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Elizabeth, whose very presence at Downing Street was something of a shattering of precedent, was not averse to shattering another. After Churchill's speech, she herself rose and in a clear voice announced that she was about to do what few sovereigns had ever done before. "I propose the health of my Prime Minister," she said.
Outside in the dim street, the crowd waiting through this dazzling dinner at Downing Street speculated whether there would be any dramatic announcement that night. Next morning several hundred were still waiting and guessing. All morning they waited and talked, as the great men of the land went in and out the black door. By late afternoon there were more than 2,000 gawpers standing in the street. "I wish they'd tell us something," groused a photographer."! haven't eaten since last night."
Off to the Palace. The door opened and an office worker popped out. Everyone laughed from sheer nervousness. At 4:25 the door opened once more and out stepped Winston Churchill, in striped pants, frock coat and topper. There was a sparse cheer or two, then suddenly the street rocked with three huge, earsplitting cheers of acclaim. A slight, sad smile crinkled the Churchillian features for a moment. Then, clamping firmly on his cigar, the Prime Minister climbed into his car and headed for Buckingham Palace.
An hour later, after Churchill and Elizabeth talked alone, a palace bulletin made it official that "the Right Honorable Sir Winston Churchill has tendered his resignation as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which Her Majesty was graciously pleased to accept." "Good old Winnie!" shouted the crowd at Downing Street once again when Churchill returned. The old man smiled through tear-dimmed eyes, raised his fingers in the victory sign and went inside. Soon afterward the street was nearly empty once again. That evening Churchill came out of the house once more, climbed into his car and drove to his doctor's for a checkup.
No Time for Obits. From far and wide next day the tributes poured in. Great contemporaries, heads of state, ancient enemies, old colleagues, distant admirers, journalists, historians, soldiers, statesmen and plain men in the street took to their typewriters, their telegraph pads, their microphones, their notepaper or simply the local pub to heap praise on a career that has seldom been matched.
Germany's 79-year-old Konrad Adenauer at first refused to believe the news that Churchill had quit. "All of us in the free world need his advice and will always seek it," he said.
"We shall never accept the thought that we are to be denied your counsel," said President Eisenhower.
In the spate of encomium, Churchill was compared with everything, from an endless cavalry charge to Leonardo da Vinci. As everyone tried his best to rise to the occasion—tempted, no doubt, by a wish to be as eloquent as Winston Churchill himself would have been—the London Economist was at last moved to remark that "Sir Winston Churchill is not dead. He has merely retired from the office of Prime Minister . . . The time has fortunately not yet come to write his obituary."