Tory Triumph?

British voters picked up Winston Churchill the day before yesterday, moved him across the few feet that separate the Opposition Bench from the Government Bench, and transported Mr. Attlee an equal distance in the opposite direction. Whatever this shifting of weight may or may not achieve for English policies, it should bring Americans a respite from the constant in-vocative which certain commentators have been heaping on the British Socialist government for the past six years.

When the Tories preserve the health program (that invention of the arch-fiend, Bevan) intact, administer the nationalized industries with the zeal they have promised and point directly to rearmament as the cause of the recent slump in British recovery, the critics may calm down for a while. They will explain to their readers that the Conservatives just aren't like Midwest-ern Republicans, in spite of their name, and that the whole mess shows that once you vote in socialists, you're stuck with them forever.

Of course, they will assert for the next few weeks that Britain has repudiated socialism after this abortive experiment. Since the Laborites only received 49.3 percent to the Tories' 48.3 percent, this point is one that will bear and get frequent repetition. It is fraught with significance.