For 1943, A Bold Heart

Over the world's short waves, Winston Churchill gave another of his full-dress oratorical performances, launched the first big broadside in a new war of nerves against Italy.

In his last radio performance, in May, Britain's Prime Minister had done his best to sound resolute in the face of threatened Nazi gas attacks, discouraging war communiques and mounting hostility at home. Last week his resolution was unbridled, his humility as forthright as a sock on the jaw. For his resolution, he had good reason. November's war had fared well. In Britain a Gallup poll reported that his popularity, sadly sagging in July after the rout at Tobruk, had shot up again. Of those polled, 91% approved of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

Spaced by theatrical pauses and wrapped in intonations as rich as plum pudding, the Churchill phrases hailed allied collaboration in Africa, promised it in the Pacific, anticipated it at the peace table. To Benito Mussolini he applied a fresh epithet: "The hyena in his nature broke all bounds of decency."* To "the fair land of Italy" he guaranteed "prolonged, scientific and shattering air attack." To Italians he offered the choice "to say whether they want this terrible thing to happen to their country or not." If not, presumably they could get rid of Il Duce and his works.

While fires from the previous night's four-ton British bombs still seared Turin, Churchill threatened "to bring the weight of war home to the Italian Fascist State in a manner not hitherto dreamed of by its guilty leaders."

Other Churchillisms:

> On Africa: "We intend, and I will go so far as to say we expect, to expel the enemy before long."

>On France: "I agree with General de Gaulle that at last the scales of deception now have fallen from the eyes of the French people. Indeed, it was time."

> On the Pacific: "It may well be that the war in Europe will end before the war in Asia. ... If events should take such a course, we should, of course, bring all our forces to the other side of the world to aid the United States . . . against the aggressions of Japan."

> On the future: "I promise nothing . . . I know of nothing . . . which justifies the hope that the war will not be long or that bitter, bloody years do not lie ahead."

>On the peace: "I should hope . . . that we shall be able to make better solutions . . . than was possible a quarter of a century ago."

> On 1943: "We must brace ourselves to cope with trials and problems. . . . We do so with ... a bold heart and a good conscience."

*Other Churchillian labels for Il Duce: "jackal," "lackey," "serf," "utensil."

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