The Press: 999

When a citizen of London hears stealthy footsteps in his pantry, finds his drawing room in flames, or stumbles over a body on the stairs, he knows precisely what to do. He picks up the nearest telephone, dials 999, and waits for help to come. For number 999 on London’s exchange brings policemen, fire engines, ambulances on the run.

One morning last week when the staid London Times turned up at breakfast with these cryptic numerals above a report of the previous day’s debate in Parliament, every good Londoner got the allusion. Britain’s bungling, War-born Ministry of Information was still being lambasted in the House of Commons. And the Times head was a plea for help from baffled editors whose effort to get news from the front had been balked by official red tape.

Two days earlier London’s press campaign against Perth Control (TIME, Sept. 25) had come to a climax when the Evening Standard printed an editorial in which it accused the Ministry of harboring political jobholders without news experience. Said the Standard: “It is staffed to capacity three or four times over, but stuffed with incapacity. We are not fighting the big Hitler on the Rhine only to set up little Hitlers here.”

Next day in the House of Commons Laborite John Morgan rose up to ask how many men the Ministry employed. Tall, baldish Sir Edward Grigg, appointed that morning to represent the Ministry in Parliament, answered for the Government: there were 872 in London, 127 provincial employes. A gusty Whew! swept like a wind through the House, followed by cries of anguish. Of these 999, Sir Edward added, 43 were former newsmen, 48 were Ministry officers chosen because they had press or radio experience. His explanation was greeted with a roar of laughter and jeers.

Another Laborite, George Griffith, called out: “Sack the lot!” Amidst more laughter Sir Edward said that Lord Macmillan, Minister of Information, recognized that “the situation requires investigation.” Interrupting him, Socialist J. J. Davison shouted: “It requires evacuation!” The House cheered.

Not alone in ridiculing Lord Macmillan’s Ministry was the House of Commons. In the Minister’s own House of Lords next day Opposition Whip Lord Strabolgi poked gentle fun at him: “Lord Macmillan’s position is that he is lying on his back with three Defense Ministers sitting on his chest.” (Laughter.) There was need, said Lord Strabolgi, for a man with “journalistic flair” to make the Ministry a powerful department as it was in World War I under Britain’s late, great news baron, Lord Northcliffe.

While Parliament bandied witticisms, almost forgetting there was a war in Europe, British journals grew increasingly bitter. They wanted more newsmen, fewer admirals in the Ministry. Said the Yorkshire Post: “We do not know who conceived the Ministry of Information but it was strangled in red tape at birth.” The Daily Express exclaimed: “Soon we will need leaflet raids on Britain to tell our own people how the War is going!” Thoroughly disgusted, the National Union of Journalists uttered a resolution: “Under present conditions the Ministry is both a national scandal and a national danger.”

This week, like a Japanese samurai who feels himself dishonored, the Ministry committed harakiri. Its regional offices disbanded, the staff in London prepared for wholesale dismissals. A skeleton Ministry hoped to carry on as a propaganda agency; but Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was expected to announce that a new department would censor news dispatches and issue Government communiques.

Correspondents in Berlin were still treated with unwonted courtesy by Nazi officials, still cabled their stories without Government interference. At the Taverne, Italian restaurant in Kurfürsten Strasse, they could sit around the newsmen’s stammtisch (regular customers’ table) sipping their brandy-and-lemon Nikolaevskys long after Berlin’s 1 a.m. war curfew, when other restaurants closed. As a special favor the Government gave them laborers’ rations: two pounds of meat a week, instead of the single pound allotted to white-collar workers.