PRINCESS MARGARET'S DECISION: RIGHT OR WRONG?

THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN:

HER decision, which has plainly been come to after subtle pressure, will be regarded by great masses of people as unnecessary and perhaps a great waste. In the long run it will not redound to the credit or influence of those who have been most persistent in denying the Princess the same liberty that is enjoyed by the rest of her fellow-citizens. Even the least cynical among us find it hard to see why an innocent party to a divorce [i.e., Sir Anthony Eden] can become the man who appoints archbishops and bishops, while the Princess, who merely exercises her social graces and has a very remote chance of succeeding to the throne, should be denied by ecclesiastical prescription the right to marry an innocent party to a divorce. That odd piece of inconsistency may be typically English, but it has more than a smack of English hypocrisy about it.

Britain's left-wing NEW STATESMAN AND NATION:

SUBMERGED under the "human interest" of the Princess Margaret story, commentators have been slow to scrutinise her statement of renunciation.

It raises sharp constitutional issues. The Princess declared that she has been "aware that, subject to my renouncing my rights of succession, it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage." This seems to imply that a civil marriage could have been possible only if the succession were renounced. But who has made her "aware" of any such thing? Is it even true? The right of succession is peculiarly a matter for Parliament. She has been made "aware" of a probably untrue and certainly highly controversial doctrine.

Who told her that her duty as a Princess demanded that she should uphold the Archbishop of Canterbury's view? She consulted him; he has made no secret of his dogma. But surely no one except our Parliament and the Governments of other Commonwealth countries has any right to make any statement involving such a choice. The question of succession is not a matter for the royal prerogative (or for the Archbishop) but for the British and the other Common wealth Premiers.

If Sir Anthony [Eden] had been consulted (as he should have been the moment the question of succession arose) he would have, been bound to give Princess Margaret the opposite advice. The Premier's own marriage, according to the Archbishop's doctrine, is not a true marriage. No wonder that the upshot of the whole affair in Parliament and the country is a demand for Disestablishment.

The Vatican Daily, OSSERVATORE RO MANO:

THE echoes and rumblings of the passing storm continue after the noble message of Princess Margaret. She was subjected to reportorial treatment usually given those movie stars who seek publicity in anything--even of the most dubious nature. The storm swept away a large part of the press, along with weakly resisting public opinion, into a bankruptcy without parallel in recent years.

If there were an administrator to look into this disastrous bankruptcy, it would be easy for him to denounce those who are responsible: the liberal secularists and the materialistic extremists, their schools and their journalism. The former because in their pretension of giving order to the world without including its Creator, they have set up love in the place of law. The about-face of the materialistic extremists would have been stupendous if a "comrade" faithful to Communist principles had sent a message to say he was calling off his wedding because the person he was marrying wanted a church ceremony.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:

FROM the romantic point of view, the episode is a sad disappointment.

We cannot help reflecting, though, that in this case a member of the British royal family has shown a strength of character eminently befitting that family's highest traditions. They can't take that away from her.

THE DENVER POST:

ENGLISHMEN used to spend their energy and blood protecting the "rights" of the people from the tyranny of the crown. They succeeded so well that the only tyranny remaining in that enlightened country is the tyranny of tradition over the lives of the members of the royal family.

The latest victim is Princess Margaret. In such a well-ordered country as England it seems strange that it is proper enough to have a Prime Minister who is a divorced and remarried man but not a princess with a divorced man as a consort; it seems strange that the rules of the state church would be so much at loggerheads with the civil laws of the same state. But that is the way England is.

Heathen peoples used to have idols. More civilized peoples have symbols. Margaret can blame her unhappiness on the fact that by an accident of birth she is part of British symbolism. Symbols are of use only so long as they stand for what they are supposed to symbolize. In

Britain the royal family is required to personify many things--the essence of the state and the commonwealth, the majesty of the law, qualities that are British, British tradition and British ideas of morality. The requirements of symbolism are exacting--more exacting than Princess Margaret ever realized before. Now she knows.

THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR:

PRINCESS MARGARET'S decision not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend will come as a disappointment to those who are "in love with love" and will be a reassurance to those who value tradition, stability and the indissoluble sanctity of marriage.

Hearst Columnist GEORGE E. SOKOLSKY:

I DARE not say that a woman should not marry the man she loves, but it is refreshing as Springtime to witness a response to a call to duty. Margaret of England will be beloved by her people not because she gave up the man of her choice, but because she sacrificed personal happiness to maintain a way of life which her family is duty-bound to defend. In this era in which marriage is being reduced to a matter of registration and the word romance is becoming, in common parlance, equivalent to harlotry, the clean courtship, the honorable decision, the unwillingness to yield principle to personal satisfaction stand out in pristine beauty, and all who were engaged in what could have been an ugly pursuit of passion will be glorified among their own people as restoring the virtuous qualities of duty and respect.

New York Post Columnist MAX LERNER:

WHAT kind of conception of duty is it which demands that one should give up love and life, in the interest of some abstraction like the Monarchy or the Empire or the Church, all of which in the end draw their sustenance from love and life? The churchmen, high and low, have commended Margaret on putting duty above love. I can understand their sense of triumph. But their congratulations will be cold cheer in the dreary years that stretch ahead.

I prefer the view that all minor duties must be matched against the overreaching duty to the genuineness with which we live our lives, and to our deepest emotions. I think the reason why I feel so disappointed about Margaret's decision is that it seems a betrayal of the very sources of life, because of a musty conception of what is owed to ancient forms that have outlived their usefulness.

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