Sir Winston's Legacy

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 822, 29 April 1955, Page 18

Sir Winston's Legacy

HEN he [Churchill] was born, when he was young and even as he moved towards middle age, Britain’s position was very different from her position in the last 10 or 20 years. She was for much of those early years still the factory of the world, supplying less industrialised countries with the goods which only she was equipped to produce. She was still supreme at sea. She was still the executive head of the Imperial group of nations. But she was on the eve of a change which was to reduce her share of the world’s trade from two-thirds to less than one-fifth, as it is today. Customers were soon to become competitors. Her navy was to face the challenge of the Germans in the North Sea. Her limitations as a military power were to become visible. Her Empire was to turn itself into the Commonwealth. The United States of America was slowly to move into Great Britain’s place as the dominant world power. Through all these changes and their dangers, and through the two terrible world wars which might so easily have brought . . . confusion and wreck, Win-

a. ston Churchill steered or helped to steer Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth. When the Downing Street door closed on him, it closed on an age us well as on a man. Many things. that were only coming into being when he was born, or when he was young, or when he was middle-aged, are now commonplace, but in the meantime many new and more wonderful discoveries have been made-so wonderful that they have shaped a new age of their own. This is the thirteenth year of the atomic age, and industrialists are already gearing atomic energy to the needs of every- _ day life... With these physical changes have come social changes that are in their way as great... Winston Churchill has done Britain and the Commonwealth three great services. He has saved them from defeat in war, he has saved them from financial disaster in peace, and he has guided them through peaceful social changes around the skirts of unrest which at

times seemed to threaten civil war, to a new form of society in which there is a new equality. The sum total of all this is that he has given them and brought them to opportunity. Of course he hasn’t done all that alone; he’s had help and company. And of course he hasn’t always been solely, or chiefly responsible, for the course of events. But there have been times when he has been, times when no one else could have carried the burden of decision, when no one else was able or willing to do it. Naturally he hasn’t been able to do it without interruption; there have been times when he’s had to stand aside-in 1945, for example. He’s adapted himself wonderfully to change, even if sometimes he’s resisted it as strongly as he’s speeded it at other times. He’s made enthusiastic use of the new devices and discoveries, but the world of his youth and of his middle age was so. different from the world of today that it must necessarily be hard for him to visualise a future which even younger British statesmen are finding it hard to glimpse. Someone else will have to make use of the opportunity which is his legacy as he leaves office. The measure of this opportunity, this really wonderful opportunity, can be found, I think, in one simple fact, in twelve words. Those words told the story of the big air race of 1953 in a headline which was this: "From Autumn in England to Spring in New Zealand in 24

hours." That is the time it. took the Royal Australian Air Force Canberras to cover the 13,000 miles from London to Christchurch. More to the point still, it took the Vickers Viscount 40 hours to do the journey, and the Vickers Viscount is an ordinary commercial aircraft. It still takes about a month to do this journey by sea. Swift flight by air and close and perfect contact by radio are refashioning the world and making it smaller and more compact . .. When we add to the possibilities of this annihilation of space the possibilities brought into being by these new metals like plutonium and the tremendous natural resources of countries like Australia and Canada, where uranium has been found in large quantities, it is very easy. to see the shape of things to come. If things go well, in the years ahead the British Commonwealth may find for itself a new and greater future, especially the European populated dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It’s easy to be wrong in matters of this sort, and it’s easy to exaggerate the possibilities, but I don’t think that I’m doing either when I suggest that Winston Churchill’s great service to Britain and to the Commonwealth has been to guide it through its crises to the point where this new future has opened itself up. I don’t think it’s any belitthement of him to measure what he’s done in this way. His dimensions . . . are still those of a great man. And I don’t think that I’m

— --_- Extracts from a recent commentary on the international news, broadcast from the Main National Stations of the NZBS

doing him less than justice when I Suggest that his years, and his background ‘and Wis outlook, make it necessary for someone else to take up the task where he has been et? to lay it down? . . T don’t think it’s ‘Carrying imagination too far to suggest that the door of Downing Street which closed on an age when he left for the last time as Prime Minister opened simultaneously on a new’ age in which Great Britain and the Commonwealth may find a new greatness. Without him, that hope might not be with us now. That, I think, is the highest tribute we can pay him. It is not a tribute which makes him out to be a little kind of man, but one which leaves him a very great man, indispensable in the course of the history of the Commonwealth. We can sayof him, as’ it’ Was said of his predecessor; Pitt the Younger: "Glorious was his course and long the stream of light he left behind him." ‘That stream of light illumines the

future.

R. M.

HUTTON-POTTS

April 9, 1955 =