A "Gentlemen's Champagne"

The Gentleman routinely imbibes himself with Pol Roger champagne, or any other prominent champagne that holds the royal warrant.

WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS A CIGAR-SMOKING PUFFBALL whose daily alcohol regime included sherry at breakfast, whisky at lunch, champagne at dinner and brandy before bed. Or so it has been reported. This may not be quite accurate for the official Churchill Centre states that he preferred beer at lunch and whisky during tea time, whilst before dinner there was sherry, then Champagne, brandy and port. He apparently enjoyed the occasional glass of hock at breakfast, and he would traditionally greet people in the morning with a sherry. Those close to him confide that he couldn't stand cocktails, apart from the "Papa Cocktail", a smidgen of Johnnie Walker covering the bottom of a tumbler, which was then filled with water and sipped throughout the morning according to his daughter. As one observer described it, it was more akin to mouthwash than a highball but that's how Winston liked his scotch and water. It was perhaps this very watered down concoction that gave the great man a seemingly bottomless capacity for drink-soaked endurance, and allowed him to fondly quip that "he had taken more out of alcohol than alcohol had taken out of him." In fact the contention that Churchill was in any way an "Alcohol Abuser" is pointedly debunked by the Churchill Centre as a myth, for no serious colleague had ever reported him the worse for drink. He was not an alcohol abuser per se, he was merely alcohol dependent.

As evidence of that dependency there was of course his famous declaration to the King of Saudi Arabia that his absolute rule of life required drinking before, during and after meals, though it was during mealtimes that Churchill did most of his heavy imbibing. There was also the observation that he drank two bottles of Pol Roger champagne a day, his favourite champagne house and the only sparkling wine that he would consume following the Second World War:

And, of course, there was Mme Odette Pol-Roger, a widow from 1963 until her death in 2000 aged 89, on whom - and on whose wines - Winston Churchill doted so much. Indeed, so smitten with her was Churchill that he named a racehorse after her and promised to visit her in Epernay: `Invite me during the vintage, and I'll press the grapes with my bare feet,' he declared. It is reckoned that in the last ten years of his life more than 500 cases of the stuff passed through his cellars.

So for those who cannot afford the silky smooth crispness of Dom Pérignon everyday, Pol Roger champagne is probably the next best thing. Its premium bottle, Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, is named after the gentleman who would tolerate no other. As a testament to its fine quality, the prominent champagne house also holds a Royal Warrant to supply the British Royal Family with cases of its very best, further enhancing Pol Roger's reputation as a "gentlemen's champagne".

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Churchill on the Great War

It was a time described by historian A.J.P. Taylor as:

Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other sort of currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on to perform jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so.

But that was about to change severely. UK Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey had said the previous day:

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

On August 4, 1914 – 94 years ago – the United Kingdom declared war on Imperial Germany.


Winston Churchill was involved in the affairs of war at this time. That, however, is another story. Today we present quotes from Churchill’s six-volume work The Second World War, whose first volume was first published 60 years ago this year. We present extracts regarding World War I from volume 1, chapter 1; The Follies of the Victors 1919-1929. We let readers judge for themselves. The theme of the first volume was:

HOW THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES
THROUGH THEIR UNWISDOM
CARELESSNESS AND GOOD NATURE
ALLOWED THE WICKED
TO REARM

Churchill says:

     In the summer of 1919 the Allied Armies stood along the Rhine, and their bridgeheads bulged deeply into defeated, disarmed and hungry Germany. The chiefs of the victor Powers debated and disputed the future in Paris. Before them lay the map of Europe to be redrawn almost as they might resolve. After fifty-two months of agony and hazards the Teutonic coalition lay at their mercy, and not one of its four members could offer the slightest resistance to their will. Germany, the head and forefront of the offence, regarded by all as the prime cause of the catastrophe which had fallen upon the world, was at the mercy or discretion of conquerors, themselves reeling from the torment they had endured. Moreover, this had been a war, not of Governments, but of peoples. The whole life-energy of the greatest nations had been poured out in wrath and slaughter. The war leaders assembled in Paris had been borne thither upon the strongest and most furious tides that have ever flown in human history. Gone were the treaties of Utrecht and Vienna, when aristocratic statesmen and diplomats, victor and vanquished alike, met in polite and courtly disputation, and, free from the clatter and babel of democracy, could reshape systems upon the fundamentals of which they were all agreed. The peoples, transported by their sufferings and by the mass teachings with which they had been inspired, stood around in scores of millions to demand that retribution should be exacted to the full. Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred blood-soaked battlefields.

Churchill goes on:

The territorial provisions of the Treaty of Versailles left Germany practically intact. She still remained the largest homogeneous racial block in Europe. When Marshal Foch heard of the signing of the Peace Treaty of Versailles he observed with singular accuracy: “This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for twenty years.”

Further:

     The economic clauses of the Treaty were malignant and silly to an extent that made them obviously futile. Germany was condemned to pay reparations on a fabulous scale. These dictates gave expression to the anger of the victors, and to the failure of their peoples to understand that no defeated nation or community can ever pay tribute on a scale which would meet the costs of modern war.
     The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance of the simplest economic facts, and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them. The newspapers, after their fashion, reflected and emphasised the prevailing opinions. Few voices were raised to explain that payment of reparations can only be made by services of by the physical transportation of goods in wagons across land frontiers or in ships across salt water; or that when goods arrive in the demanding countries, they dislocate the local industry except in very primitive or rigorously-controlled societies. In practice, as even the Russians have now learned, the only way of pillaging a defeated nation is to cart away any movables which are wanted, and to drive off a portion of its manhood as permanent or temporary slaves. But the profit gained from such processes bears no relation to the cost of war. No one in great authority had the wit, ascendancy, or detachment from public folly, to declare these fundamental, brutal facts to the electorates; nor would anyone have been believed if he had. The triumphant Allies continued to assert that they would squeeze Germany “till the pips squeaked”. All this had a potent bearing on the prosperity of the world and the mood of the German race.

Yet further:

     The second cardinal tragedy was the complete break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the Treaties of St. Germain and Trianon. For centuries this surviving embodiment of the Holy Roman Empire had afforded a common life, with advantages in trade and security, to a large number of people, none of whom in our own time had the strength or vitality to stand by themselves in the face of pressure from a revivified Germany or Russia. All these races wished to break away from the Federal or Imperial structure, and to encourage their desires was deemed a liberal policy. The Balkanisation of South-Eastern Europe proceeded apace, with the consequent relative aggrandisement of Prussia and the German Reich, which, though tired and war-scarred, was intact and locally overwhelming. There is not one of the peoples or provinces that constituted the Empire of the Hapsburgs to whom gaining their independence has not brought the tortures which ancient poets and theologicians had reserved for the damned. The noble capital of Vienna, the home of so much long-defended culture and tradition, the centre of so many roads, rivers, and railways, was left stark and starving, like a great emporium in an impoverished district whose inhabitants have mostly departed.
     The victors imposed upon the Germans all the long-sought ideals of the liberal nations of the West. They were relieved from the burden of compulsory military service and from the need of keeping up heavy armaments. The enormous American loans were presently pressed upon them, though they had no credit. A democratic constitution, in accordance with all the latest improvements, was established at Weimar. Emperors having been driven out, nonentities were elected. Beneath this flimsy fabric raged the passion of the mighty, defeated, but substantially uninjured German nation. The prejudice of the Americans against monarchy, which Mr. Lloyd George made no attempt to counteract, had made it clear to the beaten Empire that it would have better treatment from the Allies as a Republic than as a Monarchy. Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the person of an infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a Council of Regency. Instead, a gaping void was opened in the national life of the German people. All the strong elements, military and feudal, which might have rallied to a constitutional monarchy and for its sake respected and sustained the new democratic and Parliamentary processes, were for the time being unhinged. The Weimar Republic, with all its liberal trappings and blessings, was regarded as an imposition of the enemy. It could not hold the loyalties of the German people. For a spell they sought to cling as in desperation to the aged Marshal Hindenburg. Thereafter mighty forces were adrift, the void was open, and into that void after a pause there strode a maniac of ferocious genius, the repository and expression of the most virulent hatreds that have corroded the human breast – Corporal Hitler.

He continues:

     While all these untoward events were taking place, amid a ceaseless chatter of well-meant platitudes on both sides of the Atlantic, a new and more terrible cause of quarrel than the Imperialism of Czars and Kaisers became apparent in Europe. The Civil War in Russia ended in the absolute victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet Armies which advanced to subjugate Poland were indeed repulsed in the battle of Warsaw, but Germany and Italy nearly succumbed to Communist propaganda and designs, and Hungary actually fell for a while under the control of the Communist dictator, Bela Kun. Although Marshal Foch wisely observed that “Bolshevism had never crossed the frontiers of victory”, the foundations of European civilisation trembled in the early post-war years. Fascism was the shadow of ugly child of Communism. While Corporal Hitler was making himself useful to the German officer-class in Munich by arousing soldiers and workers to fierce hatred of Jews and Communists, on whom he laid the blame of Germany’s defeat, another adventurer, Benito Mussolini, provided Italy with a new theme of government which, while it claimed to save the Italian people from Communism, raised himself to dictatorial power. As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism. Thus were set on foot those kindred movements which were destined soon to plunge the world into even more hideous strife, which none can say have ended with their destruction.

There is also some correspondence. We cite from volume 6 a message:

Prime Minister to Foreign Office          8 Apr 45
     This war would never have come unless, under American and modernising pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones. No doubt these views are very unfashionable....

Another message, three and a half weeks later:

Prime Minister to Sir H. Knatchbull-Hugessen (Brussels)          26 Apr 45
     It is no part of the policy of His Majesty’s Government to hunt down the Archduke Otto of Habsburg or to treat as if it were a criminal organisation the loyalty which many Austrians friendly to Britain cherish for their ancient monarchy. We should not actively intervene on their behalf, being at all times resolved that in any case where we are forced for the time being to depart from the ideal of non-intervention our guide is the will of the people, expressed by the vote of a free, unfettered, secret ballot, universal suffrage election. The principle of a constitutional monarchy, provided it is based on the will of the people, is not, oddly enough, abhorrent to the British mind.
     2. Personally, having lived through all these European disturbances and studied carefully their causes, I am of opinion that if the Allies at the peace table in Versailles had not imagined that the sweeping away of long-established dynasties was a form of progress, and if they had allowed a Hohenzollern, a Wittelsbach, and a Habsburg to return to their thrones, there would have been no Hitler. To Germany a symbolic point on which the loyalties of the military classes could centre would have been found, and a democratic basis of society might have been preserved by a crowned Weimar in contact with the victorious Allies. This is a personal view, but perhaps you would meditate upon it.

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Churchill on Israel

The Land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is Older than Sixty. The World should return to Churchill's perspective on Ersetz Israel, the Land of Israel

On Dec. 10, 1948, Winston Churchill, then leader of the opposition, took to the floor of the House of Commons to chastise the Labour government for its continuing refusal to recognize the state of Israel. In his remarks, Churchill commented:

"Whether the Right Honourable Gentleman likes it or not, and whether we like it or not, the coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years. This is a standard of temporal values or time values which seems very much out of accord with the perpetual click-clack of our rapidly-changing moods and of the age in which we live."

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THE VALIANT MAN

THE STATE FUNERAL OF SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
By Gregory Benton (go over to Piddingworth to read full version)

Forty-three years ago, on the 25th January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill, 'The Valiant Man', died at the magnificent age of 90 years.

The great man's great funeral of state five days later remains vividly in my memory as a young man as the family watched it all unfold on television throughout the day: the procession of the gun carriage to and from St. Paul's Cathedral; the service itself and the moving entrance of Sir Winston's body into the church accompanied by Croft's setting for the Burial Sentences: I am the resurrection and the life saith the Lord. He who believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.

There, gathered before the whole world, in one place at one time, were the presentation of the man, the signs, symbols, sounds and words that, in all their historical grandeur, represented everything that we were, in which we believed and for which we held the deepest affection and loyalty: Our Christian Faith, Freedom and Civilisation; Britain, Mother England, the Union 'Jack', the Mother of All Parliaments, the Royal Navy and Marines, the Army and the RAF, resplendent all, even in mourning.

These filled the canvas of the world of which we ourselves were a part; a world, it seemed, that in Churchill's passing, passed with him and, in its celebration of an Empire that made it's last great stand just twenty years before in World War Two.

This was also last month and year that the Union Flag would fly supreme in Canada, although for a time remain cherished and paraded; especially by the veterans of the wars. The desire for a distinctive Canadian flag was surreptitiously symbolic of a policy that, in it's revisionsist history and anti-British ideology, would bury the great Dominion and re-invent the country in the image of Trudeau's franco-utopian mind.

Upon reflection, given the changes since then, not only in Britain and Canada and the United States, but the world itself, and with the current controversy over the transfer of ancient rights, freedoms and customs from Great Britain to the bureaucrats of the European Union, it is not out of place to question whether the will of the British people to which Sir Winston gave voice has surrendered to the apparent impotence and weakness of a generation now so deeply estranged from those things that made England, indeed, all of Britain, great...and free.

Has that which was unthinkable come to fruition by stealth and indifference and perhaps by that mocking, pathetic self-loathing culture that has insidiously crept into our institutions and popular culture?

There are those who, if they are aware of his existence at all, dismiss Churchill and the generation (including our American friends) that saw us through the darkest period in human history, as mere nostalgia, as if it was all about 'adventure' and the romance of 'Empire' rather than the triumph of good over evil.

[...]

The changes that occurred in Britain and the British Commonwealth following the war and that have dominantly emerged in the course of the last forty years through the rebellion of the post-war generation and their children is that of a more insular, withdrawn, softer, more and even pejoratively self-indulgent 'man'; mirroring the differences between what was once a great Empire and the contemporary Commonwealth that has descended into a culture of racial and political pretense complicated by tyrannical rulers and murderous regimes. There is very little 'Britishness' left in the Commonwealth even as some are wondering if there is much 'Britishness' left in Britain.

[...]

Welcome the 'metrosexual, Europhilic, ahistorical and sensitive man...with a latte.

[...]

The things that made Sir Winston Churchill, even with his human flaws, and the things for which he stood so magnificently, did not come out of a vacuum nor were they peculiar to him alone. As Admiral Cunningham once said: 'It takes three days to build a ship; three centuries to build a tradition.' The culture that flourished from the enormous development that occurred from the 18th century into the 20th was fashioned by men and women both, where the stature of the common 'man', raised in virtue and law, reached such a height as to withstand the insults and menacing tyranny threatening our way of life.

If some of us retain an affection for the things of the past, it does not mean that we ought to live in it. The principles, virtues, decency and foundation that have been that past's strength, however, are not so inextricably attached that they be reduced to footnotes in some history book. They are the things that endure; that must endure.

One loves the flag for many reasons but it is what it symbolizes that means most: freedom, the dignity of citizenship and a way of life. These are not for sale as apparently some politicians, without conscience, and their followers think.

As one watches and listens once again to the words of Sir Winston, it is impossible not to imagine how he would respond to the challenges before us today.

Would he not identify and defy the enemy? Would he not call upon us all, citizens in the free world, including the United States, to unite and stand up to those,at home and abroad, who would either destroy or enslave us?

It may get worse before it gets better as my generation passes quickly to another. Where are the few today whose strength of conviction and spirit, daring and courage, will take their place and give hope once again to Britain, her former Dominions and all who love freedom and decency and put an end to the erosion of so much, so dearly bought?

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The American Churchill

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt (1858-1919), the greatest and youngest President of those United States of America. (P.S. except for Lincoln)

Above: 1903 official portrait by John Singer Sargent (in T.R.'s words, a "man's portrait" by a "real man's artist").

TO CALL TEDDY ROOSEVELT the American Churchill might not be entirely perfect, comparisons never are, but does perfectly convey the esteem in which I hold him (on some qualities, I would rank T.R. the better). Like a biography on Churchill, a biography on Roosevelt leaves the reader with an heroic and implausible life's tale that is difficult to fathom and surprising to contrast. Animated by an indomitable spirit, both men seem larger than life and bigger than history.

To begin with, both served in their respective armies, headed their respective navies and led their respective countries; both were serious historians and gifted orators, and both read and wrote voraciously; both were Freemasons, Nobel laureates and Kipling imperialists; both were men of the greatest integrity, and possessed of the most irreproachable personal virtue, for whom loyalty was a core quality; both shared a fraternity to Anglo-Americanism and both were horrified and exasperated by the unwillingness of their opponents to save civilization when it needed to be saved - Churchill with Chamberlain, Roosevelt with Wilson. Isolated or ostracised, both stood virtually alone in a flood of filth against a tide of evil.

The image of Roosevelt rightfully stands alongside Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln on Mount Rushmore as a colossal figure of the American experience. This is astounding when you consider that the great man was neither a founding father, nor a serving president during a turbulent period in the Great Republic's history. Yet, on the list of greatest presidents, scholars consistently rank T.R. among the very top with an average placement score of 4.83 out of 42 presidents. Only Lincoln (1.58), F.D.R. (2.00), Washington (2.83) and Jefferson (4.42) rank higher, all of whom faced the titanic upheavals of revolutionary, civil or world war. Without an epic struggle by which to stake his claim with the best, Teddy was left to win it on his personality.

That legendary personality introduced America to the arena of international power politics, thrusting aside the American tradition of isolationism. Under Roosevelt's leadership (1901-1909), the American navy went from fourth largest in the world to largest after the grand British Imperial Fleet. Henceforth, the United States would "speak softly and carry a big stick" (his phrase), admittedly sometimes too softly (Wilson, Eisenhower, Carter), sometimes with too much stick (Johnson/Nixon, "Dubya"). Better than all his peers, T.R. exemplified manly virtue, understanding the delicate balance between manly restraint and manly assertiveness in the effective wielding of state power.

The great conservationist (way ahead of his time on that one) also exemplified conservative virtue with both feet firmly anchored to Nature's ground, who wasn't prone to Wilsonian liberal idealism that has affected most every president since, including the current incumbent in "making the world safe for democracy". Although Woodrow Wilson is ranked highly in his own right, it is nonetheless remarkable that Roosevelt is rated higher by scholars, even though Wilson led the United States through the Great War, albeit not until very late in the game. We know that Roosevelt thought the president "weak" up to 1917, that if it were up to him, America would have been in the thick of it in 1914. Knowing this, Churchill's "great Ifs accumulate" with untold American divisions irresistibly poring into Europe at the outset, becoming battle hardened in Flanders and Ypres in 1915 and marching on to Mons by 1916. No Verdun, no Somme, no Passchendaele, no mass disillusionment. A dramatic altering of the balance of power on the continent would have been impossible for the Germans to ignore. With the benefit of hindsight, we are entertained with the thought of Roosevelt at the helm, the idea that some semblance of the Old World just might have been maintained. But sadly we will never know. Like Churchill, I doubt we will ever see his likes again.

"Of all the public men that I have known, on both sides of the Atlantic (and there are few that I have not known in the past thirty years), he stands out the greatest, and as the most potent influence for good upon the life of his generation."
- Viscount Lee of Fareham, English statesman

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The End of the Beginning

We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonality...but we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not combined. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. - Winston Churchill, 1946

OH, WHAT A HOPELESS ROMANTIC Churchill appears in retrospect. Britain does not have its own dream or task in the world today; the great global British project has quite transparently made way for a grandiose European one instead. Britain is no longer just in Europe, of Europe and for Europe, they are becoming under Europe too, thanks to the democratically deceitful handiwork of their political masters. They are not merely interested or associated or linked; but combined, absorbed, entrenched and entangled, perhaps now, irretrievably. With the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon by Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom will surely be pushed all the way into the cesspool of continental European integration.

And for what? Is it really possible to suppose that whatever integrated Europe could ever evolve from the cesspit of unrepresentative and irresponsible corruption, of anti-American, anti-Christian, weak-at-the-knees bureaucratic paralysis, that currently defines its governmental apparatus; could possibly be better for Britain, than what Great Britain has evolved for itself over the course of a thousand years?

For the life of me, I cannot think of one single net positive likely outcome of this effort. Britain has, throughout its history, been secured as the constant incubator of civil liberties, parliamentary democracy and liberal economy; by the distance which it has physically enjoyed, and which it has strategically, politically and militarily nurtured; from the continent of Europe. What circumstances have changed, that should conspire to direct Britain's core interests and decisions in precisely the opposite direction from the compass north it has observed throughout its entire history, I know not.

In this respect, I ask the exactly same question as Sir Winston Churchill in his speech of March, 1936 to the Conservative Backbench Foreign Affairs Committee. In that speech, Churchill pointed out that throughout the course of almost four centuries, and in the face of four successive mortal threats to its free security from a rising and belligerent continental power (Philip II's Spain, Louis XIV's and Napoleon I's France, and Wilhem II's Germany), Britain always chose the hard but correct path of steadfast opposition to the power which - animated by principles vastly different from those of liberal Britain - could and would, in victory and in the achievement of hegemony, only diminish or destroy Britain's essence. Churchill asked: what has changed, that we should, in 1936, regard our proper response to the rising power of Adolf Hitler's Germany in a different manner?

The answer was, of course, nothing at all; and that Churchill was able to persuade his fellow countrymen of that fact, changed the course of history for the immeasurably better.

What was true in 1936 is, in my view, true today. That is not to suggest for a moment that there is any country or power on the continent of Europe today, which constitutes a belligerent and militaristic threat to Great Britain in the classical sense. Most European countries are today, at least nominally, liberal democracies. I suppose it is this very fact which leads many in Britain to think that the magnetic north pole of Britain's strategic self-interest has moved, and that that move justifies a submersion of Britain's hard-won independence and long-evolved institutions, into a European institutional hodge-podge without history, accountability, checks and balances, or record of performance.

Yet the risk Gordon Brown runs - on behalf of all Britons and, by extension, all Commonwealth subjects - should be self-evident from this description. What I find truly confounding is that there is nothing whatsoever that I can see to justify taking this risk, even assuming that integrated Europe should somehow acquire an effective, representative and responsible government. Britain already has one of those. So, too, does it have free trade and free flow of goods, workers and other economic constituent components and forces, between itself and its European neighbours.

Is it too late? Up until now, member states of the European Union have agreed upon common policies that are merely suggestive of a single federated state, be it a common civil service (the European Commission), a single High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, a common European Security and Defence Policy, a supreme court (European Court of Justice in matters of European Union law), a common space agency (the European Space Agency), a peacekeeping force (Eurofor), and an intergovernmental research organisation (the EIROforum). It may talk of a "single European currency", a European Central Bank and a European Parliament, but the EU does not have a single government, a single foreign policy set by that government, or a single taxation system contributing to a single exchequer. It still does not have a constitution. It is still missing the symbols of statehood, such as an official coat-of-arms and presidential seal. It does, however, have a common flag, anthem, holiday and motto. It has basically come as far as it can come without becoming a constitutional republic with a semi-presidential system.

And that is why it is finally the end of the beginning. The long phoney war is over. To be or not to be is now the question. The cunning ambiguity about what it all means continues, but people seem less easily fooled over treaties dressed up as constitutions, or rather constitutions dressed down as treaties. Deceitful diversions like grandstanding over the crossing of certain "red lines" for an undefined period of time sound increasingly like desperate ploys to avoid a politically feared referendum. People may just be waking up. For the future of Her Majesty, the real battle has arrived; the year of reckoning has finally come.

Posted by Beaverbrook and Walsingham

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The English-Speaking Century

by Keith Windschuttle

In the past one hundred years, four successive political movements—Prussian militarism, German Nazism, Japanese imperialism, and international Communism—mounted military campaigns to conquer Europe, Asia, and the world. Had any of them prevailed, it would have been a profound loss for civilization as we know it. Yet over the course of these bids for power, a coalition headed first by Britain and then by the United States emerged not just to oppose but to destroy them utterly.

From the long perspective of human affairs, these victories must stand as among the most remarkable of the past three millennia. They were as decisive for world history as the victories of the ancient Greeks over Persia, of Rome over Carthage, and of the Franks over the Umayyad Caliphate.

Continue reading The English-speaking century...

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Young Winston

The greatest Briton, surely, though many of his fellow Britons proved and continue to prove themselves unworthy of him. Our brave old lion, stalwart defender of the sacred Crown and leader of the English-speaking peoples! He is, in some respects, an effectual patron saint for this blog; and a perpetual rebuke to the grotty, shameless politicians we are so unlucky to have today. (With some exceptions).


So the Monarchist reader will no doubt be happy to hear the good news that Richard Attenborough’s 1972 film ‘Young Winston’ has just been released on DVD for the first time. It lacks some of the charm of ‘My Early Life’, Churchill’s boffo autobiography (still available in a beautiful paperback from Eland), but remains an excellent piece, featuring much of its content, a film of awesome scope and home to some remarkable performances.

It takes in everything from Churchill’s cavalry charge against the Dervishes (who scream ‘Allahu Ackbar’ as they attack, oh how the times don’t change), his unsuccessful days at school (here we might have done without the rather seedy beating scenes), his midnight escape from a Boer prisoner-of-war camp, and his early years in Parliament. Simon Ward looks uncannily like the young Churchill, and does a great job of his snarling, flighty brand of eloquence.

Like the book, the film is a continually impressive, inspiring account of a great man’s formation. There’s none of the silly nonsense of ‘finding oneself’, or self-exploration, or backpacking in Thailand, that constitutes the present-day ‘development’ into adulthood. Instead we have an illustration in bravery, patriotism and good humour that all would do well to learn from.

Read the book first, and set aside a spring evening for the film. It goes down well with a brandy and a cigar, and a roaring fire, and a happy stomach full of some roast joint.

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Taking on Churchill's Mantle

The New York Sun today has an interesting review of Andrew Robert's new book, a History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900. It's over the top in its praise, mind you - to wit: "From every point of view, Mr. Roberts stands in comparison with the giant on whose shoulders he sits..." (ahem, not bloody likely) - but well worth the review all the same.

That Mr. Roberts dares to challenge the contemporary orthodoxy and anti-patriot "assumption that history is a matter of impersonal abstractions — globalization, secularization, decolonization, urbanization, or any number of others — rather than of individuals and peoples" of course resonates with me, as it would the followers of this blog. The book proclaims with confidence that the 21st century will belong to the "Anglosphere", just as the 20th belonged to America and the 19th belonged to the British Empire, which I suppose is a way of saying that whereas the 19th was an age of empires, the 20th that of nation-states, the 21st century will belong to the individual, now more self-reliant, mobile and technologically connected than ever before, more or less independently living and working within the confines of his or her own cultural-linguistic space. And what network civilisation values more the liberty, livelihood, creativity, capital and sovereignty of its people?

"Defending the British Crown Commonwealth and the English-Speaking Peoples" may sound anachronistic to all those who themselves, ironically enough, are stuck in a late 20th century frame of mind, one that values the pre-eminence of nation-states in the affairs of citizens. But the nation-state is in decline as an organising principle, a development that is to be welcomed in my opinion, save as a bulwark against the consolidating tyranny of global terrorism, continental statism, or even international bureaucratisation and world government. The point here is that while we recognize that all politics is local, as it should be, it is only natural for people to reach out past their immediate communities in a technological world, and interconnect in a culturally coherent way with others who also embrace the same shared language, history, habits and symbols.

Because modern nations do not own or have a monopoly on culture, or on connecting people to it - indeed, more often that not, they are brutal destroyers of it, undermining longheld tradition, habits and beliefs; emasculating our ancient symbols with cheap national logos; forgetting or revising history in a way that conforms to a new nationalist or transnationalist vision; and engaging in cultural protectionism that shields citizens from cross-border competition, stifling freedom and promoting mediocrity at home. But more than anything perhaps, has been the disturbing reliance by Western governments to use the power and apparatus of the state to enforce culturally relativistic ideas, to employ official "multiculturalism" as politically correct group thought - to, in effect, live in a state of cultural self-denial! And therein partly lies its undoing.

Just as Churchill was right to believe that a loosely bound, strongly interwoven people should not tolerate the assertions of a written constitution, which implies any dimunition to their liberty and independence, nor should they tolerate the assertions of a national government, which as a faction of Parliamentary democracy, has a disturbing ability to accrete unaccountable power to itself over time. Be that as it may, the unrivalled economic prosperity of our times is making government less and less relevant to its voters, who are wealthier, more mobile and more self-reliant than ever before, which is why the long gradual decline and fall of the nation-state is well under way.

So behold the realm of the sovereign individual. Like their Royal Sovereign Queen, may they forever reign supreme!

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Vive La Reine!

History is far stranger than fiction, a truth demonstrated again this week with revelations that in 1956 Guy Mollet, the then French Prime Minister, proposed a union between Britain and France. The soul shrinks at such a prospect. The two best enemies in all the world under one government? Under Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II no less. Devouted Churchillians will know that the great man himself proposed such a union in the dying days of the Third Republic, as what remained of the French Army evaporated before the German advance. The proposal was Churchill at his most romantic and pragmatic. It would have allowed the French to maintain that they were never defeated by Nazism, a kind if misplaced gesture; it also would have granted Britain immediate and legal control - though for how long? - over the French fleet and colonies. In the end the British were forced to sink much of the French fleet in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir and to gradually pry the French colonies from the control of Vichy.

Mollet's eccentric gesture must be seen in the context of its time. According to recently discovered documents, the proposal was made on the eve of the joint Franco-British retaking of the Suez Canal from that cretin Nasser. Eden had shown signs, at least to the minds of some senior French officials, of vacillation. The proposal of union, even if sure to be rejected, being dramatic and unexpected might have made any backdown over Suez more awkward for the Cabinet and No. 10. "How can we betray so loyal an ally as France?" one might have heard a hesitant minister ask had the Cabinet gotten cold feet over the attack. It was the sort of off the wall, desperate and ruthlessly calculated thing that the Quai d'Orsay has specialized in for centuries.

More broadly than the Suez Crisis, which in the end brought down both Mollet and Eden, the first half of the twentieth century had been unkind to the two former rivals turned erstwhile friend, though especially so for France. The halting and incomplete process of industrialization left the country vulnerable to the rise of the Rhur-powered German economy. This combined with the socio-political divides highlighted over secularization, the Dreyfus Affair and in the 1930s the short-lived Popular Front government, gave the impression to the French people, and to the outside world, of a weak and divided nation. The strange defeat of 1940, in Marc Bloch's famous analysis, only confirmed the image of a weak and fading France. The Fourth Republic (1946-1958) proved another blow. Despite hopes that it would remedy the oft remarked upon instability and ineffectiveness - the latter perhaps exaggerated - of the Third, the disaster of Suez, a still struggling economy - as the Federal Republic of Germany boomed - and finally the Algerian crisis ensured its demise. In this context a desperate French leader might be willing to swallow some national pride for the sake of short-term advantage.

All this changed in 1958. Immediately after the Second World War France had rejected Charles de Gaulle's calls for strong, and at times frankly authoritarian leadership. In 1958 a large majority of the French public practically begged the old war leader to save them from themselves. So he did. Despite being a dirigiste of the old school, de Gaulle was a great improvement on the muddling socialists who dominated the politics of the Fourth Republic. Sweeping away internal trade barriers, protecting private property from the predations of the Left and Far Left and otherwise maintaining a positive climate for investment and trade, de Gaulle engineered an economic miracle almost as spectacular as that of Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard's Social Market next door. He also matched improved French economic prowess with a more belligerent foreign policy.

From the First Battle of the Marne until Suez the Anglo-French partnership had usually meant a more junior role for the Republic. It was Chamberlain who was the prime force at Munich, Bevin who lead the French toward NATO in 1949 and Eden who first proposed aggressive action against Nasser in 1956. De Gaulle replaced this deference, born out of internal social and economic weakness, with an often juvenile anti-anglo-saxonism. Rejecting Britain's entry into the Common Market twice, pulling out of the NATO command structure in 1966, the pompous declaration at Montreal City Hall in 1967 of "Vive le Quebec Libre," and frequent prickings of the Americans over Vietnam, were as much a matter of policy as of nationalistic revanche for the former leader of the Free French.

The Britain of Harold MacMillan and Harold Wilson, de Gaulle's contemporaries at No. 10, was a bleak place. Supermac had made it a point to suck up to Eisenhower (if you have a more polite description, that is still accurate, please propose it in the comments) and while both he and de Gaulle oversaw the dismantling of their respective global empires, it seemed far more like a retreat for Britain than for France. Wilson had come to power promising to modernize Britain in the "white heat of technology." Hopes that technocracy might overcome class, tradition and stagnation were ill-placed. After Wilson came Heath and then Wilson again and then Callaghan. Then there was the Winter of Discontent. Members of the House of Commons openly talked about Britain becoming another Portugal. If the France of Georges Pompidou, de Gaulle's apprentice and successor, did not prosper as before, it seemed far more vigorous during Stagflation than its old rival. Certainly no French President of the time was seen running to the IMF for help to prop up the franc.

Then came the Eighties. Britain went with Mrs Thatcher and France with Francois Mitterrand. Germany had begun to walk away from the Social Market with Willy Brandt's government. From the distance of a quarter century the three decades after 1945 seem an anomaly. Britain, the homeland of laissez-faire became a case study of the dangers of democratic socialism. Germany and France, previously contemptuous of the free market, made a short-lived truce and prospered greatly as a result. The old patterns re-asserted themselves twenty-five years ago. The French today speak deridingly of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, while straining to catch up to the Anglo-Saxon economies, as they did a century ago. German authoritarianism has assumed a new more pleasant, if bloated, welfare state form in the last years of the 20th century. The Franco-British Union was a dead letter for the simple reason that the two nations were culturally incompatible. One nation prided itself on being "the Mother of the Free," the other "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." If those differences seemed obscure in 1956 they have become clearer again today. Tony Blair notwithstanding.

Publius

Originally posted at The Gods of the Copybook Headings

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A Warning from History

I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible. Our forces are reduced now to very slender proportions… I do not see what political strength there is to face a disaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that in any circumstances any large reinforcements would be sent from here…

There is scarcely a single newspaper… which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. … Any alternative Government that might be formed here… would gain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreover, in my own heart I do not see what we are getting out of it. …No progress has been made in developing the oil. Altogether I am getting to the end of my resources.

I think we should now put definitely… the position that unless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own terms in regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuate before the close of the… year.

I would put this issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not prepared to urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner, I would actually clear out.

It is quite possible, however, that face to face with this ultimatum [they]… will implore us to remain. If they do, shall we not be obliged to remain?… At present we are paying… millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano out of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.

memorandum from Winston Churchill, Colonial Secretary,

to Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George,

September 1, 1922

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Churchill- the first Neocon

In today's New York Times is a two-page article outlining the reasons for the championing of Churchill by American conservatives since the Reagan Administration and his denigration on the other side of the Pond.

In England right-wing historians are portraying the last lion as a drunk, a dilettante, an incorrigible bungler who squandered the opportunity to cut a separate peace with Hitler that would have preserved the British Empire. On the American right, by contrast, Churchill idolatry has reached its finest hour. George W. Bush, who has said ''I loved Churchill's stand on principle,'' installed a bronze bust of him in the Oval Office after becoming president. On Jan. 21, 2005, Bush issued a letter with ''greetings to all those observing the 40th anniversary of the passing of Sir Winston Churchill.'' The Weekly Standard named Churchill ''Man of the Century.'' So did the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who in December 2002 delivered the third annual Churchill Dinner speech sponsored by conservative Hillsdale College; its president, Larry P. Arnn, also happens to belong to the International Churchill Society. William J. Luti, a leading neoconservative in the Pentagon, recently told me, ''Churchill was the first neocon.'' Apart from Michael Lind writing in the British magazine The Spectator, however, the Churchill phenomenon has received scant attention. Yet to a remarkable extent, the neoconservative establishment is claiming Churchill (who has just had a museum dedicated to him in London) as a founding father.

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The Great Churchillian Lesson

The great lesson is the Churchillian one of "greater" Anglo-Saxon unity in the name of sanity, decency and the future against insanity, indecency and destruction. The question of whether our epicentre ought to be Washington, London or elsewhere is grotesquely pointless and misplaced.

There inevitably and perpetually will be differences of flavour, currency and fashion among the members of our greatest and most important of Clubs. Let us never forget, however, the ties of blood, spirit and conviction that not only bind us but which animate our indomitable spirit of freedom and of its vigorous defence. Our great common legacy is that of Washington and Pitt; Lincoln and Palmerston, Disraeli, Lee and Grant; Wilson and Lloyd George, Borden, Smuts and Hughes; of Roosevelt, Churchill, Mackenzie King and Curtin; of Kennedy, De Gaulle, Brandt and Meir (stretching the definition of "anglo-saxon" here); of Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterand and Kohl (stretching the definition again); of Bush, Blair, Harper and Howard.

The legacy we all share is our willingness to call both evil and truth by their names, and to do likewise with a lie - and to stand in defence of truth and of freedom, and be ready to destroy evil and lies, whatever the cost - for the simple truth that we understand that we cannot live in a world in which evil, lies, slavery and our enemies flourish.

Against our commonalities, our differences are as trivial as they come.

Walsingham

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In the name of God, go

In the long history of the British Parliament, few occasions have rung with greater drama than the Commons debates of May 7, 1940. In the aftermath of the debacle of the Norwegian campaign, and with the British nightmare of the ages - of continental domination by a hostile power - fast crystallizing into reality, the house of cards of Baldwin’s and Chamberlain’s 1930s “policy of peace” came finally and fully crashing to the ground. As real fear at last broke upon Britain - a visceral realization of the enormity and gravity of the crisis, and how badly it could truly turn for the nation - Parliament was suddenly baying for the government’s blood. Churchill himself tried valiantly and selflessly to shoulder the blame, at least for Norway, but no one was having it. It was all too obvious that Churchill was not the villain but rather the man of the hour, for it was exactly his prophecy - urged for years in the face of scorn and abuse - that had now become fact; and exactly his remedy – to fight, come what may – that was now so obviously recommended. Indeed, Lloyd George remarked that Churchill “must not allow himself to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues.” No, the anger of desperation fell exactly on target: on Neville Chamberlain and his ilk, whose true guilt lay not in any mishandling of the Norwegian campaign, but in their misguided and irresponsible rule over many years that had brought the nation, one step at a time, to this point. No actions or words of theirs could by then redeem that guilt. The mortal blow was delivered by Leo Amery, who in his speech to the Commons quoted Oliver Cromwell’s words to the Long Parliament: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

Recalling this brings two things to front and centre of mind. First: that anger at mismanagement and misconduct tends, generally and ultimately, to be directed at the proper point, and tends to be greater and less susceptible to mitigation the more protracted and constant the offence. And second, that there is only one truly workable correction to a condition of persistent ineptitude and unpardonable or even criminal mismanagement; and that is for those guilty of such misconduct to step down and disappear, and to leave the business of governance to others. With that in mind, on the morrow of Paul Martin’s television address to the nation pleading for understanding and more time in office, and reflecting on the palpable mood of the country in the face of the now overwhelming evidence of Liberal misconduct, I can scarcely do better than to echo Cromwell and Amery. You Liberals have been here long enough, for any good you have done; in the name of God, go.

It is obvious at this point to everyone - except, apparently, to Martin and his Party - that the Liberals are no longer in a position to govern, and that nothing they can say or do, with the possible exception of spending some contrite time in Opposition and reforming themselves from bottom to top, can now alter that fact. Presuming that the current national mood survives until Election Day, whenever that may be - as all reason, honour and sanity demand it must - the Liberals’ eviction from the government benches is now certain. What remains to be established is the exact scale of the damage they have wrought upon our country.

For the catastrophic legacy of the past odd-decade of Liberal rule is to be measured not only in the damage directly attributable to Adscam, which is breathtaking enough. No; as in the case of 1930s Britain, the real rot runs deeper, has been longer in the making, is greater in its impact and its consequence; and therefore, is now all the more unforgivable and compelling of change.

Where does one begin the litany? How about with health care, the sacred cow that the Liberals invariably trot out as the Alamo only they can defend? We do indeed still have a public health care system in Canada, but it is obvious to anyone who attempts to use it that it is failing badly, costing ever more money, and delivering ever poorer service, ever more slowly. I would wager that not a single Canadian, coast to coast, would assert that our health care system is in better condition today than before the Liberals took power. Yet the Liberals instantly and self-righteously quash any attempt to explore any means of improving the system, of raising the return to Canadians on the vast sums of money they invest in it. The Liberal attack on such attempts always begins with the word: “privatization”, uttered with mock horror. That a large measure of private payment already exists within our system, in the form of pharmaceutical, dental, and “supplementary medical” coverage, the Liberals never mention. Nor do they admit that most other countries with public health care systems raise not the slightest objection to private payment for virtually any service – indeed, they are glad to see the burden on the public system eased. Nor are the Liberals honest, or intelligent, enough to see or admit that something this profoundly broken, needs some kind of a fix. No, the knee-jerk attack against anyone bold enough to consider out loud alternatives and changes to our obviously failing system constitutes too easy and self-serving a weapon for the Liberals to discard.

No matter. The provinces will, as they must, go their own ways on health care and find sustainable solutions, no matter what the Liberals say. They will be lead by Alberta, which has already declared – explicitly – its complete indifference to the federal Liberals’ opinion on the matter. Indeed, Albertans’ indifference to the federal government is now pretty much absolute and across the board. Long gone are the days when “western alienation” was the hot anger of the few; today, it is the profound and probably irreversible indifference of the majority. The Liberals have, for better than a decade, confirmed on every occasion their contempt for Western Canadians, and for Albertans in particular. In the run-up to the Second Gulf War, the Liberal government went out of its way to mock Albertans’ views on the idea of Canadian support for the effort, dismissing those views out-of-hand as “un-Canadian”. Western Canada has struggled for twenty years to gain a greater voice in Ottawa, one in fairer proportion to – if nothing else – its financial contribution to the country; whether through Senate reform, or through the Reform Party, which Westerners built from the ground up. But in truth, at this point, particularly with a torrent of oil money flooding in, they really no longer care. The latest Liberal slap in Western Canada’s face: Martin’s appointment of two Liberal hacks - probably the last two people Albertans themselves would have picked – as Alberta’s newest “representatives” in the Senate, in quite deliberate spite of Albertans’ democratic pre-selection of two candidates; didn’t raise much of a fuss, for it came as anything but a surprise. Albertans, and with them many other Western Canadians, have simply moved on. I do not know exactly where this new breed of western alienation will lead, but it cannot be anywhere that would warm the heart of any Canadian federalist.

Western Canadians as a whole, and Albertans in particular, have long been accustomed to seeing their net cash exchange with Ottawa stuck deep in negative territory. So too have they long been aware that most of their money ends up in Quebec. But with Adscam, the Liberals have accomplished something truly remarkable: they have managed, through a criminal destruction of taxpayers’ wealth, to shock and insult Western Canadians and Quebecers in roughly equal measure – and all in the name of national unity! For Western Canadians, Adscam is insult added to injury, and confirmation that the cesspool of Liberal immorality and corruption runs much deeper than even they had imagined. For Quebecers, the scandal carries the further sting of disillusionment. It reveals, suddenly and shockingly, in what fantastic contempt the Liberals hold them, that the Liberals consider bribes, kickbacks and dirty appointments to judicial posts to constitute business as usual in the province. As Stephen Harper put it last night, the Liberals have offered Quebecers a choice between separation and corruption. Quebecers’ reaction so far to Adscam makes clear what, between those options, they are apt to choose. Again, I do not know what the ultimate fallout will be, in terms of Quebec’s future in Canada, but again, it cannot be anything good from a federalist’s perspective. What is crystal clear is this: that if anyone can restore Quebecers’ faith in and respect for the federal government, it is not the Liberal Party of Canada.

I cannot think of a single way in which the Liberals - who claim to hold as their central principle a commitment to a federal Canada, underpinned by a strong and useful national government - have helped rather than injured the federalist cause. Indeed: the one policy sphere that has historically and universally motivated, required and justified the very existence of a national government – foreign and defence policy – the Liberals have more or less declared irrelevant and meaningless, in addition to making a hash of it for more than a decade. From every perspective, our most important foreign relationship is with the United States, and our relationship with that country is at its lowest ebb in living memory. I believe that the people and government of that country have never held Canada and Canadians in lower esteem. This is something for which Canada will pay a heavy price in the years to come, and the situation has come about not because we came to hold opinions different from the Americans’, but because our Liberal government could not be bothered to get past a childish smugness, and actually put some adult thinking into those opinions. On the supreme geopolitical questions of our time – the war in Iraq, the global war on terror, ballistic missile defence - the Liberal government has behaved with incredible – but, incredibly, perhaps calculated – incompetence and apparent indifference. The Liberals have consistently declined to devote any meaningful thought to these issues. Instead, the Liberals point to polls that ask trite questions along the lines of: “should we spend money on health care or on weapons and death”, as “proof” of Canadians’ support for their policies. It is a breathtaking abdication of responsibility, as if the executives of a major company were to cease the hard work of formulating and executing strategy, and instead just divvy up the cash and give everyone a year off – because “that’s what the people want”.

The list goes on and on. Our once respected Armed Forces have been attrited and abused to a point from which they may never be able to recover. Our tax burden has never been higher, and our federal bureaucracy has never been so bloated. Our economic productivity growth last year actually hit zero.

There is little else for Canadians to now say. You Liberals have been here long enough, for any good you have done. In the name of God, go.

Walsingham (originally posted here)

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Blair's Folly

Tony Blair is a man whom I have come to respect and admire greatly since September 11, 2001. Indeed, I have since that date considered him to be a living testament to a central underpinning of the enduring greatness of Great Britain: namely, that any man who rises to the top of the political heap in that country - particularly one who arrives at the summit in time for a moment of great crisis - apparently cannot but possess certain admirable qualities. Those qualities include: an understanding of history and its great lessons; an ability to distinguish friend from foe; the possession of a rational and manly loyalty to the one, and an equally rational and manly willingness and determination to fight the other; the intelligence to realize that a necessary war against a serious, determined, intelligent and ruthless enemy cannot be waged without loss, sacrifice and mess; the courage to lead and be unpopular where that is required; and the ability to think and speak clearly. It is the mark of Britain's greatness - a mark shared with that other great bulwark of freedom and liberal Christian civilization, the United States of America - that leaders with these qualities seem almost invariably to surface when the moment truly requires them. (A more vivid contrast with and condemnation of the Canadian political system and caste I could not invent, but I shall leave that discussion for another occasion.)

The clarity of thought that underpins Blair's determination to join President Bush's war against radical Islamic terrorists, and the regimes and systems that foster and breed them; and the courage and determination to act boldly in that war's prosecution that Blair has displayed; make him in an important respect a true inheritor of his Royal and parliamentary predecessors who so valiantly resisted earlier mortal threats to British freedoms and civilization. This makes one thing all the more baffling: why on earth is this man determined to push Britain all the way into the cesspool of continental European "integration"?

For the life of me, I cannot think of one single net positive likely outcome of this effort. Britain has, throughout its history, been secured as the constant incubator of civil liberties, parliamentary democracy and liberal economy; by the distance which it has physically enjoyed, and which it has strategically, politically and militarily nurtured; from the continent of Europe. What circumstances have changed, that should conspire to direct Britain's core interests and decisions in precisely the opposite direction from the compass north it has observed throughout its entire history, I know not. In this respect, I ask the exactly same question as Sir Winston Churchill in his speech of March, 1936 to the Conservative Backbench Foreign Affairs Committee. In that speech, Churchill pointed out that throughout the course of almost four centuries, and in the face of four successive mortal threats to its free security from a rising and belligerent continental power (Philip II's Spain, Louis XIV's and Napoleon I's France, and Wilhem II's Germany), Britain always chose the hard but correct path of steadfast opposition to the power which - animated by principles vastly different from those of liberal Britain - could and would, in victory and in the achievement of hegemony, only diminish or destroy Britain's essence. Churchill asked: what has changed, that we should, in 1936, regard our proper response to the rising power of Adolf Hitler's Germany in a different manner?

The answer was, of course, nothing at all; and that Churchill was able to persuade his fellow countrymen of that fact, changed the course of history for the immeasurably better.

What was true in 1936 is, in my view, true today. That is not to suggest for a moment that there is any country or power on the continent of Europe today, which constitutes a belligerent and militaristic threat to Great Britain in the classical sense. Most European countries are today, at least nominally, liberal democracies. I suppose it is this very fact which leads Blair and his ilk to think that the magnetic north pole of Britain's strategic self-interest has moved, and that that move justifies a submersion of Britain's hard-won independence and long-evolved institutions, into a European institutional hodge-podge without history, accountability, checks and balances, or record of performance.

Yet the risk he runs - on behalf of all Britons and, by extension, all Commonwealth subjects - should be self-evident from this description. What I find truly confounding is that there is nothing whatsoever that I can see to justify taking this risk, even assuming that integrated Europe should somehow acquire an effective, representative and responsible government. Britain already has one of those. So, too, does it have free trade and free flow of goods, workers and other economic constituent components and forces, between itself and its European neighbours. What, then, is the point? Is it really possible to suppose that whatever integrated Europe could ever evolve from the cesspool of unrepresentative and irresponsible corruption, of anti-American, anti-Christian, weak-at-the-knees bureaucratic paralysis, that currently defines its governmental apparatus; could possibly be better for Britain, than what Great Britain has evolved for itself over the course of a thousand years?

Mr. Blair, you called it right in casting your geopolitical lot with your American friends - with that America with which your country and countrymen truly do share a common bond, nature and interests. Do not dilute or destroy the benefit of that action by continuing to push Britain down the unnecessary and destructive path of greater political integration with continental Europe.

Walsingham (originally posted here)

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HONOURING OUR PATRON, SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, KG (1874-1965)

Brave Old Lion, British Prime Minister, Statesman, Soldier and Author, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Stalwart Defender of the Sacred Crown, Honourary Citizen of the United States, Heroic Leader of the Free World, Magnanimous Victor of the English-Speaking Peoples, etc...

THE GREAT CHURCHILLIAN LESSON AND ANGLOSPHERE LEGACY

The great lesson is the Churchillian one of "greater" Anglo-Saxon unity in the name of sanity, decency and the future against insanity, indecency and destruction. The question of whether our epicentre ought to be Washington, London or elsewhere is grotesquely pointless and misplaced.

There inevitably and perpetually will be differences of flavour, currency and fashion among the members of our greatest and most important of Clubs. Let us never forget, however, the ties of blood, spirit and conviction that not only bind us but which animate our indomitable spirit of freedom and of its vigorous defence. Our great common legacy is that of Washington and Pitt; Lincoln and Palmerston, Disraeli, Lee and Grant; Wilson and Lloyd George, Borden, Smuts and Hughes; of Roosevelt, Churchill, Mackenzie King and Curtin; of Kennedy, De Gaulle, Brandt and Meir (stretching the definition of "anglo-saxon" here); of Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterand and Kohl (stretching the definition again); of Bush, Blair, Harper and Howard.

The legacy we all share is our willingness to call both evil and truth by their names, and to do likewise with a lie - and to stand in defence of truth and of freedom, and be ready to destroy evil and lies, whatever the cost - for the simple truth that we understand that we cannot live in a world in which evil, lies, slavery and our enemies flourish.

Against our commonalities, our differences are as trivial as they come.

Walsingham

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