My Aunt and the Duke of Windsor

Dec. 5, 1936. — ‘ I don’t know about her. But they say he’s for the common man.’ — MY AUNT Dec. 11. — ‘I hope they leave the poor fellow alone now. After all, he’s only human.’ — MY AUNT May 5, 1937. — ‘Maybe there would n’t be a bus strike if he were king. He was friendly to labor, you know.’ — MY AUNT

Oct. 18. — ‘Of course he ought to come to America. Housing and all that are very worth while.’ — MY AUNT

Oct. 31. — ‘Imagine! Going to Nazi Germany! I always said she was pro-Nazi.’ - MY AUNT Nov. 7. —‘I’m glad he’s not coming. He’d only stir up trouble, and we’ve enough here already, without him too.’ — MY AUNT

My aunt has, you see, quite positive opinions on the behavior of the Duke. Right now she stands firmly with Heywood Broun, the Baltimore Federation of Labor, the A. F. of L., the CIO, and the rest. She’s ‘agin’ the Duke.

My aunt I don’t blame. She’s susceptible to the loudest cries on a public question, and the Liberal-Labor assault on the Duke has truly been screeched and roared. But those who have written for her to read and talked for her to hear constitute another problem. They are supposed to have reasonably consistent criteria and yardsticks by which to judge men and events. If their influence on my aunt is any indication, in the Duke’s case they’ve thrown reason into the ash can and proceeded on a hyperemotional use of the rule of thumb.

She seethes with Labor’s indignation at the Duke’s choice of Charles Bedaux as a guide to the United States, and boils along with the American League Against War and Fascism at the sight of the Duke inspecting Nazi housing and factories. She doubtless has forgotten that slightly less than a year ago she had been convinced by the liberals that Edward VIII was being ousted for his ‘radical sympathy’ for the British workingman. Edward was quite a fellow in those days, almost a threat to capitalism — so much so that my aunt astonishedly found herself agreeing with the Communist Party that Edward’s dethronement was merely the prelude to a programme of ‘vicious reaction’ throughout the Empire. She was then for the Duke — very much.

Although her sources are pretty much unchanged, she no longer gets the behindthe-scenes story as she did last December. The same liberals have sold her the idea that the Duke is now a new and more real menace — this time a threat to democracy itself.

My aunt was much impressed when the Baltimore Federation of Labor referred to the proposed American tour as ‘a slumming party.’ Like the Baltimore boys, she thought it pertinent to point out that as plain Miss Wallis Warfield her present Grace had never been interested in the labor movement. It was true, she thought sagaciously, Wally had never been known to leave a cocktail party at Aunt Bessie Merryman’s to do picket duty or even to talk over wages and hours with a dress fitter. My aunt, whose previous interest in Wally had been mainly limited to her Molyneux gowns and backstairs tidbits about her, pronounced it more than just that Her Grace should now be punished for such youthful indiscretion.

Heywood Broun’s comment that a few pleasant remarks from the Duke about the plight of the Welsh miners did n’t constitute a labor record also struck a sympathetic chord. After all, look at what the Duke had done to all those old palace retainers! He too was probably just sniffing at the other half. If my aunt had been the rough-andtumble type, she would have bestowed upon his yellow head the additional title of ‘Labor Faker.’

Yet a year ago, along with these same liberal instructors, she thrilled at the spectacle of real royalty ‘bursting out in indignation at the horrible conditions of the Welsh colliers.’ She grew pink enough to see pleasant social portents in his willingness to befriend a class ignored by his government. She talked hopefully of ‘philosopher-kings’ and enjoyed watching Edward make his ministers uncomfortable.

It was really this fellow Bedaux, my aunt would tell you, who changed everything. He’d devised the ‘stretch-something’ system, and such a fellow was no fit labor tutor for the Duke, An admission from me that the Duke might have done better failed to quench my aunt’s thirst for his blood. Unfortunately she did n’t grasp the comic implications in Labor’s objections to Bedaux as a major-domo: simply that Labor’s roar meant that Bedaux would have to bring the Duke 3000 miles across the water and walk him through heaven-knows-how-many-more miles of factories to convince him of the preëminence of the Bedaux system. That, of course, Bedaux could not have done in Europe.

I don’t think, either, that my aunt would have agreed with Labor’s unbreathed surrender to Bedaux implicit in its howling. She just did n’t realize that if Labor objected so violently to Bedaux as guide it meant to demonstrate its own factory systems against his. Had she seen this, my aunt would probably have stood right up and said, ‘If he visits the intelligently, humanely conducted American factories, he ’ll be able to judge for himself.’ But then, my aunt did n’t get the whole story.

Nor was she in on all the angles of the Duke’s journey into Nazi Germany. She got just enough to conclude, along with her enlighteners, that the Duke’s inspection of German plants and housing was tantamount to his being bamboozled by the Nazi chieftains. In their hot fury at the Duke’s going to Germany at all, my aunt’s guides, much as the Duke’s Nazi guides, doubtless construed his pointed silences as approval. As my aunt herself so often says, ‘That’s an argument that cuts both ways.’ And, salute or no salute, my aunt owns now that she has n’t read one word of praise of Naziism by the Duke.

She was, however, deeply horrified that, of all people, the Nazis should pick Nazi Labor Front Leader Ley to show the Duke around. That was every bit as silly as having Madame Perkins do the same service in this country. My aunt and her newspaper advisers seemed to expect the Nazis to release a trade-unionist leader from a concentration camp for this mission. Along with the A. F. of L. and the rest, she forgot that the Duke would have had to be pretty much of a blockhead not to have known before he ever went to Germany that Ley could show him only the corpse of German organized labor. Again, on the motive of the Duke’s inspection of this corpse, my aunt’s ‘two-way’ argument might have come in handy.

Finally, it is strange that Messrs. Broun, Pegler, and the rest, who write column after column on the Nazi-loving British Government, completely neglected to speculate (for my aunt’s benefit) on that government’s rôle in the Duke’s German trip. Particularly Broun, whose speculations have the redeeming and annoying virtue of later being substantiated by fact. He might have figured it something like this: the British Government long ago announced its objection to the Duke’s visiting the United States. However, it coveted his publicity value for its own use. With Secretary Eden fawning on Hitler, it had a perfect setup to utilize the Duke’s popularity. Send him into Germany, where his presence would create the sentiment of British friendship without actually involving the home government. And, in exchange for the German junket, the British Foreign Office would reward the little Duke with a lollipop in the form of no objections to the American tour.

It all worked out beautifully — for Messrs. Eden and Chamberlain. Mr. Broun’s suppositional powers might not roam so far as this, but perhaps the Foreign Office cannily figured that the Duke’s German expedition would arouse objections in the United States. Thus, they could keep the Duke away from America without visibly raising a finger against him. Supposition or not, that’s the way it turned out. The Foreign Office cashed in on the Duke’s popularity. So did my aunt and the American liberals, but they got lead chips instead of silver.

Some day perhaps my aunt will read (and then she’ll believe it) that the Labor-Liberals tried and convicted the Duke on mighty flimsy evidence — that they blacklisted for a long time, with a great many innocent followers, the good influence he might have had. She may also learn of the unconscious collusion between the British conservatives and the American liberals. Someone may tell her that when the Americans hysterically linked the Duke with Fascism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Labor elements, they played straight into the waiting hands of their own foes.

My aunt may realize (with help) that, regardless of his tactless associations and naïvete in the whole complicated business of human welfare, the Duke as humanitarian had a tremendous popular influence. His mere announcement of interest in housing and working conditions created vast public curiosity and sympathy for these and kindred progressive measures. She may see that his proposed tour caused more comment on these subjects than did the Wagner Housing Act or the Child Labor Amendment.

Granting the Duke’s background, no one expects even a rounded liberal point of view from him. But why, because of what at worst can be considered only a blunder, threaten him with a picket line and boycott? Why class him with Vittorio Mussolini? To date no boasts of the joy of blowing villages to bits have sullied his prestige.

And the chance to trade intelligently on that prestige my aunt and her liberals have, for the time being, booted away. Labor’s noisy self-congratulation is picayune beside the reactionaries’ quiet smirk. The American liberals have simply won the battle and lost the war.

The Duke now plans to go to Scandinavia and even Soviet Russia. He’s too reactionary to be welcomed to democratic America, but he’ll probably be persona grata with the Soviets, — particularly the Stakhanovites, — who know the sweetest use of publicity.

My dear aunt may learn all this in time. But she’ll need some new teachers.