Word: beaverbrook
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...committee heads in conference every afternoon. He presides lolling in a big chair. Every night at 11 o'clock (the hour when British dailies go to bed with their first editions) his secretary collects from each committee a full report of work done that day. Next morning Lord Beaverbrook reads these reports, then takes action. Example: one report told of a small Midlands manufacturer who was down in his output because of a shortage of certain classes of material and labor. A neighbor ing manufacturer had a surplus of both the material and the men, but Manufacturer...
...dozen bottles of brandy, a dozen bottles of whiskey and (in case he didn't drink) a dozen bottles of ginger beer sent to the offended secretary. With them went a note: "From a bad Minister to a fine Under Secretary." Since he became so busy, Lord Beaverbrook has stopped giving big dinners, now has a few aircraft men to dinner once or twice a week. When he tells them they have done "first rate" they glow. Dinner at Stornoway House (13 Cleveland Row, London) is served by four footmen at 9 or 10 o'clock. Sometimes...
...underlings like the Beaver now. So does the British public, which considers him as securely settled in his job as Winston Churchill is in his. Critics call him a dictator, point out that the Government would be in a frightful mess if all the Ministries were run like Beaverbrook's. That does not worry the Beaver. They complain that he has put industrial leaders in control of supplies used in their industries. The Beaver says his men are efficient. They complain that he has stolen publicity from other Ministries with stunts such as his aluminum-collecting campaign, is tight...
Even his mildest critics say that Beaverbrook is "slightly cracked." But a Canadian columnist summed up the general opinion of him thus: "Positive, bee; comparative, beaver; superlative, Beaverbrook." To keep Britain's aircraft factories running during a Blitzkrieg is a job comparable to running General Motors' 38 U. S. plants in an earthquake...
...majority in the House of Commons. But since the illness of Conservative Leader Neville Chamberlain, another man has gradually usurped the actual leadership of the Party. He stays in the background and lets others drive, but he picks and orders the routes. That man is William Maxwell Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook. Says he: "Nobody would have believed it. It's as likely they'd have predicted I'd be Archbishop of Canterbury...