Veritable Beacons

Every Briton loves a paradox. Last week the man whom many had begun to call the greatest Prime Minister Britain ever had--whom all conceded to be one of her profoundest initiates in the artifices of rhetoric--was the subject of two.

It was a paradox that the Conservative Party, which by definition is opposed to change, to risks of any sort, to anything "unsound," should elect as its leader Winston Churchill, the most daring and, in the word's best sense, most radical leader in the country. This paradox was consummated by a unanimous vote of the Party after the resignation fortnight ago of that composite of conservatism, Neville Chamberlain.

For the choice there was a sound reason. Winston Churchill himself articulated it. True, he takes chances; he thought up Gallipoli, he endorsed General de Gaulle, he brought some "dangerous" left-wingers into the highest councils of the land. He expressed his basic conservatism as he accepted the leadership: "At all times, according to my lights and throughout the changing scenes through which we are all hurried, I have always faithfully served two public causes which I think stand supreme--maintenance of the enduring greatness of Britain and her Empire and the historical continuity of our island life."

Another paradox: Britons do not mind being told the worst but refuse to believe anything but the best. Winston Churchill knows this well, and one of the qualities which make his words reverberate with heroism is his ability to tell bad news and make it seem somehow good--to make gloomy sentences add up to buoyant paragraphs. Last week he spoke of casualties, property destruction, difficulties-of production, the flub at Dakar. His doom-ridden peroration was a bright passage in the literature of hope:

"Because we feel easier in ourselves and see our way more clearly through our difficulties and dangers than we did some months ago, because foreign countries, friends and foes, recognize the giant, enduring, resilient strength of Great Britain and the British Empire, do not let us dull for one moment the sense of the awful hazard in which we stand.

"Do not let us lose the conviction that it is only by supreme and superb exertions, unwearied and indomitable, that we shall save our souls alive. No one can predict or even imagine how this terrible war against German and Nazi aggression will run its course.

"Long, dark months of trial and tribulation lie before us. Not only many dangers but many more misfortunes, many mistakes and disappointments will surely be our lot; death and sorrow will be our companions on the journey, hardship our garment, constancy and valor our only shield.

"We must be reunited, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible. Our qualities and deeds must burn and glow through the gloom of Europe until they become the veritable beacons of its salvation."

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