Genius Without Judgment:Churchill at Fifty

Abstract

IT IS NOT TRUE that a rolling stone gathers no moss. Mr. Churchill has gathered a great deal of moss. Not that a stone, whether stationary or rolling, is a suitable symbol for this extraordinary man. He is like a rocket that intermittently dazzles the night sky, disappears, and dazzles it again; flashes now from this quarter, now from that; is always meteoric but never extinguished. The principal difference between Mr. Churchill and a cat, as Mark Twain might say, is that a cat has only nine lives. By all the laws of mortality, Mr. Churchill should have perished a score of times, sometimes in laughter, sometimes in anger, sometimes in contempt; but the funeral has always been premature, the grave always empty. You may scotch him for a moment, but you cannot kill him, and we grow weary of pronouncing his obsequies.