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THE JOURNAL OFWINSTON CHURCHILLSUMMER 2007NUMBER 135

Number 135 • Summer 2007ISSN 0882-3715www.winstonchurchill.org____________________________Barbara F. Langworth, Publisher(blangworth@adelphia.net)Richard M. Langworth CBE, Editor(malakand@langworth.name)Post Office Box 740Moultonborough, NH 03254 USATel. (603) 253-8900December-March Tel. (242) 335-0615___________________________Deputy Editor:Robert A. CourtsSenior Editors:Paul H. CourtenayJames LancasterJames W. MullerRon Cynewulf RobbinsNews Editor:John FrostContributorsAlfred James, Australia;Terry Reardon, Canada;Inder Dan Ratnu, India;Paul Addison, Winston S. Churchill,Sir Martin Gilbert CBE,Allen Packwood, United Kingdom;David Freeman, Ted HutchinsonWarren F. Kimball,Michael McMenamin, Don Pieper,Christopher Sterling,Manfred Weidhorn, United States___________________________k Address changes: Help us keep your copiescoming! Please update your membership officewhen you move. All offices for The ChurchillCentre, its Allies and Affiliates are listed on theinside front cover.__________________________________Finest Hour is made possible in part throughthe generous support of members of TheChurchill Centre and Societies, the particularassistance of the Number Ten Club, and anendowment created by the Churchill CentreAssociates (listed on page 2).___________________________________Published quarterly by The Churchill Centre,which offers various levels of subscription invarious currencies. Membership applicationsmay be obtained from the appropriate officeson page 2, or may be downloaded from ourwebsite. Permission to mail at non-profit ratesin USA granted by the United States PostalService, Concord, NH, permit no. 1524.Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.JUNO BEACH CENTRETo the Prime Minister, Ottawa:As one of the original members ofthe fund-raising team that solicited $8million to open the Juno Beach Centre, Isend my sincere thanks to you and yourgovernment for the recent commitmentof additional funding. As President of theInternational Churchill Society, Canada, Iattended a tour of the Normandy beacheswith Sir Winston’s daughter Lady Soames(née Mary Churchill), in October 2004. Iwas never so proud to be a Canadian aswhen this multinational group toured this“piece of Canada.” Like many, I had afather and grandfather who fought there.Everyone in our party was complimentaryon the content and focus of Canada’swartime contribution as depicted in theJuno Beach Centre. Please know thatthere are many Canadians who applaudyour initiative.RANDY BARBER, MARKHAM, ONT.EVEREST REMEMBEREDHow enjoyable was GeoffreyFletcher’s two-part article, “SpencerChurchill (p) at Harrow” (FH 133-34).Having visited the school on the wonderfulChurchill tour organized by TheChurchill Centre last year, I could muchmore easily envision the scenes he recreatedand appreciate the environment hedescribes. The part about Mrs. Everest isparticularly touching, and so likeChurchill. The tour party visited Mrs.Everest’s grave last year, and laid a wreathon it—very appropriate.EARL M. BAKER, WAYNE, PENNA.• I’m glad you enjoyed my piece. Someyears ago ICS (UK) held our AGM at theschool and I met fellow Churchillians fromthe United States who were in England andwere welcome guests. The conversationturned to the public (private) school systemin the UK which for many years producedmost senior politicians and civil servants.Churchill had four Old Harrovians in his1940 Cabinet: L.S. Amery, J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, D. Margesson and G. Lloyd.This gave me the idea for the article.Churchill’s schooldays in my opinion forgedhis character, particularly between 1888and 1892, but have not been fullyresearched. I am not an Old Harrovian butI was at a similar school; times had notFINEST HOUR 135 / 4D E S PAT C H B O Xchanged very much in my time! —GJFNOT “DEAD DRUNK”An author’s note to “Like Goldfishin a Bowl” (FH 134: 33) quotes me assaying I helped a “dead drunk” Churchilland Eden home after a long dinner withthe Russians at Teheran. Let me pleasecorrect that: to me “dead drunk” meanshorizontal. Sir Winston was not so faralong as that. He was still walking,just...so much that I put my arm withinhis to hold him steady and had a corporaldo the same to Mr. Eden. Thus they wereable to walk straight and upright to theBritish Consulate. Indeed they need nothave walked, because a limousine hadbeen provided, but they decided to do sobecause it was a fine, clear night.“Inside the Journals” on the nextpage accurately describes Stalin’s customof multiple toasts, which he always performedwhile remaining firmly soberhimself. WSC and Eden were thus affectedon that occasion, but were yet able towalk home in true British fashion after aheavy night, talking loudly but notsinging, and living to fight another day!DANNY MANDER, LOS GATOS, CALIF.• Mr. Mander’s adventures, writtenthrough an interview by Susan Kidder, arecoming up in a future issue. —Ed.LORD CHARLES BERESFORDOn the back cover of FH 134, theseaman in the pool with his telescope onChurchill is more likely Admiral LordCharles Beresford, who at the time wasretired from the Navy and serving asConservative MP for Portsmouth. He wasa frequent critic in Parliament of Liberalnaval administration under Churchill. (Adrawing in Punch for 1 November 1911depicts Haldane, the outgoing First Lordof the Admiralty, saying to his successor:“And you can handle Beresford,”acknowledging his thorn-in-the-side status.)The drawing may have been influencedby the 1912 Olympic games inStockholm, which ran 5 May to 22 July.JOHN S. McCLEOD, JR., MILFORD, CONN.• See corrections on this issue’s backcover. Photos of Beresford and Bridgemansuggest that either would fit the cartoon, butwe believe you are correct, in that all theother figures are political, and Bridgemanwas not. I probably put two and two together

E D I T O R ’ S E S S AYHistory on the CheapGENERATIONAL CHAUVINISM? MAJOR CROUTONS IN THE CHURCHILL SOUPAn outbreak of pernicious pronouncements on Churchill and his times by a number of authors raises thequestion: will history join the lost arts? We are not at “the end of history,” as Francis Fukuyama famouslysuggested, before 9/11 proved him wrong. But could we be approaching the end of good history?Examples abound in this issue: a pronouncement that Churchill didn’t read serious books and borrowedhis ideas from H.G. Wells (page 10); an assertion that Churchill was a closet anti-Semite (page 40);and three new books making further fallacious pronouncements unleavened by rival facts and opinions (page 54).Tom Hickman’s Churchill’s Bodyguard (FH 133) was so packed with errors as to cast doubt on his basicChurchill knowledge. Charles Higham’s book, Dark Lady, suffers from similar errors, while adding “a soup bowl ofscandals” and a “forest of family trees.” From Churchill’s War Rooms is a book that has virtually nothing to do withChurchill; adding him to the title was done to boost sales. Gordon Corrigan’s Blood, Sweat and Arrogance, like somebooks before it, sets out with preconceived notions and considers only the facts that support them. With perfect hindsight,Corrigan assures us that sinking the French fleet at Oran in 1940 was unnecessary, and that Churchill himselflacked intellectual curiosity—so ridiculous a theory that one wonders if he read any serious biography.Such writers share a penchant for selective research and “Generational Chauvinism”: a phrase coined byWilliam Manchester to describe the judging of past events by modern standards or hindsight.Faith in the French Army of 1940 was “idiocy,” Corrigan writes, forgetting that everyoneat the time (except the Germans) thought the French unbeatable. Higham dwells on thesocial inequities of the Edwardian era as if he has just discovered them. Richard Toye dubsChurchill an anti-Semite on the basis of a draft someone else wrote, ignoring WSC’s massivepro-Semitic record. Higham doesn’t like Lord Randolph, so he assures us that QueenVictoria “detested” him, which may be true but does not define Lord Randolph. Churchilldidn’t readily warm to strangers, so Corrigan concludes that he was an introvert. Withal theyare irritatingly smug, constantly asserting their superiority over predecessors who navigatedthe same waters with perhaps more judgment and balance.Cheap history is encouraged by the Internet, our electronic Hyde Park Corner: adouble-edged sword of opinion from sublime to preposterous; and by the expansion of newsoutlets to a 24/7 cacophony. In such a soup, it is much easier to become a Major Croutonby proclaiming Churchill an anti-Semite than by acknowledging his lifelong Zionism.A new book by Geoffrey Roberts claims that in 1948, Stalin told somebody in the U.S. State Department thathe hoped to “do business” with America—that if he had been born American he would have been a businessman.Could this be another isolated fact that some may seize upon to argue that Stalin was really a benign, misunderstooduncle? I have not read the book and do not presume to judge it. A scholar friend assures me that Roberts’ writing isnot the same breed of silliness as these others: “Were we wrong about Uncle Joe? Wrong (or not wrong) when? Thereis absolutely no doubt that FDR and WSC were frequently wrong about Uncle Joe. But is that a universal? That theywere wrong about the degree of his power over his advisers is, I think, not irrelevant. Or were they correct?”In those few lines a professional historian offers the alternative to cheap history. There are always practical possibilities,new avenues of thought or inquiry, which might change our view of What Really Happened. But these arenot explored with out-of-context quotations or pre-fab conclusions designed to fit a mind-set.“No one is obliged to alter the opinions which he has formed or expressed upon issues which have become apart of history,” Churchill said in 1940. “But at the Lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgmentsunder a searching review....In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have beenwrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a differentsetting….History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to reviveits echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days.”I hope history will continue to flicker on the trail of the past, and not become a discipline practiced byPolitically Correct closed minds who have already decided (or have been told) what they must believe. —RML ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 7William Manchester1922-2004

DATELINESHANDING BACK THE FIRE HOSELONDON, DECEMBER 29TH— Great Britaincompleted her last $80 million installment onWorld War II debt to the United States, paidback with interest. When your neighbor’s houseis on fire, Franklin Roosevelt said in 1940, it isappropriate to lend him your hose. Well, theUK never forgot those loans, and paid them offwith honor. —JLQuotation of the Seasonmany others, I often summon up in mymemory the impression of those July“Likedays....The old world in its sunset was fairto see. But there was a strange temper in the air.Unsatisfied by material prosperity, the nationsturned restlessly towards strife internal or external.National passions, unduly exalted in the decline ofreligion, burned beneath the surface of nearly everyland with fierce, if shrouded, fires. Almost one mightthink the world wished to suffer.”—WSC, the world crisis, VOL. 1, CH. 8, 1923SUPPORTING ACTORLOS ANGELES, FEBRUARY 25TH— WhenHelen Mirren won the AcademyAward for best actress in “TheQueen,” we remembered a telling linein the motion picture, as Her Majestyinforms Tony Blair that WinstonChurchill “sat right in that spot” whenshe was new to the throne. Returninghome from that excellent film, wetuned in to an older one, “AnAmerican in Paris.” There is a scenewhere Gene Kelly is walking amongthe French painters; overlooking thesea is a robust older gentleman with acigar, dabbing at a canvas. Kelly does adouble-take: it is obviously Churchill,perennial bit player in films old andnew! —EARL BAKERGLEESON TO PLAY WSCLONDON, NOVEMBER 26TH— DublinerBrendan Gleeson, best known for hisportrayal of Ireland’s most notoriouscriminal, is to play Winston Churchill(proclaimed Britain’s chief criminal byNazi propagandists) in a sequel toRidley Scott’s “The Gathering Storm.”The star of “The General” will take onhis new role in “Churchill at War,”which will be made by HBO, theAmerican network behind “TheSopranos” and “Band of Brothers.”The story centres on Churchill’s leadershipduring the Second World War,but no British actor was deemed suitablefor the role. Gleeson, 51, willdeliver some of the Prime Minister’smost famous orations, which gaveinspiration to the nation.Gleeson has built a reputation forplaying a variety of Irish criminals and“wide-boys,” such as Bunny Kelly in “IWent Down” and Walter McGinn in“Gangs of New York.” Said TeriHayden, the actor’s agent: “The idea ofan Irishman playing Churchill is fascinating.”(Why, exactly? —Ed.)Gleeson abandoned teaching foracting at the age of 34. After a coupleof bit parts, his breakthrough role wasin “Braveheart,” playing Mel Gibson’sright-hand man, Hamish. He has sinceworked with Steven Spielberg, MartinScorsese and Anthony Minghella;starred opposite Nicole Kidman andRenée Zellweger in “Cold Mountain”;and had parts in “Mission ImpossibleII,” “Troy,” and “ArtificialIntelligence.”Gleeson is following a line ofvenerable, and more obvious,Churchillian portraitists: Albert Finneywon an Emmy and a Golden Globefor his depiction in 2002’s “TheGathering Storm,” a look at Churchilland Clementine in the years leadingup to the Second World War. RobertHardy made the role famous in1981’s mini-series, “WinstonChurchill: The Wilderness Years,” asdid Richard Burton before him in1974’s “The Gathering Storm.” Themost recent portrayal of Churchill wasby Scottish actor Mel Smith in“Allegiance,” a play by Mary Kennythat imagines what passed betweenChurchill and Michael Collins, theIrish rebel leader, when they met inLondon. Ironically, Gleeson also portrayedCollins on screen, in a 1991television movie, “The Treaty.”“It will probably annoy a fewpeople,” said the film critic DaveFanning of Gleeson’s casting in therole. “Brendan knows how to beWINSTONIAN: Brendan Gleeson (shown here as Professor “Mad-Eye”Moody in theHarry Potter films) will make a passable WSC in “Churchill at War.”sloppy and gruff and Churchill was abit of an awkward bloke. He’d be theright build and he could certainlyslouch properly with the right coats onhim. Ridley Scott wouldn’t care thatmuch about being 100% true to howthe guy looks, as long as the feel of themovie is right. I think he’ll be great.”“Churchill at War” is being madeby the same production team asFinney’s —Scott Free Productions, andis a follow-on. Rainmark Films, aLondon-based company, is a co-produceron the film, which will be shotin England and France this summer.—JAN BATTLES, THE SUNDAY TIMESFINEST HOUR 135 / 8

HOLOCAUST OFF LIMITSLONDON, APRIL 2ND— Schools are droppingthe Holocaust from historylessons to avoid offending Muslimpupils, a Government-backed study hasrevealed. It found some teachers arereluctant to cover the atrocity for fearof upsetting students whose beliefsinclude Holocaust denial.There is also resistance to tacklingthe 11th century Crusades, whereChristians fought Muslim armies forcontrol of Jerusalem, because lessonsoften contradict what is taught in localmosques. The findings have promptedclaims that some schools are using history“as a vehicle for promotingPolitical Correctness.”—LAURA CLARK, DAILY MAIL• Churchillian comment: “All thisis but a part of a tremendous educatingprocess. But it is an education whichpasses in at one ear and out at theother. It is an education at once universaland superficial. It produces enormousnumbers of standardized citizens,all equipped with regulation opinons,prejudices and sentiments, according totheir class or party.”—WSC, “MASS EFFECTS IN MODERNLIFE,”THOUGHTS AND ADVENTURES, 1932BIBLIOGRAPHY NIGHTLONDON, FEBRUARY 27TH— Canada House,the elegant building on the west side ofTrafalgar Square, was the scene lastnight for an enjoyable reception hostedby the High Commissioner forCanada, in celebration of RonaldCohen’s tremendous and exhaustiveBibliography of the Writings of SirWinston Churchill. (See FH 133: 41.Speech will appear in FH 136.)Sir Martin Gilbert (who introducedthe author) and RandolphChurchill, Sir Winston’s great-grandson,were among the large number ofattendees, a broad group reflecting theauthor’s wide circle of contacts:archivists, historians, diplomats, bookdealers and lawyers, with the occasionalfield marshal, peer and formerCanadian prime minister thrown in.Cohen provided an entertainingand inspiring account of his long andchallenging bibliographic journey,sprinkled with amusing anecdotes ofbizarre episodes in far-flung librariesand archives. The evening was atremendous success and it was good tosee that even those who are not quiteso devoted to the Great Man were ableto appreciate the importance of Mr.Cohen’s achievement.It is clear that we can now divideChurchill bibliography into two eras:B.C. and C.E.: “Before Cohen” and“Cohen Era.” We hope that readerswho are unable to purchase their owncopy will request that their library, particularlycollege and university libraries,acquire one.—RAFAL HEYDEL-MANKOOJENNIE REMEMBEREDBATH, SOMERSET, APRIL1ST— A new exhibitionon Sir Winston’smother, LadyRandolph Churchill,opened at theAmerican Museum.A newspaper article refers to its title,“The Dollar Princess,” repeating all theold canards about how many men sheslept with, and how Lord Randolphdied of syphilis (refuted long ago in FH94). “She was the first woman of significancein British parliamentary politics,”wrote Cassandra Jardine in theDaily Telegraph. This is too broad; at atime when women were not permittedto vote, let alone to be MPs, it is difficultto describe her as a force in parliamentarypolitics.Jennie was well read and politicallysophisticated, and as Winston’s lifeopened to him she proved adept athelping him get assignments hedesired. While she did not influencepolicy, she certainly did influence atleast one election. In 1885, when LordRandolph was appointed to his firstoffice, Secretary of State for India, conventioncompelled new ministerialappointees to resign as a Member ofParliament and stand for reelection.Jennie and her sister-in-law did all hiscampaigning personally, an unusualoccurrence. It is doubtful that anywomen had done this before, let alonedone it better.Jardine claims that Jennie wroteFINEST HOUR 135 / 9Lord Randolph’s speeches and helpedevolve his theme of Tory Democracy,assertions not verified by his biographers,including their son Winston.She did write her own speeches duringthe 1885 campaign, and received lettersof congratulations from many, includingthe Prince of Wales.Jennie wrote perceptively in her1908 memoirs: “In England, theAmerican woman was looked upon as astrange and abnormal creature withhabits and manner something betweena red Indian and a Gaiety Girl....If shetalked, dressed and conducted herselfas any well-bred woman would...shewas usually saluted with the tactfulremark, ‘I should never have thoughtyou were an American,’ which wasintended as a compliment.”Lady Randolph was a greatwoman whose example of drive andenterprise, from the Boer War hospitalship to the Anglo-Saxon Review, madeher a commanding figure in her time.She was, on balance, an admirablemother. Winston and Jack alwayslooked at her with pride and affection.The American Museum at Bath is agrand institution; we hope that theirexhibit portrays Jennie for what shewas, and not as the virago of popularmyth and sensationalist biographers.continued overleaf >>ERRATA, Fh 133• Page 11, column 1, line 8: The sellingprice of the Churchill painting “Viewof Tinerhir” (prematurely stated as£350,000 against the previous auctionrecord of £344,000) was underestimated;it was sold by Sotheby’s for £612,800.• Page 32, column 1, line 29:Churchill’s Attorney-General was DonaldSomervell, the son of Robert Somervell(not the son of H.O.D. Davidson).• Page 33, column 2, line 27:Milbanke, a cavalryman, commandedthe Sherwood Rangers, a yeomanry regiment(not a battalion of the SherwoodForesters, who were infantry). Also, thepicture of the school on this page is incorrect.It is of the Lower School of JohnLyon, which was established in the 19thcentury, and the building was first occupiedin 1876.

DATELINESTORONTO STATUE UPDATETORONTO, MARCH 25TH—Finest Hour 117included a report on afund-raising drive toimprove the areaaround the statue inCity Hall Square, onthe 25th anniversaryof its unveiling, by thepresent WinstonChurchill, on 31October 1977. Thegoal was $25,000 and,as noted in FH 123, $28,000 wasraised from donors in six provinces.After the installation of four plaquesrecounting Churchill’s life and achievements,eight park benches and trees,the site was rededicated by MayorDavid Miller on 6 June 2004, the 60thanniversary of D-Day.Last year Toronto announced a$40 million design competition to revitalizethe Square. Competition guidelinesstated that the Henry Mooresculpture “The Archer” could not betouched, but the Churchill statue was“relocatable,” either in the square or insome other part of Toronto.The International ChurchillSociety of Canada promoted retainingthe Churchill statue in the Square, andthis included radio and newspapercomments. In December a Toronto Suncolumnist questioned why a statue ofnon-Torontonian should be there.Another columnist, Joe Warmington,replied that without Churchill“Toronto as we know it today mightnot even exist.” He added: “It was aman named Churchill who was thebeacon, and it was Churchill who sentthe message that we would ‘never surrender.’That should be enough; but goover to the memorial and read some ofthe passages, and tell me you don’t getgoose-bumps.”On 8 March the winning designwas picked from forty-eight entries andwe are delighted to advise that the statueis to remain in City Hall Square, inan improved location. Our next task isto ensure that the four plaques aremoved with the statue—and, we trust,the park benches.—TERRY REARDONALEX HENSHAWLONDON, FEBRUARY 24TH— Alex Henshaw,who died on 24 February at the age of94, was the principal test pilot forSpitfires and Lancasters, and a famousdaredevil. Once he was asked to put ona show for the Lord Mayor ofBirmingham’s Spitfire Fund by flyingat high speed above the city’s mainstreet. Civic dignitaries were not happywhen he flew the plane upside downbelow the level of the Council House!Often, Henshaw would be called uponto demonstrate a Spitfire to groups ofvisiting VIPs. After one virtuoso performance,Churchill was so enthralledthat he kept a special train waitingwhile he and Alex talked alone.Henshaw for his part consideredChurchill “the greatest Englishmanof all time, the man who saved theworld.” —THE DAILY TELEGRAPHBORROWED FROM WELLS?LONDON, NOVEMBER 28TH— Churchill wasa closet science fiction fan who borrowedthe lines for one of his “mostfamous speeches” from H.G. Wells,said Dr. Richard Toye, who claimedthat the phrase, “The GatheringStorm” (the title of WSC’s first volumeof war memoirs) was written by Wellsyears earlier in The War of the Worlds.“It’s a bit like Tony Blair borrowingphrases from Star Trek or DoctorWho,” Dr. Toye said. “People look atpoliticians in the 20th century and presumetheir influences were big theoristsand philosophers. What we forget isthat Churchill and others were probablynot interested in reading that stuffwhen they got home after a hard day inthe House of Commons. Churchill wasdefinitely a closet science-fiction fan. Infact, one of his criticisms of Wells’ AModern Utopia (1905) was that therewas too much thought-provoking stuffand not enough action.”In 1901, Wells wrote a book ofpredictions, Anticipations, calling for ascientifically organised “new republic,”with state support for citizens. WinstonChurchill wrote to Wells: “I read everythingyou write,” adding that he agreedwith many of his ideas. Two days laterChurchill gave an address to theFINEST HOUR 135 / 10Scottish Liberal Council in Glasgow, inwhich he said the state should supportits “left out millions.”In 1931, Churchill admitted thathe knew Wells’s work so well he couldpass an exam in it. “We need toremember that there was a time whenChurchill was a radical Liberal whobelieved these things,” Toye explained.“Wells is often seen as a socialist, buthe also saw himself as a Liberal, and hesaw Churchill as someone whose viewswere moving in the right direction.”Wells advocated the idea of selectivebreeding, arguing that peopleshould only be able to have children ifthey met certain conditions such asphysical fitness and financial independence.Churchill told Wells he admired“the skill and courage with which thequestions of marriage and populationwere discussed.”Wells predicted the political unificationof “the English-speaking states”into “a great federation of whiteEnglish-speaking peoples.” Churchilloften argued for the “fraternal association”of those nations, and even wrotea four-volume History of the English-Speaking Peoples.—SARAH CASSIDY, THE TIMESChurchillian comment:In January Dr. Toye representedsomebody else’s words as Churchill’sown. Here he states that Churchill’swords were not his. WSC thus managedto commit opposite sins withequanimity. What a man!The notion that Churchill wastoo busy to do serious reading and preferredto indulge in science fictionwhen he “got home after a hard day inthe House of Commons” (hilarious toanyone steeped in WSC’s routine), issimply dumb. Anyone consulting thebooks Churchill read in his youth, forexample, know that his tastes ran fromAristotle to Shakespeare, Darwin toWynwood Reade. Certainly he read sciencefiction—even Henty novels. Andhis photographic memory stored hisfavorite phrases. That doesn’t mean hepicked up his essential philosophy fromsome novelist.At the time he wrote to Wellsabout the welfare state, Churchill >>

ICONOGRAPHY: Perhaps, heeding Dr. Richard Toye, Britain should put H.G. Wells (left)on the Twenty and Sir Winston in the Plagiarism Pen for “Gathering Storm.” But here isa prototype we like a great deal. (Photoshop® work by Barbara Langworth)was reading Progress and Poverty, by theAmerican economist Henry George,who proposed taxing private ownershipof basic elements like land instead ofwealth or income. In 1911, WSCreached his radical crescendo, fightingfor prison reform, old age pensions andabandoning the House of Lords. Thenwar clouds captured his attention. Butclearly, Churchill derived his radicalpolitics from economists and philosophers,not science fiction writers.“The Gathering Storm” dates asfar back asThe Federalist, but Toye’sclaim is specifically refuted by the officialbiography. In volume VIII, publishednearly twenty years ago, SirMartin Gilbert noted that it was literaryagent Emery Reves who suggestedthe title. Churchill merely approved ofit (pages 394-95):A final telegram from Emery Reves[January 1948] was decisive in anarea of utmost importance, the titleof the first volume. Churchill hadchosen ‘Downward Path’ as thetheme of the years 1931 to 1939.This title, Reves telegraphed,‘sounds somewhat discouraging.’The American and other publisherswould prefer a ‘more challengingtitle indicating crescendo events.’Reves suggested ‘GatheringClouds,’ ‘The Gathering Storm’ or‘The Brooding Storm.’ The titleChurchill chose was ‘The GatheringStorm.’Of course one could say, “Right,it was Emery Reves who read ‘TheGathering Storm’ in The War of theWorlds and handed it to Churchill.”But that’s really being silly, isn’t it?WINSTON ON THE £20?LONDON, NOVEMBER 3RD— War veteransstormed back into battle to support acampaign by The Daily Mirror to getSir Winston Churchill put on the new£20 note. They are furious that 18thcentury economist Adam Smith hadbeen picked to replace the face of SirEdward Elgar, saying that Smith wasobscure by comparison.Ricky Clitheroe, 72, an ex-Parafrom Catford, South-East London,said: “We agree with the Mirror. Wewant Sir Winston on our £20. Hesaved this country. We don’t want aScot, we don’t even know who he is.”Wealth of Nations author Smith isdue to appear on Britain’s 1.2 billion£20 notes from this spring. War vetsset up a stall under the Churchill statuein Parliament Square to collect petitionsignatures backing WSC. They tookthe petition to the Cenotaph onRemembrance Sunday and eventuallyhanded it in to Downing Street.Yet another campaign group hadpushed for composer Elgar to remainon the notes until after his 150th birthdaynext year. MPs from Herefordshireand Worcestershire, joined by the ElgarFoundation, have called for the delay.The Bank of England replied that “agreat majority of £20 notes in circulationwill still have Sir Edward Elgar onthem and will continue to circulatealongside the Adam Smith £20 notesfor several years after that.”Meanwhile, The Fabian Societyhas called for a black face to be put on£20s to reflect Britain’s changing socialmake-up.—VANESSA ALLEN, DAILY MIRRORGILBERT AT FULTONFULTON, MO, MARCH 24TH— Sir MartinGilbert, Churchill’s official biographerand author of seventy-seven books, washosted at a dinner by the Board of theWinston Churchill Memorial andLibrary at Westminster College. Gilbertalso held a book signing, and a collectionof Churchill photos by Richard J.Mahoney was on display. The nextafternoon Gilbert delivered the annualKemper Lecture on Churchill.Last year, in the midst of the 60thanniversary of the Fulton “Iron Curtain”speech, Chris Campbell, editor of thestudent newspaper, was quoted in theSt. Louis Post-Dispatch as questioningwhether his school name-droppedChurchill too much and whether itshould move on to a new claim tofame. The day the story ran, Campbellwas told by the school’s college relationsdirector that he could not get a presspass to the weekend’s anniversary eventsif he planned to speak to other mediaoutlets. Campbell did not want to paywhat it would have cost to go to theevents, so he acquiesced to the school’swishes. But, he complained: “I thoughtit was unfair what they did. I feel likethey were trying to stop me from speaking.”The school said it was not tryingto suppress Campbell’s views.We think Westminster Collegeshould continue name-droppingChurchill, particularly his goodEnglish, discouraging sentences like “Ithought it was unfair what they did.”MALAKAND:Y’ALL COME, HEAR?BATKHELA, PAKISTAN, DECEMBER 1ST— Thebattlefield of a far-off imperial war thatonce gripped the imagination of theBritish public is to be opened up forthe first time to tourism. It is“Churchill’s Picket,” where the youngWinston fought with the 1897Malakand Field Force, the subject ofhis first book, published 1898.The Malakand battlefield area hasbeen under tight military control sinceWinston Churchill’s eyewitness accountsof the campaign were published in TheDaily Telegraph in 1897. The governmenthas now decided to grant access >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 11

DATELINESMALAKAND...to historic sites such as Malakand Fort,where 1,000 Sikh infantry under Britishcommand fended off 10,000 Pathantribesmen led by the “Mad Mullah.” Hehad roused the tribes against Britishdominion and said the Prophet hadordained that they eject the foreignersfrom India. (Plus ça change... —Ed.)“We are seeking funding for theproject from foreign governments,”said an official from Pakistan’s tourismministry. “It is hoped that we can usesome of the finance to restore some ofthe historic buildings.” The hill-crestedbowl of Malakand is home to BritishIndia’s northernmost church, which iscurrently situated inside a Pakistanimilitary base, and a hilltop fortificationcalled Churchill’s Picket, near wherethe young Winston was almost killedin a skirmish.Malakand borders the tribalagency of Bajaur, where al-Qaeda operativesare believed to be based. As inChurchill’s day, the local Pashtuns areoften in the thrall of charismatic mullahs.Maulana Muhammad Alam, aleader of the banned Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, from Batkhela, isan ideological descendant of the “MadMullah.” His group sent 10,000 mento fight alongside the Taliban inAfghanistan in 2001. “PresidentMusharraf has gone in one direction[with America], but we have gone inanother,” he said.Churchill volunteered to fight onthe frontier amid comparable unrest.He was 23 and a lieutenant of theFourth Hussars in India when mullahsbegan to foment trouble. He joined theMalakand Field Force. “Like mostyoung fools,” he wrote in My EarlyLife, “I was looking for trouble.”Foreign visitors today are notentirely unwelcome. Tribal elders fondlyremembered British officers who left atPartition in 1947. “The Mad Mullahwas a man of exceptional qualities. Thesenew mullahs are just out for personalgain,” said Rehamatullah Khan, 90.—ISAMBARD WILKINSON, DAILY TELEGRAPHChurchillian comment: If thissounds weird in a world where avoidingoffence to Muslims is an article ofpolitical faith, it must sound strangeryet in Pakistan. It is no surprise that achurch in these parts survives becauseit is inside a military base. Officials saythe plans to open up the area will goahead despite increasing security concernsafter a suicide attack near the sitethis month that killed forty-two armyrecruits. But a trip to the battlefield siteplanned by a British group was cancelledin November because of fears ofpossible attacks by Islamic militants.Winston Churchill, who visitedChurchill Picket a few years before9/11, told us that it could only be seenwith a military escort. It is ironic thatPakistan seeks to create this Disneylandwith foreign support.Old DatelinesFrom the collection of John FrostTHE PM’S TWO HATSLONDON, JUNE 3RD, 1953— Many of thosewho saw the Coronation processiontwice noticed that Sir WinstonChurchill did not leave the Abbey inthe hat in which he drove to it. Theexplanation is that he went to theAbbey in the uniform and cocked hatof Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.On arrival he put on over the uniformthe mantle of the Order of the Garterlent to him by the Earl Marshal. As hewas wearing this mantle when he leftthe Abbey he naturally assumed theostrich-plumed hat of the Garter also.This was lent to him by LordClarendon. —The TimesPOOR, DEAR RANDOLPHLONDON, JUNE 29TH, 1940— “In reply to arequest from the Prime Minister, theHome Secretary sent a list of 150‘prominent people’ whom he hadarrested. Of the first three on the list,two, Lady Mosley and Geoffrey Pitt-Rivers, were cousins of the Churchills—a fact which piqued Winston andcaused much merriment among hischildren. Winston went to bed shortlyafter 1am and I resisted Randolph’sattempt to make me sit up with himand discuss the Fifth Column (whichincidentally Winston thinks a muchless serious menace than had been supposed).Randolph was in a horribleFINEST HOUR 135 / 12GRANDPAPA DRESSES UP, 3JUN53: WSCdeparted Downing Street as Lord Wardenof the Cinque Ports, emerged fromWestminster Abbey as Knight of theGarter. His grandchildren, Nicholas andEmma Soames (above) had been invitedto watch the ceremony in Whitehall. Withhim in court dress (below) are his sonRandolph and grandson Winston. The latterwas a page to his grandfather.state...and yet W said, when he askedto be allowed some more active part inthe war, that if R were killed he wouldnot be able to carry on his work.”—JOHN COLVILLE DIARY

VC “TOO POSITIVE”LONDON, APRIL 7TH— Amid the deathsand the grim struggle bravely borne byBritain’s forces in southern Iraq, onetale of heroism stands out: PrivateJohnson Beharry, whose courage in rescuingan ambushed foot patrol, andthen saving his vehicle’s crew despitehis own terrible injuries, earned him aVictoria Cross: the decoration youngChurchill had most desired.For the BBC, however, his storywas “too positive.” The corporationcancelled the 90-minute drama aboutBritain’s youngest surviving VC herobecause it feared it would alienate listenersopposed to the war in Iraq. TheBBC’s retreat from the project, whichhad the working title “Victoria Cross,”will reignite the debate about the broadcaster’spatriotism. “The BBC hasbehaved in a cowardly fashion bypulling the plug on the project altogether,”said a source close to the project.“It began to have second thoughtslast year as the war in Iraq deteriorated.It felt it couldn’t show anything with adegree of positivity about the conflict.“It needed to tell stories aboutIraq which reflected the fact that somemembers of the audience didn’t approveof what was going on. Obviouslya story about Johnson Beharry couldnever do that. You couldn’t have ascene where he suddenly turned aroundand denounced the war because he justwouldn’t do that. The film is now onhold and it will only make it to thescreen if another broadcaster picks itup.” The company developing the projectis believed to have taken the scriptto ITV.The Ministry of Defence recentlyexpressed concern about Channel 4’s“The Mark of Cain,” which showedBritish troops brutalising Iraqidetainees. That programme was temporarilypulled from the schedules afterIran detained fifteen British troops. Aspokesman for the BBC admitted thatit had abandoned the VC project butrefused to elaborate.BBC’s decision to pull out willonly confirm the fears of critics thattelevision drama is only interested intelling bad news stories.—CHRIS HASTINGS, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH ,AROUND & ABOUTAntoine Capet, Professor of British Civilization,University of Rouen, told us of “Torn Asunder,” byRuaridh Nicollthe, an article on the Union ofBritain in The Observer (London) on January 7th:“Churchill famously left Scots as a rearguard at Dunkirkbecause nobody would be too upset.” This is an example of mischiefmaking.The Prime Minister would have had no knowledge of whichunits were left on the beaches during the heroic evacuation at Dunkirk.That was decided by those on the spot. As it happens, the units whichsuffered most were those ordered to defend Calais to the last: the King’sRoyal Rifle Corps and the Rifle Brigade. The word “famously” suggeststhat the reference was confused with St. Valéry—a long way southwestof Dunkirk. Here the 51st Highland Division, which had been behind theSomme and not involved in the evacuation, was obliged to surrenderafter a tough fight, having been cut off and surrounded on 12 June—eight days after the end of the Dunkirk operation. To say that the P.M.chose to sacrifice this Division is absurd. —PHCRRRRichard Littlejohn writes in the Daily Mail that Chancellor of theExchequer and presumptive new Prime Minister Gordon Brown “hasbeen comparing himself to Churchill (as well as Gandhi). I look forwardto his first prime ministerial broadcast. ‘We shall tax on the beaches, weshall tax on the landing grounds, we shall tax in the fields and in thestreets....Never in the field of human taxation, has so much been owedby so many.....I have nothing to offer but tax, tax and more tax.’”RRRAddendum to Warren Kimball’s “The Alcohol Quotient” (FH 134), fromSir Martin Gilbert, In Search of Churchill (1994, 226-27): In January1942, as Japanese forces advanced into Burma, Anthony Eden reportedChurchill’s desire to fly to India to meet with Indian leaders to workout a constitution for India after the war. Sir Alexander Cadogan calledWSC’s plan “brilliantly imaginative and bold.” Eden told his private secretary,Oliver Harvey, that Churchill had “confessed that he did feel hisheart a bit...he had tried to dance a little the other night but quickly losthis breath.” Harvey commented: “What a decision to take, and how gallantof the old boy himself. But his age and especially his way of lifemust begin to tell on him. He had a beer, three ports and three brandiesfor lunch today, and has done it for years.” In the event Churchill did notgo to India, feeling he must be in London at a critical time.RRRScott Johnson in “The Limits of Churchill’s Magnanimity,” http://powerlineblog.com/May 19th, refers favorably to Finest Hour 101 regardingChurchill’s uncharacteristic remark about Stanley Baldwin in 1946 (“itwould have been much better had he never lived”). Johnson provided alink to our website, which has produced at least one new member. Healso included another Churchill quotation but it was not quite as stated,and did not apply to Baldwin: “As the man whose mother-in-law had diedin Brazil replied, when asked how the remains should be disposed of,‘Embalm, cremate and bury. Take no risks!’” This was actually fromChurchill’s article, “Britain’s Deficiencies in Aircraft Manufacture,” DailyTelegraph, London, 28 April 1938, reprinted in Step by Step (London:Butterworth, 1939), 226. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 13

DATELINES: 21 MAY 1948The Commando Memorial“NOTHING OF WHICH we have any knowledge or record has ever been done bymortal men which surpasses the splendour and daring of their feats of arms.”Nearly six decades ago in thecloisters of Westminster, theLeader of the Opposition, WinstonS. Churchill, unveiled amemorial to those who haddied in the then-recent World War on servicein submarines and with commandoand airborne forces: three groups who hadknowingly faced even more dangers thanthose which confronted fighting men as amatter of course. His speech was fully reportedin the following day’s Times, butthe early biographers seem to have missedit. It bears reprinting for the light it throwsboth on the men Churchill commemoratedand on his own beliefs.Over forty years ago, when preparingthe official history of the Special OperationsExecutive in France (reissued in 2004), Iconjectured that, as he spoke, Churchillhad in mind—as well as the feats hepraised—the then still inadmissible deedsof special agents for sabotage, subversionand escape who had set out on their missionsby parachute or by submarine.A distinguished audience was assembledto hear the wartime Prime Ministerthat day. Among those present were A.V.Alexander, Minister of Defence andwartime First Lord of the Admiralty; Admiralof the Fleet the Viscount Cunninghamof Hyndhope, wartime First SeaLord; Field Marshal the Earl Wavell, formerCommander-in-Chief Middle Eastand later Viceroy of India; Major GeneralSir Robert Laycock, who had been Chief ofCombined Operations; Lieutenant GeneralSir Frederick Browning, who hadbeen commander of Airborne Forces; LieutenantColonel A.C. Newman, who hadwon his Victoria Cross at St. Nazaire; andseveral other VC holders. The Dean ofWestminster, the Very Reverend A.C. Don,held a brief service. Churchill concludedwith the last two verses of an old Masonicpoem, familiar in those days to many ofthe dignitaries present.—PROFESSOR M.R.D. FOOTToday we unveil a memorialto the brave who gave theirlives for what we believe futuregenerations of theworld will pronounce arighteous and noble cause. In this ancientAbbey, so deeply wrought into therecord, the life and the message of theBritish race and nation—here whereevery inch of space is devoted to themonuments of the past and to the inspirationof the future—there will remainthis cloister now consecrated to thosewho gave their lives in what they hopedwould be a final war against the grosserforms of tyranny. These symbolic imagesof heroes, set up by their fellowcountrymenin honour and remembrance,will proclaim, as long as faithfultestimony endures, the sacrifices ofyouth resolutely made at the call of dutyand for the love of our Island home andall it stands for among men.Published by kind permission of the copyrightholder, Curtis Brown Ltd., on behalf ofthe Estate of Sir Winston Churchill, copyright© Winston S. Churchill.BY WINSTON S. CHURCHILLPHOTOGRAPH BY TERRY MOORE BY KIND PERMISSION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEYThis memorial, with all its graceand distinction, does not claim any monopolyof prowess or devotion for thoseto whom it is dedicated. We all knowthe innumerable varieties of dauntlessservice which were performed by HisMajesty’s soldiers and servants at homeand abroad, in the prolonged ordeals ofthe Second World War for right andfreedom. Those whose memory is heresaluted would have been the first to repulseany exclusive priority in the Rollof Honour.It is in all humility which matchestheir grandeur that we here today testifyto the valour and devotion of the SubmarineService of the Royal Navy inboth wars, to the Commandos, the AirborneForces and the Special Air Service.All were volunteers. Most were highlyskilledand intensely-trained. Losseswere heavy and constant. But greatnumbers pressed forward to fill the gaps.Selection could be most strict wherethe task was forlorn. No units were soeasy to recruit as those over whichDeath ruled with daily attention. Wethink of the forty British submarines—FINEST HOUR 135 / 14

more than half our total submarinelosses—sunk amid the Mediterraneanminefields alone, of the heroic deathsof the submarine commanders andcrews who vanished for ever in theNorth Sea or in the Atlantic Approachesto our nearly-strangled island. We thinkof the Commandos, as they came to becalled—a Boer word become ever-gloriousin the annals of Britian and her Empire—andof their gleaming deedsunder every sky and clime. We think ofthe Airborne Forces and Special AirService men who hurled themselves unflinchinginto the void—when we recallall this, we may feel sure that nothing ofwhich we have any knowledge or recordhas ever been done by mortal menwhich surpasses the splendour and daringof their feats of arms.Truly we may say of them, as of theLight Brigade at Balaclava, “When shalltheir glory fade?” But there were characteristicsin the exploits of the submarines,the Commandos and the AirborneForces which, in different degrees,distinguished their work from any singleepisode, however famous and romantic.First there was the quality of precisionand the exact discharge of delicateand complex functions which requiredthe utmost coolness of mind and steadinessof hand and eye. The excitementand hot gallop of a cavalry charge didnot demand the ice-cold efficiency inmortal peril of the submarine crews and,on many occasions, of the AirborneForces and the Commandos.There was also that constant repetition,time after time, of desperate adventureswhich marked the work of theCommandos, as of the submarines, requiringnot only hearts of fire but nervesof tempered steel.To say this is not to dim the lustreof the past but to enhance, by modernlights, the deeds of their successors,whom we honour here today. Thesolemn and beautiful service in whichwe are taking part uplifts our hearts andgives balm and comfort to those livingpeople, and there are many here, whohave suffered immeasurable loss. Sorrowmay be assuaged even at the momentwhen the dearest memories are revivedand brightened. Above all, we have ourfaith that the universe is ruled by aSupreme Being and in fulfilment of asublime and moral purpose, accordingto which all our actions are judged.This faith enshrines, not only inbronze but for ever, the impulse of theseyoung men, when they gave all theyhad, in order that Britain’s honourmight still shine forth and that justiceand decency might dwell among men inthis troubled world. Of them and inpresence of their memorial we may repeatas their requiem as it was theirtheme, and as the spur for those whofollow in their footsteps the well-knownlines:...heard are the voices—Heard are the Sages,The Worlds and the Ages.“Choose well; your choice isBrief and yet endless;Here eyes do regard youIn eternity’s stillness;Here is all fullness,Ye brave, to reward you.Work, and despair not.”PoemsChurchill LovedWith his usual impressive memory,Churchill was quoting the “MasonicPoem” of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(1749-1832), which he must have readyears before or recalled from Bartlett’sFamiliar Quotations, which he essentiallymemorized. The poem is found onhttp://xrl.us/wevb, which notes: “ToEnglish-speaking Masons, Goethe’s bestknown Masonic work is the short poem‘Masonic Lodge.’ It can be found in anycollection of Goethe’s works, and inVolume Twenty of the Little MasonicLibrary. It is given in full here, not onlyfor purposes of short discussion, but because,by some unaccountable and distressingerror, the first ten lines, whichare the keynote of the whole poem[which Churchill did not quote] areomitted in the (1929) Clegg edition ofMackey’s Encyclopedia.”The Masons’s ways areA Type of ExistenceAnd his persistenceIs as the days areOf men in this world.The future hides itGladness and Sorrow,We press still thorow,Naught that abides in itDaunting us—onward.And Solemn before usVeiled, the dark portal,Goal of all mortal;Stars are silent o’er usGraves under us silent.While earnest thou gazestComes boding of terror,Comes phantasm and errorPerplexes the bravestWith doubt and misgiving.But heard are the voices—Heard are the Sages,The Worlds and the Ages;“Choose well; your choice isBrief and yet endless;Here eyes do regard youIn eternity’s stillness;Here is all fullness,Ye have to reward you,Work, and despair not.”,Fiinest Hour thanks Professor Foot for his suggestion that we republish the Commando Memorial speech. Reading it,shortly after the United States’ Memorial Day, we were struck by how much has changed in contemporary tributes to themilitary. Churchill unabashedly told us what these brave people did, hurling themselves against the enemy, “unflinchinglyinto the void.” Today when we honor those who serve, we do so almost in the abstract. Apparently, describing what they actuallydo is considered somehow too delicate, and might be found objectionable by this or that segment of society. Churchillwas often quite specific about what brave individuals did for their country—but Churchill was also convinced not only ofthe justice of his cause, but of the unity of his nation. That too, sadly, has changed. —Ed. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 15

GLIMPSESTroubled Triumvirate:The Big Three at the SummitNO ONE HAD A BETTER VIEW OF CHURCHILL, STALIN, ROOSEVELT AND TRUMAN AT THECONFERENCES THAT REMADE THE WORLD THAN THE INTERPRETERS.BY HUGH LUNGHIHugh Lunghi was born August 1920 and read Greats (Classics) at Oxford. In June 1943, then a Captain in the Royal Artillery,he was appointed aide-de-camp (ADC) and Russian language interpreter to the Head of the British Military Mission inMoscow, Lt. Gen. Sir Gifford Le Q. Martel. After the war he served as a diplomat and interpreter. He had the unusual experienceof interpreting at meetings with the first two Soviet dictators following Lenin: Stalin and Khrushchev. He is one of the few, if any,survivors of those present at most of the plenary sessions of the wartime conferences in Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam. There he wasRussian language interpreter for the British Chiefs of Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke (later Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke),Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal. He interpreted for PrimeMinisters Churchill and Attlee and Foreign Secretaries Eden and Bevin. Joining the BBC in 1954,Mr. Lunghi was editor of broadcasts to central Europe and chief commentator covering the Sovietinvasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968—the first contemporary international subject commented uponby Finest Hour. On retiring from the BBC in 1980 he was appointed Director of the Writers’ andScholars’ Educational Trust and editor of its magazine Index on Censorship. Subsequently he was electedVice Chairman of Common Cause UK. He has lectured widely on Soviet and East Europeanaffairs. His text is from his remarks at the Annual General Meeting, International Churchill Society(UK), 29 April 2006.FINEST HOUR 135 / 16

Let me preface my remarks with some thoughtsabout the Americans. They are friends. TheUnited States in its public and private giving,is the most generous nation in the whole of history,and perhaps the most idealistic in the causes ofhuman rights and freedom. Yet this generosity seems tobring about the perverse result that the U.S. isdenounced widely. I have often to remind my younglisteners that it was the U.S. which put Europe back onits feet when it was struggling to recover from thedevastation of World War II. Having served alongsideAmericans in wartime and after, I’ve found themamong the most helpful and brightest of colleaguesand friends. I feel constrained to put this on recordbecause my account of those distant wartime eventsmight seem to lean in a contrary direction. But toput a dark gloss on those historic events is far frommy intention.My first sight of any of the Big Three was, of course,of Winston Churchill, from the Public Gallery in theHouse of Commons a couple of years or so before theoutbreak of war. Out of office, Churchill was yet againcastigating his government’s and party’s appalling recordof failure to meet the Nazi rearmament threat. In myschoolboy ignorance I thought his gadfly antics weresimply letting his own side down. After that Churchillfaded from my mind until he became Prime Minister in1940. We had been at war for nine months. By theneven Oxford students began to take notice of his stirringspeeches on the wireless.Not many months after being posted from myartillery regiment to our military mission in Moscow in1943, its chief, General Martel, said I was to accompanyhim to Teheran at the end of November. There, with noprevious warning, I was ordered to interpret for theChiefs of Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, AdmiralAndrew Cunningham and Air Marshal Sir Charles Portalat what turned out to be the first of the so-called “BigThree” conferences.Among the three heads of government, Churchillwas the eldest, celebrating his 69th birthday; he hadalready met Stalin and Roosevelt, the latter seven times.Stalin was five years younger, Roosevelt the youngest at61. Churchill was the only one of the three who hadexperience of commanding troops on the battlefield—did that make him a worse strategist than the other twoor a better one? By 1943, an outsider might think thatall the allies were working more or less closely towardsthe defeat of the enemy.As we now know from innumerable accounts, thiswas far from the reality. Aside from almost non-existentmilitary cooperation, we met with antagonism andobstruction from Soviet officialdom: spiteful, evenincomprehensible behaviour. Their closely censoredmedia were generally hostile at the failure of the Anglo-Americans to open a so-called “Second Front” inWestern Europe. They scoffed at our military operationsin the Middle East, Italy, the Atlantic, and our bombingoffensive, which did constitute, however limited, a second,third, fourth and fifth front. We were grateful forthe real Russian hospitality and friendliness of Sovietcitizens brave enough to talk to foreigners. In Moscow,our food and accommodation were on the level of theprivileged class, Communist Party officials: quite comfortable,thank you.TeheranChurchill and Roosevelt flew to Teheran fromCairo, where they had disagreed bitterly over strategicpriorities. Roosevelt had declined even to talk about acommon approach to Stalin. To add to his discomfort,the Prime Minister had a throat infection, losing hisgreatest weapon: his voice. He looked worried and irritableas he arrived at the British Legation. It was the secondtime I had seen him in my life. Yet just seeing him,we suddenly felt the code-word for the conference,“Eureka,” was well-chosen.As I gathered from bits of Chiefs of Staff conversations,the President was again refusing his lunch invitationor even to talk before they both met that awkwardcustomer, Stalin. Even if he was determined to beardStalin himself, why would Roosevelt not want the observationsof Churchill, who had already met and negotiatedwith the Soviet chief? The latter, meanwhile, made hisForeign Minister, Molotov, concoct a cock-and-bull storyof an assassination plot by enemy agents in Teheran. Itsuccessfully caused a not reluctant Roosevelt to movetwo-odd miles from the U.S. Legation into a buggedhouse in the grounds of the Soviet Embassy, just a stepacross a narrow road from the British Legation. [ThatFDR and Churchill knew they were being bugged is nowaccepted: see Warren Kimball, “Listening in on Rooseveltand Churchill,” FH 131: 20. –Ed.]Today, as we know from contemporary accounts,Roosevelt sought to ingratiate himself with Stalin bymocking his British ally. He did tell Churchill he wasgoing to make a few jokes at his expense, “just to putStalin at his ease.” During the conference sessions andsocial occasions, I observed FDR assuming a jocular airabout Churchill’s cigars and “imperialist” outlook.The plenary sessions at Teheran were held in theSoviet Embassy. The first seemed somewhat disorganized.The President had not wanted an agenda; he had“not come all these miles to discuss details.” Rooseveltlooked confident and pleased to be asked, as the onlyHead of State, to chair the sessions. Churchill, lightingup his cigar, looked fit, and at first seemed not undulyembarrassed by the fairly heated arguments between theAmericans and British over strategic priorities now >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 17

TROUBLED TRIUMVIRATE...being played out in front of Stalin.As the debate developed, the PrimeMinister increasingly appeared onthe defensive, still arguing stronglyfor his vision of the militaryoptions. To me, Stalin seemed puzzledat first over the disunitybetween the Americans and British.He allowed his normallyinscrutable face a rare smile.Down the years I’ve beenasked what it was like to watchChurchill, at this momentous juncturein his life, making friends withthe ally we simply couldn’t dowithout: Josef Stalin, the biggestmass-murderer of all time, with thepossible exception of Mao Tsetung.I have vivid memories.Stalin always spoke softly,briefly, and to the point, completelyin command of facts andstatistics, hardly ever looking at anote, asking pertinent, awkwardquestions. At times we couldhardly make out his words, withtheir marked Georgian accent.Away from the table he was not thegreat heroic leader of the RedSquare icons. Short, even in hisbuilt-up, square-toed shoes, peeping under door-keeperliketrousers with a broad stripe down each side, at firstglance he looked unimpressive. His Marshal’s tunic witha plain Russian upright collar was decorated only withthe Hero of the Soviet Union gold star. At close range,he looked like a humble, kindly uncle. But I was struckby the yellow whites to his greenish brown, cat-like eyes,which hardly ever met yours if you were a stranger, aforeigner. His own staff was often brought to order witha fearsome glare. You could see them freeze, almost literallytremble in their boots.Apart from questions of military strategy and timing,Poland’s postwar frontiers, and how to secure ademocratic government, were the major battlegroundsfor Churchill. An early and firm date for the launch ofthe Second Front in Northern France was Stalin’s mainaim. Roosevelt’s was to get Russia into the war againstJapan. He was also determined to get Stalin to supporthis dream of an international peace-keeping bodypoliced by the Soviet Union, the USA, Britain andChina (at that time Chiang Kai-shek’s China, of course).At first Stalin was evidently not at all keen on a singlebody, doubtless thinking of the League of Nations, fromwhich the Soviet Union had been kicked out when itTHE WORLD OF TEHERAN: The Red Army had not yet penetrated any eastern Europeancountries, but the portents for 1944 were obvious. (Map from Newsweek, 6 DecemberFINEST HOUR 135 / 18attacked Finland in 1939. When Stalin saw the importanceRoosevelt attached to the project, the Sovietmedia, following Stalin’s line of course, ostentatiouslybegan to support it.Teheran was, I believe, the most important of theBig Three Conferences, more significant than Yalta. Apersistent historical misconception has it that EasternEurope was “betrayed” at Yalta. Not so. That happened,and I believe it did happen, in Moscow in October1943, before Teheran, at a meeting of foreign ministers:Molotov, Eden and Cordell Hull, Roosevelt’s then-Secretary of State, who seemed to know little and careless about the countries of Eastern Europe. From thelittle I saw of him I found him rather frosty. Eden’sattempt to involve the others in discussing the future ofeast and central Europe was smothered by Molotov,with the help of Hull’s cushion of indifference.Roosevelt at Teheran reinforced that impression, sayinghe intended to withdraw his troops from Europe withina year after the end of hostilities there. Stalin, I feel inretrospect, couldn’t have believed his luck. At the time,of course, we interpreters, even when briefed for a particularsession, could only guess at the strategic dreamsof the principals.

SWORD OF STALINGRAD: Stalin kissed it, Voroshilov dropped it, then apologized to WSCand invited himself to dinner. (illustrated london News and www.ushistoricalarchive.com.)Here I should explain that Churchill’s principalinterpreter was Major Arthur Birse, a peacetime banker,also from our Moscow Military Mission, born and educatedin 19th century St. Petersburg, more than twice myage, a good friend and mentor, by far the most outstanding,the most brilliant of all the Allied interpreters. ThePrime Minister didn’t like to be interrupted by his interpreteruntil he had finished his train of thought, whichsometimes went on a bit, with many a stirring phrase,making it the more difficult for us. He was demanding,but at the same time generous and encouraging.My own test came before the second plenary sessionon 29th November. The Prime Minister was topresent a Sword of Honour on behalf of King George VIto mark the heroic defence of Stalingrad. Representingthe Red Army—the only senior soldier Stalin hadbrought along, “hoping he would do,” as Stalin put it—was Marshal Voroshilov, once Stalin’s companion inarms, baby-faced, murderous and cruel. Voroshilov wasin command of several “Army Fronts” when Hitlerinvaded Russia. He proved so hopeless he had to besacked. Survivors of Stalin’s inner circle tell us that oftenhe shouted at him, “Shut up, you imbecile.”The Prime Minister proudly presented the sword.FINEST HOUR 135 / 19Stalin was visibly moved. After quietlyuttering a few words Stalinpassed the sword to Voroshilov,who promptly let it slip from thescabbard onto his toes. Stalin’s facedarkened, his fists clenched.As we dispersed after the ceremony,Churchill led our way out. Iheard, or felt, a tug at my sleeve. Itwas Voroshilov. I had been interpretingfor him that morning at theChiefs of Staff meeting. Sheepishlyhe asked my help. As we caught upwith the PM, Voroshilov, pinkfaced,stammered an apology forhis gaffe, and at the same timewished Churchill a happy birthday,which was in fact the followingday. As we walked away the PMgrowled: “A bit premature—mustbe angling for aninvitation…couldn’t even play astraight bat.”At Churchill’s 69th birthdaydinner, in the British Legation thenext evening, we witnessed anotherlittle drama unfold. Bear with me ifyou’ve already heard or read aboutit—this is how I saw it.A Persian waiter in white cottongloves and red and blue livery,making (I suspected) his first entrance, brings in themagnificent dessert, a splendid ice cream pyramid with akind of night-light under it. Stalin is making a bit of aspeech. The waiter, wanting to serve Stalin first, standsbehind him, then moves towards Molotov’s chair. Mouthagape at sight of the assembled magnificoes, the waiternervously lets the dish tip slightly. It’s hot in the roomand the inevitable happens. As I look on, fascinated, thebeautiful creation accelerates off the salver. It missesStalin, the waiter staggers further sideways, and itdescends onto the shoulder of Vladimir Pavlov, Stalin’sinterpreter, and all down his pristine Russian diplomaticdress uniform.A voice is heard just in front of me, Air ChiefMarshal Sir Charles Portal (Peter Portal to his colleagues),sotto voce: “Missed the target.”I watch the Prime Minister, but either he has notnoticed or has chosen not to. A true professional, Pavlovcontinues calmly interpreting. Pavlov, by the way, wasvirtually always Stalin’s interpreter—in English andGerman. At the Yalta Conference, some fourteenmonths after Teheran, Pavlov was rewarded by Churchillwith the CBE—not, of course, for his heroism under icecream fire. >>

TROUBLED TRIUMVIRATE...MoscowAfter Teheran my next close encounter with Mr.Churchill was almost a year later in October 1944, hissecond and final visit to Moscow (codenamed “Tolstoy”),where he was accompanied by Eden. Talks with Stalinand Molotov mainly concerned Eastern Europe, the “percentage”agreement over Soviet and British influence invarious countries, and Poland. Representatives of theLondon Polish Government in exile in London were alsoinvited. The mischievous “percentages” more or less evaporatedand did not figure formally again in any tripartiteor even bilateral talks, though you’d not know it from theattention devoted to them by modern historians andChurchill himself. Our Military Mission officers, includingmyself, were on duty looking after the PrimeMinister and Foreign Secretary in the Soviet hospitalitytown house in Ostrovskiy Street (formerly and today theAustrian Embassy).YaltaThe following February, I watched Churchill’s aircraftland, after its seven-hour flight from Malta, at theCrimean airport of Saki, where I had been working formuch of the past fortnight. It touched down shortlyafter Roosevelt’s aircraft. The President, waxen cheeked,looked ghastly, his familiar black naval cloak over hisshoulders, hat-brim turned up in front, being helpedinto a jeep which Churchill solicitously followed on footas they inspected the Guard of Honour together.We had a five-hour drive to our respective destinations.Ours was the slightly odd Moorish-Scottish baronialstyle Vorontsov Palace/Villa overlooking the BlackSea at Alupka. Twelve miles away just outside Yalta wasthe last Czar’s Palace, Livadia, the American quarters andvenue of the plenary sessions. Stalin, the generous host,was in between, in the Yusupov Villa in Koreis, six milesfrom Livadia. It was there in Stalin’s headquarters thatwe held the Chiefs of Staff military meetings.The opening session of the Yalta Conference wasone of the most dramatic and fateful. It was there thatDresden’s destiny was sealed. Among many omissionsand misrepresentations put about by revisionist historiansand others in recent years is that either Churchill orAir Marshal Harris or the RAF in general were directlyand personally responsible for the deliberate annihilationof Dresden’s population and its art treasures. This is howI witnessed the matter at that first session.Among other requests and questions of militaryliaison, Stalin, with his Deputy Chief of Staff, GeneralAntonov—I watched and heard them both—asked usand the Americans to bomb lines of communication—roads and railways. They wanted to stop Hitler transferringdivisions from the west to reinforce his troops inSilesia who were blocking the Russian advance onBerlin. We ourselves had passed intelligence about thetroop movements to the Russians. They claimed theyhad it from their own sources.The road and rail network, against which contingencyplans had already been discussed by the RAFmonths previously, was the target—not the city, and notcivilians as such. One of the intended consequenceswould be the jamming of road and rail communicationsby refugees. Together with other towns, Antonov stressedthe importance of Dresden as a rail junction.The following day at the Chiefs of Staff meeting inStalin’s Yusupov Villa, which our Chief of Staff, by thenField Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, was asked to chair, thequestion of liaison for “bomb lines” was discussed.Antonov again pressed the subject of lines of communicationand entrainment, specifically via Berlin, Leipzigand Dresden. The latter he again referred to as animportant rail junction. The Soviet Air MarshalKhudyakov added his expertise to the same requests. Iinterpreted our assent. The USAAF Major-GeneralKuter also agreed. The bombing mission by the RAFand the U.S. Army Air Corps was a military success, buttragically inflicted great loss of civilian refugee life whichChurchill later deeply deplored.*Here in the Crimea, Stalin looked exultant, wethought—after all, he held the trump cards. His armieswere already in occupation of most of Eastern Europe.The myth that it was carved up at Yalta is patently inaccurate.There was no need: the Red Army already heldit. After the war one of Stalin’s favourite jokes suggestedhe deserved the whole bear, and he got it!As I saw him, Roosevelt displayed indifference toEastern Europe. I thought the President—and he wasnot the only one—hopelessly misperceived the realitiesof the Soviet Union, completely misjudging Stalin, as toan extent did Churchill and Eden. It was “a pleasure towork with Stalin...there is nothing devious about him,”Churchill said. Because of his paranoia, I believe Stalin*At the Fifth Churchill Lecture, in Washington in 2005, SirMartin Gilbert stated that the first Soviet request on Dresdenarrived before Yalta, and that at Yalta, Stalin and Antonovasked Churchill why it hadn’t already been bombed. Churchill,perplexed, cabled Attlee in London, who responded that theattack had been ordered. This was actually confirmed by Gen.Antonov’s deputy, who was among the audience when Gilbertlectured on the subject in Moscow. It was undoubtedly thisconversation which Mr. Lunghi observed. Sir Martin writes:“It is curious that when the request came…Churchill and AirMarshal Portal were in flight on their way to the Yalta conference.So the request was dealt with by Churchill’s excellentdeputy Clement Attlee, later the Labour Prime Minister, andby the deputy chiefs of staff and approved. It was the 16th or17th item of the things that they had to approve that day.”FINEST HOUR 135 / 20

PARTNERS?: At Teheran, both Roosevelt (right) and Churchillthought they could trust Stalin (left). The map below, whichappeared in time as the Red Army drove across Polandtoward the Reich, forecast the post-Yalta endgame, althoughtime proved wrong about Yugoslavia and, later, Austria.did not trust those he thought were trying to curryfavour with him. Stalin at one point told Churchill hefelt more at home with frank and even tough negotiatorsand open enemies. The P.M., though wilier in thisrespect than Roosevelt, also thought he could win Stalinover by compromise and concession. By the way, unbelievably,he also said he liked the Deputy Commissar forForeign Affairs Andrey Vyshinsky—a more despicableand treacherous character I could not imagine.It was not until years after the Yalta Conferencethat one of its most tragic outcomes—one of theblackest pages in British history—was revealed. The lastformal act was Eden’s signature to the secret agreementon repatriation, in other words the return to Stalin’smerciless hands of Soviet prisoners of war. Many, forcedinto auxiliary service in the German army, had falleninto our hands. The Foreign Office agreed to Sovietdemands that even non-Soviet Russian civilians who hadlived in Eastern Europe before the war should be handedover: an unnecessary and dishonourable act whichChurchill at one point tried to stop.Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s close adviser, whomChurchill admired, hailed Yalta as “the dawn of a newage.” Hopkins, for whom I interpreted briefly, wasunhappily a chronically ill man, and he seems to haveprovided some dodgy advice to the President aboutStalin, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In hisrecently published book, Sergo Beria, son of Stalin’ssecret police chief, claims Hopkins was “blindly pro-Soviet even before he met Stalin.”What stays in my memory is the doggedness, thetoughness—not without old-world courtesy and magnanimity—withwhich Churchill fought not just forBritain, but for Poland and France and for smallernations too. His private secretary Jock Colville onceremarked that the difference between WSC and deGaulle was that “de Gaulle’s loyalty was to France alone;Churchill’s was merely to Britain first.”By contrast the xenophobe Stalin and the stolidMolotov, taking the cue from Roosevelt, poured vitriolon the French: “rotten to the core and should be punished,”was one expression I heard. Churchill stuck upfor France not just out of love—Britain would need heras the main ally on the continent. But Churchill alsostood up for fair play for the German people, as distinctfrom the Nazis. Stalin taunted him: “You are pro-German,” adding to his censure the Argentinians,Brazilians and Swiss, calling them “swine,” the Swedeseven worse, the Finns “stone-obstinate.”PotsdamBy the time the leaders met again in July 1945 at“Terminal,” the last of the Big Three gatherings atPotsdam, Truman had replaced Roosevelt, who had >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 21

LAYING THE CORNERSTONE, 1943: The British cartoonistIllingworth produced this optimistic drawing after the TeheranConference. (The workers appear to be Foreign MinisterMolotov, Secretary of State Hull and Foreign Secretary Eden.) Itis not clear on whom or what the stone is being dropped.TROUBLED TRIUMVIRATE...died in April. We saw Churchill still battling on behalfof postwar Poland and France. The meetings were badtempered,relieved by social occasions, banquets withmusic at the Neues Palast: on one occasion we heardStalin applaud Truman’s impromptu and near-professionalrendering of Chopin. Hailing Truman as a musicianand Churchill as a painter, Stalin, fishing for compliments,lamented that he alone was “without talent.”Some understatement, that.Rightly or wrongly, the new President seemed to usa much warmer, more approachable, more sincere chiefthan his predecessor. Halfway through the conferencethere was a general election in Britain. WinstonChurchill, “the greatest modern British statesman”according to the New American Desk Encyclopedia, “thegreatest Englishman” according to a recent UK publicopinion poll, was dismissed by his country.RetrospectiveHaving pondered the question over many decadesand, most importantly, discussed it with Arthur Birse, Ihave become convinced that Churchill’s magnanimousjudgment of Stalin was crucially formed during that têteà-têtemidnight meal in August 1942 in Stalin’s ownKremlin quarters, waited upon by his daughter Svetlana.It was, I think, that close, very personal encounter, inthe face of a still mortally dangerous foe, which forgedwhat in Churchill’s perception had perhaps become abond between warrior leaders.What amazed those of us, British and Americans,living and working in Moscow, experiencing the realitiesof life there, was the extraordinary ignorance, as itseemed, displayed by our principals and their advisers.Most astounding and puzzling was why Roosevelt andChurchill, the State Department and the Foreign Office,could for a moment believe that Stalin would allow freeelections, let alone the inevitable concomitant of a freepress, in liberated Europe, when those very freedomswere denied to the peoples of the Soviet Union. It wasall on a par with Roosevelt’s silly remark to Stalin that heknew the Baltic peoples would happily vote to rejoin theSoviet Union if only Stalin allowed them free elections.True, Stalin later did graciously permit such things inFinland and Austria, but these were Stalin’s little showpiecestates to help his “popular fronts” in Europe. “Itdoesn’t matter what you do,” as Lady RandolphChurchill is alleged to have said, “as long as you don’t doit in the street and frighten the horses.”At that time the people were very ready to turn ablind eye to the monstrous and bloody Stalinist regime.The U.S. and British press and radio were brimmingover with goodwill for the gallant Red Army and itsleader. Churchill, we saw, was fed up after Yalta. Weheard him say “That’s done with and out of the way,”and make various rude remarks about the final communiqué.Notwithstanding his partiality for what some sawas mad-cap military adventures, Churchill, with hispolitical experience and historical perspective, saw furtherahead than anyone, especially to the postwar perilsfacing central Europe.It is not just his vision we have to respect andadmire. His courage and energy, often barely recoveringfrom serious illness, making the arduous, dangerouswartime pilgrimages to meet the two other Alliedleaders, were almost superhuman. At the time, most ofus could not know of the enormous physical, let alonemental, strain he must have been under.In the years that followed Potsdam I saw and interpretedwith Stalin face to face on several occasions, butsadly not with Churchill. My last tenuous connectionwith our wartime leader, almost exactly twenty yearsafter the Yalta Conference, was in 1965, on the occasionof his state funeral, when it was my privilege in the BBCWorld Service to organize its coverage for our Czech andSlovak broadcasts. Churchill had outlived Roosevelt bytwo decades and Stalin by twelve years. The Triumviratedeparted this world in inverse order to their ages, and to,one hopes, varied destinations.General Charles de Gaulle was the chief foreignstatesman at Sir Winston Churchill’s funeral. For thevery reason that their relationship during the war, aseveryone knew, had not been the easiest, his epitaph, itseemed to me, was the most fitting of all. You mayremember, in his letter to the Queen, President deGaulle paid this tribute, the more striking for its brevity:“Dans ce grand drame, il fut le plus grand.” ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 22

RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMASRight you are! Basic (not “Plain”)A: English, the invention of C.K.Ogden (1889-1957), attractedChurchill’s attention during WW2. Itwas intended not for English speakers,but for foreigners, whom Churchillthought (rather presciently, as it turnedout) would benefit from being able to“get by” in what he saw as the up-andcomingworld language. He discussed itduring his speech on Anglo-AmericanUnity at Harvard University in 1943.Churchill wrote no pamphlet or essay,but if you click on our website searchfeature and enter “Basic English,” youwill find many references to the subject.The first is an abstract of a piece aboutOgden, Churchill and the concept.Roosevelt took a dim view of BasicEnglish. When WSC recommendedprinting the Atlantic Charter agreementin B.E. as well as its original form, FDRreplied: “I wonder what the course ofhistory would have been if in May1940 you had been able to offer theBritish people only blood, work, eyewater and face water, which I understandis the best that Basic English cando with the five famous words?”Q:Did Churchill have a tattoo ofanxanchor on his left forearm?We hear rumors, but find no evidence.The closest to any skinA:marking is his reference to having givenskin for a grafting of a fellow soldier,Dick Molyneux, in Cairo. John Seigalhad an opportunity of raising the questionwith Lady Soames at the 2006 ICS(UK) Churchill birthday reception.Somewhat bemused, she recalled thescar, but no tattoo.Q:At the Cabinet War Rooms inLondon, close to Churchill’s bedroom,is a room with the name plate“Stenhouse.” Who was this person?—D.A. Bailey (dapadailey@comcast.net)Basic EnglishQ: We have an enquiry about a book or pamphlet by Churchillabout “Plain English.” Is he thinking of something by Ogden?—Linne Omissi, Senior Librarian,Jersey Library, St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, UKMargaret Stenhouse worked inA: Churchill’s secretarial pool at 10Downing Street. One of Churchill’s privatesecretaries, Sir John Martin, wrotein his memoirs: “I was given a kind andreassuring welcome by the PrincipalPrivate Secretary, Eric Seal, and ‘Mags’Stenhouse, the head of the permanentstaff of assistants in the Prime Minister’soffice (to whose expert knowledge, wisdomand splendid leadership of ‘theGirls’ so much was due in the comingyears), and spent my first day at No. 10being introduced to my new colleaguesand my duties.” (John Martin: DowningStreet: The War Years, London:Bloomsbury, 1991, 3-4.) Another PrivateSecretary wrote of “the admirableMiss Stenhouse who had been on thescene almost as long as Miss Watson[another secretary].” (John Colville,The Churchillians, London: Weidenfeld& Nicolson, 1981, 52.)aWould anyone recall the name aofQ: Churchill’s pet bulldog?a Churchill bought a bulldog forA: a£10 in September 1891 whenhe was at Harrow. It was a bitch ofgood pedigree, called “Dods,” nicknamed“Dodo.” His idea was to getwhelps from her which he could sell for30/- each. See Randolph Churchill,Winston S. Churchill, Companion VolumeI, 274-77; and Richard Hough,Winston and Clementine (London: BantamPress, 1990) 45.Churchilltrivia Questions 481Q: aand 733, posted on your website,seem to credit two different people withinspiring Churchill’s interest in painting:Gwendeline Churchill and Lady Lavery.Which is it? —Neil ScottBoth answers are correct. BothA: aGwendeline, (Churchill’s sisterin-law,aka “Goonie”), and Lady LaverySend your questions to the editorcan be credited with encouragingChurchill topaint. In June 1915 WSCwent to Hoe Farm to getaway from the misery of lossof office. On 19 June hewrote to his brother Jack: “Itreally is a delightful valley &the garden gleams with summerjewelry. We live vy simply—but withall the essentials of life well understood& well provided for—hot baths, coldchampagne, new peas & old brandy.”On Sunday 20 June, Gwendelinelent Winston her son’s watercolourpaints because she thought this wouldcheer him up. Churchill soon foundout that concentrating on the art oftransferring subjects to a canvas, in thewords of his private secretary EdwardMarsh, “was a distraction and a sedativethat brought a measure of ease to hisfrustrated spirit.”On Friday 25 June WSC boughthimself an easel, plus all the paraphernaliafor painting in oils. A week lateron 2 July, still at Hoe Farm, he experimentedwith oils for the first time.What happened next was memorablydescribed by Churchill in an articlepublished in The Strand in December1921, subsequently reprinted inThoughts and Adventures and later as abook, Painting as a Pastime (1948):So very gingerly I mixed a little bluepaint on the palette with a very smallbrush,and then with infinite precautionmade a mark about as big as a beanupon the affronted snow-white shield.... At that moment the loud approachingsound of a motor-car was heard inthe drive. From this chariot therestepped swiftly and lightly none otherthan the gifted wife of Sir John Lavery.‘Painting! But what are you hesitatingabout? Let me have a brush—the bigone.’ Splash into the turpentine, wallopinto the blue and the white, franticflourish on the palette—clean no longer—and then several large, fierce strokesand slashes of blue on the absolutelycowering canvas. Anyone could see thatit could not hit back. No evil fateavenged the jaunty violence. The canvasgrinned in helplessness before me. Thespell was broken. The sickly inhibitionsrolled away. I seized the largest brushand fell upon my victim with Berserkfury. I have never felt any awe of a canvassince. —JL ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 23

“Behind the Distant MountainsIs the Promise of the Sun”A VALUABLE ASPECT OF CHURCHILL STUDIES:REFLECTIONS UPON HIS EXPERIENCES WHICH BEAR UPON OUR WORLD TODAYFinest Hour’s 2007 mandate to publish “all Churchill, all the time” (FH 134: 5) offers us opportunitiesfor more expansive treatment of Winston Churchill’s relevance today: not what he woulddo if he were here alongside us (and he would be alongside us); but what his experience andreflections suggest might be done, or the warnings he offers of dangers and challenges similar tothose he met, fought and overcame.Speaking at our Chicago conference on the most critical mission of The Churchill Centre,Laurence Geller described our responsibility to convey Churchill’s experience and insight to freedomlovingpeoples: “Our task is about keeping the lessons Churchill taught us alive. They are today nevermore vital in the endless fight against genocidal maniacs, racism, fundamentalism, hatred and bigotry. Hisexample emboldens us to combat the wickedness of myriad self-serving fanatics. We are stronger whenarmed with Churchillian lessons. We can make our society better. We should and we must.”As our President, Laurence has now attended many meetings, at the board, chapter and nationallevel, in America and in Britain, of this and other organizaitons, to reach out and elaborate on his idea:kind of “Think Tank” to promote the development of Churchillian responses to today’s challenges. Themessage, he unceasingly reiterates, “is never more relevant than it is today. To fail to apply his experience—to engage simply in nostalgia for old glories and battles won—would be less than Churchillian.”Call it “Applied Churchill,” or whatever you like. Repeatedly Sir Winston implored us to “studyhistory.” Certainly he would want us to derive the lessons history offers. As he said nearly 100 years agoin 1908: “What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled worlda better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmoniousrelation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?”With that charge in mind, Christopher Harmon, insurgency and terrorism expert andChurchillian, offers a new interpretation on what we should learn from Churchill’s Cold War posture thatmay apply to today’s wars. Professor Harmon does not mention Iraq, except in passing—his is a differentChurchillian message.Yet we cannot forget Iraq—how could we these days? So two other scholars, Professors TobyDodge and David Freeman, turn to that dilemma in collegial debate—the kind of which we thinkWinston Churchill would approve. They consider not whether we should go or stay; but rather what, ifanything, we can learn from Churchill’s and Britain’s experience in Iraq 85 years ago. Much, they conclude,has changed. And much remains the same.We hope readers will welcome our reemphasis on this aspect of Churchill Studies. Our aim is simple:to encourage fresh thinking among Great Democracies he believed were “the hope of years to come.”As he concluded in 1908: “And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity willnot be cast down. We are going on—swinging bravely forward along the grand high road—and alreadybehind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.” —THE EDITORSFINEST HOUR 135 / 24

“Let Us Preach What WePractise”: The Fulton Speechand Today’s WarIT IS TIME TO ADJUST OUR DIRECTIONTOWARD THE RHETORICAL PATH THAT ISCENTRAL TO INFLUENCING WORLD OPINIONBY CHRISTOPHER C. HARMONThrough June 2007, Dr. Harmon was Kim T. Adamson Chairman ofInsurgency and Terrorism, Marine Corps University. In September hetakes up a new position as Professor of Counter Terrorism at theGeorge C. Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany. The second editionof his book, Terrorism Today, appears this October fromRoutledge. This article is derived from his remarks to the WashingtonSociety for Churchill, a Churchill Centre affiliate, at the Old EbbittGrill in Washington on March 4th.Very early in 1946, Winston Churchill arrived inAmerica for two months of rest and a speakingtour. Although he was Leader of the Oppositionin the House of Commons, he carefullydisavowed any official role. He came to Americaas a “counselor and compatriot.” 1 At the dock in NewYork City, after the liner Queen Elizabeth had pulled in,Winston and Clementine descended into a crowd pepperedwith reporters.Q. Will you comment on the socialist program of theLabour Party?A. I never criticize the government of my countryabroad. I very rarely leave off criticizing it at home.Q. Do you expect to eat much in America?A. After rationing I hope to make up for lost time.Q. What is your reaction to the fact that you will be[staying] in Florida near Al Capone?A. You refer to the former distinguished resident ofChicago. I had not addressed myself to the problem.The Churchills received many invitations theycould not accept—such as one to visit Dwight Eisenhower’shometown in Kansas, and to fish with ErnestHemingway in Cuba. Bookings on the statesman’s scheduledid include addresses in Miami, Fulton, Williamsburg,the Pentagon and New York City. All the speecheswere covered by the press, but it was the one in Missourithat made the largest headlines. The New York Times pronounced:“Mr. Churchill came with a message of suchinterest and importance to our country, to his, and to theworld at large that he converted his presence at Fultoninto a historic event.” 2The Fulton AddressAt Westminster College on March 5th, PresidentHarry Truman introduced the great Englishman, whopaid generous tribute to his hosts. But Churchill’s mindwas troubled by the rise of Soviet power vis-à-vis Europeand America.He had closely watched the USSR as it made, first,an amazing comeback after 1941, and then remarkableterritorial gains in the heart of Europe. A Soviet state of180 millions, dominated by one man, now also dominatedthe ancient capitals of Eastern Europe: Prague, Berlin,Vienna, Riga, Warsaw, Tallinn, Budapest, Bucharest,Vilnius, Sofia.Historians quarrel even now over how the Cold Warbegan, but Churchill felt he knew. He had brooded on thematter for several years by the time of his visit to Missouri.He was a historian; more to the point, he had made, andlived through, the relevant history.Taking the long view, Churchill knew the wartimeBig Three collusion had been somewhat unnatural, for heunderstood Bolshevism. He had witnessed Soviet misbehaviorduring war, and his memoranda and state papersdisplay particular anger at Moscow’s violence towards thePoles, the people over whom Britain had entered war.Suppose Churchill had been able to forget that in1939 the Soviets had invaded eastern Poland almost ashastily as the Nazis had taken western Poland. In 1943,his doubts would have stirred, or even surfaced, whenGermans removed the soil over mass graves at Katyn; theSoviet NKVD had murdered and buried 8000 Polish officerson that spot near Smolensk. Then, the next year,came the appalling immobility of the Red Army whenPolish citizens rose up, hoping to liberate Warsaw fromthe Germans. The Russians seemingly preferred to see thebrave destroyed. Nineteen forty-five brought the disappearanceinto Soviet jails of sixteen Polish emissaries whoin March had ventured from London to Moscow at >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 25

FULTON AND TODAY’S WAR...Stalin’s invitation, a shock to all Britishstatesmen.There had been a slow and disturbingchange in Soviet rhetoric. Spokesmenof the Kremlin were recurring to the oldcommunist notion that World War IIbegan in capitalist combinations againstthe innocent; they were now suggestingthat similar combinations could lead toWorld War III. An ugly moment came on9 February 1946, when Joseph Stalinmade it clear in a speech that the goodwill engendered during the war was gone,and that the future held dark prospectsfor “another imperialist war.” 3All these signs of chill preceded theFulton address. There was as yet noNATO. There was no Truman Doctrinefor protecting Turkey and Greece fromcommunist expansion. There was the“Long Telegram” from American diplomatGeorge Kennan in Moscow to theState Department, discussing the eeriechanges in Moscow and calling for “containment.”But it had not yet been published: the followingyear, as an article by “X” in Foreign Affairs, it wouldcause a stir.In the language Churchill used at Fulton there is nomore ominous phrase than “Iron Curtain.” The Sovietshated the hard ring of that metaphor, and the Sovietnewspaper Pravda rankled when Churchill did not attributethe term to its originator, which, it said angrily, wasfirst used by Josef Goebbels in February 1945. In keepingwith long tradition, Pravda was wrong. In fact, the phrasewent back long before that. 4Churchill himself had used the term in a letter toPresident Truman on 12 May 1945, nearly a year beforeFulton, when it already had the grim connotations laterbroadly understood. The Prime Minister’s letter spoke ofthe melting away of the American and British armies, theCanadians’ inevitable departure from Europe, and the difficultyof working with the French. He vividly described“this enormous Muscovite advance into the centre ofEurope,” adding, “An iron curtain is drawn down upontheir front. We do not know what is going on behind.” 5Some criticized the Fulton speech as militaristic, butthere are many sunny aspects of the address. The archetypalold Tory spoke up for the United Nations, the new“world organization”—as the planned entity was knownduring war years. 6 I don’t think this was a pained genuflectionto American internationalists, to the foundationalmeetings at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco, or toFranklin Roosevelt’s legacy. Churchill’s praise for collectivesecurity was consistent with his life-long teaching.WESTMINSTER COLLEGE, 1946: Businessman Eugene Donnelly, WinstonChurchill, President Truman and Westminster College President Franc L. McCluer.At Fulton Churchill spoke of the Soviet threat, but also dwelled on the prospectsfor understanding and optimism, and revived his prewar theme of collective securi-FINEST HOUR 135 / 26On record was his public support in the 1920s forthe League of Nations; his effort for collective security inthe 1930s. It does not go too far to say that his Fulton textmight shock conservative readers today, with its positiveviews on the nascent UN. Churchill even argued for astanding military force of components contributed bymember states, at the ready for international peacekeeping.The United Nations has always had a smallMilitary Staff Committee for just such work, even thoughthe Cold War flash-froze it in embryo form. 7Churchill never felt that a world organization precludedregional security arrangements among individualpartners. He always said, as in Washington in May 1943, 8that beneath the umbrella of the “world organization”there should be strong, inward-looking regional arrangementsto deal with normal security concerns. These,together with the UN superstructure, would constitute“the Sinews of Peace” in the postwar world.For Churchill the first of these was the BritishCommonwealth, which he still spoke of as the BritishEmpire. A close second was the Anglo-American alliance.At Fulton he spoke with his usual richness and warmth onthis topic, calling for “fraternal association” and using thephrase “special relationship.” Here was a foreigner whoopenly regarded American power as good for the world.He thought it a very good thing that the atom bomb wasstill a monopoly of the United States, that it would becriminal to let that change in the short term.The Associated Press suggested in its wire story fromFulton that Churchill had proposed a military alliance

“Ispoke earlier of the Temple of Peace.Workmen from all countries mustbuild that temple....Indeed they must doso or else the temple may not be built, or,being built, it may collapse, and we shallall be proved again unteachable and haveto go and try to learn again for a thirdtime in a school of war, incomparablymore rigorous than that from which wehave just been released. The dark agesmay return, the Stone Age may return onthe gleaming wings of science, and whatmight now shower immeasurable materialblessings upon mankind, may even bringabout its total destruction.”—WSC, Fulton, 1946between London and Washington. He did not say that,but he certainly came close. The press knew where hisheart was. Transatlantic bilateral rapport was central to hisview of world security—and British self-interest. Considerthe remarkable praise he had heaped upon Americanmilitary power—memorably at the Albert Hall onAmerican Thanksgiving Day, 1944. A few days afterFulton came his speech at the Pentagon, praising U.S.military performance in World War II, delivered to a glitteringarray of officers including Generals Eisenhower,Bradley and Spaatz and Admirals Leahy and Nimitz. TheEnglishman’s conviction was that the American militarypartnership must anchor the postwar era.Churchill did not cultivate these linkages in theexpectation of war. He believed in the power of deterrence.Most of his talk on his 1946 American tour was ofconstructing peace. Even at Fulton he told the audienceexplicitly that he did not think the Soviets wanted war.The broader message was: mankind has the power and theopportunity to save its future. In a metaphor Churchillascribed to an author he’d been reading on his trip, hespoke of a “Temple of Peace. Workmen from all countriesmust build that temple [with] ‘faith in each other’s purpose,hope in each other’s future and some charity towardeach other’s shortcomings.’”Today’s Long WarChurchill’s emphasis on allies remains sound policytoday. Good alliances are a requisite for what has rightlybeen called a “global war on terrorism.” The fight isunusual, and without true precedent. It bears manyaspects unlike either World War II or the Cold War.Deterrence and negotiation with al Qaeda is hardlypossible. Our enemies are not just without uniforms; theyare usually unseen. Most do not work for a state; many arestateless, even fugitives. The Taliban, al Qaeda, JemaahIslamia, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat,and their ilk live and fight well below the governmentallevel—they are what political scientists call (in a phraseChurchill might have detested) “sub-state actors.”Churchill had experiences with “terrorists,” but he spokeof terrorism on relatively few occasions.Ours is a new generation facing a somewhat newgeneration of conflict, a product of devolution, not evolution,in moral and martial terms. Terrorism is housed inthe basement of barbarity, and Churchill, who hoped toconstruct a Temple of Peace, would be appalled to knowhow many terrorists there are today.He also, I feel sure, would not accept terrorism as anew norm, or apologize for it, as many do now. We mustfight the enemy, accept the unwanted challenges.They come without crisp tactical remedies from theold captains of war. Churchill, I might guess, would haveconsidered the war of 9/11 as profoundly real, protractedand complex. In it, his prudence as a statesman mighthave helped him more than his mastery of European militaryhistory.While no one can say what Churchill would havedone, we do know we have on our hands an unwantedwar. So, how are we doing, and, what do we need to do?The opening campaign was a military one of thegreatest boldness. The Americans, British and other allieswent into the Afghan lairs of the guerrillas and roustedthem out. Bin Laden did not expect this. Neither didmany of us. A maker of coalitions himself, Churchillmight have admired the way our coalition linked up withAfghans to smash the Taliban, up until then the 21st century’sleading state sponsor of international terrorism.Efforts by the Taliban today to climb back up the southernskirts of Afghan territory are significant, but take littleaway from the effectiveness of that quick campaign atthe end of 2001. In Afghanistan, even a few years of peaceis impressive.There have followed other, lesser martial efforts,especially in the Philippines. In the southern islands, alQaeda’s ally Abu Sayyaf has been battered and beaten byFilipinos enjoying American intelligence and advice, thelatest chapter in a long association between Manila andWashington. Abu Sayyaf is on about its fourth leadernow—they keep dying of lead poisoning. Most observersthink this organisation has lost whatever religious andpolitical credibility it had.In the Horn of Africa, we are similarly involved.Our armed forces contribute in varying ways to alliedindigenous forces fighting Somali warlords, the North >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 27

“ Would a special relationship between the United States and the BritishCommonwealth be inconsistent with our overriding loyalties to the WorldOrganisation? I reply that, on the contrary, it is probably the only means by which thatorganisation will achieve its full stature and strength. There are already the special UnitedStates relations with Canada which I have just mentioned, and there are the special relationsbetween the United States and the South American Republics. We British have ourtwenty years Treaty of Collaboration and Mutual Assistance with Soviet Russia. I agreewith Mr. Bevin, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, that it might well be a fifty yearsTreaty so far as we are concerned. We aim at nothing but mutual assistance and collaboration.The British have an alliance with Portugal unbroken since 1384, and which producedfruitful results at critical moments in the late war. None of these clash with the generalinterest of a world agreement, or a world organisation; on the contrary they help it. ‘Inmy father’s house are many mansions.’” —WSC, Fulton, 1946FULTON AND TODAY’S WAR...African terrorists, and al Qaeda agents. Our few uniformedmen and women in that theater are engaged incivic action more than direct action; they do not oftenpull triggers. But every day their corpsmen do shoot vaccinesinto children, and antibiotics into sickly domesticanimals. Wells are dug, schools are built. This part of thebattle Churchill would have recognized from the oldforms of “hearts and minds” campaigns that the Britisharmy waged in places like Oman and Malaya.As this aid work suggests, kinetics is but one part ofthe grand strategy in the global war on terrorism. And,despite what critics may say, I think there is a grand strategy,and that it has been articulated. The problems comein execution, in the challenges of gaining foreign support,and in the task of meeting the concerns of the citizenry…and if all that were not enough, we have Iraq.Within our grand strategy for what we must call theLong War, economic elements of national power may betoo focused upon—and too drained by—resuscitatingIraq. The war has many costs and they mount up in othertheaters. Elsewhere we have aid programs, but there aresticks as well as carrots: the sanctions regimes begun underPresident Clinton and redoubled under President Bushare difficult to torque down, but they do constrict someof the financial lifelines in transnational terrorism. TheUnited Nations is actually engaged in financial counterterrorism:a new UN treaty took effect in 2002, and eventhough many states will not or cannot obey it, the conventiondoes help the U.S. Treasury and State Departments,and foreign partners, who work to freezeenemy assets.In the field of intelligence our record is mixed. Wehave made progress at the Central Intelligence Agencyand the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and yet both stillhave their difficulties—such as an out-flow of experiencedpeople worn down by the past five years, and the challengesof properly training new personnel. Reorganization,too, comes with new challenges. Churchill’s warlasted six years; he would have faced similar drains had itcontinued as long as this war might.There is a mammoth new bureaucracy—the Departmentof Homeland Security—which does not yet seem toproduce intelligence but always clamors for it from others.It is a cliché to say that intelligence is overwhelminglyimportant in counterterrorism, but it is a cliché because itis so true. For one thing, intelligence is a product of, and akey to, policing; at this stage of the Long War, police areperhaps even more important than soldiers.In diplomacy, the U.S. was swiftly supported by itsNATO allies after 9/11. The North Atlantic Treaty Organizationinvoked its Article 5 for the first time in a halfcentury of history, declaring that an attack on one is anattack on all. Countries such as Germany and Britain havedone a great deal, actually and symbolically. I am disappointedover Canada; I have a very smart Canadian graduatestudent in class and her disappointment in Canada’srole outruns mine. But for such ills there are tonics.Australia has been a most vigorous and impressive ally. AlQaeda knows it, too, which explains the overt threats,multiple bombings of holiday spots in Bali, and the otherplots within Australian cities more recently.There are certainly some diplomatic problems aswell—including stalemate in the Middle East, and declinein international support for global terror war. These problemsmerge into the realm of “public diplomacy.”A dimension of our power that is under-used andbadly used is the public effort to “tell our story abroad.” 9FINEST HOUR 135 / 28

When it comes to reaching out to potential friends, we’redoing very, very badly. I will waste no time enunciatingsomething that has been talked of in this town for years.We have a problem, and we must face it, belatedly,in this sixth year of war. Churchill would not want us tocome here to Old Ebbitt’s just to drink and chatter andcomplain. He would want us to discuss solutions to theproblem…while we are drinking. In that spirit, here are afew considered ideas to improve things a little inAmerican information operations and public diplomacy. Ichose to focus here, at the expense of other issues in grandstrategy. Call these rubrics “The Four R’s.”“The Four R’s”1) Recreate the Bureaucracy of Public DiplomacyDuring the Cold War we had an entity—the UnitedStates Information Agency—that specialized at reachingover the Iron Curtain, over the heads of despots, to subjectpopulations. Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty andlike programs were deemed by people like AlexanderSolzhenitsyn to be powerful. But after the Berlin Wallcame down, so did the architecture of USIA. It was foldedinto the State Department in much smaller form. Nowwe have a small office for public diplomacy which hasbeen frequently vacant and often badly staffed. I will notname any of the incumbents of that office. But when Ipuzzle on why this part of government has done so littlefor so many years—years the locusts have eaten—I recallan acidic remark incorrectly attributed to Churchill: “anempty car drew up and Clement Attlee got out.”There is inadequate leadership at State on this issue,and the same is true on the National Security Council—even though one of its six directorships is titled “global outreach.”Our best diplomats are schooled to cultivate foreigndiplomats, not foreign populations and news editors. Weneed a separate bureaucracy with its own culture and thespecial function of public diplomacy. Before 9/11, we didn’tknow we needed this; we should have created it in 2002;we will be suffering for it when 2007 merges into 2008.2) Resource the EffortThe State Department has been under-funded. Ifneed be I’d take $10 or $15 billion from Defense and reallocateit to State. 10 In the present crisis, instead of doingmuch more to reach out overseas, we’ve constricted someoperations. There are consulates that closed in the 1990s,and so too did some embassy and consulate libraries—yetthey are exactly the kind of place that students and othercurious people can come to learn about the USA and itspolicies and its people.We have set up a TV station that beams in Arabiclanguage to the Middle East—al-Hurrah. The concept isgood. It will need better supervision, and it will needresources. So do other radio services which are beingcropped back for 2007 or 2008. Our government isapparently eliminating VOA broadcasting in Uzbek,Croatian, and Georgian, reducing VOA and RFE/RLservices in the Ukraine and former Portuguese Africa, andreducing broadcasts in Kazakh. 11 And then there is this:we are now eliminating VOA broadcasting in the Englishlanguage. Is this because using English abroad is consideredimperialist? Or is it that we are too foolish to see thatbroadcasting news and healthy entertainment in Englishis a friendly way to teach other peoples about ourselves?As a congressional staffer, I observed how quick weare to trim away public diplomacy programs. When cutswere proposed in the National Endowment for Democracy,then receiving a mere $17 million, George Willreferred to this as “slaying the butterfly of democracy.”Some critics think our approach to the Long War is toomilitary. Let them speak up! Words are cheaper thanweapons, and often more effective.3) Restore the Moral Impulse and Argument to DiplomacyIn 2002-03 in the war on terrorists, we were tooquiet on the moral front. We felt quelled by Abu Ghareb.Now many of our leaders say little or nothing at all, onmost occasions, about the moral obscenity of terrorism.Democracy, the rule of law, and moderation are thebest and the obvious alternatives to politics driven by terrorism.That is evident in sad places such as Lebanon, SriLanka, the Congo. We should quit apologizing for whowe are and make overtly the robust defense that democracyand freedom deserve. No one should defend AbuGhareb. Nor should we apologize for fighting people whowrite manuals advising how to torture and how to killinnocents. 12 It is time to adjust our direction and proceedwith some confidence on the rhetorical path that is centralto reaching public opinion in the world. Right actionis vital, but we need the right arguments too.Do public spokesmen know how to make the argumentsagainst terrorism? Do they at least remember theones that used to be made by Jean François Revel andRonald Reagan? Do our social scientists teaching here inAmerica recall what they were taught in civics class? I harbordoubts. As a student in graduate school in the late1970s, I heard a foreign-born student ask our Poly Sciprofessor for a definition of democracy. He balked, andthen asked me, because he knew I was taking a course inpolitical philosophy. “Self-rule under law” is a wonderful,short, powerful definition of democracy.Churchill wrote and spoke to this question so often.Two years before his Fulton speech, for example, inAugust 1944, he was asked how he would judge whetherthe new Italian government was a true democracy.Churchill described what he called “simple and practicaltests” by which democratic freedom can be measured:Is there the right to free expression of opinion and of oppositionand criticism of the Government of the day? >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 29

FULTON AND TODAY’S WAR...Have the people the right to turn out a Government ofwhich they disapprove, and are constitutional means providedby which they can make their will apparent? Aretheir courts of justice free from violence by the Executiveand from threats of mob violence, and free from all associationwith particular political Parties? Will these courtsadminister open and well-established laws which are associatedin the human mind with the broad principles ofdecency and justice? Will there be fair play for poor aswell as for rich, for private persons as well as Governmentofficials? Will the rights of the individual, subject to hisduties to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted?Is the ordinary peasant or workman, who is earninga living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family,free from the fear that some grim police organizationunder the control of a single Party, like the Gestapo,started by the Nazi and Fascist Parties, will tap him onthe shoulder and pack him off without fair or open trialto bondage or ill-treatment? These simple, practical testsare some of the title-deeds on which a new Italy could befounded. 13A few months later, in October 1944, he said a similarthing in simpler form. In the House of Commons,celebrated over hundreds of years for high-flown idealsand soaring speeches, Churchill declared: “At the bottomof all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man,walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, makinga little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoricor voluminous discussion can possibly palliate theoverwhelming importance of that point.” 14The tests and procedures Sir Winston recommendedare political virtues for all peoples in all times. They arenot “ethno-centric.” They can exist quite independentlyof Britain or the USA. The virtues of moderate politics,democracy and the rule of law can and should “sell”abroad, not because we invented them; not because theyneed to sell; but because they are desirable—at least tomany people—for their own reasons and on their ownterms. Democracy worked in ancient Greece; it workstoday in Bangladesh and Taiwan and the Republic ofSouth Africa. It might even work in a generation or twoin North Korea. After all, look how far it has come in ageneration in South Korea.4) Renew the Rhetorical FightIf Churchill constantly reminds us of anything, Isuppose, it is to attend to rhetoric. Good, bad, or indifferent,rhetoric is a centerpiece of policy. So I submit to yourjudgment five arguments 15 which we should be using.Most have been ignored by our leaders—especially keypeople in the public eye who have the opportunity to talkthrough VOA and al-Hurrah and the International HeraldTribune and the global diplomatic circuit.These are points we need added to our public diplomacy.You may have your own, which I would welcome;you may wish to strike out one or two of mine, which isfine with me. The point is that the times demand freshelements in the world’s discussions. We must begin tomove people’s minds—fortify our friends and allies.(1) Al Qaeda’s leaders are not clerics. Most are noteven deeply schooled in the subtleties of Islam. Thus theyhave no credibility when publishing “fatwas.” It isastounding that a civil engineer (Bin Laden) or a surgeon(al Zawahiri) should pretend to tell Muslims how to beholy, or whom to kill between rounds of prayers.Washington, correctly, does not try to explain the Koran;but Washington should deprecate these terrorists’ impudenceand posturing as religious interpreters.(2) Most attacks by “Muslim” zealots have killed orinjured Muslims—from Egypt’s Anwar Sadat to the lowliestsoul buying vegetables in a bazaar, or seated withfriends at a pizzeria. Apparently the U.S. governmentdeclines even to count the Muslims murdered by selfdescribedholy Muslims. 16 The tally would be a compellingargument against terrorism—especially for thoseabroad who imagine that counterterrorism is nothing butWestern concern. By the way, any newspaper could makethe same count—with the same concentration they nowapply to counts of the American war dead.(3) Innumerable terror attacks have been by Shiaagainst Sunni, or vice-versa. These are unseemly invitationsto a war within a civilization. Eventually, a Sunniterrorist, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, stated openly his strategyfor war upon all Shia in Iraq. Such declarations shouldbe held up to the cold light of shame, and mentioned frequentlyin explanation of other but similar attacks byother Zarqawis of the world. I have seen social scientistswax indignant when imagining that the U.S. is waging awar of religious civilizations. How many of these sameobservers speak up against terrorists who actually do try toset off a war between Muslim factions?(4) Purportedly aiming at “Jews and AmericanCrusaders,” Islamic terrorists have bombed or shot orburnt alive scores of non-Americans in other countries. InEastern Africa in 1998, U.S. embassies were targeted but,overwhelmingly, the human damage was to Kenyans andTanzanians. In Bali, Australian tourists were the target,but many Indonesians and a mix of foreigners died fromthe Jemaah Islamiya/al Qaeda double-bombing. How canterrorists justify such murders? Their own writings pointto their vulnerability on this issue.(5) Some legitimate Muslim clerics have spoken up.The Islamic Commission of Spain, representing some 200Sunni mosques in that country, roundly condemned BinLaden and al Qaeda for terrorism, publishing a fatwaagainst them in 2005. That same year, the MuslimCouncil of Britain condemned the indiscriminate terrorismof London by bomb plots. The clerics went so far >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 30

“ How could we bear to be treatedlike schoolboys...to be turnedout on parade by tens of thousands tomarch and cheer for this slogan or forthat; to be forced every hour to conceal thenatural workings of the human intellectand the pulsations of the human heart?Why, I say that rather than submit tosuch oppression, there is no length wewould not go to....We are in the midst ofdangers so great and increasing, we are theguardians of causes so precious to theworld that we must, as the Bible says, ‘Layaside every impediment’ and prepare ourselvesnight and day to be worthy of theFaith that is in us.” —WSC, Paris, 1936as to call upon the faithful in Britain to “unite in helpingthe police to capture these murderers.” But the bravery ofsuch moderates was barely noted by the Western press,and hardly mentioned in Washington. It should havebeen detailed in a White House press conference on developmentsin foreign affairs.Conclusion“Let us preach what we practice,” as Churchill saidat Fulton, and begin to compete seriously in the strugglefor public opinion. No student of Winston Churchillshould ever forego the art of rhetoric in the ways we havein these last five years.We will defeat this latest scourge of militant Muslimterrorism. It is a fierce and ugly ideology. But the samewas true of international anarchism, Soviet bolshevism,and Nazi fascism, and all those have been defeated. Allviolent ideologies, from wherever they come, are by theirnatures less worthy than democracy.And so on this anniversary of Fulton, which markedthe commencement of a war of ideas more than a standoffof armies, let us reenergize our convictions. AsWinston Churchill said to an ally in a speech entitled“Collective Security” in 1936: all aggressive action mustbe judged, not from the standpoint of Right and Left, butof “right and wrong….We are in the midst of dangers sogreat and increasing, we are the guardians of causes so preciousto the world, that we must, as the Bible says, ‘layaside every impediment,’ and prepare ourselves night andday to be worthy of the Faith that is in us.” 17Endnotes1. Pilpel, Robert H., Churchill in America: 1895-1961: AnAffectionate Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976),section title. The press conference notes quoted are on pp. 214-15.2. Ibid., 223.3. Taubman, William, Stalin’s American Policy: From Entente toDétente to Cold War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1982), 133.4. Pravda, Moscow, 1 August 1946, as reported in the sameday’s Associated Press. Robert Pilpel traced the phrase “iron curtain”to a 1942 usage by a German finance minister. Sir Martin Gilberttraced it yet farther back, to the Russian émigré philosopher VasilyRozanov in Apocalypse of Our Time (1918): “With a rumble and aroar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian History.”5. “Prime Minister to President Truman,” T. 895/5, on 12May 1945, CHAR 20/218, Churchill Archives Centre, CambridgeUniversity. I appreciate the aid of the Archives, and the support ofthe Marine Corps University Foundation which made those visitspossible.6. Churchill usually restricted his doubts about the UnitedNations to private discussions with advisers. He did write a causticpassage against the organization as peopled with so many small statesas to be a “Babel” at times, but that prose came later, when writingthe final volume of his war memoirs.7. The Military Staff Committee is mentioned in the UNCharter, articles 26 and 47. The committee meets regularly. Yet it isso obscure that when I asked one speaker who had just lectured onUN peacekeeping operations about it, he balked, asked me to repeatthe question, and then had no reply. Books on containment and thepostwar world also forget the committee. Dr. Janeen Klinger of theArmy War College believes that the onset of Cold War made militaryactivity by the UN so unlikely that its military staff committeeimmediately proved moribund. She points the reader to Eric Grove,“UN Armed Forces and the Military Staff Committee: A LookBack,” International Security, vol. 17, no. 4, Spring 1993, 172-82.8. A critical meeting between U.S. and British officials tookplace at the British Embassy in Washington on 22 May 1943. Thosepresent included Vice President Henry Wallace and Sumner Welles, aState Department appeaser before the war and a bitter critic ofChurchill’s; in 1946 he would say kind things about the Fultonspeech.9. “Telling America’s Story Abroad” is the official objective ofthe Voice of America.10. While the entire budget for the Department of State andour foreign aid program is less than $35 billion, that of theDepartment of Defense is nearing $500 billion.11. “Voice of America: Cuts at a Glance,” Associated Press, 23February 2007.12. There are several of these, including Military Studies in theJihad Against the Tyrants, c. 1994, discovered in Manchester, England,some years later.13. 28 August 1944; see Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchillvol. 7, Road to Victory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), 918.14. Ibid., 1046, speech of 31 October 1944.15. Harmon, Christopher C., Terrorism Today, 2nd. ed.(Abingdon, Oxford, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2007), ch. 5.16. It is encouraging that the latest White House nationalstrategy for counterterrorism does make a passing mention of thisincredibly important pattern in terrorism.17. Gilbert, Martin, Winston S. Churchill vol. 5, Prophet ofTruth 1922-1929 (London: Heinemann, 1976), 788. Paraphrase andquotations, 24 September 1936, Theatre des Ambassadeurs, Paris. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 31

THE PROTRACTED CONFLICTFailing in Baghdad:The British Did It FirstHERE IS WHAT BRITAIN’S HISTORY of failure at building a democratic state in Iraq in the1920s and 1930s tells George W. Bush and his successors: If, like Gen. Maude, they fail todeliver on the promises of a better future for the Iraqi people, then Iraq will continue as afont of violent instability long after those who made the promises have been buried.BY TOBY DODGEAt the center of Baghdad’sneglected North GateWar Cemetery, near theedge of the old city walls,stands an imposing grave.Sheltered from the weather by agrandiose red sandstone cupola, it isthe final resting place of a man fromwhom George W. Bush could havelearned a great deal about the perilsof intervening in Iraq.Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick StanleyMaude was head of the British armyin Mesopotamia when he marchedinto Baghdad on a hot, dusty day inMarch 1917. Soon thereafter, heissued Britain’s “Proclamation to thePeople of Baghdad,” which eerilyforeshadowed sentiments that Bushand his administration wouldexpress eighty-six years later: Britishforces, Maude declared, had enteredthe city not as conquerors, but asliberators.Maude had arrived in Baghdad after a long andarduous military campaign. British forces had beenfighting the Ottoman army for 2 1/2 years and had sufferedone of the worst defeats of World War I in the sixmonthsiege of the eastern city of Kut, which had endedToby Dodge (t.dodge@qmul.ac.uk) is author of Inventing Iraq: TheFailure of Nation Building and a History Denied (Columbia UniversityPress). He is associate professor of international politics at theUniversity of London and a senior fellow at the International Institutefor Strategic Studies. This article, first published in Washington PostOutlook, 25 February 2007, is reprinted by kind permission of theauthor and The Washington Post.MESOPOTAMIA,THEN AND NOW:The boundariesremain as WinstonChurchill laidthem out at the1921 Cairo conference.Lt. Gen. SirFrederick Maude(left) arrived anddied in 1917.(Photo from www.firstworldwar.com)FINEST HOUR 135 / 32in an ignominious surrender to theTurks in April 1916.Having rallied from that lossand finally reached Baghdad, Maudetried to create common causebetween the British army and thecity’s residents, whom he saw as havingbeen oppressed by 400 years ofOttoman rule. “Your lands havebeen subject to tyranny,” he declaredin his proclamation, and “yourwealth has been stripped from youby unjust men and squandered.” Hepromised that it was not “the wishof the British Government to imposeupon you alien institutions.” Instead,he called on residents to managetheir own civil affairs “in collaborationwith the political representativesof Great Britain.”Maude did not live to see thefailure of his efforts to rally the peopleof Iraq to the British occupation.He died eight months later, havingcontracted cholera from a glass of milk.After his death, British policy toward Iraq changedrepeatedly as the army attempted to dominate the countryand suppress the population, while the governmentstrove to adjust to Britain’s diminished role in the internationalsystem after World War I. Initially, the aim wassimply to annex the territory and make it part of theEmpire, run in a fashion similar to India. But WoodrowWilson’s Fourteen Points speech in January 1918 did inthat idea. In setting out America’s vision for the postwarworld, Wilson expressly attacked the duplicitous diplomacyof European imperialism, which he blamed for

dragging the world into prolonged military conflict.This meant that a modern, self-determining statewas now to be built in Iraq. Britain was to take the lead,but its effort was to be continually scrutinized by theLeague of Nations, which had been set up underWilson’s watchful eye at the Paris Peace Conference atthe end of the war.In an echo of what is happening under the U.S.occupation, hopes for a joint Anglo-Iraqi pact to rebuildthe country were dashed by a violent uprising. On 2 July1920, a revolt, or thawra, broke out along the lowerEuphrates, fueled by popular resentment of Britain’sheavy-handed behavior in Iraq. The British army had setabout taxing the population to pay for the building ofthe Iraqi state, while British civil servants running theadministration refused to consult Iraqi politicians, judgingthem too inexperienced to play a role in the newgovernment.The rebellion quickly spread across the south andcenter of the country. Faced with as many as 131,000could. After defeating wartime coalition Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George, whose Colonial Secretary, WinstonChurchill, had engineered the organization of Iraq, thevictorious Bonar Law pledged that “at the earliest possiblemoment, consistent with statesmanship and honour,the next government will reduce our commitments inMesopotamia.”U.S. presidential candidates campaigning to seizethe White House in 2008 should be forewarned, however:it took Britain ten more years to jettison its financialand military commitments to Iraq. During that period, anumber of governments struggled to reduce the size ofthe forces deployed, and the amount of money beingspent. They strove for a decade to stabilize the countryand meet Britain’s pledges to the international communitywhile trying to placate domestic opinion. The tensionsinvolved in this exercise—building a state fromscratch with a hostile population, under severe budgetaryconstraints and in the face of rising domestic anger—ultimately led to the failure of the whole exercise.“ The policy failure leads to increasingly desperate attempts to stay the course, to pourin ever greater numbers of troops, gambling on a resurrection of the initial policy.This middle stage comes to an end with the decision to disengage. Interestingly, thischoice—admitting defeat and going home—is usually taken by a new government.”insurgents armed with 17,000 modern rifles left overfrom the war, the British army needed eight months toregain full control of Iraq; 2,000 British troops werekilled, wounded or taken prisoner and 8,450 Iraqis werekilled. To make matters worse, the British governmentwas forced to pour troops back into Iraq, long after theend of the war, to stabilize the situation.The revolt forced Britain to devolve real power toIraqi politicians. At the head of this new administrationthe British placed a newly created king, Faisal ibnHussein, famous for his association with Lawrence ofArabia during the war. But the revolt had as much influencein Britain as it did in Iraq itself. The “blood andtreasure” expended in putting down the violence madethe continued occupation extremely unpopular. Thepublic’s discontent reached its peak in the general electioncampaign of November 1922. The leader of theopposition, Conservative Andrew Bonar Law, capturedthe national mood when he declared: “We cannot aloneact as the policeman of the world.”Newspapers and candidates organized their electioneeringaround the “bag and baggage” campaigndemanding that Britain withdraw from Iraq as soon as itLike Maude’s before him, Bush’s policy in Iraq hasresulted in a series of unintended outcomes. In the faceof ever-increasing violence, the stirring rhetoric aboutIraq becoming a beacon of democracy in the MiddleEast has been quietly dropped. Instead, the operation inIraq has been placed on the frontline of the global fightagainst terrorism: It is better to battle terrorists on thestreets of Baghdad than in Brooklyn or Houston, themantra goes.Where does this leave U.S. policy toward Iraq?Historical studies often divide military interventions intothree general phases. The first phase, the initial decisionto invade, is shaped by common misperceptions that theconflict will be short and that military force can be usedto achieve political objectives. World War I began withan assumption that British troops would be home byChristmas; Bush declared the “mission accomplished”after three weeks.The second phase is marked by a slow realizationthat both these assumptions are wrong. The policy failureleads to increasingly desperate attempts to stay the course,to pour in ever greater numbers of troops, gambling on aresurrection of the initial policy. This middle stage >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 33

FAILING IN BAGHDAD...comes to an end with the decision to disengage.Interestingly, this choice—admitting defeat and goinghome—is usually taken by a new government.The 1920 revolt, followed by the change of governmentin London in 1922, led to a prolonged butlargely unsuccessful attempt to do nation-building onthe cheap. The final transformation of policy wasmarked by another change of government. The electionof May 1929 resulted in a Labour administration. Thenew foreign policy team found it easier to identify thecontradictions at the heart of Britain’s relations with Iraqand find ways to overcome them. It recommended Iraqfor unconditional membership to the League of Nationsin 1932, unceremoniously dumping Britain’s commitmentto building a democratic and stable state.Iraq became a fully independent state that sameyear. But it was unable to defend itself against its neighbors,or to impose order without assistance. The governmentwas ultimately dependent on the Royal Air Forceto guarantee its survival.Eighty years later, after failing to stabilize Iraq, theU.S. government has come face to face with the highcosts of the new “forward-leaning” foreign policy of theBush doctrine. Comparisons with other military interventionssuggest that Bush will continue to pursue alargely unvarying policy in Iraq, deploying all the troopsand resources at his disposal in an attempt to correct themistakes that have been made. The result, as the presidenthimself has recognized, will be to push the difficultdecisions about the future of U.S. involvement in Iraqonto his successor.History, however, has two final disturbing lessonsfor the next president. The governing elite nurtured bythe British to take their place—the Iraqi royal familyand their associates brought to the country in 1921—proved unfit for the purpose and were swept aside by amilitary coup in 1941. The British army was forced toreinvade and restore them to power. Yet even this secondinvasion was not enough. The violent instability thatengulfed Iraq and resulted in the rise of Saddam Husseinwas triggered by the murder of the royal family by Iraqiarmy officers in July 1958. The crime was committed inthe name of Arab nationalism, as a strike against Britishinterference in a sovereign Arab nation.Here is what Britain’s history of failure at buildinga democratic state in Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s tellsGeorge W. Bush and his successors: If, like Gen. Maude,they fail to deliver on the promises of a better future forthe Iraqi people, then Iraq will continue as a font of violentinstability long after those who made the promiseshave been buried. ,But DidBritain Fail?WHAT BRITAIN’S EXPERIENCE may teach usis that superpowers can only fail voluntarily.BY DAVID FREEMANProfessor Dodge is broadly correct in his outlineof the history of Iraq, and his case iscompelling for what may happen if promisesof a better future for Iraqis are not kept.Our chief concern here—the role of WinstonChurchill in the British Iraq Mandate—is limited,because his involvement, if not his policies, ended withthe fall of the Lloyd George coalition in November1922. The description of what happened from thatpoint on is accurate. Yet it can be argued that Britain’sventure in Iraq was not a failure—for reasons whichhave little to do with prospects there today.I disagree with the characterization of Britain’s initialgoals for Iraq in the 1920s, and would challenge thesuggestion that what is being attempted now is the sameas what was attempted then. There are several importantpoints that should be considered:1. What was Britain trying to accomplish by establishingIraq in 1922? First, to fulfill residual obligationsfrom the war (which Professor Dodge does not mention;but see the accompanying correspondence betweenChurchill and Lloyd George, particularly the commentsof the latter). Second, to establish a stable governmentbroadly friendly to British interests, the most importantof which was preserving the link to India. If the Britishhad indeed been trying to build a nation founded ondemocratic self-determination, they would not havearrested and deported the leader of just such a movementand imposed the alien Hashemite monarchy. Inother words, the British were simply trying to keep a lidon things, given their own diminishing resources. Theydid not consider Iraq a high priority. Churchill made itclear that he was prepared to order a unilateral withdrawalof British forces from the region if the desiredProfessor Freeman (dafreeman@fullerton.edu) is a regular contributorto Finest Hour and his last article was “Midwife to an UngratefulVolcano: Churchill and the Making of Iraq” in FH 132, Autumn2006. He teaches History at California State University, Fullerton.FINEST HOUR 135 / 34

low-cost settlement could not be achieved.2. British policy was in fact successful in achieving itsgoal. Relying on support from air power, a relatively stablegovernment friendly to British interests was maintainedin Iraq for as long as Britain needed it. If not byIndian independence in 1947, then certainly followingthe Suez episode of 1956, Britain no longer had eitherthe need or the inclination to sustain the Hashemitegovernment. It had served its purpose, and the Britishcould justly claim that thirty-five years was quite longenough to expect the Hashemites to have establishedthemselves or face the consequences. The Hashemitemonarchy established at the same time in neighboringJordan, after all, survives to this day.3. The 1920 Iraq uprising came as Britain was in theprocess of reducing its troop commitments. ProfessorDodge correctly notes that it was a troop increase thatended the rebellion, but frames this in a negative context.Surely the troop “surge” is what gave Britain theopportunity to establish its low-cost solution? (The additionaltroops, by the way, came from India.)4. Bonar Law’s statement about reducing commitmentsin Mesopotamia can be misinterpreted. The settlementworked out by Churchill—with the support ofBonar Law’s Conservatives, who made up the majority ofLloyd George’s Coalition government—enabled thereduction of British troops stationed in Iraq. This wasalready in place when Bonar Law made his remarks. Hewas simply pledging to carry out the policy.5. League of Nations scrutiny of Britain’s policies wasintended, but the United States never joined the League.The Mandate under which Britain governed Iraq wassupervised by the League Council, made up of Britain,France and other imperial powers holding Mandates. Inshort: the Mandate holders were policing themselves.Churchill’s solution met the obligations Britain hadacquired during and after the First World War and continuedto work for as long as it was needed, after whichtime it was abandoned. Realpolitik? Perhaps, but itworked, and that is the point at issue here. Most likelythe only real similarity between the situation in Iraq thenand now is the unchanged nature of the populace. ,Correspondence on Iraq, 1922WINSTON S. CHURCHILL AND DAVID LLOYD GEORGEWSC to DLG (Churchill papers: 17/27)1 September 1922I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task youhave given me is becoming really impossible. Our forcesare reduced now to very slender proportions. TheTurkish menace has got worse; Feisal is playing the fool,if not the knave; his incompetent Arab officials are disturbingsome of the provinces and failing to collect therevenue; we overpaid £200,000 on last year’s accountwhich it is almost certain Iraq will not be able to paythis year, thus entailing a Supplementary Estimate inregard to a matter never sanctioned by Parliament; a furtherdeficit, in spite of large economies, is nearly certainthis year on the civil expenses owing to the drop in therevenue. I have had to maintain British troops at Mosulall through the year in consequence of the Angora quarrel:this has upset the programme of reliefs and will cer-Reprinted by kind permission from the official biography, Winston S.Churchill, Companion Volume IV, Part 3, starting at page 1975.“Wee Free” may refer to the Asquith Liberals, who were “free” of theLloyd George Coalition. An August 1920 letter along the same lines(“There is something very sinister to my mind in this Mesopotamianentanglement”) was written but not sent; see Companion Volume IV,Part 2 (Heinemann, 1977), 1199. In 1921 Churchill became ColonialSecretary and went to Cairo to settle Middle East boundaries.tainly lead to further expenditure beyond the provision. Icannot at this moment withdraw these troops withoutpractically inviting the Turks to come in. The small columnwhich is operating in the Rania district inside ourborder against the Turkish raiders and Kurdish sympathisersis a source of constant anxiety to me.I do not see what political strength there is to face adisaster of any kind, and certainly I cannot believe that inany circumstances any large reinforcements would be sentfrom here or from India. There is scarcely a single newspaper—Tory,Liberal or Labour—which is not consistentlyhostile to our remaining in this country. The enormousreductions which have been effected have brought nogoodwill, and any alternative Government that might beformed here—Labour, Die-hard or Wee Free—wouldgain popularity by ordering instant evacuation. Moreoverin my heart I do not see what we are getting out of it.Owing to the difficulties with America, no progress hasbeen made in developing the oil. Altogether I am gettingto the end of my resources.I think we should now put definitely, not only toFeisal but to the Constituent Assembly, the position thatunless they beg us to stay and to stay on our own termsin regard to efficient control, we shall actually evacuatebefore the close of the financial year. I would put this >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 35

issue in the most brutal way, and if they are not preparedto urge us to stay and to co-operate in every manner Iwould actually clear out. That at any rate would be asolution. Whether we should clear out of the countryaltogether or hold on to a portion of the Basra vilayet isa minor issue requiring a special study.It is quite possible, however, that face to face withthis ultimatum the King, and still more the ConstituentAssembly, will implore us to remain. If they do, shall wenot be obliged to remain? If we remain, shall we not beanswerable for defending their frontier? How are we todo this if the Turk comes in? We have no force whateverthat can resist any serious inroad. The War Office, ofcourse, have played for safety throughout and are readyto say “I told you so” at the first misfortune.Surveying all the above, I think I must ask you fordefinite guidance at this stage as to what you wish andwhat you are prepared to do. The victories of the Turkswill increase our difficulties throughout theMohammedan world. At present we are paying eightmillions a year for the privilege of living on an ungratefulvolcano out of which we are in no circumstances toget anything worth having.DLG to WSC (Churchill papers: 17/27)10 Downing Street, 5 September 1922My dear Colonial Secretary,I agree that the situation in Iraq requires mostcareful consideration, and think you should put yourviews before the Cabinet on Thursday.The whole problem has arisen out of the decisionto attack the Turks in Mesopotamia. Strategically, I thinkthat decision was faulty. To be effective we had to leaveour base on the sea for hundreds of miles in a torridcountry utterly unfit for white fighting. We ought tohave concentrated on Gallipoli and Palestine orAlexandretta. The Taurus was then unpierced. The decisionwas taken when I was hardly on the fringe of theWar Cabinet. You were in it. Having provoked war withthe Turk we had to fight him somewhere, but theswamps of the Tigris were a badly chosen battle-ground.Whatever, however, the merits or demerits of theoriginal decision to fight in Mesopotamia, it certainly isresponsible for our difficulties now; and tracing the storyback to that decision, I do not see how any of our subsequenttroubles could have been avoided.It was quite clear to me when I became PrimeMinister that we could not afford to relax our campaignagainst the Turks in that region. Such a decision, afterthe withdrawal from Gallipoli, and the surrender of aBritish army at Kut, would have weakened our positionthroughout the Mahomedan world.Having beaten the Turk both in Iraq and inPalestine, we could not at the Armistice have repudiatedall our undertakings towards the Arabs. We were responsiblefor liberating them from Turkish sovereignty, andwe were absolutely bound to assist them in setting upArab governments, if we were not prepared to governthem ourselves.As to the present position, it is very disappointingthat Feisal has responded so badly to your excellentefforts to make him self-supporting with a minimum ofBritish protection; but I do not think that an effectivecase can be made against us on that score, if we standtogether and meet criticism courageously.If we have failed in Iraq, it is because we havetaken no effective steps during our years of occupationto prospect the possibilities of the country. As you know,I was anxious that the Anglo-Persian [Oil Company]should bore to ascertain the value of the oil deposits. Wehave, however, done practically nothing in that respect.If we leave, we may find a year or two after we havedeparted that we have handed over to the French andthe Americans some of the richest oil fields in theworld—just to purchase a derisive shout from our enemies.On general principles, I am against a policy ofscuttle, in Iraq as elsewhere, and should like you to putall the alternatives, as you see them, before the Cabineton Thursday.RetrospectChurchill’s warnings about Iraq are todayquoted frequently, but the situation in1920-22 had its own characteristics. Britainwas quarreling with Turkey (Lloyd Georgewas anti-Turk) and oil was not a major factor,except as a way Britain’s Iraq Mandate might “pay itsown way.” America was then the main oil producer, thevast Arabian oil fields were still undiscovered, andBritain’s oil supply was assured via the Anglo-Persian OilCompany in Iran. Oil was suspected to be plentiful inIraq, and Lloyd George regretted that no effort had beenmade to confirm this and exploit it.In his unsent 1920 letter to Lloyd George,Churchill declared that the Arabs had “laid aside theblood feuds they have nursed for centuries and that theSuni and Shiah [sic] tribes are working together.” Was heright? Perhaps not, but apparently today the opposite situationexists. The Iraqi leader who could get the Sunni,Kurds and Shia to work together would be heralded as awizard of Bismarckian proportions.The British decision to hold Iraq by air power,bucking up the Hashemite King Feisal while withdrawingtroops, was taken in Cabinet. Iraq obtained nominalindependence in 1932. The thirty-five-year Hashemitedynasty, after several coup attempts and revolts, finallyfell in the revolution of 1958, which led to the Ba’athistsand, ultimately, to Saddam Hussein. —Ed. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 36

THE PROTRACTED CONFLICT (2)Churchill andLloyd GeorgePOLITICAL MYOPIA, 1936-1945:HOPING YOUR COUNTRY WILL LOSEBY JAMES LANCASTER“ALMOST ALL BEHIND YOU, WINSTON”: Low would havecaused a stir had he added a ghostly Lloyd George, ponderinghis options in May 1940. (LG image from a cartoon in the tatlerof 26 Apri 1911.) Can readers name all the complete faces depictedby Low? Photoshop® modifications by Barbara Langworth.There is one conspicuous absentee in the famousDavid Low cartoon of 14 May 1940, “Allbehind you Winston,” where Churchill and hiscabinet colleagues stride forward purposefully,their sleeves rolled up, four days after WSCbecame Prime Minister.The absentee is David Lloyd George, Churchill’sformer mentor and Prime Minister for much of WorldWar I. He is not in the cartoon because he was not inthe Government—of his own choice. Lloyd Georgerefused to join the War Cabinet three times, on 13 May,28 May and 6 June. He also refused Churchill’s offer, on10 December 1940, to go to Washington asAmbassador, following the death of Lord Lothian.During the first six months of Churchill’s premiership,friends and colleagues of all parties tried to persuadeLloyd George to support Churchill and join thegovernment. His secretary and mistress, FrancesStevenson, tried as hard as anyone, admitting, “I knewthat LG’s iron will was set against working withChurchill.” 1 Stevenson recorded this on 20 June 1940.By October she had come round to Lloyd George’s plan,writing to him: “Your time will surely come, and thegreat thing is to keep fit until that time arrives.” 2Why did Churchill want Lloyd George, someonehe had, early in his career, referred to as “a chatteringlittle cad,” 3 in his coalition government? The principalreason was his belief that in a wartime coalition “Thesense of duty dominates all else, and personal claimsrecede.” 4 Although Churchill had become increasinglydisillusioned with his old chief in the interwar years, hewanted his government to represent all parties, includingthat much diminished Liberal faction led by LloydGeorge. He also wanted to muzzle the “Welsh Wizard,”and with good reason. Lloyd George had proclaimed onmany occasions his admiration for Hitler, following theirtwo meetings in 1936. He had consistently attacked thegovernment for incompetence, and had spoken in favourof discussing peace terms with Hitler. With his prestigestill intact, his emergence as a British Pétain needed tobe guarded against one way or another. Churchill certainlythought LG could do more good on the teamthan opposing it from the outside.Why for his part did Lloyd George, who resentedbeing successively spurned by Premiers Macdonald,Baldwin and Chamberlain, refuse to “fall in” behindChurchill? Where was his “sense of duty”? Why did henot bury his “personal claims”? To decline four invitationsfrom your Prime Minister to serve your country inthe hour of her peril reveals, at the very least, extraordinarydisloyalty. It was also unpatriotic. Worse, it sent thewrong message to the enemy. Many of Lloyd George’sarticles were so defeatist that many people thought heshould be locked up. Duff Cooper replied to one of hisharangues in the House in September 1939 saying thatit “would be received with delight in Germany, where itwould be said that the man who claimed to have wonthe last war was already admitting defeat in this one.” 5One reason for Lloyd George’s refusals was his profoundpessimism, his feeling that the situation was militarilyhopeless. Only a few weeks after the outbreak ofwar, Harold Nicolson and Robert Boothby met him atThames House. In his diary entry for 20 September1939 Nicolson wrote: “He [Lloyd George] says that he isfrankly terrified and does not see how we can possiblywin the war.” 6 The Welshman even constructed at a costof £6000 an air-raid shelter sixty feet underground atChurt, his country estate. His secretary, Arthur Sylvester,said it was like Piccadilly underground station.Lloyd George’s only formal explanation for notjoining the Government was his 29 May letter toChurchill, saying he could not join a War Cabinet containingChamberlain. When he refused Churchill’s finaloffer, to become Ambassador in Washington inDecember 1940, he said that his doctor (Lord Dawson >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 37

CHURCHILL AND LLOYD GEORGE...whom Brendan Bracken called “the undertaker’s friend”)advised against it. Dawson had actually given him aclean bill of health. In reality, as he confided to FrancesStevenson, he had no intention of accepting the offer.Lloyd George had every reason to want to stay inBritain at this time. Despite his defeatist leanings he hadfrequently been canvassed as the only man who couldsave the country, not only before Churchill becamePrime Minister but in the months following. It is significantthat when he turned down the post as Ambassadorin Washington, the Sunday Pictorial was in the middle ofa campaign supporting him as the alternative primeminister. 7 He was convinced that, one way or another,he would be called to save the country. He had thusbeen called in 1916; why not a second time? “I shallwait until Winston is bust,” he told Arthur Sylvester. 8Not content with waiting for Churchill to makeone blunder too many, Lloyd George led the attack onthe Prime Minister in the Vote of Confidence on 7 May1941. He accused Churchill of surrounding himself with“yes-men.” He said it was fatuous to suppose thatBritain could ever invade mainland Europe, that it wasmore important to have manpower in agriculture than inthe army, and that the War Cabinet should be sacked. Inhis reply, Churchill turned on Lloyd George with theremark: “It was the sort of speech with which, I imagine,the illustrious Marshal Pétain [WSC always pronouncedPétain as “peatayne”] might well have enlivened the closingdays of M. Reynaud’s Cabinet.” 9 The vote was carried447-3, Lloyd George, as usual, abstaining.Although most dissident Tories by then supportedChurchill, Lloyd George continued to attack the governmentwhenever the war news was bad. Behind thisdefeatist attitude lay the continuing hope that his hourwas still to come. He listened every night to Germanpropaganda from Berlin, hoping that a stalemate situationwould force a peace accommodation. He felt surehe would be the man the country would choose to parleywith Hitler. Yet, while continuing to attack the government,at no time did Lloyd George spell out, privatelyor in a public forum, what peace terms he would proposeor accept. Nor did he ever question his own abilityto do business with Hitler.Fortunately Lloyd George’s opportunity to negotiatean undefined peace, with a man who never respectedany agreed terms or conditions, never came. Churchillhad not met Hitler, but he had the measure of him.“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough,the crocodile will eat him last,” WSC had said of theneutral nations in January 1940. His old mentorthought he knew better. In his meetings with Hitler in1936 Lloyd George had been very impressed (as wasHalifax in 1937, and Chamberlain in 1938). He hadbeen deeply touched by Hitler telling him that the Alliedvictory in the World War I was owed to one great statesman—LGhimself. This “one great statesman,” had hebeen given the opportunity, would, in the best case, havefailed to reach an agreement with Hitler. In the worstcase, he would have been party to nothing less thanGerman hegemony in Europe, and to Britain’s defeat.Lloyd George died on 26 March 1945. In his tributeon 28 March, Churchill concentrated on thedeceased’s achievements in the days of social reformbefore 1914, and on his premiership in the critical years1916-18: “Although unacquainted with the military arts,although by public repute a pugnacious pacifist, whenthe life of our country was in peril he rallied to the wareffort and cast aside all other thoughts and aims.” 10Churchill was referring to the First World War. In theSecond, Lloyd George conspicuously chose not to “rallyto the war effort” nor to “cast aside all other thoughtsand aims.” In his tribute, Churchill, magnanimously,chose not to say anything about Lloyd George duringthe years 1936-45.Were Churchill’s war policies compromised in anyway by the contrary behaviour of his “old friend”? No—never at any time. Lloyd George had been sidelinedwhen he failed to bring the government down in theVote of Confidence. Prior to that debate Churchill didnot move one iota to meet LG’s stated conditions underwhich he might serve: removing Chamberlain from theWar Cabinet and reorganising the Cabinet along thelines of the War Directorate which LG set up in 1916.Following that Vote of Confidence, in a letter tohis son Randolph on 8 June 1941, Churchill consideredLloyd George as one of the “small fry” who “do theirbest to abuse us whenever the war news gives them anopportunity, but there is not the slightest sign that theHouse as a whole, or still less the country, will swervefrom their purpose.” 11Churchill had concluded his closing speech in thatcritical debate by dismissing the naysayers’ defiance:“When I look back on the perils which have been overcome,upon the great mountain waves through whichthe gallant ship has driven, when I remember what hasgone wrong, and remember also what has gone right, Ifeel sure we have no need to feel the tempest. Let it roar,and let it rage. We shall come through.” 12Endnotes1. The Autobiography of Frances Lloyd George (London:Hutchinson, 1967), 264.2. Taylor, A.J.P., ed., The Letters of Lloyd George and FrancesStevenson: 1913-1941 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975), 241.3. Gilbert, Sir Martin, Churchill: A Life (London:BCA/Heinemann, 1992), 147.4. Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War, vol. 2, TheirFinest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 8.5. Duff Cooper, Alfred, Old Men Forget (London: RupertHart-Davis, 1953), 267. >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 38

CHURCHILL AND LLOYD GEORGE...6. Nicolson, Nigel, editor, Harold Nicolson, The War Years1939-1945, Diaries and Letters (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 35.7. Lysaght, Charles, Brendan Bracken (London: Allen Lane,1980), 179.8. Cross, Colin, editor, Life with Lloyd George: The Diary ofA.J. Sylvester (London: Macmillan, 1975), 281.WSC on Taxation9. Churchill, Winston S., The Unrelenting Struggle (London:Cassell, 1943), 120.10. Churchill, Winston S., Victory (London: Cassell, 1946), 89.11. Gilbert, Sir Martin, Winston S. Churchill vol. 6, FinestHour 1939-1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 1105.12. Churchill, Winston S., The Unrelenting Struggle, op. cit.,133. ,Wit &Wisdom“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GOOD TAX,”Churchill is alleged to have said. But did he say it?I am doing research for my assignment:Taxation, and various taxes used toraise money. Could you let me knowwhere Churchill says, “There is no suchthing as a good tax”? —NicoleThere is no occurrence of thatstatement, or any part of it, inChurchill’s 15 million publishedwords of speeches, articles,letters and books. However,there is one that is close:“Taxes are an evil—a necessary evil,but still an evil, and the fewer we haveof them the better.”—HOUSE OF COMMONS, 12 FEBRUARY 1906Churchill, who favored Free Trade,was here attacking protective tariffs. Headded: “...every arrangement betweenprotectionist States which takes theform of a reduction in the tariff barriersof the world is a distinct advantage.”Using the search feature on ourwebsite, enter the word “taxes,” and thiswill lead you to useful articles onChurchill’s views of taxation. Especiallyread the article “Opportunity Lost?” athttp://xrl.us/wsac.Churchill thought hard about taxation,and his early beliefs were largelyformed on the basis of Progress andPoverty, a book by the American economistHenry George. Following George’sideas, Churchill argued that peoplehave the right to possess what they produce,or receive in exchange for theirwork—but there is no congruent rightto private ownership of the elementsupon which all depend: air, water, sunshineand land.Henry George heldthat if private ownershipof basic elements ispermitted, suppression and exploitationof one class by another is inevitable.Churchill wanted to shift taxationfrom production to land. In 1909 hesaid: “You can tax wealth or you can taxwages—that is the whole choice....Taxationshould not only have regard to thevolume of wealth, but, so far as possible,to the character of the processes ofits origin.”Churchill believed in this tax becausehe observed the high prices eventhen demanded for commercial land.Such land, he said, was created not byany individual but by the existence andwork of the entire community.The article explains why the ideadid not work out. Henry George’s theoriesare little known today—but in hisearly career, they were central to WinstonChurchill’s thinking about taxation.Your writing about this will probablyastonish and impress your teacher.More Churchill on Taxes“The great principle which thisHouse ought to guard and cherish isthat, when the tax collector comes tothe private citizen and takes from himof his wealth for the service of the public,the whole of that money taken shallgo for the purposes for which it is intended,and that no private interests,however powerfully they may be organizedand however eloquently advocated,shall thrust their dirty fingers into thepie and take the profit for themselves.”—HOUSE OF COMMONS, 8 JUNE 1908FINEST HOUR 135 / 39“...the taxes on incomes over£3,000 a year, upon estates at death, onmotor cars before they cause death,upon tobacco, upon spirits, uponliquor licences, which really belong tothe State and ought never to have beenfilched away; and, above all, taxes uponthe unearned increment in land arenecessary, legitimate and fair; and thatwithout any evil consequences to therefinement or the richness of our nationallife, still less any injury to thesources of its economic productivity,they will yield revenue sufficient in thisyear and in the years to come to meetthe growing needs of Imperial defenceand of social reform.”—MANCHESTER, 23 MAY 1909“This refusal to treat all forms ofwealth with equal deference, no matterwhat may have been the process bywhich it was acquired, is a strenuous assertionin a practical form that thereought to be a constant relation betweenacquired wealth and useful service previouslyrendered, and that where noservice, but rather disservice, is proved,then, whenever possible, the Stateshould make a sensible difference in thetaxes it is bound to impose.”—NORWICH, 26 JULY 1909“The idea that a nation can tax itselfinto prosperity is one of the crudestdelusions which has ever fuddled thehuman mind.”—ROYAL ALBERT HALL, 21 APRIL 1948 ,

MYTH AND REALITYWhat Did ChurchillReally Think About the Jews?SOMEONE ELSE’S OPINIONS, IN AN UNPUBLISHED ARTICLE WHICH NEVER APPEARED INPRINT UNDER CHURCHILL’S NAME, CANNOT BE LAID AT CHURCHILL’S DOOR.BY SIR MARTIN GILBERT CBEIn a press release announcing a book by RichardToye on Churchill and Lloyd George, CambridgeUniversity Press put its main emphasis on the discoveryof a previously unknown article written byWinston Churchill in 1937, containing considerableanti-Semitic imagery.The 1937 article, “How the Jews Can CombatPersecution,” was “unearthed by Dr. Richard Toye, aCambridge University historian,” according to TheIndependent. “Written three years before Churchillbecame Prime Minister, the article has apparently lainunnoticed in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge sincethe early months of the Second World War.“Churchill criticised the ‘aloofness’ of Jewish peoplefrom wider society and urged them to make the effort tointegrate themselves....Churchill says: ‘The central factwhich dominates the relations of Jew and non-Jew is thatthe Jew is “different.” He looks different. He thinks differently.He has a different tradition and background.’ Hethen criticises Jewish moneylenders: ‘Every Jewish moneylenderrecalls Shylock and the idea of the Jews as usurers.And you cannot reasonably expect a struggling clerk orshopkeeper, paying 40 or 50 per cent interest on borrowedmoney to a “Hebrew Bloodsucker,” to reflect that almostevery other way of life was closed to the Jewish people.’”In fact, this article has not “lain unnoticed,” and notone word of it was written by Churchill. Nor did the articleever appear in print, either under his name or that ofany other. The article was written in its entirety by aBritish journalist, Adam Marshall Diston (1893-1956).Professor Gilbert is official biographer of Winston Churchill, aCC honorary member, and a contributor to Finest Hour. His book,Churchill and the Jews, was published in Britain in June by Simon andSchuster, and will be published in the USA by Holt in October.EDITOR’S NOTE: We trust that readers will appreciate thatthe painful quotations from this article are neither ours nor SirMartin Gilbert’s, but come from press reports and releases.Reflecting on his four decades as official biographer in FinestHour 65, Sir Martin said something we should never forget aboutChurchill: “I never felt that he was going to spring an unpleasant surpriseon me. I might find that he was adopting views with which Idisagreed. But I always knew that there would be nothing to cause meto think: ‘How shocking, how appalling.’” No. Never. RMLThis fact was unknown to Dr. Toye, in whose newbook on Churchill and Lloyd George the article appearsas if written by Churchill. After the press release, Ipointed out to Dr. Toye that not a single word of the articlewas by Churchill, and gave him Diston’s name. Hereplied: “Thank you for drawing my attention to what Ihadn’t been aware of about the article.”It is astonishing that a professional historian shouldnot be aware of the name of the actual author, a name thatfirst appeared in the relevant volume of the Churchillbiography, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V,Part 3, The Coming of War: Documents 1936-1939(London: Heinemann, 1982), page 670, which showedthat the article was written in full by Diston.Churchill, who was then writing on average an articlea week, paid Diston—a journalist, a member of SirOswald Mosley’s New Party in its pre-fascist days, and awould-be Labour Party parliamentary candidate in1935—to draft certain articles. Some of Diston’s otherdrafts were amended by Churchill and published with hisamendments; a few were published unamended.The article in question, “How the Jews CanCombat Persecution,” was however not published at all.This was fortunate, as it was offered for publication threetimes: twice in 1937, shortly after Diston wrote it, andonce in 1940. Some have claimed the act of offering it toa publisher means that Churchill approved of it—but thiswas not the way his articles were offered.In 1937, Churchill himself would not have offeredthe article personally. His private office did that, and wasalways most efficient. It is not clear that Churchill evenread either the original or the retyped Diston article:neither have any markings on them by him, whichsuggests that he had not, since other Diston drafts arecopiously red-penned.In 1940, the then-editor of his war speeches,Charles Eade, unearthed the article and suggested he publishit. But Churchill, alerted to its anti-Semitic overtonesby secretary Kathleen Hill, would not permit publication.Someone else’s opinions, in an unpublished article,which never appeared in print under Churchill’s name,cannot be laid at Churchill’s door.FINEST HOUR 135 / 40

What were Churchill’s actual views on the Jews?In 1982 I published Churchill’s written instructionsto Marshall Diston on what the articleshould cover. Churchill wrote: “Obviouslythere are four things. The first is to be a goodcitizen of the country to which he belongs. The second isto avoid too exclusive an association in ordinary mattersof business and daily life, and to mingle as much as possiblewith non-Jews everywhere, apart from race and religion.The third is to keep the Jewish movement free fromCommunism. The fourth is a perfectly legitimate use bythe Jews of their influence throughout the world to bringpressure, economic and financial, to bear upon theGovernments which persecute them.”*Churchill had always urged the Jews to be good citizens,while retaining their faith and culture. His advice tohis Manchester Jewish constituents in 1907 was: “Be goodJews.” He explained that he did not believe a Jew could be“a good Englishmen unless he is a good Jew.”A year later, at the first public meeting he attendedwith his wife Clementine, a few weeks after their marriage,he told those gathered to open a new wing of theManchester Jewish Hospital that he was “very glad to havethe experience of watching the life and work of the Jewishcommunity in England; there was a high sense of the corporateresponsibility in the community; there was a greatsense of duty that was fostered on every possible occasionby their leaders.”Avoiding “too exclusive” an all-Jewish associationwas another consistent theme. Churchill welcomed Jewsas part of the wider British community, and was impressedby how many accepted that challenge. His friendRufus Isaacs became (as Lord Reading) both Viceroy ofIndia and Foreign Secretary. But he was worried whenLloyd George wanted to include three Jewish CabinetMinisters among the seven Liberals in his 1918 administration,writing to the Prime Minister: “There is a pointabout Jews which occurs to me—you must not have toomany of them. Three Jews among only seven LiberalCabinet Ministers might I fear give rise to comment.”Keeping “the Jewish movement” free ofCommunism was another consistent theme. The prominenceof individual Jews in senior positions in theCommunist revolutions in Russia, Bavaria and Hungaryhad alarmed Churchill since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.Writing about this in 1920 he urged the Jews toabandon Communism, and either enter into the nationallife of their own countries, as in Britain—“while adheringfaithfully to their own religion”—or opt for Zionism.* Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V, Part3, The Coming of War: Documents 1936-1939, London: Heinemann,1982; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983, 654. See also Gilbert’s noteson the Diston draft of “King George VI,” page 519.Churchill regarded Zionism as “a very great ideal,”writing in 1920: “If as may well happen, there should becreated in our own lifetime by the banks of the Jordan aJewish State under the protection of the British Crown,which might comprise three or four millions of Jews, anevent would have occurred in the history of the worldwhich would, from every point of view, be beneficial.”Churchill’s 1922 White Paper established that theJews were in Palestine “of right, and not on sufferance.”During the Second World War he suggested appointingthe Zionist leader, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, as British HighCommissioner for Palestine (in 1910, as Home Secretary,Churchill had signed Weizmann’s naturalization papers).Fighting persecution was also Churchill’s consistentadvice to the Jews, at a time when he himself was beingabused by Nazi newspapers in Germany for his outspokencriticism of Nazi racial policy. Some of his most powerfulwords in the House of Commons after Hitler came topower were denunciations of the cruelty of Nazi anti-Semitic policies.Anti-Semitism was anathema to Churchill. In aletter to his mother he described the French anti-Semiticcampaign against Dreyfus as “a monstrous conspiracy.”His main criticism of the Conservative Government’sAliens Bill in 1904 was that the proposed immigrationcontrols could be abused by an “anti-Semitic HomeSecretary.”When, in the House of Commons in 1921,Churchill spoke in favour of Jewish land purchase inPalestine, a fellow Member of Parliament warned himthat, as a result of his advocacy, he would find himself up“against the hereditary antipathy which exists all over theworld to the Jewish race.” This was indeed so: in 1940 asenior Conservative gave as one reason for Churchill’sunsuitability to be Prime Minister his “pro-Zionist”stance in Cabinet, protesting against the Chamberlaingovernment’s restrictions on Jewish land purchase.During the Second World War, Churchill suggestedthe removal of “anti-Semitic officers” from high positionsin the Middle East. This led one of those officers, hisfriend General Sir Edward Spears, a Liberal MP, to warnthis writer that “Churchill was too fond of Jews.”Following the King David Hotel Jewish terroristbombing in 1946, at a time of strong anti-Jewish feelingin Britain, Churchill told the House of Commons: “I amagainst preventing Jews from doing anything which otherpeople are allowed to do. I am against that, and I have thestrongest abhorrence of the idea of anti-Semitic lines ofprejudice.”These were Churchill’s consistent, and persistentbeliefs. As he remarked when his criticisms of Jewishterrorism in Palestine were being discussed: “The Jewishpeople know well enough that I am their friend.”This was indeed so. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 41

Churchill and the Tank (1):Present at the CreationBY DAVID FLETCHER“In the first place the Commission desire to record their view that it was primarily dueto the receptivity, courage and driving force of the Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer Churchillthat the general idea of the use of such an instrument of warfare as the ‘Tank’ was convertedinto a practical shape. Mr. Winston Churchill has very properly taken the viewthat all his thought and time belonged to the State and that he was not entitledto make any claim for an award, even had he wished to do so. But it seems properthat the above view should be recorded by way of tribute to Mr. Winston Churchill.”—Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors, in summing up claims in respect of “Invention of Tanks”“MOTHER”: Members of the Landships Committee and its designers with “Mother,” the first rhomboid-shaped tank,during an early demonstration at Burton Park, Lincoln in 1916. Winston Churchill was not present on this occasion.The Inspiration/Perspiration Ratio is well knownwhere inventions are concerned, and it shouldbe recognised that Churchill’s contributionfalls directly into the former category—buteven then it did not spring from nowhere. Hisduties to the Fleet and the Royal Naval Air Servicenotwithstanding, the First Lord of the Admiralty wasalways looking for an opportunity to gain a toehold in awar zone.It came sooner than he thought when that piraticalMr. Fletcher is author of War Cars (1987) and The British Tank 1915-1919 (2001). Photographs were supplied by the author by kind courtesyof the Tank Museum Collection, Bovington Camp, Dorset.RNAS officer, Charles Rumney Samson (who in earliertimes was one of those who taught Churchill to fly),took his squadron to Dunkirk in 1914. Within weeks,whenever the weather prevented flying, these men weretearing around Flanders in home-made armoured cars,shooting up the German cavalry and having the time oftheir lives. Grasping the opportunity, Churchill encouragedexpansion of this armoured car force with newlymade vehicles from Britain and before long anyone witha sense of adventure was anxious to join in; among themthe legendary “Bendor,” the Duke of Westminster.But it didn’t last, and couldn’t last. Trenchesappeared, often dug across the roads: barbed wire likewise.Shell fire began to turn the ground into a quagmireFINEST HOUR 135 / 42

and the movement of armoured cars was restricted. Afterall, even the best of them were no more than conventionalcars with about four tons of armour bolted on,even if many were Rolls-Royces. Most were handed overto the Army while the men dispersed. Some went backto sea. The Duke took his armoured cars to Egypt butothers, fired up with the potential of armoured warfareon land, returned to London and thought up new ideas.Among them was a chap named TomHetherington, who somehow managed to retain commissionsin the Army and the Navy at the same time.He dreamed up the idea of a huge machine, somethingone might associate with H. G. Wells, which would rollinto Germany on 40-foot-diameter wheels, wade acrossthe Rhine and bring the war to an end in weeks.Hetherington and Churchill came together at adinner, hosted by Westminster, and there is little doubtthat the young officer’s impossible design reignited theFirst Lord’s interest. Churchill himself was, above all, arealist, who dealt best with what he could see and understand.Commodore Murray Sueter, Director of the AirDepartment at the Admiralty, remembers Churchillstorming around his office saying, “We must crush thetrenches, D.A.D.: It is the only way; it must be done.” 1Churchill’s first effort along these lines wasabortive. Two municipal steam rollers were acquired,linked up side by side and then driven like mad at atrench parapet, only to get stuck in the soft mud and sitthere, belching smoke, rollers spinning, going nowhere.On a more practical level the First Lord ordainedan Admiralty Landships Committee, 2 which met (forthe first time in the First Lord’s rooms at the Admiraltysince he had the flu) under the chairmanship of EustaceTennyson D’Eyncourt, Director of Naval Construction,in February 1915. This committee, and the driving forcebehind it, was Churchill’s greatest contribution to theevolution of the tank.The Landships Committee’s first problem was todecide upon the respective merits of wheels orCaterpillar tracks. Hetherington’s huge wheeled designwas simply too big, and even a half-scale version,designed by William Foster and Company in Lincoln,was rejected at an early stage. That left tracks. Buttracks, as a means of crossing rough ground, were hardlyknown in Britain and early prototypes mostly had to beimported from the USA. Murray Sueter educatedChurchill on the properties of tracks by inviting himdown to Horse Guards to push a small tracked truckaround. Soon the Landships Committee had experimentsgoing on everywhere and Churchill attended onewith Lloyd George, as the following article notes, at atesting ground near Wormwood Scrubs.Even so, Churchill was better with men thanmachines. and his last great contribution to this saga wasto appoint a pushy young merchant banker, one AlbertStern, as secretary to D’Eyncourt’s Committee.Commissioned as a Lieutenant in the RNAS, Stern wentat it like mad, with no respect for rank or station. Sterndidn’t tread on toes—he leapt on them, and managed tomake himself very unpopular. But he got things done. Aprototype machine, first known as “Little Willie,” wasrunning by the summer of 1915. Its successor—“BigWillie” or “Mother”—the true prototype of all BritishWorld War I tanks—was completed the followingDecember and a matter of months later, productionbegan. As Marcus Frost relates next, tanks went intoaction for the first time on 15 September 1916. In thecircumstances, it was an amazing feat to imagine, invent,design and produce a brand new weapons system in soshort a time.Churchill, by then, was out of the picture.Reaction to the Dardanelles reverse, his resignation fromthe government and subsequent return to uniform, kepthim away from developments in Britain. Yet it did notleave his mind, and from the trenches he sent Sir JohnFrench a document entitled “Variants of the Offensive,” 3which proved to be very influential. It was not simply aplea for the tank, but a broad-based look at the prob- >>ORIGINS: Tommy Hetherington, above, drives the Killen-Straittractor through barbed wire entanglements at WormwoodScrubs. Albert Stern strides at left; Lloyd George and Churchill,though present, are not in the photo. A Pedrail one-ton truck,below, of the type Churchill pushed around on Horse GuardsParade as an example of a track-laying vehicle.FINEST HOUR 135 / 43

CHURCHILL AND THE TANK (1)...lem and various solutions. Try something, try anything!was its basic cry. Even so, Churchill devoted a good dealof the manuscript to “Caterpillars,” as most peoplecalled them at the time. In the document he revealed toFrench that such machines were already being built inBritain and would soon be ready for service—jumpingthe gun a bit since Fosters of Lincoln were still playingaround with the prototype.What makes this appeal interesting is the fact thatChurchill, now that he was an Army officer, was solicitingthe Commander-in-Chief’s support. Months earlierhe got very upset when one of the Landships Committeerevealed the project to General Smith-Dorrien since, atthat time, the First Lord wished his Landships to be anaval responsibility.Douglas Haig saw Churchill’s paper when hereplaced Lord French as commander of the BritishExpeditionary Force in December 1915. A far moreresponsive officer, despite his undeserved reputation asan unimaginative “blunderer and butcher,” Haig sentone of his officers to see Churchill and then proceededto England to witness a prototype demonstration. Thisofficer, Colonel Hugh Elles, Royal Engineers, would takecommand of the Tank Corps for the duration of the warChurchill missed the first demonstration of a tank,which took place in the grounds of Hatfield Park,Hertfordshire at the end of January 1916; he was inFrance. He also missed the second demonstration onFebruary 2nd, which was laid on especially for theMinister of War, Lord Kitchener, but at least Churchillwas spared hearing Kitchener refer disparagingly to a“pretty mechanical toy” as he strode off, halfway throughthe performance.Churchill returned to the government fold inthe summer of 1917, as Minister of Munitionsunder Lloyd George. By this time the tankprogramme was in full swing and there was noneed for him to become involved. In any casethere was more than enough to do; the supply of steelalone was getting beyond the critical state and, with theUnited States as the main source, there was conflict withthe French.That first tank attack was not a great success, butat least it was sufficient to convince Field Marshal Haigof the tank’s efficacy and cause him to order 1000 more.Basking in a certain amount of reflected glory, Churchillwrote a paper on “The Greater Application ofMechanical Power to the Prosecution of an Offensive onLand,” at the behest of the Prime Minister, for theCommittee of Imperial Defence and the War Cabinet.As Mr. Frost explains, 1917 was a bad year fortanks, notably during the summer offensive when theyoften floundered in the Flanders mud. Thus it is interestingto note that in a memo to the War Cabinet on themunitions programme for 1918, written in October1917, Churchill places tanks fifth in a list of six desirablefactors, with artillery at the top and even transportation(road and rail) above tanks. The irony is that just amonth later, on 20 November 1917 at Cambrai, thetanks turned in a performance that changed virtuallyevery mind.Not that it was all plain sailing at home. In hisnew position, Churchill came under increasing pressure,particularly from senior officers, to get rid of Stern, whohad trodden on far too many toes. In an acrimoniousinterview in August 1917, a transcript of which has survived,Churchill gave Stern the dressing down of his life.Stern stood accused of wasting public money on uselesstanks, of failing to anticipate future requirements andtechnical developments and failing to create an experimentaldepartment to work on new tanks.None of this really stands up to close investigation,but Churchill’s anger matched the mood of the time andit was enough to see Stern kicked out of his post, albeitwith the promise of a knighthood and a new position aschairman of an Anglo-American tank committee.Churchill’s demand for an experimental departmentseems to have sparked new thoughts and, about a monthlater, in a paper entitled “Special Tanks,” he suggestedamphibious and mine-clearing tanks. This revealsremarkable prescience, and work on such projects wasactually in progress when the war came to an end. Itcame into its own twenty-seven years later when adaptedtanks, referred to as “specialised armour,” cleared theway off the Normandy beaches.Tanks made a major contribution to British successin the Great War, more than justifying WinstonChurchill’s initial leap of faith. Yet that was not the endof Churchill’s association with tanks. As Chancellor ofthe Exchequer in the interwar years, Churchill made apoint of being photographed at significant demonstrationsand, of course, his involvement in World War IIresulted in the famous Churchill Tank; but that is anotherstory.Endnotes1. Broad, Lewis, Winston Churchill (London: Hutchinson,1941), 163.2. Churchill, Winston, The World Crisis, vol. 2, 1915(London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), 77.3. Ibid., 86.4. Churchill, Winston, The World Crisis, vol. 3, part II, 1916-1918 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927), 302.See also Glanfield, John, The Devil’s Chariots (London: SuttonPublishing, 2001); Fletcher, David, War Cars (London: HMSO,1987; and The British Tank 1915-1919 (London: Crowood Press2001). ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 44

Churchill and the Tank (2):In for the DurationBY MARCUS FROSTBy 1915, the bloodbath of World War I seemed endless. The Central Powers,Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, were pitted against Britain,France, Italy and Russia, and the slaughter among their soldierswas intense. The battle lines were frozen on everyfront and no advances were being made bypressing chests against bullets.But Winston Churchill had an idea.BRITISH TRIBUTE TO A WORLD WAR I ALLY: A British Mark IV tank at Caterpillar, Inc. in Peoria, Illinois, presented “in appreciationof the great service rendered Great Britain by the Holt Manufacturing Company during the war.” (Caterpillar, Inc.)In these solemn days we mourn every life lost inbattle, but perhaps we have lost sight of what itwas like for our forbears. Ninety years ago in theage of static trench warfare, men were moweddown by machine guns if they rose from theirparapets and tried to advance. Each side pummeled theother with deadly artillery fire; shrapnel shredded bodieson both sides. In the battles of Verdun and the Sommebetween July and November 1916, almost a million werekilled, an average of 6600 per day, 277 per hour, five perMr. Frost, of Mexia, Texas, is a Churchill Centre Governor, Trusteeand Associate (the only individual who is all three). He is active inboth our Dallas and San Antonio affiliates, and sponsored the recentteacher seminar in March at Baylor University.minute. By war’s end Germany and Russia would lose1.75 million men each, France and Austria-Hungaryabout 1.4 million each, Britain 750,000, Italy 615,000. 1A 42-year-old doctor, John M. McCrae of the RoyalCanadian Army Medical Corps, wrote the most frequentlyquoted English-language poems of the war afterdays of being surrounded by the human wreckage:In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below. 2Could anything be done to stop the death and carnage?In London, Prime Minister Herbert Asquithreceived a suggestion from a colleague: “It would be >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 45

CHURCHILL AND THE TANK (2)...quite easy in a short time to fit up a number of steamtractors with small armoured shelters, in which men andmachine guns could be placed, which would be bulletproof.Used at night, they would not be affected byartillery fire to any extent. The caterpillar system wouldenable trenches to be crossed quite easily, and the weightof the machine would destroy all barbed-wire entanglements.”3The writer was Winston Churchill. His lettermarked the first step toward the practical evolution ofthe tank in World War I.The caterpillar track was invented in 1770 byRichard Edgeworth, an Englishman. During theCrimean War (1853-56) his countryman, James Boydell,constructed a few steam-powered tractors based on thisdesign, which unfortunately were not ready in time forthe Crimea, though there were plans to use them. Thedevelopment of the tank remained dormant until thearrival of the internal combustion engine, first developedin Germany by Gottlieb Daimler in 1885. 4In 1904, Benjamin Holt of Stockton, California,became convinced that a steam traction engine withextended wheels was not practical in farming. Holt hadbegun to develop and produce steam-powered wheeltypetractors in the mid 1880s. He had turned to thepossibility of using a track to replace the wheels becauseof its superior weight-bearing surface. Holt had gone toEngland in 1903 to investigate developments in crawlertractors. He had also sent some of his own companyofficials to view a track-laying design by Alvin O.Lombard of Waterville, Maine, who had developed atracked log hauler on skids for use in the winter. Aftergathering as much information as possible, Holt beganto perfect his own design on track-laying tractors. 5On Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 1904, Holtsuccessfully tested his first track-type tractor close to theStockton site of Holt Manufacturing Company. The testtractor had a refitted steam traction engine. The wheelshad been replaced with two track frames 30 inches high,42 inches wide and nine feet long. The tracks fitted toeach frame were constructed of 3x4-inch wooden slats.This first crawler was able to operate on ground too softfor men and horses, because of its greater weight bearingsurface area. After numerous tests, regular productionmodels of the Holt track-layer were introduced in 1906,priced at $5500 each. 6Although successful in bearing weight in softground, these early track layers were cumbersome andexpensive to operate, and depended on horses to bringwater and fuel to feed the boilers and fire boxes. In 1908Holt brought out a gasoline-powered crawler which inmotion had the appearance of a caterpillar. The famousCaterpillar trademark was born through Holt’s efforts. 7Across the Atlantic in 1901, British inventorFrederick Simms had produceda design of what hecalled a motor-war car,with a Daimler engine, abulletproof shell and twomaxim guns on revolvingturrets. The British WarOffice rejected Simm’sdesign and showed nointerest in similarschemes.By the outbreak ofthe First World War, aWisconsin company producedthe Killen-StraitArmoured Tractor. Itstracks consisted of a continuousseries of steellinks, joined together withsteel pins. In June 1915 aKillen-Strait with a Britisharmored car body plonkedon top was tested at Wormwood Scrubs before WinstonChurchill and David Lloyd George, who watched it cutthrough barbed wire entanglements. (See photo, previousarticle.) Churchill had just fallen from power, havingbeen relieved as First Lord of the Admiralty on 28 Mayover the Dardanelles operation. It is possible that theDardanelles, itself conceived as an alternative to trenchwarfare, weighed on Churchill’s mind as he observedanother possible solution to the slaughter in Europe. 8Holt’s Caterpillar tractor had by then becomefamous among both warring sides for its design andworkability, and a Holt Agency had been established inAustria by a Hungarian, Leo Steiner. In 1912 theAustrian military was attracted to Holt’s design when itproved superior in hauling heavy artillery. In 1913Steiner was ordered to procure as many Holt tractors aspossible but when war broke out with England in 1914,the pro-British Holt refused to fill the orders. 9When the British military became interested in thepossibilities of crawler traction on the battlefield, theytoo turned to Holt. As early as September 1914, Holtengineers were sent to England, while the British WarDepartment sent an officer to Holt’s newly opened EastPeoria, Illinois factory. One Briton greatly influenced byHolt’s Caterpillar was Col. Ernest Swinton, who had theidea to build an armed and armored machine gundestroyer. 10 With the help of Col. Maurice Hankey,then Secretary of the War Cabinet, Churchill at theAdmiralty was persuaded to set up a “Landships Committee”to look at the possibilities of building a new warmachine. 11 (Refer to David Fletcher’s preceding article.)The Admiralty Landships Committee ultimately commissionedLt. W.G. Wilson of the Naval Air Service andPROGENITOR: A Talbot armored carof the Royal Naval Air Service onstandby during Churchill’s visit toOstend in 1914 (Tank Museum)FINEST HOUR 135 / 46

William Tritton of William Foster & Co. Ltd. ofLincoln to produce a small “landship.” Built in secrecy,the machine was given the code-name and referred to asa “water tank for Mesopotamia”—partly because of itsappearance, partly to keep its true nature secret. Thusthe name “tank.” 12Holt did not build tanks for Britain; those eventuallyproduced were of British production. But it was theHolt design and track laying caterpillar system, accordingto Swinton, that sparked the development of Britishtanks. 13On 20 January 1916 the first British tank began itstrials. More than a year earlier, Churchill had encouragedthe inventors and technical experts to work out aneffective design; when the War Office showed no interest,Churchill had found Admiralty money to fund theexperiments. He had also encouraged those whobelieved, as he did, that the tank could effectively endtrench warfare, substantially lessening the casualties inFrance and Flanders. 14Tanks were used for the first time in battle on theSomme, where a dramatic turn in the Entente (Allied)fortunes took place on 15 September 1916. Forty-ninetanks took part in the attack, moving forward on a widefront. Ten were hit by German artillery fire, nine brokedown with mechanical difficulties, and five failed toadvance. The rest advanced more than 2000 yards, capturingthe long-sought High-Wood, and three villages,Flers, Martinpuich, and Courcelette. But a disappointedChurchill wrote to Admiral Fisher, both of them nowout of power: “My poor ‘land battleships’ have been letoff prematurely and on a petty scale. In that idea residedone real victory.” 15Churchill had wanted to produce tanks in largenumbers, and only deploy them when as many as 1000were available. Recognizing the potential of the newweapon, British Commander General Haig asked theWar Office for a thousand. The Germans, fortunately,were far behind in their own tank experiments.As the tanks helped the British advance, RaymondAsquith, the Prime Minister’s son, was shot through thechest and died. Also wounded that day was the futurePrime Minister Harold Macmillan, who lived out his lifewith bullet fragments embedded in his pelvis, whichgave him a “shuffling walk.” During the day he waswounded, Macmillan recalled seeing a tank, one of“these strange objects,” bogged down in a shell-hole. 16The tank quickly proved its worth, even in smallnumbers. Eleven days after its first use, an attack by thirteentanks captured the village of Thiepval, which hadheld out since the first day of the Somme offensive. Thatsame day, Combles fell to an infantry attack supportedby two tanks, while at Gueudecourt, where tanks wereassisted by air reconnaissance, 500 Germans were takenprisoner with only five British casualties.The new invention was not without its problems.In muddy conditions tanks becamestuck and almost completely useless.Deployment methods and tank use in themilitary arts had not evolved very far, and to use them inthe wrong way would actually hinder a battle. TheFrench used tanks for the first time on 17 April 1917,when Gen. Nivelle planned to advance six miles usingtwenty divisions along a 25-mile front along the riverAisne. The attack was a disaster; his men halted afteronly six hundred yards. Expecting 15,000 casualties,Nivelle wound up with 100,000. Of the 128 tanks usedin the battle, thirty-two were knocked out on the firstday. Two villages in the battle zone, Nauroy andMoronvillers were totally destroyed. 17Far to the south and east in Palestine, meanwhile,the British launched their second attempt to captureGaza. Despite eight tanks, the use of gas shells, and atwo-to-one troop preponderance, this attack was a failure,but Gaza fell to Allenby’s troops on 1 November1917, the tanks doing everything that was expected ofthem despite harsh desert conditions.By mid-May 1917, Haig’s troops had made greateradvances than at any time since the start of trench warfaretwo and a half years earlier: 61 square miles ofGerman-held territory, over 20,000 prisoners of war, and252 heavy guns were taken in just over a month. Thetank had become an integral part of British infantry, andthe results were telling. The first German tank trial washeld only that month, on 14 May at Mainz, two daysbefore the renewed Battle of Arras ended. The Germanshad finally learned to appreciate this new weapon.On 10 August 1917, the British renewed the Ypresoffensive, but the advance was impeded four days laterby heavy rain. On the 16th the village of Langemarckwas taken, but a German counter-attack recovered muchof the gains. The initiative lay, however, with the British,who were helped in capturing the fortified German pillboxesby the use of tanks, and also by a ferocious Frenchdiversionary attack on the German lines at Verdun,when more than 5,000 Germans were taken prisoner.On 23 October along the Aisne, the Frenchlaunched a limited but sustained attack on German positionsdefending the Chemin des Dames, assisted byeighty French tanks. They advanced two miles across thepulverized terrain, taking 10,000 prisoners and deprivingthe enemy of an important observation point at Laffaux.Among the places captured by the French was the Fort dela Malmaison, a former fortress which had been soldbefore the war to a private builder, for use as a stonequarry. Known as the Battle of the Quarries, the victorywas what one historian has called “neat and compact andsatisfying as a gift package; indeed a gift to cheer a tiredand discouraged country.” The Germans, unwilling to >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 47

CHURCHILL AND THE TANK (2)...face a protracted battle (and also because of the presenceof the tanks), withdrew from the Chemin des Dames to alower position two miles farther north. 18The British launched their third 1917 offensive on20 November, aimed at Cambrai and beyond. A quarterof a million British troops faced similar numbers ofGermans along a six-mile front. Here for the first timein the history of warfare, the main thrust of the attackwas carried out by tanks: 324 took part in the openingattack. Their appearance in such numbers was effective.They crashed through barbed wire defenses and withinhours had made a break in the German line. “The triplebelts of wire were crossed—as if they had been beds ofnettles,” Captain D.G. Browne recalled, “and 350 pathwayswere sheared through them for the infantry. Thedefenders of the front trench, scrambling out of dugoutsand shelters to meet the crash and flame of the barrage,saw the leading tanks almost upon them.” Theappearance of these metallic creatures, wrote Browne,was “grotesque and terrifying.” The initial success wassomewhat dampened because of a design flaw wherebythe tank tracks broke down after a short time in action.But the first day at Cambrai marked a decisive successfor the new device to breach the enemy front line. TheGerman defences had been broken, five miles gained,and more than 4000 soldiers taken prisoner. The Britishnewspapers trumpeted: “Greatest British Victory of theWar....A Surprise for the Germans.” 19On 5 March 1918 Churchill, now Minister ofMunitions, assured Lloyd George that he would produce4000 tanks by April 1919. Victory, WSC said, couldonly be certain when Britain and France had strongerand better armies than Germany: “That is the foundationon which everything rests, and there is no reasonwhy we should not have it in 1919.” 20The first tank-to-tank battle between German andBritish machines was on 24 April 1918 on the WesternFront. German troops, assisted by thirteen tanks, tookVillers-Bretonneux; a British heavy tank knocked out itsfirst adversary, but the others turned and fled. SevenBritish tanks pushed forward into the German infantrypositions “and did great execution,” General Rawlinsonnoted in his diary. “They claim 400 killed at least.”On the Western Front, the French were seeking toreverse the German victories of early 1918. On 30 June,south of Ambleny, the French attacked with a new typeof 5 1/2-ton tank, adopting the earlier German tactic ofadvancing rapidly to their objective on one flank beforeturning back to capture the troops in the center. Onlythen did they search for German soldiers hiding in caves,taking a thousand prisoners.A million American troops and military personnelwere in France by the beginning of July 1918, but themonth before the influenza that had begun in India andBritain reached the Western Front. Over 62,000Americans were to die of influenza in France against48,909 from enemy action. 21German attacks continued along the WesternFront. On 17 July, when the Germans reached Nanteuil-Pourcy, Italian troops drove them off. The atmosphere atGerman headquarters was very different from the confidencethey had held back in March. “Fairly depressedmood,” noted Col. Mertz von Quirnheim of theOperations section, and he added: “Difficult question—what is to happen from now on?” The answer came fromthe Allied side on the following day, 18 July, when thesupreme Allied commander, Marshal Foch, launched acounter-attack along a 27-mile front. More than 200tanks took part in the offensive. The German line gaveway, driven in to a depth of 4 1/2 miles. Twenty thousandGerman prisoners and 400 heavy guns were captured.Jaulgonne, where the Germans had crossed theMarne six weeks earlier, was retaken by the Americans,who with the French began a northward march toFereen-Tardenois.On 10 August, Churchill told Lloyd George thatthe Tank Corps would need 100,000 men by June 1919.Allied plans for the coming year were gaining momentum.A tank factory had already been built atChateauroux, France. Churchill, representing Britain onthe Inter-Allied Munitions Council, likened the activitysurrounding the production of war munitions to that ofbees: “At the Ministry of Munitions we were the bees ofHell, and we stored our hives with the pure essence ofslaughter. It astonishes me to read in these after years thediabolical schemes for killing men on a vast scale bymachinery or chemistry to which we passionately devotedourselves.” 22By August 1918 the tide of the war was turning infavor of the Allies. German morale was low, the Kaiserin a state of deep depression, as the Allies advanced fartherand faster with the help of the tank. Gen. Haig hadalready pictured in his mind how he wished to fight theremainder of the war. On 10 September 1918 he askedthe War Office in London for mounted men, and allforms of munitions designed to increase mobility, for a“war of movement.” The tank would certainly beinvolved in this type of warfare. 23The Great War came to an end with a suddenGerman collapse, ending with an armistice, on theeleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventhmonth, 1918. The tank had firmly established itself as anecessary weapon for use in modern warfare. From theinvention of the tracked steam tractor by Benjamin Holtto Colonel Swinton’s idea of placing an armored, bulletproofcab with machine guns on a track-type tractor, thetank was developed into a formidable fighting machinethat saved lives and helped armies to advance intoenemy lines. 24 Its development had drastically changedFINEST HOUR 135 / 48

methods of battle byeliminating deadlytrench warfare.After the war,museums were openedand relics ofArmageddon becamepart of many monuments.In England, in1924, a Tank Museumwas established atBovington, Dorset atwhich the very firsttank, known variouslyto the troops as “BigWillie,” “His Majesty’sLandship Centipede”and “Mother,” was ondisplay. Alas in 1940,when the call went outfor scrap metal to feedthe munitions factories,“Big Willie” wassent to the scrap heap,to become a part ofshells and shrapnel of a new war. 25Unfortunately also, tank tactics and design in theinterwar years gradually became the preoccupation of theGermans—with disastrous results for the French in thedebacle of May 1940. Churchill saw this coming too. In1936 he sadly exclaimed in Parliament:CELEBRANTS: Maj. Gen. Ernest Swintonsalutes Benjamin Holt on the factorygrounds at Stockton, California, 18 April1918. A mock baby tank (right), powered bya motorcycle engine had been built for theoccasion, attended by 2500 cheering Holtemployees. (Caterpillar Inc.)The tank was a British invention. This idea, which hasrevolutionized the conditions of modern war, was a Britishidea forced on the War Office by outsiders. Let me saythey would have just as hard work today to force a newidea on it. I speak from what I know. During the war wehad almost a monopoly, let alone the leadership, in tankwarfare, and for several years afterwards we held the foremostplace. To England all eyes were turned. All that hasgone now. Nothing has been done in “the years that thelocust hath eaten” to equip the tank Corps with new machines.26On 22 April 1918, Ernest Swinton, now a general,journeyed to the United States, to thank Benjamin Holtand the employees of his California plant for their contributions.The people of Stockton held a huge parade inhonor of his visit. Though usually referred to as the“father of the tank,” Swinton remarked that “it was the‘Caterpillar’ track-type tractor” which inspired his ideaand helped change the course of the war. 27 He wouldnever have achieved his goal had it not been for thevision and drive of Winston Churchill. Defending thetank as a weapon that saved rather than squanderedlives, Churchill deplored the disarmament conventionsthat declared tanks offensive weapons:The tank was invented to overcome the fire of the machine-gunswith which the Germans were maintainingthemselves in France, and it saved a lot of lives in theprocess of eventually clearing the soil of the invader. Now,apparently, the machine-gun, which was the Germanweapon for holding on to thirteen provinces of France, isto be the virtuous, defensive machine-gun, and the tank,which was the means by which these lives were saved, isto be placed under the censure and obloquy of all justand righteous men. 28 Endnotes1. Gilbert, Martin, The First World War (New York: HenryHolt & Co., 1994), 541. References to specific tank engagements arefrom this outstanding work by Churchill’s official biographer.2. McRae, John Lt. Col., “In Flanders Fields,” first publishedin Punch, London, 7 December 1915. Written on 3 May 1915, theday after McRae witnessed the gruesome death of his friend Lt.Alexis Helmer. The full poem is in Finest Hour 121:6.3. Gilbert, op. cit., 124.4. Erickson, Erling A., “Origins of the Cat” in Benjamin Holt,The Story of the Caterpillar Tractor (Stockton, Calif.: University of thePacific, 1982), 33-34.5. Ibid., 35-36.6. Ibid., 37.7. Orlemann, Eric C., The Caterpillar Century (St. Paul, Minn.:MBI Publishing Co., 2003), 14-15. Letourneau, P.A. (ed.), HoltTractors Photo Archive (Minneapolis, Minn.: Iconografix, 1993), 9.8. Tank Development, National Archives Learning Curve.www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWtank development.htm9. Caterpillar, Inc., The Caterpillar Story (Peoria, Ill.:Caterpillar Inc., 1984), 24.10. Ibid., 25.11. Tank Development, op. ct.12. Caterpillar, Inc., op. cit., 25.13. Humphreys, Leonard A., “Caterpillar Goes to War,” inBenjamin Holt, op. cit., 70-71.14. Gilbert, op. cit., 229-30.15. Ibid., 286.16. Ibid., 286.17. Ibid., 320-23.18. Ibid., 331-69.19. Ibid., 379.20. Ibid., 402.21. Ibid., 418-37.22. Ibid., 442-52.23. Ibid., 457.24. Caterpillar, Inc., op. cit., 25.25. Gilbert, op. cit., 533.26. Churchill, Winston S., Arms and the Covenant (London:Harrap, 1938), 379. Speech of 12 November 1936.27. Caterpillar, Inc., op. cit., 24.28. Churchill, op. cit., 22. Speech of 13 May 1932.The author acknowledges with appreciation the importantinformation in “Benjamin Holt & Caterpillar: Tracks & Combines,”American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1984, supplied byHoward D. Hicks, Vice President Marketing, Holt Cat Inc., SanAntonio, Texas. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 49

The Queen andMr. ChurchillWhen Churchill, still Prime Minister and nearingthe age of eighty, looked upon theQueen’s picture in a newspaper, he murmured“The country is so lucky.” Exactly so; weshould be less shy of acknowledging the fact.BY DAVID DILKSIN my innocence I had not realized how pervasiveis the influence of the Royal Society of St. George;for I see on the wall before me the portrait of theQueen early in her reign by Denis Fildes, andbehind me a study of the elderly Churchill byEgerton Cooper. Thus I find myself in the positiondescribed by A.E. Housman, who is said to haveremarked just before his translation from the Universityof London to Trinity College: “Cambridge has seenmany strange sights. It has seen Wordsworth drunk andPorson sober. It is now destined to see a better scholarthan Worsdworth and a better poet than Porson, betwixtand between.” 1To speak to you about the Queen and Mr.Churchill (as he still was when she came to the throne)is to dwell simultaneously upon several planes. There isthe personal relationship between a monarch comingunexpectedly to the throne in her mid-twenties and aPrime Minister of vast age and experience, less tempestuousand mercurial than he had once been. Then there isa much longer perspective, for as Churchill liked torecall, he had many a time enjoyed drinking the healthof the Queen’s great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria,when he was a young officer, determined to live as nearas humanly possible to the eye of the storm and then towrite about his experiences.Beyond that lay something ancestral and subconscious,for Churchill was an historian in more sensesthan one. He had made history, and written a great dealThe recent visit of the Queen to America, and subsequent gratuitousreferences to the quaintness of monarchy by the U.S. media, promptpublication of this address to the Royal Society of St. George, City ofLondon Branch, 6 February 2007. Professor Dilks is the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Hull, author of The Great Dominion:Winston Churchill in Canada 1900-1954 (reviewed FH 129), and thebiographer of Neville Chamberlain. He memorialized Bill Deakin inFinest Hour 131. We are honored to publish such fine writing. —Ed.^ ENCHANTMENT: Churchill’s favourite photograph of theQueen. Colville recalled him staring at the picture, musing:“Lovely, inspiring. All the film people in the world, if they hadscoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited tothe part.” (Photograph by Charles Dawson, time Magazine.)> FAREWELL: 4 April 1955 after a dinner at Number Ten. Onhis last night as Prime Minister, Sir Winston bade adieu.of it; he had devoted no fewer than four volumes to hisdistinguished ancestor the first Duke of Marlborough,and from that process learned—to the eventual profit ofthis country and many others—of the perils and frustrationsof coalition warfare.In the two years before his return to office inSeptember 1939, he had given himself to what eventuallybecame A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, andwith a serious purpose beyond the immediate task ofmaking enough money to pay for his handsome style oflife at Chartwell; for he believed the fate of mankindwould rest largely in the hands of those peoples, and thatdespite crises, misjudgments, blunders and reverses, theBritish had behaved well towards the rest of the world.He was not ashamed to refer to the “grand oldBritish race, which had done so much for mankind andwhich had still so much more to give.” 2 In sum, forChurchill the monarchy represented not only the apex ofour society and constitutional arrangements, but a focusfor the loyalty and aspirations of many millions; andwith a startling suddenness, the role of that monarchyhad to be reinterpreted in the present Queen’s reign toembrace a world-wide Commonwealth.Churchill had revered Queen Victoria from afar;FINEST HOUR 135 / 50

“There is no one here at all exceptthe Family, the Household &Queen [sic; Princess] Elizabeth—aged 2.The last is a character. She has an air ofauthority & reflectiveness astonishing inan infant.”—WSC to his wife, from Balmoral, 25 September1928 (Mary Soames, Speaking for Themselves, 328).he had enjoyed, without always approving entirely, thecompany of King Edward VII; he respected highly thegruff probity of King George V; he had—to his credit,for it was evident that nothing but political damagecould result—placed a high premium upon his loyalty toKing Edward VIII. Later, musing upon that monarch’sunsuitability for the heavy duties of the throne,Churchill once said “morning glory,” thinking of thoseflowers which flourish and fade in the forenoon. To KingGeorge VI and his Queen he had drawn very close duringthe war, and his admiration for the two of themknew few bounds. “Your Majesties,” Churchill wrote tothe King, “are more beloved by all classes and conditionsthan any of the princes of the past.” 3Amidst all the austerities and bleak hardships ofBritain in the early years after the war, Churchillreceived with joy the news of Princess Elizabeth’s forthcomingmarriage. “One touch of nature makes thewhole world kin,” he remarked, echoing Shakespeare,“and millions will welcome this joyous event as a flash ofcolour on the hard road we have to travel.” 4And then there were horses. Churchill had taken toracing late in life, under the inspiration of his son-in-lawChristopher Soames, whereas the taste seems to havebeen acquired by the present Queen in her early youth.A few months before Churchill came back to office asPrime Minister for the last time, she invited him tolunch with her at Hurst Park. In the same race were runninga horse in the Royal colours, appropriately andindeed unexceptionably named Above Board, andChurchill’s horse, known with a tinge of political incorrectitudeas Colonist II.By a small margin, Colonist II won. To a less adroitcorrespondent, this triumph might have provided slightembarrassment in the composition of a letter of thanksfor the luncheon. Not a bit of it in Churchill’s case. “Iwish indeed that we could both have been victorious,” hewrote to Princess Elizabeth, “but that would be no foundationfor the excitements and liveliness of the Turf.” 5When she and her husband left for a prolongedtour of Canada and the United States in 1951, Mr.Attlee was still Prime Minister; by the time of theirreturn, Churchill had come back to 10 Downing Street.He had a wonderful gift of magnification, of capturingthe unexpected word or phrase, of putting events into abroad context. To the Princess he said at Guildhall uponher return, “Madam, the whole nation is grateful to youfor what you have done for us and to Providence forhaving endowed you with the gifts and personalitywhich are not only precious to the British Commonwealthand Empire and its island home, but will playtheir part in cheering and in mellowing the forwardmarch of human society all the world over.” 6The Chairman mentioned a few minutes ago that Ihad the honour to work for Sir Anthony Eden, who toldme that one morning early in 1952 Churchill had runghim up with the words, “Anthony, imagine the worstthing that could possibly happen.” This was the PrimeMinister’s way of breaking the news of King George VI’sdeath. In bed at Downing Street, Churchill sat alone intears, looking straight ahead and reading neither his officialdocuments nor the newspapers.It happened that the Prime Minister’s PrivateSecretary, who described this scene, had previously heldthe same office with Princess Elizabeth. “I had not >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 51

“The monarchy signified for himsomething of infinite value, atonce numinous and luminous; and if youwill allow the remark in parenthesis,ladies and gentlemen, do you not sometimeslong for someone at the summit ofour public life who can think and writeat that level?”SADNESS: TheQueen returnshome after thedeath of herfather, GeorgeVI, Feburary1952. At thefoot of thestairs (r-l) arethe PrimeMinister,OppostionLeader Attlee,and ForeignSecretary Eden.realized how much the King meant to him,” we find inSir John Colville’s diary. “I tried to cheer him up by sayinghow well he would get on with the new Queen, butall he could say was that he did not know her and thatshe was only a child.” 7This was merely a momentary expression, utteredat a moment of profound sadness, and not one by whichChurchill would have wished to stand once his spirit wasless troubled.It is a measure of his longevity in politics thatwhen he proposed the motion for addresses of sympathy,he could remind the House of Commons that he hadbeen an MP whenever such a motion had been movedin the past, in 1901, in 1910, and in 1936. It now fell toChurchill to describe Queen Elizabeth as a fair andyouthful figure, Princess, wife and mother, “heir to allour traditions and glories, never greater than in herfather’s days, and to all our perplexities and dangers,never greater in peacetime than now. She is also heir toall our united strength and loyalty.” 8The new monarch was ascending the throne, heremarked, at a moment when tormented mankind stoodpoised uncertainly between worldwide catastrophe onthe one side and a golden age on the other. In speakingof catastrophe, he had in mind the enmity between thewest and Russia, and the awful prospects opened up inthe age of nuclear warfare; whereas if only a true andlasting peace could be achieved and if “the nations willonly let each other alone,” undreamed-of prosperity,with culture and leisure ever more widely spread, mightcome to the masses of the people everywhere. 9Churchill adored the Queen. You will perhapsthink the language unsuitable or even a little disrespectful;but no lesser expression will do. Gazing at a photographin 1953, the one which shows her in a white dressand with long white gloves, displaying that enchantingsmile which lights up her face as if a blind had suddenlybeen raised, the Prime Minister mused, “Lovely, she is apet. I fear they may ask her to do too much. She isdoing so well.” 10And again a week or two later, as he contemplatedthe same photograph, “Lovely, inspiring. All the filmpeople in the world, if they had scoured the globe, couldnot have found anyone so suited to the part.” 11 Thereuponhe immediately began to sing from the hymn, “Yetnightly pitch my moving tent/A day’s march nearerhome.” (If you object that this piece of informationseems scarcely relevant to my theme, I merely rejoin thathistorians are sticklers for completeness and love goingoff at a tangent.)The Queen wished to confer the Order of theGarter, which he had declined when offered in 1945,upon Churchill. He had then felt that it would be inappropriateto receive such a distinction upon the morrowof his rejection at the General Election; whereas in thesummer of the Coronation, the moment seemed morepropitious. Her Private Secretary broached the matterwith the Prime Minister in persuasive terms. This time,Churchill capitulated without much resistance but witha good deal of emotion. Then he said with a grin, “NowClemmie will have to be a lady at last.” 12Churchill travelled far less than he had done duringthe war and when Parliament was sitting would normallywait upon Her Majesty at Buckingham Palaceeach week. Her Private Secretary remained in an anteroom,unable to hear the conversation but catching pealsof laughter. “Winston generally came out wiping hiseyes,” Sir Alan Lascelles once recorded. “‘She is en grandebeauté ce soir,’ he said one evening in his schoolboyFrench.” 13In those final years of office, Churchill had combinedrearmament and the strengthening of NATO witha prolonged effort to build some kind of bridge toRussia. He repeatedly postponed resignation andendured some sharp passages with his colleagues in consequence.By the spring of 1955, he knew it was time togo. A few days after his departure, the Queen wrote inher own hand from Windsor to say that while her confidencein Anthony Eden was complete, “it would be uselessto pretend that either he or any of those successorswho may one day follow him in office will ever, for me,be able to hold the place of my first Prime Minister, toFINEST HOUR 135 / 52

whom both my husband and I owe so much and forwhose wise guidance during the early years of my reign Ishall always be so profoundly grateful.” 14We may think of Churchill as an amiable or evenreverent agnostic, who conceived of himself not as a pillarof the church but perhaps as a flying buttress. He didnot invoke the Deity casually or cynically, a fact whichconfers its own interest upon his touching and heartfeltreply to the Queen:Our Island no longer holds the same authority or powerthat it did in the days of Queen Victoria. A vast worldtowers up around it and after all our victories we couldnot claim the rank we hold were it not for the respect forour character and good sense and the general admirationnot untinged by envy for our institutions and way of life.All this has already grown stronger and more solidlyfounded during the opening years of the present Reign,and I regard it as the most direct mark of God’s favour wehave ever received in my long life that the whole structureof our new-formed Commonwealth has been linked andilluminated by a sparkling presence at its summit. 15The monarchy signified for him something of infinitevalue, at once numinous and luminous; and if youwill allow the remark in parenthesis, ladies and gentlemen,do you not sometimes long for someone at thesummit of our public life who can think and write atthat level?Sir Winston was not mistaken in drawing attentionto the Queen’s role within the Commonwealth. Hecould not have foreseen how quickly governments in thiscountry, as distinct from many millions of individual citizens,would cease to feel any serious interest in theCommonwealth. Indeed, it is not clear that the associationcould have survived in a recognisable form but forthe Queen’s unfeigned commitment to it.We have failed in knowledge, by which I meanthat we have been far too ready to accept one-sidedaccounts of our relations with countries in every part ofthe Commonwealth; and we have failed in self-belief, forif we cannot be troubled to defend ourselves againstassertions that Empire was nothing more than a cloakfor greed and extortion, we should scarcely be surprisedif others multiply such allegations, sometimes on themost grotesque scale. Now we need an exercise of constructiveimagination, to realize what Commonwealthconnections can do, not only for us but for a muchwider community. Though much has been lost beyondretrieval, a good deal remains. To give fresh life to thoseconnections, to promote better understanding betweencountries and friendship between races, is of supremeimportance. Perhaps that fact is now a little more apparentthan it was, say, ten or twenty years ago. It is a taskin part for politicians, but also for all of us; and, giventhe Queen’s identification of herself and the monarchywith the Commonwealth over a span of sixty years, forthe coming generation in the Royal Family.When Churchill, nearing the age of eighty, lookedupon the Queen’s picture in a newspaper, he murmured“The country is so lucky.” 16 Exactly so; we should be lessshy of acknowledging the fact.“We have failed in knowledge, bywhich I mean that we havebeen far too ready to accept one-sidedaccounts of our relations with countriesin every part of the Commonwealth; andwe have failed in self-belief, for if wecannot be troubled to defend ourselvesagainst assertions that Empire was nothingmore than a cloak for greed andextortion, we should scarcely be surprisedif others multiply such allegations, sometimeson the most grotesque scale.”Endnotes1. There are many versions of this story in print, but the most reliableis in Chambers, R.W., Man’s Unconquerable Mind (London:Jonathan Cape, 1939), 380-81.2. On the resignation of Anthony Eden as foreign secretary, 20February 1938. Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War, vol. 2,Their Finest Hour (London: Cassell, 1949), 201.3. WSC to the King, 5 January 1941, ibid., 554.4. Churchill’s capacious memory produced this quotation ofShakespeare (Troilus and Cressida, iii. 3) in the House of Commons, 22October 1947. Churchill, Europe Unite (London: Cassell, 1950), 168.5. WSC to Princess Elizabeth, 20 May 1951. Gilbert, op. cit., 613.6. House of Commons, 19 November 1951. Churchill, Stemmingthe Tide (London: Cassell, 1953), 194.7. Colville, John R.,The Fringes of Power (London: Hodder &Stoughton, 1985), 640.8. House of Commons, 11 February 1952. Stemming the Tide,op. cit., 244.9. Ibid., 245.10. WSC to Lord Moran, 3 February 1953. Moran, Charles,Churchill: The Struggle for Survival (London: Constable, 1966), 427.11. Ibid., 429.12. Hart-Davis, D. (ed.), King’s Counsellor (London: Weidenfeld& Nicolson, 2006), 344.13. Ibid., 340.14. The Queen to WSC, 11 April 1955. Gilbert, op. cit., 1126.15. WSC to the Queen, from Sicily, 8 April 1955, ibid., 1128.16. WSC to Lord Moran, 4 November 1953. Moran, The Strugglefor Survival, op. cit., 528. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 53

Books, Arts&Churchill Centre Book ClubManaged for the Centre by ChartwellBooksellers (www.churchill-books.com),which offers member discounts up to25%. To order contact Chartwell Booksellers,55 East 52nd Street, New York,New York 10055, email bscb@dti.net,telephone (212) 308-0643,facsimile (212) 838-7423.Sinking StoneROBERT A. COURTSFINEST HOUR 135 / 54Blood, Sweat andArrogance and theMyths ofChurchill’s War,by Gordon Corrigan.Weidenfeld& Nicolson, 496pages, hardbound£20, memberprice $45.This bookmight besubtitled, “What does an iconoclast dowhen the icons are broken?” Corriganbuilt his reputation with his previousMud, Blood and Poppycock, a stridentbut generally well-received attack onthe World War I generals. Now the ex-Gurkha major turns his gaze uponChurchill, with a professional soldier’scontempt for politicians, but certainlynot a historian’s professionalism.Corrigan, who lists “pricking thepompous” among his hobbies in thecredits, is unable to understand that intotal war, politics cannot be totally ignored.For example, he blithely assertsthat Churchill’s “demands to sink theFrench fleet [at Oran in 1940 were] unnecessary,for…the French would havecome to an agreement without thethreat of force.” He has the luxury ofsuch assumptions today; Churchill in1940 could not take the risk. And heignores the dynamic political effect ofBritain’s action in the USA, where itwas seen as proof that Britain wouldnever surrender.Anyone is free to hold Churchill incontempt, but to do so requires learningsomething about him. Significantly,Corrigan’s bibliography lists four booksby David Irving but only one by MartinGilbert—and that one not aboutChurchill. Yet, despite his title, Corriganactually spends little time onChurchill, and almost none in analysis.His critical comments are rarelysourced, never explained, and overtlyglib (“in view of his later treatment ofBomber Command”)—which avoidsthe tiresome evidential business ofproving what one means.Corrigan calls Churchill “a manwho found it difficult to look beyondwhat he knew and was familiar with,” astatement that would not be made byanyone who has seriously studied theastonishingly prescient and innovativePrime Minister (tanks, Mulberry harbours,naval aviation, SOE, commandos,ad infinitum).Another criticism cites Churchill asoverruling the Chiefs of Staff, despitethe well-known fact that he did nothingof the kind on a military issue, no matterhow much he might have pressedthem, much to his credit. AndChurchill did meet serious resistance,not least from the iron-willed Brooke,whom Corrigan astonishingly refers toas “Churchill’s creature.”The tone throughout is irritatinglysmug, at times unworthy of a seriouswriter: “There is no question thatChurchill was personally brave andcompletely unafraid of death. The troublewas that he was not afraid of anyoneelse’s death either.” (This is a bizarrecomment to anyone who has read ofChurchill’s anguish over Gallipoli, orhis concern, expressed to Marshall, thata premature invasion of Europe wouldresult in “a sea full of corpses.”)And the book is often factuallywrong. For example: “…originally destinedfor the infantry, [Churchill] choseinstead to join an expensive and gorgeouslycaparisoned cavalry regiment.”Actually Churchill was never “destined”for the infantry.Where he is not wrong, Corrigan isselective: he praises Britain for inventingthe tank, but does not mentionChurchill’s role in that enterprise. Nordoes he give WSC credit for makingthe most of the few resources he had in1940. Whatever “damage” Churchillmay or may not have inflicted on thewar effort, without him there wouldhave been no war effort at all.When Corrigan does stumble upona valid historical controversy, he dealswith it little better than he doesChurchill. To one of the most hotly debatedtopics of the postwar years, thestrategic bombing of Germany, he devotesthree paragraphs, reaching theheights of analysis: “Dresden was justone more raid in a long war and was totallyjustified.” Worse, he does not seemto know whether he supports the policyor not, for when Churchill is involved,he is castigated for being “quick toevade the blame for his own policy.”On the attempt to forestall Hitlerin Norway, Churchill is seriously vulnerableto critical analysis; but Corriganfails to provide it. He offers only histrademark snide remarks (“the greatstrategist himself…the great man”) andinappropriate language (WSC replacesa naval commander with a “chum.”)Corrigan fails the basic requirementof a historian: to judge decisionsmade at the time by the facts known atthe time. He criticises Churchill’s beliefin the French Army as being “idiocy”that was to prove “utterly and completelyerroneous in such a short spaceof time.” But he ignores the fact thateveryone in Europe thought “la Grand

Armée” unbeatable, and its swift defeatin 1940 was a shock for all Europe.Proper historians, moreover, do not describeactions or events with such simplisticphrases as “crassly idiotic,” nordescribe those who disagree with themas “the Churchill faction.”Corrigan holds that Churchill“was…the man who by his politicalactions between 1919 and 1929contributed in very large measure toBritain being unready,” for the SecondWorld War—as if there was no differencebetween Weimar Germany andthe Third Reich. Churchill’s changeof view on rearmament in the 1930swas owed, he says, to being “out ofoffice, and increasingly unlikely to regainit…Churchill underwent a conversionthat makes the Black Deathlook like a minor outbreak of thesniffles.” Such language is worse thanWinston &Archie: TheLetters of SirArchibaldSinclair andWinston S.Churchill 1915-1960, edited byIan Hunter.London:Politico’s, 530pages, hardbound,£30, member price $36.inston” needs no introduction“Wbut “Archie” may not be familiarto FH readers. Sir ArchibaldHenry MacDonald Sinclair (1890-1970) was the leader of the fading LiberalParty from 1935 to 1945, andserved as Air Minister in Churchill’swartime coalition government. The twomen had been introduced long before—by American Maxine Elliott—anddespite a sixteen-year difference in age,mere silliness; it is, er, “crassly idiotic.”The coverage of military aspects ofthe war is acceptable, but sadly, to use aCorriganism, the sound of grindingaxes drowns out sensible narrative. Corriganprefers the quick judgement andthe glib throwaway, not a sustained anddetailed analysis of difficult and controversialtimes. If you want reasoned criticism,you must turn to far better books,by such authors as Lamb, Charmley,Roskill, R.W. Thompson, and the AlanbrookeDiaries.In proving his case that Churchill“was very nearly responsible for losing[the war],” Corrigan can only be judgedto have failed. When ripples of suchweird accusations subside (as they alreadyhave) the biggest stones sinkfastest. In the great pool of Churchillliterature, this book is destined to sinkwithout trace. ,Heroes of the Air: ArchibaldSinclair and Hugh DowdingCHRISTOPHER H. STERLINGthey became good friends. Both hadAmerican mothers. As with all upperclass Britons (Sinclair was a Scot), theywrote reams of letters, often long anddetailed. Luckily for us, many of thoseletters were saved despite occasionalnotes at the end of one or another thatbecause of its content it should be destroyedafter being read.Ian Hunter, a longtime ChurchillCentre member and London-based authorof three earlier books on businessmanagement, as well as articles in TheJournal of Liberal History, has painstakinglypulled most of the surviving letterstogether and annotated them to describepeople and events mentioned.Many of the letters (the originals areeither in the National Archive at Kew,or the Churchill Archives Centre inCambridge) have not appeared in printbefore. Alas, others by Sinclair are sadlylost, thanks to the wartime bombingof the Liberal headquarters, and a postwarfire at his home at Thurso. Overseveral periods, we have only Winston’sletters. What does survive, however,is both fascinating and insightful.Hunter has arranged the letters andevents in five parts. The first concernsWorld War I, both before and afterChurchill’s service on the WesternFront, following his departure from theAdmiralty in the crisis over Dardanellespolicy. In August 1915, we see Sinclair—an officer until invalided out in1917—urging WSC not to come to thefighting front as he would rapidly becomefrustrated with military policythat he could not affect. He would bemore useful in London, Sinclair said,even in his depleted political state (19).After Churchill left the war planninggroup in November, however, histone and that of Sinclair changed. Sinclairwas seconded (at Churchill’s request)to serve under WSC in 1916 forthe several months that WSC was in activeservice, commanding a unit ofScots. Their letters back and forthwhen one or the other was on leave inLondon provide a peek at front-line lifeand lore, along with their assessmentsof political warfare at home.The second part focuses on thebrief, bitter war against the RussianBolsheviks after World War I, whenSinclair served as principal military secretaryto Churchill, who was Secretaryof State for War. The scattered missives(much has been lost) are nearly all annotatedfor context, and some show thepressures Churchill was under with demobilizationof Britain’s conscript armyon the one hand, and trying to shoreup the White Russians on the other. Includedis Churchill’s controversial (evenacerbic) memo on the possible use ofgas against insurgents in India andAfghanistan (64). Many of these letters(really inter-office memos) are moreformal in tone, given the roles of thetwo men in the same ministry—andmostly from Sinclair to Churchill.The third section centers on thefifteen years from 1924 to 1939, whenboth men saw varied roles, Sinclair enteringParliament and becoming a politicalfigure in his own right. They remainedclose friends, and eventuallypolitical allies with their mutual concernover Nazi Germany by the late1930s. This period, marked by briefand scattered memos, includes >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 55

WINSTON & ARCHIE...Churchill’s wilderness years (1929-39),the early part of which saw Sinclair inthe National Government. The Liberaldecline is evident in each succeedingelection, until Sinclair takes over the severelydepleted party in 1935.The longest part of Hunter’s collection,and perhaps the one of primaryinterest, concerns the air war from1940 to 1945. As Secretary of State forAir, Sinclair was the senior civilian officialto whom all RAF marshals at leastnominally reported. He was such astaunch supporter of their recommendationsand campaigns, however, thatmany saw him more as a representativeof their views rather than as the RAF’spolitical master. The letters and memos(more selective than in other sectionsgiven the huge amount of material)show occasional heat as wartime pressurebuilt on both men.There is a scattering of “ActionThis Day” notes and more than a fewexpressions of asperity on Churchill’spart. There is constant reference to thefriction between Lord Beaverbrook, atthe Ministry of Aircraft Production,and Sinclair’s Air Ministry. Two factorsjump out in many of the memos exchanged—Churchill’swell-known detailedinterest in the war effort, and therole that statistics played in monitoringoperations and in policymaking. Alsoevident—as Hunter makes clear in hisuseful editorial insertions—Sinclairplayed a stronger role in developing airpolicy than Churchill would give himcredit for after the war.A final brief section covers the lastfourteen years of the relationship, from1946 to 1960, five years beforeChurchill’s death and a decade beforeSinclair’s. Having lost his 1945 bid toretain his seat in the House of Commons,and another attempt five yearslater, Sinclair became a member of theHouse of Lords as Viscount Thurso in1952, part of the first Honours List ofChurchill’s postwar government. Hesuffered a stroke that year (he was 62)and would not actually sit in the Lordsuntil 1954. Four years later anotherstroke sadly ended his active career andleft him an invalid for the remainder ofhis life.Collections of letters are hugelyvaluable windows into both the correspondentsand their era. Edited as wellas this one, with careful editorial guidanceas to what we are reading andabout whom, they are fascinating aswell. We can only hope that more“Churchill and...” correspondence willappear covering other Churchillianfriends and colleagues.A SummerBright and Terrible:WinstonChurchill, LordDowding,Radar, and theImpossibleTriumph ofthe Battle ofBritain, byDavid E. Fisher.New York:Shoemaker & Howard, 304 pages,hardbound $26, member price $20.80.An engaging if sometimes odd workbbegins with a piled-up title,which tries to push every sales buttonall at once. In fact it is mainly devotedto the dour and enigmatic Air ChiefMarshal Sir Hugh “Stuffy” Dowding.Despite suggesting that the story hasnot been told, Fisher covers groundothers have trod more successfully becausethey didn’t try to stretch theircoverage as far as Fisher does.Divided into four chapters or parts,one for each season of 1940, the bulkof it covers the Battle of Britain in thesummer and early autumn of that year.But Fisher also provides background—the just-in-time development of radar(a later American term for radio directionfinding) and the Spitfire fighteraircraft. The two protagonists,Churchill and Dowding, face off inJune 1940. The former wants to sendmore British fighter aircraft to help thecrumbling French; Dowding warns thatEngland will be defenseless if he does.Unlike most who went up against thenew Prime Minister, Dowding carriedthe day in an unusual appeal directly tothe War Cabinet—and was provedright when the Luftwaffe attackedBritain after the fall of France.FINEST HOUR 135 / 56In November, after the worst of theGerman onslaught seemed past, Dowdingwas relieved by the Air Ministry.Churchill, who had earlier backed himstrongly, apparently made no move tosave him. Granted, Dowding hadplanned retirement and had reached retirementage, but the Air Ministry (AirMinister Sinclair and chief of staff Portal,among others) did seem rather cavalier,given all he’d done to meld radar,radio, and telephone networks into aFighter Command that probably savedBritain by controlling the air.Fisher is an experienced writer withan eye for narrative. There are parts ofthis volume that take one back to theEnglish countryside on a warm, drySeptember day, looking up at the crossingcontrails of German and Britishfighters, dueling while Luftwaffebombers plod toward London andother targets. Or one could be on anRAF airfield, as fighters are scrambledto meet the latest onslaught—orcramped in one of the control buildingsof the new radar system, trying togauge how many German aircraft arecoming and where they are headed.Fisher is excellent at describing themany facets of Dowding’s personality,including (and here many earlier accountshave been silent) his belief in thesupernatural, which at times appearedto give him strength to persevere. Hewent so far as to “speak” with some ofhis lost pilots (his “chicks” as he referredto them), as well as with his deceasedwife. It is to the author’s creditthat Dowding comes across in thesescenes as understandably exhausted andconcerned, rather than as a mere flake.Fisher also describes and definesDowding’s two chief lieutenants, AirVice Marshals Trafford Leigh-Mallory(backer of the “big wing” notion ofmassing defending fighters) and KeithPark (who agreed with Dowding’s “bitsand pieces” use of defending aircraft).Flying hero Douglas Bader (who flewwith artificial legs owing to a prewarflying accident) served under Leigh-Mallory; thus we get a pilot’s-eye as wellas command view of the conflict.Though the Dowding/Park tacticssucceeded, Leigh-Mallory replacedPark, while Air Vice Marshal Sholto >>

BRIGHT AND TERRIBLE...Douglas, a critic of Dowding’s approach,took over Dowding’s post inwhat seemed to some as a coup. The issuesand personalities involved in thesechanges in command have been debatedby historians ever since. Fisherclearly is sympathetic with the embattledif cold and “stuffy” Dowding.A nuclear chemist and professor of“cosmochemistry” and environmentalscience at the University of Miami,Fisher has authored a number of earlierpopular science histories with his son:notably Tube, a history of television.His scientific background combineswith an ability to make technical topicslike radar and aeronautics easier tograsp. There are many past and presentaccounts of these gripping events andplayers. But Fisher offers a readablemelding of them, especially for thoseunfamiliar with the story.Dowding, after two other postingswhich did not work out, retired in mid-1942 and was later raised to the peerageas Lord Dowding, his first Battle ofBritain command post, Bentley Priory,being his territorial designation. He isthe unappreciated hero of Fisher’s tale. ,Vital Insights to a Key ColleaguePAUL H. COURTENAYChurchill’sMan ofMystery:DesmondMorton andthe World ofIntelligence,by Gill Bennett.London,Routledge372 pages,hardbound,£49.95. Notavailablefrom Churchill Centre Book Club. Wesuggest Amazon UK.From 1995 till 2005 Gill Bennettwas Chief Historian of the Foreign& Commonwealth Office, and thisbook is the latest in the GovernmentOfficial History series; series authorsare afforded free access to all relevantmaterial in the official archives (whichremain closed to the public).Thus Bennett has found as muchas is ever likely to be known about theofficial life of Desmond Morton. Herquest for information has been frustratedbecause of Morton’s extremesense of privacy: he was unmarried anddestroyed all his private papers. Despitethis handicap, the author has unearthedas much as possible from other sources,though these remain scanty.Morton was born in 1891 and wasseverely wounded in 1917, a bulletlodging so near his heart that it was toodangerous ever to remove; he neverthelesslived to be 79. Lady Soames tells adelightful story of observing him playingtennis at Chartwell. Her father, fascinatedby Morton’s permanent bullet,had informed her that “he could keelover at any moment,” and she couldnot help but watch in fearful anticipationfor this possibility!Morton first met Churchill in1916, when he provided 6th Battalion,the Royal Scots Fusiliers with artillerysupport at Ploegsteert, Belgium. Afterrecovering (to some extent) from hiswound, Morton became aide-de-campto Field Marshal Haig, C-in-C of theBritish Expeditionary Force. In this capacityhe frequently escorted importantvisitors. One of these, Churchill asMinister of Munitions, rememberedhim from their Ploegsteert encounter.Their early relationship centred ontechnical matters but developed intofriendship, WSC later writing: “Iformed a great regard and friendship forthis brilliant and gallant officer.”Morton joined the Secret IntelligenceService (SIS) in 1919 and specialisedin longer term intelligencegathering on Soviet Russia, to which hewas dedicated. He later expanded hisinterest to the whole field of industrialintelligence, studying the economies ofpotential enemies in order to assesstheir sustainable military capabilities.He was the driving spirit for the studyof industrial intelligence in Britain, andfor its contribution to defence, rearmamentand economic planning in theyears leading up to World War II. Healso bought a house only three milesfrom Chartwell one year after WSC’spurchase; from that time he became afrequent visitor and the two men oftenheld long discussions together.Morton was involved in the 1924saga of the Zinoviev Letter, addressedto the Communist Party of GreatBritain by the President of the Comintern’sexecutive committee, urging theparty to rouse the proletariat in preparationfor armed insurrection and classwarfare. Copies were distributed (possiblyby SIS) to those with vested interests,and the first Labour government(under Ramsay Macdonald) was severelyembarrassed. It has never beenproved whether or not the Zinoviev wasa forgery. Gill Bennett gives several examplesof obfuscation by Morton whenthings went wrong; he thus protectedSIS and his own situation.In 1931 Morton was appointedChairman of the Industrial IntelligenceCentre, and this became his main activity.Between 1934 and 1937 his correspondencewith Churchill becamemore frequent and less restrained, WSCbeing free actively to campaign in orderto arouse the government to the dangersahead. There is no hard documentaryevidence to suggest that Mortonsupplied anything which Churchill wasnot entitled to know—indeed the evidencepoints in the other direction.Morton’s chief value was checking andcorrecting information supplied fromother sources; he even received valuableinformation from WSC himself. It isinteresting to read some of Morton’sfacetious letters and reports, which wereoften not appreciated by the traditionalCivil Service.Much of Desmond Morton’s timein the years leading up to World War IIwas devoted to developing plans for aMinistry of Economic Warfare to be establishedin the event of war; by thetime of Munich this planning was complete,Morton continuing with his intelligencework and maintaining his >>FINEST HOUR 135 / 57

“Morton himself wrote that he could not imagine a better epitaph than: “Desmond Morton mighthave been a greater figure in the affairs of his country had he been less of a gentleman...”VITAL INSIGHTS...links with Churchill. When the warbegan he developed a role for himself asliaison between covert and overt spheresof decision and action, with Churchillas Prime Minister setting a high valueon this activity.From the outset of WSC’s premiershipMorton doubled the role of intelligenceinterface with that of liaison withthe Allied governments-in-exile, andwas consulted by Churchill on a widerange of other issues, yet had no officialposition other than as a member of thePrime Minister’s personal staff. An advantageof this arrangement was that hecould access government at any levelwithout bothering about subverting thechain of command; this was a vital resourcewhen the PM wanted a rapid,flexible response on any topic, or if hepreferred to send messages other thanthrough official channels. Morton wasthe PM’s eyes and ears in quarters WSCdid not have time to inspect personallyand became the personal embodimentof WSC’s will to make things happen.Hack WorkCHRISTOPHER H. STERLINGDark Lady:WinstonChurchill’sMother andHer World,by CharlesHigham. NewYork: Carroll &Graf 250 pp.,hardbound,$25.95, memberprice$20.75.This is a disappointing, perplexingand decidedly odd book. It appearsto have been written with, on the onehand, a listing of people and events toinclude and, on the other, a soup bowlof scandals to be detailed and a forest offamily trees to wend through. ThereAs a “gatekeeper” he took the blame ifthings went wrong, for example ifsomeone failed to secure an interviewwith the PM or received an unfavourableresponse to a message. Bylate 1941, as Churchill’s control of governmentmachinery became more solid,Morton’s involvement and influencelessened; but he stayed with WSC tillthe end of the war.In addition to the official files,much of the author’s research has beenfacilitated through the voluminous correspondencebetween Morton and thewriter R.W. Thompson, author of TheYankee Marlborough, an early criticalwork (FH 27). Morton felt thatThompson had been over-critical ofChurchill and corrected much of whathe had drafted. Nevertheless, inChurchill and Morton (FH 51), publishedafter Morton’s death, Thompsonrevealed that in later life, Morton hadbecome bitter and disillusioned by hisloss of close contact with Churchill.Still, Morton had told Thompson thatlater historians would be bound tomay have been a page limitation, too,with the result that we have a breathlesspresentation, almost telegraphic instyle, and often confusing. The bookand the story seem rushed. Highamjerks the reader from topic to topic,with little sense of flow or connection.Subjects jump about with nary a transition—weare reading about Jennie,then suddenly about one of her friends,or her son Winston. Specific sourcenotes are not offered.There are the (now sadly usual)signs of inadequate editing—doublewords, misspellings, and the like. Sometimesthe editing is unwittingly funny,as when we read: “whether or not [Jennie]had been his mistress as Prince ofWales, she was deeply fond of him,”which suggests a sex-change operation.(196). The facts get more than a bithazy—are readers aware that around1911, Churchill “used 50,000 troops tocrush a railway strike” (199)? The jacketon the British edition has a picture ofJack Churchill labeled as Winston!FINEST HOUR 135 / 58write WSC’s name in Valhalla, “eventhough it may be more difficult to findit in Heaven.” The truth was thatevents and time brought a gradual endto a friendship that was always basedmore on shared interests than on sharedpsychology.Morton himself wrote to Thompsonthat he could not imagine a betterepitaph than: “Desmond Mortonmight have been a greater figure in theaffairs of his country had he been less ofa gentleman”; such an aspiration byChurchill, according to Gill Bennett,would have been an irrelevance.This book is much more than a biographyof Desmond Morton; it is alsoa textbook on the history of the SIS, includingmany tedious details of internaljealousies. So, together with its highcost, it is unlikely to achieve majorsales. But as a piece of detective workuncovering information about an intenselyprivate man, it will be requiredreading for those who want to knoweverything possible about an importantfigure at Churchill’s elbow. ,Higham, author of “secret lives” ofHoward Hughes and the Duchess ofWindsor, seems as interested in theseamy social history of the 19th centuryelite. We get lots of asides about thesharp economic and social divides ofthe gilded age, and the sexual peccadilloesof the rich, interspersed with detailsof Jennie’s life. Indeed, we dwellmore on her roguish father Leonard(with almost nothing on her mother)during the first two decades of Jennie’slife. Some of this commentary almostseems like filler to flesh out a relativelybrief book, in spite of the rushed characterof other sections. Broad commentscarry no support or commentary.such as the notion that Jennie lovedJack more than Winston while havingmore in common with the latter (213).While the text appears to havebeen researched through a long list ofarchives, how could the author fail tomention Ralph Martin’s two-volume,900-page biography in his listing ofpublished sources, even though he >>

makes text references to it? Martinbarked up some of the same seamy trees(his book was withdrawn in Englandfor falsely alleging that Jack was notLord Randolph’s son). Higham impliesthat he corrects his predecessors, butthere are no real notes and only informaldocumentation; we are told simplythat earlier biographers (usually unnamed)have erred in one way or another,and here is the true story.Too many asides are unexplained orhave nothing to do with Jennie. QueenVictoria allegedly “detested” Lord Randolph(41), but we are not told why.And it gets almost numbing trying tokeep up with the bed-hopping. Perhapsthere should have been a family tree as aguide to who was sleeping with whom.Does Higham add to our knowledgeof Lady Randolph Churchill? No.There are hardly any aspects of her lifehere that have not covered more thoroughlyin previous biographies andJennie’s memoirs.Higham does mention an unusual1914 lawsuit filed by Jennie againstJack and Winston (over, of course,money, specifically the terms of Randolph’swill). Her lawyer was her son’sgood friend F. E. Smith, and Jenniewon. Having produced this case, whichhe says no previous biographer hasmentioned, Higham gives it all of onepage, based apparently on a single pressaccount (206-07). At virtually the sametime, Higham tells us that Jack supportedhis mother in her divorce proceedingsfrom second husband GeorgeCornwallis-West, and that all the familysummered together.Something is odd about this story.Take the bit about the Lusitania sinking(214), which had nothing to do withJennie; the tragedy is Winston’s faultand all but described as the reason hewas forced from the Admiralty. Gallipoliis mentioned, but with little detail.We are told incorrectly that theCabinet prevented WSC serving on thefront after he left the government.Higham’s entire analysis of LadyRandolph, in wrapping up his tale,consists of three paragraphs added as a“postscript.” Readers, please save yourmoney for something more useful. Thisseems little better than hack work. ,No Churchill, None of the TimeDAVID HATTERFrom Churchill’sWar Rooms: Lettersof a Secretary1943-45, byJoanna Moody.Stroud, Glos.Tempus, 256pages, hardbound$50, memberprice $40.The disappointments begin with thisbook’s misleading and potentiallydeceptive title. The implication is thatit’s about Churchill; or has some connectionto him—or someone who atleast dealt with him, who rememberedwitticisms we hadn’t heard before. Anyconnection would do, in fact, otherthan that the person merely worked inthe Cabinet War Rooms.Yes, they were “Churchill’s WarRooms,” but it’s difficult to recall theirever being so described. Apart from thisrather tenuous connection, you are leftwondering why Churchill’s name is inthe title. It really is the publisher’s responsibilityto ensure that a title reflectsa book’s content. Churchill’s name is sovaluable that in this case, the publisherused it to maximize appeal. Readers willbe let down by the discrepancy betweenthe title and the content.The subject of the book is the delightfulOlive Margerison, who appearedon a television news programmelast December. She is 92 and looks andsounds 29: sharp, vivacious, altogetherengaging. Her story is, however, notparticularly remarkable. She worked forGeneral Leslie Hollis 1 (Secretary,Chiefs of Staff Committee). She wenton some of the official wartime journeyswith Hollis (and, ipso facto,Churchill). Then Olive Christopher,she was engaged to Neil Margerison,who was away serving with the forces.The first part of the book dealswith Olive’s life through 1943. It is anMr. Hatter, of Ongar, Essex, is a Chartwellguide, who wrote about the Chartwell VisitorsBook in Finest Hour 131.everyday story of wartime folk and,apart from what looks like a mix-up onpage 47 over the dates when DudleyPound 2 and Andrew Cunningham 3served as First Sea Lords, it tells yetagain an unexceptionable story aboutlife in the Thirties and about the shortagesof lavatories in the War Rooms.The second part covers Olive’s correspondencewith her fiancé and containsprotestations of affection, whichengender a feeling of sympathy for theseparated sweethearts but are remarkablymundane otherwise. There are afew howlers, such as the reference toHMS Renown and HMS Penelope as“battleships.” All in all, it was a relief toreach the end. The book is fundamentallya personal record and, while it willevoke memories of the way things wereduring the Second World War, it reallyadds nothing to our knowledge ofChurchill. The main body of readerswill comprise enthusiasts who defaultto buying anything with the GreatMan’s name in the title. I am left withthe feeling that if I had really wanted toread another book about what life waslike during the war, I could have writtenit myself.Endnotes1. General Sir Leslie Chasemore [Jo]Hollis KCB, KBE (1897–1963). Secretary,Chiefs of Staff Committee, travelled a withIsmay and Churchill, and is mentioned inWSC’s The Second World War; but the contextis usually that of carrying out routine tasks.He is not mentioned in Gilbert’s Churchill: ALife, or in the Macmillan Dictionary of the SecondWorld War.2. Admiral of the Fleet Sir Alfred DudleyPickman Rogers Pound RN (1877-1943).First Sea Lord, June 1939-September 1943.3. Admiral of the Fleet Sir AndrewBrowne Cunningham, First Viscount Cunninghamof Hyndhope KT GCB OM DSO(1882-1963). Succeeded Pound as First SeaLord. A member of the Chiefs of Staff Committee,Cunningham was responsible forstrategic direction of the navy for the remainderof the war. He attended the conferences atCairo, Teheran, Quebec, Yalta and Potsdam.Cunningham served as First Sea Lord until hisretirement in 1946. ,FINEST HOUR 135 / 59

I N T E R V I E WChurchill’s Lessons of LeadershipSIR MARTIN GILBERT “ONE ON ONE” WITH PETER MANSBRIDGEPeter Mansbridge is a British-bornCanadian journalist, for twentyyears the chief correspondent andanchor of The National, CBC Television’spremier nightly newscast. This November2006 interview is published bykind permission of the Canadian BroadcastingCompany, Peter Mansbridge andSir Martin Gilbert. Finest Hour thanksMike Campbell in Halifax, Nova Scotia,for arranging permission with the CBC.Mr. Mansbridge began by saying thatalthough he would like to talk about allof Sir Martin’s thirty books on Sir WinstonChurchill, the show was unfortunatelyonly a half hour long. He thenasked Sir Martin what defines leadershipand great leaders.SIR MARTIN GILBERT: I think agreat leader has to have a sense of moralpurpose, he has to know exactly wherehe stands on the crucial issues of theday, and, if he is going to be a leader ofa western democracy, he must have areal sense that democracy matters, thatit has to be defended; a real convictionin his beliefs, and, of course, an abilityto transmit his convictions. There aremany people who have intense andgood convictions but, for one reason oranother, do not have the means totransmit them, to get them across—toyou and me.PETER MANSBRIDGE: So, it’s thatcombination of knowing where youwant to go, being convinced that it’sright, and having the ability, not onlyto attract others to follow you, but tohelp you get there?MG: Absolutely. You have to reflectpublic opinion, but you also have to beable to lead it—perhaps in directions itis a little reluctant to go. It is a complicatedbalancing act.PM: How do you judge a leader, anddo you have to wait and look back onwhat they did?MG: Churchill’s caseis interesting, in thathe judged himself afailure because duringthe Thirties, duringthe great appeasementdebate, when he was inopposition and so fewwere listening to him,he felt he had failed toproduce acceptance forhis views that war couldbe averted by armaments,by alliances, by faith inone’s own ideological, democratic positions.Being called in, as it were, to pickup the mess—to make good the neglectof his advocacy—he did not see as agreat achievement: he saw it as a failurethat he had been unable to convincethe Baldwin and Chamberlain governmentsto take measures that he—Churchill—believed could prevent war.Of course, for us, his coming to powerwas a great achievement. One has alwaysto think, what would have happenedif he had not had the full confidenceof his convictions? What wouldhave happened, when the Blitz was atits height, if he had said to himself, “Idon’t think I can go ahead with this”?He came near to that—very near to losing,not his nerve, but to feeling thatthe power of the enemy was too strongto overcome.PM: Is leadership different in wartime?MG: I think so. I think it is muchharder also to get to the bottom of whatwartime leadership is. So much of wartimeleadership—even, indeed especiallyChurchill’s —is working with alarge group of people, drawing on theirexpertise, allowing fighting men andwomen get on with the job, encouragingeffort and achievement, and notnecessarily being a micro-manager.Churchill was not primarily amicromanager, despite his incrediblefascination for and grasp of detail. HisFINEST HOUR 135 / 60leadership was that of an inspiring presence,rather then a finger in the pie. Intimes of peace, perhaps, a leader has tobe more pro-active.PM: Has television changed leadership?MG: Probably. People often ask me,“Would Churchill have been any goodon television?” We do not know. In hisprime he would probably have beenmagical on television, as he was onpublic platforms.PM: He became Prime Minister in hismid-Sixties. Was that his prime?MG: I think some of his greatest dayswere in the five or six years before theFirst World War, when he spearheadedthe great social revolution in Britain,creating the social system in Britainunder which we still live. Then therewas the greatness of his struggle againstappeasement—such an up-hill and dedicatedstruggle. But yes, certainly hisprime was in those first months of theSecond World War. In May 1940,when everything seemed hopeless, healso feared that Britain might be defeated.He confided to Anthony Edensix months later, “I awoke every morningwith dread in my heart.” Yet he wasable to go out and about into thebombed areas and show defiance, andpeople said, “He does not think we’rebeaten.” Even the “V for Victory” sign

was “cocking a snook” at the prospectof utter disaster.In June 1940 Churchill was goinginto the back door of 10 DowningStreet—the door on the Horse GuardsParade—fumbling with his key. Agroup of men around the nearby statueof Kitchener, putting up scaffolding soit would not be hit by shrapnel (whichin fact it was a year later; the marks canbe seen to this day), started cheering,“Good Old Winnie!” The Private Secretarywith Churchill was puzzled that hekept fumbling with his key to open thedoor—normally he would go and chatwith them or wave to them. So the PrivateSecretary tugged at him and said,“Prime Minister, the men on the scaffolding...”Suddenly he saw the tearsstreaming down Churchill’s face. Atthat moment, with France having capitulated,and German invasion bargesgathering in the North Sea and Channelports, he must have thought the situationwas hopeless. But he did notwant the men to feel his doubt; to seehim without his grin, his defiance, hiscigar, his V-sign.Churchill’s emotions often surprisedthose who knew him best. GeneralSir Hastings (later Lord) Ismay, thehead of his Defence Secretariat, hasrecorded in his memoirs accompanyingChurchill to the London docks immediatelyafter the first heavy attack of theBlitz. “Our first stop,” Ismay writes,“was at an air-raid shelter in whichabout forty persons had been killed andmany more wounded by a direct hit,and we found a big crowd, male and female,young and old, but all very poor.“One might have expected themto be resentful against the authoritiesresponsible for their protection; but,as Churchill got out of his car, theyliterally mobbed him. ‘Good old Winnie,’they cried. ‘We thought you’dcome and see us. We can take it. Giveit ’em back.’“Churchill broke down, and as Iwas struggling to get to him throughthe crowd, I heard an old woman say,‘You see, he really cares; he’s crying.’”PM: I interrupted you over Churchill’sability to continue his leadership in thetelevision age...MG: Churchill was a very adaptableperson. In his enormously long life—his time in Parliament spanned sixtytwoyears—he had to adapt to all sortsof aspects of politics. Where he wasvery good—and this was unexpectedfor his contemporaries—was on theradio in its early days. I was astonishedto discover that when the BBC wantedin 1926 to have someone make theChristmas appeal for the blind, theychose him. It was a wonderful appeal,because he spoke with wit as well as oratory,with light touches as well asheavy touches. So, he adapted to theradio, as we now know with the famousSecond World War speeches.PM: A question about politicalhangers-on....MG: Churchill did not use imagemakers,but I came across a fascinatingcase where he recommended one.When General de Gaulle arrived inLondon in 1940—the one hope reallyof maintaining a fighting France inexile—Churchill was impressed thatthis man wanted to go on fighting theGermans. I found a note that he wroteto the Cabinet Office the theme ofwhich was that General de Gaulle is ourman but he has such a poor personalityand presentation that governmentmoney should be used to get a leadingPR firm to boost his image. So a considerablesum of money was paid to aPR agency, which trained de Gaulle fora month before he made his first greatspeech from London to the French people.Although Churchill did not have a“PR man” per se, he did have an excellentliterary agent, Emery Reves, whoarranged for his articles to be publishedaround the world between 1937 andthe outbreak of war in 1939.PM: After thirty books and havinggone through fifteen tons of materialduring your research, if he were alivetoday, what would be the one questionyou would ask?MG: It would be a question he himselfasked, and I would like to know whathis answer would be. While the SecondWorld War was in its final stages, heFINEST HOUR 135 / 61asked a friend, “Do you think I spenttoo much energy on the German questionand not enough on the Sovietquestion?” I would ask if he thoughtthat he had not done enough, or allthat he could have done, in dealingwith Stalin in 1944.PM: What do you think his answerwould be?MG: I would like to feel that it wouldbe “no,” that he would say that he haddone all that could be done, that he didhis best. But he was a very self-criticalperson, so he might feel that that he didfail in that regard.PM: What was Churchill’s greatest contributionin helping us to define leadership?MG: I think it was a combination ofdrawing on his vast experience, and hisperseverance. So often knocked down,so often marginalized, so often out ofpower, out of office, he never gave up.On one occasion, when he came toCanada in 1929, he thought perhaps heshould give up politics altogether, buy aranch in Alberta, and become a Canadianrancher!PM: Really?MG: He wrote to his wife from Banffin 1929, “I am greatly attracted to thiscountry....I have made up my mindthat if Neville Chamberlain is madeleader of the Conservative Party or anyoneelse of that kind, I clear out of politicsand see if I cannot make you andthe kittens a little more comfortable beforeI die.”* But by the time he hadcompleted his holiday, he was back inthe cut and thrust of British politics.PM: Lucky; who knows what wouldhave happened to us if he hadn’t beenhere?MG (laughing): Perhaps he’d have becomea great Oil Baron!*Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill. CompanionVolume V, Part 2, The Wilderness Years1929-1935 (London: Heinemann, 1981), 62. ,

JAMES LANCASTER’SCHURCHILL QUIZMr. Lancaster welcomesreader input and comments:jimlancaster@wanadoo.frEach quiz includes four questionsin each of six categories:Churchill contemporaries (C),literary matters (L), miscellaneous(M), personal details(P), statesmanship (S) and war (W).Questions are graded into four levelsfor difficulty, the hardest being Level 1.How far can you get before you missone?Level 4:1. Which is Churchill’s best-sellingbook? (L)2. What went really terribly wrong forChurchill in World War I? (W)3. The British government distanced itselffrom one of Churchill’s 1946speeches and the U.S. government declinedto endorse it. Which was it? (S)4. Whom did Churchill marry? (C)5. Who was the aloof Frenchmanwhom Churchill befriended in the SecondWorld War? (C)6. Name five kinds of animals and petsChurchill kept at Chartwell. (P)7. What are the titles of Churchill’s twomajor biographies? (L)8. Which country did Churchill call“The Great Republic”? (M)Level 3:9. Why did Churchill visit the Blenheimbattlefield in September 1932? (L)10. When did Churchill visit Canadafor the first time? (S)11. When and why did Churchill orderchurch bells to be rung for the firsttime during World War II? (W)12. In 1945 Churchill told Harry Hopkins,“If we had spent ten years on researchwe could not have found a worseplace in the world [for the next BigThree Meeting].” Where was it? (M)13. Which of Churchill’s greatestfriends died on 30 October 1929? (C)14. In December 1900 Churchill toldreporters, “I am not here to marry anybody.”Where was he? (P)15. In which Canadian city did WSCand Roosevelt meet twice? (C)Level 2:16. Of whom did Churchill write whenhe was in Bangalore in 1897: “She leftno stone unturned, she left no cutletuncooked”? (M)17. What was the name of Churchill’smost successful thoroughbred? (M)18. For what was Clementine Churchillawarded the CBE in 1918? (P)19. How did Churchill sum up AdmiralJellicoe’s three lost opportunities todestroy the German fleet at Jutland inMay 1916? (W)20. Who described Churchill’s TheWorld Crisis as “Winston’s brilliant autobiographydisguised as a history ofthe universe”? (L)Level 1:21. In which constituency wasChurchill de-selected? (S)22. Who was the first American PresidentChurchill met? (P)23. The Fates looked after Churchillbecause he was only once wounded incombat. When was this? (W)24. When did Churchill speak ofBritain as “This great country nosingfrom door to door like a cow that haslost its calf, mooing dolefully now inBerlin and now in Rome—when all thetime the tiger and the alligator wait forits undoing”? (S)AnswersPARRISH, CHICAGOTRIBUNE, 1945(21) Oldham in 1906 over his stanceon Free Trade. (22) William McKinley,in Washington on 14 December 1900.(23) 15 November 1899, hit in thehand by a bullet splinter just before hesurrendered. His hand was later dressedby a Boer medical officer on the way toprison in Pretoria. (24) At a FocusGroup luncheon on 1 March 1938.(16) His mother. (17) Colonist II,known to punters and bookies asColonist. (18) For setting up and organisinghundreds of canteens for munitionsworkers and other civilians inthe years 1915-18. (19) “Three times isa lot.” (20) The former Prime MinisterArthur J. Balfour.(9) To get material for his biography ofthe first Duke of Marlborough. (10)December 1900. (11) On 15 November1942, to celebrate victory at ElAlamein. (12) Yalta in the Crimea. (13)Lord Birkenhead (F.E. Smith). In hisobituary Churchill wrote, “He was themost loyal, faithful, valiant friend anyman could have, and a wise, learned,delightful companion.” (14) New York,on board the Lucania. The Duke ofManchester had just married theCincinnati heiress Helena Zimmermann.(15) Quebec City.(1) The Second World War. (2) The Dardanellescampaign. (3) The Fultonspeech in March 1946. (4) ClementineHozier. (5) Charles de Gaulle. (6)Dogs, cats, sheep, cows, horses, blackswans, budgerigars, golden orfe, birds,butterflies, pigs, geese, tropical fish. (7)Lord Randolph Churchill and Marlborough:His Life and Times. (8) America.FINEST HOUR 135 / 62

Churchill Centre Regional and Local ContactsLocal Affairs Coordinator:Gary Garrison (ccsgary@bellsouth.net)2364 Beechwood Drive, Marietta GA 30062tel. (770) 378-8389; fax (770) 565-5925Deputy Coordinator:Paul Courtenay (ndege@tiscali.co.uk)Park Lane Lodge, Quarley, Andover, Hants.SP11 8QB UK; tel. (01264) 889627AFFILIATES ARE IN BOLD FACE(National organizations on inside front cover)Rt. Hon. Sir Winston S. ChurchillSociety of AlaskaJudith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu)2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647Churchill Centre ArizonaLarry Pike (lvpike@Chartwellgrp.com)4927 E. Crestview Dr.,Paradise Valley AZ 85253bus. tel. (602) 445-7719; cell (602) 622-0566California: Churchillians of the DesertDavid Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com)74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210tel. (760) 837-1095Churchillians by the BayRichard Mastio (rcmastio@earthlink.net)2996 Franciscan Way, Carmel CA 93923-9216tel. (831) 625-6164Churchillians of Southern CaliforniaLeon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com)235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042tel. (323) 257-9279bus. tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844Churchill Friends of Greater ChicagoPhil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)22 Scottdale Road, LaGrange IL 60526tel. (708) 352-6825Colorado: Rocky Mountain ChurchilliansLew House, President(lhouse2cti@earthlink.net)2034 Eisenhower Drive, Louisville CO 80027tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589England: ICS (UK) Woodford/Epping BranchTony Woodhead, Old Orchard,32 Albion Hill, Loughton, Essex 1G10 4RDtel. (0208) 508-4562England: ICS (UK) Northern BranchDerek Greenwell, “Farriers Cottage”Station Road, GoldsboroughKnaresborough, North Yorkshire HG5 8NTtel. (01432) 863225Churchill Centre North FloridaRichard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net)81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607tel. (352) 378-8985Winston Churchill Society of GeorgiaWilliam L. Fisher (fish1947@bellsouth.net)5299 Brooke Farm Rd., Dunwoody GA 30338tel. (770) 399-9774Winston Churchill Society of Michigan:Michael P. Malley (michael@malleylaw.com)3135 South State St., Ste. 203,Ann Arbor MI 48108tel. (734) 996-1083; fax (734) 327-2973Churchill Round Table of NebraskaJohn Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com)7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114tel. (402) 968-2773New England ChurchilliansJoseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com)340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919Churchill Society of New OrleansEdward F. Martin (tmartin@joneswalker.com)2328 Coliseum St., New Orleans LA 70130tel. (504) 582-8152Churchill Society of Greater New York CityGregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com)c/o Fulbright & Jaworski, 666 Fifth AvenueNew York NY 10103 • tel. (212) 318-3388North Carolina ChurchilliansA. Wendell Musser MD (amusser@nc.rr.com)1214 Champions Pointe DriveDurham NC 27712; tel. (919) 417-1325Churchill Centre Northern OhioMichael McMenamin (mtm@walterhav.com)1301 East 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114tel. (216) 781-1212Churchill Society of PhiladelphiaBernard Wojciechowski(bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us)1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446tel. (323) 661-9856South Carolina: Bernard Baruch ChapterKenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net)P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367tel. (803) 254-4035Tennessee: Vanderbilt UniversityYoung Churchill Club; Prof. John English(john.h.english@vanderbilt.edu)Box 1616, Station B, Vanderbilt University,Nashville TN 37235North Texas: Emery Reves ChurchilliansJeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net)2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237Churchill Centre South TexasJames T. Slattery (slattery@fed-med.com)2803 Red River CreekSan Antonio TX 78259-3542cell (210) 601-2143; fax (210) 497-0904Washington Society for ChurchillDr. John H. Mather, Pres.(Johnmather@aol.com)PO Box 73, Vienna VA 22182-0073tel. (240) 353-6782THE RT HONSIR WINSTON S.CHURCHILL SOCIETY, CANADACalgary: Dr. Francis LeBlanc, Pres.(neuron@platinum.ca)126 Pinetree Dr. SW, Calgary AB T3Z 3K4tel. (403) 685-5836; fax (403) 217-5632Edmonton: Dr. Edward Hutson, Pres.(jehutson@shaw.ca)98 Rehwinkel Road, Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8tel. (780) 430-7178British Columbia: Christopher Hebb, Pres.(cavell_capital@telus.net)1806-1111 W. Georgia Street, Vancouver BCV6E 4M3; tel. (604) 209-6400Vancouver Island: Barry Gough, Pres.(bgough@wlu.ca)3000 Dean Ave., P.O. Box 5037,Victoria, B.C. V8R 6N3; tel. (250) 592-0800,FINEST HOUR 135 / 63

“ T H E O LY M P I A N S AT P L AY, ” 1 9 1 2 : P O S T C R I P TLORD CHARLES BERESFORD GCB GCVOWE like to get things right on our back cover!Per John McLeod’s letter on page 4, the swimmingAdmiral in the Punch cartoon on FH 134’s back cover is, we now believe, Lord Charles Beresford, longtimeChurchill critic (thus the telescope trained on WSC). By 1912 Beresford had retired from the Navy and was servingas Conservative MP for Plymouth. On 20 December 1912, Churchill would deliver a devastating blow in responseto a Beresford speech in the House of Commons: “He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, ‘Before theyget up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, they do not know what they are saying;and when they sit down, they do not know what they have said.’”LEWIS VERNON HARCOURT, VISCOUNT HARCOURT PCPaul Courtenay is now fairly certain that the bald-headed gentleman standing behind andbetween the two javelin throwers (Prime Minister Asquith) and Leader of the OppositionAndrew Bonar Law) is Lewis Vernon Venables, First Viscount Harcourt (1863-1922), whoserved as Liberal MP for Rossendale, Lancashire from 1904 to 1916. At the time of the cartoon,Harcourt was Secretary of State for the Colonies. Port Harcourt, Nigeria, was namedafter him in 1913, when the Governor-General of Nigeria, Sir Frederick Lugard, wrote toHarcourt, with the somehow rather cutting request: “In the absence of any convenient localname, I would respectfully ask your permission to call this Port Harcourt.”HERBERT SAMUEL GCB OM GBE PCThe character with the telephones above,and coddling Andrew Bonar Law at left, isHerbert Samuel (1870-1963), the first practisingJew appointed to a British Cabinet. In1915 Samuel proposed a British Protectorateover Palestine, which led to the BalfourDeclaration on a Jewish National Home. Hebecame the first High Commissioner of thePalestine Mandate in 1920. He served asAsquith’s Postmaster General and HomeSecretary, sided with Asquith in the 1916 splitwith Lloyd George, and lost his seat in 1918.(He was an MP again, 1929-35). Churchill,left, is patting Ulster Unionist Edward Carson(shown wrestling with Home Ruler JohnRedmond above), who had come out in favorof appropriations for more submarines.“How are the mighty fallen, and theweapons of battle perished...” —2 Samuel 1:27,“Essence of Parliament” by Frederick Townsend in Punch, or The London Charivari, 28 February 1917 • John Frost Collection