The Crown

P:To crush Arab resistance to the policy of making Palestine a "national homeland" for Jews, King Edward was graciously pleased to sign at Balmoral Castle in Scotland last week an Order in Council submitted by His Majesty's Government.

Once the royal signature "Edward R. I." had been affixed, it became possible for grim-jawed Lieut. General John Greer Dill, commanding the new British Expeditionary Force in Palestine (TIME, Oct. 5), to: 1) impose censorship of the press and all communications; 2) issue regulations which, so long as they are in the form "for the public safety," may be of any kind General Dill thinks best and unchallengeable in any court of law; 3) order the arrest, detention or exclusion from Palestine of anyone; 4) order private property forfeited to the Crown or destroyed as a punitive measure. Arab leaders last week offered a reward of $2,500 for the death or capture of General Dill.*

P: While Queen Mary waited sadly in Buckingham Palace for the ceremony marking her departure to live in Marlborough House last week, the King and Mrs. Simpson merrily boarded a special salon railway car at Aberdeen and set out for London, it being announced by the Sunday Referee that the wild strains of Hungarian gypsy music will soon be heard in Buckingham Palace. King Edward, in addition to inviting Turkish Dictator Mustafa Kamal Atatuerk to visit him in London, has also, according to the Referee, invited Koez Antal, "Hungary's Most Famous Gypsy Bandmaster,'' to give a concert for His Majesty's dinner guests at Buckingham Palace. That Mrs. Simpson was traveling with the King was officially announced by the Court Circular.

P: On reaching London, Edward VIII drove to Buckingham Palace, breakfasted with Queen Mary and his sister the Princess Royal. Then a crowd gathered outside saw the Queen, her pallid face working with grief, leave the Palace on the arm of her son, after having resided there 25 years. Blue-coated Bobbies saluted, scarlet-clad Palace sentries presented arms, many women in the crowd wept, men cheered in hoarse, choked voices and Queen Mary with a visible effort just managed a slight wave of her white-gloved hand.

Instead of her previous nine ladies-in-waiting, Her Majesty will have five at Marlborough House. She takes with her Amelo, the French onetime No. 2 chef at Buckingham Palace; her principal chauffeur; and of course faithful Sir Harry Lloyd Verney, Treasurer and Private Secretary to the Queen.

P: That King Edward has given jewelry worth $1,000,000 to Mrs. Simpson was asserted in the U. S. smartchart Town & Country last week with the comment: "The King is proud of her. Anyone bold enough to object to her being at the royal table would be quickly disgraced." In shipping $50,000 worth of this year's finest U. S. silver fox pelts to a "royal purchaser" in London last week, the Manhattan fur export firm's owner Julius Green hinted: "Some people take it for granted these silver foxes are a gift to Mrs. Simpson." Meanwhile Mr. Simpson was transferring his clothes from the Simpson flat to the Guards Club in London last week and Mrs. Simpson on October 7 was to move into her new Cumberland Terrace house, on the roof of which are figures of Love, Justice, Wisdom and Victory.

P: One of those stately lectures which high British officials now and then condescend to give to an irreproachable organ like the New York Times was scrupulously mirrored in its pages last week: "With thrones toppling in Europe or being in subjugation to a dictatorship, it was the opinion of advisers to the throne that King George and Queen Mary were the perfect exemplars of British constitutional monarchy. . . . King Edward, however, has chosen to go his own way. . . . This has given rise to a considerable amount of bitterness and has split high society into two sections. . . . Mr. Simpson regards the friendship of his wife and the King as purely platonic.

"In well-informed circles Mr. Simpson's name has been mentioned among others who are likely to be honored. The nature of such an honor is the subject of considerable speculation. If such an honor is conferred, it will be entirely on the King's initiative, unaffected by court precedent.

"There is nothing furtive in His Majesty's relationships with his friends. He considers his private life a thing apart from his kingship. This attitude, unusual in a King, has been so distorted by mystery and ill-founded rumor that it has placed these three persons in an invidious position."*

P: King Edward's 13-year-old nephew, Viscount Lascelles, elder son of the Princess Royal, Countess of Harewood, reached in his Eton schooldays last week that awful moment at which his Tutor assigned him to "fag" for a senior Etonian. This "fag-master" will expect his tea to be made and his room tidied by Viscount Lascelles who will find his posterior more or less vigorously "swished" with a cane or fives-bat if the toast is burned or the fag-master's cricket boots are improperly cleaned. The King's nephew will most certainly be thus belabored like any other Eton schoolboy, but Viscount Lascelles is most unlikely to be flogged with the Eton birch by athletic, rock-climbing Headmaster Claude ("The Emperor") Aurelius Elliott. It was the sight of the Eton birch which made Queen Mary exclaim: "If I had known the boys were thrashed with this, I should never have let Henry [The Duke of Gloucester] go to Eton." Appointed in 1933, new Headmaster Elliott found Eton finances shakey, Eton boys unruly. With great success he put Eton on a paying basis, flogged a record number of culprits during his first term, has made Eton boys as good as they need be to grow up the Empire's masters.

*From Palestine, under whose laws Communism is not suffered to exist, 36 Communists including 16 women were deported last week.

*Ernest Aldrich Simpson was born of a British father and a U. S. mother in 1897 in Manhattan. From Harvard ('19) he went to Britain's swank Coldstream Guards and into his father's London firm of ship charterers, Simpson, Spence & Young. He married in 1923 and in 1925 was divorced from a Manhattan Social Registrite now in reduced circumstances, by whom he has a 12-year-old daughter Audrey. In 1926 he married the present Mrs. Simpson. She was Wallis ("Wally") Warfield of Baltimore and in 1916 gave her age as 22 when she married Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., now commander of the U. S. Aircraft Tender Wright, from whom she was divorced in 1925. Thus the King and Mrs. Simpson are the same age, 42, and Mr. Simpson at 39 is ripe to receive at His Majesty's hands knighthood, a baronetcy, a peerage or one of the historic Court offices.

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