Foreign News: Chamberlain Out

After 29 years of public life gaunt, gout-ridden Neville Chamberlain retired last week to nurse his failing health. To the once bitterly critical Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, who succeeded him as Prime Minister, Chamberlain addressed a letter in the tone of the adviser and friend he had become in recent months. It began “Dear Winston,” explained his reasons for retiring, concluded “Yours ever.” “Dear Winston” replied with equal gallantry in the prose for which history undoubtedly will remember him.

Bevin Up. The Chamberlain exit put into the all-powerful War Cabinet a patient, stubborn slab of a man named Ernest (“Give ‘Itler ‘Ell”) Bevin. As the National Government’s new Minister of Labor he has so ably unmuddled his department that his hold on the popular imagination is the greatest political phenomenon of the war. Built like a beer barrel, ungrammatically eloquent Bevin wedged himself into the revised Cabinet as the apex of pyramiding trade-union strength. No mere pub gabble was the talk of Bevin as “our next Prime Minister.” However, there were no signs last week that Prime Minister Churchill was missing any political busses.

New Jobs. Upstairs to Chamberlain’s old job as Lord President of the Council stumbled Sir John Anderson, whose experiences as policeman in Ireland, Bengal and the General Strike gave him poor training for the job of Minister for Home Security.

Into Sir John’s old job went weak-eyed, strong-willed Herbert Morrison, a Laborite who knew London’s problems from having lived in its slums and having battled to get rid of them while running the London County Council. Succeeding Morrison in the key post of Minister of Supply was cold, shrewd Sir Andrew Rae Duncan, chairman of the Executive Committee of the British Iron and Steel Federation, who moved up from Presidency of the Board of Trade. Into the Board of Trade went handsomely mustached Captain Oliver Lyttelton, who, before the war, was managing director of British Metal Corp. and held enough other directorates—including one with the German Metallgesellschaft A.-G.—to bring in £20,000 in annual fees. Viscount Caldecote, who as Sir Thomas Inskip did more to prevent changes in the Anglican prayer book than he did to increase colonial plant production, was sidetracked to Lord Chief Justice. Brought in out of the rain was thin-faced, properly cravated Viscount Cranborne, Anthony Eden’s “Foreign Office twin” whose loyalty was at last rewarded when he was named to Lord Caldecote’s vacated post as Dominions’ Secretary. Sir John Reith, having done little but look sour and unapproachable as Minister of Information and then as Minister of Transport, was tossed a baronetage and for equally inexplicable reasons named to a new post as Minister of Works and Public Buildings, charged with the eventual rebuilding of London. In as new Minister of Transport went sporty Lieut. Colonel John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, holder of the Royal Aero Club’s No. 1flying certificate, twice Parliamentary Secretary to the Transport Ministry, who is known around his greyhound racing tracks (in 1937 they paid 40% dividends) as “Brab.”

5-to-3. Having shuffled virtually the same old pack to deal out this Cabinet, Churchill then dealt his own Conservative Party a pat hand in the new inner War Cabinet. By adding Bevin he had three Laborites and three Conservatives in the innermost council of the British Empire. But the Conservative Party controls the bulk of Britain’s wealth and a two-thirds Parliamentary majority (frozen while the war lasts). So the Conservative Prime Minister upped his War Cabinet to eight, added Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood and Sir John Anderson. This brought the standing of Britain’s controlling body to three Laborites, five Conservatives.

Viewed from its too many angles the new Cabinet shaped itself up as a time bomb which must eventually explode. Encased in their common desire for victory, there must nevertheless be some acid friction between Bevin, who was the brains of the General Strike, and men who helped break it; between others who had learned not to trust each other’s judgment in the past and had no particular assurance that in a pinch they could trust each other’s judgment now.

Growl and Grumbles. Churchill’s growl still set the keynote of his people’s temper. He still rode high in their affections as war leader, but there was also a grumble, which CBS Broadcaster Edward (christened Egbert) Murrow defined as coming from caste-conscious Britons who were beginning to realize that “all are equal under the bomb.”

War profiteering has not been fully curbed. This sort of situation did not sit well with a public facing a new tax load in the form of a purchase tax rising to a maximum of 33⅓% on such items as winter clothing and household goods. Added to these irritants in civilian life was the arrival of Britain’s miserable winter weather, the still present threat of invasion, the anxiety of continuing air raids, the problem of keeping a mobilized but inactive army of more than two million men out of mischief, the possibility of another blow to civilian morale if, for instance, symbolic Gibraltar falls.

Steam Off. Best valve available last week through which to blow off angry popular steam was old Mr. Chamberlain. The London Times bade him good-by by acknowledging that for more than three years he bore “a load of responsibility as heavy and thankless as any that was ever carried by a British Prime Minister. …” Not so gallant, angry British masses have for months wanted him to take his umbrella, tuck it under his arm, and go back to manufacturing brass bedsteads in Birmingham. For in the British public mind, man and umbrella have come to symbolize an era of, to say the least, Damned Bad Management.

Starchiest comment on Mr. Chamberlain’s historic role was at hand in a new little book called Guilty Men, an on-the-record, non-editorialized indictment of Chamberlain and 14 of his pre-and post-Munich peers (TIME, Sept. 30). Author was “Cato,” identified by wiseacres as the Evening Standard’s brilliant newsman Michael Foote.

On the record there was little doubt that Chamberlain reflected Britain’s great desire for peace when he talked with Hitler at Munich. That he was not altogether naive in his appraisal of the European situation was evident by his having ably stocked Britain with foodstuffs. When he was convinced of Hitler’s bad faith he did foresee the need for British armament. Yet there was little credit due him for having made a “deal” to stall for time when the arrival of war showed he had failed to capitalize on delay, his armament program had not progressed much beyond the promissory scale.

A five-year survey of Neville Chamberlain’s remarks on the British armament drive makes a poor epitaph for one whose family served the Empire in high station for 64 years:

Jan. 1935—”If we are to make our contribution to that general sense of security in Europe we must at all events be sufficiently armed to be able to do so.”

Nov. 1935—”The Government have been conscious that their hands have been weakened by the knowledge of other countries that Britain was not strong enough, either at sea or at land. . . .”

July 1936—”No one . . . can doubt that if we are to play our part in preserving the peace … it is absolutely necessary that we should rehabilitate our armed forces. . . .”

Fall of 1937—”I must frankly admit that progress is not yet as fast as I should like but it soon will be … production has begun in earnest.”

Dec. 1937—”The country is … getting stronger every day.”

March 1938—”The almost terrifying power that Britain is building up has a sobering effect on the opinion of the world.”

After Munich, 1938—”We must renew our determination to fill up the deficiencies that yet remain in our armaments.”

Feb. 1939—”Our arms are so great that, without taking into account the Dominions’ contribution, ‘Come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them.’ ”

April 1940—”Those seven months that we have had have enabled us to make good and remove our weaknesses … so enormously to add to our fighting strength that we can face the future with a calm and steady mind, whatever it brings.”