Q for Wavell, O for Auk

General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell won two campaigns and world fame. Then he lost two campaigns and full vigor. Finally he squeaked through two campaigns and public censure. Last week he was traded to India.

The Middle East Command, Sir Archibald's old one, has for seven months been the Empire's most important. India, which has been the second most important, might be the first if the Germans took European Russia and began heading southeast. India's Commander, Lieut. General Sir Claude John Eyre ("The Auk") Auchinleck, traded positions with General Wavell.

Most shifts in British Command are easily passed over--with a grave pat on the back for the deposed man, three cheers and a tiger for the new one. But last week's shift, involving the greatest British military hero of the war, could not be tossed off lightly. Winston Churchill got into a dreadful row with Leslie Hore-Belisha for failing to explain the exchange. Observers were left to discover their own explanations for the shift. It was not difficult.

Short Kick. Archie Wavell was plumb wore out. He had run the Italians out of Libya and East Africa, had had his men run out of Greece and Crete, had sent some mechanized snails into Iraq and Syria. He had worked like a Trojan. One day he would stand on a hill in Eritrea straining his one good eye through a one-barreled glass, peering across at the Eyeties' vulnerabilities; next day he would stir up his field staff in Sidi Barrani; then he would calm the fears of Egyptian politicians; fly to Crete; visit headquarters in Palestine; spend a day at his desk in Cairo. Now he was not as sharp as he had been: his Syrian effort was going lazily, his action at Hellfire Pass last month went poorly.

Last week he said: "It will be a good thing to have a fresh mind work on this situation."

General Wavell's was far from a full-dress demotion. His record, his hold on his country's affection and, chiefly, his merit would not permit it. He was clearly kicked, but not very far, downstairs. There was important thinking to be done in India. If the Germans defeated the Russians, Germany would have a common frontier with India. This threat called for a Wavell, because it now appeared that Sir Archibald's special talent is what the British Army calls "Q," staff planning, rather than "O," operations.

Double Play. Skipping the obvious fact that the British are as yet no match for the Germans in man power or machine power, the job in Cairo had turned out to be too big for one man. It had comprised Q and O and lots of things the Army had no letters for. The new setup provided that General Auchinleck should concentrate fairly narrowly on military problems and action.

It gave him a sidekick for executive matters, such as the supply of tanks, guns, water. This job fell to broad-shouldered, smooth, East-wise Lieut. General Sir Robert Hadden Haining, recently Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff, whose new title was one never before used in the British Army: Intendant General. It meant what it said--superintendent without the super.

Also provided was a political officer--not quite so much a commissar as a clearinghouse--to ease the Commander of his quasi-viceregal duties, to speed up the business end of fighting battles, to serve as a megaphone for Winston Churchill, as an ear trumpet for Dominion complaints, and as both in relations with "the peoples" (Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Frenchmen). This office went to Captain Oliver Lyttelton. Son of the late Alfred Lyttelton (a great Eton cricketer who was Lord Balfour's Colonial Secretary), himself an Etonian, a Cantab, a World War I Grenadier Guardsman and a D.S.O., Oliver Lyttelton was Managing Director of British Metal Corp. Ltd. when Churchill made him President of the Board of Trade last year. He renounced an income of $80,000 to take the job. It was he who put through recent British clothes rationing, so smoothly that even his wife learned about it in the papers. Speedily arriving in Cairo last week, he said: "We need speed to win the war--I'm here for that."

Off It. If General Wavell still looked pretty good on the record, the Auk looked fine off it. General Auchinleck's only fighting in World War II was ignominious: he landed at Narvik just in time for 23 skidoo. But in the books are accounts of his great work in Northwest Frontier rebellions in 1933 and 1935. He organized the defenses of the south coast of England in double-quick time last summer. Shifted to India to put some go into India's war effort, he shocked even the Indians by announcing that he was sympathetic to Indianization of the Army, by talking Urdu, by putting on a garden party for Indian officials at which he gave them rides in Indian-made tanks.

To Go. But the Auk and his aides will have to capture many an Axis warrior before they capture the world's imagination and their subordinates' affection as Archie Wavell did. Last week General Wavell gave a final, characteristic interview before leaving the post he obviously loved.

"I was in India 30 years ago as a subaltern," he mused. "It will be a new job, and quite a change. I have had two quite strenuous years here. We have had our ups and downs. . . ."

A correspondent: "Can you win the war without America's full-scale participation?"

The General slowly shook his head. "We shall have to have airplanes, tanks, munitions, transport, and finally men."

Correspondent: "Do you think we have time. . . ?"

Sir Archibald paused, then said: "Yes, I believe there is time."

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