August 29, 2008

By Winston S. Churchill

Published in Finest Hour 80, Third Quarter, 1993

Fifty years ago at Harvard, Winston Churchill delivered his great clarion call for Anglo-American brotherhood. How remarkable it is that his words remain as noble a guide half a century on.


After the Quebec conference in 1943, Churchill relates in Closing the Ring, ‘the President was very anxious for me to keep a longstanding appointment and receive an honorary degree at Harvard. It was to be an occasion for a public declaration to the world of Anglo-American unity and amity. “It was to be more than that: “Law, language, literature — these are considerable factors,” Churchill told his audience … “Blood and history – I, a child of both worlds, am conscious of these.” He explained how well the combined chiefs of staff system worked – should continue to work – and how much Harvard and Cambridge had done for the abbreviated language called “Basic English” – a similar simplified vocabulary is still used by British and American broadcasts abroad (if not as often as it should be among immigrants wishing to be citizens). He reminded us that if we, the English-Speaking Peoples are together, nothing is impossible. He supported the concept of an effective international organization, but implored us not to pass along the defense of our lives and liberties “until we are quite sure [it] will give us an equally solid guarantee.”

The last time I attended a ceremony of this character was in the spring of 1941, when, as Chancellor of Bristol University, I conferred a degree upon the United States Ambassador, Mr. Winant, and in absentia upon President Conant, our President, who is here today and presiding over this ceremony. The blitz was running hard at that time, and the night before, the raid on Bristol had been heavy. Several hundreds had been killed and wounded. Many houses were destroyed. Buildings next to the University were still burning, and many of the University authorities who conducted the ceremony had pulled on their robes over uniforms begrimed and drenched; but all was presented with faultless ritual and appropriate decorum, and I sustained a very strong and invigorating impression of the superiority of man over the forces that can destroy him.

Here now, today, I am once again in academic groves – groves is, I believe, the right word – where knowledge is garnered, where learning is stimulated, where virtues are inculcated and thought encouraged. Here, in the broad United States, with a respectable ocean on either side of us, we can look out upon the world in all its wonder and in all its woe. But what is this that I discern as I pass through your streets, as I look round this great company?

I see uniforms on every side. I understand that nearly the whole energies of the University have been drawn into the preparation of American youth for the battlefield. For this purpose all classes and courses have been transformed, and even the most sacred vacations have been swept away in a round-the-year and almost round-the-clock drive to make warriors and technicians for the fighting fronts.

Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.

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There was no use in saying “We don’t want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. “There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one’s existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. What is the explanation, Mr. President, of these strange facts, and what are the deep laws to which they respond? I will offer you one explanation – there are others, but one will suffice.

The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.

If this has been proved in the past, as it has been, it will become indisputable in the future. The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility. Although we live in a period so tumultuous that little can be predicted, we may be quite sure that this process will be intensified with every forward step the United States make in wealth and in power. Not only are the responsibilities of this great Republic growing, but the world over which they range is itself contracting in relation to our powers of locomotion at a positively alarming rate.

We have learned to fly. What prodigious changes are involved in that new accomplishment! Man has parted company with his trusty friend the horse and has sailed into the azure with the eagles, eagles being represented by the infernal (loud laughter) – I mean internal -combustion engine. Where, then, are those broad oceans, those vast staring deserts? They are shrinking beneath our very eyes. Even elderly Parliamentarians like myself are forced to acquire a high degree of mobility.

But to the youth of America, as to the youth of all the Britains, I say “You cannot stop.” There is no halting-place at this point. We have now reached a stage in the journey where there can be no pause. We must go on. It must be world anarchy or world order.

Throughout all this ordeal and struggle which is characteristic of our age, you will find in the British Commonwealth and Empire good comrades to whom you are united by other ties besides those of State policy and public need. To a large extent, they are the ties of blood and history. Naturally I, a child of both worlds, am conscious of these.

Law, language, literature – these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all the love of personal freedom, or as Kipling put it:

“Leave to live by no man 5 leave underneath the law” – these are common conceptions on both-sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples. We hold to these conceptions as strongly as you do.

We do not war primarily with races as such. Tyranny is our foe, whatever trappings or disguise it wears, whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal, we must forever be on our guard, ever mobilised, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. In all this, we march together. Not only do we march and strive shoulder to shoulder at this moment under the fire of the enemy on the fields of war or in the air, but also in those realms of thought which are consecrated to the rights and the dignity of man.

At the present time we have in continual vigorous action the British and United States Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee, which works immediately under the President and myself as representative of the British War Cabinet. This committee, with its elaborate organisation of Staff officers of every grade, disposes of all our resources and, in practice, uses British and American troops, ships, aircraft, and munitions just as if they were the resources of a single State or nation.

I would not say there are never divergences of view among these high professional authorities. It would be unnatural if there were not. That is why it is necessary to have a plenary meeting of principals every two or three months. All these men now know each other. They trust each other. They like each other, and most of them have been at work together for a long time. When they meet they thrash things out with great candour and plain, blunt speech, but after a few days the President and I find ourselves furnished with sincere and united advice.

This is a wonderful system. There was nothing like it in the last war. There never has been anything like it between two allies. It is reproduced in an even more tightly-knit form at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in the Mediterranean, where everything is completely intermingled and soldiers are ordered into battle by the Supreme Commander or his deputy, General Alexander, without the slightest regard to whether they are British, American, or Canadian, but simply in accordance with the fighting need.

Now in my opinion it would be a most foolish and improvident act on the part of our two Governments, or either of them, to break up this smooth-running and immensely powerful machinery the moment the war is over. For our own safety, as well as for the security of the rest of the world, we are bound to keep it working and in running order after the war – probably for a good many years, not only until we have set up some world arrangement to keep the peace, but until we know that it is an arrangement which will really give us that protection we must have from danger and aggression, a protection we have already had to seek across two vast world wars.

I am not qualified, of course, to judge whether or not this would become a party question in the United States, and I would not presume to discuss that point. I am sure, however, that it will not be a party question in Great Britain. We must not let go of the securities we have found necessary to preserve our lives and liberties until we are quite sure we have something else to put in their place which will give us an equally solid guarantee.

The great Bismarck – for there were once great men in Germany – is said to have observed towards the close of his life that the most potent factor in human society at the end of the nineteenth century was the fact that the British and American peoples spoke the same language.

That was a pregnant saying. Certainly it has enabled us to wage war together with an intimacy and harmony never before achieved among allies.

This gift of a common tongue is a priceless inheritance, and it may well some day become the foundation of a common citizenship. I like to think of British and Americans moving about freely over each other’s wide estates with hardly a sense of being foreigners to one another. But I do not see why we should not try to spread our common language even more widely throughout the globe and, without seeking selfish advantage over any, possess ourselves of this invaluable amenity and birthright.

Some months ago I persuaded the British Cabinet to set up a committee of Ministers to study and report upon Basic English. Here you have a plan. There are others, but here you have a very carefully wrought plan for an international language capable of a very wide transaction of practical business and interchange of ideas. The whole of it is comprised in about 650 nouns and 200 verbs or other parts of speech – no more indeed than can be written on one side of a single sheet of paper.

What was my delight when, the other evening, quite unexpectedly, I heard the President of the United States suddenly speak of the merits of Basic English, and is it not a coincidence that, with all this in mind, I should arrive at Harvard, in fulfilment of the long-dated invitations to receive this degree, with which president Conant has honoured me? For Harvard has done more than any other American university to promote the extension of Basic English. The first work on Basic English was written by two Englishmen, Ivor Richards, now of Harvard, and C.K. Ogden, of Cambridge University, England, working in association.

The Harvard Commission on English Language Studies is distinguished both for its research and its practical work, particularly in introducing the use of Basic English in Latin America; and this Commission, your Commission, is now, I am told, working with secondary schools in Boston on the use of Basic English in teaching the main language to American children and in teaching it to foreigners preparing for citizenship.

Gentlemen, I make you my compliments. I do not wish to exaggerate, but you are the head-stream of what might well be a mighty fertilising and health-giving river. It would certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to move freely about the world – as we shall be able to do more freely than ever before as the science of the world develops – be able to move freely about the world, and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit primitive, of intercourse and understanding. Might it not also be an advantage to many races, and an aid to the building-up of our new structure for preserving peace?

All these are great possibilities, and I say: “Let us go into this together. Let us have another Boston Tea Party about it.”

Let us go forward as with other matters and other measures similar in aim and effect – let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all. Such plans offer far better prizes than taking away other people’s provinces or lands or grinding them down in exploitation. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

It would, of course, Mr. President, be lamentable if those who are charged with the duty of leading great nations forward in this grievous and obstinate war were to allow their minds and energies to be diverted from making the plans to achieve our righteous purposes without needless prolongation of slaughter and destruction.

Nevertheless, we are also bound, so far as life and strength allow, and without prejudice to our dominating military tasks, to look ahead to those days which will surely come when we shall have finally beaten down Satan under our feet and find ourselves with other great allies at once the. masters and the servants of the future. Various schemes of achieving world security while yet preserving national rights, traditions and customs are being studied and probed.

We have all the fine work that was done a quarter of a century ago by those who devised and tried to make effective the League of Nations after the last war. It is said that the League of Nations failed. If so, that is largely because it was abandoned, and later on betrayed: because those who were its best friends were till a very late period infected with a futile pacifism: because the United States, the originating impulse, fell out of line: because, while France had been bled white and England was supine and bewildered, a monstrous growth of aggression sprang up in Germany, in Italy and Japan.

We have learned from hard experience that stronger, more efficient, more rigorous world institutions must be created to preserve peace and to forestall the causes of future wars. In this task the strongest victorious nations must be combined, and also those who have borne the burden and heat of the day and suffered under the flail of adversity; and, in this task, this creative task, there are some who say: “Let us have a world council and under it regional or continental councils,” and there are others who prefer a somewhat different organisation.

All these matters weigh with us now in spite of the war, which none can say has reached its climax, which is perhaps entering for us, British and Americans, upon its most severe and costly phase. But I am here to tell you that, whatever form your system of world security may take, however the nations are grouped and ranged, whatever derogations are made from national sovereignty for the sake of the larger synthesis, nothing will work soundly or for long without the united effort of the British and American peoples.

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.

I therefore preach continually the doctrine of the fraternal association of our two peoples, not for any purpose of gaining invidious material advantages for either of them, not for territorial aggrandisement or the vain pomp of earthly domination, but for the sake of service to mankind and for the honour that comes to those who faithfully serve great causes.

Here let me say how proud we ought to be, young and old alike, to live in this tremendous, thrilling, formative epoch in the human story, and how fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave. Let all who are here remember, as the words of the hymn we have just sung suggest, let all of us who are here remember that we are on the stage of history, and that whatever our station may be, and whatever part we have to play, great or small, our conduct is liable to be scrutinised not only by history but by our own descendants.

Let us rise to the full level of our duty and of our opportunity, and let us thank God for the spiritual rewards He has granted for all forms of valiant and faithful service.

Harvard: Fifty Years Ago…

It was Monday 6 September 1943.  I was a 22 year-old First Lieutenant lucky enough to be selected as one of 400 young officers to attend a four’ month concentrated course at the Harvard Graduate School of Business in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The conflicts in Europe and the Pacific were raging. Big events lay ahead. All I knew was that the work at Harvard was very tough; that we had a rigid schedule from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. five days each week, and there was study hall on the weekends. I also knew that most of us would graduate in late October. What I didn’t know was that I would be reassigned to a new unit and shipped to England for further training and staging for the big invasion the following June. From Utah Beach it was Cherbourg, across to Liege, Belgium; Galeen, Holland and finally Niederbreisig on the Rhine when the war ended. So much for an introduction.

On 3 September, three days prior, we had been informed that the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, would be at Harvard to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, thus returning the compliment paid to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oxford Convention ceremonies (also held at Harvard due to the war) in June 1941. The announcement included the fact that we would take a break from classes that afternoon and march from the Graduate School, across the bridge over the Charles River to the Tercentenary Quadrangle, commonly known as Harvard Yard, between the Sanders Theatre, Memorial Hall and Wiedener Library. No public report of any sort was permitted in advance of Churchill’s visit. His identity became known to a few bystanders when a special Boston and Albany train arrived in the Allston Yards. Mrs. Churchill, their daughter Mary, plus a convoy of aides and dignitaries accompanied him. At the time Mary was a subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Over 12,000 gathered to hear Churchill that Monday afternoon. The mob standing outside reacted to his remarks as though they were watching the ceremony go on before them. Hats went off and heads bowed as the prayer was read and the laughter and applause within Sanders was reiterated by those of us outside. Several fainted in the hot sun, adding consternation and somewhat marring attention to the speech.

Churchill was at his eloquent best. He had already marshaled and inspired the defense of Britain at its most critical hour. He was continuing his untiring efforts in the preparations for the big offensive in Europe to come at some undecided time. He declared “the price of greatness is responsibility” and that the people of America were not absorbed in their own affairs remaining undisturbed beyond their protective oceans, which were “shrinking beneath our very eyes.”

The Prime Minister spoke about the ties of blood and history between our two countries. He proclaimed that tyranny is our foe: “We must go on; it must be world anarchy or world order.” Such eerily appropriate words today… He spoke of the combined Chiefs of Staff Committee which worked “in complete harmony under the President and myself” using troops, ships, aircraft, ammunition, “just as if they were the resources of a single state or nation. We trust each other. We like each other. This is a wonderful system. There never has been anything like it between two allies.”

His speech clearly stressed unity. It was so full of optimism for victory that he dwelled upon the kind of world we all wanted after the war. He closed by saying, “Let us rise to the full level of our duty and of our opportunity and let us thank God for the spiritual rewards He has granted for all forms of valiant and faithful service.’,

The Commencement Hymn was sung in Latin and the Very Reverend Henry Bradford Washburn pronounced the benediction.

Upon the adjournment of the meeting, many of those in the Academic Procession and the audience walked to the Yard to watch Mr. Churchill speak to the assembled throng of some 10,000 from the steps of the South Portico of the Memorial Church. Ruffles and Flourishes accompanied his arrival and the Coast Guard Band played “God Save The King.” Harvard President James B. Conant introduced him to the outdoor audience, which gave him a great ovation. He spoke for about five minutes, punctuating many points with the tapping of his cane and, again, this was followed by another enthusiastic demonstration whereupon Churchill responded with his famous V-for-Victory sign.

With appearances concluded, the official party then proceeded to the Fogg Museum where an informal luncheon was served and (yes) several Champagne toasts were presented. Churchill and his party returned to Washington, D.C. by rail that same evening. Thus ended a day that will always be remembered as unique in Harvard history and in the minds of those who attended albeit far fewer in number today, fifty years later.

So I count myself as a very lucky person. Not only did I see and hear Churchill that day, but I also was in the front line of servicemen not more than twenty feet from him. It was a moment truly to be remembered and cherished these past many years. –John T. Hay