Next, the ‘War Cabinet’ was formed, comprising nine members (Chamberlain, Halifax, Simon, Hoare, Chatfield, Hore-Belisha, Kingsley Wood, Churchill and Lord Hankey

Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey (1st Baron Hankey), minister without portfolio in War Cabinet, 1939–40; chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, 1940–41; paymaster general, 1941–2.

). Eden has been granted the right of ‘access’ to the Cabinet. Only three of the nine members of the War Cabinet are without portfolios (Chamberlain, Hoare and Hankey), while in Lloyd George’s War Cabinet during the last war, five out of six members did not hold ministerial positions and could devote all their time and efforts to the matter of conducting the war.

If the ‘reconstruction’ goes no further, Churchill and Eden will find themselves hostages, and Britain will surely lose the war. But I think that the ‘reconstruction’ cannot end at this point. This is just the beginning. Further steps will follow.

There are neither Labourites nor Liberals in the Cabinet. Chamberlain would not let them into the ‘War Cabinet’, and Sinclair, Greenwood and others did not want to be held responsible for government policy without being able to influence it.

The situation on the Polish front is not brilliant. The Germans advance, the Poles retreat. True, the press insists that the retreat is being conducted ‘as planned’, but one can hardly believe this in good conscience.

The British, meanwhile, have won an important victory in South Africa. Hertzog, who stood for South Africa’s neutrality in the current war, has retired, and in his place General Smuts is forming a government which will support Britain in the war. The majority of the South African parliament spoke against Hertzog.