Canada: Quiet Visitor

Britain's press was finding Canada's Prime Minister poor copy. The informal "fact finding" which had taken William Lyon Mackenzie King to London and kept him there already more than three weeks went on behind closed doors. He let reporters, including one from the Maple Leaf (Canadian service paper) interview him. But they learned nothing.

He called on Old Friend Winston Churchill in his new house near Albert Hall, stayed to chat for hours. He attended an informal and boisterous dinner that Prime Minister Attlee gave in a private room in the House of Commons. He sniffled through a cold. He presented himself at Buckingham Palace in a neat dark lounge suit to lunch with the King and Queen, and later drove across to visit Queen Mary in Marlborough House.

London reporters assigned to cover the doings of Mackenzie King tried to liven things up by asking a few questions at the Dorchester Hotel, where he was staying: does he work in his shirt sleeves? Has he a kipper for breakfast?

"You mean the quiet gentleman on the first floor?" asked a chambermaid. "Lum-me, I should get into serious trouble if I told you that."