'For Valour': Lesson From Churchill

'For Valour': Lesson From Churchill
AP Photo, file

On Veterans' Day and our daily news pages appearing nearly indistinguishable from the celebrity gossip pages, it is worth taking a moment to recall a different time, and a different form of celebrity.

 In February 1952 Winston Churchill paid tribute to the recently deceased King George VI with the words, “for valour.”

There probably was no greater tribute to make, for Churchill, following his mentor Jan Smuts, had said that there was no higher virtue for a leader, or anyone else, to possess. Both Churchill and the King respected it. Both had seen combat and death; both had overcome disability, including a stammer and depression; both had struggled with the perception, at earlier points in their careers, that they were the wrong men in the wrong place at the wrong time; both, together, led their nation to victory in a terrible war.

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