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Winston Churchill’s Moral and Philosophical Guides
- By JUSTIN D LYONS
- | November 8, 2021
- Category: Explore Understanding Churchill
Churchill never attended university. In terms of the higher realms of thought, we must regard him as largely self-educated—and his greatest early strides toward a moral philosophy took place in an unusual location. Churchill’s first army posting was in Bangalore, India in 1896. The garrison was there to maintain order, and the soldiers mostly slept or relaxed through the very hot days, turning out in the evenings for the polo matches. As he recounts in My Early Life, Churchill made good use of this time. Recognizing that he had many gaps in his education, he sent home for books.
“What were Ethics?”
Eagerly the young officer consumed classic works of history, philosophy, and politics. He puzzled about Socrates and read Gibbon, Macaulay, Schopenhauer, Malthus, Darwin, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, for hours every day.1 One of these perceived gaps in his education was in moral and ethical instruction. Before he left England, a friend had told him Christ’s gospel was the last word in Ethics.
This sounded good, but what were Ethics? They had never been mentioned to me at Harrow or Sandhurst. Judging from the context I thought they must mean “the public school spirit,” “playing the game,” “esprit de corps,” “honourable behavior,” “patriotism,” and the like. Then someone told me that Ethics were concerned not merely with the things you ought to do, but with why you ought to do them, and that there were whole books written on the subject.2
Yet, as with the other subjects, there was no professional tutoring or concise outline of the topic to be obtained within his vicinity. Nor, obviously, had his previous education offered much instruction concerning the relationship between religious doctrine and correct action.
On Religion…
But Bangalore also offered much time for talk, not all of it of a military nature. It was in the officer’s mess of the 4th Hussars that Churchill was first exposed to sustained speculation on religious belief and moral action:
In the regiment we sometimes used to argue questions like “Whether we should live again in another world after this was over?” “Whether we have ever lived before?” “Whether we remember and meet each other after Death, or merely start again like the Buddhists?” “Whether some high intelligence is looking after the world or whether things are just drifting on anyhow?” There was general agreement that if you tried your best to live an honourable life and did your duty and were faithful to friends and not unkind to the weak and poor, it did not matter much what you believed or disbelieved. All would come out right. This is what would nowadays I suppose be called “The Religion of Healthy-Mindedness.”3
Christianity was defended by some of the senior officers, but on utilitarian grounds rather than doctrinal truth. It possessed a “disciplinary value, especially when presented through the Church of England. It made people want to be respectable, to keep up appearances, and so saved lots of scandals.” Churchill’s description indicates that imperial concerns were prominent. Different religions and forms of worship were seen as valuable insofar as they accomplished these ends. But “too much religion of any kind” was harmful: “Among the natives especially, fanaticism was highly dangerous and roused them to murder, mutiny, or rebellion.” One should note that in these passages Churchill is reporting, not speaking for himself: “Such is, I think, a fair gauging of the climate of opinion in which I dwelt.”4
…And religious doubt
Apparently, he did not take these opinions as sufficiently established, though they obviously spurred his investigating spirit. “I now began to read a number of books which challenged the whole religious education I had received at Harrow.” His religious opinions were heavily influenced by William Lecky’s The Rise and Influence of Rationalism and History of European Morals. These established in his mind a “predominantly secular view.” So did Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man, which took a dim view of religion. Lacking any counterpoint, he “passed through a violent and aggressive anti-religious phase which, had it lasted, might easily have made me a nuisance.”5
Churchill did pass through this anti-religious phase into easy-going tolerance, seemingly taking as his model the British army, composed of Roman Catholics and Protestants: “Religious toleration in the British army had spread until it overlapped the regions of indifference. No one was ever hampered or prejudiced on account of his religion.”6 This spirit of tolerance for different religious beliefs Churchill carried forward into later life, though he showed a marked preference for Christianity as the faith most conducive to a healthy society, as his many references to Christian civilization attest.
The Christian ethic
Churchill acted within a Christian cultural, religious, and political context, but he was not a church-goer. “I am not a pillar of the church but a buttress—I support it from the outside,” he remarked.7 He alluded to the King James Bible, its terms and phrases, more than any other book.8 For him it was the foundational text of Western civilization, a source of profound phrases that evoked grand feelings and high purpose, rather than the Word of God.
Churchill acknowledged Christ as a great moral teacher, but did not accept his divinity. Nor was His name readily upon Churchill’s lips. Of his five million words of speeches, he never said the word “Jesus” and said “Christ” only once, not acknowledging him as Savior.9 Though he admired Christ’s ethical teaching, he believed that it was not very serviceable for the demands of politics or war:
The Sermon on the Mount is the last word in Christian ethics. Everyone respects the Quakers. Still, it is not on these terms that Ministers assume their responsibilities of guiding states. Their duty is first so to deal with other nations as to avoid strife and war and to eschew aggression in all its forms, whether for nationalistic or ideological objects. But the safety of the State, the lives and freedom of their own fellow country-men, to whom they owe their position, make it right and imperative in the last resort, or when a final and definite conviction has been reached, that the use of force should not be excluded.10
One may question whether Quaker pacifism represents the only possible implication of the Sermon on the Mount. But it is clear that, in Churchill’s understanding, pacifism was not a position compatible with responsible statesmanship.
Churchill’s moral code
So where can we look to determine the content of Churchill’s moral code? One could do worse than to begin by looking to a moral he gave to his own work. The Second World War is more than a historical narrative. His inclusion of a moral indicates that it is meant to teach about morally correct and prudent action in peace and war:
In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will11
Churchill’s moral formulation is hardly as far-reaching as the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3-16), though it has been suggested that he was inspired by those verses.12 Yet, it surely reaches further than it might first appear. While the first two clauses may be employed regardless of moral rectitude, they are caught up and elevated by the following clauses—in the context of which they must be read. Thus, the entire moral implies standing boldly in defense of right against injustice and aggression and so calls for both moral knowledge and the moral courage to act on that knowledge—the very foundation of Churchill’s leadership in the Second World War. Before anyone else of prominence, Churchill recognized the evils of Nazism. Braving sustained and near universal disapproval, he advocated for measures that would restrain them.
War and Moral Prudence
Churchill’s objection to the Sermon on the Mount as a guide for war and politics was that it was insufficiently flexible. In his reading, it demands only peaceful approaches and thus cannot fulfill the duties of statesmanship. The context of his remarks is a chapter in his war memoirs, “The Tragedy of Munich,” on Chamberlain’s misguided approach to Hitler. The surrounding account makes clear the nature of the tragedy: Chamberlain’s failure to stand by Czechoslovakia not only emboldened Hitler. It quelled his critics among the German military chiefs, and ended internal doubt and obstruction of his grim designs. “It may be well here to set down some principles of morals and action which may be a guide in the future,” Churchill writes. “No case of this kind can be judged apart from its circumstances.”13
This last comment echoes the understanding of virtuous action offered by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics. F.E. Smith, a conservative politician and one of Churchill’s closest friends, related a story in which Churchill was given a copy of Aristotle’s Ethics. Churchill is reported to have said that he thought it very good, adding “But it is extraordinary how much of it I had already thought out for myself.”14
Aristotle describes moral action as a mean between deficiency and excess. A person who flees all danger acts deficiently and is a coward. A person who fears nothing, rushing to meet any danger, acts excessively with respect to courage and is rash. True courage exists in the middle of this scale. It is the mean between the two extremes. All the ethical virtues are such a mean, habitually chosen, between vices.
Judgement in statesmanship
But there are other requirements for an action to be virtuous: Each action must also be done in the right way and at the right time, so there is only one way to act virtuously in each circumstance. Herein lies the significance of so defining virtue. One cannot lay down universal rules for action or universal standards for virtue because situations of moral action cannot be judged beforehand. You need the prudent leader to judge; the sensible leader will know what is right. Ethical training is the formation of the right character in the prudent leader, so that he may make those judgments properly.
In “The Tragedy of Munich,” Churchill applies these concepts to politics and war:
Those who are prone by temperament and character to seek sharp and clear-cut solutions of difficult and obscure problems, who are ready to fight whenever some challenge comes from a foreign Power, have not always been right. On the other hand, those whose inclination is to bow their heads, to seek patiently and faithfully for peaceful compromise, are not always wrong.15
For Churchill, the difficulty with either approach occurs when a course is followed regardless of the particulars of the situation.
His approach is nicely illustrated by a conversation with President Harry Truman in 1946. Truman explained to Churchill that the Presidential Seal of the United States had just been redesigned, turning the eagle’s head to look at the olive branch of peace rather than the arrows of war. Churchill responded: “Why not put the eagle’s neck on a swivel so that it could turn to the right or left as the occasion presented itself?”16
The virtue of prudence
According to Aristotle, prudence is the most important virtue for a political leader. It may be defined as the pursuit of the good in the light of the particular. The prudent leader knows what is good to do, but also takes into account the circumstances in which it must be done. Chamberlain, Churchill said, misjudged Hitler and the European situation. Thus his rejection of the prudent and flexible use of force was wrong.
The virtue of prudence requires some rehabilitation these days. Aristotle tells us that it forms a bridge between the intellectual and moral virtues. The prudent statesman must know the moral good and how to achieve it. But a rival version of prudence is connected, not to moral good, but merely to success, to achieving one’s ends. This destroys prudence as a moral virtue in any meaningful sense. For Churchill, as for Aristotle, truly prudent action was in service of a moral cause. The force he advocated was not for the sake of domination or advantage, but to maintain freedom and peace.
Nor is Churchill’s prudence one that counts physical survival as the ultimate good. As he repeatedly reminded the British people, some causes are worth fighting for. Whatever the chances of success, some principles are worth dying for:
Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.17
Endnotes
1 Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (1930, reprinted, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 112.
2 Ibid., 109.
3 Ibid., 114.
4 Ibid., 114-15. See also the author’s preface: “I have tried, in each quarter-century in which this tale lies, to show the point of view appropriate to my years, whether as a child, a schoolboy, a cadet, a subaltern, a war-correspondent or a youthful politician. If these opinions conflict with those now generally accepted, they must be taken merely as representing a phase in my early life…”
5 Ibid., 115.
6 Ibid., 114.
7 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945-1965 (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College Press, 2013), 1160.
8 Darrell Holley, Churchill’s Literary Allusions (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 1987), 7.
9 Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Viking, 2018), 43.
10 Winston S. Churchill, The Gathering Storm (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 287.
11 These words stand in the opening pages of each volume of Churchill’s war memoirs under the heading: “Moral of the Work.”
12 Andrew Roberts, “Winston Churchill and Religion: A Comfortable Relationship with the Almighty” Finest Hour 163 (Summer 2014), 58.
13 WSC, The Gathering Storm, 287.
14 Kirk Emmert, “Churchill on Civilizing Empire” in Harry Jaffa, ed., Statesmanship: Essays in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), 63.
15 WSC, The Gathering Storm, 287.
16 Recollection of presidential aide Clark Clifford, in Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill by Himself (New York: Rosetta, 2016), 122.
17 “Arm Yourselves and Be Ye Men of Valour,” broadcast of 19 May 1940 in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974), VI: 6223. See also “The Biblical Churchill: ‘Be Ye Men of Valour.”
The author
Justin D. Lyons, Associate Professor of Political Science at Cedarville University in Ohio, is author of “Churchill on Statesmanship: Pope Innocent XI”; “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Agincourt”; “On War: Churchill, Thucydides, and the Teachable Moment”; and “Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar: Parallels and Inspirations.”
Further Reading
Steven Goldfein, “Learning for Political Leadership: The Churchill Example” (2019)
An outstanding analysis of Churchill’s moral and ethical mind which guided his actions throughout life.