journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

dragged the level of earnings to the
minimum that an unemployed man
would demand."
Campbell-Bannerman and
Churchill grasped the nature of
poverty, Hill says, but Lloyd George
didn't. Once Churchill attached himself
to Lloyd George as junior lieutenant,
true reform was lost to political
expediency. Lloyd George had no political
principles, Hill believes, and attempts
at land value taxation were
gradually whittled down and disappeared.
Thus perished the opportunity
truly to eliminate the cause of poverty,
giving way to government sponsored
welfare schemes paid for by direct taxation.
"The people may go about with
state spectacles and state dentures, but
they may be made unemployed by the
taxation required to pay for these
things. Whereas the individual can take
steps to remedy poor eyesight and poor
teeth, he cannot overcome the condition
of poverty himself."
Almost alone among the Asquith
cabinet, Hill continues, Churchill saw
the truth but was unable to serve it. Yet
his 1908 statements on taxation "merit
inscription in gold lettering wherever
men deliberate state expenditure":
Taxation, raise it as you please, is a
gross and unredeemable evil....All
taxation is an evil, a necessary evil,
if you will, but still an evil, in so
far as taxation is concerned, harsh,
unmingled, and unmitigated....
When the state takes arbitrarily
from the savings or earnings of the
people sums of money, great or
small, it withdraws that money
from the healthy fructifications of
industry and trade and it diminishes—cannot
fail to diminish—
the consuming & productive energies
of the people.
It would take a better student of taxation
and economics than this writer to
evaluate Mr Hill's argument. For example,
are the issues Turgot and George
raised at the turn of the last century
valid in a world where land has long
been enclosed, where millionaires are
created without any reference to landholdings
But whatever his regrets over
the opportunities squandered by
Churchill's radical decade, Malcolm
Hill has rendered a detailed and useful
account of a little-known period in
Churchill's career.
It may be ironic that modern admirers
of Sir Winston point to his role
in creating the English Welfare State if,
as Hill says, that concept was wrong
from the beginning because it failed to
address the root causes of poverty. It
may also be that Churchill's accomplishments
during 1904-11 were comparable
to what Larry Arnn has described
as his accomplishments at Yalta
and Potsdam: "the best he could do in
the situation that then prevailed."
Older Titles Reviewed: A Flavo(u)rrul Light Soul
Charles W. Snyder
Mr.
Churchill:
MrChurx-l! ii! A Portrait,
by Philip
Guedalla.
I
London:
Hodder &
Stoughton,
1
1941, rep.
m
1945; New
York: Reynal&
Hitchcock,
1941; London:
Pan
Books (shortened to end in May
1940, source list deleted), 1951; Paris:
La Jeune Parke, n.d. (paperback);
Stockholm: P. A. Norsted & Soners
Forlag, 1942; Toronto: Musson,
1942; Buenos Aires: Claridad, 1942;
New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1943.
346 pages, illustrated. Current availability:
common and low priced.
Philip Guedalla's Mr. Churchill
(1941) portrays its subject at the
pinnacle of his prestige, the man of the
hour, the bulwark of a Britain whose
survival still hung in the balance. If we
cast our minds back to the sterner days
of 1941, it is easy to imagine the appeal
this book had, not only in Britain
but in America, where many wondered
how Churchill, the British bulldog
who rallied his embattled nation, had
become the great man who by then
dominated the world stage.
Is Mr. Churchill worth reading
today Certainly it can be read with en-
Mr. Snyder is a longtime Churchill Center
member in Savannah, Georgia.
joyment, for its style is pleasing and its
pace is fast. This is a very readable
book. But the sources available to the
author were scant, necessitating a superficial
treatment of many topics.
Compared with the meatier volumes
now available, especially the Official
Biography and such one-volume "lives"
as Pelling's, Gilbert's, Rose's and Morgan's,
Guedalla's is a very light souffle
indeed.
It is a flavorful dish nonetheless.
Philip Guedalla wrote with flowing
style and subtle humor. Because of the
book's readability, one might be
tempted to recommend it to younger
readers, who would like to learn the
basic facts of the Churchill saga before
tackling more detailed and scholarly
treatments. But Mr. Churchill does not
fully fit that bill because it ends with
the German invasion of Russia, and so
much must be learned that came afterward.
One would certainly want a student
of Churchill to know about his
role in the many strategic decisions of
the war, the conferences with other Allied
leaders, the Fulton speech, the
Nobel Prize, and the return to Downing
Street in the 1950s.
Still, Mr. Churchill retains some
interest. For one thing, just as the biographies
Churchill himself wrote tell
as much about their author as their
subjects, Mr. Churchilltdh us much
about its author, himself a notable figure.
Philip Guedalla (1889-1944) was a
popular historian and a failed politician,
who would die from disease contracted
while on a wartime mission in
the Middle East. He attained early
continued overleaf
FINEST HOUR IOS / 39