Most newsworthy feature of Neville Chamberlain's Cabinet reshuffle last May was the appointment of pudgy Leslie Hore-Belisha as Secretary of State for War. In Stanley Baldwin's Government this shrewd little Jew, as Minister of Transport, had won unprecedented publicity by his road-safety campaign, his famed orange-topped Belisha Beacons.
The point of Hore-Belisha's new appointment was obvious—his iob was to get much-needed recruits for the British Army. the ugly duckling of Britain's fighting services. With the sort of interest shown in a popular cricketer, Britishers—from black-coated civil servants in Whitehall to roisterous...
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