The Mover

Since 1945, the world's high places had been filled with small men who seemed intent on proving that great men were obsolete. They had fiddled and fussed, explained and complained. Now Winston Churchill returned to power-a man who bore the consciousness of his own stature proudly, who shouldered responsibility with sober relish-a man who was a mover rather than a victim.

In the American language the word "politician" calls forth contempt and distrust, and such connotations grew, in 1951, with disclosures of corruption and shoddy politics in high places of the U.S. This growing contempt and distrust came at an unfortunate time; in 1951, many of the gravest problems facing the U.S. were political. Churchill, without a trace of shame, calls himself a politician. He means that by aptitude, training and choice, his business in life is to deal with problems of man and state, and state and state.

A practitioner of this profession, once properly considered a noble calling, has great opportunities waiting for him in the field of U.S.-British relations. The crisis that runs from Egypt to Iran is largely the result of Anglo-American disunity on policy in that area. The disunity, in turn, is a result of careless and unskillful politics, not of any irreconcilable differences of U.S. and British policy in the Near and Middle East. When Acheson and other U.S. leaders sit down with Mossadegh, they can plead, as they did last week, for patience and good will on the specific question of Iranian oil. But they do not speak out of any broad, concerted Western policy that visualizes clearly the British and American roles in the future of the Moslem world. In forming future policy, the U.S., not Britain, will have the greater weight, as it had in the wartime decisions of the Western allies.

Churchill's major contribution to the future development of Western policy will be to make sure that the decisions get made, that they are consistent with each other, and that a vigorous effort is made to carry them out. As a professional politician, Churchill has an intense interest in the destiny of Western civilization. He even accepts eagerly a share of responsibility for it. It will be a welcome change for the U.S. to have that kind of interest urgently present in the councils of the West.

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