The Pittsburgh Press (March 9, 1946)
I DARE SAY —
Forever England’s
By Florence Fisher Parry
I have been thinking what it would mean to this America right now if we had a man as much America as Churchill is England.
For Winston Churchill is the very epitome and quintessence of Great Britain. She is Churchill, and Churchill is she. Her interests are his interests; her future his future; her heartbreak his heartbreak; her peril his agony.
For her he has risked his life countless times. For her he would extend it beyond its furthermost breath. For her he would bargain, cajole, coerce; for her, he would step down from the high plateau of statesmanship into the dubious dark alleys of politics and all its secret covenants secretly arrived at.
Nowhere can there be found today so versatile a servant of his country. He seems to be able to get along with anyone so long as it is to England’s interest to do so. He is capable of great and sincere friendships; but even greater than his friendships is his watchful guardianship of England’s interests.
No one could suspect his friendship for Franklin D. Roosevelt of being founded on anything but the most sincere and genuine affection. They liked each other. They were companions. Yet no personal friendship could be to Winston Churchill as important as is his love for England. There stood an impasse that not even the blandishments of a Roosevelt could cross or touch or in any way affect!
Winston Churchill could serve as a good example of what a true patriot should and can be. Would that we had here in America such a man, who could maintain such a firm stance astride the continents!
The vote getters
We are not a country that produces statesmen. We produce enterprisers, financiers; we produce politicians and smart business men. We produce idealists. We are the world’s greatest producers of professional reformers and fanatical pressure groups and meddlers and kibitzers.
But we do not produce statesmen. We often them no training school. We provide them no traditions. Our statesmen are but glorified politicians whose eyes must be kept on the Main Chance. We seldom see in America a man in politics who has ever succeeded to rising to the place where he feels safe in risking the loss of a vote.
I was furnished a pat example of this one day last week, and I think I shall try to describe it here. I attended a luncheon which the Chamber of Commerce gave in celebration of the Westinghouse Company’s 60th Anniversary and the 100th birthday of George Westinghouse.
They invited Governor Martin as the Speaker of the Day, and he gave a redoubtable, pungent, and unsparing speech in defense of competitive Free Enterprise in America. It was a fearless, hard-punching attack upon the prevailing spirit of iconoclasm in our Labor ranks today, and was a stirring rebuke to the kind of exhibition he had just been witness to; for in order to enter the hotel banquet hall where he spoke. Governor Martin had had to pass through a tightly-formed and menacing picket line thick with placards bearing the warning: “Governor Martin, do not cross this picket line!”
This made Governor Martin’s speech all the more significant and stirring. Here, at last, we told ourselves, was a man with the courage of his convictions, cost what it may! Here was a man who would not compromise; who was not afraid to take his place in the ranks of the Enterprisers and defend the honest interests of American business!
Is there such a man?
But after Governor Martin had finished his prepared speech, he took time to address a few remarks to Labor; conciliatory, friendly, placating – political. He flattered the picketers. He avowed himself their pal. They were good vote-holding, vote-getting remarks.
Then he left and went out to and through the picket line; but not before sanding surrounded by the picketers in a happy little group, to have his picture taken – with them – together.
Oh, I dare say it was all right. It was politics. It was America. But as I left the scene, I found my heart was heavy.
Where has our American eagle flown? Where has our American flint-like and fearless character gone? Where are the men who stood unflinching against whatever friend or foe tried to coerce them from their rock-bound principles?
Will there be a man arise from our troubled midst, freed at last from the bondage of votes and constituents and profitable compromise? Will there be a man arise stern-visaged and unsmiling and not afraid to turn a wrathful frown upon the wreckers of our national peace and prosperity?
We hear a phrase. It has been used until it is threadbare: “The courage of one’s convictions.”
Where is such a man who would rather be right than President, and defend the Right, though it cost him so much as one vote?