Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2012 - (Page 126)

h e R i Ta g e T h e R i T z - C a R lT o n , B o s T o n , m a R C h 1 9 4 9 Winston Churchill’s visit to Boston in spring 1949 had both a vivid front story and a dramatic back story. Invited to give the keynote address at the Mid-Century Convocation organized by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Churchill obliged with an hour of soaring rhetoric before an awed, 13,000-strong crowd in the Boston Garden. Four years after the end of World War II and the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was the most revered statesman in the 126 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m Courtesy of the Boston PuBliC liBrary, Print DePartment winston churchill world — and also out of office, having bitterly lost the postwar election to the Labour Party. Now 74 years old and in declining health, he had every reason to bask in his legend, except that he yearned to return to power and, as he saw it, “win the peace” as decisively as he had won the war. A few years earlier, he had warned of an “iron curtain” descending on Eastern Europe, and part of his reason for coming to Boston was to enlist his fellow speaker, President Harry Truman, to join him in confronting Stalin. The White House wanted none of this: Less than a week later, the president was due to meet the new British prime minister to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, ushering in the era of NATO, and the Truman administration feared that Churchill’s grandstanding might overshadow the U.S. initiative. And so, Truman abruptly canceled his appearance in Boston, and Churchill was left to go it alone. He proceeded to do so, in a remarkable speech that swooped across history, culture and science and ended in a plea for humanism, all the more wrenching for the speaker’s part in having reclaimed it from the abyss. http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2012

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2012
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... Hong Kong
Design
Auto
Technology
On the Boulevards
Shopping
Jewelry
Watches
Palm Beach
Wellness
Santiago

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Winter 2012