Tag: Winston S. Churchill

Low
Churchill by Low for the New Statesman, 1 May 1926 (Wikimedia Commons)
“The Charlie Chaplin of Caricature”: Churchill on Low

“The Charlie Chaplin of Caricature”: Churchill on Low

“Churchill on Low” is excerpt­ed from “David Low” for the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project. Click here for the orig­i­nal text. To sub­scribe for reg­u­lar Hills­dale updates, click here, scroll to bot­tom and fill in your email.

“Master of invective”

“Low is the great­est of our mod­ern car­toon­ists,” wrote Win­ston Churchill in his delight­ful essay “Car­toons and Car­toon­ists.” He praised “the vivid­ness of his polit­i­cal con­cep­tions,” declar­ing Low a sin­gu­lar tal­ent: “He pos­sess­es what few car­toon­ists have—a grand tech­nique of draughts­man­ship. Low is a mas­ter of black and white. He is the Char­lie Chap­lin of car­i­ca­ture, and tragedy and com­e­dy are the same to him.”…

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Auschwitz
“Work sets you free.” The main gate of Auschwitz, the first sight Jews caught of their place of doom. (Creative Commons Dnalor 01 via Wikimedia)
Bombing Auschwitz: “Get everything out of the air force you can.” -WSC

Bombing Auschwitz: “Get everything out of the air force you can.” -WSC

“Bomb­ing Auschwitz” is Chap­ter 31 in my book, Win­ston Churchill, Myth and Real­i­ty: What he Actu­al­ly Did and Said. Avail­able in Kin­dle or paper­back from Ama­zon.

The Auschwitz myth

“War is main­ly a cat­a­logue of blun­ders,” Churchill wrote. [1] A war leader is “the slave of unfore­see­able and uncon­trol­lable events. Anti­quat­ed War Offices, weak, incom­pe­tent or arro­gant Com­man­ders, untrust­wor­thy allies, hos­tile neu­trals, malig­nant For­tune, ugly sur­pris­es, awful miscalculations—all take their seat at the Coun­cil Board….” [2]

Churchill’s most fla­grant inac­tion, accord­ing to many crit­ics, was fail­ing to bomb Auschwitz, the noto­ri­ous Nazi death camp, or the rail lines lead­ing to it.…

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"Man is Spirit"
Churchill did believe in a spiritual connection with his forebears, witness “The Dream,” 1947. Lord Randolph’s ghost: “Are you still a Protestant?” Winston: “Episcopalian.” (Painting by Sal Asaro, 1987.)
Question for Readers: What did Churchill Mean by “Man is Spirit”?

Question for Readers: What did Churchill Mean by “Man is Spirit”?

“Man is spirit”

Win­ston Churchill retired as Prime Min­is­ter on 5 April 1955. On April 3rd, he met with his non-Cab­i­net min­is­ters. His last words were report­ed by William Sid­ney, Vis­count De L’Isle and Dud­ley, his neigh­bor in West­er­ham, to Mar­tin Gilbert. “Man is spir­it,” he told them. Then he added: “Nev­er be sep­a­rat­ed from the Americans.”

The lat­ter is well under­stood. In 1956, when he wasn’t around, there was quite a seri­ous sep­a­ra­tion, over Suez. “Man is spir­it” is hard­er to under­stand. What did Churchill mean?

A pro­fes­sor teach­ing Churchill’s states­man­ship says his class is going back and forth on that.…

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sovereignty
Parliament Square, 31 January 2020, photo by SpashNews.com, in Robert Hardman’s fine essay in the Daily Mail. Read it at https://dailym.ai/2RRBIKV.
On Sovereignty: Churchill on the UK and Europe, 1933-1953

On Sovereignty: Churchill on the UK and Europe, 1933-1953

Sovereignty is back

Britain has left the Euro­pean Union. “It was a tran­scen­den­tal night,” Andrew Roberts writes of Jan­u­ary 31st. Read his excel­lent piece on Brex­it and the UK’s regained sov­er­eign­ty in the Dai­ly Tele­graph: “Britain has become an adult once again, tak­ing ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for our own choic­es and actions. [It] has bold­ly stepped out on its own, tak­ing a risk, cer­tain­ly. But then which great his­toric nation­al action has not involved some ele­ment of risk?…

By stat­ing that no for­eign law shall hence­forth have juris­dic­tion over British law, we have thrown away the jurispru­dence com­fort blan­ket and become an adult, tak­ing ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for our own choic­es and actions again….…

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secondhand
Churchill debating for the negative on the resolution “That in the opinion of this House the present Government is unworthy of the confidence of the country,” Oxford Union, 1 March 1907. Secretary Hallett is seated at far left, President Talbot on the raised dais, Viscount Wolmer in the chair to his left. (This fine framed print from the Illustrated London News is offered by Media Storehouse. See http://bit.ly/2S1JlNE)
Secondhand but Valid: “If you can speak in this country…”

Secondhand but Valid: “If you can speak in this country…”

The Eng­lish-Speak­ing Union posed a ques­tion which illus­trates the prob­lem of sec­ond­hand quotes. That is, some­thing Churchill said which is not in his pub­lished canon. The quote is: “If you can speak in this coun­try [Britain], you can do any­thing.” It was a con­cise cel­e­bra­tion of the British right to free speech. The ESU has it on their web­site. But is it verifiable?

In 1966, the ESU Philadel­phia Branch host­ed an exhib­it of my Churchill bio­graph­i­cal stamp col­lec­tion at the Philadel­phia Nation­al Bank. It was the first pub­lic appear­ance of what­ev­er lim­it­ed Churchill knowl­edge I then had, my “awak­en­ing” as a Churchillian.…

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Addison
The Addison Corpus: see list and links below. (Montage by Barbara Langworth)
Paul Addison, 1943-2020: What Matters is the Truth

Paul Addison, 1943-2020: What Matters is the Truth

29 October 1994 A fond and fun­ny mem­o­ry of Paul Addi­son is one which few know about. It came dur­ing a Wash­ing­ton sym­po­sium on “Churchill as Peace­mak­er,” lat­er pub­lished as an out­stand­ing book. Dur­ing a break, we walked over to the White House, which Paul want­ed to see. We stood at the iron fence, gaz­ing at the seat of pow­er across the lawn. . As we chat­ted, Paul remarked on how close we were to the build­ing itself. “The secu­ri­ty seems pret­ty light,” he said. “It’s not hard to visu­al­ize some stray lunatic stand­ing here and spray­ing the walls with bullets.”…

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wrong pig
“In the name of humanity; Broke the staff over them. Too much talking.” Not sure about the precise translation, but the Nazi message is clear: FDR and Churchill, with Stalin’s help, executing liberty. (Der Stürmer, Berlin, June 1943.)  
Not Churchill, re Germany: “We butchered the wrong pig”

Not Churchill, re Germany: “We butchered the wrong pig”

Digital scans of 80 million words by and about Churchill, including his books, articles, speeches and published papers, offer no instance of this phrase, either with the word “slaughtered” or the word “butchered.” Neither did I find any statement of his suggesting Britain had “fought the wrong enemy.”  One of Churchill's virtues was to recognize the main threat to peace at each juncture in his career. From 1933 to 1945, he was certain that Nazi Germany was not the "wrong pig." He did begin to think, late in the war, that one mortal foe had given rise to another. But he always kept things in perspective.

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Reves
Churchill with Emery Reves at Le Bourget Airport, Paris. Behind them is an Imperial Airways Handley Page “Horatius” airliner, used in the Croydon-Paris service. (From the book jacket and Martin Gilbert Papers at Hillsdale College)
Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937-1964

Winston Churchill and Emery Reves: Correspondence, 1937-1964

Win­ston Churchill and Emery Reves: Cor­re­spon­dence, 1937-1964, edit­ed by Sir Mar­tin Gilbert. Austin: Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Press, 1997, 415 pages, Ama­zon $8.95. This updat­ed review was first pub­lished by the Hills­dale Col­lege Churchill Project.

Emery Reves, from the ground up

Admir­ers of Sir Mar­tin Gilbert were pleased and touched to see his chron­i­cle appear, now over twen­ty years ago. But few expect­ed it would amount to much more than a use­ful research tool. We were wrong, and quick­ly real­ized why Sir Mar­tin and Wendy Reves were so keen to get it published.…

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Fleming
Professor Alexander Fleming, who first discovered the mold Penicillin Notatum, in his laboratory at St Mary’s, Paddington, London, 1943. (Imperial War Museum – public domain)
Urban Myths: “Alexander Fleming Twice Saved Churchill’s Life”

Urban Myths: “Alexander Fleming Twice Saved Churchill’s Life”

Fleming as rescuer…

The Flem­ing myth is updat­ed from an arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1998.

Is it true that Lord Ran­dolph Churchill financed the edu­ca­tion of Alexan­der Flem­ing, the dis­cov­er­er of peni­cillin, as a result of Flem­ing (or his father) res­cu­ing Churchill from drown­ing in a swamp when young Win­ston was a youth—and a Flem­ing dis­cov­ery, peni­cillin, saved Churchill’s life years lat­er in 1943? A friend of mine has sent me this email regard­ing it and I want­ed to ver­i­fy . —L.M.

This ques­tion comes up reg­u­lar­ly, but both parts of the sto­ry are untrue. Nei­ther Alexan­der Flem­ing nor his father were with Churchill at the times sug­gest­ed.…

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Palestine
At the Cairo Conference, 1921. Front, L-R: M. Stevenson, Gen. Walter Congreve (Commander Egyptian Expeditionary Force), Sir Herbert Samuel (Palestine High Commissioner), Winston Churchill (Colonial Secretary), Sir Percy Cox (Iraq High Commissioner). 2nd row, L-R: Gertrude Bell (advisor who favored Arab kings in Iraq and Jordan), Sir Sassoon Eskell (Iraq Finance Minister), Gen. Atkinson, Jafar Pasha al-Askari (Iraq Defense Minister), T.E. Lawrence (Middle East Dept.) Public domain, Beaugosses at the English Wikipedia.
Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On

Avaricious Imperialists or Nation Builders? The Middle East, 100 Years On

Middle East, Made and Unmade

“A Cen­tu­ry Ago, the Mod­ern Mid­dle East Was Born,” announced The New York Times in Decem­ber. A col­league asks: “Are you not struck by how dif­fi­cult (impos­si­ble?) it is to encap­su­late his­to­ry in an op-ed? Is that real­ly how and when the mod­ern Mid­dle East was born?”

Good ques­tions. The Times’s idea is that after World War I, avari­cious impe­ri­al­ists moved in to enslave Turkey’s for­mer slaves. This famil­iar theme will dom­i­nate through the cen­te­nary of the Cairo Con­fer­ence in March 2021. It’s been around at least since 2001, when Osama bin Laden referred to 9/11 as pay­back for what he then called “eighty years of injustice.”…

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Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality

Churchill by Himself

Churchill in His Own Words

Churchill and the Avoidable War

The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill

The Patriot’s Churchill

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