July 17, 2013

AROUND AND ABOUT: FINEST HOUR 126, SPRING 2005

==================

Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch has declared his all-time list of preferred board members: Winston Churchill, Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte.

***

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024

More

James Goldsborough of the San Diego Union Tribune, in an obituary of Yasser Arafat, invokes a Churchill-era comparison: “Ben Gurion once wrote that Charles de Gaulle‘s achievement was greater than Winston Churchill’s because de Gaulle started with nothing. Despite his mistakes and conceding his many faults, that is also Arafat’s achievement. It is why his demise is both a historic event and an opportunity. It is a historic event because he gave the Palestinian people their identity. It is an opportunity
because it is now time to move from the existential to the practical.”

***

A British election is coming, and Conservative Party leader Michael Howard is accusing the Government of consistently failing to deliver: “If it took Winston Churchill five years to win the Second World War, and if it took Clement Attlee six years to build the welfare state, surely seven and a half years is more than long enough for this Prime Minister to get a grip on the problems that face Britain today?” Prime Minister Tony Blair labeled Howard “not the hope of a successful Tory future [but] the reincarnation of a failed Tory past,” accusing the Conservatives of broken promises and fantasy policies. And a jolly time was had by all.

***

The President is blasted for failing to fight inflation, provide livelihoods or promote peace….La Presidenta Macapagal-Arroyo of the Philippines, that is, according to Max Soliven in The Phillippine Star (26Nov04). But Soliven adds: “Low or negative ratings are not the end of the world nor cause for panic. Halfway through World War II, even Winston Churchill got a bashing from a majority of Britons polled, who expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the way he was handling the war. Churchill bounced back from this condemnation and, by sheer optimism, determination, stubbornness and grit, mobilized his nation into achieving final victory. He said later that it was the indomitable spirit of the British people who were the ‘lion’: he merely provided the ‘roar.’ But what a roar!”

***

Gene Grant in the Albuquerque (N.M.) Tribune on retiring US Secretary of State (and CC Honorary Member) Colin Powell: “Best of all, I loved how he comported himself while angry—summed nicely in that most delicious of Winston Churchill quotes: ‘I like a man who smiles when he fights.'”

***

Bookfinder.com still ranks The World Crisis among “the top ten out-of print books.” Churchill’s World War I memoirs, second on Bookfinder last year, were sixth most sought-after in 2004. Sex by Madonna, last year’s winner, is third; John Kerry’s The New Soldier (the 2004 presidential candidate’s 1970s attack book on the Vietnam war) was number one.