The World Crisis
by the Right Honorable , First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911 to 1915. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1923. 8vo. xiv +589 pp. $6.50.
As the sparks fly upward, Lord Randolph Churchill’s son was born to trouble, and, with his father’s instinct, he has never bothered to avoid it. Americans, who watch the drama of British affairs and see only the larger gestures of the actors, think of him as a brilliant man, not proof against recklessness, and with a bright talent for a quarrel. There may be truth in such a picture, but no candid reader of The World Crisis can think it either a complete or a fair one, for the book is not merely exceptional, it is remarkable — very remarkable indeed — and, on the strength of this exhibit, one could not go far wrong in calling its author a man of genius.
The World Crisis is Mr. Churchill’s apologia. Indeed, like a born fighter, he conceives the world struggle in personal terms. But that he was close to the vortex of things during the fateful years 1911-1915 is obvious. As First Lord of the Admiralty, he held Britain’s life line in his hands. That line might well have snapped. Before the war, as well as during it, not once, but many times, it was strained to the breaking point; but it held, and readers of these intense chapters, running through the sequent and tremendous periods of foreknowledge, preparation, and realization, will be convinced that, if Churchill failed to destroy his country’s enemies, at least he saved her life.
That the First Lord foresaw the war is made certain by documentary proof. He knew that it was foreordained, that it must come, and come soon. The difficult technical story of the creation of the mightiest fleet the world has seen, the mounting of guns of unheard-of sizes, the development of super-engines, the assurance of an oil supply, gathered under stress from the world’s ends, and all the complex difficulties which made his administration of the Navy a prodigious obstacle-race against, time —these tilings are told with the swing and sweep of the comprehensive mind. Great soldiers, great administrators, tell their stories well. Churchill is one of them. It is a piece of high art to make so complicated and technical a chapter as that on the Romance, of Design dear as spring water, and thrilling as a novel.
Into the maze of charge and countercharge, of which this book is the storm-centre, we need not enter. Was Admiralty or Admiral to blame for the tragedy of Coronal? Was the defense at Antwerp a legitimate hazard? Such questions are for the instructed to fight over. A mere reader may at least be sure that here is an extraordinary book, by a man who can write history as well as make it.
ELLERY SEDGWICK.