Evening star., 1940-03-03

six months old. Out of the first half
the one figure who emerges in large
scale as villain is an old and we'll
tried player, stock character in the
drama of the Goth century. He has not
only made history but has written it,
and with the same hard brilliance that
he does everything else. This, it is
scarcely necessary to add, is the Right
Hon. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
He came into Office as first lord of the
admiralty on September S, symbol of
hope, of action, to all the British people.
For the Nazis he was an object of the
bltterest hatred and at him ever since
they have aimed their heaviest propa-
ganda cannon. For neutral nations he
was valid symbol of Britain at war, a
Britain transformed and revitalized.,
Though Mr.. Churchill's activity has
been in part concealed by the screen of
censorship, he emerges nevertheless as
the directing force of the war, throwing
himself into his task with the same
grim fervor that marked him in the
period beginning in 1914 It is safe
assumption that he has had not little
to do with assembling the mass Of troops
now in the East for new campaign
which promises to begin In thu. spring.
Long Enemy of Chamberlain
How he works with his cabinet chief,
Prime Minister Chamberlain, the public
is not permitted to know. For long
time they were enemies, bitter and un-
relenting. Mr. Churchill customarily re-
ferred to Mr.. Chamberlain with biting
scorn as that undertaken from Bir-
mingham.' The war has, of course, OBJ
scured these personal enmities. But it
is major irony in the record of our
time that Mr.. Churchill should be fight
ing under the banner of the man whom
he tried for so many fruitless months
to goad into action.
1t took a war to exhume Mr.. Churchill
from the political grave to which his
own flashing genius had consigned him.
He was too spectacular, too outspoken,
for that period of somnolence from 1881
to 1889. Genius without judgment" was
the damning verdict of those who mis-
trusted him. When he spoke in Cas-
sandra-like warning of the peril to the
empire, the elder statesmen refused to
listen. His was voice crying in will
derness of SNUG Indifference.
During the 3Os Mr.. Churchill spent not
little of his remarkable career Of en-
ergy berating the British. They we're
asleep, he said when he happened to be
in mild mood. They were decadent,
defeated living in the past of greatness
that was rapidly vanishing, he cried
when really aroused.
Invokes Greatness of Past.
Again and again Mr.. Churchill has
invoked that greatness to stir the pres
ent generation out of lethargy. And no
one has more right to call upon the
tradition of empire than this romantic
figure. In curious way Mr.. Churchill
seems often to be a throwback to the
time of Sir Francis Drake or Give or
Wellington, soldiers who were statesmen
and statesmen who were soldiers. If
sober men like Mr.. Chamberlain could
summon up the past, it would be the
comfortable past of Queen Victoria.
Mr.. Churchill would recreate the stirring
greatness of the time of Queen Elizabeth.
Winston Churchill was born under the
best auspices. His father was Lord Ran
dolph Churchill, third son of the seventh
Duke of Marlboro, leader of the House of
Commons and chancellor of the ex-
chequer, one of the most brilliant Tory
politicians in Britain's history. His
mother had been Jenine Jerome, born of
a wealthy New York banking family.
As with all upper-class Britishers, his
rearing was intrusted to nurse, good
woman for whom he has retained a warm,
affectionate memory. At the age of he
was sent to st. James School, the most
fashionable and correct preparation for
Eton. The aristocratic youngsters who
attended st. James were put under the
most savage Victorian discipline, Mr..
Churchill recalls.
Considered Schooling Futile.
His schooling, at st. James and later
at Harrow, he considered almost entirely
futile. Completely uninterested in Latin,
Greek and mathematics, he was usually
near the bottom of his class II would
far rather have been apprenticed as a
bricklayer's mate" he says of the years
spent in school, "or run errands as a
messenger boy, or helped my father to
dress the front windows of grocer's
shop. 1t would have been real; it would
have been natural; 1t would have taught
me more, and I should have zone It
much better. Also should have got to
know my father, which would have been
joy to me-"
As youngster Winston had $500 toy
soldiers, together with 18 field guns and
fortress pieces. ze and his brother Jack