WINSTON CHURCHILL

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22467, 30 July 1938, Page 18

WINSTON CHURCHILL

(SI‘ECTAI.t.Y WRITTEN FOR THE PRESS.) [By R. G. C. McNAB.I

Winston Churchill is, among living writers, the most conspicuous employer of the grand manner. He fails sometimes, but sometimes brings off an extraordinarily good passage. Doughty and T. E. Lawrence were both his superiors in this style, more moving, more consistent, although both, Lawrence more than Doughty, were wrung to a fine simplicity in their most tense moods. Winston Churchill has never written anything so good as that passage at the end of “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.” in which Lawrence, in the midst of regarding the dissolution and butchery of a Turkish army after the massacre at Deraa, was stricken to wonder and respect by the bearing of a group of German soldiers. Here, for the first time, I grew proud of the enemy who had killed my brother. They were two thousand miles from home, without hope and without guides, in conditions mad enough to break the bravest nerves. Yet their sections held together, in firm rank, shearing through the wrack of Turk and Arab like Armoured ships, high-faced and silent. When attacked they halted, took position, fired to order. There was no haste, no crying, no hesitation. They were glorious. In that awful moment Lawrence was driven to an unwonted, bare simplicity. Winston Churchill, despite his life of great actions and great political transactions, either is too composed to lay aside his high solemnity, or he has never been so moved by happenings outside himself. He marches, like some solid eighteenth century sermon-writer, arm in arm with dogma and pseudoclassical dignity. The classicism is no* authentic; but it is admirably assumed and at last worn like a garment. The clanging periods resound, the pomposity seems grandeur, and the ornate commonplace appears a pragmatic declaration. Is it the memory of John Churchill that clothes the records of a facile chronicler with the magniloquence of Clarendon ox Atterbury? Was A infrequent conference with the eloquently learned Lord Randolph Churchill? Or was it—and the question is inevitable, if unkind — the days and the nights given to Macaulay so that John Churchill should be re-established and Macaulay refuted? The style was always a trifle stilted, even in “London to Ladysmith”; but now the grand style covers great events and great personalities and is not always inappropriate. A sense of history, of the majesty of England, of the magnitude of national engagements, and, also, of his own part and importance in terrible events, marks his narrative of things past and present. Thus— Once more now in the march of centuries Old England was to stand forth in battle against the mightiest thrones and dominations. Once more in defence of the liberties of Europe «nd the common right must she enter

A Grand Phrase-Maker

upon a voyage of great toil and hazard i across waters uncharted, towards coasts unknown, guided only by the | stars. Once more “the far-off line of storm-beaten ships” was to stand between the Continental Tyrant and the dominion of the world. The next paragraph describes the transmission of orders to the British Navy to commence hostilities against Germany; but the chapter ends—--1 walked across the Horse Guards Parade to the Cabinet room and reported to the Prime Minister and the Ministers who were assembled there that the deed was done. But the figure of the writer does not always loom so heavily, and, indeed, he is a man of greatness or near-greatness. He has i knack of hitting off character very well, especially of those with whom he has been intimate; and, now, in these late days, a little humour waits upon the r.ogmatic appraisal and the full-blown periods. I had read one or two of Winston Churchill’s sketches of “Great Contemporaries” when it became clear that a few of these phrases should be shared; some may be admired, others may seem shallow or bathetic. Lord Rosebery (to whom on his deathbed the “Eton Boating Song” was played on a gramophone).—He would not stoop; he did not conquer. Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm ll.—William II had none of the qualities of the modern dictators—except their airs. Bernard Shaw.—Jack Frost dancing bespangled in the sunshine. The titter ill accords with the tocsin, or the motley with the bandages. Chamberlain and Gladstone.—At the root the split was flat and utter. Sir John French and Winston Churchill. —Those who have not served in the Army will hardly comprehend the enormous precipices which range upward tier upon tier from a regimental officer to the Commander-in-Chief of many army corps. . . , I waited, an unofficial personage, in the car. We lunched out of a hamper excellently contrived, in a ruined cottage. T. E. Lawrence.—Just as an aeroplane only flics by its speed and pressure against the air, so he flew best and easiest in the hurricane. The Earl of Birkenhead.—He had all the canine virtues in a remarkable degree—courage, fidelity, vigilance, love of the chase. Trotsky.—When the usurper and tyrant is reduced to literary controversy. when the Communist instead of bombs produces effusions for the capitalist Press, when the refugee War Lord fights his battles over again, and the discharged executioner becomes chatty and garrulous at his fireside, we may rejoice in the signs that better days are come. ... A skin of malice stranded tor a time on the shores of the Black Sea, and now washed up in the Gulf of Mexico. . . . Marooned by the very mutineers he had led so hardily to seize the ship. A. J. Balfour.—A lay-priest seeking a secular goal.

Herr Hitler.—A highly competent, cool, well-informed functionary. John Morley.—But it was not me he had beat. It was the avalanche, the whirlwind, the earthquake, roaring forth in triple alliance. Herr von Papen.—The lank, obscure, glass-eyed, stiff-collared official, hitherto known only to the world by his mishandling of German affairs in the United States. Lloyd George.—[Winston Churchill conducted the ex-nihilist, Savinkov, to “Chequers” to meet the Prime Minister.] The Prime Minister was entertaining several leading Free Church divines, and was himself surrounded by a band of Welsh singers who had travelled from their native Principality to do him choral honours. Asquith.—One would imagine from Mr Spender’s description of the breakup of the Coalition in December, 1916, that Mr Asquith was a kind of Saint Sebastian standing unresisting with a beatific smile, pierced by the arrows of his persecutors. As a matter of fact, he defended his authority by every resource irv his powerful arsenal. Marshal Foch.—He began his career a little cub brushed aside by the triumphant march of the German Armies to Paris and victory; he lived to see all the might of valiant Germany prostrate and suppliant at his pencil tip. Ana, last, a quotation at times applicable to its creator; George Nathaniel Cttrzon.—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 natural pre-eminence was accompanied by airs of superiority.