A GREAT LEADER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1941, Page 4

A GREAT LEADER

MR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S BIRTHDAY STRIKING TRIBUTE PAID BY MR AMERY. “SPIRIT OF OLD ENGLAND INCARNATE.” (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 29. “Mr Churchill is today the spirit of old England incarnate, with its unshakeable self-confidence, its unfailing sense of humour, its underlying moral earnestness and its unflinching tenacity. Against that inner unity of spirit between leader and nation, the ill-cemented moral fabric of Hitler’s perversion of German souls must be shattered in the end.” This tribute to Mr Churchill on the occasion of the Prime Minister’s sixty-seventh birthday tomorrow was paid in a broadcast by the Secretary for India, Mr Amery. “What kind of a man,” asked Mr Amery, “is this English Prime Minister, who in his personality so strongly represents the outlook and will to victory of a great nation?”

First and foremost, Mr Amery continued, Mr Churchill has his roots deep and firm in England’s history. He was a descendant of a family which from the days of - the great Duke of Marlborough had played its’ part in British affairs. To renew the lustre of his name, to make good and more than make good the brilliant promise of his father’s brief political career was his ambition.

This soon displaced that hunger for sheer dangerous adventure which for a few years led him to every scene of warlike action on the Indian frontier and in South Africa. That ambition had, however, a background wider than mere family pride—a motive deeper than mere personal desire for political distinction. The splendid drama of English history always appealed to him both as a student and a writer and filled him with the desire to make his own contribution to that wonderful narrative. More specially, Mr Churchill had been stirred by the history of war. These were the foundations on which were built in the course of years practical administrative experience in almost every great department of State, including all the services, Navy, Army, Air Force and munitions, concerned with the conduct of war. Last but not least, 40 years in the House of Commons had made him not only a great orator but one supremely fitted both to understand and lead that uniaue body of men in which was concentrated the wisdom, courage and independence of a free people. Mr Amery reviewed Mr Churchill’s political career and recalled that for 10 years he was out of' office—a distinguished but isolated figure. Then came the war. That in a moment made an immediate demand for his immense fund of experience in military affairs. It also immediately raised issues which transcended all party divisions and linked up the England of today with the England that fought the Spanish Armada and wore down Napoleon. “In that new England,” Mr Amery concluded, “Mr Churchill by natural right came into his own”' ■' v