`BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS AND SWEAT'
SIR,—The letters about Sir Winston Churchill's im- mortal offer of 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' remind me of another Prime Minister and of another phrase less happily linked together. I think I may have been present when this phrase was first planted in the mind of him whom it was later to diminish.
Round about the years 1928-29, the late Earl Baldwin came to Taunton to address a political meet- ing, speaking of Lloyd George with considerable scorn and also about broccoli. A young man on the platform-1 believe one of the Croom-Johnson family —made a graceful little speech of welcome, and in it told'of how Mr. Baldwin (as he then was) had won the devotion of a handful of Oxford undergraduates by answering some question about the inside of politics with unhesitating candour and bluntness.
`We were appalled,' said the young man, 'by his frankness!'
Mr. Baldwin was visibly pleased and said he re- membered the incident. The audience was pleased too, and the thought of Mr. Baldwin's unanxious candour and lack of showiness—particularly in con- trast with the trickiness of Lloyd George—warmed the whole gathering.
May it not be that Mr. Baldwin consciously or sub- consciously remembered this phrase and the affection it had won him when he was pressed in the House of Commons by Mr. Churchill on November 12, 1936, about his failure to rearm the country?—Yours faithfully,
L. S. HARRIS Field House, Hoveton Si. John, Norfolk
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