Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother extremely enthusiastic, and largely dissipated any residual feeling that George and Elizabeth were a lesser substitute for Edward. Elizabeth told Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, "that tour made us", and she returned to Canada frequently both on official tours and privately. During the Second World War, the King and Queen became symbols of the fight against fascism. Shortly after the declaration of war, "The Queen's Book of the Red Cross" was conceived. Fifty authors and artists contributed to the book, which was fronted by Cecil Beaton's portrait of the Queen and was sold in aid of the Red
RMS Queen Elizabeth and an outdoor swimming pool. With these improvements, Cunard intended to keep the ship in operation until at least the middle 1970s. However, the strategy did not prove successful due to the high fuel costs plus the ship's deep draught, which prevented her from entering various island ports, and the ship's width which preventing her from using the Panama Canal. Cunard retired "Queen Mary" in 1967 and "Queen Elizabeth" by 1969 and replaced them with a single, smaller ship, the more economical "Queen Elizabeth 2". In 1968, "Queen Elizabeth" was sold to a group of American businessmen from a company