BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Pilot of 1942
The End of the Beginning. War Speeches by the Prime Minister in i94z. Compiled by Charles Eade. (Cassell. us. 6d.)
IT is a moving experience to read, or to hear, the Prime Minister's speeches at the moment of their delivery when they come new- minted into the world. It will be a stirring experience to the historian of the future, a hundred years hence, in 2240 A.D., to weigh their exact significance and to measure their historical importance. It is a sort of half-way experience—neither the one thing nor the other, but a sort of mixture of both—to read them again, in the form of a book, a year after their original delivery. One result of that reading is clear, at any rate to the reviewer. The Prime Minister was fundamentally right in the course which he steered, the view which he took, and the arguments he used. The experience of a year, which has taught us so much, has certainly taught us that he has not been a false prophet. He is justified by the event ; and his stature rises as the event pronounces his justification.
There are other things which crowd on the mind as one reads his speeches. They attain' the heights of oratory ; but they are, in the main, matters of business statement, which appeal to the reason, and not of emotional eloquence. That is why they endure, and will continue to endure. They accumulate a cogent and massive argument on the business of the war—an argument all the more cogent because a strategic eye, and strategic experience, control and inspire the un- folding of the argument. There are many war speeches in the record of history—the speeches of Demosthenes ; the speeches of Crom- well ; the war speeches of the younger Pitt. The speeches of Mr. Churchill will stand any comparison. They have a sturdy granite optimism—an optimism which is justified by the course of later events, but an optimism which would have been just and right even if it had not been so justified, in virtue of its psychological effect and its immediate steeling of national will and effort. They have also an imperturbability which would have rejoiced Walt Whitman (" Me imperturbably standing at ease ") and which rings absolutely true to what we like to regard as the essence of our national character. There is no exultation of " wild bells ringing out to the wild sky " in the broadcast of November 29th, after the victory of El Alamein and the successful occupation of North Africa. There is no despon- dency in the broadcast of February 15th, given on the night of the day on which Singapore fell to the Japanese. (That broadcast is perhaps the finest of all the Prime Minister's speeches. " All I have to offer is hard, adverse war for many months. Here is another occasion to show—as so often in our long story—that we can bear reverses with dignity and with renewed accessions of strength.") Speeches of this order are not only words : they are acts—and acts of the first order of importance. The parliamentary speeches have had a tonic and steadying effect on a Parliament, which, once or twice, became nervous and excited—perhaps more nervous and excited ;Ilan the country itself. But it is the broadcast speeches which cannot but seem, in retrospect, to be the essential master- pieces. Not only are they admirably delivered (Mr. Churchill " produces " himself with a singular art), but they are perfectly adjusted to stiffen the sinews of a nation which is a mixture of a bull and a bulldog, but which has also a poetic vein (after all, it is also the nation of Shakespeare and Byron) and can respond to a poetic touch. This may sound extravagant. Is it? The man who could give the toast, on January ist of last year, " Here's to 1942, here's to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril," was a schoolfellow of Byron, and of the same sort of metal.
Perhaps it is the fighting speeches delivered in Parliament, at the end of January and the beginning of July of last year, which will particularly engage the attention of the historian of 2240. Let us leave them to him, and let us leave him to assess "Mr. Churchill's errors of judgement. Not but that it is wise, and a bounden duty, to assess them even in the present : it is the genius of democracy, and a necessary condition of its life, that it should hold its leaders to constant account. (The uncriticised life of the infallible leader is not worth living.) But here, and at this moment, we may thank the man who has tried, as his record of 1942 shows, to tell us clear, honest, blunt truth ; who has done his best to keep us in the light, and to keep us up to the mark. That is the final feeling after reading these speeches of 1942. A tribute should be paid to the editor of the volume for his quiet and unostentatious editing and for the austerely brief matter which he adds to the speeches he has edited. His short chronological notes
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