CUCKOO IN THE NEST

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6919, 27 May 1929, Page 3

CUCKOO IN THE NEST

Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill

"Parties cannot break him. He is superior to parties. He is a. cuckoo in the Tory nest, although the Tories, themselves scarcely suspect it. One of these days lie may head a government of national union (the government of which the ageing Lloyd George dreams) and have all the dichards wonderiug why they didn't down the man when they had the chance." So observes a candid writer in Time and Tide, who describes the Eight Honourable Winston Churchill as an adventurer, but a responsible adventurer. “That is to say, he calculates. Also, he lakes a, pride in achieving succors. Northclifl'e was like that. So wars Napoleon, bo is Mussolini. Home people, arc, in politics because .it, is (ho right, thing to do. Winston Churchill is nor. one, of them. He is in politics because he finds politics exciting, and because he loves power. His astonishing career lias been full, of romance and drama. Life has found in him a. magnificent instrument on which lo play the most dazzling impromptus. lie has held more ministerial posts than any other living Englishman. He has, indeed, always been ready to tackle any ministerial ;job, provided it was big enough. He does everything with boldness, and an air. A Man of Courage

“He rides courageously —those who saw how he behaved when lie put, his shoulder out in the hunting field had to concede him physical courage of a very high order—and lie writes brilliantly, getting his effect with great sweeping strokes, intensifying light and shadow to heighten the drama of his subject. He shoots well, lie hunts boars, lie paints (Lavery taught him), lie makes splendid orations, which he writes out beforehand and learns olf bv heart. He is a, terrific worker and

a full-hearted player. See him at polo, striking arm leashed, laced up in a riding corset, mounted on a pony like a. young earl, horse. (He rides all of lost., and io.-1 his figure early in life, aud has never been keen enough on regular exercise to regain it since.) He pause?, poises, seems to be restiug in mid-play, and then suddenly he sees an opening, an opportunity, and in ho rushes like a cavalry brigade charging, neither deft nor graceful, but straight and driving, and full of tremendous zest and energy —and skilful with it, too. His life has been like that. He “Touches Wood"

“Luck plays a larger-part in shaping the careers of men than most, of them nro usually prepared to admit. Luck does not, of course, entirely explain the plienomeno'n of this volatile and dynamic individual, with his full eyes, oddly shaped shoulders, hair thinning back from a round high forehead. There- is immense ability there, too, and tenacious industry, enormous powers of work, great physical energy, and a certain disdainful confidence which enables him to jump into all sorts of enterprises with the sure feeling that he. can handle the job better than anyone else. But still, his luck has been fantastic. It. has been so fantastic that he has got into the habit of half-humorously, half-seriously 'touching wood.’

“Ho went to the Cuban war as a correspondent. One day, bending to bite a tough chicken wing, he had his hair clipped by a bullet. A second before, tnat bullet would have taken him in the centre of the forehead. Ia the Soudan campaign lie was lost ;u the desert. Suddenly the clouds parted long enough to show him Orion and give him liis direction. What incredible luck! Escaping from prison during the Boer war. he found himself in wild, unknown country. How is he to find his way now? Again ,Orion points a I winkling fairy finger from the heavens. The star, and his luck, bring him to- the only English house for miles around. Then, in Franco, lie is summoned from his front-line dug-out by a general who wants to have a look ar him. But the great man cannot, after all, fit the meeting in. So, cursing, Churchill ploughs back through three miles of mud —to perceive on arrival, with one of liis rare hashes of awe, that in his absence his dug-out has been wrecked by a shell, and the officer in it killed. The Churchill Luck “On another occasion in that war he steps from the room in which lie has been writing, and a minute later a shcil bursts outside and hurls a razor-edged metal fragment; across the tabie at which lie had been sitting. Anon, he thinks lie will learn to llv. But he is a bad pilot. His machine crashes. His pilot is injujred. Churchill —need one say it? —sits up amid the wreck and finds himself unhurt. It is not a patch uf luck. It is the regular Churchill luck. You can trace it all through his life —from the day when, us a boy, he jumped, from a bridge to catch the branches of a tree, fell 20 feet as they snapped, aud (instead of breaking his neck, or at least a limb) landed uninjured on a soft patch in a ditch—to (hat phase, of his mature post-war career when lie fell out of the Coalition (iee, lost a couple of election battles on his way down, but lauded after all, smiling and intact, on the soft patch of the Treasury, in the Conservative ditch."