"David Looser" wrote in message
...
"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote in message
...

The marriage bit was a red herring.

Your understanding of the British constitution appears to be extremely
weak.

The "marriage issue" was no red herring, it was a genuine constitutional
issue. The monarch is the head of the Church of England, and the Church
banned the re-marriage of divorcees.

It says a lot about attitudes at the time that people kicked up such as
stink about it. What would have happened if the King had said "bugger the
constitution: I *will* marry Wallace and I *will* remain King" - what
sanction (other than generating a lot of hot air) could the Government and
the Church of England have taken against him. OK, so he'd have got a lot of
people's back up, but maybe he could have toughed that out. Maybe if he had,
he might have forced the Church of England to accept marriage to a divorcee
and to change their stuffy attitude. But I believe that religion should very
much be a servant, not a master - anyone who says "I want to do it but it's
against my religion" has, by definition, chosen the wrong religion to
follow: I'd respect someone much more if they said "I don't want to do it
because it's against my religion".

I'm not saying that he should have remained King. Given his Nazi sympathies,
he would have been a political embarrassment if he'd remained on the throne
right up to the declaration of war. And that is the real reason (IMHO) that
he should have been coerced to step down. The fact that he was a superficial
wastrel didn't help his cause! However the marriage-to-a-divorcee issue,
while evidently very important to some people, is utterly irrelevant as far
as I'm concerned as long as he doesn't commit bigamy - ie make damn sure the
divorce is legal! In other words, the end result was probably correct but it
was justified on a very specious excuse.