There sits the government, the bald head of Mr. Churchill shining among the Members with unmistakable authority. The benches are nearly empty until the time draws near for the Prime Minister to speak; a few minutes before he rises the House is jammed with Members sitting even on the foot of the Speaker’s dais. The Prime Minister rises. There is dead silence as Mr. Churchill lays before him a sheaf of what are technically called notes, as it is prohibited in the House for any member, even the Prime Minister, to read a speech. This rule is presumably to prevent a member from using a speech written by someone else. The familiar Washington ghost writers would have little employment in Westminster. Mr. Churchill would have about as much use for one as Shakespeare would have had. Mr. Churchill’s “notes” are in fact his completely written speech which he has memorized by rereading the final copy quickly on the way to the House. He has worked on this speech for several hours a day for eight days, writing, rewriting, until he finally has it typed on sheets half the size of standard typewriter paper. Thereafter he never looks at it. He has it before him, and he automatically turns the pages, but his delivery is perfectly extemporaneous, and you would imagine as you sat there watching and listening that those incomparable phrases were conceived at the moment, and to the satisfaction of hearing them is added the illusion of being present at their creation. Mr. Churchill himself insists he cannot speak well impromptu and I have heard that his son Randolph, recently seated in Parliament, is considered a better offhand speaker than his father. It is an extraordinary coincidence that this greatest orator of modern times should have an impediment of speech similar, we may imagine, to that of the greatest orator of ancient times, Demosthenes. Churchill has almost overcome the impediment. His delivery is not what we would consider the best. He depends not at all on gesture. Now and then he pauses to glance over the top of his spectacles with defiance or curiosity. His stance is determined, not graceful. For the most part he stands quietly in the same spot, and only moves a step backward or forward when he wishes to emphasize a passage. His voice is sonorous, strong, not the golden voice of a William Jennings Bryan, but also not the vulgar guttural of Hitler. Yet when Churchill speaks of Hitler there comes into his tone a note that promises to meet all the Nazi’s brutality and pay interest. Churchill’s voice is ideally adapted to the radio and the millions of Americans who listen to him on the air have heard him at his best. Many have exclaimed at his accent that he does not talk like an Englishman. His is the accent of Sandhurst, Britain’s West Point, which is nearer the American way of speaking than the curious upper-class cockney affected by some graduates of Oxford and Cambridge.