The San Francisco call., 1897-06-27

! adlatus to the Secretary, subservient to
| him and to Parliament instead of to the
| crown, very important point when it is
RENE m bered that in previous reigns con-
II cts between Parliament and the throne
/ have frequently occurred, one of them,
! indeed, eliminating in the death on the
| scatfold OF King Charles /. The Queen.
however, finding at length that not only
the Liberals but even the Tories were de-
termined upon the change, deferred, as
she has invariably done throughout her
reign, to the will Of her people and virtu.
ally abandoned 10 Parliament her strongly
cherished preroGative of the mmand
OF the army, matters being facilitated by
the fact that there was at the time of the
old Duke of Cambridge's retirement no
! royal prince of sufficient military stand
ing and experience to enable his being ap-
| pointed to the vacant office. and that the
! sovereign was not a man, but a woman,
Indeed. the change would certainly have
been more difficult had the Prince
of Wales been on the throne. since
the constitution OF every monarchicaI
country in Europe provides that theoret-
lcally, at any rate, the command : in
chief OF the army shall be vested in the
hands of the sovereign.
| This is the case, of course, in Italy. But
in discussing the proposal 10 transform
/ from royal into a national" force,
the champions of the re solution, who in
cluded, of course, many of ex-Premier
| CrispTs friends, argued that the army was
recruited for the defense, not so much OF
the throne as of the nation, and was paid
by the latter; that the King was merely
Its chief officer, subject like any other Of
hcer to the orders OF the nation; in fact.
that King and the soldiers were alike the
servants of the people which furnished
the funds for their maintenance. 1t was
added that the word royal" now prefixed
to army" gave rise to the impression
that the latter constituted merely a body
of personal retainers of the sovereign,
who in the event OF any conflict on hts
part with the people would espouse his
cause instead of the taxpayers, who after
all are its paymasters.
A conflict of this kind is no longer re-
garded as imminent in Italy. But it can
not be denied that something III this ma.
ture IS apprehended in Germany. and
more especially in Prussia, where mon
arch and people are daily drifting further
apart.
That Emperor William anticipates some
such struggle is apparent from all his re-
cent utterances whenever he has occasion
to address his troops. notably at Bielefeld
last week, his favorite theme being the
duty of the soldiers to hold themselves
ready to defend with their life's blood
their sovereign and his throne, not so
much against the foreign foe, as against
the enemies within the frontiers of the
empire and of the kingdom. In presid-
ing at the ceremony of the swearing
in of the recruits, he never fails to
remind them that their first duty is 10
ward himself rather than to the people
who pay them, and he is never tired of
I expatlatlng on what he describes as the
Kings CLOTH" that is to say, the uni
form, which he, like many other sover-
eigns chooses to regard as the livery, not
OF the State or of the nation, but of the
monarch to whom the wearer is bound by
special ties of allegiance, loyalty and
blind, unquestioning obedience. NoI
must it be forgotten that in all instances
OF DISPUTE and strife between civilians and
military men, the Emperor always up
holds the latter even when they are
shown to be the aggressors, and actually
to the extent of either pardcning or COM