December 2022 - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill, Wells, and Government by “Experts”

26 December 2022 Comments 1 Comment

Churchill shared Wells’s faith in science, but he never lost his reservations about experts. Four months after they met, he declared in Parliament: “It was a principle of our Constitution not to employ experts, whether business men or military men, in the highest affairs of State.” Four decades laster he reiterated: “Expert knowledge, however indispensable, is no substitute for a generous and comprehending outlook upon the human story with all its sadness and with all its unquenchable hope.”

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Bull in a China Shop: John Foster Dulles? Not Churchill’s Line

20 December 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"This fellow preaches like a Methodist Minister, and his bloody text is always the same: that nothing but evil can come out of meeting with Malenkov. Dulles is a terrible handicap. Ten years ago I could have dealt with him.... I have been humiliated by my own decay."

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Telling Off the Prez: “Love Actually” Still Sings

15 December 2022 Comments 0 Comments

"I love that word 'relationship.' Covers all manner of sins, doesn't it? I fear that this has become a bad relationship.... We may be a small country, but we're a great one too—the country of Shakespeare, Churchill, the Beatles, Sean Connery, Harry Potter—David Beckham's right foot. David Beckham's left foot for that matter." Hugh Grant at his best.

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Why Churchill Skipped the Roosevelt Funeral in 1945

10 December 2022 Comments 1 Comment

The funeral quandary: “...everyone here thought my duty next week lay at home, at a time when so many Ministers are out of the country” (per Martin Gilbert). “P.M. of course wanted to go. A[nthony Eden] thought they oughtn’t both to be away together.... P.M. says he’ll go and A. can stay. I told A. that, if P.M. goes, he must.... Churchill deeply regretted in after years that he allowed himself to be persuaded not to go at once to Washington” (per Alexander Cadogan).

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Churchill Quotations for December 7th

6 December 2022 Comments 1 Comment

"In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. 'Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?' 'It’s quite true,' he replied. 'They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor. We are all in the same boat now.' I put Winant on to the line and some interchanges took place, the Ambassador at first saying, 'Good, Good'—and then, apparently graver, 'Ah!' I got on again and said, 'This certainly simplifies things. God be with you,' or words to that effect."

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