TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21228, 26 September 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Mr Churchill’s Influence It was George 11. who said of his generals that he didn’t know what effect they had on the enemy, but they frightened him, says a writer in the Spectator. In a very different way the Prime Minister frightens me—badly. His dominance over every other figure on the political stage in Britain is now such that there is a danger of the national cause depending on his personality far more than it ought to on any .single man’s. Dorothy Thompson was perfectly right in depicting him as the embodiment of the cause of righteousness, no less than Hitler is of the cause of evil. His courage and confidence put heart into every man and woman and child in the land, his humour and his faultless verbiage make his every intervention in the House of Commons decisive, and above all he reveals at every turn his instinctive understanding of the temper of the common man. In that supremely important quality none of his colleagues comes near him. Mr Morrison and Mr Bevin appeal effectively to the wage-earners, and that is of vital importance, but the Prime Minister’s words go home to the hearts of men and women ot every class from castle to cottage.