When I heard that Mrs. Thatcher resigned, I called her. I wanted her to know that my heart was with her, and that I thought England owed her a great debt and was going to miss her. I told her that the United States and many other countries would miss her as well. She was quite self- possessed, as always. She didn't hold any grudges (恶意). She just understood that this was the right thing to do. For as long as I have known her, she has known her mind and spoken it clearly. It was one of the things that I respected her for at our first meeting, back in 1975. I had just left the governorship of California and was in London to make a speech, and she had just taken the leadership of the Conservative Party. Justin Dart, an American businessman, set up the meeting. He told me that he thought we had much in common. We were only supposed to (被期望) meet for a few minutes, but we talked for over an hour. She was warm and feminine, gracious and intelligent, it was clear to me that we were soulmates (意气相投的人)when it came to reducing government and expanding economic opportunity. At a reception that evening, an Englishman asked me what I thought of her. I said, 'I think she' d make a magnificent Prime Minister. “He looked at me with mocking(愚弄)disdain (轻视)” My dear fellow, ' he said, “a women Prime Minister?” I replied that England had once had a queen named Victoria who had done rather well. A few years later, Mrs. Thatcher was Prime Minister -- and I had the chance to renew our friendship as the President. I admired greatly what she was doing in England to recover from the years of socialist rule because that's what the Labor Party is. We were always comfortable with each other. Our first state dinner was for her, and so was our last, We still stalk and I think there has never been any feeling in our relationship that we will stop. I plan to see her soon in England, though not, she reminded me, again at 10 Downing Street. In 1983, when I was hosting the Economic Summit in Williamsburg, Va. , we had a dinner at the old British colonial governor's home. I thought it would be fun to tease her in my toast by saying, 'Margaret, if some of your predecessor had been a little more clever, you would be hosting this dinner in Williamsburg. “I had gotten as far as saying”. . , a little more clever. . . 'When she cut in and joked, 'I know, I would be hosting this dinner in Williamsburg. 'We all had a good laugh. At the dinner, everyone turned and looked at me. 'Tell us about the American miracle, ' said Helmut Kohl, the chancellor of West Germany. I launched into a variation of the speech I had made for years, about how excessive tax rates can take away the incentive to produce, and how cutting taxes can generate growth. It wasn't long before I read about a wave of tax cutting in other countries. But no one did more in this regard than Margaret Thatcher. I don't claim credit for convincing her of the merits of free enterprise. She was just as determined as I to get government off the backs of the people. In many ways, she was able to accomplish more in this regard (在这个问题上) than we were, perhaps because she did not have to deal with a Democratic Congress. I believe it was Mrs. Thatcher who introduced the idea of all the heads of government at the economic summits addressing each other by their first names. I know it helped put me at ease(安逸). When I felt like the new kid at school at my first economic summit in Ottawa in 1981, I waited for a lull (间歇) in the meeting and said, 'My name is Ron. , ' I always thought she was a common-sense person who discussed things the way they ought to be discussed. We disagreed from time to time, but the disagreements went away when we had a chance to talk. Before I met with Mikhail Gorbachev of our first summit -- the Fireside Summit in Geneva in November, 1985 -- I talked with Mrs. Thatcher. She told me that Gorbachev was different from any of the other Kremlin lead