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Men & Faith. No phrase in George VI's royal style is more resonant than "Defender of the Faith."* When Pope Leo X so designated Henry VIII, it meant: defender of the Roman Catholic faith. Henry abruptly and sensationally made it mean defender of the Protestant Church of England. Since then, the faith preserved in Great Britain's Crown has evolved, in terms both political and social, far beyond careful definition. What it has gained in breadth it may have lost in depth.
But it is still, so grim battles have proved, a Faith. Not fanatical, it engages the one talent that could be called uniquely British: to change without fuss, to change conservatively. At its core, perhaps, is belief in man and his dignity. The effort to define the Faith continues in the life and the thought of Britain.
Britons like Sir William Beveridge put it in terms of human security; some, like Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England, in terms of a politically resurgent Christianity—"to be a Christian," he recently wrote, "is to share in a new movement of life. . . ."
Some have their doubts along with their faith. Britain's Field Marshal and India's Viceroy, Lord Wavell, a soldier of generally unsuspected spirit and eloquence, wrote in his forthcoming book about poetry (Other Men's Flowers): "It is a law of life which has yet to be broken that a nation can only earn the right to live soft by being prepared to die hard in defense of its living. . . . May the spirit of adventure and self-sacrifice . . . stay with us after the war, when we undertake ... to refashion a shattered world."
Gentle yet earthy King George VI would probably feel more atune to the words of a British mother, refusing to send her children to safety in the U.S. at the war's start. Said she: "Something is happening here they must feel and know if ever they are to be a part of England again. Whatever the risks, I cannot rob my children of their country."
* Full title: George VI, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.