.burger A i ( Owes
The Dawn of Liberation. War Speeches by Rt. Hon. Winston S' - Churchill. Vol. V. Compiled by Charles Eade. (Cassell. 12s. 6d.)
MOST of these speeches, which were made in the year 1944, are comparatively fresh in the reader's mind, but they gain something by being brought together in one massive whole—the long speeches dealing with war and policy, and 'the short speeches, some of them trenchant answers to questions in the House of Commons. If each long speech has its own rhythm of inter-connected fact, comment and sentiment, there is a certain rhythm also in the collection as a whole, with great and small themes building themselves up into a chapter of the history of the world at war. What skill in exposition, and delight also in his own handling of a subject, whether it concerns the progress of the war, military decorations, or Basic English. It was this champion of Basic English who remarked that the Home Secretary " was embarking on a purely philosophical disquisition on a hypothetical and conjectural situation " ; but whose very next words (answering 3 request that he should select someone to speak for the Government) were monosyllabic : " If the worst came to the worst I might have a shot at it myself." In these pages the Demosthenic and the impish combine to create the Churchillian.
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