Beaver's Apple

Britain's gabbiest second fronter--the fierce-tongued Lord Beaverbrook--could never go to bed until his R.A.F. elder son had phoned him: "All's well--goodnight!" For Wing Commander Max Aitken, 32, is the apple of the Beaver's eye. Some said it was the Beaver who got Max grounded in the Air Ministry last year. But it was only temporarily. Flying a Beaufighter, Son Max landed last week with a cocky message for the Beaver: he had bagged two Nazi bombers over Britain, bringing his total to twelve.

Though not yet in the class of the late Paddy Finucane (TIME, July 27), curly-haired, handsome Max, D.F.C., is one of Britain's aces. In London, at week's end Czecho-Slovak President Eduard Benes announced that young Max would get another decoration: the Czech War Cross. That made two things Benes and the Beaver shared in common--a high regard for Wing Commander Aitken and mounting impatience for a second front.

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