I’d been looking forward to the movie Darkest Hour for some time. Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale
College, and Churchill scholar and author of Churchill’s Trail: Winston Churchill and the Salvation of Free
Government, talked about it on radio with Hugh Hewitt a time or two.
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| Winston Churchill image from Wikipedia |
I also went through the online Hillsdale course about Churchill a year or so ago. And in December, the Imprimis newsletter was by Larry Arnn about Churchill. So, in
addition to doing a bit of a movie review, I’ll also quote Dr. Arnn here and
there. The movie is a portrayal of history, so I hope you don’t consider this
piece as spoilers, but if you’re worried about that, see the movie first.
The movie was about the time in Britain when the mollifying
foreign policy of Neville Chamberlain was seen for what it was, and a vote of
no confidence removed him as Prime Minister of England, opening up the position
for an unpopular but determined Winston Churchill.
Almost immediately after his acceptance, Churchill finds the
country in the unacceptable position of having nearly its entire army—about 300,000
soldiers—stranded on the northern French beach of Dunkirk following Hitler’s
swift sweep across France. If you saw the recent movie Dunkirk, things will start to fit into place. It was about to be an
unmitigated disaster. Churchill was the one who ordered the civilian boats to be recruited to
cross the channel to rescue the soldiers. The heroic “win” at Dunkirk was the
rescue, against great odds, that allowed Britain to fight another day.
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| movie poster from AMC |
Churchill was under tremendous pressure, including from his
own party. Chamberlain and his ally, Lord Halifax, maneuver against Churchill;
they seem to think diplomacy at all costs is the answer, and if they can prove
Churchill isn’t open to that option, they can step down from the war council
Churchill has appointed them to, leading to a no confidence vote again—possibly
opening the position for Halifax.
King George VI—the father of Queen Elizabeth, who was
portrayed in the movie The King’s Speech—had
been a longtime friend of Chamberlain and Halifax. It was distasteful to him to
be forced to work with Churchill. But there’s a turning point. And it comes on
a very good question.
The King is wondering whether he will need to flee, with his
family, to Canada, and live out his reign in exile, because it is assumed by so
many that, if the Germans invade the Isle of Britain, they could conquer.
Halifax and Chamberlain are saying, wouldn’t it be better to get the best terms
possible, by negotiating through Mussolini, than risk a bloody war they might lose?
But Churchill, feeling the heavy weight of his people on his
shoulders, can’t imagine any terms with Hitler that would mean anything but
complete subjugation to that monster.
It is a discussion with the King, and then a discussion with
some everyday common folk that, according to the movie, lead to Churchill’s
decisive speech—which in the process gains full support of Parliament and the
British people, and outmaneuvers Halifax and Chamberlain. I’ll leave out the
details because, though I really don’t like political maneuvering in literature
(or in real life), it’s the crux of the story here. It's hard to imagine a movie about leading up to a speech being all that interesting, but it is.
Here are a couple of memorable passages from that speech, often called “We shall fight on the beaches”:
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined
this Government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and
sweat." …
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We
have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask,
what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with
all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war
against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue
of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in
one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror,
victory, however long and hard the road may be….
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous
States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight
with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight
on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we
shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for
a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and
starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British
Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World,
with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of
the old.
That kind of frank determination against tyranny will always
be needed.
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| bust of Churchill in the US Capitol building |
If there’s something I didn’t like in the movie, it is how
much drinking Churchill does—and possibly more importantly, how often they point
it out. He probably did drink quite a lot, but there was never any evidence it
was affecting his mind—which was determined and sharp up to age 90 when he
died. He was both quick and sharp witted.
One of my favorite Churchill quotes, from the English major
world, has to do with grammar. A woman commented to him that he had incorrectly
ended a sentence with a proposition. He retorted, “Madam, that is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.” It makes me laugh; maybe you
have to be a word person.
Churchill was a word person. He wrote some 50 books in his
lifetime, about battles in war—colorfully told. About political philosophy, history. and
more. He had a prodigious mind, and a flair for being able to say what was on
it.
There’s talk of Gary Oldman getting an Oscar for his
performance; I’d be agreeable to that. He captured the swiftness, the push
forward nature, the energy. And also made the force of nature that was Churchill seem human.
Also good in the movie was Lily James (who played Cinderella beautifully a couple of years ago), portraying his
personal secretary, Elizabeth Layton. Churchill’s wife, Clemmie, played by
Kristin Scott Thomas, was also good for humanizing him—she corrects him for
scaring off the secretary in her first hour (she returns), and tells him to
better behave himself, so that people can think well of him, as she does.
Getting back to Larry Arnn’s Imprimis speech, he lists three lessons
we learn from Churchill:
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| Dr. Larry Arnn image from Imprimis |
1. It
is not trends but choices that matter most at the key moments of history…. [Of that important speech] No one else on
that day was either inclined to make or capable of making that speech, and
Churchill had only become prime minister by a series of narrow chances. No
story better illustrates one of Churchill’s favorite lessons—a lesson valuable
for us to keep in mind: both chance and choice play a large part in human
affairs.
2. The
second lesson concerns the limits of war, of politics, indeed of all human
action. Churchill helped to save his country by his willingness to fight to the
death and to inspire others to joining him. He also saved it by his reluctance
to do that.
3. Strategy
must be rooted in the purposes of the nation: it aims to preserve the nation in
pursuit of those purposes. This means that strategy is not confined, when it is
pursued by the statesman, to war alone. Churchill wrote: “The distinction
between politics and strategy diminishes as the point of view is raised. At the
summit true politics and strategy are one.”
Dr. Arnn goes on to say (and note that “liberal society”
means classical liberalism, or free society, not a democrat party that is
exactly opposite to that),
Churchill lived, loved, and fought for the liberal society.
Liberal societies protect the rights of their peoples; their right to make
their livings, to raise their children, to speak their minds. These are the
elements of a fully human life. Under a free and limited government, the right
of all to pursue this life is recognized and defended. The justice of this kind
of government is the reason that Churchill, the grandson of a duke, was not an
aristocrat but a defender of democracy.
That’s a pretty good description of what we’re talking about
in the northern hemisphere of the Spherical Model, up out of tyranny and into
the freedom zone.
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