In favor of being well read

Apparently, the book I've been reading and posting about, is vol. 3 (I was thinking it was vol. 2) of The History of the English Speaking Peoples, by Winston Churchill. Vol. 3 is called The Age of Revolution.

I am an admirer of Churchill. He saw war coming and the need to resist Hitler before many others. I've gathered that from other stuff I've read. I had a pastor who liked to tell us about Churchill's speech to some English school children, roughly it went: Never, never, never give up.

I just read a few glowing reviews of this set of books. I think some parts of the book are a bit tedious. And I'm personally finding it rather challenging reading, lots of words I don't know, unfamiliar names I have a hard time remembering from page to page, and lots of descriptions of battles.

Churchill explains battles better than some writers, and I think it's apparent that this subject was of great interest to him. It's not a subject of great interest to me however. Perhaps his early interest in toy soldiers was helpful to him later in life. He could picture the battles and battle strategies.

I've been doing a bit of reading about Churchill and found out that he was not a very good student as a young man. Perhaps he just wasn't interested. What he did enjoy was playing with toy soldiers. When his father sent him to military school then he began to flourish. He really took to it. He entered the army and was sent to India where spent the hot afternoons breaks reading instead of napping, and educated himself reading Plato and such like. He began to develop a talent for writing.

I think it's interesting to read about successful people who overcame difficulties. His parents were wealthy and paid him little attention. He did have a nanny who he was close to. Perhaps that made a great difference.

I was telling someone about this book. I said that it appeared to me that Churchill favored war. I'm not sure if that is quite the right way to put it. He writes favorably about his ancestor Marlborough who was a soldier, perhaps showing a personal bias, I don't know. They seemed to me to be fighting about some silly stuff in some cases, some disagreement that might have been worked out with diplomacy. I don't know enough to say why France and England and I think some other countries got into a war about who should be the king of Spain. I think it had something to do with Catholics and Protestants. The book paints of picture of periods of engaging in war and then of becoming weary of war. But perhaps sometimes fighting a decisive battle is better than dragging out a long one, if it can be done with. What lessons can we learn from the past?

The person I was talking to said that she had been reading a lot of books about war. And she was clearly coming to the conclusion that war should be avoided. She didn't actually say that but I just took it that she felt that way. We didn't really get into that particular subject. When I said that I thought Churchill favored war she said she wouldn't want to read that book.

I wouldn't say that I am pro-war and yet it seems at some times wars are unfortunately unavoidable. It's hard to know what would have happened if history had taken a different course. If a certain war had not been fought, or a certain war had been fought, what would have happened. What would have happened if England did not fight Germany in WWI? What if England had not had a man like Churchill?

The women and I went on to talk of other books, and I must say that I was quite impressed when she said that she reads out loud to her husband who's eyesight is failing. I wondered how long did she read to read so many books, so I asked her. She really surprised me when she answered that she would typically read about 1 1/2 hours after breakfast, and after lunch, and after dinner. That makes about 4.5 hours a day of reading!