June 24, 2015

Finest Hour 113, Winter 2001-02

Page 04

IMMORTAL WORDS

Received FH 112 and wanted to say how much I like the Sept 11th feature: just the tonic!
ROBERT COURTS, WEST MIDLANDS, ENGLAND

“Our Qualities and Deeds Must Burn and Glow” in Finest Hour 112 was beautiful.
ROBERT O. DISQUE, MILFORD, CONN.

2024 International Churchill Conference

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

More

I read your stirring essay in FH 112 and must thank you for it. Your scholarship is impeccable and you have assembled excellent passages from Churchill. I too had thought of his “You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory,” from The Gathering Storm. Just as Orwell and Bernard Levin have criticized those who say “their system is no worse than ours, we oppress people just as they do,” you point out that there is a pretty big divide between “us” and “them.” Really, a most valuable article, written with Churchillian declamation.
MORTIMER CHAMBERS,
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HISTORY
UCLA, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Great minds think alike! I have been doing a great deal of broadcasting regarding September 11th (my first doctorate is in the international law of guerrilla warfare) and I, also, have been using the 14 July 1941 quotation, “You do your worst, and we will do our best.”
PROFESSOR KEITH SUTER, SYDNEY, AUS.

You did a magnificent job of selecting so very many of the exactly right quotes from Sir Winston to guide his strength and wisdom to the minds of today’s English-Speaking Peoples. Surely his words clarify the attitude, courage and resolve needed by Americans and others, as was true those decades ago. Wouldst but everyone in the country and the world might hear them, or at least read them.
JOHN C. HASSETT, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.

Your construct of paralleling current events with Churchill’s mastery of language and leadership is nicely and forcefully done: a fine message, finely drawn. In the end, you make the words of Churchill fit a kaleidoscope of evolving (devolving?) situations, and you do it very well. When this is published I would reprint it and make sure it went to every foundation, potential donor and funding source under President Plumpton’s signature. People who appreciate the message and the word should be afforded the clear opportunity to show it—long or short term, large or small, restricted or open-ended.
JIM LANE, SEATTLE, WASH.

Thanks for the kind words, I worked very hard on that. A shorter version was published op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A “Special Edition”of FH 112 contains all our September 11threlated articles, including this one, Churchill’s speech, letters, the Giuliani and Winston S. Churchill articles, and Jeff Wallin’s interview with Juan Williams of Fox News. It is available free to any Churchill Center Associate, supporter of The Churchill Center Heritage Fund, or for any donation readers care to make. Checks may be in local currency to The Churchill Center (USA), ICS (UK) or ICS (Canada).—Ed.

CHURCHILL AND THE MONARCHY

In the abstract of “Churchill and the Monarchy” by David Cannadine (FH 111: 14), he states that after the abdication of Edward VIII, Churchill “remained loyal to the Duke of Windsor as far as he could without prejudicing his greater loyalty to the Crown.” Professor Cannadine must know more than I do about Churchill’s knowledge of the Duke’s admiration for Nazism. But the fact that Churchill summoned the Duke back from Spain under a veiled threat of court martial suggests displeasure, and the Duke’s subsequent banishment to the Bahamas reinforces that suggestion.
JOSEPH R. ABRAHAMSON M.D. ([email protected])

“Loyal” is not the best word— I think the point Cannadine makes is that Churchill would not prejudice loyalty to the Crown in his relations with the Duke. WSC was certainly concerned over the Duke’s apparent sentiments; and also over the Duke’s grim performance as Governor of the Bahamas. See also “The Unforgivable David Windsor” in “Datelines, “page 7.—Ed.

VANISHING NATIONAL ANTHEMS

Your excellent piece on Vanished Anthems in FH 111 roused memories of an earlier Ontario culture at school. 9AM: call to order, little boys and girls in early forms of manufactured or home-made clothing, standing beside little desks with lift-tops and inkwells (the girl in front of me had pigtails which I experimented with, trying to tip them into the inkwell). 9:05: One verse of “God Save the King” followed by as many verses of “Maple Leaf Forever” as were written on the “roily-blind” pulled down over the chalk board. Sometime in the 1930s, “O Canada” was introduced and “The Maple Leaf” was retired, occasionally to be heard but always more out of date. “O Canada” (or as my Irish background would have it “O’Canada”) was awkwardly worded and was later rewritten to reflect French Canada. In one of these interim periods another verse of “God Save the Queen” was written to make one anthem do for us:

Our loved Dominion bless,
With peace and happiness,
From shore to shore;
God let our Empire be,
United loyal and free,
True to herself and Thee,
For evermore.
JOHN SIBBALD, JACKSON’S POINT, ONT.

IMMORTAL WORDS

Received FH 112 and wanted to say how much I like the Sept 1 lth feature: just the tonic!
ROBERT COURTS, WEST MIDLANDS, ENGLAND

“Our Qualities and Deeds Must Burn and Glow” in Finest Hour 112 was beautiful.
ROBERT O. DISQUE, MILFORD, CONN.

I read your stirring essay in FH 112 and must thank you for it. Your scholarship is impeccable and you have assembled excellent passages from Churchill. I too had thought of his “You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory,” from The Gathering Storm. Just as Orwell and Bernard Levin have criticized those who say “their system is no worse than ours, we oppress people just as they do,” you point out that there is a pretty big divide between “us” and “them.” Really, a most valuable article, written with Churchillian declamarion.
MORTIMER CHAMBERS,
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HISTORY
UCLA, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Great minds think alike! I have been doing a great deal of broadcasting regarding September 1 lth (my first doctorate is in the international law of guerrilla warfare) and I, also, have been using the 14 July 1941 quotation, “You do your worst, and we will do our best.”
PROFESSOR KEITH SUTER, SYDNEY, AUS.

You did a magnificent job of selecting so very many of the exactly right quotes from Sir Winston to guide his strength and wisdom to the minds of today’s English Speaking Peoples. Surely his words clarify the attitude, courage and resolve needed by Americans and others, as was true those decades ago. Wouldst but everyone in the country and the world might hear them, or at least read them.
JOHN C. HASSETT, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.

Your construct of paralleling current events with Churchill’s mastery of language and leadership is nicely and forcefully done: a fine message, finely drawn. In the end, you make the words of Churchill fit a kaleidoscope of evolving (devolving?) situations, and you do it very well. When this is published I would reprint it and make sure it went to every foundation, potential donor and funding source under President Plumpton’s signature. People who appreciate the message and the word should be afforded the clear opportunity to show it—long or short term, large or small, restricted or open-ended.
JIM LANE, SEATTLE, WASH.