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The "Cockney Sparrow." "Imagine Henry Ford abolishing capitalism or Jim Farley entirely abandoning the Democratic Party." Thus Author Kraus conveys an idea of what has happened to Churchill's Cockney Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood. A self-made millionaire, "for 58 years Sir Kingsley has lived the life and preached the creed of capitalism. In his 59th year he has, to use his own phrase, 'liquidated the millionaire.' " In Parliament, Wood had been a kind of right-wing British Ickes, baiting the Laborite members with the ferocity and felicity of a man who had known the left from birth. But "in his 5th year he delivered a speech in the House that brought the Labor members to their feet to give him a solemn ovation." He had just put through "a budget . . . that takes almost the last penny out of the rich man's pocket and makes England a poor man's country." "If a Laborite had done it," says Kraus, "the City would have suffered a serious attack of jitters. However, since it was Sir Kingsley, everyone understands that war transforms people and problems." And, Kraus adds, "to the lasting honor of Conservative landowners, shipping magnates, business executives . . . they don't care whether they are broke or not as long as they are helping to break Hitler. . . . They have changed as miraculously as has their Chancellor."
Ambassador Most Extraordinary. The transformations on the left are just as surprising. A wag once called Sir Stafford Cripps Sir Stafford Crapps, "a parody of his own way of speaking when he tightens his lips and hisses damnation to the capitaLIstic system with a poisonously sharp 'li.' " For years Sir Stafford, though the owner of one of Britain's largest stone quarries and one of its highest-priced lawyers, was a spiritual resident of Moscow. To show his contempt for "imperialist" World War II, Sir Stafford hopped off soon after it started to study war conditions in China.
Then Churchill, who once growled at Cripps's "loathsome speaking," sent him to Moscow in the flesh. Russian officials who met him in morning coats and top hats were appalled when the British ambassador appeared in a flannel suit; he looked like a Bolshevik intellectual. But with all the skill and keenness that made him a great lawyer, Sir Stafford went into action for England, with Hitler's help got an alliance for the British sector of the "capitaLIstic system."
Boss. Ernest Bevin is Britain's most powerful labor leader, Minister of Labor. Some 20 years ago, he won his elaborate argument for 100,000 striking dockers before the Ministry of Labor's special commission. Friends urged him to go into the law, "You would certainly become a K.C. (King's Counsel, Britain's highest legal rank)." "P.C. if you please," growled Bevin, "P.C.—counsel for the proletariat."