October 17, 2008

by Gunnar Knapp

Mr. Knapp ([email protected]) is Professor of Economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage. His remarks are from the celebration of Sir Winston’s 125th birthday by Alaska Churchillians on 30 November 1999.

It was with some trepidation that I accepted Jim Muller’s invitation to speak to you tonight. What, I wondered, could I say about Winston Churchill that most of you would not already know, and know better than I? But then I realized that my task was easy. I needed only to open any book by Churchill at random and start reading, and my listeners were likely to hear something said well and well worth saying.

So I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity to share some selections from a work of Churchill’s which I read and enjoyed recently, at Jim’s recommendation. The book is Thoughts and Adventures (in America under the title Amid These Storms.) which was published in 1932 when Churchill was 58 years old.

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Thoughts and Adventures consists of twenty-three essays, most of which had been previously published, on a wide range of topics. Here are some of the titles:

Cartoons and Cartoonists
Election Memories
The U-Boat War
The Irish Treaty
Mass Effects in Modern Life
Moses
Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem
Painting as a Pastime

There is no unifying theme in these essays. They are of varied importance to an understanding of Churchill and his times. I found some much more interesting than others.

So why read this book? I want to suggest four reasons.

First, Thoughts and Adventures is full of marvelous writing. Churchill not only had a lot to say: he also knew how to say it well. Churchill didn’t just give great speeches, or write great histories: he told good stories, too.

Second, Thoughts and Adventures introduces you to Churchill’s writing on a variety of topics. It is, if you wish, a Churchill sampler. You meet Churchill the historian, Churchill the politician, Churchill the storyteller. You begin to get a sense of the breadth of Churchill’s interests and thinking.

Let me offer a few examples. Here is Churchill writing on the German military’s fatal decision to launch an all-out attack on the western front in March 1917 unchecked by civilian authorities, who with a broader vision might instead have sought peace:

“It was the fatal weakness of the German Empire…that its military leaders, who knew every detail of their profession and nothing outside it, considered themselves, and became, arbiters of the whole policy of the State…. We may imagine a great ship of war steaming forward into battle. On the bridge there are only lay figures in splendid uniforms making gestures by clockwork and uttering gramophone speeches. The Engineer has taken charge of the vessel, and, through the vessel, of the Fleet. He does not see a tithe of what is going on….How can he, locked in his engine-room far beneath the water line and the armoured deck? He has stoked up all his boilers, he has screwed down all the safety-valves; he has jammed the rudder amidships. He utters nothing but the wild command, Full speed ahead.”

Here is a prophesy from the essay “Fifty Years Hence”, written in 1924:

“High authorities tell us that new sources of power, vastly more important than any we yet know, will surely be discovered. Nuclear energy is incomparably greater than the molecular energy which we use to-day….There is no question among scientists that this gigantic source of energy exists. What is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight, or it may be the detonator to cause the dynamite to explode. The Scientists are looking for this.”

Here is Churchill writing on whether he should have quit smoking:

“I suppose if I had to relive my life I ought to eschew the habit of smoking. Look at all the money I have wasted on tobacco. Think of it all invested and mounting up at compound interest year after year….But consider! How can I tell that the soothing influence of tobacco upon my nervous system may not have enabled me to comport myself with calm and with courtesy in some awkward personal encounter or negotiation, or carried me serenely through some critical hours of anxious waiting? How can I tell that my temper would have been as sweet or my companionship as agreeable if I had abjured from my youth the goddess Nicotine?”

Here is Churchill writing on what young people should read:

“It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite young. A man once told me that he had read all the books that mattered. Cross-questioned, he appeared to have read a great many, but they seemed to have made only a slight impression. How many had he understood? How many had entered into his mental composition? How many had been hammered on the anvils of his mind and afterwards ranged in an armoury of bright weapons ready to hand? It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts….Young people should be careful in their reading, as old people in eating their food. They should not eat too much. They should chew it well.”

A third reason for reading Thoughts and Adventures is that it offers some very exciting reading. Churchill looms so large in history that I’m always surprised to learn how many adventures and close calls he had as a young man, although I’m sure that his qualities as a leader reflected the breadth and intensity of his experience. Here are a few paragraphs from his essay “In the Air”:

    Except for the year 1916, I was continually in control of one or the other branch of the Air Service during the first eleven years of its existence…

    I had two hours later to preside and speak at a House of Commons dinner to General Pershing. I managed to do this; but next day I found myself black and blue all over….From that day to this I have rarely been in the air. Certainly I have not flown a dozen times. Yet they tell me it is quite safe now.

A fourth reason for reading Thoughts and Adventures is the marvelous final essay “Painting as a Pastime,” also available, as you know, in a book in its own right. If you don’t read the whole work, try to read at least read this essay. Here are just a few selections from it:

To have reached the age of forty without ever handling a brush or fiddling with a pencil, to have regarded with mature eye the painting of pictures of any kind as a mystery, to have stood agape before the chalk of the pavement artist, and then suddenly to find oneself plunged in the middle of a new and intense form of interest and action with paints and palettes and canvases, and not to be discouraged by results, is an astonishing and enriching experience. I hope it may be shared by others.

…Let me say a word on painting as a spur to travel. There is really nothing like it. Every day and all day is provided with its expedition and its occupation, cheap, attainable, innocent, absorbing, recuperative. The vain race of the tourist gives place to the calm enjoyment of the philosopher, intensified by an enthralling sense of action and endeavor.

To me, this essay shows Churchill at his most sincere. This is no bravado of youth, no political rhetoric, no historical self-justification. This is a man who, beyond all his other remarkable achievements, has discovered a great secret, a door to beauty, and relaxation, and simple enjoyment of life, and wishes to share it.

One of these days I will get those paint brushes, and give it a try, and I hope you will too. And perhaps we will owe a new debt to Winston Churchill.