by Anne Edwards
The only person who to my knowledge showed alarm under these [raids] was the Prime Minister, Lloyd George. He had a room in the basement of the Foreign Office, where the walls were so thick as to offer the greatest security, fitted up as a sitting-room and bedroom with sandbagged windows, and whenever a raid was reported he went there. On one occasion when a raid had been signalled ... I myself from an upper window saw Lloyd George rush from No. 10, hatless, and with hair flying, into the Foreign Office to his sandbagged room.
The Prime Minister held a pessimistic outlook for the Allies and was alarmed for his own safety. As the long, dark winter months of 1917–18 approached, Lloyd George could see that the Allied armies were “exhausted and disillusioned. The war fever had burnt itself out ... enthusiasms had cooled down. There were no more patriotic demonstrations in the streets ... The Russian Armies had ceased to exist as a fighting force and were rapidly disintegrating into a mutinous rabble . . . French troops could not be relied upon for any operation that involved sustained attack on a great scale.” The likelihood that the Americans would be ready before 1919 with an army of sufficient force to help the Allies make up for these failings was dim. Could the English Army hold out that long? In mid-December, its infantry showed a loss of 116,000 men. An appalling 399,000 men had been killed in the ghastly massacres of the Flanders Campaign, and the infantry had borne the brunt of these casualties.
Lloyd George and the Allies would have taken heart if they had known at the end of 1917 that Germany did not have enough food to feed its armies or its population for more than a few months, or that “the military ardour of Germany’s allies was evaporating.” The only hope Germany had of obtaining food supplies was in the exploitation of Russia, which could not be accomplished without employing considerable forces in the occupation of Russian farmlands. This meant that Germany had to force the war to a conclusion “at the earliest possible moment.” Since the Germans calculated that “only a comparatively small proportion of the American Army could be put into the fighting line during the critical months of 1918,” they did not attach much importance to the American Army.
“Not very good news from France. We all feel very anxious,” Queen Mary recorded in her diary on March 21, 1918, the day the Germans opened their massive offensive on the Western Front. When German victory seemed possible, King George rushed to France to see if his presence might not help the flagging morale of the British Armies.
In anguish, Queen Mary wrote the King on March 27: “... I have never in my life suffered so much mentally as I am suffering now and I know you are feeling the same ... One must just have faith and believe that God cannot allow those huns to win and that our brave and gallant troops will be able to withstand the onslaughts in spite of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy. God bless and keep you my own beloved husband.”
The Queen had had her own personal problems, however small when compared to the great losses of so many of her husband’s subjects. Bertie had been seriously ill throughout most of 1917 and was finally—and correctly—diagnosed and operated upon for a duodenal ulcer in November. She had heard all sorts of gossip about David’s unrepressed behaviour when he was home on leave—how he attended (against the King’s wishes, an unforgivable transgression in Queen Mary’s eyes) all the debutante balls, dancing until dawn and arranging assignations with various married women. All of these stories were, in fact, quite true. Lady Cynthia Asquith notes in her diary:* “So far [the Prince of Wales] dances most with Rosemary and also motors with her in the daytime.† No girl is allowed to leave London during the three weeks of his leave and every mother’s heart beats high.” But it was Lady Rosemary’s friend, Mrs. Freda Dudley Ward,* who was to catch David’s eye and heart when they met quite romantically in an air-raid shelter. “Saw the Prince of Wales dancing around with Mrs. Dudley Ward, a pretty little fluff with whom he is said to be rather in love,” Lady Cynthia records on March 12, 1918. “He is a dapper little fellow—too small—but really a pretty face. He looked as pleased as Punch and chatted away the whole time. I have never seen a man talk so fluently while dancing. He obviously means to have fun.”
That the Prince of Wales should carry on in such a flippant manner in a time of great and serious crisis was reprehensible to Queen Mary, who tried whenever possible to keep such gossip away from the King.
On February 19, the Prince of Wales had taken his seat in the House of Lords. The House was “fairly full,” the Ladies’ Gallery “thronged,” and the ceremony was more “pompous than usual when a peer takes his seat,” Lord Esher records. Of the young Prince of whom he had been fond since childhood, he comments, “The boy looked more boyish than ever in such surroundings [he was twenty-three at the time]. A youthful fair figure, smooth as Henry the Fifth. His blush is ready as ever on a fair cheek, but his eyes have lost their dreamy Weltzschmerz look. He was composed and modest. Later he took his Grandfather’s seat on the Cross Benches.” Some of the fear of the war’s toll shows in Lord Esher as he adds, “Amid this world-changing turmoil the old traditional ceremony was moving and who knows but that for the last time a Prince of Wales thus takes his seat in this historic House.”
A less sentimental view was taken by Lady Cynthia up in the Ladies’ Gallery. She described the Prince of Wales as having “a wooden body with bland, meek, milk-and-water countenance—[pretty but] stripped of all character, nothing of the bulldog breed ...”
Queen Mary continued her visits to London’s hospitals, talking to the returned injured soldiers and to the victims of bombs and air raids. Something of myth was now being perpetuated about Queen Mary’s character. One story being circulated was that while she was “going round a hospital, Queen Mary was struck by a fair-haired mother with a very dark baby. She commented on this and returned to the woman’s bedside on completing her round, saying, ‘His father must have been very dark-wasn’t he?’ To which the woman breezily replied, ‘Sure, ma’am, I don’t know—he never took his hat off.’ ” A bottomless supply of such Queen Mary stories travelled around the fashionable squares of London. Her stateliness, self-control, unique appearance, along with her aloofness, all contributed to the tone of the “Queen Mary” stories. Young, iconoclastic aristocrats like Lady Cynthia enjoyed stories that characterized the Queen as unworldly. The fact that she had had six children did not enjoin youthful opinion that as for sexual intercourse—“King George, yes, but Queen Mary—never!”
Another false precept (for the Queen was anything but naive) was that Queen Mary was a maitresse femme who dominated her husband. Cholly Knickerbocker, an American newspaper columnist, nicknamed the British Royal Couple “George and the Dragon,” and shortly after the war a cartoon was published in America showing Queen Mary as an enormous woman in an apron with a diminutive King George dangling on one string and the Prince of Wales on another. Lady Airlie reports that someone sent the clipping of this cartoon to the Queen, and the two of them “laughed together over its absurdity.” In truth, Queen Mary’s obeisance to her husband was almost oriental in its absoluteness. She did speak her mind when the King requested she do so, but never without his approval, and she was not close enough to David to pull the strings in his life (had she been, his future would not have been what it was to be).
London antique dealers were to claim that they hid all the bibelots and precious items that they knew might appeal to the Queen when they expected her to visit their premises, for the Queen was prone to take what she wished and they would go without payment.* If while visiting in some aristocratic home she sighted an object that had once belonged to the Royal Family, she often would request its return, and the current owner could do nothing else but oblige. Queen Mary was determined to restore all former possessions of the various Royal homes to their original places. Her research and memory regarding Royal property were staggering. And if she spied a painting or a vase or a piece of silver that she knew had once been Royal property —though perhaps given to a mistress or a Royal retainer and then sold—she expected (i
n the name of historic preservation) the dealer or host to contribute the piece to the Crown and the nation.
April 1918 was deceptively warm and reassuring. American troops were pouring into France. England and France were slowly obtaining air supremacy. New inventions for tracing submarines under water were helping to diminish the German submarine menace. By Easter, Germany had made peace with Russia via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the danger of the Germans manning the Russian Black Sea Fleet and making their way through the Straits into the Mediterranean was present. By July, the German advance toward Amiens on the Western Front had finally been stopped by a concentration of French and British troops, with a high cost in Allied casualties.
The roses at Windsor were in glorious blossom when Queen Mary moved her Household there for the month of july. The King’s Aunt Helena (Queen Victoria’s daughter), and her two daughters—Marie Louise and Thora—were at nearby Cumberland Lodge. In consequence, the two families spent a good deal of time together, and lunch on Sunday at the castle was an established ritual.
At about 1:00 P.M., Sunday, july 21, Princess Helena and her family were assembled in the corridor of Windsor waiting for the King and Queen who were—for the first time in anyone’s memory—a half-hour late. When the King appeared on the landing above them, his face was drained of all colour. Queen Mary stood stiffly behind him. They descended the stairs so slowly and both looked so grave and distressed that the group gathered there feared news might have come of a German victory.
“Oh, George, is the news very bad?” Princess Helena exclaimed.
He said, “Yes, but it is not what you think. Nicky, Alix, and their five children have all been murdered by the Bolsheviks at Ekaterinburg ...” All were shaken by the news, and lunch was a grim affair. Details were not learned until a week later.
“It’s too horrible and heartless,” Queen Mary wrote on that day in her diary.
At midnight on July 16, the entire Russian Imperial Family had been awakened and told to gather downstairs. Jacob Yurovsky, a member of the Bolshevik secret police, explained to them that the regional Soviet had decided that they must be moved. He then led them to a small semibasement room, sixteen by eighteen feet, with a heavy iron grillwork on the window. He told them to wait there until the automobiles arrived.
Nicholas, his sleepy son in his arms, asked for chairs so that Alexandra and the small boy could sit while they waited. “Yurovsky ordered these chairs brought. Alexandra took one,” Robert Massie says as he describes the horrifying drama at Ekaterinburg. “Nicholas took another, using his arm and shoulder to support Alexis, who lay back across the third chair. Behind their mother stood the four girls (Anastasia clinging to her spaniel, Jimmy) and Demidova, the Empress’s parlourmaid. Demidova carried two pillows, one of which she placed in the chair behind the Empress’s back, the other pillow she clutched tightly. Inside, sewed deep into the feathers, was a box containing a collection of the Imperial jewels.
“When all were assembled, Yurovsky reentered the room, followed by his entire Cheka squad carrying revolvers. He stepped forward and declared quickly, ‘Your relations have tried to save you. They have failed and we must now shoot you.’
“Nicholas, his arm still around Alexis, began to rise from his chair to protect his wife and son. He had just time to say ‘What ... ?’ before Yurovsky pointed his revolver directly at the Tsar’s head and fired. Nicholas died instantly. At this signal, the entire squad of executioners began to shoot. Alexandra had time only to raise her hand and make the sign of the cross before she too was killed by a single bullet. Olga, Tatiana, and Marie, standing behind their mother, were hit and died quickly ... Demidova, the maid, survived the first volley, and rather than reload, the executioners took rifles from the next room and pursued her, stabbing with bayonets. Screaming, running back and forth along the wall like a trapped animal, she tried to fend them off with the cushion. At last she fell, pierced by bayonets more than thirty times. Jimmy, the spaniel, was killed when his head was crushed by a rifle butt.
“Alexis, lying on the floor still in the arms of the Tsar, feebly moved his hand to clutch his father’s coat. Savagely, one of the executioners kicked the Tsarevich in the head with his heavy boot. Yurovsky stepped up and fired two shots into the boy’s ear. Just at that moment, Anastasia, who had only fainted, regained consciousness and screamed. With bayonets and rifle butts, the entire band turned on her. In a moment, she too lay still.”
The full ruthlessness of the murders was not known for many months, nor was the ghoulish disposal of the bodies—all dismembered, burnt, and then the bone that resisted fire dissolved with sulphuric acid. As each further horror was uncovered, the Russian Imperial Family’s relations in Great Britain suffered anew.* Yurovsky’s account of the murders told much later contains the tell-tale phrase: “Your relatives have tried to save you. They have failed.” He could only have been referring to King George and Queen Mary. The tone of the statement implied that forces beyond their control caused them to fail, that a last-ditch effort had been made by England to save the Tsar and his family.† No evidence exists that in the months preceding the murders King George made any further effort to bring the deposed Imperial Family out of Russia. David, for the rest of his life, was to insist that his father did everything he could to effect their freedom. Memories of the Tsar’s family at Osborne when he was a cadet could very well have haunted David.
At no time would the Kaiser have barred his Imperial cousins from passing through Germany to freedom. However, once the Bolsheviks were in control, neither the Kaiser, King George, nor the British Government could have saved the Tsar and his family with an offer of free passage and asylum. Ironically, Ekaterinburg fell eight days after the murders to the advancing White Army, at whose hands the lives of the Russian Imperial Family might have been spared.
The vile murders of Nicky and Alicky, little Alexis, and the four young Grand Duchesses were a horrifying family tragedy as well as a loathsome historic event. All the grim sadness and self-recriminations caused by the brutal murders began afresh when the grieving Empress Maria, mother of the murdered Tsar and his family, found safe passage from Russia to England, where she stayed with Queen Alexandra at Sandringham.
The Germans had begun their ultimate offensive only twenty-four hours before the tragic happenings at Ekaterinburg. On the morning of July 15, the Kaiser stood in the soft summer rain on the summit of a specially constructed gazebo in Champagne, watching “the distant drifting smoke of battle.” He was a desperate man. Either he was to win this offensive or lose his power and title. For three days, he maintained a pose of “triumphant hilarity.” Then, on July 18, as he waited for news of final victory came the blow that he had lost the Battle of Champagne. He walked dejectedly downhill from his gazebo to board the Imperial train, riding all through the night toward Spa, and exile.* The following night he paced the narrow corridor outside his luxurious coach, pausing from time to time to gaze intently at a huge photograph on the wall. The picture showed him seated having tea with his grandmother, Queen Victoria, under a tent on the lawn at Osborne. Wilhelm knew the end was near and that he would never conquer England.
On August 8, King George paid his fifth visit to the French front. At dawn the next day the British Army, led by 450 tanks, broke through the German lines and advanced 9 miles. The American army, under General Pershing, heavily defeated the Germans at Saint Mihiel on September 12. With the Kaiser in exile and with a new German government under Prince Max of Baden,* on October 3 an appeal for an immediate armistice was addressed to President Wilson. Within a few weeks Turkey and Austria had capitulated. Prince Max handed over the German government to the Socialist leader, Friedrich Ebert† and the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm was accepted as the establishment of the German Republic was proclaimed from the steps of the Reichstag.
By November 1918, the war was nearing its bloody end. The Prince of Wales—created a major on the staff of the Canadian Corps during the summer—had turned his m
ind “increasingly to upheavals that seemed to be rapidly sweeping away the world of my youth.” On November 5, from the front near Mons where the British Expeditionary Force had had its initial encounter with the Germans, the Prince of Wales had written his father:
Dearest Papa,
... There seems to be a regular epidemic of revolutions & abdications throughout the enemy countries which certainly makes it a hard & critical time for the remaining monarchies, but of those that remain I have no hesitation in saying that ours is by far the most solid tho of course it must be kept so & I more than anyone realise that this can only be done by keeping in the closest possible touch with the people & I can promise you that this point is always at the back of my mind & that I am & always shall make every effort to carry it out as I know how vitally it will influence the future of the Empire! ... I’m sure you won’t mind when I tell you that I’m out the whole of every day seeing & visiting the troops i.e. the people.
The world of my youth—his father had been crowned King of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King and Emperor of India, the day before the Prince of Wales’s seventeenth birthday. The previous year, the German Emperor and eight reigning kings and emperors, seven crown princes, and two dowager queens had attended the funeral of Edward VII. By 1922 there would be no ruling German Emperor; King Manoel II, fleeing the revolutionary forces in Portugal, would take refuge in Britain; and Emperor Karl I of Austria (the last of the Hapsburgs) would be forced to abdicate. Already the Russian Revolution of 1917 had been responsible for the murders of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, which had ended the monarchy in Russia. A decade later, the young King Farouk of Egypt was to say to the Prince of Wales, “Someday there will be only five kings—the kings of hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades; and the King of England.”*