DUKE OF WINDSOR LIBELLED

Southland Times, Issue 23182, 24 April 1937, Page 7

DUKE OF WINDSOR LIBELLED

OBJECTION TAKEN TO “BEST SELLER” DEMAND MADE FOR APOLOGY (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) (Received April 23, 8.45 p.m.) LONDON, April 22, The Daily Mail says the Duke of Windsor’s solicitor (Mr A. G. Allen) has requested William Heinemann Limited, publishers of “Coronation Commentary,” by Geoffrey Dennis, to withdraw the book and publish a suitable apology on the ground that it libels the duke, otherwise a writ for libel may be issued. Dermis was an Oxford undergraduate at the same time as the Duke and is about to end his League of Nations career by representing the SecretaryGeneral at the Educational Conference of Australia and New Zealand. “Coronation Commentary,” published on April 12, has proved itself a “best seller.” Mr Geoffrey Dennis’s book stated. “There was more in the drama of King Edwards’s abdication than the conflict between Mr Stanley Baldwin and the King over Mrs Simpson.” Mr Dennis is Editor and Chief of Document Services at the League of Nations Secretariat. “There were things done and said in his infatuation, his lover’s prodigality, and his shrill King’s rages against those who denied her to him. There were things left undone in his infatuation, duty neglected, papers held up, papers curiously and neo-Kaiserishly annotated. There was no sound understanding of technique or the limitations or the necessary dignity of office, irregular hours, irregular habits, muddling, fuddling and meddling.” Yet Mr Dennis saw 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 England derelict? Contempt for the dignity of office meant the evasion of certain excesses of court etiquette, irregular hours meant once having kept _ the right honourable jack-in-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. They may very well have been right, but, until this marriage was mooted, they had no notion of how to get rid of him. She whom they pretended was a disaster was in fact a God-send. Her two divorces were a gift from Heaven.” While Mr Dennis expressed the opinion that association with Mrs Simpson was. a source of courage, strength and stimulus to King Edward he summed up national opinion thus: “For 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, the nations dream and myth of feminine royalty. Mr Dennis said also: “You cannot run an ancient monarchy on saxophone ana cocktail party lines.”