Read it through once

While all this political change and controversy was going on the King was performing a multitude of personal and social and State duties. There was always the vast amount of detailed study of current documents--all of which he looked into before signing as had Queen Victoria before him; there was the strenuous and incessant round of State functions including the reception of visiting Sovereigns and ambassadors, and special deputations, visits to cities and towns and the private houses of his greater subjects, State dinners to men and women of every school of thought and life in its higher branches, frequent trips to the Continent and continuous conferences with public men. In this connection it is interesting to note that just before the General Elections--towards the close of 1909--he did what no Sovereign had done for many a long year and did it not only without criticism but with public approval when he called Lord Lansdowne, Lord Rosebery and Mr. Balfour into quiet conference regarding the political situation. How many others of all parties he may have invited to similar discussions in the privacy of Buckingham or Windsor only such a personage as his faithful and old-time Secretary, Lord Knollys, really knows. Military and Naval reviews were amongst the more important general functions of these years coupled with gracious and conciliatory visits to Ireland in 1904 and 1907. In this latter year he reviewed a magnificent fleet of warships at Portsmouth eleven miles long, headed by the first of the Dreadnaughts, and manned by 35,000 officers and men. Upon another occasion in 1909, the greatest fleet ever gathered together in any waters in the history of the world was also reviewed by His Majesty as, perhaps, a comment on the recently revealed crisis caused by German Naval construction. As to this the King was intensely concerned and we can safely assume that if one cause of his latter ill-health was political worry another cause may well have been the Naval rivalry of a Power which boasted 4,000,000 of a trained Army to Britain's 250,000 men.