The People's Choice

In four days three million Britons listened to 40 election speeches by Winston Churchill. The 71 -year-old Conservative Prime Minister had barnstormed Britain by car, scarcely taking time out to lunch by the roadside off sandwiches and Scotch.

This week some 22 million voters would go to the polls to choose among 1,686 candidates, second largest number in any British general election. Of these, the Conservatives and pro-Churchill Liberals numbered 629, Labor 604, Liberals 305, Commonwealth 22, Communists 21. There were also 68 Independents. Of the electors, perhaps a tenth (men & women in uni form), would cast their votes by mail.

All last week planes from Britain carried tons of top-priority ballot papers for distant war theaters, some (e.g., in Burma) to be dropped to combat troops by para chute. Because these far-flung soldier votes will be slow in returning, the election result will not be announced before July 26.

Comic Relief. Britain's first election campaign in nearly ten years had been punctuated by high jinks. The name-calling between Labor leaders and rambunctious Tory Lord Beaverbrook (who artfully drew most of the opposition fire) continued without letup. Young Tory Brendan Bracken, 44, First Lord of the Admiralty, had more than names flung at him : a milk bottle tossed through the window of his car narrowly missed his head. Laborite A. V. Alexander, ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, narrowly missed the nomination deadline because the car buretor of his car had been "tampered with." Bernard Shaw briefly climbed the barricades to pat Communist candidate R. Palme Dutt on the back, declare that "practical British Communism saved us in the war in the west." Sighed Labor leader Herbert Morrison: "The election is in danger of degenerating into a comic opera." Agricultural Note. There was the traditional crop of crank candidates. Wackiest of all seemed to be Churchill's eleventh-hour opponent in Woodford, Essex, doughty Alexander Hancock, 47, a farmer.

Farmer Hancock decided to run only when Corporal Arthur Yates, who flew back from Burma, arrived too late to stand against the Prime Minister. Said Farmer Hancock, who until last week did not know a soul in Woodford: "I'm not interested in parties: I'm no sheep." Of Churchill he said: "I'm as good a man as he is"; of the Hancock platform (strip life of luxuries and work only an hour a day) : "I'm standing for the common people against organized oppression." Church ill was delighted.

Hard to Predict. Seldom had an election result been so hard to predict by rule-of-thumb. Some ten million electors would vote for the first time in their lives. The Tories, after their 1935 landslide (387 seats out of 615) were bound to lose some ground, but Win-with-Winnie was a massive counterbalance to the postwar leftward swing. War-worn Britons wanted social reforms and meant to have them. Would they go part of the way to socialization with the Conservatives, or most of the way with Labor?

The Tories, with Churchill's war achievement to trade on, were reconciled to losses but confident of victory. Labor, committed to a drastic socialist program, was sure of gains, uncertain of victory. Liberals hoped at most to snatch a vital balance of power. To a world anxiously inquiring: "Stands Britain where she did?'1, British voters would soon give an answer. Presumably it would be: Yes.

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