Portrait of theWeek-
BRITAIN'S SEAMEN'S STRIKE drifted along its third week. with a forecast that it could dam- age the balance of payments by anything up to £20 million a month; the court of inquiry started work, accompanied by uncompromis- ing words from the seamen's leader, Mr liugarth, who also remarked, 'It's obvious that for the next couple of weeks we are all going to sit still.' The nation, as it happened, was fresh from an enjoyable spell of sitting still during the sunniest Whitsun anyone could re- member, when millions basked, sedentary and motionless, beside the sea, or, less contentedly, in vast traffic queues. Meanwhile, the Cunard pissenger ships had lost f14 million, over the past five years, the line's new chairman, Sir Basil Smallpeice, disclosed on Tuesday; and doubts were heard in America, too, about the economics of space travel. A three-legged space-craft was launched nevertheless, in the hope of achieving a soft landing on the moon; and Sir Bernard Lovell of Jodrell Bank said there was a 'very high degree of probability' that life forms existed elsewhere in the universe.
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