The Imperial Churchill

...If, however, we attempt to discern the ends of Churchill's own "life of action and advocacy" we are at first bewildered...

...Nevertheless, he remained convinced that given its essentially artificial economic situation, the economic health of twentieth century Britain depended on the maintenance of her Empire...

...And because of its necessary reliance on prestige as the dominant means of sustaining its authority, because of the general hostility—provoked or unprovoked—of the uncivilized peoples who border a widespread empire, and because of the threats to imperial security caused by the fear, envy, and ambition of other great powers, every imperial nation must become expansionist...

...It will not do to dismiss his advocacy of empire as his one great "blindspot," for that advocacy had deep roots in his whole political outlook...

...The direct consequence of his striving for excellence is that he benefits others who, in the absence of his striving, would have no claim to the benefits they receive...

...On the other hand, his radicalism seemed opportunistic to many of the members of his new party, and his open ambition often unsettled them...

...The possession of an empire thus tends to direct in the broadest sense the development of its ruling nation...

...Only when man is striving to perfect himself does he reach his full humanity and attain the happiness of which he is capable...

...But modern democratic regimes are based on a social contract theory of government which reduces the ends of politics to peace and prosperity...

...Nor did he think that empire is grounded in a self-denying obligation of the civilized to succor the needy...

...Ruling a civilizing empire is the activity which marks the culmination of the search which men must undertake to find scope for, and thereby to develop, their "powers...

...Empire can be the basic cause of a nation's cultivating a particular kind of man and the way of life he personifies...

...their right to self-government derives from their ability to govern themselves...

...But the advance of science is said to have made war the specialty of technicians, and many have come to question the ability of politicians to comprehend strategic matters...

...The ascent from barbarism to full civilization does not, in his view, entail a movement from the depths of narrow self-seeking to the peaks of selfless altruism...

...One civilized nation may not rule another without its consent unless the subservience of the subjugated nation is indispensable to the self-preservation of the ruler...

...Being part of a great imperial project fortifies a citizen's self-respect, augments his patriotism, andgives a larger, more political meaning to his life: It makes him a more public-spirited citizen and, thereby, a more complete human being...

...Kirk Emmert The Imperial Churchill A IN HIS ESSAY, "Consistency in Politics," Winston Churchill suggests that the most important thing to know about a reputed statesman is the nature of the broad purposes which guided his judgments and actions...

...This may havebeen because he was the last democratic statesman who thought that the best kind of life was based upon, but not encompassed by, peace and prosperity...

...The virtues can be developed, then, only in situations which call for them and give them scope...

...We remember the great war leader and protector of liberal democracy against Nazi tyranny...

...Churchill did not stress the economic impetus for empire...

...Consideration of his views on empire suggests, in fact, that Dorothy Thompson was correct when she observed that Churchill was an "aristocrat" whose "spirit is Aristotelian...

...he spoke of man's rights, and yet he also took his bearings from man's obligation to perfect himself...

...In a letter to his cousin, written in 1899, Churchill observed that "the improvement of the British breed is my political aim in life," but he noted that this aim was often in conflict with "another great principle" to which he was also committed—"Liberty...

...Jeffery D. Wallin The Warrior Churchill-1915 IT USED TO BE that a young man aspiring to learn the art of statesmanship first apprenticed himself to the art of war...

...Man is pre-eminently a political being because, in addition to needing assistance to meet his primary needs for security and economic well-being, he perfects himself only through political activity, and particularly by holding public office...

...Churchill thought that the addition to a democratic regime of empire, and of the principle it represents, made that regime worthy of his full support...

...Empire is the means to civilize democracy...

...In addition to perfecting the exceptional few, Churchill thought that empire elevates the common citizen who remains at home...

...The overriding importance of man's obligation to become civilized requires that he submit himself, when it is available, to the expeditious and assured agency of imperial rule...

...Churchill called the British regime an "Imperial Democracy...

...The Empire supported access to foreign markets and raw materials, and the imperial navy secured British trade and commerce...

...A just empire puts the uncivilized touch with civilization and provides them with the external assistance without which their development would be greatly retarded, if not completely prevented...

...The right of the uncivilized to liberty is subordinate to their obligation to improve...

...He had serious doubts about modern mass democracy because he thought that it might reduce everyone to a common level of mediocrity...

...For Churchill, human excellence was largely equivalent to political excellence, to The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 7 the moral and political virtues needed to govern the political community: He considered the statesman to be the embodiment of human virtue...

...he was a partisan of human excellence, but he strongly supported efforts to raise the minimal level of well-being of the common man...

...The imperial project cannot, however, be simply attributed to the compulsion of circumstances...

...His attempt to combine civilizing empire and democracy should be seen as perhaps the most significant part of his efforts to give modern democracy a higher tone...

...Churchill's advocacy of civilizing empire was grounded on the view that all men areunder a sovereign obligation to perfect their higher, uniquely human faculties, to become, to the extent of their varying capacities, more complete human beings...

...The true imperialist seeks to restrain the nation's desires for power and wealth by putting them in the service of a higher end—civilization...

...A just empire over the uncivilized, on the other hand, need not be founded on the deliberate or freely given consent of the governed...

...Churchill thought that empire elevated the uncivilized by establishing law, order, and more efficient administration, by expanding the range of desires of the uncivilized, and by satisfying these desires by means of large capital improvements and the use of scientific technology...

...Human life is not worth living when it has lost sight of a sound standard of human excellence and of the need to strive to attain that standard...

...Vigorous men and nations are also driven to empire by a desire to prevail or to be predominant...

...In fact, however, his ouster had much less to do with his "interference" in naval matters and much more to do with partisan politics than is usually thought...

...Empire is the essentially undemocratic means by which democracy, while retaining its foundation in the equal rights of all, is pushed in the direction of concern with encouraging human excellence...

...It must, however, be directed to their improvement: It must be a "civilizing empire...

...Because it requires for its continued existence a high level of moral and civic virtue from a few, and a lesser but significant measure of virtue from all its citizens, empire keeps alive for the whole nation a more complete view of human excellence than would otherwise survive in a modern mass democracy...

...There is no half-way house for Britain between greatness and ruin...

...To appreciate fully Churchill's position in 1915 it is necessary to recall that he had begun his political career as a Conservativeand had become a Liberal only in 1904...

...but the opinion that Churchill was a poor strategist is mare circumscribed and rests upon the events of the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915, when Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty...

...we must," Churchill noted, "be a strong, successful, scientific, commercial empire or starve...

...This did not, of course, make him popular with the Tories, and when he took up the cause of the People's Budget in 1909, he added further fuel to the charge that when he left the Tory Party he turned his back on his class (he was a cousin to the Duke of Marlborough) as well...

...Because of its widespread responsibilities for governing others, an imperial nation can provide a much greater number of authoritative offices than a nonimperial nation, and particularly than a modern demo-cratic nation which tends to have relatively weak offices and elevates private over public affairs...

...he was the friend and imaginative utilizer of technology and the fruits of industrialization, and yet he could not reconcile himself to the scientific attitude toward man and nature and favored the martial over the commercial virtues...

...But what makes this opinion difficult to question is that it is thought to be supported by the most fundamental principles of modern democracy...

...By assuming the title of Minister of Defense as well as Prime Minister he became vulnerable to the criticisms that he could not possibly have known as much about strategy and tactics as his military advisors, and the subtler, but perhaps more important charge that his appreciation of military and civic virtue was unseemly in the leader of a democracy...

...He thought there were more powerful and elevated causes of national expansion...

...Churchill's advocacy of civilizing empire followed from his view that the seeking and exercise of political responsibilities are necessary means to human excellence...

...Now "that we have got this immense population here at this level of economic society...

...Their obligation does not run down to the uncivilized, or across to their fellow men, but up to man fully civilized—to civilization...

...Churchill was less concerned with civilizing empire's ability to elevate the uncivilized ruled than he was with its tendency to further improve its civilized rulers...

...We like to forget that in the 1920s and 1930s Churchill, in his great Marlborough and in numerous essays, expressed grave doubts about the viability and goodness of modern mass democracy...

...Commerce gave impetus to British expansion, but Churchill thought the more fundamental cause of imperial growth was the need for military security...

...The fully civilized man, the man of noble self-regard, wants the best things for himself, and he considers moral and political virtue to be the things most worth having...

...Because only the rule of those of superior merit elevates the ruled, Churchill held that "intrinsic merit is the only title of a dominant race to its possessions...

...In a search for sufficient scope for his abilities Churchill went from sport to war to politics, activities which he ranked according to their ability to give full scope to his powers...

...Winston S. Churchill was the last democratic statesman to combine the roles of general—at least in the sense of making strategy—and statesman...

...Only at the head of an extensive empire can the truly great-souled man have his day...

...The highest possibilities for statesmanship exist for those who "hold with honor the foremost stations in the greatest storms...

...Britain's Empire, moreover, was frequently an economic drain on the nation: "Imperialism and economics clash," Churchill observed, "as often as honesty and self-interest...

...He saw the imperial aspiration for the uncivilized as being not the attainment of Lull human excellence, but the passing of the threshold which marks the boundary between barbarism and civilization—the development of a minimal capacity for self-government...

...Civilized men and nations are obliged to themselves, to the high standard which they have set for themselves...

...Thus, while powerful for the moment, he had made many enemies in the Opposition, and had made few friends in his new party...

...Empire increases the security and economic well-being of all classes...

...He did not view empire as a burden to be endured or as merely one of the inescapable responsibilities of a powerful nation...

...Churchill thought that true threats to self-preservation may justify a nation's expansion, but that desires for greater wealth and power do not in themselves legitimize imperial rule...

...Even essentially defensive and satisfied nations are led into war and expansion just in order to protect themselves and their present possessions...

...The "spirit of empire," Churchill observed, is "the desire for power" or the "desire to prevail," a "great fact which practical men must reckon with...

...The virtues of the fully civilized man are developed and perfected only by energetic striving to perform the deeds and to engage in the activities which those virtues make possible...

...Now man does not attain virtue naturally, without substantial effort on his own part...

...From Alexander the Great to Henry V to the First Duke of Marlborough, there was an almost unbroken line of great statesmen who were also great generals...

...Churchill was a defender of democracy, but he was keenly aware of the inherent inequalities among men...

...Although we may safely reject the view of some of Churchill's detractors that he was little more than a gifted opportunist, we must also admit that it is difficult to discern the ultimate purpose or principles to which he consistently adhered...

...Only imperial nations are of sufficient magnitude to provide scope for the most splendid and demanding forms of political excellence...

...To many this implies that excellence in the art of war is inappropriate to democratic statesmanship...

...Churchill thought that the highest kind of political and moral virtue was that which existed on the grandest scale...

...Without the need to give someone his due there can be no development of justice, without a substantial danger, no courage, without political responsibilities, no prudence...

...The country naturally supported Admiral Fisher, and this resulted in Churchill's own resignation...

...His switch of party was accompanied by a switch in politics...

...Premodern statesmen saw war as a means to the ends of politics, which included, among other things, civil and religious virtues...

...To have confined the British at home would have been to stifle their unusual potential for excellence: Churchill observed that within the broader Empire "the peculiar gifts for administration and high civic virtue of our race may find a healthy and honorable scope...

...By the end of 1914 the war in the West 8 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974...

...And we find even more unpalatable Churchill's dogged commitment to empire at a time when that kind of rule had long ceased to be defensible in the eyes of all right-thinking men...

...This last charge cannot be dealt with in a short article...

...This suspicion seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Hitler's attempt to direct World War II personally made it easier to defeat Germany than it might otherwise have been...

...In addition to advocating free trade, Churchill now took up the cause of the workingman...

...This became apparent when, as a price of joining a coalition in May 1915, the Conservatives demanded Churchill's dismissal and the Liberals acquiesced with few misgivings...

...Our times and our democratic regime lead us to be familiar with, and receptive to, the democratic more than the aristocratic Churchill...

...In an effort to move the Liberal Party to the left, and thereby to co-opt the emerging Labour Party (which he thought dangerous because of its constant appeals to class interest), he concerned himself with the problems of sweated labor, and, as Home Secretary, he opened the first labor exchanges, began work on unemployment insurance, and was an effective proponent of prison reform...

...Churchill's resignation from the Admiralty in May 1915 is usually attributed to the fact that he bullied his First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, into an unsound naval scheme at the Dardanelles, thus forcing Fisher to resign in protest...

...He also distinguished between rule over civilized and rule over uncivilized nations...

...The most demanding offices in an empire are those at the peak of the imperial government itself...

...The moral foundation of empire, and thus also of civilization, rests not on the distinction between altruistic duty and self-interest but on that between narrow, "slavish," or undue self-interest and the pursuit of one's own good broadly or nobly conceived...

...In practice a defensive empire tends to become almost indistinguishable from a deliberately offensive or expansive empire...

...Churchill would have been sympathetic to current defenders of American empire who stress the connection between the growth and necessity of American empire and the nation's interest in its security and in world order...

...Those who want to understand Churchill's statesmanship, however, must take seriously both the aristocratic and the democratic Churchill...

...Churchill was a man of principle, but he seems to have been torn between his dedication to virtue and human excellence and his dedication to liberty and the democratic regime of liberty...