Hate-Free, Fear-Free

When sterling Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, speaks affectionately of "Algie," Her Majesty refers to the Earl of Athlone, her youngest brother. He is so keen a soldier that he not only won the D. S. O. in Africa in 1901 but begged off from becoming Governor General of Canada in 1914 to join the British Army in France. Last week Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King revealed that when George VI toured the Dominion last year, King & King talked over who would make a suitable successor for Canada's then Governor General, Baron Tweedsmuir, and agreed on "Algie."

The King and his Prime Minister did not know that Lord Tweedsmuir was going to slip in his bath and die of brain concussion (TIME, Feb. 19), but his term was about to expire and they did well to get everything forehandedly settled. Last week. Buckingham Palace officially announced that His Majesty has been graciously pleased to appoint as Governor General of Canada Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, Earl of Athlone and Viscount Trematon, Knight of the Garter, Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, Grand Master of the Order of St. Michael & St. George, Governor of Windsor Castle and Personal Aide de Camp to George VI since his accession.

Delighted were Canadians, well aware that South Africa liked Lord Athlone so well as her Governor General some years ago that she got him to stay on for a second term. Algie said after Africa, "I think I've earned a little rest, now I'm going to vegetate in Sussex." Instead the Earl was entrusted with a series of missions in the Near East extremely important to the British Government, which needed to impress the late Turkish President Kamal Atatuerk and tough King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud dined with a woman for the first time in his life when he sat down with the Countess of Athlone. Tactful "Aunt Alice" (to George VI) veiled herself like a model Mohammedan woman while in Arabia. (Back home she mildly startled England by becoming the first member of the royal family publicly to approve birth control.) London papers, which would never dare fake such a story, have asserted several times that Edward VIII when Prince of Wales proposed marriage to Athlone's homey daughter Lady May Cambridge, great favorite of Queen Mary, but she preferred to marry Captain Henry Abel Smith of the Royal Horse Guards.

Athlone after break of war opened a "worldwide moral rearmament weekend" of the Oxford Group with solemn words: "Our thoughts go out tonight to all who are facing special sacrifice or suffering.

We pray their labor may not be in vain and that their victory will open the way toward the new world we are endeavoring to build--that hate-free, greed-free, fear-free world for which every one of us longs." Secret will be kept the date on which the new Governor General will sail to Canada this spring.

Nondescript Utterance. In the Dominion last week a teapot tempest blew up from Ontario as the Attorney General of this Province, politically inexperienced Gordon Daniel Conant, 65, who has been in public life less than three years, again cackled on his favorite theme of British-U. S.-solidarity-to-save-the-world.

Last week the Provincial Attorney General sorely vexed Ottawa, London and Washington by burbling, "If the United States want to build the St. Lawrence waterway, by all means let us join them.

If they want access to Alaska over Canadian soil there should be no hesitation in settling the matter. In fact nothing short of the impairment of our status as a sovereign nation would be too much for Canada to offer as a sacrifice on the altar of liberty and freedom. . . . The success of the Allied cause may be very doubtful unless at an early date the active participation of the United States is made effective." Even ever burbling and often indiscreet Premier Mitchell ("Mitch") Hepburn of Ontario was vexed at this latest burble of old Mr. Conant, explained that he believed his Attorney General had become "deeply disturbed" while witnessing the departure of Canadian officers (one of whom was his brother-in-law and another his private secretary) for service in World War II. In Washington Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who recently spanked U. S. Minister Cromwell, took Mr. Conant to the woodshed, declared that no nondescript utterances of minor officials abroad could influence U. S. foreign policy.

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