Sovereign's Dilemma

Grim forebodings and impish doubts beset, last week, the mind of George V, King & Emperor. The Church of England prayer book schism had suddenly yawned into a wide abyss. On which side stood the Sovereign? If on both, could he long maintain so wide a straddle? Leaders on both sides, harassed His Majesty, last week, by despatching hundreds of partisan appeals to the royal winter residence, Sandringham House, Norfolk. What to decide?

Doubtless there stirred in the Fifth George an acute consciousness that he owes his throne to the fact that the First George was a sturdy Protestant. He, the Elector of Hanover, achieved his legal right of succession to the British Throne under the Act of Settlement (1701), in which the British Parliament had taken care to exclude all Roman Catholic claimants. To-day is barely two centuries later than that time--when a religious issue was paramount in settling the First George upon his throne (1714). Has England changed so greatly that the Fifth George can dare to remain aloof from the great and present issue between Pro-Catholic and Pro-Protestant members of the Church of England?

His Majesty will have no choice but to take sides, if Parliament passes the new and further revised prayer book of the Church of England (the State Church). Should a bill approving that volume pass and be placed before the Fifth George, he must either sign or refuse to sign. In either case, the disappointed faction would be alienated from the Throne.

Since the British ruling classes are predominantly Church of England folk, the dilemma faced by George V is thus presented by his most potent subjects and cannot be ignored.

However, one fact opens a narrow path to Royalty between Scylla and Charybdis, namely that slightly more than half the population of the United Kingdom do not belong to the Church of England. It is this majority which (although its individual leaders are less potent than those in the State Church), is probably strong enough to maintain the Sovereign in suspended straddle, until the abyss beneath him closes through conciliation, or is replaced by some such new order of things as disestablishment of the State Church by Parliament.

To trouble His Majesty still further, came last week at St. Cuthbert's church, Darwen, Lancashire, an actual beginning of physical strife over the great spiritual issue. When the Rev. F. B. Lauria, Vicar of St. Cuthbert's, attempted with pro-Catholic technique the "sung Eucharist," some 200 pro-Protestant parishioners rose up with loud, spontaneous hymns to drown the chanting of the Eucharist. Soon they fell to shouting extracts from the old Prayer Book, to shaking angry fists. Police, hastily summoned, got Vicar Lauria safely away, but not until a booing mob of 1,000 had collected wrathfully around the Church of Sainted Cuthbert.