Blood of the Battenbergs

Britain's Acting Prime Minister Richard A. Butler stood up in the House of Commons one day last week and, for all his determination not to, twanged the bowstring of Britain's royal romance. The Churchill government, announced the dry, donnish Chancellor of the Exchequer, proposes to change the law which designates Princess Margaret as regent should her sister the Queen die before Prince Charles is 18.

The 1937 Regency Act. said Rab Butler, should be altered. The plan is to make Queen Elizabeth's husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, regent. The Queen feels it proper that Prince Charles's father, not his 22-year-old aunt, should train the boy for the responsibilities of the throne and shoulder those responsibilities as regent, if need be.

Butler's proposal was adrenalin to the millions of Britons who are busily marrying off Princess Meg to the dashing, divorced R.A.F. ace, Group Captain Peter Townsend: the government, it seemed, was deliberately relieving the Princess of one great obstacle to her marrying a commoner. Butler made clear that the regency change has been in the wind for more than a year. The question of freeing Margaret to marry Townsend--a matter requiring the approval of the Queen, the government and the Church of England--had nothing to do with it. "Such a matter . . . has never come before the cabinet." said he, "and I think I am voicing the opinion of all members when I say that . . . deplorable speculation and gossip [should be] brought to an end."

Steadfast Devotion. The Chancellor hoped in vain. The gossip grew even louder (it has assumed "the shape of scandal," protested the stately London Times). And it seemed likely to continue for months to come. The latest word is that the Queen, the Queen Mother and Margaret herself have agreed to do nothing until the Queen and Philip return from a visit to Australia next May. The royal family apparently hopes that by then Margaret's ardor for Airman Townsend--now neatly isolated in an air attache's job in Brussels --will have cooled. Margaret apparently hopes that her steadfast devotion to Townsend will be so plain to everyone that a way will be found to bless the marriage.

Not alone the de-emphasis of Margaret (which caught U.S. headline writers) but the new emphasis on Philip created a stir in Britain. Lord Beaverbrook's Tory Daily Express and the Liberal Manchester Guardian, which find few issues to agree upon, both agreed that the regency should be kept "in the line of succession" rather than pass to one who is not in the line, i.e., Princess Margaret should have the regency. There was also a deep undertow of nervousness and grumbling in the starchy back benches of the Tory Party, whose men are properly silent in public and often violently articulate in private. Though the handsome and gregarious Philip takes his job seriously and is increasingly popular with the British public, he is not universally beloved by England's bluebloods. They mistrust him: his politics are comparatively liberal; he plays loose with some of the stuffier conventions of the palace; he is a foreigner--a Greek prince naturalized as a British citizen; but above all, he is a Battenberg, and a nephew of the dashing, controversial Admiral the Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his equally controversial wife Edwina.

A Slight Inheritance. Battenberg. a name to reckon with in medieval Germany, had come alive again, after five centuries of obscurity, by the time that Prince Louis of Battenberg, half German and half Polish, married Queen Victoria's granddaughter. He moved to England, became First Sea Lord of the Admiralty and an intimate adviser to Victoria. Edward VII and George V. In World War I, hamburger became Salisbury steak, sauerkraut became liberty cabbage and the Battenbergs translated their German name directly into English: Mountbatten. Louis' son, the present "Lord. Louis," Earl Mountbatten of Burma, took up where his father left off, joined the Royal Navy, ran around with his playboy cousin, Edward, Prince of Wales. He married the commoner granddaughter of fabulously wealthy Sir Ernest Cassel (a German-Jewish financier), whose money irrigated the Nile valley, reconstructed Argentina's finances, built railroads in Sweden, refloated China after the 1894-95 war with Japan, sponsored the "tuppenny tube" (the forerunner of London's subways). He left Edwina a large share of a -L-6,000,000 inheritance.

For three decades Lord Louis ("Dickie" to his friends) and Edwina, both brilliant, handsome and unabashedly extravert, have been making headlines, salon gossip, friends and enemies in the Empire. Dickie led London's Mayfair set after World War I, and the British Commandos in World War II. A thoroughly professional naval commander, he also won distinction on land as Supreme Allied Commander for Southeast Asia. "A nice guy," commented the late General Joe Stilwell, who had to deal with Mountbatten in Burma. "That's what makes him so dangerous--he turns on charm like a water faucet." After the war Mountbatten became British Viceroy and Governor General of India and presided over the birth of an independent India, became an ally of Nehru and the British Laborites, and emerged from it all a trusted friend of Empire-minded Winston Churchill.

Never far behind was Edwina. A mingling of German, English, Scottish, Irish and perhaps even American-Indian blood (she claims descent from Pocahontas), she shared her husband's limelight and ambitions, his tendency to cultivate the then-rising left wing, his love for finery and entertaining. She jarred social London with some of her friendships. Once, when a Laborite vote canvasser called on them, Lord Mountbatten assured him, "Don't worry about us. It's the servants you want to work on."

More Hindrance Than Help. Philip, the debonair son of Lord Louis' sister, Alice of Battenberg, and of Prince Andrew of Greece, was ushered into English life as the ward of his uncle Louis. There were many who saw the hand of the Mountbattens in the romance which made Philip husband of the Heiress Presumptive; a part of the royal honeymoon in 1947 was spent at the Mountbattens' 6,000-acre estate at Broadlands.

Lord Louis is now stationed far away from London as commander in chief of the NATO Mediterranean fleet based on Malta, and the Queen Mother's reported distaste for Edwina has produced a notable coolness between the Mountbattens and Buckingham Palace. Philip, though still fond of Uncle Louis and Aunt Edwina, is reportedly well aware that his kinship may now become more hindrance than help. But he remains a Battenberg, and so does his son, the next King of England. In 100 years, the blood of the Battenbergs has risen from obscurity on the banks of the Rhine to the threshold of the highest throneroom on earth.

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