Tributes to Allied Leaders Part II: Winston Churchill

 

In a previous post (see “Tributes to Allied Leaders, Part I," November 1, 2015) I discussed Charles Gibson Jr.’s poetic tribute to President Franklin D. Roosevelt following Roosevelt’s passing, which Charlie sent to President Truman, Roosevelt’s successor. In this post, I will discuss Charlie’s ode to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

Writing to the editor of the New York Times in late 1944, Charlie requested that his “To Winston Churchill” be published in both the Times of London and New York. The simultaneous publication, he wrote, could “make a complete international gesture.” As Charlie would later write to MIT Chairman Karl T. Compton, “one of my efforts has been Anglo-American, as well as world[,] fellowship.” Charlie certainly held a lifelong interest in international diplomacy and goodwill (in fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he were a supporter of the United Nations when it was created after the Second World War). However, nothing came of Charlie’s plans for an “international gesture.” The Times rejected his poem for publication.

But 1949 presented a new opportunity for Charlie’s poem to be read and appreciated, and MIT Chairman Compton would prove vital in this respect. That year MIT held a convocation for members of the scientific community “to appraise the state of the post-war world, [and] to consider the progress of scientific enterprise.” The event’s keynote speaker was Winston Churchill.

In a letter to Compton written prior to the convocation, Charlie asked if his poem might be read at the event or passed along to Churchill at the dinner that evening. Replying after the convocation, Compton wrote, “I was very glad to receive your verses dedicated to Winston Churchill. I read them at the banquet on Friday night and gave him the manuscript.”

Not long afterwards, Churchill expressed his appreciation of the poem in a letter to Charlie. (That very letter is on display at the Gibson House Museum.) No doubt overjoyed to have received this positive response from the prime minister, Charlie replied with a (much longer) letter of his own, noting, “I am glad my inadequate Lines have been so well received, because, as the occasion suggested, I attempted to epitomize your great efforts to avert the Second World War.”

 As Charlie explained to Churchill, he often studied the prime minister’s speeches and addresses, and wrote the poem as a way to express his great admiration and respect for him. It is clear from Charlie’s poetic tributes to both Roosevelt and Churchill that he regarded the two men as great saviors who protected and guided mankind through the most destructive war in human history.

I.

Churchill, the greatest of all England’s sons

To guard her bastion and her battlements,

You were the one who warned her that the Huns

Would tear again the sacred lineaments

Of peace and in the hour of dire distress

Strode forth to battle, and your words impress

Upon a world half conquered unawares.

But now, unyoked, that would most gladly shares

The great burden, blasting through the skies

Opening at last on Allied victories.

You, the unconquered, shattered the grim fear,

Even as your grandsire, the great duke of yesteryear.

II.

Grasp the warm hand extended o’er the seas!

Columbia, your foster mother, sent

All she possessed, her darling child to please,

Bathed in the blood of our great sacrament

Sealed in the holy union of our souls,

To reach the realm of time’s victorious goals.

Joined as of yore in common woe we stand,

Firm in our faith, advancing hand in hand.

The genius of two branches of our race

Flows in our veins and rightly grows apace.

The soul of final Victory appears

In you, the symbol of two hemispheres.

By Timothy Spezia, museum docent

Image Source:  http://www.britannica.com/biography/Winston-Churchill

Sources:
Winston Churchill, letter to Charles Hammond Gibson, April 28, 1949.
Karl T. Compton, letter to Charles Hammond Gibson, April 2, 1949.
Charles Hammond Gibson, letter to editor of the New York Times, September 11, 1944.

Charles Hammond Gibson, letter to Karl T. Compton, March 29, 1949.
Charles Hammond Gibson, letter to Winston Churchill, May 20, 1949.
Charles Hammond Gibson, “To Winston Churchill,” 1949.
“The Mid-Century Convocation,” MIT Institute Archives & Special Collections, accessed October 17, 2015, https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/midcentury/