About 11,000 homing U.S. soldiers, cheering mightily, lined the rails of the great Queen Mary as she inched up New York Harbor. A band, aboard a small boat alongside, blared its welcome. Through it all, in his stateroom on the Mary, the Prime Minister of Canada rested undisturbed. Said he, later: “I sleep well.”
William Lyon Mackenzie King looked ruddy and happy after 28 fact-finding days in England. As he left the liner at Manhattan’s Pier 90, cameramen yelled at him, “C’mon, smile!” and “Wave your hat!” He did. Reporters nudged him into the pier’s pressroom, but he would only say that he had had a pleasant voyage. That night he was off for Washington.
When he was there last March he discussed U.S.-Canadian trade with his old friend Franklin Roosevelt. This time he would ponder the immense problem of the atom bomb with Harry Truman and Clement Attlee (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS). Not until that conference was over would King return to Canada.
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