The Good News

In the enforced secrecy of the last three months, Britain's Princess Elizabeth had grown sullen and snappish from yearning to tell the neighbors all about Philip. Last week she was smiling radiantly as garden party guests clustered near her, hoping for a glimpse of her ring. "It's like turning a page in a book," she said.

The Cousin. Lieut. Mountbatten had not always seemed so important to his royal cousin. When Elizabeth first met him at a Palace luncheon given by her grandparents, she was six. Reports say that she was not visibly moved. In later years there were many other casual meetings. But his older relatives seemed to find Philip more interesting than Elizabeth did. King George and Philip had long chats about the Navy. At Queen Mary's wartime home at Badminton House, the Queen Mother and her young cousin would spend hours lopping off branches to drag home for fuel.

Gradually, as Philip became a fixture in the family circle, his name crept into Elizabeth's tea-table talk. Her friends began to have their suspicions, and often prankish Princess Margaret would infuriate her sister by wondering out loud if Elizabeth's heart was jumping when Philip was due for a visit. Then, last fall, Philip spent several weeks with the Royal Family at Balmoral. By the time Philip's visit was over, Elizabeth's mind was made up, and she told her father all about it. As fathers the world over are prone to do, George suggested that she wait a while. The London papers, meanwhile, had started a flurry of speculation. The Palace promptly issued a denial of any engagement, but in essence the denial said only "not yet."

The Prince. Despite the family's affection, there were many drawbacks to the match. Prince Philip had applied for British citizenship, but he was still technically of Greek nationality, although he had not been in that country since he was a year old. Britain was deeply involved in the Greek political picture, and the royal house of which Philip was still a member was not popular with Britain's Laborites. Elizabeth and Philip went on seeing one another, but always circumspectly. Then Elizabeth was whisked away to South Africa.

Throughout the royal tour Philip's picture stood on Elizabeth's dressing table. She wrote him three times a week. By the time she got home again, Prince Philip of Greece had become plain Lieut. Mountbatten, a British subject. The U.N. and the U.S. had taken on Britain's Greek headaches. The last objection to the match seemed to have been removed. Philip proposed formally, asked King George's consent, and the King gave it heartily.

But instead of an immediate announcement, the young couple were condemned to even more secrecy. Gossip columnists searched in vain for signs of them in Mayfair and the West End. Horrid rumors that the whole affair was off circulated among Britain's matchmakers. To see his girl at all, Philip had to slip secretly through a side door of the Palace or arrange clandestine rendezvous through his cousin, the Duchess of Kent. Then, last week, after sounding out his Government and his Dominion Ministers, King George inserted a notice in the Court Circular. "It is with the greatest pleasure," it ran, "that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their beloved daughter the Princess Elizabeth to Lieut. Philip Mountbatten."

Philip got leave and drove up from his naval station in Wiltshire to move into the Boule Room at Buckingham Palace. While London's crowds thronged before the Palace, Elizabeth and Philip appeared at last in public, their arms proudly and openly linked.

The News. Like doting maiden aunts, Britain's press rang fatuous changes on the great news. Headlines were heady with sentiment over the "love match." Austerity, coal crises, rationing and shortages faded from the news columns to make way for reports of the lovers. "Philip," announced one paper solemnly, "turned up Friday with a ring on the little finger. He usually wears it on his second finger." Even the Daily Worker seemed affected by the monarchical atmosphere. "This alliance," it proclaimed with the cold disapproval of a Romanov, "is not to our liking." While the Daily Express polled its readers on whether the Princess should . be married in rationed austerity or regal state ("Life is too drab," it warned, "to pass up this chance for having fun"), the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal and Hereditary Marshal and Chief Butler of England, called a committee to arrange for an October wedding in Westminster Abbey, complete with open landaus, guards and 500 guests.

There were many other arrangements to be made. Philip, for instance, was comparatively poor and would need money. A Daily Worker cartoon showed Elizabeth complaining: "He won't take my money, father. He wants to live on his Navy pay." But in Manchester a working bus driver conceded: "I think the Royal Family gives us something other countries haven't got. I'm willing to pay for it." King George was expected to ask Parliament for -L-35,000 a year for Philip. Elizabeth's own allowance (-L-15,000) would be upped. In time the couple would get their own town house, though they expected to start by living with the family. Unlike his great-great-grandfather, Victoria's Prince Albert, Philip would almost certainly be given a royal dukedom as well.

The Consort. Albert was the only modern precedent* for the role Philip would play in British life. Although he had no constitutional power of his own, Albert exercised enormous influence over British politics by patiently and studiously advising Victoria. A royal husband, he wrote, "should entirely sink his own individual existence in that of his wife. He should aim at no power, shun all contention and continuously and anxiously watch every part of the public business in order to assist and advise. . . ."

Whether, like Albert, Philip would live up to these words; whether, like Albert, he would become Prince Consort in title as well as in fact were questions for the solemn future. For the moment, most Britons were content with the romantic present. "Ain't he just the answer," cooed a Bradford woolworker over Philip last week. "Me an' 'erbert's gettin' married abaht October too."

* Four of Britain's five reigning queens have been married. Mary Tudor's husband, King Philip of Spain, was styled both King Consort and King of England. He left Mary after a year and after her death sent the Armada to make war on her half-sister Elizabeth. The second Mary's husband, Prince William of Orange, was an heir to the British throne in his own right and ruled equally with his wife. Prince George of Denmark, who married Queen Anne, had no British status, except as the Queen's husband. Victoria's Albert was the first to receive the title Prince Consort. It gave him social precedence over other members of the royal family, changed his political status not at all.

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