.JOURNAL OFTIIE CHURCHILL CKNTER AND ... - Winston Churchill

SUMMER 1999 JOURNAL OF THE CHURCHILL CENTER AND SOCIETIES NUMBER 1039 Sir Robert Rhodes JamesA Remembrance by Richard M. Langworth12 Personality of the Century (9)"We Must Never Deny Our Gratitude"C. P. Snow18 "The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire"A Most Excellently Deserved AwardDr. Cyril Mazansky19 GETTYSBURGThe Greatest and Bloodiest Battle in the Noblest andLeast Avoidable of All the Great Mass-Conflicts ofyWhich Till Then There Was RecordWinston S. Churchill24 Churchill and Eisenhower at GettysburgArticle & Centerspread Painting by Charlotte Thibault28 If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of GettysburgWinston S. Churchill34 "Broad, Sunlit Uplands": An AppreciationPaulAlkon35 Action This Year: Diary for 1928Richard M. LangworthBOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES:37 Douglas Hall reviews a comprehensive book on the21st Lancers at Omdurman...Lord Blake offers us allthere is to know about Churchill in 20,000words....George Richard revisits Virginia Cowles's Life ofWSC...Richard Brookhiser contemplates "The Book ofthe Century"....Collected Works, Collected Essays—hereis our Feature Editor's compilation of Churchill's"Collected Poetry," and while we're at it, several morecompilations: Curt Zoller's list of book reviews for WSCbooks through Liberalism and the Social Problem....Katharine Thomson's list of Churchill's thoroughbredhorses....Ron Cohen's and Douglas Hall's 1899-1959Election Tallies....Mrs. Landemare's and BarbaraLangworth's recipe for Potatoes Anna....and the latestChurchilltrivia stumpers from Curt Zoller.4 Despatch Box5 Datelines7 The Churchill Calendar8 Wit & Wisdom15 Action This Day41 Churchill Center Associates News42 Churchill Online43 Woods Corner44 Churchill in Stamps46 Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas48 Ampersand50 Recipes from No. 1051 ChurchilltriviaCover: "Churchill and Eisenhower at Gettysburg,"an oil painting by Charlotte Thibault, commissionedfor Finest Hour by Craig Horn.Eisenhower took Churchill on a tour of thegrounds around his farm at Gettysburg in May1959. Charlotte's conjectural painting (shown infull on centerspread) asks us to imaginewhat may have passed through Churchill's mindon his visit to the ground he hallowed. And by theway, do you suppose the Great Man might haverecalled his 1931 essay, and wondered what mighthave happened in the world if Lee had won?FINEST HOUR 103/3

DATELINESQUOTE OF THE SEASON"The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that when nations are strongthey are not always just, and when they wish to be just they are often no longer strongLet us have this blessed union of power and justice. "WSC, 1936, quoted by Spencer Warren in Churchill's "Iron Curtain " Speech, to be publisbed in November by the University or Missouri PressTHE FIRSTWAR ROOMSLONDON, MARCH 24TH—Most think theCabinet War Rooms at Clive Steps werewhere Churchill's Cabinet met throughoutthe Blitz—but until late 1940 theymet at Down Street Underground Station,on the Piccadilly Line betweenHyde Park Corner and Green Park. Builtin 1907 and shut in 1932, Down Streetwas reactivated by the Railway ExecutiveCommittee in 1938, and trains beganstopping there again to ferry top brasssafely under the streets of London.Churchill, who nicknamed Down Street"the bunker," slept very well there, enjoyingthe good food and wine stockpiled bythe railways' catering companies beforerationing. It's not easy to spot the tinyplatform between Hyde Park Corner andGreen Park, but you can visit it from thecomfort of your computer by loggingonto the London Transport Museum'swebsite: www.Itmuseum.co.uk.TIME PERSON OF THE CENTURYNEW YORK, JUNE 20TH— Last issue in thisspace we outlined Time's requirements fornomination letters for the "Person of theCentury": 180 words, five or six sentences.Today the editor sent his along,180 words exactly:"In January 1950, Time named WinstonChurchill 'Man of the Half-Century,'saying 'he launched the lifeboats'that saved liberty in its gravest hour. Timecited Churchill's unmatched career: fiftyyears of international prominence—fourtimes that of Franklin Roosevelt, twicethat of any other leader; the only statesmanto hold high office in the two greatestcataclysms of this century; the onlyone to write of his experiences in words"The Bunker" today: the sealed street entranceof Down Street Underground Station.that will live as long as words are read."Since presumably Time will not revisitits decision for 1901-1950, the questionis: who since 1950 has eclipsedChurchill's accomplishments? Consideringthat after 1950, Churchill was electedPrime Minister, promoted peace throughpreparedness, published eight further volumesof history, won the Nobel Prize forLiterature, and became the most-quotedstatesman who ever lived, his record is allthe more astonishing. Still, as he himselfwrote, 'nothing surpasses 1940.' It is beyondimagining what our world would belike today if Winston Churchill had notbeen Britain's Prime Minister at that moment:the pivotal time for the 20th century.MAM-AIR MINI MARTDo not repeat our exact words, butby all means send your own 180 words toTime. The address is: Person of the Century,Time Magazine Letters, Time & LifeBuilding, Rockefeller Center, New YorkNY 10020, or e-mail letters@time.com."NEVER DESPAIR"LONDON, MAY 17TH— William Rees-Moggwrites in The Times: In April 1955 I haddie memorable good fortune as a younglobby correspondent to hear WinstonChurchill's last great speech to the Houseof Commons. He gave his assessment ofhow to secure the survival of mankind inthe new age of the hydrogen bomb. Hisclosing words were: "The day may dawnwhen fair play, love for one's fellow men,respect for justice and freedom, will enabletormented generations to marchcontinued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 / 5

"Never Despair," continuedforth triumphant from the hideous epochin which we have to dwell. Meanwhile,never flinch, never weary, never despair."-Alexander JusticeDESPAIR ANYWAY...LONDON, MARCH 29TH—Sir WinstonChurchill, Boadicea and Henry VIIIcould be among British figures banishedfrom history as part of a "dumbing down"of the subject, reports the Daily Mail.Drafts for the new National Curriculumcirculated in March contained almost norequirements for children aged 7-14 to betaught about important people, dates andfacts. Instead, teachers are urged to concentrateon "historical skills" and the beliefsof people from "various social, cultural,ethnic and religious perspectives."Chris McGovern, director of theHistory Curriculum Association, whofought to keep such figures as Churchillin the original curriculum five years ago,said the changes would erase "the landmarksof British history." The Mail adds:"Pupils currently learn about the twoWorld Wars and are offered the chance tostudy figures such as Churchill, Hitlerand Stalin in depth. But the new curriculummakes only the Nazi Holocaust acompulsory subject. It is otherwise left toteachers to give 'consideration' to 'thecauses and consequences' of the worldwars. Churchill is not even mentioned."McGovern continues: "It is a disaster.The birthright has disappeared forchildren to learn about their nationhood....A lot of teachers also feel a hugesense of guilt about Britain's past whichthey see as imperialistic and concernedonly with white males." He suggested thereforms were intended to underminesense of British identity, making it easierto submerge the country into a Europeansuperstate: "If you want to see the UnitedKingdom as part of a federal Europeanstate then history gets in the way."The draft curriculum was to havebeen sent to Education Secretary DavidBlunkett in May and put out to consultationover the summer. British readers maywish to query their MPs on the currentstate of these proposals.Simultaneously, the Telegraph advisedthat Earl Spencer's speech at the funeralDATELINESof Princess Diana has entered British secondaryschool textbooks "as one of thegreat examples of the effective uses ofEnglish."BUT NOT JUST YET...TORONTO, JUNE 2ND—Members might liketo know that we receive 60,000 to 70,000visits per week on The Churchill Centerand Societies website. That's not numbersof people, because some people makemany requests while surfing from page topage. Our busiest week was the week ofthe launching of USS Winston S.Churchill when we received 73,054 visits.But our busiest days were May 25th andMay 26th when we received 17,886 and16,660 respectively. Interestingly, it felloff to 3,730 per day by the end of thatweek, coinciding with the deadline forfinal exams and term-papers. The cause ofeducating young people about Churchillis not altogether lost.-John PlumptonSPIRITUAL RENEWALEDINBURGH,MAY 10TH—During the war aScottish cleaning woman and mother ofsix named Helen Duncan was tried forwitchcraft for holding seances invokingsuch ghosts as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.Churchill angrily defended her in a letterto Home Secretary Herbert Morrison,calling the trial "obsolete tomfoolery."Mrs. Duncan was hounded for the rest ofher life. She died five weeks after policeburst into a seance while she was in tranceand tried to seize the ghostly apparaitions.Now a web-based campaign for a posthumouspardon has begun, with supportfrom British television producers, MPsand spiritualists. The web address ishttp://members. tripod, com/^helenduncan/.LONDON REMEMBERSLONDON, MAY 6TH—IN WAR, RESOLUTION;IN DEFEAT, DEFIANCE; IN VICTORY, MAG-NANIMITY; IN PEACE, GOODWILL. Thosefamous words are now inscribed on amemorial in St. Paul's Cathedral to the30,000 London civilians who died fromenemy bombing in World War II. Alsoengraved on the Irish limestone monumentare the words: "Remember beforeGod the People of London 1939-1945."FINEST HOUR 103 / 6i•SI•I•WM$m•Hs thehe>y theIt was the Queen Mother wholaunched the memorial fund with a generousdonation. She of course livedthrough the Blitz and made many visitsto the sites of the worst bombings. Sheachieved a special place in Londoners'hearts with her remark after the bombingof Buckingham Palace: "I'm glad we'vebeen bombed. It makes me feel I can lookthe East End in the face." The EveningStandard, which promoted the fund, receiveddonations ranging from a fewpence to hundreds of pounds, often inmemory of one who had died in the Blitzor the VI and V2 attacks that followed.BERLIN REMEMBERSBERLIN, MARCH 6TH—Some Germans areprotesting the naming of an Army Barracksafter Churchill, mainly on the goodold grounds of the bombing of Dresden(which everyone forgets was a militarytarget). German Defence Minister RudolfScharping hedged by saying the Barrackswould be in recognition of Churchill'scontribution to European unity. But PeterBoenisch in the newspaper Bild replied,"One can imagine a Churchill library, ayouth foundation or exhibition, but aChurchill Barracks would not be overcomingthe past." Meanwhile, CulturalMinister Michael Naumann has attackedBritain's obsession with World War II,saying the UK is still "mesmerized by theNazis....There is only one nation in the

DATELINESworld that has decided to make the SecondWorld War a spiritual core of its nationalpride."VISCOUNT ECCLES, 1904-1999LONDON, APRIL 24TH—As education ministerunder Churchill, Eden and Macmillan,David Eccles was widely respected forhis brilliant mind and his ability to winbattles in Cabinet. But he had one dreadfulflaw, said The Guardian: his "apocalypticsmugness." In Parliament after thewar he made himself unpopular with"Rab" Butler by claiming the "intellectualleadership" of the Tory Party. He mastermindedarrangements for the 1953 Coronation,but caused embarrassment by describingthe Queen as his "perfect leadinglady." Eccles's most famous act of self-immolationtook place in July 1962, duringMacmillan's "Night of the Long Knives."Unlike others involved, Eccles was offeredanother post. "It's the Exchequer or nothing,"he replied—and was promptly givennothing. - The WeekLOCAL & NATIONALNew EnglandNEWPORT, R.I., NOVEMBER—An intense andlearned group led by two Naval War Collegeprofessors spent 2 1/2 days in deepdiscussions of Winston Churchill's writingsand speeches at a seminar sponsoredby the Liberty Fund of Indianapolis. WasChurchill a Christian? What are the essentialcomponents of "Western Civilization"which he is said to have saved? Washe optimistic about human progress ormade melancholy by war? Why did thisstiff critic of socialism and bureaucracyalso take pride in having created the accoutrementsof the modern welfare state?Was 1930s appeasement caused byFranco-British memories of the GreatWar, or the pacifism endemic to democracies?How far did Churchill really wantUnited Europe to go? What elements explainhis greatness—moral vision, politicaljudgment, courage, rhetoric?Hindsight is not 20/20 so there wasno shortage of controversy. Tulsa Universityhistorian Paul Rahe spoke eloquentlyfor Churchill's vision of the nobility ofpolitics; others, including a Cato InstituteTHE CHURCHILL CALENDARAll postings welcome; owing to our quarterly schedule, we need copy at least three months in advance.19993 September: "Churchill and the Second World War" panel/dinner,American Politicial Science Conference, Atlanta, Ga.24-26 September: Theme Conference, "Churchill & Eisenhower at Gettysburg,"26-28th: Churchill Center Board of Governors Meeting, Gettysburg, Penna.18 October: Publication of Churchill War Papers 3: "The Ever-Widening War, 1941"200014-17 September: Seventeenth Intl. Churchill Conference, Anchorage, Alaska200114 February: Centenary of Winston Churchill's Entry into ParliamentSpring: Theme Conference: "Churchill and Intelligence"Autumn: Eighteenth International Churchill Conference, Ottawa, Ontario2002Spring: Nineteenth International Churchill Conference, LondonSpring: Ninth International Churchill Tour, England2003Spring: Student Seminar, Quebec CityAutumn: Twentieth International Churchill Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda4-8 December: 50th Anniversary of the Bermuda Conferencelibertarian and two Britons, saw many ofChurchill's actions as opportunism, partypolitics, even hypocrisy. The debate wasframed around readings of Churchill's"The Dream," The World Crisis Volume I,The Gathering Storm, Triumph andTragedy, and many rich speeches from the1920s through 1940s.The most riveting session, for thisparticipant, was the rich discussion of acounterfactual question: should Churchillhave made a truce of some type withHitler after the fall of France? Panel leadersAlberto Coll and Michael Handel,their Naval War College colleague JohnMaurer, and historian Sebastian Cox exploredthis issue. A consensus emerged:neither in the terms of that time, norgiven what has been revealed since, wasChurchill wrong to fight on. And his successplaces the world in his debt.Symposiasts parted company reluctantlyafter this remarkable intellectualbanquet, but each took away new insightsinto the ways Churchill's voice helped todefend the West and advance die Anglo-American tradition of political liberty.-Chris Harmon M>AROUND AND ABOUTEverybody's getting into the Person of the Century business, not to mention the Millennium.Recendy The Sunday Telegraph decided to poll historians for the greatest British andworld figures of die past thousand years. They received some dark horse nominations:David Hume, John Maynard Keynes, Abraham Darby. But the Countess of Longford,Alistair Home and Vernon Bogdanor of Oxford picked Churchill, who was named morethan anyone else, widi Shakespeare a close second. John Charmley, always interested in aquick headline, suggested Adolf Hitler: "Nobody has had as much influence, for thebad, as Hitler," wrote J.C., forgetting not only the body counts of Stalin and Mao, butthe fact tliat he's written a book saying Churchill should have not fought theFiihrer.... Arabella Churchill, 49, the daughter of Randolph Churchill and wife of jugglerHaggis McLeod, was rescued with seven of her friends by the U.S. Navy off Hawaii inApril after an outrigger canoe capsized. Arabella spent eleven hours in shark-filled waters.Today she says, "life seems very precious and not to be wasted"....Members of dieHeythrop Hunt careered through Bladon last winter, coursing a primary school playgroundand terrorising a girl walking a dog. The Hunt apologized to Bladon Council.continued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 /1

Wit&Wisdom"THE HUN IS ALWAYS AT YOURTHROAT OR AT YOUR FEET"Dan Schneider asks, "What is thecite for WSC's great quote (above)? Accordingto Churchill, himself, it was notoriginally coined by him. The reference,in Kay Halle's Irrepressible Churchill(Cleveland: World 1966, p. 218) reads:"The proud German Army has by itssudden collapse, sudden crumbling andbreaking up...once again proved the truthof the saying, 'The Hun is either at yourthroat or at your feet.'" Halle ascribes thepassage to Churchill's broadcast fromWashington on the third anniversary ofthe Home Guard, 14 May 1943, but itdoes not appear either in thetext of that broadcast in theComplete Speeches (VI, pp.6772-74) or Onwards to Victory(pp. 87-90)."IRON CURTAIN"We've been over thisbefore, but here is new information.Natalie Adams ofthe Churchill Archives Centerwrites: "In 1951 Churchillreceived a letter fromone of the compilers of theAmerican College Dictionary,asking him whether he recalledhaving met the phrasebefore his first use of it.Churchill's response was,'No. I didn't hear of thephrase before—though everyone hasheard of the "iron curtain" which descendsin a theater.' (Reference: ChurchillPapers, CHUR 2/391)."We found this very interesting, butwondered if the phrase had neverthelessbeen read by Churchill and remained inhis capacious memory. Dalton Newfield,in Finest Hour 19 (May-June 1971, p. 5)wrote:"According to The Concise OxfordDictionary of Quotations, the term 'ironcurtain,' in reference to things Russian,was first used in a book by Mrs. PhilipSnowden, entitled Through Bolshevik Russia,in 1920. The exact wording, 'We wereAROUND & ABOUTcontinued from page 7...Lullenden, the first Churchill country home (1917-19) in East Grinstead, West Sussex,is for sale again. Called "a near-perfect example of a fine Tudor house on a modestHome Counties estate," it can be had for only £2.75 million. Agents are FDP Savills(01732) 7897OO....After he had left power in 1955, Churchill and his wife wished togive an avenue of limes and elms to Chequers, country residence of Prime Ministers,but the trustees chose chestnut and beech....According to Nigel Rosser in London'sEvening Standard, the Royal Family changed their official name to Mountbatten-Windsorin 1960 because an obscure genealogist protested that the surname Windsor impliedPrince Andrew was born out of wedlock. Rosser says Churchill "steamrollered"the Queen to adopt "House of Windsor" in 1952 because of his then-loathing forLouis Mountbatten over his performance as last Viceroy of India, according to Rosser.(They were later reconciled; will someone please advise whether this is to be believed?)....A painting offered Churchill by Lord Melchett, chairman of ICI during thewar, was vetoed for Chequers by Lord Lee (who gave Chequers to the nation) becausehe considered it "a very perfunctory example of a second-rate painter." The work wasJohn Churchill at Blenheim, by van Huchtenburgh—which the Prime Minister dulyplaced at Number Ten Downing Street.^behind the "iron curtain" at last,' is foundon page 32. Given WSC's dynamic interestin world affairs, it is not illogical tosuppose that he was an early reader of thispioneer account of Lenin's Russia, andthat the phrase was added to his bank ofknowledge to be stored for opportuneusage some quarter-century later."Second to use 'iron curtain' officially,so far as I know, was Josef Goebbels,the infamous Nazi propaganda chief,in the 25Feb45 issue of Das Reich, one ofthe Nazi journal's last issues. Translated itreads: 'Should the German people laydown its arms, the agreement betweenRoosevelt, Churchill and Stalin wouldallow the Soviets to occupy all Easternand Southeastern Europe together withthe major part of the Reich. An iron curtainwould at once descend on this territorywhich, including the Soviet Union,would be of enormous dimensions.'"Churchill himself was only third inline, but even so he first used the phraselong before Fulton. In a telegram to Trumandated 12May45 (see Triumph andTragedy, U.S. edition, p. 498) he said: Aniron curtain is drawn down upon theirfront. We do not know what is going onbehind.' And six months before the WestminsterCollege address, St. VincentTroubridge, in the 21Oct45 Sunday EmpireNews, wrote: 'There is an iron curtainacross Europe.'"Thus at Fulton on 7 March 1946,Churchill was to use the phrase for atleast the second time himself, for thefourth time in its contemporary context,and for at least the fifth time in literature.It may at first seem surprising that he waspreceded in its use by one of democracy'sbitterest enemies during the last gasps ofthe Third Reich, probably to make clearwhat was already well known—that theNazis much preferred to make their firstpeace with the Anglo-Americans. YetGoebbels, himself no slight student ofpolitics and global strategy, was probablyas capable as Churchill in recognizing theruthless ambitions of Premier Stalin, perhapsmore so, for the tyrant is well qualifiedto recognize his fellow tyrant."The Churchill Center has arrangedfor publication of Churchill's "Iron Curtain"Speech, papers from a colloquiumcosponsored in March 1996 with theChurchill Memorial & Library. (See"Quote of the Season," page 5.) M>FINEST HOUR 103 / 8

SIR ROBERT RHODES JAMESA REMEMBRANCE BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTHIn his most famous book, RobertRhodes James set out to prove thatWinston Churchill was human. Asuperfluous mission? Sir Robertreplied that Churchill had been almostcompletely deified, and that itwas high time someone brought himdown to earth. Churchill: A Study inFailure (1970) was an outstandingcatalogue of the great man's outrages,miscalculations and false steps whichleft him, in 1939, admired for hisbrilliance and feared for his lack ofjudgment.If Churchill had died at sixty-five,Rhodes James wrote, he would be rememberedas a politician who failedmore than he succeeded, which was Ithink a bit tongue-in-cheek. If Hitleror Lenin had died at thirty theywould not be remembered at all. Peopleare remembered for the totality oftheir contributions. Nor was A Studyin Failure a pioneering work, for criticalbooks about Churchill had beenappearing since the 1920s. But it wasthe best of its kind: carefully researched,deftly argued, an elegant politicalhistory, a model. In 1985 it wasnamed by the International ChurchillSociety's Churchill Bibliographic Dataas the best critical work on Churchillever published.Its author was well qualified, becauselike Churchill, Sir Robert wasthat rare combination, the politicianwriter,and, unlike most modernpoliticians, he didn't make politics hissole career. He clerked in the Houseof Commons from 1955 to 1965, returnedto All Souls as a research fellow,taught history at Stanford andthe University of Sussex, and workedfor the United Nations in New York.In 1976 he won a by-election inCambridge and held the seat despitetough challenges until he retired in1992. His toughest race was in 1987,when he eked out a close win againstthe redoubtable Shirley Williams, oneof the prominent "Gang of Four"who founded the Social Democratsout of disaffected Labour members.Aside from Study in Failure, SirRobert left a huge corpus for laborersin the Churchill vineyard, beginningwith the first biography of Lord RandolphChurchill since the one by SirWinston (who praised it) in 1962; ofWSC's great friend Lord Rosebery(1963); of Prince Albert (1983); andof Anthony Eden, whom he so admired(1986). His work was less eventhan his admirers proclaimed. BobBoothby (1991, reviewed FH78) borderedon hagiography: Churchill'sParliamentary Private Secretary, wholater fell out with his boss, hardly putsa foot wrong in that book, whichmeanwhile etiolates Churchill. Yetshort of Churchill and Roy Jenkinswe would be hardpressed to find amore valuable politician-writer.His greatest contribution wasWinston S. Churchill: His CompleteSpeeches 1897-1963 (1974), not trulycomplete but close, with two well-organizedand comprehensive indexes.He shocked me once by confidingthat he had been paid only £5000 forthe job, 55 pence per page, so niggardlya sum as to be unimaginable.It's a safe bet that he derived no incomefrom its later abridged editions,the most recent of which was Barnes& Noble's Churchill Speaks, althoughhe smiled when I told him the originaleight volumes are among the threeor four most highly sought-aftermulti-volume works about WinstonChurchill.Imet him in Washington in 1994,where he delivered a paper at ourfirst Churchill Symposium, laterquantified in Churchill as Peacemaker(1997). His colleague Paul Addison,who also participated, remembered"what fun he was to be with, a warmand generous character sparkling withgossip and full of enthusiasms." SirRobert told me that he'd written, in alighthearted vein, the story of theChurchill government that neverwas—the government Churchillwould have run had he won in 1945-What a piece of alternate history thatwould have made, no doubt on thesame plane as Churchill's "If Lee HadNot Won the Battle of Gettysburg"(see elsewhere this issue).The Washington Post said SirRobert "could be a congenial companionto those he counted as his intellectualnear-equals," which clearlyincluded Professor Addison. But noteveryone was so fortunate, and he wasnot one to hide his light under abushel. As the Post put it, he "neverlost the superior manner commonlydisplayed by clerks of the Commons."He issued a stream of complaintabout our symposium, from the factthat speakers had to stand up to thequality of certain presentations. Hisprotest over our auditorium ban onsmoking was an example, crisp anddroll: "Sex will be banned next inyour country, except between consentinggay couples in California.There is little future for the rest ofus.continued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 / 9

"The Swiss Press got rather confused and described NicholasSoames and me as WSC's 'two grandsons,' which puzzledthe multitude, as the physical resemblance is absolutely nil.Nicholas, of course, thought it hilarious."—RRJFor awhile it seemed that SirRobert and I weren't destined tobecome chums. He was a Torywet who believed in little Britainwithin the European Union and regardedMargaret Thatcher as a rathernasty aberration. I was a jaded politicaljunkie who had lost faith in politicsas currently practiced but wouldhave voted for Thatcher if I could,who believed that the EU was a socialistcon-job for the benefit of theFranco-Germans, and that the bestGreat Britain could do was to join theNorth American Free Trade Association.We disagreed manifestly aboutthe Official Biography. RandolphChurchill had sacked him from theO.B. research team and Robert neverforgave him, always maintaining thatthe O.B. was the same "case for thedefence" Churchill had already madein his own books (FH 64, p. 11).Robert never feared to say exactlywhat he believed in the most forcefulterms available to a gentleman. In anage of prevaricating phonies of theLeft and Right, such a character israre. Winston Churchill would haveloved him.At the Peacemaker symposium hetook on my friend Manfred Weidhorn,who suggested that Churchillhad protested Hitler's occupation ofthe Rhineland. Walking briskly to thepodium after Manny's presentation,Robert announced: "Churchill saidnothing about the Rhineland, nothingat all; he was hoping to get intothe Cabinet so he kept his mouthshut." Then bang, he sat down again.No questions, thanks very much!Later we tangled over this—becauseChurchill did and said thingsabout the Rhineland which ought tobe in the record, and (I argued)sweeping generalizations have noplace either in a biography ofBoothby or a seminar on Churchill.He ended it with a peremptory note:"I am one of Churchill's strongest admirers,but I cannot accept claimsthat have no merit or justification. Isee no point whatever in continuingthis correspondence."nd that, I thought, was that;Allbut a year later he wrote tojffer Finest Hour a very goodpiece ("Myth-Shattering: An ActorDid NOT Give Churchill's Speeches,"FH 92), and we renewed our correspondence,in which he produced atreasury of rewarding observations.His intelligent and shrewd thoughtson Churchill and politics, deliveredad hoc with a kind of entre nous intimacy,were a privilege to read. Heeven agreed to consider what I wouldeventually produce on Churchill andthe Rhineland. I came to realize thathere was a wise and opinionated Diogenesto shed a kindly light over myown insignificant Churchill studies.Alas the Rhineland piece was setaside, because like most of his friendsand admirers I expected Robertwould be with us a long time yet; andnow he will never read it, to hammerme back in cordial debate. He diedtoo young, of cancer on May 20th,his second Churchill volume unpublished.I join the mourners of a firstclass intellect and, as Churchill said,"a good House of Commons man." $3AFFAIRS CHURCHILLSir Robert Rhodes James to Richard M. Langworth, 1995-98ANTHONY EDEN"I do not think that WSC developed 'a cold hatred' for Eden; certainly theircorrespondence would belie this, but the abandonment of the Suez Canal baseangered Churchill, as did Eden's manifest impatience with WSC's procrastinationabout retiring."GEORGE VI"The relationship between WSC and the King during the war is important,as it has been consistently underestimated, and even on occasion ignored. Itbegan stickily, but developed into the closest relationship between Monarchand Prime Minister in modern British history. The Queen Mother is very affectionatelyamusing about WSC, as was the King when Churchill's letters becameespecially flowery. On one occasion WSC enthusiastically responded to a pleafor help in preparing a broadcast by the King by sending a speech he had composedspecially. Of course, it contained words and phrases the King could notget his tongue round, and, while splendidly Churchillian, was so out of characterfor the King that it was politely rejected. Sadly, his draft seems to have disappeared."HAROLD NICOLSON"His position was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Informationbetween May 1940 and June 1941. This was a junior Ministerial post in theChurchill Coalition Government. Duff Cooper was a disaster as Minister, andHarolds career suffered thereby, but as his son Nigel has frankly admitted, 'hewas not a fit person to run a Department in wartime.' Indeed, much as I lovedHN, he was marvellously unfitted to administer or run anything. When WSC,who had to find a Labour Minister to balance the Coalition team, had to sackHN, whom he greatly liked and respected, he made him a Governor of theBBC, which was his true metier." continued opposite »>FINEST HOUR 103/10

DUFF COOPER"I too thought that Charmley's biography of Duff Cooper was much betterthan his Churchill book, though I thought he was unduly censorious about Duff'sdrinking and womanizing. If his wife was tolerant of both then I think we cam be. Iprefer red-blooded people to time-servers and sycophants. And Duff had real guts,in war and peace. And he wrote so wonderfully, gracefully and simply—particularlyon a hot summer afternoon after a long lunch with beautiful women and plenty ofChampagne, good wine and brandy. But this is now terribly unfashionable andnon-PC!"LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL"I never believed this canard [that he died of syphilis]. When I was researchingmy Lord Randolph Churchilll discussed it with an eminent elderly specialist in the disease,who told me that, having looked at the symptoms, syphilis was the least likely ofall the causes of his decline and death. He was certainly treated for it, by a physicianwho was on record as declaring all nervous diseases syphilitic, which of course we nowknow is nonsense. John [Mather] s conclusion [FH 93] that the treatment only acceleratedLord Randolph's mental collapse and death seems to me to be fully justified. Iam rather surprised that some of the Churchills told you they believed the story, althoughRandolph, ill-advised as usual, did. But the Churchills do like to tease. Clarissa Avon once told me that 'of course'her father Jack was illegitimate, knowing full well that this was nonsense, but rather chic...Jack's son John was physically almostan exact replica of his Uncle Winston, and with an even more formidable capacity for alcohol consumption; he livedto a much greater age than the modern Puritans deem possible, and was also a very good artist!"CHURCHILL SYMPOSIA"I am glad your last Symposium went much better, and the style that I had advised was adopted. The great AustinConference on WSC* was made memorable and enjoyable by the provision of the smoking room in the LBJ Library, and,by a stroke of added genius by Roger Louis, a bottle of Bourbon for each participant. No wonder it was a triumph. AndWSC would have greatly approved."*Published as Churchill: A Major New Assessment of His Life in Peace and War, Lord Blake and William Roger Louis,editors (NY: Norton 1993).ON THE CIRCUIT"We had a fine dinner meeting of The Other Other Club in Madison. I cut down my contribution drastically, as the oldboys were longing to get at their oysters and Pol Roger....I had to do the same at the Anniversary meeting in Zurich, where Ispoke from the same podium as WSC had in 1946,as the Swiss Foreign Minister gave an interminableA P otshot at the Tov ? malaise under leader William Ha g" e - Daily Mail,and hardly relevant speech, but it went remarkably4Dec98 - ^ did not send me this> but if he saw k he would have en '^ed k -well, and there were many requests afterwards forthe full text. The Swiss Press got rather confused anddescribed Nicholas Soames and me as WSC's 'twograndsons,' which puzzled the multitude, as thephysical resemblance is absolutely nil. Nicholas, ofcourse, thought it hilarious."THE WEED"If we have another Winston Churchill symposiumit really must recognise that a non-smokingChurchill Conference is a contradiction in terms,almost as idiotic as a non-smoking Churchill Cabinet!Auberon Waugh has formed a club in Londonin which smoking is compulsory. This may be takingthe counter-revolution rather too far, but he ismaking a point against the PC fanatics...I likesmoking. Oh dear." $'There must be some way to solve this crisis, William, dear. Whatwould past leaders have done?... William?'COUJO3

'WePersonality ol theIN ever D lever iU'enyC.Pur9?IREMEMBER—I shall not forget itwhile I live—that beautiful, shining,desperate summer of 1940. I was listeningwith a friend, for we were never far froma radio that June, to one of the greatspeeches. It must have been either afterDunkirk, or after the fall of France. Thegrowling, lisping voice came into the room.That voice was our hope. It was the voice ofwill and strength incarnate. It was saying what wewanted to hear said ("We shall defend our island")and what we tried to believe would come true ("Weshall fight on unconquerable until the curse of Hitleris lifted from the brows of mankind. We are sure thatin the end all will come right.")My friend and I went out into the Londonevening. He said, "We must never deny our gratitude.Don't forget. We must never deny our gratitude. "Winston Churchill was a great man, if suchwords mean anything. But he was something else, towhich Americans have responded more wholeheartedlythan we English have: perhaps because to us it istoo near the bone. He was the last of an epoch.In those days of 1940 we were sustained by asurge of national emotion, of which Churchill wasboth symbol and essence, evocator and voice. His patriotismwas absolute. He was an aristocrat, but hewould cheerfully have beggared his class and hisfriends, and everyone else too, if that was the price ofthe country's coming through. Everyone believedthat, and as his voice rolled out into the streets thosesummer evenings, Churchill spoke for a nation undi-Commencing in Finest Hour 97, "Personality of the Century" was anongoing series of op-ed pieces designed to qualify Churchill for Timemagazine's top accolade at the end of the century. The nine articles arenow being gathered and submitted to the editors of Time. British novelistC.P. Snow was Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Technology.Among his best books were novels in the Strangers and Brothers sequence,including Corridors of Power. This excerpt may be read in fullin the Churchill chapter of his A Variety of Men (Macmillan: 1967).© KARSH, OTTAWAvided and curiously happy, as it has neverbeen in my lifetime, before or since.Looking back, perhaps one reads intoour mood of those months elements whichwere not there. Did we really have a senseof last things, as I have now? The last fightof Britain as a solitary great power. The lastgreat starring part on the world stage. Thelast aristocrat to rule Britain. The last assertive cry ofa country which, for no particular reason, had governeda disproportionate slice of the world.All these last things, and a good many more,seem now to be contained in Churchill's speeches.Macaulay said of Oliver Cromwell that everyone,whether they believed in kings or not, could not helpfeeling that he was the greatest prince who ever ruledin England. I suspect that will be something like theattitude of posterity to Churchill, at any rate in thefirst years of his wartime administration.Yet there are paradoxes which will puzzle posterity.During those years, Churchill ruled the countrywith a greater measure of support than any primeminister has ever done. Nevertheless, he only becameprime minister in the teeth of the wishes of the overwhelmingmajority of his own party. He was a Conservative,but the Conservatives had distrusted himfor a generation. They thought him arrogant, ambitious,an adventurer. When Chamberlain had to go,they would have chosen Lord Halifax as Prime Minister.King George VI hated having to send forChurchill in May 1940 and would never have doneso if it had not been for the providential chance thatHalifax happened to be a member of the House ofLords. Churchill's real support, as well as trust and affection,came from the Labour benches.Then there was another twist. Churchill wasPrime Minister for five years. The Hitler war waswon. In the general election of 1945, he waspromptly thrown out of office—"dismissed" to usehis own word—by a gigantic Labour majority, in oneFINEST HOUR 103 /12

of the biggest political turnovers in the long historyof Britain. These events are calculated to puzzle notonly posterity but also contemporary Americans. Yetanyone used to drinking in London pubs and talkingto servicemen before that election could not be surprisedwhen he was voted out of office.The British vote for parties, not for people.The mass of the country at that time wanted sweepingsocial reforms, and did not believe the ConservativeParty could make them.Had Churchill died in his sixties, he wouldhave been one of the picturesque failures in Britishpolitics. His life, right up to the time when mostmen have finished, had been adventurous and romantic,but he had achieved little. Except among hisreal friends, he had never been popular.He had an unsatisfactory and unhappy boyhood.He was a textbook example of a highly intelligent personwho just couldn't cope with a formal education.He must have had an IQ as high as anyone could reasonablywish, immense verbal skills and gigantic, if latent,powers of concentration. But he had to be sent tothe military academy of Sandhurst because no onecould think of anything else to do with him.He wasn't cut out to be a peacetime officer. Hewanted glory; he wanted the excitement of war. Hewas a romantic born. His physical courage (or anyother kind of courage) no one, except possibly himself,ever doubted. He longed to see what danger feltlike. In the Victorian afternoon of the British Empire,he managed to work in a lot of fighting, inIndia, in Egypt, in South Africa.At the age of 26 he entered Parliament andwithin a remarkably short time became the mosthated politician in the country. Churchill started as aConservative, but for honorable reasons, and on aspecific issue, he changed his party. In British politics,this takes some living down. It took even moreliving down because his change was soon followed bythe great Liberal victory of 1906, and he found himselfa member of the Liberal administration, the mostgifted Britain has ever had. From that day, his namewas a dirty word in respectable Conservative circles.For years, he could do nothing quite right. Hewas an excellent First Lord of the Admiralty beforeand at the beginning of World War I. But his bestideas came to nothing. He was responsible for the developmentof the tank, but the weapon was wasted.In the wartime coalitions, the Conservatives made ittheir first condition that Churchill should not holdhigh office. Even Lloyd George, the most persuasiveof men, who believed in him, had difficulty smugglinghim in.So he went through his middle age. The recordof failure grew. He changed party again and rejoinedthe Conservatives. He had a lively but unsuccessfulspell as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924-29). Inthe 1930s, he was the chief Conservative critic of theConservative Party—passionately opposed to themover India (where he behaved like a 19th century imperialistand was dead wrong), over their attempts toappease Hitler (where he was dead right). For nearlyfifty years of his public life, the orthodox remark inBritain was, "Churchill? Brilliant, of course. But nojudgment."to people in the corridors ofpower, means two things—one which mostof us would think bad, one good. The badthing "Jiudgment,"is the ability to sense what everyone else isthinking and to think like them. This Churchillnever had, and would have despised himself for having.But the good thing in "judgment" is the abilityto think of many matters at once, in their interdependence,their relative importance and their consequences.In this sense Churchill's judgment, on manyoccasions in his life, was seriously defective.Churchill had a very powerful mind, but a romanticand unquantitative one. If he thought about acourse of action long enough, and desired it passionately,he convinced himself that it must be possible.That obsessive quality drove him into his major errors,not only in war but in peace. Think of his famouscry, "I have not become the King's First Ministerin order to preside over the liquidation of theBritish Empire." Resounding, yes. The grand manner,yes. But it didn't make sense. Any First Minister,even one with a will as strong as his, would have beenobliged to preside over the dissolution of the Empire.If Britain had tried to hold India after 1945, Indiawould have gone anyway, with bitterness for whichthe whole West would not have been forgiven.Yet, ironically, this same obsessive quality wasthe force which saved us. When Hitler came topower in 1933, Churchill did not use judgment, butone of his profound insights. Hitler was absolute evil,and there was no way round. It was a unique occasionin our history. We needed that insight, and thatFINEST HOUR 103 /13

JVlLy dear JNellie, 11 JVILiPo C^JhiircJiill Jkad ever done me iJke Jaonour oi amg me to marry nun, 1 sJhoiiid 01 comrse nave accepted Jaim on tne—C.P. Snow's "Mrs. Smith"This could only have been the former Pamela Plowden (1874-1971), who married Victor Lytton,later the Earl of Lytton, in 1904; she and Churchill remained friends for life. -Ed.absolute strength. Not many in conservative Britainhad such insight. He had. That was why he couldkeep us going when it came to war and we werealone. Where it mattered most, there he was right.And that is why we shall never deny our gratitude.There is also a great deal else to be grateful for.He not only helped to save us from dying; he showedus a pattern of life. Churchill was never sour or malicious.He had, on the contrary, all the broad and expansivevirtues. He was a singularly magnanimousman. With a few exceptions, he forgave his enemies.He was the loyalest of friends, took risks for those heloved, and never denied his affections. He wore hisvirtues as cheerfully as his absurd hats.He never lost the rip-roaring Corinthian gustofor living. Eyebrows were lifted at his brandy andChampagne, his cigars, his liking for the company ofthe international rich, and much he cared. In everythingthat doesn't matter, he did precisely what hewanted and never gave a damn. In everything that didmatter, he lived much more strictly than most men,according to a strong and gallant moral code. Therewas never, for example, a breath of sexual scandalabout him. He married rather late, at thirty-three, waslucky in his wife and lived in monogamous happiness.IDID once hear an anecdote for which I have noevidence. I heard it during the war: like those cumulatingstories in his last ten years, it left apleasant taste.It was told me by a charming elderly woman,now dead, who had herself been a dashing beauty inEdwardian society. She had just come back from arailway journey. The time was the middle of the war,when Churchill was at the peak of his power. Shefound herself in a carriage with another elderlywoman, an acquaintance whom she had not met fora long time. According to my informant this was thewoman whom Churchill in his twenties had wishedto marry (long before he met his future wife). Shehad been smart, pretty, an heiress: the only difficultywas that she had not returned his love. He had pursuedher with the singlemindedness that he had laterspent on war. He had used all his eloquence, all hisforce, every resource he had. None of it was anygood. She finally married someone who happened tohave a very common English name—I will call himMr. Smith—and who was otherwise unknown to history.So my informant sat opposite Mrs. Smith,whom she had not met since they were both youngwomen, in the railway carriage. There was a gooddeal of chat about old times. Then my informantsaid:"You must be very proud of your old flame.""What do you mean?""Mr. Churchill, of course."At that Mrs. Smith is said to have given a gentlenon-committal smile. My informant could not resistasking:"Come now, have you never wished that youhad married him?"Then Mrs. Smith looked her straight in theeye, and said: "My dear Nellie, if Mr. Churchill hadever done me the honour of asking me to marry him,I should of course have accepted him on the spot."Too gallant to believe? Anyway, such was thestory. I cannot vouch for any part of it. But from thepoint of view of the Churchillian apotheosis, it doesn'tmatter whether it is true or not. It does carry thetone of high-hearted behaviour, higher-hearted behaviourthan we could manage in our own time. Andit was Churchill's own high-hearted behaviour thatbecame the substance of his myth. People wantedsomething to admire that seemed to be slipping outof the grit of everyday. Whatever could be saidagainst him, he had virtues, graces, style. Courage,magnanimity, loyalty, wit, gallantry—these were notoften held up for admiration in our literature, or indeeddepicted at all. He really had them. I believethat it was deep intuition which made people feel, inthose last ten years, that his existence had after allsweetened English life. $FINEST HOUR 103/14

ACTIONOne hundred years ago:Summer 1899 • Age 24The First DefeatChurchill spent the summer of 1899in his first election campaign,attempting, unsuccessfully, to persuadePamela Plowden to join him. He wroteto her describing the campaign:"I shall never forget the successionof great halls packed with excited peopleuntil there was not room for one singleperson more - speech after speech, meetingafter meeting - three even four inone night - intermittent flashes of Heat& Light & enthusiasm - with cold airand the rattle of a carriage in between: agreat experience. And I improve everytime - I have hardly repeated myself atall. And at each meeting I am consciousof growing powers and facilities ofspeech, and it is in this that I shall findmy consolation should the result be, asis probable, unfortunate."Churchill's prediction was accurate.He and his running mate, the tradeunion leader Mawdsley, lost the twoTory seats to the Liberals in the July 6thelection. The results were close, however,and The Manchester Courier reportedthat Churchill "might have been defeatedbut he was conscious that in thisfight he had not been disgraced." Balfouragreed, writing Churchill, "thissmall reversal will have no permanent illeffect upon your political fortunes."100-75-50-25 YEARS AGOMichael McMenaminChurchill soon turned his attentionto South Africa. In a speech on 17August he said: "The trouble in theTransvaal is a very serious question, andthe situation in South Africa has nowreached an acute stage. It is not likelythat the present condition of things cango on indefinitely without war breakingout, and I am not so sure that is such avery terrible prospect or one that wetremble at....England is a very greatPower and the Boers are a miserablysmall people, and I ask how long is thepeace of the country and the Empiregoing to be disturbed by a party of filibusteringBoers."Negotiations between the Britishand the Boers over the Boer refusal togrant voting rights to the largely Britishimmigrants ("Uitlanders") who hadcome to South Africa during the goldrush of the late 19th century brokedown in early September. In SeptemberChurchill received an offer from TheDaily Mail to serve as its war correspondentin South Africa, and used that offeras leverage to secure a more rewardingposition from The Morning Post, whichagreed to pay all of his expenses and£250 a month. Churchill prompdy setabout fortifying himself for the journey.His son wrote that "Churchill neverbelieved that war should be needlesslyuncomfortable" and listed some of theprovisions, including six bottles each of1889 vin d'Ay Sec, light Port andFrench Vermouth; and eighteen bottleseach of St. Emilion and a ten-year-oldScotch whiskey.Seventy-five years ago:Summer 1924 • Age 49A "Seat for Life" at LastChurchill continued his search for aconstituency where he could standat the next General Election as an Independentwith Conservative Party support,while maintaining a busy scheduleof speaking and writing. On 27 June hespoke to the London School of Economicson "The Study of English":"To be able to give exact and lucidexpressions to one's thoughts, to be ableto write a good clear letter upon a complicatedor delicate subject, to be able toexplain shordy, precisely, and correcdywhat you mean, what you have seen,what you have read, what you have beentold, or what you want to understand;to appreciate and express the shades ofmeaning which attach to words - theseare surely among the most importantacquirements which young English menand young English women can possiblyseek to aid them in their life's career."Churchill addressed the "InternationalFinancial Situation" in a speech tothe Associated Advertising Clubs inLondon on 17 July 1924, attributingFINEST HOUR 103 /15

100-75-50-25 YEARS AGOthe economic slump not to foreigncompetition, but to "a serious and widespreaddecline in consuming power"which was caused by "taxation...andimprovident methods of finance inmany countries."Foreshadowing what was accomplishedwhen Margaret Thatcherbecame Prime Minister over half a centurylater, Churchill's article "ShouldStrategists Veto the Tunnel?" appearedin The Weekly Dispatch on 27 July. WSCwas highly critical of a recent decisionby the Committee of Imperial Defence,dismissing a proposal for a Channeltunnel which had been supported byover 400 members of Parliament.Churchill ridiculed the secrecy surroundingthe decision and the fact thatit was reached after a limited discussion:"They must be quite short argumentsbecause we know there were onlyforty minutes available for their presentation,for their discussion and for theconclusion to be recorded. Twenty minuteswould, therefore, perhaps suffice torepeat them. One column of an ordinarynewspaper would readily containthem. Why should we not have them?Why should this matter be wrapt inmystery? The public have a right toknow what were grounds in which agreat decision like this was taken."Churchill then set forth in considerabledetail why British security wouldnot be endangered by a Channel tunnel:"Fancy trying to invade this islandby a tiny tube when the whole air isopen to a stronger assailant. Comparethe risks of London being destroyed byincendiary bombs or poisoned by chemicalbombs from the air, with the risks ofour not being capable of flooding thetunnel in time and safeguarding ourown end of it. The risks from the air arenow a hundredfold greater....The dangerof invasion following on treachery is thesole ground on which a government isjustified in vetoing the scheme. And ifthat ground is shown to be illusory, dieway will be cleared for the fair examinationof an enterprise which might wellbecome a notable symbol in the advanceof human civilisation."In a letter to Clementine on 19August 1924, Churchill gave her anupdate on how repairs were progressingat Chartwell: "Everyone is working franticallyat your room. The whitewashes,the oak stainers, the carpenters and theplasterers are hard at work from morntill night. I hope that all will be to yourliking when you return. They are allowingnothing to stand in the way ofthis....My Beloved, it will be jolly havingyou back on Monday. The house seemsvy empty without you. With tenderlove, your devoted W"On 11 September, Churchillaccepted an offer from the ConservativeParty's Constituency Committee inEpping to stand for Parliament in thenext General Election as a "Constitutionalist"with Conservative Party support.At Epping, and one of its successorconstituencies called Woodford, hewould find at last the "Seat for Life" he'dlost in Dundee.Fifty years ago:Summer 1949 • Age 74En garde, frangais!Churchill continued working onthe third volume of his war memoirs,spending much time in Italy on holidaywith Clementine and his entourage,described on this occasion by WalterGraebner. No matter how far he went,whether by rail or air, Churchill tookwith him all the equipment for anoffice, other than tables and chairs.Nothing was left to chance: he wantedan office functioning within an hour ortwo after his arrival. Crates and blackdespatch boxes were filled with typewriters,paper clips, pencils, ink, paper,paste, scissors, pins, envelopes, sealingwax,seals and string.The management of this vital partof the holiday operation was entrustedto two secretaries from the London staff,one of whom was available wheneverChurchill called between 8AM and2PM.There were always about a dozenpeople in the Churchill entourage. Twowere Scotland Yard detectives, whoworked twelve-hour shifts each so thatChurchill was never left unguarded.Since they were the same team assignedto him in England they felt quite at easein the party, and on painting and picnicexcursions they pitched in and helpedlike everyone else. Also present was avalet, who not only dressed Churchilland looked after his other needs in thebedroom, but squeezed the tube whenhis master wanted more paint, saw thata fresh cigar was never more than a fewfeet away, and did hundreds of other littlethings which added to his comfort.Immediately prior to departing onholiday, Churchill addressed a Conservativerally in Wolverhampton in whichhe harkened back to his 1924 theme ofexcessive taxation:"...our Socialist spendthrifts andmuddlers have dissipated every overseaasset they could lay their hands on, andin addition have exacted and extractedfrom our people a higher rate of taxationthan was required in the veryheight of the war, from which we victoriouslyemerged. It will be incredible tothose who come afterwards that somuch should have been cast away in soshort a time, so many sacrifices demanded,so many restrictions and regulationsimposed and obeyed, and that atthe end we should be where we arenow."Churchill concluded this passageby borrowing and adapting to presentcircumstances one of his most famouslines: "Never before in the history ofhuman government has such greathavoc been wrought by such smallmen." He also repeated the attacks onSocialism he had made twenty-five yearsearlier, promising that the Conservativeswould "...return to a system which pro-FlNESTHOUR103/l6

vides incentives for effort, enterprise,self-denial, initiative, and good housekeeping.We cannot uphold die principlethat die rewards of society must beequal for those who try and for thosewho shirk, for those who succeed andfor those who fail...."Within a year—perhaps muchsooner—the British nation will havehad to make one of the most momentouschoices in its history. The choice isbetween two ways of life: between individualliberty and State domination;between concentration of ownership indie hands of the State and the extensionof ownership over the widest number ofindividuals; between the dead hand ofmonopoly and the stimulus of competition;between a policy of increasingrestraint and a policy of liberating energyand ingenuity; between a policy oflevelling down and a policy of opportunityfor all to rise upwards from a basicstandard."In August, Churchill attended thefirst meeting of the Council of Europein Strasbourg, where he delivered aspeech in French and, according toHarold Macmillan, "with a better accentthan usual." Robert Rhodes Jamesreported diat Churchill's opening words,"Take heed! I am going to speak inFrench," were received by the crowd"with thunderous cheers and applause."In the speech, Churchill attempted toharmonize European nationalism withan overriding European unity:"We are reunited here, in this newAssembly, not as representatives of ourseveral countries or various political parties,but as Europeans forging ahead,hand in hand, and if necessary elbow toelbow, to restore the former glories ofEurope and to permit this illustriouscontinent to take its place once more, ina world organization, as an independentmember sufficient unto itself."That primary and sacred loyaltythat one owes to one's own country isnot difficult to reconcile with this largerfeeling of European fellowship. On thecontrary, we will establish that all legitimateinterests are in harmony and thateach one of us will best serve the realinterests and security of his country ifwe enlarge at the same time both oursentiment of citizenship and of commonsovereignty—if we include in thissentiment the entire continent of Statesand of nations who have the same wayof life."After Strasbourg, Churchill continuedhis holiday, staying with LordBeaverbrook at his villa near MonteCarlo. While there, he suffered a slightstroke which was not reported publiclyat the time. (See "Churchill's Dagger,"FH 87.) By the end of August,Churchill had recovered sufficiendy toreturn to England, where he attendedthe races at Epsom to see his new racehorse,Colonist II.Fifty years ago:Summer 1974Take Heed!While the controversial GrahamSutherland portrait of Sir Winston,presented to him by Parliament in1954, remained unavailable for viewinga previously unknown sketch for theportrait was discovered on the back ofanother Sutherland canvas, "Paraphraseof Figure with Key in Rembrandt'sNight Watch," painted in 1953. It wasdiscovered when the owner of the Rembrandtstudy sent it to be cleaned. Thislaunched a fresh round of speculation asto the fate of the original which, as wenow know, Lady Churchill had determinedwould never see the light of day.CSC had no comment.Winning her approval, by contrast,were two excellent small statues ofSir Winston. One, revealed by LordMountbatten in September, was a 20-inch-high replica of the Ivor Roberts-Jones memorial statue in ParliamentSquare, offered in limited edition at£594 each to commemorate theChurchill Centenary.A second,by German-bornsculptress KarinChurchill (norelation), depictedWSCaged 80 in hisGarter Robesand sold for£250. The generousMrs.Churchill, alongtime memberof ICS, presentedone ofher bronze statuesto Blenheim Palace, another to theCentenary Exhibition at SomersetHouse, and a third to Lady Churchill,who was delighted with it. Unlike manymodern effigies, Karin Churchill's workwas very lifelike. "The trend nowadaysis to be almost abstract," she told theOxford Journal. "The person becomesunrecognisable, and I think people whoreally like Churchill would like somethingreally like him."&FINEST HOUR 103/17

"THE MOST EXCELLENT ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE 7A Most Excellently Deserved AwardDR. CYRIL MAZANSKYOn May 25th, Richard Langworth, President ofThe Churchill Center, received the award of honoraryCBE. The ceremony took place in theWashington residence of British Ambassador Sir ChristopherMeyer, KCMG. Thirty-one years after Mr. Langworthformed the International Churchill Society, he receivedrecognition for his career-defining work of not onlyenhancing and perpetuating the values and teachings ofSir Winston Churchill, but also for playing a significantrole in fostering Anglo-American relations.The historical parallels should not be lost. For itwas in Washington six years before the founding of ICS, afew blocks away on the steps of the White House, thatRandolph Churchill received on behalf of his father theaward of honorary citizen of the United States, in part forSir Winston's fostering, if not bringing to its pinnacle, theclose Anglo-American cooperation that exists to this day.However, it is not only Richard who must glory inthe receipt of this award, for all members of TheChurchill Center and Societies can figuratively be proudco-participants. For indeed from the highest level of theBritish realm comes the official recognition of the significantrole and mission of The Churchill Center.In June 1917 King George V instituted the Orderof the British Empire "in recognition of the manifold services,voluntary and otherwise, that have been renderedboth by British subjects and their allies in connection withthe war." This Order for the first time was neither hierarchicalnor exclusive (to the aristocracy) and for the firsttime in British history touched every level of national life.As described by Kenneth Rose, the Order "establishedan honour as socially neutral as the London Undergroundor Marks & Spencer." Furthermore, at a timewhen women had not yet obtained the right to vote, thisaward was to be given to men and women equally. EarlCurzon, Lord President of the Council and formerViceroy of India, drafted the document for the War Cabinet.A year after it was instituted, the award was dividedinto a Military and Civil Division. Although founded toreward endurance in the war, subsequent recipients wererecognized for their accomplishments in peace. The CivilDivision retained the original plain purple ribbon of theorder, but in 1937, at the request of Queen Mary, it waschanged to be of a rose pink color edged with pearl gray.A Commander of the Order is the highest degreeshort of a knighthood. Other Churchill Center memberswho have been the recipient of the CBE are Sir MartinGilbert, Anthony Montague Browne, Robert Hardy andDamon Wells.The Ambassador's completecitation reads: "Theaward of an honorary CBE toRichard Langworth is in recognitionof his contributionto British-American relationsthrough promoting and preservingthe memory of WinstonChurchill in the United States."Back in 1968 Richard Langworth founded the InternationalChurchill Society, a charitable, non-profit organisation.There are now more than 3,000 members ofThe Churchill Centre and Societies in four organizationsin the UK, USA, Canada and Australia."Richard Langworth is President of The ChurchillCentre in the United States and editor of the quarterlyjournal of all four organizations, Finest Hour. He has writtenmany books and articles on Churchill. And he hashelped raise funds for the republication of many of SirWinston Churchill's out-of-print books."In recent years, Richard Langworth's focus hasbeen on 'Teaching the Next Generation.' He set up theChurchill Centre in Washington to offer endowments tosupport academic studies of Churchill."Richard Langworth's work ensures that Churchill'sconcept of a 'fraternal relationship' between our twocountries lives on. The joint leadership by the US and UKof the NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia brings to mindChurchill's words to President Kennedy: 'In this centuryof storm and tragedy, I contemplate with high satisfactionthe constant factor of the interwoven and upward progressof our peoples. Our comradeship and our brotherhood inwar were unexampled. We stood together, and because ofthat fact the free world now stands.'"This award recognises the outstanding contributionof Richard Langworth to British-American relationsthrough his work with The Churchill Centre and Society.I am commanded by Her Majesty in accordance with thepowers vested in me as Her Ambassador, to confer onRichard Langworth the Insignia of Commander of theMost Excellent Order of the British Empire."Congratulations, Richard, from all of us in TheChurchill Center and International Churchill Societies. M>Dr. Mazansky has served as a Director of ICS/USA and Governorof The Churchill Center, and is a frequent contributor to FH. —RML.This article was written over the strong protestations (but obviouslynot strong enough) of the editor. —CM.FINEST HOUR 103/18

GETTYSBURGTHE GREATEST AND BLOODIEST BATTLEIN THE NOBLEST AND LEAST AVOIDABLEOF ALL THE GREAT MASS-CONFLICTSOF WHICH TILL THEN THERE WAS RECORDBY WINSTON S. CHURCHILLIN 1863 the initiative in theAmerican Civil War passed toConfederate General Robert E.Lee, who resolved to carry out hislong-planned invasion of Pennsylvania.But Vicksburg, on the Mississippi,was in dire straits, and unlessit could be largely reinforcedits fall was imminent. A proposalwas made to stand on the defensive in Virginia, to sendLee himself with two divisions to the Mississippi, andother troops to Middle Tennessee to defeat the coveringforces south of Nashville and threaten the commercialcities of Louisville and Cincinnati, perhaps forcing UnionGeneral Ulysses S. Grant to abandon his campaign againstVicksburg. Lee refused point-blank to go.Squarely he put the issue before the Council ofWar: the risk had to be taken of losing Mississippi or Virginia.His view prevailed, and on May 26th, three weeksafter the Battle of Chancellorsville, the invasion of Pennsylvaniawas sanctioned. The Army of Northern Virginiawas reorganised in three corps of three divisions each,commanded by James Longstreet, Richard S. Ewell, andA. P. Hill. Lee's object in 1863, as in the previous year, wasto force the Army of the Potomac to fight under conditionsin which defeat would spell annihilation. In this hesaw the sole hope of winning Southern independence.The movement commenced on June 3rd. GeneralLongstreet concentrated his corps at Culpeper, Virginia,and behind it the other two corps passed into theShenandoah Valley, marching straight for the Potomac.Longstreet meanwhile moved up on the east of the BlueRidge with his front and flank screened by General JebStuart's cavalry, eventually entering the valley behind theother two corps through the northern "Gaps." On the9th, before the movement was well under way, there wasan indecisive cavalry battle at Brandy Station, in whichthe Federal cavalry, under their new commander, AlfredPleasanton, regained their morale.At first the campaign wentwell for Lee. Ewell on the 10th leftCulpeper for the valley, and,marching with a speed worthy of"Stonewall" Jackson, cleared theFederal garrisons out of Winchesterand Martinsburg, capturingfour thousand prisoners andtwenty-eight guns, and on the15th was crossing the Potomac. He established his corps atHagerstown where it waited for a week, till the corps in therear was ready to cross, and his cavalry brigade pushed onto Chambersburg, in Pennsylvania, to collect and sendback supplies. On the 22nd he was ordered to advance fartherinto Pennsylvania and capture Harrisburg, a hundredmiles north of Washington, if it "came within his means."On June 27th Ewell reached Carlisle, and hisoutposts next day were within four miles of Harrisburg.The other two Confederate corps were at Chambersburg.As far as Chambersburg Lee had been following the CumberlandValley, with his right flank shielded by the SouthMountain range, and as yet he knew nothing of Hooker'smovements. He accepted Stuart's plan of making a raidthrough the mountains and joining Ewell in Pennsylvania.Stuart, who started on the 25th, believed that Hooker wasstill in his encampments on the east side of the mountains,and expected to be able to ride through his campareas and cross the Potomac near Leesburg. But Hookerhad broken up his camps and was marching that samemorning for the Potomac. Stuart had to make a third rideround the Federal rear, crossed the Potomac within twentymiles of Washington, failed to make contact with Ewell'sright division, and only rejoined Lee with his men andhorses utterly exhausted on the afternoon of July 2nd.Thus for a whole week Lee had been deprived of the"eyes" of his army; and much had happened meanwhile.As soon as Lee began his movement to the northHooker proposed to march on Richmond. But Lincolncontinued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 /19

forbade him, and rightly pointed out that not Richmondbut Lee's army was his proper objective. In thus deciding,the President did what Lee had expected. After crossingthe Potomac Hooker made his headquarters near Frederick,where he covered "Washington and threatened Lee'sline of communications. General Halleck, Lincoln's militaryadviser, and Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War,had agreed after Chancellorsville that Hooker must notbe in command of the army in the next battle. Whentlierefore the General, denied the use of the Harpers Ferrygarrison, tendered his resignation, it was promptly accepted.Early in the morning of June 28th GeneralGeorge G. Meade, commander of the Fifth Corps, whowas now appointed to the chief command, decided tomove his whole army by forced marches northwards tothe Susquehanna to prevent Lee from crossing that river,and at the same time to cover Baltimore and Washington.Meade was a safe, dogged commander, with no politicalaffiliations. He could be relied upon to avoid acts of folly,and also anything brilliant. Expecting that Lee wouldcome south from the Susquehanna to attack Baltimore,he now prepared to meet him on the line of Pipe Creek,ten miles beyond Westminster.Lee had been greatly perplexed by Stuart's failureto report, but, having implicit confidence in him, hadconcluded that Hooker must still be south of the Potomac.On learning the truth during the 28th he ordereda concentration at Cashtown, close to the eastern foot ofSouth Mountain. He did not hurry, and the march wasconducted with a view to "the comfort of the troops." Atthe outset of the campaign he had been in agreement withLongstreet that the strategy should be offensive and thetactics defensive, and he had no intention of fighting abattle except under favourable conditions. But chanceruled otherwise.ON JUNE 30th a brigade of Hill's corps advancedeight miles from Cashtown to Gettysburg, partlyto look for shoes, partly to reconnoitre a placethrough which Ewell's corps might be moving next day.Gettysburg was found in the hands of some Federal cavalry,which had just entered. The Confederate brigadeturned back without ascertaining the strength of the hostileforce. Buford, the Federal cavalry commander, whobore the Christian names of Napoleon B., seems to havebeen the first man in either army to appreciate the strategicalimportance of Gettysburg, the meeting-place of somedozen roads from all points of the compass. He moved hisdivision to the west of the town, where he found a strongposition behind a stream, and called upon the commanderof the First Corps to come to his aid with all speed. TheFirst Corps was followed by the Eleventh Corps.On July 1st severe fighting began with the leadingConfederate troops, and presently Ewell, comingdown from the north-east, struck in upon the FederalP E N N S Y L V ANJ_,,A• Haqerstown ,,, . .5'-«s=.3Rr- WestminsterMartinsburg •W. .•' '••-.VI RG I N I A _^ •Frederick. TownHarpers Ferry>S^>V/lrt^G I N I ABrandy StationAquia CreekBaltimore*Washington^ >°FredericksburgTHEGETTYSBURGCAMPAIGNflank, driving the Eleventh Corps through Gettysburg toseek shelter on higher ground three miles southwards, wellnamed Cemetery Ridge. On this first day of battle fiftythousand men had been engaged, and four Confederatedivisions had defeated and seriously injured two Federalcorps. It now became a race between Lee and Meade, whocould concentrate his forces first. Neither Lee nor Meadewished to fight decisively at this moment or on thisground; but they were both drawn into the greatest andbloodiest battle of the Civil War. Lee could not extricatehimself and his supply trains without fighting Meade'sarmy to a standstill, and Meade was equally committed toa field he thought ill-chosen.LEE WISHED to open the second day of the battlewith an attack by Ewell and Hill on CemeteryRidge, which he rightly regarded as the key to theFederal position. He was deterred by their objections.Longstreet, when he arrived, argued at length for a manoeuvreround Meade's left to place Lees army betweenMeade and Washington. Such a movement in the absenceof Stuart's cavalry would certainly have been reckless, andit is not easy to see how Lee could have provisioned hisFINEST HOUR 103/20

army in such a position. Finally Lee ordered Longstreet toattack the Federal left at dawn.Longstreet, who entirely disapproved of the roleassigned to him, did not come into action till four in theafternoon. While he waited for an additional brigade twocorps joined the Union Army. Lee, who imagined that theFederal left rested upon the Emmetsburg road, expectedthat Longstreet's advance up this road would roll up theFederal line from left to right. But at this point the Federalcorps commander, Sickles, had taken up an advancedposition on his own authority, and his flank was not theend of the Federal line. When this was discoveredLongstreet obstinately refusedto depart from the strict letterof his orders, though he knewthat Lee was not aware of thetrue position. All that heachieved after several hours'fierce fighting was to forceSickles back to Meade's mainline.On this day thegreater part of Hill's corps tookno part in the battle. Ewell,who was to have attacked thenorth end of the ridge as soonas he heard Longstreet's guns,did not get into action till 6PM. There were no signs ofany coordination of attacks onthe Confederate side on July2nd. Although Lee had failedto make his will prevail, andthe Confederate attacks hadbeen unconnected, the losses of the Federal Army wereterrible, and Meade at the Council of War that night wasnarrowly dissuaded from ordering a general retreat.THE THIRD day began. Lee still bid high for victory.He resolved to launch fifteen thousand men,sustained by the fire of a hundred and twenty-fiveguns, against Meade's left centre, at the point where one ofHill's brigades had pierced the day before. Ewell's corpswould at the same time attack from the north, and if theassault under General George E. Pickett broke the Federalline the whole Confederate Army would fall on. Again theattack was ordered for the earliest possible hour. It was theFederals however who opened the third day by recapturingin the grey of the dawn some of the trenches vacated theprevious evening, and after hard fighting drove the Confederatesbefore noon entirely offCulp's Hill. Exhausted bythis, Ewell made no further movement. Longstreet was stillarguing vehemently in favour of a wide turning movementround Meade's left. The heavy losses which his corps hadsuffered on the 2nd made this more difficult than ever."'General,' said Pickett to Longstreet,who stood sombre and mute, 'shall I advance?'By an intense effort Longstreetbowed his head in assent. Pickett salutedand set forty-two regiments against theUnion centre.... The Federal rifle artillerypaused till they were within seven hundredyards; then they opened again witha roar and cut lanes in the steadfastlyadvancing ranks. On they went, withoutflinching or disorder; then the deadlysound, like tearing paper, as Lee once describedit, rose under and presently abovethe cannonade."The morning passed in utter silence. It was nottill one in the afternoon that the Confederates began theheaviest bombardment yet known. Longstreet, unable torally himself to a plan he deemed disastrous, left it to theartillery commander, Alexander, to give the signal to Pickett.At half-past two the Confederate ammunition,dragged all the way from Richmond in tented wagons,was running short. "Come quick," Alexander said to Pickett,"or my ammunition will not support you properly.""General," said Pickett to Longstreet, who stood sombreand mute, "shall I advance?" By an intense effortLongstreet bowed his head in assent. Pickett saluted andset forty-two regiments againstthe Union centre.We see to-day, uponthis battlefield so piously preservedby North and South, andwhere many of the guns stillstand in their firing stations, thebare, slight slopes up which thisgrand infantry charge wasmade. In splendid array, alltheir battle flags flying, the forlornassault marched on. But,like the Old Guard on theevening of Waterloo, they facedodds and metal beyond thevirtue of mortals. The Federalrifle artillery paused till theywere within seven hundredyards; then they opened againwith a roar and cut lanes in thesteadfastly advancing ranks. Onthey went, without flinching ordisorder; then the deadly sound, like tearing paper, as Leeonce described it, rose under and presently above the cannonade.But Pickett's division still drove forward, and attrench, stone wall, or rail fence closed with far larger numbersof men, who, if not so lively as themselves, were atleast ready to die for their cause. All three brigadiers inPickett's division fell killed or mortally wounded. GeneralL.A. Armistead with a few hundred men actually enteredthe Union centre, and the spot where he died with hishand on a captured cannon is to-day revered by the manhoodof the United States.UT WHERE were the reserves to carry through. this superb effort? Where were the simultaneous attacksto grip and rock the entire front? Lee at Gettysburgno more than Napoleon at Waterloo could windominance. The victorious stormers were killed or captured;the rest walked home across the corpses which encumberedthe plain amid a remorseless artillery fire. Lesscontinued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103/21

ROBERT E. LEE"His noble presence and gentle, kindly manner were sustainedby religious faith and an exalted character....He wasopposed to slavery and thought that secession would do nogood,' but he had been taught from childhood that his firstallegiance was to the state of Virginia.... [When] Virginia secededhe resigned his commission, bade farewell for ever to his home atArlington, and in the deepest sorrow boarded the train for Richmond....Someof those who saw him in these tragic weeks, whensometimes his eyes filled with tears, emotion which he nevershowed after the gain or loss of great battles, have written about hisinward struggle. But there was no struggle; he never hesitated. The choice was for the state ofVirginia. He deplored the choice; he foresaw its consequences with bitter grief; but for himselfhe had no doubts at the time, nor ever after regret or remorse."than a third came back. Lee met them on his horse Travellerwith the only explanation which they would not accept:"It is all my fault."LONGSTREET, in memoirs written long afterwards,has left on record a sentence which is his bestdefence: "As I rode back to the line of batteries, expectingan immediate counter-stroke, the shot and shellploughed the ground around my horse, and an involuntaryappeal went up that one of them would remove mefrom scenes of such awful responsibility."But there was no counter-stroke. The Battle ofGettysburg was at an end. Twenty-three thousand Federalsand over twenty thousand Confederates had been smittenby lead or steel. As after Antietam, Lee confronted his foeon the morrow and offered to fight again. But no oneknew better that it was decisive. With every personal resourcehe gathered up his army. An immense wagon trainof wounded were jolted, springless, over sixteen miles ofcrumpled road. "Carry me back to old Virginia." "ForGod's sake kill me."On the night of the 4th Lee began his retreat.Meade let him go. The energy for pursuit had been expendedin the battle. The Potomac was found in flood;Lee's pontoon bridge had been partially destroyed by araid from the city of Frederick. For a week the Confederatesstood at bay behind entrenchments with their backsto an unfordable river. Longstreet would have stayed tocourt attack but Lee measured the event. Meade did notappear till the 12th, and his attack was planned for the14th. When that morning came, Lee, after a cruel nightmarch, was safe on the other side of the river. He carriedwith him his wounded and his prisoners. He had lost onlytwo guns, and the war.THE WASHINGTON Government were extremelydiscontented with Meade's inactivity; andnot without reason. Napoleon might have madeLee's final attack, but he certainly would not have madeMeade's impotent pursuit. Lincoln promoted Meade onlyto the rank of Major-General for his good service at Gettysburg.Lee wended his way back by the ShenandoahValley to his old stations behind the Rappahannock andthe Rapidan. The South had shot its bolt.Up to a certain point the Gettysburg campaignwas admirably conducted by Lee, and some of its objectswere achieved; but the defeat with which it ended farmore than counterbalanced these. The irreparable loss of28,000 men in the whole operation out of an army of seventy-fivethousand forbade any further attempts to winSouthern independence by a victory on Northern soil. Leebelieved that his own army was invincible, and had begunto regard the Army of the Potomac almost with contempt.He failed to distinguish between bad troops and goodtroops badly led.It was not the army but its commander that hadbeen beaten on the Rappahannock. It may well be thathad Hooker been allowed to retain his command LeeFINEST HOUR 103 / 22

might have defeated him a second time. Fortune, whichhad befriended him at Chancellorsville, now turnedagainst him. Stuart's long absence left him blind as to theenemy's movements at the most critical stage of the campaign,and it was during his absence that he made the fatalmistake of moving to the east side of the mountains. Lee'smilitary genius did not shine. He was disconcerted byStuart's silence, he was "off his balance," and his subordinatesbecame conscious of this mood. Above all he hadnot Jackson at his side. Longstreet's recalcitrance had ruinedall chance of success at Gettysburg. On Longstreetthe South laid the heavy blame.During the winter following Gettysburg there wasa pause. The North gathered its overwhelmingstrength for a sombre task. In the Spring of 1864Grant laid siege to Richmond while in the South Shermanlaid waste to Georgia. President Lincoln, though narrowlyreelected over an opponent who argued for a peace settlement,rebuffed a Confederate attempt at negotiation.President Davis appointed Lee his Commander-in-Chief,but every Confederate counter-offensive had beencrushed, and at last in early 1865, Grant closed upon itsstubborn capital.On April 2nd President Davis sat in his pew inthe church at Richmond. A messenger came up the aisle."General Lee requests immediate evacuation." Lee, disengaginghimself from Richmond, was pursued by morethan tliree times his numbers. Grant ventured to appeal toLee to recognise that his position was hopeless. Lee rodeon Traveller to Appomatox Court House to learn whatterms would be offered. Grant wrote them out in a fewsentences. They were generous: Lee's officers and soldiersmust surrender their arms and return on parole to theirhomes, not to be molested while they observed the laws ofthe United States. Grant added, "Your men must keeptheir horses. They will need them for the spring ploughing."This was the greatest day in the career of GeneralGrant, and stands high in the story of die United States.Thus ended the great American Civil War, whichmust upon the whole be considered the noblest and leastavoidable of all the great mass-conflicts of which till thenthere was record. Three quarters of a million men hadfallen on the battlefield. The North was plunged in debt;the South was ruined. The material advance of the UnitedStates was cast back for a spell. The genius of America wasimpoverished by the alienation of many of the parent elementsin the life and history of the Republic. But, as JohnBright said to his audience of English working folk, 'Atlast after the smoke of the battlefield had cleared away thehorrid shape which had cast its shadow over the wholecontinent had vanished and was gone for ever.'" $5Reprinted by permission from The Great Republic: A History of America,by Sir Winston Churchill, edited and arranged by Winston S.Churchill, soon to be published by Random House.ABRAHAM LINCOLN"By his constancy under many varied strains andamid problems which his training gave no key he had savedMr the Union with steel and flame. His thoughts were bent uponv healing his country's wounds. For this he possessed all the qual-* ities of spirit and wisdom, and wielded besides incomparableauthority. On April 11th he proclaimed the need of a broadand generous temper and urged the conciliation of the vanquished.At Cabinet on the 14th he spoke of Lee and otherConfederate leaders with kindness, and pointed to the pathsof forgiveness and goodwill. But that very night as he sat inhis box at Ford's Theater a fanatical actor, one of a murdergang, stole in from behind and shot him through the head....Lincoln died next day, withoutregaining consciousness, and with him vanished the only protector of the prostrate South."FINEST HOUR 103 / 23

Centerspread. StoryCHURCHILL AND EISENHOWERAT GETTYSBURG, 6 MAY 1959Article & Painting by Cnarlotte Tnibault • Commissioned ror Finest Hour by D. Craig HornPkotograpks from tke Ajtine Williams Wkeaton Collection, National Park Service, Dwigkt D. Eisenkower Likrary"W;ELL, MYfriend,you're back again,"Dwight D. Eisenhowersaid on 4 May1959, as Sir WinstonChurchill hobbleddown the ramp ofIke's official plane,Columbine III, whichhad brought him toWashington fromIdlewild. Churchillreplied, "I am indeed glad to see you." To the waitingmicrophones, Churchill responded to the President'sformal speech of welcome: "I am most happyonce again to set foot in the United States—mymother's country I always think of it and feel it. Ihave come here on a quiet visit to see some of myold comrades of wartime days..."Churchill took up quarters in his old suite atthe White House, where he and Eisenhower hadfirst met in 1942. Robert Pilpel's Churchill in Americarecords that dinner that evening was rather sad,"for it was well past midnight London time andChurchill was feeling the effects of jet-lag. Thechange in him since 1954, moreover, was starklydramatic, and during the meal Eisenhower observedsorrowfully to his daughter-in-law, Barbara, 'I onlywish you had known him in his prime.'"On the 5 th, however, Churchill had recovered,and the President took him to Walter Reed ArmyHospital to visitJohn Foster Dulles,dying of cancer, andGeorge C. Marshall,paralyzed by astroke. Pilpel recordsthat Eisenhower wasstill distressed overChurchill's deterioration,"plainlychoked up" accordingto a reporter. SirWinston revivedagain in the evening, where Ike held a stag party forWorld War II admirals and generals who had workedunder them both on the invasions of North Africaand Europe fifteen years before.On Wednesday May 6th they traveled by helicopterto Eisenhower's farm at Gettysburg, whichgave Churchill a bird's eye view of the great battlefieldhe himself had only just described in The GreatDemocracies, his final volume of his History of the English-SpeakingPeoples, published the year before. Oncelanded they boarded an electric golf cart and touredthe pastures and fields. Now and then they would dismountfor a look round.The evidence suggests that they spent moretime considering Eisenhower's Black Angus cattlethan the Battle of Gettysburg, but after the immortalwords Churchill had just published about it,there is no doubt that their thoughts on more thanone occasion wandered back to 1863.FINEST HOUR 103/24

Top row:Alighting atGettysburg fromthe White Househelicopter, 6May 1959. Atright, Ike shoosaway reporters.Lower row:Rides on farmroads, at left ina surrey named"Mamie" (frontpassenger isAnthonyMontagueBrowne, SirWinston'sPrivateSecretary); atright in the golfcart. Standingbehind the cartis Det. Sgt.Eddie Murray,Sir Winston'spersonalbodyguard.MY painting overleaf asks the viewer to imagineone of those moments. In my mind's eye, theyare discussing the outcome of that fateful battle asonly two of the world's great commanders might.The commander of the Confederate forces (Lee) andthe Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces (Lincoln)listen, from a perspective only they can share.As the discussion ensues, Winston Churchilland Dwight Eisenhower step out of time, findingthemselves in that fateful moment when the courseof time might have taken different paths. The sceneis Pickett s charge. The Confederate Army rushes theflanks of the Union's 69th and 71st Pennsylvaniansat the "angle" on 3 July 1863. It was what Churchillcalled a "Hinge of Fate," not unlike more recenttimes when, as leaders of men, their own actionsmight have led to quite a different future than theone we now enjoy.There is an added dimension to my painting,something I intentionally wished to imply. Supposethat the Confederates, and not the Union, had prevailedat Gettysburg?Only a man of Churchill's military and literaryresources could have simultaneously contemplatedboth the great Union victory and the alternatehe wrote himself in 1931: How "the Confederatesoldiers, by a deathless feat of arms, broke theUnion front at Gettysburg."We have read what Churchill wrote about thehistory that happened. Turn the page now and recallwhat might have happened. Pickett's charge succeeds!Churchill then recounts what happened afterward inhis remarkable essay, "If Lee Had Not Won the Battleof Gettysburg."Churchill would visit America again, briefly,when he sailed into New York Harbor aboardChristina in 1961. But no one present that day in1959 could resist the thought that here, fittingly atGettysburg, Winston Churchill was saying good-byeto his Mother's Land. M>_•Overleaf: "Churchill and Eisenhower at Gettysburg"200 color prints, 14x20", printed on heavy coated paperwith a white margin, signed and numbered by the artistand suitable for framing, are available from ChurchillStores, PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229 for $65.FINEST HOUR 103 / 25

IF LEE HAD NOT WONTHE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURGBY WINSTON S. CHURCHILLTHE quaint conceit ofimagining what wouldhave happened if some importantor unimportant event hadsetded itself differently has becomeso fashionable that I am encouragedto enter upon an absurd speculation.What would have happenedif Lee had not won the Battleof Gettysburg?Once a great victory is won it dominates not onlythe future but the past. All the chains of consequenceclink out as if they never could stop. The hopes that wereshattered, the passions that were quelled, the sacrificesdiat were ineffectual are all swept out of the land of reality.Still it may amuse an idle hour, and perhaps serve as acorrective to undue complacency, if at this moment in thetwentieth century—so rich in assurance and prosperity, socalm and buoyant—we meditate for a spell upon the debtwe owe to diose Confederate soldiers who by a deathlessfeat of arms broke the Union front at Gettysburg and laidopen a fair future to the world.It always amuses historians and philosophers topick out the tiny things, the sharp agate points, on whichthe ponderous balance of destiny turns; and certainly thedetails of the famous Confederate victory of Gettysburgfurnish a fertile theme. There can be at this date no conceivabledoubt that Pickett's charge would have been defeatedif Stuart with his encircling cavalry had not arrivedin the rear of the Union position at the supreme moment.Stuart might have been arrested in his decisive swoop ifany one of twenty commonplace incidents had occurred.If, for instance, General Meade had organized his lines ofcommunication with posts for defence against raids, or ifhe had used his cavalry to scout upon his flanks, he wouldhave received a timely warning. If General Warren hadonly thought of sending a battalion to hold Little RoundTop the rapid advance of the masses of Confederate cavalrymust have been detected. If only President Davis's letterto General Lee, captured by Captain Dahlgren, revealingthe Confederacy plans had reached Meade a few hoursearlier, he might have escaped Lee's clutches.Anything, we repeat, might have prevented Lee'smagnificent combinations from synchronizing and, if so,Pickett's repulse was sure. Gettysburg would have been agreat Northern victory. It mighthave well been a final victory. Leemight, indeed, have made a successfulretreat from the field. TheConfederacy, with its skilful generalsand fierce armies, mighthave another year, or even two,but once defeated decisively atGettysburg, its doom was inevitable.The fall of Vicksburg, which happened only twodays after Lee's immortal triumph, would in itself byopening the Mississippi to the river fleets of the Union,have cut the Secessionist States almost in half. Withoutwishing to dogmatize, we feel we are on solid ground insaying that the Southern States could not have survivedthe loss of a great battle in Pennsylvania and the almost simultaneousbursting open of the Mississippi.HOWEVER, all went well. Once again by the narrowestof margins the compulsive pinch of mili-. tary genius and soldierly valor produced a perfectresult. The panic which engulfed the whole left ofMeade's massive army has never been made a reproachagainst the Yankee troops. Everyone knows they werestout fellows. But defeat is defeat, and rout is ruin. Threedays only were required after the cannon at Gettysburghad ceased to thunder before General Lee fixed his headquartersin Washington. We need not here dwell upon theludicrous features of the hurried flight to New York of allthe politicians, place hunters, contractors, sentimentalistsand their retinues, which was so successfully accomplished.It is more agreeable to remember how Lincoln,'greatly falling with a falling State,' preserved the poiseand dignity of a nation. Never did his rugged yet sublimecommon sense render a finer service to his countrymen.He was never greater than in the hour of fatal defeat.But, of course, there is no doubt whatever thatthe mere military victory which Lee gained at Gettysburgwould not by itself have altered the history of the world.The loss of Washington would not have affected the immensenumerical preponderance of the Union States. Theadvanced situation of their capital and its fall would haveexposed them to a grave injury, would no doubt have considerablyprolonged the war; but standing by itself thismilitary episode, dazzling though it may be, could notFINEST HOUR 103 / 28

have prevented the ultimate victory of the North. It is inthe political sphere that we have to look to find the explanationof the triumphs begun upon the battlefield.Curiously enough, Lee furnishes an almostunique example of a regular and professional soldier whoachieved the highest excellence both as a general and as astatesman. His ascendancy throughout the ConfederateStates on the morrow of his Gettysburg victory threw JeffersonDavis and his civil government irresistibly, indeedalmost unconsciously, into the shade. The beloved andvictorious commander, arriving in the capital of hismighty antagonists, found there the title deeds which enabledhim to pronounce the grand decrees of peace. Thusit happened that the guns of Gettysburg fired virtually thelast shots in the American Civil War.THE MOVEMENT ofpoliticians exploiting the ignoeventsthen shifted to 'It may perhapS Serve aS a rant and untutored colouredthe other side of the At-vote against the white inhabilanticOcean. England—the Corrective tO UfluUe COWlplacefLCy tants and bringing the time-the long statecraft of Britain in dealing with alien andmore primitive populations. There was not only the needto declare the new fundamental relationship between masterand servant, but the creation for the liberated slaves ofinstitutions suited to their own cultural development andcapable of affording them a different yet honourable statusin a commonwealth, destined eventually to becomealmost world-wide.Let us only think what would have happenedsupposing the liberation of the slaves had at that timebeen followed immediately by some idiotic assertion ofracial equality, and even by attempts to graft white democraticinstitutions upon the simple, gifted African race belongingto a much earlier chapter in human history. Wemight have seen the whole of the Southern States invadedby gangs of carpet-baggingname by which the British Empirewas then commonly described—hadbeen rivenmorally in twain by the dramaof the American struggle. Wehave always admired the steadfastnesswith which the Lancashirecotton operatives,though starved of cotton by theNorthern blockade—our mostprosperous county reduced topenury, almost become dependentupon the charity of the restof England—nevertheless adheredto the Northern cause. The British working classeson the whole judged the quarrel through the eyes of Disraeliand rested solidly upon the side of the abolition ofslavery. Indeed, all Mr. Gladstone's democratic flair andnoble eloquence would have failed, even upon the thenrestricted franchise, to carry England into the Confederatecamp as a measure of policy. If Lee after his triumphalentry into Washington had merely been the soldier, hisachievements would have ended on the battlefield. It washis august declaration that the victorious Confederacywould pursue no policy towards the African negroes,which was not in harmony with the moral conceptions ofWestern Europe, that opened the high roads along whichwe are now marching so prosperously.But even this famous gesture might have failed ifit had not been caught up and implemented by the practicalgenius and trained parliamentary aptitudes of Gladstone.There is practically no doubt at this stage that thebasic principle upon which the colour question in theSouthern States of America has been so happily settledowed its origin mainly to Gladstonian ingenuity and toif we meditate for a spell uponthe debt we owe to thoseConfederate soldiers whoby a deathless feat of armsbroke the Union front atGettysburg and laid open a fairfuture to the world."honoured forms of parliamentarygovernment into unmeriteddisrepute. We might haveseen the sorry farce of blacklegislatures attempting to governtheir former masters. Uponthe rebound from this theremust inevitably have been astrong reassertion of localwhite supremacy. By one deviceor another the franchisesaccorded to the negroes wouldhave been taken from them.The constitutional principlesof the Republic would have been proclaimed, only to beevaded or subverted; and many a warm-hearted philanthropistwould have found his sojourn in the South nobetter than A Fool's Errand.'we must return to our main theme and to theI procession of tremendous events which followedB;UTthe Northern defeat at Gettysburg and the surrenderof Washington. Lee's declaration abolishing slavery,coupled as it was with inflexible resolve to secede fromthe Union, opened the way for British intervention.Within a month the formal treaty of alliance betweenthe British Empire and the Confederacy had beensigned. The terms of this alliance, being both offensiveand defensive, revolutionized the military and naval situation.The Northern blockade could not be maintainedeven for a day in the face of the immense naval power ofBritain. The opening of the Southern ports released thepent-up cotton, restored the finances and replenished thearsenals of the Confederacy. The Northern forces at Newcontinued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103/29

Orleans were themselves immediately cut off and forcedto capitulate. There could be no doubt of the power of thenew allies to clear the Mississippi of Northern vesselsthroughout the whole of its course through the ConfederateStates. The prospect of a considerable British armyembarking for Canada threatened the Union with a newmilitary front.But none of these formidable events in the sphereof arms and material force would have daunted the resolutionof President Lincoln, or weakened the fidelity of theNorthern States and armies. It was Lee's declaration abolishingslavery which by a single master-stroke gained theConfederacy an all-powerful ally and spread a moralparalysis far and wide through the ranks of their enemies.The North were waging war against Secession, but as thestruggle had proceeded, the moral issue of slavery had firstsustained and then dominated the political quarrel. Nowthat the moral issue was withdrawn,now that the noblecause which inspired theUnion armies and the Governmentsbehind them wasgained, there was nothing leftbut a war of reconquest to bewaged under circumstancesinfinitely more difficult andanxious than those which hadalready led to so much disappointmentand defeat. Herewas the South victorious,reinvigorated, reinforced, offeringof her own free will tomake a more complete abolitionof the servile status onthe American continent thaneven Lincoln had himself seenfit to demand. Was the war to continue against what soonmust be heavy odds merely to assert the domination ofone set of English-speaking people over another; wasblood to flow indefinitely in an ever-broadening stream togratify national pride or martial revenge ?It was this deprivation of the moral issue whichundermined the obduracy of the Northern States. Lincolnno longer rejected the Southern appeal for independence."If," he declared in his famous speech in Madison SquareGardens in New York, "our brothers in the South are willingfaithfully to cleanse this continent of negro slavery,and if they will dwell beside us in goodwill as an independentbut friendly nation, it would not be right to prolongthe slaughter on the question of sovereignty alone."Thus peace came more swiftly than war hadcome. The Treaty of Harpers Ferry, which was signed betweenthe Union and Confederate States on 6 September1863, embodied the two, fundamental propositions: thatthe South was independent, and the slaves were free. If the" The Treaty of Harper's Ferry,which was signed betweenthe Union and ConfederateStates on 6 September 1863,embodied the two,fundamental propositions:that the South wasindependent,and the slaves were free."spirit of old John Brown had revisited the battle-scarredtownship which had been the scene of his life and death,it would have seen his cause victorious, but at a cost to theUnited States terrible indeed.Apart from the loss of blood and treasure, theAmerican Union was riven in twain. Henceforth therewould be two Americas in the same northern continent.One of them would have renewed in a modern and embattledform its old ties of kinship and affiliation with theMother Country across the ocean. It was evident, thoughpeace might be signed and soldiers furl their flags, profoundantagonisms, social, economic and military, underlaydie life of the English-speaking world. Still slavery wasabolished. As John Bright said, "At last after the smoke ofthe battlefield has cleared away, the horrid shape whichhad cast its shadow over the whole continent, had vanishedand was gone for ever."T THIS date when allseems so simple andclear, one has hardly thepatience to chronicle the bitterand lamentable developmentswhich occupied the two succeedinggenerations. But we may turnaside in our speculation to notehow strangely the careers of Mr.Gladstone and Mr. Disraeliwould have been altered if Leehad not won the Battle of Gettysburg.Mr. Gladstone's threatenedresignation from LordPalmerston's Cabinet on themorrow of General Lee's pronouncementin favour of abolitioninduced a political crisis in England of the most intensecharacter. Old friendships were severed, old rancoursdied and new connections and resentments took theirplace. Lord Palmerston found himself at the parting of theways. Having to choose between Mr. Gladstone and LordJohn Russell, he did not hesitate. A Coalition Governmentwas formed in which Lord Robert Cecil (afterwardsthe great Lord Salisbury) became Foreign Secretary, but ofwhich Mr. Gladstone was henceforward the driving force.We remember how he had said at Newcastle on 7 October,1862, "We know quite well that the people of theNorthern States have not yet drunk of the cup—they willtry hard to hold it far from their lips—which all the restof the world see they nevertheless must drink. We mayhave our own ideas about slavery; we may be for oragainst the South; but there is no doubt that JeffersonDavis and the odier soldiers of the South have made anarmy; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they havemade what is more than either, they have made a nation."FINEST HOUR 103 / 30

Now the slavery obstacle was out of the way andunder the aegis of his aged chief, Lord Palmerston, who inMr. Gladstone's words "desired the severance (of Northand South) as the diminution of a dangerous power," andaided by the tempered incisiveness of Lord Robert Cecil,Mr. Gladstone achieved not merely the recognition butan abiding alliance between Great Britain and the SouthernStates. But this carried him far. In the main the friendsof the Confederacy in England belonged to the aristocraticwell-to-do and Tory classes of the nation; thedemocracy, as yet almost entirely unenfranchised, andmost of the Liberal elements sympathized with the North.Lord Palmerston's new Government formed in September,1863, although nominally Coalition, almost entirelyembodied the elements of Tory strength and inspiration.No one can say that Gladstones reunion with the Torieswould have been achieved apart from Gettysburg andLee's declaration at Washington.However, it was achieved, and henceforward theunion of Mr. Gladstone and Lord Robert Cecil on allquestions of Church, State and Empire became an accomplishedand fruitful fact. Once again the "rising hope ofthe stern and unbending Tories" had come back to his oldfriends, and the combination, armed as it was with prodigiousexecutive success, reigned for a decade irresistible.IT IS STRANGE, musing on Mr. Gladstones career,how easily he might have drifted into radical and democraticcourses. How easily he might have persuadedhimself that he, a Tory and authoritarian to his finger-tips,was fitted to be the popular and even populist, leader ofthe working classes. There might in this event have stoodto his credit nothing but sentimental pap, pusillanimoussurrenders of British interests, and the easy and relaxingcosmopolitanism which would in practice have made himthe friend of every country but his own. But the sabres ofJeb Stuart's cavalry and the bayonets of Pickett's divisionhad, on the slopes of Gettysburg, embodied him for everin a revivified Tory party. His career thus became a harmonyinstead of discord; and he holds his place in the seriesof great builders to whom the larger synthesis of theworld is due.Precisely the reverse effect operated upon MrDisraeli. What had he to do with the Tory aristocracy? Inhis early days he was prejudiced in their eyes as a Jew byrace. He had, indeed, only been saved from the stigma ofexclusion from public life before the repeal of the Jewishdisabilities by the fact of his having been baptized in infancy.He had stood originally for Parliament as a Radical.His natural place was with the left-out millions, with thedissenters, with the merchants of the North, with thevoteless proletariat. He might never have found his placeif Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg. But for thathe might have continued leading the Conservative Party,educating them against their will, dragging them into allsorts of social policies which they resented, making themserve as agents for extensions of franchise. Always indispensable,always distrusted, but for Lee and Gettysburg hemight well have ended his life in the House of Lords withdie exclamation, "Power has come to me too late!"But once he was united by the astonishing eventsof 1863 with the democratic and Radical forces of the nation,the real power of the man became apparent. He wasin his native element. He had always espoused the causeof the North; and what he was pleased to describe as "theselfish and flagitious intrigue (of the Palmerston-GladstoneGovernment) to split the American Union and torebuild out of the miseries of a valiant nation the vanishedempire of George III," aroused passions in England strongenough to cast him once and for all from Tory circles. Hewent where his instinct and nature led him, to die Radicalmasses which were yearly gathering strength. It is to thiswe owe his immense contribution to our social services. IfDisraeli had not been drawn out of the ConservativeParty, the whole of those great schemes of social and industrialinsurance which are for ever associated with hisname which followed so logically upon his speeches—"Health and the laws of health," "sanitas sanitatum omniasanitas"—might never have been passed into law in dienineteenth century. They might no doubt well have comeabout in the twentieth. It might have been left to somesprout of die new democracy or some upstart from Scotland,Ireland, or even Wales, to give to England what herlatest Socialist Prime Minister has described as "our incomparablesocial services." But "Dizzy," "The People'sDizzy," would never have set these merciful triumphs inhis record.We must return to the main theme. We may,however, note, by the way, that if Lee had not won theBattle of Gettysburg, Gladstone would not have becomethe greatest of Conservative Empire and Commonwealthbuilder, nor would Disraeli have been the idol of the toilingmasses. Such is Fate. But we cannot occupy ourselvestoo long upon the fortunes of individuals.DURING the whole of the rest of the nineteenthcentury the United States of America, as thetruncated Union continued to style itself, grewin wealth and population. An iron determination seemedto have taken hold of the entire people. By the Eightiesthey were already cleared of their war debt, and indeed alltraces of the war, except in the hearts of men, were entirelyeradicated. But the hearts of men are strange things,and the hearts of nations are still stranger. Never couldthe American Union endure the ghastly amputationwhich had been forced upon it. Just as France after 1870nursed for more than forty years her dream of revanche, sodid die multiplying peoples of the American Union concentratetheir thoughts upon another trial of arms.continued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103/31

TO THE SOUTH of the Confederacy lay Mexico,in perennial alternation between anarchy and dictatorship.Lee's early experiences in the formerMexican War had familiarized him with the military aspectsof the country and its problems, and we must admitthat it was natural that he should wish to turn the bayonetsof the Army of Northern Virginia upon this sporadicallydefended Eldorado. In 1884 the Confederate States,after three years' sanguinary guerrilla fighting, conquered,subdued and reorganized the vast territories of Mexico.These proceedings involved a continuous accretion ofSouthern military forces. At the close of the Mexican War700,000 trained andwell-tried soldierswere marshalled underwhat the North stillcalled "the rebel flag."In the face of thesepotentially menacingarmaments who canblame the NorthernStates adopting compulsorymilitary service?This was retortedby similar measuressouth of the Harper'sFerry Treaty line. Sucha process could not goon without a climax oftragedy or remedy.The climax, which came in 1905, was perhaps inducedby war excitement arising from the Russo-Japaneseconflict. The roar of Asiatic cannon reverberated, andeverywhere found immense military organizations in anactively receptive state. Never has the atmosphere of theworld been so loaded with explosive forces. Europe andNorth America were armed camps, and a war of first magnitudewas actually raging in Manchuria. At any moment,as the Dogger Bank incident* had shown, the British Empiremight be involved in war with Russia. And apartfrom such accidents the British Treaty obligations towardsJapan might automatically have drawn us in.The President of the United States had been formallyadvised by the powerful and highly competentAmerican General Staff that the entry of Great Britaininto such a war would offer in every way a favourable opportunityfor settling once and for all with the SouthernRepublic. This fact was obvious to many. Thus at thesame time throughout Europe and America precautionarymeasures of all kinds by land and sea were actively* In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, a Russian fleet fired ontrawlers on the Dogger Bank, claiming that there were Japanese torpedoboats among them. A Commission of Inquiry was set up andRussia was ordered to pay compensation to the families of the victims.taken; and everywhere fleets and armies were assembledand arsenals clanged and flared by night and day.NOW THAT these awful perils have been finallywarded off it seems to us almost incomprehensiblethat they could have existed. Nevertheless,by the end of 1905 the tension was such that nothingcould long avert a fratricidal struggle on a gigantic scale,except some great melting of hearts, some wave of inspirationwhich should lift the dull, deadly antagonisms to alevel so high that they would become actual unities.We must not underrate the strength of the forceswhich on both sidesof the Atlantic Oceanand on both sides ofC A N A D Athe fortified Americancontinental frontierswere labouring faithfullyand dauntlesslyto avert the hideousdoom which kindredraces seemed resolvedto prepare for themselves.But these deepcurrents of sanity andgoodwill would nothave been effectiveunless the decisivemoment had foundsimultaneously in England and the United States leadersgreat enough to dominate events. In President TheodoreRoosevelt and Mr. Arthur Balfour, the British Prime Minister,were present two diverse personalities which togetherembodied all the qualities necessary alike for profound negotiationand for supreme decision.When it happened it proved to be the easiestthing in the world. We who look back upon it take it somuch for granted that we cannot understand how easilythe most beneficent Covenant of which human recordsare witness might have been replaced by the most horribleconflict and world tragedy.The Balfour-Roosevelt negotiations had advancedsome distance before President Wilson, the enlightenedVirginian chief of the Southern Republic, wasinvolved in them. Despite Mr. Gladstone's cold-bloodedcoup in 1863, the policy of successive British Governmentshad always been to assuage the antagonism betweenNorth and South. At every stage the British had sought topromote good will and close association between hersouthern ally and the mighty northern power with whomshe had so much in common.On Christmas Day 1905 was signed theCovenant of the English-Speaking Association. Theessence of this extraordinary measure was crystal clear.The doctrine of common citizenship for all the peoples'THE TREATY OF HARPER'S FERRY, 1863"Boundary of the Confederacy •——-•——FINEST HOUR 103 / 32

involved in the agreement was proclaimed. There was notthe slightest interference with the existing arrangements ofany member. All that happened was that henceforwardthe peoples of the British Empire and of what were happilycalled in the language of the line "The Re-UnitedStates" deemed themselves to be members of one bodyand inheritors of one estate.The flexibility of the plan, which invaded no nationalprivacy, which left all particularisms entirely unchallenged,which altered no institutions and required noelaborate machinery, was its salvation. It was, in fact, amoral and psychological rather than political reaction.Hundreds of millions of people suddenly adopted a newpoint of view. Without prejudice to their existing loyaltiesand sentiments, they gave birth in themselves to a newhigher loyalty and a wider sentiment. The autumn of1905 had seen the English-Speaking world on the verge ofcatastrophe. The year did not die before they were associatedby indissoluble ties for the maintenance of peace betweenthemselves, for the prevention of war among outsidePowers and for the economic development of theirmeasureless resources and possessions.The Association had not been in existence for adecade before it was called upon to face an emergency notless grave than that which had called it into being. Everyone remembers the European crisis of August, 1914. Themurder of the Archduke at Sarajevo, the disruption ordecay of the Austrian and Turkish Empires, the old quarrelbetween Germany and France, and the increasing armamentsof Russia—all taken together produced the mostdangerous conjunction which Europe has ever known. Itseemed that nothing could avert a war which might wellhave become Armageddon itself.What the course and consequences of such a warwould have been are matters upon which we can onlyspeculate. M. Bloch in his thoughtful book published in1909, indicated that such a war if fought with modernweapons would not be a short one.** He predicted thatfield operations would quickly degenerate into a devastatingstalemate with siege warfare, or trench warfare, lastingfor years. We know his opinions are not accepted by manyleading military experts. But, at any rate, we cannot doubtthat a war in which four or five of the greatest EuropeanPowers were engaged might well have led to the loss ofmany millions of lives, and to the destruction of capitalthat twenty years of toil, thrift, and privation could nothave replaced. It is no exaggeration to say that had the crisisof general mobilization of August 1914 been followedby war, we might today in this island see income tax atfour or five shillings in the pound, and have two and ahalf million unemployed on our hands. Even the UnitedStates might have been dragged in.**]ean Bloch (1836-1902), Polish financier and writer. His book, IsWar Now Impossible?, was actually published in England in 1899.BUT IT WAS inherent in the Covenant of the English-SpeakingAssociation that the ideal of mutualdisarmament to the lowest point compatible withjoint safety should be adopted by the signatory members.It was also settled that every third year a Conference of thewhole Association should be held in such places as mightbe found convenient. It happened that the third disarmamentconference of the E.S.A.—as it is called for short—was actually in session in July, 1914. They acted as men accustomedto deal with the greatest events. They felt so sureof themselves that they were able to run risks for others.On 1 August, when the German armies were alreadyapproaching the frontiers of Belgium, when theAustrian armies had actually begun the bombardment ofBelgrade, and when all along the Russian and Frenchfrontiers desultory firing had broken out, the E.S.A. tenderedits friendly offices to all the mobilized Powers,counselling them to halt their armies within ten miles oftheir own frontiers, and to seek a solution of their differencesby peaceful discussion. The memorable documentadded "that failing a peaceful outcome the Association mustdeem itself ipso facto at war with any Power in either combinationwhose troops invaded the territory of its neighbour."Although this suave yet menacing communicationwas received with indignation in many quarters, it infact secured for Europe the breathing space which was sodesperately required. The French had already forbiddentheir troops to approach within ten miles of the Germanfrontier, and they replied in this sense. The Czar eagerlyembraced the opportunity offered to him. The secretwishes of the Kaiser and his emotions at this juncture havenecessarily been much disputed. There are those who allegethat, carried away by the excitement of mobilizationand the clang and clatter of moving armies, he was notdisposed to halt his troops already on the threshold of theDuchy of Luxembourg. Others avow that he received themessage with a scream of joy and fell exhausted into achair, exclaiming, "Saved! Saved! Saved!" Whatever mayhave been the nature of the Imperial convulsion, all weknow is that the acceptance of Germany was the last toreach the Association. With its arrival, although there yetremained many weeks of anxious negotiation, the dangerof a European war may be said to have passed away.Most of us have been so much absorbed by theimmense increases of prosperity and wealth, or by thecommercial activity and scientific and territorial developmentand exploitation which have been the history of theEnglish-Speaking world since 1905, that we have been inclinedto allow European affairs to fall into a twilight ofinterest. Once the perils of 1914 had been successfullyaverted and the disarmament of Europe had been broughtinto harmony with that already effected by the E.S.A., theidea of a "United States of Europe" was bound to occurcontinually. The glittering spectacle of the great Englishcontinuedoverleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 / 33

Speaking combination, its assured safety, its boundlesspower, the rapidity with which wealth was created andwidely distributed within its bounds, the sense of buoyancyand hope which seemed to pervade the entire populations;all this pointed to European eyes a moral whichnone but the dullest could ignore.Whether the Emperor Wilhelm II will be successfulin carrying the project of European unity forward byanother important stage at the forthcoming Pan-EuropeanConference at Berlin in 1932 is still a matter ofprophecy. Should he achieve his purpose he will haveraised himself to a dazzling pinnacle of fame and honour,and no one will be more pleased than the members of theE.S.A. to witness the gradual formation of another greatarea of tranquillity and cooperation like that in which weourselves have learned to dwell.If this prize should fall to his Imperial Majesty, hemay perhaps reflect how easily his career might have beenwrecked in 1914 by the outbreak of a war which mighthave cost him his throne, and have laid his country in thedust. If today he occupies in old age the most splendid situationin Europe, let him not forget that he might wellhave found himself eating the bitter bread of exile, a dethronedsovereign and a broken man loaded with unutterablereproach. And this, we repeat, might well have beenhis fate, if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg. MiReprinted by permission from The Great Republic: A History of America,by Sir Winston Churchill, edited and arranged by Winston S.Churchill, soon to be published by Random House."BROAD, SUNLIT UPLANDS": AN APPRECIATION OF CHURCHILL'S ESSAYPAUL ALKONF LEE Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg" is presented as if it were written by someone living in an alternateworld where Lee did wm the battle of Gettysburg, thus precipitating (implausibly from our viewpoint) a. sequence of events leading to the abolition of slavery, a Union of the English-Speaking Peoples, and theprospect of a United States of Europe led by Kaiser Wilhelm. Churchill's imaginary resident of that imaginary worldspeculates (in vintage Churchillian prose) about what dreadful things, including a terrible European war breaking outin 1914, might have happened had there not been a Confederate victory. Readers are thus invited to see, from that surprisinglyUtopian perspective, our own world as both dystopian and implausible. The narrator mentions, for example, abook written in 1909 by M. Bloch—but not accepted by leading military experts—predicting that a European conflictfought with modern weapons would be a long, bloody stalemate of trench warfare killing millions and leaving in itswake economic and political devastation.The brilliance of Churchill's essay lies in his decision to shift its narrative viewpoint so that readers must notonly consider the possible consequences of a Confederate victory—including alternatives to the bloodletting of WorldWar I—but also imagine how inconceivable our world might seem if things had worked out differently. Emphasis isupon the contingency as well as the facts of history. Not incidentally, Churchill powerfully exercises here that rare giftof political imagination which allowed him to portray dramatically different outcomes of a particular situation,whether the American Civil War or (later) the Battle of Britain.In Churchill's 1931 evocation of the very implausibility of what readers must nevertheless acknowledge to havebeen the stark reality of World War Is gigantic slaughter, we may see a foreshadowing of the rhetorician who later ralliedhis country to the cause of civilization by inviting contemplation of the likelihood—too easily dismissed by manythen and now—that a Nazi victory would plunge "the whole world...into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister,and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science" (Their Finest Hour). That chilling thoughtacquires much of its power by inviting imagination of one possible future as a kind of alternate feudal period whosetyrannies are accompanied and abetted by technological development more accelerated than anything actually achievedduring the medieval era.Nine years after writing this essay Churchill invited his audience to think of the worst possible outcome ofBritain's fight against Hitler's Germany, not as a unique situation incomparable with anything that has gone before, butrather as an alternate past wrenched out of time to prevent and replace that desirable future in which, "If we can standup to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands." (TheirFinest Hour). Here and elsewhere Churchill's skill as alternate historian notably enhanced the rhetoric that he sofamously and effectively mobilized for war.Dr. Alkon is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His article, "Winston Churchill and the ScientificImagination," was published in Finest Hour 94. This appreciation is excerpted from his paper, "Alternate History and Postmodern Temporality,"in Time, Literature and the Arts: Essays in Honor of Samuel L. Macey (Victoria: University ofVictoria, B.C.: 1994).FINEST HOUR 103 / 34

Action This Ye ear...DIARY FOR 1928RICHARD M. LANGWORTHOUR INTERNET website (www.winstonchurchill.org)offers a sectioncalled "Action This Day," which iswider in scope than FH's department by thesame name. On the website our object is to pinpointChurchill's location and activities day byday, ultimately for every day of his life.The Diary for 1928 came about by accident.I was looking for a reference to a Churchillvisit to Belfast, to support the accompanyingphoto, sent by Devoy White of Sacramento, California.Devoy's photo was from the archives of a Belfastcompany named "Shorts." I searched in vain for a 1928Churchill trip to Northern Ireland. None had occurred,but luck was at hand in the reliable official biographer. Asimilar photo is number 184 in Sir Martin Gilbert'sChurchill: A Photographic Portrait (1974). Both weretaken on the Thames, where Churchill was inspectingShort Brothers's "Calcutta" flying boat, moored oppositethe Houses of Parliament. "Throughout his life," commentsSir Martin, "he retained a keen interest in new inventionsand means of transport."The investigation led me to many other interestingevents in 1928 and ultimately resulted in the followingnotes for the website's "Action This Day." I publish themhoping they may inspire readers to tackle other years insimilar fashion.You can help complete this valuable file! Althoughwe would prefer you to be computer literate, and to sendyour year-diary by email, we also accept typed manuscripts.If you care to help, please contact John Plumpton,address on page 4. John can tell you what years stillneed to be covered. There are many to choose from.OVERVIEW OF 1928Throughout the year Churchill, aged 54, wasChancellor of the Exchequer, the most senior position inthe Cabinet next to the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin.The main Exchequer issue was Churchill's scheme of derating,a kind of supply-side economics. Churchill proposedto reduce by £30 million Local Rates (taxes) onfactories and farmers, paying for it partly by an increasednuisance tax (on petrol), partly from reduced governmentspending, and partly through increased governmentrevenues generated by the resulting improved economy.His scheme was bitterly opposed by Minister of HealthNeville Chamberlain; the rift that grew between themwould affect their relationship later.A second issue, later in the year, was war debt.Churchill maintained that Britain needed enough ofwhat Britain was owed by Europe to balance what Britainowed the United States. President Coolidge had been intransigenton the subject, greeting a suggestion that theBritish war debt be reduced with the famous, laconic remark,"They hired the money, didn't they?" Churchill referredto Coolidge as a "New England backwoodsman,"and preferred to put the issue off until President Hooverwas inaugurated in March 1929.In the literary field, Churchill's chief writing projectfor 1928 was The Aftermath, published in 1929 as VolumeIV of The World Crisis.Januarylst-8th: Chartwell; political correspondence.9- 10th: to France via Newhaven-Dieppe; two days hunting wild boar in the Forets d'Eu and d'Argueswith "Bendor," the Duke of Westminster.1 lth: Back to Chartwell.16th: London; Treasury Chambers.20th: Cabinet meeting, London; at Treasury Chambers.25th: Cabinet Policy Committee meeting; Churchill sayshe hopes de-rating will start by October 1929—apregnant date, as it turned out.29-30th: Treasury Chambers and 11 Downing Street.February5th: Returned to Chartwell.7th: London; Commons debate on the King's Address,which WSC supports.9th: London; Treasury Chambers. continued overleaf...FINEST HOUR 103/35

Diary ior 1928, continued...February12-13th: Chartwell, where Clementine is ill; to London.14th: London; Treasury Chambers.15th: London; Treasury Chambers; Lord Asquith dies.16th: Downing Street; Cabinet meeting in respect for Asquith.17th: Cabinet Meeting agreed to WSC's economic plans.27th: Policy Committee meeting.March5th: Policy Committee meeting; dispute over rating reliefcontinued, difficulty again with Chamberlain.6th: Treasury, London.9th: London; Treasury Chambers.12th: Policy Committee meeting on de-rating plans.18th: London, 11 Downing Street.23rd: London; Treasury Chambers.26th: Policy Committee meeting.28th: Policy Committee; argues with Chamberlain.April2nd: Cabinet.3rd: Cabinet reconvenes without WSC or Chamberlainpresent; Policy Committee meeting.4th: Cabinet reaches compromise on de-rating .4-23rd: At Chartwell almost without interruption; briefforays to London for Cabinet and House sessions.24th: Commons. Fourth Budget Speech (3 1/2 hours).24-27th: London; Treasury Chambers.MayApril 28-May 10th: Chartwell; in bed with influenza.10-13th: Chartwell, recovering from 'flu.13th: Night express to Scotland and Duke of Westminster'shouse Rosehall, in Sutherland.14-19th: Rosehall. Churchill reads, fishes, reviews proofs ofBeaverbrook's book, Politicians and the War.20-31st: Chartwell to prepare for Budget Debate.June5th: Commons; WSC introduces Finance Bill.5-8th: Commons debate on Budget and Finance.19th: London; Treasury Chambers.July5th: Meeting of Committee of Imperial Defence; WSC proposesan extension of the Ten Year Rule (budget formilitary assumes no major war within ten years). TheTen Year Rule is renewed.22nd: London; Treasury Chambers.August1st: Cabinet meeting, London.3rd: Chartwell; cables birthday congratulations to Baldwin, 61.4-8th: Chartwell.9th: Chartwell; lunch with Bernard Baruch.10-1 lth: Chartwell with Victor Cazalet, Randolph, Lindemann.September21st: Chartwell weekend guests include James Scrymgeour-Wedderburn, later MP for Renfrew, Scotland (1931-45), who writes: "Winston is building with his ownhands a house for his butler, and also a new gardenwall. He works at bricklaying four hours a day, andlays 90 bricks an hour, which is a very high output.He also spends a considerable time on the last volumeof his war memoirs....His ministerial work comesdown from the Treasury every day, and he has to givesome more hours to that. It is a marvel how muchtime he gives to his guests, talking sometimes for anhour after lunch and much longer after dinner. He isan exceedingly kind and generous host, providing unlimitedChampagne, cigars and brandy. Even poor oldProf who is really a teetotaller is compelled to drinkten cubic centimetres of brandy at a time, because hewas once rash enough to tell Winston that the averagehuman being could imbibe ten cc of brandy withoutcausing any detectable change in metabolism."(Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 5, p. 301).22-23rd: Chartwell24-27th: To Balmoral, Scotland (rail via London-Rugby-Perth,car to Balmoral) for stag hunting with King George Vand further dictation of The Aftermath. WSC writes:"The King is well—but ageing. He no longer stalks butgoes out on the hill where the deer are 'moved about forhim,' & it may be that some loyal stag will do his duty."28th: Returned to London.October1st: Cabinet meeting, discussed 30 May 1929 as possible datefor the next General Election.3rd: Chartwell.1 Oth: London, Cabinet meeting.17th: London, Cabinet meeting.19th: Paris for discussion of War Debts with P.M. Poincare.25th: Epping. Speech to his constituency, "A DisarmamentFable" (see. Arms and the Covenant, page 15, whichrecords this speech incorrectly as October 15th).29th: London, Cabinet meeting.31st: London; Treasury Chambers.November5th: WSC a guest at Baldwin's eve-of-session dinner.1 lth: Dinner and film show at Beaverbrook's London house.19th: London; Treasury Chambers.21st: London. "Baldwin has gone to Scotland & I am incharge." (Gilbert, Companion Vol. 5, Part 1, p. 1383.)29th: Birthday dinner at House including Philip Sassoon, ProfessorLindemann, Lord Harmsworth and VictorLaski. 30th: Churchill's 54th birthday at Chartwell.3rd: London; Treasury Chambers.4th: To Duke of Westminster's Eaton Hall, near Chester.December25th: To Chartwell for Christmas and the New Year. $FINEST HOUR 103 / 36

Sudan RevisitedDouglas J. HallThe Last Charge: The21st Lancers and theBattle ofOmdurman,2 September 1898, byTerry Brighton (AssistantCurator, Museumof the Queen's RoyalLancers). Published byCrowood Press, Ramsbury, Marlborough,Wiltshire SN8 2HR.Winston Churchill's The River War,published in 1899, included twochapters devoted to the Battle of Omdurman.He covered the same groundagain in two chapters of My Early Life(1930). Churchill's two accounts werewritten from his firsthand experience ofthe battle as a supernumerary Lieutenantof the 21st Lancers and correspondentof the Morning Post.Mr. Brighton's greatly expanded account,written with the advantage of accessto the archives of the Queen's RoyalLancers and the assistance of the NationalArmy Museum and the ImperialWar Museum, considerably developsChurchill's two narratives. In additionit incorporates previously unpublishedextracts from contemporary letters anddiaries of other participants in one ofthe last cavalry charges made by theBritish army. The result is a highly readablebook, profusely illustrated witheight full colour plates and 100 blackand white photographs and maps,which retains the excitement ofChurchill's vivid descriptions of the"last great colonial battle," enhanced bythe personal experiences of other regimentalsoldiers who saw action on thatMr. Hall is FH's features editor.BOOKS, ARTS& CURIOSITIESday, three of whom were awarded theVictoria Cross.It is well known that Churchill's applicationto take part in the Sudan campaignhad originally been vetoed byLord Kitchener and that his presencehad only been secured through hismother's entreaties to the Prime Minister,Lord Salisbury. In the event the officialWar Office telegram advising himof his supernumerary attachment to the21st Lancers read: "...you will proceedat your own expense and in the eventof your being killed or wounded...nocharge of any kind will fall upon BritishArmy funds." Hardly the warmest ofwelcomes! The objections of LordKitchener, and most of Churchill's fellowofficers, were not on account of hisabilities as a soldier but entirely on accountof what he might write as a newspapercorrespondent. One of his supporterstold Lord Kitchener that hewould not write for a newspaper, whichwas presumptuous. He meant to write,and provided highly detailed and descriptiveletters, written as if to a friend,to the Morning Post.In the early stages of the campaign,Mr. Brighton notes, the regiments presscoverage had not been good and the relationshipbetween the regular officersand Churchill became strained. Thefeeling was mutual and Churchill complainedto his mother of being given"...a fearful lot of work of a petty andtedious kind" and "...the 21st Lancersare not on the whole a good business....!would much rather have beenattached to the Egyptian cavalry staff."However, as the regiment approachedthe northern outskirts of Omdurmanand came in sight of the enemy greatercamaraderie appears to have taken over.With the two armies poised waiting forbattle to commence a naval officer onone of the gunboats threw a bottle ofChampagne towards a group ofLancers; it fell short and Churchill wasfirst in the water to recover it!Churchill's reports of the numbers ofDervishes, and the casualties on bothsides, tended to be higher than those ofhis fellow officers, including LordKitchener, but otherwise his despatchesform an important part of Mr.Brighton's narrative. A previously unpublishedaccount from the memoirs ofCorporal Rix, an NCO in Churchill'ssquadron, provides a graphic descriptionof Churchill's own bravery whichthe latter had modestly not seen fit tomention. Highly recommended toeveryone interested in Churchill andthe Sudan.Mission ImpossibleDouglas J. HallWinston Churchill, by Robert Blake.Pocket Biographies Series, SuttonPublishing Ltd., Stroud, Gloucestershire1998. 110 pages, paperback,£4.99. If you wish a copy, please notifythe editor.Sutton's series of Pocket Biographiescovers a wonderfully disparate rangeof subjects, from Alexander the Greatthrough Abraham Lincoln and MarilynMonroe to Mao Tse-tung. Lord Blakewas the co-editor, with William RogerLouis, of Churchill: A Major New Assessmentof his Life in Peace and War (reviewedin FH 77), a collection oftwenty-nine essays from a conference atTexas University, which provided a wideand diverse range of assessments ofChurchill's life and career. What LordBlake has done in this little book is tomeld all the undisputed facts aboutChurchill's life and career with a selectionof some of the myths, distortions,scandals and subjective opinions whichhad been expressed at the Texas conference,or indeed elsewhere. He robustlydismisses a few canards but leaves othersdangling. Surely his task was MissionImpossible. How can one compressall those billions of words into 110pages of generously sized and spacedtypescript?The drastic abridgement tends togive the narrative a somewhat telecontinuedoverleaf...FINEST HOUR 103 / 37

graphic style in places, but almosteverything of consequence is mentioned,however briefly. (The Battle ofBritain takes one sentence.) On certaincontentious topics Lord Blake is curiouslyambivalent. The bombing of Germancities "was defended...as a meansof wrecking German war industry...butwas in reality a campaign ofterror...under the ruthless Sir ArthurHarris....However there is a contraryview that it diverted resources frommore important objectives."Warren Kimball's lengthy dissertationon the special relationship betweenChurchill and Roosevelt is compressedinto two sentences: "[Churchill]never admitted recognition of Roosevelt'sdeep hostility to British 'colonialism,'but he must have felt it. Theirrelationship, under a veneer of candidfriendship, was uneasy and their strategicobjects divergent." Elsewhere LordBlake neatly demolishes the oft-repeatedmyth, arising from his speech inZurich in 1946, that he approved of aEuropean Union in its present form.Churchill, Blake writes, advocated "akind of United States of Europe. Theidea of Britain having the sort of relationshipwith a European federal capitalwhich Texas or California has withWashington was never in his mind."The Keeper of the Archives atChurchill College Cambridge, PiersBrendon, once told a Churchillian audiencethat Sir Martin Gilbert had usedonly about ten percent of the materialavailable in his massive Official Biography.Gilbert murmured, "As much asthat?" How has Lord Blake covered theground in fewer than 20,000 words? Hedeserves some kind of award. As it is,history students with an ever-growingcurriculum to assimilate will be gratefulfor the opportunity to read a balancedbiography of Churchill in less than halfa day.Early Titles: Carry Me Back to Old VirginiaG eorge RichardWinston Churchill: TheEra and the Man, byVirginia Cowles, 370pp., illus. London:Hamish Hamilton,New York: Harper andBrothers, 1953; new revisededition, NewYork: Grosset & Dunlap (paperback)1956. Also published in Swedish, Germanand Spanish. Secondhand value$3-15. Frequency: common.The author has in this instance aconsiderable advantage over mostother biographers of Churchill. She notonly had met her subject but was onterms of friendship with him. VirginiaCowles's work is also different frommany other books on Churchill of itsperiod in that the Second World Warreceives comparatively little attention inrelation to the whole. Rather, the aimwas to give a quite detailed history ofMr. Richard is a Finest Hour contributorfrom Tasmania, Australia.Churchill from childhood through tohis second Prime Ministership. This isachieved by relating many facts whichare now well known about Churchill'shistory but which in 1953 were farfrom common knowledge and doing soin a manner which is well balanced andvery readable.The book is full of the instructiveand informative. Examples include thefact that as a young man Winston heardGladstone speak in the House of Commons;that he believed Julius Caesar tobe the greatest man who ever lived becausehe was the most magnanimous ofall the warriors; and that aged fifteen henearly killed himself with a home madebomb. Churchill's military career is wellchronicled, including the rarely mentionedrescue of a Sudanese baby afterthe Battle of Omdurman and its handingback to its own people. This aspectof the life is greatly enhanced by interviewswith surviving contemporarieswho had served with Churchill in Indiaand in the Boer War.His early Parliamentary career iscovered in some detail; his long friendshipwith David Lloyd George is fullydescribed and well-known incidentssuch as Tonypandy and the Siege ofSidney Street figure prominently. Theperiod immediately prior to World WarI and his dealings with Fisher and LloydGeorge, and with the Irish problem,provide the setting for his activities duringthe 1914-18 cataclysm.The interwar years are well depictedand the author brings home tothe reader Churchill's extremely highlevel and range of activity in this period.Among other things, Churchill in thisera served as Chancellor of the Exchequer;was sent to the political wilderness;achieved a prodigious literary outputand fought one of his more notoriouslosing battles when he supportedthe King in the Abdication crisis.Although Cowles is light on theSecond World War, she does give readerssome insights into Churchill theman at that vital time in his life whenshe describes her wartime lunches andmeetings with him and his family,something latterday biographers are obviouslydenied. She also, quite correctly,states the central failure of the war:"when all is said and done, Communismand not Democracy has been thevictor over a large part of the world,"blaming mainly the Americans.The concluding chapters coverChurchill's spell as leader of the Oppositionfrom 1945 to 1951 and his resumptionof the role of Prime Ministerin 1951, a post he held until two yearsafter this book was published. Cowles'sfinal sentence declares, "He will be rememberedas a statesman but he will becherished as a man," something fewwould disagree with.Whilst The Em and the Man isnot at all revisionist, it does not provide"meaningful psychological interpretations"and discloses no scandals or distractionsfrom the main story. It isprobably the better as a result. It providesa very clear picture of Churchillfrom birth up to the stage when possiblyhis great powers were in decline. Itis a good size for a one-volume biographyof such a complex and manyfacetedindividual and can be recommendedfor inclusion in all Churchill libraries.>»FINEST HOUR 103/38

The Boole or the CenturyRicnard BrookniserThe Second World War (6 Vols.), byWinston S. Churchill. Boston,Houghton Mifflin 1948-53; London:Cassell 1948-54, over 5000 pages, illustratedwith maps and plans. Still inprint. Secondhand values range from$25 for a set of book club editions toover $500 for a fine English CharrwellEdition (1956). Frequency: common.Winston Churchill's The SecondWorld War is a peerless conjunctionof subject and author. The war wasthe century's big event; Churchill wasits major hero; and his six-volumememoir displays an incisive mind and agreat voice. The war squats in mid-centurylike a hellish railroad station.Everything before hurtles in, and everythingafter spirals out. It destroyed agreat evil, Nazism, while leaving another,Communism, stronger. It stimulatedthe free nations of the world toheroism and sacrifice, while batteringand twisting their institutions.Winston Churchill was the son ofa brilliant, burned-out politician wholooked as if he would follow in his father'sfootsteps, until, early in the1930s, he foresaw the coming conflictand vainly warned Britain to prepare.When the war finally came, Churchillled his country as Prime Minister for allbut ten months. For the first year and ahalf, Britain fought, outnumbered andvirtually alone, like the Spartans atThermopylae; unlike them, the Britishsurvived.Churchill recounts his experiencesin prose shaped by a youthful dietof Macaulay and Gibbon, and sharpenedby a side-career as a journalist.Like many politicians' books, The SecondWorld War recycles speeches—butwhat speeches: "We shall fight on theWINSTON S.CHURCHILLTHLSU'ONDWORIDU'XRFinestbeaches, we shall fight on the landinggrounds, we shall fight in the fields andin the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender...." This was ademocratic leader who did not rely onghosts or focus groups.Sometimes Churchill captures thepiquant detail. When he makes a trip toParis in the spring of 1940 in a vain attemptto buck up the crumblingFrench, he notices the smoke of governmentarchives being burned at the Quaid'Orsay. Sometimes he steps back tosketch a masterly portrait. The historianJan Lukacs thought his three-page summaryof Hitler's early career one of thebest analyses of the Fiihrer's motivesever written. Always there is dramaswirling around him: his relief, even ina time of crisis, at rising to the height ofpower ("At the top, there are great simplifications");his appreciation of Americanpower and the effect it would haveafter the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,which brought the U.S. into thewar ("I slept the sleep of the saved andthankful"); a lurid scene in 1944 inwhich he and Stalin jot down on a"half-sheet of paper" the degree of influenceeach would like to have in thenations of Eastern Europe after the war.This is not light reading. Weknow, as we follow the story throughthickets of memos and daily ordeals,that it will lead not to peace, but to fourdecades of cold war, and that Britainwill be shorn of empire and great-powerstatus (Churchill suspected the first result,and could not face the second).The story is a record of wickedness anddestruction unprecedented in history.But there are also gleams of inspiration:of great men acting on right motives,and making a difference; of brave mendoing their duty.As the generations that livedthrough the Second World War fall towhat Lincoln called "the silent artilleryof time," and as history replaces memory,we have to make sure that our historiesare real—saving the world, notSaving Private Ryan. The Second WorldWar is a good place to start. $"Last Lap," Manchester Daily Dispatch, 4 August 1944, as the Allies swept toward Paris.Richard Brookhiser is the author of severalbooks, including Alexander Hamilton, American.He is a member of the selection committeewhich assembled a list of the 100 best nonfictionbooks of the 20th century. Reprintedby kind permission of National Review.FINEST HOUR 103 / 39

THE COLLECTED POETRY OF WINSTON CHURCHILLCOMPILED AND ANNOTATED BY DOUGLAS J. HALLIn declaring Winston Churchill anHonorary Citizen of the UnitedStates, President Kennedy said (quotingEd Murrow), "He mobilized the Englishlanguage and sent it into battle." ThePresident was referring in particular to1940, but Churchill's stimulating use ofhis native language was constant throughouthis long and distinguished life. Languagehas two forms, written and spoken.Churchill was a master of both. As a journalist,essayist, author, novelist, historian,biographer, editor, correspondent, communicator,conversationalist and speakerhe had few equals in any one of thosefields, much less all of them. He has beendescribed as a law unto himself in his useof words, as in so many other matters.In 1906, Churchill addressed theannual dinner of the Authors' Club:Authors are the happy people in theworld, whose work is pleasure. No onecan set himself to the writing of a pageof English composition without feelinga real pleasure in the medium in whichhe works, the flexibility and the profoundnessof his noble mother tongue.The House of Commons may do whatit likes, and so may the House of Lords;the American market may have its bottomknocked out, the heathen mayrage in every part of the globe; Consulsmay fall, and the suffragists rise, but theauthor is secure as almost no other manis secure. I have sometimes fortifiedmyself amid the vexations, vicissitudesand uncertainties of political life by thereflection that I might find a secure lineof retreat on the pleasant, peaceful andfertile country of the pen, where oneneed never be idle or dull.Those spoken words, as written words,read just as well as they must havesounded to that gathering over ninetyyears ago.Churchill spoke and wrote with arhythm which made it almost poetical.He arranged his notes for his speeches ina format closely resembling blank verse.Although he was never a prolific poethimself he greatly enjoyed poetry and hada remarkable capacity to commit to memorycopious lines of verse which he lovedto recall and recite at appropriate moments.In his writings and speeches heregularly quoted lines from Macauley andwas still able to recite long passages frommemory well into extreme old age.Winston Churchill was truly a poetat heart. A little book was published yearsago with a similar title to this article, butcontained nothing by him. This little collection,compiled with the help of hisdaughter, presents the poems he is knownto have composed himself. They are takenfrom Churchill Canto, a larger work bythis writer, as yet unpublished, containinga selection of verse with which Churchillwas in some way associated.THE INFLUENZAOh how shall I its deeds recountOr measure the untold amountOf ills that it has done?From China's bright celestial landE'en to Arabia's thirsty sandIt journeyed with the sun.O'er miles of bleak Siberia's plainsWhere Russian exiles toil in chainsIt moved with noiseless tread;And as it slowly glided byThere followed it across the skyThe spirits of the dead.The Ural peaks by it were scaledAnd every bar and barrier failedTo turn it from its way;Slowly and surely on it came,Heralded by its awful fame,Increasing day by day.On Moscow's fair and famous townWhere fell the first Napoleon's crownIt made a direful swoop;The rich, the poor, the high, the lowAlike the various symptoms know,Alike before it droop.Nor adverse winds, nor floods of rainMight stay the thrice-accursed bane;And with unsparing hand,Impartial, cruel and severeIt travelled on allied with fearAnd smote the fatherland.Fair Alsace and forlorn Lorraine,The cause of bitterness and painIn many a Gallic breast,Receive the vile, insatiate scourge,And from their towns with it emergeAnd never stay nor rest.And now Europa groans aloud,And 'neath the heavy thunder-cloudHushed is both song and dance;The germs of illness wend their wayTo westward each succeeding dayAnd enter merry France.Fair land of Gaul, thy patriots braveWho fear not death and scorn the graveCannot this foe oppose,Whose loathsome hand and cruel sting,Whose poisonous breath and blightedwingFull well thy cities know.In Calais port the illness stays,As did the French in former days,To threaten Freedom's isle;But now no Nelson could o'erthrowThis cruel, unconquerable foe,Nor save us from its guile.Yet Father Neptune strove right wellTo moderate this plague of Hell,And thwart it in its course;And though it passed the streak of brineAnd penetrated this thin line,It came with broken force.For though it ravaged far and wideBoth village, town and countryside,Its power to kill was o'er;And with the favouring winds of Spring(Blest is the time of which I sing)It left our native shore.God shield our Empire from the mightOf war or famine, plague or blightAnd all the power of Hell,And keep it ever in the handsOf those who fought 'gainst other lands,Who fought and conquered well. >»FINEST HOUR 103 / 40

• "The Influenza" was written by thefifteen-year-old Churchill in 1890 whenhe was a pupil at Harrow School. For hiseffort he received a House Prize whichwent some way towards redeeming his position,bodi with his schoolmasters and hisparents who had been less than impressedby his recent behaviour and scholasticachievement. The poem is remarkably accomplishedfor a fifteen-year-old and givesan early glimpse of Churchill's commandof language, his sense of history and hisimpish humour. It was published in TheHarrovian, the Harrow School magazine,fifty years later on 10 December 1940,when the "Famous Old Harrovian" hadbecome quite a celebrity. See WinstonChurchill and Harrow by E. D. W. Chaplin(Harrow School Bookshop, 1941).PUSSY CATOnly one thing lacks these banks of green—The Pussy Cat who is their Queen....• Churchill's term of endearmentfor his wife, Clementine, was Pussy Cat.He often embellished his letters to herwith small drawings of cats. In April 1924Winston, assisted by the children, movedinto Chartwell. These lines were in a letterto Clementine who was in Dieppe.See Mary Soames, Speaking for Themselves:The Personal Letters of Winston andClementine Churchill (1998).POOR PUGGY-WUGOh, what is the matter with poor Puggy-wugPet him and kiss him and give him a hug.Run and fetch him a suitable drug,Wrap him up tenderly all in a rug,That is the way to cure Puggy-wug.• As a child Mary Churchill had apet pug called "Punch." One day Punchbecame desperately ill. Mary and her sisterSarah were disconsolate. Their fathercomposed this ditty to comfort them andall three sang it together to the ailing dog.Lady Soames adds that the treatmentworked! Published by permission of LadySoames from Sarah Churchill, A Threadin the Tapestry (London: 1967).OH, MRS GRAEBNER!Your husband is a very temperate man -hmphHe needs - er - a little sedative to sleep.He should drink all the brandy that hecan - hmphYou've really very little cause to weep.• Walter Graebner, Churchill's Lifeeditor, writing in My Dear Mr Churchill(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965) relatedhow, after dinner at Chartwell oneevening, he and his wife were discussingthe use of sleeping pills with Winston andClementine. Churchill, with an impishgrin, addressed Mrs. Graebner with thisimpromptu piece of doggerel. Not greatpoetry, but the kind of thing Churchillwas very good at—and which pleasedhim hugely.FRENCH VERSELa peinture a l'huileEst bien difficile,Mais c'est beaucoup plus beauQue la peinture a Feau.• In Painting as a Pastime (London:Odhams 1948) Churchill used the rare,possibly unique, combination of Frenchand verse to explain his preference forpainting in oils rather than water-colours.AFTER READING AFOREIGN OFFICE REPORTThe CzechoslovaksLie flat on their backsEmitting loud quacksThe YugoslovoksAll die of the pox.• Anthony Montague Browne,Churchill's Private Secretary 1952-65,quotes this example of WSC's impromptuverse in Long Sunset (London:Cassell 1995, reprinted by kind permission).Mr. Montague Browne believesthat this "schoolboy" verse may havebeen Churchill's own composition. Such"high poetic flights," he says, did not reflectenmity or contempt, but did not reflectmuch high esteem either!CHURCHILL CENTER ASSOCIATESIt is a pleasure to announce that thanks to continued support from theChurchill Center Associates, including many new ones, The ChurchillCenter Endowment Fund hasreached over one million threehundred thousand dollars:more than the goal we set forourselves when launching theAssociates program in late1997. Our gratitude to themall is deeply felt. But this isonly the "End of theBeginning." To create a permanent,fully endowed ChurchillCenter will take ten milliondollars or more. In theautumn we renew our questfor major donors outside ourranks. For the nonce, if youthink you might be amongthose able to sustain the fundwith a donation of $10,000or more over four years,please contact us.FINEST HOUR 103/41REMEMBERWINSTON CHURCHILLWill future generations remember?Will the ideas you cherish now be sustainedtheni Will someone articulateyour principles? Who will guide yourgrandchildren, your faithand your country?There is an answer.With your help, The Churchill Centerwill endure as a powerful voice, sustainingthose beliefs Sir Winston and weheld dear. Now.And for future generations.For more information contact:The Churchill Center AssociatesRichard M. Langworth, President888-454-2275

CHURCHILL ONLINEnttp : //www. wins ton nurcnill. oChurchill's Political PhilosophyUSTSERV WINSTON:Subscribe free to our discussion forum. Sendthe two-word email message SUBSCRIBEWINSTON with your name toListserv@imumarist.edu—you 'II receive aconfirmation and will then be able to sendand receive comments on Churchill throughour online community by e-maUing Winston@vm.marist.edu.In case of problemscontact our List Manager, Jonah Triebwasser:I2ML@tnaristB.marist.eduEvery once in awhile Listserv Winstonlights up over a hot topic.One recent example was a debate overhow much Churchill was influencedby Machiavelli's The Prince, whichstemmed from a chance request by astudent (the major customers at ourwebsite).The digital equivalent of allhell quickly broke loose. Some subscriberstried to compared Churchillwith Bill Clinton and other modernfigures, only to receive a proper hidingby subscribers who said no suchcomparisons were possible or relevant.One of these wrote:"All politicians are productsof their time periods, no more, noless. You cannot separate the politicianfrom the political system. Politicians,just like Machiavellian princes,are not created in vacuums. Modernpoliticians are the result of a flawedpolitical system—namely the fundingaspects of it. They represent aptly thepolitical culture of the West, the sayanything-to-get-electedreality ofmodern politics. The political systemas it stands now encourages candi-Finest Hour happily publishes interestingsnippets from "Listserv Winston," but youreally need to subscribe. See box above.dates to sell their souls to the highestbidders. It forces them to find increasinglycreative sources of campaignfunding, such as coffees at the WhiteHouse or meetings with Buddhistnuns, to name the two most notableexamples."Churchill never had to gothrough this type of political system.If he had, maybe we would have seena more unscrupulous Churchill, perhapsnot. But that is a question whichis unanswerable."Although"say-anything-to-getelected"applies as well to Baldwinin the 1930s, we thought thiswriter made some fairly deft points.Lady Soames is always at pains to stoppeople comparing her father withmodern figures while speculating onhow he might react to today's issues.She will always ask the person declaringsuch things: "How do you know?"It does seem, however, thatsome of Churchill's political preceptsmight profitably be adopted by modernpoliticians. To name two: collegialityand principle—stating whatone really believes instead of what theTHECHURCHILLWEBSTTE:Aim your browser at the www addresswww.xvinstonchurchill.org and the ChurchillHome Page will appear. Click on any of thebuttons to connect to the latest informationon The Churchill Center and Churchill Societies.The Finest Hour button produces theearliest publication of the next issue. If youexperience any difficulty pleaseemail webmasterJohn Plumpton:Savrola@winstonchurchill.orsaudience wants to hear, and maintainingfriendly relations with the oppositionafter political debate has diedaway. Neither habit is very commonanymore, but they do exist. JesseHelms and Paul Wellstone, to nametwo disparate American Senators ofthe right and left respectively, exhibitboth these Churchillian traits. Doubtlessfollowers of Parliament in Britain,Canada and Australia could nameothers, though not "many.The adoption of Churchilliantraits by someone able properly to putthem over without appearing false orphony would not prevent someonefrom becoming President or PrimeMinister of a modern democracy. Notso long ago, a President who said whathe thought yet was always cordial tohis political enemies served two fullterms carrying forty-nine states thesecond time round. And we all knowthe Prime Minister who served longerthan any other Premier this century bysaying exactly what she believed. Perhapsshe was not as matey with theopposition as Churchill. But it wasfascinating, and perhaps unprecedented,when a former Leader of theOpposition paid a courtesy call on herbefore he took over at Ten DowningStreet. 45FINEST HOUR 103/42

WOODS CORNERAN INDEX TO REVIEWS OF EARLYBOOKS BY WINSTON CHURCHILLCOMPILED BY CURT ZOLLER~A fir. Zoller, who is developing a newA. VJ. checklist of books about WinstonChurchill, is also our official gatherer ofbook reviews of Churchill's books. We publishherewith for your information the reviewsknown to Curt (not all of them onfile) for books up to The World Crisis.Curt's email address is:zcurt@earthlink. net. —Editor.THE STORY OF THEMALAKAND FIELD FORCEThe Athenaeum, Vol. 111, 26March 1898, p. 403 • The Spectator,Vol. 80, 14 May 1898, p. 700 • TheTimes, No. 35484, 7 April 1898, p. 8 •London Quarterly and Holborn Review,Vol. 91 (1899), p. 375 'ComparativeStudies in Society and History, Vol. 31,October 1989, pp. 649-670, by DavidB. Edwards • The New Yorker, Vol.LXVI, 26 March 1990, pp. 94-6, byNaomi BlivenTHE RIVER WARThe Athenaeum, Vol. 114, 2December 1899, pp. 751-52 • Booklist,Vol. 30, September 1933, p. 21 • BostonEvening Transcript, 7 June 1933, p. 2 •The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. V,4 February 1933, p. 138 • Saturday Reviewof Literature, Vol. X, 5 August1933, p. 32 • The Political Science Reviewer,Vol. XX, Spring 1991, pp. 223-63, by James WMullerSAVROLAThe Bookman, Vol. XXXIV,July 1908 • Newsweek, Vol. XLVII, 16April 1956 • Harper's Magazine, Vol.212, May 1956, pp. 80-92, by P. Pickrel• New York Times (Book Review), 15April 1956, p. 5, by A. L. Rowse • Encounter,Vol. XXV, October 1965, pp.45-51, by Bryan MageeSAVROLA cont'd.New York Times (Book Review), 15April 1956, p. 5 • The Times LiterarySupplement, 17 August 1990, p. 867, byStefan ColiniLONDON TO LADYSMITHVIA PRETORIAThe Nation, Vol. LXX, 28 June1900, p. 501 • The Canadian Magazine,Vol. 15 (1900), p. 79 • The Athenaeum,19 May 1900, p. 622 • U. S. Naval InstituteProceedings, Vol. 91, October1965, pp. 114-19, by Capt. S. WRoskill • The New Yorker, Vol. LXVI, 26March 1990, pp. 94-96 by NaomiBliven • Finest Hour, No. 40, Summer1983, p. 15, by Stanley SmithIAN HAMILTON'S MARCHThe Bookman, Vol. XIX, December1900, p. 187 • New York Times(Saturday Review of Books), 12 January1901, p. 19 • U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings,Vol. 91, October 1965, pp.114-19, by Capt. S. W. Roskill • TheNew Yorker, Vol. LXVI, 26 March 1990,pp. 94-96 by Naomi BlivenLORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLBlackwood's Magazine, February1906 • Contemporary Review, Vol.LXXXVI (1906), p. 233+ • The AmericanHistorical Review, Vol. XI, April1906, pp. 675-76, by Edward Porritt• The Twentieth Century, Vol. 59, April1906, pp. 636-37 • Academy (London),Vol. 70, 6 January 1906, p. 5• American Monthly Review of Reviews,Vol. XXXIII, March 1906, p. 380 •Athenaeum, 6 January 1906, p. 7 • LiteraryDigest, Vol. XXXII, 31 March1906, p. 491 • Public Opinion, Vol. 40,3 March 1906, p. 283 • Saturday Review,Vol. 101, 6 January 1906, p. 18LORD RANDOLPH, cont'd.London Quarterly and Holborn Review,Vol.105 (1906), p. 347 • The Spectator,Vol. 96, 6 January 1906, pp. 19-22 •U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol..91, October 1965, pp. 114-19, byCapt. S. W. Roskill • The Times LiterarySupplement, 23 January 1981, pp. 87-89, by R. F. Foster • Finest Hour, No.51, Spring 1986, pp. 14-16, by JohnPlumpton • Finest Hour, No. 93, Winter1996, pp. 23-28, by John H. MatherMY AFRICAN JOURNEYThe Saturday Review, Vol. 106,19 December 1908, p. 761 • The Bookman,Vol. XXXV, January 1909, pp.188-89, by Lord Ronaldshay • ContemporaryReview, Vol. XCV, March 1909,Supplement, pp. 5-7 • Booklist, Vol. 5,April 1909, p. 101 • Literary Digest, Vol.XXXVIII, 20 March 1909, p. 473 • TheNation, Vol. LXXXXVIII, 8 April 1909,p. 366, by J. M. Hubbard • Athenaeum,23 January 1909, p. 99 • The NewYorker, Vol. LXVI, 26 March 1990, pp.94-96, by Naomi Bliven • Library Journal,Vol.115, 15 February 1990, p. 219,by M. RogersLIBERALISM ANDTHE SOCIAL PROBLEMAnnals of the American Academyof Political & Social Science, Vol.XXXV, May 1910, p. 740, by ChesterLloyd Jones • Political Science Quarterly,Vol. XXV, September 1910, pp. 529-31,by C.A. Beard • American Monthly Reviewof Reviews, Vol. XLI, March 1910,p. 383 • Booklist, Vol. 6, May 1910, p.321, by Chester Lloyd Jones • Independent,Vol. LXVTII, 14 April 1910, pp.815-16 • Literary Digest, Vol. XL, 5March 1910, p. 446 • The Nation, Vol.XC, 12 March 1910, p. 489 • The Outlook,Vol. 94, 26 February 1910, pp.503-04 $This column is named after the lateFrederick Woods, audior of the first Bibliographyof Sir Winston Churchill and a longtimemember of the International Churchill Societyof the United Kingdom.FINEST HOUR 103/43

Churchill in Stamps:Locals and LabelsBooksAddress to the U.S. Congress, 1941The Unrelenting Struggle, 1942Pages 283-288: FURTHER APPENDICESCatalogue numbers are Scott (#), Stanley Gibbons (sg) orGerald Rosen, A Catalogue of British Local Stamps, published1975 (R). A slash mark (/) indicates a set with a common designfrom which any value is usable. Carus and Minkus cataloguenumbers, when mentioned, are identified by name.OUR philatelic biography has ended, but the melody lingerson, with more pages of appendices followed by a hugealbum filled with locals and labels. From this album I haveselected, usually, the first page for each "country." Locals areaffixed to envelopes to cover the cost of transporting them, usuallyfrom offshore islands to the mainland. They are mainlyfound affixed to the backs of envelopes, which still have to carrynormal postage on the front. Labels are simply that, and thoughthey often claim postal validity they are mainly bogus, issued tobilk unwary collectors. Identifying the frauds was one of themain reasons the Churchill Study Unit, predecesor to ICS andThe Churchill Center, was founded back in 1968.283.The End of the Beginning, 1943Onwards to Victory, 1944The Dawn of Liberation, 1945Victory, 1946War Speeches, 1946Secret Session Speeches, 1946Painting as a Pastime, 1948The Second World War (6 Vols) 1948-53The Sinews of Peace, 1950Europe Unite, 1950In the Balance, 1951War Speeches, Definitive Edn., 1952Stemming the Tide, 1953History of the English-SpeakingPeoples (4 Vols), 1956-58The American Civil War*, 1961The Island Race", 1964Heroes of History", 1968Joan of Arc*, 1969The Unwritten Alliance, 1961YounK Winston's Wars"*, 1972Brazil 1965 issueBrazil pearl flawMarbellzed paper283. A continuation of our books appendix, with a Haiti commemorativeand three varieties of Brazil #1005, sg 1122.Frontiers and Wars**, 1975*Excerpts from E-S Peoples**Published posthumouslyNet output: 8,000,000 words284. For the appendix on foreign honors and decorations I chosea foreign honor, Dubai Minkus 120/123, sg 147/150 (normalwhite bordered) showing the Garter-topped casket lying in state.285. An appendix on paintings is easily illustrated by KathiriSeiyun's colorful set, Minkus 92/99, sg 91/98; and three of thesix 1968 Grenada paintings issue, #274-279, sg 289/294.1.3 FOREIGN HONORS & DECORATIONSKnight Grand Cross, Leopold of Belgium286. Locals begin with Albania-so-called-exile labels, whichhave been around almost as long as this writer, having firstappeared in 1945 after Albania went Communist. The memoryof Kastrioti, the medieval hero of Albania who freed it temporarilyfrom the Turks, was invoked again recently by KosovarAlbanians. He is accompanied by FDR and Churchill. These"stamps" come with various overprints in black, gold, etc.287. Alderney, one of the more diminutive Channel Islands, evidentlydid use these labels to convey GPO mail and parcels fromAlderney to the mainland by the Commodore ShippingCompany, which issued them. The Churchill sets, R41-45 andR58-62, were created by the use of overprints.284.Knight Grand Cross, Netherlands LionChevalier Order of Elephant, DenmarkGrand Cross of St. Olav, NorwayGrand Cross of Oak Leaf, LuxembourgOrder of the Star of NepalBelgian Croix de Guerre with PalmFrench Crolx de Guerre with PalmDanish Liberation MedalCrolx de la LiberationMedalle Mllitaire, FranceDistinguished Service Medal, U.S.A.Military Medal, LuxembourgHonorary Citizen of the United Statesand the states of New Hampshire,West Virginia, Tennessee, Hawaii,Nebraska, North Carolina, Maryland.288. Bardsey, an island off the coast of North Wales, issued theselabels to help support its wildlife conservation projects, butalmost certainly they were never used as postage. Valuablenonetheless to the philatelic biographer, they offer the only"stamps" picturing Churchill's colleagues David Lloyd Georgeand Lord Mountbatten, as well as Nelson, and WSC by Karsh.Honorary Citizen of Paris, Athens,Marathon, Thebes, Aeglion, Nancy,Naupactus, Strasbourg, Brussels,Roque-Cap-Martln, Antwerp,Luxembourg,Honorary Life Member, FriendshipVeterans Fire Engine Co.,Alexandria, VirginiaHonorary Member, NationalCongress of Indians, U.S.A.(To be continued)FINEST HOUR 103/44Honorary degrees from Harvard,Rochester, Mcr.ill, Brussels,Louvaln, Miami, Columbia, New York,Oslo, Copenhagen and WestminsterCollege, Pulton, Missouri.

APPENDIX3.1 PAINTINGS4.1 ALDERNEYAlderney is the northernmost of the Channel Islands. BritishGeneral Post Office Mail ana local parcels were carried betweenAlderney, Sarfc aha Guernsey by the Commodore Snipping (CS)Company until those functions were taken over by Guernsey's newindependent postal service in 1969.Liberation Definitives (overprints), 9 May 1965 (Hosen* AL41-45)Also extant imperforate.View of Lake ChoireLes ZoraldesLake LuganoVillage near LuganoPlug Street, 1915BoatB, RivieraTorcelloBuddha and LilyChartwell, SnowPoplar TreesBlenheim TapestriesRiver at DaublgnyMimizan, MoroccoElephants in the CircusOurika, Atlas MountainsEsher Palace TerraceCork Trees at MimizanGoldfish Pool, ChartwellMonte Carlo Olive GrovesBlue Room, Trent ParkMill, St. GeorgesLake Geneva, Mt. BlancVenice, ItalyThe Weald of KentUnder SnowMarrakech,Morocco(many scenes)ChartwellActive 1915-1960518 works287.Churchill Definitives (overprints), 7 May 1966 (Rosen AL58-6S)Also extant imperforate.si mMeditteranean, GenoaSt. Jean, Cap Ferrat*Rosen, Gerald: Catalogue of British Local Stamps, BLSC Co., 1975LOCALS AND LABELS"Locals" are stamps issued by non-postal union entities, usuallyoffshore Islands, to cover the carriage of mail to the nearestofficial Post Office. "Labels" are, In essence, everything else.Many of both types were issued to commemorate Sir Winston, butonly the local stamps of Herm, Lundy, and Gugh Islands wereregularly used on actual mall. Most of the others simply exploitedinterest in Churchill, although the stamps of Alderneyand Sark, Issued by a shipping firm, did frante parcels.4.0 ALBANIA (EXILES), 1945, 1952, 1965Produced in four varieties to raise funds for exiles in Britain,reprinted with new colors and 1952 date, then overprinted in twoinks after Churchill's death, these are among the most colorful,and the most fraudulent "stamps." The 50+20 value exists with athree-quarter front portrait of FDR. Gjergji Kastrloti was themedieval hero of Albania, who freed it temporarily from the Tuiksin 1461. Albania reverted to Turkish rule when he died in 1467.Roosevelt, Kastriotl, Churchill Marking FDR's death, 1945288.4.15 BARDSEY (YNYS ENLLI)A small island off the coast of Gwynedd, North Wales, operatedand owned by a Trust which began issuing local stamps in 1979to help support its wildlife conservation projects. The stampagent was Rembrandt Philatelies Ltd. in Hampshire. Since nocommercial covers have been discovered (although Bardsey doesget summer visitors), the genuinity of the labels is in doubt.British Heroes, September 1980 (BY42-45)Issued in Miniature Sheets of FourLord Nelson, Lloyd George, Lord Mountbatten, WSCBARDSEY 10.

RIDDLES,MYSTERIES,ENIGMASSend your questions tothe Editor;C^! llPiiiy,QDATING METHODSWhy do Americans (but not inFinest Hour) write the date inme order of month, day, year insteadof chronological order?ALondon's The Express answeredhis question thusly: "In Britain,dates have always been written in themanner of the ecclesiastical and legalprofessions; thus the 29th day of Aprilthis year is abbreivated to 29/4/99....No doubt the Americans, in theirlackadaisical manner, have always saidApril twenty-nine, nineteen ninetynine,hence 4/29/99."The Express column was headed(so help us) "May 6, 1999."Finest Hour, in its lackadaisicalmanner, always prefers "29 April1999" (or the abbreviation 29Apr99)to "April 29, 1999" because it lookscleaner and avoids confusion; we alsouse "1st," "2nd," "3rd," "4th" etc.when the year is not mentioned, e.g.,"April 29th." Never, however, will yousee either 4/29/99 or 29/4/99 in thesepages, except in a direct quote!ICHURCHILL RESIDENCESn this column in issue 101 we respondedto a request to nameChurchill's London residences. (Wecommitted two errors: it was 11 MorpethMansions, not 12, and Number11 does carry the blue historicalplaque.) Now, thanks to LadySoames's Speaking for Themselves, weare able to provide a much more comprehensivelist of residences, includingcountry houses and temporary quarters.We invite further corrigenda.Official residences (?) such as AdmiraltyHouse and Downing StreetLullenden, East Grinstead, West Sussex:The Churchillsfirst country home, 1917-1919; sold to Gen. Sir Ian Hamilton.are listed only for the periods theChurchills actually resided there. Asterisked(*) London addresses carrythe blue historical plaque. (It is notclear whether the Churchills fully vacatedHyde Park Gate during the1951-55 Premiership.)For inveterate explorers, we alsolist some temporary quarters, such asthe Ivor and Freddie Guest residences,used between homes; and at least afew holiday rentals: Pear Tree Cottage(1914) and Hoe Farm (1915); and"Hosey Rigge," rented during theoverhaul of Chartwell (1923-24).Primary ResidencesCharles Street (1874-1879)The Little Lodge, Dublin (1877-1880)29 St. James's Place (1880-1883)35A Gt Cumberland Place (1883-00)105 Mount Street (1900-1905, hisfirst bachelor flat)12 Bolton Street (1905-March 1909,the first house ever of his own)*33 Eccleston Square (Spring 1909-April 1913)f Admiralty House (April 1913-May1915)41 Cromwell Road (June 1915-Autumn 1916, with Jack andGoonie Churchill and family)*33 Eccleston Square (Autumn 1916-Spring 1917)16 Lower Berkeley Street (September-November 1918)1 Dean Trench Street (rented fromearly 1919 to early 1920)*2 Sussex Square (March 1920-January1924; destroyed in the Blitz)5 11 Downing Street (January 1924-April 1929)*11 Morpeth Mansions (long-termlease, 1932-September 1939)5 Admiralty House (September 1939-July 1940)5 10 Downing Street & Number TenAnnexe (July 1940-July 1945)*28 Hyde Park Gate (October 1945-1965)5 10 Downing Street (December1951-April 1955)Country HousesLullenden, East Grinstead, W. Sussex(Spring 1917-Autumn 1919)Chartwell, Westerham, Kent (April1924 to 1965)Temporary Quarters22 Carlton House Terrace (Spring1909, loaned by Freddie Guest)Pear Tree Cottage, Overstrand, nearCromer, Norfolk (Summer 1914)21 Arlington Street (May-June 1915,loaned by Ivor Guest)Hoe Farm, Godalming, Surrey(rented, Summer 1915)16 Lower Berkeley Street (Autumn1918)3 Tenderden Street (Autumn 1918)Templeton, Roehampton (Winter1919-Spring 1920, withFreddie Guest)FINEST HOUR 103 / 46

RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMASRight: 12 Bolton Street,London W.I, the firsthouse ever of his own,remains as modest todayas it was when WSCowned it, 1905-1909.Here he brought his newwife Clemmie in 1908.QI realize the Churchill quote, "Inever did any sports," is a fake,but what is its source—Nazi propaganda?Alt is almost certainly a fake, sinceit is flatly untrue. He played golf,indifferently, in his 30s and 40s. Herode to hounds until well into his 70s.He swam into his 80s. He played polointo his 50s. (See "Churchill andPolo" by Barbara Langworth in FH72.) He rode horses into his 70s, evenraced. ("Churchill and the Lure of theTurf" by Katharine Thomson in FH102.) It may arise from his famouscrack that he got his exercise by servingas pall-bearer for his many friendswho exercised all their lives, one of hisexaggerations. He had, and exhibited,prodigious energy.QPrior to the Second World Warwhen Churchill was not in thecabinet but the chances of war weregrowing, billboards or a billboard appearedin London with the words,"What Price Churchill?" How manybillboards were there, when were theyLeft: 11 Morpeth Mansions was leased bythe Churchills from 1932 through 1939.In his flat on the top floor, Churchill andhis few Parliamentary allies gathered todiscuss the rise of Hitler. Duff Cooper,ascending in the lift one night afterMunich, whispered, "This is hell."WSC replied, "It is the end of theBritish Empire..."put up and who paid for them?AWe know of only one billboard.It was put up in The Strand inlate July 1939. The sign was paid forby an anonymous supporter. Whetherthe identity of the mysterious sponsorhas ever been uncovered I cannot say.—Rafal Heydel-Mankoo, Ottawa, OntarioWhy was Churchill given theNobel Prize for Literature for hiswont"as a writer and speaker in 1953?AIn a publication of the NobelPrize Library, published underthe Sponsorship of the Nobel Foundationand the Swedish Academy,Kjell Stromberg tells the story of the1953 award.Usually government leaders werenot honoured, but Churchill had alreadybeen considered twice. Supportfor him had come from around theworld, particularly from within Sweden.In 1946 a report found thatSavrola was without literary merit, MyEarly Life was charming, but onlyMarlborough could serve as a basis forwinning. The World Crisis was dismissedas history and historians didnot win (only Theodor Mommsenwas a previous winner).In 1948 another report committeeconsulted G.M. Trevelyan who,despite their disagreements overMacaulay, endorsed Churchill. TheWorld Crisis carried great weight thistime because in no other work could"the true pulse of the age be sensed sowell or the direct breath of the greatevents be felt so clearly."This report called Churchill "theincomparable painter of the history ofour time." Nevertheless, it was feltthat the orator, without peer in hiscentury, was needed to reinforce thewritten work. "It is, then, basically forhis oratory that Churchill deserves thePrize; but his art as an orator is wellframed by the rest of his production,"said the report.In spite of this extremelyfavourable report, the Academy eventuallywaited another five years beforeyielding to the appeals which camewith ever greater urgency from all cornersof the globe. The fact that he wasstill an active politician was probablyinfluential in their reluctance to makethe final decision.Competition was not particularlyfierce in 1953. The Swedish Pen Clubsupported E.M. Forster. Others, includingErnest Hemingway, were towin in subsequent years. On October15th, the Prize was voted to Churchill"for his mastery of historical and biographicaldescription as well as forbrilliant oratory in defending exaltedhuman values."Winners are seldom consultedbut this time the Swedish Ambassadorasked Churchill if he would accept.He replied that he was honoured, particularlybecause of the recognition ofhis written works. He was required tobe in Bermuda to meet with PresidentEisenhower so his wife, LadyChurchill, and his daughter, nowLady Soames, represented him. I haveposted much of this information onour website.—John Plumpton, Agincourt, Ontario BFINEST HOUR 103 / 47

AMPERSAND (1)All the Thoroughbreds Sir Winston Ever Ownedby Katharine Thomson, Churchill Archives CentreWe asked Katharine Thomson ("Churchill and the Lure of the TurfFH 102) if she couldlist all the racehorses Churchill ever owned. The chore was far more formidable than wewould ever have imagined. Undaunted, Katharine gave us even more than we asked for...Brood mares:Cedilla: bred 1951, sold 1962.Comma: by Chamoissaire out of Cedilla, 1958; sold 1962.Madonna: bred 1945.Moll Flanders: bought 1949.Pannikin II: bought 1948.Pink LadyPoetic: bought 1949.Salka: bred 1950.Sayala:bred 1951.Sister Sarah: died 1955.Turkish Blood: bred 1944, died 1961.The Veil: by Abernant out of Sister Sarah, 1953.Racehorses:Aberdilla: by Abernant out of Cedilla, 1961.Alba: by Abernant out of Salka, 1959; sold to stud inUnited States.Aura: by Aureole out of Cedilla, 1956; sold 1959.Collusion: by Colonist out of Moll Flanders, 1955; won1956.Colonist II: by Rienzo out of Cybele, 1946; bought asthree-year-old in France, 1949. Won 13 races, including WinstonChurchill Stakes, Bentinck Stakes and Kensington PalaceStakes and £11,937 in prize money. Sold to stud 1951 for£7,350.Canyon Kid: bred 1948; won Speedy Stakes. Died 1950 or1951.Dark Issue: trained in Ireland; won Irish 1000 Guineas1955.First Light: bred 1953.Galaxy: by Galcador out of Salka, 1956; sold 1958.Gibraltar III: bred 1950; won twice 1952-53.Great Winter (I suspect this should be Red Winter):trained in Ireland.Halo: by Hyperion out of Madonna, 1956; won in 1959and retired to stud at Newchapel as a brood mare.High Hat: by Hyperion, out of Madonna, 1957; won fourraces, including Aly Khan Gold Cup and Winston ChurchillStakes, 4th in Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Syndicated to stud inIreland and sold to Japan 1971.Holiday Time: bred 1955; won three times as two-yearold.Honeycomb: by Honeyway out of Madonna, 1961.Kemal: by Never Say Die out of Turkish Blood, 1959; halfbrother to Vienna, won over hurdles and on the flat. Retired tostud in Denmark.Loving Cup: by Holywell out of Pannikin II, 1949; won in1952 and retired to stud at Newchapel as brood mare.Lupina: by High Lupus out of Salka, 1961.The Minstrel: by Abernant out of The Veil, 1960.Non Stop: bred 1949; won twice 1952-53.Novitiate: by Fair Trial out of The Veil, 1959: won as2-year-old.Pigeon Vole: by Fastnet out of Colombe Poignardee, 1950;bought in France 1953, won Robert Wilmot Stakes, Windsor.Pinnacle: bred 1953; won 1955.Planter's Punch: by Colonist out of Loving Cup, 1955; sold1958.Pol Roger: by Rienzo out of Coquetterie, 1949; won threetimes, 1952-53.Le Pretendant: by Ocean Swell out of Cybele, 1953; halfbrother to Colonist. Won Winston Churchill Stakes, ran inWashington International. Retired to stud in Pakistan.Prince Arthur: by King Legend out of Poetic, 1950; wonthree times 1952-54, including Winston Churchill Stakes.Punctuation: bred 1956.Release: by Court Martial out of Salka, 1957; wonEbbisham Stakes (£3,500) in 1960, second in Queen ElizabethII Stakes, won twice 1961, retired as brood mare at Newchapel.SatrapSeraph: out of Sayala, 1957: won as 2-year-old and in MaypoleHandicap following year. Retired as brood mare at Newchapel.Sunhat: by Honeyway out of Madonna, I960.Sunstroke: by Hyperion out of Moll Flanders, 1955; wontwice, sold to Spain for £2000, 1958.Tudor Monarch: out of Madonna by Abernant, 1955; wontwo races worth £3,082, including Stewards Cup at Goodwood.Sold to stud in Queensland, Australia, for £1,520 in 1959(named best-looking stallion in the state, 1963-64).Vienna: by Aureole out of Turkish Blood, 1957; won twice1960, three times, 1961; won Prix Ganay at Longchamps(£10,000). Retired to stud in Ireland.Welsh Abbot: out of Sister Sarah by Abernant, 1955; wontwice, the Challenge Stakes and Portland Handicap, total of£6,882. Syndicated to stud in England for £20,000, 1959; successfulsire of sprinters.Welsh Monk: by Abernant out of The Veil, 1958; won atNewmarket.Why TellThe author welcomes addenda and corrigenda. $FINEST HOUR 103 / 48

AMPERSAND (2)All the Elections Churchill Ever ContestedDouglas J. HallIn a parliamentary career spanning sixty-four yearsChurchill represented five constituencies and servedunder thirteen Prime Ministers (Lord Salisbury, Balfour,Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith, Lloyd George,Bonar Law, Baldwin, MacDonald, Chamberlain, Attlee,Eden, Macmillan and Douglas-Home—and, of course,his own Premierships, 1940-45 and 1951-55.Churchill from the beginning invariably addressednational rather than local issues. Oldham (for which hesat in 1900-06) was an important cotton-spinning centrewhose electorate favoured the Conservative policy of Protectionism,which advocated duties on cheap foreign textiles.Churchill's Free Trader stance and consequent defectionto the Liberals was based on national rather thanlocal considerations, but as a result the Oldham ConservativeAssociation passed a resolution that he "had forfeitedtheir confidence in him."Following his deselection at Oldham, Churchillwas invited to stand for North West Manchester, one ofnine of that city's constituencies, with a tiny electorate ofjust 10,000, of whom almost a third were Jewish.Churchill polled 5,639 votes with a majority of 1,241.He represented the constituency for just over two years.By now a junior minister (Under Secretary of State forthe Colonies), he was almost entirely concerned with nationaland international affairs. The Liberal governmentbrought in an Aliens Act which angered the powerfulJewish element in Churchill's constituency, and localCatholics were incensed because he would not commithimself over Home Rule for Ireland. When, in the customof the day, he had to submit to reelection on beingappointed to the Cabinet as President of the Board ofTrade, he was narrowly defeated by the Tory candidate.Just two weeks later Churchill found a "seat of convenience"at Dundee. He polled 7,079 votes while theConservative and Labour candidates split 8,384 votes betweenthem. He remained MP for Dundee for over fourteenyears, during which time he was almost continuouslya Cabinet minister.Churchill initially saw Dundee as "a seat for life,"but suffered the inconvenience of its being 440 milesfrom Westminster and, in those days, only practically accessibleby a rather joyless overnight sleeper train fromKing's Cross. Scotland's third largest city, Dundee was6Jul99:lOctOO:13JanO6:24AprO8:9MayO8:18Janl0:9DeclO:29Jull7:l4Decl8:15Nov22:6Dec23:19Mar24:29Oct24:30May29:27Oct31:14NOV35:5Jul45:23Feb50:25Oct51:25May55:8Oct59:Totals:By-election (Oldham) -lostGeneral election (Oldham) -wonGeneral election (NW Manchester) -wonBy-election (NW Manchester) -lostBy-election (Dundee) -wonGeneral election (Dundee) -wonGeneral election (Dundee) -wonBy-election (Dundee) -wonGeneral election (Dundee) -wonGeneral election (Dundee) -lost*General election (West Leicester) -lostBy-election (Westminster, Abbey) -lostGeneral election (Epping) -wonGeneral election (Epping) -wonGeneral election (Epping) -wonGeneral election (Epping) -wonGeneral election (Woodford**) -wonGeneral election (Woodford) -wonGeneral election (Woodford) -wonGeneral election (Woodford) -wonGeneral election (Woodford) -won21 campaigns; 16 wins and 5 losses* The 1922 election was lost to Ernest Scrymgeour who had foughtand lost Dundee to WSC in the previous five elections.** Woodford was a division of the former Epping constituency.hardly a joyful place in which to arrive of a morning,dark, tall and grimy, with much unemployment, povertyand drunkenness. Curiously, the electorate at first felt honouredto be represented by a Cabinet minister andseemed prepared to overlook Churchill's long absences.But the relationship became strained after World War I,when Churchill's own controversial escapades compoundedwith much local bitterness and disillusionmentled to his defeat in the 1922 election. Shortly beforepolling day Churchill had been stricken with appendicitis,which limited his campaigning. He finished fourthbehind a Prohibitionist, a Labourite and a local Liberal,and later wrote: "I found myself without an office, withouta seat, without a party and without an appendix."Churchill was out of Parliament for almost twoFINEST HOUR 103 / 49

Recipes rrom No. 10: Pommes de terre Annaby Georgina Landemare (Churchill Family Cook, c. 1940s-50s)Updated & annotated by Barbara Langworth (PotatoesAnna—I never didfind out whoAnna was)This simplerecipe is all inthe preparationand presentation.Use 1/4 lb butter per two pounds of very, verythinly sliced potatoes (yellow are very nice). It is a goodbuffet dish.Mrs. Landemare's original recipe is:"Potatoes. Fresh butter.Peel some potatoes and cut into very thin rounds thesize of a florin. Wash in salted water and dry very well ina cloth. Well butter anomelette pan. Place alayer of potatoes on thebottom. Cover withoiled [melted] butter,pepper and salt. Repeatthese layers until the panis full and cook in amedium [350° F] oven until brown [40-60 min]. Removefrom the oven, turn out and cut into slices orserve whole in a dish."Since the dish is inverted, it is important that the firstlayer of potatoes be attractively arranged. Select perfectslices, and overlap them carefully. Mrs. Landemareprobably had a copper or cast iron omelette pan. If youdon't have an "omelette pan" which is ovenproof, use apie plate. Keep in mind the final shape makes the presentation.A watercress or parsley garnish adds color.ELECTIONS, continued...years, unsuccessfully contesting by-elections at LeicesterWest and Westminster in 1923-24. In the 1924 generalelection he was adopted as the "Independent Constitutionalistanti-Socialist" candidate for Epping, which effectivelyremained his constituency for the rest of his political career.In his five years as Chancellor of the ExchequerChurchill was engrossed in national issues: the GeneralStrike; pensions for widows, orphans and the elderly;taxes and the Gold Standard; unemployment and theDepression. Constituency concerns received scant attention.Churchill's visits were mainly whistle-stop tours andan occasional summer fete. Nevertheless, in that "semiruralconstituency among the glades of Epping Forest,"the voters seemed content with their MP's high profile,and prepared to overlook his limited parochial presence.He was popular, respected, even regarded as something ofa Colossus.The May 1929 election swept the Tories from officeand Churchill's majority was slashed to 5,000, hissmallest ever for Epping/Woodford. Through 1939 hewas out of office, increasingly isolated from his party,first over Dominion status for India, then over rearmament.In the 1935 election he faced considerable hostilityat several meetings but polled almost 35,000 votes andrecorded his largest majority (20,419). During its recordrun (1935-45), the new Parliament saw Churchill returntriumphantly to the centre of affairs, but not before hehad ruffled constituency feathers with his attacks onChamberlain's policy of appeasement. Several constituencybranches passed resolutions of censure andChurchill later regarded the episode as "one of the majorpolitical crises" he had faced in his career.In 1945 Epping was subdivided. The new EppingDivision looked marginal (in fact it was won by Labour)so Churchill stood for the new Woodford Division. Hewon by a majority of over 17,000, but nationally Labourwon 393 seats to only 189 for the Tories.Churchill now became Leader of the Opposition.During the election of February 1950, he polled morethan 37,000 votes, double that of his challenger. Nationallythe Attlee majority was reduced to six. This was notenough to sustain a radical programme and when Attleecalled another election in 1951 the Conservatives won321 seats to Labour's 295. Churchill returned to DowningStreet with a personal record: 40,938 votes.Woodford sent him back again in 1955, despitesome rumblings that he was now eighty, and no longerPrime Minister. His vote (25,069) was the lowest since1929, though there had been some population decreasesand he did retain a huge majority. Once more he won in1959—by nearly 15,000 votes. Churchill served as MPuntil October 1964, although age and infirmity limitedhis appearances both in Commons and in Woodford.When he finally resigned he was nearly ninety. The electorsof Woodford had clearly, in Burke's phrase, "chosen amember indeed." Mainly they remained unperturbed byhis age. They were represented by a legend. M>FINEST HOUR 103 / 50

CHURCHILLTRIVIABy Curt Zoller (zcurt@earthlink.net)Test your knowledge! Most questions canbe answered in back issues o/TinestHour or other Churchill Center publications,but it's not really cricket to check. 24 January 1932 in New York, Dr. Otto C.976. After Churchill's car accident inquestions appear each issue, answers in the fol-Pickhardlowing issue. Questions are in six categories: What did the doctor prescribe? (P)wrote a prescription for him.Contemporaries (C), Literary (L), Miscellaneous(M), Personal (P), Statesmanship (S) and War(WJ.961. Did Churchill ever speak with PresidentKennedy? (C)962. What three revolutions didChurchill describe in his History of theEnglish Speaking Peoples! (L)963. On 1 1NOV98 Queen Elizabeth IIunveiled a statue of Churchill. Where isthe statue located? (M)964. What was the full name of Winston'sbrother Jack? (P)965. What was the only Cabinet postChurchill never received? (S)966. What kind of vessel did the U.S.Navy name Winston S. Churchill andlaunch on 17 April 1999? (W)967. When did Canadian PM MackenzieKing first meet Churchill? (C)968. Where did Churchill find his commentsregarding the "locust years"? (L)969. What vessel carried WSC's coffinup the Thames? (M)970. Name Churchill's London residenceswith the blue historical plaque. (P)971. At Teheran, Churchill commented"....the truth is so precious, it must alwaysbe attended by" ...what? (S)972. Of whom did Churchill say, "He isthe only man who could have lost theWar in an afternoon."? (W)973. To whom did Churchill refer whenhe said "...it would have been better hadhe never lived."? (C)974. On 12 March 1887 Lord Randolphsent a letter to his wife under a "FlyingSeal." What is a "Flying Seal"? (L)975.What did WSC reply when asked ifhe had any complaints about America?(M)977. In 1945 while electioneering, whatdid Churchill declare "no Socialist systemcan be without"? (S)978. Where and when did WinstonChurchill say, "The story of the humanrace is War. Except for brief and precariousinterludes, there has never beenpeace in the world"? (W)979. Who was the first woman memberof Parliament, who served with Churchilland often clashed with him? (C)980. In one of his books Churchillwrote, "Nothing will change himmuch....[his] letters as a boy are his lettersas a man. The same vigour of expression;the same simple yet direct language...thesame humour and freedomfrom all affection...." To whom was hereferring? (L)981. What three heads of governmentmet at Bermuda in 1953? (M)982. What did Churchill call his moodswings which often enveloped him? (P)983. In 1937 Churchill commented, "Itis no use leading the other nations up thegarden and then running away when thedog growls." To what did he refer? (S)984. Prior to D-Day Churchill orderedBomber Command to execute the"Zuckerman plan." What was it ? (W)ANSWERS TO LAST TRIVIA(937) In his 25Junl 1 letter to his wifeChurchill suggested Edward Grey as Godfatherto Randolph. (938) Henry WMassingham provided the introduction toLiberalism and the Social Problem. (939)Vice President Henry Wallace criticizedChurchill's Fulton address on 12Sep47.(940) Churchill was initiated into theFreemasons 24May01. (941) The article,"How to Stop War" was originally publishedby the London Evening Standard12Jun36 and reprinted in Step by Step(1939). (942) The code name for theDunkirk evacuation was"Dynamo." (943)The Cockran papers are at the New YorkCity Public Library. (944) The StrandMagazine paid Churchill £150 for eacharticle and £30 for each photo in hisAfrican travelogue. (945) Chandor spainting was unfinished because Stalinwould not sit, sending photographs whichChandor refused to paint from. (946)Churchill was appointed Under-Secretaryfor the Colonies in 1905. (947) In theDaily Telegraph and Morning Post oi15Apr47 he commented, "If my fatherwould have been an American citizen insteadof my mother, I should have hesitateda long time before I got mixed upwith Europe and Asia..." (948) Shall WeAll Commit Suicide?, published in Nosh'sPallMallm September 1924, Churchillwrote: "Might not a bomb no bigger thanan orange be found to possess secretpower to destroy a whole block of buildingsnay, to blast a township at a stroke?Could not explosives... be guided automaticallyin flying machines...?" (949)Harold Macmillan commented onChurchill's "lion heart" in his War Diaries.(950) The publishers reduced the type by2 points for The Gathering Storm. For thesecond edition they reset the first volumeand all succeeding volumes had largertype. (951) Vice President-elect TheodoreRoosevelt commented about WSC after ameeting in Albany, New York in December1900. (952) Churchill repeated thephrase "blood, toil, tears and sweat" in sixspeeches: 13May40, 8Oct40, 7May4l,2Dec4l, 27Jan42 and 10Nov42. (953)Churchill writes in Marlborough: "Onerule of conduct alone survives as a guideto men in their wanderings: fidelity tocovenants, the honour of soldiers and thehatred of causing human woe." (954) TheGermans' greatest errors were invadingBelgium, because it brought Britain intodie War; and waging unrestricted submarinewarfare, because it brought the U. S.into the War. (955) Lt. Gen. Sir AdrianCarton de Wiart was Churchill's personalrepresentative to Chiang Kai-shek. (956)"Locksley Hall" by Tennyson was quotedin the article "Fifty Years Hence" inThoughts and Adventures. (957) The Marlboroughvictory was at Ramillies in Belgium.(958) His word of advice for buddingartists was "audacity." (959)Churchill recommended feeding "largenumbers of floating mines into the Rhineriver above Strasbourg." (960) Churchillreferred to the leadership of Air MarshalDowding and his direction of FighterCommand. $3FINEST HOUR 103/51

"GOD AND THE EMPIRE""I rode forward with the 35th Sikhs until firing got so hot that my grey pony wasunsafe We also remained till the enemy came to within 40 yards tiring ourrevolvers. They actually threw stones at us Altogether I was shot at from 7.30 till 8on this day and now hegin to consider myself a veteran. Sir Bindon has made me hisorderly officer, so that I shall get a medal and perhaps a couple of clasps."—Winston S. Churchill to his Mother, Camp Inayat Kila, India, 1Q September 18Q7INSIGNIA OF A COMMANDER OF THE MOST EXCELLENT ORDER OF THE BRITISH EMPIREIn 1917 King George V instituted the Order of the British Empire "in recognition of the manifold services, voluntary andotherwise, that have been rendered both by British subjects and their allies in connection with the war." A year after it wasinstituted, the award was divided into a Military and Civil Division. The Civil Division retained the original plain purpleribbon of the order, but in 1937" at the request of Queen Mary, it was changed to be of a rose pink color edged withpearl gray which it retains to this day. Members of The Churchill Center and Societies honoured with the Order includeThe Lady Soames (DBE); Lord Jellicoe and [Sir] Caspar Weinberger (KBE); Sir Martin Gilbert, Anthony MontagueBrowne, Robert Hardy and Damon Wells (CBE); Col. Nigel Knocker and Grace Hamblin (OBE); and RandolphChurchill (MBE); Clementine Churchill was invested with the GBE (Dame Grand Cross of the Order) in 1946. Thelatest investiture of a Churchill Center member, as a CBE, is discussed by Cyril Mazansky on page 18.