David Low (cartoonist) Quotes (1891-1963)

“Strube is a gentle genius. I don't mind his attacks because he never hits below the belt. Now Low is a genius, but he is evil and malicious. I cannot bear Low.”

“It may well be, that the future historian, asked to point to the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the period between the two wars will reply without hesitation, "Colonel Blimp".”

“[Winston Churchill]...detested David Low's politics, while admiring his skill. Low was a New Zealand Communist who was a favourite of Beaverbrook's. I found his employment inexplicable. In his own quirkish way Beaverbrook was a true patriot, yet he employed people like Frank Owen, Michael Foot and, appropriately below all, Low. Competent and talented they undoubtedly were, but the harm they did in opposing Britain's rearmament programme against Hitler is appalling. One of Low's cartoons depicted Colonel Blimp, his favourite Tory butt, exclaiming over our belated, inadequate but desperately needed arms programme of the late 1930s: 'Gad Sir, if we want to keep our place in the sun, we must darken the sky with our planes.' I would like to have confronted these gentlemen with the sight of one of our stricken airfields in the Battle of Britain. Would they have adopted for their own use Churchill's earlier saying: 'I have often eaten my own words and found them on the whole a most nourishing diet'? I doubt it.”