June 10, 2013

DESPATCH BOX: FINEST HOUR 134, SPRING 2007

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SCOTTISH TOUR 2008

I received FH 132 this morning and had a good but not thorough look at it over lunch. The article on Iraq has a particular poignancy over here just now with the PM recently blurting out that he agreed with Sir David Frost that the current adventure there is a disaster.

2025 International Churchill Conference

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2025 International Churchill Conference

It sounds like the Churchill Tour of England last year was a rousing success and enjoyed by all. I see you would like to return to the North of England and Scotland in the Spring of 2008; let me know if I can be of any assistance in regards to the Edinburgh leg of such a tour. There are many Churchill-related aspects in these parts, as members of past Churchill Tours to Scotland know.

DR. DAVID G. GRANT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, LOGISTICS CENTRE, FAIRBAIRN UNIV., EDINBURGH

• A Churchill Tour is planned for early May 2008, starting and ending in Glasgow. Highlights include eight speakers, at least two five-star hotels, Edinburgh, the ancestral home of Clementine Churchill at Airlie Castle, WSC’s old Dundee constituency, the Hebridean Isle of Mull, the legendary golfing resort of Gleneagles, a black tie dinner in the State Dining Room aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, and a side trip to the Lake District, We will visit every important Churchill site in southern Scotland. Full details will be available shortly.

PROCEEDINGS AND LAST LION

I read Churchill Proceedings 2001-2003 and on the “Gathering Storm” in Iraq, delivered in 2002, before the invasion. I was disappointed that you didn’t speculate what WSC would do with Iraq, but as Lady Soames says, “How do you know?” However, as with everything you write, it was interesting and easy reading. Any news on the third volume of Manchester’s The Last Lion!

SEVERAL READERS WRITING SEPARATELY

• Well, I don’t think he ever advocated using the military to “build democracy, ” only to encourage it (Greece, 1944). He might seal the borders (this is the main problem), let whomever was inside fight it out, and declare those lefi standing the winners; or partition it; or both. But of course I can’t say this in public! (See also the “Quotation of the Season,”FH 132:7).

Paul Reid in Palm Beach is working on Last Lion vol. 3. He hopes to finish in 2007, perhaps for 2008 publication.

“NO MAN’S LAND” (PAGE 51)

The world stopped for a moment as I read this aloud to Phil. Very moving.

SUSAN LARSON, CHICAGO

The song is an extremely poignant and extraordinarily humbling reminder of the awesome and always gruesome waste of young lives that are ever spent in fulfilling someone’s political, territorial, religious, or /and financial ambitions, or/and satisfying populist but personal internal demons, fears, insecurities, inferiority complexes or even paranoia for good, bad or whatever reason.

LAURENCE S. GELLER, CHICAGO

The “Great Republic” is falling into a no man’s land with one foot rooted in the follies of the past and the other foot afraid to step boldly into the future. Never in history have we more needed Winston Churchill’s vision, courage, and determination. We have lost our way and have become more preoccupied with style than substance. When our leaders refuse to lead, and our warriors refuse to fight, then we will hear that distant trumpet play a mournful taps over what was once the greatest experiment in human liberty. Everything we hold dear is being looted by the thugs of a new dark age. Who will wear a red poppy for the USA?

CDR. LARRY KRYSKE, USN (RET), GARLAND, TEXAS

There is nothing so instructive as to visit a third world country. Returning from Mexico, I realized how wonderful it is to live in America. But many of us don’t realize how good we have it, and how much we take for granted. I thought about Churchill’s remark, “If mortal catastrophe should ever overtake the British Nation, historians a thousand years hence will…never understand how a victorious nation suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained through measureless sacrifice.” Sacrifice like Private Willie McBride.

We have 20- and 30-year-olds who don’t even know who the Vice President is. Our young people have inherited the greatest nation on earth and they don’t even know what they have inherited or why or how they inherited it, or for that matter, I greatly fear in some cases, what the word inherited even means.

MARCUS FROST, MEXIA, TEXAS