100 years ago--Winston Churchill blasts socialism and Communism

Mister, we could use a man like Winston Churchill again. As reported on the front page of the Montreal Gazette, November 30, 1925:

CHURCHILL LASHES BRITISH SOCIALISM

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Summed Up Results of Marx' Teaching in Tunbridge Wells Speech

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(Special Cable to the New York Times and Montreal Gazette.)

London. Nov. 29--Socialists and Communists received a merciless tongue-lashing Saturday from Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill--who, by the way, is 51 today.

Speaking at Tunbridge Wells, he said:

"The Socialist in his folly and the Communist in his malice would undermine and fatally wreck the pillars of our society. They wish to go as fast as possible along the same road, but the Communist thinks he can smash his way by violence and the Socialist believes he can do it by humbug. The theories of that remarkable German, Karl Marx, if put into practice, would finally and fatally destroy the liberty and prosperity of these islands and, whether our ruin is achieved by a violent blow or by administration in subtle doses of slow poison, is only a secondary matter. Britain would be laid low and the only question at the post-mortem would be: 'Did she fall or was she pushed?'

"The Socialist tries to lead us to disaster by foolish words and the Communist by violent deeds. We must show ourselves equally capable of meeting and beating them, whether it is a matter of words or deeds.

Churchill derided the Socialist claims of seeking to place life on a nobler plane, and commented on the foreign nature of Socialist minds. "Even their dreary gospel," he said, "comes from Germany and Russia. British Socialists are well known to be the dullest in the world. They have merely gulped down what Karl Marx and Lenin handed over to them." Churchill warned against the "dark power of Moscow" and said: "There we have what was never known before--a band of cosmopolitan conspirators gathered from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America, in despotic possession of what was once the mighty and famous Empire of Russia. These men are ceaseless in their endeavors to spread revolution throughout every land. There is no country more the object of malignity than this island home of ours, which has so long preserved democratic freedom with order and responsibility in all classes."