The Wilmington morning star., 1940-05-17
WASHINGTON
DAYBOOK
By JACK STINNETT

WASHINGTON, May 16-If the rest of the
country is like Washington, no man alive is I'm.
der more critical microscopes than Winston
Churchill, who, as Prime Minister of Great Brit
ain, has, for the first time in nearly four de.
cades Of public prominence, got the reigns Of
the empire completely in his hands.
Scouting around the capital, I have found a
few persons who know him intimately or well
and have collected a hodge-podge that may serve
for an introduction to the man who will guide
the destinies of the Allies against a Nazi war
machine which is rolling with monotonous sue
cess over Europe's little nations.
The 66-year-old Prime Minister, whose trade
mark is a long, black cigar, is fat, elderly,
stodgy. But his looks are deceiving . . he
is tempestuous, meteoric and combines reckless
ness with traditional English tenacity. Lord
Asquith, under whom he served in one of his
nine cabinet posts, said, Winston has genius,
but not judgment" You couldn't convince
the English people of that.
He's Half American
It's typical of Churchill that when Sir Neville
Chamberlain was attacked for withdrawal of the
troops from Norway, Churchill came to his de-
tense and temporarily, at least, prevented the
political rout of his superior. Yet Churchill,
in the first World war, was the man who shout.
ed that if the Scandinavian countries could be
brought in on the side Of the Allies, the war
would be over in less than Is months.
AS far as I can find out, without reading a
history of the British Empire, he's the first
Prime Minister who is half American. His
mother was Jenny Jerome, of New York.
The men who have Influenced his life and for
whom he has had much veneration include his
father, Lord Randolph Churchill; Lord Hugh
Cecil, a died-in-the-wool Tory; Lloyd George; Sir
Francis Mowatt, a conservative of the strict Vic.
torian school; and Bourke Cochran, a Tammany
Tiger of New York's roaring Nineties.
Churchill once was an honored guest of Kaiser
Wilhelm II, but he has become the symbol for
almost everything in the British people the,
Germans hate and fear. There's no love lost on
his side. From the first, he has been one of Hit.
ler's severest critics.
When ne talks about the Nazis, he's at his
snarliest. Frequently he ends his TRADES with,
I'm the end, We'll break their hearts,"
He just Missed
Unlike many statesmen, Churchill has been
under frontline fire. In the middle years of the
World war, he left the government to become
major in the trenches-once left a dugout after
hours of l~etter-writing just a few minutes
before it was blown to smithereens.
For the first II years after Great Britain's
armed forces took up airplanes, he was chief OF
one branch or another of aviation. When he
was first chief of the Royal Air Force, they had
Nv PldheS, i've pllOlS. OF SOIue years, ne pllOL-
ed a plane himself -. but gave it up after
several crashes.
He's a violent enemy of red tape refuses
to abide by the petty regulations of minor Off
Gals. He works from $50 a. m. to 1 or 2 a. m.
. . often reminds associates that work and
pleasure are the same thing. Nevertheless, he
has a hobby; it's the same as that of Gen. Gus
tave Gamelin, commander-in-chie of the Allied
armies oil painting. Churchill also is an
amateur bricSlayer he has been a journalist
war correspondent ard novelist.
He's an avid collector of cartoons in which
he appears and chuckles over all of them Ia lit
tie hobby out of which Hermann Goering also
derives a lot of pleasure.)
If he could be said to have one quality for
which even his most outspoken enemies have
great respect, it is courage. Not even the Nazis
ever have questioned that.