Don’t know why exactly but Bill Murray’s infamous line from Stripes came to mind today as I visited a local campus (Go BLUE!) music store and found an obscure used cd called Great Speeches of the 20th Century.” On it was Lou Gehrig telling his fans that he was “the luckiest man in the world.” Kentucky’s favorite son (after Muhammad Ali) Happy Chandler introduced the Babe, whose aged, raspy voice belied an uncommon humility during his farewell address at Yankee Stadium in 1947.
But ‘twas the century’s great political leaders what got me to writing. Chief among them was Churchill’s inspired exhortation girding his countrymen for the impending German attack on their island fortress:
“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire…. Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad sunlit uplands. But if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the likes of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealths last for a thousand years men will still say THIS was their finest hour!”
It is quite fashionable to quote Churchill today and in fact both liberals and conservatives are quick to do so. My personal “discovery” of the man and his importance began with my Uncle Willie, who was mayor of Hazard, KY for 20 years from the from the 50’s on. Uncle Willie was the oldest of my dad’s 11 siblings and my first entrée into the political world. I will always remember him giving me a commemorative silver dollar with John F. Kennedy’s call for us to “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
Uncle Willie also quoted Churchill and with his Dobbs hat (hats went out of style after the hatless JFK entered office) and ever-present cigar I always tended to associate each with the other. But it wasn’t until my post law school European trek in the summer of ‘79 that I began to more fully appreciate Churchill and his importance. In London I stayed at Chelsea College, where students there filled me in.
Coincidentally, one evening we watched a BBC theatrical presentation of Churchill during the height of the war. Wherever I went in London—Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower, Hyde Park, Piccadilly, Victoria—his visage was my constant companion, his indomitable spirit, it seemed, everywhere.
Years later I visited the Cabinet War Rooms, the underground labyrinth where Nazi bombers had forced Churchill and his team to conduct their defense of the free world for most of 1940. The rooms have been restored to exactly as they were back then, a sepia-toned bunker, complete with maps, ration stamps, full size replicas of the generals and Churchill himself, his bed, nightstand, ashtray (with cigar) and brandy snifter (“I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me”).
Suddenly sirens blare their warning of yet another Nazi bomb strike. You could sense the utter horror a Brit would feel, wondering if they’d be blown to smithereens like a neighbor or relative on a previous raid. Then, Sir Winston’s comforting words.
Churchill’s speech above was quite true: had Britain succumbed the world would look much, much different today. Literally and factually all that stood between a Hitlerian empire of the Dark Void and our Walt Disney World of Wonder and Goodness was the stout-hearted British people. As Churchill noted, “It was the nation …that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give it the roar.”
Whether Sir Winston was being uncharacteristically humble or not, it is evident to me that certain individuals placed at certain points in time affect for both good and bad the future course of world events. No Hitler--no WWII. No Churchill--no Greatest Generation, no Marshall Plan, no United Nations, no GI Bill, no Israel. Game over. Period.
Such was his importance, as if his whole life had pointed to this one decisive moment and purpose: to steel his countrymen, to rally American support and prevail against the Godless scourge of Nazi fascism.
Churchill himself believed this. He was raised a devout low church (no ornamental or popish ritual) Christian by his doting nanny, Mrs. Elizabeth Anne Everest, or “Woom” as boy Winston called her. A poor student, he resolved to catch up with more learned peers as a soldier in India. He devoured books of literature and philosophy and so became acquainted with scholars who systematically destroyed everything he’d been taught about religion.
He became angry that so many “myths” had taught to him as divine truths: “…I passed through a violent and aggressive anti-religious phase…My poise was restored during the next few years by frequent contact with danger.” To wit, his miraculous escape from a Boer prison camp in South Africa, where he had to cross 300 miles in hostile territory.
At rope’s end he found a house, which turned out to be the ONLY one for 20 miles that was British! Churchill later said that he “felt like a drowning man pulled out of the water and informed he has won the Derby!”
The experience brought him back to God: “I found no comfort in any of the philosophical ideas which some men parade in their hours of ease and strength and safety… I realized with awful force that no exercise of my own feeble with and strength could save me from my enemies, and that without the assistance of that High Power which interferes in the eternal sequence of causes and effects more often that we are always prone to admit, I could never succeed. I prayed long and earnestly for help and guidance. My prayer, as it seems to me, was swiftly and wonderfully answered.”
Stephen Mansfield’s book on Churchill, “Never Give In” says that Churchill saw himself as a knight, a standard bearer for the British Empire in the conflict between Christendom and the forces of blackest paganism. Compared to other leaders of the day who floated in a sea of moral relativity, Churchill’s moral compass provided the firm foundation from which he early and accurately identified Hitler as “this wicked man” and the Nazis as “sinister forces of evil.”
How similar to today’s enabling war cry to “rid the world of evil” that both Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair used to attack Iraq, and still use as reason enough to attack wherever necessary henceforth. Whether it is an apt comparison is a topic for another day.
For now we can take comfort in Sir Winston’s assessment: “You can count on America doing the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”
Moo on! RFD 8/22/04
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