Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY*, AUGUST 29, 1942 ANOTHER CHURCHILL STUDY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 29 August 1942, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail. SATURDAY*, AUGUST 29, 1942 ANOTHER CHURCHILL STUDY

MR CHURCHILL’S busy career and striking abilities have always provided good copy for authors, and since he became Prime Minister the reading public has been favoured with a rapid succession of books on the man and his work. Mr Philip Guedalla’s brilliant study, “Mr Churchill” (Hodder and Stoughton, Limited), though published last November, has not long been generally available in New Zealand. It was eagerly awaited; for its author brings to his task an exceptional range of experience and ability. He first attracted attention some twenty years ago with a series of short sketches of contemporary authors and politicians; but as his powers developed he began to use a wider canvas; and his later writings have taken the form of biography and extended historical studies. Born in 1890, he belongs essentially to the twentieth century, and his works are marked by the detachment and disillusionment that characterise the Georgians. His early writings showed an exces-

sive consciousness of his own wit and cleverness, and were almost euphuis-; tic in their straining after epigram,] paradox and antithesis. Maturity] has pruned this fault without entirely eliminating it; but for one reader who is repelled by Mr Guedalla’s mannerisms, ten will be delighted by his acid wit, his realistic approach, his insight into character and motive, and his felicity of expression. The merit of Mr Guedalla’s book lies more in its presentation of the material than in the material ’ itself. He breaks no new ground and advances no new theories. This is no disparagement of his excellent study; for Mr Churchill’s life has been an open book to all the world since his sensational escape from a Boer prisoncamp over forty years ago. Every step in his crowded career has been a matter of public interest, and all the arguments and controversies have been talked out. Where there might be doubt or misinformation, Mr Churchill himself has resolved it, for he has written frankly and fully of his early and middle life. The fierce light that beats upon a throne has shone as mercilessly on the path trodden by Mr Churchill. From 1908 to 1929, he was, except for two short intervals, a member of the Cabinet, and held every important office except Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. It is a record that no British public man now living excels, and none, save Mr Lloyd George, even approaches. The new biographer, in his description of these years, does full justice to Mr Churchill’s astonishing vitality, courage and resilience.

Mr Guedalla rightly points out that the Prime Minister’s success is due as much to tireless energy as to innate brilliance. He himself has said that since he entered public life he has hardly known a day when he was idle. He had little natural talent as a speaker, but made himself an orator by assiduous practice. EveA his recreations are strenuous, and he turns with joy in his scanty

leisure to writing, painting, and I brick-laying. Of his private life Mr I Guedalla says little, but he emphasises the incalculable advantages he lias derived from a happy marriage. He reminds us, too, of the considerable influence Mr Churchill’s father and his father’s memory had on his life. Lord Randolph Churchill was a Conservative with democratic sympathies, and in his last years he always felt he had made a mistake in not boldly crossing to the Liberal side. His son early determined that he would be bound by no such party ties; and he shifted from Conservative to Liberal, and then back to Conservative, because he thought principles were more important than party affiliations. He had always considered it a privilege that by his success in the House of Commons he was able to redeem in some measure his father’s shattered reputation, and it is significant that one of his first ventures into the world of letters was a respectful and restrained biography of Lord Randolph Churchill. A large part of his space Mr Guedalla has given to the events of the last thirteen years. They show Mr Churchill’s fortunes at their lowest and at their highest. For ten years following his break with Mr Baldwin in 1929 he sat below the gangway in the House, still a formidable figure personally, but without any effective power. He seemed to be perversely attracted by unpopular and unsuccessful causes; and neither .his attacks on the India Bill, nor his : intervention in the abdication crisis, nor his exposure of the Nazis did him any good. When Mr Chamberlain returned from Munich to be received with almost hysterical enthusiasm, Mr Churchill was nearly alone in describing the accommodation with the dictators as “a defeat without a war.” But the German entry into Czechoslovakia in March, 1939, proved the turning point in a career which had seemed likely to end in frustration and failure. Almost overnight Mr Churchill, who had never been very popular, and for some years had been most unpopular, suddenly found himself the most widely acclaimed public man in England. The outbreak of war carried him into the Cabinet; eight months later the rising demand for action made him Prime Minister. Mr Guedalla calls his last chapter,' dealing with the events of the last two years, “Mr Churchill’s war.” Few will quarrel with the aptness of the title. After the collapse of France, when Britain was in almost hourly peril of invasion, Mr Churchill stood out as the embodiment of the nation’s will to resist. Where some were in despair, and others timoroiis, he declared in plain and unmistakable terms that Britain would fight on, against all odds and in all circumstances, and he rallied the people to him. Mr Guedalla quotes Macaulay’s eulogium on Pitt , as a parallel: “The ardour of his soul set the whole kingdom on fire.” It is too soon to assess Mr Churchill's precise place in history, and a full length biography of him must wait. But ,in the meantime Mr Guedalla has provided us with a study that is readable, accurate and discriminating. It has the additional merit of appearing while the chief actor holds the centre of the stage.