My dad is reading this book. I picked it up and read a few pages and what I read was completely amazing! I hope that we can once again find great men like this man in our history. Winston Churchill was an amazing scholar, man and leader. This book is extremely insightful and well-written. I will be picking up a copy for myself sometime soon. Here are a couple of excerpts from his chapter on Pearl Harbor. This is some of his reaction to hearing the news that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor and that the United States would be entering World War II. I miss the day when Europeans thought and spoke of our country like this.
No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!
Silly people, and there were many, not only in enemy countries, might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey has made to me more than thirty years before – that the United States is like ‘a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.
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