The mantle of greatness fell upon Mr. Baldwin to-day. In the chronicle of this unforgettable day his speech must always dominate it. There were three salient things about it. There was a classic simplicity about its form that achieved effects that would have eluded a more deliberate art. There was the high tragedy of the tale he had to tell, and there was finally the revelation of his strong handling of the affair from the moment last October when scandal began to touch the King╒s name.
Mr. Baldwin, with infinite daring, spoke extempore from notes that always seemed in alarming disarray. There was obvious peril in that, since the subject-matter required handling to a hair╒s breadth in tact, but Mr. Baldwin came through without a shadow of a slip. His language was as simple as his judgment was clear that the marriage was inadmissible. He spoke with great assurance. There was no nervousness, no doubtings of himself. There was not the slightest hint that he had ever been visited by any questionings that his advice to the King could be other than right.
It is just here that one meets the only criticism of the speech. Mr. Baldwin in the judgment of nearly the whole House of Commons was right in his advice, but he might, it is urged, have spared a moment or two to present his reasons for it. However, for once, Mr. Baldwin, who so often sees the right and leaves anybody who will to do it, saw it, as he believed, last October and acted on it. He never wavered, and many a man might have wavered when he saw the tragedy rushing headlong to abdication ╤ the first voluntary abdication of a King of England. There, as nearly the whole nation will agree, he showed the boldness of a Hampden. Whether history will regard him so or not it is in some such light that the House of Commons sees him to-day. He is at his zenith.
Never before has a Prime Minister related to the House of Commons the course, substance, and even the actual words of conversations with his Sovereign. The House listened enthralled. ╥I am going to marry Mrs. Simpson, and I am prepared to go.╙ That determined declaration of King Edward fell on amazed ears. That the intention should have been put with that almost defiant decisiveness to Mr. Baldwin was the most convincing proof the House had had so far that there was no hope of keeping the King. ╥Where I failed,╙ said Mr. Baldwin towards the end of his speech, ╥no one could have succeeded,╙ and the House recognised that it was the truth.
The magnanimity of the King╒s message renouncing the Throne greatly mitigates his egocentric view of his duty, but these disclosures stilled any lingering doubts in the House that with suppler handling than Mr. Baldwin╒s he could have been dissuaded from his purpose. Even Mr. Churchill did not dare to suggest that. The one consoling revelation in Mr. Baldwin╒s narrative was that the King had behaved with the utmost constitutional propriety and had recoiled with dread from the thought that his action should lead to any division in the nation, most of all to the formation of a ╥King╒s party.╙ The House cheered loud and long at that.
In a day that has had so many cruel moments perhaps nothing quite so moved the heart as the King╒s pledge to Mr. Baldwin, that if he went he would go with dignity and with the least possible trouble to his subjects. There was the culmination of the tragic story which Mr. Baldwin had to unfold.
A word is to be said about the House of Commons itself. Mr. Baldwin appealed to it to remember that it was a theatre on which the eyes of the world were set. The reminder was not necessary. The House had already proved through an hour and a half that it is still the first Assembly in the world and fully conscious of it.
