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“Behind the Distant MountainsIs the Promise of the Sun”A VALUABLE ASPECT OF CHURCHILL STUDIES:REFLECTIONS UPON HIS EXPERIENCES WHICH BEAR UPON OUR WORLD TODAYFinest Hour’s 2007 mandate to publish “all Churchill, all the time” (FH 134: 5) offers us opportunitiesfor more expansive treatment of Winston Churchill’s relevance today: not what he woulddo if he were here alongside us (and he would be alongside us); but what his experience andreflections suggest might be done, or the warnings he offers of dangers and challenges similar tothose he met, fought and overcame.Speaking at our Chicago conference on the most critical mission of The Churchill Centre,Laurence Geller described our responsibility to convey Churchill’s experience and insight to freedomlovingpeoples: “Our task is about keeping the lessons Churchill taught us alive. They are today nevermore vital in the endless fight against genocidal maniacs, racism, fundamentalism, hatred and bigotry. Hisexample emboldens us to combat the wickedness of myriad self-serving fanatics. We are stronger whenarmed with Churchillian lessons. We can make our society better. We should and we must.”As our President, Laurence has now attended many meetings, at the board, chapter and nationallevel, in America and in Britain, of this and other organizaitons, to reach out and elaborate on his idea:kind of “Think Tank” to promote the development of Churchillian responses to today’s challenges. Themessage, he unceasingly reiterates, “is never more relevant than it is today. To fail to apply his experience—to engage simply in nostalgia for old glories and battles won—would be less than Churchillian.”Call it “Applied Churchill,” or whatever you like. Repeatedly Sir Winston implored us to “studyhistory.” Certainly he would want us to derive the lessons history offers. As he said nearly 100 years agoin 1908: “What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled worlda better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmoniousrelation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?”With that charge in mind, Christopher Harmon, insurgency and terrorism expert andChurchillian, offers a new interpretation on what we should learn from Churchill’s Cold War posture thatmay apply to today’s wars. Professor Harmon does not mention Iraq, except in passing—his is a differentChurchillian message.Yet we cannot forget Iraq—how could we these days? So two other scholars, Professors TobyDodge and David Freeman, turn to that dilemma in collegial debate—the kind of which we thinkWinston Churchill would approve. They consider not whether we should go or stay; but rather what, ifanything, we can learn from Churchill’s and Britain’s experience in Iraq 85 years ago. Much, they conclude,has changed. And much remains the same.We hope readers will welcome our reemphasis on this aspect of Churchill Studies. Our aim is simple:to encourage fresh thinking among Great Democracies he believed were “the hope of years to come.”As he concluded in 1908: “And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity willnot be cast down. We are going on—swinging bravely forward along the grand high road—and alreadybehind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.” —THE EDITORSFINEST HOUR 135 / 24