22 OCTOBER 1948, Page 4

Two and a third pages of " Errata and Corrigenda

" in Mr Churchill's The Gathering Storm is rather generous measure, particularly in view of the distinction of the collaborators associated with the author. Still, it must be remembered that the book consists of over boo pages and is necessarily full of technicality and detail. Curiously enough, one uncorrected error occurs on the very first page, where reference is made to " the British Delegation at Versailles " moulding and shaping President Wilson's conception of a League of Nations into the concrete Covenant. But no British pelegation ever sat at Versailles during the discussions on the German Treaty (though the treaty was handed to the Germans there and signed there) ; all the shaping of the League Covenant took place at the Hotel Crillon in Paris. One of the " corrigenda " is Interesting. In the text Mr. Churchill says that he stood at the by-election in the Abbey Division of Westminster in 1924 as a Liberal. The correction runs, " For Liberal read Independent Constitutionalist." It is odd that Mr. Churchill should not have remembered what his designation was, but there seems in fact to have been some confusion about the matter. Mr. Philip Guedalla in his study of Mr. Churchill gives the description as " Independent Anti-Socialist," Sir James Grigg in his recent book Prejudice and 7udgtnent as " Independent and Anti-Socialist," Mr. Broad in his biography of Winston simply as " Constitutionalist." The essential fact, no doubt, is that Mr. Churchill stood as Mr. Churchill. What better ?

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