Yet supposing (as I do not for one moment suppose) that Mr. Kennedy were correct in his tragic utterance, then I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men. It will then be for you, for the Americans, to preserve and to maintain the great heritage of the English-speaking peoples. It will be for you to think imperially, which means to think always of something higher and more vast than one’s own national interests. Nor should I die happy in the great struggle which I see before me, were I not convinced that if we in this dear island succumb to the ferocity and might of our enemies, over there in your distant and immune continent the torch of liberty will burn untarnished and (I trust and hope) undismayed.
1939, 14 June. (Nicolson I, 403.)
WSC to American columnist Walter Lippmann at a dinner with Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery and the Julian Huxleys. (Julian, brother of Aldous, was a biologist, author and internationalist.) Lippmann had said that the American Ambassador, Joseph Kennedy, had informed him that war was inevitable and that Britain would be beaten.
The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
1943, 6 September. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Onwards, 182.)
The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American Democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. If you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement.
1946, 5 March. Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. (Sinews, 94.)
Churchill inherited from his father, and passed on to his son, a well-worn admonition: "We must never fall below the level of events.”
World History
