2 JUNE 1950, Page 4

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HERE is something just a little pathetic

about the auto- biographical articles by the Duke of Windsor which the Sunday Express is publishing. There are few people who will not regret that a former King of England should see fit to figure with this prominence in the columns of the popular Sunday Press. His motive for doing it must be a matter of speculation. He explained last Sunday that " as the years went by, and error and supposition multiplied, it became more and more plain that it was my duty to put down the facts as I know them." It may have been his duty to put them down ; it was certainly no part of his duty to publish them in the Sunday Express. If he had put them in book form any publisher would have welcomed them, and salient passages would have been quoted by every paper in the Kingdom. But in fact there is no case for the correction of alleged errors and suppositions. The Duke of Windsor is not a subject of public discussion today. The unhappy events of 1936 belong to history, and no responsible person wants to disinter them. An ill situation turned out unbelievably well, and there it may be left. Nothing could be more deplorable than that the whole story of the abdication should be dragged up again after many of the persons, like Lord Baldwin and Archbishop Lang, principally concerned in it are dead and silent. But we are apparently to have it all.

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