April 29, 2013

Finest Hour 155, Summer 2012

Page 8

Around and About


Melissa Kay Cox, owner of Aclarus Communications in Denton, Texas, was asked by the Denton Record-Chronicle to name four guests for her fantasy dinner party (http://xrl.us/bm6fcp). Cox listed Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, Katharine Hepburn and Mae West. That would be quite a party. WSC loved conversing with talented, attractive, accomplished women, and with these he almost certainly would not dominate the conversation.

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Robert Pilpel wrote of George Orwell’s accolade to Churchill in FH 142. Now David Freeman sends us another Orwellism, from the author’s 1941 essay, “The Art of donald Mcgill” (Oxford Book of phorisms):”…high sentiments always win in the end, leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”

William John Shepherd writes of “a little irony that you might find interesting. At Catholic University of America where i work we have the papers of the late historian Catherine Ann Cline. Her major work was a biography of E. D. Morel, who ran against Churchill in dundee. See the archival compiling work i did for the Cline Papers at http://xrl.us/bm5zq8.” Mr. Shepherd also reminded us that the Communist Willie Gallacher (MP for west Fife, 1935-50) once ran against Churchill in dundee. Churchill said, “Mr. gallacher is only Mr. Morel with the courage of his convictions, and Trotsky is only Mr. Gallacher with the power to murder those whom he cannot convince.” Congressman Rob Woodall (R., ga.) is “a big fan of Winston Churchill,” but “i do not have Churchill aspirations.” Or speechwriting aspirations either, it would seem.

Lawrenceville Channel 11 (http://xrl.us/bm9pp5) calls woodall “generations removed” from Churchill’s time “when political speech often seemed a bit dense and wordy by today’s standards.” Then they asked him to rewrite Churchill’s line from the 1946 “iron Curtain” speech at Fulton. Mr.woodall, neither dense nor wordy, tackled his assignment with aplomb. Churchill had said “we all know the frightful disturbance in which the ordinary family is plunged when the curse of war swoops down upon the bread-winner and those for whom he works and contrives.”

Woodall offered: “we have working families here in the Seventh district.And we do want to protect our working families from the perils of war.”

It doesn’t exactly tug at your heartstrings, but reminds us of Roosevelt’s crack to Churchill about his “blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat” speech: “i wonder what the course of history would have been if in May 1940 you had been able to offer the british people only ‘blood, work, eye water, and face water,’ which i understand is the best basic English can do with five famous words.”

John Plumpton wonders how many of today’s students would get the humor: german Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives at Passport Control at the Paris airport. “Nationality?” asks the immigration officer. “german,” she replies. “Occupation?” “Noโ€”just here for a few days.”

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