Winston Churchill

THE CHURCHILL CENTER
THEINTERNATIONALCHURCHILLSOCIETIES
AUSTRALIA • CANADA • UNITED KINGDOM • UNITED STATES • www.winstonchurchill.org
PATRON: THELADYSOAMES,D. B. E.
The Churchill Center is a non-profit organization which encourages study of the life and thought of Winston S. Churchill; fosters research
about his speeches, writings and deeds; advances knowledge of his example as a statesman; and, by programmes of teaching and publishing,
imparts that learning to men, women and young people around the world. The Center also sponsors Finest Hour, special publications, symposia,
seminars, conferences and tours. The Center was created by the International Churchill Societies, founded in 1968 to inspire and educate
future generations through the works and example of Winston Churchill.
THE CHURCHILL CENTER
A non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0482584
TRUSTEES
The Hon. Celia Sandys, Fred Farrow,
George A. Lewis, Amb. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.,
The Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger
BOARD OF GOVERNORS
Garnet R. Barber, David Boler,
William C. Ives, Nigel Knocker,
Richard M. Langworth, Dr. John H. Mather,
James W. Muller, Charles D. Platt,
John G. Plumpton, Douglas S. Russell,
Jacqueline Dean Witter
BUSINESS OFFICE
Lorraine C. Horn, Administrator
8016 McKenstry Drive, Laurel MD 20723
Tel. (888) WSC-1874, Fax. (301) 483-6902
Email: WSC_1874@msn.com
OfFICERS
Richard M. Langworth, President
181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229
Tel. (603) 746-4433, Fax. (603) 746-4260
Email: malakand@conknet.com
William C. Ives, Vice President
77 W. Wacker Dr., 43rd fir., Chicago IL 60601
Tel. (312) 845-5798, Fax. (312) 845-5828
Email: merivas@mbf-law.com
Dr. John H. Mather, Secretary
12144 Long Ridge Lane, Bowie MD 20715
Tel. (202) 565-8312, Fax. (202) 565-8476
Email: johnmather@aol.com
Douglas S. Russell, Treasurer
PO Box 2416, Iowa City IA 52244
Tel. (319) 351-5610, Fax. (319) 351-6409
Email: srpllp@email.msn.com
Charles D. Platt, Endowment Director
14 Blue Heron Drive West,
Greenwood Village, CO 80121
Tel. (303) 721-8550, Fax. (303) 290-0097
Email: dnhx71A@prodigy.com
Derek Brownleader, Membership Secretary
1847 Stonewood Dr., Baton Rouge LA 70816
Tel. (225) 752-3313
CHURCHILL STORES (Back Issues & Sales Dept.)
Gail Greenly, PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229
Tel. (603) 746-3452, Fax (603) 746-6963
Email: greengail@aol.com
INTERNET COMMITTEE
Homepage: www.winstonchurchill.org
Listserv: Winston@vm.marist.edu
John Plumpton, Webmaster, Savrola@ican.net
Listserv: Jonah.Triebwasser@marist.edu
Associate: Beverly Carr, bgcarr@interlog.com
Consultant: Ian Langworth, catrap@bigfoot.com
Churchill Center...
CHURCHILL CENTER ASSOCIATES
Winston Churchill Associates:
ICS United States, Mr. & Mrs. Matthew B. Wills,
The Churchill Center, Mr. & Mrs. Parker H. Lee III,
Alex M. Worth Jr., Fred Farrow, Colin D. Clark,
Michael & Carol McMenamin,
David & Diane Boler, Ray L. & Patricia M. Orban,
The Annenberg Foundation, David & Carole Noss,
Mr. & Mrs. Anthony E. Gilles
Clementine Churchill Associates:
Barbara & Richard Langworth, James F. Lane,
Drs. John H. & Susan H. Mather,
D. Craig & Lorraine Horn, Linda & Charles Platt,
Dr. John B. Thomison,
Ambassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson Jr.,
Ronald D. Abramson, Jeanette & Angelo Gabriel,
James R. & Lucille I. Thomas
Mary Soarnes Associates:
Mr. & Mrs. William C. Ives, Jacqueline & Malcolm
Witter, Mr. & Mrs. John G. Plumpton,
Gary J. Bonine, Mr. & Mrs. James W. Muller,
Frederick C. & Martha S. Hardman,
Douglas S. Russell, Elizabeth Churchill Snell,
Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Leahy, Richard & Jenny Streiff,
Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Drake Kambestad,
Daniel & Susan Borinsky, Robert M. Stephenson,
Michael W. Michelson, Dona & Bob Dales,
Dr. Jeffrey T. De Haan
CHURCHILL CENTER ACADEMIC ADVISERS
Prof. James W. Muller, Chairman,
University of Alaska, Anchorage
1518 Airport Hts. Dr., Anchorage AK 99508
Tel. (907) 786-4740 Fax. (907) 786-4647
Email: afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu
Prof. Paul Addison, University of Edinburgh
Dr. Larry P. Arnn, President, The Claremont Institute
Prof. Kirk Emmert, Kenyon College
Sir Martin Gilbert, CBE, Merlon College, Oxford
Prof. Barry M. Gough, Wilfrid Laurier University
Prof. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers University
Prof. Patrick Powers, So, New England School of Law
Prof. Paul A. Rahe, University ofTulsa
Dr. Jeffrey Wallin, President, The American Academy
Prof. Manfred Weidhorn, Yeshiva University
Prof. John A. Ramsden, Queen Mary & Westfield Col.
AFFILIATE:
Washington Society for Churchill
Ron Helgemo, President. Tel. (703) 476-4693
PO Box 2456, Merrifield, VA 22116
INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL
OF CHURCHILL ORGANIZATIONS
Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr., Chairman
208 S. LaSalle St., Chicago IL 60604 USA
ICS AUSTRALIA
Robin Linke, 181 Jersey Street, Wembley WA 6014
ACT Representative: Lee Deegan,
12/63 Tindery Circuit, Palmerston ACT 2913
ICS CANADA
Revenue Canada No. 0732701-21-13
Ambassador Kenneth W. Taylor, Hon. Cliairman
Garnet R. Barber, President
4 Snowshoe Cres., Thornhill, Ont. L3T 4M6
Tel. (905) 881-8550
John G. Plumpton, Executive Secretary
130 Collingsbrook Blvd,
Agincourt Ont. M1W 1M7
Tel. (416) 497-5349 Fax. (416) 502-3847
Email: Savrola@ican.net
Jeanette Webber, Membership Secretary
3256 Rymal Road, Mississauga Ont. L4Y 3C1
Tel. (905) 279-5169
Charles Anderson, Treasurer
389 Stanfield Drive, Oakville Ont. L6L 3R2
The Other Club of Ontario
Bill Williams, President
1 Ridgewood Rd., St. Catharines, Ont. L2R 3S2
Winston S. Churchill Society of Vancouver (Affiliated)
Robert W. Gourlay, President
300 - 744 W. Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V6C 1A5
ICS UNITED KINGDOM
Charity Registered in England No. 800030
Nigel Knocker, Chairman
PO Box 1257, Melksham, Wilts. SN12 6GQ
Tel. & Fax. (01380) 828609
Email: Nigel@icsuksaf.demon.co.uk
TRUSTEES
The Hon. Celia Sandys, Chairman;
The Duke of Marlborough; David Boler;
David J. Porter; Geoffrey J. Wheeler;
The Rt. Hon. The Earl Jellicoe
COMMITTEE
Nigel Knocker, Chairman;
Wylma Wayne, Vice Chairman;
Paul H. Courtenay, Hon. Secretary;
Fred Lockwood, Hon. Treasurer;
John Glanvill Smith, Editor ICS UK Newsletter;
Michael Kelion; Dominic Walters; Ernie Money
ICS UNITED STATES
A non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0365444
Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees
208 S. LaSalle Street, Chicago IL 60604
TRUSTEES
Richard M. Langworth; George A. Lewis;
Wendy Russell Reves; Hon. Celia Sandys';
The Lady Soames; Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger

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WINTER 1998-99
JOURNAL OF THE CHURCHILL CENTER AND SOCIETIES
11 Personality of the Century
His Genius Had a Philosophical Foundation
Ron Cynewulf Robbins
13 Special Relationship
Churchill Conference XV: November 5th-8th, 1998
As Seen by Various Eyes
20 International Tour and Conference XVI
The Bath Connection, July 17th-22nd
The Churchill Conference, July 22nd-25th
Nigel Knocker
22 "The First Time I WSC'd..."
Our members got to talking one day about what
attracted them to Winston Churchill...
25 Glimpses: Count Xavier Puslowski
Rafal Heydel-Mankoo
26 What to Do About Iraq? A Debate
Charles Montgomery and Robert Shepherd
29 How Churchill Saw Others: Stanley Baldwin
How could such a magnanimous man say of him,
"It would have been better had he never lived."?
Richard M. Langworth
32 Thanks! To All Who Helped Us in 1998
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES:
36 The new Churchill Proceedings are a cornucopia of
opinion, says Michael Richards....Raymond Seitz's Over
Here, the Editor says, ought to be required
reading....The History Channel has gone over the top on
Pearl Harbor, Ron Helgemo reports....Michael Smith
writes that if you were good at crosswords in WW2 you
might end up working at Bletchley....Churchill Online
considers Devolution and Hi tier.... John Plumpton's
abstracts reveal quite different scholarly and public perceptions....Churchill
in Stamps nears the end of its
journey....Colin Coote's The Other Club gets a late
review... Members consider good books for young people....
Britons of the Millennium: Shakespeare and
Churchill are juxtaposed by Douglas J. Hall
4 Despatch Box
5 Datelines
7 The Churchill Calendar
12 Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas
28 Recipes from No. 10
34 Action This Day
42 Inside the Journals
44 Churchill in Stamps
46 About Books
50 Churchilltrivia
51 Wit & Wisdom
51 Ampersand
Cover: "Portrait of Sir Winston Churchill," an
original oil by Frank Mason, never previously
published, reproduced by kind permission of the
artist and Joseph Van Goethem of Van Goethem
Fine Art, where the painting is offered for sale.
Size: 48x42 in., 62x56 in. with frame. Mr.
Mason kindly agreed to a generous donation from
the proceeds of this sale to The Churchill Center.
For details please contact Mr. Joseph Van
Goethem, Goethem Fine Art, Regency at McLean,
1800 Old Meadow Road, Suite 619, McLean,
Virginia 22102, tel. (703) 790-1430.
FINEST HOUR 101 / 3

DESPATCH BOX
Number 101 • Winter 1998-99
ISSN 0882-3715
www.winstonchurchill.org
Barbara E Langworth, Publisher
Richard M. Langworth, Editor
PO Box 385, Hopkinton,
NH 03229 USA
Tel. (603) 746-4433
Fax. (603) 746-4260
Email: Malakand@conknet.com
Senior Editor: John G. Plumpton
130 Collingsbrook Blvd.
Agincourt Ont. M1W 1M7 Canada
Email: Savrola@ican.net
Senior Editor: Ron Cynewulf Robbins
198 St. Charles Street, Victoria
B.C., V8S 3M7 Canada
Features Editor: Douglas J. Hall
183A Somerby Hill, Grantham,
Lines. NG31 7HA England
News Editor: John Frost
Editorial Assistant: Gail Greenly
Contributors
Sir Martin Gilbert, Nigel Knocker, UK;
George Richard, Australia;
James W. Muller, Manfred Weidhorn,
Curt Zoller, Dr. John H. Mather,
Michael McMenamin, USA.
Finest Hour is made possible in part
through the generous support of members
of The Churchill Center and
Societies, and with the assistance of an
endowment created by The Churchill
Center Associates (page 2).
FINEST HOUR is published quarterly by
The Churchill Center and International
Churchill Societies, which offer various levels
of support in their respective currencies.
Membership applications and changes of
address should be sent to the appropriate
offices on page 2. Permission to mail at nonprofit
rates in USA granted by the US Postal
Service, Concord, NH, permit no. 1524.
Copyright 1999. All rights reserved. Designed
and edited by Dragonwyck Publishing
Inc. Production by New England Foil
Stamping Inc. Primed by Reprographics Inc.
Made in U.S.A.
CONFERENCE 1998
[To Prof. Muller] I want to express gratitude
for the many things I gained from having
been a part of the Churchill Conference. The
stimuli offered from the lectures to the lunch
conversations will not be easily forgotten. I have
received some gracious letters that seal this experience
for me in a way I had not expected. It was
an honor and a pleasure, and I hope to be involved
in the future. Thank you for the phone
call asking me to rise to a challenge that would
enable me to learn more about Winston
Churchill, individuals who revere his leadership,
and the opportunity to discover more about myself,
and what it takes to be a leader.
MARY KEMPER, COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY
THE THANKS ARE TO YOU
I am greatly indebted for your "care and attention"
to the layout and impressive illustrations
for my piece, "Unswerving Resolution,
Glinting Intellect" (FH 97). The op-ed enterprise
you outline in your editorial in the same issue is
ablaze with opportunities that will handsomely
benefit The Churchill Center. Bonne chance.
I would like also to say how I admired your
forthright comments about "terminological inexactitudes"
concerning the Churchill Center vs.
Societies (FH96, p. 4), on necessary consolidation
and future advantages which must be seized
by managing change. I have never understood
the dismal philosophy that contemplates essential
change as metaphorical blood-letting, especially
when applied to institutions.
RON CYNEWULF ROBBINS, VICTORIA, B.C.
FINEST HOUR 100
In the last paragraph of Robert Pilpel's extract
on Theodore Roosevelt, WSC did not
speak to President Kennedy who invited him to
Washington (from New York) in 1961—I did.
WSC never spoke to Kennedy. It was not illwill,
just circumstance. (See my book, Long Sunset,
pages 289-90.)
ANTHONY MONTAGUE BROWNE, CBE, DFC
READING, BERKS.
SEPARATIZING MACKENZIE KING
What a beautiful day it was supposed to be:
French and English Canada paying tribute to
the two great leaders of the West during World
War II, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.
For this day, a memorial was built to
commemorate their meetings in Quebec City in
1943 and 1944. On Rue Saint-Louis, sculptures
of FDR and Churchill faced each other with expressions
of interest and determination.
But the day was spoiled by ultra-nationalist
Canadians and the Prime Minister of Canada,
Jean Chretien, who gave a political affiliation to
the event that it should never have had.
Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada in
1943-44, had hosted the Quebec Conference
and they were offended that a statue of King was
not displayed with Churchill and FDR.
French and English Canadians should be
proud of this memorial because it was
Churchill's wit and boldness that saved England
and helped win the war. I am not an admirer of
Roosevelt, but I think that these Quebec City
meetings between Churchill and Roosevelt were
important to the war effort. A statue could be
built of Mackenzie King to commemorate
Canada's war effort, but does it have a relation to
these meetings, did he fully participate to the
discussions? And is it so important to spoil an
important commemoration just for partisanship?
Could an expert on WW2 or Churchill
give his opinion on this matter.
B. GAREAU, MONTREAL, QUEBEC
At the Quebec Conference, Churchill felt
that King was using the event for his own political
advancement. What better photo opportunity
than to be photographed with Churchill
and FDR? But their relationship goes back further
than that. King met Churchill during the
latter's tour of Canada in the early 1900s. King
called Churchill "an arrogant pup" (although
they were born three weeks apart!). When King
went to England soon after their initial encounter
and was told to meet Churchill, he
replied: "Anybody but Churchill. I've met him
and he's the last man in England I want to see."
RAFAL HEYDEL-MANKOO, OTTAWA, ONTARIO
Editor's response: Fm no expert, but I suspect
Mackenzie King would be quite satisfied with the
statuary at Quebec. He had no plenary role in the
Quebec conferences and complained privately that
he felt himself an "errand boy. "Nonetheless he recognized
the paramountcy of the two leaders, felt little
insult over the arrangements and, though he
had many policy disagreements, always praised
FDR and Churchill alike.
CHURCHILL OR CONGRESS?
Did you know that Herman Kahn, who
wrote the classic tome On Thermonuclear War,
was at Rand Corporation, and later founded the
Hudson Institute, said that he would have
traded the entire United States Congress for
Winston Churchill at 65?
LARRY HINDS
Editor's Response: No I didn't, and herewith I
pass on Mr. Kahn's delightful quote, which reminds
me of William Buckley's celebrated remark that he
would prefer to be governed by the first 535 names
in the Boston telephone book than the entire
United States Congress (including, I presume, the
present one). $j
FINEST HOUR 101 / 4

DATELINES
QUOTE OF THE SEASON
"when the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too
late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the
sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability
of mankind, want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of
clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—
these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history. "
-WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 12 April 1935
PARIS REMEMBERS
PARIS, NOVEMBER 11TH— Following a salute,
the Union Flag and Tricolour which veil
the statue slide to the ground and are
quickly folded by four cadets, two from
Sandhurst, two from Saint-Cyr. To the
Churchill statue that she has just unveiled,
Elizabeth II gives an emotional
smile. On this Armistice Day 1998, Her
Majesty is Parisian. And she has just unveiled,
with President Jacques Chirac, a
monument by sculptor Jean Cardot, dedicated
by France to the most famous
British Prime Minister of the century: a
choice which owes nothing to chance.
The Queen underlines it by saying that
Churchill "would also have wanted to remind
me that this same date, 11th November
fifty-four years ago, he and General
de Gaulle walked down the Champs-
Elysees together, at the end of the second
great conflict which tore into the very
heart of Europe."
The Queen said Churchill, her first
Premier, "who guided me with such wisdom
and humour through the earliest
years of my reign," had a sometimes difficult
relationship with de Gaulle, but
would have been delighted with the honour
bestowed by France, a country he
"loved all his life." Churchill is only the
second Briton honoured with a Paris
statue, after Edward VII, in honour of his
efforts to improve Anglo-French understanding
at the beginning of the century.
Lady Soames, Sir Winston's daughter,
was acknowledged first since it was at
her initiative that, on 22 June 1993, Her
Majesty The Queen Mother inaugurated
a fund for a statue of General de Gaulle
in London. In return, France chose
Armistice Day 1998 to erect beside the
Seine, opposite a bronze statue of
Clemenceau, Father of Victory in 1918, a
monument to the man General de Gaulle
called the Father of Victory in 1945. After
the ceremony at Churchill's statue, Her
Majesty placed other flowers at the statue
of Clemenceau, where Churchill had laid
them on this day in 1944.
Arriving in Paris the evening before,
the Queen began the day by laying a
wreath under the Arc de Triomphe. The
ceremony, on the 80th anniversary of the
Armistice that ended World War I, carried
a special solemnity. Marne taxis, a battery
of artillery, vintage Renault carriages and
de Dion Bouton trucks evoked the Great
War. At the 11 th hour of the 11 th day of
this 11 th month, the President of France
greeted The Queen as she arrived at the
head of the Champs Elysees, among ranks
of a cavalry regiment of the Guard. Together
the Heads of State bowed before
the flame of the unknown poilu, each
wearing symbols of the battles in which
the two allies fought. Elizabeth II greeted
a delegation of former soldiers, among
them General Bourgeois, 102 years old,
who voluntarily enlisted at age 17 in 1914
as a defender of Verdun.
Among the guests who gathered for a
luncheon at the Elysee Palace were Pierre
Mesmer, head of the honorary committee
for the Churchill statue, Lady Soames
and Sir Winston's grandson who bears his
name. The toasts between Her Majesty
and President Chirac were made with Pol
Roger Champagne, cuvee Sir Winston
Churchill 1988. This was a fitting ceremony
to mark the new statue of a man
who first incarnated resistance to the
Third Reich by announcing, on 4 June
1940: "We shall never surrender."
Later in the day, The Queen was received
in Wevelgem, Belgium by King Albert
II and Queen Paola. With the Irish
President, Mme. McAleese, the Royals
visited the Irish memorial of Messines.
Their Majesties then travelled on to Ypres
where, each evening, the horn sounds for
the Allied soldiers who fell.
-Antoine Michelland in Paris Match,
Translated by Gail Greenly >»
FINEST HOUR 101 / 5

DATELINES
DDG-81 s
Captain, Cdr.
Mike Franken,
sends us the
beautiful ship's
crest, which
will appear in
color in our
next issue.
USS WINSTON S. CHURCHILL
BATH, MAINE, JANUARY 7TH— The U.S.
Navy's newest guided missile destroyer
(see Datelines in recent issues) will be involved
in ceremonies this spring. The
launching will be at 2:50 PM Saturday
April 17th at Bath Iron Works. Lady
Soames and Mrs. William Cohen, wife of
the Secretary of Defense, will officiate.
The launch is open to the public and
members are cordially invited. Information
will be mailed to all members in
New England and anyone else who requests
it by telephoning the editor.
There may be a separate christening
ceremony at Bath or Portland on Friday
April 23rd, marking the 50th anniversary
of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
attended by various NATO heads of
state and government, and Lady Soames.
However, the Navy is not sure at this
writing whether this event will come off.
They are, however, certain that a launch
will occur on the 17th. For those too far
away to attend both, you should grasp the
sure thing and plan to be in Bath April
17th in plenty of time for the launch
which, the Navy says, will definitely occur
at high tide, 2:50 PM.
HOUSEKEEPING NOTES
As FH commences its second hundred
issues, a moderate redesign is upon
us. Our title changes to script and incorporates
the "V" logo formerly used by
ICS/USA (and still used by ICS/UK), a
registered trademark.
"Amid These Storms" has been
dropped, freeing the editor to contribute
more articles. The Churchill Center Report
has been folded into "Datelines,"
since the Center is intrinsic to all we do.
You will inevitably notice adjustments in
coming issues as we settle into our new
suit of clothes. Thanks to David Eisenlohr
and Bev Carr for the title design
work, and to Chris Petersen for making it
all work.
SHAKESPEARE FIRST
LONDON, JANUARY 2ND— Churchill ran a
close second to playwright William
Shakespeare in a BBC poll of its listeners
for Britain's greatest personality of the
past 1,000 years. Shakespeare polled
11,717 votes, Churchill 10,957, and
William Caxton (publisher of the first
printed book in the English language)
7,109. Charles Darwin was fourth in the
poll with 6,337. Not a bad start for the
Millennium sweepstakes; proves BBC listeners
a fairly erudite lot, too.
YOUNG MEMBERS WANTED
Not everyone who joins The
Churchill Center or Societies gives an age.
Among about 1000 American members
who do, five percent are under thirty. A
more encouraging statistic is that >»
ARMISTICE DAY: 80 YEARS ON
On Armistice Day we welcome the dedication
of a statue in Paris to the only man who held
high office in both World Wars. Lady Soames left
promptly at the close of the International
Churchill Conference in Virginia in order to attend
this event, made possible by many generous
Frenchmen, including The Churchill Center's
good friends at Champagne Pol Roger. Ten years
ago while visiting Epernay we had the honor to
recall the words that meant so much to embattled
France in 1940:
"Francais! Pendant plus de trente ans, en temps
depaix comme en temps de guerre, j'ai marcbe avec
vous etje marche encore avec vous aujourd'hui, sur la meme route.... "
"Frenchmen! For more than thirty years in peace and war I have marched with
you. I am marching with you still along the same road. Tonight I speak to you at your
firesides, wherever you may be, or whatever your fortunes are. I repeat the prayer upon
the Louis d'or, 'Dieu protege la France.' Here at home in England, under the fire of the
Boche, we do not forget the ties and links that unite us to France....Here in London,
which Herr Hitler says he will reduce to ashes...our Air Force has more than held its
own. We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes...
"Good night then: Sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will
come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly upon all who suffer for the
cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn. Vive la France!
Long live also the forward march of the common people in all the lands towards their
just and true inheritance, and towards the broader and fuller age."
On Armistice Day 80 years on, we remember above all those who never returned,
of whom Winston Churchill spoke on 14 July 1940: "This is no war of chieftains or
of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes.
There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who will render
faithful service in this war but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will
never be recorded. This is a war of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without
failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse will be lifted from our age."
Reviewing the film "Saving Private Ryan," (FH99), Dick Feagler of the Cleveland
Plain Dealer describes a scene during the invasion of Normandy in 1944: "A squad of
American Rangers is sent behind enemy lines to save a man whose three brothers have
been killed in battle. Higher headquarters wants him shipped home to spare his
mother the agony of having all her sons killed in combat. So eight Rangers risk their
lives for one man. And when one of the Rangers is mortally wounded, he asks Private
Ryan to bend over so he can whisper to him. 'Earn this, he says.
"And that is the request of all the young men who have died in all the wars, from
the Somme to Normandy to the Chosen Reservoir to Da Nang to the Gulf:
"Earn this."
FINEST HOUR 101/6

DATELINES
THECHURCHILLCALENDAR
Local event organizers are welcome to send entries for this calendar; owing to our quarterly schedule, however, we need copy at least three months in advance.
1999
2 April: Annual General Meeting, ICS/UK, Cabinet War Rooms, London
17 April, 2:50 PM: Launch of USS Winston S. Churchill, DDG81, Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine
17-22 July: Churchill Conference Mini-Tour, London to Bath, England
22-25 July: Sixteenth International Churchill Conference, Bath, England
26 July-8 August: "Churchill's South Africa" Tour, Cape Town to Pretoria (sold out)
24-26 September: Theme Conference, "Churchill & Eisenhower at Gettysburg," Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
18 October: Promised publication date of The Churchill War Papers III: The Ever-Widening War, 1941
2000
14-17 September: Seventeenth International Churchill Conference, Anchorage, Alaska
2001
14 February: Centenary of Winston Churchill's Entry into Parliament
Autumn: Eighteenth International Churchill Conference, Ottawa, Ontario
2002
Spring: Nineteenth International Churchill Conference, London
2003
Twentieth International Churchill Conference and 50th Anniversary of the Bermuda Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda
the average American member age is only
48, and the average age of those joining
through the Internet (now our largest
source of new members) is 44. WE
WANT YOUNG MEMBERS! If you are
not a member already, or know someone
who should be, remember that USA student
membership costs only $20; and if
even that is a hardship, mail or Email us
with your situation and let us see what we
can do. For example, there are plenty of
regular members who will gladly subsidize
subscriptions of young people who are
genuinely interested. Similar student discounts
are also offered by ICS UK and
Canada. Write to the national offices
listed on page 2.
ANOTHER MUSICAL
PASADENA, NOVEMBER 6TH— From tonight
through December 20th the Pasadena
Playhouse (State Theatre of California)
produced "Only a Kingdom," which
marked the second appearance of
Churchill in a musical production. (The
first was Robert Hardy in the title role of
"Winnie," some years ago in London.)
"Only a Kingdom" was about the Abdication
of Edward VIII. The actor playing
WSC, John Connolly, bore a remarkable
physical likeness and had mannerisms
that looked Churchillian. In the play,
Churchill was portrayed as spokesman for
the Royal Family, specifically the Queen
Mother, who were all strongly against
King Edward's abdication. [She was indeed,
but in the real-life episode
Churchill took the King's part against the
majority of Parliament. -Ed.] I do not
know if this play will ever reach the east
coast. It was well acted; Stan Chandler as
Edward VIII had a great voice; but as theater,
I've seen better. -David Crone
LOST AT SEA
SYDNEY, DECEMBER 28TH— The Australian
sailing sloop Winston Churchill (FH 100,
p. 6) sank during a raging storm in the
Tasman Sea during the annual Sydney-to-
Hobart race, broken up by 90 mph winds
and seas as high as 35 feet which arrived
almost without warning. The race ended
with six dead and numerous yachts lost.
Winston Churchill was abandoned at sea.
Of her nine-man crew, seven including
skipper Richard Winning and 19-year-old
Michael Rynan (at sea for the first time)
were rescued from life rafts while two
crewmates were swept off the rafts some
95 miles from shore.
Winston Churchill put up a game
fight, but after hours of battering a huge
wave broke to leeward, ripping loose
chain plates, breaking planks and, perhaps,
driving her mast through her hull.
The boat rapidly filled with water. Winning
cast off his raft as the stern was sinking.
He turned to help a mate and when
he looked back the mast was disappearing.
The lashes parted and the rafts were
soon separated and out of sight of one another.
Winning's raft capsized twice,
which required some survivors to go overboard
to right it. The rafts were conical
with a shallow pointed top; with three
people inside all their weight is below the
water line so they are theoretically impossible
to capsize—they capsized twice. In
the aftermath, Richard Winning vowed
never to race again.
Our thanks for this report to the Sydney
Herald and Clarence Martin. Finest
Hour extends deepest sympathy to family
members and survivors.
STATUS OF WAR PAPERS III
LONDON, JANUARY 17TH^ Sir Martin
Gilbert has kindly advised us that The
Ever-Widening War: 1941, his third volume
of Churchill War Papers and the final
"Companion Volume" to Biographic Volume
6 of the Official Biography, is to be
published Monday 18 October by Heinemann.
He is "on a crash schedule" to
complete all final editorial work in February.
(Sir Martin turned the manuscript for
this book in to the English publisher,
Heinemann, in December 1997.)
During 1998 Heinemann's parent,
Reed Consumer Group, was bought by
Random House. The takeover was, in
words of a most reliable source, "the most
almighty mess and the Reed records were,
and are, less than adequate." Sir Martin's
news makes us cautiously optimistic, and
we congratulate him (in Churchill's
words) for "continuing to pester, nag and
bite." continued >>>
FINEST HOUR 101/7

We also hope the new managers get real,
and reconsider the ridiculous £95 per
copy UK price—the identical Norton US
edition lists at $75 (our price $58)—and
that they stop scrapping remainder copies
of the Official Biography (if there are any
left) rather than distributing them to
needy schools and libraries.
Alas the previous Heinemann management
has put virtually all the biographic
and companion volumes out of
print—including, now, Volume I of the
War Papers. Their press runs of the Volume
5 Companions (1922-1939) were so
small that the books now cost over $300
on the secondhand market; even Sir Martin
lacks one of them. Given that record,
things can only get better. Had primary
responsibility for editing and producing
the War Papers been given to the Norton
publishers years ago when this project
began, we would probably have four or
five volumes in print by now. New management
is good news. -RML
NOT REALLY "OFFICIAL"
Incidentally, the name "Official Biography"
is somewhat misleading, as Sir
Martin Gilbert noted in a 1991 interview
with Brian Lamb on C-Span's "Booknotes":
"I'm called the official biographer,
though to the enormous credit of the
Churchill family they've never asked to
see a single word of what I was writing
until the books were printed and bound
and ready for sale to the public. They
never asked me to delete a word or to skirt
around a particular issue. So 'official' is a
misnomer if it's thought to mean a censored
or restricted biographer."
THE VIRTUAL CENTER
Because our website and other places
say, "The Churchill Center, Washington,
D.C.," we occasionally get communications
from people who want to visit our
building. Of all possible answers we like
Dr. Mather's the best: The CC is a "virtual
center." It certainly exists, as its many activities
show, but it does not own or occupy
a building. This is not to say it doesn't
plan to—a building fund is part of its
extended endowment.
Meanwhile, for anyone with questions
about membership, joining, gift
membership or other business, you have
only to telephone our toll-free number,
WSC-1874, to find the cheery
DATELINES
voice of administrator Lorraine Horn,
who will be pleased to answer questions
or direct to you someone who can.
"WSC": PRO AND CON
A reader has suggested that we
should not use the initials "WSC" in reference
to Winston S. Churchill because
using the initials, like, say, JFK, FDR and
so on, isn't British practice. We have accordingly
diminished our use of "WSC,"
but we haven't abandoned it. True,
Britons do not refer to people by their
initials as often as Americans do (though
everyone knows who EIIR is, and Stanley
Baldwin was always "SB" to his colleagues).
But for editorial practicality (in
lieu of repeating "Churchill" all too often)
"WSC" cannot be bettered.
"Sir Winston" is usually too formal
(and he wasn't that until 1953). "Winston
Spencer Churchill" rarely fits. "Winston"
is too familiar, and we are informed that
he despised "Winnie." "WSC" has its
function and we don't think WSC would
mind too much. He wore the initials on
his carpet slippers, penned them on official
documents, even had a "WSC" template
so he could "sign" his paintings.
Also, his daughter and biographer both
use "WSC" freely. Good enough for us!
CHURCHILL POSTERS
ICS Canada
and our Internet
team
have produced
"Study History!
Study History!"
superb
posters, carrying
the
most famous
photograph
of Churchill,
kindly authorized
www.winstonchurchill.org
for
use by Yousuf Karsh. The posters advertise
the Churchill Home Page, www.winstonchurchill.org,
and are designed to interest
teachers and students in Churchill
and our organizations. Hundreds have already
been distributed free of charge to
schools in Canada, the U.S.A. and Great
Britain. Most posters are 18x24" but a
few were printed in a more compact
12x18" and either is presently available.
For the time being, they come in a tube
with the 1995 Conference poster marking
"Churchill, Roosevelt and the end of
World War II."
Posters are free to teachers, students,
schools and colleges. Please Email or mail
us with the name and address of the
school, the teacher or department head to
whom they should be addressed. (Limit
two to a customer.)
Posters are also free to current members.
In U.S.A., please send $5 payable to
"Churchill Center" to the editor, to cover
the cost of postage and packing. In
Canada send C$5 payable to "ICS" to
John Pumpton. In UK send £2 payable
to "ICS" to Nigel Knocker. (Addresses are
all on page 2.)
YOU COULD OWN ONE
NOVEMBER HTH— In case you have your
heart set on obtaining a 1941 Enigma
machine, one was being auctioned at:
.
The catalog description said it was complete
except for "Birnen," so I logged
onto the LEO German-English online
dictionary and found out this word
means "pears" in English! Well, I guess
the light bulbs are sort of pear-shaped. Estimate
DM 12.000-18.000. The previous
one went for DM 24.034 ($13,400 or
£8,000). -Jim Kirk
CAROL SUZUKI
SANTA MONICA, JUNE 4TH— A regular and
longtime attendee at Churchill conferences
and tours and beloved wife of Peter
Suzuki, Carol died in her sleep after a twoyear
battle against cancer. Born and raised
in Wheeling, West Virginia, Carol Jean
Bonar worked for the US State Department
while pursuing her history degree at
the George Washington University. In
1970 she moved to Wiesbaden, Germany,
to study German. Here she met Peter,
who was teaching for the University of
Maryland in the same city. They were
married in January 1972, honeymooned
on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, and
moved to Omaha, Nebraska. Here they
remained, with Peter pursuing his teaching
career at the University of Nebraska.
Everyone who knew Carol Suzuki rejoiced
in her friendly and outgoing manner
and her deep knowledge of the
Churchill saga. Peter Suzuki's many
friends in The Churchill Center and Societies
send their heartfelt sympathy. Our
grief, though not so great as his, is deeply
felt. -RML continued >»
FINEST HOUR 101/8

ERRATA,/-//100
Page 8: caption under Randolph
Churchill's photograph should read 22
February (not July) 1968.
Page 40: words are missing at top
left column: "This interruption of innocence
in politics is the strangest thing
imaginable. It would seem to..."
Page 46, last paragraph, it was Anthony
Montague Browne who spoke
with Kennedy, not Churchill.
Page 62: A flying hyphen has entered
Alistair Cooke's correction.
Page 63: dates for Lady Churchill
should read 1968-1977, not 1968-1979.
ON THE MAP
WASHINGTON, OCTOBER 27TH— National Geographic
maps have been an important resource
for world leaders, scientists, explorers,
academics, travelers, and millions
of readers of the renowned yellow-bordered
magazine. During World War II,
NG's 1944 map, "Germany and Its Approaches,"
became Churchill's personal
briefing map. Half a century later during
the Gulf War, National Geographic received
10,000 additional requests from
the public for a map of the Middle East.
A new map was created and included in
the February 1991 issue of National Geographic.
The Society donated 50,000
copies of the map to U.S. military units
throughout the Persian Gulf.
THE THINGS THEY SAY, cont'd...
LONDON, OCTOBER 30TH— Winston
Churchill has demanded a retraction of a
slur in a Daily Mail gossip column, which
repeated the old story that his grandfather
once slept with actor/playwright Ivor
Novello, describing the experience as
"musical." Apparently this was picked up
from Ted Morgan's biography of Somerset
Maugham, and a Novello biography by
James Harding. The Mail asserted that
historian Andrew Roberts (Eminent
Churchillians) backed up the lie in his review
of Clive Ponting's (dreadful)
Churchill biography. But what Roberts
said was that this was just about the only
lie about Sir Winston which Ponting did
not include!
EU HONOURS "VISIONARIES"
BRUSSELS, NOVEMBER 28TH— Sir Winston is
one of nine "visionaries from the past"
DATELINES
honoured by European Parliament buildings
in Brussels, Strasbourg or Luxembourg
named for them. The other eight:
Italian anti-fascist Altiero Spinelli and
postwar premier Alcide De Gasperi; postwar
German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer;
French feminist Louise Weiss;
Spanish diplomat Salvador de Madariaga;
Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak;
Czech-born Nobel peace prize winner
Bertha Von Suttner; and French statesman
Robert Schuman. -Daily Mail
THE OLD GAS BAG
LONDON, NOVEMBER 2ND— Winston
Churchill considered unleashing poison
gas on Germany in the last year of World
War II, The Guardian reports. Citing a
memo discovered in Britain's public
archives, the newspaper said Churchill
contemplated a mustard gas attack that
would "drench the cities of Ruhr and
many other cities in Germany in such a
way that most of the population would be
requiring medical attention."
Churchill's comments were made in
AROUND AND ABOUT
the letter to General Sir Hastings Ismay,
secretary of the War Cabinet, on 6 July
1944, the newspaper said. Churchill said
the only reason that Germany had not
used gas on the Allies was because "they
fear retaliation...Not certainly out of
moral scruples or affection for us." But
Churchill added that he would not use
the gas unless it could be shown it was
"life or death for us" or that "it would
shorten the war by a year," The Guardian
said. "In the meanwhile, I want the matter
studied in cold blood by sensible people
and not by that particular set of
psalm-singing uniformed defeatists which
one runs across now here now there,"
Churchill continued. After some study,
Ismay told Churchill the military chiefs
thought a gas attack would not have a
"decisive" effect on the war and Churchill
accepted their decision.
We are sure to see eventually a
warped version of this report from some
modern-day psalm-singing uninformed
defeatists to illustrate WSC's ungodliness.
Remember, you read the truth here. >»
Addition to your useless information file: Cover Magazine quotes Mission Pharmacal,
which has determined that the average volume of Churchill's snore was 35
decibels....Finest Hour's 1999 Samuel Hoare Award for the Most Unchurchillian Parliamentary
Behaviour was won outright the first week of January. Despite a close run
by US Congressman Gephardt, who called for a return to collegiality while wags
played recordings of his speeches branding colleagues child-starvers, the Award went
to the gentleman who pie-bombed the Dutch Finance Minister, announcing the replacement
of Holland's guilder by the euro. The Minister was wiping off the first pie
when splat, he took another one.... 1998 Award went to Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
for flinging glasses of water at his critics in the Duma.... Her grandfather's History
of the English-Speaking Peoples is recommended by Telegraph Magazine's Emma
Soames: "If there was a fire I'd go for all the books I haven't read...I'd probably get
burned as I tried to pick it up." (No, it's light.)....Churchill battled to receive dutyfree
cigars, the Daily Mail reveals, bucking postwar Labour duties as high as 150 percent....Worse,
Churchill commissioned a military investigation, Operation Unthinkable,
considering a preemptive war by the Anglo-Americans against the Soviet Union
starting in July 1945, according to secret documents released by the Public Record
Office. Look for disapproving additions to the Feet of Clay Collection soon....28
Hyde Park Gate, the Churchills' London home from 1945 to 1965, was offered for
rent at £10,000 a week by actor Anthony Andrews; for longer term leases he will settle
for only £7,000.... 11 Downing Street, once occupied by WSC and Lord Randolph
Churchill, has been opened to visitors for the first time as part of a series of selected
"Heritage Open Days"...."Can you describe Churchill in one sentence?" the
Sunday Telegraph challenged Sir Martin Gilbert, who has spent about eight million
words on the official biography. Sir Martin replied: "He was a great humanitarian
who was himself distressed that the accidents of history gave him his greatest power at
a time when everything had to be focused on defending the country from destruction,
rather than achieving his goals of a fairer society." Game, set and match? M
FINEST HOUR IOI / 9

LOCAL AND NATIONAL NEWS
BRITISH COLUMBIA
VANCOUVER, NOVEMBER 30TH— Leslie
Strike, outgoing President of our esteemed
colleagues, The Sir Winston S.
Churchill Society of British Columbia,
reports many successful 1998 events for
the Society. March 6th: an "Evening with
Churchill" addressed by the Hon. Jay
Burns, United States Consul General, on
the new role of NATO; May 19th: black
tie dinner for Vice Chancellor of the University
of Hull (U.K.) David Neville
Dilks, who spoke on "Churchill, Eden
and Canada"; November 30th: black tie
dinner marking Sir Winston's 124th
birthday, addressed by Dr. John Mather
on "Medical Myths and Truths."
The Churchill Scholarship Foundation
continues to receive donations under
the able Chair of Stan Winfield. The student
winner of the 1998 first prize was
Mr. David Gossen. Anyone in B.C. who
is not a member of the Society should
join. The new President is Robert W.
Gourlay, QC (address on page 2).
ENGLAND: FINCHER
COLLECTION TO BLETCHLEY
LONDON, DECEMBER i oTH— Finest Hour has
presented the late Robert Fincher's
Churchill stamp collection to the International
Churchill Society of the UK, for
display at the Churchill Rooms, Bletchley
Park—the wartime codebreaking centre
where Jack Darrah has created his marvellous
Churchilliana display (see FH 91, p.
18). Mr. Fincher presented the stamps to
FH in 1989, asking us to use them where
they would best advance interest in Sir
Winston. In 1992, key pages were published
in Finest Hour 77.
The collection was appraised on behalf
of ICS/UK by prominent philatelist
Celwyn Ball, former President of ICS,
Canada. Fincher's specialty was what philatelists
call "forerunners"—stamps depicting
Churchill issued before Sir Winston's
death, after which numerous commemoratives
appeared. His detailed study
of the 1945 Colombia "Big Three" overprints
is the standard work on this subject.
Members visiting Bletchley should
not fail to have a look. Or, obtain a copy
of Finest Hour 77 from your local Society
or Churchill Stores.
WASHINGTON SOCIETY
IS CC AFFILIATE
WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 25TH— The Washington
Society for Churchill (WSC) became
the first Affiliate of The Churchill
Center by unanimous vote of the CC
Board of Governors. CC Affiliates are organizations
whose aims are substantially
the same as the Center, but do not include
the International Churchill Societies
of Canada or the UK, which are independent
associated organizations. The
Washington Society, founded five years
ago, is one of the largest groups meeting
regularly, with a broad array of activities,
student programs, and support for major
Churchill conferences—both Washington
'93, and Williamsburg '98, which it
hosted. Speakers have included Jack
Kemp, Caspar Weinberger, Williamson
Murray and members of the CC Board of
Governors. The Society has also hosted
Edwina and Celia Sandys, and assisted at
Churchill Center symposia held in Washington
in 1994 and 1996. Members in
the District of Columbia and the surrounding
tri-state area wishing to be
aware of upcoming WSC events may
contact the Society (address on page 2).
TENNESSEE
COOKEVILLE, TENN., MARCH 31ST— CC
member John David Marshall gave the
1998 Phi Kappa Phi Lecture at Tennessee
Technological University today: "The
Churchill Wit." Marshall is professor
emeritus, Todd Library, Middle Tennessee
State University in Murfreesboro.
NORTH TEXAS
DALLAS, SEPTEMBER 19TH— Twenty-two
members and guests met at the Dallas International
Cultural and Social Circle
Club for a wine and cheese social before a
presentation by Nathan Hughes, whose
topic was a critique of Brian Walden's
"Churchill as a Hero," shown on BBC
television last year. (See FH 97, p. 33.)
Walden considered that Churchill was a
hero because he gave the war meaning
and moral greatness, and that Britain's
stand from the time of Dunkirk to Pearl
Harbor ensured the survival of human
rights. But Walden was critical of
Churchill's early life and considered him
an old-fashioned, blimpish reactionary.
These views were refuted by a number of
those present and an interesting discussion
ensued. For latest on North Texas activities
contact Nathan Hughes, 1117
Shadyglen Circle, Richardson TX 75081-
3720, tel. (972) 235-3208.
NORTHERN OHIO
CLEVELAND, NOVEMBER 3RD— Northern
Ohio members gathered at the Greenbrier
Suite, where Marshall Wright spoke on
"Winston Churchill and Jacky Fisher at
the Admiralty." Members were offered
sumptuous fare by the Wall Street Deli.
If you live in or near Cleveland, contact
our Northern Ohio friends to be
placed on the mailing list. Telephone
Alexis at (216) 781-1212 or write Michael
McMenamin, Walter & Haverfield, 1300
Terminal Tower, Cleveland, OH 44113.
1999 UK ARCHIVES EXHIBITIONS
• May-July 1999: "Churchill and
Horseracing" exhibit, National Museum
of Horseracing, Newmarket, Suffolk. This
small display focuses on Winston
Churchill's ownership, late in his life, of
racehorses such as "Colonist II" and "Pol
Roger." It is hoped to complement material
from the Churchill Archives Centre
with a number of artifacts.
• June-October 1999: "Churchill:
The Evidence," a large cradle-to-grave exhibition
at the National Library of Scotland
in Edinburgh. This display will use
original documents and photographs
from the Churchill Archives Centre to tell
the story of Churchill's long life and career,
but will highlight his Scottish connections:
his long tenure as MP for
Dundee, his command of a Scottish battalion
during WW1, and his acceptance
of the Freedom of Edinburgh in 1942.
• November and December 1999:
"Churchill and the Boer War," a display
at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum,
Bristol, marking the centenary of
Churchill's celebrated capture and escape.
Members visiting England at that time
could combine a visit to the Newmarket
display with a trip to us here at the
Churchill Archives Centre. We would be
delighted to entertain you and show you
some more of our treasures.
-Allen Packwood, Churchill Archives
Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge
CB3 0DS, tel. (01223) 336087. M>
FINEST HOUR IOI /10

JnergQualify 01 iJiie C^eninuury \7)
His vjreiums Had a Jr JiilosopJiical JK
RON CYNEWULF ROBBINS
THE ancient philosophers owed their
greatness to an iron-clad conviction that
we must never retreat from reality.
Churchill's words and deeds in perilous times
provide incontrovertible evidence that his genius
had a philosophical foundation. The folly
of his recent detractors is painfully apparent
when they choose to ignore the metaphysical
virtues empowering his leadership. They prefer to work
from the arid assumption that they understand him better
than the people who joined his crusade to preserve civilization.
Although Hitler was the instinctive exploiter of
Teutonic mass psychology, his philosophy soon caused
him to lose touch with reality, and humanity suffered one
of the bloodiest periods in history. Churchill held on
tightly to reality, while coping daily with the flux of his
ideas and a visionary gift central to his effective guardianship
of freedom. Some critics refuse to recognize the
strength of his philosophy and its overwhelming appeal
to those who cherish freedom.
The opinion of Isocrates the Athenian (436-338
B.C., pupil of Socrates) is supremely relevant: "I hold that
man wise who can usually think out the best course to
take and that man a philosopher who seeks to gain that
insight." Churchill eminently conforms to Isocrates's description
of a genuine philosopher. He was dedicated to
uniting the Greeks against Asia—Greece resembling a
David confronting a despotic Goliath. Boasting that he
clung to reality, Isocrates was castigated (mark well!) for
over-elegance of style.
Churchill was ever sensitive to the unending antagonism
between good and evil—another parallel with the
Athenian truth seekers. He reacted to threatened or actual
evil by leaping instantly into battle. The intransigence of
his latter-day traducers often has roots in wilful misinterpretation
and shameful cupidity; there is in their analyses
rarely a leavening of humour, a charge it would be impos-
Commencing in Finest Hour 97, "Personality of the Century" is an ongoing
series of op-ed pieces designed to qualify Churchill for Time
magazine's designation by the end of the century. Selected articles will
be targeted to op-ed sections of major newspapers and compiled for
presentation to the editors of Time. Ron Cynewulf Robbins, a journalist
who covered Churchill in the House of Commons, is a FH senior
editor living in Victoria, B. C.
© KARSH, OTTAWA
sible to bring against Churchill. But if one
makes the mistake of resorting to malice, there
is indeed no room left for laughter. According
to classical tradition tragedy and farce should
have a foot in each other's camp. Unfortunately
writers trying to topple Churchill's reputation
are generally so swamped by theatricality that
they offer nothing beyond the tragedy of their
own dreary limitations. Inaccuracy has always been paltry
apparel for scribes clamouring for recognition. Too many
of the so-called new school of historians delude themselves
if they believe obfuscation of facts and lamentable
lapses into fiction will prove them right, and Churchill
wrong. Gross sensationalism and shock tactics cannot
guarantee that today's public, or posterity itself, will bestow
credibility on unethical practitioners.
One of the most inane notions put forward is that
Churchill would have handled things better had he come
to peace (or at least not prosecuted the war) with Hitler
after the fall of France in 1940. "Fight on!" was his policy.
Had he thought otherwise, the British would have thrown
him out of office. Anyone alive in Britain during those
crucial days can confirm that Churchill, and the vast majority
of his compatriots, were adamant in their refusal to
turn traitor to freedom. They strove on valiantly together.
In his customary forthright fashion Churchill explained
what a wartime leader is compelled to face in a
democracy: "Power in a national crisis, when a man believes
he knows what orders should be given, is a blessing....The
loyalties which centre upon number one are
enormous....If he is no good, he must be pole-axed."
By contrast it is easy to summon up condemnatory
quotes from the oratory of Adolf Hitler. A comparatively
mild example: "For the good of the German people, we
must wish for a war every fifteen or twenty years." Hitler
said that in 1941, the year he repeated the colossal error of
Sweden's Charles XII and France's Napoleon by invading
Russia.
Churchill's abiding concern for the fate of Greece
during and after the war demonstrates how firmly loyalty
and honour were embedded in his philosophy. The plight
of Britain's old ally following her invasion by Italy, and
later Germany, demanded swift action and he provided it.
Postwar criticism of the sacrifices Churchill's policy entailed
frequently clouds fundamental issues, continued >»
FINEST HOUR IOI /11

PERSONALITY OF THE CENTURY...
There have been suggestions that he was motivated
chiefly by glowing romanticism. It is true that he takes
second place to no one in his admiration for Greece. He
praised the Greeks and Jews with equal fervour by pointing
out that their "endless struggle for life stretches back
to the fountain springs of human thought. No other two
races set such a mark upon the world." He lauded the inheritance
of "...genius and wisdom" they have left us: "No
two cities have counted more with mankind than Athens
and Jerusalem. Their messages in religion, philosophy, and
art have been the main guiding lights of modern faith and
culture."
It is abundantly clear, however, that he was entirely
realistic in dealing with the Italian-German attack on
Greece. It must be borne in mind that the country immediately
invoked the guarantee Neville Chamberlain had
given before Churchill succeeded him in the premiership.
Pledging all possible assistance to the beleaguered Greeks,
Churchill sent them a heartening message: "We will fight
a common foe and we will share a united victory."
Britain's army, fleet and air force were spread dangerously
thin over huge distances when Italy struck in October
1940. What Churchill called "The Torment of
Greece" was long and savage until his promise of eventual
triumph was fulfilled. The complications in the Mediterranean
arena soared to horrendous heights. Undeterred,
Churchill stayed the course, telling Eden how important
it was for the government to show that their word was
their bond "lest the whole Turkey position is lost through
proof that Britain never tries to keep her guarantees." Axis
conquest forced the Greek government to take refuge in
London, and on appropriate occasions Churchill displayed
his well-known fondness for American poetry by
citing the words "the glory that was Greece" from Poe's To
Helen.
Fifty and sixty years on, we alive today are the
inheritors and beneficiaries of Churchill's achievement.
The existence and success of The Churchill Center and
Societies, Churchill College, Cambridge, The Memorial
at Fulton, the Churchill Societies of Canada and the Winston
Churchill Memorial Trust all bear testimony to our
gratitude, and are vital to the safeguarding of a priceless
inheritance. $?
RIDDLES,
MYSTERIES,
ENIGMAS
Send your questions to
the Editor
S| While watching the film "Young Winston,"
' 1I heard a reference to his brother
JadzT 'Could
someone give me a thumbnail
sketch of him?
AJohn Strange Spencer Churchill,
.1880-1947, known as Jack, a stockbroker.
Wounded in action in the Boer
War, 1899. Married Lady Gwendeline
Bertie (1884-1941), daughter of the 7th
Earl of Abingdon, 1908. Major, Queen's
Own Oxfordshire Hussars 1914-18.
Served at Dunkirk, 1914; on Sir John
French's staff 1914-15; on Gen. Sir Ian
Hamilton's staff at Gallipoli, 1915; on
General Birdwood's staff 1916-18. Accompanied
Winston on his lecture tour of
North America, 1929, with WSC's son
Randolph and Jack's son Johnny. His surviving
son, Peregrine, is a vigorous octogenarian.
The rumor that Jack was not
Lord Randolph's son, begun by biographer
Ralph Martin, was put down when
Martin lost a slander lawsuit, but occasionally
still surfaces. Jack and Winston
were very close; their descendants still are.
Please identify Churchill's London res-
^ idences, and indicate with an asterisk
(*) which carry the blue historical plaque .
A35A Great Cumberland Place (1874-
1900, Lord and Lady Randolph's);
105 Mount Street (1900-1905, his first
bachelor flat); 12 Bolton Street (1905-
09), the first house ever of his own); 33
Eccleston Square* (1909-13); 41
Cromwell Road (1915-?, shared with his
brother Jack and their families); Sussex
Square* (post-WWl); 12 Morpeth Mansions
(1930s); 28 Hyde Park Gate*
(1945-65).
QHow many fictional works have been
written in which Churchill figures
prominently in the story?
AThere are several; one the most gripping
to me is Brian Garfield's The
Paladin (NY: Simon & Schuster 1979,
London: Macmillan 1980), said to be
"fiction based on fact." Its protagonist is
Christopher Creighton, engaged by WSC
at a very young age to act as WSC's personal
spy. Christopher has quite a war. He
warns of Belgium's plans to surrender in
time to save the BEF at Dunkirk; blows
up secret German U-boat pens in Ireland;
sabotages a friendly Dutch submarine and
sends its crew to the bottom after it reports
the Japanese battle fleet en route to
Pearl Harbor (because Churchill doesn't
want to warn the Americans in order to
get them into the war—an old, old saw).
Back in London, Creighton finishes the
job by murdering the only cypher clerk
who has read the sub's message—and she
is his girlfriend! He engineers the assassination
of Darlan, and tips the Nazis of
the Dieppe taid to convince the Americans
it's too soon for a cross-channel invasion.
Finally, when the invasion is on, he
steers the Germans into reinforcing Calais
over Normandy.
Fast-forward to the 1990s: someone
named "Crichton" surfaced a few years
ago claiming to have been just such a spy,
relating much of the same stuff—was he
the person who inspired Garfield? We've
tried off and on to contact Brian Garfield,
but he has eluded us. The book was reviewed
FH 48, mentioned in Janet
Daniels's "Churchill as Fictional Character,"
FH 79; both are available from
Churchill Stores (contacts, p. 2).
Stores also sells The Boer Conspiracy,
by John Woods ($10): how Sherlock
Holmes foiled a plot against WSC's life
during the 1901 Oldham election—telated
of course by an aged Dr. Watson in
1940. A great tead! $
FINEST HOUR IOI /12

SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
Churchill Conference XV: November 5th-8th, 1998
Colonial Williamsrmrg, Virginia
AS SEEN BY VARIOUS EYES
VIEW FROM THE TOP
After nine months of intense activity, six o'clock Friday
November 5th was a click away and the 15th
Churchill Conference would be up and running. As I
waited for silence from the audience gathered for the opening
session, it seemed that the Planning Committee's hard
work was either going to come to fruition or I would be
holding the bag for considerable misdirected energy, expended
by a lot of dedicated people. Any anxiety I did have
at that moment was quickly dispelled as the conference
gained full momentum with its theme of "The Special Relationship:
The End of the Beginning," played out in the student
seminar, various presentations and the First Churchill
Lecture delivered by Ambassador Raymond Seitz.
The Planning Committee, including James Muller,
John Plumpton, Ron Helgemo and Craig and Lorraine
Horn, worked as a team with the added benefit of teleconferencing
and email. This may be the first Churchill Conference
when the planners met together in one room only twice
during the course of a nine-month preparation. The eventual
success of the conference was a remarkable testimony to the
effectiveness of modern modes of communication: the logistics
and organization involved in the planning could not
have been achieved otherwise in the constrained time available.
An added factor in our favor was the marvelous cooperation
of the staff of the Williamsburg Foundation, especially
its Archivist, Stephen E. Haller.
The planning of a Conference requires a high level of
cooperation and coordination and a strong spirit of mutual
support, in order to achieve a smooth operation where the
registrants can really enjoy themselves without distractions.
It was a great benefit to be able to have this Conference at
the Williamsburg Lodge with its superb facilities. The
weather also cooperated, affording the opportunity to enjoy
the amenities of the historic capital of Colonial Virginia.
It is probably inappropriate for me to wax lengthily
on the feeling of satisfaction we have, and of how the delegates
enjoyed the sessions and themselves. So I will quote
from a letter I recently received from Lady Soames:
"Now I am sitting down quietly and casting my
mind back to the tremendously successful and enjoyable programme
over which you presided at Williamsburg. May I,
through you, thank The Churchill Center's committee for
ABOVE: Nigel Knocker and Ron Helgemo demonstrate professional
18th century techniques as they step out with Colonial dames.
BELOW: Curt Zoller with Lady Soames, Bond Nichols at right.
your generous hospitality. I do think you and your colleagues
did a marvelous job in the detailed preparations, and the series
of seminars and presentations and functions were so well
planned: I got the feeling that everyone was really enjoying
themselves and there was such a nice atmosphere.
"I thought a great feature of the Conference was the
presence of students from so many different colleges and
universities. Their input was very stimulating and I'm sure
they all profited from the seminar themselves a great deal.
Another highlight was being able to celebrate Richard's CBE,
so well deserved personally and also a compliment and accolade
to the whole Society. And finally Ray Seitz's thoughtful
and riveting analysis of the special relationship really sparked
off the Churchill Lectures at a very high level. I hope you
have all had some days off, as running the Conference and
attending all the events must have been a marathon." >>>
FINEST HOUR IOI /13

Typically, Lady Soames has caught the "note and tick"
of the Conference; and what more can a Planning Committee
ask than that our Patron be enthused over its outcome. I
think her comments are echoes of the thoughts, spoken and
unspoken, of many who were there with us. Don't miss the
next one in Bath, England 22-25 July, 1999. Once again the
torch has been passed to our colleagues of the International
Churchill Society, United Kingdom.
John H. Mather, M.D.
Chairman, Planning Committee
THE WILLIAMSBURG JOURNEY
It is nearly 6 PM when the phone rings in my car. My
wife, Lorraine, is calling me from Williamsburg, and I
am on the Washington Beltway headed to Dulles Airport
to pick up Winston Churchill's daughter and granddaughter,
coming in from London. Lorraine is anxious: "Where are
you and how soon will you be to Dulles? Celia just called.
They have been waiting since 3:30 and no one has yet arrived
for them."
I panic. The traffic is terrible; a stray loony is trying to
jump off the Woodrow Wilson Bridge and the entire westside
Beltway is at a crawl. "What are they doing here already?"
I reply. "You told me to pick them up at 6:30 PM
and it's not even 6." (Maybe I'll just go back home and pretend
this is not happening.)
At 6:20 PM I arrive at Dulles to find Celia Sandys
waiting outside the terminal and Lady Soames sitting quietly
and patiently inside. I am near suicide. But not to worry.
They are not only warm, but apologetic for the inconvenience
they have created for me on a busy conference week. I
thought they would be ready to throw me to the lions! Instead
we quickly pack their bags into the trunk (boot), Lady
Soames climbs into the back seat with the overflow luggage,
and we are off.
Three hours later we arrive in Williamsburg. It is
nearly 10 PM and the lighting is dim. Street lighting like
this is carrying the 18th Century too far. I proceed to get lost
trying to find a hotel which I have never visited on roadways
built 250 years ago, with precious few signs to guide me.
Think about it. I have been late picking up the only
surviving child of the Man of the Century, as well as his
granddaughter. They have been traveling for nearly ten
hours. I have packed them into an overloaded car for another
three hours, through Washington rush hour traffic. I
am now depositing them in a hotel that I only inadvertently
stumbled upon. On top of that, I don't know whether my
guest should be addressed as Lady Soames, The Lady
Soames, Mrs. Soames, Lady Mary or Honorable Lady. (I'm
from Iowa; I only work in outer space.) And there is Celia,
strong and determined, who sizes you up quickly and takes
no quarter. Dressed in jeans and a jacket, she is already planning
her next seven activities. What does one say: "Greetings,
Mrs. Sandys, and how are all the little ones?" Well no—
ABOVE: Williamsburg Lodge's Tidewater Room was a hub of activity
for registration, displays, Churchill Stores, book signings and website
demonstration. BELOW LEFT: The 1998 Blenheim Award to David
Boler (John Mather at right). BELOW RIGHT: Lorraine Horn, Ruth
Plumpton man Registration desk. (Craig was still out on the road.)
she is officially Mrs. Perkins. Or is she the Honorable Celia?
I think about joining the nut on the bridge.
In fact, of course, we had a great time. They were
both warm and understanding. Although tired from an exhausting
trip, to say nothing of two-plus hours waiting for
me at Dulles, they could not have been more agreeable. They
quickly put me at ease, and despite my trouble finding the
hotel, all was in readiness at Williamsburg. Lady Soames was
exactly what we have all come to expect and to know. As
"Thomas Jefferson" said at the Friday night banquet, we now
see why she is called Lady Soames." She attended every program,
sat attentively through every speech and participated
with aplomb in every event. Celia Sandys showed her
Churchill fortitude and perseverance as repeatedly we imposed
upon her last-minute changes in schedule and unexpected
duties regarding presentations and acknowledgments.
Strong stock, those Churchills.
On the return trip to Dulles, things went more
smoothly. They wanted to see some of the Virginia countryside
and I was happy to oblige. Leaving 1-95 at Falmouth, we
headed toward Warrenton. I was reasonably sure that there
was some road or another that would take us up to Dulles,
and there was. We drove through the gentle rolling countryside
of "Mosby's Confederacy" as I related stories of this or
that Civil War battle or skirmish. Next came >>>
FINEST HOUR IOI /14

ABOVE: Twelve students from William & Mary, Queen Mary & Westfield
College, Universities of Virginia and Tennessee, Butler, Georgetown
and American Universitities and Berry College made up our
panel on Churchill's The Age of Revolution. BELOW LEFT: Fred Farrow
(1.) and Jim Muller (r.) flanking Farrow Award winner Manfred Weidhorn.
BELOW RIGHT: Laura and Chris Harmon with Lady Soames.
Chris is a prolific writer for FHand other journals, and teaches at
US Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Quantico, Virginia.
SCHOLARLY PERSPECTIVES
Attending the 15th International Churchill Conference
were eleven Williamsburg Fellows of The
Churchill Center, who came together to discuss the
third volume of Churchill's History of the English-Speaking
Peoples, The Age of Revolution, with three faculty members.
The Fellows, chosen for their academic promise, were undergraduates
at colleges and universities in the eastern United
States, ranging from freshmen to seniors; one was an exchange
student from the British Isles.
The Williamsburg Seminar, "Winston S. Churchill
on the Modern Revolutions," began with a presentation by
this writer and continued the next day with a fast-paced,
three-hour discussion of The Age of Revolution by the Fellows,
with conference-goers looking on. John Ramsden, Jeffrey
Wallin, and I, who moderated the sessions, had only to
pose the questions about the book. The Fellows, who had
read it with great care, tackled the three modern revolutions
that Churchill describes in his history: the Glorious Revolution
of 1688 in Britain, the American Revolution of 1776,
and the French Revolution of 1789, as well as the revolutions
in science and industry that helped to create the modern
world. They also considered the distinctive features of
Churchillian history, wondered about his omissions and
idiosyncrasies, and debated the accuracy of his accounts of
such leading figures as Marlborough, Madison, Hamilton,
and Napoleon.
The Williamsburg Fellows were conspicuous during
the Conference through the First Churchill Lecture, which
they attended. Each received a certificate from Celia Sandys,
and they selected one of their number, Brian Sayers, as the
class marshall, who conveyed eloquent thanks to Lady
Soames for what they had learned from the work of her father.
Costs of the seminar were partly defrayed by contributions
from members, who signed on to be student sponsors.
James W. Muller
Academic Chairman
Catlett and the Confederate raid that resulted in a Yankee
Generals jacket being captured for display in Richmond.
Then Manassas, where Stonewall Jackson got his name. If
only I could just shut up and let them enjoy the quiet of the
countryside....
We reached Dulles Airport spot on schedule: a most
wonderful time with our two guests. Until we meet again...
D. Craig Horn
Transport-R-Us
STORES-EYE VIEW
With forty-seven boxes filled with Churchill Stores
inventory and strategically placed throughout my
daughter Lisa's motor home (the posters were in
the shower stall), we set out from Manchester, New Hampshire
on November 3rd at 4 PM. Our goal was a Pennsylvania
campground five hours away where we would spend the
night before moving on to Williamsburg the next day.
From our family pool Lisa received the "organized"
gene. She is the plan-aheader who wants to know, needs to
know, and knows in advance the route, the elapsed time,
where we will stay, and so on, ad infinitum. So my only
work, packing twenty-seven boxes (the other twenty were
pre-packed ICS mugs), was done for the time being. I was
just along for the ride.
A beautiful ride it was. Sunset across the Mass Pike
was spectacular and we arrived as planned at the campground
on the Pennsylvania border at exactly 9 PM. A cold
snap was upon us but the motor home was cozy. Since I was
sharing my bunk with boxes of coffee mugs I felt buttressed
on all sides.
Before the sun rose, we were up complaining about
the cold, but ready to go; and eight hours later, precisely as
Lisa had forecast, we pulled up to the Williamsburg Lodge.
(A little too closely, I might add. Our first souvenir was an
exchange of paint between the motor home's top edge and
the Lodge's metal canopy.) We were greeted with friendly
smiles, which waned somewhat as we explained that we had
"about fifty" boxes to be taken to the Tidewater Room. In a
very short time, however, they and we were ensconced in our
respective quarters. continued >»
FINEST HOUR 101/15

FAR LEFT: Lisa, Gail and Churchill Stores. LEFT: Redcoat
Fred Lockwood, ICS UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, reviews
Colonial Redcoats on November 6th. BELOW: A
massive array of Churchilliana and memorabilia aided the
cause and kept bidders hopping and sales soaring.
John Mather, Ron Helgemo, Craig and Lorraine
Horn and others had done a great deal to ease our fear of
"where-will-we-put-all-this-stuff"; the Tidewater Room was
ample with a bank of tables for Stores items and plenty of
room for the various activities that would occur there. Our
hard-working organizers provided whatever we needed with
good humor and grace.
The next day as we were unpacking and organizing
our wares, we were delighted to have volunteers Michael Pintavalle
and Caroline Hartzler come on board to lend efficiency
to the setting-up process. We also met a wonderful
duo from Canada, Raili and Dave Garth, who were invaluable
throughout the weekend. During very chaotic times,
when it seemed as though every one of the 250 attendees was
making a purchase, Dave and Raili were there, always cheerful,
friendly and helpful. Without them Lisa and I would
have been swamped and some Conference-goers might still
be waiting for their sales slips to be written and their merchandise
to be bagged.
It was hectic, it was exhausting, it was great fun and
now that the memories of fatigue have faded, we're ready to
go again. Thank you Lisa, Raili and Dave and all the other
volunteers. Thank you, Conference organizers. And thank
you, delegates and customers. Your overwhelming support
meant that we didn't have to sleep with the mugs on the trip
back. And yes, we drove exactly eight hours to the same
campground in Pennsylvania where we had stayed on the
way down, then arrived home after exactly five hours from
the campground to New Hampshire. That Lisa will do it
every time!
Gail Greenly
Churchill Stores
TRIBUTE TO A LADY
My colleagues and I have gathered here today to extend
our gratitude to you, Lady Soames, but I feel
being able to accomplish this is equally as daunting
a task for me as that of your father's during the Battle of
Britain. For it is difficult to give gratitude to those who provide
us with a sense of vision, a sense of purpose. It is difficult
to give gratitude to those who altruistically give theit
time, efforts, and their commitment for the betterment of a
younger generation. Moreover, it is difficult merely to give
gratitude to a lady who has inspired all of us to face the
world with a sense of optimism; to stay strong in time of
doubt; to serve when people are most deprived.
Lady Soames, your father stood at the despatch box
many times to remind the British people, and people in
every nation, that we depend on a younger generation to
build a greater world. During my days at Oxford, we would
sing about building a Jerusalem among the "dark satanic
mills." Your father, Lady Soames, gave us this hope.
Today, you are not only a living reminder to us. Your
devotion to this organization and to its younger generation
have built a pillar which the Churchillian dream may be
built upon. We are, indeed, indebted to
you, and of course, words of gratitude
cannot possibly capture the endless contributions
you have made to our presence
here today. So rather than attempt to say
merely, "thank you," allow me to say
"God bless you," for your time, your dedication,
your support.
Brian Sayers
For the WilliamsburgFellows >»
FINEST HOUR 101/16

A NEW FOCUS IN AN UN-NATIONAL WORLD
From The Churchill Lecture
by Ambassador Raymond Seitz
America's
real birth as
, a world
power started with
a bang. On Sunday,
December 7th
1941, just a day
before my first
birthday, Japanese
aircraft flew out of
the morning sun of
the Pacific Ocean
and attacked Pearl
Harbor, Hawaii.
For a new country,
which for generations
had happily
ignored the far-flung troubles of the world, Pearl Harbor
marked a shattering of American innocence. After all, this
was a country founded on the rejection of the Old and the
value of the New. America was a new world, a planet away
from the past, where original sin was forgiven and a new
Eden bloomed.
But I think in those fifty years of global struggle that
began at Pearl Harbor and ended with the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the country did learn a lot. It learned
that while America may be different it is not unique. It
learned, I hope, that the world is as old as the human condition,
and America is much a part of it.
The American fascination with the new is nonetheless
a great strength too—its search for answers, its willingness to
experiment, its ability to regenerate. Americans are excited
by what lies just over the next hill or just around the next
corner. But getting the balance right between the old and
the new, between the superficial and the enduring, between
the image and the reality, is still a challenge for American
politics. I remember when Bill Clinton was making his first
run for the presidency in 1992. His theme song was from
Fleetwood Mac: "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow,"
and I used to mutter to myself, "But don't stop thinking
about yesterday either."
Surely this is one purpose of The Churchill Center:
not just the study of the great, jowly bulldog and his many
myth-making accomplishments, not just the rotund Anglophilia
that sometimes rolls around in American discourse,
not just nostalgia for the glory days of wartime collaboration.
Churchill, I suspect, would scoff at a lot of that—and
also use it to advantage. But it seems to me that the important
goal of The Center must be to take the experiences and
principles of the past, which were so dynamically represented
by this supreme figure, and heave those lessons forward into
new generations. And certainly an essential lesson for America
is an old one: you can't go it alone.
If I could put a priority item on today's Anglo-American
agenda, this would be it: a fresh focus on national security
in an un-national world, and a reconciliation between
economic globalism and social responsibility. And it is this
type of exercise, I think, that one finds at the heart of Anglo-
American relations anyway. What I learned as Ambassador is
that today the genuine "special relationship"—the unique
part of Anglo-American affairs—really exists outside the official
body of government intercourse and well beyond the
headlines and photo ops.
You see this in all manner of public policy, from welfare
reform to school reform, and from zero-tolerance policing
to pension management. You see it in every scholarly
pursuit from archaeology to zoology, in every field of science
and research, and in every social movement from environmentalism
to feminism. You see it in financial regulation and
corporate governance and trade union interchange, and you
see it at every point along the cultural spectrum from the
novel to the symphony and from the movies to rock 'n' roll.
You see it in the big statistics of trade and investment, and in
the tiny statistics of transatlantic tourism (6 million visitors
each way last year); or transatlantic flights (41,000 last year);
or transatlantic telephone calls (three and a half billion minutes
of talk last year). You see it in the work of The Churchill
Center and Societies.
Here is the thick, rich texture of the relationship at its
most creative, its most energetic, and its most durable. The
truly special relationship is this: the United States and the
United Kingdom influence each other's intellectual development
like no other two countries. And it is here, I suspect—
where the old truth lies—that we will discover answers about
our joint future in a changing, global world.
America and Britain share an accumulation of historical
concepts given body over generations—human and civil
rights, liberty, the common law and the rule of law, forbearance
and equity, the manners of property, the basic freedoms,
simple dignity. We may practice these imperfectly, but all of
them mixed up together mean that we think about things in
a similar fashion, and on one issue or another we are as likely
as not to arrive at pretty much the same conclusion. This is
not always true, but it is often true, and the relationship
emerges from the natural repetition of this pattern. One
thing is sure: neither nation could possibly replicate this relationship
with any other country.
This past spring, my wife and I visited a house in
Tunisia which Churchill had used as a headquarters.
Not a month ago we saw, hanging on the wall in a
Scottish castle, an oil study of the great man—a study for the
famously evaporated Graham Sutherland portrait. You simply
can't get away from him. I often pass Churchill's statue in
Parliament Square where he leans into the House of Commons
and scolds the MPs as they emerge, and in >»
FINEST HOUR IOI /17

CHURCHILL LECTURE...
another statue I saw again just yesterday in Washington,
Churchill supervises the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. A
bust of Churchill was recently unveiled in the city of Quebec.
And on a little pedestrian cross-walk in London,
where Old Bond Street turns into New Bond Street, there—
sitting on a park bench—are the bronze figures of Churchill
and Roosevelt. Churchill is sporting a jaunty bow tie and
wearing his zippered shoes. Roosevelt is in a rumpled, double-breasted
suit and you can see the metal leg braces sticking
out beneath his trouser cuffs. They are both looking on the
decidedly paunchy side of life. Both are smiling. Churchill is
leaning towards Roosevelt to catch a word, and Roosevelt has
his left arm slung across the top of the bench. They seem to
be enjoying the day and simply shooting the breeze.
They may be talking about where matters stand and
how to handle things. They may be doing in someone's reputation.
Or maybe they're recollecting that day a long time
ago when they heard about Pearl Harbor and strapped their
nations together in joint purpose. And maybe they're saying
that, even if today the ocean is different, we're still in the
same boat.
A TIME TO SAY THANKS
The Editor with his most munificent conference gift, a handmade
cigar humidor, and friends Tommy Brooks, Bond Nichols, special
friend Barbara Langworth, Kathy Nichols and Patricia Orban.
The telephone rang October 29th: it was the British
Ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer. I was sure he
was calling about the upcoming Conference, but the
Ambassador had other things on his mind:
/ am delighted to confirm that Her Majesty the Queen
has been pleased to confer upon you the honorary award of Commander
of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
(CBE). The award is in recognition of your many years as President
of the International Churchill Society and Churchill Centre
and the contribution you have made thereby to Anglo-American
understanding. It gives me particular pleasure to be able to give
you this news shortly before your valedictory conference as ICS
President. I expect to receive the insignia of your CBE soon and
will then arrange a date for an investiture here in Washington.
To say I was floored would understate the case considerably.
But writers are never long lost for words, and by November
3rd I had recovered sufficiently to write the Ambassador,
relying for copy on the greatest Commander the
British Empire ever had:
Your Excellency: In accepting honorary American citizenship
in 1963, Sir Winston wrote to President Kennedy: "In
this century of storm and tragedy I contemplate with high satisfaction
the constant factor of the interwoven and upward
progress of our peoples. Our comradeship and our brotherhood in
war were unexampled. We stood together, and because of that
fact the free world now stands." He would surely approve of our
more recent combined operations in the pursuit of liberty.
The Churchill Center and Societies strive to assure that
Churchill's concept of a "fraternal relationship" among the English-speaking
Peoples survives to be considered, debated and
evolved to meet mutual requirements in the next century, as it
has in this. That my efforts in this regard should come to the attention
of Her Majesty, and that she should see fit to confer upon
me the honorary award of Commander of the British Empire, is
an honour which can only cause me to redouble those efforts,
and to refer again to the great man's words, when he offered
"my solemn and heartfelt thanks for this unique distinction,
which will always be proudly remembered by my descendants."
It remains to thank my friends on the Conference
Committee, and John Plumpton in particular, for the alltoo-generous
Power-Point presentation "Richard's Dream"
on Friday night, and the beautiful hand-carved cigar box
which they produced to mark my thirty years' involvement
in our mutual enterprise. I am grateful beyond imaginings to
my wife Barbara, my son Ian, and everyone reading these
words, for sustaining that enterprise through their faith and
contributions, spiritual and tangible, all these many years;
and many of them know there have been moments when it
needed sustaining. Writers may only perform if they have an
audience, and to paraphrase the Great Man, it was the
Churchillians dwelling round the globe who had the lion's
heart; I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
When I was a boy I was fascinated by flags and their
symbolism. I am probably one of few who know that the Latvian
flag represents a warrior holding a stone bandage to his
bleeding body. I still feel a thrill at the Stars and Stripes or
Union Flag or Maple Leaf, and the National Anthems we sing.
In them I see all the forebears who gave us what we have. And,
notwithstanding the depression I feel over the decline of moral
standards, individual responsibility and political integrity,
there is still Churchill's example, recalled through this enterprise,
always ready to inspire the young people we reach and
influence through our work. continued »>
FINEST HOUR IOJ /18

To clear up any confusion, by "valedictory conference
as ICS President" the Ambassador does not refer to any imminent
departures. Churchill Conference XV marked the
transition from ICS/USA to The Churchill Center. But my
colleagues have transitioned me to President of The
Churchill Center, and they themselves comprise a fine and
able Board of Governors who bring divers skills in critical
fields. Meanwhile, and as long as I am required, I will remain
editor of Finest Hour.
Kind words are always hard to come by. To the many
who have written and spoken so many kind words, my deepest
thanks. I can only hope that I may continue to deserve
such confidence, and such friends.
Richard M. Langworth
Thanks for the Memories: Delegates to International Churchill Conference XV
Delegates were mailed full addresses. If you've mislaid
any you require, please contact the Administrator,
Churchill Center, 888-WSC-1874.
Ellen & Paul Alkon, Rolling Hills Estates, Calif.
Laura Bainbridge, Alexandria, Va.
Paul Bainbridge, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Dick Banks, St. Matthews, S.C.
Solveig & Randy Barber, Thornhill, Ont.
Eve &c Dick Barton, New Orleans, La.
Ronald Berg, Norfolk, Va.
Donald Best, Los Angeles, Calif.
Carol & David Billingsley, Union, Ky.
Diane &c David Boler, Bidborough, Kent
Beverly & Gary Bonine, Detroit, Mich.
Susan & Dan Borinsky, Lake Ridge, Va.
Nancy & Stan Bowers, Howell, Mich.
Carol &C Michael Breckenridge, Shaker Hts., Oh.
Margaret & Tommy Brooks, Sarasota, Fla.
Lois Brown, Westland, Mich.
Mayo Brown, Upperville, Va.
Sally Browne, Gillingham, Kent
J. B. & Susie Burtch, Richmond, Va.
Nancy Canary, Lakewood, Oh.
R. Paul Carlson, Park Ridge, 111.
Bonnie & Robert Castrey, Huntington Beach, Calif.
Al Cleghorn, Vienna, Va.
Lorraine & Don Cline, Salisbury, N.H.
Addie Comegys, Wenham, Mass.
Carol & Jim Cotton, Ft. Bragg, Calif.
Aline & Donald Cousens, Unionville, Ont.
Betty Cox, Sedalia, Colo.
Margaret & John Cox, Mashpee, Mass.
Phil Crotty, Brighton, Mass.
Mary & Fenton Cunningham, Asheville, N.C.
Amy Cyr, Applegate, Mich.
Lorraine & Tony Czamecki, Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.
Dona & Bob Dales, Santa Fe, N.M.
Shirley & George Davis, McLean, Va.
Dr. Gordon Davis, Fulton, Mo.
Ann & William Dean, Dunwoody, Ga.
Elizabeth & Kirk Emmert, Gambier, Oh.
Rosemary & David Farmer, Richmond, Va.
Fred Farrow, Farmington Hills, Mich.
Martha &C Tranum Fitzpatrick, Montgomery, Ala.
G. J. Fletcher, Rhode-St-Genes, Belgium
Margot & Adam Foster, Washington, D.C.
Katherine & Harry Freer, Osoyoos, B.C.
Gilbert Frimet, Southfield, Mich.
Raili & Dave Garth, Markham, Ont.
Walt Gavenda, Annandale, Va.
Tony Gilles, Knoxville, Tenn.
June Gills, Washington, D.C.
Rachel & Thomas Gladden, Washington, Pa.
Alma & Tom Goldner, Clarkston, Mich.
Gail Greenly, Contoocook, N.H.
Julia & Hugh Hadley, Columbus, Oh.
Carol & Roger Hall, Manassas, Va.
Kathleen & George Halsey, Norwalk, Calif.
Martha & Fred Hardman, Spencer, W.V.
Laura & Chris Harmon, Alexandria, Va.
Dorothy & Bob Hartland, Chevy Chase, Md.
Caroline Hartzler, Burke, Va.
Steve Hayward, Arlington, Va.
Duvall Hecht, Costa Mesa, Calif.
Ron Helgemo, Reston, Va.
Billie & J. D. Henry, Gainesville, Fla.
Lorraine &C Craig Horn, Laurel, Md.
Lew House, Louisville, Colo.
Kathy &L Jeff Hutter, Cumberland, Md.
J. Willis Johnson, San Angelo, Tex.
Patsy Rankin Jopling, Augusta, Ga.
Judy & Joe Just, Burr Ridge, 111.
Dorothy & Quinn Kelly, Kalamazoo, Mich.
Jill Kendall, Portage, Mich.
Elaine Kendall, Portage, Mich.
Warren Kimball, Newark, NJ.
Tweet Kimball, Sedalia, Colo.
Linda & Dick Knight, Jr., Nashville, Tenn.
Frances & Dick Knight, Sr., Nashville, Tenn.
Nigel Knocker, Melksham, Wilts.
Barbara & Richard Langworth, Hopkinton, N.H.
Susan & Philip Larson, La Grange Park, 111.
Raymond Lavine, Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Ruth Lavine, Los Angeles, Calif.
Posey & Dick Leahy, Norwell, Mass.
Parker H. Lee III, Lynchburg, Va.
Connie & David Levering, West Lawn, Pa.
Levy Armand, Norfolk, Va.
Fred Lockwood, Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Molley & Richard Lowry, San Francisco, Calif.
Jennifer Mariner, Bowie, Md.
Jean & Frank Marshall, Birmingham, Ala.
John David Marshall, Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Richard & Susan Mastio, St. Joseph, Mo.
Susan & John Mather, Bowie, Md.
Alex & Stephen Mather, Bowie, Md.
Maureen McCann, W Vancouver, B.C.
Billie & John McFadden, Rocky River, Oh.
Charles McLaughlin, San Diego, Calif.
Jack Meeks, Jacksonville, Fla.
John Mino, Gates Mills, Oh.
Jill & Phil Mitchenall, Chevening, Kent
Janey & Patrick Moores, Lexington, Ky.
Forbes Morse,-Costa Mesa, Calif.
Myree & Ragnwald Muller, Thetford, Vt.
Judith & James Muller, Anchorage, Ak.
Andrew Ness, Lafayette, Calif.
Dea & Marvin Nicely, Seaside, Calif.
Kathy & Bond Nichols, Long Beach, Calif.
Charlotte & Earl Nicholson, Dallas, Tex.
Betty & Charlie Northen, Birmingham, Ala.
Sandy & Bob Odell, Lempster, N.H.
Patty & Ray Orban, Quincy, 111.
Madge, Malcolm & Anita Page, Augusta, Ga.
Owen Palmer, Gillingham, Kent
Greg Peete, Richmond, Va.
Guest & Robert Pilewski, Oil City, Pa.
Amy & Michael Pintavalle, Exton, Pa.
Linda & Chuck Plan, Greenwood Village, Colo.
Ruth & John Plumpton, Toronto, Ont.
Patrick Powers, Worcester, Mass.
Julia & Jack Proctor, Richmond, Va.
John Ramsden, London
Louise Rankin, Anderson, S.C.
Doug Reed, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Hill Riddle, New Orleans, La.
Richard Roberts, West Palm Beach, Fla.
Betty Rogers, Bradenton, Fla.
Mary Ruth Rudd, San Diego, Calif.
Phyllis & Howard Ruoff, Broomall, Pa.
Yvonne & Charles Salloum, Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Hon. Celia Sandys, Marlborough, Wilts.
Raymond G. H. Seitz, London
Sondra Shader, West Palm Beach, Fla.
Carol Shankes, Louisville, Colo.
Kevin Shanley, Troy, N.Y.
Fred Sheehan, Weymouth, Mass.
Genie Sherard, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Barbara & John Sibbald, Jacksons Pt., Ont.
Jean & Brian Singleton, Baslow, Derbyshire
Elizabeth & James Snell, Halifax, N.S.
The Lady Soames, London
Betty & Gene Soper, Walla Walla, Wash.
Michael Sorensen, Bowie, Md.
Lisa Southwick, Pittsfield, N.H.
Christiane & John Stoffer, Bloomington, 111.
Jenny & Richard Streiff, Gainesville, Fla.
Les Strike, W. Vancouver, B.C.
Marcie & Bob Thedinger, St. Joseph, Mo.
Lucille & Jim Thomas, Allendale, N.J.
Tish & Jerry Thompson, Charlotte, N.C.
Kathie & John Utz, Green Lane, Pa.
Laura & JeffWallin, Washington, D.C.
Brad Walters, Chapel Hill, N.C.
Spencer Warren, Annandale, Va.
Leon J. Waszak, Los Angeles, Calif.
Anne & Eric Waxman, Setauket, N.Y.
Jeanette & Bernie Webber, Mississauga, Ont.
Avril & Mark Weber, Tucson, Ariz.
Phyllis & Manfred Weidhorn, Fair Lawn, N.J.
Jerald Welch, Cheverly, Md.
Damon Wells, Houston, Tex.
Virginia & Norm West, Vienna, W.V.
Sarah Williams, Washington, D.C.
Julia & Matt Wills, Colorado Springs, Colo.
Sue & John Wilston, Southampton, Hampshire
Lind & Marshall Wright, Bretenahl, Oh.
Petty & Mitt Younts, Richmond, Va.
Robert Ziemer, Leawood, Kan.
Gert & Curt Zoller, Mission Viejo, Calif.
FINEST HOUR 101 /19

INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL TOUR AND CONFERENCE XVI
THE BATH CONNECTION: LONDON TO BATH MINI-TOUR, 17-22 JULY 1999
CHURCHILL CONFERENCE XVI • BATH, ENGLAND, 22-25 JULY 1999
Registration Packets will be in the mail. To be sure of a place, register with this information now 1 .
THE BATH CONNECTION (Speaker: Anthony Montague Browne, CBE, DFC)
W
r e have scheduled this tour to encourage
as many as possible to attend the
Bath Conference. We have planned it with
first-time visitors in mind, and have kept it
simple to hold costs to a minimum. This is
an attractive option to traveling to Bath on
your own, adding enjoyable dimensions to
the Conference itself.
•Note: the tour is not available to
anyone not attending the Conference.
Price includes all Conference fees including
extras, but not accommodation at the
Francis Hotel, which we reserve for you.
Led by Barbara and Richard Langworth
and Garry Clark, hosts of eight previous
Churchill Tours, you will be accommodated
in two fine hotels en route to
Bath. As usual, you may expect those special
entrees, not available to the general
public, that make Churchill tours unique.
Friday 16th July:
Flying day to London.
Saturday 17th July:
Our hotel is the Strand Palace (upgraded
club class rooms) convenient to
the theatre district, and we can book play
tickets for Saturday night. A welcoming
reception and dinner will be held at 5PM.
Retire early if jetlagged!
Sunday 18th July:
Thames River cruise to Greenwich
aboard the Havengore, which had the
honour of bearing Sir Winston's coffin up
the Thames in 1 965. Lunch and a visit to
the Royal Observatory and the famous
clipper ship Cutty Sark. Dinner tonight is
on your own and we will be pleased to direct
you to interesting
London
restaurants.
Monday 19th July:
Early morning
visit to the
Cabinet War
Rooms, Winston
Churchill's WW2
bunker; then by
motor coach to Chartwell, which will be
closed to the public for our private enjoyment.
View the many improvements including
the excellent exhibit of
Churchill's life and times and the Nemon
statue of WSC and Clementine. Dinner
tonight at our hotel, the historic Bell at
Hurley, on a lovely stretch of the Thames
where yachts, canoes and motor launches
perambulate.
Tuesday 20th July:
By special arrangement, a visit and
lunch at RAF Uxbridge: the "the hole in
the ground" where, on 17 September
1940, Churchill saw all aircraft aloft at
the height of the Battle of Britain, a military
museum not open to the public. Afternoon
in Windsor with its famous castle.
At dinner tonight, Anthony Montague
Browne will relate his experience as
Sir Winston's private secretary, 1952-65.
Wednesday 21 st July:
To Woodstock, Blenheim Palace and
the restored Churchill graves at Bladon.
Our route takes us through the Cotswolds,
the traditional heart of England, with their
golden villages and beautiful countryside.
Thursday 22nd July:
Departing the Bell, we visit the "connoisseur's
stone circles" at Avebury and
the "tourist's version" at Stonehenge, arriving
at the 1728 Francis Hotel by tea
time. Rates: single rooms £90 ($150),
doubles or twins £120 ($200). From the
Francis, it is an easy walk to the conference
and center of Bath, a city we consider
the most beautiful in England.
Sunday 25 th July:
The Tour includes your return to
central London after the conference ends.
HOW TO REGISTER FOR
THE TOUR (Including Conference)
Cost for the Bath Mini-Tour, including
full Conference registrations, dinners
and optional extras (but not accommodation
in Bath on July 22nd-25th) is $1995
per person (single occupancy surcharge
$400). This includes, on July 17-21st, all
hotel accommodation, transportation,
gratuities, entry fees, full English breakfasts,
four dinners, four lunches, expertise
of the tour hosts, local guides and speakers,
a welcome packet, tour bulletins,
reading lists and maps, and return transport
to London after the tour ends at
mid-day July 25th.
Personal checks to Specialist Tours,
P.O. Box 385, Contoocook, NH 03229.
A deposit of $500 is due upon registering
and is returnable in full if you cancel before
31 March 1999.
Not included are: dinner July 18th,
any lunches when the group is not together,
beverage bills (excluding wine
served at dinners), room and valet service,
passport fees, any expenses we incur in
making individual arrangements, and
other items not specifically included. Airfare
to London and airport transfers are
also not included. Members find this
preferable, enabling them to make their
own arrangements from any departure location.
The tour reserves the right to
make adjustments in the itinerary.
Churchill Tours always book up
rapidly and sell out fast—especially when
they are connected to a Churchill Conference.
We have a limit of 45, so we advise
you to book early. To reserve places or for
information contact the Churchill Center
NH offices. Telephone Barbara Langworth
toll free on weekdays: (888) 454-
2275, fax (603) 746-4260.
F.mail: b_langworth@conknet.com >>>
FI\I:~T Hoik IOI /20

INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL CONFERENCE XVI
Speakers: Major General Arthur Denaro, Lord Deedes, Robert Hardy CBE,
Sir Henry Beverley, William Tyler and Officers of The Churchill Center
J
r he International Churchill Society of
the UK invites you to attend the 16th
International Churchill Conference in the
World Heritage site and beautiful City of
Bath. The Conference Centre is the historic
Guildhall in the centre of Bath, where The
Right Honourable Winston Spencer
Churchill, OM, CH, MP, as he was then,
lunched on the 20th offuly 1950.
Registration Packets will be posted to
members shortly. The fees are modest, offering
a great deal for the money.
Thursday 22 July:
Afternoon: registration at the Guildhall,
Bath, the Conference Centre. Introduction
to the conference. Evening: Mayoral
reception, Roman Baths, followed by
gala Dinner Dance in the Pump Room
Friday 23 July:
Morning Lectures: Major General
Arthur Denaro, Commandant, Royal
Military Academy, Sandhurst:
"Churchill's Emerging Leadership at the
Royal Military College and in the 4th
Hussars." Lord Deedes: "The Impact of
Churchill as a War Correspondent." Afternoon
is free for your personal enjoyment
of Bath. A guided tour is available.
Evening: Robert Hardy declaims
Churchill's first political speech, made on
26 July 1897 at Claverton Manor, site of
the American Museum. This event on the
very site includes a reception with drinks
and canapes and a walk round the museum
if desired.
Saturday 24 July:
Morning: Richard Langworth, President,
Churchill Centre, describes the
work and progress of the Centre to date.
Sir Henry Beverley, Director General of
the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust,
describes its work as "a living Tribute to
Sir Winston Churchill." Churchill's Leadership
in South Africa to be discussed by
a leading Parliamentarian. Afternoon:
The annual book discussion by prominent
historians, this year's title being Iondon
to ladysmith via Pretoria.
Evening: A cruise on the Kennet and
Avon Canal, including supper, on board
the narrowboat, Pride of Bath.
Robert Hardy, CBE
Sunday 25 July:
Morning: William Tyler's address:
"An Enduring Model of Leadership."
James Muller introduces the 2000 Alaska
Conference. Conference ends by noon.
HOW TO REGISTER
FOR THE CONFERENCE ONLY
(For Conference and Tour, see opposite. The
following fees may be adjusted before the
registration pack is issued.)
• Master Registration Fee for all four
days of the Conference is £180 (US$306)
per person, including all Conference
events and lunch on July 23rd, 24th and
25th. A single day Registration Fee is also
available for the second and third days at
£66 (US $112.)
• Optional Extras: The following events
are individually optional at a total cost of
£97 (US$165.):
Thursday: Roman Baths Reception
£7 (US$12)
Thursday Dinner-Dance at the
Pump Room £44 (US$75)
Friday: Bath Guided Tour £3 (US$5)
Friday: Robert Hardy at American
Museum, drinks, canapes £20 (US$34)
Saturday: Kennet & Avon Dinner
Cruise on Pride of Bath £23 (US$39)
• Total cost per person for Master Registration
including all optional extras is
only £277 (US$471). Accommodation
extra (see below). Your personal cheque in
US or Canadian dollars is all that is
needed to register—no complicated currency
exchange. Make payable to "ICS"
and airmail to ICS, PO Box 1257, Melksham,
Wilts. SN12 6GQ, England.
• REGISTER SOON! Registration
forms will be in the mail shortly, but you
have enough here to register now. Any
questions? Please contact the Chairman,
Nigel Knocker, at the above address, or by
Email to nigel@icsuksaf.demon.co or by
telephone; from North America dial
01144-1380-868609. In UK dial
(01380) 868609.
BOOKING ACCOMMODATION
You are responsible for your own
hotel arrangements unless you are coming
with the Tour Party. (In that case the tour
will book your Bath accommodation at
the Francis Hotel, but you will register
and check out individually.) If you are
not coming on the Tour Party, you must
make your reservation individually at one
of several hotels which are holding rooms
for delegates. You will receive a list by return
when you register, or in the forthcoming
registration pack.
Excellent rates are available in a wide
range of hotels and guest houses. Since
the Conference Centre is the Guildhall,
delegates have the opportunity of staying
in accommodation of their choice. Hotel
prices range from £208 (US$353) for a
double room at the handsome Bath Spa,
to £54 (US$93) at the conveniently
placed Parade Park. Costs at the Stakis,
alongside the River Avon, are in the region
of £115 (US$195). Guest houses,
inns and farmhouse prices start from £28
(US$47) for a double room and run to a
typical average price of £46 (US$78). Accommodation
in Bath is at a premium in
July so you are recommended to book as
early as you can. For a list of modestly
priced Bed & Breakfast accommodations,
please contact the Tourist Information
Centre. From North America dial 01144-
1225-477101. In UK dial (01225)
477101. M>
FINHSTHOUR IOI /21

IO
The First Time
I WSC'J...
Our members got to talking
one day about what attracted
them to Sir Winston Churchill.
The comments proved fascinating.
7?
O
ne of the most interesting exchanges of 1998 on our
Internet Forum (Listserv Winston) was a charming
commentary from young and youngish members on
what attracted them to Winston Churchill. Most were not old
enough to remember World War II, so the origin of their awareness
is diverse and interesting. Since these accounts had a huge
response, we will gladly publish more of them, whatever the age
of the respondent, who may contact us by mail or email. -Editor
Graham Taylor, Toronto (age 18):
My first taste of Churchill, five years ago, was his History
of the English-Speaking Peoples. Of course I must have
had some interest in British history to begin with, but those
four volumes did much to expand my interests, as well as
my knowledge.
Rob Curry, via Internet:
My first memory of him was during 1967-68 when
my father had a year's sabbatical at Cambridge. I recall that
on a tour of Blenheim I saw young Winston's collection of
toy soldiers. For a boy of 9 or 10 there seemed to be case
after case filled with them. After that, most of my allowance
was spent buying Britains model knights and soldiers. I still
have a set of Guards with sentry boxes in a box.
Walt Linne, Indianapolis, Indiana:
I was hooked as soon as I could read (circa 1948). My
father was killed in action during World War II at Germersheim-on-the-Rhine...I
grew up reading WW2 history and
novels, specifically aviation, though my Dad was a Tanker. I
read Churchill's name everywhere, and have continued my
fascination to this day.
Charlie Montgomery, Monroeville, Alabama:
My father was a Napoleon buff, so as a boy I was too.
But in college during the early sixties, I found a copy of The
Gathering Storm. I think anyone who lived the Cold War
knows how one felt upon reading TGS. I can still remember
thinking, "How can we be making the same mistakes again?
Churchill has already told us to be aware, and what has to be
done." I never went back to Napoleon. WSC became my
hero. Besides that, my birthday is 30 November. What
choice did I have?
Greg Smith, Phoenix:
Born in 1937, I grew up during WW2, with my father
in the Navy. As a math major I had little exposure to
history even though I attended a liberal arts college. I read
Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the year it was published,
which began a lifelong fascination with history, and
Churchill in particular. In 1962 my mother, knowing of my
interest, gave me a first edition of Marlborough, Vol. 2 that
she found in a Chicago book store, and I began collecting
Churchill's works. I invited a lady friend over yesterday
evening to split a bottle of Pol Roger and watch the video
"Young Winston." I hope the thought counted. She liked
the Champagne.
Dr. Thomas J. Brueckner, via Internet:
I was a little kid, riding home on a Saturday morning
from the YMCA in our station wagon, with my big brother
and my dad driving. We heard about Churchill's death on
the car radio. I remember it was snowing that day, the first
time I heard about Winston Churchill.
Michael Olesen, St. Paul, Minnesota:
My first recollection of a historical event was also the
Churchill funeral. I was seven at the time, but I >»
FINEST HOUR IOJ /22

emember a distinct sense of sadness and gratitude, and that
something more than a life was ending. I remember so well
the black and white image of the cranes along the Thames
being lowered as the launch Havengore carrying his body
passed. Of all the events I have since watched, his funeral is
still the most vivid.
Sally Browne, Chatham, England:
The funeral also brought my husband, Owen Palmer,
and me to Churchill, for we are restoring Havengore. [See
Finest Hour 97 -Ed.] The physical restoration is extremely
demanding and thankfully I have often had the more interesting
task of researching the vessel. I have immersed myself
in the archives at Churchill College, the Port of London Authority,
the Museum of London and national newspapers. I
had the pleasure of interviewing the warrant officer and the
commander of the Grenadier Guards, the bearer party from
the Palace of Westminster to Waterloo Station; and listening
to the personal memories of the 1965 skipper and crew. Reliance
on secondary sources has not reduced the impact of
Churchill's passing; the sadness, loss and gratitude; the contemplation
and wonder of what the future held without him.
Richard Dixon, Missoula, Montana:
My first experience was when a friend gave me a copy
of My Early Life. Since then I have bought every book by
Churchill that I can find (and afford). I've always been a
reader rather than a collector, so my collection is a mixture of
paperbacks to some fine first editions, all of them read at
least once. I always buy used copies of My Early Life to give
to young people (and some old ones for that matter) to get
them started reading Churchill. I recently gave a speech on
Churchill and gave out three copies to fellows who are 15 to
20 years my senior (I'm 55). Think I may have hooked one
and hopefully CC membership is next. I need someone to
raise a toddy with on November 30th.
Ron Cohen, Ottawa, Ontario:
In London, aged 21, the huge media fuss drew me to
Kensington Gardens across from the cordoned-off entry to
Hyde Park Gate. The curious and concerned from around
the world (judging by dress, appearance, language) had gathered
there as Sir Winston's life gradually ebbed. Later I marvelled
at the queues waiting to attend the lying-in-state. On
the morning of the funeral, I stood in crowds outside Westminster
Hall waiting for the catafalque to proceed up Whitehall
toward St. Paul's. What struck me at the time was the
huge popular outpouring of love and reverence, the symbolic
acknowledgments of state and private enterprises and authority
(including the silencing of Big Ben, the attendance
by the Royal Family, the dipping of the Thames cranes) and
the recognition by world leaders and the media. (The Economist
said, in roughly the following terms: "We will boast to
our grandchildren that we lived when Churchill was alive.")
When I returned to Canada, I joined the Book-of-the-
Month Club, purchased The Second World War, then the History
of the English-Speaking Peoples, read Ralph Martin's Jennie,
and then first realized (to my great surprise) that Sir
Winston's writings antedated 1948. I started collecting
Churchill's writings at age 26, heard about ICS, and was
hooked. As evidence of the dangerous psychological condition
which may result, I am now fifteen years into the preparation
of my Bibliography of the Published Writings of Sir
Winston Churchill.
Robert A. Gazzola (via Internet):
My first and most memorable experience was also at
Hyde Park Gate prior to his death. About a dozen people
stood across from his home for ten or fifteen minutes of
silent homage, then were replaced by others. There was always
a small group present. The scene was simple and voluntary.
No one organized it. No one invited people to attend. A
lone guard in civilian dress stood before his door. No one
spoke and all showed a marked respect and reverence. This
made quite an impression upon me and has never left my
memory.
Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, Ottawa, Ontario (age 23):
I was 11, and my family deserves full credit for fuelling
my interest. During the Second World War my greatuncle
was A.D.C. to the President of Poland [See
"Glimpses," page 25. -Ed.] Based in London, he naturally
met Churchill on many occasions. My family was also very
friendly with Count Edward Raczynski, Polish ambassador
to London and later President of the government-in-exile.
Being so close to these two men and hearing them speak so
highly of Churchill was without doubt the single greatest
factor encouraging me to delve deeper into his life.
Brandon R. Sanders, Ft. Worth, Texas (age 29):
Being so much older than Rafal, I fall just under the
age 30 barrier. At age 14, I engaged upon the happy task of
reading a biography of every United States President, starting
with Reagan and working back. I kept noticing these great
men quoting someone named Winston Churchill. They
seemed to quote him or discuss meeting him with such reverence
that I began to wonder who exactly this person could
be. Pausing my reading at Kennedy, I started the Randolph
Churchill/Martin Gilbert biography of Winston Churchill. I
was amazed. This man had lived a thousand "crowded
hours." I couldn't help but think that if we consider just one
great event from his life and nothing else, his place in history
would be secure. But here he was, year after year, doing these
amazing things. Thus at the ripe old age of 29,1 still find out
new things about him. I read and re-read all I can. "Hero" is
a term thrown loosely in this day and age, but anyone who
knows his story, and has faith in high ideals can call him
that. When nature removes so great a man, people explore
the horizons for a successor. But none comes and none will,
for his class is extinguished with him. continued >»
FINEST HOUR 101/23

THE FIRST TIME I WSC'D...
Andrew Rogers, Seattle (age 30):
What attracted me was looking through my father's
book club edition of The Second World War, when I was in elementary
school in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Dad was a
career Navy officer, and we had lived (and would soon live
again) in Hawaii; so I was very interested in the attack on
Pearl Harbor. Expecting Churchill's book would be a conventional
history of World War II, I was surprised to read
how little attention he paid to the details of the attack, as opposed
to his personal reaction and how well he slept that
night. I remember wondering whether all six volumes were
as focused on the author as the Pearl Harbor episode was,
and that anyone who could fill so many pages with personal
recollections and first-person narrative must have led a pretty
interesting life. Or have a pretty huge ego. Or both. I read a
lot more by and about Sir Winston in high school and college,
and in college I started to collect his books, and really
began to develop a more rounded picture of the Great Man.
Marc David Miller, New York City:
Like several others, I was fascinated by Napoleon at
the age of 15. After learning what I could about Napoleon, I
drifted eight decades on to Churchill. I bought many books
about and by Churchill, watched "Young Winston," "The
Wilderness Years" and "The First Churchills." Twenty years
later (January 1998) I saw the Cabinet War Rooms, and I
hope to see Chartwell and Blenheim in the future.
Joseph Sramek, Binghamton, N.Y.:
I am 22 now but have been a Churchillian since the
sixth grade. My class was assigned a project: research and impersonate
a famous person! I obtained a frock coat, Homburg
hat, cane and cigar. Doing it correctly for my teacher, who
was old enough to be of the WW2 generation, required a lot
of research. I don't exactly know why I chose Churchill, but
it might have something to do with family discussions. Early
on, I was aware of Hitler, Stalin, and the valiant man who resisted
them and (singlehandedly in my family's eyes) "saved"
civilization. My grandmother, now 75, told me she cried
when Churchill died. She gave me newspaper clippings to
help me and I was hooked to the study of history. Churchill
continues to remain prominent as I pursue a PhD program
in European History. While many historians dismiss or
doubt the Carlylean and Macaulayite notion of "the Great
Man in history," there is one leading candidate. His major
contribution, aside from saving the free world in 1940, is as
one of the best historians of the century, for Marlborough has
consistently been cited among the best biographical works.
Richard H. Knight, Jr., Nashville, Tenn.:
My parents bought a Time-Life photo history of
World War II in the late Forties. The text was actually an
abridgement of the early volumes of Churchill's war memoirs.
Well thumbed, this book served us well over the
decades, often flattening stamps we had soaked from covers,
when it was not propping open doors. In the mid-Fifties,
when Movietone Newsreels began running pieces on
Churchill's birthday, I knew how old he was. Sir Winston
seemed to have a birthday about every three months. One
day in 1958 I asked my Dad (a career Naval Person) for his
opinion on the Man of the Century. He replied, "Winston
Churchill." It made perfectly good sense to me. Dad still
holds to this view. So does Junior.
Clarence Martin, via Internet:
I was born in New Orleans in 1930. My father required
that every Saturday morning I copy, by hand, an article
from one of the magazines to which we subscribed and
explain to him its significance. The bad part was that he
picked out the article. The good part was that if I "passed" I
received 15 cents. As early as 1938 the articles I was assigned
were largely about the coming of war, and Churchill. During
my reward sessions at the movies during the war, Pathe News
would light up the giant screen with a bigger-than-life Winston
Churchill, walking through the burning ruins of London.
I felt he was someone I knew—not as exciting as Flash
Gordon, but real. I found myself following his exploits. I
need not explain to this group where it went from there.
Melchior de Wolff, Rotterdam, Holland:
It was my grandmother whom I recall as the first person
to speak to me about Churchill. It must have been during
a visit to Amsterdam, she being about 66 years old, I
being about nine. I remember distinctly her voice, in Dutch:
"Listen: if he [WSC] wouldn't have been there, you wouldn't
have been there." A second recollection is that several members
of my family pronounced WSC's name as: "Sjorzel."
Ricardo Munro, Arvin, Calif.:
I was born in 1955 just after Sir Winston retired.
Both my grandfather and father had strong memories. I remember
my grandfather telling me that Churchill had been
a Liberal in Dundee, highly respected by the Scots. Although
my grandfather had Labour Party sympathies as a young
man, like many Scots he had great respect for Churchill's
courage and integrity. During the 1930s, after he emigrated
to America, he broke with friends from the Red Clydeside,
many of whom were pro-Communist. Incredible as it may
seem both left- and right-wing Americans supported the
Russo-German pact in 1939. Although my father and grandfather
became naturalized American citizens in 1936, they
remained staunchly pro-British. Hearing Churchill on the
radio (and later Edward R. Murrow) was inspirational. People
in my family still talk about it. My father carried with
him a copy of Blood, Sweat, and Tears throughout the war.
My grandfather gave me an LP of Churchill's speeches which
we heard together many times. I still have the book, with a
1941 June rose pressed in, and the record. $
FINEST HOUR IOI /24

The author with his great-uncle.
Glimpses:
Count
Xavier
Puslowski
Rafal Heydel-Mankoo
The death a year ago of my 92-year-old great-uncle,
Count Xavier Puslowski, struck a personal chord
which transcended the void experienced by the loss
of a loved one. Having been actively involved in some of
this century's most tumultuous events, Count Puslowki became
in my eyes a larger-than-life figure. Against the backdrop
of his sparkling grey eyes one could almost see the
great spectacles of the past being replayed. Naturally such a
life led to encounters with Winston Churchill.
The son of Count Ladislas' Puslowski and Princess
Christina Pignatelli d'Aragon, Xavier was born on 29 September
1905 in northeast Poland, present-day Belarus. His
English connections included his grandmother, Ida
Cavendish, first cousin of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, and
grand-daughter of Sir William Rumbold. The Puslowskis
endured many tragedies in the early years of the century,
not least of which were the Russian Revolution and the First
World War.
On the outbreak of war in 1939 Xavier fought as an
officer in the cavalry and in an armoured battalion. With
the defeat of Poland, he and his wife, Zofia Puslowska, fled
to London, leaving behind their 600,000-acre estate. He
soon joined the Polish government-in-exile and became
A.D.C. to Polish President Raczkiewicz. Remaining in this
position for the duration of the war, he was able to meet
Churchill on numerous occasions.
An amusing incident occurred early in the war. The
Prime Minister was walking along a corridor followed by an
entourage of aides and officials, including Field Marshal
Alanbrooke. Approaching an elevator, Puslowski turned to
Churchill and said, "You must be getting tired, sir." The
PM turned and snapped: "Me, tired? No—they! They are
the ones that are always tired!" With that he made a broad
gesture towards Alanbrooke and company.
Xavier was also friendly with General Sikorski and
Mr. Heydel-Mankoo is studying Law at the University of Ottawa and
has been an ICS Canada member since age 14; he is now 23. He is
executive director of the National Capital Chapter of the
Monarchist League of Canada.
especially with the Polish Ambassador
to Great Britain,
Count Edward Raczynski. The
latter died only a few years
ago, having passed the century
mark. A marvellous monocled
character (he married his secretary
when he was in
his late nineties) he held the
dubious honour of being the
first person to inform Churchill that the Second World War
had started, telephoning the First Lord at Chartwell to notify
him that the Germans had crossed the border (see
Gilbert's Volume 6). He later wrote a book about Churchill:
Od Narcyza Kulikowskiego do Winstona Churchilla, published
in London by the National Polish Cultural Foundation
in 1976. I had the honour of meeting Count Raczynski
when I was a child. Only later would I discover this great
man's accomplishments.
Before my uncle died, he gave me a letter I cherish,
from Downing Street and signed by Anthony Bevir, one of
the PM's private secretaries. Alas it remains the only physical
link attesting to Count Xavier's connection to Sir Winston.
The last link between my uncle and Churchill is
rather indirect. At my Count Xavier's funeral I met his
cousin, Sir Henry Rumbold, great-grandson of The Rt.
Hon. Sir Horace Rumbold, a legendary Ambassador whose
biography was written by none other than Sir Martin
Gilbert.
Sir Horace, who was British Ambassador to Germany
from 1921 to 1933, stands with Churchill, Duff
Cooper, Harold Nicolson and a handful of others, the few
who spoke out against Hitler before the war. References to
Rumbold abound in any decent Churchill biography. According
to William Manchester, "Sir John Reith at the BBC
continued to gag Hitler's critics—Sir Horace Rumbold and
Harold Nicolson were denied airtime because they were
'anti-German.'" After the First World War, when my uncle's
estates were overrun by the Bolsheviks in the Soviet invasion
of Poland, my uncle and his family escaped to Warsaw and
were accommodated at the British Legation by Sir Horace.
Many people regarded Sir Winston Churchill as
the last of the Victorians. I like to view my uncle as one of
the last Edwardians.
*The correct spelling in Polish is Wladyslaw (pronounced
Vwadiswav); since Polish names are difficult for
non-Poles to pronounce, his name is usually spelt "Ladislas"
in France or England. M>
FINEST HOUR 101/ 25

Exploring Churchill s Canon
Wkat to Do ALout Iraq? A Debate
We often seek in Churchill's experience the answers to modern problems he never had to consider, but on which he
may have left some guidelines. This thoughtful exchange occurred on our Internet forum a year ago, during one of
the periodic Iraq outbursts. We filed it for publication after the next outburst, which involved the recent Anglo-
American action over that country, the results of which are suggested on page 5 in our "quote of the season." -Ed.
THE FUTILITY OF SANCTIONS
Charles Montgomery
Churchill's Arms and the Covenant (London: 1938)
offers many comments relative to the Iraq situation—not
all of them by Churchill. For instance,
on 18 May 1934, in the wake of Mussolini's invasion of
Abyssinia, Stanley Baldwin commented about sanctions
used against aggressor states: "There is no such thing as a
sanction that will work that does not mean war." (146)
Sanctions without war were as unsuccessful against
Mussolini as they were later against Hitler: on 18 June
1936 the British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, said in
the House of Commons:
Whatever view we take of the course of action which
the League should follow [upon German aggression]
there is one fact upon which we must, of course, be
agreed. We have to admit that the purpose for which the
sanctions were imposed has not been realized. (345).
Sanctions are an easy alternative to serious action,
which appeal to politicians who base their decisions on
opinion polls, or who refrain from applying more serious
correctives out of fear of public or press reaction. A passage
showing Churchill's commitment to principle, regardless
of political or press attacks, occurs in this book in
his speech of 20 July 1936. He was speaking of course of
how Britain should deal with an aggressive Nazi Germany.
Let us admit at the outset that Saddam Hussein is no
Hitler; but Churchill's political philosophy is no less worthy
of reflection in respect to the Iraq problem today:
I believe that in dangerous times, once public danger
is made known, we should be found not less worthy of
the handling of confidential matters than were the rugged
generations which built up this island's greatness. Nothing
would give me greater pleasure than to be absolutely
stultified...and proved to be an alarmist. I would endure
with patience the roar of exultation that would go up
when I was proved wrong, because it would lift a load off
my heart and the hearts of many Members. What does it
matter who gets exposed or discomfited? If the country
is safe, who cares for individual politicians, in or out of
office? (354)
In contrast to this attitude was Baldwin's response
to Churchill's speech on "The Locust Years" on 12 November
1936, which will be familiar to readers of the
news in 1998:
My position as the leader of a great party was not altogether
a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance
was there...of that feeling being so changed that the country
would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I
had gone to the country and said that Germany was
rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think
that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry
at the moment? I cannot think of anything that would
have made the loss of the election from my point of view
more certain. (385-86)
Baldwin was saying that the loss of an election was more
important than the safety of the nation. In all the Parliamentary
exchanges over rearmament, that was certainly
the most damning of any speaker.
How often in reading books like Arms and the
Covenant I am reminded that politicians learn little from
history, continuing to make decisions based on polls and
self-aggrandizement; and even in some cases self-preservation.
One of the things that made Churchill great was that
he was committed to principle. He continued to speak
out when he saw his country heading towards trouble,
even in the face of terrible "ratings" or negative opinion
polls. As Alistair Cooke remarked, recalling those years: "I
imagine that most of us here would like to think that, had
we been in Britain in say 1934-36, we should certainly
have been on Churchill's side. We'd have said, 'Yes, it's
true about the German air force.' In fact I don't think ten
percent of us would have been with him." (Proceedings of
the Churchill Societies, 1988-89).
George F. Will, a longtime Churchill Center member,
wrote in his column on 16 February 1998:
If Saddam's arsenal is as dangerous as the [American]
Administration's hot rhetoric asserts...the Administration
should be making the case for commensurate measures,
meaning measures designed to remove him. Such measures
could include indicting him as a war criminal, recognizing
a provisional government in exile and funding it
with Iraq's frozen assets, stripping his regime of its >>>
FINEST HOUR IOI/26

UN seat, and most important, using ground forces to occupy
sparsely populated southern Iraq, which includes
the nation's largest oil field....During four decades of Cold
War, the United States, while waiting for the Soviet
regime to change, largely deterred and contained that
regime, which was potentially far more dangerous than
Iraq is. Granted, Saddam's Iraq can be more regionally
destabilizing than the Soviet Union was, and chemical
and biological weapons have terrorist applications that it
is all too easy to see him countenancing. Still, Saddam
was deterred from using such weapons in the Gulf War by
U.S. threats of massive retaliation.
SANCTIONS HAVE THEIR PLACE
Robert Shepherd
George Will's formulations are the first I've seen
with a Churchillian cast: military containment on
the ground as well as the air, coupled with the
threat of massive retaliation should doomsday weapons be
used by the enemy. (Churchill once remarked that the
irony of the hydrogen bomb was that its very terror made
Armageddon less likely.) Unfortunately, bringing democratic
nations around to Will's recommendations requires
leadership and persuasive diplomacy of the kind that
seems in short supply at present. Air strikes which accomplish
nothing permanent are a cheap way out, and will no
doubt be confirmed through government-by-focus-group.
It seems that "leaders of great parties" do worry about
being "exposed or discomfited"; or fear to act lest they
make the loss of elections more certain.
But what about South Africa? We did not have to
go to war in that case, over apartheid, nor was there any
serious use of a threat of war—none at all! The world used
economic sanctions, which some would say were a weak
slap on the wrist. But the fact is, those sanctions (divestment,
etc.) represented a strong, steady, potent pressure
against a determined regime that ultimately accepted the
will of the world.
Other cases of an international cold shoulder have
led to such successful outcomes as the political "relaxation"
of the former dictatorships in Portugal and Greece.
Both those countries were eager to join the European
Community. The "carrot and stick" in these instances
were economic—and they worked without the use of any
threat of war whatsoever.
As for remaining indifferent to the opinion of those
who lack our principles, we certainly honor Churchill for
that (at times). But isn't being indifferent to the opinion
of others with contrary principles the whole problem we
have with Saddam Hussein to begin with? We praise
Churchill's indifference to political and press attacks on
his beliefs (amazing, isn't it—a politician who truly be-
"/ would endure with patience the
roar of exultation that would go up
when I was proved wrong, because it
would lift a load off my heart and
the hearts of many Members. What
does it matter who gets exposed or
discomfited? If the country is safe,
who cares for individual politicians,
in or out of office?"
—Winston S. Churchill, 20 July 1936
lieved in a cause and purpose for his country?). But the
experience of the West with Iraq involves a man with remarkable
indifference to (western) military, political and
press attacks on him or his regime.
We can certainly stand in a respectful awe of
Churchill for his perseverance, even stubbornness, in the
face of united opposition. Yet it is not his stubbornness
alone that merits respect, but also his values and ideals on
behalf of which that stubbornness was expended. After all,
the bad guys can be stubborn, too.
REBUTTALS
Mr. Montgomery:
The examples you give for cases where sanctions
worked without threat of war all involve countries
(Greece, South Africa, Portugal) that had not engaged in
warlike activities. The quotes from Arms and the Covenant
referred to Mussolini after his invasion of Abyssinia. Iraq/
Saddam has previously shown it/he was predisposed to
war and would be stopped by nothing less. Sanctions didn't
work against Japan (which had invaded Manchuria in
the 1930s), or against Red China or the USSR during
major incidents in the Cold War. The most drastic sanctions,
such as total blockade and declaration of war, had
no effect on Germany in 1914 or 1939, or for that matter
on the Southern Confederacy in 1860.
Peaceful countries engaged in domestic wrongdoing
are susceptible to sanctions. But can you show one
case where sanctions caused a country which had invaded
another, or previously engaged in warlike behavior, to give
up or withdraw from conquered land or to radically
change its behavior? continued >»
FINEST HOUR IOI/27

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IRAQJ...
Mr. Shepherd:
If I follow the argument correctly, countries susceptible
to sanctions would have to include mostly, or at least
characteristically, peaceful countries with a tendency to or
leaning toward democracy; or without an entrenched predisposition
to war, or readiness to fight; or regimes engaged
in domestic wrongdoing (but excluding the Confederacy
in I860 and Hitler's Germany in the 1930s)? I
believe there is a danger in being too dismissive of the
power of economics. Some of America's "founding fathers"
wrote about the power of commerce and economic
self-interest in moderating the effects of a fanatical or warlike
spirit. A generation later, Alexis de Tocqueville said
similar things in greater depth.
As an example of the success of sanctions against a
warlike country, consider the evolution of Vietnam since
the mid-1980s, which has been more favorable, from the
Western standpoint, than during the wars fought to promote
that evolution from the 1940s to the mid-1970s.
Vietnam reminds me of Aesop's fable of the Sun and the
Wind, arguing who was the stronger—which could make
the man remove his coat. The Wind blew and blew and
only made the man clutch his coat tighter. The Sun benignly
shone his mild, mellow warmth and the man took
off his coat. The moral was that fierceness and belligerence
are sometimes less effective than patience and steadiness.
With Vietnam, according to some commentators,
there has indeed been a radical, though gradual, change in
behavior, despite its previous predisposition to war and
conquest, whether in self-interest and self-determination
(as when they invaded Cambodia to stop the Killing
Fields of Pol Pot in the late 1970s). The Vietnamese
proved not immune to the profit motive, and their desire
for prosperity ultimately outlasted their Communist fundamentalism.
Now we are seeing similar discussions about Cuba.
They didn't mind being outcasts and pariahs as long as
the Soviet Union was doling out largesse. Today it's a different
story. The Pope was allowed to come and lecture
and scold, and he was still thanked profusely for just coming.
Maybe even the Cuban rulers were acknowledging,
however obliquely, the truth of the Pope's criticisms.
Editor's note: If we may now play the devil's advocate: so
would the Churchillian policy with respect to Iraq be simply
a period of "benign neglect," in Kissinger's phrase? And what
if that gives them enough time to develop a missile filled with
typhus, and the means to deliver it? Reader comment is invited.
$
Recipes from No. 10
by Georgina Landemare (the Churchill Family Cook, c. 1940s-50s)
Updated and annotated by Barbara Langworth
13 OCTOBER 1940...
As the raid continued and seemed to grow in intensity we put on our tin
hats and went out to view the scene from the top of the Annexe buildings.
Before doing so, however, I could not resist taking Mrs. Landemare and
the others from the shelter to see their kitchen. They were upset at the
sight of the wreck, but principally on account of the general untidiness 1 .
—WSC, Their Finest Hour
Tournedos Montpensier (serves six)
6 short paste' tartlets, pie crust dough tartlets, or purchased tarts
6 beef fillets (tenderloin) about 2 1/2 lbs total
1 bundle of small asparagus
6 pats of green butter
Cut off the points of the asparagus and cook in salted water,
strain and put in a little melted butter. Place a few of these tips
in each tartlet.
Melt 2 Tb butter and 2 Tb oil. Tie each fillet with a piece of
string to prevent spreading. Cook for 3 minutes each side, and
then place one in each tartlet. Top with green butter.
Mrs. Landemare's
short
paste:
1 1b plain flour
(about 4 cups)
12 oz butter
(3 sticks)
salt
squeeze of
lemon juice
Rub the butter well into the flour, mix with a very small
amount of water and lemon juice. Form into a past.e.
2 - Green Butter
Mix 6 Tb (3 oz) softened butter with a generous Tb of
finely chopped parsley, a little lemon juice and salt and
pepper. For a more decorative garnish use a large star tip
and pipe in a circle. |
FINEST HOUR IOI /28

How Churchill
Saw Others:
Stanley Baldwin
What could have impelled
so magnanimous a man
to say of his former chief,
"It would have been much
better had he never lived"?
Richard M. Langwortn
Baldwin with his Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1929
How quickly a single thread leads us "In Search of
Churchill," to quote Sir Martin Gilbert's apposite
book title from a few years ago. Recently on
our Internet forum we were asked for the source of
Churchill's famous recommendation about what to do
with a certain famous corpse: "Embalm, cremate and
bury," WSC replied—"take no chances." This led me
through an instructive journey that defined the vast extent
of Churchill's generosity towards his colleagues—and its
limits.
I first heard the "embalm" remark cited (diplomatically,
without identifying the corpse in question) by Anthony
Montague Browne, Churchill's private secretary
(1952-65) in a marvelous speech to a Churchill Society
dinner at London's Savoy in 1985 (see FH 50). Stephen P.
Johnson of the University of Washington tracked it to
William Manchester's The Last Lion, Vol. 2 "Alone"
(Boston: Little Brown 1988), which stated in a footnote
that it referred to former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.
Manchester cited Kay Halle's Irrepressible Churchill
(Cleveland: World 1966), pages 131 and 133, and I was
off. The result was a diverting two hours reading what
Churchill had to say about Stanley Baldwin.
Contrary to Manchester, Halle does not mention
the "embalm" quote in her references to Baldwin, but she
does offer a broad collection. Taken chronologically, they
show the development of Churchill's thought on his longtime
Parliamentary colleague and sometime chief.
Winston Churchill's collegiality, even
friendship, toward those with whom he violently
disagreed was one of his noblest characteristics.
There are many evidences of it in the Official Biography
and elsewhere—and one case where it was not extended in
its usual effusiveness. Churchill was not a hater and was
quick to forgive; but toward one Parliamentary colleague
he did not in the end grant forgiveness.
Stanley Baldwin was elected to Parliament in 1908
but remained a backbencher until 1921, when he rose to
Cabinet rank under Andrew Bonar Law. After Law's death
in 1923 he became Prime Minister, only to be thrown out
by Labour in January 1924. He returned to Downing
Street following the December 1924 election and remained
Prime Minister until Labour was returned in the
spring of 1929.
Churchill, who had come up the hard way in politics
and almost always amid controversy, found Baldwin's
success difficult to fathom. Musing later on Baldwin's rise,
Churchill called him "a countrified businessman who
seemed to have reached the Cabinet by accident." 1 But
Churchill happily accepted the Chancellorship of the Exchequer
in Baldwin's government, probably offered to
him, most historians agree, on the theory that it was better
to have Winston fulminating from the inside than
from without.
In 1931, as the Depression deepened, Baldwin
brought the Tories into coalition with Labour Prime Minister
Ramsay MacDonald, Baldwin himself serving as
Lord President of the Council. Churchill shared few political
positions with either; he referred to them as "two
nurses fit to keep silence around a darkened room." 2 >>>
FINEST HOUR IOI/29

"Baldwin took the view that Germany planned to strike east, not west;
that a showdown between the Nazis and Bolsheviks wouldn't be a bad thing;
that rearmament would only frighten a peace-loving nation and, perhaps,
cause it to elect somebody else. Such realpolitik is not unknown today... "
Speaking before the Royal Academy in 1932, WSC referred
to his fellow artist: "[Mr. Baldwin] is still quite a
distinguished painter in our academy. If I were to criticise
him at all I would say his work lacked a little in colour,
and was also a little lacking in the precise definition of
objects in the foreground. He too has changed not only
his style but also his subjects...Making a fair criticism, I
must admit there is something very reposeful about the
half-tones of his twilight studies." 3
In the general election of 1935 the Conservatives
won a huge majority and Baldwin became Prime Minister
again. But no Cabinet post was offered Churchill, who
had parted from Baldwin in 1931 over the question of
Dominion status for India, and now began to differ on
whether Britain should rearm in the face of Hitler's Germany.
Baldwin took the view that Germany planned to
strike east, not west; that a showdown between the Nazis
and Bolsheviks wouldn't be a bad thing; that rearmament
would only frighten a peace-loving nation and, perhaps,
cause it to elect somebody else. Such realpolitik is not unknown
today...
Churchill's politics were based on principle, not
polls or public mood. He seethed in frustration, though
his early parries turned on humor. During one debate
Churchill remarked of Baldwin, "The Lord President was
wiser than he is now; he used frequently to take my advice.
"4
By 1935 the German threat was nakedly apparent;
yet Baldwin still resisted a vigorous response. Churchill's
consternation now gave rise to stronger words: "Occasionally
he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself
up and hurried on as if nothing had happened".... "He is
no better than an epileptic corpse." (This is perhaps the
root of attribution of the "embalm" quote by Manchester.)
In 1937, when Baldwin appeared in the House of Commons
Smoking Room, having been succeeded as Premier
by Neville Chamberlain, Churchill remarked, "Well, the
light is at last out of that old turnip." 5
Compared to some exchanges we've heard more recently
in Congress or Parliament, such remarks
seem tame. The difference is that a collegial atmosphere
prevailed in Churchill's time: a friendship or
kinship that survived the rancor and asperity of Parliamentary
debate. Indeed Churchill was more collegial than
most. His tribute to Philip Snowden, the Labour Chancellor
of the Exchequer with whom he disagreed violently
on every conceivable subject, is a typical example. After
Churchill's generous tribute to Snowden following the latter's
death, 6 Lady Snowden, an active socialist and teetotaler,
wrote to Churchill: "Your generosity to a political
opponent marks you for ever in my eyes the 'great gentleman'
I have always thought you. Had I been in trouble
which I could not control myself, there is none to whom I
should have felt I could come with more confidence that I
should be gently treated."
Sir Martin Gilbert, who reprinted this note in his
In Search of Churchill, comments: "There are rather few of
whom this can be said, even outside the political fray. It
marks a quality which, by its very nature, would remain
little known beyond those who were its beneficiaries. In
all the venues of my search, finding this characteristic
seemed to me the most rewarding." 7
Nor was Churchill's generosity strictly a peacetime
phenomenon. Once World War II was on, when we
might have expected an embattled Prime Minister to demand
uncritical support, Churchill at least publicly bore
his critics with equanimity and humor. At a low point in
1941 he responded to a particularly strong attack: "I do
not think...any expression of scorn or severity which I
have heard used by our critics has come anywhere near
the language which I have been myself accustomed to use,
not only orally, but in a stream of written minutes. In fact,
I wonder that a great many of my colleagues are on speaking
terms with me." 8
Stanley Baldwin had remarked in the 1930s that in
the unlikely event of war, "we must save Winston to >>>
Kay Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, Cleveland and
New York: World Publishing Co. 1966, p. 181.
2 Ibid., p. 117.
3 Ibid., pp. 119-20.
4 Ibid., p. 129.
5 Ibid., pp. 133, 131, 134.
° Winston Churchill, "Philip Snowden," Sunday Pictorial,
London, 12 August 1931 (Woods C170/II); reprinted in Great Contemporaries,
London: Cassell 1937 et. seq.
' Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill, London: Harper-
Collins 1994, pp. 221-22.
8 Halle, op. cit., p. 181
FINEST HOUR IOI /30

London hoarding posted by unknown supporters
after Munich wondered what price would have to
be paid before Churchill could join the Cabinet.
The price when it was paid was high indeed.
be our fighting Prime Minister." Churchill never publicly
repaid the compliment, if compliment it was. He held
Baldwin responsible for Britain's lack of preparedness
when the crisis inevitably came. During the Blitz, when
informed that a German bomb had fallen on Baldwin's
house, Churchill quipped, "What base ingratitude." 9 Yet a
year later, the fair-minded Prime Minister tried to prevent
the churlish confiscation for scrap metal of the artistic
iron gates around Baldwin's country home. (They were
being requisitioned out of spite. Baldwin had become preeminent
among the "Guilty Men" whom the fickle public
now believed had brought on the war.) "Lay off Baldwin's
gates," Churchill said without effect: the gates were confiscated.
10
In 1943 they renewed personal contact, Churchill
asking Baldwin's views over a speech he was thinking of giving
to condemn Irish neutrality. Baldwin read WSC s notes
while Churchill sipped brandy. Finally Baldwin opined, "I
wouldn't give that speech," and Churchill didn't. 11
Some of his biographers believe that Stanley Baldwin
had served to bring a nation united into war; that
without his caution, Britain would have split over
rearmament; and that even as one of the "Guilty Men," he
provided Britain with something it needed besides its hero
Churchill: a scapegoat. 12 There is much to be said against
critics who are wise after the fact. If Stanley Baldwin had
prevented Britain from rearming soon enough to forestall
Hitler, he certainly had plenty of company. As Churchill
once remarked of Chamberlain, the British public had no
right to condemn him for the war, having backed his policies
to the hilt almost up to the last days of peace.
What Churchill knew and Baldwin didn't was that
a Britain so anxious for peace would "never give in" once
battle was joined. "Going back a long time to 27 March
1936," WSC recalled in 1951, "[Mr. Baldwin] said, according
to the Daily Herald, 'We shall have to give up certain
of our toys—one is Britannia rules the
Waves'....As has been often pointed out, it is
Britannia rule the Waves—an invocation,
not a declaration of fact. But if the idea
Rule Britannia was a toy, it was certainly
one for which many good men from time
to time have been ready to die." 13
Churchill's final view of Baldwin, who
died in 1947, was atypical of his usual magnanimity. Indeed
it was much more severe than the Parliamentary
barbs Kay Halle recorded—severer, in fact, than biographer
Martin Gilbert has noticed toward any other of
Churchill's contemporaries, including Samuel Hoare and
Aneurin Bevan.
"Shortly after the war," writes Gilbert, "when he
was asked to send Baldwin, then aged eighty, a birthday
letter, [Churchill] declined to do so, writing to an intermediary:
'I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have
been much better had he never lived.'
"In my long search for Churchill," Gilbert concluded,
"few letters have struck a clearer note than this
one. Churchill was almost always magnanimous: his tribute
to Neville Chamberlain in 1940 was among the highpoints
of his parliamentary genius. But he saw Baldwin as
responsible for the 'locust years' when Britain, if differently
led, could have easily rearmed, and kept well ahead
of the German military and air expansion, which Hitler
had begun in 1933 from a base of virtual disarmament.
Churchill saw Baldwin's policies, especially with regard to
Royal Air Force expansion, as having given Hitler the impression,
first, that Britain would not stand up to aggression
beyond its borders, and second, that if war came
Britain would not be in a position to act effectively even
to defend its own cities." 11 *
In the end, that was enough to damn Stanley Baldwin
perhaps as no other contemporary Briton in
Churchill's eyes. $
9 Ibid., p. 131.
P. Howard, Beaverbrook, p. 120, quoted by Middlemas &
Barnes, Baldwin: A Biography, NY: Macmillan 1969, p. 1021.
Middlemas & Barnes, Baldwin, op. cit. pp. 1065-66.
12 Ibid., p. 1067.
13 Hall, op. cit., p. 188.
!* Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 105-6.
FINEST HOUR 101 /31

Thanks!
To all wno aided Tne Cnurcnill Center in 1998
So many members have helped us in
so many ways during 1998 that we
would like to acknowledge them
here, all in one place, many repeatedly.
Nothing would exist without you. Every
person who spends the money of this organization
promises to use it to best advantage
in "keeping the memory green
and the record accurate." We care about
one thing: that Winston Churchill's wit
and wisdom, his intense optimism, his
continued relevance and sound philosophy,
be impressed as strongly upon the
21st Century as it has been in this.
SUBSCRIPTIONS...
are the one thing every member must
pay once a year. The basic subscription
rate of $35 ($20 for students or libraries)
has been unchanged since 1994, which is
a miracle. Not only is today's $35 worth
less than in 1994; but we have been expanding
publications, our website, and
our various services and activities furiously.
Not only is the $35 you paid in
1994 worth only $28.50 today; it's buying
roughly twice the product. In effect
you're getting what cost $35 in 1994 for
only $14.25!
That's only part of the story.
One-third of our members renew at levels
higher than $35—and they account
for two-thirds of our subscription income.
These memberships are Contributing
($75), Sustaining ($125), Supporting
($250), Benefactor ($500) and
Fellow ($ 1000). Every amount over the
basic $35 (less the value of small tokens
of thanks we send the larger donors) is
tax-deductible by U. S. citizens. Many of
these folks renew at their chosen level
year after year, regardless of what they
contribute to our other appeals. We're not
going to list all of you here because there
are over 500. You know who you are
from the thank-yous we send you. We
just want you to know how deeply we
appreciate your steady generosity.
Over and above membership
renewals are the Heritage Fund, Conference
Sponsorships, and the Churchill
Center Endowment Fund. All of these
are strictly optional; yet they receive support
from hundreds of members.
THE HERITAGE FUND...
is our annual drive for contributions to
our operating budget. The Churchill
Center is a non-profit organization. This
is a good thing, because we never make a
profit! Indeed, if we relied strictly on
member subscriptions, even including
the high level ones, we could finance
only about a fifth of our present output.
The 1998 Heritage Fund appeal
was mailed to members in October.
We are happy to report that nearly
$16,000 has been received, and donations
are still coming in. In 1998 we did
something we had not done before: we
offered no gifts of thanks to contributors;
100% of what they sent was tax-deductible.
The hundreds of people who
responded are listed below. Whether
your gift was a dollar or a thousand dollars,
we are deeply grateful that you cared
enough to support the Churchill Center
CONFERENCE AND
STUDENT SPONSORS...
are those people who send more than
their basic Conference registration to
help support the event. For 1998,
twenty-two Conference Sponsors (eight
couples, six singles) contributed over
$37,000 while twenty-nine Student
Sponsors contributed $2,900—nearly
$40,000 in all. It is also appropriate to
thank our three corporate sponsors. The
House of Raeford Farms and the Philip
Morris Companies made major contributions;
and Champagne Pol Roger contributed
their prize product for a reception
to thank our Conference Sponsors.
And how important these sponsors
were! When all the bills were paid,
the 1998 Conference was in the black to
the tune of about $7,000 (all of which
was plowed back into our operating budget).
It is not hard to calculate where we
would be if you had not been there for
us. We would be issuing a truncated
Finest Hour, among other things.
THE CHURCHILL
CENTER ASSOCIATES...
are those who have contributed and/or
pledged from $10,000 to $200,000
specifically to The Churchill Center En-
REMEMBER
WINSTON CHURCHILL
Will future generations remember?
Will the ideals you cherish now be sustained
theril Will someone articulate
your principles? Who will guide your
grandchildren, your faith
and your country?
There is an answer.
With your help, The Churchill Center
will endure as a powerful voice, sustaining
those beliefs Sir Winston and we
held dear. Now.
And for future generations.
for more information contact:
The Churchill Center Associates
Richard M. Langworth, President
454-2275
dowment Fund. Our Endowment is
never spent, but invested to produce income
that protects the principal against
inflation and supplements our income.
In 1998, the Endowment was responsible
for 7.5% of our budget. Some day it will
be paying 50%.
The way it works is simple: a
Churchill Center Associate pledges a
minimum of $10,000 cash (tax-deductible)
in any installments he or she
wishes, over a four-year period. Much
larger amounts may be and have been
pledged, but $10,000 is the cash minimum.
In addition to contributions of
cash, an Associate may add a bequest or a
gift of property. An Associate's total commitment—cash
and otherwise—determines
membership in one of three levels:
Mary Soames ($10,000), Clementine
Churchill ($25,000) and Winston
Churchill ($50,000+) Associates. Many
of us have reached for the higher levels
by the combination of a basic gift plus a
bequest. For example, many of us became
Clementine Churchill Associates
by combining $10,000 cash over four
years with a bequest of $15,000.
ANNUITY PLAN FOR INVEST-
MENTS OF $1000 UP
Not everybody can afford $10,000. So
we are developing an Annuity Plan
which, through investments from as >>>
FINHSTHOUR IOI /32

low as $1000, you may provide for The
Churchill Center while benefiting yourself
and your heirs, and providing yourself
with income for life while saving a
great deal of income tax.
Tony Gilles, one of our Associates
who is an expert on "planned giving,"
is available to consult with you at
no charge on the plan that will best meet
your personal, family and tax needs.
Please call Tony for a copy of our booklet
on the subject, or for answers to any
questions you might have in this area:
(423) 974-7396.
ENDOWMENT CONTRIBUTORS...
We also want to mention also
the eight people to date who have given as
much as $2,000 directly to the Endowment
Fund, whose names also appear
herewith. Actually this list used to be
larger—but many have since decided to
become Associates. All contributions to
the Endowment can be credited to a
$10,000 Associates commitment anytime
within four years. Other Endowment
contributors also may become Associates.
We remember in early 1997
when there were four Churchill Center
Associates—then there were ten, and
twenty. Today, sixty-three people and institutions
are Associates. Members of our
Board of Governors have still to contact
many other members who have expressed
interest. We are trying to do this as
quickly as time permits. If you are wondering
why you have not heard from us,
please telephone us toll-free at (888) 454-
2275. We will be happy personally to explain
the entire scenario, to send you our
Prospectus and a videotape featuring
Lady Soames, Celia Sandys, Martin
Gilbert and Gregory Peck.
1998 HERITAGE FUND
Up to $100
Robert E. Baggott
Phillip A. Battaglia
Robert W. Beckman
Henry V. Bohm
Ronald J. Broida
Damian A. J. Canuto
Col. Robert Coe [Ret]
Chester L. Cooper
James Guy Cooper
Orlin R. Corey
Charles W. Crist
Craig De Bernardis
Thomas B. Dorris
Judge William E. Eubank
George Fallet, RE.
Douglas J. Feith
George A. Gerber
Paul R. Grehl
Dr. Richard M. Heller
Gordon J. Hill
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Holstad
Daniel R. Hughes
Gilbert H. lies
Lt. Col. John D. Jannazo
Daniel Kamstra
W. Quinn Kelly
Martin Kennedy
Marianne M. Kerwin
Paul S. Leavenworth
Victor B. Levit
Douglas L. Loos
John J. Marek
Robert L. Maxwell
Dennis J. McLaughlin
Donald McQuillen
Thomas P. Mihajlov
Mr. & Mrs. Morris A. Nunes
Joseph L. O'Connor
Dr. Allan J. Pantuck
Dr. William Partin
William R. Piper
Stephen W Pogson
Robert A. Rosenblatt
Dr. Edwin Rothman
Winston O. Roulier
Michael G. Santry
Maj. Robert D. Seals
Charles W. Snydcr
Reace 1.. Stanford, Jr.
Joseph K. Starkey
Mr. & Mrs. Donald Stephens, Jr.
Austin J. Stibbe
Fr. G. Corwin Stoppel, Ph.D.
Walter T. Webster, Jr.
George S. Wills
$100-199
Ronald B. Alexander
Mary Stuart Barnhart
Brant S. Beaudway
James B. Bennett
Herman L. Breitkopf
Thomas E. Brinkman, Jr.
Mr. & Mrs. Robert Castrey
Mary Callan Charlesworth
Don R. Cline
Martin D. Cohen
Charles C. Cornelio
Edward W. Fitzgerald
Edward R. Flenz
Jane Fraser
Laurence Geller
Tedd R. Haas
David A. Handley
Stephanie C. Hart
Robert G. Hauser
John A. Herring
Mr. & Mrs. D. Craig Horn
J. Jeffrey Hutter, Sr.
George M. Ivey, Jr
Jerry M. Kenny
Max L. Kleinman
Howard Kopelson
Barbara & Richard Langworth
Philip Parker Larson
Gerald B. Lechter
Dr. Terrence W. Leveck
David H. Levering
Craig Lewis
Bill Light
J. William Lovelace
James li. Lukaszewski
Thomas C. MacDonald, Jr.
Frank C. Marshall
Dr. John H. Mather
L. A. Miller
Russell H. Mullen
Daniel N. Myers
Mr. & Mrs. Earl Nicholson
Dr. Malcolm 1. Page
Kenneth W Rendcll
Harry E. Roberts
Lt. Col. Hillcl Samisch
Werner Schuele
Robert J. Scott, Jr.
Msgr. Francis R. Seymour
Alan Shaw
L. Neal Smith, Jr.
B. Abbott Sparks, Jr.
William B. Sturgeon
Reese Taylor
William B. Thompson
Robert I. Toll
Peter W Tredick
Prof. Jonah I. Triebwasser
Bronson Tweedy
Richard G. Urschel
John A. Utz
David H. Watson
Allen P. Webb
Norman E. West
Michael W. Wickham
Fr. Eric B. Williams
James T. Williams
L. Mark Wine
$200-499
Danforth Beal
Ward B. Chamberlin, Jr
Tranum Fitzpatrick
Matthew Fox
Dr. John S. Josey
Mary Ruth Rudd
Mr. & Mrs. Sherwood Smith
Capt. Richard Lewis Speer
Dr. George I. Thomas
James R. Thomas
Julia R. Wills
Michael L. Youngman
$500-1,000
Jack Moseley
David L. Noss
Charles D. Platt
Frederick J. Sheehan, Jr.
Dr. Peter T. Suzuki
in Memory of Carol Suzuki
Peter J. Travers
Robert & Sonia Turnquist
1998 CONFERENCE
SPONSORS
Gary J. & Beverly Boninc
Tommy & Margaret Brooks
Robert & Bonnie Castrey
Addle Comegys
Williams Dean, Jr.
Fred Farrow
Margot & Adam Foster
Dick & Posey Leahy
Parker H. Lee, III
Andrew Ness
Charles D. Platt
Dr. Peter T. Suzuki
in Memory of Carol Suzuki
Damon Wells, CBE
Marshall & Lind Wright
Corporate Sponsors
House of Raeford Farms, Inc.
Philip Morris Companies
Pol Roger Champagne
Student Sponsors
Paul Alkon
Laura Bainbridge
Donald Best
David & Diane Boler
Robert Dales
Fred Farrow
Tranum Fitzpatrick
Robert Hartland
Steve Hayward
Ron Helgemo
Craig Horn
ICSUK
J. Willis Johnson
Barbara & Richard Langworth
Ruth Lavine
Raymond Lavine
Parker H. Lee, III
Richard & Molley Lowry
John David Marshall
John Mather
Michigan Churchillians
Earl Nicholson
Linda & Chuck Platt
John Plumpton
Brian J. Singleton
Richard Streitt
Matt Wills
Jacqueline & Malcom Witter
Alex M. Worth, Jr.
ENDOWMENT
CONTRIBUTORS
Thomas P. Brooks, $1000
Jane Fraser Fulcher, $500
John David Marshall, $100
Morris A. Nunes, $35
John B. Thomison, $1,000
Robert R. Ziemer, $2,000
Sen. Bob Packwood, $2,000
Dr. Cyril Mazansky, $500
CHURCHILL
CENTER
ASSOCIATES
Winston Churchill Associates
ICS United States
The Churchill Center
Mr. & Mrs. Matthew B. Wills
Mr. & Mrs. Parker H. Lee, III
Mr. Alex M. Worth, Jr.
Mr. Fred Farrow
Mr. Colin D. Clark
Michael & Carol McMenamin
David & Diane Boler
Ray L. & Patricia M. Orban
The Annenberg Foundation
David & Carole Noss
Mr. & Mrs. Anthony E. Gilles
Clementine Churchill Associates
Barbara & Richard Langworth
James F. Lane
John H. & Susan H. Mather
D. Craig & Lorraine Horn
Linda & Charles Platt
Dr. John B. Thomison
Amb. & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson
Ronald D. Abramson
Jeanette & Angelo Gabriel
James R. & Lucille Thomas
Mary Soames Associates
Mr. & Mrs. William C. Ives
Jacqueline & Malcolm Witter
Mr. & Mrs. John G. Plumpton
Gary J. Bonine
Mr. & Mrs. James W. Muller
Frederick & Martha Hardman
Douglas S. Russell
Elizabeth Churchill Snell
Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Leahy
Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Kambestad
Richard & Jenny Streiff
Daniel & Susan Borinsky
Robcrr M. Stephenson
Michael W Michelson
Dona & Bob Dales
Dr. Jeffrey T. De Haan &
FlNl^T I lOt'R 101 /33

100-75-50-25 YEARS AGO
ACTION
THIS DAY
One hundred years ago:
Winter 1898-99 • Age 24
Polo and The River War
Early in December 1898, Churchill returned
to India to play in the annual
Inter-Regimental Polo Tournament. On
board ship, he worked on his manuscript
for The River War, writing his mother on
11 December: "I have however made
good progress with the book. Three vy
long chapters are now almost entirely
completed. The chapter describing the fall
of Khartoum Gordon's death etc is I think
quite the most lofty passage I have ever
written." He offered as an example one
sentence about the Mahdi who had been
orphaned as a child (Martin Gilbert suggests
that this may have been based on
Churchill's own experience with his father):
"Solitary trees, if they grow at all,
grow strong: and a boy deprived of a father's
care often develops, if he escape the
perils of youth, an independence and a
vigour of thought which may restore in
after life the heavy loss of early days."
Churchill had strong feelings
about Kitchener and his destruction of
the Mahdi's Tomb, writing in The River
War. "By Sir H. Kitchener's orders, the
Tomb has been profaned and razed to the
ground. The corpse of the Mahdi was dug
up. The head was separated from the
body, and, to quote the official explanation,
'preserved for future disposal'....If
the people of the Sudan cared no more for
the Mahdi, then it was an act of vandalism
and folly to destroy the only fine
building which might attract the traveller
and interest the historian."
Michael McMenamin
On 9 February 1899, one week
before the Polo Tournament, Churchill
fell down some stairs, spraining both ankles
and dislocating his right shoulder. It
was this dislocation, rather less prosaic
than grabbing at a quayside ring on arriving
in India, as stated in My Early Life,
which long caused him discomfort. [See
Barbara Langworth, "Churchill and
Polo," FH'72. -Ed.] He wrote his mother:
"I fear I shall not be able to play in the
Tournament as my arm is weak and stiff
& may come out again at any moment. It
is one of the most unfortunate things that
I have ever had happen to me and is a bitter
disappointment." In the event,
Churchill played in the Tournament, with
his right arm strapped to his side. He led
his team to victory in the finals where,
bound arm and all, he scored three of his
team's four goals.
Churchill left India in late
March, never to return. Christine Lewis,
a young American girl he befriended on
the voyage from India to Egypt, describes
Churchill's typically late arrival: "The
gangplank was about to be raised when
down the wharf ran a freckled, red-haired
young man in a rumpled suit carrying an
immense tin cake box.... We found him a
most amusing fellow traveler—full of fun,
with a delightful sense of humor....Every
day he sat beside us on the deck, working
intensely on his book. He paid no attention
to the gay chatter of young people as
he wrote and rewrote in that peculiar
small hand....Perhaps his one fault at this
time was being a little too sure about
everything, which the other young people
did not always appreciate." [See the
Churchill-Lewis Correspondence, available
from Churchill Stores. -Ed.]
Seventy-five years ago:
Winter 1923-24* Age 49
Fighting for a Comeback (1)
On 6 December 1923, Churchill lost
the West Leicester by-election, his
last campaign as a Liberal free trader, the
issue over which he left the Tories in
1904. Churchill pulled no punches in the
campaign, belying the claim of his enemies
that he was currying favor with the
Conservatives in order to foster a return
to their ranks by attacking personally the
Tory Leader Stanley Baldwin. In a speech
given 26 November 1923, he compared
Baldwin to "the March Hare and the Mad
Hatter" and ridiculed Baldwin's self-characterization
as "a plain, blunt man," calling
him "as rich as any man in Leicester."
When not engaging in personalities,
Churchill enhanced his reputation as the
most effective political defender of free
trade in his time: "What is the use of pretending
that this greatest of all exporting
nations has got to lie down pusillanimously
behind a network of tariffs, cowering
in our own markets, living by taking
in each other's washing, feeding like a
dog on its own tail? [Laughter.]"
Like many before and since,
Baldwin overestimated the electoral appeal
of protectionism. The Conservatives
returned to office with a reduced margin,
having lost 88 seats. But Churchill's divided
Liberal Party was busy arranging its
own demise. Former Prime Minister Herbert
Asquith made clear on 12 December
that his wing—the larger wing—of the
Liberals would support Labour over the
Conservatives, ensuring Britain its first
Socialist government. Churchill signaled
his disagreement in a letter to The Times
on 18 January 1924: "The enthronement
in office of a Socialist Government will be
a serious national misfortune such as has
usually befallen great States only on the
morrow of defeat in war." On 21 January
1924, the Liberals voted with Labour to
oust Baldwin, and Ramsay MacDonald
formed his government. That same day
marked the beginning of Churchill's
eventual return to the Conservative Party
of his youth.
In March Churchill campaigned
at a by-election in Westminster as "an Independent
Anti-Socialist Candidate," >»
FINEST HOUR IOI / 34

100-75-50-25 YEARS AGO
claiming that "I have been fighting Socialist
candidates in every election I have
fought since 1908." In a speech on 11
March 1924, Churchill's prescient attack
on socialism highlighted its inherent contradictions
and foreshadowed its intellectual
collapse 65 years later:
"It is an absurd delusion that the
industries of this country can be conducted
through committees of elected
politicians. One-tenth of the dose of Socialism
which ruined Russia would kill
Great Britain stone dead....[M]en with
pedant and pedagogic minds and doctrinaire
views, men with a desire to rule out
exactly what every one of their fellow-citizens
was to do and was not to do from
dawn to dusk, from one year's end to another,
in pursuance of their goal, have in
the history of the world brought untold
miseries upon millions. [Cheers.]"
Churchill described in Thoughts
and Adventures the Socialists who opposed
him in that election: "Of course
there are the rowdy meetings...shouting
interruptions...and every kind of nasty
question carefully thought out and sent
up to the Chair by vehement-looking
pasty youths or young short-haired
women of bulldog appearance." In vivid
contrast, Churchill writes that he received
"...all kinds of support. Dukes, jockeys,
prize-fighters, courtiers, actors and business
men all developed a keen partisanship.
The chorus girls of Daly's Theatre
sat up all night addressing the envelopes
and despatching the election address. It
was most cheering and refreshing to see
so many young and beautiful women of
every rank in life, ardently working in a
purely disinterested cause, not unconnected
with myself."
Fifty years ago:
Winter 1948-49 • Age 74
Fighting for a Comeback (2)
Twenty-five years later saw Churchill
as Leader of the Opposition making
the same attacks on Socialists, speaking
against a bill to nationalize the iron and
steel industries: "I say this is not a Bill, it
is a plot; not a plan to increase production,
but an operation in restraint of
trade. It is not a plan to help our patient
struggling people, but a burglar's jemmy
to crack the capitalist crib. [Laughter.]
"The Rt. Hon. Gentleman
laughs, but he lives on the exertions of 80
percent of industries still free and all his
hopes are founded on their activities.
Those free industries constitute practically
the whole of our export trade...but
still they are carrying the whole burden of
our life and represent our only solvent
economic earning power."
While complimenting Labour's
stand against the Soviet Union's blockade
of Berlin, he was critical of its refusal to
recognize the new state of Israel, for
which he blamed the anti-semitism of
Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin:
"Whether the Rt. Hon. Gentleman
likes it or not, and whether we like it
or not, the coming into being of a Jewish
State in Palestine is an event in world history
to be viewed in the perspective, not
of a generation or a century, but in the
perspective of a thousand, two thousand
or even three thousand years....I say that
the Conservative Party has done a great
task over twenty-five years, with Parliaments
which had a Conservative majority,
in trying to build a Jewish National
Home in Palestine, and now that it has
come into being, it is England that refuses
to recognize it, and, by our actions, we
find ourselves regarded as its most bitter
enemies. All this is due, not only to mental
inertia or lack of grip on the part of
the Ministers concerned, but also, I am
afraid, to the very strong and direct streak
of bias and prejudice on the part of the
Foreign Secretary. I do not feel any great
confidence that he has not got a prejudice
against the Jews in Palestine."
In the same address, responding
to the criticisms that Palestine could not
accommodate the explosive growth of the
Arab and Jewish populations—more than
doubling in the previous 25 years—
Churchill conveyed his optimistic vision
of people as a resource and an asset rather
than a liability: "The idea that only a limited
number of people can live in a country
is a profound illusion; it all depends
on their co-operative and inventive
power. There are more people today living
twenty storeys above the ground in
i New York than were living on the ground
in New York 100 years ago. There is no
limit to the ingenuity of man if it is properly
and vigorously applied under conditions
of peace and justice."
Twenty-five years ago:
Winter 1973-74
A Portrait by Giugiaro
/ Hnest Hour would publish only two is-
JL sues in 1974, for it was having editor
troubles. Dalton Newfield, declaring that
"no working man could hold successfully
both the offices of President and editor,"
had recruited Stephen King (not that
Stephen King) as editor, but King had
been unable to complete an issue. Wearily
Dal gathered up the makings of issue
#30, sixteen pages long, and produced another
edition full of interest.
The cover
was a favorite of Dal,
who wrote: "There is
Sir Winston! There is
the rotundity of his
later life and the
humor of which he is
so justifiably famous
dominating the portrait—yet
there is
also the wide brow of his exceeding intelligence,
the furrows of his concern for the
world and even that shrewdness that enabled
him to effect his dreams despite opposition
from every quarter. Surely the
artist must have steeped himself in the
Churchill Story ere he drew the first line
of this exceptional portrait?
"Not so! Giugiaro writes, 'At
that time I liked to make pictures of that
kind as a hobby, taking the inspiration for
most of them from the most famous personalities
in the political, movie and show
world.' But Sr. Giugiaro has claims to supremacy
in his field, which is the design
of automobiles. He has been with Fiat
and Bertone, and now is a principal at Ital
Design. A few of his many credits include
Alfa Romeo's Sprint Speciale, Alfasud,
Canguro and Giulia GT; Iso's Rivolta,
Fidia and Grifo; Ferrari's 250GT; Fiat's
850 Spyder; de Tomaso's Mangusta;
Maserati's Ghibli; Porsche's Tapiro and
Lotus's Esprit." Coincidentally, Giugiaro
had come to the notice of America's automotive
press when Automobile Quarterly
published a feature on his designs (Spring
1971, Vol. 9, No. 3)—the same issue
where Dai's successor as editor of Finest
Hour published his first automotive article,
"The Glorious Madness of Kaiser-
Frazer"....
Ms
FINEST HOUR IOI /35

ZtooKS, ARTS
& CURIOSITIES
Exploring the "Churchill Myth"
Michael Richards
Churchill Proceedings
1994-1995, edited by
Richard M. Langworth.
Published by The
Churchill Center,
Washington, D.C. 144
pages, softbound, illustrated,
$10 postpaid
from Churchill Stores,
PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229 USA
Winston Churchill, leading
Time magazine's poll for "Person
of the Century," is the
most revised and reinterpreted figure in
20th Century history. The "Churchill
myth"—which Sir Winston forthrightly
promoted through his books and speeches
as "my case"—has lately been broadly
challenged, especially since the release of
once-secret wartime documents in
Britain, America, Russia and Germany.
During 1994-95, Churchill was
accused of wishing to sterilize mental incompetents,
backing appeasement in the
1930s, promoting the use of poison gas
in World War II, destroying the Empire,
engineering the Pearl Harbor attack and
the 1929 Wall Street crash, spying on the
Soviet Union, and harboring "a lifelong
antipathy toward coloured people."
As Churchill once said in another
context, "there is surely some happy
ground between these scarecrow extremes."
And there is no need for irresponsible
critics, when we have so many
responsible ones—over thirty of whom
contribute to Churchill Proceedings 1994-
1995, published by The Churchill Center
in Washington.
The book comprises speeches or
papers at 1994-95 Churchill Center
events by speakers including William F.
Buckley, Jr.; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.;
Special Relationship Plus
Richard M. Langworth
OVER
HERE
RAY M O N D
S E I T Z
Over Here, by
Raymond Seitz.
London: Weidenfeld
& Nicolson,
hardbound, 376
pages, regular
price £20/$35,
CC/ICS member
price $24. Also
available in paperback
William Manchester; William Rusher;
Roy Jenkins; a dozen scholars; and college
students who delivered papers at Churchill
Center conferences or seminars.
A non-profit educational organization,
The Churchill Center is not
averse to negative viewpoints. "On balance,
naturally, our view of Churchill is
positive," says the editor, "but we try not
to paper over Churchill's faults. His best
friend, Lord Birkenhead, once remarked,
'When Winston is right he is superb.
When he's wrong, well, oh my God...'"
Among the debates in this volume
is one between Larry Arnn of the
Claremont Institute and Professor Warren
Kimball of Rutgers. "Churchill was a
British statesman whose goal was to advance
the interests of Great Britain," says
Kimball. "Churchill was a British statesman
whose goal was to advance liberty,"
replies Arnn, who goes on to contrast
British "interests" with those of the Soviet
Union. Similar diversity is offered (between
Kimball and Buckley) over
Churchill's professed trust of Stalin, and
(between Arnn and Lord Jellicoe) over the
value of Churchill's Arctic convoys to
Russia. Lord Jenkins, a onetime Labour
foe, says there is no need to whitewash
Churchill's record: let it stand.
There are pieces here that reach
back—David Stafford on Churchill and
Secret Intelligence; Lord Jellicoe's marvelous
retrospective on Churchill and Jellicoe's
father, who commanded Britain's
Grand Fleet in World War I and about
whom Churchill said, "He was the only
man who could lose the war in an afternoon."
There are pieces that look forward—Arthur
Schlesinger on how
Churchill will survive revisionist history;
Coach Johnny Parker on how he uses
Churchill to inspire nothing less than the
New England Patriots football team.
There are intimate views of young Winston,
by his granddaughter Celia Sandys;
and the old, by his daughter Lady
Soames. All in all, it's a fine mix. Sir Winston,
who was always in the thick of debate,
would be delighted with it.
Churchill was always
careful never to criticize America
publicly. When reporters w°Hnston
asked if he had any complaints, he would
often reply, "toilet paper too thin, newspapers
too fat."
Privately Churchill was less reticent,
although he always maintained a decent
respect for the two kindred countries
which in the end both claimed him as a
citizen. In 1945 he said he had heard a
British peer state that Great Britain would
have to become the forty-ninth State of
the American Union, while an American
congressman was saying that America
should not be asked to reenter the British
Empire. "It seems to me," he remarked,
"that the path of wisdom lies somewhere
between these two scarecrow extremes."
Churchill went on to recite his
familiar prescription of "a fraternal relationship
between the two great Englishspeaking
organizations." He worked hard
to establish that relationship, succeeding
only partially. But it is probably reasonable
to conclude that Churchill was right
when he said that if Britain and America
are together, they are usually in the right,
and if they are divided, one of them is almost
always wrong! continued >»
FINEST HOUR IOI/36

We were fortunate to have with
us at the November Churchill Conference
a keen practitioner of Anglo-American relations.
Ambassador Seitz delivered the
First Churchill Lecture, excerpted in this
issue and published in full on our website.
His book should be read by every
American in Britain—and every Briton
who wishes to delve beneath the stereotypes
and really understand Americans.
Seitz is very careful about that
over-used term, "special relationship"; not
because it is wholly invalid but because,
he suggests, it is barely adequate. "When
I think about official relations," he writes,
"I find the term doesn't begin to capture
the breadth and depth of what otherwise
goes on between us." Churchill at Harvard
in 1943 mentioned the high points:
law, language, literature. Seitz fills in the
details: Britain is the largest foreign investor
in America. Six million Americans
and British visit each others' country per
year, and in the same amount of time
there are 3 1/2 billion minutes of Anglo-
American telephone conversation.
There is another important aspect
to his book, and that is its value in
the realm of statesmanship. Raymond
Seitz is, uniquely, the only career foreign
service officer ever appointed to the State
Department's top Ambassadorship, the
Court of St. James's, where he served two
Presidents of opposite parties. He is frank
and appealing on the implications of such
a role, how it affects one's performance.
He offers almost a textbook course on
what an Ambassador to London does
when confronted, say, by an Ambassador
to Dublin who declares that her turf includes
Northern Ireland.
Over Here acknowledges earlier
commentators on Anglo-America, most
of them much more biased than its author.
Harold Nicolson, Seitz recalls, said
that an American is "not the sort of person
we like." Samuel Johnson was "willing
to love all mankind, except an American."
Anglophobe James Russell Lowell,
by contrast, commented that Americans
are "worth nothing except so far as we
have disinfected ourselves of Anglicism,"
and the American drama critic John
Mason Brown, responding to a tactless
toast proposed by an English host, said:
"Mr. Chairman, you have observed that
while you don't care for Americans in the
mass, individual Americans are delightful
people. With the British, I find the reverse
is true." But, Raymond Seitz adds,
Opium for the People
Ron Helgemo
Betrayal at Pearl Harbor: A Television
Documentary aired on the History
Channel (USA), December 7th
On the anniversary of Pearl Harbor,
the History Channel, whose
programs vary between solid history
and opium for the people, ran a
BBC-produced documentary claiming
that President Roosevelt knew all about
the surprise attack and allowed it to happen
to get the United States into the war.
The program, as Arthur Balfour might
have said, contained much that is trite
and much that it true, but what was true
was trite, and what was not trite was not
true.
That "Betrayal at Pearl Harbor"
should not be taken seriously is manifestly
evident. Examples of why it shouldn't
begin with its interview of Robert
Ogg, which approaches dishonesty. The
producers fail to inform the audience that
Mr. Helgemo is President of the Washington
Society for Churchill, a CC Affiliate.
"Neither country knows as much about
the other as it pretends to."
Over Here is, I think, the best
American view of Britain since Robert
Deindorfer's Life in Lower Slaughter, a 25-
year-old book by a friend of mine, gone
now, God bless him, a copy of which I
presented to the Ambassador. Bob Deindorfer
moved in 1973 from large, filthy
New York to Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire,
and charmingly noted, in a different
sphere of course, many of the same
things as Mr. Seitz: the blase British attitude
toward antiquity and one-track
roads, the soft beauty of an English
spring, the sound of an English choir, the
pulse-quickening sight of a spire above a
country village. He compared these to the
large scale, wholesale-sized American
countryside and eight-lane throughways,
the can-do attitude that nothing is impossible
and the best is yet to come.
Both the Deindorfers and the
Seitzes made the same decision, as the
former put it in 1974: "to stretch our foreign
assignment a bit longer, while wondering
how long, psychologically if not
tactically, bone-deep Americans can remain
abroad before renewing their subscription."
But Ray Seitz can't fool us.
He's hooked, like many before and no
doubt after him, by British ways, British
scenes, British politics, British manners,
British life. He gives himself away on the
flyleaf of his book, which pictures him in
a suit of English cut before a Regency
fireplace on a flowery carpet, surrounded
by three large dogs. He's a goner.
Alvin Toffler, the author of Future
Shock, had a comment about Bob
Deindorfer's book which amused Raymond
Seitz:
"If there's one thing I can't
stand it's an Anglophile, but unfortunately,
I love the British. Which is why I
found this book a lovely, insidious attack
on my precarious certainties. Anyone
who has dreamed of hiding out in
England during the decline and fall of
Western civilization will enjoy this
book—and deserve what he gets when
the barbarians knock."
Mr. Ogg is the infamous "Seaman Z" immortalized
by John Toland, an early conspiracy
theorist who wrote that Pearl Harbor
was plotted by Franklin Roosevelt.
"Seaman Z," whose story has
had a nasty habit of changing over the
years, claimed he heard "queer signals"
which could have been the missing Japanese
aircraft carriers. But he could only
have been hearing the carriers if the carriers
were broadcasting.
The Japanese themselves claim
their fleet (Kido Butai) never sent a single
message. They say they dismantled the
telegraph sending devices so a message
could not be sent. After the war, the
Strategic Bombing Survey found the
Japanese military's own after-action report,
which credits the success of the attack
to the fact that secrecy was maintained.
Among the reasons why secrecy
was maintained, radio silence comes first.
How could it be, for example, that Seaman
Z in San Francisco picked up signals
from the Japanese fleet but Hawaii, much
closer and lying between California and
the fleet, never heard it? continued >»
FlNI-STMOUR 101/ 37

BETRAYAL AT PEARL HARBOR...
The producers of "Betrayal" also
interviewed Eric Nave, a British cryptologist
who worked on the Japanese JN-25
naval code. Nave, with the late James
Rusbridger, wrote Betrayal at Pearl Harbor,
a book claiming Churchill hid what
he knew about the attack from Roosevelt.
The producers might have mentioned
that Nave left Singapore in February
1940, had no further involvement with
JN-25, and could not have known of the
Japanese change to the JN-25B code in
December 1940—and the resulting lack
of anyone's ability to read the code after
that date. There are a couple of scenes
with Pacific Fleet cryptologist Joe
Rochefort, the hero of Midway, who is
said to have read JN-25B intercepts. But
they fail to mention Rochefort's claims
that he was reading only five to twenty
percent of any message in JN-25B prior
to Midway and could not have been reading
more before then.
The "Winds Code," which is
supposed to have been an attack signal
disguised in a Japanese weather report,
surfaces again in the History Channel
presentation. I have yet to hear an explanation
of how the "Winds Code" told
anybody anything about Pearl Harbor.
Once again Ralph Briggs is dragged out
as evidence that the Americans intercepted
this message. How Briggs, in
Cheltenham, Maryland, heard the coded
weather report and no one else did has
never been explained; it was supposed to
be, after all, a regular mid-day, Japanese
time, CB radio broadcast. Nor does the
History Channel explain either why the
Japanese sent it, since the failure in communications
that would have necessitated
the "Winds Code" did not occur.
Tucked into the "Betrayal" piece
is Mr. Joe Lieb's claim that Secretary of
State Hull told him of the coming attack
and named Pearl Harbor as the target.
The trouble here is that Mr. Lieb and Mr.
Hull were the only ones present at their
alleged conversation, and Mr. Lieb did
not see fit to tell anyone of this conversation
until after Mr. Hull died. Thus there
is no way independently to verify his
claim.
An even more preposterous notion
presented by the film is that General
Marshall (he of course was also in on the
plot) went horseback riding on a Sunday
morning in order to be "unavailable" for
questioners concerned about Japan's next
move, thus assuring the success of the
Japanese air raid. Really! "Betrayal at Pearl
Harbor's" case against General Marshall
hinges on this, and the fact that he sent
an alert warning to Pearl Harbor without
sufficient priority. Surely it is easier to
consider the latter act one of bureaucratic
incompetence rather than a purposeful
plot to delay an attack warning? If Pearl
was being set up, why send a warning at
all? To cover himself? But the warning
was kept secret for fifty years!
Geostrategy and codebreaking
take up a great deal of the film, which
major concern throughout. Indeed, while
the West may have focused primarily on
the Japanese during the Pacific war, the
Japanese continued to focus more on
China. Even at the war's end the Japanese
had 1.9 million men and nearly 10,000
aircraft there. It made little sense to Japan
to defeat the U. S. if that meant giving up
China.
"Betrayal at Pearl Harbor" is
very wise after the fact. The imminence
of war, it tells us, should have been clear
to American planners. Japan's JN-25B
code had been broken. The orders to sail
the Japanese Fleet from the Kuriles to a
"The reason why this kind of garbage passes for history
is that standards for evidence have disappeared."
uses them to document accusations of
prior knowledge of the coming attack by
American authorities. The producers
begin by alleging that the United States
knew the Japanese attack force was in the
Kurile Islands. If it did, then the U. S.
had to expect an attack either in Alaska,
Hawaii, the west coast or Panama. Of
these possible targets, the film says, the
only one that made any sense was Hawaii.
But the documentary oversimplifies:
having its fleet in the Kuriles did
not reduce Japan's choices of where to attack.
Admiral Yamamoto needed to bring
the fleet together for an attack in the
most secure place possible, regardless of
direction. The "southern strategy," which
eventually won out, required the Japanese
Navy to neutralize the Philippines (then a
U. S. territory), which crossed its sea
lanes. This required Yamamoto to go after
the U. S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
That the Japanese had trouble making up
their minds (Japanese Army-Navy politics
was at work here too) served them, in the
sense that it helped disguise their eventual
choice. The "northern strategy" (attacking
Alaska) was also seen as a distinct possibility
to Westerners. As late as 15 October
1941 Roosevelt wrote Churchill, "I think
they [the Japanese] are headed north."
(See Kimball's Churchill and Roosevelt:
The Complete Correspondence.)
Clearly the Japanese had a variety of
strategic choices in the months
prior to Pearl Harbor. The key to
their Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity
Sphere was China, and that was their
rendezvous point in mid-Pacific were
transmitted. The Dutch claimed to have
intercepted them, so presumably the
British and the Americans should have
been able to do the same.
Certainly the imminence of war
in the Pacific was obvious to any reasonably
intelligent person at the time, but
the Pacific did not get the attention it deserved.
To understand why, we must put
ourselves in the shoes of leaders at that
time—not laboratory analysts of the present.
And at that time, the British were
up to their eyeballs with Germans and the
Americans were fighting an undeclared
war with the German Navy in the North
Atlantic. Hindsight, of course, is always
20-20. But on whatever the British and
Americans "should have been able to do,"
let me quote a direct source. Duane
Whitlock, unlike Mr. Nave, was there, on
Corregidor, working on the Japanese
codes. "I can attest from first-hand experience
that as of 1 December 1941 the recovery
of JN-25B had not progressed to
the point that it was productive of any
appreciable intelligence," stated Whitlock—"not
even enough to be pieced together
by traffic analysis....It simply was
not within the realm of our combined
cryptologic capability to produce a usable
decrypt at that particular juncture."
In the early 1990s the U. S.
Navy transferred all its cryptologic
archives from Crane, Indiana to the National
Archives in Washington. This includes
26,581 JN-25 intercepts from 1
September to 7 December. All of these
are available for public review. >»
FINEST HOUR IOI/38

Frederick Parker, who studied 2,413 of
these intercepts, argues in the film that
had they been read at the time, they
would have provided clear evidence of the
impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Rusbridger
and Nave, in their book, claim
they were read, but offer no evidence.
Well, here is the evidence: The
2,413 pre-Pearl Harbor intercepts had
been decrypted by Navy cryptologists after
the war while they were waiting to be
mustered out of the service. While Parker
makes a strong circumstantial case that the
attack would have been discovered had
these messages been read, cryptologists at
that time would not have been looking
just at the 2,413 intercepts; they would
have been looking at all 26,581. Would
they have been able to discern the relevant
information from all that noise?
I could go on: the "bomb plot,"
the Popov questionnaire, Hull's "ultimatum"
to Japan, etc., all old news, misleadingly
presented. Readers may recall that
Nave and Rusbridger tried to turn all this
around a few years back (just in time to
cash in on the 50th anniversary of Pearl
Harbor, actually) by claiming it wasn't
Roosevelt after all, it was Winston
Churchill who hid the knowledge of the
attack in order to draw the United States
into the war. As Professor Kimball wrote:
"It seems to me that to brand WSC
and/or FDR as conspirators requires that
they be seen as evil geniuses. But for them
to allow the U.S. Fleet to be clobbered
means they were stupid. That doesn't
compute."
Allow me to vent for a moment.
The reason why this kind of garbage
passes for history is that standards for evidence
have virtually disappeared. Not all
evidence is equal and there is an obligation
to weigh evidence against some reasonable
standard. The standard is not exactly
rocket science; remnant evidence is
better than tradition-creating evidence;
corroborated testimony is better than uncorroborated
testimony; forensic evidence
is better than hearsay. Our inability to be
skeptical, to think critically, to ask questions,
to compare and contrast, leads to
the perpetuation of one urban legend
after another, be it Churchill and Coventry,
Churchill and the Lusitania,
Churchill (or Roosevelt) and Pearl Harbor,
etc., etc., etc. Hard thinking, critical
analysis, and skepticism are the only ways
to challenge this rubbish. I sometimes despair.
Vent off.
How the Telegraph Put One Across Hitler
Michael Smith
Mr. Smith's new book, Station X: The
Codebreakers of Bletchley Park (Channel
4 Books) is available for £14.99 post
free in UK, from Telegraph Books Direct,
24 Seward St, London EC1V 3GB,
tel. (0541) 557222 quoting ref PA557.
The ability to solve The Daily Telegraph
crossword in under 12 minutes
was used as a recruitment test
for wartime code-breakers. Good chess
players and those skilled at crossword
puzzles were viewed as having the potential
to turn their abilities to cracking
codes. The Daily Telegraph was asked to
organise a crossword competition to help
identify potential recruits. After the competition,
each of the participants was contacted
and asked to undertake "a particular
type of work as a contribution to the
war effort." Those who agreed found
themselves sent to the Government Code
and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, the
home of Britain's wartime code-breakers.
Bletchley Park had employed
several hundred eccentric academics to
break the Nazi Enigma codes early in the
war, but by the end of 1941 it was desperately
trying to expand its operations. The
need for fighting men was so great that
no one in Whitehall was prepared to release
people to work at an obscure Foreign
Office department that could not tell
anyone what it was doing. Four of the senior
code-breakers, Alan Turing, Gordon
Welchman, Stuart Milner-Barry and
Hugh Alexander, wrote to Winston
Churchill, who was obsessed with the
code-breakers and had recently visited
them, describing them as "the geese that
laid the golden eggs but never cackled."
The letter warned Churchill,
"We despair of any early improvement
without your intervention." No one
seemed to understand "the importance of
what is done here or the urgent necessity
of dealing promptly with our requests."
Churchill minuted to his chief of staff:
"Make sure they have all they want extreme
priority and report to me that this
has been done," he wrote, scrawling
across it the warning: "Action this day."
Shortly afterwards, clever young
men and women from the universities
began arriving at Bletchley. But they were
not enough and, spurred on by
Churchill's minute, military intelligence
chiefs looked for new ways of finding recruits.
When the publication of the
5,000th Daily Telegraph crossword puzzle
led to a spate of correspondence on the
paper's letters pages, military intelligence
spotted a useful source of talent.
Stanley Sedgewick, a Telegraph
crossword fan, entered a competition to
solve the daily puzzle in less than 12 minutes.
The first to complete the crossword
was a Mr. Chance from Orpington, Kent,
who handed it in after 6 minutes, 3.5 seconds,
but unfortunately he had spelt a
word wrong and was disqualified. Four
other people completed the puzzle within
12 minutes, the fastest being F. H.W.
Hawes of Dagenham, Essex (7:58). They
included Vera Telfer of Maida Vale, north
London (10:39). Sedgewick was one
word short when the 12-minute bell rang,
"which was disappointing as I had completed
that day's puzzle in the train to
Waterloo in under 12 minutes.
"Imagine my surprise when several
weeks later, I received a letter marked
'Confidential' inviting me to see Col.
Nichols of the General Staff 'on a matter
of national importance.'" (Nichols was
the head of MI8, the military intelligence
department concerned with Bletchley
Park, which was referred to by those in
the know as BP or Station X.) "I was told,
though not so primitively, that chaps with
twisted brains like mine might be suitable
for a particular type of work as a contribution
to the war effort."
After passing the interview,
Sedgewick was sent to Bletchley Park's
training base in Bedford, known locally as
"the Spy School," and then appointed
"Temporary Junior Assistant" at the
"Government Communications Centre."
He worked in the Air Section, on German
weather codes which were used to
provide weather forecasts for Bomber
Command. He was unaware until shortly
after the end of the war that their most
important use was as a means of breaking
into the Enigma system used by the German
Navy. The work made a crucial contribution
to winning the Battle of the Atlantic
and ensuring that vital sea lines
with the U.S.A. were protected. Mi
FINEST HOUR IOI / 39

CHURCHILL ONLINE
http://www.winstonchurchill.org
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SCOTTISH AND WELSH
DEVOLUTION
71 yf an y Churchillians tend to believe
l\/l that Winston Churchill would
-L. T JL. have opposed the development of
separate Scottish and Welsh Parliaments,
which they see as spelling the beginning of
the end of the United Kingdom. "Listserv
Winston" enraged in some of this banter in
December. Professor Paul Addison of the
University of Edinburgh and Allen Packwood
of the Churchill Archives Centre put
the List straight on this matter, proving once
again that what is widely believed of
Churchill is not always what Churchill believed...
From: hispas@srvO.arts.ed.ac.uk
(Prof. Paul Addison)
A word or two in response to
the gentlemen summoning up the ghost
of Winston Churchill when attacking
Tony Blair's proposals for Parliaments in
Scotland and Wales. Churchill himself
before 1914 was a supporter of Home
Rule for Ireland, Scotland and Wales. If
his proposals for Irish Home Rule had
been implemented before the First World
War, the twenty-six counties might still
be a part of the United Kingdom today.
There was so little demand for Scottish
and Welsh home rule after 1918 that the
Finest Hour happily publishes interesting
snippets from "Listserv Winston," but you
really need to subscribe. See box above.
question of devolution disappeared for
the rest of Churchill's life, but some of his
comments suggest that he continued to
favour a federal UK including regional
Parliaments in England.
The main reason for the resurgence
of Scottish nationalism in the
1980s was the determination of Mrs.
Thatcher not only to reject Scottish home
rule but to impose on Scotland policies
which the majority of Scots plainly and
repeatedly rejected at the polls. She behaved,
in other words, more like an English
nationalist than a custodian of a
multinational Union. By the time Tony
Blair came in the damage was done and it
may now be too late to save the Union.
But Home Rule offers a last chance of
holding it together and it may just work,
as Churchill hoped it would work in Ireland.
From: agp20@cam.ac.uk.
(Allen Packwood,
Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge)
I was very interested to read
about Churchill's hypothetical reaction to
current political developments within the
United Kingdom. I have been selecting
material for an exhibition on Churchill to
be staged next summer at the National
Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. One of
the items I am proposing to feature is the
following speech, delivered by Churchill
in his Dundee constituency on 9th October
1913:
"Another great reason for the
settlement of the Irish question in the
present Parliament and for disposing of
the Home Rule controversy now, while
we have the full opportunity presented, is
that the ground is thereby cleared for the
consideration of claims of self-government
for other parts of the United Kingdom
besides Ireland. You will remember
how, last year, I addressed a meeting in
Dundee on this subject. I made it perfectly
clear that I was speaking for myself.
I made it clear that I was not speaking of
the immediate future, but dealing with
the subject which lay for the moment
outside the sphere of practical politics and
raising a question for reflection and discussion
rather than for prompt action.
"I spoke of the establishment of
a federal system in the United Kingdom,
in which Scotland, Ireland and Wales,
and, if necessary, parts of England, could
have separate legislative and parliamentary
institutions, enabling them to develop,
in their own way, their own life according
to their own ideas and needs in
the same way as the great and prosperous
States of the American Union and the
great kingdoms and principalities and
States of the German Empire."
Just a few years earlier Churchill
had been advocating reform of the House
of Lords. And who says politics does not
go in cycles? continued >»
FINEST HOUR IOI / 40

DID CHURCHILL
MISUNDERSTAND HITLER?
CHURCHILL ONLINE
From: idkgschon@aol.com
(Karl-Georg Schon):
Let me see whether I can start
something with three theses (for the sake
of the argument I will oversharpen them):
1. Churchill completely misunderstood
Hitler. For instance he called
WW2 "the unnecessary war." This is
wrong because Hitler wanted war for
war's sake (vide his saying in August
1939: "Hopefully there won't be someone
to turn up with a mediation plan" or
something to this effect; vide his disappointment
that he was unable to crush
Czechoslovakia by military force but had
to do it with Munich). War was for Hitler
the ultima ratio of life itself. Perhaps (only
perhaps) war could have been avoided
through military intervention during the
Rhineland crisis—when Churchill was
conspicuously silent. From then on Europe
was doomed. Another example is
that Churchill saw in Hitler the (or at
least some) embodiment of Prussian militarism.
The reverse is actually true. Hitler
crushed Prussian militarism forever. It
was no historical accident that it was the
truly Prussian element of the German officer
corps who staged several attempts on
Hitler's life. Hitler, indeed, established
(albeit in a perverted way) civilian control
over the military.
2. Churchill's greatness lies in
his defeat—if you measure defeat or victory
in terms of the declared aims of an
individual statesman. He said, "I have not
become the King's first minister in order
to preside over the liquidation of the
British Empire," yet he precisely did so.
But in the way of doing it he defeated the
most evil system of modern times and
thus gave to the "liquidation of the
British Empire" (one is tempted to say to
the Empire itself) a noble meaning. Liquidation
became "Their Finest Hour."
There is an element of tragedy in this.
But is there greatness without tragedy?
3. Churchill did not and perhaps
could not recognize that the British
Empire was doomed anyway—doomed
from what Paul Kennedy calls over-extension.
As an aside: it was doomed for this
reason from its very beginning.
Churchill's empire-mindedness prevented
him from doing Britain the perhaps greatest
service he (and at the time probably
only he) could have done, i.e. to prepare
Britain for integration into Europe.
Churchill came, in my view, close to
doing so in 1946-48, but he dropped his
effort when he realized the implications
of such a step for the fading empire.
From: Malakand@conknet.com (Editor)
1. Did Churchill's term "the unnecessary
war" have anything to do with
whether or not Hitler was bent on war?
Didn't Churchill argue that by timely action,
through about 1936, France and
Britain could have prevented war (whatever
Hitler wanted) by preemptive action,
e.g. over Germany's rebuilding the Luftwaffe?
Was he as noncommital on the
Rhineland as is commonly held?
2. Chinese, Ukrainians, Baits
and central Asians might dispute whether
Hitler's was the most evil system of modern
times, although it was unmatched in
genocidal precision. But to the point,
which is very valid, William F. Buckley Jr.
makes some parallel comments in our
1994-1995 Proceedings, words which I
put among the twenty or thirty best passages
about Churchill I've ever read:
Mr. Churchill had struggled to diminish
totalitarian rule in Europe
which, however, increased. He fought
to save the Empire, which dissolved.
He fought socialism, which prevailed.
He struggled to defeat Hitler, and he
won. It is not, I think, the significance
of that victory, mighty and glorious
though it was, that causes the
name of Churchill to make the blood
run a little faster....It is simply mistaken
that battles are necessarily more
important than the words that summon
men to arms, or who remember
the call to arms. The battle of Agincourt
was long forgotten as a geopolitical
event, but the words of Henry V,
with Shakespeare to recall them, are
imperishable in the mind, even as
which side won the battle of Gettysburg
will dim from the memory of
men and women who will never forget
the words spoken about that battle
by Abraham Lincoln. The genius of
Churchill was his union of affinities
of the heart and of the mind. The
total fusion of animal and spiritual
energy...
3. It was Clement Attlee, in the
first phase, and Harold Macmillan, in the
second, who presided over the dissolution
of the Empire. But we often judge past
history by present-day standards, not to
mention hindsight. It is very clear today
that Churchill failed to understand the
strength of the anti-colonial movement;
the desire of colonial peoples to be governed
by their own rascals, even if the latter
turned out to be worse than the
British civil service; and the endgame of
the Europe Unite movement. From
WSC's point of view in the 1940s and
1950s, Britain and the Commonwealth
were a viable Fourth World, and based on
that mindset he took the view that Britain
was "of" Europe, but not "in" it—a
benevolent, interested partner, but not a
party; and that European Unity depended
primarily on the continental powers resolving
"the ancient quarrels of Teuton
and Gaul." Yet some historians continue
to remark over how, with a remarkable
lack of foresight or comprehension, or
even perhaps a sense of self-preservation,
Britain herself—not simply Churchill,
but the whole governing establishment—
allowed her moral and political force to
decline. This is to a certain extent John
Charmley's argument in his Churchill's
Grand Alliance.
From: caputi@OAKAIT.FREDONIA.EDU
(Dr. Robert J. Caputi)
I enjoy the intelligence and collegiality
of the Listserv. In reply to
Malakand's statements: It is offered how
Britain's "whole governing establishment"
allowed her moral and political force to
decline in the postwar period. I submit
that the two awful world wars and the
crippling Depression era led to the unavoidable
losses of both tangible and intangible
overseas assets and had much to
do with the "decline" of that moral and
political force. I do not believe the British
Lion relinquished anything willingly; instead
it was forced into a reactive rather
than proactive role after V-E and V-J
Days. Economics, sadly, played a critical
role. The enduring greatness of "Their
Finest Hour" was that those immense sacrifices,
the dissolution of the Empire and
Britain's great power status, in the long
run, was worth it to secure the defeat of
the beasts from Berlin. M>
FlNliSTHOUR 101 /41

ABSTRACTS
INSIDE THE JOURNALS
John G. Plumpton
One of the missions ofYmest Hour is to
bring its readers the best and latest in
Churchill scholarship. This is usually done
through feature articles and book reviews.
Some scholarship is first published in
scholarly and even popular journals, and
to cover that area John Plumpton renews
his former column of article abstracts, Inside
The Journals, last seen in Finest
Hour 84. Most often we will feature material
directly about Churchill but we will
also consider Churchill-related topics or
themes in the broadest sense of the meaning
of that term. We will include book reviews
of Churchill and Churchill-related
books if they say something new or significant
about the topic.
Scholarly Perceptions
Adelson, Roger and Sikorsky,
Jonathan: "Churchill in the 1990s,"
The Historian, 1995 (58) 1: 119-23.
The Historian considered the
state of Churchill scholarship in
the 1990s by looking at recent
books by two historians who represent
opposite schools of historiography:
Martin Gilbert's Churchill: A Life and
In Search of Churchill, and John
Charmley's Churchill, The End of Glory
and Churchill's Grand Alliance: The
Anglo-American Special Relationship,
1940-1957.
Winston Churchill, who has
long stirred controversy on both sides of
the Atlantic, was the subject of most of
an issue of the Historian in Summer
1958. The then-editor wrote that
"Churchill virtually invented the tank,
laid the foundations for the Union of
South Africa, the Irish Free State, and
the Zionist home of Israel, out-drank
the Russians, out-talked President Roo-
The Churchill of the Revisionists
RAY DRIVER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
sevelt, out-guessed Corporal Hitler, and
indubitably saved the free world from
destruction in 1940." A less heroic view
of Sir Winston was presented in the articles
that focused on him as historian,
politician, reformer and strategist.
In London on 11 July 1995,
Churchill's role during World War II
was debated in the great hall of Church
House, Westminster. John Charmley
and Lord Clark held that Churchill had
sold out Britain to the United States, a
proposition opposed by Lord Blake and
Andrew Roberts. The anti-Churchill
and anti-U.S. proposition was defeated
by a substantial majority of the capacity
crowd.
In reviews published in The
New York Times Book Review that same
month, Gertrude Himmelfarb and
Henry Kissinger expressed regret over
the way Conservative revisionists have
been debunking Churchill. Historians
in the 1990s who want to understand
Churchill will find it easier than did his
contemporaries earlier in the twentieth
century who had to contend with the
great man's own writings. Despite his
defense of himself, Churchill was stigmatized
with irresponsibility by such
books as Robert Rhodes James:
Churchill, A Study in Failure, 1900-
1939.
To understand Churchill during
and after World War II, the historian's
job is more difficult because of
Churchill's global influence as Prime
Minister during the war, as the media's
leading statesman of the English-speaking
world and as the legendary figure of
English liberty. This reputation was
supported by Churchill's best selling
memoir of World War II and his History
of the English-Speaking Peoples. In
addition to this was the massive and
masterly biography of Randolph
Churchill and Martin Gilbert. Gilbert
also wrote a single volume Churchill: A
Life "for readers to judge for themselves
Churchill's actions and abilities."
If the readers are the jury,
Gilbert is Churchill's chief defense attorney.
Gilbert takes Churchill's own
words more seriously than do recent
historians. He deals sympathetically
with controversial parts of Churchill's
career. As for the man's private life,
Gilbert passes over some of the charges
some of Churchill's contemporaries
have made in print. The biographer is,
in this incidence, taking precedence
over the historian. Gilbert is always respectful
of the man whose finest hour,
like that of Britain, was in 1940.
Other historians have asked
tough questions about Churchill's long
public life. One such historian is John
Charmley, who is one of the group of
historians who wear Conservatism on
their sleeves. Charmley's Churchill, The
End of Glory made a splash only after a
review by Lord Clark, a rich and outspoken
former junior Conservative
Cabinet Minister, asserted that
Churchill should not have rejected >»
FINEST HOUR IOI /42

ABSTRACTS
Hitler's peace terms in 1940 because
they would have protected Britain's status
as a world power far more than his
selling Britain out to the United States.
Clark's review upstaged Charmley's general
theme that Churchill was a romantic
imperialist whose views hardly
changed since the 1890s.
The last part of The End of
Glory and Churchill's Grand Alliance
blames Churchill's "Atlanticism" for
preventing Britain from being more assertive.
While Charmley appreciates
that the actions of statesmen must be
judged by the exigencies of the situations
they faced, he remains indignant
over Churchill's sacrifice of so many
vital British interests to the United
States. Charmley's grasp of politics in
London is better than his understanding
of Anglo-American policymaking
and the enormously complicated scene
in Washington. He is a partisan British
nationalist who degenerates into uncritical
anti-Americanism.
Public Perceptions
Price, Thomas: "Popular Perceptions
of an Ally: the Special Relationship in
the British Spy Novel," Journal of
Popular Culture 1994, (28) 2: 49-66.
Historians of the English-speaking
world during the first half
of the twentieth century will
continue to run into Churchill because
he had a greater opportunity than any
other person to do both good and bad
things. Because Churchill injected his
personality into almost everything he
did, said and wrote, he has invited the
praise and blame of historians in the
1990s, as he did with his contemporaries.
Churchill's call for a "special
relationship" between Britain and
America after Germany was defeated
was motivated by a desire for a closer,
more intense connection in order to
counter the Soviet threat. On the level
of grand politics, that relationship
culminated in the Thatcher-Reagan
partnership which expanded
beyond merely an anti-communist
barricade to an ideological
economic challenge to the entire
socialist world. The Churchill-
Roosevelt and Thatcher-Reagan
special relationships were at the
grand politics level, but leaders
need followers just as followers
need leaders. Public opinion in
Britain and America generally
supported their leaders because public
perceptions—its images and stereotypes,
"pictures in our mind" as Walter
Lippmann said—were created that supported
the special relationship concept.
These pictures can be categorized as
four disparate images of allies: Perfidious
Albion, Crusader, Corporate
Takeover and Corporate Merger.
Historians played an important
role in developing public perceptions,
but the public's conditioned
mood was also significantly created by
one of the most popular genres of fiction:
the spy story. Three spy novelists,
all immensely popular in both Britain
and the United States, wrote books
which created pictures in the public
mind of the special relationship: Ian
Fleming, John le Carre and Len
Deighton.
The Perfidious Albion image,
such as affected the relationship between
Charles de Gaulle and Britain
over NATO, might have been John
Charmley's view of the British-American
relationship, but it was not one of
the images portrayed by these novelists.
The other images, however, can be
identified in their stories.
In most of Fleming's stories
about James Bond, there is little discussion
of the policy connections between
Britain and the United States. It is usually
unspoken, showing up in the joint
operations between allies. The strongest
allied relationship is personal, between
Bond and C.I.A. agent Felix Leiter.
Both Bond and Leiter are crusaders;
their cause is right and the enemy is
CHEER UP!
THEY WILL FORGET YOU
BUT THEY WILL
REMEMBER ME ALWAYS
DAVID LOW FOR THE EVENING STANDARD, 31JUL45
evil. However, in his last novels, Fleming
shows an uneasiness with the special
relationship and a suspicion that a
Corporate Takeover is imminent.
In le Carre's novels the Americans
seem so vastly different from the
British in societal mores and actions
that they might have appeared from another
planet. The resentment to American
control of their British counterparts
is never far from the surface in le Carre.
There are few Americans whose personal
relationships with the British can
even be remotely characterized as
friendly and exhibiting respect. The
image of America as ally in le Carre is
one that goes from non-entity in the
early novels to an unfriendly Corporate
Takeover in the later ones. The threat
to the British way of life ceases to be
Communism; it is now the threat from
the Americans.
Len Deighton's heroes spend
considerable time in America or with
Americans, but he says very little about
American society and values. Americans
are there to work with, and then get on
with life. Deighton's image of the
Americans as an ally appears much
close to the friendly Corporate Merger
than to the hostile Corporate Takeover.
Churchill's call for a "special
relationship" to embark upon a crusade
against Communism created many pictures
in the public mind. Some were
painted by historians; others were
painted by novelists. All had a variety of
consequences, many unintended, and
many still influential today. $
FINEST HOUR 101/43

Churchill in Stamps:
The World's Tributes
Pages 271-276: STATE FUNERAL AND EULOGIES
Catalogue numbers are Scott {#) or Stanley Gibbons (sg). A
slash mark (/) indicates a set with a common design from which
any value is usable. Carus and Minkus catalogue numbers are
sometimes used, and are identified by name.
We are nearing the end of our philatelic biography, which
began its serialization back in Finest Hour 43 in 1984.
Although there are a few pages of appendices that may be of
interest, one or two more installments will see us at the end.
"Churchill in Stamps" will be retained as a philatelic column.
271. The funeral cortege is depicted on a common design for
three Maldive Islands stamps: #201/3/5 (sg 204/6/8). The Lyingin-State,
previously illustrated by other stamps, is here represented
by Antigua #351 (sg 410), which also carries the
Churchill Coat of Arms. Aden-Kathiri Seiyun overprinted eight
stamps for "World Peace" in 1967, including four for Churchill;
two values, overprinted in red WORLD PEACE I WINSTON
CHURCHILL, Minkus 102/108 (sg 100/106), are used here.
272. A set of Ajman "famous people" stamps which includes
Churchill also happen to include King Baudouin of the Belgians
and Charles de Gaulle of France, who attended the Churchill
funeral; they are shown here in a page on the Congregation at St.
Paul's Cathedral. King Baudouin is depicted leading a group of
Royals (Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Grand Duke Jean
of Luxembourg and King Constantine of Greece) on a Churchill
set issued by Ras al Khaima, Minkus 17A/20A, Carus 29/32.
273. Thirty-three Commonwealth countries produced 132
stamps to a common design by Jennifer Toombs to mark
Churchill's passing. (Other Commonwealth members produced
individual designs.) The Omnibus set illustrates the pages of
tributes to Sir Winston in 1965. We're not going to bore you with
the lot; the four pages shown here contain the most important
quotes. This first page, with Antigua #157/60 (sg 170/3) and
Ascension #96/99 (sg 91/94) carries The Queen's message to the
Commonwealth.
274. Bahamas #224-27 (sg 267-70) and Barbados #281-84 (sg
236-39) illustrate Prime Minister Harold Wilson's remarks—
certainly among the finest Churchill eulogies I've ever read.
275. President Johnson's tribute is juxtaposed with that of
Premier Kosygin (who said as little as he could get away with)
on this page illustrated by Basutoland #105-08 (sg 102-05) and
Bechuanaland #206-09 (sg 194-97).
276. Bermuda #201-04 (sg 189-92) and B.A.T. #16-19 (sg 16-
19) accompany Charles de Gaulle and Ludwig Erhard.
(To be continued)
271.
272.
VALLLIJTION
T.-i." P-.CCESSION
Lh-::.i on -'•. r-'ilny Z^-zurcih;; ncrr.irifr the state funeral began. To the
ica 1 : r;. 1 ' r.-.; L : 'i'-.:i ': rum.-, a rr.ilf;-lsr:g procession moved forward with
•^.'- ::o:':"I:; '.-.hro'^h London ;'rorr. Westminster to the cathedral. Out
i:i-i'i-J .•-•en'; San-'lr fir.a banners, trumpeters and guardsmen, mounted
>r.:i pl^-wi. -iritain w-;;; p.'iyinf-' its last full measure of tribute.
"MR would nave
li'A'jJ 1,3 be
th^re, ' sale:
an :•'.:-. and
I'ullow Harrovian.
''How -Jet!.T.r.ir.fi-J
no v;as nov-r cchappening."
Ih

VALEDICTION
VALEDICTION
273.
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN
"I know that it will be the wish of all my people that the loss
which we have sustained be met in the most fitting manner, and
that they should have an opportunity of expressing their sorrow
at the loss and their veneration of the memory of that outstanding
man who, in war and peace, served hie country unfailingly for more
than 50 yearsj and in the hours of our greatest danger was the
inspiring leader who strengthened and supported us all...
"...Confident that
I can rely upon
the support of my
faithful Commons
and upon their
liberality in
making suitable
provision for the
proper discharge
of our debt of
gratitude and
tribute of national
sorrow, I
have directed that
Sir Winston's body
shall lie in state
in Westminster
Hall, and that
thereafter the
funeral service
shall be held in
the cathedral
church of St.
Pauls.' 1 —EIIR
275.
HISTORY'S CHILD
"When there was darkness in the world, and hope was low in the
hearts of men, a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill.
As long as men tell about that time of terrible danger and of
the men who won the victory, the name of Churchill will live.
Let us give thanks that we knew him. With our grief, let there
be gratitude for a life so fully lived, for service so splendid,
and for the joy he gave by the joy he took in all he did. He is
history's child, and what he said and what he did will never die."
"The tireless
efforts of Sir
Winston during
the war against
Hitlerite
Germany are
remembered in
the Soviet Union
and the grief of
the British
people in this
bereavement is
shared here."
—Premier
Alexei
Kosygin,
U.S.S.R.
—President Lyndon Johnson, United States
C 0 mmon we alth
Omnibus:
Antigua,
Ascension
Commonwealth
Omnibus:
Basutoland,
Bechuanaland
VALEDICTION
VALEDICTION
A GOOD HOUSE OF COMMONS MAN
IN THE GREAT DRAMA
' (He ana his legend) are the possession not of England or Britain,
but or. 1 the world; not of our time only, but the ages. For now the
noise o:" hooves thundering across the veldt, the clamour of the
hustings in a score of contests, the shots in Sidney Street, the
•^n^ry guns of Gallipoli and Flanders, Coronel and the Falkland
Islands, the sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy, the urgent
warnings or the Nazi threat, the wnine of the sirens, the dawn
bombardment of the Normandy beaches—all these are now silent...
''For everyone in my country, as for myself, Sir Winston Churchill
is and will remain the one who, in directing the admirable British
war effort to victory, contributed powerfully to the wellbeing of
the French people and the liberty of the world. In the great drama
he was the greatest."
—President Charles De Gaulle, France
",..There is a
stillness, and in
that stillness
echoes and
memories..,
274.
"...Each of ur
has his own
memory, for in
the tumultous
diapason of the
tributes, all of
us hero at least
know the epitaph
he would have
chosen for himself:
'He was
a good House of
Commons man.'"
-Prime Minister
Harold Wilson
276.
"His services
to his fatherland
and to the free
world will assure
him a high rank
in world history
after his long,
strenuous life,
richly blessed
with success."
--Chancellor
Ludwig
Erhard,
German
Federal
Republic
V/ •• I yj - : 1
Co rr.rr.on w e 311 h
Omnibus:
Bahama 5,
Commonwealth
Omnibus:
Bermuda,
3r. Antarctic

ABOUT BOOKS
"Neither Fulsome
Nor Fulminating":
Colin Coote's The Other Club
The Other Club, by Sir Colin Coote.
London: Sidgwick &
Jackson Ltd., 1971, hardbound,
156 pages, illustrated
with cartoons. Frequency:
rare. Current
range on the secondhand
market $50-100/£30-60.
Difficult to find, but always
worth the search, is Colin
Coote's jolly history of the dining
club founded by Winston Churchill
and F. E. Smith in 1911 (and still going
strong). Sir Colin knew Sir Winston for
over forty years and compiled some of
the earliest books of Churchill quotes.
The death of the last of its two
"pious founders" caused some to believe
The Other Club might pass out of existence,
but Members decided otherwise.
Coote was assigned to write the Club's
history "because I was the second senior
Member and practically the whole
membership wanted the Club to continue.
Lord Longford, an Irish Earl, was
a Member and also chairman of Sidgwick
& Jackson, who were the original
publishers of certain famous authors
such as Rupert Brooke, who was the
son of my contemporary Housemaster
at Rugby School. Lord Longford willingly
agreed to publish my account,
which the Club had commissioned, and
having been a frank friend of Sir Winston
from my 'teens upwards, I tried to
produce something neither fulsome nor
fulminating. The book never aimed at a
vast circulation, though it achieved a
modest success among the Club's Members
and friends."
Sir Colin's remarks come from
correspondence, laid into Finest Hour's
copy of The Other
Club, with former editor
Dalton Newfield,
who was trying to obtain
enough copies to
satisfy demand (a problem
we still have). "I
can well understand
that it was not intended
for vast circulation,"
Newfield wrote Sir
Colin. "My desire for
twenty-four copies was
based on the idea that if
it is difficult to find
now it would be more
so in future. Of course
I also have your Maxims
and Reflections, Sir
Winston Churchill: A
Self-Portrait, Wit and
Wisdom and A Churchill
Reader, and even though there is
overlapping, I feel that each is a valued
part of my collection. How fortunate
you were to have known him so well."
Christopher Ford's review in
The Guardian of 13 November 1971
nicely illuminates this literary gem.
Touch of the Other
Christopher Ford
Imagine: The Club, exclusive, immemorial,
resonant with the noises
of gentlemen dining. Imagine,
though, two splendid braggadocios,
quite thinly disguised under the pseudonyms
of Churchill and F. E. Smith.
Our heroes suspect the pitter-patter of
black balls. So what do they do? They
start The Other Club. Here, too, gen-
The Co-founders of The Other Club in Punch, 2 November 1910.
(Monypenny's Life of Disraeli had just been published).
Mr. F. E. Smith: "Master of epigram—like me!"
Mr. Winston Churchill: "Wrote a novel in his youth—like me!"
Together: "Travelled in the East—like us. How does it end?"
tlemen may dine, insulated from hoi
polloi; and, if the members seem to be
mainly of a political or military vocation,
then where else would you look
for gentlemen except landed on the
grouse-moor?
This, then, is the backcloth,
nay, the stage itself, for Sir Colin
Coote's latest literary adventure. And
with such gusto does he ring up the
curtain: "Nineteen Hundred and
Eleven! What a year in which to be
born! The Edwardian era, so like the
Second Empire in France, was lying in
the ashtray of history, like the last cigar
puffed on his deathbed by its
founder..."
Sir Colin was ever a fantasist,
except perhaps in his days as managing
editor of the Daily Telegraph. He personally
wrote a book called Sir Winston
Churchill: A Self-Portrait"; and he is >>>
FINEST HOUR IOI/46

ABOUT BOOKS
RULES OF THE OTHER CLUB
These are the original Rules, though some have altered. Rule 3 was immediately and frequently
violated. As for Rule 6, "the Club is not immune from inflation; and these figures
are variable"— but imagine what £2 bought for dinner in 1911. Rule 7 had the clear
purpose of altering no vote in Parliament. Although Rule 11 remains unchanged, there
has been no Executive Committee since 1970 and its powers are exercised by the honorary
secretaries. The Rules are read aloud at every meeting and graduate Members have long
known them by heart:
1. The Club shall be called the Other Club.
2. The object of The Other Club is to dine.
3. The Club shall consist of no more than fifty Members and not more than
twenty-four Members of the House of Commons.
4. So long as this number is not exceeded, any Member may propose a Candidate
for election to the Committee, and the Committee may circulate the
name of any other Candidate or Candidates (but not singly) to the Club
for election at such time as they think fit.
5. The Club shall dine on alternate Thursdays at 8.15 punctually, when Parliament
is in session.
6. There shall be an entrance fee of £5 and an annual subscription of £7 10s. £2
shall be charged for each dinner.
7. The Members of the House of Commons shall be paired from 8 o'clock until
10.30 p.m. unless they arrange to the contrary through the co-secretaries.
8. The Executive Committee shall setde all outstanding questions widi plenary powers.
9. There shall be no appeal from the decision of the Executive Committee.
10. The names of the Executive Committee shall be wrapped in impenetrable
mystery.
11. The Members of the Executive Committee shall nominate the Secretary, who
shall receive no remuneration and shall be liable for all unforeseen obligations.
12. Nothing in the rules or intercourse of the Club shall interfere with the rancour
or asperity of party politics.
a sort of Coalition Liberal. But now, at
last, Sir Colin has found a subject worthy
of a former Times leader-writer.
How like matadors do his characters bestride
their political ring. Modestly he
keeps on denying that his Other Club is
merely a group of Churchillian sycophants;
but the great man, together
with that Smith among Smiths, are here
as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger.
Their coruscating wit shines
through these pages of history. Here's
Churchill replying to a speech by
Smuts: "I have known him long, very
long; I remember the first time I saw
him. It was in the Colonial Office in
1906." (Factually, remarks a footnote,
this happens to be wrong.) Smith—
who once, when a judge called him offensive,
said, "As a matter of fact we
both are; the difference is that I'm trying
to be and you can't help it"—is
given personal credit for The Other
Club's twelfth and final rule: "nothing
in the rules or intercourse of the Club
shall interfere with the rancour or asperity
of party politics." It was once said
of a famous England cricketer that
there was only one bigger head in the
North: Birkenhead.
Where Sir Colin most excels is
in his character-drawing. With how
deft a twitch of the pen does he describe
Lord Goddard, who was "as
forthright about hooligans as about
port." (Coote can't have been an ignorant
tippler himself, in the great days.
The Club ran short of brandy during
the War: "After considerable research, I
discovered an excellent 1875, a passable
1904, and an undated concoction with
a kick like a mule. Churchill unhesitatingly
chose the mule.")
Like a sack of marbles on a hot
tin roof the names drop. There was
"Lord Tweedmuir, better known"
"Winston in the Pinafore Room," sketched by
a Member. (WSC: "All babies look like me.")
(surely not?) "as John Buchan, who
wrote tremendous adventure stories...
with the pen of an angel," and Alfred
Munnings, "whose portrayal of horses
was divine." Don't think, though, that
the club isn't democratic. "One of the
distinctions which his command in Iraq
won for Sir John Salmond was a membership
of The Other Club." J. H.
Thomas, railwayman turned Cabinet
Minister, was a member, too, even if
"he was rather inclined to call mere acquaintances
'real pals.'"
Rejections? "The only candidate
I recall being repulsed was Sir
Samuel Hoare, who shared with Sir
John Simon an extraordinary capacity
for getting himself disliked, coupled
with a fervent desire to get himself
beloved. But he probably did not know
that he had been a candidate." Only
two Prime Ministers, Baldwin and
MacDonald, were not Members. Neither
was ever proposed. Harold Wilson,
though elected, never attended: "He is
an agreeable table companion. He was
not kept out, nor did he deliberately
stay out."
Oswald Mosley joined, proposed
by Churchill and the Hon. Esmond
Harmsworth. The profession of
letters has been decently represented,
not least by the author and by P. G.
Wodehouse, who wrote to Sir Colin: "It
must have been at my first dinner that I
sat next to F. E. Smith. Conversation
was a bit sticky at first, but when I
asked him why he didn't get his Rugger
Blue in 1893, he never stopped talking
and we got on splendidly."
continued»>
FINEST HOUR IOI /47

ABOUT BOOKS
Also of possible interest, depending
on your son's interest in history,
is The Gathering Storm, the first
volume of the Second World War
memoirs. Unlike the later volumes of
this six-volume work, this is a combination
of highly personal experience and
broad-sweep history, showing how the
Western democracies went from complete
triumph in 1918 to the greatest
threat to their existence in just twenty
years—a lot of lessons for today. As to
biographies for young people, Robert
Severance's Soldier, Statesman, Artist is a
nicely illustrated, well-written work for
young people recommended by
Churchill's daughter Lady Soames. If
not available in libraries, the Churchill
Center new book service sells it for $15.
-Editor
The attorney general, a "great captain" and a "risen minister" leaving the Savoy.
THE OTHER CLUB...
Sir Colin was ever a man of
fine sensibility and delicate feelings. His
sketch of Frederick Lonsdale is of one
"who wrote Wildish plays without having
Wilde's habits." One is allowed to
suspect a telescope to a Nelsonian eye
when he writes of a distinguished member:
"Another problem is why he never
married...probably he was not really interested
in women as women and
acutely disliked the prospect of sharing
his privacy with anybody. In life, as in
grammar, there is a neuter gender."
And, indeed, in literature.
Brendan Bracken's lively imagination
of himself is affectionately regarded:
"Most of us when children
played a game of 'Let's pretend.' We
fancy ourselves to be Horatius, or
Leonardo, or Napoleon. It does nobody
any harm, and is less pitiable than fancying
in our second childhood that we
are a poached egg." It's the author's one
slight error of tact, maybe, that
Churchill gets mentioned three times
on that page.
Sir Colin's own final words can
safely be left to speak for this rich
panoply, this veritable "War and Peace"
of our time: "And if even the trappings
of companionship, the cadence of good
talk, the contacts of fine minds, the
clash of verbal conflicts, should be temporarily
swamped by banality or
brutishness, the theme and refrain of
civilization will break through again
and be heard. For the song was wordless,
the singing will never be done."
Books for
Young People
Thank you for sending a Churchill poster
to my son David for his history class report
at Fork Union Military Academy. L'll enroll
him as a student member. Would you
have some book title suggestions he might
find at the local library? Due to time constraints
he will need to look there first.
-Billy Belcher
Among Churchill's works the
first one I always recommend to young
people is My Early Life, primarily because
it remains so relevant. Churchill
had a tough time growing up. Few believed
in him and he had to earn everything
he received. Besides that, it's a
great read.
If your son is interested in
World War II, but not enough to take
on The Second World War, consider Step
by Step: 1936-1939. This is a collection
of "fortnightly letters" written for newspapers
by Churchill in the years leading
up to the War, which compresses many
of the ideas of The Gathering Storm (the
first book of that volume, at least) into
far fewer words.
-Graham Taylor, Toronto
As to Churchill's own books I
certainly concur with My Early Life as a
start. It would be hard to write fiction
this exciting and full of adventures.
Also, while some of it is covered in My
Early Life, I would also recommend The
Story of the Malakand Field Force. And
My African Journey gives us another adventure
not covered in My Early Life.
-Rob Curry, Listserv Winston
One of my very earliest TV
memories was Churchill's funeral. It
made an impression on me, though I'm
sure I had no idea who Churchill was.
Then in my mid-teens I read Shirer's
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which
led me to Churchill, and I read The Second
World War. But I'm not sure either
of those could be recommended to the
very young reader as places to start.
-Evan Quenon, Austin, Texas IS
FINEST HOUR IOI / 48

Apposite Aphorisms:
The Seven Ages of Man
Douglas J. Hall
In a recent BBC poll for
Britons of the Millennium,
Shakespeare and Churchill
finished first and second (see
Datelines, page 6). Darrell Holley
wrote in Churchill's Literary Allusions
(New York: McFarland &
Company 1987), "There is no
English author whom Churchill
alludes to as often as to William
Shakespeare. Both by formal quotations,
some quite lengthy, and
by well-known phrases almost
hidden in his text, Churchill
makes allusion to many of Shakespeare's
plays....[He] uses the lines
of Shakespeare in various capacities:
as illustrations in his history
of England, as embellishments in
his other historical works, and as
support in speeches to Parliament.
In various ways he borrows the
artist's words to ornament his own
ideas."
The Seven Ages of Man from
As You Like It are probably among
the most quoted lines written by
William Shakespeare. They were
written between 1596 and 1600
and I thought it might be amusing
to compare them with a selection
of apposite aphorisms, maxims
and opinions taken from the
20th century speeches and writings
of Winston Spencer
Churchill.
My choices may, of course,
not entirely be "as you like it." If
not, why not take time to put together
a selection of your own
choosing?
ABOUT BOOKS
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely
players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many
parts,
His acts being seven ages.
At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's
arms.
And then the whining schooolboy,
With his satchel and shining morning
face,
Creeping like a snail unwillingly to
school.
And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress's eyebrow.
Then a soldier, full of strange oaths,
And bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in
quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.
And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon
lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts into the lean and
slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose
And pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd a world
too wide
For his shrunk shank;
And his big manly voice turning
Again towards childish treble,
Pipes and whistles in his sound.
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
In second childishness,
And mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans
everything.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
I have always taken the view that the
fortunes of mankind in its tremendous
journey are principally decided for good
or ill—but mainly for good, for the
path is upward—by its greatest men
and its greatest episodes.
(9 January 1941)
There is no finer investment for any
community than putting milk into babies.
(21 March 1943)
How I hated this school, and what a
life of anxiety I lived there...I made
very little progress at my lessons, and
none at all at games.
(My Early Life, 1930)
...until September 1908, when I married
and lived happily ever afterwards.
(My Early Life, 1930)
In making an army, three elements are
necessary—men, weapons and money.
There must also be time....
What are we fighting for? If we left off
fighting you would soon find out.
(1 December 1948....30 March 1940)
It is desirable that persons concerned
with the administration of justice
should carefully acquaint themselves
with the nature and character of any
punishment which they may be authorised
to order. (24 February 1910)
The prospect of attaining extreme old
age, of living beyond threescore years
and ten, which is the allotted span of
human life, seems so doubtful and
remote to the ordinary man, when in
the full strength of manhood, that it
has been found in practice almost
impossible to secure from any very
great number of people the regular sacrifices
which are necessary to guard
against old age. (23 May 1909)
We have to organize our lives and the
life of our cities on the basis of
dwelling under fire and having always
this additional—not very serious
chance—of death added to the ordinary
precarious character of human
existence. (8 October 1940) M>
FINEST HOUR 101/49

By Curt Zoller (Curt@fea.net)
Test your knowledge! Most questions
can be answered in back issues
of Finest Hour or other
Churchill Center publications, but it's
not really cricket to check. 24 questions
appear each issue, answers in the following
issue. Questions are in six categories:
Contemporaries (C), Literary (L), Miscellaneous
(M), Personal (P), Statesmanship
(S) and War (W).
913. How many Prime Ministers did
John Colville serve? (C)
914. Frederick Woods wrote about
"Churchill's Method of Writing." Where
can you find this piece? (L)
915. How did Churchill compare the
American Constitution with the British
Socialist Parry? (M)
916. When did Churchill buy Chartwell?
(P)
917. At the Casablanca Conference with
Churchill and FDR, what key issue was
presented by a slip of the tongue? (S)
918. In WSC's comment on the Polish
Fighter Squadron, how many Frenchmen
was one Pole worth? (W)
919. Nellie Hozier, Clementine
Churchill's sister, served in World War I.
What was her position? (C)
920. What was the title of the despatches
Churchill sent to the Daily Telegraph
when attached to the Malakand Field
Force, and how did he sign them? (L)
921. What was the name of the architect
of Blenheim? (M)
922. Where is Sir Winston buried? (P)
923. What was Churchill's position on
the use of bacteriological weapons? (S)
924. What was Sir Roger Keyes's position
during the Dardanelles affair? (W)
925. After Neville Chamberlain met
Hitler he was asked to bring Churchill
into the Government. What was his response?
(C)
CHURCHILLTRIVIA
926. What was WSC's pen-name when
writing to The Harrovian in 1891 ? (L)
927. When did Churchill have his first
heart attack? (M)
928. When did Sir Winston receive the
Williamsburg Award? (P)
929. Which military leader defined leadership
as "The capacity and the will to
rally men and women to a common purpose,
and the character which inspires
confidence"? (S)
930. What was Operation "Felix"? (W)
931. Who was "Goonie" Churchill? (C)
932. Where did Churchill quote "Pretty
Polly Oliver"? (L)
933. What happened to his Insignia of
the Garter after Churchill's death? (M)
934. How many of Churchill's speeches
were broadcast from the House of Commons?
(P)
935. Where did Churchill utter, "Never
give in, never give in..."? (S)
936. Whom did Churchill characterize
when he said, "It was by men like him in
whom fire and force of valiance burnt,
that our Island was guarded during perilous
centuries"? (W)
Answers to Churchilltrivia in FH 100:
(889) Admiral David Beatty was appointed
by Churchill as his Naval Secretary
in 1911. (890) Churchill received the
Nobel Prize for Literature on 16 October
1953; he was 79 years old. (891) King Albert
of the Belgians commented on the
Antwerp and Gallipoli campaigns. (892)
Clementine's mother's maiden name was
Blanche Ogilvie. (893) The moral and
political virtues are justice, courage or
strength of soul, prudence, perseverance,
imagination and self-restraint. (894) Lord
Mountbatten replaced Admiral Roger
Keyes, DCO.
(895) Churchill called Sir John Cunningham
"Dismal Jimmy." (896) Robert
Rhodes James was the editor of Winston
Churchill: His Complete Speeches. (897)
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound
was First Sea Lord. (898) The Williamsburg
Award was created "to serve as a
continual reminder that there are today,
as there were yesterday, vigorous, courageous
and eloquent leaders, and is presented
to a person who has made an outstanding
contribution to the historic
struggle of men to live free and self-respecting
in a just society." (899) What
Churchill said about the House of Lords
was: " This second chamber as it is—
one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative,
irresponsible, absentee." (900)
On 30 January 1919, 5000 British
troops, who had just arrived from England,
mutinied and demanded to be sent
back at once.
(901) Marigold Churchill died on 24 August
1921. (902) The first volume of
Marlborough: His Life and Times was published
in London in 1933 by Harrap.
(903) The Churchill Porch is at the National
Cathedral, Washington, D.C.
(904) The car sold for £66,400, formerly
owned by Churchill, was kept at Chartwell
where it was engaged in staff errands. It
was an Austin Ten saloon, license number
EYH 409. (905) Sir Stafford Cripps,
British Ambassador to the Soviet Union,
held up the Churchill message for about
two weeks, because he felt that it would
be interpreted as an attempt to embroil
the Soviets with Germany. (906) Operation
"Catherine" was the proposed fleet
action by specially strengthened surface
ships in the Baltic, in the winter of 1939-
1940, to isolate Germany from Scandinavia,
and particularly to cut the supply
of Swedish iron ore.
(907) Churchill referred to Sir Stafford
Cripps, British Ambassador to the Soviet
Union, as "...a lunatic in a country of lunatics..."
(908) Churchill commented,
"Personally I like short words and vulgar
fractions." (909) Churchill's parents were
married on 15 April 1874. (910) Isaiah
Berlin quotes Churchill in Mr. Churchill
in 1940. (911) No; Churchill favored the
truce with Sinn Fein because he considered
"that our forces are stronger and better
trained." (912) Churchill blamed
General Montgomery in using Italian
POW statements too often as cover
source for intelligence information. $5
FINEST HOUR IOI/5O

Wit&
Wisdom
UNIQUE PRESCRIPTION
MDs in the audience may like
to tell us whether this note from the
American doctor who treated Churchill
after his New York City car accident in
the winter of 1931-32 is unique in its
prescription. (Courtesy Warren Kimball,
from the Churchill Archives).
January 26, 1932
This is to certify that the post-accident convalescence
of the Hon. Winston S. Churchill
necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits especially
at meal times. The quantity is naturally
indefinite but the minimum requirements
would be 250 cubic centimeters.
A/Otto C. Pickhardt, M.D.
I seem to recall a 1929 account of
Churchill's encounter with another American
doctor on his lecture tour, who told
him he would have to stop smoking cigars
to maintain his voice. Indicating a
glass containing his usual weak highball,
Churchill asked, "What about that?"
"That," said Pickhardt, "must be left to
your conscience." WSC replied, "I think
you and I shall get along fine."
served to 1945), married Waldorf
Astor, of Greenwood, Virginia.
Although a Conservative,
like Churchill after 1924, she
clashed often with him over
Dominion Status for India and
relations with Germany and
Russia. She was a strong backer
of the appeasement policies of
Prime Ministers Baldwin and
Chamberlain. The famous exchange
between them, during a
weekend at Blenheim Palace, is
apparently not apocryphal, as
we had previously believed:
"Winston, if I were married to
you I'd put poison in your coffee"...
"Nancy, if I were married
to you I'd drink it."
Another reported encounter
occurred in the House of Commons as
Churchill was orating about Mankind,
saying "Man" this and "Man" that. Lady
Astor continually kept interjecting
"...And Woman, Mr. Speaker...And
Woman!" Finally Churchill is supposed to
have exclaimed, "In this context, Mr.
Speaker, the understanding is that Man
EMBRACES Woman." This did not improve
his relations with the Noble Lady.
PRAISE FOR HITLER?
A reader question was prompted
by the film "Judgment at Nuremberg," in
which Churchill is said to have "praised
Hitler" in The Times in 1938. Ron Cohen
provides the documentation:
Regrettably, Woods notes only
one letter to The Times in 1938. In all
there were nine letters, statements and
memoranda by Churchill published in
The Times in 1938. Of these, one statement
may contain the text referred to. Issued
on 6 November and published at p.
12 of The Times of 7 November 1938, it
may also be found in Companion Volume
3 to Volume V of the Official Biography,
at pp. 1259-60:
"Herr Hitler ought to understand
this mood and respect it. I have always
said that if Great Britain were defeated
in war I hoped we should find a
Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position
among the nations. I am sorry, however,
that he has not been mellowed by
the great success that has attended him.
The whole world would rejoice to see the
Hitler of peace and tolerance, and nothing
would adorn his name in world history
so much as acts of magnanimity and
of mercy and of pity to the forlorn and
friendless, to the weak and poor....Let this
great man search his own heart and conscience
before he accuses anyone of being
a warmonger....If Herr Hitler's eye falls
upon these words I trust he will accept
them in the spirit of candour in which
they are uttered." $3
AMPERSAND
A fitting close to this issue is this note of thanks to John
Mather, Chairman of the 15th International Churchill
Conference (below with Nigel Knocker), who took on an
unexpected big job when urgently needed and "made
himself useful at a critical moment. "Many thanks, John.
ENCOUNTERS WITH LADYASTOR
/ am writing a paper about Mr.
Churchill and I keep hearing jokes about
Lady Astor. Who is Lady Astor and what
was the relationship? -Gordon Jones
Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess
Astor, b.1879, first woman
Member of Parliament (elected 1919,
FINEST HOUR IOI /51