Jerome family Archives - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s Washington Humor, Part 1

30 April 2012 Comments 0 Comments

A friend who is delivering a Churchill speech in D.C. asked for some examples of Churchilian humor involving Washington and U.S. Presidents.

Everyone enjoys Churchill’s famous crack in his first (1941) speech to Congress:

“If my father had been American, and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own!” That brought down the house.

When in the U.S., Churchill liked to emphasize his American roots. Broadcasting to America six months earlier, he avowed something he always believed:

The great Burke has truly said, “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors,” and I feel it most agreeable to recall to you that the Jeromes were rooted for many generations in American soil, and fought in Washington’s armies for the independence of the American Colonies and the foundation of the United States.…

Churchill on Edmund Burke (Part 2)

8 April 2012 Comments 0 Comments

continued from Part 1……

More quotations on the Great Burke in Churchill By Himself:

1941, in a broadcast to America:

The great Burke has truly said, “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors,” and I feel it most agreeable to recall to you that the Jeromes [Churchill’s maternal forebears] were rooted for many generations in American soil, and fought in Washington’s armies for the independence of the American Colonies and the foundation of the United States. I expect I was on both sides then. And I must say I feel on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean now. —BBC, London, 16 June

1940s, re the Russians in World War II:

A generation would no doubt come to whom their miseries were unknown but it would be sure of having more to eat and bless Stalin’s name.…