Thank God for Winston Churchill

Head of Gold; Feet of Clay

There is plenty of discussion these days about Winston Churchill and World War II.  Three movies have appeared in recent months.  One deals with Dunkirk (where Churchill had assumed the Prime Ministership) and the victory-from-the-jaws-of defeat at Dunkirk.  A second (the most recent to be released) deals with the "Battle for Britain", entitled Darkest Hour.  The third, Churchill, deals with the run up to the Normandy invasion.  All are great flicks, historically faithful, and worth watching. 

Churchill was an unusual person, to put it mildly.  He saw some things more clearly than the average man--especially, the average politician.  But he remains deeply flawed.  That, in and of itself, makes him a singular figure in twentieth century history.

In the account of historian Robert Tombs, we read the following:

The importance of Churchill's leadership, despite criticisms then and since, remains undeniable.  Attlee once said tartly that Churchill's main contribution to the war was talking about it.  Churchill himself said modestly that it was "the nation and race dwelling round the globe that had the lion heart," and he only "had the luck to be called upon to give the roar."  There was truth in both remarks.

Churchill was above all a master of words, prepared and memorized, inspired by Shakespeare, Gibbon, Macaulay--over 2,000 speeches, over 4 million words during his career.  He said that "words are the only things which live for ever," and many of his phrases became part of the language--the only statesman of whom this can be said.  [Robert Tombs, The English and their History (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2015),  p.706f.] 

Churchill's fascination with, focus upon, and utterance of  words--his core belief in the power of words--has a connection with Jesus Christ Himself, for He is the one who bears the divine title, "The Word".  Christians are those who believe and understand that everything that that is, apart from the self-existent God, came into existence by God speaking it into being.  It is why the Kingdom of God, for its part, comes into existence by preaching and proclamation.  Preaching the Gospel to all the nations of the earth is how the Kingdom of God is reified throughout the earth.

Churchill's fascination with the power and significance of words is a reflection of this fundamental Christian truth.  But Churchill was, to say the least, an idiosyncratic man, which for many was part of his charm; for others it was a profound vexation.

Winston's Back . . .

It’s Always A Good Time To Revisit Winston Churchill

‘Darkest Hour’ centers around arguably the most perilous period in Winston Churchill’s lifetime of drama: when Great Britain stood alone against the seemingly unstoppable Nazi Germany.

Jonathan Ehret
The Federalist

With the release of “Darkest Hour” in theaters today, the larger-than-life personality and historical presence of Winston Churchill comes back to the forefront of the public’s imagination. The film perhaps introduces one of the most consequential figures of the twentieth century to a younger generation for the first time.

The film centers around arguably the most dramatic and perilous period in a lifetime of drama and danger: when Great Britain stood alone against the seemingly unstoppable onslaught of Nazi Germany. France had surrendered, the Low Countries had fallen, Scandinavia was occupied or cowed in fear, and Eastern Europe lay pinned under Nazi and Soviet jackboots. To a contemporary observer, resistance to the Nazis seemed hopeless.

More than a few neutrals threw in their lot with the Nazis in hopes of sharing the spoils of conquest, while others, including many in the United Kingdom, believed the only recourse was suing for peace on Adolph Hitler’s terms and praying a few precious scraps of freedom would remain to them. Churchill, almost alone, disagreed.

An anachronism even in his own day, Churchill clung to romantic notions of honor and imperial glory, which caused some of his peers embarrassment and would be mocked by many today.

Will History Repeat?

"The Old B--- Likes It Narrow"

In 1951 a general election was held in the UK.  The Conservatives won; Winston Churchill was returned to power.  These were the days when large swathes of the working class supported and voted for the Conservatives.  Voting was not strictly along the lines of socio-economic class, despite very strong social class identity at the time.  

It took a long time to count the votes, and the final outcome was not known until the following morning.  In his book, Family Britain 1951-1957, David Kynaston quotes the writer Ronald Duncan's encounter with a train porter at Charing Cross.

The Call of Philosemitism

Following Apostolic Teaching

We have just finished reading an interesting volume on the Jewish Question--about the place and position of Jewish people upon the earth.  In the West, anti-semitism is making a "comeback" it would seem.  This is taking place, in part because of the influence of Islam in general and the attitudes and activities of  some Islamic refugees in Europe, on the one hand, and because of the recent tendency of the Left sympathetically to embrace Islam, and Islam's prejudices.  Anti-semitism is one such.

How refreshing it has been, then, to read Gertrude Himmelfarb's The People of the Book: Philosemitism in England, From Cromwell to Churchill (London: Encounter Books, 2011). The historical, gradual re-acceptance of Jewish people into the United Kingdom is fascinating in part because of the cast of actors involved over a three hundred year period, from Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans onward.  This cast begins with Cromwell, of course, who was staunchly philosemitic (that is, a lover of the Jewish people).  The Jews had been expelled from England: Cromwell began the reversal of that position.  But it also includes luminaries such as philosopher, John Locke, scientist, Isaac Newton, and notables such as Edmund Burke, William Macaulay, author and politician, Benjamin Disraeli, Gladstone and Winston Churchill, as well as literary figures such as Walter Scott, George Eliot and Charles Dickens.

This political and literary tradition, coupled with the attempt by Hitler to exorcise the Jewish people from the human race and the reaction that was part of World War II has left the English speaking world largely philosemitic--at least up to our generation, when things have begun to change.

Himmelfarb documents the connection between a love of the Old Testament amongst Christians--one of the great consequences of the Reformation--and a sense of kinship and respect for the Jewish people that was one of its fruits, particularly in England.  Puritan scholarship with respect to the Old Testament, to the Hebrew language, and to traditional rabbinic teaching was legendary.  Out of it came an abiding theme of philosemitism that flowed through to the wider culture of learning, the arts, and politics.  It did not win Jewish people full civil and political rights immediately--but the leaven was at work, and in the end the "revolution" was bloodless and a consequence of the "natural acceptance" of higher and deeper truths.  It represents a particular high water mark of Christian civilisation.

With the attenuation and decline of the Christian faith in the English speaking world--already well under way by the end of the nineteenth century, and gathering pace throughout the twentieth, it was inevitable that the Jewish Question would arise again.  And so it has come to pass.

A Tale of Two Cities

Jerusalem and Athens

Observations from Churchill that make for interesting reading 50 years down the road.

The Greeks rival the Jews in being the most politically-minded race in the world.  No matter how forlorn their circumstances or how grave the peril to their country, they are always divided into many parties, with many leaders who fight among themselves with desperate vigour.  It has been well said that wherever there are three Jews it will be found that there are two Prime Ministers and one leader of the Opposition.

The same is true of this other famous ancient race, whose stormy and endless struggle for life stretches back to the fountain springs of human thought.  No two races have set such a mark upon the world.  Bot have shown a capacity for survival, in spirit of unending perils and sufferings from external oppressors, matched only by their own ceaseless feuds, quarrels, and convulsions. . . .

No two cities have  counted more with mankind than Athens and Jerusalem.  Their messages in religion, philosophy, and art have been the main guiding lights of modern faith and culture.  Centuries of foreign rule and indescribable, endless oppression leave them still living, active communities and forces in the modern world, quarrelling among themselves with insatiable vivacity.  Personally I have always been on the side of both, and believed in their invincible power to survive internal strife and the world tides threatening their extinction.  [Winston Churchill, The Second World War.  (London: The Reprint Society, 1954).  Vol. V:  Closing the Ring, p. 413.] 

Giving PC The Old Heave Ho

The Clash of "Absolutely Sacred Rites"

These days the grievance industry is churning forth protestations of offence taken at every manufactured opportunity.  It is social narcissism on steroids.  Precious-petal-me, at the centre of the universe, must have one's precious stamens duly protected, preserved, and nurtured.

Buttressing this absurd pre-occupation with self is a panoply of johnny-come-lately-invented demand rights--which can be characterised as an egocentric state of mind believing that everyone else has an obligation to serve moi.

This mindset gives succour to tyrants and dictators in societies which would tolerate them.  In our more egalitarian, democratic cultures the best that can be mustered is a high pitched whining, punctuated by brief outbursts of tempestuous rage, interspersed with melodramatic foot stomping.

Winston Churchill describes how narcissistic political correctness was dealt with in his day:

Finest Hours

Not Politics as Usual

John Paul Warren is reputed to have said, "Cream always rises to the top...so do good leaders".”  Never is this more true than when heat is applied.  Below is a salutary example of the epigram.

When World War II began, Britain's Prime Minister was Neville Chamberlain.  Although prior to war he had been an idealistic pacifist and an appeaser of Hitler, fooled by Hitler's solemn promises not to invade nearby countries.  When he was subsequently betrayed, Chamberlain was not about to be fooled twice.  He became a resolute and ardent war leader.

The early months did not go well.

Churchill's Darkest Moment

The Vision of Death

Anthony Eden served as Foreign Secretary under Sir Winston Churchill during the war years.  He and Churchill were a kind of dynamic duo, pretty much of one mind.

Prior to the commencement of hostilities and the opening of the Second World War, Eden was serving as Foreign Secretary in the Chamberlain government.  Churchill was not part of the government at that time.  But in the end, the differences of view and opinion between Eden and the rest of the Chamberlain Cabinet led to his resignation in February, 1938.

In his memoirs on the War, Churchill penned this interesting historical and personal note:

In the night of February 20 a telephone message reached me as I sat in my old room at Chartwell (as I often sit now) that Eden had resigned.  I must confess that my heart sank, and for a while the dark waters of despair overwhelmed me.  In a long life I have had many ups and downs.  During all the war soon to come and in its darkest times I never had any trouble in sleeping.

In the crisis of 1940, when so much responsibility lay upon me, and also at many very anxious, awkward moments in the following five years, I could always flop into bed and go to sleep after the day's work was done--subject of course to any emergency call.  I slept sound and awoke refreshed, and had no feelings except appetite to grapple with whatever the morning's boxes might bring.  But now on this night of February 20, 1938, and on this occasion only, sleep deserted me.  From midnight till dawn I lay in my bed consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear.

There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses.  My conduct of affairs would have been different from his in various ways; but he seemed to me at this moment to embody the life-hope of the British nation, the grand old British race that had done so much for men, and had yet some more to give.  Now he was gone.  I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death. [Winston Churchill, The Second World War (London: The Reprint Society, 1950).  Volume I: The Gathering Storm,  p.217.]

As the old adage has it, "cometh the hour, cometh the man".

Postscript:

One reader e-mailed with the following comment:

Great piece this morning on Churchill

I recall reading that part and was very impressed…and also with

1/his ability to express in writing so accurately his thoughts..what a gift..and

2/ despite what must have been many concerns on his mind he slept soundly, and ate regularly

Maybe he had a better supply of whiskey then I have

Pacifism's Contemporary Step-Child

 Every Form of Unfair Attack

In the mid-thirties, Germany was rapidly re-arming--in clear breach of the Treaty of Versailles.  Britain, however, was caught in a malaise of pacifism and anti-war sentiment.  It refused to see the growing elephant in the room.

Winston Churchill was one of the few MP's who devoted this part of his career to crying, "Wolf".  He warned consistently of the dangers, and urged a much greater commitment to defence spending.  He was mocked and pilloried in public, if not private.  To this day it is remarkable to reflect on the indomitable spirit which enabled him to persevere and persist.  Such conviction and moral courage over matters of public policy are rarely seen.

Finally, the House of Commons began to wake up to what was happening in Germany.  It decided to increase spending on the Royal Air Force.  When Churchill stood up to speak in favour of the measure, he warned the House of the inevitable vociferous reaction of the disarmament and pacifist elements of UK society.  He warned the members of the torrent of abuse which would be unleashed upon them.  Even now it is difficult to conceive the strength and power of idealistic pacifism which held the Britain in its grip at the time.

Warned Churchill:

Vestiges of the First Christendom

A Great Hour to Live

Christendom has passed into history.  Christian Europe was the first Christendom.  We await the development and rise of the second, third, fourth . . . Christendoms.  In the meantime, so pagan has Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world now become it is difficult to imagine a time where so many people--a majority in fact--once took the existence of God and Christian teaching for granted.  But such indeed was the case.

By the time of the Second World War, Western Christendom was in its final stages of dissipation, soon to be replaced by a militant, secular, atheistic, materialistic humanism.  Whilst on the cusp of this new violent and decadent world, glimpses of the former heights could still be seen from time to time.

Koba The Dread's Wilful Ignorance

Purblind Prejudice

We have been reading with great interest and pleasure Winston Churchill's six volume, The Second World War.  We are nearly halfway through, in the midst of volume III.  In chapter xx, "The Soviet Nemesis", Churchill details the lead up to the German invasion of Russia, June 1941.

One would be on safe ground believing that Churchill had little time for either Communism in general and Stalin in particular.  Somehow the-oh-so-stuck-in-the-mud, antediluvian UK Prime Minister had not got caught up in the adulation communism, and of the Soviets that swept up UK intellectuals at the time. 

Churchill made the following comments against the backdrop of an evident build-up of the Nazi war machine along the line between the USSR and Hitler's eastern border.  This build-up was an open secret throughout the UK and US governments at the time, and was well known amongst European nations.  Only Stalin remained completely blind to it--so much so that when Hitler finally attacked, a great deal of the Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground within a matter of hours.

Churchill writes:

What Is Our Policy?

Survival

The period between the First and Second World War in the UK has been dubbed the "Twilight Years"  by celebrated historians.  The country was awash with communist and latterly national socialist sympathisers, with pacifists, with Fabian socialists, with academics entranced by Freudianism, and with eugenicists.  [See Richard Overy,  The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars (New York: Penguin/Viking, 2009)]

The pacifist sentiment was largely represented politically via the Labour and Liberal parties.  But not exclusively so.  Neville Chamberlain, the architect of the foreign policy of appeasement towards Hitler, professed to be a pacifist.  He led the Conservative Party.  But despite the grip of these strange philosophies and teachings, when it finally became clear to the wilfully obtuse that Herr Hitler was an aggressor and had an ambition to rule Britain by force, the nation and its intellectuals and false prophets came together as one.

When Chamberlain realised that Hitler had deliberately deceived and lied to him, he became resolute in leading the nation in war.  But he was unable to win the universal support of the House of Commons.  Eventually, Winston Churchill was asked to lead a coalition government representing all parties in the House.  Repentant pacifists stood to indicate their support.  All parties laid aside politicking and began to pull together in harness to defend the nation.

Winston Churchill describes the moment: