Sir Eric and the Five Inches

New York Daily Newsman Howard Whitman went around to Buckingham Palace to see how the King was getting on.

"I'm an American citizen," Whitman said to a burly sergeant. "I'd like to see the King. . . ."

"Now that's a one, isn't it," exclaimed the sergeant. "Fact of it is you can't even go into the palace. This is a private house, this is."

Whitman's subsequent adventures, as recorded by Whitman:

"After a long wait I was able to see the police inspector in charge of the palace detail. . . . 'Quite impossible,' he said. 'Don't you realize that no one can enter this palace at all, except by appointment?'

" 'Well, how about an appointment?'

" 'The procedure is to write to the Master of the Household. . . .'

" 'Then what?'

" 'He'll reply that you can't have one.'"

The Red Carpet. "I decided to see how far I'd get as a reporter. The first step was to look up Buckingham Palace in the telephone book and call Whitehall 4832. When I got His Majesty's press agent representative on the wire, instead of saying to him 'Hey Butch, how about a squint at the big shot?' I had to call him Sir Eric and couch my request in Sunday language.* It worked. . . .

"We tiptoed along red carpets and emerged in Grand Hall, an oblong place filled with marble pillars and gilded cherubs. There was George VI, King, Emperor, in the flesh, handing out medals and shaking hands with intrepid subjects who were queued up in a long line. . . ."

The Tub. "Most of the palace is shut off now. . . . 'Wartime severity, you know,' said Sir Press Agent. Unlike Broadway publicity boys, he didn't ask me to put in a plug for anything, except perhaps for the palace bathtubs which have rings painted around them at the five-inch level. That's for wartime conservation. The rule in Britain is that you bathe in five inches of water, maximum. . . . 'After all,' Sir Eric said, 'the royal family are people, you know. . . .'

"I said, 'Why yes, of course,' and as we parted Sir Eric said, no thanks, he didn't care for a stick of gum."

*Reporter Whitman evidently called before Sir Eric Mieville, the King's secretary, turned over the royal press agentry to Captain Lewis A. Ritchie, R.N. (TIME, May 29).

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