A Letter From The Publisher, Jun. 29, 1959

WITH a passion few U.S. citizens comprehend, monarchical Canada scorns the republicanism of its neighbors to the south. “Our ideal, by right of inheritance, is the ideal of the King-in-Parliament,” wrote Montreal Economist John Farthing, bluntly and articulately, in his book Freedom Wears a Crown. “It requires for its fulfillment the acceptance of initial loyalty to a sovereign as opposed to allegiance simply to a system of law. Anyone who does not find the first preferable to the second is out of place in Canada. He should be an American citizen, not a British subject.” For the next four weeks, though they will grumble darkly at the cost and occasionally disparage the Crown itself, Canadians will turn out to see the Crown in the person of their Queen, Elizabeth II. Hers is a task much in contrast to the imperial role of her grandparents (later George V and Queen Mary) when they toured India in 1905 (see cut). Now the prides, loyalties and sympathies that Canadians feel are shared, in some degree at least, by the quarter of the earth’s population that belongs to the Commonwealth of Nations. An explanation of the great political invention called the Commonwealth and a definition of the historically new job that Elizabeth has in reigning over it will be found in this week’s HEMISPHERE cover story, The Redeemed Empire.

THE great human stories of Washington.” mused the New York Times’s Chief Washington Correspondent James Reston last week, “are beyond the scope of daily journalism.” He was rejecting on the “rough time” that daily journalism had in trying to explain why the Senate refused to confirm Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce. It was the onrush of the great human story in the Strauss affair that TIME reported in its June 15 cover story on Strauss, a story that prepared readers for the thorny issues and the thornier human personalities involved. With weekly journalism’s advantages of second thought and third look, TIME this week reports the high drama of the post-midnight confirmation vote—not only the result, but how and why it came about, what the press said, and what the likely consequences are. See NATIONAL AFFAIRS, “This Sad Episode,” and related stories.