Cabinet Shuffle

A few nights before Parliament reconvened last week, Captain the Right Honourable David Margesson, M. P., Conservative Party Whip, found himself in a very tight spot. Weekending at the Sussex house of his friend. Transport Minister Euan Wallace, Captain Margesson retired about midnight to his bedroom in an otherwise unoccupied wing. In the bed room was a cupboard (containing a washstand) equipped with an automatic light switch. When the door was open, the light was on; when closed, the light was out --or at least it was supposed to be. Captain Margesson, impelled by what he later de scribed as "childish curiosity," wanted to make sure. He squeezed his great frame into the cupboard and pulled the door shut behind him. The light really went out.

Captain Margesson was satisfied. Fum bling in the dark for the door's handle, he soon discovered that there was no inside handle. The Captain heaved his 14 stone against the door. It would not budge. He lit a match and observed that the mirror over the washstand was fogging from his breath. Scared stiff, he grabbed -a razor and forced it between the door and its frame. This admitted a little air, a chink of light. By diligently manipulating the razor Captain Margesson made a big enough hole to keep breathing, then he went to work on the door catch. Four hours later he staggered out exhausted.

Captain Margesson's great & good friend Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, whose sterner political chores the Captain does, was not in quite such a bad fix as Parliament sat again. But he was in no good fix. Great Britain was grousing about the war's inactivity and part of the press was after ministerial scalps, if not that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. The Prime Minister had to do something, and the best guess was that he would shuffle, but not shake up, his Cabinet, probably reduce his nine-man War Cabinet, possibly give Winston Churchill more war powers (TIME, April 8). He did just that.

Musical Chairs. The result pleased almost nobody. The Times described the Cabinet shuffle as a game of puss-in-the-corner. The Spectator labeled it "The Cabinet Stirabout." Coming closer to the right figure, the Daily Herald compared it to the Mad Hatter's tea party: "The leading figures move solemnly from one chair to another and the public, like Alice, looks on bewildered." In effect, Mr. Chamberlain had invited his Cabinet to get up and march around the room while he stood one chair in the corner. When they sat down again, six had new chairs, there were two new players, and one was out of the game. In new chairs were: > Dapper, round-bellied Sir Kingsley ("Cherub") Wood, 58, who as Air Secretary had been more & more criticized for letting Britain continue to lag behind Germany in production of planes and training of pilots. Both press and House of Commons have been down on him for his secrecy about R. A. F. exploits. Into the very small chair of Lord Privy Seal, a sinecure, went Sir Kingsley.

> Down in the big chair Sir Kingsley had vacated sat lean old Sir Samuel Hoare, who had been Air Secretary twice before (1922-24, 1924-29). Although British experts think planes can be produced much faster than "Cherub" Wood produced them, few thought last week that Sir Samuel, most famed as the co-planner of the abortive Hoare-Laval Ethiopian deal, was the man to produce them.

> The Board of Education's 39-year-old President, Earl De La Warr, and First Commissioner of Works Herwald Ramsbotham (pronounced Ram's Bottom) also landed in each other's chair. Cabinet critics waited to see what sort of stuff this new & bigger job brought out of young De La Warr, who in World War I was a conscientious objector who showed his nerve by serving on a mine sweeper.

> Feckless William Shepherd ("Shakespeare") Morrison lost both the Ministry of Food and the Chancellery of the Duchy of Lancaster, but Neville Chamberlain and Captain Margesson found a seat for this faithful Party hack in the Postmaster Generalship, where he cannot be heckled as farmers and consumers have heckled him. Postmaster General Major George Clement Tryon was made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with the additional sop of a baronage.

> To get a Minister of Food who knew something about dealing with the public, the Prime Minister sagely went outside the Cabinet and hired a shopkeeper tycoon--Frederick James Marquis, Lord Woolton, banker, insuranceman and chairman of Lewis's Ltd., a chain of Midlands department stores. He used to criticize Neville Chamberlain's "parsimony"; when Chamberlain was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Day after Lord Woolton joined the Cabinet Mrs. Chamberlain introduced him at a"Better Cookery" campaign meeting as follows: "Since arrangements for this meeting have been made some body has been busy changing Cabinet Ministers around." (Laughter.) Thin-lipped thin-haired Lord Woolton started off nicely in his new job by talking modestly to the housewives in terms they understood. "I suppose I am really going to run the biggest shop the world has ever seen -- to supply the nation's food. It is a stimulating thought. It strikes the imagination." A slice of bread wasted each day by each Briton, he then explained, equals 30 shiploads of wheat in a year. A teaspoonful of tea for each person "and none for the pot" would save 60 shiploads of tea.

> To the Ministry of Shipping, to succeed Sir John Gilmour, who died last fortnight, went strapping, ambitious Robert Spear Hudson, a blunt ex-diplomat who as Secretary of the Department of Overseas Trade was one of the junior ministers who revolted against Neville Chamberlain after Munich. After Chamberlain warned the rebels to play ball, Hudson played ball. Last summer he took credit for Behind-the-Scenes-Man Sir Horace Wilson's abortive plan to offer Germany credits and access to world markets in exchange for peace. Said the Spectator last week: "His appointment . . . over the head of Sir Arthur Salter, whose brilliant record in the control of shipping in the last war qualifies him better than any other man in the country ... is worse than incomprehensible."

Newsreel Note. Out of the Cabinet altogether went Lord Chatfield, Minister for Coordination of Defense, thereby reducing the inner War Cabinet from nine men to eight. Instead of giving First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill this chair to put his feet on, parsimonious Neville Chamberlain scrapped the Ministry and named kewpish Mr. Churchill Chairman of the Committee of Service Ministers (Air Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare, War Secretary Oliver Stanley, Winston himself). Since the committee can only make recommendations to the Cabinet, the Prime Minister had made Mr. Churchill look more powerful to the public without giving him more power.

This might cost Winston everything he has gained since the war began, if Britain met a military reverse. Cynics suspected that Mr. Chamberlain might have some such idea in mind. Although Winston Churchill has lately praised the Prime Minister even in private (to the irritation of his friends), nobody in Britain thinks the two men can share the same political bed long without somebody's landing on the floor. Churchill is probably biding his time, and last week Winston and Foreign Secretary Viscount Halifax were even bets for the Prime Ministership, if Chamberlain should go.

Neville Chamberlain does not go often to the cinema. If he had gone last week, he could have heard newsreels of himself and Lord Halifax receive moderate applause, Winston's get ovations.

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