Britain's Bracken

In pre-Munich days, when Winston Churchill was languishing in the political purgatory reserved for those whom the British consider erratic, he had one stanch and steadfast follower--Irish-born, Australian-educated Brendan Bracken, now Britain's able Minister of Information.

Tall, bespectacled Brendan Bracken, whose hair looks like a pinkish bird's nest, last week met some 100 members of the U.S. press in Manhattan, played an adroit game of ask-me-another. Said he:

> "Stalin is very much engaged on his war front. I think he really can't spare time for conferences at the moment. It is foolish to assume, as many people do, that Marshal Stalin's inability to attend a conference, or the shifting of ambassadors, is any indication that Russia is going to make any arrangement with Germany. There are a lot of unconscious fifth columnists who are spreading that story."

> "I believe Hitler knows definitely from a military point of view he cannot win this war, but he believes that owing to political warfare, which creates disunity between the United Nations, Germany will escape the consequences of her brutal action. . . . Politically he is a man of the greatest cunning and adroitness."

> "We have a terrible war ahead of us--long, hard. We shall have to undergo the most terrible sacrifices before we can round up these Axis gangsters, and therefore, we must keep together. If the United Nations cease to be united, then believe me, Germany will have lost the war from a military point of view, but won it from a political point of view."

> "I wouldn't want to be selling insurance in Italy. . . . Germany will get such a 24 dose in the next six months that a lot of Germans will feel that there is a great deal of soundness in the Quaker religion. . . ."

> "We know how tough the Japanese are. . . . They have committed wrongs darker than death against the Americans and the British. ... If anyone expects any softness in our operations against the Japs, they will be mistaken."

> "Britain intends to fulfill her pledges to India in all respects, but you've got to put political issues in India into cold storage until the war is over."

But worldly Brendan Bracken, who impressed his listeners by his knowledge of what not to say as well as by what he said, made one tactless slip. Calling onetime No. 2 Nazi Rudolf Hess "a perfect nitwit," he added that he was "an overgrown Boy Scout." Boy Scouts did not like that, and British Boy Scouts formally told him so.

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