L'Affaire Lyttelton

President Wallace Phillips took a pleased look about the Savoy's plushy dining room. This was the most successful luncheon the London branch of the American Chamber of Commerce had staged this year--400 British and U.S. admirals, generals, politicians and businessmen present, another 150 turned away. During the main course of veal roast, potatoes and asparagus he leaned over, made a suggestion to the luncheon speaker, British Minister of Production Oliver Lyttelton. Since there were so many Americans present, Mr. Phillips whispered, it might be a good thing if the speaker said a few words about the U.S. and Japan.

"Japan Was Provoked." Minister Lyttelton nodded approvingly. When he got up to make his speech extolling U.S.-British cooperation, he read from his Cabinet-approved little slips of blue paper until he came to an incidental mention of the word "Japan." Then he added extemporaneously: "Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was ever truly neutral even before America came into the war."

Then he went back to his little blue pages for a peroration which lauded once more U.S.-British mutual aid against the aggressors. The guests cheered loudly, some of the Americans stopping on their way out to give the speaker a warm handshake.

But when Minister Lyttelton returned to his spacious, robin's-egg-blue office on the third floor of the Ministry of Production, he found his assistants milling around in consternation. The interpolated words, cabled to the U.S., had practically exploded in Washington. The shock was all the greater because numerous British experts in both the U.S. and Britain had slaved to gather material to make the speech a convincing show of U.S.-British good will, with accent on reverse Lend-Lease. Several versions of the speech were cabled back and forth, checked down to the last word. Minister Lyttelton promptly issued a statement explaining that his remarks were intended only as a compliment, but purple-tempered old Cordell Hull was not appeased. "In all my career," said one State Department oldtimer, "I have never seen Mr. Hull get so mad."

The Secretary of State promptly issued a blast: "The statement of the British Minister of Production is entirely in error. . . . This Government from the beginning to the end was actuated by the single policy of self-defense."

New Dealing Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois uprose to demand that Winston Churchill fire Lyttelton immediately. Next day British Ambassador Halifax called at the State Department to offer the official apologies of his Government, and Minister Lyttelton spoke his personal apologies in the House of Commons. Manfully refusing to claim that he had been misreported, he said: "Any misunderstanding is entirely my own fault. . . . The fault was one of expression and not of intention. . . ."

Tongue Trouble. Able Oliver Lyttelton, a man of great know-how with facts, had again got himself in trouble because of words. A grandnephew of William Gladstone, son of a Cabinet Minister, he was born to the salons of British power. Tall, heavy-mustached, with a penchant for double-breasted waistcoats, he has a personal charm that smooths all paths for him. His business abilities were established beyond cavil by his spectacular rise in the metals industry, wherein he first became manager of the giant British Metal Corp. and then fathered a world tin cartel.

Drafted, willingly, into politics by his good friend Winston Churchill shortly after Munich, he made such a name for himself as a top administrator (he planned Britain's remarkably smooth transfer to severe rationing) that he was soon in the key Cabinet post of Minister of Production. For a short while he was widely talked about as a Tory candidate for Prime Minister. But an early ministerial speech was so maladroit that the boomlet promptly collapsed. Said a friend: "He talks like Demosthenes with the pebbles in his mouth."

"In an Election Year." Last week the pebbles in Minister Lyttelton's mouth were much in evidence. As the context of his words showed and as his explanation made plain, he was trying to pay the U.S. a strong compliment. Because of the U.S. opposition to aggression, he might have worded his praise, the U.S. made plain to Japan long before Pearl Harbor that she must give up her plans of Asiatic domination or fight. The U.S. was aggressive against the aggressors. But Minister Lyttelton's bumbling word "provoke" gave Axis propagandists a field day. Immediately Jap Domei was on the air, cackling : "The real cause of the war in Greater East Asia is so clear that even the British are unable to conceal the truth."

Washington newsmen soon pointed out that Minister Lyttelton had bulled amid some of the most delicate china of Term IV strategists. For more than two years critics of the Roosevelt Administration have insisted that the President must have known his policy toward Japan would lead to war; and that therefore he had no excuse either for his campaign statements that his policy meant peace or for the unpreparedness at Pearl Harbor. Minister Lyttelton's remarks paraphrased the basis for such a charge.

Britain's sage Manchester Guardian commented: "The fuss in the U.S. is a warning to everybody that a great many Americans will not be in a rational or reasonable state of mind until the November election is over--if even then. Had an American public figure been credited with unfortunate remarks of the same order about ourselves, his explanation would have been quickly accepted. They order things differently in the U.S. . . . It does make life a trifle difficult, especially in an election year."

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