currents

THE FIGHTER
repeated kindnesses to Chamberlain until Chamberlain’s
death six months later. 39 One must think that this offer was
inspired by something more than the inconvenience of moving
house. Churchill liked the phrase “stoop to conquer,” which he
regarded as a virtue of the statesman. He attributed this quality,
for example, to the first Duke of Marlborough. 40 Here he exercised
it.
Unable simply to command, Churchill employed other
devices. One was charm. Another was rhetoric. 41 At 6:00 p.m.,
immediately after the meeting of the war cabinet, a meeting of
the full cabinet, numbering twenty- five, convened to discuss
the offer of a peace conference. Martin Gilbert describes this
meeting as “one of the most extraordinary scenes of the war.” 42
Churchill gave the cabinet a report of the war, of the evacuation
under way at Dunkirk, of the likelihood that Hitler would soon
“take Paris and offer terms.” He remarked that the Italians also
would “threaten and offer terms.” There was no doubt whatsoever,
Churchill said, “that we must decline anything like this and
fight on.” 43 In other words, Churchill was repeating for the entire
cabinet the arguments he had made immediately beforehand to
the war cabinet.
Churchill spoke extensively without prepared remarks. Hugh
Dalton, a Labour member and minister of economic warfare,
made detailed notes on the speech in his diary. He wrote that
Churchill was “quite magnificent. The man, and the only man
we have, for this hour.” He recorded Churchill’s closing remarks:
I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part
of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with “That
Man” [Hitler]. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make
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