By Catherine Ulrich Brakefield
WinstonChurchill was seventy-four when he addressed the House of Commons with thisline, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” He’dgone against the current of popularity again facing the same brick wall as hehad with the impending doom of Nazism, now, with the threat of Communism.
He summed his life up thusly: “All the great things aresimple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor,duty, mercy, hope.” The Brit’s British Bulldog was still on his feet, growlinghis warnings.
In my February blog, we traveled through the hallways ofChurchill’s early days, his accomplishments, and his defeats. In March welearned about the obstacles he faced in World War I and World War II and thetrials he overcame.
He was often lonely, misunderstood, and yes, made a coupleof wrong turns. He fought heroically in the trenches of World War I and battledthe Blitz of World War II. But this latest threat looming upon Britain’sborders worried him even more. When in 1949, George Orwell’s (the pen name ofEric Arthur Blair) science fiction book Nineteen-Eighty-four waspublished, more discord followed. Most know Blair as George Orwell, so Ishall refer to Blair as Orwell henceforth.
It is amazinghow much Orwell and Churchill had in common—and how many differences. Bothended up with the same ideals—but with very, very different outcomes.
Both hadexperienced severe loneliness in their lifetime. Both were well-known authors.Both were British subjects. Both had a heart for the poor and downtrodden, and bothhad experienced the snobbery of their constituents during their young schoolyears and adult years. Perhaps there waseven a little awe in Orwell’s temperament toward Brit’s Bull Dog because henamed his protagonist Winston in Nineteen Eighty-four.
Perhaps itwas the deciding differences between them that made each choose a differentpath to notability—and in the end, the outcome of their souls.
Churchill wasborn into an aristocratic family and struggled with maintaining his grades.Orwell was born into a lower-middle-class family. He was intellectuallybrilliant and received outstanding grades throughout school. He won twoscholarships, one to Wellington and Eton.
Though both men experienced loneliness, they reacted verydifferently. Orwell often wrote about his miseries throughout his novels, asseen in his autobiographical essay, Such, Such Were the Joys (1953).
Churchill chose to see the brighter side of life, andwrote, “When we look back on all the perils through which we have passed and atthe mighty foes that we have laid low and all the dark and deadly designs thatwe have frustrated, why should we fear for our future? We have come safelythrough the worst.”
Orwell once shrugged off imperialism and labeled himself ananarchist. He continued this self-behavior for several years. Then, during the1930s, he decided he was a socialist. Thinking this was even too libertarian inthe way he thought, he took the next step to saying he was a communist.
Orwell’s Animal Farm came into print in 1945. It wasa political fable based on the Russian Revolution and its betrayal of JosephStalin. The book is about the barnyard animals that overthrow their humanmasters and then set up their own society.
The intelligent and power-loving pigs form a dictatorshipand then encourage bondage even more oppressive and heartless than their formerhuman masters had bound them beneath.
The pigs’ slogan was, “All animals are equal, but someanimals are more equal than others.” Animal Farm made Orwell famous.Many critics said, “Animal Farm was one of Orwell’s finest works, fullof wit and fantasy and admirably written.”
Well into his forties now, Orwell pondered his politicalpreferences. And after brooding over Naziism and Stalinism, he realized thereloomed a dark menace in each. This is when he took up pen again and wrote hisscience-fiction thriller Nineteen Eighty-four.
It’s about an imaginary future where the world is dominatedby three warring totalitarian police states and the leader is called BigBrother. The hero in Orwell’s book is Englishman Winston Smith who lives inOceania. It is Smith’s job to rewrite the history books. To systematicallydestroy the truth and rewrite history in the Ministry of Truth, therefore,bringing it up to the current political thinking.
The party has created a propagandistic language known asNewspeak, designed to limit free thought and promote the Party’sdoctrines. For instance, war is peace,freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. Winston has doubts and shares thesethoughts with a like-minded woman. They fall in love. They get caught and arearrested by the Thought Police.
The method was so diabolical that it eventually worked. Theimprisonment, torture, and reeducation broke him physically and rooted out hisindependent mental existence, and his spiritual dignity—the only love he feltwas toward Big Brother.
Afterwards, meeting the woman he once loved, he feels noattraction toward her at all. Only an allegiance to Big Brother.
“Who controls the past,controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past,” Orwell said in his book. Pointing out the dangers oftotalitarianism did make an impression upon many. The book was later turnedinto a movie entitled Big Brother.Nineteen Eighty-four is considered a classic and mandatoryreading for some high schools and colleges in the United States. Orwell died oftuberculosis in a London hospital in January 1950.
Nineteen Eighty-fourcontinues in print and into the minds of our youth today. As I wrote in March’sblog, here is Churchill’s speech at Westchester during the Great Depression ofthe 1930s again, “Words are the only things that last forever. The Pyramids molder, the canals silt up, the bridgesrust, the railroads change and decay…But words spoken two or three thousandyears ago remain with us now, not as mere relics of the past, but with alltheir pristine living…leaping across the gulf of ages—they light the world forus today.” How ironic you hear nothingof this today. Churchill was right when he said, “The empires of the future arethe empires of the mind.”
In 1951 Winston Churchill was at the ripe age of 77 whenhe was elected prime minister for the second time. Queen Elizabeth made WinstonChurchill a knight of the Order of the Garter in 1953.
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy made WinstonChurchill the first foreigner to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship. “In thedark days and darker nights when Britain stood alone…he mobilized the Englishlanguage and set it into battle.”
Upon Churchill’s death, we learn of his most cherishedBible verse, John 14:2–3 “In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also” (NKJV) His funeral was laced with Christian undertones, for he orchestrated it himself and wanted lively hymns. And so, before a worldwide audience of 350 million, the congregation listened to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic;” in respect to his Anglo-American parentage, “Who Would True Valour See” and “Fight The Good Fight With All Thy Might.” His coffin was carried out of St Paul’s Cathedral to “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.”
Once, someone said to him that he was a pillar of the church. He retorted, “No, no, not a pillar, but a buttress, supporting it from the outside.”
Orwell and Churchill had commonalities, but both wentabout achieving their notability in different ways.
What if history wererewritten? Words are a vital network of wisdom for the next generation toexplore. What if history booksare changed to uphold the dominant party’s agenda? As seen in February, March,and April’s blog, this has been tried throughout the years. It is Orwell’s words that the schools areexploiting. Churchill’s words are all but obscure.
Churchill once said in his boisterous voice, “What isforesight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lackof clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, untilself-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features whichconstitute the endless repetition of history.”
Love’s Final Sunrise:Fleeing for her life Ruth findsherself in an hourglass of yesteryear. Can Joshua’s Amish ways help themsurvive these final three-and-one-half years? “Tobe honest, I’m not usually drawn to fiction. But for this no-nonsensenonfiction lover, Love’s Final Sunrise was a risk that paid off in fullmeasure. I highly recommend this author’s way of weaving intrigue, romance, andChristian principles.” Lori AnnWood
Catherineis theaward-winning author of Wilted Dandelions, Swept into Destiny, Destiny’sWhirlwind, Destiny of Heart, Waltz with Destiny and Love's Final Sunrise,and two pictorial history books, The LapeerArea and Eastern Lapeer. She has been published by Guideposts Books,CrossRiver Media, Revell Books, Bethany House Publishers, and ArcadiaPublishers.
Catherine and her husband of fifty-one years liveon a ranch in Michigan and have two adult children, four grandchildren, four Arabian horses, three dogs, three cats, six chickens,and five bunnies. You can learn more about her at CatherineUlrichBrakefield.com
https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/winston-churchill
https://www.biography.com/political-figures/winston-churchill
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/winston-churchill-quotes
https://www.history.com/news/meet-the-woman-behind-winston-churchill
https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Orwell/Animal-Farm-and-Nineteen-Eighty-four
