I do not know why Mr. Churchill avoids as much as possible making extemporaneous speeches, unless it is his passion for perfection, because as a conversationalist he is without superior and he has few peers. One of them was his intimate friend, Lord Birkenhead, whose power of expression was almost on a par with Churchill’s, as I had the opportunity to observe once in Berlin when the then most brilliant lawyer in England attended a luncheon of the Anglo-American Press Association and dazzled us with his talk. I remember the answer he gave when someone asked what he thought of Mussolini. “Mussolini,” he remarked, “bestrides Italy like a Colossus, but to judge a rider one must consider the kind of horse he rides.” I have listened to Mr. Churchill talk at the dinner table and he is as brilliant there as he is in the House of Commons. His conversational style has the same classical quality of his writing and public speaking. Every sentence is rounded and balanced; none is left incomplete, and I should think that ninety-five per cent of everything he says in talking with his friends could be taken down by a stenographer and reproduced without changing a syllable. At the same time there is no studied effect and the listeners have not the feeling they are attending a recitation or declamation. They are transported back to the time when, either in Ancient Greece or in eighteenth century Europe, men cultivated the art of speaking and especially of conversation. Who knows what effect it will have upon English education and English habits of conversation to have had as a Prime Minister during the war a master of the word such as appears only seldom in centuries. The oratory of Churchill must already have influenced the language standards of the English-speaking world, even though imperceptibly, for it is impossible that so many millions should have listened to him and read his speeches without having their taste improved. As a contrast it is interesting to observe what the effect has already been upon the German language to have had the apostle of illiteracy as the head of the German Reich for eight years; the language of Goethe and Heine has been supplanted deliberately by a coarse vulgarization of German chosen for its appeal to the lowest instincts of the population.