Muddles & Mismanagements

Winston Churchill's hunched body rose, his heavy gold watch chain shining in Parliament's yellow-glassed sunlight. His hands were in the pockets of his jacket. His great, willful, strangely babylike head surveyed a packed House, and his words began to growl. For two days Winston Churchill had patiently taken a lambasting from his critics, both serious and snide. Now it was his turn. He began it with an invocation to the spirit of Democracy which was destined for history.

"This long debate," he said, "has now reached its final stage. What a remarkable example it has been of the unbridled freedom of our parliamentary institutions in time of war! ... I am in favor of this freedom, which no other country would use or dare to use in times of mortal peril such as those through which we are passing, but the story must not end there, and I make now my appeal. . . ."

For one hour and 27 minutes Winston Churchill answered his critics in tones both of challenge and of humility. He made a long appeal for sympathy because he had been criticized while he was overseas talking to Franklin Roosevelt. He also made the salutary admission that "I have stuck hard to my 'blood, toil, tears and sweat'-to which I have added muddles and mismanagements."

At the end he received an ovation. He had not yet lost his power to charm Parliament, which still loved him for his gallantry under political fire. Parliament still believed he was the one man who could make Britain feel and rise to meet the awful necessities of war.

As had been expected, Parliament voted down Sir John Wardlaw-Milne's politically-impossible motion of "no confidence in the central direction of the war" (TIME, July 6), 476-t00-25. Cheers rang out, and as the Prime Minister, still cocky, left the House he beamed and raised two fingers in a V-for-Victory salute.

Yet the excitement of the occasion did not blind Britain to the fact that the Prime Minister had flatly rejected the widespread demand that he separate the Defense Ministry from his office. "I am your servant," said he. "You have the right to dismiss me, if you please. What you have no right to do is to ask me to bear responsibility without powers of effective action." And that was that, muddles and mismanagements or not.

Why Tobruk? In his humble vein, Winston Churchill confirmed the general diagnosis that Tobruk had fallen because the German High Command outsmarted the British, and because German equipment was better (TIME, July 6)-partly excusing it on the ground that quick manufacturing for British Isles defenses had put the premium in British material on quantity rather than quality. Many were his revelations, intentional or otherwise, of British military naivete.

Of Tobruk's collapse he said: "It was utterly unexpected, not only by the public, but by the War Cabinet and even by the general staffs. It was also unexpected by General Auchinleck and the High Command of the Middle East. On the night before its capture we received a telegram from General Auchinleck that the garrison was adequate and the defenses in good order, and that 90 days' supplies were available for the troops."

Said he, also, without blushing: "Tobruk went after a single day of fighting, and this entailed withdrawal to Matruh, and 120 miles of desert was thus placed between the Eighth Army and its foe. Most authorities imagined that ten days or a fortnight would be gained by this. However, on June 26 [five days later], Rommel presented himself with his armored and motorized forces in front of this new position."

Nations United. Only his assurances about the future were encouraging:

> "Our conversations [in Washington] were concerned almost entirely with nothing but the movements of ships, guns, troops, aircraft and measures to be taken to combat losses at sea and replacement, and more than replacement, of sunken tonnage."

> "The two greatest English-speaking nations were never closer together. Never was there a more earnest desire between allies to engage the enemy, and never was there a more hearty resolve to run all risks, to make all sacrifices, to wage this hard war with vigor and to carry it to -a successful conclusion."

> "I make no forecast of the future [in Russia]; all I know is that the Russians have surprised Hitler before, and I believe they will surprise him again, and, anyhow, whatever happens, they will fight to death or victory."

> "I know there is a tendency to deride and disparage the bomber effort against Germany. . . . This attack is not going to get weaker, but is going to get continually stronger until, in my view, it will play a perfectly definite part in taking the strain off our Russian ally and in reducing building and construction of submarines and other weapons of war."

> "Hitler made a contract with the demon of the air, but the contract ran out before the job was done and the demon has taken on an engagement with a rival firm."

In short Winston Churchill's defense was basically as optimistic as it was obviously sincere. But in the cold light of logic it was not so completely convincing as it was in the golden rumble of still unsurpassed oratory. He left the United Nations to hope that he and his friend Franklin Roosevelt had selected the right military commanders and were listening to the commanders they had chosen. Those facts, not susceptible of proof by oratory, remained to be seen.

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