Articles by New Statesman

Technology

From the archive: The King’s decision

King Edward VIII proposed to his love, the divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. A constitutional crisis followed, and on 11 December Edward abdicated the throne. His brother Albert became George VI Things had reached such a pass that the lesser evil was the King’s abdication. But there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about how things ever reached this pass, and the best service we can do is frankly to discuss certain facts that have not been made plain to the public. It is altogether unfair to the King to pretend, as the Times pretends, that the King had himself shown that he realised Mrs Simpson’s unsuitability by suggesting that she should be married to him without being Queen of England. For the question of his intention to make Mrs Simpson Queen had been fully discussed with Mr Baldwin in private before the morganatic solution was suggested. It was only because Mr [Stanley] Baldwin had intimated that the Government would resign if Mrs Simpson was to become Queen of England that the King advanced the morganatic solution as a second best. The simple truth is that the King is a lonely, highly-strung person who had found for the first time in his life a woman who gave him confidence and happiness. It seemed to us, and still seems to us, that it would have been better to have allowed him to marry her morganatically than to have made marriage impossible without abdication. Only one of the arguments passionately urged against this solution seems to us valid. If it is true that the Dominions would have refused to pass the necessary legislation, that was of course a good reason for refusing it. But the attitude of the Dominions obviously depended very much on the way in which the suggestion was made to them, and we do not doubt that some of the Dominions which were most opposed to the marriage would have accepted Mrs Simpson either as Queen or as the King’s wife if the proposal had been preceded by the necessary governmental and press preparation. We urged this solution before Mr Baldwin’s statement last week, because it was clearly the only solution compatible both with the King’s happiness and his remaining on the throne. This, however, is now past history. Mr Baldwin held that it was better for the King to abdicate than to have Mrs Simpson as Queen or even as the King’s wife. He had the right to make this decision and we have the right to criticise it. What neither we nor anyone else had the right to do was to attempt to rally political support for the Crown against his Ministers. Nothing but disaster could have followed the formation of a King’s Party and a battle between some group of “King’s friends” and the majority of the House of Commons. Once Mr Baldwin had made it clear that the Government would not support a morganatic marriage, only the enemies of democracy would have urged that the King was still free to make a personal appeal to the country over the heads of his Ministers, and it was significant that it was at this stage that Lord Rothermere, in one of his various and contradictory epistles to himself, decided to support it. Lord Rothermere, like Sir Oswald Mosley, would no doubt have been a willing cavalier in a battle between King and Parliament. For ourselves, we dislike much of the unctuous humbug that has been advanced against the King’s marriage. But if it had come to a battle between Cavaliers and Roundheads, we should have been Roundheads all the time, even though being a Roundhead once again meant being a Puritan. But Cromwell did his work well; and Puritanism and Parliamentarism still remain dominant in England. The House of Commons and the country, as far as we can judge of it, had nothing but contempt for those who tried to make personal or party capital out of the King. The Labour Party had too much sense to fall into the trap of trying to come out as “King’s men”. The King showed no disposition to lend himself to intrigue, and the danger of the formation of a Royal Fascist Party, which seemed serious at the week-end, is now over – unless there are any of our Fascists who look forward to intriguing against democracy at a new court of St Germain. There is one other important factor which may temper the regret that we feel that the King should have abdicated on such an issue. Much has been made of his carelessness of scandal and of the damage caused by the gossip that has flooded the American press almost from the day of his accession, which followed him everywhere on his Adriatic holiday and which reached its climax at the Ipswich divorce. More important in the long run, however, was the doubt felt by many informed persons about whether the King would desire fully to carry out his duties as sovereign. He had expressed this doubt himself before he became King, and he too obviously continued to hate many of the ceremonial and routine functions of royalty after his accession. Every sensitive person will sympathise with this dislike and, as we said last week, the most attractive part of the King’s character is his loathing of humbug. But then the functions of royalty are largely ceremonial, and it may be that a tolerance of humbug is an essential characteristic of the holder of any great ceremonial office. In any case, until we have a Republic the man who sits on the throne of England must be prepared for a monotonous and exacting job, and if he is not prepared for all the necessary discipline for fulfilling his decorous functions it is better for him not to be King. Edward VIII, moreover, disliked the old type of royal adviser; no doubt many of those whom he was expected to spend his time with were dull and “stuffy” people. But they were also responsible people, and it is an open secret that much of the society that has surrounded King Edward has been irresponsible and politically, as well as morally, undesirable. If the facts were known the British public would have far less objection to Mrs Simpson than to some of the other influences that have played their part in the King’s entourage. The King’s abdication is an unhappy solution of an unhappy situation. In the circumstances it is nevertheless the best solution. Since he is not allowed to marry the woman of his choice and remain on the throne he is better off it, both for his own sake and the country’s. We see only one actually good result out of this lamentable affair. The British Monarchy had been built up by deliberate propaganda to a dangerous eminence, dangerous, as everyone now sees, for the King as for the country. A few weeks ago it was considered bold to recall that the King was a man who might have faults like other people. To-day it has become possible once again to talk sense about Monarchy. We welcome this return to sanity. So clearly does it mean a return to sanity that we may even venture to recall that though it matters who is King of England and who is Queen of England, it matters rather more that war is now raging in Europe. Further reading: Abolish the monarchy]