Time for Decision

"The Prime Minister has benefited greatly from the month's complete rest prescribed by his doctors." So said a communique from No. 10 Downing Street last week.

It is now known that Sir Winston Churchill suffered a slight stroke,* and that it was followed by one mild relapse. But, leaving his Chartwell home last week, he posed cheerfully for photographers, and waddled unaided to his car. pausing on the way to admire a lime tree in the yard. Beside him on the car seat, in token of the busy days ahead, lay a box of black cigars. He headed for Chequers, Britain's country retreat for its prime ministers, which he does not like as well as Chartwell, though it is closer to the pulse of things. There he let it be known that he was not pleased with the recent foreign ministers' conference in Washington, and still wants top-level talks with the Russians. But mostly, the old warrior pondered one grave decision: Should he keep on indefinitely in office, as he had always wished? Or should he hand over his favor to his faithful friend and (nephew-in-law) Anthony Eden, while he was still able to decide the succession? Eden's own health, and the ascending political popularity of two other Tory cabinet members, Rab Butler and Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, made the issue important.

At week's end Eden, leaned out by his illness, but feeling fit (see NEWS IN PICTURES), flew in from his U.S. convalescence to join the Prime Minister at Chequers. For two weeks they would talk it over, before setting out for the Mediterranean. Guessed one Churchill associate: "Winnie might hand over around the time of the annual Tory conference in October. I wouldn't lay you 2 to 1 against it."

*Brought on by contraction of the blood vessels in the brain. This often happens to elderly people who work too hard; the stroke suffered may be so slight that the patient is often unaware of it.

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