The Minister for Co-ordinating Defence was not at his best
in the debates on the Supplementary Estimates for Defence on Monday afternoon. What the House required was a detailed and dispassionate survey of the work of the departments and an account of the special measures that were being taken to organise the country to meet the threat of war. Members grew rather restless when he spent so much time on niggling points, and then broke off to make an attack on the Labour Party's unhelpful attitude to recruiting. " His onslaught on the Opposition was regarded as particularly unfortunate at that particular moment, seeing that they had not then even deployed their arguments, and there had been little indication, apart from a foolish speech in the country by Mr. Attlee, of what line they intended to take. There is a general feeling in the House that greater efforts ought to be made to induce in the Labour Party a spirit of co-operation in the matter of defence.
Previous page
