Churchill Goes Home

Propped up in bed in Suite No. 80, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sailed back to Britain in the liner Queen Mary. It was not a pleasure cruise: for five mid-Atlantic days the old warrior wrestled with i) a heavy cold, and 2) Britain's bloody embroilment with Egyptian nationalism. By ship-to-shore radio, Churchill kept in touch with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, approving the government's decision to reinforce Suez. Safe ashore at Southampton, Churchill had a brief word to say about his trip to Washington: "I've never had such a warm welcome, not even in wartime." Then he sped to London to take charge of the Egyptian crisis, to report to the cabinet on foreign matters, and to hear their latest alarming domestic news.

Britons were solidly behind Churchill in his firm policy in Suez. But storms were brewing over the precise commitments involved in his Washington warnings to the Red Chinese. British left-wingers accuse Churchill of "selling out" to "applauding Congressmen" by aligning British with U.S. policy in the Far East.

But more urgent than Labor's squawks over foreign policy, perhaps domestically more important than gunfire in Egypt, was the need to grapple with Britain's worst economic blizzard since 1945. Biggest headaches:

P: At the present rate of spending, the Bank of England's gold and dollar hoard (down to a precarious $2.3 billion) will have melted away by midsummer. The vast sterling area, which accounts for a quarter of the world's population and half its trade, is heavily in debt. Last week nine Commonwealth Finance Ministers, meeting in London's gloomy old Treasury Building, pledged their countries to earn more and spend less, in an effort to balance the family budget by the end of 1952. Each member nation would slash imports, increase exports, try to control inflation; the sterling bloc as a whole pledged itself to work to make the pound once more freely convertible to dollars.

P: Needing 500,000 more workers for defense jobs, the Tories are squeezing labor into defense plants by cutting steel allocations to nonessential industries. Labor Minister Sir Walter Monckton, who shares the prevailing Tory dislike for the word "control," last week got trade union approval for what was called a "notification of vacancies order" giving the government power to "steer" workers into defense jobs.

P: Britain needs a million new houses, notably in the coal fields. Yet money, steel, labor and bricks are all in short supply. The Tory solution: cut red tape, build simpler "people's houses" at $2,700 apiece. Scarce building materials, announced Housing Minister Harold Macmillan, will be doled out to local authorities on the principle: "The faster you build, the more you will get to build."

Churchill's task was to dramatize a new time of trouble for Britain. The country resounded to ministerial predictions of doom. Anthony Eden: "The country is in acute and continuing danger." Food Minister Woolton: "We may not be able to maintain the new meat ration" (16-c- worth a week). Gloomiest of all was Chancellor of the Exchequer R. A. Butler, whose painful lot it was to propose a new national belt-tightening in Parliament. Warned "Rab" Butler: "We face the risk of being bankrupt, idle and hungry." To weather the storms, at home & abroad, Britain needed Churchill at his bulldog best.

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