Politicians From England

"Many years on, historians will read this and your speeches in Arms and the Covenant. They will wonder but I doubt if they will decide what devil of pride, unbelief, unselfishness or sheer madness possessed the English people that they did not ride as one man, depose the blind guides... and call on you to lead them to security, justice and peace. There is a Polish proverb about the Poles themselves...'Wise is the Pole after the event'. The English electorate is growing more Polish daily."

"Stalin told how he had asked Lady Astor [in 1931] about politicians in England. '"Chamberlain," she said, "is the coming man." 'What about Winston?' '"Oh, he's finished," she replied.' Stalin had retorted: 'If your country is ever in trouble, he will come back.'"

"His countrymen have come to feel that he is saying what they would like to say for themselves if they knew how."

"Winston (Churchill) believes in the maximum of injustice enforced with the maximum of brutality."

"The next thing I was asked to do was to go up to Norwich and “rouse the town,” as they say. Winston Churchill was in the British cabinet and was going to make a speech there. Well, the English suffragists knew that the government was completely opposed to suffrage, and they conceived this plan to publicly ask all the cabinet members what they were going to do about votes for women. For that moment at least, the whole audience would turn to the subject of suffrage. We considered it an inexpensive way of advertising our cause. I thought it was a very successful method. (What happened at Norwich?) AP: I went to Norwich with one other young woman, who was as inexperienced as I was, and we had street meetings in the marketplace, where everyone assembled for several nights before Mr. Churchill’s speech. I don’t know whether we exactly “roused the town,” but by the time he arrived, I think Norwich was pretty well aware of what we were trying to do. The night he spoke, we had another meeting outside the hall. We were immediately arrested. You didn’t have to be a good speaker, because the minute you began, you were arrested."

"I listened to him and couldn't help thinking: Of course, Churchill is a considerable man and a major statesman … but something of the small boy lives on in him: Iran is a toy he likes while India is a toy he dislikes."

"We are also short of heroes today—or too aware of our leaders’ shortcomings—which may help to explain the cult of Winston Churchill, a cult which is perhaps even more pronounced in North America than it is in the United Kingdom. The British, after all, have had direct experience of Churchill in other roles than that of the great World War II leader. They are more likely to remember his long political career with its share of mistakes and failures. In North America, the Churchill who is remembered is largely the towering figure who fought on alone against the Axis and who helped craft the Allied victory, not the author of the disastrous Gallipoli landings in World War I or the ailing prime minister who stayed too long in office in the 1950s. President George W. Bush is, not surprisingly, fond of comparing himself to the first Churchill, not the second."

"The truth is that Churchill never was and never had been, in the true sense, a party man. He would fight the party battle con amore, when necessary. But behind these ephemeral struggles, he saw always the vision of the nation. He was proud of its great past and was determined that its future should be no less glorious. Some of the older Members of the party were surprised and even disturbed at his being given the high post of Chancellor of the Exchequer immediately after his return to the party fold... But as the Parliament proceeded, no one could withhold admiration for the wit, humour, ingenuity, and oratorical skill which he deployed. The Budget speeches were a work of art. None of us had heard anything of the kind—such mastery of language, such careful deployment of the arguments, such dexterous covering of any weak point... I am trying to picture the Churchill of 1924–9: unique, wayward, exciting, a man with a peculiar glamour of his own, that brought a sense of colour into our rather drab political life... But it is impossible to describe the effect of the continual flow of his talk. The arresting thoughts were invariably clothed in equally striking phraseology."

"Only that giant among statesmen, our great Prime Minister, seemed convincing in his role as an apostle of arms and the Covenant. Of him at least men could feel that when he said arms he meant arms. The rich versatility of his nature and the varied phases of his career had equipped him to grasp hold of issues which to narrower men seemed incompatible. The Liberal in him could talk of the Covenant with propriety, the Tory in him could speak of arms with conviction. To quote a schoolboy's naïve but telling description of the Younger Pitt: "He had a broad mind with room in it for many thoughts.""

"He would make a drum out of the skin of his own mother in order to sound his own praises."

"You know the difference between a politician and a statesman? Here is the LeMay definition: a politician is a high-profile hooker looking for money to fund a campaign so that he can be in position to be owned by a political party, doing their bidding like a slave. Johnson fit that category. A statesman is a politician whose allegiance is only to their nation, and who, despite the feelings of others, does what he believes in his gut is in the best interest of his country, politics be damned. That even means doing something that may cost him his career, but he takes the moral high ground as he sees it, to do what must be done. That was Churchill. That's the difference. Ronald Reagan is a statesman, and make a note of it- we may not have any more in the future. They are a damned dying breed. That also applies to military commanders. You can have a charismatic, friendly, and amiable type of leader, but that is a difficult position to hold when you have to maintain discipline. It can be done, but it is hard. Then there is the hard-ass, no-holds-barred, get-it-fucking-done leader who pushes his men and expects ever-better results afterward. The easygoing leader may be liked more by his men, but the hard-ass will sure as shit have their attention, and if she shares the dangers with them, he will have their respect. Respect is everything."

"1919: but two years later Mr. Winston Churchill was entrusted by our harassed Cabinet with the settlement of the Middle East; and in a few weeks, at his conference in Cairo, he made straight all the tangle, finding solutions fulfilling (I think) our promises [to the Arabs] in letter and spirit (where humanly possible) without sacrificing any interest of our Empire or any interest of the peoples concerned. So we were quit of the wartime Eastern adventure, with clean hands, but three years too late to earn the gratitude which peoples, if not states, can pay."

"It will take a great deal of patience to undo the harm that Churchill has done."

"One question about The Dream that tantalized his family is whether the story was really fiction. When asked this question, Sir Winston Churchill would smile and say, "Not entirely.""

"While vague about the hereafter, Churchill always held that "man is spirit," and believed in a kind of spiritual connection with his forebears. On 24 January 1953, he told his private secretary, John Colville, that he would die on that date—the same date his father had died in 1895. Twelve years later Churchill lapsed into a coma on January 10th. Confidently, Colville assured The Queen's private secretary: "He won't die until the 24th." Unconscious, Churchill did just that."

"As I look at the Europe Hitler has devastated, I know very intimately that, as an Englishman of Jewish origin, I owe you the gift of life itself."

"In twenty-five years' knowledge of our [labour] movement I have known no leader to whom that faith has been given in greater measure or from a fuller heart."

"Take Winston Churchill into the Cabinet. Churchill is the only Englishman Hitler is afraid of. He does not take the PM or Lord Halifax seriously, but he placed Churchill in the same category as Roosevelt. The mere fact of giving him a leading ministerial post would convince Hitler that [you] really meant to stand up to him... Churchill's admission to the Cabinet would be the most effective measure. Otherwise trouble would start again very soon."

"I remember we passed by 10 Downing Street. That’s the place where the prime minister of England lives. And I remember that a few years ago a man lived there by the name of Winston Churchill. One day he stood up before the world and said, “I did not become his Majesty’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.” And I thought about the fact that a few weeks ago a man by the name of Anthony Eden lived there. And out of all of his knowledge of the Middle East, he decided to rise up and march his armies with the forces of Israel and France into Egypt. And there they confronted their doom, because they were revolting against world opinion. Egypt, a little country. Egypt, a country with no military power. They could have easily defeated Egypt. But they did not realize that they were fighting more than Egypt. They were attacking world opinion, they were fighting the whole Asian-African bloc, which is the bloc that now thinks and moves and determines the course of the history of the world."

"The traditional British view is that character is what matters in a general. They like a solid, simple man, with no newfangled nonsense about him. He should be preternaturally silent. If by chance he thinks at all he should not let this leak out, otherwise confidence would be destroyed."

"In King's view, there could have been no finer comrades-in-arms for the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff than the Prime Minister and the British Chiefs of Staff. King both respected and enjoyed Mr. Churchill. The two men were similar in their entire frankness and their determination in pursuing given thoughts and courses of action. From time to time they collided, but basically they understood one another."

"One day during the conference King lunched alone with Mr. Churchill and enjoyed the opportunity for an extended conversation. So convincingly did the Prime Minister speak that King, as he remarked afterward, kept his hand on his watch. Had this cherished personal belonging been asked of him, he might not have known how to refuse it! Although King was not in accord with the suggestions of operations in the eastern Mediterranean and an attack on the soft underbelly of Europe, he was in hearty agreement with Mr. Churchill's desire to clear the enemy out of North Africa so that Allied shipping might freely use the Mediterranean and avoid the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope."

"In the dark days and darker nights when England stood alone—and most men save Englishmen despaired of England's life—he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."

"Perhaps if the British people could speak, they would ask for peace. But since the official voice of England asks not for peace but for destruction, it is destruction we must provide."

"I know I speak for all Americans, your fellow citizens, in extending warmest congratulations and affectionate best wishes on your 90th birthday. As you celebrate this milestone in a full and eventful life we remember with gratitude, and future generations will continue to do so, your magnificent eloquence, your unfailing courage and your great service to the cause of freedom and human dignity."

"Unlike modern military operations, whose names are chosen for their public relations value, operations in World War II were christened on the governing principle that the name should give no hint of the objective. To this, Winston Churchill added a second requirement: operations should not be given boastful or frivolous monikers. As he told Pug Ismay, "Intelligent thought will already supply an unlimited number of well-sounding names that do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called 'BUNNYHUG' or 'BALLYHOO'."

"He never over-claimed his part in 1940. Disaster had united rather than disrupted the people of Britain as he knew it would. Although as a nation we were alone, as individuals we were all in it together. He felt our temper exactly... But it was not to his eloquence, or even to his humour, alone that we responded; disaster had struck the scales from our eyes, and suddenly we saw the towering courage that had been Churchill's all his life. We all knew, in that instinctive way that tells true from false, that here was a man who would stand to the last; and in this confidence we could stand with him."

"I now put Churchill, with all his idiosyncrasies, his indulgences, his occasional childishness, but also his genius, his tenacity and his persistent ability, right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful, to be larger than life, as the greatest human being ever to occupy 10 Downing Street."

"To the occupied nations in Europe he was already the living symbol of resistance and hope. Only if Britain was victorious could they regain their freedom, and they felt that if anyone could bring about that victory, it was Churchill. Travelling in Scandinavia and the Low Countries after the war, this was the sort of thing that I heard on all sides: "You in England had no idea what Churchill meant to us. We used to sit in dark cellars with the wireless turned on as low as possible, and while one of our number patrolling the streets would keep a look out for the Gestapo, we would strain our ears to catch his every word. His voice was the only ray of light in an otherwise completely dark and hopeless world.""

"[T]he upsurge of the national spirit was largely his own creation. The great qualities of the British race had seemed almost dormant until he had aroused them. The people then saw themselves as he portrayed them. They put their trust in him. They were ready to do anything that he asked, make any sacrifice that he demanded, and follow wherever he led."

"In Winston Churchill we have a man capable of keeping up the courage of the people. Thank God for that. I know no one else amongst our political leaders who can do it."

"I keep thinking of Winston Churchill down at Westerham, full of patriotism and ideas for saving the Empire. A man who knows that you must act to win. You cannot remain supine and allow yourself to be hit indefinitely. Winston must be chafing at the inaction. I keep thinking of him walking up and down the room."

"He ought to be the Minister of Supply if we are in for a crisis. His energy and fiery brain seem unimpaired with age. He is certainly not dismayed by our difficulties. He says that our rulers are now beginning to get frightened... He said that sometimes he couldn't sleep at night thinking of our dangers, how all this wonderful Empire which had been built up so slowly and so steadily might all be dissipated in a minute. He was just the stuff required in an emergency. The thing is to say when the emergency has arrived."

"Finally, a word about British objectives. They were, as Churchill defined them, much simpler: to survive at all costs, even if this meant relinquishing leadership of the Anglo-American coalition to Washington, even if it meant weakening the British empire, even if it also meant collaborating with the Soviet Union, a regime the younger Churchill had hoped, in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution, to crush. The British would attempt to influence the Americans as much as possible—they aspired to the role of Greeks, tutoring the new Romans—but under no circumstances would they get at odds with the Americans. Stalin's expectation of an independent Britain, capable of resisting the United States and even going to war with it, would have seemed strange indeed to those who actually shaped British wartime and postwar grand strategy."

"Unfortunately, as he quickly discovered, the governor had fallen prey to the hazard of “Churchillian Drift,” attributing an aphorism of unknown origin to Winston Churchill."

"Winston Churchill famously claimed that of all human qualities, courage was the most esteemed, because it guaranteed all others."

"As early as 1919, Churchill, then a cabinet minister in Lloyd George's government, foresaw the potential for German-Soviet collaboration."

"[Churchill] said, "You were very rude to me, you know." I told him, "Yes, but you were rude too." Then, with just a hint of a smile, he looked up and said blandly, "Yes, but I am a great man." There was no answer to that. He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right."

"He would often go into no-man's-land. It was a nerve-wracking experience to go with him. He would call out in his loud, gruff voice—far too loud it seemed to us—"You go that way, I will go this... Come here, I have found a gap in the German wire. Come over here at once!" He was like a baby elephant out in no-man's-land at night. He never fell when a shell went off; he never ducked when a bullet went past with its loud crack. He used to say, after watching me duck: "It's no damn use ducking; the bullet has gone a long way past you by now.""

"I have got a good recollection of Mr. Churchill when he was in the Colonial Office and somehow or other since then I have held the opinion that I can always rely on his sympathy and goodwill."

"His vitality, his brainpower, his endurance, his wit, his eloquence, his industry, his application were superabundant, superhuman. The first and last impression left by the Colosseum concerns its size. So with Churchill: the man was huge. Then, also, for the bulk of the British adult population, the moment which must stand out most proudly in their collective memory was 1940. More deliberately than at any other time in its history the nation united in a good cause... That was their finest hour. Churchill was the prime organiser, the voice, the symbol and the historian of those great days... His precise virtue then was that he represented his countrymen in that crisis better than at any other moment in his career. He exemplified, in word and deed – more, in every inflection and gesture – the untiring, resplendent courage which the hour demanded... Rarely were the needs of a nation and the chief quality of its leader better matched than in 1940. Nothing can ever take that from him. No one in his senses will ever try."

"An inspirational leader, he seemed to typify Britain's courage and perseverance in adversity and its conservatism in success... He was a great war leader and he is a great man."

"A later call on President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, a guest at the White House, was no more than an informal chat. It had no military significance, but it was the first time I ever had a personal talk with either of these two men. Tobruk, in the African desert, had just fallen to the Germans and the whole Allied world was thrown into gloom. These two leaders, however, showed no signs of pessimism. It was gratifying to note that they were thinking of attack and victory, not of defense and defeat."

"All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day. It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been."

"Winston Churchill, who worried about the "pan-Asian malaise" and the looming "shadow of Asiatic solidarity," was himself inordinately fond of the racial slurs that were guaranteed to alienate Asian peoples. His Chinese allies remained "little yellow men" to him, even as the same phrase became an everyday expression in discussions of the Japanese enemy."

"Winston Churchill was unlike anyone Eisenhower had ever met. Though he was a megalomaniac on a par with MacArthur, Churchill elicited a wholly contrary response from Eisenhower, whose aversion to big egos was built on a lifetime of experience with such men. With Churchill, Eisenhower found himself up against a powerful personality- with a penchant for the dramatic gesture- in whom were combined politician, statesman, warlord, and frustrated soldier would much rather have been on the battlefield commanding troops: The latter he had in common with Eisenhower."

"A British soldier once described Winston Spencer Churchill as "a pugnacious looking b[astard]." Others mistakenly regarded Churchill's plump figure as the affirmation of a jolly fat man. One historian has aptly described him as resembling a cherubic, jumbo-size baby with a cigar stuck in its mouth. There are hardly sufficient adjectives in the English language to describe the British wartime prime minister, but a descriptive (and contradictory) few will suffice. Churchill was brilliant, pampered, petulant, romantic, pragmatic, courageous, egotistical, eccentric, possessed of enormous perseverance, opinionated beyond measure, and impossibly demanding; furthermore, he drank too much, suffered from depression (his "black dog"), "waddled rather than walked," and by any criterion ought to have been too old to carry the enormous burden of a prolonged war that threatened Britain's very existence. His mood swings were legion and ranged from tears to jokes- on occasion at one and the same time. Eisenhower tells the tale of meetings during which "I've seen tears run over his chin." During one such encounter Eisenhower had just rejected as impossible something Churchill wanted done in Italy. "He painted a terrible picture if we didn't do it... He said, 'if that should happen I should have to go to His Majesty and lay down the mantle of my high office.' And here were tears running down. But within ten seconds he was telling a joke... The man could use pathos, humor, anecdote, history, anything to get his way." Warts and all, Winston Churchill nevertheless represented the indomitable spirit of a defiant nation under siege. His oratory was stirring, and like FDR's, it galvanized an entire nation. In 1939 when Lord Halifax suggested that Britain make peace with Hitler, Churchill not only declined but instead vowed to rescue "mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened the stained pages of history.""

"He was quite magnificent. The man, and the only man we have, for this hour... As we separated several of us went up and spoke to him. He had risen from the long table and was standing in front of the fireplace. I patted him on the back and said: 'Well done, Prime Minister! You ought to get that cartoon of Low, showing us all rolling up our sleeves and falling in behind you, and frame it and stick it up there'. He answered with a broad grin, 'Yes, that was a good one, wasn't it?'"

"He is much more attractive than the Edens and other gentlemanly wishy-washies. He is a real tough and at the moment talking our language."

"Every day there are four or five columns in the Manchester Guardian consecrated to his honour."