May 31, 2013

Finest Hour 116, Autumn 2002

Page 14

BY RUDOLF KIRCHER

“An Abundantly Full Life”: Churchill Through German Eyes Part I: The Man

For some reason it is difficult not to smile when Winston Churchill is mentioned. Not because he cannot be taken seriously, nor because during the Great War he talked of the “rat holes” in which the German Fleet was hiding, nor because many people in England say that he has made himself ridiculous more often than other politicians and statesmen; nor is it because he has a liking for monstrous collars and a tendency to embonpoint. Oh, no! All that is to some extent untrue, and to some extent unimportant.

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There are people who smile just as automatically when they speak of a funeral as when they hear beautiful music. Evidently, direct contact with a bit of genuine life is what sometimes compels us to smile involuntarily. It is certainly so in the case of Winston Churchill. He is a diplomat, but in spite of that, we see him more clearly as he really is than any other Englishman of importance. Churchill typifies real life in England. A good deal about him is sham, but it may also be said that nothing about him is false.

He is thoroughly English in appearance, like the pictures of John Bull on the posters of a whisky firm: broad-shouldered, very massive and not at all “smart.” He is not made up in any way, everything about him is natural. That, as one knows, is un-English nowadays—but what is English about him stands out all the more clearly.

Winston Churchill has been called an eternal boy. There are many such in England. He is a great lover of games, particularly polo, which he understands the least. His failing, so people say, is that he tries to do things he does not understand, particularly as a statesman. But who is to do things, if they are always to be kept for those who know something about them? Churchill has one quality which matters more than anything else: he is capable of learning the things he does not know.

He is as versatile as a journalist; he sees the essential. He really is equal to his posts, and there are few Englishmen who have filled more posts, just as there are few English soldiers who have taken active part in more campaigns and wars than this child of nature, who, incidentally, is already over fifty years of age. The Colonial Office, Board of Trade, Admiralty, Home Office, War Ministry, Treasury, Cuba, the Punjab, Bajaur, the Sudan, South Africa, Antwerp, the House of Commons, and innumerable constituencies—all these have been his battlefields as a soldier, a statesman, an official, and a politician.

Against the many possibilities open to the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, a descendant of the Dukes of Marlborough, is the fact that he had to struggle for years against a defect of speech, and nervousness when speaking in public. Yet with the number of books and articles he has written, his speeches, and the enormous amount of work such a life involves—to say nothing of the social commitments and the occasional accidents to which his sporting tastes expose him—it may be said with some truth that his is an abundantly full life. Over and above it all, Winston is a painter. Courtesy, however, forbids further comment on this.

His courage and indifference to danger is his most striking quality. He is a living illustration of Dean Inge’s theory that man is “a splendid fighting animal, holy,” and at the same time “satanic.” Churchill’s courage is not only the courage of a man who goes into battle with his fellow men; he is equally brave when he is single-handed, even if he has to swim against the current.

We need only recall how he defended the cause of the Boers, against whom he had fought on the field of battle (and who had taken him prisoner); how he attacked Kitchener for desecrating the dead Mahdi’s tomb after the Battle of Omdurman; how he defied public opinion in spite of the menacing attitude of the excited crowd.

That was at Birmingham, in the stormy days of the “People’s Budget,” years before the war. Churchill and Lord Robert Cecil were to speak in the Town Hall. A furious crowd had assembled outside. Lord Robert got into the hall by the back door under police protection, while Churchill drove up in an open carriage, quite alone, through the crowd, showing no sign of fear or anxiety. It was “a challenge that might have ended in his being lynched,” A. G. Gardiner says. The people were speechless for a moment, then they broke into loud cheers. The English spirit!

It is said of him that wherever he goes, “it smells of powder.” Every country in which he sets foot becomes a battleground, full of adventure, full of daring, full of surprises: action, activity, ambition to do great deeds! “Don’t reflect, but act! That is the new gospel.” So says Gardiner with a disapproving frown.

The French philosopher Henri Bergson was the preacher of this new doctrine, Churchill his obedient diciple. It is not the author’s business to defend Bergson, but to say that Churchill acts without reflecting would not be altogether correct. It may be a description that applies to the English Diehards—the Tories who, whether it be due to port and whisky, or to patriotic emotion, always see red—and perhaps occasionally to Winston in his younger days, but not to the riper man of whom Sidebotham says, with some justification, that his political arteries are becoming calcified.

The truth is rather that he throws himself with extraordinary energy into everything that he does. Social policy in his Radical days as a friend and fellow worker of Lloyd George’s, Antwerp and Gallipoli during the war, or his Finance Bill of 1925, in fact everything, is a matter of life and death to him. In a country where the art of living is so thoroughly understood, such a nature must always come to the front again, no matter how often it may be driven back by fate. And what he does is never without reflection. Antwerp and Gallipoli were terribly costly mistakes, but the fundamental idea was good, namely, to strike where the German flank was exposed, and upset the Central Powers’ oriental policy.

Churchill is particularly keen and quick-witted in debate, but, unlike the greatest of all extemporary speakers, Lloyd George, he would never dream of making a speech without the most careful preparation and thought, even if it meant writing it out half a dozen times. He has such a natural gift for expressing himself vigorously, and at the same time with literary distinction, that the passages he has studied the most carefully always give the impression of beng uttered under the influence of a momentary inspiration.

He is not cultivated in the sense of being an accomplished scholar. After he left Harrow he had no further need for Attic culture, and he turned to Sparta, to Sandhurst. The classic answer he gave, when he was asked at Harrow what profession he had in mind, was “The army, of course, as long as there is any fighting going on.” After that, “I shall have a shot at politics.” Westminster reechoes with this “shot” today.

But when it is not actually a question of the Socialists, whom Churchill hates like a pestilence, he shoots pleasantly enough, better than any of the others, because of his delightfully mischievous irony, which often disarms, and forces even his adversaries to smile. Witty sallies of this kind are amongst the daily refreshments provided in Parliament—no one enjoys them more than Labour shadow chancellor Philip Snowden—and Churchill is a specially liberal contributor to this form of political restorative and stimulant.

Churchill is more Radical than dogmatic by nature, consequently not a man born to belong to any one particular Party. He began as a Conservative, like his father, and forsook that path, probably feeling that the natural place for a man of his ambition and activity was amongst those ruling the country. From 1906 the Liberals were in office, and they would probably still be in power if the war had not broken the backbone of the Party.

He was not satisfied with a humble place on the right wing of the Liberals, amongst the Whigs and Imperialists like Sir Edward Grey, Haldane, and McKenna; his impulsive temperament led him to join the most Radical of them, Lloyd George, and those who were trying to prevent Labour from drifting towards Socialism by a wise social policy. This political foundation broke down, and Churchill was one of those most eager to find a fresh parliamentary point d’appui, a Party with which something worth doing might be attempted, and which would find sufficient favour with the masses to be a serious rival to the young Labour Party.

Hence the idea of a Centre Party—Birkenhead, Home, Churchill, and Lloyd George. It was an ingenious idea, but too self-centred. Feeling in the English constituencies was strongly against the idea of creating a new Party, for the benefit of a clique, which would have destroyed the classic English Party system, for the sake of an organisation with an uncertain future. The natural result was that Churchill went back to those who had a prospect of holding office in the near future, the Conservative Party. He is now Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is said to be the future Conservative Premier.

All this looks worse than it really is. Party is to Churchill only an unavoidable, and, as far as he is concerned, undesirable means to an end; he himself always remains Winston Churchill, so he thinks. The gradual loss of his Radicalism and bold independence of mind may be put down either to the political calcification already mentioned, or be regarded as the natural consequence of his change of Party. The choice is between the two.

He is becoming more and more the Englishman of the class to which he belongs. Does this mean that he is getting slack? Or will he be a powerful driving force in his new Party? Is it possible that a time may come when the indomitable energy of a Churchill will achieve the rejuvenation of Conservatism that Baldwin is trying to effect, but without the same strength? His great difficulty will be to avoid being spoilt by his success, and gradually becoming indifferent. That would be a loss to England, for she has not too many men of genius. Lloyd George succumbed to the war-fanatics. Will the passion for money making, which threatens to be the ruin of English Conservatism, bring about Churchill’s downfall?

There is much room for doubt, for with all his remarkable gifts, with all his force of character and practical ability, Winston Churchill’s personality is unfathomable. Try as one may to grasp it, it is always a case of groping in empty space. Where is the great moral purpose? Where is the higher spiritual aim which ought surely to be somehow and somewhere apparent in the life of a really great man? He seems to have more power of assimilating ideas than of originating them, to be more a man who grasps the ideas suggested to him with unusual rapidity, than one who inspires them.

That would be a limitation, but he might still be a man of considerable importance. The real question is: what is it all for? Why this constant readiness to fight? What are the aims for which this immense power is exerted? Are they holy or satanic, spiritual or worldly, noble or selfish, or merely a matter of chance, of indifference? It is on the answer to this that his future depends. It is slow in coming.

Winston may still be a boy, in spite of his fifty years, but history will have to pass sentence on him before long. He has reached the real turning point, which will decide whether he is a statesman or merely a shrewd politician. In the case of Baldwin the question hardly arises; as regards Lloyd George the answer threatens to be tragical. But Churchill has a chance of climbing to great heights. His past is not against him. The talk of his being an incorrigible militarist trying to bring about war is exaggerated.

Margot Asquith tells us that on the 14th of August 1914, she saw him going to a Cabinet meeting “with a happy face.” More than one face was happy on that day, for, now that the die had been cast, men of energy, courage, and strength were needed. To Winston Churchill it meant more than that: to understand what he felt, we must turn to his book, The World Crisis. It is a notable work, certainly the best written of all the books on the war. Anything more heart-rending than the pre-war history, into which he gives us an insight in the first two hundred pages, can hardly be imagined. Churchill is not by any means one of those who abuse Germany, or attribute the sole responsibility for the war to her. He merely describes the events which took place during the years preceding the war, in the light in which they appeared to a prominent member of the British Cabinet, and relates how a friend of Germany and of peace was driven, as he believed, into a position in which he felt bound to do his utmost to strengthen Britain’s armaments, until the terrible collision occurred.

Next issue: Kircher on The World Crisis. 

Englilnder, first published in German, was translated with revisions and additions by Constance Vessey and published by Collins in new York in 1928. The illustrations opposite, from the time the book was published, appeared in The Graphic, 15 March 1924.