By JOHN O'SULLIVAN

Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis Queen Elizabeth II during a 1954 tour of the Commonwealth. On her Diamond Jubilee, it continues to expand due to her hard work; she is said to have shaken hands with 2 million people.

At a Buckingham Palace reception for G-7 leaders in the run-up to the first Gulf War, Edward Heath, a former prime minister, was lecturing Secretary of State James Baker on his duty to visit Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Baker demurred: security, etc. Heath insisted: "I went to Baghdad."
"I know you did," said the third person in the conversation, "but you're expendable." He had been neatly deflated—and by no less a personage than the Queen.
Photos: America and the Queen


Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee. Here are a few moments in her long relationship with the U.S.


Not many Americans have seen Queen Elizabeth II in this light: relaxed with heads of government, plainly conversant with great issues, slyly witty. Her constitutional role imposes a highly formal style on her in public. But this private reality explains why her Diamond Jubilee is a world event rather than just a British one.
For the Jubilee is being celebrated in former colonies at least as fervently as in Britain and the 15 other countries of which she remains "Queen Regnant." The 54-nation Commonwealth, which she heads, is expanding. Countries never ruled from London, such as Rwanda and Cameroon, have recently joined. What the Canadian writer Mark Steyn described as "the first multicultural identity—the British Commonwealth one" is not a witty paradox but a durable, even resilient, reality.
Elizabeth II is much of the reason. She has visited every Commonwealth country at least once, some often, and shaken hands with some two million people. She is the super-glue holding together a world-wide post-imperial structure of free relationships.
Americans are largely unaware of her wider role. America's republican tradition and love of innovation distort its view of an ancient monarchy. Americans thrill to its ceremony but overlook its utility and staying power. Their view of the Queen is a friendly but overly romantic one, shaped by three moments.
In World War II newsreels, she appeared as a modern young woman who "did her bit" training as an auto mechanic—a Rosie the Royal Riveter. In 1947 she married a handsome naval war hero in a "fairy tale" royal wedding shown world-wide on television. And in 1952 she returned hastily to Britain from Kenya—slim, delicate and palely beautiful—as the new young Queen upon the death of her greatly loved father.
All these moments were evocative. Together, however, they suggested the imprisonment of a lively young woman inside the cold formalities of an ancien regime. This seemed at odds with America's promise of personal freedom, especially to young women. What it missed was that the Queen had been given what American women were soon saying they wanted: a career.
Some of the best love affairs rest on misunderstandings. In addition to countless private visits, especially to American "horse country," the Queen has made no fewer than six state visits to Washington, meeting all but one (Lyndon Johnson) of the 11 U.S. presidents in office during her reign. Her most significant visit was for the 1976 Bicentennial. There were a few sour notes: After a cabaret number called "Muskrat Love," a court official confided to a table of Brits that "H.M. didn't much like the song about copulating rodents." But the visit went well. She delivered a short but powerful speech in Philadelphia as "a direct descendant of George III": "We lost the American Colonies because we lacked that statesmanship 'to know the right time, and the manner of yielding, what is impossible to keep.' " That lesson, she said, helped Britain to transform its second empire into a free Commonwealth.
In his Victorian study of the monarchy, Walter Bagehot warned, "We must not let daylight in upon magic." Modern communications do just that. Sometimes for the best—we know that the Queen is a brave and resourceful woman. In 1982, she calmed down a madman who had gained entry into her bedroom at Buckingham Palace. She is unaffectedly religious. She is devoted to her duty, not as a prisoner of ritual but as a practical sovereign working to preserve the monarchy as a focus of multicultural loyalty in a diverse world—and succeeding beyond any reasonable expectation.
Sometimes not for the best—a late threat to her success was the antics of the younger royals, notably Princess Diana, and the Hollywood cult of celebrity that seduced them. Celebrity and monarchy are natural enemies. The first is about enjoying fame; the second is about performing duties. Elizabeth always realized the distinction. Her third prime minister, Harold Macmillan, wrote of her decision to ignore a terrorist threat: "She is impatient of the attitude towards her to treat her as…a film star.... She loves her duty and means to be a Queen." For a moment around Diana's funeral, it seemed that this dutiful woman had lost ground to the glamorous "people's princess." But the febrile mood passed; the monarchy recovered its nerve. And when the Queen Mother died, her highly traditional funeral showed people rallying to the more solid ideal.
Americans may not celebrate Elizabeth II's Jubilee as fervently as some other ex-colonials. They will, however, applaud. When magic survives daylight, and the reason is duty bravely performed, we are briefly in a better world.
— Mr. O'Sullivan is the author of "The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World."