Surely for every Chamberlain there should be a Churchill

Churchill Tells Chamberlain To Get Real In Historic Inscribed Rare Book

In August, 1938, as Nazi  aggression against the Sudetenland threatened war, Winston Churchill  presented Britain's Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, with ... a sharply inscribed ... copy of the fourth volume of his Marlborough. His Life and Times :

"Perhaps you may like to take refuge in the Eighteenth Century." 

The inscription captures Churchill's sardonic, mordant wit and rings with poignant irony, written as the world stood on the brink of "sinking into a new Dark Age," with Chamberlain desperately seeking peace at any price and Churchill amongst a few lone voices for confrontation before Hitler became further emboldened against his neighbors and thence the entire Continent.

 

"My good friends, for the second time in our history a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time" (Chamberlain, announcing the agreement).

 

I could think of nothing but Chamberlain when I saw this headline a bit ago:

 

KERRY: US WANTS NO CONFRONTATION WITH RUSSIA

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is not looking for a confrontation with Russia, where admitted NSA leaker Edward Snowden is believed to be hiding....

Kerry said, "I would simply appeal for calm and reasonableness. We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is 'a fugitive from justice.' "

 

As today we stand yet again on the brink of "sinking into a new dark age," I would rather clean out my refrigerator than follow the news anymore today.  Somebody call me when our Churchill arrives.

 

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

Churchill's era -- in England -- produced some of history's most masterly writers (and speakers) of insults. Oscar Wilde and GB Shaw are perhaps the best-known, but from late-Victorian days until well into the last century, English writing abounds in wonderfully subtle -- and clever -- aspersions. The one Churchill directed at Chamberlain is a prize example. Here he is speaking about Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald: "I have waited fifty years to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury bench" and "He has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought." And PM Stanley Baldwin: "He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened." And PM Clement Attlee (when told Attlee was a modest man): "Absolutely true -- but then he does have a lot to be modest about." As for calling you "when our Churchill arrives," I estimate that Churchills arrive only about once a century. We may have wait another 87 years.