Alamein Anniversary

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 333, 9 November 1945, Page 8

Alamein Anniversary

OT many after-dinner speeches would make good broadcasts. The BBC broadcast of the Alamein dinner in London heard the other day from Main National Stations was an excep-tion-a lively function and a good clear recorditig. "Monty," who was in good form, said that at the outset of his command of the Eighth Army there was considerable speculation as how long some of the gentlemen in front of him would last in their commands; the laughter that held up the show here was tenewed when he added that there was even mote speculation about his own tenute. He presented Mr. Churchill with a volume of poems written by men of his desert army. (Lord Wavell, who sought comfort from poetry in that same desert will appreciate this to the full.) In making the gift he said he had found some difficulty in choosing it, for Mf. Churchill had everything he wanted. He waited for him to add "except office,’ but he forbore. It is told how "Monty" meeting Winston during the war said: "I neither drink nor smoke, and I am one hundted per cent fit," whereupon the P.M. retorted: "I both drink and smoke, and I am two hundred per cent fit." At the Alamein dinner Winston referred to the austerity of Alexander and Montgomery, which fortunately they did not ask their guests to share. Disraefi put it less kindly when he said of Gladstone that he had no ftedeeming vices. The sensual Briton, however, is quite prepated to overlook the Puritan strain in the two victorious Field-Marshals, just as Lincoln ignofed the stories that Grant was drinking and told the gossipers that if they would let him know what brand of whiskey Grant drank, he would send a cask of it to his other generals. ~