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Unflappable Man. In a time of financial crisis, Chancellor of the Exchequer was the most crucial job in the Cabinet. It fell to Rab Butler, and he promptly showed his independence by refusing to let Churchill put an "overlord" above him. The two men still have their differences. Rab's intellectuality grates on the old man, and Butler once confided to a friend: "I believe Winston still thinks of me as a bright young man just down from Cambridge." As opposed to Churchill's inspired high spirits, Butler is, in the words of a friend, "completely unflappable —if a bomb exploded under his desk, he would press a button for his third secretary." Blood, toil, tears and sweat are not for him. Recently he advised a British audience to adopt his own credo: "Do not be elated, never be depressed." But Sir Winston has learned to admire Rab's solid virtues; when Butler presented his first budget, Churchill lumbered to his feet, flourishing a handful of papers to urge backbenchers to louder cheers, crying: ''This is Tory democracy!"
Butler's relationship with Anthony Eden is built upon mutual friendship and respect. Butler never takes a hand in a foreign-policy decision. He himself tells a wry story of walking in St. James's Park with Eden and wagering that they could not get through the park without somebody's recognizing the handsome Foreign Secretary (nobody ever recognizes Butler). Sure enough, a nursemaid spotted Eden. "And I left him there," says Butler, "telling the pretty nursemaid about the mysteries of unrequited exports."
Butler's rise has inevitably cast him. in the public eye, as a sort of rival to Eden. Actually, the two some time ago struck a private gentlemen's agreement on Eden's right to be the next Prime Minister. Then, like so many Chancellors before him—Disraeli, Gladstone, Pitt the Younger. Winston Churchill, to name a few—Rab Butler will get his turn to be Prime Minister. Some have lingering doubts about Butler as P.M.; some feel he lacks some final quality of imaginative decision.
"Quality, Sir, Quality!" Butler has been a superb Chancellor of the Exchequer at a time when Britain needed one. Last week Butler entered into the "closed season"—the two-week period when the Chancellor traditionally is cut off from the outside world and is left to think, and to give final shape to his budget in deepest secrecy. Every day, like a queen ant fussed over by faithful workers, Rab was closeted in his Treasury office. Evenings he worked until past midnight in his study, hung with Impressionist paintings from his father-in-law's collection.