The Atlantic Bookshelf: A Guide to Good Books

FOR Winston Snencer Churchill there is no substitute. Where is another such duke’s grandson or lord’s son like him.? Versatile as a chameleon, energetic as the solar system, he goes round what he can’t go through, never stopping, always on the jump. From one rung to another, up he goes, while all the world wonders. Boy and man, Churchill is himself. He may spin like a teetotum, yet he is no fixed weathercock, hut goes whirling along the path he has set himself. How he learned to do it is told in the latest of his fascinating volumes.

Remember as you read it that he is fifty-six years old, and nominally a Conservative. Whether in politics or warfare, whether fighting the Socialists or his own party, talking strategy or writing the most arresting history of the war which has yet appeared, Winston Churchill never speaks or writes without distinction. In the face of such a record it is of moment to study his formative years, especially when they are unfolded for us with such gusto by such a hero of his own adventures. Brilliant, bumptious, wayward, captivating, child of genius, he is the Alcibiades of the days we live in.