GREAT BRITAIN: Shirts On

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As they did in Brussels before Waterloo, British officers danced late in London last week. In Berlin there was no dancing. Dancing is forbidden in Germany as a frivolity out of keeping with war. In Britain they danced to show their nerve—and because they could not sleep. Berliners looked at the wreckage of their homes, remembered that they had been told their city was impregnable, said nothing. Londoners shook their fists at the sky. As sirens wailed and fires burned, as the war of mutual destruction gained fury, stolid Germans and the scarcely more volatile British alike wondered if this was the beginning of the end of their capitals.

When people wonder, their leaders speak. First to speak up last week was Adolf Hitler. One afternoon he appeared unexpectedly before a hand-picked Nazi audience in Berlin’s Sportspalast and strode jauntily out on the platform. He looked chipper and fit. He had a fresh haircut, his mustache had just been trimmed. His job was to explain why Germany was being bombed with such disquieting regularity, and Orator Hitler did a good job.

“For three months I have not allowed an answer to be given because I was of the opinion that they would stop this mischief,” he explained. “We will now spoil the game of these air pirates. . . . If the British Air Force drops 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 kilograms of bombs, then we shall now in a single night drop 150,000, 300,000 or 400,000 kilograms of bombs, and more.”

The cheering, stamping audience shouted most thunderously when Orator Hitler sent this message to Great Britain: “I now prefer to fight until finally a wholly clear decision is reached. . . . When the British say: ‘He doesn’t come,’ my answer is: ‘Keep your shirts on. He is coming.’ “

Next day Winston Churchill rose in the House of Commons to reply to Adolf Hitler—and to tell his own people what was in store for them. The Prime Minister was also jaunty. Although the House had had to adjourn for an hour during an air raid, Mr. Churchill’s humor was intact. He began by paying his respects to his foe (“No doubt Herr Hitler will not like this transference of [U.S.] destroyers”), went on to express his confidence that Hitler’s Empire would pass away more quickly than did Napoleon’s Army (“although of course without any of its glitter and glory”). Then Winston Churchill got down to the point.

“The Germans have put forth a greater proportion of their total air strength than we have. . . . We must be prepared for heavier fighting in this month of September. The need of the enemy to obtain a decision is very great, and if he has the numbers with which we have hitherto credited him, he should be able to magnify and multiply his attacks during September. . . . Even if the average attack is doubled, or even trebled … we can stand it.”

It was a challenge given, a challenge accepted. Two days later Chancellor Hitler made good his boast, Prime Minister Churchill his defiance. The British were sure they could stand it not only because their nerves were good, but because they knew that their Air Force was still intact, that man-for-man and ship-for-ship it was better than the Luftwaffe, and that behind the still outnumbered R. A. F. was a broadening stream of new equipment which, they fervently hoped, might eventually drive German planes from their skies. In aircraft production more than in any other effort of their war lay Britons’ chance of beating The Man Hitler.

Correspondents who last week made a tour of the Midlands factory district, where most British airplanes and parts are made, reported no appreciable damage. One correspondent poked his nose into the garden of William Maxwell Aitken, Baron Beaverbrook, who is Minister of Aircraft Production, and found everything quiet there. Not long before, Lord Beaverbrook had said: “If you want to see what damage Hitler’s done, take a look into Beaverbrook’s garden. When you see a little man tearing up and down, raging and shaking his fist at the sky, you’ll know Hitler’s hit aircraft production.”

In spite of individual superiority, in spite of the advantage of fighting at home, Britain is still far behind Germany in air strength. Best estimate of present first-line strength gives Germany 12,500 ships, Britain 6,600. Even if the rate of production is neither better nor worse than last spring, Germany is still producing 2,300 planes a month. Last month Britain claimed a production of nearly 1,800 planes, got between 350 and 400 from the U. S. The 1,800 figure is almost exactly twice as many as British factories turned out in May, the month Lord Beaverbrook took charge. Even if Britain goes down this fall, it will not be Lord Beaverbrook’s fault. If she holds out, it will be his triumph. This war is a war of machines. It will be won on the assembly line.

“The Methods.” Not Iong ago a civil servant who had just been transferred to the Ministry of Aircraft Production expressed the general complaint against the Ministry. “You’d hardly believe the appalling state of this office,” said he. “The place is a complete chaos.” Somebody asked: “Isn’t the Beaver producing the planes?” “Oh, yes,” said the complainant, “he’s producing them all right. But, my dear fellow, the methods! They’re dreadful.”

When Winston Churchill created a new ministry for him four months ago, Lord Beaverbrook considered himself the most unpopular man in Britain. In 31 years since he had gone over from Canada, a rich Colonial with a twangy voice and a wardrobe of loud suits, he had been phenomenally successful as a publisher, fairly successful in politics, utterly unsuccessful in getting himself widely liked. He was an outlander and he could get things done, and for one thing as much as the other stodgy Britons mistrusted him. In Britain “brilliant” is an opprobrious term.

For the same reason, they once mistrusted Winston Churchill. But last May, when the House of Commons preferred the nighty brilliance of Mr. Churchill to the dignified ineffectuality of Neville Chamberlain, it acquiesced in a revolution in British politics. It was the beginning of the end of the Old School Tie.* Lord Beaverbrook was a part of the revolution. At that time the British wanted things done, and the Beaver proceeded to do them. They remembered that it took a Welshman to win their last war for them.

Lord Beaverbrook moved his new ministry into the Imperial Chemical Industries House on Millbank, beyond Whitehall, and promptly turned the nea flawlessness of the building into something resembling the newsroom of his Express. Doors were left open, telephones rang like bedlam. Once-prim civil servants were told to take off their coats, roll up their sleeves. In the midst of it all, often from 8 a.m. until past midnight, Lord Beaverbrook sat breathing deeply in the atmosphere he liked best.

Before he took charge, the job of producing airplanes rested in many hands, largely military, and could proceed only after endless consultations. Lord Beaverbrook took everything into his own hands, then parceled out responsibility to committees and personal advisers, largely outsiders. As committee heads and advisers he picked his own men, many of them self-made like himself. He chose Canada’s onetime Prime Minister Richard Bedford Bennett, an old friend, to advise him on Canadian and U. S. affairs; calm, bald Albert Henry Stanley, Baron Ashfield, an asthmatic expert on guns to tackle industrial and production problems; a onetime office boy named Frank Spencer Spring, managing director of Hawker Siddeleys Aircraft Corp., to supervise airframe production; Motor-magnate William Edward Rootes, son of a garage owner, to head the aero-engine committee; British Woolworth’s Chairman William Lawrence Stephenson, who began work at 13 earning five shillings a week, to buy all British aircraft equipment. One of the Beaver’s most successful appointments was of a sailor, Admiral Sir Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans (“Evans of the Broke”), to look after the security of aircraft factories and airdromes.

“Spur, Whip, Oats.” To get raw materials quickly Lord Beaverbrook jumped into the scramble that had preceded him, emerged with a system of portioning out materials as they became available, giving plants what they currently needed. One Saturday soon after he went to work he discovered that he needed some cotton material to complete the manufacture of a batch of planes. His underling telephoned the mills in Lancashire, found them closed for the weekend. So the Beaver called the police, ordered them to round up mill managers and workers. Police nabbed the mill executives on golf courses and tennis courts, searched parks, pubs and cinemas for the workers. By Sunday morning the mills were going and Lord Beaverbrook got his cotton on time.

He speeded up plants by stopping all design changes once a plane was in the production line, military fussiness having caused incredible delays in both British and U. S. factories. He concentrated, like Hermann Göring, on a few proved types. With recalcitrant manufacturers he used what an assistant called “spur and whip, and sometimes a bag of oats.” Every manufacturer found himself accountable to one of Lord Beaverbrook’s committeemen, at first weekly, then once a day.

As in the days when he ran the Express and the Standard, the Beaver meets his committee heads in conference every afternoon. He presides lolling in a big chair. Every night at 11 o’clock (the hour when British dailies go to bed with their first editions) his secretary collects from each committee a full report of work done that day. Next morning Lord Beaverbrook reads these reports, then takes action. Example: one report told of a small Midlands manufacturer who was down in his output because of a shortage of certain classes of material and labor. A neighbor ing manufacturer had a surplus of both the material and the men, but Manufacturer No. 1 was not on speaking terms with Manufacturer No. 2. So Lord Beaver brook telephoned first one and then the other, coaxed them into cooperating. Next thing he heard, they were buddies.

By nagging, harrying, wheedling, the Beaver got underlings to assume responsibility. One subordinate whom he bawled out (as he once bawled out Fleet Street editors) wrote a stiff request for transfer. The Beaver read the note, muttered cozily: “My frightful temper,” and ordered a dozen bottles of champagne, a dozen bottles of brandy, a dozen bottles of whiskey and (in case he didn’t drink) a dozen bottles of ginger beer sent to the offended secretary. With them went a note: “From a bad Minister to a fine Under Secretary.” Since he became so busy, Lord Beaverbrook has stopped giving big dinners, now has a few aircraft men to dinner once or twice a week. When he tells them they have done “first rate” they glow. Dinner at Stornoway House (13 Cleveland Row, London) is served by four footmen at 9 or 10 o’clock. Sometimes the host is late, sometimes he doesn’t appear. Some times he rushes in for the soup course, dashes out, returns with an Air Marshal. After dinner he sinks into a big blue chair, turns a spotlight on himself, leaving his guests in the dark, and goes over his papers, firing questions at the guests. In the midst of their answers he interrupts them by picking up a telephone and bark ing: “I want 20 lorries,” or “Get me Montreal. . . . I want 50 pilots. I want them at Montreal tomorrow morning.” If he happens to notice that his guests look thirsty, he will say: “You must have some champagne. I have the finest champagne collection in London.” Every night he telephones his son Max at his fighter squadron, to find out if he is still alive.

His underlings like the Beaver now. So does the British public, which considers him as securely settled in his job as Winston Churchill is in his. Critics call him a dictator, point out that the Government would be in a frightful mess if all the Ministries were run like Beaverbrook’s. That does not worry the Beaver. They complain that he has put industrial leaders in control of supplies used in their industries. The Beaver says his men are efficient. They complain that he has stolen publicity from other Ministries with stunts such as his aluminum-collecting campaign, is tight with legitimate ministerial news. The Beaver says: “My job is to produce airplanes, not publicity.” He picked his own public-relations man, silver-haired, hard-boiled J. B. Wilson of the Express, to filter news from his Ministry, not to funnel it.

Even his mildest critics say that Beaverbrook is “slightly cracked.” But a Canadian columnist summed up the general opinion of him thus: “Positive, bee; comparative, beaver; superlative, Beaverbrook.” To keep Britain’s aircraft factories running during a Blitzkrieg is a job comparable to running General Motors’ 38 U. S. plants in an earthquake.

The Revolution. That such a bawling, boasting, gauche little man from the Colonies could secure a hold on British public opinion second only to Winston Churchill’s is only one sign of the social revolution that is proceeding apace in Great Britain. It is a revolution in that it is being carried out without benefit of elections, yet it undoubtedly follows the will of the people. It began on May 10 when Winston Churchill succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister.

Churchill named a Cabinet that was truly a coalition, but the balance of power, in terms of popular following, shifted from the Conservatives (who have 374 seats in the House of Commons) to Labor (which has 164 seats). Smart Winston Churchill knew that his only chance to win the war lay in the enthusiastic support of the working classes. Backed by press and public, with no real opposition from the abdicating ruling class, he brought forward such men as Minister of Supply Herbert Stanley Morrison, longtime Laborite Leader of the London County Council and Minister of Labor Ernest Bevin, the horny-handed General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. The British public, sick of the leadership that had produced Munich and bumbled through eight months of war, took these men to its heart, became so wildly enthusiastic over the “give ‘itler ‘ell” speeches of Ernest Bevin that he is considered the best bet to be next Prime Minister. Whether he is or whether he is not, Britain is through with rule by its traditional ruling class.

Two things have maintained the Conservatives in nominal power so far: 1) the need of unity in the face of Hitler’s threat; 2) the Conservatives’ overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. But since the illness of Conservative Leader Neville Chamberlain, another man has gradually usurped the actual leadership of the Party. He stays in the background and lets others drive, but he picks and orders the routes. That man is William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. Says he: “Nobody would have believed it. It’s as likely they’d have predicted I’d be Archbishop of Canterbury.”

— The Old School Tie is the diagonally striped neckpiece of a graduate of one of Britain’s Public Schools, so called because for 500 years they have been supposed to prepare young men for public service. They are extremely private schools, demanding rigid social qualifications as well as an average of $1,000 a year tuition fees. Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Rugby are the best known.