A Diplomatic Ducai Bore
It is rather curious that such passionate in- terest should be displayed in the revelations of volume after volume of documents from the German Foreign Office archives. I should have thought that the opinions of the Duke of Saxe- Coburg and Gotha as to the political beliefs of British personalities he met at the funeral of King George V were so much stagnant water under a crumbling, bridge. As to what he had to say about the attitude towards Germany of Edward VIII, it may be dismissed either as the product of an optimistic ducal imagination or else (what is more likely) as the views of a Young man who was not any better informed about foreign countries than the majority of his subjects. Edward VIII is, of course, not the only Sufferer. `Mr. Astor, the Editor of The Times' (sic), is quoted as admiring Hitler's sim- plicity and abusing Roosevelt, 'who, in his Opinion, was establishing a npw kind of Com- munism in America,' M. Lebrun is discovered to be `a distinguished man, who does not belie the ex-officer he is,' and Mr. Duff Cooper is said to have been unforthcoming until 'it emerged that we had been contemporaries at school at Eton.' Decidedly the Duke was an amateur diplomatic bore of the first order. No doubt the wOrst is yet to come: we have still to learn whom Hitler destined fiir his puppet British Government in 1940.
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