The Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a DusterBegbie, Harold
History
The Mirrors of Downing Street: Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster
Begbie, Harold
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1910-1936; Statesmen -- Great Britain
There is perhaps only one other man in the present House of Commons who
could do more than Mr. Churchill for his country and the world. All Mr.
Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a
Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road of
destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality.
This is to say, that to be saved from himself Mr. Churchill must be
carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal, an ideal so much
greater than his own place in politics that he is willing to face death
for its triumph, even the many deaths of political life.
At present he is but playing with politics. Even in his most earnest
moments he is only "in politics" as a man is "in business." But politics
for Mr. Churchill, if they are to make him, if they are to fulfil his
promise, must be a religion. They must have nothing to do with Mr.
Churchill. They must have everything to do with the salvation of
mankind.
It is time, high time, he hitched his waggon to a star.
Ever since I first met him, when he was still in the twenties, Mr.
Churchill has seemed to me one of the most pathetic and misunderstood
figures in public life. People have got it into their heads that he is a
noisy, shameless, truculent, and pushing person, a sort of intellectual
Horatio Bottomley of the upper classes. Nothing could be further from
the truth.
Mr. Churchill is one of the most sensitive of prominent politicians, and
it is only by the exercise of his remarkable courage that he has
mastered this element of nervousness. Ambition has driven him onward,
and courage has carried him through, but more often than the public
thinks he has suffered sharply in his progress. The impediment of
speech, which in his very nervous moments would almost make one think
his mouth was roofless, would have prevented many men from even
attempting to enter public life; it has always been a handicap to Mr.
Churchill, but he has never allowed it to stop his way, and I think it
is significant both of his courage and the nervousness of his
temperament that while at the beginning of a speech this thickness of
utterance is most noticeable, the speaker's pale face showing two
patches of fiery pink in his cheeks, the utterance becomes almost clear,
the face shows no sign of self-consciousness, directly he has
established sympathy with his audience. It is interesting to notice an
accent of brutality in his speaking, so different from the suave and
charming tones of Mr. Balfour; this accent of brutality, however, is
not the note of a brutal character, but of a highly strung temperament
fighting its own sensibilities for mastery of its own mind. Mr.
Churchill is more often fighting himself than his enemies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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