Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter, Admiral Rickover - On Doing Your Best

Winston Churchill, seven months removed from his first term as First Lord of the Admiralty, addressed the House of Commons on March 7, 1916. After praising the men of the Royal Navy, he expressed concern about their tools of war. Sir Martin Gilbert wrote: “His intention was to criticize the inadequacy of the ships, the guns, the ammunition and the supplies which these men had at their disposal.” Churchill memorably declared:

 
“In is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best, you have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.’”

I was reminded of Churchill’s quote this week when I learned about a story from Jimmy Carter’s autobiography “Why Not the Best? The First 50 Years.”

I had applied for the nuclear submarine program, and Admiral Rickover was interviewing me or the job. It was the first time I met Admiral Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subjects I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew most at the time – current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery – and he began to ask me a series of questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance, he soon proved that I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen….
 
Finally, he asked me a question and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, “How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?” … I had done very well, and I swelled my chest with pride and answered , “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!” I sat back to wait for the congratulations – which never came. Instead, the question: “Did you do your best?" I started to say, “Yes, sir,” but I remembered who this was, and recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir. I didn’t always do my best.”

He looked at me for a long time, and then turned his chair around to end the interview. He asked me one final question, which I have never been able to forget - or to answer, He said, "Why not?" I sat there for a while, shaken, and then slowly left the room..

Another memorable quote along similar lines from Churchill was captured on an amazing piece of film from an address he gave to the London County Council on July 14, 1941. This video is striking not just for Churchill’s delivery, but also because of the enthusiastic reactions that it captures. Trust me, this 83-second video is well worth watching. As Churchill praised the men and women of the civil defense forces of London, he also issued a warning to Adolf Hitler:

 We ask no favors of the enemy. We seek from them no compassion. On the contrary, if tonight the people of London were asked to cast their votes as to whether a convention should be entered into to stop the bombing of all cities, an overwhelming majority would cry, “No, we will mete out to the Germans the measure - and more than the measure - they have meted out to us.” The people with one voice would say: “You have committed every crime under the sun. Where you have been the least resisted there you have been the most brutal. It was you who began the indiscriminate bombing. We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst – and we will do our best.”

Thanks for reading (and – hopefully - watching),
Bill