Remembering Churchill
This month seems replete with significant dates, and one which many people have been remembering today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Winston Churchill.
Churchill had an unbelievably complex life replete with triumphs and disasters.
Sometimes he was spectacularly right - at other times he was equally spectacularly wrong. Rosevelt was supposed to have said that WSC had a hundred ideas a day, of which four were good ideas.
His early career showed a spectacular climb to be First Lord of the Admiralty, when he was brought down by the failure at Gallipoli - though I have some sympathy for Douglas Reeman's pithy epitaph on that particular disaster,
"It was designed by a genius, but it was left to bloody fools to carry out."
That one was almost worthy of Winston Churchill's own famous wit. I have already quoted him in today's quote of the day, but cannot resist the temptation to repeat a few more.
When WSC was at school a teacher asked him to decline the latin word Mensa (table) he promptly did so, but only gave the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative cases. The teacher prompted him for the vocative.
"But Sir, I don't intend ever to talk to tables." the boy replied.
On one occasion he and the House of Commons were listening to a long and boring speech from one MP, and Churchill noted that another MP, an elderly gentleman, was using an ear trumpet in an attempt to hear it. He asked
"Who is that fool denying his natural advantages?"
While attending a ceremony surrounding a statue of himself in America, Sir Winston was approached by a Rubenesque lady who told him.
“Mister Churchill, I’d like you to know I got up at dawn and drove a hundred miles for the unveiling of your bust,” she said.
The great man looked over her for a second, and replied: “Madam, I want you to know that I would happily reciprocate the honour.”
I have been unable to confirm either of these quotes, but there are two stories of occasions when he was lying back in the House of Commons benches and the MP who was speaking wrongly assumed he was asleep.
According to one story the MP asked him "Must you fall asleep during my speech?" and he replied "No, it's purely voluntary."
In the other, an MP who had been droning on about the dire wartime situation reached his peroration with something like "And in the face of this crisis, the Prime Minister is asleep" and WSC supposedly opened one eye and drawled "Would to God I were!"
(On one or two occasions when I myself have been wrongly accused of falling asleep I have been tempted to copy one of these lines but have never quite dared.)
He also said
"Mr Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right"
"War is mainly a catalogue of blunders"
"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true"
"Criticism is easy: achievement is difficult."
"It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them"
"Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offence."
There were many aspects of Churchill's views and attitudes which would be unacceptable today, but it is unfair to judge a man born in the 1870's by the standards of the 21st century. And it is easy for those who wish to debunk his legend to find things he did which, out of context, appear truly dreadful. But although he only died fifty years ago the changes in attitudes which have taken place in that period were immense: and the period he was in office was an incredibly difficult one in which great and terrible evils threatened to conquer the world and people sometimes had to choose between ghastly options and even worse ones.
For all the triumphs and disasters of his career, the thing for which WSC will rightly be best remembered was this: he was among the first, usually the most outspoken, and always the most resolute of those who realised that Hitler could not be bargained with and any attempt to do so would destroy civilisation, And he had the courage to realise that any price was worth paying to avoid a Nazi victory.
Churchill had an unbelievably complex life replete with triumphs and disasters.
Sometimes he was spectacularly right - at other times he was equally spectacularly wrong. Rosevelt was supposed to have said that WSC had a hundred ideas a day, of which four were good ideas.
His early career showed a spectacular climb to be First Lord of the Admiralty, when he was brought down by the failure at Gallipoli - though I have some sympathy for Douglas Reeman's pithy epitaph on that particular disaster,
"It was designed by a genius, but it was left to bloody fools to carry out."
That one was almost worthy of Winston Churchill's own famous wit. I have already quoted him in today's quote of the day, but cannot resist the temptation to repeat a few more.
When WSC was at school a teacher asked him to decline the latin word Mensa (table) he promptly did so, but only gave the nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and ablative cases. The teacher prompted him for the vocative.
"But Sir, I don't intend ever to talk to tables." the boy replied.
On one occasion he and the House of Commons were listening to a long and boring speech from one MP, and Churchill noted that another MP, an elderly gentleman, was using an ear trumpet in an attempt to hear it. He asked
"Who is that fool denying his natural advantages?"
While attending a ceremony surrounding a statue of himself in America, Sir Winston was approached by a Rubenesque lady who told him.
“Mister Churchill, I’d like you to know I got up at dawn and drove a hundred miles for the unveiling of your bust,” she said.
The great man looked over her for a second, and replied: “Madam, I want you to know that I would happily reciprocate the honour.”
I have been unable to confirm either of these quotes, but there are two stories of occasions when he was lying back in the House of Commons benches and the MP who was speaking wrongly assumed he was asleep.
According to one story the MP asked him "Must you fall asleep during my speech?" and he replied "No, it's purely voluntary."
In the other, an MP who had been droning on about the dire wartime situation reached his peroration with something like "And in the face of this crisis, the Prime Minister is asleep" and WSC supposedly opened one eye and drawled "Would to God I were!"
(On one or two occasions when I myself have been wrongly accused of falling asleep I have been tempted to copy one of these lines but have never quite dared.)
He also said
"Mr Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right"
"War is mainly a catalogue of blunders"
"There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true"
"Criticism is easy: achievement is difficult."
"It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them"
"Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offence."
There were many aspects of Churchill's views and attitudes which would be unacceptable today, but it is unfair to judge a man born in the 1870's by the standards of the 21st century. And it is easy for those who wish to debunk his legend to find things he did which, out of context, appear truly dreadful. But although he only died fifty years ago the changes in attitudes which have taken place in that period were immense: and the period he was in office was an incredibly difficult one in which great and terrible evils threatened to conquer the world and people sometimes had to choose between ghastly options and even worse ones.
For all the triumphs and disasters of his career, the thing for which WSC will rightly be best remembered was this: he was among the first, usually the most outspoken, and always the most resolute of those who realised that Hitler could not be bargained with and any attempt to do so would destroy civilisation, And he had the courage to realise that any price was worth paying to avoid a Nazi victory.
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