Chapter 2 2. Winston Churchill-1

greatest man of our time When Churchill was young, he once talked to a friend about his views on the meaning of life.His thoughts are philosophical and candid."We're all worms," ​​he said, adding, "And I do think I'm a firefly." Churchill's life was driven by an unshakable instinct of his own destiny.He infuriates some and inspires many more.No matter how many "no"s he hears when he pursues what he is determined to have, he never knows what the "no" means.Once he took part in a military campaign or a political struggle, he always took the word "failure" out of his vocabulary.

I first met Churchill in June 1954, when I hosted a welcome for his official visit to Washington as Prime Minister.I remember the eagerness, even excitement, as I waited for his plane to come into view. Although I have been abroad many times and met many domestic and foreign leaders and famous people, none of them can surpass Churchill.During World War II, in the Pacific, his speeches touched my heart more than those of President Roosevelt. Since I entered politics, I have come to appreciate the impact he has had on the world of a Britain that has endured the greatest test of courage and resilience.No matter how exaggerated, it is difficult to make a fair evaluation of him.He is one of the great leaders of the twentieth century.

I was lucky that, according to protocol at the time, the president went to the airport to welcome visiting heads of state, and the heads of city government met him at the White House.So Eisenhower should welcome the working women, and I welcome the Prime Minister. The night before, I spent over an hour preparing my ninety-second welcome.When I see an airplane, I quickly run it through my mind. The four-engine Stratoplane landed, taxied down the runway, and finally came to a stop in front of us, the hatch opened, and a moment later Churchill was alone at the top of the gangway, wearing a pearl gray hamburger hat .To my great amazement, he looked so small in stature, which seemed to be due to his shrunken shoulders, and his large head was mounted directly on his body, as if there was no neck at all.In reality, he was five feet eight inches tall.Just as it would never occur to you to think of Theodore Roosevelt, who was five feet eight inches tall, as a "slant man," it would never occur to you to think of him as a "slant man."

His assistants surrounded him to help him down the gangway.Churchill quickly looked around Guozhou and saw the welcome scene and the camera below: he refused any help. Leaning on a gold-headed cane, he walked slowly down the gangway.He had suffered a stroke a year ago, and every time the gun took a step, he was very hesitant, apparently unsure of himself.About halfway down the ramp, he noticed four Airmen saluting him, which he paused for a moment. We shook hands and he said he was very happy to meet me for the first time.Like most Britons, his handshake was not convincing.Just a light touch.After greeting Secretary of State Dulles, he went straight to the cameras and microphones.Without waiting for my welcome speech, he delivered his arrival address.He said he was very happy to come from his home country to his mother's land (apparently referring to his mother being an American).Amid the roaring applause that closed his speech, he made a triumphant "V" before turning and striding toward the black Lincoln convertible in which we were heading to the White House.The speech I had painstakingly prepared was never used, but neither did it seem to be thought to have been missed.

As I re-read the diary entry I kept that day, I was astonished to find that this seventy-nine-year-old man, who had just suffered a stroke, was still alive within thirty minutes of our trip to the White House after an overnight propeller plane flight across the Atlantic. Coping with so many problems so well.He kept talking and waving to people on both sides of the road. He told me that he had followed my trip to Southeast Asia a few months ago.He particularly appreciated my visits to the countryside during my stay in Malaysia to visit British troops there fighting Communist insurgent forces.When I told him how impressed I was with General Gerald Templer and other officers who worked for the gentle transition of the British colonies to independence, he promptly replied, "My only hope is that only When they are ready for administrative duties, we give them independence." The last time I saw him in London four years later, he again expressed his concern.

He then commented on the situation in Indochina, which I visited during my trip to Asia.He said that at the end of World War II, France had to decide whether they were going all out to save Indochina, or whether they were only doing it half-heartedly and perfunctorily.As he waved to the crowd, he looked me over and said, "They made the decision to participate but not go all in. It was a fatal mistake." He smiled at the crowd, looked back at me and said, "Mr. Vice President, the world is in a very dangerous situation, and it is vital that our two peoples stand together. We have differences, and that's normal." , is inevitable, but in the end it is secondary, and the newspapers always exaggerate the actual situation."

This seemingly insignificant conversation actually has a lot of meaning.It was very clear that he was signaling to me and through me to the government that he wanted to get through this.Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had had an unpleasant meeting with Churchill on the Indochina issue when he visited London two months earlier.Rumors about the matter published in the newspapers immediately put the Anglo-American relationship in a state of tension. Churchill was visibly annoyed when Radford urged him to help France keep the French colonies in Indochina.Churchill asked brusquely why they had to fight for France to keep Indochina, given that the British had never fought to keep India for themselves.Radford, unlike a man of great diplomatic experience, felt that if Britain refused to join us in our efforts to repel Communist aggression in Asia, Congress might be displeased with "Britain.

To this, Churchill replied bluntly: "When we are no longer dependent on American aid, I will be happy. Churchill was reluctant to propose against the Viet Cong in Indochina because he feared that Communist China would intervene.He thought this would lead to a war between China and the United States, involving the Soviet Union, and making Europe a battlefield and Britain a target.But when Redford reported the meeting to Eisenhower, the president was surprised and shocked.Churchill, a symbol of resistance despite all the hardships and twists and turns of World War II, appears to have almost resigned himself to defeat in Southeast Asia.

Churchill expressed his serious concern about the atomic bomb as he continued to wave to the crowd.He said it was perfectly legitimate for us to talk about retaliation using this "terrible weapon".But the theory of "overwhelming concentration" associated with nuclear weapons worries him. When I told him that I had just finished reading the fourth volume of his World War II memoir, The Key to Fate, he commented that in the four months before Roosevelt's death, the relationship between him and the U.S. government There is almost no contact and understanding between them.Then he was surprisingly blunt: "When President Roosevelt fell ill and President Truman suddenly took office, he didn't know what he was going to do." His face became extremely serious, and he turned to me again, ignoring the crowd, and said, "That's a Great mistake, a commander should keep his deputy informed when he knows he is ill and may soon be out of the game."

Now we are very close to the White House.I said that after reading his memoirs, I often wondered if the Allies had taken his advice and launched an attack on the "soft underbelly" of southern Europe, instead of concentrating on this D-Day invasion in Normandy. I don't know what will happen.When we entered the northwest gate, he said lightly: "Maybe we can get Vienna easily." Churchill's physician, Lord Moran's personal diary on the British Prime Minister's state of health during his visits to Washington, reveals that Churchill was sometimes afflicted with illness, but that once he appeared, no one who saw him felt that he was in pain.He was always somehow able to pull himself together when it came to major events.

Despite the heavy schedule of official talks throughout the visit, Churchill always seemed happy at the lengthy and sometimes, I thought, tedious banquets held in his honor.He is one of those rare great leaders who seem to love small talk as much as they love talking about events that shake the world.His habit of napping, which he maintained even during the war years, kept him refreshed at night. At White House state dinners, Mrs. Eisenhower had little to do except to help Churchill when he seemed to be having trouble cutting through meat.She said he was concerned that the knives in the White House were not very sharp.During the dinner, when Dulles toasted his guests with whiskey mixed with ginger beer, Mrs. Nixon asked Churchill if he would like to taste a glass. He said no, and then said that he usually drank his first whiskey at 8:30 in the morning. , and at night like to drink a cup of champagne. At the banquet, Churchill's topic was his past experience.Although in conversation, he never let others cut in, he was never rude.Like MacArthur, Churchill's uninterrupted monologues were so engrossing that no one complained when he was the keynote speaker and no one else was allowed to intervene.Mrs. Nixon later told me that Churchill was one of the funniest guests she had ever had at a dinner party.He captivated Mrs. Eisenhower as he recounted his dramatic adventures in the Boer War. The best opportunity I had to observe our formidable guest was at the men's banquet at the British Embassy on the last evening of his visit.Eisenhower was once again unable to attend due to diplomatic protocol, so I was the highest honored American guest. About fifteen minutes later, Churchill came among us. He greeted each guest and stood and talked for a while, but when Defense Minister Charles Wilson was going to spend a long time talking about something, Churchill made a point of saying A chair went and sat down.I walked over too, and he looked up at me, grinned, and said, "I think sitting down is better than standing." At the dinner party, I asked him how his three-day busy schedule of meetings was affecting him. Aside from a few "temporary vertigos," he said he felt the session was better than the others.In his characteristic booming voice, he said: "I always seem to be inspired and reinvigorated when I come into contact with this strange country of yours on the other side of the Atlantic." Later the conversation turned to vacation plans.He said he was going on vacation to Morocco by boat: I replied: I always travel by plane because I get seasick.He gave me a stern yet amusing look and said, "Young man, don't worry, when you're older you won't get dizzy anymore." I was forty-one at the time. Churchill was not only a remarkable maker of history, but also a historian.I have read almost all of his prodigious works, and I have found him to be an excellent writer when he is not describing events in which he himself was directly involved.He wrote much more about World War I than he did about World War II, where his reactions and observations were often told in story form.His finest work on World War I coverage is Aftermath, an account of the Versailles peace conference, and The Eastern Front, written within two years of his other five volumes.Churchill is not a major character in either book.In his two multivolume histories, however, Churchill lived up to his famous dictum: "The best way to make history is to write it." As a historian, Churchill's interest in the American Civil War always grew when he visited Washington, and this time was no exception.At the men's dinner, he commented that, in his opinion, Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest men in American history, one of the greatest generals who ever lived.Someone, he said, should "record, weave into tapestry or paint on canvas the unforgettable sight of Lee crossing the Potomac River on horseback after refusing to command the Army of the United States in order to stand with the South." One of the greatest moments of the war, he said, finally came when, at Appomattox, Lee pointed out to General Ulysses Grant that his officers kept their horses as private property and asked if each of them was allowed to have When it came to horses, Grant said: "Let all men take a horse, soldiers and officers alike, they need horses to plow the land." At this moment Churchill looked around at the fascinated people, his eyes flickered Ray: "Living in poverty and war, what an act!" I asked him about the talks he had with the Soviet leader who succeeded Stalin.He said that the West must have a policy of strength, and must not deal with the Communists in a weak position.He told me that he was looking forward to visiting the Soviet Union, but that he would not make any promises to bind the United States. He pointed out that apart from his wartime alliances, he had been opposed to the "Bolsheviks" all his life, and said: "I am sure that the American people will trust me, who understands the Communist Party, and is another anti-Communist fighter." He concluded the conversation by saying: "I Guess I've done as much against the Communist Party as McCarthy has done." Before I could speak, he grinned, leaned over to me, and said, "Of course, that was a private statement, and I absolutely disagree with it. Interfering in the internal affairs of other countries!" Churchill expressed to me his displeasure at the ignominious sophistry of the radical and provocative Aneurin Bevan. In 1947, Bevan, as health minister in a Labor government, said Conservatives were "worse than parasites".The words even embarrassed some of his colleagues.I naturally felt that although Bevan's words were neither elegant nor intelligent, Churchill himself was also rare in using harsh language. In accusing James Ramsay and MacDonald of lacking political fortitude, Churchill once made up this story: I remember when I was a boy my parents took me to a famous big circus in Barnum , there was an exhibit of grotesque monsters, but the one I wanted to see most on the exhibit catalog was a so-called "boneless monster."My parents thought the scene might be too disgusting and scandalous for my young mind, and I had waited fifty years to see this "boneless monster" sitting in the chancellor's chair . He described Dulles as "the only bull I know with a china cupboard." Astor, the first female member of the British Parliament, once said to him: "If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee." Churchill retorted: "If I were your husband, I would put poison in your coffee." Just drink it." After Labor Wright Clement Atley finished his speech in Parliament, Churchill said: "He is a humble man with much to be humbled about." George Bernard Shaw gave him two theater tickets and a note: "Bring a friend to my play, if you have any friends." Churchill replied with a note: "I am busy with the opening ceremony. I will come on the second night when there are tickets for the second night." Churchill once said of Aneurin Bevan, "However, there is an ideal punishment: the most blah blah blah blah in war has become the most eminent administrative failure in peacetime." In attacking others with vicious language, Churchill must have given as much as he had received. Churchill revealed something about his lifestyle at the men's banquet.When talking about the British atomic energy expert Lord Prudden, he said: "No one gave so much to the world and took so little. He didn't eat meat, didn't smoke, never married." Churchill liked a life of affluence.I think he will admit that he has given a lot to the world and received a lot. He had a certain insight into life, and one biographer called him: "Peter Pan in politics." After giving up playing polo in his later years, painting became his hobby.His bold strokes and vibrant colors seem to release his pent-up energy.As he once said: "If it wasn't for painting, I wouldn't be alive. I can't bear the tension brought about by various things." During his visit to Washington, we compared our respective writing habits.I told him I found it worked best with a dictator.With a mischievous smile in his eyes, he said: "I prefer to dictate to a beautiful secretary than to a cold, mindless machine." He went on to say that he had two "very beautiful" secretaries. Many years later, at the 1972 U.S.-Soviet summit in Moscow, I told Brezhnev about this.The Soviet leader said he also agreed that Churchill loved secretaries even machines.Then he winked, grinned, and said, "Besides, a secretary is especially useful when you wake up at night and want to take some notes." Churchill hated material life without civilization.During World War I, he always took a tin tub to the front.During Prohibition, his contract on lecture tours in the United States stipulated that he must receive a bottle of champagne before each lecture. Not long after I took office in 1969, an elderly butler at the White House told me something.During Churchill's visit, President Roosevelt invited him to live in the White House, staying in the Queen's bedroom.The room was beautifully decorated and had a very comfortable bed.During another of Churchill's visits, Roosevelt insisted that his guests should stay in the Lincoln Bedroom so that his guests could say that he had slept in the Lincoln Bed.The Lincoln Bedroom is decorated in a drab style in the austere style of mid-nineteenth-century America. It is undoubtedly the most uncomfortable bed in the White House. At night, half an hour after Churchill went to bed, the butler said that he saw Churchill in an old-fashioned pajamas, but he lacked sufficient understanding.We know that, even in Britain, Churchill was widely regarded as a pugnacious bull snake.His speech seemed overblown and exaggerated.Most of us sympathized with the familiar Neville Chamberlain for his determination to avoid war, and admired the tolerance and dignity with which he bore Hitler's diatribes.I can remember the relief everyone felt when Chamberlain returned to England from the Munich Conference, announcing that he had brought back "the peace of our time". It was only in 1939, when Hitler finally showed that he would never be content without conquering Europe, that we began to realize how wise Churchill had been and how accurate his prophecies were!With Europe crumbling under the sudden blow, Churchill, with his radiant personality and dramatic eloquence, was instantly legendary.Churchill was good at grasping his own role. He said: "It is this nation and this race scattered all over the world that have the heart of a lion, and I am honored to be called to roar. From the very beginning of the war, he had a special interest in America.Because he knows it is the "treasure of democracy" and that only our support - and at best our intervention - can save Britain.Temperamentally, he was particularly suited to the role, since his mother, Jeanne Jerome, was born in Brooklyn, USA.He even proudly declared in some exaggerated language that the Jerome family had Iroquois Indian blood. He was born at Belanie House in 1874, the eldest son of Lord and Lady Randolph Churchill.His parents had a great influence on him when he was young.He loves them and adores them.Unfortunately, however, neither of them had more time to devote to him to his benefit. Lord Randolph was a talented and volatile statesman who spent his life in risky and failed ventures.He resigned from cabinet in protest of a government policy he had expected the prime minister to reject.But the resignation was accepted, and Randolph never entered the cabinet again.Just because he got venereal disease a few years ago, his health also began to decline.Aside from being preoccupied with his own affairs, Lord Randolph cared little for his son, viewing him as a nuisance both because he did poorly at school and because he added to the expenses of an already financially strapped family . Politics attracted him far more than school work.He had long been eager to discuss with his father relevant political events and contemporary celebrities.But Lord Randolph frustrated every attempt he made.Winston later wrote: "If I made the slightest gesture of friendliness, he immediately became angry. I once suggested that I could help his private secretary draft some letters. He was icy to me." Lord Randolph 40 His death at the age of six also ended any chance for the two of them to work closely together. Winston wrote that his mother "shone on me like a star in the night. I loved her dearly, but there was always a distance".In fact, Mrs. Randolph was a frivolous beauty, and marriage put little restraint on her liking for flattery and intercourse with men.Despite her education and discernment, her affair was well known.Among these were important figures - the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. It occurred to me that much of the so-called "new science" of psychobiology was sheer hoax.For example, in a book he co-authored with former ambassador William Bullitt, Sigmund.Freud believed that Wilson, who adored his father Woodrow, subconsciously hated his father, a hostility that made him self-serving in his dealings with those who disagreed with him on foreign policy.It strikes me as outlandish, downright stupid. If one is looking for insight into how an adult thinks and feels, his family background and early life will often provide a clue, and that is common sense, and I agree. For Churchill, although emotionally deprived early in life, it does not seem to have had a serious effect on him.He was extremely proud of his father and posthumously upheld his name and the many causes that Randolph fought for.Mrs. Randolph lived to see her son become a famous fighter, author, and statesman. Like MacArthur's mother, she used her extensive connections with powerful people to advance her son's career.She became a veritable loving mother to Winston in her later years and was completely dependent on him. Like Einstein, Churchill was a notoriously mediocre student in his early years.One of his tutors said: "The lad can't pass Harrow, he can only pass the examinations of the second-class schools." In China or the Soviet Union, he would not be sent as a top student to higher education And acquire an important position in government or industry.During one of my visits to Beijing, a Chinese educator proudly told me that in China all children receive primary education for free, and he went on to say that when they graduate from junior high school, they take a comprehensive exam and only those exams Qualified people are allowed to enter higher-level schools to study.Those who failed the exam were sent to work in factories or farms.Afterwards, he mused: "Under our system, we provide better education for the masses, but we lose our Churchills." A perceptive scholar would have found in Churchill extraordinary powers not known by mass testing.In English, he is a talented person.He hated Latin and the sciences, where his poor grades dragged his average below the cut-off mark.He was placed in the lowest class at Harrow on grades.In that class, English writing was emphasized in various subjects. "Therefore," he wrote later, "I devoted all my energies to the basic structure of common English sentences—a well worthwhile affair." He soon developed a fascination with the English language, which Enriched his life, and the lives of generations of English speakers. For Churchill, the normal route to a political career at Oxford or Cambridge seemed out of the question.So he decided to enter the British Military Academy at West Point in Sandhurst as a cavalry cadet.He loved his military training, and his academics showed: He graduated at the top of his class. The young Churchill now scanned the world stage for places that would offer him adventure.He traveled to Cuba as a reporter for a newspaper covering the guerrilla war between the island's rebels and the Spanish colonial authorities.He later wrote that he had a "wonderful and terrible feeling" as he glimpsed the silhouette of Cuba on the horizon. "It's a place where some real things are happening. A place where vital action is taken, where anything can happen. And a place where something is sure to happen. I might be in the die here." He soon returned to England to prepare for his first military commission: serving eight or nine years in India.He looked forward to his future with dread, writing to his mother: "You can't imagine how I long to sail away to a place full of adventure and excitement in a few days... and Not to the dreary country of India—where I have neither the pleasure of peace nor the chance of war." Churchill had a considerable period of time at his disposal in Bangalore, and he was determined to make the most of it.He practiced polo for hours every day and became an excellent polo player.He also began to learn things that he never learned in school.His approach to learning is broad and methodical.He asked his mother to give him a full set of yearbooks.These are compiled from the British political yearbook as well as news from countries around the world.He read carefully, took notes, and gradually mastered the wealth of facts and information contained in the yearbook.Before he reads summaries of major issues debated in Congress, he often carefully sketches out his personal view of that particular event.Then compare your own views and analysis with those of those present at the meeting. He also asked his mother to send him some of the great essayists of the English language, especially the historians Macaulay and Gibbon.On blistering Indian afternoons, while his colleagues were taking naps, Churchill was engrossed in the words and rhymes of these books. Before long, he was sending back reports of the war to a London newspaper. It was an unconventional move for a young officer, one that many of his colleagues and most of his officers disapproved of.When his account of the fighting in the Far North West was published in a book, it was suggested, ironically, that the title should be "A Lieutenant's Notes to Generals."This sarcasm has been with him all his life, but he never minded it. Churchill was never willing to conform to convention, thinking that it would restrict his personality.He is of no use to those who secure their position by limiting the creativity of others.He was driven mad by the kind of fussy bureaucratic thinking that reduces life to its minimum value.He despises the mental state of lower officials who have strict ideological boundaries and prohibit anyone from going beyond one step.Kipling called them "little people" and said that those who seemed "too small to be loved or hated" would "bring the country down"!When Churchill objected to the conformity of the "little people", he often recited this poem by Kipling aloud. In recent decades in the United States, this old problem has added new troubles to us.In our bloated bureaucracy, there are many rigid lifeless little people who only care about keeping their jobs, and there are also many people who are politically active for liberal causes.Therefore, it is always very difficult to get the bureaucracy to act.It is now nearly impossible for a conservative cabinet minister, agency director, or even a president to galvanize a politically dissenting bureaucracy to act on certain issues. Churchill angered many by going directly to the top for something he wanted to do, rather than wasting time on lower-level officials who were afraid to make decisions outside the box.Stories about Clemens, Lloyd, George and Churchill circulated in London after the First World War say that after the three died, one by one, they came to the Pearl Gate.Clemens arrived first, knocked on the door and asked to be let in.St. Bald came out and asked Clemens to reveal his identity so that he could check his resume and give him an eternal reward.So did Lloyd George.At last Churchill arrived, and he knocked on the door, and St. Peter opened it, and asked Churchill to identify himself, so that he could look up his history and let him know his eternal reward.Churchill replied, "Who the hell are you? Call God." During Churchill's tenure in India, he used all the social influence he and his mother could use to persuade Lord Kitchener to allow Churchill to follow the British army to chase the Islamic dervishes in Sudan.In this way, he participated as an army reporter in the last cavalry charge in history at the battle of Umm Durman Churchill left the army in 1899 to join the MP for Oldham in Manchester - the area his father represented.He is defeated.This failure was a blow.After his first defeat in politics, he wrote that he felt "the feeling of being deflated is like drinking half a bottle of champagne or soda uncorked overnight." Adventure soon beckoned him again. As a war correspondent, he traveled to southern Africa to cover the Boer War.Two weeks after his arrival, he was captured as a prisoner of war during a heroic defense of a train attacked by the Boers.He escaped from Bull's guards, who offered him twenty-five pounds - dead or alive.A few years later, he hung up the notice offering him a reward with a frame in his study, and told visitors: "This is my full price? Twenty-five pounds?" While he was still in Africa, a legendary adventure novel he had previously written was published in New York and London; three months later his book on the Boer War and his exploits in it was published to a favorable reception from the public, It sells well. When he returned to England two months later, he was a national hero. Sixteen constituencies asked him to do them the honor of running for Parliament as their representative. Yet again he chose Oldham, and was elected. Winston Churchill's affection for the House of Commons was rare in the world.In the deepest sense, the House of Commons has been his spiritual home since he first took the seat in 1901.Through his father's family and his own storied history, he sees himself as a living part of the House of Commons and its traditions.It is fascinating to read his speeches about his determination to rebuild the Houses of Parliament.It seems that the building was bombed before the German bombing in World War II.This is not the language of a man who talks about building buildings.Here is a man who speaks with great urgency about the relationship of the individual to history. He was received in a friendly manner by his new colleagues.Many of them had served alongside his father and had an almost protective duty to the young Churchill.Churchill later wrote that he had been drafting, revising and then practicing his first speeches until he could speak fluently anywhere. He was a marvelous and well-known speaker who could captivate thousands in the hall, or captivate millions of radio listeners.He combined his proficiency in English with an all-natural showmanship.But, more importantly, he was inspiring because he himself was inspired by the ideals he was fighting for.As the former Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies said, Churchill's wartime speeches were so provocative because he "learned such a great truth that to move others, the orator and the leader must first be moved : In his head, everything should be alive." However, mastering the art of public speaking was not easy for him.At the beginning, he wrote down and memorized each speech, practiced gestures in front of the mirror, and even used different methods to make tongue bites for better results. When I met Churchill's son Randolph for the first time at the Republican Convention in 1952, I told him how impressed I was with his father's brilliant extemporaneous speeches.他笑了笑说："这些讲话也应该是好的，他花费了一生中最美好的岁月来写作并且背熟它们。"在我与伦道夫谈话中，我觉察到作为一个伟人的儿子是多么难呵！我发现他极为聪明、风趣、诙谐，然而与温斯顿、邱吉尔相比就不免相绌。要是换一个人作邱吉尔的儿子，那么这一点就更加千真万确了。 作为议会的一名才华横溢和出身名门的年轻议员，无限美好的前程展现在邱吉尔的眼前，他登上了世界的顶峰。 突然，他开始抨击他的政党的领导人所采取的立场。当他主张自由贸易政策这一与保守党官方为保护英国货物而制定的关税壁垒政策直接相抵触时，就引起了一场重大危机。这种由资历较浅的议员破坏党规，特别是他们还打算向内阁提议的作法是完全不能被接受的。 1904年邱吉尔采取了果断的行动。他"越过"下院，从保守党转向自由党。在政治上有时必须冒险，赌注要多高就可能有多高，其结果是显而易见的：成功或是失败。政治舞台以外的人们，或是新来政界的人们往往不明自政治上冒风险的独有的特性。生意上冒风险是伤脑筋的，但是至少有些科学仪器能部分地预测到可能的结果。但是，在政治上冒风险却要依靠魄力、直觉和适时地作出决定的能力。 今天，整个保护主义的争论似乎是遥远的、没有生气的。 有人不得不怀疑邱吉尔为此而冒这么大的风险是否值得。but.邱吉尔是从广义上来看待自由贸易的问题，包括它与国内就业和英国生活水准等问题的直接关系。当许多英国人无怨言地生活在并不比狄更斯的惨淡小说所描写的情况为好的环境里的时候，邱吉尔就看到了广大的英国公民的生活水平问题将是英国政府在本世纪面临的重大问题。 使他吃惊的不只是英国社会内经济上的不公正，还由于英国社会不可避免的精神上的创伤。一天，当他在曼彻斯特他的选区街道上行走时，他与助手说："设想住在这样的一条街道上——从未见过美好的事物，从未吃过可口的食物，从未说过聪明的语言！" 经常有些青年人要我列举一些作为竞选政府候选人所必备的条件。可以提及的有智力、直觉、品质以及对伟大事业的信念。许多人具有这些条件；但是，只有极少数人具有政治上成功的必不可少的条件——愿意冒一切危险来获得一切。你不应害怕失败，这并不是说你应当轻率。但是你首先要有勇气。如果有一个未来的候选人告诉我，只有当他在财政上和政治上得到该党组织的支持，并且民意测验表明他肯定获胜时，他才决定参加，则我会对他直截了当地说："不要这样做，你将是一个劣等的候选人。"在邱吉尔的整个生涯中，他总是勇敢的，有时是轻率的，但是他从来不害怕失败。 邱吉尔的易党给他带来的冲击波是巨大的。他的许多朋友们公开地指责他是一差别是多么明显！今天，因担任公职取得成就而受到许多人赞同和尊敬的可能性微乎其微。侵犯私人生活的危险性日益增大，对进入政界首先需要付出各种代价和经受各种揭露的事对许多人来说简直起了阻碍作用。这必然会影响到愿意担任公职的男人和妇女的质量和数量。 1906年邱吉尔三十二岁时，才第一次在自由党政府内获得内阁成员的职位。在以后的几年内，他担任过六个内阁职务，对于每一职务他都怀有极大的好奇心和花了巨大的精力。作为商务部大臣，邱吉尔给立法机关的领导提供了动议权，这就为现代英国奠定了基矗"此外，作为内政部大臣，他首先提出给煤矿工人八小时日工作制和要求在矿井里设有安全设备；他禁止地下雇用十四岁以下的男孩；店员要有法定的工间休息；建立最低工资制：建立全国性的劳工交流以减少失业；实行了重大的监狱改革。 事实上，这些成就是今日英国福利政府的开端。但是，即使他颁布了这些改革，邱吉尔还是在社会主义和自由主义之间划了一条鲜明的界线。在一次讲话中，邱吉尔认为他的方法最好，他说："社会主义谋求使富者下降，自由主义谋求使贫者提高；社会主义会扼杀企业，自由主义会从特权和偏爱的桎梏下拯救企业……；社会主义提高法规的地位，自由主义提高人的地位，社会主义攻击资本，自由主义攻击垄断。" 他在立法上做出的成绩是巨大的。他是有创造性的、吸引人的和爱争论的；但给人第一个印象，他似乎总是粗鲁和不老练的。在他需要朋友的地方他树立了许多敌人。在某些情况下，如果人们对他比较了解以后，这种坏印象能够得到扭转。 但是第一个印象通常是难忘的。正如他的一个密友所说："第一次看到温斯顿时，你看到的是他所有的缺点，之后你花费余生的时间去发现他的美德。" 象邱吉尔那样有着易激动的性格和脾气的人在政界中是司空见惯的。1947年当我第一次进入众议院时，那里极易发怒的人和一些不可思议的行为古怪的人比比皆是。但是随着电视的发展使得政治人物均质化了，在均脂牛乳中，奶油不会浮到顶部。这同样适用于均质化的政治生活。 过去，我们倾向于钦佩那种不仅在思想上，而且在风格上有勇气标新立异的政治领袖。但是今天，为了不使过度曝光而变得苍白，或显得过分或失去平衡，绝大多数政治家不得不或者伪装作和蔼的，不伤害他人的态度。"不要兴风作浪"似乎已成了大多数新一代的政治家的行动准则。 我并非认为在政府里需要有怪人或者是狂人。但是我们不妨有几个有创见的思想家和冒险家。我们的年青一代的政治领袖们需要知道，若是你想成功，只有一件事比犯错误更坏，那就是迟钝。有时我也感到疑惑，象邱吉尔和戴高乐这样伟大的有独创性的人物，能否幸免于我们的政治领袖们今天所不得不遇到的为一些小事在报纸上接二连三地遭到攻击。 邱吉尔为他的高压手腕付出昂贵的代价。他几乎没有什么密友，但却有许多敌人。据斯·皮·斯诺讲，即使对邱吉尔十分钟爱的乔治勋爵也认为他是"有点象傻瓜"，在他成功之际，一切都是美好的。他的果敢的，我认为是卓越的计划——为了早日结束第一次世界大战，派遣了一支突击队在达达尼尔海峡的加里波里登陆，被拙劣地修修补补地执行，给他的批评者们提供了所需的武器，以降低他的威望。他被赶下了台，担任一个荣誉职务。 他对此无法忍受。倒不是因为他计较这一场争论，也不是因为他的自负受到挫伤，当然也不是因为他怀疑如果一切按照他的计划行事达达尼尔远征可能成功。真正使他难受的是，他失去了决定事件进展的能力。就象他的助手所说："情况越糟糕，他却越果敢，越平静——正是这种该诅咒的闲散无事的感受使他如此沮丧。" 就在这个时刻，邱吉尔第一次遭受到他称之为"黑狗"的折磨——周期性的令人疲惫的几番消沉使他一度接连几周都打不起精神来。还使他感到不快的是，另一位散文大师，英国第一部词典的编纂家，塞缨尔·约翰逊也遭受到同样的折磨。他在那段时间里感到痛苦是可以想见的，这也许倒为他这个本来是乐观的、精力充沛的人提供了为未来战斗做好准备的条件。 给他提供的和平和快乐的取之不竭的一个源泉是他的婚姻。1908年他与克莱门蒂·霍齐尔结了婚，正如后来他写的那样，他们"自从结婚以后，生活得很幸福。"诚然，美满的婚姻并不意味着它从无烦恼。邱吉尔夫人是她丈夫的最坚决的支持者和最热烈的信徒，但是她从来就不喜欢作一个职业政治家。