A Churchillian Footnote
On “Dead or Alive.”

By Michael Knox Beran, author of The Last Patrician: Bobby Kennedy and the End of American Aristocracy.
September 24, 2001 9:15 a.m.

he wrongheadedness of last Wednesday's editorial in the New York Times condemning President Bush's "overly bellicose" language has already been pointed out on NRO. The editorial writers of the Times unfavorably compared the president's characterization of Osama bin Laden's status in American eyes ("Wanted: Dead or Alive") with the supposedly more restrained rhetoric of Winston Churchill. On NRO on September 19th, Mark R. Levin evinced several examples of Sir Winston's use of strong language; I would add to these the following passage, which I came across in Churchill's book, Their Finest Hour:

I have often wondered, however, what would have happened if two hundred thousand German storm troops had actually established themselves ashore [in Britain in the late summer of 1940]. The massacre would have been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither mercy nor quarter. They would have used terror, and we were prepared to go all lengths. I intended to use the slogan, "You can always take one with you."

You can always take one with you. What would the editorial writers of the New York Times have said about that?

Churchill had of course been wanted "dead or alive" himself — by the South African Boers shortly after the outbreak of the Boer War. In November 1899 the Boers derailed a British armored train on which the 25-year-old Churchill, as a correspondent for the London Morning Post, was travelling. Under artillery fire from the Boers Churchill supervised the effort to clear the line; he saw the engine past the obstruction before throwing off his revolver and field glasses to attend to wounded British soldiers. Churchill then headed back to the scene of the derailment, where he was captured by the Boers and taken to Pretoria. He subsequently escaped, and a notice was posted on Government House at Pretoria offering £25 "to anyone who brings the escaped prisoner of war, Churchill, dead or alive to this office." Sir Winston's granddaughter, Celia Sandys, recently published a book about the episode, Churchill: Wanted Dead or Alive.

Discussing the incident in his book, My Early Life, Churchill observed that to "be a fugitive, to be a hunted man, to be 'wanted,' is a mental experience by itself . . . . The need for concealment and deception breeds an actual sense of guilt very undermining to morale," one that gnaws "the structure of self-confidence." We can only hope that President Bush's words will have such an effect on the morale of Osama bin Laden.