A PLATFORM COLUMBUS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 42, 19 February 1931, Page 10

A PLATFORM COLUMBUS

Having, as the result of his Indian utterances, established himself in a sort of semi-detached, guerrilla position in the Conservative Party, Mr. Winston Churchill is no doubt feeling a greater amount of freedom, and his advent to the American lecture platform (heralded by a London cablegram yesterday) should provide opportunity for new intellectual fireworks. Some considerable amount of room in •■ this field has been created by the death of the Earl of Birkenhead; and the essay that the latter wrote a year or two ago on his contemporary is a sufficient indication that if anyone can fill the blank it is Mr. Churchill himself. Each has led a somewhat comet-like existence in, and on the outskirts of, party politics; and Lord Birkenhead's departure from official reserve into candid journalism was not more piquant in its way than would be a candid series of American lectures by the' ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. *One of the selected subjects, "The Future of the Englishspeaking Peoples," presents considerable scope for candour. The future would be more golden if the present was less golden (in the New York sense). In an historic sense, the United States owes everything to the Mother Country, but unfortunately at the moment the M.C. owes much more to the U.S. That branch of the subject, however, would be far more likely to appeal to Mr. Snowden or Dean Inge than to a member of the party that made the war debts settlement.