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The Churchill Project - Hillsdale College > Search results for 'robert rhodes james'
Churchill’s Novels in Sterner Days: More than Mere Escape
17
Jul
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Churchill was motivated by H.G. Wells’s views of science in war: “The irresistible Juggernaut, driving through towns and villages as through a field of standing corn—a type which Armageddon itself could not achieve....” That was an accurate description of the Blitzkrieg that swept over France in May 1940, though WSC himself had his reasons to speak less alarmingly. He settled for a “remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks.” He was, after all, about to admonish Britons: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour.”
Kishan Rana on Churchill and India: A Misunderstood Relationship
15
May
2023
2
By ANDREAS KOUREAS
The most common misconceptions about Churchill and India are no better misrepresented than by former Indian Ambassador Rana. Ladled on wholesale are false accusations of genocide, imperial hatred and invented conspiracies. The ridiculous price for so short a book may do more than anything to prevent people from reading it. Which, given the contents, may not altogether be a bad thing.
Bourke Cockran: “Becoming Churchill” Becomes Better
10
Apr
2023
By GREGORY BELL SMITH
“I have never seen his like, or in some respects his equal. With his enormous head, gleaming eyes and flexible countenance, he looked uncommonly like the portraits of Charles James Fox. It was not my fortune to hear any of his orations, but his conversation, in point, in pith, in rotundity, in antithesis, and in comprehension, exceeded anything I have ever heard.” —Winston Churchill on Bourke Cockran
Facing the Dictator: Stalin, 1946; Hitler, 1938
02
Feb
2023
By RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
The 1946 Churchill-Stalin exchange was remarkably similar to Churchill’s with Hitler eight years earlier: “I am surprised that the head of a great State should set himself to attack British members of Parliament who hold no official position and who are not even the leaders of parties.” Martin Gilbert’s official biography informs our knowledge Churchill’s consistency.
Great Contemporaries: George Nathaniel Curzon
16
Jan
2023
1
By BRADLEY P. TOLPPANEN
Churchill described Curzon’s funeral as “dull and dreary,” but he had “faced his end with fortitude and philosophy. I am v[er]y sorry he is gone. I did not think the tributes were v[er]y generous. I w[oul]d not have been grateful for such stuff. But he did not inspire affection, nor represent g[rea]t causes.”
Did Churchill Waffle in 1938?: The Tale of Hubert Ripka
08
Dec
2022
By Richard M. Langworth
“Every one of us leading politicians has to ask ourselves whether we have the right, whether we can in all conscience force our country into war….[But] Masaryk was right. Death is better than slavery. [If war does come] “we’ll smash them to smithereens so they don’t trouble us for a century or more.” —WSC to Hubert Ripka, 22 June 1938
English-Speaking Peoples (6): A Nuanced View of Oliver Cromwell
07
Nov
2022
By DUGGAN FOLEY
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.
How Churchill Saw the Second World War as a Moral Conflict
20
Oct
2022
1
By JUSTIN D. LYONS
Hitler appealed to everything that is darkest in the human heart. Churchill himself appealed to different passions. He summoned the virtues of the British people and helped them find strength within themselves. He sought to elevate rather than to debase; to raise Britons from a desire for security above all to a contemplation of the just and the noble; to embolden them to face sacrifice and death rather than see the armies of evil pound their booted rhythms on the earth.
Churchill on Amritsar: An Imperialist Speaks Out for Human Rights
12
Aug
2022
1
By Martin Gilbert
“What I mean by frightfulness is the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre upon a particular crowd of people, with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or the whole country. We cannot admit this doctrine in any form. Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia.” —WSC
Great Contemporaries: Anthony Eden (Part 2), 1934-1938
21
Jul
2022
By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
“From midnight till dawn I lay in my bed consumed by emotions of sorrow and fear. There seemed one strong young figure standing up against long, dismal, drawling tides of drift and surrender, of wrong measurements and feeble impulses…. Now he was gone. I watched the daylight slowly creep in through the windows, and saw before me in mental gaze the vision of Death.” —WSC
“Superstitious Blood-poisoning”? Churchill on Smallpox Vaccination
08
Jul
2022
Band of Brothers: Austen and Neville Chamberlain, and Their Eulogists
16
Jun
2022
By DAVE TURRELL
All are all now firmly established in the great pantheon of the House of Commons. All experienced failure, engendered controversy, still do, and always will. In death, all passion spent, they can be evaluated for the characters that lay beneath their politics. And, in common, a deep seam of basic decency can be found.