Out of Boredom

In the course of defending Son Randolph Churchill fortnight ago (TIME, March 29), Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons it was permissible for soldiers on active service to express themselves in print. Last week, the London Evening Standard published a six-column Letter From A Soldier which pungently voiced many a Briton's opinion of talkative politicians.

Wrote the anonymous soldier:* "In the first place what a grand idea if some of our civvie ministerial bosses would accept a self-denying ordinance to hold their tongue now for a space. Or at least agree to sing the same song (in which case a single well-rendered chorus would suffice for a season).

"Exhort and comfort! Comfort and exhort! . . . Up rises our old friend, Mr. A. V. Alexander of the Admiralty to tell us that all's well and the Navy's there. Then, optimism breaking out like a rash over the face of the press, his ever-loving colleague, Mr. Ernie Bevin . . . has to come clattering down like a load of bricks on our heads to tell us that we're too complacent and that times are going to get even tougher. Now if Alex and Ernie could only arrange to make a bookkeeping entry instead of a newspaper story, thus canceling each other out without publication, we soldiers would not get so bewildered.

"And for us? Out of the boredom and browning off and endless practice in weapons, drill and maneuver that we have endured, something worth-while is rising in England. A Great Army is here too, terrible in power, destined to fame unequaled in all the splendid story of our country. On a day before long there is going forth from this island the finest body of troops our nation ever raised . . . soon the trumpets will be sounding the advance. Afterwards must follow the mournful rolling of the muffled drum."

* The Evening Standard's brilliant, leftist Editor Frank Owen became a trooper in the tank corps last year.

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