Finest Hour - Winston Churchill
Finest Hour - Winston Churchill
Finest Hour - Winston Churchill
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“GOOD VOYAGE — CHURCHILL”<br />
THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL<br />
SUMMER 2011 • NUMBER 151<br />
$5.95 / £3.50
i<br />
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE & CHURCHILL WAR ROOMS<br />
UNITED STATES • CANADA • UNITED KINGDOM • AUSTRALIA • PORTUGAL<br />
PATRON: THE LADY SOAMES LG DBE • WWW.WINSTONCHURCHILL.ORG<br />
Founded in 1968 to educate new generations about the<br />
leadership, statesmanship, vision and courage of <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
® ®<br />
MEMBER, NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR HISTORY EDUCATION • RELATED GROUP, AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION<br />
SUCCESSOR TO THE WINSTON S. CHURCHILL STUDY UNIT (1968) AND INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY (1971)<br />
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CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD<br />
Laurence S. Geller<br />
lgeller@winstonchurchill.org<br />
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR<br />
Lee Pollock<br />
lpollock@winstonchurchill.org<br />
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER<br />
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES<br />
The Hon. Spencer Abraham • Randy Barber<br />
Gregg Berman • David Boler • Paul Brubaker<br />
Donald W. Carlson • Randolph S. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
David Coffer • Manus Cooney • Lester Crown<br />
Sen. Richard J. Durbin • Kenneth Fisher<br />
RAdm. Michael T. Franken USN • Laurence S. Geller<br />
Rt Hon Sir Martin Gilbert CBE • Richard C. Godfrey<br />
Philip Gordon • D. Craig Horn • Gretchen Kimball<br />
Richard M. Langworth CBE • Diane Lees • Peter Lowy<br />
Rt Hon Sir John Major KG CH • Lord Marland<br />
J.W. Marriott Jr. • Christopher Matthews<br />
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Philip H. Reed OBE • Mitchell Reiss • Ken Rendell<br />
Elihu Rose • Stephen Rubin OBE<br />
The Hon. Celia Sandys • The Hon. Edwina Sandys<br />
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Cita Stelzer • Ambassador Robert Tuttle<br />
HONORARY MEMBERS<br />
Rt Hon David Cameron, MP<br />
Rt Hon Sir Martin Gilbert CBE<br />
Robert Hardy CBE<br />
The Lord Heseltine CH PC<br />
The Duke of Marlborough JP DL<br />
Sir Anthony Montague Browne KCMG CBE DFC<br />
Gen. Colin L. Powell KCB<br />
Amb. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.<br />
The Lady Thatcher LG OM PC FRS<br />
FRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONS<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Archives Centre, Cambridge<br />
The <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Memorial Trust, UK, Australia<br />
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ACADEMIC ADVISERS<br />
Prof. James W. Muller,<br />
Chairman, afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu<br />
University of Alaska, Anchorage<br />
Prof. Paul K. Alkon, University of Southern California<br />
Rt Hon Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, Merton College, Oxford<br />
Col. David Jablonsky, U.S. Army War College<br />
Prof. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers University<br />
Prof. John Maurer, U.S. Naval War College<br />
Prof. David Reynolds FBA, Christ’s College, Cambridge<br />
Dr. Jeffrey Wallin,<br />
American Academy of Liberal Education<br />
LEADERSHIP AND SUPPORT<br />
NUMBER TEN CLUB<br />
Contributors of $10,000+ per year<br />
Skaddan Arps • Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Jack Bovender • Carolyn & Paul Brubaker<br />
Mrs. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong> • Lester Crown<br />
Kenneth Fisher • Marcus & Molly Frost<br />
Laurence S. Geller • Rick Godfrey • Philip Gordon<br />
Martin & Audrey Gruss • J.S. Kaplan Foundation<br />
Gretchen Kimball • Susan Lloyd • Sir Deryck Maughan<br />
Harry McKillop • Elihu Rose • Michael Rose<br />
Stephen Rubin • Mick Scully • Cita Stelzer<br />
CHURCHILL CENTRE ASSOCIATES<br />
Contributors to The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Endowment, of<br />
$10,000, $25,000 and $50,000+, inclusive of bequests.<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Associates<br />
The Annenberg Foundation • David & Diane Boler<br />
Samuel D. Dodson • Fred Farrow • Marcus & Molly Frost<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Parker Lee III • Michael & Carol McMenamin<br />
David & Carole Noss • Ray & Patricia Orban<br />
Wendy Russell Reves • Elizabeth <strong>Churchill</strong> Snell<br />
Mr. & Mrs. Matthew Wills • Alex M. Worth Jr.<br />
Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong> Associates<br />
Ronald D. Abramson • <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Jeanette & Angelo Gabriel• Craig & Lorraine Horn<br />
James F. Lane • John Mather • Linda & Charles Platt<br />
Ambassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson Jr.<br />
James R. & Lucille I. Thomas • Peter J. Travers<br />
Mary Soames Associates<br />
Dr. & Mrs. John V. Banta • Solveig & Randy Barber<br />
Gary & Beverly Bonine • Susan & Daniel Borinsky<br />
Nancy Bowers • Lois Brown<br />
Carolyn & Paul Brubaker • Nancy H. Canary<br />
Dona & Bob Dales • Jeffrey & Karen De Haan<br />
Gary Garrison • Ruth & Laurence Geller<br />
Fred & Martha Hardman • Leo Hindery, Jr.<br />
Bill & Virginia Ives • J. Willis Johnson<br />
Jerry & Judy Kambestad • Elaine Kendall<br />
David M. & Barbara A. Kirr<br />
Barbara & Richard Langworth • Phillip & Susan Larson<br />
Ruth J. Lavine • Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Leahy<br />
Philip & Carole Lyons • Richard & Susan Mastio<br />
Cyril & Harriet Mazansky • Michael W. Michelson<br />
James & Judith Muller • Wendell & Martina Musser<br />
Bond Nichols • Earl & Charlotte Nicholson<br />
Bob & Sandy Odell • Dr. & Mrs. Malcolm Page<br />
Ruth & John Plumpton • Hon. Douglas S. Russell<br />
Daniel & Suzanne Sigman • Shanin Specter<br />
Robert M. Stephenson • Richard & Jenny Streiff<br />
Gabriel Urwitz • Damon Wells Jr.<br />
Jacqueline Dean Witter<br />
ALLIED NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS<br />
_____________________________________<br />
INTL. CHURCHILL SOCIETY CANADA<br />
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www.winstonchurchillcanada.ca<br />
Ambassador Kenneth W. Taylor, Honorary Chairman<br />
CHAIRMAN<br />
Randy Barber, randybarber@sympatico.ca<br />
VICE-CHAIRMAN AND RECORDING SECRETARY<br />
Terry Reardon, reardont@rogers.com<br />
TREASURER<br />
Barrie Montague, bmontague@cogeco.ca<br />
BOARD OF DIRECTORS<br />
Charles Anderson • Randy Barber • David Brady<br />
Peter Campbell • Dave Dean • Cliff Goldfarb<br />
Robert Jarvis • Barrie Montague • Franklin Moskoff<br />
Terry Reardon • Gordon Walker<br />
_____________________________________<br />
INTL. CHURCHILL SOCIETY PORTUGAL<br />
João Carlos Espada, President<br />
Universidade Católica Portuguesa<br />
Palma de Cima 1649-023, Lisbon<br />
jespada@iep.ucp.pt • Tel. (351) 21 7214129<br />
__________________________________<br />
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE AUSTRALIA<br />
Alfred James, President<br />
65 Billyard Avenue, Wahroonga, NSW 2076<br />
abmjames1@optusnet.com.au • Tel. 61-2-9489-1158<br />
___________________________________________<br />
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE - UNITED KINGDOM<br />
Allen Packwood, Executive Director<br />
c/o <strong>Churchill</strong> Archives Centre<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> College, Cambridge, CB3 0DS<br />
allen.packwood@chu.cam.ac.uk • Tel. (01223) 336175<br />
THE BOARD (*Trustees)<br />
The Hon. Celia Sandys, Chairman*<br />
David Boler* • Randolph S. <strong>Churchill</strong>*<br />
David Coffer • Paul H. Courtenay<br />
Laurence Geller* • Philip Gordon<br />
Scott Johnson* • The Duke of Marlborough JP DL<br />
The Lord Marland* • Philippa Rawlinson<br />
Philip H. Reed OBE* • Stephen Rubin OBE<br />
Cita Stelzer • Anthony Woodhead CBE FCA*<br />
HON. MEMBERS EMERITI<br />
Nigel Knocker OBE • David Porter<br />
___________________________________________<br />
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE - UNITED STATES<br />
D. Craig Horn, President<br />
5909 Bluebird Hill Lane<br />
Weddington, NC 28104<br />
dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com • Tel. (704) 844-9960<br />
________________________________________________<br />
CHURCHILL SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT<br />
OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY<br />
www.churchillsociety.org<br />
Robert A. O’Brien, Chairman<br />
3050 Yonge Street, Suite 206F<br />
Toronto ON, M4N 2K4<br />
ro’brien@couttscrane.com • Tel. (416) 977-0956
CONTENTS<br />
The Journal of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
<br />
Number 151<br />
Summer 2011<br />
Packwood, 10<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, 14<br />
COVER<br />
Admiralty Christmas card, 1941, showing HMS Prince of Wales returning <strong>Churchill</strong> from the<br />
Atlantic Charter conference with Roosevelt, August 1941. Flying from the masts are the signal flags<br />
PYU (international code for “Good Voyage”) and CHURCHILL. We cannot prove, but are fairly<br />
certain, that the PM is standing on the portside wing. From a painting by William McDowell,<br />
probably commmissioned by the card producer Raphael Tuck. Reproduced by kind courtesy of the<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Archives Centre, Cambridge, Sir John Martin Papers (MART-3). Story on page 18.<br />
ARTICLES<br />
Theme of the Issue: “The Special Relationship”<br />
8/ What Is Left of the Special Relationship • Richard M. Langworth<br />
10/ The Power of Words and Machines • Allen Packwood<br />
12/ Why Study <strong>Churchill</strong> The American Alliance, for One Thing • Martin Gilbert<br />
14/ Reflections on America • <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
16/ What He Saw and Heard in Georgia • William L. Fisher<br />
18/ Cover Story: “Good Voyage—<strong>Churchill</strong>” • H.V. Morton<br />
19/ The Meeting with President Roosevelt, August 1941 • <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
20/ Hands Across the Atlantic: Edward R. Murrow • Fred Glueckstein<br />
22/ “All in the Same Boat” • Ambassador Raymond Seitz<br />
27/ Is This the Man • Charles Miner Cooper<br />
28/ William A. Rusher 1923-2011 • The Editor with Larry P. Arnn<br />
29/ “The Truth is Great, and Shall Prevail” • William A. Rusher<br />
55/ <strong>Churchill</strong>iana: The Potted Special Relationship • Douglas Hall<br />
Randolph S. <strong>Churchill</strong> Centenary 1911-2011<br />
32/ “The Beast of Bergholt”: Remembering Randolph • Martin Gilbert<br />
34/ Randolph by His Contemporaries • Compiled by Dana Cook<br />
36/ Washington, 9 April 1963: Randolph’s Day • Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis<br />
<br />
38/ <strong>Churchill</strong> on Clemenceau: His Best Student Part II • Paul Alkon<br />
44/ “Golden Eggs,” Part III: Intelligence and Closing the Ring • Martin Gilbert<br />
Seitz, 22<br />
Onassis, 36<br />
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES<br />
50/ Former Naval Persons and Places • Christopher M. Bell:<br />
Historical Dreadnoughts, by Barry Gough and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Dilemma, by Graham Clews<br />
51/ <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>: Walking with Destiny • Film Review by David Druckman<br />
52/ <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>: War Leader, by Bill Price • Max E. Hertwig<br />
53/ Pol Roger Champagne: Another Look • Daniel Mehta<br />
56/ Harold Nicolson and His Diaries • James Lancaster<br />
60/ Education: Finding Answers for National History Day • The Editor<br />
DEPARTMENTS<br />
2/ The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre • 4/ Despatch Box • 5/ Around & About • 6/ Datelines<br />
6/ Quotation of the Season • 8/ From the Editor • 14/ Wit & Wisdom • 27/ Poetry<br />
30/ Action This Day • 37/ Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas • 43/ Moments in Time<br />
55/ <strong>Churchill</strong>iana • 62/ <strong>Churchill</strong> Quiz • 63/ Regional Directory<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 3
D E S P A T C H B O X<br />
Number 151 • Summer 2011<br />
ISSN 0882-3715<br />
www.winstonchurchill.org<br />
____________________________<br />
Barbara F. Langworth, Publisher<br />
barbarajol@gmail.com<br />
Richard M. Langworth, Editor<br />
rlangworth@winstonchurchill.org<br />
Post Office Box 740<br />
Moultonborough, NH 03254 USA<br />
Tel. (603) 253-8900<br />
December-March Tel. (242) 335-0615<br />
__________________________<br />
Editorial Board<br />
Paul H. Courtenay, David Dilks,<br />
David Freeman, Sir Martin Gilbert,<br />
Edward Hutchinson, Warren Kimball,<br />
Richard Langworth, Jon Meacham,<br />
Michael McMenamin, James W. Muller,<br />
John Olsen, Allen Packwood,<br />
Terry Reardon, Suzanne Sigman,<br />
Manfred Weidhorn<br />
Senior Editors:<br />
Paul H. Courtenay<br />
James W. Muller<br />
News Editor:<br />
Michael Richards<br />
Contributors<br />
Alfred James, Australia<br />
Terry Reardon, Dana Cook, Canada<br />
Antoine Capet, James Lancaster, France<br />
Paul Addison, Sir Martin Gilbert,<br />
Allen Packwood, United Kingdom<br />
David Freeman, Fred Glueckstein,<br />
Ted Hutchinson, Warren F. Kimball,<br />
Justin Lyons, Michael McMenamin,<br />
Robert Pilpel, Christopher Sterling,<br />
Manfred Weidhorn, United States<br />
___________________________<br />
• Address changes: Help us keep your copies coming!<br />
Please update your membership office when<br />
you move. All offices for The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre<br />
and Allied national organizations are listed on<br />
the inside front cover.<br />
__________________________________<br />
<strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> is made possible in part through the<br />
generous support of members of The <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre and Museum, the Number Ten Club,<br />
and an endowment created by the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre Associates (page 2).<br />
___________________________________<br />
Published quarterly by The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre,<br />
offering subscriptions from the appropriate<br />
offices on page 2. Permission to mail at nonprofit<br />
rates in USA granted by the United<br />
States Postal Service, Concord, NH, permit<br />
no. 1524. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.<br />
Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.<br />
CASABLANCA LETTERS:<br />
IT WAS WEYGAND!<br />
I was intrigued by whether Rick’s<br />
“Letters of Transit” in Casablanca (FH<br />
150: 49) cite Darlan, not de Gaulle, as<br />
the French authority in the European<br />
version. We have a DVD sold in<br />
France with English and French subtitles.<br />
My wife easily found the passage<br />
with Peter Lorre speaking about the<br />
signature on the Letters of Transit with<br />
his exaggerated German accent. We<br />
heard neither “de Gaulle,” nor did we<br />
hear “Darlan,” although the English<br />
subtitles read “de Gaulle.” I thought it<br />
sounded more like “Weygand,” not<br />
realising this would lead us to the<br />
correct track. My wife then found the<br />
answer on the Internet Movie Database<br />
(http:// imdb.to/mJvlBS):<br />
“Incorrectly regarded as goofs: It<br />
is widely believed that Ugarte [Lorre]<br />
clearly says that the Letters of Transit<br />
are ‘signed by General de Gaulle.’ This<br />
would have rendered them useless in<br />
Casablanca, as de Gaulle was the leader<br />
of the Free French forces which were<br />
actively fighting against the Nazibacked<br />
Vichy regime that controlled<br />
Casablanca. De Gaulle's name is shown<br />
on the English and Spanish DVD/Blu-<br />
Ray subtitles. However, Peter Lorre<br />
actually names General Weygand<br />
(Vichy Minister of Defence, whatever<br />
that means in an occupied country).<br />
The French subtitles have it correct.”<br />
ANTOINE CAPET, ROUEN, FRANCE<br />
SENATOR BYRD<br />
In Winchester, Virginia, I visited<br />
Senator Harry Byrd, who spoke at our<br />
1991 conference in Richmond. He is<br />
in fine form and enjoys <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong>.<br />
We talked at length about <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
two visits to Richmond; his stories of<br />
the 1929 visit are as funny as ever. He<br />
expressed the view that <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
“saved” for the great task that befell<br />
him in 1940.<br />
Sen. Byrd expressed appreciation<br />
for Celia Sandys’s visit to Winchester<br />
several years ago. We also talked of his<br />
famous uncle, Admiral Richard Byrd,<br />
whose Boston home at 9 Brimmer<br />
Street I had visited a week before.<br />
Other than Lady Soames, I<br />
cannot think of anyone with an “older”<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 4<br />
memory of Sir <strong>Winston</strong> than Harry<br />
Byrd. It goes back eighty-two years.<br />
RICHARD H. KNIGHT, JR., NASHVILLE, TENN.<br />
Senator Byrd and Richard Knight<br />
VON MANSTEIN<br />
In FH 150 I read “How Guilty<br />
Were the German Field Marshals” As<br />
a schoolmaster who helps sixth formers<br />
with their coursework, I admire your<br />
attempt to steer people away from<br />
Wikipedia. It’s fine for checking basic<br />
things like birth dates, but not for<br />
much more. Any of my pupils who rely<br />
on it as their sole source for information<br />
will get very short shrift from me<br />
(and poor marks for research).<br />
I like to point students towards<br />
specific books. For Manstein there is an<br />
outstanding new biography, Manstein:<br />
Hitler’s Greatest General, by Mungo<br />
Melvin, a serving British general<br />
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson), now in<br />
paperback. Two chapters cover his<br />
postwar life, particularly his trial. This<br />
would be ideal for any A-Level (or<br />
equivalent) student. Incidentally, it has<br />
the best maps of any military history<br />
book I’ve read in years.<br />
Other sources are von Manstein’s<br />
memoirs, Lost Victories (Methuen,<br />
1958, abridged from the German original);<br />
Erich von Manstein by Robert<br />
Forczyk (Osprey, 2010); the Manstein<br />
essay by Field Marshal Lord Carver in<br />
Hitler’s Generals (Weidenfeld &<br />
Nicolson, 1989); Liddell Hart: A Study<br />
of His Military Thought, by Brian<br />
Bond (Cassell, 1977, useful for L-H’s<br />
contribution to the trial); Alchemist of<br />
War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart, by<br />
Alex Danchev (Weidenfeld &<br />
Nicolson, 1998); and Liddell Hart’s
The Other Side of the Hill (Cassell,<br />
1948). I am sure a similar list for<br />
Kesselring could be constructed.<br />
ROBIN BRODHURST, READING, BERKS.<br />
FOND MEMORIES<br />
Thank you for the review of<br />
Heather White-Smith’s My Years with<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong>s. Barbara Langworth’s<br />
comments are entirely fair. The stories<br />
it contains are domestic ones, as they<br />
occurred, and were written into her<br />
diary. However, contrary to the review,<br />
pages 21-22 do indeed discuss WSC’s<br />
1953 stroke and how it was kept quiet.<br />
Heather, Grace Hamblin and Jo<br />
Sturdee (later Lady Onslow) used to<br />
lunch together regularly. The last time<br />
Grace went to Chartwell was when we<br />
took her to hear Roy Jenkins at the<br />
launch of his biography. We often saw<br />
Jo, as she lived near Heather’s daughter<br />
in Oxfordshire. We miss both of them.<br />
The saddest thing was that when the<br />
three were together so many tales were<br />
regaled, only to be forgotten and lost<br />
to posterity. I just so wish I had taken a<br />
tape recorder on those occasions!<br />
You might also be interested to<br />
know that Heather has given several<br />
talks, based on her book, for which she<br />
was helped with her presentation skills<br />
by Robert Hardy.<br />
HENRY WHITE-SMITH, SUNNINGDALE, BERKS.<br />
AROUND & ABOUT<br />
Conservative radio talk-czar<br />
Rush Limbaugh ran this doctored<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> photo on his website. New<br />
Jersey Governor Chris Christie looks<br />
like hes ordering two pizzas. If he could lose that<br />
double chin he would poll 10% more favorably.<br />
Accompanying the photo was a transcript with a<br />
caller, lamenting that Christie, unlike <strong>Churchill</strong>, refuses<br />
to run for president when hes needed. Limbaugh praised <strong>Churchill</strong> for stepping<br />
forward for his country in World War II.<br />
But <strong>Churchill</strong> didnt exactly step forward. Hed always been available. It<br />
was the government that wasnt having him—until the chips were down and<br />
there was no one else. Nor was <strong>Churchill</strong>, per Limbaugh, alone in opposing<br />
Hitler. There were Anthony Eden and Alfred Duff Cooper, among others.<br />
The caller had a point that there is no <strong>Churchill</strong> among candidates for<br />
President (or indeed for Prime Minister, nor has there been since the war,<br />
with the possible exception of 1979). Every four years we see people proposing<br />
to run who bring to mind Denis Healys comment that being attacked<br />
by Sir Geoffrey Howe was akin to being savaged by a dead sheep.<br />
<br />
Daily Telegraph political correspondent James Kirkup reports that<br />
another would-be <strong>Churchill</strong> has bitten the dust: Defence Secretary Liam<br />
Fox was criticized for taking members of his staff to a Whitehall pub after<br />
the British intervention in Libya. “Dr. Fox, a sociable type, pointed out that<br />
he had not drunk alcohol during Lent, only breaking his fast over Libya. I<br />
dont think it was unreasonable, he said. Its a bit like asking <strong>Churchill</strong> if he<br />
regrets having a drink during World War II.”<br />
Labour MPs quickly homed in, Kirkup wrote: Shadow Defence Minister<br />
Kevan Jones said, “This is yet another demonstration of the over-inflated<br />
opinion Liam Fox has of himself.” Michael Dugher, his colleague, added,<br />
“Liam Fox is no <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>.” Ah well, better men than you, Fox. <br />
Editor’s response: Thank you for<br />
the gracious comments, under the circumstances!<br />
We were wrong about the<br />
1953 stroke; see Errata, page 7. Those<br />
interested in Mrs. White-Smith’s talks<br />
should email henry@woosier.co.uk.<br />
DR. WHO<br />
Although not especially a Dr.<br />
Who fan, I have seen the Cabinet War<br />
Rooms episode and “The Making of<br />
Dr. Who.” So I found the Dr. Who<br />
exam answer (FH 150: 8) a refreshing<br />
amusement. This web page describes<br />
“River Song” and near the end,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>'s role in getting the Van<br />
Gogh painting, and the “Pandora<br />
Opening”: http://bit.ly/hxyt02.<br />
GRACE FILBY, REIGATE, SURREY<br />
Dr. Who has always had a special<br />
love for Britain and the Monarchy. In<br />
.<br />
the David Tennant series, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
calls him on a phone in the Tardis and<br />
he flits back to World War II to help.<br />
He's rumored to have had an affair<br />
with the Virgin Queen Elizabeth,<br />
revealed when he meets Elizabeth X (a<br />
gun-toting gal who saves his bacon).<br />
But I believe the Van Gogh painting<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> gives Dr. Who is in a later<br />
series which ended in December 2010,<br />
and is only seen as part of a flashback.<br />
This is cool to read!<br />
CHARLOTTE THIBAULT, CONCORD, N.H<br />
DISLOYAL TOASTS<br />
At the March Charleston meeting<br />
it came to my attention that several<br />
present refused a request to give the<br />
Loyal Toast to the President of the<br />
United States, and one even admitted<br />
it. The context of that rejection was<br />
clearly intense personal dislike (stronger<br />
words were used) for the incumbent.<br />
Rude behavior is not limited to<br />
the present. I understand that in 1986<br />
a prominent member was heard to<br />
toast “The Presidency,” while in 1998<br />
there were shouts of “No!” and a few<br />
years later “Bush lied!” Perhaps 1986<br />
was forgivable: the toast is to an Office<br />
of State. But not so the other instances.<br />
I leave it to readers’ imaginations<br />
to speculate how <strong>Churchill</strong> would have<br />
characterized such behavior. He had no<br />
truck with petty personal politics.<br />
Loyalty to the office—monarch, prime<br />
minister, president, whatever—was a<br />
hallmark of his character and style.<br />
Lacking his way with words, I will<br />
simply say that, if these stories are true,<br />
I am ashamed of the persons involved,<br />
and of their disgraceful and fundamentally<br />
unpatriotic action.<br />
WARREN F. KIMBALL, JOHN ISLAND, S.C. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 5
DAT E L I N E S<br />
CHURCHILL ON THE ROYAL WEDDING<br />
LONDON, OCTOBER 22ND, 1947— “I am in<br />
entire accord with what the Prime<br />
Minister has said about Princess<br />
Elizabeth and about the qualities<br />
which she has already shown, to<br />
use his words, ‘of unerring graciousness<br />
and understanding and<br />
of human simplicity.’<br />
He is indeed right in declaring that<br />
these are among the characteristics of<br />
the Royal House. I trust that everything<br />
that is appropriate will be done<br />
by His Majesty's Government to mark<br />
this occasion of national rejoicing.<br />
‘One touch of nature makes the whole<br />
world kin,’ and millions will welcome<br />
this joyous event as a flash of colour<br />
on the hard road we have to travel.<br />
From the bottom of our hearts, the<br />
good wishes and good will of the<br />
British nation flow out to the Princess<br />
and to the young sailor who are so<br />
soon to be united in the bonds of holy<br />
matrimony. That they may find true<br />
happiness together and be guided on<br />
the paths of duty and honour is the<br />
prayer of all.”<br />
—WSC (HIS QUOTATION IS FROM<br />
SHAKESPEARE’S TROILUS AND CRESSIDA)<br />
LONDON, APRIL 29TH, 2011— If the Great<br />
Man woke up from his “black velvet—<br />
eternal sleep,” perhaps to enjoy a cigar<br />
and a cognac during the pageantry in<br />
London, he might have felt a sense of<br />
satisfaction, and invoked his favorite<br />
Boer expression, Alles sal reg kom—<br />
“All will come right.” The words he<br />
spoke sixty-four years ago at another<br />
Royal Wedding have stood the test of<br />
time. “We could not have had a better<br />
King,” he told Anthony<br />
Montague Browne in 1953:<br />
“And now we have this<br />
splendid Queen.”<br />
The road has indeed<br />
been hard these six decades<br />
of her reign, but “unerring<br />
graciousness” and “human<br />
simplicity” have marked her<br />
every step along the way.<br />
We wish the couple a happy<br />
life and a sense of responsibility.<br />
Live long, and<br />
prosper. RML<br />
FALSE ALARM AT<br />
33 ECCLESTON SQUARE<br />
LONDON, FEBRUARY 21ST— Stefan<br />
Buczacki, author of <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
Chartwell (FH 138), left home to give<br />
a talk on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s homes to a civic<br />
society. “I returned to find an alarming<br />
email sent a few minutes after my<br />
departure to the effect that <strong>Churchill</strong>'s<br />
former London house at 33 Eccleston<br />
Square had been destroyed by fire<br />
during the day. The London Fire<br />
Brigade confirmed that there had<br />
indeed been a major fire in Eccleston<br />
Square but the neighbouring house to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s former home at Number<br />
33 was the one affected; terrible for<br />
the owners, but a relief for historians.<br />
“<strong>Churchill</strong> took over 33<br />
Eccleston Square in March 1909 after<br />
selling his first home at 12 Bolton<br />
Street. The Square was created in 1835<br />
by Thomas Cubitt, who took a lease<br />
from the Duke of Westminster to<br />
provide rather grand neo-classical<br />
houses for the aristocracy and successful<br />
professional classes. Number 33<br />
is a typical property, a gracious family<br />
home on four floors. The cost to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was £200 per year with the<br />
option of purchasing a 65-year ground<br />
lease for £2000. It played a most<br />
important part in his life and he<br />
owned it for seven years. It was to<br />
Eccleston Square that he returned in<br />
the evening of 3 January 1911 after<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 6<br />
Quotation of the Season<br />
ll these schemes and crimes...are<br />
“A bringing upon him and upon all<br />
who belong to his system a retribution<br />
which many of us will live to see. The<br />
story is not yet finished, but it will not be<br />
so long. We are on his track, and so are<br />
our friends across the Atlantic Ocean....<br />
If he cannot destroy us, we will surely<br />
destroy him and all his gang, and all their<br />
works. Therefore, have hope and faith, for<br />
all will come right.”<br />
—WSC, BROADCAST TO THE FRENCH PEOPLE,<br />
LONDON, 21 OCTOBER 1940<br />
personally observing the famous Siege<br />
of Sidney Street (last issue, page 34)<br />
in his capacity as Home Secretary.<br />
“From early 1913 the house<br />
was leased to the Foreign Secretary,<br />
Sir Edward Grey, when the<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s moved to the First Lord of<br />
the Admiralty’s official residence at<br />
Admiralty House. They returned to<br />
the Square in late 1916 and finally<br />
disposed of the lease in late May<br />
1918—rather surprisingly to the<br />
Labour Party, who wanted it as<br />
offices and paid <strong>Churchill</strong> £2350 for<br />
the lease and £50 for his carpets.”<br />
The escape of 33 Eccleston<br />
Square leaves 2 Sussex Square as the<br />
only one of <strong>Churchill</strong>'s former homes<br />
to have been destroyed. It was<br />
damaged beyond repair in an air raid<br />
on the night of 9 March 1941.<br />
PRAETORIAN GUARDS<br />
LONDON, APRIL 1ST— Prime Minister<br />
David Cameron has started to keep<br />
tabs on backbench Tory MPs by<br />
joining them for roast beef in the<br />
House of Commons Members’<br />
Dining Room every Wednesday<br />
lunchtime. But the schmoozing has<br />
its limits, reports the Daily Mail:<br />
“When voluble troublemakers such as<br />
Bill Cash or [Sir <strong>Winston</strong>’s grandson]<br />
Nicholas Soames loom, a praetorian<br />
guard of young Cameroons forms a<br />
circle around the PM so he can<br />
munch his Yorkshire in peace.”
Nelson Peltz, Jeffrey Immelt, Rabbi<br />
Marvin Hier and Larry Misel with award.<br />
WIESENTHAL HONORS<br />
NEW YORK, MARCH 30TH— The awards that<br />
pursued Sir <strong>Winston</strong> during his lifetime<br />
continue. Tonight about 500<br />
supporters of the Simon Wiesenthal<br />
Center presented the Center’s Medal of<br />
Valor posthumously to Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, Hiram Bingham IV and<br />
Pope John Paul II. The Humanitarian<br />
Award was given to General Electric<br />
chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt.<br />
At a pre-dinner reception at the<br />
Mandarin Oriental hotel, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre chairman Laurence Geller<br />
accepted the medal on behalf of the<br />
late Prime Minister: “Accepting an<br />
award on behalf of <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
can only make me feel like a midget.”<br />
Accepting on behalf of the late<br />
Pope, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, Papal<br />
Nuncio to the United States, said, “I<br />
feel a little bit at home when I am<br />
among Jews. I know their history, their<br />
beliefs and their hopes for the future.<br />
They have given humanity the idea for<br />
a spiritual God which has elevated the<br />
human spirit.” “What about their<br />
bagels” a reporter asked. “Well,” he<br />
said, “As a good Italian, I always prefer<br />
Italian food.”<br />
Robert Bingham accepted the<br />
award for his father, a U.S. diplomat<br />
who enabled more than 2500 Jews to<br />
escape the Holocaust. He attended<br />
with his wife, sister and brother-in-law,<br />
all wearing Hiram Bingham pins.“My<br />
father placed humanity above career,”<br />
he said. “He believed that there was<br />
that of the divinity in every human<br />
being. And he left us a lesson, and that<br />
is to stand up to evil.”<br />
—LIZZIE SIMON, WALL STREET JOURNAL;<br />
FULL ARTICLE: HTTP://ON.WSJ.COM/FFROZI<br />
A PORNY ISSUE<br />
NEW YORK, APRIL 26TH— Another faux<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> “quote” cropped up on the<br />
blog of columnist Jonah Goldberg,<br />
writing about “A Thorny Porn-y Issue”<br />
(http://bit.ly/j7RZ7t). For collectors of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ian red herrings, here’s the<br />
alleged exchange:<br />
WSC reportedly says to a woman<br />
at a party, “Madam, would you sleep<br />
with me for £5 million” The woman<br />
stammers: “My goodness, Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>. Well, yes, I suppose.…”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> interrupts: “Would you sleep<br />
with me for £5” “Of course not! What<br />
kind of woman do you think I am”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> replies: “We’ve already established<br />
that. Now we are haggling about<br />
the price.” Cute, but no cigar.<br />
Like the equally fictitious<br />
encounter with Nancy Astor (“If I were<br />
married to you, I’d put poison in your<br />
coffee”…“If I were married to you, I’d<br />
drink it”—actually between Astor and<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s friend F.E. Smith, who was<br />
much faster off the cuff—this putdown<br />
cannot be found in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
canon or memoirs by his colleagues<br />
and family. This hasn’t prevented it<br />
working its way into spurious quotation<br />
books, and, of course, the Web.<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> usually treated<br />
women with Victorian gallantry. He was<br />
so dazzled by Vivien Leigh, star of Gone<br />
with the Wind, that he became uncharacteristically<br />
tongue-tied. When he met<br />
actress Merle Oberon on a beach in the<br />
South of France after WW2, he turned<br />
somersaults in the water. Prurient jests<br />
were not in his make-up.<br />
GETTING THE BOOT<br />
LONDON, APRIL 2ND— It’s been a hallowed<br />
custom for years, but now MPs have<br />
been ordered to stop rubbing the foot<br />
of the imposing bronze statue of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> as they enter the<br />
Commons Chamber. It<br />
wore a hole in the great<br />
man’s left foot. It has<br />
now been restored and a<br />
strict instruction has<br />
gone out to MPs to<br />
keep off.<br />
—DAILY MAIL; FULL<br />
ARTICLE AT<br />
http://bit.ly/lsw1it.<br />
TERRY McGARRY<br />
ENCINO, CALIF., APRIL 26TH— Terry<br />
McGarry, 72, died today of a rare brain<br />
disease. A longtime<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ian, Los<br />
Angeles Times editor<br />
and former UPI<br />
foreign correspondent,<br />
he was a<br />
raconteur extraordinaire,<br />
who loved<br />
nothing better than<br />
traveling cross country to <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
conferences with his wife Marlane on<br />
their BMW motorcycle, only to don<br />
black tie for the formal dinners. The<br />
McGarrys served on the 2001 San<br />
Diego conference committee, a challenging<br />
operation in the wake of 9/11.<br />
Steve Padilla of the Times wrote<br />
that Terry was “one of those old school<br />
journalists who covered just about<br />
everything—wars, the assassination of<br />
President Kennedy, the trial of Jack<br />
Ruby.” Terry was in the room in Dallas<br />
when Ruby shot Kennedy’s killer, Lee<br />
Harvey Oswald.<br />
Terry was a keen follower of<br />
<strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong>. His last letter to the<br />
editor commented on the “Some Issues<br />
about Issues” in FH 133: “It needed to<br />
be said and was said quite well.”<br />
“We will also remember that<br />
Terry could make a reader laugh,”<br />
Padilla wrote. He left UPI in 1983<br />
saying that reporting is “like sex: it’s<br />
worth doing well, but sooner or later<br />
you have to stop and eat.” Our sympathies<br />
to Marlane and his family. As<br />
WSC wrote of Joseph Chamberlain:<br />
“One mark of a great man is the power<br />
of making a lasting impression on the<br />
people he meets.” RML<br />
ERRATA, FH 150<br />
Paga 47: At the end of “Dev’s<br />
Dread Disciples,” for “diffuse” read<br />
“defuse.” Thanks for this catch to<br />
Sidney Allinson of Victoria, B.C.<br />
Page 50: Barbara Langworth<br />
wishes to note that her review of My<br />
Years with the <strong>Churchill</strong>s incorrectly<br />
stated that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s 1953 stroke was<br />
omitted (see “Fond Memories,” page<br />
5). It was the editor (as usual) who<br />
misunderstood and added this note to<br />
her text. Sorry. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 7
What Is Left of the Special Relationship<br />
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH, EDITOR<br />
When the 2011<br />
London <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Conference organizers<br />
asked for an issue of <strong>Finest</strong><br />
<strong>Hour</strong> devoted to their<br />
theme, my first reaction was<br />
superficial. What is left of<br />
the Special Relationship for<br />
which <strong>Churchill</strong> strove, at<br />
the expense of British power<br />
and independence, believing<br />
there were greater things at<br />
stake than the Empire<br />
Confined to the area of<br />
foreign relations, not a lot.<br />
Forget the extremists<br />
who say America is the only<br />
country to have gone from<br />
barbarism to decadence<br />
without an intervening period<br />
of civilization; or that Britain<br />
has done nothing for<br />
America except to require<br />
rescue from two cataclysms.<br />
Forget the symbolism of an<br />
American president<br />
returning a <strong>Churchill</strong> bust<br />
loaned to his predecessor—<br />
which in fact was perfectly<br />
understandable (<strong>Finest</strong><br />
<strong>Hour</strong> 142: 7-8).<br />
Forget all that.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> rejected such<br />
superficial musings in<br />
Virginia in 1946, when<br />
he quoted an English<br />
nobleman, who had said<br />
Britain would have to<br />
become the forty-ninth<br />
state; and an American<br />
editor, who had said the<br />
U.S. might be asked to<br />
rejoin the British Empire. “It<br />
seems to me, and I dare say it<br />
seems to you,” <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
told the Virginia Assembly,<br />
“that the path of wisdom<br />
lies somewhere between<br />
these scarecrow extremes.”<br />
Scarecrow extremes are<br />
one thing, facts another. In<br />
the main, U.S. policy since<br />
the war has been to downplay<br />
the British<br />
connection, or even the<br />
idea that Britain matters:<br />
not only to encourage<br />
the “Winds of Change”<br />
which swept away the<br />
Empire, but the devaluation<br />
of everything from<br />
sterling to British independence<br />
of action.<br />
The recent thrust of<br />
American foreign policy<br />
has been to nudge Britain<br />
into a European federation,<br />
no form of which <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
ever endorsed. Oh, the U.S.<br />
has been quite willing to<br />
count on its “closest friend”<br />
when invading Iraq in 1991,<br />
or Afghanistan ten years<br />
later, or in the operations,<br />
whatever they are, in Libya<br />
at the moment. But reciprocal<br />
support of London by<br />
Washington has been fairly<br />
uncommon.<br />
The only period since<br />
the war when the intergovernmental<br />
Special<br />
Relationship seemed to<br />
resume its wartime inti-<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 8
PAGE OPPOSITE: Roosevelt and <strong>Churchill</strong> at Casablanca, Morocco,<br />
February 1943; John F. Kennedy and Harold Macmillan aboard the<br />
Presidents yacht Honey Fitz, Washington, April 1961; Ronald Reagan<br />
and Margaret Thatcher at Camp David, December 1984.<br />
macy was when the respective heads of government were<br />
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher; when America<br />
abandoned traditional anti-colonialism and backed Britain<br />
in the Falklands war. The British Prime Minister repaid that<br />
gesture in August 1990, as Iraq was invading Kuwait, when<br />
she sent her famous message to Reagan’s successor: “George,<br />
this is no time to go wobbly.”<br />
But the Reagan-Thatcher years fade into the blue distance<br />
of the Middle Ages, America reverts to earlier policies, and<br />
the State Department now calls the Falklands the “Malvinas.”<br />
When Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the White<br />
House in 2009, there was no trip to Camp David, no state<br />
dinner, no joint press conference. In London, an aide to the<br />
U.S. administration thought it right to explain to the Daily<br />
Telegraph: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just<br />
the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You<br />
shouldn’t expect special treatment.”<br />
The President and Prime Minister seemed to improve<br />
the atmosphere in London this May by giving the relationhip<br />
a new name: “Ours is not just a special relationship, it is an<br />
essential relationship.” (“An” or “the” Is it more essential<br />
than others, i.e., special They didn’t elaborate.)<br />
The 2011 <strong>Churchill</strong> Conference has able critics to<br />
document the one-sided Special Relationship between governments.<br />
Piers Brendon’s Decline and Fall of the British<br />
Empire tracks the end of a domain that once spanned a<br />
quarter of the world, a process welcomed by Washington.<br />
Our main argument with John Charmley, years ago (FH<br />
79-81-82-83), was over a very brief section of his <strong>Churchill</strong>:<br />
The End of Glory, suggesting that Britain should have<br />
backed away from the Hitler war. His sequel, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Grand Alliance, on Washington’s postwar effort to dismantle<br />
British power, drew few quibbles from us. Confined<br />
only to inter-government relations, we would come not to<br />
praise the Special Relationship, but to bury it.<br />
Is it dead then<br />
No.<br />
Times change. Presidents and Prime Ministers come and<br />
go. None can change the fundamentals, observed by<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> at Harvard in 1943: “Law, language, literature—<br />
these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of<br />
what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially<br />
to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial<br />
justice, and above all the love of personal freedom, or as<br />
Kipling put it: ‘Leave to live by no man’s leave underneath<br />
the law’—these are common conceptions on both sides of<br />
the ocean among the English-speaking peoples.”<br />
Perhaps there is less love of personal freedom, as Mark<br />
Steyn argues: “A gargantuan bureaucratized parochialism<br />
leavened by litigiousness and political correctness is a scale<br />
of decline no developed nation has yet attempted.” But if<br />
that is so, the decline is equally precipitous.<br />
By circumstance of history—more than through any specific<br />
actions of <strong>Churchill</strong> or Attlee, Roosevelt or<br />
Truman—international leadership after the war passed to<br />
the United States. As Raymond Seitz asserts herein, the<br />
world (though it doesn’t always accept it) “is incapable of<br />
serious action without the American catalyst.” This changes<br />
nothing about the congruence of heritage, culture, politics<br />
and commerce central to America and Britain.<br />
You see this congruence in all manner of public policy,<br />
Ambassador Seitz writes, “from welfare reform to school<br />
reform, and from zero-tolerance policing to pension management…in<br />
every scholarly pursuit from archaeology to<br />
zoology, in every field of science and research, and in every<br />
social movement from environmentalism to feminism. You<br />
see it in financial regulation and corporate governance…at<br />
every point along the cultural spectrum…You see it in the<br />
big statistics of trade and investment.” And you see it—if<br />
we may digress to our own sphere—in the combination of<br />
British and American expertise that is developing the<br />
massive <strong>Churchill</strong> Archives into an unprecedented tool for<br />
researching Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s life and times.<br />
The real Special Relationship remains. “The United<br />
States and United Kingdom influence each other’s intellectual<br />
development like no other two countries,” Seitz adds.<br />
“And it is here, I suspect—where the old truth lies—that we<br />
will discover answers about our joint future in a changing,<br />
global world.”<br />
A thing to be avoided at the coming Conference is<br />
concentrating exclusively, or even too deeply, on the relationships<br />
between British and American governments.<br />
There is much more to the Special Relationship than that.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> saw this in the early 1900s. We see it still in the<br />
early 2000s. We would be fools to ignore it.<br />
Many of these affinities <strong>Churchill</strong> limned long ago at<br />
Harvard, telling his American audience that it would find in<br />
Britain “good comrades to whom you are united by other<br />
ties besides those of State policy and public need.” Seven<br />
decades on, no <strong>Churchill</strong>ian with experience on both sides<br />
of the Atlantic would gainsay him. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 9
T H E S P E C I A L R E L A T I O N S H I P<br />
The Power of Words and Machines<br />
In the 21st century <strong>Churchill</strong>s hope, as expressed at Harvard in 1943 and at M.I.T. in 1949,<br />
has the potential to be realized by technology he never knew, but knew would come.<br />
A L L E N<br />
P A C K W O O D<br />
________________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Packwood is Director of the <strong>Churchill</strong> Archives Centre, Cambridge<br />
and Executive Director of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre United Kingdom. A<br />
longtime contributor to <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong>, he is chairman of the October<br />
2011 International <strong>Churchill</strong> Conference in London.<br />
CHURCHILL AT 33: Already the author of nine books, <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
soon to hold his first Cabinet position, President of the Board of Trade,<br />
when he addressed the Authors Club in February 1908. He spoke of<br />
the freedom and power of the pen—or today perhaps the keyboard.<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> is justly celebrated as a master of<br />
the written and spoken word. His own career was<br />
launched and sustained by his pen, which gave him an<br />
incredible freedom and power. As early as 17 February<br />
1908, addressing the Author’s Club of London, he chose to<br />
emphasise the freedom of the writer: “He is the sovereign of<br />
an Empire, self-supporting, self contained. No-one can<br />
sequestrate his estates. No-one can deprive him of his stock<br />
in trade; no-one can force him to exercise his faculty against<br />
his will; no-one can prevent him exercising it as he chooses.<br />
The pen is the great liberator of men and nations.”<br />
What is generally less well known is that he was also<br />
passionate about the potential of science and technology.<br />
He lived in an age of great technological change, and he<br />
embraced it. As a young man, he not only learnt to drive,<br />
but even took flying lessons, taking to the cockpit at a time<br />
when to do so was both pioneering and dangerous. In his<br />
early political life he helped to develop the Royal Naval Air<br />
Service, pushed through the modernisation of the British<br />
Fleet and its conversion from coal to oil, and sponsored<br />
research into the land battleships that would become the<br />
tank. Once convinced of the value of a particular project, he<br />
would often assume the role of its most passionate advocate.<br />
On 31 March 1949, he spoke at the Massachusetts<br />
Institute of Technology on “The 20th Century: Its Promise<br />
and Its Realization.” The theme of his speech was the contrast<br />
between the promise of scientific discoveries and the<br />
terrible weapons and wars they had actually delivered. Yet<br />
even after the carnage of two world wars, and when faced<br />
with the horrors of atomic annihilation, he refused to be<br />
too pessimistic, seeing science as the servant of man rather<br />
than man as the servant of science, and advocating stronger<br />
Anglo-American relations within the new United Nations as<br />
the best way of securing the benefits of scientific progress<br />
and guaranteeing peace.<br />
He predicted that the Soviet regime would be unable<br />
to sustain its grip on its people forever, and that while<br />
“Science no doubt could if sufficiently perverted exterminate<br />
us all,…it is not in the power of material forces in any<br />
period which the youngest here tonight may take into prac-<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 10
tical account, to alter the main elements in human nature<br />
or restrict the infinite variety of forms in which the soul and<br />
the genius of the human race can and will express itself.”<br />
This was a message of hope, a statement of belief in the<br />
possibility of progress through technological advance.<br />
We cannot presume to know how <strong>Churchill</strong> would<br />
respond to the world today, but we can be confident that he<br />
would want his words to be heard, and the lessons of his era<br />
to be studied, and that he would look to new technology as<br />
a means of reaching the widest possible audience. This after<br />
all is the man who said, upon accepting his Honorary<br />
Degree at Harvard University in September 1943: “It would<br />
certainly be a grand convenience for us all to be able to<br />
move freely about the world—as we shall be able to move<br />
more freely than ever before as the science of the world<br />
develops…and be able to find everywhere a medium, albeit<br />
primitive, of intercourse and understanding.”<br />
It is interesting to note that at the beginning of the<br />
21st century, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s hope has the potential to be<br />
realised through the development of the Internet, which<br />
uses English as its main language and allows truly global<br />
communications. I am not crediting <strong>Churchill</strong> with foreseeing<br />
the World Wide Web, but he did end this section of<br />
his Harvard speech with the observation that “the empires<br />
of the future are the empires of the mind.”<br />
The challenge facing The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre, and the<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> museums, archives and foundations with which it<br />
works, is to harness new technology to ensure that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s words and actions are presented to the next generation<br />
in a form relevant to them. There will always be a<br />
place for conferences and lectures, for the cut and thrust of<br />
debate; there will always be magic in seeing treasures like<br />
the final page of the “finest hour” speech; the actual sheet<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had in his hand in the House of Commons on 18<br />
June 1940, annotated with his own last-minute changes. Yet<br />
now there is also the ability to capture and present such<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> exhibitions, events and resources to a huge potential<br />
audience, over a longer timescale, using the Internet.<br />
To do this properly will not be cheap or easy. It will<br />
require professional partnerships, with educators who know<br />
how to tailor and present the content for use by students,<br />
and with digital designers and publishers who know how to<br />
develop and present on-line resources. It will require networking,<br />
branding, marketing, publicity and constant<br />
innovation to make sure that the right <strong>Churchill</strong> sites are<br />
accessible and visible, and able to act as beacons in a jungle<br />
of information. But we should take our lead from Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>, the Victorian cavalry officer who embraced new<br />
technology, and like him we should use the power of both<br />
words and machines. <br />
“The outstanding feature of the 20th century has been the enormous expansion in<br />
the numbers who are given the opportunity to share in the larger and more varied life<br />
which in previous periods was reserved for the few and<br />
for the very few. This process must continue at an<br />
increasing rate....Scientists should never underrate the<br />
deep-seated qualities of human nature and how,<br />
repressed in one direction, they will certainly break out<br />
in another. The genus homo—if I may display my<br />
Latin...remains as Pope described him 200 years ago:<br />
Placed on this Isthmus of a middle State,<br />
A being darkly wise and rudely great,<br />
Created half to rise and half to fall;<br />
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;<br />
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;<br />
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.”<br />
—WSC, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY,<br />
BOSTON, 31 MARCH 1949<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 11
T H E S P E C I A L R E L A T I O N S H I P<br />
Why Study <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
The American Alliance, for One Thing<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s modernity of thought, originality, humanity, constructiveness and foresight find<br />
no better expression than in his lifelong quest for close relations with the United States.<br />
M A R T I N G I L B E R T<br />
study <strong>Churchill</strong>” I am often asked.<br />
“Surely he has nothing to say to us today”<br />
“Why<br />
Yet in my own work, as I open file after file<br />
of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s archive, from his entry into Government in<br />
1905 to his retirement in 1955 (a fifty-year span), and my<br />
present focus on completing the 1942 <strong>Churchill</strong> War Papers<br />
volume, I am continually surprised by the truth of his assertions,<br />
the modernity of<br />
his thought, the originality<br />
of his mind, the<br />
constructiveness of his<br />
proposals, his<br />
humanity, and, most<br />
remarkable of all, his<br />
foresight.<br />
Nothing was<br />
more central to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s view of the<br />
world than the importance<br />
of the closest<br />
possible relations with<br />
the United States. “I<br />
delight in my<br />
American ancestry,” he<br />
once said. Not just his<br />
American mother, but<br />
his personal experiences<br />
in traveling<br />
through the United<br />
States, starting in 1895<br />
when he was just twenty-one, gave him a remarkable sense<br />
of American strength and potential.<br />
On 13 May 1901, when Britain and the United States<br />
were on a collision course over the Venezuela-British Guiana<br />
boundary, <strong>Churchill</strong> told the House of Commons, in only<br />
the third time he had spoken there: “Evil would be the<br />
counselors, dark would be the day when we embarked on<br />
Chris check<br />
FH122 files for<br />
high-def .jpg<br />
that most foolish, futile and fatal of all wars—a war with<br />
the United States.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> held his last Cabinet fifty-four years later,<br />
on 5 April 1955. In his farewell remarks to his Ministers, he<br />
said: “Never be separated from the Americans.” For him,<br />
Anglo-American friendship and cooperation, of the closest<br />
sort, was the cornerstone of the survival, political, economic<br />
and moral, of the<br />
Western World.<br />
Although<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was never<br />
blind to American<br />
weaknesses and mistakes<br />
with regard to the<br />
wider world, his faith<br />
was strong that when<br />
the call came, as it did<br />
twice in his lifetime,<br />
for America to come to<br />
the rescue of western<br />
values and indeed of<br />
western civilisation, it<br />
would do so, whatever<br />
the initial hesitations.<br />
His foresight<br />
covered every aspect of<br />
our lives, both at home<br />
and abroad. He was<br />
convinced that man<br />
had the power—once<br />
he acquired the will—to combat and uproot all the evils<br />
that raged around him, whether it was the evils of poverty<br />
or the evils of mutual destruction. “What vile and utter<br />
folly and barbarism it all is”—such was his verdict on war.<br />
Once a war had been thrust on any nation, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
was a leading advocate of fighting it until it was won, until<br />
the danger of subjugation and tyranny had been brought to<br />
CHRISTMAS 1944: Several Canadian firms commissioned this calendar artwork,<br />
which appeared in color on the cover of <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 122, Spring 2004.<br />
________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
The Rt. Hon. Sir Martin Gilbert CBE, the official biographer of Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> since 1968, has published<br />
almost as many words on his subject as <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote, and has honored <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> with his contributions for nearly thirty<br />
years. This article, first published in FH 60 in 1988, has been revised and expanded in accord with the theme of this issue.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 12
an end. He was equally certain that, by foresight and<br />
wisdom, wars could be averted: provided threatened states<br />
banded together and built up their collective strength. This<br />
is what he was convinced that the Western world had failed<br />
to do in the Baldwin-Chamberlain era, from 1933 to 1939.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> always regarded the Second World War as<br />
what he called the “unnecessary war,” which could in his<br />
view have been averted by the united stand of those endangered<br />
by a tyrannical system. Forty years later, in the Cold<br />
War, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s precept was followed. The result is that the<br />
prospects for a peaceful world were much enhanced.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> also believed in what he called (in 1919)<br />
“the harmonious disposition of the world among its<br />
peoples.” This recognition of the rights of nationalities and<br />
minorities is something that, even now, the leading nations<br />
are addressing. One of his hopes (1921) was for a Kurdish<br />
National Home, to protect the Kurds from any future threat<br />
in Baghdad. In 1991 and again in 2003, Britain, along with<br />
the United States, took up arms against that threat; and in<br />
2011 the two countries are a leading part of the coalition to<br />
protect the people of Libya from another tyrant.<br />
Democracy was <strong>Churchill</strong>’s friend; tyranny was his<br />
foe. When, in 1919, he called the Bolshevik leader Lenin<br />
the “embodiment of evil,” many people thought it was a<br />
typical <strong>Churchill</strong> exaggeration. “How unfair,” they<br />
exclaimed, “how unworthy of a statesman.” While I was in<br />
Kiev in 1991, I watched the scaffolding go up around<br />
Lenin’s statue. The icon of seventy years of Communist rule<br />
was about to be dismantled, his life’s work denounced as<br />
evil by the very people who had been its sponsors, and its<br />
victims. They knew that <strong>Churchill</strong> had been right from the<br />
outset: Lenin was evil, and his system was a cruel denial of<br />
individual liberty.<br />
From the first days of Communist rule in Russia,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> did not doubt for a moment that the Communist<br />
system would be a blight on free enterprise and a terrible<br />
restraint on all personal freedoms. Yet when he warned the<br />
American people in 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri,<br />
that an “Iron Curtain” had descended across Europe,<br />
cutting off nine former independent States from freedom,<br />
he was denounced as a mischief-maker.<br />
Whatever Britain’s dispute or disagreement with the<br />
United States might be, <strong>Churchill</strong> was firm in refusing to<br />
allow Anglo-American relations to be neglected. In 1932 he<br />
told an American audience, in words that he was to repeat<br />
in spirit throughout the next quarter of a century: “Let our<br />
common tongue, our common basic law, our joint heritage<br />
of literature and ideals, the red tie of kinship, become the<br />
sponge of obliteration of all the unpleasantness of the past.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was always an optimist with regard to<br />
human affairs. One of his favourite phrases, a Boer saying<br />
that he had heard in South Africa in 1899, was: “All will<br />
come right.” He was convinced, even during the Stalinist<br />
repressions in Russia, that Communism could not survive.<br />
Throughout his life he had faith in the power of all peoples<br />
to control and improve their own destiny, without the interference<br />
of outside forces. This faith was expressed most<br />
far-sightedly in 1950, at the height of the Cold War, when<br />
Communist regimes were denying basic human rights to<br />
the people of nine capital cities: Warsaw, Prague, Vilnius,<br />
Riga, Tallinn, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia and East Berlin.<br />
At that time of maximum repression, at the height of<br />
the Stalin era, these were <strong>Churchill</strong>’s words, in Boston:<br />
“The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with<br />
falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of<br />
time, but the soul of man thus held in trance, or frozen in a<br />
long night, can be awakened by a spark coming from God<br />
knows where, and in a moment the whole structure of lies<br />
and oppression is on trial for its life.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> went on to tell his audience: “Captive<br />
peoples need never despair.” Today the captive peoples of<br />
Eastern Europe have emerged from their long night. The<br />
Berlin Wall has been torn down. Tyrants have been swept<br />
aside. The once-dominant Communist Party is now an<br />
illegal organisation throughout much of what used to be the<br />
Soviet empire.<br />
In every sphere of human endeavour, <strong>Churchill</strong> foresaw<br />
the dangers and potential for evil to triumph. Those<br />
dangers are widespread in the world today. He also<br />
pointed the way forward to the solutions for tomorrow.<br />
That is one reason why his life is worthy of our attention.<br />
Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an<br />
anachronism with out-of-date opinions. In portraying him<br />
thus, it is they who are the losers, for <strong>Churchill</strong> was a man<br />
of quality: a good guide for our troubled decade, and for<br />
the generation now reaching adulthood.<br />
One of the most important and relevant lessons that<br />
we can learn from <strong>Churchill</strong> today is, I believe, the importance<br />
of our democracies and democratic values, something<br />
that we in the West often take for granted. On 8 December<br />
1944, when the Communist Greeks were attempting to<br />
seize power in Athens, <strong>Churchill</strong> told the House of<br />
Commons: “Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the<br />
street by a man with a Tommy gun. I trust the people, the<br />
mass of the people, in almost any country, but I like to<br />
make sure that it is the people and not a gang of bandits<br />
from the mountains or from the countryside who think that<br />
by violence they can overturn constituted authority, in some<br />
cases ancient Parliaments, Governments and States.”<br />
I would like to end with the seven questions <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
first asked publicly in August 1944, when he was in Italy,<br />
watching the former Fascist country grappling with the<br />
challenges of creating a new government and framework for<br />
its laws and constitution. <strong>Churchill</strong> set out seven questions<br />
to the Italian people that they “should answer,” in his<br />
words, “if they wanted to know whether they had replaced<br />
fascism by freedom.” The questions were: >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 13
WHY STUDY CHURCHILL...<br />
“Is there the right to free expression of opinion and of<br />
opposition and criticism of the Government of the day<br />
“Have the people the right to turn out a Government<br />
of which they disapprove, and are constitutional means provided<br />
by which they can make their will apparent<br />
“Are their courts of justice free from violence by the<br />
Executive and from threats of mob violence, and free from<br />
all association with particular political parties<br />
“Will these courts administer open and well-established<br />
laws, which are associated in the human mind with<br />
the broad principles of decency and justice<br />
“Will there be fair play for poor as well as for rich, for<br />
private persons as well as for Government officials<br />
“Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties<br />
to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted<br />
“Is the ordinary peasant or workman, who is earning a<br />
living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family, free<br />
from the fear that some grim police organization under the<br />
control of a single Party, like the Gestapo, started by the<br />
Nazi and Fascist parties, will tap him on the shoulder and<br />
pack him off without fair or open trial to bondage or illtreatment<br />
“These simple, practical tests,” he added, “are some of<br />
the title deeds on which a new Italy could be founded.”<br />
After the war, <strong>Churchill</strong> was to repeat these same<br />
seven questions whenever he was asked on what freedom<br />
should be based, and on how a truly free society could be<br />
recognised. They are questions that we should learn by<br />
heart, and ask of each country that struggles to build<br />
freedom. In an ideal world, they are questions that every<br />
Member State of the United Nations should be able to<br />
answer in the affirmative. It is for the generation entering<br />
into adulthood today to try to make that happen. <br />
W I T A N D W I S D O M<br />
Reflections on America<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> never criticized America publicly. Asked in<br />
1944 if he had any complaints he replied, “Toilet<br />
paper too thin, newspapers too fat.” With close associates<br />
he was less reticent, yet he always maintained a decent<br />
respect for the motherland which claimed him as a son.<br />
His prescription for a fraternal relationship “between<br />
the two great English-speaking organizations” was regularly<br />
expressed, and he never lost faith in America’s destiny or<br />
capacity for good. His greatest disappointment in old age,<br />
one of his closest colleagues confided, was that the “special<br />
relationship” never blossomed as he had wished. Surely he<br />
would be cheered by the recent Anglo-American collaborations—and<br />
those of the broader “Anglosphere” with<br />
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and, in the 21st century,<br />
India as well.<br />
Robert Pilpel, writing in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong>, expressed the<br />
belief that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s American affinity began the day he<br />
first arrived in New York in 1895: “…a life which before<br />
1895 seemed destined to yield a narrow range of skimpy<br />
achievements became from 1895 onwards a life of glorious<br />
epitomes and stunning vindications. Credit Bourke<br />
Cockran, New York’s overflowing hospitality, the railroad<br />
journey to Tampa and back, or the rampant vitality of a<br />
nation outgrowing itself day by day. Credit whatever you<br />
will, but do not doubt that <strong>Winston</strong>’s exposure to his<br />
mother’s homeland struck a spark in his spirit. And it was<br />
this spark that illuminated the long and arduous road that<br />
would take him through triumphs and tragedies to his rendezvous<br />
with greatness.”<br />
This is a very great<br />
country my dear<br />
Jack. Not pretty or<br />
romantic but great<br />
and utilitarian. There<br />
seems to be no such<br />
thing as reverence or<br />
tradition. Everything<br />
is eminently practical and things are judged from a matter<br />
of fact standpoint. (1895)<br />
<br />
I have always thought that it ought to be the main end<br />
of English statecraft over a long period of years to cultivate<br />
good relations with the United States. (1903)<br />
<br />
England and America are divided by a great ocean of<br />
salt water, but united by an eternal bathtub of soap and<br />
water. (1903)<br />
<br />
Deep in the hearts of the people of these islands…lay<br />
the desire to be truly reconciled before all men and all<br />
history with their kindred across the Atlantic Ocean, to blot<br />
out the reproaches and redeem the blunders of a bygone<br />
age, to dwell once more in spirit with them, to stand once<br />
more in battle at their side, to create once more a union of<br />
hearts, to write once more a history in common. (1918)<br />
<br />
I felt a strong feeling of sentiment when I saw...that the<br />
Coldstream Guards and the United States Marines were<br />
standing side by side. It looked to me as if once again the<br />
great unconquerable forces of progressive and scientific civilization<br />
were recognizing all they had in common and all<br />
they would have to face in common. (1927)<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 14
We have slipped off<br />
the ledge of the precipice<br />
and are at bottom. The<br />
only thing now is not to<br />
kick each other while we<br />
are there. (1932)<br />
<br />
I wish to be Prime<br />
Minister and in close and<br />
daily communication by<br />
telephone with the<br />
President of the United<br />
States. There is nothing<br />
we could not do if we<br />
were together. (1933)<br />
<br />
The British Empire and the United States will have to<br />
be somewhat mixed up together in some of their affairs for<br />
mutual and general advantage. For my own part, looking<br />
out upon the future, I do not view the process with any<br />
misgivings. I could not stop it if I wished; no one can stop<br />
it. Like the Mississippi, it just keeps rolling along. Let it<br />
roll! Let it roll on full flood, inexorable, irresistible, benignant,<br />
to broader lands and better days. (1940)<br />
<br />
Prodigious hammer-strokes have been needed to bring<br />
us together again….Still, I avow my hope and faith, sure<br />
and inviolate, that in the days to come the British and<br />
American peoples will for their own safety and for the good<br />
of all walk together side by side in majesty, in justice, and in<br />
peace. (1941)<br />
<br />
The experience of a long life and the promptings of my<br />
blood have wrought in me conviction that there is nothing<br />
more important for the future of the world than the fraternal<br />
association of our two peoples in righteous work both<br />
in war and peace. (1943)<br />
<br />
Great Britain and the United States all one Yes, I am all<br />
for that, and you mean me to run for President<br />
(1943)...There are various little difficulties in the way.<br />
However, I have been treated so splendidly in the United<br />
States that I should be disposed, if you can amend the<br />
Constitution, seriously to consider the matter. (1932)<br />
<br />
There is no halting-place at this point. We have now<br />
reached a stage in the journey where there can be no pause.<br />
We must go on. It must be world anarchy or world order.<br />
Throughout all this ordeal and struggle which is characteristic<br />
of our age, you will find in the British Commonwealth<br />
and Empire good comrades to whom you are united by<br />
other ties besides those of State policy and public need. To a<br />
large extent, they are the ties of blood and history. Naturally<br />
I, a child of both worlds, am conscious of these. (1943)<br />
[None who took part in church services aboard HMS Prince of Wales in 1941] will forget<br />
the spectacle presented that sunlit morning on the crowded quarterdeck—the symbolism of the<br />
Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes draped side by side on the pulpit; the American and British<br />
chaplains sharing in the reading of the prayers; the highest naval, military, and air officers of<br />
Britain and the United States grouped in one body behind the President and me; the closepacked<br />
ranks of British and American sailors, completely intermingled, sharing the same books<br />
and joining fervently together in the prayers and hymns familiar to both. I chose the hymns<br />
myself....We ended with “O God Our Help in Ages Past.”<br />
…Every word seemed to stir<br />
the heart. It was a great<br />
hour to live. (1950)<br />
Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous<br />
rise of world organisation will be gained without what I<br />
have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking<br />
peoples...a special relationship between the British<br />
Commonwealth and Empire and the United States. (1946)<br />
<br />
It is not a matter of whether there is a war with<br />
China or not, but whether there is a rift between Britain<br />
and the United States or not. (1951)<br />
<br />
I have never accepted a position of subservience to the<br />
United States. They have welcomed me as the champion of the<br />
British point of view. They are a fair-minded people. (1951)<br />
<br />
Let us stick to our heroes John Bull and Uncle Sam. They<br />
never were closer together than they are now.... (1953)<br />
<br />
The British and American Democracies were slowly and<br />
painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet. (1954)<br />
<br />
Never be separated from the Americans. (1955)<br />
<br />
There is not much left for me to do in this world and I<br />
have neither the wish nor the strength to involve myself in<br />
the present political stress and turmoil. But I do believe,<br />
with unfaltering conviction, that the theme of the Anglo-<br />
American alliance is more important today than at any time<br />
since the war. (1956)<br />
<br />
I am, as you know, half American by blood, and the<br />
story of my association with that mighty and benevolent<br />
nation goes back nearly ninety years to the day of my<br />
father’s marriage. In this century of storm and tragedy I<br />
contemplate with high satisfaction the constant factor of the<br />
interwoven and upward progress of our peoples. Our comradeship<br />
and our brotherhood in war were unexampled. We<br />
stood together, and because of that fact the free world now<br />
stands. (1963) <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 15
What He Saw and Heard in Georgia<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s travels in the American South were not widely<br />
reported, but his 1932 message received receptive ears—<br />
juxtaposed with news of future wartime antagonists.<br />
W I L L I A M L. F I S H E R<br />
GEORGIA TECH: <strong>Churchill</strong> (center) reviews cadets, 24 February 1932.<br />
always made my living by my pen and by my<br />
tongue,” <strong>Churchill</strong> once remarked, and, following his<br />
“Ihave<br />
losses in the 1929 stock market crash, he labored<br />
double overtime. In February 1932 he arrived in Atlanta, on<br />
a nineteen-city lecture tour which would earn him £7500<br />
(then $35,000).* <strong>Churchill</strong> the writer, no less than the<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> the orator, was always inspired by America: this<br />
trip produced his famous essay “Land of Corn and<br />
Lobsters”; his previous journey in 1929, though ostensibly a<br />
holiday, had led to twelve articles under the title “What I<br />
Heard and Saw in America.”<br />
The Atlanta visit, and the rest of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s life,<br />
almost never came to pass. The previous December, in New<br />
York City, he’d been struck by a car while attempting to<br />
find Bernard Baruch’s apartment. Again WSC found grist<br />
for his pen: recovering in Manhattan and Nassau, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
dictated “My New York Misadventure” (FH 136) and “My<br />
Happy Days in the ‘Wet’ Bahamas” (FH 145).<br />
Resuming his lecture tour at the end of January<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> took as his topic “The Destiny of the English-<br />
Speaking Peoples.” His Atlanta appearance was set for the<br />
old Wesley Auditorium on the evening of February 23rd.<br />
The Atlanta Constitution promised he would bring “a<br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Fisher is treasurer and the immediate past-president of the<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Georgia.<br />
*Martin Gilbert, <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life (London, 1991), 504-05.<br />
message of hope and encouragement to the American<br />
people” and, given the economic climate, advised that ticket<br />
prices had been “set as low as possible consistent with<br />
meeting essential expenses.”<br />
Accompanied by his daughter Diana, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
checked into a suite at the Biltmore Hotel (now urban condominiums).<br />
The Constitution covered his lecture the next<br />
day, noting his concerns about the growing armaments and<br />
armies in Europe. “In the days of Augustus,” <strong>Churchill</strong> told<br />
Georgians, “the Roman Empire maintained the peace of the<br />
world with a force of 800,000.” But now, “on the morrow<br />
of the War to End War, armies totaling over twenty million<br />
jealously guard the frontiers of Europe.” Eventually, he contemplated,<br />
“there must come a form of unity to Europe. Yet<br />
that may not be an unmixed blessing to the world.”<br />
Returning to his main theme, <strong>Churchill</strong> admitted that<br />
“we have quarreled in the past.” But even then, he continued,<br />
“great leaders on both sides were agreed on<br />
principle. Let our common tongue, our common basic law,<br />
our joint heritage of literature and ideals, and the red tie of<br />
kinship, become the sponge of obliteration for all the<br />
unpleasantness of the past.” After all, he told his audience,<br />
“it is sometimes much safer to quarrel with a man who<br />
doesn’t understand your language….”<br />
The next day <strong>Churchill</strong> and his daughter went a few<br />
blocks north to Grant Field, on the campus of Georgia<br />
Tech, to review Army and Navy Reserve Officer Training<br />
Corps cadets and offer words of inspiration. The student<br />
newspaper reported his support of American military preparedness,<br />
and compliments to Georgia for its part in the<br />
American Civil War. (Since 1929, when he had toured the<br />
old battlefields of Virginia, <strong>Churchill</strong> had been preparing to<br />
write his History of the English-Speaking Peoples.)<br />
From Atlanta the <strong>Churchill</strong>s went to South Carolina,<br />
where they relaxed several days at the plantation home of<br />
financier Bernard Baruch. This friendship was explored at<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong> Conference in Charleston last March.<br />
Archival Discoveries<br />
Included here are perhaps the only two extant photos<br />
documenting <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Atlanta visit, both taken at<br />
Georgia Tech. The March edition of the student newspaper<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 16
JUST VISITING: With Diana at Georgia Tech. <strong>Churchill</strong> had told his<br />
Atlanta audience, “Let our common tongue, our common basic law, our<br />
joint heritage of literature and ideals, and the red tie of kinship, become<br />
the sponge of obliteration for all the unpleasantness of the past.”<br />
covered his ROTC comments, and I found the photos quite<br />
unexpectedly on a photography website. Mike Connealy of<br />
New Mexico discovered the negatives among the papers of<br />
his father-in-law, an engineering student at the time, who<br />
probably snapped them for the student newspaper.<br />
Portents of Armageddon<br />
Poring through microfilm archives of the Atlanta<br />
Constitution and Atlanta Journal, I found the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
coverage interesting—but several other events reported in<br />
the same days’ papers were nothing short of eerie and, in<br />
hindsight, prophetic.<br />
On the front page of the February 23rd Constitution<br />
was a headline: HITLER TO OPPOSE VON HINDENBURG IN<br />
GERMAN RACE. (Hitler would lose this race for President,<br />
but would then be appointed Chancellor.) This was accompanied<br />
by an article headlined CHINESE AIR BASE TOTALLY<br />
WRECKED BY JAP BOMBERS.<br />
The next day came a Constitution article entitled,<br />
HITLERITE OUSTED FROM REICHSTAG. It described how<br />
Josef Goebbels, later Hitler’s propaganda minister, had been<br />
expelled from the legislature kicking and screaming, for<br />
insulting President von Hindenburg. Goebbels had shouted<br />
at the delegates, “You do not represent Germany,” and “The<br />
man of tomorrow is coming!”<br />
To put an exclamation point on my feeling of “six<br />
degrees of separation,” I found yet another odd item, probably<br />
“filler,” buried on a back page of the February 24th<br />
Constitution, listing recent U.S. Army postings. The U.S.<br />
Army numbered only about 100,000 at this time, so it was<br />
a short list. And in it was the posting of Major George S.<br />
Patton, Jr. (cavalry) to Ft. Myer in Virginia.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, Hitler, Goebbels, Patton: all four were in<br />
the Atlanta newspapers on the same two days in 1932—<br />
over seven years before the beginning of World War II.<br />
From <strong>Churchill</strong> there was a message of hope and encouragement,<br />
and a plea for Anglo-American unity. In the then<br />
seemingly unrelated other articles we find a yet-to-be understood<br />
forecast of mighty battles to come.<br />
What other seemingly disconnected headlines in<br />
tomorrow’s paper (or iPad) will converge in future years<br />
Ponder this over your morning coffee. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 17
“Good Voyage — <strong>Churchill</strong>”<br />
Handpicked to represent the press on <strong>Churchill</strong>s Atlantic Charter summit with Roosevelt in<br />
Newfoundland in August 1941, a famous British travel writer produced a renowned wartime<br />
book: Atlantic Meeting. This is an excerpt from his account of the voyage home.<br />
H. V. M O R T O N<br />
Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
longing to see a<br />
convoy. He used to<br />
go down to the Map Room<br />
time after time and measure<br />
the distance of the nearest,<br />
and so keen was his desire to<br />
see the life blood of Britain in<br />
circulation that the Captain<br />
and First Sea Lord knew that<br />
sooner or later his wish would<br />
have to be gratified. It happened<br />
on August 15th.<br />
There was a magnificent<br />
convoy of seventy-two ships<br />
ahead of us and, as we rapidly<br />
overhauled them, Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> pointed out that a<br />
slight deflection from our<br />
course would take us into<br />
them. A wireless warning to<br />
the corvettes was accordingly<br />
sent out.<br />
The first I knew of it was when I met the signal<br />
officer poring over a code book and he seemed rather<br />
worried. He explained his problem.<br />
“The signal I’m to make to the convoy is ‘The Prime<br />
Minister wishes you the best of luck.’ But there’s no signal<br />
for Prime Minister in the International Code. The nearest is<br />
“Chief Minister of State,” which doesn’t sound a bit right.”<br />
“Is there a flag for church” I asked.<br />
“Yes.”<br />
“And hill”<br />
“I see the idea—<strong>Churchill</strong>.” He came back later with<br />
the message changed to “Good Voyage, <strong>Churchill</strong>.”<br />
“I shall spell out <strong>Churchill</strong>,” he said. “There can’t be<br />
any mistake then.”<br />
It was not until 8:30 that evening that we ran into the<br />
convoy. I was in the wardroom studying American magazine<br />
advertisements at the time. The telephone rang and George<br />
Ferguson spoke from the bridge, telling me to go out on the<br />
quarterdeck at once.<br />
I ran out and saw an<br />
amazing sight. We were<br />
racing through the middle of<br />
the convoy. There were<br />
tramps, tankers, liners and<br />
whalers, salty old tubs and<br />
cargo boats of every type, age<br />
and size on each side of us,<br />
the nearest only 200 yards<br />
away, the crews clustered on<br />
decks and fo’c’sles, waving<br />
their caps in the air and<br />
cheering like mad.<br />
Never had I seen anything<br />
like it in my life. After<br />
days on a lonely ocean, to<br />
come into this fleet of<br />
seventy-two ships travelling<br />
in long lines and covering<br />
many square miles of the<br />
Atlantic would have been<br />
exciting even in peacetime. It<br />
was like meeting a town at sea, Blackburn or Oldham, with<br />
all the chimneys smoking.<br />
Now and again a siren tried to give us the V-sign in<br />
Morse, but came to grief on the dots. Men in shirt sleeves,<br />
sailors, a few passengers, stood clustered wherever they<br />
could see us best, waving away, laughing and shouting at<br />
the top of their voices.<br />
Guarding this mighty fleet were eight little grey<br />
corvettes lifting on the swell, snapping round the flanks of<br />
the convoy like sheep dogs, scurrying up in rear to hurry on<br />
a laggard, and dashing off into the open as if they had smelt<br />
the big bad wolf.<br />
We went through with our destroyer screen at twentytwo<br />
knots. The convoy was doing eight. If they were<br />
thrilling to us, we must have been equally thrilling to them<br />
as we shot ahead with our painted guns levelled and twelve<br />
coloured flags and a pennant flying from our main foremast.<br />
The pennant at the lower yard showed that the signal<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 18
was made in the International Code. A three-flag hoist<br />
above it read, PYU—GOOD VOYAGE, and a nine-flag hoist<br />
on the port side spelt CHURCHILL.<br />
As each ship read the message we could hear the<br />
sound of cheering as we came level with them, we could see<br />
skippers laughing inside wheelhouses, trying to wave with<br />
one hand and touch off the siren with the other; and upon<br />
our bridge <strong>Churchill</strong> waving his hand in the air, making a<br />
“V” with the forefingers of his right hand, was cheering as<br />
madly as any of the men who were cheering him.<br />
As he looked over the sea from the altitude of the<br />
bridge, the Prime Mnister could see the whole convoy<br />
moving towards England. He saw it spread out for miles<br />
over the Atlantic, moving in columns. He saw ships with<br />
aeroplanes tied to their decks, he saw cargo-boats wallowing<br />
to the Plimsoll line with food and munitions, liners deep in<br />
the water with every kind of war material and tankers heavy<br />
with petrol—a stupendous and heartening sight for the<br />
leader of an island at war.<br />
Having passed through them, we turned and saw our<br />
white wake streaking backward, and we saw the ships<br />
tossing in the tidal wave of our wash. Then, to our surprise,<br />
the Prince of Wales with her destroyers began to describe a<br />
circle, and we raced back behind the convoy. Why What<br />
had happened This had happened. The Prime Minister<br />
insisted on seeing it all over again!<br />
So on we came a second time, the bright message still<br />
at our masthead, our grey guns levelled; the sea curving in<br />
two white lines from our bows; and they saw in us the<br />
majesty of British sea power as we saw in them the gallantry<br />
of the Merchant Navy. It was a grand meeting on the high<br />
seas in wartime. I doubt if there has ever been a finer. It<br />
symbolised the two great forces which have made Britain<br />
and her Empire great and powerful in the world; the two<br />
forces we must thank when we eat our bread in freedom at<br />
this hour. As I watched those merchant ships so heavily<br />
loaded pass by, I wished that everyone at home in England<br />
could have seen them too. No one, seeing those brave ships<br />
loaded with help for us passing through the battlefield of<br />
the North Atlantic, could ever again waste a crust of bread<br />
or think it smart to scrounge a pint of petrol.<br />
Again the cheers sounded as the Prince of Wales went<br />
past. “V” flags were hoisted by tramps and tankers, the deep<br />
sirens of liners and the shrill yelps of tramps sent out one<br />
dash and three misguided dots into the air of evening; and,<br />
once again, we saw the tiny cheering figures on decks and<br />
fo’c’sles as we raced across the grey sea on our way. And,<br />
looking back at them with pride and gladness in our hearts,<br />
we saw the convoy fade in the growing dusk to black dots<br />
on the skyline; then they disappeared and there remained<br />
only a smudge of smoke to tell that seventy-two ships were<br />
going home to England.<br />
Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong> watched them until the dusk hid them<br />
from view. “A delectable sight,” he said. <br />
The Meeting with President Roosevelt<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, House of Commons, 24 August 1941<br />
We had a Church parade on the Sunday in our<br />
Atlantic bay. The President came on to the quarterdeck<br />
of the Prince of Wales, where there were<br />
mingled together many hundreds of American and British<br />
sailors and marines. The sun shone bright and warm while<br />
we all sang the old hymns which are our common inheritance<br />
and which we learned as children in our homes. We sang the<br />
hymn founded on the psalm which John Hampden’s soldiers<br />
sang when they bore his body to the grave, and in which the<br />
brief, precarious span of human life is contrasted with the<br />
immutability of Him to Whom a thousand ages are but as<br />
yesterday, and as a watch in the night....<br />
When I looked upon that densely-packed congregation<br />
of fighting men of the same language, of the same<br />
faith, of the same fundamental laws and the same ideals,<br />
and now to a large extent of the same interests, and certainly<br />
in different degrees facing the same dangers, it swept<br />
across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure<br />
hope, of saving the world from measureless degradation.<br />
And so we came back across the ocean waves, uplifted<br />
in spirit, fortified in resolve. Some American destroyers<br />
which were carrying mails to the United States marines in<br />
Iceland happened to be going the same way too, so we<br />
made a goodly company at sea together.<br />
And when we were right out in mid-passage one afternoon<br />
a noble sight broke on the view. We overtook one of<br />
the convoys which carry the munitions and supplies of the<br />
New World to sustain the champions of freedom in the Old.<br />
The whole broad horizon seemed filled with ships; seventy<br />
or eighty ships of all kinds and sizes, arrayed in fourteen<br />
lines, each of which could have been drawn with a ruler,<br />
hardly a wisp of smoke, not a straggler, but all bristling with<br />
cannons and other precautions on which I will not dwell,<br />
and all surrounded by their British escorting vessels, while<br />
overhead the far-ranging Catalina air-boats soared—vigilant,<br />
protecting eagles in the sky. Then I felt that, hard and terrible<br />
and long drawn-out as this struggle may be, we shall<br />
not be denied the strength to do our duty to the end. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 19
Hands Across the Atlantic<br />
HOW EDWARD R. MURROW PROMOTED TELEVISION AND FILM SALES FOR<br />
CHURCHILLS LAST GREAT WORK, A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES<br />
F R E D G L U E C K S T E I N<br />
EDWARD R. MURROW<br />
“Dear Sam: Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
....asked me, in his usual<br />
gracious fashion, to<br />
enquire whether there<br />
might be any interest...<br />
—Ed”<br />
SAMUEL GOLDWYN<br />
In<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>:<br />
A Life,<br />
Martin Gilbert<br />
wrote that by<br />
the end of<br />
October 1932,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
completed half of<br />
the first of his<br />
Marlborough<br />
volumes and had<br />
begun to think<br />
about his next literary<br />
work, A<br />
History of the<br />
English-Speaking<br />
Peoples. 1<br />
On 22 February 1933, The New York Times published<br />
details about the new project: <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
contracted with the English publisher Cassell to write a<br />
400,000-word history, and would receive £20,000 (then<br />
$68,000, equivalent to $1.75 million today)—an amount<br />
believed to be the highest sum paid for the rights to any<br />
book in the previous twenty years. 2<br />
During the summer of 1938, <strong>Churchill</strong> finished his<br />
final volume of Marlborough and completed the first<br />
chapter of his new History. On August 20th, as the Munich<br />
crisis was building, he wrote to Lord Halifax that “he was<br />
horribly entangled with the Ancient Britons, the Romans,<br />
“Dear Sir <strong>Winston</strong>:<br />
My friends...seem to<br />
feel that they lack<br />
either the skill or<br />
the financial resources<br />
to turn<br />
it into a movie.<br />
I think they<br />
are wrong,<br />
but then I<br />
am not a<br />
producer.<br />
—Ed”<br />
the Angles,<br />
Saxons and<br />
Jutes all of<br />
whom I<br />
thought I had<br />
escaped for ever<br />
when I left<br />
School.” 3<br />
On the first<br />
of December, the<br />
day after his sixtyfourth<br />
birthday,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> completed<br />
his first<br />
volume, ultimately<br />
subtitled, The Birth<br />
of Britain.<br />
Writing to his<br />
former research assistant Maurice Ashley in April 1939,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> spoke of his proposed theme: “…the growth of<br />
freedom and law, of the rights of the individual, of the subordination<br />
of the State to the fundamental and moral<br />
conceptions of an ever-comprehending community. Of<br />
these ideas the English-speaking peoples were the authors,<br />
then the trustees, and must now become the armed champions.<br />
Thus I condemn tyranny in whatever guise and from<br />
whatever quarter it presents itself. All this of course has a<br />
current application.” 4<br />
But this last great multi-volume work would not be<br />
published until 1956, long after the coming war, as<br />
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Glueckstein is a Maryland writer and <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> contributor. His previous articles were “<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> and Colonist II” (FH 125), “The<br />
Statesman John Kennedy Admired Most” (FH 129), “<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Feline Menagerie” (FH 139), and “Ed Murrow’s <strong>Churchill</strong> Experience” (FH 144).<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 20
<strong>Churchill</strong> would ultimately explain in his preface:<br />
It is nearly twenty years ago that I made the arrangements<br />
which resulted in this book. At the outbreak of the war about<br />
half a million words were duly delivered. Of course, there was<br />
still much to be done in proof-reading when I went to the<br />
Admiralty on September 3, 1939. All of this was set aside.<br />
During six years of war, and an even longer period in which<br />
I was occupied with my war memoirs, the book slumbered<br />
peacefully. It is only now when things have quietened down<br />
that I present [it] to the public…. 5<br />
Of The Birth of Britain, Harold Nicolson wrote in<br />
The New York Times: “This book is intensely, entrancingly<br />
personal. We have the author’s simple faith, his romanticism,<br />
his irony, his deep compassion, his scorn, his<br />
boyishness and his pugnacity…a memorable history, illuminated<br />
by flashes of genius, character and style, and one that<br />
is bound to prove an ever-enduring record of our common<br />
race.” In the Manchester Guardian Geoffrey Barraclough<br />
added: “The story of men’s efforts at all times to grapple<br />
with the problems and challenges of their own day—that<br />
story plain and unembellished stirs and exalts us too.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s further volumes, which followed in 1956, 1957<br />
and 1958, were The New World, The Age of Revolution<br />
and The Great Democracies.<br />
Inevitably the author was interested in the sale of the<br />
television rights of the book in the United Kingdom and<br />
United States. To determine the American market, he<br />
turned to the American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow,<br />
whom he had met in London after Murrow was appointed<br />
chief of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s European<br />
Bureau in 1935. Murrow had asked <strong>Churchill</strong>, who had<br />
been warning of Germany’s remilitarization, for a broadcast<br />
interview to the United States. In 1940, when Air Ministry<br />
censors tried to deny Murrow permission to send live<br />
broadcasts to the U.S. from London rooftops during the<br />
Blitz, <strong>Churchill</strong> as prime minister interceded and approved<br />
the request. The two men’s professional and personal relationship<br />
was cemented when their wives, Janet Murrow and<br />
Clementine <strong>Churchill</strong>, became close friends while working<br />
on relief efforts in war-torn London.<br />
On 20 May 1958, Anthony Montague Browne, Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>’s private secretary, wrote Murrow:<br />
I discussed with Sir <strong>Winston</strong> the matter of the sale of the television<br />
rights of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples<br />
which came up at luncheon. He quite agrees that it would be<br />
very helpful if you could take discreet soundings and let him<br />
know if there is any market for it. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> himself could<br />
not, of course, appear to assist in any way—it would be<br />
merely a straight sale of the television and/or film rights.<br />
Two weeks later <strong>Churchill</strong> himself cabled Murrow at CBS<br />
with one of his legendary “prayers”: “Pray inform me if you<br />
have been able to ascertain whether any market exists.” 6<br />
Murrow, who had by no means been inactive after<br />
Montague Browne’s letter, responded next day, saying there<br />
was “no active interest,” and that the general impression<br />
“seems to be it’s more suitable for large screen cinema.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> quickly thanked his friend and for “the trouble<br />
you are taking.” 7<br />
Murrow, thinking Hollywood, now turned to his<br />
friend Samuel Goldwyn, writing on July 21st:<br />
I think I mentioned to you that when I talked to Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in London last May he asked me, in his usual gracious<br />
fashion, to enquire whether there might be any interest<br />
in this country in the television or movie rights to his<br />
“History of the English-Speaking Peoples.” I have pretty well<br />
determined that there is no interest in television and I am<br />
wondering what you would think of the possibility of developing<br />
any interest in the movie world. 8<br />
Alas a week later Goldwyn said he would not be interested.<br />
9 It is unknown who else Murrow may have<br />
approached in Hollywood, but certainly he had started at<br />
the top. He must have been disappointed to advise Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> on September 8th: “My friends in Hollywood are<br />
of course lavish in their praise of the literary merit of the<br />
work but seem to feel that they lack either the skill or the<br />
financial resources to turn it into a movie. I think they are<br />
wrong, but then I am not a producer.” 10<br />
Murrow’s efforts were extraordinary on the face of<br />
it, and Sir <strong>Winston</strong> clearly appreciated it. On 17<br />
November, after <strong>Churchill</strong> returned from a holiday at Lord<br />
Beaverbrook’s villa La Capponcina at Cap d’Ail in the<br />
South of France, Anthony Montague-Browne wrote<br />
Murrow a letter expressing Sir <strong>Winston</strong>’s “very warm<br />
thanks for the trouble you have taken,” adding, “It was<br />
most useful to us to have the views of someone of your<br />
standing on this matter.” 11<br />
Although <strong>Churchill</strong> was unsuccessful in having the<br />
book made into a television series or film in America, he<br />
had better luck in England. At considerable expense, the<br />
BBC developed and filmed an epic titled <strong>Churchill</strong>’s People,<br />
which consisted of twenty-six fifty-minute episodes based<br />
on A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. <br />
Endnotes<br />
1. Martin Gilbert, <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life (London: Pimlico, 2000; first<br />
published 1991), 509.<br />
2. “<strong>Churchill</strong> to Write Book,” The New York Times, 22 February<br />
1933, 22.<br />
3. Gilbert, <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life, 605.<br />
4. Martin Gilbert, <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, Companion Volume V, Part<br />
3, The Coming of War 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), 1445.<br />
5. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, A History of the English-Speaking<br />
Peoples, vol. I, The Birth of Britain (London: Cassell, 1956), vii.<br />
6-11. Collections and Archives, The Edward R. Murrow Center of<br />
Public Diplomacy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Medford,<br />
Massachusetts.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 21
“All in the Same Boat”<br />
Neither Britain nor America could replicate<br />
their relationship with any other country.<br />
A M B A S S A D O R R A Y M O N D S E I T Z<br />
Iam especially pleased to give this first <strong>Churchill</strong> Lecture<br />
in Williamsburg, which takes us back to the English<br />
roots of American history. The complicated Anglo-<br />
American relationship may actually have started when<br />
Queen Elizabeth I commanded Sir Humphrey Gilbert, halfbrother<br />
of Sir Walter Raleigh, to sail the Atlantic and “seize<br />
the heathen and barbarous land.” This is the first recorded<br />
reference to Washington, D.C.<br />
I was born in 1940, so my life began almost at the<br />
same moment as America’s real birth as a world power. I<br />
don’t think these two events were connected. But they coincided,<br />
and as a result, most of my years, both personal and<br />
professional, fitted snugly within a clearly delineated, historical<br />
epoch that ran for exactly fifty years.<br />
For this half-century the United States engaged in a<br />
great global struggle, first combating fascism in a hot war<br />
and then resisting communism in a cold war. This immense<br />
epoch ended in December 1991 when the Soviet Union,<br />
with its perverse ideology and corrupt institutions, succumbed<br />
to its own spiritual gangrene. The end of the era, in<br />
fact, came with a whimper.<br />
But for Americans, it had started with a bang. On<br />
Sunday, December 7th, 1941, just a day before my first<br />
birthday, Japanese aircraft flew out of the morning sun of<br />
the Pacific Ocean and attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. For<br />
America, this marked the beginning of World War II: the<br />
great defining shock in the history of our country. With a<br />
single jolt, the news electrified the national psychology.<br />
For my parents’ generation it was common to ask,<br />
“Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor” My<br />
family liked getting the where-were-you question because<br />
we were actually at Pearl Harbor.<br />
My father was a captain of infantry stationed at<br />
Scholfield Barracks. When the attack came, he took his<br />
company of young soldiers down to the beaches to dig in<br />
and await the land invasion that never came. The rest of the<br />
family was hustled into a station wagon and taken into the<br />
leafy fields of a pineapple plantation to hide. Of course I<br />
remember none of this, but it was so much a part of our<br />
family lore that I sometimes think I can see it all.<br />
OR, “ALL IN THE SAME SLEDGE” <strong>Churchill</strong> despised the editorials in the<br />
Chicago Tribune (whose Joe Parrish here lampoons him and FDR over<br />
Poland, 16 October 1944). It was probably not entirely accidental that he<br />
assigned the serial rights to his Secret Session Speeches to the Tribunes<br />
rival, Marshall Fields Chicago Sun. The Trib just kept on whinging.<br />
New Collides with Old<br />
History rarely moves at right angles. But for a new<br />
country, which for generations had happily ignored the farflung<br />
troubles of the world, Pearl Harbor marked a<br />
shattering of American innocence. After all, this was a<br />
country founded on the rejection of the Old and the value<br />
of the New. Throughout its history, millions of people have<br />
come to its shores expecting a new life, breaking with the<br />
past: a personal act of liberation.<br />
America was not just another place. It was a new<br />
world, a planet away from the past where original sin was<br />
forgiven and a new Eden bloomed. Americans called places<br />
“New England” and “New Hampshire” and lived in cities<br />
called “New York” and “New Orleans.” Their politicians<br />
have always promised a starting-over newness—the New<br />
Freedom, the New Deal, the New Frontier, the New World<br />
Order—because they think “new” is better.<br />
American popular culture explains that a new and<br />
improved soap is appealing simply because to be new is to<br />
be improved, and its music and literature are about change<br />
and movin’ on—a new car, a new road, a new town, a new<br />
mate, a new life. In fact, it still seems that anything can be<br />
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Raymond Seitz was the first career diplomat in modern history to be Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s (1991-94), which is usually a political<br />
appointment. His book, Over Here, should be read by every American in Britain and every Briton in America. This article is excerpted from the First<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Lecture, Williamsburg, Virginia, 7 November 1998. It remains so applicable now that it is hard to believe it is thirteen years old.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 22
made new in America, including its people—eat right, exercise<br />
right, cap those teeth and straighten out that nose, tuck<br />
up a droop here and vacuum out a bulge there and, with a<br />
variety of chemical compounds from Prozac to Viagra, you<br />
can shoot up with the Syringe of Youth into a perfect Zenlike<br />
state of permanent, forever newness.<br />
But in those fifty years of global struggle, 1941 to<br />
1991, America learned a lot. It learned that while it may be<br />
different, it is not unique. It learned, I hope, that the world<br />
is as old as the human condition, and it is very much a part<br />
of it. It learned that many of the old verities apply to it, just<br />
as they do to all others. There are good and bad, right and<br />
wrong, the world turns and the sun also rises.<br />
The American fascination with the new is nonetheless<br />
a great strength: our search for answers, our willingness to<br />
experiment, our ability to regenerate. We are excited by<br />
what lies just over the next hill or just around the next<br />
corner. But getting the balance right between the old and<br />
the new, between the superficial and the enduring, between<br />
the image and the reality is still a challenge for our social<br />
politics. When Bill Clinton was making his first run for the<br />
presidency, his theme song was “Don’t Stop Thinking about<br />
Tomorrow,” and I used to mutter to myself, “Don’t stop<br />
thinking about yesterday, either.”<br />
This is one purpose of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre—not<br />
just the study of the great, jowly bulldog and his many<br />
myth-making accomplishments; not just the rotund<br />
“JUST PERFECT HARMONY”: Even though there wasnt exactly perfect<br />
harmony after Teheran, <strong>Churchill</strong>, a fan of cartoons, would have approved this<br />
portrayal by the British artist Tom Webster in the Courier, Winter 1943.<br />
Anglophilia that rolls around in American discourse; not<br />
just the nostalgia for the glory days of wartime collaboration.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, I suspect, would scoff at a lot of<br />
that—while using it to advantage. But it seems to me that<br />
the goal of the Centre must be to take the experiences and<br />
principles of the past, which were so dynamically represented<br />
by this supreme figure, and heave those lessons<br />
forward into new generations. And certainly an essential<br />
lesson for America is an old one: You can’t go it alone.<br />
National Destinies Converging<br />
If someone put that famous question to Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>—“Where were you when you heard about Pearl<br />
Harbor”—he would say that he was spending a Sunday<br />
evening at Chequers, the prime minister’s country home,<br />
dining with two Americans, his old friend Averell Harriman<br />
and the U.S. ambassador, John Winant. The record of the<br />
evening is not exact, but everyone agrees what occurred in<br />
substance. On the question of how <strong>Churchill</strong> got the news,<br />
it seems the butler did it.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had been in a glum mood—the news from<br />
the desert war in North Africa was not good—and when he<br />
switched on a radio to listen to the BBC nine o’clock bulletin,<br />
the report about a Japanese attack was garbled and<br />
there was confusion around the table. But the butler, Frank<br />
Sawyers, who had been listening to another radio in the<br />
pantry, rushed back into the dining room—insofar as any<br />
English butler rushes—and confirmed the news.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> leapt from the table and, followed by his<br />
two American guests, went to an office and put in a call to<br />
President Roosevelt. “What’s this about Japan” the Prime<br />
Minister shouted down the line. “It’s quite true,” Roosevelt<br />
replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbor.” And then<br />
the President added, “We are all in the same boat now.”<br />
Can you imagine this exchange by transatlantic telephone<br />
Imagine, in those days, the hollow, tinny sound of<br />
voices separated by three thousand miles of underwater<br />
cable, the rasping static that must have scratched at their<br />
simple words, and somewhere along that long line the<br />
muffled sound of two national destinies converging.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> later confessed that he was exhilarated by<br />
the news of Pearl Harbor when he went to bed that night.<br />
He lamented the loss of life, but America was finally in the<br />
war. Victory was assured—the war was over and only the<br />
manner of its ending was left to be concluded. The United<br />
States and the United Kingdom were truly in the same boat.<br />
And there they remained, with the water right up to the<br />
gunwales, for the next fifty years.<br />
Roosevelt and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
The modern paradigm of the Anglo-American partnership<br />
comes down from <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> and Franklin<br />
Roosevelt. In many ways they were the kind of match for<br />
each other that only the serendipity of history could >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 23
“America and Britain share an accumulation of historical<br />
concepts given body over generations—human and civil rights,<br />
liberty, the common law and the rule of law, forbearance and<br />
equity, private property, the basic freedoms, simple dignity. We<br />
may practice these imperfectly, but all of them mixed up together<br />
mean that we think about things in a similar fashion, and on one<br />
issue or another we are as likely as not to arrive at the same<br />
conclusion. This is not always true, but it is often true.”<br />
“ALL IN THE SAME BOAT”...<br />
produce. Both were patrician with long family histories, and<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s mother was conveniently born in Brooklyn.<br />
Both were eloquent and witty in a time before God<br />
invented speech-writers. In their political intrigues and<br />
public relations, each was as manipulative as the other. And<br />
both were warriors.<br />
They did not always agree. After all, one was a dyedin-the-wool<br />
Tory and the other a visionary liberal<br />
Democrat. Their world views were distinctly different.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> loved the British Empire and understood<br />
European history better than any American was likely to do.<br />
Roosevelt, for his part, had no intention of fighting a war to<br />
preserve British colonialism and thought European history<br />
was misbegotten.<br />
Military strategy was a contentious bone between<br />
them and they often exasperated each other. If it suited<br />
Roosevelt to distance himself from the prime minister when<br />
meeting with “Uncle Joe” Stalin, he did so. When it suited<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> to agree with Stalin on a mathematical carve-up<br />
of the Balkans, he did so too.<br />
The danger of looking back at this pair of leaders is<br />
the cloud of romance that envelops their memory. Still,<br />
these two remarkable people—wrapped in lap rugs on the<br />
deck of a battleship in the North Atlantic or watching a<br />
desert sunset from a Moroccan tower—cast a spell over<br />
Anglo-U.S. relations through all the years that followed.<br />
Coin from the <strong>Churchill</strong> Mint<br />
This came to be known as the “special relationship,”<br />
another durable coin from the <strong>Churchill</strong> mint. For many<br />
years, on both sides of the Atlantic, the phrase carried the<br />
reassuring resonance of wartime triumph and captured the<br />
spirit of an exceptional alliance between two countries<br />
which did not take naturally to alliances. The “special relationship”<br />
implied a steady rhythm of cooperation between<br />
the United States and United Kingdom that was unaltered<br />
by political change in either capital. It was a transatlantic<br />
code which promised that things would probably turn out<br />
all right in the end, and usually they did.<br />
When I returned to Britain as Ambassador in 1991, I<br />
was leery of this catch-phrase, and never used it. I thought<br />
it had become a little shopworn and sounded too much like<br />
a knee-jerk jingle. The end of the Cold War, I thought, was<br />
no time for clichés. Europe was changing fundamentally. So<br />
was the bilateral relationship. So was the world.<br />
After all, for those fifty years, the Anglo-American<br />
relationship had taken its principal shape from a single<br />
strategic fact. Concentrated in the center of Europe, and<br />
extending well to the east, stood a large military force controlled<br />
by a hostile, totalitarian regime—first Nazi and then<br />
Soviet—which wished neither of our countries well. The<br />
official Anglo-American relationship wasn’t only about this,<br />
but it was largely about this.<br />
And then, suddenly, the Berlin Wall came down,<br />
Eastern European nations were liberated, Russian forces<br />
streamed back to their Eurasian hinterland, the continent<br />
was effectively de-nuclearized, Germany was united and the<br />
Soviet empire collapsed in a colossal, shuddering mass. This<br />
was a breathtaking epic, and almost entirely peaceful. In<br />
fact, I cannot identify another period in modern European<br />
history when such sweeping historical forces were let loose<br />
across the continent without a precipitating war.<br />
Vertical to Horizontal<br />
The apparent triumph of political democracy and<br />
open-market economics—both of which are essentially<br />
Anglo-American concepts—was so complete that one<br />
enthusiastic observer declared the phenomenon “The End<br />
of History,” meaning the ultimate resolution of ideological<br />
division. But it also meant that the strategic perspective of<br />
the U.S. and Britain was much less likely to overlap.<br />
And, sure enough, today it seems that instead of the<br />
vertical political world of the cold war, with a dividing line<br />
running from top to bottom, we instead have a horizontal<br />
economic world with a division running crosswise like a line<br />
of latitude. This is just another way of saying “globalization,”<br />
but parts of each society in the world today<br />
participate in an international economy and parts of each<br />
society really don’t.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 24
The dividing line today has less to do with geography<br />
than it does with whether you are citizen of the knowledgebased<br />
Information Age and all the technological and<br />
computerized wizardry that implies. And it is the effect of<br />
economic globalism rather than political ideology which<br />
produces the serious tensions in the world today.<br />
You can argue, for example, that someone with a university<br />
degree in Seattle has more in common with a<br />
well-educated executive in Edinburgh than with many of<br />
the below-line individuals in his own country. I recall a<br />
recent study which showed that the top 20% in America<br />
received almost 50% of the national income, and it was<br />
growing; and the bottom 20% received about 5% of the<br />
national income, and it was declining. The difference had<br />
nothing to do with race or region or religion. The simple<br />
dividing line was a university degree—which meant access<br />
to the Information Age.<br />
And, therefore, someone without much education in<br />
Manchester faces the same limited prospects as his counterpart<br />
in, say, Chicago. In fact, there is probably more social<br />
alignment between the United States and the United<br />
Kingdom today than ever. Much more than before we hold<br />
up a social mirror to each other. Such in-or-out parallelism<br />
is more or less true around the world. And so the social<br />
agendas between the United States and Britain today—and<br />
even our political moods—are strikingly similar.<br />
Globalization’s Challenge<br />
I think globalism is a good thing, though its implications<br />
are just emerging. Over the last years nations have<br />
geometrically enriched themselves through a progressively<br />
more liberal free-trading system, financed by an increasingly<br />
more fluid capital market. In 1950 international trade was<br />
valued at some $70 billion; last year it reached $4 trillion.<br />
The value of international financial transactions on any<br />
given day is in the neighborhood of $12 trillion, give or<br />
take a trillion.<br />
The high-speed, on-line, internetted, gigabyting electronics<br />
which lubricates this massive global exchange<br />
demonstrates an interconnection in the world economy so<br />
fleet and so sensitive that events somewhere in the world<br />
have instantaneous ramifications everywhere in the world.<br />
But what globalism lacks is the political framework to<br />
understand it. Our international institutions such as NATO<br />
or the IMF—both of which were essentially put together by<br />
the British and Americans—are looking a little dysfunctional<br />
these days. There is no <strong>Churchill</strong>ian concept to pull<br />
all this together. In fact, there seems to be a disconnect<br />
between the globalization of economic development, on the<br />
one hand, and the de-globalization of political leadership on<br />
the other.<br />
Moreover, “globalization” often sounds like a euphemism<br />
for Americanization. Americans especially need to be<br />
careful that too many Microsoft programs, too many Big<br />
Macs, too many cruise missiles, too many Sylvester Stallone<br />
movies do not lead to a cultural reaction against an international<br />
system largely identified with the United States.<br />
For Britain, too, these are confused times. Dean<br />
Acheson’s famous statement that Britain had lost an empire<br />
but not yet found a role seems much more relevant now<br />
than when he said it. Today the question of how Britain fits<br />
into this global world presses down on the nation like a<br />
heavy political weight, and for the most part, the response is<br />
ambivalent.<br />
The country, for many understandable historic reasons<br />
and genuine misgivings, cannot bring itself to make the<br />
necessary psychological commitment to the grand European<br />
enterprise. It can’t quite come up with a credible alternative<br />
either. This is probably the most important strategic issue<br />
Britain has faced since the end of the Second World War.<br />
But in this political twilight zone, the UK sometimes seems<br />
to have retired to the psychiatrist’s couch to ask: Who am I<br />
Where am I going Is God really not an Englishman<br />
Over the last century, the role of international leadership<br />
has increasingly fallen to the United States. For better<br />
or worse, the world has become accustomed to American<br />
leadership, or put another way around, the world is<br />
incapable of serious action without the American catalyst.<br />
Yet American politics seem fractious, petty, unilateralist,<br />
self-absorbed, strident and media-obsessed, and the<br />
current global financial challenge, for example, coincides<br />
with a moment in United States history when the country,<br />
at least to outside observers, seems bent on pulling itself<br />
apart and squandering its moral energy. The result, I think,<br />
is that the federal capital of this remarkable republic has<br />
been diminished, and will remain so for a long time.<br />
The Real Special Relationship<br />
When you look around the world today, I think it is<br />
safe to say that we do not have the structure nor the vocabulary<br />
nor the leadership to describe where we are. Perhaps<br />
this is why the political <strong>Churchill</strong> seems to loom so large<br />
today. Less his fullness than our inadequacy.<br />
If I could put a priority item on today’s Anglo-<br />
American agenda, this would be it: a fresh focus on national<br />
security in an unnational world, and a reconciliation<br />
between economic globalism and social responsibility. What<br />
I learned as ambassador is that today the genuine “special<br />
relationship”—the unique part of Anglo-American affairs—<br />
really exists outside the official body of government<br />
intercourse and well beyond the headlines and photo ops.<br />
You see this in all manner of public policy, from<br />
welfare reform to school reform, and from zero-tolerance<br />
policing to pension management. You see it in every scholarly<br />
pursuit from archaeology to zoology, in every field of<br />
science and research, and in every social movement from<br />
environmentalism to feminism. You see it in financial regulation<br />
and corporate governance and trade union >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 25
“ALL IN THE SAME BOAT”...<br />
interchange, and you see it at every point along the cultural<br />
spectrum from the novel to the symphony and from the<br />
movies to pop music.<br />
You see it in the big statistics of trade and investment,<br />
and in the tiny statistics of transatlantic tourism (six million<br />
visitors a year); or transatlantic flights (40,000); or transatlantic<br />
telephone calls (three and one-half billion minutes).<br />
You see it in the work of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre.<br />
Here is the thick, rich texture of the relationship at its<br />
most creative, most energetic, and most durable. The truly<br />
special relationship is this: the United States and the United<br />
Kingdom influence each other’s intellectual development<br />
like no other two countries. And it is here, I suspect—<br />
where the old truth lies—that we will discover answers<br />
about our joint future in a changing, global world.<br />
Plus Ça Change...<br />
America and Britain share an accumulation of historical<br />
concepts given body over generations—human and civil<br />
rights, liberty, the common law and the rule of law, forbearance<br />
and equity, private property, the basic freedoms, simple<br />
dignity. We may practice these imperfectly, but all of them<br />
mixed up together mean that we think about things in a<br />
similar fashion, and on one issue or another we are as likely<br />
as not to arrive at the same conclusion.<br />
This is not always true, but it is often true, and the<br />
relationship emerges from the natural repetition of this<br />
pattern. One thing is sure: neither nation could possibly<br />
replicate this relationship<br />
with any other<br />
country.<br />
Visiting Tunisia,<br />
my wife and I went to<br />
a house which<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had used as<br />
a headquarters. You<br />
could almost smell the<br />
cigar smoke. More<br />
recently we saw,<br />
hanging on the wall in<br />
a Scottish castle, an oil<br />
study of the great man,<br />
for the famously evaporated<br />
Graham<br />
Sutherland portrait,<br />
presented to him by<br />
Parliament on his 80th<br />
birthday but subsequently<br />
destroyed<br />
because he hated it so.<br />
You simply can’t<br />
get away from the<br />
man. I often pass<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s statue in Parliament Square, where he leans into<br />
the House of Commons and scolds MPs as they emerge. In<br />
another statue I saw again just yesterday, <strong>Churchill</strong> supervises<br />
the traffic on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington. A<br />
bust of <strong>Churchill</strong> was recently unveiled in the great French-<br />
Canadian city of Quebec.<br />
And on a little pedestrian cross-walk in London,<br />
sitting on a park bench, are the bronze figures of <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
and Roosevelt. Symbolic perhaps of my opening thoughts<br />
about Pearl Harbor, it is at the junction of the two Bond<br />
Streets: New and Old. It’s a unique sculpture, the only one<br />
of them both, the work of Lawrence Holofcener, like<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> a joint British-American citizen.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> is sporting a jaunty bow tie and wearing his<br />
zippered shoes. Roosevelt is in a rumpled, double-breasted<br />
suit and you can see the metal leg braces sticking out<br />
beneath his trouser cuffs. They are both looking on the<br />
decidedly paunchy side of life.<br />
Both are smiling. <strong>Churchill</strong> is leaning towards<br />
Roosevelt to catch a word, and Roosevelt has his left arm<br />
slung across the top of the bench. They seem to be enjoying<br />
the day and simply shooting the breeze.<br />
They may be talking about where matters stand and<br />
how to handle things. They may be doing in someone’s reputation.<br />
Or maybe they’re remembering that day a long<br />
time ago when they heard about Pearl Harbor and strapped<br />
their nations together in joint harness.<br />
And maybe they’re saying that, even if today the<br />
ocean is different, we’re still in the same boat. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 26
Is This the Man<br />
London, 12 April 1945: “The Prime Minister was found at his desk with wet eyes”<br />
Is this the man<br />
who rigid stood<br />
with bulldog<br />
mien<br />
and shoulders<br />
hunched,<br />
feet wide apart,<br />
bluntly to tell<br />
with throaty growl<br />
his island folk:<br />
“There’s nothing left;<br />
gone are our guns,<br />
gone are our tanks,<br />
gone our allies,<br />
gone the spearhead<br />
of our attack.<br />
“There’s nothing left<br />
to offer you<br />
but blood and toil<br />
and tears and sweat.<br />
“There’s nothing left<br />
but our grim will<br />
to battle on<br />
while our breath holds.<br />
“In this mold cast<br />
we’ll build in mass,<br />
guns, tanks and arms<br />
of new design,<br />
more deadly far<br />
than those we’ve lost:<br />
a new offense<br />
of greater thrust.<br />
“While thus we toil<br />
our valiant fleet<br />
ever our shield,<br />
will guard our shores.<br />
Our airmen keen<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> at the grave of Franklin Roosevelt, 12 March 1946.<br />
as hungry hawks,<br />
blood of our blood,<br />
bone of our bone,<br />
will guard our skies,<br />
and in their zeal<br />
will give their all,<br />
and, giving, win<br />
the world’s acclaim<br />
and its intent<br />
to pray and work<br />
for truth and right.<br />
“We shall not flag,<br />
and as of old<br />
we’ll hew our way,<br />
with pit dog grit,<br />
through all our ills<br />
to our set goal.”<br />
Is this the man<br />
who had the nerve<br />
to strip his land<br />
to make secure<br />
Suez Canal,<br />
the Empire’s bridge<br />
and vital link<br />
‘twixt East and West<br />
Is this the man<br />
who quick as<br />
thought,<br />
when the mad Hun<br />
sprang at the Russ,<br />
told the Red chief<br />
he’d stay with him<br />
through thick and<br />
thin<br />
to the war’s end;<br />
Who sent his ships,<br />
despite great loss,<br />
through icy seas<br />
bearing supplies,<br />
guns, tanks and<br />
planes<br />
to bleak Murmansk<br />
for use against<br />
the common foe<br />
Is this the man<br />
to whom there came,<br />
in a dark hour<br />
across the sea,<br />
a whisper from<br />
his only peer<br />
in all the world,<br />
one brave as he,<br />
whose crippled frame<br />
did but enhance<br />
his smile serene<br />
and serve to lend<br />
to his sound mind<br />
wings to aspire—<br />
“From this day forth,<br />
come weal or rue,<br />
I’ll share the load<br />
and ride with you,<br />
knee touching knee,<br />
in this crusade.”<br />
Is this the man<br />
who slept in spurs,<br />
who sent back word<br />
in quick response:<br />
“Our church bells ring<br />
as God we praise.<br />
Within their stalls<br />
the horses champ.<br />
The whetted swords<br />
whine in their sheaths.<br />
With lightened heart<br />
girded, I wait.”<br />
Is this that man<br />
he who now sits,<br />
with wet red eyes,<br />
pallid and limp,<br />
image of woe,<br />
deep in his chair<br />
Yes, it is he.<br />
Hush! Let him weep.<br />
Such grief as his<br />
must find a vent,<br />
or chance the toll<br />
of clot or stroke.<br />
He has just learnt<br />
his gallant friend<br />
from cross the sea<br />
who rode with him,<br />
knee touching knee,<br />
so unperturbed<br />
through risks untold,<br />
who was to him<br />
as David was<br />
to Jonathan,<br />
will ride with him<br />
no more,<br />
no<br />
more.<br />
BY CHARLES<br />
MINER COOPER,<br />
physician to President<br />
Harding. First published<br />
in volume form by John<br />
Howell, San Francisco,<br />
1945. <br />
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
“Is This The Man” appeared in FH 14 (1970), FH 60 (1988) and the 1995 Boston Conference Program. Knowing as we do the bumps and scrapes<br />
of the famous relationship—knowing that things weren’t always quite this way—the poem yet has a way of turning up, and sounding right.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 27
William A. Rusher<br />
1923-2011<br />
CLAREMONT INSTITUTE<br />
He told us how an all-American boy,<br />
growing up in the 1930s, found in a<br />
distant English voice crackling across<br />
the ether, the hero of a lifetime.<br />
R I C H A R D M. L A N G W O R T H<br />
W I T H L A R R Y P.<br />
A R N N<br />
Bill Rusher came to our aid in a<br />
pinch. Back in the Nineties, we<br />
were striving to “balance” our<br />
political speakers, and the 11th<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Conference in Calgary and<br />
Banff was the conservatives’ turn. We<br />
had welcomed the Liberal Roy Jenkins<br />
on our Scottish tour that summer, and<br />
had lined up Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and<br />
William Manchester to address our<br />
1995 Boston conference. So to Banff we<br />
invited Milton Friedman, to explain<br />
why <strong>Churchill</strong> was right (yes!) to put<br />
Britain back on the gold standard in the<br />
Twenties.<br />
Alas, Dr. Friedman took ill, and<br />
we scratched around for another conservative<br />
who could take his place on short<br />
notice. Milton Friedman’s own home<br />
town, San Francisco, produced Mr.<br />
Rusher, longtime publisher of National<br />
Review and friend of William F.<br />
Buckley, Jr. “After all,” I told the organizers,<br />
Randy Barber and John<br />
Plumpton, “his initials are WAR, so<br />
nobody can think him a peacenik.” Bill<br />
duly arrived and delivered a charming<br />
speech, excerpts of which are on the<br />
next page. All of it can (and should) be<br />
read on our website.<br />
We held a Q&A at Banff because<br />
we wanted to ask Mr. Rusher why his<br />
friend Buckley wrote such dreadful<br />
things about <strong>Churchill</strong> in 1965. We<br />
were actually trying to get Buckley to<br />
address a <strong>Churchill</strong> conference but he<br />
was resisting. And so we cornered his<br />
colleague. “You<br />
will have to<br />
remember,” Bill<br />
Rusher replied<br />
in his crisp staccato,<br />
“that the<br />
Buckleys were<br />
America Firsters<br />
before the war; a<br />
streak of libertarianism<br />
always<br />
ran through<br />
them. They were<br />
not fans of<br />
European entanglements. And of course,<br />
as you know, they were Irish!”<br />
But lo, with the help of Larry<br />
Arnn, we actually did get Buckley, in<br />
Boston, though alas we couldn’t get<br />
both him and Arthur Schlesinger<br />
together on the same night!<br />
In remembering the learned,<br />
charming man that was Bill Rusher,<br />
<strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> can do no better than to<br />
quote Larry Arnn’s tribute to him in<br />
National Review, which described him<br />
as “<strong>Churchill</strong>ian”:<br />
<br />
“If we mean by that a man who<br />
had a natural ear for good words in<br />
prose and poetry…then Bill Rusher was<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ian. If we mean by that a man<br />
who distilled a wide reading into truths<br />
that could be remembered and applied<br />
to his own choices, then Bill Rusher was<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ian. If we mean by that a man<br />
who learned from <strong>Churchill</strong> all his life,<br />
who saw into his character as a gentleman<br />
would see, then Bill Rusher was<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ian. If we mean by that a man<br />
whose wit was biting but never unkind,<br />
whose sense of humor was hilarious to<br />
the place of danger on formal occasions,<br />
then Bill Rusher was <strong>Churchill</strong>ian....<br />
“There are differences between Bill<br />
Rusher and <strong>Churchill</strong>. <strong>Churchill</strong> would<br />
not, if he offered you a drink in his<br />
home, hand you a printed menu, accurate<br />
as to inventory, that he had prepared<br />
himself….<strong>Churchill</strong>, said his wife, was ‘a<br />
sporting man who liked to give the train<br />
a chance to get away.’ Rusher would<br />
speak sharply to <strong>Churchill</strong> about that, as<br />
he did to me.<br />
“Like <strong>Churchill</strong>’s work, that of<br />
Rusher lives because it gives us a model<br />
and a chance today. We owe him a debt,<br />
to be paid in love and memory.” <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 28
11th International <strong>Churchill</strong> Conference, Banff, Alberta, 25 September 1994<br />
“The Truth is great, and shall prevail,<br />
When none cares whether it prevail or not”<br />
W I L L I A M A. R U S H E R<br />
Excerpted from <strong>Churchill</strong> Proceedings<br />
1994-1995 (published 1998). For the<br />
complete text of this speech please see:<br />
http://bit.ly/mF8Aeo.<br />
Although only in my teens in the<br />
late Thirties, I was politically<br />
aware, watching the developments<br />
in Europe as war approached. I<br />
found an early hero in Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
The first thing I remembered about him<br />
was in an article by Vincent Sheehan,<br />
who wrote: “When you see him coming<br />
he reminds you of an army with banners<br />
fluttering. Your first impulse is to get<br />
out of his way.”<br />
When I was sixteen, I remember<br />
my mother dashing into my room one<br />
morning and saying, “Bill! Wake up!<br />
Hitler’s invaded Poland and the dirty<br />
devil’s on the radio. Come and listen.”<br />
It was September 1st, 1939. I was<br />
soon able contemporaneously to listen<br />
to liberty's reply—those great wartime<br />
broadcasts by <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, over<br />
the inadequate shortwave of those days.<br />
I can’t tell you how they lifted the spirit.<br />
Fast forward to 1946, when I was<br />
waiting to enter a Harvard Law School<br />
class for returning veterans, and met a<br />
fellow <strong>Churchill</strong>ian, Henry Anatole<br />
Grunwald, an Austrian immigrant<br />
working as a copy boy at Time. He later<br />
became editor-in-chief of Time and<br />
U.S. Ambassador to Austria. In 1965 he<br />
edited one of the finest tributes,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>: The Life Triumphant, published<br />
by American Heritage.<br />
Henry Grunwald intrigued me<br />
with a discovery of his: an unpublished<br />
despatch filed by the Time correspondent<br />
in Athens in December 1944,<br />
when <strong>Churchill</strong> had arrived there to try<br />
to set up a democratic government<br />
under the Greek Orthodox Archbishop<br />
Damaskinos, uniting the disparate<br />
fighting elements.<br />
Met on arrival by Lieutenant-<br />
General Sir Ronald Scobie, the British<br />
officer commanding, <strong>Churchill</strong> began<br />
asking questions. According to Time’s<br />
man, <strong>Churchill</strong> asked: “Who is this<br />
Damaskinos Is he a man of God, or a<br />
scheming prelate more interested in the<br />
combinations of temporal power than in<br />
the life hereafter”<br />
Scobie replied, “I think the latter,<br />
Prime Minister.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said, “Good, that’s just<br />
our man.”<br />
Archbishop Damaskinos was duly<br />
named premier and <strong>Churchill</strong>, of<br />
course, met him during that visit to<br />
Greece. Gerald Pawle, in The War and<br />
Colonel Warden, recounts an episode<br />
which occurred right before their<br />
meeting. It is a tradition in the Royal<br />
Navy that on Christmas Eve members<br />
of the crew dress up and go around the<br />
deck japing and joking, and occasionally,<br />
at random, tossing a colleague into<br />
the sea. They wear very strange costumes.<br />
On this occasion one of them<br />
was dressed up as a hula dancer, with a<br />
grass skirt and brassiere with red and<br />
green lights that blinked on and off.<br />
They had been isolated from the VIP<br />
area, but nonetheless they wandered a<br />
little close just as official party including<br />
the Archbishop arrived on board.<br />
Now Damaskinos stood well over<br />
six feet, and of course he was wearing a<br />
miter that reached a good foot or more<br />
above that. He had a long, flowing black<br />
cloak and a huge, bushy grey beard. The<br />
sailors looked at him and beheld a<br />
fellow celebrant! Massing happily, they<br />
advanced on the Archbishop with every<br />
intention of tossing him into the sea.<br />
They were deterred with difficulty,<br />
and the Archbishop went on to Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>'s cabin, where it was politely<br />
explained to him who these people were<br />
and what the tradition was. It is said<br />
that he looked as if he had fallen among<br />
a group of lunatics.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, like all heroes, has his<br />
detractors, but I don't worry about this<br />
at all. If there is anything certain in<br />
history, it is his place and stature. For<br />
one thing, his career was simply so long!<br />
Let me give you an example.<br />
After World War II, Attlee's<br />
Labour government wanted to curb the<br />
power of the House of Lords. Attlee had<br />
the poor judgment to quote what<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, as a member of the 1911<br />
Liberal cabinet, had said when the<br />
Liberals had first curbed the Lords’<br />
powers. <strong>Churchill</strong> had called the Lords<br />
“one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepresentative,<br />
irresponsible, absentee.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> replied: “Really, I do<br />
believe there ought to be a statute of<br />
limitations on my remarks. I'm willing<br />
to be held responsible for anything I've<br />
said for the past thirty years, but before<br />
that I think a veil should be drawn over<br />
the past.” How many politicians last<br />
long enough to make that particular<br />
request<br />
As long as humanity admires<br />
courage, eloquence and tenacity,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> will be remembered and<br />
honored—and these are virtues which<br />
will come into fashion again, ladies and<br />
gentlemen.<br />
I know we have a tendency to be<br />
discouraged about how things are<br />
going—although in our time, you know,<br />
they haven't gone all that badly. The<br />
Soviet Union lies in ruins. Free market<br />
economics, which I wouldn't have given<br />
you a plugged nickel for at the end of<br />
World War II, is now so popular that<br />
even Red China calls its policy “Market<br />
Socialism,” whatever that is. These are<br />
big victories. Still there is much that is<br />
worrisome. I'm sure <strong>Churchill</strong>, if he<br />
were here, would encourage us to “never<br />
despair” and “never give in.” That is<br />
why I think he would enjoy a little<br />
quatrain by the 19th century British<br />
poet Coventry Patmore, with which I<br />
like to end my talks, because it is<br />
upbeat, optimistic and true.<br />
For want of me<br />
the world's course will not fail.<br />
When all its work is done<br />
the lie shall rot.<br />
The Truth is great and shall prevail,<br />
When none cares<br />
whether it prevail or not. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 29
125 Years Ago<br />
Summer 1886 • Age 11<br />
“A little cash would be welcome.”<br />
The summer of 1886 saw the beginning<br />
of Lord Randolph’s short-lived<br />
tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer<br />
and Leader of the Conservative Party in<br />
the House of Commons. It was to end<br />
barely six months later. In the general<br />
election, the Conservatives won 316<br />
seats which, combined with the Liberal<br />
Unionists’ 78, gave the Conservative-<br />
Unionist coalition a majority of 118.<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> was aware of his father’s<br />
political activities. After his father had<br />
been reelected but before the Tory<br />
margin was known he wrote to his<br />
mother: “I am very glad Papa got in for<br />
South Paddington by so great a majority.<br />
I think that was a victory! I hope the<br />
conservatives will get in, do you think<br />
they will” In a letter to his mother on<br />
13 July, he showed surprising political<br />
sophistication for an eleven-year-old:<br />
“Do you think the conservatives will get<br />
in without any of the unionist liberals”<br />
In this letter he importuned his mother<br />
to allow him to learn to play the cello: “I<br />
want to know if I may learn the<br />
Violoncello or if not The Violin instead<br />
of the Piano, I feel that I shall never get<br />
on much in learning to Play the piano,<br />
but I want to learn the violoncello very<br />
much indeed and as several of the other<br />
boys are going to learn I should like to<br />
very much, so I hope you will give sanction.<br />
I would be delighted.” He closed<br />
his letter with a not untypical plea: “I<br />
am very sorry to say that I am bankrupt<br />
and a little cash would be welcome.”<br />
In a letter to his mother on 27<br />
by Michael McMenamin<br />
July, two days before Lord Randolph was<br />
appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer,<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> inquired as to his future: “I<br />
received Papa’s letter this morning, it<br />
was so kind of him to write to me when<br />
he was so busy. Do you think he will be<br />
Secretary of State for India, or that he<br />
will have a new post.” His mother had<br />
written to him following his 13 July<br />
letter and its cello plea but, as <strong>Winston</strong><br />
pointed out in this letter, “you have not<br />
said anything about the Violoncello in<br />
your letter.”<br />
100 Years Ago<br />
Summer 1911 • Age 36<br />
“Perhaps the time is coming.”<br />
The summer of 1911 was one of the<br />
hottest, and labor strikes began<br />
among the dock workers in June, followed<br />
by partial strikes by railway<br />
workers and food shortages in London,<br />
Liverpool and Manchester. As with the<br />
strikes at Tonypandy, <strong>Churchill</strong> as Home<br />
Secretary was in the middle of things.<br />
The King himself was concerned,<br />
telegraphing <strong>Churchill</strong> on 16 August<br />
1911: “Accounts from Liverpool show<br />
that the situation there more like revolution<br />
than a strike. Trust that Govt while<br />
inducing strike leaders and masters to<br />
come to terms will take steps to ensure<br />
protection of life & property.”<br />
As he had during the miners’ strike<br />
in Tonypandy and elsewhere, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
called upon local authorities to make the<br />
fullest use of police before calling in<br />
troops. Troops were requested by local<br />
authorities on several occasions, however,<br />
when civil order had broken down. The<br />
railway strikes ended on 20 August after<br />
Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd<br />
George persuaded employers to recognize<br />
and bargain with the unions. On 20<br />
August the King wrote to <strong>Churchill</strong>:<br />
“Your telegram informing me that the<br />
Railway strike has been declared at an<br />
end has given me the greatest satisfaction.<br />
I feel convinced that prompt<br />
measure taken by you prevented loss of<br />
life in different parts of the country.”<br />
The season was more significant to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in that he began to reconsider<br />
his view that Germany was no threat to<br />
Britain, prompted when the Germans<br />
sent the gunboat Panther to the port of<br />
Agadir in Morocco. <strong>Winston</strong> being<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>, he did not hesitate to share his<br />
thoughts with Prime Minister Asquith,<br />
Foreign Secretary Grey, Chancellor of<br />
the Exchequer Lloyd George and First<br />
Lord of the Admiralty McKenna (whom<br />
he eventually replaced). In a memorandum<br />
to the Committee of Imperial<br />
Defence on 23 August, <strong>Churchill</strong> foretold<br />
with uncanny precision how a<br />
German attack on France would<br />
develop, and what Britain should do in<br />
response to aid Belgium and France in<br />
that eventuality.<br />
On 30 August, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote<br />
Grey: “Perhaps the time is coming when<br />
decisive action will be necessary. Please<br />
consider the following policy for use if<br />
and when the Morocco negotiations<br />
fail.” He went on to recommend a triple<br />
alliance with Russia and France to “safeguard<br />
the independence of Belgium,<br />
Holland and Denmark,” provided those<br />
three resisted any German invasion.<br />
On 13 September, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote<br />
McKenna on naval policy in the event of<br />
war: “The British government should<br />
guarantee to pay full indemnity for all<br />
British or neutral ships sunk or captured<br />
by the enemy in the course of bringing<br />
necessaries of life and manufacture to<br />
this country.” The same day, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
wrote Asquith criticizing naval policy:<br />
“Are you sure that the ships we have at<br />
Cromarty are strong enough to defeat<br />
the whole German High-Seas fleet If<br />
not they shd be reinforced without<br />
delay….Are you sure that the admty<br />
realise the serious situation of Europe I<br />
am told they are nearly all on leave at<br />
the present time.” <strong>Churchill</strong> repeated<br />
this same criticism of the Admiralty the<br />
next day in a letter to Lloyd George.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 30
75 Years Ago<br />
Summer 1936 • Age 61<br />
“It has not been a pleasant task.”<br />
Hitler’s foreign policy had changed<br />
the face of Europe. The acquiescence<br />
of France and Great Britain to<br />
Germany’s remilitarization of the<br />
Rhineland, coupled with Germany’s<br />
being the only major power to support<br />
Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia, the countries<br />
of southeast Europe knew they<br />
would have to make their peace with<br />
Germany since France and Britain would<br />
not keep them out of Germany’s orbit.<br />
In Britain, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s cousin<br />
Frederick Guest warned him that though<br />
“Baldwin is tired,” if he wished to be<br />
Prime Minister he must temper his criticisms<br />
of the government. <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
remained quiet over the Rhineland, but<br />
ignoring Guest’s advice, he attacked the<br />
government the next day for “half measures<br />
and procrastinations,” and being<br />
weak, careless and seemingly incapable<br />
of realizing the awful degeneration<br />
which is taking place….At any rate my<br />
conscience is clear. I have done my best<br />
during the last three years and more to<br />
give timely warning of what was happening<br />
abroad, and of the dangerous<br />
plight into which we were being led or<br />
lulled. It has not been a pleasant task. It<br />
has certainly been a very thankless<br />
task....I have been mocked and censured<br />
as a scare-monger and even as a warmonger,<br />
by those whose complacency<br />
and inertia have brought us all nearer to<br />
war and war nearer to us all.<br />
They were closer to war then even<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> knew. While German propaganda<br />
was touting (as some historians do<br />
today) Hitler’s “economic miracle,”<br />
Germany’s economy was in bad shape.<br />
Hitler had engaged in massive deficit<br />
spending in order to rearm. While<br />
unemployment had been reduced from<br />
six to 2.5 million, 14% of the workforce<br />
was still unemployed, not including<br />
another million in labour service camps<br />
populated largely by communists, socialists,<br />
Jews and other declared enemies.<br />
Reserves of the Reichsbank had been<br />
reduced from 973,000,000 reichsmarks<br />
to only 72,000,000 by 1936.<br />
Stephen Roberts, an economic historian<br />
from Australia who spent 1936<br />
studying in Germany, concluded: “The<br />
MARCH 1936: As <strong>Churchill</strong>s concerns<br />
mounted, Lloyd George visited Hitler at the<br />
Berghof, and returned singing his praises.<br />
Nazi state is being financed by short<br />
term loans....She can get nowhere until<br />
she returns to normal economic conditions,<br />
but she is afraid to try to get back<br />
to those, because she fears economic collapse<br />
and social upheaval if she does so.”<br />
Knowing this, Hitler realized that<br />
war was the only way out of the box,<br />
which is what he had intended all along.<br />
Hermann Göring’s four-year plan in<br />
1936 was designed to facilitate a series of<br />
short contained conflicts, after each of<br />
which Hitler would digest his conquest<br />
and move on to the next. <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
afraid of this. He wrote to a friend on 2<br />
July: “I fear that by the summer of next<br />
year, the Germans will be so strong as to<br />
dominate all our thoughts.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> supported Austen<br />
Chamberlain’s request for a secret<br />
session of Parliament to discuss defense<br />
issues, but Prime Minister Baldwin<br />
refused. He did agree to receive a parliamentary<br />
deputation led by Austen, Lord<br />
Salisbury and <strong>Churchill</strong>, on 28-29 July.<br />
At the conclusion of the first day,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said: “Permit me to end upon<br />
this thought which preys upon me. The<br />
months slip by rapidly. If we delay too<br />
long in repairing our defences we may be<br />
forbidden by superior power to complete<br />
the process.”<br />
On the second day, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
addressed Baldwin’s excuse that the<br />
country was not ready to support all that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> wanted to improve national<br />
defence. Baldwin said he did not believe<br />
Germany was rearming in order to fight<br />
Britain. He even suggested circumstances<br />
under which he would throw France<br />
under the bus—as his successor was to<br />
do with Czechoslovakia: “I am not going<br />
to get this country into a war with<br />
anybody for the League of Nations or<br />
anybody else or for anything else. There<br />
is one danger, of course, which has probably<br />
been in all your minds—supposing<br />
the Russians and Germans got fighting<br />
and the French went in as the allies of<br />
Russia owing to that appalling pact they<br />
made; you would not feel you were<br />
obliged to go and help France, would<br />
you If there is any fighting in Europe to<br />
be done, I should like to see the Bolshies<br />
and the Nazis doing it.”<br />
Baldwin would get his wish in<br />
three years, when the Bolshies and the<br />
Nazis joined to carve up Poland.<br />
50 Years Ago<br />
Summer 1961 • Age 86<br />
“He is a wonderful boy.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> spent much of June at the<br />
Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo,<br />
where Anthony Montague Browne wrote<br />
to Lord Beaverbrook, “I think Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> is bored. There is nobody<br />
about at all.”<br />
He returned to London early in<br />
July and, with Clementine, entertained<br />
Lord Beaverbrook and Lady Dunn at<br />
Chartwell on the 16th. On August 12th<br />
they had a visit from Lord Montgomery,<br />
who paid many such calls on the fastaging<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong>. Monty managed to<br />
elicit from <strong>Churchill</strong> his opinion that<br />
Balfour had been “the best leader we<br />
have had in this century”—better than<br />
Lloyd George, who “had not been as<br />
good.” <strong>Churchill</strong> said that Baldwin had<br />
been a poor leader and that Chamberlain<br />
had been better. “But then you see I am<br />
prejudiced. The first thing [Neville<br />
Chamberlain] did when the war started<br />
was to ask me to join his government.”<br />
Later in August, his son Randolph<br />
and the American Kay Halle—who had<br />
wanted to marry each other thirty years<br />
earlier but were dissuaded by their<br />
respective parents—were lunching at<br />
Chartwell when <strong>Churchill</strong> rose and proposed<br />
a toast to John F. Kennedy: “Kay,<br />
let us drink to your great President.”<br />
In late August, <strong>Churchill</strong> returned to<br />
Monte Carlo, accompanied by his<br />
grandson <strong>Winston</strong>. In a letter to<br />
Clementine he wrote, “I am daily astonished<br />
by the development I see in my<br />
namesake. He is a wonderful boy. I am<br />
so glad I have got to know him.” <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 31
My employment with Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>, as a<br />
research assistant on the official biography of his<br />
father, began in October 1962 on my twentysixth<br />
birthday, at his beautiful home Stour, in East Bergholt,<br />
Suffolk. Given Randolph’s reputation for drink and anger,<br />
my friends and I assumed that my engagement would be of<br />
short duration. I was still there, as part of his team of<br />
“young gentlemen,” or “ghosts,” four and a half years later.<br />
Randolph made many enemies by his often violent<br />
conduct, but he could be kind, considerate and generous.<br />
On my first working day he somewhat shyly handed me a<br />
gift: a copy of his book Fifteen Famous English Homes,<br />
inscribed “Martin Gilbert from Randolph S. <strong>Churchill</strong>.” A<br />
month later he gave me another of his books, The Rise and<br />
Fall of Sir Anthony Eden, inscribed “Martin from<br />
Randolph.” I had been accepted as part of his team.<br />
Work could begin at any time of the day, or night: in<br />
mid-morning, after lunch, before dinner, or after dinner.<br />
Randolph never tired of asking the questions, and was<br />
always eager to hear the answers. “Why have you taken so<br />
long, dear boy” was a frequent complaint, even when it<br />
seemed to me that I had been extremely quick.<br />
In the course of his <strong>Churchill</strong> work, Randolph would<br />
ask for notes and outlines for things that he was preparing<br />
outside the biography. One such effort, on which I worked<br />
quite hard, was a film script on the life of Hitler which was<br />
commissioned by Granada Television. The scheme, under<br />
which he would be the presenter, and which he looked<br />
forward to enormously, was abandoned after he quarrelled<br />
with the producer the first time they met, in a Granada<br />
studio in London. “I refuse to work with a woman,” he<br />
said, and walked out—to the Café Royal.<br />
In March 1964 I spent thirteen consecutive days with<br />
Randolph. Several of my friends wondered whether I could<br />
possibly survive unscathed, that is to say, without being<br />
sacked, but I did.<br />
Randolph was an exacting taskmaster and at the same<br />
time a generous employer. At a time when he was paying<br />
me a good salary, he wrote to me in Oxford from Stour:<br />
“Looking at my salary book I see that you are being scandalously<br />
underpaid.” He proposed a generous increase.<br />
When a research assistant had angered him and was sacked<br />
at midnight, the next morning on the breakfast table was a<br />
blank cheque signed by Randolph for the young man to fill<br />
in. Kindness and anger were inextricably mixed up in his<br />
brain, the first warm and encouraging, the second sometimes<br />
frightening in its intensity.<br />
A source of constant amelioration was Randolph’s<br />
friend Natalie Bevan. The colourful, animated pottery<br />
figures that she made, some of which (including four large<br />
trumpeting elephant candle-holders) graced Randolph’s<br />
table, reflected her own colourful character. When storms<br />
brewed, her presence could avert the worst dramas. Her<br />
arrival at Stour was something much to be looked forward<br />
RANDOLPH CHURCHILL CENTE<br />
“The Beast of Bergholt”<br />
Sir Martin Gilbert Remembers Randolph S. C<br />
“Research at Stour was as far from any dry-as-dust archive<br />
or ivory tower as one could imagine. On the outside of the<br />
house, overlooking the terrace, Randolph affixed a plaque:<br />
I am come to a determination to make<br />
no idle visits this summer,<br />
nor give up any time to commonplace people.<br />
I shall return to Bergholt.<br />
—John Constable (1776-1837)<br />
“Were we, Randolph's researchers, ghosts and paid<br />
hacks, among the commonplace people when storms<br />
raged We certainly felt as much. It was Natalie Bevan<br />
who, on so many occasions, raised both our spirits and his;<br />
or, in raising his, raised ours.” —MG<br />
EAST BERGHOLT: His father loved Chartwell, Randolph loved Stour<br />
(above). Sir Martin Gilbert (right) paid an emotional return visit, the first<br />
since Randolphs death, to greet us on the Tenth <strong>Churchill</strong> Tour, 22 May<br />
2006. Our hosts, Paul and Birte Kelly, have impeccably maintained<br />
Randolphs 1957-68 home. Photographs by Barbara Langworth.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 32
NARY<br />
to. She was always ready with words of comfort for us<br />
researchers when Randolph made life difficult.<br />
In the summer of 1964 the work load was lightened<br />
by the arrival of an enthusiastic young American, George<br />
Thayer, who later wrote a book on extremist right-wing<br />
groups in Britain, and worked for a Congressman on<br />
Capitol Hill. His career was cut short by his early death<br />
from cancer.<br />
In September 1964 all four researchers (Michael<br />
Wolff, Andrew Kerr, George Thayer and myself) and the<br />
four secretaries on the payroll at the time received a collective<br />
exhortation, one of Randolph’s (and his father’s)<br />
favourite verses:<br />
The heights of great men reached and kept,<br />
Were not attained by sudden flight,<br />
But they, while their companions slept,<br />
Were toiling upwards in the night.<br />
hurchill, 1911-1968<br />
Randolph’s personality, with its exhortations and<br />
eccentricities, kept the team on its toes. On one occasion a<br />
telegram arrived in which the address was given not as East<br />
Bergholt but Beast Bergholt. He announced at once, with a<br />
broad grin, that he was now “the Beast of Bergholt.”<br />
Research successes were not always enough to avert<br />
Randolph’s anger. One day when I was at Oxford, a<br />
telegram reached the College Lodge informing me that I<br />
had been sacked. The reason for my sacking had nothing to<br />
do with my researches. Some grouse had reached Stour, by<br />
rail, as a gift from the Secretary of State for War, John<br />
Profumo. Having probably been shunted onto a siding for<br />
too long during their journey, they were no longer edible;<br />
this only became clear when they were at table. At the end<br />
of a letter to Profumo, thanking him for some historical<br />
material he had sent (the fifty-year rule for public documents<br />
meant his permission was needed to see government<br />
archival material even for 1914), I mentioned the fact that<br />
the grouse were off. On receiving my letter he had telephoned<br />
Randolph to offer some more.<br />
Profumo’s call revealed that I had, unwittingly, broken<br />
a house rule, unknown to me at the time. As Randolph<br />
explained, in furious tones: “I cannot have people who are<br />
working for me and who come to my house complaining<br />
about the food behind my back to people who had sent it. I<br />
cannot abide the idea that anyone staying and working in<br />
the house does not have his primary loyalty to myself. If<br />
you blab about the food in a mischievous way you might,<br />
for all I know, blab about graver matters.” If I wanted to<br />
work on research in Oxford and elsewhere at a reduced<br />
salary, he suggested that I should contact Michael Wolff.<br />
“But I do not wish you to come back here.”<br />
Advice came that same day from Andrew Kerr:<br />
“Suggest you write groveller.” I did so, and received a<br />
telegram from Randolph in reply: “Thank you for your >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 33
“THE BEAST OF BERGHOLT”...<br />
letter. The matter is closed.” When I next returned to Stour<br />
he greeted me: “Welcome back. I am sorry about what happened.<br />
We won’t speak about it again. Now tell me, dear,<br />
what have you brought me to read”<br />
There was a sequel to this episode six months later<br />
when Profumo resigned. Randolph was shocked by the virulence<br />
of the newspapers, and by the way in which the<br />
Profumos were to all intents and purposes besieged in their<br />
own home. In strictest secrecy, so that it never reached the<br />
ears of any journalist or the lens of any press photographer,<br />
he offered Stour as a sanctuary. I still have the instructions<br />
we were all given, headed with the codename OPERATION<br />
SANCTUARY, marked SECRET, and explaining how we were<br />
to look after “OGs” (Our Guests).<br />
Randolph would leave the country to be with his<br />
father on board Aristotle Onassis’s yacht Christina. “Our<br />
friends will seek to come here to Stour unobserved.” If they<br />
were observed, “admission of the Press to the house or<br />
garden will be denied.” If interlopers broke into the garden<br />
“they will be requested to leave.” If they refused, the police<br />
would be called, “during which time our guests will retire<br />
upstairs. We will not stand any rot.”<br />
The Profumos were to be treated as if they were in<br />
their own home. Randolph’s staff was instructed not to<br />
“blab” in the village. If the Profumos wished to go abroad<br />
“they should fly from Southend to Dieppe and should<br />
charter a car on arrival on the continent and ‘disappear<br />
none knows whither.’” In fact there was never any idea in<br />
the Profumos’ mind that they would go abroad, despite<br />
newspaper speculation. Randolph, as usual, was trying to<br />
cover all possibilities.<br />
I was impressed by Randolph’s gesture, one of real<br />
affection and goodness. I knew that, as a young MP,<br />
Profumo had been one of the Conservative Members who<br />
voted against Neville Chamberlain on 8 May 1940, making<br />
possible <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s premiership two days later. At<br />
that time Profumo was the youngest MP. He had entered<br />
the Commons at a by-election only two months before the<br />
decisive vote and had not yet made his maiden speech.<br />
When I reminded Randolph of this, he urged me to write it<br />
down and to send it not to one newspaper but to all of<br />
them. I did so, and about a dozen papers published it. It<br />
was my very first published foray into public life.<br />
Randolph’s generous nature, like his father’s, could be<br />
stirred by a tale of injustice. One afternoon a pupil of mine<br />
at Oxford was pictured in a London evening newspaper,<br />
and pilloried, for a drug-related offence. I brought<br />
Randolph the newspaper that same afternoon. As soon as I<br />
had told him the young man’s story, he telephoned the<br />
newspaper editor and demanded the removal of the offensive<br />
photograph. It was taken out in the later editions.<br />
I learned at Stour that history was concerned with character<br />
and humanity, as well as with facts and achievements. <br />
Randolph by His Contemporaries 1927-1968<br />
A young Apollo, golden-haired,<br />
Stands dreaming<br />
on the verge of strife,<br />
Magnificently unprepared<br />
For the long littleness of life.<br />
—RUPERT BROOKE<br />
C O M P I L E D B Y D A N A C O O K<br />
London, 1927: <strong>Winston</strong>s Pride<br />
[<strong>Winston</strong>’s] son Randolph [was] a handsome stripling of<br />
sixteen, who was esurient for intellectual argument and had<br />
the criticism of intolerant youth. I could see that <strong>Winston</strong> was<br />
very proud of him.…<br />
—Charlie Chaplin, actor, My Autobiography (1964)<br />
_______________________________________________________<br />
Mr. Cook (danacook@istar.ca) compiles literary and political encounters<br />
for numerous newspapers, magazines and journals, including FH 147<br />
and FH 150. The last two entries herein were added by the editor.<br />
Oxford, 1929: Botticelli Angel<br />
Randolph…had just come up and I<br />
“enjoyed”—if that is the right word—his<br />
friendship for a few months. Though he was<br />
nearly five years younger than me, he established<br />
a spirited relationship that was equally<br />
balanced between flirtation and rudeness. I<br />
tended to patronize him, though secretly<br />
dazzled by his extraordinary youthful beauty:<br />
thick golden hair, enormous blue eyes and a<br />
sugar-pink complexion….He looked like a<br />
Botticelli angel.<br />
—Elizabeth Longford, writer, The Pebbled Shore (1986)<br />
Bosnia, 1943: Deceptive Forms<br />
Randolph was all that has been said and written about<br />
him—irrepressible, arrogant, rude, argumentative—and much<br />
more. He had a natural eloquence, a deeply inquisitive intelligence<br />
and a retentive memory; he was a marvellous story-teller,<br />
and—when he wished to be—one of the most charming men I<br />
have ever known. he had courage that went beyond bravery,<br />
because he had to force himself to the front, and he did so<br />
consistently….an object lesson that human greatness and<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 34
WAR AND PEACE:<br />
< Randolph parachuted<br />
into Yugoslavia with<br />
Fitzroy Maclean and<br />
Evelyn Waugh. An emotional<br />
Tito greeted the<br />
Prime Ministers own<br />
son as a fellow fighter.<br />
Nearly a decade later ><br />
he donned Court Dress<br />
for the Coronation of<br />
Queen Elizabeth II on 2<br />
June 1953, he was photographed<br />
proudly with<br />
his father and his son<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>. Photo by<br />
Helmut Gernsheim from<br />
RSCs <strong>Churchill</strong>:A Life<br />
in Photographs (1955).<br />
goodness may reside in deceptive forms not always recognized<br />
by those who are looking for them.<br />
—Sir Fitzroy Maclean, soldier, statesman,<br />
in Kay Halle, ed., The Grand Original (1971)<br />
Naples, 1944: “You Have Sent Us Your Son”<br />
On 12 August I met <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> in Naples. He<br />
said that he was sorry he was so advanced in years that he<br />
could not land by parachute, otherwise he would have been<br />
fighting in Yugoslavia. “But you have sent us your son,” I<br />
replied. At that moment tears glittered in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s eyes.”<br />
—Josip Broz (Tito) in The Grand Original<br />
London, 1945: Political Ambition<br />
Dined with Randolph. He was quite meek. Said he<br />
wants to get into politics as a career and is only continuing his<br />
newspaper work because he needs the money. Says it is difficult<br />
for him sometimes to reconcile his “dignity” as an<br />
Englishman and a <strong>Churchill</strong> with his reporting. He hopes to<br />
be Prime Minister some day.<br />
—C. L. Sulzberger, journalist, A Long Row of Candles (1969)<br />
Los Angeles, 1950s: Quiz Bust<br />
The famous names of the time paraded through<br />
Information Please [quiz show]. Randolph...was supposed to<br />
be an authority on the geography of the United States. When<br />
he was asked to name a river that divided two New England<br />
states, he replied with great authority, “The Delaware.”<br />
—Oscar Levant, pianist, Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)<br />
London, 1950s: Managing Waugh<br />
[Evelyn] Waugh was not only anti-black but also anti-<br />
Semitic, anti-French and, with the rarest exceptions,<br />
anti-British. Once, years ago, I asked Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong> how<br />
he managed to get along with him, having in mind that not<br />
many could get along with Randolph himself. “Well,” he said,<br />
“I always promise him I won’t have any Americans around.”<br />
—J.K. Galbraith, economist, A View from the Stands (1986)<br />
London, 1950-51: Still Trying<br />
In White’s Club ran into Randolph whom I hadn’t seen<br />
for more than ten years. He was very genial—now immensely<br />
bloated and rather absurd-looking, laying down the law to a<br />
little circle of fellow drinkers about politics, etc.: not any edifying<br />
scene, but, all the same, I like him in a way…. (1950)<br />
Looked in to see Randolph in the London Clinic, where<br />
he’s having his Korean wound attended to—immense figure<br />
propped up in bed, drinking and smoking, writing letters to<br />
newspapers, telephoning etc.; a sort of parody of a man of<br />
action; of his father, indeed. We talked about politics. Poor<br />
Randolph, who looks almost as old as <strong>Winston</strong>, still trying to<br />
be the wild young man of destiny. (1951)<br />
—Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist, Like It Was (1981)<br />
London, Mid-1950s: Under the Burden<br />
Another character writing for the [Evening] Standard at<br />
the time was Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>, who labored under the<br />
burden of being the son of his famous father. He was not a<br />
popular figure, given to booze and bluster, and earned part of<br />
his considerable upkeep by writing articles for Beaverbrook, as<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> had done when out of office in the 1930s. Also like<br />
his father, he wrote well, but he lacked the authority of any<br />
substantial achievement in his own life.<br />
—Anthony Westell, journalist, The Inside Story (2002)<br />
London, Late 1950s: Prep for Provocation<br />
For a television interview with Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>…<br />
everyone, including TV critics next morning, said how relaxed<br />
and calm I had been with Randolph, in spite of his attempts at<br />
provocation, at which he was not untalented. In fact I had >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 35
RANDOLPH BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES...<br />
spent a number of hours that day and the previous day being<br />
grilled by some of my sharpest colleagues in Gray’s Inn Road. I<br />
got them to fire questions at me, the kind of questions they<br />
thought I would be asked.<br />
—Roy Thomson, press baron, After I Was Sixty (1975)<br />
London, 1958: Anti-Disarmament Serenade<br />
On one [disarmament] march, Randolph greeted the<br />
marchers with a wind-up gramophone on which he was<br />
playing patriotic music, but the din was so great he was taken<br />
to be a supporter and then, when his furious gestures made his<br />
position clear, invited to join us and have his mind changed.<br />
— Doris Lessing, novelist, Walking in the Shade (1997)<br />
1950s-60s: Multiple Remembrances<br />
One has a montage of memories. Randolph arguing with<br />
a Georgetown cop who had dared stop a car he was driving<br />
rather drunkenly down 29th Street sometime in the Fifties;<br />
Randolph red-faced and exultant at the Democratic convention<br />
in Los Angeles in 1960, rejoicing over the nomination of<br />
Jack Kennedy, whom he adored as extravagantly as he despised<br />
Jack’s father; Randolph boasting of a Hollywood dinner given<br />
by Otto Preminger, at which he successfully insulted so many<br />
guests that eight of them, he claimed, left the table; Randolph<br />
on a hilarious riff about the Munich crisis in which he gave<br />
leading characters Joycean names—Chamberpot and Holyfox<br />
and Mountbottom....<br />
—Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., historian, A Life in the<br />
20th Century, vol. 1, Innocent Beginnings (2000)<br />
London, 1967: Happier Than Ever<br />
Randolph, looking old and grey, like a haggard hawk,<br />
has been on the brink of death for three years. The other night<br />
he told me that he was now happier than he had ever been. He<br />
was at last doing something that justified his life—his book on<br />
his father, the best thing he had ever done, his contribution to<br />
the world; the fact that he was no longer restless was balm to<br />
him. I am sure he was being sincere, but it is hard to believe.<br />
His eyes looked so abysmally sad.<br />
—Cecil Beaton, photographer, The Parting Years (1978)<br />
Pennsylvania, 1968: On Stamps<br />
I wrote him to ask for help identifying portraits on<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> stamps, for what was then the philatelic <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Study Unit. I knew little about him, but what I knew I liked.<br />
I knew of his volcanic personality. (“I am an explosion that<br />
leaves the house still standing.”) I had read of the famous<br />
exchange at White’s, after Randolph survived an operation for<br />
a benign tumor: “Have you heard the news” Evelyn Waugh<br />
thundered to the bar: “Leave it to modern medical science to<br />
cut out of Randolph the only thing that was not malignant.”<br />
And I knew of Randolph’s response, his Easter card to the<br />
devout Catholic Waugh: “Wishing you a Happy Resurrection.”<br />
I knew of his failure on TV’s “$64,000 Question,”<br />
failing to identify the man who gave his name to the word<br />
“boycott”—and how he then named his favorite pug “Captain<br />
Boycott.” And of his lawsuit against the gutter press, who had<br />
called him a “paid hack,” described in a book published by<br />
himself, under the imprint, “Country Bumpkins.”<br />
I knew of how, incensed over a South African landing<br />
card asking his race, he had written: “Human. But if, as I<br />
imagine is the case, the object of this enquiry is to determine<br />
whether I have coloured blood in my veins, I am most happy<br />
to be able to inform you that I do, indeed, so have. This is<br />
derived from one of my most revered ancestors, the Indian<br />
Princess Pocohontas, of whom you may not have heard, but<br />
who was married to a Jamestown settler named John Rolfe.”<br />
Moreover, I had read his two volumes about his father—<br />
and they are the reasons I am writing here, in this place, today.<br />
My request was inconsequental and I expected no reply,<br />
but back it came: “I regret to record that I know nothing<br />
about stamps, but if you will send along your questions I shall<br />
be pleased to try to answer them.” Martin Gilbert remembers<br />
my letter. Scarcely a fortnight later, Randolph was dead.<br />
Over the years I collected all his books, and books about<br />
him, and I think I know some of his pathos, his driving forces,<br />
and the vindication of his final triumph: the biography. When<br />
he died a friend spoke of him as his father had of Brendan<br />
Bracken: “Poor, dear Randolph.” I liked that, too. Every<br />
admirer of Sir <strong>Winston</strong> is grateful for Randolph’s life.<br />
—Richard M. Langworth<br />
Washington, 9 April 1963: Randolphs Day<br />
I remember Randolph, on a<br />
spring day after rain, with the<br />
afternoon sun streaming into<br />
the Green Room. It was the day<br />
Jack had proclaimed Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> Honorary Citizen of<br />
the United States. Now the last<br />
guest had wandered out, and we<br />
had gone to sit in the Green<br />
Room to unwind together.<br />
Jack had cared about this<br />
day so much. We met in his<br />
<strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 80, 3rd Qtr., 1993<br />
office. Randolph was ashen, his<br />
voice a whisper. “All that this<br />
ceremony means to the two<br />
principals,” I thought, “is the gift they wish it to be to<br />
Randolph’s father—and they are both so nervous it will be a<br />
disaster.”<br />
The French windows opened and they went outside. Jack<br />
spoke first but I couldn’t listen. Then the presentation.<br />
Randolph stepped forward to respond: “Mr. President.”<br />
His voice was strong. He spoke on, with almost the voice of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>. He sent his words across the afternoon,<br />
that most brilliant, loving son—speaking for his father. Always<br />
for his father.<br />
But that afternoon the world stopped and looked at<br />
Randolph. And many saw what they had missed.<br />
After, in the Green Room—the happy relief—Randolph<br />
surrounded with his loving friends—we so proud of him and<br />
for him—he knowing he had failed no one, and had moved so<br />
many. I will forever remember that as Randolph’s day.<br />
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in The Grand Original <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 36
R I D D L E S , M Y S T E R I E S , E N I G M A S<br />
Tracking <strong>Churchill</strong>’s Motorcars<br />
Q<br />
A friend and I are a keen owners of Morris Oxford VIs similar to one<br />
owned by Sir <strong>Winston</strong> (reg. no. 6000KP) before his death. We are writing<br />
a book forty years since they ceased production and wish to include his car,<br />
which in the 1990s was still in Kent. We also understand that both 777SKE<br />
and 6000KP are still around and wonder how we verify this<br />
—GEORGE WEATHERLEY, ENGLAND (GEORGEWEATHERLEY @BTOPENWORLD.COM)<br />
Morris<br />
Oxford VI<br />
As an automotive writer, I have long<br />
planned to write about <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
cars, or those used by his staff. Yes, the<br />
Morris Oxfords you mention do exist,<br />
though I can’t believe he owned two;<br />
perhaps one was a staffer’s car In<br />
2005, 6000KP was sold by Christie’s<br />
(see http://bit.ly/mNZvyV). On the<br />
tracking of British cars by number<br />
plate, I asked my colleague and sometime<br />
co-author, Graham Robson.<br />
• Mr. Robson replies: If Mr.<br />
Weatherley is a motoring enthusiast—<br />
and if he proposes to write a book<br />
about Morris Oxfords he will have to<br />
be!—he might know that the British<br />
car licencing authority (DVLA) has a<br />
small section for “do they still exist”<br />
queries. Visit www.dvla.gov.uk, find the<br />
Press Office section, and ask for their<br />
help. It is regularly provided, but do<br />
not expect it to be done in a trice.<br />
A book about Morris Oxfords is<br />
unlikely to be a best seller, so the<br />
authors should find themselves a publisher<br />
before they do a lot of work. I<br />
was recently approached for advice by<br />
someone who spent five years writing<br />
165,000 words of self-aggrandising<br />
hagiography about BMC’s Sir Leonard<br />
Lord, and now expects publishers to be<br />
queueing up for it.<br />
As author of a book on Humbers<br />
(a friend told me his Super Snipe gave<br />
him a case of mal de mer one summer’s<br />
eve), I certainly endorse Graham’s<br />
comments about finding a publisher.<br />
But how can they resist 165,000 words<br />
on Leonard Lord —Ed.<br />
THEY SPOKE IN FRENCH<br />
QWhat can you tell me about<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Secret Agent, a new<br />
book by Reno residents Max and Linda<br />
Ciampoli, alleging that as a young man<br />
in World War II, Max was a secret<br />
agent who took orders directly from<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong><br />
—BRIAN DUGGAN,<br />
NEVADA APPEAL, CARSON CITY, NEV.<br />
ASome descriptions say this is a<br />
“novel based on fact.” Whatever it<br />
is supposed to be, we find no mention<br />
of Max Ciampoli in the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
papers and Martin Gilbert has never<br />
heard of him; nor has the official historian<br />
of MI5, whom Professor Kimball<br />
approached on our behalf. It sounds<br />
fanciful, like a similar novel, The<br />
Paladin, by Brian Garfield, reviewed in<br />
FH 139: 24. (A man claiming to be<br />
Garfield’s protagonist surfaced a few<br />
years ago but wasn’t taken seriously.)<br />
Our novels reviewer, Michael<br />
McMenamin, adds: “<strong>Churchill</strong> speaks<br />
to Ciampoli only in French and, so far<br />
at least, gives him all his assignments<br />
directly, many of which are pretty<br />
mundane.” You can’t say that about<br />
The Paladin, which is a page-turner.<br />
BRODRICKS ARMY<br />
QEarly in <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Parliamentary career<br />
(1901), he opposed<br />
Secretary of War St.<br />
John Brodrick’s initiative<br />
to increase military<br />
expenditures by 15%,<br />
arguing that the Navy<br />
BRODRICK<br />
should be Great<br />
Britain’s primary military concern.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> went on to collect his speeches<br />
on the subject in Mr. Brodrick’s Army<br />
(1903), but I understand that the debate<br />
continued for three years. The Elgin and<br />
Send your questions to the editor<br />
Norfolk Royal Commissions,<br />
along with the Esher<br />
Committee, resulted in<br />
Brodrick’s political isolation<br />
and reassignment as Secretary of<br />
State for India. I assume that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s efforts ultimately won<br />
the legislative battle, but is there a reference—and<br />
where can I find information<br />
on the Esher Committee or the Elgin<br />
and Norfolk Royal Commissions<br />
—K.T.P. LONARD, VIA EMAIL<br />
AA. Maccallum Scott, author of the<br />
first biography of <strong>Churchill</strong> in<br />
1905, wrote that WSC was ultimately<br />
victorious: “In the first division on Mr.<br />
Brodrick’s army scheme he was the sole<br />
Conservative to walk into the lobby<br />
against it. Two years later he had gathered<br />
round him a party and destroyed<br />
the scheme.”<br />
But young <strong>Churchill</strong>’s efforts<br />
“meant more than the gaining of a<br />
Parliamentary reputation,” as WSC<br />
wrote in My Early Life: “It marked a<br />
definite divergence of thought and<br />
sympathy from nearly all those who<br />
thronged the benches around me.”<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>, his son wrote in the official<br />
biography, was already complaining to<br />
his mother about “a good deal of dissatisfaction<br />
in the Party, and a shocking<br />
lack of cohesion. The Government is<br />
not very strong....The whole Treasury<br />
bench appears to me to be sleepy and<br />
exhausted and played out….”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and a few dissident<br />
young Tory members added to the disarray<br />
by outrageous Parliamentary<br />
manners and criticism of many senior<br />
Conservatives. Critics dubbed them the<br />
Hughligans (or Hooligans), after one of<br />
their members, Lord Hugh Cecil.<br />
Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong> concludes: “It was<br />
a modest attempt at a latterday Fourth<br />
Party. They began to meet for dinner<br />
on Thursday evenings; occasionally<br />
they asked leading political personalities<br />
of the day, maybe a Tory, maybe a<br />
Liberal, to join them at dinner.”<br />
For a rather disjointed discussion<br />
of the Esher Committee and the Elgin<br />
Commission reports, see the following<br />
web page: http://bit.ly/lWRvPf. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 37
<strong>Churchill</strong> on Clemenceau:<br />
His Best Student • Part II<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s entire career as a writer demonstrates that the past must be studied even<br />
though it does not neatly offer rules and models to follow. Clemenceau was such a model,<br />
and we have no better student of Frances Tiger than Britains Lion, <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
P A U L A L K O N<br />
The final version<br />
of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
second essay<br />
on France’s Tiger,<br />
entitled simply<br />
“Clemenceau,” was<br />
published in 1937<br />
in his book Great<br />
Contemporaries.<br />
The first version,<br />
“Clemenceau—the<br />
Man and the Tiger,”<br />
appearing in 1930,<br />
included a cartoon<br />
satirizing in a<br />
friendly way<br />
Clemenceau’s postretirement<br />
big game<br />
hunting in India. It<br />
shows the great<br />
Frenchman with<br />
pith helmet, rifle<br />
and bandolier, confronting<br />
a tiger; the<br />
caption reads “Both<br />
(together): Tiens! Le<br />
Tigre.” 5<br />
An interim version, published by a newspaper in<br />
1936, was a historical workshop, wherein <strong>Churchill</strong> tried to<br />
define the essential nature of France, with its own unique<br />
beginning: “Whenever I hear the Marseillaise, I think of<br />
Clemenceau. He embodied and expressed France.” 6 For<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, the man and the nation were symbolically interchangeable.<br />
All three versions, and their surviving manuscripts in<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong> Archives, reveal that <strong>Churchill</strong> lavished great<br />
care on this biographical sketch, making many small and<br />
large revisions.<br />
Here as elsewhere,<br />
the future Nobel<br />
laureate shows<br />
himself to have<br />
been very much a<br />
professional writer,<br />
intent on polishing<br />
style as well as substance.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
metaphors are<br />
expressive.<br />
Clemenceau is a<br />
ghost of the 1789<br />
French Revolution,<br />
come to haunt<br />
tyrants of the<br />
present time in<br />
France. But only<br />
the 1936 text<br />
includes an explanation<br />
of how<br />
Clemenceau’s attitudes<br />
were shaped<br />
by his upbringing<br />
and first experience<br />
of political tyranny when his father was wrongly imprisoned<br />
by Napoleon III.<br />
In the 1930 Strand and 1937 Great Contemporaries<br />
versions, <strong>Churchill</strong> begins by praising Clemenceau’s much<br />
criticized Grandeurs et Misères de la Victoire, his posthumously<br />
published reply to the posthumously published<br />
General Foch: “We are the richer…that Foch flings the<br />
javelin at Clemenceau from beyond the tomb, and that<br />
Clemenceau, at the moment of descending into it, hurls<br />
back the weapon with his last spasm.” 7<br />
THE TIGER AT PARIS: Principals of the Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles settlement<br />
that followed set the stage for rest of the century. From left, in the words of historian<br />
George Lamb:“David Lloyd-George (whose greatest fear was political disaster in Britain),<br />
Vittorio Orlando (who tried to get massive compensations for Italys suffering), Clemenceau<br />
(driven by his determination forever to end the threat of a strong Germany) and Woodrow<br />
Wilson, who would concede anything to get the League of Nations started.” A decade later<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> reflected to Beaverbrook:“What a ghastly muddle they made out of it.”<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 38
Despite <strong>Churchill</strong>’s comic tone here, he argues more<br />
soberly in Clemenceau’s defense that history is best served<br />
by showing great men as they really were, even in their<br />
petty moments, rather than as mere monuments, “upon<br />
which only the good and great things that men have done<br />
should be inscribed” (GC, 301). In The Strand and Great<br />
Contemporaries, <strong>Churchill</strong> retains but greatly amplifies and<br />
complicates his equation of Clemenceau with France:<br />
He represented the French people risen against tyrants—<br />
tyrants of the mind, tyrants of the soul, tyrants of the body;<br />
foreign tyrants, domestic tyrants, swindlers, humbugs,<br />
grafters, traitors, invaders, defeatists—all lay within the<br />
bound of the Tiger; and against them the Tiger waged inexorable<br />
war. Anti-clerical, anti-monarchist, anti-Communist,<br />
anti-German—in all this he represented the dominant spirit<br />
of France. (GC, 302)<br />
This list of tyrannies fought against is also a catalogue<br />
of what <strong>Churchill</strong> regards as characteristic and mainly<br />
admirable French attitudes. These stemmed ultimately from<br />
the French Revolution “at its sublime moment” (not, of<br />
course, the reign of terror that followed), when defining<br />
new ideals for its country and the world.<br />
Always a student of political symbols, <strong>Churchill</strong> also<br />
added to the expanded passage an image of the elderly<br />
Clemenceau as a more appropriate symbol of his country<br />
than the Gallic cock. After asserting that Clemenceau “was<br />
France,” he writes that “the Old Tiger, with his quaint,<br />
stylish cap, his white moustache and burning eye, would<br />
make a truer mascot for France than any barnyard fowl”<br />
(GC, 302).<br />
Emblematic Imagery<br />
As <strong>Churchill</strong> must have known, cartoonists enjoyed<br />
putting Clemenceau’s head satirically on a tiger, just as they<br />
had long depicted him (not always fondly) as an English<br />
bulldog. 8 Neither tiger not bulldog ever displaced the cock<br />
or lion, though in the 1940s the bulldog became the<br />
symbol of Britain and its best qualities.<br />
A less pleasing parallel came in 1945 when <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
wartime achievements did not prevent a wounding ejection<br />
from office. Of Clemenceau’s similar fate <strong>Churchill</strong> noted,<br />
without premonition: “When the victory was won, France<br />
to foreign eyes seemed ungrateful. She flung him aside and<br />
hastened back as quickly as possible to the old huggermugger<br />
of party politics” (GC, 312-13).<br />
The essay as a whole, however, portrays the Tiger triumphant<br />
by outlining a career that, only eight years after<br />
his death, had in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s opinion made it “already<br />
certain that Clemenceau was one of the world’s great men”<br />
(GC, 302). His outline of Clemenceau’s life provides a clear<br />
though far from easy model for imitation, and is evidently<br />
designed partly as such. Great men were never far from<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s thoughts.<br />
In his Great Contemporaries sketch of Clemenceau,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> creates another emblematic figure, France’s victorious<br />
general, Marshal Foch, representing the aristocratic<br />
virtues of pre-revolutionary France. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s explanation<br />
of the aristocratic strain of French history symbolized by<br />
Foch is among his most memorable set pieces. Its romantic<br />
eloquence rivals in effect—some might say in excess—<br />
Edmund Burke’s famous recollection of Marie Antoinette at<br />
Versailles during the height of her glory. 9<br />
In his Clemenceau essay, however, <strong>Churchill</strong> prudently<br />
picks Joan of Arc as a more acceptable 20th century<br />
emblem of ancient French virtues. Supplementing the<br />
France embodied by Clemenceau, <strong>Churchill</strong> writes, “There<br />
was another mood and another France”:<br />
It was the France of Foch—ancient, aristocratic; the France<br />
whose grace and culture, whose etiquette and ceremonial has<br />
bestowed its gifts around the world. There was the France of<br />
chivalry, the France of Versailles, and above all, the France of<br />
Joan of Arc. It was this secondary and submerged national<br />
personality that Foch recalled….But when [Foch and<br />
Clemenceau] gazed upon the inscription on the golden statue<br />
of Joan of Arc...and saw gleaming the Maid’s uplifted sword,<br />
their two hearts beat as one. (GC, 303) 10 >><br />
_________________________________________________________<br />
5. <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>, “Clemenceau—the Man and the Tiger,”<br />
The Strand Magazine, December, 1930: 582-93. Subsequent citations to<br />
this work will be documented in endnotes with the abbreviation SM.<br />
6. CHAR 8/542: manuscript, and News of the World, 15 March<br />
1936: 5 (with slightly different paragraphing), part of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s series<br />
on “Great Men of Our Time.” Subsequent citations will be documented<br />
parenthetically as CHAR 8/542 & NOTW.<br />
7. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, “Clemenceau,” Great Contemporaries<br />
(London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), 301-02. Subsequent citations<br />
will be documented parenthetically with the abbreviation GC.<br />
8. See back cover for Henri Guignon’s American World War II<br />
poster “Holding the Line,” which depicts <strong>Churchill</strong> as a bulldog guarding<br />
the Union flag.The first bulldog caricature was in Punch, 29 May 1912.<br />
For other examples see Fred Urquhart, W.S.C.: A Cartoon Biography<br />
(London: Cassell, 1955), 105, 121, 131, 242; and <strong>Churchill</strong> in<br />
Caricature (London: The Political Cartoon Society, 2005), 44. Bulldog<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> cartoons are memorable not because there were many, but<br />
because the image stays in mind with its simplicity and aptness.<br />
9. Burke’s passage was likely in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s mind when he paid his<br />
nostalgic tribute to old France. In his essay on George Bernard Shaw for<br />
Great Contemporaries, he engaged in a literary flourish by announcing<br />
that he would “parody Burke’s famous passage,” by substituting his first<br />
memory of Lady Astor for Burke’s of Marie Antoinette (GC, 54).<br />
10. <strong>Churchill</strong> invokes an imaginary moment when Clemenceau<br />
and Foch view Fremiet’s statue of Joan and either read the inscription on<br />
its base or, more likely (as Danielle Mihram has suggested to me), recall<br />
that famous phrase, which had achieved the status of a proverbial saying.<br />
It was sometimes attributed to Joan’s vision of Saint Michael telling her<br />
about the distressed state of France and expressing compassion, which of<br />
course she too was to feel as motivation for her mission.<br />
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________<br />
Dr. Alkon is Leo S. Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. This is a<br />
condensed text of his original paper, which will appear in full in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> Online, and is also available by email from the editor.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 39
CHURCHILL ON CLEMENCEAU...<br />
Here <strong>Churchill</strong>’s nostalgia is in full flood: his sentimental<br />
yearning for the “grace and culture” of old<br />
aristocratic eras, viewed through very rose-colored glasses<br />
indeed. But <strong>Churchill</strong> the historian knew better than most<br />
the sordid realities that were also a big part of those days.<br />
Even <strong>Churchill</strong>’s paean to ancient France includes a<br />
reminder of “the blood-river” it engendered. He also<br />
reminds us of a conflict<br />
only temporarily set<br />
aside between<br />
Catholicism, as exemplified<br />
by the devoutly<br />
religious Foch, and<br />
fierce anti-clericalism,<br />
exemplified and often<br />
led by the skeptical<br />
Clemenceau who, as<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> explains,<br />
“had no hope beyond<br />
the grave” (GC, 312).<br />
In <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
survey of Clemenceau’s<br />
career there is only<br />
realism, which suggests<br />
his considerable knowledge<br />
of French history<br />
in Clemenceau’s time.<br />
Starting with his courageous action trying to save generals<br />
Thomas and Lecomte from execution while he was “Mayor<br />
of Montmartre amid the perils of the Commune” in 1871,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> portrays Clemenceau as politician and journalist<br />
with equal displays of moral and often physical courage:<br />
over French colonies, the Grévy affair, arguments over<br />
Boulanger, the Panama frauds and accusations that<br />
Clemenceau was implicated, and not least the Dreyfus<br />
Affair, in which “Clemenceau became the champion of<br />
Dreyfus,” having consequently “to fight, to him the most<br />
sacred thing in France—the French Army” (GC, 303, 309).<br />
“All the elements of blood-curdling political drama were<br />
represented by actual facts…which find their modern parallel<br />
only in the underworld of Chicago” (GC, 305).<br />
Clemenceau led “a life of storm, from the beginning<br />
to the end; fighting, fighting all the way” (GC, 303). The<br />
key word that fascinates <strong>Churchill</strong> to the point of repetition<br />
is “fighting.” It was not only Clemenceau’s combative<br />
nature, but some of his rhetorical methods that appealed to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, who later adapted them to his own purposes at a<br />
crucial moment.<br />
They became friends while <strong>Churchill</strong> was Minister of<br />
Munitions, just as the French reluctantly turned to<br />
Clemenceau at “the worst period of the War….He returned<br />
to power as Marius had returned to Rome; doubted by<br />
many, dreaded by all, but doom-sent, inevitable” (GC, 309-<br />
10). <strong>Churchill</strong>, who in 1940 thought of himself as “walking<br />
with destiny,” here uses the phrase “doom-sent” in a way<br />
that shifts the latter part of his biographical sketch toward<br />
the mood, though not the denouement, of a Greek tragedy.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> from this point on is eye-witness and commentator.<br />
He approves of Clemenceau’s way of dealing with<br />
an unfriendly parliament chamber:<br />
To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the<br />
subject and in human touch with the audience. Certainly<br />
Clemenceau seemed to do this…He looked like a wild<br />
animal pacing to and fro behind bars, growling and glaring;<br />
and all around him was an assembly which would have done<br />
anything to avoid having him there, but having put him<br />
there, felt they must obey. (GC, 310-11)<br />
The importance of projecting the right mood in a<br />
crisis was certainly a lesson learned by <strong>Churchill</strong>. He<br />
remembered too some particular words that had served<br />
Clemenceau to good effect. By trying them out on<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> before using them in the French Assembly,<br />
Clemenceau provided a kind of private tutorial for what<br />
proved to be his most apt pupil:<br />
He uttered to me in his room at the Ministry of War words<br />
he afterwards repeated in the tribune: “I will fight in front of<br />
Paris; I will fight in Paris; I will fight behind Paris.” Everyone<br />
knew this was no idle boast. Paris might have been reduced<br />
to the ruins of Ypres or<br />
Arras. It would not have<br />
affected Clemenceau’s<br />
resolution. (GC, 312)<br />
Here of course is<br />
a model for <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
speech about Dunkirk to<br />
the House of Commons<br />
on June 4, 1940: “We<br />
shall go on to the end,<br />
we shall fight in France,<br />
we shall fight on the seas<br />
and oceans…we shall<br />
fight on the beaches, we<br />
shall fight on the<br />
landing grounds, we<br />
shall fight in the fields<br />
and in the streets, we<br />
shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.” 11<br />
In adapting Clemenceau’s trope, <strong>Churchill</strong> amplified<br />
it, hammering home his point by widening and also particularizing<br />
its geographical scope to provide a memorable<br />
vignette of future war, waged relentlessly on sea, on land<br />
and in the air. <strong>Churchill</strong> also evidently took to heart<br />
Clemenceau’s explanation of how in war’s most perilous<br />
time he cast away the axioms of party politics in favor of<br />
pragmatism:<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 40
“By trying [his words] out on <strong>Churchill</strong> before using them in the French Assembly,<br />
Clemenceau provided a kind of private tutorial for what proved to be his most apt<br />
pupil [when he said], ‘I will fight in front of Paris; I will fight in Paris; I will fight<br />
behind Paris.’ Here of course is a model for <strong>Churchill</strong>’s speech about Dunkirk on<br />
3 June 1940: ‘...we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans…we<br />
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in<br />
the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.’”<br />
One day he said to me, “I have no political system, and I have<br />
abandoned all political principles. I am a man dealing with<br />
events as they come in the light of my experience,” or it may<br />
be it was “according as I have seen things happen”….<br />
Clemenceau was quite right. The only thing that mattered<br />
was to beat the Germans. (GC, 311-12)<br />
Later, when beating the Germans was again all that<br />
mattered, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s inspired and energetic muddling<br />
through must surely have been fortified by recollection of<br />
Clemenceau’s approach in equally dire times.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s sketch winds down with recollection of<br />
visits to Clemenceau during his retirement and, in the final<br />
version, with part of a letter from Clemenceau’s daughter<br />
correcting a legend: that although Clemenceau wanted to be<br />
buried upright, his wish was not honored. In the 1930 and<br />
1936 essays <strong>Churchill</strong> had accepted and recounted this tale<br />
as fact, and stoutly ended with a ringing declaration: “If I<br />
were a Frenchman, I would put it right—even now.”<br />
Madeleine Clemenceau-Jacquemaire took no umbrage<br />
at this, but did kindly inform <strong>Churchill</strong> that her father had<br />
left no such wish. In his final version <strong>Churchill</strong> quotes her,<br />
ending with her description of the simple unmarked grave<br />
“where one only hears the wind in the trees and murmuring<br />
of a brook in the ravine,” where at last The Tiger “returned<br />
alone to his father’s side, to the land whence his ancestors<br />
came, les Clemenceau du Colombier, from the depths of<br />
the woodlands of La Vendée, centuries ago” (GC, 313).<br />
These haunting words, selected from an English translation<br />
of the letter Madeleine had written in French, nicely<br />
evoke the long and important sweep of French local history<br />
and Clemenceau’s place in it. 12<br />
Madeleine’s letter had ended with a matter-of-fact<br />
statement that “the old manor house close by is there to<br />
bear witness.” By deciding to omit this rather flat sentence,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> heightens the evocative quality of his conclusion.<br />
Likewise, he keeps in French within the quoted sentence,<br />
rather than translating into English, the phrase “les<br />
Clemenceau du Columbier.” Here, as in the very few other<br />
bits of French that are sprinkled in his essays on<br />
Clemenceau, <strong>Churchill</strong> adroitly heightens the local color<br />
and French flavor appropriate to his topic without either<br />
flaunting his French (such as it was) or creating problems<br />
for those whose French is rusty or non-existent. That<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> gave such careful thought to stylistic issues is one<br />
more indication of his superb skill as a writer. 13<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s last verbal image of Clemenceau comes “a<br />
year before he died” in his unheated library-sitting room in<br />
Paris on a winter day:<br />
The old man appears, in his remarkable black skull-cap,<br />
gloved and well wrapped up. None of the beauty of<br />
Napoleon, but I expect some of his St. Helena majesty, and<br />
far back beyond Napoleon, Roman figures come into view.<br />
The fierceness, the pride, the poverty after great office, the<br />
grandeur when stripped of power, the unbreakable front<br />
offered to this world and to the next—all these belong to the<br />
ancients. (GC, 313)<br />
Without retracting his equation of Clemenceau with<br />
revolutionary France at its best, <strong>Churchill</strong> turns finally to a<br />
more vague but equally laudatory displacement of<br />
Clemenceau into the far more remote past—a modern whose<br />
true place is now in the pantheon of admirable ancients. >><br />
_________________________________________________________<br />
11. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, Blood, Sweat, and Tears (New York:<br />
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), 297.<br />
12. CHAR 8/548. Madeleine Clemenceau-Jacquemaire’s letter,<br />
dated 12 November 1936, was apparently prompted by the News of the<br />
World version of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s essay (the only one to mention the<br />
Marseillaise) because she includes her hope that whenever <strong>Churchill</strong> hears<br />
the Marseillaise he will continue to think of her father. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s reply,<br />
on 13 January 1937, ends with the hope that England and France will<br />
remain united to avert the new peril facing civilization.<br />
13. Another example: I have mentioned where, in the final<br />
version, he proposes the tiger as a better mascot than the cock (GC, 302).<br />
In the 1930 version, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote that the tiger “would make a truer<br />
oriflamme…” (SM, 584). “Oriflamme” is a word redolent of French<br />
history, though hardly familiar to English readers, or even many French<br />
readers, in the 1930s. It refers to the ancient banner of French kings from<br />
the 12th to the 15th centuries. <strong>Churchill</strong> was fond of antique words, a<br />
hallmark of his style; but he displayed sound professional judgment by<br />
replacing “oriflamme” with “mascot.”<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 41
“<strong>Churchill</strong> heightens the evocative quality of his conclusion. Likewise, he keeps in<br />
French within the quoted sentence, rather than translating into English, the<br />
phrase ‘les Clemenceau du Columbier.’ Here, as in the very few other bits of<br />
French that are sprinkled in his essays on Clemenceau, <strong>Churchill</strong> adroitly<br />
heightens the local color and French flavor appropriate to his topic without either<br />
flaunting his French (such as it was) or creating problems for those whose French<br />
is rusty or non-existent. That <strong>Churchill</strong> gave such careful thought to stylistic<br />
issues is one more indication of his superb skill as a writer.”<br />
Summary<br />
In The World Crisis, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s World War I<br />
memoir, Clemenceau receives only brief, laudatory comments.<br />
Except for <strong>Churchill</strong>’s account of the peace<br />
conference, Clemenceau’s actions are remarked only in connection<br />
with military events. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s visit to the front<br />
with Clemenceau is described in just one sentence. 14<br />
Clemenceau’s resolve to fight in front of Paris, in<br />
Paris, and behind Paris is quoted to illustrate not primarily<br />
his temperament, as in Great Contemporaries, but the<br />
importance of his support for Foch—who was willing to<br />
lose Paris if necessary to win the war—rather than for<br />
Pétain, who wanted to defend Paris at all costs even if it<br />
meant allowing a potentially fatal gap to open between the<br />
British and French armies. And thus, wrote <strong>Churchill</strong>, “we<br />
found the path to safety by discerning the beacons of truth”<br />
(WC, II, 449).<br />
Clemenceau’s only other wartime comment in The<br />
World Crisis has for us now a very <strong>Churchill</strong>ian ring that<br />
again illustrates his affinity with The Tiger: “The spirit of<br />
Clemenceau reigned throughout the capital. ‘We are now<br />
giving ground, but we shall never surrender…’” (WC, II,<br />
456). Clemenceau’s credo here could certainly pass for<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s in 1940.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> as Prime Minister would probably have<br />
acted and spoken as he did even if he had not known or<br />
studied Clemenceau. Many other aspects of his experiences,<br />
studies, and psychology pointed him in the same direction.<br />
It was their affinities that prompted <strong>Churchill</strong> to study<br />
Clemenceau, and not the study of Clemenceau that<br />
prompted those affinities. Nevertheless <strong>Churchill</strong>’s instincts<br />
as leader, and occasionally the very words of his public pronouncements,<br />
were surely fortified by his deep and abiding<br />
understanding of Clemenceau’s career.<br />
Of course <strong>Churchill</strong> also studied many other people<br />
who offered examples relevant to his own career. His histories<br />
and biographies are replete with such exemplary figures,<br />
as is Great Contemporaries—so much for the canard that<br />
he cared nothing for others. Perhaps the most important of<br />
these is his ancestor John <strong>Churchill</strong>, First Duke of<br />
Marlborough, to whom he devoted four volumes of<br />
eminent biography. In Marlborough, <strong>Churchill</strong> insists, “the<br />
success of a commander does not arise from following rules<br />
or models….every great operation of war is unique.” 15<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>’s entire career as a writer demonstrates<br />
that the past must be studied even though it does not<br />
neatly offer rules and models to follow in the future.<br />
Clemenceau was such a model. Although more detailed<br />
biographies are available in English, none are from authors<br />
whose experiences equipped them as well as <strong>Churchill</strong> to<br />
understand and to parallel Clemenceau’s achievements. The<br />
English-speaking peoples have no better student of The<br />
Tiger than Sir <strong>Winston</strong>. <br />
________________________________________________________<br />
14. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, The World Crisis 1916-1918, 2 parts,<br />
(London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927), II, 470-71. Subsequent citations<br />
to this work are cited parenthetically with the abbreviation WC.<br />
15. <strong>Winston</strong> S. <strong>Churchill</strong>, Marlborough: His Life and Times, 2<br />
vols. (London: George G. Harrap, 1947), I, 105.<br />
“The city was empty and agreeable by day, while by night there was nearly<br />
always the diversion of an air raid. The spirit of Clemenceau reigned throughout<br />
the capital. ‘We are now giving ground, but we shall never surrender.…’”<br />
—WSC, The World Crisis 1916-1918, II: 456<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 42
M O M E N T S I N T I M E<br />
Recrossing the Rhine, 26 March 1945<br />
< 26 MARCH 1945: Col. Slator (earphones),<br />
WSC and Brooke; seeming to lean on WSC is<br />
Gen. Sir Miles Dempsey, Commander, British<br />
Second Army, part of the 21st Army Group. A<br />
Life photo on the same occasion (above)<br />
shows Cdr. Thompson (naval cap under gun<br />
barrel), Brooke and Dempsey (behind muzzle),<br />
WSC and Montgomery (far right).<br />
v FIRST CROSSING, 25 MARCH: <strong>Churchill</strong>,<br />
in raincoat (below) with Montgomery. Others in<br />
the photograph are American soldiers.<br />
This spectacular photograph, sent to us<br />
by Christopher V. Taylor, shows<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> plunging into the Rhine<br />
aboard a Buffalo amphibian, on his way<br />
back to the French side after his second<br />
crossing into Germany on 26 March<br />
1945. In command, wearing earphones<br />
(see also the photo at above right, of the<br />
same occasion by Life magazine) is Mr.<br />
Taylor’s late uncle, Lt. Col. Richard F.<br />
Slator, 11th Royal Tank Regiment.<br />
In what must have been a gratifying<br />
moment, <strong>Churchill</strong> first crossed<br />
the Rhine on 25 March 1945, only days<br />
after Eisenhower’s armies, as he wrote in<br />
The Second World War (VI: 365):<br />
The Rhine—here about four hundred<br />
yards broad—flowed at our feet. There<br />
was a smooth, flat expanse of meadows<br />
on the enemy’s side. The officers told us<br />
that the far bank was unoccupied so far<br />
as they knew, and we gazed and gaped at<br />
it for a while….Then the Supreme<br />
Commander had to depart on other<br />
business, and Montgomery and I were<br />
about to follow his example when I saw<br />
a small launch come close by to moor.<br />
So I said to Montgomery, ‘Why don't<br />
we go across and have a look at the other<br />
side’ Somewhat to my surprise he<br />
answered, ‘Why not’ After he had made<br />
some inquiries we started across the river<br />
with three or four American commanders<br />
and half a dozen armed men.<br />
We landed in brilliant sunshine and<br />
perfect peace on the German shore, and<br />
walked about for half an hour or so<br />
unmolested.<br />
Always eager to be in on the<br />
action, <strong>Churchill</strong> omitted to note that<br />
he was being naughty. Eisenhower had<br />
had no intention of putting him in<br />
harm’s way—which of course he immediately<br />
suggested after Eisenhower had<br />
left! To <strong>Churchill</strong>’s disappointment, no<br />
German barrage greeted the party,<br />
which wandered about in what might<br />
have been rural England.<br />
The March 25th crossing is shown<br />
in a famous photo (below right) but<br />
Slator’s photograph, is obviously a different<br />
occasion, with British soldiers.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> says he crossed the Rhine<br />
again on the 26th—but on a Jeep over a<br />
pontoon bridge.<br />
Gerald Pawle’s The War and<br />
Colonel Warden, based on the diaries of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s naval aide Commander<br />
“Tommy” Thompson, answered our<br />
question. Slator’s photo is of the March<br />
26th return trip. Pawle, pages 367-68:<br />
Before we returned to England [wrote<br />
Thompson] we made a second crossing<br />
of the Rhine, General Dempsey taking<br />
us in his Jeep over a pontoon bridge<br />
which had just been completed at<br />
Xanten. On the far side we saw a large<br />
number of very woebegone and dishevelled<br />
German prisoners who had been<br />
herded into a barbed-wire enclosure.<br />
Some of them recognized the P.M., and<br />
they gaped at him in absolute astonishment….Eventually<br />
we went back across<br />
the Rhine in one of General Hobart's<br />
tracked amphibious craft, and then<br />
began one of the most hair-raising drives<br />
I can remember. Keen to get rid of us by<br />
this time, Monty was determined we<br />
should reach the airfield at Venlo before<br />
dark. In the leading car he set a furious<br />
pace, and as the sun went down we went<br />
faster and faster, the convoy often<br />
reaching 80 mph. Even so it was almost<br />
dark when the Dakota took off.<br />
This was <strong>Churchill</strong>'s last visit to<br />
the battlefield. Eisenhower, after he<br />
heard of the PM’s crossings, quickly<br />
made sure <strong>Churchill</strong> got back to where<br />
he was supposed to be.<br />
THE BUFFALO<br />
Designed by Donald Roebling,<br />
grandson of the Brooklyn Bridge builder,<br />
the Landing Vehicle Tracked was introduced<br />
in the U.S. in 1941. The British<br />
Buffalo (“Water Buffalo” to Americans),<br />
evolved in 1942, with an improved powertrain<br />
from the M3A1 light tank.<br />
Though mainly used in the Pacific<br />
theatre, LVTs did feature in European<br />
river operations toward the end of the<br />
war, including the Rhine crossing<br />
(“Operation Plunder”). Their descendants<br />
are still part of the armed forces,<br />
the latest version being the AAV, formerly<br />
LVT-7. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 43
C H U R C H I L L A N D I N T E L L I G E N C E<br />
Golden Eggs:<br />
The Secret War,<br />
1940-1945<br />
Part III: Closing the Ring<br />
Again and again, before and during<br />
the desert battles and landings in<br />
Europe, Enigma decrypts monitored<br />
by <strong>Churchill</strong> gave precious clues<br />
that saved Allied lives.<br />
M A R T I N G I L B E R T<br />
© MARTIN GILBERT, 1983<br />
The Western Desert<br />
During each phase of the war in the Western Desert,<br />
Enigma revealed German strengths and weaknesses,<br />
including Rommel’s fuel shortages, and the dates and routes<br />
of the despatch of fuel oil by ship across the Mediterranean.<br />
The army, navy and air commanders-in-chief were thus<br />
notified when and where the enemy was weak, and what<br />
advantages could be taken. On 4 May 1941, for example,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> drew the attention of General Wavell,<br />
Commander-in-Chief Middle East, to a decrypt that had<br />
just been sent him, with the note: “Presume you realize<br />
authoritative character of this information.”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, asking Brigadier Menzies, head of the Secret<br />
Intelligence Service, for a translation of the actual decrypt<br />
rather than the usual summary, added: “Actual text more<br />
impressive than paraphrase showing enemy ‘thoroughly<br />
exhausted,’ unable, pending arrival 15th Panzer Division and<br />
of reinforcements, to do more than hold ground gained at<br />
Tobruk…also definitely forbidding any advance beyond<br />
Sollum, expert for reconnaissance, without permission.” 1<br />
Enigma would reveal if that permission were given.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> sent General Wavell the unsummarized<br />
translated text of an Enigma message decrypted three days<br />
earlier. Normally, to protect the source of the information,<br />
only summaries or paraphrases were sent, but <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
judged it crucial for Wavell to know precisely what the<br />
Germans were planning. OL (Orange Leonard), the prefix<br />
to the message, was a typical digraph used to transmit messages<br />
from an individual spy: anyone other than Wavell who<br />
saw this reference would assume that it was an agent and<br />
would be unaware of the true source.<br />
Wavell’s successors, Generals Auchinleck and<br />
Montgomery, were each regular beneficiaries of the daily<br />
flow of decrypted German messages. On 6 November 1941,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in one of his first telegrams to Auchinleck wrote:<br />
“I presume you are watching the constant arrival of antitank<br />
guns upon your front, both as observed by road and as<br />
reported in our most secret by air.” 2 The “most secret” were<br />
Enigma messages from the Luftwaffe. In the second week of<br />
November <strong>Churchill</strong> informed Roosevelt that two Axis<br />
convoys on their way to Benghazi with fuel oil and military<br />
supplies for Rommel had been sunk. 3 The destruction of the<br />
convoy had been possible because of intercepted messages<br />
which, when deciphered, had given their precise routes and<br />
timings of the convoys.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was worried lest the secrecy of his Signals<br />
Intelligence be endangered. When he asked Menzies about a<br />
British naval signal from Malta giving details of the convoy,<br />
Menzies reassured him: “The Malta signal was sent out as a<br />
result of an aircraft sighting, which quite naturally corresponded<br />
with our Most Secret information. The signal,<br />
however, was based on the aircraft sighting and not on our<br />
material. No security, therefore, was disregarded.” 4<br />
A day after Auchinleck launched his November offensive<br />
in the Western Desert, Enigma revealed a setback to his<br />
troops in a sudden flash flood. <strong>Churchill</strong> ensured that<br />
Auchinleck noted this “special information.” 5 <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
even able to follow Auchinleck’s advance through Enigma,<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 44
telegraphing on November 21st: “From what I learn from<br />
special sources which you know, I have formed a favourable<br />
impression of your operations.” 6<br />
On the fifth day of the battle, concerned to maintain<br />
the secrecy of the Enigma-based information during the<br />
inevitable ebb and flow of troops and armies, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
telegraphed: “C is sending you daily our special stuff. Feel<br />
sure you will not let any of this go into battle zone except as<br />
statements on your own authority with no trace of origin<br />
and not too close a coincidence. There seem great dangers<br />
of documents being captured in view of battle confusion.<br />
Excuse my anxiety.” 7<br />
Two days later <strong>Churchill</strong> repeated his concern: “Please<br />
burn all special stuff and flimsies while up at the Front.” 8<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s scrutiny of Enigma was continuous. Also<br />
on November 23rd he informed Auchinleck that he had<br />
asked Brigadier Menzies “to emphasise to you the importance<br />
of our MK 9.” <strong>Churchill</strong> hoped this information<br />
would encourage Auchinleck to run “quite exceptional<br />
risks.” 9 Drawing Admiral Cunningham’s attention to this<br />
same Enigma, <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed:<br />
I asked the First Sea Lord to wireless you today about the<br />
vital importance of intercepting surface ships bringing reinforcements,<br />
supplies and, above all, fuel to Benghazi. Our<br />
information here shows a number of vessels now approaching<br />
or starting. Request has been made by enemy for air protection,<br />
but this cannot be given owing to absorption in battle<br />
of his African air force. All this information has been<br />
repeated to you. I shall be glad to hear through Admiralty<br />
what action you propose to take. The stopping of these ships<br />
may save thousands of lives, apart from aiding a victory of<br />
cardinal importance. 10<br />
What <strong>Churchill</strong> called “our information here” was the<br />
summary of a decrypt giving details of the German air fuel<br />
cargo on board two oil tankers, Maritza and Procida, destined<br />
for Benghazi and the German airfield at nearby<br />
Benina. 11 Within twenty-four hours of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s telegram,<br />
both ships had been sunk, and Rommel’s aircraft fuel<br />
supply drastically curtailed.<br />
Enigma determined the British decision to take the<br />
offensive in the Western Desert. On 15 March 1942,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> explained to Auchinleck: “A heavy German<br />
counter-stroke upon the Russians must be expected soon,<br />
and it would be thought intolerable if the 635,000 men on<br />
your ration strength should remain unengaged preparing for<br />
another set-piece battle in July.” 12 If no earlier offensive was<br />
possible in the desert, <strong>Churchill</strong> added a day later—<br />
knowing from Enigma the German strategic plans—it<br />
might be necessary to transfer fifteen air squadrons from the<br />
Western Desert “to sustain the Russian left wing in the<br />
Caucasus.” 13<br />
One crucial Enigma message on 2 May 1942 revealed<br />
that by June 1st, Rommel would have enough fuel for a<br />
thirty-eight day tank offensive. 14 Rommel launched his<br />
offensive on May 26th. Knowing the date, <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
urged Auchinleck to strike first, but Auchinleck had felt<br />
unable to do so.<br />
On 20 August 1942, <strong>Churchill</strong>, then in Egypt, visited<br />
the forward positions at Alam Halfa across which, it was<br />
already known from Enigma, Rommel’s attack would come.<br />
Enigma also indicated that Rommel might launch his attack<br />
on 25 August. <strong>Churchill</strong> immediately appointed General<br />
Maitland Wilson to establish a defensive line for Cairo and<br />
the Suez Canal. Further Enigma decrypts gave five days’<br />
respite: the attack came on the night of August 30th.<br />
While in Cairo, the Prime Minister was allocated a<br />
Special Communications Unit to provide direct access to<br />
the Enigma decrypts. His wireless operator was Edgar<br />
Harrison, who was later seconded to him on his visits to<br />
Turkey, Nicosia, Teheran and Yalta. 15<br />
Enigma decrypts continued to expose Rommel’s fuel<br />
supply. When one signal reported the sailing of a convoy<br />
from Italy to North Africa on September 6th, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
wrote to the naval and air chiefs, Sir Dudley Pound and Sir<br />
Charles Portal: “This is evidently an occasion for a supreme<br />
effort, even at the risk of great sacrifices by the Navy and<br />
Air Force. Pray inform me tonight what action you are<br />
taking.” 16 The action was to attack the convoy. Three of its<br />
four merchant ships, laden with aviation fuel, were sunk.<br />
A decrypt on 8 October 1942, a message from the<br />
Western Desert to the German High Command, revealed<br />
Panzer fuel stocks would soon be down to four and a half<br />
days’ battle supply, and that only three days’ worth of this<br />
fuel was located between Tobruk and Alamein. This<br />
message was decrypted at Bletchley at virtually the same<br />
moment it was read in Berlin. The decrypt was sent to<br />
Menzies, then immediately to <strong>Churchill</strong>, the chiefs of staff<br />
and Montgomery. The decrypt continued that as a result of<br />
this fuel shortage, the Panzer army “did not possess the<br />
operational freedom of movement which was absolutely<br />
essential in consideration of the fact that the British offensive<br />
can be expected to start any day.” 17<br />
A series of October decrypts had enabled the RAF to<br />
pinpoint and to sink the “vitally needed tankers” bringing<br />
tank and aircraft fuel across the Mediterranean to the<br />
German and Italian forces in North Africa. Further decrypts<br />
revealed “the condition of intense strain and anxiety behind<br />
the enemy’s front,” giving the Defence Committee “solid<br />
grounds for confidence in your final success.” 18<br />
On the evening of November 2nd, Rommel sent an<br />
emergency situation report to the German High Command:<br />
His forces were exhausted, and no longer able “to prevent a<br />
further attempt by strong enemy tank formations to break<br />
through, which may be expected tonight or tomorrow.” On<br />
the other hand, Rommel told Berlin, an “ordered” withdrawal<br />
of his troops was impossible in view of the lack of<br />
motor vehicles. Rommel added: “The slight stocks of fuel<br />
do not allow for a movement to the rear over great dis- >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 45
“[Rommel] deserves the salute which I made him—and<br />
not without some reproaches from the public—in the<br />
House of Commons in January 1942, when I said of him,<br />
‘We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us,<br />
and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.’ He<br />
also deserves our respect because, although a loyal German<br />
soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works....”<br />
—WSC, The Grand Alliance, 1950<br />
THE SECRET WAR...<br />
tances.” On the “one available road” his troops would certainly<br />
be attacked “night and day” by the RAF. In this<br />
situation, he warned, “the gradual annihilation of the army<br />
must be faced.”<br />
The decrypt of this message reached <strong>Churchill</strong> on the<br />
night of November 2nd, when a copy was also sent to Cairo<br />
for Alexander. Three other decrypts that same day testified<br />
to the imminence of a German retreat, and the exhaustion<br />
of the German army. “Presume you have read all the<br />
Boniface,” <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed to Alexander on<br />
November 4th. 19<br />
Following the Allied victory at El Alamein,<br />
Montgomery advanced westward. After landings in<br />
Morocco and Algeria, the Americans under Eisenhower<br />
advanced eastward. Tunisia became the battleground of<br />
both forces against a determined enemy. Enigma decrypts<br />
over a ten-day period showed <strong>Churchill</strong> and the Combined<br />
Chiefs of Staff the extent to which Hitler was determined to<br />
hold Tunisia, and alerted them to strong Axis reinforcements,<br />
including several formations of high quality: 10,000<br />
German and Italian troops in the second week of<br />
November, with 15,000 more to follow. 20 When military<br />
setbacks took place—disturbing Allied public opinion—the<br />
detailed reasons for them could not be explained publicly,<br />
for fear of disclosing the source of the knowledge.<br />
A month later, Enigma decrypts showed the effect of<br />
Allied air and sea attacks. “Boniface shows the hard straits<br />
of the enemy,” <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed Eisenhower on<br />
December 16th, “the toll taken of his supplies by submarines<br />
and surface ships, and especially the effect which<br />
our bombing is having upon congested ports.” 21<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> did tell Eisenhower that the naval attacks were<br />
particularly successful because Enigma regularly revealed<br />
sailing dates, routes and cargoes.<br />
As Alexander set the assault on Tripoli for 14 January<br />
1943, <strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed to him on December 27th:<br />
“Reading Boniface, after discounting the enemy’s natural<br />
tendency to exaggerate his difficulties in order to procure<br />
better supplies, I cannot help hoping that you will find it<br />
possible to strike earlier….” 22<br />
On 5 January 1943, as Alexander and Montgomery<br />
planned their Tunisian offensive, <strong>Churchill</strong> drew the Chiefs<br />
of Staff Committee’s attention to decrypts from which he<br />
was “pretty sure that the Germans in Tunisia are very short<br />
of transport and have not the necessary mobility for a largescale<br />
deep-ranging thrust.” This being so, on noting “in<br />
Boniface” the anxiety of the Commander of the Fifth<br />
Panzer Army, General von Arnim, about an attack in the<br />
southern sector, <strong>Churchill</strong> asked that the possibility of a<br />
southern operation should not be excluded, especially as it<br />
would force von Arnim to divert forces to the south, and<br />
thus give “the relief we seek” in the northern sector. 23<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was alarmed on February 17th to read two<br />
reports about the success of Allied supplies entering Tripoli<br />
harbour, and an Enigma message exhorting Rommel to<br />
bomb the harbour. <strong>Churchill</strong> at once urged the Chiefs of<br />
Staff Committee to send “remonstrances” to Admiral<br />
Cunningham, adding:<br />
He is the best fellow in the world, but he ought not to have<br />
said the passage marked in red, which is directly contrary to<br />
our policy of minimising the use of Tripoli harbour, and<br />
which is calculated to deprive Montgomery of the element of<br />
surprise expressing itself in an unexpectedly early attack with<br />
greater strength. On the advice of the Chiefs of Staff<br />
Committee I purposely lent myself to a very discouraging<br />
view of the Tripoli unloadings. But all this is undone.<br />
Boniface shows that this is Hitler’s view. 24<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was always alert to the dangers of discovery.<br />
“You will I am sure,” he telegraphed to Montgomery on<br />
March 1st, “Tell even your most trusted commanders only<br />
the minimum necessary.” One of the two decrypts to which<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had drawn Montgomery’s attention that day<br />
showed that, at that point in the battle in northern Tunisia,<br />
one of von Arnim’s units, the 21st Panzer Division, had<br />
“only 47 serviceable tanks.” 25<br />
A single division at Medenine guarded Montgomery’s<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 46
supply lines. No extra troops seemed to be needed, but on<br />
February 28th a decrypt revealed Rommel’s intention to<br />
attack Medenine with three Panzer divisions, thus encircling<br />
the British forces in front of the Mareth Line. Further<br />
decrypts showed that Rommel would deploy 160 tanks and<br />
200 guns. 26 Montgomery responded at once, rushing up the<br />
New Zealand Division, 400 tanks and over 800 field and<br />
tank guns 200 miles along the single tarmac road, switching<br />
the balances of forces in Britain’s favour. The RAF, too,<br />
alerted by Enigma, was able, just in time, to increase its<br />
forward strength, building it up to double that which it was<br />
known was available to Rommel.<br />
Rommel, unaware that he had lost both surprise and<br />
superiority, launched his attack against Medenine on March<br />
6th. In fierce fighting, the trap was sprung; of 140 German<br />
tanks, 52 were counted derelict on the battleground on the<br />
following day. Not a single British tank was lost. The<br />
German assault infantry, their protective shield itself<br />
assaulted, were pinned down and depressed by “a devastating<br />
volume” of fierce and medium gunfire. At seven<br />
o’clock that evening, Rommel intervened personally,<br />
ordering “an immediate cessation of the battle.” 27<br />
Rommel’s decision to call off the battle of Medenine<br />
was decisive. Had he succeeded in driving back the Eighth<br />
Army, which he might indeed have done without his Enigma<br />
messages being read, all the Anglo-American plans for<br />
Operation “Husky” could have been set back, and a landing<br />
on Sicily might even have proved impossible in 1943.<br />
This success for Britain’s most secret source came at a<br />
time of sudden fear that the secret was about to be exposed.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s March 1st warning to Montgomery had been a<br />
timely one. Eight days later, on the 9th, the Enigma<br />
decrypts themselves revealed that the Germans were suspicious<br />
of Britain’s impressive Intelligence. Only later did it<br />
become clear that they still did not imagine that their<br />
Enigma machine ciphers were vulnerable. 28<br />
By March 28th the German and Italian forces were in<br />
full retreat, and <strong>Churchill</strong> sent Montgomery a summary of<br />
the recent Enigma decrypts: General Messe’s 164th<br />
Division “has lost nearly all its vehicles and heavy weapons,”<br />
the 21st and 15th Panzer Divisons “are regathering on<br />
heights south-east of El Hamma,” and the Italian commander-in-chief<br />
of the Mareth garrisons had asked the 15th<br />
Panzer Division “to cover his retreat.” “You should have<br />
received all this through other channels,” <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote,<br />
“but to make sure, I repeat it.” 29<br />
The battle to drive Axis forces out of Africa was hard<br />
fought and prolonged. But following Montgomery’s capture<br />
of the Tunisian port of Sfax on April 10th, with more than<br />
20,000 prisoners taken in three weeks, Enigma revealed that<br />
the opposition was finally weakening. The next day<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> telegraphed Alexander: “‘Boniface’ shows clearly<br />
the dire condition of the enemy, particularly in fuel.” 30<br />
On April 25th Alexander commented: “Enemy is<br />
unlikely to be able to stand our prolonged pressure, but he<br />
will continue to offer bitter and most stubborn resistance<br />
until his troops are exhausted.” 31 What Alexander sensed in<br />
the war zone was confirmed by what <strong>Churchill</strong> learned from<br />
the decrypted German messages. “Boniface,” he telegraphed<br />
to Alexander on April 26th, “clearly shows the enemy’s<br />
anxiety, his concern over his ammunition expenditure, and<br />
the strain upon his air force.” 32<br />
On May 12th, German resistance in Tunisia came to<br />
an end. An Enigma signal from General von Arnim to<br />
Berlin—decrypted at Bletchley—stated curtly: “We have<br />
fired our last cartridge. We are closing down for ever.” 33 Von<br />
Arnim himself was captured and 150,000 of his soldiers<br />
taken prisoner. 34 Sicily and Normandy<br />
The planning for the Sicily and Normandy landings<br />
involved two major deception plans. Both depended upon<br />
Enigma for the Allied knowledge that the Germans had<br />
fallen for them.<br />
The first deception, using the body of a recently<br />
dead Briton and forged documents, swapped Sicily—site<br />
of the actual landing—for Greece. German troop movements<br />
to defend Greece against the expected attack were<br />
seen in the Enigma orders. In the words of a member of<br />
the deception staff—the London Controlling Section,<br />
located just below <strong>Churchill</strong>’s above-ground rooms in the<br />
Board of Trade building—“Enigma told us that the<br />
Germans were falling for it.” 35<br />
On May 14th, only two weeks after the body had<br />
floated ashore off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, a “most<br />
secret” message sent from the German High Command to<br />
Naval Group Command South pinpointed the “possible<br />
starting points” for Allied landings in Greece, specifically<br />
Kalamata and Cape Araxos, both of which had been mentioned<br />
in one of the bogus letters washed ashore with the<br />
body. The German High Command message went on to<br />
order reinforced defences at Kalamata and other Greek<br />
ports, minelaying and installing operational U-boat bases. 36<br />
An Enigma decrypt of this German message reached<br />
London that day. 37 To <strong>Churchill</strong>, who was in Washington,<br />
Brigadier Hollis at once telegraphed: “‘Mincemeat’ swallowed<br />
rod, line and sinker by right people and from best<br />
information they look like acting on it.” 38<br />
By autumn 1942, planning had begun for a landing in<br />
Northern Europe within the following two years.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s knowledge of what would be involved in such a<br />
landing gained immeasurably from Enigma when, on 30<br />
September, Bletchley Park broke the German “Osprey”<br />
cypher used by the Todt Organization. This gave an important<br />
window into a massive German construction project:<br />
the anti-invasion preparations of the West Wall. >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 47
THE SECRET WAR...<br />
Under the expert cryptographic skills of Colonel<br />
Tiltman (see Part I, <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 149, Winter 2010-11, 23),<br />
Japanese diplomatic messages whose code had been broken<br />
were scrutinised for clues about German coastal defences. It<br />
could be time-consuming and frustrating work. In<br />
November 1943 the Japanese Military Attaché in Berlin<br />
sent a detailed thirty-two-part report to Tokyo about a tour<br />
he had just made of the coastal defences in northern France.<br />
Eleven parts of this report were solved by the end of<br />
December, but the remaining twenty-one parts were not<br />
fully decrypted until June 1944. By contrast, a report about<br />
the German coastal defences sent to Tokyo by the Japanese<br />
Naval Attaché in Berlin on 4 and 5 May 1944, was fully<br />
solved and translated by 13 May. 39 This gave <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
the planning staff valuable insights about what to bomb<br />
from the air as soon as possible, and, on D-Day, what to<br />
bombard from the sea.<br />
As Normandy planning continued, <strong>Churchill</strong> was<br />
warned that without a series of deceptions, including some<br />
in which Stalin would have to participate, no landings<br />
would be possible in 1944. On 30 January 1944 the head<br />
of British deception operations, Colonel John Bevan, and<br />
his American counterpart, Lieutenant-Colonel William H.<br />
Baumer, flew to Moscow to explain to Stalin the essential<br />
threefold Soviet dimension in the Normandy deception<br />
scheme. They made three requests of the Russians:<br />
1) To time their summer 1944 offensive to occur after<br />
the cross-Channel landing, in order to confuse the Germans<br />
as to which of the two offensives would come first, and to<br />
make it impossible for them to withdraw forces from the<br />
still-dormant, but imminently active, Eastern Front once<br />
Normandy was invaded.<br />
2) To help fake an Anglo-Soviet landing in northern<br />
Norway as the first phase in an Allied military advance<br />
through Sweden, an essential component of a second front<br />
landing in Denmark, and striking southward to Berlin.<br />
3) To appear to be about to mount their own<br />
amphibious landing against the Black Sea coast of Romania<br />
and Bulgaria.<br />
On 6 March, Stalin agreed to carry out these three<br />
deceptions. In the months that followed, as Berlin ordered<br />
men and materials to the apparently threatened areas,<br />
decrypted Enigma messages revealed that Germans had<br />
fallen for them. Without Enigma, there was no way that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> could have known that Stalin had either believed<br />
in, or carried out, these crucial deception plans.<br />
Integral to the Soviet deceptions was the need to convince<br />
the Germans that Calais, not Normandy, was the<br />
objective of the Allied armies training in Britain in early<br />
1944. From the moment Enigma revealed the Germans<br />
were sold on Calais, the final stages of the Normandy landings<br />
could go ahead. Even after D-Day, German Intelligence<br />
was convinced that the main thrust would still come at<br />
Calais, and held back considerable forces, which Rommel<br />
had urgently wished to send to Normandy. Rommel’s<br />
appeals, and the High Command’s refusals, were known to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and Eisenhower—and much appreciated by<br />
them—through Enigma. 40<br />
On May 13th the Joint Intelligence Committee<br />
warned <strong>Churchill</strong> and Eisenhower that, on the basis of<br />
Enigma decrypts, and reports from agents in France, up to<br />
sixty German divisions would be available to oppose the<br />
Allied landings in three weeks’ time. After further study of<br />
the decrypts, the Committee was able to reassure <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
and Eisenhower that their estimate fell just below the upper<br />
limit that had been set for calling off the landings. 41<br />
Again and again during the preparations for D-Day,<br />
during the June 6th landings, and during the advance<br />
inland, Enigma decrypts, monitored closely by <strong>Churchill</strong>,<br />
gave precious clues that saved Allied lives. One example: on<br />
June 1st an urgent request from Rommel for German Air<br />
Force attacks on American positions before a German attack<br />
scheduled for 3 pm that day was signalled to the First<br />
United States Army with nearly two hours to spare. 42<br />
The Bombing of Dresden<br />
Like British help for the Yugoslav and Greek partisans,<br />
the bombing of Dresden was also Enigma-driven. Towards<br />
the end of January 1945 a series of Enigma messages<br />
revealed a German plan to send reinforcements to the<br />
Russian front then in Silesia from as far away as the Rhine,<br />
Norway and northern Italy. 43<br />
On February 1st, through Enigma decrypts, three<br />
German infantry divisions from the Western Front were<br />
identified on the Eastern Front. “Reports indicate,”<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and the Chiefs of Staff were told that day, “that<br />
further divisions may be on their way.” 44<br />
Two days later the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Soviet<br />
forces, General Antonov, asked for urgent Allied action “to<br />
prevent the enemy from transferring his troops to the east<br />
from the Western Front, Norway and Italy, by air attacks<br />
against communications.” On the 4th this Soviet request<br />
was presented to the Big Three at Yalta, 45 along with a<br />
Soviet Intelligence assessment of the thirty-one German<br />
divisions believed to be in transit from the West to Silesia:<br />
twelve from the Western Front, eight from the interior of<br />
Germany, eight from Italy and three from Norway. 46<br />
The Anglo-American Combined Chiefs at once agreed<br />
to divert some of their bomber forces—then on crucial missions<br />
attacking German oil reserves—to attack German<br />
Army lines of communication in the Berlin, Dresden and<br />
Leipzig region. Nine days later, the Anglo-American<br />
bombing began. In the resulting firestorms, tens of thousands<br />
of the city’s inhabitants were killed: the direct<br />
consequence of information provided through Enigma. (See<br />
also Chartwell Bulletin 24, page 9; and “Leading <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Myths: Dresden”: http://bit.ly/miyrYK.)<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 48
End of the War in Europe<br />
Enigma gave <strong>Churchill</strong> and his inner circle of military<br />
and Intelligence advisers crucial insights until the very end.<br />
Sometimes, <strong>Churchill</strong> had to be reminded of them. On 17<br />
April 1945 he read of a bombing raid three days earlier on<br />
Potsdam. He wrote at once to the Secretary of State for Air,<br />
Sir Archibald Sinclair and the chief of the Air Staff, Sir<br />
Charles Portal: “What is the point of going and blowing<br />
down Potsdam” 47 Portal replied that it was a report of the<br />
Joint Intelligence Committee—based on Enigma—that had<br />
noted the shift of German Air Force operational headquarters<br />
from Berlin to Potsdam, making it very much a target. 48<br />
On April 29th, an hour before midnight, as Soviet<br />
tanks battled inside Berlin, Hitler sent an Enigma message<br />
seeking reinforcements from General Wenck, who was<br />
southwest of Berlin facing the British army. The message<br />
read: “Where are Wenck’s spearheads Will they advance<br />
Where is Ninth Army” 49 Thus, even in his final hours,<br />
Hitler inadvertently betrayed his thinking and his plans<br />
through his own most secret system of communications.<br />
This enabled British troops to surround and immobilize the<br />
one last hope of a continued fight inside Berlin. On the following<br />
afternoon, Hitler committed suicide.<br />
On May 3rd, as the war in drew to an end, a German<br />
Enigma message, one of the last of the war, revealed that<br />
German moves were being taken to try to forestall a Soviet<br />
parachute landing and military advance along the Baltic<br />
coast into Denmark. <strong>Churchill</strong> took immediate action to<br />
prevent Soviet forces entering Denmark, ordering<br />
Montgomery’s forces to divert from their eastward advance<br />
and drive northward to the Baltic. They did so, entering the<br />
port of Lübeck with, as <strong>Churchill</strong> noted to Eden, “twelve<br />
hours to spare.” 50<br />
Thus the last use of Enigma in the war in Europe was<br />
not to help Stalin, but to forestall him. <br />
1. Decrypt OL211 of 4May41. <strong>Churchill</strong> to Wavell: <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
papers, 20/38.<br />
2. Telegram of 6Nov41: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/44.<br />
3. “Personal and Secret,” 9Nov41: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/44.<br />
3. “Most Secret,” C/8035, 12Nov41: Cabinet papers, 120/766.<br />
4. “Secret and Personal,” 19Nov41: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/45.<br />
5. “Personal. Most Secret,” 21Nov41: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/45.<br />
6. “Personal and Most Strictly Secret,” 23Nov41: <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
papers, 20/45.<br />
7-10. Ibid.<br />
11. The message was preceded by a two-letter (digraph) prefix, in<br />
this case MK, chosen to imply to any eavesdropper that it was an individual<br />
British agent (usually indicated by such a digraph) rather than the<br />
German Air Force’s secret radio signals transmitted by Enigma.<br />
12. Prime Minister’s Personal Telegram (hereinafter PMPT) 383<br />
of 1942, 15Mar42: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/88.<br />
13. PMPT 393 of 1942, 16Mar42: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/88.<br />
14. CX/MSS/945/T12 of 2May42.<br />
15. Geoffrey Pidgeon, Edgar Harrison: Soldier—Patriot and Ultra<br />
Wireless Officer to <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> (Los Angeles: Arundel, 2008), 178.<br />
16. Boniface 1371, T.10, Prime Minister’s Personal Minute (hereinafter<br />
PMPM), M.350/2, 6 September 1942: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/67.<br />
17. “Personal and Secret.” “Clear the Line,” PMPT 1305 of 1942,<br />
23Oct42: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/81.<br />
18. “Bigot,” “Most Secret,” PMPT 1392 of 1942, 29Oct42:<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/81. “Bigot” was a prefix informing the recipient that<br />
the telegram contained material of the utmost secrecy. The decrypts mentioned<br />
by <strong>Churchill</strong> in his telegram to Alexander were QT/4474, 4592,<br />
4599, 4642, 4644 and 4682.<br />
19. PMPT 1420 of 1942, 4Nov42: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/82.<br />
20. Enigma decrypts CX/MSS/1698/T.<br />
21. “Private, Personal and Secret,” telegram of 16Dec42: <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
papers, 20/85.<br />
22. Telegram of 27Dec42: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/85.<br />
23. PMPM D.4/3, 5Jan43: Cabinet papers, 79/88 (Chiefs of Staff<br />
Committee, 5Jan43, Annex).<br />
24. PMPM D.22/3, 17Feb43: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 4/397A.<br />
25. Decrypt VM 5207.<br />
26. The decrypts were VM 5007 of 0342 and VM 5207 of 1646,<br />
28Feb43: CX/MSS/2190/T14: F.H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in<br />
the Second World War, vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1981), 593-95.<br />
27. Major-General David Belchem, All in the Day’s March,<br />
(London: Collins, 1978), 147. Belchem was head of Montgomery’s<br />
Endnotes<br />
Operations Staff from 1943 to 1945.<br />
28 Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, 596.<br />
29. PMPT 391 of 1943, 28Ma43: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 4/396.<br />
30. PMPT 498 of 1943, 11Apr43: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 4/289.<br />
31. MA/342, “Personal and Most Secret,” 25Apr43 (received 4<br />
a.m., 26Apr43): <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/110.<br />
32. PMPT, T.592/3, “Most Secret and Personal,” 26Apr43:<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/110.<br />
33. David Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan<br />
(London: Cassell, 1971), 530. Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the<br />
Foreign Office, Cadogan had been privy to Enigma since June 1940.<br />
34. The second highest-ranking German prisoner of war after<br />
Rudolf Hess, von Arnim was held in Britain until 1947. Many of his soldiers<br />
were taken as prisoners of war to Canada and the United States.<br />
35. Lady Jane Bethell, in conversation with the author, 17Jun85.<br />
36. The German General sent to the Peloponnese to prepare for<br />
the non-existent assault was Rommel. In the first week of June, a group<br />
of German motor torpedo boats was ordered from Sicily to the Aegean;<br />
this fact was likewise revealed through Enigma.<br />
37. CX/MSS/2571/T4 of 15May43: published in full, in its original<br />
translation, in Michael I. Handel (editor), Strategic and Operational<br />
Deception in the Second World War (London: Cass, 1987), 79-80,<br />
source, U.S. Army Military History Institute (Reel 127, 5-13May43).<br />
38. “Alcove” No. 217, 14May43: Cabinet papers, 120/88.<br />
39. Secret Intelligence Service archive, series HW.<br />
40. See Martin Gilbert, D-Day (New York: Wiley, 2004), passim.<br />
41. Secret Intelligence Services archive, series HW1.<br />
42. KV 7671 and 7678, quoted in Ralph Bennett, Ultra in the<br />
West: The Normandy Campaign of 1944-45 (London: Hutchinson,<br />
1979), 77.<br />
43. Joint Intelligence Committee (45) 31(O), rev. final, 25Jan45.<br />
44. Chiefs of Staff papers, 1Feb45.<br />
45. Transcripts: “Minutes of the Plenary Meeting between the<br />
USA, Great Britain, and the USSR, held in Livadia Palace, Yalta, on<br />
Sunday, 4 February 1945, at 1700.”<br />
46. This assessment had been transmitted via Bletchley and the<br />
British Military Mission, Moscow, to Soviet Intelligence. The message as<br />
sent, and the decrypt on which it was based, is in the Secret Intelligence<br />
Service archive, series HW/1.<br />
47. PMPM 362 of 1945, 19Apr45: Premier papers, 3/12, folio 3.<br />
48. “Top Secret,” 20 April 1945: Premier papers, 3/12, folio 2.<br />
49. Bennett, Ultra in the West, 234.<br />
50. “Top Secret,” PMPT 771, 5May45: <strong>Churchill</strong> papers, 20/217.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 49
Books, Arts<br />
& Curiosities<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Book Club<br />
Managed for the Centre by Chartwell<br />
Booksellers (www.churchillbooks.com),<br />
which offers member discounts up to<br />
25%. To order please contact<br />
Chartwell Booksellers, 55 East 52nd<br />
Street, New York, NY 10055.<br />
Email info@chartwellbooksellers.com<br />
Telephone (212) 308-0643<br />
Facsimile (212) 838-7423<br />
FORMER NAVAL PERSONS AND PLACES<br />
CHRISTOPHER M. BELL<br />
Two Bulls in a Naval Shop<br />
Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur<br />
Marder, Stephen Roskill Writing and<br />
Fighting Naval History, by Barry<br />
Gough. Seaforth, hardbound, 320<br />
pages, illus., $34.20 on Amazon.<br />
The history of the Royal Navy during<br />
the first half of the 20th century has<br />
been shaped to a remarkable degree by<br />
the writings of two prolific and highly<br />
influential historians, Arthur J. Marder<br />
and Captain Stephen W. Roskill, dubbed<br />
“our historical dreadnoughts” by A.J.P.<br />
Taylor. These two figures, and the<br />
famous rivalry between them, are the<br />
subject of Barry Gough’s newest book.<br />
Marder and Roskill came to naval<br />
history from very different backgrounds.<br />
Roskill, a retired Royal Navy officer, is<br />
best known for The War at Sea (1954-<br />
61), the four-volume official history of<br />
naval operations during the Second<br />
_____________________________________<br />
Professor Bell teaches history at Dalhousie<br />
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.<br />
World War, although readers of <strong>Finest</strong><br />
<strong>Hour</strong> are more likely to know him from<br />
his later critique, <strong>Churchill</strong> and the<br />
Admirals (1977). Marder, an American<br />
academic, established his reputation with<br />
a monumental five-volume history of the<br />
navy during the Fisher era, From the<br />
Dreadnought to Scapa Flow (1961-70).<br />
These volumes provided the first detailed<br />
coverage of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s initial tenure as<br />
First Lord of the Admiralty. (In a 1972<br />
essay, “<strong>Winston</strong> Is Back,” published as a<br />
supplement to the English Historical<br />
Review, Marder offered a lively, and generally<br />
favourable, account of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
1939-40 stint at the Admiralty.)<br />
Drawing on a wide range of<br />
sources, including the voluminous<br />
papers left by his subjects, Barry Gough<br />
has created a fascinating portrait of these<br />
two gifted historians. The Harvard-educated<br />
Marder found his early career<br />
hindered at times by anti-Semitism, but<br />
his unrivalled ability to coax documents<br />
from the British Admiralty gave his work<br />
an air of authority and quickly established<br />
his reputation as a formidable<br />
scholar. Roskill enjoyed a more privileged<br />
access to Admiralty documents at<br />
the beginning of his historical career—<br />
one of the advantages of working as an<br />
official historian for the Cabinet Office.<br />
The War at Sea was one of the most successful<br />
of the official British histories and<br />
immediately established Roskill’s<br />
standing within the historical community.<br />
But Gough reveals how difficult the<br />
role of official historian could be.<br />
Any criticism of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
wartime leadership was bound to be<br />
controversial, but Roskill’s task was<br />
further complicated by the fact that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was again Prime Minister<br />
when the first volume of The War at Sea<br />
was nearing completion. <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
objected to Roskill’s treatment of naval<br />
operations during the Norwegian campaign<br />
of 1940, and to his account of the<br />
decision to dispatch the Prince of Wales<br />
and Repulse (Force Z) to Singapore on<br />
the eve of the Pacific war (see <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Proceedings, FH 138-39).<br />
Under pressure from above, Roskill<br />
eventually softened his criticisms, but his<br />
revised account still left the impression<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong> had interfered excessively<br />
with subordinates and that his poor<br />
grasp of naval strategy had led to the loss<br />
of Force Z in December 1941. Two<br />
decades later, Roskill, now free from any<br />
form of official censorship, developed<br />
these charges in <strong>Churchill</strong> and the<br />
Admirals, a provocative and seeminglyauthoritative<br />
work that detailed many<br />
other criticisms of the Prime Minister.<br />
Gough also reveals the behind-thescenes<br />
story of the Marder-Roskill feud.<br />
Their relations soured rapidly in the late<br />
1960s after Roskill was appointed official<br />
biographer of the first Lord Hankey,<br />
the former Cabinet secretary. Marder<br />
had previously examined Hankey’s diary,<br />
and Hankey’s son had agreed that he<br />
might publish excerpts from it. Roskill,<br />
however, successfully blocked Marder<br />
from quoting this source in his work.<br />
The two men were soon trading barbs<br />
publicly over a range of issues.<br />
The breach between them was<br />
never as complete as might have been<br />
thought, but the historical community<br />
was left in no doubt that the two leading<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 50
historians of the 20th century Royal<br />
Navy had fallen out. Their best-known<br />
dispute involved <strong>Churchill</strong>’s second<br />
tenure at the Admiralty. Drawing<br />
heavily on postwar testimony from Sir<br />
Eric Seal, who had been <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
principal private secretary as First Lord,<br />
Marder challenged Roskill’s view that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> had meddled excessively in<br />
naval operations during the Norwegian<br />
campaign. Marder painted a much more<br />
flattering portrait of both <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea<br />
Lord, provoking a sharp rebuke from<br />
The Goods on the Dards<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s Dilemma: The Real Story<br />
Behind the Origins of the 1915<br />
Dardanelles Campaign, by Graham<br />
Clews. Hardbound, 344 pages, illus.,<br />
$44.95, Kindle edition $36.<br />
There is every reason to be skeptical<br />
about the need for a new book on<br />
one of the most frequently scrutinized<br />
episodes of World War I, and of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s role in it. Is there really more<br />
to be said on the subject This detailed<br />
new study shows that there is.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s part in the Dardanelles<br />
campaign has always been controversial,<br />
but over the years a consensus has<br />
emerged. It is generally agreed, for<br />
example, that <strong>Churchill</strong>, a dedicated<br />
peripheral strategist, embraced the naval<br />
assault on Turkey to avoid the bloody<br />
stalemate on the Western Front. Once<br />
committed, it is said, he became<br />
obsessed. His enthusiasm for a strictly<br />
naval attack on the Dardanelles is commonly<br />
attributed to the initial<br />
Roskill. The dispute went on for several<br />
years without either historian ceding any<br />
ground.<br />
Barry Gough brings these controversies<br />
to life in a way that will captivate<br />
both the general reader and the specialist.<br />
His book is recommended, not<br />
only as an entertaining biography of two<br />
of the most colourful and important<br />
naval historians of the last century, but<br />
for its account of the ways in which<br />
they shaped our understanding of the<br />
modern Royal Navy—and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
long and complex relationship with it. <br />
unavailability of troops, while his later<br />
determination to obtain support from<br />
the army is seen as a belated acknowledgement<br />
that the naval attack had<br />
failed. But none of these assumptions<br />
should be taken for granted.<br />
Clews takes a slightly different<br />
approach from other historians.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, he writes, always preferred<br />
seizing an island off the German coast,<br />
even after the Dardanelles attack was<br />
approved. The capture of, say, Borkum,<br />
offered the best means of getting around<br />
the stalemate and defeating the primary<br />
enemy. But the monitors and other specialised<br />
craft needed for a Borkum<br />
operation were not ready, so he threw his<br />
support behind the Dardanelles, strictly<br />
as an interim measure. It seemed to offer<br />
the prospect of a major victory at little<br />
risk, one he thought could be wrapped<br />
up quickly, and resources shifted to one<br />
of his northern schemes.<br />
Worth Seeing, and Worth Going to See<br />
DAVID DRUCKMAN<br />
Unlike many books that claim to<br />
tell the “real story,” <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
Dilemma actually delivers the goods.<br />
Remarkably, nearly all the evidence<br />
Clews deploys has been available in<br />
published form for years, but this in no<br />
way diminishes his achievement. His<br />
analysis of the origins of the campaign is<br />
thorough and insightful, paying careful<br />
attention to all the major decisionmakers:<br />
Kitchener, Asquith, Lloyd<br />
George, Balfour, Hankey. But since<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s role is the most frequently<br />
misunderstood, Clews naturally gives<br />
WSC the most attention.<br />
It is hardly surprising, given the<br />
impact of the Dardanelles on<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s subsequent reputation, that<br />
historians have tended to assume<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was more committed to it<br />
than he actually was. But by shifting the<br />
lens slightly, Clews brings <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
actions into sharper focus. It is clear<br />
now, for example, why <strong>Churchill</strong> clung<br />
so stubbornly to a “ships alone” operation<br />
in January 1915, even though<br />
troops could have been found for a<br />
combined assault, and again in March,<br />
when the naval attack had faltered.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> does not necessarily<br />
emerge from this reinterpretation with<br />
his reputation enhanced. Many of the<br />
standard criticisms of the First Lord for<br />
ignoring the advice of his professional<br />
advisers are reinforced by Clews’s study.<br />
But the book shows that there was a<br />
logic and a consistency to <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
actions that are essential to understanding<br />
the origins of this controversial<br />
campaign. <br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>: Walking With Destiny, written<br />
and produced by Marvin Hier and Richard Trank,<br />
directed by Richard Trank. Running time 1:41.<br />
At the urging of The <strong>Churchill</strong> Centre and several<br />
emails, my wife and I made a point to see this new<br />
film when it arrived at the Loft Cinema in Tucson. This<br />
small fine arts theater showed it for four days; Lynn and<br />
I picked the fourth, figuring it would not be crowded,<br />
and it wasn’t. The theater seated about two hundred<br />
and there were several dozen to view the film. >><br />
_______________________________________________<br />
Mr. Druckman, a longtime and frequent <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> contributor,<br />
divides his time between Tucson and Chicago.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 51
WALKING WITH DESTINY...<br />
The newest production from the<br />
Moriah Films Division of the Simon<br />
Wiesenthal Center, the film was sponsored<br />
locally by the Tucson International<br />
Jewish Film Festival. Written and produced<br />
by Rabbi Marvin Hier (Dean of<br />
Simon Wiesenthal Center) and Oscar<br />
recipient Richard Trank (Oscar winner),<br />
it was narrated by another Oscar<br />
winner, Ben Kingsley. <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> (grandson), Celia Sandys,<br />
Walter Thompson (bodyguard), and Sir<br />
Martin Gilbert partially narrated and<br />
added to its authenticity.<br />
The story concentrates on<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s finest hours in 1939-41, but<br />
overlaps at both ends. It begins in the<br />
“wilderness years,” with his early warnings<br />
about Adolf Hitler and his support<br />
for Jews under threat by the Nazi<br />
regime. As Charles Krauthammer, John<br />
Lukacs and others have noted, <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
may not have won World War II, but<br />
without him it would almost certainly<br />
have been lost. The film’s historical consultant,<br />
Sir Martin Gilbert, believes that<br />
had <strong>Churchill</strong>’s words about Nazi racial<br />
policies been heeded, the Holocaust<br />
might never have occurred. The film,<br />
say its producers, “examines why<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>'s legacy continues to<br />
be relevant in the 21st Century and<br />
explores why his leadership remains<br />
inspirational to current day political<br />
leaders and diplomats.” The production<br />
is slick, and aims frankly to convince<br />
those unknowledgeable about <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
that he was the savior of the 20th<br />
century.<br />
Seasoned <strong>Churchill</strong>ians will find<br />
little to complain of, aside from the lack<br />
of criticism. No footage, for example, is<br />
devoted to the Russian invasion of<br />
Finland or the Anglo-French debacle in<br />
Norway. Much time is spent on the<br />
Blitz and the Dunkirk evacuation.<br />
During the latter episode, the producers<br />
slip in an old clip of a soldier carrying<br />
another soldier through the World War<br />
I trenches. An odd piece of trivia is the<br />
suggestion that <strong>Churchill</strong>’s famous brick<br />
walls at Chartwell were often rebuilt<br />
after <strong>Churchill</strong> left off for lunch—not<br />
entirely new information!<br />
The film powerfully highlights<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s warnings about the Nazi<br />
threat to the Jews, which are often lost<br />
in descriptions of his warnings about<br />
German rearmament. It shows how his<br />
speeches influenced American opinion,<br />
and how his personal appearances and<br />
radio broadcasts boosted the morale of<br />
British civilians in bombed areas.<br />
Somewhat Short of Reliable<br />
MAX E. HERTWIG<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>: War Leader, by<br />
Bill Price. Pocket Essentials,<br />
Harpenden, Herts., UK, softbound,<br />
160 pp., £7.99.<br />
Despite its subtitle, this 45,000-word<br />
pocket softback is not about<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> as war leader, although ninety<br />
pages are devoted to the two World<br />
Wars. It’s a biography: clinical, with few<br />
quotations and only fourteen footnotes.<br />
There are only a handful of inaccuracies<br />
of any significance. Contrary to<br />
Price, <strong>Churchill</strong> did not formally favor<br />
“the eventual creation of a Jewish state,”<br />
although he supported it once created.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s mistake in crossing Fifth<br />
Avenue in 1931 and Hitler’s partition of<br />
Czechoslovakia are inaccurately<br />
described, and no one has yet found the<br />
naval signal “<strong>Winston</strong> is Back” when<br />
WSC returned to the Admiralty in<br />
September 1939. <strong>Churchill</strong> had not<br />
“danced at the news” of Pearl Harbor,<br />
although he might have liked to. But<br />
these minor errors of fact are less important<br />
than some of the odd conclusions.<br />
Price provides a new take on the<br />
World War II Second Front argument.<br />
The British military chiefs, he says, had<br />
concluded that “If battles were fought in<br />
As a <strong>Churchill</strong>ophile I gave “Walking<br />
with Destiny” eight of ten, but my wife,<br />
interestingly, gave it nine. If you know<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, see the film. It will confirm<br />
everything you’ve believed about him,<br />
and it’s not boring. If you are a novice,<br />
be entertained, and learn. <br />
which the opposing forces were<br />
equal...the Germans would likely win, so<br />
they advocated the use of overwhelming<br />
force to guarantee victory.” Hence<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s proposals for attacking the<br />
“soft underbelly” of Europe.<br />
One wonders where he got this.<br />
General Mark Clark, speaking to the<br />
Western Canada <strong>Churchill</strong> Societies in<br />
1970, admitted that he found the soft<br />
underbelly to be “one tough gut”—but<br />
neither Clark nor his fellow generals are<br />
on record as believing the Germans<br />
would win any battle of equal forces.<br />
Covering the final year of the war,<br />
Price is completely accurate about the<br />
strategic bombing of Germany. He notes<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong> argued against continuing<br />
to raze German cities, and his treatment<br />
of Dresden (a Soviet target, confirmed<br />
by Attlee) proves that he has read Martin<br />
Gilbert or <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong>. But a few pages<br />
later he says that <strong>Churchill</strong> “inexplicably”<br />
skipped Franklin Roosevelt’s<br />
funeral—a fraught and contentious<br />
claim. Roosevelt died with the war about<br />
to end; could the prime minister dart off<br />
in the midst of imminent victory to<br />
attend a funeral Despite <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
initial impulse to attend, Eden and<br />
others dissuaded him.<br />
At the same time we read that the<br />
wartime coalition was breaking up, in<br />
part because <strong>Churchill</strong> “had alienated<br />
many of the other members of the coalition...by<br />
appearing to favour the<br />
opinions of his circle of cronies, principally<br />
Lord Beaverbrook, Brendan<br />
Bracken and Professor Lindemann”<br />
(139). The coalition broke up because<br />
Labour wanted a general election.<br />
There are a few other peculiar<br />
statements. Price contends that<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was sent to the Admiralty in<br />
1911 because Asquith wanted “a safer >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 52
pair of hands” to deal with the trade<br />
unions after the Welsh strikes, which at<br />
least needs qualification. The official<br />
biographer and others say the move was<br />
made because Asquith wanted a spirited<br />
pair of hands at the Admiralty and<br />
admired <strong>Churchill</strong>’s pluck during the<br />
1911 Agadir Crisis, which had threatened<br />
war with Germany.<br />
Price recounts early naval losses in<br />
World War I—but not victories, like the<br />
Falkland Islands; he is fair and balanced<br />
on Gallipoli and <strong>Churchill</strong>’s political<br />
eclipse in 1915.<br />
Between the wars, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
decision as Chancellor of the Exchequer<br />
to put Britain back on the Gold<br />
Standard is given the standard<br />
Keynesian interpretation. The author is<br />
certainly wrong that Chamberlain<br />
joined Halifax in arguing for peace talks<br />
with Hitler in 1940; or that the shift in<br />
power to America occurred at the<br />
Atlantic Charter meeting in August<br />
1941. In <strong>Churchill</strong>’s second premiership,<br />
Price seems to rank defeating the<br />
uprisings in Kenya and Malaya among<br />
the major foreign policy initiatives,<br />
though he does mention WSC’s quest<br />
for a Big Three summit conference.<br />
The best part of this little book is<br />
the end. The <strong>Churchill</strong> who emerges<br />
from the diaries and memoirs of his colleagues,<br />
Price says, “is of a man who<br />
often bore the immense responsibility<br />
with which he was charged much more<br />
heavily than he showed in public. Such<br />
descriptions provide a glimpse of the<br />
real man which had previously been<br />
covered up by the mythology surrounding<br />
him, and which <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
himself made little effort to dispel....<br />
But, in the end, his reputation surely<br />
rests on those months between March<br />
1940 and December 1941 when Britain<br />
fought on alone against the tyranny of<br />
Nazi Germany.”<br />
He should have said May 1940<br />
and June 1941, but no one can argue<br />
with his final sentence: “In those<br />
months of adversity he proved himself<br />
with words and actions which can only<br />
be described as heroic.”<br />
This is a nice little book, but lays<br />
enough eggs and false trails as to fall<br />
somewhat short of reliable. For those in<br />
need of a brief life, the winner and still<br />
champion is Paul Addison’s <strong>Churchill</strong>:<br />
The Unexpected Hero (in print at $13,<br />
$10 in Kindle)—which is still, in the<br />
late John Ramsden’s words, the best<br />
brief life of <strong>Churchill</strong> ever published—<br />
”and by a long way.” <br />
Pol Roger Champagne: Another Look<br />
“TOO MUCH OF ANYTHING IS BAD, BUT TOO MUCH CHAMPAGNE IS JUST RIGHT”<br />
D A N I E L M E H T A<br />
____________________________________<br />
Mr. Mehta, an English writer based in<br />
Singapore, is a long-time member of TCC with<br />
an interest in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s recreational side<br />
(properties, art, hobbies). See also “Still Verve<br />
in the Veuve,” FH 63: 15; Pol Roger by<br />
Cynthia Parzych and John Turner, FH 107: 27;<br />
and “Odette Pol-Roger,” FH 109: 8.<br />
—MARK TWAIN<br />
ALondon wine merchant, sent to<br />
appraise the Chartwell wine cellar,<br />
determined that almost the only thing of<br />
value in it was a large supply of vintage<br />
Pol Roger champagne. 1 A champagne<br />
drinker for most of his adult life,<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> was a Pol Roger<br />
devotee for over fifty years, receiving it<br />
with compliments in later life. He often<br />
quoted the words of Napoleon, whose<br />
biography he had once hoped to write:<br />
“I cannot live without champagne. In<br />
victory I deserve it; in defeat I need it.” 2<br />
An extant order for a case of the<br />
1895 vintage, purchased in 1908 when<br />
he was President of the Board of Trade,<br />
provides evidence of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s early<br />
affection for Pol Roger. It also documents<br />
the £4/16 he paid for it.<br />
After World War II, Odette Pol-<br />
Roger, grande dame of the champagne<br />
house, kept <strong>Churchill</strong> well stocked with<br />
cases, most commonly (until it ran out)<br />
the 1928 vintage. By 1965, WSC had<br />
worked his way through to the 1934<br />
vintage and was beginning to enjoy the<br />
’47. He had often promised Odette he<br />
would visit Epernay, where he hoped to<br />
“press the grapes with my feet” 3 —a startling<br />
image, though he never made good<br />
his intention.<br />
Pol Roger, a Champenois from Ay,<br />
established the Epernay champagne<br />
house in 1849. The company’s first shipments<br />
to England were in 1876, inspired<br />
perhaps by the outstanding vintage year<br />
of 1874, the year of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s birth. It<br />
was the beginning of a long association<br />
with England, which would result in its<br />
name becoming better known there than<br />
in France.<br />
Upon Pol Roger’s death, his sons<br />
Maurice and Georges were given >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 53
POL ROGER...<br />
permission to use their father’s first and<br />
last name together, as the family and<br />
company name (the family name is<br />
hyphenated). Under their leadership, by<br />
the end of the century, the champagne<br />
house was one of around 20 Grandes-<br />
Marques, which would define quality<br />
levels through the present.<br />
Currently, a fifth generation of<br />
Pol-Rogers produces around 125,000<br />
cases annually from 85 hectares of vineyards.<br />
The house is renowned for having<br />
the deepest (and therefore the coldest)<br />
cellars in Champagne. The tunnels hold<br />
an approximate 7.5 million bottles and<br />
the company states that every bottle is<br />
riddled (turned) by hand. Even their<br />
non-vintage brut, better known as<br />
“White Foil” because of its neck<br />
wrapper, spends at least three years in<br />
these cellars before going out on the<br />
market.<br />
Maurice Pol-Roger was the fatherin-law<br />
of Odette Pol-Roger, who ran the<br />
company at the height of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
fame, and with whom he became close<br />
friends. Odette did not follow her<br />
father-in-law’s flamboyant business<br />
management when she took over the<br />
firm as unofficial head in the 1940s,<br />
while active in the French Resiastance.<br />
She devoted her energy to a role she saw<br />
as simply “to encourage people to enjoy<br />
champagne,” said The Daily Telegraph. 4<br />
Famous for her beauty, grace and<br />
vitality, she also managed to charm<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> from the beginning. She<br />
remains the most widely recognised<br />
ambassador of the firm to date.<br />
Pol Roger today produces six<br />
champagnes, from non-vintage brut<br />
through to their flagship Sir <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Cuveé. The company devotes<br />
some 30% of its production to<br />
premium vintage champagne, against an<br />
industry standard of 6%, and enjoys a<br />
long association with the UK.<br />
Their premium vintage brand,<br />
first named after <strong>Churchill</strong> in 1984, can<br />
only be produced in the very best years,<br />
from 100%-rated villages, and only<br />
those areas under the vine in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
day. After his death in 1965, searching<br />
for a suitable tribute for their Englishmarket<br />
White Foil, they began<br />
bordering its label in black, and have<br />
COMPLIMENTS: Christian Pol-Roger with<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>s great 1945 testimonial.<br />
only recently changed to navy blue,<br />
honoring the “Former Naval Person.” 5<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s life is punctuated by<br />
references to champagne. He would<br />
name his favourite racehorse after<br />
Odette, although she was heard to<br />
remark, “Oh that mare—we had such<br />
trouble with her.” 6 In 1915, dismissed<br />
from the Admiralty at the nadir of his<br />
fortunes, <strong>Churchill</strong> wrote to his brother<br />
Jack from Hoe Farm that he and the<br />
family were well equipped with all the<br />
essentials of life: “hot baths, cold champagne,<br />
new peas and old brandy.” 7<br />
Later, when working on the renovations<br />
to the lake at Chartwell in the<br />
1930s, he would write to the absent<br />
Clementine that the working party was<br />
taking champagne at all meals.<br />
The House of Pol Roger bridles at<br />
the suggestion that they instigated the<br />
association with <strong>Churchill</strong>. In fact, at<br />
the World War II victory party at the<br />
British Embassy in Paris, Alfred Duff<br />
Cooper introduced <strong>Churchill</strong> to Odette<br />
Pol-Roger. WSC was immediately<br />
smitten, and a friendship began which<br />
would endure through the rest of his<br />
life. He declared that Odette should be<br />
invited to dinner whenever he was in<br />
Paris and pronounced her home in<br />
Epernay “the world’s most drinkable<br />
address.” 8 She was close enough to Sir<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> to be on the short list of personal<br />
friends invited to attend his state<br />
funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral.<br />
Hanging in the company’s headquarters<br />
is a framed thank-you note<br />
from <strong>Churchill</strong>, dated from 1945. It<br />
reads “I thank you so much for this<br />
most agreeable token of your regard,<br />
which I have received with pleasure, and<br />
also with the kind expression with<br />
which it is accompanied.” 9<br />
Long before then, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
brand loyalty was well established, and<br />
because it showed no signs of waning,<br />
Pol Roger was assured of a continued<br />
association with their most famous and<br />
revered customer.<br />
Paraphrasing <strong>Churchill</strong>’s words,<br />
current managing director Christian<br />
Pol-Roger frequently remarks: “My idea<br />
of a good dinner is good food, good<br />
company, and champagne from beginning<br />
to end.” 10 <br />
Endnotes<br />
1. <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 62, First Quarter, 1989,<br />
“Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas”: “…a London<br />
wine merchant, sent to appraise the cellar at<br />
Chartwell, pronounced it a ‘shambles,’ the<br />
only items of value being a large supply of<br />
vintage Pol Roger Champagne (regularly<br />
topped up by shipments from Madame Odette<br />
Pol-Roger in Epernay); Hine brandy; and some<br />
bottles of chardonnay which <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
bottled with Hillaire Belloc and which WSC<br />
forbade anyone to touch. The merchant pronounced<br />
the chardonnay undrinkable, along<br />
with the rest of the cellar.”<br />
2. Apparently adapted from Napoleon<br />
Bonaparte: “In victory, you deserve champagne.<br />
In defeat, you need it.”<br />
3. Obituary of Odette Pol-Roger, Daily<br />
Telegraph, 30 December 2000; FH 109.<br />
4. Ibid.<br />
5. See www.polroger.co.uk: “In 1990<br />
the black band of mourning on ‘White Foil’<br />
was lightened to navy blue, recalling <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>'s ‘loyalties to the Senior Service’ as a<br />
former First Lord of the Admiralty.”<br />
6. Obituary Odette Pol-Roger, Daily<br />
Telegraph, op. cit.<br />
7. WSC to his brother Jack, Hoe Farm,<br />
Godalming, Surrey, 19 June 1915.<br />
8. www.polroger.co.uk<br />
9. WSC to Odette Pol-Roger, British<br />
Embassy, Paris, 14 November 1945.<br />
10. WSC to Odette Pol-Roger,<br />
Christian Pol-Roger to the author, 27 February<br />
2010.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 54
C H U R C H I L L I A N A<br />
The Potted Special Relationship<br />
What began in 1941 was quickly celebrated by British<br />
potteries—and thereby hang several tales.<br />
D O U G L A S H A L L<br />
Above right: a lovely little earthenware loving cup from Wade, Heath of Burslem. Roosevelt and <strong>Churchill</strong> form handles; the body represents the North<br />
Atlantic, with convoys of mirror-glazed ships and aircraft streaming from the U.S. to Britain. Below left: plates by A.J. Wilkinson, Royal Staffordshire<br />
Pottery, using the sepia portrait transfers, and by Alfred Meakin, using a colour transfer of the two leaders facing the Statue of Liberty, encircled by<br />
flags and captioned, “Champions of Democracy.”Furled flags border an unusually colourful piece of wartime tableware. Bottom left: a sweet dish by<br />
Grimwades Royal Winton Pottery. Nice captioned line drawings of the two leaders are under crossed national flags and a floral garland.<br />
An impressive amount has been<br />
written about the <strong>Churchill</strong>-<br />
Roosevelt relationship: Warren<br />
Kimball’s Forged in War (1997) has a<br />
seventeen-page bibliography! British<br />
potteries were not slow to mark the<br />
event with a flood of commemorative<br />
china. Much was produced under<br />
wartime restrictions which prohibited<br />
elaborate decoration, but these pieces<br />
of very nice quality have become quite<br />
highly collectible in recent years.<br />
The Mystery Mug<br />
At an auction in Leicestershire I<br />
spotted a novel coffee mug in brown<br />
salt-glazed stoneware. The caricature<br />
portraits on either side were the same<br />
as on a white mug I owned, but instead<br />
of a large “V,” this one was inscribed<br />
“J-Le-S | Oct | 1941” between the<br />
portraits. It is backstamped “TG Green<br />
& Co Ltd, Church Gresley, England.”<br />
A Derbyshire pottery established in<br />
1864, it is still in business, best known<br />
for its popular blue and white-banded<br />
“Cornish” kitchenware.<br />
The inscription intrigued me.<br />
Who was “J-Le-S” What was being<br />
commemorated in October 1941 It<br />
was, after all, two months after the<br />
Atlantic Charter meeting and well<br />
before Pearl Harbor. <strong>Churchill</strong> was in<br />
fact in a funk, thinking America<br />
would never join the war.<br />
I had to own this little mug.<br />
Unfortunately, another bidder had the<br />
same idea, and I had to bid high to<br />
secure my prize. I telephoned T.G.<br />
Green for help identifying the initials.<br />
They could not assist, but did advise<br />
that they formerly did a considerable<br />
trade in personalised pottery—from<br />
complete tableware services to individual<br />
pieces—much of it with barges<br />
which plied the nearby canals.<br />
Whether “J-Le-S” was a barge<br />
person we’ll never know. Did he (or<br />
^ CURIOSITY: T.G. Green made this brown<br />
glazed mug above. Around the foot is the line:<br />
“Lets drink to victory, lets drink to peace.” But<br />
who is “J-Le-S” Below: the white version, with<br />
a “V” instead of a monogram, from the collection<br />
of Matt Wills, appeared in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 96.<br />
she) order a single mug, or several<br />
dozen What connection was there<br />
with <strong>Churchill</strong> and Roosevelt Was<br />
there any significance to the date<br />
October 1941 And is there an<br />
American or Canadian connection<br />
Chambers’ Biographical<br />
Dictionary lists one Jean Le Sage, a<br />
French-Canadian who became Prime<br />
Minister of Quebec in 1960. He<br />
would have been 29 in 1941. Was he,<br />
like many of his countrymen, in<br />
Britain at the time Did he stop off in<br />
Church Gresley and commission a<br />
supply of personalized coffee mugs<br />
Perhaps a reader can help throw some<br />
light on this “riddle wrapped in a<br />
mystery inside an enigma.” <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 55
O L D T I T L E S R E V I S I T E D<br />
Harold Nicolson and His Diaries<br />
“FOR US THEY SHINE HAPPILY TODAY AS MYRTLE<br />
FLOWERS AMONG THE HEAVY WREATH OF BAY”<br />
J A M E S L A N C A S T E R<br />
Harold Nicolson met <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> in the spring of 1908,<br />
when Nicolson was an undergraduate<br />
at Oxford and dined periodically with<br />
his Balliol friend Arthur Bertie at<br />
Wytham Abbey, a few miles from the<br />
city. This “grim gray building in a<br />
lovely park” was the country estate of<br />
Arthur’s father the 7th Earl of Abingdon.<br />
Nicolson described <strong>Churchill</strong> as<br />
“a young man with reddish hair who<br />
stooped and slouched [and] who<br />
talked a great deal, only thirty-three<br />
and already a member of the Cabinet.”<br />
The account of this first meeting is<br />
not in the Nicolson diaries but in<br />
Nicolson’s “A Portrait of <strong>Winston</strong><br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>,” in Life magazine for April<br />
1948. Nicolson kept only a very occasional<br />
diary during his Foreign Office<br />
career (June 1909-December 1929), so<br />
it is not until 1925 that we find his<br />
first diary entry about WSC.<br />
• 7 June 1925: Dine and sleep with<br />
the <strong>Churchill</strong>s at Chartwell. <strong>Winston</strong> is<br />
delighted with his house, which he considers<br />
a paradise on earth. It is rather<br />
nice. Only Goonie [WSC’s sister-in-law<br />
Lady Gwendoline Bertie] there, and a<br />
red-headed Australian journalist called<br />
Bracken. A most self-confident and, I<br />
should think, wrong-headed young<br />
man. We talk about Curzon. <strong>Winston</strong> is<br />
nice about him. June 8: Motor up with<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>. A rather perilous proceeding.<br />
We break down two or three times on<br />
the way.<br />
___________________________________<br />
Mr. Lancaster provides the “<strong>Churchill</strong> Quiz”<br />
in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> and on winstonchurchill.org.<br />
He has provided a copy of Nicolson’s 1948 Life<br />
article, available from the editor by email.<br />
• 27 Apri1 1961 [letter from Harold<br />
to his wife, Vita Sackville-West]: I went<br />
to the Academy Banquet and enjoyed it<br />
very much. I watched [<strong>Winston</strong>’s] huge<br />
bald head descending the staircase, and I<br />
blessed it as it disappeared. “We may<br />
never see that again,” said a voice<br />
behind me. It was Attlee.<br />
These are the first and last entries<br />
on <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> in the diaries of<br />
Harold Nicolson, who had many interesting<br />
things to say about people<br />
and events during thirty-five eventful<br />
years. He was a prolific writer, and<br />
many of his observations, kind and<br />
critical, concern the life and times of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong>. This is why the<br />
Nicolson diaries are of such interest to<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ians, and why they are<br />
quoted frequently in the last four volumes<br />
of the official biography, and in<br />
many books about <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
Three volumes of the diaries, edited<br />
by Harold’s son Nigel, were published<br />
between 1966 and 1968. A fourth volume<br />
was published in 2004, incorporating<br />
extracts from the pre-1930<br />
diaries held at Balliol, entries from<br />
Nicolson’s Peacemaking: 1919 (published<br />
in 1933), plus letters to friends<br />
and family.<br />
Harold Nicolson was born in 1886,<br />
the son of Sir Arthur Nicolson, later<br />
Lord Carnock, who was Ambassador<br />
to Russia in 1905-10 and Permanent<br />
Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in<br />
1910-16. <strong>Churchill</strong> had great respect<br />
for Sir Arthur, whose despatch written<br />
in 1910 he quoted at length in The<br />
Eastern Front: “The ultimate aims of<br />
Germany are…to obtain the preponderance<br />
on the continent of Europe,<br />
and when she is strong enough…she<br />
will enter into a contest with us for<br />
maritime supremacy.”<br />
In 1909 Harold passed the Foreign<br />
Office exams, one of only two candidates<br />
accepted that year. His first<br />
diplomatic posting was in Constantinople,<br />
where he spent two and onehalf<br />
years between 1912 and 1914.<br />
Back in London he was assigned to the<br />
newly created War Department at the<br />
Foreign Office. He distinguished himself<br />
with a succession of insightful papers<br />
on the Balkans, and later played a<br />
major part in the drafting of the Balfour<br />
Declaration in 1917.<br />
In the spring of 1919 Nicolson was<br />
sent to the Paris Peace Conference. Between<br />
October 1919 and May 1920 he<br />
was seconded to Woodrow Wilson’s<br />
nascent League of Nations, shuttling<br />
between the League’s offices in London<br />
and Paris. In 1922 he accompanied<br />
Lord Curzon to Lausanne to<br />
settle the differences between Turkey,<br />
Italy and Greece. His next posting was<br />
in 1926-27 as Counsellor to the Legation<br />
in Teheran, followed by two years<br />
in Berlin, where he served through December<br />
1929.<br />
He then made a fateful decision,<br />
prompted primarily by his wife’s re-<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 56
fusal to follow him any more from<br />
post to post. Vita Sackville-West,<br />
whom he had married in 1913, declared<br />
she was a writer, not the “wife of<br />
a diplomat.” Encouraged by her friend<br />
Virginia Woolf, she persuaded Harold<br />
to give up his promising career at the<br />
Foreign Office and make his way, like<br />
her, by writing and journalism.<br />
Towards the end of 1929 Beaverbrook<br />
signed him up to write the “Londoner’s<br />
Diary” for the Evening Standard.<br />
He turned up for his first day on Grub<br />
Street as “Londoner” on 1 January 1930.<br />
Hitherto his diary entries had been occasional,<br />
in pen and ink; on New Year’s<br />
day he switched to a typewriter.<br />
His son Nigel writes: “Having once<br />
started the diary afresh he maintained it<br />
without a single break until 4 October<br />
1964 when the emptiness of his days left<br />
him too little to record. He typed it<br />
every day after breakfast on both sides of<br />
loose sheets of quarto paper….The entire<br />
diary is some three million words<br />
long.” In an entry for 23 August 1938<br />
he explains to his sons Ben and Nigel<br />
that “this diary, of which they know the<br />
industry and persistence, is not a work<br />
of literature or self-revelation but a mere<br />
record of activity put down for my own<br />
reference only.”<br />
Here we see some convergence between<br />
the careers of <strong>Churchill</strong> and<br />
Nicolson. By 1930 they were both out of<br />
office, each living by their writings.<br />
Nicolson wrote his autobiographical<br />
Some People in 1927, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s My<br />
Early Life appeared in 1930. <strong>Winston</strong><br />
had written the life of Lord Randolph in<br />
1906, Harold wrote the life of his father<br />
Lord Carnock in 1930. Both authors<br />
were very proud of their filial biographies.<br />
The literary output of both men<br />
was colossal, a mix of serious works and<br />
profitable journalism.<br />
There was also a convergence of<br />
views as the decade darkened. Both supported<br />
the League of Nations and resisted<br />
appeasement, Nicolson influenced<br />
by his firsthand knowledge of German<br />
and Italian methods of diplomacy. His<br />
fluency in German gave him an advantage.<br />
On 12 June 1936 he was seated<br />
next to a German woman who told him<br />
he should visit Germany: “You would<br />
find it all so changed.” He replied: “Yes,<br />
I should find all my old friends either in<br />
prison, or exiled, or murdered.”<br />
On 10 May 1938 Nicolson tells us:<br />
“On afterwards to Randolph <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
flat. He is editing a book of his father’s<br />
speeches which show how right he has always<br />
been.” Later in the Telegraph, he reviewed<br />
the book—Arms and the<br />
Covenant (While England Slept in U.S.):<br />
The ordinary reader.…will be<br />
amazed at the prescience of Mr.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> and at the blind optimism<br />
of his critics. He will be encouraged<br />
by the blend of realism and idealism<br />
which renders Mr. <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
present theory so far above the<br />
jangles and tangles of party controversy.<br />
And he will delight in the<br />
brilliance of one of the greatest<br />
orators of our time.<br />
Nicolson was prescient himself. In his<br />
biography of his father he reminds us of<br />
German foreign minister (and later<br />
chancellor) Prince Bülow’s speech on 11<br />
December 1899: “The times of our political<br />
anaemia and economic humility<br />
must not recur. In the coming century<br />
the German people will be either the<br />
hammer or the anvil.”<br />
Participating as he did in the Paris<br />
Peace Conference negotiations in 1919,<br />
Nicolson agreed with Foch’s comment,<br />
“This is not Peace. It is an Armistice for<br />
twenty years.” During his posting in<br />
Berlin, October 1927 to December<br />
1929, he reported to London about the<br />
growth of the Nazi movement, German<br />
nationalism, the demands for “Lebensraum,”<br />
and the clamant calls for the abrogation<br />
of treaty obligations.<br />
There is plenty of gossip, folly and<br />
wisdom in these diaries, much more<br />
than “a mere record of activity.” Here is<br />
a pot-pourri of <strong>Winston</strong>ian items:<br />
• 6 July 1930 at Wilton, the Earl of<br />
Pembroke’s house in Wiltshire:<br />
[<strong>Winston</strong>] goes for a long walk with<br />
Vita….He spoke of his American tour.<br />
The difficulty of drink and food. One<br />
never got real food, only chicken. He<br />
had been given a dozen champagne by<br />
Barney Baruch and paid it back to him<br />
at a cost of £30. He was happy there.<br />
• 17 March 1936, meeting of the<br />
Foreign Affairs Committee of which<br />
Nicolson is Vice-Chairman:<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> gathered a group together in<br />
the smoking-room and talked about<br />
funk versus national honour and our<br />
duty to generations yet unborn.<br />
• 4 November 1936, letter from<br />
Harold to Vita (Hadji to Viti) about<br />
seconding the Address at the opening<br />
of Parliament:<br />
My constituency [West Leicester]<br />
which, maybe in a moment of blindness,<br />
refrained from electing the Right Honourable<br />
Member for Epping…. <strong>Winston</strong><br />
at this flashed out, “They also refrained<br />
from electing the Right Honourable<br />
Member for the Scottish Universities<br />
[Ramsay MacDonald].”<br />
• 8 December 1937, breakfast with<br />
Lord Baldwin:<br />
He talked about <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
and said he lacked soul. I suggested that<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> is very sympathetic to misfortune<br />
in others. He answered, “I don’t<br />
deny that <strong>Winston</strong> has his sentimental<br />
side. And what is more, he cannot really<br />
tell lies. That is what makes him so bad a<br />
conspirator.”<br />
• 22 February 1938, HN to Vita<br />
after his speech on Eden’s resignation:<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> comes up and says, “That was<br />
a magnificent speech. I envy you your gift.”<br />
• 2 March 1938, Harold to Vita on<br />
a meeting of WSC’s “Focus Group”:<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> was enormously witty. He<br />
spoke of “this great country nosing from<br />
door to door like a cow that has lost its<br />
calf, mooing dolefully now in Berlin and<br />
now in Rome—when all the time the tiger<br />
and the alligator wait for its undoing.”<br />
• 5 December 1938, in the House,<br />
remarking on <strong>Churchill</strong> fumbling his<br />
notes when attacking Hore-Belisha:<br />
[<strong>Churchill</strong>] certainly is a tiger who, if<br />
he misses his spring, is lost.<br />
• 14 June 1939, dinner with Kenneth<br />
Clark of the National Gallery,<br />
the Walter Lippmans and <strong>Churchill</strong>:<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> is horrified when Walter<br />
Lippman tells him that the American >><br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 57
THE NICOLSON DIARIES...<br />
Ambassador, Joe Kennedy, thinks that<br />
war is inevitable and Britain will be<br />
licked. “No, the Ambassador should not<br />
have spoken so, Mr Lippman….Yet supposing<br />
(as I do not for one moment suppose)<br />
that Mr. Kennedy was correct in<br />
his tragic utterance, then I for one would<br />
willingly lay down my life in combat,<br />
rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to<br />
the menaces of these most sinister men.”<br />
• 17 September 1939, diary:<br />
Chamberlain must go. <strong>Churchill</strong> may<br />
be our Clemenceau or our Gambetta.<br />
• 26 September 1939, WSC speaking<br />
on the Navy’s successes to date:<br />
The effect of <strong>Winston</strong>’s speech was<br />
infinitely greater than could be derived<br />
from any reading of the text. One could<br />
feel the spirits of the House rising with<br />
every word.<br />
• 8 May 1940, Norway debate:<br />
On the one hand he has to be loyal to<br />
the Services; on the other, he has to be<br />
loyal to the Prime Minister….he manages<br />
with extraordinary force of personality<br />
to do both these things with<br />
absolute loyalty and apparent sincerity,<br />
while demonstrating by his brilliance<br />
that he really has nothing to do with this<br />
timid gang.<br />
• 4 June 1940, “Never Surrender”:<br />
This afternoon <strong>Winston</strong> made the<br />
finest speech that I have ever heard. The<br />
House was deeply moved.<br />
AT HOME: Harold and Vita later in life at Sissinghurst, Kent, now a National Trust property. The<br />
mansion, whose magnificent garden is situated in the midst of a ruin of an Ellizabethan manor<br />
house, was lovingly tended by the Nicolsons from the time they arrived in 1930. Sissinghurst<br />
Castle, as it is known, may be combined with a visit to Chartwell, only thirty miles away.<br />
• 4 July 1940, attack on the French<br />
fleet at Oran:<br />
The House is saddened at first by this<br />
odious attack but is fortified by <strong>Winston</strong>’s<br />
speech. The grand finale ends in an ovation,<br />
with <strong>Winston</strong> sitting there with tears<br />
pouring down his cheeks.<br />
• 14 July 1940, after <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
BBC broadcast:<br />
Imagine the effect of his speech in<br />
the Empire and in the U.S.A….<strong>Winston</strong>’s<br />
best phrase was “We may show<br />
mercy—we shall ask for none.”<br />
• 5 November 1940, WSC makes a<br />
statement after Question Time:<br />
He is rather grim. He brings home to<br />
the House the gravity of our shipping<br />
losses….It has a good effect. By putting<br />
the grim side forward he impresses us<br />
with his ability to face the worst.<br />
• 23 December 1940, WSC’s<br />
broadcast to the Italian people:<br />
He read out his letter to Mussolini of<br />
May last. It was tremendous. He read<br />
out Mussolini’s reply. It was the creep of<br />
the assassin.<br />
• 7 May 1941, vote of confidence<br />
carried by 447 to 3:<br />
[<strong>Churchill</strong>] stands there in his black<br />
conventional suit with the huge watchchain.<br />
He is very amusing. He is very<br />
frank….As <strong>Winston</strong> goes out of the<br />
chamber… there is a spontaneous burst<br />
of cheering….Members are a bit defeatist.<br />
But <strong>Winston</strong> cheers them up.<br />
Yesterday it was rather like a hen-coop of<br />
wet hens; today they all strutted about<br />
like bantams.<br />
• 23 April 1942, Secret Session on<br />
the fall of Singapore:<br />
He tells us of our present dangers….<br />
It is a long and utterly remorseless catalogue<br />
of disaster and misfortune. And as<br />
he tells us one thing after another,<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 58
...gradually the feeling rises in the<br />
packed House....members begin to feel<br />
in their hearts, “no man but he could<br />
tell us of such disaster and increase<br />
rather than diminish confidence.”...The<br />
House gives him a great ovation.<br />
• 12 March 1943, dinner with the<br />
cartoonist and critic Osbert Lancaster<br />
the diplomat Charles Peake:<br />
Charles tells me about the latest de<br />
Gaulle row. De Gaulle had decided to go<br />
to Syria, and Charles had been instructed<br />
to say No. “Alors,” he had said, “je suis<br />
prisonnier.” [“So, I am a prisoner.”] He<br />
[de Gaulle] retired to Hampstead. <strong>Winston</strong><br />
had telephoned Charles saying, “I<br />
hold you responsible that the Monster of<br />
Hampstead does not escape.”<br />
• 8 May 1945, Victory in Europe:<br />
As Big Ben struck three, there was an<br />
extraordinary hush over the assembled<br />
multitude, and then came <strong>Winston</strong>’s<br />
voice....“The evil-doers,” he intoned,<br />
“now lie prostrate before us.” The crowd<br />
gasped at this phrase. “Advance Britannia!”<br />
he shouted at the end, and there<br />
followed the Last Post and God Save the<br />
King which we all sang very loud indeed.<br />
And then cheer upon cheer.<br />
• 10 August 1945, on <strong>Churchill</strong>’s<br />
attitude toward his electoral defeat on<br />
July 26th:<br />
Not one word of bitterness; not a single<br />
complaint of having been treated<br />
with ingratitude; calm, stoical resignation—coupled<br />
with a shaft of amusement<br />
that fate could play so dramatic a<br />
trick, and a faint admiration for the electorate’s<br />
show of independence.<br />
• 19 December 1945, at the French<br />
Embassy; WSC talking about dealing<br />
with the Russians:<br />
“…one is not sure of their reactions.<br />
One strokes the nose of the alligator and<br />
the ensuing gurgle may be a purr of affection,<br />
a grunt of stimulated appetite,<br />
or a snarl of enraged animosity. One<br />
cannot tell.” <strong>Winston</strong> then comments<br />
on the younger Conservative MPs:<br />
“They are no more than a set of pink<br />
pansies.” His passion for the combative<br />
renders him insensitive to the gentle gradations<br />
of the human mind.<br />
• 12 December 1946, diary entry:<br />
Jack <strong>Churchill</strong> tells me that somebody<br />
had asked <strong>Winston</strong> why Attlee did<br />
not go to Moscow to get in touch with<br />
Stalin. “He is too wise for that,” replied<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>. ”He dare not absent himself<br />
from his Cabinet at home. He knows<br />
full well that when the mouse is away<br />
the cats will play.”<br />
• 17 August 1950, in conversation<br />
with Paddy Leigh Fermor:<br />
Somebody said, “One never hears of<br />
Baldwin nowadays—he might as well be<br />
dead.” “No,” said <strong>Winston</strong>, “not dead.<br />
But the candle in that old turnip has<br />
gone out.”<br />
• 19 August 1955, Chartwell:<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> told Viti that at his last audience<br />
with the Queen she had said to<br />
him, “Would you like a Dukedom or<br />
anything like that”<br />
These extracts from Nicolson’s diaries<br />
date from many years ago, long before<br />
the days of live television in the<br />
House of Commons. It will never be<br />
possible to reproduce the sight and<br />
sound of <strong>Churchill</strong> as “a child of the<br />
House of Commons.” Nicolson writes<br />
that many of the studio recordings of his<br />
speeches unfortunately fail to reproduce<br />
the flavour of the live performance. Was<br />
it ever thus.<br />
However, more than any other observer,<br />
Harold Nicolson often conveys<br />
the sensation in the House when <strong>Winston</strong><br />
was “up” and at his best. Here is an<br />
example. On 29 November 1944<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> spoke about “The tasks which<br />
lie before us.” The text of this speech in<br />
The Dawn of Liberation includes the<br />
words: “Youth, Youth, Youth….there is<br />
no safer thing than to run risks in<br />
youth… A love of tradition has never<br />
weakened a nation….Let us have no fear<br />
of the future. We are a decent lot, all of<br />
us, the whole nation.”<br />
These simple words will have been<br />
enjoyable to read in The Times the following<br />
day, <strong>Churchill</strong>’s 70th birthday.<br />
But the Hansard text can never convey<br />
the way these words were delivered.<br />
Nicolson tells us what it was like to be in<br />
the House that day. In his letter to his<br />
sons Ben and Nigel dated the 29th:<br />
By the time I reached the Chamber,<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> was about to rise. When<br />
he came back from his Italian visit,<br />
we had all been horrified by his<br />
apparent exhaustion. But Moscow<br />
did him good, and the snow-drifts<br />
of the Vosges did him even more<br />
good. He is, or seems, as fit as he<br />
ever was, even in his best days. It is<br />
incredible that he should be seventy,<br />
all but a day. He made a lovely<br />
speech. He spoke of tradition as the<br />
flywheel of the State. He spoke of<br />
the need of youth—“Youth, youth,<br />
youth, and renovation, energy,<br />
boundless energy”—and as he said<br />
these words, he bent his knees and<br />
pounded the air like a pugilist—<br />
“and of controversy, health-giving<br />
controversy. I am not afraid of it in<br />
this country,” he said, and then he<br />
took off his glasses and grinned<br />
round at the Conservative benches.<br />
“We are a decent lot,” he said,<br />
beaming upon them. Then he<br />
swung round and leant forward over<br />
the box right into the faces of the<br />
Labour people: “All of us,” he<br />
added, “the whole nation.”<br />
It read so mildly in the newspapers<br />
next morning. Yet in fact it was a perfect<br />
illustration of the Parliamentary art.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s contemporaries have left<br />
enough memories of the Old Man to fill<br />
several bookshelves, but Nicolson’s are<br />
especially valuable. From his first meeting<br />
with the young <strong>Winston</strong> in 1908 to<br />
his obituary broadcast on BBC television<br />
in January 1965, Nicolson has described<br />
superbly many of the memorable, as well<br />
as some of the forgettable, moments of<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s long life:<br />
“It is salutary to be reminded how<br />
bitter were the animosities, how dark the<br />
lies, how almost unendurable the injustices<br />
which, until 1940, he had constantly<br />
to endure,” Nicolson said. “He<br />
may have been wrong in the attitude he<br />
took over the India Act or the Abdication;<br />
but his defiance of contemporary<br />
opinion on such occasions was not due<br />
to any egoism or self-advantage but to<br />
an overpowering loyalty to lost causes<br />
and stricken friends. For us they shine<br />
happily today as myrtle flowers among<br />
the heavy wreath of bay.” <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 59
E D U C A T I O N<br />
Finding Answers for National History Day<br />
FINEST HOUR OFFERS ADVICE FOR STUDENTS IN ACADEMIC COMPETITION<br />
ON TEHERAN, TURKEY, POSTWAR GOALS, STALIN VS. HITLER,<br />
AND THE BRITISH ATTACK ON THE FRENCH FLEET AT ORAN<br />
National History Day, usually in<br />
November, is an American academic<br />
competition for students in<br />
grades 6-12. Each year, more than half a<br />
million students construct both individual<br />
and group entries in one of five<br />
categories: Documentary, Exhibit, Paper,<br />
Performance or Website. Students then<br />
compete in a series of regional and state<br />
contests to proceed to the national<br />
contest. The mission of National<br />
History Day is to provide students with<br />
opportunities to learn historical content<br />
and develop research, thinking and<br />
communication skills through the study<br />
of history, and to provide educators with<br />
resources and training to enhance classroom<br />
teaching.<br />
The theme for 2011 is “Debate and<br />
Diplomacy: Successes, Failures, and<br />
Consequences of History”—a rich field<br />
for <strong>Churchill</strong> studies. For more information<br />
see http://bit.ly/ifr5tb.<br />
Teacher Barbi Binnig at Nimitz<br />
High School in Houston made a stimulating<br />
request on behalf of her students:<br />
“I have a few questions for the Teheran<br />
Conference and the attack at Oran. My<br />
students have done extensive research<br />
and would like to have different historical<br />
perspectives on their projects. Can<br />
you help” We could certainly try.<br />
Note to readers: This is one of<br />
scores of questions from teachers or students<br />
we try to answer, necessarily<br />
quickly, over the course of the year. It<br />
affords an interesting view of the material<br />
they run into. Omitted are many<br />
references to books and websites. We<br />
want students to draw their own conclusions<br />
on what they discover.<br />
Teheran Conference<br />
“We’ve read that at the Teheran<br />
summit in 1943, <strong>Churchill</strong> said that he<br />
felt like a ‘poor little donkey’ when<br />
sitting next to Stalin and Roosevelt. Did<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> feel Britain was not as much<br />
of a ‘superpower’ when compared to<br />
America and Russia at the Teheran<br />
Conference If so, why”<br />
• Yes. By late 1943, the U.S. and<br />
Soviet Union had the preponderant military<br />
forces and were in a military<br />
position that enabled them to exert<br />
greater influence over war strategy.<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> referred to Britain as the<br />
“poor little English donkey” and “the<br />
only one...who knew the right way<br />
home” because he was convinced his<br />
proposals for future operations were the<br />
best ones on the table. There is much<br />
debate about this, of course. For<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>’s view explained concisely see<br />
Martin Gilbert, <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life, available<br />
in paperback. This is really a<br />
standard reference for anyone interested<br />
in <strong>Churchill</strong>. It provides the full story<br />
and is entirely reliable with its facts.<br />
Turkey as Ally<br />
“Was there much debate or discussion<br />
about Turkey joining the Allies, or was<br />
it a brief topic of discussion”<br />
• There was no debate among the<br />
Allies, but it was <strong>Churchill</strong>'s initiative to<br />
persuade the Turks to join them. Turkey<br />
did not declare war officially until very<br />
late in the war, but as Martin Gilbert<br />
points out, they rendered an important<br />
service by cutting off their export of<br />
chrome, a strategic war material, to<br />
Germany. See the article “<strong>Churchill</strong> in<br />
Turkey 1943” in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong> 126.<br />
Postwar Goals<br />
“We’ve read that <strong>Churchill</strong> wanted<br />
the world to be safe for at least fifty<br />
years, whereas Stalin aimed for fifteen or<br />
twenty years of peace. Do you think<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> was optimistic, or did he formulate<br />
his goal after much thought and<br />
planned strategy”<br />
• If anyone was counting, it might<br />
have been only rhetorically. It would be<br />
wrong to assume that Stalin contemplated<br />
a war with the West a few years<br />
after Germany was defeated (although<br />
he declared to his foreign minister,<br />
Molotov, that he would fight if attacked,<br />
even if it meant “losing the revolution”).<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> said in his “Iron Curtain”<br />
speech at Fulton in 1946: “I do not<br />
believe that Soviet Russia desires war.<br />
What they desire is the fruits of war and<br />
the indefinite expansion of their power<br />
and doctrines.”<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 60
Your students might enjoy reading<br />
or hearing this famous and important<br />
speech. The text is on the <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Centre website and there is a link to the<br />
audio version from the BBC Archives:<br />
http://bit.ly/i19Afp.<br />
Stalin and Hitler<br />
“We’ve read that <strong>Churchill</strong> saw<br />
Russia in an almost similar way to the<br />
way he saw Hitler, the Allies’ common<br />
enemy. Why did he decide to have<br />
diplomatic relations with Stalin even<br />
though he viewed Russia negatively”<br />
• <strong>Churchill</strong> was a pragmatist. Before<br />
the war he saw Russia as a potential ally<br />
and Germany as the chief threat to<br />
other countries and the peace of Europe.<br />
Stalin’s regime was equally tyrannical,<br />
but until the war it had confined itself<br />
within its borders. While it had tried to<br />
export communism, it had not done so<br />
militarily until 1939.<br />
In August 1939 the Soviets signed a<br />
non-aggression pact with Hitler, and<br />
used it to gobble up the Baltic States<br />
and part of Poland. They congratulated<br />
Hitler for his victories and were still<br />
shipping vast quantities of goods to<br />
Germany when Hitler invaded Russia in<br />
June 1941. Thus Stalin had helped<br />
bring about the war in the first place.<br />
Once Russia was attacked <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
nevertheless welcomed Stalin as an ally<br />
and promised all possible aid to defeat<br />
what he saw as the greater threat. He<br />
hoped at Yalta that something good<br />
would come of the arrangements with<br />
Stalin, and something did: Stalin abided<br />
by his commitment not to undermine<br />
Greece, which he and <strong>Churchill</strong> had<br />
arranged at the famous “spheres of<br />
influence” talks in Moscow in 1942.<br />
Both before and after the war,<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> did not believe it accomplished<br />
anything to refuse diplomatic<br />
recognition. Over communist China in<br />
July 1952, for example, he said: “I was,<br />
I think, the first in this House to<br />
suggest, in November 1949, recognition<br />
of the Chinese Communists….I<br />
thought it would be a good thing to<br />
have diplomatic representation. But if<br />
you recognise anyone it does not necessarily<br />
mean that you like him.” (He<br />
then added an amusing reference to his<br />
political arch-enemy, Aneurin Bevan:<br />
“We all, for instance, recognise the Rt.<br />
Hon. Gentleman, the Member for<br />
Ebbw Vale.”)<br />
Poland<br />
“Once Poland lay in the Russian-<br />
Communist grip after WW2, did<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> feel his relations with Stalin at<br />
the Teheran Conference were a mistake<br />
Or did he expect Stalin to set up puppet<br />
governments”<br />
• It wasn’t so much Teheran as<br />
Yalta, which <strong>Churchill</strong> left believing he<br />
could trust Stalin, who had promised<br />
free elections in Poland. By the Potsdam<br />
Conference in July 1945 he had come<br />
to the conclusion, based on events in<br />
Poland, that Stalin had no such intention.<br />
He wrote in his memoirs that he<br />
would have had a “showdown” over<br />
Poland when he returned to Potsdam<br />
after the July 1945 British election; but<br />
his party lost that election, he was no<br />
longer Prime Minister, and he did not<br />
return to finish the conference.<br />
Oran<br />
“In your opinion was the Royal<br />
Navy’s attack on the French fleet at<br />
Oran in July 1940 necessary”<br />
• Yes. See the review in <strong>Finest</strong> <strong>Hour</strong><br />
150, by Earl Baker, of a recent Oran TV<br />
documentary. Much more on this is in<br />
Martin Gilbert's <strong>Churchill</strong>: A Life.<br />
“What were the greatest successes<br />
resulting from <strong>Churchill</strong>’s order to<br />
destroy the French fleet”<br />
• Depriving Hitler of critical<br />
surface vessels and convincing the<br />
world, particularly the United States,<br />
that Britain was in the war to the death,<br />
and would never surrender.<br />
“What were some failures”<br />
• Not putting the rest of the French<br />
fleet out of commission! (Of course<br />
there was a huge uproar in France, but<br />
after victory was won, most thoughtful<br />
Frenchmen forgave him.)<br />
“There is debate regarding the claim<br />
that <strong>Churchill</strong> may have ordered the<br />
securing of the French fleet for political<br />
or ulterior motives. For example, some<br />
have claimed that <strong>Churchill</strong> needed aid<br />
from Roosevelt and ordered the attack<br />
to ‘impress’ Roosevelt.”<br />
• Remember first that <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
approached this problem hoping to<br />
avoid attacking his former ally. He<br />
instructed his admiral on the scene to<br />
offer a variety of peaceful means to keep<br />
the fleet out of German hands. The<br />
French admiral refused them all. Once<br />
an attack was the only alternative, he<br />
naturally hoped that it would impress<br />
Roosevelt. But his primary aim was to<br />
maintain naval superiority.<br />
On sound military advice, he was<br />
convinced that Britain must secure the<br />
cream of the French Navy. The only<br />
place where Britain was not on the run<br />
in 1940 was at sea, and even there the<br />
shipping lifeline was precarious. Britain<br />
had to import half her food and much<br />
of her arms; without command of the<br />
seas she would starve.<br />
“After the attack, the Conservative<br />
Party rallied around <strong>Churchill</strong>. Others<br />
have claimed that <strong>Churchill</strong> ordered the<br />
attack to gain political support.”<br />
• It is true that the House of<br />
Commons roared its approval when he<br />
explained the reasons for the attack on<br />
the French fleet (see James Lancaster’s<br />
excerpt from the Nicolson diaries for 4<br />
July 1940, page 58, lefthand column).<br />
But the Conservative Party and most<br />
others had rallied round him before<br />
then. The Conservative establishment<br />
was doubtful when he succeeded<br />
Chamberlain, whom most of them had<br />
admired and supported. But <strong>Churchill</strong>'s<br />
refusal to surrender or agree to an<br />
armistice after the fall of France, the<br />
“miracle” of Dunkirk, and the speeches<br />
he made to the country, put a large<br />
section of his party behind him by the<br />
end of June. <br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 61
<strong>Churchill</strong> Quiz<br />
JAMES LANCASTER<br />
Each quiz includes four questions in six<br />
categories: contemporaries (C), literary<br />
(L), miscellaneous (M), personal (P),<br />
statesmanship (S) and war (W), easy<br />
questions first. Can you reach Level 1<br />
Level 4<br />
1. Who wrote Jennie Jerome in 1873<br />
indicating that she was free to marry<br />
whom she wanted “provided always that<br />
he is not a Frenchman or any other of<br />
those continental cusses” (P)<br />
2. Who lost the General Election in July<br />
1945, only ten weeks after the surrender<br />
of Germany (S)<br />
3. Who was <strong>Churchill</strong> writing about in<br />
The Strand in 1935, whose career had<br />
been borne upwards “by currents of<br />
hatred so intense as to sear the souls of<br />
those who swim upon them” (C)<br />
4. WSC wrote in 1945: “I felt as if I<br />
had been struck a physical blow. My<br />
relations with this shining personality<br />
had played so large a part in the long,<br />
terrible years we had worked together....I<br />
was overpowered by a sense of deep and<br />
irreparable loss.” Who was the shining<br />
personality (C)<br />
5. Which edition of The World Crisis<br />
has a foreword reading: “Our tale therefore<br />
recounts the greatest of human<br />
catastrophes since the decline and fall of<br />
ancient Rome” (L)<br />
6. Who told Lord Riddell in 1913: “In<br />
both parties there are fools at one end<br />
and crackpots at the other, but the<br />
great body in the middle is sound and<br />
wise” (C)<br />
Level 3<br />
7. WSC to Violet Bonham Carter, 1953:<br />
“It kept me off the air for eleven years. It<br />
is run by reds.” What was it (M)<br />
8. Who called for the songs “Ol’ Man<br />
River” and “Carry Me Back to Old<br />
Virginny” at the Thanksgiving dinner<br />
in Cairo on 25 November 1943 (M)<br />
9. “Democracy is no harlot to be<br />
picked up in the street by a man with a<br />
—— gun.” Fill in the blank. (S)<br />
10. When did WSC end a<br />
speech thusly: “Still, I avow<br />
my hope and faith, sure and inviolate,<br />
that in the days to come the British<br />
and American peoples will for their<br />
own safety, and for the good of all,<br />
walk together side by side in majesty, in<br />
justice, and in peace” (S)<br />
11. In what month and year did<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> broadcast that the German<br />
battleship Graf Spee had blown herself<br />
up (W)<br />
12. What was <strong>Winston</strong> trying to do<br />
when he described in My Early Life<br />
how he “grasped the larger hope” (P)<br />
Level 2<br />
13. Of which day in September 1940<br />
did <strong>Churchill</strong> later write: “The odds<br />
were great; our margins small; the<br />
stakes infinite” (W)<br />
14. In a review of which book did the<br />
Evening News write in November<br />
1931: “No greater writer of the English<br />
language exists today. Mr <strong>Churchill</strong> is<br />
our modern Macaulay; or rather<br />
today’s Thucydides” (L)<br />
15. <strong>Winston</strong> to Clementine, September<br />
1929: “…I went out & of course I<br />
caught a monster in 20 minutes.”<br />
What did he catch (P)<br />
16. When, at the Admiralty, did WSC<br />
tell his colleagues: “Gentlemen, to your<br />
tasks and duties” (W)<br />
17. In which book did <strong>Churchill</strong> write:<br />
“After all, a man’s Life must be nailed<br />
to a cross either of Thought or Action.<br />
Without work there is no play” (L)<br />
18. <strong>Churchill</strong> often used the biblical<br />
phrase “In my Father’s house are many<br />
mansions.” Give the book in the New<br />
Testament. (M)<br />
Level 1<br />
19. To his mother in November 1896<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> wrote: “I must say that she is<br />
the most beautiful girl I have ever<br />
seen.” Who was she (P)<br />
20. Who wrote: “Dear <strong>Winston</strong>,<br />
Thank you so much for sending me a<br />
copy of your latest book. I have put it<br />
on the shelf with all the others” (C)<br />
21. Smuts to <strong>Churchill</strong>, 30 January<br />
1944: “Following immediately on your<br />
courageous mission …” What was the<br />
mission (S)<br />
22. Who died on 11 June 1900 at<br />
Diamond Hill, South Africa, described<br />
in Ian Hamilton’s March as “an officer<br />
of high and noble qualities, beloved by<br />
his friends, and honoured by the men<br />
he led” (W)<br />
23. Who told John Colville, after a<br />
couple of adventurous days on the<br />
other side of the Rhine in March 1945:<br />
“Sleep soundly. You might have slept<br />
more soundly still” (M)<br />
24. Which is the most profusely illustrated<br />
edition of <strong>Churchill</strong>’s account of<br />
World War II (L) <br />
Answers<br />
(19) Pamela Plowden. (20) The Duke of<br />
Windsor. (21) <strong>Churchill</strong>’s flight to Athens<br />
on Christmas Day 1944, successfully to<br />
mediate the Greek civil war. (22) Lieut.-<br />
Colonel the Earl of Airlie, 12th Lancers,<br />
mentioned in despatches, uncle of<br />
<strong>Winston</strong>’s future wife Clementine. (23)<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>. (24) Editions le Sphinx,<br />
Brussels, 1951-1954, in French. In these<br />
three volumes alone there are about 2300<br />
photographs, many unique, and hundreds<br />
of specially drawn maps and charts.<br />
(13) Sunday 15 September, now Battle of<br />
Britain Day. (14) The Eastern Front. (15)<br />
A 188-pound marlin off Catalina Island,<br />
California. “‘Tis better to have hooked and<br />
lost, than never hooked at all.” This is a<br />
play on Tennyson’s lines in In Memoriam:<br />
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than<br />
never to have loved at all.” (16) 3 September<br />
1939, the outbreak of World War II<br />
(17) My Early Life. (18) John XIV, 2.<br />
(7) The BBC. (8) <strong>Churchill</strong>. (Roosevelt<br />
called for “The White Cliffs of Dover.”) (9)<br />
Tommy; in <strong>Churchill</strong>’s speech on the<br />
Greek crisis, 8 December 1944. (10)<br />
Addressing the U.S. Congress, 26<br />
December 1941. (11) 18 December 1939.<br />
(12) Persuading himself to like whisky.<br />
(1) Her father, Leonard Jerome. (2) The<br />
Conservatives. (3) Hitler. (4) Franklin<br />
Roosevelt. (5) The Great War, published by<br />
George Newnes in 1933. (6) <strong>Churchill</strong>.<br />
FINEST HOUR 151 / 62
REGIONAL AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS<br />
Chapters: Please send all event reports to the Chartwell Bulletin: news@winstonchurchill.org<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Alaska<br />
Judith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu)<br />
2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508<br />
tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647<br />
England: TCC-UK Chartwell Branch<br />
Nigel Guest (nigel.guest@ntlworld.com)<br />
Coomb Water, 134 Bluehouse Lane<br />
Limpsfield, Oxted, Surrey RH8 0AR<br />
tel. (01883) 717656<br />
North Carolina <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
www.churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.org<br />
Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com)<br />
5909 Bluebird Hill Lane<br />
Weddington NC 28104; tel. (704) 844-9960<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Calgary, Alberta<br />
Mr. Justice J.D. Bruce McDonald<br />
(bruce.mcdonald@albertacourts.ca)<br />
2401 N - 601 - 5th Street, S.W.<br />
Calgary AB T2P 5P7; tel. (403) 297-3164<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir <strong>Winston</strong> Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of Edmonton, Alberta<br />
Dr. Edward Hutson (jehutson@shaw.ca)<br />
98 Rehwinkel Rd., Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8<br />
tel. (780) 430-7178<br />
Rt. Hon. Sir Winton Spencer <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Society of British Columbia<br />
Christopher Hebb<br />
(cavellcapital@gmail.com)<br />
30-2231 Folkestone Way, W. Vancouver, BC<br />
V7S 2Y6; tel. (604) 209-6400<br />
California: <strong>Churchill</strong>ians-by-the-Bay<br />
Jason Mueller (youngchurchillian@hotmail.com)<br />
17115 Wilson Way, Watsonville CA 95076<br />
tel. (831) 722-1440<br />
California: <strong>Churchill</strong>ians of the Desert<br />
David Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com)<br />
74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210<br />
tel. (760) 837-1095<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>ians of Southern California<br />
Leon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com)<br />
235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042<br />
tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Chicagoland<br />
Phil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)<br />
22 Scotdale Road, LaGrange Park IL 60526<br />
tel. (708) 352-6825<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Connecticut<br />
Roger Deakin (khouchin@sbcglobal.net)<br />
85 River Road (M-7)<br />
Essex, CT 06426; (860) 767-2817<br />
Colorado: Rocky Mountain <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Lew House (lhouse2cti@earthlink.net)<br />
2034 Eisenhower Dr., Louisville CO 80027<br />
tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589<br />
<br />
England: TCC-UK Woodford/Epping Branch<br />
Tony Woodhead<br />
(anthony.woodhead@virginmedia.com)<br />
Old Orchard, 32 Albion Hill, Loughton<br />
Essex IG10 4RD; tel. (0208) 508-4562<br />
England: TCC-UK Northern Branch<br />
Derek Greenwell (dg@ftcg.co.uk)<br />
Farriers Cottage, Station Road, Goldsborough,<br />
North Yorks. HG5 8NT; tel. (01432) 863225<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of South Florida<br />
Rodolfo Milani<br />
(churchillsocietyofsouthflorida@gmail.com)<br />
7741 Ponce de Leon Road, Miami FL 33143<br />
tel. (305) 668-4419; mobile (305) 606-5939<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre North Florida<br />
Richard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net)<br />
81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607<br />
tel. (352) 378-8985<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Georgia<br />
www.georgiachurchill.org<br />
Joseph Wilson (joewilson68@hotmail.com)<br />
1439 Vernon North Drive, Dunwoody GA 30338<br />
tel. (404) 966-1408<br />
<strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Michigan<br />
Richard Marsh (rcmarsha2@aol.com)<br />
4085 Littledown, Ann Arbor, MI 48103<br />
tel. (734) 913-0848<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Round Table of Nebraska<br />
John Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com)<br />
7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114<br />
tel. (402) 968-2773<br />
New England <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Joseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com)<br />
340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170<br />
tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of New Orleans<br />
J. Gregg Collins (jgreggcollins@msn.com)<br />
2880 Lakeway Three, 3838 N. Causeway Blvd.<br />
Metairie LA 70002; tel. (504) 799-3484<br />
New York <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Gregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com)<br />
Fulbright & Jaworski, 666 Fifth Ave.<br />
New York NY 10103; tel. (212) 318-3388<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Northern Ohio<br />
Michael McMenamin (mtm@walterhav.com)<br />
1301 E. 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114<br />
tel. (216) 781-1212<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Society of Philadelphia<br />
Bernard Wojciechowski<br />
(bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us)<br />
1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446<br />
tel. (610) 584-6657<br />
South Carolina: Bernard Baruch Chapter<br />
Kenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net)<br />
P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367<br />
tel. (803) 254-4035<br />
Texas: Emery Reves <strong>Churchill</strong>ians<br />
Jeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net)<br />
2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210<br />
tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Houston<br />
Chris Schaeper (chrisschaeper@sbcglobal.net)<br />
2907 Quenby, Houston TX 77005<br />
tel. (713) 660-6898<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre South Texas<br />
thechurchillcentresouthtexas.com<br />
Don Jakeway (churchillstx@gmail.com)<br />
170 Grassmarket, San Antonio, TX 78259<br />
tel. (210) 333-2085<br />
Sir <strong>Winston</strong> <strong>Churchill</strong> Society of<br />
Vancouver Island • www.churchillvictoria.com<br />
Mayo McDonough (churchillsociety@shaw.ca)<br />
PO Box 2114, Sidney BC V8L 3S6<br />
tel. (250) 595-0008<br />
Washington (DC) Society for <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
Chris Sterling (chriss@gwu.edu)<br />
4507 Airlie Way, Annandale VA 22003<br />
tel. (703) 256-9304<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong> Centre Seattle<br />
www.churchillseattle.blogspot.com<br />
Simon Mould (simon@cckirkland.org)<br />
1920 243rd Pl., SW, Bothell, WA 98021<br />
tel. (425) 286-7364
Britain’s Bulldog, France’s Tiger<br />
They had more in common than cartoon caricatures. See page 38.<br />
Although <strong>Churchill</strong> as bulldog first<br />
appeared in Punch in 1912, the<br />
American cartoonist Henry Guignon<br />
was first to revive the image in World<br />
War II. This poster, issued in 1940,<br />
after Franklin Roosevelts reelection,<br />
was intended to alert isolationist<br />
Americans that Britain and <strong>Churchill</strong><br />
were the best bulwark against tyranny.<br />
The drawing later appeared on a British<br />
postcard, and ran on the cover of <strong>Finest</strong><br />
<strong>Hour</strong> 106, Spring 2000, with an article on<br />
the evolution of the bulldog image by the<br />
late Douglas Hall (see also page 55).<br />
“Le Vieux Tigre” (The Old Tiger) by<br />
Joseph Sirat in La Griffe, Paris, 26<br />
January 1917. Clemenceau was<br />
drawing ministerial blood (“SANG<br />
MINISTERIEL”) in political wars at the time:<br />
“Oh!...de ma dernière dent, mordre,<br />
mordre encore...et mourir!” (Oh!...in my<br />
last tooth biting, biting...and die!) But by<br />
November 1917 he had won and was back<br />
again as Prime Minister, calling for unity<br />
and “total war.”He represented France at<br />
Versailles and remained in office until 1920.<br />
“Whenever I hear the Marseillaise,” wrote<br />
<strong>Churchill</strong>, “I think of Clemenceau.”