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A favorite Saturday afternoon for the King & Queen is tea at the country house of Oliver Stanley, Minister of Colonies, whose wife, now dead, was the beautiful, dashing Lady Maureen Stanley. The "tea" is usually a drink or two, and the company an informal collection of R.A.F. air vice marshals, pilots, war correspondents and others invited to meet George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The King's manner with his airmen is easy, comradely. The King likes ribald stories, has a large store of them, enjoys standing in a corner with a knot of men swapping ribaldries.
New King. The war has given him a new and tempered toughness, a new confidence, an easier manner. As Duke of York he was shy, hesitant in public, agonized by his stuttering. Now he walks with dignity. His voice usually has rounded, effortless confidence. The speech impediment still troubles him when he broadcasts, but is otherwise seldom noticeable. He is still only 5 ft. 8 in. tall and slightly built. But he seems a bigger man.
Empire & Power. The King undoubtedly shares, although he never expresses, the anxieties which Prime Minister Churchill reflected last week. Quite simply and directly, these anxieties have to do with Great Britain's future as a great world power.
Britons, living on an island at Europe's edge, are inevitably concerned with Europe and Soviet Russia's emergence there. Churchill's solution, and theirs, is to preserve a place in Europe by getting along with Russia if possible. Britain may be forced to vie with Russia in Europe, but she hopes for a worldwide order in which European rivalries may be merged and in which the Empire may thrive. Richard Kidston Law, next in rank to Anthony Eden, told the American Chamber of Commerce in London: "The interests of the U.S. and the British Commonwealth demand a worldwide political and economic system."
What Statesman Law calls "Commonwealth" practically all Britons call, without shame, "Empire." Colloquially, the Empire includes: 1) the Dominions of the Commonwealth (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Eire); 2) the colonies and protectorates (Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, etc.); 3) India—the only realm of which George VI is actually Emperor. Total population: 557,000,000. (The world's population: 2,170,000,000.)
"George VI ... Emperor. . . ." therefore embodies a hope and a prospect which is all-important to Britons, important to all the world. War has at once tightened and loosened the bonds of Empire. Sovereign, national aims conflict in Canada with a never-dying tie to Britain. Aspirations both regional and national stir New Zealand and Australia. South Africa's great Prime Minister, Field Marshal and Elder Statesman Jan Christiaan Smuts, feels grave responsibility both for Imperial Britain and for the independent integrity of his own country. India, the jewel of Empire, strains away from Empire, yet gives (or sells) men and wealth for Britain's fight.
The human tie between them all is the King-Emperor.