THAT MAN AGAIN
By W. J. BROWN, M.P.
WAS staying at an Irish hotel in the wilds—the very beautiful I wilds—of Kerry. It was a Saturday night. And Mr. Churchill was to speak on the wireless at 9.15 p.m.
Now I am one of the millions who enjoy listening to Mr. Churchill, and that quite irrespective of what he has to say. For his speeches have a quality, or rather a combination of qualities, which are not present in their fullness in the utterances of any other figure in our public life. First, there is the massive architecture of the speech. Essentially, its outlines are very simple. Language, it has been said, was given to man to conceal his thought. In the case of Mr. Churchill it was given him to " make friends, and influence people." For this purpose simplicity in essentials is the first requisite. And the larger the audience the greater the need for simplicity. Thus the outlines of his radio speeches are simple, bold and clear. Next, continuity matches clarity. Each section of his speeches is clearly related to what has gone before and to what is to come. There are no abrupt transitions, difficult to follow or immediately to relate to the general line or argument. The " plan," so to speak, is as clear as the " elevation." And within each section of the speech each paragraph is directed to its given purpose. There are no loose wanderings about them. They march like regiments of soldiers to their appointed destination. They say what they were meant to say, and that said, they end.
With these essentials first assured, Mr. Churchill can afford to let himself go in his choice of words. And what a vocabulary he commands! And with what precision he uses it! So rich, so varied, so comprehensive is it that we should all suffer from a sense of comparative illiteracy did not the simplicity of his main structure ensure that he would carry us with him all the way. And, finally, what variety of tone and temper is .displayed there! The gravely argumentative, the ironic, the humorous, the contemptuous, the urgent, the enthusiastic, the scathing—on all the facets of human feeling he rings the changes like an accomplished bell-ringer. And back of the whole astonishing performance one feels a warm, vivid, human personality, a mind richly stored with experience, reading and a sense of history—made and in the making—which inform and illuminate what he says and which put his speeches into a category of their own.
So I wanted to hear Mr. Churchill speak. And to this end I approached the girl in the reception office and asked that the speech might be laid on in the smaller and less frequented of the two lounges available to the guests. She said she would speak to the manageress about it. This was at lunch-time. Dinner was at 7.30 p.m. I dined early; and well before nine o'clock I went to the reception office again to make sure that my request had not been forgotten and that there would be no hitch. It had not been for- gotten. But it could not be met. Why? Because all the time dinner was on the refrigerator had to be kept going. And the " frig " and the wireless couldn't function together. The manageress had ruled that the " frig " must stay on ; so the wireless would accordingly be off. I expressed a dignified protest and retired hurt.
At just before 9.15, not in the small lounge, but in the big one, there was a crackling and buzzing noise, and then came the familiar voice of Mr. Churchill. For twenty minutes he spoke, and during that time you could have head the proverbial pin drop in that carpeted lounge, wherein sat some sixty or seventy people.
Afterwards I enquired what had happened that we should have had the speech relaid. It appeared that other English folk had approached the manageress and had also asked that the speech should be laid on. But this was not the explanation. For the manageress had been adamant. Mr. Churchill might be speaking, but she " could not care less." The matter had been settled, not by the English, but by the Irish. For they, too, wanted to hear Mr. Churchill. In the late war the Irish Free State had been neutral. So were the Irish people. They didn't care who beat Hitler. And some eighty odd thousand of them crossed the border to join up with the British and
to lend a hand with the job. In the matter of hearing Mr. Churchill the Irish were similarly neutraL They finished their dinners before the appointed hour. The " frig" went off. And Mr. Churchill went on.
There is a parable in this somewhere if I could only work it out. In a democracy little local petty interests are always getting in the way of the big issues. The national interest may require that this or that should be done. But the individual citizen, if he sees the broad national interest at all, sees it much less sharply and clearly than some personal and immediate interest of his own. And so there are a thousand points of resistance to what the national interest requires should be done. It may be as plain as a pikestaff, for in- stance, that to project into a period of under-production the restric- tive practices developed by employers and employed during periods of " over-production " is the wildest of follies. To this general proposition everybody will immediately assent. But when that general proposition is translated into particular proposals to Jack Robinson, bricklayer, and Tom Jones, miner, the reaction is liable to be very different. The traditions of decades, the mental attitudes generated by past experience, rise up .and inhibit them from acting on the generalisation. And so policy lags behind need, and the pace of democratic policy is slow and uncertain. The "frig " must be kept on, even though the speech go unheard. . . .
Such slowness, confusion and obstruction are grist to the mill of the would-be dictator, of the " Right " and the "Left " alike. But the corruption, the injustice, the inefficiency and the wooden- ness of dictatorship are a high price to pay for increased speed in the handling of public affairs. This, however, does not appear until after the dictatorship has established itself. And then it is too late. Nor is it necessary to establish dictatorship or to give totalitarian powers to nominally democratic governments to achieve this in- creased speed. For beneath the superficial differences which divide men one from another, and which for a time obscure the needs of the community as a whole, there is a profound community of interest which dynamic leadership can evoke. In time of crisis " deep calls unto deep," and does not go unanswered.
But the " deep " must be there to call to its fellow. Dynamic leadership is essential to the proper functioning of democracy. The English and the Irish alike desired to hear Mr. Churchill. And so the " frig " was turned off and the radio turned on. I am sure that the Irish would not have finished their dinners early in order to hear Mr. Attlee. And I grieve to say that I doubt whether many of the English would either. That circumstance, with all that it implies, is one of profound significance in our present situation in Britain. As in due time will appear.
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