Winnie: Punching

The old Tory battler, Winston Churchill, was watching fierce-eyed for a chance to hit the Labor government with a knockout blow. He canceled a scheduled address at the University of Pennsylvania this week because he did not want to leave the battlefield at a crucial moment. In London, before the Primrose League (a Conservative Party offshoot which sponsors social and welfare activities), Churchill last week turned his old phrasemaking genius on Attlee & Co. Most striking Churchillisms: "Mr. Attlee [leads] that cluster of lionhearted limpets, a new phenomenon in our natural history . . . who are united by their desire to hold on to office at all costs . . . Our affairs drift and bump and flop . . ."

Said Churchill: "I cannot recall any period in my long life when mismanagement and incompetence have brought us into greater danger ... In every quarter of the world we are regarded by our friends with anxiety, with wonder and pity; and by our enemies . . . with hostility or even contempt. . . Not one of them is so weak they cannot spare a quip or even a taunt for Britain. [Yet] we have but to cast away, by an effort of will, the enfeebling tendencies and fallacies of socialism . . ." Bevan and the other ministers who resigned had "rendered a public service," said Churchill, by drawing attention to the government's failure to buy necessary raw materials in good time--a muddle just like "the meat, the nuts, the eggs . . ."

Churchill accused the Labor government of allowing U.S.-British relations to become strained, particularly.over the MacArthur issue. Churchill implied, as he had before, that President Truman had every right to fire General MacArthur; at the same time, he thought Labor ministers had no right to bring "reproaches against General MacArthur--that great soldier and great statesman . . ." Churchill continued: "Mr. Truman is not only the President of the United States. He is also the commander in chief, and no one outside the great republic, now bearing nineteen-twentieths of the whole weight of the war in Korea, has the slightest right to interfere between him and his officers . . ." In Commons this week, Winnie promised, his party would apply against the government "the full rigors of debate."

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