1940-06-08 — Page 3

Saturday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

STORY

OF

The

(1919-

1935

1919

December 7, 1936, a short, stout, bald-headed gentleman, with the face of a self-indulgent cherub, arose to speak in the House of Com- mons.

At the moment he was in a righteous temper, his cheeks were flushed and his jaw set.

It was four o'clock-ques-

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1931

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June 8, 1940.

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lanscapes

n

His

once. They are some of them are pretty good. other recreations are of a sedentary nature; bezlque, backgammon, a flutter at the tables in Le Toquet, as occasion of very costly venture into the Wall Street market, which for some reason he prefers to that of London..

He is phyaleally capable of stand- ing a good deal of wear and tear. but it is the athletic mind rather than the healthy body that keeps bim going at top speed. Few men are mare agile, more abandoned, In the pursuit of an idea. If one strikes him, in the bath, of half way through dressing, he will rush

WINSTON LEADER EMPIRE'S

for so long the thankless role of a Tory Cassandra.

That role is over now and the prophet is not without honour.

He is the most gifted man in the House of Commons assembly. He is also, in private lite no less than In public, one of the most unusual.

Marlborough

was forefather

A descendant of John, Brst Duke OF Marlborough, Queen Anne's great general, he retains it is a family trail-some of the habits of an 18th Century aristocrat,

When he wants to be there is no more delightful conversationalist in England. His conversation, too, is of an 18th century kind.

More stylish than scintillating,

begins a series more, a confection of whole paca-

of biographical

Hussare, with a gift for polo and little else.

Then, quite suddenly, his in- telleet began to assert itself. In the fedium of army life at Bangalore, he took to reading- Gibbon, Macaulay, Darwin, Mal- thun, Plato. Ho grow restless; his family pulled strings at home; he was attached to the 31st Punjab Infantry us-war correspondent in their campaign against the Pathans. Not long afterwards more sirbigs were pulled and he obtained a similar position in Kitchener's war against the Dervishes of the. Sudan. The two books which resulted from these adventures-The Story of the Malakand Field Force" and

CHURCHILL OF AN

DESTINY

out, calling for a secretary to take it clown.

Drives his

The River War" displayed three of his most persistent characteris- les. They were extremely well written. They showed a singuinr grasp of military problems. They also betrayed temperamental In-

secretaries hard ability to distinguish between his

The spectacle of a stout gentle- man in sk underclothes or a bath towel, or nothing at all, is not good for the nerves of housemulda aniel

own business and somebody else's. Even the great Kitchener did not escape the disapproving pen of his subaltern of Hussars,

his week-end hostesses have been Prisoner of

known to warn their staffs In advance of this Churchili habit.

As for his secretaries, he employa four, five or six and drives them burd.

Tireless himself, he does not expect them to be tired, and they probably only stay with him be- raum-of his ability to charm, any- one whom he wishes to charm.

He is a strong family man, de- voted to his wife and children. This is one of the reasons why he works so hard, for his family, like himself, is not averse to luxury. Amidst all his other interests, he is constantly writing. His income from that and from

lectures

muy amount to as much us £20,000 In a good year. As Chancellor at the Exchequer he was known as a hearty spender of publie money; in private life, he and his family are hearty spenders of his own,

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that much of his prose should be hurled..

At its worst it is very readable and at its best. I ranka with the best in England.

In darity, its dramatie intensity, its moments of imprudence and moments of profound Insight, in graphs than of single phrases, I

its ability to wear the purple with does not lend itself to quotation. out disaster, there stands revealed It has to be heard to be believed. the inner personality of Churchill. Not to be confused with Winston Hunched into a chair, his heavy Churchill, the American novelist, he has written 16 books of which shoulders falling away Into his only one is a novel and that o broad chest and paunchy stomachyouthful-indiscretion... he will talle far into the night, while droppings of cigar as slowly

tion time. The House, crowd- articles about head sunk into his shoulders, his

ed from floor to gallery, was -nervous-and-irritable..

"May I ask my right honourTMTM ubles trieul," he began in his thick lisping volve, glaring al the impassive bulk of Mr. Stanley - Baldwin, "whether he can give us an usurance that no irrevocable step.

The speaker got no further. The silence which had greeted his opening words wn suddenly Broken, from all sides, with how Is of "No" and "Sit down"-a SEVILL described in next morning's "Tines" as "the most striking rebuff of modern parliamentary history."

The recipient of this rebulf was the Right Honourable Winston Spencer Churchill, who had been Trying in make, so his enemies considered. a little political empita! out of the imminent abdiention of Edward VI.

That night his enemies declared that Churchill would never recover the ground he had lost. Well, he bod dene himself in at last, and was an utterly ruined man. Mr. Churchill himself, however, was noi of this opinion.

as amenable to cork in a tub of

He is about suppression as

water.

He had faced an angry Commons before. Once, indeed, in the dim past, he had so outraged that normally restrained assembly that one M. "P, had thrown a book at his hend. As for his political

our Premier, Mr. Winston Churchill

Czecht-Slovak crisis, it was purse erally agreed that, in the event of war, nothing short of the Last

could keep him from the

This swift reversal of fortune as typient bula of Churchill's career 24 of ins charneler. Nobody dults that there was an element ot idealism in his support of King Ldward. Nobody doubts his at- tachment to the British Empire.

cover the front of his waistcoat.

He prefers, on the whole, the sound of his own voice to that of

Most of his output is of a wallitary character, for his is an authority on military sciences.

etter people's, and if he is alone His

Our believes that he is alone) will fen toll to himself, quite loudly.

Once in the days when mahjong was the rage he attended a per- formance of Shaw's "St. Joan", In, which Dame Sybil Thorndike said: "West wind, west wind, west wind,” The Right Hon. Winston Churchill, sitting in the front row, exploded: "Pong!"

His energy is amazing, but this does not advertise itself. His op- pearance is decidedly sloppy.

Crumpled Formality

11 was this unheesuntable being who attempted to play Cavalier ugalost Mr. Baldwin's Roundibend. It was this same being who enn- ducted opposition to Indian Re-.. furm; who edited the "British Gazete" (the strike-breaking Government

with newspaper) Tehno] búy gusto during the General Strike of 1028; who hoped to militarize the railways during the labour unrest of 1911; who super- vived the fantastic "Sidney Street Slege" of 1911; and who used to be known to the music halls of Eng- Band with "affection, as "Winnie".

Churchill

downfall, that had been predicted. The Statesman

un and off, since 1918.

Winston Churchill an ex-* perienced man who has held nine Cabinet

posltions-elght us Liberal and one as a Conservative.

"While England Slept"

To auch a versatile personage what is a rebuff, even "the most. striking in modern Parlamentary History?"

Hurt he may well have been. but not despairing.

During 1937 ho resumed with imperturbable Rsyurants .tho thread of that oratory which. calling for more aggressive de- fence measure against Nazidom, has been embalmed for posterity in a volumo entitled "Wille Eng- Innd Slopt.

None the less, Churchill the Peter Pan is counterbalanced by Churchill the Elder Statesman,

It is possible, of course, to discern In his statesmanship, the pare childlike and expansive characteris. fles.

3

In London he dresses

with crumpled formality. In the coun- try he wears, whenever possible, workman's blue overall, and though he has never, in any clr- curastances, sat down to dinner in aus thing but evening clothes, they. are not exactly neat. In repuse, he stems old, bored inert. He looks like a connoisseur of food and wine who for years has not bothered to tale enough exercise,

In America, in 1931, he had a

story of

last war

three

His "World Crisis". & volume history of the last War, is remarkable in many respreis.

It brings to the description of those horrible campaigns a scientifle detachment, a high strategie Im- urinmilcn. and a dreamy relish fur the effusion of blood.

11 has another gifi, inore com- mendable and more rate among historians knowledge of how men who are hot historians behave. The same can be said of his "Mart- borough", a fine biographical de fence of his ambiguous ancestor, And now, with the last volume of "Marlborougly" still umong the newly published books, he is well on his way to completing the first volume of his "Flatory of the English Speaking People"

His writing, however, wil always come second to Churchill's political

carcer.

Surrendered

number of lecture engagements al Fortune

over the country.

It was the very depth of Pro- hibition. te insisted, however, that a bottle of vintage champagne should be provided for him at inner time, wherever he happened to be. lie would also order threo or four dinners at one time, not The Empire of his dreams is a

out of gluttony, but out of a destre Rudyard Kipling sort of empire-

to pick and choose among the best the spangles and the bugles, the

features of each the lesser breed

hotel's cuisine. palin and pine, without the law, the white man's His ogent had to meet these ex- burden and all the rest of

penses, besiden paying $1,000 lecture.

But It also happens that Chur- chill's concept of empire is inter-- penetrated with a great deal of profound thinking, with an amaz- İng accretion of solid information, and with a strategical vision second to one in England.

That vision has not grown dim with the passing of time. For the past eight years he has seen that the greatest; threat to British. Im- perialism lay in Berlin, not Moscow,

It is one of the world's tragedies.

Governments thought otherwise and: that Churchill was forced to play.

Heybromo.once more.leados--that-the-Baldwin, and Chamberlain

of the ad surrender" wing of the Conservative Party. During the

Chuchill has his recreations, though. His grounds at Chartwell Manor in Kent aro Embellished with artificut dams and falla. Ho built them himself. He bullt the cottages and the garden walls. He installed the pump

which sends water up from the lower pond to the upper pond with the goldfish. At Chartwell, he rarely goes out without a aliovel, or rake, unless IL is painting day,

Els pictures

signed Charles Marin": have been exhibited only

Io gladly exchanged his 1erary Income for the Prime Minister's £5,000 a year-a plum which fate dangled constantly before his nose and as constantly snatched away. entered life in 1874 He certainly with all the advantages. He was o Hrandson of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, and son of that Lord Randolph Churchill whose brillant career was cut shot only by a tragic breakdown.

I mother was In America, born Jennie Jerome of Now York, u beautiful woman and an inspired hostess.

Churchill is proud of his parent- ngo, and evon, it may be, of his beginnings. Like everything else about him, they were unusual. Ho was a dunce at Harrow and the despair of his father who decided that the army was the only place At for him.

Ile departed for Indio, a round- faced, red.. headed subaltern of

the Boers

24.

After this, his mind not being the sort feed on the mean diet of discipline and routine, he re- tired from the army. He was just When the Boer War came, he rushed out to South Afrien as carrespondent for the Morning Post" and was captured by the Boers. In embarrassing circum- stanees. He had been directing with considerable gallantry the de- fence of an armoured train, which Is not what semi-civilian wat correspondent:

supposed to do. The Beers, however, who always showed an engaging disregard of military punctills, did not shoot him. They merely imprisoned him in Pretoria, and from Pretoria be escoped.

are

It was upon this foundation of literature insubordination and heroics that he entered political Bte swimming inlo Parliament on the muddy tide of the Khaki Election of 1900, a Conservative of the most warlike stripe. Soon after the Boer War lost its appeal, the issue of Protection split his party and the Conservatives began slip- ping down an inclined plane at the end of which was obvious disaster. In the middle of this process Mr. Churchtil discovered that he was n Free Trader, Liberal, indeed a Kadicul. He crossed the floor of the House and was soon firmly en- trenched among the supporters of the new Liberal Government.

201

that

"President of the Board of Trude, Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty-the rewards followed one another in upward sequence. The Cabinet of which he became member included such brilliant figures as Asquith, Haldane, Grey,

George. Even Lloyd

minous group Churchill's light ..shone, at atrul intervals. more

brighilv than any man's. cenius without judgment" was what the indulgent Mr. Asquith called him. Yet it is safe to say that his reorganisation of His Majesty's navy before the War was one of the inost spectacular feats ever per- formed by n First Lord,

Responsibility for Gallipoli

The War brought with it his first disaster. He was the originator of the Gallipoli campaign, a plece of profound strategical thinking, ruin- ed by incompetent generals of the at front and too much blekering home, When Gallipoli ended in he was Callure and recrimination unjustly made the goat and forced Lo resign. His enemies cheerfully remarked that that was the end of **Winnie". Within two

years he was back, as Minister of Munitions in the Coalition Government of Davd Lloyd George.

With the post-War collapse of the Coalition Government, "Chur- chill was counted out again. He lout his sent · at Dundee to an #ccentric Prohibitionist called Scrymgeour. What future was there for a Lloyd George Liberal, or indeed any, sort of Liboral?

About this Lime A serica of cautious transformation like a słow changing of colour, began to lake place Churchill's political-con- science. He stood for West Lelces- ter in a by-election as a "Liberal Free Trader" and lost, Ho stood for the Abbey Division of West- minster as an "Anti-socialist," and lost again. It was as a "Const|jar- tionalist that he approached the electors of Epping, and the electors of Epping sent film bacle to Parlia~ ment. At last he realised what had`

happened; he was a Tory and a Tory of the more extreme type, and the ex-Liberal Minister enter- ed. Mr. Baldwin's administration as Chancellor of the Exchequer, where for five years ho produced a series of budgete in which only the most astute brains could distinguish the finance from the fire-worka, Kor

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