![]() ![]() The question which was so rhetorical to Churchill was, he knew, answered very differently by others. “Is human progress the result of the resolves and deeds of individuals, or are these resolves and deeds only the outcome of time and circumstances? Is history the chronicle of famous men and women, or only their responses to the tides, tendencies and opportunities of their age? Do we owe the ideals and wisdom that make our world to the glorious few, or to the patient anonymous many? The question has only to be posed to be answered.” In one form or another, he asked it of every great event of his lifetime-and not of his lifetime alone. “Is the march of events ordered and guided by eminent men or do our leaders merely fall into their places at the heads of the moving columns?” This question-which he put in 1932-fascinated Churchill throughout his life. ![]() Had this happened, Churchill believed, the changes brought in the name of Progress-of Science, of Democracy, and of Equality-might have been less revolutionary, less bloody, and more salutary than any we have in fact known. Had that happened the nations of Europe might have been spared the terrible blood-letting of the last two years of the War, and the main political structures of the nineteenth century dissolved by the War-among them the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian monarchies-might have endured far into the twentieth century. Nor did he doubt that, had it been so executed, the First World War could have been brought to a successful conclusion some time either in 1915 or 1916. I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”Ĭhurchill was 65 years old when, for the first time in his life, he “had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.” He never doubted that, had he possessed such authority in 1915, the Dardanelles strategy could have been successfully executed. At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene. As he went to bed, he tells us, at about 3 a.m., he was “conscious of a profound sense of relief. N the night of the tenth of May, 1940, on the eve of the ill-fated Battle of France, Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain. Jaffa edited and published in 1981 through Carolina Academic Press. This essay originally appeared in Statesmanship: Essays in Honor of Sir Winston Churchill, which Dr. ![]()
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