Caustic Criticism Of Lord Beaverbrook

Manawatu Times, Volume 67, Issue 111, 4 September 1942, Page 5

Caustic Criticism Of Lord Beaverbrook

(Special Correspondent.) Received Thursday, 8 p.m. LONDON, Sept. 2. The clamour for a second front has much abated since the Dieppe raid. The well-known quarterly review, the 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 Beaver* brook, 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 incompetehee." “The Round Table observes that Beaverbrook's departure from office caused no personal break in his personal • riendship with the Prime Minister and mat reoently one of the Special anxieties weighing on Parliament which has little raith in Beaverbrook’s erratic genius as a purveyor of victory has been the fear .est Beaverbrok and not the War Cab* met or Chiefs of Staff might become Mr Churchill’s principal source of advice. Many members of the Commons felt Chary of the recent long recess." They were actuated not by a desire for Parliamentary interference in the strategic planning but by apprehension ae to now the Churchill-Beaverbrook 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 oan be initiated is a question on which no opinion of any value whatever can be given except that of a few responsible men who are in possession of the full facts. It is difficult to understand the state of mind of those who think so great an enterprise would have the slighest chance of success if launched under the control of men who are capable of letting their Judgment in such a matter be influenced in any degree by the resolutions of mass meetings or agitations in the 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 strategio question and many others related to it shall be more adequate In the fourth year of the war than it seemed to be in the third." The Round Table expresses the opinion that there are four “certain needs" for the war's fourth year: Firstly: For the whole plan of war on the technical side to be conceived in terms of co-operation of ail three services and thought out by strategists to a strategic end before being co-ordinated with the policy by the intervention of any minister. Secondly: Production must be wedded to strategy by co-ordination at the highest level, which implies that scientific invention must be raised from a consul, tatlve to an executive status in the High Command’s counsels. Thirdly: There is a strong case for vesting the ultimate authority in a small number of outstanding minds set free from any other responsibilities but that of thinking ahead. Fourthly: The British war planning machinery must be fitted at least into that which will evolve the plan of the United Nations."