THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12423, 17 April 1926, Page 11

THE MAN OF THE MOMENT

I MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ROMANTIC CAREER J

The Man of the Moment in Great Britain is. Mr Winston Churchill. No matter how the tide of battle ebbs and flows in the big political arena, nor what gallant knights’ crested helms sink low beneath the puissant stroke of epic steel, he holds the limelight at Westminster. The secret of the Budget is his, and, never mind what politicians may talk about just now, they are one and all thinking of nothing else but the Budget.

Remember that, when all is said, and the fury of the violent partisans evaporates, in hot air, the great game of politics, as played in all countries and every epoch, boils down at the end to finance. Always and everywhere the basic question remains, who shall call the tune when it comes to levying taxation. Mr George Bernard Shaw never put a shrewder word into the mouth of one of his dramatic creations than when he makes Caesar tell, the Egyptians that taxes are the main business of all illustrious conqueror^. Never was this' truism more grimly true than now, when this country is wallowing in the slough of economic discord that inevitably followed the supefb largesse of the' Great War. Today the crucial problem of all our politics is how to pay for the biggest firework display ever staged in history, and, in particular, who shall foot the bill. The ironic fates have ordained that these haggard questions shall be settled by a statesman of fiftv-one, who started his career as a nimble cavalrysubaltern, and to-day is galloper to« the King’s Treasury. * A ROMANTIC CAREER Mr Churchill’s career is genuinely a brilliant romance. No enterprising film impresario dare imagine l anything half so dramatic and impossible. I'he ■ brimful story of his life, though he . still counts among politicians as a young man, eclipses in sober fact that of any splendid Elizabethan figure. Even the dazzling Raleigh or the adventurous Drake scarcely achieved such versatile and glittering human experience. If it be true that experience is the zest of life, Mr Churchill is truly the most enviable of living celebrities. Se was the idol of a brilliant father and a beautiful and gifted mother. In his veins flows the ancestral blo'od of the Marlborough family crossed t with the vivacious sap of aspiring America. He was such a fiasco at Harrow that he was reayly being turned down. Rut at Sandhurst jbe found his right metier, and won distinction. His first public / advent was made in the old lounge of the Empire Music Hall in Leicester Square as a slim, red-headed cadet, when lie made a speech one night denouncing the kill-joy activities of Mrs Ormiston Ghant.

HAS HE GOT THEM ? When Mr Churchill’s compelling figure stalks slowly across the Westminster horizon to-day, members whisper -■ together and ask: “Has he fcof. them?” They are referring td some eight hundred millions sterling. But Winston passes on, flicking the ash from a dark, well-chewed -cheroot, head bowed, hands deep in coat pockets.. He is thinking of that betting tax, perhaps, or may be of a new sumptuary duty on luxurious suspenders. Who knows? -Che sara saral But what a gentleman to haye for a papa!

Lloyd George, as a Parliamentary debater. Is certainly a, lucre effective platform orator, married one of the prettiest and nicest girls in England, has several of the jolliest children, contrived to be a full brigadier on the Western front in .the Great War as well as First Lord of the Admiralty, was one of the first men in, and nearly the last out, at_the defencoof Antwerp, and is goarai’ner to “F.E.’s” eldest child. And he is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, charged with framing what should be the most critical Budget introduced in the House of Commons for several centuries. ' What more worlds are there for Lord Randolph Churchill’s son to conquer Except macbe the crowning of his versatile career by some day emerging as Prime Minister of England and First Commoner of the realm 1 The flying years have changed Mr Churchill’s oqjward semblance a little, but they are powerless to quell his inner fires. The auburn locks are dulled to a more neutral hue nowadays, and very thin on top. Winston is prematurely bald, like many men whose beads have worn.the shako and the tin hat. He has lost a little of that cavalry slimness; is no longer “btlt an eagle’s talon in the waist,” And he stoops a good deal when he walks, as though the weight of so many millions bore down his shoulders. ‘ A DEMON FOR WORK But he still plays a strenuous game of polo, and his step is’firm and challenging, like his glance. He has mellowed. and studied caution, hut the youthful impetuositv still slumbers within. He is a demon for work. Whatever Whitehall Department he enters to command, he it the Board of Trade,'the War Office, the Admiralty, or the Treasury, all of which have known him in turn, his subordinates encounter a masterful . personality. He works them hard, suffers fools not at all and holds firmlv that, in the bright lexicon of middle-see, ithere is no such word as "impossible.” Whatever is afoot that is interesting and exciting, whether it be anarchistshooting in Sidney street or batteryrunning at the Dardanelles, Winston is in the. picture. He has acted right up to Nietzehe’s philisophy of ‘‘live dangerously.”

He served in India as a galloper to Sir Bindon Blood in a hard and desperate North-west Frontier campaign. He saw the depth and thickness of deadly fighting, either as soldier or war correspondent, in the Sudan, in Cuba, and in South Africa. Ot Omdurman, after riding alone across hundreds of leagues of desert to get in at the death, he charged as a privileged civilian with the Death or GloryBoys in their famous dash against the Burging ranks of the Dervishes. And these adventures, like that of his thrilling- capture by the Boers and hairbreadth escape from Pretoria, he has narrated in books that are almost literary classics. VARIED ACCOMPLISHMENTS He writes better than most literary men, paints better than many professional artists, plays polo with the best and golf with the worst, is perhaps the superior of his former comrade, Mr