British Commonwealth of Nations: The Cabinet

Two years and four months in office crowned the Baldwin Cabinet, last week, on the occasion of a compromise between its moderate majority led by Premier Baldwin and the arch-Tory group. This compromise effected, Britons could look with a justified satisfaction on the following men, now more firmly at the helm of State than ever:

Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and Leader of the House of Commons—Stanley Baldwin.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs—Sir Austen Chamberlain.

Chancellor of the Exchequer—Winston Churchill.

Secretary of State for Home Affairs—Sir William Joynson-Hicks.

Secretary of State for the Colonies—Leopold C. M. S. Amery.

Secretary of State for India—The Earl of Birkenhead.

The full Cabinet roster runs to 21 ministers, with six more in a secondary category and not ordinarily present at the Cabinet table—an example, the Solicitor General for Scotland, A. M. MacRobert. Two peers hold high but chiefly honorary Cabinet rank: the Earl of Balfour (Premier 1902-05), and the Marquess of Salisbury—these respectively Lord President of the Council, and Leader of the House of Lords.

Baldwin, steady country squire and ironmaster; Chamberlain, austerely Victorian Birmingham politician; Churchill, hot-head of a half-dozen simultaneous careers; Joynson-Hicks, plus royaliste que le roi; Amery, implacable Imperialist; Birkenhead, a lawyer, brilliant, fashionable, yet most profound: these are Britain’s Big Six.

Not only has Premier Baldwin kept from falling between the two stools of his party (Moderate-Conservative, and Tory), but his old fashioned brier pipe has become so much a part of the British scene that last week the King-Emperor remarked, on seeing a mammoth pipe exhibited as an advertisement, “They ought to give it to Baldwin.”