Expression

In the spring of 1940, when Nazi Germany had conquered most of Europe and Britain stood nearly alone, the British turned to Winston Churchill (1874-1965) as prime minister. He was sixty-five, with a long and checkered career behind him, and many had thought his best days past. Yet in that hour he became the indispensable voice of resistance. He offered his people no easy comfort, 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat', but he gave them something greater: the conviction that their cause was worth any sacrifice and that they would not yield. As German bombs rained on London in the Blitz, he rallied a frightened nation with speeches of granite resolve: 'We shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender.' His words, broadcast by radio into every home, helped Britain hold on through the months when it was the last free nation standing against Hitler in Europe, buying time until the Soviet Union and the United States entered the war. Churchill was not a simple hero; he held views, especially about empire, that history rightly questions, and he himself called democracy 'the worst form of government except for all the others.' But in the gravest crisis of the modern age, his courage and his command of language steadied the free world. He reminds us that words, in the mouth of a brave and resolute leader, can be a weapon and a shield, and that one person's refusal to surrender can change the fate of millions.

The same century that broke apart in war saw music break apart too. In 1913, a year before WWI, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky premiered 'The Rite of Spring' in Paris, and the audience nearly rioted. Its pounding, irregular rhythms, harsh clashing harmonies, and primal energy shattered the elegant expectations of Romantic music; it sounded, to listeners, like chaos, even violence. In hindsight it seems almost prophetic of the convulsions to come. Across the modern era, composers splintered the old system of tonality, the sense of a musical 'home key', some, like Arnold Schoenberg, abandoning it entirely for atonal music. Music, like the painting of Picasso and the poetry of the age, was reckoning with a world that no longer felt orderly. But the century's most joyful musical revolution rose from America. Jazz, born from the spirituals, blues, and ragtime of Black Americans, came of age in the 1920s, the 'Jazz Age.' Out of New Orleans and Chicago, geniuses like Louis Armstrong turned improvisation into high art, his trumpet and voice swinging with a freedom and warmth the world had never heard. Jazz spread across the globe as America's signature sound, music of resilience and joy created by a people who had known great suffering. So the era's music holds the same tension as its history: the splintering of the old order, and, rising amid the wreckage, a vibrant, hopeful new voice.

This week's writing is a 'history that matters' essay: you choose one person, place, or moment from the World Wars era worth remembering, and you make the case for why it still matters. The best subjects carry weight: a person of heroic courage or charity (St. Maximilian Kolbe; a rescuer like the many who hid Jews; a nurse, a soldier, a resister), a place that bears witness, or a moment of decision. If you can, interview an older relative about their memories or their family's, or read a survivor's testimony, real voices make history matter. Today, choose your subject and gather information from at least two reliable sources (or your interview), taking careful notes. Then write a focused thesis, not just 'St. Maximilian Kolbe was important,' but a real claim: 'St. Maximilian Kolbe's sacrifice at Auschwitz proves that love can survive even where evil seems total, and that is why we must remember him.' Outline how you will tell the story clearly and build to your point. As you draft, use Day 3's lesson: free the hidden verbs, write with strong, direct verbs so the reader feels the weight of what happened. Above all, treat your subject with the gravity and respect it deserves. See the week's writingAssignment for the full prompt, length, and rubric; you may complete the essay as carry-over work.

Alongside Maximilian Kolbe stands St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Edith Stein (1891-1942). A brilliant German-Jewish philosopher who had become an atheist, she was drawn to truth until it led her to Christ; she was baptized and became a Carmelite nun. When the Nazis came for the Jews, her Jewish birth marked her for death, and in 1942 she was sent to Auschwitz and killed in the gas chambers. She went, she said, 'for my people', offering her life in union with the Cross. St. John Paul II canonized her in 1998 and named her a patroness of Europe. Like Kolbe, she shows that even in the century's darkest place, holiness was possible, that love and faith could not be extinguished. This is the answer to our essential question: the same century that produced unspeakable horror also produced some of the bravest holiness the world has ever seen. Close by praying for the courage to love as they loved, and for all the victims of that terrible time.