Absolutely incredible bulls @redleg! I also love your Churchill quote...he is one of my very favorite people I admire.
I agree, but it likely isn't that Churchill. There is a lot of debate with regard to its origin.
It has been cited as first used by George Orwell, the American Novelist Winston Churchill, Prime Minister Winston Spenser Churchill, Richard Grenier, and even Rudyard Kipling.
I have never found a text - speech or writing where Prime Minister Churchill used it.
For a long time I have believed it was the American author Winston Churchill who first used it, but am now convinced that was also incorrect.
Orwell expressed very similar sentiments but not exactly in those words.
I am now inclined to think that the quote is a product of quotation drift that can be traced originally to Kipling's poem "Tommy" written in 1890. In it he writes of the public's usual disdain for soldiers until they need them.
I went into a public- ’ouse to get a pint o’beer,
The publican ’e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
…
O makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken sodgers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.2
Over the next century and a bit, authors like Orwell and the American Churchill dressed it up and made it more powerful. After WWII it simply seemed like something Prime Minister Winston Churchill should have said even if he didn't.
However it came into its present form, it is a very accurate observation.
