Portrait of the Week
HALF-WAY THROUGH THE HUNDRED DAYS, and the pace was beginning to tell. The fight to save the I seemed like a melodrama—would the brave banks arrive in time with their $3,000 million rescue act? They did, but only just: wait for the next instalment of this gripping serial in six months' time. Amid the ruins of the 4 per cent growth rate, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Callaghan, hinted darkly at overseas defence cuts, but refrained from saying exactly what he meant.
MORE SERIOUS was the slow descent to bestiality taking place in 'parts of the Congo. Two waves of massacres by rebel forces brought in Belgian paratroops to pull out all whites that they could: when the Belgians left, a Brussels official reckoned that 900 foreigners were still in peril. Meanwhile, in Brussels the slow descent towards oblivion of the Common Market was halted, when Germany agreed to compromise over cereal prices. Italy began soundings for a plan for European political unity. South Africa, after all to receive sixteen Buccaneer aircraft ordered from the UK, is to suspend the Ninety-Day Act.
. * MR. GREENWOOD, the Colonial Secretary, was greeted by bazooka and bomb explosions when he began a ten-day visit of South Arabia: but to such a fervent unilateralist this was probably preferable to staying in London to hear that Mr. Wilson is to allow Polaris submarines to stay at Eloly Loch. Britain announced her intention of maintaining the Cyprus base and the US gave hints that Mr. Wilson had better not step out of line over the multilateral force during his coming talks with President Johnson. The US and Russia began a space race to Mars, while the crunch over Soviet payments to the UN was temporarily averted; military rule returned to Saigon; Juan Peron failed in his attempt to return to the Argentine, and a Danish soldier received twenty days for sending an extract from Tropic of Cancer in code over a radio linked with the NATO radio network.
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SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS NINETY, and I/resi- dent Johnson proclaimed November 30 Churchill Day. Messages flooded in from all over the world, but the most touching was that from President Lake of West Germany, that the German people thought of Sir Winston with sincere admiration, and honoured him as a great pioneer and advo- cate of European unity. Sir Alec Douglas-Home at last revealed his Resignation Honours, with peerages for three Tory MPs. which should ensure a mini-election early in the New Year.
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