The Beaver Arrives

The transatlantic flying boat taxied to a mooring in Miami, and out stepped a brisk welterweight with a carved-coconut face, Britain's fabulous Lord Beaverbrook. Scrunched into a black overcoat, he emplaned for Washington. There he dined with the President.

The Beaver had come to act as coordinator in the British-U.S. food and production setup. That was the official reason, at least. If there was any other reason, the dynamic newspaper tycoon, lately No. 2 man in Winston Churchill's Cabinet, said nothing about it. Neither did Downing Street; neither did Washington, officially.

Five weeks ago, the Beaver jumped or fell from the Churchill Cabinet. The brash baron who was born plain Max Aitken of Canada explained vociferously: "I am simply a sick man needing a rest." He has had bouts of asthma and temperament, inextricably mixed, for years. Between bouts (and during them) he helped convert British industry to wartime production, whooped up aircraft building, slashed British red tape, shocked and angered many an Old School Tie; he stepped up beside Churchill, as Minister of Production, did a whale of a job in upping British war production.

There was plenty for him to do in his new job. Badly needed was a mastermind to straighten out the tangle and confusion of Lend-Lease red tape and to synchronize U.S. production and purchasing with British and Russian needs. The Beaver knew how to cut red tape. Whether the brilliant, bumptious outspoken millionaire was the right man to handle all the delicate bric-a-brac of human relationships involved was something else again.

Before he settled down to his assignment, the Beaver detoured back to Miami Beach for a short rest. The Florida climate is beneficial to his asthma. It also inspired the Beaver to broadcast to his fellow Canadians his passionate conviction that the United Nations' No. 1 battlefront is Russia, where supplies and men must be rushed for a "deadly, offensive stroke." Giving a Beaverish twist to the Beatitudes, the welterweight lord declared: "Unless we have resolute, determined, brave citizens trained to handle the tanks and guns . . . then we cannot be blessed, we cannot be the peacemakers, we cannot inherit the earth."

Asserting that Singapore was not lost to superior equipment ("on the contrary, the weight of munitions was on our side"), he cried: "Unbreakable morale is the first necessity. It is the absolute condition of victory."

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