The first Man of 1952 was a Danish-born sea captain named Henrik Kurt Carlsen. As the New Year rolled in and all the world watched, he fought alone for the life of his ship Flying Enterprise against the fury of January seas in the North Atlantic. For twelve days he fought, but in the end the Flying Enterprise went down. Captain Carlsen rejected the inevitable Hollywood contract and modestly disappeared, and the world was left still searching for a hero.

In 1952 the world badly wanted a hero as dramatically poised as the captain to rescue it from an engulfing ocean of doubt. There were heroes aplenty on the bloody battlefields of 1952, but their heroism served only to give a sharper sting to the frustration that already lay on the world. For 1952 was a year in which the world was officially at peace, but still waged bloody wars it hopefully called "small" and half-heartedly armed against the danger of one it would have to call "big." It was a year of frustration in which the peace talks begun so hopefully in a tent at Panmunjom were moved to a permanent building—made to last, if necessary, for years.

Moved Permanently

A-Bombs & a Blonde. The U.S., carrying the main burden of the war in Korea, was still in 1952 the richest and strongest nation on earth, richer and stronger than it had ever been, but even its great strength was not enough. The U.S., like the rest of the world, was tired of the incubus of permanent crisis, tired of high taxes, tired of a war that was never done and never won, tired of the peace dove that was only a clanking phony made in Moscow. For all its might & main, the U.S. could find no quick way out.

At home, the U.S. flexed its great muscles, put everyone to work, paid them more money, built them more and better houses, more and fancier cars. Its enterprising suburb builders raised up almost overnight a new Levittown beside the Delaware River, bigger at birth than the pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania cities of York and Lancaster. Its patient medical researchers found drugs that gave promise of conquering TB and polio. Its impatient newspaper readers doused themselves inside & out with another wonder drug, chlorophyll, and followed the Wars of the Roses—Eleanor and Billy.

The U.S. cheered the Yankees as they won the World Series, and Decathloneer Bob Mathias as he shattered his own world record in the Olympics. It turned a bored ear to science's biggest bang—the explosion of a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific—and sighed in disillusion when Frank Hayosteck, the note-in-a-bottle Romeo of Johnstown, Pa., journeyed all the way to Ireland to find his Breda O'Sullivan and then came home again—alone. In 1952, the U.S. rediscovered sports cars and discovered Marilyn Monroe.

The Man of the Hour. But one event alone occupied the major attention of the U.S. in 1952. When General Eisenhower, an authentic hero both at home and abroad, resigned his job as head of NATO's armies to enter the U.S. political arena, many innocent Europeans (as well as many informed Americans) took it for granted that he had been appointed 1952's Man of Destiny, almost by acclamation. Only a few formalities seemed necessary before the discredited Truman retired and Ike took over. But Europeans reckoned without the modes and manners of U.S. politics. Their best overseas reporters were totally unable to convey to them the nuances of a campaign in which the Republican candidate was darkly accused of being a Republican and the Democrat damned for supporting a Democratic administration.

In 1952, Americans, too, were getting a new perspective on their political practices. Seen for the first time through the pitiless magnifying glass of TV, the business of nominating and electing a U.S. President was an overwhelming sight, often stirring, frequently entertaining, sometimes appalling. It was a new kind of lesson in civics, and a good one. Perhaps it lasted too long, and shouted too loud. Yet when the sound & fury were done, and the passion spent, firm stands had been taken and issues freely debated. Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower, both able, earnest and sincere candidates, had conducted their own campaigns on a high level. In the age of the airhop and the fireside telecast, both candidates had traveled farther and had been more searchingly inspected by more people than in any other election in history. On Election Day, Ike piled up the biggest landslide victory since that of Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. Dwight Eisenhower's election was the major news event of 1952. As a military commander, he had been Man of 1944; in his new political role, he had every opportunity to become undisputed Man of 1953.

Small Maybe. In Western Europe a handful of brave and patient politicians did their best to fill the bill for 1952—Italy's sere and aging Alcide de Gasperi, still holding his pastepot coalition government together in the face of the largest Communist parliamentary opposition in Europe; Britain's Winston Churchill, fighting now not on the beaches and in the hills, but in the factories and in the shops, to bestir Britain's trade; Germany's flinty and determined Konrad Adenauer, desperately fighting to tie his country's destiny to the West: France's busy Bookkeeper Antoine Pinay, standing bulldog guard for 9 1/2 months on the national budget like a Normandy farmwife, before at last giving up.

Western Europe in 1952 was eating better and keeping warmer. The Schuman Plan to pool its coal and steel industries was at last under way. Its defenses at year's end were still a good 10% below what the generals in charge thought a "vital minimum," but they had advanced far beyond the paper armies of two years ago. "Certo it is," said one Italian laborer last week, between talk of a football lottery and the price of bread, "that war is no nearer this year than it was last, and maybe—I say it with the smallest of maybes—it is farther away."

In many ways, 1952 might be called the Year of the Generals. The entrenched ones, like Stalin and Franco and Mao and Tito, held their familiar sway. Others came to power; in coups d'etat (Egypt's Naguib and Cuba's Batista) or in honest elections (Greece's Papagos and in the U.S., Eisenhower). The generals held the headlines; so much so that, to the hurried reader, the manner of a nation's defense too often seemed more important than who and what was being defended. The rise of the generals reflected a felt need for decisiveness and a longing, often unstated, for something to put one's faith in. In such a time, the Man of the Year had to be one who could restore lost faith to a troubled people, and to serve (perhaps longer than generals can) as custodian of that faith. In 1952, such a symbol of faith was not a man at all, but a woman: a shy, dedicated, determined 26-year- old who came to the throne of Great Britain in February.

Magical Power. It was not the fact of her being Queen that made Elizabeth II the Woman of 1952. That year had no more respect for the governance of kings than for the government of politicians. It saw one king, Egypt's fat and frolicsome Farouk, bundled unceremoniously off his throne without a single subject to raise his hand in protest. It saw another, King Paul of Greece, resoundingly rebuked at the polls for daring to oppose his people in their choice of a new Prime Minister.

1952 also saw the well-meaning but ineffectual Shah of Iran hissed by his subjects and hamstrung by the wizened old weeper Mossadegh, who had done his best (or well-intended worst) to bring the whole world to a standstill in 1951. It saw Elizabeth herself succeed to a throne long since shorn of its last vestige of political power, to reign over a Commonwealth whose only union was in tradition and assent.

What, then, was Elizabeth's significance? It was no more—and no less—than the significance of a fresh young blossom on roots that had weathered many a season of wintry doubt. The British, as weary and discouraged as the rest of the world in 1952, saw in their new young Queen a reminder of a great past when they had carved out empires under Elizabeth I and Victoria, and dared to hope that she might be an omen of a great future. Her dramatic flight from a vacation in Kenya at George VI's death to take her place at the head of the royal family beside the Queen Mother and revered Queen Mary gave the British spirit a lift even in the midst of their bereavement.

It mattered not that India, which once had bowed to Victoria as Empress, would merely nod to Elizabeth as its "first citizen"; that many of her black subjects in Africa were screaming "Death to all white men" in a riot of restless revolt; that many of her white subjects on the same continent were talking openly of South African republic under Prime Minister Daniel Malan.

For the enduring roots of British monarchy are nurtured not in autocracy but in consent, the consent of the people to revere the symbol of monarchy, the consent of the monarch to bow to the will of the people. "It may well be," wrote a thoughtful London editorialist at the time of Elizabeth's accession, "that we here in Britain, by accident rather than design, have stumbled back to the original, the true and abiding function of monarchy, which lay in the magical power of kings...to represent, express and effect the aspirations of the collective subconscious."

A Sailor's Wife. Indeed, few of the thousands who listened in London in February to the tabarded heralds proclaiming her Queen, "with one consent of heart and tongue," bothered or needed to rationalize Elizabeth's accession. No more did millions throughout the English-speaking world who read the medieval words with a sudden new consciousness of well-being. For a generation of Sunday-supplement readers, Elizabeth's life story had provided a quiet, well-behaved fairy tale in which the world could believe. All of them confidently expected her to go right on living it. It was not an easy job, this being Queen of Britain. It meant diverting but never offending a polyglot family of 500 million subjects, many of them as outspokenly critical as a spinster aunt. It meant being regal without arrogance, glamorous without extravagance, gracious without familiarity. It meant setting an example of domesticity as a wife and mother and still commanding an empire's respectful devotion.

Tory and Laborite disagreed on the subject of their Queen as they disagreed on almost everything else in Britain, but the disagreement was only doctrinal; both parties believed in her. "The young Queen needs the love and protection of us all," wrote Nye Bevan's wife Jennie Lee in her leftist Tribune soon after the accession. "We insist she be given not only time enough but peace of mind to live her private life." Many a Conservative, on the other hand, yearned to caparison his new sovereign in all the pomp and panoply of bygone days. It was not the least of Elizabeth's tasks to find the proper balance between simplicity and sumptuousness a balance that would lend majesty her being and still not outrage those who demanded a more democratic example. In this, as in many other aspects of her new position, she was helped by her 31-year-old husband, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Ever since their royal marriage, Britain's maiden aunts and Mrs. Grundys had watched Philip with eagle eyes for the traditional signs of the sailor ashore; but, beyond causing a handful of Canadian debutantes to gush ecstatically over his good looks at Elizabeth's first presentation party, or setting Washington society aflutter on the royal visit to the U.S., the Queen's husband has given no sign of reviving his bohemian bachelor ways, mild though they were in actuality. He still strives hard to lure Elizabeth out of the stuffy circle of bluebloods considered by the most conventional the only proper hosts for royalty. Last month he offended many a Tory by persuading the Queen to accept an invitation to dine with Actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

But by & large Philip has learned that the restraints royalty must put on itself have solider reasons than he had once supposed. His frank impatience with outmoded customs is now largely confined to attempts at jolting his wife's realm out of its lethargy. "There is a school of thought." Prince Philip said in an official speech as Elizabeth's husband, "which says, 'What was good enough for my father is good enough for me.' I have no quarrel with this sentiment at all, so long as it is not used as an excuse for stagnation...but do not forget that the great position of British industry was won when we led the world in inventive imagination and the spirit of adventure."

The Queen is Leaving. Like most young couples in the early years of their marriage, the Queen of Britain and her husband are engaged in a friendly struggle for domination in their own affairs, but Philip is no Prince Albert (who once complained, "I am only the husband, never the master in my house"). At parties, when she wants to leave and he doesn't, Elizabeth sometimes checkmates Philip by sending an equerry with the curt message: "The Queen is leaving." But on other occasions, as when he insisted against her wishes on wearing a plain naval uniform (Last week Elizabeth raised Philip's rank to admiral, colonel and air commodore, in charge of cadet training in the three services.) instead of the trappings of a royal duke at the recent opening of Parliament, Philip's will prevails. His relatively humble upbringing (A poor relation of the Mountbattens, Philip was educated at St. Cloud in Paris, a progressive school in Scotland, and the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth.) has given Elizabeth a closer touch with her people than her own cloistered past could have permitted.

Elizabeth's obvious happiness in Prince Philip and their children has added new softness to her character and new beauty to her face, just as becoming Queen has added a new dimension to her practical intelligence. "It never occurred to me that she could be a deep thinker," confessed one of Elizabeth's elder advisers recently, "but every now and then, just lately, I catch her reflecting in a way she never used to...groping for a glimpse, a blurred glimpse of the workings of destiny."

No Lunch for Gromyko. Like many another working couple in their realm, Elizabeth and Philip begin their day by listening to the 8 o'clock BBC newscast. Half an hour later, they discuss it over a breakfast of tea, toast and kippers, and soon they are lost in a cloud of newspapers. Elizabeth pores through three papers each morning, not overlooking the sports pages, and like most women, she shudders slightly when she sees her own picture. Newspictures have seldom done her justice.

At around 9:15 Nurse Helen Lightbody ("Nana") ushers in the children, accompanied by the Queen's two corgies, Susan and Sugar, for half an hour of play. Charles, Duke of Cornwall, 4, is eager and always curious. Wide-eyed Princess Anne, 2, always tumbles flat when she curtseys. By 10 a.m. Elizabeth's working day has begun at a Chippendale desk: letters to be read and written, documents to be signed, social schedules to be agreed upon. "She gets to the point with frightening speed and accuracy," says one of her aides.

At 11:30, she holds the first of her day's audiences. A foreign ambassador is presenting his credentials. If it is the representative of a friendly power, Elizabeth chats graciously in English, or in serviceable French. If it is Andrei Gromyko, the interview is brief and formal. It may be a recently appointed bishop eager to discuss the problems of his new see, and Elizabeth as head of the church must be interested and informed. It may be a visiting Governor General from one of the Commonwealth nations, come for luncheon with his lady. Gourmet or no, the guest must face the fact that Elizabeth the Queen likes short meals and plain, wholesome British fare. After lunch (maximum: an hour and a quarter) come the public appearances—a ship to be launched, a hospital to be visited, an exhibition to be opened, a cornerstone to be laid—always accompanied with a gracious, impromptu and neat little speech.

Advise & Warn. At 5 o'clock, the Queen is back once more in the palace to play with her children for another hour and—on Tuesdays—to await the weekly visit from the Prime Minister. Churchill used to drop in on her father at 5:30, but Elizabeth makes him wait until an hour later to give her more time in the nursery. No one but the Queen and Churchill himself knows what is said at these meetings (which often last an hour or more), for not even Philip may be present, but a glimpse of the forcefulness of the young Queen's questions may be had in the words of another senior Cabinet member, who recently remarked: "Younger ministers than I will soon learn that this is no women to be trifled with."

The British monarch's sole governmental duty is only "to advise, to encourage and to warn," but that can nevertheless be a vital and important duty. At this stage, Elizabeth for the most part spends her time attempting to learn what she can from her wise first minister, and asking, "How will this affect the average house-wife?" In some cases, Elizabeth is empowered to enforce her warning. No minister, for instance, may leave the country without her consent, and Churchill himself had to ask permission before making his plans to visit the U.S. this month.

"All We See." Elizabeth's first and primary duty to her people, however, is to represent in her person all that they hold best in the British way of life, to endow the average Briton's life with a spaciousness beyond his own means. All last year, Britons were making plans and looking forward to Elizabeth's coronation like a family planning a favorite daughter's wedding. They mean it to be her party, but they mean it to be a family party as well. The common sense and kinship Elizabeth shares with her people are both exemplified in her decision, against stiff conservative prejudice, to let TV enter the Abbey so that all the family may share the ceremony.

The Queen can still be stiffly Victorian when occasion demands it. A veteran aide recently criticized her favorite crooner: "Ma'am, that Bing Whatnot, blest if I can see what you see in him." "Sir," replied Elizabeth loftily, "you are not supposed to see all we see." But she can also unbend delightfully. "Often she has caught my eye when a slightly pompous person is executing a ceremonial gambit," confesses an old friend of Elizabeth's, "and we both have to look away hastily to keep from laughing."

Last week Britain's Queen fulfilled another age-old obligation to her people by spending Christmas at Sandringham, her grandfather's and her father's favorite house, surrounded by members of her family. It was the season when Britons are most conscious of home and family, words that loom large and rich with meaning in their lives. It was the season also when the British monarch traditionally speaks to his subjects as a parent on matters close to all their hearts. By radio from Sandringham last week, Elizabeth told her subjects in a warm, clear voice: "Many grave problems and difficulties confront us all, but with a new faith in the old and splendid beliefs given us by our fore- fathers, and the strength to venture beyond the safeties of the past, I know we shall be worthy..."

In cynical 1952, Britons and Americans alike were often too plagued by doubt to venture beyond the safeties of their past. In Elizabeth II, by God's grace Queen, Defender of the Faith, each might see a reminder of what was old and splendid, and also a fresh, imperative summons to make the present worthy of remembrance.

COVERS GALLERY: Click here to see the cover image from 1952

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