The Cabinet

Two years and four months in office crowned the Baldwin Cabinet, last week, on the occasion of a compromise between its moderate majority led by Premier Baldwin and the arch-Tory group. This compromise effected, Britons could look with a justified satisfaction on the following men, now more firmly at the helm of State than ever:

Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, and Leader of the House of Commons--Stanley Baldwin.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs--Sir Austen Chamberlain.

Chancellor of the Exchequer--Winston Churchill.

Secretary of State for Home Affairs--Sir William Joynson-Hicks.

Secretary of State for the Colonies--Leopold C. M. S. Amery.

Secretary of State for India--The Earl of Birkenhead.

The full Cabinet roster runs to 21 ministers, with six more in a secondary category and not ordinarily present at the Cabinet table--an example, the Solicitor General for Scotland, A. M. MacRobert. Two peers hold high but chiefly honorary Cabinet rank: the Earl of Balfour (Premier 1902-05), and the Marquess of Salisbury--these respectively Lord President of the Council, and Leader of the House of Lords.

Baldwin, steady country squire and ironmaster; Chamberlain, austerely Victorian Birmingham politician; Churchill, hot-head of a half-dozen simultaneous careers; Joynson-Hicks, plus royaliste que le roi; Amery, implacable Imperialist; Birkenhead, a lawyer, brilliant, fashionable, yet most profound: these are Britain's Big Six.

Not only has Premier Baldwin kept from falling between the two stools of his party (Moderate-Conservative, and Tory), but his old fashioned brier pipe has become so much a part of the British scene that last week the King-Emperor remarked, on seeing a mammoth pipe exhibited as an advertisement, "They ought to give it to Baldwin."