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- [00:05]
Narrator/Announcer
Read along with Hugh and Dr. Arne and enjoy Winston Churchill's My Early Life on a deeper level. Purchase your very own copy of My Early Life at the Hillsdale College Bookstore. Just visit Hillsdale. Edu Radio. Learn about the fascinating first 30 years in the life of one of the most provocative and compelling leaders of the 20th century, Winston Churchill, In My Early Life, Hillsdale, Hillsdale. Edu Radio. That's Hillsdale. Edu Radio to buy your copy of My Early Life.
- [00:48]
Podcast Host/Producer
Every week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins Hugh Hewitt to discuss great books, great men and great ideas. This is Hillsdale Dialogues, Part 1 of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you find your audio.
- [01:14]
Hugh Hewitt
Morning Gloria and Evening Grace America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Welcome to the Hillsdale Dialogue, the final radio hour of the week and maybe your last hour watching on the Salem News Channel or maybe you're watching over at Hillsdale. Edu. But my guest is, as promised, Dr. Larry Arndt. And we are back, as promised In My Early Life by Winston Churchill. Dr. Arne, chapters 13 to 15 are the condensed version of the River War. So you and I spent probably six weeks on the River War, which was Churchill's third book. Maybe I don't know if it was second book or third book. And so I don't want to spend second, second book. I don't want to spend a lot of time on the River War. I want to highlight a couple of things that in my early life that I don't think I noticed in the River War and get your reaction to them. The first one is you mentioned last time we talked about my early life. He loved adventure, and it's an adventure story. The young Churchill is just as dashing as any young British soldier can be. On page 160, he's in India. He's finished with the the campaign up in the hills. And he writes, there remained only the last phase of the long drama of the Sudan. I was deeply anxious to share in this. It's an interesting turn of phrase. And so he jumps on a boat and goes home. What do you make of that kind of mindset? Do you think we still have that mindset among many young men?
- [02:46]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah. Well, he first of all, he went to you. Sure we do. Yeah, of course we do. They're rising up all the time. Remember that story we liked about I went to India?
- [02:57]
Hugh Hewitt
Yes.
- [02:58]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Talking about doing something over there. And I got these kids and they come down and they want me to decide right then at lunch in the Dining hall and they weren't even seniors to send them to India next month, you know. And I said shut up, stay here. But that's the spirit, right? That's the thing that gets it going. And that was, you know, I mean, Elon Musk, what's he like? Right. I actually developed an account today talking to somebody about why Winston Churchill is yet greater man and entrepreneur than Elon Musk, whom I regard as great and entrepreneurial.
- [03:36]
Hugh Hewitt
He converted the British name to oil.
- [03:39]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, he did, he did. Well, he. There must, you know, Tesla's under fire, right? And it just had. Stock's been bad and stuff better now, I think. Anyway, Musk gave an all hands talk and he stated the ultimate purposes of Tesla and it was sustained abundance for everyone. And what he defined it, he said it means that everyone can have whatever they want, whenever they want in a sustained way, so we can keep on forever. Well, that's, you know, very grand, isn't it? It also isn't quite human.
- [04:19]
Hugh Hewitt
No, it's not. Okay, I'm glad you, you added that because when you said it was very grand, I'm saying I'm not sure I want to live in that world because that world implies a lot.
- [04:29]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, well, you may be in that world pretty soon because my cybertruck drives itself and the robots are learning the same way and so it's, you know, it's kooky. What's going on?
- [04:41]
Hugh Hewitt
Does your cybertruck really drive itself?
- [04:45]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Oh yeah. I could get in it in my driveway here and put your address in Virginia or California and it would drive me there and I would probably not have to intervene at all right now it's not certified for non attentive self driving, so you got to watch and it watches you to see if you're watching. But I've driven it to Lansing, that's 70 miles and the airport's 85 miles in the rain at night and I didn't touch a thing.
- [05:20]
Hugh Hewitt
Now, what's interesting that you bring up Elon Musk, there's been this reaction against him. It is not unlike the reaction to young Churchill. In fact, I wanted to read to you. Churchill on page 162 talks about envy. It is melancholy to be forced to record these less amiable aspects of human nature. He's being called a metal hunter and a self advertiser, which by a most curious and indeed unaccountable coincidence have always seemed to present themselves in the wake of my innocent footsteps and even sometimes across the path on which I wish to proceed. He's talking about envy. And Musk has run into that, too. Trump ran into it. But Trump, it's a fleeting thing because he's 78, 79 years old, but with Musk, it's turned into terrorism. No one tried to kill Churchill for being an ambitious person, but they did try to stop him many times.
- [06:13]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That passage you read is one of my favorites. And it's a very delicate thing, you know, because he was incredibly pushy, and, you know, the way you got ahead in the British Empire was to push yourself into battle. And he pushed harder than anybody. And, you know, in this chapter, it's revealed that he wanted to go to Sudan. And he wanted to go to Sudan because there's action there, and all he wanted to do was get killed or risk that. And everybody wants to go. And Kitchener does not want him personally in particular to go because Churchill had written a lot of articles, critical generals, and got his name in the paper and was a leading journalist while a soldier. And so Kitzner tried to stop him, even when the Prime Minister wrote on his behalf.
- [07:04]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh, it's astonishing. We got to set this up. Churchill writes, I decided to proceed without delay to the center of the Empire and argue the matter out in London. He gets on a boat and he goes to London, gets his mother to help him, and everybody's involved. There are three characters that our audience will not be familiar with. I tried to find my copy of Salisbury by Andrew Roberts, which is a fabulous biography of Lord Salisbury, but I paused this time on Major Sir Schomberg, Kerr MacDonald, because I had not noticed the first time I read in my early life, that Churchill writes about this extraordinarily gallant man who, in after years, at a very advanced age, insisted on proceeding to the trenches of the Great War and was almost immediately killed by a shrapnel cell. Now, first of all, Dr. Arnie says, at very advanced age, when Major Sir Schomburg, Kurt MacDonald was Lord Salisbury's chief of staff, he was young. When he went to World War I, he was 55. And Churchill's calling that a very advanced age, that maybe for the 1900s or the 1800s.
- [08:15]
Dr. Larry Arndt
That's right, yeah. Yeah.
- [08:17]
Hugh Hewitt
But that kind of character, that kind of character in the British Empire is everywhere.
- [08:23]
Dr. Larry Arndt
And see, Churchill writes early in his career. The first actual essay we have of him, never published, is in his archive, says that the master of rhetoric is master of himself. He can, even if his party abandons him, he can be strong. Well, he gets in. Churchill gets in to see Lord Salisbury, because he wrote an interesting book about fighting in Afghanistan, and Salisbury loved it. And Salisbury was the greatest man in England at that time. He's one of. From one of the oldest, most politically connected families. And he's Prime Minister for the third time, and he's a member of the House of Lords, the last member of the House of Lords to be Prime Minister. And so this great man loved Churchill's book and he's the greatest man. And Churchill gets him to write a telegram to Kitchener which effectively says, please take Churchill. And Kitchener says no. And Kitchener had already had a communication from the Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne, of the same nature. And Kitsner said no to him, too. And then Churchill found a way through the War Office, and we'll come to that.
- [09:40]
Hugh Hewitt
Let's pause for a moment. I had forgotten this, that Lord Salisbury reads the Malachin Field Force and he invites a young Churchill to come to basically the White House, right? The number 10, the great man, master of the British world, the unchallenged leader of the Conservative Party, a third time Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary at the height of his long career, received me at the appointed hour. And I entered for the first time the spacious room overlooking the Horse Guards Parade in which I was afterwards for many years, from time to time, to see much grave business done in peace and war. I'll come back to Salisbury. That's not the PM's office, right? He's talking about the Foreign Minister's office. I think.
- [10:27]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Now he sees Salisbury in 10 Downing Street.
- [10:29]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh, he does, yeah.
- [10:32]
Dr. Larry Arndt
And. And that, you know, that's the. The place, right? That's the place. And so, yeah, that was a big deal. Right. And you'd think that would get him to the Sedan. It didn't work and he still didn't stop. You know, that's. And, you know, there's a cleverness, first of all, this Churchill is both when he praises and when he recounts negative things about himself, there are elegances in it. So when he says metal seeker, you know, all that, you know, trying to get his name in the paper. He is the most published author on these wars in which he fought, and he's the second lieutenant and he is critical of the generals. Now, that's outrageous.
- [11:24]
Hugh Hewitt
It is outrageous, but it is not. It's not unusual for Winston Churchill. More coming up. Don't go anywhere. The Hillsdale Dialogue continues right after the break. All things hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. stay tuned for more of Dr. Larry Arn here on the Hillsdale Dialogue.
- [11:39]
Mark Levin
Hello, America. I'm thrilled, thrilled to announce my new 10 part podcast series, Liberty and Learning with Mark Lewis Levin and Larry Arne. Join me and my dear friend Dr. Larry Arne, President of Hillsdale College, as we dive deep into the founding principles of our great nation. In these challenging times, understanding our history and the ideals of self government is more crucial than ever. We'll explore the core of America's current crises, the changes in our government and what it means for our lives and liberties. From education to borders, citizenship to the separation of powers, we'll cover it all. Tune in to Liberty and Learning with Mark Levin and Larry Arne of Hillsdale College. So subscribe now and join us on this wonderful journey to rediscover the principles that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in history. Don't miss it.
- [12:27]
Podcast Host/Producer
Listen right now to Liberty and Learning with Mark Levin and Larry Arn@podcast.hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you find your audio. Hey there. It's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour anniversary play a key role in this week's episode. We start with Mark Moyer, William P. Harris, chair of Military History at Hillsdale College. We discuss the legacy and the lessons learned from the Vietnam War 50 years after the fall of Saigon. Meanwhile, the Great Gatsby turns 100 this year. Benedict Whelan from our English department joins us to discuss the themes in that book. And Julianne Hillock, founding principal at Hojo Academy in New Mexico, talks to us about the unique challenges of running a school in a remote part of the country, plus being honored by the Hillsdale College Alumni Association. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you get your audio.
- [13:44]
Hugh Hewitt
Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt with Dr. Larry ARR. And we're talking about Winston Churchill, my early life and his habit of criticizing those above him in the military chain of command.
- [13:53]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Dr. Arne, you've got a son in law in the Navy, I think.
- [13:57]
Hugh Hewitt
Yes.
- [13:58]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Right. Does he, does he do that?
- [14:00]
Hugh Hewitt
No, he doesn't say a word about politics ever. Because our attrition of our military, never. And it's a good tradition. I like this tradition. Do not be involved in politics. We do not want political generals. We want good generals and admirals and captains and colonels all the way down to the newly enlisted E1.
- [14:23]
Dr. Larry Arndt
But didn't our, our friend Tom Cotton, who's very salty, respond to it was either a journalist or a senator about some criticisms of the War in the Middle East. And he wrote to correct the record.
- [14:38]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh, he did this. The story, if I can recall it completely, he did not get permission to do that. The letter was printed and attention was called to it by bloggers in Minnesota that go by Powerline. And he was summoned at a date certain to meet with the head of his deployment. I think he was in Iraq at the time, might have been Afghanistan. He went both places. But before that meeting happened, somebody in the United States maybe w, said something good about that letter. So when he went to see his commanding officer, his commanding officer said, you know, not to do this again. Right. Senator Cotton said they got away with it, but it's a good thing with timely like this. There's a fine line in here, by the way. Will a duck swim? You know, I don't know what would happen if you send out a note to a student In Hillsdale College, Dr. Ryan would like to see you at the President's office or the President's home at X hour. Do you think they're going to say yes?
- [15:47]
Dr. Larry Arndt
No, I think they won't. Yeah. You know, because, you know, I have peripheral things to do with Donald Trump for several years now, and they are peripheral things. Right. They're important to me, and some of them are important, but they're not the center of his world. And people, you know, this morning I got an email from somebody, and it's a lot of details about a particular thing. Can you get to Trump? And I replied, no, I cannot.
- [16:15]
Hugh Hewitt
Well, that's not unlike what I mentioned earlier. This Major Sir Schomburg Kerr MacDonald, who's Lord Salisbury's number one guy. After this meeting goes down, Churchill approaches him and says, can you get Lord Salisbury to write Kitchener? And this guy's very clear, said, I will ask him and he will probably send a letter, but it will not be a demand and it might be ignored, and I can't do anything more. And it played out exactly like that. And I think it's hard to say sometimes, no, I can't do something. But it's a useful trait to be able to say, no, I can't do something, or to limit your ability to do something.
- [16:56]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, well, and, but, but remember that Schomburg said he will indicate in the letter that he would be pleased if Churchill was accepted. And he did do that. And Kitchener didn't ignore the letter. He said no.
- [17:11]
Hugh Hewitt
He said no.
- [17:13]
Dr. Larry Arndt
And. And, you know, that's a big deal. And, you know, and one of the most famous things about Winston Churchill's early life Was he was down there and took part in that cavalry charge. Yeah.
- [17:25]
Hugh Hewitt
And he wouldn't take no for an answer. So the secret to this chapter is a fellow named Field Marshal Evelyn Wood. I had to go and look him up because Churchill doesn't tell us much about him. He tells us a little bit about Lord Salisbury and how great he is, and a little bit about how Lord Salisbury, Chief of Staff is a good man, but he just says that. Evelyn Wood. He just assumes fact's not in evidence. He assumes the reader knows that this is a great man. He's a field marshal. I mean, this guy, he got the Victoria Cross, which is like. He's a recipient of the Medal of Honor. He fought in the Zulu War, the first Boer War, the Mahdist War. He did everything. He fought in India, he did everything. And he can't hear a thing. But he's at dinner and he hears about Churchill's plight, and he gets angry and he says it's not up to Kitchener to tell the War Office, which he then had, he was the Adjutant General, to tell the War Office who gets to come and who doesn't get to come. And so he said, churchill, go and join the Lancers, because they answer to me. It is a lesson in persistence, Dr. Arndt.
- [18:31]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, Churchill. And, you know, political understanding, too. Once he saw that. Because, see, that's a conflict between the Home Office and the Field Office. Right. And. And Evelyn Wood is protecting his prerogatives. Right. And Churchill saw that there was an energy there that he could exploit, and he got himself down there.
- [18:53]
Hugh Hewitt
The ambition that flows out of this page is too hard to convey, but the anxiety is something I wanted to talk to you about. He talks about this long journey, afraid that at every stopping point there'll be a telegraph from Kitchener overriding the attachment to the 21st Lancers. And it never happened. Do you take any message away about anxiety from the. You know, he's anxious the whole way. He just thinks he's going to get told not to go, and all he wants to be is a lancer in this battle, and he's afraid he's going to get sent home. But he professes he worries too much.
- [19:33]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah.
- [19:33]
Hugh Hewitt
He.
- [19:33]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Well, Churchill wrote a lovely thing that I remind myself from time to time. Churchill lived with a lot of anxiety, right? I mean, he wore almost the loss of defeat of his country in war, bombing of London. Right. And he wrote down, when he was still pretty young, he wrote down, when I am overcome with worry, I write down on a piece of paper a list of the things that I'm worried about. And they readily sort themselves into things I can't do anything about and things that might not happen and that I can concentrate on the ones that I can do something about. And so that's a good habit for people to have because everybody's got worries every day, all the time. And he also my friend Tom West.
- [20:21]
Hugh Hewitt
Oh, yeah.
- [20:21]
Dr. Larry Arndt
My friend Tom west is fond of saying, like, if you have a sleepless night, you know, whatever your worries are, they tend to compound. And Tom west quotes, I think it was Hegel who says no one is responsible for his thoughts after midnight.
- [20:39]
Hugh Hewitt
Yeah. I mentioned last week you're going to have Victor Davis Hanson as your commencement speaker. I think it will be a very memorable address. I think he is going to put a lot of work into it, but he worries a lot. Probably the person who worries the most that I know the work of the best is Victor Davis Hansen. Victor, that worries me that he worries. Does it worry you that he worries?
- [21:03]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah. Well, Victor is, you know, I know Victor really well and admire him very much. And Victor is, he's a courageous, steadfast, forthright, persistent man. But he doesn't live in a happy state night and day. It's always been like that.
- [21:27]
Hugh Hewitt
Delicately put. He's a farmer. Now, I've never met a farmer who is optimistic, but I met a few farmers who can pretend to be happy again. He's very worried about the direction of the country. I think he's very happy that Trump won, but he's living in California, in the Central Valley, and it's been so screwed up, it's so bad, people don't have any idea how screwed up this state is. You fled it. I fled it, but he stayed. He's still farming and he expects. But the tariffs are going to hit him. Did you know that? He expects the tariffs. The easiest thing for someone to do is to throw a tariff on his almonds and standby. We'll talk more about VDH after the break. All Things Hillsdale at Hillsdale Edu. Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Hillsdale dialogue underway. All Things Hillsdale at Hillsdale Edu. We're talking tariffs, Dr. Arndt.
- [22:20]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Our trading partners, so to speak, have had consistently higher tariffs than we have for 50 years. Right. And, you know, if Trump's not, and we don't know for sure what Trump is trying to do, because we do know he's trying to make a deal and whatever position he takes early will be towards some ultimate deal that he can't reveal fully because he's negotiating. Right. But if all he achieves is he equalizes those tariffs, which is one of the explicit purposes he names, then that should be a gain. Right. Especially because, you know, we, we favored in the, in the GATT and in the W. World Trade Organization. We were stronger than any country in the world and we favored them at our expense.
- [23:16]
Hugh Hewitt
Yes.
- [23:17]
Dr. Larry Arndt
But our burdens are very large now.
- [23:20]
Hugh Hewitt
And we have carried so much of. I really. We're going back to last week's conversation about the tariffs. I don't think the good thing about podcasting is there's a lot of good content. You do it now, you have your own podcast, and the Hillsdale Dialogues are podcasts, and there are podcasts everywhere. The problem with podcasting, you gotta have opinions every week. And so for 10 days, I've been hearing negative opinions about Donald Trump's tariffs. And very few people point out the point you just made. There are enormous barriers to American exported goods. I always bring up Wisconsin dairy products because Derek Van Orden, their congressman and a former seal, likes to say, we can't send our stuff into Canada. They won't let our stuff come into Canada. And unless, you know that, you wouldn't know that, you would think that the world is flat and that free trade happened, but that we are not living in a free trade world. We're living in a world full of America can afford to subsidize us.
- [24:16]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, that's been a consistent thing. I look some today and find out that some of the tariffs that Trump has imposed are higher than the tariffs we suffer under now. But that's a, you know, that's not the long term story. That's not what it's been like since the global free trade movement started. And, you know, I mean, like I looked up this. Of carmakers, Tesla has the largest domestic content in its cars and it's like 70 some percent. And that's also true of the cars they sell in China and the cars they sell in Berlin. They got factories all over the place. And they work very hard, apparently, to have domestic content. Well, the domestic content of General motors is about 50%. And the reason for that is they make a lot of stuff in Mexico.
- [25:15]
Hugh Hewitt
Don't get me started on gm. I tell people we encourage that. I grew up in a GM town, Lordstown, made cars, Packard Electric made cars and a steel town, and it had 60,000 people when I was born. It's got 40,000 people now. It doesn't have any steel mills. It might have one. Doesn't have any car companies. They tried to start an electric car. It's hollowed out. That happened in the course of my lifetime because of our trade policy, which was good for the world but not so good for the industrial base of America. And I understand that unions had a role in that. But I do also understand if we're going to be in a conflict for many, many decades with China, and you and I both hope it's a cold war, not a hot one, we've got to reshore the capacity to defend ourselves and deter that war. And that means a bunch of things that might be more expensive to produce here, but which we can reliably count on being here when we need them. Isn't that the short defense of Trump?
- [26:18]
Dr. Larry Arndt
And you know, Senator Graham, who still writes in the Wall Street Journal sometimes, now retired, is a friend of mine and a very wise man and he's a radical free trader. And I get that right. That's, that's true. And I don't believe with him, I don't believe that industrial policy should be generally made in the government. And I also believe that we need a strong manufacturing base for national defense. And we got to clean all that up. And, and you know, that's, and we got to compete. We gotta, you know, we gotta, we gotta build things here and they've got to be efficient and they've got to be competitive around the world. And so you're looking for all those things, right, and matching the tariffs that that places have on us. And see, remember the way the tariffs work, right, like in the European Union and Britain, the farmers are a very strong lobby and they should be right. And they want to grow their own food. Well, they can't grow food nearly as well as we have. And they got big tariffs on food from America. That's what Victor's. The point Victor is making. Right. And we have huge advantages in that.
- [27:35]
Hugh Hewitt
And we will be using those advantages. Do not go anywhere, America. I'll be right back for more with Dr. Larry Arndt. All things Hillsdale at hillsdale.edu. to find the Hillsdale dialogue page and all the other information about Hillsdale, head to Hugh four Hillsdale.
- [27:53]
Podcast Host/Producer
This show is a part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to your favorite. You'll get brand new episodes of all your favorite shows sent right to your device and you'll help us know that you're out there listening. Never miss another episode by going to podcast Hillsdale.
- [28:15]
Hugh Hewitt
Eduardo.
- [28:18]
Podcast Host/Producer
That's Podcast Hillsdale Edu subscribe or click the Follow or Subscribe button on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Hey there, it's Scott Bertram, host of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Anniversaries play a key role in this week's episode. We start with Mark Moyer, William P. Harris, chair of Military History at Hillsdale College. We discuss the legacy and the lessons learned from the Vietnam War 50 years after the fall of Saigon. Meanwhile, the Great Gatsby turns 100 this year. Benedict Whelan from our English department joins us to discuss the themes in that book. And Julianne Hillock, founding principal at Hojo Academy in New Mexico, talks to us about the unique challenges of running a school in a remote part of the country, plus being honored by the Hillsdale College Alumni Association. All that this week on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Find it at podcast hillsdale. Edu or wherever you get your audio.
- [29:34]
Hugh Hewitt
Welcome back, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt with Dr. Larry Ahren. We're talking about agriculture. We're talking about food. Dr. Aron, what about it?
- [29:42]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Of course, it would be a more efficient world if we could grow all the food and somebody else could make all the stuff. The trouble is they might use all that stuff they make to kill us.
- [29:54]
Hugh Hewitt
And the big, the biggest trouble of all is we thought China was joining the club for 25 years and they didn't join the club. And they're Leninists, and now they've got the biggest navy in the world and the biggest army in the world. We've still got more nukes and we got lots of good stuff and they're afraid of us. And that's good. But let me return. I gotta make sure I get to one more part. We can be a little bit cavalier with the River War because there is in the Hilltale dialogues a series of discussions about chapters 13, 14 and 15 on the river War. But there's one part I wanted to get to you about. Second Lieutenant Robert Grenfell. So Churchill is doing everything he can to get from India and get to London. He intrigues to get to the Sudan. He finally gets sent to the Sudan. Turns out that the position that had been held for him they couldn't wait for him any longer until he got the orders and his position was given to Second Lieutenant Robert Grenfell. And he said, fancy how lucky I am here I've got the troop that would have been Winston's, and we are to be first to the start. And then Churchill writes, chance is unceasingly at work in our lives, but we cannot always see its working sharply and clearly defined. As it turned out, this troop was practically cut to pieces in the charge which the regiment made in the battle of September 2nd. And its brave young leader was killed. He was the first of that noble line of Grenfellows to give his life in the wars of the Empire. Two of his younger brothers were killed in the Great War, one after gaining the Victoria Cross, and his own ardent spirit was the equal of theirs. That's a very moving tribute. It's also quite an extraordinary reflection on chance.
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Dr. Larry Arndt
Oh, yeah. In Churchill and in Aristotle, chance and art are closely related because those are the two causes of things that are not simply dominated by all the natural processes. And so Aristotle even writes that somebody like Churchill, a person of many purposes, the chance tends to favor such people because they have so many purposes that breaks in chance are more likely to favor one of them.
- [32:10]
Hugh Hewitt
And expand on that, I didn't quite understand that you want to take a lot of risk.
- [32:17]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Well, let's say that you, you know, you want to. Let's say you're Elon Musk and you want space S. SpaceX and Tesla at the same time. And you drive yourself repeatedly to near bankruptcy trying to build them both at the same time. And at some point, things happen that favor SpaceX and not Tesla. Well, it's a blow to Tesla, but It's good for SpaceX. And he's even encouraged to close Tesla and concentrate on SpaceX. And his reply is, I can't give up one of my children. So whatever was the chance that hurt Tesla helped him in another way. And so if you have a lot of purposes, some of them are likely to be served by just about anything that happens.
- [33:02]
Hugh Hewitt
Okay, now that makes sense. I want to close this episode by talking about the anxiety because he said, let me get the quote. I suppose a criminal flying from justice goes through the same emotions at every stopping point. Thank God there was no wireless in that day. It made me think of Louis XVI trying to get away from the revolutionaries. And he almost made it, but he didn't. And they took him back to Paris and off with his head and off with the head of Maria. So I understand the fear, but it closes this. My efforts were not, after all, to miscarry. Sir Herbert Kitchener, as I afterwards learned, confronted with my appointment by the War Office, that's Sir Evelyn, had simply shrugged his shoulders and passed on to what were, after all, matters of greater concern. How often do we. He thinks himself much more important than he was, though he was very important at the time.
- [33:59]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Yeah, that's right. And you know, Kitchener, Churchill would have to do with Churchill for the rest of Kitchener's life. Kitchener was very important in the First World War and Churchill both argued and cooperated with him. And then Kitsner's. Churchill's life was changed. Kitchener died in 1917 when a ship that he was on in the North Sea struck a mine and the ship went down. And Churchill got that news while he was composing his testimony to the Dardanelles Commission of Inquiry. And he was in the course of blaming Kitchner, who Churchill believed bore fault for some of the failure at the Dardanelles. And he was with Ian Hamilton, another commander down there, a friend of Churchill's. And they were in a house off Hyde park and they heard. And they. And Churchill was working on this passage with Hamilton and they heard a commotion outside and there was an extra that had been issued to the newspaper and he heard the noise and he went out to see what it was. And it was a report that Kitchener had been killed. And he had to amend his testimony somewhat.
- [35:10]
Hugh Hewitt
I'm reminded at this point I wanted to tell you the fetching Mrs. Hewitt and I have begun to watch a series set in World War I, New Zealand. And a lot of it ends up at Gallipoli. And we forget that the New Zealanders were part of the empire and the empire sent them off to Gallipoli. They haven't said anything about Churchill yet. They haven't blamed anyone yet. I don't know that they're going to blame anyone yet, but I'm unaware. Treatment of the New Zealanders. Churchill always has given the South Africans their due. Right, because he likes them, maybe because of the Boer War. Does he ever spend a lot of time talking about the New Zealanders?
- [35:47]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Oh, yeah, yeah. A lot in the Second World War book, but also they were important in the Second World War. And one of the best stories to show the nature of the empire was that half the British Empire British effort in the two world wars in round numbers. Half came from imperial nations and Britain had direct rule only over India. And India had an all volunteer Army. And in 1943 they've got South Africa conquered and the Prime Minister North Africa conquered.
- [36:22]
Hugh Hewitt
So pause right there, doctor. I'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm Hugh Hewitt. Hillsdale Dialogue underway. We're talking about what the Empire did for Britain with Dr. Larry Arne. You were saying, Dr. Arne?
- [36:35]
Dr. Larry Arndt
And the Prime Minister of New Zealand writes Churchill a telegram and says, okay, that emergency is over. The Japanese are looming out here. We need our division back. We've only got four and you've got the best one. And Churchill writes him back and says, I pray leave them here. The decisive things are here and we got to win the war here to win it at all and we can hold off the Japanese. So he sends that back, right? And then Ian Frazier's man's name, Peter Frazier is a man's name and the Prime Minister and he writes him back and says, well, we've talked about it in the cabinet and we've had a day long debate in our House of Commons and the troops may stay. You see, that was a New Zealand decision, not a British decision, but it underscores what Churchill said about the empire which was it was united by fellow feeling and common loyalty, even placing New Zealand in peril by its own choice.
- [37:35]
Hugh Hewitt
Common feeling and what? Common feeling, Sentiment and sentiment, conviction.
- [37:41]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Right.
- [37:42]
Hugh Hewitt
That should be the west right now.
- [37:44]
Dr. Larry Arndt
It shares an end.
- [37:45]
Hugh Hewitt
That should be the west right now. And to a certain extent it's a good place to close. And we have to. Anyway, next week we will go to chapter 16 I leave the army. If you want to learn more about the Sudan campaign, we have an entire series in the archives of HughForHillsdale.com the Hillsdale Dialogue. But it's a good place. It's also, I think Trump is trying to drive home that there is a west and you should be part of it. Am I making up? Mike? Put on rose colored glasses. Dr. Arndt.
- [38:12]
Dr. Larry Arndt
That was the burden of Vance's speech on defense that offended the Europeans so much. He thought they were just, he was going to lecture them on spending 5%. But he spent most of his speech talking about protection of civil libert and leaving political parties free to campaign. And you know, Romania, the Romanian High Court, under pressure from the European Union voided an election in Romania. And Marine Le Pen, the leader of what might be the most popular party in France, has been convicted of a crime and the crime is a crime of Europe. She was in the European Parliament. They gave her a staff member and she's supposed to abuse the staff member for non European Union work. And you know, so it's a matter of deploying your staff. And they sentence her to five years out of politics. And the, the appeal will not take place until after the next election. And they don't like her because she's a nationalist and she doesn't think the European Union should have the whip hand inside France.
- [39:26]
Hugh Hewitt
Okay. I predict the show that's not going to end well for the eu. It's not. I don't think it's not. You can't do that. The French are free people. You can't do that to a free people. Not from a bureaucracy. Dr. Larian, thank you for your time. I want to thank everyone. We will be back next week on chapter 16, I leave the army. That's a funny title for a chapter, but the book is My Early Life by Winston Churchill. Thank you for listening. I'll be back on Monday.
- [39:59]
Podcast Host/Producer
Thanks for listening to the Hillsdale Dialogues, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. More episodes at podcast hillsdale.edu or wherever you find your audio. For more information about Hillsdale College, head to Hillsdale.
- [40:16]
Dr. Larry Arndt
Eduardo.