_ennui_--frequent flights to the court of England--for Norway has had
quite enough of absentee royalty. The English papers asserted that
King Edward used his parental authority to overcome his daughter's
scruples. At all events, she gave in. As for Prince Karl's reasonable
fear of dethronement and penury, the Norwegian government quieted that
by promising a respectable pension in case the king should find it
expedient to abdicate.

So, then, the affair was comfortably arranged. The king has a salary
of $200,000, a crown when he had no hope of ever feeling one on his
brow, and the problems of a court without a nobility.

And now the world is asking, "Has Norway done well for herself?"
Certainly she has done well in putting a Scandinavian prince on the
throne. No alien would ever understand Norway or be understood. If
reports are creditable, the Kaiser made the most of his friendship
with the country in support of the claims of a son of his own. Had a
German secured the throne, there would have been sown fresh seeds
of discord on a peninsula which can raise a sufficient crop of
dissensions without any aid from the rest of Europe. For Denmark,
still nursing the rankling grievance of the Schleswig-Holstein affair,
detests the thought of everything German.

King Haakon combines the advantages of Scandinavian birth with the
very positive political asset of blood relationship to half the courts
of Europe. Grandson of the late King Christian of Denmark, the young
monarch is also nephew to King George of Greece, the Dowager Empress
of Russia, and Alexandria of England, a grand-nephew to the late Oscar
of Sweden, son-in-law to King Edward VII, and cousin to the Czar. To a
relatively defenseless country like Norway, this means a good deal.