Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/617

 between emperor and king. The passing cloud dispersed. On 15 Aug. 1906 the At Friedricijs- kin visited the emperor at hof, is Aug. Friedrichshof near Cronberg on his journey to Marienbad, and a general conversation which only dealt in part with politics put matters on a right footing. Sir Frank Lascelles, the English ambassador at Berlin, who had accom- panied the king from Frankfort, was present at the interview. Just a year later (14 Aug. 1907) a like meeting at Wilhelms- hohe renewed the friendly intercourse, and in the same year the German emperor and empress paid a state visit to Windsor (11-18 Nov.). The emperor exerted all his charm on his host and his fellow guests. The formal speeches of both emperor and king abounded in felicitous assurances of good-will. During the emperor's stay at Windsor the king gathered about him as imposing an array of royal personages as ever assembled there. On 17 November he entertained at lun- cheon twenty-four men and women of royal rank, including the king and queen of Spain, Queen Amelie of Portugal, and many members of the Orleans and Bourbon families, who had met in England to celebrate the marriage o"f Prince Charles of Bourbon to Princess Louise of Orleans. The entertainment showed the king at the head of the royal caste of Europe, and attested his social power of reconciling discordant elements. The emperor remained in England till 11 December, sojourning privately at Highcliffe near Bournemouth on leaving Windsor. Again on his way to Marienbad the king spent another pleasant day with the emperor at Friedrichshof (11 August 1908). King Edward returned the German emperor's formal . . ., WTT* i -r-i i visit to Windsor in February 1909, when he and the queen stayed in Berlin. For the second time during his reign a cabinet minister bore him company on a foreign expedition. At Kiel some four years earlier the first lord of the admiralty, Lord Sel borne, had been in the king's suite when he met his nephew. The king was now attended by the earl of Crewe, secretary for the colonies. On neither of the only two occasions when a cabinet minister attended the king abroad did the foreign minister go. In both instances the minister's presence was of compli- mentary rather than of diplomatic signi- ficance, and was a royal concession to the German emperor's love of ceremonial observance. The king's Berlin expedition did not differ from his visits of courtesy to other foreign capitals.

With the aged emperor of Austria, whom he had known and liked from boyhood, and in whose dominions he had often sojourned, the king was equally desirous of repeating friendly greetings in person. He paid the emperor a visit at Gmiinden on his way out to Marienbad in August 1905, and on each of the two meetings with Meetings will. * he German A emperor at Cron the emperor berg, m August 1907 and of Austria, August 1908, he went the next day to Tschl to offer salutations to Emperor Francis Joseph. All these meetings fell within the period of the king's usual autumn holiday. But on his second visit to Ischl the emperor of Austria entertained him to a state banquet, and Baron von Aerenthal, who was in attendance on his master, had some political conversation on affairs in Turkey and the Balkan provinces with Sir Charles Hardinge, who was in King Edward's retinue. But the king's concern with the diplomatic problem was remote. He was once more illustrating his zeal for ratifying by personal intercourse the wide bounds of his friendships with European sovereigns.

On the same footing stood the only visit which the king paid to the tsar of Russia The visit during his reign. He made to Russia, with the queen a special journey June 1908. (9 June 1908) ^ Reval> l t was the first visit ever paid to Russia by a British sovereign. It followed his cruise round the other northern capitals, and the king regarded as overdue the personal civility to the tsar, who was nephew of his wife, and to whom he was deeply attached. The tsar had been driven from his capital by revolutionary agitation and was in his yacht off Reval. The interview proved thoroughly cordial. French journalists hailed it with satisfaction ; Germans scented in it a new menace, but the journey was innocent of diplomatic purpose. Objection was raised in the House of Commons that the king's visit showed sympathy with the tsar's alleged oppression of his revolutionary subjects. The suggestion moved the king's resentment. He acknowledged no connection between a visit to a royal kinsman and any phase of current political agitation. The unrest in Russia was no concern of his, and only awoke in him sympathy with the ruler whose life it oppressed. Unwisely the king took notice of the parliamentary criticism of his action, and cancelled the invitation to a royal garden party