To the People: On Ethos and it's place in Churchill's words

Quite Large, isn't it?

Ethos is, perhaps to some, a confusing word to use. It's counterparts in Logos and Pathos are rather simple to rationalize being the appeals to logic and emotion specifically. Ethos, however, when translated from the original Greek means "Character" or "Community", it can be interpreted as either an appeal to ethics or an appeal to the spirit of the group, the "guidelines" that it follows. When Winston Churchill, then, gave his "Sinews of Peace" speech at Westminster college, the language he used for the talk was of a rather inclusive bent. Rather than simply appealing to people's emotions or even their sense of reason, he instead tries to form a connection between the people of Britain with the people of United States. Where other politicians might have emphasized "the British Spirit" or "the hardiness of Britain's people", Churchill insists on combining together the disparate people of Britain and the United States (along with Canada, who most have forgotten participated in the war) as a collective united by the hardships endured within the war as well as brothers in arms, armaments and armed nuclear devices. He does his best to create an out-group in the Communist party by pointing out how good and moral it is that only they, the current collective, possess the technology required to make atomic bombs, while also pointing a finger at how "dreaded" and "totalitarian" a reverse situation might have been. By appealing to the audience's sense of morality, he is establishing yet another enemy that they must work together to defeat.

While I will certainly agree that the speech was executed powerfully, one need only listen to Churchill's voice to agree with that notion, I am quite uneasy at some of the language he uses. By setting up the USSR as the next enemy to be defeated right after the Nazis, Italians and Japanese, he is creating perhaps not a legal precendent but rather a ethical one that the Nation of Britain, as well as the United States, must step in whatever affairs they deem necessary. It reminds me of the poem "First they came..." by Martin Niemoller with how he leads the people from one enemy to the next, and having seen the effects of such a lure in today's modern politics, I can't help but feel that it may have begun a dangerous trend.

Image Credit: "United Nations Plaza" obtained via Wikimedia Commons