United Bedfellows

Londoners began to prophesy that within three months Sir Stafford Cripps would have talked himself either into Winston Churchill's job or out of the Cabinet. For the fourth successive week he was having a fling. Warmed by the success of his maiden speech as Leader of the Commons (TIME, March 9), the Red Squire last week begged the United Nations to snuggle more closely into bed. "After the victory," he said, "let us remain in the same gallant company to rebuild a stricken world upon the foundations of justice and equality that will secure for us, for them and for all the people of the world a happier, saner and more peaceful future."

Three days later, echoes of these Crippsisms bounced back from the fusty chambers of the London Times, which said: "Both for Great Britain and for the U.S. . . . secure relations with Russia are of paramount importance. ... It should be a primary aim of British policy ... to promote that understanding and to associate the U.S. Government with an Anglo-Soviet agreement. . . . Russia is not exclusively a European power, and the same identity of interests which makes Russia and the U.S. allies in the struggle against Hitler unites them not less firmly across the Pacific Ocean. There is no reason to suppose that a clear and unequivocal British lead will be misunderstood in Washington. . . ."

While Winston Churchill and the rest of the War Cabinet remained silent, Lord Beaverbrook's powerful newspapers began taking pot shots at Sir Stafford. Wrote the Evening Standard's brilliant, liberal editor Frank Owen: "Cripps had better get off that 'it-all-depends-on-you' theme. . . . We have had enough appeals to self-sacrifice. What the nation needs is not appeals but orders. ..."

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