WINSTON CHURCHILL, INTELLIGENCE AND FICTION: “Mysteries Inside ...

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• Philosophie et théologie

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• Publié par: ojuhyfub
• Nombre de lectures: 150
• Langue: Français

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WIN ST ON CH URCH IL L , IN T E L L IGE N CE AN D F ICT ION : “Mysteries Inside E nigmas” Robin W. Winks, F .R. H ist. S. Yale University April 2, 1995 Mr. President, Mr. Dean, Mr. K emper, Churchill Fellows, members of the faculty and students of the college, ladies and gentlemen: The Board of G overnors of the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library, and President Traer, have shown remarkable courage in their invitation to me to deliver the thirteenth Crosby K emper Lecture here at Westminster College. President Traer also has shown magnanimity in concurring in the choice of a historian, since his education is also in that discipline. I am acutely aware of the honor you do me, in inviting me to speak in this place, on Winston Churchill, and the honor you have done me in granting me the college’s honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, and I thank the Trustees of the College for doing so. I am not the first historian to appear before you, for you have chosen from the very best and most knowledgeable in Britain, but Iamthe first Americanborn speaker and, I am certain, the first to address you without a rich treasure trove of personal stories concerning the subject of this day’s remembrance, for I did not know Winston Churchill, and given the nature of life and death, few speakers in the future are likely to have done so. Like Abraham Lincoln, Churchill is now for the ages. Of course, historians strongly believe they can know the men and women of whom they write. Further, Churchill was himself a most distinguished historian. To be sure, as Sir John Plumb observed in the second K emper address, few historians today write the kind of history Churchill wrote, and more’s the pity. The sweeping canvas on which he painted, the ringing tones of certitude in which he spoke, the absolute conviction that what he had to say was interesting, significant, and moreover, true, would set him apart from our more confessional age, when discussions of the sex lives of our presidents passes for history and when gossip is taken as fact. O ne might still write aH istory nglish Speak of the E ing Peoples, politically incorrect as the title would strike some ears, but such a book would scarcely be the best seller it was, by which Churchill escaped his persistent anxiety about money and became a rich man. For me, as a historian, to speak of Winston Churchill is a moment of historical autobiography, for I grew up listening to the voice of E dward R. Murrow as he described the G erman air attack upon St. Paul’s Cathedral, my ear glued to the family radio, and I know that it was in some measure a reading of the swelling, sweeping prose of Churchill’s great history – partial, biased, E urocentric, impassioned – of World War II that led me to history as a profession. So I am not only honored, but I am moved by this opportunity to think again about one of the great leaders of this century. I have taken as my subject today Winston Churchill and intelligence. G iven that Churchill was a great believer in intelligence – and the matters that support it, and which it in turn supports, including resistance movements, evasion, escape, and defection techniques,