Churchill - Part 2
Having been one of a handful of men who are taken to have been the ultimate decision makers in WW2, just over a year after the war finished the experience must have been fresh in his mind. The "bottom line" had arrived, he had been right in the centre of it all laden with extraordinary responsibility. There had now been time to contemplate cause and effect and wonder whether it could have been prevented - might it happen yet again ?.
On 19th September, 1946 he gave a speech in Zurich which nevertheless came to be referred to as his Geneva Speech because that was where he was staying at the invitation of the Swiss. It is said that the invitation was a thank you for turning down Stalin's suggestion of attacking Germany from the South by invading Switzerland, a neutral country.
In the speech he said that there was a need for a United States of Europe, starting with France and Germany and then going on to encompass the whole of Europe and, he hoped, also even the then Soviet Union - in order to bring Europe lasting peace and prosperity. It is not difficult to imagine that Churchill meant every word of what he said.
Within a few years the embryonic European Union had emerged and today it includes his country, the United Kingdom. However, the UK is in the process of leaving the EU with "No United States of Europe" having rung out from some of his countrymen's lungs for years and official non-co-operation at the highest level in the active attempt of permanently being obviously different from (more equal than ?) the rest. The British have voted not to be any part of what is, so far, the nearest thing to Churchill's vision. The rest of Europe, particularly France and Germany, is aiming for further integration in years to come. If/when we arrive at the emergence of a United States of Europe then the UK will conspicuously be on the outside, resolutely unwilling to contribute or co-operate, some say because the UK failed to take the enterprise over from the inside and turn it into a replacement for lost Empire. So they are leaving, not for the want of trying, maybe in determination, to prevent a United States of Europe from coming into being.
Normally being totally disinterested, I have now found a tiny reason for visiting London - it is to go to Churchill's grave at a particularly quiet time. I wonder if someone spinning in their grave at great speed produces an audible sound of some sort.