SECOND FRONT AND BEAVERBROOK

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 289, 4 September 1942, Page 5

SECOND FRONT AND BEAVERBROOK

London Writer’s Claim POSSIBLE INFLUENCE ON PREMIER (Special Correspondent.) (Received September 3, 9.40 p.m.) LONDON, September 2. The clamour for a second front has much abated since the raid on Dieppe. The, quarterly review “Round Table” comments somewhat caustically on Lord Beaverbrook’s attitude to the second! front: “The man who put himself at the head of the demand for an immediate second front is Lord Beaverbrook, with that extraordinary flair of the modern newspaper proprietor for sensing the popular desire and fanning it to a blaze and representing the dictates of reason as the caution of incompetence.” The “Round Table” observes that Lord Beaverbrook’s departure from office has caused tno break in his personal friendship with the Prime Minister and says that that recently has been one of the special anxieties weighing on Parliament, which has little faith in Lord Beaverbrook’s erratic genius as a purveyor of victory. There has been a fear, the journal says, lest Lord Beaverbrook and' nob the War Cabinet or the chiefs of staff might become Mr. Churchill’s principal source of advice. Matter For Experts. Many members of the House of Commons felt chary of the recent long recess. “They have been actuated not by a desire for Parliamentary interference in the strategic planning but by apprehension as to how the ChurchillBeaverbrook relationship might develop behind the scenes while the Westminster curtain was still down.” Commenting on the second front, the “Round Table” says: “When and how it can be initiated is a question on which no opinion is of any value whatever except that of the few responsible men who are in possession of the full facts. It is difficult to understand the state of mind of those who think that so great an enterprise would have the slightest chance of success if it were launched under the control of men who were capable of letting their judgment on such a matter be influenced to any degree by resolutions of mass meetings or agitations in lobbies'. “On the other hand, it is rightly the concern of public opinion to demand that the machinery for forming a decision on this high strategic question and the many others related to it shall be more adequate in the fourth year of the war than it has seemed to be in the third 1 .” Improved Control. The “Round Table” expresses the opinion that there are four “certain needs” for the war’s fourth year: First, for the whole plan of the war on the technical side to be conceived in terms of co-operation of all the three services and thought out by strategists to a strategic end before 'being co-ordin-ated with policy by the intervention of any Minister. Secondly, that production must be wedded to strategy by co-ordination at the highest level, which implies that scientific invention must be raised from a consultative to executive status in the High Command's counsels. Thirdly, that there is a strong case for vesting ultimatei authority in a small number of outstanding minds set free from any other responsibility but that of thinking ahead. Fourthly, that the British war planning machinery must be fitted at last into that which will 'be evolved as the plan of the United Nations.