A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE tendency to describe each of the Prime Minister's set speeches as the greatest he ever made is to be distrusted, so I refrain from saying precisely that of last Sunday's broad- cast. But that it was a great performance no one will question. A few sentences of denunciation of Hitlerism might perhaps have been omitted—there is little new to be said on that subject at this time of day—but even they had a certain pertinence if the underlying purpose of the speech was, as can hardly be doubted, to bring home the ultimate and fundamental meaning of the war to people who had not fully appreciated ft—west of the Atlantic as well as east. Nothing is more invaluable to a speaker than mastery of modulation, and Mr. Churchill has it, as Briand had in a lower key, to per- fection ; the scorn with which Mussolini was dismissed as " jackanapes " trebled the effect of the epithet. The reminder to Americans, and anyone in Europe who might take the words home, that Hitler's way is to dispose of his victims one by one was subtle enough to be completely inoffensive and pointed enough to be completely unmistakable in its purport. The speech closed with its finest passage—the return to " this quiet bay," the church-service on the ' Prince of Wales,' the hymns, the voyage home with the American destroyers which " happened to be going the same way," the meeting with the convoy— it is only in retrospect perhaps that we realise with what magic the picture was painted. Once again—how terrifyingly indis- pensable.
Previous page
