"Delighted, Ma'am!"

When an upset stomach forced an obviously tired Queen Elizabeth to take a couple of days off from her Canadian tour, London's Daily Herald cried out in alarm: THE QUEEN IS EXHAUSTED BRING HER HOME! "The truth is Her Majesty has the colly-wobbles," said the Daily Mirror. When with Gallic intuition France-Soir suggested that "Queen Elizabeth's fatigue and illness may presage a happy event," the idea was loyally denied by the Queen's press secretary as "absolute nonsense." He had not been told the news. Last week the rumors were confirmed: for the first time since 1857, when Queen Victoria bore her ninth and last child (Princess Beatrice, who died in 1944), a reigning Queen of Britain was going to have a baby.

FEBRUARY BABY? asked the News Chronicle, but all the palace would say was that the royal personage would be born some time "early next year." If a boy, the child would take precedence over Princess Anne, who will be nine this week, as next in line for the British throne after ten-year-old Prince Charles. Already, the British press was sorting favorite names--George, Albert, James or Andrew for a prince; Mary, Elizabeth, Victoria or Charlotte for a princess. WELL, WHAT LOVELY NEWS, glowed the Daily Sketch. DELIGHTED, MA'AM ! added the Daily Mail.

"Both the Queen and Prince Philip have always been anxious to have more children, and they are very happy about it." said a palace spokesman. Most everybody in Britain apparently felt the same way. When the 33-year-old Queen and her family withdrew for the weekend to bleak Balmoral Castle, Scotland, thousands of curious tourists jammed the neighborhood, and extra police were rushed to Balmoral to fend off rubbernecks.

The Queen's secret had been well kept until she had a chance to return to Britain and be examined by her own physician, Lord Evans. Now it could be told that back in July Canada's Prime Minister John Diefenbaker had been let in on the secret (as had Ike and Mamie), but that it was the Queen alone who had decided not to curtail her tour except for those two days at Whitehorse in the Yukon. Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana had also been told, early because, as the palace announced last week, the Queen's fall tour of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Gambia would have to be canceled.

In Accra, the Ghana Times "humbly" suggested that the new baby be named either Amma Ghana or Kwame Ghana. In London, palace officials were busy looking up the proper procedure for setting up a Council of State to take on the Queen's duties later on. In the midst of popular enthusiasm, more sobersided politicians took note of another side effect of the news. With the Queen's presence in England next fall now assured (her acquiescence is necessary to the dissolution of Parliament), Prime Minister Harold Macmillan would have an extra month before having to call a general election, which presumably will now be held in November.

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