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make such choices and think they were made to do so. If they are
correct, they are still rarer.
According to Churchill, superior commanders manage to
make the gravest choices well because they combine the functions
of statesman and general. For example, Churchill wrote that his
ancestor Marlborough was a “statesman and warrior,”2 and that
King William III and Marlborough were “warrior-­statesmen.”3
Superior to William, Marlborough possessed a “threefold com­
bination of functions—­
military, political, and diplomatic.”
This combination would not be seen again until Napoleon, “the
Emperor-­statesman-­captain.”4 It does not matter how much the
nation needs this; it is rare. The battles of Napoleon and those of
Marlborough were separated by a century and a half, and accord­
ing to Churchill no one of this quality appeared in the interval
between them.
FAILURES OF CHOICE AND CHANCE
Churchill believed it tragic when the purposes of politics must
give way to the urgencies of war.5 He regarded this as most tragic
when it stemmed from a failure of human choice, when the trag­
edy might have been prevented by better choices. Statesmanship,
when successful, vindicates human choice. Statesmanship, even
more than generalship, raises and answers the question whether
we can guide our futures through “reflection and choice,” as
opposed to “accident and force.”6 Churchill wrote that the catastro­
phes of modern war were commonly prepared and suffered in
countries “ill-­directed or mis-­directed by their rulers.”7 Better
rulers, Churchill implied, would prevent these catastrophes. We
remember Themistocles, Scipio, Marlborough, and Wellington
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because they rose in the face of danger to prevent death or eclipse
for their nation. These examples inspired Churchill. He saw them
as proof that mankind can manage its affairs, at least when people
of extraordinary ability are present.
Churchill found a curious proof of the existence and impor­
tance of this capacity for statesmanship in the existence of
chance. In “Mass Effects in Modern Life” he wrote:
Is history the chronicle of famous men and women, or only
of their responses to the tides, tendencies and opportunities
of their age? Do we owe the ideals and wisdom that make
our world to the glorious few, or to the patient anonymous
innumerable many? The question has only to be posed to be
answered. We have but to let the mind’s eye skim back over
the story of nations, indeed to review the experience of our
own small lives, to observe the decisive part which accident
and chance play at every moment.8
It is a long leap from the “ideals and wisdom” of “famous
men and women” to “accident and chance.” In this sense chance
is the opposite of human art. Accident is not intended, either
by art or by nature. Works of art and the choices that produce
them must be intended by definition. Accidents often interfere
with our choices, in which cases chance overcomes choice. Far-­
seeing people are sometimes able to avoid misfortune, in which
cases choice overcomes chance. Obviously choice and chance
are competitors. How then can the existence of chance prove the
sovereignty of art?
Chance was to Churchill also the friend of the statesman.
One might say that the space occupied in causality by chance
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and the space occupied by art is a shared space. If chances can
occur, then nature is not simply dominant, not simply the cause
of everything. For Churchill the existence of chance helped to
resolve the doubt that men can command their affairs toward
just purposes.9 It helped to overcome the evidence—­for example,
in the story of the Great War—­that sometimes in the largest
matters human beings cannot command their affairs. Churchill
ranged himself “with those who view the past history of the
world mainly as the tale of exceptional human beings.” He
cited as evidence of this something that we all observe in “the
experience of our own small lives.” In those lives “accident and
chance play at every moment” a “decisive part.” If this is true in
the small things we see, “how much more potent must be the
deflection which the Master Teachers—­Thinkers, Discoverers,
Commanders—­have imparted at every stage.”10
In the preface to his biography of John Churchill, the first
Duke of Marlborough, Churchill described the duke as a man
almost beyond chance. He “never fought a battle that he did not
win, nor besieged a fortress he did not take. Amid all the chances
and baffling accidents of war he produced victory with almost
mechanical certainty.” That was a different kind of mechanism
than the sort Churchill deplored in The River War, and he wrote
that it was unique: “Nothing like this can be seen in military
annals.” He “never rode off any field except as a victor.”11 Was
that not the very idea of the statesman, the man who conquered
chance? And what did such mighty personalities have to do with
the little accidents that divert or dominate our personal lives?
But the lives of these powerful people show also the power
of chance, for in their lives it is multiplied just so much as the
power of their art is multiplied. Those who chose Sir Robert
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Watson-­Watt, the inventor of radar, for his post did not fully
know what he would do with the job; as regards their choice,
his achievement was partly a matter of chance. Einstein, grow­
ing up a Jew in a country that did not favor Jews, might, except
for a bit of fortune here and there, have spent his life as a pat­
ent examiner. Hitler was gassed, alas not to death, in the Great
War. Had he been killed, his story never would have developed
into the monstrosity it became; instead his injury became an
item on his résumé that helped his advancement. Many times
Churchill might have been killed on battlefields, and he made
much of the fact that an annoying invitation from a general
caused him, during the Great War, to be away from his bunker
when it was hit by a German shell.12 Churchill was not annoyed
any longer when he saw the damage done to his station when
he returned.
The power of chance implies the power of art: if a deflected
stone can hit a man and change the history of the world, then
a man can stand on the mountain above the road and aim the
stone to cause the same effect. The space occupied by chance is
the same space, up on the mountain or anywhere else, occupied
by human art and ingenuity. To eliminate the one is to eliminate
the other.
In Churchill’s view, the “mass effects” that were trans­
forming both war and peace begin in an attempt to conquer
the obstacles we face that are found in nature and in chance,
but they end in overcoming man himself. This was evident to
Churchill in the awesome scale of war, so large that the states­
men who attempted to manage it seemed like puny figures.
Churchill asked, of those who governed during the Great War,
“how far were they to blame?” Were there among them men of
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“real eminence and responsibility whose devil heart conceived
and willed this awful thing?” He continued,
One rises from the study of the causes of the Great War with
a prevailing sense of the defective control of individuals
upon world fortunes. It has been well said, “there is always
more error than design in human affairs.” The limited
minds even of the ablest men, their disputed authority, the
climate of opinion in which they dwell, their transient and
partial contributions to the mighty problem, that problem
itself so far beyond their compass, so vast in scale and detail,
so changing in its aspect—­a ll this must surely be considered
before the complete condemnation of the vanquished or the
complete acquittal of the victors can be pronounced. Events
also got on to certain lines, and no one could get them off
again.13
Churchill’s life may be seen as an attempt to supply through
statesmanship a vindication of human choice. He described in
many places the qualities such a statesmanship would exhibit.
They begin oddly enough in the smallest place, in a certain abil­
ity to perceive details.
THE MEASURE OF A STATESMAN
In Marlborough, Churchill described the War of the Spanish
Succession in which Marlborough commanded, but also he
described the structure of war itself. In a chapter entitled “The
Structure of the War,” Churchill explains “not one but many
operations of war.” How does the general choose among his
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options? “Circumstances alone”—­which are many in number
and constantly moving—­“decide whether a correct conventional
maneuver is right or wrong.”14 How many are the enemy? What
is his location? In which direction is he going? How does the
ground lay? Is it raining, or will it?
One can apply the same reasoning to statesmanship. The
right thing to do depends on the circumstances. Politicians
are usually rated by their fidelity to principle. One politician
believes in limited government, private property, and such old
things; he is admired on the Right. Another favors government
action, to keep up and to make “progress”; he is admired on
the Left. Does that tell either of them how to vote on a given
bill? What if, by passing a certain bill that appeals to the Left,
the party of the Right can gain votes to dominate yet larger
questions? The one on the Right might support the bill for that
reason, and the one on the Left oppose it. Compromise is every­
where, even among the principled—­or rather, only among the
principled, for the unprincipled compromise nothing as they
blow with the wind. Especially to the principled, the details and
the circumstances matter. It is very different to contemplate the
good than it is to do the good. As Churchill wrote, “A man’s Life
must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action.”15
Churchill wrote that this doing of the good on the battlefield
cannot be “calculated on paper alone, and never copied from
examples of the past.” The solution must be “evolved from the
eye and brain and soul of a single man.” This man was making
calculations constantly, making errors often, but achieving an
“ultimate practical accuracy.” It is easy to describe after the fact
what might have been done. “Any intelligent scribe” can do it. To
him the “campaigns of the greatest commanders often seem so
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simple that one wonders why the other fellow did not do so well.”
Churchill continued,
The great captains of history, as has been said, seem to move
their armies about “as easily as they ride their horses from
place to place.” Nothing but genius, the daemon in man,
can answer the riddles of war, and genius, though it may be
armed, cannot be acquired, either by reading or experience.
In default of genius nations have to make war as best they
can, and since that quality is much rarer than the largest and
purest diamonds, most wars are mainly tales of muddle. But
when from time to time it flashes upon the scene, order and
design with a sense almost of infallibility draw out from haz­
ard and confusion.16
The superior general differs from the “intelligent scribe” in
his ability to bring these shifting details into order and compre­
hension. Without this capacity wars are mainly tales of muddle,
chaos, confusion, or all of them. One can see a certain paral­
lel with one of the arguments upon which Plato’s ideal republic
fails. The cities will be miserable until philosophers are kings,
but these philosophers will not serve willingly, and we who
would benefit from their rule cannot force them because we
lack the knowledge of who and what they are.17 Churchill was
not talking about philosophers, at least not exactly and not yet.
He was talking only about the immediate and shifting details in
which the right choice was to be found—­variables that presented
challenges few could meet.
Yet for Churchill these challenges were not the only diffi­
culty. Something more was required to cope with events and
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steer them to some chosen outcome. Churchill indicated what
that was in another essay, one of his most charming and also
instructive on many levels.
A SINGLE UNITY OF CONCEPTION
Churchill knew a lot about painting, and he could write and
speak about it and about himself without obvious boasting, a gift
for which the readers and audiences of modern politicians may
pine. In a 1925 essay entitled “Painting as a Pastime,” Churchill
depreciated his ability to paint—­never mind that his paintings
are competent enough. It is a fact that some famous painters
gave him instruction. By the time he was finished, his paintings,
including many that he had painted prior to 1925, were exhib­
ited at the Royal Academy of the Arts on no fewer than thirteen
occasions, the last a one-­man exhibition devoted to his works.
Yet Churchill wrote that “there is no subject on which I feel more
humble” and “at the same time more natural.”18
“Just to paint is great fun,” one paragraph begins. “The
colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out.” But
this paragraph is not about the fun of painting or the delicious­
ness of squeezing out the colors; rather Churchill violated his
habit of announcing his paragraphs with clear topic sentences.
From the fun of painting, the paragraph proceeds to launch a
battle. Churchill wrote that as one “slowly begins to escape from
the difficulties of choosing the right colors . . . wider consid­
erations come into view.” Churchill “slowly” began to escape
from the difficulties of painting. Though not obvious, this is
a claim to competence. Having begun to escape those difficul­
ties, Churchill could understand painting more fully. For him
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