As an aid to analysis of Mr. Churchill's work, consider Mr. Carl Van
Doren's article in the _Nation_, of which the most striking passages are
quoted below:
To reflect a little upon this combination of heroic color and moral
earnestness is to discover how much Mr. Churchill owes to the
element injected into American life by Theodore Roosevelt.... Like
him Mr. Churchill has habitually moved along the main lines of
national feeling--believing in America and democracy with a fealty
unshaken by any adverse evidence and delighting in the American
pageant with a gusto rarely modified by the exercise of any critical
intelligence. Morally he has been strenuous and eager;
intellectually he has been naïve and belated.
* * * * *
Once taken by an idea for a novel, he has always burned with it as
if it were as new to the world as to him. Here lies, without much
question, the secret of that genuine earnestness which pervades all
his books: he writes out of the contagious passion of a recent
convert or a still excited discoverer. Here lies, too, without much
question, the secret of Mr. Churchill's success in holding his
audiences: a sort of unconscious politician among novelists, he
gathers his premonitions at happy moments, when the drift is already
setting in. Never once has Mr. Churchill like a philosopher or a
seer, run off alone.
* * * * *
Even for those, however, who perceive that he belongs intellectually
to a middle class which is neither very subtle nor very profound on
the one hand nor very shrewd or very downright on the other, it is
impossible to withhold from Mr. Churchill the respect due a sincere,
scrupulous, and upright man who has served the truth and his art
according to his lights.... The sounds which have reached him from
among the people have come from those who eagerly aspire to better
things arrived at by orderly progress, from those who desire in some
lawful way to outgrow the injustices and inequalities of civil
existence and by fit methods to free the human spirit from all that
clogs and stifles it. But as they aspire and intend better than they
think, so, in concert with them, does Mr. Churchill.