Airman & Scholar

As the day approached for Cambridge University to pick a new chancellor to succeed the late Jan Christian Smuts, hardly anybody expected a fuss. The heads of the various colleges were almost unanimously agreed on the man for the strictly honorary job: wiry, brilliant Arthur William, Baron Tedder, marshal of the R.A.F. and onetime deputy supreme commander of the cross-Channel invasion. The actual voting by the university senate (any Cantabrigian with an M.A. is eligible to vote) should have been, as always, a mere formality.

But three weeks ago a new candidate suddenly popped up: 90 members of the senate signed a petition in favor of India's Jawaharlal Nehru, M.A. Cantab. '14. The Nehru backers were only a fraction of the electors, but they represented that confirmed and vocal band of British political idealists who hold, with Nehru, that it is both possible and desirable to be neutral in the struggle between Russia and the West. The undergraduate Varsity backed Nehru as "the man who has maintained the most consistently impartial attitude throughout the Korean war."

University officials jittered in alarm. It was bad enough to have a political controversy intruded into the election. But to make matters worse, it was the first time since 1847, when Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Albert won in a squeak over the popular Earl of Powis, that the chancellorship had ever been contested.

Last week Nehru himself took his old alma mater off the hook. Through the Indian high commissioner in London, he informed his Cantab, backers that he wished his name withdrawn. Without further ado, Lord Tedder's election went through. Airman Tedder got the word from his office in Washington, where he is chairman of the British Joint Services Mission.

Except for the energetic little Nehru group, Cantabs. had reason to be pleased. Their new chancellor was not only one of Britain's greatest airmen and World War II heroes, he was also a quiet man with scholarly tastes (his dissertation on The Navy of the Restoration won the distinction of publication) and a passion for sketching.

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