King Charles Before the Congress

The state visit of King Charles III and Queen Camilla to America next week to honor the 250th anniversary of the Founding is a moment to mark. It would scarcely have been imaginable to Charles’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, George III, who lost the colonies in 1783. Charles will visit Manhattan and is due to address Congress, only the second such speech by a British monarch. The first such speech was his mother’s in 1991.In hosting Charles and Camilla, President Trump is repaying the royals — via a state banquet and other fêtes — for honoring him last year with a state visit to Britain in September. Buckingham Palace says that the coming trip aims to “celebrate historic connections and the modern bilateral relationship.” Mr. Trump says that he is “looking forward to spending time with the King, whom I greatly respect. It will be TERRIFIC!”The editor and royal watcher Tina Brown writes that as king, Charles “has found a way to be statesman-like but human, regal but authentic.” Even the sovereign, though, must contend with what she calls the “ratty diminution of British power on the world stage” and the “disintegrated goodwill between” Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who, the 47th president grasps, is a far cry from Winston Churchill.Sir Keir’s fortunes have tumbled since he visited Mr. Trump last year. He dithered over participating in America and Israel’s war on Iran. When a British base on Cyprus was hit by the mullahs, it took three weeks for HMS Dragon to reach the island. This from the Navy that defied the Spanish Armada of 1588 and boasted of the services of the likes of Sir Francis Drake and Horatio Nelson. Sir Keir has been unable to shake the Epstein scandal.The visit is expected to include a rarity — a garden party for the Royals held on American soil, the first since 1939. The event, to take place at the British Ambassador’s residence on Massachusetts Avenue, will, the Washington Examiner reports, discourage male guests from wearing hats. Plenty of hats are on display at a new exhibition devoted to Queen Elizabeth II’s fashion, newly opened at the King’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.The king attended that opening this week, timed to mark the 100th birth anniversary of his mother, the longest-serving monarch in British history. When, in 1976, Elizabeth visited America for its bicentennial, she danced with President Ford at a state banquet and addressed a joint meeting of the Congress. We commend a watching of it, which we found affecting, starting with the cataract of applause with which she was welcomed. At the time, just months after the war in Kuwait, Elizabeth drew great applause when she saluted the “outstanding leadership” of President George H.W. Bush in the war and spoke of the “courage and prowess” of our armed forces. She reported that the service men and women of Britain were “proud to act in a just cause alongside American comrades,” a compliment that was greeted, again, by robust applause.The king’s speech to Congress is set for Tuesday. We find ourselves looking forward to it. His will be a harder task than his mother’s, as the combat phase of the war in which she spoke was short and swift and ended on our terms. We are not there yet in the current war. Nor is Britain where it was during the first Gulf War. All the more, we reckon, will be the interest what Charles has to say about how the relationship between our countries has been so special.

King Charles Before the Congress

King Charles Before the Congress

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