Finest Hour

On the day when Britain's efforts to throw off the Euro-wog yoke endure the dubious glory of yet another Dunkirk, it seems appropriate that researchers have confirmed the significant role played by the Official Greatest Ever Number One Greatest Briton Ever, Winston Churchill, in the death by famine of three million Indians. Simulations of weather conditions during six major famines indicate that five coincided with lack of moisture in the soil, brought on primarily by poor rainfall and high temperatures and only coincidentally exacerbated by the British Empire's disinclination to encourage welfare dependency and its dismantling of native arrangements for dealing with such events. By contrast, the 1943 famine took place when rain levels were above average, and may therefore be credited to the entrepreneurial buccaneering of speculators, the thrift of panic hoarders, and the policies of the Churchill cabinet. Warned by mere experts about the prospect of famine, the greatest Briton dismissed such petty materialistic concerns in his usual robust fashion and his government continued to export food from India while the viceroy was asking for a million tons of emergency wheat supplies. Curiously enough, since independence India has largely eliminated deaths by famine: a tragedy for which Churchill's well-fed successors in the modern Conservative Party have done their best to compensate by adjusting the home-grown plebs to coolie status.