CEYLON: The People's Premier

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Within an hour after the monk's bullets found their mark, Ceylon's tough, puckish Governor General Sir Oliver Goonetilleke proclaimed what amounted to a state of emergency over Ceylon—a volatile land that boasts the highest homicide rate in Asia. But next day, as Banda's like-minded colleague, Education Minister Wijayananda Dahanayake, took over the premiership, a strange quiet settled over the country. Taxis, buses and cars flew mourning flags of white; the only hint of violence lay in a rising wave of public feeling against the Buddhist clergy. In Colombo a two-mile-long queue waited five hours in the scorching sun to pass by Banda's coffin in the Rosemead Place bungalow. At first the police refused to admit them, but at last Sir Oliver intervened. "The gates of the Prime Minister's home," he said, "were always open to the people. They must be open now."