Cassandra Returns

Winston Churchill had a busy week. Three days before his 74th birthday, he donned jodhpurs, fortified himself with rum punch and galloped off to the hounds astride a borrowed horse. Churchill's inevitable, square-crowned Russell hat was jammed well down on his head, his equally inevitable cigar clenched firmly between his teeth.

Later, his birthday and the hunt behind him, Churchill stood up on the floor of the House of Commons and, amid grave silence from his colleagues, demanded from Prime Minister Clement Attlee an account of the Labor government's stewardship over the nation's moldering defenses.

"I ask the Prime Minister," Churchill rumbled, "where are the rifles which, on V-E day, armed 4,600,000 troops and Home Guards of this country alone? Are they in oil? ... There is no difficulty in keeping rifles. They do not go sour, like milk . . . What has happened to those latest models of tanks? . . .

"I have long experience in this matter, and I can assure the House that it is most improvident to get rid of the vital weapon you have until you have a better one to put in its place. What has happened to the enormous masses of artillery? . . . What have we ... in organized and equipped formations that can be sent abroad or brought into action in this country? . . ."

Attlee sat slumped down as far as he could get on a front bench, almost hidden behind a paper on which he doodled continuously. At one point, Churchill asked:

"What have we got to show for it [-L-305 million voted for the army during 1948]?" Then, looking at Attlee, "I ask the Prime Minister that question. I see that he is likely to reply." "No," said Clement Attlee.

Attlee's silence at the conclusion of Churchill's oratorical barrage was probably the best way out of an embarrassing and messy situation. Since war's end, the Labor government (on the assumption that most existing equipment would be antiquated by the time there was another war) has sold or given away the enormous total of -L-546 million worth of supplies and equipment. Other material is rotting and rusting in dumps, particularly in Germany. In one case, radio and radar equipment was stuffed down an old mineshaft and sealed with concrete. An energetic farmer dug it out, sold it at a nice profit, and considerably embarrassed the officials who had buried it in the first place.

"Should war come," concluded Churchill, "--which God forbid; and it does not depend on us whether war comes; less than ever in our history does it depend on us ... a terrible accountancy will be required from those to whom Parliament has accorded, in time of peace, unparalleled resources and unprecedented power."

To his hearers, Winston Churchill seemed once more cast in the role of Cassandra; history, apparently, was repeating itself with dire monotony.

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