Page:The golden book of King Edward VII.djvu/40

KING EDWARD VII.

and I trust that the friendship and admiration which we all feel for the French nation and their glorious traditions may in the near future develop into a sentiment of the warmest affection and attachment between the peoples of the two countries. The achievement of this aim is my constant desire.(1903)

One great secret of King Edward's immense influence was that, as The Times has said, "He was indeed a man among men; and the British people, and yet more perhaps the Irish people, instinctively love a man. Nothing struck them more and nothing pleased them better than his open and manifest joy in life." And the British love of sport and open-air amusements was in him exemplified to the uttermost. Whether his racing yacht Britannia was carrying off cup after cup-whether he were shooting tigers in India, pheasants at Sandringham, or deer in the Highlands—or whether, pressed 35