Man's Man

Pale, eight-year-old Prince Philip of Greece was under no illusions. Paris in 1929 was full of exiled princes. Some drove taxis. Others were waiters. At his fashionable school in St. Cloud, Philip was always ready to take on odd jobs like waiting on tables. His mother had warned him that he might as well learn, because he too might end up as a waiter.

A great-great-grandson of Britain's Victoria, Philip Gluecksburg was born on the Island of Corfu on June 10, 1921. In 1863 his grandfather, Prince William of Denmark, had become Greece's King George I. Philip was sixth in line to the Greek throne. But a year after Philip's birth, his uncle, King Constantin, was tossed off the throne. Philip, his parents and his sisters* became exiles. With his family, Philip sailed to England, where his mother's father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had gained fame in the days before World War I as Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty. From then on much of Philip's life was spent visiting relatives. Philip's favorite was his Uncle Dickie Mountbatten (the Battenbergs had Anglicized their German name during World War I). In 1933 Philip went to a German school at Salem, near the Lake of Constance. Every time he saw a Nazi salute he laughed; his nervous German relatives sent him back to the Mountbattens in London. Philip never learned Greek or Danish, and at Gordonstoun, a public school near Elgin, Scotland, he became thoroughly British.

"Pray, Sir," Said the Prince. Unlike tradition-bound Eton and Harrow, Gordonstoun, established in 1934 in a castle on the cliff-girt coast of Morayshire, bristled with progressive education. There, aristocratic young Britons were taught to forget class distinctions and live like hemen. Every morning before breakfast they took long hikes, climbed hills or practiced javelin-throwing.

In Elgin, they tell how one day Dick Clelland, the barber, lost his temper. Clelland, tired of having boys mess up his shop window with dirty fingers, rushed out, razor in hand, and kicked a boy who was waiting for a bus. Prince Philip turned and asked: "Pray, sir, for what do I receive this kick?" (At least, that is what Morayshiremen, who know how a Prince ought to talk, say Philip said.)

Philip spent hours along the Moray Firth soaking up the shoptalk of fishermen and boatbuilders. At night he would stand watch with coast guardsmen in their lonely huts high over the harbor. As a scholar he was only fair, but when he left school after four years he took with him the highest honor for seamanship.

At Dartmouth Naval College Philip won the King's Dirk as the best cadet of his term. Then came war, sea duty on H.M.S. Ramillies and a commission as lieutenant aboard the Valiant. He was mentioned in dispatches for good work at the battle of Matapan (240 miles from his birthplace).

"But Very Sweet." Back in London after the war, Philip, now 6 ft. 2 in. and handsome, was one of the most popular bachelors at Mayfair parties. The Navy gave him shore duty at Corsham in Wiltshire, instructing seamen in current events and swimming. Many an evening Philip spent in the "local," The Methuen Arms, playing darts and taking good-naturedly a mild joshing from the townsmen on reports of his romance with the Princess.

London was livelier and offered more scope for his favorite diversion--practical joking. This trait had first manifested itself at Gordonstoun, where Philip once led a class quietly out of the window while the teacher concentrated on the blackboard. At a party last year he was dancing with a girl who had heard that "Prince Philip" was there but didn't know him by sight. She asked Philip if Philip was indeed at the party. He replied: "No, he's not, but he's a dreadful man and thank God he isn't here." Then the girl asked: "Do you think he's going to marry Princess Elizabeth?" Philip replied: "I hope not, for her sake." A few weeks ago in a nightclub he diverted himself by sticking pins in a phone book, calling up unlucky strangers on whose names his pinpoint fell.

This sort of thing has not diminished Philip's popularity. Said a woman friend: "He's a terrible schoolboy, of course, but very sweet." An American, who talked to dozens of Philip's friends, arrived at this verdict:

"He is the type who would be considered 'a good all-round man' at an American university and would make the best fraternity on the campus, but some of his frat brothers would undoubtedly find him painfully exuberant at times. He gives the impression of being 'a man's man.' "

* Philip's father, Prince Andrew, died in Monte Carlo in 1944. His sisters are Margarita, who married Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg; Theodora, who married the Margrave of Baden; Cecilia, Grand Duchess of Hesse bei Rhein, who was killed with her husband and their two sons in a plane crash in 1937; and Sophie, who married Prince Christopher of Hesse.

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