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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CONTENTS

� Memories of World War II, part IV by David Ramsay, page 3

� 67th Anniversary of D Day, page 12

� Memorial Day, page 14

� Royal Air Force Museum, page 15

� Bookworm’s Corner, page 16

� Churchill Flashback 1953, page 24

� Book Review-Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, page 26

� Empires of the Mind Essay, page 30

� Michael McMenamin Event, page 34

� Churchill in the News, page 36

� Interspersed with various Churchilliana

Churchillians by-the-Bay Board of Directors: Richard C Mastio, Chairman and Contributions Editor for The Glow-Worm, Jason C. Mueller, President, Gregory B. Smith, Secretary and Liaison with Churchill Centre, Michael Allen, Treasurer. Directors: Jack Koers, Carol Mueller, Editor of The Glow-Worm, LloydNattkemper, Dr. Andrew Ness, Barbara Norkus, Katherine Stathis, and Anne Steele. Glow-Worm named by Susie Mastio

© Copyright, All Rights Reserved Glow-Worm and Churchillians by-the- Bay, Inc

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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 proposit ion that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing wh ether 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 fie ld, 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 c an not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who st ruggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world w ill 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 wh o 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 devo tion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we h ere highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under Go d, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, f or 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.

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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

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

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

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

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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

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

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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.

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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

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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

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

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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 wit h

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

- 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

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

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:

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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

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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

36

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 Russ ian Academy of Arts, Zurab Tsereteli depicting Soviet d ictator Joseph Stalin, centre, British prime minister Winst on 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 Pres ident John F. Kennedy presiding.

EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Hopkins Considering Title Role I n 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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Rose in bloom for Churchill A Cambridge college will be highlighted at the Chel sea Flower Show – with a specially created rose.

Churchill College was founded in 1960, and plans to grow the Churchill Rose were launched last year for its half-

century.

The peach-coloured flower, now blooming, will make its debut at the Chelsea Flower Show next week.

It was grown by Norfolk-based company Peter Beales, and is a tribute to the man after whom the college is

named, Sir Winston Churchill.

A spokeswoman for the college said it seemed odd that there was no rose celebrating Churchill’s name. “This was

certainly the opinion of the Churchill College team in June 2010, when they tried, and failed, to find such a rose to

decorate the tables at their formal ball in celebration of the college’s 50th anniversary. ‘If not, why not?’ quickly

became: ‘Why not bring one into being?’

“Members of the Churchill family have expressed their pleasure at the rose and will, it is hoped, be at Chelsea on

the day it is launched.” •

Coming Soon: Experience the Dunkirk Evacuation at Dover Castle

From 10 June, visitors to Dover Castle will find themselves immersed in the drama of the Dunkirk evacuation of May 1940, in the very tunnels where the desperate rescue operation - codenamed 'Dynamo' - was masterminded.

Artist's impression of the new visitor experience in the Wartime Tunnels.

© Kvorning Design & Communication

Operation Dynamo: The Rescue from Dunkirk

Operation Dynamo: Rescue from Dunkirk will combine original news-reels and recordings, two years of painstaking research, testimonies from veterans of both the beaches and the tunnels, and state-of-the-

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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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