Foreign News: Innocents Abroad

Sir Ronald Lindsay, the moose-tall Ambassador at Washington of His Britannic Majesty, eschewed last week each of his many opportunities to correct or deny the extraordinary dispatches which hourly arrived from London concerning Edward VIII, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the Dominions Beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

The British Ambassador might have taken exception to the Washington Post’s assertion that King Edward “plans to marry” Mrs. Ernest Simpson. Or Sir Ronald might have objected to the United Press story carried from coast to coast by the Scripps-Howard chain under headlines the entire width of the page:

“CHURCH HEADS SNUB KING EDWARD”

“2 PRELATES SHUN PARTY ATTENDED BY MRS. SIMPSON”

“British Ruler Blushes and Appears Distressed at Private Conference with Archbishops of Canterbury and York”

“BALDWIN SAID TO HAVE DEVELOPED HOSTILITY TOWARD HIS MAJESTY”

If there were any doubt about all this, the British Embassy might have set right the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, the Right Reverend Irving Peake Johnson, D. C., who warmly declared: “The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York stand for the sanctity of the home against the power of the King. They were placed in a position in which they had to choose between their conscience and expediency. It is to their credit that they had the courage to witness to our Lord’s command.”

Undenied by any British source, the story of the King and Mrs. Simpson last week was blunt and simple. Under English law a man who makes a trip in company with another man’s wife, the two stopping at the same hotels, has in fact given the husband opportunity to sue the wife for divorce on the ground of adultery. The King has just made an extended yachting trip in company with Mrs. Simpson, and notably in Vienna they stopped at the same hotel (TIME, Sept. 21). But Mr. Simpson, as a loyal British subject, could not institute proceedings for divorce in which His Majesty might appear as corespondent. Last week Mr. Simpson did just about what any disgruntled English husband does who wishes to spare his wife’s name.

The usual procedure is for the husband to register with a hired corespondent at an English hotel, the staff of which are familiar with their jobs. When the wife brings the suit for divorce, hotelmen testify that the husband and the corespondent spent the night together in the same room and were registered on the blotter as man & wife. Needless to say, in such sordid circumstances any actual commission of adultery is usually omitted by the husband, whose mood is apt to be one of bitterness at a divorce system which many British jurists and prelates have denounced as “revolting” and “unfair.” Last week Mrs. Simpson filed such a divorce suit against Mr. Simpson in the rural Ipswich Court of Assizes. Under English law, she must appear in court and prove that she is herself of good character, for in England, if it can be shown that husband and wife have each committed adultery, then neither can obtain a divorce. This feature of the law has been described as Holy Deadlock and supplied the title for a novel of that name by Funster A. P. Herbert, M.P.

At Ipswich the judge who will hear the Simpson suit this week is jovial, golfing Sir John Anthony Hawke, who was for five years attached to the present King in the capacity of Attorney General to the Prince of Wales. Assuming that Sir John grants the divorce, any technical flaw in this decision can be discovered only by another of Edward VIII’s officials, the King’s Proctor. The Ipswich assizes open this week but those at Norwich opened last week, with Sir John presenting his traditional spectacle of royal pomp. Up he walked with the Mayor, local judges and members of the Norwich Corporation, all in full robes, as the Town Crier intoned, “Make way! Make way for God’s and the King’s Judge! Make way!” Sir John Hawke was in scarlet robe with imposing ermine collar and full powdered wig, the conventional embodiment of British Jus tice. He said a loud prayer for wisdom and righteousness as he will when the case of Simpson v. Simpson comes before him, probably next week.

Meanwhile, steamers from England reaching the U. S. last week brought in their usual quota of British subjects. By tradition these love and honor their King and firmly believe that Britain leads the world in freedom of the Press. It was a pathetic case of Innocents Abroad last week to observe such travelers absorbing their first facts about King Edward and Mrs. Simpson from Manhattan’s shipnews reporters. Though to these newsmen it seemed that the incoming Britons were deliberately evasive, actually most of them were sincerely bewildered products of the most subtle and effective press censorship in the world, a censorship whose chief weapon is constant official British reiteration that “there is no British censorship.”* A distinguished British Innocent Abroad of the week was Miss Irene Mary Bewick Ward, M.P., a Conservative stateswoman accustomed to deliver to women’s clubs in all parts of the world a lecture entitled Whether British Democracy Can Outlive European Dictatorship. Although she en joys the reputation of “always smiling,” Miss Ward, M.P., for once looked grim after telling reporters: “I can assure you that I know absolutely nothing about this Mrs. Simpson, and I am telling you the truth when I tell you that I have never before heard her name mentioned in any conversation I have had—anywhere.”

The sophisticated type of arriving British traveler mostly evaded questions about the King & Mrs. Simpson, exclaiming, “It is so cheeky for Americans to want to know about that !” Actress Gertrude Lawrence adroitly turned publicity from Mrs. Simpson to herself. “She certainly won’t get any publicity from me !” caroled Miss Lawrence on the Aquitania. “I may not be able to get to the Coronation if I get a suitable Hollywood offer, but if I miss the Coronation I am sure the King will understand ! Of course I’m joking.” The perfect strategy was adopted by Lord and Lady Tennyson who, long after their ship arrived in Manhattan last week, remained “sleeping” in their cabin until there was no longer any reporter around.

In Pittsburgh last week fashionable clothes were being shown by Thelma, Lady Furness who introduced Mrs. Simpson, the onetime Miss Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, to H.R.H. Last week Lady Furness’ sister, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, said: “Yes, Mrs. Simpson is a good friend of my sister and of mine. And I have also had the honor of meeting the King. We don’t see why people ask us about them—really ! It makes my sister very mad.”

In London, businessmen with a monetary stake in the Coronation, such as hotel-men, makers of Coronation mugs and bunting, etc., grew frantic at their inability to find in British papers last week news absolutely vital to their private business. Many of them had Manhattan papers read back to them by transatlantic telephone. London insurance brokers were suddenly swamped with an avalanche of customers. While $500 of insurance against postponement of the Coronation could at first be had for $20, latecomers were obliged to pay $130. Finally the market became so top-heavy that brokers were unwilling to take at any price the risk of what Edward VIII might do. In the eyes of British businessmen he had ceased last week to be the “Empire Salesman” and had become a most unsettling factor in trade.

The disclosures of last week came as a logical and orderly sequence to events going back nearly 20 years. The present King, just after the War, made a first trip to the U. S. of a most exemplary character. On his second trip “he got in with the wrong sort of society people on Long Island,” as an intimate member of H.R.H.’s entourage remarked at the time. Efforts to extricate their eldest son from this fast and loose international set were unremittingly pursued by King George and Queen Mary, one of their methods being to send Edward of Wales on the longest possible Empire tours. A predecessor of Mrs. Simpson remembers how H.R.H. left her for one of these tours of duty, sob bing bitterly, and she has the innumerable cablegrams he sent her while abroad, many dealing with the daily doings of the little dog she gave him to remember her by. Some $100,000 was fruitlessly spent at Queen Mary’s order in doing over Marlborough House in 1928 to make it a suitable home for the Prince and a Princess of Wales.

Nevertheless, Edward VIII has always scrupulously performed his outward “public duties.” He has been the “Empire Salesman.” He has led a charmed youth with the result that today at 42 he still seems from a distance of 15 feet only about 22. And His Majesty is undoubtedly most popular with millions of the British Lower Classes. Today there is probably not a person of this class who does not love King Edward, in the sense that “the Englishman is taught to love his King as a friend.” Meanwhile, in Mayfair there is a small, swift, hard-drinking clique who are the King’s only real friends. Most of these people seem “American” to the circles in which Queen Mary and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin respectively move — and to these worthies “American” is a revolting adjective. The worst feature of an appalling situation in their eyes last week was not that Mrs. Simpson has one divorce and is about to have another but that Mrs. Simpson was in fact born in the U. S.

The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of All England, is a close family friend of the Royal Family. With the Archbishop of York, according to United Press, the Archbishop of Canterbury recently sought an audience with King Edward at which they were “adamant” in refusing to attend one of the St. James’s Palace official dinners*which launched Mrs. Simpson in the highest British society (TIME, June 8, July 20). These dinners were attended by the heir apparent, the Duke of York, the Duchess of York and Colonel and Mrs. Charles Augustus Lind bergh. It was revealed last week that when King Edward first personally inserted Mrs. Simpson’s name into, the Court Circular, sent each day to British newspapers, the London Times was the scene of an agonizing editorial conference which delayed publication for an hour, until it was finally decided that the will of King Edward is the law of the Times.

The King has the right to dissolve Parliament and keep the nation without a legislative body for three years. The King has the right to sell the British Navy. The signature of the King on many State documents is indispensable to their validity. The armed forces of the Crown are sworn to him in personal allegiance. Separately from his position in the United Kingdom, he is also King in each of the Dominions. Therefore, if His Majesty, heedless of the consequences, were resolved to make political trouble he could exert upon his Government, the Church and Parliament almost irresistible pressure. He can, in any case, marry whomever he likes. At the time of the marriage of the present Duchess of York, who was previously a commoner, it was established that any woman marrying into the British Royal Family is accorded status similar to her husband’s. Thus should Edward VIII marry Mrs. Simpson she would be at once Queen Wallis.

There was no sufficient evidence last week to establish any such destiny for Mrs. Simpson. She was merely spending nearly every night in the King’s suburban snuggery at Fort Belvedere and the fact was definitely established that His Majesty has not slept in Buckingham Palace since he returned from the Balkans. The United Press reported that the King has told his secretaries he is personally opposed to the British Press’s suppression of the facts, emphasizing this by saying: “If anyone wants to talk about my association with Mrs. Simpson I’ll give them plenty of chance !” That the King was furiously angry at the attitude of the Church, Cabinet and Press Lords could be conjectured from His Majesty’s sudden, slap-in-the-face announcement last week that on next Christmas day the new King will NOT deliver over the radio one of the Christmas fireside talks which so endeared his late father to his subjects the world around. A shrewd guess was that British public opinion, the Cabinet and the Church will gradually adjust themselves to approval of whatever course willful Edward VIII may pursue, and that in good time the British Press will present this to the British public as matter for national self-congratulation and rejoicing.

*A meeting of the British News Proprietors Association was held last week under pressure from the Cabinet and a decision taken that “because of the imminence of the Coronation and the social consequences” of reporting the Simpson divorce it would not even be mentioned in British newspapers. Simultaneously Scotland Yard operatives took the number of the motorcar of an Associated Press photographer who was taking pictures of furniture being moved into Mrs. Simpson’s new house and warned him that the political branch of Scotland Yard is “clearing this street.” The U. S. photographer refused to be intimidated and made a series of amusing pictures showing Mrs. Simpson’s furniture being moved by the firm of Trollope in Belgrave Square. Among journalistic employes of British newspapers indignation at the suppression of the Simpson story was overwhelming last week and these minions, in open defiance of their employers, the Press Lords, gave every assistance they could to U. S. correspondents covering the case. At Ipswich the local authorities told British reporters whom they suspected of aiding their U. S. colleagues. “You are warned to desist !”

*The Archbishops however did not cut themselves off last week from ever attending a function at which the King may ask them to meet Mrs. Simpson. The Chaplain of the Archbishop of Canterbury made this clear when he denied a story that the Archbishops had told the King they would not attend “any function” at which Mrs. Simpson is present. Thus her presence in Westminster Abbey would not be taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury as precluding his officiating to crown King Edward.