Theodore Roosevelt Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Armenians — Detail from a campaign poster by the American Committee for Relief in the Near East–Armenia-Greece-Syria-Persia . (W.B. King, Library of Congress, public domain)

Winston Churchill and the Armenian Genocide, 1914-23

14 October 2020 Comments 0 Comments

Excerpted from an article for the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, September 2020. For the complete text, an appendix of Churchill’s words on Armenia, more illustrations and endnotes, please click here.

The age-long misfortunes of the Armenian race have arisen mainly from the physical structure of their home. Upon the lofty tableland of Armenia, stretching across the base of the Asia Minor Peninsula, are imposed a series of mountain ranges having a general direction east and west. The valleys between these mountains have from time immemorial been the pathways of every invasion or counter-attack between Asia Minor in the west and Persia and Central Asia in the east….…

Novelist and Statesman: The Two Winston Churchills

18 March 2019 Comments 0 Comments

The two Churchills became aware of each other in 1900 when books by the English author began to appear alongside those of the already-well-established American. Indeed, so prominent was the American novelist at the time that English Winston wrote him a polite letter promising to use his middle name "Spencer" to distinguish himself from the far better-known American. The novelist replied that if he had a middle name he would have been pleased to return the compliment.

Churchill as Racist: A Hard Sell

27 February 2012 Comments 2 Comments

Racist still? In “To See Humans’ Progress, Zoom Out” (The New York Times, 26 February 2012), Professor Steven Pinker asserts that for all their faults, educated people today are getting better:

Ideals that today’s educated people take for granted — equal rights, free speech, and the primacy of human life over tradition, tribal loyalty and intuitions about purity — are radical breaks with the sensibilities of the past. These too are gifts of a widening application of reason.

Fair enough, but to contrast what educated people were like in the bad old days, Prof.…