THE MEN AROUND CHURCHILL—Rene Kraus—Lippincott ($3).
Between two devastating defeats, Norway and France, Britons quietly won the one victory without which they could not hope to survive in World War II—they liquidated the class war in England for the duration. Entirely within the framework of their democracy, Britons freed themselves of those fatal tensions and cleavages that plague other democracies, paralyzed France. The miracle of Britain's outnumbered defense was made possible by the miracle of British class collaboration.
This week Biographer Rene Kraus (Winston Churchill; TIME, Nov. 4) described this crucial compromise in terms of the men who made it and who now rule wartime England. Some of them have been written up before. "Cato" mauled the Tories in his Guilty Men (TIME, Sept. 30). Patricia Strauss cleverly clawed the Laborites in Bevin and Co. (TIME, July 7). Rene Kraus's book mauls nobody, is the first book to line up for biographical inspection all of the 14 men who Kraus believes are "the men around Churchill."
They are: 1) Conservative Lord Halifax; 2) Conservative Anthony Eden; 3) Liberal Sir Archibald Sinclair; 4) Conservative Sir Kingsley Wood; 5) Laborite Ernest Bevin; 6) Laborite Herbert Morrison; 7) Laborite Clement Attlee; 8) Laborite Albert Victor Alexander; 9) Conservative Lord Beaverbrook; 10) Laborite Sir Stafford Cripps; 11) Laborite Arthur Greenwood; 12) General Sir John Dill; 13) General Archibald Wavell; 14) King George VI.
Most remarkable fact about Britain's sea change, says Author Kraus, is not that Chamberlain gave way to Churchill. "More remarkable . . . seems the fact that the team that pulls Great Britain through the war has remained, on the whole, unchanged. The fighters of today are the petty politicians of yesterday. Eccentrics have become constructive. Revolutionaries are now pillars of state and society. Tories forget to wear the old school tie."
Between World Wars I & II, Britain was not a functioning democracy. Democracy is the most delicate balance of classes and their conflicting interests; appeasement was the symptom that this balance had become unbalanced. Among British Tories, appeasement took the form of pro-Nazi laissez faire. Among Laborites appeasement took the form of do-nothing pacifism. "The House of Lords," says Kraus, ". . . was . . . the stronghold of pro-Nazi sympathies—with the Labor Lords, in their pacifism, closely allied with Fascist-minded peers." Britons were afraid even to diagnose the disease of which the great General-Strike of 1926 and Munich were cognate symptoms. Hitler made the diagnosis, calculated his tactics with clinical precision. But Hitler made one mistake—the sick man was not incurable.
The cure was revolutionary enough to change even the mental habits of the men around Churchill. Says Kraus: "I venture to show this transformation in a few test cases . . . The men I describe are not necessarily great men, but they seem to be great examples."
Four of them: