Thus Sir Christopher Bullock had his career broken last week without anything specific being brought out against him. Among British aviators, the view was that Sir Christopher is easily worth ten of the men who investigated and broke him. A wounded War veteran with a silver tube in his stomach, the ousted Permanent Secretary of the Air Ministry was brilliant, driving, egotistical, efficient and a master of every technique in Government aviation except watching his tongue and saying the regulation thing where other and silkier Civil Servants were concerned. As for Sir Eric Geddes, airmen assumed that he was vexed because he had not got a peerage and still more vexed because the events of last week will make it hard for King Edward to give him one soon. To Sir Christopher's defense leaped The Aeroplane, No. 1 British aviation weekly, praising his "marvelous work" for the Air Ministry, voicing "indignation" at his dismissal. At the Air Ministry, Civil Servants greeted with sly satisfaction the appointment of a new Permanent Secretary this week who is definitely silky, Colonel Sir Donald Banks, hitherto the pleasant Director General of the British Post Office.

In defending himself, Sir Christopher Bullock made the startling statement that the Chairman of Imperial Airways gets $10,000 per year, while the Permanent Secretary of the Air Ministry gets $15,000. This disclosure jarred the conventional belief of Britons that their Civil Servants are "poorly paid," and constantly get fat offers from British business which they nearly always refuse because of their loyalty to public service. Sir Christopher maintained that if he had succeeded Sir Eric as Chairman of Imperial Airways it would have been at a salary step-down of $5,000 per year.

Flatly denying that any swap had ever been intended, and freely admitting that any Air Ministry official may have in the back of his mind that he might "at some indefinite future date, years ahead" find himself working for Imperial Airways, Sir Christopher cried:

"What a world of difference is there between give-and-take living talk and the stale dead ashes of conversations raked over and microscopically dissected after many months! "The whole atmosphere and emphasis are changed. Transitions from one subject to another are blurred. Phrases taken from the context and subjected to a frigid post-mortem are hardly recognizable."

Automatically, every scandal or near-scandal touching His Majesty's Government is turned into matter of congratulation by the London Times—even in cases like the recent enforced resignation of Secretary of State for Colonies "Jim" Thomas whom everyone considered guilty (TIME, June i et ante). Of perhaps wholly innocent Sir Christopher Bullock the Times said last week.