There is one particular way in which I think his inconsistencies have
been dangerous to his career. They have brought him too often into
inferior company.

Lord Northcliffe, with all his faults, is a man to whom statesmen may
speak their minds without loss of influence, but there are other
newspaper proprietors, financiers of commercialized journalism, with
whom a man of Mr. Churchill's power and position should hold no personal
relations. His is a mind which stands in need of constant communion with
men of culture and refinement. He knows the world by this time well
enough, what he does not know are the heights. His character suffers, I
think, from association with second-rate people. He is too heedless of
his good name.

Is it too late for him to acquire strength of character? His faults are
chiefly the effects of a forcible and impetuous temperament: they may be
expected to diminish as age increases and experience moulds. But
character does not emerge out of the ashes of temperament. It is not to
be thought that Mr. Churchill is growing a character which will
presently emerge and create devotion in his countrymen. Character for
him must lie in those very qualities which are now chiefly responsible
for his defects--his ardour, his affectibility, his vehemence, his
impetuous rashness, his unquestioned courage. One thing only can convert
those qualities into terms of character, it is a new direction.

There is perhaps only one other man in the present House of Commons who
could do more than Mr. Churchill for his country and the world. All Mr.
Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a
Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road of
destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality.
This is to say, that to be saved from himself Mr. Churchill must be
carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal, an ideal so much
greater than his own place in politics that he is willing to face death
for its triumph, even the many deaths of political life.

At present he is but playing with politics. Even in his most earnest
moments he is only "in politics" as a man is "in business." But politics
for Mr. Churchill, if they are to make him, if they are to fulfil his
promise, must be a religion. They must have nothing to do with Mr.
Churchill. They must have everything to do with the salvation of
mankind.

It is time, high time, he hitched his waggon to a star.