Sitting of 25 January 1965

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

DEATH OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson)(at the Bar) acquainted the House that he had a Message from Her Majesty the Queen to this House, signed by Her Majesty's own hand. And he presented the same to the House, and it was read by Mr. SPEAKER (all the Members of the House being uncovered), as follows:
I know that it will be the wish of all my people that the loss which we have sustained by the death of the Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., should be met in the most fitting manner and that they should have an opportunity of expressing their sorrow at the loss and their veneration of the memory of that outstanding man who in war and peace served his country unfailingly for more than fifty years and in the hours of our greatest danger was the inspiring leader who strengthened and supported us all. Confident that I can rely upon the support of my faithful Commons and upon their liberality in making suitable provision for the proper discharge of our debt of gratitude and tribute of national sorrow, I have directed that Sir Winston's body shall lie in state in Westminster Hall and that thereafter the Funeral Service shall be held in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.
ELIZABETH REGINA.
The Prime Minister: I beg to move,
That Her Majesty's Most Gracious Message be taken into immediate consideration.
Question put and agreed to.
The Prime Minister: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty humbly to thank Her Majesty for having given directions for the body of the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., to lie in state in Westminster Hall and for the
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funeral service to be held in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul and assuring Her Majesty of our cordial aid and concurrence in these measures for expressing the affection and admiration in which the memory of this great man is held by this House and all Her Majesty's faithful subjects.
In accepting this Motion, this House, and, by virtue of its representation in this House, the nation, collectively and reverently will be paying its tribute to a great statesman, a great Parliamentarian, a great leader of this country.
The world today is ringing with tributes to a man who, in those fateful years, bestrode the life of nations—tributes from the Commonwealth, from our wartime allies, from our present partners in Europe and the wider alliance, from all those who value the freedom for which he fought, who still share the desire for the just peace to which all his endeavours were turned. Winston Churchill, and the legend Winston Churchill had become long before his death and which now lives on, are the possession not of England, or Britain, but of the world, not of our time only but of the ages.
But we, Sir, in this House, have a special reason for the tribute for which Her Majesty has asked in her Gracious Message. For today we honour not a world statesman only, but a great Parliamentarian, one of ourselves.
The colour and design of his greatest achievements became alive, on the Parliamentary canvas, here in this Chamber. Sir Winston, following the steps of the most honoured of his predecessors, derived his greatness from and through this House and from and through his actions here. And by those actions, and those imperishable phrases which will last as long as the English language is read or spoken, he in turn added his unique contribution to the greatness of our centuries-old Parliamentary institution.
He was in a very real sense a child of this House and a product of it, and equally, in every sense, its father. He took from it and he gave to it.
The span of 64 years from his first entry as its youngest Member to the sad occasion of his departure last year covers the lives and memories of all but the oldest of us. In a Parliamentary sense, as in a national sense, his passing from our midst is the end of an era.

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He entered this House at 25—already a national and controversial figure. He had fought in war, and he had written of war, he had charged at Omdurman, he had been among one of the first to enter Ladysmith, an eye-witness of the thickest fighting in Cuba, a prisoner of a Boer commando—though not for as long as his captors intended.
And he brought his own tempestuous qualities to the conduct of our Parliamentary life. Where the fighting was hottest he was in it, sparing none—nor asking for quarter. The creature and possession of no one party, he has probably been the target of more concentrated Parliamentary invective from, in turn, each of the three major parties than any other Member of any Parliamentary age, and against each in turn he turned the full force of his own oratory. If we on this side of the House will quote as a classic words he uttered over half a century ago, about the party he later came to lead, hon. Members opposite have an equally rich treasure-house for quotations about us, to say nothing of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway.
When more than 40 years after his first entry as a young M.P. he was called on to move the appointment of a Select Committee about the rebuilding of this Chamber, he proclaimed and gloried in the effect of our Parliamentary architecture on the clarity and decisiveness of party conflict; he recalled, with that impish quality which never deserted him, the memories of battles long past, of his own actions in crossing the Floor of this House, not once in fact but twice.
For those who think that bitter party controversy is a recent invention and one to be deplored, he could have had nothing but pitying contempt. And as he sat there, in the seat which I think by general wish of the House should be left vacant this afternoon, in those last years of the last Parliament, silently surveying battles which may have seemed lively to us, could we not sense the old man's mind going back to the great conflicts of a great career and thinking perhaps how tame and puny our efforts have become?
A great Parliamentarian, but never a tame one—they misjudge him who could even begin to think of him as a party operator, or a manipulator, or a trimmer, or a party hack. He was a warrior, and party debate was war; it mattered, and
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he brought to that war the conquering weapon of words fashioned for their purpose; to wound, never to kill; to influence, never to destroy.
As Parliament succeeded Parliament he stood at this Box, at one time or another holding almost every one of the great Offices of State. He stood at the Box opposite thundering his denunciation of Government after Government. He sat on the bench opposite below the Gangway, disregarded, seemingly impotent, finished. His first Cabinet post—the Board of Trade—made him one of the architects of the revolution in humane administration of this country. He piloted through the labour exchanges; he led the first faltering steps in social insurance.
The Home Office and then the more congenial tenure of the Admiralty—Ministerial triumph and Ministerial disaster in the first War. Colonies, War, the Treasury: the pinnacle of power, and then years in the wilderness. The urgent years, warning the nation and the world, as the shadow of the jackboot spread across an unheeding Europe. And then came his finest hour. Truly the history of Parliament over a tempestuous half-century could be written around the triumphs and frustrations of Winston Churchill.
But, Sir, it will be for those war years that his name will be remembered for as long as history is written and history is read. A man who could make the past live in "Marlborough", in his dutiful biography of Lord Randolph, who could bring new colour to the oft-told tale of the history of the English-speaking peoples, for five of the most fateful years in world history, was himself called on to make history. And he made history because he could see the events he was shaping through the eye of history. He has told us of his deep emotions when, from the disaster of the Battle of France, he was called on to lead this nation.
"I felt"
he said,
"as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. Ten years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms. My warnings over the last six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me. I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it.

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I thought I knew a good deal about it all, and I was sure I should not fail. Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams."
His record of leadership in those five years speaks for itself beyond the power of any words of any of us to enhance or even to assess. This was his finest hour, Britain's finest hour. He had the united and unswerving support of the leaders of all parties, of the fighting services, of the men and women in munitions and in the nation's industries, without regard to faction or self-interest. In whatever ôle, men and women felt themselves inspired to assert qualities they themselves did not know they possessed. Everyone became just those inches taller, every back just that much broader, as his own was.
To this task he brought the inspiration of his superlative courage, at the hour of greatest peril; personal courage such as he had always shown, and indeed which needed a direct order from his Sovereign to cause him to desist from landing on the Normandy beaches on D-Day; moral courage, the courage he had shown in warning the nation when he stood alone, now inspired the nation when Britain and the Commonwealth stood alone. There was his eloquence and inspiration, his passionate desire for freedom and his ability to inspire others with that same desire. There was his humanity. There was his humour. But above all, he brought that power which, whenever Britain has faced supreme mortal danger, has been asserted to awaken a nation which others were prepared to write off as decadent and impotent, and to make every man, every woman, a part of that national purpose.
To achieve that purpose, he drew on all that was greatest in our national heritage. He turned to Byron—"blood, tears and sweat." The words which he immortalised from Tennyson's "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" might well be a nation's epitaph on Sir Winston himself.
"Not once or twice in our rough island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory;
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of Self, before his journey closes,
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He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses."
The greatest biographer of Abraham Lincoln said in one of his concluding chapters:
"A tree is best measured when it is down."
So it will prove of Winston Churchill, and there can be no doubt of the massive, oaken stature that history will accord to him. But this is not the time.
We meet today in this moment of tribute, of spontaneous sympathy this House feels for Lady Churchill and all the members of his family. We are concious only that the tempestuous years are over; the years of appraisal are yet to come. It is a moment for the heartfelt tribute that this House, of all places, desires to pay in an atmosphere of quiet.
For now the noise of hooves thundering across the veldt; the clamour of the hustings in a score of contests; the shots in Sidney Street, the angry guns of Gallipoli, Flanders, Coronel and the Falkland Islands; the sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy; the urgent warnings of the Nazi threat; the whine of the sirens and the dawn bombardment of the Normandy beaches—all these now are silent. There is a stillness. And in that stillness, echoes and memories. To each whose life has been touched by Winston Churchill, to each his memory. And as those memories are told and retold, as the world pours in its tributes, as world leaders announce their intention, in this jet age, of coming to join in this vast assembly to pay honour and respect to his memory, we in this House treasure one thought, and it was a thought some of us felt it right to express in the Parliamentary tributes on his retirement. Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of Parliamentary comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of a world's tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: "He was a good House of Commons man."
Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I beg to support the Motion moved by the Prime Minister. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken in eloquent words in appreciation of the life of Winston Churchill and has told us of his long Parliamentary career. In doing so, the Prime Minister voiced the feelings of the House and of the nation.
Yesterday, when we saw the pageant of that life and career unfolded before us, it did not seem possible that a man could have achieved so much within a mortal span, and anyone who tries to measure the qualities of Winston Churchill knows that there is nothing that can now be said or written which can add to the stature of the man, because each of us knows with certainty that he has lived in the presence of one of the greatest men of all time.
When, on his 90th birthday, Mr. Harold Macmillan quoted from his writings the now famous words:
"In War, Resolution;
In Defeat, Defiance;
In Victory, Magnanimity;
In Peace, Good will"
Mr. Macmillan was, I believe, right in saying that those words provided perhaps the most satisfying picture of the complete man. For they convey the rich, full-blooded life which was his: the ups and downs of fortune in politics and war; the tempest and the controversy; the grandeur; the boyish, infectious zest for living of a man for whom life was an endless adventure; the deep humanity and simplicity, of which the Prime Minister has spoken, of a man with a large heart and an open countenance. Winston Churchill knew his mind and required others to do so. He was impatient of hesitation and, except in military affairs—let us admit it—had little time for detail, for he saw things whole and wide and far.
Our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren will praise him for his vision, but for us inevitably today there is, in the forefront of our minds, his leadership of the nation to victory in war. We remember him coming here from the high councils of the allies, from every battlefront which he visited with the forces, eager always to be on the ramparts. We remember him as a master of strategy in his own right, acting as a stimulating influence on the
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soldiers, sailors and airmen in charge of the operations of war.
Indeed, I have often thought that it was a mark of the force and magnetism of the man that those individuals he chose as the particular instruments of victory seemed somehow to be infected with a touch of his genius and to assume a part of his mantle.
But the picture which will never die in the minds of any is his unquenchable courage during those long months when the nation stood under siege—and then, in truth, he was the incarnation of defiance of evil and of the triumph of right over wrong. And it was because conquered men and women saw in Churchill the enduring, immovable rock that hope was able to live on and to triumph over despair in many other countries other than our own.
Pericles, speaking of the Heroes' defence of Athens and of democracy, said:
"And having each one given his body to the Commonwealth they received instead thereof a most remarkable sepulcher—not so much that wherein they are buried so much as that other wherein their glory is laid up, on all occasions both of word and deed, for to famous men all the earth is a sepulchre: and their virtues shall be testified not only by inscription on stone at home but in all lands wheresoever in the unwritten record of the mind, which far beyond any monument will remain with all men everlastingly. Be zealous therefore to emulate them and judge that happiness is freedom and freedom is valour and be forward to encounter the dangers of war."
So it might be said of Churchill, and all our people whom he inspired in his and their finest hour.
As the Prime Minister has said, his horizons of thought and imagination stretched well beyond those of other men. Years back, he would discuss with his great friend, General Smuts, and much talk of one world, and his speeches on the themes of the rôle of the English-speaking peoples and the unity of Europe and the interdependence of nations revealed a mind restless and fertile with ideas, seeking always to turn men's minds to better ways and to what he described as "the uplands of peace".
On his 90th birthday, we spoke of him in the House as a great Parliamentarian, and rightly so, for politics was his life. Because the Prime Minister has already done it I will not try today

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to add to the words on his great Parliamentary career, but where there was controversy there Churchill was certain to be found, using in debates in the House the broad sword and the rapiers of wit and repartee and turning and tuning them with his sensitive ear to every mood of the House.
But he was a politician in the most honourable sense of the word, for he came here into Parliament through politics to serve the nation. He was, of course, the Leader of the Conservative Party, both as Prime Minister and from these benches, and today we are heavy at heart but at the same time full of gratitude to one who gave to his colleagues unstintingly of his friendship and his loyalty, which he conceived to be two of the greatest of the virtues.
As we take leave of him, I would like to recall to the House the very last words of the book which he himself called, "My Early Life". In the last few lines, he had been talking of the worries and the struggles of politics and the challenges which he would have to face, and then he wrote this simple line:
"… until September, 1908, when I married and lived happily ever afterwards."
To Lady Churchill, who has stood by him all his life and who was with him at the end, we would like to join with the Prime Minister in sending our admiration and our affection, and we stand in homage with the nation.
Mr. J. Grimond: I beg to support the Motion moved by the Prime Minister.
Only a few months ago, we said goodbye to Sir Winston Churchill as a Member of Parliament. On that occasion we claimed him particularly as our own. Now Sir Winston is dead. That long career, which went back to the days before the motor car was known and which saw such astonishing changes throughout the world, is ended. Now we are at one of the still points of the turning world. A link stretching back to Queen Victoria and Gladstone has snapped. All freedom-loving men, wherever they are, now claim Sir Winston as their own and mourn his death—and well they may, because it is in large measure due to him that some of us are free at all.
It is by his leadership in war, as has been said, that he will be first remembered.
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Freedom and his country were what he loved and he had the chance to serve them both in the war. There is a temptation, knowing that I can add nothing to the praise which will be accorded to him, to leave him to history and to say:
"Oh heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause."
But we should not allow even the events of the war to throw into the shadows the rest of his life and his service. We should remember the quality of his character as well as the size of his achievement. We should remember his contributions to peace and the pleasure which he gave to so many people, and his kindness, and his courtesy, and the trouble he took to give of his mind even to insignificant people and to make sure that they enjoyed themselves.
From where we stand today it seems as if Sir Winston had been moulded and preserved by fate to lead Britain in her crisis. That was not always the view of his contemporaries. Several times he seemed to have failed. Many people felt that he lacked just those qualities which are said to be essential to the highest office.
But it was his supposed defects as much as his acknowledged virtues which entitled him to be called "great". For 60 years he strode across British politics and some virtue departed from them when his powers declined. A man of action, he also had the gift of words—written words, conversational words, words for speeches. The high horse of political oratory has been riderless since his departure.
No insipid mantle of adulation can obscure the splendour of a life spent fighting, fighting for what he believed good against all the forces of inertia and defeatism. He was tried not only in the hot furnace of war, but in the bleak wilderness of rejection by his own political party. His motives were misrepresented. It would be foolish to pretend that he was not sad and depressed, but he never became cynical. He was a romantic, an individual man. We praise and envy his exploits all the more because we know that they are unlikely to be repeated. Before the First War he was denounced as a dangerous radical, indeed, Socialist, and between the wars as

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a maverick who dared to revolt against party discipline. Never was he afraid to put his future in jeopardy when he felt that he was right. Often he may have been wrong, but he was never cowardly, trivial or mean.
In his love of adventure and his imaginative powers he was far removed from the modern technocrat. Yet every-one who was subjected to it paid tribute to the power of his mind. It was a creative instrument informed by insatiable curiosity and constantly ranging over new ideas. Already in 1913 he was dictating a treatise on world supplies of oil. Prison reform, labour exchanges, the Antwerp Expedition, the Dardanelles, the invention of the tank, the floating harbours of D-Day—to all these he contributed.
At the higher level of broad political judgment, he may have been wrong over finance and India, but he appreciated the German danger in the 1930s, the threat of Russian policy in the late 1940s, and the need for a united Europe after the war. He always related current decisions to future trends and wide principles.
His supreme gift as a politician lay in his determination and in his vision of a better, happier, world. Without that vision, all the expert knowledge of the technocrat is useless and all the skill of the politicians runs only to the achievement of office. Perhaps, after all, it is the technocratic age above all others which needs the refusal to take anything for granted and the power of decision which was Sir Winston's. Perhaps, after all, he was born 10 years too early.
He loved life. He could be very funny. He wanted everyone to be happy. He wanted to taste and try everything that life could offer. Power never corrupted him, nor did success make him pompous. In his extraordinary retention of youth's wonder and enjoyment and energy, it could well indeed be said of him, as was said of someone else, that he was half lion and half child.
While we send our deepest sympathy to his family and particularly to his wife—and perhaps it might not be out of place to mention on this day his doctor—let us also he thankful that we have been alive at the same time as Sir Winston Churchill.
Mr. R. H. Turton: As the back-bench Member with the longest continuous service,
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I rise to support the Prime Minister's Motion.
Throughout his long career, Sir Winston Churchill displayed all the Parliamentary qualities that every backbench Member wishes to possess. Others have spoken about how the span was so long that one could not in one's memory have known those early years, but I remember that when I first came into the House in 1929 Sir Winston was somewhat estranged from the Opposition Front Bench and was conducting individual but highly successful forays against Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Government.
Then a year or two later he led an independent and well-organised opposition to the India Bill against the massed support of that Bill of all the parties in the House. He was a tiny minority against a huge majority. From that same seat on the front bench below the Gangway in the next few years he warned Parliament of the perils of Nazi rearmament and roused the nation to defend itself against them.
The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have talked about his and the nation's finest hour, but to me the real test of his Parliamentary quality came when, crushed by electoral defeat, he came down into the arena after 1945 and lightheartedly took up the duties of Leader of the Opposition and engaged in Parliamentary battle until that battle was won. All of us who served with him in his Government, in however humble a position, will always be proud of having served in the Government of Sir Winston Churchill. To all of us, to the least of us, he showed amazing loyalty and stimulating humour in our encounters.
How can one sum up such a career? He epitomised Parliamentary courage—generous in victory, indomitable in defeat. No hon. Member has ever attempted more; and although no hon. Member has had more successes, it was his achievement of scaling the mountain of success out of the foothills of defeat that has given him as an example to every hon. Member who enters this House in the future.
Sir Winston Churchill loved this House. Your freshest memory of him, Mr. Speaker, will be of him rising from that seat below the Gangway, reluctantly accepting the support of two hon. Members, tottering to the Bar of the

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House and there making his bow to you, Mr. Speaker, and to Parliament, which he loved.
As this afternoon we sadly leave this Chamber and pass under the Churchill Arch, we will recollect that that arch was left by him untouched and unrepaired to remind Parliament of the fury the Nazis unleashed against this nation and this Parliament. To many of us in future that battered and chipped relic of the former Chamber will be a permanent memorial to the man who loved democratic freedom, who revered our Parliamentary procedure and who in the judgment of all was the greatest Member that Parliament, in all its 700 years, has ever
known.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved, nemine contradicente,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty humbly to thank Her Majesty for having given directions for the body of the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Churchill, K.G., to lie in State in Westminster Hall and for the funeral service to be held in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul and assuring Her Majesty of our cordial aid and concurrence in these measures for expressing the affection and admiration in which the memory of this great man is held by this House and all Her Majesty's faithful subjects.
To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

ADJOURNMENT
The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Bowden): I beg to move, That this House do now adjourn.
Perhaps I may say a word about business and other arrangements. Guidance is already being circulated to Members on the Lying-in-State, applications for tickets for Saturday, the changed timing of the Ballot for Notices of Motions on Friday, 5th February, and the refreshment arrangements for this week. Approval will be sought tomorrow to Motions governing our attendance at St. Paul's, on Saturday, and the sitting of the House during the Lying-in-State.
As to tomorrow, I understand that the Opposition do not propose to move their Motion on the aircraft industry. In that case, no business would be taken after the Second Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill, which, if the House agrees, will be taken formally. I shall be making a further statement tomorrow about the business for next week.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at seventeen minutes past Three o'clock.

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, having been called together by The Lord Chancellor pursuant to the Resolution of 3rd November last.
The Lord Chancellor on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Chester.
The Earl of Avon—Took the Oath.

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN
2.35 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, I have it in command to deliver to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty The Queen.
Then Her Majesty's Message was presented and read to the House by the Lord Chancellor as follows:
"I know that it will be the wish of all my people that the loss which we have all sustained by the death of the Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, should be met in the most fitting manner and that they should have an opportunity of expressing their sorrow at the loss and their veneration of the memory of that outstanding man who, in war and peace, served his country unfailingly for more than fifty years and in the hours of our greatest danger was the inspiring leader who strengthened and supported us all.
"Confident in the support of Parliament for the due acknowledgment of our debt of gratitude and in thanksgiving for the life and example of a national hero, I have directed that Sir Winston's body shall lie in State in Westminster Hall and that thereafter the funeral service shall be held in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.
"ELIZABETH REGINA."
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I beg to move that the Message from Her Majesty the Queen be taken into consideration forthwith.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

MOTION FOR AN HUMBLE ADDRESS, AND TRIBUTES
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I beg to move—
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for having given directions for the funeral service of the late Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, to be held in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, and assuring Her Majesty of our warm concurrence and support for these measures for expressing the affection and admiration in which the memory of this great man is held by this House and all Her Majesty's faithful subjects."
My Lords, only one thing is certain about the tributes that will be paid this afternoon to Sir Winston Churchill: they will be felt, and rightly felt, by their authors to be inadequate to the occasion and to the man. Yet I am sure that all who speak will receive the indulgence of those present and of those who in later years may read our words, recognising as they will the immensity, or I may say the impossibility, of the task before us.
Sir Winston Churchill was a House of Commons man, and it was his desire that he should spend his whole Parliamentary life in that House. We, the House of Lords, the other Chamber of the Legislature, have none the less the duty and the privilege of paying tribute to Sir Winston Churchill as a national leader and world statesman and, may I add, an illustrious Leader of the Party of noble Lords opposite. We therefore offer our undving admiration and gratitude for the services to our nation and the world of one of the greatest Englishmen of all time.
He was not only a superb man of action, a national and international leader in war and peace. If he had left nothing but his books—though it ishard to imagine his books without his career in politics—he would have lived long in British history. As is well known, his schooldays were not distinguished, a

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matter of considerable encouragement to many of us, our children and our grandchildren. One recalls that Lord Randolph Churchill, his father, shortly before his own death, was writing to a magnate in the Dominions to ask for an opening for his son, Winston. Lord Randolph did not believe that his son would ever be able to make a career in England. But by the time Mr. Winston Churchill, as he then was, was in his early thirties, he had published his Life of the same Lord Randolph. Lord Rosebery, himself no mean biographer, could say of that book:
"He has under great difficulties produced a fascinating book, one to be ranked among the first dozen, perhaps; the first half-dozen, biographies in the language."
In short, his astonishing mental powers had begun to reveal themselves many years before the supreme call for him in 1940. But no one who has read the chapter in his autobiography, My Early Life, called "Education at Bangalore", where he served with his regiment as a young cavalry officer, will underestimate the collossal and sustained effort, the self-sacrifice involved. For four or five hours every day he read history and philosophy. "It was", he recalled, "a curious education." "I approached it", he says, "with a hungry mind and with fairly strong jaws, and what I got I bit" With every year that passed, his claim to be a man of indisputable and original genius, alike in deeds and words, was ever more clearly established.
I cannot even bgin to refer to the long list of his great achievements in literature and public life, nor the vicissitudes, including grave misfortunes, that would have overwhelmed a lesser personality. It may well be that most people's thoughts will centre on the years from 1940 to 1945, when he led a National Coalition Government, preeminently assisted by my noble friend Lord Attlee, the noble Earl, Lord Avon, and others—some of whom will speak to us—and when he brought us through, against all odds, to victory. But one does not easily forget his devotion to the Royal Navy, known to the oldest and youngest present. One remembers what Lord Kitchener said to him, when he fell from office during the First War: "Well, there is one thing at any rate they cannot take from you. The Fleet was ready".
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Others will remember Sir Winston as a main architect of the employment exchanges, which he referred to more than fifty years ago as"the gateway to industrial security", or, again, will remember his concern with the unemployment insurance, in which he discovered what he called"the magic of averages". No Home Secretary has thrown himself more ardently into the movement for penal reform. Out of a very famous passage, which I remember was quoted by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Birkett, in his maiden speech in your Lordships' House, I must quote one sentence at least:
"An unfailing faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man: these are the symbols in which the treatment of crime and the criminal marks and measures the stored-up strength of a nation and of a silent proof of its living virtue".
In all his achievements before the First War he was inflexibly supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, as he then was, of whom he was to writ:
"Disinterested patriotism and inflexible integrity were his only guides."
It is altogether appropriate that his daughter should be speaking to us today, as are others of his closest friends and allies, in peace and war. I should say that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, sends a message of very deep regret that he is not yet well enough to come to join in the tributes, but everyone will be glad to know that he is making good progress.
Certainly Sir Winston was controversial, sometimes deliberately controversial, often occupying a lonely place in national affairs. Perhaps in seeking a reason for this posture and attitude we can find it in some other words of Lord Rosebery, something that he wrote about the early life of Chatham:
"All the time we have felt that there was always something in him different in quality from his fellow politicians, that there was an imprisoned spirit within struggling for freedom and scope."
Surely that was never truer about Sir Winston Churchill than in those years before 1939, as the sky darkened and he issued his unheeded warning against the Nazi menace.
Then we come to the moment, so tersely and yet so unforgettably

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described by him, when, at the darkest hour in 1940, he was at last given a complete mandate and an unparalleled responsibility.
"I felt", he has written,
"as if I were walking with destiny and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial."
And then, gravely, but also gaily, he took our burdens on his shoulders and, to adapt one of his favourite phrases, we all went forward together. It might be asked: How much of the heroic effort that followed was his and how much was ours? Who can say? Who would wish to say? Sir Winston has again and again insisted that all he did was to find a means of liberating and giving full expression to our best and most patriotic impulses, and no doubt, in a sense, that is so. He himself has said:
"It was the nation who had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar."
Of course, that is a delicious understatement of what he accomplished. Certainly he was no autocrat or dictator, imposing his rule upon the people. He was a stupendous leader, but he was no less a faithful representative of the British people, even in his most glorious and exalted moments. He gave sublime effect to the Biblical instruction:
"He who would be the greatest among you must be the servant of all."
And yet his war leadership will always be recognised as a supreme example of how one man can turn the course of world history, by inspiring and galvanising a whole nation, and, indeed, the forces of freedom everywhere; so that everyone seemed to acquire an extra dimension and almost everyone seemed able to do better than he supposed was his best. He had a genius of words that prompted the heroism of deeds. The late Lord Tweedsmuir once analysed the outstanding qualities of the great captains. He concluded that military greatness was not different from other sorts of greatness, in the same way that military virtues are not different from other virtues. He mentions courage, capacity for self-sacrifice, patience, the sense of oneself as a part of a predestined purpose. All these qualities Sir Winston possessed in notable fashion. But one other quality
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was added—a human sympathy, which Sir Winston perhaps possessed most obviously of all. Lord Tweedsmuir found this quality of human sympathy in what he calls Julius Caesar's strange magnanimity, in Robert E. Lee's tenderness and chivalry, in that something in Napoleon which bound to him the souls of his veterans. The greatest captains, he assures us, have laid their spell on the hearts of their armies. That quality, that power of communicating and arousing human sympathy among countless millions, was something which only gradually, perhaps, Sir Winston discovered fully in himself, but under Providence he discovered it in time to rescue the cause of freedom. In the years after the war he achieved the seemingly impossible, and he not only maintained but enhanced the universal esteem and affection felt for him.
A few days ago I asked our newsagent whether any further information about Sir Winston had come through on the early morning News. He shook his head and added, "Bless his old heart". That is surely the overwhelming sense of our nation to-day—deep sorrow that he has left us; deep, deep sympathy for his bereaved family; but, above all, gratitude for his life, gratitude that he was given to us, and, as it seemed, so often that he was miraculously spared, gratitude that we have been alive with him and lifted so often out of ourselves.
Some lines of a poem which I cannot trace come back to me, I hope correctly. I think that they express what men and women and children, not only in our country but everywhere, are feeling: "When the high hope we magnify And the true vision celebrate And worship greatness passing by Ourselves are great."
My Lords, I know that the House will wish to send profound sympathy to Lady Churchill, his incomparable partner, and to all his loving family. I propose the Motion in the terms mentioned at the beginning of my tribute.
Moved—
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, thanking Her Majesty for having given directions for the funeral service of the late Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, to be held in the

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Cathedral Church of St. Paul, and assuring Her Majesty of our warm concurrence and support for these measures for expressing the affection and admiration in which the memory of this great man is held by this House and all Her Majesty's faithful subjects.—(The Earl of Longford.)
2.52 p.m.
VISCOUNT DILHORNE: My Lords, the Leader of the House has reminded us of many of the activities and many of the events in the life of the man we now mourn, and he has expressed in the most moving way what I am sure we all feel, and felt yesterday when we heard the sad news of the death of Sir Winston. There are many in this House far better qualified to speak of him than I am; and in paying this tribute to him on behalf of the Opposition, in the absence overseas of my noble friend Lord Carrington, I am oppressed by the knowledge that no words I can utter can pay adequate tribute to the greatest Englishman of our age.
That he was a man of genius, of brilliance in many fields, all will acknowledge. He had many virtues. But there was, in my belief, one feature of his character that stood out above all others, and that was his courage, his absolutely indomitable courage. His example in the dark days of 1940 inspired the nation, and no matter how black things seemed, and were, both then and later, his courage and determination never faltered.
After leading the nation to victory, the loss of the Election that followed must have been deeply felt by him. Many a lesser man might have decided that he had done enough and have retired, having accomplished so much. But Sir Winston's courage, his patriotism, his belief that he might still serve his country, led him to carry on. When he again became Prime Minister in 1951 I held a junior office in his Administration. Holders of such offices do not ordinarily come much in contact with the Prime Minister, but it does happen on occasions. I am sure that all junior Ministers were as impressed as I was by his kindness, courtesy and understanding. He never left anyone in the slightest doubt about his own views, and if he felt strongly he was apt to express them with a vigour and clarity of language beyond compare. It
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was a great honour to have served under him as Prime Minister, and something of which one will always be very proud.
My Lords, I really cannot do justice to the man, the statesman, the leader of his country, and the great international figure that we mourn to-day. Edmund Burke, in his tribute to William Pitt, said this:
"No man was ever better fitted to be the Minister of a great and powerful nation, or better qualified to carry that power and greatness to their utmost limits. Under him Great Britain carried on the most important war in which she was ever engaged, alone and unassisted".
A little later, Burke said:
"Alone this island seemed to balance the rest of Europe."
Those words, used by Edmund Burke on that occasion, apply fully, in my view, to Sir Winston Churchill and the part he played as our Prime Minister in those war-time days. We treasure our memories of him. His fame will not diminish. We mourn him, and I should like to join, on behalf of the Opposition, in the expression of very deep sympathy with Lady Churchill and the members of his family.
LORD REA: My Lords, I rise with a heavy heart and with abysmal sorrow to try to say the unsayable: to echo inadequately the grief, and also the pride, of thousands of men and women throughout the world who now give heartfelt thanks that our forbears produced such a man as Winston Churchill, that our descendants can look back upon such a mighty figure in our history, and, perhaps a little selfishly, that we of this generation had the honour to live with him. I think there is no more for me to say.
2.58 p.m.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, the great man whom we mourn to-day is one whom posterity will ever connect with particular days, hours, moments, of crisis for this country and for mankind. Yet in the particular day, hour, moment, he struck something universal in humanity.
In the hour of unique peril, when he led our nation, he led it by evoking the spirit of its history through the centuries, and he uttered that spirit in deeds and in words simple and timeless. In leading a nation he touched those chords of humanity which belong to all nations.

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A lover of men, women and children, a reconciler, nothing human in grief or in laughter ever lay outside his quick sympathy. How characteristic of him are these words at the beginning of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples:
"It is in the hope that the contemplation of the trials and tribulations of our forefathers may not only fortify the English-speaking peoples of today but also play some small part in uniting the whole world that I present this account."
Yes, a patriot. The leader of Anglo-American friendship, he was no less the prophet of the friendship of all nations.
There were two aspects of Christianity that Sir Winston made especially his own. One was the idea of Christendom, a civilisation of charity, justice, and the care for persons—a Christian civilisation. The other was the law of forgiveness, as applied to nations. He could hate and despise a State or a system, but he could feel the bond of humanity with its people and so seek reconciliation after conflict.
My Lords, wherever men and women believe in God, they will want to thank God for giving such a man to the world. For him we to-day thank God with our hearts—for what he was, for what he is and will never cease to be.
LORD ROBERTSON OF OAK-RIDGE: My Lords, like many of those who sit with me on these Cross Benches, I have spent the major part of my life as a servant of the Crown. There are many on these Benches who served Winston Churchill longer and more closely than I did, but I can say that twice he intervened personally to change the whole course of my career. I can also say that my father was associated with him for many critical years and, incidentally, owed to him, when he was Secretary of State for War and Air, his Field Marshal's baton, bestowed on him at a time when the honour was particularly welcome. So when I was offered the great honour of paying a short tribute this afternoon to Winston Churchill, on behalf of those who sit on the Cross Benches, I accepted with immense pride.
Winston Churchill, as we all know, was very proud of his own record with the Fighting Services, from Omdurman to the Rhine. He liked sailors, soldiers
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and airmen, officers and men. He understood them. He was not afraid of them, not even of the Generals. He knew how to manage them. He liked to be with the troops; and he showed it. Small wonder, then, that throughout the last long struggle they gave him their unstinted devotion.
All, it seems to me, who served or were associated with Winston Churchill, whether in the great Departments of State or the Fighting Services, or in their professions or as men of affairs, or as technical men called in to assist his Government, or in any other capacity—all of them will boast about it to the end of their days. All of them will go on telling their stories about him, embellishing them always a little more each time; and all of them, whenever there is any kind of crisis in our land, will say, as in unison: "What a pity it is we have not got Winston here to-day!"—and nobody will resent their saying it.
EARL ATTLEE: My Lords, as an old opponent and a colleague, but always a friend, of Sir Winston Churchill, I should like to say a few words in addition to what has already been so eloquently said. My mind goes back to many years ago. I recall Sir Winston as a rising hope of the Conservative Party at the end of the 19th century. I looked upon him and Lord Hugh Cecil as the two rising hopes of the Conservative Party. Then, with courage, he crossed the House—not easy for any man. You might say of Sir Winston that to whatever Party he belonged he did not really change his ideas: he was always Winston.
The first time I saw him was at the seige of Sidney Street, when he took over command of the troops there, and I happened to be a local resident. I did not meet him again until he came into the House of Commons in 1924. The extraordinary thing, when one thinks of it, is that by that time he had done more than the average Member of Parliament, and more than the average Minister, in the way of a Parliamentary career. We thought at that time that he was finished. Not a bit of it! He started again another career, and then, after some years, it seemed again that he had faded. He became a lone wolf, outside any Party; and, yet, somehow or other, the time was coming which

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would be for him his supreme moment, and for the country its supreme moment. It seems as if everything led up to that time in 1940, when he became Prime Minister of this country at the time of its greatest peril.
Throughout all that period he might make opponents, he might make friends; but no one could ever disregard him. Here was a man of genius, a man of action, a man who could also speak superbly and write superbly. I recall through all those years many occasions when his characteristics stood out most forcibly. I do not think everybody always recognised how tender-hearted he was. I can recall him with the tears rolling down his cheeks, talking of the horrible things perpetrated by the Nazis in Germany. I can recall, too, during the war his emotion on seeing a simple little English home wrecked by a bomb. Yes, my Lords, sympathy—and more than that: he went back, and immediately devised the War Damage Act. How characteristic! Sympathy did not stop with emotion; it turned into action.
Then I recall the long days through the war—the long days and long nights—in which his spirit never failed; and how often he lightened our labours by that vivid humour, those wonderful remarks he would make which absolutely dissolved us all in laughter, however tired we were. I recall his eternal friendship for France and for America; and I recall, too, as the most reverend Primate has said already, that when once the enemy were beaten he had full sympathy for them. He showed that after the Boer War, and he showed it again after the First World War. He had sympathy, an incredibly wide sympathy, for ordinary people all over the world.
I think of him also as supremely conscious of history. His mind went back not only to his great ancestor Marlborough but through the years of English history. He saw himself and he saw our nation at that time playing a part not unworthy of our ancestors, not unworthy of the men who defeated the Armada and not unworthy of the men who defeated Napoleon. He saw himself there as an instrument. As an instrument for what? For freedom, for human life against tyranny. None of us can ever forget how, through all
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those long years, he now and again spoke exactly the phrase that crystallised the feelings of the nation.
My Lords, we have lost the greatest Englishman of our time—I think the greatest citizen of the world of our time. In the course of a long, long life, he has played many parts. We may all be proud to have lived with him and, above all, to have worked with him; and we shall all send to his widow and family our sympathy in their great loss.
3.12 p.m.
THE EARL OF AVON: My Lords, this is a day not only of national mourning but of mourning throughout the Free World. For Sir Winston's service was to mankind, and for this his place will always be among the few immortals. Many of your Lordships knew Sir Winston well, and worked with him closely at one or other period of his career. But this afternoon, as has been apparent from almost every speech, our minds go back more especially to that period of the Second World War which he himself called our "finest hour", and which was certainly his.
It seems to me in every sense appropriate that this sad occasion should be so exceptionally signalised as in this Royal Message—and not only because of Sir Winston's qualities of true greatness in leadership above all. These in themselves would be cause enough for the Message which we have received. But there is also another reason: that Churchill epitomised, at the same time as he led, the nation, at a time of brave and (why should it not be said?) splendid resistance against odds which might have seemed overwhelming. So, my Lords, as we mourn and honour Sir Winston, we reverence also all those who fell to bring victory to a cause for which he had dedicated himself and us. They are now together.
My Lords, what follows is a suggestion to which I expect, of course, No 1mmediate reply or comment, and which I make with some temerity, but from messages I have received I believe that it is not only my thought. It seems to me that the nation would feel glad if there could be a "Churchill Day". This could be most appropriately connected, perhaps, with some date in that summer of 1940, when both Churchill's leadership and this country's will to resist, whatever the cost,

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expressed themselves so gloriously. They could then be enshrined together for as long as our calendar endures.
I should like also to associate myself with the messages to Lady Churchill. No tribute, however penned or phrased, could out-measure what is deserved.
My Lords, courage is never easy to define. Sometimes it is shown in the heat of battle; and that we all respect. But there is that rarer courage which can sustain repeated disappointment, unexpected failure, and even shattering defeat. Churchill had that, too; and he had need of it, as the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will remember, not only for days but sometimes for weeks and for months. Looking back now at the war, victory may seem to have been certain. But it was not always certain; and when news is bad, it is very lonely at the top.
Like one or two of those who are with us in this House this afternoon, I saw much of Sir Winston then—often many times a day, not only at official meetings but in such periods of comparative relaxation as there were, at meals and, as was his wont, late into the night. I grew to respect and love him, even though the argument might sometimes be sharp.
My Lords, there is the granite type which feels little. Sir Winston was nothing of that at all. He felt deeply every blow of fortune and every gleam of hope. Alert, eager and questing as his temper was, he could hold on through all tides and tempests; and he had that gift, rare and difficult to discharge in statesmanship, of knowing when to reject "No" as an answer, recognising that the arguments against any positive action could always be trusted to marshal themselves. During those war years his mind was always projected to the next move, and in this he was aided by an energy which was something much more than zest for life. With that constitution, Sir Winston would have survived any strain in any age, but he loved best the present one in which he lived. I have heard it said in criticism that his opinions were of his own generation. Certainly they were. And that was his strength, because he was at the same time open-minded and comprehending as are very few men in this century. He saw clearly and further than most, and he spoke fearlessly
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and without favour of what he saw. He sensed the danger for his country with the instinct of the artist and the knowledge of the historian.
As we cast our minds back this afternoon and pay tribute to his memory, there is, of course, nothing for which we in this Assembly shall remember him more than as a Parliamentarian. He called himself a "child of the House of Commons". But he was, of course, much more than that. He had been brought up in a great Parliamentary age. I remember how he used to tell me how in those days speeches, even of Under-Secretaries, were fully reported in the Press. With awe, almost, he spoke of those days. And the great figures that dominated that period gave him an intimate sense of the power of Parliament which he never lost, just as he never forgot that Parliament put him where he was in 1940. It was a memory with him always.
So, my Lords, as we say farewell to him now, we thank this, the greatest of all Parliamentarians whom we shall know; and we can best enshrine his work by devoting ourselves to the same thing, to those cherished thoughts, traditions and beliefs to which he held, through life, till death.
VISCOUNT STUART OF FINDHORN: My Lords, if you would permit me to speak for a very brief period, I, too, would say a few words of tribute to that great and remarkable man Sir Winston Churchill. I repeat "great and remarkable "because he was; indeed I wonder whether "outstanding" would not be the more correct term to use. I speak only because, like the noble Earl, Lord Avon, who has just spoken, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who spoke so admirably, if I may say so, about Sir Winston, and others, I worked very closely with him. I was his Chief Whip throughout most of the days of the war, and I saw a great deal of him in those days. Hours, as my noble friend Lord Avon said, meant little; the hours were variable. There were meals often to be had. And no man was more generous, except perhaps in so far as hours of sleep were concerned.
In so far as I have risen to any position in this world, it has been thanks to Sir Winston Churchill, because I served him as Government Chief Whip and also in

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the Opposition; then from 1951 until he retired as Prime Minister I had the honour of serving in his Cabinet. If it had not been for the pressure which he himself exerted upon me—and I say this in all honesty—I should never have entered his Cabinet. I had not contemplated doing any such thing; I had retired as Chief Whip some two or three years previously. But let me make it quite clear that I, at least, have no regrets. It was the most interesting, I may say absorbing, time of my whole life. He taught me more than anybody else has ever taught me. Indeed, when people have discussed education, I have often said that my education began in 1940 when I joined Sir Winston Churchill. It may have been rather a delayed start, but there is a good deal of truth in it.
I have always said of Sir Winston that he was at his best when things were at their worst. When the nation's war-time fortunes were hitting the bottom, Sir Winston was hitting the top every time, and he never failed; and I, like, I believe, all sane members of this country, express to-day, and will always express, undying gratitude for that and for all he did for our country.
My Lords, what else can one say? I have been reading the newspapers and have listened to the wireless and to the tributes in your Lordships' House. Everything has been said or written already. There is only one thing left that I wish to say: I wish, from a full heart, to pay a sincere tribute to that great lady, Lady (Churchill. No man had a more wonderful partner in those days. I saw quite a lot of Sir Winston and Lady Churchill, not only at Downing Street but at Chequers and, when in Opposition, Chartwell, and she was incomparable. Nobody could have done greater work than she did in her help to him, and I am sure we should all like to thank her for her valiant work, her strength of character, and her bravery.
3.25 p.m.
BARONESS ASQUITH OF YARN-BURY: My Lords, I must ask your indulgence as a newcomer among you and as one who speaks, as we all speak to-day, under the stress of deep personal grief. I think it is hard to realise that that indomitable heart, to which we all
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owe our freedom and our very existence, has fought its long, last battle and is still. I count myself infinitely blessed in having known Winston Churchill as a close and dear and life-long friend. But, from the day of our first meeting in my early youth, I saw him always in a dual perspective. Through and beyond my friend, well known and dearly loved, I saw one of the greatest figures of all time upon the stage of history.
Few shared my view in those days; nor, indeed, in thirty years' time. But, despite frustrations and setbacks and disappointments, I was always conscious that his ultimate confidence in himself remained unshaken. He had no doubts about his star. Even in those early days he felt he was walking with Destiny and that he had been preserved through many perils in order to fulfil its purpose. I think he might have said with Keats:
"There is an awful warmth about my heart, like a Lord of immortality."
And he was right. For in his own life he has taken his place among the immortals.
My Lords, for me it would be vain to attempt to assess the elements that have gone to the making of this epic character—statesman, orator, artist in action, fighter from first to last—and withal the most human of human beings. Many of his great qualities have been extolled in the eloquent and moving speeches we have listened to this afternoon, and I would associate myself with the noble Viscount, Lord Dilhorne (and I think the noble Earl, Lord Avon, mentioned it), in putting courage first: his courage, the courage that accepts and hurls back every challenge; courage which he himself esteemed as the highest of human virtues, because, as he once said to me, "It guarantees all the rest".
Then, greatness of heart. From all small things he had a grand immunity. He never wished to trample on a fallen foe, whether a political opponent or a defeated nation. For though he believed and said that the only answer to defeat is victory, his enmity could not survive once victory was won.
"My hate had died with their surrender"
he wrote about the ruins of Berlin. He never hated nations—or men—as

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such. He hated only their ideas. "You knock a man down in order to pick him up in a better frame of mind—and you may pick him up in a better frame of mind". he once said. And then there was his vitality, a flame which all the waters of the world were powerless to quench. He seemed to have been endowed by Fortune with a double charge of life and with a double dose of human nature.
But, transcending all, was his warm and wide humanity. His character
"spanned the whole gamut of human possibilities—its frailties, foibles, grandeur and nobility".
He could be Puck or prophet, sage or wit, above the battle, in the scrum, an epic poet or a tease. What other Leader of the Opposition has ever kissed his hand to an infuriated Government Front Bench? That is what I once saw him do. And how he brought not only fortitude but gaiety to our grimmest hours!
"We are expecting the coming invasion. So are the fishes!"
Thus he broadcast to the French people from a basement during the crashes of an air raid. Hearing his chuckle, we ignored the bombs and laughed with him.
He shared our tears. When he saw gallant Londoners sticking up little, pathetic Union Jacks among the ruins of their homes, he was totally unmanned and wept. An old woman said: "You see, he really cares; he is crying. "They recognised a human being, vulnerable to their own simplest emotion; one who shared their common clay and had invested it with a new glory. At last he was not only understood but loved, as few Prime Ministers have ever been.
I think that few men's lives have touched such heights and depths of triumph and disaster, and it was sometimes in his darkest days that I thought him greatest. I am thinking of the 'thirties (to which the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, has referred), when he was in the shadows, at odds with his own Party and with all the powers that be. He saw so clearly the danger, the deadly peril which encompassed us, and he saw the choice which we must make.
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To him it was a stark, simple, moral choice: it was a choice between tyranny and freedom, good and evil, life and death. He dedicated all his powers of vision, passion and expression to awakening the sleeping conscience of the nation, both to its peril and to its honour. And he failed. The awakening came from the fulfilment of the doom he prophesied and did his utmost to avert.
1 have heard him called "erratic," "unreliable," "not a safe man." Not safe enough to fill the armchair of a humdrum office in safe days, but when all was at stake, when our own survival and the fate of civilisation were rushing towards the rapids, then we saw him, in the lightning flash of danger, as the one man strong enough to save.
How did he save us? The answer is, by being himself.
"When all was desperate, he wildly hurled himself into the scale and saved the world."
He threw in the nation, too. He created in each one of us his own heroic image of ourselves, so that we were transmuted by his faith into the people he believed in. We were that people, but we did not know it until he had revealed us to ourselves.
And now—there can be no leave-taking between him and the people that he served and saved. I think that many of us to-day may be feeling that by his going the scale of things has dwindled, our stature is diminished, that the glory has departed from us, that
"there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon."
When yesterday I looked for the last time on his face from which all age and all infirmity had dropped away—young, calm and resolute in death—I thought: "Is there anything, or is there nothing left that we can do for him?"Then I remembered the words of his Victory broadcast—when he urged us not to fall back into the rut of inertia, confusion and "the craven fear of being great". And I knew that the resolve to keep unbroken that pattern of greatness which he impressed upon the spirit of the nation is the tribute he would ask from us to-day.
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente: ordered, that the said Address be presented to Her Majesty by the Lords with White Staves.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, T beg to move that, as a mark of respect to the memory of the late Sir Winston Churchill, the House do now adjourn.
Moved, That as a mark of respect to the memory of the late Sir Winston Churchill,
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the House do now adjourn.—(The Earl of Longford.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, nemine dissentiente.
House adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes before four o'clock.