Lay Figure

Winston Churchill. By Robert Sencourt. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.)

IT is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Sencourt has given us not one, but two books; there is, on the one hand, an excellent account of the Prime Minister's life, racy, readable, highly coloured, exciting, which does full justice to the variety and scope of his career, and will give many people an entirely new picture

of the man of learning and of action whom the crisis has called to the front rank of the nation.

On the other hand, we have an account of Mr. Sencourt's own views on Europe and on society, attributed, with varying degrees of credibility, to Mr. Churchill. Where quotations to fit the author's thesis can be found, they are duly included—although on some occasions the reader is conscious of a faint, uneasy desire to see the words in their full context. Where no quotations can be found, then Mr. Sencourt admits that here is "an example . . . of Mr. Churchill's inconsistency," and that " no one is in- fallible," or " Mr. Churchill has never closely examined " the matter, or " his instincts are true and just, but he never directed the searchlight of his genius on the details of the trouble." Admittedly, it is a difficulty under which every effort of interpreta- tion labours. But the author must expect a certain measure of

scepticism on the part ,of ththe who are asked to accept the result.

Mr. Sencourt is frankly opposed to democracy. He speaks of German youth revolting against " years of democracy and de- moralisation " as though the terms were synonymous ; he appears of the world between wars, a world of " continued hunger, higher " combined his economic system with his foreign policy without any distraction of a vote from uninformed masses," and the misery of the world between wars, a world of " continued hunger, higher taxes, greater waste of effort and intense fear," he blames " first of all " on Demos. Democracy is closely associated in his mind with anti-clerical Liberalism and Freemasonry, which in their turn are the seedbeds of Communism. All this is familiar enough. It has come trumpeting to us for years from Rome and Berlin, with whose view of the British Empire as a decadent plutocracy " largely to blame " for the deficiencies of the Have-Not-Powers Mr. Sencourt also appears to agree. It is admittedly a possible, if very one-sided, interpretation of European divisions in the last twenty years. What is less admissible is that the Prime Minister endorses the interpretation.

The alternative to a democracy which is responsible for so much ill is only roughly sketched in, and, again, more by inference than direct recommendation. But Mr. Sencourt's preference appears to be for an authoritarian monarchy, a functioning aristocracy, parliamentary institutions controlled by a govern- ing class which—if such is the correct reading of a peculiarly obscure passage on page 299—would manipulate the popular vote

" by contributions from inherited fortune," State control of credit and foreign policy, coupled—oddly enough—with a return to free

capitalism and free trade. The historical system which appears

most nearly to have fulfilled this programme is that of the Fascist Italy of the Carta del Lavoro days, before the onslaught of Autarky.

Mr. Sencourt is free to prefer this system. But it is difficult to read the Prime Minister's historic defence on November 2ISt of the liberties of Parliament and of the people, won through genera-

tions of struggle—including a bloody struggle with an Authori- tarian Monarchy—into an endorsement of views as personal and, on the whole, as unrepresentative as those of Mr. Sencourt.

It is, finally, in the author's interpretation of the historical events of the last twenty years that he least commands belief. For Mr. Sencourt, as for Hitler, Versailles is the villain of the piece. And Versailles is the fault of democracy! Brest-Litovsk is forgotten—

the infinitely more vindictive peace imposed by a military autocracy against whose rigours nobody raised a protest—save the elected representatives of the German people. And surely responsibility

must go behind the democracies which made Versailles to the authoritarian States which made the war. If the last twenty years has proved anything, it is that the will of the people must be stifled before they can be led to war. That, more than self- satisfaction, decadence, Bolshevist intrigue, and the rest, explains the failure of Western diplomacy. If the people are allowed to speak, they speak against war.

Again, in the events of this troubled year it is not the voice of Mr. Churchill that speaks to us from Mr. Sencourt's pages. The departure of Mr. Chamberlain from the Premiership is openly

regretted (p. 279), and the Conservatives who voted against him blamed. Every excuse is found for Petain, who, "with the gravity, the orderliness and the logical sequence of twenty years earlier,"

broke the British alliance and the pledge to make no separate peace, and who accepted as collaborators two such vivid enemies of England as Laval and Baudouin. France is described, after the collapse and the German occupation, as being "united with all Europe in the aim to reach by other means to other ends "—to Hitler's New Order presumably. Finally there appears on pages 295-296 an appeal to what is perilously akin to appeasement. Negotiation is urged as the alternative w " a criss-cross of air- raids which either side can impede, but neither prevent." Are we, then, to join France in the New Order? No other interpreta- tion can be deduced from Mr. Sencourt's plea. And if his analysis of Mr. Churchill's policy leads him to imagine that such a plea is in keeping with it, are we not entitled to discount the whole elaborate superstructure of conjecture and hypothesis as roundly as—we may presume—the Prime Minister himself would