Blue Blood in Flanders

Blue blood as well as red soaked the sodden plains of Flanders and the banks of the Somme last week as Britain's knights and lords fell with day laborers and farmers in the grim cavalcade of war. True to the ancient tradition that the aristocracy pays for its privileges on the day of battle, the first-born of the realm marched, as in many crises of Britain's turbulent history, to fulfill their destiny. So rapid was the depletion of the aristocracy, already thinned and impoverished by death and death taxes in World War I, that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood decreed that for the duration death duties are payable only once if successive estate owners die in action.

Against estates valued at -L-5,000 or less no death duty will be levied.

>Over hoary Alnwick Castle on the once embattled Scottish border, a blue and gold ducal standard flew at half-mast announcing that Henry George Alan Percy, Duke of Northumberland, Earl Percy, officer in the Grenadier Guards, had been killed in action. Head of the famous fighting Percy clan, which has battled in & out of England for over 800 years, the 27-year-old Duke died trying to stem the Nazi advance through Flanders. His brother and successor, Lord Hugh Algernon, is in active service with the Northumberland Hussars.

>To the royal family came news that Lord Frederick Charles Edward Cambridge, cousin of King George VI and favorite nephew of Queen Mary, had also died in the Battle of Flanders as a captain in the elite Coldstream Guards, leaving his elder brother, the Marquess of Cambridge, without a male heir.

> Killed on the Western Front was another, more distant relative of the royal family, Grenadier Guardsman the Hon.

Gustavus Lascelles Hamilton-Russell, son of Viscount Boyne and nephew of the Earl of Harewood (brother-in-law of George VI). His ancestor Sir Frederick Hamilton had distinguished himself fighting Germans under Sweden's great King Gustavus Adolphus. Guardsman Hamilton-Russell's son Gustavus Michael George, aged 8 and the final survivor of his family, is now heir to Lord Boyne.

>Handsome Irish Major John Henry George Crichton, 8th Earl of Erne and Lord-in-Waiting to the King, whose father died in France in 1914, was killed fighting a new generation of the same foe. The earldom descended to his son, aged 2.

Lieut, the Hon. Evelyn Boscawen. heir to Viscount Falmouth and not long out of Cambridge, died as a Coldstream Guardsman in Flanders. Lieut. Sir Marmaduke Charles Henry Joseph Casimir Blenner-hasset was killed while serving as a Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, leaving a nine-day-old successor to his baronetcy.

>After being reported missing, 32-year-old Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard.

16th Duke of Norfolk, 27th Earl of Arundel, Premier Duke & Earl of England, turned up in a French hospital south of the Somme, having been wounded at Boulogne. Weetman John Churchill Pearson, Viscount Cowdray, grandson of multimillionaire Engineer Sir Weetman Pearson and non-playing captain of the British polo team that played in the U. S. in 1939, returned badly wounded from Flanders to have his left arm amputated in Durham Hospital. Upon hearing the news, his wife gave birth to a premature daughter.

>Less noble but equally prominent lives were lost in Flanders: Polo Star Hesketh Hughes, who became a galloping sensation at the 1936 tournament at London's Hurlingham Club, almost beating a highly touted American team singlehanded; Laurence O'Shaughnessy, noted Irish surgeon, who went to the front, declaring he could save more lives there than waiting at a base hospital for mangled soldiers to arrive ; Richard Whitaker Porritt, first Member of Parliament killed in the war; Captain Christopher Jeffreys, aide-de-camp to General the Viscount Gort.

>Reported missing was distinguished, 55-year-old traveler, diplomat, soldier, author and M. P., Sir Arnold Wilson, who formerly championed Hitler's cause and early in the war suggested an armistice with Germany. Later he joined up for what is considered the most dangerous job in the Air Force-rear gunner on a bombing plane. "I have no desire,"he declared, "to shelter myself and live in safety behind the ramparts of the bodies of millions of our young men." Commented the sergeant pilot of his plane, "He knows his stuff."Old Etonians killed in France were remembered at the gravest Fourth of June (202nd anniversary of Patron George Ill's birth) celebrations since 1916. The annual boat procession and luncheon were both canceled, and of the usual festivities, only the cricket matches remained. Colored waistcoats and boutonnieres, traditional symbols of levity, were dispensed with.

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