Churchill's Other War

The British edition of the Gallup poll showed last week that 86% of the British approved of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. In March 88% had approved, and the months between had seen damaging blows to his prestige--the Balkan campaign, the loss of Crete. As far as British popular sentiment went, the vote indicated that the Prime Minister's personal prestige would probably survive another defeat--provided it was not due to gross incompetence.

But only 58% of the voters approved of Britain's conduct of the war, 38% definitely did not, which made it quite plain that many Britons were far from satisfied with the work done by the Churchill Government, if not by Mr. Churchill.

Tough Job. As Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill must fight two wars: 1) the far-flung military and naval campaigns of World War II; 2) the vital economic battle at home to support 46,000,000 people while stoking the insatiable maw of Britain's military machine. In the fighting, the Empire seems to be doing reasonably well, considering its shortage of trained men and of material. The home front is different.

Tough indeed is the job of re-gearing a country from peace to war economy. Britain has had to take 7,450,000 of its able-bodied population out of productive work. There are 4,000,000 men in the Army, 1,700,000 men in the Home Guard, 1,750,000 men and women working in various civilian defense forces. There is now almost no unemployment in the United Kingdom; 290,000 unemployed in May was well below previous all-time low in April.

The job of financing or even seeming to finance the war is enormous. Besides the $50,000,000-a-day cost of fighting, there are interminable extras. Some -L-60,000,000 ($240,000,000) has been spent on air-raid shelters, public and private. Government payrolls are hugely swollen. (The Food Ministry alone eats up $18,000,000 annually, the Ministry of Information $11,000,000.)

But the money spent for this nonproductive work has shown results. In spite of dire predictions, Britain is extremely healthy after a year of total war. Deaths from many diseases have dropped sharply (partly, doctors think, because of healthier diets enforced by rationing) and only cerebrospinal fever, the '"disease of overcrowding," has shown a heavy increase. The big job of cleaning up bomb damage, demolishing Blitzed houses, repairing buildings and roads, is full-time work for 80,000 men, with the result that the country shows far fewer scars than it might after nearly a year of air raids.

Rackets are almost inevitable when trying to centralize control of a complex modern economy. So far in Britain, most racketeering is small-time: selling rationed food on the black market, dodging quota restrictions.

In heavy industry, however, which is limited to a 10% profit on its Government contracts, some operators have found that they could make extra profits by kickbacks from subcontractors.

Widely criticized is the appointment of leading industrialists to Government control boards. A cause celebre is the case of Viscount Wolmer, Government Director of Cement, who also draws a $20,000 salary from the cement makers' federation. Lord Wolmer's leading critic has been the Rt. Rev. Ernest Barnes, famed Bishop of Birmingham, who some months ago lost a -L-1,600 libel suit over remarks he made about the "cement ring." Last week the unrepentant Bishop stood up in the House of Lords to ask, "Ought a Government officer, sitting in a Government building and giving instructions, to be paid by monopolists whom he may have in the national interest to coerce?"

Equally unfortunate, to most Britons, is the setup of the Government's Petroleum Board, which is headed by representatives of the Shell, Anglo-American and Anglo-Iranian oil companies. The Board buys oil from these companies, resells it to them for distribution. Retail profits are fixed, but the oil companies can set the retail price, presumably take a profit on bulk sales to the Board. Cockney comment on the Petroleum Board: "Oh my, ain't it a luvly war."

Basic criticism of Winston Churchill's battle on the home front is that he pays too much attention to the Army, not enough to problems of labor and management. Pointed out as a prime example is an acute shortage of farm labor. In spite of the fact that Britain has 4,000,000 more acres under cultivation than in peacetime, many farm workers have been drafted, and women's farmwork brigades and mobile labor groups do not make up the shortage. Worst of all, critics point out, the Army plans to draft more farm laborers after this year's harvest.

Drafting of workers has also hit the coal industry hard and current production is half a million tons below the 4,500,000 tons weekly that the Government has planned for.

From labor leaders last week came a chorus of acid criticism:

Said the Secretary of the Building Trades Federation, asking for a return to the six-day week: "Men cannot be expected to carry on at heavy manual labor all the hours God sends, day after day, without a break."

A spokesman of the General and Municipal Workers Union complained about erratic shortages: "The Management of this country must understand men will not be content to stand idle in the factory with nothing to work on. Material is not being related to labor."

A delegate to the Building Trades' Operatives Conference in Glasgow spoke of Army contracts: "Guaranteed work is more profitable to the employers than the workers . . . because the longer the job lasts and the more it costs, the more the employer draws his 10% on wages. The enemy is not only across the seas: it is within our gates."

Serious indeed was the report by President Jack Tanner of the leftist Amalgamated Engineers Union. Of 31 plane plants recently surveyed, he said, only six were working on full schedule. Reasons: shortage of tools and materials, delays in contracts, slipshod planning by managers. Said Tanner:

"The retreat from Crete was something more than a military massacre. It had some of its roots in the management of the home industrial front. . . . Our efforts shall not be brought to naught by a group of incompetents. . . . There are men in Britain who think patriotism is another name for profit and democracy a synonym for dividends. . . . There will be more Cretes unless changes are made in this country."

But even closer to the root of the matter, many thought, were the words of Conservative Sir Herbert Geraint Williams in the House of Commons: "Because you have a Prime Minister of great genius and capacity for inspiration, that is no reason his acts should go without criticism. It is a real peril to this country that Mr. Churchill should be regarded as a man beyond challenge: it is bad for him and it is bad for you."

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