The Duchess Of Windsor (49 page)

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Authors: Greg King

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The lease of the house, however, failed to stifle David’s desire to return to England. He honestly believed that he and Wallis could be of use to his brother in performing public duties on behalf of the monarchy. His continued hope was spurred on by reports from Monckton that Prime Minister Chamberlain was at least investigating the possibility of a return. On the last weekend in August 1938, Chamberlain and Monckton were both invited to Balmoral to discuss the Duke’s return with the King. Monckton was somewhat surprised when George VI invited Queen Elizabeth to join the discussion but said nothing.
Chamberlain explained that the British government had no objection to the return of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and that, as prime minister, he no longer saw how the former King and his wife could be kept out of the country. He even suggested that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor might be of some assistance to the King, able to take over some of the ceremonial duties which the Royal Family was expected to fulfill. Monckton wrote: “The King himself, though he was not anxious for the Duke to return as early as November 1938 . . . was not fundamentally against the Prime Minister’s view. But I think the Queen felt quite plainly that it was undesirable to give the Duke any effective sphere of work. I felt then, as always, that she naturally thought that she must be on her guard because the Duke of Windsor, to whom the other brothers had always looked up, was an attractive, vital creature who might be the rallying point for any who might be critical of the new King who was less superficially endowed with the arts and graces that please.”
17
It was left to Monckton to convey the unfavorable decision that the return of the Windsors was to be delayed for the foreseeable future. As an olive branch, however, he explained that the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were to stop in Paris on their return from an African trip and that they would like to meet with the Windsors. David’s brother Harry and his wife, Alice, would therefore become the first members of the Royal Family to visit him and Wallis since the abdication. David, needless to say, was overjoyed; although he and his brother had never been particularly close, he detected in the move a softening of attitudes on his family’s part. Wallis, who had met both of the Gloucesters previously at the Fort, was nervous, fearing that she would “put a foot wrong” and harm her husband. But when the Gloucesters arrived, everything went smoothly. The two couples lunched at the Hotel Meurice, and in the evening the Windsors took the Gloucesters to dine at Larue’s in the rue Royal. Both Wallis and David were convinced that the visit at least indicated a willingness on the part of the Royal Family to bridge the differences separating them. Neither would learn the truth: that the visit had not been the idea of King George VI but had taken place at the insistence of the prime minister. Both of the Gloucesters had been unwillingly pushed to make this gesture. “It was Neville Chamberlain’s idea, not ours,” the Duchess of Gloucester candidly wrote many years later.
18
When the Gloucesters returned to London, they were greeted with several critical letters expressing indignation that they had met the Duchess of Windsor. Such incidents, though rare, were often used to bolster the perception that the British public stood opposed to the return of the Duke and Duchess. But such propaganda, often repeated, is without merit. A Gallup poll conducted in 1939 revealed that 61 percent of the British public wanted the Windsors to return to England; only 16 percent opposed such a move. The inevitable conclusion is that the only real opposition to the Windsors’ return came from the court and the Royal Family.
19
Nor is it correct to assume that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were inundated with hate mail and virulent letters opposing their return to England. In fact, most of their mail was positive, as Dina Wells Hood recalled: “Every time an announcement of the Windsors’ impending return to England appeared in the press, hundreds of fans wrote to the duke expressing their delight at the good news. They reiterated their disappointment at his abdication, their sorrow at his exile.”
20
Nevertheless, the Windsors remained in exile, and the Royal Family did its best to ignore their existence. One particularly hurtful example came that fall, when David was not invited to attend the unveiling of the memorial to his father in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. David had paid half the cost of the memorial, which was sculpted by Reid Dick, and fully expected, as George V’s eldest son, to be present during its dedication. He was beside himself with anger when he learned that the Royal Family had held the ceremony without him. Even more troubling was the way in which he was ignored: not just as a former king but even as a son.
Wallis worried greatly over such humiliations; she tried as best as she could to somehow fill the void in her husband’s life, to provide for him both an alternative to the family he had lost, the country he had left, and the throne whose duties had once filled his days.
21
At first, these attempts amounted to little more than idle entertainments. Then, in May 1939, David made his first serious incursion since the abdication into the political arena.
Fred Bate, the head of British and European operations for the National Broadcasting Company in America, asked David if he would like to make a speech to the United States promoting the idea of world peace. He immediately agreed and decided that he would symbolically deliver it from the battlefields of World War I at Verdun. There was nothing objectionable about the speech, but the timing turned out to be rather unfortunate.
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had been scheduled to make a tour of the United States beginning in May 1939, at roughly the same time that Bate suggested the Duke should broadcast. Bate had already arranged for David to deliver his speech; a potential conflict seemed averted when Buckingham Palace announced that the King and Queen, due to the worsening international situation, had decided to postpone their American visit. However, on May 2, George VI was advised that the trip to America was vital to the British cause should a European war erupt, and the royal tour, previously canceled, was now back on. On May 5, the King and Queen sailed aboard the
Empress of Australia
for North America.
It was too late for Bate to cancel the speech. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived at Verdun on May 7 and were welcomed in an official ceremony by the mayor. They toured the battlefields that afternoon and spent the rest of the evening working on the speech, which would be delivered on the following day.
22
Wallis helped David draft the speech. He wanted to emphasize not only the need for peace but the responsibility of the nations of the world to secure that peace for future generations. As a piece of antiwar propaganda, it was effective:
I am speaking tonight from Verdun, where I have been spending a few days visiting one of the greatest battlefields of the last war. Upon this and other battlefields throughout the world, millions of men suffered and died and, as I talk to you from this historic place, I am deeply conscious of the presence of the great company of the dead; and I am convinced that could they make their voices heard they would be with me in what I am about to say.
For two and a half years I have deliberately kept out of public affairs and I still propose to do so. I speak for no one but myself, without the previous knowledge of any government. I speak simply as a soldier of the last war, whose most earnest prayer is that such cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind.
I break my self-imposed silence now only because of the manifest danger that we may all be drawing nearer to a repetition of the grim events that happened a quarter of a century ago. The grave anxieties of the time in which we live compel me to raise my voice in expression of the universal longing to be delivered from the fears that beset us and to return to normal conditions. You and I know that peace is a matter too vital for our happiness to be treated as a political question. We also know that in modern warfare victory will lie only with the powers of evil. Anarchy and chaos are the inevitable results, with consequent misery for us all.
I cannot claim for myself the expert knowledge of a statesman, but I have at least had the good fortune to travel the world and therefore to study human nature. This valuable experience has left me with the profound conviction that there is no land whose people want war. This I believe to be as true of the German nation as it is of the British nation to which I belong, of you in America and of the French nation on whose friendly soil I now reside.
International understanding does not always spring up spontaneously itself. There are times when it has to be deliberately sought and negotiated, and political tension is apt to weaken that spirit of mutual concession in which conflicting claims can best be adjusted. The problems that concern us at this moment are only the reproductions on a larger scale of the jealousies and suspicions of everyday life. In our personal contacts we all strive to live in harmony with our fellowmen. Otherwise modern civilization could never have come into existence.
Are we now going to destroy that civilization by failing to do internationally what we have learned to do individually? In their public utterances the heads of governments are at one in declaring that war would be disastrous to the well-being of their people. Whatever political disagreements may have arisen in the past, the supreme importance of averting war will, I feel confident, impel all those in power to renew their endeavours to bring about a peaceful settlement.
Among measures that I feel might well be adopted to this end is the discouragement of all that harmful propaganda which, from whatever source, tends to poison the minds of the peoples of the world. I personally deplore, for example, the use of such terms as “encirclement” and “aggression.” They can only arouse just those dangerous political passions that it should be the aim of us all to subdue.
It is in a larger spirit than that of personal or purely national interest that peace should be preserved. The statesmen who set themselves to restore international security and confidence must act as good citizens of the world and not only as good Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Americans, or Britons. The benefit to their own nations must be sought through the benefit to the wider community of which we are all members.
In the name of those who fell in the last war I urge all political leaders to be resolute in the discharge of this mission. I appeal to them in the name of the living, whose existence and happiness are in their hands, and I appeal to them especially in the name of the youth of the present day, with all its incalculable potentialities of future service to the human race.
The world has not yet recovered from the effects of the last carnage, which in each and every country decimated my generation. The greatest success that any government could achieve for its own national policies would be nothing in comparison with the triumph of having contributed to save humanity from the terrible fate that threatens it today.
Somehow, I feel that my words tonight will find a sincere echo in all who hear them. It is not for me to put forward concrete proposals; that must be left to those who have the power to guide their nations toward closer understanding.
God grant that they may accomplish that great task before it is too late.
23
 
The opinions expressed in the Duke’s speech were completely in harmony with both British sentiment at the time and the government’s policy of negotiation and appeasement. But no one was prepared to believe that the timing—coming as it did on the heels of his brother’s important visit to America—was accidental. Although the evidence is clear that not only did the idea for the speech originate with Bate rather than David and that it had been planned prior to the sudden revival of the royal visit, various writers have attempted to use it against the Windsors. Sarah Bradford, for example, declares: “It is hard not to suspect that there was a decided intent on the part of the Windsors to upstage the King and Queen before they arrived in America and to draw attention to the Duke as an international figure of importance.”
24
The truth, of course, was quite different, but few in court circles were willing to believe anything but the worst of the Duke and Duchess.
On May 8 the same day on which David was scheduled to make the speech, the
Daily Express
editorialized: “The decision of the Duke of Windsor to broadcast to the United States today is to be regretted. The moment is unhappily chosen. The King is on his way to America. Any word spoken on the United States at present should come from him. It would have been better for the Duke to wait. It is reported that the Duke will make an appeal for peace in his broadcast. Such an appeal would have been uttered more appropriately after the King’s peace mission to the Dominion had been brought to a conclusion.”
25
That private citizens were entitled to freely express their views, especially at critical moments in history, seemed to have completely escaped the editors of the
Daily Express.

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