An M.P. rose to question the War Secretary one day last week. What of the visit young Edmund Ironside (15-year-old Tonbridge schoolboy, son of Britain's Chief of Imperial General Staff) had recently made to France? Was this not stretching privilege? Would the sons of privates be permitted to visit their fathers at the front?
Polite War Secretary Oliver Stanley replied that Edmund had gone to France on the personal invitation of France's Gen eralissimo Maurice Gamelin, to see his father get the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. It was "a very exceptional" visit ; probably no other children would be...