March 7, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 11

By Richard M. Langworth

Whole books have been written about Churchill’s leadership. How can we hope to cover it in one issue? We can’t—but we can highlight aspects that tend to be overlooked.

Justin Lyons considers the ancient Greeks and the roots of Churchill’s statesmanship. Like Plato and Aristotle, whose works he absorbed, Churchill was able to meld political skill and knowledge into “a coherent body of political thought as a guide.” This, Lyons writes, “distinguishes the statesman from the political actor, or the mere politician.” From Churchill’s mountain of archives, we extract the essence of his leadership.

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How the leader maintained and improved public morale in the “sterner days” of the war has often been described, but never have we heard it so well related and appraised as by a high school senior. This essay by Sarah Howells, now a freshman at Princeton, won the first Churchill Centre Research Paper Competition last year. Her work is fresh and expertly documented—well able to stand with the other articles herein.

A view of Churchill and the Indian Army by Raymond Callahan will serve as our newest rebuttal when critics complain that we only publish praise. Finest Hour has striven for years to consider Churchill “in the round.” Here a respected scholar considers an aspect of his leadership that was slightly askew. Does Churchill’s attitude toward the Indian Army brand him a racist, as some writers contend? Of course not, says Dr. Callahan. But it is evidence of a fault in Churchill’s historical memory—failing to update impressions he had acquired as a young officer in 19th century India.

The Commons was startled in 1943 when Churchill spoke of the Treaty between Britain and Portugal in 1373. Fred Glueckstein explores this obscure story and another aspect of Churchill’s leadership: his mastery of history. In fact, Britain was quite prepared to seize the Azores, which were desperately needed as a base against the U-boats. Churchill’s historical wisdom led him to a way to occupy them peaceably—with the help of a treaty 570 years old.

To be a leader is to be a visionary, as Winston Churchill demonstrated in his 1937 article, “Will There Be War?” This was a year before the cataclysm of Munich. WSC with his vision was leading the public— not with dark warnings of the Nazi threat, which some think he spent all his time doing, but by sober contemplation of how peace might yet be preserved. He asked: Were readers thinking about Europe in the midst of the abdication of one King and the coronation of another? Churchill was.

Leslie Hore-Belisha would seem a curious choice to memorialize Churchill. After the Fall of Tobruk, a decade before he wrote the article herein, he had co-sponsored a motion of no confidence in the government. Churchill told him he would fight back with a bigger gun. “He gave his warning with a twinkle in his eye,” Hore-Belisha adds, “but I knew that he meant business….it was not long before his high explosives and shrapnel were falling all around me.” The motion was defeated, 475-25. But Hore-Belisha lived in an age when collegiality off the floor was equal to fierce contention on  it—when there was no 24/7 news media to fan the flames of discord. Magnanimous as ever, Churchill forgave his little rebellion, and gave him an office in 1945.

Those close to WSC knew of “his intense loyalty to friends, even if he falls out with them politically,” Hore-Belisha adds. “Yet even in the heat of the argument he will often retain a deep regard and even personal affection for the man he is fighting, particularly if the man he is fighting really fights back.”

If you want an appreciation of leadership, ask a marine. It is quite wrong to suppose, says Col. John McKay, that the degree of need determines the quality of the leader. Churchill did not create the situations in which he provided answers; they were simply the most appropriate response to those situations. There is no guarantee that the leader who emerges will be good. Yet unless there is a need, the function of a leader cannot be discharged. The emergent leader must cultivate, as Churchill did, “a temperament suited to crisis.”

These are a few of the aspects of leadership we may find in studying Sir Winston Churchill. As in life.