Patching Up

The latest date for Churchill's retirement is one that he himself gave to his Cabinet last week. The date: on or about Sept. 15.

Were he to postpone resignation much longer, a major Tory Party crisis would probably develop. His critics insist that too many domestic problems are unsettled because of the Old Man's inability to concentrate for long, and that he must step down decently in advance of the party's conference at Blackpool on Oct. 7. But their position is delicate: Sir Winston, who will be 80 on Nov. 30, has told intimates recently that he does not expect to live long without the stimulus of supreme responsibility. And so top Tories, though convinced that the time has come when he must retire, are hesitant about importuning him, lest they speed the doughty old hero to his grave.

Two of Churchill's ministers have resigned in the past fortnight. If he intended to stay long, he might have used the occasion for an overdue Cabinet reshuffle. Instead, he merely filled the two vacant posts. The changes:

P:Out as Colonial Secretary stepped Oliver Lyttelton, who has labored long and with some success in coping with Mau Maus in Kenya and Communists in Malaya, and has been yearning to return to big business. His successor: Alan Lennox-Boyd, 49, a brilliant Oxonian who married into the wealthy Guinness family. As Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, he guided the restoration of road transport from Socialist nationalization to private ownership.

P:Out as Minister of Agriculture: Sir Thomas Dugdale, who resigned because of public outcry over Crichel Down, a now famous chunk of Dorset farmland taken over during the war as an R.A.F. bombing range. After the war, the original owner tried to buy it back, but Agriculture Ministry officials highhandedly refused to let it go at any price; they wanted to make an experimental farm out of it some day. Crichel Down has now become a national symbol of the arrogance of bureaucrats. Dugdale, resigning, gallantly took the rap for his subordinates. His successor: Derick Heathcoat-Amory, 54, who had been a success as Minister of State at the Board of Trade.

The new ministers, and the men who took their old jobs, are all generally considered "Eden men."

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