March 7, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 9

Namrata Singh in The Times of India writes: “extraordinary situations demand extraordinary leadership. But once the situation is diffused, the very remarkable traits in a leader can at times lead to his redundancy.  In 1945, even after Churchill successfully led Britain through World War II, displaying super-leadership qualities, he lost the election. Cut to the present:  Vikram pandit, a year after he was named CeO of Citigroup, had to fire-fight a rather unforeseen crisis situation that gripped the global financial world. Some doubted his capabilities, but after suffering deep losses, the bank under Pandit’s leadership returned to profit in 2010 after paying off the government aid which it got in a bailout in 2008. Last week Pandit resigned, much to the shock of the investor fraternity.” Well, Churchill never did that.

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“The Conservative party can never get too much of Churchill,” says Larry Elliott in The Guardian, “so there will be many who will be hoping that his words [‘the end of the beginning’] are as appropriate for describing the state of the economy today as they were for outlining the global balance of power in 1942. Make no mistake,” elliott continues, “news that Great Britain’s economy grew by 1% in the third quarter of 2012 does not mark the end of the downturn that began more than five years ago….Over the past twelve months, national output has been flat and remains 3% lower than in early 2008. Recovery has been weaker and slower than in any cycle for which reliable records exist, including the Great depression of the 1930s.” Things were pretty grim in 1945, too.

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Amelia Hill, quickly repeated by scores of media outlets, wrote in The Guardian on February 6th:  “Around 115 years after it was written, the only known poem by an adult Churchill has been discovered….The author peppers the poem with the names of remote outposts defending Britain’s interests around the world—many of which he would have visited as a young officer and even fought at—including Weihaiwei in China, Karochaw in Japan and Sokoto in north-west Nigeria….Douglas J. Hall, from the Churchill War Rooms in London, is adamant that Churchill ‘was truly a poet at heart.’”

The poem is written in crayon, in words not particularly reminiscent of him, and signed in ink.  A respected autograph dealer says it’s genuine, but he is the owner.  Why Churchill would write a poem in crayon and sign it in ink might give pause to a buyer about to spend $15,000.  Where is the provenance? But the big question is: How many errors can you spot in Amelia Hill’s paragraph above? A prize of five back issues of your choice to the winner!