My father was a fan of Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain during World War II. I have written in a previous blog about the call my parents received on December 7, 1941, from a neighbor informing them of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack led to the U.S. entering World II immediately on the side of Britain and other allies.
We may forget how shocking was that attack and the fear that the United States might lose this war with the Nazis and their allies. My mother later recounted my family’s experiences in dealing with wartime life: how she hoarded gasoline, sold only with the use of carefully regulated coupons, as she rode one way up the main shopping highway and back down the other in one trip. No short trips for just one item or shopping in only one place at a time. She saved cans and newspapers for the drives which recycled them for war use.
The British, of course, having been attacked earlier and watching France fall, across the narrow strip of the English Channel, were obviously in even more danger of losing the war.
They did not lose, and surely one reason was the absolute resolve of Winston Churchill that they would not. His refusal to even consider surrender, fought with stirring speeches to the British parliament, was as brave an act as any in history.
However, societies involved in great conflicts almost always find it impossible to return to past ways once the conflict is over, even if they win.
Churchill was never as popular after the war. His strong belief in the continuance of the British Empire was at odds with the new world risen from the ashes of the conflicts in Europe and Asia. Native citizens would, time and again, gain release from their colonialist overlords by war or by the reluctant understanding of the colonizers that the time of empire was over.
Churchill, brave as any wartime leader in history, did not understand that even the British Empire was not ordained to last forever.
Much earlier in his life, Churchill had taken a speaking tour of the United States and met “an aging Mark Twain.” They discussed the Boer War, fought between the British Empire and South Africa. As described in The Economist (December 23, 2023, “From Prisoner to Prime Minister”), the conversation went as follows, Churchill remembering: ‘Of course we argued about the Boer war. After some interchanges I found myself beaten back to the citadel. ‘My country right or wrong.’ ‘Ah,’ said the old gentleman, ‘when the poor country is fighting for its life, I agree. But this was not your case.’”
America is still my country even when it errs, but I am not called to worship it as a god. Some of the greatest patriots are those who, like ones who opposed the U.S. entry into Vietnam, practice great patriotism when they rightly fault the country for its sins.