GREAT BRITAIN: Peer’s Pamphlet

Hastings William Sackville Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford, follows the great tradition of the noble British individualist. A tall, cadaverous man of 52, dressed in blue serge and a green “ratcatcher” cap given him by his mother, he broods over the mating habits of spiders, has written a book on Parrots and Parrotlike Birds in Aviculture. Last week he published a new work, an anti-war pamphlet called What a Game! It put him back in the hot water he has stewed in for most of World War II.

Besides his zoological hobbies, the Duke has dabbled in Communism, Buchmanism, Social Credit and Fascism. Currently he is a Pacifist and Social Creditor. Early in 1940, when he was still the Marquess of Tavistock, he turned up at the Foreign Office with a peace proposal which he claimed came from the German Legation in Dublin.

The Germans repudiated the plan almost as fast as the British.

But, as he would yearn for a rare arachnid, the Duke still hankered after peace. Succeeding to the title (and an estate valued for death duties at $18,600,000), he continued his propagandizing. As a gesture against the “militarism” of the Church of England, last winter he stopped paying $1,280 a year to support the ducal church on his estate in Bedfordshire and the rents of two neighboring vicarages. He also refused to donate the iron railings of his London properties for scrap iron to be made into tanks.

In What a Game! the Duke argues that World War II is “lunacy.” The British have fought against their French “allies” in Syria, welcomed Hitler’s “ally,” Russia, as a friend. Since Churchill once disliked Stalin as much as he dislikes Hitler, why could Britain not be a friend of Hitler too? “If Hitler is left in a position of considerable ascendancy in Europe, it is likely that the very fact of his ascendancy would render his rule less harsh as the years went by.”

However wrongheaded Britons thought last week’s effusion, most of them agreed that the Duke was sincere and no quisling. Some even admired his courage in sticking to his beliefs. Said the Duke: “I am prepared to risk imprisonment or internment. … I should not enjoy it, but I should face up to it.”