Heroes have not always been appreciated. Indeed, in the troubled times which followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars, caused by lower wages, unemployment and high food prices, the term became abusive. Whenever the Duke of Wellington made his appearance, a certain kind of London mob (there were many different kinds) would shout: “No heroes! We want no heroes!” For the self-conscious proletariat, the “Man on Horseback” was a political enemy. They threw stones through the windows of Apsley House, the duke’s London residence. He had the windows boarded up but refused to replace the glass, as a reminder to people of how volatile was popularity and how fickle the crowd, applauding him as a hero one moment, detesting him the next.
The truth was that the duke, being not so much a cynic as a realist, a man who had no illusions about human nature, disapproved of the hero cult. He had seen what it led to in France, where the egregious hero of the age, Bonaparte, had been able, in consequence, to send millions—friends, enemies and civilians—to their deaths. It had taken all his efforts, and much blood, to stamp out this particular outbreak of hero worship. What the duke was not to know, but might have foreseen and deplored, was that the return of Bonaparte’s body to France (which he opposed) and its sanctification in the Invalides, the world’s most vainglorious tomb, led to his posthumous cult of grandeur and aggression. Hence the absurd dictatorship of his nephew, Napoleon III, a disaster for France, ending in the disgrace of Sedan and the bloodbath of the Paris Commune, and indeed for Europe too, for it made possible the military paramountcy of Prussia, and so pointed directly to the horrors of the First World War. Nor did this evil heroic streak end in 1918. On the contrary, the age of the dictators was a consequential echo of the age of Napoleon. For these self-made autocrats, beginning with Atatürk in the debris of the Ottoman Empire, and Mussolini in Italy, and continuing through Stalin in Russia, Hitler in Germany and Mao Tse-tung in China, all to some degree were inspired by, and modeled themselves on, Bonaparte, the prototype and exemplar of all modern tyrants. Many lesser monsters followed in their wake: Sukarno in Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh and Pol Pot in Indochina, Nasser and Saddam in the Middle East, Peron and Castro in Latin America, Gadhafi, Bokassa and Idi Amin in Africa—all of whom strutted about for a time in grotesque parodies of the masterful Corsican, engaging in every form of beastliness, from genocide to cannibalism.
Wellington, who had studied and taken to heart Roman history, and the use of emperors placed on the throne by their troops, as well as the disastrous example of Bonaparte, believed that the essence of a constitutional state was the absolute submission of the military power to duly constituted civil authority. He strongly approved of Washington’s conduct in the delicate transmission from war to peace, and the creation of the American constitutional government, just as, equally, he deplored the example of Simón Bolivar in South America, which set that unhappy continent on its tragic path to periodic coups d’état and military rule. Thanks to Washington’s wisdom and forbearance, the United States has never been in real danger of taking the Bonapartist path, always—as in the case of General MacArthur and President Truman half a century ago—the military man submitting to the elected chief magistrate, with the full approval of the nation.
Wellington’s dislike of professional heroes had another aspect to it. He disliked showiness, or “side,” as they called it at Eton, and, still more, boasting. A particular object of his contempt was Admiral Sir Sydney Smith, the so-called or self-proclaimed hero of Acre, who had prevented the Turks from taking this valuable port and had dined out on it ever since. His windiness on the subject led to his attracting the nickname of “Long Acre,” after a district of Central London. The admiralty secretary, Croker, warned Wellington about Smith in 1814: “An old naval friend told me: ‘Beware of heroes—the more you come to know them, the less you will think of them.’” Smith was a loose cannon during the Congress of Vienna, and for a time attached himself to Wellington. But the duke soon got rid of him: “Talks too much.”
The scale on which military heroes have been rewarded has declined. In England, the nation gave the Duke of Marlborough, victor in four major battles against Louis XIV, Blenheim Palace, still the most princely house in the country. Wellington declined anything on that scale, but was provided with the fine estate of Stratfield Saye in Hampshire. Even Field Marshal Haig, dubious hero of the western front in the First World War, was given £100,000 by Parliament. By contrast, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, chief of staff under Churchill for most of the Second World War, got a “gratuity” of £346, and had to sell his house and his beloved collection of bird books, just to make ends meet when peace came. None of the British heroes of that war were financially rewarded, except by selling their memoirs. America has never gone in for such prizes. But it sometimes bestows, democratically, high office on its heroes—Grant and Eisenhower being examples.
The twentieth century, and still more the twenty-first, has followed in the footsteps of the nineteenth and broadened the recruiting ground for heroes. Men like Humphry Davy, inventor of the miner’s safety lamp, or Thomas Edison, the world’s inventor in chief, came on to the stage of public adulation followed by explorers like Stanley and Livingstone, and brave women in the shape of Florence Nightingale and Grace Darling. There were hero praisers too: in Britain Carlyle stuck to the traditional mode of the captains, like Cromwell and Frederick the Great, but in America Emerson prepared the way for the cult of the entrepreneur. In due course the public applauded the outstanding steelmaker Andrew Carnegie, and the oilman John D. Rockefeller.
This new kind of hero was controversial, and it is a fact that, throughout history, one person’s hero has been another’s villain, not only in his own day but later. I recall an elderly don of my old Oxford college coming into the Senior Common Room one evening and announcing to his colleagues: “You know, I am really coming to detest that fellow Julius Caesar”—as though he were about to stride through the door, laurel on brow, sword in one hand and Gallic War in the other. The heroes of America’s emergence as the world’s largest industrial power were clearly genuine in one sense, since Carnegie’s cheap, high-quality steel benefited everybody; Rockefeller’s slashing of the price of kerosene by 90 percent was a godsend to the housewife; and Ford’s cheap, reliable Model T ended the isolation of the farmer. But to others, such men were “robber barons,” or, in the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, “malefactors of great wealth.” The rich sought redemption through philanthropy. Carnegie declared that amassing wealth was morally allowable, if done honestly, “but he who dies wealthy dies disgraced.” He gave away his hundreds of millions in an endless series of benefactions whose catalog alone fills a fair-size book. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations followed in due course, and the series continues today with the colossal benefactions of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Now people feel that giving away money in vast quantities is not heroic, if your wealth is colossal. I am not so sure. In my experience, a majority of rich people are stingy. Of course the real hero is someone like Dr. Johnson, who always gave away a large chunk of his income, and would fill his pockets with coins before going out, entirely for the purpose of donating small sums to beggars. “What is the point of it?” he was asked. “To enable them to beg on,” he replied, a truly heroic remark. The generous poor man, like Charles Lamb, is a particular hero of mine. But I must admit I enjoy the company of the generous rich, like my old friend Jimmy Goldsmith, and don’t feel it is right to inquire too closely as to how they came by their wealth.
People must agree to differ about heroes. I admire Chile and its people greatly, and became concerned when my friend Salvador Allende became its president and opened the country to hordes of armed radicals from all over the world. The result was the world’s highest inflation, universal violence and the threat of civil war. So I applauded the takeover by General Pinochet, on the orders of Parliament, and still more his success in reviving the economy and making it the soundest in Latin America. But by preventing the transformation of Chile into a Communist satellite, the general earned the furious hatred of the Soviet Union, whose propaganda machine successfully demonized him among the chattering classes all over the world. It was the last triumph of the KGB before it vanished into history’s dustbin. But Pinochet remains a hero to me because I know the facts.
My other heroes tend to be people who successfully accomplish things I would not dare even to contemplate. I could not possibly sail single-handedly round the world, even if I had the skill, like a pretty and fragile woman of my acquaintance, Clare Francis. My admiration for her is without qualification, particularly since she is modest about her achievement. The man who runs a fruit stall round the corner from my house has swum the English Channel several times for charity. He is a true hero for me. I admire heroines of the oriental slums like Mother Teresa, who was a realist as well as an idealist (as are most true saints). The vicious attacks launched on her by Western playboy intellectuals filled me with horrified fury. I always have a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth even if it puts them in a minority of one. And in this case there is some common feeling, for during most of my life I have been outspoken myself on these lines, and have suffered accordingly. I think we appreciate heroism most if we have a tiny spark of it ourselves, which might be fanned into a flame if the wind of opportunity arose.
So how do we recognize the heroes and heroines of today? I would distinguish four principal marks. First, by absolute independence of mind, which springs from the ability to think everything through for yourself, and to treat whatever is the current consensus on any issue with skepticism. Second, having made up your mind independently, to act—resolutely and consistently. Third, to ignore or reject everything the media throws at you, provided you remain convinced you are doing right. Finally, to act with personal courage at all times, regardless of the consequences to yourself. All history teaches, and certainly all my personal experience confirms, that there is no substitute for courage. It is the noblest and best of all qualities, and the one indispensable element in heroism in all its different manifestations.