COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
 
 ADDRESSES AT THE UNIVERSITY CONVOCATION 
 
 IN HONOR OF THE 
 
 RIGHT HONORABLE WINSTON CHURCHILL 
 
 MARCH l8, I946 
 
 14 
 
 1 Q» 
 
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Di rst Old York Library 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/addressesatuniveOOchur 
 
THE VISIT OF MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL TO NEW YORK 
 in March, 1946, furnished the first opportunity for Co- 
 lumbia University to confer the honorary degree which had 
 been voted to him in December of 1943. 
 
 A notable gathering of Trustees, Staff, and guests of the 
 University was assembled in the Rotunda of Low Memorial 
 Library. 
 
 After a prelude by a brass ensemble including a Ceremonial 
 and Flourish composed for the occasion by Mr. Richard 
 Arnell, the Exercises began with a processional hymn u O, God, 
 our help in ages past" an invocation by the Chaplain of the 
 University, the Reverend Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., a voluntary 
 by the University choir (Exaltabo te, by Palestrina) followed 
 by the formal conferring of the degree. 
 
 PRESENTATION 
 Carlton J. H. Hayes, Seth Low Professor of History 
 
 I have the high honor, Mr. President, to present for the de- 
 gree of Doctor of Laws in Columbia University a most dis- 
 tinguished gentleman. I do so simply and humbly. For the 
 whole world knows him and, if in some places he is feared, he 
 is loved in most places and respected everywhere. He is in 
 succession to that line of eminent British soldiers and states- 
 men who, reaching from his own ancestor, the Duke of Marl- 
 borough, down through the Earl of Chatham, the vounger 
 Pitt, Nelson and Wellington, to Lloyd George, have been 
 raised by Providence at particular moments to face and sur- 
 mount a series of grave crises in the modern history of our 
 Western civilization. The latest and gravest of all such crises 
 he has unflinchingly faced, and for the wisdom, the infectious 
 spirit, and the vigor with which he has led in surmounting it 
 
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he merits the gratitude of the entire liberty loving world, of 
 the entire civilized world, and especially of the university 
 world. 
 
 But this is not all. He is indeed a universal genius and a 
 veteran of everything. He has been an inveterate traveler. He 
 has been a soldier in India, in Egypt, in South Africa. He has 
 been a journalist and international correspondent. He has long 
 been a Member of Parliament, and has occupied at one time 
 or another practically every post in his country's Government. 
 
 He has been Lord Rector of Scottish Universities and Chan- 
 cellor of English Universities. He is a good friend of the United 
 States. He is the author of many books, and his four-volume 
 narrative of the First World War and his monumental life of 
 Marlborough rank him in the forefront of great historians. 
 And his histories, like his speeches, are clothed in a masterful 
 prose. For his adornment of English letters, as well as for the 
 brave deeds and skillful planning through which he has en- 
 sured a new breathing spell to law and to libertv, I request, in 
 behalf of this University, this traditional seat of liberty and 
 law, that you, Sir, now confer the degree of Doctor of Laws 
 upon the Right Honorable Winston Churchill. 
 
 CONFERRING OF THE DEGREE 
 Frank D. Fackenthal, Acting President 
 
 Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, Briton; distinguished 
 son of a distinguished family, with heritage from both sides of 
 the Atlantic; educated at Harrow and Sandhurst; veteran 
 of five militarv campaigns on four continents; Member of 
 Parliament almost continuously for more than a generation; 
 administrator of major cabinet posts, and Prime Minister 
 for five years of World War II; sometime honorary head 
 
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of the Universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, and Edinburgh; jour- 
 nalist, author, orator, statesman, with ability to crystallize 
 the thought of a war-troubled nation and the aspiration of the 
 civilized world; leader of a great people through their "finest 
 hour"; I gladly admit you to the degree of Doctor of Laws in 
 this University and confer upon you all the rights and privi- 
 leges which attach thereto, in token whereof I hand you this 
 diploma. 
 
 RESPONSE 
 The Right Honorable Winston Churchill 
 
 Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It gives me great 
 pleasure to receive this degree and the honor and esteem it 
 implies from Columbia University. 
 
 During the war, when I was here on business two years ago 
 I received your invitation, and it came to me from Dr. Nicholas 
 Murray Butler. A promise made to him is not one that could 
 ever be broken, and although I have been endeavoring to live 
 as quiet and reposeful a life as possible during my visit to the 
 United States, I thought myself bound not only by my prom- 
 ise but my great regard for him to come forward and accept 
 this remarkable honor which this great university of the 
 mighty city of New York wished to confer upon me. 
 
 We have had an announcement in the paper the day before 
 yesterday of the great affliction which has fallen upon Dr. 
 Nicholas Murray Butler, whom I have known for so many 
 years. The light has failed, but that is only the light which re- 
 acts upon our physical senses; the inward vision, the light that 
 burns within, burns all the brighter and shines from him in 
 guiding all those who have known him for so many years and 
 have lived with him and guided those forward along the path 
 of decency, of honor, of character, and of good sense. 
 
I wish to pay my tribute of respect to him on this occasion, 
 when you are bestowing this honor upon me. 
 
 The university life of the United States will stand out as 
 a glorious trophy and monument of its power and wealth and 
 culture. In no other country that has ever existed has such 
 university training been so widely diffused. The graduates of 
 your universities are numbered, not by the millions but by the 
 tens of millions. Everywhere, young men and young women 
 can come forward and gain the immense advantage of a year 
 or two, or it may be more if they are lucky, of a view of all the 
 arts, the sciences, of the knowledge, of the wisdom and of 
 the dignity which man has accumulated, painfully and slowly, 
 in his long toil through life. Indeed, it is the glory of your coun- 
 try that these facilities should be open to so many, and that a 
 young man or young woman who has a chance and does not 
 take full advantage of it, who has got good grounds to avail 
 himself or herself of it and does not, will have better grounds 
 to repent in days to come. 
 
 Under the great stroke of war, under the processes of aca- 
 demic development, the curriculum had to be altered. Other 
 colleges, other schools, were opened, on dark and stormy fields 
 of war, and far out on the ocean space and in the high air. But 
 education could be gained there, education which acts as a 
 great former of character, which gives the young man facing 
 the storm a poise, a position and a dignity which may well 
 animate his estate all the rest of his life, apart from making 
 his countrymen grateful to him for all he has done. 
 
 You have, I have no doubt, been assured, indeed, when I 
 spoke in Miami and received a degree there three weeks ago 
 it was mentioned that immense preparations are being made 
 and are, in fact, in progress to provide for the facility of educa- 
 tion which will be needed by your young men returning home 
 from the war, so that there is no blackout period in their lives, 
 
and that they can enter into full citizenship of a free country 
 with that essential knowledge of the humanities and of the 
 learning which the world has gathered together, and which 
 universities inculcate in those who have years to learn, and 
 there are many. 
 
 May I say that I think there should be, or in the universities 
 it is most important that there should be, a study of our lan- 
 guage, the English language. We have a very great tradition 
 in that. It is a key to a marvelous literature; it is the means 
 of contact between I will not say the most numerous, but the 
 most influential mass of human beings spread about the world. 
 We have a great tradition, a great legend, and I know now our 
 young officers and soldiers, — GFs coming back from the front, 
 British officers and private soldiers all returning home — cer- 
 tainly have got, one thing and that is a good grounding in 
 Anglo-American slang. I suggest without any prejudice that 
 they are now acquire full knowledge and facility of the ma- 
 jesty and power of their own mother tongue. 
 
 I read a great deal out of the newspapers. I read all the news- 
 papers I can see in this country. Turning over the pages, so 
 many pages, in the morning between the different advertise- 
 ment sheets, and so on, is a healthy physical exercise. It might 
 well replace the ordinary dumbbells. I see in some, and in 
 some books that I read, an undue reliance upon slang. In its 
 right place, slang has its virtues, but let us keep a tight hold 
 of our own mother tongue because that is the key to the treas- 
 ure houses of the past and also the key to the great works of 
 the future. 
 
 Another study which is very important, it seems to me, is 
 the study of history, and of course history, like everything else 
 that is human, is erroneous and fallible. But still a knowledge 
 of the past is essential to taking a broad view and a true view 
 of the course to be pursued in the future. 
 
They say history never repeats itself, but only the historians 
 repeat one another. They say also that the lesson of history is 
 that it renews parallels. However it may be, although no situ- 
 ation will exactly repeat itself, it is a good thing to have in our 
 minds all that has happened in the past, with as much em- 
 phasis as we can, illumined as we can, in our minds, with the 
 romance and drama of all the countries, of all the nations that 
 have been moving forward in the vast process of the world. 
 Even our Communist friends should studv this. They should 
 study the admirable modern works on the life and the soul of 
 the white ant. That will show them not only a great deal about 
 their past but will give a very fair indication of their future. 
 
 But, with regard to our common history, which bifurcated 
 at the point in the past, I hope that there will be an attempt 
 to write without prejudice. In conflicts which arise between 
 people in the long story of man, prejudices arise, and it is right 
 that both sides should be stated with all the force and fashion 
 of the day in which these events took place, but in the after 
 time, as we move on, it seems to me that an effort should be 
 made to inculcate the truth as far as has been given to us to 
 ascertain, to inculcate the actual facts that occurred, and 
 to understand the strange position and hard position in which 
 human beings are placed in the conflicts which break out 
 around them. I hope that Anglo-American history may be 
 studied from that point of view so that we may at any rate 
 understand all that has happened to us, and how it is we are 
 all here in the world together at the present time and not get- 
 ting on so badly after all. 
 
 I have great sympathy with the ordinary humble, common 
 toiler. What chance has he or she when world convulsions 
 sweep across his land? What chance has he when his home is 
 shattered, when the institutions in which he was brought up, 
 and all his or her surroundings vanish in the night, or are liqui- 
 
dated? How can he in his humble position, one individual out 
 of millions, control or guide or govern, and how can he adjust 
 himself, in anything like a remote degree, to the position he is 
 forced into by tyrants who from time to time seize upon the 
 governments of great states. 
 
 No, a spirit of tolerance and comprehension must run 
 through all our studies of history, and for my part, I am glad 
 to say here in Columbia University, that in my heart, there is 
 no abiding hatred to any great race on this earth. 
 
 I earnestly hope that there will be no pariah nations. Guilty 
 or punished, we have to look forward to a broader, fairer world, 
 richer, fuller, in every way. There must be opened, under the 
 aegis and under the authority of the United Nations, valiantly 
 maintained, unflinchingly maintained, a world organization 
 to guard the humble toiler, to guard the small homes, of all the 
 nations, from renewal of the horrors of war and of tyranny. 
 
 Such are the words I venture to speak to you today, and I 
 must also say that in that task you will be aided to the utmost 
 by all the moral and material forces that the British Empire, 
 the British nation, the British Commonwealth of Nations, can 
 supply. Thus, marching forward together, with no aims of 
 conquest, of subjugation, or of material profit, or of advance- 
 ment of the sordid interests, we may render at this juncture 
 services to humanity which never before has any country had 
 the honor to do. 
 
 I thank you very much for the honor you have conferred 
 upon me today, and for the attention with which you have 
 listened to me. I shall carry away from this noble hall an in- 
 defaceable impression of your kindness and of the greatness 
 of the city and nation to which you belong. 
 
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AV6RY