Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

C H U R C H I L L P R O C E E D I N G S
“Description” suggests
writing that is both easier and
less interesting than
Churchill’s. What is most
striking in all his historical
and biographical works is
their astute combination of
narration with analysis.
In “A Day with
Clemenceau,” analysis is less
sustained than in Churchill’s
sketch of Clemenceau for
Great Contemporaries. The
account in Thoughts and
Adventures of Clemenceau’s
day visiting allied generals and
the front lines during a major
crisis of World War I,
however, weaves into the narrative
an appraisal of two
styles of leadership, with
Churchill’s preference and recommendation
unmistakable.
At the outset,
Churchill—and the reader
along with him—discovers
Lloyd George, the British
Prime Minister “in bed, a grey
figure amid a litter of reports
and telegrams” (177). This
grey figure then dispatches a
subordinate—Churchill—to France to find out what the
armies are doing about the German offensive. The
French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, taking
Churchill along, goes himself to important allied headquarters,
listens to the generals, decides on the spot to
send French reserves into battle in support of hardpressed
British troops, and then insists on also going as
far forward as possible, where he comes under German
shell fire, to have a look at the front line. “A Day with
Clemenceau” shows why Clemenceau was one of
Churchill’s heroes and models. It also leaves no doubt
about what style of leadership is best.
“Ludendorff’s ‘All—or Nothing’” is not a narrative
of the March 1918 German offensive as it unfolded, but
rather a gripping, sustained analysis of its causes, horrendous
nature, and consequences—among other things,
ruin for Germany. For our conference on “Churchill and
Today’s Challenges” there is surely no essay more relevant
than this one. Here, as a reminder or to whet your
appetite, is a central paragraph:
The Clemenceau statue, Paris. “As much as any single
human being, miraculously magnified, can ever
be a nation, he was France....the Old Tiger, with
his quaint, stylish cap, his white moustache and
burning eye, would make a truer mascot for
France than any barnyard fowl.” —WSC
It was the fatal weakness
of the German empire that
its military leaders, who
knew every detail of their
profession and nothing
outside it, considered themselves,
and became, arbiters
of the whole policy of the
State. In France throughout
the War, even in its darkest
and most convulsive hours,
the civil government, quivering
to its foundations,
was nevertheless supreme.
The President, the Premier,
the Minister of War, the
Chamber, and that amazing
composite entity called
“Paris,” had the power to
break any military man and
set him on one side. In
England Parliament was
largely in abeyance. The
Press exalted the generals, or
“the soldiers” as they called
themselves. But there existed
a strong political caste and
hierarchy which, if it chose
to risk its official existence,
could grapple with the “brass
hats.” In the United States
the civil element was so overwhelmingly
strong that its
main need was to nurture
and magnify the unfledged
military champions. In
Germany there was no one to stand against the General
Staff and to bring their will-power and special point
of view into harmony with the general salvation of the
State. (167)
Among many other points of this paragraph and
this essay, Churchill’s analysis shows the danger of not
reading and learning widely beyond that narrow military
education from which he broke free in ways exemplified
by his career, and not least by the book we are here to
discuss this week. ,
Endnotes
1. Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures, ed. James
W. Muller with Paul H. Courtenay and Alana L. Barton
(Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2009), 318. Subsequent page references
for quotations from this edition of Thoughts and Adventures
are given parenthetically in the text.
2. Winston Churchill, My Early Life: 1874-1904, intr. William
Manchester (New York: Simon & Schuster Touchstone, 1996), 43.
3. Churchill, My Early Life, 113.
FINEST HOUR 148 / 62