Winston and the Bear

While Germany wrestled with the Russian Bear last week, Winston Churchill engaged in a game of two-handed Russian wrestling with critics of Britain's aid-to-Russia program. On his left hand the Prime Minister contended with growing opposition to Britain's passive war effort; on his right, with growing Tory opposition to helping Russia at all.

In an optimistic speech to Parliament, the Prime Minister, who has promised Russia all possible aid, got around to the Bear rather late.

"The magnificent resistance of the Russian Armies," said he, "makes it certain that Hitler's hopes of a short war with Russia will be dispelled. Already in three months he has lost more German blood than was shed in any single year of the last war."

500 Hours. To many Britons even such belated tributes seemed altogether inadequate and passive. They wanted to know, bluntly, why Britain did not get right into the ring where the Bear's hug was tying up Hitler. Some of them, remembering Winston Churchill's responsibility for the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of World War I, wondered whether that memory could possibly be making their leader timid.

Said the liberal New Statesman and Na tion: "Moscow is not impressed by the expedition to Spitsbergen (see p. 20). . . . We have command of the sea; have we not the troops available even for 'beard-singeing' operations? Are there no bases worth denying to the enemy? Uneasiness is inevitable in view of the record of the War Office. . . ."

Wrote the London News Chronicle's Columnist A. J. Cummings: "We have in this country a great idle Army bored to distraction waiting impatiently for the invasion that will never come."

Said Editor John Rutherford Gordon of the Sunday Express: "What is the matter? Lack of planes? Lack of tanks? Lack of rifles? Lack of men? Probably we do lack all these things but it seems to me we lack something much more important. That is the offensive attitude of mind."

Cried Cassandra of the Daily Mirror: "If our own military position does not permit of an assault on any single part of Hitler's 2,000-mile western front, then Russian hopes should not have been raised by the joint telegram from President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill. . . . Five hundred hours ago! France crumbled in less time than that. Five hundred hours! Plenty of time to lose hope. Plenty of time in which to die."

Both Your Houses. In private, many Britons, like Americans, have made no bones of saying that they hoped Germany and Russia would annihilate each other, that both could go to hell. Fortnight ago no less a cog in the aid-to-Russia mechanism than sleek, sporting Minister for Aircraft Production Lieut. Colonel John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon was accused by Secretary Jack Tanner of the big Amalgamated Engineering Union of expressing just such sentiments.

Prime Minister Churchill was said to have bawled out his Aircraft Minister, but last week the Prime Minister defended Moore-Brabazon in Parliament. Saying that hundreds of British planes were being sent to Russia, Winston Churchill added that "although the phrasing of what [Moore-Brabazon] said at a private gathering, taken out of its context, might be misconstrued, I am satisfied that he was and is in the fullest accord with this Government's policy."

Laborite Emanuel Shinwell asked the Prime Minister to say whether Colonel Moore-Brabazon had admitted the remarks attributed to him. The Prime Minister would only reply: "I think that would not be helpful to the general interest."

At this point Parliament's lone Communist, hornrimmed, hot-tempered William Gallacher. asked whether the Prime Minister was willing "to clear out all those in the Government who are not 100% behind the Soviet Union." Said Winston Churchill: "I am not prepared to receive guidance from the honorable gentleman, who, it is notorious, has changed opinions whenever he was ordered to do so by a body outside this House."

Shouted Willie Gallacher: "The Prime Minister has no right. ... It is a dirty, cowardly, rotten action. . . . It's the action of a blackguard! It's a foul, dirty lie!"

Later Communist Gallacher apologized.

New Leader? Most significant rumor to come out of England last week was that the 1942 Committee--an arch-Tory, super-discussion, trend-sniffing, policy-pushing group--had met and voted on the ticklish question of the most desirable successor to Prime Minister Churchill. Passed over were Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, who broke with the Chamberlain "appeasement" Government, and dynamic but capricious Minister of State Lord Beaverbrook. Two votes went to longtime Party Whip Captain David Margesson, Secretary of War. The overwhelming winner was steely, efficient, ruthless Sir John Anderson--who after World War I headed the Black and Tan suppression of Irish revolt, who helped Stanley Baldwin's Government break the 1926 general strike, who later, as Governor of Bengal, gained the reputation for brutality in handling India's malcontents.

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