This review was written in August 2003, edited June 2004.
These are 23 short essays by Winston Churchill
published on a wide variety of subjects. I borrowed the book from Ulick
O’Connor and read the 1949 edition at the end of May 2003. They are a series of
reminiscences and reflections which Churchill had written for newspapers and
periodicals between 1924 and 1931.
Many of the essays deal with aspects of the Great War, and these,
because of Churchill’s intimate involvement on the political side of the war,
are of some interest. However, with his energy, courage, self-confidence and
his prominent political role in Britain during the early part of the twentieth
century, the primary effect of reading Churchill’s reminiscences rests on his
vainglorious opinion of himself, which is conveyed by an element of hyperbole,
although muted by a far from convincing modesty.
In his essays The U-boat War, In the Air, the Battle
of Sydney Street and With the
Grenadiers he blandly tells of his heroic
experiences which must strike the reader at times as showing courage and
recklessness beyond the natural instincts of self-preservation of the ordinary
man. For example, he claims to
have flown hundreds of times during the dangerous pioneer days of the infant
and emerging British air force from 1912 to the end of the War.
The essays are evocative of many aspects of the early
twentieth century. I shall refer briefly to one, The Irish Treaty. Churchill was one of the seven British members of
the Treaty negotiating group. He refers to the leader of the Irish representatives,
Griffith, his knowledge of history, his firmness of character and his high
integrity. ‘An unusual figure - a silent Irishman.’ He confirms that Griffith
was the person who agreed the Treaty when the negotiations were about to break
down, and that it was he alone who took the courageous step to do so.
Michael Collins had ‘elemental qualities and mother
wit’. Churchill found him remarkable. Collins received a measure of sympathy
from Churchill because, being on the military side of the revolution, Collins
found compromise on the Treaty terms more difficult than did Griffith.
Nevertheless, in discussion with Churchill, Collins undertook to defend the
Treaty unless the majority of the Irish people were opposed to it.
Churchill appears to have been very wise in resisting the American pressure on him to force Ireland into the Second War after America had joined in 1941. He obviously was concerned about the potentially deleterious effect of influencing Ireland on this issue, particularly the effect it might have on Irish soldiers involved in the War and the tens of thousands of Irish civilians in Ireland and Britain who were involved in supporting the war effort in so many ways. Churchill must have been aware of the quiet and little known activities whereby Ireland was giving help to Britain. De Valera was totally committed to neutrality on the grounds of the North of Ireland. Would it have been the correct move for us after the US had joined? I suspect that quite a number of the Fine Gael party might have followed James Dillon and agreed to be more active in supporting the Allies. After the war Costello’s attitude to the North mirrored that of Dev’s. It would have been a great step if Costello had done what Lemass did, making contact with the people in the North and adopting a friendlier attitude to its citizens.
Perhaps Churchill’s two most important essays are Shall
We All Commit Suicide and Fifty
Years Hence. In the latter essay Churchill
shows remarkable insight into the threat to the human race and to the planet by
the rapid advances in scientific knowledge and the spectre of advancing war
technology, the adverse effects of which are likely to affect whole populations
rather than the traditional fighting soldier. He may have read Yeats’s Second
Coming!
He states that increasing knowledge, advancing
science and gathering power were not matched by any improvement in human virtue
or wisdom. Modern Man will be capable of the most terrible deeds and his most
modern woman will back him up. We have the power and weapons far outstripping
Man’s intelligence and certainly outstripping his nobility. It might be better
to call a halt to discovery and progress rather than to
be mastered by our own apparatus and the forces which it directs. Without an equal growth of mercy, pity, peace and love,
science herself may destroy all that makes
human life majestic and tolerable.
As St. Raphael said to Adam, do not try to understand
the stars.
In the last paragraph of his Fifty Years Hence, he talks about a race of beings who had mastered
Nature
A state was created whose
citizens lived as long as they chose, enjoyed pleasures and sympathies incomparably wider than our own,
navigated the inter-planetary spaces, could recall the panorama of the past and
foresee the future. But what was the good of all that to them? What did they
know more than we know about the answers to the simple questions which man has
asked since earliest dawn of reason - Why are we here? What is the purpose of life?
Whither are we going? No material progress, even though it takes shapes we
cannot now conceive, or however it may expand the faculties of man, can bring comfort
to his soul. ------ Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate
descendants; forces terrific and devastating will be in their hands; comforts,
activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will
ache, their lives will be barren if they have not a vision above material
things. And with the hopes and powers will come dangers out of all proportion
to the growth of man’s intellect, to the strength of his character or to the
efficacy of his institutions.
Surely a remarkable insight into the future of
humanity as it is evolving to-day! Perhaps the most cogent omission among
his thoughts about humanity and its future is the lack of direct reference to
the profound and disastrous effect the human population explosion is having on
the planet with its limited
and rapidly diminishing capacity to nurture its inhabitants.
In his essay Shall We All Commit Suicide he writes about the terrifying prospects of modern
warfare and its doomsday prospects. And despite the failures of the League of
Nations at his time of writing, ‘deserted by the United States, scorned by
Soviet Russia, flouted by Italy, distrusted equally by France and Germany’, he
believed that safety and salvation could only be found through the League. It
is tragic that, largely because of the hegemony of an arrogant and all-powerful
United States under Bush, the United Nations may also fail in its ideals to
create a better world, a better understanding between nations and a safe
balance between Man and his natural surroundings on which he and the natural
flora and fauna of the planet depend for their livelihood.
In the same essay he throws doubt on the utility of
the democratic system based on universal suffrage, claiming that parliaments in
the democratic countries were inadequate to deal with the problems which dominated
the affairs of modern society. He believed that nations were no longer lead by
their ablest men. One wonders if he was showing a leaning towards fascism at
this time, before the advent of Hitler and when Mussolini was earning
widespread admiration as he achieved order in a chaotic Italy.
In Ireland to-day we can sympathise with Churchill’s
view on democracy as we see successive governments putting the welfare of party
before that of the people, a fact which is starkly evident if one reads the
history of our health services, our appalling planning history, of widespread
corruption in high as well as low places, and our reluctance to adopt badly
needed legal reform, to mention only a few aspects of political policy and
administration in the Republic. We also have personal freedom without a
corresponding sense of responsibility, added to which is the excessive
influence of individuals and minorities. Democracy will only survive if
personal and corporate freedom goes hand in hand with a sense of responsibility
towards society. The period of the Celtic Tiger has seen a sad deterioration in
responsibility even among senior politicians, the professions and in the public
service. We are no longer lead by our ablest men.
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