The headline of Gerard Baker's column, "Queen Elizabeth Didn't Take Her Majesty for Granted" (Free Expression, Sept. 13), may have been true during her reign as monarch, but it wasn't always so. Let me explain.
In 1967 I was visiting the Churchill War Rooms, which are underground beneath the Treasury in London's Whitehall. It was before the rooms were open to the public, and I was included in a group of retired Scotland Yard officers who had been stationed there during World War II. Their stories were remarkable.
One officer talked about his first assignment in the 1930s, before the war, when he was guarding then-Princess Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace. He described how the little girl liked to stand on the high windowsill of her playroom and watch the princess' regiment drilling in the courtyard below. One day, her mother came into the room and the guard lifted her down from the windowsill, saying, "There you are, little lady," to which she answered, "I'll have you know I am not a lady; I am a princess." Her mother then said, "Alas, it's true that she is a princess, but we're hoping to make a lady of her someday."
They succeeded admirably.
Henry I. Miller
Redwood City, CA