Shush!

Prime Minister William Lyon Mac kenzie King last week convinced Canadi ans that ill-health was not the most important reason why flinty Lieut. General Andrew George Latta McNaughton, Commander in Chief overseas, had been retired (TIME, Jan. 3).

Mr. King shushed a Parliamentary de bate, embarrassing to his Government and McNaughton. He asked opposition party leaders to review, in the privacy of his office, the secret dispatches in the case.

Said he: "These [documents] are of great concern not only to Canada but to other United Nations." This week Canadians were none the wiser as to what these documents contained. But after reading them, Opposition Leader Gordon Graydon said flatly: "The Government has not told the whole story. ..." By thus taking his critics into his confidence, Mr. King had avoided a public answer to reports long current in London and Ottawa. According to these reports, McNaughton and General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, new commander of the British invasion forces, clashed at every turn. Unanswered, too, was the charge that McNaughton had rebelled at the Canadian Government's right-about-face in military policy. As a result of this turnaround, Canadian troops now fight in dispersed corps rather than as a single all-Canadian army, as McNaughton planned it. To this charge, Toronto's bitterly anti-King Globe & Mail added another: The Government, having committed itself to the McNaugh ton policy, had to abandon it because of failure to procure the manpower to main tain and reinforce a full Canadian army.

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