Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1901-02-23
WONDERS ON THE
BRITISH EMPIRE
MARVELS IN THE CONSTITUENCY
OF The NEW KING-ALL
OVER THE WORLD.

When a stout, good-humored, slightly
bald gentleman of fifty-nine, dressed in
the spectacular. though not battle
Scared, uniform of British field mar
shall, was saluted by humbly genuflect-
ing subjects as king of Great Britain and
Ireland and emperor of India, the scene
furnished food for imagination.
The face of this gentleman will soon
become the best known of all the faces
H. the world. 1t will be stuck on letters
written by the light of seal oil lamps
in snow houses in the darkness of Arc
tic winter Moons, and in the sunshine of
Antarctic midnights. 1t will be on coins
that will pay missionaries for saving
souls and Arab land pirates for caravans
of slaves, the survivors of the butchered
tribes.
Edward, king and emperor, represents
more variegated religious sentiments
than any other man on earth.
He is the official head of the Episcopal
church of England, and of the Presby-
terrain church of Scotland.
He holds the title of Defender of the
Faith because the pope bestowed it upon
Henry VIII. for writing pamphlet
against Luther just before Henry desert
ed the pope for not giving him divorce.
He is the greatest Mohammedan of the
world. ruling over more Moslems than
| obey the sultan of Turkey.
He is the first Brahmin and the first
Parsee sovereign of the globe.
He possesses the most sacred shrines
of the Buddhists.
He is the head of several colonies of
Confucians.
Gos S111,i Of c1, do 0F
idolatry, many of whom are regularly
supplied with machine made gods by en-
terprising British manufacturers in
birmingham.
If KingEdward should go to some parts
of his empire he would find subjects
| whose first impulse would be to eat him.
| In other parts he would find people who
| would knock their foreheads on the
| ground and worship him as deity.
| Some of the four hundred million in
| habitants of his dominons stick to the
rule of having only one wife apiece at
| one time. Others believe in letting each
| husband have all the wives he can get,
and still others hold that the proper do
nestle arrangement is that by which
| several husbands share one wife.
/, We often say that "England' will do
| this or that, as if England and the Brit
| ish empire meant the same thing. The
truth is that King Edward has over a
| dozen times as many subjects outside
| of England as he has in it, and that Eng
land contains only about one two hum
dred and twentieth part of the land OF
the empire.
| There never was a king before who
ruled over so many varied samples Of
4 the earth's surface. If you start al
! Greenwich and go eastward or westward
around the world, you cannot strike a
| space of ten degrees in the whole 800
degrees of longitude that does not lie on
the meridian of some British possession,
except one gap of about twenty degrees
in the isandless wastes of the Atlantic.
! Nor can you find zone of ten degrees
of latitude anywhere from the North to
the South Pole that does not cross Brit
| ish territory.
| Edward VII. rules over people of every
race and of almost every nationality on
the globe. II ehas English, Scotch and r.
ish subjects everywhere, French subjects
on the Channel islands and in Canada,
Spanish subjects in Gibralter, Italian
| and Greek subjects in Malta. Arab, Cop
tic and Turkish subjects in Egypt, SUBJ
|; jects of score of Asiatic races in India
| Chinese subjects in Hong Kong and Wei
Hal Wei, Malay subjects in Borneo and
Fthe Malay peninsula, Polynesion subjects
Iin the Pacific, Dutch, Zulu, Hottentot
and Bushman subjects in South Africa !;
negro subjects in West and Central At
| RIGA, and Indian and Eskimo subjects in
| Canada.
| Think of the prayers that are going
! UP from all over the world for that bald
gentleman witls the red coat and the blue
ribbon. In hundred languages white,
| black, brown, red and yellow men are
| breathing God save the king" If there
| were green men, some of them would be
| doing it, too. No wonder Edward VII is
| sobered and awed by the responsibilities
| of such a position.