The Art of Tetman Callis

“In the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks on Birdcage Walk, across from the former pig meadow and leper colony currently known as St. James’s Park, a full-throated congregation belted out the ‘Te Deum’ and prepared to take communion from the bishop of Maidstone. ‘To Thee all angels cry aloud,’ they sang, ‘the heavens and all […]

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“We are only specks of dust that have settled in the night on the map of the world.” – Winston Churchill (quoted by Rick Atkinson in The Day of Battle) Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“No one, whether Nazi or not, should be led summarily before a firing squad without legal trial and consideration of the relevant facts and proofs. Rather would I here and now be led out into the garden and shot than that my honor and that of my country should be smirched by such baseness.” – […]

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“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” – Winston Churchill, The World War II Desk Reference, Douglas Brinkley and Michael E. Haskew, eds. Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Prime Minister to Minister of Agriculture, September 26, 1940: ‘I am far from satisfied at the proposal to reduce pigs to one-third of their present number by the middle of the autumn. This is certainly not what was understood by the Cabinet. . . .  Meanwhile, what arrangements are you making for curing the surplus […]

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“It was a great, quaintly organised England that had destroyed the Spanish Armada. A strong flame of conviction and resolve carried us through the twenty-five years’ conflict which William II and Marlborough waged against Louis XIV. There was a famous period with Chatham. There was the long struggle against Napoleon, in which our survival was […]

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“It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the […]

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“Revenge has no part in politics, and we should always be looking forward rather than looking back.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“When armies approach each other, it makes all the difference which owns only the ground on which it stands or sleeps and which one owns all the rest.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“When you have got a thing where you want it, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“The transfer to Great Britain of fifty American warships was a decidedly unneutral act by the United States. It would, according to all the standards of history, have justified the German Government in declaring war upon them. The President judged that there was no danger, and I felt there was no hope, of this simple […]

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“The King changed his practice of receiving me in a formal weekly audience at about five o’clock which had prevailed during my first two months of office. It was now arranged that I should lunch with him every Tuesday. This was certainly a very agreeable method of transacting State business, and sometimes the Queen was […]

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“On November 15 [1940], the enemy switched back to London with a very heavy raid in full moonlight. Much damage was done, especially to churches and other monuments. The next target was Birmingham, and three successive raids from the 19th to the 22nd of November inflicted much destruction and loss of life. Nearly eight hundred […]

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“One day after luncheon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kingsley Wood, came to see me on business at Number 10, and we heard a very heavy explosion take place across the river in South London. I took him to see what had happened. The bomb had fallen in Peckham. It was a very big one—probably […]

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“I have often wondered . . . what would have happened if two hundred thousand German storm troops had actually established themselves ashore. The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths. […]

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“When I said that the French Army, fighting on, wherever it might be, could hold or wear out a hundred German divisions, General Weygand replied, ‘Even if that were so, they would still have another hundred to invaded and conquer you. What would you do then?’ On this I said that I was not a […]

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“Past experience carries with its advantages the drawback that things never happen the same way again. Otherwise I suppose life would be too easy.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“An accepted leader has only to be sure of what it is best to do, or at least to have made up his mind about it. . . .  If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he […]

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“If the present tries to sit in judgment on the past, it will lose the future.” – Winston Churchill, Their Finest Hour Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Experience at the end of World War II demonstrated that it is much more difficult to order the affairs of liberated nations than of defeated ones. This is because it is undesirable, if not impossible, to arbitrate their affairs with the same ruthlessness. If Washington’s twenty-first-century neoconservatives had possessed a less muddled understanding of the […]

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“British and American intelligence possessed enough information by late 1944, from Ultra and escaped Auschwitz prisoners, to deduce that something uniquely terrible was being done to the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, if the right conclusions had been drawn from the evidence. . . . [G]iven the known limitations of precision bombing even where good target […]

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“Some illusions persist that the wartime Allies missed opportunities to promote the cause of ‘good Germans’ who opposed Hitler, rejecting approaches from such men as Adam von Trott. Yet the British seemed right, first, to assume that any dalliance of this kind must leak, fuelling Soviet paranoia about a negotiated peace and, second, in believing […]

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“For many years after 1945, the democracies found it gratifying to perceive the Second World War in Europe as a struggle for survival between themselves and Nazi tyranny. Yet the military outcome of the contest was overwhelmingly decided by the forces of Soviet tyranny, rather than by Anglo-American armies.” – Max Hastings, Winston’s War Share […]

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“Clear leadership, violent action, rigid decision one way or the other, form the only path not only of victory, but of safety and even of mercy. The State cannot afford division or hesitation at the executive centre.” –  Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, Vol. 2 Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Men should always be difficult. I can’t bear men who come and dine with you when you want them.” – Benjamin Disraeli (Max Hastings, Winston’s War) Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.” – Winston Churchill, The River War Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“Both squadrons were now steaming southward on slightly converging courses—the British to seaward with the setting sun behind them, and the Germans nearer the land. And now began the saddest naval action in the war. Of the officers and men in both the squadrons that faced each other in these stormy seas so far from […]

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“The first rule of war is to concentrate superior strength for decisive action and to avoid division of forces or engaging in detail.” – Winston Churchill, The World Crisis Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“In war all repetitions are perilous. You can do many things with impunity if you do not keep on doing them over and over again.” – Winston Churchill, The World Crisis Share this…FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinemailPrint

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“The world on the verge of its catastrophe was very brilliant. Nations and Empires crowned with princes and potentates rose majestically on every side, lapped in the accumulated treasures of the long peace. All were fitted and fastened—it seemed securely—into an immense cantilever. The two mighty European systems faced each other glittering and clanking in […]

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