Eyes Front

An engagement that the British Royal Family takes as seriously as anything on its calendar is the annual Armistice Day ceremony at Whitehall's Cenotaph. Standing bareheaded at such a service nine years ago George V caught the cold from which he never fully recovered, yet to repeated suggestions that this ceremony in the murderous November damp be given up, the Royal Family has always turned a deaf ear.

Last week every Briton with a radio and the 3,000 odd who own television sets received much more at this service than they expected. In the pinkly flickering tubes of their televisors they could see King George stiffly standing before the Cenotaph in a Field Marshal's khaki-colored greatcoat, beyond him, the British Cabinet in funereal black, beyond them a double row of bluejackets rigidly at attention, behind them the windows of the Home Office where Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mother Mary watched the ceremony. Big Ben bonged eleven times and a sudden dramatic silence blanketed the entire city of London.

Skittering through the guards slipped a wild-eyed man in a stained trench coat, loudly shouting: "Stop all this hypocrisy! You are deliberately preparing for war!"

Before he could say or do more, panting overcoated policemen pounced on him, knocked him to the pavement, bloodied his nose. King George and the Cabinet stood like ramrods, eyes front, ignoring the scuffle (see cut). Queen Elizabeth gasped, clutched at her throat, then relaxed when danger was past. The tousled protestant turned out to be one Stanley Storey, escaped from the Cane Hill Insane Asylum on Sept. 21.

Throughout the rest of London only three incidents marred the solemnity of of the two-minute silence. At Ludgate Circus an iron-lipped whistler continued to shrill Night Must Fall until a crowd threatened to lynch hihim, and at Spitalfield Market Church the sentimental silence was shattered by a realist who suddenly shouted: "The dead are all right. What about me? I haven't had any breakfast!" Police had to rescue him.

In Regent's Park Pond a middle-aged patriot was placidly rowing a boat when the silence began, tried to stand upright in his skiff and splashed overboard. Coming to the surface he stood waist-deep in muck and cold water, head bowed for 90 seconds before squishing ashore.

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