The Reflex

"Unthinkable!" one London newspaper called it when the rumor first popped up a month ago. But last week, only a few days before her third child was expected, Queen Elizabeth II announced her "will and pleasure" to the Privy Council that certain of her descendants, not in line for the throne, be permitted to bear the name of her husband's house as well as of her own. By the intricate provisions of the royal declaration, Britain would not see a Mountbatten-Windsor for three generations, but that did not make the change of name any sweeter.

For many Britons, the almost instinctive hostility to the House of Mountbatten goes back to the anti-German feeling of World War I, when Wagner's music was banned from the Albert Hall and to have a German name could mean getting the sack. Most prominent victim of the anti-German feeling of the day was no less a personage than Britain's German-born First Sea Lord, Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, who had been a British subject for 46 years.

"You Are Right . . ." He was married to a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, but neither his marriage nor his distinguished Royal Navy record was enough to save him. Hounded by the press and vilified by the public, he lasted only two months after the outbreak of the war before he penned a short and sad note to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, offering to resign in the interests "of the great Service to which I have devoted my life." "In all the circumstances," replied Churchill, "you are right in your decision."

In 1917 King George V himself felt obliged to discard all such "German Degrees, Styles, Dignities, Titles, Honours and Appellations to Us" as the Dukes and Duchesses of Saxony and the Princes and Princesses of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. While the King became plain Windsor, Prince Louis of Battenberg became a Mountbatten (a literal translation of his German name). Until the day he died in 1921, he never forgot his humiliation. Nor did his second son, Dickie, who was a 14-year-old naval cadet at the time of his father's fall, and vowed to be First Sea Lord one day himself. Around him centers most of the fuss.

The Man Who . . . The ambitious young cadet in time became the debonair Right Honorable Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas, first Earl Mountbatten of Burma, K.G., P.C., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.. G.C.V.O., K.C.B., D.S.O. He was a destroyer flotilla skipper in the Mediterranean, later Britain's wartime South East Asia commander, and then Viceroy of India during India's difficult transition to independence. At last, after achieving, like his father before him, the rank of First Sea Lord, he became Britain's first Chief of the Defense Staff in 1958.

To right-wing types in England, he remains "the man who gave India away" under the direction of Attlee's Socialist government. To society, he and his Edwina are too flamboyant and pushy, e.g., they dress their male staff in the same navy blue uniforms as the Buckingham Palace staff.

Of all the earl's achievements, none matched the way he pushed forward his handsome young Greek nephew, the fair-haired but indigent Prince Philip of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucks-burg. He arranged his nephew's first meet ing with 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, watched over their friendship until he saw Philip become consort to the Queen.

"Sad Blunder." Last year irrepressible Uncle Dickie privately published a book on his family tree claiming that until the Queen went through the formal process of adopting the name of Windsor in April of 1952, she had reigned two months as a Mountbatten, and therefore the House of Mountbatten historically "takes its place among the reigning houses of the United Kingdom." Last week, when Her Majesty announced her "will and pleasure," the press could not shake off the unpleasant conviction that Uncle Dickie was behind it all. "A victory for Prince Philip and his uncle!" growled the Daily Herald. "A sad blunder," said Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express. "The decision will not be approved by the British public," said Britain's biggest paper, the tabloid Daily Mirror. From the London Times there was an uncomfortable silence. But for all these reservations about the Queen's decision, the expected birth within the next few days of another royal heir was bound to remind everyone again how basically popular Britain's Queen is.

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