CHURCHILL, WINSTON SPENCER, SIR. 1874-1965.
Autograph Letter Initialed ('W'), Treasury Chambers, Whitehall, May 21, 1928, 8vo, 3pp. conjoined leaves, to Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, commenting on the latter's recent book, holes punched, offset from paperclip.
Provenance: Sold Sotheby's March 14, 1979.

'Unteachable from infancy to tomb—there is the first & main characteristic of mankind.'

Churchill writes to his close friend and ally Canadian-British newspaper publisher Baron Beaverbrook. The latter had recently published Politicians and the War, a history of World War I, and Churchill here shares his observations. In part: 'But what a tale! Think of all these people-decent[,] educated, the story of the past laid out before them—What to avoid-what to do etc. patriotic, loyal, clean-trying their utmost—What a ghastly mess they made of it ! Unteachable from infancy to tomb—There is the first & main characteristic of Mankind....' Churchill's postscript to the letter summarizes his thoughts perfectly: 'No more war.' Kenneth Young in his Churchill and Beaverbrook: A Study in Friendship and Politics writes, 'In 1928 not even the acute and roving eye of Churchill could foresee that within a few years he himself, once more in the political wilderness, would be giving stern and unheeded warnings that major war threatened but could be averted' (p 106).
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