Chamberlain Under Fire

"Another Norwegian campaign is due to open. ... It will be waged against the War Cabinet in the House of Commons. . . . Chamberlain will be under fire," wrote the London Daily Mail last week as the full gravity of the Norwegian debacle filtered through the blackout of official information. That Hitler had succeeded in snatching a neutral state from under the very muzzles of British naval guns could not be denied, and Neville Chamberlain's Government teetered on the brink of its worst political crisis. Millions of Britons wanted to know, said Laborite Ellen Wilkinson, how Hitler could seize Norway "with 1,500 men and three brass bands."

The first blast of criticism was set off by Liberal Leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, big Scottish landowner, Legion of Honor hero in World War I and among Winston Churchill's closest advisers. Mentioned among the ginger groups as a possible Prime Minister because he did a good job as Secretary of State for Scotland in Ramsay Macdonald's Cabinet and yet stands well with the Tories, Sir Archibald demanded a "grand inquest." "I hope," he thundered to an Edinburgh audience, "that it is not too late for craven and irresolute counsels to be suppressed. ... I am amazed at the false prophets telling us that Hitler missed the bus, that we have turned the corner and that we are now ten times more confident than six months ago. That reminds me of the prophesy that Munich meant 'peace in our time.' "

"Successful Retirement." After dodging two attempts to smoke him out by pleading the necessity of secrecy, Prime Minister Chamberlain finally delivered a sketchy "interim" report to a sullen, worried House of Commons. Stripping the speech of reassuring forensic shocks, stupefied M. P.s learned: 1) that although aware "for many months" of German transport and troop accumulations at Baltic ports, the Allies were unprepared for a northern Nazi thrust, the troops assembled for aiding Finland having been dispersed; 2) that the mining of the Norwegian waters on April 8 coincided purely by "curious chance" with the Nazi coup; 3) that although the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway on April 8, the first British naval forces did not land at Namsos until April 14 and the first British troops arrived at AAndalsnes only on April 17; 4) that the British Navy had not succeeded in interrupting a steady stream of German reinforcements across the Skagerrak, but the Nazi Air Force had prevented the Allies from landing tanks or artillery in South Norway; 5) that the Allied troops had executed a "successful retirement."

Cold comfort next day, when it was learned that the Northwestern Expeditionary Force had pulled out of Namsos as well as AAndalsnes, were Chamberlain's assurances that "although in the face of overwhelming difficulties in the situation, it has not been possible to effect the capture of the town [Trondheim], I am satisfied that the balance of the advantage up to the present lies with the Allied forces."

Nor were dejected Britons bucked up by his gloomy forecast that the Nazis "are prepared and would not scruple to invade Holland, Belgium or both. Or it may be that their savage hordes will be hurled against their innocent neighbors in the southeast of Europe. They might well do more than one of these things in preparation for an attempt at large-scale attack on the western portion of this country."

"The British Can Take It." Promised a full-dress debate in Parliament this week, the British public was divided at the weekend into two groups : those who insisted "Chamberlain must go," and those who declared, "Chamberlain can stay but he must DO SOMETHING." Spokesman of the Chamberlain-must-go group was Laborite Herbert Morrison, M. P. and able Leader of the London County Council, who publicly demanded the scalps of the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon and Air Secretary

Sir Samuel Hoare. "I have a suspicion," he declared before a Labor Party Regional Conference at Southampton, "that these three men are primarily responsible for the relative weakness of our war effort. I urge them to consider whether their best service to the country would not be by way of resignation."

Irked by the namby-pamby utterances of Cabinet members, particularly the Lord President of the Council, Earl Stanhope, Laborite Morrison flew into a fair frenzy, shouting: "The efforts of that ministerial misfit, Lord Stanhope, to turn the Norwegian withdrawal into something like a victory is typical irresponsibility based on the assumption that the British can't take it. Well, the British can take it, even if His Lordship can't."

"Faulty, feeble and foolish," was World War Prime Minister Lloyd George's comment on the Chamberlain policy. "All the foresight and striking power in diplomacy and in strategy are on the side of the Nazis," he declared, "all the blunders, the ineptitude, the slackness on the part of the Allies."

"Chamberlain's capacity for self-delusion is a national danger," fumed the Manchester Guardian. "If Parliament does its duty next week, perhaps even Mr. Chamberlain may be brought to understand that we cannot and will not go on in this way." Reports that naval chiefs had insisted upon an immediate bold attack on Trondheim before the Germans had their big guns set up but had been prevented by the Cabinet for reasons of caution did little to soothe rising tempers.

More serious to the Government than the hue & cry of the opposition were indications that its nominal supporters were fed up with the shilly-shallying war policy hitherto pursued and were about to bolt from the ranks. "What we want is a real War Cabinet with someone at the top who can decide a question. . . . We are meandering and muddling through the war making excuses and boasting," criticized Government Supporter Clement Davies, M. P. In fine English sarcasm he assured Mr. Chamberlain that if Hitler had missed the bus, it was because he "too often takes a taxi."

Richard K. Law, M. P. for stanchly Conservative Hull and son of World War I's Conservative Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law, also opened fire on the Government, denouncing its "attitude to the problem . . . which must be changed before the country is in sight of victory."

Meeting privately in the House of Commons, 20 influential Parliamentarians, including ex-War Secretary Leslie Hore Belisha, former First Lord of the Admiralty L. S. Amery, ex-Minister of Information Lord Macmillan and Radical Publicist Vernon Bartlett, decided that the resignation of the Cabinet had now become an immediate issue.

In a move to thwart political scalp-hunters, oldster Sir John Simon tossed the entire Cabinet into a single cauldron of responsibility, maintaining in a united-we-stand-divided-we-fall speech that "if there is anybody disposed to fasten criticism upon this Minister or that ... he will be most woefully disappointed.'' Iron Veracities. Chief spokesman of the Chamberlain-can-stay group was veteran Publicist J. L. Garvin, who in the London Observer gave expression to the general demand that the Allied war machine be rapidly geared up to that of a powerful, superbly organized, determined enemy. "We must wake up to the iron veracities of this war," he wrote, "and then face them not merely without flinching but with redoubled energy of will and effort. . . . The British people have done everything that was asked of them. . . . Their Government, willingly supplied with immense means and powers, ought to have done far more.

"We require above all two things: first, the supreme effort for absolute air mastery; . . . second, a smaller War Cabinet composed of a few men . . . who will give their whole minds to the higher direction of the war. . . . Against a foe who holds the strategical initiative ... we have to get ready both for a wide extension of the struggle and for its intensified violence at home and abroad. Britain and France have to fight not only for their own liberties but for their lives. They have to wage that fight and win it during the next few months. It may well be, and it is very likely to be, the most desperate struggle that the world has seen. . . . The Nazis are full of vehement confidence. . . . They are flushed with unlimited dreams of destruction and triumph. They mean to make a giant bid for complete victory by next autumn. The Allies have to meet the full shock of this temper before they can begin to smash it. But they cannot smash it until they possess complete and overwhelming predominance of the flying arm. . . . The truth and force of that view ought to have been brought home to practical imagination long ago by the Polish Blitzkrieg. By the new lessons in Norway the case is proved up to the hilt. . . . The Allied cause demands nothing less than an air supremacy of two to one. . . .

"Not less indispensable is the thorough reconstruction of the present ministerial system. . . . The present composition and working of the Government are a hindrance to our hopes and an asset to our foes. . . . There is no movement for personal reasons against Mr. Chamberlain as Prime Minister. Neither in the Cabinet nor out of it is there any ambitious competitor for his place. ... It is the more incumbent upon him to provide the invigorated government and the more efficient system of war thinking, war planning and war waging that the nation demands and the Allied cause urgently claims. Instead of the present large Inner Committee loaded with departmental duties, there must be a real War Cabinet compacted of a few men who will give their whole time and mind to foresight and action. This is the sine qua non of success."

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