The Duke of Kent

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 167, 4 September 1942, Page 3

The Duke of Kent

EFORE this issue reaches the public the death of the Duke of Kent will . have ceased to be news. Every paper in the English-speaking world will have printed articles about it, every orator in the Empire expressed the Empire’s reaction to it. We shall not add, or attempt to add, to the flow of emotion at this late date. But there are things still to ba said. To belong to the Royal Family is, in Britain, to be something that tens of thousands of people can’t see with clear eyes. But the Duke belonged to the Royal Family three times overhe was the son of one king and the brother of two others-and yet people saw him as he was. That in itself was extraordinary. It meant that he was entirely without pretence and _ entirely without guile. The most striking example of this was the response of the people of America when he visited their President last year. For we must not forget that a king’s son in the United States, though he remains an object of interest, arouses enthusiasm only if he is what Americans call a fellow; and fre can be a fellow only if he is too simple and too sincere for possible misunderstanding. The Duke was not misunderstood either as a fellow or as a prince, and we lack imagination if we think that a small achievement. It was a remarkable achievement, and it is the fact for which he will be longest remembered. For we must not dishonour him by base flatteries. Some of the things said about him for a day or two following his death should not have been said in any circumstances. They were just not true, and what is not true is offensive. A king’s son has the same right as a cook’s son. to protection from misrepresentation; and since this particular prince remained at forty the friendly ‘and natural schoolboy whom Fate twenty years earlier called out of school to an exalted and dangerous life, it is not merely fatuous to pile laurels on him that he never sought or won: it is indecent ‘and impudent.