( It is curious to recall that it is not very long since the main complaint of the critics of the Monarchy was that it exercised too much hidden authority :sx this was certainly the complaint made , until recently , of George =5's behaviour during the constitutional crisis of 1931 .sx ) The fact is that the evidence available to us makes it clear that the Sovereign still exercises considerable power , even if this power commonly takes the form only of personal influence , is an expression only of the constitutional right to be consulted , to advise , and to warn .sx There are several examples of the exercise of this personal influence in Sir Harold Nicolson's Life of King George =5 , and the little evidence available to us about the use of his position of influence by King George =6 suggests that tradition and habit- to say nothing of hereditary streaks of character- combine strongly to ensure that the right to advise and to warn is not something which either the Sovereign or his Ministers take lightly .sx If anything , the present reign is likely to see a steady increase in the influence of the Sovereign .sx Mr. Muggeridge bashfully claims that he has no knowledge of the present members of the Royal Family .sx But I am sure that he does know that the present Queen is reputed to be a very strong-willed young woman , able and ready to make her views known and heeded , that she has , at worst , a strong streak of Hanoverian pig-headedness , and , at best , an unusual strength of character and clarity of purpose .sx This is of no little importance :sx even Lytton Strachey was , in the end , no match for the character of Queen Victoria , and this may well be the reason why Mr. Muggeridge chooses to ignore the known character of her great-great-granddaughter .sx Of no less importance is the fact that the present Queen is likely to reign for a very long time :sx longer , perhaps , even than Queen Victoria .sx The length of Queen Victoria's reign , her accumulated experience , her growing personal ascendancy over Ministers who naturally stood in awe of so formidable an historical figure , her ascendancy even over the heads of foreign powers , even when they were not her own children or grandchildren :sx all these were an important reason for the exceptional influence which she came to exercise .sx There seems every possibility that the present Queen will increasingly come to occupy something of the same position .sx However much the facts of power may change , the influence of an experienced and knowing old woman , who had been at the head of her State for fifty years while heads of the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R. or even the Chinese Republic had come and gone , could not count for nothing- even in the world which Mr. Muggeridge sometimes fearfully imagines will exist in 2002 .sx How do we expect this exceptional position of influence , which confers real personal power , to be used ?sx Much , and the answer , again , is best given in personal terms , as George =5 interpreted his duties and , so far as we know , George =6 also .sx George =5 had a strict and unerring understanding of the important conventions of the constitution :sx this proved to be of untold value during the crisis of January , 1924 , when he resisted the most powerful pressures which were put on him to keep the Labour Party out of office .sx To his instinctive behaviour on that occasion we can , in part , attribute the development of the Labour Party within the Parliamentary system instead of outside it , at a time when Left-wing movements throughout Europe became e@2migre@2 groups within their own countries .sx Holding the ring- for this is what such conduct is- is not confined to strict constitutional questions .sx In Sir Harold Nicolson's biography , there are many examples of George =5's anxiety that the dominant party or even interest should not , so far as it was within his power to influence decisions , ride roughshod over the rights of any of his people .sx Twice during the General Strike , for example , he spontaneously and effectively intervened to prevent the more extreme elements in the Conservative Government from unjustly or cruelly treating the strikers .sx Interventions of this kind cannot be ignored , and neither can their importance .sx It is no small thing , in an age of strong party government , to have excesses of party spirit rebuked by one to whom Ministers are constitutionally bound to listen ; and that they do listen is apparent from all that we know of the Labour Governments of 1945-51 , and the little that we know of the history of the Conservative Governments which have held office since then .sx It is apt to make people uncomfortable to-day to talk of duty , especially of duty in high places .sx But no one can read the biographies of George =5 and George =6 , which are not sycophantic , without realising that it was a simple , almost " ve , conception of their duty to their subjects , all their subjects , for it affected even George =5's attitude to the Indian question , which inspired most of their actions , and certainly their actions at all critical moments .sx I state this as a cold fact , which no one who is not blinded by preconception can fail to recognise in the available evidence .sx It is equally apparent , from the available evidence that the very simplicity of this conception of duty has normally had , and cannot fail normally to have , a softening and civilising influence on those engaged in the embittering struggle for power .sx There are ideas and conceptions , as Professor Butterfield has reminded us , which are none the less real merely because it is only thinking which has made them so .sx MARC BLOCH'S ACCOUNT of the collapse of France in 1940 is , for the comparisons it affords , not irrelevant to the point I am trying to make .sx He there accuses the rulers and seducers of the French people before 1940 of showing " complete ignorance of the high nobility which lies unexpressed in the hearts of a people which , like ours , has behind it a long history of political action .sx " It is not a sentimental , but a precise point which he makes :sx it is the length of a people's political tradition to which he draws our attention , and the failure of the inherent nobility of the French political tradition to find worthy expression before and during 1940 .sx A similar nobility , inherent in the British political tradition , did find expression in 1940 .sx It is a foolhardy man , surely , who believes that the contrast had nothing to do with the expression of the tradition through , not only the Monarchy as an institution , but also the personal characters and examples set by George =5 and George =6 .sx The ingraining of this tradition in the British Royal Family- and I cannot see how it could more surely be accomplished than by the passing on of a tradition within a family- seems to me of real value to the country .sx It is for this reason that most of the sentimental talk about the education of a modern Sovereign is so alarmingly irrelevant .sx Day by day , week by week , year by year , the Queen is invited , by her self-appointed advisers , to send her eldest child to a State school , to " bring him up like other " :sx advice which may be relevant to the education of a citizen , but not to the education of a constitutional Sovereign .sx There seems to be little doubt that the inculcation of the habits of mind and behaviour of a constitutional Sovereign has been successfully achieved in the cases of George =5 , George =6 , and the present Queen .sx I see no reason why we should be prepared to barter the prospect of a first-class Sovereign for the certainty of yet another second-class citizen .sx It seems a mean exchange .sx IT IS CURIOUS that Mr. Muggeridge , who is rightly anxious that people should adapt themselves to the realities of their changed positions , does not understand the role of the Monarchy in helping to make the uncomfortable facts of life acceptable .sx It is easy to laugh at the sight of the Labour Ministers of 1924 , attired , a little ridiculously , in Court dress .sx But , except to a few irreconcilables of the Left , the pomp and the display were a small price to pay for the visible evidence that the Sovereign , the known repository of the nation's political experience , had accepted the Labour Party as his advisers , and had accepted them in the same manner and with the same marks of respect , given and received , as the representatives of either of the two established , middle-class , parties .sx Nor do I understand how Mr. Muggeridge , and those who argue like him , can deny the value of the Monarchy in making even more difficult changes , not only popularly acceptable , but acceptable even to those most likely not to be reconciled to them .sx The transference of power in British territories since 1945 has been made considerably easier by the presence and actions , even by the courtesy , of the two reigning monarchs .sx Again , one may smile at the speed with which Mr. Nehru or even Archbishop Makarios is transformed from being one of Her Majesty's guests-in-prison into one of Her Majesty's guests at Buckingham Palace .sx But he seems to me someone ill-qualified to observe or comment on public affairs who denies the importance of such things .sx Those pictures of " The Queen and her Ministers , " which are reproduced on the back page of The Times at every Commonwealth conference , are worth contemplating .sx One may , like Mr. Muggeridge , sometimes wryly observe that the number of Prime Ministers seems to increase in direct proportion as the number of territories directly subject to Her Majesty declines .sx But in the end , one must , if one is not jaundiced , admit that they are a notable tribute to the capacity of the British for accepting inevitable change .sx The acceptance of reality in Algeria might have been considerably easier for the colons and the Army , if there had been the symbol of an accepted Sovereign to emphasise the continuity which exists in all established societies in spite of actual change .sx It becomes less necessary to cry Algerie Franc@6aise , or something like it , when the fiction of the headship of the Commonwealth makes visible the abiding connections which unite one society to another .sx THE SYMBOLIC MEANING of the Monarchy is the most important and at the same time the most difficult and confusing of all its many aspects .sx What does the Monarchy mean to those who cherish it ?sx This question must be answered with more than a little care for other people's needs and feelings .sx It may well be that the Monarchy is less necessary to the articulate than the inarticulate , to Mr. Muggeridge than Mrs. Mop .sx But I am not so sure of this .sx As I have said , Mr. Muggeridge seems to me to betray just as foolish an obsession with the Monarchy as the most bedazzled reader of Woman and Woman's Own .sx The value of the Monarchy to me , personally , seems to me to be of much the same order as its value to those less inclined to examine their own attitudes and their own motives .sx " We smile at the Court Circular ; but remember how many people read the Court Circular !sx " says Bagehot in one of his more offensively , intellectually arrogant sentences .sx " Its use is not in what it says , but in those to whom it speaks .sx " I do not deny that the Monarchy speaks directly and intelligibly to me .sx If we are to believe Mr. Muggeridge , the Monarchy symbolises obsequiousness ; sycophancy ; snobbishness ; class-consciousness ; social mountaineering ; dreamland ; earthly pretensions ; and circuses .sx It is obvious that all of these are commingled in the popular conception of the Monarchy , but I find this neither surprising nor , in itself , alarming .sx Obsequiousness , sycophancy , snobbishness , and the like , seem to me , unhappily , to be inevitable components of all human societies- I am not sure they are not their lubrication ; an oily mixture , I agree- and I object to them only when they corrupt or seriously interfere with the legitimate exercise of real power .sx