Canada: EXTERNAL AFFAIRS: The Traveler

On the six-day trip across, William Lyon Mackenzie King was the only one of the Queen Mary’s passengers to have a suite, although ex-U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle, British Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal and Lady Portal were also aboard. As the Mary edged up to Southampton Sunday noon, the Prime Minister (in pale grey suit, blue tie) gawped momentarily at a quayside thronged with cheering people, then noted that they were cheering British prisoners of war arriving simultaneously at an adjacent pier. The Prime Minister waved, and joined in the cheering.

First on board to greet Mackenzie King were Britain’s black-hatted, dapper Deputy Under Secretary for the Dominions Sir John Stephenson, and tall Frederic Hudd, Canada’s Acting High Commissioner in Britain. Behind them came Southampton civic dignitaries, led by the wife of the city’s ailing Lord Mayor, Job Charles Dyas. Primly the Lady Mayoress recited a prepared speech of thanks for clothing that Canada had sent to the city during the blitz.

Mackenzie King listened dutifully. By 1 p.m. he was lunching alone on shipboard on soup, roast beef, potatoes, cauliflower, ice cream, coffee. By mid-afternoon he was drinking tea, eating toast and jam on a special train bound for London. At 5:30 he was in London’s Waterloo Station. Half an hour later he was on his way, by car, to the Chequers home of Britain’s Prime Minister Clement Attlee. By Monday mid-morning bustling Mr. King was in his suite at London’s Dorchester Hotel, laying out a schedule for the coming week.

Reticent as usual, he said only, “I have come to talk things over quietly with as many people as possible.”

The Prime Minister’s vagueness could not hide one fact: an Empire family party was in the making. Also in London —or on the way—were Australia’s External Affairs Minister Herbert Vere Evatt, New Zealand’s Paddy Webb, South Africa’s Deputy Prime Minister Jan Hendrick Hofmeyr. Like Mackenzie King, they were admittedly intent on gaining for Britain’s Dominions an effective voice in the writing of the peace. It looked as if four lobbyists were about to turn on the pressure.