Winnie the Poohbah

THE AFTERMATH--The World Crisis-- 1918-1928--Winston S. Churchill--Scrib- ner's ($5). The Sequel. The first volume of Mr. Churchill's The World Crisis was dedicated "To All Who Tried," the next "To All Who Endured"; this latest and last, "To All Who Hope." That is a strange title to give a pessimistic climax like this: "The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes there has never been peace in the world; and before history began murderous strife was universal and unending. . . ." Moreover, "it was not until the dawn of the 20th century of the Christian era that War really began to enter into its kingdom. j> "The War stopped as suddenly and as universally as it had begun. ... In a hundred laboratories, in a thousand arsenals, factories, and bureaux, men pulled themselves up with a jerk, turned from the task in which they had been absorbed. Their projects were put aside unfinished, unexecuted; but their knowledge was preserved; their data, calculations, and discoveries were hastily bundled together and docketed 'for future reference' by the War Offices in every country. ... It is in these circumstances that we entered upon that period of Exhaustion that has been described as Peace." Mr. Churchill, British Minister of War during "the" war, describes it in terms of exasperation, cynicism, vitriolic indignation. Though he was at the Peace Conference only toward the end, for the discussion of Soviet Russia, his opinion of the whole fiasco is nonetheless violent. He spits fire upon Wilson Biographer Ray Stannard Baker's smugness: "Mr. Baker detracts from the vindication of his hero by the absurd scenario picture which he has chosen to paint. Wilson's share in the Peace Conference, his hopes, his mistakes, his achievements, his compromises and his disasters are worthy of something better than the Hollywood setting with which we are provided. The President is represented as a stainless Sir Galahad championing the superior ideals of the American people and brought to infinite distress by contact with the awful depravity of Europe and its statesmen. Mr. Baker's film story is, in short, the oldest in the world. It is nothing less and nothing more than the conflict between good and evil, between spiritual conceptions and material appetites, between generosity and greed, between moral earnestness and underhand intrigue, between human sympathy and callous selfishness." Mr. Churchill also grills the whole U. S.: "The American populace fell as far short of their Chief in disinterested generosity to the world, as the peoples of the Allied countries exceeded their own leaders in severity to the enemy. . . . After immense delays and false hopes that only aggravated her difficulties, Europe was to be left to scramble out of the world disaster as best she could; and the United States, which had lost but 125,000 lives in the whole struggle, was to settle down upon the basis of receiving through one channel or another four-fifths of the reparations paid by Germany to the countries she had devastated or whose manhood she had slain." Immensely entertaining for their very vigor, the chapters on the Peace Conference are less instructive and certainly less valuable historically than Mr. Churchill's commentary on the outskirts of war and reconstruction for which he was personally responsible -- at home, in Russia, Ireland, Turkey, Palestine. Notoriously hostile to the Bolshevik regime, he castigates the man whose body is "still preserved in pickle for the curiosity of the Moscow public and for the consolation of the faithful." -- Lenin. "In the cutting off of the lives of men and women no Asiatic conqueror, not Tamerlane, not Jenghiz Khan, can match his fame. . . . His purpose, to save the world: his method, to blow it up. . . . Apt at once to kill or to learn: . . . ruffianism and philanthropy: but a good husband; a gentle guest; happy, his biographers assure us, to wash up the dishes or dandle the baby; as mildly amused to stalk a capercailzie as to butcher an Emperor. . . . Lenin was the Grand Repudiator. He repudiated everything. He repudiated God, King, Country, morals, treaties, debts, rents, interest, the laws and customs of centuries, all contracts written or implied, the whole structure -- such as it is -- of human society. In the end he repudiated himself." To the Allies' shambling policy, or rather lack of policy regarding the Soviet, Churchill attributes much of Russia's tragedy. Timely support of Kolchak, brave but bewildered Czech general, would have given effective substance to the ghost war, "... a war in areas so vast that considerable armies, armies indeed of hundreds of thousands of men, were lost -- dispersed, melted, evaporated; a war in which there were no real battles, only raids and affrays and massacres, as the result of which countries as large as England or France changed hands to and fro; a war of flags on the map, of picket lines, of cavalry screens advancing or receding by hundreds of miles without solid cause or durable consequence; a war with little valour and no mercy." The Significance. In the preface to his ebullient history Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill insists that "all the opinions expressed are purely personal and commit no one but myself." Far from expecting tact in the pronouncements of his public men, the Englishman relishes spirited aspersions hurled from high office. Especially does he expect "Winnie" Churchill, proverbial playboy -- poohbah of British politics -- to say his bitter say against Americans and Bolsheviks, and to sing his little song for whatever policy is momentarily his.*

* For an account of Mr. Churchill's present policy, see FOREIGN NEWS.