— Portrait of the Week
THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUTS dominated the week, circling the world at 17,500 m.p.h. The Pope blessed them, the Soviet people congratulated them (dispatching their own moon probe next day), and President Johnson invited them to stay. While Major White was walking in space, as far as from the middle of the Pacific to the coast of Florida, the British public was busy with Whitsun celebrations on the roads--the customary seasonal orgy of exodus, blockage, jams, speeding, casualty ,figures and recrimination: A few expectant Trogs and Greasers (Mods and Rockers translated) were picked up off the beaches, and the French announced a plan to send their juvenile delinquents to sea in ships.
BEA PORTERS STRUCK at Whitsun, for no obvious reason, and sin came to the Isle of Skye in the form of a Sunday car-ferry. Abroad, President de Gaulle was said reluctantly to have abandoned his plan to take over Radio Luxembourg before the forthcoming presidential election ('Watch out—he'll be after the BBC next,' said a Radio Luxembourg executive), and President Nkrumah cancelled the Ghanaian elections when all his candidates were returned unopposed ('Ours is indeed . . . a path strewn with truth, honesty and integrity,' said the Ghanaian Times). The Americans announced an objective of £1,929 million by 1967 in their drive to increase arms exports, and Chou En-lai promised in Dar-es- Salaam that the Chinese would give all possible help to the Congolese rebels. American troops were authorised to fight alongside South Vietnamese soldiers, at which there were loud American protests, and Wall Street had its worst setback since Kennedy's assassination. But Sir Robert Menzies said Australian troops in Vietnam were ready to fight with the Americans.
IN BRITAIN Bank rate went down by 1 per cent, but some mortgage rates rose to a new peak, a record HP debt was announced. and Lord Robens was reported to have described the Government's economic measures as ;not very good or popular.' He also doubted whether steel would be sationalised. The anniversary of Dun- kirk was observed, another Italian friar was arrested for smuggling cigarettes, 150 journalists on the Daily Mirror declared they would strike, drought in Florida was so severe that alligators had to be fed by hand, and the Palace announced that in future knights might take delivery of their titles without waiting for an accolade. An ominous political note was struck when Mr. MacPherson, Labour MP for Stirling and Falkirk, went into hospital with coronary thrombosis.
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