and the reigning monarch, especially of Elizabeth II during his last term as premier. Churchill has been described as a "liberal imperialist" who saw British imperialism as a form of altruism that benefited its subject peoples because "by conquering and dominating other peoples, the British were also elevating and protecting them". Martin Gilbert asserted that Churchill held a hierarchical perspective of race, seeing racial characteristics as signs of the maturity of a society. Churchill's views on race were driven by his imperialist mindset and outlook. He advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, the Americas and India, believing that the British Empire promoted and maintained the welfare of those who lived in the colonies; he insisted that "our responsibility to the native races remains a real one". In 1906, Churchill stated that "We will endeavour... to advance the principle of equal rights of civilized men irrespective of colour". According to Addison, Churchill was opposed to immigration from the Commonwealth. Addison makes the point that Churchill opposed anti-Semitism (as in 1904, when he was fiercely critical of the proposed Aliens Bill) and argues that he would never have tried "to stoke up racial animosity against immigrants, or to persecute minorities". In the 1920s, Churchill supported Zionism but believed that communism was the product of an international Jewish conspiracy; in an article in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, Churchill wrote that a group of "international" Jews supported a Bolshevist "world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality". Although this belief was not unique among British politicians of the time, few had the stature of Churchill, and the article was criticised by the Jewish Chronicle at the time. Churchill made a number of disparaging remarks about non-white ethnicities throughout his life, including a series of racist comments and jokes about Indian nationalists made to colleagues during the inter-war period and his wartime premiership. Historian Philip Murphy partly attributes the strength of this vitriol to an "almost childish desire to shock" his inner circle. Churchill's response to the Bengal famine was criticised by some contemporaries as slow (see ), a controversy later increased by the publication of private remarks made to Secretary for India Leo Amery, in which Churchill allegedly said that aid would be inadequate because "Indians [were] breeding like rabbits". Philip Murphy