The Crown

Next in importance after the British Constitutional Question, now safely answered in the United Kingdom, is the Indian Constitutional Question--the question whether the Indian people accept and enter into the spirit of the new Constitution enacted in 1935 by the Mother of Parliaments and sent to them from London, together with a most able new Viceroy, the banker Marquess of Linlithgow (TIME, Oct. 12 et ante). Last week George VI, new King & Emperor, labored chiefly over reports from his Indian Empire.

Indians, apart from their groveling submission to princely rajas and maharajas in the Native States, and apart from their tepid interest in the rubber-stamp legislative bodies in British India, have a nationwide political organization which they call the "Indian National Congress," and Mahatma Gandhi is its Prophet. In case it should ever be argued that this native Congress does not represent any considerable number of the Indian people, Mr. Gandhi has secured the attendance of some 60,000 Congressmen at each normal meeting. They met last week in a swiftly-constructed bamboo and tent city near the village of Faizpur, 200 mi. outside Bombay, and the Mahatma laid aside for this occasion his recent preoccupation with the special problems of India's Untouchables and village industries. Mr. Gandhi now concerned himself and the Congress concerned itself with deciding whether to: 1) support or struggle against the New Indian Constitution; 2) support or boycott the Coronation Durbar in India next winter of Their Majesties; 3) support or withhold support from His Majesty's Government in case they find themselves at war.

A series of three decisions on these three points last week, all diametrically adverse to His Majesty's Government and to His Majesty, was the story which the Indian National Congress wrote by unanimous acts at Faizpur. This Voice of India said with its 60,000 throats, "No, no and NO!" A problem was therefore presented to British correspondents in Bombay, but not a problem beyond their powers to solve. Not only over British wires but over the U. S. circuits of United Press, the story of the Conference's three-times-No verdict went out with this lead sentence: BOMBAY (UP)--ENTHUSIASM RAN HIGH THROUGHOUT INDIA TODAY OVER THE ANTICIPATED VISIT OF KING GEORGE VI, EMPEROR OF INDIA, DESPITE A DECISION OF THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS TO BOYCOTT HIS CORONATION.

This was a British journalistic feat probably never before equaled and perhaps never to be surpassed in reversing at the start the biggest news story of the Empire last week. The dispatch contained no particulars of the alleged "enthusiasm" of Indians for the Coronation and this was presumably confined to pukka sahibs in the privacy of their homes. At the Congress sessions last week the Mahatma spoke with his usual mystic benevolence.

Not so the Congress' fighting President, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, now its active leader. Britons accuse him of being semi-Marxian and he last week called them semi-Fascist in return. Roared Mr. Nehru:

"British imperialism inclines more and more toward the Fascist powers, although the language it uses is democratic. Our Congress party stands for full Democracy, not for Socialism, but I hope the logic of events will lead it to Socialism, which seems to be the only remedy for India's ills. . . . This is because modern Imperialism is an outgrowth of Capitalism and cannot be separated from it!" Congress President Nehru closed by announcing: "The basic policy of this Congress is to combat the Government of India Act--the new Constitution--and destroy it!" Thus the new King & Emperor knew last week that his Coronation Durbar in India next winter will be the outward and visible symbol of an inward and political Indian Constitutional Crisis.

Assuming that King George, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Elizabeth all go to India for the Durbar, and in London last week that was what had been slated, an eruption of numerous Indians against the Constitution, symbolized by the Crown and embodied in the members of the Royal Family on Indian soil, must now be considered an awful possibility. Last week the new King's Private Secretary, Major Alexander Hardinge, was disclosed to be taking his three months' "vacation" in India, and on his return will be able to advise His Majesty's Government and His Majesty whether to go through with the Durbar.

P:His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, youngest brother of His Majesty and most intimate friend of the Duke of Windsor, posed for cameramen with his dashingly beauteous friend Mrs. William Edward David Allen last week on the front steps of the establishment of Mrs. Stackpool Odell, the expensive London phrenologist.

Mrs. Allen was once the Marquise de Casa Maury and before that a mannequin, her present husband being a London businessman. She took the Duke to the phrenologist to get his bumps read. Pictures of the Duke and Mrs. Allen appeared in all illustrated London papers. The phrenologist, after feeling the Duke's bumps, reported as to His Royal Highness' head: "It is nicely balanced, with a fine quality of brain rather than quantity. If he were looking for a job he would best be suited for classical or artistic work. But his self-protective and assertive qualities are comparatively weak. Although wiry, he could do with more vitality and more staying power.

"His social qualities, I found, are fairly good, but he is a little too diffident. His bump of conjugality was moderately developed, but his success in marriage would depend on adaptation to his partner."

Thus far the Duke of Kent is the father of two children, a son Prince Edward, and a daughter born on Christmas 1936 to Greek Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, herself dashingly beauteous.

P:The Duke of Windsor was again last week the.subject of a "scoop" Hearst report, Mr. Hearst having originally scooped the Duke's resolve to marry Mrs. Simpson and his wish to make her his morganatic wife (TIME, Nov. 16). The Duke, announced Hearst Universal Service, "has decided to write a book in defense of Jews. ... To the question of whether he thinks such a book expedient at the present time, the former King Edward VIII answered: 'To know what is the right thing to do and not to do it is cowardice.' Baron Rothschild, the Duke's host, has placed his library at Edward's disposal. . . . The Duke told friends the motto of the work would be Ich Dien ('I Serve')." This is the hereditary motto of the Prince of Wales.

As grand figures in International Jewry, the House of Rothschild could have planned no coup more dazzling than to have their race defended by the abdicated King of England in a book carrying on its cover the three plumes of the Prince of Wales and his motto Ich Dien. In England, where the name of Montague has a definitely Jewish ring, the fact that Mrs. Simpson is descended from the Gentile and aristocratic Montagues of Virginia has been, quite erroneously, held as a point against the Woman of 1936. The Duke of Windsor, as midnight tolled in the Year 1937, clapped Baron Rothschild warmly around the shoulder, kissed the Baroness ("Kitty") Rothschild heartily and ran off to ring up Mrs. Simpson in Cannes.

P:The Rev. Dr. C. H. D. Grimes, Pastor of the English Church in Vienna, revealed this week that his Anglican superiors have cracked down on him, demanding to know why he did not "ask someone's advice" before he allowed abdicated Edward VIII to read the scripture lesson in his church on Christmas (TIME, Jan. 4). Since the British Minister to Austria was present and made no objection, Dr. Grimes last week was flabbergasted to discover that he had enraged Church authorities in England who are apparently resolved to keep the Duke of Windsor an everlastingly damned sinner. Hedged Pastor Grimes: "The idea . . . did not come from me, but from the Duke himself." It had been well understood by the British colony in Vienna that the marriage of the Duke & Mrs. Simpson would be performed next spring by Dr. Grimes. Quaking last week, he cried: "To arrange even a single detail of such a ceremony now would be to provide evidence of collusion, which all parties are seeking to avoid!"

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