(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)
On June 20, 1936, Churchill, in his sixty-second year, made a passionate and deeply personal speech to his constituents. Here’s his conclusion:
I have done my best during the last three years and more to give timely warning of what was happening abroad, and of the dangerous plight into which we were being led or lulled.____________________________________________
It has not been a pleasant task. It has certainly been a very thankless task. I has brought me into conflict with may former friends and colleagues. I have been mocked and censured as a scaremonger and even as a warmonger, by those whose complacency and inertia have brought us all nearer to war and war nearer to us all.
But I have the comfort of knowing that I have spoken the truth and done my duty, and as long as I have your unflinching support I am content with that.
Indeed I am more proud of the long series of speeches which I have made on defense and foreign policy in the last four years than of anything I have ever been able to do, in all my forty years of public life.
Martin S. Gilbert, Churchill: A Life. (p. 559)
1 comments:
As I was once told, he also wasn't right, because it was too soon.
In other words, he cannot be credited with knowing that of which he spake, for that would mean that all those making decisions were wrong. Can't have that! Therefore, he would have been right if he hadn't been right so soon.
Don't shake your head, John. I once was in that very same position and they never did see the contradiction. Emotional narcississism blinded them. Same with Mr. Churchill over far more important matters, but over the same type of self-worshipping men.
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