A Prophecy

Today in the prime of life. with the dangerous “forties" navigatedt, with the most plentiful crop of political wild oats ever sown or ever survived, re-united to his traditional party, miraculously translated to the office from which his father fell never to rise again, he is easily the foremost figure in Parliament, with a past that would have extinguished anyone ordinarily destructible, and nevertheless with a future that is the most interesting subject in politics. He emerges today from No. 11, Downing Street, and such is his buoyance and tenacity of grip upon the lifeboat of office that I see no reason why he should, not one day emerge from No. 10. But before that happens I hope he will have given evidence that he has judgment as well as genius and that he has ceased to be “an intractable little boy, a mischievous and dangerous little boy, a knee-worthy little boy.”

— From an article by A. G. Gardiner written in 1926