The King's Speech - Mark Logue [77]
And so he went on, smiling like a schoolboy (or so Logue thought) whenever he managed a hitherto impossible word without difficulty. The ‘decisive struggle’ was now upon the people of Britain, the King continued, building up the tension. ‘It is no mere territorial conquest that our enemies are seeking; it is the overthrow, complete and final, of this Empire and of everything for which it stands and, after that, the conquest of the world . . .’
There was nothing for Logue to do but just stand and listen, marvelling at the King’s voice. When he had spoken his last words, Logue just gripped his hands; both men knew it had been a superb effort.
They didn’t dare speak immediately, though; at Logue’s insistence, they were trying a new way of working under which the red light – this ‘red eye of the little yellow god’, as Logue called it – didn’t stay on throughout the broadcast. This had the disadvantage of making it difficult to be absolutely certain that they were actually off air. The two men continued to look at each other in silence – ‘the King and the commoner and my heart is too full to speak’. The King patted him on the hand.
A few minutes later, Ogilvie came in – ‘Congratulations, your Majesty, a wonderful effort’, he said – followed by the Queen, kissing her husband and telling him how grand he had been. They all stayed there talking for another five minutes.
‘And then,’ as Logue put it, ‘the King of England says “I want my dinner” – and they all said good night and went down the stairs into another world.’
The King was suitably proud of his effort, and relieved that, despite the fluidity of the military situation, he had not been obliged to make major last-minute changes to the text. ‘I was fearful that something might happen to make me have to alter it,’ he wrote in his diary that evening. ‘I was very pleased with the way I delivered it, & it was easily my best effort. How I hate broadcasting.’85
The next morning, the newspapers were full of praise for the speech. The Daily Telegraph called it ‘a vigorous and inspiring broadcast’, adding, ‘Reports last night indicated that every word was heard with perfect clarity throughout the United States and in distant parts of the Empire.’ Logue’s telephone, meanwhile, had been ringing off the hook. ‘Everyone is thrilled over The King’s Speech,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Eric Mieville rang me from Buckingham Palace and told me that the reception all over the world had been tremendous. Whilst we were speaking the King rang for him, so I sent my congratulations through again.’ The reaction from the Empire and beyond had also been enthusiastic.
The next day, a Saturday, Logue and Myrtle celebrated the King’s success by going to see a matinee of My Little Chickadee, a comedy set in the Old West of the 1880s, starring Mae West and W. C. Fields. Afterwards, Valentine took his parents to dinner at a restaurant Myrtle called ‘the Hungarian’. It was the first time they had been there since the war had started, and the band played all Myrtle’s favourites.
It would take more than one speech, however fine, to turn the tide of a war which was going against the Allies. Next to fall to the Germans was Belgium. King Léopold III, who was commander-in-chief of his country’s forces, had hoped to fight on in support of the Allied course, imitating the heroic example of his father, King Albert, during the First World War. Yet the situation this time was different, and on 25 May, convinced that further resistance was hopeless, Léopold surrendered. Controversially he chose to stay with his people rather than accompany his ministers to France where they attempted to continue to operate as a government-in-exile. However unfairly, he was vilified in Britain as a result. His behaviour during the war divided