September 27, 2013

AROUND AND ABOUT: FINEST HOUR 102, SPRING 1999

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Noted American columnist David Broder in The Washington Post for May 9th: “The nation and the world are learning what it means for the United States to conduct a war with a weak-kneed Congress and a wobbly president….If Kosovo ends as badly as it might, historians will remember [Arizona Senator John] McCain’s Churchillian warning: ‘If we cannot keep our word to prevail over this inferior power that threatens our interests and our most cherished ideals, then it is unlikely that we will long know a real peace.’ But this is not a Churchillian moment—at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue”….Lord Jenkins, who addressed us in 1994 on “Churchill from across the Aisle” (see 1994-1995 Proceedings), is proposing to add Churchill to his celebrated line of biographies, which includes Gladstone, Attlee, Asquith and Baldwin….Churchill despised atom bomb scientist Nils Bohr, recently released secret papers reveal; WSC thought Bohr’s views of atomic catastrophe alarmist, and simply didn’t like the man….R.I.R: Wing Cdr Ronald Kellett, who commanded Polish airmen of 303 Squadron (highest scoring fighter squadron in Battle of Britain with 113 “kills”) died
aged 89; Captain John Mott, LVO, sub-lieutenant aboard the cruiser Exeter in the historic 1939 battle with the GrafSpee, has died aged 81….12,000 acre Langholm Moor, one of Churchill’s favourite grouse moors, is to be shut down owing to shortage of grouse caused by protected birds of prey—not good news for rural John Bulls….