1 - Winston Churchill

LEFT: Effervescent welcome: Richard Langworth pours Pol Roger for Lady Soames, Arthur Schlesinger and William Manchester, Saturday.CENTER: Caitlin Murphy, whose comprehension of WSC was demonstrated again at the "Teaching Churchill" panel, with Celia Sandys.RIGHT: A reunion among members of the 1994 Churchill Tour: Bill and Marjorie Williams, Norm West, Addie Comegys and Virginia West.encroachments of the postwar years. He and Englandwere too tired, and as with east Europe and Poland, therewas nothing to be done. There was no force in Europethat could move back the Soviet legions, no force in GreatBritain that would reignite, until the passage of timetwenty-five years later, the vision that Mr. Churchill displayedspeaking only to the BBC microphones that day inJune 1945, because nobody else was listening.Mr. Churchill had struggled to diminish totalitarianrule in Europe, which however increased. Hefought to save the Empire, which dissolved. He foughtsocialism, which prevailed. He struggled to defeat Hitler,and he won. It is not I think the significance of that victory,mighty and glorious though it was, that causes thename of Churchill to make the blood run a little faster.He subsequently spoke diffidently about his role in thewar, saying that the lion was the people of England, thathe had served mainly to provide the roar. But it is the roarthat we hear when we pronounce his name; it is simplymistaken that battles are necessarily more important thanthe words that summon men to arms or who rememberthe call to arms. The Battle of Agincourt was long forgottenas a geopolitical event, but the words of Henry V,with Shakespeare to recall them, are imperishable in themind, even as which side won the Battle of Gettysburgwill dim from the memory of men and women who willnever forget the words spoken about that battle byAbraham Lincoln.The genius of Churchill was his union of affinitiesof the heart and of the mind; the total fusion of animaland spiritual energy. "You ask what is our policy? Iwill say it is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all thestrength that God can give us..." In other days from othermouths we would mock the suggestion that extremism inthe defense of liberty is no vice. Churchill collapsed theequivocators by his total subscription to his cause. "Let'em have it," he shot back to a critic of aerial bombing;"remember this, never maltreat the enemy by halves."Looking back in his memoirs on the great Presidentialdecision of August 1945 he wrote, "There was never amoment's discussion as to whether the Atomic Bombshould be used or not." That is decisiveness we correctlydeplore when we have time to think about it, but he wastelling his countrymen, and indirectly Americans, thatany scruple at that time of peril to the nation itself was anindefensible and unbearable distraction.We are allowed by his many portraitists to seewarts, Cromwell insisted be preserved, which warts howeverdo not deface the memory of Churchill because ofthe nobility of his cause, and his high sense of the Britishmoment. It is my proposition that Churchill's words wereindispensible to the benediction of that hour, which wehail here tonight, as we hail the memory of the man whospoke them, as we come together, to praise a famous man.FINEST HOUR 89/24Larry Arnn: I have the formidable job ofresponding to Mr. Buckley, who has set an example forour people for a generation, of how to talk intelligently, infront of you who have made a vocation of listening to SirWinston. Bill Buckley has three things in common withWinston Churchill. Both are failed politicians...UnlikeBuckley, Churchill's story goes on to some political success,else Churchill would be remembered as Buckley willbe remembered, that is to say as a great man of letters.The second thing is that both men have progeny.In Britain Churchill changed Conservative politics, andso it was not Sir Samuel Hoare who became PrimeMinister but Anthony Eden, then Harold Macmillan,and some years later Margaret Thatcher. And these peoplehad something in common, and something different,than the strain of Conservatives who were in powerbefore Churchill. They were at once less anti-socialist,and more democratic. Now we know about Bill Buckleythat he gave rise to a movement here in America at a timewhen there was no hope that the movement could succeed,because every fashionable and authoritative opinionsaid no; and we count among his progeny Ronald Reaganand Newt Gingrich. It is the same kind of thing.The third thing is that both had or have certainaristocratic tendencies. Both are fine writers. Both wrotecertain things too complicated for us simple people fullyto understand. Both were given to drink, and to cigars, in