The War and Winston Churchill

The great scene seemed certain to be enacted again. Winston Churchill had flown back to Britain and this week would again bulge up in Parliament to face, and probably outface, his critics. Though he had risked the flat statement "Egypt will be held," even the speedy fall of Egypt was not likely to upset his Prime Ministership.

Winston Churchill's critics practiced hard last week:

> Urbane, intelligent Conservative Sir John Wardlaw-Milne, who has great Indian interests and has lost much Far Eastern wealth during the war, proposed a motion of "no confidence in the central direction of the war." Nineteen signed with him.

> A by-election seemed to prove that the British public was wrathier after Tobruk than ever before.

> Cried Laborite Alfred Edwards in a speech at Leeds: "Libya has been lost on the playing fields of Eton. If Rommel had been born in this country he would by now have been a sergeant -- not a field marshal. Our tank divisions in Libya have been directed by cavalry officers, not a man being trained in mechanized warfare. Until recently some of them even insisted on wearing their spurs. This is not a joke."

> Declared the liberal New Statesman and Nation: "Each time proposals have been made for separating the functions of Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Mr. Churchill has overwhelmed or avoided his critics. This process cannot go on forever."

> Sniped the leftist Tribune: "At the moment [Churchill] is in America assembling the raw material for new perorations with which to bemuse and befuddle the British public."

But even Winston Churchill's keenest critics suspected that in his great Parliamentary scene he would come off little, if any, worse than before. Doubtless he would try to draw the maximum attention away from Tobruk with handsome paragraphs about his conversations with President Roosevelt, a Second Front, other future possibilities. But there were more realistic reasons why Parliament's candle of criticism was likely to sputter and die before the Prime Minister's breath.

Sir John Wardlaw-Milne's motion was tactically bad, and his friends of the arch-Tory 1922 Committee were hotly angry with him on that account. His motion would allow Prime Minister Churchill to call for a vote on the motion, rather than on dissociating the Prime Ministership and Defense Ministership. However many would vote for the latter, few, if any, would give a flat no-confidence vote to the Churchill Government.

The reason was old but still good. As the sober Economist put it: "This is a crisis of leadership as well as of confidence. The two go together. Mr. Churchill is still the only possible leader; and a Parliament which sought to bring him down might well bring down Parliament itself."

There was another important reason why Parliamentary criticism might be expected to fade. Though a great deal came from the Left, the Left was well aware that much came from the deepest Right. And the Left was inclined to go along with a man whom the Right disliked, so long as no powerful Leftist seemed likely to get the Prime Ministership.

Britons in general fell back on the hope that, even though Winston Churchill might override other men's criticism, he would not dismiss thoughts they might put in his head. But more Britons than ever before would hereafter push to separate Prime Minister Churchill from his Defense portfolio. This week the London Times was only one of a host of voices saying "The position of Minister of Defense is now a full-time job."

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