Bad Boy

AMID THESE STORMS--Winston S. Churchill--Scribner ($3.50). Though Winston Churchill grew up physically long ago (he is 58), he is still and perennially the bad boy of British politics. Bubbling with super-adolescent energy and enthusiasms, hyper-adolescent ideas, unlike the typical Britisher he cannot refrain from sounding off on any subject that catches his briskly roving eye. Always refreshing (if you like enthusiasm per se), often more humorous than he intends, he apologizes for this collection of outbursts by saying that in an old world one must still amuse oneself like a child. Every Englishman is familiar with cartoons of Winston Churchill picturing his bulging forehead crowned by a tiny hat. He explains that this is a cartoonist's invention, necessitated by the fact that he has no "distinctive mark," based on a single instance when he had to borrow a hat that was too small for him. At Monte Carlo he usually bets on red because he has a "preference for the optimistic side of things." Among many vigorous yarns about the War, funniest (unintentionally) is "My Spy Story," in which he tells how he discovered and demolished a searchlight on the tower of a Scottish castle, considerably upsetting an innocent dinner party to do it. ". . . But the most extraordinary part in my opinion is yet to come. There was nothing in it at all." Post-War conditions have bruised his optimism, but it is still unbowed. He can still look on the bright side of such threatening promises as the robot: "A being might be produced capable of tending a machine but without other ambitions. Our minds recoil from such fearful eventualities, and the laws of a Christian civilization will prevent them. But might not lopsided creatures of this type fit in well with the Communist doctrines of Russia?" Aggressively conservative, Winston Churchill's desk-poundings will please many a Fundamentalist in politics. But the next moment with absent-minded effrontery he is apt to give away a point to the enemy: "Democratic governments drift along the line of least resistance, taking short views, paying their way with sops and doles and smoothing their way with pleasant-sounding platitudes. Never was there less continuity or design in their affairs, and yet towards them are coming swiftly changes which will revolutionize for good or ill not only the whole economic structure of the world but the social habits and moral outlook of every family. Only the Communists have a plan and a gospel. It is a plan fatal to personal freedom and a gospel founded upon hate." Optimist Churchill may give other optimists (including himself) food for thought when he admits that if he had a second chance at life. "I have no doubt that I do not wish to live it over again."

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