THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for-transmission through the Post as a newspaper. WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 1, 1948. Mr Churchill – Frustration And Triumph

Northern Advocate, 1 December 1948, Page 4

THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE Registered for-transmission through the Post as a newspaper. WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 1, 1948. Mr Churchill - Frustration And Triumph

The fact that Mr Churchill celebrated his 74th birthday yesterday makes appropriate a review of the past decade of a remarkable career.

Mr Churchill marked the eve of his birthday by attending a hunt meeting, being astride a hunter for two hours, wearing a bowler hat and smoking the inevitable cigar. This incident is eloquent uf the mental and physical virility of an extraordinary man, but it is the service Mr Churchill rendered to Britain and to civilisation during World War 11. to which the celebration of his birthday rightly gives priority. Mr Churchill’s first volume of his monumental war memoirs reveals the character and the prescience of a great man, and as his efforts to dissipate the “gathering storm” are surveyed, there is created poignant pain that “what might have been” was prevented by the actions of men who, though well intentioned, were content to emulate the ostrich rather than the lion.

Sir Harold Butler, reviewing the tragic volume which discloses lost chances to preserve peace in Europe, recalls that during the 11 years preceding the outbreak of war, Mr Churchill was chafing in the desert. He saw better than anyone what the rearming of Germany portended, and from May, 1932, onwards he began his long series of warnings, preaching “arms and the Covenant as the only means of maintaining peace. His information, which has now been proved remarkably accurate by captured German documents, was either rejected by the Government as untrue, or discounted when its truth was admitted. Nothing seemed capable of piercing the complacency of the Prime Ministers, the political parties, or the nation. “It was,” as Mr Churchill says, “like being smothered in a feather bed.” Mr Churchill became violently critical of Britain’s action in 1935 in concluding a naval treaty with Germany behind the backs of the French, thus sweeping away the naval clauses of the Peace Treaty by a private agreement of which the League of Nations was not informed. Mr Baldwin’s failure to take the strong action Mr Churchill urged in connection with Italy's attack on Abyssinia, and the Nazis’ invasion of

the Rhineland appalled the soldierstatesman, who says the moral of these and subsequent capitulations to the dictators is that “virtuous motives trammelled by inertia and timidity are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.” It was failure of British leaders to recognise ’chis fact which eventually plunged the world into war. Mr Chamberlain’s flight to Berehtesgaden to meet Hitler was “one of the many strange quirks of fate which thwarted the chances of peace,” as but for that flight is was even possible that a carefully-laid plot organised by German generals to seize the Nazi leaders and for a panzer division to march into Berlin would not have miscarried.

The tragic story continued until Hitler seized his opportunity and “penetrated with ease into the frail defences of the tardy, irresolute coalition against him,” and the war began. ■ Mr Churchill moved out of the wilderness to the Admiralty, where at last he was able to throw all his energies into action, with results for which the world may well be grateful. As the war proceeded, Mr Churdhill became increasingly disturbed by want of drive and direction, which eventually brought the Allies to the brink of disaster. Fortunate was the world that Britain, at that fateful moment, found a man who had complete confidence in himself and in the spirit of the country. Writing in “The Gathering Storm,” Mr Churchill makes this confession of his own feelings on being called upon to assume complete responsibility at the blackest hour of defeat and dismay: “As I went to bed about 3 a.m. I was conscious of a profound sense of relief. At last I had authority to give directions over the* whole scene. I felt as if I was walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. ... I was sure I should not fail.

These thoughts doubtless recurred to Mr Churchill yesterday, and they must have given him rare pleasure, for as has been said of him, “few men have met their supreme ordeal with such sublime faith, and fewer still have proved so worthy of it in the event.”