Rule: help each other
when you can, but never harm —
never help the bear
Duff Cooper added: ‘I hope you will forgive me because your friendship, your comradeship and your advice are very, very precious to me.’ Churchill replied on November 22:
Thank you very much for your letter, which I was very glad to get. In the position in which our small band of friends now is, it is a great mistake ever to take points off one another. The only rule is: Help each other when you can, but never harm — Never help the Bear.
Excerpt From: Winston S. Churchill: The Prophet of Truth, 1922–1939 (Volume V) (Churchill Biography Book 5) by Martin Gilbert.
Mr. Churchill had quite the career.
Up – down – up again – down again – up – down.
Biographers like to tell the story how Franklin Roosevelt once said is supposed to have said along the lines that Winston has 100 ideas a day but only one will turn out to be good. Which is okay as he will have another 100 ideas tomorrow.
What is usually included with the quip is that Mr. Churchill heard the story and took umbrage and wanted to know when did he ever have a bad idea.
One idea that took with him was that Hitler was a problem without fixing by anything than removal.
While many sought out accommodation, Mr. Churchill maintained a wall of anti-end-Hitler words.
At one point after the Munich Crisis when the France and Great Britain took Czechoslovakia apart, Mr. Churchill called for a vote question the actions of His Majesties Government and he asked for just 50 members of the House of Commons to vote with him to record the fact that there were some folks who objected to such an action.
Mr. Churchill got 2.
Understand that when the House of Commons votes, the members vote by exiting the House chamber through the yes door or the no door and then the group together in the lobby to discuss the vote.
After this vote, Mr. Churchill stood in the lobby for two other men.
Kind of rubs it in.
Still, he kept at it.
This is the time of Mr. Churchill’s career called The Wilderness Years.
On the outside.
Out of step.
Down.
Has been.
About Mr. Churchill, Herman Wouk wrote:
Winston Churchill, today an idealized hero of history, was in his time variously considered a bombastic blunderer, an unstable politician, an intermittently inspired orator, a reckless self-dramatizer, a voluminous able writer in an old-fashioned vein, and a warmongering drunkard. Through most of his long life he cut an antic, brilliant, occasionally absurd figure in British affairs. He never won the trust of the people until 1940, when he was sixty-six years old, and before the war ended they dismissed him. But in his hour he grasped the nature of Hitler, and sensed the way to beat him: that is, by holding fast and pushing him to the assault of the whole world, the morbid German dream of rule or ruin, of dominion or Götterdämmerung. He read his man and he read the strategic situation, and with the words of his mouth he inspired the British people to share his vision. By keeping back the twenty-five squadrons from the lost Battle of France, he acted toughly, wisely, and ungallantly; and he turned the war to the course that ended five long years later, when Hitler killed himself and Nazi Germany fell apart. This deed put Winston Churchill in the company of the rare saviors of countries, and perhaps of civilizations.
I feel the wilderness is where a lot of Americans are today.
Out of it.
Down.
Take heart.
We need to read the man and the situation.
Anyone of us may be in position to be that rare savior of a country.
In the meantime, help each other when you can, but never harm —
And never help the bear.
Never ever, help that bear.
No Haiku For You 