The Churchill Memoirs

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27226, 18 December 1953, Page 10

The Churchill Memoirs

We print today the last of the extracts from the sixth and final volume of Sir Winston Churchill’s memoirs of the Second World War. It has been a very great privilege to print these articles; and we have no doubt that our readers have valued the privilege of reading them. For this, as an American reviewer has said, is “ a gigantic contribution to “ history by a historical giant ” —the man who was closest of all to the great events he describes; the man who in peace foresaw more clearly than most the disasters impending; the man who in war and at the very height of victory saw more clearly than anyone else the failures of the Western statesmen to lay a sure foundation for future peace. Sir Winston Churchill may, as some believe—and as he himself sometimes appears to believe—be the man destined to retrieve these failures and to turn the course of history in a direction more hopeful for mankind. Be that as it may, the Second World War did not end with the end of fighting. “ These things ”, says Churchill over and over again in the last volume, “are still with

“us “ The Second World War ” is therefore an unfinished history; and the theme of the sixth volume acknowledges as much: “How the “ Great Democracies triumphed, and “ so were able to resume the follies “which so nearly cost them their “life”. May Sir Winston Churchill live to complete the record, and in a way fitting to .his sense of history and to his great humanity.