Is Tomorrow Hitler's? 200 Questions on the Battle of Mankind

by H. R. Knickerbocker

3. ENGLAND

Q. What place do you think Churchill will have in history?

A. If Churchill brings his country victorious out of this war, he will without a doubt go down as the greatest man in English history. No Prime Minister of the sixty ministries since Walpole, and none of the Monarchs when they exercised unlimited power, nor any Admiral or General has upon his tombstone: “He saved England from death.” Many have saved England from defeat. Many have added to England’s power and glory. But only Churchill will be entitled to the supreme rank, for never before has England been threatened with the supreme penalty of national extinction. Among the Prime Ministers Lloyd George would have a place near Churchill, but the alternative to victory in the first World War was not the alternative in this war. Among the defenders of England, Nelson, Wellington, and the Great Duke of Marlborough would rank near Churchill. But the alternative to victory against Napoleon or Louis XIV was not the alternative England faces now. And no England of the past ever faced such odds as Churchill and his people faced at the fall of France. Whatever the decision, Churchill has already achieved greatness. This man who used to be accused of playing at politics and acting only for himself has been lifted by his responsibility to forget himself in the Battle of Mankind.

Q. Is Mr. Churchill really backed by all the British people?

A. Mr. Churchill is the most popular and trusted leader the British people have had within the memory of living man. The man who caused the defeat of the General Strike in 1926 is if anything more popular among the working classes than among the upper classes. In the House of Commons he usually receives heartier applause from Labor members than from Conservatives even though he is the head of the Conservative party. This is partly because the Conservatives cannot rid themselves of a tinge of resentment at the man who was always, consistently, unfailingly right about the coming of the war, and what it would be like, while they were always, consistently, unfailingly wrong. The Conservatives out of a rooted misconception of the character and intentions of Hitler, felt an instinctive sympathy for him almost up to the time he actually began to drop bombs upon them. The Labor party on the other hand shared Churchill’s antipathy for Hitler from the very beginning, and there was thus early established a bond between the great British aristocrat and the British working classes which has been greatly strengthened by his leadership of the war. I doubt if there is a single Labor party leader with as devoted a following among the British workers as Churchill has.

Q. What part in the war has the British workingman played under Churchill’s leadership?

A. The British workingman, inspired and informed by Churchill, has been superbly and intelligently patriotic. It is this union of Churchill with Labor which has warded off defeat in the most desperate hour, and which with our help will eventually win the war. British Labor’s attitude toward the struggle which will decide the fate of all the world for generations to come is a reproach to that minority of American labor which has failed to understand the fact that the liberty and the life of every individual American workingman depends on the outcome of this war. During those awful months following the evacuation of Dunkirk, the British trades unions voluntarily gave up all the trades unions rules which, designed to protect the interests of labor in peacetime, hampered production and became a danger in war. They lengthened hours, took less pay for more work, stayed on the job to the point of complete exhaustion. In the course of about three months the British workingman doubled the production of weapons and munitions, and almost tripled airplane production by the end of the year. It could not have been done without Churchill. From 1932 to 1939, for seven years, Churchill had been tirelessly teaching, preaching, exhorting, and pleading with the British public and the British government to meet the German menace. By the time the war came the British working classes had learned from Churchill what it was about. They learned much faster than the Chamberlains and many a muddleheaded rich appeaser.

Another impressive sign of the wisdom of the British Labor Party from the leaders to the rank and file is that you do not hear from them the demands for a “definition of war aims” which are so loudly voiced by groups of American liberals. These Americans who are so concerned about establishing the chemical purity of British intentions, and who insist on a blueprint of the peace settlement, and a guarantee that the world will be made over in a style that meets with their approval—these Americans show precisely the incomprehension of Hitler that Chamberlain showed with his appeasement. Your ordinary British dock worker knows more about the meaning of the war than scores of American intellectuals who are still bleating about war aims. As the British Labor publicist, G. D. H. Cole, put it, “The Labor leaders and the great majority of their followers alike believed firmly that the defeat of Hitler mattered immeasurably more than anything else. For this reason they were ready to put aside even their socialism and the greater part of their reforming policy and even to abstain from criticizing openly the government’s mistakes rather than run any risk of dividing the national elements which stood for a vigorous prosecution of the war.”

Q. Is Churchill what you would call a realist or an idealist?

A. Churchill is both. He is a hardheaded, tough-minded idealist and an imaginative, generous realist. He is convinced that the policy which works for the good of all will also work best for the good of the individual. This is the foundation stone of civilization. Hitler believes that the smart man is the man who exploits others. Hitler’s are the ethics of the “heel,” the gangster, the racketeer, the cheat who is always on the lookout for a chance to swindle, or rob, betray, or murder for profit. The Churchill attitude is that of the moral man, the member of society. The Hitler attitude is that of the amoral man, the bandit preying upon society.

I do not think Churchill is formally a religious man, although he attends divine services and thus sets an example for the nation under his leadership. But Churchill’s beliefs add up to something closely approaching practical Christianity. It seems to me that very few Americans really understand what Churchill stands for. He is so much in the public eye as a war leader, that we are bound to think of him as a warrior first. We forget or never were told that he is first of all a builder. Before the war, in the field of international relations he believed passionately in the life-and-death necessity of sustaining the League, of collective security through the League.

Then as now, and in England as here in America, there were great numbers of persons who thought they were being hardheaded realists by rejecting the League as romantic. Their successors today are our isolationists or noninterventionists, as they shamefacedly call themselves now. Churchill remorselessly revealed how suicidal was this refusal to cooperate among nations for the maintenance of security for all. Long before Litvinoff coined the phrase Churchill was preaching that “peace is indivisible,” that only through collective security could the security of any single state be secured. His scorn for the British counterpart of our isolationists was withering: “It is of the utmost consequence to the unity of British national action that the policy of adhering to the Covenant of the League of Nations shall not be weakened or whittled away. I read in the Times a few days ago a letter in which a gentleman showed that these ideas of preventing war by international courts and by reasonable discussion had been tried over and over again. He said they had been tried after Marlborough had defeated Louis XIV and after Europe had defeated Napoleon, but, he said, they had always failed. If that is true it is a melancholy fact but what was astonishing was the crazy glee with which the writer hailed such lapses from grace. I was told the other day of a sentence of Carlyle’s in which he describes ‘the laugh of the hyena on being assured that, after all, the world is only carrion.’”

It is of course plain to everybody now that the world is being torn apart because crazy people prevented the League of Nations from functioning, crazy people who believed they were as shrewd as the Americans who today would like us to wait for the Germans to land on United States soil before we fight. It has always been considered by cheap and vulgar men that it is clever to be entirely selfish, and so our Lindberghs, Wheelers, and Nyes even whisper temptingly the base suggestion that we may profit by this war if Britain falls and her Empire crumbles. What retribution would be ours were we to listen to such voices! Churchill, whom no detractor has ever called a stupid man, is not afraid to come out boldly and declare: “I think we ought to place our trust in those moral forces which are enshrined in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Do not let us mock at them, for they are surely on our side. Do not mock at them for this may well be a time when the highest idealism is not divorced from strategic prudence. Do not mock at them, for these may be years, strange as it may seem, when Right may walk hand in hand with Might.” This he spoke in 1937. How the words are crammed with meaning now for America whose vital self-interest to bring about the defeat of our enemy is identical with the highest idealism.

Q. Can Churchill be trusted?

A. I will answer by citing Mr. Churchill’s attitude toward Ireland. In 1938 when the bill to turn the Irish naval bases back from British to Irish control was being discussed, Churchill protested that when war came, if Ireland refused to lend the ports to England, there would be no way to get them back. Because, he said, “It will be no use saying, ‘Then we will retake the ports.’ You will have no right to do so. To violate Irish neutrality should it be declared at the moment of a great war may put you out of court in the opinion of the world and may vitiate the cause by which you may be involved in war. If ever we have to fight again we shall be fighting in the name of law, or respect for the rights of small countries.” Can you imagine Hitler nourishing such scruples? Churchill has proved, moreover, the hardest way, that he meant what he said. The British still abstain from occupying and using the Irish ports. They have lost scores of ships to German submarines which might have been stopped if the Royal Navy had the use of the Irish bases. Many people think it wrong for the British to imperil their cause by respecting the neutrality of Ireland, which like every other country outside the Axis owes its hopes for national independence to a British victory.

Q. What does Churchill think of the United States? I know that his mother was American and that now during the war he wants as much help from us as he can get, but what does he really think of America?

A. We can go as far back as 1932 and find that he had this to say: “Of course if the United States were willing to come into the European scene as a prime factor, if they were willing to guarantee to those countries who take their advice that they would not suffer for it, then an incomparably wider and happier prospect would open to the whole world. If they were willing not only to sign but to ratify treaties of that kind, it would be an enormous advantage. It is quite safe for the British Empire to go as far in any guarantee in Europe as the United States is willing to go, and hardly any difficulty in the world could not be solved by the faithful cooperation of the English speaking peoples.” This was his view of the possibilities of Anglo-American cooperation before the war; his faith in it now is stronger than ever. As for his opinion of the American people, one can deduce a good deal from some of the adjectives he has used about us in the past. He has called us “active, educated, excitable and harassed”; and “the most numerous and ebullient of civilized communities.”

Q. What does Churchill think of Roosevelt and the New Deal?

A. I am sure he has a profound admiration for Mr. Roosevelt quite aside from the help he wants from him. Churchill and Roosevelt are both aristocrats, both expert politicians, both highly cultured men, both believers in humanity, and in the destiny of the English-speaking peoples. There are only two factors to make them differ. The first is that they are rivals, friendly rivals, of course, and allied rivals for the duration of the war, but rivals just the same, and when the time comes to translate victory into peace terms it is going to be exciting to see which of these powerful, determined men will do the leading. It will be a struggle of titans. As one reviews the chief characteristics of each man it seems as though each possesses to the ultimate possible degree the qualities of courage, intelligence, imagination, and stubbornness.

Churchill has called Roosevelt “this great man, this thrice chosen head of a nation of 130,000,000.” Another time in 1934 he described Roosevelt’s administration as a dictatorship, writing: “Although the Dictatorship is veiled by constitutional forms it is none the less effective.” Hastily he added: “To compare Roosevelt’s effort with that of Hitler is not to insult Roosevelt but civilization.” Now both men have become dictators in the classical sense of the word as it has been so sapiently defined by Frederick L. Schuman. “‘Dictatorship’ is a form of power which is resorted to voluntarily and temporarily by democracies to meet dangers of invasion or revolution. It is a device to save democracy, not to destroy it.... The disposition of democrats to regard dictatorship in times of crisis as fatal to democracy rather than as fundamental to its preservation reflects a tragic confusion resting upon ignorance of history and misuse of labels.” Schuman points out that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini are tyrants or despots, but not, if one uses the word properly, “dictators.”

The reassuring fact is that both Roosevelt and Churchill believe that a Pax Anglo-Americana is the key to the future. Churchill believes that the British ought to take the leading role in such an arrangement because they have borne the heat of battle to a greater degree than we shall have done even with our troops in Europe. Roosevelt believes America ought to be the leader since we are coming out of the war considerably stronger than Great Britain and the younger nation is now ready to take over guidance of world affairs from the parent country. Out of this fundamental difference could come a massive dispute, but since it will have been based on victory we can hope fervently that the opportunity for the discussion be provided as quickly as possible.

Churchill has a second difference with Roosevelt in the field of economic theory and practice. He is distinctly against the New Deal. There was a time during the period of the Blue Eagle when Churchill seemed almost to fear that communism was coming to the United States. He warned: “It is irrational to tear down or cripple the capitalist system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of action to create a new communist system.” With Churchillian directness he proclaims his belief in profits. “There can never be good wages or good employment for any length of time without good profits.”

With equal candor and with much wit he defends rich men. “A second danger to President Roosevelt’s valiant and heroic experiments seems to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts.... It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the chase.... The question arises whether the general well-being of the masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values, and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to capture commonwealth.” All this, his own economic philosophy, he sums up in the formula: “Whether it is better to have equality at the price of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality.”

Does this indicate a narrowly selfish interest by Churchill in his own class? Not at all. He believes profoundly in the possibility of extending leisure and well-being to all mankind through the benefits of science. He takes the evidence of Soviet Russia that the means to general affluence is not communism, nor does he think it can come through any form of nationalization of production. He believes the essence of the problem is monetary. He believes the rights of man are more important than the success of any economic system. He believes in the British Empire as a mighty instrument of civilization. He believes profoundly in cooperation with us. There is no reason why the two mightiest democratic dictators, Roosevelt and Churchill, should not emerge from the Peace Conference with a harmonious plan.

Q. Is it true that Churchill is gifted with a peculiar power to foresee the event?

A. I know of no statement which summed up in so few words a complete forecast of history as was contained in one sentence of Churchill’s delivered April 6, 1936 in a speech on the fortification of the Rhineland. You will remember that Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland March 6, 1936. Mr. Churchill had this to say: “The creation of a line of forts opposite to the French frontier will enable the German troops to be economized on that line and will enable the main forces to swing round through Belgium and Holland.” There in thirty-six words you have the entire story of the Battle of France, told four years before it took place.

Q. Tell us what you know of Mr. Churchill as a person. What are his principal characteristics?

A. Courage is his principal characteristic. I hesitated a moment but decided to put his courage ahead of his intelligence, because courage is a more important quality than intelligence. I remember I once had a spirited argument on this point with Henri Bernstein, the French playwright. We were at the country home of Louis Bromfield in Senlis, the point outside Paris where the Germans during the last war came nearest to the capital. Bernstein insisted intelligence was the most valuable quality a man could have, and with enough of it he would not need more than a minimum of courage. I argued that without courage the keenest intelligence is useless in a world of action. A couple of years later Bernstein and I were on the same refugee ship, the Madura of the British India Line, fleeing from Bordeaux to England after the fall of France. I reminded Bernstein of our argument and insisted that the disaster of France proved my contention was right. Surely the French were still what they have often been called, the most intelligent people on the continent, but for some reason which nobody has yet completely fathomed, they had at this moment of their national history lost the desire or the willingness to fight. I suppose it would be fair to define that as lack of courage, although I would be the last to assert that this is a permanent state of mind or of heart on the part of the French.

The collapse of the French was the signal for Churchill to display the finest quality of his character. Senator Gerald P. Nye once, with the good taste characteristic of our isolationists, said: “Britain is a dead horse. America should not team up with a lost cause.” To France in her death agony Churchill made the offer that she merge with Britain and establish a single Franco-British government and cabinet, unite the resources of the French and British Empires, and fight on to the last drop of British blood, even if all France were occupied. It took a Churchill’s imagination, generosity, and audacity to make such an offer. The French did not have enough strength left to reach out and accept the hand of rescue. We have heard a great deal about fighting to the last drop of blood, but Churchill is the only man I have ever seen among the belligerents who makes it absolutely convincing.

I was in London during those peak months of the Battle of Britain, August and September 1940 when the Germans were bombing by day as well as by night, trying to conquer the R.A.F. to make invasion possible. One day I was driving through London with Mr. Churchill, and as we passed a particularly large and well-camouflaged machine-gun emplacement at a street intersection, the Prime Minister called my attention to it. “Do you see that?” “Yes,” I said, “it seems you really meant it when you said the British would fight in the streets.” “Meant it!” exclaimed Mr. Churchill. “Why the Germans could if they liked drop a hundred thousand parachutists on London, and if they did we would chew them up and spit them out.” There was in his voice a note of delight at the prospect. This note is present in all of Churchill’s references to getting at the enemy. Although no man would act more quickly to relieve his people of the necessity of shedding their blood, while the fight is on Churchill revels in it. The responsibilities which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing effect upon him. Not at all. The last time I saw him, while the Battle of Britain was still raging, he looked twenty years younger than before the war began. As we walked across the garden in the rear of Number Ten Downing Street I had to quicken my pace and almost trot to keep up with him, so swiftly did he stride along the gravel path.

His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people and it is my impression that the British are, just as Churchill said, “proud to be under the fire of the enemy.” You may think it overdrawn but if you had shared with them the experience of heavy air bombardment, you would agree that Churchill was only expressing the exact truth when he said: “The sublime but also terrible experience and emotions of the battlefield which for centuries have been reserved for soldiers and sailors now are shared for good or ill by the entire population.” Even in the midst of the most fearful danger Churchill taunts the enemy—“We are waiting for that long promised invasion. So are the fishes.” I would not be surprised if Churchill really wanted the Germans to try, for if they were to try and fail it would be a defeat so disastrous that it might well lead to a German collapse.

Without courage nothing can be accomplished. With it plus intelligence everything can be done. Churchill’s courage is of every variety. He has the simple battle courage of the Hussar. Remember the cavalry charge at Omdurman in the Sudan when the young Lieutenant Churchill fought his way through a tangle of howling dervishes? He has the enduring physical courage to play a championship game of polo with a dislocated shoulder. He has the moral courage to lead a lost cause. It was he who defended the Duke of Windsor at the abdication, when the once most popular man in the British Empire had lost every other friend. He has the courage to take responsibility, and since he has been Prime Minister he has personally taken the criticism for every ill turn of fortune, every plan gone wrong. He can meet a hostile mob and talk it down. He can lead in battle. He can lead in war. Above all he can infuse his courage into others.

One’s pulse quickens at that immortal peroration of his delivered on June 18, 1940, when France had surrendered, the British Expeditionary Force had escaped with the loss of all its tools, and England stood weaponless before the foe, in greater mortal peril than ever in ten centuries. The words Churchill spoke then were the equivalent of a strong army to defend the British Isles. Translated into the deeds of the R.A.F., they defeated the enemy. Churchill said: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned upon us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister and perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Q. What was it Churchill said about carrying on even if the British Isles were conquered?

A. On August 20, 1940 in the midst of the Battle of Britain, Churchill said: “If we had been put in the terrible position of France, a contingency now happily impossible, although, of course, it would have been the duty of all war leaders to fight on here to the end, it would also have been their duty, as I indicated in my speech of June 4, to provide as far as possible for the Naval security of Canada and our Dominions and to make sure they had the means to carry on the struggle from beyond the oceans.”

Q. That would be fine for us if we could depend upon it, but do you think Churchill really meant it? What good would it do for the British Navy to carry on if the British Isles were conquered?

A. I am sure that Churchill himself would do exactly as he said he would. He would perish with his troops or with his Navy—who can tell how or where—but he would never surrender. Can you doubt it when you hear those words of his which are as much an inspiration for us today as they were for the British when he uttered them on the last day of the evacuation of Dunkirk? They deserve to be memorized by us all. “Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas, and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

With Churchill’s picture these words are placarded in homes and offices throughout the British Empire. Their spirit is the spirit of Britain. But having said this I am compelled to add that it would be feeble-minded for us to expect that the British Navy would continue resistance to the Germans after the British Isles had been conquered.

Let us examine what the position would be if the British Isles fell. First let us ask a British Naval Officer what would happen to the Royal Navy if the British Isles were conquered. He will tell you: “There wouldn’t be any Navy left.” I can see readily how this would be true. If the Germans try invasion, the Royal Navy is going to throw itself between the home island and the invaders with a desperation such as has never been equaled in British Naval history, and that is saying a very great deal. The Germans cannot capture the British Isles by air power alone. They can land men and machine guns by air as they did at Crete, but the heavy weapons they need to beat off and batter down the formidable British artillery and heavy tanks now massed at home, they will have to land by sea. Without these weapons they cannot win. The Royal Navy will prevent their landing or perish in the attempt. The Germans will try to clear the way for their invading craft by torpedoes, mines, speedboats, Stukas, burning oil on the water, and every conceivable means, and by some perhaps not now conceivable to us. The British defenders will discard caution and risk everything. They will hurl themselves at the invader. If they lose there will surely be little left of the Navy.

But suppose there were left a British naval force large enough when taken in combination with what we could spare from the Pacific to continue to maintain practical control of the Atlantic, enough anyway to prevent any German attempt at sending an invading army to America. Could we then expect this remnant of the British Navy to retire to Canada or the United States, and continue resistance to the Germans? I do not think so.

In the first place, what would be the purpose of the British Navy in continuing resistance to the Germans after the British Isles had been captured? Would it be for the purpose of eventually reconquering the British Isles? No, because that would be impossible. This is one of those grim facts which are too ugly for most people to look at, but there is no use turning our eyes away and refusing to see that if the Germans do invade and conquer the British Isles, the British people will have finished their life. It would be the end for them, not for the duration of this war, which would in fact be ended then, but for as far into the future as the imagination can travel. The Germans might remain in possession of the British Isles or in effective control for the thousand years Hitler so often boasts about, or until they became weak through centuries of good living. Hitler would disarm the people of Britain and allow hunger to decimate them. He could count on forty per cent of the population dying of starvation in a year or so. Does this seem an exaggeration? It is only one more of those facts about Hitler which nobody would believe. The trusting Dutch would not believe what Hitler was like until he taught the people of Rotterdam. But the British people have now learned their lesson. They have totally lost the wide-eyed faith of our Lindberghs, that Hitler is “human after all.” The British know Hitler would do just what I have said, he would deliberately destroy a great part of the population, allowing to remain alive only those sufficiently broken to become good slaves. But why, you ask, could not the British Navy reconquer the British Isles, if they had our wholehearted help? The answer is that there would be no base from which to operate.

We can now contemplate reconquering Europe from the Nazis because we have a base or several possible bases from which to operate against the Reich. We have the British Isles and Russia and the Middle East, and parts of North Africa, and may have other bases before the war is over. But if the British Isles were captured, where could the British Navy land to invade and repossess them? And with what troops would this engagement be fought? With the Canadians and Australians? Nobody would dare disparage the fighting qualities of these magnificent men, but if the 46,000,000 Britishers in the British Isles had failed to throw back the German Army is it likely that 16,000,000 Canadians and Australians could defeat it? What about the United States? If we had not entered the war before the conquest of the British Isles, is it likely we would go to war after the British had been beaten? Moreover, if we did, it is inconceivable that we should beat the Germans after they had seized the resources of the United Kingdom. They would then have added to the shipbuilding capacity of the continent all the British shipyards, at this moment the most productive in the world. It might be worth our while to glance an instant at the shipbuilding situation which would exist if Germany takes the British Isles.

The shipbuilding capacity of each of the following countries is listed as of the most productive year since 1917. This was usually 1919.

	Tons
Germany	600,000
Denmark	140,000
France	210,000
Holland	240,000
Norway	60,000
Sweden	165,000
Italy	220,000
Japan	700,000
	2,335,000
United Kingdom	2,000,000
Total	4,335,000

After the defeat of Britain, Germany and her allies would possess the capacity to build 4,335,000 tons of ships a year, which is more than four times our 1941 production of around 1,000,000 tons and is even larger than our record performance in 1919 when we turned out 4,075,000 tons of ships. Admiral Land’s prediction that we would eventually build 6,000,000 tons a year remains to be fulfilled. As matters now stand if the Germans were to capture Britain, time would be on their side for the building of ships. Furthermore, of course, the Germans would inherit the vast British industrial machine, and save for the production of steel, would have the power to turn out more airplanes and munitions than we could for many years. All of this is merely to emphasize what the fall of Britain and the end of the British Navy as a fighting force against Hitler would mean to the United States.

Q. But isn’t Churchill often wrong in his military judgment? Hasn’t he made mistakes due to overconfidence?

A. It is true that Mr. Churchill has the vices of his virtues, and since his most prominent virtue is courage, he also possesses what has seemed at times to be recklessness. His sanguine temperament makes him ideally equipped to lead a nation in desperate circumstances, but his critics of whom a few still exist will never cease insisting on the obvious, that he makes mistakes, as though it were not the hoariest of adages that only the man who never does anything commits no errors. They list a roll of his alleged military failures, beginning with his unsuccessful defense of Antwerp and the costly attempt to take the Dardanelles in the last war; and in this war Norway, Greece, and Crete. But if these events are analyzed it will be seen that each of them had its justification.

Many military critics looking back at the last war now agree that Mr. Churchill was right to advocate holding Antwerp as an Allied strong point behind the German lines, and if the Allied High Command had supported him sufficiently Churchill’s defense might have succeeded. The Dardanelles attempt—which used to be the failure his enemies most enjoyed—was in the view of most military men today a brilliant conception which would have ended the war victoriously for the Allies two years earlier, if Churchill’s plan had been carried out as it could have been. We know now not only that the campaign could have succeeded from the outset and at comparatively little cost, if the Churchill timetable had been scrupulously kept, but also that the straits could have been captured even at the very end if one last push had been made. One of Raymond Swing’s best stories is of his experience as a war correspondent with the Turks, whom he saw hoarding their last few rounds of ammunition as, to their astonishment, the British steamed away, losing with a completely un-British lack of persistence. It was jealousy more than anything else that spoiled the Dardanelles campaign, Kitchener’s jealousy of Churchill.

In his old age, Kitchener, the Army chief, obstinately refused to do what the Navy chief advised, and the end was failure. It was perhaps the most keenly felt failure in the life of Churchill when he resigned after the Dardanelles. Anyone who reads the painstaking account he has written of the campaign in his history of the war, The World Crisis, may perceive how heavy the blow was. Even clearer evidence are the pictures of him in his country place at Chartwell. One for which he sat immediately after the Dardanelles campaign shows him looking years older than a picture of him before the campaign began. No, the Dardanelles ought to be remembered to Churchill’s credit, and it will be eventually.

In this war its place has been given by his critics to Norway, Crete, and Greece. Ed Angly, my companion in flight from France, used humorously to wonder if the British were ever going to cease retreating and my reply was that they probably never would until they had retreated to victory. The Norwegian campaign discouraged many, and critics on both sides of the Atlantic demanded to know why the British secret service had not known in advance of the German intention to invade Norway; why the Royal Navy had not prevented invasion; why the British Army landed in the north could not hold on.

The reproach of faulty information can be leveled only by persons not acquainted with the nature of the Gestapo. It must not have escaped general attention that when the German Army marches into a captured territory, for a few days news of a sort continues to trickle out, and we may hope that British or other enemy agents continue to function during this time. But as soon as the Gestapo appears, with Himmler directing its hordes of agents in civilian clothes, and its tens of thousands of black-uniformed SS, it is as though an asbestos curtain had fallen on the frontiers of the country, and from then on the silence of the grave envelops the land. I was not surprised that Hitler could strike with such devastating secrecy; what victim of his has been warned except by the general reputation of the invader? Even the Bolsheviks were plaintively surprised when the “assassin of the working classes” so violently dissolved his friendship with the “scum of the earth.” We may be sure that if Hitler were ever put, by the fall of Britain, in a position to attack the Western Hemisphere, we would also be surprised, not by the action but by the time and method. The Norwegian surprise was no fault of Churchill.

The question why the British could not hold on is one that is put not only about Norway but about Crete and Greece and it may be put again before the last battle is fought. The answer is one which may have to be borne in mind for a long time. It is contained in the simplest facts about the war, which tend to be forgotten in the riot of daily news. The principal fact is that Britain after two years of war has not yet caught up with the numbers and equipment of the German war machine built by a population double that of the British over seven years of peacetime preparation and two of war. The British have fought on nearly every one of their battlefields so far with inferior numbers against superior material and better-trained men. Let those of us in America who imagine we have only to call a few million boys to the colors and train them a year in order to have an army, consider the British experience. The British soldiers are only now after more than two years of war training, becoming a capable modern army, about one-third the size of Britain’s “medium-sized” army.

Finally we heard the criticism that Churchill’s decision to send troops to Greece was a mistake, since he knew they could not hold out against the Germans. “Political” reasons, it was said, ought not to govern military decisions. But what is the war being fought about if not to re-establish honor among nations? Britain was sworn to come to the aid of Greece. Had she failed to do so, forlorn though the hope was of immediate success, she would have lost a good part of that moral reputation which is worth more than many army corps to her today. This “political” decision was made in the sense of the classical definition of politics, “that branch of ethics dealing with the ethical relations and duties of states.”

Churchill did make one public mistake, and it was shared by hopeful millions, when he said at the beginning of the Norwegian campaign, “Herr Hitler has committed a grave strategic error in spreading the war so far to the north.” The man who had almost never underestimated the Germans did so that time.

Q. Wasn’t that apparent error in judgment perhaps really a piece of good-cheer propaganda for the people?

A. I do not think so; it was a real mistake based on his own audacity, yet who would not prefer a leadership which tries and fails to one which does not try at all? In Churchill the British have one leader who understands that wars are never won on the defensive, and we may be sure that he can be depended upon to seize the first conceivable opportunity to carry the war into Hitler’s territory. The offensive spirit never had a more consistent exponent than Churchill, as in his proclamation:

“We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of his Nazi regime; from this nothing will turn us—nothing. We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his men. We shall fight him by land, we shall fight him by sea, we shall fight him in the air, until, with God’s help, we have rid the earth of his shadow and liberated his peoples from the yoke.”

This eloquence of Churchill is a gift from Heaven for our side during these terrible years, when confusion of mind is the greatest foe of the democracies. One of the most famous sayings of Hitler, quoted by Rauschning is: “Mental confusion, contradiction of feeling, indecisiveness, panic; these are our weapons.”

We in America can see how effective these weapons are. Consider the mental confusion, indecisiveness, and conflicting feelings aroused in the United States by the speeches of Hitler’s American Quislings, the Lindberghs and Wheelers. The counterpart of these circles existed in England but they were long ago rendered powerless and even speechless by the analytical eloquence of Churchill. Take the case of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Hitler undoubtedly expected to divide the outside world by proclaiming his “Holy Crusade” against Bolshevism. But Churchill choked this deceit in its inception. The Germans began their attack on Russia at four o’clock in the morning, and before the day was out Churchill had given the world his answer. Other statesmen might have waited a day or even a week. Churchill gave Hitler no time to spread mental confusion. “Any man or state,” Churchill declared, “who fights against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe.... Hitler’s invasion of Russia is no more than a prelude to an attempted invasion of the British Isles.... The Russian danger is therefore our danger and the danger of the United States.... Let us redouble our exertions and strike with united strength while life and power remain.” This declaration, swift and uncompromising as a bullet, was equivalent to the loss of a great battle for Hitler. I am sure he entertained hopes that he could induce Britain even to stop fighting in order that he could more easily destroy Bolshevik Russia. Churchill’s speed prevented the question from even being debated. This is the finest example of leadership. The Prime Minister did not wait to find out by Gallup poll or otherwise what the British people thought. He boldly led them.

Q. Do you think the flight of Hess to England had any connection with the German attack on Russia which followed six weeks later?

A. Hess fled to England May 10, and Hitler attacked Russia June 21. I think there must have been a connection, and I have my theory of it, but it is only a theory. I think Hess may have carried Churchill a message from Hitler saying he was going to attack Russia, offering a negotiated peace, and soliciting the benevolent neutrality if not the active aid of Britain to destroy the Bolshevik menace. We may be sure that whatever was the purpose of Hess’s visit, Churchill knows all about it by now.

There are two passages in Churchill’s speech after the invasion of Russia which might bear on Hess. In one place he says, “All this was no surprise to me. I gave clear and precise warnings to Stalin of what was coming.” And then, as though he realized that this statement might indicate that he had specific foreknowledge of the German plans against Russia, Churchill adds, “I gave him warnings as I have given warnings to others before. I can only hope that these warnings did not fall unheeded.” Then at another point Churchill emphasized: “We will never parley, we will never negotiate with Hitler or any of his men.” That might refer to Hess’s effort to negotiate. We know that if Hess had carried such a proposal to Churchill it would have been rejected, and if Churchill warned Stalin it is very likely Stalin profited by the warning. It has been argued, however, that the British could have allowed Hess to believe, and to transmit to Hitler his belief, that the proposal would be accepted. This would have served to encourage Hitler to go ahead with his plans and attack Russia. We can be certain that in the meeting between Hess and Churchill, the Prime Minister did not come off second best.

I knew Hess personally—not very well, but well enough to have formed an estimate of his character. On the basis of his character I would say we could exclude a great many alleged explanations of his flight. He was brave and led a life of hazardous adventure. He was not likely to flee for cowardly reasons. He was first in the personal esteem of Hitler and Hitler was the only person who could have threatened his life. Himmler could not do so, nor Goering. He was a quiet, unambitious fellow and had few enemies. I do not believe fear had anything to do with the flight. He was devoted to Hitler and it is almost inconceivable that he should have done anything contrary to the Fuehrer’s wishes. He was never a policy maker, meddled not at all in the high politics of the party or state, but merely delivered speeches on order, and acted as a sort of super-private secretary and valet to his master. It is not likely that he went to England to advance a policy of his own, as was widely believed before the German attack on Russia. Many signs point to the probability that Hess was acting as Hitler’s emissary to try to dupe Churchill into withdrawing from the war and sanctioning the attack on Russia. The objections are, of course, that it is hard to believe that Hitler could have been such a fool as to think such an attempt feasible, or that he would risk losing his valued confederate on a mission with such little likelihood of success, or that he would have risked the revelation of his plans to the Russians. Yet if Hess had fled because he was afraid, or because he thought Germany was losing, or because he had split with Hitler, or for any other reason discreditable to the Nazi cause, surely the British by now would have given the facts to the public. It would have made the best propaganda in the world. I heard Jan Valtin, author of Out of the Night, advance the suggestion that Hess, who was always a sensitive fellow, with a touch of sissy in his carriage, and who was attached to the Fuehrer with an almost morbid devotion, might have succumbed to a fit of pique; he might have been slighted by Hitler before one of his rivals, as Goering or Himmler or Goebbels or Rosenberg, and might have leaped into his plane and left the country to “make Hitler sorry.” This is an engaging theory. I will stick to mine.

Q. What is the secret of Churchill’s success?

A. His appetite for creation. He is as eager to create as Hitler is to destroy life. He cannot live without creating. Hitler cannot live without destroying. Churchill’s courage, wit, and eloquence are matched by his industry. He does an incredible amount of work. Before he came back into the government he never let a day go by without writing at least 2,000 or 3,000 words. His powers of concentration are phenomenal. His memory is prodigious. He dictates everything he writes. I have visited him in his workroom on the top floor of his country home at Chartwell in Kent. A shelf about breast-high runs the length of the room, and on it he has arranged his books of reference, notes, and documents. I was there when he was finishing his monumental life of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. There were twenty or thirty volumes lying open on the shelf, with paper slips marking other passages to be consulted. His practice is to walk up and down the room, glancing here and there at his various works of reference, dictating all the time to a secretary. As in the composition of his speeches, he has a first draft typed with plenty of space for corrections and interlining. This is returned for recopying and sometimes half a dozen drafts are necessary before the final form is completed. The result of this striving after perfection is something as near approaching perfection as one can find in the works of any writer of, what I might call, inspired history. I remember once a conversation about Churchill’s writing ability with Alexander Woollcott. I thought I had been as appreciative as one could be, but Aleck broke in: “No, Knick, you haven’t said enough. Churchill is the greatest master of the English language since the men who wrote the King James version of the Bible.” There is a nobility and grandeur about Churchill’s oratory which no literature I know outside the Bible can approach. On July 14, 1940 when Hitler’s army had swept all before it save the British Isles, Churchill said: “And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach, and face the worst that the tyrant’s might and enmity can do. Bearing ourselves humbly before God, but conscious that we serve an unfolding purpose, we are ready to defend our native land against the invasion by which it is threatened. We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone. Here in this strong City of Refuge which enshrines the title deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization; here, girt about by the seas and oceans where the Navy reigns; shielded from above by the prowess and devotion of our airmen—we await undismayed the impending assault. Perhaps it will come tonight. Perhaps it will come next week. Perhaps it will never come. We must show ourselves equally capable of meeting sudden violent shock, or what is perhaps a harder test, a prolonged vigil. But be the ordeal sharp or long, or both, we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley; we may show mercy—we shall ask for none.”

Can this language be matched except by the adjurations of the prophets of old? And what could surpass the fiery blast of his invective turned upon Hitler? “This wicked man,” he said, “the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroying hatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, has now resolved to try to break our famous island race by a process of indiscriminate slaughter and destruction. What he has done is to kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world, which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he has caused in London have been removed. He has lighted a fire which will burn with a steady and consuming flame until the last vestiges of Nazi tyranny have been burnt out of Europe and until the Old World—and the New—can join hands to rebuild the temples of man’s freedom and man’s honor, upon foundations which will not soon or easily be overthrown.”

It is interesting to catalogue the various words Churchill has used to describe Hitler, and to note that he prefers the simplest descriptives, “wicked,” “evil,” and “bad.” What other speaker could use the childish adjective “bad” and make it so effective as did Churchill on April 27, 1941 when he said: “In February, as you may remember, that bad man in one of his raving outbursts threatened us with a terrifying increase in numbers and activities of his U-boats....” And again on February 9: “We must all of us have been asking ourselves what is that wicked man whose crime-stained regime and system are at bay and in the toils, what has he been preparing during these winter months?” And earlier on October 1, 1939: “How soon victory will be gained depends upon how long Herr Hitler and his group of wicked men, whose hands are stained with blood and soiled with corruption, can keep their grip upon the docile, unhappy German people.” Once he calls him a “cornered maniac,” and in the same speech of November 12, 1939 says: “I have the sensation and also the conviction that that evil man over there and his cluster of confederates are not sure of themselves as we are sure of ourselves; that they are harassed in their guilty souls by the thought and by the fear of an ever approaching retribution for their crimes, and for the orgy of destruction into which they have plunged us all....” On March 30, 1940 he refers to “Hitler’s murderous rage,” and says, “In his frenzy, this wicked man and the criminal regime which he has conceived and erected, increasingly turn their malice upon the weak.”

Constantly recurs the simile of bloodstained, foul hands, perhaps best in Churchill’s speech of June 12, 1941 when he said: “We can not yet see how deliverance will come or when it will come, but nothing is more certain than that every trace of Hitler’s footsteps, every stain of his infected and corroding fingers will be sponged and purged and if need be, blasted from the surface of the earth.”

The most famous of Churchill’s epigrams is the one now known by the entire English-speaking world, about the Royal Air Force, delivered in his speech of August 20, 1940 on “The War Situation” in the House of Commons. I heard that speech and particularly noted the epigram, but I cannot now certify which of the two current versions he actually delivered. As I remember, he said, “Never in the field of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few.” But in the collected volume of his speeches edited by his son, Randolph, the sentence runs, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” I have seen both of these versions on placards in British stores and offices. Hansard must have the original version and it is possible Churchill or his son may have made an amendment in the volume of speeches.

Q. What are Churchill’s principal interests?

A. I am going to make an omnibus answer to this and include replies to a score of questions usually asked about Mr. Churchill. Roughly, in order of importance Mr. Churchill’s principal interests are England; the war, the Royal Navy; his family, past, present, and future; power; politics; the English language; public speaking; writing history and making it; writing journalism; reading history, biography, literature; the English-speaking people; Scotch whisky; good food, good wines, cigars; the French people; all other people; conversation; favorable publicity; unfavorable publicity; ceremony; painting; bricklaying; swimming (in younger days polo); six-pack bezique; his hats; his shoes; his clothes; and of course “that bloodthirsty guttersnipe.”

Compare this with Hitler’s interests: power; Hitler-Germany; the war; the German Army; barbarism; haranguing crowds in public; haranguing friends in private; propaganda; rewriting history; reading military history (and making it); suppressing journalism; the Jews; colossal architecture; the movies; vegetarian food; and of course “the warmonger Churchill.”

By this comparison I do not put the two men on the same level, for morally they cannot be considered as belonging to the same species, but it is interesting to note the contrasts that come out in such a list. It is not merely the contrast between the aristocrat who is striving to preserve free life for common men and the “guttersnipe” who is bent upon enslaving them all; it is a contrast of two worlds.

Churchill has a profound historical sense and the thought of himself as a part of the broad stream of the British people, flowing from the distant past into the limitless future, is never absent from his speaking and writing. He is never just Churchill, he is Churchill of British history, of the Marlboroughs, but now more than ever Churchill of the British people, with whom he has established a community of feeling seldom equaled in the relationship of leader to people. It has always been Hitler’s boast that “I am Germany!” An Italian journalist thinking to jibe at England during the tormented months of the Blitz said mockingly that the British Isles seemed to be inhabited by “forty million Churchills.” He was right, for under Churchill’s leadership the entire population has become animated with his courage and he is England to the same degree and by the same psychological process as Hitler is Germany. Hitler obtained his ascendancy over the German people by expressing their hitherto largely unconscious aspirations, for revenge, aggression, expansion, and conquest. At the height of the British people’s peril they turned spontaneously and unanimously to Churchill whom Providence seemed to have reserved for this critical hour, and they entrusted to him the fulfillment of their aspirations to beat off the enemy, save their families, and win victory. I was there and for four months watched the British people and in particular the eight million Londoners endure the anxiety of expected invasion and the full blast of the greatest attack ever made on a civilian population in history and I know that their faith in Churchill was a most important factor in their endurance. Every Londoner thought as the bombs fell, “Churchill is there; he can’t be beaten; we can’t be beaten.” Churchill “became” England. This is the experience that has elevated him above himself, fulfilled his character, made him great. Today Churchill’s every faculty of soul, mind, and body is devoted to the service of the British Commonwealth. Today every soul and resource in the German Commonwealth is devoted to the service of Hitler.

Churchill actively directs the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force but his love is the Navy. One can tell from his speeches how frequently his mind dwells upon it. It remains his favorite branch of the services, despite the noble tribute he has paid the R.A.F. He reserves for it words such as he would use otherwise only to describe Old England herself. “Amphibious” is the term he likes best to define the power of Britain in arms. His conviction of the paramount importance of the Fleet was thus dramatically expressed: “On them, as we conceived, floated the might, majesty, dominion and power of the British Empire. All our long history built up century after century, all our great affairs in every part of the globe, all the means of livelihood and safety of our faithful, industrious, active population depended upon them. Open the seacocks and let them sink beneath the surface and in a few minutes, half an hour at the most—the whole outlook of the world would be changed. The British Empire would dissolve like a dream; each isolated community struggling forward by itself; the central power of union broken; mighty provinces, whole Empires in themselves, drifting helplessly out of control, and falling a prey to strangers; and Europe after one sudden convulsion passing into the iron grip and rule of the Teuton and of all that the Teutonic system meant. There would only be left far off across the Atlantic, unarmed, unready and as yet uninstructed America, to maintain single-handed law and freedom among men.” That was written about the Royal Navy mobilized for war in August 1914 but with what melancholy accuracy it reflects the situation of today, except that this time the Teutonic might is such that Europe has already had its one sudden convulsion and has passed under the rule of a Teutonic system far grimmer than anything the Hohenzollerns would have imposed. And once again, after a score of years of warning, America still finds herself “unarmed, unready and as yet uninstructed,” dependent now for her very life upon the continued existence of that Navy which Churchill apostrophizes.

Now of course the war takes all of Churchill’s time, but in normal circumstances he has an enormous number of interests and activities. He concentrates fiercely upon each in turn, and everything he does he does at least well, some things he does excellently, and some he does superlatively. Fighting, speaking, writing, eating, drinking, sleeping, smoking, all are the source of intense satisfaction. He relishes every moment in his life. This war was made for him, because fighting is life itself to Churchill. In the last war he was a subordinate and could not thoroughly enjoy the fight when others checked his combat plans. Now he is unchecked by anybody except the British people, and they have shown they are only too glad to let him savor to the full what are to him the joys of responsibility in the greatest fight with the greatest consequences in the memory of mankind. Before the war the most exciting form of conflict was politics, about which Churchill once said, “Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous.” He takes the keenest pleasure in writing, but he would always give up his work on a book to go back into politics, as he did when this war began.

He was just finishing his monumental History of the English Speaking Peoples when he was called to the Admiralty. I understand the History is to be in several volumes, but despite its size Churchill wrote the whole thing in a year, dictating thousands of words a day. He had worked on it, gathering material for many years, and such is the organization of his mind and so precise and comprehensive is his memory than when he once began he was able to dictate it almost as fast as he could talk. I have heard that the publisher has already set the book up but is waiting presumably for the end of the war to release it.

Today his prewar books, as My Early Days, are reprinted and have become best sellers. Even his prewar newspaper articles are eagerly dragged out, and reprinted both here and in England to sell at high prices. His books have been phenomenally successful and his income from them, from journalism, and from lectures has been for most of his life considerably higher than the $50,000 a year he receives as Prime Minister. It was always a financial sacrifice for him to go into office despite the comparatively liberal salaries of British ministers. He has no interest in money. His earnings have been large ever since he was a war correspondent in South Africa, but he has spent money as fast as it came, on his estate, his family, and on good living. One of his best American friends, Bernard Baruch, once tried to instruct him in the art of stock exchange speculation but nothing came of it. Churchill had for it the interest he has for everything in life, and wanted to learn it, but he lacked the indispensable requirement for amassing a fortune, namely an overwhelming desire to make money. The power given by the possession of money is so paltry compared with political power that none of the great statesmen, or even the wicked dictators, have exhibited any interest in it. What use has Hitler for money? I doubt that he has touched any for years.

Until this war began it was power that appealed to Churchill more than anything else in the world. It is ironical that now he possesses it to a greater degree than he could ever have dreamed of, power for its own sake he no longer wants. But that has not lessened his aesthetic capacity to enjoy it. No stress of war, nor the imminence of awful danger, can prevent him from enjoying the power of his spoken or written word. You can feel his artistic satisfaction as you hear him in the House of Commons, delivering on a desperate day passages calculated not only to encourage, guide, and inspire, but to excite admiration for their felicity.

We American correspondents in London used regularly to attend the House every time Churchill spoke, although none of us need have done so, since the speeches were delivered into our offices almost instantaneously by ticker. We wanted to hear him in person not only for the stirring drama of it but because as journalists we wished to listen to the greatest living master of our craft. The trouble of attending Parliament was considerable, for the old House, now in ruins, was too small to accommodate even the Members if they all attended, and the foreign press was allotted so few seats it was necessary to apply days in advance to get a place. The narrow seats with too little space for knees and feet were uncomfortable, the acoustics poor, but the view from our gallery was perfect.

There sits the government, the bald head of Mr. Churchill shining among the Members with unmistakable authority. The benches are nearly empty until the time draws near for the Prime Minister to speak; a few minutes before he rises the House is jammed with Members sitting even on the foot of the Speaker’s dais. The Prime Minister rises. There is dead silence as Mr. Churchill lays before him a sheaf of what are technically called notes, as it is prohibited in the House for any member, even the Prime Minister, to read a speech. This rule is presumably to prevent a member from using a speech written by someone else. The familiar Washington ghost writers would have little employment in Westminster. Mr. Churchill would have about as much use for one as Shakespeare would have had. Mr. Churchill’s “notes” are in fact his completely written speech which he has memorized by rereading the final copy quickly on the way to the House. He has worked on this speech for several hours a day for eight days, writing, rewriting, until he finally has it typed on sheets half the size of standard typewriter paper. Thereafter he never looks at it. He has it before him, and he automatically turns the pages, but his delivery is perfectly extemporaneous, and you would imagine as you sat there watching and listening that those incomparable phrases were conceived at the moment, and to the satisfaction of hearing them is added the illusion of being present at their creation. Mr. Churchill himself insists he cannot speak well impromptu and I have heard that his son Randolph, recently seated in Parliament, is considered a better offhand speaker than his father.

It is an extraordinary coincidence that this greatest orator of modern times should have an impediment of speech similar, we may imagine, to that of the greatest orator of ancient times, Demosthenes. Churchill has almost overcome the impediment. His delivery is not what we would consider the best. He depends not at all on gesture. Now and then he pauses to glance over the top of his spectacles with defiance or curiosity. His stance is determined, not graceful. For the most part he stands quietly in the same spot, and only moves a step backward or forward when he wishes to emphasize a passage. His voice is sonorous, strong, not the golden voice of a William Jennings Bryan, but also not the vulgar guttural of Hitler. Yet when Churchill speaks of Hitler there comes into his tone a note that promises to meet all the Nazi’s brutality and pay interest. Churchill’s voice is ideally adapted to the radio and the millions of Americans who listen to him on the air have heard him at his best. Many have exclaimed at his accent that he does not talk like an Englishman. His is the accent of Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point, which is nearer the American way of speaking than the curious upper-class cockney affected by some graduates of Oxford and Cambridge.

I do not know why Mr. Churchill avoids as much as possible making extemporaneous speeches, unless it is his passion for perfection, because as a conversationalist he is without superior and he has few peers. One of them was his intimate friend, Lord Birkenhead, whose power of expression was almost on a par with Churchill’s, as I had the opportunity to observe once in Berlin when the then most brilliant lawyer in England attended a luncheon of the Anglo-American Press Association and dazzled us with his talk. I remember the answer he gave when someone asked what he thought of Mussolini. “Mussolini,” he remarked, “bestrides Italy like a Colossus, but to judge a rider one must consider the kind of horse he rides.”

I have listened to Mr. Churchill talk at the dinner table and he is as brilliant there as he is in the House of Commons. His conversational style has the same classical quality of his writing and public speaking. Every sentence is rounded and balanced; none is left incomplete, and I should think that ninety-five per cent of everything he says in talking with his friends could be taken down by a stenographer and reproduced without changing a syllable. At the same time there is no studied effect and the listeners have not the feeling they are attending a recitation or declamation. They are transported back to the time when, either in Ancient Greece or in eighteenth century Europe, men cultivated the art of speaking and especially of conversation. Who knows what effect it will have upon English education and English habits of conversation to have had as a Prime Minister during the war a master of the word such as appears only seldom in centuries. The oratory of Churchill must already have influenced the language standards of the English-speaking world, even though imperceptibly, for it is impossible that so many millions should have listened to him and read his speeches without having their taste improved. As a contrast it is interesting to observe what the effect has already been upon the German language to have had the apostle of illiteracy as the head of the German Reich for eight years; the language of Goethe and Heine has been supplanted deliberately by a coarse vulgarization of German chosen for its appeal to the lowest instincts of the population.

Churchill attracted much attention when in a memorandum to all government offices he asked for a more effective and economic use of the English language in official communications and demanded the abandonment of the jargon currently in use by bureaucrats. He can be colloquial. The first time I met Mr. Churchill was at a luncheon given by Lady Colefax, who has done more to help American correspondents in London than almost anyone there. Present were Mr. Churchill, J. L. Garvin, the crusty, brilliant editor of the Observer and one-time editor of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Somerset Maugham, Mrs. Simpson, not yet the wife of Edward, Harold Nicolson, Peter Fleming, Jan Masaryk, and a number of others. The conversation was almost exclusively between Churchill and Garvin, and well it might be, for Garvin is one of the few who can talk on anything like equal terms with the master, and indeed on this occasion Garvin practically talked Churchill silent. It was just two years before the war, but the topic was even then the position of Russia, and Garvin exclaimed, “Do you mean to say you would throw in your lot with the Bolsheviks?” The Churchillian reply was, “I mean just that, old cock!” with a remark to the effect that when one had to face an enemy like Germany it would be only common sense to try for the help of any ally no matter how distasteful otherwise.

We can see from Churchill’s policy of helping Russia since the German attack how consistent he has remained. On the day after the Russians marched into Poland—and horrified the world of fellow travelers and caused all except party-liners and a few foresighted realists to draw back in aversion from this manifestation of Red Imperialism—I had a talk with Mr. Churchill, who had been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty a fortnight before. I asked him whether, since Great Britain had guaranteed the territory of Poland against aggression and had gone to war with Germany because of the German attack on Poland, one could now consider that Great Britain was at war with Russia since the Russians also had attacked Poland? I am not at liberty to quote him, but he gave the answer in public a fortnight later when after the fall of Warsaw he declared: “We could have wished that the Russian Armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland instead of as invaders. But that the Russian armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.... I can not forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

Thus early and late Churchill maintained that it was desirable to attempt to bring Russia into arms as an ally against the Germans, and he was one of the few men in Britain who could advocate such a policy without being suspected of sympathizing with the Bolsheviks. Only Finland shook his resolution to do nothing to alienate the Russians and it is interesting now to recall his words uttered in the midst of the Russian assault on Finland: “Only Finland, superb, nay, sublime in the jaws of peril—Finland shows what free men can do. The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent. They have exposed for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force. Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle. Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace and proves it base and abominable in war.”

His reaction of sympathy with the people of Finland fighting against “servitude worse than death” is only one of countless examples that could be named of the little-appreciated fact that he is an extremely sensitive man. His gruff way sometimes conceals it, but there is not a man in public life anywhere who feels the miseries of this stricken world with more compassion than Churchill. When eighteen months after these caustic remarks about the Communist regime, Russia was attacked and Mr. Churchill expressed his sympathy with the Russian people, it is certain he meant it, although it was good politics too. Incidentally I am convinced that one of the reasons why he is loath to discuss detailed plans for what a victorious Britain would like the postwar world to be, is the problem of Russia. Certainly the vast majority of British people would like to see the Bolshevik government replaced by some democratic regime.

I am sure one reason for Churchill’s aversion to Bolshevism is his strong family feeling, and his repugnance for the Communist attempt to subordinate the family, if not to abolish it, as was originally attempted in the Soviet Union. For his family in the past, his noble and famous ancestors, he has profound respect and a feeling of proud affectionate gratitude which has led him to devote a good part of his literary labors to the biography of his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, and to the massive life of the Duke of Marlborough. To his present family, his wife Clementine, his daughters Sarah, Diana, and Mary, and his son Randolph, he devotes more time and attention than most men with a fraction of his responsibilities. Randolph’s marriage to the beautiful Pamela Digby was a delight to Mr. Churchill. It represented the only chance of the perpetuation of the Churchill name, and when Winston Spencer, the first grandchild to bear his name was born, he became the favorite member of the dynasty.

Churchill’s aversions are just as strong and notable as his predilections. They might be listed, without order: Hitler, Mussolini, Trotzky, Nazism, Communism, the New Deal, Prohibition, hypocrisy, cruelty, thick soup, bores, mediocrity, cowardice, stupidity, sentimentality, bigotry, muddling, proletarianism, poor English, poor food, poor anything except poor people. He is intolerant of anything but the best. He is the perfect exemplar of a gentleman who never offends anyone except intentionally. His manners to his friends are of an old-fashioned courtliness. When he bids a guest farewell Mr. Churchill comes to the driveway to see him off with a handshake and a Godspeed. His manners to his enemies are savage and the lash of his tongue is feared from Berlin to Whitehall. He can be wounding to a colleague who has failed to meet requirements. One Cabinet Minister complained that when Churchill dismissed him he “kicked me out as though I had been a servant.” As the war wears on and the duties of office become heavier, his patience has frayed and the single criticism one can frequently hear is that he has become short-tempered. He is particularly intolerant of Parliamentary inquiries which would require the Government to reveal facts of military value to the enemy. Constantly, naive Members ask such questions, and if Mr. Churchill chooses personally to reply he frequently makes his answer blister. Yet there has never been a Prime Minister with a more meticulous regard for the rights, functions, and ceremonies of Parliament than Mr. Churchill. This regard is such that he has sometimes been criticized for delaying action until all forms are duly complied with by Parliament.

Churchill’s restless energy is such that his associates are both inspired and compelled to work harder than they ever did with anyone else. Shortly after he went to the Admiralty I visited his office and chatted with his secretaries. They were obviously sincere in their hero worship of him, but equally sincere in their sighs of weariness over the strenuous schedule they have to follow. Rauschning describes Hitler as an essentially lazy man who “does not know how to work steadily. Indeed is incapable of working. He hates to have to read with concentration. He rarely reads a book through; usually he only begins it.” Could there be found a greater contrast than this with the habits of Churchill whose perpetual industry and powers of concentration are as important elements in his genius as intellect? As an illustration of his ability to concentrate I know no better anecdote than the one told me by Randolph. It was during the months before the war when Mr. Churchill was writing the History of the English Speaking Peoples, and every day world without end, he turned out, generally in the evening, his stint of words from 2,000 upward. It made no difference what was happening in international affairs, or what other demands were made upon his time. No excitements or exigencies were allowed to disturb his writing. But events grew bigger and bigger and to the prescient eye of Mr. Churchill it became every day more clear that war was certain to come, and that a violent gesture by Hitler might precipitate it any moment. Suddenly Hitler marched into Prague, breaking the fresh vows he had made at Munich, deliberately insulting Britain and France, cynically strangling the rump state he had sworn to respect. Throughout Europe ran a shudder and the mind of every man was absorbed with anxious exploration of the possibilities. On that evening Mr. Churchill rose from dinner, and as he started upstairs to his workroom to write his stint, he exclaimed to his family, “It will be difficult for me tonight to concentrate my undivided attention upon the reign of King James II, but I shall do so.”

Another time I visited Chartwell with Randolph and as we walked through the garden I saw a new brick building and remarked that it had not been there before. “No,” Randolph explained. “Father just built it.” “You mean, had it built?” I asked. “Oh no, built it with his own hands.” I had heard about Mr. Churchill’s bricklaying but had no idea it extended to building whole houses. This one I found was his studio. He had laid every brick in the building, and evidently was expert as a professional. He particularly likes difficult jobs such as arches and corners and curves. The Brick-layers Union at one time admitted him to membership, but later called in his card on instructions from the central office which objected to the Union’s accepting a Tory politician as a member! This brick house, however, was not built by any honorary bricklayer. If Mr. Churchill ever falls upon evil times it may serve to recommend him for employment. While Churchill, without having to do so and merely as a hobby, became a qualified artisan in the building trades, Hitler could not even out of dire necessity keep a job in the building trades. Churchill might earn a living also as a painter. The studio walls were hung from top to bottom with the product of his brush, signed Charles Morin. There were landscapes, seascapes, and every variety of scene, many of them recording vacations on the French Riviera, his favorite resort. Presently we joined Mr. Churchill swimming in the outdoor pool he had also personally constructed. Later he played cards with his wife. Six-pack bezique was the game. Guests had tea on the lawn in the shade of the trees.

These were the last peaceful days before the hurricane which it is fashionable to say will sweep away all that comfortable, easy, country-home England. I do not believe it will do anything of the kind. The war will certainly leave little of parasitic England. The vast accumulations of inherited wealth are being swept now into the hopper of war. It will no longer be possible for Francis Williams to declare that eighty per cent of the wealth of England belongs to six per cent of the population, and that nearly half of the national income goes to ten percent of the people. But Churchill’s type of good living, country house and all, will not disappear, for it is based upon his own labors, as we could see demonstrated before our eyes. After the card game Mr. Churchill went upstairs to his workroom and about an hour later came down with the manuscript of a 1,500-word article for the Daily Telegraph which he had just dictated. I read it with professional envy, for in only a few minutes he had produced one of his characteristic gems, informative, learned, witty, for which he would receive a remuneration about equivalent to the annual income of an average American newspaperman. He frequently surpasses this feat in economizing time. He used to write many of his newspaper articles on the way up to London in his automobile, dictating to his secretary.

Churchill has now by act of Parliament completely dictatorial powers and can order any British citizen to perform any service or can confiscate any property, but he has yet to be criticized for ruling arbitrarily. He hates silly questions and will walk away from a bore, or cut a hypocrite down with an epigram. Whisky, he believes, is a boon to mankind, and he has never been the worse, but often the better for it. The two men he most abhors in our time are Hitler and Trotzky, both teetotalers. He is a gourmand, that is to say a man with a sensitive taste in food who likes a lot of it. Once he was in ill health and went to a noted specialist who, contrary to the fashion of the day and despite the patient’s well-upholstered body, advised him to eat more food. He follows the prescription enthusiastically.

One night, about eighteen months before the war, traveling from London to Paris, I had the good luck to be on the same train with Mr. Churchill. After he had finished his work he invited me to join him. All the way from London to Dover he had dictated to a secretary who was to return to London. This is the way he works, incessantly, never wasting a moment. Our train was run onto a massive ferryboat, a new system of crossing the Channel and this was Mr. Churchill’s first experience of it. It was bitterly cold. Mr. Churchill wore a heavy fur-lined coat. We started to explore the ferryboat. Word got about among the crew that Winston Churchill was aboard, and speedily men gathered to salute him and mention their service in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, which he organized. The Captain invited us to the bridge. Steaming out of Dover harbor with an icy wind cutting our faces, we listened as the Captain pointed out the lights of two wrecks near the harbor and ventured the opinion that “You, Sir, I believe ordered those ships sunk to block the harbor entrance to submarines?” Mr. Churchill believed the skipper was right.

With unflagging energy Mr. Churchill led the way about the ship from the bridge to the hold, stopping now and then to exchange a few sentences with his admirers. Churchill had been out of the government then for many years, but he remained the best-known figure in the realm and one could measure his popularity by the reception he received on the ferryboat. Toward midnight we climbed to the smoking room where Mr. Churchill as a nightcap consumed a large platter of thick slices of rare roast beef with the appetite of John Bull. As I watched him I thought to myself that this is the way he deals with life, he devours it. When during the quiet period of the war he made an intensive inspection of the French and British positions and the Maginot line, French officers were astonished at his ability to sit up with his hosts studying and discussing the problems of war and probably a hundred other things, including certainly the dry vintage champagne he likes so well, and then appear again a few hours later at dawn for a hearty breakfast with cigar! No Frenchmen and few of any other nationality smoke cigars for breakfast, but Mr. Churchill finds them invigorating. He is seldom without one in his waking hours.

The last time I visited him he received me at about 9:30 A.M. in the upper bedroom at Number Ten Downing Street. The Prime Minister was sitting up in bed, cigar in mouth, hard at work with a kind of bed desk in front of him to hold his papers, and pinned within easy reaching distance on the wall a rack for various colored folders to hold documents of different urgencies. This man who might justly be called the most industrious human being on earth, is a believer in the maxim of Mark Twain who did most of his voluminous writing in bed: “A man’s a fool who runs when he can stand still, or stands when he can sit down, or sits when he can lie down.”

For serious writing Mr. Churchill requires the stimulus of striding up and down, but he finds that for reading and working over state papers and for dictating letters and memoranda, there is no more efficient position than sitting up in bed. To sleep Mr. Churchill does not necessarily require a bed, for such are his powers of endurance that now in his sixty-seventh year he frequently when on tours of inspection takes his night’s rest in his automobile. I remember saying good-by to him one afternoon before the Admiralty and as he was climbing into his car to drive to one of the great naval ports, his aide-de-camp asked him where he would spend the night. Mr. Churchill replied, “In the car driving back.” No Prime Minister has ever moved about his constituency so much, so tirelessly, and so dangerously as Mr. Churchill who travels day and night by blackout and under bombardment. He manages the total war effort of the Empire, but as he has repeatedly emphasized, the war will be won or lost in the British Isles, and inside this mighty fortress the Prime Minister gives the major part of his attention to his duties as Commander in Chief. He is incessantly on inspection.

Like the Captain of an old-time castle under siege, he roams from battlement to battlement, from the South of England to the North of Scotland, viewing the coast defenses, visiting naval stations, driving the newest tanks, witnessing test flights of the latest warplanes, cheering the R.A.F., the troops, the civilian population, sharing their dangers, striding through the dust of bombs, and always everywhere comprehending instantly, offering suggestions, giving the orders of the expert he is in every branch of defense. It is sometimes forgotten that if Hitler is indeed the Marshal in Chief of the German war machine, so is Churchill of the British war machine, and if Hitler has proved a military leader of intuitive genius, Churchill has incomparably more experience and scientific education in war, and certainly no less imagination than Hitler even in the narrow field of strictly military affairs. Hitler had four years of the last war as a private and corporal; has read military history; since he became Chancellor has had the counsel of the Prussian General Staff; and now has had two years’ experience of war. Churchill’s military education began with the exacting instruction of Sandhurst and for practical experience in old-fashioned combat he witnessed or took part in the Boer War, the River War in India, civil war in Cuba, and the Sudan campaign. In the first World War he helped direct the struggle from one of its most important posts, the Admiralty, conceived the tank and numerous other new devices of war, fought in France as a colonel, and all the while before and since, studied and wrote about war until he became one of its foremost historians. These experiences and studies are those of a Doctor of Philosophy compared to Hitler’s grammar school course. In the long run, granting all of Hitler’s genius, I am convinced Churchill, given the tools, will win—but not without America.

You may object that it seems absurd to compare favorably the military abilities of a commander of forces which have constantly been on the defensive with those of the chief of troops so far ever victorious. But the war is a long way from its end, and before that goal is reached, the military qualifications of Churchill may prove their superiority over Hitler’s. Churchill has not yet had the opportunity to show what he can do as a war leader pitted with equal weapons against the enemy, because the war machine he inherited from the feeble hands of Chamberlain was for a long time capable of nothing but defense. Meanwhile as the British plus American war machine is growing, it is encouraging to remember that Churchill with his background of forty years of war, study of war and leadership in war, his youthful inventive mind and eager imagination, is capable of taking everything the Germans have devised or used successfully, and improving it until with the eventually superior resources he will command, victory will be certain, provided always that the United States enters the war in time.