‘And saw before me the vision of Death’

It has been inspiring to read in Martin Gilbert’s The Wilderness Years of Churchill’s lone crusade to warn his countrymen of the dangers of their policy of dust with regard to rearmament. I was struck by this moving passage on the resignation of Antony Eden from the government:

From midnight to dawn, I lay on my bed, consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear. There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses. Now he was gone. I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.