A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ISAID some time ago that it seemed a pity that the Duke of Windsor should be dragging into light again the whole painful story of the abdication, and a study of the story as it appears in the latest issue of Life provides no reason for changing that opinion. As might be expected, the Duke writes of Mr. Baldwin throughout in a tone of animosity, though it is plain even from this narrative that the Prime Minister did no more than his duty required, did it with obvious reluctance and did it very well. What is surprising is the disclosure that the friend on whom the Duke most relied at the moment of crisis was no other than Lord Beaverbrook. When Mrs. Simpson's divorce proceedings were pending King Edward sent for the proprietor of the Daily Express and the present Lord Rothermere and got them to persuade the British Press to report the case unsensationally. Later (on November 14th, 1936) when matters were coming to a head, the King persuaded Lord Beaverbrook, who had just sailed for America on the ' Bremen ' (travelling Imperially ?) to come back on the same boat and advise him ; but by the time he did get back the conflict between the King's determination to marry Mrs. Simpson and the certainty of overwhelming opposition to that course in Great Britain and the Dominions had made either an abandonment of the marriage or an abandonment of the throne inevitable. The idea of a morganatic marriage, it appears, originated with the then Lord Rothermere and was heavily frowned on by Lord Beaverbrook—who did show thereby that his advice was of some value.
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