EDWARD VIIL (1894– ), eldest son of King George V.
and Queen Mary, at that time duke and duchess of York, was born on June 23, 1894. at White Lodge, Richmond Park, and baptized 23 days later by the archbishop of Canterbury as Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David. In 1902 H. P. Hansell was appointed his tutor, and remained with him from that time until August 1914, accompanying him to his various places of edu cation. During 1902-7 the prince was prepared for the navy, and in the spring of 1907 he entered Osborne, familiar to him in child hood as Queen Victoria's country house in the Isle of Wight, which had been used as a preparatory naval college since the Queen's death. After two years at Osborne he proceeded to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. While a cadet at Dartmouth he per formed his first public duty on March 29, 1911, by presenting to the mayor and corporation of that town the silver oar which they had held formerly as a symbol of the rights associated with the bailiwick of the water of Dartmouth.
On June 23, 191o, he was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester and Knight of the Garter. His Dartmouth training came to an end in June 1911, and on the loth of that month he was in vested with the insignia of the Order of the Garter at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. On July 13, 1911, at Carnarvon Castle, he was invested by the King with the insignia of prince of Wales and earl of Chester, and on this occasion for the first time an English prince addressed the Welsh people in their own language, though Queen Victoria had spoken a few words of Welsh to a deputation which made her a presentation on her seventieth birthday. The duchy of Cornwall had been his since his father's accession to the throne: unlike the princedom of Wales, the title carries with it ex tensive properties in land and from that time onward provided the principal element in the prince's income.
In 1911 the prince became a midshipman and was appointed to H.M.S. "Hindustan," in which ship he served for three months. In the spring of 1912 the prince spent five months in Paris as the guest of the marquis de Breteuil, and was coached by Maurice Escoffier in the language and history of the country. In October 1912 he entered Magdalen college, Oxford, then under the presi dency of Mr. (subsequently Sir) Herbert Warren. The prince, while at Magdalen, lived as far as possible the life of an ordinary undergraduate, in marked contrast with the artificial scheme of life provided by the Prince Consort for his grandfather at Cam bridge fifty years earlier. He made friends among undergraduates drawn from many social classes and is said to have reconciled a youthful socialist-republican to his existence by singing "The Red Flag" with accompaniment played on his own banjo. His tutors found him a youth of quick intelligence though without much capacity for continuous concentration. He served as a private in the university O.T.C. Some of his vacations he spent in European travel, visiting Germany twice, in 1912 and 1913, and Denmark and Norway in 1914. His university career was cut short by the outbreak of the World War.
The war brought before the prince more pressingly than ever before the conflict between his natural impulses and the require ments of his station. His natural impulse was to incur all the risks at the earliest opportunity, and he is said to have reminded Lord Kitchener that he was not irreplaceable as he had four younger brothers. Lord Kitchener is said to have replied, "If I were cer tain you would be shot I do not know that I should be right to restrain you. What I cannot permit is the chance, which exists till we have a settled line, of the enemy securing you as a prisoner. You have a lot to learn about soldiering yet. When you have learnt a bit more perhaps you may go to France." On August 7 the prince was gazetted to the Grenadier Guards and joined the first Battalion at Warley barracks, Essex. In November, having been appointed aide-de-camp to Sir John French, he landed in France and took up his new duties at British G. H. Q. at St. Omer. During the next 18 months he served with the Expeditionary Force on the western front in various parts of the line, being first attached to the 2nd Division under Sir H. S. Home, to the I. Corps under Sir Charles Munro, and later to the Guards Division under the Earl of Cavan. Throughout this period the prince was inclined to rebel against the restrictions imposed upon him. Not only did he want his full share of danger: he also wanted to enter into free and equal comradeship with the "other ranks" as man to man, to be able to put off at will the paraphernalia of his prince dom, while at the same time exploiting to the full its resources for national service. He joined incognito in games of football behind the lines, and assisted in the service of the wounded. While still serving in France he founded a fund, in his own name, for the re lief of those whose near relations had been killed in action, and at the beginning of 1916 took his place as chairman of the first com mittee meeting in connection with the Naval and Military Pen sions Act.
In March 1916 he was appointed to the staff of the General Officer Commanding the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and proceeded at once to Egypt. He took the opportunity of see ing the troops in various parts of the line, and also went as far south as Khartoum. On his return journey he paid a visit to the Italian headquarters at Udine, and by the middle of June had re turned to the British armies in France. He was then attached to the XIV. Corps (Lord Cavan) and subsequently, after the disas trous defeat of the Italians at Caporetto in October 1917, pro ceeded with that corps to the Italian front where he remained until August 1918. In May of that year the prince paid a semi official visit to the King of Italy in Rome, and this was the occa sion of the first of those wide-spread matrimonial rumours with which the prince was embarrassed, and which doubtless played their part in making marriage a difficulty for him, and ultimately the occasion of his tragedy. On this occasion he was supposed to be going to marry the eldest daughter of the King of Italy, princess Yolanda of Savoy.
On his return to France the prince was attached to the Canadian Corps, with whom he was serving at the time of the armistice, and within a week of that event he was in Dover meeting the first batch of Boo prisoners of war on their return from Germany. In January he was back on the Continent, having arranged to be at tached to the Australian Corps serving in Belgium, after which he visited the Army of Occupation on the Rhine, spending a few days with the New Zealand Division and paying a short visit to General Pershing at the American headquarters at Coblenz. In later years the prince often referred to the "insignificant part" he had played in the war, but it is hard to see how he could have done more, or to suppose that most young men of 20 to 24 in his posi tion would have done anything like as much. Certainly the prince's war services were the foundation of the unique popularity he subsequently enjoyed.
The prince had taken his seat in the House of Lords on one of his flying visits to England in 1918 and in May 1919 he was ad mitted to the freedom of the City of London. The next few months were a whirl of activities. He visited his estates in Corn wall, descended a tin-mine, and sketched out plans subsequently pursued for the benefit of the miners, the fishermen, and the agri culturists of the Duchy; visited also the estates of the Duchy in Kennington, where he realized his opportunity of setting an ex ample as a landlord of London slum properties; visited the docks of Plymouth and the shipyards of the Clyde.
On August 5, 1919, he set out on the first of his empire tours, leaving Portsmouth on H.M.S. "Renown" for Newfoundland and Canada. In Newfoundland the special interest he had shown in the regiment which "our oldest colony" had sent to France was warmly appreciated. On August 15 he reached Canadian soil at St. John, New Brunswick, and the tour extended through the en tire dominion from east to west. Five days after reaching Vic toria, B.C., on September 23 the return journey began. Wherever he went the prince's presence roused the utmost enthusiasm, and everywhere he sounded a note which on his part was no mere piece of politeness but an expression of personal feeling. "I do not feel," he said, "that I come to this great dominion as a stranger. I want Canada to look on me as a Canadian, if not actually by birth yet certainly in mind and spirit, for this, as the eldest son of the ruler of the British Empire, I can assure you that I am." The feeling which leads so many young public school men to want to get away from over-crowded and over-civilized England to the wide open spaces was a conspicuous element in the prince's temperament. Those who know him have said that he always felt more at home with crowds in the rough industrial north than in the south of England, and still more at home with them overseas.
At Saskatoon the prince attended a rodeo, and at the close of the performance unexpectedly jumped on to a bronco's back and rode round the ring; but the most appreciated of all the prince's actions in Canada was his purchase of a ranch in Alberta as a Canadian home, at which he spent several subsequent holidays. Before returning to England he paid an official visit to the Presi dent of the United States at Washington, and afterwards kept a number of engagements in the U.S.A. Here as in Canada he was welcomed with an enthusiasm which played a perceptible part in improving the relations between the two countries. Needless to say American publicity was not shy of suggesting that these rela tions would be further improved by the selection of an American princess of Wales.
Reaching England on December 1, 1919, the prince spent only three and a half months at home before starting on March 16, 192o, for Australia and New Zealand. Both the outward and the return journey were made via the Panama Canal, and calls were made on the outward journey at Barbados, San Diego (Cal.), Honolulu and Fiji, and on the return journey at Fiji, Samoa, Honolulu, Acapulco, the West Indies and Bermuda ; the whole tour took seven months and was completed on October 1920. Needless to say this tour, like its predecessor and its many suc cessors, involved a great deal of exhausting work. Sometimes the prince's hand would be put out of action by too many and too hearty grips; on one occasion he completely lost his voice and had to make his speech in a whisper; sometimes his medical adviser insisted on a few days' complete rest, which generally took the form of golf or a hunting expedition. There were also occasions on this and other tours when the prince's free and easy ways gave offence to those who made insufficient allowance for a young man's natural impulse to enjoy himself. Being a keen dancer the prince liked to dance with a partner he found congenial when others ex pected him to distribute his favours with mathematical equality among all the best young ladies. But such incidents were mere specks on the sun of a blazing popularity; indeed they were de fects of his outstanding quality, for if the prince had been less unfeignedly natural he would not have won hearts as he did.
The year from October 1920 to October 1921 was spent at home. The prince's official residence had been established in the wing of St. James's Palace known as York House. From here he visited, among other places, Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow and the Clyde, Cardiff, Newport and Bristol, and the property of his duchy in Devon, Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. In the duchy he gave particular attention to the development of small holdings, co operative farming, and afforestation.
In the autumn of 1921 he set out on what must be accounted the most admirable of his tours, because its success was by no means a foregone conclusion. Only two years had passed since the massacre at Amritsar had stirred up the most formidable expres sion of Indian hostility since the Mutiny, and the unrest was far from over. Indeed Mr. Gandhi had recently formed an alliance with a widespread Moslem organization aiming at the overthrow of British rule. It had at one time been intended that the prince should go to India a year earlier, on his way back from Australia, to inaugurate the new constitution established on the basis of the Montagu-Chelmsford report. That had been deemed inadvisable, but the visit, though postponed, was not abandoned. It was a bold experiment, to test once again, in circumstances so radically changed since King George's Durbar of 1911, the magic of the royal name. The visit proved that the magic had lost some, but by no means all, of its potency. There were riots and boycotts, but also scenes of splendid enthusiasm. Whether as a matter of Indian policy the experiment justified itself is a point on which opinions differed. What was beyond question was the profound respect felt by British people, at home, in India, and all over the world, for the courage of the prince in undertaking this, the most hazardous of all his imperial progresses. He left England for India on October 26, 1921, in H.M.S. "Renown," calling at Gibral tar, Malta (where he opened the first session of the abortive Mal tese parliament) and at Aden, landing at Bombay on November 17, where he created a deep impression by saluting a group of "untouchables." At Poona he laid the foundation stone of the Shivaji Memorial. At Lucknow and Allahabad the prince was sub jected to organized boycott. After arriving at Calcutta he crossed to Rangoon and proceeded to Mandalay. After leaving Burma he sailed to Madras where the attempts of Indian nationalists to spoil his welcome met with little success. At Delhi he received an ad dress from the new Indian legislative, and in spite of some mis givings on the par. of his staff proceeded to the Punjab, the scene of the worst disorders two years before, where he was well re ceived by enormous crowds in Lahore, among whom he freely mingled. After visiting the North West Frontier province he made for the coast at Karachi and sailed to Japan, with calls at Colombo, Singapore and Hongkong on the way. In Japan he stayed a month, and the homeward voyage included calls at Manila, Borneo, Penang and Cairo. He reached England on June 20, 1922, after an absence of eight months.
The prince had thus made three enormous journeys in the course of three years, but many more were to follow. In April 1923 he visited Brussels in order to dedicate the monument erected by the British government in token of gratitude for the kindness shown to British prisoners of war after the armistice, and then revisited the battlefields of the western front. Both in this year and in the next he paid flying visits to his ranch in Al berta, the latter visit being combined with an informal visit to the United States to witness the international polo matches.
The prince's principal interest in 1924 was his Presidency of the Empire Exhibition at Wembley, to secure the fullest publicity for which he entertained the representatives of the press at a luncheon in the grounds. On the opening day of the Exhibition, April 23, he welcomed the official visit of his father, the King, in one of his earliest broadcast speeches.
All the great Dominions had now been visited except South Africa, and with the purpose of repairing this omission he left England in H.M.S. "Repulse" on March 28, 1925, calling on the way at the four West African colonies of Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In the Gold Coast he opened the new college of Achimota, which had been founded as the future uni versity of British West Africa. In Nigeria he travelled up to Kano, the Moslem city on the ancient trans-African trade route south of the Sahara, and took part in a Durbar to which came 20,000 horsemen under Moslem chieftains. Reaching Cape Town on April 3o, he characteristically included in his first speech a few sentences of Afrikaans, which gave great satisfaction to the Dutch, who constitute rather more than half the white population of the Union. Leaving Cape Town he journeyed through the Cape Province into the native reserves of the Transkei : then through the Orange Free State to Maseru where he was greeted by 5o,000 Basuto horsemen ; and onwards to Natal, where he opened a new dock at Durban, and gave special attention to the Zulu and Indian communities. Travelling inland from Natal he reached Pretoria and Johannesburg, where he opened the Witwatersrand Univer sity; then via Mafeking and the Bechuanaland Protectorate he travelled through Southern and Northern Rhodesia. It is impos sible to make the record of these tours more than a barren cata logue, and if the record were elaborated the details would be monotonous. All the greater is the credit due to the prince for the unflagging vitality he displayed throughout the long succession of receptions, all so much alike for the central figure yet each unique for its local participants. It has been finely said that the en thusiasm of crowds "never went to his head and always went to his heart." Leaving South Africa after a three months' visit on July 29, 1925, the prince crossed to South America, having accepted an in ' vitation from the President of the Argentine republic to visit that country. For this visit he had made the best possible preparation by a thorough study of the Spanish language, which he speaks more fluently than any other foreign language. The scenes of al most delirious enthusiasm which seem to have marked every stage of his activities in Buenos Aires surpassed in their own way any thing achieved by his own more stolid fellow countrymen. Leav ing Buenos Aires he travelled through 1 Soo miles of cattle-raising country, and crossed the Andes into Chile, visiting Santiago and Valparaiso. Returning to Buenos Aires he sailed for England, reaching home on October 16, 1925, after an absence of seven months. The visit was criticized by some sections of the British press, but there can be ne doubt at all that whatever it cost was much more than repaid by the stimulus given to British trade with the Argentine. It was about this time that the prince began to be recognized as the empire's best commercial traveller. He was himself very well aware of this aspect of his activities, and on his return home, in a speech at the opening of the North-East Coast Exhibition, he took occasion to drive home the truth that British exports would never win the market to which their quality entitled them without the application of more expert and up-to date methods of salesmanship.
The next three years were, by the prince's standard, a stay-at home period, though in August 1927 he visited Canada with the Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin, to take part in the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Canadian confederation, and took the oppor tunity of visiting his Alberta ranch. One of his new departures in 1926 was his presidency of the British Association meeting at Oxford.
The only extensive tract of the British Empire as yet unvisited was East Africa, and in September 1928 the prince left England with his brother, the duke of Gloucester, for what was to be primarily a holiday in pursuit of big game with gun and camera in that country. On the voyage he set himself to master the ele ments of Swahili. At Mombasa he was introduced to Chumah (or "Wellington"), the last survivor of the faithful servants of Dr. Livingstone who had carried their master's body from Central Africa to the coast more than fifty years before. The prince's travels extended through Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika ; and he was at Dodoma, in the centre of the last named territory, when he heard the news of King George's serious illness. On November 28 he left Dodoma by train for Dar-es-Salaam, and arrived in Eng land by H.M.S. "Enterprise" on December i s. The journey was considered remarkably fast, but only a very few years later he would, at Dodoma, have been on the Imperial Airways route to the Cape and would have got home in less than half the time. After his rather's recovery the prince returned to East Africa to complete the tour he had designed.
In 1931 he paid a second visit to the Argentine to open the British Empire Exhibition at Buenos Aires, and had the satisfac tion of finding that the commercial interest he had stimulated on his previous visit had not languished.
Shortly before setting out on this tour the prince had entered into occupation of Fort Belvedere and adapted it to his require ments as a country house. Fort Belvedere, which is within the confines of Windsor Great Park, had been built by the "butcher" duke of Cumberland in the middle of the eighteenth century.
The prince's activities within the British Isles covered a wide range, but a very great many of them were inspired by a desire to do whatever he could to help the less fortunate of his father's sub jects. No organization claimed more of his attention than the British Legion, of which he became President on the death of Lord Jellicoe. He was also a keen member of Toc H, an organiza tion whose members undertook to devote their spare time to social service. Slum-clearance and the provision of work and clubs for the unemployed were causes which owed much to his inspiring leadership. Various new industrial enterprises benefited by his patronage, especially British films.
The prince had all the typical Englishman's devotion to sport and hard exercise, both for its own sake and for the sake of keep ing physically fit. At one time he used to run for an hour in Buck ingham Palace grounds daily before breakfast. At a later date he used to start the day with an exhaustive programme of exercises in his private gymnasium. He was fond of playing squash rackets at the Bath Club. His favourite game is golf, and there is prob ably no player alive who has driven his ball in so many provinces of the empire. He also delights in flying : it satisfies a craving for speed which is typical of his generation, and also, as he is said to have often remarked, afforded him a welcome escape from human contacts when the day's work, so often transacted in a blaze of publicity, was over.
For there is no doubt that the labours of publicity, though so admirably discharged, imposed a severe nervous strain on one who was by nature of a highly strung temperament. In his earlier years the nervousness of the prince when making speeches was often painfully apparent, but in later years this nervousness was, so far as the public could see, well mastered and controlled. The felicity of his speeches on a wide range of subjects was the result of careful preparation. Every visit was preceded by study and by consultation with experts. Nothing was more abhorrent to his conception of his duties than the traditional royal waxwork, smil ing and uttering platitudes. Nor was he content with the offering of sympathy, however sincere. In every case he sought to use his unique position and popularity to give fresh drive to the best and most valuable ideas connected with every subject he handled. A good example, out of dozens which might be cited, was his speech at the centenary dinner of the Royal Institute of British Archi tects on November 22, 1934, in which he reviewed the possibilities and dangers of the application of the principle of mass production to architecture.
The prince's interests had, of course, their limitations, but it may be suggested that these reacted less on his public usefulness than on his private happiness. Having lived ever since boyhood in a whirl of activity and publicity he had had but little time or inclination to develop interests of the kind that enrich the quiet hours of life, as youth passes into middle age. He had little feel ing for the beauty of nature, thinking, it is said, that the country looked better from an aeroplane than from the ground. He cared little for books apart from ephemeral fiction, or for music apart from popular songs and dance bands. It was often said, perhaps with truth, that he dreaded his accession to the throne, and the thought of growing old in ever the same inescapable publicity. By temperament as by training he was unlike either of his parents, and he may well have contemplated the perfection of their man ner as King and Queen with an admiration not far removed from despair. As the bachelor prince of Wales, young still for his years though he had turned forty at the time of his father's jubilee, he had himself achieved something not far short of perfection. It was his tragedy that he could not leave it at that. It is difficult to write with confidence on this theme, but something must be said to prepare the ground for what followed, and to suggest that deep seated and long maturing causes played their part in the king's decision to abdicate.
Such thoughts, however, were very far from his subjects' minds when the prince succeeded his father as Edward VIII. on January 20, 1936. His accession was proclaimed at a meeting of the Privy Council on the following day, and in his declaration to that body the new king stated his determination to follow in his father's footsteps in upholding constitutional government. On January 28 came the funeral of the late King, which was attended by crowds surpassing all previous experience. King Edward and his three brothers, who on the previous midnight had mounted guard over the catafalque in Westminster Hall, walked behind the coffin as it was borne through the streets of London. The King's slight boyish figure showed unmistakable signs of weariness and strain. In February he performed at Buckingham Palace the royal duty of investing with honours and decorations those who had been men tioned in his father's last New Year's Honours List. The King himself assumed the highest ranks in the navy, army and air force. Early in March he attended the service at the Church of All Hallows, Barking by the Tower, when the Welsh Guards, with whom he had been associated as Prince of Wales, celebrated their coming of age on St. David's day.
On July 16 a singular and alarming incident served to call forth such widespread expressions of sympathy as to remind the King, if reminder were needed, that all his old popularity was intact. While the King was riding along Constitution Hill on his way back to Buckingham Palace at the head of the six battalions of the Guards to whom he had just presented new colours in Hyde Park, a loaded revolver was thrown down into the roadway in front of his horse. At the trial of McMahon, the man involved, the judge held there had been no intention of harming the King but that McMahon was "one of those misguided persons who think that by notoriety they can call attention to grievances." He was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.
In November the King visited the navy at Portland, where the home fleet was inspected in wild weather, and the King charac teristically spent an evening with the lower deck at a smoking concert. He also, in the course of his brief reign, visited the royal air force at their station in Suffolk. In matters of industry and employment the King was as active as the prince had been. In February he visited the British Industries Fair at Olympia and at the White City. In March, when in Glasgow to see the new liner "Queen Mary", he made a study of the progress of housing in that great and slum-infested city. In November he visited South Wales, the largest of the so-called "special" areas, i.e. areas of chronic unemployment, and received a hearty welcome wherever he went. There is no question that his outspoken determination that more must be done for these areas than had hitherto been attempted strengthened the hands of all those who, without dis tinction of party, were pressing the Government to launch a bolder policy. Plans which had been made for visits to Birmingham and South Staffordshire were abandoned in view of the swiftly on coming crisis which ended in the King's abdication.
At the end of July 6,000 Canadian ex-service men and their re lations gave the King an enthusiastic reception at Vimy Ridge where, in the presence of the President of the French Republic and the Prime Minister of Canada, he unveiled the Canadian National Memorial. During the late summer the King undertook a yachting cruise on the Dalmatian coast which, beginning as a private holiday, ended in several semi-official visits. In Istanbul King Edward met Kemal Atatiirk and, continuing his journey by land, he was received by King Boris in Bulgaria and by President Miklas in Austria. It was the first time since the War that a British sovereign had visited the rulers of states in Eastern Europe.
It is unnecessary here to record the general history of King Edward's brief reign apart from his own activities. Suffice it to say that, at the time of his accession, Italy was in the midst of her Abyssinian campaign, against which the League of Nations, under British Leadership, was applying "sanctions." In March Ger many denounced the treaty of Locarno and occupied with her forces the hitherto demilitarized Rhineland. In May Italian troops occupied the capital of Abyssinia, and the League subsequently abandoned the sanctions policy. In July the Spanish civil war broke out, and for the remaining months of the reign the British Government was occupied, in collaboration with the French Gov ernment, in trying to restrain the tendencies of Germany, Italy and Russia to intervene on one side or the other in the Spanish conflict. At home the year was marked by the introduction of an extensive and thorough programme of re-armament, by steady progress of industrial recovery after the Great Slump and a con sequent steady diminution of unemployment. Among the memo rable events of the reign were the establishment of the first regu lar B.B.C. television programmes, and the burning of that notable Victorian landmark, the Crystal Palace.
Before the King's reign was many months old gossip began to connect his name with that of an American married woman, Mrs. Simpson, and the subject was taken up in certain sections of the American press from May onwards, when the names of Mr. and Mrs. Simpson appeared as guests at the first formal dinner party given by the King after his accession. It should be said that much that passed current in the American press and in common gossip about the King's conduct was as inaccurate as it was ungenerous. None the less, the grant on October 27, 1936, of a decree nisi to Mrs. Simpson in her action for divorce against Mr. Simpson in evitably quickened the pace of rumour. The British press re frained from comment on the subject with a completeness and a unanimity which was one of the most creditable features of the whole episode, and press comment was not released until a very few days before the march of events would have in any case made the matter public. On December 1 the Bishop of Bradford, in an address to his diocesan conference, made reference to the King's dependence on God's grace, and added, "we hope he is aware of this need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness." The bishop, as it afterwards appeared, was referring only to the King's apparent indifference to the claims of religion, in contrast with the profound piety of his predecessor, but the press assumed that the bishop had the King's relations with Mrs. Simpson in mind, and its editorials thereupon enlarged upon a topic hitherto taboo. From day to day from now onwards the leader of the opposition asked the prime minister in the House of Commons if he had any statement to make, and on December 10 Mr. Baldwin unfolded the whole story of his negotiations with the King down to the composition of the King's message contain ing his instrument of abdication, which had been brought to the bar of the house and read by the Speaker before Mr. Baldwin rose to make his speech.
When Mr. Baldwin returned from his summer holiday he found awaiting him a large correspondence, mostly from British citizens on the American continent, expressing uneasiness on account of the rumours appearing in the American press. Mr. Baldwin de cided that it was his duty to see the King, and to warn him of the dangers he was incurring. This interview took place on October 20. Mr. Baldwin laid the facts as he saw them before the King, but did not press for any reply on the King's part. On November 16 the King sent for Mr. Baldwin and discussion was renewed. The prime minister told the King that he did not think that the King's marriage with Mrs. Simpson would receive the approbation of the country. The objection was not, of course, that Mrs. Simp son was a commoner nor that she was an American, but that she was a woman who had already divorced two husbands. The King, however, replied, "I am going to marry Mrs. Simpson and I am prepared to go." On this statement Mr. Baldwin felt he could make no immediate comment. Queen Mary and the King's brothers were then informed of the King's resolve.
On November 25 the King again sent for Mr. Baldwin and asked him whether legislation would be possible, enabling the King to marry Mrs. Simpson in a private capacity without her becoming queen. Such morganatic marriages had been legally recognized in many continental states where members of the royal family were debarred by law from making officially recognized marriages out side the royal caste. Mr. Baldwin replied that he would have to consult not only the British cabinet but also, under the Statute of Westminster, the prime ministers of the dominions, but that in his personal opinion any such arrangement would be entirely unac ceptable. The King said that he was not surprised and, though Mr. Baldwin made the enquiries indicated, with the expected re sult, clearly dismissed the possibility from his mind forthwith. The choice was between the marriage and the crown. Marriage would not be possible until the end of April 1937 when Mrs. Simpson's decree would presumably be made absolute, but once the King's mind was made up any delay would be detrimental. As Mr. Baldwin told the House, the King was determined to go with dignity, with as little disturbance as possible, and in circum stances that would make the succession of his brother as little difficult as possible.
When the situation became clear to the public in the early days of December, public feeling was deeply moved and bewildered. There was an intense desire to retain as King one from whose reign so much had been expected; probably most people not only hoped but believed that he would choose the course which was re garded as the path of duty. But attempts of interested parties to suggest that the King was being made the victim of the Victorian prejudices of his ministers, or that Mrs. Simpson would be an acceptable queen, failed entirely of their object. Before the deci sion to abdicate was made public a general feeling had come to prevail that it was the best and in any case the inevitable course. The Abdication Bill was carried through all its stages, and the reign of Edward VIII. formally terminated, on December 11, 1936. On the evening of the same day, as "H.R.H. Prince Ed ward", he addressed a last broadcast message to his people, com mending them to his successor, hitherto the duke of York, who had "one matchless blessing, enjoyed by so many of you and not bestowed on ine—a happy home with his wife and children." For his own part, "I have found it impossible .... to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love." The same night he left the country to stay with friends in Austria. One of the first acts of King George VT was to confer on him the title of duke of Windsor.
The reign was the shortest since that of Edward V., the boy king deposed by his uncle Richard III. and, as is generally supposed, smothered in the Tower with his brother. No coins had been issued bearing the head of Edward VIII., but the reign will be commemorated in stamp collections, the stamps being the first British issues reproducing a photographic portrait without con ventional ornament. On June 3rd, 1937, the duke of Windsor mar ried Mrs. Wallis Warfield (Simpson) in France.
Various popular appreciations have been published, e.g. E. Graham, Edward, Prince of Wales (1929), W. Townsend, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (1929), B. Maine, Our Ambassador King. Life as Prince of Wales (1936), H. Bolitho, Edward VIII.; his Life and Reign (D. C. So.)