[untitled]

     The deep impression produced throughout the United States by the death of PRESIDENT MCKINLEY has found its reverberating note all over the world. Princes and peoples have been eager to show their cordial sympathy. But nowhere has this feeling been stronger than in our own country and among all classes of the population of these islands. The Gazette published last night orders, by the KING’S command, the wearing of Court mourning for the late PRESIDENT. It is announced, at the same time, that a memorial service will be held in Westminster Abbey at noon on Thursday—the day when MR. MCKINLEY’S remains will be borne to their last home in Ohio—and a similar service will take place at 3 o’clock on the same day in St. Paul’s Cathedral. The former ceremony will be attended, it is understood, by the official representatives of the Government and of the Diplomatic body; while at the latter the LORD MAYOR, the Sheriffs, and the leading members of the historic Corporation of London will be present in civic dignity. On the same day, too, the Stock Exchange will be closed as “a mark of sympathy with the people of the United States.” A memorial which has been drawn up in the name of the leading bankers, merchants, and traders of the City, and which is now open for signature at the Bank of England, is intended to convey to the American Ambassador the feelings of sorrow and indignation at the blow that has fallen upon a country connected with us by ties so close and so numerous. Nor has it been left to the State and to public bodies to give expression to the emotions springing from a common humanity and a common origin, which unite us with the people of the United States in their hour of trouble. Spontaneously and almost universally the signs of public grief have been shown among us. Throughout the land flags wave at half-mast in silent homage to the murdered PRESIDENT. There is hardly any corporate or organized body in the United Kingdom which has not been eager to seize the opportunity of joining in a manifestation of kindly feeling bearing testimony to a real kinship between two great nations sprung from the same ancestors and inspired by the same traditions.
     In the centres of commerce and industry in the United States the public sorrow has shown itself in an unwontedly subdued tone and an absence of any visible evidence of excitement. Almost all the conspicuous edifices, public or private, in New York are draped in black—the singular exception being that the buildings belonging to the Federal Government, being forbidden by law, display no signs of mourning. After lying in state in the City Hall at Buffalo, the late PRESIDENT’S body was removed yesterday to Washington, whence it will be carried to-night to his home at Canton, in Ohio. The funeral will, undoubtedly, be the most remarkable demonstration of public affliction that has been witnessed in America since ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S remains were carried to their last resting-place. MR. MCKINLEY had won the esteem and affection of his fellow-citizens, and the policy which he pursued in office was the outcome, both in its strength and in its weakness, of the varying opinions of the American people. His domestic virtues and the simplicity of his life endeared him to a nation among whom, in spite of the vast development of wealth and of the growing temptations to luxury, the Puritan tradition is still a powerful force. The day of mourning proclaimed, as his first official act, by MR. MCKINLEY’S successor will be no merely formal testimony to the grief of the nation. It will express feelings intensified by the reaction from highly-wrought hopes to the cruel certainty that the assassin had been successful in his crime. The keenest sympathy for the bereaved and suffering wife of the late Chief of the State is a factor in the condition of the public mind the importance of which can hardly be overestimated.
     The new PRESIDENT of the United States is, fortunately, exempted from the necessity of facing a general election before he has to decide upon and announce a policy. He occupies, in fact, a position of peculiar independence. As a general rule the Vice-President has been chosen, not as the most fitting person to succeed the actual Chief of the Executive in the case of death or resignation, but for merely party reasons. MR. ROOSEVELT’S predecessors have been nominated and elected either to give a sop to a defeated or disappointed section of the victorious party, or to gratify some powerful State of which the “Favourite Son” has been left out of the running. But the statesman for whom MR. MCKINLEY’S death has opened the way to the highest place in the Republic had the honour thrust upon him by an irresistible movement of public opinion. He did not himself desire a place which, as it seemed, must relegate him to political quietude, if not to political impotence, during four eventful years. Still less was his nomination desired by the powerful organization governed by SENATOR HANNA, which dominated the Republican party, and of which MR. MCKINLEY was the chosen representative. But the popular will which compelled MR. ROOSEVELT to accept the office of Vice-President, with hardly any other duties than those of the chairmanship of the Senate, has, in the actual event, given him for three years and a half the control of the executive power in the United States, with the prospect, if his administration is successful, of becoming the unchallenged candidate of his party at the next election to the Presidency. MR. ROOSEVELT’S high character, his unquestioned ability, his literary gifts, and his remarkable strength of will are qualities which ought to secure him a distinguished place in the roll of the Presidents of the Union. It is too soon to conjecture whether PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT will add to these advantages the saving leaven of a wise and far-seeing prudence. He is an American Imperialist, and, though he has said that he will continue to proceed upon the lines of MR. MCKINLEY’S policy, it is not certain that he will give the same interpretation as his predecessor to the somewhat vague phrases in which that policy was set forth. In this country there will be no disposition to form any unfriendly prejudgment of MR. ROOSEVELT’S Administration. The pessimistic forecasts of some organs of opinion in Germany and Austria, though ostensibly based upon a belief in MR. ROOSEVELT’S anti-German feeling, have probably a different origin. The jealousy of the prosperity and the expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race which is at the root of the virulence of the criticism directed against this country abroad is a main element also in the bitterness against “Americanism” on the Continent.