Bonus:
"Lead out the pageant: sad and slow, As fits an universal woe, Let the long, long procession go, And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low."
Sixty Years Since the Death of Churchill
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Winston Churchill was one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century. I also think Ronald Reagan was an equally great leader.
A great leader indeed. It would have been good to see what sort of leader WC was if he led during peacetime. I guess God puts the right people in the right places for the right job.
[…] Political Analysis, Punditry, and News:Sixty Years Since the Death of Churchill – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American […]
He was a truly inspirational war leader; but a pretty incompetent strategist. Witness Gallipoli, sending the PoWales to Singapore, stripping North African defenses in a hair-brained attempt to defend Greece, and quite number of other examples.
He was mixed. For example he had the hare brained idea of using an ice berg as an unsinkable carrier. On the other hand he was the chief proponent of the mulberries, the artificial harbors that proved so essential in the Normandy campaign. He was against a 1943 invasion of France and I think he was right to do so as we simply weren’t ready. He recognized, long before the Americans, that Stalin was going to be the major threat after Hitler was defeated. His mistakes tended to be out of a desire not to have replicated the massive casualties that the British sustained on the Western Front in World War I. Thus he looked favorably on illusions like invading Italy, and meaningless endeavors in the Balkans or his fantasy that resistance in Occupied Europe could set the Continent ablaze. Short cuts to victory were ever his futile dream.
Quite right that he was mixed. However, history has shown that the timid, while rarely making large mistakes, also have few great successes. He was probably the last real Victorian in his attitude to colonization though his negative comments about colonial independence were borne out in too many instances. One thing is certain; we shall not see his like again soon in his home country, if ever.