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Churchill on Clemenceau: Biography as Morality Play
Unformatted Document Text:  Paul Alkon Paper for American Political Science Association Conference 17 Masongate Drive Chicago, August 30-September 2, 2007Rolling Hills Estates Panel: Churchill and FranceCA 90274 August 31, 2:00 pm ## email not listed ## Churchill and Clemenceau: Biography as Morality Play We’re entering the season–or perhaps now in America we’re always in the season–for political biographies. These are often didactic exercises in which people are given emblematic qualities like those personified virtues and vices that clashed in medieval morality plays. At worst such biographies stridently teach how to vote at the next election. At best they provide enduring analysis of relationships between individuals and the body politic. Among the best are Winston Churchill’s 1937 biographical sketch of Georges Clemenceau, and Clemenceau’s 1926 biography of Demosthenes. Churchill wrote partly as self-schooling just before his unforeseen (but perhaps hoped-for) opportunity to apply the lesson to help shape his own achievements during World War II. The biography of Demosthenes that Clemenceau wrote for young people after his retirement conveys much that he had learned about ethical engagement with politics during a long career starting as Mayor of Montmartre in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and finishing as Premier of France at the agonizing climax of World War I. Called in France “The Father of Victory” for his 1918 leadership, and “The Tiger” for his political ferocity, Clemenceau is presented by Churchill as the embodiment of France and its revolutionary ideals: As much as any single human being, miraculously magnified, can ever be a nation, he was France . . . . He was an apparition of the French Revolution at its sublime moment, before it was overtaken by the squalid butcheries of the terrorists. He represented the French people risen against tyrants–tyrants of the mind, tyrants of the soul, tyrants of the body; foreign tyrants, domestic tyrants, swindlers, humbugs, grafters, traitors, invaders, defeatists–all lay within the bound of the Tiger; and against them the Tiger waged inexorable war. Anti- clerical, anti-monarchist, anti-Communist, anti-German–in all this he represented the dominant spirit of France. (GC, 302)

Authors: Alkon, Paul.
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Paul Alkon
Paper for American Political Science Association Conference
17 Masongate Drive Chicago, August 30-September 2, 2007
Rolling Hills Estates Panel: Churchill and France
CA 90274
August 31, 2:00 pm
## email not listed ##
Churchill and Clemenceau: Biography as Morality Play
We’re entering the season–or perhaps now in America we’re always in the season–for
political biographies. These are often didactic exercises in which people are given emblematic
qualities like those personified virtues and vices that clashed in medieval morality plays. At worst
such biographies stridently teach how to vote at the next election. At best they provide enduring
analysis of relationships between individuals and the body politic. Among the best are Winston
Churchill’s 1937 biographical sketch of Georges Clemenceau, and Clemenceau’s 1926 biography
of Demosthenes. Churchill wrote partly as self-schooling just before his unforeseen (but perhaps
hoped-for) opportunity to apply the lesson to help shape his own achievements during World War
II. The biography of Demosthenes that Clemenceau wrote for young people after his retirement
conveys much that he had learned about ethical engagement with politics during a long career
starting as Mayor of Montmartre in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War and finishing as Premier
of France at the agonizing climax of World War I. Called in France “The Father of Victory” for his
1918 leadership, and “The Tiger” for his political ferocity, Clemenceau is presented by Churchill
as the embodiment of France and its revolutionary ideals:
As much as any single human being, miraculously magnified, can ever be a nation, he was
France . . . . He was an apparition of the French Revolution at its sublime moment, before it
was overtaken by the squalid butcheries of the terrorists. He represented the French people
risen against tyrants–tyrants of the mind, tyrants of the soul, tyrants of the body; foreign
tyrants, domestic tyrants, swindlers, humbugs, grafters, traitors, invaders, defeatists–all lay
within the bound of the Tiger; and against them the Tiger waged inexorable war. Anti-
clerical, anti-monarchist, anti-Communist, anti-German–in all this he represented the
dominant spirit of France. (GC, 302)


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