Woman of the Year

Normally a courageous feminist, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt is accustomed to name annually "The Ten Women of the Year." This week she not only did not name Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson as one of her ten women of 1936 but emphasized her attitude by announcing that she is not going to name any more women of the years. In past years Mrs. Catt has named such women as Mrs. Lindbergh, Miss Perkins, Miss Earhart, with President Roosevelt's wife heading the list year after year.

In the entire history of Great Britain there has been only one voluntary royal abdication and it came about in 1936 solely because of one woman, Mrs. Simpson. In 1935 she was quite as intimate with Edward as she was later but he was then only Prince of Wales, and there was no reason to think she was not going to remain the wife of Mr. Simpson, just as in the days of King Edward VII his female intimates generally had husbands and stayed at Buckingham Palace ostensibly on the invitation of Queen Alexandra as "her friends." Two years ago Mrs. Simpson was hardly known as Edward's friend outside the most limited Mayfair set. Three years ago their friendship was furtive: she would "just happen" to be in a London nightclub with her own party, the Prince of Wales would also "just happen" to be there with his, and an equerry would go over to her table and ask if she would care to dance with H.R.H.

Edward of Wales had had many another friend on the same terms, and Mrs. Simpson was an ordinary divorcee of the international set, definitely not rich and seldom or never mentioned in society columns. In the single year 1936 she became the most-talked-about, written-about, headlined and interest-compelling person in the world. In these respects no woman in history has ever equaled Mrs. Simpson, for no press or radio existed to spread the world news they made.

In England the news that the King, as King, wanted to marry Mrs. Simpson was the final culmination of a tide of events sweeping the United Kingdom out of its cozy past and into a more or less hectic and "American" future. Against this trend the spirit of John Bull resolutely set himself, and the flesh was that of the Rt. Hon. Stanley Baldwin. The Prime Minister provoked the entire crisis, which otherwise might never have arisen as a crisis, by making publicly in the House of Commons the first official statement that King Edward was actually resolved to marry Mrs. Simpson (TIME, Dec. 14). This fact had been ascertained as a "scoop" personally by William Randolph Hearst, but had it not been made official. Edward VIII might simply have done nothing until after he was crowned May 12, and then (Mrs. Simpson having meanwhile obtained her absolute divorce on April 27), His Majesty had only to marry her and she would have been Queen.

By turning the course of Britain's history back into its traditional channel, Stanley Baldwin certainly rose to a stature equaled by few other candidates for Man of the Year. Indeed so impressive was his handling of the Simpson Crisis that his popularity in England reached an all-time high and evoked one of the most extraordinary gestures of public acclaim ever accorded to a modern politician: a gift of $10,000,000 to implement the new era brought about by Mr. Baldwin.*

The other three Men of the Year candidates on a par with Stanley Baldwin would be Franklin Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini and Chiang Kaishek. But for all their greatnesses of achievement in 1936, a historian on the moon at the end of the current century could scarcely single out any of these as having put his mark supremely and uniquely on 1936.

Mr. Roosevelt's second electoral landslide, while the greatest in modern U. S. history, was made against weak opposition and, by its very magnitude, showed him to belong to the decade, perhaps to the century, not just to one more year. Moreover, political landslides however great are not compassed in the U. S. by just one personality and to re-elect Franklin Roosevelt because the U. S. electorate did would be a gross injustice to his prophet and political teammate, James Aloysius Farley.

Mr. Baldwin's historic triumph at home came only after he had earned from History some pretty low marks for 1936 in statesmanship abroad, notably his weak and clumsy handling of Mussolini. As for that Dictator in 1936, against odds which the greatest European military experts called "insurmountable" for a country so comparatively not strong as Italy, he carved out for himself an Empire in Africa. He gambled on the weakness of the League of Nations and on Britain being unable to make a success of Sanctions. Finally, he gambled that the military experts were wrong. In all three gambles II Duce won, but Ethiopia is not a prize so rich that because he won it history must call him Caesar.

In Eastern Asia, ten years of butchering Communists and belaboring local satraps into submission were climaxed in 1936 by Premier & Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek when his China, for the first time, stopped yielding to Japan's more impossible demands and adopted a policy which could be called "strong" (TIME, Nov. 9). Premier Chiang might well have been Man of the Year had he not, at the zenith of his prestige, been suddenly kidnapped (see p. 18).

In 1936 the other Asiatic dictator, Joseph Stalin, gave to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics "the world's most democratic constitution"--except that it is the very reverse of that, a windy mockery which leaves the Stalin Dictatorship unimpaired. In France the year brought the first Cabinet headed by a Socialist that country has ever had, but Premier Leon Blum and his "New Deal" have brought a series of nationwide strikes and political headaches. Adolf Hitler in 1936 tore up the last shreds of the Treaty of Versailles, but Der Fuehrer has yet to grapple with an external foe, and his "victories" to date have nearly all been in Germany's backyard. Insane though the international butchery in Spain became during 1936, and even though it may end in another World War, no masterful Man of the Year had emerged from Spain. Things there were just about as Punch brilliantly sketched them in terms of Europe's Strong Men (see cut).

In Art, in Music, in Religion and in Science, 1936 was barren of a Man or Woman of the Year. Typical was Mme Curie-Joliot, daughter of the late great discoverer of radium, who became in 1936 one of the first three women ever to reach French Cabinet rank. Not one of these proved an outstanding success and Mme Curie-Joliot, disgusted with what she saw of politics, soon resigned. No Einstein Theory shot meteoric across Science's sky, no deathless melody, canvas or sculpture won world acclaim.

In Sport the white Man of the Year was Lou ("Iron Man'') Gehrig who continued his string of consecutive baseball games played with the New York Yankees to 1,808 in eleven years, making 49 home runs in 1936, helping win another World Series and being again voted "most valuable player in the American League." Black Man of the Year was Sprinter Jesse Owens. His Olympic record--championships in three individual events, one team event--has been equaled only by red-skinned Jim Thorpe in 1912 and stamps him Sport's Man of the Year.

In her way as unique as Sprinter Owens, Writer Margaret Mitchell uncorked in 1936 the first first-novel ever to sell a million copies in six months, Gone With The Wind (TIME, July 6). Animal of the Year was the Baby Giant Panda whose mistress calls her Su-lin (see p. 25).

In about the same 1936 class was President Arthur Sherman of Covered Wagon Co., biggest auto trailerman of the first Auto-Trailer Year.

In the Theatre there was only Eugene O'Neill with his 1936 Nobel Prize for work done in other years; in the Cinema only such as Robert Taylor with his 1936 profile. In Medicine there was in 1936 the Surgeon General of the U. S. Public Health Service, Dr. Thomas Parran Jr., the great syphilologist who this year got syphilis on the radio for the first time.

The service of Dr. Parran in proving to 123,000,000 citizens of the U. S. that about 12,000,000 of them are gonorrheics, about 6,000,000 syphilitics and that they had all better do something about it promptly, was indeed a Service of the Year.

But none of these faintly approached or in any degree diminished Mrs. Simpson as Woman of the Year, the figure for whom 1936 will be especially remembered. She was first in the news; first in the heart of Edward VIII (who during most of 1936 was first in British hearts); first in that historic British crisis--moral, emotional, political, religious--which aroused all civilization.

Archbishops' Aftermath. It was chiefly the Church of England which was damaged, in the very fibre of English Christian morality, by the open scandal of King Edward and Mrs. Simpson. Yet there were outcries in the largest London newspapers last week against kicking the Duke of Windsor and his presumptive Duchess now that they are down. The Archbishop of Canterbury who is Primate of All England last week evinced regret that he had had to do so. The Archbishop of York, who is Primate of England, made his attack in the form of a pastoral letter. It was not so much an attack on the Duke of Windsor as an attack on every man who might do as Edward VIII had done.

"There is some danger," wrote the Archbishop of York, "that regret for the loss of the brilliant qualities and sympathy for a monarch who in critical days was confronted with a most painful choice, may divert our attention from the fact that the occasion for this choice ought never to have arisen. The harm was not done in December or even in October when he announced his intention of marriage to the Prime Minister, but much earlier.

"It has happened to many a man before now to find himself beginning to fall in love with another man's wife. That is the moment of critical decision and the right decision is that they should cease to meet before the passion is so developed as to create an agonizing conflict between love and duty. That decision has often been taken by men of honor. And when the power of personal attraction is reinforced by the glamor of the throne, the moral obligation is more urgent for that reason. "Thirdly, let us remember that any kind of love which can be in conflict with duty is not the love of which the Gospel speaks. Love which has its roots in mutual attraction and passion can be united with love which is the very nature of God and the best of Christian graces and this takes place in a multitude of marriages.

"In the New Year we turn away from a sad, humiliating story to what we are confident will be a happier future.

"Let us prepare ourselves to enter into the full meaning of the Coronation as a rededication of the whole national life and ourselves as citizens that God may consecrate us alike as individuals and as a people to His glory and in the service of mankind.

"The King and Queen are not yet so widely known as was Edward the Prince of Wales at this time last year, but they are sufficiently well known to have earned and won the trust and affection of their subjects. We have every ground for the assurance that this trust and affection will become deeper as the years pass."

The Archbishop of Canterbury followed on Sunday with a remarkable broadcast which in effect rebuked himself and the Archbishop of York for having rehashed the affair of Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson and announced it was time that all Britons stopped making any further reference to it. He then switched into a furious castigation of Soviet Russia and made this glancing reference to birth control: "Many regard the rich results of Science as being all-sufficing. This has brought about a loosening of the ties of marriage and restraint upon the impulses of sex. Well may we ask--'Whither is this drift carrying us?' " As the Archbishop of Canterbury was by this time getting definitely a "bad press," the sagacious Primate of All England gave a most sumptuous feast to British journalists in his Lambeth Palace, regaling them with pheasant and choice wines.

With unction the Archbishop drew attention to his principal aphorism on the abdication crisis: "Truly this has been wonderful proof of the strength and stability of the Throne."

Career. In London last week, authoritative sources continued their post-Abdication exploration and disclosure of the Story of the Year. It became possible to fill in the sort of life led by King Edward and Mrs. Simpson accurately. Her life up to Mrs. Simpson's meeting with Edward VIII was inconsequential to a degree, has never been rehearsed in TIME. She was born in one of those typical Southern families who all more or less descend from William the Conqueror, but Wallis Varfield was not going to spend her life talking about her family. She resolved early to make men her career, and in 40 years reached the top--or almost. No man she careered is known to have ever said a word not in her praise. Apart from her first husband Commander Earl Winfield Spencer, U. S. N., and her second (present) husband Ernest Aldrich Simpson, a London shipbroker, probably her best friend, next to the Duke of Windsor, remains the Argentine Ambassador in Washington, Felipe Espil. He, in the years of which he now speaks was an Argentine bachelor. First Secretary in Washington. "My, my!" sighed Ambassador Espil to swank U. S. friends last summer, "who would ever have dreamed that our little Wallis would ever be where she is now!"

Mrs. Simpson from the moment King George V died, began to "help" infatuated King Edward VIII, according to her lights. She helped him to spend thousands of guineas royally, imperially, wildly; and she helped him to pinch pennies, convincing His Majesty that in housekeeping she is most economical. Together they cruised the Balkans in one of the world's costliest yachts, they ransacked Carrier's in Paris for diadems, in October they picked out the ermine skins recently made up in London for Mrs. Simpson's Christmas (TIME, Dec. 28). Simultaneously she caught His Majesty's servants spending too much for things like bath soap and King Edward sacked retainers right & left on her lightest say-so.

It was established last week that Edward VIII, a few hours before reading his Abdication broadcast, asked his three closest remaining attendants to accompany him to Austria, and they all gave the Duke quiet, steady-eyed refusals. His personal private secretary of 15 years, Sir Godfrey Thomas, an astute Welshman with a standing (and perhaps a future) in the British diplomatic service, simply "vanished." His personal bodyguard, Chief Inspector David Storier, vainly tried at Scotland Yard to get let off from guarding the Duke of Windsor. Both Mrs. Simpson and the Duke separately tried to retain the services of Chauffeur George Stanley Ladbrooke (who last winter persuaded the King to buy Buicks, although Mrs. Simpson had originally wanted Packards), but Chauffeur Ladbrooke had had enough. The same applied to distinguished Major Hon. Alexander Hardinge, the anti-Simpsonite whom Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin forced upon King Edward as Private Secretary in the early days of the reign and later caused to be made a Privy Councillor. Last week exhausted Major Hardinge was beginning a three-months rest, before returning to be Private Secretary to King George VI. Back in Buckingham Palace to the joy of all concerned was good and great Lord Wigram, for 25 years private secretary to King George V. Lord Wigram will get the Royal Household back on its Georgian legs, then turn over to Major Hardinge, remaining available as Lord-in-Waiting.

The Duke & Mrs. Simpson. It was an achievement last week that Mrs. Simpson was able for the first time to go shopping in Cannes without causing a crowd to collect. She ate her Christmas dinner not in the villa of her friends Mr. & Mrs. Herman Livingston Rogers but with her famed chaperon Aunt Bessie in a Cannes hotel. Greatest ambition of the Woman of the Year seemed to be to drop from world publicity's most glaring spotlight to utter oblivion, the perfect 1937 exit for the Woman of 1936.

At the Rothschild castle in Austria, the Duke of Windsor cheerily engaged a staff of body servants from local applicants. Strangest post-Abdication event was when the Duke, hitherto notorious as Edward of Wales and as King Edward for his chronic absence from church, suddenly drove in on Sunday to the English Church of Vienna. He chatted at the door with U. S. Minister to Austria George Messersmith & wife, invited them to luncheon, but they had a previous engagement. Then, like abdicated Kaiser Wilhelm II who incessantly takes part in divine service at Doom, abdicated King Edward VIII went to the lectern and in a clear, ringing voice read the second Scripture Lesson. It was about Biblical David (Luke II, 1-20), and the Duke has always been called David in his own family. This performance was taken to be a retort pious to the Archbishops of England and a clincher on the pastor of Vienna's English Church, Rev. Dr. C. D. H. Grimes, to perform the wedding of David Windsor some time next spring to the Woman of 1936.

*Baron Nuffield of Morris Motors, "the Henry Ford of Great Britain/' last week gave $10,000,000 into the hands of three private trustees "to give practical shape to current expressions of good will toward King George and at the same time do anything I can to support the National Government, particularly Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.'' Seated on a platform at Oxford University recently, plain Lord Nuffield. who grew up in Oxfordshire from bicycle tinkerer to motors tycoon, was so affected by the intoxicating words in which Oxonians thanked him for giving their medical school $6,250,000 that he got to his feet and cried out he would give Oxford another $3,750,000. explaining that he did so "on the sudden impulse of the moment." Punch promptly cartooned Nuffield honking a motor horn from which gold pieces pour into the inverted mortarboards of scrambling Oxford dignitaries.

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