.JOURNAL OFTIIE CHURCHILL CKNTER AND ... - Winston Churchill

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The Boole or the CenturyRicnard BrookniserThe Second World War (6 Vols.), byWinston S. Churchill. Boston,Houghton Mifflin 1948-53; London:Cassell 1948-54, over 5000 pages, illustratedwith maps and plans. Still inprint. Secondhand values range from$25 for a set of book club editions toover $500 for a fine English CharrwellEdition (1956). Frequency: common.Winston Churchill's The SecondWorld War is a peerless conjunctionof subject and author. The war wasthe century's big event; Churchill wasits major hero; and his six-volumememoir displays an incisive mind and agreat voice. The war squats in mid-centurylike a hellish railroad station.Everything before hurtles in, and everythingafter spirals out. It destroyed agreat evil, Nazism, while leaving another,Communism, stronger. It stimulatedthe free nations of the world toheroism and sacrifice, while batteringand twisting their institutions.Winston Churchill was the son ofa brilliant, burned-out politician wholooked as if he would follow in his father'sfootsteps, until, early in the1930s, he foresaw the coming conflictand vainly warned Britain to prepare.When the war finally came, Churchillled his country as Prime Minister for allbut ten months. For the first year and ahalf, Britain fought, outnumbered andvirtually alone, like the Spartans atThermopylae; unlike them, the Britishsurvived.Churchill recounts his experiencesin prose shaped by a youthful dietof Macaulay and Gibbon, and sharpenedby a side-career as a journalist.Like many politicians' books, The SecondWorld War recycles speeches—butwhat speeches: "We shall fight on theWINSTON S.CHURCHILLTHLSU'ONDWORIDU'XRFinestbeaches, we shall fight on the landinggrounds, we shall fight in the fields andin the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender...." This was ademocratic leader who did not rely onghosts or focus groups.Sometimes Churchill captures thepiquant detail. When he makes a trip toParis in the spring of 1940 in a vain attemptto buck up the crumblingFrench, he notices the smoke of governmentarchives being burned at the Quaid'Orsay. Sometimes he steps back tosketch a masterly portrait. The historianJan Lukacs thought his three-page summaryof Hitler's early career one of thebest analyses of the Fiihrer's motivesever written. Always there is dramaswirling around him: his relief, even ina time of crisis, at rising to the height ofpower ("At the top, there are great simplifications");his appreciation of Americanpower and the effect it would haveafter the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,which brought the U.S. into thewar ("I slept the sleep of the saved andthankful"); a lurid scene in 1944 inwhich he and Stalin jot down on a"half-sheet of paper" the degree of influenceeach would like to have in thenations of Eastern Europe after the war.This is not light reading. Weknow, as we follow the story throughthickets of memos and daily ordeals,that it will lead not to peace, but to fourdecades of cold war, and that Britainwill be shorn of empire and great-powerstatus (Churchill suspected the first result,and could not face the second).The story is a record of wickedness anddestruction unprecedented in history.But there are also gleams of inspiration:of great men acting on right motives,and making a difference; of brave mendoing their duty.As the generations that livedthrough the Second World War fall towhat Lincoln called "the silent artilleryof time," and as history replaces memory,we have to make sure that our historiesare real—saving the world, notSaving Private Ryan. The Second WorldWar is a good place to start. $"Last Lap," Manchester Daily Dispatch, 4 August 1944, as the Allies swept toward Paris.Richard Brookhiser is the author of severalbooks, including Alexander Hamilton, American.He is a member of the selection committeewhich assembled a list of the 100 best nonfictionbooks of the 20th century. Reprintedby kind permission of National Review.FINEST HOUR 103 / 39
THE COLLECTED POETRY OF WINSTON CHURCHILLCOMPILED AND ANNOTATED BY DOUGLAS J. HALLIn declaring Winston Churchill anHonorary Citizen of the UnitedStates, President Kennedy said (quotingEd Murrow), "He mobilized the Englishlanguage and sent it into battle." ThePresident was referring in particular to1940, but Churchill's stimulating use ofhis native language was constant throughouthis long and distinguished life. Languagehas two forms, written and spoken.Churchill was a master of both. As a journalist,essayist, author, novelist, historian,biographer, editor, correspondent, communicator,conversationalist and speakerhe had few equals in any one of thosefields, much less all of them. He has beendescribed as a law unto himself in his useof words, as in so many other matters.In 1906, Churchill addressed theannual dinner of the Authors' Club:Authors are the happy people in theworld, whose work is pleasure. No onecan set himself to the writing of a pageof English composition without feelinga real pleasure in the medium in whichhe works, the flexibility and the profoundnessof his noble mother tongue.The House of Commons may do whatit likes, and so may the House of Lords;the American market may have its bottomknocked out, the heathen mayrage in every part of the globe; Consulsmay fall, and the suffragists rise, but theauthor is secure as almost no other manis secure. I have sometimes fortifiedmyself amid the vexations, vicissitudesand uncertainties of political life by thereflection that I might find a secure lineof retreat on the pleasant, peaceful andfertile country of the pen, where oneneed never be idle or dull.Those spoken words, as written words,read just as well as they must havesounded to that gathering over ninetyyears ago.Churchill spoke and wrote with arhythm which made it almost poetical.He arranged his notes for his speeches ina format closely resembling blank verse.Although he was never a prolific poethimself he greatly enjoyed poetry and hada remarkable capacity to commit to memorycopious lines of verse which he lovedto recall and recite at appropriate moments.In his writings and speeches heregularly quoted lines from Macauley andwas still able to recite long passages frommemory well into extreme old age.Winston Churchill was truly a poetat heart. A little book was published yearsago with a similar title to this article, butcontained nothing by him. This little collection,compiled with the help of hisdaughter, presents the poems he is knownto have composed himself. They are takenfrom Churchill Canto, a larger work bythis writer, as yet unpublished, containinga selection of verse with which Churchillwas in some way associated.THE INFLUENZAOh how shall I its deeds recountOr measure the untold amountOf ills that it has done?From China's bright celestial landE'en to Arabia's thirsty sandIt journeyed with the sun.O'er miles of bleak Siberia's plainsWhere Russian exiles toil in chainsIt moved with noiseless tread;And as it slowly glided byThere followed it across the skyThe spirits of the dead.The Ural peaks by it were scaledAnd every bar and barrier failedTo turn it from its way;Slowly and surely on it came,Heralded by its awful fame,Increasing day by day.On Moscow's fair and famous townWhere fell the first Napoleon's crownIt made a direful swoop;The rich, the poor, the high, the lowAlike the various symptoms know,Alike before it droop.Nor adverse winds, nor floods of rainMight stay the thrice-accursed bane;And with unsparing hand,Impartial, cruel and severeIt travelled on allied with fearAnd smote the fatherland.Fair Alsace and forlorn Lorraine,The cause of bitterness and painIn many a Gallic breast,Receive the vile, insatiate scourge,And from their towns with it emergeAnd never stay nor rest.And now Europa groans aloud,And 'neath the heavy thunder-cloudHushed is both song and dance;The germs of illness wend their wayTo westward each succeeding dayAnd enter merry France.Fair land of Gaul, thy patriots braveWho fear not death and scorn the graveCannot this foe oppose,Whose loathsome hand and cruel sting,Whose poisonous breath and blightedwingFull well thy cities know.In Calais port the illness stays,As did the French in former days,To threaten Freedom's isle;But now no Nelson could o'erthrowThis cruel, unconquerable foe,Nor save us from its guile.Yet Father Neptune strove right wellTo moderate this plague of Hell,And thwart it in its course;And though it passed the streak of brineAnd penetrated this thin line,It came with broken force.For though it ravaged far and wideBoth village, town and countryside,Its power to kill was o'er;And with the favouring winds of Spring(Blest is the time of which I sing)It left our native shore.God shield our Empire from the mightOf war or famine, plague or blightAnd all the power of Hell,And keep it ever in the handsOf those who fought 'gainst other lands,Who fought and conquered well. >»FINEST HOUR 103 / 40
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.JOURNAL OFTIIE CHURCHILL CKNTER AND ... - Winston Churchill

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