Inspiration and Leadership

Comparisons should not be pushed too far as they can be deceiving as well as helpful.

However, the Burmese liberation movement might benefit from a tandem similar to Britain’s King George VI and prime minister Winston Churchill.

The King influenced in quiet ways, for example, stiffening resistance to appeasement at a time when the appeasers were still in charge.
His position prevented him from speaking openly.

Churchill was able more directly to influence and change the course of events.

The King, a shy, unassuming man, inspired almost mystical devotion,
similar to that inspired by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
People saw in him the personification of their country.

Churchill provided the dynamic political leadership necessary to pull together, under a coalition government, people of very different political opinions.
He infused them with energy and a common purpose :
the destruction of Nazism.

The King carried with him in his car, wherever he went, a Sten Mark II submachine gun, as he was determined not to be taken alive and used as a hostage by German paratroops.
However, in the event of the country being overrun, he had decided to remain with and to share the fate of his people.

Churchill planned, if Britain were overrun, to continue the war from exile, from Canada.

The King’s Christmas message, 1939,
broadcast to the world by the BBC, at one of the darkest moments in European history,
included these words :

I said to the man at the gate of the Year
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied,
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light,
and safer than a known way.”

Burma has her Queen,
who has chosen to remain with and to share the fate of her people,
a hostage like them.

Where is her Prime Minister to lead the coalition forces from exile ?

_ Cedric snodgrass