George VI Honors
Strike-badgered General Motors scarcely had time to notice this week that a Scottish member of its board, hearty Sir Harry Duncan McGowan, was raised to the peerage as a Baron by His Majesty King George VI, who released last week his first Honors List. Sir Harry, easily the biggest Briton on the list, was knighted in 1918 for putting through efficient mergers of munitions firms. He has long been rated "the highest salaried industrialist in Great Britain," a key figure in Rearmament today, and is Board Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd.
The Honors List created two additional barons and a viscount, each of these new peers being a Conservative Party henchman of long service. The Prime Minister's good wife, Mrs. Lucy Baldwin, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, got her admirable oar in with the elevation last week of Juliet, Lady Williams to the rank of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her nationwide campaign to provide cheaply pain-deadening drugs to British mothers in childbirth. Of six new baronetcies two were awarded to onetime Actor Sir Derwent Hall Caine, son of Author Hall Caine, and Percy Malcolm Stewart, who lately accompanied Edward VIII on his visit to South Wales (TIME, Nov. 30).
Thos. Cook & Son Ltd. scored with a knighthood to Great-Grandson Thomas Cook, 34, "the youngest knight dubbed since 1911"; British Broadcasting Corp. with knighthood for its musical director, Dr. Adrian Cedric Boult; and among the 53 others knighted were George VI's private secretary, Major the Hon. Alexander Henry Louis Hardinge, and Nigel Leslie Campbell, principal banking trustee for the $10,000,000 philanthropic fund just given by Motor Maker Lord Nuffield to succor Britain's unemployed and honor Stanley Baldwin for his handling of the Constitutional Crisis (TIME, Jan. 4). Last week Nuffield got nothing, and the peerages strongly predicted in London for Cunard White Star Board Chairman Sir Percy Elly Bates, apropos the Queen Mary, and Home Secretary Sir John Simon, apropos his legal work on the Abdication, also were not conferred at this time.
Somewhat puzzled were London wiseacres as to whether this Honors List, which ordinarily would have come out on New Year's Day, was just about as it would have been if issued by King Edward, or had been severely pruned of numbers of his friends. Various stars and orders were handed by George VI to such people as the captain of the yacht on which Edward & Mrs. Simpson cruised; to the most convivial of the ex-King's equerries, Major Sir John ("Jackie") Renton Aird; and to Edward VIII's air pilot, Wing Commander Edward Hedley ("Mouse") Fielden. When famed "Mouse" did not elect to serve the Duke of Windsor, London newspapers printed that he has retained under George VI his Edward-invented rank, "Captain of the King's Flight," but in listing him last week for the Royal Vic orian Order, 4th Class, no such title was mentioned.
Members of the Royal Family naturally figured in the Honors List. Her Majesty the Queen, heading the whole list, became Dame Grand Cross and Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order. The Duke of Gloucester was made Air Vice-Marshal and Military Aide-de-Camp to His Maj esty the King; the Duke of Kent became Naval Aide-de-Camp. Her Royal Highness Princess Mary, the Princess Royal, was indirectly honored when her spouse the Earl of Harewood was also made a Military Aide-de-Camp.
The extremely rare incident of being made baronet elsewhere than in a Royal Palace befell Walter Turner Monckton, the attorney who dickered for King Edward VIII with the Cabinet during the Crisis. Mr. Monckton, kneeling in the drawing room of the King's private house, No. 145 Piccadilly, was smartly touched upon the shoulder with a sword by His Majesty, arose "Sir Walter Monckton, Baronet." No other Briton slated last week to be honored had actually received the accolade from King George VI at latest dispatches.
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