CHURCHILL & ORWELL: THE FIGHT FOR
FREEDOM BY THOMAS RICKS
A
fascinating book which presents the beliefs and lives of Winston Churchill and
George Orwell. Most impressive about it is the brilliantly selective use
of quotations from both writers and what I found to be wise perspective on the
meaning of their lives on our contemporary situation and my own life.
A
few examples:
·
I am struck by how often in history the “wisest” writers and
thinkers have felt the world was going down the drain. The historian
Arnold Toynbe began the 1930s observing that it was becoming common to think
that “the Western system of society might break down and cease to work.”
In 1935, the Shakespearean scholar, A.L. Rowse, wrote that it was “too
late to save any liberalism, perhaps too late to save socialism.” In
1938, after the Munich Agreement, the novelist, Virginia Woolf, wrote to her
sister, lamenting “the inevitable end of civilization.”
Despite the
easy-to-support assertions, “civilization” has shown the ability to sustain
itself against great setbacks. It’s worth remembering that today as we
bemoan what’s going on around us and work to make it right.
As George Orwell
wrote after World War II, lamenting what was going on around him but still
looking forward: “Spring is here, even in London…and they can’t stop you
from enjoying it. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the
police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers,
but the earth is still going around the sun and neither the dictators nor the
bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”
On the other
hand, we must not fail to see how narrow the gap is between calamity and
avoiding calamity. If it hadn’t been for Churchill, a “peace agreement”
might have been reached between the leaders of Britain and Hitler. Many
leaders, including Lord Halifax, wanted to find such an agreement. And
also, in our own history in America, there were those who advocated that
Lincoln agree to the Confederate states withdrawing from the Union. The
challenge Churchill faced in World War II was huge. As just one example,
in 1942, Churchill was crushed one day to learn that, of a convoy of 34 ships
coming from Canada, 20 had been sunk.
·
I’ve often remarked on how every life is made up of “successes”
and “failures.” That is certainly true of the lives of Churchill and
Orwell. Churchill’s defeats were many prior to World War II and after
World War II. Yet, he displayed towering strength and willpower during
the war. Without him, it may not have ended the way it did.
Orwell, with his
books Animal Farm and 1984, has achieved more notoriety and success after his
death than before. When he was alive, his book sales were measured in the
hundreds and thousands. Since his death, an estimated 50 million copies
of his books have been sold.
In Animal Farm,
Orwell described an existence that spoke directly to the tragedy of Communism.
Later, he wrote, “Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous
alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the
very existence of truth.” It is not just the future that belongs to the
all-powerful, but also the past.
·
Both Churchill and Orwell were, at their very heart, focused on
understanding reality and, drawing from that, conclusions in a direction that
fostered individual freedom.
I love this from
Ricks: “In war time, people will believe the worst if they are not told
the truth, or something close to it, perhaps mixed with a vision of the way
forward.” That is what any leader in any time must provide to his or her
organization.
We must always stay rooted, to the best of our ability, in the sanctity of the individual and doing what we are called on to do and what we believe is right.
