EDWARD’S ABDICATION

Evening Star, Issue 22620, 12 April 1937, Page 8

EDWARD’S ABDICATION

MORE THAN THE SIMPSON AFFAIR “ KM LITTLE LIST OF CRIMES " SUFFICIENT TO BREAK ADORED AND DEVOTED KING Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, April 11. (Received April 12, at 1.5 p.m.) “ There was more in the drama of Edward’s abdication than the conflict between Mr Baldwin and the King over Mrs Simpson,” states Mr Geoffrey Dennis (Editor and Chief of Document Services, League of Nations Secretariat) in ‘ Coronation Commentary,’ published by Heinemann. “ There were things done and said in his infatuation—his lover’s prodigality, his shrill King’s rages against those who denied her to him—and there were things left undone in his infatuation—duty neglected, papers held up, papers curiously neo-Kaiserishly annotated, no sound understanding of the technique or the limitations or the necessary dignity of office, irregular hours, irregular habits, muddling, fuddling, and meddling.” Yet Mr Dennis sees in these things “ A poor little list of crimes which were sufficient to have broken an adored and devoted King. Dereliction of duty was hoped for and pounced upon, and was it no dereliction of duty by a Government complacently to leave half England derelict? “ Contempt for dignity of office meant evasion of certain excesses of Court etiquette. Irregular hours meant once having kept the Right Honourable Jack-in-the-office waiting five minutes. Meddling meant trying to help the unfortunate. In wanting to get rid of him for his other misdeeds they may have been wrong, or they may very well have been right, but until this marriage was mooted they had no notion of how to ft rid of him. She whom they pretended was a disaster was in fact a godsend. Her two divorces were a gift from heaven.” While Mr Dennis expresses the opinion that association with Mrs Simpson was a source of courage, strength, and stimulus to Edward he sums up national opinion as: “ For a Queen of England a twice-divorced woman with two former husbands living was not good enough. She clashed too crudely with the nation’s idea and ideal, and the nation’s dream and myth of feminine Royalty.” Mr Dennis says also: ‘‘You cannot run an ancient monarchy on saxophone-and-cocktail party lines.”