Bittern's Fall

Britain's aging Queen Victoria, pottering about the halls of Windsor Castle in 1892, came upon a five-year-old boy eating grapes. She gave him a kindly pat on the head, for he was the son of her personal chaplain, Canon J. N. Dalton. "Go away, Queen," shouted the brash little boy, "I'm eating grapes." Unamused, the Queen exclaimed: "What a loud voice that boy has!"

The little boy waxed--eventually to 6 ft. 3 in. The voice waxed too, and earned for Hugh Dalton the nickname "Booming Bittern." Many a Tory never forgave this product of aristocratic Eton and King's College, Cambridge, for joining the Labor Party after World War I. He was called a traitor to his class. Among Laborites, sarcastic Tory-lasher Dalton won honors, if not complete confidence. During World War II he served first as Minister of Economic Warfare, later as President of the Board of Trade. After the war, Clement Attlee made him Chancellor of the Exchequer, traditionally No. 2 post in the British Cabinet. Recently, as Sir Stafford Cripps towered into prominence as Britain's economic dictator, Dalton's own political stature shrank.

Offense. One day last week Hugh Dalton strode confidently across the tessellated inner lobby of the House of Commons; he knew that he held Britain's spotlight. In his battered red leather dispatch box were the secrets of Britain's interim budget. Burly, greying John Lees Carvel, political correspondent for London's evening Star, cheerily hailed his old friend Dalton as he approached the door of the House, asked jokingly about the budget. Dalton threw a jovial arm around Carvel's shoulders and, remembering that the journalist liked a nip now & then, said: "John, your whiskey is going to cost you a bit more from now on. You'll have to pay a penny more for your beer, too." Item by item the salient points of the budget came out in Dalton's banter.

Dalton strolled into the House. Carvel went to a telephone and dictated 55 fateful words to his paper. By the time Dalton had been booming for 13 minutes (but before he had mentioned any specific tax changes), the Star's "stop-press" column told of Britain's new taxes.

Admission. Next morning the tempest he had so casually stirred up broke on Dalton. Tory M.P. Victor Raikes told Dalton that he would ask a question in the House about the tip to the Star. After a routine Cabinet meeting, Dalton took Attlee aside and admitted his indiscretion. He offered his resignation. That afternoon a much subdued Dalton arose in the House of Commons to answer Raikes's question. "I appreciate that this was a grave indiscretion on my part," he intoned, "for which I offer my deep apologies to the House."

Winston Churchill arose and generously offered implied absolution: "May I acknowledge, on the part of the Opposition, the very frank manner in which the Right Honorable Gentleman has expressed himself to the House, and our sympathy with him at the misuse of his confidence which has occurred."

But the storm gathered momentum. While the House buzzed with rumors, Attlee called a special Cabinet session, and Tory backbenchers called on Churchill to demand Dalton's head. In the evening, while Churchill was preparing a letter to Dalton demanding an inquiry, Attlee acted.

"The principle of the inviolability of the budget," Attlee wrote to Dalton, "and the discretion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who necessarily receives many confidential communications, must be beyond question." He accepted Dalton's resignation.

Penance. That same evening, some of the high Laborites saw the cinema premiere of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, a play about a British official who had sold a Cabinet secret to a stockbroker. For Dalton, unlike Sir Robert Chiltern of Wilde's play, there was no happy ending--at least not immediately. His old rival, Sir Stafford Cripps, became, in addition to his other duties, Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But Dalton might take heart from the remarks of a friend to Wilde's indiscreet hero: "Well, the English can't stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong." Said one M.P. of the temporarily disgraced Dalton: "He'll serve his penance on the back bench for a few months--but mark my words, Hugh will get back."

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