THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL • SPRING 2010 • NUMBER 146
THE CHURCHILL CENTRE & CHURCHILL MUSEUM UNITED STATES • UNITED KINGDOM • CANADA • AUSTRALIA PATRON: THE LADY SOAMES LG DBE • WWW.WINSTONCHURCHILL.ORG
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ALLIED NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ___________________________________________ CHURCHILL CENTRE - UNITED KINGDOM PO Box 1915, Quarley, Andover, Hampshire SP10 9EE Tel. & Fax (01264) 889627 CHAIRMAN Paul. H. Courtenay, ndege@tiscali.co.uk OFFICERS Michael Kelion, Vice Chairman Anthony Woodhead CBE FCA, Hon. Treasurer John Hirst, Secretary COMMITTEE MEMBERS Eric Bingham • Robin Brodhurst • Paul H. Courtenay Robert Courts • Geoffrey Fletcher • Derek Greenwell Rafal Heydel-Mankoo • John Hirst • Jocelyn Hunt Scott Johnson • Michael Kelion• Michael Moody Brian Singleton • Anthony Woodhead CBE FCA TRUSTEES The Hon. Celia Sandys, Chairman David Boler • Randolph S. Churchill • David Coffer Philip Gordon •The Duke of Marlborough JP DL The Lord Marland Philip H. Reed OBE HON. MEMBERS EMERITI Nigel Knocker OBE • David Porter _________________________________________ INTL. CHURCHILL SOCIETY CANADA 14 Honeybourne Crescent, Markham ON, L3P 1P3 Tel. (905) 201-6687 www.winstonchurchillcanada.ca Ambassador Kenneth W. Taylor, Honorary Chairman CHAIRMAN Randy Barber, randybarber@sympatico.ca VICE-CHAIRMAN AND RECORDING SECRETARY Terry Reardon, reardont@rogers.com TREASURER Barrie Montague, bmontague@cogeco.ca BOARD OF DIRECTORS Charles Anderson • Randy Barber • David Brady Peter Campbell • Dave Dean • Cliff Goldfarb Robert Jarvis • Barrie Montague • Franklin Moskoff Terry Reardon • Gordon Walker __________________________________ CHURCHILL CENTRE AUSTRALIA Alfred James, President 65 Billyard Avenue, Wahroonga NSW 2076 abmjames@iinet.net.au • Tel. 61-2-9489-1158 _____________________________________ INTL. CHURCHILL SOCIETY OF PORTUGAL João Carlos Espada, President Universidade Católica Portuguesa Palma de Cima 1649-023, Lisbon jespada@iep.ucp.pt • Tel. (351) 21 7214129 ________________________________________________ CHURCHILL SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY www.churchillsociety.org Robert A. O’Brien, Chairman 3050 Yonge Street, Suite 206F Toronto ON M4N 2K4, Canada ro’brien@couttscrane.com • Tel. (416) 977-0956
CONTENTS
The Journal of Winston Churchill
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Number 146 Spring 2010
Cover: The Churchill Screen at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Details on back cover.. ARTICLES
Robbins, 18
Churchill in Context 12/ How We Can Restore the Lost Glory to Democracy • Winston S. Churchill 15/ “Lost Glory”: Modern Reflections • Warren F. Kimball & Suzanne Sigman 16/ The Outcasts: What Did Churchill Tell Guy Burgess after Munich? • Michael Dobbs 18/ Great Contemporaries: Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s Bracken • Ron Cynewulf Robbins 22/ 110 Years On: Remembering Jennie and the Maine • Celia Lee 26/ The Short, Sweet Life of Winston Churchill College • Philip & Susan Larson 32/ Livadia Revisited: Memories of the Yalta Conference • David Druckman 36/ Churchilliana: “These Are a Few of My Favourite Things” • Douglas Hall 58/ Finest Hour Reader Survey • Barbara F. Langworth
Lee, 22
Larson, 26
Druckman, 32
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES 37/ Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45, by Max Hastings • Piers Brendon 38/ Churchill, by Paul Johnson • David Freeman 39/ The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, by Richard Langworth • Warren F. Kimball 40/ The Churchills: A Family Portrait, by Celia and John Lee • Ted Hutchinson 41/ Les coups tordus de Churchill, by Bob Maloubier • Antoine Capet 41/ Citizens of London, by Lynne Olson • Christopher H. Sterling 42/ The Twilight Years, by Richard Overy • Ted Hutchinson 43/ I Was Churchill’s Bodyguard, by Edmund Murray • Anthony Montague Browne 44/ About Books: The Asquith Corpus • Christopher H. Sterling 46/ Churchill Commemorative Stamps: A Partial Update, 1977-1998 • Celwyn Ball
Churchill Proceedings CHURCHILL AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY 48/ Churchill’s Futurist Essays • Richard M. Langworth Churchill for Today Views and Counterviews: 50/ 1. Churchill and the Aristotelian Tradition • Larry P. Arnn 52/ 2. A Contrarian’s View of Churchill as Philosopher • Manfred Weidhorn 54/ On Liberty: Churchill’s “Consistency in Politics” • Michael McMenamin 56/ Democracy in the Age of Information • Paul Alkon DEPARTMENTS 2/ Who’s Who in The Churchill Centre • 4/ Despatch Box • 6/ In This Issue 7/ Datelines • 9/ Around & About • 11/ Wit & Wisdom • 16/ History Detectives 25/ Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas • 30/ Action This Day • 36/ Churchilliana 46/ Philately • 62/ Churchill Quiz • 63/ Regional Directory FINEST HOUR 146 / 3
DESPATCH BOX
YOUNG WINSTON
Number 145 • Winter 2009-10 ISSN 0882-3715 www.winstonchurchill.org ____________________________ Barbara F. Langworth, Publisher barbarajol@gmail.com Richard M. Langworth CBE, Editor rlangworth@winstonchurchill.org Post Office Box 740 Moultonborough, NH 03254 USA Tel. (603) 253-8900 December-March Tel. (242) 335-0615 __________________________ Editorial Board Paul H. Courtenay, David Dilks, David Freeman, Sir Martin Gilbert, Edward Hutchinson, Warren Kimball, Richard Langworth, Michael McMenamin, James W. Muller, John Olsen, Allen Packwood, Terry Reardon, Suzanne Sigman, Manfred Weidhorn
Senior Editors: Paul H. Courtenay James W. Muller News Editor: Michael Richards Contributors Alfred James, Australia Terry Reardon, Canada Antoine Capet, James Lancaster, France Inder Dan Ratnu, India Paul Addison, Winston S. Churchill, Sir Martin Gilbert, Allen Packwood, United Kingdom David Freeman, Fred Glueckstein, Ted Hutchinson, Warren F. Kimball, Justin Lyons, Michael McMenamin, Robert Pilpel, Christopher Sterling, Manfred Weidhorn, United States ___________________________ • Address changes: Help us keep your copies coming! Please update your membership office when you move. All offices for The Churchill Centre and Allied national organizations are listed on the inside front cover. __________________________________ Finest Hour is made possible in part through the generous support of members of The Churchill Centre and Museum, the Number Ten Club, and an endowment created by the Churchill Centre Associates (page 2). ___________________________________ Published quarterly by The Churchill Centre, offering subscriptions from the appropriate offices on page 2. Permission to mail at nonprofit rates in USA granted by the United States Postal Service, Concord, NH, permit no. 1524. Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
It was thoughtful of Lady Soames to let you use the wonderfully introspective painting of her father in youth for the cover of FH 144. It has a touch of Manet’s and Whistler’s styles, and as an art appreciator, I find it a little sad the artist couldn’t be recognized. I find this study exemplary of Sir Winston’s youthfulness that also portrays the diligence of his writing and studiousness in that era of his illustrious career. DONALD ABRAMS, HERMOSA BEACH, CALIF.
Publisher’s response: Knowing we have difficulty finding good color for our covers, our Patron generously has sent us copies of several of her own paintings. Although this one is signed indecipherably, we have no information about the artist. We wonder if it was done from life or a photograph, but have never seen a similar photo. I think the artist captured Churchill’s delicate hands very artfully. —BFL
slightest sign of gratitude. His infamous visit of condolence to the German Embassy on Hitler’s death was a grotesque insult to the Allies and the victims of Nazism, and in particular the many Irishmen who fought and died in the British Armed Forces and Merchant Marine during the war (who are not even mentioned in either of these articles). However, I did learn about David Gray, the U.S. Representative in Dublin, and what a splendid man he must have been. HENRY G. KEOWN-BOYD, BROMYARD, HEREF.
• Breguet sponsored a London dinner for The Churchill Centre and is the manufacturer of WSC’s pocket watch, which is pictured in the program. The case’s reverse bears a Spencer-Churchill coat of arms and is very old; perhaps Breguet used different hands then. Attached to the ring in the lower photo is not a watch but a small round gold case for holding gold Sovereigns. —Ed.
• FH 142-145 aired the broad range of opinion on Churchill and Ireland at our 2008 Boston conference, including Irish contributions in WW2. Finest Hour Online contains still more. In such accounts, comparisons of WSC and de Valera were inevitable; historians have compared Churchill and Hitler without endorsing the latter. And we need to accept that de Valera was as much a patriot as Churchill. We published the two de Valera papers together because one balances the other. For instance, while Ferriter justifies de Valera’s “condolence visit” for expressing “the seriousness with which he took neutrality,” Kimball calls it “embarrassing and disgraceful.” Kimball notes that (1) Roosevelt did not rein-in Gray’s activities; (2) Irish neutrality was maintained not by “American protection” but because once the convoy situation had stabilized it didn’t really matter; (3) de Valera’s government placed no barriers on Irish enlistment in the British military; and (4) Ireland secretly but effectively worked with British Intelligence. The real effect of Irish neutrality was negligible; the emotional impact seems to have been far greater, and longer lasting. —Ed.
GET YOUR IRISH UP
SCOTS WHA’HAE
I found the de Valera articles in FH 145 extremely irritating. To compare a blinkered bigot like de Valera to Churchill is absurd and distasteful. De Valera could maintain Irish neutrality only under Anglo-American protection for which he showed not the
I enjoyed “The Scotland We Know” (FH 144: 5) and Fred Glueckstein’s piece on Murrow (page 26). I was surprised not to see A.M. Sperber’s Murrow: His Life and Times, in the endnotes.
“THE TURNIP” FH 144 page 25 seems to show two different Churchill “turnips” (pocket watches). The one at the top with subdials is keyless and lacks Breguet’s characteristic hands, and the other at the bottom has a plain pendant and associated chain. Are they both by Breguet, or just the lower one? ANDREW LUMSDEN, UK (VIA EMAIL)
Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.
FINEST HOUR 146 / 4
PARKER H. LEE III, LYNCHBURG, VA.
Thanks for “The Scotland We Know.” A minor point: Admiral Beatty took the Grand Fleet, including five American battleships, to sea on 21 November 1918, not in 1919. My great-uncle, John R. Menzies, lived in North Berwick, East Lothian, in a house which backed onto the West Links. He walked up to the eighteenth tee to watch the great armada go by on its way back to its anchorage. I agree with your thesis that we Scots pulled above our weight in both wars. Thanks for bringing back many happy memories of motoring days in Scotland. We always enjoyed the road to Edinburgh through Glencoe, which runs in an almost straight line across Rannoch Moor, arguably the most dramatic drive in all of Scotland. DAVID RAMSAY, INDIAN WELLS, CALIF.
Scots, wha’hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed Or to victorie! ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)
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FLAWED GENIE David Freeman (FH 144: 36-37) misunderstands my books. He fails to appreciate that, based on Churchill’s own writings at the time, his 1921 concerns over Iraq (Churchill’s Folly) were purely financial. I disagree that “right of conquest” gives carte blanche to the victor: yet it was open to WSC to reject a single Iraqi state, and instead make the three Ottoman vilayets into separate countries, including Kurdistan. Likening my Flawed Genius of World War II to Pat Buchanan’s Churchill bashing is a distortion. My
main disagreement with Churchill is clearly his rejection of Marshall’s and Eisenhower’s plans for D-Day in April 1943. To agree with Churchill is to disagree with these two great generals—as well as to denigrate the “Greatest Generation”: contrary to Churchill and Ismay, British soldiers were not feeble, and American GIs were at least the equals of the Germans. Walter Dunn’s Second Front Now (1980) painstakingly shows that there were sufficient landing craft by 1943, that the issue was where to place them (Europe or the Pacific). The Americans believed in attacking the main enemy directly. Churchill rightly favoured the traditional British peripheral approach in 1939-41, but the full might of the USA made direct attack the better option, as Marshall and Eisenhower appreciated. Churchill entitled his last volume of war memoirs Triumph and Tragedy because he realised we had only delivered the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe from one dictator to another. Tragically, Churchill was hoist on his own petard by Soviet conquests, which would never have happened had Eisenhower and Marshall prevailed. Max Hastings’ new biography shows that Churchill got two big things right: the evil of Hitler and the fact that only the USA could save Britain. In 1938-41 Churchill was effectively the only senior British politician to realise this. The tragedy is that he never grasped the fighting and logistical capability of the American military. If he had, he would have seen what Eisenhower and Marshall saw: that we could have won World War II much earlier, assuring his aspirations for the peoples of Central Europe. And that is what my book is all about.
After the Dieppe Raid fiasco in August 1942, Canadians had strong reasons not to support another poorly planned and badly supported crosschannel attack. And British General Montgomery made a habit of telling his troops that he valued their lives above all else and would not risk them in any operation not supported by overwhelming force. A common error by revisionist historians is to judge by hindsight, discounting contemporary realities. The prime responsibility of Churchill, Roosevelt and Mackenzie King was not the welfare of East-Central Europeans but defending their own countries by defeating Hitler with minimal losses. Not only did Generals Marshall and Eisenhower fail to convince their professional counterparts in Britain (including Churchill) of the viability of a cross-channel invasion before 1944; they failed to convince the most important judge of all: President Roosevelt—who would have been the person answering to voters and next-of-kin for any resulting disaster. I believe this debate can be settled with a simple gun-to-the-head test: You are an Allied soldier, sailor, airman or marine. You are part of a seaborne invasion of a powerfully defended continent. Which date do you think offers you a better chance of survival: 1943 or 1944?
—CHRISTOPHER CATHERWOOD,
JOHN HIRST, STEVINGTON, BEDS.
UNGEEKED A friend asked me to pass on that he finds the last two issues a great improvement on the immediate previous issues. He felt there was more comment about interesting matters; less “geeky” minutiae and fewer arguments in the letter pages with one academic slanging off another.
ST. EDMUNDS’ COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE
David Freeman replies: When discussing D-Day we need to consider Canada, an independent country which did not have to participate and had its own domestic set of problems with respect to the war. Christopher Catherwood does not touch on this so I wish to remind him. FINEST HOUR 146 / 5
• We’d prefer people to air their views direct, but when this complaint first surfaced we reviewed the nineteen letters in the past four issues. Three were by academics. The proportion is similar in this issue. Academic papers are here for important reasons. See “Churchill Proceedings,” FH 143: 10, column 2. —Ed. ,
IN THIS ISSUE
Democracy’s Lost Glories C
hurchill thought deeply about politics and political movements from Bolshevism to Fascism, dictatorship to democracy. He formulated precepts for political conduct; he considered how politics affected “civilization,” by which he included the Welfare State he helped to organize. He thought the State should alleviate poverty and provide security through “discipline, organization and relief.” But he resisted nationalization of industry and redistribution of wealth advocated by socialists. The breadth of his political thought would surprise many who visualize him as a reactionary. Early on, for example, he argued for taxing land rather than earnings.1 After the Great War and the Depression, reformers of the Left shifted to massive state intervention and benefits. Here they lost Churchill, who regarded socialism as “the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”2 His “Gestapo speech,” suggesting that a Labour government would fall back on something like Hitler’s Geheime Staatspolizei to enforce their programs, helped his Conservatives lose the 1945 election. Yet, though he said hard things about the Labour Party, he believed in coalitions when possible, and courtesy on and off the floor. He was deeply grateful for Labour’s support in Britain’s darkest hour, feeling emotional loyalty toward leaders like Attlee and Bevin, and genuine sorrow when they left the wartime coalition in May 1945. Churchill favoured light taxation, allowing money “to fructify in the pockets of the people, as they used to say in my young days.”3 Once a “minimum standard” was guaranteed by the State, he thought citizens should be free to pursue their own interests, according to their lights and talents. The impression he leaves is of a politician occupying the “middle,” but not exactly a “moderate,” for he had firm opinions. He sought a medium between the extremes of Left and Right, relying upon democracy to ensure equality and a decent life for all. A patrician, but not a snob, he enjoyed luxuries, but favored taxing them; though he faulted democracy—as in his “Lost Glory” article on page 12 of this issue—he always respected the “little man.”
Churchill’s years as a crusader for social change are almost forgotten. His remarks on the status of women confound critics who think he wished to deny them the vote. (See for example “Action This Day, 100 Years Ago,” page 30.) So often depicted as an enemy of labor— through myths about his actions during the Welsh coal miners’ strike of 1910 and the General Strike of 1926— he was in fact a strong proponent of trade unions. “I have been taught it all my public life, that the employers of this country are deeply thankful there is in existence a strong organised trade union movement with which they can deal, and which keeps its bargains and which moves along a controlled and suitable path of policy.”4 The political writer Joe Klein recently reminded us of Churchill without mentioning him. Klein was asked how we can measure the worth of political leaders. Listen to what they say, he replied. If there is not a single statement in their remarks that is not unpleasant to hear, you know they are unprincipled: empty suits relying on polls and focus groups in a quest for power.5 Klein thus defined a chief attribute of Churchill— the willingness to say, not what people wanted to hear, but what he thought they should hear. His maxims were employed to that end with devastating effectiveness. Churchill was consistent, even when his party was not. Michael Mink explains: “...his two changes of party from Conservative to Liberal and back again, his egotism and his independence of spirit at all times led orthodox politicians to mistrust him and his judgment. Not until he was in his mid-60s did a crisis arise in which party politics were irrelevant and his greatest qualities could be demonstrated and recognized.”6 Many subjects that occupied Churchill’s mind are familiar to us today: the child tax credit, collective bargaining, elections fought over foreign policy, immigration, legislative cure-alls, media defeatism, the minimum wage, the national debt, outsourcing, protestors, women’s rights. Perhaps they went by different terms in Churchill’s day, but they occupied his thoughts. And his opinions are rarely uninteresting. —The Editor ,
___________________________________________________________________________________ 1. See “Henry George and Churchill’s Lost Opportunity,” Finest Hour 139, Summer 2008, 58. 2. Perth, Scotland, 28 May 1948. Churchill, Europe Unite (London: Cassell, 1950), 347. 3. Hawkey Hall, Woodford, Essex, 20 March 1959. Churchill, The Unwritten Alliance (London: Cassell, 1961), 312. 4. Broadcast, London, 27 March 1941. Churchill, The Unrelenting Struggle (London: Cassell, 1942), 71. 5. Joe Klein, Politics Lost: How American Democracy was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid (New York: Doubleday, 2006). 6. Michael Mink, “Winston Churchill’s Uphill War,” Investor’s Business Daily, 30 August 2007. FINEST HOUR 145 / 6
DAT E L I N E S shutterstock.com
SEALS ON THE BREAKERS CAMBRIDGE, NOV. 30TH— Lecturing
on “Churchill and Empire,” Piers Brendon said that Churchill loved Kipling (the love was not reciprocated) and used to recite his poetry in the bath. Piers Brendon writes FH: “According to David Gilmour’s book The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling (2002), page 164, the cadences of ‘We shall fight on the beaches’ may have owed something to the seals in The Jungle Book, who ‘fought in the breakers, they fought on the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries’—speculation, of course, but amusing speculation.”
FAIL ON THE BEACHES LONDON, NOVEMBER 12TH—Churchill’s
most famous wartime speech was awarded an “F” grade by a computerised exam marking system in the UK. The computer particularly disliked Churchill’s use of repetition, as in: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields...we shall fight in the hills.” His use of the word “might,” as in “the might of the Army,” was also picked out as the erroneous use of a verb instead of a noun.
Churchill before the microphones, defying all the rules and laying the groundwork for technologies of the future to deal him a flunking grade. Remember the lethal computer HAL in 2001? “I’m sorry, I can’t do that, Dave....”
This sorry saga was revealed at a conference to discuss testing and assessment in the UK. David Wright, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA), the professional body representing markers, told how a copy of Churchill’s speech had been uploaded to a website which had been set up to assess English literature. Salil Bhate, a pupil at King Edward VI grammar school in Chelmsford, Essex and a member of the executive of the English Secondary Students’ Association, said: “Young people simply don’t trust electronic marking. You study for two years and at the end of it there’s a computer which decides whether you get an ‘A’ or ‘C’ grade. We deserve more respect than that.” Of course, Churchill’s speech was not a literary text, and therefore not designed to be treated as a piece of English literature to be marked according to exam standards. [Why not? —Ed.] But Mr. Wright and his colleagues at the CIEA used it to make the point that the computer could not take into account dramatic effect. They also said it had perhaps been too rigid in rejecting the use of the word “might” as a noun. Churchill was not the only famous person to fall foul of the electronic marking system. The computer also dismissed the works of Ernest Hemingway and William Golding. —RICHARD GARNER, NEW ZEALAND HERALD (NZHERALD.CO.NZ)
Finest Hour’s opinion: It looks as though the experiment was set up in order to make a mockery of the electronic marking of English and it certainly did so, but this is no guarantee that it won’t be introduced little by little. It suits a world in which English has become an international business language stripped down to a functional minimum. The danger is that the English of Shakespeare and Churchill will become the exclusive FINEST HOUR 146 / 7
Quotation of the Season
“D
o you or do you not believe in democracy?” That is a fairly large question....there was the lady who wrote a metaphysical treatise [beginning] with the words “I accept the Universe.” And, as we all know, Mr. Carlyle made the celebrated comment: ‘Gad, she’d better.’ “That is rather like my feeling about democracy. I accept it. But I am a good deal more doubtful whether democracy believes in Parliamentary institutions….We have only to look across the Channel in Europe to see how democracy tends in its present manifestation to be injurious to the Parliamentary system and to the personal liberties which are dear to the Liberal heart.” —WSC. HOUSE OF COMMONS, 11 FEBRUARY 1935
preserve of scholars and lovers of literature—one more good reason for encouraging the young to read and enjoy Churchill. —PAUL ADDISON, UNIV. OF EDINBURGH
FH IS BILINGUAL LONDON, DECEMBER 1ST— A reader writes: “Finest Hour could be greatly improved if written in English rather than American.” It is time for our periodic reminder that since 1982, every word in FH that originates in Britain or the Commonwealth (although we have difficulty discerning the differences between British and Canadian) is published in the author’s spelling. We wonder idly if there is any other publication in that so handles English and American contributions. We take our bilingual quality so seriously that even the news articles within a department (like the next entry), are spelled in English not American, if they originate in England. But we are prepared to accept Professor Henry Higgins’ >>
DATELINES
injunction in Pygmalion: “There even are places where English completely disappears. In America they haven’t used it for years.”
For only £4500 you could have owned it.
NEW CIGAR RECORD AYLSHAM, NORFOLK, JANUARY 28TH—
A half-
smoked cigar, abandoned when Churchill dashed away to an urgent wartime Cabinet meeting, estimated to fetch £350, has sold for £4500. The stogie, 9.5 cm (3.75”), its band emblazoned with Churchill’s name, was retrieved by a member of the Number Ten staff sixty-nine years ago. Picking up the stub, Downing Street valet Nellie Goble grabbed a sheet of official notepaper and scribbled a note to a friend: “To Jack, with all good wishes from Nellie. Just a small souvenir to remind you at some future date of one of the greatest men that ever lived in England.” “Jack” treasured the letter and cigar until his death in 1987, when it passed to his daughter, who wants to remain anonymous. She kept it wrapped in the note in a drawer at her north Norfolk home. Andrew Bullock of Keys Auctioneers said: “It is a collector’s dream to own something that is so very, very scarce, or even unique. Anyone who collects Churchilliana would love to get their hands on something no-one else in the world has... and when it relates so directly to the iconic image of the man, it has added value. Apparently it was extremely rare for Churchill not to finish a cigar, so it must have been something very, very urgent that demanded his immediate attention in the Cabinet Room. As this was wartime, it is fascinating to speculate as to what it might have been that was so important.”
But Churchill in fact often failed to “finish” a cigar, leaving them around half-chewed or half-smoked when he was distracted. On-scene observers have told us that he sometimes chewed them more than he smoked them. And there are plenty of his cigars around, including a provenance-equipped unsmoked cigar, which sold only four years ago for £70. Last November, a cigar said to have been smoked by Churchill as he planned D-Day was discovered in a small market village “after being hidden for over fifty years,” according to the Daily Telegraph, London. If a cigar WSC actually held in his lips is more valuable, consider the half-smoked one valued at £800 by an expert during the filming of the Antiques Roadshow. Christian Williams, 33, was given that one when he was just 12 by his grandfather, Ronald Williams, a World War II veteran. It was taken from a meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt at the 1943 Casablanca Conference. Williams said he felt like he owned a piece of history: “I’ve kept the cigar a secret and completely to myself since my granddad gave it to me all those years ago. I can remember so clearly what he said to me as he handed it over: ‘You’ll know what to do with it one day and realise what it is’….I’ve never dared to touch it and never picked it out of its box, it’s far too precious to me. I don’t even keep it at home because I’m worried about it, it’s held in a safe place and I only take it from there for special occasions. It’s a really powerful object because when I look at it I can imagine where it came from. “I guess I have part of a 20th century icon, as we think of Churchill….” Ronald Williams, who served in the 8th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment, was asked to act as butler to the Prime Minister for the Casablanca Conference, code-named “Symbol,” held 14-24 January 1943 at the Anfa Hotel. Here the Anglo-Americans plotted their European strategy, and how they were to tackle occupied Europe. Probably toward the end of the conference, Williams decided to take some souvenirs of the occasion. FINEST HOUR 146 / 8
Finest Hour’s opinion: Provenance among Churchill cigars varies widely, but their constant appearance on the market shows that people who believe such items were touched by Churchill are prepared to invest in that belief, even in the absence of concrete evidence. It tells you something about the psychology of today, and the need for artifacts to link us to our heroes; but it tells us nothing we did not know about Sir Winston. —ALLEN PACKWOOD, DIRECTOR CHURCHILL ARCHIVES CENTRE, CAMBRIDGE
BLANKLEY ON CHURCHILL Reviewing Paul Johnson’s Churchill (see page 37) in The Washington Times, Tony Blankley derives Johnson’s five qualities that made Churchill what he was: “1) He aimed high, but never cadged or demeaned himself to gain office or objectives; 2) there Blankley (Life) was no substitute for hard work—even though he was brilliant; 3) he never allowed mistakes, disasters—personal or national—accidents, illnesses, unpopularity and criticism to get him down. His powers of recuperation, both in physical illness an in psychological responses to abject failure, were astounding; 4) he wasted extraordinarily small amounts of energy on hatred, recrimination, malice, revenge, grudges, rumor mongering or vendettas. Energy expended on hate was energy lost to productive activity; and 5) he always had something other than politics to give joy to his life.” WASHINGTON, JANUARY 5TH—
P-R TOPS AGAIN A champagne tasting by the House and Garden Department of NJ.com pronounced the Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill Cuvée the best among prestige champagnes. “Prestige cuvées have more concentrated aromas and flavors than what you find in non-vintage champagnes,” said Jean-Louis Carbonnier, French TRENTON, N.J., DECEMBER 15TH—
AROUND & ABOUT A
nent our Poland features in FH 145, Sir Martin Gilbert was off to the snows of Warsaw in February, where he spoke on “Churchill and the Poles from Versailles to Potsdam”—a broadsweep exercise that enthralled his audience.
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spokesman and U.S. representative for the Champagne Region and its producers. “We began sniffing and spitting. Yes, we did spit Dom Perignon, Roederer Cristal and all the other champagnes. With the prestige cuvées retailing from $135 for Nicholas Feuillatte Palmes d’Or to $280 for Roederer Cristal, that averages about $15 per taste and spit.” Carbonnier’s tasting partner was Wendy Taft, sommelier and managing director of the Park Avenue Club in Florham Park, and owner of La Bakerie restaurant in Morristown. When tasting the 1998 Pol Roger Sir Winston Churchill, which turned out to be the top prestige cuvée for all the judges, Tate exclaimed: “This champagne embodies the power and inspiration of Churchill himself while dancing across my palate with the dexterity and finesse of Fred Astaire.”
33 ECCLESTON SQUARE LONDON, DECEMBER 2009— A beautiful property in Eccleston Square in London, the house purchased by the Churchills after their marriage, has come onto the market. At a time when MPs’ expenses were less under scrutiny, Winston Churchill and his family lived in this smart terraced house for four years. A blue plaque commemorates his sojourn. After being offered for up to £4.75 million with no takers, the house is now being offered for rental and is available to let at £3000 a week through Ayrton Wylie estate agents (ayrtonwylie.com, 020 7730 4628). Churchill moved to 33 Eccleston Square in spring 1909, a year after marrying Clementine Hozier. His first two children were born here: Diana in 1909 and Randolph in 1911. >>
Stephen Greene, chairman of HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, on the free market (Wall Street Journal, 13 February): “I don’t myself believe that there’s any alternative to the market as the basic engine of economic and social development…. the alternatives have been tried. We know what they look like. That’s the stark lesson of the 20th century....I do stand by what you might describe as a Churchillian defense of the markets.” He means to say, writes the WSJ, that the market “is the worst form of economic organization, except for all the others that have been tried.”
kkkkk Steve Goldfein is reading in Churchill’s Marlborough where he is offered the Viceroyalty of the Netherlands by the Holy Roman Emperor. Although that meant £60,000 a year, offered political and military control he needed, pleased Queen Anne and made political and military sense, Marlborough declined without hesitation because it was bad for the “common good.” Steve adds: “I think what our countries want is someone they believe will put the ‘common good’ ahead of their personal needs; if a political party wishes to win people back, it must convince them that the principles that guided John Churchill and his great descendant in their public duties are alive and well. I fear we have a long way to go.”
kkkkk Senior editor Paul Courtenay complimented The Spectator for its review of “Into the Storm” starring Brendan Gleeson, while noting some flaws our review didn’t (FH 143): “Leaving aside the permanent grumpiness of Winston and Clementine, who could not possibly have spent five years without smiling, there were a number of fairly obvious solecisms such as the apparent VC investiture (which would have been carried out by King George himself), the Teheran dinner (held at the British not the Russian Embassy) and “Some chicken, some neck” (proclaimed in Ottawa not Washington), I was pleased by the attempts to convey the horror of Churchill’s early wartime flights. But even these did not manage to convey the half of how uncomfortable—and hazardous—they were. “Churchill did not usually fly to the United States as shown, but often went by sea, though he did sometimes return by air in a comfortable machine. His earliest flight to the Middle East in 1942 was entirely different. Not only was there no heating, as correctly and effectively depicted, but there were no seats and only minimal lighting; the 67-year-old Prime Minister had to lie on a shelf in the back of a dark, draughty, unpressurised Liberator bomber for some eight hours to reach Gibraltar, flying at night a long way out into the Atlantic before turning south; after refuelling, it was another thirteen hours across the Sahara to Cairo. Then, after continuing to Moscow and back in slightly better conditions, he had to endure the same horrific treatment on the way home, always with the chance of encountering a stray enemy fighter. “Referring to this journey, General MacArthur said that if disposal of Allied decorations were placed in his hands, he would “award the Victoria Cross to Winston Churchill; a flight of 10,000 miles through hostile and foreign skies may be the duty of young pilots, but for a statesman burdened with the world’s cares, it is an act of inspiring gallantry and valour.” ,
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DATELINES
During Churchill’s time at the stunning house, built in 1835 by Thomas Cubitt, he was promoted to a number of senior positions in and out of the Cabinet. In this period he assisted in drafting the new social welfare system, the protection of workers’ rights and the introduction of the first minimum wage. Although they leased the house to Lord Grey in 1913-16, the Churchills retained ownership through May 1918. —CHERYL MARKOKS
KEN PERKINS 1926-2009 OCTOBER 23RD— Major-
General Kenneth Perkins CB MBE DFC was an unusual man. In the postwar period when reputations were made or lost in the British Army of the Rhine, he sought active service in the Far East, and further shunned the career mainstream by training as a pilot. Commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1946, he saw service in the Middle East, and flew 214 observation sorties during the Korean War, receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross. He served in operations against the communist insurrection in Malaya, attended Pakistan Staff College, commanded an artillery battery in Germany, and instructed at the Staff College, Camberley, where he questioned the practicability of the “trip-wire” and nuclear strike response to a Warsaw Pact attack in Central Europe with a laconic “Rubbish in, rubbish out.” At the Commandant’s invitation, he rewrote this exercise. All this and his relentless intellectual energy proved ideal preparation for
secondment to command the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces. Sultan Qaboos faced a rebellion begun as a call for modernisation during his father’s reign, but which by 1975 turned into a communist-inspired insurrection by the People’s Republic of South Yemen. Served by outstanding subordinates, Perkins concentrated on strategic defence, integrating substantial Iranian and Jordanian contingents of troops and aircraft. In two years he wound up the war and returned the oil-rich Sultanate to peace and prosperity. He was rewarded by the Order of Oman and appointed CB, becoming Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Operations) before retiring to become a military adviser to British Aerospace. In retirement he devoted his energies to painting and writing, including his amusing and modest autobiography A Fortunate Soldier, and was literary assistant on the Churchill books of his wife Celia Sandys. She survives him, together with their son and daughter, and three daughters of his first marriage. —SUNDAY TIMES kkk We will remember Ken as an affable Churchillian who lived up to the Times’ description, ever able to deflate superfluous pomp with a wry comment or laugh. At a 1987 Churchill Tour dinner at the Reform Club, we tenuously asked him to say Grace, hoping it wouldn’t be one of those long-winded affairs. Grasping the need, Ken rose and said, “For what we are about to receive, Thank God.” On another tour, hosting with Celia a garden party at their Wiltshire home for our party, our coach was blocked by low-hanging limbs of the Savernake Forest. Shuttling people down the lane in his car, Ken was much bemused when someone, mistaking him for the help, handed him a one pound coin: “The first tip I’ve ever received. I’m going to frame it.” Ken was a modest man with much to be immodest about: he never stood on ceremony; a great raconteur, he always underplayed his many accomplishments, joining happily in our appreciations of his spouse’s grand—RML father. R.I.P. FINEST HOUR 146 / 10
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL LONDON, MARCH 2ND— With great sadness the Churchill family announces the death of Winston S. Churchill after a courageous battle with cancer. He was 69 and died peacefully at home in London. He is survived by his devoted wife, Luce, four children from his first marriage and eleven grandchildren. Sir Winston’s grandson, he was a war correspondent, author, politician and patron of a number of charities, and was a Member of Parliament for twenty-seven years. He bore his final illness with the great fortitude that those who knew him would have expected. There will be a Memorial Service at a later date. Condolences (mpaxson@winstonchurchill.org) will be forwarded to his family and the editor (rlangworth@winstonchurchill.org) wecomes memorials and reminiscences for our summer issue.
BERYL MURRAY 1919-2009 TAVISTOCK, DEVON, OCTOBER 7TH—My
mother, Beryl M. Murray, widow of Churchill’s bodyguard the late Sgt. Edmund Murray, died peacefully today. My parents ever looked forward to Finest Hour, and were happy to take part in Churchill Centre events. Polite and modest, unassuming but not shy, Beryl was a favourite of Sir Winston, accompanying him and Edmund on a cruise on the Onassis yacht Christina and at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. She was the ideal foil to my father, especially at public events after Sir Winston’s death, when he began speaking of his experiences. Beryl kept diaries and press cuttings over the years my father spent with Sir Winston, which produced his memoir, I was Churchill’s Bodyguard, (reviewed in Finest Hour 56, Summer 1987, which we republish in his memory on page 43.) Beryl and Eddie Murray and their family were grateful for all The Churchill Centre does to continue the memory of the great man. Speaking for myself, I have always thought it unbelievable that I had the privilege of meeting and talking to him. —WILLIAM MURRAY DARTMOORBILL@YAHOO.COM
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“A Mere Mouthful for a Bird” using on fate and mankind’s insignificance, the youthful Winston Churchill observed: “There are 13 million feathers on a dragonfly’s wing—yet it is but a mouthful for a bird.” Richard Harloe sent us the perfect photograph to accompany this remark. “It was taken while talking to some young relations, fishing on Lake Kariba, Zimbabwe, the largest man-made lake and reservoir in the world (5580 square kilometres, 2150 square miles),” Mr. Harloe writes. “A dragonfly landed on the tip of one of our fishing rods and a Carmine Bee Eater swooped on it. It seems quite a common fate!”
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Wit & Wisdom
The Chartwell Bulletins, 1935 “The digger sunk deeper into the mud and finally wallowed himself into an awful pit. It became necessary to bring four hydraulic jacks, which though they are quite small things and one man can handle them, can lift thirty tons. Then railway sleepers had to be sunk in the ground under the digger to make a foundation for these jacks, and as the jacks hoisted the digger, of course the sleepers sunk deeper. “However after nearly a week the animal emerged from his hole and practically finished the job, though there is still a fortnight’s tidying up for five men. This animal is very strong with his hands but very feeble with his caterpillar legs, and as the fields are sopping, they had the greatest difficulty in taking him away. They will have to lay down sleepers all the way from the lake to the gate over which he will waddle on Monday. I shall be glad to see the last of him.” —WSC to his wife, 2 March 1935 Chartwell Bulletin No. 7 Chartwell guide and CC-UK member Nigel Guest reminds us that 2010 is the Seventy-fifth Anniversary of Churchill’s 1935 “Chartwell Bulletins,” sent to his wife to apprise her of happenings at their home during her absence in the South Seas. Churchill despatched other “Chartwell Bulletins” from time to time before and after 1935, but these twelve were the most interesting and cohesive. We published them, together with footnotes by Sir Martin Gilbert and photos from Lady Soames’s personal albums, in 1989. Then, in 2001, we named our own newsletter the Chartwell Bulletin, and recent copies have contained short quotes from Churchill’s originals on their covers. Mr. Guest writes:
“I volunteer at Chartwell and assist with guided walks around the gardens and estate. During these walks I make extensive use of the Churchill Centre’s 1935 ‘Bulletins’ and The Churchill Centre’s modern newsletter. Some of the ‘Bulletins’ coincide with the actual walks. It adds a certain poignancy to the verbal pictures I try to paint. “For example, it is easy to visualise the ‘mechanical digger’ (steam shovel) at work enlarging the lakes, with Churchill’s fabulous descriptions, giving the machine a human persona. I think his comment about Prime Minister MacDonald in Chartwell Bulletin No. 5 may have been prompted as he watched the digger from his study window: ‘Ramsay sinks lower and lower in the mud, and I do not think the poor devil can last much longer.’ “I appreciate Michael McMenamin’s ‘Action This Day’ entry in Finest Hour 145: 12-13, which provides further insight into 1935 and Clementine’s departure for the South Seas. Her voyage to the Dutch East Indies enables me to reference the story of the ‘Bali Dove,’ and the inscription on the sun dial in the Golden Rose Walk.* I think it would be a great idea to reprint the 1935 Chartwell Bulletins to coincide with this 75th anniversary year.” Copies of The Churchill Centre’s 1935 Chartwell Bulletins, now rare, sell for between $25 and $80 on the used book market. See bookfinder.com. *From Mary Soames, The Rose Garden, Chartwell Clementine Churchill (London: Cassell, 1979, 269-70): …the most charming of her mementos of the East was a Bali dove, an enchanting pinky-beige little bird with coral beak and feet, who lived in a beautiful wicker cage rather like a glorified lobster-pot. He was a great pet, and would crou-aou and bow with exquisite oriental politeness to people he liked. He survived for two or three years, when, no doubt homesick for his enchanted island home, he died. Clementine had him buried under the sundial in the centre of the walled garden. Round the base are carved the following lines:
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HERE LIES THE BALI DOVE It does not do to wander Too far from sober men, But there’s an island yonder, I think of it again. ,
CHURCHILL IN CONTEXT
How We Can Restore the Lost Glory to Democracy “Whenever the Socialists have come into office they have very speedily provoked a violent reaction in the country….At the next election there will probably be a very full swing of the pendulum away from the existing Ministers….The Socialist Ministers will, as usual, have to choose between quarrelling with their followers and quarrelling with the nation.” W I N S T O N S. C H U R C H I L L First published in The Evening Standard, 14 January 1934 Published in Finest Hour by kind permission of Winston S. Churchill and Curtis Brown Ltd.
I N TR O D U C T I O N
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--hurchill’s startling words above, pregnant with current relevance, are from a little-known article published only twice during a forty-year interval. In it, Churchill casts a skeptical eye on a nation beset by economic woes, and wonders if democracy could be improved by extra votes for “the more responsible citizens” and by proportional representation. He would become less enthusiastic about at least the latter idea later in his career. In proposing a bonus vote for “every householder …who pays the rent and the rates [taxes] of any dwelling,” Churchill voices a theme later developed by the Australian novelist Nevil Shute in his 1953 book, In the Wet. In Shute’s imaginary Australia, there were up to seven votes: one for everybody; another for a university degree or military commission; another for time spent abroad; another for raising two children to age fourteen without divorce, and so on. Such ideas are easily shouted down for obvious reasons. We’re not concerned with Shute, except as an aside, but with Churchill; and the qualifications for his bonus vote are less important than his thinking about it. Larger and larger numbers of today’s democracies pay fewer and fewer taxes, yet retain the ability to vote themselves largesse from those who do. Churchill, an extremist of neither Left nor Right, sought a middle way, “to provide security for the working class so they would not expropriate the wealth of the holders of capital; so
they would have a fair chance for themselves.” (FH 144: 11.) The bonus vote is an example of his thinking. Proportional representation strives for a more representative democracy by distributing legislative seats in proportion to the party vote, instead of the “winner take all” approach (plurality voting) as in the UK or USA. (P.R. exists in Australia, Ireland, and many other countries.) P.R. makes the domination of a majority far less likely, but can lead to shifting party alliances, unstable coalitions, and in some cases, political chaos. Churchill offers a novel twist by proposing proportional representation only for the cities. This, he says, would “focus the personality” of their citizens in governing their affairs. But extending P.R. to rural areas, he adds, would “destroy the personal contacts and collective identities which exist.” But where would Churchill draw the line, particularly given the vast expansion of the suburbs since 1934? Why would a voting system good for some be bad for others? Paraphrasing his famous crack about democracy, we might say that plurality voting is the worst of all systems, except for all the other systems. Far from branding Churchill as an elitist, this interesting essay shows his ability—uncommon among politicians of any age—to think in fresh and imaginative ways about democracy, adhering to tradition only when he considers it essential to the political life of the nation. —RML Judge for yourself.
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T
o say that the House of Commons needs strengthening is not necessarily to imply any censure upon its members. It is merely a recognition of the dangers in which our Parliamentary institutions stand and of the need for those who care about them, and about the life we have hitherto led in this country, to take effective steps in their defence. The history of the last eleven years has consisted in alternative Governments of Mr. Baldwin1 and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald2 culminating in their joint association. Whenever the Socialists have come into office they have very speedily provoked a violent reaction in the country. Mr. Baldwin has always caught the ball from Mr. MacDonald, and on the last occasion has embraced not only the ball but its thrower as well. We now have a so-called National Government under which the proceedings of the House of Commons have sunk to the lowest ebb. Four-fifths of the members are Conservative supporters of the Administration. The two Oppositions make gestures and demonstrations to which the outside public pays scarcely any attention. But this by no means implies a general contentment in the country. There is probably at this moment a definite majority of Socialists and Liberals over the whole Conservative and so-called National forces. This great mass of voters has no effective representation in the Chamber. They are completely unrepresented as far as Parliament is concerned. It must not be supposed, however, that the political life of the country is not proceeding. All the powerful forces which have influenced our lives for so many years are alive and at work. At the next election there will probably be a very full swing of the pendulum away from the existing Ministers. It may well be that a majority of inexperienced and violent men will be returned. The responsible elements in the country will lose all control both of the House of Commons and of the executive. An immense disturbance will be caused to our agricultural, industrial and commercial life. The Socialist Ministers will, as usual, have to choose between quarrelling with their followers and quarrelling with the nation. They will be impaled on this dilemma, and after a period of anxiety and possibly of disorder, a strong reversion will be made to government by the Right. Whether this reversion takes a constitu-
1. Stanley Baldwin KG PC, later The Earl Baldwin of Bewdley (1867-1947), Conservative Party leader, Prime Minister 1924-29, 1935-37; Lord President of the Council in Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, 1931-35. 2. James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Party leader, Labour Prime Minister 1929-31; Prime Minister in a National Government with Conservative support, 1931-35.
tional or a Fascist form depends entirely upon what injury has been done to the country during the interval. Nothing is more certain than that the Socialist party is incapable of defending the old parliamentary liberties of England. The universal suffrage which has now been established deprives the House of Commons of the respect of the nation. The vote has lost its value to the voter. What everyone has, no one esteems. There are no longer eager political classes following keenly the progress of events. Nearly one-third of the electorate do not take the trouble to go to the poll. A large proportion of the others have to be dragged there upon some electioneering cry. There is a total lack of any continuity of political thought or discussion. All we have is vague mass-driftings interrupted from time to time by spasmodic mob-votes. Anyone can see how impossible it would be for Parliament to command the interest of the nation under such conditions. The old life of the House of Commons is rapidly passing away. In its place we have a timid Caesarism refreshing itself by occasional plebiscites. At any moment a serious crisis may arise in which the >>
“When the day dawns that any number of citizens are taught to believe there is a more rapid road to prosperity, to wealth, to the possession of capital, than the employment of industry and the exercise of self-denial—and that this more rapid way is through the treasury, by the complaisance or the connivance of politicians—then the knell of this country’s prosperity is sounded.” —Bourke Cockran to the Liberal Club, London, 1903. From Michael McMenamin and Curt Zoller, Becoming Winston Churchill (Greenwood Press, 2007,) 244.
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CHURCHILL IN CONTEXT
“The vote has lost its value to the voter. What everyone has, no one esteems. There are no longer eager political classes following keenly the progress of events. “ —WSC LOST GLORIES... differences which used to be settled by Parliamentary debate will be settled outside the walls of Parliament by the conflict of extremists. In any such conflict the Socialist or revolutionary forces will certainly be beaten. But the danger is that in the process of defeating them our ancient, free constitution and Parliamentary system will be destroyed. Already the thoughts and interests of the younger generation are being attracted away from the scene where Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Baldwin doze so peacefully, to the kind of ideas which in one form or another have become dominant throughout Europe. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that the next years may well see the end of the English Parliamentary system. A universal suffrage electorate will have shown themselves incapable of preserving those forms of government under which our country has grown great and from which all the dignity and tolerance of our present life arise. It is for these reasons that I have long cast about for a means of strengthening the Parliamentary regime. I do not here speak of the necessary reform of the House of Lords or Second Chamber, for that is a well-known controversy. But the time has also come when we must definitely improve the franchise of the House of Commons so as to make the vote which returns a Parliament more truly representative of the strong, vital forces which make the country move and which cannot be indefinitely disregarded.
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he proposal which I have made is extremely simple. It raises no issue of rank or class, of party or wealth, of age or sex. It involves the disfranchisement, actual or prospective, of no class. It aims, however, at giving a greater weight to the more responsible citizens, to those who make the largest contribution to the nation’s well-being and those who bear the heaviest public burden. I propose that every householder, by which I mean the man or woman who pays the rent and the rates of any dwelling in which more than two persons habitually reside, should have a second or plural
vote. This would certainly involve four or five million persons. Many of them would be young persons: a proportion of them would be women. They would all be persons who had to face the real problems of life in a manner quite different from lodgers of all kinds of both sexes, dependent or otherwise. We should to that extent have corrected the effects of throwing an enormous mass of irresponsible voters into the scales as was done during Mr. Baldwin’s last administration, and we should have infused into the franchise a new measure of stability. If the principle of weighting the franchise were found acceptable there is no reason why it should not be further developed as time went on with the object of making the total vote at the poll representative of the pulling and driving power of the country, instead of its more dependent and more volatile elements. Another advantage should be noted. The new class of plural voters, numbering millions—with whom anyone may rank himself in the ordinary processes of life—would be a class bearing special political responsibilities. They would in consequence tend to follow public affairs with more seriousness than at present. They would feel that there rested upon them in a marked degree the duty of caring for the interests of the State. If their extra vote was envied or even resented by the other classes, that very feeling would restore to the franchise some of the value it has lost by being made universal. We should have taken the first step of moving back to a foundation for Parliament composed of electors who really take an interest in public affairs, and as a result Parliament would continue to be the forum of national discussions and the college from which Cabinets are chosen. We should not in the least be deterred by catch phrases such as “fancy franchises,” nor by the fate which has overtaken fancy franchises in so many European countries. All experience goes to show that once the vote has been extended to everyone, and what is called full democracy has been achieved, the whole system is very speedily broken up and swept away. A true democracy
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involves a much more refined process than the mere counting of noses. If that is to be the method by which we are to be ruled, then it is not a Parliament but quite different organizations which under modern conditions will marshal the noses and do the counting.
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here is one other reform in the franchise which should be made by the present Parliament and should become operative at the next election. I mean the institution of Proportional Representation for the great cities. The lack of influence on affairs of our great cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds and many others is deplorable. As political entities they are already moribund. They had more influence in the old days when they only had a couple of members than they have now that they are each sliced up into ten or a dozen constituencies. There is no collective voice from any of them. Leading politicians in every party avoid such fickle and changeable areas, and seek in county seats or smaller boroughs a trustworthy resting-place. When one sees how, for instance, the interests of Manchester and Liverpool are ignored in the whole march of public events, and how little they count in public discussion, it is surely time a change was made. On the other hand, the introduction of Proportional Representation in the counties would be a great mistake. Whereas in the cities Proportional Representation would focus the personality of the citizens, the same system in the counties would destroy the personal contacts and collective identities which exist.
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ow is the time for action. It is always difficult for the House of Commons to deal with matters affecting the position of so many of its own members; but the conditions of the present Parliament are favourable as they have never been before and may not be again for many years. Both the reforms I have mentioned would have the effect of helping rather than hurting the existing personnel. Nothing will prevent the swing of the pendulum, but it would be to some extent moderated. The Liberals would be well advised to support the additional vote for householders, if it were part of a Bill in which Proportional Representation was established in the great cities. Of course, there would be a violent controversy, but one of the greatest delusions in politics is to suppose that it is desirable always to please everybody. And what is the alternative? I have no hesitation in saying that unless the reform and strengthening of our Parliamentary institution is actively undertaken without
delay we shall see ourselves involved in a succession of disastrous fluctuations attended by continued constitutional decay, and that the regeneration of the country and the establishment of sincere and vigorous government will be achieved through agencies very different from those which have hitherto been the peculiar glory and achievement of our island. , “Lost Glory”: Modern Reflections
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’m not sure that “Lost Glory” is Churchill at his best. It veers from sounding like a Rush Limbaugh rant to exaggerated images of fascism. As always, buried beneath the rhetorical excesses are both wit and good sense, but this time they are buried a bit deeper than usual. Still, the description of a government caught between its own supporters and a broader public does resonate in today’s world, though I looked in vain for some explanation of how a voting majority in Parliament consisted of 60 percent of its members, as it seems to do in one branch of the U.S. Congress. And I do find it interesting, in an antic way. —Warren F. Kimball
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found this essay tremendously interesting, particularly because Churchill links voting (representation) with contributing to the social safety net (taxation): “giving a greater weight to the more responsible citizens, to those who make the largest contribution to the nation’s well-being and those who bear the heaviest public burden.” Whereas Americans once fought a revolution over “taxation without representation,” they and others are now faced with fellow citizens who ask for “representation without taxation”: fewer and fewer pay income tax, but may vote for candidates who promise to redistribute ever more to them. Some even receive refundable tax credits. Surely if that number becomes the majority (recent reports have it as high as 47 percent in the U.S.), democracy as we know it would be challenged. Of course there are other, “flat” taxes. Social security and property taxes (rates) raised to compensate for declining values are both burdensome on the working poor. Should they be “progressive”? Where will it all lead? Do the British, American, Canadian and other constitutions protect us from an economic “tyranny of the majority”? How do we organize our countries so that poor can become more prosperous? Churchill always inspires us to think. —Suzanne Sigman ,
FINEST HOUR 146 / 15
HISTORY DETECTIVES
The Outcasts: What Did Churchill Tell Guy Burgess after Munich? MICHAEL DOBBS Mr. Dobbs is author of four Churchill historical novels (reviewed in FH 117, 122, 126, 131) in which characters and episodes are carefully researched from life. The spy Guy Burgess appears in the first, Winston’s War. For Martin Gilbert’s account of the actual Burgess-Churchill meeting see his Winston S. Churchill, vol. V, Prophet of Truth 19221939 (London: Heinemann, 1976), 990-92; and Companion Volume V, Part III, The Coming of War 1936-1939 (London: Heinemann, 1982), 1192-96 and 1198-99.
I
t began over alcohol—a good pub lunch—something of which I’m sure Sir Winston would have approved. I was with two old friends, the celebrated British TV writers Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, who are very knowledgeable about the 1930s. They spoke of how extraordinary it was that Winston Churchill, a man reviled and mistrusted by so many at the time, should have become Prime Minister. It wasn’t a topic I was then familiar with—yet something inside me stirred, and without realizing it I set out on a journey that in many ways has changed my life. I began reading about Winston Churchill, and stumbled across an extraordinary reference to him in a book written by the British politician Tom Driberg about his friend Guy Burgess. It recounted in some detail how Burgess, who was then a BBC producer, had spent much of the day of 1 October 1938 alone with Churchill at Chartwell. The story is likewise recounted by Sir Martin Gilbert in the Official Biography and
Tom Driberg, left, with Guy Burgess, checking proofs of Driberg’s book, Moscow, October, 1956. Driberg first broke the news of the Churchill-Burgess meeting, on the day after Chamberlain had signed the Munich Pact with Hitler—and Martin Gilbert who confirmed it in the Official Biography.
its relevant companion volume, as referenced above. There were two fascinating aspects to the Churchill-Burgess meeting. The first was that it was the day after Neville Chamberlain had signed the Munich Agreement and his subsequent promise to adoring crowds in Downing Street that he had brought “peace for our time.” For Churchill, a man who had been pursued by Black Dogs after the Dardanelles and other dark days in his life, that October 1st must have been one of the darkest. FINEST HOUR 146 / 16
The second extraordinary fact is that Guy Burgess, in addition to his duties at the BBC, was even at this stage one of the most notorious of Soviet spies. Such a man with Churchill? It seemed an unnatural combination. So what were they doing? Driberg left a detailed account that made sense. Both Churchill and Burgess enjoyed drink and disputation; they were both highly opinionated. Crucially, they were both committed to the fight against fascism, and it is inconceivable to me that they didn’t debate the future course of events with passion. Churchill would have been pessimistic, Burgess youthfully bullish. Whereas Sir Martin Gilbert’s research is impeccable, any account by Driberg has to be treated with caution—he was himself a KGB spy —and almost none of the histories other than Gilbert’s offers even a glancing reference to the meeting. Yet Driberg’s book was published in 1956 and Churchill could easily have dismissed it as nonsense. He didn’t.
Burgess worked at the heart of Westminster, knew everyone, threw outrageous alcohol-fuelled parties that were attended by politicians, priests and even a few prostitutes— yet when his treachery was uncovered it was difficult to find anyone who had even shared a bus queue with him. Many matters were covered up, files and diaries filleted, Burgess cast into oblivion and exile in Moscow. After the publication of Driberg’s book, nothing was heard of the Chartwell meeting for twenty years. Then Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, Volume V, brought the meeting to light in 1976, and the text of Burgess’ memo was in Gilbert’s relevant document volume in 1982. Now the BBC has made available online its record of the meeting (http://xrl.us/bgwm5b). Burgess wrote (Gilbert, pages 1198-99): Mr Churchill complained that he had been very badly treated in the matter of political broadcasts and that he was always muzzled by the BBC. I said I was not myself in possession of the facts and, in any case, had nothing to do with such matters, since I believed that the allotment of space was settled by arrangement and discussion between the BBC and the political parties. I imagine that he was referring to a past controversy that I believe (though I didn’t say so) there was over India and election time. He went on to say that he imagined that he would be even more muzzled in the future, since the work at the BBC seemed to have passed under the control of the Government. I said that this was not, in fact, the case, though just at the moment we were, as a matter of courtesy, allowing the Foreign Office to see scripts on political subjects. The point is WSC seems very anxious to talk. [s.] G Burgess
Aside from Churchill feeling he had been kept from the airwaves by the BBC, I suspect they discussed much more. As other BBC archives show, Burgess was already notorious for his drinking and his taste for luxuries—so he and WSC probably got on outrageously well!
So impressed was Churchill by the much younger man that when they had finished their conversation at Chartwell, he presented Burgess with a signed copy of Arms and the Covenant, his latest book of speeches. There is much to be learned about the times and the two men by reflecting on this meeting. They had a lot in common, were both outcasts fearful of the future, determined to fight on no matter the cost, even though they viewed the world through entirely different lenses. History is filled with ironies. A few years after this meeting, one of them came to be regarded as the greatest man Britain had ever produced, the other as one of its greatest traitors. Yet such a vacuum is an open invitation to a dramatist. I have used it in my writings to try to get to grips with the isolation and the passion of Churchill, and how he was so often forced to rely on informal and even disreputable supporters. Alongside Burgess we can include Mrs. Churchill’s “Three Terrible B’s”: Brendan Bracken, Lords Birkenhead and Beaverbrook. WSC tended to romanticize in his own histories, drawing a veil over the personal hurts he must have so often experienced and felt. Yet it is those personal hurts that drove him on, obsessed him even, ever since his childhood when his father turned his back so cruelly on his young son. Churchill was a complicated individual, and encounters with men such as Burgess provide a valuable insight into what FINEST HOUR 146 / 17
made him so different from others. If in the dramatic process I exaggerate the importance of Burgess by suggesting that a Soviet agent could actually have been of help to Churchill, it at least gives us pause for thought about the complicated nature of patriotism, and how history often makes for odd bedfellows. If the fact of their meeting was ever deliberately covered up, until the diligent Martin Gilbert unearthed it in 1976, one place those responsible forgot to look was within the files at the BBC, where Burgess was required to record his activities—and where the records lay all the time! Note: Driberg’s book, Guy Burgess: A Portrait with Background, was published in 1956 by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. For more information about Michael Dobbs’s novels, radio documentary and television play about Sir Winston Churchill, please visit www.michaeldobbs.com. ,
www.b bc.co.l uk
GREAT CONTEMPORARIES
Roosevelt’s Bracken:
HARRY HOPKINS “Lord Root of the Matter” RON CYNEWULF ROBBINS
C
uriosity about defenders of liberty is insatiable. The selfless dedication of gifted historians, even the indelible tidemarks of posterity, yield us no quietus. Our inquisitiveness extends to anyone who served faithfully alongside our heroes and made crucial contributions to their achievement. The physically frail Harry Hopkins fits this category: a magnificent gobetween with whom Churchill and Roosevelt felt comfortable and at ease. Lifelong opponents of Roosevelt’s New Deal could not resist including Hopkins in their denunciation. When he died, a Los Angeles Times editorial suggested that it didn’t matter whether Hopkins was “great or little or good or bad”; what mattered was seeing that “the phenomenon of a Harry Hopkins in the White House does not recur.” Robert Sherwood, another member of FDR’s inner sanctum, has described the invective heaped on Hopkins, who lived for over three years in the Roosevelt White House. He was quartered in Abraham Lincoln’s former study. Hopkins was regarded, Sherwood wrote, “as a sinister figure, a backstairs intriguer, an Iowan combination of Machiavelli, Svengali and Rasputin.” (Similar sobriquets were attached during the second Bush’s administration to Karl Rove, much to the latter’s amusement.) But Robert Sherwood added a counterpoint by General and later Secretary of State George C. Marshall: Hopkins, Marshall said, had “rendered a service to this country which will never even vaguely be appreciated.” Churchill’s entourage had no counterpart of Harry Hopkins, though Brendan Bracken invites comparison because of his role as WSC’s intimate confidant. Like Hopkins, Bracken surmounted humble beginnings, and encountered disdain and envy. It would be difficult to brush aside the conclusion that by lineage and rank Churchill and Roosevelt were political aristocrats, shaped by blood and history. Roosevelt had long admired the career of his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt; he imitated him by using the governorship of New York as a springboard to the FINEST HOUR 146 / 18
Mr. Robbins, a journalist who had covered Churchill in Westminster after World War II, was Finest Hour’s editor emeritus until his death last year (FH 144: 8-9). This is the first of his two articles on the two “treasured confidants” of Roosevelt and Churchill, the other being WSC’s Brendan Bracken, to be published in our next issue. Mr. Robbins asked that we acknowledge Sir Martin Gilbert’s 2006 visit to Canada, and his compelling hour-long interview on CBC, which inspired this article.
Presidency. Churchill had haunting memories of his father Lord Randolph; he rose to occupy his father’s office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and later secured the premiership his father had once anticipated. Fault-finders complained bitterly about what they believed was the dangerous incongruity of Hopkins and Bracken being warm pals of their leaders. Foreign Minister Lord Halifax, “the Holy Fox,” to whom Chamberlain had tried to hand the premiership in 1940, referred to Bracken as a gangster. Churchill, once in Downing Street, despatched Halifax as Ambassador to the United States, replacing him with anti-appeaser Anthony Eden. It is fair to note that Halifax did well in Washington. Neither Hopkins nor Bracken came naturally into the retinue of their mentors; both had to prove their worth. Scenes of misery and want awakened in Hopkins a Dickensian-like revulsion. Born in Sioux City in 1890, he became a conscientious social worker after attending Grinnell College. He was Federal Emergency Relief Administrator in 1933, moved on to head the Works Progress Administration, and is heavily credited for fashioning Roosevelt’s Social Security bill. Hopkins had risen to serve as Secretary of Commerce in 1938-40, but further political ambition was abandoned as he fought an extremely debilitating illness. Perhaps one secret of his relationship with FDR was that they were both survivors of agonizing disease. At a one-on-one session in the White House, Wendell Willkie, FDR’s opponent in the 1940 election, brusquely demanded to know why Hopkins was there. “I can understand that you wonder why I need that half-man around me,” said Roosevelt, referring to Hopkins’ gaunt appearance. “Some day you may well be sitting here…knowing that practically everybody who walks through [the door] wants something out of you. You’ll learn what a lonely job this is and you’ll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins, who asks for nothing except to serve you.” (Willkie deserves a bow for recording that observation.) Nor did Hopkins seem to be the socialist ideologue his enemies often portrayed. Robert Sherwood recalls: One day I saw him pick up a book put out by the W.P.A. It was an expensive printing job, with many plates and a very substantial-looking binding. He flourished the book and said to me, “This is pure boondoggling. The people who attacked us for things like this were perfectly right. Of course, I would have been a God-damned fool to have agreed with them.”*
For their parts, Roosevelt and Churchill were blithely unconcerned by criticism of their valued henchmen. WSC
ignored the early dislike of his wife and his son toward Bracken, whom both came later to respect. (In this case Winston was right: Bracken became an astute Member of Parliament and handled the Ministry of Information with far greater élan than any of his predecessors.) Likewise, Hopkins was Roosevelt’s reliable emissary to Europe. Churchill met him for the first time when he arrived at Downing Street to discuss the Lend-Lease programme, which Hopkins was supervising. The President had asked for a trenchant private assessment of how Churchill and the British would stand up to Hitler. Hopkins gave both top marks. Churchill nicknamed Hopkins “Lord Root of the Matter,” and the warm rapport between them never wavered. Martin Gilbert’s volume VI of the Official Biography records Hopkins’ 1941 visit to Britain in great detail. Hopkins left for Moscow, then returned to meet Churchill in Glasgow in freezing mid-January. After touring the city’s defence establishments, Churchill spoke of how Hopkins had come “in order to put himself in closest relation with things here. He will soon return to report to his famous chief the impressions he has gathered in our islands.” That night, Martin Gilbert tells us, Churchill and Hopkins were given dinner in Glasgow by the Regional Commissioner for Scotland, Tom Johnston, at the Station Hotel. After dinner, Hopkins replied:
“I
suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well, I'm going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books in the truth of which Mr. Johnston’s mother and my own Scottish mother were brought up: ‘Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.’” Then he added very quietly: “‘Even to the end.’” Observers present saw the Prime Mnister in tears. He knew what it meant. Many historians say the Anglo-American “special relationship” was far more special to the British than the Americans. Hopkins would deny it. In a series of informal memoirs written for Sherwood, he penned words Churchill himself might have written: I know no person in his right mind but that he believes if this nation ever had to engage in another war Great Britain would be fighting on our side, and yet, to hear some people talk about the British, you would think the British were our potential enemies. I believe that the British have saved our skins twice—once in 1914 and again in 1940. They, with the
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>>
GREAT CONTEMPORARIES
“I can understand that you wonder why I need that half-man around me. Some day you may well be sitting here…knowing that practically everybody who walks through [the door] wants something out of you. You’ll learn what a lonely job this is and you’ll discover the need for somebody like Harry Hopkins.” —FDR to Wendell Willkie
Rarely photographed at summit conferences, Hopkins was caught here before a session in Teheran. To his right, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall shakes hands with Sir Archibald Clark-Kerr, British ambassador to the Soviet Union; to his left, a Soviet interpreter translates for Marshals Stalin and Kliment Voroshilov. Looking on between the marshals is Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. At far left is Field Marshal Sir John Dill (Wikimedia)
French, took the brunt of the attack in the First World War, and the Germans came within a hair’s breadth of licking them both before we got into it. This time it was Britain alone that held the fort and they held that fort for us just as much as for themselves, because we would not have had a chance to have licked Hitler had Britain fallen.
that the British live by trade. We are probably powerful enough, if we want to use that power, seriously to injure that trade, but I do not believe it is to our self-interest to do it. Why should we deliberately set about to make a weak Great Britain in the next hundred years unless we go on the assumption that war will be waged no more?….
Many Britishers do not make it particularly easy for those of us who want to see a close-working relationship with Great Britain. When the Prime Minister said that he was not selected to be the King’s Minister to liquidate the Empire, every isolationist in America cheered him. Before that, he had never been very popular with our isolationists in America. There is constant friction between our business interests and we think—and have no doubt with some good reason—that Great Britain would take an unfair advantage of us in trade around the world…
If I were to lay down the most cardinal principle of our foreign policy, it would be that we make absolutely sure that now and forever the United States and Great Britain are going to see eye to eye on major matters of world policy. It is easy to say that. It is hard to do, but it can be done and the effort is worth it.*
The American people must realize the plain and simple truth
Exhausted, ill and worn out, Hopkins was destined to die at fifty-six. Just before his death, on 22 January 1946, he wrote the last letter of his life. It was addressed to Winston Churchill.
FINEST HOUR 146 / 20
Further Reading • Robert E. Sherwood’s Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York; Harper, 1946); The White House Papers of Harry Hopkins, 2 vols. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948) is a fundamental source, one of the greatest political memoirs ever published. It earned Sherwood, who with Hopkins had helped write Roosevelt’s speeches, his fourth Pulitzer Prize. (Unlike Churchill, FDR did not write all his speeches himself, but like WSC, he was an indefatigable reviser.)
ABOVE: Churchill with Brendan Bracken and Harry Hopkins. When Churchill expressed initial doubt about Hopkins’s importance, it was the faithful Bracken who informed him how close he was to President Franklin Roosevelt. After they met they soon became fast friends. BELOW RIGHT: Harry Hopkins, his daughter Diana, and WSC with the President’s scottie “Fala” (unfazed by his exalted company) at the White House during Churchill’s visit following Pearl Harbor, December 1941.
Harry Hopkins’ Last Letter
• Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill: A Life (London: Heinemann, New York: Henry Holt, 1991; Toronto: Minerva, 1992, still in print in paperback) is a readable distillation of Gilbert’s eight-volume official biography (but not an abridgement; it contains much new information). On 20 September 2006, Sir Martin was interviewed by the CBC in Toronto, which produced a video and sound clips of some of Churchill’s famous wartime speeches. Sir Martin gave viewers a keen insight into the steadfast work Churchill did when preparing his orations. At first WSC wrote his speech drafts by hand; later he began dictating to a secretary. Although he usually held to his final script, a copy of which he always carried, he had often memorized important passages in advance. ,
New York January 22, 1946 Dear Winston, Only being laid up in the hospital prevented me from meeting you at the boat the other day and I do hope you will find it possible to get to New York, because it appears altogether unlikely that I could possibly be in Florida during the next month. All I can say about myself at the moment is that I am getting excellent care, while the doctors are struggling over a very bad case of cirrhosis of the liver—not due, I regret to say, from taking too much alcohol. But I must say that I dislike having the effect of a long life of congenial and useful drinking and neither deserve the reputation nor enjoy its pleasures. The newspapers indicate you and Clemmie are having a quiet and delightful time and I hope you won’t let any Congressional Committee of ours bore you. Do give my love to Clemmie and Sarah, all of whom I shall hope to see before you go back, but I want to have a good talk with you over the state of world affairs, to say nothing of our private lives.* _________________________________________________________ *Hopkins quotes and his letter to Churchill are from Robert Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry Hopkins, 2 vols. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948), II: 910-11 and 920. FINEST HOUR 146 / 21
110 Years On: Remembering Jennie and the Maine She was widely renowned for living life large, so few were surprised when Winston and Jack Churchill’s mother raised $150,000 to furnish and equip a hospital ship for the Boer War—or when Jennie herself embarked for South Africa, and personally directed the nursing. CELIA LEE Mrs. Lee is the main author of The Churchills: A Family Portrait, reviewed on page 39. All photographs are published by kind permission of Mrs. Peregrine Spencer Churchill.
L
ady Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother, was born Jennie Jerome in Brooklyn on 9 January 1854. Her star sign is Capricorn, the mountain goat, which always climbs higher, discontented until it reaches the top. In 1874 Jennie fell in love with and married Lord Randolph Spencer Churchill, second surviving son of the Seventh Duke of Marlborough and Frances Vane Tempest. Randolph became an expert on Irish affairs and rose rapidly to become Chancellor of the Exchequer
and Leader of the House of Commons in 1886. But he fell out with the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, over defence cuts he’d proposed in his first budget, and resigned as a point of principle. The strain of political life had taken its toll of his health and Jennie had much experience of nursing him through bouts of illness until his death in January 1895. The Anglo-Boer War broke out in 1899, and Mrs. Blow, the American wife of the manager of one of South Africa’s richest mining syndicates, determined to provide
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PAGE OPPOSITE: Jack Spencer Churchill, later a Major in the Oxfordshire Hussars, with his mother aboard the Maine during his convalescence from war wounds; the hospital ship, supplied by Bernard Nadel Baker of Atlantic Transport in Baltimore, flew the Stars and Stripes, the Union Flag, and the flag of the Red Cross. ABOVE: “Sister Jennie” wearing the uniform she designed herself, at her desk in her cramped cabin aboard the Maine. (This photo gives the lie to critics who claimed that she enjoyed “a suite of rooms.”) At right, wounded soldiers aboard the Maine. Both Boer and British wounded were welcomed and treated on board.
a hospital ship to care for the war wounded. Jennie became chairman of the U.S. Hospital Ship Fund and worked enthusiastically to raise what she recalled in her memoirs was $150,000 (nearly $4 million in today’s money). An American millionaire, Bernard Nadel Baker, founder of the Atlantic Transport Company in Baltimore, provided one of his transport vessels, the Maine, which required a complete refit. Jennie organised a huge fund-raising event at Claridge’s Hotel in London and decided to travel on the ship to Cape Town as both her sons were serving in South Africa. The fund-raising was marred by the devastating news that Jennie’s son Winston had been captured by the Boers. He eventually escaped unscathed, but while he remained in captivity it was a harrowing time for Lady Randolph, as she was still known. The launch ceremony of the hospital ship Maine was conducted by HRH the Duke of Connaught, a younger brother of the Prince of Wales. Flying the flags of the United States, Great Britain, the Red Cross, and the Admiralty’s transport fleet, Maine left Portsmouth Harbour on Saturday 23 December 1899. She was equipped with an isolation ward, an operating theatre and an X-ray machine—an innovation at that time. At sea, there was conflict between the American and British staff, and Jennie acted as peacemaker. Her 46th birthday passed unnoticed and on January 23,
Maine arrived in Cape Town. The war-readied harbour was full of ships disembarking troops, and the streets filled with soldiers. Deployment of the Maine was the responsibility of the Chief Medical Officer for Cape Town, who wanted to send the ship to Durban to take on wounded for immediate return to England. Jennie opposed this, and got her way. Her younger son Jack arrived in uniform, wearing a large sombrero hat which gave him rather the appearance of a cowboy. It gave Jennie peace of mind when his brother Winston arrived, and the three Churchills were reunited for two days. With the Battle of Spion Kop underway, the ship would soon be filled to capacity. Winston and Jack left to join their regiments and Jennie and her staff took charge of the wounded, who were arriving in wagons. She wore a nurse’s uniform of her own design, a starched white apron, white blouse and an armband with a red cross. When the ambulance train arrived on February 5th, Jennie and Miss Hibbard and the nursing staff were ready to care for the first sixty-seven casualties. There were twelve stretcher cases, but the rest were walking. The Central News of Durban reported that: “Lady Randolph personally superintended their reception, directed berthing, and flitted among the injured as ‘an angel of mercy.’” To Jennie’s distress, Jack was wounded and became the first officer casualty received on board, on 13 >>
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REMEMBERING JENNIE... February, just nine days after his twentieth birthday. Winston later explained that while on reconnaissance on horseback, Jack had been shot in the calf: a near thing, since the bullet passed close to his head. Winston wrote his mother that the field doctors had told him Jack’s wound would take a month to heal. Jack wrote to his Aunt Clara Frewen on 27 March: Thank goodness it had turned out to be nothing, but it hurt a good deal at the time. I mounted again as the squadron continued to retire, but after going about a mile, Winston made me get into an ambulance; and so my military career ended rather abruptly. It was very hard luck being hit the first time I was under fire. But I saw a very good day, and while it lasted, I heard as many bullets whiz past as I ever want to. I went straight onto the Maine, and there I remained until she sailed for the Cape.
Jack’s bullet is on display at the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum in London. The Maine was soon filled with wounded soldiers, and Jennie and her team worked day and night. Her personal role was largely administrative. British and Boer casualties, arriving in tattered uniforms covered in dirt, were treated equally. Twenty operations were performed and there were three deaths, one each from typhoid, aneurysm and tuberculosis. The nurses cleaned and dressed the wounds, administering morphine as a painkiller. Surgeons removed bullets under ether anaesthesia. Winston wrote in a press report: “During the two months the ship has been at Durban, more than 300 cases have been treated, and many difficult operations have been performed successfully.”
Jennie had for many years been a close confidant of the Prince of Wales, who wrote in February to congratulate her for her courageous work. Jennie replied: “I am satisfied with the Mission the Maine has fulfilled—& if I may say so my connection with it. It has been hard work & sometimes the temptation has been great to fly off in a mail steamer for home—but I am glad I resisted.” The Maine sailed for England with its cargo of casualties and arrived back in Southampton on 23 April, carrying twelve wounded officers and over 350 wounded men. The press reported that Jennie looked lovely in a blue serge dress and a sailor’s straw hat with a blue ribbon. From the flag-bedecked quay, the patients were taken by special train to the hospital at Netley.
H
aving once boasted that she would live to be 90, Jennie died aged only 67, on 9 June 1921, after a fall at “Mells Manor,” the home of her friend Frances, Lady Horner. Winston was at her side. On July 1st he wrote to a friend in what may serve as her valedictory: I wish you could have seen her as she lay at rest—after all the sunshine and storm of life was over. Very beautiful and splendid she looked. Since the morning with its pangs, thirty years had fallen from her brow. She recalled to me the countenance I had admired as a child when she was in her heyday and the old brilliant world of the eighties and nineties seemed to come back.* ,
*Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume IV, Part 3, Documents April 1921 – November 1922 (London: Heinemann, 1977), 1532.
BELOW LEFT: Maine personnel and nursing staff. Seated, left to right: Mary Eugenie Hibbard, in charge of the nurses; Sister Ruth (Miss Manly); Lady Randolph Churchill; Eleanor Warrender; Sister Sarah (Miss McVean). Standing, left to right: Dr. Weber; Sister Virginia (Miss Ludekins); Colonel H.F. Hensman, officer in command; Maine Captain Stone; Dr. Dodge; Sister Margaret (Miss McPherson). When they argued, Lady Randolph acted as an Anglo-American intermediary; yet when she needed to get her way, she got it. BELOW RIGHT: Her bed, behind a curtain in a small corner of her cabin.
FINEST HOUR 146 / 24
RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMAS Send your questions to the editor
On Turtles and Turtle Soup
Q
I've often heard it said that Churchill enjoyed turtle soup and turtle meat. Is there any evidence of this? Did Churchill in any of his writings ever mention this, or did any contemporaries refer to his supposed liking of it?
A
Churchill was fond of turtle asoup, and probably picked up the taste as First Lord of the Admiralty during the Great War. According to several sources, when the Royal Navy was watching Napoleon in exile at St. Helena, nearby Ascension Island was replete with turtles, and British warships returning home would bring turtles with them. Though the custom had lapsed by 1940, Churchill was keen to revive it. In his account of the Atlantic Charter meeting with Roosevelt (Atlantic Meeting), H.V. Morton wrote that Churchill, wanted to serve turtle soup to the President. Miraculously, his naval aide, Commander Thompson, found bottles of turtle soup in a Piccadilly shop and, finding that neither coupons nor ration books were required, bought the lot and took it in triumph back No. 10. In describing Churchll’s December 1944 flight to Greece in the Official Biography, Volume VII, Sir Martin Gilbert quotes Pierson Dixon, from the Foreign Office, who recalled a dinner of “turtle soup, ham sandwiches and whisky.” Jack Fishman, in My Darling Clementine, described a dinner for WSC on 31 October 1950, where 275 Conservative politicians celebrated the 50th anniversary of WSC’s election to Parliament: “Each course traced his Parliamentary life....Sherries, turtle soup, and appetizers were named after two of his constituencies.” (Could one have been “Turtle Soup Manchester North West”?)
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Finally, there’s this: In selecting dinner menus for the Churchill Conference at Williamsburg, Virginia in 1988, we learned that WSC, during his visit in 1946, had requested not turtle soup but turtle itself—specifically Maryland Diamondback Terrapin.
Colonial Williamsburg’s archivist showed us a letter so extraordinary that our then-executive director, Parker Lee, kept a copy, which he has now forwarded to us. It is necessary to edit from the following excerpt a word that is banned from civilized speech, but since the writer was a southerner, readers may perhaps guess. From: John N. Mackall, VicePresident, Davison Chemical Corp., Baltimore. To: John D. Green, General Manager, Williamsburg Restoration Inc., 11 March 1946 (excerpt).... “Dear Mr. Green: “Charlie Gillet called me to say that you were having a dinner for Mr. Churchill, and that he had expressed a desire to have Maryland Diamondback Terrapin. He and I both agreed that the world’s first citizen should have the world’s first food if available, and that it could easily be made available. “Perhaps you do not know too much of the Maryland Diamondback Terrapin. The same Diamondback appears in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida. The North Carolina Diamondbacks, called ‘sliders,’ are only fit to feed to [deleted], and the Georgia and Florida Diamondbacks are only fit to feed to pigs. The difference is in the food they eat. “The Maryland Diamondback, in its initial stages, lives exclusively on a diet of little soft shell crabs. They ought to be good…but commerce entered into it and began to raise them in captivity, and later from eggs, so that their exclusive diet was crab shells and dead crabs. Of course the worst Maryland Diamondbacks are better than the North Carolina or Georgia or Florida Diamondbacks, but they are still not first class. “There are relatively few people in Maryland who, in the raw state, know the difference between FINEST HOUR 146 / 25
a wild Diamondback freshly caught, one fed in captivity, or one raised from eggs. Charlie Gillet and I know the difference, so when Mr. Churchill wanted terrapin we were confronted with finding wild Diamondback that had never in their lives eaten anything but little soft shell crabs. We know most of the people who have them, and it was a simple matter to have enough sent up. “I had heard that when Mr. Churchill visited Maryland for a couple of weeks when he was studying the battlefields of the Civil War, he had eaten Maryland Diamondback Terrapin, and that he would be satisfied with none but the best. Indeed any man who can drink warm Vermouth before breakfast, as I hear Mr. Churchill does, ought to have something to compensate for it. Maryland Diamond Back seemed to be just what he needed, and it was a pleasure to get it for him and for you.”
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Editor’s Note: The Diamondback (Malaclemys terrapin) is native to coastal swamps of eastern and southern United States, ranging from Cape Sable, Florida to Massachusetts. After World War II it was hunted almost to extinction, and although not on the U.S. Endangered Species List it is considered threatened or endangered by the states of Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia. It is the state reptile of Maryland and mascot of the University of Maryland. On the Admiralty yacht Enchantress during his first sojourn as First Lord (1911-15), Churchill, an animal lover, once took pity on turtles being held for soup and ordered their release. It seems likely that he would refrain from dining on terrapin today! ,
Churchill on the Prairie:
The Short, Sweet Life of Winston Churchill College, Pontiac, Illinois PHILIP AND SUSAN LARSON
“F
ire sirens, factory whistles and church bells would sound to kick off the Pontiac Chamber of Commerce business fund drive for Winston Churchill College.” Sounding your car horn was also recommended. The name Winston Churchill had found a home on the broad prairies he had admired during his American visits: central Illinois’ agrarian Livingston County, population only 10,000. In 1966, its citizens founded the only college ever named for Churchill in the United States. This unlikely event makes an inspiring story.1
Rural Enterprise Not content with the good life in a flourishing area, community leaders perceived an education gap. Although several schools were located in the general proximity, too many students, they believed, were falling between the cracks or needed a second chance. Either there was not room in existing colleges, or their potential was diminished. The solution was to found a private co-ed junior college which would more fully nurture the individual and maximize his life potential.
Once the decision was made to found a college, the community closed ranks to make it happen in the only way they knew: independent action without government aid. The project was an example of the can-do independence and spirit of rural America. As Oscar Brissenden, retired executive with the state Farm Bureau and a college founder stated, “We talked about walking under our own power, owning our own soul, paying our own way.…”2 During the campaign for donations he liked to say: “Don’t give until it hurts, give until it feels good.” The Winston Churchill College (WCC) project blended leaders with a mix of fine talent in education, business and the professions. Betty Lower was a Fulbright Scholar who with her husband William taught at Pontiac High School. Other principals included Mrs. Ray Westall; Mrs. Lucile Goodrich; administrators and educators of the Max Myers School; local businessmen Frank Leyman and Duane Haas; bank president Myron Heins; dentist Russell Morris; Illinois State University President Robert Bone; and three lawyers: August Fellheimer, Sam Smith and Tom Ewing, now a retired Congressman.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mr. & Mrs. Larson head the Churchill Centre Chicagoland chapter and chaired the 2006 International Churchill Conference. They wish to thank former U.S. Representative Tom Ewing, a prime mover in the founding and naming of Winston Churchill College in 1966 and a tireless provider of contacts and interviews for this article.
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As the local paper stated, “the founding of the college with their own money and effort—in the ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ tradition—has brought Livingston Countians… into close harmony and cooperation.”3 Why name the college for a far-off citizen of another country? Because Churchill was considered “the outstanding world statesman of our time.” Its founders hoped that “the college will perpetuate his philosophy of individual freedom and his ideals of courage and responsibility.”4
percent.6 About 1500 individuals or businesses contributed, no donation higher than $6000. The “farmers gave 100 to 1000 bushels of corn or soybeans.”7 Caught up in the spirit, local amateurs presented a play that netted $700. It was a community effort: even local youngsters put on a play in a garage, raising $7.26.8 The college physical plant occupied a vacated 1894 high school. With substantial renovation, ample space was made ready for the opening on 25 September 1966. The
ABOVE: Pontiac is in rural illinois 100 miles southwest of Chicago, on the fabled Route U.S. 66, also known as the “Will Rogers Road” and the “Main Street of America,” which ran between Chicago and Los Angeles. Removed from the U.S. highways system in 1985, portions of it have since had a local resurgence through state markers. OPPOSITE: The old main building of Winston Churchill College was a former high school, built in 1894. Sold for the land, it was demolished and razed in 1971.
It was Tom Ewing who suggested Churchill’s name, which was preferred over the first governor of the Northwest Territory. The athletic teams were appropriately christened the Bulldogs, to capture the tenacious spirit of the wartime Churchill.5
Plan and Execution The idea of founding a college from scratch was especially daunting. Such a venture needed expertise and money to move off the dream stage into reality. It began in mid1964 with Dr. Raymond Dooley, president of nearby Lincoln College, exploring the idea of a private junior college in the area. Local folk took charge, creating a board of regents, which generated wide community support. Questions needed to be answered such as fund raising, physical plant, administration, faculty, student enrollment and marketing. With Churchillian spirit, the citizens charged ahead. The fund-raising campaign blossomed, raising $150,000. Miraculously, fund-raisers Brissenden and Leyman kept the administration expenses to under one
community was a wonderful source for contributions of time and materials. The college president’s walnut desk was provided by a local editor and a special appeal brought in thousands of books. Tom Ewing put out a call for five matching chandeliers for the main entrance.9 Recruiting for administration and faculty came mostly from the area. Dr. Andreas Paloumpis, an Illinois State University professor, was named Winston Churchill College’s first president. Three deans were added who doubled up to teach, along with ten other teachers. Now on the fast track, student enrollment started in February 1966 and grew to 184 at the opening. Particularly helpful was a June Articulation conference, allowing transfer of credits to four-year colleges.10 Marketing was aided by the name of Winston Churchill, which strongly resonated with a public fully aware of the great man’s achievements, made even more intense by his recent passing. Word was spread with ads and brochures bearing such slogans as “One college concerned with one student at a time” and “Many a door is closed to thousands! But [not ours].”11 >>
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EARLY SUCCESSES: Promotional material for the mid-Sixties fund-raising campaign, admissions policy flyer, program for the first Commencement, and the first edition of the Winston Churchill College Yearbook, The Squire, 1966-67.
WINSTON CHURCHILL COLLEGE... As part of the marketing strategy, the college created a Churchill Room inside the main entrance: “the first institution with archives devoted exclusively to Churchill memorabilia” in the United States. Many key individuals were solicited for historic contributions. Clementine Churchill wrote, “I feel honoured that the city of Pontiac should wish to remember my husband…”12 U.S. Representative Leslie Arends contacted former President Dwight Eisenhower, who contributed a moving 1951 Churchill signed letter: “My dear Ike…with all my heart, believe me your comrade and friend.”13 Senator Adlai Stevenson III donated the original speech his father gave at the Churchill memorial service in Washington, D.C. in 1965. Joyce Hall of Hallmark Cards sent a folio of Churchill prints. Philatelic contributions took on a special significance when Jennifer Toombs, the British artist who designed the British Commonwealth Churchill “omnibus” commemoratives, sent over some of her original art.14 A magnificent Churchill bust by the sculptor Robert Merrell Gage was placed on a plinth inside the main entrance.
Five Happy Years In just two years the Pontiac community had accomplished a major undertaking. The official dedication and installation of the first president started with an academic processional accompanied by the Pontiac High School band. A color guard led seventy-three official delegates from their respective schools, headed by Harvard as the oldest. British Consul-General Douglas Robey offered greetings.15 A vital part of Winston Churchill College was the 500-member Guild, whose activities included fund-raising, clerical assistance, library support and student aid. Their 160-page WCC Cook Book began with a jubilant introduction “…someone dared to ‘dream the impossible dream’...but the doubters didn’t reckon on the people who make up Livingston County!” The shop the Guild created is still in business.
Extracurricular programs were ambitious and productive. The mixed chorus, under Betty Lower, grew to over a third of the college population. The Churchill College Players provided an exciting dramatic program directed by William Lower. Their ambitious schedule included productions of Mr. Roberts, Inherit the Wind, Brigadoon and Oklahoma.16 Sports focused on basketball and golf. The “Bulldog” basketball team finished 10-12 in the first year, but were 14-7 by the fourth.17
End of the Dream Alas, Winston Churchill College wasn’t destined to survive. As the yearbook noted in 1969: “The burgeoning state junior college system has caused considerable decline in all private college and university enrollments.”18 Also, WCC accreditation was conditioned on certain advanced degrees being required after five years, which involved large additional expenses. And—crucially—no endowment had been built up. Enrollment had risen to 255, but the final downward spiral saw attendance falling drastically and finances with it. With Churchillian spirit, the board tried to fight back, “contacting practically all the individuals of the county and surrounding area,” but to little avail.19 Oscar Brissenden recalled the sale of assets in 1971: The auctioneer was “wearing a straw hat and drawling like Johnny Cash. But it was like a funeral for me, and when they got to the forty-four choir robes yesterday I couldn’t take it any more and had to leave.”20 The Board settled the college’s debts and the doors closed forever. No public funds were ever needed. Sadly, the grand old 1894 building had outlived any useful purpose and needed significant structural repairs, and the local public schools were already operational. Pontiac’s McCoy Construction purchased the building and land. The decision was made to auction whatever there was to sell of the building features: molding, bricks, light fixtures. Once the building was dismantled, it was razed. The dormitory
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building, purpose-built for Churchill College in the mid1960s, was converted to apartments and survives today. Despite the sudden end, there were defining moments to remember. Winston Churchill College had provided education for 800 students, mostly from the area. There were fond memories of activities like “Spring Fever Day,” with student games like tug-of-war, kite flying and raft competition. The College had changed many people’s lives at an early and pivotal age. One student felt it was the turning point in his life. Another admits having had no direction before entering Winston Churchill College; he recently received an Illinois House commendation at retirement after thirty-one years of law enforcement. At the last commencement, Bill Lower reflected, “the students had diplomas, faculty had jobs, and citizens had memories.” The community should never forget “Victories are not in the consummation, but in the quest.” Winston Churchill College had come to an honorable conclusion. As its namesake said, paraphrasing Samuel Johnson: “...courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.”21 The short, sweet life of Winston Churchill College demonstrated many of the great man’s ideals. “Blood, toil, tears and sweat” on the prairies of Illinois forged a better life for students who might otherwise have missed a priceless opportunity to prove themselves. The honor of the day was won by a hardworking community. Winston Churchill College was the proof of their fortitude. ,
Endnotes 1. Pontiac Daily Leader, 31 July 1970. 2. Chicago Tribune, 25 September 1966. 3. Pantagraph, Bloomington, Illinois, 23 January 1966. 4. Chicago Tribune, 25 September 1966. 5. Pontiac Daily Leader, 25 August 1966. 6. Chicago Tribune, 26 June 1966. 7. Chicago Tribune, 25 September 1966. 8. Chicago Tribune, 26 June 1966. 9. Pantagraph, 23 January 1966. 10. The Squire, the WCC Yearbook, 1966-67. 11. WCC brochures. 12. Clementine Churchill to WCC, 6 January 1966. 13. Chicago Tribune, 25 September 1966. 14. Pontiac Daily Leader, 20 April 1966. 15. Pontiac Daily Leader, 3 November 1966. 16. The Squire, 1968-69. 17. The Squire, 1966-67. 18. Pantagraph, 1 May 1971. 19. Pontiac Daily Leader, 23 July 1970. 20. Chicago Tribune, 26 July 1971. 21. Winston S. Churchill, “Alfonso the Unlucky,” Strand Magazine, July 1931; reprinted in Great Contemporaries (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1937), 137. Richard M. Langworth, ed., Churchill By Himself (London: Ebury Press, 2008), 14.
BELOW: The authors; Robert Merrell Gage’s bust which stood inside the main entrance; former Fulbright scholar Betty Lower, who led the WCC Chorus; and former U.S. Representative Tom Ewing,who proposed the school’s name. RIGHT: WCC’s highly appropriate sports emblem.
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125-100-75-50 YEARS AGO
125 years ago Spring 1885 • Age 10 “Gladstone is a brute”
by Michael McMenamin
W
inston was enjoying his new school and was no longer at the bottom of his class, but neither was he at the top. The best showing he could make was fourth out of ten in English, Classics and French. In Conduct, he continued dead last among the twenty-nine pupils. In April, he wrote to his father describing the enthusiasm about Lord Randolph’s prospects for becoming Prime Minister: “I have been out riding with a gentleman who thinks that Gladstone is a brute and thinks that ‘the one with the curly moustache ought to be Premier.’ The driver of the Electric Railway said ‘that Lord R. Churchill would be Prime Minister.’” Churchill asked his father “to sign your name in full at the end of your letter” because “everybody wants your autograph.” Winston did not disclose that he was selling his father’s autographs to his classmates! He apparently didn’t tell his mother either, for he was looking to expand his product line. He wrote her in May that his father had sent a half dozen autographs which he was distributing. “Everybody wanted one,” he wrote, adding: “I should like you to send me a few of yours too.” 100 Years Ago Spring 1910 • Age 35 “Winston thinks with his mouth”
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s the new Home Secretary, Churchill had responsibility over a wide variety of subjects. In the official biography, Randolph Churchill listed strikes, prison reform, women’s suffrage, accidents in mines, the “Siege of Sidney Street,” the Shops Act and Early Closing Bill, the Aliens Bill and a letter to the King on House of Commons activity. Churchill had frequently been the target of suffragettes disrupting his campaign speeches in the recent election, and was nearly pushed in front of an oncoming train during one such disturbance. Yet he believed in women’s suffrage “in principle.” He had written in April to the Secretary of a non-party
Conciliation Committee headed by Lord Lytton (husband of his first love, the former Pamela Plowden): “I am...anxious to see women relieved in principle from a disability which is injurious to them whilst it is based on grounds of sex.” The main political battle was over the veto power of the House of Lords over bills passed by the Commons. The Liberal Party, having campaigned on the theme of “The Peers versus the People,” had seen their majority whittled to only two votes over the Tories. But Churchill continued to advocate privately to Prime Minister Asquith that “The time has come for the total abolition of the House of Lords.” Asquith did not take Churchill’s advice and had once written to an acquaintance that “Winston thinks with his mouth.” Instead, in March, he proposed three reforms: end the Lords’ power to award or reject a “money bill” (including the government’s budget, the Lords veto of which had led to the January, 1910 election); limiting the Lords’ power to reject other legislation to two years (this was used to pass an Irish Home Rule Bill several years later); and reducing the maximum life of a Parliament from seven years to five. Speaking in favor of Asquith’s proposals on 31 March, WSC said: It is not merely a question of regularizing the financial situation. It is more than that, because there is a great series of democratic taxes which constitute the policy of the Budget; and they form not
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merely the barrier which we erect against a Protectionist system, but they are the actual gage of battle with the House of Lords….I always hesitate to embark upon the domain of prophecy, but I frankly say that I believe at the proper time, in the proper manner, and under proper circumstances we shall succeed in carrying both the Veto and the Budget to the steps of the Throne. Churchill’s “prophecy” proved correct. The Budget was passed by the Commons on 27 April by a vote of 324-231, and the Lords gave their assent a few hours later. Seventy-Five Years Ago Spring 1935 • Age 60 “I long to be folded in your arms”
M
artin Gilbert’s official biography recounts the conclusion of Clementine’s six-month voyage to the South Seas, in the company of Terence Philip, a 42-year-old bachelor. Churchill wrote to her on 13 April that “On the whole since you have been away, the only great thing that has happened has been that Germany is now the greatest armed power in Europe…Rothermere [the anti-appeasement press lord] rings me up every day; His anxiety is pitiful. He thinks the Germans are all powerful and that the French are corrupt and useless, and the English hopeless and doomed. He proposes to meet this situation by groveling to Germany. I endeavour to inculcate a more robust attitude.”
He added: “You will find me waiting for you at Dover pier….I think a lot about you my darling Pussie…and rejoice that we have lived our lives together; and have still some years of expectation in this pleasant vale. I have been sometimes a little depressed about politics and would have liked to be comforted by you….I have not grudged you yr long excursion; but now I do want you back.” A week later, upon reaching Suez, Clemmie responded: “Oh my Darling Winston. The Air Mail is just flitting & I send you this like John the Baptist to prepare the way before me, to tell you I love you & that I long to be folded your arms.” The next day, Churchill drafted a long memorandum on Germany’s increasing air superiority, which he said contributed to Hitler’s “confident attitude.” The Luftwaffe, he wrote, was regarded by Germans as the instrument by which Germany will regain dominance in Europe….The conclusions which cannot be avoided are that the Government have allowed themselves to be mistaken in their estimate of British and German strength at particular dates; and that the statements made by Ministers in Parliament are wrong, are admitted to be wrong, and will be proved still more grievously wrong with every month that passes. The German superiority, already large, will now grow upon all counts with progressive speed, to an extent determinable only by the decisions of the German Government.” Churchill sent copies of his note to Prime Minister MacDonald, Tory leader Stanley Baldwin, and Air Minister Lord Londonderry. They fell on unfertile ground. In early May came an indirect exchange of views between Hitler and Churchill via Lord Rothermere. Urging an Anglo-German “understanding,” much as he had done in his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote: All the so-called mutual-assistance pacts which are being hatched today will subserve
discord rather than peace. An Anglo-German understanding would form in Europe a force for peace and reason of 120 million people of the highest type. The historically unique colonial ability and sea-power of England would be united to one of the greatest soldierraces of the world. Were this understanding extended by the joining-up of the American nation, then it would, indeed, be hard to see who in the world could disturb peace without willfully and consciously neglecting the interests of the White race. Despite the blandishments and temptation, Churchill saw the implications of Hitler’s offer, writing to Rothermere: If his proposal means that we should come to an understanding with Germany to dominate Europe, I think this would be contrary to the whole of our history. You know the old fable of the jackal who went hunting with the tiger and what happened after the hunt was over. Thus Elizabeth resisted Philip II of Spain. Thus William III and Marlborough resisted Louis XIV. Thus Pitt resisted Napoleon, and thus we all resisted William II of Germany. Only by taking this path and effort have we preserved ourselves and our liberties and reached our present position. I see no reason myself to change from this traditional view. However, I think a reasonable answer to Hitler would be that his plans of an Anglo-German understanding would be most agreeable provided they included France and gave fair consideration to Italy. Perhaps you will consider this. In the defense debate on 22 May, Stanley Baldwin admitted that in his speech six months earlier on German and British air strength, he had been “completely wrong.” Churchill suggested a secret session, as in 1917, to discuss defense issues “without our conversation being
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heard by all Europe.” Baldwin did not respond. Fifty Years Ago Spring 1960 • Age 85 “The greatest living human being”
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hurchill brought twenty-three books with him on his cruise in the West Indies aboard Onassis’s yacht Christina. Among then were Graham Greene’s A Gun for Sale and Jack London’s Call of the Wild, the latter recalling a youthful Churchill’s attraction to the adventure novels of H. Rider Haggard. When Churchill arrived at the island of Martinique, he met author Herman Wouk, who later was to write The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. In his diary, Wouk wrote that “I saw the greatest living human being of our time, a man who will stand with Caesar and Napoleon when the years have rolled away.” In May, Churchill agreed to his son Randolph’s request to be named his official biographer. While the relationship between father and son had been tumultuous, WSC was convinced of Randolph’s ability through his recent biography of Lord Derby. His only stipulation was that nothing be published until ten years after his death. Randolph wrote his father: Your letter has made me proud and happy. Since I first read your life of your father, thirtyfive years ago when I was a boy of fourteen at Eton, it has always been my greatest ambition to write your life. And each year that has passed since this ambition first started in my mind, has nurtured it as your heroic career has burgeoned. When the time comes, you may be sure that I shall lay all else aside and devote my declining years exclusively to what will be a pious, fascinating and I suppose, a remunerative task. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart for a decision which, apart from what I have already said, adds a good deal to my self-esteem and will, I trust, enable to me to do honour in filial fashion, to your extraordinarily noble and wonderful life. ,
Memories of the Yalta Conference
Livadia Revisited DAVID DRUCKMAN
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rom Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, our bus meandered the shores of the Black Sea for 100 miles, passing battlefields of the 1855 Crimean War, including the famous Balaklava. On the left were churches, stretching along the high cliffs. On the right were dachas, sanatoriums and palaces, including Vorontzov Palace, where Churchill stayed during those fateful days of the Yalta Conference with Stalin and Roosevelt on 4-11 February 1945. The Vorontzov is a large villa built between 1828 and 1846, designed by the English architect Edward Blorean for the Prince Vorontsov, the Czar’s ambassador to Britain. The entire Crimean area had been evacuated by the Germans
just eleven months earlier.1 Churchill’s villa was twenty minutes from Livadia, not the five minutes he mentions in his war memoirs.2 Beyond the buildings on the right of the highway is the beautiful warm, sunlit and blue Black Sea. Very unlike its appearance in 1945, today’s Yalta is a seaside resort where in summer the population jumps from 80,000 to 1,200,000. We chugged up a twisty road to reach Livadia, 3 km. above Yalta. The Palace is smaller than I anticipated, its two floors containing only seventeen rooms, not counting the czar’s church nearby. Four rooms on the first floor were used for the conference. The rest are refurnished with belongings of the Romanov dynasty, and are of historical interest themselves.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mr. Druckman and his wife Arlyne, of Tucson and Chicago, travel the world in search of Churchill. His previous articles appeared in FH 47 (South Africa), FH 90 (Gallipoli), FH 129 (Lady Randolph’s birthplace, Brooklyn) and FH 132 (Schloss Cecilienhof, Potsdam).
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TOP: The Livadia the Czar knew was extensively altered after 1918. ABOVE: The Romanovs, murdered by the Soviets on 17 July 1918. From left, Grand Duchesses Olga and Maria, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Anastasia, Czarevich Alexei, Grand Duchess Tatiana. Remains found separately from the rest were identified in 2008 by forensic scientists as those of Maria and Alexei (circled). There is no truth to stories that Anastasia survived, although the separate remains may have been hers rather than the similarly-sized Maria’s. At right, Nicholas II must have looked out upon the surrounding hills from this vantage point. BELOW: The “White Palace” from the air, Yalta’s splendid location on the Crimean Peninsula (now in Ukraine), and Vorontsov Palace, Churchill’s residence during the Yalta conference, overlooking the Black Sea, twenty minutes from Livadia.
‘ Livadia was built in 1910 and 1911 in Italian Renaissance style as a summer palace for the Czar, but he used it only four times before World War I arrived and ended his reign. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the “White Palace” was converted to a sanatorium; but when President Nixon visited the USSR in 1974, it was restored to its former glory and opened finally to visitors. Presumably the Russians cleaned it up for the 1945 conference, although they hadn’t much time after the Germans left the year before.
The Black Sea can easily been seen across the carefully groomed gardens. If one wishes, one can climb down to the sea from the Palace. Today, only 30 meters from the building were a dozen tables with souvenirs and clothing— free enterprise has come to Ukraine. And Livadia has gone digital: there’s an internet chatroom, and excellent pictures are available on its website.3 Before our visit, we had made arrangements with a local guide to present an illustrated edition of Churchill’s The World Crisis to a palace executive. Soon after our >>
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ABOVE: Lynn Druckman, left, presents a Scribner illustrated edition of The World Crisis to Prokopova Ludmila, center. BELOW: The author, right, with Ukrainian guides in the Churchill Library, usually closed to the public, which was kindly opened for our visit.
ABOVE: The Italian Courtyard, location of the Big Three press photos (page 22) and movie sets. BELOW: One of many gardens outside of palace with view of deep sapphire-colored Black Sea.
LIVADIA REVISITED... arrival we were met by Prokopova Ludmila, Manager of Scientific Department of the Romanov Dynasty, and her staff. Our tour guide translated as my wife made the presentation on behalf of ourselves and The Churchill Centre. Thirty people on the tour crowded around, and the expression on Ms. Ludmila’s face conveyed her pleasure. Indeed she was so touched that she unexpectedly opened the 300-square-foot Churchill Library for all of us. Usually restricted to researchers, it is lined with bookcases. I recognized many of the volumes, not only by WSC but by members of his family including Mary Soames, Winston Churchill and Celia Sandys. On the right as we entered the vestibule is the largest room in the palace, the 700 square foot White Hall Meeting Room. Here the Big Three met daily around a cramped round table, three meters in diameter, now exhibited in the vestibule. Of the seventeen wooden chairs, three had leather seats and backs, supposedly for Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. Nearby is the Czar’s English Billiard Room, where the Yalta documents were signed. The State Reception Room was Roosevelt’s study, and talks on the Far East were held here. A famous photo of the Big Three is also on display. Outside, near the entrance, is the Italian Courtyard, which has been pictured in several films: The Manger, Anna Karenina, The Gadfly and a film production of Othello. We expressed our appreciation to Prokopova Ludmila and her staff for their hospitality, which was warmly reciprocated, and to our local guide who made the arrangements. They were proud to show us what they have created here, to recognize Churchill’s contributions to the allied victory. The tour group, mainly comprising older Germans and South Africans, was respectful, quiet and interested. Unlike the Yalta Conference itself, which resulted in many unfulfilled Soviet promises leading to the onset of the Cold War, this portion of our Ukrainian river cruise, along the Dneiper River and the Black Sea, was a fine success, and we were pleased to have visited the historic site firsthand. ,
Endnotes 1. See http://alupka.russian-women.net and Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, 6 vols., Vol V, Closing the Ring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1951), 246-47. 2. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. VI, Triumph and Tragedy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), 357. 3. See the official website of the Livadia Palace at http://www.galenfrysinger.com/livadia_palace_crimea.htm. FINEST HOUR 146 / 34
ABOVE: The Palace vestibule, the first room after entering palace, now contains the round conference table around which the fate of the postwar world was debated and decided in February, 1945. The leather chair at right is one of three provided for the heads of government: Truman, Stalin and Churchill. BELOW: Plenary sessions were held in the largest room in the Livadia Palace, the White Hall. Here the attendees and their staffs gathered; Roosevelt is on the right side of the center photograph. Today, the White Hall conains display cases with classic photographs of the historic conference.
ABOVE: Display cases in the respective rooms of Roosevelt and Stalin display books and artifacts, including Roosevelt’s teacup, left. Two of Churchil’s late war speech volumes flank his History of the English-Speaking Peoples; at right is Jack Fishman’s quotation book, If I Lived My Life Again. BELOW: Roosevelt’s study; the Conference agreement was signed here.
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CHURCHILLIANA
“These Are a Few of My Favourite Things”
4
DOUGLAS HALL
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ll collectors are asked about their favourite piece of Churchilliana— a difficult question. From a vast assemblage, how can we single out a single winner? I usually reply in the words of Thomas Gray—“A fav’rite has no friend!”—and invite my questioner to follow Kipling’s counsel: “Each to his choice.” A wide assortment is selected, and in most cases I am happy to concur. Here are the six most frequently cited items.
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1. Kirklands 1939 “Back to the Admiralty” character jug. Finely sculpted if rather enigmatic, it was represented as a ship’s figurehead wreathed in bow waves. A coloured vesion was also produced, but the almost classic beauty of the plain white version is always preferred. 2. Wilkinsons 1941 Churchill Toby. Perhaps the voting is influenced by Clarice Cliff’s signature underneath, or by fascination with the theory that the jug was in fact a World War I holdover. But there is always agreement that this is a superb toby jug, arguably the best of the genre. 2
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3. Spode 1965 Churchill Vase. Commissioned by Thomas Goode & Co. Ltd. in an edition of only 125, it is finished in rich crimson embellished with gold and inscribed on the reverse, “He expressed the unconquerable spirit of the nation,” with a long quotation from his most famous wartime speech. A superb memorial, it cost £125 when issued but cannot now be touched for ten times that or more. 4. Paragon China 1974 Centenary Cigar Casket. Lavishly decorated in cobalt blue and gold with the Churchill Coat of Arms, speech quotations and cameos of Blenheim Palace and Chartwell, it has a silhouette of FINEST HOUR 146 / 36
5
Churchill surrounded by his honours inside the lid, and is lined with cedar wood.
5. Keith Lee 1981 Bronze Figure. A foot-tall representation of Churchill in the “Wilderness Years,” issued to tie-in with the Thames TV series starring Robert Hardy as WSC, this was the audience choice at my Churchilliana lecture on the 1996 Churchill Tour. Only 250 were produced. Another example is in the White House art collection. See, they haven’t disposed of all their Churchill bronze! 6. Kevin Francis 1989 “Spirit of Britain” Toby. Designed by Peggy Davies after her retirement from Royal Doulton, where she had been senior modeller for forty years, it is inscribed on the base, Tantum Mirabile Est (So Much is Owed”), It incorportates a copy of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples and the British lion marked Ego fremitum praevui (I provided the roar). Beautifully sculpted and decorated, this toby jug commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. , 6
Books, A rts & Curiosities Hooligan, Carnivore and Rogue Elephant PIERS BRENDON
Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45, by Max Hastings. Harper Press, hardbound, illus., 664 pp., $60. Member price $48. Available from Amazon UK for £15.
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his volume is dedicated to the memory of Roy Jenkins, who invited Max Hastings to help with his 2001 biography of Churchill (reviewed in FH 114). As Hastings recounts in his introduction, Jenkins became so exasperated by his many critical comments that he eventually sent him packing, saying that he should write his own book. This dramatic portrait of Churchill’s war leadership is the result and, ironically, it is vastly superior to Jenkins’s overrated work. That was little more than a digest of Sir Martin Gilbert’s gigantic official Life and it depicted Churchill as a bland, winebibbing Whig, much like Jenkins
____________________________________ Piers Brendon is a Fellow at Churchill College Cambridge and was Keeper of the Churchill Archives Centre.
himself. Hastings presents him more convincingly as a ruthless, brandygulping Tory with the fire and the guts to beat Hitler. It is true that Jenkins was on automatic pilot by the time he came to create his own image of Sir Winston: his writing was flaccid; he never set foot in the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, a treasure trove of unpublished material; and he failed to appreciate the worth of Churchill as hooligan, carnivore and rogue elephant. By contrast, Hastings’s efficient soldierly prose marches along at a brisk pace and carries the reader with it. He has drawn on copious original sources and consulted experts familiar with them, enabling him to cast fresh light on familiar episodes. And the burden of his story is that Churchill, with all his rash impulses and wild judgements, embodied a war spirit too often lacking in his countrymen. Churchill’s first and crucial triumph was to keep Britain in the war as France collapsed under the German Blitzkrieg in the spring of 1940. Weighing up the odds, cabinet ministers such as Lord Halifax favoured a negotiated peace with Hitler. Hastings rightly says that Churchill discussed the proposal (something not recorded in his war memoirs) because the old appeasers might have ousted him if he had seemed “irrationally intransigent.” But there is no escaping Churchill’s fierce determination to fight. He got rid of Halifax as soon as possible and rejected any deal to let the Third Reich engage in single, mutually destructive combat with the Soviet FINEST HOUR 146 / 37
Churchill Centre Book Club Managed for the Centre by Chartwell Booksellers (www.churchillbooks.com), which offers member discounts up to 25%. To order please contact Chartwell Booksellers, 55 East 52nd Street, New York, NY 10055. Email info@chartwellbooksellers.com Telephone (212) 308-0643 Facsimile (212) 838-7423
Union. Some historians assert that he could thus have saved the British Empire. Hastings responds unanswerably that a bargain with Hitler would have been not only a blunder but a crime. In what was his own as well as his country’s finest hour, Churchill’s achievement was to inspire the nation and to animate its armed forces with his own will to win. He managed the first, of course, by “mobilising the English language and sending it into battle.” The second was more difficult, despite the Luftwaffe’s failure in the Battle of Britain and Wavell’s successes against the Italians in Africa at the end of the year. This was because, as the chaotic evacuations from Dunkirk and Brittany showed, the British army was no match for the Wehrmacht, or, later, for Japanese troops. Hastings reveals in humiliating detail the shortcomings of bone-headed brass hats with memories of the Somme, and Tommies whose training was as bad as their equipment. And he shows how Churchill, for all his energy, imagination and pugnacity, was seldom able to distil victory from Britain’s “torpid military culture.” Being human, Churchill’s own record was far from being perfect. Hastings compiles a remorseless (though not exhaustive) catalogue of his errors, which were usually those of a subaltern of hussars impatient to make the enemy bleed and burn. Churchill dissipated Allied strength in the Mediterranean by supporting Greece in 1941 and later by engaging in a futile struggle for the Dodecanese. He had a compulsion to capture irrelevant islands, from Pantelleria to Sumatra, and to mount amphibious operations, such as the disastrous 1942
Dieppe Raid. Luckily his scheme for landings in northern Norway was aborted—General Ismay feared an “Arctic Gallipoli.” Churchill encouraged cloak-anddagger operations to set occupied Europe ablaze, though they were usually damp squibs which provoked ferocious Nazi reprisals. He clung to the costly Italian strategy and dithered over the Normandy invasion. Despite his humane instincts, he connived at what Hastings calls “the undoubted excesses of the bomber offensive.” Moreover Churchill neglected to plan for a better postwar society, which probably cost him the 1945 election. Confronting present perils, he simply could not look to the future, though he did once wonder if heaven were a constitutional monarchy, “in which case there was always a possibility that the Almighty might have occasion to send for him.” On the other hand, Churchill never made a war-losing mistake. He possessed incomparable strategic vision: almost from the first he forecast that Hitler would “recoil eastwards” and he proposed to “drag” the United States into the conflict. In spite of his antiBolshevik sentiments, he embraced Stalin when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Whether his ardent wooing of Roosevelt would have made America a belligerent if the Japanese had not bombed Pearl Harbor remains doubtful. But Churchill played a vital role in focussing transatlantic attention on defeating Germany first. By delaying D-Day until 1944 he and Roosevelt ensured that the Red Army did most of the fighting. This resulted in the Communist domination of eastern Europe, which WSC could not prevent. Yet he remained one of the “Big Three” even though the British lion was dwarfed by the American buffalo and the Russian bear. Reflecting on the “sustained magnificence” of Churchill’s performance, Hastings concludes that he was “probably the greatest actor upon the stage of affairs whom the world has ever known.” Hyperbole or not, Hastings himself turns in a magnificent performance. Naturally there are niggles. He
spells Freyberg, one of Churchill’s favourite generals, wrongly throughout. He says that Stalin had only three English phrases, which he deployed at Yalta, whereas they were almost certainly designed to conceal some real grasp of the language. Furthermore
Hastings deals perfunctorily with the Empire, which was a mixed blessing for Britain and a major bone of contention between Churchill and Roosevelt. Nevertheless, in a crowded field, this is one of the best books ever written about Winston Churchill. ,
Putting Canards to Rest DAVID FREEMAN
Churchill, by Paul Johnson. Viking, hardbound, 182 pp., $24.95, Amazon $14.58. Member price $20.
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n the last decade, a plethora of wellestablished scholars have produced Churchill biographies. The conservative British historian Paul Johnson joins the ranks with an unabashedly positive interpretation. Although written for the general reader, Johnson does presume some previous acquaintance with the subject, for he aims to set down a very personal assessment of someone he regards highly. Despite getting crossed up on a few minor details (misspelling the name of Emery Reves, calling Brendan Bracken a Canadian; asserting that WSC personally authorized the destruction of Dresden) Johnson has mastered the controversies in Churchill’s life and delivers his judgment on these subjects. The result is a brisk, no-nonsense analysis that readers of Finest Hour should find to be a refreshing change from the lugubrious stream of meretricious alternatives. ____________________________________ Professor Freeman teaches British history at California State University Fullerton.
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At the age of seventeen, Johnson had the good fortune to encounter Churchill and ask him a question: “Sir, to what do you attribute your success in life?” Without hesitation, WSC replied: “Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down, and never sit down when you can lie down.” These personal touches enliven the book. Johnson, for instance, provides his own calculations as to the number of Churchill’s published words including speeches (8-10 million; the real number is 15 million) and the number of times Churchill came under fire (about fifty). He also offers his view that Churchill’s character owed more to the influence of his mother Jennie than his father Randolph. What strikes home, though, are Johnson’s curt dismissals of the many spurious charges laid upon Churchill’s legacy. Churchill was never a warmonger, he writes; nor was he a heavy drinker. He loved the procedure of cigar smoking more than the smoking itself. On more substantial issues, Johnson disputes that Churchill’s decision as Chancellor of the Exchequer to return Britain to the Gold Standard in 1925 was a mistake. On the contrary, Johnson argues, the move forced a switch from old, low-productivity industries to new ones which provided the very technologies such as avionics and radar that enabled victory in the war. On the 1938 Munich Agreement, Johnson not surprisingly backs the “time lost” rather than “time gained” argument, a military benefit to Hitler. At the heart of the book is the Second World War. Here Johnson poses questions: “Did Churchill personally save Britain? Was his leadership essential to its survival and eventual >>
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CHURCHILL BY JOHNSON... victory?” After citing ten reasons to support his argument (see “Blankley on Churchill,” page 8), the conclusion he reaches is a resounding “Yes.” Johnson’s take on the more disputatious of wartime decisions is much the opposite of Hastings (previous review). He testifies, as one who lived through the era, that the strategic bombing campaign was “the most popular of all Churchill’s initiations.” It kept up public morale and did in fact make an important contribution to the destruction of the German war machine. WSC’s diverting British forces from North Africa to Greece in 1941 forced Hitler to postpone the
invasion of the Soviet Union by several crucial weeks. This led to the German failure to take Moscow or Leningrad before winter, dooming Hitler’s campaign. On this point, Johnson decisively refutes the preposterous thesis that Churchill delayed D-Day. Instead, Churchill rightly “insisted that D-day should not take place until overwhelming strength was established and there was a near certitude of success.” Johnson concludes: “Of all the towering figures of the twentieth century, both good and evil, Winston Churchill was the most valuable to humanity, and also the most likeable. It is a joy to write about his life and to read about it.” It is indeed. ,
Churchill’s Wit: A Double-Edged Sword WARREN F. KIMBALL
The Definitive Wit of Winston Churchill, Richard M. Langworth, ed. Public Affairs, 2009. 244 pages, $19.95. Member price $16.
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angworth has done us both a --aservice and a disservice with a single book. This distillation from his collection of quotes, Churchill By Himself, takes the wittiest remarks, reorders them a bit, and offers them as a satisfying “tasting menu.” But (here comes the other shoe), at the same time he has given politicians and speechwriters (often the same creature)
____________________________________ Professor Kimball is editor of the RooseveltChurchill Correspondence and many other works on the two leaders and World War II.
an all too handy handbook. As a result, we are likely to be inundated with a new wave of Churchill quotes. Aha, you say, who better to quote? True, but the pols will still misquote, still misapply, and still miss the reality that Churchill’s wit was routinely a double-edged sword. Witness this: “Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun.” Fit that into policies of many Churchill-quoting national leaders. On using nuclear weapons WSC sarcastically remarked that “the argument is now put forward that we must never use the atomic bomb until, or unless, it has been used against us first. In other words, you must never fire until you have been shot dead.” Think twice before you read that as Churchill advocating preemptive nuclear strikes. The appendix of “red herrings” should be distributed to all pundits and politicians who consistently and for their own purposes attribute to WSC things he never, and frequently never would have, said. “Rum, buggery and the lash” gets an all too decent burial. Some truth in packaging warnings. As with Churchill by Himself, indexing this sort of publication is very difficult, as the editor admits ruefully. The quotations in Definitive Wit FINEST HOUR 146 / 39
are short and punchy, the chapter groupings work quite well. But nothing substitutes for repeatedly sampling the punch-lines and ripostes that come under the rubric “wit.” Which brings another warning. Sampling will tempt readers to try to divine Churchill’s personality and thinking from retorts given in a society that considered verbal “thrusts and parries” a fine art. But so-called high table humor is a game, not a memoir. By definition, these quips lack context, although the editor tries his best with deft though brief notes. His foreword admits to fearing that limiting the book to witticisms will cause some to get WSC wrong: “Langworth says Churchill thought of Russians as ‘baboons’ and Germans as ‘carnivorous sheep.’...In fact, Churchill admired Russians for valor and Germans for ingenuity, among other things.” The scope of the book inevitably caused many witticisms from the editor’s big book to be left out—like the one about Spain’s Franco. WSC: It is fashionable at the present time to dwell on the vices of General Franco, and I am therefore glad to place on record this testimony to the duplicity and ingratitude of his dealing with Hitler and Mussolini. I shall presently record even greater services which these evil qualities in General Franco rendered to the Allied cause.
Of course that’s just what the British, including our boy, did by referring to Hitler as Herr Schicklgruber. The difference is that Langworth put at the end of this quote every one of the man’s names: “Generalissimo Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teodulo Franco Bahamonde, Caudillo of Spain”—a subtle jibe, probably lost on pedants who think the editor was just being a smarty pants. Anyway, this is now my favorite WSC statement. Sorry it didn’t make the Definitive Wit—perhaps Franco’s titles took up too many pages? I intend to take this lovely little book (it will go into paperback soon, so it’s portable) and dig out of it the perfect epigram for every speech I give or chapter I write. ,
A Happy Family TED HUTCHINSON
The Churchills: A Family Portrait, by Celia and John Lee. Palgrave Macmillan, hardbound, illus., 272 pages, $28, Member price $19.
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any books have been written about Winston Churchill’s extended family, but The Churchills has a surprisingly tight focus; it considers only what later generations might call the “nuclear family” of Lord Randolph Churchill, his wife Jennie, and their two sons, Winston and Jack. There is relatively little in the book about the respective influences of the long line of Marlboroughs on Randolph’s side or the American blood of Jennie (per A. L. Rowse’s twovolume work of decades ago) nor any of the gossipy reporting evident in so much writing about Winston’s children. Instead we have a relatively straightforward book about two parents raising their two boys, and how this family influence led one of the boys to becoming Prime Minister of Britain. Authors Celia Lee and John Lee focus hard on the Churchill brothers, using a broad array of sources. Their main source, however, is the reminiscences and papers of Peregrine Churchill, Jack’s son. Peregrine was a dedicated student of the history of his family and felt strongly that, over the years, myths had grown that were ____________________________________ Mr. Hutchinson is executive director of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, and editor of the society’s journal.
untrue, and that Jack’s important role in his brother’s life had gone underappreciated. The Lees were asked to help Peregrine organize his papers for his own work on the Churchill family, and when he died in 2002, they were asked to complete his work. They have done yeoman work, demonstrating the crucial role Jack played, primarily through his hard work and likeable, easygoing demeanor. (It seems almost impossible to find a contemporary with a bad thing to say about him; it’s rather easier with Winston.) From here they widen the lens to examine their parents, and in the process argue that this family was much happier than even their strongest defenders would have us believe. The reasoning behind this argument is laid out in the interesting “author’s note” that follows the main text. They admit they are disputing the notion that Randolph was an uncaring and inattentive father. But they argue that Randolph’s disappointment with Winston can only be understood in the context of his pleasure with Jack, who was always pleasant and did everything well. The Lees also make the broader argument that Winston’s claim of his parents ignoring him does not hold water when one reads the full letters of the entire family. (One realizes, for example, that a parental letter to Jack was meant to be read aloud to Winston.) From the evidence, the family was much tighter-knit than we may have previously believed. At times the Lees push their case too far. By the end of the book one supposes that Randolph was the most loving, supportive, and faithful father ever graced with children, thanks to the somewhat selective use of quotations. For instance, the Lees quote only a small piece of Randolph’s reprehensible, well-known letter to Winston of 9 August 1892, warning him that he might become a “social wastrel.” The Lees also overstate matters by suggesting that this letter had the “desired effect” of Winston doing well at Sandhurst. His abilities were more naturally suited to Sandhurst then to his previous schools, and he would have likely done well there regardless. As I FINEST HOUR 146 / 40
read it, Randolph’s letter had little “desired effect,” other than to slap down a son he found too exultant. The book has much to say about Jennie, and argues that rumors of her many extramarital love affairs have been greatly exaggerated. I couldn’t say whether the Lees’ estimate of Jennie having only a half-dozen lovers is accurate, but it is probably closer to the mark than the 200 or more that are sometimes rumored. They do make some damning observations about Jennie withholding rightfully-owed monies to her sons, which prevented Jack from achieving his dream of attending university. If this is true it is a serious stain on her character, but otherwise Jennie, like Randolph, comes off more loving and attentive in The Churchills than she has in many other family histories. The Lees are probably the world’s leading scholars on Jack Churchill, and they demonstrate it clearly, providing a full and nuanced portrait of this likeable and generous man. Jack’s loyalty, love, and constant friendship was a source of strength for Winston in even his most trying days, and the authors consider him one of the strongest supporters who kept the great man going, standing side by side with a small group that included Clementine, the Churchill children, and a very select group of their close friends. Treatment of Winston is a little more problematic. They insist that Winston at times mistreated his kindly brother (for instance, not thanking Jack for his literary work on WSC’s books) and not recognizing the sacrifices Jack made for the family (such a taking a job in the City that he despised). Winston was not one to shirk giving credit to collaborators on his books; given Jack’s nature it is far more likely that he asked not to be acknowledged. The authors also misstate Winston’s activities in a few broader areas, such as overestimating the importance of his leading the defense of Antwerp in the strategic picture of World War I. It also seems strange that in the chapter covering World War II, equal coverage is given to Winston and Jack, when one brother is clearly >>
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THE CHURCHILLS... performing a more significant job. I actually admire this determination to treat the brothers as partners and equals, even though one was world famous and the other virtually unknown. In spite of some of my concerns with this book, I do think it admirably succeeds in demonstrating that the
It’s Churchill, Stupid! ANTOINE CAPET
Les coups tordus de Churchill [Churchill’s Dirty Tricks], by Bob Maloubier. Éditions Calmann-Lévy, paperback, 268 pp., €15. Amazon France (www.amazon.fr) €14.25.
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t is well known that any book with “Churchill” in the title—and even better with a photograph of him on the cover—has a fair chance of attracting buyers. In this instance, the picture is the famous “Chicago gangster” photo, WSC holding a submachine gun under his right arm, which the Nazis liked to use on propaganda leaflets. The colloquial title, “Churchill’s Dirty Tricks,” suggests a “popular” treatment of the subject—which the tone and tenor of the text amply confirm. This is not a serious book, just a string of unsubstantiated “good stories” and anecdotes, the first based on the author’s experience as a recruit of the British Special Operations Executive
Churchill family was more cohesive than disfunctional, and had much to do with what Winston would become. It is also a very useful corrective to those who depict young Winston’s childhood as one grim day after another. The book could very well set a template for a new way to think about his early life, and for that Celia and John Lee deserve much credit. ,
(SOE). Maloubier was in Algiers in December 1942, part of the Special Detachment set up by Major Jacques Vaillant de Guélis, a bilingual Englishman. He builds on secondary evidence, like the presence there of Desmond Morton and Stewart Menzies, to conclude that the French Admiral Darlan’s murder was plotted by Churchill behind Roosevelt’s back—Darlan being presented as a slow-witted “President’s man.” All this comes in a very lighthearted tone, as if Maloubier’s superior intelligence enables him effortlessly to understand complex events which lesser mortals cannot, along the lines of “It’s Churchill, stupid!” The “flash-back” on Churchill’s ancestry is a scurrilous accumulation of the worst clichés, culminating in his father’s death of “the pox.” The Dardanelles affair is expedited as in a comic strip—our hero recovers, only to manipulate the USA into entering World War I thanks to a timely inter-
cept of the Kaiser’s message to Mexico, offering it Texas and California. The next “old yarn” is Coventry, which Churchill is said to have left unprotected to preserve Ultra’s secrecy—repeatedly proven groundless by this publication and others as long ago as 1984. The author’s English (and knowledge of American history) is poor. Discussing Joseph Kennedy, he translates “America Firsters” as “premiers Américains,” which would mean “early American settlers.” I do not know what truth lies in his assertion that the Ambassador was one of “those Antisemites who reject God Bless America because it was written by a Jew.” Maloubier wades out of his depth when accusing Kennedy of having raised his glass in the first months of the war to the Reich’s victory. This, he says, aroused the ire of Churchill, who sent “Bill” Stephenson (“Intrepid”) to FDR with a list of the Ambassador’s pronouncements, including his supposed boast that he was out to impeach the President—a bit much to expect even from Joe Kennedy. There are no footnotes, only a list of “archives consulted.” The bibliography omits mention of the excellent works by François Kersaudy, the foremost French Churchill scholar. This book is perhaps entertaining for those of puny intellectual gifts who like public-bar conversations which indulge in debunking great leaders—but not worth more space in Finest Hour. ,
Churchill’s American Supporters CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in its Darkest, Finest Hour, by Lynne Olson. Random House, hardbound, illus., 472 pp. $28. Member price $22.40.
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n her earlier books, including Troublesome Young Men (FH 136: 40), Olson has demonstrated her ability to meld a mountain of source material into a cogent and readable account. Here, however, her focus
____________________________________ Professor Capet teaches English history at the University of Rouen.
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seems to waver from its original intent. Defined as a study of the roles of three Americans—Ambassador John Gilbert Winant, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow, and Lend Lease administrator Averell Harriman—it is instead a broader survey of the growing American presence in London during the war. Indeed for whole chapters the three leading characters disappear from its pages. Churchill pops up everywhere, but so does, for example, Pamela Churchill, along with a host of other journalists, generals and others. Perhaps the three American subjects offered too limited a base. Indeed, though the book’s dust jacket photo pictures five men in tuxedos (Churchill among them), Winant is the only one of the book’s supposed subjects included. And it is Winant for whom Olson provides her greatest service, as the man is largely forgotten today while both Murrow and Harriman are remembered and treated in other books (as in Thomas Parish’s recent To Keep the British Isles Afloat, which centers on Harriman and Hopkins). Ill-treated as he was by Roosevelt (all too common for many of the president’s supporters), Winant was revered in Britain during and after the war. Olson provides us with many examples of why this was so, from little gestures to his vital and continual support of Churchill and the British war effort when Washington seemed either unconcerned or more focused on its own priorities. Part of the trouble with readable books like this is that their authors try to relate the war’s overall story to a readership they know lacks historical context for the characters and era. Whole chapters in Olson’s book take us away from London and the central players to deal with other people and issues. In the end, one wonders just how central these three men were, given what we read about the roles of so many others. Surely Hopkins was just as important in keeping Britain afloat, and Roosevelt above all. We ____________________________________ Dean Sterling teaches communications at The George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
want to learn more about how Winant, Harriman and Murrow related to each other in those London years. Gil Winant is clearly Olson’s hero. While the former New Hampshire governor couldn’t deliver a decent speech and proved a terrible administrator, he said and did all the right things (ignoring an affair with Churchill’s daughter Sarah) to support the British effort. The moody Murrow (who fell into Pamela Churchill’s bed) best relayed the Blitz to American radio listeners (see “This…is London,” FH 144: 26). He went along on twenty-
four bombing missions better to report the heat of battle (and perhaps assuage his guilt at not being a fighting man). Harriman, the self-centered political climber (and another who appreciated Pamela) suffers most in Olson’s telling. While a hard worker, he too often undercut Winant, until he learned the real difficulty of being one of FDR’s ambassadors during his own unhappy stint in Moscow. In the end, both Harriman and Murrow went on to sometimes glittering postwar careers, while Winant, down and ignored, took his own life early in 1947. ,
The Finest Cultural History of 1930s Britain TED HUTCHINSON
The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars, by Richard Overy. Viking, hardbound, illus., 522 pp., $35, Member price $28. I expect that the battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. —WSC, 18 June 1940 FINEST HOUR 146 / 42
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hurchill has often been described by historians and biographers as a “man apart” from those around him. He was, after all, one of the few national politicians to see and clearly understand the threat Nazi Germany posed to Britain and Western civilization. His life in the 1930s was spent in the political wilderness, where his voice counted for little even as his country hurtled towards war. In this superb new book, historian Richard Overy indirectly argues that Churchill in fact understood the average Englishman far better than most national leaders. But first it should be noted that this book hardly mentions the name Winston Churchill at all. It is neither a political nor social history of England in the 1930s, but instead a measured and thoughtful look at the culture of despair that arose in England in the aftermath of the First World War, and existed until the beginning of the Second. Overy argues that the British saw themselves at the top of the world in the years before the Great War. Through a combination of science, capitalism and colonial policy, life in Britain was imagined by most to be like an escalator ride upwards, as more and more in the nation were able to share in the continual perfection of Western and Christian civilization. All of this was shattered, of course, by losses of the war. By the 1920s, >>
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FINEST CULTURAL HISTORY... many in Britain felt, as Churchill was to suggest in 1940, that they were entering a “new Dark Age.” Overy explores this theme with a number of chapters touching on the disenchantment with capitalism, modern medicine, science, politics, and above all with the prospects of progress. This progress was now an illusion, many felt, as they readied themselves for the gradual decline that, as they were told by the academics and thinkers of the time, all spent civilizations must eventually face. Yet Overy also notes that the average Briton of the time never quite gave in to despair. As bad as things were in Britain in the 1930s, they were better than in many nations on the continent, and the British always had their traditions of parliamentary democracy to fall back on. In one moving section of his book (which
other reviewers have also noted) Overy describes a bookseller who in 1933 placed a best-selling biography of Adolf Hitler in his shop window. He had to clean the window twice daily to remove the accumulated spit. In the 1930s many Britons did feel that they were entering that new dark age. But they were also ready to fight it, and they needed a leader to show them the way. Winston Churchill was the man who taught his country, and by extension the world, that it was still possible to move toward the broad, sunlit uplands. Despite the few mentions of Churchill, this is surely the finest cultural history of Britain in the 1930s. It should be read by all Churchillians who want to understand more about the time and world Churchill inhabited—and why his words resonated so strongly with the people from which he supposedly stood apart. ,
Murray joined the Metropolitan Police and in due course was placed in the “Protection” side of the Special Branch. Happily in those days political terrorism had not attained the horrific flood that we see today, although Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, and others had been the targets for Israeli murder squads. Nevertheless, it was a job that had to be taken seriously, if only to stand between a prominent political figure and lunatics, or just over-enthusiastic supporters. It was in this atmosphere that Sgt. Murray was appointed to be one of Winston Churchill’s bodyguards in 1950 and after his resignation as Prime Minister in 1955 became his main bodyguard until Churchill’s death ten years later. I suppose that all bodyguards inevitably become integrated into the life of the people they serve and the Churchill household was no exception. Sgt. Murray found himself concerned with aspects of his charge which were not really part of his functions, particularly after Churchill’s resignation as Prime Minister, when there was no longer a large back-up staff. He was SIR ANTHONY MONTAGUE BROWNE KGMG CBE DFC effective in matters such as passports at airports, access and exits at meetings, gt. Edmund Murray had a varied and generally making Churchill;s career and he gives a brightly everyday life smoother. coloured if somewhat elliptical account I remember him mainly as being of it. As a young man he had a varied in charge of Churchill’s painting number of jobs, working in a pub, in arrangements. Sgt. Murray himself Sainsburys (a large chain of food painted, as he describes in his book, stores), as a packer of electrical goods, a and was well attuned to Churchill’s deck steward on a paddle steamer, a idiosyncrasies in this field. He was parshort period in the Irish Guards and ticularly useful in the increasing working in a London restaurant. periods that Churchill spent in the In 1937 he joined the French South of France in his retirement, Foreign Legion and served in France, where his fluent French ensured North Africa, Madagascar, and Indosmooth liaison with the local police. china. Vichy France was neutral in the To be a bodyguard must be a war against Japan and the French soul-destroying occupation, waiting troops were in a state of supervision I Was Winston Churchill’s about for hours and hours with very under the Japanese occupation until Bodyguard, by Edmund Murray: little to do, but bearing a real responsithe closing months of the war, when London: Thomas Allen 1987. bility for the well-being of the Availability: good on bookfinder.com the Japanese massacred many of them personality in one’s charge. Thus, and drove the remainder north into ____________________________________ China. This is an interesting account of Murray’s account is inevitably a cataSir Anthony is Sir Winston’s last private sec- a world of which few people know any- logue of small matters, which retary (1952-65) and is an honorary member nevertheless cast an interesting minor thing at all and it could have been of The Churchill Centre. We republish his light on Churchill’s later years. This review from FH 56, Summer 1987, observing expanded to the advantage of the book. volume can be placed on the shelf the passing of Beryl Murray (page 10). At the end of the War, Sgt. alongside Simply Churchill by Mr. Roy
Old Titles Revisited: Bodyguard Eddie
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Howells, the male nurse who looked after Churchill in his old age, and the several books by a previous bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson. We tend to see history from a different point of view and I am bound to say that where I was present at some of the events Sgt. Murray describes, they struck me rather differently from the account he gives. In the words of Field Marshal Robertson in the First World War, “I ’eard different.” It was all too easy to succumb to irritation with Sgt. Murray at times but his devotion to Sir Winston Churchill was genuine and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have
stood before him. He did make Churchill’s life easier in a number of ways and “the Boss” I think had a real affection for him. It was Churchill’s inevitable reaction to stand up for any member of his entourage who was under attack. As Lady Churchill once said, looking at me rather pointedly: “Winston is always ready to be accompanied by those with considerable imperfections.” Sgt. Murray’s memoirs make for a book with interesting and thoughtful comments on life, a record of undoubted devotion towards Churchill, and memories not lacking in adventure before his last assignment. ,
About Books: The Asquith Corpus CHRISTOPHER H. STERLING
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. H. Asquith (1852-1928), the Liberal prime minister (1908-16), was responsible for the 1911 Parliament Act, which limited the power of the House of Lords, and led Britain during the first two years of World War I. Some called him the most gifted man ever to serve in the premiership. He was made an Earl in 1925, three years before his death. Churchill served under him in three cabinet roles: President of the Board of Trade (1908-10), Home Secretary (1910-11) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15). After making a success of law practice, Asquith entered Parliament in 1886. Under Gladstone, he was named Home Secretary just six years later. He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1905 under Sir Henry CampbellBannerman, who he succeeded in 1908. Deposed in 1916, Asquith remained head of the Liberal Party until 1926, though he lost his seat in 1924. Split between Asquith and Lloyd George supporters, the Liberals never recovered. Among the books below are letters Asquith sent to two different women, sharing with them his most secret thoughts about political events, the war, and his colleagues.
newly opened archives. Naturally views were also colored by what people thought of the Liberal Party, Asquith and Lloyd George. Those views, too, have tempered with time. This listing is in chronological order as published.
• The Right Hon. H.H. Asquith, M.P., by Elias Frank (London: James Clarke, 1909, 248 pp.) is an early biography, published a year after Asquith became prime minister. • Autobiography, by Margot Asquith (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1920-22, 2 vols.; 276 and 314 pp., reissued several times in varied formats) is widely available and important. Margot was Asquith's wife and reflects much of what he thought. • Fifty Years in Parliament, by Lord Oxford and Asquith (London: Cassell; Boston: Little, Brown, 1926, 2 vols., 306 and 308 pp.; adds the word “British” in the American edition). After 1876, chapters cover Parliament and party changes, third parties, life in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister and cabinet office, etc. The second volume covers the years from 1901 (under Balfour) to 1913 with sections on Ulster (Northern Ireland), patronage (ecclesiastical and the poet laureate), HHA’s cabinet etc.
Punch, 21 May 1913, aboard the Admiralty yacht Enchantress. WSC: “Any home news?” Asquith: “How can there be with you here?”
• Memories and Recollections, 1852-1927, by Lord Oxford and Asquith (London: Cassell; Boston: Little, Brown, 1928, 2 vols.) is an autobiography (despite the author’s denial). The volumes divide at summer 1914. Churchill is notable in both, but the second includes the crisis of May 1915 when WSC was forced out of the Admiralty over the Dardanelles disaster.
Koss (next page) breaks the literature on Asquith into two periods, roughly paralleling public thinking. Books were generally positive until 1970, while the family (especially his daughter, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a close friend of WSC) controlled his papers and the books based upon them. After 1970, they become more realistic and balanced, in part thanks to
• Life of Lord Oxford and Asquith by John A. Spender and Cyril Asquith (London: Hutchinson, 1932, 2 vols., 366 and 435 pp.) was Asquith's authorized biography, appearing four years after his death. The two volumes draw heavily on his own papers plus some official documents and press reports, but tend to make for fairly dry reading today. >>
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ABOUT BOOKS
ASQUITH CORPUS... • H.H.A.: Letters of the Earl of Oxford and Asquith to a Friend, edited by Desmond MacCarthy (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1933-34, 2 vols., 218 and 212 pp.). In 1916-28 Asquith wrote almost daily to Mrs. Hilda Harrison, following Venetia Stanley (see below). The family was deeply unhappy over this unauthorized book. The volumes cover the war, its aftermath, the fragmenting of the Liberal Party, and Asquith’s comments on statesmen, artists, and authors. • Mr Balfour’s Poodle: An Account of the Struggle Between the House of Lords and the Government of Mr Asquith, by Roy Jenkins (London: Heinemann; New York: Chilmark, 1954, 320 pp.; republished 1968, 1989), covers the 1911 battle over the power of the House of Lords. Asquith had pressed both Edward VII and George V to appoint a wave of new (Liberal) peers if the Lords did not yield their power over budget bills. • Asquith: Portrait of a Man and an Era, by Roy Jenkins (London: Collins, 1964, revised edition 1978) is a warm and appreciative biography, wellwritten and readable (not always true of British political biography!). It was once held to be the definitive treatment of Asquith’s life, but later revisionist works and the Venetia Stanley letters have changed some views. • Inside Asquith’s Cabinet: From the Diaries of Charles Hobhouse, edited by Edward David (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1978, 296 pp.) shows how political diaries can be of value. Hobhouse began his political career aged thirty in 1892, retiring in the midst of WW1. As a recorder of Asquith’s governments— and of the cut-and-thrust of cabinet government—he was very perceptive.
• H.H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley, edited by Michael and Eleanor Brock (Oxford University Press, 1983, 704 pp.) opens a revealing window into Asquith and his era. Starting in 1912, the letters
ERRATA FH 144: 5. Beatty watched the German High Seas Fleet steam into captivity on 21 November 1918, not 1919 as stated. (See Despatch Box.) FH 145: 3. Stupidly, the editor miscaptioned the third photo down. It should, of course, read “Bullock, 30” not “Gilbert, 20.” He also misspelled his own name in a byline, but nobody noticed.... FH 145: 54. In the righthand column line 6, the word “publicly” has become “pubicly,” which is not a slap at FDR! Apologies. , (about half of the 560 known) reveal a statesman faced with political ruin over the Irish problem, who escapes by leading Britain through the crisis of 1914 into the Great War. Asquith confided utterly in his young friend Venetia, sharing military secrets unknown even to the Cabinet or his commanders. Some were written during cabinet meetings! He described political intrigues and wrote openly of Churchill, Lloyd George and Kitchener. He was crushed in May of 1915 when Venetia married Edwin Montagu, and her interest in the letters ceased. (See also Levine, below.)
• Asquith, by Stephen E. Koss (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, 332 pp.) is a solid revisionist political biography, building on the shoulders of Jenkins. He makes clear that he has a different take on many aspects of his subject’s life, thanks in part to newly opened archives.
• The Asquiths, by Colin Clifford (London: Murray, 2002, 544 pp.) draws on Margot Asquith’s own journals, Asquith’s letters to her, and unpublished correspondence in family and many other archives, describing an extraordinary family in cataclysmic times—people more than politics. Margot’s dislike of Churchill (among others) comes through, but much of the focus here is on H.H. Asquith’s children and the war which takes up half the book. • Asquith as War Leader, by George H. Cassar (London: Hambledon & London, 2003, 288 pp.) argues that during the initial stages of WW1 (1914-15), Asquith’s oratory, tact and skill, combined with his imperturbability and prestige, made him indispensable. As the war dragged on, lacking the ruthlessness needed to win at any cost, he became ill-suited to direct the nation, and he was maneuvered out of Downing Street by Lloyd George in December 1916. Cassar describes Asquith’s part in shaping war aims and strategy.
• Politics, Religion and Love: The Story of H. H. Asquith, Venetia Stanley and Edwin Montagu. Based on the Life and Letters of Edwin —Excerpted from Writing about Samuel Montagu, by Naomi B. Winston, a 100-page annotated guide Levine (New York: NYU Press, 1991, 830 pp.) reviews the Venetia story from to be published by the Washington Society for Churchill. , her husband’s writings. Curt Zoller’s Annotated Bibliography of Works About Sir Winston S. Churchill, at 410 pages, is the most comprehensive bibliography of works about Churchill. It includes frank, forthright reviews on 700 books specifically about WSC. Also listed are works substantially about Churchill, articles, lectures, reviews, dissertations and theses. The book was a Farrow Award winner in 2004. Selling for up to $189 on the web, it’s indispensable for the serious Churchill library. SPECIAL: We include the unabridged Addendum (specify whether by email or hard copy): $65 postpaid in USA. TO ORDER: Send check payable to The Churchill Centre, 200 West Madison Street, Suite 1700, Chicago IL 60606 USA. Or phone toll-free (888) WSC-1874. Credit cards accepted: Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover. Postage extra outside USA.
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PHILATELY
Churchill Commemorative Stamps A Partial Update, 1977-1998 CELWYN
BALL
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his checklist, while not complete, illustrates how Churchill continues to be a philatelic subject. Many of these issues arose out of the anniversary of World War II and the death of HM the Queen Mother. “SG” and “Scott” refer to numbers assigned by the Stanley Gibbons and Scott postage stamp catalogues.
GREAT BRITAIN Bernera Locals (Small island off the Scottish coast.) 1985. Life and Times of The Queen Mother. Gold foil commemoratives; £10 shows VE-Day celebration with Churchill on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
British Philatelic Exhibition 15-20 October 1985. Life and Times of The Queen Mother. Small souvenir sheetlets show SG 129 (Falkland Islands Dependencies) and SG 538 (Solomon Islands). On the latter, Churchill is pictured with the Queen Mother. No values on stamps. Also overprinted “Specimen” in black. Isle of Man 5 September 1990. 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain. SG 449-454. Issued in sheets of eight (449-50, 451-52, 453-54), and mounted on three cards with cachet at top. Churchill is at top righthand corner with the quotation, “We shall go on to the end; we shall fight…whatever the cost may be.” __________________________________ Mr. Ball, of Monckton, New Brunswick, is a veteran of the WW2 British First Army which fought in the invasion of North Africa, and a former chairman of ICS Canada. His new illustrated catalogue of Churchill stamps since the first issues will be published shortly and highlighted in Finest Hour.
ROW 1: Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway Local. ROW 2: Marshall Islands V-1 and Gabon souvenir sheet with the Big Three at Yalta. ROW 3: Benin marks the 1966 Commonwealth Omnibus honoring Churchill. British Philatelic Exhibition souvenir sheet reprints Queen Mother issues, one showing WSC. ROW 4: Grenada Grenadines commemorates Nobel Prize Winners with a not-very-good likeness of WSC. Bernera gold foil locals probably never saw use on actual postage.
Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch (Locals) 11 May 1977. Issued to pay for letter and parcel transit on the railway. Designed and printed by the House of Questa. 10p value shows the locomotive “Winston Churchill.” BENIN 20 December 1985. 50th Anniversary of the Commonwealth Churchill Omnibus Issue. SG 878-886, Scott 796a-796j; souvenir sheet 797. SG 835-45 overprinted in black, “Pre-World Cup Football Mexico 1986.” GABON 1995. 50th Anniversary of the End of World War II. Scott 813a-813c, souvenir sheet 814. Souvenir sheet shows Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Livadia Palace (see pages 32-35) during the February 1945 Yalta conference. FINEST HOUR 146 / 46
GRENADA GRENADINES Nobel Prize Winners (FH 90). Scott 1771-73 and three souvenir sheets, Scott 1774-76. Scott 1776 depicts Churchill. MARSHALL ISLANDS 1994. World War II. Scott 489. Shows V-1 over London with Churchill quote on tab. 1995. Churchill souvenir sheet. NICARAGUA 24 January 1996. 50th Anniversary of the End of WW2. Scott 2142a-h. Issued in two strips of four, top and bottom on centre gutter. Depicts bombers over Remagen Bridge. Scott 2142b shows Churchill, FDR and Stalin at Yalta. TANZANIA 12 December 1994. 50th Anniversary of D-Day, 6 June 1944.
SG 1998-2015. Printed se-tenant in sheetlets of six: SG 1998-2003, 2004-09 and 2010-15. SG 2005 shows engineers working on a Churchill tank on Gold Beach, Normandy. 15 July 1996. “They Shaped the 20th Century” World Figures Issue.
Scott 1481a-h, 1482a-h. Scott 1482g shows Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Yalta. UNITED STATES 1991-1995. World War II. The following sheetlets have historic value in illustrating the war: LEFT: Isle of Man’s Battle of Britain souvenir sheet, a handsome depiction with WSC portrait and quote at upper right. RIGHT: Marshall Islands’ 1995 Churchill $1 souvenir sheet and 60c value. BELOW RIGHT: Nicaragua elaborately marks the end of WW2 with souvenir sheet and stamps including WSC. BOTTOM LEFT: Tanzania included Al Jolson and Amelia Earhart among shapers of the 20th century along with Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.
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Scott 2559a-j: World at War, 1941. Scott 2697a-j: Into the Battle, 1942. Scott 2765a-j: Turning the Tide, 1943. Scott 2838a-j: Road to Victory, 1944. Scott 2961a-j. Victory at Last, 1945. Roosevelt and Churchill are mentioned on several sheet labels and shown together on Scott 2559d. ,
BELOW: Tanzania’s outstanding set of commemoratives marking the anniversary of D-Day included a Churchill tank.
CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
Churchill and the Future of Democracy 2009 International Churchill Conference
I N T R O D U C T I O N B Y R I C H A R D M. L A N G W O R T H
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n his 1932 book Thoughts and Adventures, Churchill assembled his “Big Four” futurist essays, contemplating trends he could already then see, which would affect the evolution of democracy, the nature of government, and the nature of man. His moving, powerful and prescient essays contemplate issues that are ever-present, as worthy of attention today as they were eighty years ago.
“Mass Effects in Modern Life” argued that advances in science, technology and communication are suppressing individual achievement, and warned of the rise of the collective at the expense of the individual: “Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions...hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events; and lastly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glory?” Such questions merit examination by thoughtful people. The newspapers do “a lot of thinking” for people, Churchill continued. Substitute “media” for “newspapers” and he could be speaking about the superficiality of modern news reporting. Yes, he wrote, it provides, “a tremendous educating process. But it is an education which passes in at one ear and out at the other. It is an education at once universal and superficial.” Such conditioning, he went on, would produce “standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments, according to their class or party.” Churchill also wondered whether the leveling process that produces today’s politicians would discourage the emergence of “great men” (which of course he
considered himself, among others). Was the “great man” theory of history dead? Was this a good thing? (See Manfred Weidhorn’s following overview.) “Consistency in Politics” discussed political conduct—not of the Left or the Right, or any particular philosophy, but the standards of conduct for responsible officeholders. Consistency is a virtue, Churchill declared—but the key to consistency amid changing circumstances “is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.” Examples of this application may be seen today in our leaders’ approaches to subjects such as energy production, the new Russia, the rise of Asia and the Pacific Rim; the European Union replacing traditional nationstates; Free Trade amidst subsidized or nationalized industries; and the role of the State in the economy. “Ideas acquire a momentum of their own,” Churchill wrote. He could have been thinking of opinion polls when he added: “The stimulus of a vast concentration of public support is almost irresistible in its potency.” Are ideas that contribute to the growth of the collective dangerous to liberal democracy? “There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realised, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the White Ant.” A statesman, Churchill concluded, “should always try to do what he believes is best in the long view for his country, and he should not be dissuaded from so acting by having to divorce himself from a great body of doctrine to which he formerly sincerely adhered.”
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“Shall We All Commit Suicide?” considered the implications of the nuclear age. Written in 1924, almost a decade before Einstein wrote his famous letter to Roosevelt, warning of the dangers implicit in splitting the atom, Churchill’s message thunders with urgency across the years: “May there not be methods of using explosive energy incomparably more intense than anything heretofore discovered? Might not a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings—nay, to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?” Mankind, he adds, “has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination....Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverize, without hope of repair, what is left of civilization. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long his victim, now—for one occasion only—his Master.” “Fifty Years Hence” speculates on the world of 1980, predicting the effects of science and communication— biotechnology, cell phones, television, air travel, the age of instant information: “projects undreamed of by past generations,” as Churchill put it: “...forces terrific and devastating...comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures”—juxtaposed to an unaltered mankind: “The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man we know so well will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.” Can humans change their nature sufficiently to prosper in this world where pleasures and dangers crowd in upon them? Churchill wondered. Governments, he wrote, in lines very striking today, “drift along the line of least resistance, taking short views, paying their way with
sops and doles, and smoothing their path with pleasantsounding platitudes. Never was there less continuity or design in their affairs, and yet towards them are coming swiftly changes which will revolutionize for good or ill not only the whole economic structure of the world but the social habits and moral outlook of every family.” Read alongside his 1934 article, “Restoring the Lost Glory of Democracy” (page 12), “Fifty Years Hence” encapsulates his concerns about the future of our form of government: “Democracy as a guide or motive to progress has long been known to be incompetent. None of the legislative assemblies of the great modern states represents in universal suffrage even a fraction of the strength or wisdom of the community. Great nations are no longer led by their ablest men, or by those who know most about their immediate affairs, or even by those who have a coherent doctrine.” Some say we have replaced the old moral compass of religion with a kind of secular humanism and vague internationalism, an urge to do right and to understand and accept the most extreme among us. Churchill described and feared that development. It was vital, he wrote, “that the moral philosophy and spiritual conceptions of men and nations should hold their own amid these formidable scientific evolutions. It would be much better to call a halt in material progress and discovery,” he continued, “than to be mastered by our own apparatus and the forces which it directs.” Today’s challenges are not the same as in Churchill's time. It is foolish, writes Paul Alkon, to believe that our times are simply a replay of his. Churchill's lasting value lies in his approach to challenges: not what he did in 1915 or 1940, but the broad principles that motivated him, the concepts he stood for: liberty, individuality, magnanimity—his belief in his country, and its fraternal sisters across the seas, as a force for good The 2009 Churchill Conference offered outstanding discussions on these futurist essays, which read as though they were written yesterday. May we learn from them, and teach others through our work. ,
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CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
Churchill for Today: Views and Counterviews 1. Churchill and the Aristotelian Tradition L A R R Y P. A R N N Dr. Arnn became President of Hillsdale College in 2000, launching an ambitious financing program (the College does not accept government funds). Previously he was President of the Claremont Institute, publisher of The Claremont Review of Books, and director of research for Sir Martin Gilbert. Under his aegis, Hillsdale College Press is reprinting the Official Biography, and has now progressed through Volume V. In 2004 he won our Somervell Prize for “Never Despair,” the best article of the past year in Finest Hour. He is a member of The Churchill Centre College of Fellows.
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ames Muller writes in his introduction to the new edition of Thoughts and Adventures the following sen__tence: “The essay on the adequacy of Parliament’s political choices leads directly to the largest question that Churchill takes up in Thoughts and Adventures—the significance of the transformation of political life by modern science, which he considers in the remarkable essays toward the end of the volume.” The first science of the West was philosophy: the wish to know the world around us and our place in it; to know what is our good, and the good of the other beings. The questions it asked were: What is justice? What is truth? What is right? What is it to be human? Modern science is defined by Thomas Hobbes this way: “Reason then is but a scout or a spy to range abroad and find the way to thing desired.” Modern science is a system of experimentation to find the way to the things we want. This directs the mind away from the evaluation of our wants—from the attempt to rank them and discipline them according to some standard we discover by the observation of nature. We focus not upon the refinement or disciplining of our wants, but rather upon their fulfillment At first this is not controversial. Who opposes finding a cure for cancer? Health is a good thing. But what if the aim is rather to improve not only the health of the race, but also its strength, intelligence or beauty?
And what if the means proposed is eugenics, applied either through the control of breeding practices or the culling of undesirable populations? Once one understands the possibilities opened up by modern science, then the theme of this Churchill conference becomes in part a question. Advancing science—surely. Unchanging mankind—who knows? One of the charms of Thoughts and Adventures, and its able introduction by its editor, is how plainly these questions are shown—not as a set of deductions such as I have just made, but rather as practical problems that peoples and the statesmen who lead them must address. One cannot read these essays without seeing yet again that Churchill was a remarkable man. On technology, Churchill asks a question in “Mass Effects in Modern Life.” Ask yourself if you see this happening: “I have no hesitation in ranging myself with those who view the past history of the world mainly as that of exceptional human beings, whose thoughts, actions, qualities, virtues, triumphs, weaknesses and crimes have dominated the fortunes of the race. But we may now ask ourselves whether powerful changes are not coming to pass, are not already in progress or indeed far advanced. Is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals?” Next, ask if you agree with his assessment of the decline of leadership when he writes:
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“Certainly we see around us today a marked lack of individual leadership. The late Mr. John Morley, statesman and philanthropist, man of letters and man of affairs, some years ago towards the close of his life delivered an oration in which he drew attention to the decline in the personal eminence of the leaders in almost all the important spheres of thought and art. He contrasted the heads of the great professions in the early 20th century with those who had shone in the mid-Victorian era. He spoke of ‘the vacant Thrones in Philosophy, History, Economics, Oratory, Statecraft, Poetry, Literature, Painting, Sculpture and Music, which stood on every side. It is difficult to marshal today in any part of the English-speaking world an assembly of notables who either in distinction or achievement can compare with those to whom our grandfathers so gladly paid attention and tribute.”
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omething about the position or station of Churchill can be found in the juxtaposition of two things in him. The first is what he was for. It is obvious that he fought all his life for popular rule and government by consent. He came into Parliament under a Prime Minister of glorious family who opposed government by consent, who supported the right of the well-born to take a leading part in politics by virtue of their birth. Churchill never agreed with this. He quit the party of that man on the ground that its proposals would divide the nation along class lines. I mean protectionism or tariffs, which for Churchill as for England has been much more a political than an economic issue. Having adopted this cause, Churchill saw fundamental dangers to its success. Technology is the condition of the liberal society for a reason explained in the first book of Aristotle’s Politics. Slavery is unjust, Aristotle writes, except in cases of incompetence, which are few. Therefore slavery must be ameliorated by, for example, the prospect of liberation. Why only ameliorated? Why not ended? Aristotle writes that, “if the shuttle could weave, and the plectrum pluck the lyre without a guiding hand, foreman would not need workers, nor masters slaves.” In the liberal society, it is necessary for some to slave so that others may have leisure to learn, to teach, and to rule. This means, mind you, that in the mind of Aristotle, classical politics contain an element of injustice. They cannot be perfected, except, perhaps, by the liberation of technology. Is there anything more terrible than that? In Churchill’s essays, war is more terrible, for two reasons: The march of science makes weapons more horrible, and it piles up resources that make it affordable to fight wars. No longer do we have to stop fighting in the winter. We
are rich enough to go on killing each other, and the whole of society participates, embittered and inflamed. Churchill shares the position of Aristotle, the philosopher and his kinsman as a statesman. It is their business to see above and beyond the city-state, to test its claims against nature and the commandments of reason. By doing this, they place themselves in a position both to protect and to elevate their city or state in the name and for the sake of standards that are beyond any law. Churchill is famous as a defender of his country and the West. The defense began decades before the battles of 1940—decades before the writing of these essays. It was plain in his speech on army reform in 1901 that Churchill was graced with an ability to see beyond the claims of his country. Thus he was a champion and exemplar of his country’s nobility and goodness.
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n contemplating the individual versus the collective Churchill deploys an entomological simile. “It is a curious fact that the Russian Bolsheviks in carrying by compulsion mass conceptions to their utmost extreme seem to have lost not only the guidance of great personalities, but even the economic fertility of the process itself. The Communist theme aims at universal standardization. The individual becomes a function: the community is alone of interest: mass thoughts dictated and propagated by the rulers are the only thoughts deemed respectable. No one is to think of himself as an immortal spirit, clothed in the flesh, but sovereign, unique, indestructible. No one is to think of himself even as that harmonious integrity of mind, soul and body, which, take it as you will, may claim to be ‘the Lord of Creation.’ Subhuman goals and ideals are set before these Asiatic millions. The Beehive? No, for there must be no queen and no honey, or at least no honey for others. In Soviet Russia we have a society which seeks to model itself upon the Ant. There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realised, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the White Ant.” (The termite, which has no queen.) But this gloomy passage is followed by a statement of hope—and of hope in common people, not in the arising of a great leader: “But human nature is more intractable than antnature. The explosive variations of its phenomena disturb the smooth working out of the laws and forces which have subjugated the White Ant. It is at once the safeguard and the glory of mankind that they are easy to lead and hard to drive.” Churchill then submits a potent statement of danger for today: >>
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CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
ARNN... “Is it then true that civilization and democracy, when sufficiently developed, will increasingly dispense with personal direction: that they mean to find their own way for themselves; and that they are capable of finding the right way? Or are they already going wrong? Are they off the track? Have they quitted the stern, narrow highroads which alone lead to glorious destinies and survival? Is what we now see in the leading democracies merely a diffusion and squandering of the accumulated wisdom and treasure of the past?” It was no more a choice for Churchill to go back to the ancient city-state than it was for Aristotle to go forward (if forward is the direction) to the modern liberal society. “Mankind has gone too far to go back, and is moving too fast to stop,” Churchill writes. “There are too many people maintained not merely in comfort but in existence by processes unknown a century ago, for us to af-
ford even a temporary check, still less a general setback, without experiencing calamity in its most frightful form.” Churchill makes this point several times in his life, as in admonishing Americans at Harvard in 1943: “There is no halting-place at this point. We have now reached a stage in the journey where there can be no pause. We must go on. It must be world anarchy or world order.” He was thinking about the unprecedented power of science in “Fifty Years Hence” when he concluded: “It is this power called Science which has laid hold of us, conscripted us into its regiments and batteries, set us to work upon its highways and in its arsenals; rewarded us for our services, healed us when we were wounded, trained us when we were young, pensioned us when we were worn out. None of the generations of men before the last two or three were ever gripped for good or ill and handled like this.” ,
Churchill for Today 2. A Contrarian’s View of Churchill as Philosopher MANFRED WEIDHORN Dr. Weidhorn is Professor of English Literature at Yeshiva University in New York and the dean of scholars on Churchill’s literary heritage. He has written four books on Churchill, three of which remain in print. The first of these was Sword and Pen: A Survey of the Writings of Winston Churchill (1974), still one of the standard works in its field. Born in Vienna, where his family was chased out by Hitler, he was raised in Brooklyn and educated at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. He is a contributor to Finest Hour and a member of The Churchill Centre’s College of Fellows.
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n “Mass Effects in Modern Life,” Churchill confronts the Great Man vs. Great Forces theories of history. But his written record is inconsistent. His 1930s essays, and his novel Savrola written thirty years before, emphasize Great Forces. But in his other works we find a mish-mash, with leanings toward the Great Man theory, which he certainly held later in his life. One explanation is that as a historian, he must take note of historical forces; but as a working politician, he has to believe in the impact made by a highly placed individual—otherwise, how can he (or any politician) run for office with the mantra, “I can make a difference”?
In “Consistency in Politics,” Michael McMenamin will argue in these pages that the legacy of Churchill is “liberty.” This is incomplete. Churchill’s legacy is in fact “Liberty and Social Justice.” That was especially true in his radical phase, but remained true even in his long Conservative period, when he was often to the left of the American Democratic Party (except on the New Deal). Let the record show Michael’s concession that Winston S. Churchill was a lifelong Liberal! In “Fifty Years Hence” Churchill writes: “Who shall say that the world itself will not be wrecked, or indeed that it ought not to be wrecked?” )(italics added).
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This reminds me of the days of my youth when at 9 pm every Sunday on the radio, Walter Winchell gave alarming world news, followed at 9:15 by Jimmy Fiddler, who provided swinish Hollywood gossip. A wag said, “First you listen to Winchell and fear that the world is coming to an end; and then you listen to Fiddler and fear that it isn’t!” Churchill commits a blooper when he says, near the beginning of the essay, “We assume that progress will be constant.” Wrong. We assume that progress exists! The idea of “progress” is a complex issue. Actually, there are five quite separate aspects of it: 1) Technological or absolute progress—what Churchill mainly deals with in his essays. 2) Intellectual progress. In the words of Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg: “The more we learn about the universe, the less do we understand it.” 3) Emotional progress. Freud’s “Work and Love” remain central: the loss of a job or love is not consoled by learning about the Big Bang or by putting a man on the moon. 4) Moral progress, e.g., 175 million lives ended by fellow human beings in the 20th century. 5) Spiritual progress: God grows remote, and no satisfying theory replaces Him.
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he basic human need is for a narrative that explains how we got here and where we are going. Religion provided that, until it became unsatisfactory. Reason and science were to have replaced religion, but have proved to be no more satisfying. Hence there is no exit from the human condition, i.e., no progress.
To help locate Churchill’s observations on the intellectual roadmap, President Harry Truman’s quest is useful. You will remember his famous demand: “Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, On the one hand...On the other.” When it comes to the value of secular, worldly, scientific knowledge, the “one-handed” school is totally negative. That school includes Augustine, Thoreau, Gandhi and Tolstoy, all of whom argue that such knowledge (including, or especially, the creature comforts that result from it) contributes nothing to human fulfilment. The “two-handed” school, as represented by Rabelais, Shakespeare and Horace Walpole, celebrates, unlike the first group, the advances that result from scientific knowledge but, on the other hand, also takes note of the destructive consequences. In “Mass Effects in Modern Life,” Churchill mainly takes the two-handed approach, except for this sentence: “This material progress, in itself so splendid, does not meet any of the real needs of the human race.” He ends the essay with a typical two-handed flourish, as do many modern essays on this question, such as Bertrand Russell’s. Who’s right? Perhaps the matter is put to rest by Woody Allen’s would-be commencement address: “More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” This is two-handedness, collapsed into one hand. , Churchill’s classic book of essays in its earliest and latest forms. Left: A very fine jacketed Keystone Library edition published in 1933, shortly after the first trade edition. Right: The latest edition by ISI Press, with a new introduction by James W. Muller and extensive new footnotes by Paul Courtenay. Available to members for $17.40 from the Churchill Centre Book Club (see page 37).
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CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
On Liberty: Churchill’s “Consistency in Politics” MICHAEL McMENAMIN Mr. McMenamin is a first amendment and media defense lawyer in Cleveland and co-author of Becoming Winston Churchill: The Untold Story of the Young Churchill and His American Mentor [Bourke Cockran]. He is the co-author of the exposé Milking the Public: Political Scandals of the Dairy Lobby from LBJ to Jimmy Carter. A long-time contributor to Finest Hour and to Reason, he has also written for The Wall Street Journal, The Sacramento Bee, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, and The Nation.
B
efore you can judge a politician’s “consistency in politics,” as described in Churchill’s Thoughts and Adventures, you need to know what principles the politician professes to hold. I’ve studied Churchill’s political principles, and how he acquired them, for twenty years. When I started, it was not that easy to find much literature on the subject. Save civilization and people don’t tend to care that much what your political principles were, or whether you were consistent in applying them. My own interest in the subject came about after reading his book For Free Trade, a collection of speeches leading up to the election of 1906, which resulted in a Liberal Party landslide. As a contributing editor to the libertarian political journal Reason, whose motto is “free minds and free markets,” I was struck by several passages in For Free Trade. Here is one of them: The theory of Protection is either right or wrong. The doctrines that (by) keeping out foreign goods, more wealth and consequently more employment will be created at home are either true or they are not true. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Another passage in this obscure little book by Churchill which impressed me was this:
You may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of government—for, remember, governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away—you may put money in the pocket of one set of Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another set of Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way. Every vote given for protection is a vote to give governments the right of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and charging the public a handsome commission on the job.
Churchill’s arguments on Free Trade were as cogent and persuasive to me in the 1990s as they must have been ninety years earlier. So inspired, I persuaded my editors at Reason to run an article in the form of a “debate” on Free Trade featuring young Winston Churchill and Richard Gephardt, majority leader of the House of Representatives and at the time the most prominent national supporter of protectionism. Gephardt didn’t stand a chance and neither would any protectionist today, among which President Obama is prominent. In my quest to learn more about Churchill’s political principles, I sent a copy of my Reason debate article to Churchill’s official biographer, asking if he could recommend books exploring Churchill’s political philosophy. By return mail I received a gracious letter from Sir Martin Gilbert and, to my delight, an autographed copy of his then-out-of-print book Churchill’s Political Philosophy, which I promptly read.
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In reading that book, I was struck by the following comment from Eric Seal, Churchill’s Principle Private Secretary from September 1939 through mid-1941. Seal seemed to describe principles which were the same for Churchill then as when WSC was a young man: The key word in any understanding of Winston Churchill is the simple word “Liberty.” Throughout his life, through many changes and vicissitudes, Winston Churchill stood for liberty. He intensely disliked, and reacted violently against, all attempts to regiment and dictate opinion. In this attitude, he was consistent through his political life.
When Paul Addison published his political biography Churchill on the Home Front, he too described Churchill’s political and economic philosophy in a way which reinforced my impression from For Free Trade: Churchill…detested all peacetime plans for the regulation and control of the economy. They smacked to him of regimentation and dictatorship. Churchill was often dismissed as an adventurer but it was, of course, this quality of individualism for which, above all else, he stood.
By now I was certain that you could characterize Churchill (as he did himself ) as a “liberal” in the European sense, or a “classical liberal” as used in America today, i.e., a believer in individual liberty and free markets. But how and when did Churchill begin to acquire these principles? It was not from his father, whose “Tory Democracy” was more a slogan than a philosophy. Churchill began to form his political principles in the summer of 1895, before he met his American mentor, Bourke Cockran. While that is apparent now, it was certainly not apparent to me at the time. Yet Churchill left any number of clues for those who wanted to know how and when he began to acquire the classic liberal principles which he followed more or less consistently throughout his career. Here are just a few. While much is made of Churchill’s 1897 selfeducation in India, he actually started much earlier. In the summer of 1895, he read Henry Fawcett’s 1865 classic Manual of Political Economy. Fawcett was a strong free-market liberal and the Manual of Political Economy was based upon the work of John Stuart Mill, with whom Fawcett served as a Member of Parliament. Churchill wrote to his mother in the summer of 1895 about Fawcett’s book: …I have now got a capital book—causing much thought—and of great interest. It is a work on political economy by Fawcett. When I have read it—and it is very long—I shall perhaps feel inclined to go still farther afield in an absorbing subject. But this is a book essentially
devoted to “first principles”—and one which would leave at least a clear knowledge of the framework of the subject behind—and would be of use even if the subject were not persevered in.
I found Churchill’s reference to “first principles” interesting in light of what he later wrote about Bourke Cockran in Thoughts and Adventures, in an essay which follows immediately upon his “Consistency in Politics.” After referring to the Democrat Cockran’s support for McKinley for President in 1896—opposing the candidate of his own party, William Jennings Bryan, over the issue of free silver—and Cockran’s subsequent return to the Democrat fold in 1900, Churchill wrote: Cockran by that frequent recurrent to first principles… had evolved a complete scheme of political thought which enabled him to present a sincere and effective front in every direction according to changing circumstances. [emphasis added]….Above all he was a free-trader and repeatedly declared that this was an underlying doctrine by which all the others were united.
As early as 1904 Churchill acknowledged in a letter to Cockran the influence his mentor had in developing his political principles: “I would like to think that under different skies and different lands we are fighting in one long line of battle for a common cause.” Fifty years later, Churchill was saying the same thing about Cockran, in a 1954 speech accepting an honorary degree from the State University of New York: There was another thing Bourke Cockran used to say to me. I cannot remember his actual words but they amounted to this: “In a society where there is democratic tolerance and freedom under the law, many kinds of evils will crop up but give them a little time and they usually breed their own cure”….I remain a strong supporter of the principles which Mr. Bourke Cockran inculcated into me on my youthful visit before most of you were born.
Was Churchill consistent in his basic precepts throughout his career? At age 23, he had already declared himself to be a Liberal in his political principles. As he wrote in a letter to his mother from India in 1897: There are no lengths to which I would not go in opposing [the Conservatives] were I in the House of Commons. I am a Liberal in all but name. My views excite the pious horror of the [Officers’] Mess. Were it not for Home Rule—to which I will never consent—I would enter Parliament as a Liberal. As it is—Tory Democracy will have to be the standard under which I shall range myself.
As more countries turn to protectionism in response to the financial crisis of 2008, “the old phrases of 1903” stand up fairly well to the special interests who >>
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CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS
McMENAMIN... are seeking higher tariffs to maintain higher prices without sacrificing market share. They are prompted by the same impulses motivating British and American protectionists in the early 1900s. Amid the controversies of 1934 over Home Rule for India and German rearmament, where Churchill’s stands were as principled as they were unpopular, he took the time to oppose unsuccessfully the Gambling Bill of 1934. On four occasions he spoke against this bill, which he believed posed serious dangers to civil liberties. The bill sought to legalize gambling for dog racing and football while making participation in sweepstakes illegal. Churchill was appalled at the hypocrisy, but the bulk of his opposition was addressed to the infringement on civil liberties the gambling bill called for. Three things aroused his concern. First, the bill called for press censorship by prohibiting newspapers from publishing the list of Irish Sweepstakes winners. Second, the bill provided for warrantless police searches of private homes. Third, the bill granted government the authority to open
private mail to find contraband sweepstakes tickets. In addressing his own party leaders on the government bench, he told them: “you have lost your sense of proportion.” Then, turning to the Labour Party he said more ominously to Clement Attlee: I put it to the Leader of the Opposition who all his life has fought for liberty that they owe it to themselves and their movement, in view of what is taking place all over the world, to be particularly careful, on all questions which arise, to preserve the liberty of the individual.” [emphasis added]
By “what is taking place,” Churchill meant the rise of fascism generally and Nazi Germany in particular. Keep that in mind when reading “Consistency in Politics.” His detractors claim he wasn’t consistent, but they’re wrong. Churchill wasn’t perfect. He would instinctively compromise in order to achieve progress. But his politicw were more consistent than those of any other British politician of his generation. And individual liberty was at its core. ,
Democracy in the Age of Information PAUL ALKON Dr. Alkon, an Academic Adviser to The Churchill Centre, is Leo S. Bing Professor Emeritus of English and American Literature at the University of Southern California. He has published books on Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and science fiction, along with a unique Churchill work, Winston Churchill’s Imagination (2006). In 2003 he won our Somervell Prize for his Lawrence of Arabia features in Finest Hour 119.
I
n a 1941 essay entitled “Wells, Hitler, and the World State,” George Orwell condemned as naive and dangerous the political views of H.G. Wells. So, very often, had Churchill, although he and Wells were friends. His objections mostly centered on what he regarded as Wells’s gullible approval of the Soviet Union and ungrateful disapproval of the capitalist system which allowed him to prosper as people bought his novels. Orwell also suggested, paradoxically, that Wells was “too sane to understand the modern world.” How can there be too much sanity? This difficulty, Orwell explained, arose because we don’t live in a sane world, but Wells “was, and still is, quite incapable of understanding that nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself
would describe as sanity. Creatures out of the Dark Ages have come marching into the present, and if they are ghosts they are at any rate ghosts which need a strong magic to lay them.”1 In 1941, the most conspicuous creatures of the Dark Ages were Hitler and his legions. That Churchill understood this is clear from the warning in his “Finest Hour” speech that under Hitler, “the whole world” would “sink into the abyss of a New Dark Age.”2 Despite their contempt for Wells’s politics, Orwell and Churchill admired his novels, especially his scientific romances. In 1931, Churchill, after castigating (as usual) Wells’s political views, praised the novels: ...when I came upon The Time Machine, that marvellous philosophical romance….I shouted with joy. Then I read
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all his books. I have read them all over since. I could pass an examination in them. One whole long shelf in my small library is filled with a complete edition.3
Churchill goes on to applaud the accuracy of Wells’s predictions: air warfare, tanks and the like. But Orwell gets at something more general, Wells’s presentation of a new way to regard the entire future: ...it was a wonderful experience for a boy to discover H.G. Wells. There you were, in a world of pedants, clergymen and golfers, with your future employers exhorting you to “get on or get out,” your parents systematically warping your sexual life, and your dull-witted schoolmasters sniggering over their Latin tags; and here was this wonderful man who could tell you about the inhabitants of the planets and the bottom of the sea, and who knew that the future was not going to be what respectable people imagined.4
The novels, in other words, invited readers to consider change, not stability, as the norm. Churchill emphatically agrees. The characteristic feature of modern life, which distinguishes it from past history, he insists, is the inevitability of rapid change. Churchill didn’t learn this from Wells. But that lesson in the novels surely accounts in some measure for Churchill’s attraction to them. It was a matter of affinity more than influence, although Orwell was right too in remarking: “I doubt whether anyone who was writing books between 1900 and 1920, at any rate in the English language, influenced the young so much. The minds of all of us, and therefore the physical world, would be perceptibly different if Wells had never existed.”5 When The Time Machine was published in 1895, Churchill was twenty-one. It was life in the 20th century, not fiction, that impressed on him change, not stability, as the new norm for society, as for individuals. Looking back in his 1930 autobiography, Churchill wrote that he had “drawn a picture of a vanished age. The character of society, the foundations of politics, the methods of war, the outlook of youth, the scale of values, are all changed, and changed to an extent I should not have believed possible in so short a space without any violent domestic revolution.”6 and “scarcely anything material or established which I was brought up to believe was permanent and vital, has lasted. Everything I was sure or taught to be sure was impossible, has happened.”7 It is in the light of this disconcerting realization that we can best approach Churchill’s “Consistency in Politics.” Like My Early Life, it was published in the aftermath of World War I, the most shattering interval of early 20th century change. Churchill’s fundamental premise is clearly stated: “The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while
preserving the same dominating purpose.” Because circumstances are always and inevitably changing, changes in political tactics, strategy, and even beliefs must when necessary be embraced and announced: “A Statesman should always try to do what he believes is best in the long view for his country, and he should not be dissuaded from so acting by having to divorce himself from a great body of doctrine to which he formerly sincerely adhereed.”8 No lesson could be more clear. No lesson could be harder to apply in practice, whether as a politician or in judging politicians to decide if their shifting allegiances and ideologies are in pursuit of a steady and worthy larger goal, or mere trimming for the sake of immediate advantage. Over his lifetime, Churchill himself was astonishingly adaptable in coping with changing circumstances. Most of us would agree that despite some mistakes and deplorable contradictions, he went with considerable success and steadiness of worthy purposes, from fighting for England on horseback to serving as Prime Minister in the era of hydrogen bombs. But it’s easier to see this now. There was less agreement about the worthiness of Churchill’s changing attitudes and allegiances in his own day—when, for example, he switched parties twice. “Consistency in Politics” is partly an implicit apologia and defense of his own political transformations. But Churchill’s explicit examples are from the comfortably distant and less controversial past: Edmund Burke, Robert Peel, William Gladstone, Joseph Chamberlain. I’ll be surprised if anybody jumps up today to disagree about Peel or Gladstone. But good luck to us all if we try to apply it to current politics. I hope we don’t try. It’s better to go home and keep Churchill’s essay in mind as a caution against over-hasty judgements, and an invitation to try as best we can in the whirl of immediate events and our own shifting opinions to look for the dominating purposes—worthy or unworthy—that may motivate political pronouncements. ,
Endnotes 1. George Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State,” in Dickens, Dali and Others (London: HBJ, 1973), 123. 2. Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears (New York: Putnams 1941), 314. 3. Winston S. Churchill, “H. G. Wells,” in the Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols. (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), III 52-53. 4. Orwell, “Wells, Hitler and the World State,” 122. 5. Ibid., 121. 6. Winston Churchill, My Early Life (New York: Simon & Schuster Touchstone, 1996), xxi. 7. Churchill, My Early Life, 67. 8. Winston S. Churchill, Thoughts and Adventures (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1932), 23, 29.
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Finest Hour Reader Survey, 2009 In which we finally get what’s coming to us. Interest: Leadership Writings Statesmanship Humor Paintings Family Other
COMPILED BY BARBARA LANGWORTH
O
ur latest reader survey was available on the internet for the first time. Webmaster John Olsen created a form whereby members could enter their opinions online. Mailed-in entries were keyed in by Barbara Langworth who compiled the data using John’s database system. We received about 200, half by each method. Not everyone filled in all the blanks so the totals vary. Respondents were from the USA, Canada, UK, Singapore, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Australia. About 65 percent of those who responded to our question about age were over 60 Age No. % years old, This statistic is not 60+ 113 65 quite so grim as it may ap50-59 40 23 pear. The average age of 40-49 16 9 members who state their age 30-39 3 2 (based on our database) is 55 20-29 2 1 thus only 23 percent of those replying to the survey were in the average age bracket. The average age is 55 in the U.S., 59 in Canada. Of 164 who responded to the “occupation” question, under half were retired or semi-retired. Common occupations were attorneys, lawyers, medical professionals and educators, businessMembership length people, accountants, Years No. % managers, administrators and 10+ 94 50.1 consultants. They included a 5-10 30 16.0 pastor, photographer, sports3-5 40 21.5 caster, U.S. marshal and 0-2 23 12.4 Blackjack dealer! Over half were longtime members. Nearly all told us where they had heard of us. Among “Other” enHeard via: No. % tries were “don’t reFriend 42 21.8 member,” personal CC website 23 11.9 contacts, magazines Bookseller 21 10.9 or books, Chartwell; Internet 20 10.4 and one or two via War Rooms 11 5.7 the English-Speaking Local Event 11 5.7 Union, and Fulton Other 65 33.6 Memorial. Despite our flyers twice being shipped with Levenger books, none mentioned Levenger.
No. 170 167 166 124 69 65 17
% 21.9 21.7 21.5 15.1 9.0 8.5 2.3
We asked what interests you most about Churchill (778 ticks, right) and what Churchill items do you collect (484 ticks, Collect: No. % below). Books 178 36.8 We asked for DVDs 77 15.9 your interest in Finest Churchilliana 55 11.4 Hour, the Chartwell Videos 54 11.2 Bulletin and website. Recordings 49 10.1 Three-quarters of you Art 35 7.2 said “high,” and the Stamps 17 3.5 rest “moderate.” All Nothing 8 1.7 but six wanted more Other 11 2.2 or the same level of publications and web services. In answer to the question about readership level, 42.3 percent said they read Finest Hour cover to cover, 38.1 percent said “thoroughly,” and 19.1 percent read “selections.” Only one person said they “flip through it.” Among “publications read,” 464 ticks were distributed between Finest Hour (39 percent), the Chartwell Bulletin (32 percent) and “Churchill Proceedings” within Finest Hour (29 percent). What is your favorite feature of Finest Hour? Repsondents listed (in order): articles by Churchill and book reviews (by far the highest votes), glossy cover, Books Arts & Curiosities, Action This Day, feature articles, cover story, Wit & Wisdom, Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas, Churchill Proceedings, Editor’s Essay, World War II, Quiz. Several approved of recent in-depth articles such as the Ed Murrow story, “This...is London.” Is Finest Hour just fine as it is? Ninety-five percent (142) said yes, while five percent (seven) said no. A typical response was: “Great as it is, rich and robust with interesting and compelling topics. It will stand the test of time as a literary collectable.” Mailed questionnaires (but not web participants) rated Finest Hour contents, distributing 925 ticks over
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favorite article subjects, 285 over favorite illustrations, and 1,369 over favorite standing departmments in the magazine, distributed as follows: Interest area: Youth/family On WW1 On WW2 Post-WW2 Articles... By WSC Relevance Literary Quotations
No. 88 142 137 103
% 9.5 15.4 14.8 11.1
ticks 32 34 36 33
high 15 20 32 13
some 13 12 3 16
132 107 104 98
14.3 11.6 11.2 10.6
34 35 34 33
29 18 21 21
5 13 10 9
Illustrations Cartoons Paintings... By WSC Of WSC
count % 109 38.3
ticks 33
high 15
some 10
34 30
11 8
16 15
Department Book Reviews Wit & Wisdom Leading Myths Old Books Editor’s Essay Action this Day Riddles Despatch Box Quiz Bibliography Around&About Datelines Ampersand Book Club Other
count % 140 10.2 125 9.1 123 9.0 116 8.5 105 7.7 102 7.5 100 7.3 78 5.7 77 5.6 76 5.6 70 5.1 66 4.8 55 4.0 73 5.3 14 1.5
ticks 37 35 35 31 34 26 34 29 33 28 27 32 26 29
high 30 22 19 23 20 17 19 11 9 13 8 15 10 14
some 7 12 15 6 14 8 12 10 11 7 15 14 10 11
92 84
32.3 29.5
General recommendations We asked how you would improve it and received sixty comments: “More book reviews....articles about collecting Winston Churchill’s books….more on Churchill’s relevance today….analysis of his voluminous writings….Victorian moral attitudes, with modern application.…famous Churchillians now in the news….continue to publish opposing views and perspective, such as Diarmaid Ferriter’s take on de Valera….essays, speeches and talks by others about WSC….Churchill during the interwar years 1919-39….‘then and now’ photos.…the
people around Churchill….relationships with friends, family, and enemies, personal and professional....shorter articles, more pictures.” Occasionally, advice was contradicslight nil tory: “More excerpts from scholarly writ2 2 ings” and “I like the newer, scholarly 1 1 format” were countered by “more for the 0 1 average reader, less from scholars and ac3 1 ademics.” Some said “I have no interest in stamps and skip those articles,” while 0 0 others said, “more stamps.” 4 1 3 0 Specific recommendations 3 0 “The problem of objectively understanding and writing about wars and history....lighter articles such as Terry Reardon’s on St. Pierre et Miquelon in slight nil the autumn 2007 issues, to balance more 7 1 scholarly articles by Martin Gilbert and other academics....an issue devoted to his 7 0 writings, the Nobel Prize....the cars 6 1 Churchill owned (an article has long been gestating on this)....more excerpts from Langworth’s Connoisseur’s Guide slight nil to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill 0 0 ....how Churchill studied history and ap1 0 plied or ignored it in various situations.” 1 0 One reader recommended “more on 2 0 WSC’s early Parliamentary Bills between 0 0 1906 and 1914: No other statesmen 1 0 thought of the conditions of the working 3 0 man in the early 20th century.” 7 1 11 2 “The Relevance Thing” 8 0 More readers prefer articles relating 4 0 Churchill to today’s world than readers 3 0 who don’t want them. A sampling: 6 0 “More articles with relevant actuality, re3 1 lations between nations, globalisation.… more on WSC’s relevance to today’s challenges and crises….how would he react to today’s issues on war, healthcare?...how would he handle the dreadful happenings in the UK—the EC, crime, mass immigration, growing Muslim population?...more contemporary comment on WSC’s relevance in a vastly changed and changing world.” But one reader raised a caution: “I do have a concern at bringing Churchill into modern issues and allowing writers to take advantage of the publication to air their modern views.” We think we’re already doing that... Some of you asked for things we believe we are >>
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READER SURVEY
already doing: “A Churchill Calendar of activities during past and/or forthcoming quarter” (see website and Chartwell Bulletin)...lists of Best Books by and about Churchill (see FH 140, but we’ll do more of this)....current news related to Churchill” (see Datelines and Around & About)....info on upcoming lecture series events at Cabinet War Rooms” (see Chartwell Bulletin)....where readers can find good Churchill photographs and sculpture to purchase (see winstonchurchll.org and click on “shop”)....Churchill’s influence on today’s Middle East/Muslim situation, for which he is often blamed (see “Churchill and the Founding of Iraq,” FH 132)....more diary extracts or articles from people close to Churchill (see recent articles by Messrs. Bullock and Golding, FH 143-45; we publish such new material, but published diaries by colleagues are not within our right to reprint)....bring back stamps and Churchilliana.” (We heard you; see issues from FH 140 on.)
Finest Hour Design and Layout Few comments were offered, and some was contradictory. On the one hand: “Break up the print with cartoons or Churchill’s paintings, photographs of his early days where relevant,” and “I believe the magazine would benefit from a more contemporary feel and look. The articles and features, whilst very interesting are dated in presentation and layout.” On the other hand: “The publication continues to be well designed; don’t change a thing; you can’t improve on it,” and “It was very good when I joined five years ago and it is better now.” However, the reader survey preceded one of our periodic redesigns. Commencing with FH 145, the magazine was altered by eliminating white-on-black caption blocks, adding more white space and leading between lines of type, cutting back on line rules, using more sansserif type and photo “bleeds” (off the page edge). We typically redesign every five years. Readers concerned with layout and design should look at this issue, and FH 145, and tell us what you think of the changes. Some things are unavoidable. Not being A-4 format, Finest Hour is going to appear “foreign” to Europeans the moment they take it from its envelope— despite our insistence on English spelling for Englishoriginated material (see “FH is Bilingual,” page 7). We always aim to improve readability, because Finest Hour is more type-driven (like The Spectator) than art-driven (like Architectural Digest). The editors are not graphic designers, and, while we deprecate the modern tendency toward acres of white space and enormous titles, an art director could surely improve the product—at a price. However, there are higher priorities, including a deputy editor, and, recog-
nizing actuarial reality, a plan for succession. Your praise was both humbling and encouraging: “Every time I learn something new (WSC decreed that a cat must always be at Chartwell—I had no idea!)...Finest Hour is one of the most professional quality publications one can receive.…I have each issue from #1....superb; no suggestions for improvement....an exceptional job together with the newly formatted website….the frequency of publication is just right for me….I read FH cover to cover and enjoy it greatly….I learn a lot about Churchill from many angles….I wouldn’t change a thing.…I enjoy everything—have learned so much and think our editor is terrific….I like FH in its entire form—all subjects…. I love Finest Hour, just make it larger….always look forward to my copy…. the book reviews are excellent.”
Chartwell Bulletin and Churchill Proceedings Most readers approved of our 2007 decision to expand the Chartwell Bulletin to cover all event and news items, while devoting an expanded Finest Hour to “all Churchill, all the time.” One reader “missed coverage of events in FH, while realizing that the Chartwell Bulletin is now the vehicle for this.” A few readers thought that Churchill Proceedings (scholarly papers from conferences) should revert to its previous format as a separate publication. But most approved of running the Proceedings within issues of FH, which produces those papers up to three years earlier than they were being produced in the old separate format. And, of course, our new website feature, “Finest Hour Online,” offers more scholarly papers that don’t make FH for reasons of space. Effective with issue 21, The Chartwell Bulletin was redesigned to match the appearance of the website— which is important, because many members now read it only on the web. Hard copies of the Chartwell Bulletin are mailed only to U.S. members. Both the UK and Canadian organizations have opted to read it via our website, where it is posted up to a month before the hard copy is mailed. Many Americans also read it online. We were interested to know if American members also wanted an email-only Bulletin. While 60 percent said they would prefer it by email, only 20 percent said they would want it only by email, and over 40 percent said they would “disapprove” or “disapprove strongly” if this was the only way they could read it. (Three said they would drop their membership!) Website (www.winstonchurchill.org) We were anxious to know how often you use the website and were encouraged by the results. Nearly twothirds of you use it monthly, and six percent use it daily. On the other hand, there are 36 percent who never use it
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at all. As “Finest Hour Online” continues to expand, those who don’t use it at all will unfortunately miss the material not in our print publications. Favorite website features garnered 400 ticks: One reader commented: “There’s not enough time in the day to digest all this information!” More specific criticisms were: Interest No. % “Finest Hour arNews 58 15.0 ticles are slow to Quotations 43 11.1 be available onWSC speeches 41 10.6 line and help in Myths 41 10.6 access is perfuncPublications 39 10.1 tory…. the webQuote of Season 33 8.5 site rarely works. Action This Day 29 7.5 I’ve been diAudio-Video 24 6.2 rected to go Calendar 23 6.0 there to renew Quiz 20 5.2 my membership Local News 20 5.2 but it never Educators 15 3.9 works….when I contact support, they tell it me it doesn’t work and to use snail mail— there are broken links though I think most of those have been repaired….The chronological web version of Action This Day is a little difficult to navigate.” Webmaster John Olsen is sensitive to these concerns, but the new website still requires masses of old material to be converted and new .pdf files of back issues to be posted, so it’s a matter of time. Never hesitate to contact the webmaster if you have any trouble; he wants to help and acts promptly. General Criticisms We asked “what bugs you” and fifty-three replied. Some said, “I’m not bugged about anything.” Complaints included: “[One of our trustees] is welcome as a Churchillian but I don’t like reading him and will not attend events where he is a speaker….We need more outreach to the younger generations. Having been a member since I was 13, and now approaching 40, I find that people of my generation are not as familiar with the Churchill saga….Throughout the administration of George Bush, one of the worst Presidents ever, you compared him favorably to Churchill.” We take issue with the last. We avoid modern comparisons; quite often we have said they are non-sequitur. The Jablonsky article on the “Bush Doctrine” was more critical than complimentary. G.W. Bush did speak at one of our events; that’s something we’ll cover regardless of who is president. On the other hand, many respondents had no complaints at all: “We get 20-30 magazines a month; Finest Hour is the one I read from cover to cover.”
Conference Comments The most common complaint about conferences was expense: “Pricey for an average guy like me….way too expensive….too far away….too expensive locations….should not always be the same time of year.” Suggestions included: “Could we try one on a campus in the summer to see if it could be offered for less and provide more educational time?...a gathering of Churchill Centre Associates (contributors to the endowment).… too expensive for retirees; some kind of senior citizen discount might be considered.” (Note: The average age at conferences is much higher than the overall average age. We’ve always thought this is because older members have more time to spare, but their support is crucial.) Local Chapters “The affiliates and chapters need a press kit designed by the Centre—one was promised in San Francisco, but it has not been delivered—the press kit would provide suggestions and materials on how to promote and advertise our local activities….why don’t Australia and NZ support WC as in the US and Canada, now that it’s clear he was the fall guy for Gallipoli?” We asked if there was a local branch near you. Sixtyeight percent said yes the rest said no; most of the latter would like a branch near them. Members were split over whether they wished to attend local events, but if there were a local chapter or branch in their area, 84 percent said they’d attend. Lastly we asked if you felt if your local chapter was effective. A hearty 77 percent said yes but 23 percent thought a chapter was not functioning. Several specific comments on chapters were passed on to their leaders. Best Features We asked what The Churchill Centre does best, and ninety-two members replied: “Keeps subjects varied, diverse, compelling and informative....the episodes in his life and leadership….classy events with very big headline speakers….publications, book reviews, Churchill Tours and activities….Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms….the Centre is responsive to members with a friendly, courteous staff....stays true to Churchill....outstanding website and journal….fine symposia and seminars….conference topics, speakers and venues are all very attractive....adds real substance to what one already knows about Churchill….clearing house for ideas….a wonderful job keeping WSC’s memory alive….educates young people and their teachers….thought-provoking articles….inclusiveness: I feel I belong.” Thanks to all who took the trouble to respond, and be assured we are listening to your thoughts. ,
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Level 3 7. What were the warnings which Churchill sent to Stalin between April and June 1941, which were mainly ignored? (W) 8. Young Winston wrote his mother from his Brighton school in 1885: “Tell Oom I got my coat.” Who was Oom? (P) 9. Which event prompted WSC to broadcast in June 1940: “We have become the sole champions now in arms to defend the world cause”? (W) 10. What is the date of this ditty? You’ve heard of Winston Churchill This is all I need to say He’s the latest and the greatest Correspondent of the day. (P)
Level 2 13. Churchill’s Amid These Storms was published in New York in 1932. What was the title of the British edition? (L) 14. Which of Churchill’s relations was known as the “Father of the American Turf”? (P) 15. In February 1938 WSC spoke about the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax: “What is the point of crying out for the moon, when you have the sun, and you have that bright orb of day from whose effulgent beams the lesser luminaries derive their radiance.” Who was the “bright orb”? (C) 16. Which Churchill book, published in 1910, did he describe “as a guide for some and as an armoury for others”? (L) 17. On 12 November 1943 Churchill cabled Roosevelt, saying that this would be a good time to rid ourselves of “that turbulent Knight.” Who was the Knight? (C) 18. In which speech did Churchill say: “Do we not owe it to ourselves, to our children, to mankind tormented, to make sure that these catastrophes shall not engulf us for the third time”? (S) Level 1 19. Who wrote the excellent monograph on Churchill in the 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography? (L) 20. Why was 13 August an important historical date for Winston Churchill? (P) 21. How old was Churchill when Asquith made him Home Secretary? (S) FINEST HOUR 145 / 62
24. Where did Churchill say in 1904: “To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle”? (S)
Answers
(1) My Early Life. (2) Fulton, Missouri. (3) Franklin Roosevelt. (4) Germany. WSC used almost the same words in the House of Commons again in 1943. (5) “…the sun in his eyes and the wind in his teeth.” (6) Winston Churchill.
Level 4 1. “When does one first begin to remember? When do the waving lights and shadows of dawning consciousness cast their print upon the mind of a child?” These are the opening sentences of which Churchill book? (L) 2. Where did Churchill give the Iron Curtain speech? (S) 3. Who cabled Churchill on 8 December 1941: “Today all of us are in the same boat with you...and it is a ship which will not and can not be sunk”? (W) 4. “Those who choose the moment for beginning wars do not always fix the moment for ending them.” (1918.) To which country did Churchill refer ? (W) 5. At a Conservative fête in 1938 WSC told the Duchess of Buccleuch: “Put Neville Chamberlain with the shun in his eyes and the wind in his teesch.” Translate. (M) 6. Whom did an 1897 Daily Chronicle reviewer describe as “Pushful, the Younger”? (M)
23. At a White House luncheon in 1943, when a guest brought up India, WSC asked: “Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly under the benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?” Who was the guest? (M)
(7) That Germany was preparing to invade Russia. (8) His nurse Mrs Everest, aka “Woomany” or “Woom.” (9) The decision of Pétain on 16 June to seek an armistice with Hitler. (10) 1900, after WSC returned from South Africa in July. (11) Winston Churchill. (12) Bourke Cockran.
Each quiz includes four questions in six categories: contemporaries (C), literary (L), miscellaneous (M), personal (P), statesmanship (S) and war (W), easy questions first. Can you reach Level 1?
22. After which speech in May 1940 did WSC say to his old friend Desmond Morton, “That got the sods, didn't it”? (M)
(13) Thoughts and Adventures. (14) His maternal grandfather Leonard Jerome, who founded the Coney Island Jockey Club and Jerome Park. (15) Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. (16) The People’s Rights. (17) Charles de Gaulle. (18) Speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, 26 December 1941.
JAMES LANCASTER
11. From whom in 1910 did King George V receive a letter with this observation? “It must not however be forgotten that there are idlers and wastrels at both ends of the social scale.” (C) 12. “I must record the strong impression which this remarkable man made [in 1895] upon my untutored mind. I have never seen his like, or in some respects his equal.” Who is the young Churchill describing? (C)
(19) Professor Paul Addison. (20) Anniversary of the Battle of Blenheim, 1704. (21) Thirty-five (youngest Home Secretary since Sir Robert Peel in 1822). (22) Leaving the Commons chamber after his “Blood, toil, tears, and sweat” speech on 13 May 1940. (23) Helen Ogden Mills Reid, Vice President of the New York Herald Tribune and sister of Colonel McCormick, the redoubtable publisher of the Chicago Tribune. (24) Free Trade Hall, Manchester.
Churchill Quiz
REGIONAL AND LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS Chapters: Please send all news reports to the Chartwell Bulletin: rlangworth@winstonchurchill.org LOCAL COORDINATORS (USA) Marcus Frost, Chairman (mfrostrock@yahoo.com) PO Box 272, Mexia TX 76667 tel. (254) 587-2000 Judy Kambestad (jammpott@aol.com) 1172 Cambera Lane, Santa Ana CA 92705-2345 tel. (714) 838-4741 (West) Sue & Phil Larson (parker-fox@msn.com) 22 Scotdale Road, LaGrange Park IL 60526 tel. (708) 352-6825 (Midwest) D. Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com) 5909 Bluebird Hill Lane, Weddington NC 28104; tel. (704) 844-9960 (East) LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS (Affiliates are in bold face) For formal affiliation with the Churchill Centre, contact any local coordinator above. Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Society of Alaska Judith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu) 2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508 tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647 Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Society of Calgary, Alberta Mr. Justice J.D. Bruce McDonald, Pres. (bruce.mcdonald@albertacourts.ca) 2401 N - 601 - 5th Street, S.W. Calgary AB T2P 5P7; tel. (403) 297-3164 Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer Churchill Society of Edmonton, Alberta Dr. Edward Hutson, Pres. (jehutson@shaw.ca) 98 Rehwinkel Rd., Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8 tel. (780) 430-7178 Churchill Centre Arizona Larry Pike (lvpike@chartwellgrp.com) 4927 E. Crestview Dr., Paradise Valley AZ 85253 bus. tel. (602) 445-7719; cell (602) 622-0566 Rt. Hon. Sir Winton Spencer Churchill Society of British Columbia Christopher Hebb, Pres. (cavellcapital@gmail.com) 30-2231 Folkestone Way, W. Vancouver, BC V7S 2Y6; tel. (604) 209-6400 California: Churchillians-by-the-Bay Jason Mueller (youngchurchillian@hotmail.com) 17115 Wilson Way, Watsonville CA 95076 tel. (831) 768-8663 California: Churchillians of the Desert David Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com) 74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210 tel. (760) 837-1095
Churchillians of Southern California Leon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com) 235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042 tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844
New York Churchillians Gregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com) Fulbright & Jaworski, 666 Fifth Ave. New York NY 10103; tel. (212) 318-3388
Churchill Centre Chicagoland Phil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com) 22 Scottdale Road, LaGrange IL 60526 tel. (708) 352-6825
North Carolina Churchillians www.churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.org Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com) 5909 Bluebird Hill Lane Weddington NC 28104; tel. (704) 844-9960
Colorado: Rocky Mountain Churchillians Lew House, President (lhouse2cti@earthlink.net) 2034 Eisenhower Dr., Louisville CO 80027 tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589 England: TCC-UK Woodford/Epping Branch Tony Woodhead, Old Orchard 32 Albion Hill, Loughton Essex IG10 4RD; tel. (0208) 508-4562 England: TCC-UK Northern Branch Derek Greenwell, Farriers Cottage Station Road, Goldsboroughdd Knaresborough, North Yorks. HG5 8NT tel. (01432) 863225 Churchill Society of South Florida Rodolfo Milani (churchillsocietyofsouthflorida@gmail.com) 7741 Ponce de Leon Road, Miami FL 33143 tel. (305) 668-4419; mobile (305) 606-5939 Churchill Centre North Florida Richard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net) 81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607 tel. (352) 378-8985 Winston Churchill Society of Georgia www.georgiachurchill.org William L. Fisher (fish1947@bellsouth.net) 5299 Brooke Farm Rd., Dunwoody GA 30338 tel. (770) 399-9774
Churchill Centre Northern Ohio Michael McMenamin (mtm@walterhav.com) 1301 E. 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114 tel. (216) 781-1212 Churchill Society of Philadelphia Bernard Wojciechowski (bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us) 1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446 tel. (610) 584-6657 South Carolina: Bernard Baruch Chapter Kenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net) P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367 tel. (803) 254-4035 Texas: Emery Reves Churchillians Jeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net) 2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210 tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237 Churchill Centre Houston Marty Wyoscki (cilcia@sbcglobal.net) 10111 Cedar Edge Drive, Houston TX 77064 tel. (713) 870-3346 Churchill Centre South Texas thechurchillcentresouthtexas.com Don Jakeway (churchillstx@gmail.com) 170 Grassmarket, San Antonio, TX 78259 tel. (210) 333-2085
Winston Churchill Society of Michigan Richard Marsh (rcmarsha2@aol.com) 4085 Littledown, Ann Arbor, MI 48103 tel. (734) 913-0848
Sir Winston Churchill Society of Vancouver Island Sidney Allinson, Pres. (allsid@shaw.ca) 3370 Passage Way, Victoria BC V9C 4J6 tel. (250) 478-0457
Churchill Round Table of Nebraska John Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com) 7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114 tel. (402) 968-2773
Washington (DC) Society for Churchill John H. Mather, Pres. (Johnmather@aol.com) PO Box 73, Vienna VA 22182-0073 tel. (240) 353-6782
New England Churchillians Joseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com) 340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170 tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919
Churchill Centre Seattle www.churchillseattle.blogspot.com Simon Mould (simon@cckirkland.org) 1920 243rd Pl., SW, Bothell, WA 98021 tel. (425) 286-7364
Churchill Society of New Orleans J. Gregg Collins (jgreggcollins@msn.com) 2880 Lakeway Three 3838 N. Causeway Blvd., Metairie LA 70002 tel. (504) 799-3484
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The Memorial Screen at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London A memorial to Sir Winston in St. Paul’s Cathedral was long considered. Nelson and Wellington are both buried there, and their memorials are a central focus within the Crypt. But Churchill is buried at Bladon, and the only memorial to him within the Cathedral records the position where the coffin stood at his funeral, a spot now hidden beneath the Dome Sanctuary. The memorial screen was chosen in 2000, and Somerset blacksmith James Horrobin was given the commission. Comprising a pair of centre gates and two smaller gates, the screen is emblazoned with reminders of Churchill’s life, the Order of the Garter, the Order of Merit, and the Shield of the Cinque Ports.The location is significant. It lies on the centre axis of the Crypt, in line with the Nelson and Wellington tombs, directly below Wren’s great dome, and centred on Nelson’s tomb. The area also contains many memorials to significant national figures and events, including the chamber of the great commanders of World War II. The screen was dedicated in 2005 by The Queen’s cousin, HRH The Duke of Kent. The Dean of St. Paul’s called Sir Winston “one of our nation’s greatest servants.” A moving service included several of Churchill’s favourite hymns. A specially composed choral piece, a Motet, blended Churchill’s words “In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.” The service was attended by family members led by Sir Winston’s daughter Lady Soames. Also in attendance were Lady Thatcher, Sir Edward Heath, Members of Parliament and members of The Churchill Centre.
Obscure London Churchilliana Other Churchill sights in London not frequently visited include the Commando Memorial at Westminster Abbey, which Churchill dedicated in May 1948 (Finest Hour 125, Spring 2007: 14-15); the former London Magazine on the Hyde Park Serpentine, which Churchill had guarded during the 1911 Agadir Crisis, convincing Prime Minister Asquith that he was a man of action fit to run the Admiralty (Finest Hour 88, Autumn 1995, 14); the seated bronze figures of Churchill and Roosevelt on a bench in New Bond Street (Finest Hour 143, Summer 2009: 14); and Number Ten Annexe: the ground floor offices next to the Cabinet War Rooms, Churchill’s main headquarters after Downing Street was considered unsafe from bombing attacks during the Blitz (Finest Hour 144: 7). On Churchill Tours formerly conducted by the editor, we occasionally asked Sir Martin Gilbert to lead walking tours of these London spaces. At the Annexe, he was always careful to point out the filled holes in the ground floor walls, which once contained brackets for the steel air raid shutters.
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