The phrase doesn't track to Churchill, but the latter part of it can be found...in Margaret Thatcher, viz., her remarks, "New Threats for Old," in Westminster College, Fulton, Mo., at a joint commemoration with the Churchill Centre of the "Iron Curtain" speech's 50th anniversary, 9 March 1996:
"It is, of course, often the case in foreign affairs that statesmen are dealing with problems for which there is no ready solution. They must manage them as best they can. That might be true of nuclear proliferation, but no such excuses can be made for the European Union's activities at the end of the Cold War. It faced a task so obvious and achievable as to count as an almost explicit duty laid down by History: namely, the speedy incorporation of the new Central European democracies--Poland, Hungary and what was then Czechoslovakia--within the EU's economic and political structures. Early entry into Europe was the wish of the new democracies; it would help to stabilize them politically and smooth their transition to market economies; and it would ratify the post-Cold War settlement in Europe. Given the stormy past of that region--the inhabitants are said to produce more history than they can consume locally--everyone should have wished to see it settled economically." The speech is in James W. Muller, ed., Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" Speech Fifty Years Later (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), which collects the papers from that occasion. A readable .pdf is on the Churchill Centre website (scroll to pages 18-24): http://www.winstonchurchill.org/images/finesthour/Vol.01%20No.90.pdf Noting that she used the words "are said," I searched for something by Churchill along those lines but nothing comes up. It sounds like him, and may have been expressed in a different way. Lady Thatcher is such a Churchillian that, if she knew he said it, she would have credited him. Quote sites purporting to offer his words are unreliable unless they provide attribution. If you find attribution for this reamark, even leading to someone else, I'd be glad to know. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ChurchillChat" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/churchillchat?hl=en.
