the German Army; barbarism; haranguing crowds in public; haranguing
friends in private; propaganda; rewriting history; reading military
history (and making it); suppressing journalism; the Jews; colossal
architecture; the movies; vegetarian food; and of course “the warmonger
Churchill.”
By this comparison I do not put the two men on the same level, for
morally they cannot be considered as belonging to the same species, but
it is interesting to note the contrasts that come out in such a list.
It is not merely the contrast between the aristocrat who is striving
to preserve free life for common men and the “guttersnipe” who is bent
upon enslaving them all; it is a contrast of two worlds.
Churchill has a profound historical sense and the thought of himself
as a part of the broad stream of the British people, flowing from
the distant past into the limitless future, is never absent from his
speaking and writing. He is never just Churchill, he is Churchill of
British history, of the Marlboroughs, but now more than ever Churchill
of the British people, with whom he has established a community of
feeling seldom equaled in the relationship of leader to people. It has
always been Hitler’s boast that “I _am_ Germany!” An Italian journalist
thinking to jibe at England during the tormented months of the Blitz
said mockingly that the British Isles seemed to be inhabited by “forty
million Churchills.” He was right, for under Churchill’s leadership
the entire population has become animated with his courage and he _is_
England to the same degree and by the same psychological process as
Hitler _is_ Germany. Hitler obtained his ascendancy over the German
people by expressing their hitherto largely unconscious aspirations,
for revenge, aggression, expansion, and conquest. At the height of the
British people’s peril they turned spontaneously and unanimously to
Churchill whom Providence seemed to have reserved for this critical
hour, and they entrusted to him the fulfillment of their aspirations
to beat off the enemy, save their families, and win victory. I was
there and for four months watched the British people and in particular
the eight million Londoners endure the anxiety of expected invasion
and the full blast of the greatest attack ever made on a civilian
population in history and I know that their faith in Churchill was a
most important factor in their endurance. Every Londoner thought as
the bombs fell, “Churchill is there; he can’t be beaten; we can’t be
beaten.” Churchill “became” England. This is the experience that has
elevated him above himself, fulfilled his character, made him great.
Today Churchill’s every faculty of soul, mind, and body is devoted to
the service of the British Commonwealth. Today every soul and resource
in the German Commonwealth is devoted to the service of Hitler.
Churchill actively directs the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force but
his love is the Navy. One can tell from his speeches how frequently his
mind dwells upon it. It remains his favorite branch of the services,
despite the noble tribute he has paid the R.A.F. He reserves for it
words such as he would use otherwise only to describe Old England
herself. “Amphibious” is the term he likes best to define the power
of Britain in arms. His conviction of the paramount importance of the
Fleet was thus dramatically expressed: “On them, as we conceived,
floated the might, majesty, dominion and power of the British Empire.
All our long history built up century after century, all our great
affairs in every part of the globe, all the means of livelihood and
safety of our faithful, industrious, active population depended upon
them. Open the seacocks and let them sink beneath the surface and in a
few minutes, half an hour at the most--the whole outlook of the world
would be changed. The British Empire would dissolve like a dream; each
isolated community struggling forward by itself; the central power of
union broken; mighty provinces, whole Empires in themselves, drifting
helplessly out of control, and falling a prey to strangers; and Europe
after one sudden convulsion passing into the iron grip and rule of
the Teuton and of all that the Teutonic system meant. There would
only be left far off across the Atlantic, unarmed, unready and as yet
uninstructed America, to maintain single-handed law and freedom among
men.” That was written about the Royal Navy mobilized for war in August
1914 but with what melancholy accuracy it reflects the situation of
today, except that this time the Teutonic might is such that Europe
has already had its one sudden convulsion and has passed under the
rule of a Teutonic system far grimmer than anything the Hohenzollerns
would have imposed. And once again, after a score of years of warning,
America still finds herself “unarmed, unready and as yet uninstructed,”
dependent now for her very life upon the continued existence of that
Navy which Churchill apostrophizes.
Now of course the war takes all of Churchill’s time, but in normal
circumstances he has an enormous number of interests and activities.
He concentrates fiercely upon each in turn, and everything he does he
does at least well, some things he does excellently, and some he does
superlatively. Fighting, speaking, writing, eating, drinking, sleeping,
smoking, all are the source of intense satisfaction. He relishes every
moment in his life. This war was made for him, because fighting is
life itself to Churchill. In the last war he was a subordinate and
could not thoroughly enjoy the fight when others checked his combat
plans. Now he is unchecked by anybody except the British people, and
they have shown they are only too glad to let him savor to the full
what are to him the joys of responsibility in the greatest fight with
the greatest consequences in the memory of mankind. Before the war the
most exciting form of conflict was politics, about which Churchill once
said, “Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous.”
He takes the keenest pleasure in writing, but he would always give up
his work on a book to go back into politics, as he did when this war
began.
He was just finishing his monumental _History of the English Speaking
Peoples_ when he was called to the Admiralty. I understand the
_History_ is to be in several volumes, but despite its size Churchill
wrote the whole thing in a year, dictating thousands of words a day. He
had worked on it, gathering material for many years, and such is the
organization of his mind and so precise and comprehensive is his memory
than when he once began he was able to dictate it almost as fast as he
could talk. I have heard that the publisher has already set the book up
but is waiting presumably for the end of the war to release it.
Today his prewar books, as _My Early Days_, are reprinted and have
become best sellers. Even his prewar newspaper articles are eagerly
dragged out, and reprinted both here and in England to sell at high
prices. His books have been phenomenally successful and his income
from them, from journalism, and from lectures has been for most of his
life considerably higher than the $50,000 a year he receives as Prime
Minister. It was always a financial sacrifice for him to go into office
despite the comparatively liberal salaries of British ministers. He has
no interest in money. His earnings have been large ever since he was
a war correspondent in South Africa, but he has spent money as fast
as it came, on his estate, his family, and on good living. One of his
best American friends, Bernard Baruch, once tried to instruct him in
the art of stock exchange speculation but nothing came of it. Churchill
had for it the interest he has for everything in life, and wanted to
learn it, but he lacked the indispensable requirement for amassing a
fortune, namely an overwhelming desire to make money. The power given
by the possession of money is so paltry compared with political power
that none of the great statesmen, or even the wicked dictators, have
exhibited any interest in it. What use has Hitler for money? I doubt
that he has touched any for years.
Until this war began it was power that appealed to Churchill more than
anything else in the world. It is ironical that now he possesses it
to a greater degree than he could ever have dreamed of, power for its
own sake he no longer wants. But that has not lessened his aesthetic
capacity to enjoy it. No stress of war, nor the imminence of awful
danger, can prevent him from enjoying the power of his spoken or
written word. You can feel his artistic satisfaction as you hear him in
the House of Commons, delivering on a desperate day passages calculated
not only to encourage, guide, and inspire, but to excite admiration for
their felicity.
We American correspondents in London used regularly to attend the
House every time Churchill spoke, although none of us need have
done so, since the speeches were delivered into our offices almost
instantaneously by ticker. We wanted to hear him in person not only for
the stirring drama of it but because as journalists we wished to listen
to the greatest living master of our craft. The trouble of attending
Parliament was considerable, for the old House, now in ruins, was too
small to accommodate even the Members if they all attended, and the
foreign press was allotted so few seats it was necessary to apply days
in advance to get a place. The narrow seats with too little space for
knees and feet were uncomfortable, the acoustics poor, but the view
from our gallery was perfect.
There sits the government, the bald head of Mr. Churchill shining
among the Members with unmistakable authority. The benches are nearly
empty until the time draws near for the Prime Minister to speak; a
few minutes before he rises the House is jammed with Members sitting
even on the foot of the Speaker’s dais. The Prime Minister rises.
There is dead silence as Mr. Churchill lays before him a sheaf of
what are technically called notes, as it is prohibited in the House
for any member, even the Prime Minister, to read a speech. This rule
is presumably to prevent a member from using a speech written by
someone else. The familiar Washington ghost writers would have little
employment in Westminster. Mr. Churchill would have about as much
use for one as Shakespeare would have had. Mr. Churchill’s “notes”
are in fact his completely written speech which he has memorized by
rereading the final copy quickly on the way to the House. He has
worked on this speech for several hours a day for eight days, writing,
rewriting, until he finally has it typed on sheets half the size of
standard typewriter paper. Thereafter he never looks at it. He has it
before him, and he automatically turns the pages, but his delivery
is perfectly extemporaneous, and you would imagine as you sat there
watching and listening that those incomparable phrases were conceived
at the moment, and to the satisfaction of hearing them is added the
illusion of being present at their creation. Mr. Churchill himself
insists he cannot speak well impromptu and I have heard that his son
Randolph, recently seated in Parliament, is considered a better offhand
speaker than his father.
It is an extraordinary coincidence that this greatest orator of modern
times should have an impediment of speech similar, we may imagine, to
that of the greatest orator of ancient times, Demosthenes. Churchill
has almost overcome the impediment. His delivery is not what we would
consider the best. He depends not at all on gesture. Now and then
he pauses to glance over the top of his spectacles with defiance or
curiosity. His stance is determined, not graceful. For the most part
he stands quietly in the same spot, and only moves a step backward or
forward when he wishes to emphasize a passage. His voice is sonorous,
strong, not the golden voice of a William Jennings Bryan, but also not
the vulgar guttural of Hitler. Yet when Churchill speaks of Hitler
there comes into his tone a note that promises to meet all the Nazi’s
brutality and pay interest. Churchill’s voice is ideally adapted to the
radio and the millions of Americans who listen to him on the air have
heard him at his best. Many have exclaimed at his accent that he does
not talk like an Englishman. His is the accent of Sandhurst, Britain’s
West Point, which is nearer the American way of speaking than the
curious upper-class cockney affected by some graduates of Oxford and
Cambridge.
I do not know why Mr. Churchill avoids as much as possible making
extemporaneous speeches, unless it is his passion for perfection,
because as a conversationalist he is without superior and he has few
peers. One of them was his intimate friend, Lord Birkenhead, whose
power of expression was almost on a par with Churchill’s, as I had the
opportunity to observe once in Berlin when the then most brilliant
lawyer in England attended a luncheon of the Anglo-American Press
Association and dazzled us with his talk. I remember the answer he
gave when someone asked what he thought of Mussolini. “Mussolini,” he
remarked, “bestrides Italy like a Colossus, but to judge a rider one
must consider the kind of horse he rides.”
I have listened to Mr. Churchill talk at the dinner table and
he is as brilliant there as he is in the House of Commons. His
conversational style has the same classical quality of his writing
and public speaking. Every sentence is rounded and balanced; none
is left incomplete, and I should think that ninety-five per cent of
everything he says in talking with his friends could be taken down
by a stenographer and reproduced without changing a syllable. At the
same time there is no studied effect and the listeners have not the
feeling they are attending a recitation or declamation. They are
transported back to the time when, either in Ancient Greece or in
eighteenth century Europe, men cultivated the art of speaking and
especially of conversation. Who knows what effect it will have upon
English education and English habits of conversation to have had as
a Prime Minister during the war a master of the word such as appears
only seldom in centuries. The oratory of Churchill must already have
influenced the language standards of the English-speaking world, even
though imperceptibly, for it is impossible that so many millions should
have listened to him and read his speeches without having their taste
improved. As a contrast it is interesting to observe what the effect
has already been upon the German language to have had the apostle
of illiteracy as the head of the German Reich for eight years; the
language of Goethe and Heine has been supplanted deliberately by a
coarse vulgarization of German chosen for its appeal to the lowest
instincts of the population.
Churchill attracted much attention when in a memorandum to all
government offices he asked for a more effective and economic use
of the English language in official communications and demanded the
abandonment of the jargon currently in use by bureaucrats. He can be
colloquial. The first time I met Mr. Churchill was at a luncheon given
by Lady Colefax, who has done more to help American correspondents in
London than almost anyone there. Present were Mr. Churchill, J. L.
Garvin, the crusty, brilliant editor of the _Observer_ and one-time
editor of the _Encyclopaedia Brittanica_, Somerset Maugham, Mrs.
Simpson, not yet the wife of Edward, Harold Nicolson, Peter Fleming,
Jan Masaryk, and a number of others. The conversation was almost
exclusively between Churchill and Garvin, and well it might be, for
Garvin is one of the few who can talk on anything like equal terms
with the master, and indeed on this occasion Garvin practically talked
Churchill silent. It was just two years before the war, but the topic
was even then the position of Russia, and Garvin exclaimed, “Do you
mean to say you would throw in your lot with the Bolsheviks?” The
Churchillian reply was, “I mean just that, old cock!” with a remark to
the effect that when one had to face an enemy like Germany it would
be only common sense to try for the help of any ally no matter how
distasteful otherwise.
We can see from Churchill’s policy of helping Russia since the German
attack how consistent he has remained. On the day after the Russians
marched into Poland--and horrified the world of fellow travelers and
caused all except party-liners and a few foresighted realists to draw
back in aversion from this manifestation of Red Imperialism--I had
a talk with Mr. Churchill, who had been appointed First Lord of the
Admiralty a fortnight before. I asked him whether, since Great Britain
had guaranteed the territory of Poland against aggression and had
gone to war with Germany because of the German attack on Poland, one
could now consider that Great Britain was at war with Russia since the
Russians also had attacked Poland? I am not at liberty to quote him,
but he gave the answer in public a fortnight later when after the fall
of Warsaw he declared: “We could have wished that the Russian Armies
should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of
Poland instead of as invaders. _But that the Russian armies should
stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia
against the Nazi menace...._ I can not forecast to you the action of
Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but
perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”
Thus early and late Churchill maintained that it was desirable to
attempt to bring Russia into arms as an ally against the Germans, and
he was one of the few men in Britain who could advocate such a policy
without being suspected of sympathizing with the Bolsheviks. Only
Finland shook his resolution to do nothing to alienate the Russians and
it is interesting now to recall his words uttered in the midst of the
Russian assault on Finland: “Only Finland, superb, nay, sublime in the
jaws of peril--Finland shows what free men can do. The service rendered
by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed for all the
world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red
Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in
these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can
see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and
hungry in peace and proves it base and abominable in war.”
His reaction of sympathy with the people of Finland fighting against
“servitude worse than death” is only one of countless examples that
could be named of the little-appreciated fact that he is an extremely
sensitive man. His gruff way sometimes conceals it, but there is not
a man in public life anywhere who feels the miseries of this stricken
world with more compassion than Churchill. When eighteen months after
these caustic remarks about the Communist regime, Russia was attacked
and Mr. Churchill expressed his sympathy with the Russian people, it is
certain he meant it, although it was good politics too. Incidentally
I am convinced that one of the reasons why he is loath to discuss
detailed plans for what a victorious Britain would like the postwar
world to be, is the problem of Russia. Certainly the vast majority of
British people would like to see the Bolshevik government replaced by
some democratic regime.
I am sure one reason for Churchill’s aversion to Bolshevism is his
strong family feeling, and his repugnance for the Communist attempt
to subordinate the family, if not to abolish it, as was originally
attempted in the Soviet Union. For his family in the past, his noble
and famous ancestors, he has profound respect and a feeling of proud
affectionate gratitude which has led him to devote a good part of
his literary labors to the biography of his father, Lord Randolph
Churchill, and to the massive life of the Duke of Marlborough. To his
present family, his wife Clementine, his daughters Sarah, Diana, and
Mary, and his son Randolph, he devotes more time and attention than
most men with a fraction of his responsibilities. Randolph’s marriage
to the beautiful Pamela Digby was a delight to Mr. Churchill. It
represented the only chance of the perpetuation of the Churchill name,
and when Winston Spencer, the first grandchild to bear his name was
born, he became the favorite member of the dynasty.
Churchill’s aversions are just as strong and notable as his
predilections. They might be listed, without order: Hitler, Mussolini,
Trotzky, Nazism, Communism, the New Deal, Prohibition, hypocrisy,
cruelty, thick soup, bores, mediocrity, cowardice, stupidity,
sentimentality, bigotry, muddling, proletarianism, poor English, poor
food, poor anything except poor people. He is intolerant of anything
but the best. He is the perfect exemplar of a gentleman who never
offends anyone except intentionally. His manners to his friends are
of an old-fashioned courtliness. When he bids a guest farewell Mr.
Churchill comes to the driveway to see him off with a handshake and a
Godspeed. His manners to his enemies are savage and the lash of his
tongue is feared from Berlin to Whitehall. He can be wounding to a
colleague who has failed to meet requirements. One Cabinet Minister
complained that when Churchill dismissed him he “kicked me out as
though I had been a servant.” As the war wears on and the duties of
office become heavier, his patience has frayed and the single criticism
one can frequently hear is that he has become short-tempered. He
is particularly intolerant of Parliamentary inquiries which would
require the Government to reveal facts of military value to the enemy.
Constantly, naive Members ask such questions, and if Mr. Churchill
chooses personally to reply he frequently makes his answer blister. Yet
there has never been a Prime Minister with a more meticulous regard for
the rights, functions, and ceremonies of Parliament than Mr. Churchill.
This regard is such that he has sometimes been criticized for delaying
action until all forms are duly complied with by Parliament.
Churchill’s restless energy is such that his associates are both
inspired and compelled to work harder than they ever did with anyone
else. Shortly after he went to the Admiralty I visited his office and
chatted with his secretaries. They were obviously sincere in their
hero worship of him, but equally sincere in their sighs of weariness
over the strenuous schedule they have to follow. Rauschning describes
Hitler as an essentially lazy man who “does not know how to work
steadily. Indeed is incapable of working. He hates to have to read with
concentration. He rarely reads a book through; usually he only begins
it.” Could there be found a greater contrast than this with the habits
of Churchill whose perpetual industry and powers of concentration are
as important elements in his genius as intellect? As an illustration
of his ability to concentrate I know no better anecdote than the one
told me by Randolph. It was during the months before the war when Mr.
Churchill was writing the _History of the English Speaking Peoples_,
and every day world without end, he turned out, generally in the
evening, his stint of words from 2,000 upward. It made no difference
what was happening in international affairs, or what other demands
were made upon his time. No excitements or exigencies were allowed
to disturb his writing. But events grew bigger and bigger and to the
prescient eye of Mr. Churchill it became every day more clear that
war was certain to come, and that a violent gesture by Hitler might
precipitate it any moment. Suddenly Hitler marched into Prague,
breaking the fresh vows he had made at Munich, deliberately insulting
Britain and France, cynically strangling the rump state he had sworn
to respect. Throughout Europe ran a shudder and the mind of every man
was absorbed with anxious exploration of the possibilities. On that
evening Mr. Churchill rose from dinner, and as he started upstairs to
his workroom to write his stint, he exclaimed to his family, “It will
be difficult for me tonight to concentrate my undivided attention upon
the reign of King James II, but I shall do so.”