TRADITION BROKEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 9

TRADITION BROKEN

HORE-BELISHA’S POLITICAL CAREER GREAT REVITALISING FORCE. MAN OF DYNAMIC ENERGY. With the departure of the Rt Hon Leslie Hore-Belisha from the War Office, the youngest member of the British War Cabinet goes into temporary political oblivion. At 44, after 16 years in the House of Commons, Mr HoreBelisha sat in the seat of Lord Kitchener and Press tributes in England and U.S.A., indicate something of the obvious worth of this young and energetic Cabinet Minister.

Modernism comes slowly in high places, stated a writer in the “Picture Post." Hore-Belisha held modern notions of publicity—that is, he knew how to appeal to the man in the street and talk to him about his problems. But Army bureaucrats cling tenaciously to customs and methods. Napoleon had his difficulties with traditionalists. And the traditionalists have always feared Hore-Belisha. He began his political life at 28. Then his Conservative opponent for Devonport sarcastically referred to him as "a little chit of a fellow.” Hore-Belisha replied: “I am proud to be called ‘a little chit of a fellow’ because I am rather older than Napoleon was when he led to victory the greatest armies that the world has ever seen; because I am older than Alexander, was when he conquered the then known world; because I am rather older than Hannibal, probably the greatest general the world has ever seen . . . because I am five years older than Pitt, the greatest English Prime Minister, when he became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-three; and because I am six years older- than Mr Gladstone was when he became Lord of the Treasury .... there were three million ‘little chits of fellows’ who protected my opponent and his home in the war. If you want a monument to the achievement of the older politicians you may find it across the Channel. It is three hundred miles long and a half mile deep and it is studded with the tombstones of “little chits of fellows’.” Hore-Belisha won the seat. Today, sixteen years later, his dynamic energy has helped launch the first contingents of the greatest army of “little chits of fellows” Britain has known. There was a solemn shaking of heads when Hore-Belisha became Secretary of State for War. Not because he was a little chit. He had grown politically. Grey streaked his wavy auburn hair. There was a steadier glint in his blue eyes. His round face and heavy eyebrows, his slow smile and more expansive figure ■ had been made famous by cameras and cartoonists from John O’Groats to Land’s End. But be-medalled generals and bureaucrats and the old-school-tie brigade shuddered at what the flamboyant and dynamic figure who made a beacon famous, might do amidst the traditions of the- War Office. BREAK WITH TRADITION. But the traditionalist generally gave full credit to Hore-Belisha for his amazing re-organisation and re-vitalising of the Army and the War Office. He did break with tradition. He insisted that the modern army needed a modern outlook as well as up-to-date equipment. He re-vitalised the highest commonds. He inspired the ranks by democratic reform and popularised the Army. He held out to every private the possibility of a Field-Marshal’s baton. Hore-Belisha made mistakes. He often was blamed for omissions and commissions possibly not of his own creation. During the September crisis of 1938 which ended in Munich he was blamed for shortage of anti-aircraft defences. He was blamed for lack of certain equipment for the army. These inadequacies have all been remedied. A Ministry of Supplies at his urging was created. Political enemies strove to drive him from office. He has been working eighteen hours a day, tireless in energy, on the verge of greater achievements. With a flare for the dramatic, with a love of life and the good things of it, as strong as it was with Disraeli —his hero —he worked amidst simple surroundings. His room at the War Office was simple and practical. High ceilinged, the walls were covered with maps of the various fronts and frontiers. His large mahogany desk was neat and orderly and was never allowed to become piled up. At this desk Hore-Belisha consulted with his generals and advisers. When he received visitors he slouched into an easy chair close to the fireplace and relaxed. But he never lost the gift of making each visitor feel as if their visit was the most important thing in Hore-Belisha’s day. Hore-Belisha's mother married twice. Her first husband, the ex-Secretary of War’s father, was Mr J. I. Belisha. After his death the widow married, in 1912, Sir Adair Hore, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions. Then her son added the extra part to his name making it Hore-Belisha. DEFINITE LEANINGS. His mother has told how from his earliest days, Leslie Hore-Belisha showed definite leanings towards law and oratory. He used to declaim famous men’s speeches in his bedroom at night. At Clifton College he frequently gave orations on Speech Day always eating grapes before his speeches because he had read somewhere that the great Pitt used to drink wine before speaking. Leslie, his mother said, thought grapes would have the same effect. When Lady Hore died, the bachelor Secretary of War was inconsolable. Hore-Belisha as a student was brilliant, but learning came easily and he did not have to work as hard as most. As a boy at Clifton, he was a good sprinter. He is proud of having won the hundred-yard dash two years in succession. He went to St John's College, Oxford, a year before the first world war broke out. He travelled on the Continent and studied in Paris and at Heidelberg, where he happened to be when the Great War started. SERVICE IN LAST WAR. During the war, though a mere lad. he joined the “Old Contemptibles” in October. 1914. He joined the Public

School Boys’ battalion as a private and “formed fours” on Salisbury Plain. He was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps serving as captain. later rising to the rank of Major. He Served on two fronts, in the West in France, and in Salonika and Cyprus. He was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he went back to Oxford. He won scholastic honours, and became the President of the Union which has given so many leaders to the nation. He used to play wing threequarter for the college. The only outdoor sport he indulges in today is golf, and he has a handicap of sixteen. He says there are many good men who have to remain bad golfers. Leaving Oxford, he started on the road to be a barrister. His restless, inquiring mind brought him to journalism and he was one of the best reporters, and political gossiper, on the “Sunday Express.” Soon politics caught him. And he caught on to politics with a tenacious ambition which never left him. He has indeed tremendous driving power and courage. He won Devonnort for the Liberals in 1923 and has held this seat ever since. It is sometimes forgotten by his opponents that he is a political strategist of the first oi'cler. It was he who really founded the Liberal National Party and enabled Baldwin with Macdonald to form a National Government, which has been in power ever since. RAPID RISE IN POLITICS. Hore-Belisha's rise in politics was rapid. His opponents said he was more interested In a career than principles. But the ex-Secretary of War has never abandoned his strong Liberalism. If he were to express his policies in general terms they would be found to be greatly similar to those of President Roosevelt. whom he greatly admires. Both are tacticians and strategists as well as champions of liberal principles. Both are energetic, vivacious, with a quick eye for the main chance. Both have a great knack of stirring public interest. His first office in the Government was as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. Then came his promotion to Financial Secretary of the Treasury. the threshold to the Cabinet. But political exigencies deprived him of a Cabinet Post when he was appointed Minister of Transport. A less ambitious and gifted man would have sunk into obscurity. Overnight his genius converted the Ministry of Transport into one which seemed to be the only important department in the Government. It furnished most of the headlines. In May, 1937, with the recruiting problem acute. Premier Chamberlain transferred him to the War Office. Wiseacres waited for the “ballyhoo.” For weeks and months he said nothing. The man who launched the beacon, who stirred the whole country into battle against “death on the roads” disappeared from the public eye. Hore-Belisha knew that the War Office was a big job. He intended to master its problems before he talked. And when he had learned what he thought was necessary he came back into the limelight by the most drastic reorganisation of the War Office and Army known in recent times.