A NEW HEAD

During the past two years, Britain has had four Ministers of Defense. Last week a fifth took the job. Out went wealthy lawyer Sir Walter Monckton, a brilliant negotiator as Churchill's postwar Labor Minister but no great shakes at Defense. He has been in ill health, and will be given the sinecure job of Paymaster General.

As new Defense Minister, Anthony Eden appointed ex-Soldier Antony Henry Head, 50, who has been War Secretary for the past five years. Head has recently been under an avalanche of criticism in the press for his frenzied calling up of some 20,000 reserves on short notice. In the first angry moment of the Suez crisis, the regular army was too sprawled out and disorganized to provide a real threat to Egypt's Colonel Nasser.

This initial unreadiness of British arms has not yet been made the political issue it may some day become in Britain. "I never thought the British would use force," Egypt's Nasser told TIME last week. "I have good intelligence, and I knew they weren't ready."

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