Volume 10, Number 10 · May 23, 1968
War Correspondent
By D.A.N. Jones
Winston S. Churchill: Young Statesman 1901-1914
by Randolph S. Churchill
Houghton Mifflin, 763 pp., $10.00
When Winston Churchill's florid speeches came over the wartime radio, the aged Hilaire Belloc, ever out-of-date, is alleged to have snarled: 'Damned Yankee careerist.' Fair comment on 1901-14; irrelevant to Churchill's valued efforts in 1939-45. Equally anachronistic are the 'old warrior's' admirers, who are now applauding this volume of his amusing son's ill-organized biography, claiming to detect in the clever young politician the lineaments of the grand old man to come. 'No one can doubt that he would withstand any trial, overcome any tribulation and develop in wisdom and fortitude until the hour and the man were matched…. He was no war-monger but he was in tune with great events, and it is wholly right that a man of spirit should relish his duty…. He was not to die. He was to live on for fifty more years, and because he lived, our country stayed free. Praise be.' No one writes like this nowadays, except when they are writing about Churchill. His style is catching.
Review, 3449 words
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