George V used his son as a source of information on the senior generals. ‘I want to know privately if the C in C has had a row with Genl Smith-Dorrien,’ he asked in March 1915. ‘You might find out and let me know.’90 The Prince had little useful information on this point but he did not spare Sir John French in his correspondence and his testimony must have contributed to the strong support George V gave Kitchener against the Commander-in-Chief. When Monro was succeeded by Sir Hubert Gough, the Prince was cautiously enthusiastic. At first he was dismayed by the new Corps Commander’s reluctance to let him visit the front line, then he became more approving as the rules were relaxed. ‘There is no doubt he is an able tactician and a good “pushing” general,’ he wrote in July. ‘He talks too much; that is his gt fault to my mind.’91
His views on most matters were orthodox and strident. He was strongly in favour of conscription, feeling that the whole nation must be mobilized if the war was ever to be won.92 He welcomed as irresistible the call to arms which his father delivered in October 1915. Who would have the heart to ignore such an appeal? ‘But no doubt there are thousands of these foul unpatriotic brutes about!! One almost begins not to think so highly of one’s country as one did!!’93 Conscientious objectors were ‘loathsome’; he had twelve hundred of them working in the Duchy, ‘Disgusting looking men with long hair and they never wear hats; they loaf about the place and look at one with a very contemptible air!!’94 Miners who struck for higher pay were still more loathsome, they should be put ‘straight into the trenches and send the whole crowd out patrolling, the first night they go in!!’95 As for Roger Casement, the Irishman who sought to lead a German-inspired rising, he deserved least sympathy of all: ‘He should be publicly hung in Hyde Park or some open space where there is room for a large crowd.’96
His father and brothers would have echoed these views, as indeed would 90 per cent of the officers of the British Army. On most issues, though his parents might from time to time irritate him, he differed from his family very little. Increasingly it seemed to him that he had most in common with Prince Albert. The two had grown particularly close; ‘more so perhaps than most brothers, as our interests are the same,’ wrote the Prince of Wales early in 1915. ‘I am sure he will always do very well in the future; in fact I often feel that if I do as well as he does I shall be all right!!’97 Prince Albert’s naval career was suffering from his ill health and he had been forced to work in the Admiralty, a dreary job which he performed uncomplainingly. ‘I must say I admire him tremendously for this and don’t hesitate to tell you he’s one of the best,’ the Prince wrote to Godfrey Thomas, knowing well that uncomplaining acceptance of ill fortune was not his own forte.98 Prince Albert, however, was not so uncomplaining when it came to the conduct of his parents. The two Princes united in a chorus of criticism. Prince Albert wailed about the ‘awful prison’ of Buckingham Palace: ‘The parents have got funny ideas about us, thinking we are still boys at school or something of that sort, instead of what we are.’99 The Prince of Wales was no more enthusiastic about life in the Palace, especially after the King imposed a teetotal regime for the duration of the war: ‘Awful balls the whole thing. I don’t think it will have much effect on the drinking community. Lloyd George forced it on Papa.’100
As he grew older he became more adept at avoiding the sombre dignity of the family circle. By 1917 he was able to come and go more or less at pleasure. He was summoned for two weeks to Sandringham. ‘This little boy somehow says NO,’ he told Lady Coke. ‘He might possibly spend two or three days there, but not more, not for nobody, and he knows a bit too much for that!!!!’101 – a point so close to his heart as to demand even more than his usual allotment of two exclamation marks. In London he still stayed always at Buckingham Palace, but tried to time his periods of leave so that he had at least a few days there without his parents. This did not always work out. ‘I am sorry your style was rather cramped during your leave in London,’ Lord Burghersh wrote sympathetically. ‘It’s exactly the same with me. Family so inquisitive.’102 But it would be wrong to attach too much significance to such flights from the family nest. The Prince was far from rejecting his parents or demanding total independence. On his twenty-first birthday his father wrote to tell him: ‘You will have about £246,000 which … is a splendid sum of money which will go on increasing until you marry and set up house. Until then, I hope you will consider my home as your home.’ The Queen echoed her husband’s words: ‘I hope that for some years to come you, my darling Son, will continue to live under our roof, where you are and ever will be “le bienvenu”.’103 The Prince in his reply told his mother how pleased he would be to remain with his parents ‘until the fateful day arrives when I shall have to think about finding me a wife, and I trust that day is as yet afar off!!’104 Privately he had probably made up his mind that he must set up on his own once the war was over, but he had no wish to confront his parents on such an issue while the war was still raging and long-term plans seemed impossible to make.
In June 1915 the Prince had first speculated about the possibility that a Guards division might be formed under the command of Lord Cavan, ‘an ideal state of things’.105 A month later the ideal became reality; ‘It ought to be the finest division in the world,’ the King wrote proudly.106 The Prince had no doubt that this was where he belonged. In his eyes the Guards were as far above the other line regiments as the Navy was above the Army. He admitted to the King that he and the other Guards officers were apt to think that their men were the only ones of any use, ‘which is v. wrong and which one must avoid above all things, but it’s not an unnatural point of view to take really!!’107 But though his transfer to this martial empyrean brought some relief and moved him a little closer to the fighting, it did not prove entirely satisfactory. Life at Cavan’s headquarters was no less sybaritic than in his previous postings; Raymond Asquith visited the headquarters in November 1915 and was given ‘a good dinner and an excellent bottle of champagne … the Prince of Wales was there and gave me a long and fragrant cigar’.108 Nor was the work more enlivening; a typical day in December had him devoting the morning to pursuing a missing consignment of gum boots and the afternoon to bargaining for the use of a piece of land on which to build bathing huts: ‘Heavens, the unparalleled monotony of this life!! … I shall go mad soon!!’109 Worst of all, though he liked and admired ‘Fatty’ Cavan, he deplored the General’s reluctance to let him get near the trenches: ‘I think Fatty is going to shut me up in my glasshouse more than ever.’110 Only a week after this entry he escaped from his glasshouse and visited the front line during a lull in the battle of Loos. The 1st Guards Brigade had charged three hundred yards across open ground towards the enemy line and had been massacred by machine-gun fire as they reached the final wire, ‘too cruel to be killed within a few yards of yr. objective … This was my first real sight of war and it moved and impressed me most enormously.’ On the way back the party had to jump into a trench to avoid a storm of shrapnel, fifty yards away the Prince’s car was damaged and his driver killed: ‘He was an exceptionally nice man, a beautiful driver