GREAT BRITAIN: A Worrying Time

GREAT BRITAIN “A Worrying Time” Send him victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us, God Save the King!

In London’s sooty, bustling Paddington station one morning last week, travelers paused in their rush to catch holiday trains, trainmen and porters put down the tools of their trade, and all together, as fellow subjects of Britain’s King George VI, sang the words of their national anthem. All over Britain, in churches of every denomination, others were singing the hymn’s familiar words with special solemnity. “When we sing ‘Send him victorious,’ ” said Canon Adam Fox to a hushed congregation in Westminster Abbey, “we mean over all his enemies and especially over his present illness.” Throughout the world last week, from Montreal to Cape Town, prayers were rising for the health and recovery of Britain’s King.

“He Hasn’t Looked Well.” In the gloomy drizzle of rain outside the iron gates of Buckingham Palace, small groups of people with deep concern written on their faces gathered from all over London. As two Coldstream Guards in top-heavy busbies and flaming tunics paraded back & forth on sentry-go, the people talked among themselves in the hushed tones of relatives in a hospital anteroom. “He hasn’t looked well for the longest time,” said one old lady with an air of authority. “He must be very sick, God bless him,” said another.

They had watched in growing anxiety as several ambulances drove through the gates carrying surgical equipment with which to turn the Palace’s rococo Buhl Room into an operating theater. They had stood and watched Queen Mary and her eldest granddaughter Elizabeth drive into the courtyard and disappear behind the great grey façade, their faces unsmiling.

The royal family were all gathered near by. The Queen had cut short her Balmoral holiday a week before. The Duke of Gloucester had canceled a shooting trip to hurry to London. Princess Margaret flew down from Scotland. Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, called off their plan to sail to Canada; they planned to fly over later if all went well. Even the Duke of Windsor, the elder brother whose abdication made George king, was on hand.

“How Is He?” Great Britain, still in the center of worldwide crises and facing a crucially important general election, for a time forgot her other worries: the country was intent on the fate of the King, the symbol of stability in a world in which nothing was stable. To Queen Elizabeth came a note jointly signed by the leaders of the three political parties, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Clement Davies. “Madam,” it said, “at this time of anxiety we wish with our humble duty to assure Your Majesty that our thoughts are with you and the Princesses. It is our earnest prayer that His Majesty the King may soon be fully restored to health.”

Meanwhile, as eight doctors held final consultations over X rays, the daily business of royalty went on. On Saturday night, Princess Elizabeth was scheduled to appear at a movie premiere (The Lady With a Lamp) for the benefit of the Royal College of Nursing. “Do you think she’ll show up?” someone in the waiting crowd asked a bobby on duty. “Show up? Of course she’ll show up,” growled the bobby. “Good luck! How is he?” shouted the crowd when the Princess at last appeared. “This is a worrying time,” she confessed inside the theater.

“Condition Satisfactory.” At 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, the anxious crowd at the Palace gates got the word for which they had waited so long. “The King,” said a bulletin pencilled on a gilt-framed white card and hung outside the Palace, “underwent an operation for lung resection this morning. Whilst anxiety must remain for some days, His Majesty’s immediate postoperative condition is satisfactory.”

Giant searchlights flashed a great V in the skies, and a cheer rang out as a further bulletin announced: “The King has gained strength during the day.” For the time being no more details were issued by Palace authorities or Surgeon Clement Price Thomas, the 57-year-old Welsh chest specialist who performed the operation. Britons were still as much in the dark over the exact nature of the King’s illness as they had been when the doctors first spoke of “structural changes” in his lung. The nature of the operation (resection is the removal of the whole or part of a lung) indicated the presence of either a growth (tumor or cancer) or an abscess (caused by bronchiectasis).

King George’s health has never been rugged. Two years ago he underwent a serious leg operation for a circulatory ailment. His consistent refusal to take things easy has taken its toll. There was danger of surgical shock to a constitution weakened by more than four months of respiratory trouble.

But there was still no way for anxious Britons to estimate their King’s chances of recovery. The country remained deeply anxious. The crowds in front of the Palace had gone about their business, but passers-by still stopped for a moment or two to look at the draped windows. A hush hung over the Palace. The Coldstream Guards on sentry duty at the Palace were ordered to step quietly and not to bring their rifle butts heavily to the ground.