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Speaking of Britain and its Empire in 1941, Winston Churchill said: “We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.”1 A few weeks earlier he had advised the boys at Harrow School: “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. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”2 The image he conveyed is one of hardiness and personal toughness, and it galvanized his countrymen. Yet we rarely give thought to where he found the hardiness and resilience he conveyed.

"Civilisation will not last, freedom will not survive, peace will not be kept, unless a very large majority of mankind unite together to defend them and show themselves possessed of a constabulary power before which barbaric and atavistic forces will stand in awe."

His daily routine involved two principles, the first learned from Napoleon: strength of force in the most crucial places. The second principle was economy of effort.

Churchill was a devotee of Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) the English poet, short-story writer and novelist, who in 1907 won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kipling’s majestic novels of the old Empire struck a romantic chord in the young Winston. Later they studded his books and speeches.

“The splitting up of the campaign in the Mediterranean into two operations, neither of which can do anything decisive, is, in my humble and respectful opinion, the first major strategic and political error for which we two have to be responsible.” - Churchill to Roosevelt

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project is privileged to receive photos and memorabilia that add to our Churchill collection. Laura Crosby of Summerville, South Carolina, sent us the historic photos shown here, from the collection of her parents, Eugene and Kathleen Sloan. They round out our picture of Churchill’s June 1942 visit to America, and his first encounter with U.S. troops at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

Like Thucydides, Churchill wrote to teach. To convey what should be done, how it should be done, and why it should be done is the essence of political leadership. War is a violent teacher. Churchill strove always to be a good student and to pass on what he learned.

Issues of peace and war: Dewey protested Herbert Hoover’s “peripheral” defense strategy in 1950, only to fall back on it, to Churchill’s displeasure, two years later.

In a previously unpublished article, Winston S. Churchill contrasts the tenets of Socialism with the values of free societies.

“Politics are absolutely engrossing to you…and now you have painting for leisure and polo for excitement and danger.” —Clementine Churchill to WSC, 1921

Late in 1945, Winston Churchill had the splendid and characteristically generous idea of commemorating his 1940-45 Coalition Government—which had only broken up six months previously—by striking a large bronze medallion. In early 1946 he presented one to every member of that government, as well as to others. In all, there were 136 of these magnificent, four-inch diameter objects, each weighing 8.7 ounces. They were cast at Churchill’s own expense by the foremost manufacturer of such things, Spink & Son, a company founded in 1666.

As the postwar world began to take shape, Churchill, as in the 1930s, predicted danger ahead. Initially, his cries fell on deaf ears. Out of power, he watched as the United States’ and his country’s foreign policy drifted towards what he perceived as another disaster—communism’s ascendancy. Then a letter arrived from President Harry Truman, inviting him to speak at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri in March 1946. It was an opportunity for Churchill to shape history once again. Though what came to be known as his “Iron Curtain Speech” received mixed reactions at the time, today, scholars recognize that it laid the foundation of public opinion needed for the West to pursue a vigorous challenge to Soviet hegemony.