Man of England

(See Cover)

Four years and six months have passed since King George VI told his people: "We are at war. . . . We can only do the right as we see the right." Three years and nine months have passed since the King's First Minister, Winston Churchill, arose from Dunkirk's depths and immortally said: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. ..."

Britain and her Empire, her people and her King have changed. Her dangers, as Winston Churchill said last week, are no longer mortal. The great impending event of 1944 is not invasion of Britain, but the invasion of Hitler's Europe. The looming question for Britons and their king is not whether they can avert disaster, but how they will fare in victory--and with whom they are going to share it. The question of Empire is not which Dominions shall receive and sustain the British Fleet (it never was a question in Britain), but just how closely the Dominions shall group around Britain in the postwar world.

Britain's mood is not the lonely desperation of 1940. The emerald isle is a khakied isle, jammed with American men, planes, weapons; jammed, too (as Americans forget), with Britons who never left their bombed and war-worn home, with many others who left, fought far afield, and are briefly home again to fight on the climactic field of Europe.

Nor is Britain's mood, on the eve of the blow to end the war in Europe, the excited anticipation which only lately began to abate in the U.S. The mood of Britain is more in keeping with the effort to come. The men of Britain who (as A. E. Housman sang) make it possible for God to save the king have lost too many battles in this and other wars not to know that they and their allies may lose battles on the beaches before they win the battle for Europe.

Britain is tired. Britain, for that good and human reason, is as determined as the Russians to end the war as soon as the generals think it possible. For that effort, Britons summon all the energy, all the bravery, all the power left to them in their fifth year of war. They know that when Hitler falls the task will not be done. They are in the Pacific war, too. But, regrettably, it can never be so real and near to the people of Britain. For them, the great task left will be the task of peace. In that task, they know, is wrapped the fate of Britain, her Empire and--to the extent that Britain shapes her world--of all men.

One of the Britons girded for the climactic year of Europe's war, and for the peace, is King George VI. His highest duty is to be one of Britain's 46,000,000. In a fashion which no other people can wholly understand, and which no Briton needs to understand, he is Britain, or he is nothing.

How to Make a King. George VI is, first of all, the product of time. Britons have spent some 1,100 recorded years in the making of their monarchy (see p. 27). The result--a king who does not rule, a monarchy which nevertheless still holds and preserves the intangible but final

"authority"--suits them well. George VI cannot dismiss, disparage or even threaten his ministers. As was shown in the case of his brother, Edward VIII, they can evict him. But no minister of-the King, nor any truly British socialist, would ever dare to raise hand or voice against the Monarchy. The institution is the thing.

But a good man helps. In the unspoken but unanimous opinion of his people, George VI is a good king.

He came to that quality and estate when he was four days short of 41. (His father, the greatly esteemed George V, was 44 when his father, Edward VII, died, and Edward was 59 when Victoria withered away.) Most of the blood in his veins was the German blood of the Hanovers, mixed with the English Tudors and Scotch Stuarts. His house had owned the English name of Windsor only 19 years. But on Dec. 10, 1936, when he stuttered a little and took up the burden of his brother, the slow mutation of the British way had made him as British as a cockney.

He had been a country gentleman, a younger son reared not for the throne (that was for gay Edward), but for the ancillary quiet of a royal dukedom. A strict father, a stalwart mother and some reserve within himself gave him an air of strict propriety. A governess, tutors, a sergeant of the Coldstream Guards cultivated the necessary manners and arts. Naval schools (Osborne and Dartmouth), a sea tour as a snotty (midshipman) before and during World War I shaped him in his family's marine tradition. A childhood friendship produced his Duchess and his Queen, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a gentle-born commoner. They have not yet produced a son; the heir, Princess Elizabeth, comes of royal age (18) next month. Her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, is 13. They are a happy family.

King at Work. In the trembling years of 1940 and 1941, King George spent nearly a third of his time among his people. He watched the Army recover from Dunkirk. He watched the R.A.F. hold back the Luftwaffe (he had earned an R.A.F.'s pilot rating in 1919). He joined the Navy on its prowls around Britain. He was constantly meeting the nation's housewives and munitions girls, its fighter pilots and mine layers. He even had his own personal bomb. After his office on the north side of the Palace had been blitzed, he moved across the hall. There, at work one day, another bomb spattered the room with broken glass, plaster and dirt. The King, like all his subjects, was proud of his bomb, bored his friends telling about it. Never in British history has a monarch seen and talked to so many of his subjects or so fully shared their life.

Though the King has little direct power, the war has provided extra burdens for him. The Emergency Defense Acts, which gave the Government power to make rules and regulations necessary to the war, provided also that none of them could become effective until after they had been read to the King in the presence of four members of his Privy Council, and approved by him. Since 1939, there have been 10,836 such orders. Some long, some short, some complex, some simple--the King has heard them all. Not once has he disapproved.

Throughout the war, George VI's daily routine has been rigorous, unsensational, inelegant. Like every other Briton who can manage it, he has his cup of morning tea, a black Indian blend in bed at about 8 o'clock. When he travels he lives aboard his ten-car train to avoid the fuss and bother of staying with people. By 9:30 he has bathed, dressed, breakfasted and glanced at the morning papers. All the London dailies go to the Palace. When he is in London he then meets one of his two secretaries in his office. The secretary is loaded with papers. Among them are the latest secret dispatches from the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry. There are special reports from the War Cabinet. There are usually a dozen or more lengthy reports already marked by his secretary to guide the King's attention, from various government departments, and many documents to sign.

From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., he sees people. In a typical week he saw five admirals, two air marshals, two British generals and two American (Eisenhower and Spaatz). He sees all of the British and Dominions politicians who come to London, too. Many of these meetings are scheduled to last only 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes, if the guest is an old acquaintance or proves particularly interesting, the audience goes on for an hour, or as long as the timetable will permit.

Detesting unpunctuality, the King keeps his London routine as regular and unvarying as possible. After lunch he walks for half an hour in the Palace grounds, reads his longer papers, possibly goes off with the Queen to visit some London military club. He sees one of the two secretaries again before dinner.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill used to see the King one morning each week. Their sessions grew so long they were absorbing each other's entire half-day. Now Churchill lunches with the King one day a week, usually Thursday. Over grilled sole, or cold roast beef, washed down with whiskey and soda, the Prime Minister talks about the war, or the latest gossip of Downing Street. George VI and Churchill are gay and intimate friends, but Churchill does most of the talking. Churchill serves the King competently and with abiding respect, calls his monarch "Sir." The King, in his chats with Churchill, sometimes displays the British humor which lightens his otherwise grey job. When Winston is especially ebullient, George will remind him that, after all, the most brilliant of Prime Ministers merely moves within the monarchy's ancient orbit.

King at Play. After dinner, the King may play a few phonograph records from an enormous collection of jazz recordings he owns. He doesn't go for classical music. There are seldom more than two Palace dinner parties a week, usually only one. One reason is that the King & Queen have few close personal friends.

A favorite Saturday afternoon for the King & Queen is tea at the country house of Oliver Stanley, Minister of Colonies, whose wife, now dead, was the beautiful, dashing Lady Maureen Stanley. The "tea" is usually a drink or two, and the company an informal collection of R.A.F. air vice marshals, pilots, war correspondents and others invited to meet George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The King's manner with his airmen is easy, comradely. The King likes ribald stories, has a large store of them, enjoys standing in a corner with a knot of men swapping ribaldries.

New King. The war has given him a new and tempered toughness, a new confidence, an easier manner. As Duke of York he was shy, hesitant in public, agonized by his stuttering. Now he walks with dignity. His voice usually has rounded, effortless confidence. The speech impediment still troubles him when he broadcasts, but is otherwise seldom noticeable. He is still only 5 ft. 8 in. tall and slightly built. But he seems a bigger man.

Empire & Power. The King undoubtedly shares, although he never expresses, the anxieties which Prime Minister Churchill reflected last week. Quite simply and directly, these anxieties have to do with Great Britain's future as a great world power.

Britons, living on an island at Europe's edge, are inevitably concerned with Europe and Soviet Russia's emergence there. Churchill's solution, and theirs, is to preserve a place in Europe by getting along with Russia if possible. Britain may be forced to vie with Russia in Europe, but she hopes for a worldwide order in which European rivalries may be merged and in which the Empire may thrive. Richard Kidston Law, next in rank to Anthony Eden, told the American Chamber of Commerce in London: "The interests of the U.S. and the British Commonwealth demand a worldwide political and economic system."

What Statesman Law calls "Commonwealth" practically all Britons call, without shame, "Empire." Colloquially, the Empire includes: 1) the Dominions of the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Eire); 2) the colonies and protectorates (Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, etc.); 3) India--the only realm of which George VI is actually Emperor. Total population: 557,000,000. (The world's population: 2,170,000,000.)

"George VI ... Emperor. . . ." therefore embodies a hope and a prospect which is all-important to Britons, important to all the world. War has at once tightened and loosened the bonds of Empire. Sovereign, national aims conflict in Canada with a never-dying tie to Britain. Aspirations both regional and national stir New Zealand and Australia. South Africa's great Prime Minister, Field Marshal and Elder Statesman Jan Christiaan Smuts, feels grave responsibility both for Imperial Britain and for the independent integrity of his own country. India, the jewel of Empire, strains away from Empire, yet gives (or sells) men and wealth for Britain's fight.

The human tie between them all is the King-Emperor.

Men & Faith. No phrase in George VI's royal style is more resonant than "Defender of the Faith."* When Pope Leo X so designated Henry VIII, it meant: defender of the Roman Catholic faith. Henry abruptly and sensationally made it mean defender of the Protestant Church of England. Since then, the faith preserved in Great Britain's Crown has evolved, in terms both political and social, far beyond careful definition. What it has gained in breadth it may have lost in depth.

But it is still, so grim battles have proved, a Faith. Not fanatical, it engages the one talent that could be called uniquely British: to change without fuss, to change conservatively. At its core, perhaps, is belief in man and his dignity. The effort to define the Faith continues in the life and the thought of Britain.

Britons like Sir William Beveridge put it in terms of human security; some, like Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, in terms of a politically resurgent Christianity--"to be a Christian," he recently wrote, "is to share in a new movement of life. . . ."

Some have their doubts along with their faith. Britain's Field Marshal and India's Viceroy, Lord Wavell, a soldier of generally unsuspected spirit and eloquence, wrote in his forthcoming book about poetry (Other Men's Flowers): "It is a law of life which has yet to be broken that a nation can only earn the right to live soft by being prepared to die hard in defense of its living. . . . May the spirit of adventure and self-sacrifice . . . stay with us after the war, when we undertake ... to refashion a shattered world."

Gentle yet earthy King George VI would probably feel more atune to the words of a British mother, refusing to send her children to safety in the U.S. at the war's start. Said she: "Something is happening here they must feel and know if ever they are to be a part of England again. Whatever the risks, I cannot rob my children of their country."

* Full title: George VI, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.