“The Government majority for their part appeared captivated by Mr. [Stanley] Baldwin's candour. His admission of having been utterly wrong, with all his sources of knowledge, upon a vital matter for which he was responsible was held to be redeemed by the frankness with which he declared his error and shouldered the blame. There was even a strange wave of enthusiasm for a Minister who did not hesitate to say that he was wrong. Indeed, many Conservative Members seemed angry with me for having brought their trusted leader to a plight from which only his native manliness and honesty had extricated him; but not, alas, his country.”—British statesman and Nobel Literature laureate Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), The Gathering Storm (1948)
I really love the photo accompanying this post, don’t you? It shows the leader of Britain in its “finest hour” at age seven, a veritable bulldog-in-training. The stance is not far removed from that of 60 years later, when photographer Yousef Karsh, according to legend, yanked the PM’s ever-present cigar away, provoking this world-famous image.
More often, the statesman delivered instead of received provocations. From the moment he came squirming, kicking and bawling into the world on this date in 1874, in a ladies’ cloakroom in the family ancestral home Blenheim Palace, Sir Winston Churchill threw out of their comfort zone virtually everyone who came into his orbit.
An architect of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, Churchill was, on a personal level, the product of just such a relationship. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, an up-and-coming Conservative politician, married Jennie Jerome, a Brooklyn girl seemingly out of the pages of Henry James and Edith Wharton, with money (courtesy of her father), beauty and admirers (including the Prince of Wales) to spare.
Winston arrived seven months after their wedding. Whether born prematurely, as the family insisted, or as a result of a conception that took place before vows were exchanged, as at least several biographers suspect, Churchill simply “never could,” as William Manchester noted, “wait his turn.”
What good is reading—or, for that matter, writing—a blog if it tells you what you already know, or confirms your ingrained prejudices?
I really love the photo accompanying this post, don’t you? It shows the leader of Britain in its “finest hour” at age seven, a veritable bulldog-in-training. The stance is not far removed from that of 60 years later, when photographer Yousef Karsh, according to legend, yanked the PM’s ever-present cigar away, provoking this world-famous image.
More often, the statesman delivered instead of received provocations. From the moment he came squirming, kicking and bawling into the world on this date in 1874, in a ladies’ cloakroom in the family ancestral home Blenheim Palace, Sir Winston Churchill threw out of their comfort zone virtually everyone who came into his orbit.
An architect of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, Churchill was, on a personal level, the product of just such a relationship. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, an up-and-coming Conservative politician, married Jennie Jerome, a Brooklyn girl seemingly out of the pages of Henry James and Edith Wharton, with money (courtesy of her father), beauty and admirers (including the Prince of Wales) to spare.
Winston arrived seven months after their wedding. Whether born prematurely, as the family insisted, or as a result of a conception that took place before vows were exchanged, as at least several biographers suspect, Churchill simply “never could,” as William Manchester noted, “wait his turn.”
What good is reading—or, for that matter, writing—a blog if it tells you what you already know, or confirms your ingrained prejudices?
Look, if you want to find examples of the British statesman’s eloquence (imbibed, I was delighted to learn, from memorizing passages from the Irish-born Tammany Hall politician Bourke Cockran, an orator so intimidating that William Jennings Bryan didn’t dare share a platform with him), look elsewhere.
If you want to take issue with the traditional “Last Lion” narrative of his life (particularly as it relates to his benighted attitudes toward Ireland, India and Iraq), you’ll find plenty to find on the Web for that, too.
But if you want to discover another aspect, albeit in a minor key, of the writing mastery that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; if you want to discern more about the rhetorical strategies that made everyone, friend or foe, move to the edge of their seats when he rose to speak in the House of Commons; or if you simply want to understand how he carved out his place in history, then consider the passage I quoted and the circumstances that inspired it.
In this first volume of his Second World War memoir, Churchill has just related a pivotal episode in his “wilderness years” out of power: the astonishing spring 1935 admission of error by his own Conservative Party head and Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in disputing backbencher Churchill’s warning that Hitler’s Luftwaffe would achieve parity with the Royal Air Force within the year.
When the truth came out, Baldwin ‘fessed up. Well, sort of. He didn’t confess to covering up, but to getting wrong “my estimate of the future.” But that was enough for the country, which promptly accorded him even higher approval ratings.
As he wrote, Churchill found himself in an ambivalent position toward his predecessor once removed at Whitehall.
But if you want to discover another aspect, albeit in a minor key, of the writing mastery that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953; if you want to discern more about the rhetorical strategies that made everyone, friend or foe, move to the edge of their seats when he rose to speak in the House of Commons; or if you simply want to understand how he carved out his place in history, then consider the passage I quoted and the circumstances that inspired it.
In this first volume of his Second World War memoir, Churchill has just related a pivotal episode in his “wilderness years” out of power: the astonishing spring 1935 admission of error by his own Conservative Party head and Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, in disputing backbencher Churchill’s warning that Hitler’s Luftwaffe would achieve parity with the Royal Air Force within the year.
When the truth came out, Baldwin ‘fessed up. Well, sort of. He didn’t confess to covering up, but to getting wrong “my estimate of the future.” But that was enough for the country, which promptly accorded him even higher approval ratings.
As he wrote, Churchill found himself in an ambivalent position toward his predecessor once removed at Whitehall.
On the one hand, this former young-man-in-a-hurry, who had seen his own climb up “the greasy pole” of politics stalled at key points (his management of the Dardanelles campaign in WWI, his strident opposition to Indian opposition more than a decade later), was still smarting over the genial Baldwin’s election to a post he thought he deserved.
On the other hand, he eventually became Prime Minister himself and knew the challenges and second-guessing to which responsibility subjected heads of government. The angrier Churchill sounded toward Baldwin, the greater license it would afford others to react with similar harshness toward himself.
On the other hand, he eventually became Prime Minister himself and knew the challenges and second-guessing to which responsibility subjected heads of government. The angrier Churchill sounded toward Baldwin, the greater license it would afford others to react with similar harshness toward himself.
So, despite the fact that he rarely consulted Baldwin in the war, Churchill delivered a tamped-down, even amiable appraisal of his predecessor once removed in his memoir:
“Our differences at times were serious, but in all these years and later I never had an unpleasant personal interview or contact with him, and at no time did I feel we could not talk together in good faith and understanding as man to man.”
If only that was all there was to it…
But elsewhere, in the same account, Churchill wonders how Baldwin got away with his inaccurate reassurance to the public at all—specifically, why no Parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the true state of affairs concerning German airpower and what the government did (or didn’t) know about it.
So Churchill concedes his former leader’s “candour” and “native manliness and honesty,” but he fully intends to drag him before the bar of history. In this case, words and even good intentions are not enough—the real consequences of policy decisions have to be considered.
“Our differences at times were serious, but in all these years and later I never had an unpleasant personal interview or contact with him, and at no time did I feel we could not talk together in good faith and understanding as man to man.”
If only that was all there was to it…
But elsewhere, in the same account, Churchill wonders how Baldwin got away with his inaccurate reassurance to the public at all—specifically, why no Parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the true state of affairs concerning German airpower and what the government did (or didn’t) know about it.
So Churchill concedes his former leader’s “candour” and “native manliness and honesty,” but he fully intends to drag him before the bar of history. In this case, words and even good intentions are not enough—the real consequences of policy decisions have to be considered.
It all comes full force with a single short, ironic phrase, abruptly halting those rhythmic cadences he’d learned from Bourke Cockran: “but not, alas, his country.”
Game, set, match: Churchill.
I admit to another reason for interest in this episode: the periodic outcry that American Presidents “accept responsibility” for disastrous policy mistakes.
Game, set, match: Churchill.
I admit to another reason for interest in this episode: the periodic outcry that American Presidents “accept responsibility” for disastrous policy mistakes.
John F. Kennedy was absolutely baffled that his popularity could balloon after he took the blame for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and I’m sure that Jimmy Carter remains equally nonplussed why his similar admission of error for the failed Iranian rescue mission did nothing to raise his.
This past week, we have another, more curious instance of this: the urging of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations, that President Obama should, like JFK, accept responsibility for his recent trip to Asia, where the President’s bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito occasioned ridicule in some quarters.
I expected conservatives to be bent out of shape about Obama’s well-meaning gesture. But I find it positively strange that Gelb, a liberal Democrat, could liken what was, at worst, a public relations faux pas on the part of the Obama administration, to JFK's military operation, which:
a) cost lives,
b) did not succeed in its purpose of driving Fidel Castro from office, and
c) underscored foreign perceptions that the Yanqui colossus of the North would once again interfere with Latin American internal matters.
Gelb should re-read Churchill to understand the kind of momentous foreign-policy mistakes that really require accepting responsibility—and then he should consider how capricious history can be in apportioning blame.
Baldwin’s responsibility for what Churchill called “the gathering storm” is not unlike Calvin Coolidge’s for the Great Depression in the United States. The popularity of both leaders as they left office eroded within only a year or two, though not as drastically as their hapless successors.
While private correspondence and the reminiscences of friends indicate that both men were aware of the grave risks their nation was facing, historians still fault them for not doing more to confront challenges while there was still time to avoid a cataclysm.
I guess it’s natural that so many continue to dispute the nature of Churchill’s legacy just as much as the manner in which he came into the world. For all their seeming sophistication, historians can act with as much wrongheadedness as anyone else in weighing a person’s life. Most of us understand that the people we meet never are totally good or totally bad, but the passions of politics inevitably color how we see people with great power or influence.
In this regard, I think that the philosopher Isaiah Berlin best captured the essence of Churchill’s personality when he spoke of “the hedgehog and the fox.” The fox, he noted, knows many things, but the hedgehog understands one really big thing. Stanley Baldwin, with his exquisite sense of the public pulse, and particularly what would play with respect to India and the abdication crisis surrounding King Edward VIII, was a classic fox; Churchill, in contrast, by grasping the enormity of Hitler's evil early on, conformed to the pattern of a hedgehog.
Like Pope John Paul II, the stubbornness that could prove so off-putting on so many occasions steeled Churchill's will for the supreme test of his career: upholding the autonomy of the individual human being against the world’s greatest totalitarian power.
I’m not sure I would say that Churchill could influence historical judgments as much as he could history itself. But the judgments in his memoirs, such as this one on Baldwin, are far more trenchant and quotable than the average career retrospectives of today’s statesmen.
This past week, we have another, more curious instance of this: the urging of Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council of Foreign Relations, that President Obama should, like JFK, accept responsibility for his recent trip to Asia, where the President’s bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito occasioned ridicule in some quarters.
I expected conservatives to be bent out of shape about Obama’s well-meaning gesture. But I find it positively strange that Gelb, a liberal Democrat, could liken what was, at worst, a public relations faux pas on the part of the Obama administration, to JFK's military operation, which:
a) cost lives,
b) did not succeed in its purpose of driving Fidel Castro from office, and
c) underscored foreign perceptions that the Yanqui colossus of the North would once again interfere with Latin American internal matters.
Gelb should re-read Churchill to understand the kind of momentous foreign-policy mistakes that really require accepting responsibility—and then he should consider how capricious history can be in apportioning blame.
Baldwin’s responsibility for what Churchill called “the gathering storm” is not unlike Calvin Coolidge’s for the Great Depression in the United States. The popularity of both leaders as they left office eroded within only a year or two, though not as drastically as their hapless successors.
While private correspondence and the reminiscences of friends indicate that both men were aware of the grave risks their nation was facing, historians still fault them for not doing more to confront challenges while there was still time to avoid a cataclysm.
I guess it’s natural that so many continue to dispute the nature of Churchill’s legacy just as much as the manner in which he came into the world. For all their seeming sophistication, historians can act with as much wrongheadedness as anyone else in weighing a person’s life. Most of us understand that the people we meet never are totally good or totally bad, but the passions of politics inevitably color how we see people with great power or influence.
In this regard, I think that the philosopher Isaiah Berlin best captured the essence of Churchill’s personality when he spoke of “the hedgehog and the fox.” The fox, he noted, knows many things, but the hedgehog understands one really big thing. Stanley Baldwin, with his exquisite sense of the public pulse, and particularly what would play with respect to India and the abdication crisis surrounding King Edward VIII, was a classic fox; Churchill, in contrast, by grasping the enormity of Hitler's evil early on, conformed to the pattern of a hedgehog.
Like Pope John Paul II, the stubbornness that could prove so off-putting on so many occasions steeled Churchill's will for the supreme test of his career: upholding the autonomy of the individual human being against the world’s greatest totalitarian power.
I’m not sure I would say that Churchill could influence historical judgments as much as he could history itself. But the judgments in his memoirs, such as this one on Baldwin, are far more trenchant and quotable than the average career retrospectives of today’s statesmen.
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