Through the year 1942 Great Britain was again a nation at war. This account will deal first with such matters as may be called the normal occurrences of the national life, and then with the course of the war during the past year, and with attention only to those areas of action in which Great Britain has directly participated.
Cabinet Changes.
Of a number of changes in the personnel of the Government that were made during the year, some deserve mention. In February 1942 the War Cabinet was reconstituted and reduced in size from nine members to seven: Winston Churchill, Prime Minister and Minister of Defense; Clement Attlee, Secretary for Dominion Affairs; Sir Stafford Cripps, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons; Sir John Anderson, Lord President of the Council; Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; Oliver Lyttleton, Minister of State; and Ernest Bevan who held the portfolios of Labor and National Service. There was some reshuffling of Cabinet positions, and five ministers were dropped and replaced. A new ministry was set up at the end of May, the department of Fuel, Light, and Power, headed by Gwilym Lloyd George. A vast deal of comment, much if it highly critical, was caused by the dropping of Sir Stafford Cripps from the War Cabinet in November, 1942, and his appointment as Minister of Aircraft Production. This was an obvious demotion. Herbert Morrison, Secretary for the Home Department, took Sir Stafford's place in the War Cabinet; the Privy Seal was given to Lord Cranborne; and Anthony Eden added the duties of Leader of the House of Commons to his work at the Foreign Office. In the reconstructed War Cabinet there is only one member without heavy departmental duties. A consequence of this will be an increase in the Prime Minister's authority.
Unemployment.
The war seems to have provided the solution of one of Britain's greatest problems, unemployment. Figures given out during the year 1941 showed a marked improvement in that regard, with a reduction from 696,606 in January to 219,577 in July; then came an increase to 230,621 unemployed persons in September and 270,289 in October. The few figures made public for the year 1942 show a further considerable decrease. In January there were a few more men and boys unemployed than the month before, but fewer women and girls. The figures for February were 99,928 unemployed men and boys, and about 60,000 women and girls. Of the men and boys, 26,508 were classed as unsuited to any occupation. In March 1942 the total number of the unemployed of both sexes had fallen to 135,762. Excluding those unsuitable for any industrial occupation, there were in June 62,766 men and boys, and 36,474 women and girls unemployed. All these figures are for persons between the ages of 16 and 60.
Coal Industry.
One of the most serious problems connected with British wartime industrial effort has been the production of coal. The new Ministry of Fuel, Light, and Power, set up at the end of May, had this problem as its first task. So many miners left their jobs either to enter the armed services or to find better-paying defense work that England has been faced with a bad coal shortage. And there have been frequent strikes among the miners who did not leave; in May 1942 between 10,000 and 15,000 miners were on strike. Low wages are one difficulty; the refusal of the owners to open up new seams (which supposedly they would rather hold in reserve for a possible competitive and profitable future) is another. In June a board of investigation was appointed to inquire into the miners' claim for a wage increase of 4 shillings a shift for adults and 2 shillings for boys, with a weekly minimum of £4.5s The report, issued a fortnight later, gave the miners a minimum wage of £4.3s. for underground workers and £3.18s. for surface workers, which was somewhat less than had been asked for. The increases will add £23,500,000 to production costs, which will be passed on to the consumer. The Mineworkers' Federation accepted the proposed compromise, so for the first time the British coal industry has a national minimum wage.
Before the grant of the increase to the coal miners it was estimated that changes in the wage rates of somewhat less than 4,000,000 working people had resulted in a weekly increase of some £4,000,000.
Another wage settlement important enough to be mentioned, although it affected fewer people than did the establishment of a national minimum wage for the coal industry, was made in March 1942, when the Railway Staff National Tribunal awarded a weekly increase of 4s.6d. (90 cents) in the total wages of adult railway men. This award fixed the minimum base rate at £3.2s.6d. ($12.50) in rural areas, £3.3s.6d. ($12.70) in industrial areas, and £3.5s.6d. ($13.10) in the London area. It might be noted that in each of these categories, 11s ($2.20) a week is a war allowance.
Wartime Employment.
The degree to which the war is employing the time and energies of the civilian population is shown by an official statement made in the latter part of May, that, in round numbers, 22,000,000 of the 33,000,000 persons between the ages of 14 and 64 were mobilized, and that 2,000,000 others, mostly women, were engaged in part-time war work. The farming problem has been especially acute because the armed services have drawn many farm hands away, and many others have obtained jobs in the better-paying war industries. It is estimated, however, that in 1942 only one-third of the food needed by Britain was being imported, as compared with two-thirds in 1939. To effect this result, which saves about 5,000,000 tons of shipping space, 50 per cent has been added to the acreage under cultivation. But this calls naturally for more farm labor. This was taken care of, in part, by nationwide regulations that provide a 10-day farm-work 'holiday' for children 12 to 14 years of age, followed by 'half-work, half-school' days. There are also older boys working as 'Young Farmers' on the land.
Foreign Trade.
While the war has brought about a decrease in unemployment, now down to almost the irreducible minimum, British foreign trade continues to suffer because manufacturing has been diverted into special channels to provide goods needed in the war effort, and many markets in which British manufactured goods were previously sold have been closed by the war. The returns of overseas trade have not been published since sometime in the year 1941; the fragmentary bits of information are too meager to give any reliable indication of what is taking place; though it seems clear that loss of markets rather than the seizure or destruction of goods by enemy action accounts for the decline in exports.
Education.
The latest available figures for British educational institutions, published early in the year 1942, showed no marked change from those of the preceding year, though there was a slight change in the numbers attending the English universities. Higher education in England is in the hands of the two ancient institutions, the University of Oxford with 22 colleges and 3 private halls, and the University of Cambridge, with 17 colleges and 1 hall; and of the modern universities of London and Durham, and the yet more recent seven 'provincial' universities. The total number of university students in 1942 came to 27,506, and the teaching staffs of the several universities numbered in all 4,392. The University of Wales had a staff of 347 teachers and 2,112 students. In Scotland the four universities — St. Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh — had 8,716 students and staffs totaling 1,027. There are also in England and Wales about 2,150 secondary and technical schools attended by 304,000 boys and 265,000 girls, taught by some 25,000 teachers. The number of elementary schools maintained by local educational authorities — about 21,700 in England and Wales, with a daily average attendance of a little more than 4,525,000 — is about the same as for past years.
Mention should be made of the Youth Training Centers which are performing the great task of teaching British youngsters who leave school at the age of 14 skills particularly required by a country at war, but useful also in times of peace. Fire fighting and the repair of bomb damage are wartime activities; but electric welding, navigation, the use of machine tools, and a number of other skills will be worth while after the war is over. An increase in what is virtually child labor, and a continued rise in juvenile delinquency, are problems that show themselves in the wake of the united war effort; but it is probably true that as to youth there is more on the credit than on the debit side of the ledger, because in general the young people of England are not only learning how to work but also gaining a sense of responsibility.
Budget and Taxes.
The fifth war budget, which was introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Kingsley Wood, in mid-April, for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1943, was based on an estimated expenditure of £5,286,000,000, an increase of £1,079,043,000 over the budget for the year 1941-1942. The estimate for the year 1941-1942 had proved to be inadequate and had been increased by supplementary votes of credit. On March 10, 1942, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons that he must ask for a grant of £250,000,000 in addition to what had been given; up to March 7, £3,770,000,000 had been expended, together with £110,000,000 from the balance of the previous year. That would bring the total votes of credit for the current year to £4,250,000,000. For the sake of comparison, it may be pointed out that the largest amount voted by Parliament for the cost of one year of World War I was in 1918, when £2,500,000,000 was voted but not all spent. Of the sum given in the fifth war budget, £4,500,000,000 was to be raised in Great Britain, the remainder to be made up by savings and so on. The budget made no provision for any increase in direct taxation. The allowance given a married couple from income tax remained £140; that for married women who work was increased from £45 to £80. The increase of 2d. a pint tax on beer is expected to bring in £42,000,000 more; the increase on spirits to £2 a gallon (which means 4s.8d. on a bottle of whiskey) will account for another £14,000,000; the increase of 6s on light wines and 12s. on sweet wines will bring in £2,000,000 more. Tobacco is taxed another 6d. an ounce. The purchase tax on luxuries was doubled, from 33 per cent to 66 per cent, with many new articles added to the list. Hats, gloves, and handkerchiefs are rated as luxuries; so too are wallets, watches, and trunks, and many other items that come fairly close to the definition of necessities. Even the enormous sums provided by the budget were found to be inadequate, and supplementary votes of credit were given. In September 1942 it was said that the war had been costing an average, recently, of £12,250,000 a day; in the next few weeks the figure rose to £12,750,000 a day, of which £10,500,000 was spent on the fighting and supply services and £2,250,000 on miscellaneous war services.
This imposes an exceedingly heavy burden of taxation, a sum totaling some 64 per cent of the national income. A careful study recently made showed that, including social-service contributions, indirect taxes, and rates (local taxes), the annual tax costs averaged, before World War I, £5.19s. per head; in 1925-26, £20.8s; in 1937-38 (a rearmament year) £24.16s.; and in 1941-42, £51.14s. At the present rate of exchange, this increase means that before 1914 taxes of all sorts in Great Britain came to $23.80 a person, and in the year 1941-42 to $206.80. This includes the internal revenue taxes on tea, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, and the like, and the purchase tax. In terms of percentage of income, a man with a wife and two children pays 27 per cent of his earning in taxes if he makes £100 a year; 19.6 per cent if he makes £250 a year; and 24.2 per cent if he makes £350 a year. This bears out the old contention that indirect taxes and sales taxes fall mainly on those who are in the lower income brackets. In introducing the fifth war budget Sir Kingsley Wood stated that he felt the maximum was already being obtained in direct taxes; he guaranteed that taxes should not reduce the earnings of a single man below 32s. a week, of a married man without children below 48s. The increases in this latest budget came in the charges on 'luxury goods,' partly to obtain revenue, partly to curb inflation by restricting consumption.
Food and Clothing.
Regulations that became effective by the middle of June 1942, set 5s. as the maximum that restaurants and hotels might charge for a meal; but provision was made for a 'house charge' (cover charge) of not more than 7s. 6d., with further charges for such amenities as an orchestra, cabaret, dance floor. Tea, which is a more important item to the English than most other people understand, is rationed at 2 oz. a week, for everyone over five years old. From the end of July the cheese ration was doubled, to four oz. a week; and during the summer for a period of eight weeks the sweets ration was raised to 4 oz. weekly. On the other hand, milk is rationed at the rate of three pints weekly to a person, except for children, pregnant women, and some invalids; and the egg ration has been cut from one a week to three a month. No white bread can be made, but only whole wheat (really it is 85 per cent whole wheat, 15 per cent white); and this restriction applies to other baked goods, such as rolls, biscuits, cake.
Late in the summer it was announced that clothing coupons allotted for four and a half months must be stretched to cover another month. It is said that reserves of food in Great Britain are greater than ever before, but the Government has no intention of permitting those reserves to be drawn upon save in time of necessity. The English are probably better fed than any other Europeans, but they have had to tighten their belts. With rationing, gout seems to have disappeared; so too has some ten pounds from the weight of the average Britisher.
Air Raid Losses.
In general, during 1942 deaths and injuries from air raids were far less among the civilian population than previously. In December 1941 it was announced that 34 civilians had been killed by enemy action from the air and 55 injured so seriously as to be hospitalized. In January 1942 the number of fatalities was trebled, 112 were killed and 61 were injured; but in February the figures fell to 22 killed and 21 wounded. That was in sharp contrast to the case for February 1941, when 793 were killed and 1,068 wounded in air raids. The figures for April and May were released together: 399 killed and 425 wounded. It was in these months that took place a series of 'reprisal raids' on Bath, Exeter, Norwich, York, the so-called 'Baedeker raids' which the Nazis aimed not at points of importance in the British war effort but at cathedrals and other national monuments. October was a bad month, with 229 civilians killed and 370 injured. However, the total number of deaths announced as due to enemy air attacks in 1942 was well under the figure for deaths from accidents on the roads.
On Nov. 15 the Minister of Home Defense, Herbert Morrison, said that 47,000 people had been killed in air raids in Britain since the war began, and 56,000 injured (hospitalized). Since June 18, 1940, is the accepted date for the beginning of air raids over Britain, this means that over a period of 29 months an average of 1,620 persons a month have been killed in the air raids, and 1,931 persons injured. The figures refer to civilians only, and it is not clear whether or not persons who died in hospitals of injuries received are included in the number of the killed. In 1941, air-raid deaths among the military were said to be but 2 per cent of the number of civilian deaths. This would add somewhat less than 1,000 to the number of air-raid deaths in Britain to mid-November 1942.
Property Damage.
The damage done to property by aerial bombardment is difficult to estimate. Mention of the specific damage done in a few places may be illustrative of what the British have endured. The City of London (about one square mile) had at the outbreak of war 48 parish churches, of which 15 have been gutted, 4 severely damaged, and 3 burned down. In the raids over Bath in April 1942, several churches and two hospitals were destroyed, as well as houses linked with the names of such celebrities as Burke, Scott, DeQuincey, and Shelley. Canterbury was a Nazi target toward the end of October 1942, when it was obvious that the aim of the enemy was to destroy the ancient cathedral. That attempt did not succeed, but it will cost £66,000 to repair the damage to the cathedral. Hull, which before the war was the third most important seaport in Great Britain, had suffered by October last more than 70 air raids 'with incidents,' and nearly 800 alerts; scarcely a street escaped damage. Yet the port's activity has not once been brought to a standstill. For the country as a whole, the tremendous extent of the damage done was made reasonably clear in the mid-November statement of the Minister of Home Defense, already cited. Mr. Morrison said that 2,750,000 houses in Great Britain had been destroyed or damaged by aerial attack. That is more than one house for every five in the land. That 2,500,000 of these houses have been repaired and are now being lived in is evidence of the tenacity and courage of the people. Nevertheless, the devastation wrought by Nazi air bombs has been appalling in its scope.
Air Raid Losses of the Enemy.
The Nazis have now learned that they are not alone in the knowledge and use of aircraft as instruments of destruction. Increasingly in the past year the British have launched great air attacks against the enemy. Some of the raids call for special mention. Lubeck, to which are shipped iron ores from Sweden, was severely damaged by the Royal Air Force at the close of March, 1942; and about a month later, for four successive nights beginning April 24, Rostock was bombed, an important shipping center where are situated the Heinkel factories and the Neptune Shipbuilding plants that construct U-boats. The British give the end of May and the first days of June as the time when Germany began to feel the full strength of the British air power. On May 30 Cologne, which is an important armament center and the site of great chemical plants, was attacked by more than a thousand British air craft (1,130 was the number made known later) which in 90 minutes dropped more than 3,000 tons of explosives on that city. On June 1 almost as many (1,036) attacked Essen, the home of Krupp munitions. On June 25 the R.A.F., more than a thousand strong, bombed Bremen for 75 minutes. Air raids of such magnitude are enormously costly, require long and careful preparation, and in execution demand adherence to an almost split-second accuracy. Of necessity it is only rarely that these great air armadas can be sent against the enemy.
By day and night the Royal Air Force continued to hammer away at enemy-held positions. The daring raids of the Commandos also deserve mention — their largest-scale raid, that at Dieppe on Aug. 19, was carried out by a force that was five-sixths Canadian. During the week that ended with Sept. 4 there were raids extending from Gdynia to Guernsey, setting numerous fires at Königsberg, Danzig, and other salient points. In the month of September there were 15 nights and 11 days of offensive air operations. Such operations, effective though they have been in weakening morale, disrupting the flow of supplies, destroying plants engaged in war production, and bringing about the evacuation of thousands of refugees from the bombed cities, cannot be carried out without paying toll. For the nine months ending Sept. 30 the number of British bomber aircraft lost over Germany and northern Europe was 1,082. The largest scale daylight air raid was made on Oct. 9, when 500 craft of the R.A.F. together with more than 100 United States Flying Fortresses and Liberators attacked along a front reaching from Dieppe to Dunkirk and fifty miles inland. The quantity of explosives dropped on these raids far exceeds what the Nazis dropped in the greatest and fiercest of their attacks on British cities. There are now 'four-ton' bombs — weighing 8,000 lbs. apiece (something under four long tons) — one of which is able to demolish a city block. Italy, as well as Germany and German-held Europe, was also visited by British aircraft during 1942, and tremendous damage was wrought on such important industrial centers and seaports as Milan, Turin, Naples, and Genoa. It may be pointed out that care was taken to spare the world-famous cathedrals of Milan and Cologne. Rome has not been bombed by the British. Various reasons may be found, but none of them is entirely convincing. Perhaps the best lies implicit in a statement issued from the Prime Minister's residence, that the Italians had threatened to bomb the Vatican with captured British bombs if there were an air raid on Rome.
Shipping Losses.
Writing of Britain in the year 1941 it was possible to say, with figures to support the contention, that grievous as had been the damage wrought by Nazi air raids, the destruction of British shipping by U-boats was a more serious threat. For the first three months of 1941 the British authorities published weekly statements of sinkings; for the next three months they published monthly statements; since then they have published none. But there are indications that the U-boat menace is still serious; it is more than a menace — it is a reality. The activity of submarines off the Atlantic coast of the United States has shown us how great can be the damage done by undersea craft at great distances from their home bases. Up to the end of 1941, the British had acknowledged the loss of over 8,000,000 tons of merchant shipping. Speaking in the House of Commons on Sept. 8, 1942, Winston Churchill said among other things that the losses at sea were still heavy. He added that conditions were improving, however, and that therefore warfare on the U-boats must be improving. Save for such generalizations, and for announcements that some large convoys managed to make port despite the U-boats, there is little to go by. Neither generalizations nor announcements of successful convoys can be bases for optimism.
Enemy U-boat Losses.
Late in October A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, said that the United Nations exclusive of Russia had sunk or damaged more than 530 enemy U-boats. This may be regarded as the maximum number. There is a possible wide difference between damaging a U-boat and sinking it. Further, since it seems to be agreed that the Nazis are building U-boats at a rate of 25 or more a month, and there is no reasonable ground for assuming that they lack adequately trained men to serve aboard them, in the U-boat wolf pack the Nazis have a powerful weapon that is doing the United Nations a vast deal of damage.
Theater of War.
Middle East.
At the close of the year 1941 and the opening of 1942, the theater of war in which the British were most successful, indeed that in which alone they were meeting with success, was North Africa. General Auchinleck, who had replaced General Wavell, opened his offensive in November 1941, and before January was over Bardia, Solum, and Halfaya had been recaptured by the British and had yielded some 14,000 Axis prisoners. Then General Rommel, the Nazi desert commander, advanced in force and with such effect that in February the British were forced to abandon Bengazi and Derna. There followed a lengthy period during which little or nothing of the desert war found its way into the news columns. In June, Rommel was meeting with great success. Tobruk, where in an earlier campaign the British had held out for eight months, succumbed after a single day's attack, and with the city the Nazis gained 28,000 prisoners. Since the reports from the British forces had been encouraging, this was a terrible blow. In eleven days Rommel chased the British 325 miles. Within a week he drove them from Halfaya Pass, from Sidi Barani, from Matruh; and only when he was within 70 miles of Alexandria, at Alamein, did the British turn and make a stand. Lieut. General Ritchie who had been in command of the Eighth Army was made the scapegoat, and Auchinleck himself took command, in addition to his duties as commander-in-chief in that theater. In July the British began counterattacking, but for weeks there was no real battle fought. Auchinleck was replaced by Sir H. R. L. G. Alexander as commander in the Middle East, while in direct command of the Eighth Army in Egypt under him was Lieut. General Bernard Law Montgomery. The British had been reinforced after they had stopped Rommel at Alamein (Rommel had also been reinforced); Churchill had been in Egypt; and new commanders with a more aggressive spirit had been placed at the head of the armed forces in the Middle East. In a speech in Parliament on Sept. 8 Churchill gave the Commons a review of the war, in which he stated that the Desert Army had lost over 80,000 men and had been driven back more than 400 miles since May — hence the changes in command. Somewhat optimistic newspapermen had said that the first week in July marked a definite turning point in the battle of Egypt. Four months later, on Nov. 4, it was possible for the official statement to be made, 'The Axis forces in the Western Desert are now in full retreat.'
These successes in the desert war, together with the landing of American troops in North Africa on Nov. 8, within four days of the announcement that Marshall Rommel's Nazi forces were in retreat, seemed at the end of this year to alter the whole pattern of the war. To what extent this is true, it is too early to say definitely. That the pattern has altered is clear; just what the new pattern will be cannot yet be determined. Of the American expedition to Africa, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons that the plan was President Roosevelt's, that he (Churchill) was playing the role of lieutenant to the President. Yet it may be pointed out that the British Navy has given full and invaluable cooperation; that the British and American forces are working together in North Africa; and that the occupation of what was the French colonial empire in North Africa is closely associated with British military operations in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Far Eastern Area.
In the early weeks of 1942 when encouraging news was coming from Africa, the news from Malaya was discouraging in the extreme. Japanese infiltration was causing the British to fall back in mid-January, heavily outnumbered, tired by continuous fighting, and at a grave disadvantage because of the lack of adequate aerial support. On the evening of Feb. 14 Singapore fell, and with it the Japanese took about 60,000 men, of whom 15,000 were British, 13,000 Australians, and 32,000 Indians. Lack of food and water, lack of petrol, lack of ammunition, all contributed to the disaster. Borneo and Sumatra were lost; the Netherlands East Indies, as well as all the British possessions save India, fell into Japanese hands. It would be futile here to endeavor to give any explanation of why Britain lost so much of the 'Golden East' in the year 1942. Again and again the bitter words 'Too little and too late' have been applied to British operations in the war. That the strength of Singapore was over-stressed is obvious now. Its story is somewhat different than that of Hong Kong — which fell on Christmas Day 1941 — because no serious attempt seems to have been made to strengthen the defenses of Hong Kong until shortly before the Japanese entered the war, while Singapore had for years been considered a Gibraltar; but Singapore was fortified to repel attack from the sea, and the Japanese approached from the land. Comment on what happened would best be left to the British themselves. It must be borne in mind, however, that from the fall of France Britain for months stood alone against the Nazis, that her strength had to be scattered over a considerable portion of the globe, that areas nearer Great Britain itself seemed the theaters in which decisive action would most likely take place, and, lastly, that like some other people, the British are at their best when defending their own land. At any rate the British record in the Far East is but part of the record of failure made by the United Nations in countering the sudden, skillful, and savage Japanese attacks in that area.
American Troops in Great Britain.
The entrance of the United States into the war has had some interesting consequences within the boundaries of the United Kingdom. On Jan. 26, 1942, the first detachment of American troops landed in Northern Ireland. It may be pointed out that De Valera protested in the name of Eire against the presence of American troops in Ireland. How many American troops are in Great Britain has not been made known, but British papers make it clear that they are present in large numbers all through England, as well as in Northern Ireland. This, it may be noted, is the first time in history that great bodies of Americans have spent any length of time in England. On the whole, comments in the English press show that the Americans have made themselves welcome. Not that there have not been opportunities for friction. The American Army is much better paid than the British, so that American soldiers have been able to buy out the stocks of small English shops. In August the minimum pay of an unmarried private in the British Army was 17s. 6d. a week ($3.50); the estimated value of his board and so on came to twice that. The British claim that their Army is well fed, as may well be the case; but the food is inferior in quality, quantity, and variety to that of the American forces as a consequence of wartime conditions and a shortage of shipping. But there has been little evidence of feeling on that account. When American soldiers in England gave up their Thanksgiving turkey and contributed 40,000 turkeys to English hospitals, they won and received the thanks of the English. Much more significant as a chance for friction is the matter of army discipline. In August Parliament passed the United States of America (Visiting Forces) Bill, by the terms of which the British Government granted extraterritoriality in regard to members of the American armed forces, making them subject only to American courts martial sitting in Great Britain. Naturally some objection was voiced on the part of the English. It was pointed out, however, that American military law imposes more severe penalties for certain crimes than does English civil law. Thus far there has been no evidence that the British have been in any way dissatisfied with the manner in which cases of discipline among the American troops have been handled — meaning, primarily, in matters involving the British civilian population.
Actions at Sea.
Sea warfare is shrouded in mists and silence, and nothing but rumors have yet been broadcast about a possible naval battle in Norwegian waters in December. Two great battleships were placed in commission this year, H.M.S. Hood and H.M.S. Anson, sister ships of 35,000 tons displacement.
Social Problems.
That domestic problems have not been lost sight of has been made abundantly clear by the publication late in 1942 of the 'Beveridge Report.' Sir Henry Beveridge, Master of University College, Oxford, classicist, lawyer, and economist, was appointed in 1941 by Arthur Greenwood, then Minister of Reconstruction, 'to undertake ... a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations.' The Report proposes a comprehensive compulsory system of social insurance for every man, woman, and child in Great Britain, to be paid for by joint contributions of employers and employees, and the Treasury. In 1945 this would call for £351,000,000 from the Treasury, £194,000,000 from the insured, £137,000,000 from employers, with £15,000,000 from interest. Existing national insurance schemes now cost £432,000,000 yearly, of which sum £265,000,000 comes from the Treasury and local taxes, £69,000,000 from the insured, £83,000,000 from employers, and £15,000,000 from interest. Under the new plan an average family — man, wife, and 2 children — would receive 56s. ($11.20) a week as unemployment insurance for an indeterminate time, the same amount for non-industrial disability, and — for 13 weeks — for industrial disability; old-age pension would amount to 40s. ($8) weekly. There is a further provision for a man to receive two-thirds of his pay up to $15.20 for industrial disability. Provision is made for payments of between $24 and $80 for funeral expenses, and a $40 marriage allowance for women. The plan is far from revolutionary, but it makes vastly better provision for a national minimum program than does the present system. The Report has been a best-seller in England. That a nation at war should give so much attention to social-security problems, to a plan to set its people free from want, without in the least slackening in its war efforts, is encouraging in the extreme.
