I am a great lover of civility and measured speech, which I think goes a long way to help people manage disagreements and differences, even in the context of profound or mortal conflict. Speaking in a calm and courteous way helps people to feel and think in a calm and courteous way. And maybe that calm can help people achieve better outcomes in difficult situations.

For this reason, I don’t like a new trend I’ve noticed here in the United States—the increased use of very vulgar, inflammatory language in public. I especially don’t like seeing this language used by public officials. I see public officials quoted using language in front of a wide audience that I wouldn’t say in private to my husband.

It has been more than twenty years since I wrote my short, unconventional biography of Winston Churchill, Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, but I still think about Churchill just about every single day. He made such a deep impression on me.

On the subject of courteous language, I’m reminded of the letter that Churchill wrote after Japan suddenly entered into the wider Second World War in December 1941.

Without prior declaration of war, Japan attacked several British imperial territories. In response, Churchill, then Prime Minister, sent a letter to the Japanese envoy in London. In this letter, dated December 8 with a “Foreign Office” heading, he wrote.

                                                                             Foreign Office, December 8

Sir,

         On the evening of December 7th His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom learned that Japanese forces without previous warning either in the form of a declaration of war or of an ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war had attempted a landing on the coast of Malaya and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong.

         In view of these wanton acts of unprovoked aggression committed in flagrant violation of International Law and particularly of Article I of the Third Hague Convention relative to the opening of hostilities, to which both Japan and the United Kingdom are parties, His Majesty’s Ambassador at Tokyo has been instructed to inform the Imperial Japanese Government in the name of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom that a state of war exists between our two countries.

         I have the honour to be, with high consideration,

                                                           Sir,

                                                Your obedient servant,

                                                                          Winston S. Churchill

In his book The Grand Alliance (Amazon, Bookshop), the third volume in his fascinating, monumental six-part history, The Second World War, Churchill answered some critics. Churchill noted, “Some people did not like this ceremonial style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” 

To me, this “ceremonial style” seems perfectly suited to what Churchill described elsewhere as “the tragic simplicity and grandeur of the times and issues at stake”—something far more suitable than expletives and exclamation points. 

Courtesy is valuable even—and perhaps especially—at the moments of highest tension.