Everyone is someone else’s infidel (1)
Another email is lazily doing the rounds. Mine came via someone I know in the UK, prefaced by the asinine remark, “I always did like that fellow’s speeches.”
One of the finer things about blogging, I’m discovering, is that it encourages you to strive for clarity in your ideas. Journalists and blogging colleagues at both ends of the political spectrum can be a big help in this, but we also generate a lot of white noise.
The world needs to do a lot of thinking just now. It requires action, too, but what it doesn’t need is more hatred, the lumping-together of individuals into amorphous groups of “ists” for the sake of laziness or to support belligerent nationalism and zealotry.
I was not surprised to find that the bloggers had discovered the WC quote. But it was depressing to find that it appears on many blog sites without even the most cursory of analysis, as though it represents the ultimate and inviolable expression of truth. It’s also depressing to find this quotation framed by so much hatred, and by blinkered incitements to violence.
I didn’t yet own a copy of The River War, so I could only verify that quotation online. I could have gone to the library, of course, but I was overcome by fearful fatalistic apathy that the book might be out on loan.
The Winston Churchill online shop doesn’t offer it for sale. Volume I is available from Project Gutenberg, but Volume II appears not to be. So I wrote to Ronald J. Goodden, who is cited as the person who produced the e-text in January 2004. He replied:
Frustrated that Volume II of The River War appears not to be widely available, I headed to Amazon UK and bought the Adobe e-book for a couple of pounds. It’s a single volume and none of the words quoted in Macintyre’s Times article appear in this e-version, other than the phrase “the mighty stimulus of fanaticism”, which isn’t part of the more controversial quotation.
The Churchill Centre refers to the unexpurgated version of the quote, the version that most frequently appears on blog sites (including at this one). The right-wing blogs are generally critical of Macintyre for supposedly neutering the full force of WC’s message.
The Churchill Centre’s ‘Publications and Resources’ section sheds more light on the missing text:
Don’t expect, then, to be able to find that quotation in many of the currently available editions of WC’s book. It was removed following the first edition. So, unless you’re rich and/or resourceful, you’ll be lucky to find it in print.
Does Ben Macintyre, therefore, own one of the highly collectable and unabridged early editions? He doesn’t say. I wonder where he found the text from which he quotes; has he seen a copy of the book, did he seek out the original edition in a library, or did he simply find the quotation via the internet, as I and other bloggers have done?
The average blogger might have an excuse for inconsistency and obscurity, Mr Macintyre less so. I suggest he would have done his readers a service by mentioning that what must now be the best-known quote from this book was removed from most popularly available editions long ago, and that it has only recently come back into print.
If Churchill edited his own text, he may himself have removed the quotation from all subsequent editions as long ago as 1902, along with much else (my e-book, for example, has just 199 pages). The abridged version contains no preface explaining how and why the edits were made. I wondered whether this particular segment had been removed more recently by the publisher, in a post-Rushdie fit of political correctness.
The Churchill Centre very helpfully thanks one Gregory Smith for finding the quotation in the unabridged edition of The River War (the site suggests it might be the “Quotation of the Decade”), and it seems to be Smith who has largely been responsible for returning it to the attention of the modern reader. Andy Guilford, another reader at the Centre, says he cannot find the infamous quote in his one-volume Prion paperback (1997) and cannot remember having heard it on a ‘Books on Tape’ audio production, either.
“The editor” responds to Mr Guilford:
At the time I published this post, Richard Langworth, the editor of Finest Hour at the Churchill Centre had not yet replied to an email l sent him asking whether any record exists of why Churchill excised the two chapters from later editions.
In the meantime, Ron Goodden wrote back to say that he had entered some key phrases from the quotation into the Gutenberg e-texts for me, but was unable to locate them in the 1902 edition of the book. “I can only assume,” he wrote, “that if the quote is indeed genuine, it comes from the much longer, original edition. Sorry.”
If any NZBC reader has a print edition of the original, unabridged book, you have more money than sense. But I’d still be more than happy to buy a photocopy from you, in order to compare it with the e-book and find out what else has been removed.
Is it, then, insignificant that the quotation isn’t in recent versions — especially as the Churchill Centre is now re-publishing the unabridged book? After all, it isn’t as though I am suggesting that the quotation never originated from WC’s pen. Whether or not the widely distributed quotation is accurate, the fact remains that at some point the author or his publisher decided — for reasons as yet unknown — to remove it and the surrounding chapters.
The fervour these words still generate might be one reason why WC might have had the foresight to do so, but I doubt it.
In any case, it’s a bit rich for anyone to accuse The Times’ columnist Macintyre of neutering the full force of WC’s message when it’s relatively easy to establish that WC did a fair bit of that himself. It has to be said, though, that Macintyre isn’t exactly clear about the source of his quotes. He states that in The River War Churchill’s account “ended in the battle of Omdurman in 1898”. In fact, even in the abridged e-book, this is Chapter 15 of 19 chapters. The volume culminates in ‘The End of the Khalifa’. And all the stuff about rabid dogs and fanatical frenzy appears neither Macintyre’s column nor is it in the widely available abridged version of the book.
Anyway, as you can see, “fearful fatalistic apathy” needn’t be terminal — it’s even possible to corroborate some facts online, with a little cursory research. But should I be worried about my “degraded sensualism”? And if I’m ever improvident (my recent credit card statements suggest that I am), and I’m occasionally slovenly or sluggish, does that make me retrograde, does that paralyse my development, too? Or would other shortcomings be required for that? And who would one contact about finding a concubine?
I feel the need to exercise some artistic licence of my own, and to speculate further about why WC may have self-censored his work.
Perhaps he realised that it was rather odd for him to be ascribing “slovenly systems of agriculture” to the followers of a particular belief system. Particularly when, rather inconveniently, the origins of agriculture lie in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, part of present day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Around those parts, they first started getting sloppy about 9500-8000 BC, and it was pretty much all downhill from there, thanks to those well-known disorderly bastards, the Sumerians.
Meanwhile Churchill’s antecedents were bashing around in caves with antlers and bones and trying to figure out how they could keep their fire alight so they could watch Aston Villa at home to Charlton Athletic.
[My thanks are due to Elisa B. for reminding me of the history of agriculture. I must have had a fatalistically apathetic spell on the day we did that in school.]
Where I grew up in the 1960s, “systems of agriculture” also tended towards the slovenly. They mainly involved Welsh hill farmers in wet duffle coats trying to drag bedraggled sheep by their hind legs out of the swamps and into their wellies before stopping in at the Chapel to bellow a few hymns in a defunct language (there were no mosques in Caergybi).
To WC, Islam was not only a dangerous force but also a curse upon its followers; an extraordinarily sweeping condemnation, even considering that his quoted words are over 100 years old — not that bold strokes necessarily invalidate old words. But it was a very different world in those days. Britain still had its Empire, the Crusades were being avenged in different ways and the world’s mothers were yet to bear millions of soon-to-be premature corpses.
We do well to learn lessons from the past, but we shouldn’t transpose them onto the present without questioning them, and we certainly shouldn’t expect them to help stop what is being perpetrated by a relatively small number of suicidal individuals, supposedly against the “infidel”. More about that in my next post, Everyone is someone else’s infidel (2).
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities — but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”Not being one to confuse the acceptance of things at face value with a desire for historical continuity, I deleted the email. And not being one to let rabid dogs lie, about an hour later I went back and retrieved it from Deleted Items.
— Winston S. Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899)
One of the finer things about blogging, I’m discovering, is that it encourages you to strive for clarity in your ideas. Journalists and blogging colleagues at both ends of the political spectrum can be a big help in this, but we also generate a lot of white noise.
The world needs to do a lot of thinking just now. It requires action, too, but what it doesn’t need is more hatred, the lumping-together of individuals into amorphous groups of “ists” for the sake of laziness or to support belligerent nationalism and zealotry.
I was not surprised to find that the bloggers had discovered the WC quote. But it was depressing to find that it appears on many blog sites without even the most cursory of analysis, as though it represents the ultimate and inviolable expression of truth. It’s also depressing to find this quotation framed by so much hatred, and by blinkered incitements to violence.
I didn’t yet own a copy of The River War, so I could only verify that quotation online. I could have gone to the library, of course, but I was overcome by fearful fatalistic apathy that the book might be out on loan.
The Winston Churchill online shop doesn’t offer it for sale. Volume I is available from Project Gutenberg, but Volume II appears not to be. So I wrote to Ronald J. Goodden, who is cited as the person who produced the e-text in January 2004. He replied:
Mr Bell:I explained how, recently, elements of the WC quote have resurfaced in one of Ben Macintyre’s Times Online columns, ‘How would Churchill have answered the Islamist threat?’, but in a contextualised and incomplete form — at least when compared with the version circulating via email.
I'd be happy to oblige, if possible. Which “quote” were you referring to? Please understand that this etext is from a 1902 single-volume edition.
Cheers,
Ron Goodden
Atlanta, U.S.A.
Frustrated that Volume II of The River War appears not to be widely available, I headed to Amazon UK and bought the Adobe e-book for a couple of pounds. It’s a single volume and none of the words quoted in Macintyre’s Times article appear in this e-version, other than the phrase “the mighty stimulus of fanaticism”, which isn’t part of the more controversial quotation.
The Churchill Centre refers to the unexpurgated version of the quote, the version that most frequently appears on blog sites (including at this one). The right-wing blogs are generally critical of Macintyre for supposedly neutering the full force of WC’s message.
The Churchill Centre’s ‘Publications and Resources’ section sheds more light on the missing text:
“THE RIVER WAR
First published by Longmans Green, London: 1899 (2vols)
Woods A2
Churchill’s greatest early work: a prose epic with much relevance today. Editions through 1965 are highly collectable. All editions from 1902 had an abridged text, in which Churchill excised about 25% of the original manuscript, but also some new material. First editions have 950pp, others 456 or less. An indispensable work. The Churchill Centre is now facilitating publication of a new unabridged edition.”
(My emphases)
Don’t expect, then, to be able to find that quotation in many of the currently available editions of WC’s book. It was removed following the first edition. So, unless you’re rich and/or resourceful, you’ll be lucky to find it in print.
Does Ben Macintyre, therefore, own one of the highly collectable and unabridged early editions? He doesn’t say. I wonder where he found the text from which he quotes; has he seen a copy of the book, did he seek out the original edition in a library, or did he simply find the quotation via the internet, as I and other bloggers have done?
The average blogger might have an excuse for inconsistency and obscurity, Mr Macintyre less so. I suggest he would have done his readers a service by mentioning that what must now be the best-known quote from this book was removed from most popularly available editions long ago, and that it has only recently come back into print.
If Churchill edited his own text, he may himself have removed the quotation from all subsequent editions as long ago as 1902, along with much else (my e-book, for example, has just 199 pages). The abridged version contains no preface explaining how and why the edits were made. I wondered whether this particular segment had been removed more recently by the publisher, in a post-Rushdie fit of political correctness.
The Churchill Centre very helpfully thanks one Gregory Smith for finding the quotation in the unabridged edition of The River War (the site suggests it might be the “Quotation of the Decade”), and it seems to be Smith who has largely been responsible for returning it to the attention of the modern reader. Andy Guilford, another reader at the Centre, says he cannot find the infamous quote in his one-volume Prion paperback (1997) and cannot remember having heard it on a ‘Books on Tape’ audio production, either.
“The editor” responds to Mr Guilford:
“The quotation falls in Volume II, Chapter XXII, ‘Return of the British Division’, which Churchill omitted starting in 1902. Likewise culled was Chapter XXI, ‘After the Victory’ [...] The bad news is that unabridged original copies of The River War (1899 1900) cost from US$1000 up. The good news is that an entirely new two volume edition is coming, thanks to Professor James Muller and The Churchill Centre.”
At the time I published this post, Richard Langworth, the editor of Finest Hour at the Churchill Centre had not yet replied to an email l sent him asking whether any record exists of why Churchill excised the two chapters from later editions.
In the meantime, Ron Goodden wrote back to say that he had entered some key phrases from the quotation into the Gutenberg e-texts for me, but was unable to locate them in the 1902 edition of the book. “I can only assume,” he wrote, “that if the quote is indeed genuine, it comes from the much longer, original edition. Sorry.”
If any NZBC reader has a print edition of the original, unabridged book, you have more money than sense. But I’d still be more than happy to buy a photocopy from you, in order to compare it with the e-book and find out what else has been removed.
Is it, then, insignificant that the quotation isn’t in recent versions — especially as the Churchill Centre is now re-publishing the unabridged book? After all, it isn’t as though I am suggesting that the quotation never originated from WC’s pen. Whether or not the widely distributed quotation is accurate, the fact remains that at some point the author or his publisher decided — for reasons as yet unknown — to remove it and the surrounding chapters.
The fervour these words still generate might be one reason why WC might have had the foresight to do so, but I doubt it.
In any case, it’s a bit rich for anyone to accuse The Times’ columnist Macintyre of neutering the full force of WC’s message when it’s relatively easy to establish that WC did a fair bit of that himself. It has to be said, though, that Macintyre isn’t exactly clear about the source of his quotes. He states that in The River War Churchill’s account “ended in the battle of Omdurman in 1898”. In fact, even in the abridged e-book, this is Chapter 15 of 19 chapters. The volume culminates in ‘The End of the Khalifa’. And all the stuff about rabid dogs and fanatical frenzy appears neither Macintyre’s column nor is it in the widely available abridged version of the book.
Anyway, as you can see, “fearful fatalistic apathy” needn’t be terminal — it’s even possible to corroborate some facts online, with a little cursory research. But should I be worried about my “degraded sensualism”? And if I’m ever improvident (my recent credit card statements suggest that I am), and I’m occasionally slovenly or sluggish, does that make me retrograde, does that paralyse my development, too? Or would other shortcomings be required for that? And who would one contact about finding a concubine?
I feel the need to exercise some artistic licence of my own, and to speculate further about why WC may have self-censored his work.
Perhaps he realised that it was rather odd for him to be ascribing “slovenly systems of agriculture” to the followers of a particular belief system. Particularly when, rather inconveniently, the origins of agriculture lie in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, part of present day Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Around those parts, they first started getting sloppy about 9500-8000 BC, and it was pretty much all downhill from there, thanks to those well-known disorderly bastards, the Sumerians.
Meanwhile Churchill’s antecedents were bashing around in caves with antlers and bones and trying to figure out how they could keep their fire alight so they could watch Aston Villa at home to Charlton Athletic.
[My thanks are due to Elisa B. for reminding me of the history of agriculture. I must have had a fatalistically apathetic spell on the day we did that in school.]
Where I grew up in the 1960s, “systems of agriculture” also tended towards the slovenly. They mainly involved Welsh hill farmers in wet duffle coats trying to drag bedraggled sheep by their hind legs out of the swamps and into their wellies before stopping in at the Chapel to bellow a few hymns in a defunct language (there were no mosques in Caergybi).
To WC, Islam was not only a dangerous force but also a curse upon its followers; an extraordinarily sweeping condemnation, even considering that his quoted words are over 100 years old — not that bold strokes necessarily invalidate old words. But it was a very different world in those days. Britain still had its Empire, the Crusades were being avenged in different ways and the world’s mothers were yet to bear millions of soon-to-be premature corpses.
We do well to learn lessons from the past, but we shouldn’t transpose them onto the present without questioning them, and we certainly shouldn’t expect them to help stop what is being perpetrated by a relatively small number of suicidal individuals, supposedly against the “infidel”. More about that in my next post, Everyone is someone else’s infidel (2).
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