A Time for Old Men - Winston Churchill
A Time for Old Men - Winston Churchill
A Time for Old Men - Winston Churchill
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“A <strong>Time</strong><br />
<strong>for</strong> <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong>”<br />
THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL<br />
SPRING 2011 • NUMBER 150<br />
$9.95 / £6.50
i<br />
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CONTENTS<br />
The Journal of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
,<br />
Number 150<br />
Spring 2011<br />
Alkon, 16<br />
Reardon, 20<br />
COVER<br />
“The Debate on the Address, House of Commons, 1 November 1960,” by Alfred R. Thomson RA.<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> (back cover) is in his usual seat below the gangway. Prime Minister Harold<br />
Macmillan is speaking. Seated behind him (red hair) is Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys.<br />
To Sandys’ right are Henry Brooke and (back cover) Selwyn Lloyd, R.A. Butler and, probably, John<br />
Maclay. Behind Maclay, leaning <strong>for</strong>ward with paper in hand, is the Prime Minister’s son Maurice.<br />
Facing Macmillan, leaning <strong>for</strong>ward with paper in hand, is the Leader of the Opposition, Labour’s<br />
Hugh Gaitskell; behind him, also leaning, is Liberal Leader Jo Grimond. The painting, presented to<br />
Harold Macmillan by the 1922 Committee in 1963, hangs in the Palace of Westminster.<br />
ARTICLES<br />
Theme of the Issue: “A <strong>Time</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong>”<br />
10/ Introduction: Age and Leadership • Richard M. Langworth<br />
11/ May 1940: A <strong>Time</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong> • Don C. Graeter<br />
16/ <strong>Churchill</strong> on Clemenceau: His Best Student? Part I • Paul Alkon<br />
20/ The Reluctant Retiree: Did <strong>Churchill</strong> Stay Too Long? • Terry Reardon<br />
25/ Holding Fast: <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Longevity • John H. Mather M.D.<br />
26/ The Lion in Winter: Encounters with <strong>Churchill</strong> 1946-1962 • Dana Cook<br />
31/ Confronting Television in <strong>Old</strong> Age • The Editors<br />
32/ <strong>Churchill</strong> Defiant: Barbara Leaming’s Brilliant Insights • Richard M. Langworth<br />
k k k<br />
34/ “Anarchism and Fire”: What We Can Learn from Sidney Street • Christopher C. Harmon<br />
36/ “Golden Eggs,” Part II: Intelligence and the Eastern Front • Martin Gilbert<br />
43/ On Russia • <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS<br />
58/ Great Contemporaries: Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher • Barry Gough<br />
Leaming, 32<br />
Gough, 58<br />
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES<br />
44/ The King’s Speech, by David Seidler • David Freeman<br />
45/ Christian Encounters: <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, by John Perry • Ted Hutchinson<br />
46/ The De Valera Deception, by Michael & Patrick Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin • David Freeman<br />
47/ The Right Words: The Patriot’s <strong>Churchill</strong> and <strong>Winston</strong> • Christopher H. Sterling<br />
48/ In the Dark Streets Shineth, by David McCullough • Michael Richards<br />
48/ Secrets of the Dead: <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Deadly Decision, a PBS Documentary • Earl Baker<br />
50/ My Years with the <strong>Churchill</strong>s, by Heather White-Smith • Barbara F. Langworth<br />
50/ The Man Who Saved Europe, by Klaus Wiegrefe • Max Edward Hertwig<br />
52/ <strong>Churchill</strong> in Fiction: Historical Characters in Need of Character • Michael <strong>Men</strong>amin<br />
54/ Education: How Guilty Were the German Field Marshals? • Rob Granger & the Editor<br />
62/ Moments in <strong>Time</strong>: <strong>Churchill</strong> in North Africa, August 1942 • Kevin Morris<br />
DEPARTMENTS<br />
2/ The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre • 4/ Despatch Box • 6/ Datelines • 6/ Quotation of the Season<br />
8/ Around & About • 10/ From the Editor • 31/ Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas<br />
43/ Wit & Wisdom • 56/ Action This Day • 61/ <strong>Churchill</strong> Quiz<br />
FINESTHOUR150/3
D E S P A T C H B O X<br />
Number 150 • Spring 2011<br />
ISSN 0882-3715<br />
www.winstonchurchill.org<br />
____________________________<br />
Barbara F. Langworth, Publisher<br />
barbarajol@gmail.com<br />
Richard M. Langworth, Editor<br />
rlangworth@winstonchurchill.org<br />
Post Office Box 740<br />
Moultonborough, NH 03254 USA<br />
Tel. (603) 253-8900<br />
December-March Tel. (242) 335-0615<br />
__________________________<br />
Editorial Board<br />
Paul H. Courtenay, David Dilks,<br />
David Freeman, Sir Martin Gilbert,<br />
Edward Hutchinson, Warren Kimball,<br />
Richard Langworth, Jon Meacham,<br />
Michael Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin, James W. Muller,<br />
John Olsen, Allen Packwood, Terry<br />
Reardon, Suzanne Sigman,<br />
Manfred Weidhorn<br />
Senior Editors:<br />
Paul H. Courtenay<br />
James W. Muller<br />
News Editor:<br />
Michael Richards<br />
Contributors<br />
Alfred James, Australia<br />
Terry Reardon, Canada<br />
Antoine Capet, James Lancaster, France<br />
Paul Addison, Sir Martin Gilbert,<br />
Allen Packwood, United Kingdom<br />
David Freeman, Fred Glueckstein,<br />
Ted Hutchinson, Warren F. Kimball,<br />
Justin Lyons, Michael Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin,<br />
Robert Pilpel, Christopher Sterling,<br />
Manfred Weidhorn, United States<br />
___________________________<br />
• Address changes: Help us keep your copies coming!<br />
Please update your membership office when<br />
you move. All offices <strong>for</strong> The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre<br />
and Allied national organizations are listed on<br />
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__________________________________<br />
Finest Hour is made possible in part through the<br />
generous support of members of The <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre and Museum, the Number Ten Club,<br />
and an endowment created by the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre Associates (page 2).<br />
___________________________________<br />
Published quarterly by The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre,<br />
offering subscriptions from the appropriate<br />
offices on page 2. Permission to mail at nonprofit<br />
rates in USA granted by the United<br />
States Postal Service, Concord, NH, permit<br />
no. 1524. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.<br />
Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.<br />
SOMERVELL AWARD<br />
Issue 149 reminds me again to<br />
express gratitude <strong>for</strong> the kindness and<br />
support given my article, “Eye-Witness<br />
to Potsdam,” by the Finest Hour<br />
Editorial Board in naming it <strong>for</strong> the<br />
Somervell Award.<br />
Last week three local newspapers<br />
printed articles about the award, and I<br />
have been asked if I will give a story to<br />
the Liverpool Echo, which covers<br />
Merseyside. Local schools want me to<br />
appear as well so I am preparing to talk<br />
to future generations about what Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> did <strong>for</strong> us all.<br />
NEVILLE BULLOCK, ASHTON, LANCS,<br />
STUDENTS’ CHOICE<br />
In discussing Richard Holmes’s In<br />
the Footsteps of <strong>Churchill</strong>, included in<br />
his “Five Best Recent <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Books,” (FH 148: 40), John P. Rossi<br />
quotes Holmes’s statement that<br />
“Without <strong>Churchill</strong>, Britain would<br />
have lost the war.” Mr. Holmes also<br />
stated (page 230, Basic Books paperback<br />
edition): “In 1940-41 Britain<br />
would not have survived as an independent<br />
nation had it not been <strong>for</strong> the<br />
agricultural, industrial and financial aid<br />
received from Canada.” By the end of<br />
World War II, Britain had received<br />
$3.5 billion in gifts from Canada, and<br />
more in loans.<br />
TERRY REARDON, ETOBICOKE, ONT.<br />
Editor’s response: In an interesting<br />
if depressing column, “Dependence<br />
Day,” in the January 2011 New<br />
Criterion, Mark Steyn writes: “Threesevenths<br />
of the G7 economies are<br />
nations of British descent. Two-fifths of<br />
the permanent members of the U.N.<br />
Security Council are—and, by the way,<br />
it should be three-fifths. The rap<br />
against the Security Council is that it’s<br />
the Second World War victory parade<br />
preserved in aspic, but if it were,<br />
Canada would have a greater claim to<br />
be there than either France or China”<br />
(http://xrl.us/biffwx).<br />
THANKS<br />
I must tell you that Finest Hour<br />
seems to be going from success to<br />
success and I find myself engrossed <strong>for</strong><br />
a day or two after each arrival. The<br />
current issue is perhaps the best ever.<br />
The in<strong>for</strong>mation about intelligence is<br />
new, at least to me, and fascinating.<br />
ROY M. PITKIN, LA QUINTA, CALIF.<br />
“GOOGLEWORLD”<br />
Your article on the digital world’s<br />
effects on joining organizations (FH<br />
148: 44) is intriguing. And worrying.<br />
How do any of us find financial<br />
support in Googleworld? I don't have<br />
an answer, but I think you are right.<br />
We cannot resist the tide, and must<br />
find ways of floating on it. Rupert<br />
Murdoch is making a brave attempt to<br />
move his newspapers to the web, but I<br />
think it is far from certain he will<br />
succeed. How long can we rely on the<br />
overly generous contributions of time<br />
and money from people who have sustained<br />
so many non-profits <strong>for</strong> so long?<br />
I don't know. You are entirely right to<br />
raise the issue and have it discussed.<br />
The worst aspect of the “<strong>Churchill</strong><br />
industry” is how parts of it refuse to<br />
move with the times, want everything<br />
to stay as it was—to see <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
through spectacles so deeply tinted<br />
with rose that they cannot look ahead.<br />
Incidentally, I spoke at the<br />
Imperial War Museum in December,<br />
supporting WSC as the Greatest British<br />
Prime Minister, during a debate <strong>for</strong><br />
London History Week. Talking about<br />
him to a diverse audience had them<br />
standing on their feet (and buying<br />
books). Whenever we manage to get<br />
the message across, I find it is always<br />
well received.<br />
LORD DOBBS, WYLYE, WILTS.<br />
SUTHERLAND PORTRAIT<br />
I take exception to the statement<br />
on page 5 (FH 148) that Clementine<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was within her rights to<br />
destroy the 1954 portrait of Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> by Graham Sutherland. This<br />
was a work of art commissioned by<br />
Parliament. As I see it, civilized people<br />
respect art even if they lack the ability<br />
to appreciate it. It would be more intelligent<br />
to publish photographs of the<br />
portrait, as well as Sutherland’s portraits<br />
of Somerset Maugham, Helena<br />
Rubinstein and Konrad Adenauer,<br />
together with a commentary from a<br />
qualified critic of modern portraiture.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/4
This would not include anyone in the<br />
employ of Hallmark greeting cards.<br />
National galleries and government<br />
offices are filled with portraits the<br />
subject disliked. Dolley Madison was<br />
willing to risk her life to save a Gilbert<br />
Stuart portrait of George Washington,<br />
whether or not Martha liked it. The<br />
National Trust spends time and money<br />
to preserve buildings, art and memorabilia,<br />
and would deplore the wanton<br />
destruction of so-called private property.<br />
It is <strong>for</strong>tuitous that Clementine<br />
did not destroy Chartwell, which she<br />
also disliked.<br />
ROBERT L. HALFYARD, N. QUINCY, MASS.<br />
Editor’s response: Lady <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
did not dislike Chartwell. Without her<br />
enthusiasm and support, preparing the<br />
house <strong>for</strong> exhibit by the National Trust<br />
would have been problematic. What<br />
she disliked, at least in the early years,<br />
was its expense.<br />
The controversy over the<br />
Sutherland painting is bewildering.<br />
Unlike Stuart’s Washington, it was not<br />
the property of the nation. It was<br />
private property, regardless of who presented<br />
it. Some believed that it should<br />
have been donated to the National<br />
Trust, even though it never hung at<br />
Chartwell. That has a familiar ring.<br />
Prominent people are <strong>for</strong>ever being<br />
told that they should give their property<br />
to society, that to do what they<br />
please with it is, well, tacky. The origin<br />
of this presumption lies in the belief<br />
that private property is literally a gift,<br />
which all right thinkers should pass<br />
along <strong>for</strong> appreciation by critics (in<br />
this case provided they don’t work <strong>for</strong><br />
Hallmark). A more sensitive view of<br />
the matter is in Lady Soames’s book on<br />
her father’s life as a painter, which we<br />
quoted.<br />
WINSTON: “A LONGING<br />
TO GO TO SEA”<br />
I am remiss in sharing a few cherished<br />
stories about time spent with Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>’s late grandson, an experience<br />
which showed a surprising technical<br />
side of him that I didn’t read in the<br />
remembrances in Finest Hour 147.<br />
Soon after I had departed as commanding<br />
officer of USS <strong>Winston</strong> S.<br />
USS <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, DDG-81<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, <strong>Winston</strong> wanted to visit the<br />
ship during one of his stays in<br />
Washington. I think he wanted to<br />
verify that the satellite TV he had purchased<br />
<strong>for</strong> the crew was working, that<br />
the ship had maintained its lavish publike<br />
chiefs’ mess, and that the books he<br />
so generously donated were not on<br />
display, but rather being read.<br />
We organized a rendezvous south<br />
of DC. The plan was <strong>for</strong> me to escort<br />
him to the Norfolk Navy Base in his<br />
chauffeured automobile. We had an<br />
intriguing talk during the three-hour<br />
drive. During intermissions, to let our<br />
jaws rest, he broke out his laptop and<br />
immediately began emailing, while<br />
speeding down I-95, his fingers flying<br />
across the keyboard.<br />
Since this preceded 4G networks<br />
and the common use of “hot zones,” I<br />
asked how he managed to get a signal.<br />
That unleashed a torrent of technospeak<br />
in reply. <strong>Winston</strong> went on and<br />
on about how to rig one’s car to maximize<br />
reception, the proper phone<br />
network in the central Atlantic states<br />
versus the Miami metropolitan area,<br />
burst transmissions, condensing emails,<br />
and other crucial tips to stay connected<br />
in the 21st century. The conversation<br />
continued into a truck stop (my recommendation—appropriate,<br />
I thought,<br />
since we had been discussing The Great<br />
Republic, his book on his grandfather’s<br />
writings of America). Alas we had an<br />
absolutely heinous meal, memorable to<br />
a fault. We laughed about that truck<br />
stop <strong>for</strong> the next two days.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/5<br />
The ship visit was pleasant <strong>for</strong><br />
<strong>Winston</strong> and a bit emotional <strong>for</strong> me.<br />
He was most at home with the fire<br />
control and electronics technicians—<br />
the two ratings responsible <strong>for</strong> much of<br />
what makes a modern destroyer<br />
modern. [His grandfather is erroneously<br />
credited with coining the term<br />
“destroyer,” which actually dates to the<br />
1890s. —Ed.]<br />
Our drive home was about radar<br />
signals, wave theory, electro-magnetic<br />
induction, weapons control systems,<br />
and modern navigation techniques (he<br />
favored the old ways of navigation).<br />
For a journalist with a liberal arts education,<br />
he found a com<strong>for</strong>table niche in<br />
the techno-babble that is today’s Navy.<br />
I thought I saw in his eye a longing to<br />
go to sea.<br />
You may be interested to know<br />
that Sir <strong>Winston</strong>’s 1897 observations<br />
of the Northwest Frontier, also in<br />
Finest Hour 147, still hold true in the<br />
Punjabi region:<br />
…tribes war with tribes. Every man’s<br />
hand is against the other and all are<br />
against the stranger.…the state of continual<br />
tumult has produced a habit of<br />
mind which holds life cheap and<br />
embarks on war with careless levity and<br />
the tribesmen of the Afghan border<br />
af<strong>for</strong>d the spectacle of a people who<br />
fight without passion and kill one<br />
another without loss of temper….A<br />
trifle rouses their animosity. They<br />
make a sudden attack on some frontier<br />
post. They are repulsed. From their<br />
point of view the incident is closed.<br />
There has been a fair fight in which<br />
they have had the worst <strong>for</strong>tune. What<br />
puzzles them is that the “Sirkar”<br />
should regard so small an affair in a<br />
serious light.<br />
After two and a half years of<br />
dealing with the strategy, policy, and<br />
planning <strong>for</strong> the Middle East and the<br />
Central and South Asia regions, I find<br />
the young <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> as right<br />
today as he was in the days of the<br />
Malakand Field Force.<br />
Who knows…but my next posting<br />
may lead to a modern appreciation of<br />
The River War. Maybe even a unique<br />
destination <strong>for</strong> The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre’s<br />
meeting of the board. We shall see.<br />
RADM MICHAEL T. FRANKEN, USN<br />
UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND ,
DAT E L I N E S<br />
1911-2011: THE SIDNEY STREET CENTENARY<br />
LONDON, DECEMBER 18TH—<br />
The Museum of London<br />
Docklands today opened a new<br />
exhibition, “London under Siege:<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and the Anarchists,”<br />
featuring the Astrakhan-collared<br />
greatcoat <strong>Churchill</strong> wore when he<br />
controversially arrived at the scene<br />
to observe operations against<br />
criminals on 3 January 1911.<br />
(Reported by The Guardian website,<br />
http://xrl.us/bh68rg.)<br />
Mr. Clive<br />
Bettington of<br />
the Jewish<br />
East End<br />
Celebration<br />
Society, cosponsors<br />
of the<br />
exhibit, says<br />
Sidney Street “is part of East End and<br />
socialist folklore and the area at the<br />
time was home to radical political<br />
groups, most of whom had come from<br />
Eastern Europe, thus helping exaggerate<br />
people’s imaginations about<br />
immigration and other cultures.”<br />
If there’s any exaggeration it’s<br />
the publicity. A legal and warranted<br />
police action does not amount to<br />
“London under Siege.” Whether or<br />
not the “Latvian anarchists” cornered<br />
at Sidney Street were socialists, they<br />
were in the process of robbing a<br />
jewelry shop when the police were<br />
summoned. (See “Anarchism and<br />
Fire,” page 34.)<br />
The jeweler’s shop was at 119<br />
Houndsditch, near Cutler Street and<br />
Goring Street. The besieged house was<br />
at 100 Sidney Street, which runs north<br />
and south from Whitechapel Road to<br />
Commercial Road, near Whitechapel<br />
Underground station. Un<strong>for</strong>tunately<br />
there is little left to see of the neighborhood<br />
as it was in 1911, since it was<br />
rebuilt as the Sidney Street Estate in<br />
the postwar reconstruction of Stepney.<br />
One of the blocks at the end of the<br />
street was named “Siege<br />
House,” but number 100<br />
was actually on the east<br />
side, about halfway down,<br />
near Sidney Square.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s presence<br />
at the scene in 1911<br />
pursued him a long time.<br />
Speaking in Shepherd’s<br />
Bush about the departing<br />
government be<strong>for</strong>e the<br />
general election of 3<br />
December 1923, WSC<br />
remarked: “In the brief period during<br />
which they held office they have not<br />
succeeded in handling a single public<br />
question with success.” The crowd<br />
laughed when a voice said, “They succeeded<br />
at the battle of Sidney Street,<br />
didn't they?” <strong>Churchill</strong> shot back: “We<br />
have always been wondering where<br />
Peter the Painter got to.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s account of the “Siege<br />
of Sidney Street” is in his Thoughts<br />
and Adventures, pages 63-72 of the<br />
new ISI Books edition edited by James<br />
W. Muller. <strong>Churchill</strong> concludes: “Of<br />
‘Peter the Painter’ not a trace was ever<br />
found. He vanished completely.<br />
Rumour has repeatedly claimed him as<br />
one of the Bolshevik liberators and<br />
saviours of Russia. Certainly his qualities<br />
and record would well have fitted<br />
him to take an honoured place in that<br />
noble band. But of this Rumour is<br />
alone the foundation.”*<br />
* One of FH’s contributors liked<br />
to tweak the editor, who is of part-<br />
Latvian extraction, by reiterating the<br />
claim (revived in current publicity)<br />
that the Sidney Street gang were<br />
“Latvian anarchists,” knowing that<br />
each time, the editor would faithfully<br />
edit this out! This was not to whitewash<br />
Latvians, but because the gang<br />
leader, “Peter the Painter” (variously<br />
identified as Peter Piatkow, Peter<br />
Straume or Jacob Peters) did not<br />
possess a Latvian name. Two accomplices<br />
who died in the blaze were Jacob<br />
FINESTHOUR150/6<br />
Quotation of the Season<br />
f a man is coming across the sea to<br />
“Ikill you, you do everything in your<br />
power to make sure he dies be<strong>for</strong>e finishing<br />
his journey. That may be difficult, it<br />
may be painful, but at least it is simple. We<br />
are now entering a world of imponderables,<br />
and at every stage occasions <strong>for</strong> self-questioning<br />
arise. Only one link in the chain of<br />
destiny can be handled at a time.”<br />
—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS,<br />
18 FEBRUARY 1945<br />
Vogel and Fritz Svaars; “Svaars” could<br />
be Latvian, but not “Fritz.”<br />
THE DREAM IN COLOMBO<br />
COLOMBO, NOVEMBER 20TH— Sri Lanka,<br />
the country <strong>Churchill</strong> knew as<br />
Ceylon, not unfamiliar with civil<br />
upheaval, reflected on his littleknown<br />
1947 short story, The Dream,<br />
(FH 125: 41, FH 126: 44). Part of<br />
the dialogue:<br />
Lord Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>: “But<br />
tell me about these other wars.”<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>: “They were the wars<br />
of nations, caused by demagogues<br />
and tyrants.”<br />
LRC: “Did we win?”<br />
WSC: “Yes, we won all our<br />
wars. All our enemies were beaten<br />
down. We even made them surrender<br />
unconditionally.”<br />
LRC: “No one should be made<br />
to do that. Great people <strong>for</strong>get sufferings,<br />
but not humiliations.”<br />
WSC: “Well, that was the way<br />
it happened, Papa.”<br />
LRC: “How did we stand after<br />
it all? Are we still at the summit of<br />
the world, as we were under Queen<br />
Victoria?”<br />
WSC: “No, the world grew<br />
much bigger all around us.”<br />
LRC: “…<strong>Winston</strong>, you have<br />
told me a terrible tale. I would never<br />
have believed that such things could<br />
happen. I am glad I did not live to<br />
see them.” The article continues...
Finest Hour 56<br />
D A T E L I N E S<br />
In 1947, Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote<br />
about a dream he had. He had been<br />
seated in his studio trying to paint a<br />
portrait of his father. He felt an odd<br />
sensation and turned around to see his<br />
father, then long dead, seated in the<br />
leather armchair behind him. A long<br />
conversation<br />
on a<br />
wide range<br />
of subjects<br />
followed,<br />
an extract<br />
of which is<br />
quoted<br />
opposite.<br />
This<br />
imaginary<br />
conversation<br />
between<br />
father and<br />
son seems appropriate now with the<br />
issue of the horrors of war coming up<br />
in evidence be<strong>for</strong>e the Sri Lanka<br />
Commission on Lessons Learnt and<br />
Reconciliation, and in some happenings<br />
connected to it.<br />
When Al-Jazeera published what<br />
it stated were still unverified photographs<br />
of the Eelam War [against Tamil<br />
separatists, won by the Sri Lanka government<br />
in 2009], the government<br />
spokesperson’s immediate reaction was<br />
to claim they were fakes. Recently, it<br />
has been repeated that there were zero<br />
civilian deaths due to offensives by the<br />
security <strong>for</strong>ces. On the contrary, there<br />
have been repeated claims by many<br />
civilians….<br />
These rival claims can only be<br />
verified by an independent inquiry,<br />
either by a specially constituted panel<br />
acceptable to most independent civil<br />
society organizations or by a Truth<br />
Commission on the lines of the Tutu<br />
Commission in South Africa. It is in<br />
the interests of the government to see<br />
that an independent inquiry is done.<br />
—FEDRICA JANZ, SRI LANKA GUARDIAN<br />
HEEERE’S ADOLF!<br />
BERLIN, OCTOBER 29TH— Germany has<br />
opened a Hitler Museum—but cynics<br />
who predicted an “Adolf Hitler Platz”<br />
one day will have to wait. The German<br />
Historical Museum’s exhibit, entitled<br />
“Hitler and the German Nation and<br />
Crime,” is devoted to the citizenry’s<br />
complicity in the Third Reich. This is<br />
new: <strong>for</strong> decades after the war, German<br />
students were taught that Hitler had<br />
effectively hijacked the nation as it<br />
stood and watched.<br />
“That much of the German<br />
people became enablers, colluders, cocriminals<br />
in the Holocaust” is now a<br />
mainstream view, says political analyst<br />
Constanze Stelenmüller. “But it took us<br />
a while to get there.” The exhibit consists<br />
largely of everyday objects that<br />
ordinary Germans made to glorify the<br />
Führer, such as a tapestry woven by<br />
church women interspersed with<br />
images of townsfolk, the Lord’s Prayer<br />
and the Swastika.<br />
“WSC DIDN’T SAY THAT”<br />
WASHINGTON, JANUARY 25TH— Ross<br />
Douthat describes The King’s Speech<br />
(reviewed on page 44) as “com<strong>for</strong>t food<br />
<strong>for</strong> Anglophiles [with] plummy accents,<br />
faultless sets, master thespians and an<br />
entirely unobjectionable political<br />
message (down with Hitler and snobbery,<br />
but God Save the King).” But<br />
Christopher Hitchens in Slate accuses<br />
the film of “gross falsifications of<br />
history” (www.slate.com/id/2282194/).<br />
Hitchens says it whitewashes <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
by painting him as an ally of George<br />
VI, who succeeded his brother, the<br />
“Nazi sympathizer” Edward VIII, when<br />
in fact the “bombastic” WSC stuck<br />
with Edward to the last, squandering<br />
his political capital as an anti-appeaser.<br />
Once Edward abdicated, the Royal<br />
Family, a “rather odd little German<br />
dynasty,” was “invested in the post-fabricated<br />
myth of its participation in<br />
‘Britain's finest hour.’”<br />
We were all set to send Slate a<br />
rebuttal, as over Hitchens’ Atlantic rant<br />
in 2002 (FH 114, http://xrl.us/bif47u),<br />
labeling <strong>Churchill</strong> “incompetent,<br />
boorish, drunk and mostly wrong.” But<br />
Slate readers responding on their<br />
website spared us the task.<br />
The film emphasizes <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
instinctive support <strong>for</strong> the monarchy,<br />
which is accurate. Edward VIII was a<br />
regrettable character, not even controllable<br />
as governor of the Bahamas,<br />
where several kettles of ripe fish were<br />
left when he quit<br />
Nassau. But his pro-<br />
Nazi ideas (which<br />
Hitchens incorrectly<br />
says “never ceased”)<br />
were as shallow as the<br />
rest of him, probably<br />
stemming from his<br />
admiration of how<br />
Herr Hitler got his way without the<br />
inconvenience of a Parliament.<br />
King George VI was scarcely<br />
alone in supporting Chamberlain and<br />
appeasement. A whole generation had<br />
been wasted in World War I, as Alistair<br />
Cooke elegantly put it during the 1988<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Conference: “The British<br />
people would do anything to stop<br />
Hitler, except fight him. And if you<br />
had been there, ladies and gentlemen—<br />
if you had been alive and sentient and<br />
British in the mid-Thirties—not one in<br />
ten of you would have supported Mr.<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>.”<br />
King George<br />
VI’s deportment in<br />
World War II won<br />
him the lasting<br />
respect of his people,<br />
eclipsing his mistaken<br />
beliefs be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
1940. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
political reverse after<br />
Edward VIII<br />
George VI<br />
defending Edward VIII was brief and<br />
insignificant; his comeback as “Prophet<br />
of Truth” was soon back on track as<br />
events proved he’d been right all along.<br />
Gross falsifications of history? All<br />
we have here is the grossly iconoclastic<br />
Chris Hitchens, personification of the<br />
Member of Parliament described by<br />
Arthur Balfour: “The hon. gentleman<br />
has said much that is trite and much<br />
that is true, but what’s true is trite, and<br />
what’s not trite is not true.”<br />
—EDITOR<br />
“WSC WROTE ABOUT IT”<br />
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 16TH— Columnist<br />
Bret Stephens on “America’s Will to<br />
Weakness”: “Beijing provokes clashes<br />
with the navies of Indonesia and Japan<br />
as part of a bid to claim the South<br />
China Sea. Tokyo is in a serious diplomatic<br />
row with Russia over the South<br />
Kuril islands, a leftover dispute from<br />
1945. There are credible fears that >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/7
D A T E L I N E S<br />
Teheran and Damascus will overthrow<br />
the elected Lebanese government.<br />
Managua is attempting to annex a<br />
sliver of Costa Rica, a nation much too<br />
virtuous to have an army of its own.<br />
And speaking of Nicaragua, Daniel<br />
Ortega is setting himself up as another<br />
Hugo Chávez by running, unconstitutionally,<br />
<strong>for</strong> another term. Both men<br />
are friends and allies of Mahmoud<br />
Ahmadinejad,.”<br />
All this was written be<strong>for</strong>e Egypt<br />
and Libya exploded, Pakistan abducted<br />
a U.S. diplomat, and Argentina, which<br />
the U.S. obliges by calling the Falkland<br />
Islands “Malvinas,” confiscated a U.S.<br />
plane used in a joint training exercise.<br />
Stephens continues: “We are now<br />
at risk of entering a period—perhaps a<br />
decade, perhaps a half-century—of<br />
global disorder, brought about by a<br />
combination of weaker U.S. might and<br />
even weaker U.S. will. The last time we<br />
saw something like it was exactly a<br />
century ago. <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote<br />
a book about it: The World Crisis.<br />
Worth reading today.” Stephens’<br />
column is at: http://xrl.us/bh7377.<br />
DR. WHO?<br />
FULLERTON, CALIF, DECEMBER 15TH— The<br />
following was submitted to me as an<br />
essay on a final exam taken this week.<br />
(If you don’t know who “The Doctor”<br />
is, skip this note or Google Dr. Who.)<br />
“<strong>Churchill</strong> is known <strong>for</strong> as the<br />
British Prime Minister during World<br />
War II. He saw the threat that Hitler<br />
presented, unlike Neville Chamberlain,<br />
who thought, ‘Hitler seems like a right<br />
fine old chap.’ <strong>Churchill</strong> also coined<br />
the ‘iron curtain’ phrase regarding<br />
Communism. What most people don't<br />
know about <strong>Churchill</strong> is that he was a<br />
personal friend of The Doctor, or at<br />
least he knew The Doctor well enough<br />
to know his phone number and be able<br />
to call him in the TARDIS.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> summoned The<br />
Doctor during World War II when the<br />
Daleks had infiltrated the underground<br />
war cabinet, masquerading as weapon<br />
designed to defeat Hitler, by a British<br />
scientist who turned out to be an<br />
android created by the Daleks and<br />
given fake human memories.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, it appears later helped River<br />
AROUND & ABOUT<br />
Manfred Weidhorn sends us an excerpt from the<br />
Diaries of Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda chief,<br />
dated 8 May 1941, a year after <strong>Churchill</strong> had come to<br />
power. Hitler and Goebbels regularly lambasted <strong>Churchill</strong> as<br />
an aging, delusional liar, Prof. Weidhorn writes; but in his personal daily<br />
diary, Goebbels reflected on what he really thought:<br />
“I study <strong>Churchill</strong>'s new book Step by Step, Speeches from 1936-39<br />
and essays. This man is a strange mixture of heroism and cunning. If he had<br />
come to power in 1933, we would not be where we are today. And I believe<br />
that he will give us a few more problems yet. But we can and will solve them.<br />
Nevertheless he is not to be taken lightly as we usually take him.”<br />
For more public and private Goebbels opinions, see Randall Bytwerk,<br />
“<strong>Churchill</strong> in Nazi Cartoon Propaganda,” Finest Hour 143, Summer 2009.<br />
kkkkk<br />
On a pundit panel last November 7th, Mara Liasson of National<br />
Public Radio likened outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives<br />
Nancy Pelosi, then battling to remain her party’s leader in the House after<br />
her party sustained major losses in the November elections, to <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>. This was rebutted by Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume,<br />
who said that unlike Pelosi, <strong>Churchill</strong> had stayed on after winning a great<br />
victory—World War II. (For the video see http:// xrl.us/bh69x8.)<br />
Liasson and Hume are both right and both wrong. <strong>Churchill</strong> was dismissed<br />
in 1945, despite the approaching complete victory in World War II,<br />
while Pelosi lost the Speakership after a great electoral loss (per Hume).<br />
But <strong>Churchill</strong>, like Pelosi, declared that he would remain party leader despite<br />
electoral defeat (per Liasson).<br />
The issue is obfuscated because the offices aren’t comparable. In<br />
America, The Speaker of the House of Representatives, third in line <strong>for</strong> the<br />
presidency and party leader in the House, is far more important than the<br />
Speaker of the House of Commons, who is a party politician but “independent<br />
of party” when Speaker. And in America the President is always the<br />
titular leader of his party. Still, a Pelosi comeback in 2012, like <strong>Churchill</strong>’s in<br />
1951, would be bound to produce more comparisons. Over and above the<br />
contemporary politics, it’s nice to know that <strong>Churchill</strong> is still the benchmark<br />
by which today’s players are measured. ,<br />
Song get the painting Vincent Van<br />
Gogh made of the TARDIS exploding<br />
to the Doctor to warn him of the<br />
Pandora Opening.”<br />
—DAVID FREEMAN<br />
Editor’s note: Doctor Who<br />
episodes frequently involve historical<br />
figures, though we’re not quite sure<br />
how tongue-in-cheek this submission<br />
was. TARDIS, Doctor Who’s time traveling<br />
device, is short <strong>for</strong> “<strong>Time</strong> and<br />
Relative Distance in Space,” and the<br />
Daleks are the evil robots bent on<br />
world domination. But it will take a<br />
better Dr. Who fan than we to identify<br />
River Song and the Pandora Opening!<br />
Readers please help....<br />
“KARSH 4” UNEARTHED<br />
VANCOUVER, FEBRUARY 2010— In a master’s<br />
thesis entitled “By the Side of the<br />
‘Roaring Lion,’” University of Calgary<br />
graduate student Rebecca Lesser uncovered<br />
a fourth in the series of <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
photographs snapped by Yousuf Karsh<br />
after <strong>Churchill</strong>’s “Some Chicken—<br />
Some Neck” speech to the Canadian<br />
Parliament in Ottawa on 30 December<br />
1941. Referred by Terry Reardon, she<br />
sent us her manuscript, which is available<br />
from the editor by email. Ms.<br />
Lesser notes that Karsh snapped several<br />
candid photographs of the two leaders:<br />
“It was Mackenzie King who had<br />
arranged <strong>for</strong> Karsh’s photographic<br />
encounter with <strong>Churchill</strong>…“he was as<br />
FINESTHOUR150/8
eager to be photographed with his<br />
British counterpart as Karsh himself<br />
was to photograph <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
The third photo, “Karsh 3,” not<br />
pictured by Lesser, was in Karsh’s<br />
account in FH 94; and Terry Reardon’s<br />
“<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> and Mackenzie<br />
King” in FH 130.<br />
Rebecca Lesser’s fourth photo,<br />
first published on 10 January 1942 in<br />
Canada’s weekly general-interest magazine<br />
Saturday Night, “depicts a<br />
laughing Mackenzie King glancing over<br />
at <strong>Churchill</strong>, who in turn looks into<br />
the camera with a slight smile. The<br />
photograph was deemed unsuitable by<br />
King, as he felt that their jovial expressions<br />
were inappropriate <strong>for</strong> the serious<br />
nature of their meeting; he had not<br />
been posing <strong>for</strong> this photograph, and<br />
thus had not been granted the opportunity<br />
to constitute himself into the<br />
image he wished to convey. King’s<br />
concern regarding the public reception<br />
of such unposed images assured that<br />
these other photographs from that<br />
most famous sitting would be relegated<br />
to the archives.”<br />
We have always thought that<br />
Karsh’s “afterthought” photos of King<br />
and <strong>Churchill</strong> together (which, unlike<br />
the more famous pair, were never<br />
retouched) convey a truer picture of<br />
both statesmen. We continue to<br />
wonder exactly how many photos<br />
Karsh actually shot that day in Ottawa.<br />
TRUE AND TRITE<br />
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1ST— Richard Toye’s<br />
biased and lopsided <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Empire<br />
WHICH KARSH IS THE TRUEST CHURCHILL?<br />
Below left: “Karsh 1,” the “Roaring Lion,” taken after Karsh plucked the cigar from <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
mouth, resulting in a world-famous grimace. Below right: “Karsh 2,” the “Smiling Lion,” taken<br />
after WSC laughed and said, “You can even make a roaring lion stand still to be photographed.”<br />
Bottom left: “Karsh 3,” with Mackenzie King—which we think is yet more<br />
genuine. Bottom right: “Karsh 4,” Rebecca Lesser’s discovery, perhaps the best of the lot.<br />
(let off lightly in FH 147) continues to<br />
cast a trail of misin<strong>for</strong>mation. In The<br />
New Yorker of August 30th, Adam<br />
Gopnik wrote a balanced account<br />
(http://xrl.us/bidbyp) of the continuing<br />
interest in and new books about<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, which drew the following<br />
response from a reader in New Mexico:<br />
“Adam Gopnik’s article on<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> glides over the<br />
damning portrait of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s turn-ofthe-century<br />
exploits in Richard Toye’s<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Empire: The World That<br />
Made Him and the World He Made. It<br />
is hard to reconcile the <strong>Churchill</strong> who<br />
believed that ‘imperialism and progressivism<br />
were parts of the same package,’<br />
and who lamented the death camps of<br />
the Holocaust, with the <strong>Churchill</strong> who<br />
dispatched hundreds of thousands of<br />
Kenyan Kikuyu, including President<br />
Obama’s grandfather, to torturous detention<br />
camps (‘Britain’s Gulag,’ in the<br />
words of the historian Caroline Elkins);<br />
who spoke of Indians as ‘a beastly people<br />
with a beastly religion,’ and who said that<br />
‘the Aryan stock is bound to triumph.’<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s imperial vision reminds us<br />
that a reconsideration of his political<br />
principles must not be confined to the<br />
era that shaped his finest hour.”<br />
To The New Yorker:<br />
The allegation that the<br />
President’s grandfather was a Mau Mau<br />
rebel tortured by the British stems<br />
from a blogsite and/or Obama’s<br />
“Granny Sarah,” who also claimed that<br />
the President was born in Kenya. The<br />
Mau Mau rebellion didn’t begin until<br />
the end of 1952 (a year after Obama’s<br />
grandfather was proven innocent and<br />
released), and <strong>Churchill</strong> actually<br />
expressed sympathy <strong>for</strong> the Kenyan<br />
rebels (http://xrl.us/bhwooo). The parliamentary<br />
<strong>for</strong>ms extant in India and<br />
developing in Kenya stem from the<br />
British rule your reader deplores. The<br />
“Aryan stock” quotation does not<br />
appear in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s canon. For better<br />
in<strong>for</strong>mation than that provided by<br />
author Toye, he might want to rely on<br />
more balanced accounts, such as<br />
Arthur Herman (Gandhi and<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>), who knows what <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
really thought and did about India<br />
(http://xrl.us/bic86y). —RML ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/9
T H E M E O F T H E I S S U E<br />
Tigers and Lions: Age and Leadership<br />
“Great captains must take their chance with the rest.<br />
Caesar was assassinated by his dearest friend. Hannibal<br />
was cut off by poison. Frederick the Great lingered out<br />
years of loneliness in body and soul. Napoleon rotted at<br />
St. Helena. Compared with these, Marlborough<br />
had a good and fair end to his life.”<br />
—WSC, Marlborough, vol. IV, 1938<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> served his last term as<br />
Prime Minister between 1951 and 1955,<br />
leaving at the age of 80. Georges<br />
Clemenceau served his last term as Prime Minister of<br />
France from 1917 to 1920, leaving at the age of 79. Each<br />
entered politics under the age of 30, supporting himself<br />
through writing. Each was a radical in his youth, growing<br />
more conservative as he aged. Far beyond retirement age,<br />
each inspired his countrymen, who knew them respectively<br />
as France’s Tiger and Britain’s Lion.<br />
Overt similarities aside, as Paul Alkon suggests<br />
herein, there is powerful evidence that <strong>Churchill</strong> patterned<br />
his own political attitudes after Clemenceau,<br />
whom he deeply admired—and that Clemenceau,<br />
although <strong>Churchill</strong> was the much younger man,<br />
unproven when they met, also admired him.<br />
Clemenceau died in 1929, too soon to consider any<br />
parallels of his career with <strong>Churchill</strong>’s. Indeed, a comparison<br />
between them would never have arisen, were it not<br />
<strong>for</strong> 1940 and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s finest hour. In that signal year,<br />
aged over 65, WSC was brought to office by other old<br />
men—not the “troublesome young men” of one recent<br />
book but troubled older men from three different parties.<br />
Their unity of faith and action made <strong>Churchill</strong> their<br />
nation’s leader at precisely the right time.<br />
Don Graeter’s “A <strong>Time</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong>” focuses on<br />
those days in 1940, and the aging individuals who made<br />
the difference in Britain’s hour of peril. As such, his piece<br />
is well qualified to lead our features on this theme.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was thought to be politically finished in<br />
1945, when the country flung him from office on the eve<br />
of complete victory over all Britain’s enemies. But he<br />
thought otherwise. When the editor of The <strong>Time</strong>s had<br />
the effrontery to suggest that <strong>Churchill</strong> should carry<br />
himself as a national leader and not remain long on the<br />
scene, his replies were characteristic, and illuminating:<br />
“Mr. Editor, I fight <strong>for</strong> my corner….I leave when the<br />
pub closes.” And he meant it—as we learn from Terry<br />
Reardon’s “Reluctant Retiree,” and Barbara Leaming’s<br />
outstanding new book, <strong>Churchill</strong> Defiant.<br />
How did <strong>Churchill</strong> do it? John Mather provides the<br />
physical explanation: how a fast-aging statesman, packing<br />
the baggage, the ups and downs of a record career in politics,<br />
somehow defied most medical advice and all<br />
actuarial probabilities from 1940 to his final retirement<br />
four months short of his 90th birthday.<br />
“Great captains must take their chance with the<br />
rest.” <strong>Churchill</strong> took his chance, and like John <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
First Duke Marlborough, he “had a good and fair end to<br />
his life.” It wasn’t all he had hoped <strong>for</strong>: his goal of permanent<br />
world peace remained elusive—as it remains<br />
today. Yet who can gainsay his record?<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> thought at the end of his life that he had<br />
“worked very hard and achieved a great deal, only to<br />
achieve nothing in the end.” With our longer perspective,<br />
we may disagree. <strong>Churchill</strong> did not win World War<br />
II: what he did was not lose it. “Only <strong>Churchill</strong>,”<br />
Charles Krauthammer wrote, “carries that absolutely<br />
required criterion: indispensability. Without <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
the world today would be unrecognizable—dark, impoverished,<br />
tortured.” And Charles de Gaulle remarked: “In<br />
the great drama, he was the greatest.”<br />
What can the world’s Democracies learn from<br />
the long careers, devotion to liberty, and<br />
lifetime defiance of odds by leaders like<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and Clemenceau, who lived their finest hours<br />
well over retirement age? Is something to be said <strong>for</strong><br />
electing leaders with thirty or <strong>for</strong>ty years’ political experience?<br />
Or is this to be avoided, absent a very special type<br />
of character, like Britain’s Lion or France’s Tiger?<br />
That is the theme and purpose of this issue of<br />
Finest Hour. We take no position at the end. Perhaps<br />
none can be taken, because history never repeats, as<br />
Mark Twain quipped—”though it sometimes rhymes.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> alone could not save the world. But<br />
we can’t resist wondering if others like him will be there<br />
when we need them—and if we will have the <strong>for</strong>titude,<br />
like the <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong> of 1940, to hand them the job. We’ll<br />
see—and probably soon.<br />
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH, EDITOR ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/10
A G E A N D L E A D E R S H I P<br />
May 1940: A <strong>Time</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong><br />
This improbable political thriller actually happened. An unlikely group of elderly gentlemen<br />
delivered three dramatic, perfectly timed speeches that set in motion a stream of events<br />
which changed the course of history. It was, truly, a time <strong>for</strong> old men.<br />
D O N<br />
C. G R A E T E R<br />
HOUSE OF COMMONS LIBRARY<br />
“I HAVE FRIENDS”: Extremely rare (because photographs were not then allowed in the Commons) this historic photo was surreptitiously snapped with<br />
a Minox spy camera by Conservative MP John Moore-Brabazon. It shows the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, declaiming on the first day of the<br />
Norway debate, 7 May 1940, with John Simon and <strong>Churchill</strong> on the front bench above the gangway. Three days later, <strong>Churchill</strong> was Prime Minister.<br />
House of Commons, London<br />
Tuesday, 7 May 1940<br />
3:00 pm<br />
The Alcoholic Barrister had risen from modest Welsh<br />
roots. A successful King’s Counsellor, he was as well a<br />
respected Member of Parliament, though isolated as an<br />
independent. Few were aware of his carefully concealed penchant<br />
<strong>for</strong> binge drinking. Largely <strong>for</strong>gotten today, he will<br />
play a critical role in our drama.<br />
3:15 pm<br />
At 71, the Prime Minister was a very old man at a<br />
time when life expectancy was 59. He had been patient,<br />
however—had waited his turn to lead the country. He did<br />
things his own way. After all, he knew best.<br />
The Prime Minister hardly bothered to conceal his<br />
contempt <strong>for</strong> His Majesty’s Opposition: the Labour Party<br />
and a handful of disaffected Liberals. What did they matter<br />
with his huge Conservative majority? He tolerated no disloyalty<br />
in his own Tory ranks, where his opponents were<br />
few and of little consequence; and those he would crush. >><br />
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Graeter is Director of Investments <strong>for</strong> Central Bank of Louisville, Kentucky. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School<br />
and served as a U.S. Navy officer during the Vietnam War. This article is adapted from his remarks to The Forum Club of Louisville.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/11
A TIME FOR OLD MEN...<br />
He knew who they were—had had them under surveillance<br />
<strong>for</strong> some time. Impatiently, the PM glanced at his watch,<br />
anxious to adjourn <strong>for</strong> the Whitsun holiday.<br />
3:30 pm<br />
Heads turned as the Admiral walked down Whitehall.<br />
Rarely did Londoners encounter a naval officer on the street<br />
in the full dress uni<strong>for</strong>m of an Admiral of the Fleet.<br />
Much decorated <strong>for</strong> bravery, the Admiral, now 67,<br />
had retired a hero. Financially secure from the success of his<br />
memoirs, he had entered Parliament <strong>for</strong> North Portsmouth<br />
in 1934. The Conservative Party had been delighted, since<br />
no one could beat a naval icon in Portsmouth.<br />
After a career of danger and hardship, the Admiral had<br />
anchored in tranquil waters, splitting his time between his<br />
country estate and “the best club in London,” as the House<br />
of Commons was known. Politically unambitious, he had<br />
supported his party; yet he now found himself among a<br />
small group of Tory backbenchers increasingly discontented<br />
with the Prime Minister’s leadership.<br />
The business be<strong>for</strong>e the House was procedural—a<br />
motion to adjourn <strong>for</strong> the holiday. But custom dictated that<br />
Members could speak on any topic. The Admiral had<br />
decided to seize the opportunity. He had had enough. No<br />
orator, he would condemn the Prime Minister’s leadership.<br />
He knew the risk of being run out of the party and<br />
deprived of his seat. Well, let the younger, ambitious ones<br />
worry about such things. He would do what he thought was<br />
right and, if necessary, leave public life <strong>for</strong>ever.<br />
7:09 pm<br />
The Admiral rose to deliver his only major speech. His<br />
voice was weak and he visibly trembled. The benches fell<br />
silent, out of respect <strong>for</strong> who he was and because of his<br />
dress uni<strong>for</strong>m, worn <strong>for</strong> just this purpose. Six rows of<br />
medals adorned his chest, glittering gold bands ran from his<br />
cuffs to his elbows. His voice did not match the splendor of<br />
his appearance, but the Admiral commanded rapt attention.<br />
The chamber hung on his every word.<br />
He began by criticizing the current British war campaign<br />
as “a shocking story of ineptitude.” He praised the<br />
First Lord of the Admiralty, who, he said, had “the confidence<br />
of the Navy, and indeed of the whole country.” But<br />
“proper use” of the First Lord’s “great abilities” could not<br />
be made “under the existing system.”<br />
8:03 pm<br />
Internal turmoil gripped the Scholar, another discontented<br />
Tory backbencher. He too was 67. Fluent in nine<br />
languages, he had taken a first at Balliol, and had been<br />
elected a fellow of All Souls at an early age. A prominent<br />
journalist, he had won acclaim as a military and political<br />
historian.<br />
In the 1920s, when the Scholar had served as First<br />
Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State <strong>for</strong> the<br />
Colonies, <strong>Time</strong> had called him the most talented member<br />
of the cabinet, though criticizing his pugnacious manner.<br />
But his party had been ousted in 1929, and in the national<br />
government that followed he had not been invited back.<br />
His career seemed well behind him.<br />
Aware of his reputation as an indifferent speaker, the<br />
Scholar had toiled mightily on the remarks he hoped to<br />
make. Still he was unsure—both of himself and of how far<br />
he should go. He shared the Admiral’s views, but he owed<br />
his seat to the Prime Minister, and the PM had been his<br />
friend. Given his seniority, the Scholar should have been<br />
recognized early—but the Speaker was a political foe and<br />
ignored him until the chamber of the House had nearly<br />
emptied <strong>for</strong> dinner.<br />
“I came to the House of Commons today in uni<strong>for</strong>m <strong>for</strong> the first<br />
time because I wish to speak <strong>for</strong> some officers and men of the<br />
fighting, sea-going Navy....The enemy have been left in undisputable<br />
possession of vulnerable ports and aerodromes <strong>for</strong> nearly a<br />
month, have been given time to pour in rein<strong>for</strong>cements by sea and<br />
air, to land tanks, heavy artillery and mechanised transport, and<br />
have been given time to develop the air offensive....It is not the fault<br />
of those <strong>for</strong> whom I speak....If they had been more courageously and<br />
offensively employed they might have done much to prevent these<br />
unhappy happenings and much to influence unfriendly neutrals.” —The Admiral<br />
FINESTHOUR150/12
“We are fighting today <strong>for</strong> our life, <strong>for</strong> our liberty, <strong>for</strong> our all;<br />
we cannot go on being led as we are. I have quoted certain<br />
words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I<br />
do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who<br />
are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words<br />
which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is<br />
what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it<br />
was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation: ‘You have<br />
sat too long here <strong>for</strong> any good you have been doing. Depart, I<br />
say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’" —The Scholar<br />
He had almost decided to <strong>for</strong>go<br />
comment when from behind came the<br />
urgent tones of the Alcoholic Barrister:<br />
“Now is the time. You must speak.<br />
Play <strong>for</strong> time. I’ll get you a crowd.”<br />
Gripped by doubt, the Scholar<br />
rose and began to address a nearly<br />
empty House. But the Alcoholic<br />
Barrister had repaired to the lobbies<br />
The Alcoholic Barrister<br />
and smoking room and, good as his<br />
word, soon produced a crowded Chamber.<br />
Encouraged by the increasing crowd, the Scholar<br />
described the government’s “handling of economic warfare,”<br />
indeed “the whole of our national ef<strong>for</strong>t,” as “too little, too<br />
late….We cannot go on as we are. There must be a change.”<br />
The chamber roared its approval. Emboldened, the<br />
Scholar made a fateful decision—to include a quotation he<br />
had accidentally discovered, never thinking the opportunity<br />
would arise to use it:<br />
“This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament<br />
when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs<br />
of the nation: ‘You have sat too long here <strong>for</strong> any good you<br />
have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with<br />
you. In the name of God, go!’”<br />
Wednesday, 8 May 1940<br />
4:00 pm<br />
The speeches resumed the next day, as the Elder<br />
Statesman brooded in his office. Once a noted orator, he<br />
was now 77, his days of leadership long past. He had not<br />
given a major speech in five years. Disgusted with both<br />
events and the Prime Minister, whom he held in open contempt,<br />
he planned to take no part in the debate. Though<br />
several colleagues begged him to intervene, he no longer<br />
had a significant following. What was the point?<br />
In the Chamber the Opposition—which had noted<br />
the violent split in Conservative ranks after last night’s<br />
speeches by the Admiral and the Scholar—opened by<br />
calling <strong>for</strong> a division: a vote of confidence in the government.<br />
Stung by their effrontery, the Prime Minister angrily<br />
interrupted: “I have friends in the House…and I call on my<br />
friends to support us in the Lobby tonight.”<br />
At this the Elder Statesman’s daughter, herself an MP,<br />
left the House to see her father. Breathlessly she told him<br />
what the Prime Minister had just said. The Elder<br />
Statesman, furious, said he could not remain silent.<br />
As he headed to the Chamber, the Elder Statesman<br />
gathered his thoughts—eighteen years since the Coalition<br />
he led had been thrown out in a rebellion of its Tory<br />
members. Revenge, indeed, was a dish best served cold.<br />
5:37 pm<br />
With a slight motion to the Speaker, the Elder<br />
Statesman was promptly recognized. Even at his age, the<br />
Speaker dared not keep him waiting.<br />
He began with a quip which drew laughter, and took<br />
his time as the Speaker called <strong>for</strong> order and the word spread<br />
to MPs outside the Commons that he was “up.” Members<br />
rushed back into the Chamber, which was soon full. The<br />
Elder Statesman began making his case. He would never<br />
give another memorable speech in the House. Did he have<br />
one last great oration in him?<br />
He told the House he had been reluctant to speak, but<br />
felt obliged to do so because of his experience as Prime<br />
Minister during the previous war; and this was no time to<br />
mince words. The Government's ef<strong>for</strong>ts, he continued, had<br />
been done “half-heartedly, ineffectively, without drive and<br />
unintelligently. Will anybody tell me that he is satisfied with<br />
what we have done about aeroplanes, tanks, guns?…Is<br />
anyone here satisfied with the steps we took to train an<br />
Army to use them? Nobody is satisfied.” >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/13
A TIME FOR OLD MEN...<br />
To the surprise of some who knew their mixed history<br />
as <strong>for</strong>mer colleagues, the Elder Statesman tried to exculpate<br />
one member of the government: “I do not think the First<br />
Lord was responsible <strong>for</strong> all the things that happened.” The<br />
First Lord of the Admiralty immediately interrupted: “I take<br />
full responsibility <strong>for</strong> everything that has been done by the<br />
Admiralty, and I take my full share of the burden.” The<br />
Elder Statesman replied that the First Lord must not allow<br />
himself “to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the<br />
splinters from hitting his colleagues.”<br />
Then, like the Scholar, the Elder Statesman reached<br />
his carefully-timed peroration. Turning to the Prime<br />
Minister, he spoke directly and devastatingly: “He has<br />
appealed <strong>for</strong> sacrifice. The nation is prepared <strong>for</strong> every sacrifice<br />
so long as it has leadership. I say solemnly that the<br />
Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because<br />
there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in<br />
this war than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.”<br />
Monday, 13 May 1940<br />
4:00 pm<br />
As the Commons reconvened, the Pariah rose to<br />
address a now bewildered assembly. Aged 65, he had arrived<br />
here <strong>for</strong>ty years be<strong>for</strong>e. After a remarkable career of ups and<br />
downs, including twice changing parties, his career had<br />
foundered. He had spent the last decade on the back<br />
benches, lonely and frustrated. Even though he had rejoined<br />
the government as First Lord of the Admiralty the previous<br />
autumn, Conservatives who shared his views still avoided<br />
him, afraid of being tainted by association.<br />
The Pariah’s detractors were not limited to Tories. The<br />
Labour Party detested him <strong>for</strong> sins, and imagined sins,<br />
stretching back decades. A reporter had labeled him “a man<br />
without a party.” While his brilliance and industry were<br />
respected, he was also thought to be out of touch and<br />
lacking in judgment. “Rogue elephant,” “aging adventurer”<br />
and—the worst cut of all—“half-breed American” were<br />
among their derogatory descriptions. Just a year be<strong>for</strong>e, he<br />
had barely survived “deselection” as the Tory candidate <strong>for</strong><br />
his long-held constituency. Some MPs resented even having<br />
to listen to him. They sat on their hands in silence.<br />
A friend later described the Pariah’s speech as<br />
“a very short statement.” A longtime enemy, the editor of<br />
The <strong>Time</strong>s, described it patronizingly as “quite a good little<br />
warlike speech.” But in the House itself, the Pariah soon<br />
had his colleagues on their feet, waving their Order Papers.<br />
He concluded amidst roaring tumult, as William<br />
Manchester wrote, with words now known to millions who<br />
were unborn at the time, who have never seen England, and<br />
do not even speak English:<br />
“I would say to the House, as I have said to those who<br />
have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but<br />
blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ You ask, what is our policy? I will<br />
say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might<br />
and with all the strength God can give us. That is our policy.<br />
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It<br />
is victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror,<br />
victory however long and hard the road may be; <strong>for</strong> without<br />
victory, there is no survival.”<br />
Dramatis Personae<br />
The Alcoholic Barrister<br />
Clement Edward Davies KC (1884-1962) was called<br />
to the Bar of England and Wales and appointed King’s<br />
Counsellor in 1923. He became a Liberal MP in 1929, and<br />
was Leader of the Liberal Party, 1945-56. Nothing better<br />
became his service to his nation than his urging the Scholar<br />
to intervene in the Norway Debate on 7 May 1940.<br />
“The Prime Minister must remember that he has met this <strong>for</strong>midable<br />
foe of ours in peace and in war. He has always been worsted. He is<br />
not in a position to appeal on the ground of friendship. He has<br />
appealed <strong>for</strong> sacrifice. The nation is prepared <strong>for</strong> every sacrifice so<br />
long as it has leadership, so long as the Government show clearly<br />
what they are aiming at and so long as the nation is confident that<br />
those who are leading it are doing their best. I say solemnly that<br />
the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because<br />
there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war<br />
than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.” —The Elder Statesman<br />
FINESTHOUR150/14
The Prime Minister<br />
Arthur Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940), became a<br />
Conservative MP in 1918 and Prime Minister in 1937. In<br />
the crisis of May 1940, with the Germans victorious, he<br />
seemed to be thinking in terms of self rather than the broad<br />
interests of the nation, offending many, including Megan<br />
Lloyd George MP, the first female Welsh MP, who convinced<br />
her father to speak. Chamberlain died in November<br />
1940, after loyally supporting his successor, who said generously<br />
that he had “acted with perfect sincerity according to<br />
his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and<br />
authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the<br />
awful devastating struggle.…”<br />
The Admiral<br />
Sir Roger John Brownlow Keyes Bt GCB KCVO<br />
CMG DSO RN (1872-1945), Admiral of the Fleet, 1930;<br />
Conservative MP, 1934; First Baron Keyes, 1943. His career<br />
stretched from African anti-slavery patrols to touring the<br />
Allied landings in Leyte during World War II. He was<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s liaison to King Leopold of the Belgians and<br />
director of Combined Operations in 1940-41. His trembling<br />
speech had enormous impact due to his personal<br />
stature, military expertise, and the fact that he was speaking<br />
against his own party’s Prime Minister. Harold Nicolson<br />
termed it the most dramatic speech he had ever heard.<br />
The Scholar<br />
Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery CH (1873-<br />
1955), known as Leo, met <strong>Churchill</strong> when the latter pushed<br />
him into “Ducker,” the swimming pool at Harrow School,<br />
in 1889. He became a Conservative MP, 1911; First Lord of<br />
the Admiralty, 1922-24; Colonial Secretary, 1923-29; and<br />
Secretary of State <strong>for</strong> India and Burma, 1940-45. Seeking a<br />
certain quotation by Oliver Cromwell <strong>for</strong> his speech, Amery<br />
discovered another. He had thought it too incendiary, but<br />
kept it at the ready. It made <strong>for</strong> the speech of his life.<br />
The Elder Statesman<br />
David Lloyd George OM PC (1863-1945) Earl Lloyd<br />
George of Dwy<strong>for</strong> (1945) was a Liberal MP from1890; he<br />
was President of the Board of Trade, 1905-08; Chancellor of<br />
the Exchequer, 1908-15; and Prime Minister, 1916-22. He<br />
was ousted as prime minister when the Chamberlain wing<br />
of the Tory party broke from the coalition. The old man<br />
had not <strong>for</strong>gotten. Though his reputation was later clouded<br />
by suspicion that he was a defeatest, and that he favored an<br />
armistice during World War II, his intervention in the May<br />
8th debate was crucial and devastating.<br />
The Pariah<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Leonard Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong> KG OM CH<br />
TD PC FRS etc. (1874-1965), needs no further description<br />
in these pages.<br />
The March of Events<br />
World War II began in September 1939, but the<br />
“phony war,” through spring 1940, saw little military<br />
action, despite grave concerns over the government’s management.<br />
These crystallized around the failure to organize<br />
the economy <strong>for</strong> war, inadequate production of armaments<br />
and training of troops, and a lack of energy and direction.<br />
In World War I, Lloyd George’s small war cabinet of<br />
members without departmental responsibilities was thought<br />
critical to his success. There was growing sentiment that in<br />
order to put the economy on a war footing, the Labour<br />
Party must be brought into a coalition of the type Lloyd<br />
George had headed. Chamberlain resisted at every point.<br />
By Tuesday, 7 May 1940, a British attempt to seize<br />
Norwegian ports recently occupied by the Germans had<br />
gone badly awry. In the House of Commons, the ordinarily<br />
routine motion to adjourn <strong>for</strong> the Whitsun holiday thus<br />
became known as “the Norway Debate.”<br />
An unlikely combination of backbenchers ignited a<br />
conflagration which ultimately consumed Prime Minister<br />
Chamberlain and elevated <strong>Churchill</strong> in his place on the<br />
evening of May 10th. On the 13th, <strong>Churchill</strong> gave his first<br />
address as Prime Minister, which is now graven in history.<br />
Admiral Keyes’s challenge first emboldened<br />
Chamberlain's critics, Leo Amery’s stirring demand <strong>for</strong> the<br />
PM’s resignation unleashed a torrent of emotion. The reaction<br />
of the Tory back benches encouraged Labour to call <strong>for</strong><br />
a vote of confidence. Chamberlain’s disastrous response so<br />
angered Lloyd George that he decided to speak—a moment<br />
of high drama which built emotions to fever pitch. The<br />
chaotic division saw Chamberlain’s 200+ majority shrink to<br />
81 because of defections by his supporters. Although a technical<br />
victory, this embarrassment <strong>for</strong>ced Chamberlain either<br />
to <strong>for</strong>m a coalition with Labour or resign.<br />
During two days of back room intrigue on May 9th<br />
and 10th, as Hitler began his long-planned blitzkrieg in the<br />
west, Labour refused to serve under Chamberlain; then<br />
Lord Halifax, the Tory favorite to succeed him, declined the<br />
job. Pressured by the urgency of the situation, Chamberlain<br />
resigned and the King, reluctantly, sent <strong>for</strong> the only choice<br />
available—the Pariah, <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> became Prime Minister at a time when he<br />
could not have carried a vote, even among his own party.<br />
The complex chain of events played out over four days,<br />
involving many individuals. True, there were “troublesome<br />
young men” on the Tory back benches—Boothby,<br />
Macmillan, Eden and the like. True, the Labour Party was a<br />
decisive influence. True, Chamberlain, Halifax, Hitler and<br />
others played their roles. But without the <strong>Old</strong> <strong>Men</strong>, it<br />
wouldn’t have happened as it did.<br />
How much we owe these brave old men: two poor<br />
speakers and one great one, but past his prime. They struck<br />
the sparks that lit the tinder—and changed history. ,<br />
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A G E A N D L E A D E R S H I P<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> on Clemenceau:<br />
His Best Student? • Part I<br />
France’s “Tiger” at 76 was more than a decade older than <strong>Churchill</strong> when he reached the<br />
pinnacle; but <strong>Churchill</strong> was 77 when he reached the pinnacle the second time. There is little<br />
doubt that <strong>Churchill</strong> patterned his leadership after that of the great Frenchman he admired.<br />
P A U L A L K O N<br />
OLD MEN AT THE FRONT: Sharing a taste <strong>for</strong> battle and on-scene action, <strong>Churchill</strong> and Clemenceau delighted in visiting the front lines. Left: The<br />
Tiger (in mufti) with his generals and a Breguet biplane, 1917. Right: Brooke, Montgomery and <strong>Churchill</strong> with U.S. Ninth Army commander General<br />
William H. Simpson during a visit to Monty’s Twenty-first Army Group at Hitler’s Siegfried Line (West Wall), inside Germany, in March 1945.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was an ardent though not uncritical<br />
Francophile. At the heart of his admiration <strong>for</strong><br />
France was Georges Clemenceau—as a friend and,<br />
more importantly, as a hero and teacher extraordinaire of<br />
how to conduct politics in war and peace. That <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
was the best of all Clemenceau’s students is more than I am<br />
able to argue. But it is beyond question that <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
Clemenceau’s most important Anglo-Saxon pupil. 1<br />
Their affinities were apparent to <strong>Churchill</strong> very soon<br />
after they met during World War I, and are even more<br />
apparent as we look back at their lives now. Both were prolific<br />
writers. Both were effective speakers. Both were<br />
interested in painting—<strong>Churchill</strong> as a gifted amateur artist,<br />
Clemenceau as a connoisseur and champion of Claude<br />
Monet. Both were fearless men of high principles willing to<br />
speak up <strong>for</strong> them even at great political cost. Both were<br />
skillful politicians persistently involved in trying to shape<br />
events <strong>for</strong> the better. Both had remarkably long careers in<br />
public life, marked by intervals in high office and intervals<br />
in the political wilderness when history seemed to be<br />
passing them by. Both were elderly men—Clemenceau 76<br />
years old, <strong>Churchill</strong> 65—when finally called to the summit<br />
of power as prime minister in order to avert defeat by the<br />
Germans. Both rejected calls <strong>for</strong> a negotiated settlement and<br />
insisted that nothing less than victory was acceptable.<br />
Their previous experiences served them well. After<br />
qualifying as a doctor of medicine, Clemenceau in 1865<br />
went to the United States, where he was a teacher and also a<br />
journalist reporting on the aftermath of America’s Civil War<br />
<strong>for</strong> a French newspaper be<strong>for</strong>e returning home. He entered<br />
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Dr. Alkon, a <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Academic Adviser, is Leo S. Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature at the University of<br />
Southern Cali<strong>for</strong>nia. He has published books on Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and science fiction, along with <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Imagination (2006). He won the Somervell Award <strong>for</strong> his Lawrence of Arabia features appearing in Finest Hour 119 in 2003.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/16
politics as Mayor of Montmartre in 1870 during the chaos<br />
following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. His<br />
political career spanned the tumultuous years from that<br />
period to his retirement in 1920, acclaimed by then as le<br />
père la victoire, the father of victory—the man who had<br />
made victory possible <strong>for</strong> France in 1918.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of<br />
Cavalry upon graduation from Sandhurst in 1895, fought<br />
in several of Britain’s “little wars” from then until he<br />
entered Parliament in 1900, primarily earned his keep as<br />
war correspondent, biographer, historian and essayist, and at<br />
last became Prime Minister on 10 May 1940 to preside over<br />
the perilous time that he soon defined as the British<br />
Empire’s finest hour.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s first lengthy encounter with Clemenceau<br />
was on 30 March 1918, as the allied front line was<br />
bending be<strong>for</strong>e the German offensive that had<br />
started the previous week. Lloyd George had dispatched<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to learn what he could about French dispositions<br />
and intentions. Clemenceau—although nicknamed “The<br />
Tiger” <strong>for</strong> his political ferocity—readily agreed not only to<br />
provide in<strong>for</strong>mation but to take <strong>Churchill</strong> along on a tour<br />
of front-line headquarters to find out at first hand. The next<br />
day, in a letter dated 31 March, <strong>Churchill</strong> described to his<br />
wife the tour and his vivid impressions of Clemenceau:<br />
Yesterday was vy interesting, <strong>for</strong> I saw with Clemenceau all<br />
the commanders—Haig, Foch, Pétain, Weygand, Rawlinson<br />
etc; & heard from each the position explained. The old man<br />
is vy gracious to me & talks in the most confidential way. He<br />
is younger even than I am! and insisted on being taken into<br />
the outskirts of the action wh was proceeding N of Moreuil.<br />
Seely’s Brigade had just stormed the wood above the village<br />
& were being attacked by the Huns there. Stragglers,<br />
wounded horses, blood & explosives gave a grim picture of<br />
war. I finally persuaded the old tiger to come away from what<br />
he called “un moment délicieux.”<br />
We dined with Pétain in his sumptuous train and I was much<br />
entertained by Clemenceau. He is an extraordinary character,<br />
every word he says—particularly general observations on life<br />
& morals is worth listening to. His spirit & energy<br />
indomitable. 15 hours yesterday over rough roads at high<br />
speed in motor cars. I was tired out—& he is 76!<br />
He makes rather the same impression on me as Fisher: but<br />
much more efficient, & just as ready to turn round & bite! I<br />
shall be vy wary. 2<br />
After the war <strong>Churchill</strong> set down at greater length his<br />
memories of that encounter, in an essay whose final version<br />
was titled “A Day with Clemenceau” and published in 1932<br />
in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s collection Thoughts and Adventures.<br />
This account opens “early in the morning” of 28<br />
March 1918 as <strong>Churchill</strong>, summoned by Lloyd George,<br />
finds “him in bed, a grey figure amid a litter of reports and<br />
telegrams” that give no clear picture of the alarming new<br />
battle in France. 3<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> tells of their dialogue, of his journey to and<br />
across France to Paris in dreary rain, of “the terrible tide of<br />
German advance,” of the desperate scraping together of<br />
every available man to meet it, and at British General<br />
Headquarters where he stopped en route—“how oddly the<br />
calm, almost somnolence, of this supreme nerve-centre of<br />
the Army contrasted with the gigantic struggle shattering<br />
and thundering on a fifty-thousand yard front fifty or sixty<br />
miles away” where “one of the largest and most bloody and<br />
critical battles in the history of the world” was taking place<br />
(T&A, 166). The scene is thus set with a prelude explaining<br />
the high stakes <strong>for</strong> all concerned as Germany seems on the<br />
brink of victory. <strong>Churchill</strong> next tells how, at the appointed<br />
hour of 8 am on the morning of March 30th, at the French<br />
Ministry of War, he found waiting “five military motor-cars,<br />
all decorated with the small satin tricolours of the highest<br />
authority.” He continues:<br />
Monsieur Clemenceau, punctual to the second, descended<br />
the broad staircase of the Ministry, accompanied by his personal<br />
General and two or three other superior officers. He<br />
greeted me most cordially in his fluent English.<br />
“I am delighted, my dear Mr. Wilson (sic) <strong>Churchill</strong>, that<br />
you have come. We shall show you everything. We shall go<br />
together everywhere and see everything <strong>for</strong> ourselves. We<br />
shall see Foch. We shall see Debeney. We shall see the corps<br />
Commanders, and we will also go and see the Illustrious<br />
Haig, and Rawlinson as well. Whatever is known, whatever I<br />
learn, you shall know.” (T&A, 168)<br />
Here <strong>Churchill</strong> deftly characterizes Clemenceau’s willingness<br />
to cooperate fully with his British ally, and also his<br />
jovial affability, made even more endearing by the comic<br />
touch of his mistake about <strong>Churchill</strong>’s first name—which,<br />
later on, he got right. <strong>Churchill</strong> added this detail about the<br />
name to the essay’s final version <strong>for</strong> Thoughts and<br />
Adventures, apparently recollecting it only as he revised the<br />
last draft. Also made clear by the picture of Clemenceau’s<br />
grand entrance toward cars displaying emblems of “the<br />
highest authority” is his easy but firm command of the situation<br />
and his sang-froid at what was in fact one of the >><br />
______________________________________________________<br />
1. Citations to CHAR with various reference numbers refer to<br />
documents, often untitled, in the Chartwell Papers, <strong>Churchill</strong> Archives<br />
Centre, Cambridge University. For prompt, courteous, and efficient help<br />
at the Archives I am grateful to Katharine Thomson. For enlightenment<br />
on matters of French language and culture I’m much indebted to my<br />
USC colleague Danielle Mihram. My footnotes are <strong>for</strong> FWK III.<br />
2. Mary Soames, ed., Speaking <strong>for</strong> Themselves: The Personal<br />
Letters of <strong>Winston</strong> and Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong> (London: Doubleday,<br />
1998), 206. Abbreviations in the passage are <strong>Churchill</strong>’s.<br />
3. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, “A Day with Clemenceau,” Thoughts<br />
and Adventures (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1932), 165.<br />
Subsequent citations to this work are documented parenthetically in my<br />
text with the abbreviation T&A. The text of “A Day with Clemenceau”<br />
is available from the editor by email.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/17
“Very well,” said Clemenceau...our men shall come at once and help you. And now,”<br />
he said, “I claim my reward.” “What is that, sir?” asked Rawlinson.<br />
“I wish to pass the river and see the battle.” The Army commander shook his head.<br />
“It would not be right <strong>for</strong> you to go across the river,” he said. “Why not?” “Well, we<br />
are not at all sure of the situation beyond the river. It is extremely uncertain.”<br />
“Good,” cried Clemenceau. “We will re-establish it. After coming all this way and<br />
sending you two divisions, I shall not go back without crossing the river. You come<br />
with me, Mr. <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> (this time he got it right); and you Loucheur. A<br />
few shells will do the General good,” pointing gaily to his military Chef de Cabinet.<br />
So we all got into our cars again and set off towards the river and the cannonade.”<br />
—WSC, Thoughts and Adventures<br />
CHURCHILL ON CLEMENCEAU...<br />
war’s most desperate moments no less <strong>for</strong> him than <strong>for</strong><br />
France and England.<br />
The rest of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s essay amplifies this portrait of<br />
a lovable happy warrior, raising morale by radiating courage,<br />
confidence, and good cheer while also making command<br />
decisions at the highest level. <strong>Churchill</strong> provides no account<br />
of those “general observations on life and morals” that had<br />
so impressed him on that day according to his letter to<br />
Clementine. Instead <strong>Churchill</strong> dwells on what might be<br />
called the less philosophical side of a man who was indeed<br />
often inclined to general observations about life and morals,<br />
as witness among other works Clemenceau’s La Mélée<br />
Sociale (The Social Struggle) and his two-volume philosophical<br />
and scientific testament, Au Soir de la Pensée (To<br />
the Evening of Thought). Rather than such fare, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
shows what are in effect a series of verbal snapshots of<br />
Clemenceau in action that day.<br />
At British Fourth Army Headquarters “about twelve<br />
miles south of Amiens,” General Rawlinson “received<br />
Clemenceau with the sincere respect and evident affection<br />
which the personality of the ‘Tiger,’ above all his fellowcountrymen,<br />
always extorted from the leading soldiers of<br />
the British Army” (T&A, 171-72). When General<br />
Rawlinson sets out a “substantial” lunch <strong>for</strong> his guests,<br />
“Clemenceau would not have this until his contribution of<br />
chicken and sandwiches of the most superior type had been<br />
produced from the last of his cars” (T&A, 172).<br />
Here is Clemenceau as generous, well-prepared<br />
gourmet and bon vivant basking in British affection as well<br />
as respect. Here too (characteristically) is <strong>Churchill</strong> as connoisseur<br />
of good dining.<br />
After lunch the most important conference of the<br />
day—and a very important one <strong>for</strong> the war—takes place off<br />
stage, as Clemenceau retires to a room alone with the commander<br />
of all the British armies, Sir Douglas Haig, who has<br />
just arrived. Neither <strong>Churchill</strong> nor we at second hand are<br />
privy to what was said in that room where, as the essay<br />
earlier makes clear, the British would try to obtain desperately<br />
needed French rein<strong>for</strong>cements. We know from other<br />
sources that many French generals were reluctant to make<br />
such arrangements. <strong>Churchill</strong> reports only the results and<br />
aftermath: “Very soon Clemenceau returned with Sir<br />
Douglas Haig. Evidently all had gone well. The Tiger was in<br />
the greatest good humour. Sir Douglas, with all his reserve,<br />
seemed contented” (T&A, 173).<br />
Then, in Boswellian mode, <strong>Churchill</strong> recreates a dialogue<br />
between Clemenceau and General Rawlinson,<br />
omitting anything said by General Haig, who vanishes from<br />
the scene without further notice.<br />
“Very well,” said Clemenceau in English to the company,<br />
“then it is all right. I have done what you wish. Never mind<br />
what has been arranged be<strong>for</strong>e. If your men are tired and we<br />
have fresh men near at hand, our men shall come at once and<br />
help you. And now,” he said, “I claim my reward.” “What is<br />
that, sir?” asked Rawlinson. “I wish to pass the river and see<br />
the battle.” The Army commander shook his head. “It would<br />
not be right <strong>for</strong> you to go across the river,” he said. “Why<br />
not?” “Well, we are not at all sure of the situation beyond the<br />
river. It is extremely uncertain.”<br />
“Good,” cried Clemenceau. “We will re-establish it. After<br />
coming all this way and sending you two divisions, I shall not<br />
go back without crossing the river. You come with me, Mr.<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> (this time he got it right); and you<br />
FINESTHOUR150/18
Loucheur. A few shells will do the General good,” pointing<br />
gaily to his military Chef de Cabinet. So we all got into our<br />
cars again and set off towards the river and the cannonade.<br />
(T&A, 173-74)<br />
Here, as in other episodes of this day, <strong>Churchill</strong> shows<br />
Clemenceau wearing a public face of assurance and insouciance,<br />
whatever might have been his worries about severe<br />
military setbacks at the front and political battles behind the<br />
lines that were in fact hardly less menacing to victory than<br />
the German assault. In this essay <strong>Churchill</strong> says nothing<br />
about Clemenceau’s dire political problems with defeatists,<br />
pacifists, and strikes in crucial armaments industries,<br />
although implying by silence on these topics that<br />
Clemenceau had any such difficulties well in hand.<br />
Clemenceau’s courage and grace under pressure are<br />
also highlighted when <strong>Churchill</strong> quotes two of his remarks<br />
made in French when they had passed into the zone of<br />
artillery fire and arrived within a few hundred yards of the<br />
battle line. After “a shell burst among a group of led horses<br />
at no great distance,” scattering them and wounding some,<br />
Clemenceau—who had among other things once been a<br />
teacher of equitation—adroitly stops one of the injured<br />
animals:<br />
The poor animal was streaming with blood. The Tiger, aged<br />
seventy-four [actually 76], advanced towards it and with<br />
great quickness seized its bridle, bringing it to a standstill.<br />
The blood accumulated in a pool upon the road. The French<br />
General expostulated with him, and he turned reluctantly<br />
toward his car. As he did so, he gave me a sidelong glance and<br />
observed in an undertone, “Quel moment délicieux!” (“How<br />
delicious,” T&A, 176)<br />
As they all head afterwards to General Pétain’s headquarters,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, alone <strong>for</strong> a moment with Clemenceau,<br />
says: “‘This sort of excursion is all right <strong>for</strong> a single day: but<br />
you ought not to go under fire too often.” He replied “C’est<br />
mon grand plaisir ’” (“It is my great pleasure,” T&A, 177).<br />
In another of the essay’s major episodes, <strong>Churchill</strong> shows<br />
Clemenceau <strong>for</strong> once during that day revealing deep<br />
emotions without any attempt at concealment. Here,<br />
rather than disguise what he feels, Clemenceau makes a<br />
point of displaying his feelings with dramatic flair and in a<br />
typical French way that even his British audience is compelled—<strong>for</strong><br />
once—to approve. This was in Beauvais at the<br />
headquarters of General Foch, where the inspection party<br />
was treated to one of his famous map demonstrations.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> recreates Foch’s demonstration at the map of each<br />
day’s German advance since March 21st to show that the<br />
attack is at last petering out:<br />
And then suddenly in a loud voice, “Stabilization! Sure, certain,<br />
soon. And afterwards. Ah, afterwards. That is my affair.” He<br />
stopped. Everyone was silent.<br />
Then Clemenceau, advancing, “Alors, Général, il faut que je<br />
vous embrasse.” (“So General, I must embrace you.”)<br />
They both clasped each other tightly without even their<br />
English companions being conscious of anything in the<br />
slightest degree incongruous or inappropriate. These two<br />
men had had fierce passages in the weeks immediately preceding<br />
these events. They had quarrelled be<strong>for</strong>e; they were<br />
destined to quarrel again. But, thank God, at that moment<br />
the two greatest Frenchmen of this awful age were supreme—<br />
and were friends. No more was said. We all trooped down the<br />
stairs, bundled into our cars, and roared and rattled off again<br />
to the north. (T&A, 171)<br />
Although in Thoughts and Adventures the encounter<br />
with Foch is followed by about seven pages recounting the<br />
other stops be<strong>for</strong>e returning to Paris, the dramatic embrace<br />
would have made an effective climax. 4<br />
“A Day with Clemenceau” certainly draws from that<br />
day as <strong>Churchill</strong> recounts important lessons in leadership<br />
that must have rein<strong>for</strong>ced, although they hardly created,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s own methods: Clemenceau courageously sees <strong>for</strong><br />
himself what is happening, inspires affection as well as<br />
respect, talks with his commanders, and displays both the<br />
authority and the will to make important military as well as<br />
other decisions.<br />
The most significant contrast in the essay, implicit<br />
rather than explicitly remarked but nevertheless unmistakable,<br />
is that between the “grey” figure of Lloyd George in<br />
bed “amid a litter of reports and telegrams” which so<br />
bewilder him that he sends a subordinate off to gather facts;<br />
and Georges Clemenceau, a prime minister who tours the<br />
front himself to talk with his generals, sees what is happening,<br />
and makes important decisions on the spot.<br />
Although <strong>Churchill</strong> also often read reports be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
getting out of bed in the morning, it was of course<br />
Clemenceau’s overall style of leadership, not that of Lloyd<br />
George, that was—far from coincidentally—<strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
method as prime minister. ,<br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
4. The essay did end with departure from Foch’s headquarters in<br />
its first published version, which occupies only one page in the August<br />
1926 issue of Cosmopolitan (vol. 81, no. 2, p. 25), where it is titled “The<br />
Tiger and the Bulldog.” The bulldog of this version is General Foch. The<br />
essay was next published as “The Bulldog and the Tiger: A Day with<br />
Clemenceau amid the Bursting Shrapnel of the French Battlefields,” in<br />
Nash’s Pall Mall (March 1927), pp. 28-29 and 84-88. Both versions have<br />
facing photographs of Foch and Clemenceau. The 1927 version has all<br />
the episodes of the final version <strong>for</strong> Thoughts and Adventures, differing<br />
in only minor verbal ways except that here Clemenceau gets <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
first name right every time. After the essay’s 1932 publication in<br />
Thoughts and Adventures, its most noteworthy later appearance, substantially<br />
unchanged, was in the 14 January 1940 issue of the Sunday<br />
Dispatch as “My 17 Fateful Hours with Clemenceau.” Surely this revival<br />
was part of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s long campaign to keep himself—and his potential<br />
virtues as a prime minister—in the public eye.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/19
A G E A N D L E A D E R S H I P<br />
The Reluctant Retiree<br />
Did <strong>Churchill</strong> Stay Too Long?<br />
T E R R Y R E A R D O N<br />
“He then began to speak quite feelingly to me about<br />
himself at the present time, saying, ‘I have no<br />
ambition beyond getting us through this mess.<br />
There is nothing that anyone could give me or that I could<br />
wish <strong>for</strong>. They cannot take away what I have done.’ That as<br />
soon as the war was over, he would get out of public life.” 1<br />
So wrote Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in his diary <strong>for</strong> 23 August 1941. Yet when the<br />
war was won in 1945, the 70-year-old <strong>Churchill</strong> stayed in<br />
public life, against the wishes of his wife Clementine and<br />
many of his closest colleagues, hoping to “win the peace.”<br />
The landslide victory of the Labour Party in the 1945<br />
election elicited the oft-quoted comment from Clementine<br />
that “It may well be a blessing in disguise,” and <strong>Winston</strong>’s<br />
rejoinder, “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.”<br />
2<br />
In spite of the blow, <strong>Churchill</strong> retained his sense of<br />
humour. “When an acquaintance suggested that he should<br />
tour England so that the thousands of his own countrymen<br />
who had never seen him could have a chance to honour<br />
him he growled: ‘I refuse to be exhibited like a prize bull<br />
whose chief attraction is its past prowess.’” 3<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was as frank about the election as his<br />
reasons <strong>for</strong> staying on after it. Addressing the Conservative<br />
Central Council on 28 November 1945 he thanked them<br />
<strong>for</strong> welcoming “one who has led you through one of the<br />
greatest political defeats in the history of the Tory Party.”<br />
Then he added that staying on was—“not from any motives<br />
of personal ambition—<strong>for</strong> what could I possibly want?—<br />
but only because of the strong convictions which I hold<br />
about the future of our country, and my desire to serve you<br />
as long as you may think me of any use, or I feel that I have<br />
anything worthy of your acceptance to give.” 4<br />
Even <strong>Churchill</strong> had his doubts about that. A few<br />
weeks later he wrote to the Duke of Windsor in reflective<br />
mood: “…I increasingly wonder whether the game is worth<br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Reardon, of ICS Canada, is a FH contributor whose recent articles<br />
were “<strong>Churchill</strong> and de Gaulle (FH 138) and “Mice That Roared: The<br />
Thirty-Minute Invasion of St. Pierre and Miquelon” (FH 136). His<br />
“<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> and Mackenzie King,” in FH 130, Spring 2006, won<br />
the Somervell Award <strong>for</strong> the best article of of 2005-06.<br />
CUMMINGS IN THE DAILY EXPRESS, 4 MARCH 1953: “What! Eden<br />
and Butler away, and still someone trying on my shoes!” <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
returned from a Jamaica holiday to renewed anxieties <strong>for</strong> his health,<br />
and suggestions he retire. The portrait is of Gladstone, who was still<br />
Prime Minister, and still vigorous, at 84 (not 82 as in the label).<br />
the candle. It is only from a sense of duty and of not leaving<br />
my friends when they are in the lurch, that I continue to<br />
persevere.” 5 <strong>Churchill</strong> would not of course confess that his<br />
ego was involved, although it was, as it would be <strong>for</strong> any<br />
major leader who had gone through what he had.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> remained a dominant figure abroad. In<br />
November 1945 he spoke in Paris, and then Brussels. where<br />
he received a tremendous reception. The British<br />
Ambassador, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, later recalled<br />
that “people stretched out their hands to touch him....<br />
remarks in the street included one from an old lady who<br />
had placed her camp-stool at a street corner—‘Now I have<br />
seen Mr <strong>Churchill</strong>, I can die’....people broke through the<br />
police-cordon....one girl threw her arms round his neck and<br />
kissed him fervently.” 6<br />
In October 1945 <strong>Churchill</strong> received an invitation<br />
from President Truman to speak in Truman’s home state of<br />
Missouri, at Westminster College. His resultant “Iron<br />
Curtain” speech in March 1946, warning of Russia’s territorial<br />
ambitions, resulted in fierce criticism by the American<br />
media and also in Britain, where ninety-three Labour MPs,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/20
LOW IN THE EVENING STANDARD, 31 JULY 1945: “Two <strong>Churchill</strong>s,”<br />
by the pro-Labour New Zealander David Low, reminds us of the<br />
grudging respect Low held <strong>for</strong> the old Tory he had supported through his<br />
cartoons during the war; <strong>Churchill</strong> equally thought well of Low, while<br />
describing him amusingly as a “green-eyed young Antipodean radical.”<br />
including future Prime Minister James Callaghan, tabled a<br />
motion of censure against <strong>Churchill</strong>. It was not long be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
those short-sighted politicians had to eat their words. 7<br />
Would <strong>Churchill</strong> have had the same impact if he had<br />
chosen to retire? Possibly so: Roosevelt was dead, Stalin was<br />
proving to be expansionist in eastern Europe; <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
reputation as the man who had stood up to Hitler and<br />
given hope to the world was still intact.<br />
As at Fulton, <strong>Churchill</strong> was trying desperately to<br />
ensure that the mistakes of the 1920s and 1930s were not<br />
repeated. On 19 September 1946, at Zurich University, he<br />
spoke of the need <strong>for</strong> a United Europe: “The first step in<br />
the recreation of the European family must be a partnership<br />
between France and Germany. In this way only can France<br />
recover the moral leadership of Europe. There can be no<br />
revival of Europe without a spiritually great Germany.” 8<br />
Even with the benefit of hindsight, which shows<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to have been right again—and considering that<br />
France had been invaded by Germany in 1870, 1914 and<br />
1940—this was an astonishing statement. In announcing<br />
the Marshall Plan of aid to Europe on 12 June 1947, U.S.<br />
Secretary of State George Marshall said <strong>Churchill</strong>’s call <strong>for</strong> a<br />
United Europe had influenced his belief that the European<br />
States could work out their own economic recovery with<br />
financial help from the United States. 9<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s world stature conflicted with his leading<br />
the Opposition, according to Rab Butler, future Chancellor<br />
of the Exchequer and potential prime minister: “The constructive<br />
part of his mind always dwelt more naturally on<br />
the international scene than on bread-and-butter politics.” 10<br />
But Harold Macmillan, who did become PM, added: “Any<br />
attempt to remove a man whom the whole nation knew to<br />
be the greatest Englishman of this or perhaps of any time<br />
would have been deeply resented by the country….<br />
Moreover, it would certainly have failed. Anyone who knew<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> intimately must have realized that he was a man<br />
impossible to frighten and equally difficult to dislodge.” 11<br />
In April 1949 <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote to his old friend, the<br />
financier and adviser to presidents Bernard Baruch, that he<br />
would not continue in politics “but <strong>for</strong> the fact that I feel it<br />
my duty to help the sane and constructive <strong>for</strong>ces in Britain<br />
to restore our position in the world.” 12 Even his first stroke,<br />
on 24 August 1949, while visiting Beaverbrook on the<br />
French Riviera (reported to the press as a “chill”), did not<br />
alter his determination.<br />
In the General Election of 23 February 1950 the<br />
Labour Party lost seventy-eight seats, the Conservatives<br />
gained eighty-five, and the Labour’s overall majority was<br />
reduced to six. Inevitably they went to the nation again on<br />
25 October 1951, and this time the Conservatives won with<br />
an overall majority of twenty, returning <strong>Churchill</strong> to<br />
Downing Street a month shy of his 77th birthday. Two days<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e the election <strong>Churchill</strong> told an audience in Plymouth<br />
that he would strive to make “an important contribution to<br />
the prevention of a third world war, and to bringing the<br />
peace that every land fervently desired….It is the last prize I<br />
seek to win” 13<br />
Mrs. <strong>Churchill</strong> was of mixed mind, as stated by their<br />
daughter, Mary Soames: Clementine “must have felt—<strong>for</strong><br />
his sake alone—some sense of satisfaction after the bitter<br />
defeat of six years be<strong>for</strong>e; but of elation she felt none.<br />
Nothing that had happened had changed the conviction she<br />
held in 1945, namely, that <strong>Winston</strong> should have retired at<br />
the end of the war.” 14<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s wartime private secretary, John Colville,<br />
now re-hired, wrote that WSC told him he intended to >><br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
1. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Diaries, 23 August 1941<br />
(Library and Archives Canada) http://xrl.us/be9rwt.<br />
2. Martin Gilbert, <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, vol. 8, “Never Despair”<br />
1945-1965 (Toronto: Stoddart, 1988), 108.<br />
3. Virginia Cowles, <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>: The Era and the Man<br />
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953), 356.<br />
4. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, The Sinews of Peace (London: Cassell,<br />
1948), 45.<br />
5. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 174.<br />
6. Ibid., 170.<br />
7. Ibid.. 208.<br />
8. <strong>Churchill</strong>, Sinews of Peace, 201.<br />
9. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 337.<br />
10. Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamish<br />
Hamilton, 1971), 133.<br />
11. Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune (London: Macmillan.<br />
1969), 287.<br />
12. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 471.<br />
13. Martin Gilbert, <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life (London: Heinemann,<br />
1991), 897.<br />
14. Mary Soames, Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong> (Boston: Houghton<br />
Mifflin, 1979), 566.<br />
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THE RELUCTANT RETIREE...<br />
remain Prime Minister <strong>for</strong> just one year. He just wanted to<br />
“re-establish the intimate relationship with the United<br />
States, which had been a keynote of his policy in the war,<br />
and to restore at home the liberties which had been eroded<br />
by wartime restrictions and postwar socialist measures.” 15<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> broadcast to the nation on 22 December on<br />
the dire economy, and measures being taken to improve it.<br />
Internationally, he said, “we shall stand up with all our<br />
strength in defence of the free world against Communist<br />
tyranny and aggression….It may be that this land will have<br />
the honour of helping civilization climb the hill amid the<br />
toils of peace as we once did in the terrors of war.” 16<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> spoke in Ottawa and Washington in early<br />
1952, showing he had lost none of his ability to tailor an<br />
address to obtain the desired reaction from his audience.<br />
His oratory was also put to good effect when he returned to<br />
London and spoke in the House of Commons on the death<br />
of King George VI.<br />
As recounted by the socialite MP “Chips” Channon,<br />
a staunch Chamberlain supporter be<strong>for</strong>e World War II,<br />
“<strong>Winston</strong> spoke, and I thought he was sublime, so simple<br />
and eloquent with his Macaulay phrases pouring out. The<br />
attentive House was electrified.” 17<br />
On 21 February 1952 <strong>Churchill</strong> suffered a small arterial<br />
spasm; his doctor said, “You’ll have to pull out or<br />
arrange things so the strain is less.” Just five days later<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had to respond to an opposition Vote of Censure,<br />
accusing him of wanting to make war on China in order to<br />
hasten the end of the Korean War. In a powerful response,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> pointed out that his stance was exactly the same<br />
as Labour had agreed to when they had been in power. As<br />
Nigel Nicholson wrote: “There was pandemonium....<br />
[Labour Leader Clement Attlee] was sitting hunched up like<br />
an elf just out of its chrysalis, and stared at <strong>Winston</strong>,<br />
turning slowly white....<strong>Winston</strong> sat back beaming.....We<br />
had won.” 18<br />
After speaking with John Colville and Lord Salisbury,<br />
Moran put his comments on the arterial spasm to <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
in a letter on 12 March, again insisting that he had to<br />
reduce his workload. The next day Clementine telephoned<br />
Moran: “He was not angry when he got your letter; he just<br />
swept it aside….I’m glad you wrote. It may do good.” 19<br />
But <strong>Churchill</strong> was 77, and could not fight time<br />
<strong>for</strong>ever. On May 16th Colville wrote: “the P.M. is low...his<br />
concentration less good...age is beginning to show...tonight<br />
he spoke of coalition. He would retire in order to make it<br />
possible.” Two weeks later he added: “<strong>Winston</strong> is, I fear,<br />
personally blamed in the country and by his own party in<br />
the House. Mrs. <strong>Churchill</strong> does not think he will last long<br />
as Prime Minister.” Then in mid-June: “The Prime Minister<br />
is depressed and bewildered. He said to me this evening,<br />
‘The Zest is diminished.’” 20 But <strong>Churchill</strong> remained as<br />
driven as ever. On New Year’s Day 1953 Colville recorded<br />
GABRIEL IN THE DAILY WORKER, 27 APRIL 1953: “Now, now, Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>, remember the motto of the Knights of the Garter, ‘Evil to those<br />
who evil think’!” The communist paper wondered if <strong>Churchill</strong>’s new<br />
knighthood would <strong>for</strong>ce his resignation—and was disappointed again.<br />
ILLINGWORTH IN PUNCH, 3 FEBRUARY 1954: “Man goeth <strong>for</strong>th unto<br />
his work and to his labour until the evening." Perhaps the most vicious<br />
of all the pro-retirement cartoons—by an artist who had hereto<strong>for</strong>e<br />
admired <strong>Churchill</strong>—appeared in Punch during the editorial tenure of<br />
Malcolm Muggeridge, a persistent critic (see quote, page 27). <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
was staggered by this unfair and insulting drawing, showing him listless<br />
at his desk, his face registering the unmistakable effects of the partial<br />
paralysis he had suffered the preceding summer. (See “The Cartoon<br />
That Shocked the PM” by Tim Benson, Finest Hour 113.)<br />
FINESTHOUR150/22
WSC’s prophetic statement: “He said that if I lived a<br />
normal span I should assuredly see eastern Europe free of<br />
Communism.” 21<br />
In April 1953 pressure on <strong>Churchill</strong> to step down<br />
eased when Eden was operated on <strong>for</strong> gallstones. Serious<br />
complications occurred, and eventually Eden went <strong>for</strong> an<br />
operation in Boston which, while successful, required a<br />
lengthy recuperation.<br />
Eden did not return to his duties until September<br />
1953 and in the intervening period <strong>Churchill</strong> assumed<br />
Foreign Office duties. Then, without warning, on 23 June<br />
1953, <strong>Churchill</strong> suffered a stroke. When a press release was<br />
eventually made, it was to the effect that the Prime Minister<br />
needed a complete rest.<br />
“He had not enjoyed his convalescence,” Roy Jenkins<br />
wrote. “He did not welcome old age, and he knew that the<br />
best way to stave off the effects was to postpone the time<br />
when power had gone <strong>for</strong> the last time….Outweighing all<br />
these other considerations, however, was his conviction that<br />
the world was in danger of nuclear destruction, and his<br />
mounting belief that his last service might be to save it from<br />
such a fate as could no one else.” 22<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s remarkable powers of recovery again saved<br />
him. Though he had previously proposed to retire when<br />
Eden was fit, he now decided that if he could make a successful<br />
address at the Conservative Party Conference on 10<br />
October 1953, he would stay on. The fifty-minute speech,<br />
Macmillan said, “was really magnificent.” 23<br />
A week later <strong>Churchill</strong> was thrilled to be told that he<br />
had been awarded the Nobel Prize, but when he was<br />
in<strong>for</strong>med that it was <strong>for</strong> Literature, not Peace, his pleasure<br />
was diminished. In December he kept a date <strong>for</strong> talks with<br />
Eisenhower and the French Prime Minister at Bermuda,<br />
which had been postponed by his stroke.<br />
Stalin had died on 5 March and at Bermuda <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
spoke of opening relations with his successors. But “Ike<br />
followed with a short, very violent statement, in the<br />
coarsest terms. He said that as regards the P.M.’s belief that<br />
there was a new look in Soviet policy, Russia was a woman<br />
of the streets and whether her dress was new, or just the old<br />
one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath.” 24<br />
In spite of the rebuff from Eisenhower, <strong>Churchill</strong> continued<br />
his quest <strong>for</strong> peace. A four-power <strong>for</strong>eign ministers’<br />
meeting (USA, USSR, France, Britain) was held in Berlin in<br />
February 1954, and while no specific agreement was signed,<br />
there was progress over the occupation of Austria. In the<br />
subsequent House of Commons debate on 25 February,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said: “Patience and perseverance must never be<br />
grudged when the peace of the world is at stake. Even if we<br />
have to go through a decade of cold war bickering....that<br />
would be preferable to the catalogue of unspeakable and<br />
unimaginable horrors, which is the alternative.” 25<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> still would not commit to a firm date to<br />
step down. Rab Butler wrote that his “affectionate admiration<br />
<strong>for</strong> Anthony Eden was beyond doubt, but equally so<br />
was the disservice he did his successor by making him wait<br />
too long. This did not suit Anthony any more than it suited<br />
King Edward VII. The latter took it out in life and licence,<br />
the <strong>for</strong>mer in controlled impatience.” 26<br />
It is interesting that Eden, in his autobiography covering<br />
this period, Full Circle, does not once mention his<br />
frustration at <strong>Churchill</strong>’s repeated broken promises to<br />
resign. Since the book was published in 1960, with<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> still alive, Eden may have felt the need <strong>for</strong> discretion.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was still adamant <strong>for</strong> staying on: “Now it’s a<br />
case of a world crisis,” the Prime Minister in<strong>for</strong>med Moran<br />
on 10 June 1954. “I could not leave the Government in an<br />
emergency such as this. It is not that I want to hang on to<br />
the office <strong>for</strong> a few weeks more. But I have a gift to make to<br />
the country: a duty to per<strong>for</strong>m. It would be cowardly to run<br />
away from such a situation.” 27<br />
Pressure to resign nevertheless mounted, and there<br />
were testy exchanges with Eden. On 9 January 1955 Harold<br />
Macmillan told Moran: “<strong>Winston</strong> ought to resign...since I<br />
became Minister of Defence I have found that he can no<br />
longer handle these complicated matters properly. He can’t<br />
do the job of Prime Minister as it ought to be done.”<br />
Moran conveyed this to <strong>Churchill</strong>: “When he looked<br />
up his eyes were full of tears….Harold’s intervention had<br />
left a bruise. The P.M. had come to depend on him and<br />
counted on his support....And now he had gone over to the<br />
other camp.” 28<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> finally decided to resign on 7 April 1955;<br />
however in March he mistakenly construed that a letter<br />
from Eisenhower gave hope <strong>for</strong> a summit and thus he said<br />
he would put back his resignation again. But when he was<br />
persuaded that his optimism was misplaced, he went back<br />
to the original timetable.<br />
Three days be<strong>for</strong>e he stepped down after entertaining<br />
the Queen and Prince Philip at Number Ten, John Colville<br />
found <strong>Churchill</strong> on the edge of his bed: “…suddenly he<br />
stared at me and said with vehemence: ‘I don’t believe >><br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
15. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries<br />
1940-1955 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1985), 632-33.<br />
16. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, Stemming the Tide (Boston: Houghton<br />
Mifflin), 213.<br />
17. Sir Henry Channon, Chips: The Diaries of Sir Henry<br />
Channon (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), 464.<br />
18. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 705.<br />
19. Lord Moran, <strong>Churchill</strong>: Taken from the Diaries of Lord<br />
Moran (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 407-08.<br />
20. Colville, 647, 649, 651.<br />
21. Ibid., 658.<br />
22. Roy Jenkins, <strong>Churchill</strong> (New York: Plume, 2002), 868.<br />
23. Macmillan, 526.<br />
24. Colville, 683<br />
25. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 955.<br />
26. Butler, 165.<br />
27. Moran, 590.<br />
28. Ibid., 666-67.<br />
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THE RELUCTANT RETIREE...<br />
that Anthony can do it.’” 29 Was this another prophetic<br />
statement, or just the frustration of someone who hated to<br />
give up?<br />
Ironically, three months after <strong>Churchill</strong> resigned, a<br />
summit was held in Geneva, Eisenhower writing to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> that “his courage and wisdom would be<br />
missed.” 30 The official reason <strong>for</strong> Eisenhower’s change was<br />
that the Russians had signed the Austrian State Treaty on 15<br />
May, ending Austria’s occupation, a prior condition <strong>for</strong> a<br />
summit. But some historians concluded that Eisenhower<br />
feared <strong>Churchill</strong> would “give the store away.” Certainly<br />
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles took that view. In<br />
February 1953, discouraging <strong>Churchill</strong>’s intended visit to<br />
Washington, Dulles said the U.S. public “thought <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
could cast a spell on all American statesmen.” 31<br />
Harold Macmillan concluded: “There are some critics<br />
who declare that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s last decade in politics was a<br />
failure, and added little to his reputation....In some respects<br />
they were as fruitful as any in his life. There was the Fulton<br />
speech in 1946, which led to the aligning of the Western<br />
and democratic countries against the advancing menace of<br />
Russian aggression. There was the foundation of the<br />
European Movement which has led to the recovery of<br />
Europe....No Minister out of office has ever had such an<br />
effect on <strong>for</strong>eign policy. [And] his conduct of the Opposition<br />
gave new life and impetus to the Conservative Party.” 32<br />
Had <strong>Churchill</strong> won the 1945 election, would he have<br />
been more conciliatory with Stalin at Fulton? And even if<br />
still unsuccessful with Stalin, would he have handed over to<br />
Eden in 1950? There is no doubt that Stalin retained some<br />
respect <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> after Fulton, as illustrated by an<br />
exchange recounted by Stalin’s biographer: Nine months<br />
after Fulton, “<strong>Churchill</strong> sent Stalin a greetings telegram on<br />
21 December 1946—‘All personal good wishes on your<br />
birthday, my war-time comrade’ to which Stalin returned<br />
his ‘warm thanks.’” 33<br />
A slightly more conciliatory Fulton speech might have<br />
left Stalin ready to continue the wartime dialogue; but with<br />
the Soviets in control of Eastern Europe, <strong>Churchill</strong> had no<br />
cards to play, and anything he gained would have been<br />
minor. It was not in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s nature to have stepped<br />
down in 1950, with Stalin still alive and no hope <strong>for</strong> a settlement<br />
leading to world peace, his overriding goal. If<br />
reelected in 1950, I think he would have stayed on.<br />
When he did return to power in 1951, his original<br />
intention to remain <strong>for</strong> just a year was generally accepted,<br />
since that would give Anthony Eden the reins in timely<br />
fashion <strong>for</strong> the next election. Eden’s health was a substantial<br />
reason <strong>for</strong> delay, but by 1954, with no hope <strong>for</strong> American<br />
participation in a summit, there was no legitimate reason<br />
<strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> to stay.<br />
Eden’s span as Premier was short: from 6 April 1955<br />
until he resigned <strong>for</strong> health reasons on 18 January 1957.<br />
CUMMINGS IN THE DAILY EXPRESS, 29 JANUARY 1954: “Why don’t<br />
you make way <strong>for</strong> someone who can make a bigger impression on the<br />
political scene?” This cartoon probably spoke <strong>for</strong> most people.<br />
Certainly Eden’s decision to embark on the disastrous Suez<br />
Canal seizure without prior agreement with the United<br />
States was a major error, with the humiliation of having<br />
Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth, brokering<br />
a peace solution. The true humiliation, however, was<br />
that the U.S. government told Britain that the pound sterling<br />
would come under attack if Britain failed to back<br />
off—and even <strong>Churchill</strong> might have found good reason to<br />
stop in that case.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was depressed by Suez and what it meant<br />
<strong>for</strong> the Anglo-American relationship. Colville wrote: “…he<br />
thought the whole operation the most ill-conceived and illexecuted<br />
imaginable.” When Colville asked if he would<br />
have acted as Eden had over Suez, WSC replied, “I would<br />
never have dared; and if I had dared, I would certainly<br />
never have dared stop.” 34 On the other hand, it is difficult<br />
to imagine <strong>Churchill</strong> not engaging in close conversations<br />
with the Americans be<strong>for</strong>e engaging at Suez.<br />
Although it is clear that <strong>Churchill</strong> was in his final<br />
years as Premier, perhaps the real question is: was a fifty<br />
percent <strong>Churchill</strong> better than a hundred percent Eden? ,<br />
________________________________________________________<br />
29. Colville, 708.<br />
30. Gilbert, “Never Despair,” 1151.<br />
31 Colville, 661.<br />
32. Macmillan, 558.<br />
33. H. Montgomery Hyde, Stalin: The History of a Dictator<br />
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1972), 554.<br />
34. Colville, 721.<br />
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A G E A N D L E A D E R S H I P<br />
Holding Fast: <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Longevity<br />
There is much to be learned from his tenacious spirit, well into old age.<br />
Yet, as in so many other areas, <strong>Churchill</strong> was one of a kind.<br />
J O H N H. M A T H E R M. D.<br />
Speaking of the imperiled British race in World War II,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said, “We have not journeyed all this way<br />
across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains,<br />
across the prairies, because we are made of sugar<br />
candy.” That famous line typifies our abiding image of the<br />
leader who galvanized free peoples with his famous maxims:<br />
never stop, never weary, never give in. He summoned the<br />
call to hold fast and never to despair. But we give little<br />
thought to where he found his strength and energy.<br />
Was <strong>Churchill</strong> immune from the frailties that accompany<br />
advancing age? He was not. Yet, he did seem to<br />
possess innate physical, mental and spiritual strengths which<br />
he was able to call upon at will. His physical resilience and<br />
mental hardiness did not desert him until his eighties.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s first quarter century had been marked by<br />
numerous illnesses and accidents, some of them close calls,<br />
none enough to incapacitate him: pneumonia, a concussion,<br />
appendicitis, a near-fatal encounter with a car, a dislocated<br />
shoulder. But the period following his first premiership was<br />
the most significant, medically as well as politically. The<br />
physical and mental stress of World War II, causing several<br />
<strong>for</strong>ced rests from illness, mark important transition periods.<br />
The War Years (Age 65 to 70)<br />
At the request of the Cabinet, Dr. Charles Wilson<br />
(Lord Moran from 1943), devoted himself to looking after<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s health. Highly dedicated, Moran was willing to<br />
do whatever he could to maintain and restore his patient.<br />
At an age when most men are happily retired,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> seemed to be not only indomitable but indefatigable.<br />
He had enthusiastically assumed the greatest job of<br />
his life. He maintained a tremendous work schedule with<br />
verve, relish, and zest which might have exhausted a man of<br />
his age, and indeed wore out some younger colleagues.<br />
During the war he may have suffered a heart attack, and<br />
had several bouts of pneumonia which in earlier days would<br />
surely have disabled or killed him.<br />
With America in the war after Pearl Harbor, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
________________________________________________________<br />
Dr. Mather, a past governor of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre, has spent over two<br />
decades researching Sir <strong>Winston</strong>’s medical history. This article is adapted<br />
and updated from his paper in <strong>Churchill</strong> Proceedings 1996-97.<br />
felt the need to consult urgently with Roosevelt, and arrived<br />
in Washington shortly be<strong>for</strong>e Christmas 1941. On<br />
December 27th Moran, at his hotel, was summoned to his<br />
patient at the White House. <strong>Churchill</strong> explained that he<br />
had experienced some shortness of breath with a dull pain<br />
over the left side of his chest and down his left arm, but<br />
that it had passed. Moran examined his patient, finding<br />
little amiss, but was convinced that <strong>Churchill</strong> had experienced<br />
either a heart attack or coronary insufficiency<br />
(angina). The doctor then made what may have been the<br />
most important decision of his professional career.<br />
Charles Wilson was acutely aware of the political and<br />
military arguments against doing what was clinically<br />
orthodox: hospitalizing his patient, confirming his diagnosis<br />
with an electrocardiogram, and calling in a heart specialist.<br />
Impossible! Yet, should <strong>Churchill</strong> have a second and<br />
perhaps fatal coronary attack he might be held responsible.<br />
But Wilson opted to refrain from conventional<br />
therapy. He simply warned his famous patient to slow<br />
down, to do no more than was absolutely necessary. Such<br />
were <strong>Churchill</strong>’s recuperative powers that he survived this<br />
apparent first warning signal that his circulatory system was<br />
beginning to fail. Later <strong>Churchill</strong> was seen in London by a<br />
cardiologist, Sir John Parkinson, who determined that the<br />
PM had possibly had a brief episode of angina, and proposed<br />
no special treatment.<br />
An alternative and reasonable medical conclusion is<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s pain was no more than a muscle spasm, or<br />
a strain of the bony and cartilaginous chest wall. This is<br />
suggested by the lack of adverse effects—<strong>Churchill</strong> soon<br />
resumed his very fast pace, with effective speeches in<br />
Washington and Ottawa. It is usual <strong>for</strong> someone who experiences<br />
an episode of angina to have additional attacks when<br />
he resumes stressful activity. <strong>Churchill</strong> did not, and had no<br />
such attack in later life.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s next medical episodes were not so private.<br />
In North Africa in February 1943 he had a mild pneumonia<br />
associated with a cold, which he was able to shrug<br />
off quickly. Later that year <strong>Churchill</strong> flew from London to<br />
North Africa to meet Roosevelt and their military advisers.<br />
In mid-December 1943 at Tunis, he developed a fever.<br />
Wilson, now Lord Moran, suspecting trouble, sent <strong>for</strong> >><br />
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CHURCHILL’S LONGEVITY...<br />
nurses, a pathologist and x-ray equipment. Pneumonia was<br />
diagnosed and treatment was promptly started. One of the<br />
sulfa drugs (May and Baker or “M&B”)<br />
was administered. It took a little more than<br />
a week <strong>for</strong> the inflammation of his lungs to<br />
begin subsiding. However, there were<br />
several episodes of cardiac fibrillation,<br />
which sometimes accompanies pneumonia.<br />
To combat this and strengthen the heart<br />
action, Moran briefly administered digitalis.<br />
This illness seriously debilitated <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
Because of his public location and the<br />
need to bring in medical assistance, news of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s indisposition could not be suppressed;<br />
press bulletins were issued and the<br />
nervous Cabinet reassured. But the combination<br />
of sulfa drugs, his own resilience,<br />
and excellent medical and nursing care<br />
enabled <strong>Churchill</strong> to weather the storm.<br />
Fortunately, major decisions on battle plans<br />
were already well advanced and his illness<br />
had no effect on the war’s progress.<br />
Late in August 1944, a tired <strong>Churchill</strong> returned from<br />
conferences and inspections in Italy running a high temperature.<br />
A case of pneumonia was again diagnosed, though<br />
described as a “mild one” by Moran. <strong>Churchill</strong> was confined<br />
to bed <strong>for</strong> a few days, received newly developed penicillin,<br />
and continued to work, preparing <strong>for</strong> another trip to<br />
Washington and to Quebec <strong>for</strong> the second conference there.<br />
Be<strong>for</strong>e Quebec in September, 1944, American<br />
Ambassador to Britain Gilbert Winant in<strong>for</strong>med Roosevelt<br />
adviser Harry Hopkins that <strong>Churchill</strong> had been ill again.<br />
His temperature had returned to normal, Winant noted,<br />
CHARLES WILSON, LORD MORAN<br />
1882-1977:<br />
CHURCHILL’S DOCTOR<br />
but each journey had taken its toll, and the frequency of<br />
illness had increased.<br />
The effects of alcohol and drugs on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s mental<br />
capacity remain a matter <strong>for</strong> debate. The<br />
image of him as a heavy drinker persists,<br />
thanks in part to his frequently expressed<br />
taste <strong>for</strong> whisky, wine, champagne and<br />
brandy. During World War II his physician<br />
provided him with various medications<br />
such as “reds” (barbiturate capsules) <strong>for</strong><br />
insomnia, which were also used <strong>for</strong> his<br />
afternoon naps. Several visiting military<br />
officers told of <strong>Churchill</strong>, awakened early<br />
into a nap, being wobbly and apparently<br />
the worse <strong>for</strong> alcohol. More likely, what<br />
they observed were the continuing effects<br />
of barbiturates.<br />
Despite his reputation <strong>for</strong> indefatigability,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was noticeably beginning<br />
to fail. After each recovery from his three<br />
wartime pneumonias, he pursued a grueling<br />
schedule with few periods of relaxation,<br />
apart from his regular afternoon naps. He used sleeping pills<br />
frequently, and seemed to have increasing difficulty remembering<br />
that he was using them.<br />
During periods of tension <strong>Churchill</strong> often had transitory<br />
elevations of temperature, but these seldom lasted more<br />
than a day. Awakening in the morning, he always took his<br />
own temperature, indicating his preoccupation with his<br />
health, a mild <strong>for</strong>m of hypochondria. One morning he<br />
called Moran after reading his temperature at 106 degrees.<br />
Moran said to double check the reading because if it were<br />
accurate he should be dead, and asked if the PM was<br />
speaking from the grave. The reading proved to be 96!<br />
The Lion in Winter: Encounters with <strong>Churchill</strong> 1946-1962<br />
D A N A C O O K<br />
Mr. Cook (danacook@istar.ca) has published collections of<br />
literary, political and show business encounters widely, including<br />
his first installment <strong>for</strong> Finest Hour in issue 147.<br />
London, 1946: Reluctant Owl<br />
[A friend] asked me to luncheon with his mother….After<br />
hasty introductions, we went downstairs to the dining room,<br />
where I found myself sitting next to Lady <strong>Churchill</strong>. Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
was at the far end of the table, looking silent and grumpy, not<br />
unlike, I thought, a great old owl who had been dragged, much<br />
against his will, out into the bright sunlight. [Luncheon guests]<br />
alternately filled Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s glass in an attempt, I concluded,<br />
to induce artificial respiration with champagne. The old man<br />
remained hunched over and hardly said a word, although a<br />
plump pink hand would reach out <strong>for</strong> the glass at fairly regular<br />
intervals and bring it to his lips to be drained.<br />
—Joseph Alsop, Journalist, “I’ve Seen the Best of It”:<br />
Memoirs, with Adam Platt (New York: Norton, 1992)<br />
New York, 1949: “Prop Him Up”<br />
He came to the <strong>Time</strong>s <strong>for</strong> dinner and reflected on Yalta,<br />
Stalin, Roosevelt, and the atom bomb.…He looked considerably<br />
more rounded <strong>for</strong>e and aft than when I had seen him about a<br />
year and a half earlier. There was a curious sort of grayness to<br />
his flesh, which gave me a start when he entered the eleventhfloor<br />
dining room. I saw him take a quick look at the scowling<br />
photograph of Mussolini in the gallery of big shots on the wall,<br />
but he made no comment. He asked <strong>for</strong> a glass of tomato juice,<br />
which I thought was newsworthy, but corrected this impression<br />
when the brandy was passed around, and he complained that<br />
FINESTHOUR150/26
Defying the Odds (Age 70 to 80)<br />
After <strong>Churchill</strong> left office in July 1945, Moran did his<br />
best to make his patient take a prolonged rest. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
enjoyed a holiday in Italy, painting on the shores of Lake<br />
Como. Though shocked by Labour’s election victory, he<br />
avoided depression through his devotion to painting and<br />
the family that surrounded him.<br />
His physician had good reason <strong>for</strong> believing <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
was exhausted, even unable at times to concentrate. WSC,<br />
he wrote, was little interested in politics, and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
himself speculated on whether his energy would ever return.<br />
On 5 September 1945, <strong>Churchill</strong> summoned Moran<br />
to look at a swelling in his groin which proved to be a<br />
“rupture.” When he was a schoolboy a surgeon had warned<br />
him about the possibility of a hernia. A truss proved only a<br />
temporary palliative. His surgeon Sir Thomas Dunhill<br />
insisted that operating was necessary, but a reluctant<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> put it off until 11 June 1947.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s susceptibility to pneumonia, coupled with<br />
Moran’s observation of hardening blood vessels in the<br />
retinal arteries and a “sluggish” circulation, made the<br />
surgery risky, so the operation was not without difficulties.<br />
Normally a 20-minute procedure, it took two hours because<br />
of a large mass of adhesions in the abdominal cavity, the<br />
aftermath of a 1922 appendectomy. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s convalescence<br />
was prolonged. He had begun to write his massive<br />
memoirs of World War II, but he did not work at it continuously.<br />
When Britain’s weather began to turn cold,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> went south to the more balmy climate of<br />
Marrakesh, Morocco.<br />
On 24 August 1949, Moran was called from London<br />
to Lord Beaverbrook’s villa in Monte Carlo where a holidaying<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> needed him. Playing cards at 2 am, he had<br />
noticed a cramp in his right leg and right arm, still present<br />
when Moran arrived the next morning. <strong>Churchill</strong> also<br />
seemed to have some difficulty in writing, but no slurring<br />
of speech was noted. As his physician proceeded with his<br />
examination, <strong>Churchill</strong> asked if he had a stroke. Moran<br />
replied that most think of a stroke as a burst artery but that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had only had a small blockage of a small artery—<br />
the beginning of his doctor’s downplaying of WSC’s<br />
circulation problems. In fact it was a small stroke, involving<br />
structure of the left side of the brain but no major artery,<br />
since speech was not affected. (See “<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Dagger,” by<br />
Beaverbrook colleague Michael Wardell, FH 87, Summer<br />
1995, http://xrl.us/bfakav.)<br />
Systematic cover-ups followed after this first in a series<br />
of strokes which ultimately ended <strong>Churchill</strong>’s life. Despite<br />
apparent recovery, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s blood vessels had become<br />
“old” and later strokes progressed to the severely debilitating<br />
syndrome known as multi-infarct “vascular” dementia.<br />
In early 1950, just five months later, <strong>Churchill</strong> had a<br />
sensation of hazy vision and experienced difficulty reading:<br />
a transient episode, but consistent with poor circulation in<br />
the blood vessels that reach the posterior brain. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
later complained of stiffness in his shoulders and neck,<br />
which suggests a partial or total occlusion of these vessels. If<br />
there is truth to the old canard that a man is “as old as his<br />
arteries,” then <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> was an “old man” as he<br />
began to write his wartime memoirs.<br />
Victory in the General Election of 26 October 1951<br />
meant no respite <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, who was again Prime<br />
Minister with an apparent new lease on life. Yet on 21<br />
February 1952, he told Moran he was having difficulty<br />
remembering words he wanted to express. This aphasia was<br />
transitory but is evidence of a more generalized insufficiency<br />
of the blood supplying a large area of the lateral portion of<br />
the left brain. These episodes were not true strokes but >><br />
everybody kept him talking so much that he didn’t have time to<br />
drink. I thought the old man snorted and lisped more than usual,<br />
but this may have been induced by sobriety.…As he left at a<br />
few minutes past eleven, a little shuffly and a little bent, Dr.<br />
Howard Rush, the <strong>Time</strong>s’s favorite doctor, remarked, “Jesus,<br />
prop him up.” I thought his political days were over....<br />
—James Reston, Journalist, Deadline: A Memoir (New<br />
York: Random House, 1991)<br />
Chartwell, 1950: <strong>Old</strong> Sea Lion<br />
I happened to be briefly in the chair at The Daily<br />
Telegraph, then serialising his War Memoirs, and it was in connection<br />
with some dispute arising over his excessive proof<br />
corrections that he had required my presence. His physical condition<br />
was....flabby and puffy, and, in some indefinable way,<br />
vaguely obscene. Like an inebriated old sea lion, barking and<br />
thrashing about in shallow water. He was wearing his famous<br />
siren suit, with a zip-fastener up the front; various of his collaborators<br />
were there, familiarly sycophantic, as is the way with<br />
such people, especially the service ones. At four o'clock, in lieu<br />
of tea, a tray of highballs was brought in, and as others followed<br />
my senses began to swim. I cannot recall that the subject of the<br />
proof corrections was ever broached, except perhaps very<br />
casually. At one point <strong>Churchill</strong> took me out into the garden and<br />
showed me his goldfish and water works.<br />
—Malcolm Muggeridge, Journalist, Chronicles of Wasted<br />
<strong>Time</strong>, vol. 1, The Green Stick (London: Collins, 1972)<br />
Chartwell, 1950: Champagne Revival<br />
Randolph called me at my hotel and invited me to lunch at<br />
Chartwell the next day. I naturally supposed that there would be<br />
a large number of interesting and important people at the<br />
luncheon, and that I could per<strong>for</strong>m the function of a fly on the<br />
wall. Instead, the lunch party consisted of the old man,<br />
Randolph and myself, and at first it was a most uncom<strong>for</strong>table<br />
affair. Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong> was dressed in a siren suit and looked like<br />
an angry old baby. He responded to my shy greetings with an<br />
angry harrumphing noise. I think Randolph had sprung me on<br />
him at the last moment, and that I was not at all a welcome<br />
addition. [But] the effect of the champagne on Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong> >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/27
CHURCHILL’S LONGEVITY...<br />
transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) where the circulation is<br />
briefly reduced and then returns.<br />
In January 1953, just be<strong>for</strong>e the inauguration of<br />
Eisenhower as U.S. President, <strong>Churchill</strong> crossed the Atlantic<br />
to see his old comrade in arms. Another meeting was<br />
planned <strong>for</strong> the summer in Bermuda, but it did not materialize.<br />
On 23 June, following a London dinner <strong>for</strong> the Prime<br />
Minister of Italy, he had difficulty rising from his chair and<br />
some thought he had had a bit too much alcohol. Moran<br />
was called, but by the time he arrived, <strong>Churchill</strong> was at<br />
home in bed. He carefully examined his patient, who had<br />
slurred speech and an unsteady gait. It was <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
second major stroke.<br />
By now the Prime Minister had become increasingly<br />
dependent on drugs. Typically, he named his tablets:<br />
“majors, minors, reds, greens,” and “Lord Morans.” He<br />
sometimes took these medications, especially sedatives and<br />
tranquilizers, with alcohol, which, being a central nervous<br />
system depressant, can accentuate their effects, producing<br />
lapses of memory and confusion.<br />
Though beset with various levels of insomnia,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had previously fought off depression by intense<br />
exercises such as hunting, polo and swimming, and through<br />
writing, bricklaying and painting. His creative impulses<br />
probably gave him an extended political life. His desire <strong>for</strong><br />
bright and sunny climes—highly suggestive of a variety of<br />
depression known as Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD<br />
Syndrome—increased in his later years, when he spent long<br />
months in the South of France. Some of these trips were<br />
taken on very short notice, when London was dreary and<br />
damp. But in later years it was much harder <strong>for</strong> him to<br />
escape his depressive predisposition, owing to the onset of<br />
an impaired blood supply to his brain.<br />
His driving desire still to make a contribution <strong>for</strong>ced<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to demonstrate a public image of vigor and<br />
robust health. His verbal skills had been honed over a lifetime<br />
of oratory. Meticulous preparation, bolstered by<br />
medical stimulants, allowed him to demonstrate a vitality at<br />
Cabinet meetings and Conservative Party conferences, such<br />
as Margate in October 1953. While cerebral arteriosclerosis<br />
was probably the principal cause of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s progressive<br />
dementia, even the modest use of alcohol and drugs ironically<br />
hastened his decline and magnified his problems with<br />
memory and recall.<br />
“Nothing in the End” (Age 80 to 90)<br />
Convinced finally that his long-desired hope <strong>for</strong> a summit<br />
and “settlement” with the Russians could not happen<br />
during his tenure, <strong>Churchill</strong> retired as Prime Minister in<br />
April 1955, but continued to work on his final multivolume<br />
work, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples,<br />
and to seek the sun in the South of France. In April 1958,<br />
he had an episode of dizziness and fell. He developed pneumonia<br />
and pleurisy, and took several weeks to recover.<br />
In May 1959 he made his penultimate trip to the<br />
United States, spending much of the time with Eisenhower,<br />
who lamented, “You should have seen him in his prime.”<br />
He fell asleep on the flight home. Awakening as the aircraft<br />
landed, he noticed a throbbing pain in his right little finger.<br />
Moran referred him to Professor Charles Rob, a cardiovascular<br />
surgeon at St. Mary’s Hospital and Medical School.<br />
Somehow, <strong>Churchill</strong> had crushed the blood supply to the<br />
finger, possibly from a ring acting as a tourniquet, and eventually<br />
he lost its tip to dry gangrene. Here was further<br />
evidence of the fragility of his vascular system and the generally<br />
advanced state of his arteriosclerotic arteries. Shortly<br />
afterward, he stopped painting.<br />
He continued his trips to the South of France and on<br />
28 June 1962 at a hotel close to Lord Beaverbrook’s Monte<br />
was like that of the morning sun on an opening flower. He<br />
began to talk, through the champagne, and then through port<br />
and a small bottle of a special cognac, which he consumed<br />
alone, since the champagne and the port were almost too much<br />
<strong>for</strong> me. He was talking, I suppose, <strong>for</strong> his own amusement—I<br />
was a thirty-six-year-old American journalist, of whom he had<br />
probably never heard, and there was no good reason to waste<br />
such talk on me. For the talk was good, very good, wise and<br />
witty and malicious by turns.<br />
—Stewart Alsop, Journalist, Stay of Execution: A Sort of<br />
Memoir (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973)<br />
London, 1951: Looking <strong>for</strong> the Loo<br />
The first time we realized that he was honouring us was at<br />
a great per<strong>for</strong>mance of Caesar and Cleopatra. In the interval, I<br />
was hovering about in my dressing-room, wondering what the<br />
great man was thinking of us, when my door opened and that<br />
immortal head with the wonderful blue eyes came round it. I was<br />
too much taken aback to say anything, but he said at once, “Oh,<br />
I'm sorry, I was looking <strong>for</strong> a corner.” Realizing his need, I took<br />
him back through the outer office, and indicated to him exactly<br />
where to go and how to get himself down the stairs again, where<br />
there would be someone waiting <strong>for</strong> him to take him back<br />
through the pass-door and into his seat.…[At the following<br />
reception] we were introduced to the Prime Minister as we came<br />
into the gathering and, during the drinks with sandwiches be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
the <strong>for</strong>malities started, I took the liberty of seeking him out and<br />
imploring him <strong>for</strong> his help and would he have the generous<br />
patience, so very nervous and anxious as I was not to say the<br />
wrong thing, just to please glance through what I had planned to<br />
say, it wouldn't take him more than two minutes? He turned eyes<br />
so hooded they were almost shut away from me and said, “Oh, I<br />
would suggest a few impromptu words….”<br />
—Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor, Confessions of an Actor<br />
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982)<br />
**<strong>Churchill</strong>’s account of this meeting was made when he<br />
returned to his seat and his daughter Mary: “I was looking <strong>for</strong> a<br />
luloo, and who d’you think I ran into? Juloo.” —Ed.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/28
Carlo villa, he slipped on a rug<br />
and fell heavily on his right<br />
hip. The x-ray taken in his<br />
hotel room showed a broken<br />
upper femur. He was transferred<br />
to Monaco Hospital,<br />
where a large plaster cast was<br />
applied, extending from his<br />
chest down his right leg, which<br />
allowed him to be flown to<br />
England. He was admitted to<br />
the Middlesex Hospital where<br />
his right hip was pinned by<br />
Philip Newman, Britain’s<br />
leading orthopedic specialist <strong>for</strong><br />
this condition. He was discharged<br />
fifty-five days later<br />
after a prolonged recovery period, having given the medical<br />
and nursing staff a difficult time due to his intermittent<br />
confusion and irritability.<br />
This hip fracture is not uncommon in the elderly after<br />
a fall. But notably, <strong>Churchill</strong> survived the surgery, the anesthetic<br />
and the rehabilitation without any major problems<br />
such a thrombosis in his legs from poor circulation.<br />
Over the next two and a half years <strong>Churchill</strong> showed<br />
less and less interest in life, retiring as a Member of<br />
Parliament 28 July 1964 after a phenomenal political career<br />
that stretched back over sixty years. After another transient<br />
episode of impaired blood supply to the brain in December,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. He<br />
died on 24 January 1965.<br />
The Effects of Aging on Per<strong>for</strong>mance<br />
While the progression of dementia was probably<br />
faintly understood by <strong>Churchill</strong>, his behavior over these<br />
PAINTING AT MIAMI, 1946: With Clementine be<strong>for</strong>e the “Iron<br />
Curtain” speech in Fulton. One of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s keys to longevity was<br />
certainly the ability to relax and to clear his mind of worry.<br />
final years was entirely consistent<br />
with a continuing<br />
diminution of mental powers.<br />
His prescient “Sinews of Peace”<br />
speech, at Fulton in March<br />
1946, had galvanized him with<br />
the conviction that he could,<br />
through his own brand of personal<br />
diplomacy, achieve his<br />
final goal of world peace. Alas,<br />
he could not get Eisenhower—<br />
or, despite a few false hopes,<br />
the Russians—to the conference<br />
table, and the failure<br />
weighed deeply: “I have worked<br />
very hard and achieved a great<br />
deal,” he said to his private secretary,<br />
“only to achieve nothing in the end.”<br />
From the 1930s, unlike his earlier career, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
focus was heavily devoted to international affairs. In later<br />
life he had little time <strong>for</strong> difficult and intractable domestic<br />
and economic issues. His ability to concentrate <strong>for</strong> extended<br />
periods of time, to assimilate data and sift through critical<br />
background in<strong>for</strong>mation, was gradually lost. When his colleagues<br />
complained he sometimes regarded them as disloyal,<br />
and this led increasingly to episodes of melancholy and<br />
soul-searching.<br />
While much of his decline was hidden from the<br />
public, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s lowering interest in government led to<br />
pressure to resign. While some saw his continuing prestige<br />
as an advantage <strong>for</strong> the Tory Party, others wanted him<br />
“gracefully” to retire. When he resisted, they backed off but<br />
remained pessimistic. When it was thought that he was prepared<br />
to go in the spring of 1953, his heir-apparent,<br />
Anthony Eden, fell seriously ill. This emboldened >><br />
House of Commons, 1952: Mettle<br />
Ted Heath took me into the smoking-room....“Remember,<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> hates small talk.” I was already very alarmed by the<br />
<strong>for</strong>thcoming encounter, but now I panicked. What big talk could I<br />
possibly think up in the thirty seconds that remained? When we<br />
reached him, <strong>Churchill</strong> was reading the racing results....Heath<br />
introduced me: “This is Nicolson, sir. The new Member <strong>for</strong><br />
Bournemouth East.” He did not even look up. Heath then left us.<br />
I spoke my hastily prepared question: “Prime Minister, what do<br />
you consider the most important quality in a man?” At that he<br />
did look up and, over the rim of his spectacles and the rim of<br />
the newspaper, he spoke one word in reply: “Mettle.” He then<br />
resumed his study of how his horse had done.<br />
—Nigel Nicolson, Publisher and Politician, Long Life:<br />
Memoirs (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997)<br />
Downing Street, 1954: Drawing Power<br />
I was shown into a large, dimly lit Cabinet Room. Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> rose from his chair and shook my hand. I had not realized<br />
what a short man he was; I towered over him. He motioned<br />
with an unlit cigar <strong>for</strong> me to sit next to him. It would be just the<br />
two of us, apparently. I noticed that three London afternoon<br />
dailies were spread out on a table next to him. “Well, first,” he<br />
said, in the marvelous voice I had heard so many times on the<br />
radio and in the newsreels, “I want to congratulate you <strong>for</strong> these<br />
huge crowds you've been drawing.” “Oh, well, it's God's doing,<br />
believe me,” I said. “That may be,” he replied, squinting at me,<br />
“but I daresay that if I brought Marilyn Monroe over here, and<br />
she and I together went to Wembley, we couldn't fill it.”<br />
—Billy Graham, Evangelist, Just As I Am: The<br />
Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: HarperCollins, 1997)<br />
Nice, Mid-1950s: Cute, <strong>for</strong> a Legend<br />
I was strolling with Brigitte [Bardot] through one of the corridors<br />
of the Victorine studios when we saw the silhouette of a<br />
man walking toward us and treading heavily with the aid of a<br />
cane. At first I thought it was Orson Welles; but Welles was not<br />
that old, I remembered, changing my impression. When we >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/29
CHURCHILL’S LONGEVITY...<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> <strong>for</strong> new attempts at detente with Russia, but no<br />
sooner had he begun to pursue them than a major stroke<br />
saw his colleagues quietly assume many of his functions.<br />
(See Terry Reardon’s preceding article.)<br />
Throughout these years of frustration and decline,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s family and friends never wavered. His wife,<br />
always anxious <strong>for</strong> him and their family life, maintained a<br />
strong partnership and attempted, sometimes with spectacular<br />
lack of success, to ensure that he ate properly, rested<br />
well, and had convivial company.<br />
A representative conversation occurred at Chartwell<br />
when Sir John Anderson, WSC’s wartime Home Secretary<br />
and deviser of the Anderson Shelter, admitted to <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
that he had been “vegetating”—staying in bed late.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: “What time do you have breakfast, and do<br />
you get up?”<br />
Anderson: “Yes, I always get up to breakfast.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: “Are you shaved and booted?”<br />
Anderson: “Yes, I’m shaved and booted and ready to<br />
go out.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: “What do you eat <strong>for</strong> breakfast?”<br />
Anderson: “Twice a week I have bacon—the other<br />
days porridge.”<br />
Ava, Lady Anderson, widow of the late Ralph Wigram,<br />
the <strong>for</strong>eign office official who had helped <strong>Churchill</strong> learn of<br />
German rearmament: “Yes, porridge with salt.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: “Good God.”<br />
Ava: “What do you have <strong>for</strong> breakfast, <strong>Winston</strong>?”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: “An egg often—sometimes a fried sole—<br />
some cold chicken and cold ham with coffee. I always have<br />
it in bed—never with Clemmie. I tried that once or twice<br />
but no marriage could last if you breakfast together and it<br />
nearly wrecked mine—so never again.”<br />
Aside from a glimpse of the care his wife took of him,<br />
this is an example of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s continued humor and wit<br />
well into old age. The role of laughter and fun in his life<br />
went a long way towards his overall good health and<br />
longevity. There are many stories which show that he did<br />
not take himself too seriously, and often poked fun at<br />
himself, along with his friends and political enemies.<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> stands out among statesmen, yet<br />
despite his towering image, from a medical standpoint he<br />
was as human as any of us. Indeed if he had lived and died<br />
simply as a “mere mortal,” his medical problems would be<br />
of interest to no one except perhaps his doctor. At the<br />
sunset of his life he was medically impaired with vascular<br />
insufficiency; yet there can be little doubt about his essential<br />
physical resilience and mental hardiness. There is much to<br />
be learned—and emulated—from his tenacious spirit well<br />
into old age; yet, as in so many other areas, <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was one of a kind. ,<br />
got closer I recognized Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>....Brigitte was<br />
always herself, whether in the presence of her wardrobe woman<br />
or the world's great personalities. After the usual exchange of<br />
polite <strong>for</strong>malities there was silence. <strong>Churchill</strong>'s eyes sparkled as<br />
he looked at the young actress without speaking. He seemed to<br />
be wondering what platitude would come out of this sensual<br />
mouth made <strong>for</strong> love and the screen….”When I was eight years<br />
old and heard you on the radio, you frightened me,” said<br />
Brigitte. “But now you seem rather cute, considering you're a<br />
legend.” “Cute” was not a word people normally used to<br />
describe <strong>Churchill</strong> to his face! The great orator remained<br />
speechless.<br />
—Roger Vadim, Film Director, Bardot Deneuve Fonda: My<br />
Life with the Three Most Beautiful Women in the World (New<br />
York: Simon and Schuster, 1986)<br />
Marrakesh, 1959: Moments of His <strong>Old</strong> Self<br />
Coffee and brandy with <strong>Churchill</strong> on his last night in<br />
Marrakesh. We sat at his table in the corner of the Mamounia<br />
Hotel dining room….He looked older: his skin is no longer pink<br />
but whitish and blotchy. His eyes are watery and dim. His<br />
hearing is even worse (as usual he wouldn’t wear his hearing<br />
aid), and his voice is very faint. He is now really weak and can’t<br />
get up without massive ef<strong>for</strong>t, has to be half-supported when he<br />
walks upstairs. But he wasn’t “ga-ga” as so many people have<br />
said. I think he has difficulty, because of his hearing, in following<br />
things. So he seems to miss part of what’s going on, above all<br />
when he’s tired. But he has moments of his old self.<br />
—C. L. Sulzberger, Journalist. The Last of the Giants<br />
(New York: Macmillan, 1970)<br />
Monte Carlo, 1960: Dozing Off<br />
The outer door of the house opened to admit several<br />
manservants, bearing among them the recumbent <strong>for</strong>m of...Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>. It was a strange and uncomely way in which<br />
to see <strong>for</strong> the first time a human being of such renown and consideration....the<br />
prostrate figure came emphatically into being,<br />
gesticulating and muttering in a fashion most indicative of life,<br />
and within a few minutes was established in a dining-room chair<br />
and manifestly the man who had come to dinner….I saluted him<br />
with reverence. He was not, I think, aware of this; having been<br />
deposited in his chair the old gentleman was clearly content to<br />
let circumstances take their course, and by and by fell into a<br />
doze. He continued in a light sleep throughout the meal….After<br />
dinner somebody put a cigar into his mouth and lit it; it seemed<br />
a ritual gesture without dignity; the completion of an effigy.<br />
—James Cameron, Journalist, Points of Departure,<br />
(Northumberland: Oriel Press, 1967)<br />
London, 1962: Still Flashing the “V”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> fell and broke his thigh in Monte Carlo....The<br />
next day he was flown back to London and I was outside the<br />
hospital as they brought him out. I leaned close to the ambulance<br />
window to see his face and judge how ill he was. Two feet<br />
away from me, the old boy opened his eyes and smiled. He<br />
raised his hand to me in the famous “V” sign of the war years.<br />
Evidently history couldn’t claim him yet. But the incident debilitated<br />
him and, [in 1964] he reluctantly resigned from Parliament.<br />
—Robert MacNeil, Broadcast Journalist, The Right Place<br />
at the Right <strong>Time</strong> (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982) ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/30
R I D D L E S , M Y S T E R I E S , E N I G M A S<br />
Confronting Television in <strong>Old</strong> Age<br />
Q<br />
A year or so ago BBC Newsnight showed a very rare video of <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> preparing <strong>for</strong> a broadcast. He <strong>for</strong>got his lines and instead, with<br />
a twinkle in his eye, ad libbed a poem directly into the camera. I felt this short<br />
clip told more about the man than anything else I had seen. I believe the<br />
video was going into a collection somewhere. Do you know where this clip is<br />
held, and is it possible to get a copy? —KEITH BRAITHWAITE, ENGLAND<br />
ASince we know of no footage of<br />
WSC preparing <strong>for</strong> a radio broadcast,<br />
we think you are referring to the<br />
television screen test released by the<br />
BBC in November 1986. From Finest<br />
Hour 55, Spring 1987:<br />
LOST FOR WORDS, AT LAST<br />
Television viewers in Britain,<br />
America and the Commonwealth were<br />
variously amazed and amused to find<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> on television, in a 1955<br />
screen test released after thirty years by<br />
the BBC. The original was made by the<br />
mother of Humphrey Crum Ewing of<br />
Reading, a member of the TV Unit of<br />
the Conservative Central Office, who<br />
kept a copy.<br />
Mr. Crum Ewing said: “It was<br />
very hush-hush at the time, because he<br />
was considering how he was going to<br />
announce his retirement. It is well<br />
known that all his speeches were very<br />
well prepared….But there was no<br />
autocue on the cameras then and when<br />
it came to reading a poem about ducks<br />
in St. James’s Park he had his head<br />
down, looking at the script. He looked<br />
as if his eyes were shut. He was an old<br />
man then. The techniques he had<br />
learned were not suited to television.”<br />
Viewers [in 1987] were not<br />
shown the poem recitation, but they<br />
did see a nervous WSC ad libbing in a<br />
three-minute sequence. <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
have often said that Sir <strong>Winston</strong> would<br />
be quickly demolished by the modern<br />
media and their agencies. For many of<br />
us, this excerpt proved how easy the<br />
job would have been.<br />
If the excerpt you saw included<br />
the poetry reading, it must be a longer<br />
version of the one we reported. The<br />
best source to consult would be the<br />
BBC Archives.<br />
GREAT CONTEMPORARIES: The first<br />
edition (above) and 1938 Extended Edition,<br />
both very rare in dust jackets. The<br />
latter added four essays, including one on<br />
Roosevelt. (Putnam’s American edition,<br />
1937, never added the extra essays.)<br />
Photos by Mark Weber, <strong>Churchill</strong> Book<br />
Specialist, www.wscbooks.com.<br />
QI plan to buy a copy of Great<br />
Contemporaries, but remain<br />
undecided: is the revised edition with<br />
four new essays the best choice?<br />
—GILBERT MICHAUD, QUEBEC<br />
AIf you’re going to own only one<br />
copy, definitely get the revised<br />
edition, <strong>for</strong> the sake of completeness: it<br />
adds four essays, on Fisher, Parnell,<br />
Roosevelt and Baden-Powell. Among<br />
Send your questions to the editor<br />
first editions, both the 1937<br />
and 1938 volumes are rare<br />
and pricey in fine jacketed<br />
condition, though ordinary<br />
worn copies have remained<br />
reasonably priced. If the 1930s<br />
originals are beyond your means, look<br />
<strong>for</strong> the very inexpensive postwar editions<br />
by Odhams, which contain all the<br />
1938 essays. Avoid wartime editions by<br />
Macmillan or the Reprint Society,<br />
which eliminate Roosevelt, Trotsky and<br />
Savinkov out of political considerations<br />
<strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s wartime allies.<br />
Also, you need to watch <strong>for</strong> the<br />
new edition due from ISI Books, edited<br />
with a new <strong>for</strong>eword by James Muller,<br />
and important footnoting by Muller<br />
and Paul Courtenay. This edition will<br />
contain five further essays by WSC:<br />
H.G. Wells, Charlie Chaplin,<br />
Kitchener of Khartoum, King Edward<br />
VIII and Rudyard Kipling.<br />
A few notes on Great<br />
Contemporaries from Langworth, A<br />
Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> (1998, 2001):<br />
In Bargaining <strong>for</strong> Supremacy<br />
(1977), James R. Leutze accused<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> of being “oddly unaware of<br />
other people's reactions...not much<br />
interest in others.” That charge has<br />
stuck, and rare is the <strong>Churchill</strong> critic<br />
who fails to repeat it. The reader of<br />
Great Contemporaries will come away<br />
with the opposite impression. No one<br />
could have written such vivid essays on<br />
the great personages of his time<br />
without comprehension, understanding<br />
and, in some cases, regard.<br />
Take <strong>for</strong> example the Labour<br />
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip<br />
Snowden, with whom <strong>Churchill</strong> (the<br />
preceding Chancellor) hotly debated all<br />
the great issues of socialism vs. capitalism<br />
in the 1920s and 1930s. After a<br />
lengthy account of their antagonisms,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> adds: “...never have I had<br />
any feelings towards him which<br />
destroyed the impression that he was a<br />
generous, true-hearted man....the<br />
British Democracy should be proud of<br />
Philip Snowden.” A noble tribute—<br />
and typical of <strong>Churchill</strong>. ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/31
A G E A N D L E A D E R S H I P<br />
“Where Others Heard Taps,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Heard Reveille”<br />
Barbara Leaming offers brilliant insight into<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s last decade of active politics<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Defiant: Fighting On 1945-<br />
1955, by Barbara Leaming. London:<br />
Harper Press, 394 pages, £20/$26.99.<br />
Member price $21.60.<br />
“At my time of life I have no personal<br />
ambitions, no future to provide <strong>for</strong>. And<br />
I feel I can truthfully say that I only<br />
wish to do my duty by the whole mass<br />
of the nation and of the British Empire<br />
as long as I am thought to be of<br />
any use <strong>for</strong> that.”<br />
—<strong>Churchill</strong> in a London Broadcast,<br />
21 March 1943<br />
At first glance, Barbara Leaming’s<br />
book on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s last ten<br />
yyears of active politics is just<br />
“popular history”: under 400 pages, paraphrases<br />
instead of lengthy quotes, no<br />
footnotes (the back pages provide line<br />
references). There is none of the clinical,<br />
chronological approach of Sir Martin<br />
Gilbert, and little that challenges his<br />
findings.<br />
But Leaming adds a unique personal<br />
dimension that places her book<br />
well above the long array of potboilers—making<br />
it the most important<br />
survey of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s last active decade<br />
since Anthony Seldon’s <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Indian Summer thirty years ago. It will<br />
be particularly valuable to young people,<br />
or others new to <strong>Churchill</strong>, <strong>for</strong> its keen<br />
insight into his lifelong defiance of long<br />
odds and <strong>for</strong>midable adversaries.<br />
In describing his last political<br />
decade, Leaming takes the measure of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s earlier experience. For<br />
example, she spots something he wrote<br />
R I C H A R D M. L A N G W O R T H<br />
of uniquely gifted people in 1937: “One<br />
may say that sixty, perhaps seventy<br />
percent of all they have to give is<br />
expended on fights which have no other<br />
object but to get to their battlefield.”<br />
That, she observes, nicely<br />
describes “the arc of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s own<br />
political career. By the time he had realized<br />
his supreme ambition of becoming<br />
prime minister, in 1940, he had spent<br />
decades fighting to reach his particular<br />
battlefield. Again, after being hurled<br />
from power in 1945, <strong>Churchill</strong> dedicated<br />
an additional six years to fighting<br />
his way back” (135).<br />
Why did he fight on after 1945?<br />
In two words: world peace. It was, he<br />
said repeatedly, “the last prize I seek.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> considered himself<br />
uniquely gifted <strong>for</strong> what he called<br />
“parleys at the summit.” At Fulton, even<br />
as he warned of the Iron Curtain, he<br />
insisted that if only the heads of govern-<br />
ment could sit down together, the<br />
danger of Apocalypse could be eased.<br />
Repeatedly he risked rupturing the<br />
special relationship he valued above all<br />
others, challenging a reluctant<br />
Eisenhower to meet with him and the<br />
Russians. Most notable, Leaming writes,<br />
was his speech of 11 May 1953, which<br />
she regards an equal to his great war<br />
speeches. “Where others heard taps,” she<br />
concludes, “<strong>Churchill</strong> heard reveille.”<br />
Relying heavily on diaries and<br />
memoirs of the primary players (but circumspect<br />
about the non-medical views<br />
of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s doctor Lord Moran),<br />
Leaming constructs an intensely personal<br />
portrayal not only of <strong>Churchill</strong> but of<br />
colleagues and adversaries, led by Stalin<br />
and Eisenhower. And make no mistake,<br />
Eisenhower was an adversary. Rosy portraits<br />
of their relationship obfuscate<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s low view of Ike as President;<br />
he deemed him short on vision, stagnant<br />
in thinking. Above all, the President was<br />
subservient to his Secretary of State,<br />
John Foster Dulles, “whose breath stank<br />
and whose left eye twitched incessantly<br />
and disconcertingly”—whom President<br />
Eisenhower sent at regular intervals “to<br />
try to turn <strong>Churchill</strong> from his purpose.”<br />
The reader is at <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
shoulder from page 1, where, in Berlin<br />
in 1945, he descends the stairs to<br />
Hitler’s bunker, hesitates halfway down,<br />
climbs wearily back and—when a<br />
Russian soldier shows him where Hitler’s<br />
body was burned—turns away in revulsion.<br />
Or 1946, in Miami, “seated beside<br />
a bed of red poinsettias near the pink<br />
brick seaside house,” his tropical tan suit<br />
“snugly across his stomach,” pondering<br />
what he must tell the world at Fulton.<br />
We read parallel sketches of Stalin<br />
around the same time, holidaying on the<br />
Black Sea, ailing, exhausted, paranoid,<br />
suspicious of plots against him, torturing<br />
a <strong>for</strong>mer doctor he believes is a spy.<br />
Leaming’s insight is extraordinary.<br />
Why, <strong>for</strong> example, did Truman invite<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to Fulton, when the President<br />
was seeking to avoid confrontation with<br />
Moscow? “At a time when Truman had<br />
yet to emerge from Roosevelt’s shadow,”<br />
she suggests, “it might be difficult politically<br />
to depart from his predecessor’s<br />
Soviet policy. The Fulton speech, delivered<br />
by a private citizen who also<br />
happened to be a master of the spoken >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/32
Clementine Spencer<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> (1885-1977):<br />
“She would gladly<br />
exchange the<br />
splendours and miseries of<br />
a meteor’s train <strong>for</strong> the<br />
quieter more banal<br />
happiness of being married<br />
to an ordinary man.”<br />
Anthony Eden (1897-<br />
1977): “He worried about<br />
being displaced by Butler<br />
or Macmillan….He was<br />
notorious <strong>for</strong> bullying<br />
people who could be<br />
bullied and collapsing<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e those who couldn’t.”<br />
John Foster Dulles (1888-<br />
1959), “whose breath stank<br />
and whose left eye<br />
twitched incessantly and<br />
disconcertingly.”<br />
Eisenhower sent him at<br />
intervals to turn <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
from his purposes.<br />
Harold Macmillan (1894-<br />
1986): Ardent <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
to retire, he pressed others<br />
to deliver his message.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, well-in<strong>for</strong>med,<br />
said: “I should be glad if he<br />
would come and tell in his<br />
own words what he feels<br />
rather than tell my wife.”<br />
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil,<br />
Fifth Lord Salisbury, known<br />
as “Bobbety” (1893-1972):<br />
“Tall and gaunt with a long<br />
nose and protruding teeth,”<br />
an ugly man “whose great<br />
personal charm caused<br />
many women to find him<br />
immensely attractive.”<br />
Richard Austen “Rab”<br />
Butler (1902-1982): “He<br />
threw in his lot with a<br />
group of Labour members<br />
who, in the hope of saving<br />
their own hides should<br />
Attlee fall, aimed to bring<br />
down the Government <strong>for</strong> a<br />
coalition headed by Bevin.”<br />
Dwight D. Eisenhower<br />
(1890-1969): “At Bermuda,<br />
he compared Russia to a<br />
woman of the streets…<br />
whether her dress was<br />
new or just the old one<br />
patched she was still the<br />
same whore underneath.”<br />
Josef Stalin (1878-1953):<br />
Enraged at being told to<br />
retire lest he suffer a<br />
severe stroke, he<br />
destroyed his medical<br />
records, tortured a doctor<br />
he conceived was a spy,<br />
and vowed to avoid all<br />
doctors in the future.<br />
word, as well as a figure of exceptional<br />
appeal to Americans, would allow<br />
Truman, at no political cost to himself,<br />
to see if the public was ready to accept a<br />
change” (67).<br />
Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong> is closely<br />
appreciated. She yearned <strong>for</strong> <strong>Winston</strong> to<br />
retire. In their daughter Mary’s words,<br />
she would “gladly exchange the splendours<br />
and miseries of a meteor’s train<br />
<strong>for</strong> the quieter more banal happiness of<br />
being married to an ordinary man.” Yet<br />
she wished him go on his terms, sharply<br />
replying when outsiders urged her to<br />
intervene. Asked in mid-1954 if she<br />
wanted <strong>Winston</strong> to retire, she replied:<br />
“Yes I do indeed, but I don’t wish to be<br />
told that by Mr. Harold Macmillan.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Tory colleagues do not<br />
bear well under Leaming’s light. Nearly<br />
to a man, they hoped he would retire,<br />
each of them in profound self-interest.<br />
Salisbury wanted Eden, knowing he<br />
could not as easily control “Rab” Butler;<br />
Butler dangled a coalition be<strong>for</strong>e Labour<br />
as a way to supplant Eden as heir<br />
apparent. Macmillan first shunned the<br />
retirement cabal, hoping it would fail,<br />
paving his own way to the top, while<br />
urging Clementine and private secretary<br />
Jock Colville to tell <strong>Winston</strong> to go.<br />
Eden, ever the prevaricator, flopped this<br />
way and that over demanding <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
quit. No wonder the wheels nearly came<br />
off the Cabinet at several junctures—in<br />
ways that remind us of politics today.<br />
We may not have appreciated the<br />
degree of separation between <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
and Eden—and <strong>for</strong> how long. Michael<br />
Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin’s “Action This Day” last<br />
issue quoted <strong>Churchill</strong>’s 1936 remark<br />
when Eden became <strong>for</strong>eign secretary: “I<br />
think you will now see what a lightweight<br />
Eden is.” <strong>Churchill</strong> Defiant<br />
reminds us of what WSC said the night<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e his resignation as Prime Minister<br />
in April 1955: “I don’t believe Anthony<br />
can do it.” <strong>Churchill</strong>’s judgment was on<br />
the mark. Eden, who resigned soon after<br />
Eisenhower refused to back his march<br />
on Suez in 1956, “could be a prickly<br />
and peevish character,” but was diplomatic<br />
with <strong>Churchill</strong>, Leaming quotes<br />
the historian P.J. Grigg: Eden was notorious<br />
<strong>for</strong> “bullying people who could be<br />
bullied and collapsing be<strong>for</strong>e those who<br />
couldn’t” (137).<br />
The book leaves us with poignant<br />
and sorrowful realizations, national and<br />
personal. Nationally, Britain’s place in<br />
the world fell precipitously in the<br />
decade after the war. The “special relationship”<br />
proved more special to<br />
London than to Washington, and the<br />
disagreements over a summit were followed<br />
by a major rupture over Suez.<br />
On the personal level we witness<br />
the fall of a giant. Yet even in 1943,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had “no personal ambitions,<br />
no future to provide <strong>for</strong>.” He never gave<br />
in. He faced down colleagues who<br />
pressed him to resign with all his famed<br />
resolution. He gloried in battles won, as<br />
when turning somersaults in the sea <strong>for</strong><br />
actress Merle Oberon after a great<br />
speech in Strasbourg. He despaired<br />
when he hit stone walls, like Eisenhower<br />
at Bermuda, who, when asked about the<br />
next meeting, said: “I don’t know. Mine<br />
is with a whisky and soda.”<br />
“Never give in,” he’d told the boys<br />
at Harrow: “Never give in, except to convictions<br />
of honour and good sense….”<br />
Who can say if he was right or wrong<br />
about a summit with the Russians? It<br />
was never tried. When honour and good<br />
sense told him it was time, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
went—convinced that a summit was<br />
beyond his declining powers.<br />
Barbara Leaming offers no<br />
summary chapter, no list of the faults or<br />
mistakes of players in the drama. Unlike<br />
some authors, she does not suggest that<br />
her subjects individually changed<br />
history. But her opinions register<br />
throughout, and are nowhere more<br />
apparent than toward the end:<br />
“When <strong>Churchill</strong> refused to retire<br />
in 1945, his decision had flowed from<br />
everything that was essential to his character;<br />
so had his subsequent decisions to<br />
fight on. At the beginning of 1955, the<br />
decision that confronted <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
different, harder. This time, rather than<br />
ride the wave of his obstinacy, he had to<br />
overcome it. He had to crush his lifelong<br />
refusal to accept defeat. He had to<br />
conquer the primal survival instinct that<br />
had allowed him to spring back so many<br />
times be<strong>for</strong>e. This time, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
battle was not really with Salisbury,<br />
Eden, Eisenhower or any antagonist. It<br />
was with himself” (306). ,<br />
• Reviews continue on page 44.<br />
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T E R R O R I S M C E N T E N A R Y<br />
“Anarchism and Fire”<br />
What We Can Learn from Sidney Street<br />
C H R I S T O P H E R C. H A R M O N<br />
On the weekday morning of 3 January 1911, citizens<br />
of London awoke amidst “The Siege of Sidney<br />
Street.” Two weeks earlier, well-armed anarchists<br />
had tried to rob a jeweler, murdered some police who<br />
responded, and then disappeared. They were found holed up<br />
in an apartment building and surrounded by Metropolitan<br />
Police. Home Secretary <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, alerted in his<br />
bath, approved a request <strong>for</strong> support from Scots Guards at<br />
the Tower of London. Characteristically wishing to be where<br />
the action was, <strong>Churchill</strong> then appeared in person on the<br />
scene (see also Datelines, page 6).<br />
Battle erupted with exchanges of weaponry. Automatic<br />
pistols within the building competed with rifle and pistol fire<br />
from outside <strong>for</strong> at least two hours. Either from bullets or<br />
breached gas heating pipes, the edifice ignited. The Fire<br />
Brigade waited expectantly to put out the blaze, but onscene,<br />
the Home Secretary supported the police decision to<br />
let the building burn.<br />
The unleashing of martial <strong>for</strong>ce against terrorists in an<br />
English city can never be a happy event, and <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
among the many to offer evidence at an inquest two weeks<br />
later. Two criminals had died in the blaze; if there were any<br />
others, they escaped. None of the terrorists was British; all<br />
were aliens living in London.<br />
Such anarchists had ignited an earlier outrage in downtown<br />
London. A 1909 robbery had turned into a shooting<br />
rampage, block after block, until over twenty innocents were<br />
wounded. By the time the Sidney Street gang erupted, the<br />
city had had enough of anarchists.<br />
By coincidence, the previous February, Prime Minister<br />
Asquith had appointed a “new sheriff”: war veteran <strong>Winston</strong><br />
S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, aged 36. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Home Office held<br />
authority over the police and fire brigades alike. The counterterrorist<br />
operation, directed in part by the Home Secretary<br />
himself, ended the gang’s reign, but also resulted in a<br />
policeman shot and several firemen, constables and civilians<br />
wounded. The building itself was wrecked, its owner<br />
demanding reconstruction at city expense.<br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
Dr. Harmon, Marine Corps University’s Horner Chair, is author of<br />
Terrorism Today (2007). His work, “How Terrorist Groups End,” was introduced<br />
in lectures at the Heritage Foundation and the Institute of World<br />
Politics in 2004. His latest contribution to this study is a chapter in the<br />
2010 McGraw-Hill textbook, Toward a Grand Strategy Against Terrorism.<br />
As the use of <strong>for</strong>ce tends to do in democracies, Sidney<br />
Street subjected the decision-makers to close scrutiny. Many<br />
theater-goers hooted derisively as the new-fangled newsreels<br />
pictured Mr. <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> moving in and out of cover,<br />
consulting with police and their several commanders. In the<br />
House of Commons the Rt. Hon. Arthur Balfour, Member<br />
<strong>for</strong> the City of London (financial district), pronounced<br />
pointedly: “I understand what the photographer was doing<br />
[in the danger zone], but why the Home Secretary?” Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said he’d gone because the Home Office lacked<br />
in<strong>for</strong>mation—and also out of curiosity. Later in his Thoughts<br />
and Adventures, he admitted that he probably would have<br />
done better to go to his desk in the Home Office.<br />
Internationally networked and lethal, idea-driven and<br />
fanatical, anarchism was prominent from the late 1880s<br />
through the early 1920s. In the beginning, many governments<br />
reacted by rolling over. Some authorities seemed<br />
immobile; others moved slowly, unwilling to confront a<br />
violent international movement. Be<strong>for</strong>e World War I, no<br />
fewer than six heads of state were murdered by anarchist “idealists.”<br />
The militants seemed to come and go across national<br />
borders, settling or moving on with near-impunity. On the<br />
principle of free speech, some countries protected their fiery<br />
publications. In established democracies especially, authority<br />
was slow to confine or strike these armed minorities—as was,<br />
say, Japan after the series of incidents leading up to the sarin<br />
gas attack on subways in more recent times.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s own Liberal Party had pointedly declined to<br />
support a 1904 bill that would have made it easier to deport<br />
alien radicals. But growing London violence between 1909<br />
and 1911 would begin to shift <strong>Churchill</strong>’s views on the rights<br />
of non-citizens—and those of many of his fellow MPs.<br />
Many familiar aspects of the Sidney Street siege draw<br />
our eye today: Should citizens in<strong>for</strong>m police of “suspicious”<br />
people, or is this unacceptable in a democracy? Our governments<br />
of late have been obscure on this question. In 1911, a<br />
<strong>for</strong>mer landlord of one of the robbers had stepped up to talk<br />
to the police about the attempt to burglarize the jewelry<br />
shop. Without his help, law en<strong>for</strong>cement authorities might<br />
never have located the hideout on Sidney Street.<br />
Should government offer rewards? Britain had offered<br />
£500 sterling <strong>for</strong> the Sidney Street killers in 1910, but<br />
bureaucracy would triumph over the brave in<strong>for</strong>mant. About<br />
five robbers were initially sought; the reward offer identified<br />
only three, and the landlord just one. (As a result, he was<br />
given only a third of the reward money.)<br />
Was the use of <strong>for</strong>ce justified? Force displeases, and<br />
always should, since it poses inevitable danger to innocents.<br />
At Sidney Street, <strong>for</strong>ce was requisite. <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, the<br />
authorizing minister, was unusually reflective on these<br />
matters. Already the author of eight books and experienced<br />
with war on several continents, he was no moral relativist. He<br />
believed profoundly in the rule of law. In a later political and<br />
FINESTHOUR150/34
SIDNEY STREET, 3 JANUARY 1911: Indifferent as ever to danger, <strong>Churchill</strong> (top hat) is a wall<br />
away from a hail of bullets. When fire broke out, he supported withholding the fire brigade, lest<br />
firemen’s lives be lost. <strong>Churchill</strong> later admitted that his rush to the scene was a rash move.<br />
violent event, the General Strike of 1926, <strong>Churchill</strong> was confronted<br />
by the question: were the strikers terrorists or<br />
freedom fighters? He replied: “I decline utterly to be impartial<br />
as between the fire brigade and the fire.” The metaphor<br />
suits, when ideological gunmen match <strong>for</strong>ce with a nation’s<br />
security personnel.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s on-scene thoughts at Sidney Street included<br />
the possible use of a heavy metal shield to protect the constables<br />
as they advanced upstairs. The outbreak of fire later<br />
rendered this idea inappropriate, yet<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> remembered it, and incorporated<br />
it in World War I, when he<br />
pushed hard <strong>for</strong> development of the<br />
tank. After the embers of Sidney Street<br />
cooled, he considered the need to arm<br />
police better, and promoted trials of<br />
new weaponry.<br />
How do terrorist groups meet their<br />
end? Sometimes—more often than<br />
social scientists allow—they expire only<br />
after limited use of state <strong>for</strong>ce. Two<br />
American west coast groups which<br />
armed and barricaded themselves and<br />
refused to surrender—the Symbionese<br />
Liberation Army and its ideological<br />
opposite, The Order—expired in hails<br />
of SWAT bullets and tear gas in 1975<br />
and 1984 respectively. Actual military<br />
units or semi-militarized gendarmes<br />
have sometimes been needed, as in<br />
Canada <strong>for</strong> early 1970s terrorism by the<br />
Quebecois separatists, or in France <strong>for</strong> a<br />
1994 hijacking by Algerians.<br />
Anarchism was damped down by<br />
the Bolshevik Revolution and World<br />
War I, but contemporary histories and<br />
memoirs make it clear that slow, steady,<br />
constructive and often-controversial<br />
measures by governments were the most<br />
important factor in its decline.<br />
Government began to fight back, with<br />
tougher laws on incitement; bans on<br />
immigrants or visitors known to have<br />
anti-democratic and militant views;<br />
more focused law en<strong>for</strong>cement; fewer<br />
“passes” on grounds of free speech;<br />
bilateral and multilateral intelligence<br />
and extradition; and the creation or<br />
improvement of domestic intelligence<br />
organs like the United States Federal<br />
Bureau of Investigation. States declined<br />
to surrender to fanatical minorities.<br />
The anarchist movement and its handling provide<br />
lessons <strong>for</strong> free societies today. Delays in government<br />
response to anarchist violence were classically democratic. So<br />
was the difficult decision, in London in 1911, to defend rule<br />
of law with a brief interruption of civil norms and a deployment<br />
of guns. At Sidney Street, a lawful government proved<br />
itself better armed than anarchism. And, unlike the anarchist<br />
leaders, Home Secretary <strong>Churchill</strong> had campaigned <strong>for</strong> and<br />
won election to public office, where his responsibilities<br />
included the option to use <strong>for</strong>ce. ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/35
C H U R C H I L L A N D I N T E L L I G E N C E<br />
GERMANY STRIKES EAST • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS<br />
Golden Eggs: The Secret War, 1940-1945<br />
Part II: Intelligence and the Eastern Front<br />
At Hitler’s greatest expectation of triumph, the fruits of British Signals Intelligence<br />
became a precious metal in Soviet Military resistance. Decrypts also helped Britain support<br />
Balkan allies, by relaying German military dispositions to the Yugoslav and Greek partisans.<br />
M A R T I N G I L B E R T<br />
Aiding the Soviet Union<br />
Throughout the spring of 1941, Enigma decrypts<br />
made it clear that it was against the Soviet Union—<br />
Germany’s partner <strong>for</strong> the previous twenty months—that<br />
Hitler intended to turn next. On March 30th, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
wrote to Anthony Eden:<br />
I told C [Brigadier Stewart <strong>Men</strong>zies, Chief of MI6, the<br />
British Secret Intelligence Service] to send you substance of<br />
sure in<strong>for</strong>mation lately received in this No. JQ/803/T2. 1 My<br />
reading is that the bad man 2 concentrated very large<br />
armoured <strong>for</strong>ces, &c., to overawe Yugoslavia and Greece, and<br />
hoped to get <strong>for</strong>mer or both without fighting. The moment<br />
he was sure Yugoslavia was in the Axis he moved three of the<br />
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
The Rt. Hon. Sir Martin Gilbert CBE has been the official biographer of Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> since 1968, and has published almost as<br />
many words on his subject as <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote. Sir Martin is an honorary member of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre and has been a contributor to<br />
Finest Hour <strong>for</strong> nearly thirty years. For further in<strong>for</strong>mation see http://www.martingilbert.com. Part I of this article appeared last issue.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/36
five panthers towards the Bear 3 believing that what was left<br />
would be enough to finish the Greek affair. However,<br />
Belgrade revolution upset this picture and caused orders <strong>for</strong><br />
northward move to be arrested in transit. This can only mean<br />
in my opinion intention to attack Yugoslavia at earliest or<br />
alternatively act against the Turk. It looks as if heavy <strong>for</strong>ces<br />
will be used in Balkan Peninsula and that Bear will be kept<br />
waiting a bit. Furthermore, these orders and counter-orders<br />
in their relation to the Belgrade coup seem to reveal magnitude<br />
of design both towards southeast and east. This is the<br />
clearest indication that we have had so far. 4<br />
The defeat of the Soviet Union would enable the full<br />
weight of German power to be turned on Britain: with<br />
control of Russian oil supplies, raw materials, steel and<br />
munitions being massively in Germany’s favour. On 3 April<br />
1941, while Hitler’s <strong>for</strong>ces were making their final preparations<br />
<strong>for</strong> the invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
took a calculated risk in sending Stalin in<strong>for</strong>mation, based<br />
on Enigma, relating to German intentions against the Soviet<br />
Union. To guard the highly vulnerable source of the in<strong>for</strong>mation,<br />
he pretended that this source was a British<br />
agent—an individual—not Germany’s own top-secret<br />
Signals Intelligence communications system.<br />
The message sent to Stalin was emphatic and urgent:<br />
I have sure in<strong>for</strong>mation from a trusted agent, that when the<br />
Germans thought they had got Yugoslavia in the net, that is<br />
to say, after March 20 [the day of the signing of the Yugoslav<br />
pact with Germany], they began to move three out of the five<br />
Panzer divisions from Roumania to Southern Poland. The<br />
moment they heard of the Serbian revolution [the Yugoslav<br />
renunciation of the pact with Germany] this movement was<br />
countermanded.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> ended his message to Stalin: “Your Excellency<br />
will readily appreciate the significance of these facts.” 5<br />
Stalin was not the only <strong>for</strong>eign recipient of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Enigma-based in<strong>for</strong>mation that week. On April 4th, the day<br />
after his telegram to Stalin, <strong>Churchill</strong> sent a message to<br />
General Dusan Simovitch, the leader of the new Yugoslav<br />
Government:<br />
From every quarter my in<strong>for</strong>mation shows rapid heavy concentration<br />
and advance towards your country by German<br />
ground and air <strong>for</strong>ces. Large movements of air <strong>for</strong>ces are<br />
reported to us from France by our agents there. Bombers<br />
have even been withdrawn from Tripoli according to our<br />
African Army Intelligence. 6<br />
Although <strong>Churchill</strong> could not say so, “my in<strong>for</strong>mation” was<br />
not from “our agents” or “African Army Intelligence” but<br />
Luftwaffe Enigma messages decrypted at Bletchley Park. 7<br />
Enigma could reveal German intentions; but this<br />
knowledge could not <strong>for</strong>estall those intentions. On Easter<br />
Monday the Germans bombed Belgrade. British troops were<br />
rushed to Greece. Germany, with Italian and Bulgarian military<br />
and air support, swiftly overran both Yugoslavia and<br />
Greece, and turned its preparations, as <strong>Churchill</strong> had <strong>for</strong>ecast,<br />
against the Soviet Union.<br />
Stalin made no acknowledgment to <strong>Churchill</strong> <strong>for</strong><br />
sending him on April 3rd the Enigma-based in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
that intimated the German intention to attack the Soviet<br />
Union. But <strong>Churchill</strong> instructed the Foreign Secretary,<br />
Anthony Eden, to pass on to the Soviet Ambassador in<br />
London, Ivan Maisky, several further messages, likewise<br />
derived from Enigma, giving details of German military and<br />
air moves and preparations towards the Soviet frontier. The<br />
most detailed, and important message was transmitted from<br />
Maisky to Moscow on 10 June 1941. It gave the Soviet<br />
General Staff a list of German troops concentrated on the<br />
German-Soviet border, identifying all German units. 8<br />
Eleven days later, on 22 June 1941, Germany invaded<br />
the Soviet Union. <strong>Churchill</strong> made an immediate commitment<br />
to do whatever could be done to sustain the Soviet<br />
Union in its struggle. Signals Intelligence was a crucial and<br />
integral part of that commitment. Two days after the<br />
German invasion, Brigadier <strong>Men</strong>zies asked <strong>Churchill</strong> if he<br />
should pass on to Stalin—without revealing their source—<br />
the summaries of all Enigma decrypts bearing on the<br />
German intentions, strategy and tactics on the Eastern<br />
Front. <strong>Churchill</strong> gave his approval, noting on <strong>Men</strong>zies’<br />
request: “Providing no risks are run.” 9<br />
On 27 June 1941, within a week of Hitler’s invasion<br />
of Russia, there was a British cryptographic success at<br />
Bletchley Park in breaking the German Army Enigma key<br />
used on the Eastern Front. Known as “Vulture,” this >><br />
“Stalin rarely bothered to reply, but his commanders-in-chief took action on the basis of every<br />
Enigma-based communication....There were many occasions when the cryptographers at<br />
Bletchley Park—who did not have to leave their command posts to visit troops at the front<br />
—had already decrypted those messages, and sent them to Moscow, and Moscow had sent<br />
them to the commander-in-chief facing the German troops, even be<strong>for</strong>e the German<br />
commander returned to his command post and was given them.”<br />
FINESTHOUR150/37
“I have sure in<strong>for</strong>mation from a trusted agent that when the Germans thought they had got<br />
Yugoslvaia in the net...they began to move three out of the five Panzer divisions from<br />
Roumania to Southern Poland. The moment they heard of the Serbian revolution [renouncing<br />
the pact with Germany] this movement was countermanded....<br />
Your Excellency will readily appreciate the significance of these facts.”<br />
—<strong>Churchill</strong>’s telegram to Stalin, 3 April 1941<br />
PLAYERS: Eager <strong>for</strong> an ally, <strong>Churchill</strong> passed his decrypted intelligence about German plans to invade Russia—carefully disguised<br />
as reports from secret agents—direct to Stalin (left); when Stalin didn’t respond he went to the more receptive Soviet Ambassador in<br />
London, Ivan Maisky (second from left). <strong>Churchill</strong> instructed “C,” Secret Intelligence Service head Brigadier Stewart Graham <strong>Men</strong>zies<br />
(pronounced “menkeys,” third from left), to give the Russians any and all secret decrypts, “providing no risks are run.” Enigma also<br />
in<strong>for</strong>med <strong>Churchill</strong> of German intentions in Yugoslavia, which he passed to General Alexander, ultimately deciding that Josip Broz<br />
(Tito, right) was the most likely <strong>for</strong>ce to back in guerrilla warfare against the German occupation. Photos: Wikimedia Commons.<br />
THE SECRET WAR...<br />
key provided British Intelligence with daily readings of<br />
German military orders sent from Berlin to the Eastern<br />
Front. On June 28th, the day after Bletchley’s success,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> gave instructions that Stalin was to be given this<br />
precious Intelligence. From that day, an officer in British<br />
Military Intelligence serving in the British Military Mission<br />
in Moscow was sent—by British radio cypher—regular<br />
warnings of German strategic intentions and tactical orders,<br />
and was instructed to pass them on to Soviet Intelligence.<br />
Thus, at Hitler’s greatest expectation of triumph, the<br />
fruits of British Signals Intelligence also became a precious<br />
metal in Soviet military resistance.<br />
Enigma-based in<strong>for</strong>mation useful to the Soviet Union<br />
was continuously sent on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s instructions to the<br />
British Military Mission in Moscow, where a special liaison<br />
officer would take it to the Kremlin <strong>for</strong> the head of<br />
Soviet Military Intelligence. One of these officers was the<br />
future Sovietologist and historian Edward Crankshaw.<br />
In the first week of July 1941, cryptographers at<br />
Bletchley learned from Enigma that German Intelligence on<br />
the Eastern Front was breaking into two Soviet channels of<br />
communication. The Germans were reading certain Russian<br />
Air Force coded messages in the Leningrad area, and were<br />
decrypting Russian naval signals in the Baltic. This in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
was passed on to Moscow on 7 July 1941, alerting the<br />
Soviet General Staff to this gap in their security. A week<br />
later, on July 14th, the disposition and order of battle of the<br />
German <strong>for</strong>ces was transmitted to Moscow.<br />
On July 16th, an appreciation of German plans<br />
against Smolensk and Gomel, together with details of<br />
German air <strong>for</strong>ce targets behind Russian lines, were transmitted<br />
from Bletchley to Moscow. The next day it was a<br />
German order —as a result of heavy German casualties and<br />
problems of adequate air cover—to slow down the advance.<br />
This order gave the Red Army its first sense of success, and<br />
also a chance to regroup, knowing that its <strong>for</strong>ces would not<br />
face a surprise attack.<br />
In mid-July 1941, as German troops drove towards<br />
Leningrad and Moscow, <strong>Churchill</strong> pressed Brigadier<br />
<strong>Men</strong>zies to send as much Enigma-based Eastern Front<br />
material as possible to Stalin. The important decrypt<br />
CX/MSS/59/T10, setting out operations that were to take<br />
place on the Eastern Front on July 16th, had been sent at<br />
FINESTHOUR150/38
7:30 pm on 15 July 1941. The summary as submitted to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> read: “Russians threatened by envelopment at<br />
Smolensk. Support of 4th Panzer Army (Armée) with main<br />
battlefront at Smolensk. Russians are to be prevented from<br />
withdrawing. Railways in the rear to be bombed.” 10<br />
<strong>Men</strong>zies replied to <strong>Churchill</strong>: “I am of the opinion<br />
that the source would definitely be imperilled if this in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
was passed to Moscow in its present <strong>for</strong>m, as it<br />
would be impossible <strong>for</strong> any agent to have secured such<br />
in<strong>for</strong>mation regarding operations <strong>for</strong> the 16th July. I have,<br />
however, arranged with the War Office <strong>for</strong> the gist to be<br />
incorporated with other material.”<br />
<strong>Men</strong>zies went on to point out to <strong>Churchill</strong> that the<br />
head of the British Military Mission to Moscow, General<br />
Mason-MacFarlane, had been instructed “to in<strong>for</strong>m the<br />
Russians that we possess a well-placed source in Berlin who<br />
has occasional access to operational plans and documents.<br />
This explanation has been accepted by the Russians. I have,<br />
however, refused to furnish them with detailed identifications,<br />
which might well arouse their suspicions as to the real<br />
origin of the in<strong>for</strong>mation, <strong>for</strong> they would appreciate the<br />
impossibility of being able to furnish us with any identifications<br />
on the Western Front.” With his message, <strong>Men</strong>zies<br />
sent <strong>Churchill</strong> “a sample of the type of in<strong>for</strong>mation which<br />
has been passed and which should prove of considerable<br />
assistance to the Russian General Staff.” 11<br />
On 9 September 1941, as German <strong>for</strong>ces pressed<br />
towards Moscow, the German orders <strong>for</strong> the final assault on<br />
Moscow were decrypted at Bletchley Park. These orders<br />
were at once radioed to the British Military Mission in<br />
Moscow, and then taken to the Kremlin, more then three<br />
weeks be<strong>for</strong>e the actual assault began.<br />
When it became clear on September 20th, through<br />
Enigma, that the Germans planned to launch an all-out<br />
assault on Moscow in twelve days’ time, <strong>Churchill</strong> authorized<br />
the dispatch of a warning to Stalin, through the British<br />
Military Mission in Moscow. Eight further Enigma-based<br />
warnings were sent to Moscow in the following four days,<br />
giving the Soviet High Command more than a week’s<br />
notice of German intentions, dispositions and movements<br />
on all sectors of the Moscow Front, and the location and<br />
strength of German ground <strong>for</strong>mations assembling in the<br />
Smolensk area.<br />
Reading a decrypt giving details of the German<br />
armoured and motorized divisions about to be committed<br />
to the battle <strong>for</strong> Moscow, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote on 2 October<br />
1941 to Brigadier <strong>Men</strong>zies: “Are you warning the Russians<br />
of the developing concentrations,” and he added: “Show me<br />
the last five messages you have sent.” 12<br />
On 2 January 1942, British cryptographers broke the<br />
Enigma key known to Bletchley as “Kite.” This key contained<br />
the German Army’s most secret supply messages<br />
between Berlin and the Eastern Front. In February they<br />
broke “Orange Two,” which carried all top-secret messages<br />
between Berlin and the Waffen SS units fighting on the<br />
Eastern Front.<br />
During the first week of March 1942, Enigma<br />
decrypts revealed the scale, direction and date of the second<br />
German summer offensive against the Soviet Union. These<br />
included German Air Force intentions, 13 operational<br />
orders, 14 and the <strong>for</strong>tification of aerodromes in the East. 15<br />
Also revealed, through a diplomatic decrypt, was Japan’s<br />
inability, because of a shortage of ships and aircraft, to help<br />
Germany by attacking the Soviet Union in the Far East,<br />
something Hitler was pressing <strong>for</strong>. <strong>Churchill</strong> noted on this<br />
latter decrypt that it should be passed to Roosevelt. 16<br />
Another vital decrypt that was passed to Stalin was an<br />
Enigma message sent on March 3rd, and decrypted at<br />
Bletchley two days later, ordering the transfer of German<br />
anti-aircraft units in Romania to the Ukraine. 17 This was<br />
followed on March 7th by decrypts of heavy German military<br />
rail movements from Romania to the Eastern Front, 18<br />
the despatch on May 10 of German bomber and dive<br />
bomber units to the Russian Front, 19 and a German Air<br />
Force report, also decrypted on March 10, giving details of<br />
Soviet troop concentrations. 20<br />
On receipt of this in<strong>for</strong>mation from Britain, the<br />
Russians were able to make new dispositions, in greater<br />
secrecy. If that secrecy were to be compromised, Enigma<br />
would reveal it.<br />
On March 12th, <strong>Churchill</strong> assured Stalin that, in<br />
order to help the Soviet Union meet this impending attack,<br />
he had given “express directions” that British supplies to<br />
Russia “shall not in any way be interrupted or delayed.” 21<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> also gave orders that day that, to draw back<br />
German resources from the Eastern Front during the<br />
German offensive, the British bombing offensive over<br />
Germany would be intensified “both by day and night.” As<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> explained two days later, in a message to the head<br />
of the British General Staff Mission in Washington, his<br />
policy was “taking the weight off Russia during the summer<br />
months by the heaviest air offensive against Germany which<br />
can be produced.” 22<br />
On 23 May 1942, with <strong>Churchill</strong>’s approval, the<br />
Soviet High Command were sent details, culled from<br />
Enigma, of precisely where the German summer offensive<br />
against the Soviet Union would be launched, and in what<br />
strength. 23 During the second week of July 1942, when a<br />
change of strategy was decided upon in Berlin, with<br />
armoured <strong>for</strong>ces ordered <strong>for</strong>ward towards Stalingrad, the<br />
details of this revised plan were sent from Berlin to the<br />
German military and air commanders-in-chief by Enigma<br />
signals. 24 Both the recipients of this order, the German commanders-in-chief<br />
on the Eastern Front, and the British<br />
cryptographers at Bletchley Park, decrypted this change of<br />
plan simultaneously.<br />
From Britain, the new orders were sent on July 13 to<br />
Moscow. From Moscow they were transmitted that same >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/39
“Reading his daily box of Enigma<br />
decrypts, <strong>Churchill</strong> never relaxed his<br />
Russian vigilance. On 6 December<br />
1942, during the Stalingrad battle, he<br />
wrote to Stewart <strong>Men</strong>zies, ‘Has any<br />
of this been passed to Joe?’ It had. ”<br />
THE SECRET WAR...<br />
day by secure radio link to the newly appointed commander<br />
of the Stalingrad Front, Marshal Timoshenko. The Germans<br />
never knew that their plan was in the hands of their<br />
enemies. On the following day, 14 July 1942, the three<br />
German armies in southern Russia received from Berlin<br />
their precise objectives, likewise sent through Enigma.<br />
These objectives, decrypted at Bletchley Park, were also sent<br />
at once to Moscow, and on to Timoshenko.<br />
Shortly after <strong>Churchill</strong>’s return from his first Moscow<br />
visit in August 1942, the seventeenth Arctic convoy, PQ 17,<br />
was attacked by German air and submarine <strong>for</strong>ces. Of the<br />
<strong>for</strong>ty merchant ships in the convoy, nineteen were sunk.<br />
Ironically, the tragedy of PQ 17 had been caused by<br />
Enigma, since the convoy’s escorts had been <strong>for</strong>ced to<br />
scatter once it was revealed through Enigma that Germany’s<br />
three largest warships were about to emerge from their<br />
Norwegian Arctic bases, to attack. There was no way that<br />
the British convoy escort could outmatch these three naval<br />
giants or even stave them off. To avoid a total slaughter, the<br />
convoy was ordered to scatter.<br />
On 30 September 1942, <strong>Churchill</strong> learned from an<br />
Enigma decrypt of a German plan <strong>for</strong> naval action on the<br />
Caspian Sea, as soon as German troops had crossed the<br />
Caucasus. He immediately sent a clear summary to Stalin.<br />
“I have got the following in<strong>for</strong>mation,” he wrote, “from the<br />
same source that I used to warn you of the impending<br />
attack on Russia a year and a half ago. I believe this source<br />
to be absolutely trustworthy. Pray let this be <strong>for</strong> your own<br />
eye.” The in<strong>for</strong>mation read:<br />
Germans have already appointed an Admiral to take charge<br />
of naval operations in the Caspian. They have selected<br />
Makhach-Kala as their main naval base. About twenty craft<br />
including Italian submarines, Italian torpedo boats and<br />
mine-sweepers are to be transported by rail from Mariupol to<br />
the Caspian as soon as they have got a line open. On account<br />
of the icing-up of the Sea of Azov the submarines will be<br />
loaded be<strong>for</strong>e the completion of the railway line.<br />
“No doubt,” <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote to Stalin, “you are<br />
already prepared <strong>for</strong> this kind of attack.” It seemed to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> “to make all the more important” the plan to<br />
rein<strong>for</strong>ce the Soviet Air Force in the Caspian and the<br />
Caucasus theatre by twenty British and American<br />
squadrons. “I have never stopped working at this,”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> added, “since we were together and I hope in a<br />
week or so to have the final approval of the President and to<br />
be able to make you a definite joint offer.” 25<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> understood that every fragment of in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
on German military and air preparations and activities<br />
could be of inestimable value to the Soviet High<br />
Command, as daily decrypts showed that the German<br />
<strong>for</strong>ces were facing a fierce opponent in southern Russia, and<br />
that there had been a setback in German plans there. “My<br />
latest in<strong>for</strong>mation,” <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed to Stalin on<br />
October 8, “shows that the German plans <strong>for</strong> sending shipping<br />
to the Caspian have been suspended.” 26<br />
The Soviet Union was to be the beneficiary of<br />
Enigma, and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s vigilance to Soviet needs, until the<br />
end of the war. Central to this ef<strong>for</strong>t was Colonel Tiltman,<br />
one of whose most important achievements came in<br />
September 1942, when he helped to break the German<br />
teleprinter cypher system known at Bletchley as Tunny—<br />
another word <strong>for</strong> tuna. 27<br />
Unlike Enigma, Tunny carried a considerable amount<br />
of strategic Intelligence, while Enigma more often yielded<br />
tactical or operational Intelligence. Between November and<br />
December 1942, at the height of the Battle <strong>for</strong> Stalingrad,<br />
this resulted in an estimated 870 decrypts yielding 4.5<br />
million letters of text, from four keys. By 1945 the figures<br />
had increased dramatically: between 1 January and 8 May<br />
1945, Bletchley broke 374 keys—by then changing with<br />
increasing frequency—with the help of the Colossus electronic<br />
codebreaking machines: 4500 messages in all,<br />
containing 22 million letters were read in that period. 28<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> ensured that Stalin was apprised of German<br />
intentions on the Eastern Front without fail or delay.<br />
Enigma also enabled <strong>Churchill</strong> to intervene on Russia’s<br />
behalf in late October and early November 1942, at the<br />
height of the battle of Stalingrad. Because Enigma revealed<br />
the full extent of Germany’s commitment, and entanglement,<br />
in the East, <strong>Churchill</strong> timed a series of military<br />
initiatives in the West in such a way as to <strong>for</strong>ce the withdrawal<br />
of vital German war material from the East. The first<br />
of these initiatives was Montgomery’s attack on the German<br />
<strong>for</strong>ces inside Egypt, at El Alamein, on October 23rd; then,<br />
two weeks later, on November 8th, Operation Torch, the<br />
Allied amphibious landings in North Africa.<br />
These major African battles <strong>for</strong>ced Hitler to transfer<br />
aircraft from the Eastern Front at a time when they were<br />
most needed in the East. In the immediate aftermath of the<br />
North African landings, 400 of the 500 German warplanes<br />
moved to Tunisia were brought from Russia, as were several<br />
hundred transport aircraft which had been supplying the<br />
German <strong>for</strong>ces surrounded at Stalingrad. As a result of the<br />
precipitate transfer of these transport aircraft, German<br />
bombers had to be pressed into service at Stalingrad in their<br />
stead. Enigma revealed to the British, and through them to<br />
FINESTHOUR150/40
the Russians, just what a setback the fighting in North<br />
Africa was to the German resources on the Eastern Front.<br />
Commenting on the un<strong>for</strong>eseen, and un<strong>for</strong>tunate,<br />
switch of aircraft at Stalingrad, Marshal Goering later wrote:<br />
“There died the core of the German bomber fleet.”<br />
On November 7th, the day be<strong>for</strong>e the Torch landings,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> learned of German plans to bomb Soviet oil<br />
installations at Baku. He at once passed on this in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
to Stalin. “Many thanks <strong>for</strong> your warnings,” Stalin replied.<br />
“We are taking the necessary measures to combat the<br />
danger.” 29 This was one of the very few times when Stalin<br />
bothered to reply, although his commanders-in-chief took<br />
action on the basis of every Enigma-based communication.<br />
On 19 November 1942 the Red Army launched its<br />
counter-offensive north of Stalingrad. Throughout the<br />
battle, Britain sent Russia tactical Intelligence derived from<br />
the minute-by-minute operational orders of the German<br />
Army and Air Force. Sometimes a German commander<br />
could not be at his command post <strong>for</strong> several hours, as he<br />
had to be with his men at the front. Only on returning to<br />
his command post was he given his latest batch of operational<br />
orders.<br />
There were many occasions when the cryptographers<br />
at Bletchley Park—who did not have to leave their<br />
command posts to visit troops at the front—had already<br />
decrypted those messages, and sent them to Moscow, and<br />
Moscow had sent them to the commander-in-chief facing<br />
the German troops, even be<strong>for</strong>e the German commander<br />
returned to his command post and was given them.<br />
Reading his daily box of Enigma decrypts, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
never relaxed his Russian vigilance. On 6 December 1942,<br />
during the Stalingrad battle, he wrote to Brigadier <strong>Men</strong>zies:<br />
“Has any of this been passed to Joe?” 30 It had.<br />
On 25 February 1943 there were two further breakthroughs<br />
in Allied help <strong>for</strong> the Soviet Union. First, that day,<br />
there was the breaking at Bletchley Park of the German<br />
“Ermine” key, used by one of the main German Air Force<br />
combat units on the Eastern Front. That same day, the start<br />
began of the first round-the-clock bombing offensive against<br />
Germany, whereby British bombers attacked by night and<br />
American bombers by day. For the Soviet war machine, the<br />
intensification of the Anglo-American bomber offensive was<br />
an important element in the constant pressuring and steady<br />
weakening of Germany’s war-making powers. “I hope,”<br />
Stalin telegraphed to <strong>Churchill</strong> on 27 March 1943, “that<br />
the air offensive against Germany will go on inexorably<br />
increasing.” 31<br />
It did, with German Air Force Enigma messages providing<br />
Bletchley Park, and Bomber Command’s<br />
Commander-in-Chief, Sir Arthur Harris, with a daily indication<br />
of where the German fighter and anti-aircraft <strong>for</strong>ces<br />
were most stretched, and there<strong>for</strong>e most vulnerable.<br />
As the Germans prepared their third Eastern offensive,<br />
against the Soviet <strong>for</strong>ces in the Kursk Salient, more and<br />
more of the actual German orders <strong>for</strong> the planned attack<br />
were decrypted at Bletchley. Once more, the British were<br />
able to alert Soviet Military Intelligence. One of the most<br />
important decrypts to be shown to <strong>Churchill</strong> was a Tunny<br />
decrypt of 25 April 1943. It contained a detailed German<br />
appreciation of the Soviet order of battle be<strong>for</strong>e the German<br />
offensive in the Kursk Salient. 32<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> made sure that this in<strong>for</strong>mation was passed<br />
to Moscow, two months be<strong>for</strong>e the offensive was to open,<br />
together with detailed estimates, likewise based on the<br />
Germans’ own top secret signals, of the strength and composition<br />
of the German divisions deployed around the<br />
Salient or the Kursk and Orel pincer movements. This<br />
in<strong>for</strong>mation alerted the Soviet High Command to exactly<br />
what the Germans knew of what was facing them, enabling<br />
the Soviet High Command to alter the balance of the facing<br />
<strong>for</strong>ces to Soviet advantage. The Battle of Kursk was the last<br />
and fatal attempt by the German Army to continue its eastward<br />
advance.<br />
The Soviet Union also made its contribution to the<br />
task of decryption. In June 1943, Soviet Intelligence captured<br />
two elements of the Enigma system, a code used by<br />
the Luftwaffe <strong>for</strong> air-to-ground signalling, and a naval<br />
Enigma machine. Shortly afterwards, <strong>Churchill</strong> sent several<br />
British Naval Intelligence experts to Murmansk to discuss<br />
with their Soviet counterparts how best to use the German<br />
air and naval messages thus procured. Later that summer,<br />
the British presented the Soviets with another captured<br />
Enigma machine, and a book of instructions <strong>for</strong> its use.<br />
Assisting Occupied Yugoslavia<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> accepted that Enigma would determine<br />
many aspects of British war policy. In Yugoslavia in 1943,<br />
Enigma revealed a massive concentration of German and<br />
Italian troops encircling and moving in on Mount<br />
Dormitor. It was clear that a large hostile <strong>for</strong>ce was surrounding<br />
the mountain. <strong>Churchill</strong>, who was then in Cairo,<br />
agreed with an SOE proposal to parachute in a small<br />
team—two officers and a wireless operator—to the centre of<br />
the German encirclement, to make contact with the <strong>for</strong>ce<br />
that was the German target. The three volunteers found<br />
themselves with Josip Broz (Tito) and his partisans, in a<br />
fierce battle, but the partisans escaped the trap, and Britain<br />
began supporting Tito’s <strong>for</strong>ces.<br />
Enigma had helped Britain find, and support, a<br />
Balkan ally. One of the two British officers parachuted in<br />
on that first mission was <strong>Churchill</strong>’s <strong>for</strong>mer literary assistant,<br />
Bill Deakin; <strong>Churchill</strong> followed his activities through<br />
the Enigma decrypts, including his escape, with Tito, from<br />
the German trap.<br />
On July 25th, Enigma decrypts had made it clear that<br />
as many as thirty-three German, Italian, Croat and<br />
Bulgarian Divisions were being held down in Yugoslavia, >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/41
THE SECRET WAR...<br />
most of them by Tito’s partisans. <strong>Churchill</strong> there<strong>for</strong>e<br />
directed that a number of additional aircraft be used in the<br />
dropping of supplies: “This demand,” <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
explained to Ismay on the previous day, “has priority even<br />
over the bombing of Germany.”<br />
The air resources needed to send up to 500 tons a<br />
month of arms and equipment to the Yugoslav partisans<br />
would be “a small price to pay,” <strong>Churchill</strong> told the Staff<br />
Conference, “<strong>for</strong> the diversion of Axis <strong>for</strong>ces caused by<br />
resistance in Yugoslavia.” Every ef<strong>for</strong>t should be made, he<br />
said, “to increase the rate of delivering supplies. It was<br />
essential to keep this movement going.” 33<br />
During July 1943, Enigma decrypts showed the pressure<br />
being exerted on German military dispositions by the<br />
partisans in both Yugoslavia and Greece, also the recipient<br />
of a British mission and supplies. On July 7th, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
telegraphed to General Alexander, Commander-in-Chief of<br />
the Allied Forces in the Mediterranean: “I presume you<br />
have read the ‘Boniface’ about the recent heavy fighting in<br />
Yugoslavia and the widespread sabotage and guerrilla beginning<br />
in Greece.” 34 From Quebec, where he was with<br />
Roosevelt, <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed a week later to Alexander:<br />
I am sending you by an officer a full account which I have had<br />
prepared from “Boniface” and all other sources of the marvelous<br />
resistance put up by the so-called Partisan followers of<br />
Tito in Bosnia and the powerful cold-blooded manoeuvres of<br />
Mihailovic in Serbia. Besides this there are the resistances of<br />
the guerrillas in Albania and recently in Greece.<br />
Endnotes<br />
The Germans had not only been rein<strong>for</strong>cing the Balkan<br />
peninsula with divisions, <strong>Churchill</strong> noted to General<br />
Alexander, “but they have been continually improving the<br />
quality and mobility of these divisions and have been stiffening<br />
up the local Italians.”<br />
Basing his figures upon Enigma, <strong>Churchill</strong> in<strong>for</strong>med<br />
Alexander that there were in Yugoslavia nine German, seventeen<br />
Italian, five Bulgarian and eight Croat divisions. On<br />
the Greek mainland, there were a further six German, eight<br />
Italian and two Bulgarian divisions. “The enemy,” he commented,<br />
“cannot spare these <strong>for</strong>ces, and if Italy collapses the<br />
Germans could not bear the weight themselves.” 35<br />
While he was staying at Roosevelt’s home at Hyde<br />
Park, on the Hudson River, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote to Roosevelt<br />
about Yugoslavia. A series of Enigma decrypts had revealed<br />
the murder by German <strong>for</strong>ces, not only of Tito’s partisans<br />
in combat, but of several thousand Yugoslav civilians as<br />
reprisals.<br />
“I am not sure that you people have quite realized all<br />
that is going on in the Balkans,” <strong>Churchill</strong> told Roosevelt,<br />
“and the hopes and horrors centred there. You might find it<br />
convenient to keep it by you. Much of it is taken from<br />
Boniface sources, and it certainly makes one’s blood boil, I<br />
must add.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> also sought to put Roosevelt’s mind at ease.<br />
“I must add,” he wrote, “that I am not in any way making a<br />
case <strong>for</strong> the employment of an Allied army in the Balkans<br />
but only <strong>for</strong> aiding them with supplies, agents and<br />
Commandos.” 36 ,<br />
1. Decrypt summary JQ/803/T2.<br />
2. Hitler.<br />
3. The Soviet Union.<br />
4. “Most Secret”, 30 March 1941: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/49.<br />
5. Telegram of 3 April 1941: Premier papers, 3/170/1.<br />
6. Message dated 4 April 1941: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/49.<br />
7. In particular Enigma decrypts CX/JQ803, 808, 821, 822 and<br />
849 (military movements) and 823 and 829 (air preparations), summarized<br />
in F. H. Hinsley and others, British Intelligence in the Second<br />
World War, Its Influence on Strategy and Operations, Volume 1,<br />
London, 1979, 371-72.<br />
8. I am grateful to the Russian historian Colonel-General Dmitri<br />
Vokogonov <strong>for</strong> giving me access to this document in Moscow in the<br />
summer of 1995.<br />
9. Secret Intelligence Service archives.<br />
10. Decrypt CX/MSS/59/T10.<br />
11.Secret Intelligence Service papers, HWI/14.<br />
12. Secret Intelligence Service papers, HWI/14.<br />
13. HW 1/381.<br />
14. HW 1/383.<br />
15. HW 1/386.<br />
16. HW 1/138.<br />
17. HW 1/390.<br />
18. HW 1/392.<br />
19. HW 1/401.<br />
20. HW 1/402.<br />
21. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram No. 352 of 1942, 9 March<br />
1942: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/132.<br />
22. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram No. 384 of 1942, 14<br />
March 1942: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/88.<br />
23. Secret Intelligence Service papers: HW 1/590.<br />
24. Secret Intelligence Service papers: HW 1/710, 712, 713, 715,<br />
718, 719, 721 and 722.<br />
25. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram, T.1270/2, “Most Secret<br />
and Personal”, 30 September 1942: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/80.<br />
26. “Personal”, Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram 1363 of 1942,<br />
8 October 1942: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/88.<br />
27. Tunny was an on-line encyphered teleprinter (Schlüsselzusatz<br />
40 or SZ-40) designed by the Lorenz Company.<br />
28. Ralph Erskine and Peter Freeman, “Brigadier John Tiltman:<br />
One of Britain’s Finest Cryptographers,” Cryptologia, October 2003.<br />
29. “Personal,” Kremlin, Moscow, 7 November 1942: <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
papers, 20/82.<br />
30. Secret Intelligence Service archive, series HW1/1183.<br />
31. “Personal and Most Secret,” Kremlin, Moscow, 27 March<br />
1943: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/108.<br />
32. Erskine and Freeman, “Brigadier John Tiltman,” op. cit.<br />
33. Staff Conference of 23 July 1943, Chiefs of Staff Committee<br />
No. 135 (Operations) of 1943, 23 June 1943: Cabinet papers 79/62. The<br />
Ministers present were <strong>Churchill</strong> (in the Chair), Lord Selborne and Lord<br />
Cherwell. Sir Alexander Cadogan represented Eden. Also present <strong>for</strong> the<br />
Yugoslav discussion were Major Morton and Lord Glenconner.<br />
34. “Personal and Most Secret”, Prime Minister’s Personal<br />
Telegram No. 971 of 1943, 7 July 1943: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/114.<br />
35. “Secret. For you alone”, Prime Minister”s Personal Telegram<br />
No. 1083 of 1943, 22 July 1943: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/115.<br />
36. “Mr President,” 13 August 1943: Premier papers, 3/353, folios<br />
92-93.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/42
W I T A N D W I S D O M<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> on Russia<br />
Afrequent request from students is: “Please tell me all<br />
about <strong>Churchill</strong> and Russia, and can you let me<br />
have this to me by Friday?” That, and Martin<br />
Gilbert’s <strong>for</strong>egoing testimony to just how much <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
risked to help Russia with secret intelligence, prompt us to<br />
offer a few of his comments on the country and its people.<br />
It is fair to accept that <strong>Churchill</strong> never warmed to<br />
Russia. When he was a subaltern, it posed a threat to India.<br />
In World War I, trying to save the Czar’s empire by <strong>for</strong>cing<br />
the Dardanelles, he was sacked from the Admiralty, and was<br />
no sooner gone than the Czar was, too. The Germans, he<br />
wrote, smuggled Lenin into Russia like a “culture of<br />
typhoid,” and when after Hitler’s invasion he declared his<br />
support <strong>for</strong> the USSR, Stalin was already demanding to<br />
know when he would launch a Second Front. Yalta ended<br />
with <strong>Churchill</strong> thinking—or hoping—he could trust Stalin,<br />
only to be frustrated, and denounced by the Kremlin as a<br />
warmonger. Yet he spent his waning years in office (pages<br />
20-24) trying to reach a Russian settlement. <strong>Churchill</strong> liked<br />
and admired individual Russians, such as Savinkov and<br />
Maisky (page 38), and even felt a twinge of pity <strong>for</strong><br />
Nicholas II. But he instinctively feared the Communist ideology,<br />
and knowing him as we do, it is not hard to visualise<br />
him rejoicing at the demise of the Soviet Union, which he<br />
predicted at his M.I.T. speech in 1949.<br />
kkkkk<br />
“If Russia is to be saved, as I pray she may be saved, she<br />
must be saved by Russians. It must be by Russian manhood<br />
and Russian courage and Russian virtue that the rescue and<br />
regeneration of this once mighty nation and famous branch<br />
of the European family can alone be achieved. Russia must<br />
be saved by Russian exertions, and it must be from the heart<br />
of the Russian people and with their strong arm that the<br />
conflict against Bolshevism in Russia must be mainly<br />
waged.” —MANSION HOUSE, LONDON, 19 FEBRUARY 1919<br />
kkkkk<br />
“The Bolsheviks robbed Russia at one stroke of two<br />
most precious things, peace and victory—the victory that<br />
was within her grasp and the peace which was her dearest<br />
desire...her life ever since has been one long struggle of agonizing<br />
war.” —HOUSE OF COMMONS, 5 NOVEMBER 1919<br />
kkkkk<br />
“Were they [Britain, France and America, in 1919-20]<br />
at war with Soviet Russia? Certainly not; but they shot<br />
Soviet Russians at sight. They stood as invaders on Russian<br />
soil. They armed the enemies of the Soviet Government.…<br />
But war—shocking! Interference—shame! It was, they<br />
repeated, a matter of indifference to them how Russians<br />
settled their own internal affairs. They were impartial—<br />
Bang!” —THE AFTERMATH, 1929<br />
“I cannot <strong>for</strong>ecast<br />
to you the action<br />
of Russia. It is a riddle<br />
wrapped in a mystery<br />
inside an enigma. But<br />
perhaps there is a key.<br />
That key is Russian<br />
national interest. It cannot be in accordance with the<br />
interest or the safety of Russia that Germany should plant<br />
itself upon the shores of the Black Sea, or that it should<br />
overrun the Balkan States and subjugate the Slavonic<br />
peoples of South-Eastern Europe. That would be contrary<br />
to the historic life-interests of Russia.”<br />
—BROADCAST, LONDON, 1 OCTOBER 1939<br />
kkkkk<br />
“I feel also that their word is their bond. I know of no<br />
Government which stands to its obligations, even in its own<br />
despite, more solidly than the Russian Soviet Government.”<br />
—HOUSE OF COMMONS, 27 FEBRUARY 1942<br />
kkkkk<br />
“Everybody has always underrated the Russians. They<br />
keep their own secrets alike from foe and friends.”<br />
—HOUSE OF COMMONS, 23 APRIL 1942<br />
kkkkk<br />
“Never <strong>for</strong>get that Bolsheviks are crocodiles.…I<br />
cannot feel the slightest trust or confidence in them. Force<br />
and facts are their only realities.” —CIRCA 1942; PRO, 2002<br />
kkkkk<br />
“It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism<br />
overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient<br />
States of Europe.” —21 OCTOBER 1942, THE HINGE OF FATE, 1950<br />
kkkkk<br />
“[After the war,] what will lie between the white<br />
snows of Russia and the white cliffs of Dover?”<br />
—CHEQUERS, 23 FEBRUARY 1945<br />
kkkkk<br />
“From what I have seen of our Russian friends and<br />
Allies during the war, I am convinced that there is nothing<br />
they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing <strong>for</strong><br />
which they have less respect than weakness, especially military<br />
weakness.” —FULTON, MISSOURI, 5 MARCH 1946<br />
kkkkk<br />
“There are thirteen or fourteen very able men in the<br />
Kremlin who hold all Russia and more than a third of Europe<br />
in their control.” —HOUSE OF COMMONS, 23 OCTOBER 1946<br />
kkkkk<br />
“The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds<br />
with falsehood and deny them truth <strong>for</strong> many generations<br />
of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen<br />
in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from<br />
God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of<br />
lies and oppression is on trial <strong>for</strong> its life. ”<br />
—MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, 31 MARCH 1949 ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/43
continued from page 33...<br />
Two Thumbs Up <strong>for</strong> Lionel and B-B-Bertie<br />
DAVID FREEMAN<br />
The King’s Speech: A film directed by<br />
Tom Hooper, written by David<br />
Seidler, with Colin Firth as George<br />
VI, Helena Bonham Carter as Queen<br />
Elizabeth, and Timothy Spall as<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, released 2010.<br />
In 1925, HRH Prince Albert, Duke of<br />
York, the twenty-nine-year-old second<br />
son of King George V, made his first<br />
broadcast speech at the closing of the<br />
Empire Exhibition at Wembley.<br />
Addressing an audience of 100,000, his<br />
words came haltingly, and he was<br />
acutely embarrassed. One man listening<br />
that day, a speech therapist recently<br />
arrived from Australia, remarked, “He’s<br />
too old <strong>for</strong> me to manage a complete<br />
cure, but I could very nearly do it.”<br />
_________________________________<br />
Professor Freeman teaches history at the<br />
University of Cali<strong>for</strong>nia Fullerton.<br />
Books, Arts<br />
& Curiosities<br />
One year<br />
later, with the<br />
Duke and<br />
Duchess<br />
about to visit<br />
Australia,<br />
Lionel Logue,<br />
his reputation<br />
outweighing<br />
his lack of<br />
medical credentials,<br />
was<br />
brought in.<br />
Therapy had<br />
been sought<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e, never<br />
with success,<br />
but the Duke<br />
and Logue hit it off from the start.<br />
HRH left their first meeting brimming<br />
with confidence. After two months of<br />
treatment, his delivery was significantly<br />
improved, and the Australian tour was a<br />
fine success.<br />
King George V was delighted.<br />
Although he had verbally abused his<br />
children when they were young, he<br />
admired the adult “Bertie,” his favored<br />
son and preferred successor. But primogeniture<br />
was not to be questioned in<br />
those days, and so arose the 1936<br />
Abdication Crisis.<br />
Once Edward VIII had abdicated<br />
and the Duke of York had become<br />
George VI, the latter asked Logue’s help<br />
preparing <strong>for</strong> his Coronation broadcast.<br />
Logue continued to prepare the King<br />
<strong>for</strong> big speeches until the end of the<br />
Second World War, but by Christmas<br />
1945, the King felt confident enough to<br />
manage on his own. Far from feeling<br />
discarded, Logue enjoyed the satisfaction<br />
of knowing his work was complete.<br />
“You know, Ma’am,” he said to Queen<br />
Elizabeth, “I feel like a father who is<br />
sending his boy to his first public<br />
school.” The Queen patted his arm and<br />
replied, “I know just how you feel.”<br />
This compelling story is nicely<br />
dramatized in The King’s Speech by<br />
screenwriter David Seidler, a Londoner<br />
whose own childhood stammer led him<br />
to see George VI as a hero. In fine<br />
Shakespearean fashion, Seidler telescopes<br />
events and takes some liberties with the<br />
facts in order to tell a dramatic story in<br />
a reasonable amount of time.<br />
In 1935, King George V is shown<br />
hectoring the adult Bertie about being<br />
tongue-tied, causing the Duke to turn<br />
to Logue ten years later than he actually<br />
did. (In reality, Bertie’s stammer was<br />
never debilitating, as Andrew Roberts<br />
wrote: “In fact it was relatively mild,<br />
and when he was concentrating hard on<br />
what he was saying it disappeared altogether.”)<br />
Roberts also noted that his brother<br />
never taunted Bertie <strong>for</strong> his stutter, or<br />
accused him of wanting to usurp his<br />
throne, adding: “the ludicrous old lies<br />
about Joachim von Ribbentrop sending<br />
Wallis Windsor seventeen red roses<br />
every day, and her working as a geisha<br />
in Shanghai, are trotted out to blacken<br />
her character and make the Yorks look<br />
better.” Improbably, the film suggests<br />
that Logue used the Duke’s family nickname<br />
and worked in a ramshackle<br />
office; in fact Logue had a smart set of<br />
rooms in Harley Street.<br />
After the Abdication of his<br />
brother, and George VI’s successful<br />
Coronation speech (which is skipped),<br />
the action fast-<strong>for</strong>wards to the start of<br />
the war, when the King has to deliver<br />
another major broadcast and calls upon<br />
the faithful Logue <strong>for</strong> assistance; this<br />
segment represents how the King prepared<br />
<strong>for</strong> all his broadcasts until the end<br />
of the war.<br />
Into this mix <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
is dropped rather gratuitously. Since all<br />
but the final scenes in the film take<br />
place during <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Wilderness<br />
Years of the 1930s, WSC’s screen-time<br />
FINESTHOUR150/44
is both brief and contrived. No doubt<br />
the point is to illustrate that George VI<br />
was the sovereign whom <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
served in the war, when the Royal<br />
Family, like <strong>Churchill</strong> himself, helped<br />
maintain public morale. In any case,<br />
Timothy Spall shows enough character<br />
and <strong>Churchill</strong>ian diction in his fleeting<br />
appearances to suggest that given the<br />
chance at an expansive portrayal, he<br />
would do a splendid job.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> is first shown disapprovingly<br />
waiting upon Edward VIII at<br />
Balmoral. He next appears privately suggesting<br />
to the Duke of York the use of<br />
George as a regal cognomen instead of<br />
Albert, which “sounds too German.”<br />
There is no evidence that this idea originated<br />
with <strong>Churchill</strong>, but the scene<br />
serves to make it clear to the audience<br />
that “Bertie” became George VI.<br />
Finally, <strong>Churchill</strong> appears in 1939,<br />
newly-installed as First Lord of the<br />
Admiralty, encouraging the King by<br />
saying he too once suffered from a<br />
speech impediment, which he turned to<br />
his advantage. In reality, <strong>Churchill</strong> never<br />
overcame his inability to pronounce the<br />
letter “s,” but the intention here is to<br />
convey that <strong>Churchill</strong> and his Sovereign<br />
had something in common.<br />
The most moving footage is the<br />
King’s successful war broadcast on 3<br />
September 1939—fictitiously attended<br />
by <strong>Churchill</strong>, Chamberlain and the<br />
Archbishop of Canterbury, as if they<br />
had nothing else to do that day.<br />
T-he King’s Speech won Best Picture<br />
and Best Actor Oscars in an offyear—it’s<br />
not exactly Gone with the<br />
Wind, after all—and is a touching, wellacted<br />
film. Planting explanatory lines,<br />
however ahistoric, in the mouths of<br />
characters is an acceptable dramatic<br />
practice to move the story along. Most<br />
of this is minor and <strong>for</strong>givable, except<br />
<strong>for</strong> one howler: Stanley Baldwin is<br />
shown submitting his resignation as<br />
Prime Minister in 1937 on the grounds<br />
that he had been wrong about Hitler<br />
and <strong>Churchill</strong> had been right, and<br />
in<strong>for</strong>ming the King that Chamberlain<br />
would succeed him.<br />
In fact, the supremely self-satisfied<br />
Baldwin retired <strong>for</strong> the sake of retiring,<br />
DRAMA AND REALITY: Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth (left) were well cast and played<br />
convincing roles as Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of York, later George VI. The real King and<br />
Queen greeted the crowd from Buckingham Palace on VE-Day, 8 May 1945 (right): Princess<br />
Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth, Prime Minister <strong>Churchill</strong>, King George VI and Princess Margaret.<br />
certain that Neville Chamberlain would<br />
continue his policies. It would be two<br />
years be<strong>for</strong>e major British leaders conceded<br />
that <strong>Winston</strong> was right. And, of<br />
course, it is the Sovereign’s prerogative<br />
whom to send <strong>for</strong> as Prime Minister.<br />
Even the smug Baldwin would not have<br />
mentioned a successor unless the King<br />
asked—and had he thought <strong>Winston</strong><br />
had been right, he would have suggested<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
If the film makes <strong>for</strong> better drama<br />
than it does history, it nevertheless gets<br />
one thing absolutely right. It was the<br />
Duke’s wife, later Queen Elizabeth, as<br />
Missing the Trees and the Forest<br />
TED HUTCHINSON<br />
charming as Helena Bonham Carter<br />
plays her, who encouraged Bertie to see<br />
Logue, offered moral support, assisted in<br />
the therapy sessions, and provided her<br />
testimonial to Lionel Logue in a bittersweet<br />
footnote to history.<br />
When in the 1950s the sad task<br />
fell to Queen Elizabeth the Queen<br />
Mother of selecting George VI’s official<br />
biographer, she chose John Wheeler-<br />
Bennett. If Wheeler-Bennett wrote with<br />
particular sensitivity about the matter of<br />
the King’s speech, it probably stemmed<br />
from the fact that he was himself a<br />
<strong>for</strong>mer patient of Lionel Logue. ,<br />
Christian Encounters: <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, by John Perry. Thomas<br />
Nelson, softbound, 166 pp., $12,<br />
Amazon.com $10.50, Kindle $8.99.<br />
The “Christian Encounters” line of<br />
books is a series of short biographies<br />
intended to “highlight important lives<br />
from all ages and areas of the Church,<br />
through prose as accessible and concise as<br />
it is personal and engaging.” Ostensibly,<br />
then, it should at least partially examine<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s inner spiritual life.<br />
The problem, which the author<br />
acknowledges, is that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s spiritu-<br />
____________________________________<br />
Mr. Hutchinson is Executive Director of the<br />
American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics,<br />
and editor of the society’s journal, JLME.<br />
ality is awfully hard to pin down. When<br />
he was young, <strong>Churchill</strong> could sound<br />
like a monkish devotee of the Christian<br />
Church one moment, only to say something<br />
positively atheistic the next.<br />
Sometimes these contrasting views were<br />
found even in the same letter home. >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/45
CHRISTIAN ENCOUNTERS...<br />
With few apparent beliefs to guide<br />
him, Perry is left to rely on the handful<br />
of pithy comments <strong>Churchill</strong> made<br />
about organized religion, his offhand<br />
reflection on God and fate in his<br />
speeches, and the beliefs and teachings<br />
of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s stalwart nanny, the decidedly<br />
low-church Mrs. Everest.<br />
As <strong>Churchill</strong> matured, organized<br />
religion became less of a focus in his life,<br />
and the second half of Perry’s volume<br />
becomes little more than another<br />
straight<strong>for</strong>ward biography. As an examination<br />
of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s spiritual life and<br />
relationship to Christianity the volume<br />
is hardly successful; but one cannot hold<br />
the author too accountable. He didn’t<br />
have much to work with.<br />
As a “brief life,” however, the<br />
book is really quite bad. It’s not just<br />
that it lacks any originality, or that it is<br />
no more than a thumbnail sketch; it’s<br />
that Perry just gets so much wrong.<br />
It begins, as problematical books<br />
often do, with the sources. Perry, <strong>for</strong><br />
instance, seems to think that John<br />
Pearson served as some sort of personal<br />
assistant to <strong>Churchill</strong> (135) and frequently<br />
uses Pearson’s ridiculous The<br />
Private Lives of <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
(demolished in FH 73) as a reliable<br />
source. He also quotes lighter books like<br />
Gretchen Rubin’s Forty Ways to Look at<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, while seeming to<br />
ignore Martin Gilbert, David Reynolds,<br />
and a host of other scholars who have<br />
added immeasurably to our understanding.<br />
It seems Perry did not use any<br />
primary documents at all, other than a<br />
handful of WSC’s best-known books;<br />
there are no references to the official<br />
biography document volumes in his bibliography,<br />
nor any acknowledged visits<br />
to actual archives.<br />
Problems with sources lead<br />
inevitably, as they often do, to problems<br />
in the text. A full list of the errors would<br />
be tedious, but <strong>for</strong> example: Perry badly<br />
misdates <strong>Churchill</strong>’s first visit to<br />
America (7) and says <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
Iroquois ancestors, a canard long discredited<br />
(2). He suggests, in a backdoor<br />
manner, that Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
homosexual, while offering no attribution<br />
<strong>for</strong> the suggestion (34). He tells us<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong> “unapologetically called<br />
The De Valera Deception, by Michael<br />
Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin & Patrick Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin.<br />
Enigma Books, hardbound, 436 pp,<br />
$23.95, member price $19.15.<br />
Michael Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin, longtime<br />
Finest Hour contributor, coauthored<br />
with Curt Zoller a fine 2007<br />
study of the influence the American congressman<br />
Bourke Cockran exercised<br />
upon young <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>. He has<br />
now applied his historical knowledge to<br />
fiction. Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin’s co-author is his<br />
son Patrick, an award-winning television<br />
producer, who brings to the project the<br />
ability to tell a fast-paced story that<br />
keeps readers’ attention.<br />
After leaving office as Chancellor<br />
of the Exchequer in 1929, <strong>Churchill</strong>, his<br />
son Randolph, brother Jack and nephew<br />
Johnny crossed the Atlantic <strong>for</strong> an<br />
extended tour of Canada and the United<br />
in the troops” to crush striking miners<br />
in 1910 (81). He frequently misquotes<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, and misunderstands basic<br />
facts about T. E. Lawrence (95). He<br />
deploys throwaway comments that<br />
betray an utter lack of understanding of<br />
his subject, such as the allegation that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> “had never been a family<br />
man” (149)—a statement that, at best,<br />
vastly oversimplifies the complex relationship<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had with his children,<br />
whom he dearly loved.<br />
Someday someone will write a<br />
very interesting book about <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s spiritual life. I can’t blame<br />
Perry <strong>for</strong> not achieving that goal; but<br />
even a brief biography should at very<br />
least acquaint readers with the most<br />
important sources, and strive to get<br />
basic facts right. ,<br />
Dev’s Dread Disciples; the Big Fella as Hero<br />
DAVID FREEMAN<br />
States. Their adventures have been well<br />
documented, and dramatized in The<br />
Wilderness Years starring Robert Hardy.<br />
Only now, though, more than eighty<br />
years later, can the full story be told—or<br />
at least imagined.<br />
It turns out that <strong>Churchill</strong> had an<br />
ulterior motive. During his journey he<br />
acted as secret envoy <strong>for</strong> the new prime<br />
minister, Ramsay MacDonald, to the<br />
new American president, Herbert<br />
Hoover. Along the way <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
shadowed by IRA terrorists, German<br />
spies and double agents. The adventure<br />
climaxed with an attempted assassination<br />
in a Hollywood hotel.<br />
Such is the storyline of The De<br />
Valera Deception, a “<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Thriller,” first in a series set in WSC’s<br />
Wilderness Years. In fact <strong>Churchill</strong> is not<br />
the main character. That role goes to<br />
Bourke Cockran, Jr., the fictitious son of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s real-life mentor.<br />
The real Bourke Cockran was a<br />
well-connected Irish-American politician.<br />
His fictitious son is a lawyer, like<br />
his father, who has inherited important<br />
contacts. Cockran Jr., it transpires,<br />
fought in the First World War and<br />
became deeply involved in “The<br />
Troubles” that consumed Ireland after<br />
1918. The legacy of his Irish activities,<br />
directed by the “Big Fella” himself—<br />
Michael Collins—provides the<br />
springboard into the narrative of The De<br />
Valera Deception.<br />
The governments of Britain and<br />
Ireland have been alerted to ef<strong>for</strong>ts by the<br />
Irish Republican Army to smuggle arms<br />
from the United States. The terrorists are<br />
diehard republicans opposed to the 1922<br />
settlement, in which <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
FINESTHOUR150/46
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Book Club<br />
Managed <strong>for</strong> the Centre by Chartwell<br />
Booksellers (www.churchillbooks.com),<br />
which offers member discounts up to<br />
25%. To order please contact<br />
Chartwell Booksellers, 55 East 52nd<br />
Street, New York, NY 10055.<br />
Email info@chartwellbooksellers.com<br />
Telephone (212) 308-0643<br />
Facsimile (212) 838-7423<br />
Collins participated, that resulted in the<br />
Irish Free State, a self-governing entity<br />
within the British Commonwealth.<br />
Behind their activities lurks the sinister<br />
hand of pre-Nazi Germany.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and his factotum<br />
Cockran set out to foil the dastardly<br />
plan and keep the peace throughout the<br />
British Isles. Along the way they receive<br />
assistance from such larger-than-life historical<br />
figures as William Randolph<br />
Hearst, “Wild Bill” Donovan, and even<br />
Frank “The En<strong>for</strong>cer” Nitti. Providing<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and Cockran with their<br />
greatest support, though, is intrepid<br />
Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary.<br />
She also serves as Cockran’s love<br />
interest, and the other main protagonist<br />
in the remaining books in the series.<br />
Among the IRA, Michael Collins<br />
The Right Words at the Right <strong>Time</strong><br />
comes off as a <strong>for</strong>mer hero and mentor,<br />
but the bad guys are very bad indeed.<br />
And here a word of caution: the wicked<br />
deeds of the antagonists and their<br />
inevitably grisly fates, set out in discomfiting<br />
detail, are not <strong>for</strong> the faint of<br />
heart. Wisely, the authors have kept<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> safely removed from the<br />
book’s more lurid passages.<br />
In fact <strong>Churchill</strong>’s primary role in<br />
the plot is to act as part spymaster and<br />
part father-confessor to Cockran and<br />
McGary, the latter represented as<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s goddaughter. <strong>Churchill</strong> also<br />
ties together the real historical background<br />
against which these imagined<br />
adventures are set. The result is something<br />
of a cross between the stories of<br />
John Buchan and Robert Ludlum.<br />
As <strong>for</strong> Eamon de Valera, whose<br />
name provides the title, his appearance<br />
is limited to a cameo. Still it is Dev’s<br />
actual ef<strong>for</strong>ts to establish himself as the<br />
dominant political <strong>for</strong>ce in Ireland that<br />
drive the events in this novel.<br />
While this is a work of fiction, the<br />
duplicity, backstabbing and graphic violence<br />
represented here were all too much<br />
a part of Ireland’s real struggle <strong>for</strong> selfgovernment.<br />
First in fact and now in<br />
fantasy, <strong>Churchill</strong> did his part to diffuse<br />
the dread situation. ,<br />
breadth of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s thinking (as does<br />
the editor’s introduction to each)—the<br />
flag, the island race, Commonwealth,<br />
equality, freedom of speech, freedom of<br />
religion, freedom from want and fear,<br />
freedom to vote, great Britons, independence,<br />
the individual, liberty, peace,<br />
the rule of law, service to the nation,<br />
war, work, opportunity and invention.<br />
Some of these are further broken down<br />
into sub-themes.<br />
I thought I detected a familiar<br />
chapter structure, and Langworth<br />
admitted to have been guided by<br />
Caroline Kennedy’s A Patriot’s<br />
Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and<br />
Speeches Celebrating the Land We<br />
Love. “I admired her anthology,” he<br />
says. “Although she quotes many<br />
authors, its structure gets to the root of<br />
what we think of when we think, rarely<br />
enough, of patriotism. <strong>Churchill</strong>, of<br />
course, thought of it frequently. But that<br />
was another time.”<br />
The source of every quotation is<br />
cited (a real strength in Langworth’s<br />
books), many coming from Hansard, or<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s books and articles (15<br />
million words), or writings by others<br />
quoting him. An index makes finding<br />
specific thoughts relatively easy, though<br />
readers may simply prefer to page<br />
through the collection, finding treasures<br />
and insights as they go. A handy pocket<br />
size encourages one to take it along. ,<br />
CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING<br />
____________________________________<br />
Professor Sterling teaches media law and<br />
policy at George Washington University.<br />
The Patriot’s <strong>Churchill</strong>: An Inspiring<br />
Collection of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Finest Words,<br />
Richard M. Langworth, editor. Ebury<br />
Press, 170 pp., £9.99, available from<br />
Amazon UK (http://xrl.us/bijnxx)<br />
Needing no introduction to readers of<br />
this journal is the editor of Finest<br />
Hour, and the definitive collection of documented<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> quotations. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
By Himself (2008), Langworth here distills<br />
the vibrant kernel of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
words on patriotic themes. Patriotism<br />
being a topic close to <strong>Churchill</strong>’s heart, he<br />
could, as might be expected, express that<br />
theme in many ways.<br />
The hundreds of brief selections are<br />
provided chronologically under chapter<br />
headings that provide a sense of the<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>: A Verse Biography, by<br />
Gillian Bence-Jones. T-Link,<br />
softbound, 60 pp., £7.99.<br />
Given that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s life has been<br />
told in countless <strong>for</strong>ms and languages<br />
(even comic books), why not<br />
tackle the long saga in verse? Gillian >><br />
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Christmas Eve, 1941<br />
MICHAEL RICHARDS<br />
In the Dark Streets Shineth: A 1941<br />
Christmas Eve Story, by David<br />
McCullough. Shadow Mountain, 56<br />
pp., hardbound, illus. with DVD,<br />
$19.99, Amazon.com $12.07.<br />
The noted biographer of Harry<br />
Truman and John Adams created<br />
this book <strong>for</strong> the 2010 Christmas<br />
season. It comprises an essay by the<br />
author, the 1941 addresses by President<br />
Roosevelt and Prime Minister <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
(then in Washington) at the lighting of<br />
the White House Christmas tree; a<br />
touching photo collection of Americans<br />
during World War II; and a DVD of<br />
McCullough’s presentation of the story<br />
at the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s 2009<br />
Christmas concert, including the choir’s<br />
WINSTON...<br />
Bence-Jones, described by her publisher<br />
as an East Anglian landowner of 77, was<br />
inspired to write this book by reading<br />
Walt Whitman’s poem about Abraham<br />
Lincoln.<br />
Written in blank verse, the nonrhyming<br />
<strong>for</strong>m of poetry, the book<br />
distills down (or mixes in) the many<br />
events, people, and ups and downs in<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s private and public lives in<br />
very concise stanzas. The <strong>for</strong>mat,<br />
divided into six parts, naturally eliminates<br />
most detail and explanation—this<br />
is more about the highlights, though<br />
Bence-Jones does include many of the<br />
great man’s famous words, which fit<br />
right in.<br />
Here and there through the book<br />
the author’s own life mixes in (her<br />
memories as a child, and whether<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s state funeral might have<br />
<strong>for</strong>ced a change in her long-scheduled<br />
wedding—it did not). These are not<br />
deep waters. You can read the whole<br />
thing in less than a half hour. ,<br />
per<strong>for</strong>mances of “O Little Town of<br />
Bethlehem” and “I’ll Be Home <strong>for</strong><br />
Christmas.” Critics seem undecided on<br />
whether the book is a narcissistic exercise<br />
by someone who enjoys hearing his voice<br />
or a nostalgia piece. Eva Mitnick in the<br />
Library Journal considered the lead essay<br />
(“Music is Part of Our History”) inconsequential,<br />
saying the work “isn’t<br />
particularly successful as either a<br />
Christmas book or an account of an<br />
important moment in history.” The<br />
story of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s 1941 visit, of course,<br />
is already well known from a multitude<br />
of previous books, and the Roosevelt and<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> speeches were brief.<br />
On the other hand, many readers<br />
praise the book, especially the DVD<br />
recording and the FDR and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
speeches: “It would take a tougher heart<br />
than mine not to shed a tear,” says one.<br />
“This book is a touching and appropriate<br />
gift...especially <strong>for</strong> those who share<br />
memories of WW2 or their loved ones<br />
that have been far away from home....”<br />
It is certainly priced more modestly than<br />
it might have been.<br />
k<br />
“Let the children have their<br />
night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of<br />
Father Christmas delight their play. Let<br />
us grown-ups share to the full in their<br />
unstinted pleasures be<strong>for</strong>e we turn again<br />
to the stern task and the <strong>for</strong>midable years<br />
that lie be<strong>for</strong>e us, resolved that, by our<br />
sacrifice and daring, these same children<br />
shall not be robbed of their inheritance<br />
or denied their right to live in a free and<br />
decent world. And so, in God’s mercy, a<br />
happy Christmas to you all.”<br />
—WSC, 24 December 1941 ,<br />
History as Exposé<br />
EARL BAKER<br />
Secrets of the Dead: <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Deadly<br />
Decision, produced by Richard Bond,<br />
aired by PBS in June 2010. DVD<br />
$22.49 from Amazon.com.<br />
he British accomplished a diffi-<br />
sensitive yet necessary “Tcult,<br />
military operation July 3, 1940, when<br />
they ensured the large and powerful fleet<br />
of the vanquished French nation would<br />
not be turned against them in a war in<br />
which their existing alliance had been<br />
abandoned by the French, and were left<br />
to fight on alone....the French authorities<br />
were in<strong>for</strong>med that a situation in<br />
which those ships could be turned<br />
against the solitary British war ef<strong>for</strong>t<br />
could not be tolerated. The French<br />
signed an armistice with the Germans<br />
which ordered their navy to return to<br />
French ports under the supervision of<br />
the German government. What would<br />
you have done? What do you think<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> should have done?”<br />
PBS asks these questions about<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s decision to attack the French<br />
fleet at Oran and Mers-el-Kébir in July<br />
1940—and then proceeds to condition<br />
the viewer about the character of the<br />
players. The video provides important<br />
comments by scholars, interviews aging<br />
survivors, and runs contemporary film<br />
clips; but by the end, you have seen and<br />
heard enough insinuations, innuendos<br />
and implications to make you suspect<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong> betrayed his allies, was<br />
perhaps a war criminal, and at the least<br />
was willing to kill French sailors to<br />
impress distant America. (Just to make<br />
sure you get it, all these implications are<br />
on the packaging, to be read be<strong>for</strong>e you<br />
insert the video in your CD player.)<br />
The video is in a series called<br />
“Secrets of the Dead,” which PBS says<br />
will explore “iconic moments in history<br />
to debunk myths and shed new light on<br />
past events….[it] shatters accepted<br />
wisdom, challenges prevailing ideas,<br />
overturns existing hypotheses, spotlights<br />
<strong>for</strong>gotten mysteries, and ultimately<br />
____________________________________<br />
Mr. Baker (earlbaker@idv.net) is a longtime<br />
CC member living in Wayne, Pennsylvania.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/48
ewrites history.” My chief question is:<br />
does this history need rewriting?<br />
In today’s era of tabloid news,<br />
packaging containing sinister words like<br />
“controversial…blackmail…deadly” and<br />
close-ups of <strong>Churchill</strong> in dour mood is<br />
routine sensationalism to get you to buy<br />
the video: history as exposé. I believe<br />
that the producers respect and admire<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, but I tend to see the product<br />
more televised suspense than balanced<br />
documentary.<br />
The conclusion (including comments<br />
by a French survivor) seems<br />
finally, if somewhat reluctantly, to<br />
provide support <strong>for</strong> the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Cabinet’s decision to attack. The<br />
strongest part is the factual story line,<br />
portrayed effectively in stills and in<br />
some cases by actors.<br />
Among experts, Sir Martin Gilbert<br />
is his usual knowledgeable and articulate<br />
self; naval historian Andrew Lambert is<br />
low-keyed and excellent; Warren<br />
Kimball is as usual on top of the issues;<br />
the survivors are touchingly authentic. I<br />
was disappointed, however, to hear<br />
Professor Kimball say that the action<br />
“showed the British would fight…even<br />
if they fought dirty.” Did the Marquess<br />
of Queensberry rules apply in World<br />
War II? “I daresay he had to do some<br />
pretty rough things, but they didn’t<br />
unman him,” Lady Soames recalled of<br />
her father.<br />
Balance particularly fails in the<br />
More Darlan Film Notes: Casablanca<br />
“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she<br />
walks into mine.” —Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in<br />
Casablanca, with Rains, Henreid and Bergman, 1942.<br />
Emily and Norman<br />
Rosenberg, professors<br />
of American and<br />
international history,<br />
offer an interesting<br />
sidelight on Darlan<br />
from the classic 1942<br />
film Casablanca.<br />
In the movie, the<br />
fugitive Czechoslovak,<br />
Victor Laszlo (Paul<br />
Henreid), and his wife<br />
Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman),<br />
ex-lover of Rick Blaine<br />
(Humphrey Bogart),<br />
need Rick’s purloined<br />
“letters of transit,”<br />
signed by Charles de Gaulle, which will give them safe passage to America—<br />
letters which Rick eventually passes to them, then makes off with Inspector<br />
Louis Renault (Claude Rains) to join the French Resistance.<br />
When Norm Rosenberg wrote an article analyzing Casablanca and<br />
mentioning the de Gaulle role, a professor in Europe cited a major “auditory<br />
error,” saying that the letters would almost certainly have been signed by<br />
Darlan, then the Vichy prime minister, not the exiled and outlawed de Gaulle.<br />
Norm called screenwriter Howard Koch to ask if and why the switch was<br />
made from Darlan to de Gaulle. Koch simply said it was because de Gaulle<br />
was better known.<br />
Can a reader watch a European version of Casablanca and tell us if<br />
the name cited (early in the film) is Darlan? We may then answer Prof.<br />
Rosenberg’s speculation that the European version was historically accurate.<br />
If so, the U.S. version certainly took the better moral approach.<br />
Incidentally, Claude Rains is buried just a few miles from FH’s home<br />
office in New Hampshire. We pay occasional visits, always reciting Bogie’s<br />
final line: “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” ,<br />
portrayal of French Admiral Darlan,<br />
who is made out to be an authoritative<br />
and trustworthy figure (lots of close-ups<br />
of the Admiral splendidly uni<strong>for</strong>med<br />
with determined expressions). We are<br />
not told that Darlan was an<br />
Anglophobe, an anti-Semite, a liar and a<br />
pompous ass, one of the most reviled<br />
Vichy leaders, who, when assassinated at<br />
the end of 1942, was unmourned. A<br />
rounder view of Darlan would have<br />
better in<strong>for</strong>med the account of his role<br />
in July 1940.<br />
What about the collapse of the<br />
French army—and the French government,<br />
which abandoned its solemn<br />
commitment not to make a separate<br />
peace? We may sympathize with the<br />
French in the throes of their shame and<br />
surrender, but it does not alter the fact<br />
that they left their ally alone and were<br />
ready to put their fleet under German<br />
supervision.<br />
Contrary to “fighting dirty,” the<br />
video shows that the engagement was<br />
preceded by clear and open high-level<br />
messages by the British, offering<br />
numerous alternatives to an attack,<br />
seeking to avoid fighting their <strong>for</strong>mer<br />
ally—including personally delivered<br />
messages to the field commanders: a<br />
punctilious concern that seems almost<br />
archaic today. The British even sent a<br />
high-ranking, French-speaking officer to<br />
meet with the French Admiral, extended<br />
the deadline to allow them to meet—he<br />
was received in high dudgeon by an<br />
Admiral miffed because he held the rank<br />
of a mere Captain.<br />
If you can ignore the hype engendered<br />
by the need to sell CDs, this is a<br />
well=done video about a painful but significant<br />
incident. The decision to attack<br />
the French Fleet was made under conditions<br />
created by the Germans and<br />
French, not the British, who were <strong>for</strong>ced<br />
to react. And they did.<br />
Oran became a dramatic and historic<br />
climacteric in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
premiership, demonstrating that Britain<br />
was determined to fight on, as he said,<br />
“if necessary <strong>for</strong> years, if necessary<br />
alone.” I suppose history and entertainment<br />
may converge once in a while<br />
among the skulls, tombs and secrets of<br />
the dead. ,<br />
reviews continue overleaf >><br />
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Memories, but No Startling Revelations<br />
BARBARA F. LANGWORTH<br />
My Years with the <strong>Churchill</strong>s: A Young<br />
Girl’s Memories, by Heather White-<br />
Smith. Cotesworth, 64 pp.,<br />
softbound, £9 from Amazon UK.<br />
Heather Wood was only seventeen<br />
when she was hired as a secretary<br />
to assist Grace Hamblin with<br />
Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong>’s correspondence<br />
at Ten Downing Street in 1953. Her<br />
charming little book reads like many<br />
reminiscences of people associated with<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong>s published over the years<br />
in Finest Hour, but is light on new contributions<br />
to history. There are no<br />
startling revelations and many of the<br />
incidents have been presented be<strong>for</strong>e.<br />
Jo Sturdee (Lady Onslow), Sir<br />
John Colville, Edmund Murray, Sir<br />
Anthony Montague Browne and other<br />
members of the entourage have written<br />
about working day to day with the<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s. The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre has<br />
heard the only words ever spoken in<br />
public by the inimitable Grace Hamblin<br />
at the 1987 Dallas conference, later<br />
published as “Chartwell Memories,” in<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Proceedings 1987 and later<br />
reprinted in FH 117.<br />
White-Smith helped with dictation,<br />
shopped <strong>for</strong> Mrs. <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
arranged the flowers Clementine so<br />
loved. She was at Number Ten when Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> was knighted, when he<br />
received the Nobel Prize <strong>for</strong> Literature<br />
in 1953, and when he resigned in April<br />
1955. She saw many famous visitors and<br />
spent hours with Lady <strong>Churchill</strong>,<br />
accompanying her to St. Moritz where<br />
Clementine was treated <strong>for</strong> neuritis.<br />
The book is a series of vignettes,<br />
some of which are new to us. One<br />
evening, Sir Winton’s valet could not<br />
get to Chartwell to run his bath.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was reputed to be mechanically<br />
hopeless, even lacking the ability to<br />
squeeze his own toothpaste, but his quip<br />
on this occasion betrayed amusement<br />
with that idea: “…if I turned on the<br />
taps myself, with a little bit of luck,<br />
some water may come out.”<br />
A friend, Lady Thurso, gave<br />
Clementine a Siamese kitten named<br />
Gabriel. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> was “roped” into<br />
taking him to Chartwell and they wondered<br />
how he would manage this “saucy<br />
cat.” Sir <strong>Winston</strong> “gave Gabriel a long,<br />
hard stare and said to him very firmly, ‘I<br />
am your Father and ’tis a great honour!’<br />
And, of course, all went well.”<br />
In February 1956 at 28 Hyde Park<br />
Gate, Lady <strong>Churchill</strong> was ill and proposed<br />
a sea voyage to Ceylon to<br />
recuperate, asking Heather join her.<br />
Then only twenty, White-Smith wanted<br />
to carry on with her life and felt she was<br />
missing family time. Reluctantly she<br />
announced that she would be leaving<br />
The Compleat Wrks of Wnstn Chrchl (Abridged)<br />
MAX EDWARD HERTWIG<br />
“The Man Who Saved Europe: How<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Stopped the<br />
Nazis,” by Klaus Wiegrefe. Der<br />
Spiegel Online http://xrl.us/bijvec.<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong>s’ employ. As a mature<br />
woman, she wonders if she made the<br />
right decision.<br />
Her impressions of the <strong>Churchill</strong>s<br />
are classic: “What I remember most of<br />
all, in spite of his obvious fame and<br />
greatness, were his unique reactions to<br />
the challenges he faced during his life,<br />
whether political or personal, and his<br />
wonderful kindness. Throughout everything<br />
he never failed to show his<br />
puckish sense of humour. Of course he<br />
could be angry and upset at times, but<br />
he was never arrogant or rude.”<br />
Of Lady <strong>Churchill</strong>, whose companion<br />
she was on many occasions, the<br />
author writes that she was quiet, but<br />
“rarely calm.” Clementine, she adds, was<br />
“the intellectual equal to Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
and well able to give him unbiased<br />
opinions on any subject….beautiful,<br />
charming, well-read and multi-lingual,<br />
[she was] the perfect companion <strong>for</strong> the<br />
great man.”<br />
It is disappointing that White-<br />
Smith does not recall the scary time in<br />
June 1953 when <strong>Churchill</strong> suffered a<br />
severe stroke at 10 Downing Street (see<br />
also pages 23 and 28). News of this was<br />
kept from the public and from<br />
Parliament, who were told that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was suffering from exhaustion.<br />
He went to Chartwell to<br />
recuperate from the effects of the stroke<br />
which had affected his speech and<br />
ability to walk. ,<br />
This nine-part webpost is oddly<br />
remindful of “The Compleat Wrks<br />
of Wilm Shkspr (Abridged),” in which<br />
three actors deliver all of Shakespeare’s<br />
works in a couple of hours.<br />
There’s nothing particularly novel<br />
or new in this series. Aside from the<br />
familiar attempts to cast <strong>Churchill</strong> as<br />
occasionally demoniac, it agrees that he<br />
“Saved Europe.” But one would do<br />
better reading about World War II on<br />
Wikipedia—or, if you have time, one of<br />
the good specialty studies, like Geoffrey<br />
Best’s <strong>Churchill</strong> and War—or, if you<br />
really want to know what <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
thought, his abridged war memoirs. The<br />
FINESTHOUR150/50
early parts dwell on the sagas of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and Hitler starting in 1932.<br />
Wiegrefe then skips ahead to the<br />
bombing of Germany (which he says<br />
killed mostly civilians, and on which<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was “strangely ambivalent”),<br />
and the postwar division of Europe.<br />
Much is oversimplified and fails to consider<br />
the contemporary reality of<br />
fighting <strong>for</strong> survival—which, after all, is<br />
what Britain was doing.<br />
Part 1 recounts the timeworn<br />
story of the stillborn Hitler-<strong>Churchill</strong><br />
meeting, which Hitler’s pro-British<br />
<strong>for</strong>eign press chief, “Putzi” Hanfstaengl,<br />
attempted to arrange in Munich in<br />
1932. Wiegrefe’s account (based on<br />
Hanfstaengl’s 1957 memoirs) is reasonably<br />
accurate, but concludes that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> felt “regret” that the meeting<br />
did not take place. Not so. What<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> wrote was: “Thus Hitler lost<br />
his only chance of meeting me. Later<br />
on, when he was all-powerful, I was to<br />
receive several invitations from him. But<br />
by that time a lot had happened, and I<br />
excused myself.” (Gathering Storm, 66).<br />
This hardly sounds like regret.<br />
In World War II, Wiegrefe writes,<br />
Britain’s premier “conducted a significant<br />
portion of government affairs from<br />
a horizontal position. Dressed in his red<br />
dressing gown, he would lie on his fourposter<br />
bed, chewing a cigar and sipping<br />
ice-cold soda water, and dictate<br />
memos...often titled ‘Action This Day.’”<br />
Of course he dictated correspondence<br />
(sitting up) in bed of a morning.<br />
It helped him squeeze a day and a half<br />
out of every day. He did not conduct<br />
the war from his mattress. It’s trivial,<br />
but “Action This Day” was a label not a<br />
title, and he never drank iced soda<br />
water. What he drank was a kind of<br />
“scotch-flavored mouthwash.”<br />
The author seems confused over<br />
the likelihood of a 1940 German invasion<br />
of Britain, first saying it was never<br />
planned, then that Hitler was ready to<br />
launch it if the RAF “could be put out<br />
of commission first,” then adding: “The<br />
Germans felt they stood a better chance<br />
of succeeding in May 1941....” (When<br />
they were about to invade the Soviet<br />
Union?) The imminence of invasion<br />
seemed real enough when the Battle of<br />
Britain hung by a thread.<br />
Some authors will never get over<br />
the idea that <strong>Churchill</strong> contemplated<br />
using “poison gas,” whether he meant<br />
tear gas (Iraq, 1922) or the real stuff.<br />
Why, he “even toyed with the idea of<br />
dropping poison gas on German cities,<br />
but his generals objected.” Any source<br />
<strong>for</strong> that? (We know he was willing to<br />
use it in battle—if they used it first.)<br />
Understandably Germans felt the<br />
horror of the air bombardment of<br />
Germany more than anyone else, and<br />
Wiegrefe doesn’t fail to claim that<br />
600,000 died, even <strong>Churchill</strong> admitting<br />
that the bombings were “mere acts of<br />
terror and wanton destruction.” This is<br />
a bad condensation of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s views.<br />
Dresden, WSC wrote to his Chiefs of<br />
Staff Committee and Air Marshal<br />
Portal, “remains a serious query against<br />
the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of<br />
the opinion that military objectives<br />
must hence<strong>for</strong>ward be more strictly<br />
studied in our own interests rather than<br />
that of the enemy...rather than on mere<br />
acts of terror and wanton destruction,<br />
however impressive” (Martin Gilbert,<br />
Road to Victory, 1257).<br />
Oversimplification is rampant in<br />
Part 9, “<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Role in the<br />
Expulsion of Germans from Easter[n]<br />
Europe,” accusing him of “ethnic<br />
cleansing” in moving Poland west at the<br />
expense of German areas like Silesia, to<br />
accommodate Stalin’s westerly ambitions.<br />
The shift of territory, Wiegrefe<br />
writes, required giving resident Germans<br />
“a brief amount of time to gather the<br />
bare necessities and leave.”<br />
Like the Jews of Warsaw, perhaps.<br />
Leaving to one side how much personal<br />
responsibility <strong>Churchill</strong> bore <strong>for</strong> the<br />
maltreatment of deportees—which often<br />
appalled him, whoever was maltreated—<br />
one’s heart doesn’t exactly bleed.<br />
A cooler observer might include<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s 1942 comment: “The<br />
Germans have received back again that<br />
measure of fire and steel which they<br />
have so often meted out to others.” Or<br />
his memoirs of 1945: “My hate had<br />
died with their surrender and I was<br />
much moved by their demonstrations,<br />
and also by their haggard looks and<br />
threadbare clothes.”<br />
Perhaps the short scope of Internet<br />
posts prevents deeper analysis, but there<br />
is no attempt throughout these articles<br />
to consider the reality and complexities<br />
of fighting a resolute and <strong>for</strong>midable<br />
enemy while allied with a third party,<br />
the Soviet Union, that might flip or flop<br />
various ways depending on its interests,<br />
or play off the Anglo-Americans against<br />
each other—which Stalin freely did.<br />
Seventy years on, we have the luxury<br />
to sniff at <strong>Churchill</strong>’s representing<br />
the fate of Silesian Germans with<br />
matchsticks, or suggesting “spheres of<br />
influence” in Eastern Europe (which<br />
saved Greece). We should pause to<br />
reflect that war is hell, as General<br />
Sherman said, and that nobody knew at<br />
the time who would win.<br />
At the end of the war, “the only<br />
decision remaining <strong>for</strong> the Allies was to<br />
determine what to do with Hitler and<br />
the Germans once they were defeated.”<br />
(No worries about Japan, the role of the<br />
United Nations, decolonization, nuclear<br />
technology, or European recovery.)<br />
“<strong>Churchill</strong> vacillated between extremes,<br />
between a Carthaginian peace and<br />
chivalrous generosity. In the end,<br />
Stalin’s and Roosevelt’s ideas prevailed.”<br />
We search <strong>for</strong> examples of the<br />
Carthaginian peace toward which<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> vacillated. Did he not walk<br />
out at Teheran, when Stalin proposed<br />
mass executions? Did he not reject the<br />
Morgenthau Plan of reducing Germany<br />
to an agrarian state, stripped of the<br />
industry to support herself? Did he not<br />
endorse the postwar Berlin Airlift, and<br />
urge rapprochement between France<br />
and Germany? Was he not the champion<br />
of Adenauer, and as good a friend<br />
abroad as Germany ever had?<br />
“Be<strong>for</strong>e the Holocaust,” we are<br />
in<strong>for</strong>med, “<strong>Churchill</strong> toyed with the<br />
idea of banishing Hitler and other top<br />
Nazis to an isolated island, just as<br />
Napoleon had once been banished to<br />
Elba. Or perhaps he was simply tipsy<br />
when he voiced this idea.”<br />
Perhaps Herr Wiegrefe was simply<br />
tipsy when he wrote these articles. What<br />
we have here is a rough capsule history<br />
of the war, along with several clangers<br />
and exaggerations. But in the main this<br />
account is, as an earlier reviewer once<br />
said of a much longer <strong>Churchill</strong> critique:<br />
“Too easy to be good.” ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/51
C H U R C H I L L I N F I C T I O N<br />
Historical Characters<br />
in Need of Character<br />
M I C H A E L M C M E N A M I N<br />
HHH<br />
Novels are rated one to three stars on<br />
two questions: accuracy of the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
portrayal and reading value. The<br />
following two novels are both worth<br />
reading, and similar only in the fact that<br />
both employ real characters, including<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>. But neither should be read<br />
<strong>for</strong> that reason alone, because they will<br />
probably disappoint.<br />
Fall of Giants, by Ken Follett<br />
(Dutton, 2010, hardbound),<br />
Amazon.com $18.69, Kindle $19.99.<br />
Portrayal H Worth Reading HHH<br />
Ken Follett’s latest is a big production<br />
aat 986 pages. Billed as “Book One<br />
of the Century Trilogy,” it covers the period<br />
1911 to 1924. Book Two will carry<br />
the story through the end of World War<br />
II, and a third book will cover the Cold<br />
War period.<br />
Follett’s fictional characters, who<br />
come from Britain, Russia, Germany<br />
and America, are involved in a wide<br />
range of accurately portrayed events:<br />
Welsh coal mine strikes and mine safety<br />
deficiencies, women’s suffrage, the excesses<br />
of pre-1914 Russian and British<br />
aristocracy, origins of the Great War<br />
(fairly presented from all sides, including<br />
the Britons and Germans who wished to<br />
avoid war), Woodrow Wilson’s 1914<br />
war of dubious legality with Mexico, the<br />
horrors of the great war on land and sea,<br />
the two Russian revolutions (1916,<br />
1917), Allied intervention against the<br />
Bolsheviks, Germany’s dramatic push to<br />
win the war in 1917 be<strong>for</strong>e American<br />
troops could arrive, the draconian Versailles<br />
Treaty. It’s all there and well told.<br />
Historical characters include<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, Grey, Asquith, French, Lloyd<br />
George; Germany’s Hindenburg, Ludendorff,<br />
Bethmann-Hollweg and Zimmermann;<br />
Russia’s Lenin and Trotsky;<br />
America’s Wilson and Bryan. But sadly,<br />
they are all mere cardboard stage props,<br />
inserted and deployed to lend little except<br />
verisimilitude.<br />
In a note at the end of the novel<br />
Follett explains his use of historical characters<br />
in a novel: “In some cases…my<br />
fictional characters are witnessing an<br />
event that really happened. A speech by<br />
Sir Edward Grey in Parliament, <strong>for</strong> example,<br />
is Grey’s actual words, though<br />
shortened. Sometimes a real person goes<br />
to a fictional location, as when <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> visits [the imaginary Welsh estate<br />
of] Ty Gwyn. In that case, I have<br />
made sure that it was not unusual <strong>for</strong><br />
him to visit country houses, and that he<br />
could well have done so at around that<br />
date. When real people have conversations<br />
with my fictional characters, they<br />
are usually saying things they really did<br />
say at some point….My rule is: either<br />
the scene did happen, or it might have;<br />
____________________________________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin, who writes “Action This Day” in each issue of FH, is co-author of Becoming<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, the Untold Story of Young <strong>Winston</strong> and His American <strong>Men</strong>tor. He and his<br />
journalist son Patrick are writing a series of “<strong>Churchill</strong> Thrillers” set during 1929-39, the first of<br />
which, The De Valera Deception, is reviewed on page 46. See www.winstonchurchillthrillers.com.<br />
The <strong>Churchill</strong> of Fall of Giants<br />
either these words were used, or they<br />
might have been.”<br />
In the case of <strong>Churchill</strong>, who is<br />
mentioned often but rarely actually appears,<br />
Follett’s descriptions don’t really<br />
sound like him.<br />
At a 1918 dinner party at Ty Gwyn,<br />
<strong>for</strong> example, the “star guest was <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>. <strong>Winston</strong> was a member of the<br />
Liberal Party and might have been expected<br />
to sympathize with [Welsh] revolutionaries;<br />
but he was also the grandson<br />
of a duke, and he had an authoritarian<br />
streak. Fitz [<strong>Churchill</strong>’s host] had long<br />
thought of him as a traitor to his class,<br />
but was now inclined to <strong>for</strong>give him because<br />
his hatred of the Bolsheviks was<br />
passionate.” Authoritarian?<br />
Later, during the dinner party, Follett<br />
puts more accurate thoughts in the<br />
dinner host’s head: “There’s much talk<br />
about why the Prime Minister had<br />
brought back such a troublesome and<br />
unpredictable colleague and the consensus<br />
was that he preferred to have<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> inside the tent spitting out.”<br />
And some of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s dialogue is<br />
accurate: “‘The Bolshevik regime should<br />
be strangled at birth,’ <strong>Winston</strong> said. He<br />
looked thoughtful. ‘Strangled at birth,’<br />
he repeated, pleased with the expression.<br />
Fitz controlled his impatience. Sometimes<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> imagined he had devised<br />
a policy when all he had done was coin a<br />
phrase.”<br />
These latter characterizations are<br />
scarcely inaccurate, but let’s draw the<br />
line at saying <strong>Churchill</strong> had an “authoritarian<br />
streak.” Even his worst Tory detractors—of<br />
which there were many—<br />
weren’t saying that in 1918. Follett, having<br />
used <strong>Churchill</strong> as a literary character<br />
FINESTHOUR150/52
in the past, should know better. In his<br />
Man from St. Petersburg (FH 143),<br />
WSC was a key character with a major<br />
supporting role.<br />
The problem with <strong>Churchill</strong> is that<br />
of the other real characters: they don’t<br />
come to life. Given Follett’s decision to<br />
tell the story almost exclusively through<br />
fictional characters, the speaking roles of<br />
real characters are limited, giving little<br />
opportunity <strong>for</strong> their personalities to<br />
emerge except through dialogue—and<br />
here Follett is very sparing.<br />
We can only hope that Ken Follett<br />
will take a different approach in Book<br />
Two and give a major role in the plot to<br />
and more dialogue from <strong>Churchill</strong>, Roosevelt,<br />
Stalin and Hitler, allowing the<br />
reader a feel <strong>for</strong> their character. Still, this<br />
was an entertaining and enjoyable book<br />
with an excellent grasp of the broad<br />
sweep of history on a massive array of<br />
world-shaping events during the first<br />
quarter of the 20th century.<br />
Emily Dunnit,<br />
But Who Done Emily?<br />
A Weekend at Blenheim, by J. P.<br />
Morrissey (Dunn, 2002, paperback),<br />
Amazon.com $18.23, Kindle $9.99.<br />
Portrayal H Worth Reading HH<br />
Both an English country house murder<br />
mystery and a historical whodunnit,<br />
Morrissey’s novel features an<br />
equal number of historical and fictional<br />
characters. The <strong>for</strong>mer include<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s first cousin Sunny, Ninth<br />
Duke of Marlborough; his wife, the<br />
American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt;<br />
the Duke’s American mistress Gladys<br />
Deacon; Consuelo’s mother Alva Vanderbilt<br />
Belmont; the American artist<br />
John Singer Sargent and of course<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> himself.<br />
The protagonist is an American architect,<br />
John Vanbrugh, namesake of<br />
Blenheim’s designer, engaged by Consuelo<br />
to redesign her rooms. Vanbrugh<br />
and his wife Margaret are invited to<br />
spend a weekend at Blenheim so that he<br />
can inspect the job. The year is 1905.<br />
In his own note about historical<br />
characters, Morrissey discusses his “actual<br />
places and people” at length. While many<br />
of the settings and characters “are based<br />
on actual places and people,” the house<br />
party comprising the main plot “is a complete<br />
invention (as is the novel’s narrator),<br />
though it is certainly plausible that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> [and the other historical characters]<br />
could have strolled the corridors<br />
and gardens of Blenheim together. But<br />
what they say—and perhaps more important,<br />
what prompts them to act—are my<br />
invention.”<br />
Obviously this leaves Morrissey far<br />
more leeway then Ken Follett left <strong>for</strong><br />
himself in Fall of Giants. The reason is<br />
the genre. Follett wrote a historical novel<br />
based on actual events. Morrissey, like<br />
Follett in The Man from St. Petersburg,<br />
places real historical characters in a fictional<br />
story.<br />
At a recent suspense and mystery<br />
fiction convention in San Francisco, I<br />
was on a panel with several authors, including<br />
one who wrote mysteries featuring<br />
Ernest Hemingway as an amateur<br />
detective. Everyone on the panel agreed<br />
that when you place a real historical<br />
character in a situation that never happened,<br />
you still have an obligation to get<br />
the character right. I gave only one star<br />
<strong>for</strong> the portrayal of <strong>Churchill</strong>, though I<br />
otherwise enjoyed the book.<br />
Morrissey’s <strong>Winston</strong> has many lines<br />
of dialogue, with both real characters<br />
and imaginary ones. WSC’s conversations<br />
with the Marlboroughs are well<br />
done, accurately portraying their mutual<br />
affection.<br />
But when you’re writing real characters<br />
into a piece of fiction, it is easy to<br />
destroy the suspension of disbelief which<br />
fiction requires. Notwithstanding Morrissey’s<br />
wide knowledge of Edwardian<br />
The <strong>Churchill</strong> of A Weekend at Blenheim<br />
England, that point arrived <strong>for</strong> me when<br />
the thirty-one-year-old <strong>Churchill</strong> announces,<br />
“I am painting tomorrow.” To<br />
which Consuelo adds “Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong> is<br />
the family artist. It is a wonder that my<br />
husband engaged Mr. Sargent at all.”<br />
Whoops! An elementary <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
fact is that, while he drew as a boy, he<br />
did not begin painting until 1915, after<br />
being sacked at the Admiralty.<br />
The gist of the story involves the<br />
Duke’s suspicion of a love affair between<br />
Consuelo and Sargent, and an alleged<br />
portfolio of Sargent sketches of the unclothed<br />
Duchess, which the Duke wants<br />
dearly to find (notwithstanding his own<br />
ill-concealed affair with Gladys).<br />
Consuelo, <strong>for</strong> reasons I still don’t<br />
understand, places the portfolio in the<br />
care of a servant, Emily, with instructions<br />
to hide it. Sunny, <strong>for</strong> unexplained<br />
reasons, suspects Emily and tries to<br />
browbeat her into telling him. But then<br />
poor Emily is murdered and no one<br />
knows where the portfolio has gone.<br />
A Weekend at Blenheim is not the<br />
only mystery set at Woodstock in this<br />
era. A Death at Blenheim Palace, by<br />
Robin Paige, reviewed unfavorably in<br />
FH 133, was set in 1903 and has many<br />
of the same characters. But A Weekend<br />
at Blenheim is a far better mystery and a<br />
better all around book.<br />
I gave Morrissey only two stars<br />
under “Worth Reading” because mysteries<br />
are not to everyone’s taste. But if you<br />
like the genre, it’s a three-star book and<br />
you won’t be disappointed. Also, if you<br />
can figure out why Consuelo gave the<br />
portfolio to Emily, and how the Duke<br />
found out about it, please advise. ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/53
E D U C A T I O N<br />
How Guilty were the German Field Marshals?<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s maxim, “In Victory, Magnanimity,” seems certainly to have been<br />
applied toward Kesselring and von Manstein. Did they have it coming?<br />
S T U D E N T C O R R E S P O N D E N C E • R O B<br />
G R A N G E R<br />
I’ve read quite a lot<br />
about <strong>Churchill</strong>, but<br />
I came across something<br />
completely new<br />
on the on-line encyclopedia<br />
Wikipedia.<br />
Anthony Eden’s biography<br />
page describes in<br />
some detail how<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> lobbied <strong>for</strong><br />
commutation of the<br />
death sentences <strong>for</strong><br />
German Field Marshals<br />
Albrecht Kesselring<br />
and Erich von<br />
Manstein, and even <strong>for</strong><br />
them to be released early. Apparently, <strong>Churchill</strong> even<br />
donated some money to Manstein’s defence.<br />
How could <strong>Churchill</strong> justify defending Manstein, who<br />
signed an order to treat Jews as partisans, providing a<br />
pretext <strong>for</strong> their execution; or Kesselring, who personally<br />
authorised atrocitites against civilians in Italy? Being an<br />
admirer of <strong>Churchill</strong> and his stand against the Nazis, I was<br />
shocked to discover that he was instrumental in getting two<br />
heinous war criminals released. —ROB GRANGER, UK<br />
FH’s Response: Sir Martin Gilbert writes in the official<br />
biography, <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, vol. 8, “Never<br />
Despair” (1988), 325:<br />
“Two years had passed since the end of the war in<br />
Europe. But its repercussions were continuous. ‘Am concerned<br />
about Kesselring’s death sentence,’ <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
telegraphed to Field Marshal Alexander on May 6 [1947],<br />
on learning that the Commander-in-Chief of the German<br />
<strong>for</strong>ces in Italy had been sentenced to be hanged <strong>for</strong> war<br />
crimes. ‘Propose to raise question in Parliament,’ <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
added, and he went on to ask: ‘Can you do anything?’ It<br />
________________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Granger (granger1993@hotmail.com), a 17-year-old student planning<br />
an extended project on the life and times of <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>,<br />
wrote us seeking clarification on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s role in securing the release of<br />
German war criminals, starting in 1947. Reader comment most welcome.<br />
ALBRECHT KESSELRING (LEFT) AND ERICH VON MANSTEIN<br />
was Attlee who, a<br />
week later, advised<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to leave the<br />
Kesselring matter in<br />
abeyance, as the<br />
matter was sub<br />
judice. Provided,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> replied,<br />
‘there is a suitable<br />
interval between an<br />
adverse sentence and<br />
the execution of the<br />
sentence.’ <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
letter continued: ‘It is<br />
in my opinion a<br />
matter of public<br />
policy whether the process of killing the leaders of the<br />
defeated enemy has not now exhausted any usefulness it<br />
may have had.’”<br />
Kesselring (1885-1960) and von Manstein (1887-<br />
1973) held important commands in the Battles of France<br />
and Britain, and in the invasion of Russia. They were<br />
popular with their troops, although not necessarily with the<br />
Führer: von Manstein was dismissed by Hitler in March<br />
1944, following frequent clashes over strategy.<br />
Since they were two of only three German field marshals<br />
to publish war memoirs, it would be useful to know<br />
what they had to say <strong>for</strong> themselves, because this is a murky<br />
subject, not nearly so cut and dried as the entries on<br />
Wikipedia—so try to find and check their memoirs.<br />
At Nuremberg, Kesselring was tried and sentenced to<br />
death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment<br />
and in 1952 he was released on health grounds. Von<br />
Manstein was sentenced to eighteen years <strong>for</strong> neglecting to<br />
protect civilian lives and using scorched earth tactics<br />
denying food to local populations, but the sentence was<br />
later reduced to twelve years and he was released in 1953,<br />
becoming a military adviser to the West German government.<br />
There must have been reasons <strong>for</strong> the commutations:<br />
find out what they were and evaluate them.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was known <strong>for</strong> magnanimity in victory and<br />
did not favor, as he stated in 1947 (and at Teheran to Stalin<br />
FINESTHOUR150/54
in 1943) mass executions of enemy officers. Had he<br />
believed they had taken direct part in the Nazi genocide, he<br />
would almost certainly have had a different attitude.<br />
For example: When the death camps were being discovered<br />
in July 1944, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote (Gilbert vol. 7, Road<br />
to Victory, 847): “There is no doubt that this is probably the<br />
greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the<br />
whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific<br />
machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a<br />
great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite<br />
clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our<br />
hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying<br />
out the butcheries, should be put to death after their<br />
association with the murders has been proved.”<br />
k k k<br />
Thanks <strong>for</strong> a speedy reply which will hopefully help my<br />
project. The only real source I have on this is<br />
Wikipedia, and I haven’t come across this in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
elsewhere. The only reasons Wikipedia gives <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
and Eden favouring the release of von Manstein and<br />
Kesselring are anti-communism (presumably implying a<br />
more lenient attitude towards German war criminals), and a<br />
desire to rearm the new West Germany as a bulwark against<br />
the Soviet Union.<br />
Apparently <strong>Churchill</strong> denounced the trial of von<br />
Manstein as the Attlee government’s attempt to appease the<br />
Soviets. Wikipedia makes much of the fact that behind-thescenes<br />
pressure was allegedly exerted on prison doctors to<br />
emphasize Manstein’s and Kesselring’s health problems,<br />
which were then “spun” by their defence attorneys.<br />
The most controversial aspect seems to be <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
exact motivations <strong>for</strong> intervening, and how he could possibly<br />
be ignorant of the atrocities committed, in particular,<br />
on Manstein’s orders.<br />
There is a long paper trail linking von Manstein to the<br />
massacre of Jews in the East under the pretext of dealing<br />
with partisans. How could <strong>Churchill</strong> not have known this,<br />
or been made aware of it at later date? —RG<br />
FH’s Response: Wikipedia is a useful online tool, but<br />
relying on it exclusively may skew your research and avoid<br />
consideration of different opinions or findings. Wikipedia<br />
goes to great lengths to establish objectivity, but the fact<br />
remains that its entries are somewhat uneven.<br />
The Wikipedia Eden article is footnoted, and provides<br />
the sources used <strong>for</strong> its conclusions. As I read it, it seems to<br />
me that the writer has a definite point of view—referring<br />
<strong>for</strong> example to Eden’s “cleverly drafted policy,” putting<br />
quotes around “medical,” referring to “allegedly cancerous<br />
throat,” and expressing shock that Eden’s defenders (Field<br />
Marshals Alexander and Montgomery, and the historian<br />
Basil Liddell Hart) would use “melancholy confinement” as<br />
an excuse to release Kesselring. Eden, Alexander and<br />
Montgomery hold no reputation as Nazi apologists.<br />
There<strong>for</strong>e, they must have had better reasons than the<br />
article states <strong>for</strong> arguing as they did.<br />
The Eden article adds that the release of Kesselring<br />
and von Manstein is “now seen as no more than embarrassing.”<br />
This means what, exactly? Seen by whom?<br />
This illustrates one of the troubles with Wikipedia.<br />
Though they work hard to police it, they do not have a<br />
research team like the Encyclopedia Britannica, and they<br />
rely heavily on lay writers who are not always the best qualified,<br />
or evenhanded.<br />
Incidentally, Eden’s “clever draft,” allowing pre-trial<br />
detention to be counted in their sentences, amounted only<br />
to four years (1945-49)—not “double the reduction,” as the<br />
Wikipedia article states. Its author is right on one thing:<br />
given the Soviet menace, <strong>Churchill</strong> and Eden had begun to<br />
think there was no benefit in continuing to fight the previous<br />
war. They would have been irresponsible as statesmen<br />
had they considered otherwise.<br />
If you look at the Wikipedia entries <strong>for</strong> von Manstein<br />
and Kesselring, you will find more about the trial, and the<br />
reasons <strong>for</strong> the reduction from death, to life, to a few years,<br />
in Kesselring’s case.<br />
The first thing you will notice is that von Manstein’s<br />
indictment was a Soviet indictment, which the British<br />
pursued only after Soviet pressure. Soviet indictments were<br />
not always well founded. In the 1980s they tried to indict<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> <strong>for</strong> firebombing Dresden; later, Martin Gilbert<br />
proved that it was the Russians themselves who had<br />
requested the Dresden raid and Attlee who had approved it<br />
(although <strong>Churchill</strong> certainly would have also, in response<br />
to a request from his ally).<br />
You will also read of certain mitigating circumstances<br />
which the courts considered: von Manstein’s attempts to<br />
save Italian cultural artifacts from destruction, and<br />
Kesselring’s ignoring Hitler’s orders.<br />
This is not to suggest that the two Germans were<br />
heroes. But there is a lot more to this issue than the Eden<br />
article suggests. It is likely that <strong>Churchill</strong> knew more facts<br />
than the Wikipedia writers—and acted accordingly.<br />
k k k<br />
Note to readers: Aiming students toward good sources<br />
and balanced viewpoints about <strong>Churchill</strong> is one of the most<br />
rewarding parts of this job. We avoid writing essays <strong>for</strong><br />
them, and have become fairly adept at spotting that kind of<br />
request. Students like Mr. Granger, who didn’t accept our<br />
first reply and came back looking <strong>for</strong> more answers, are particularly<br />
welcome. I am no expert on German field marshals<br />
or their behavior toward captive populations, so I tried to<br />
tread carefully and not to take positions, only to point<br />
toward more avenues of research. I would be interested in<br />
our readers’ views on how well I succeeded, and any further<br />
notes on the question of guilt. —RML ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/55
1 2 5 - 1 0 0 - 7 5 - 5 0 Y E A R S A G O<br />
125 Years Ago<br />
Spring 1886 • Age 11<br />
“Delight over a Locomotive...”<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> was still recovering from<br />
pneumonia contracted during<br />
the winter, which had brought him<br />
close to death. Lord Randolph did not<br />
neglect his son and in April brought<br />
him a well-received present, writing<br />
Lady Randolph: “<strong>Winston</strong> is going on<br />
well & is attended by Dr. Gordon. He<br />
cannot go out yet as the weather is raw<br />
with a N.E. wind He is in great delight<br />
over a Locomotive steam engine I got<br />
<strong>for</strong> him yesterday.”<br />
By May, <strong>Winston</strong> had fully<br />
recovered and was back in school in<br />
Brighton, where he wrote his mother<br />
on 10 May: “I have much joy in<br />
writing ‘Ye sealed epistle’ unto thee….I<br />
received your letter and intend to correspond<br />
in the best language which my<br />
small vocabulary can muster. The<br />
weather is fearfully hot. We went to the<br />
Swimming Baths to-day. I nearly swam<br />
the length which is about 60 feet. We<br />
are going to Play a Football Match<br />
tomorrow. Last night we had a certain<br />
Mr. Beaumont to give a lecture on<br />
Shakespeare’s play of Julius Caesar. He<br />
was an old man, but read magnificently.<br />
I am in very good health and<br />
am getting on pretty well. Love to all.”<br />
100 Years Ago<br />
Spring 1911 • Age 36<br />
Arrival of the “Chumbolly”<br />
During Clementine’s second pregnancy,<br />
she and <strong>Winston</strong> called<br />
their unborn child “The Chumbolly”<br />
by Michael Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin<br />
(alternately “Chum Bolly”) who<br />
became their only son Randolph. In<br />
the second volume of his father’s biography,<br />
Randolph writes that “no one<br />
remembers why” his parents so nicknamed<br />
him. On 18 April, Clementine<br />
wrote <strong>Winston</strong> that she was “counting<br />
the days till May 15th when the Chum<br />
Bolly is due. I hope he will not have<br />
inherited the Pug’s unpunctual habits!”<br />
Sure enough, Randolph’s birth was two<br />
weeks late on 28 May. His parents took<br />
their time naming him, and <strong>for</strong> well<br />
over a week after his birth, they were<br />
still calling him the Chumbolly in their<br />
letters. <strong>Winston</strong> wrote on 2 June:<br />
My precious pussy cat, I do trust &<br />
hope that you are being good & not<br />
sitting up or fussing yourself. Just get<br />
well & strong & enjoy the richness<br />
wh[ich] this new event will I know<br />
have brought into our life. The chumbolly<br />
must do his duty and help you<br />
with your milk, you are to tell him so<br />
from me. At his age greediness & even<br />
swinishness at table are virtues.…How<br />
I wish you were here, it wd be such fun<br />
<strong>for</strong> you—there are lots of young men<br />
to [talk] with & sounds of music, &<br />
beautiful trees & all sorts of things,<br />
including in a corner your ever loving<br />
& devoted Pug.<br />
Clementine replied,<br />
The beautiful Chumbolly who grows<br />
more darling & handsome every hour<br />
& puts on weight with every meal; so<br />
that soon he will be a little round ball<br />
of fat. Just now I was kissing him,<br />
when catching sight of my nose he<br />
suddenly fastened upon it & began to<br />
suck it, no doubt thinking it was<br />
another part of my person!<br />
By June 7th <strong>Winston</strong>, returning<br />
FINESTHOUR149/56<br />
home, was “longing to see you & the<br />
Ch B. again...& tell you all my news &<br />
give you lots of kisses on your dear<br />
cheeks & dearest lips.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was now involved in a<br />
fierce battle to limit the veto power of<br />
the House of Lords over legislation<br />
passed by the Commons. In his advocacy,<br />
he did not spare even close<br />
friends. Of his <strong>for</strong>mer best man, Lord<br />
Hugh Cecil, a prominent Tory supporter<br />
of the Lords, who had urged<br />
that referendums be held to decide<br />
“contentious issues” rather than entrust<br />
them to the Liberal-controlled<br />
Commons, WSC said on April 4th:<br />
The Noble Lord has a very bad<br />
opinion of the institutions of his<br />
country. He is not only in favour of<br />
re<strong>for</strong>ming the House of Lords, but he<br />
shows us, in speech after speech, in<br />
Amendment after Amendment, on<br />
subject after subject, that he would like<br />
to accompany and precede that operation<br />
by abolishing the existing House<br />
of Commons. The Noble Lord has the<br />
worst possible opinion of His Majesty’s<br />
Ministers, and he has frequently<br />
expressed that view in terms which<br />
have secured the utmost enthusiasm in<br />
the Opposition part of this Assembly.<br />
His opinion of this Assembly is quite<br />
on a par with his opinion of His<br />
Majesty’s Government, but his bad<br />
opinion of this Assembly is limited to<br />
the time when there is a Liberal<br />
Government in power. It is only the<br />
Liberals who are corrupt; it is only<br />
when a Liberal Government is in<br />
power that voting by ballot must be<br />
instituted.<br />
75 Years Ago<br />
Spring 1936 • Age 61<br />
“Fairies swooped down...”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was giving many speeches<br />
on <strong>for</strong>eign policy, German rearmament<br />
and Britain’s neglected defenses.<br />
His words went unheeded by Prime<br />
Minister Stanley Baldwin who, in Sir<br />
Martin Gilbert’s words, “had convinced<br />
himself of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s lack of<br />
judgment.” Gilbert quotes Baldwin’s<br />
remark to a colleague:<br />
One of these days I’ll make a few<br />
casual remarks about <strong>Winston</strong>.…I’ve<br />
got it all ready. I am going to say that<br />
when <strong>Winston</strong> was born lots of fairies<br />
swooped down on his cradle with<br />
gifts—imagination, eloquence,
industry, ability; and then came a fairy<br />
who said, “No one person has a right<br />
to so many gifts,” picked him up and<br />
gave him such a shake and twist that<br />
with all these gifts he was denied judgment<br />
and wisdom. And that is why,<br />
while we delight to listen to him in<br />
this House, we do not take his advice.<br />
It is remarkable that someone<br />
with such a “lack of judgment” could<br />
attract such a wide range of in<strong>for</strong>mants<br />
eager to bring him classified in<strong>for</strong>mation—most<br />
of it in violation of the<br />
Official Secrets Act—at great risk to<br />
themselves. A listing of dates and names<br />
of individuals <strong>for</strong>ming <strong>Churchill</strong>’s intelligence<br />
network during a single threemonth<br />
period is startling in scope and<br />
number. (For more details, see Gilbert,<br />
Chapter 36, <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, vol.<br />
5 The Prophet of Truth.)<br />
27 March: Ralph Wigram, a<br />
highly placed Foreign Office official,<br />
sends <strong>Churchill</strong> “a substantial portfolio<br />
of documents and material” on Hitler<br />
and the Nazis, all of which, Wigram<br />
notes, are “SECRET.”<br />
3 April: Desmond Morton, head<br />
of the Industrial Intelligence Centre at<br />
the Foreign Office, writes to <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
about inaccuracies in Air Ministry statistics<br />
regarding German air strength.<br />
3 April: Notwithstanding his<br />
deeply-felt anti-communism, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
begins a series of meetings with the<br />
Soviet Ambassador, Ivan Maisky.<br />
21 April: At behest of Sir Robert<br />
Vansittart at the Foreign Office,<br />
Reginald Leeper sends WSC a “secret<br />
and official letter” seeking his advice on<br />
how public opinion can best be guided<br />
to support the League of Nations.<br />
24 April: Morton says he believes<br />
WSC’s figures <strong>for</strong> German arms expenditures<br />
are too high.<br />
29 April: WSC thanks Morton<br />
but disagrees, saying the figures<br />
Morton questions were provided by the<br />
prominent London banker Sir Henry<br />
Strakosch, and that the government<br />
had declined to contradict them.<br />
5 May: Sir Ernle Chatfield, First<br />
Sea Lord, writes to <strong>Churchill</strong> outlining<br />
matters affecting the Royal Navy, the<br />
first of what Martin Gilbert described<br />
as “regular and substantial accounts of<br />
the Navy’s work and problems.”<br />
5 May: A.G. Clark, joint man-<br />
aging-director of Plessey, a major radio,<br />
telephone and electronics corporation<br />
and contractor to the War Office,<br />
meets with <strong>Churchill</strong> to discuss his visit<br />
to German munitions factories.<br />
9 May: Morton sends <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
the results of Dutch firing tests on<br />
naval armor-plate. British armor-plate<br />
was destroyed while German armorplate<br />
came through virtually unscathed.<br />
12 May: Wigram sends <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
additional Foreign Office extracts from<br />
Mein Kampf, including two sentences<br />
deleted from the English edition, one<br />
of which is: “If one tells big lies, people<br />
will always believe a part.”<br />
16 May: French Foreign Minister<br />
Pierre Flandin sends WSC a statistical<br />
summary of French air <strong>for</strong>ce expenditures<br />
and the latest French estimates of<br />
German first-line air strength.<br />
25 May: Squadron Leader Torr<br />
Anderson, director of the Air<br />
Ministry’s training school, shows<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> charts and statistics demonstrating<br />
that the school’s educational<br />
standards are declining.<br />
12 June: Ralph Wigram sends<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> three more Foreign Office<br />
dispatches dealing with Nazism, which<br />
he asks <strong>Churchill</strong> to read and destroy.<br />
12 June: Robert Watson-Watt,<br />
one of the principal developers of<br />
radar, tells <strong>Churchill</strong> the Air Ministry is<br />
holding back the rate of development<br />
of radar, and criticizes its “unwillingness<br />
to take emergency measures.”<br />
As he did in 1911, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
continued to be critical of public positions<br />
taken by his <strong>for</strong>mer best man,<br />
Lord Hugh Cecil. They had remained<br />
friends, however, and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
attacks were now more mellow, if not<br />
good-humored. Cecil advocated<br />
excluding the Soviet Union and other<br />
authoritarian countries like Italy from<br />
any alliance Britain <strong>for</strong>med against<br />
Germany, and even expressed doubts<br />
about the wisdom of an alliance with<br />
France. In reply to Cecil, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
wrote The <strong>Time</strong>s on 13 May:<br />
It must be very painful to a man of<br />
Lord Hugh Cecil’s natural benevolence<br />
and human charity to find so many of<br />
God’s children wandering simultaneously<br />
so far astray. In these<br />
circumstances I would venture to<br />
suggest to my noble friend, whose gifts<br />
and virtues I have all my life admired,<br />
that some further refinement is needed<br />
in the catholicity of his condemnation. It<br />
might be a good thing, <strong>for</strong> instance, <strong>for</strong><br />
him to put his censures down in order of<br />
priority, and then try to think a little less<br />
severely of the two least bad, or least<br />
likely to endanger our own safety. The<br />
problem would then simplify itself; and<br />
the picture would acquire the charm of<br />
light and shade.<br />
50 Years Ago<br />
Spring 1961 • Age 86<br />
Moses or Jesus?<br />
In March,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong><br />
completed a<br />
Caribbean<br />
cruise aboard<br />
the Onassis<br />
yacht<br />
Christina, and<br />
had intended<br />
DAVID BEN-GURION<br />
to fly to<br />
London April 13th, but strong winds<br />
made it impossible <strong>for</strong> him to leave the<br />
vessel until the next day. Six weeks later<br />
in London, he received a visit from<br />
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of<br />
Israel. In briefing the Foreign Office of<br />
their talks, Private Secretary Anthony<br />
Montague Brown reported that Ben-<br />
Gurion believed Iraq would “be strong<br />
enough to contain her own<br />
Communists,” but was more worried<br />
about the survival of Jordan, which he<br />
said would depend on the king. Egypt,<br />
however, was “slowly preparing <strong>for</strong> war.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> expressed his lifelong<br />
support <strong>for</strong> the Jewish people and<br />
Zionism, and Ben-Gurion responded<br />
with gratitude <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s leadership<br />
in the Hitler war. <strong>Churchill</strong> said in<br />
passing that he had once written an essay<br />
on Moses, and promised the Israeli<br />
leader a copy of the book containing it,<br />
Thoughts and Adventures. (Later,<br />
Montague Browne joked, “I thought at<br />
first I might have found it in Great<br />
Contemporaries.”)<br />
It is incidentally related that the<br />
two leaders had a debate: who was the<br />
greater man, Moses or Jesus? <strong>Churchill</strong>,<br />
it is said, argued on behalf of Moses,<br />
while Ben-Gurion took the side of Jesus!<br />
(We have lost the reference and would<br />
be grateful <strong>for</strong> any light readers may<br />
shed on this interesting story.) ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/57
C H U R C H I L L P R O C E E D I N G S<br />
Great Contemporaries:<br />
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher<br />
Washington Society <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, April 2008<br />
At the end of the day it was Fisher who prepared the great naval instrument of<br />
victory in the Great War—and <strong>Churchill</strong> who sent the Fleet to its battle stations at the<br />
outset. The Navy never <strong>for</strong>got who gave it the super-dreadnoughts. These were<br />
notable and noble achievements when Britannia still held Neptune’s trident.<br />
B A R R Y G O U G H<br />
In his time he was one of the<br />
most remarkable of men—<br />
adored by some, dreaded by<br />
others, despised by more than a few.<br />
He was a human dynamo. Jacky<br />
Fisher (1841-1920) always left froth<br />
in his wake, and he moved at the<br />
speed of one of his torpedo boat<br />
destroyers.<br />
An expert in gunnery and torpedoes,<br />
Fisher was an advocate of<br />
naval power. He loved the Royal<br />
Navy with all his heart. He deplored<br />
the old methods of promotion solely<br />
on the grounds of seniority, believing<br />
firmly that the best way of promoting efficiency was to<br />
see persons he liked and trusted given preferment in<br />
appointment and advancement.<br />
Fisher equally hated the old system <strong>for</strong> training<br />
officers, thinking it class-ridden and technologically<br />
backward, and he called <strong>for</strong> a wholesale revision to naval<br />
training and education. This included the introduction<br />
of new courses of study and the building of the<br />
Britannia Royal Naval College in Devon. In everything<br />
he was an iconoclast, widely seen as a revolutionary—<br />
and he was as well a serious troublemaker.<br />
He rose to the top partly on the basis of his own<br />
manifold abilities and partly with support of various<br />
politicians. When he came to the<br />
Admiralty as First Sea Lord on<br />
Trafalgar Day 1904, he did so with<br />
the nervous support of a Tory government.<br />
When the Liberals came to<br />
power in 1905, Fisher was firmly<br />
entrenched in position. Be<strong>for</strong>e long<br />
his famed innovation the battleship<br />
Dreadnought was in commission,<br />
sporting its impressive armor, guns<br />
and speed. Soon to follow were fast<br />
battlecruisers giving wide-ranging<br />
mobility to British naval power.<br />
Fisher advocated the idea of<br />
flotillas, though he seldom saw them<br />
in action. He became the greatest administrator of the<br />
Royal Navy since Lord Barham and, as the great historian<br />
Arthur Marder proclaimed, his name will always be<br />
connected with the Navy at the apex of its power.<br />
Fisher retired on 25 January1910, his sixty-ninth<br />
birthday, having been made Admiral of the Fleet and<br />
elevated to the House of Lords. By then he was well<br />
known to <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, who soon arrived at the<br />
Admiralty as First Lord—civilian chief of the service—in<br />
1911. When, in October 1914, <strong>Churchill</strong> needed a First<br />
Sea Lord to replace Prince Louis Battenberg, he hauled<br />
in Fisher despite objections that the latter was old and<br />
past his prime.<br />
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Barry Gough is an Archives Fellow of <strong>Churchill</strong> College, Cambridge. His latest book, Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder,<br />
Stephen Roskill and Battles <strong>for</strong> Naval History, will be reviewed in our next issue. His Titans at the Admiralty: <strong>Churchill</strong> and Fisher<br />
is nearing completion. <strong>Churchill</strong> Proceedings are papers and speeches presented at <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre conferences and meetings.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/58
These were immensely<br />
attempt to silence the Turkish<br />
challenging times. The war<br />
<strong>for</strong>ts guarding the entry to the<br />
was not over by Christmas, as<br />
straits. The 29th Division was<br />
had been predicted. The powerful<br />
German High Seas Fleet<br />
paign, and ANZAC <strong>for</strong>ces were<br />
finally committed to the cam-<br />
was not easily brought to<br />
thrown in beginning 25 April.<br />
account, and through the early<br />
But the campaign never succeeded<br />
despite repeated<br />
months of 1915 the Royal<br />
Navy missed several opportunities<br />
to engage the enemy.<br />
command. By December it was<br />
attempts and changes of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and Fisher<br />
over—with the attacking <strong>for</strong>ces<br />
operated in loose and disjointed<br />
harness, but their<br />
and challenges.<br />
withdrawn to other obligations<br />
incompatibility of temperament<br />
and outlook prevented<br />
association lasted until mid-<br />
The Fisher-<strong>Churchill</strong><br />
them from working in<br />
May 1915, when their<br />
harmony <strong>for</strong> long. They kept<br />
struggle, based on irreconcilable<br />
principles about who was<br />
different hours at the<br />
Admiralty, and in his optimism,<br />
WSC wrote that this<br />
assets were to be deployed), led<br />
in charge (and which naval<br />
gave them a round-the-clock<br />
to Fisher’s abrupt resignation<br />
watch; but they often had to<br />
and abandonment of his post,<br />
communicate by memo. And<br />
telling <strong>Churchill</strong> he was leaving<br />
grave difficulties lay ahead.<br />
because he could not out-argue<br />
Fisher had always<br />
him. This led quickly to a government<br />
crisis, a coalition<br />
HAPPIER DAYS: <strong>Churchill</strong> and Fisher in 1912.<br />
believed that the Navy—and<br />
the British war ef<strong>for</strong>t—needed<br />
government, and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
“one man” to win the war: himself. Sea power, with exit from the Admiralty. A shells crisis also occurred at<br />
lightning strikes by amphibious <strong>for</strong>ces, would bring the this time, but it was Fisher’s action that caused <strong>Winston</strong><br />
enemy to its knees. From time to time he let it be <strong>Churchill</strong>’s downfall.<br />
known (at least to <strong>Churchill</strong>) that he believed WSC was <strong>Churchill</strong> was devastated by his loss of the<br />
“the man.” In any event, a Fisher plan to take control of Admiralty and the influence it had given him over the<br />
the Baltic got nowhere, though he did build a fleet of war ef<strong>for</strong>t, but Fisher’s isolation was even greater. Fisher<br />
shallow draft monitors and other vessels <strong>for</strong> an expedition<br />
there.<br />
because of his walk-out (disgraceful in the circum-<br />
continued his behind-the-scenes activities, weakened<br />
By the end of 1914, the War Cabinet turned its stances). For a time he headed the Board of Invention<br />
mind to a bold military scheme: sailing through the and Research, looking <strong>for</strong> means of hunting the new<br />
Dardanelles to knock Turkey out of the war, securing threat of U-boats, which were mauling Allied merchant<br />
Constantinople (Istanbul) <strong>for</strong> the Russians, rein<strong>for</strong>cing shipping. But he never found a countermeasure.<br />
the Eastern Front, and tying down the Germans there. To the surprise of many, Fisher and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
By January 1915 the Dardanelles campaign was no cooperated on the evidence they presented to inquiries<br />
longer an idée fixe: it was an accepted feature of British of the Dardanelles Commission. <strong>Churchill</strong> throughout<br />
government policy.<br />
was loyal to his Admiral friend and never deserted him.<br />
In the absence of any ground <strong>for</strong>ces <strong>for</strong>thcoming In March 1916 <strong>Churchill</strong> even proposed in Parliament<br />
from Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State <strong>for</strong> War, that Fisher should be brought back. This was treated<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had been told with derision and disbelief. The idea died there and<br />
that the Dardanelles must be taken “by ships alone.” then. Fisher <strong>for</strong> his part was more suspicious. He often<br />
Thus was launched the ill-fated Dardanelles campaign. alluded to <strong>Churchill</strong>’s mercurial nature, but this was a<br />
Fisher held that it could be successful if done quickly, characteristic he himself held.<br />
but days wore on, and be<strong>for</strong>e all ships and supplies were Neither <strong>Churchill</strong> nor Fisher was present at the<br />
in place, British and French naval gunnery began an surrender of the German High Seas Fleet in >><br />
FINESTHOUR150/59
C H U R C H I L L P R O C E E D I N G S<br />
LORD FISHER...<br />
November 1918. Fisher died in<br />
1920, his last complaints being<br />
letters to The <strong>Time</strong>s about the<br />
state of naval affairs. He even<br />
proclaimed republican sympathies.<br />
The most unlikely of<br />
British admirals, he was nevertheless<br />
one of the great<br />
Englishmen of his time. To this<br />
day he casts a long, entrancing<br />
shadow across British naval and<br />
political history.<br />
True to his nature,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was prepared to<br />
let bygones be bygones.<br />
He did not seek to open old<br />
wounds, and would have been<br />
happy to leave Fisher as a piece<br />
of memory. But in 1929<br />
Admiral Reginald Bacon, a<br />
trusted Fisherite devoted to<br />
“Jacky’s” memory, produced a laudatory Fisher biography.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> thought Bacon imparted “a mood of<br />
hatred and spiteful controversy into the discussion of the<br />
memorable transactions with which Lord Fisher was<br />
concerned.”<br />
So <strong>Churchill</strong> responded with what is now called<br />
“damage control,” in a News of the World article, “Lord<br />
Fisher and his Biographer”—which received an extended<br />
lease on life when <strong>Churchill</strong>’s poular book Great<br />
Contemporaries, first published in 1937, was expanded<br />
the following year with four more essays including the<br />
Fisher piece—which was really as much about Bacon as<br />
about the late Admiral.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s essay nevertheless offered many warm<br />
appreciations of his old colleague. A flash of light always<br />
came from Fisher, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote, yet there was always<br />
something <strong>for</strong>eign to the Navy about him. He was never<br />
among the “band of brothers” of Nelsonic tradition. He<br />
was the “dark angel” of the naval service, and he gloried<br />
in it. “Ruthless, relentless and remorseless” were Fisher’s<br />
favorite epithets about himself. Highly partisan, he was<br />
the author of his own mis<strong>for</strong>tune, inviting vendettas<br />
and maneuvers: as <strong>Churchill</strong> put it, “behind him and<br />
his professional progeny, the bloodhounds followed<br />
sniffing and padding along, and now and then giving<br />
deep tongue.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> made no attempt to sidestep the charge<br />
that it was he who had brought Fisher back to the<br />
HMS DREADNOUGHT: Product of Fisher’s vision,<br />
the first of Britain’s fast, all-12-inch-gun battleships<br />
and the first capital ship powered by steam turbines.<br />
Ironically, she saw no major action in the Great War,<br />
missing the Battle of Jutland because she was refitting.<br />
Painting by Norman L. Wilkinson (1878-1971).<br />
Admiralty. He would do so<br />
again, he declared, with the<br />
knowledge he had at that time.<br />
Fisher, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote,<br />
brought energy to the<br />
Admiralty: a builder of warships<br />
whose genius was that of a constructor<br />
and organizer who<br />
delighted in trampling on the<br />
Treasury. Build ships—that was<br />
his message and his mission—<br />
and build them he did.<br />
But Fisher was old and in<br />
declining health. In fact,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> stated (<strong>for</strong> the first<br />
time in this essay), that he<br />
believed Fisher had suffered a<br />
nervous breakdown at the critical<br />
juncture in May 1915.<br />
This may be true, and brings to<br />
mind yet again the influence of<br />
health on statecraft and the<br />
running of great departments of<br />
state or of the military. (See also pages 25-30 this issue.)<br />
The Dardanelles (see FH 126, whose theme was<br />
that campaign) will long be studied as one of those<br />
might-have-beens of history: If only the Allies had<br />
pressed their military attack just a little longer! Even<br />
more puzzling is this question: “What would have happened<br />
in 1916 had the House of Commons taken<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s advice to reinstate Fisher? Of course, by<br />
then, Fisher was politically unacceptable, and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
almost equally so.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> learned many lessons from his experiences<br />
in World War I. Not least among them was that<br />
service chiefs could be egotistical and domineering prima<br />
donnas. That <strong>Churchill</strong> was able to cope with them in<br />
World War II owes much to his difficult and challenging<br />
tug of war with Jacky Fisher.<br />
At the end of the day it was Fisher who prepared<br />
the great naval instrument of victory in the Great War—<br />
and <strong>Churchill</strong> who sent the Fleet to its battle stations at<br />
the outset. The Navy never <strong>for</strong>got <strong>Churchill</strong>’s 1913<br />
triumph in the naval estimates that gave it the superdreadnoughts<br />
and more. These were notable and noble<br />
achievements. The torpedo may have ended the possibility<br />
of a close blockade of enemy ports and coasts, but<br />
the grinding preponderance of British naval power, ubiquitous<br />
if not always crushing, played a huge role in the<br />
final outcome. In World War I, Britannia still held<br />
Neptune’s trident. ,<br />
FINESTHOUR150/60
<strong>Churchill</strong> Quiz<br />
JAMES LANCASTER<br />
Each quiz includes four questions in six<br />
categories: contemporaries (C), literary<br />
(L), miscellaneous (M), personal (P),<br />
statesmanship (S) and war (W), easy<br />
questions first. Can you reach Level 1?<br />
Level 4<br />
1. A 1919-20 limerick: “There was a<br />
young man of Dundee / Who they<br />
granted command of the sea / So they<br />
gave him command / Of the air and the<br />
land / Just to make it quite fair <strong>for</strong> all<br />
three.” Who was the young man? (M)<br />
2. In his book The River War, what<br />
did <strong>Churchill</strong> describe as “the most<br />
signal triumph ever gained by the arms<br />
of science over barbarians”? (W)<br />
3. Haldane (Secretary of State <strong>for</strong> War,<br />
1912-14) once said that an argument<br />
with him in Cabinet was like “arguing<br />
with a brass band.” To whom did<br />
Haldane refer? (C)<br />
4. Why was Sunday 28 May 1911 a<br />
special day <strong>for</strong> <strong>Winston</strong> and<br />
Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong>? (P)<br />
5. In which speech did <strong>Churchill</strong> say:<br />
“If we can stand up to him [Hitler], all<br />
Europe may be free and the life of the<br />
world may move <strong>for</strong>ward into broad,<br />
sunlit uplands”? (W)<br />
6. In a note to cousin Ivor Guest on 19<br />
January 1899, WSC wrote: “I have<br />
been busy with my book and live in a<br />
strange world bounded on the north by<br />
the Preface and on the south by the<br />
Appendix & whose natural features<br />
consist of Chapters & paragraphs.” To<br />
which book did he refer? (L)<br />
Level 3<br />
7. Which U.S. President, according to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, “did not truly divine the<br />
instinct of the American people”? (W)<br />
8. In 1943 Professor R.V. Jones saw<br />
“an individual in a boiler suit come<br />
padding into the room; I imagined him<br />
to be a Ministry of Works maintenance<br />
engineer.” Who was he? (M)<br />
9. In which speech did WSC say, “We<br />
have be<strong>for</strong>e us an ordeal of the most<br />
grievous kind. We have<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e us many, many long<br />
months of struggle and of<br />
suffering”? (S)<br />
10. “If there is a game which could<br />
prepare a youth <strong>for</strong> a soldier’s life, that<br />
game is —— .” Fill in the blank. (P)<br />
11. <strong>Churchill</strong> told the Indian Empire<br />
Society in 1930: “It is no use trying to<br />
satisfy a tiger by feeding him with<br />
cat’s-meat.” To whom did he refer? (M)<br />
12. In his first public speech in 1894,<br />
WSC stood on a soapbox and said:<br />
“Ladies of the Empire! I stand <strong>for</strong><br />
Liberty!” Which Empire? (P)<br />
Level 2<br />
13. Who in 1953 called <strong>Churchill</strong> “an<br />
old man in a hurry”? (S)<br />
14. In 1911, WSC told Violet Bonham<br />
Carter, “They are so overrated. They<br />
only said everything first. I’ve said just<br />
as good things myself. But they got in<br />
be<strong>for</strong>e me.” Who were they? (L)<br />
15. WSC said, “Why will people keep<br />
referring to that bloody pot-boiler?” To<br />
which of his articles did he refer? (L)<br />
16. In which book does <strong>Churchill</strong> proclaim<br />
the maxim, “In sport, in courage,<br />
and in the sight of heaven, all men<br />
meet on equal terms”? (L)<br />
17. Whom did <strong>Churchill</strong> like to call<br />
“The noblest Roman of them all”? (C)<br />
18. When did WSC say: “I am a child of<br />
the House of Commons and have been<br />
here I believe longer than anyone. I was<br />
much upset when I was violently thrown<br />
out of my collective cradle”? (M)<br />
Level 1<br />
19. Who wrote of <strong>Churchill</strong> after a<br />
luncheon in 1925: “[he] was in his best<br />
<strong>for</strong>m: He is a Chimborazo or Everest<br />
among the sand-hills of the Baldwin<br />
Cabinet”? (C)<br />
20. Who complimented <strong>Churchill</strong> on<br />
his speech about the Brussels Sugar<br />
Convention on 2 March 1904: “The<br />
first part of that speech was the most<br />
sustained piece of irony I have ever<br />
heard in the House of Commons.” (C)<br />
21. Who remarked about <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
flight to Moscow in August 1942: “A<br />
flight of 10,000 miles through hostile<br />
and <strong>for</strong>eign skies may be the duty of<br />
young pilots, but <strong>for</strong> a Statesman burdened<br />
with the world’s cares it is an act<br />
of inspiring gallantry and valor”? (W)<br />
22. In which speech did WSC say, “Do<br />
not despair, do not yield to violence<br />
and tyranny, march straight <strong>for</strong>ward<br />
and die if need be—unconquered”? (S)<br />
23. WSC said at the Free Trade Hall,<br />
Manchester, on 9 May 1938: “We<br />
express our immediate plan and policy<br />
in a single sentence: ‘Arm and stand by<br />
the Covenant.’” Who were “we”? (S)<br />
24. What was <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
connection with the Londonderry<br />
Arms Hotel in Carnlough, County<br />
Antrim, Ireland? (P) ,<br />
Answers<br />
(19) Herbert Asquith. Chimborazo, at<br />
20,560 feet, is the highest mountain in<br />
Ecuador. (20) Prime Minister Campbell-<br />
Bannerman. (21) Gen. Douglas MacArthur.<br />
(22) VE-Day, 8 May 1945. (23) The Focus<br />
<strong>for</strong> Defence of Freedom and Peace, a crossparty,<br />
anti-appeasement group, <strong>for</strong>med in<br />
1936. <strong>Churchill</strong> was always in the chair.<br />
(24) In 1921 he inherited the hotel from<br />
his cousin Henry Vane-Tempest, third son<br />
of the Fifth Marquess of Londonderry. He<br />
sold it in 1934.<br />
(13) Harold Macmillan, echoing Lord<br />
Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>’s comment about<br />
Gladstone in 1886. (14) The Greeks and<br />
Romans. (15) “Moses: The Leader of a<br />
People,” in The Sunday Chronicle, 8<br />
November 1931, reprinted in Thoughts<br />
and Adventures (Amid These Storms). (16)<br />
The Story of the Malakand Field Force.<br />
(17) Gen. George C. Marshall. (18) The<br />
opening of the new House of Commons<br />
Chamber on 24 October 1950.<br />
(7) President Woodrow Wilson. (8) Prime<br />
Minister <strong>Churchill</strong>. (9) His first speech as<br />
Prime Minister on Monday, 13 May 1940.<br />
(10) Polo, as described by “A Cornet of<br />
Horse” [WSC] in an article on Sandhurst<br />
in Pall Mall magazine, December 1896.<br />
(11) Gandhi. (12) The Empire Theatre,<br />
Leicester Square, London.<br />
(1) <strong>Churchill</strong> when Secretary of State <strong>for</strong><br />
War and Air. (2) Battle of Omdurman, 2<br />
September 1898. (3) <strong>Churchill</strong>. (4) Their<br />
son Randolph was born. (5) “Their Finest<br />
Hour,” 18 June 1940, the anniversary of<br />
the Battle of Waterloo. (6) The River War.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/61
M O M E N T S I N T I M E<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in North<br />
Africa, August 1942<br />
K E V I N M O R R I S<br />
P H O T O S B Y R O B E R T E D W A R D J O H N S O N<br />
Historians delight in publishing photographs of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> taken by servicemen present on his<br />
wartime journeys, often taken impromptu, with<br />
“Brownies” or other basic equipment: an intimate view that<br />
is lost to the press cameras and official photographers.<br />
These photographs, taken by my late guardian Robert<br />
Johnson, were snapped of <strong>Churchill</strong> and Air Chief Marshal<br />
Tedder on the PM’s visit to North Africa in August 1942.<br />
All were taken shortly after landing. One image shows WSC<br />
surrounded by officers and servicemen, another his inspection<br />
of them on parade; another his farewell.<br />
The little in<strong>for</strong>mation I had is that the photos were<br />
taken “somewhere in Egypt,” with the very sketchy date of<br />
18 August 1942. Robert Johnson served with 40 Squadron<br />
RAF (Wellington Bombers can be seen in some photographs),<br />
which my research reveals was located at Shallufa,<br />
Egypt at time of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s visit. On the basis of in<strong>for</strong>mation<br />
furnished below, I now believe these photos were taken<br />
on 5 August 1942.<br />
“Getting There” (Finest Hour 148) notes that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> flew to Gibraltar, Cairo, El Alamein, Teheran,<br />
and Moscow, and back, by roughly the same route, between<br />
2 and 24 August 1942. The result of his visit to the Middle<br />
East was a drastic and immediate change of command, with<br />
Alexander commander-in-chief Middle East and<br />
Montgomery subordinate to him in command of the<br />
Eighth Army. (See <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, The Hinge of<br />
Fate, Chapter XXVI.)<br />
On this trip <strong>Churchill</strong> was in North Africa on 4-9 and<br />
17-23 August. The photos likely date to August 5th, when<br />
he records visiting “the Alamein positions.” (He spent the<br />
6th with Brooke and Smuts and the 7th with the 51st<br />
Highland Division; he was in Cairo from the 8th-10th, in<br />
Moscow on the 10th-16th. He also visited with North<br />
African troops on his return trip, but travelled by car.) ,<br />
_________________________________________________<br />
The author may be contacted at Kevin.morris66@yahoo.com.<br />
FINESTHOUR150/62
REGIONAL AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS<br />
Chapters: Please send all news reports to the Chartwell Bulletin: news@winstonchurchill.org<br />
LOCAL COORDINATORS (USA)<br />
Judy Kambestad (jammpott@aol.com)<br />
1172 Cambera Lane, Santa Ana CA 92705-2345<br />
tel. (714) 838-4741 (West)<br />
Sue & Phil Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)<br />
22 Scotdale Road, LaGrange Park IL 60526<br />
tel. (708) 352-6825 (Midwest)<br />
D. Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com)<br />
5909 Bluebird Hill Lane, Weddington NC<br />
28104; tel. (704) 844-9960 (East)<br />
LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS<br />
(Affiliates are in bold face)<br />
For <strong>for</strong>mal affiliation with the <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre,<br />
contact any local coordinator above.<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Alaska<br />
Judith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu)<br />
2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508<br />
tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Calgary, Alberta<br />
Mr. Justice J.D. Bruce McDonald<br />
(bruce.mcdonald@albertacourts.ca)<br />
2401 N - 601 - 5th Street, S.W.<br />
Calgary AB T2P 5P7; tel. (403) 297-3164<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Edmonton, Alberta<br />
Dr. Edward Hutson (jehutson@shaw.ca)<br />
98 Rehwinkel Rd., Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8<br />
tel. (780) 430-7178<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir Winton Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of British Columbia<br />
Christopher Hebb<br />
(cavellcapital@gmail.com)<br />
30-2231 Folkestone Way, W. Vancouver, BC<br />
V7S 2Y6; tel. (604) 209-6400<br />
Cali<strong>for</strong>nia: <strong>Churchill</strong>ians-by-the-Bay<br />
Jason Mueller (youngchurchillian@hotmail.com)<br />
17115 Wilson Way, Watsonville CA 95076<br />
tel. (831) 768-8663<br />
Cali<strong>for</strong>nia: <strong>Churchill</strong>ians of the Desert<br />
David Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com)<br />
74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210<br />
tel. (760) 837-1095<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ians of Southern Cali<strong>for</strong>nia<br />
Leon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com)<br />
235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042<br />
tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Chicagoland<br />
Phil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)<br />
22 Scotdale Road, LaGrange Park IL 60526<br />
tel. (708) 352-6825<br />
Colorado: Rocky Mountain <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Lew House, President<br />
(lhouse2cti@earthlink.net)<br />
2034 Eisenhower Dr., Louisville CO 80027<br />
tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589<br />
England: TCC-UK Chartwell Branch<br />
Nigel Guest (nigel.guest@ntlworld.com)<br />
Coomb Water, 134 Bluehouse Lane<br />
Limpsfield, Oxted, Surrey RH8 0AR<br />
tel. (01883) 717656<br />
England: TCC-UK Wood<strong>for</strong>d/Epping Branch<br />
Tony Woodhead<br />
(anthony.woodhead@virginmedia.com)<br />
<strong>Old</strong> Orchard, 32 Albion Hill, Loughton<br />
Essex IG10 4RD; tel. (0208) 508-4562<br />
England: TCC-UK Northern Branch<br />
Derek Greenwell (dg@ftcg.co.uk)<br />
Farriers Cottage, Station Road, Goldsborough<br />
Knaresborough, North Yorks. HG5 8NT<br />
tel. (01432) 863225<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of South Florida<br />
Rodolfo Milani<br />
(churchillsocietyofsouthflorida@gmail.com)<br />
7741 Ponce de Leon Road, Miami FL 33143<br />
tel. (305) 668-4419; mobile (305) 606-5939<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre North Florida<br />
Richard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net)<br />
81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607<br />
tel. (352) 378-8985<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Georgia<br />
www.georgiachurchill.org<br />
William L. Fisher (fish1947@bellsouth.net)<br />
5299 Brooke Farm Dr., Dunwoody GA 30338<br />
tel. (770) 399-9774<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Michigan<br />
Richard Marsh (rcmarsha2@aol.com)<br />
4085 Littledown, Ann Arbor, MI 48103<br />
tel. (734) 913-0848<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Round Table of Nebraska<br />
John Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com)<br />
7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114<br />
tel. (402) 968-2773<br />
New England <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Joseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com)<br />
340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170<br />
tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of New Orleans<br />
J. Gregg Collins (jgreggcollins@msn.com)<br />
2880 Lakeway Three, 3838 N. Causeway Blvd.<br />
Metairie LA 70002; tel. (504) 799-3484<br />
New York <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Gregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com)<br />
Fulbright & Jaworski, 666 Fifth Ave.<br />
New York NY 10103; tel. (212) 318-3388<br />
North Carolina <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
www.churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.org<br />
Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com)<br />
5909 Bluebird Hill Lane<br />
Weddington NC 28104; tel. (704) 844-9960<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Northern Ohio<br />
Michael Mc<strong>Men</strong>amin (mtm@walterhav.com)<br />
1301 E. 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114<br />
tel. (216) 781-1212<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Philadelphia<br />
Bernard Wojciechowski<br />
(bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us)<br />
1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446<br />
tel. (610) 584-6657<br />
South Carolina: Bernard Baruch Chapter<br />
Kenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net)<br />
P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367<br />
tel. (803) 254-4035<br />
Texas: Emery Reves <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Jeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net)<br />
2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210<br />
tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Houston<br />
Chris Schaeper (chrisschaeper@sbcglobal.net)<br />
2907 Quenby, Houston TX 77005<br />
tel. (713) 660-6898<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre South Texas<br />
thechurchillcentresouthtexas.com<br />
Don Jakeway (churchillstx@gmail.com)<br />
170 Grassmarket, San Antonio, TX 78259<br />
tel. (210) 333-2085<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of<br />
Vancouver Island • www.churchillvictoria.com<br />
Mayo McDonough (churchillsociety@shaw.ca)<br />
PO Box 2114, Sidney BC V8L 3S6<br />
tel. (250) 595-0008<br />
Washington (DC) Society <strong>for</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Chris Sterling (chriss@gwu.edu)<br />
4507 Airlie Way, Annandale VA 22003<br />
tel. (703) 256-9304<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Seattle<br />
www.churchillseattle.blogspot.com<br />
Simon Mould (simon@cckirkland.org)<br />
1920 243rd Pl., SW, Bothell, WA 98021<br />
tel. (425) 286-7364<br />
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