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Lost Touch. The problems themselves (TIME, Jan. 7) were grown far beyond any swashbuckling decisions. There were the pressing new threats of Communist aggression, such as the stepped-up Red Chinese pressure on Southeast Asia (and particularly on Malaya, Britain's guerrilla-besieged tin and rubber reservoir). There were differences in tactics of foreign policy, ranging from how to handle the Middle East to Churchill's predilection for a Big Three conference with Truman and Stalin (which the U.S. opposes). There were Churchill's doubts about General Eisenhower's international army. But above all else was the fact that, in the time of her own financial and foreign-affairs crises, Britain had somehow lost touch with the U.S.
It was this touch that Winston Churchill was best qualified to restore, and he would get his supreme chance not in the secret conferences but in his address to a joint session of Congress next week. The old man was a fighter for liberty, and would be until his last breath. On that point, at least, there was already an intimate understanding between Britain and the U.S.
*The British Information Service calls Churchill's sawed-off stovepipe a "high bowler." The British Embassy calls it a "billycock"; London hatters call it a "hard crown"; some of their customers call it a "bowler cum topper" or sometimes a "Muller" in deference to one Franz Müller, who was convicted of murder and hanged in England in 1864. Part of the evidence against him was that he had left such a hat behind on a train. A Manhattan hatter offered the last word: "It's not a cut-down tall hat, it's a high-crowned low-crowned hat."