Download - Winston Churchill

“ 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