A
Churchill
Reader
(Photograph "I he Times)
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL IN THE CABINET ROOM
ON HIS SEVENTY -NINTH BIRTHDAY
A
Churchill
Reader
The Wit and Wisdom
of Sir Winston Churchill
Constructed from his own sayings and writings
and framed with an introduction by
COLIN R. GOOTE
with the collaboration of
P. D. BUNYAN
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON
S&toettfoe $te*g Cambridge
1 954
Copyright, 1954, by Colin K. Coote
All riglits reserved including the right to ie produce this
book or parts thereof in any foim
Library of Congress catalogue card number: 54-10086
The selections from Great Contemporaries; copyright, 1937, by
Winston Churchill; are used by permission of the publishers,
G. P. Putnam s Sons.
The selections from Amid These Storms by Winston Churchill;
copyright, 1932, by Charles Scribner s Sons; are used by permis
sion of the publishers.
The selections from The World Crisis by Winston Churchill;
copyright, 1923, 1927, 1929, 1931, by Charles Scnbner s Sons;
are used by pet mission of the publishers.
CAMBRIDGE! MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
Preface
OEVEN YEARS AGO, when Sir Winston Churchill was a mere
lad of seventy-three, I compiled a short anthology of his max
ims and reflections. Since then many more such sayings have
come from his pen and his tongue; he has many more achieve
ments to his credit, including that of becoming Prime Minis
ter for the third time; and he has entered on his eightieth
year. These circumstances combined to suggest that an ex
pansion of the original quotations and a revision of the in
troductory disquisition on Sir Winston s personality might
not be untimely. It is true that he is not the sort of man
who excites differences of appraisal from year to year; and
I do not feel any urge to vary the essence of what I wrote in
1947.
The classification of quotations is no easier now than it
was then. A person s life may be divided into stages less con
troversially than his sayings into subjects. I have, however,
thought it fair to diminish the quotations relevant to dead
issues, such as Indian constitutional reform, and to increase
those which have a bearing on problems still alive today.
VI PREFACE
I am indebted to G. P. Putnam s Sons, Charles Scribner s
Sons, and Houghton Mifflin Company for permission to
quote from various works of Sir Winston Churchill, pub
lished by them.
To Sir Winston himself, I am most grateful for approving
and endorsing this revision of my earlier work,
COLIN COOTE
January 1, 1954
Contents
Preface v
Introduction by Colin R. Coote 1
1 On Himself 30
2 On His Dislikes 68
3 On Russia 84
4 On His Likes 101
5 On Parliament and Parties 120
6 On Policies and Politics 142
7 A Political Miscellany 167
8 On the English Language 183
9 On War 194
Viii CONTENTS
10 On Men in War 220
11 On Battles and Weapons 234
12 On Socialism and Socialists 260
13 On Britain and the Empire 282
14 On the Monarchy 316
15 On India 321
16 On Foreigners 332
17 On America 360
18 On Human Conduct 376
Index 407
A
Churchill
Reader
Introduction
HEN by sheer luck I was pitchforked from the trenches
into Parliament thirty-six years ago, the first statesman whom
I met personally was Sir Winston Churchill. It was a gather
ing of prospective Coalition Liberal candidates before the
election of 1918. A slightly bent figure, with a slightly echo
ing articulation, gave us a few words of greeting and of
exhortation.
This young man of forty-five had already been a highly
controversial figure for twenty years. My sympathies even
then were all with him. Before the war only Lloyd George
had outshone him in Liberal eyes. During the war, whatever
the high-ups may have thought, the soldiery and the subal
terns felt in their bones that the Gallipoli venture was right.
Yet he had already passed through some of those strange
variations in popular affection which it was his fate to en
counter throughout life. It is curious to reflect, for example,
that when he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in
1911, nervousness was prevalent in the "blue-water school."
The reason was that he was his father s son; and it was
2 A CHURCHILL READER
remembered, when much else was forgotten, that Lord
Randolph had resigned office on the issue of economy in the
fighting services. That was the "tattered flag* which, in his
first speech in Parliament, young Winston had spoken of
raising again. Oblivious therefore of the intermediate evolu
tion of the German menace, men rather expected that the
new First Lord would skin the Navy.
The songs of the people often reflect a popular mood better
than the most erudite histories; and one song, dating from
1911, ran somewhat as follows:
Don t let us scrap the British Navy!
Don t let us scrap our men of war!
What do we care if the income-tax is five bob in the pound,
We can owe it as we ve always done before.
Let Winston say ta-ta to the totems he adores,
But never to the gallant tars what guard our native shores.
He can scrap his bowlers, boaters, toppers, Homburgs and
velours
But he mustn t never scrap the British Navy.
The mention of "five bob" as an incredibly astronomical
rate of income tax is not the only feature which will excite
a wry grin. The song s Aunt Sally was the very man to whom
Kitchener could say five years later: "One thing they cannot
take from you the Fleet was ready/
These early stages on the long journey from enfant terrible
to elder statesman are not the least fascinating. They gave
him the label "impulsive" which he has always found it im
possible to unstick. He has not tried very hard to unstick it,
and with reason, for what was intended as a slur has proved,
by and large, to be a compliment. There can be no strong
pulse in a man without that very characteristic of impulsive
ness, which is not synonymous with unbalance.
INTRODUCTION 3
To admire trimmers is like admiring a motorcar without
an engine. The tires look lovely, but they don t turn. "Tran
quillity " is a slogan on which at least one Government in our
time has been returned to power. "Tranquillity" indeed!
There is nothing more tranquil than the grave. "I will never
stifle myself in such a moral and intellectual sepulchre/
exclaimed Sir Winston anent the " tranquillity" Government
of 1922. He certainly never has; and if some drops from his
cataract of impulses have been unproductive, the main body
of it has been like the Niagara and the Victoria Falls com
bined, generating a fertilising electricity in men s minds and
actions.
The purpose of this book is to show in and from his own
words what he is, as a man, as a statesman, as an orator, and
as a writer. It may therefore seem superfluous that I should
try in this introduction to add one more to the many assess
ments made of him by others. But it has been my duty, as a
professional journalist for thirty years, to do so continuously,
refreshed by an acquaintance extending over that period
and to me from the very first moment stimulating and
fascinating. It was never possible to approach him, as jour
nalists so often approach politicians, with some degree of
scepticism! Even when you thought him mistaken, his
sincerity and capacity blazed out at you like a lighthouse.
His light to his friends has indeed almost invariably been a
guiding beam and not a will-o -the-wisp.
It is one, and one only, of the characteristics of great men
that they arouse extremes of affection and of hostility.
Charles James Fox ploughed a lonely oflficeless furrow for
twelve years, subject to the unrivalled rancour of the majority
but sustained by the devoted affection of a few friends. No
statesman in our history seems to me to bear a closer analogy
to Sir Winston, and had he lived to Sir Winston s age, the
4 A CHURCHILL READER
analogy might have been closer still. But of course the
capacity to evoke such extremes of hostility and of adulation
is no complete criterion of true greatness. Quite inferior
types have clawed their way to eminence and had their season
of splendour, only to reveal shoddiness and squalor in defeat.
It is, perhaps, a peculiarity of the British race that it has
often indulged in affection for nonentities, but never sur
rendered its soul to third-class tyrants. Others, of course,
have. The most extraordinary case is not that of Hitler or
of Mussolini. There was a certain Francesco Lopez, Dictator of
Paraguay, who fought all his neighbours for twenty years
until the proportion of men to women among his people
was one to twenty. The story of so many "great" careers
illustrates the gullibility of followers rather than the genius
of leaders. For my part, I think the calibre of a statesman is
shown less by how he behaves in triumph than by how he
behaves in adversity.
Sir Winston s claim to greatness is that he has achieved a
towering eminence in spite of a usually preponderating and
always latent unpopularity. This hostility has always puzzled
and pained him, though he has borne its manifestations with
resilient composure. Only twice, I think, in his career has
any cry of despair escaped from him. The first was when
he was hounded from office after the Gallipoli failure; the
second was when he heard of Mr. Eden s resignation in 1937.
The first was wrung from him by blatant injustice, not so
much towards himself as towards the one fertile strategic idea
which emerged during the First World War. The second
was prompted by the knowledge that Mr. Eden was the only
prominent member of the Chamberlain Government who
shared and strove for his conception of the German danger,
His resignation meant a Second World War, which we were
more than likely to lose.
INTRODUCTION 5
Sir Winston has never thought or said that the British
people were not good enough to appreciate him when they
have turned against him. That sort of reaction belongs to
the Hitlers and Mussolinis of this world. He has, I think,
in spite of an astonishing versatility, a stark simplicity of
mind. Until the age of twenty, when he began to educate
himself, he had repulsed every attempt to give him academic
instruction. But he had learned a code of conduct, which it
is, perhaps, the main purpose of education to provide. Never
whine in defeat. Never gloat in victory. As he has put it him
self, "In war, Resolution. In defeat, Defiance. In victory,
Magnanimity. In Peace, Goodwill."
Let us take him first as a writer. The being who, in his first
written examination, could find nothing to fill the page
except his name, has just completed a book of about a million
words in eight years, in spite of the distractions of being
Leader of the Opposition, Prime Minister, and a world
figure. He has also found time during the same period for
some farming, painting, and horse-racing. Neither his work
nor his pastimes have been unsuccessful.
They have given him the one thing essential to a writer,
namely, background. You may write with the vocabulary
of men and of angels, but if you have not background, it
profits you nothing. I suppose the fictional character of the
"strong silent man" does exist in fact; but in my experience
strong men are not silent. If they are strong it is because,
like Odysseus, they have seen many cities of men and known
their minds. Faced with any given situation, they know
what to do, and the expression of it wells out of them in
words; and the best way to get ideas in order is to put them
down on paper.
Sir Winston was not born with the capacity to do so. He
could always talk, but he could not write. I have often
6 A CHURCHILL READER
noticed that the two capacities seldom go together. The
rousing orator is liable to be a flat writer. The reason may
well be that you cannot transpose into writing variations of
tone, of expression, of gesture. The orator is essentially an
actor, the writer is a playwright. It is one of Sir Winston s
titles to fame that he has succeeded in combining the two
capacities.
One misfortune of his success is that whenever a schoolboy
is caught out in a piece of peculiarly crass ignorance, he can
round on his indignant parents by quoting Sir Winston s
example. The parent can only hope that the example will
be followed beyond adolescence; but that is not very likely.
For Sir Winston had several spurs, peculiar to himself,
towards producing the change of interests which took place
when he was a cavalry subaltern at Bangalore. First and
foremost, of course, was admiration for a father, remote,
talented, unfortunate, and wronged. It is quite certain that,
viewing the golden happiness of Lord Randolph s beginnings
and the leaden misery of his end, the son formed the ambition
to vindicate and even to avenge.
In the second place, his mind had never been unfertile. It
was restless; not lazy. The catchcrops of soldiering and of
polo could not for ever be the only growths from so rich a
soil. He must be a dull dog indeed who has not tried his
youthful hand at writing and shuddered in after years at
the doggerel and cliches which such attempts produced.
Writing is, after all, one of the few methods by which man
can respond to his innate hope of being remembered. "When
I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but
his books were read/ " Belloc s epigram succinctly states
our aspirations after immortality. But writing is something
which has to be learned. It simply is not true, as many of
my correspondents seem to think, that a capacity to write
is innate and exists in those who have manifested no other
INTRODUCTI ON 7
sign of capacity. It requires a frustrating and lengthy ap
prenticeship. It requires a great sensibility to the sound and
music of words. For words even if only written can and
should ring in the auditorium of the mind, and prose has a
cadence as well as verse. Every competent journalist knows
that though a sentence may be grammatically correct, it can
sound clumsy and ugly. It can look as wrong as a misspelt
word. You have to learn to write tunefully just as you have
to learn to spell correctly.
At this point, I ask pardon for interpolating a prejudice.
I consider that to compose on a typewriter greatly increases
the difficulty of good writing. In the first place, a typewriter
is the refuge of those too slovenly to write in a legible hand
and good handwriting is a lovely thing. In the second place
(unless, of course, you copy on a typewriter what you have
written out first), the use of a machine seems to me to militate
against finding the right word, against good phrasing, and
even against grammar. "The structure of the English sen
tence is a noble thing," Sir Winston once wrote. So is the
structure of an arterial road; and both are spoiled by ribbon
development. Writers in English are lucky. They possess
an instrument in the English tongue which, though terse and
strong, is also flexible and variegated. For example, English
lyric poetry, though it borrows its forms, is supreme in its
music. There are many English lyrics, and many pieces of
English prose, which arouse in the reader the emotions felt
by Keats on dipping into Chapman s translation of Homer
a sort of ecstatic thrill compounded of awe and a desire for
emulation.
Sir Winston possessed this sensibility at an early age. The
sonorous tones of Gibbon and Macaulay found an echo in his
mind. Having begun reading, largely out of self-reproach
for the academic years which the locust had eaten, he became
fascinated and enthralled by what he read. Gibbon, as Sir
8 A CHURCHILL READER
Arthur Conan Doyle in one of his less-known books once said,
gives the impression of serenely floating upon a cloud and
watching pygmies hurrying and scurrying about below. That
alone tickles the fancy of self-confident young people. Speak
ing again from personal experience, I find that most of the
writing submitted by youthful contributors is an unconscious
parody of Gibbon, with robustness deteriorated into ro
tundity. Only occasionally does the exhilaration produced
by a great writer produce the retention of his qualities
coupled with something new and individual. That happened
in the case of Sir Winston. Whatever traces of other men s
styles appear in his writings, they have a style of their own.
Let me give one example his verdict on the Margrave of
Baden.
"His military epitaph for all time must be that the two
greatest captains of the age . . . rated, by actions more ex
pressive than words, his absence from a decisive battlefield
well worth 15,000 men/
The roll of the sentence is Gibbonian, but the humour is
infinitely more subtle and cleaner.
That does not mean that Sir Winston Churchill is in
variably original. Nobody soaked in history ever is; and since
history repeats itself, historians are liable to repeat each
other. Thus when, in the dark hours of May 1940, he was
called upon to champion an apparently collapsing cause, his
mind went back to Garibaldi, similarly about to set out on
a fearful and desperate journey. So he echoed Garibaldi s
words to his followers and offered us nothing but "blood,
toil, tears, and sweat." Or again, when he first became Prime
Minister in an hour of impending doom, he thought of old
Clemenceau, as he was being asked, "What is your
policy?"; and of Clemenceau s reply, "Je fais la guerre." And
there was a famous passage in a later speech about "fighting
on the beaches, in the hills, in the streets," which echoed
INTRODUCTION V
Clemenceau s defiance in 1918, "I shall fight in front of Paris,
within Paris, behind Paris."
I have spoken of the music of words, and of how that music
can be transmuted from the spoken to the written word.
Let me give one more example from Sir Winston s great war
speeches. They have the quite unusual quality of reading
as well as they sounded. Indeed, as Sir Norman Angell has
pointed out, they fall naturally into the vers libre of the
Psalms. Similarly his writings, if you speak them aloud,
sound as well as they read. That is as it should be, though it
rarely is. For writing was originally a transcript of sound.
The "thunder of the Odyssey" is a true description, though
I do not suppose anybody has recited Homer for centuries.
You can hear the horn of Roland sounding in the dolorous
pass when you read his Song.
In Sir Winston s case the relationship between the written
and the spoken word is easily explained. His method of pre
paring a speech is or, for a long time, was to write it
out and learn it by heart. His method of writing is to dictate,
and revise the result, not merely once but as many times as
are necessary for the writing to satisfy him. It might be
thought that this would involve late delivery of copy, which,
in a writer, is the unforgivable sin. But in my experience
he has never committed it. After delivery of the first proofs,
there is generally a massive sequence o overtakes and quite
often a substantial piece of rewriting. But all arrive in time.
He has himself castigated unpunctuality as intolerable rude
ness, and he satisfies the definition of a gentleman as one
who is never unintentionally rude. There is very great
versatility in his writing. He is not, of course, a journalist
in the day-to-day professional sense, but he started his literary
career as a war correspondent in the spacious days when sub
editors were grammarians rather than executioners, and he
regularly wrote feature articles for years. To write such
10 A CHURCHILL READER
articles requires a technique wholly different from that of a
writer of books; though they can be, and Sir Winston was one
of the first to do so, tailored into a book. To both the lesser
and the greater tasks he devotes equal care, and in both he
has achieved success. Those who work for him on the prep
aration either of articles or of books must not expect that
they will be allowed to be "ghost writers" people who
write something that somebody else signs. I still remember
rather ruefully an occasion, years and years ago, when I was
asked to help in the preparation of a certain article. Im
mensely flattered, I produced not information but an article
itself, written in a combination of the styles of Carlyle,
Chesterfield, and (as I thought) Churchill. The article ap
peared; but not a comma of it was mine. That was editorship
indeedl
There is, however, one form of writing in which he has
never indulged. Not a single poem has ever been attributed
to him; and that is strange in one with so deep a sense of
rhythm. He has, moreover, a most capacious memory for
poetry, and I have heard him repeat on the spur of the
moment verses as appropriate to the occasion as his quotations
from Clough ("Westward, look, the land is bright") in a
famous wartime speech. (Sir Winston was referring in a dark
hour to the hope and help to be expected from America.) It
is queer that one with such a fine taste in words should not
have tried his hand at serious verse. His only indulgence in
verse of any kind which I can recall is a neat little couplet,
urging that the Big Three should get down to business.
No more let us alter or falter or palter.
From Malta to Yalta, and Yalta to Malta.
He has tried it at every form of prose writing the full-
length history; the biography (at which, as he has shown
INTROD UCTION 11
both in Lord Randolph Churchill and Marlborough, he is
outstanding); the autobiography; the feature article; the
character sketch; and, last but not least, that more airy form
of writing, sometimes called a vignette, in which a picture is
drawn of a hobby or an incident outside the ordinary run of
a man s life. Such a work, for example, is Painting as a
Pastime.
There is one other lacuna in his activities which will
strike the English, at least, as curious. So far as I know, he
has never struck a golf ball, kicked a football, or bowled a
cricket ball. This may be, to some extent, due to an early
accident at polo; but no game except polo has ever greatly
appealed to him. Fencing (which hardly ranks as a game)
was an accomplishment at which, as a boy at Harrow, he
was an expert enough to carry off the foils championship.
But he did not pursue this sport into adult life. For the rest,
he has deliberately preferred such recreations as building,
riding, and in later life painting; and even in the
matter of riding, there is no trace of him in the hunting field.
Much of what has been said about him as a writer applies to
him as an orator. That must, of course, follow from a habit
of writing speeches and of speaking writings. The technique
which he employs is very much the same. There is first of all
the careful build-up of relevant information, presented with
enough embellishment of phrase to attract and to hold the
interest of the uninstructed, and enough profundity of
knowledge to impress the expert. Then there is a pause,
more evident in speech than in writing, though a reader can
sense the pen quivering just as the audience can see the eye
twinkling. Finally, out it comes a phrase or a word sum
marising what he has had in mind all through the prepara
tory period. I give one example not for the argument,
which is hotly disputed by naval opinion, but for the style.
His account of the Battle of Jutland begins with a wealth of
12 A CHURCHILL READER
soberly marshalled technical detail. The frightful clash of
the steel monsters, with their armaments so powerful as to
make the impact of their shells even on steel casing like "hit
ting an eggshell with a hammer/ is dramatically described.
He lists, at each of the three climacterics of the engagement,
the courses open to the British Commander-in-Chief. He
tells how, by some fatality, not the most fruitful course was
followed upon any of the three occasions; and sums it all up
by saying simply, "Three times are a lot/ 7 As good an
example from a speech as any other is the sentence which still
surrounds like an aureole the Battle of Britain pilots: "Never
in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many
to so few." These two examples, by the way, support Mr,
Charles Morgan s contention that he produces his effects by
the hammer strokes of short words and not by the caresses of
polysyllables.
As a speaker, Sir Winston confesses that at the beginning
of his career he could not string two sentences together with
out preparation. His maiden speech in Parliament had to
be launched by a kindly piece of prompting from a fellow
member. (Who does not know only too well that dark blank,
black as the pit from ear to ear, so to say, which descends
upon one as the Speaker utters one s name!) But practice
made perfect. For many years now there has been no greater
master of the impromptu. I recall an occasion when that
nine stone of quicksilver, Wedgwood Benn (now Lord Stans-
gate), worked himself up into a frenzy and was told, "The
honourable gentleman should not generate more indigna
tion than he can conveniently contain"; or his comment to
another short-legged member in a similarly frequent state
of ebullition, "The honourable member should not be so
ready to hop down off his perch "; or his retort to charges of
partisanship during the General Strike, "I cannot undertake
INTRODUCTION 13
to be impartial as between the Fire Brigade and the fire."
There is, moreover, one form of speaking in which Sir
Winston excels, though it is impossible to illustrate his elo
quence by citation. This is conversation talk on those
private occasions when language is given to us to reveal and
not to conceal our thoughts. The conditions requisite for
conversation are that bodies should be relaxed but minds
active; that the company should be congenial though of varied
opinions; that nobody should be in a hurry; and that there
should be a certain moderate lubrication of the inner man.
It is easy to see how the complexity of modern existence and,
more recently, the impact of rationing have destroyed the
opportunities for this fertile and fruitful form of human
intercourse. But it survives in odd corners, and those fortu
nate enough to find Sir Winston in one of them will have a
pleasant evening. "Churchill," the late President Roosevelt
is reported to have said, "has a hundred ideas a day, of
which at least four are good ideas." Well, four are a lot.
It is therefore quite untrue that the figure which he cuts
as a master of language owes everything to the corsets of
preparation. He has a natural taste for the delicacies of the
English tongue, which is, indeed, the supreme instrument
for both delicacy and indelicacy. (A case can be made out
that it is the best language in which to write lyric poetry and
the best language in which to swear.) For myself, I think that
however good the instrument and the technical use of it, the
effect of oratory depends very largely on the orator s voice.
Not only what the orator says, but how he says it is important.
It is even true today that the most effective speaker over the
radio is not the most effective to an audience. Lord Baldwin
was much better over the air than on the ground, so to say;
and if we were to revive the classical schools of rhetoric, they
might do worse than study why some disembodied voices are
14 A CHURCHILL READER
so much better than others. It is so. As for Sir Winston, he
is pretty good at both, but, in my opinion, not quite so good
over the radio. It is not the gestures that one misses, for he
uses few gestures. I think the inability to see the facial ex
pressions as he works through and up to his points is one
reason. Another may be that an audience is necessary for
some speakers to give of their best the corporative mind
reacts on the individual mind, and vice versa. Soliloquy does
not suit Sir Winston. He is, first and foremost, a House of
Commons man. Parliament is his natural platform, or grind
stone, or touchstone. Incidentally, there is no audience
which can better silence the bore or spur the brilliant.
The calibre of an orator must be assessed relatively as well
as absolutely. It has been my fate to hear (and to understand)
orators of many nations; and I have an admiration for any
body who can make a speech, because I am wholly incapable
of making one myself. I can say, therefore, with complete
objectivity that Mussolini could be a finer actor, Briand
more persuasive, Viviani more polished, Lloyd George more
witty, Lord Birkenhead more trenchant. But none of these
gave the same impression of power and sincerity as Sir
Winston. (Incidentally, I could never understand Hitler s
undoubted successes with his audiences. Goebbels was far
better.) On great occasions he does not seem to have to find
the mot juste it seems to be given to him. The quality
of oratory consists not merely in arousing emotions, but also,
if need be, in calming them. Personally, therefore, I am not
inclined to rank even his finest war speeches as necessarily
his best. Any man with any gift of speech at all would have
caught inspiration from the grimly ecstatic courage of those
times. The best speech, qua speech, is surely that which
makes head against a current. On this view the two speeches
which I would select as Sir Winston s best are that which he
INTRODUCTION 15
made in the debate on the Amritsar shooting and that which
he made on the Munich Agreement. In the first he faced a
House vehemently hostile, bored it into calmness with a dis
quisition on military law, and then caught its interest with
exactly the same arguments as those which, in another s
mouth, had roused it to fury. In the second, he had to make
head against the almost hysterical relief that war had been
averted. He gained no new converts, but he made the hysteri
cal "think it possible that they were mistaken."
There is another speech of Sir Winston s which, in racing
parlance, is worthy of a place. It was made in the debate
on the murder of Sir Henry Wilson by an Irish gunman
a debate which found the Home Secretary of the day unable
to make head against charges of inadequate security precau
tions. The Colonial Secretary, as Sir Winston then was, came
to the rescue and saved the Parliamentary day.
My last example is taken to show that at the age of seventy-
nine this capacity to disarm opponents was undiminished.
Sir Winston spoke in the foreign affairs debate on May 11,
1953. It must be remembered that one of the few jobs he has
never held is that of Foreign Secretary; that eighteen months
earlier he had been vociferously accused of being a war
monger; and that his remarks upon Communism all his life
had been as blunt as a bludgeon. The House was therefore
expecting fireworks. Instead, they got a piece of sober and
constructive reasoning, a piercing analysis of the chances of
an accommodation with the Communist world the dia
metric opposite of sabre-rattling. The astonishment evinced
by his audience only shows how profoundly his career and
his character have been misunderstood. "Peace," he said
during the election of 1951, "is the last prize I have left to
win." It is the prize which he has sought all his life; and
would often have won, had he been heeded. How it can be
16 A CHURCHILL READER
supposed that war could appeal to one with so broad a streak
of emotion and of tenderness in his character passes my com
prehension. But I suppose that it is a principle of party
politics that one s opponents should be considered not only
wrong but damned.
It is to be observed that two out of the four speeches
selected changed, the third shook, and the fourth surprised
the prevalent opinion of the House of Commons. To have
done any of these things is an achievement of which any
statesman can be proud. In an experience of Parliament
extending over nearly thirty years I can count the occasions
on which it has been done on the fingers of two hands. So
rare it is for an orator to "get beyond the guard o the English
heart." Where Sir Winston is exceptional is that there is
always a chance of his doing it. To those who may think that
the terrible difficulty of the task is a reflection on the capacity
of M.P.s, I must point out that, if it were easy, stability of
Government would become impossible; and it is precisely
in its quality of stability that the British Parliamentary
system is superior to others of the same stamp.
The last comment to be made upon Sir Winston s speeches
and writings is that though they are both mouth and brain
filling, they are immune from the jargon in which so many
State papers and statutes are couched. Nor, happily, are they
tinted with the new horror of "basic English/ though it must
be admitted that, in an odd moment, he himself toyed with
the idea of some simplification which would help English to
become an even more widespread lingua franca. Sir Win
ston s tilt against linguistic monstrosities during the war was
certainly one of the four bright ideas which he had on that
particular day. Unfortunately, the wound inflicted by his
lance was not mortal, but the recovery of the Goliath of de-
partmentalese does not detract from the merit of Sir Win-
INTRODUCTION 17
ston s attempt to save both England and English.
How does he rank as a statesman? Well, what is a states
man? It is, as usual, much easier to define what he is not than
what he is. Aristotle defined him as a man of a great soul; but
that is an uninformative generality. He must indeed have
principles, but not necessarily fixed principles. They must,
as Sir Winston has said, be subject "to a harmonious process
which keeps them in tune with the course of events." Perhaps
he can best be defined as a man of character, with a frame of
knowledge and experience, not so clever as to be unstable,
not so dense as to be invariably stubborn. He must, as the late
Lord Morley wrote, possess "fibre." Many years ago I will
not say in whose Premiership a Frenchman remarked to
me, "How unfortunate you English are! Formerly you were
ruled by men of character. Now you are ruled by men of
brains." It is not always clever to be always clever.
To all these qualities of a statesman, Sir Winston has a
strong claim. He did what he thought right for many years,
though the consequence was living in the political wilderness.
His experience of office is quite unique and his experience
of the world hardly less. In his veins runs the civilisation of
the Old World and the colour of the New. He has "warmed
both hands before the fire of life." He has belonged to all
parties, except the extremes; and to no party. And as for
character, there is no assembly in which he would be a nonen
tity and few in which he would not be outstanding.
Are these claims to statesmanship at all impaired by foibles?
Let us see. One of these foibles is the wearing of queer-shaped
hats. As the doggerel quoted earlier shows, it was this pecu
liarity which once struck most forcibly the popular conscious
ness. But hats do not matter nearly so much as what is under
neath them. Again, he smokes cigars incessantly; but since
the time of James I that has not been considered a degrading
18 A CHURCHILL READER
habit. He likes the good things of the table and of the cellar
who, except the dyspeptics and the cranks, does not? One
of the few survivals from the age of rotten boroughs is the
rotten insinuation that men in the public eye are alcoholics
unless they are teetotallers. No time need be wasted, in this
case, upon denying such a charge. Sir Winston s own words
are enough: "I have been brought up and trained to have the
utmost contempt for people who get drunk. 11
Another foible is his partiality for military history, of which
he has read, written, and made a good deal. People have de
duced therefrom that he enjoys war. On the contrary, the
true soldier has an even greater horror of war than the civil
ian, and though interested in the technical conduct of opera
tions is no less interested in the problem of how to avoid
them. There comes a point when life must be risked to save
all that makes life worth living; and then indeed battle must
be sustained up to and beyond the edge of endurance. But
until then, the soldier is no Jingo; nor is Sir Winston. Indeed,
it is his custom, when called upon to drink the loyal toast, to
add to The Queen I" the sot to voce prayer "And no war.
It has often been said that his changes of party are in them
selves a proof of volatility. His own pronouncement on the
point begs some questions, such as how far personal ideas
should be subordinated to party policy; but it makes a strong
case in a world where parties change their views more fre
quently than politicians change their party "The only way
a man can remain constant amid changing circumstances is
to change with them, while preserving the same dominating
purpose. 1 He started as a Tory; became a Liberal; then a
Coalition Liberal; then a Constitutionalist; and finally a
Tory again. But not one of these changes was due to "gen
uinely seeking work," as was so cruelly said of another states
man who changed his party. The kind of Toryism with
which *Jbe bfflan was the Torv Democracv of hw father
INTROBU CTI ON 19
gifted and tragic figure, who captured the fervent and endur
ing admiration of his son by such slender and casual contacts.
As his father s experience showed, the Tory Party at the turn
of the century was very different from the party as it is today.
Sir Winston broke with it largely upon the khaki view of the
Boer War, which was the view responsible for winning the
election of 1902. When he changed over, it was not generally
anticipated that the Liberals would prevail at the next elec
tion. He was transferring to what many thought would be the
losing side. What he did was to move to his then spiritual
home among that section of the Liberal Party known as
"Liberal Imperialists."
The fiscal controversy which developed in 1904 was not cal
culated to make him regret the change. To one who "believed
in Free Trade as in the laws of mathematics," Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain s new tariff policy was the reverse of a lodestar.
Moreover, there was, and always has been, a streak of the
social reformer in Sir Winston. He believed in bringing "the
magic of averages to the rescue of millions" and was in good
company in scorning the Tory Party s campaign against
"stamp licking." His adherence to the Lloyd Georgian rather
than to the Asquithian wing of the Liberals at the close of
the First World War was also natural. Apart from L. G.
having been the Prime Minister who won the war, they had
been close friends long before it. What is, at first sight, aston
ishing is that the Conservative leaders who had refused only
two years earlier to enter any Government of which he was a
member should have accepted him in the postwar Coalition
as a valued colleague. The reason was, of course, that a new
political alignment had emerged. The old Radical tail of the
Liberal dog, under the new and masterly name of the Labour
Party, wagged most of the animal. This party crossed the line
dividing Reform from Revolution. There could be no ques
tion upon which side of the line Sir Winston would be found.
20 A CHURCHILL READER
He is a reformist, through and through. He has even favoured
measures with a Socialistic flavour, such as the nationalisation
of the railways, seeing or foreseeing that such a service was at
once indispensable and unremunerative. But the idea of a
Socialist State was repugnant to him.
When Socialism uprooted the undergrowth in the old
Liberal forest, a number of trees were left in an isolation far
from splendid. Sir Winston was one such. He was in quite a
different position from Conservative Ministers, such as Sir
Austen Chamberlain, who stood aloof from their party when
the Coalition broke up in 1922. He was politically derailed;
they had just shunted themselves into a siding. It was his
good fortune that Mr. Baldwin, who was the supreme po
litical manager of our time, whatever else he was not, was
quite determined, after his defeat on the tariff issue in 1924,
to give the Tory Party a wider umbrella. The spread covered
Sir Winston, who has always been essentially a Coalitionist.
He has never been at his happiest as a party man; for he is a
Parliament man a "child of the House of Commons *
and Parliament cannot thrive without both cut and thrust,
and give and take. In his very first by-election he made an
error of tactics, which caused the late Lord Balfour to ex
claim, "I thought he was a young man of promise* It appears
he is only a young man of promises/* He has often been so
far in advance of the electorate that the attempt to keep up
has led them to look back to someone else. Thus Dundee,
after serenely voting him in from 1908 to 1918, savagely voted
him out in 1922. Or again the vision of a Socialist Gestapo,
imparted in a broadcast in 1945, was viewed by the electors
as a hallucination, and an unknown incoherent polled 10,000
votes against the Prime Minister who had won the war. He
has never had a territorial base like David Lloyd George in
Wales or the Chamberlains in Birmingham. Britain is his
constituency, and not any particular part of it, nor any par-
INTRODUCTION 21
ticular party in it. At any crisis in our national affairs, his
instinct has been to search for a national Government,
broadly based upon all classes.
That was also Mr. Baldwin s instinct. That was why Sir
Winston, to his own surprise, was given the Chancellorship of
the Exchequer from 1925 to 1929. I must devote a few words
to this period, because it is sometimes considered to mark a
lapse in his standards of achievement.
This view is based upon a highly selective memory. It is
recalled that he returned to the gold standard, and thus
opened the door to the spectre of unemployment. The error
was, however, committed because for once he listened too
much to some of his advisers. The real "bankers ramp" was
then, not in 1931. Nobody could be dogmatic about the
question in advance. Thus the late Lord Keynes was origi
nally against the step, and, some time after it had been taken,
persuaded Sir Winston that it had been a mistake. Sir Win
ston made all arrangements to say so in a public speech, but
to his dismay heard Lord Keynes, who spoke first, declare
that on reflection he considered the return to the gold stand
ard to have been rightl
What is also forgotten about his tenure of the Exchequer
is the great stride forward in social reform constituted by
widows and orphans pensions. He carried through that
measure in spite of the horribly costly General Strike a
trial which helped to precipitate another and more pro
longed trial, namely, the onset of a world-wide glut. This
latter wholly unfamiliar phenomenon on so extensive a scale
posed problems even more complex than those of scarcity. No
British Government is more than partly responsible for the
course of prices, and I have often wondered what Sir Win
ston s Socialist critics would have done if such problems had
faced them during their tenure of office. When Napoleon
was asked what quality he sought in a general he replied
22 A CHURCHILL READER
"Luck!" Certainly nobody without luck can consistently be
a Napoleon. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Winston
had no luck at all.
So much for the famous "inconsistency" of party or of per
formance. In no party and in no performance has anybody
ever accused Sir Winston of being short of ideas. His judg
ment has indeed been questioned by Mr. Neville Cham
berlain; and the reason for these questionings may be found
in his own remark: "I have a tendency, against which I
should, perhaps, be on my guard, to swim against the stream."
Sometimes, of course, the stream is right as it was on the
question of the abdication, or (at least, so it seems to me) on
the question of Indian self-government. But sometimes also
the swimmer against it has been right. For example, he was
a thousand times right in urging the forcing of the Darda
nelles in 1915; and (as I have hinted earlier) I fancy there is
nothing in his whole career, not even the defeat of his Gov
ernment in the General Election of 1945, which has left be
hind it such a taste and tang of bitterness as the frustration
by fate and fools of the Gallipoli expedition. Again, he was
all too right about the menace of Hitler, though in that case
the current against him was not a stream, but a tide; and, like
a tide, it turned. I shall always think that this period in his
career was in many respects his "finest hour." Nobody who
has not had the experience can imagine how unpleasant it is
to face a hostile House of Commons, savagely resolved to shout
or sneer one into silence.
Forgiveness to the injured doth belong,
But he ne er pardons who has done the wrong.
When the House is determined to be wrong it cannot for
give anybody who persists in proving that it is wrong. The
INTRODUCTION 23
hostile atmosphere of Westminster spreads through the press
and the public, like the smell of cooking through a boarding-
house. The only doubtful question about the object of this
hostility is whether he is more knave or fool; and it becomes
as hard for him to stage a comeback as for a discredited pu
gilist. For some six years Sir Winston was exposed to this all-
pervasive hostility. He never winced or wilted. That alone
would establish his claim to be a statesman.
But, after all, it is the man behind all these manifestations
of the man who is the most interesting. About the man
and the boy, too there is one outstanding characteristic,
namely, a zest for living which has become all too rare in
these harassed times. "Twenty to twenty-five! Those are the
years!" says Sir Winston himself. But nobody has less reason
to sigh over the days that have fled; for the vital spark that
coruscates so splendidly in youth has, in his case, continued to
sparkle past the allotted span.
It seems hard to recapture, in days when danger is faced no
less firmly but far more as a duty, the spirit which was drawn
to face danger for its own sake, as steel is drawn to a magnet.
I would not disparage the modern generation. Indeed, theirs
may well be the truer courage, when they face unflinchingly
perils about which, at first hand or vicariously, they know all,
so that the glamour has departed and only the hard skeleton
of horror remains. Nevertheless, the panache of the pre-1914
generation of young men was attractive; and those who regret
its passing may find the gist of it in Sir Winston. The reader
may take exception to the choice of a French term to describe
the chief characteristic of an Englishman. But it is not inap
propriate to Sir Winston, whose French vocabulary is exten
sive and whose French accent is something all his own.
For the greater part of his career he displayed a certain
inclination towards France. No Englishman has expressed a
24 A CHURCHILL READER
more brilliant and generous understanding of French achieve
ments and failures; and if he has been greatly saddened by a
certain lack of resilience since the war, he has never fallen
into the kind of contemptuous snorting about French insta
bility to which some others are prone.
Indeed, he is singularly objective towards all foreigners,
and particularly towards those who put up a good show,
whether as allies or as enemies. The first strong stroke which
he made against any stream was an appreciative remark about
the Boers then in arms against us. Possibly as a result of
attending the Kaiser s army manoeuvres, he has never been
very partial towards the Germans the cloven hoof, so to say,
showed too much through the "shining armour" but even
in their case his book on the 1914-18 war ends with a sonorous
catalogue of their efforts and the appeal, "Surely, Germans,
for history it is enough," Even in respect of the Russians,
whose Communism evoked some of his most sulphurous ful-
minations, he never hesitated a moment when Hitler attacked
them in 1941. He never held the foolish theory that it was
practicable to expect the Germans and the Russians to exhaust
each other. So, in June 1941, he acted at once on the princi
ple which he once defined as "if Hitler invaded Hell, I would
make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House
of Commons/ 7
How does he rank as a soldier? I do not mean as the pert
and pushing subaltern, who pulled strings to get into action
and used pens to describe it both in a shockingly successful
way. I mean as a strategist, whether at the Admiralty in the
First World War or as Minister of Defence and Prime Min
ister in the second. As for 1914-18, something has already
been said about the Dardanelles; and Sir Winston s share in
the development of the tank may be added to his claims to
fame during that period. They were indeed endorsed by the
simple fact that when, in 1939, he returned to the Admiralty
INTRODUCTION 25
on the outbreak of war an exhilarated whisper ran round the
Navy: "Winnie is back."
During the last war the test was, of course, much sterner.
It will, I think, be admitted that the main strategic decisions
all through were his. At least (to echo Marshal Joffre s reply
to the question who won the Battle of the Marne), the blame
if these decisions had been wrong would have been laid upon
him; and there were occasionally whimsical or malicious
whispers that he fancied himself to be the reincarnation of
Marlborough. Moreover, war, in our country and under our
Constitution, is run by a committee composed wholly or
mainly of civilians over which the Prime Minister presides;
and the decisions of committees over which Sir Winston
presides are liable to be Sir Winston s. He was not, like Hit
ler, surrounded by mere toadies, and it is not suggested that
Cabinet meetings were occasions for burning incense before
"the greatest strategic genius of all time." I only mean that,
though the team was good, he was the undisputed captain
of it.
But there is another feature of our constitutional practice,
which has developed through subcommittees of the Commit
tee of Imperial Defence, namely, that the committee of civil
ians never acts without the advice of military experts. That
does not diminish their responsibility; and when the experts
disagree, as they sometimes do, the civilians have to decide.
I mention the experts particularly because Sir Winston was
always extremely sensitive to their advice perhaps this sen
sitiveness was a reaction from the Dardanelles experience.
He worked them hard. He worked them at queer hours,
because of his practice of taking a nap in the afternoons and
of being particularly active through a large part of the night.
But he listened to them. Unlike Hitler, he was not guided
purely by his intuition.
Such is the background to the great strategic decisions of
26 A CHURCHILL READER
the war. Let us list some of them. I do not include the deci
sion to fight on alone after the fall of France, because if ever
there was a decision of a whole nation and not of any man or
group in it, that was the one. Indeed, Sir Winston himself
has said of the first Cabinet meeting over which he presided
that if anybody had even hinted at anything like giving in,
that person would have been torn to pieces. But no similar
prejudgment governed the decision to send our first, and at
that time our only, armoured division to Africa in the autumn
of 1940 instead of keeping it at home; nor the refusal to open
a Second Front in Europe until it could be more than a for
lorn hope; nor the steady devotion of so much of our resources
(though not as much as Air-Marshal Harris wanted) to build
ing up the bomber offensive. These were crucial decisions;
and they were sound, marked alike by daring and by discern
ment. Moreover, as we now know from the last volumes of his
War Memoirs, some of his ideas which did not prevail were as
sound as those which did. For example, he wanted an attain
able, complete, and early victory in Italy rather than a proble
matically useful invasion of southern France in 1944; and he
urged vehemently in 1945 that the Allies should not sur
render Central Germany to the Soviets before a long-term
agreement had been achieved with Russia. The first idea
might have given us an earlier peace; the second might have
prevented the Cold War.
Sir Winston is more than a descendant of the Duke of
Marlborough. He is also half American; and it is perhaps
from across the Atlantic that a touch of restlessness and even
of flamboyance in him originates. But personally I consider
all talk of national characteristics to be more or less rubbish;
and if asked to place him in any special category, I should
prefer the criterion to be a period rather than a country. In
many ways he belongs to the second half of the eighteenth
century, when, at least for a considerable part of society, life
INTRODUCTION 27
was brilliant and assured and ideas fresh and blazing. There
should be nothing offensive in talking about a "governing
class" in a country where entry into it is open to all classes.
Some are qualified, others qualify for it; and it is stupid to say
that only those who qualify for it, without originally belong
ing to it, should govern. Well, Sir Winston does belong to it.
He would have qualified if he had not belonged, but belong
to it he does, not because of his birth, or even his cigars, but
because of his temperament. He was certainly born in the
political purple, but he wears it as to the manner born, and
not all sons of famous fathers can say that.
That temperament has, admittedly, the defects of its quali
ties. A man who knows what he wants and thinks it natural
that he should get it is not a good listener. It is not only fools
that he does not suffer gladly. Or to put the same point in
another way when ideas and arguments boil and bubble up
ceaselessly in a human brain its possessor is liable to sweep
aside any interruption. You can turn off a tap, but not a
spring.
It is not that he resents interruption or opposition he
just disregards them. Yet there are exceptions to this indiffer
ence. I have heard it said that Sir Winston has had few inti
mate friends, but there are certainly two who can rank as such.
To the late Lord Birkenhead and to the late Field-Marshal
Smuts he always listened, and that not merely because it
tickled his fancy to have as a friend and counsellor his fiercest
political adversary or one who was once his jailer. What he
saw in F.E. was a vivid energy in the grand manner not unlike
his own. What he saw in the Field-Marshal was the living
embodiment of the virtues of the British system a man
once in arms against the British Empire and thereafter its
most loyal supporter. As has already been mentioned, Sir
Winston is half American, but in his love for things British,
in veneration for British traditions, and in admiration for
28 A CHURCHILL READER
British achievements, he is the most English soul alive.
You can think your own people have a lot to teach others
without assuming that others have nothing to teach them.
You can love old things without loving old ways. Sir Winston
can certainly be moved by the spectacle or memory of ma
jestic events and institutions. The cynic may think that he
regards the twentieth century too much through spectacles of
the eighteenth. But he can also be moved by very humble
and modern things. For example, one of the things which
moved him most during the war was the attitude of the people
when he passed among them after, and sometimes during, bad
raids. "What an imperial race!" he exclaimed on one occa
sion when, as he himself told the House of Commons, people
emerged from the wreck of their homes to cry, "We can take
it!" and also "Give it em back!"
He is, after all, like them himself. All his life he has taken
it, and also given it back. He has sought colour in life and he
has found it, whether dark or bright. The prayer in history
which suits him best is surely the prayer of La Hire: "Sir God,
I pray you to do to La Hire as La Hire would do to you if you
were La Hire and La Hire were God."
The message in history which fits him best Js perhaps that
which Michael Collins sent on the eve of his assassination,
and which many other men in many other contexts have
echoed: "Tell Winston we could never have done anything
without him."
It would be fitting to close this account of a master of the
English tongue by singling out from the magnificent diapason
of English verse a note appropriate to his life and character.
Shelley supplies it.
To suffer ills which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs, blacker than death or might;
INTRODUCTION 29
To defy power which seems omnipotent;
To love and bear; to hope, till hope creates
Of its own self the thing it contemplates.
Never to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Great, good, and joyous; beautiful and free
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
On Himself
This chapter begins with certain general principles which
have governed Sir Winston Churchill s actions, and then
gives his own comments on major events in his life, roughly
in chronological order.
I HAVE a tendency against which I should, perhaps, be on my
guard, to swim against the stream.
At all times, according to my lights and throughout the
changing scenes through which we are all hurried, I have
always faithfully served t\vo public causes which, I think,
stand supreme the maintenance of the enduring greatness
of Britain and her Empire, and the historical continuity of:
our island life.
On accepting the leadership of
the Conservative Party, Oc
tober 1940
[It must be remembered that Sir Winston had throughout his
life been unpopular among a large section of that party, and
never more so than when he was fighting appeasement.]
O N H I MSELF 31
Looking back with after-knowledge and increasing years,
I seem to have been too ready to undertake tasks which were
hazardous or even forlorn.
"The World Crisis" written
in 1923
[There were still in store a few similar tasks for him to
undertake.]
Everybody threw the blame on me. I have noticed that
they nearly always do. I suppose it is because they think I
shall be able to bear it best.
"Amid These Storms"
Because I show robust energy, it does not follow that I have
a sensitive or injured disposition.
Speech in the House, April
23, 1953
[Mr. Shinwell had asked whether Sir Winston was in a better
temper than he was earlier in the day.]
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded.
In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
Speech in the House, Novem
ber 11, 1942
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost
contempt for people who get drunk.
"Amid These Storms"
I neither want it nor need it, but I should think it pretty
hazardous to interfere with the ineradicable habit of a life
time.
"Time," July 6, 1953
32 A CHURCHILL READER
[Sir Winston had asked Lord Moran, his doctor, whether a
Cointreau was permitted after lunch. Lord Moran said,
"Do you want it or do you need it?"]
I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is much
better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken
place.
Cairo, Press Conference, Feb
ruary 1, 1943
I am by no means sure I have been right. It is no part of
my case that I am always right.
Speech in the House, May 21,
1952
My views are a harmonious process which keeps them in
relation to the current movement of events,
Speech in the House, May 5,
1952
I give my opinion. I dare say it will weigh as much as a
mocking giggle,
Speech in the House, 1944,
when jeered at for his refer
ence to Prince Umber to
I never take pleasure in human woe,
Glasgow, April 17, 1953
I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between Com
munism and Nazi-ism, I would choose Communism. I hope
not to be called upon to survive in the world under a Govern
ment of either of those dispensations.
Speech in the House, April 14,
1937
ON HIMSELF 33
Personally I am always ready to learn, although I do not
always like being taught.
Speech in the House, Novem
ber 4, 1952
I can practise, in an honorary fashion, the arts of surgery
and medicine. Unless there is a very marked shortage of
capable men in both these professions, I shall not press myself
upon you. No doubt in these difficult times it will be a com
fort not only to the profession but to the nation at large that
you have me in reserve. I have not yet taken any final de
cision as to which of those beneficent branches I should give
priority (in case an emergency arises). Being tempera
mentally inclined to precision and a sharp edge, it might be
thought that I should choose the surgeon s role.
London, July 10, 1951
I was once asked to devise an inscription for a monument
in France. I wrote "In war, Resolution. In defeat, Defiance.
In victory, Magnanimity. In Peace, Goodwill." The in
scription was not accepted.
"Amid These Storms"
(published in 1932)
[It is interesting to note that Sir Winston has used this in
scription, eighteen years after he had first composed it, for
the moral of his work The Second World War the first
volume of which appeared in 1948.]
I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions
with might and main till overwhelming victory, and then
offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished. Thus I
have always been against the Pacifists during the quarrel,
and against the Jingoes at its close.
"Amid These Storms"
34 A CHURCHILL READER
I thought we ought to have conquered the Irish and then
given them Home Rule; that we ought to have starved out
the Germans and then revictualled their country; and that
after smashing the General Strike, we should have met the
grievances of the miners. I always get into trouble because
so few people take this line.
"Amid These Storms"
My hate had died with their surrender.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War," Vol. VI
[On Germany.]
If the worst came to the worst, I might have a shot at it
myself.
Reply to an Opposition re
quest to name a Minister to
speak on behalf of the Gov
ernment
I have no intention of passing my remaining years in ex
plaining or withdrawing anything I have said in the past,
still less in apologising for it.
Speech in the House > April 21,
1944
This is the first time in my political life that I have kept
quiet for so long.
Margate, October 10,
[This speech to the Conservative Party Conference was Sir
Winston s first since his illness in May 1953 a period of
five months enforced abstention from public speeches.]
ON HIMSELF 35
I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have
been happier every year since I became a man. But this
interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the
chart of my journey.
"Amid These Storms"
In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded
in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except
the alphabet.
"A mid These Storms"
I never had the advantage of a university education. But
it is a great privilege and the more widely extended, the
better for any country. It should not be looked upon as
something to end with youth but as a key to open many
doors of thought and knowledge. A university education
ought to be a guide to the reading of a lifetime. . . . One who
has profited from university education has a wide choice.
He need never be idle or bored. He is free from that vice
of the modern age which requires something new not only
every day but every two or three hours of the day. . . . The
first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not a trade;
character, not technicalities. We want a lot of engineers in
the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers.
Speech in the House, Septem
ber 19, 1950
I am surprised that in my later life I should have become
so experienced in taking degrees when as a schoolboy I was
so bad at passing examinations. In fact, one might almost
say that no one ever passed so few examinations and received
so many degrees. From this a superficial thinker might argue
that the way to get the most degrees is to fail in the most
36 A CHURCHILL READER
examinations ... no boy or girl should ever be disheartened
by lack of success in their youth but should diligently and
faithfully continue to persevere and make up for lost time.
Miami, U.S.A., February 26,
1946
There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book
appears one should read an old one. As an author I would
not recommend too strict an adherence to this saying. But I
must admit that I have altered my views about the study of
classical literature as I have grown older. At school I never
liked it. I entirely failed to respond to the many pressing
and sometimes painful exhortations which I received to
understand the full charm and precision of the classic
languages. But it seems to me that should the classic studies
die out in Europe and in the modern world, a unifying
influence of importance would disappear.
Oslo, May 12, 194S
I like the song "Boy," although when I was at School I did
not advance to that position of authority which entitles one
to make that call.
Harrow School, December 8,
1940
[The reference is to the system under which upper school
boys are allowed to use lower school boys as fags,]
You have the songs of Bowen and Howson (whom I re
member well as housemasters here) with the music of John
Farmer and Eaton Fanning. They are wonderful; marvel
lous; more than could be put into brick and mortar, or
treasured in any trophies of silver or gold. They grow with
the years. I treasure them and sing them with joy.
Speech at Harrow, November
19, 1942
ON HIMSELF 37
Hitler, in one of hi$ recent discourses, declared that the
fight was between those who have been through the Adolf
Hitler schools and those who have been at Eton. Hitler has
forgotten Harrow. . . .
Speech at Harrow, December
18, 1940
May I say with great respect and with the indulgence of
the Committee, that I do not in the least mind being called
a goose? I have been called many worse things than that.
Speech in the House, Decem
ber 3, 1952
It took me three tries to pass into Sandhurst.
"Amid These Storms"
I resolved to read history, philosophy, economics, and
things like that. . . . Without more ado I got out the eight
volumes of Gibbon s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
"Amid These Storms"
[Sir Winston explains how, when a subaltern at Bangalore,
he began, to realise that polo was not everything.]
I had a feeling once about Mathematics that I saw it all.
Depth beyond Depth was revealed to me the Byss and
Abyss. I saw as one might see the transit of Venus or
even the Lord Mayor s Show a quantity passing through
infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw
exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was
inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.
"Amid These Storms"
Twenty to twenty-five! Those are the years!
"A mid These Storms"
38 A CHURCHILL READER
So, at any rate, I had been "under fire." That was some
thing. Nevertheless, I began to take a more thoughtful view
of our enterprise than I had hitherto done.
On first coming under fire in
Cuba, 1895
"I presume/ Lord Curzon said to me, "it will not be long
before we hear you declaim in the House of Commons!"
Though greatly hampered by inability to compose at the
rate necessary for public speaking, I was strongly of the same
opinion myself.
"Great Contemporaries" The
occasion was a visit to Cur
zon as Viceroy
The President of the Psychical Research Society extracted
rather unseasonably a promise from me after dinner to "com
municate" with him should anything unfortunate occur.
"Amid These Storms" On
leaving for Kitchener s army
in the Sudan
I, too, was proud of my prisoner until we reached the
army. Then it appeared that ... he was a most important
individual in the employ of the Intelligence Department
who had been spying in Omdurman. . . . Naturally, several
young gentlemen saw fit to be facetious on the subject. . . .
Reuter s correspondent even proposed to telegraph some
account of this noteworthy capture. But I prevailed on him
not to do so, having a detestation of publicity.
"River War; an Account of
the Reconquest of the Sou
dan 9
ON HIMSELF 39
He spoke nothing but Arabic; I knew only one word of
that language. Still, we conversed fluently. By opening and
shutting my mouth and pointing to my stomach, I excited his
curiosity, if not his wonder. Then I employed the one and
indispensable Arabic word "Backsheesh." After that, all
difficulties melted away.
"River War; an Account of
the Reconquest of the
Soudan"
There are lots of people who have been employed in
political office who have had professional military experience.
Even I myself was nearly five years a cadet and a lieutenant
in the Army and I have frequently interfered in civilian
matters.
Speech in the House, January
30, 1952
[Sir Winston was replying to questions upon appointing a
Field-Marshal (Lord Alexander) to the post of Minister of
Defence.]
Certainly I have been fully qualified so far as the writing
of books about wars is concerned; in fact, already in 1900,
which is a long time ago, I could boast to have written as
many books as Moses, and I have not stopped writing them
since, except when momentarily interrupted by war, in all
the intervening period.
Royal United Services Institu
tion, July 4, 1950
I have been a journalist and half my lifetime I have earned
my living by selling words and I hope thoughts.
Ottawa, January 12, 1952
40 A CHURCHILL READER
I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from read
ing it.
On "Savrola/ f his first novel
and his only one
For my part, I consider that it will be found much better
by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I pro
pose to write that history myself.
Speech in the House, January
23, 1948
On the first night when I visited the wardroom the officers
were singing songs. At the end they sang the chorus of "Rule,
Britannia." I asked them what were the words. Nobody
knew them. So I recited some of Thomson s noble lines
myself.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War," Vol. VI
[On board the cruiser Enterprise on July 20, 1944, after visit
to the Mulberry Harbours in Normandy*]
The night was chilly. Colonel Byng and I shared a blanket.
When he turned over I was in the cold. When I turned over
I pulled the blanket off him and he objected. He was the
Colonel. It was not a good arrangement.
At Spion Kop with Colonel
Byng later Lord Byng of
Virny
Keep cool, menl This will be interesting for my paper.
[When the armoured train from Estcourt on which he was
travelling as a war correspondent was ambushed by the
Boers.]
ON HIMSELF 41
The best advice I got was from Mr. Henry Chaplin, who
said to me in his rotund manner: "Don t be hurried! Unfold
your case! If you have anything to say, the House will listen."
On the birth-pangs of his
maiden speech
I am a child of the House o Commons. I was brought up
in my father s house to believe in democracy. "Trust the
people" was his message. ... In my country, as in yours,
public men are proud to be servants of the State and would
be ashamed to be its masters.
Speech to the American Con
gress, December 1941
I am your servant, and you have the right to dismiss me
when you please. What you have no right to do is to ask me
to bear responsibilities without the power of effective action,
to bear the responsibilities of Prime Minister but "clamped
on each side by strong men." . . .
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War/ VoL IV
[Towards the middle of 1942 there was some feeling in the
House of Commons that Sir Winston was taking too much
upon himself, and a Vote of Censure was moved by a few
back-bench Conservatives. They explained that they did not
want to dismiss him, but to limit his authority. However, all
this disappeared with the Alamein victory in November.]
... It was with some pride that I reminded my two great
comrades on more than one occasion that I was the only one
of our trinity who could at any moment be dismissed from
power by the vote of a House of Commons freely elected on
universal franchise, or could be controlled from day to day by
42 A CHURCHILL READER
the opinion of a War Cabinet representing all parties in the
State. The President s term of office was fixed, and his
powers not only as President but as Commander-in-Chief
were almost absolute under the American Constitution.
Stalin appeared to be, and at this moment certainly was, all-
powerful in Russia. They could order; I had to convince and
persuade. I was glad that this should be so. The process was
laborious, but I had no reason to complain of the way it
worked.
Closing the Ring, " The Sec
ond World War; 9 Vol. V
I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been an
American and my mother British, instead of the other way
round, I might have got here on my own.
Speech to the U.S. Congress,
December 16, 1941
I feel on both sides of the Atlantic. ... In my mother s
birth city of Rochester, I hold a latch-key to American hearts.
Speech in Rochester, U.S.A.,
June 1942
My mother was American and my ancestors were officers in
Washington s army. So I am myself an English-speaking
union.
[Quoted by Mr. Adlai Stevenson the Democratic Presidential
Candidate at a reception of the English Speaking Union in
London, July 29, 1953. Mr. Stevenson had had lunch earlier
with Sir Winston at Chequers, and Mr. Stevenson told Sir
Winston that he had to attend the reception later that day.
Sir Winston then made the remark above.]
ON HIMSELF 43
I am very glad the House has allowed me after an interval
of fifteen years to lift again the tattered flag I found lying on
a stricken field.
Speech in the House, 1901
[Sir Winston is referring to his father s fight for economy in
the Services, which ended in defeat and resignation. Economy
was the text of this, one of the earliest speeches, of his son.]
It is easy for an individual to move through those in
sensible gradations from left to right, but the act of crossing
the floor [i.e., changing one s political party] is one that
requires serious consideration. I am well informed on the
matter, for I have accomplished that difficult process not only
once, but twice.
All the years that I have been in the House of Commons
I have always said to myself one thing: "Do not interrupt,"
and I have never been able to keep to that resolution.
Speech in the House, July 10,
1935
I now (as Home Secretary in 1911) signed general warrants
authorising the examination of all the correspondence of
particular people upon a list, to which additions were con
tinually being made. This soon disclosed a regular and
extensive system of German-paid British agents. [The field
of preparation], once I got drawn in, dominated all other
interests in my mind. For seven years I could think of little
else ... all the war cries of our election struggles began to
seem unreal. . . . Only Ireland held her place among the grim
realities. No doubt other Ministers had similar mental ex
periences. I am telling my own tale.
"The World Crisis 9
44 A CHURCHILL READER
When I think of the fate of poor old women, so many of
whom have no one to look after them and nothing to live
on at the end of their lives, I am glad to have had a hand in
all that structure of pensions and insurance which no other
country can rival and which is especially a help to them.
"Amid These Storms"
[The reference is to Sir Winston s championship of social
insurance almost from his entry into politics to his Widows,
Orphans, and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, 1928.]
Don t get torpedoed; for if I am left alone your colleagues
will eat me.
Letter to Mr. Lloyd George in
1916, when latter was pro
posing to go on a visit to
Russia
[Sir Winston was, at the time, still in bad odour with the
Conservatives.]
I am finished,
To Lord Riddell, in losing his
position at the Admiralty in
1915
Political dramas are very exciting at the time to those
engaged in the clatter and whirlpool of politics, but I can
truthfully affirm that I never felt resentment, still less pain,
at being so decisively discarded in a moment of national
stress.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War/ Vol. I
ONHIMSELF 45
[Upon his not being asked to take part in the National Coali
tion Government, 1931-35.]
I have myself some ties with Scotland which are to me of
great significance ties precious and lasting. First of all, I
decided to be born on St. Andrew s Day and it was to
Scotland I went to find my wife. ... I commanded a Scottish
battalion of the famous 21st Regiment for five months in the
line in France in the last war. I sat for fifteen years as the
representative of "Bonnie Dundee," and I might be sitting
for it still if the matter had rested entirely with me.
Edinburgh, October 12, 1942
[Lady Churchill was Miss Clementine Hozier. Sir Winston
was defeated in Dundee at the General Election of 1922.]
I will never stifle myself in such a moral and intellectual
sepulchre.
[On the Bonar Law Government of 1922, with its policy
allegedly reactionary.]
I am without an office, without a seat, without a party, and
without an appendix.
After his defeat at Dundee in
1922
[Mr. Churchill had been operated upon for appendicitis just
before the contest, and had quarrelled with both the Liberal
and Conservative parties over their refusal to continue the
Coalition.]
I was surprised, and the Conservative Party dumbfounded,
when he invited me to become Chancellor of the Exchequer,
the office which my father had once held.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War," Vol. I
46 A CHURCHILL READER
[Sir Winston was appointed Chancellor by Mr. Baldwin in
his 1924-29 Government]
The years from 1931 to 1935, apart from my anxiety on
public affairs, were personally very pleasant to me. I earned
my livelihood by dictating articles which had a wide circula
tion not only in Great Britain and the United States, but also,
before Hitler s shadow fell upon them, in the most famous
newspapers of sixteen European countries. I lived, in fact,
from mouth to hand. I produced in succession the various
volumes of the Life of Marlborough. I meditated constantly
upon the European situation and the rearming of Germany.
I lived mainly at Chartwell, where I had much to amuse me.
I built with my own hands a large part of two cottages and
extensive kitchen-garden walls, and made all kinds of rock
eries and waterworks and a large swimming-pool which was
filtered to limpidity and could be heated to supplement our
fickle sunshine. Thus I never had a dull or idle moment
from morning till midnight, and with my happy family
around me dwelt at peace within my habitation.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War," Vol. I
In 1930, when I was out of office, I accepted for the first
and only time in my life a directorship. It was in one of the
subsidiary companies of Lord Inchcape s far-spreading or
ganisation of the Peninsular and Oriental shipping lines.
For eight years I regularly attended the monthly board meet
ings, and discharged my duties with care.
The Grand Alliance, "The
Second World War," Vol.
Ill
ON HIMSELF 47
There was a moment . . . o a world aglare, of a man aghast.
... I do not understand why I was not broken like an egg
shell or squashed like a gooseberry.
On being run down by a taxi
in New York, 1931
I was eleven years a fairly solitary figure in this House and
pursued my way in patience; and so there may be hope for
the hon. Member.
Retort to Mr. Gallacher, the
solitary Communist M.P.,
December 8, 1944
[Sir Winston was teasing Mr. Gallacher on his failure to gain
support in the House.]
I suppose they asked me to show him that, if they couldn t
bark themselves, they kept a dog who could bark and might
bite.
Remark upon being invited by
the Chamberlain Cabinet to
meet von Ribbentrop, when
the latter was German Am
bassador
It was my duty as Home Secretary more than a quarter of
a century ago to stand beside His Majesty and proclaim his
style and titles at his investiture as Prince of Wales. ... I
should have been ashamed if, in my independent and un
official position, I had not cast about for every lawful means,
even the most forlorn, to keep him on the Throne of his
fathers.
Speech in the House of Com
mons on the abdication of
Edward VIII
48 A CHURCHILL READER
[The point is that Sir Winston had been accused, not openly,
but in the miasmic coulisses of politics, of wanting to form a
King s Party with himself at its head, and to climb back into
power on the shoulders of a crisis. This was a loathsome
slander. Sir Winston was animated by personal and senti
mental memories, and by them alone.]
To be so entirely convinced and vindicated in a matter
of life and death to one s country, and not to be able to make
Parliament and the nation heed the warning, or bow to the
proof by taking action, was an experience most painful.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War/ Vol. I
No one had ever been over the same terrible course twice
with such an interval between. No one had felt its dangers
and responsibilities from the summit as I had or, to descend
to a small point, understood how First Lords of the Ad
miralty are treated when great ships are sunk and things go
wrong. If we were in fact going over the same cycle a second
time, should I have once again to endure the pangs of dis
missal? ... I could feel that I had effectively taken over the
great Department which I knew so well and loved with a
discriminating eye. I now knew what there was in hand and
on the way. I knew where everything was. I had visited all
the principal naval ports and met all the Commanders-in-
Chief. By the Letters Patent constituting the Board, the
First Lord is "responsible to Crown and Parliament for all
the business of the Admiralty/* and I certainly felt prepared
to discharge that duty in fact as well as in form.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War," Vol. I
ONHIMSELF 49
[Reflections upon taking over the duties of First Lord of the
Admiralty for the second time in 1939.]
When in 1940 the chief responsibility fell upon me and
our national survival depended upon victory in the air, I
had the advantage of a layman s insight into the problems of
air warfare resulting from four long years of study and
thought based upon the fullest official and technical informa
tion. Although I have never tried to be learned in technical
matters, this mental field was well lit for me. I knew the
various pieces and the moves on the board, and could under
stand anything I was told about the game.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War/ Vol. I
[Sir Winston became a member of the Air Ministry and Air
Defence Committee in July 1935 at the request of the then
Prime Minister, Mr. Baldwin.]
In my long political experience I had held most of the
great offices of State, but I readily admit that the post which
had now fallen to me was the one I liked the best. Power, for
the sake of lording it over fellow-creatures or adding to per
sonal pomp, is rightly judged base. But power in a national
crisis, when a man believes he knows what orders should be
given, is a blessing. In any sphere of action there can be no
comparison between the positions of number one and num
bers two, three, or four. The duties and problems of all
persons other than number one are quite different and in
many ways more difficult. It is always a misfortune when
number two or three has to initiate a dominant plan or policy.
He has to consider not only the merits of the policy, but the
mind of his chief; not only what to advise, but what it is
50 A CHURCHILL READER
proper for him in his station to advise; not only what to do,
but how to get it agreed, how to get it done. Moreover,
number two or three will have to reckon with numbers four,
five and six, or maybe some bright outsider, number twenty.
Ambition, not so much for vulgar ends, but for fame, glints
in every mind. There are always several points of view
which may be right, and many which are plausible. I was
ruined for the time being in 1915 over the Dardanelles, and
a supreme enterprise was cast away, through my trying to
carry out a major and cardinal operation of war from a sub
ordinate position. Men are ill-advised to try such ventures.
This lesson had sunk into my nature.
At the top there are great simplifications. An accepted
leader has only to be sure of what it is best to do, or at least
to have made up his mind about it. The loyalties which
centre upon number one are enormous. If he trips he must
be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If
he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no
good he must be pole-axed. But this last extreme process
cannot be carried out every day; and certainly not in the days
just after he has been chosen.
Their Finest Hour, "The Sec
ond World War; VoL II
[Upon becoming Prime Minister for first time in May 1940.]
When I xvas called upon to be Prime Minister, now nearly
two years ago, there were not many applicants for the job.
Since then perhaps the market has improved.
Speech in the House, January
1942
It had many defects and teething troubles, and when these
became apparent the tank was appropriately rechristened
ONHIMSELF 51
the "Churchill/* These defects have now been largely over
come.
Speech in the House, July 2,
1942
I am invited under the threats of unpopularity to vic
timise the Chancellor of the Duchy (Mr. Duff Cooper) and
throw him to the wolves. I say to those who make this
amiable suggestion ... "I much regret that I am unable to
gratify your wishes," or words to that effect.
Speech in the House, January
1942
[It had been sought to make Mr. Duff Cooper (the late Lord
Norwich), sent on a special mission to Singapore, responsi
ble for the early disasters in the Japanese war. Sir Winston
has always refused to hear a word against either Mr. Duff
Cooper or Mr. Eden, chiefly, I think, because of their revolt
against the Chamberlain appeasement policy.]
I was the most miserable Englishman in America since
Burgoyne.
On receiving the news of the
fall of Tobruk, June 1942,
when on a visit to Washing
ton
... on the night of the tenth of May (1940) ... I acquired
the chief power in the State I was conscious of a profound
sense of relief. At last I had the authority to give directions
over the whole scene. I felt as if I were walking with destiny,
and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this
hour and for this trial. Eleven years in the political wilder
ness had freed me from ordinary Party antagonisms. ... I
52 A CHURCHILL READER
thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I
should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the
morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering
dreams. Facts are better than dreams.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War/ Vol. I
A man who has to play an effective part in taking, with the
highest responsibility, grave and terrible decisions of war may
need the refreshment of adventure. He may need also the
comfort that when sending so many others to their death he
may share in a small way their risks. His field of personal
interest, and consequently his forces of action, are stimulated
by direct contact with the event. As a result of what I saw
and learned in the First World War, I was convinced that
generals and other high commanders should try from time
to time to see the conditions and aspect of the battle scene
themselves. I had seen many grievous errors made through
the silly theory that valuable lives should not be endangered.
No one was more careful of his personal safety than I was, but
I thought my view and theme of the war were sufficiently
important and authoritative to entitle me to full freedom
of judgment as to how I discharged my task in such a per
sonal matter.
Closing the Ring, " The Sec
ond World War/ Vol. V
I had to ask myself the question [taking the leadership of
the Conservative Party in 1940] about which there may
still be various opinions whether the Leadership of one
great party was compatible with the position I held from
King and Parliament as Prime Minister of an Administration
composed of, and officially supported by, all parties. I had
ON HIMSELF 53
no doubt about the answer. The Conservative Party possessed
a very large majority in the House of Commons over all other
parties combined. Owing to the war conditions no election
appeal to the nation was available in case of disagreement or
deadlock. I should have found it impossible to conduct the
war if I had had to procure the agreement in the compulsive
days of crisis and during long years of adverse and baffling
struggle not only of the Leaders of the two minority parties
but of the Leader of the Conservative majority. Whoever had
been chosen and whatever his self-denying virtues, he would
have had the real political power. For me there would have
been only the executive responsibility.
Their Finest Hour, "The Sec
ond World War; 9 Vol. II
I knew nothing about science, but I knew something of
scientists, and had had much practice as a Minister in
handling things I did not understand. I had, at any rate, an
acute military perception of what would help and what
would hurt, or what would cure and of what would kill.
Their Finest Hour, "The Sec
ond World War/ Vol. II
[Sir Winston was the first to associate scientists with the con
struction of national policy. He had consulted from about
1935 onwards with an old friend, Professor Lindemann,
holder of the Chair of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford.
Throughout the war, Professor Lindemann was his personal
scientific adviser. After the election of 1951, the Professor
(now Lord Cherwell) became a member of the Cabinet.]
I saw therefore that I should have to strive my utmost to
keep pace with the generation now in power and with fresh
54 A CHURCHILL READER
young giants who might at any time appear. In this I relied
upon knowledge as well as upon all possible zeal and mental
energy.
For this purpose I had recourse to a method of life which
had been forced upon me at the Admiralty in 1 9 14 and 1915,
and which I found greatly extended my daily capacity for
work. I always went to bed at least for one hour as early as
possible in the afternoon and exploited to the full my happy
gift of falling almost immediately into deep sleep. By this
means I was able to press a day and a half s work into one.
Nature had not intended mankind to work from eight in the
morning until midnight without that refreshment of blessed
oblivion which, even if it only lasts twenty minutes, is suffi
cient to renew all the vital forces. I regretted having to send
myself to bed like a child every afternoon, but I was re
warded by being able to work through the night until two
or even later sometimes much later in the morning, and
begin the new day between eight and nine o clock. This
routine I observed throughout the war, and I commend it
to others if and when they find it necessary for a long spell to
get the last scrap out of the human structure.
The Gathering Storm, "The
Second World War; Vol. I
I do not think any expression of scorn or severity which I
have heard used by our critics has come anywhere near the
language which I have been myself accustomed to use, not
only orally, but in a stream of written minutes. In fact, I
wonder that a great many of my colleagues arc on speaking
terms with me.
Speech in the Home, June 25,
1941
If I am accused of this mistake, I can only say with M.
ON HIMSELF 55
Clemenceau on a celebrated occasion: "Perhaps I have made
a number of other mistakes of which you have not heard."
Speech in the House, Novem
ber 12, 1944
More difficulty and toil are often incurred in overcoming
opposition and adjusting divergent and conflicting views
than by having the right to give decisions oneself. It is most
important that at the summit there should be one mind
playing over the whole field, faithfully aided and corrected,
but not divided in its integrity. I should not of course have
remained Prime Minister for an hour if I had been deprived
of the office of Minister of Defence.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War," Vol. IV
All my work had come to me hour by hour at the Annexe,
and I had maintained my usual output though feeling far
from well. But now I became aware of a marked reduction in
the number of papers which reached me. When I protested,
the doctors, supported by my wife, argued that I ought to
quit my work entirely. I would not agree to this. What
should I have done all day? They then said I had pneu
monia, to which I replied, "Well, surely you can deal with
that. Don t you believe in your new drug?" Doctor Marshall
said he called pneumonia "the old man s friend." "Why?" I
asked. "Because it takes them off so quietly." I made a suit
able reply, but we reached an agreement on the following
lines. I was only to have the most important and interesting
papers sent me, and to read a novel. I chose Moll Flanders,
about which I had heard excellent accounts, but had not
found time to test them. On this basis I passed the next week
in fever and discomfort, and I sometimes felt very ill.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War," Vol. IV
56 A CHURCHILL READER
A gentleman, Mr. Thomson, kindly presented me with a
lion . . . "Rota" was the lion s name. . . . He was a male lion
of fine quality and in eight years became the father of many
children. The assistant secretary who had been with me in
the airplane came with some papers. He was a charming man,
highly competent, but physically on the small side. Indulg
ing in chaff, I now showed him a magnificent photograph of
"Rota* with his mouth open, saying, "If there are any short
comings in your work I shall send you to him. Meat is very
short now/ He took a serious view of this remark. He re
ported to the office that I was in a delirium.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War," Vol. IV
[This was when Sir Winston had pneumonia in February,
1943.]
It is indeed remarkable that I was not in this bleak lull
dismissed from power, or confronted with demands for
changes in my methods, which it was known I should never
accept. I should then have vanished from the scene with a
load of calamity on my shoulders, and the harvest, at last to
be reaped, would have been ascribed to my belated disap
pearance. For indeed the whole aspect of the war was about
to be transformed. Henceforward increasing success, marred
hardly by a mishap, was to be our lot. I was not denied the
right to share in this new phase of the war. ... All this shows
how much luck there is in human affairs, and how little we
should worry about anything else except doing our best.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec-
ond World War," Vol IV
[Sir Winston was reflecting upon die fact that for twenty-
eight months while he was at head of affairs we had sustained
ON HIMSELF 57
unbroken military defeats. We were, he said, alive and at
bay; but that was all.]
I did not suffer from any desire to be relieved of my re
sponsibilities. All I wanted was compliance with my wishes
after reasonable discussion.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War; Vol. IV
[On suggestions in February 1942 that the Prime Minister
had too much to do and that he should have been relieved
of some of the burdens that fell upon him.]
Now for a short spell I became "the man on the spot."
Instead of sitting at home waiting for the news from the front
I could send it myself. This was exhilarating.
The Hinge of Fate, "The Sec
ond World War/ Vol. IV
[On visit to Cairo and Middle East, July 1942.]
This was a memorable occasion in my life. On my right
sat the President of the United States, on my left the master
of Russia. Together we controlled a large preponderance
of the naval and three-quarters of all the air forces in the
world, and could direct armies of nearly twenty millions of
men, engaged in the most terrible of wars that had yet oc
curred in human history.
Closing the Ring, " The Sec
ond World War," Vol. V
[On Teheran Conference.]
I ... insist . . . that I be host at dinner tomorrow evening.
I think I have one or two claims to precedence. To begin
58 A CHURCHILL READER
with, I come first in seniority and alphabetically. In the
second place, I represent the longest established of the three
governments. And, in the third place, tomorrow happens
to be my birthday.
Quoted by Robert E. Sher
wood in the White House
Papers of Harry Hopkins
[At the Teheran Conference in November-December 1943
Sir Winston suggested that he and President Roosevelt have
lunch together before the second Plenary session. Roosevelt
declined as he did not want the report spread that he and
Sir Winston were hatching their own schemes without Russia.
Sir Winston made the above remark to Mr. Averell Harri-
man, who brought the President s message.]
On the way out from the dining-room I did a very foolish
thing. I saw before me five yards away the two formidable
guardians (of Marshal Tito) who had once again been ex
cluded. I have a very large oblong gold cigar case which
belonged to Lord Birkenhead and was given to me by his
family after his death. This was in my right-hand pocket. I
grasped it firmly and marched towards them. Arrived within
two yards I drew it from my pocket as if it were a pistol.
Luckily they grinned with delight and we made friends. But
I do not recommend such procedure in similar cases.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War/ Vol. VI
[Sir Winston was entertaining Marshal Tito at dinner at
Naples on August 13, 1944. The Marshal was accompanied
by two "ferocious-looking" bodyguards, who were excluded
from all meetings which the Marshal attended.]
ONHIMSELF 59
Be on your guard! I am going to speak in French a for
midable undertaking and one which will put great demands
upon your friendship for Great Britain.
Speech in Paris after the Lib
eration of France
The United States stood on the scene of victory, master of
world fortunes, but without a true and coherent design.
Britain, though still very powerful, could not act decisively
alone. I could at this stage only warn and plead. Thus this
climax of apparently measureless success was to me a most
unhappy time. I moved amid cheering crowds, or sat at a
table adorned with congratulations and blessings from every
part of the Grand Alliance, with an aching heart and a mind
oppressed by forebodings.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War/ Vol. VI
Apprehension for the future and many perplexities had
filled my mind as I moved about among the cheering crowds
of Londoners in their hour of well-won rejoicing after all
they had gone through. ... I could not rid my mind of the
fear that the victorious armies of democracy would soon
disperse, and that the real and hardest test still lay before us.
I had seen it all before. I remembered that other joy-day
nearly thirty years before, when I had driven with my wife
from the Ministry of Munitions through similar multitudes
convulsed with enthusiasm to Downing Street to congratulate
the Prime Minister.
Then, as at this time, I understood the world situation as
a whole. But then at least there was no mighty army that we
need fear.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War," Vol. VI
60 A CHURCHILL READER
This struck a knell in my breast. But I had no choice but
to submit.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War; Vol. VI
[President Truman s order that the American forces should
withdraw to the agreed lines of occupation on June 21, 1945.
Sir Winston had made vigorous pleas for this to be done only
after a meeting of the Big Three to settle the important Euro
pean problems which loomed large with the ending of the
war.]
All the while I felt that much we had fought for in our
long struggle in Europe was slipping away and that the hopes
of an early and lasting peace were receding. The days were
passed amid the clamour of multitudes, and when at night,
tired out, I got back to my headquarters train ... I had to
toil for many hours. The incongruity of party excitement
and clatter with the sombre background which filled my
mind was in itself an affront to reality and proportion.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War; r VoL VI
I was myself deeply distressed at the prospect of sinking
from a national to a party leader. Naturally I hoped that
power would be accorded to me to try to make the settle
ment in Europe, to end the Japanese war, and to bring the
soldiers home. This was not because it seemed less pleasant
to live a private life than to conduct great affairs. ... I had
the world position as a whole in my mind, and I deemed
myself to possess knowledge, influence, and even authority,
which might be of service. I therefore saw it as my duty to
try, and at the same time as my right. I could not believe
this would be denied me.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War," VoL VI
ON HIMSELF 61
[On preparation for the General Election, 1945.]
It fell to me in those days to express the sentiments and
resolves of the British nation in that supreme crisis of its life.
That was to me an honour far beyond any dreams or ambi
tions I had ever nursed; and it is one that cannot be taken
away.
Verdict on his war Premiership
I regret that I have not been permitted to finish the work
against Japan.
From the message after the
General Election of 1945
It would be easy for me to retire gracefully in an odour of
civic freedom.
Speech to the Conservative
Conference., 1946
[After the defeat of the Conservatives in 1945, Sir Winston
was tempted to retire. He was certainly full of years and
honours his "civic freedoms" are no fewer than thirty-two.
But his combative spirit had been aroused by the defeat,
and he decided to carry on.]
On the whole, I accepted the view of the party managers,
and went to bed in the belief that the British people would
wish me to continue my work.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War," Vol. VI
Just before dawn, I awoke suddenly with a sharp stab of
almost physical pain. A hitherto subconscious conviction
that we were beaten broke forth and dominated my mind.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War; 9 Vol. VI
62 A CHURCHILL READER
[On the 1945 General Election. The Socialist victory was
generally unexpected even by the Socialists themselves. It
is agreed that the result was not a reflection upon Sir Win
ston but on the inter-war Conservative Governments.]
The decision of the British people has been recorded in
the votes counted today. I have therefore laid down the
charge which was placed upon me in darker times. ... It
only remains for me to express to the British people, for
whom I have acted in these perilous years, my profound
gratitude for the unflinching, unswerving support which
they have given me during my task, and for the many ex
pressions of kindness which they have shown towards their
servant.
Triumph and Tragedy, "The
Second World War; 9 Vol. VI
As to being booed this was an experience which in ...
fifty years of the House of Commons I had never previously
endured, and indeed it was an exhibition which I had never
witnessed employed against anyone in all the Parliamentary
storms through which I have lived.
Speech in the House, Febru
ary 7, 1951
I have today to deal with a Motion of censure and therefore
I hope I shall be pardoned if I do not confine myself entirely
to the uncontroversial methods which I usually practise.
Speech in the House, Decem
ber 4, 1952
I have not for quite a long time imported any cigars from
hard currency areas. I have nevertheless received some from
time to time.
Speech in the House, Novem
ber 19, 1951
ON HIMSELF 63
[Sir Winston was answering questions about the importation
of cigars from hard currency areas.]
You remember Fulton. I got into great trouble being a bit
in front of the weather that time. But it s all come out since
I won t say right, but it s all come out.
Press Conference on board the
"Queen Mary/ January
1953
[The speech at Fulton in America was that in which Sir
Winston first stated in public his apprehensions of the post
war Soviet attitude. His warnings were jeered at by his
opponents, but swiftly proved justified.]
Mr. James Glanville: "The electors did not accept the
Right Hon. Gentleman s advice."
Mr. Churchill: "I am afraid that that is a shaft too deadly
for me to reply to."
Speech in the House, March 8,
1948
[Speaking on the Navy Estimates, Sir Winston said that if
the Government had done what he advised in 1945 there
would have been a stronger Navy.]
I can only hope that the raw material is as good as the
method of distribution.
New York, January 5, 1953
[Sir Winston was commenting at a Press Conference on the
marvels of television and the fact that every expression on
his face could be seen on screens in millions of homes.]
64 A CHURCHILL READER
If I stay on for the time being, bearing the burden at my
age [78], it is not because of love for power or office. I have
had an ample feast of both. If I stay it is because I have the
feeling that I may, through things that have happened, have
an influence on what I care about above all else the build
ing of a sure and lasting peace.
Margate, October 10, 1953
[Sir Winston was answering the speculation on whether he
would retire, especially after his illness which necessitated a
month s complete rest.]
If I remain in public life at this juncture it is because,
rightly or wrongly, but sincerely, I believe that I may be able
to make an important contribution to the prevention of a
third world war, and to bringing nearer the lasting peace
settlement which the masses of the people of every race and
in every land fervently desire. I pray indeed that I may have
this opportunity. It is the last prixe I seek to win.
Plymouth, October 21, 1951
[Sir Winston was dealing with the Socialist allegation that he
was a warmonger and possibly with the suggestion that he
should have retired. He was then a month off his seventy-
seventh birthday.]
I will get on the plane and take my pill and I will wake
up either in Bermuda or in heaven. Unless one of you
gentlemen has another fate in mind for me.
Reported in New York "ffcr-
ald Tribune" October 6,
1953
ON HIMSELF 65
[Sir Winston had announced his determination to fly to
Bermuda, where he was to meet President Eisenhower and
the French Premier Laniel. Some members of the Cabinet,
mindful of his increasing frailty at the age of seventy-eight,
sought to persuade him to give up this plan and go by sea.]
I am perhaps the only man who has passed through both
the two supreme cataclysms of recorded history in high
executive office. . . . These thirty years of action and advocacy
comprise and express my life-effort, and I am content to be
judged upon them. I have adhered to my rule of never criti
cising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I
had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or
warning about it.
Preface from The Hinge of
Fate, "The Second World
War; 9 Vol. IV
Not until I am a great deal worse and the Empire a great
deal better.
Quoted in the "Sunday
Times," February 8, 1953
[When Sir Winston was visiting the United States in Jan
uary 1953, he was asked how soon would he retire. He made
this retort.]
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is pre
pared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
[On his seventy-fifth anniversary, Sir Winston was asked if he
had any fear of death. He made the above reply.]
66 A CHURCHILL READER
This is the first occasion when I have addressed this as
sembly here as Prime Minister. The explanation is con
vincing. When I should have come here as Prime Minister
the Guildhall was blown up and before it was repaired I
was blown out.
Lord Mayor s Banquet, Lon
don, November 9, 1951
I notice that the first Englishman to receive the Nobel
Prize was Rudyard Kipling and that another equally re
warded was Mr. Bernard Shaw. I certainly cannot attempt
to compete with either of those. I knew them both quite well
and my thought was much more in accord with Mr. Rudyard
Kipling than with Mr. Bernard Shaw. On the other hand,
Mr. Rudyard Kipling never thought much of me, whereas
Mr. Bernard Shaw often expressed himself in most flattering
terms.
At No. 10 Downing Street, Oc
tober 15, 1953
[On receiving notification that he had been awarded the
Nobel Prize for Literature. Sir Winston was the first states
man and the seventh Briton to receive the world s highest
literary award.]
We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings
shape us.
Speech on rebuilding the
House, October 28, 1944
I have no more ambitions, but a last task I still see in front
of me, which possibly nobody can take from me, is to ease
world tension, to pave the way for peace and freedom. Power-
ONHIMSELF 67
ful political manoeuvres are no longer practicable. One must
negotiate.
Report of a conversation by
Von Tirpitz, son of the fa-
mous Admiral Von Tirpitz,
with Sir Winston, given in
the "Evening News" Decem
ber 16, 1953
I am proud, but also I must admit, awestruck at your de
cision to include me. I do hope you are right. I feel we are
both running a considerable risk and that I do not deserve
it. But I shall have no misgivings if you have none.
Speech on receiving the Nobel
Prize for literature. The
speech was read by Lady
Churchill in Oslo on De
cember 10, 1953
On His Dislikes
The slimness of this chapter shows the narrow limitations of
Sir Winston s capacity to dislike many individuals or to dis
like any for very long. There was a very typical incident in
the debate on November 3, 1953, when Mr. Herbert
Morrison recalled that Sir Winston had once expressed the
wish ee never to see him again." To this Sir Winston retorted
with a beaming smile, "I have got over that."
ON LORD MACAULAY
It is beyond our hopes to overtake Lord Macaulay. . . . We
can only hope that Truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten
the label "Liar" to his genteel coat-tails.
(< Marlborough y His Life and
Times"
ON THE LATE LORD ESHER
It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray.
, . . We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for
fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is
a defect in an historian.
ON HIS DISLIKES 69
[Note on Lord Fisher s description of Sir Winston s part in
the Antwerp operation.]
ON THE MARGRAVE OF BADEN
His military epitaph for all time must be that the two
greatest captains of the age, pre-eminent and renowned in all
the annals of war, rated, by actions more expressive than
words, his absence from a decisive battlefield well worth
fifteen thousand men.
"Marlborough, His Life and
Times"
ON LORD CURZON
His facility carried him with a bound into prolixity; his
ceremonious diction wore the aspect of pomposity; his wide
knowledge was accused of superficiality; his national pre
eminence was accompanied by airs of superiority. . . . He
aroused both envy and admiration, but neither much love
nor much hatred.
"Great Contemporaries"
The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze;
and the evening lead. But all were solid and each was pol
ished till it shone after its fashion.
"Great Contemporaries"
ON MR. DALTON
The hon. Gentleman is trying to win distinction by rude
ness.
[On Mr. Dalton s reference to the non-publication of an
appeal for a peaceful settlement of the General Strike by the
Christian Churches, May 10, 1926.]
ON THE LATE LORD STRABOLGI
(THEN LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER KENWORTHY, M.P.)
70 A CHURCHILL READER
His doctrine and his policy is to support and palliate every
form of terrorism so long as it is the terrorism of revolution
aries against the forces of law and order.
Speech on the Punjab disturb
ances, July 8, 1920
ON RAMSAY MACDONALD
The Government are defeated by thirty votes and then the
Prime Minister rises in his place, utterly unabashed, the
greatest living master of falling without hurting himself, and
airily assures us that nothing has happened.
Speech in the House, January
21, 1921
\ remember, when I was a child, being taken to the cele
brated Barnum s Circus, which contained an exhibition of
freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the programme
which I most desired to see was the one described as "The
Boneless Wonder/ My parents judged that that spectacle
would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful
eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the Boneless Wonder
sitting on the Treasury Bench,
Speech in the House, January
28, 1933
We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of
compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest
amount of thought.
Speech in the House, March
23, 1933
ON LORD CHARLES BERESFORD
He can best be described as one of those orators who, before
ON HIS DISLIKES 71
they get up, do not know what they are going to say; when
they are speaking, do not know what they are saying; and,
when they have sat down, do not know what they have said.
Speech after his appointment
to the Admiralty in 1911
[Lord Charles Beresford was a bitter critic of the new
broom.]
ON COUNT BERCHTOLD
He meant at all costs, by hook or by crook, to declare war
on Serbia. In the whole world that was the only thing that
counted with him. That was what Germany had urged. That
he must have; and that he got. But he got much more, too.
"The World Crisis"
ON THE EX-KAISER
The defence which can be made will not be flattering to
his self-esteem. . . . "Look at him; he is only a blunderer."
"Great Contemporaries"
It is shocking to reflect that upon the word or nod of a
being so limited there stood obedient and attentive for thirty
years the forces which, whenever released, could devastate the
world. It was not "his fault"; it was his fate.
"Great Contemporaries 9
ON BERNARD SHAW
He was one of my earliest antipathies. . . . This bright,
nimble, fierce, and comprehending being Jack Frost danc
ing bespangled in the sunshine.
He is at once an acquisitive Capitalist and a sincere Com-
72 A CHURCHILL READER
munist. He makes his characters talk blithely about killing
men for the sake of an idea; but would take great trouble not
to hurt a fly.
"Great Contemporaries 9
If the truth must be told, our British island has not had
much help in its troubles from Mr. Bernard Shaw. When
nations are fighting for life, when the palace in which the
jester dwells not uncomfortably is itself assailed, and every
one from prince to groom is fighting on the battlements, the
jester s jokes echo only through deserted halls, and his witti
cisms and condemnations, distributed evenly between friend
and foe, jar the ear of hurrying messengers, of mourning
women and wounded men. The titter ill accords with the
tocsin, or the motley with the bandages.
"Great Contemporaries"
ON LADY ASTOR
She enjoys the best of all worlds. . . . She denounces the vice
of gambling in unmeasured terms, and is closely associated
with an almost unrivalled racing stable. She accepts Commu
nist hospitality and flattery, and remains the Conservative
Member for Plymouth.
"Great Contemporaries"
ON TROTSKY
He sits disconsolate a skin of malice stranded for a time
on the shores of the Black Sea and now washed up in the Gulf
of Mexico.
He possessed in his nature all the qualities requisite for the
art of civic destruction the organising command of a Car-
not, the cold detached intelligence of a Machiavelli, the mob
oratory of a Cleon, the ferocity of a Jack the Ripper, the
toughness of Titus Gates.
"Great Contemporaries"
ON HIS DISLIKES 73
I must confess that I never liked Trotsky.
Speech in the House, August
2, 1944
ON LENIN
He alone could have found the way back to the causeway.
The Russian people were left floundering in the bog. Their
worst misfortune was his birth, the next worst his death.
"The World Crisis"
[Sir Winston had a certain admiration for Lenin s talents,
and is pointing out that his early death took place at a mo
ment when he seemed anxious to curb the worst practical
and theoretical excesses of the Revolution.]
It was with a sense of awe that they [the Germans] turned
upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported
Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzer
land into Russia.
"The World Crisis"
ON PRESIDENT WILSON
The inscrutable and undecided judge upon whose lips the
lives of millions hung.
He did not truly divine the instinct of the American peo
ple. First and foremost, all through and last, he was a party
man. The spacious philanthropy which he exhaled upon
Europe stopped quite sharply at the coasts of his own country.
"The World Crisis"
ON LORD NORTHCLIFFE
... at all time animated by an ardent patriotism and an in
tense desire to win the war. But he wielded power without
official responsibility, enjoyed secret knowledge without the
general view, and disturbed the fortunes of national leaders
without being willing to bear their burdens.
"The World Crisis?
74 A CHURCHILL READER
ON LORD OXFORD AND ASQUITH
When Lord Fisher resigned in May and the Opposition
threatened controversial debate, Asquith did not hesitate to
break his Cabinet up, demand the resignation of all Ministers,
and the political lives of half his colleagues, throw Haldane
to the wolves, leave me to bear the burden of the Dardanelles,
and sail victoriously on at the head of a Coalition Govern
ment. Not "all done by kindness 1 ! Not all by rose-water!
These were the convulsive struggles of a man of action and
of ambition at death-grips with events.
The phrase "Wait and see" which he had used in peace,
not indeed in a dilatory but in a minatory sense, reflected
with injustice, but with just enough truth to be dangerous,
upon his name and policy.
Great Contemporaries 9
He fashioned with deep thought impeccable verses in com
plicated metre, and recast in terser form classical inscriptions
which displeased him. I could not help much in this!
"Great Contemporaries"
[Sir Winston and Lord Asquith went together for a holiday
in the Mediterranean on the Admiralty yacht. The scion of
Balliol proved to have a mind which "opened and shut
smoothly and exactly like the breech of a gun/ and Sir
Winston rather found that the bigger the gun the greater
the bore.]
ON SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON
The reader may pass lightly over such incidents as that of
General Robertson, who never himself at any time led even a
troop in action . . . speaking of the Cabinet as "poltroons."
"The World Crisis"
ON HIS DISLIKES 75
ON THE HOUSE OF LORDS
. . . this Second Chamber as it is one-sided, hereditary, un-
purged, unrepresentative, irresponsible, absentee.
Speech in the House, June 29,
1907
I will retort the question of the Leader of the Opposition
by another question. Has the House of Lords ever been right?
Speech in the House, June 29,
1907
[In later life, Sir Winston s views on the House of Lords
mellowed see chapter on Politics.]
ON THE LATE SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT (1931)
After listening to his [Mr. William Graham s] capacious
harangue and its immaculate delivery, one would never have
thought that the speaker was the representative of an admin
istration which, having reduced this country almost to beg
gary, had fled from their posts in terror of the consequences
which were approaching them.
Speech in the House on the
Revised Budget Proposals,
September 15, 1931
ON THE 1931-35 GOVERNMENT
We must regard as deeply blameworthy before history the
conduct not only of the British Na 
