Evening star., 1939-09-10

duplicity in current international annals:
Along all frontiers hundreds of
thousands of men, armed with the
most deadly weapons ever known,
and behind them millions more, await
the dread signal There is only one
man who can give it. There he SITS
torn by passion and foreboding, by
appetites and fears. with his finger
moving toward a button which-if
he presses twill explode what is
left of civilization . But the
choice is still open. There is no
truth in the plea that Hitler has gone
too far to start over. BY a single
impulse of will power he could regain
solid foundations of health and SAN
ity -" If there is friendly action
We will match it on our side. If there
is renewed aggression we will make
war.
There are Englishmen who think to
this day that if Winston Churchill had
not, without cabinet authority and ut
terly on his own initiative, sent the
British Navy to battle stations some 48
Asquith cabinet declared war on Ger
many, the course of history between 1914
and 1918 might have taken a very differ
ent direction. But the dynamic impul-
sive son of Lord Randolph Churchill and
the former Jennie Jerome of New York
was no stickler for red tape when it
came to throwing the mistress of the
seas into high gear at moment of
sudden and supreme peril. So, when the
British government finally made up its
mind on fateful August 4, 1914 to take
its stand alongside France and Belgium,
the then 37-year-old first lord of the
admiralty calmly announced to his COL
leagues that the navy was ready.
Effective Blockade Began.
There and then went into instantane-
Gus effect the blockade in the North Sea
and the Baltic-a ring of iron and steel
which was never to be broken and
which became the supreme factor in
bringing Germany to her knees. The
Kaiser's U-boats wrought terrific dam
age, and at Jutland his high seas fleet
fought gloriously and almost VIGOROUSLY,
but the German Navy scurried to cover
after its one and only brush with .1elicoe
and Beatty. 1t never again came out to
fight. Historians will hardly fail to ac-
cord Winston Churchill high credit for
the state of readiness which enabled the
union jack to emerge triumphant in
1918. In his own postwar historical
work, THE World Crises" Churchill in
dicates that he approved of Admiral
Jellicoe's momentous decision to break
of the engagement at Jutland without
pursuit of the battered enemy. Said
Churchill: He is the only man in his
tory who might have lost war in an
afternoon
Winston Churchills s dominant charac-
teristic is impetuosity. He revealed, it as
correspondent and later as a soldier in
the South African War, and carried it
into his subsequent public life as a
member of Parliament The ruling
passion was to be responsible for two
plumbers which all but wrecked him dur
ing the World War. One was the i'm
pulslve dispatch of the wholly made
quate naval expedition to relieve be-
leaguered Antwerp in October, 1914,
although there was only fragmentary
hope that the Germans could be re-
pulsed. The expeditionary force was
humiliatingly trapped and interned for
the duration of the war.
A year and a half later Churchill
went of half cooked again. On his rec
ommendation, Britain launched the ex-
pedition, naval and military, to force the
Dardanelles. The Gallipoli campaign
proved CHASTITY failure. The Turks, as
result Of the resistance organized by the
brilliant German general, Liman Won
| Sanders, repulsed the British with dis
astrous losses, and the London govern
ment was compelled, after months of
futile attack and heartbreaking casual
ties, to beat an ignominous retreat from
the Straits.
Went to the Front.
| Churchill came under whitening fire
in press, public and Parliament. He
resigned from the cabinet and sought a
| fighting commission as a colonel of in
| fantry in France. There he campaigned
with daredevil bravery until 1917, when
the Lloyd George government recalled
him to England, to apply his driving ad-
ministrative talents to the ministry of
munitions. Before the armistice Church.
| i'll also served as minister of air and
secretary of war. Always and ever, his
| influence was one of the factors that
maintained British morale throughout
the darkest days and definitely helped to
| turn the tide toward Allied victory.
Anthony Eden chose honor and prin-
ciple rather than retention Of high of1ce,
| when In February, 1898, he surrendered