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_ Sratorical

eral

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A PROFILE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL

The

legend |
is shattered —

picturesque and exception-

A

chill has always appreciated
the value — to attract sym-
pathy—of doing an enormous
number of odd things that catch
the public imagination. To gen-
uine activities as a soldier, gen-
, uine ability as a politician and
and literary phrase-
monger, genuine capacity to “get
by” as a novelist, historian and
painter, he has carefully added
such eccentricities as amateur
bricklaying, funny hats,
suits and the cigar. —

As he himself wrote of his
youth, “I had no idea in those
days of the enormous and un-
questionably helpful part that
humbug plays in the social life
of a great man.”

The characteristic of his poli-
tical career is that it exactly cor-
responds to its class setting.

In his 76 years, though he has
done so many things, he has never
done anything original.

Bven his rhetoric is borrowed.
the famous phrase “Blood, tears,
toil and sweat” was taken from
Garibaldi. And the equally fa-
“mous post-war term “Iron Cur-

tain” from’ Goebbels. '
Churchill’s father was the third
son of the seventh Duke of Marl.
borough, his mother a ‘wealthy
American. When he went into
politics, naturally his path. was
eased. &
In himself, also, he is a proof
that, as Lord Woolton so elo-
quently maintained during the
last British general election, the
distinction between Tory and
Liberal is largely irrelevant.
He changed from Tory to Lib-
eral just as the Liberal party
was emerging from the wilder-
ness to an unbroken run of sev-
administrations. And he
abandoned the Liberal party on
the way back to Toryism just
in time to avoid being efzulfed
in the collapse from which it
never emerged.

Let it not be thought that this
changeability indicates insincer-
ity or lack of principle. I have

“never doubted his sincerity since.

I saw him crying—real tears—at
the count? when he was defeated
in a byelection.

Winston Churchill’s principle is
that the world will be better off
with him running it than with-
out him.
®@

A short time at Harrow, three
tries to get through the Sand-
hurst entrance examination.

These are his
fications.

But after all, one does not
need to learn much, if one is a
Churchill, to know that the right
way to handle the working class
is to shoot them down.

' Troops to the Rhondda Valley
in 1910, troops to Tonypandy,
troops and police ali over the
place for the transport strike in
1911, All this was grand training
for the use of armed forces
“wholesale in the British general
strike of 1926 and the issue of

al\ figure, Winston Chur--

siren

academic quali-~

the strike-breaking British Ga-
zette, :
But his ignorance hits him now,

when. he finds it impossible to
apply his mind to any plausible

or coherent program for the Tory :

party. And his idea that denun-
ciation of his opponents and windy
exhortations to war. puts up the

backs of the British working peo- ~
ple — people who are desperately

weary of war — for whom Church-
ill can hardly conceal his con-
tempt

The peculiarity of his military
record is its uniform succession
of defeats. He has lived to see
the loss of every cause he fought
forkG 3

He fought for Spain in ‘Cuba,
to extend the frontiers of British
power in India, to establish Bri-
tain on the Nile against the “Fuz-
zy Wuzzies”, to deny self govern-
ment to the Boers.

As a strategist in the First

By IVOR MONTAGU

World War he was associated with
the futile landing at Antwerp and
the bloody fiasco of the Dardan-
elles. After the Dardanelles he
wasted 100 million pounds (then
nearly $500 million) — almost half
the total British budget in the
days when his career began —
in the most spectacular failure
of all time, the effort to strangle
the Russian Revolution at birth
by military intervention.

At the start of the Second
World War he ran true to form,
with his exultant boasts, proved
ridiculous in the event, of what
he would do to Hitler in the Scan-
dinavian campaign. The tide
never turned until he had ag com-
rade in arms those very Russian

‘Reds whom 20 years earlier he

had sought with every cruelty to
crush. 3 :

Much of his fighting has been
futile because it has been opposed
to progress.

After the First World War he
declared: “The Bolsheviks are
worse enemies of civilisation than
the Huns.” —

He rejoiced over Mussolini, said
he would rather live under Naz-
ism than Communism, and ap-
plauded Franco’s revolt.

His fame as the savior of Bri-
tain from invasion has since been
capitalized upon for every re-
actionary enterprise. But history
has now shown, iby document and
testimony, that Hitler’s problem
in invading Britain was the pow-
erful Red Army and air force on
his flank, :

Most of his friends would’ pro-
bably rest his reputation on three
legends. His far-sightedness in
fearing Hitler’s Germany as an
imperial rival, even when Cham-
berlain was courting the Nazis.
His declaration of aid to the So-
viet Union in June, 1941. And
his role as “architect of victory.”

.

‘

The “Old Warhorse” also rides the donkey of ‘Democratic war policy.

4 se is

=

It has been disclosed by his
close friend Macmillan that even
as the Russians were battling and
dying in the common cause at
Stalingrad and Churchill’s own’
mouth full. of oily praise, his
thoughts were of post-war oppo-
sition.

It is known today that not only
the Soviet leaders, but Roosevelt,
too, were convinced that Church-
ill’s stubborn drive to thwart the
Russians delayed the second front
long beyond its feasible execution
and thus prolonged the war.

Already the “soft underbelly”
had been exposed as being by far
the hardest route into Europe,
dictated by the political ambition
of controlling the Balkans and
‘Central Europe. Churchill’s
“caution” in this respect — alle-
gedly to “save life’ — cost at
least four million victims done to
death in the murder camps in
the last year of war, and but for
the rate of Soviet advance it
would also have led to the shat-
tering of Southern England by a

much longer bombardment by V
weapons.

Greatest irony of all, the policy
of building up an armed reac-
tionary Germany as a bulwark
against communism—pre-war op-
position to which was his one.
great claim to political wisdom—
is now the keystone of his post-
war foreign plans, and he the
staunchest advocate of it!

.*)

At the end of his first volume
of war memoirs he wrote that
he “was immediately dismissed
by the British electorate from all
further conduct of their affairs.”

Alas, no! Would that he had
been. But though the electorate
spoke, he has ruled effectively
through proxies.

The Fulton speech—which At-
tlee refused to repudiate; the
mad, bloodthirsty, futile policy of
trying to dragoon the Soviet Un-
ion by threats of war—these pol-
icies are carried out by the lead-
ers of the British Labor party.

So are the linking of Britain’s
economic fate to American cap-
italism; the entanglement with
reactionary clerical governments,
including a strong unrepentent
West German capitalism in the
so-called European Council.

So is relaxation of controls on
profits and prices which is con-

‘tributing to the record profits

now being made by British big
business.

All these things, carried out by
the Labor government, though
never in its program, were first
foreshadowed or demanded by
Churchill. 4

Churchill’s voice is the mas-
ter’s voice, for it is the voice of
the English ruling class. In or out —
of office, on fundamentals, Chur-
chill has his way. Only the united
efforts of the British people can
prevent this “evil old man” from
directing that way into another
world war.

4

movement.

_The decision to expel him
was made after a discus-
-sion during which he was
questioned about his be-
liefs. As he left the local
‘Conservative headquarters,
he told the press: “I have
never in my life. met such
abysmal stupidity.”

“T simply said that as a
Christian I did not believe
in killingt and that I be-
lieved there were two sides
to the Korean question. All
those fools could do was
to get me to say that I
was not opposed to Com-
munism. I pointed out to
them. that there are at
least 1,000 million! people
in the world who believe
in Communism, and that
they have to be listened to,

have peace.” he said.

asserted.

Tories expel member
of peace council

LONDON

R. C. R. Woodward. an active Conservative for the
past 20 years, has been| expelled from his local Con-
-servative association for his connection with the peace

Dr. Woodward, who attended the recent
Second World Peace Congress at Warsaw and was elect-
ed to the World Peace Council. has been a Tory member
of Ealing Borough Council for the past three years.

and that we must cooperate: with

Councillor Woodward declared that the decision of
the,Conservative association would make absolutely no
difference to his work for peace.
next three or four months would prove him right, he ©

DR. C. R. WOODWARD

them if we are to

Events within the

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 22, 1950 — PAGE 5

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