The second definitely doesn’t work because it’s actually an endothermic reaction (reverse neutron decay), but Churchill couldn’t have known that in 1931 before neutron mass was measured accurately.
From the phrasing its possible Churchill was thinking of matter anti-matter annihilation (which I think was fairly new theory at the time) but he was mistakenly identifying the proton as the anti-particle of the electron (instead of the positron).
The second definitely doesn’t work because it’s actually an endothermic reaction (reverse neutron decay), but Churchill couldn’t have known that in 1931 before neutron mass was measured accurately.
From the phrasing its possible Churchill was thinking of matter anti-matter annihilation (which I think was fairly new theory at the time) but he was mistakenly identifying the proton as the anti-particle of the electron (instead of the positron).