A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
AIR. CHURCHILL'S many-sided personality defies assessment. Sometimes in the House of Commons he will bicker across the despatch-box with Mr. Morrison like a corner-boy. A day or two later, or possibly enough the same day, he will deliver one of those speeches which no one else in the Chamber can even approach. And the ceremony in Paris last week-end showed beyond possibility of challenge that among British public men he is regarded outside this country as in a class completely by himself. That, I think, is largely true too in provincial England. No one, except conceivably Lord Montgomery, could stir anything like the enthusiasm which greets Mr. Churchill when he goes to receive the freedom of this city or that. All that is essentially as it should be. We are back in party politics now, and Mr. Churchill is a party leader who gained no great distinction in that role at the General Election. But we are not so myopic that we cannot see through that dust and turmoil to the unique national figure of the years before, the years when none was for the party and all were for the State, and one man beyond all other Englishmen sustained our fortunes till the ebbing tide began to flow and swept the Allied cause on to victory. That is the Churchill who will live in history. But there is some small danger that delight in the petty skirmishings of the House may drag down his repute a little from its zenith.
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