BATTLE OF BRITAIN: Death and the Hazards

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(See Cover) REWARD—DEAD OR ALIVE: Englishman, 25 years old, about 5 ft. 8 in. tall, indifferent build, walks "with a forward stoop, pale appearance, red-brownish hair, small and hardly noticeable mustache, talks through his nose and cannot pronounce the letter S properly.

On the walls and poles of the Transvaal this handbill was pasted one day during the Boer War. It described a young newspaper reporter who had fought like a professional soldier when a British armored train was ambushed by Boers; had been captured and held as prisoner of war, had climbed over the ten-foot iron fence of his prison with no map or compass, but a little money and some cubes of chocolate in his pockets, and had eventually taken refuge at the bottom of a mine. It described and—with the exception of the age and the mustache, which was just a medal of not-quite-certain manhood—still does describe Winston Churchill.

Young Winnie Churchill's fabulous escape from Pretoria made him world-famous while he was still trying to prove he could grow whiskers. But the escape has a wider significance than that. It symbolizes Winston Churchill as Winston Churchill so aptly and lovingly symbolizes Great Britain's unwillingness to give up when apparently cornered.

There is an extraordinary fact about English democracy—namely, that at almost any given time some English leader turns out to be a perfect symbol of his people. At the time of Edward VIII's abdication, Stanley Baldwin was the typical Englishman. At the time of the Munich crisis, Neville Chamberlain was pathetically typical. But as of the fourth week of September 1940, Winston Churchill was the essence of his land. The three men are as dissimilar as fog, rain and hail, which are all water. But the country they ruled has changed. This England is different.