Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

C H U R C H I L L P R O C E E D I N G S
Future Shock: Weapons of
Mass Destruction
Churchill’s “Shall We All Commit Suicide” (1924)
“Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, [mankind] has got into
its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own
extermination....Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear
away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of
civilization. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long
his victim, now—for one occasion only—his Master.” —WSC
P A U L A L K O N
Horace Walpole is credited with
saying, “The world is a comedy
to those that think, a tragedy to
those that feel.” Churchill did both.
His writings are ample evidence
of his inclination to think. Their frequent
amusing touches show his appreciation
of the human comedy. Hundreds
of anecdotes record his readiness to respond
emotionally to life’s major and
minor disasters. He could plunge into
despondency—his rather too famous “black dog.” He
was never ashamed to cry at sad events in life and even
on the film screen. As Prime Minister in 1940 he warned
that what lay ahead was not only work and wounds but
grievous emotions: “I have nothing to offer but blood,
toil, tears, and sweat.” 1
Isaiah Berlin, in what I believe is still the best
single essay on Churchill, finds that despite Churchill’s
joie de vivre and capacity for exuberance, his outlook is
essentially tragic. In this respect Berlin contrasts
Churchill with Franklin Roosevelt:
[Churchill’s] nature possesses a dimension of depth–and
a corresponding sense of tragic possibilities, which Mr
Roosevelt’s light-hearted genius instinctively passed
by....Mr. Churchill is acquainted with darkness as well as
light. Like all inhabitants and even transient visitors of
inner worlds, he gives evidence of seasons
of agonised brooding and slow recovery.
Mr Roosevelt might have spoken of sweat
and blood, but when Mr Churchill
offered his people tears, he spoke a word
which might have been uttered by
Lincoln or Mazzini or Cromwell but not
Mr Roosevelt, great-hearted, generous,
and perceptive as he was. 2
Berlin’s comment offers the
best key to Churchill’s achievement in
general, and in particular to the odd fate of his 1924
essay “Shall We All Commit Suicide”
This article is one of Churchill’s most perceptive
insights into future danger. We can easily see this now
because in the light of subsequent history its hints of
atomic weapons stand out, like the more explicit prediction
of them in his later essay “Fifty Years Hence,” as
Churchill himself was not shy about remarking after such
weapons became reality.
“Shall We All Commit Suicide” was first published
in the September 1924 number of Nash’s Pall Mall
magazine, and reprinted several times in the 1920s, as
Professor Muller documents in the notes to his edition.
In 1929 Churchill adapted the essay within the conclusion
of his book The Aftermath, about a decade following
World War I. The essay was reprinted (as you have it) in
Dr. Alkon, a Churchill Centre Academic Adviser, is Leo S. Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature at the
University of Southern California. He has published books on Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe, science fiction, and Winston
Churchill’s Imagination (2006). He won our 2003 Somervell Prize for his Lawrence of Arabia features in Finest Hour 119.
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