ABDICATION DRAMA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 111, 12 April 1937, Page 7

ABDICATION DRAMA

AN OUTSPOKEN AUTHOR. CONTEMPT FOP DIGNITY. EX-KING’S ACTIONS. (United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received April 12, 11.30 a.m. LONDON, April 11. “There was more in the drama of King Edward’s abdication than the conflict between the Prime Minister (Mr Baldwin) and’the King over Mrs Simpson,” states Geoffrey Dennis in his “Coronation Commentary,” published by Messrs Heinemann. “There were things done and said in his infatuation, his lover’s prodigality, his shrill king's rage against those who denied her to him, and there were things left undone in his infatuation. Duty was neglected, papers were held up, and papers curiously and neo-Kaiserishly annotated. There was no sound understanding of the technique, or limitations, or the necessary dignity of his office. There were irregular hours, irregular habits, and muddling, fuddling and meddling.” Yet the writer 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 the Government complacently to leave half of England derelict? Contempt for the diginity of the office meant the evasion of and _ certain excesses of Court etiquette ; irregular hours meant once having kept the Right Honourable Jack-in-Qffice 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, they may very well have been right; but until this marriage was mooted, they had no notion of how to get rid of him,” the book proceeds. “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 the ex-King’s association with Mrs Simpson was a source of courage and strength and stimulus to King Edward, he sums up the national opinion thus: “For Queen of England, a twicedivoroed woman with two former husbands living was not good enough. She clashed too crudely with the nation’s idea and the ideal nation’s dream and myth of feminine Royalty.” Mr Dennis says also: “You cannot run an ancient monarchy on saxophone /and cocktail party lines.”