The Duchess Of Windsor (37 page)

Even though I might have been able to recruit a commanding majority, I could not have persuaded the entire nation and all the Dominions.... By making a stand for myself, I should have left the scars of a civil war.... True, I should still be King. But I would no longer be King by the free and common consent of all.... The cherished conception of a Monarchy above politics would have been shattered.... I felt I had come to the limit of a man’s power to shape events and fend off catastrophe. Were I to wait longer I might indeed reap the whirlwind. And so, in faith and calmness, not unmixed with sorrow, I resolved to end the constitutional crisis forthwith. I would close my reign with dignity, clear the succession for my brother with the least possible embarrassment and avoid all appearance of faction.... I reject the notion . . . that, faced with a choice between love and duty, I chose love. I certainly married because I chose the path of love. But I abdicated because I chose the path of duty. I did not value the Crown so lightly that I gave it away I valued it so deeply that I surrendered it, rather than risk any impairment of its prestige.”
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I plead for time and patience. The nation must realize the character of the constitutional issue. There is no question of any conflict between the King and Parliament. Parliament has not been consulted in any way or allowed to express any opinion. The question is whether the King is to abdicate upon the advice of the Ministry of the Day. No such advice has ever before been tendered to a Sovereign in Parliamentary times. This is not a case where differences have arisen between the Sovereign and his Ministers on any particular measure. These could certainly be resolved by normal processes of Parliament or dissolution. In this case we are in the presence of a wish expressed by the Sovereign to perform an act which in no circumstances can be accomplished for nearly five months, and may conceivably, for various reasons, never be accomplished at all. That, on such a hypothetical and supposititious basis the supreme sacrifice of abdication and potential exile of the Sovereign should be demanded, finds no support whatever in the British Constitution. No Ministry has the authority to advise the abdication of the Sovereign. Only the most serious Parliamentary processes could even raise the issue in a decisive form. The Cabinet has no right to prejudge such a question without having previously ascertained at the very least the will of Parliament. This could, perhaps, be obtained by messages from the Sovereign to Parliament, and by addresses of both Houses after due consideration of these messages. For the Sovereign to abdicate incontinently in the present circumstances would inflict an injury upon the constitutional position of the monarchy which is measureless and cannot fail to be grievous to the institution itself, irrespective of the existing occupant of the Throne. Parliament would also fail entirely in its duty if it allowed such an event to occur as the signing of an abdication in response to the advice of Ministers without taking all precautions to make sure that these same processes may not be repeated with equal uncanny facility at no distant date in unforeseen circumstances. Clearly time is needed for searching constitutional debate. The next question is—What has the King done? If it be true, as is alleged, that the King has proposed to his Ministers legislation which they are not prepared to introduce, the answer of Ministers should be not to call for abdication, but to refuse to act upon the King’s request, which thereupon becomes inoperative. If the King refuses to take the advice of his Ministers they are, of course, free to resign. They have no right whatever to put pressure upon him to accept their advice by soliciting beforehand assurances from the Leader of the Opposition that he will not form an alternative Administration in the event of their resignation, and thus confronting the King with an ultimatum. Again, there is cause for time and patience. Why cannot time be granted? The fact that it is beyond the King’s power to accomplish the purpose which Ministers oppose until the end of April surely strips the matter of constitutional urgency. There may be some inconvenience, but that inconvenience stands on a different plane altogether from the grave constitutional issues I have set forth. National and Imperial considerations alike require that before such a dread step as a demand for abdication is taken, not only should the constitutional position be newly defined by Parliament, but that every method should be exhausted which gives the hope of a happier solution. Lastly, but surely not least, there is the human and personal aspect. The King has been for many weeks under the greatest strain, moral and mental, that can fall upon a man. Not only has he been inevitably subjected to the supreme stress of his public duty, but also to the agony of his own personal feelings. Surely, if he asks for time to consider the advice of his Ministers, now that at length matters have been brought to this dire culmination, he should not be denied. Howsoever this matter may turn, it is pregnant with calamity and inseparable from inconvenience. But all the evil aspects will be aggravated beyond measure if the utmost chivalry and compassion are not shown, both by Ministers and by the British nation, towards a gifted and beloved King torn between private and public obligations of love and duty. The Churches stand for charity. They believe in the efficacy of prayer. Surely their influence must not oppose a period of reflection. I plead, I pray, that time and tolerance will not be denied. The King has no means of personal access to his Parliament or his people. Between him and them stand in their office the Ministers of the Crown. If they thought it their duty to engage all their power and influence against him, still he must remain silent. All the more must they be careful not to be the judge in their own case, and to show a loyal and Christian patience even at some political embarrassment to themselves. If an abdication were to be hastily extorted the outrage so committed would cast its shadow forward across many chapters of the history of the British Empire.”
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It is contended again that there are precedents for a morganatic union of the kind contemplated. There are none. No British precedents exist and no Continental precedents apply. The analogy from them is both false and foolish. Some Continental monarchs have been constitutionally restricted to wives of certain rank or birth. The morganatic marriage was a means whereby they could choose a wife outside the permitted circle, but without conferring upon her the status of a Royal Consort. In England this has never been necessary. The King of England—it needs to be repeated—is today, and throughout history has ever been, completely free in his choice of a wife, irrespective of rank and nationality, and is trammelled by no obligation to the Constitution or to his advisors. There has, as Lord Rothermere says, been no suggestion at any time from any quarter that the lady for whom the morganatic exception is recommended should become Queen. Yet in law—apart from the fact that she is not legally free to remarry—there is nothing to bar her from becoming Consort and Queen in the full sense. The disqualification here is not, as on the Continent, one of law, but of fact. What is demanded is statutory recognition of the fact that she is not fitted to be Queen. The Prime Ministers of the Empire are to be asked to propose, and the Parliaments to accept and ratify, a permanent statutory apology for the status of the lady whom the King desires to marry. The Constitution is to be amended in order that she may carry in solitary prominence the brand of unfitness for the Queen’s Throne. Can anyone in possession of his faculties imagine any Prime Minister moving, or any Parliament undertaking to support, a proposition so indivious and so distressing?

This foolish and deplorable product of misguided ingenuity must be cleared away once and for all, and delicate and difficult grounds will be freed of at least one superfluous encumbrance.

Nor are its intrinsic embarrassments and absurdities the only reason for condemning its resurrection at this stage. Those who purport to be advancing it in His Majesty’s interest are doing so in the face of the considered and unanimous decision of the five Empire Governments. In the form of advocacy which they have chosen, it is an unpleasantly significant recrudescence of the same movement—in the same quarter—which threatened not long ago to depict the Sovereign as in conflict with his elected and Ministerial advisers. It is also an attempt to force upon the King a decision which is his and his only, and which he may be trusted to make in his own time with full regard for the Coronation of which he is a custodian and for the hereditary trust, written and unwritten, that came into his hands from his father ten months ago.
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