Guns Y. Butter

WHY ENGLAND SLEPT--John F. Kennedy--Funk ($2).

The choice, almost every Englishman could see clearly last week, had always been between guns and butter. That choice had not always been so clear to all Englishmen. In 1934 underfed Germany, faced with a choice of no butter or guns, chose guns. In 1934 well-fed England, faced with a choice of less butter or guns, chose butter. The issue was survival. Last week Germany in victory, Britain in jeopardy each gauged the consequences of its choice. Last week the U. S., nursing a seedling realism, also appraised those consequences in terms of the first serious threat to its continental security since the Trent Affair in 1861. Above all, Americans wanted to know how & why Britons had made the mistakes they made.

To help them find out, there appeared last week a startlingly timely, strenuously objective, 252-page book whose title, Why England Slept, paraphrased Winston Churchill's tocsin, While England Slept. Its author, John F. Kennedy, 23, who was graduated as an honor student from Harvard this June, is the second son of America's philoprogenitive Ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy. Its purpose is to arouse Americans 1) to the need of preparing for war in time of peace; 2) to the necessity of preparing for war as if they mean to fight. Says Author Kennedy: "A boxer cannot work himself into proper psychological and physical condition for a fight that he seriously believes will never come off." His plan for conditioning potential U. S. fighters is to show them step by step how England's failure to take war seriously from 1933 to 1939 brought her to the brink in 1940.

The political climate of the British Isles in 1933 was humidly antiwar. Britons did not want war. Britons did not believe there was going to be any war. They put their faith in the League of Nations and collective security. Labor was in no mood to forgo any of its privileges for the sake of national rearmament. Big business was in no mood to foot the rearmament bill. Winston Churchill might rave and rumble about the Nazi danger. But the Labor Party's Major Clement Attlee and Herbert Morrison (now Minister of Supply) struck more popular poses as humanitarians, League of Nations advocates, good Europeans. Meanwhile the Conservative Party ran the Government, held the slippery balance of power by buttering wishful pacifist hopes.

The critical year was 1934. In 1934 England was still ahead of Germany in planes. In 1934 England by an effort might have kept its air lead over the Nazis. But butter was king, not guns. The League of Nations, said the Liberal and Labor Parties, made rearmament superfluous. England did not rearm in 1935 either. For this, Author Kennedy thought no one leader or party was to blame. Said he: "The blame . . . must be put largely on the British public. For 1935 was the year of the General Election." British voters postponed armament.

When Munich came, Germany had 3,300 first line planes, Britain about 1,600. Germany's monthly output of planes was reported to be 600, Britain's 300. Hence Munich, argues Kennedy, could hardly be avoided.

There is nothing new in Author Kennedy's facts. Every newsreader can remember them. But put together for the first time, they make up a terrifying record of wishful thinking about peace when peace was impossible, of shillyshallying about rearmament when war was inevitable. To Americans who believe that democracy always triumphs because of its moral superiority over fascism, Why England Slept is a warning and challenge.

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