The Common Ruin

At the Lord Mayor's 450th annual banquet in London, Winston Churchill--so recently and so irresponsibly denounced by Laborites as a warmonger--last week pleaded for peace. It was one of his most eloquent speeches in years. His eyes rested on the empty space in the 15th Century Guildhall where twin statues of Gog and Magog* stood glaring at each other until German bombs destroyed them in December 1940. Then, in resonant tones, Winston Churchill spoke,

"I am so glad, my Lord Mayor, that you have decided to replace Gog and Magog. It seems to me that they represent none too badly the present state of world politics. I think there is room for both Gog and Magog. But be careful, my Lord Mayor, to keep them from colliding, for, if that happens, both would be smashed to atoms and we should have to begin all over again--from the bottom of the pit.

The Dear Wish. "Let me tell you what the materials [of Gog and Magog] are. They are vast masses of warmhearted, hard-working human beings wanting to do their best for their country and their neighbors and longing to build their homes and bring up their children in peace, freedom and the hope of better times. That is all they ask of their rulers. That is the dear wish in the hearts of all the peoples of mankind. How easy it ought to be, with modern science standing on tiptoe ready to open the doors of a golden age, to grant them this humble, modest desire.

"But then there came along all these tribes of nationalists, ideologues, revolutionaries and class warfare experts with their nasty regimentation of academic doctrinaires, striving night & day to work [the people] up against one another so that the homes, instead of being built, are bombed, and the breadwinner is killed, and the broken housewife left to pick up the surviving children, maimed and scorched, out of the ashes . . ."

Across the Gulf. "What is the world scene as presented to us today? Mighty forces armed with fearful weapons are baying at one another across a gulf which neither wishes and both fear to cross, but into which they may tumble and drag each other to their common ruin. On the one side stand all the armies of Soviet Russia and their Communist satellites, agents and devotees. On the other are the Western democracies, with their far superior resources, at present only partly organized, gathering together around the U.S. Now there is no doubt on which side we stand . ..

"I feel deep gratitude towards our great American allies. They have risen to the leadership of the world without any other ambition but to serve its highest causes faithfully. I am anxious that Britain should also play her full part, and, gathering all her Commonwealth around her, present a revival of her former influence and initiative among the allied powers."

*In British legend, the brothers Gog and Magog were the quarrelsome last survivors of a race of giants, forced to serve as porters at the gates of the old palace on the site of the Guildhall. In the Bible (Revelation 20), they symbolize the enemies of the Kingdom of God. The Jews applied the name Magog to the unknown northern tribes beyond the Caucasus--probably the Russians, as Churchill implied.

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