June 3, 2015

Finest Hour 112, Autumn 2001

Page 08

By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH

Churchill’s Wisdom Calls to Us Across the Years

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade;
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night

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—W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939
Sent to us by Professor Paul A. Rahe

Nineteen forty, he told us, was “a time when it was equally good to live or die.” Here is another. For five days after September 11th we were asked for quotes: What did Churchill say in similar circumstances? When did he say it? What effect did it have on people? Is it appropriate now? Of course it is appropriate now.

Churchill said at Munich, “I will begin by saying die most unpopular thing.” Here it is: We are not—quite— united. The academic left is busily at work assuring students that America brought this on herself. At the University of North Carolina Professor William Blum demanded the President “apologize to all the widows and orphans created by chauvinism, racism and sexism,” and cut the defense budget by 90%. At the University of New Mexico a Professor Richard Berthold told his students, “Anybody who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote.” In Washington, a scraggle of innocents free to speak through the sacrifice of others gathered to demonstrate against “war and racism.” The crackpot right contributed the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who said this was God’s act against “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU and People for the American Way.”

The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage-earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country, who, if they add something to its culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They j come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large proportion of our politicians….Nothing can save England j if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern, if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told.”‘

Our “Quotation of the Season” on page 5 can only be from October 1938. What Churchill said in the aftermath of Munich stands starkly against the searing pictures of New York and Washington. We have sustained “a total and unmitigated defeat.” There has been “gross neglect and deficiency in our defences.” We were weighed in the balance and found wanting.

It is important however to remember that even after Munich, this renowned man of war was at heart a peacemaker, who deplored the careless neglect that had brought war on:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue ofthefruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong— these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. “²

We remember equally Churchill’s powerful sense of fair play, which is, after all, what animated Americas efforts in the Middle East—however imperfect. It was inconsistent to demand that some UN resolutions be enforced but not others; naive to urge any nation to relinquish occupied territory without an absolute guarantee of unimpeachable security; foolish to bomb the wrong places from afar in attempts at risk-free retribution. It was not inconsistent to support the one democracy in sea of autocracy; to broker a settlement offering Palestinians 95% of what they wanted; to spend lives and treasure saving people in Kuwait, Kosovo, Somalia and Bosnia—all of them Muslims, ironically. Churchill said, “We have to assume the burden of the most thankless tasks, and in undertaking them to be scoffed at, criticised, and opposed from every quarter.”³ Well, they have now exported their jihad, their seventh century mentality, their unending strife and hatreds to our country. And that makes it personal.

“We shall be succeeding generations a lot of talk about the pacific virtues we displayed; how we exhausted every expedient; how we flaunted a magnificent patience; how we never lost our heads or were carried away by fear or excitement; how we turned the second cheek to the smiter seven times or more. Some historians will urge that admiration should be given to a Government of honourable high-minded men who bore provocation with exemplary forbearance and piled up to their credit all the Christian virtues, especially those which command electioneering popularity….

“I hope it will also be written how hard all this was upon the ordinary common folk who fill the casualty lists. Under-represented in Government and Parliamentary institutions, they confide their safety to the Ministers and the Prime Minister of the day. They have just cause of complaint if their guides or rulers so mismanage their affairs that in the end they are thrust into the worst of wars with the worst of chances.“⁴

So we are at war—never mind what slick “operation” we call it: with armed forces 40% of their size a decade ago, and intelligence demonstrably in need of overhaul. Will we get it right this time, or resume the follies that may someday cost us our lives? Our inertia in defending our liberty dogs our history. How often, Churchill wondered, must we learn the old truths anew, to slide slowly down from invincibility, only to be reminded by sudden calamity that we have neglected the primary mission of government: to provide for the common defense?

Till, if you will not fight for the bright when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.”⁵

Moral relativists once told us Nazis just wanted a place in the sun; today they tell us the same about the new barbarians. Unlike Christianity and Judaism, Islam has never experienced reform. Thirteen centuries after Christianity’s founding, its fanatics were burning infidels in the name of God. Thirteen centuries after Islam’s founding is now. Its fanatics will never separate church and state. Wherever they rule, women are chattel and nonbelievers are persecuted: African Christians, Afghan Hindus, Indonesian Buddhists, Jews everywhere. Why are we hated? Because here, women are empowered. Here, Christians, Jews and Muslims live peacefully together. “Tell the truth to the British people!” Churchill once thundered in frustration. There is the truth.

“We have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best…. We do not expect to hit without being hit back, and we intend with every week that passes to hit harder. Prepare yourselves then, my friends and comrades, for this renewal of your exertions. We shall never turn from our purpose, however sombre the road, however grievous the cost, because we know that out of this time of trial and tribulation will be born a new freedom and glory for all mankind.”⁶

Churchill warned that the task at hand would not be easy. Not for him the 1914 formulation, “it will all be over by Christmas.” On the contrary, he said (and President Bush has almost said): “We must prepare ourselves for hard and heavy tidings.”

After Pearl Harbor Churchill brought this message to America. The enemy may be “dazzled and dizzy with their own schemes of aggression and the prospect of early victories.” They have misjudged us. It is “difficult to reconcile [their] action with prudence or even with sanity. What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”⁷

The Congress of the United States, including many a grim old isolationist, stood on its collective feet and roared. Churchill told them:

“Some people may be startled or momentarily depressed when, like your President, I speak of a long and hard war. But our peoples would rather know the truth, sombre though it be. And afier all, when we are doing the noblest work in the world, not only defending our hearths and homes but the cause of freedom in other lands, the question of when deliverance comes falls into its proper place in the grand proportions of human history. Sure I am that this day—now—we are the masters of our fate; that the task which has been set us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable will-power, salvation will not be denied us. In the words of the Psalmist, “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. “⁸

Can America, Britain and their allies stay the course? The enemy has two hopes, as Churchill warned in 1944: “The first is that by lengthening the struggle he may wear down our resolution; the second and more important hope is that division will arise.”8 Division has already arisen; but the performance of the common people, the leaders of major parties, and, remarkably, the civilized world, suggests that today’s generation does not lack the staying power of its predecessors. We will need it.

“This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy….Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived—and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.“⁹

Never give in—and never misunderstand. This was not the work of ragtag guerrillas, materializing briefly to strike and melt away. This was the work of educated, methodical barbarians who made a careful appraisal of the likely reaction. “We must at least entertain the possibility,” wrote Paul Rahe, “that those who planned this operation planned its consequences, that they thought also, with equal intelligence and understanding, concerning our likely reaction to the havoc that they intended to wreak. We must ponder whether they might have understood just how much damage we would do to ourselves economically in the aftermath, just how cautious and fearful that we would become, just how inclined many Americans would be to wring their hands and blame their country for what the terrorists had done.” If they have so judged us, they are unwise.

“Silly people—and there were many, not only in enemy countries—might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before—that the United States is like a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.”¹⁰

With twenty years’ battle experience, from frontier skirmishes near Afghanistan to the Great War’s Western Front, Churchill knew how difficult war can be. It never fazed him. His courage calls to us across the years from that bleak May of 1940:

“Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.”¹¹

From Rudy Giuliani in his baseball cap to a President quoting the man whose bust adorns his office, we have just been reminded of how vital Churchill remains to free peoples: how appropriate his words, how contagious his resolve, how necessary his optimism. We have only to follow his precepts. Then truly it may be said that if the Great Democracies last for a thousand years, we shall still look to Winston Churchill as the essence and distillation of liberty.

Footnotes:

1. Royal Society of St. George, 24 April 1933

2. House of Commons, 12 April 1935

3. House of Commons, 8 December 1944

4. Unpublished passage from The Gathering Storm, from Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill,
Companion Volume V, Part 3 “The Coming of War” 1623, brought to our attention by Gregory Smith.

5. The Gathering Storm, 272 (English edition), 348 (American edition)

6. Civil Defence Services, Hyde Park, 14 July 1941

7. United States Congress, 26 December 1941

8. House of Commons, 27 October 1944

9. Harrow School, 29 October 1941

10. The Grand Alliance, 540 (English edition), 607 (American edition)

11. Broadcast, London, 19 May 1940