The Eloquence of Churchill

Abstract

The Editors have suggested that this latest collection of Mr Churchill's be reviewed purely as examples of eloquence. My pleasure in consenting was due only in part to admiration for the Prime Minister's character, methods and oratory: quite as strong was the conviction that a detailed appraisal of artistry in speech might be not only interesting of itself but also serviceable as a protest against the widespread neglect, not to say derision into which genuine eloquence is falling. Again and again we hear that “eloquence is out of fashion,” and the level of oratory in the British House of Commons has become a byword. Even Mr Churchill's achievement, though it enjoys the immense yet partly irrelevant advantage that it deals with matters of unique moment, seems likely to suffer in some degree from the current distaste for nobility in public speaking. One of our most excellent war-commentators, Mr Raymond Gram Swing, has perpetrated an ineptitude which the publishers have seen fit to print on the jacket of this volume. “Nothing quite so much misses the importance of Mr Churchill's speeches as to say that they are examples of superb English rhetoric. What makes his speeches invaluable is not their technique. It is what he has to tell.” Such a pronouncement hardly deserves refutation: on these lines, any truthful and clear report of events, which a thousand living journalists could produce, equals any oration here printed.