“/On the other side of the Atlantic, the young Winston Churchill wrote
of taking part in “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”
in the British Empire. In one of those jolly little wars, he wrote “we
proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the
houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady
trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive
devastation.” Churchill defended these atrocities on the grounds that
“Aryan stock is bound to triumph,” and he said he was “strongly in favor
of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.” He blamed the people
of India for a famine caused by British mismanagement because they kept
“breeding like rabbits,” adding “I hate Indians. They are a beastly
people with a beastly religion.” /“
The above paragraph is taken verbatim from page 658 of Stephen Pinker’s
recently published (2011) masterful work on the decline of violence _The
Better Angels of our Nature_ which I have just finished reading. He
cites Toyes’ book _Churchill’s Empire_ and an August 12, 2010 New York
Times article by J. Hari as his sources.
Pinker purports to examine the mindset of historical figures showing
their moral limitations by modern standards.
Too bad he didn’t bother to consult www.winstonchurchill.org
<http://www.winstonchurchill.org> or back issues of Finest Hour where
these out-of-context quotes have been shown most decidedly /not/ to be
reflections on Churchill’s morality. The battle continues....
Gregory B. Smith
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