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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1941

A Parallel Nearer Home

A Parallel Nearer Home

Walking up the main street of the smallish town in which I live, I counted the number of pictures of Mr Winston Churchill in shop windows. There were twenty-one. In bookshops, Mr Churchill's likeness stared at me from almost every periodical and a number of books. I asked an assistant in one book shop how many pictures of Mr Churchill she sold daily. 'At least half a dozen,' she said. While I was talking, a lady came in and bought a pencil drawing of General Freyberg.

And one remembers, of course, the Coronation . . . .

And outside the shop, I met a friend who, singularly unfortunate in his Bolshevik acquaintances, believed that the Soviet creed was that there was no God, but if there were, Lenin and Stalin, like Caligula, had undergone apotheosis in his lifetime. I mentioned the result of my modest researches.

'Entirely different,' snorted my friend, remaining curiously sane, 'Britain's got a Job to do, and Churchill's at the head of the Government that's doing it. He's a page 14 good man, and is doing the job well, It's only natural that the people should be thankful for what he's done. Now if Chamberlain had remained in power . . . .'

My friend did not admire Mr Chamberlain, but I omit his irrelevant (and irreverent) remarks.

'Just because people buy Churchill's picture, it doesn't mean that he's being worshipped personally. Can't you see"—"he's just a symbol"—"a sort of personification of the British spirit of endurance and perseverance?'

My friend was right, and I admitted it. 'Now.' I said,' substitute "Russia" for "England," and "Stalin" for "Churchill," and your remarks sum up the Soviet situation exactly.