Chilly Reunion

Britain's Commonwealth, like all families, is harder to hold together as everyone grows up. Last April when Britain's prime Minister Harold Macmillan decided to call a conference of his fellow P.M.s throughout the Commonwealth, there seemed to be plenty for the family to talk about. Mother Britain's new defense cutbacks, its flirtation with the European Free Trade Area, and the economic and political aftermaths of the Suez incident (which threatened to break up the Commonwealth) were all family matters requiring friendly discussion. But when the time came to discuss them in London, half of the family were either too busy at home or feeling too unfriendly to bother.

This week, as the conference began in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street, only four of the eight Commonwealth Prime Ministers originally invited were on hand. Canada's St. Laurent, for years a quiet voice of moderation at such get-togethers, had just resigned office and been replaced by Tory John Diefenbaker (who turned up on schedule). Racist South Africa's Strydom refused to come for "personal reasons" which many ascribed to an unwillingness to sit down with--or to be photographed with--the new nation of Ghana's Negro P.M., Kwame Nkrumah. New Zealand's Sidney Holland was laid up with a slipped disk. Ceylon's Solomon Bandaranaike was busy at home fighting a civil-disobedience campaign. All three sent substitutes.

Of those government leaders who went to London, two, India's Nehru and Pakistan's Suhrawardy, were notoriously incompatible, and a third--Ghana's Nkrumah--had just annoyed the British by substituting his own portrait of the Queen's on Ghana's new stamps and coins.

Arriving in London, he explained disarmingly: "Many of my people cannot read or write. When they buy stamps they will see my picture--an African like themselves--and they will say 'Aiee, look, here is my leader on the stamps. We are truly a free people.' "

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