A visitor to Budleigh: pacifist or appeaser?

While King Edward VIII is famous for abdicating the British throne, he is also remembered as a celebrated visitor to East Devon Golf Club in Budleigh Salterton, where he played a round of golf in 1921.

The visit must have been one of the highlights of his two-day trip as Prince of Wales to Devon and Cornwall, during which he wrote to his mistress Freda Dudley Ward of feeling 'so
lonely and bored and fed up and depressed’. A low point during the royal tour was meeting the crowds of well wishers, and dignitaries such as the Bishop of Exeter, of whom the Prince wrote that he ‘looks quite mad and is anyway revolting with a scraggy beard’.

Later, as Duke of Windsor following his abdication, he and his wife, the former Wallis Simpson, embarked on a ten-day private tour of Nazi Germany in October 1937. His supporters saw him as a potential peacemaker between Britain and Germany, but the British government refused to sanction such a role, opposed the tour and suspected that the Nazis would use the Duke's presence for propaganda.

The Windsors dined with high-ranking Nazis such as Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Albert Speer, and had tea with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden. The Duke had a long private conversation with Hitler, but it is uncertain what they discussed, as the minutes of their meeting were lost during the war.

On 8 May 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, the Duke recorded a radio broadcast during a visit to the World War I battlefields of Verdun, his first since abdicating in 1936. In it he appealed for peace. These are his words:

‘I am deeply conscious of the presence of the great company of the dead, and I am convinced that, could they make their voices heard, they would be with me in what I am about to say. I speak simply as a soldier of the Last War whose most earnest prayer it is, that such cruel and destructive madness shall never again overtake mankind. There is no land whose people want war.’

The broadcast was heard across the world by millions. It was widely regarded as supporting appeasement, and the BBC refused to broadcast it. It was heard outside the United States on shortwave radio and was reported in full by British broadsheet newspapers.

Pictured are Sir William Orpen's portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, and the photo of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor meeting Adolf Hitler in 1937, from Wikimedia

You can hear the Duke of Windsor's broadcast at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG4bu5LJUTo

If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at 

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Filming for Peace: The Burmese Harp (1956)

Leading film critic and writer Tim Robey, pictured here, was asked to choose the ten best anti-war films, and kindly offered a list, not in any particular order. 

‘There are some obvious ones I've left off (e.g. Platoon, Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket) but I thought you might want to direct people towards fresh discoveries,’ he told us. ‘These are all pretty amazing films in my opinion.’   

Here’s the first: The Burmese Harp (1956), noted as among the first films to show the losses of the war from a Japanese soldier's perspective. Directed by Kon Ichikawa, and based on a children's novel of the same name written by Michio Takeyama, it tells the story of Japanese soldiers who fought in the Burma Campaign during World War II.  

When a Japanese platoon surrenders to British forces in Burma in 1943, the platoon's harp player, Mizushima, is selected from the prisoners of war to deliver a request for surrender to a Japanese regiment holed up on a mountain. Mizushima fails to convince the soldiers to accept defeat, and a last stand commences. 

Traumatized by the bloodshed of his fellow countrymen, Mizushima disguises himself as a Buddhist monk and begins a journey toward peace of mind amid the chaos. You can read more about the film by clicking on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Burmese_Harp_(1956_film)

Tim Robey was born in Hertfordshire in 1978 and educated at Beechwood Park School, Oundle and Oxford University, where he read classics. Since 2000 he has reviewed films, written features and conducted interviews for the Daily Telegraph's arts pages. He appears regularly on Radio 4's Front Row and Monocle FM Radio, contributed to R4's now-defunct Film Programme, and appeared as a sofa guest on BBC Film 2015-2017. He gave Cats zero stars, but has now seen it four times.

1956 poster of The Burmese Harp by Nikkatsu

If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/700424602802079

 

 

The Breaking of the Shell by Hanneke Coates

The hamlet of Yettington, just a mile or so from East Budleigh, was the birthplace in 1608 of Roger Conant’s nephew, the eminent theologian and vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Dr John Conant.  It is also the home of Hanneke Coates, whose story of peace and reconciliation was published in Fairlynch Museum’s magazine The Primrose.

Hanneke was born just before WW2 on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where her father was a tea planter. After the invasion of Java by the Japanese in 1942, she was forced to spend three and a half years of her childhood in one of over 300 concentration camps based around the Archipelago. After the war, as was the practice with many colonials, Hanneke’s parents remained abroad whilst she and her siblings returned to Holland to be fostered out to a number of Dutch families. Later Hanneke moved to England, settling in Yettington.

‘After the invasion all European women and children were advised by the Japanese forces to move to protection camps for their own safety,’ she explained. ‘So we left our homes voluntarily expecting to be protected, but as soon as the camps were filled, they put barbed wire around us. In the meantime husbands and fathers were sent to work on the Burma railway line or placed in concentration camps in and around Japan.’

‘We were constantly moved from one camp to another, often transported in boarded up train carriages without seating, lavatories, food or drink. My final camp was the notorious Tjideng camp (now part of Jakarta) which housed around 11,000 women and children.  The camp was one of many set up to intern European civilians, mainly Dutch, as ‘Guests of the Emperor’ during the period 1942 to 1945.  Those of us who ended up there experienced what can only be called ‘hell on earth’.

‘Food was in short supply and we survived on a starvation diet of half a coconut shell with rice and water-lily soup once a day. Water and sanitation were almost non-existent and medical supplies very scarce as all Red Cross parcels were withheld by the Japanese. We all suffered from tropical diseases such as Cholera, dysentery and malaria.

‘The most lasting effect of those three and a half years in captivity was the relentless and total humiliation the Japanese inflicted on us. We were day and night screamed at, publicly disgraced and punished by having our hair hacked off with blunt knives and regularly lashed with long whips. Many times a day we were herded on to the parade ground to stand for hours in the burning tropical sun and to bow to our captors. One of my earlier memories is from when I was four years old when we were made to witness the hanging of two Dutch soldiers. By the end of the war many hundreds of thousands of women and children had died through malnutrition, tropical diseases and lack of medication. I was one of the lucky ones.’

In time, Hanneke was able to come to terms with her grim experiences. Her book, The Breaking of the Shell, was published in 2018 as part of The Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity that uses real stories of victims and perpetrators of crime and violence to help people explore ideas around forgiveness and alternatives to revenge. With no political or religious affiliations, The Forgiveness Project's independent and inclusive approach ensures its core message – that everyone has the potential to change their perspective and break the cycle of vengeance – resonates across all cultures.  

You can read the full story as published at https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories-library/hanneke-coates/

If you are interested in the history of early America, and Roger Conant as a peacemaker in troubled times you can join the Devon Peacemaker Festival Facebook group at 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/700424602802079