HIS MAJESTY'S GOVERNMENT
MR. ATTLEE has completed his administration with laud- able promptitude, and his appointments are exposed to public contemplation and comment. There has been, and will be, no inclination to make the comment unduly critical. The best must be believed and hoped of a new Government till its acts and words give reason for a different attitude. But that does not mean that preliminary assessments must be slavishly uncritical ; the country has a right to know what expectations can reasonably be entertained of its new rulers. The new Government is, in fact, largely experimental, as in the nature of things it was bound to be. Not many Labour Mem- bers have hitherto held office ; those who have are found now in positions of importance, and the appropriate positions, in the administration. For the rest, junior ex-Ministers have been given high responsibilities, and many new men given junior, and in some cases senior, posts. Innovation has appealed little lor the Prime Minister. He has gone back to the large Cabinets ofwe-war days, with Ministers whose average age is well over sixty ; he, like his predecessor, takes the post of Minister of Defence ; the India Office is retained ; and despite all the Labour criticism of the division of responsibility for housing between four or five Minister in the previous Government it is divided in the present Government be- tween five. Considerable division is clearly inevitable, and much will depend on the efficiency with which Mr. Greenwood discharges his functions of co-ordination.
In the matter of personnel the only question is what use Mr. Attlee has made of the not too ample material, qualifatively, at his disposal ; the loss of specialists like Lord Woolton and Lord Leathers is serious. To his choice for the major posts little excep- tion can be taken. Mr. Bevin was understood to desire the position of Foreign Secretary, and any hesitations about his appointment to it will be largely dispelled by the knowledge that he will be sup- ported by the ability and long experience of Mr. Philip Noel Baker, attached to the Foreign Office as Minister of State., Mr. Dalton was the obvious choice for Chancellor of the Exchequer. The three service Ministries are in safe hands, with Mr. Alexander at the Admiralty and Lord Stansgate at the Air Ministry with Squadron- Leader John Strachey as spokesman for the department in the Commons ; Mr. Jack Lawson at the War Office gets a higher post than he has so far held, but there is no reason to believe he will not be equal to it. Mr. Aneurin Bevan at the Ministry of Health is something of an adventure, but there are those who pre- dict that he will surprise his critics. Mr. Shinwell and Mr. West- wood naturally take the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the Secre- taryship of Scotland respectively ; Mr. G. A. Isaacs is understood to have been recommended by Mr: Bevin as his successor at the Ministry of Labour, and he began well with his intervention in the railway negotiations ; Mr. Tom Williams, a miner by origin, takes the Ministry of Agriculture on the strength of the experience he acquired there as Under-Secretary to Mr. Hudson.
So far there is small ground for criticism. But there are one or two appointments about which doubts suggest themselves. The transference of Mr. Cliuter Ede from the Ministry of Education, where he has been Parliamentary Secretary since 1940, is pre- sumably due to the feeling that he deserves the reward of a Sec- retaryship of State. That may well be so. but the importance of national education to-day immeasurably transcends any personal considerations, as Mr. Ede would be the first of all men to concede. His whole life has been devoted to education in one field or another, as teacher, as official of teachers' organisations, as local admini- strator and, most important of all, as Mr. Butler's close associate in the framing of the great Education Act which is now being put into operation. No one, probably, in the House of Commons has com- parable educational experience, and only considerations much more compelling than meet the eye could justify Mr. Ede's translation to another sphere. As things are, the whole supervision and adminis- tration of national education—public and direct-grant schools, the whole range of primary and secondary education, with the new divi- sion of the latter into grammar, modern and technical schools, part- time education, County Colleges— is to rest on the virgin shoulders of Miss Ellen Wilkinson. It can only be hoped they will be equal to the burden. Whether such a burden should be put on them is a serious question.
Mr. Ede's appointment, and some others, seem rather to suggest that Mr. Attlee has deliberately taken the view that past records are a disadvantage, and that the men of his choice should make new starts in fresh fields. There is admittedly something to be said for that principle, but it can easily be carried too far. Another case in point is that of Professor Marquand, who enters the House and the Ministry for the first time. Mr. Marquand has for fifteen years been Professor of Industrial Relations at Cardiff, but instead of going to the Ministry of Labour he is made Secretary to the Depart- ment of Overseas Trade. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this office at a time when the whole hope of the maintenance of the standard of living depends on an immense expansion of our export trade. The Prime Minister needs to divert to that depart- ment the best ability at his disposal. It may prove that he has done so, but for the moment judgement must be reserved. Rather simi- larly Mr. Harold Wilson, a high authority on coal, is sent to the Office of Works, and Mr. Hector McNeil, whose experience is in the field of municipal administration, to the Foreign Office. For the rest Mr. George Tomlinson should do well as Minister of Works, as should Mr. Silkin as Minister of Town and Country Planning, and Mr. James Griffiths as Minister of National Insurance. Mr. E. J. Williams is a strange Minister of Information, unless his task is to liquidate that department, as it well might be. It matters little who is Postmaster-General, since administration so largely predominates over policy in that department, but because its activities touch the general public so closely it seems a pity to depart from the almost invariable rule that the Postmaster-General shall sit in the House of Commons. So the new administration launches into what may be smooth or troubled seas. With the King's Speech next week public attention will shift sharply from personnel to policy. By all accounts attention will have plenty to fasten on.
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