The innocence of George VI

THERE IS an echo of all this in a recently published book called Sam White's Paris. In 1980, White visited the Mosleys when they were living just outside the French capital. Mosley, on this occasion, asserted that war with Germany would have been averted had Edward VIII been "allowed to keep his throne."
Among the King's stoutest supporters were, of course, Rothermere and Beaverbrook who felt that the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, should be foiled in his manoeuvres to get rid of the monarch. Hence a ditty of the day:
"There's not much point in being a peer", Said Beaverbrook to Rothermere. "Except a Marquess or a Duke", Said Rothermere to Beaverbrook. "No chance of that while Baldwin's here", Said Beaverbrook to Rothermere.
"Well, let's get him out by hook or crook", Said Rothermere to Beaverbrook.
Edward VIII abdicated at the end of 1936 and in subsequent years the Mosleys and Windsors saw a lot of each other. George VI was a very different sort of King but was curiously innocent, it seems, about the danger of war with Germany. By pure chance, when writing a biography of the exiled English Queen of Spain, Queen Ena. I came across a letter written to her by George VI shortly before war broke out in 1939. It is now in the possession of a lady in Switzerland to whom Queen Ena had given it.
In it King George wrote to Ena of his fond hope "that H. has not really decided on War. If only this can be avoided and that we can turn the situation onto negotiations instead of force with God's help we will."
But within a week, Britain was at war with Germany. And within months Mosley had been interned under Regulation 18B and was giving his answers, which only now we know, to what must have been a formidable team of interrogators, headed as it was by the late Lord Birkett.