PRESS VIEW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 237, 5 October 1940, Page 10

PRESS VIEW.

CABINET CHANGES.

Newspapers Express General Approval.

British Official Wireless. (Reed, noon.) RUGBY, Oct. 4. The Press generally approves the Cabinet changes. The "Daily Telegraph" says Mr. Churchill clearly had in mind the necessity of watchful adjustment to the changing needs of war and the value of reinforcing the Government by fresh minds.

The changes are also valued as a further example of the advantages democracy enjoys in the conduct of war, in being able to make such changes of personnel in the Government as conditions require, without the danger of discrediting the Government, as a whole.

The "Daily Herald" (Labour) points out that public confidence in the main structure of the Government is unshaken.

Mr. Chamberlain's retirement is the occasion for a tribute to his long services to the State. The "Daily Telegraph" says that no lure of ambition and no self-seeking ever sullied lii& actions. The entire Press unites in recognition of his sincerity.

"The Times," dealing with past controversies over his foreign policy, says that there, is a strong, irrefutable defence for the actions he took in a situation not of his making, but inherited from a decade of international failure.

The "Manchester Guardian" (Liberal) says: "Whatever we may think about Mr. Chamberlain in the past, and his tragic miscalculations of policy,, there is no man who desired more passionately that -we should win this war."

Mr. Ernest Bevin's promotion to the War Cabinet is welcomed on all sides. Another appointment particularly welcomed is that of Viscount Cranborne to the Dominions Office and Mr. Herbert Morrison's translation to the Home Office and the Ministry of Home Security is felt to inspire confidence that the problems of bombed civilians and their homes will be energetically tackled. Cockney-born Minister. The appointment of Mr. Herbert Morrison as Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security finds favour in his - "home town." Mr. Morrison is a Cockney born and bred. His great organising abilities were revealed as Labour leader of the London County Council, and the people of London trust him and think of him as one of themselves. In this crisis in their history he is the man to understand their needs. Hardly less important in a long view 'are the implications of his appointment in other aspects of security, against fifth column activities.

Mr. Morrison's appointment is a guarantee that no security measures will be allowed to endanger the basic civil and political liberties, the-preserva-tion of which is one of the ehief issues of the war. Any suspicion which may have existed in certain quarters in the past that the Government, in its search for enemies of, the State, might discriminate unjustly against the Left whilst turning a blind eye to prominent Nazi sympathisers on the Right, can now be completely dismissed.