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[Janko]

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[Dr Arslanagić]

 

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[Prospero]

Winston Churchill made boozy £12,000 bet with British Empire would not fall ... and won

The future Prime Minister made the pledge at a soiree the day after Queen Victoria died

By Telegraph Reporter
5:31PM GMT 10 Mar 2016
 

Winston Churchill made and won a £12,000 bet with a US millionaire on the British Empire becoming stronger following death of Queen Victoria, a newly uncovered note reveals.

Churchill placed the 115-year-old wager at a boozy dinner party with American industrialist James C. Young.

With a bet of £100 - the equivalent of £12,000 today - he refuted the claim that Britain's position in the world would drastically wane within 10 years.

On the contrary, he insisted that the empire would continue to thrive after Queen Victoria's death in 1901.

The future Prime Minister made the pledge at a soiree the day after the monarch died.

The bet between Churchill and James C. Young

Photo: BNPS/Dreweatts & Bloomsbury

Both men put pen to paper to confirm the wager of £100 made by Young that the “British Empire will be substantially reduced...before ten years are gone."
The pair signed the document which is dated January 23, 1901.
 
It is not known whether Churchill collected his winnings in 1911, by which time he was First Lord of the Admiralty.
Lydia Wilkinson, autograph and memorabilia specialist at Bloomsbury, said: "I imagine the meeting between the pair was quite a boozy affair, they were having fun and you can imagine where the conversation led as it was just after Victoria had died.
 

"They were smoking cigars and drinking, with literature and the British Empire taking the lead as topics of conversation for the night.
"I think the main thing this note shows was he was incredibly loyal to the British Empire and he was so confident he bet this astronomical amount that it would survive another 10 years as he probably didn't have this money to spare.
"It shows the arrogance, which we know about him and the flamboyance he was probably developing through starting his political career.
"At the time there were major questions about the future of the British Empire and this could be an example of him towing the party line.
"One of the things we know for sure is that Churchill has made a few corrections to his wager slip though, which makes me think that drinking was probably involved.
"This is so much more than a bet between gentlemen, it is something definitive of his ideas at the time and I have never seen another example of this.
"There are reports he did collect his bet, but sadly there is no evidence to support that."

Young's wager document has survived intact and has now been put up for auction in London for a pre-sale estimate of £25,000.
At the time of the bet Churchill was a 27-year-old MP and was travelling America, giving talks about his time as a journalist in the Boer War, where he escaped from a PoW camp and marched almost 300 miles to safety in Portuguese East Africa.
 
During his tour he was invited to the house of wealthy Minneapolis industrialist and fellow book lover Young.
As the pair chatted, drank and smoked into the night, talk turned to Britain's future after Queen Victoria and under her son King Edward VII.
At the time the British claimed an approximate 14 million square miles of territory with India, Australia, Canada and swathes of Africa under the British flag.

American industrialist James C. Young

Photo: Dreweatts & Bloomsbury

Young was convinced the Empire's influence as the pre-eminent power of the day would soon wane - an unthinkable position for Churchill.
The pair each wrote and signed wager slips and it is clear from the corrections on Churchill's note that his mind may not have been at its sharpest - possibly due to drinking enough to consider wagering £100.
His note reads: "Mr. James C. Young bets Mr. Winston Churchill - one hundred pounds even - that within ten years from this date the British Empire will be substantially reduced by loss in Australia, or Canada, or India equal to a quarter by population of one of these provinces..."

The bet was witnessed by acclaimed British poet Richard Le Gallienne who also signed the document, which is being sold by Bloomsbury Auctions.
The wager slip was sold by descendants of James Young in 1945 to a private collector, whose family are now selling it.

Despite expanding after victory in First World War, the British Empire declined after the Second World War with India becoming independent in 1947.
The Suez Crisis in 1956, at which Britain was humiliated into withdrawing its forces around the Suez Canal by the US and the United Nations, confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage.
The wager slip will go under the hammer on March 18.

[hausmaistor]

 

Noch eins flößte mir Muth ein: der Gedanke, ein Preuße zu sein. – Wer von uns, der im Ausland reiste, hätte nicht die frohe Erfahrung gemacht, daß der Name Preuße einen guten Klang hat und zur wahren Empfehlung gereicht. – Preußens Stellung zu Rußland wie zur Pforte ist zudem wohl geeignet, einem seiner Landeskinder einen guten Empfang in jenen Gegenden zu bereiten.

(Spätherbst 1829)

:ziga: :ziga:

Edited March 11, 2016 by hausmaistor

[namenski]

[Prospero]

Mislim da imam nešto konkretno i o YSCu, al evo na brzaka nešto na temu jugo-pomorskih organizacija u USA/NYC iz davnijeh dana:
 
 

[Pontijak]

Koliko se u Srbiji nista ne menja decenijama, ma sta decenijama, vekovima, evo jedan pogled iz pretproslog veka

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 14, 2016 by Pontijak

[Pontijak]

 

 

[Dr Arslanagić]

Preteruje Karić. Srbija je srazmerno svom bogatstvu puno ulagala u školstvo i rezulatati su bili itekako vidljivi u periodu do 1914. Kao dugogodišnji konzul u Skoplju, aktivista društva Sveti Sava i organizator školovanja za Srbe u tadašnjoj Osmanskoj carevini, vrlo dobro je znao koliko se država trudila u tom polju. 

[Pontijak]

ja sam to samo stavio sa jednom namerom: zar svi ovi odlomci ne podsecaju neodoljivo na srbiju danas? :)

[Dr Arslanagić]

 

Tako je to kad kolo vode metodisti, kongregacionalisti i jebeni kvekeri.