Field Marshal Sir Cyril John Deverell, 63, and four other elderly British generals called by request at the War Office in London last week, stepped one by one into the private office of Leslie Hore-Belisha and handed in their resignations. Almost immediately came word that 50 other general officers had been passed over to make way for new Chief of the Imperial General Staff Major General John Standish Surtees Prendergast Vereker Viscount Gort, 51.
These were high water marks in the most drastic reorganization the British Army has seen for generations, a reorganization that proposed almost complete substitution by advancement by merit instead of by seniority, a new Army Council on which Territorial (National Guard) officers would sit for the first time, increased pay and better living conditions for both officers and men. The equivalent of reviving David Lloyd George's War-time Ministry of Munitions, Secretary Hore-Belisha achieved by appointing Vice Admiral Sir Harold Arthur Brown, Director General of Munitions Production, to the additional post of Master General of the Ordnance.
"There was so much to do, and so little time," said Minister Hore-Belisha last week. "The new appointments can only be regarded as unconventional if rotation is taken as the standard. It cannot be the standard in any live organization."
Basic fact back of what was already being referred to as the "Belisha Purge" was that despite two years of furious rearming by Great Britain, production of heavy machine guns, tanks and artillery is way behind, there is a deficit of 12,000 men in the Army's authorized strength, and the General Staff is as knee deep in red tape as it was in 1912.
The various Blood-Busterfields and other dugout officers fulminating in service clubs against the new order last week could not have the satisfaction of belittling their new Chief of Staff as an upstart. Lord Gort is a sixth Viscount, an old Harrovian, a member of the most exclusive club in the world, the Royal Yacht Squadron, and grandson of famed Robert Smith Surtees, author of the fox hunters' bible Handley Cross. It also happens that he is a professional soldier of great ability, holds the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military decoration.