'Cry God for Harry!'

Not unexpectedly, the Wall Street Journal applauds 2nd Lt HRH's decision to deploy with his unit to Iraq:

'Cry God for Harry!'

February 24, 2007; Page A8

An English prince, still in his 20s, whose youth was famously spent in bad company and who sometimes goes by the name of Harry, takes his soldiers to war and finds his place in history and legend after an improbable victory over a foreign foe. No, Cornet Harry Wales is probably not a latter-day King Henry V. But it's hard not to be struck by the sight of a European royal who wants something more from life than to appear regularly in the pages of Hello!

The news is that Prince Charles's younger son, Harry, a junior officer in the Household Cavalry, will later this year deploy to southern Iraq even as the British government begins withdrawing some of its troops. "There's no way I'm going to put myself through Sandhurst [military academy], and then sit on my arse back home while my boys are out fighting for their country," he told one interviewer. The Prince's decision is all the more courageous given that he will surely become a prime target for jihadists seeking a trophy kill.

No less admirable is the Prince bucking the antiwar tide of British public opinion. A cartoon in the Guardian newspaper has him sitting backward in the saddle, his sword raised under the caption "Into the Valley of Death." That may typify the views of London's fashionable Islington set. But we suspect that most Britons, even those who oppose the war, will find reason to admire a young man who grasps that the essence of monarchy -- and its best justification -- lies not in its titles and luxuries but in its sense of duty, loyalty and honor.