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5-to-3. Having shuffled virtually the same old pack to deal out this Cabinet, Churchill then dealt his own Conservative Party a pat hand in the new inner War Cabinet. By adding Bevin he had three Laborites and three Conservatives in the innermost council of the British Empire. But the Conservative Party controls the bulk of Britain's wealth and a two-thirds Parliamentary majority (frozen while the war lasts). So the Conservative Prime Minister upped his War Cabinet to eight, added Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood and Sir John Anderson. This brought the standing of Britain's controlling body to three Laborites, five Conservatives.
Viewed from its too many angles the new Cabinet shaped itself up as a time bomb which must eventually explode. Encased in their common desire for victory, there must nevertheless be some acid friction between Bevin, who was the brains of the General Strike, and men who helped break it; between others who had learned not to trust each other's judgment in the past and had no particular assurance that in a pinch they could trust each other's judgment now.
Growl and Grumbles. Churchill's growl still set the keynote of his people's temper. He still rode high in their affections as war leader, but there was also a grumble, which CBS Broadcaster Edward (christened Egbert) Murrow defined as coming from caste-conscious Britons who were beginning to realize that "all are equal under the bomb."
War profiteering has not been fully curbed. This sort of situation did not sit well with a public facing a new tax load in the form of a purchase tax rising to a maximum of 33⅓% on such items as winter clothing and household goods. Added to these irritants in civilian life was the arrival of Britain's miserable winter weather, the still present threat of invasion, the anxiety of continuing air raids, the problem of keeping a mobilized but inactive army of more than two million men out of mischief, the possibility of another blow to civilian morale if, for instance, symbolic Gibraltar falls.
Steam Off. Best valve available last week through which to blow off angry popular steam was old Mr. Chamberlain. The London Times bade him good-by by acknowledging that for more than three years he bore "a load of responsibility as heavy and thankless as any that was ever carried by a British Prime Minister. ..." Not so gallant, angry British masses have for months wanted him to take his umbrella, tuck it under his arm, and go back to manufacturing brass bedsteads in Birmingham. For in the British public mind, man and umbrella have come to symbolize an era of, to say the least, Damned Bad Management.
Starchiest comment on Mr. Chamberlain's historic role was at hand in a new little book called Guilty Men, an on-the-record, non-editorialized indictment of Chamberlain and 14 of his pre-and post-Munich peers (TIME, Sept. 30). Author was "Cato," identified by wiseacres as the Evening Standard's brilliant newsman Michael Foote.