The Position of the English Monarchy Today

On November 29, 1934, the youngest surviving son of George V was married, to the accompaniment of national excitement greater than that caused by any similar event since Queen Victoria's jubilee of 1897. On May 6 of the present year, the nation and the Empire celebrated George V's jubilee, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his accession to the throne, and popular enthusiasm was even greater than in November. The stability and popularity of the British monarchy is impressive in a Europe which less than twenty years ago saw most ruling monarchs dethroned, and has since witnessed the deposition of Alfonso XIII in Spain and (more recently still) the assassination of the most successful Balkan king. Except for Italy, where the development of Fascism has greatly weakened the position of the king, monarchs exist in Europe only in three Balkan countries and in those regions of northwestern Europe where democratic government has been long established—Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. It is a common assumption that the limited monarch has been found not only compatible with but a support to the democratic capitalistic state.