IMMORTAL WORDS
Received FH 112 and wanted to say how much I like the Sept 11th feature: just the tonic!
ROBERT COURTS, WEST MIDLANDS, ENGLAND

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"Our Qualities and Deeds Must Burn and Glow" in Finest Hour 112 was beautiful.
ROBERT O. DISQUE, MILFORD, CONN.

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I read your stirring essay in FH 112 and must thank you for it. Your scholarship is impeccable and you have assembled excellent passages from Churchill. I too had thought of his "You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory," from The Gathering Storm. Just as Orwell and Bernard Levin have criticized those who say "their system is no worse than ours, we oppress people just as they do," you point out that there is a pretty big divide between "us" and "them." Really, a most valuable article, written with Churchillian declamation.
MORTIMER CHAMBERS,
PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF HISTORY
UCLA, LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

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Great minds think alike! I have been doing a great deal of broadcasting regarding September 11th (my first doctorate is in the international law of guerrilla warfare) and I, also, have been using the 14 July 1941 quotation, "You do your worst, and we will do our best."
PROFESSOR KEITH SUTER, SYDNEY, AUS.

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You did a magnificent job of selecting so very many of the exactly right quotes from Sir Winston to guide his strength and wisdom to the minds of today's English-Speaking Peoples. Surely his words clarify the attitude, courage and resolve needed by Americans and others, as was true those decades ago. Wouldst but everyone in the country and the world might hear them, or at least read them.
JOHN C. HASSETT, BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF.

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Your construct of paralleling current events with Churchill's mastery of language and leadership is nicely and forcefully done: a fine message, finely drawn. In the end, you make the words of Churchill fit a kaleidoscope of evolving (devolving?) situations, and you do it very well. When this is published I would reprint it and make sure it went to every foundation, potential donor and funding source under President Plumpton's signature. People who appreciate the message and the word should be afforded the clear opportunity to show it‹long or short term, large or small, restricted or open-ended.
JIM LANE, SEATTLE, WASH.

Editor's Response:
Thanks for the kind words, I worked very hard on that. A shorter version was published op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A "Special Edition" of FH 112 contains all our September 11th-related articles, including this one, Churchill's speech, letters, the Giuliani and Winston S. Churchill articles, and Jeff Wallin's interview with Juan Williams of Fox News. It is available free to any Churchill Center Associate, supporter of The Churchill Center Heritage Fund, or for any donation readers care to make. Checks may be in local currency to The Churchill Center (USA), ICS (UK) or ICS (Canada).- Ed.

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CHURCHILL AND THE MONARCHY
In the abstract of "Churchill and the Monarchy" by David Cannadine (FH 111: 14), he states that after the abdication of Edward VIII, Churchill "remained loyal to the Duke of Windsor as far as he could without prejudicing his greater loyalty to the Crown." Professor Cannadine must know more than I do about Churchill's knowledge of the Duke's admiration for Nazism. But the fact that Churchill summoned the Duke back from Spain under a veiled threat of court martial suggests displeasure, and the Duke's subsequent banishment to the Bahamas reinforces that suggestion.
JOSEPH R. ABRAHAMSON M.D. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )


"Loyal" is not the best word I think the point Cannadine makes is that Churchill would not prejudice loyalty to the Crown in his relations with the Duke. WSC was certainly concerned over the Duke's apparent sentiments; and also over the Duke's grim performance as Governor of the Bahamas. See also "The Unforgivable David Windsor" in "Datelines," page 7.Ed.

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VANISHING NATIONAL ANTHEMS
Your excellent piece on Vanished Anthems in FH 111 roused memories of an earlier Ontario culture at school. 9AM: call to order, little boys and girls in early forms of manufactured or home-made clothing, standing beside little desks with lift-tops and inkwells (the girl in front of me had pigtails which I experimented with, trying to tip them into the inkwell). 9:05: One verse of "God Save the King" followed by as many verses of "Maple Leaf Forever" as were written on the "rolly-blind" pulled down over the chalk board. Sometime in the 1930s, "O Canada" was introduced and "The Maple Leaf" was retired, occasionally to be heard but always more out of date. "O Canada" (or as my Irish background would have it "O'Canada") was awkwardly worded and was later rewritten to reflect French Canada. In one of these interim periods another verse of "God Save the Queen" was written to make one anthem do for us:

Our loved Dominion bless,
With peace and happiness,
From shore to shore;
God let our Empire be,
United loyal and free,
True to herself and Thee,
For evermore.
JOHN SIBBALD, JACKSON'S POINT, ONT.

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Enjoyed your National Anthems article and so will my Canadian cousins, who know only two verses of "O Canada." Surely no one living ever heard of "Roger Young" and no one (possibly not even yourself because you are too young) knows all the words except for yours truly!
GERALD LECHTER, FORT LEE, N.J.

Editors Response:
For the record, Gerald...

O they've got no time for glory in the infantry,
And they've got no use for praises loudly sung,
But in every soldier's heart in all the infantry,
Shines the name, shines the name of Roger Young.

chorus:
Shines the name...Roger Young,
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
Yes in every soldier's heart in all the infantry,
Lives the story of Private Roger Young.

Caught in ambush lay a company of riflemen
Hand grenads against machine guns in the gloom,
Fought in ambush till this one of twenty riflemen
Volunteered, volunteered to meet his doom.
chorus: Volunteered...etc.

It was he who drew the fire of the enemy,
That a company of men might live to fight,
And before the deadly fire of the infantry,
Stood the man, stood the man we hail tonight
chorus: Stood the man....etc.

On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons
Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell
That beneath the silent coral of the Solmons,
Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well
chorus: Sleeps a man....etc. ‹Ed.

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DUTCH PRECEDENT
Though I count myself a loyal subject of the Queen and carry British and Canadian passports, Linda Colley is wrong: "God Save the King/Queen" was preceded by more than a century by the Dutch "Wilhemus" song. The "Wilhemus" was adopted in the 1580s as the Dutch fought their way out of the Spanish Hapsburg empire. Probably written by Philip Marnix (1540-98), it became a little more familiar in England after the Dutch Statholder, William III, invaded England in 1688 and was crowned King the next year. William reigned until 1702 and fought with Churchill's ancestor, John Duke of Marlborough, since the War of Spanish Succession, in which the Duke won his glory, was just beginning.
JOHN F. BOSHER, OTTAWA, ONT.

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ALL PRAISE GRATEFULLY RECEIVED
I bumped into Hugh Segal ("Churchill as a Moderate," Churchill Proceedings 1996-1997) today and he pulled me aside to tell me how much he enjoys FH. From the articles to the recipes, he thinks it's a bang-up job. He was reading it on a plane and a seatmate asked about it and he told him it was a secret and he wouldn't tell him how to get one. Of course, I shot him on the spot! I told Hugh I would share his plaudits, so consider it done.
RANDY BARBER, PRESIDENT, ICS CANADA