13 August 2007

Grace of God


There are problems with the Shuttle, broken tiles again, the thing that killed the crew of Columbia. The people in Utah are talking about drilling a third shaft 1600 feet into the rock to look for the lost miners, though sadly it appears a remote hope. In town, the word has spread that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's brain, is leaving the White House. He departs what is being now called a “failed Presidency,” though it is still in business and will be for more than another year.

In the spirit of muddling through, I have been lurching toward a brief contemplation of the Partition of India in 1947, sixty years ago this week. It is a ham-handed attempt to draw some parallels with the coming partition of Iraq, which may be the only way Uncle Sam will manage to extricate himself from the mess.

Unfortunately, the Queen of England got in the way, as she will do at times. It is her right, by grace of God.

I was going to talk about the Radcliffe Commission on the Borders this morning, how the process worked, and why the last Viceroy, Lord Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten was so influenced by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Hindu-dominated Congress Party.

It may have been the intimate relationship of his wife Edwina with the dashing Nehru, whether it is physical or intellectual or both. It may have been a fundamental distrust of the remote Muhammed Ali Jinnah, who had led the Muslim League since the 1930s, and who is the father of independent Pakistan.

The role of Pakistan in the current struggle of faiths is indisputable and enigmatic. It is ruled by a despot, even if a well mannered one, simultaneously a major ally in the war on terror, and headquarters to the leadership of the jihadis. It is a predominantly Sunni nation, 70%, as is our other great ally, Saudi Arabia.

The house of Saud continues to finance the construction of mosques across the world with the largesse of the oil we so desperately crave. They are being constructed right here in northern Virginia, which promulgate the virulent doctrine of the Wahabbis.

One thing is clear: Nehru represented the sort of Indian Englishman with whom Lord Louis felt he could deal as a prospective equal. The other great figure of the age, Mohandus K. Ghandi, was a horse of quite a different colour, clad in his homespun dhoti and his implacable resistance to the British.

Why Dickie felt the pressure to move up the day of independence to August of 1947 from his guidance to accomplish it a year later is a fit topic for discussion, and aligns nicely with the parallel discussion on how fast the US should pull out of Iraq, and how it might do   so without provoking the same sort of bloodbath that attended the end of the Raj.

The last Viceroy had been sent out to India by the Labour Government of Clement Atlee to extricate Britain from India after nearly a century of direct rule, and three hundred and fifty of indirect commercial presence. The entanglements were profound and deep and not resolved yet.

Likewise was the profound pain in which Britain found herself at the conclusion of the Second War. It is premature to consign the American Empire to the ashcan of history, though some are making comparisons with ancient Rome. There is something going on, that is for sure, and I think Mark Twain was painfully on target when he observed that “history does not repeat itself, though it rhymes.”

I dug out the books to compare the duration of the Great Peaces of history- the Pax Romanum being the first, of course, lasting in some accounts three centuries. “Pax Britannica” was the term   that historian James- later Jan- Morris coined to encompass the years between the victory at Trafalgar and the First War in 1913. It was shorter, if truly global in scope.

Some assert that there was a Pax Americana, which has lasted from the conclusion of the Second War to the very present. If by that we are to understand that the absence of a thermonuclear holocaust is peace, fair enough. But the Cold War was birthed in major combat in Korea, and significant regional conflicts have erupted throughout.

I will leave that to those who will have the luxury to do more than a first draft.

I was going to pick up on the matter of the lines drawn in the Punjab, and the unresolved matter of Kashmir when I opened an e-mail from a distinguished friend. He had been talking to the Queen of England, and had some questions on matters of the House of Windsor's genealogy.

“How does Lord Louie Mountbatten relate to "Dickie?" opened the note. “ When I spoke with the Queen a few weeks ago and informed her that I had spent WWII in the Pacific, she replied, "My husband was in that theatre, too."    Her statement was in error, but I didn't challenge it.    He served in the CBI -- China,Burma,India.    That wasn't the Pacific by any stretch of imagination, but I suppose it was nearer to the Pacific than to the European.   The scene of our discussion, the WWII Memorial in Washington, is divided only by the Pacific Theater and the European Theater, so I let her ramble.”
 
I had to write back immediately, of course. This geneology business is complex, and one rarely comes within one degree of separation with Her Majesty, felt the matter merited immediately clarification.

“In short response, Sir, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, and consort to Queen Elizabeth II, is Lord Louis “Dickie” Mountbatten's nephew.

He was born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark at the Greek Royal residence of Mon Repos on the island of Corfu on June 10 1921- my birthday, too, precisely thirty years later in a considerably more humble circumstance in Detroit.

Victoria the Great had ensured that the linkages between the Royal Houses of Europe were robust through marriage. Philip's father, Prince Andrew, was the grandson of King Christian IX of Denmark, while his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg, and sister to Earl Mountbatten of Burma- the Dickie of our tale.

Princess Alice's father, Prince Louis of Battenberg, had become a naturalized British citizen in 1868 and had married one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters. Philip's grandmother was Marchioness of Milford Haven, of which Dickie was also later the Marquis, having been granted that title during WWI when he abandoned the honorific of Prince of Hesse.

Prince Philip was educated in the US and Germany, eventually attending schools in England. He left prep school in May of 1939, accepting an appointment to Dartmouth College as a Special Entry Cadet in May, just three months before Nazi troops moved into Poland.

In July of that year there was a Royal visit to the naval college, which may have been arranged by Uncle Dickie. Philip was introduced there to thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, who upon the death of her father George VI, would by grace of God, become defender of the faith, though not the Empress of India.

Philip was five years older than “Lilibet” at the time, but it was a momentous meeting.

Upon graduation in 1940, Philip joined HMS Ramillies in Colombo as a Midshipman on a six month deployment to the Indian Ocean. He transferred to HMS Valiant in the Med in early 1941 and participated in a night action against the Italian fleet off Cape Matapan, being mentioned in dispatches for his work directing the searchlights.
 
After patrolling the East Mediterranean for most of 1941, and having been promoted to Sub-Lieutenant, the Philip returned to Britain for additional training and joined the crew of HMS Wallace, which performed escort duties off the east coast of Scotland. He rose to be the First Lieutenant on that ship at the age of 21.

By summer 1942, Philip was a full Lieutenant; by October the same year, he had advanced to become Wallace's First Lieutenant.

Wallace provided cover for the Allied landings on Sicily, where the young Tony Marslow was working with local Mafiosi to secure the beach head for Allied troops.

Philip transferred to the newcon destroyer HMS Welp in July 1944, remaining onboard until the beginning of 1946. The Queen was quite correct. Welp operated in the Pacific as part of the 27th Destroyer Flotilla. Philip was with his ship in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese signed the instrument of surrender- so you and Philip were in Yoko at the same time in September of 1945.

I am of mixed opinion about the state and function of the monarchy in this day, not that anyone would care, but I certainly accept that Philip- and Dickie's- generations of the Royals went to war with the commoners.

And of course, I would never disagree with the opinion of the Queen of England on matters of pedigree. She is where she is by the grace of God.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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