Capitol Tech U Doctoral Presentation - April 2024.pptx
Glow Worm 2nd QTR 2011
1. The Glow-Worm
Churchillians by-the-Bay E-Newsletter
Northern California Affiliate of the Churchill Centre
Volume 3, Issue 2 Second Quarter 2011
“We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” *
*(Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I knew Him, page 16—
WSC’s remark was made at a dinner given by Lady Mary Elcho.)
August 1955
…and they lived happily ever after.
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Memories of World War II, Part IV
By David Ramsay
Each winter during the war when my father was away my mother organized
a pheasant shoot in the woods round Bughtrig to which she invited
neighbors and officers home on leave. Charles and I were too young to shoot
but we were pressed into service as beaters, a task we greatly enjoyed.
Armed with sticks we marched through the woods making a lot of noise and
beating the trees, thus dislodging the pheasants which flew out over the
neighboring fields within range of the guns. We had a stock of pheasants for
our larder. On the day after these shoots Charles and I went back into the
fields and collected all the spent shotgun cartridges we could find and we
used them as substitute toy soldiers as toys could not be found for love or
money.
In January 1941 armed with a couple of these pheasants, my mother went to
Dover to spend a few days for a welcome reunion with my father, whom she
had not seen since the previous summer. He gave a dinner party in her honor
at which the pheasants were the main course, relished by the guests who
were used to wartime rations.
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As a good naval wife my mother closely followed the war at sea and shared
her news with me. She was particularly interested in any actions in which
her and my father‘s friends were involved.
In May 1941 the German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz
Eugen came out into the Atlantic with a mission to destroy the convoys
bringing vitally needed war supplies from America. Admiral Sir Reginald
‘Blinker’ Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence in World War I, whose
biography I wrote, told his American friend, Amos Peaslee that October:
‘Been reading the official description of the Bismarck even by the German’s
own account she was nearer 50,000 tons than the 35,000 they agreed to keep
to; shows what folly it is to expect any Hun (as he habitually and derisively
called Germans) to keep his word…she was a very formidable ship and her
sister Tirpitz will take a lot of sinking.’ She was at least 10,000 tons larger
and more heavily armed than the most modern British battleships. The
German warships were detected by a Swedish warship when she was still in
the Baltic and the intelligence was passed on to the British Naval Attaché in
Stockholm and again verified by aerial reconnaissance when they were
anchored in the Norwegian port of Bergen.
Sir Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall
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After further reconnaissance had confirmed that they had left Norwegian
waters, the C-in-C Home Fleet, Sir John ‘Jack’ Tovey, a fine fighting
Admiral, took his ships to sea to seek out and do battle with this powerful
German force. Two Admirals who had served with my father at Dunkirk,
James Somerville and Frederick Wake-Walker were to play distinguished
roles in this action. Wake-Walker, who had done so well in command
offshore at Dunkirk, effectively my father’s deputy, was now commanding a
Cruiser Squadron, which was on patrol to the East of Iceland. His two 8”
gun cruisers Norfolk and Suffolk spotted the German force as it was about to
enter the Denmark Straits between Iceland and Greenland and with the use
of radar tracked them relentlessly, thus enabling the battle cruiser Hood and
the battleship Prince of Wales, so new that she was barely worked up, to
catch up with and engage Bismarck and Prinz Eugen. Bismarck opened fire,
straddling Hood with her first salvo, hitting her and starting fires with her
third; her fifth hit blew her up. Only three members of her crew survived,
one of them a midshipman, who had been at the same boarding school which
I would shortly join.
Comparison of Ships Directly Involved in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, 24 May 1941
At 48,400 tons the mighty Hood, as she was widely known had been the
largest ship in the Navy and an iconic symbol of national pride. Blinker Hall,
as always well informed, told his American contact that he regarded ‘the
loss of Hood blown up … by Bismarck’s extremely accurate gunnery as a
tragedy and a crime’, the latter of which he pinned on the appeasers … who
had so strongly opposed every measure of rearmament: ‘… no Government
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dared budget for a new cruiser and even the money to reconstruct her could
not be got till war was in the air, so she could not be spared; she was due to
be entirely rebuilt, re-engined and in parts re-armored but having so few
ships when war broke out she had to remain in the front line…she was never
built to withstand air attack; the addition of all the anti-aircraft guns entailed
fitting magazines for the ammunition and these could not be properly
protected: it was one of these that blew up and set off the others’.
Bismarck and Prince of Wales exchanged shots both scoring hits. A shell
from Prince of Wales ruptured one of Bismarck’s oil tanks. For some reason
she had not refueled when she was in Bergen and as she was now low on oil
her Admiral, Lutjens, broke off her mission and headed for the French
Atlantic port of Brest. Wake-Walker’s cruisers with Prince of Wales now
under his command continued their relentless tracking of the German
battleship until they eventually lost contact.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir J C Tovey at his desk.
The Admiralty, mistakenly believing that Lutjens was making for Germany
ordered Admiral Tovey to sail east to intercept him. By the time that the
ULTRA decrypts of the signal traffic between Lutjens and his base revealed
his true destination, Bismarck was 150 miles south of the Home Fleet
making it almost impossible to intercept her.
Admiral Sir James Somerville, who had stood in for BHR at Dunkirk as a
valuable night watchman enabling him to get some much needed sleep, was
now commanding Force H based at Gibraltar, which normally operated in
the Western Mediterranean. The Admiralty meantime had instructed
Somerville to sail north into the Atlantic to protect convoys taking a
southerly route which might be in Bismarck’s course.
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Admiral Sir James Somerville c. 1942
Somerville sailed from Gibraltar on the morning of May 24th with the battle
cruiser Renown, the aircraft-carrier Ark Royal and the cruiser Sheffield. Ark
Royal, the Navy’s first purpose built carrier, was like Hood an iconic ship.
She had been ‘sunk’ many times by Lord Haw Haw, the nickname of
William Joyce a British traitor, who broadcast a propaganda program from a
radio station in Hamburg and was hanged for treason after the war.
Swordfish Torpedo Aircraft
Force H’s carrier borne Swordfish aircraft alone could stop Bismarck
reaching Brest. On the evening of May 26, the third sortie of that day, Ark
Royal flew off 15 torpedo equipped Swordfish to attack the German
battleship. Although all her anti-aircraft guns were firing, two of the
Swordfish’s torpedoes hit their target, one amidships and the other aft in an
area where the mighty ship was vulnerable: the steering rooms where
powerful electric motors operated her powerful rudders. The torpedo hit
jammed the rudders when they were hard a port to evade the airstrike so
successfully that the damage control crew could not free one of them. The
mighty Bismarck was effectively crippled and could only sail in circles at 7
or 8 knots towards Tovey’s approaching Fleet. As one historian wrote: ‘The
attack had lasted just half an hour but it was one of the most decisive half
hours in the history of naval warfare’ and she was delivering herself to her
killers.
Blinker Hall, ready as always to praise the efficiency and fighting spirit of
the services, told his American friend, Amos Peaslee: ‘The chase and
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sinking of the Bismarck was a good piece of work, and when you understand
that the aircraft carrier from which our naval planes made their crippling
attack was rising and falling 50 feet in the heavy sea, you will realize what a
gallant show it was; but the boys got off all right and got back again!! and
would do it again, too.’ The weather conditions, described by Blinker, were
strikingly similar to those when Doolittle’s bombers were launched from the
USS Hornet nearly a year later for the famous raid on Tokyo. When Ark
Royal returned to Gibraltar she was cheered by every ship in the harbor.
At 0823 on May 27 the Home Fleet sighted Bismarck and at 0847 Tovey’s
battleships King George V (10 14” guns) and Rodney (9 16” guns)
supported by the cruisers Norfolk, which had tracked her since encountering
her in the Denmark Straits, and Dorsetshire opened fire. Between them they
fired nearly 2,800 rounds reducing Bismarck to a blazing wreck. None of the
British ships were hit by her shells and by 0930 her firing had ceased. Yet
stoutly built like so many German warships as Tovey signaled Somerville
‘he could not get her to sink by gunfire and he ordered Dorsetshire to
torpedo her. At 1036 she rolled over and sank, taking with her Lutjens, her
Captain Lindemann and all but 110 members of her crew of 2,200.
Tovey paid this generous tribute to Bismarck and her crew: ‘She put up a
most gallant fight against impossible odds …’ He was equally generous to
Somerville: ‘Force H was handled with conspicuous skill throughout the
operation … and contributed a vital share to its successful conclusion.’
Later in 1941 the war became global when on June 22 Hitler invaded Russia
and on December 7 Japan attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor
without first declaring war on America. My mother told me how amused she
was by Churchill’s quip when he heard of the invasion. Although he had the
reputation of being vehemently anti-communist and in his own words had
sought to strangle Soviet Russia at birth he told his Secretary Jock Colville:
‘I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler… If Hitler invaded hell I
would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of
Commons.’
On the morning after Pearl Harbor my mother told me about the attack
which absolutely horrified her and that war between America and Japan was
now certain. President Roosevelt described the attack as ‘a day which will
live in infamy’ and declared war on Japan with Churchill immediately
following suit.
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Blinker Hall had few illusions about the Japanese, of whose objectives he
had become suspicious when he was Director of Naval Intelligence in World
War I. In October 1941 he had told Peaslee: ‘We are all a bit intrigued about
the talks in Washington between your President and the Japs; some people
think that the Japs are just playing for time in the true Hitler style whereas
others think the Japs are finding way to save their face!! Personally I think it
is a bit of both; if the chance comes they will strike without warning when
ready (an astute forecast of the attack on Pearl Harbor two months later).’
Four days after the Japanese Navy fulfilled Hall’s prophecy, Hall wrote to
Peaslee: ‘I need not tell you how I felt at the treacherous attack on your fleet
and airfields; the Japs did the same thing at Port Arthur when they opened
the war on Russia!! It is not often that a nation can get away with that sort of
thing…’ Writing to his sister May, he was more critical: ‘The Americans
were caught napping good and proper; they had not a single patrol out either
in the air or in the water; and yet they are supposed to be students of history;
… they could never have read the story of Port Arthur in the opening phase
of the Russo-Jap war; the Japs went in and torpedoed the Russian fleet
before they declared war. We must expect some very nasty shocks in the Far
East; the Japs have command of the sea and know how to use it.’
Once again he was to be proved right. On the morning of December 10, only
three days after Pearl Harbor, the British battleship Prince of Wales and the
battle cruiser Repulse, which had been sent to the Far East were sunk by
Japanese shore base aircraft off the coast of Malaya while searching for an
enemy invasion force. Although they were close inshore they were operating
without any air cover in what was one of the biggest disasters in the history
of the Royal Navy.
I remember how upset my mother was, as a good naval wife when she heard
the news as she and my father had friends serving on these ships, among
them William ‘Bill’ Tennant, the Captain of Repulse who had been BHR’s
beach master ashore at Dunkirk. Fortunately, as I will relate below, he
survived.
Writing to Peaslee, Blinker Hall was highly critical of Admiral Tom Philips,
the C-in-C Eastern Fleet, over the loss of the two capital ships: ‘Well if we
won’t learn the lessons we paid so dearly for at Crete and Greece (when the
Mediterranean Fleet lost several warships in course of evacuating the Army),
we shall go on losing ships… we do pay dearly for our lessons and the fools
who will not learn them. I refer to the powers at the top; though I shall never
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understand how Tom Philips came to go out into air controlled waters
without air support.’
He drove over to condole with his late wife’s cousins, Spencer and Agnes
Ferguson, whose son George had gone down on Prince of Wales: ‘ I thought
there could be little hope for him as he was in charge of the anti-aircraft guns
and they would be firing up to the last: they are very brave but naturally
critical that the ships should have gone out with no air protection; in fact all
the world is saying the same thing …It’s all very well sending a brilliant
man straight from the Admiralty to command a fleet but unless he has had
practical experience of air attack and its effects, it’s throwing away lives and
ships. Had I been asked I should have suggested taking some one from the
Mediterranean fleet who had been through Greece and Crete; he would have
known but it’s no good jobbing back; what we have to face is the probable
loss of Hong Kong and a severe attack on our trade from the east.’
BHR took a similar line to Blinker, telling my mother that if he had been in
command the moment he heard of Pearl Harbor he would have got the two
big ships out of the way of the Japanese.
Prince of Wales had the reputation of being an unhappy ship- sailors tend to
be superstitious and a dockyard worker had been crushed to death in one of
her turrets while she was fitting out- a bad omen. In contrast Repulse under
Bill Tennant’s command was a happy ship. She was however an un-
modernized World War I battle cruiser that only had 4 4” anti-aircraft guns
and was extremely vulnerable to air attack. Skillfully handled by Tennant
she survived the Japanese strike for longer than Prince of Wales.
In March 1956 I met Tennant at the ceremony to dedicate a window in
Portsmouth Cathedral to my father and those who had served under his
command at Dunkirk and Normandy. He told me about Repulse’s last
minutes and how he had survived. During the first phase of the Japanese
attack he had combed the ship, successfully evading as many as nine
torpedoes although a bomb did hit her aircraft hangar- the fire was soon put
out. On his own initiative he signaled for air cover. One of Repulse’s AA
guns shot down a Japanese bomber. Morale on board remained high and
Tennant heard a sailor on the bridge say: ‘The old man (the lower deck’s
term for the Captain) will get us through.’ He thought that his spirit did him
proud but he wished that he could be as sure.
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Recognizing Repulse as a formidable adversary the Japanese planes attacked
her from both port and starboard and she was hit by four torpedoes.
Realizing that she was doomed Tennant ordered Abandon Ship, telling his
crew that they had done well and noting that they were forming up on deck
in good order. He was still on the bridge when the veteran battle cruiser,
who, like Bismarck had fought so gallantly against impossible odds, gave a
great lurch to port and went down, her ensigns still flying.
Tennant recalled that he was going down with her, seeing the color of the
water change from blue to green to brown, when he felt a massive blow in
his back and passed out. When he came to he was back on the surface and he
heard a cockney voice shout: ‘It’s the old man we’d better haul him in’ and
once again he was hit in the back, this time by a boathook. Dripping with oil
and probably the most disreputable looking Captain in the history of the
service, he was hauled to safety on a raft. He had been saved by a huge up
current of water displaced by the sinking Repulse. Collecting other rafts he
found places for many other survivors. Shortly afterwards the air cover for
which he had signaled, arrived and drove off the Japanese aircraft, enabling
the escorting destroyers to rescue survivors.
After he reached Singapore Tennant wrote to the families of each of the 513
members of Repulse’s crew who had been lost. By then a Rear-Admiral, he
served under my father in the Normandy invasion, where he was in charge
of setting up the artificial Mulberry harbors.
Roosevelt had only declared war on Japan not on Germany or Italy. Hitler
then proceeded to commit the biggest mistake of his career declaring war on
the United States ironically repeating the blunder Imperial Germany had
made in 1917 in enticing America into World War I. I remember my mother
telling me the news and breathing a hearty sigh of relief. Churchill
expressed his reaction in his The Second World War, ‘… but now at this
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very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in
to the death. So we had won after all! Being saturated and satiated with
emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and
thankful.’
Copyright David Ramsay, 2011
67th Anniversary of D-Day
Following is an excerpt from a moving and harrowing article on
the reality of the landing on Omaha Beach. The complete piece is
available on line at:
http://www.theatlantic.com magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/3365/
November 1960
First Wave at Omaha Beach
When he was promoted to officer rank at eighteen, S. L. A. MARSHALL was the
youngest shave tail in the United States Army during World War I. He rejoined the Army
in 1942, became a combat historian with the rank of colonel; and the notes he made at the
time of the Normandy landing are the source of this heroic reminder. Readers will
remember his frank and ennobling book about Korea, THE RIVER AND THE
GAUNTLET, which was the result of still a third tour of duty.
By S. L. A. Marshall
UNLIKE what happens to other great battles, the passing of the years and the retelling of
the story have softened the horror of Omaha Beach on D Day.
This fluke of history is doubly ironic since no other decisive battle has ever been so
thoroughly reported for the official record. While the troops were still fighting in
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Normandy, what had happened to each unit in the landing had become known through
the eyewitness testimony of all survivors. It was this research by the field historians
which first determined where each company had hit the beach and by what route it had
moved inland. Owing to the fact that every unit save one had been mis-landed, it took this
work to show the troops where they had fought.
How they fought and what they suffered were also determined in detail during the field
research. As published today, the map data showing where the troops came ashore check
exactly with the work done in the field; but the accompanying narrative describing their
ordeal is a sanitized version of the original field notes.
This happened because the Army historians, who wrote the first official book about
Omaha Beach, basing it on the field notes, did a calculated job of sifting and weighting
the material. So saying does not imply that their judgment was wrong. Normandy was an
American victory; it was their duty to trace the twists and turns of fortune by which
success was won. But to follow that rule slights the story of Omaha as an epic human
tragedy which in the early hours bordered on total disaster. On this two-division front
landing, only six rifle companies were relatively effective as units. They did better than
others mainly because they had the luck to touch down on a less deadly section of the
beach. Three times that number were shattered or foundered before they could start to
fight. Several contributed not a man or bullet to the battle for the high ground. But their
ordeal has gone unmarked because its detail was largely ignored by history in the first
place. The worst-fated companies were overlooked, the more wretched personal
experiences were toned down, and disproportionate attention was paid to the little
element of courageous success in a situation which was largely characterized by tragic
failure.
The official accounts which came later took their cue from this secondary source instead
of searching the original documents. Even such an otherwise splendid and popular book
on the great adventure as Cornelius Ryan's The Longest Day misses the essence of the
Omaha story.
In everything that has been written about Omaha until now, there is less blood and iron
than in the original field notes covering any battalion landing in the first wave. Doubt it?
Then let's follow along with Able and Baker companies, 116th Infantry, 29th Division.
Their story is lifted from my fading Normandy notebook, which covers the landing of
every Omaha company.
ABLE Company riding the tide in seven Higgins boats is still five thousand yards from
the beach when first taken under artillery fire. The shells fall short. At one thousand
yards, Boat No. 5 is hit dead on and foundered. Six men drown before help arrives.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com magazine/archive/1960/11/first-wave-at-omaha-beach/3365/
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Memorial Day May 30, 2011 -- Our Honored Dead
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who
here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we
should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow --
this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far
above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what
we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be
dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom --
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the
earth.
Source: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler. The text above is from the
so-called "Bliss Copy," one of several versions which Lincoln wrote, and believed to be the final
version. For additional versions, you may search The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
through the courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Association.
"Paul Hudson" <london@rafmuseum.org>
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Help Catalogue Our Photo Collection
Should you find that you have a spare moment during July, you may
wish to visit the Museum’s Flickr Channel.
Here, we have posted a selection of photograph albums donated to
the Museum by members of the public during the1970s where, due to
the failing memories of the people making donations at the time or
due to lack of notes on the back of photographs, our Curatorial team
has drawn a blank as to how to catalogue these images as they
contain within them no immediate or obvious reference points.
This sword was acquired by the RAF Museum in 1967. Can you help us identify what type?
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Winston as journalist
As WSC wrote in the first volume of The Second World War (page 62 in the Cassell
edition):
The years from 1931 to 1935, apart from my anxiety on public affairs, were personally
very pleasant to me. I earned my livelihood by dictating articles which had a wide
circulation not only in Great Britain and in the United States , but also, before Hitler’s
shadow fell upon them, in the most famous newspapers of sixteen European countries.
I lived in fact from mouth to hand.
This felicitous phrase ‘from mouth to hand’ describes his ability, honed after long
practice, to dictate his newspaper articles, gaining much time thereby. Most of these
articles covered politics and public affairs, but there were many others written in a light-
hearted vein.
Here is one such — an article on American food and travel.
LAND OF CORN AND LOBSTERS
Winston S. Churchill
Published in Collier’s on August 5, 1933
I feel shy about expressing my opinion about American food. I was
everywhere received with such charming hospitality that to give any
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verdict of a critical character might seem churlish. However, as eating
and drinking are matters in which the good taste of different people and
different countries naturally and legitimately varies so widely, there
may be no harm in my setting down a few general impressions. Then
there is the danger that one may be thought greedy, and reproached for
setting too much store by creature comfort and dwelling unduly upon
trivialities. But here I fortify myself by Dr Johnson’s celebrated dictum:
‘I look upon it that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind
anything else.’
So I will start out boldly with the assertion that Americans of every
class live on lighter foods than their analogues in England. Fruit,
vegetables and cereals play a much larger part in their bills of fare than
with us, and they eat chicken much more often than meat - by which of
course I mean beef and mutton. All this is no doubt very healthful, but
personally I am a beef-eater, and I always expect my wife to provide
me with butcher’s meat once a day when I am at home.
Moreover, the American chicken is a small bird compared with the
standard English fowl. Attractively served with rice and auxiliaries of
all kinds, he makes an excellent dish. Still, I am on the side of the big
chicken as regularly as Providence is on that of the big battalions.
Indeed it seems strange in so large a country to find such small
chickens. Conscious, perhaps, of their inferiority, the inhabitants call
them ‘squabs’. What an insulting title for a capon!
A dangerous, yet almost universal, habit of the American people is
the drinking of immense quantities of iced water. This has become a
ritual. If you go into a cafeteria or drug store and order a cup of coffee,
a tumbler of iced water is immediately set before you. The bleak
beverage is provided on every possible occasion; whatever you order,
the man behind the counter will supply this apparently indispensible
concomitant.
American meals nearly always start with a large slice of melon or
grapefruit accompanied by iced water. This is surely a somewhat
austere welcome for a hungry man at the midday or evening meal.
Dessert, in my view, should be eaten at the end of the meal, not at the
beginning. The influence of American customs is now so all-pervading
that during the last few years I have noticed this habit creeping into
England. It should be strongly repulsed.
The coffee in the United States is admirable, and a welcome
contrast to the anaemic or sticky liquid which judicious Americans
rightly resent in English provincial towns. The American Blue Point is
a serious undertaking. On the other hand, the American lobster is
unrivalled anywhere in the world; he has a succulence and a flavour
which I have found nowhere else. Shad roe and terrapin I have eaten
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only in the United States; I find them both entertaining. Soft-shell crabs
and corn on the cob are by no means unpalatable, but should not be
eaten too often.
A very general custom in American society is to have a little
preliminary repast before the company sits down at table. The guests
arrive any time within half an hour of the nominal dinner hour, and
stand about conversing, smoking cigarettes and drinking cocktails.
There is, of course, the admirable tomato-juice cocktail. But this is not
the one most commonly used. It was explained to me that nothing in the
laws of the United States forbids the convivial consumption in a private
house of any stores of liquor which happened to be in the host’s private
cellars before prohibition became effective in 1920. Many people must
have had very large and well-stocked cellars in those distant days, and
these supplies have lasted extremely well. Indeed one might almost
believe that, like the widow’s cruse, they miraculously replenish
themselves.
Alcoholic liquor could therefore, without any illegality, enter into
the composition of many kinds of cocktails and these short, hard, wet
drinks may be freely enjoyed without any presumption of illegality. I
am no devotee of cocktails, still I must admit that this preliminary
festival while the guests are arriving is most agreeable. The cocktails
are supported by all sorts of dainty, tasty little dishes continually
handed round upon trays or displayed upon tables. This custom is
nothing more nor less than the old custom of Imperial Russia called
‘the zakouski’.
I remember as a child, nearly fifty years ago, being taken by my
mother on a visit to the Duke of Edinburgh, who had married a Russian
princess. There I saw exactly the same ritual, with kummel and vodka
instead of the cocktails, and the same attractive, eatable kickshaws to
keep them company. It was only after this was over that the regular
dinner began. There is much to be said for this arrangement. No doubt
it encourages unpunctuality, but on the other hand it protects those who
have already arrived from starving helplessly till the late comers make
their appearances.
I expect the practice has come to stay. It makes for sociability and
good mixing, both of the guests and their refreshments. Indeed I should
not be surprised if some day the formal sit-down dinner were dropped
altogether and an ethereal generation contented themselves with
cocktails, cigarettes and caviar, and then went off and danced for glee. I
should not approve of this; but we live in a world of change, and who
can control its oscillations?
The vast size of the United States and the imperative need of
moving about have given the American an altogether different standard
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of distances from that which prevails in our small island. He thinks as
little of a fourteen or fifteen hours’ railway journey as we do of the
hour and a half to Brighton or Oxford. He is no more balked by the
prospect of travelling from New York to Palm Beach than we should be
by going to Scotland. Even the mighty journey to California, from
ocean to ocean, presents itself as quite an ordinary undertaking.
It is odd how quickly the visitor falls into this American order of
ideas. A four or six hour journey by railway soon becomes a bagatelle. I
have made three great journeys in the United States - the first separated
from the two last (I am ashamed to say) by nearly thirty years. I
dreaded the toil of travelling so much by railway, and it was a strong
deterrent from undertaking a lecture tour. But I am bound to say that I
did not find these long runs and this continuous travelling day after day,
night after night, at all fatiguing on these later occasions. Indeed, I
started for a journey of nearly six weeks soon after I had been struck by
a taxi [in December 1931 in New York], very weak and frail, and with
much misgivings as to my capacity to fulfil my engagements - but in
fact I throve on it.
It was a fruitful convalescence, and I was much stronger at the end
than at the beginning. The truth is that the trains are extremely
comfortable: the enormous rolling stock, the weight of the metals and
the steady pace maintained - even when interrupted occasionally by
formidable bangs and jolts - give a sense of repose which I do not feel
on our quick, tremulous, and comparatively light railways. In England,
indeed, except for long journeys of four or five hours, I almost always
go by motor car. In America one resigns oneself easily to many hours
of train, and tranquilly settles down to work or reading without any
feeling of impatience.
When in 1929 I traversed Canada from east to west and came back
across the United States from California through Chicago to New York,
and then down to the battlefields of the South, I had the wonderful
experience of being transported (through the magnificent kindness of
Canadian and American friends) entirely in a private car. This rare and
costly luxury gave a really joyous feeling. It was a home from home.
And what a sense of power and choice, to be able to stop where you
would and for as long as you would, and to sleep on till you wished to
get up, and to hook onto any train when satiated with the wonders of
the Yosemite Valley, or the Grand Canyon, or the roar of Niagara, or
the clack and clutter of the Chicago stockyards! It was like marching
and camping in wartime in enormous lands. Indeed, I meditated hiring a
private car for my lecture tour. Alas, the cost! Twenty-four tickets were
more than my business would bear.
20. 20
Many English people do not like the long sleeping-cars in which
strangers of both sexes are separated from one another only by curtains,
and where the temperature is often tropical till you open the window,
and arctic when you do. Still, they are very practical once you are used
to them. No one could require better accommodation than a drawing-
room compartment all to oneself. Our sleeping-berths are nearly always
at right angles to the train, and the beds are so narrow that one can
hardly turn over in them. Moreover, the sheets and blankets are also on
the narrow side, and at the slightest movement come untucked. The
United States railway bed is a splendid soft, broad, affair. It lies
lengthwise with the train, and I slept in one, night after night, as
soundly as I should in any house.
Nowhere in the world have I seen such gargantuan meals as are
provided upon American trains. Every plate would feed at least two
people. I have always been amazed at the immense variety of foodstuffs
which are carried in the dining-cars, and the skill and delicacy with
which they are cooked even upon the longest journey through the very
heart of the continent.
The darky attendants with their soft voices and delightful drawl and
courteous, docile, agreeable ways were an unfailing source not only of
comfort but of perpetual amusement to me. In view of the results of the
late presidential election [in 1932, the landslide victory of Franklin
Roosevelt over Herbert Hoover], I may perhaps confess that, armed
with a medical certificate, I somewhat anticipated the verdict of the
American nation upon the Eighteenth Amendment. But these discreet
attendants never seemed to let their eyes stray upon any vessels or
containers not officially brought to their notice. Indeed one would have
thought that where liquids were concerned they were entirely colour-
blind. One of them, however, shrouding with a napkin a gold-topped
bottle which might well have contained ginger ale, when I returned to
the compartment after a few moments’ absence, made this memorable
remark: ‘Yo’ ought to be very careful with this, sah. Men will steal this
who would not steal di’monds.’ It is pleasant to reflect that such a
temptation will soon be forever removed from the weaker members of
the American nation.
On one occasion only was there cause for alarm. A friend of mine
when I left California in 1929 sent as a parting gift a good-sized
suitcase, unlabelled, which at the last minute was thrust
unostentatiously into my compartment. Unluckily something seemed to
have gone wrong with its contents, and a very curious trickle had left its
trail all along the station platform. However, no one said a word; and
fortunately, on examination, the damage was found to be confined to
21. 21
only one of the articles which this mysterious, anonymous package
contained.
Whenever I come to a new city I always make haste to climb the
tallest building in it and examine the whole scene from this eagle’s nest.
They are wonderful, these bird’s eye views; each one gives an
impression of its own which lies in the memory like a well-known
picture. I have heard the opinion expressed that all American cities are
alike. I do not agree with this short-sighted view. The hotels are the
same in their excellence and comfort, in their routine and service; but
anyone who will not only perch himself on a pinnacle, but thread and
circumnavigate the streets in a motor car, will soon perceive that each
city has a panorama and a personality all its own.
Nothing of course can equal the world-famous silhouette of New
York from the sea. It is a spectacle the magnificence of which is
perhaps unsurpassed in the whole world and, though each building
taken separately may have its failings, the entire mass of these vast
structures is potent with grandeur and beauty. But San Francisco,
earthquake-defying, makes a fine counterpart as it gazes on the Pacific.
Nothing could be more different from San Francisco than Los Angeles,
the one towering up under its cloud canopy its buildings crowded
together on the narrow promontory; the other spreading its garden villas
over an enormous expanse, a system of rural townships basking in the
sunlight.
From west to south! What lovely country surrounds the city of
Atlanta! Its rich red soils, the cotton-quilted hills and uplands, the
rushing, turgid rivers, are all alive with tragic memories of the Civil
War. And who would miss Chattanooga, lying in its cup between the
Blue Ridge and Lookout Mountain? The scenery itself is exhilarating,
but to it all is added the intense significance of history. All these rugged
heights and peaks have their meaning in military topography: a short
drive to the battlefield of Chickamauga, kept like a beautiful park, with
many of the field batteries standing in the very positions where they
fought, is enough to reward the visitor.
In Minneapolis amid its rolling plains my small party had its most
affectionate welcome. Cincinnati, I thought, was the most beautiful of
the inland cities of the Union. From the tower of its unsurpassed hotel
the city spreads far and wide its pageant of crimson, purple and gold,
laced by silver streams that are great rivers. There is a splendour in
Chicago and a life-thrust that is all its own.
To me, Rochester makes a personal appeal. Here it was that my
grandfather and his brother, having married two sisters, built two small,
old-fashioned houses in what was then the best quarter of the town, and
22. 22
linked them by a bridge. Here they founded the newspaper which is still
the leading daily.
It would be easy to illustrate this theme further and recall the kind
impressions of Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and a dozen
others; but these examples suffice to convey the sense of variety and
character which the great cities of America present to a sympathetic and
inquiring eye.
For more than thirty years I have been accustomed to address the
largest public audiences on all sorts of topics. A lecture tour as such,
therefore, had no serious terrors for me. Still, to a stranger in a foreign
land, it must always be something of an ordeal to come into the close,
direct relationship of speaker and listener night after night, with
thousands of men and women whose outlook and traditions are
sundered from his own.
But American audiences yield to none in the interest, attention and
good nature with which they follow a lengthy considered statement.
These large assemblies always seemed to take particular pleasure in
asking questions after my address was over. At every place I
encouraged this, and sheaves of written questions were speedily
composed and handed up, covering a discursive range of topics. The
audiences appeared delighted when some sort of an answer was given
immediately to each. Any fair retort, however controversial, was
received with the greatest good humour. I remember, for instance, that I
was asked: ‘What do you think of the dole?’ I affected to
misunderstand the question, and replied: ‘I presume you are referring to
the Veterans’ bonus.’ This gained an immediate success.
The most critical of my audiences was, of course, at Washington.
Here one met the leading men of the Union, and the keen society of the
political capital, with all its currents of organized, responsible opinion.
But the most interesting, and in some ways the most testing, of all my
experiences was not on the public platform.
A Washington hostess, in the centre of the political world, invited
the British ambassador and me to a dinner of some forty or fifty
persons. There were gathered many of the most important men and
some of the most influential women in the United States. After the
dinner was over, the whole company formed a half-circle round me,
and then began one of the frankest and most direct political
interrogations to which I have ever been subjected. The unspoken, but
perfectly well-comprehended condition was that any question, however
awkward, might be asked, and that any answer, however pointed,
would be taken in good part.
For two hours we wrestled strenuously, unsparingly, but in the best
of tempers, with one another, and when I was tired of defending Great
23. 23
Britain on all her misdeeds, I counter-attacked with a series of pretty
direct questions of my own. Nothing was shirked on either side - debts,
disarmament, naval parity, liquor legislation, the gold standard and the
dole were all tackled on the dead level.
Nowhere else in the world, only between our two people, could
such a discussion have proceeded. The priceless gift of a common
language, and the pervading atmosphere of good sense and fellow
feeling enabled us to rap all the most delicate topics without the
slightest offense given or received. It was to me a memorable evening,
unique in my experience, and it left in my mind enormous hopes of
what will some day happen in the world when, no doubt, after most of
us are dead and gone, the English-speaking peoples will really
understand each other.
Their images are iconic, but surely there's something a little strange
about these 20th-century heroes and villains...
Taken from a quirky new calendar by design company Takkoda,
photos of pets were digitally altered to create spoof poses of the rich
and famous.
Winston Churchill Charlie Chaplin Spock
24. 24
CHURCHILL FLASHBACK 1953
Monday, Jan. 19, 1953
FOREIGN RELATIONS: Opportunity Ahead
Save for a few jeering Irish-Americans, New York received Winston Churchill
with warmth and affection. The tabloid Daily News, which has no great love for
Britain, welcomed the old lion editorially. At the apartment of his old friend
Bernard Baruch, Churchill received respectful visits from Governor Thomas
Dewey and many another notable. One midweek morning Mayor Vincent
Impellitteri escorted the Prime Minister to Brooklyn to visit the house where his
mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, was born Jennie Jerome in 1850. As he came
out of his mother's birthplace into a cheering crowd, reporters asked Churchill
how the four-story brick and brownstone house compared with Blenheim Palace,
the massive ancestral seat of his father's family. "I am equally proud of both,"
said the Prime Minister tactfully.
"A Great Pity." That evening Dwight Eisenhower came over to the Baruch
apartment for his third meeting with Churchill in as many days. In the course of
their long friendship. Ike and Churchill had learned to express their opinions to
each other with frankness. Their conversations last week were no less frank than
ever. Ike was disturbed, and said so, by the fact that despite fine speeches about
European unity Churchill had offered no more practical support to the European
Defense Community than had Clement Attlee (see INTERNATIONAL). Ike and
his advisers were irritated, too, by Churchill's warning on the day of his arrival in
New York that "it would be a great pity for the U.N. armies—or the U.S. armies—
to go wandering all about this vast China." Though U.S. policies are woefully
misreported by the British press—and perhaps by British diplomats—Ike felt that
after so many public and private reassurances the Prime Minister ought to realize
that no responsible U.S. official proposed to send an army wandering about
China.
Churchill was briefed regarding the new Administration's views on Asia by Ike's
Secretary of State-designate, John Foster Dulles. The American difficulty is not
that Churchill has different ideas on Asia, but that his mind is open almost to the
point of blankness on the very large part of the world lying east of Singapore.
Dulles and Churchill could agree on at least two premises: 1) Anglo-American
25. 25
cooperation in Asia is essential; 2) Asia must be treated as a strategic unit, not as
a hodgepodge of individual problems.
"So Premature." The day after his final conversation with Ike, Churchill flew
down to Washington for his last official meeting with President Harry Truman.
The Prime Minister arrived at the White House sporting shoes with zippers down
the side. Always unabashed in his pursuit of comfort, he did not hesitate to keep
his unusual footgear unzippered even at formal functions. In the White House,
where he and Truman were joined by Administration bigwigs including Dean
Acheson and Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, Churchill gravely reviewed the
global struggle against Communism. Proudly he recalled to his host the 1946
speech at Fulton, Mo., in which, publicly proclaiming the breach between Russia
and the free world, he had coined the term Iron Curtain. Mrs. Roosevelt, the
Prime Minister remembered, had been disturbed at the somewhat bellicose tone
of the speech, and much later, in an attempt to justify her objections, had told
him, "Well, you didn't have to be so premature." Said Churchill, drawing himself
up, "I replied: 'Mrs. Roosevelt, are not all prophets premature?' "
A few hours later Churchill was the President's host at dinner in the British
Embassy. Truman came to the Churchill party from a fund-raising dinner where
he had already faced seafood in aspic, petite marmite, filet mignon, stuffed
artichokes, potatoes au gratin, chiffonade salad and baked Alaska. Somehow the
President managed to make a respectable stab at the Embassy's consomme,
Dover sole, saddle of veal, potatoes duchesse, cauliflower and charlotte pralinee.
It was at this semipublic occasion—there were 16 British and American officials
present—that Secretary of State Dean Acheson chose to lecture the Prime
Minister on Britain's lackadaisical attitude toward the European Defense
Community and toward settlement of her disputes with Iran and Egypt.
Next day, with a careful, old man's gait, Churchill clambered into the presidential
DC-6, the Independence, and headed off for two weeks in the Jamaican
sunshine—which was, all pundits to the contrary, the primary reason for
Churchill's American trip. In Manhattan, at week's end, Dwight Eisenhower said
that he had recently asked "a man who is 78 years old—one of the world's great
leaders," if it wasn't time for him to retire. The statesman's answer: "My
opportunity for my greater service to my country probably still lies ahead."*
• As he told this story (at a meeting of heart specialists), Ike turned to Thomas E. Dewey, an elder
statesman 28 years younger than Churchill, said: "And that certainly applies to you, too.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,820835,00.html
26. 26
Book Review -- ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
Aristotle and the Higher Good
By HARRY V. JAFFA
Published: July 1, 2011
Some time in the 1920s, the Conservative statesman F. E. Smith — Lord Birkenhead
— gave a copy of the “Nicomachean Ethics” to his close friend Winston Churchill. He
did so saying there were those who thought this was the greatest book of all time.
Churchill returned it some weeks later, saying it was all very interesting, but he had
already thought most of it out for himself. But it is the very genius of Aristotle — as it
is of every great teacher — to make you think he is uncovering your own thought in
his. In Churchill’s case, it is also probable that the classical tradition informed more
of his upbringing, at home and at school, than he realized.
27. 27
Illustration by Vivienne Flesher
ARISTOTLE’S NICOMACHEAN ETHICS
Translated By Robert C. Bartlett And Susan D. Collins
339 pp. The University of Chicago Press. $35.
In 1946, in a letter to the philosopher Karl Löwith, Leo Strauss mentioned how
difficult it had been for him to understand Aristotle’s account of magnanimity,
greatness of soul, in Book 4 of the “Ethics.”
The difficulty was resolved when he came to realize that Churchill was a perfect
example of that virtue. So Churchill helped Leo Strauss understand Aristotle! That is
perfectly consistent with Aristotle’s telling us it does not matter whether one
describes a virtue or someone characterized by that virtue. Where the “Ethics” stands
among the greatest of all great books perhaps no one can say. That Aristotle’s text,
which explores the basis of the best way of human life, belongs on any list of such
books is indisputable.
In his great essay “On Classical Political Philosophy,” Strauss emphasizes the
continuity between pre-philosophic political speech and its refinement by classical
political philosophy. It is part of the order of nature (and of nature’s God) that pre--
philosophic speech supply the matter, and philosophic speech the form, of perfected
political speech, much as the chisel of the sculptor uncovers the form of the statue
within the block of marble. Before the “Ethics” men knew that courage was a virtue,
and that it meant overcoming fear in the face of danger. Aristotle says nothing
different from this, but he also distinguishes true virtue from its specious simulacra.
The false appearance of courage may result, for instance, from overconfidence in
one’s skill or strength, or from one’s failure to recognize the skill or strength of his
28. 28
opponents. The accurate assessment of one’s own superiority of strength or skill,
which means one really has no reason to fear an approaching conflict, is another
false appearance of courage. A false courage may also result from a passion that
blinds someone to the reality of the danger he faces. In short, the appearance of
courage may be mistaken for actual courage whenever the rational component of
virtue is lacking.
The existence of politics before political philosophy is what makes political
philosophy possible. Politics is inherently controversial because human beings are
passionately attached to their opinions by interests that have nothing to do with the
truth. But because philosophers — properly so called — have no interest other than
the truth, they alone can bring to bear the canon of reason that will transform the
conflict of opinion that otherwise dominates the political world.
Unfortunately, what has been called philosophy for more than a century has virtually
destroyed any belief in the possibility of objective truth, and with it the possibility of
philosophy. Our chaotic politics reflects this chaos of the mind. No enterprise to
replace this chaos with the cosmos of reason could be more welcome. The volume
before us is much more than a translation. The translators, Robert C. Bartlett, who
teaches Hellenic politics at Boston College, and Susan D. Collins, a political scientist
at the University of Houston, have provided helpful aids. Many Greek words cannot
be easily translated into single English equivalents — for example, the Greek word
techne, which appears in the first sentence of the “Ethics.” It is here translated as
“art,” as it usually is. But the Greeks made no distinction, as we do, between the
useful arts and the fine arts. The most precise rendering is probably “know-how,” but
that does not seem tonally right. The best solution is to use an approximation like
“art” and supplement it with notes. This is what the translators have done, in this
case and others, with considerable thoroughness.
They have also supplied an informative introduction, as well as “A Note on the
Translation,” a bibliography and an outline of the work. All this precedes the main
text. Afterward comes a brief “Overview of the Moral Virtues and Vices,” a very
extensive and invaluable glossary, a list of “Key Greek Terms,” an index of proper
names and at last a detailed “general index.” Together these bring the original text
within the compass of every intelligent reader.
Thomas Aquinas, writing in the 13th century, believed that in the “Ethics” Aristotle
had said everything needful for happiness in this life. Thus Aquinas did not write his
29. 29
own book on ethics, but instead wrote a commentary on Aristotle. This tradition was
extended by the greatest political philosopher of the 20th century, Leo Strauss, who
wrote that all his work had no other purpose than to address “the crisis of the West.”
But what is the West? And what is its crisis? According to Strauss (and many others),
the West is the civilization constituted at its core by the coming together of classical
philosophy and biblical revelation. The vitality of Western civilization results from
the interplay of these alternative principles, though each contains within itself what
claims to be exclusive and irrefutable authority. Symbolic of this authority are Athens
and Jerusalem. In “The Second World War,” Churchill remarks that everything
valuable in modern life and thought is an inheritance from these ancient cities. The
debunking both of Socratic skepticism (“the unexamined life is not worth living”)
and of biblical faith (“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”) has led to the
crisis of the West, a chaos of moral relativism and philosophic nihilism in which
every lifestyle, no matter how corrupt or degenerate, can be said to be as good as any
other.
In their brilliant and highly readable “Interpretive Essay” Bartlett and Collins
suggest, without positively asserting, that Aristotle offers a solution to the problem,
or crisis, of human well-being. But they seem to doubt whether it can meet the
challenge of the God of Abraham. But these two principles are not adversarial in all
respects. Indeed, much of Strauss’s work is a radical attack — made with the greatest
intellectual competence — against the latter-day enemies of both the Bible and a
Socratic Aristotle. Strauss maintained that Athens and Jerusalem, while disagreeing
on the ultimate good, disagree very little, if at all, on what constitutes a morality both
good in itself and the pathway to a higher good.
Aristotle’s greatness of soul (magnanimity) may seem to resemble pride, the greatest
of sins described in the biblical canon. But Thomas Aquinas’s interpretation of the
“Ethics” offers proof against theological negativism. And in the “Summa Contra
Gentiles,” Thomas made the case for sacred doctrine on the basis of Aristotelian
premises. It is an assumption of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature that the highest
good of each species is accessible to all, or nearly all, its members. For man the
highest good is wisdom. But since few if any human beings attain it, Aristotle’s
nature requires a supernatural correlate: the afterlife. Whatever one thinks of this
argument, it points to a dialectical friendship between Athens and Jerusalem. All the
30. 30
more reason for them to join forces in the desperate struggle, still going on, between
civilization and barbarism.
Harry V. Jaffa is a distinguished fellow of the Claremont Institute. His books
include “Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-
Douglas Debates” and “Thomism and Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary
by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics.”
A version of this review appeared in print on July 3, 2011, on page BR16 of the Sunday Book Review with
the headline: Faith and Reason.
EMPIRES OF THE MIND
Introspective -- By Raul V. Fabella
Raul V. Fabella is the vice-chairman of the Institute for
Development and Econometric Analysis, a professor at the
UP School of Economics, and a member of the National
Academy of Science and Technology.
Winston Churchill observed in 1943 before a Harvard
audience that "the empires of the future are the
empires of the mind." This was after it became widely
recognized that "radar" invented by Robert Watson-
Watt of the National Physical Laboratory played a
crucial role in the pivotal Battle of Britain. Likewise, it
was after the breaking of the German war code
Enigma by Bletchley Park "eggheads" -- prominent
among who was mathematician Alan Turing -- that
turned the tide of war most prominently against the
German U-boats, decidedly in favor of the allies.
Churchill’s claim normally conjures up images of runaway
geniuses and gleaming research labs inexorably spawning
future empires. And yet, subsequent history does not seem
to anoint this view: South Vietnam was lost despite the
overwhelming superiority of the USA in science-and-
technology-based firepower. Neither is pre-sequent history -
31. 31
- Churchill’s own favorite launching pad for gleaning the
future -- friendly to the claim. Germany in the first score of
the 20th century was arguably the most clever nation in the
world with the world’s best minds flocking to its universities
for enlightenment. But it opted to follow Hitler and the Nazis
to perdition. Athens, the ancient world’s center of
cerebration, was swallowed up by the empire-bound center
of somatic cultivation, Sparta. The arena of non-shooting
wars presents even more compelling counter-examples: the
economic ascendance of Meiji Japan in the last quarter of
the 19th century and of the People’s Republic of China in the
first decade of the 21st are witnesses to singular
achievements built on a decidedly inferior technological and
scientific infrastructure. Something else besides pure genius
and synchrotrons appear to be at work. Was Churchill
errant?
Despite advances in neurosciences, the mind remains a deep
mystery. Reason is the activity of the mind most studied by
specialists; passion is the one most familiar to the general
public. The first, privileges adherence to "facts"; the other,
adherence to "truths" however construed. A semi-permanent
cold war exists between the two. A Cold War witticism
related to isms is played out on precisely this dichotomy: "If
you haven’t been a Marxist by age 25, you don’t have a
heart; if you are still a Marxist at age 35, you don’t have a
mind." Discernment is the term we use for adherence to
facts; commitment, the term we use for adherence to
truths.
A strong national commitment too divorced from facts can
produce disasters. Mainland China, under Mao Zedong,
deployed strong national commitment to its truth, "Better a
Socialist train coming late than a Capitalist train coming on
time!" The result was the disastrous Great Leap Forward.
Germany and Japan in the 1930s trained their considerable
national commitment to their "truth" of manifest racial
superiority resulting in their destruction in WWII. But in
those rare instances when a nation reconciles its truths with
32. 32
facts, miracles do happen. When Deng Xiaoping’s counsel to
"seek truth from facts" became canonical in China, it
discerned the right path ("Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics") and produced the Chinese economic
miracle. Cuba, under Fidel Castro, marched with unflagging
national commitment under its truth "Socialism or Death"
and found itself redistributing poverty. By contrast, Raul
Castro has taken China’s success as a fact to re-anchor its
truth. With Deng Xiaoping’s institutional innovation in the
farm sector -- "the household responsibility system" --
serving as template, Cuba has officially allowed farming and
small businesses to play the market. Cuba is set to reconcile
its truths with facts and go the way of surging Vietnam.
Fragmented national commitment coming from fractious
discernment indeed marks many less developed countries.
They are confronted with many divergent truths anchored on
divergent tribal, sectarian or religious dogmas. Fragmented
commitment is the natural outcome. The big question is how
to defragment discernment and, thus, commitment. One
way is to create undeniable facts on the ground. India is an
interesting case. It had a very weak discernment throughout
most of its post-independence existence. Then a puny
institutional breakthrough turned things around: a rule
change forced on the state-monopolized telecommunication
sector starting in 1991 allowed private companies to operate
VSAT (satellite dish), thus, tap the global service export
network. Suddenly, Indian infotech firms could compete
globally, free of the suffocating Indian "Permit Raj." And
with success followed the upward spiral of discernment and
commitment. One way to firmer discernment and
commitment, therefore, is through localized institutional
innovation. Fragmented societies have cracks that can allow
small but meaningful institutional breakthroughs in
discernment.
Population policy in the Philippines is a classic arena of
conflict between adherence to facts and adherence to
dogma. Dogma has always triumphed and shows the level of
33. 33
discernment in the country. The passage of the RH Bill can
be a pivotal breakthrough, not so much because it will
moderate population growth as because it will start the
journey to finally wrest discernment from blind dogma.
Winston Churchill was not errant. The mind -- understood
holistically as a coming together of discernment (facts) and
commitment (truths) -- is sine qua non for the empires of
the future.
Raul V. Fabella is the vice-chairman of the Institute for
Development and Econometric Analysis, a professor at the
UP School of Economics, and a member of the National
Academy of Science and Technology.
For comments and inquiries, please e-mail us at
idea.introspective@gmail.com.
Churchill redux:
34. 34
MICHAEL McMENAMIN, a first amendment and media
defense lawyer in Cleveland, is the author of the critically
acclaimed Becoming Winston Churchill: The Untold
Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor
published in hardcover in the UK and US in 2007 by
Greenwood World Publishing and in trade paperback in
the US by Enigma Books in July 2009. The Churchill Book
Club called it "Indispensable. The most important new
book about Churchill, one you'll come back to again and
again for its extraordinary insights into Churchill's genius".
Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, said it was
"Fascinating: a tour de force that brings life and light to
one of the great early influences on Winston Churchill."
On May 14, 2011 Churchillians by-the-Bay enjoyed a luncheon,
silent auction and a presentation by Michael McMenamin on his
book Becoming Winston Churchill: The Untold Story of Young
Winston and His American Mentor. Available were signed
volumes of the above book and his Churchill fictional thriller
authored with his son Patrick, The DeValera Decception. Copies
will also be available at our next event with Marcus Frost in
October, 2011. For more information on his new volume see:
winstonchurchillthrillers.com
Michael and Patrick Team McMenamin
35. 35
After our event we were pleased to learn of this honor :
Enigma Books
3
The DeValera Deception
Wins Next Generation Indie Book Awards!
The Winston Churchill Thrillers
Michael McMenamin and Patrick McMenamin
Enigma Books is pleased to announce that The DeValera
Deception, the first in a series of “Winston Churchill Thrillers” by
the father-son writing team of Michael and Patrick McMenamin
has been named the 2nd Place Grand Prize Winner for Fiction by
the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, the largest not-for-
profit book awards program for independent publishers.
The DeValera Deception was also an Indie Awards Finalist in two
other categories:
Best First Novel over 80,000 words
and Best Cover Design-Fiction.
Robert Miller, publisher of Enigma Books, said:
“The Churchill saga and the 1930s are brought back to life by the
McMenamin father and son team with adventure, romance and
thrilling spy stories that sets this series apart. Congratulations and
more to come!”
The Parsifal Pursuit, the second Winston Churchill Thriller, is
being published by Enigma in May, 2011 and the third Churchill
thriller, The Gemini Agenda, will be issued in the fall of 2011.
The Authors
Michael McMenamin is a Churchill scholar and the author of the
critically acclaimed biography Becoming Winston Churchill, the
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Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor. He is a
member of the Editorial Board of Finest Hour, the quarterly
journal of the Churchill Centre and Museum in London and a
contributing editor of the leading libertarian magazine Reason.
Patrick McMenamin is an award-winning television news
producer who has produced stories for John Stossel on ABC News
20/20, Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network.
The awards ceremony was at the Plaza hotel in NYC on Tuesday May 24.
Michael and his Grandson Teddy
Wearing the three Award Medals
CHURCHILL IN THE NEWS
Winston ritual gets the boot
By Black Dog
2nd April 2011
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Brassed off: The statue of Sir Winston Churchill in the House of Commons
It’s been a hallowed custom for years – but now MPs have been ordered to stop rubbing
the foot of the imposing bronze statue of Winston Churchill as they enter the Commons
Chamber.
The practice, traditionally followed by those steeling themselves for a crucial speech,
wore a hole in the great man’s left foot.
It has now been restored and a strict instruction has gone out to MPs to keep off.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1372777/Winston-ritual-gets-
boot.html#ixzz1IV0SfNpH
FLASHBAC K Dec. 12, 1969
"I am a child of the House of Commons, its servant," said Winston Churchill. "All I
am I owe to the House of Commons." Long a part of Commons' legend, the late
Prime Minister is now a part of its architecture—and no insignificant part at that.
Churchill's bronze statue, like his impact, is larger than life. It stands 7 ft. 5 in. in
height, weighs a ton, and cost $26,400. Clementine, Baroness Spencer-
Churchill, 84, handsomely turned out in fur coat and pale blue feather hat,
stepped forward to unveil her famous husband's latest image. Blinking in the
bright lights, she pulled the cord and then started visibly as the drapings fell, to
reveal her husband in his famous "bulldog" stance, with foot, chin, belly and
vision forward. Permanently threatening another step, Churchill's bronze
expresses, in the sculptor's words, "an idea of impatience and hurry, of a man
wanting to see something done."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840478,00.html#ixzz1KIyu9xKM
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New Churchill sculpture will point the way to the museum
Contributed photo: Artist Don Wiegand works on a clay model of his “Iron Curtain”
sculpture as Winston Churchill’s granddaughter, Edwina Sandys, provides input in May
2010. The finished piece — a bronze bas relief that depicts Churchill giving his “Sinews
of Peace” speech — will be placed in front of the National Churchill Museum on the
Westminster College campus.
By Katherine Cummins
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
“A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. ... From
Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the
Continent.”
Winston Churchill’s “Sinews of Peace” speech, delivered at Westminster College in
1946, is arguably — in the United States at least — the British statesman’s most famous;
the invoked image of an iron curtain the most memorable.
St. Louis artist Don Wiegand now seeks to capture that moment in his new “Iron Curtain”
sculpture, commissioned by Richard Mahoney — a longtime member of the Board of
Governors of the National Churchill Museum. The piece, a bas relief which depicts
Churchill as he utters that famous phrase, will be dedicated during a special ceremony
starting at 11 a.m. on Friday, May 13, which will include an appearance by Churchill’s
granddaughter, Edwina Sandys.
“We were looking for ways to enhance the entryway to the museum,” said Rob Havers,
executive director of the museum of the reasoning behind the idea for the sculpture.
“That’s the iconic line, and there are hundreds of sculptures of Churchill, but nobody had
endeavored to depict that moment.”
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Wiegand, who has created bas relief pieces memorializing Bob Hope and Charles A.
Lindbergh and has work in The Vatican and at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington,
D.C., said “Iron Curtain” is a “very complex composition.”
“It’s a cutaway, and it will all be floating off of a column I’ve designed,” Wiegand said.
“It’s contemporary and figurative both, and historical.”
The relief will depict Churchill standing at the podium at Westminster, arm raised, with
several microphones in front of him and the climbing vine that was growing on the
podium.
“Mr. Mahoney picked the moment when Churchill raised his arm and dropped it and said,
‘An iron curtain has descended,’” Wiegand said. “I had to use a compilation of a lot of
photos (to capture the image), Edwina Sandys has been helping a lot.
“I’m proud of it. I think it’s going to be a powerful piece,” he continued. “It’s capturing a
moment that is showing and warning the world about freedom being taken away, and
that’s timeless.”
Wiegand said the 300 leaves attached to the podium “are symbolic of all of humanity.”
The artist has completed a rough model of “Iron Curtain” but has not finished the
sculpture itself because of issues with the initial casting of the bronze.
“I’ll be working on it right up to the end. I won’t see the finished piece until that morning
myself,” Wiegand said. “Everybody’s going to see it right along with me, and that’s
pretty fun.”
Havers said he is looking forward to having the piece installed to help draw visitors in to
the museum.
“I think it’s going to be a magnificent enhancement,” Havers said. “It will be a visible
cue — the way it is to be positioned, Churchill is almost gesturing to the museum.”
'OMG' Goes Way, Way Back
April 1, 2011 by Ian Chillag --NPR
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OMG Winston Churchill!
The initialism "OMG" is one of the 900 new additions to the Oxford English
Dictionary. When they started looking for its origins, they expected it'd go back 20
years or so. So it was something of a surprise when they found "OMG" in a 1917
letter from a British Admiral to Winston Churchill. He actually wrote:
I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis. OMG!
He then explained:
(Oh! My! God!)
That last part is no longer necessary. Anyway, if somebody calls you out for
using OMG, just tell them you're citing a 1917 letter to Winston Churchill.
Dishonourable discharge
Fri, Apr 01 2011 09:00 CET
by Robert Hodgson
497 Views 1 Comment
1 of 1
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BIG THREE: A sculpture by the president of the Russian
Academy of Arts, Zurab Tsereteli depicting Soviet dictator
Joseph Stalin, centre, British prime minister Winston Churchill,
left, and US President Franklin Roosevelt is shown to the public
in Moscow, January 2005.
Photo: Reuters
Budapest city council has voted to strip former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin of his honorary
citizenship of the capital. The Georgian psychopath - who was still known affectionately in the
West as Uncle Joe even as the Soviet Union he controlled was cementing a Communist
government in place in Hungary - had apparently been granted that honour in 1947.
That, at least, is what mayor István Tarlós said had been discovered during a recent shufti at the
archives. The opposition Socialist faction on the council noted that Stalin was, in fact, not an
honorary Budapester. Caucus leader Csaba Horváth recalled that an earlier city administration
signed a declaration in 2004 to the effect that he never had been.
Nor was Stalin the only historical figure to be posthumously blackballed by city council decree last
week. The 19th-century Austrian general Julius Jacob von Haynau was removed from the
honorary rolls, along with Count Josip Jelacic, a Croat who helped to suppress the Hungarian
struggle for independence from Habsburg rule in 1848. Ditto Austrian Minister-President Felix
Schwarzenberg who invited Russia to help out, and Russian military commander Ivan Paskievich
who accepted the invitation. Also declared persona non grata by the city fathers were their 19th-
century Austrian contemporaries Karl Ludwig von Grünne and Baron Karl Geringer.
Read the full story at The Budapest Times
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Today is Winston Churchill Day
Photo: United Kingdom Government Public Domain
Today is Winston Churchill Day
• April 9th, 2011 10:34 am ET
April 9th is Winston Churchill Day. On this day in 1963, Sir Churchill
Winston became an honorary citizen of the United States of
America. Although Churchill was not present, both his son and
grandson were able to attend the ceremony with President John F.
Kennedy presiding.
EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Hopkins Considering Title Role In Angelina Jolie's
'Churchill And Roosevelt'
Posted 13 hrs ago by Kara Warner in Interviews, News
Unless you've been living under a rock, you know what Sir Anthony Hopkins has
been up to lately -- ruling the universe as Asgardian overloard Odin in "Thor."
Naturally, being the esteemed thespian and Oscar-winner that he is, Hopkins is
no stranger to portraying important and imposing figures. He is always in-
demand and busy on a variety of upcoming projects. When MTV News caught up
with him during the "Thor" press day over the weekend, he revealed that he is in
talks with Angelina Jolie about playing Winston Churchill in a film she's
developing.
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art special effects to deliver a vivid account of what Sir Winston
Churchill called a "miracle of deliverance".
Visitors to "Operation Dynamo" will walk through the Secret Wartime
Tunnels deep beneath the castle and see, hear and feel - as never
before - the danger and high stakes of the evacuation. Sights and
sounds will fill the tunnels. One moment, the visitor will experience
the tense atmosphere of the operations room at Dover Castle while
the next, they will be immersed in the action on the Dunkirk beaches
as a German plane flies overhead, pursued by British anti-aircraft fire.
The myths, the reality and the legacy of Operation Dynamo will be the
focus of a new exhibition charting the history of the Dover Castle
tunnels from Napoleonic times to the Cold War.
With the operation masterminded from within the tunnels at Dover
Castle, there is no more appropriate place in England to learn about
the Dunkirk evacuation than Dover Castle. With "Operation Dynamo",
visitors will step into the tunnels and onto the beaches, boats and
command centre during one of our darkest yet greatest hours.
News
To keep up to date with all the latest developments in the Wartime
Tunnels, follow Dover Castle on Twitter, or take a look at the castle's
Facebook Page.
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Deep beneath Dover Castle lie the secret wartime tunnels from where the Dunkirk
evacuation – codenamed Operation Dynamo – was masterminded.
The exhibition celebrates the work of Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay, who was
brought out of retirement before the outbreak of war to protect the Straits of Dover,
and who co-ordinated the evacuation.
Patrick Kinna dies at 95;
Churchill's stenographer during
WWII
OBITUARIES
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Kinna was a witness to the famous encounter between a
naked, bathing Winston Churchill and U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House at Christmas
time in 1941.
March 23, 2009|Associated Press
Patrick Kinna, whose wartime duties as stenographer to Winston Churchill
included taking dictation as the prime minister bathed, has died. He was 95.
He was a witness to the famous encounter between a naked Churchill and U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House at Christmas time in 1941
Kinna died March 14 in Brighton on England's south coast, according to
announcements published by Hanningtons Funeral Directors. The cause of death
was not disclosed.
His shorthand and typing skills led to his first assignment with Churchill,
accompanying the prime minister to Newfoundland for a meeting with Roosevelt
in August 1941. He was with the prime minister again in December in
Washington.
"Churchill was in the bath and began dictating. He would submerge himself
under the water every now and again and come up and carry on with the
dictation," Kinna said in a recording for the BBC's oral history archive.
"He was very absorbed in his work that morning and would not keep still for the
valet to help dress him; he kept walking around the room speaking aloud. There
was a rat-a-tat-tat on the door, and Churchill swung the door open to President
Roosevelt!
"Churchill simply said that he had nothing to hide from Mr. President!"
Kinna was reluctant to join Churchill's staff and had told the prime minister's
parliamentary private secretary, or PPS, that he had decided not to accept.
"The PPS had restrained himself until then, but now he told me that this was the
nearest thing to a royal command I was ever going to get," Kinna recalled. "If the
prime minister wanted me on his staff, then I started on Monday. So I did."
Kinna declined an offer to remain with Churchill after the war and served Foreign
Secretary Ernest Bevin until his death in 1951.
Later joining the timber company Montague Meyer, Kinna rose to be personnel
director and retired at age 60.
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Sir Winston Churchill
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