"Majesty's Own Hand"

In London an always dramatic scene in the House of Commons is when the Prime Minister says he has "a message from His Majesty the King, signed by His Majesty's own hand," then bows thrice to the Speaker of the House and hands it up to be read. This the Rt. Hon. Stanley Bald win did last week when he handed up to Speaker the Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon Fitzroy the abdication message of Edward VIII (TIME, Dec. 21). The first message from new King George VI asked Parliament to make "permanent provision for the purpose of facilitating the uninter rupted exercise of the royal authority" in case of "any incapacity which might over take the Sovereign."

To some this looked as though the Prime Minister had got the King to hatch a scheme which might enable the Government to declare the Sovereign "incapacitated" should he seem about to do anything unconstitutional, but this will depend on how the measure is drafted as a bill, and His Majesty last week was clearly providing also for the case of his own sudden death.

Such death would make 10-year-old Princess Elizabeth the Sovereign, and last week her father asked Parliament to enact a Regency Bill under which, in case of "the demise of the Crown," the next member of the Royal Family in line for the Throne, "excluding minors" (i.e., excepting Princess Elizabeth, 10, and her sister Princess Margaret Rose, 6), should automatically become the Regent. This would mean that the death of King George would make his brother the Duke of Gloucester the sole Regent. This was a great surprise, for it had been expected that strong-minded Queen Elizabeth and strong-minded Queen Mother Mary would sit with the Duke of Gloucester and possibly also the Duke of Kent as a Regency Council.

The House of Commons swiftly returned a "humble address to the King" assuring George VI that it would do as he asked with all speed, but this applies only to the United Kingdom and its Crown colonies. George VI is in each Dominion separately King, and no act of the Mother of Parliaments can settle in London who is to be Regent as far as Ottawa, Canberra, Wellington, Cape Town or Dublin are concerned.

P:Home Secretary Sir John Simon, long England's highest-priced lawyer, was forced by the questions of M.P.'s last week to advise the House of Commons whether or not the Throne would be inherited jointly by both Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose. Reason for this question: when there is no male heir to a British peerage it descends equally upon female heirs who are sisters, and the House was much disquieted last week by the thought that England might some day have two Queens at once, after the manner of the two simultaneous Kings of Barataria in Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers. So tremendous is the prestige of an opinion by Sir John Simon that all thought of enacting one-Queen legislation ended when the Home Secretary opined that Princess Elizabeth, in the event of her father's death, would become England's sole Queen.*

P:It is usually Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who makes a clean breast in the House of Commons of shortcomings of his Cabinet (TIME, Nov. 23 et ante), but last week this penitent part--a role which homely Squire Baldwin has made singularly popular in the United Kingdom--was taken by the Minister for the Coordination of Defense, Sir Thomas Hobart Inskip.

To keep Britain's colossal rush-Rearmament program (TIME, March 30 et seq.) on schedule is Sir Thomas' awful responsibility and last week some M.P.'s hurled in his face that "Rearmament is two years behind!" A great churchman, Sir Thomas reprovingly reminded everyone that Britain is firm in her adherence to the principles of Christ. There were some gasps when Sir Thomas went so far as to say, "Rearmament is not the Government's objective!" but he got away with it. Finally he admitted to the House with suave authority that the British Rearmament program was last week officially three months behind schedule. P:The Lords of the Admiralty last year sacked five British seamen said to have driven steel pins into the electric cables of British warships and committed other acts of sabotage (TIME, Feb. 24). Last week politically feeble Major Clement Richard Attlee, Leader of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition, led various Labor M.P.'s in lamenting that the discharged Navy seamen are today having great difficulty finding jobs, their names being on the "blacklists" of patriotic British employers who are not eager to hire saboteurs.

First Lord of the British Admiralty Sir Samuel Hoare made it perfectly clear to the House that these five human barnacles of His Majesty's Navy had been scraped off without ceremony, sympathy or public trial. Said Sir Samuel: "His Majesty's Government would have preferred to put charges to the men, but that would have betrayed and therefore made useless the secret service of His Majesty's Government. The evidence has been checked and counterchecked many ways, finally by a committee of high civil servants."

Indirectly Sir Samuel implied that the Moscow Comintern was behind this naval sabotage and in retort the House's lone Communist was loud in denying that the British Communist Party would ever take inhumane steps against the British Royal Navy such that "seamen might drown!'' Sabotage by British Reds, he insisted, is purely political.

*As irate Scotsmen, Welshmen and Irishmen occasionally point out, ''There are no such persons in existence as the King and Queen of England"--i.e., they are King and Queen of the United Kingdom. The last Sovereign of England was Queen Elizabeth, who died in 1603.

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