Evening star., 1939-09-05
Churchill and Eden

Hatchets buried, Winston Church.
Ill and Anthony Eden are back in
Britain's win-the-war cabinet. Prob
ably no single act of Prime Minister
Chamberlain, aside from his persist
sent, eleventh-hour efforts for peace
and his long-range preparations for
defense of the realm in the event of
their failure, merits so universal ap-
proval in his country as the inclusion
OF the sixty-two-year-old Churchill
and the forty-two-year-old Eden in
the government now intrusted with
the fate and fortunes of the Empire
In another great European conflict.
Chamberlain indubitably responds
to popular demand in restoring these
seasoned ministers of the crown to
cabinet rank. The Prime Minister
reveals himself as broad-minded
statesman, as we'll as an astute poll
tician, in taking them into the fold,
for Churchill and Eden were bitter
and consistent foes of the Chamber
lain appeasement policies toward the
relationships policies doomed to
final collapse in the terrible cata-
clysm of war.
Mr.. Churchill resumes the helm,
which he held, as first lord of the
admiralty, at the outbreak of the
first World War in 1914. Regardless
of indecision in the Asquith cabinet
as the crisis approached, Churchill,
with that daring impetuosity which
is his cardinal characteristic, ordered
the British fleet to take up war sta
tionS in the North Sea as soon as con-
f1ict with Germany seemed both in
evitable and imminent. The historic
result was that when Britain de-
clared war on August 4, the mistress
of the seas" automatically establish
ed blockade of the enemy across
the North Sea and assumed COM
mand" of the maritime war area,
which the German Navy never sue
ceeded in breaking, though its high
seas fleet made a gallant effort to do
SO at Jutland.
Churchills star at the admiralty
was visibly dimmed by two major
disasters to British arms, for which
most of his compatriot historians
held the dynamic winston" respon-
sible. One was the lamentably un-
successful naval expedition for the
relief of beleaguered Antwerp in the
earliest weeks of the war. The other,
and far more disastrous episode
which threatened to wreck Church.
ills career, was the ignominious COL
lapse of the Dardanelles campaign,
which cost both the British Army
and Navy so dearly in the futile effort
to force the straits, in the teeth of
the impregnable defense organized
for the Turks by the German strate-
gist, General Liman Won Sanders.
Under whitening fire for author
ship of the Gallipoli fiasco, Churchill
surrendered the admiralty portfolio,
to fight as a major in France. In
front-line service there he displayed
the same reckless gallantry that dis
tinguished him as war correspond
ent and young subaltern both in
fighting in India and later in the
Boer War. In 1917 Churchill re-
turned to Lloyd Georges cabinet as
minister of munitions.
AS supreme civilian director of
Britain's sea power, Winston Church.
i'll again inherits a vast responsible
ity. Even though British naval ton
mage is five times that of Germany
margin of superiority enhanced by
the French fleet, which is alone more
than twice as strong as Hitler's-the
western powers have their work cut
out for them in attempting to assail
the Reich at sea. Such action is pos
sible on three fronts-the Baltic, the
North and the Black Seas. If the nut
can be cracked, Winston Churchill is