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Two years later the country went to war. As Britain's people buckled down to their grim existence, they demanded more & more the comfort of seeing their imperial darling. "Why didn't you bring the Princess?" war-plant workers often shouted at the King and Queen. "We want Elizabeth!"
Yellow Glare. At 18 the heiress to the throne came of age, imperially, ready to assume the Crown if her father died. As a private person she would not come of age for three years. The question of her official debut could be put off no longer, and in 1943 the wartime Princess was officially introduced to her people in the vivid, yellow glare of the blast furnaces in a Welsh tin-plate mill. Miners, factory girls, housewives and dock hands turned out by the thousands to cheer her on a two-day tour. Denied the privilege of hailing her as Princess of Wales (she is still only Heiress Presumptive, on the supposition that a male Heir Apparent may be born to claim the title of Wales), the Welsh bestowed upon her their own homespun title, Ein Tywysoges—"Our own Princess."
The Smasher. In stage center, Elizabeth blossomed as she never had in the back row. Reporters called her a natural, and radiomen crooned in delight when, at the end of her first broadcast, she ad-libbed a homey little touch by asking Margaret to say goodnight to the British evacuees abroad. Stage-struck from childhood, and on her own at last, Elizabeth was in her element, even if she did sometimes take her duties too seriously. On one dreadful occasion, when she was invited to review the graduating class at a famous officers' training school, Elizabeth had promptly pointed out an unshined buckle on one cadet. An embarrassed hush hung heavy as lead as the hapless offender was called up and rebuked.