Foreign News: Innocents Abroad

Sir Ronald Lindsay, the moose-tall Ambassador at Washington of His Britannic Majesty, eschewed last week each of his many opportunities to correct or deny the extraordinary dispatches which hourly arrived from London concerning Edward VIII, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the Dominions Beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.

The British Ambassador might have taken exception to the Washington Post's assertion that King Edward "plans to marry" Mrs. Ernest Simpson. Or Sir Ronald might have objected to the United Press story carried from coast to coast by the Scripps-Howard chain under headlines the entire width of the page:

"CHURCH HEADS SNUB KING EDWARD"

"2 PRELATES SHUN PARTY ATTENDED BY MRS. SIMPSON"

"British Ruler Blushes and Appears Distressed at Private Conference with Archbishops of Canterbury and York"

"BALDWIN SAID TO HAVE DEVELOPED HOSTILITY TOWARD HIS MAJESTY"

If there were any doubt about all this, the British Embassy might have set right the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, the Right Reverend Irving Peake Johnson, D. C., who warmly declared: "The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York stand for the sanctity of the home against the power of the King. They were placed in a position in which they had to choose between their conscience and expediency. It is to their credit that they had the courage to witness to our Lord's command."

Undenied by any British source, the story of the King and Mrs. Simpson last week was blunt and simple. Under English law a man who makes a trip in company with another man's wife, the two stopping at the same hotels, has in fact given the husband opportunity to sue the wife for divorce on the ground of adultery. The King has just made an extended yachting trip in company with Mrs. Simpson, and notably in Vienna they stopped at the same hotel (TIME, Sept. 21). But Mr. Simpson, as a loyal British subject, could not institute proceedings for divorce in which His Majesty might appear as corespondent. Last week Mr. Simpson did just about what any disgruntled English husband does who wishes to spare his wife's name.

The usual procedure is for the husband to register with a hired corespondent at an English hotel, the staff of which are familiar with their jobs. When the wife brings the suit for divorce, hotelmen testify that the husband and the corespondent spent the night together in the same room and were registered on the blotter as man & wife. Needless to say, in such sordid circumstances any actual commission of adultery is usually omitted by the husband, whose mood is apt to be one of bitterness at a divorce system which many British jurists and prelates have denounced as "revolting" and "unfair." Last week Mrs. Simpson filed such a divorce suit against Mr. Simpson in the rural Ipswich Court of Assizes. Under English law, she must appear in court and prove that she is herself of good character, for in England, if it can be shown that husband and wife have each committed adultery, then neither can obtain a divorce. This feature of the law has been described as Holy Deadlock and supplied the title for a novel of that name by Funster A. P. Herbert, M.P.