GREAT BRITAIN: At 78

Zesty as a two-year-old rounding into the stretch, Britain’s aged Prime Minister Winston Churchill last week entered his 79th year enthusiastically agallop on all his old hobbies. Unlike his gelding Non-Stop, which won only second place in the races at Kempton Park on the eve of his birthday, the Old Warrior himself spent the week in top form, smiting parliamentary enemies with one hand and holding the shredded remnants of a vanished empire together with the other. He did admit that several American admirers had been sending him rejuvenating pills, but “I don’t take them,” he said. “Think how unfair that would be to Anthony.”*

The battle in Parliament began when Laborite Emanuel Shinwell, onetime Minister of Defense, asked archly why the Prime Minister couldn’t make up his mind about who should command NATO’s navies in the Mediterranean. Churchill querulously retorted that things “may not all be as unfortunate for this country as [Mr. Shinwell] would no doubt wish.” “Withdraw!” bawled the Labor benches at this slur on Shinwell’s patriotism, but the Prime Minister’s dander was up. Instead of withdrawing, he recklessly peppered the air with further opprobrium: an ambiguous reference to “cosmopolitanism,” which is a word the Kremlin likes to hurl at Jews. Laborites booed and hissed as Churchill started to stride out of the House. “Is it in order to boo a member of this House?” he demanded truculently. A scathing Scottish voice gave his answer: “What else can you say to a goose?” Now came cries from the Tory side, demanding the withdrawal of the remark. But Churchill said: “I do not in the least mind being called a goose.”

Next day, he was Britain’s confident lion, meeting with eight Commonwealth Prime Ministers and Finance Ministers who had come to London to discuss the problem of how to strengthen the pound sterling.* As banker for the whole Commonwealth, he had good news for them: a sterling area solidly in the black last November, and backed by a $128 million surplus. But the good news was tempered with a startling announcement. To keep the recovery solid, said Churchill, Britain has decided to slash its defense spending by as much as 29% in the next two years; the original three-year rearmament program would now take up to five years. That announcement, made to Parliament by a less forceful Prime Minister, might well have rocked the nation’s confidence. Secure at 78 in his role of jealous guardian of the nation’s security, Winston Churchill made the announcement without a question from any member in the House.

*Heir Apparent Eden, now 55.

*On his doodling pad, Australian Prime Minister Menzies put the problem thus: With singular agility And technical facility We seek convertibility Which means (I’ll have you know) A quid for every quo.