GREAT BRITAIN: Together Again

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A tiny smudge of lipstick, spotted by the eagle eye of an Associated Pressman and duly reported by cable and radio last week, was an all's-well signal that spread to the four corners of the earth. Such, anyway, was the impression created by frontpage stories recounting the reunion of Queen Elizabeth and her husband in Portugal after his return from a four-month cruise through the Commonwealth. No less than 150 eager pressmen elbowed one another aside on the tarmac at Lisbon's Montijo Military Air Base as the Queen's gleaming Viscount transport headed in.

Bronzed and healthy after his vacation, the Duke of Edinburgh himself was casually at ease as he chatted with Portuguese diplomats waiting to greet his wife. When the Queen's plane rolled to a stop, he climbed briskly aboard, entered Elizabeth's private compartment, and, less than two minutes later, appeared again at the cabin door at a protocol distance behind his poised and smiling wife. A few minutes later, after a round of formal smiles and handshakes, the royal couple, apparently unconscious of the peering eyes of the press and the world, entered their car and drove off in dignified silence to the yacht Britannia.

"Well," muttered one British reporter in the midst of this unruffled scene of royal business-as-usual, "that wasn't much of a reunion." But back home and in the U.S., the headlines were redolent with the heady scent of orange blossoms dispelling the noisome rumors of rift. "After 124 days and 5 hours, they are TOGETHER AGAIN," blared Britain's Empire News. "THA-A-T'S BETTER," purred London's Sunday Pictorial.