June 26, 2013

AROUND AND ABOUT: FINEST HOUR 132, AUTUMN 2006

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Ignacio Fernandez Bargues reminds us of an inappropriate response to the announcement by London mayor Ken Livingstone, that he has not flushed the loo in fifteen months: “When Ministers of the Crown speak like this on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the Prime Minister and his friends have no need to wonder why they are getting increasingly into bad odour. I had even asked myself, when meditating upon these points whether you, Mr. Speaker, would admit the word Lousy’ as a Parliamentary expression in referring to the Administration, provided, of course, it was not intended in a contemptuous sense but purely as one of factual narration.” (WSC’s remark came when the Minister of Fuel and Power in the postwar Labour Government, Hugh Gaitskell, later Clement Attlee’s successor as leader of the Labour Party, advocated saving energy by taking fewer baths: “Personally, I have never had a great many baths myself, and I can assure those who are in the habit of having a great many that it does not make a great difference to their health if they have less.” This was too much for Churchill, a renowned bather. See WSC, Europe Unite (London: Cassell, 1950, 179.)

Those who despair that the young are insulated from Churchill’s wisdom should take heart from a recent issue of The Dig, a free alternative Boston weekly aimed at the twenty-something crowd. It’s the type of paper that features ads for escort services, help wanted ads for bike messengers and body piercers and area nightlife. In a serious front piece, Dig editor Joe Keohane urged the new crop of Boston-area college graduates (among whom we include the editor’s and executive editor’s son) to go forth and fight the good fight, citing New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.’s commencement speech to SUNY New Paltz, New York. Keohane added: “He [Sulzberger] also quoted a mean, terse 1941 commencement [sic] speech by Churchill: ‘Never give in,
never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing great or small, large or petty; never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.'” Sound advice to those of any age. —Joe Hern 

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To the Editor of Time: In 1999, Time named Albert Einstein as Person of the Century. [See “Time‘s Long March to Person of the
Century, FH 105:21, Winter 1999-2000. —Ed.] A number of us thought the honor should have gone to Winston Churchill, Time’s “Man of the Half Century.” We were disappointed that you used the opportunity to malign Churchill, citing, among other perceived shortcomings, a comment he made about Gandhi.

A recent discovery adds a significant wrinkle to this debate. One of the items in Sotheby’s recent catalogue of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection, auctioned June 30th, was a single-page sheet written by King in the early 1960s, in which he lists the “Ten Greatest Men of the Century” (215). King lists Churchill as his Man of the Century, followed by FDR, John F. Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Gandhi, Salk, Einstein, Schweitzer, Truman, M. Luther King (most likely his father), and Dag Hammarskjold. King certainly was a great student and follower of Gandhi, but nonetheless considered Churchill Man of the Century. A wise choice. —Richard D. Batchelder, Jr.