spirit of the men, the quality of the drill and turnout, the immense vitality and exuberance, impressed him profoundly. ‘They are a big power in the world now,’ he told his father, ‘I might say the next biggest after ourselves, and they are worth while making real friends with … I’m just crammed full of American ideas just now, and they want me to “go over to them” as soon as possible, which is another item for consideration and one that should not be “pigeon-holed”.’94
His time with the Australians and Americans took him into occupied Germany. He found himself billeted at Bonn in the home of the Kaiser’s sister, Vicky, Princess of Schaumburg-Lippe, and was outraged to find photographs of his family displayed in the principal rooms – ‘I feel so ashamed, however one is consoled by the thought that we’ve “cut them right out” for ever!!’ He was still more annoyed when the Princess addressed him as ‘dear’ and told him that the Germans would have been able to continue the war for several years but for the revolution. Rather grudgingly he admitted that she seemed ‘a nice enough woman for a Hun’, no doubt because she was ‘one third English’.95*4
He had no doubt that the Germans must be ruthlessly crushed and complained to the King about the ‘idiotically mild and lenient treatment of this —— Hun population. No one,’ he claimed, with more justice than usually accompanies such a boast, ‘is more against a bullying spirit than I am, as that would only place us on the same level as the Huns … But we are not making these Huns feel that they are beaten … There is no danger of serious fraternization as, thank goodness, the infantry and in fact all the men, still loathe the Huns and despise them. Of course, as regards the women, well all women in the world are made the same way, whether German or Japanese or any race you like, so that isn’t fraternization, it’s medicinal …’96 The spirit behind these words was neither magnanimous nor far-sighted. It was, however, shared by almost every junior officer, indeed by every soldier, in the allied armies. They read curiously in the light of later charges that he had been pro-German from his childhood and thus an easy convert to Nazi doctrines.
‘I just don’t know what’s happened to me since “this ’ere armistice”,’ the Prince told Joey Legh in mid-December. ‘I’m so mad and restless that I can’t sit down to think and write.’97 Sitting down and thinking was never to be one of his favoured activities, but the end of the war found him exceptionally agitated. He knew that what he was doing was of value, and did not dislike doing it, but at the same time he itched to escape from his military harness and address himself to his real profession. ‘I know that there is an enormous amount of work waiting for me in England, that is really why I’m so anxious to return and to “get down to it”,’ he told his father. Whether he would find the work tolerable once he had embarked on it, he did not know, but it was his future and he had better confront it now than later. He was more than ready for a change: ‘This makes the 6th Division I’ve visited in under a fortnight and it is wearing work.’98
He felt qualms about his ability to do the job ahead of him but also believed that he had qualifications lacking in any previous Prince of Wales and, still more, in King George V. There can be few sons in the same line of business as their father who do not from time to time believe that they have a monopoly of prescience and the spirit of progressiveness. The Prince was convinced that his father had failed to come to terms with the realities of the post-war world. In this belief he was fortified by the Queen. ‘I sadly fear Papa does not yet realize how many changes this war will have brought about,’ his mother wrote apprehensively.99 She did less than justice to the King, who could hardly have failed to notice the maelstrom which threatened to consume the heartlands of Europe. Bolshevik revolution had triumphed in Russia and was now rampant in Germany. ‘It all makes one feel anxious about the future,’ wrote the King; ‘all this sort of thing is very infectious, although thank God everything seems to be all right in this dear old country.’100 The Prince was very doubtful whether all was right in Britain, or at least whether all would continue to be right once the euphoria of victory had subsided.
He was certain that he understood the fears and aspirations of his future people far better than his father ever would and at least as well as any from the despised legion of politicians. His years with the Army had given him an opportunity denied to any other prince of getting to know the common man. This knowledge was, in part at least, illusory. He could never shed the prejudices of his caste and generation. When he heard that two of his closest friends had been transferred to the front line, he wrote that he hoped it was not true, ‘as we must have a few “gentlemen” left after the war … I’m afraid that’s rather a snobbish thing to say, tho’ I mean it, and so I suppose I’m a snob!!!!’101 He never doubted that, by training as well as breeding, ‘gentlemen’ were best qualified to run the country.
But unlike many of his contemporaries, he did not believe that the country was made for gentlemen. He knew that the men who had fought for Britain deserved more from society than they had enjoyed in the years before the war: better pay, better houses, better education for their children and treatment for their sicknesses. If their rulers failed to provide such treatment then they were not worthy to be rulers, were indeed not worthy of the title of ‘gentlemen’. His creed was simpliste perhaps, but it was generous and sincerely held. The war had left him a more thoughtful, socially conscious and open-minded man. At the end of May 1919 he received the Freedom of the City of London. Talking of his life as a soldier he told his audience:
The part I played was, I fear, a very insignificant one, but from one point of view I shall never regret my periods of service overseas. In those four years I mixed with men. In those four years I found my manhood. When I think of the future, and the heavy responsibilities which may fall to my lot, I feel that the experience gained since 1914 will stand me in good stead.102
On the whole, it did.
5
L’Éducation Sentimentale
IT IS A TRUTH UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED, THAT A SINGLE man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. When that man is not only in possession of a good fortune but is heir to the throne of Great Britain, the want becomes imperious necessity. From the moment the Prince of Wales advanced into adolescence, the need to find him a suitable wife began to preoccupy the King and Queen, their advisers, and increasingly the Prince himself.
Traditionally, spouses for the royal children were drawn from the courts of Europe, most of which were intricately bound together in a great web of cousinship that was the delight of genealogists and the despair of less well-equipped historians. This avoided not only adulteration of the blood royal but also the embarrassment involved in raising any individual noble family above the others by admitting it to relationship with the throne. When Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Louise, married the future Duke of Argyll, the precedent was felt by many to be a dangerous one. Certainly such a match would never have done for a likely occupant of the throne. If the Prince of Wales, when young, did not share this view, he kept his doubts to himself. Whether he would have married Princess May must be uncertain, but that he would in the end have married some European princess is highly probable.
Then came the First World War, and in an instant many of the possible brides were transformed into enemy aliens. An already difficult problem became almost insoluble. ‘I hope some day you will find the woman who will make you happy!’ Queen Mary wrote to her eldest son, ‘but I fear this will not be easy as so much will have to be considered.’1 The Prince was not over-worried by the inevitable delays. Physically slow to mature, he enjoyed the companionship of women but felt no strong urge to consummate the relationship. ‘I hope you are home by now,’ he wrote to a Grenadier friend in May 1916, ‘and having a jolly good time and are appeasing your sexual hunger, which I more than understand, tho’ don’t actually experience it myself, strange to say.’2 With some fellow officers he visited a brothel in Calais and watched naked prostitutes striking a series of what were considered to be erotic attitudes. ‘A perfectly filthy and revolting sight,’ he called it, ‘but interesting for me as it was my first insight into these things!!’3