An essay on Churchill’s 146th birthday. 

“The Aryan stock is bound to triumph”

Suf­fer­ers from “Churchill Derange­ment Syn­drome” hold “Aryan stock” high among Win­ston Churchill’s appalling utter­ances. The remark rose again in cor­re­spon­dence with a jour­nal­ist. I dug out for him the back­ground of that remark, but his report omit­ted it. Out of con­text the quote is mis­lead­ing, so I guess that’s just as well. But rather than write off sev­er­al hours’ research, the facts might here serve to advance reality.

Wales in its Welsh Wis­dom is think­ing of mov­ing stat­ues of Churchill, Nel­son and Gand­hi to a muse­um, the Dai­ly Tele­graph informs us. My cor­re­spon­dent wrote: “Churchill is again under fire, this time from the Welsh gov­ern­ment. It cites his sup­port for the British Empire and his sup­posed belief in the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the ‘Anglo-Sax­on’ race. The offi­cial Welsh gov­ern­ment report exam­ines what mon­u­ments and streets com­mem­o­rate var­i­ous fig­ures. It throws in Gand­hi for good measure.”

I won­dered idly what Mohan­das Gand­hi, who didn’t suf­fer fools glad­ly, would say about all this? I think he would be amused, but then depressed, by the onward march of invin­ci­ble igno­rance. Gand­hi­ji said some regret­table things about black Africans around 1906. Against that, the stat­ue of this great man who led India’s quest for inde­pen­dence is to be pro­scribed in Wales? I should think the Welsh would approve of this cham­pi­on of Home Rule. (And of Churchill, who cam­paigned for devo­lu­tion before it became popular.)

“The Anglo-Saxon race”

Hills­dale College’s Churchill Project holds dig­i­tal ref­er­ences to 80 mil­lion words of Churchill’s writ­ings, speech­es, let­ters, papers, plus biogra­phies and mem­oirs about him. This resource reveals that he used the term “Anglo-Sax­on race” exact­ly twice. The first referred to U.S. and British sailors, the sec­ond to US-UK Free Trade. You tell me whether either sounds racist:

The union of the Anglo-Sax­on race is a great ide­al, and if ever it is to be achieved it will be by increas­ing and not dimin­ish­ing the friend­ly inter­course of trade between this coun­try and the Unit­ed States. Against such wan­ton fol­ly as a tar­iff war with the Unit­ed States, Free-traders appeal with con­fi­dence to Lan­cashire, and we hope that, as in years gone by, Lan­cashire will point the path of hon­our and wis­dom to the peo­ple of the British islands. —Speech sup­port­ing Home Rule for Ire­land, Pub­lic Hall, Cheetham Hill, Man­ches­ter, 16 June 1904, Com­plete Speech­es I, 317

Churchill’s com­ment on Aryan stock occurred in an inter­view with Gus­tavus Ohlinger of Michi­gan Uni­ver­si­ty in Jan­u­ary 1901. Ohlinger pub­lished part of that inter­view, enti­tled “Suc­cess in Jour­nal­ism,” in the university’s jour­nal The Islander. But much of the inter­view, includ­ing the Aryan remark, went unpub­lished. Decades lat­er, Ohlinger pub­lished the full tran­script.  (Michi­gan Quar­ter­ly Review, Feb­ru­ary 1966).

The con­text is sig­nif­i­cant. Ohlinger was born and grew up in Chi­na, where his par­ents were mis­sion­ar­ies. Nat­u­ral­ly, he and Churchill talked about the con­fronta­tion then going on between Chi­na and Rus­sia. Ohlinger asked: what was his opin­ion? Churchill’s replied:

…we shall have to take the Chi­nese in hand and reg­u­late them…as civ­i­lized nations become more pow­er­ful they will get more ruth­less, and the time will come when the world will impa­tient­ly bear the exis­tence of great bar­bar­ic nations who may at any time arm them­selves and men­ace civ­i­lized nations. I believe in the ulti­mate par­ti­tion of China—I mean ulti­mate. I hope we shall not have to do it in our day. The Aryan stock is bound to tri­umph. Per­son­al­ly, I am not great­ly con­cerned about Russ­ian devel­op­ment in China.

Now, most today would object to “bar­bar­ic” as a descrip­tion of Chi­na, or at least its peo­ple. One hun­dred twen­ty years ago, per­haps not. Churchill was how­ev­er pre­dict­ing the out­come of a Rus­sia-Chi­na dis­pute. (Cyn­ics will smirk over his idea “to take the Chi­nese in hand.” That’s still in vogue among cer­tain politi­cians 120 years later.)

Who were the Aryans, anyway?

Tak­en out of con­text, “the Aryan stock is bound to tri­umph” cer­tain­ly sounds racist today. In the orig­i­nal con­text, Churchill was talk­ing about a rival­ry between Chi­nese and Rus­sians. Undoubt­ed­ly they are of two races, and Churchill thought the Chi­nese need­ed tak­ing in hand. Did he mean absolute dom­i­nance of the white race? I think not. Nor do I think “Aryan” is quite the right term for Russians.

It took Adolf Hitler to give the word “Aryan” a bad name. It wasn’t aways thus. Defend­ing Churchill from being called a “bar­bar­ic Mon­ster” in a Cana­di­an news­pa­per, Ter­ry Rear­don wrote:

The Toron­to Star doesn’t inform us that Aryan horse­man war­riors from Cen­tral Asia migrat­ed into the Indus Val­ley in the third mil­len­ni­um B.C. They were “as arro­gant as they were tough,” wrote his­to­ri­an Arthur Her­man. “Their very name, Arya, meant ‘mas­ter’ or ‘noble.’” They evolved into four class­es, led by the Brah­mins. Iron­i­cal­ly, in view of the Star’s charges, “Aryan stock” is today the dom­i­nant demo­graph­ic group in India.