What did Churchill say about those who trade honor for peace hav­ing in nei­ther in the end? —D.B.

There are two likely quo­ta­tions. The first was Churchill in a let­ter to Lloyd George on 13 August 1938, just before the Munich Con­fer­ence:

I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very lit­tle doubt what the deci­sion will be.

Ref­er­ence is Churchill by Him­self, page 256, quot­ing Mar­tin Gilbert, ed., Win­ston S. Churchill, Com­pan­ion Vol­ume V Part 3, The Com­ing of War 1936-1939 (Lon­don: Heine­mann 1982), page 1117.)

A month later, Churchill wrote to his friend Lord Moyne, explain­ing why a pro­posed visit to Moyne in Antigua might be prob­lem­atic. From Churchill by Him­self, page 257, Gilbert page 1155:

We seem to be very near the bleak choice between War and Shame. My feel­ing is that we shall choose Shame, and then have War thrown in a lit­tle later on even more adverse terms than at present.

Inci­den­tally, the date on WSC’s let­ter to Lord Moyne was was Sep­tem­ber 11th.

It is often believed that Churchill addressed a sim­i­lar remark to Neville Cham­ber­lain directly after Munich. It appears not so. William Manchester’s The Last Lion, vol. 2, which quotes the Moyne remark on page 334, goes on to state (364):

In almost any gath­er­ing [after Munich] it would have been indis­creet to remark…’Churchill says the gov­ern­ment had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. They will get war too.’

To end with a “Red Her­ring,” Churchill is some­times cred­ited in this con­text with: ”They that can give up essen­tial lib­erty to obtain a lit­tle tem­po­rary safety deserve nei­ther lib­erty nor safety.” This was tracked to Ben­jamin Franklin by The Churchill Cen­tre. Accord­ing to Bartlett’s, this was a com­mon state­ment dur­ing the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion, dat­ing as early as 1755. If Churchill ever used it, he was quot­ing Franklin.

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Tagged as: Churchill quotes, Lloyd George, Lord Moyne, Munich, Neville Chamberlain, war and shame