A Vow Is Kept

In 1914, when Britain went to war with Germany, its traditional first line of defense--the British navy--was under the command of a German-born prince named Louis of Battenberg. For all that he was a close relative of the royal family and a veteran of 45 years' devoted naval service, Prince Louis' name and ancestry were a sight too much for many patriotic Britons to bear. "I have lately been driven to the painful conclusion," wrote Britain's First Sea Lord in a letter of resignation as a raging sea of slurs rose about his ears, "that at this juncture my birth and parentage have the effect of impairing my usefulness."

The man to whom it fell to accept Prince Louis Battenberg's resignation in 1914 was Winston Churchill. Last week Sir Winston made fitting restitution by appointing his son to the same post. The son, as a 14-year-old naval cadet, had vowed one day to right the injustice.

Handsome and dashing Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas, first Earl Mountbatten of Burma,* had known many triumphs since his father's downfall. The stigma of his German ancestry had long since been erased in the process of anglicizing Battenberg to Mountbatten. Though once dismissed as a mere playboy, he had had the satisfaction in World War II of seeing his superiors seethe as he was plucked from beneath them to be made first an acting admiral and later Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia.

Like his father, Louis Mountbatten had felt the sting of vicious tongues, as envious enemies gossiped freely about his undue influence at court and the purported leftist leanings of himself and his wife Edwina. When the first rumor of his new appointment leaked out some months ago, Lord Beaverbrook protested in his Sunday Express: "If it is offered he should refuse it." But, as last Viceroy of British India, as commander of the British Mediterranean Fleet, and lately as head of all NATO naval forces in the Mediterranean, Earl Mountbatten has shown himself an able officer. Last week, even Beaverbrook's Sunday Express was forced to admit: "There can be no objection to his naval record."

* Uncle of Elizabeth's Philip.

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