Wild About Writing

I’m at the 25th anniversary dinner of the Sir Winston Churchill Society. It’s a posh event, held at the swank Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. All is formal. I decided to show off a bit by wearing my Scottish outfit; no, not a kilt, but an Argyle jacket and nice green tartan trows (trousers).

While my family claims descent from Scottish lairds, we don’t have the paper to prove it. We’re not even a sept of the Campbell clan, but we do claim an affinity. I betrayed the connection with my choice of the Macdonald ancient hunting tartan for the trows. But they look nice, anyway.

There’s a line in the Scottish marching air, The Campbells are Coming:

The Campbells are comin, oho, oho                                                                                                         

The Campbells are comin, oho, oho

The great Argyle he goes before

He makes his cannons and guns to roar

So what’s this got to do with the Church dinner? Not much really, so I’d better talk about the dinner.

The memory and legend of Sir Winston Churchill is so firmly embedded in 20th century world history that there’s almost nothing new that can be said about this man. Even our speaker, Celia Sandys, granddaughter of the great man, had little new to tell us.

The author of such books about her grandfather as The Young Churchill and Chasing Churchill she told us innumerable anecdotes but only one that I had not heard before: When Churchill visited a badly bombed English city soon after becoming Prime Minister, he received a rather chilly welcome. The crowd gathered to hear him began to chant, “Bomb Ber-lin, Bomb Ber-lin.” He looked out at the audience and responded; “Business before pleasure.”

Of course, Britain had to go through the business of getting its defence industries fully cranked up while obtaining the assistance of America and the British Dominions like Canada. Only then would it be able to take the offensive.

There’s a fair bit of revisionism these days about Churchill’s place in history. Many of those born since the Second World War (and that must include most of the population) don’t entirely accept the conventional wisdom that this was a “just war.” They point to the Allied air bombings of German cities, particularly Dresden, and the dropping of A-Bombs on Japan as evidence that our side was equally guilty of crimes against humanity.

As one who grew up to listening to war news of German blitzkeiegs, the Battle of Britain, and the Second Front, I share the traditional view that Britain and the West had no choice but to fight back to prevent world domination by an evil regime. It was the kind of fight in which nothing could be left to chance.

Winston Churchill properly warned a sleeping West against the threat of Hitler. How different the world is today!

Today, we fear a clash of civilizations between radical Islam and a secular West. But there is no evidence that the Islamists have the capability to genuinely threaten us. Terrorist attacks, even that as grave as September 11, are mere pinpricks against the technology and the material wealth of the West.

Where these attacks can and have hurt us is morally and psychologically. Since September 11, America and its allies have suffered more from misguided and wilfully ignorant policies pursued by the U.S. government, than anything  Al Queda has managed to do.

A P.S. to the Churchill Society: Do you really have to serve a bigger meal than any one person can reasonably consume?Two chunks of beef tenderloin? How about getting the hotel to downsize the meal and send along the $10 difference to the Food Bank?