The Fighting Line. Two Speeches on the Army. Delivered in the House of Commons on May 23rd and May 31st, 1916.

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First edition, only printing, of a Churchill rarity - his appeal to Parliament, having returned from the trenches, to stop squandering British men in fruitless attacks, reflecting his deeply felt concerns over the prosecution of the war. After receiving much criticism for his involvement in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty in November 1915 and headed to the trenches to fight. By January 1916, he was in command of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and served in the front line until early May 1916, when he returned to the Commons. In these two impassioned speeches, he deplores the wastage of lives he witnessed. "Nearly 1,000 men - Englishmen, British, men of our own - are knocked into bundles of bloody rags every twenty-four hours, and carried away to hasty graves or field ambulances" (p. 14). "Churchill had spoken with passion. He did not believe that Britain could win the war by hurling men continuously to their death, and he despised the government for trying to do so" (Gilbert, p. 774). Yet Churchill's warnings were unheeded. Less than six weeks later, the premature offensive against which he warned took place on the Somme. Nonetheless, "the public was impressed by Churchill's parliamentary protest. Many soldiers and soldiers' wives, wrote to express their gratitude that he had spoken out so frankly about the wastage of manpower" (ibid., p. 777). Prime Minister Asquith had no desire to see Churchill's concern for the ordinary soldiery feed into anti-government feeling, and he and his successor Lloyd George brought Churchill back into the fold of government. Despite the popularity of Churchill's message, the pamphlet is very rare - it did not sell well and "most, if not all, unsold copies, were, in fact, destroyed in 1918" (Cohen). We could trace just a single copy at auction (1964). Cohen A46; Woods A25. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume III, 1971. Octavo, 32 pp. Sewn in original self-wrappers. Housed in a burgundy quarter morocco solander box with chemise by the Chelsea Bindery. Wrappers a little soiled, previous owner's pencilled annotations at head of front wrapper, small patch on the first page lightly skinned by the removal of a label, pale toning to the text, very good. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 127608

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