WINSTON CHURCHill
205
where the Battle of France begins and the author becomes Prime
Minister, he writes, with some bitterness:
Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May 1940, at the outset of
this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which hence–
forth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months
of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having sur–
rendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately
dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their
affairs.
Very early in the same volume, in commenting on the "discarding" of
Clemenceau by the French at the end of the previous war, Churchill
quotes Plutarch, who said: "Ingratitude toward their great men is
the mark of strong peoples." Undoubtedly it is with some such thought
as this that Churchill must console himself for his dismissal. But
Plutarch's saying, which contains a truth, needs to be interpreted, for
gratitude and ingratitude are meaningless terms when applied to such
broad political phenomena as the British elections of 1945. Not in–
gratitude, but a refusal to allow their great men to impose themselves
upon them, or to turn them away from their intended course, is the
mark of strong peoples. It bespeaks the high political development of the
British people, that aptitude for politics which no other nation in
history can equal, that, at the very moment when all Churchill's great
efforts were crowned with success, they should have turned
him
out of
office, not in a fit of vagariousness, but on well-considered grounds.
In dismissing Churchill the British electorate sought to leave behind
that brilliant past which he so consciously embodies, but which was as
iniquitous as it was brilliant. In renouncing that past much, no doubt,
is lost. As Churchill himself has said, "The leadership of the privileged
has passed away; but it has not been succeeded by that of the eminent";
and on the other hand how eminent so many of the privileged were.
Yet the England of the very few, that England with which Churchill
willy-nilly is identified and which he espouses and disowns at the same
time, had to go. One must admire in Churchill "a sort of native plain–
ness and directness of understanding" which Burke spoke of as char–
acterizing "those men who have successively obtained authority" among
the English. Yet politics is not only a practical activity calling for a
rugged common sense. It has a moral side as well-this needs no
emphasis today-and requires the
liv~ly
sense of justice that common
sense has always been prone to dismiss as visionary.
