GREAT BRITAIN: The Outline of Churchill

Splenetic Herbert George (Outline of History) Wells is a historian whose interest in the remote past is based on his interest in the immediate present. He also brandishes words like a Martian. From the sickbed where he has lain for months, the 78-year-old socialist last week sent London’s pinko Tribune a sizzling, unsolicited philippic entitled Churchill Must Go, flaying Winston Churchill’s Greek policy.

Cried Wells: “Winston Churchill, the present would-be British Führer, is a person with a range of ideas limited to the adventure and opportunities of British political life. . . . When the British people were blistered with humiliation by the currish policy of the old Conservative gang in power, the pugnacity of Winston brought him to the fore. The country meant to fight and he delighted in fighting. For want of a better, he became the symbol of our national will for conflict, a role he has now outlived. . ..

“The British Prime Minister’s mind . . . is now plainly in a phase of extreme reaction. . . . His ideology, picked up in the garrison life of India, on the reefs of South Africa, the maternal home, and the conversation of wealthy, conservative households, is a pitiful jumble of nonsense. . . . He has served his purpose and it is high time he retired upon his laurels before we forget the debt we owe him. His last associations with the various European royalties who share his belief in the invincible snobbishness of mankind . . . are his final farewell to human confidence….”

Author Wells implied that Winston Churchill was as much an anomalous survival in politics as the platypus is in nature. Cried Wells: “We want him to go—now—before he discredits us further, for his own sake as well as ours. . . . The matter is urgent. . . . There can be no doubt of the feelings of the common people of England . . . about this ugly business in Greece and other countries under the heel of slapdash British Toryism. … If we do not end Winston, Winston will end us.”