If Necessary

Last week while Britain sent her Ambassador back to Berlin (see p. 22) to seek peace, she busied herself at home with preparations for war.

13 Strong Men. England's biggest fear is that London will be crippled by a sudden stroke from the sky. Recently Londoners have taken to rushing to their windows whenever airplanes drone overhead, as they used to when planes were a novelty. In Nos. 10 and 11 Downing Street and in Whitehall, this psychosis has taken the form of a question: Who will govern Britain if we are blown to Blarney? The Government's first answer to it was to divide all Britain into twelve administrative sections,* each of which would operate as an independent country if cut off from the rest. Last week 13 men were named to be "dictators" of those countries (London has two commissioners) should division take place by act of war.

Nothing like their European models, Britain's 13 dictators were perfect examples of traditional British public servants. The majority have titles. Eight went to Oxford or Cambridge, one to Edinburgh, two into the Army and Navy. One is an educator (Will Spens, Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), one a big businessman (John Boot, Lord Trent, head of the great Boots drugstore chain), one a diplomat (Sir Auckland Geddes, Ambassador to Washington, 1920-24), one a labor specialist (Harold Butler, former Director of the International Labor Office, Geneva). Five have had long Government experience, six saw active War duty. One makes the paper for English bank notes. One has an inferiority complex. One is stone-deaf, uses a mechanical ear and when seated by some one he dislikes, shuts it off.

Milquetoast. For over a year, Britain's Labor Party has urged the Government to set up a Ministry of Supply--an agency to conscript business for war just as the Army may conscript men. Last week such a Ministry was finally created. In wartime it will see that Government orders get precedence, that businesses get fair but limited profits. All England wondered whether Neville Chamberlain would give the Ministry to an aggressive man of action--Winston Churchill, for example. When the Prime Minister rose in the House of Commons and announced that the job would go to the 51-year-old Milquetoast Minister of Transport, Dr. Edward Leslie Burgin, one uninhibited Laborite shouted the unexpressed sentiment of most of Parliament: "Oh, my God!"

The most anyone said last week for Leslie Burgin was that he is a scholar. He has been known to use as many as 20 different languages in one day's interviews. But as an administrator he was constantly damned last week with the faint word "capable." He has been an M. P. since 1929, Minister of Transport since 1937. Best guess as to the reason for the choice: Neville Chamberlain chose a second-rate man to please business interests, who will be irked by the whole idea, would be doubly irked if an energetic man were put in charge of it.

*The previous record holder was famed T. P. ("Tay Pay") O'Connor, member for Liverpool, whose death in 1929 terminated 49 years in Parliament.

* Northeast, North, Northwest, Northmidland, Midland, Eastern, Southern, Southeastern, Southwestern, Wales, Scotland, London (2).

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