Churchill and History

Recovery and careful reform fostered prosperity at home and the Empire abroad, “based upon Government by consent, and the voluntary association of autonomous states under the Crown,” Churchill writes. “At the death of Queen Victoria it might well have been believed that the problems of past centuries were far on the high-road to gradual solution”

From Cromwell’s example, Churchill learned the inefficacy of appeasement when dealing with despotism. Cromwell also reified the beauty and fragility of free government: Should one adopt a wrong policy or allow civil war and division to rule the day, a Cromwellian demagogue may be the necessary—and simultaneously evil—solution.

On the Mayflower, 1620: “In the presence of God, and one of another, [we] covenant and combine ourselves…for our better ordering and preservation…”

The most tremendous monuments or prodigies of engineering crumble under the hand of Time. But words spoken two or three thousand years ago remain with us now, not as mere relics of the past, but, leaping across the gulf of ages they light the world for us today. In this article, Lewis E. Lehrman explains how Churchill and Lincoln were both students of history and were both determined to act historically.

"Churchill welcomed me with old-fashioned Victorian courtesy, bade me sit down, and we at once embarked on history, paying me the compliment of taking me for the professional, himself the amateur."

President Lincoln and Prime Minister Churchill found themselves challenged by wars of national survival. Even though their early lives appear to be different, there are similar aspects in their educational preparation.