One More Close Call

This week the tension eased. Small showers of memoranda began dropping on the desks of military and civil leaders. Winston Churchill was getting well, was working again.

The Prime Minister had lingered on in the Middle East, picking up loose ends of the Cairo and Teheran conferences. Suddenly, it was announced, his cold had developed into pneumonia. During the next four days the world waited for each bulletin from 10 Downing Street. Occasionally it was stirred by rumors that the end had come. Although the people knew that on Nov. 30 Churchill had entered the last year of his Biblical allotment, it was unthinkable that he might die now, before his mighty job was done.

Narrow Squeaks. The illness was one more close call for Churchill. At the age of nine, in the damp, cold English climate, he had double pneumonia. There were no sulfa drugs then. The physician who attended him remarked, when he saw the recovery, that Churchill had a charmed life.

At twelve, at Harrow, he fell 30 feet off a bridge, broke his shoulder instead of his head. At 21, in Cuba, he walked untouched through a rain of bullets. At 23, in India, he jumped from boat to dock, misjudged, smasl ed again his once-broken right shoulder (on this occasion he is reported to have uttered "most unChristian oaths").

Fighting in India, in the Soudan, in the Boer War, he walked or rode through many a space filled with pinging bullets. In World War I, German shells demolished a dugout five minutes after he had left it. Shortly after that, he was in a "Plug-street" (Ploegsteert, a village in Flanders) farmhouse when a shell came through the roof, wounded only his adjutant.

He had an acute appendix operation in 1921. Ten years later a New York taxicab knocked him down, gave him lacerations and pleurisy. He recovered with the aid of 3,000 units of anti-tetanus serum. Only ten months ago he had another attack of pneumonia.

The record seems to show that Churchill is susceptible to lung ailments. There is a limit to the capacity of an aging, though apparently tireless, body to fight them off.

No More Travels? The news of his illness broke, in midweek, in the House of Commons. In an atmosphere of solemn concern there was strong talk of making sure that henceforth the Prime Minister stay at home, that future conferences be held in London. Since war began, Churchill has traveled about 70,000 miles to talk with other statesmen. Britons thought this was not only an enormous lot but quite enough. Churchill may be of a different opinion.

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