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DICTATED. [Crawford?]

7, AUDLEY SQUARE , W.l.

21st December 1936.

Dear John

We are getting over our crisis, still feeling badly bruised,
but none the less confident, and hoping that we have finished with all
these manoeuvres and intrigues which caused us such profound anxiety.
The influence of Canada was weighty, partly through the good offices of
Peacock, who was brought in via the Duchy of Cornwall, partly also because
the Dominion Ministers seem to have been thoroughly well informed
from beginning to end. Beaverbrook, of course, behaved badly, but with
crass stupidity into the bargain. His asthma had a miraculous cure on
reaching New York - he was back here by the return boat and, I believe,
was at Fort Belvedere within two or three hours of his arrival. His
paper has been wobbling. He seemed to have some glimmer that Canadian
opinion was hardening against a Royal marriage, but at the same time
could not bring himself to drop the vendetta against Baldwin. It all
shows how little he knows about Canadian politics, or those of the oversea
realms either. Actually the day before the abdication he said that
all available troops in London would have to be mobilised, in order to
suppress the rioting which he considered inevitable; and he said that
we should be extremely lucky if we escaped very serious bloodshed. I
hope that this sinister figure in our public life may now be extinguished.
He certainly contributes very little to the Canadian evolution of
thought, about which he claims to be such an authority.

George Courthope blew into London an hour before the vote in