“Not a day passes when Winston Churchill, who proved indispensable WHEN LIBERTY HUNG IN THE BALANCE is not accused of something dreadful, from misogyny to warmongering. My book, Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, confronts this busy industry.” —RML
The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down,Townsman of a stiller town. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up, The still-defended challenge-cup. —Housman
Each one of us recalls some little incident—many of us, as in my own case, a kind action, graced with the courtesy of a past generation and going far beyond the normal calls of comradeship. Each of us has his own memory, for in the tumultuous diapason of the world's tributes, all of us here at least know the epitaph he would have chosen for himself: "He was a noble historian, a kind and decent man."
In the time since his funeral I learned that Churchill’s life and thought—the eerie relevancy of his challenges and experiences—still call to us across the years. There will always be scoffers, who portray him as an anachronism. “In doing so, it is they who are the losers,” Martin Gilbert concluded, “for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled present, and for the generations now reaching adulthood.”
An article in the Christian Post equates President Obama’s absence from the March in Paris with President Johnson skipping the 1965 Churchill Funeral. The Johnson story has gone around a lot lately, but it is neither accurate nor a fair comparison.
President Johnson, suffering from a bad case of flu, sent Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the Churchill Funeral. In his official statement Johnson said: “When there was darkness in the world…a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill….He is history’s child, and what he said and what he did will never die.”…
"Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians.… If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." —Churchill, 1933
“I was, I think, the first in this House to suggest, in November 1949, recognition of the Chinese Communists….I thought that it would be a good thing to have diplomatic representation. But if you recognise anyone it does not necessarily mean that you like him. We all, for instance, recognise the Rt Hon Gentleman, the Member for Ebbw Vale.”* —Winston S. Churchill, 1 July 1952.
On President Obama’s December 17th announcement restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, a colleague writes: “Finally we’ll have access to truly great healthcare.”
Funny. Actually top tier Cuban healthcare is mainly for party members. There is a tiered system.…
Richard Deane Taylor achieved immortality when he painted one of the most evocative and accurate portraits of Winston Churchill for Collier’s in 1951, to mark Churchill’s return to office. Years later he gave me the privilege of using it on the first English edition of my book of quotations, Churchill By Himself. He leaves fond memories among his colleagues and former students.
This year marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Churchill becoming prime minister in 1940, and the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1965. This Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar drew leading historians and thinkers to examine Churchill’s extraordinary statesmanship and the lessons that may be drawn from his example today.
Boris Johnson, whose book, The Churchill Factor, is feted widely, speaks his mind with a smile. Like Mr. Obama, he’s a chap I’d like to share a pint with at the local.
But fame and likability don’t a Churchill scholar make. And in that department, Boris Johnson needs some help.
His remarks are quoted from a November 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.
Boris Fact-checks
1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 billion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.
I queried Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers University, editor of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence and several books on World War II, who wrote:
Realpolitik: "At a conference in the Greek Foreign Office, lit only by hurricane lamps as bombs burst over the Piraeus, Churchill subjected the warring Greeks to a discourse the like of which they had never heard before. The two factions agreed to appoint Damaskinos as Regent; he called for reconciliation, ended the fighting, and left office in 1946 with Greece a constitutional monarchy."
