June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 04

IMAGES

In FH 104 Terry Reardon wrote that he was in possession of the same picture of Roosevelt and Churchill that Celwyn Ball had acquired (see FH34). Mr. Ball’s picture promoted Stanfield’s Underwear whilst Mr. Reardon’s promoted “The Hotel Oakwood.” Interestingly I also have this picture. My cherished version states: “Compliments of the Roblin Hotel Manitoba.” Is anyone aware of the provenance of the original drawing, which seems to have been broadly used in Canadian advertising? I would be interested to hear of other versions and how the picture came to be so widely adopted.
RAFAL HEYDEL-MANKOO, OTTAWA, ONT.

BRITAIN HAS CHANGED

Enclosed are press reports of the desecrations by London “protesters” on May Day [also reported in Datelines, page 5. -Ed]. By now, there is little doubt among those of us who know Britain and the British, and who retain a love for both, that a great deal has changed over there. [And not just over there… -Ed.]

I am London born, bred and schooled, and England was where I carried out the first part of my military service. This included the high honor of being part of the Grenadiers’ “Sovereign’s Escort” in George VI s coronation procession. But I began feeling the change a long time ago. More recently, last year, when my wife and I one evening walked to our St. James’s Club from a Shafesbury Avenue theatre through a milling, unruly crowd, we both felt a distinct air of menace, and were relieved to enter the safe confines of the Club.

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I know the majority of the British are entirely stable minded and were as indignant and sickened as I over what is reported. I feel sure they would share with me a feeling of disappointment and certain regret, if not anger, that “London’s finest,” the Bobbies, were actually ordered to let these extremists do their worst.
WILLIAM R. DALES, SANTA FE, NM

LETTER TO THE EDITOR,

US News & World Report

Sir,
On behalf of The Churchill Center, I wish to thank you for Sir John Keegan’s recognition of Sir Winston Churchill’s achievements. Sir John’s observation that Churchill “believed in liberty, the rule of law, and the rights of the individual” has been noted by other esteemed historians. Sir Arthur Bryant tells how Parliament entrusted Churchill with a virtual wartime dictatorship, but the man who called himself “a child of the House of Commons” never forgot his fathers admonition to “trust the people.” In Bryant’s words, “Perhaps the greatest of all Churchill’s claims to the gratitude of his country is that, though he had the power to be a dictator in the day-by-day conduct of the war, he refused to be one.”

Lord Acton’s warning about the corrupting influence of power clearly did not apply to the last hero of the twentieth century.
JOHN G. PLUMPTON, PRESIDENT
THE CHURCHILL CENTER, WASHINGTON