(2 of 5)
"authority"—suits them well. George VI cannot dismiss, disparage or even threaten his ministers. As was shown in the case of his brother, Edward VIII, they can evict him. But no minister of-the King, nor any truly British socialist, would ever dare to raise hand or voice against the Monarchy. The institution is the thing.
But a good man helps. In the unspoken but unanimous opinion of his people, George VI is a good king.
He came to that quality and estate when he was four days short of 41. (His father, the greatly esteemed George V, was 44 when his father, Edward VII, died, and Edward was 59 when Victoria withered away.) Most of the blood in his veins was the German blood of the Hanovers, mixed with the English Tudors and Scotch Stuarts. His house had owned the English name of Windsor only 19 years. But on Dec. 10, 1936, when he stuttered a little and took up the burden of his brother, the slow mutation of the British way had made him as British as a cockney.
He had been a country gentleman, a younger son reared not for the throne (that was for gay Edward), but for the ancillary quiet of a royal dukedom. A strict father, a stalwart mother and some reserve within himself gave him an air of strict propriety. A governess, tutors, a sergeant of the Coldstream Guards cultivated the necessary manners and arts. Naval schools (Osborne and Dartmouth), a sea tour as a snotty (midshipman) before and during World War I shaped him in his family's marine tradition. A childhood friendship produced his Duchess and his Queen, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, a gentle-born commoner. They have not yet produced a son; the heir, Princess Elizabeth, comes of royal age (18) next month. Her sister, Princess Margaret Rose, is 13. They are a happy family.
King at Work. In the trembling years of 1940 and 1941, King George spent nearly a third of his time among his people. He watched the Army recover from Dunkirk. He watched the R.A.F. hold back the Luftwaffe (he had earned an R.A.F.'s pilot rating in 1919). He joined the Navy on its prowls around Britain. He was constantly meeting the nation's housewives and munitions girls, its fighter pilots and mine layers. He even had his own personal bomb. After his office on the north side of the Palace had been blitzed, he moved across the hall. There, at work one day, another bomb spattered the room with broken glass, plaster and dirt. The King, like all his subjects, was proud of his bomb, bored his friends telling about it. Never in British history has a monarch seen and talked to so many of his subjects or so fully shared their life.
Though the King has little direct power, the war has provided extra burdens for him. The Emergency Defense Acts, which gave the Government power to make rules and regulations necessary to the war, provided also that none of them could become effective until after they had been read to the King in the presence of four members of his Privy Council, and approved by him. Since 1939, there have been 10,836 such orders. Some long, some short, some complex, some simple—the King has heard them all. Not once has he disapproved.