August 9, 2013

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 42

BY HON. ADLAI E. STEVENSON

Washington National Cathedral 28 January 1965

Today we meet in sadness to mourn one of the world’s greatest citizens. Sir Winston Churchill is dead. The voice that led nations, raised armies, inspired victories, and blew fresh courage into the hearts of men is silenced. We shall hear no longer the remembered eloquence and wit, the old courage and defiance, the robust serenity of indomitable faith. Our world is thus poorer, our political dialog is diminished, and the sources of public inspiration run more thinly for all of us. There is a lonesome place against the sky.

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So we are right to mourn. Yet, in contemplating the life and spirit of Winston Churchill, regrets for the past seem singularly insufficient. One rather feels a sense of thankfulness and encouragement that, throughout so long a life, such a full measure of power, virtuosity, mastery, and zest played over our human scene.

Contemplating this completed career, we feel a sense of enlargement and exhilaration. Like the grandeur and power of this masterpiece of art and music, Churchill’s life uplifts our hearts and fills us with fresh revelation of the scale and reach of human achievement. We may be sad; but we rejoice as well, as all must rejoice when they “now praise famous men” and see in their lives the full splendor of our human estate.

And regrets for the past are insufficient for another reason. Churchill the historian felt the continuity of past and present, the contribution which mighty men and great events make to the future experience of mankind; history’s “flickering lamp” lights up the past and sends its gleams into the future. So, to the truth of Santayana’s dictum, “Those who will not learn from the past are destined to repeat it,” Churchill’s whole life was witness.

It was his lonely voice that in the Thirties warned Britain and Europe of the follies of playing all over again the tragedy of disbelief and of unpreparedness. In the time of Britain’s greatest trial he mobilized the English language to inspire his people to historic valor to save their beleaguered island. It was his voice again that helped assemble the great coalition that has kept peace steady through the last decades.

He once said: “We cannot say the past is past without surrendering the future.” So today the “past” of his life and his achievement are a guide and light to the future. And we can only properly mourn and celebrate by heeding him as a living influence in the unfolding dramas of our days ahead.

What does he tell us for this obscure future whose outlines we but dimly discern? First, I believe, he would have us reaffirm his serene faith in human freedom and dignity. The love of freedom was not for him an abstract thing but a deep conviction that the uniqueness of man demands a society that gives his capacities full scope. It was, if you like, an aristocratic sense of the fullness and value of life. But he was a profound democrat, and the cornerstone of his political faith, inherited from a beloved father, was the simple maxim—”Trust the people.” Throughout his long career, he sustained his profound concern for the well-being of his fellow citizens.

Instinctively, profoundly, the people trusted the peer’s grandson. He could lead them in war because he had respected them in peace. He could call for their greatest sacrifices for he knew how to express their deepest dignity—citizens of equal value and responsibility in a free and democratic state.

His crucial part in the founding of the United Nations expressed his conviction that the Atlantic Charter he and President Roosevelt audaciously proclaimed at the height of Hitler’s victories would have to be protected throughout the world by institutions embodying the ideal of the rule of law and international cooperation.

For him, humanity, its freedom, its survival, towered above pettier interests—national rivalries, old enmities, the bitter disputes of race and creed. “In victory—magnanimity; in peace—good will” were more than slogans. In fact, his determination to continue in politics after his defeat in 1945 and to toil on in office in the Fifties to the limit of health and endurance sprang from his belief that he could still “bring nearer that lasting peace which the masses of people of every race and in every land so fervently desire.” The soldier and strategist was a man of peace—and for the most simple reason—his respect, his faith, his compassion for the family of man.

His career saw headlong success and headlong catastrophe. He was at the height. He was flung to the I depths. He saw his worst prophecies realized, his worst forebodings surpassed. Yet throughout it all his zest for living, gallantry of spirit, wry humor, and compassion for human frailties took all firmness out of his fortitude and all pomposity out of his dedication.

Churchill’s sense of the incomparable value and worth of human existence never faltered, nor the robust courage with which he lived it to the full. In the darkest hour, the land could still be bright, and for him hopes were not deceivers. It was forever fear that was the dupe. Victory at last would always lie with life and faith, for Churchill saw beyond the repeated miseries of human frailty and larger vision of mankind’s “upward ascent toward his distant goal.”

He used to say that he was half American and all English. We put that right when the Congress made him an honorary citizen of his mother’s native land and we shall always claim a part of him. I remember once, years ago during a long visit at his country house, he talked proudly of his American Revolutionary ancestors and happily of his youthful visits to the United States. As I took my leave I said I was going back to London to speak to the English Speaking Union and asked if he had any message for them. “Yes,” he said, “tell them that you bring greeting from an English Speaking Union.” And I think that perhaps it was to the relations of the United Kingdom and the United States that he made his finest contribution.

In the last analysis, all his zest and life and confidence sprang, I believe, not only from the rich endowment of his nature, but also from a profound and simple faith. In the prime of his powers, confronted with the apocalyptic risks of annihilation, he said serenely: “I do not believe that God has despaired of his children.” In old age, as the honors and excitements faded, his resignation had a touching simplicity: “Only faith in a life after death in a brighter world where dear ones will meet again—only that and the measured tramp of time can give consolation.”

The aristocrat, the leader, the historian, the painter, the politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer— behind all of them was the man of simple faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power.

Like the patriarchs of old, he waited on God’s judgment and it could be said of him—as of the immortals that went before him—that God “magnified him in the fear of his enemies and with his words he made prodigies to cease. He glorified him in the sight of kinds and gave him commandments in the sight of his people. He showed him his glory and sanctioned him in his faith.”

Adlai Stevenson was a Governor of Illinois who twice ran against Eisenhower for President of the United States (1952, 1956). He later served in the Kennedy Administration as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, where he delivered a memorable speech during the 1962 Cuban missle crisis. His eloquent eulogy following the death of Sir Winston Churchill was brought to our attention by Cyrus Copeland, who is editing a trilogy on funeral orations entitled Farewell, Godspeed.