Winston Churchill

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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
Page 2 and 3: THE CHURCHILL CENTER THEINTERNATION
Page 4 and 5: DESPATCH BOX Number 101 • Winter
Page 6 and 7: DATELINES DDG-81 s Captain, Cdr. Mi
Page 8 and 9: We also hope the new managers get r
Page 10 and 11: LOCAL AND NATIONAL NEWS BRITISH COL
Page 12 and 13: PERSONALITY OF THE CENTURY... There
Page 14 and 15: Typically, Lady Soames has caught t
Page 16 and 17: FAR LEFT: Lisa, Gail and Churchill
Page 18 and 19: CHURCHILL LECTURE... another statue
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Page 22 and 23: IO The First Time I WSC'J... Our me
Page 24 and 25: THE FIRST TIME I WSC'D... Andrew Ro
Page 26 and 27: Exploring Churchill s Canon Wkat to
Page 28 and 29: WHAT TO DO ABOUT IRAQJ... Mr. Sheph
Page 30 and 31: "Baldwin took the view that Germany
Page 32 and 33: Thanks! To all wno aided Tne Cnurcn
Page 34 and 35: 100-75-50-25 YEARS AGO ACTION THIS
Page 38 and 39: BETRAYAL AT PEARL HARBOR... The pro
Page 40 and 41: CHURCHILL ONLINE http://www.winston
Page 42 and 43: ABSTRACTS INSIDE THE JOURNALS John
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Page 46 and 47: ABOUT BOOKS "Neither Fulsome Nor Fu
Page 48 and 49: ABOUT BOOKS Also of possible intere
Page 50 and 51: By Curt Zoller (Curt@fea.net) Test

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