Sparks From the Anvil

by the RT. HON. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL C.H., M.P.

THE first time I remember hearing of Mr. Churchill was when my father —no mean politician himself — told my mother at breakfast that “Randolph’s son" seemed to have waked up the House of Commons the night before. I fancy that must have been the speech in which he criticised the conduct of the South African War. The first time I remember hearing Mr. Chttrchill - and therefore indubitably the first time I heard him, for one does not forget hearing him was at a meeting of prospective Coalition Liberal candidates before the election of 1918. A slightly bent figure with a slightly echoing articulation gave us a few words of greeting and exhortation. I do not recall what they were, but I recall very well the personality who uttered them. It was like strychnine. You were not sure whether it was a tonic or a poison, but you were very sure it was very powerful.

There is a tang of his own about Mr. Churchill. Indeed, his writing is like his oratory. It is essentially cut and thrust. He is the champion whelher in attack or defence of some cause or person. Whether the word is written or spoken, the technique is the same. The available evidence is soberly marshalled, with sufficient embellishment ol phrase to sustain the interest of the uninstructed and sufficient profundity of information to sustain the interest of the expert. Then there is a pause, more evident, of course, in speech than in writing, though the reader can sense the pen quivering just as the audience can see the eye twinkling. Finally, out it comes — a phrase or a word summarising what he has had in mind all through the preparatory period.

No doubt the similarities between the speeches and the writings exist because Mr. Churchill usually dictates his books and writes his orations. He has himself described the pains of preparation which result in what so often sounds spontaneous; and how his maiden speech had to be launched by a kindly piece of prompting from Mr. Gibson Howies. But in fact he has for long been a master of impromptu. What could be better than the retort to the M.P. who was bouncing up and down in a series of angry interruptions—“The honourable Gentleman should really not generate more indignation than he can conveniently contain ”?

One further comment is necessary before leaving the assessment of Mr. Churchill as a writer and orator. His prose, whether written or spoken, has a rhythm and a cadence which do not, indeed, conform to any rules of scansion, but are consistently notable. You get the same kind of arrangement of words, so that they flow instead of staggering, in the orations ol Cicero; and I think this is instinctive rather than deliberate. — COLIN COOTE

ON HIMSELF

I would make boys all learn English; and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for is not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.

My Early Life.

Be on vour guard! I am going to speak in French - a formidable undertaking and one which will put great demands upon your friendship for Great Britain.

Speech in Paris after the Liberation oj France.

I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I have been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a sombre grey patch upon the chart of my journey.

My Early Life.

It took me three tries to pass into Sandhurst.

My Early Life.

The night was chilly. Colonel Byng and I shared a blanket. When he turned over I was in the cold. When I turned over I pulled the blanket off him and he objected. He was the Colonel. It was not a good arrangement.

At Spion Kop with Colonel Byng — later Lord Byng of Vimy.

“I presume,” Lord Curzon said to me, “it will not be long before we hear you declaim in the House of Commons!” Though greatly hampered by inability to compose at the rate necessary for public speaking, I was strongly of the same opinion myself.

Great Contemporaries. The occasion was a visit to Curzon as Viceroy in 1896.

I have it tendency against which I should, perhaps, be on my guard, to swim against the stream.

At all times, according to my lights and throughout the changing scenes through which we are till hurried, I have always faithfully served two public causes which, I think, stand supreme—the maintenance of the enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire, and the historical continuity of our island life.

On accepting the leadership of the Conservative Party. October. 1940.

It must be renu-inbeml that Mr. Churchill had throughout his life been unpopular among a large section of that party, and never more so than when he was fighting appeasement.

I found I could add nearly two hours to my working day by going to bed for an hour after luncheon.

My Early Life.

I am without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

After his defeat at Dundee in 1922.

Mr. Churchill had been operated upon for appendicitis just before the contest, and had quarrelled with both the Liberal and Conservative parties over their refusal to continue the Coalition.

There was a moment ... of a world aglare, of a man aghast ... I do not understand why I was not broken like an eggshell or squashed like a gooseberry.

On being run down by a taxi in New York, 1932.

When I was called upon to be Prime Minister, now nearly two years ago, there were not many applicants for the job. Since then perhaps the market has improved.

Speech in the House, January. 1942.

ON OTHERS

ON MICHAEL COLLINS. — “You hunted me night and day!” he exclaimed. “You put a price on my head!”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You are not the only one!” And I took from my wall the framed copy of the reward offered for my recapture from the Boers. “At any rate, yours was a good priee—£5,000. Look at me— £25 dead or alive. How would you like that?” He read the paper, and as he took it in he broke into a hearty laugh. All his irritation vanished.

This was at the critical phase of the negotiations between the British Government and the Sinn Fein leaders in 1921, which ultimately led to the Irish Treaty: and records the trivial incident which proved to be the turningpoint towards success.

ON CZAR NICHOLAS II. — To the supreme responsible authority belongs the blame or credit for the result. Why should this stern test be denied to Nicholas II? . . . He was neither a great captain, nor a great prince. He was only a true, simple man of average ability, of merciful disposition, upheld in all his daily life by his faith in God. But the brunt of supreme decisions rested upon him. At the summit, where all problems are reduced to Yea or Nay, where events transcend the faculties of men, and where all is inscrutable, he had to give the answers. IBs was the function of the compass needle. War or no war? Advance or retreat? Right or left? Democratize or hold firm? Quit or persevere? These were the battlefields of Nicholas II. Why should he reap no honour from them? The devoted onset of the Russian armies which saved Paris in 1914; the mastered agony of munil ionless retreat; the slowly regathered forces; the victories of Brusiloff— has he no share in those? The World Crisis.

ON THE LATE LORD BIRKENHEAD, — He had all the canine virtues in a remarkable degree courage, fidelity, vigilance, love of the chase.

Some men when they die, after busy, toilsome, successful lives, leave a great stock of scrip and securities, of acres, or factories, or the goodwill of great undertakings. . . . F.E. banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends, and they will cherish his memory till their time is come.

Grent Contem poraries.

ON LORD CHARLES BERESFORD. — He can best be described as one of those orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, do not know what they are saying; and, when they have sat down, do not know what they have said.

Speech after his appointment to the Admiralty in 1911. Lord Charles Beresford was a bitter critic of the new broom.

ON TROTSKY. — He sits disconsolate — a skin of malice stranded for a time on the shores of the Black Sea and now washed up in the Gulf of Mexico.

He possessed in his nature all the qualities requisite for the art of civic destruction — the organising command ol a Carnot, the cold detached intelligence of a Machiavelli, the mob oratory of a Cleon, the ferocity of a Jack the Ripper, the toughness of Titus Oates.

Great Contrmporaries.

I must confess that I never liked Trotsky.

Speech in the House, August 2, 1944.

ON M. CLEMENCEAU. — He embodied and expressed France. As much as any simple human being, miraculously magnified, can ever be a nation, he was France. Fancy paints nations in symbolic animals — the British lion, the American eagle . . . the Gallic cock. But the old Tiger, with his quaint stylish cap, his white moustache and burning eyes, would make a truer mascot for France than any barnyard fowl.

Great Content poraries.

Clemenceau was called “the Tiger Irani his habit in his younger days of savaging successive Governments in his newspaper or in the Chamber. The sympathy he enteitained fur Mr. Churchill was exceptional, and extended to few of his own countrymen. It was returned, and Mr. Churchill found in Clemenceau’s attitude and speeches in the critical days of 1918, when the Germans were seventy miles from Paris, a model and even a text for his own when the Germans were practically as near London in 1940.

ON MARSHAL STALIN. — This great rugged war chief. . . . He is a man of massive outstanding personality, suited to the sombre and stormy times in which his life has been cast; a man of inexhaustible courage and will-power, and a man direct and even blunt in speech, which, having been brought up in the House of Commons, I do not mind at all, especially when I have something to say of my own. Above all, he is a man with that saving sense of humour which is of high importance to all men and all nations, but particularly to great men and great nations. Stalin left upon me the impression of a deep, cool wisdom and a complete absence of illusions of any kind.

Speech in the House, after a visit to Moscow, September, 1942.

ON PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. — That great man whom destiny has marked for this climax of human fortune.

Speech to the Canadian Parliament at Ottawa, December 30. 1941.

His love of his own country, his respect for its constitution, his power of gauging the tides and currents of its mobile public opinion — all this was evident. But added to this were the beatings of his generous heart —always stirred to anger and to action by spectacles of aggression by the strong against the weak.

ON THE BRITISH PEOPLE

Ask what you please; look where you will, you cannot get to the bottom of the resources of Britain. No demand is too novel or too sudden to be met. No need is too unexpected to be supplied. No strain is too prolonged for the patience of our people. No suffering or peril daunts their hearts.

Speech on the Ministry of Munitions, April, 1918.

We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar-candy.

Speech to the Canadian Parliament at Ottawa, December 30, 1941.

They [the British] are the only people who like to be told how bad things are—who like to be told the worst.

Speech in the House, June 10, 1941.

In all my life I have never been treated with so much kindness as by the people who have suffered most. One would think one had brought some great benefit to them, instead of the blood and tears, the toil and sweat which are all I have ever promised.

Speech in the House, October, 1940.

Mr. Churchill frequently insisted upon visiting the scenes of the worst bombing damage. He was greatly moved by the courage of the victims.

When 1 warned them [the French Government] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their Generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet: “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Some chicken! Some neck!

Speech to the Canadian Parliament, December 30, 1941.

It only remains for me to express to the British peoples, for whom I have acted in these perilous years, my profound gratitude for the null inching, unswerving support which they have given me during my task, and for the many expressions of kindness which they have shown towards then servant.

Message after defeat at the General Election, July, 1945.

(To be continued)