Home Again

For the first time in four full weeks, William Lyon Mackenzie King stepped out of his office in Ottawa's Parliament Building, padded across the corridor with a portfolio under his arm, pushed aside the green. curtains and stepped into the House of Commons. There was a pattering of applause and some members walked to his desk to shake his hand. The 72-year-old Prime Minister had looked wan and tired when he went away. Now he was ruddy, rested and in high spirits. A month of soaking up southern sunshine had done him good.

On his way home from Virginia, he had stopped in Washington to visit old friends. At the naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, he chatted with Cordell Hull. In Harry Truman's White House office, the P.M. talked alone with the President. Presumably, besides discussing common defense problems, they also made plans for the President's visit to Ottawa--some time in June, the P.M. said later, and "the President plans to bring Mrs. Truman with him, and possibly their daughter Margaret."

At other times, Mr. King took things easy in the chintzy "Presidential Room" at Blair House, diagonally across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. When he said his goodbyes, he told his hosts (officially, the State Department) that there was no place that he liked better. Then there had been a stopoff in New York, at the Harvard Club, in a simple room plastered with pictures of faded football teams and Crimson crews.

Back home at the Union Station in Ottawa, newsmen, photographers and Government bigwigs, headed by External Affairs Minister Louis Stephen St. Laurent, welcomed Mr. King. A little girl wedged close to him to get her first look at Canada's Prime Minister. Said she: "Gee, he's got a lot of hair in his ears."

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