Mr. Churchill

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 284, 1 December 1944, Page 7

Mr. Churchill

VERY newspaper reader has heard of the sub-editor who used his biggest type for a local event and then hanged himself because he had nothing left for the Last Trump. If we don’t know that version of the story we know another, since the variations are legion. But all have the same moral — the necessity of keeping something up one’s sleeve for a greater occasion — and it worries us as we think this week of Mr. Churchill’s birthday. It would be easy to say the things that are normally said about a great man who has lived for seventy years. But Mr. Churchill is not merely still living: he is still workingworking on the biggest job that has fallen to an Englishman since Pitt. He is Britain’s greatest war leader since Pitt; and some think of all time. If we measure greatness by the danger and the bitterness of the struggle, see it against the risks we have run and have now almost surmounted, it is difficult to take any other view of his leadership than that of his most ardent laudators. But the fact remains that his race is not yet run. If we crown him now, the laurels will look second-hand next year, or the year afterwards, or whenever our enemies are finally overcome. It will not be a question of eating our words, since his glory is already secure, but of finding new words to say the same thing. So it is safer to greet him soberly; to thank Heaven that he is still equal to his staggering burden, and survives his mistakes as easily as his flashes of genius. For. the key to his hold on all sections of the community-after his courage, wisdom, imagination, and strength -is his frank, and often flamboyant, boyishness.. He is never too solemn to laugh or too wise to be foolish; and it is to be hoped that the day will never come when he loses interest in his own ego. Until then he will not be old whatever the calendar says.