Reply
Fri 26 Jun, 2015 10:47 pm
The following is my translation. I wonder whether did Churchill really say something like these:
When Winston Churchill failed in election after WWII, an American journalist criticised British people to be ungrateful. Churchill replied:"It is a mark of a great people who are ungrateful to their leaders." Later, Joseph Stalin met with him, laughing:"Churchill, you won the war yet your people dismissed you! Take a look at me: who dares to dismiss me?!" Untouched, Churchill told him:"I fight for the right that my people can dismiss me."
@oristarA,
Ingratitude towards their great men
is the mark of strong peoples.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
http://www.someworthwhilequotes.com/INGRATITUDEINNOVATION.html
Sorry, but I can't find the Stalin-Churchill exchange.
@oristarA,
No sweat. Wish I could have helped with the other one.
@oristarA,
Besides, is "criticized British people to be ungrateful" grammatically correct?
@oristarA,
oristarA wrote:
Besides, is "criticized British people to be ungrateful" grammatically correct?
No, "criticized/ing British people for being ungrateful" would be.
@FBM,
FBM wrote:
oristarA wrote:
Besides, is "criticized British people to be ungrateful" grammatically correct?
No, "criticized/ing British people for being ungrateful" would be.
That is exactly what I wanted to write down, only that I attempted to try a new structure to express the same meaning.
I wonder why the "to be" structure doesn't work here.
@oristarA,
Think of it as a collocation and/or an idiom. We criticize people "for" something.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/criticize+for
@oristarA,
If you actually study or learn about WW2 history. Churchill really screwed over his people. He made some terrible decisions. and he was not against Hitler in the beginning.
He signed some pretty ridiculous things and really made that war difficult for the allies. poor leader.
@GorDie,
GorDie wrote:
If you actually study or learn about WW2 history. Churchill really screwed over his people. He made some terrible decisions. and he was not against Hitler in the beginning.
He signed some pretty ridiculous things and really made that war difficult for the allies. poor leader.
I will appreciate it if you would like to post some links here to prove he's muddling with Hitler at the beginning and he had some terrible decisions.