Glow-Worm #16 — Fourth Quarter 2012
The Churchillians by-the-Bay e-newsletter We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm Winston to the young Violet Asquith at a dinner in the early summer of 1906, as recounted in her book Winston Churchill As I Knew Him. Winston was thirty-one at the time, Violet was nineteen.
Violet Asquith was nineteen years old when she first met Winston
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Ed Murrow, CBS journalist
Ed Murrow being interviewed in Wiesbaden, Germany, on April 8, 1956.
For the fourth Quarter of each issue of Glow-Worm, Carol Mueller always selected an item related in some way to Churchill’s birthday — November 30. We both agreed that a good item for the fourth quarter would be the well-known tribute by Ed Murrow on Churchill’s 80th birthday, November 30, 1954, broadcast on CBS (In Search of Light, the broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow 1938-1961, pp. 236-38). Ed Murrow’s tribute on Churchill’s 80th birthday 30 November 1954 The British are an emotional, sentimental people with a great fondness for antiquity. The sentiment and the emotion are seldom displayed, but it happened in London today. The occasion was the eightieth birthday of Sir Winston Churchill — a flood of gifts, a joint session of Parliament, non-partisan oratory, a portrait, a fund that may go to three million dollars — all in honour of perhaps the most considerable man to walk the stage of history in our time. His own island, wrapped in the Atlantic mists, was never a large enough stage for him to play upon. He has served six sovereigns; his experience of war extends from the last full-dress cavalry charge to the hydrogen bomb. For fifty-two years he has sat in the House of Commons. He has not always been right, but never has he been ambiguous. Today was the most memorable public occasion of his life. Today, in recalling the war years, he said, ‘The people’s will was
resolute and remorseless. I only expressed it. They had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give it the roar.’ (See note 1 below) This ancient aristocrat, born in the tranquil, serene Victorian era has spent much of his life as a man of war. His recognition of the enemies of freedom was sure and certain. His faith in Constitutional procedure was never shaken. During the late war Sir Winston Churchill presided over a coalition government equipped with dictatorial powers and was scrupulous in his regard for the authority of the House of Commons. His political obituary was being written when he had scarcely passed forty. He sat for years in the House, warning of the menace of Nazism, while the big clock above the Speaker’s chair ticked off the wasted hours. He was a lonely but not a bitter man, always enjoying the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate, where no man was his match. When he came to power in the spring of 1940, he brooked no recrimination about the past, lest the future thereby be lost. He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle (See note 2 below) to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended. He understood the first principle of war, which is to recognize the enemy, and had Hitler invaded Hell, Mr. Churchill would have found opportunity in the House of Commons to make passing and not altogether unfavourable reference to the Devil. I am sure that if he could pluck one year from the incredible eighty and print it indelibly in the pages of history, he would choose that one year when Britain stood alone, while those who were half asleep became half prepared. He would choose it, not because of his rhetoric, not because of the Battle of Britain or the steadiness of the civilian population, but rather because democratic processes, the rights of the individual, did not shrivel or shrink even when held so near the fire of total war. The British Prime Minister is both a gambler and a crying man; Mr. Lincoln did considerable crying, too. One of the greatest gambles in the history of warfare occurred in the autumn of 1940, when he stripped the island of its pitiful remnants of armour — most of it had been lost at Dunkirk — and shipped it around the Cape to Egypt. When the German beam was on London, guiding their bombers in, he would drive up from the country for no other reason than to be there with the other subjects of the King. There was a grim gaiety about the man, a certain fascination with physical danger, a restless, roving mind which caused him to be concerned about minute details, memoranda showering right and left reading, ‘Pray inform me on this
matter within twenty-four hours,’ telephone calls to cabinet ministers in the middle of the night. And always the ability to savour and taste a well-turned phrase, to polish it until it would come out in the House of Commons in a fashion described by a friend as a ‘thunderous and well-rehearsed improvisation.’ When victory had been achieved, his fellow countrymen turned him out to grass. With one brilliant exception he did not complain. His mind had changed on very few subjects, and it was a time of change. He wrote and he painted, and sought power again. Finally it was his. Scarred and toughened as he was by political wars, the charge that hurt most in that last campaign was that he was a man of war not to be trusted with power. He remains the man of war seeking peace. Younger men, waiting for him to lay down the heavy burdens of office, grow old and impatient while waiting. He moves with uncertain steps. Some of the fire has gone from his voice, but his language continues to illuminate the political scene in England and abroad. He said today, ‘I am now nearing the end of my journey, but I hope I still have some services to render.’ His services to date have not been inconsiderable, for men who love freedom, and indeed those who now enjoy it, are considerably in his debt. He has enriched our language and fortified our heritage. Note 1: Churchill’s actual words at Westminster Hall during the presentation from both Houses of Parliament to mark his eightieth birthday were: ‘It was a nation and race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. I also hope that I sometimes suggested to the lion the right places to use his claws.’ (Winston S. Churchill Speeches 1953-1959 The Unwritten Alliance pp. 202-3) Note 2: President John F. Kennedy borrowed this phrase when he conferred honorary citizenship of the United States on Sir Winston Churchill on 9 April 1963: ‘In the dark days and darker nights when Britain stood alone — and most men save Englishmen despaired of England’s life — he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.’
George Orwell
George Orwell with his adopted son Richard, November 1946 Following the death of Orwell’s widow Sonia, his literary estate passed to his son, Richard Blair
Glow-Worm readers will not need reminding that the name Winston Smith in Orwell’s Ninety Eighty-Four was inspired by Winston Churchill and the common English name ‘Smith’. Orwell first came up with the name in 1945, using it for the central character of Ninety Eighty-Four, Orwell’s last book, published in 1949. Here are some Churchillian extracts from The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters of George Orwell, published by Secker & Warburg in 1968, in four volumes:
Winston ‘The blue-eyed boy of the Daily Worker’ On the English Communist Party in the 1930s (vol I, p. 514)
The years 1935-9 were the period of anti-Fascism and the Popular Front, the heyday of the Left Book Club, when red duchesses and ‘broad-minded’ deans toured the battlefields of the Spanish war and Winston Churchill was the blue-eyed boy of the Daily Worker. On Winston in verse Two verses from A Letter to Obadiah Hornbrooke (pseudonym of Alex Comfort, the professional anarchist and pacifist), published in the Tribune in June 1943 (vol II, pp. 301-2): But you don’t hoot at Stalin — that’s ‘not done’ — Only at Churchill; I’ve no wish to praise him, I’d gladly shoot him when the war is won, Or now, if there were someone to replace him, But unlike some, I’ll pay him what I owe him; There was a time when empires crashed like houses, And many a pink who’d twitter at your poem Was glad enough to cling to Churchill’s trousers, Christ! how they huddled up to one another Like day-old chicks about their foster-mother! I’m not a fan for ‘fighting on the beaches’, And still less for the ‘breezy uplands’ stuff, I seldom listen-in to Churchill’s speeches, But I’d far sooner hear that kind of guff Than your remark, a year or so ago, That if the Nazis came you’d knuckle under And ‘peaceably accept the status quo’. Maybe you would! But I’ve a right to wonder Which will sound better in the days to come, ‘Blood, toil and sweat’ or ‘Kiss the Nazi’s bum’.
‘Cheese, not Churchill’ Extract from the 14 March 1941 entry in Orwell’s diary (vol II, p. 388): On a wall in South London some Communist or Blackshirt had chalked ‘Cheese, not Churchill’. What a silly slogan. It sums up the psychological ignorance of these people who even now have not grasped that, whereas some people would die for Churchill, nobody will die for cheese. Churchill’s accent From an article on ‘Propaganda and Demotic speech’ published in Persuasion, summer 1944 (vol III, pp. 139-40): Of course, demotic speech is not solely a matter of being colloquial and avoiding ill-understood words. There is also the question of accent. It seems certain that in modern England the ‘educated’ upper-class accent is deadly to any speaker who is aiming at a large audience. All effective speakers in recent times have had either cockney or provincial accents. The success of Priestley’s broadcasts in 1940 was largely due to his Yorkshire accent, which he probably broadened for the occasion. Churchill is only a seeming exception to this rule. Too old to have acquired the modern ‘educated’ accent he speaks with the Edwardian upper-class twang which to the average man’s ear sounds like cockney. Orwell’s review of Churchill’s Their Finest Hour An extract from this review (vol IV, pp. 493-5) is in the Book Reviews section of this issue of Glow-Worm. It was Orwell’s last piece of writing to be published. Click the link to George Orwell’s review of Their Finest Hour in the Book Reviews section in the Table of Contents in the left-hand panel
Nancy Astor and Winston Nancy Astor was born Nancy Witcher Langhorne, in Danville, Virginia on 19 May 1879. Her father Chiswell Langhorne had made his fortune in railroad construction. Following a short and disastrous marriage (1897-1903) to Robert Gould Shaw, she left for England. On the eastward crossing of the Atlantic she met Waldorf Astor, a fellow American who was also born on 19 May 1879. They married in May 1906. Waldorf was the eldest son of William Waldorf Astor (18481919) property owner and newspaper proprietor. William Waldorf, after inheriting $100 million in 1890 moved to England, where he bought Cliveden House near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and later the Pall Mall Gazette, the Pall Mall Magazine and The Observer. He was naturalized a British citizen in 1899, and became the first Viscount Astor in 1917. The death of William Waldorf in 1919 meant that his son, who had represented Plymouth since 1910, succeeded him as second Viscount Astor. Nancy Astor was encouraged by her husband Waldorf to fight for the vacated seat — Plymouth Sutton. She won with a majority of 5,000 in November 1919 — the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. At the time Winston Churchill was not overly enthusiastic about women in the House of Commons, and he considered Nancy to be beautiful but distinctly odd.
Nancy Astor in 1920
Over the years Winston chided Nancy as a maverick on several occasions. As a part-time feminist, Christian Scientist and prohibitionist, she was an easy target: After Nancy interrupted him during his Budget speech on 11 April 1927, he remarked: ‘I have great regard and respect for the Noble Lady, but I do not think we are likely to learn much from the liquor legislation of the United States.’(RRJ’s Complete Speeches, vol IV, p. 4170). In his article on George Bernard Shaw, published in Pall Mall Magazine in August 1929, Winston wrote: Lady Astor, like Mr Bernard Shaw, enjoys the best of all worlds. She reigns on both sides of the Atlantic in the Old World and the New, at once as a leader of fashionable society and of advanced feminist democracy. She combines a kindly heart with a sharp and wagging tongue. She embodies the historical portent of the first woman Member of the House of Commons. She denounces the vice of gambling in unmeasured terms and is closely associated with an almost unrivalled racing stable. She accepts Communist hospitality and flattery and remains the Conservative member for Plymouth. She does
all these opposite things so well and so naturally that the public, tired of criticizing, can only gape. ‘It is now some sixteen or seventeen years ago’ to parody Burke's famous passage, 'that I first saw the present Viscountess Astor in London Society, and surely never lighted on these shores, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.’ She had stepped out of a band-box from the United States to animate and charm the merry and still decorous circles through which she had then begun to move. Every door opened at her approach. Insular and masculine prejudices were swept aside, and forthwith the portals of the House of Commons, barred by immemorial tradition to women, always difficult of access to those of foreign birth, were thrown wide to receive her. (Great Contemporaries Thornton Butterworth p. 54) Two years later, on 12 March 1931, Stanley Baldwin, as Leader of the Opposition, said during a speech on India: ‘I have been told that I have surrendered to my right hon Friend the member for Epping…’ at which point Nancy interrupted: ‘God forbid, Never!’ Churchill, as the member for Epping, was not amused and told her so in the lobby of the House. She replied the following day in a personal letter to Winston: Dear Winston, As a personal friend of yours & Clemms, however much I differ from you on certain political questions, I do feel that you break the ordinary decencies & relationships of public life when you drag in personalities. You hardly ever have a difference with me without calling me a Yankee (your mother was a Yankee — I am a Virginian) or asking me to get back to Virginia & leave British politics — or refer to our owning a paper. No one is prouder of her Virginian birth than I am. As for my political life — dim tho it is — I would not change it for yours… (OBDV 12, pp. 300-1). Nancy was the Member for Plymouth Sutton from 1919 to 1945. There must have been many occasions when she amused her fellow MPs, on both sides of the House, with her batty interjections and non sequiturs.
Harold Nicolson & Nancy Astor One such occasion was described with brilliant irony by Harold Nicolson in a letter to his son Nigel datelined Sissinghurst, 23 April 1945: Nancy Astor, circa 1945
I went off to the House for a Press luncheon. Winston was to make the main speech and Nancy Astor the secondary speech. Winston was very good, but warned the Press against shouting that V Day was on the verge of reality. ‘How can we possibly rejoice when our men are still losing their lives in Holland, in Norway maybe, in Italy still, and certainly in Burma?’ At the same time let us not feel that our lack of boasting is
losing us prestige. ‘Honour will come to us; we need not go out and seek it.’ Then Nancy got up. For once she had some notes in her hand, but each note suggested an idea and each idea some other idea, and then that reminded her of a story her nurse had once told her in Virginia and how little, now she came to think of it, the British Press knew about Virginia although Sir Walter Raleigh had colonised it and how Raleigh was less well known in England than in the United States… of course such a nice young man and the best type of Conservative although she herself was not a Conservative really although her husband was and nor was Winston really since he had been a Liberal once and oh yes she must tell them about Winston she had asked him why he was so cold to her when she first entered the House and he had said because I feel you have come into my bathroom and I have only a sponge with which to defend myself not that she had forgiven Winston we had all forgiven Winston but it was really the merchant navy which had done the great deeds where should we be without the merchant navy now in Plymouth… At this stage, Waldorf, who was sitting beside her, gave a slight tug to her dress. ‘Now, where was I?’ she said looking at her notes. ‘Oh yes…’ and then she started again. This was perhaps the last speech she would make in the House of Commons and she had a favour to ask Winston, would he please make her a peer, as she would wake up the House of Lords as she had woken up the House of Commons, and Philip Lothian always used to say… At which came another tug from Waldorf, so strong that Nancy sat down suddenly with an expression of pained surprise. I suppose her rambling is amusing, but it rather saddens me, as I like her, and I wish that she would not make quite such an idiot of herself in public.’ (The Diaries and Letters of Harold Nicolson, 19391945, pp. 450-1)
Bookworm’s Corner
This print is called Bookaholic copyright: Sue Macartney-Snape Link to SMS Editions
Violet’s Romanes lecture at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford The Impact of Personality in Politics, on June 6, 1963.
The prestigious Romanes lecture has been given annually at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford since 1892. The lecture series was
founded by and named for the Darwinian biologist Georges Romanes (1848-94). Violet Bonham Carter was the first woman to be invited to give the lecture. Some other people who have been invited to give the Romanes lecture: Theodore Roosevelt in 1910: Biological Analogies in History. Violet’s father H. H. Asquith in 1918: Some Aspects of the Victorian Age. Winston Churchill in 1930: Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem.
Some of her comments about Churchill in her lecture: Torrent of largesse Winston Churchill — the most naturally dramatic of all statesmen. Throughout the matchless eloquence of the epic speeches he addressed to his own countrymen, to Europe, to the Old World and the New, he has never deviated by one hair’s breadth from himself. He might well address the same remarks in the selfsame idiom to anyone who happened to be sitting next to him at luncheon. How often when I have had the luck to find myself in this position, and the recipient of this torrent of largesse, I have felt, almost with a sense of guilt, ‘But — I ought to be a continent!’ (p. 9) The 1930s Most people were asleep. Some shut their eyes deliberately. The people wanted poppy and mandragora (See Notes 1 - 5 below). The Governments gave it. The few who were awake kept agonizing vigil and strove to waken others. And of these few Sir Winston Churchill was the voice and soul. He dedicated all his powers of vision, passion and expression he possessed, in Parliament, on platforms, and in
the Press, to wakening the sleeping conscience of the nation, both to its peril and its honour. And he failed. His words fell on deaf ears. Awakening came from the fulfilment of the doom he prophesied. The Government fell, not to his sword, but by the action of some sixty Tory members who abstained in a division, and thirty others who opposed it. How then can we explain the sudden translation of Winston Churchill from utter impotence to absolute power? Sir Winston himself has given the answer when he once wrote that ‘to hold the leadership of a nation or of a party with dignity and authority requires that the leader’s message shall meet not only the need but the mood of both’. In 1940 not only did he meet the nation’s need, but he became the inspired expression of its mood and purpose. He was in tune with the hour. The Man kept his tryst with the Moment. Note 1: The opium poppy plant and the ‘mandragora’, an early term for the mandrake plant, are both narcotics. The phrase ‘poppy and mandragora’ is from Shakespeare’s Othello Act III, Scene III: Enter Othello, Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday Note 2: Shakespeare also alludes to the mandrake plant’s properties in Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene V: Cleopatra: ‘Ha, Ha! Give me to drink mandragora’ Note3: And in Romeo and Juliet he alludes to the superstition that mandrakes shriek when touched: Alack, alack! is it not like that I, So early waking, what with loathsome smells, And shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth, That living mortals, hearing them, run mad. (Juliet’s soliloquy, Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene III) Note 4: Violet also used the phrase ‘poppy and mandragora’ during her meeting with President Kennedy at the White House on 14 May 1963. When Kennedy asked her about her relationship with Churchill in the Thirties,
she said that Winston was then ‘despised & rejected of men’; ‘the country wanted poppy & mandragora’ Note 5: The phrase ‘despised & rejected of men’ is in the King James Bible, the Book of Isaiah, chapter 53, verse 3: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
RosettaBooks Rosetta Books has already published all six volumes of Churchill’s The Second World War as e-books. They are available from Amazon as Kindle e-books for $8.42 per volume. Rosetta Books has recently announced an agreement with Curtis Brown to publish another 40 Churchill books (most of the canon) as e-books. These will roll out by the first half of 2013. Rosetta Books, Churchill e-books
Churchilliana Portrait of Queen Elizabeth at the Coronation Review Harking back to Paul Courtenay’s excellent article The Diamond Jubilee—Queen Elizabeth and Winston Churchill, published in the second quarter 2012 issue of Glow-Worm, it is still opportune to publish this splendid poster of the Queen during the Coronation Review at Spithead in June 1953. The beflagged vessel in the background is none other than HMS Vanguard. Preliminary design work started in July 1939, only to be suspended in September that year. In February 1940, Winston Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty ordered the full design-and-build to go ahead. She was built by John Brown and Company in Clydebank. She was launched on 30 November 1944 — Churchill’s 70th birthday.
She was the largest and the fastest of the Royal Navy’s dreadnoughts, the last battleship to be built. In 1947 she was used for the Royal Tour of King George VI to South Africa. While refitting after her return, she was selected for the Royal Tour of Australia and New Zealand. But this tour was cancelled because of the King’s declining health. She was the flagship for the Queen’s Coronation Review in 1953. She was decommissioned in June 1960 and scrapped the same year.
Winston is lambasted by his father after missing the infantry at Sandhurst in 1893
Lord Randolph in 1893
Winston at Sandhurst in 1893 9 August 1893, Kissingen My Dear Winston, There are two ways of winning in an examination, one creditable the other the reverse. You have unfortunately chosen the latter method, and appear to be much pleased with your success. The first extremely discreditable feature of your performance was missing the infantry, for in that failure is demonstrated beyond refutation your slovenly happy-go-lucky harum scarum style of work for which you have always been distinguished at your different schools. . . .
With all the advantages you had, with all the abilities which you foolishly think yourself to possess & which some of your relations claim for you, with all the efforts that have been made to make your life easy & agreeable & your work neither oppressive or distasteful, this is the grand result that you come up among the 2nd rate & 3rd rate class who are only good for commissions in a cavalry regiment. . . I am certain that if you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle useless unprofitable life you have had during your schooldays & later months, you will become a mere social wastrel one of the hundreds of the public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby unhappy & futile existence. If that is so you will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes yourself. (OBCV vol I, Part I, pp. 390-1) Winston does not mention this letter in his life of Lord Randolph, published in 1906, but in his book My Early Life published in 1930, he defended his decision to join the cavalry: Horses were the greatest of my pleasures at Sandhurst. I and the group in which I moved spent all our money on hiring horses from the very excellent local livery stables. We ran up bills on the strength of our future commissions. We organized point-to-points and even a steeplechase in the park of a friendly grandee, and bucketed gaily about the countryside. And here I say to parents, especially to wealthy parents, ‘Don’t give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses.’ No one ever came to grief — except honourable grief through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses, or through backing horses, but never through riding them; unless of course they break their necks, which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die.
‘Blood, toil, tears and sweat’, Winston was inspired by Georges Clemenceau In his first speech as Prime Minister in the House of Commons on 13 May 1940, Churchill declared: ‘I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ One influence for his use of this famous phrase has long been ignored — the closing peroration of Georges Clemenceau in the Chamber of Deputies on 20 November 1917, his first speech as Prime Minister. As he recounted in his article on Clemenceau published in the Strand in December 1930 (republished in Great Contemporaries), Churchill as Minister of Munitions had been in the Chamber on that memorable day.
The Chamber of Deputies
Clemenceau in 1917
Extract from Churchill’s article on Georges Clemenceau (Père La Victoire — The Father of Victory) (Great Contemporaries Thornton Butterworth 1937, pp. 310-11): Clemenceau reproduced, more than any other French Parliamentarian I have heard, the debating methods of the House of Commons. The essence and foundation of House of Commons debating is formal conversation. The set speech, the harangue addressed to constituents, or to the wider public out of doors, has never succeeded much in our small, wisely built chamber. To do any good you have got to get down to grips with the subject and in human touch with the audience.
Certainly Clemenceau seemed to do this; he ranged from one side of the tribune to the other, without a note or book of reference or scrap of paper, barking out sharp, staccato sentences as the thought broke upon his mind. He looked like a wild animal pacing to and fro behind bars, growling and glaring; and all around him was an assembly which would have done anything to avoid having him there, but having put him there, felt they must obey. Indeed it was not a matter of words or reasoning. Elemental passions congealed by suffering, dire perils close and drawing nearer, awful lassitude and deep forebodings, disciplined the audience. The last desperate stake had to be played. France had resolved to unbar the cage and let her tiger loose upon all foes, beyond the trenches or in her midst. Language, eloquence, arguments were not needed to express the situation. With snarls and growls, the ferocious, aged, dauntless beast of prey went into action. Along with everyone else in the Chamber that day, Churchill was inspired by Clemenceau’s closing remarks: ‘Un jour, de Paris au plus humble village, des rafales d’acclamations accueilleront nos étendards vainqueurs, tordus dans le sang, dans les larmes, déchirés des obus, magnifique apparition de nos grands morts. Ce jour, le plus beau de notre race, il est en notre pouvoir de le faire.’ Translation : ‘One day, from Paris to the smallest village, we will hear delirious crowds welcoming home the shell-torn flags and colours of our victorious troops, twisted in blood and tears, a magnificent vision of our immortal dead. That day, the most glorious day in the history of France, is one which is well within our reach.’
A Churchillian Currency Curiosity
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. (In the House of Commons on 20 August 1940) Violet Bonham Carter wrote to Winston: Nothing so simple, so majestic & so true has been said in so great a moment of human history
Let us brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was Their Finest Hour’.
(In the House of Commons 18 June 1940)
100 Years Ago
Winston and HMS Oliver Cromwell On 28 October 1912 WSC submitted to King George V the following names for the four capital ships in the current building programme — King Richard the First, King Henry the Fifth, Queen Elizabeth and Oliver Cromwell. It is an understatement to say that the last name — Oliver Cromwell — was not well received by the King. His private secretary Baron Stamfordham replied the following day: The King wishes me to return the enclosed submission as he feels sure there must be some mistake in the name of Oliver Cromwell being suggested for one of the new battleships. Baron Stamfordham, King George V’s private secretary
Arthur John Bigge, Baron Stamfordham (1849-1931) ‘He taught me how to be a King’ (King George V in his obituary tribute in 1931 — Nicolson p. 452)
Despite this rebuff from the Palace, Churchill continued to fight valiantly in support of Oliver Cromwell. The epistolary battle between Churchill and Stamfordham lasted another four weeks. Eventually, on 20 November 1912, Churchill backed down before his sovereign, popularly known as the Sailor King for his fifteen years service in the Royal Navy, admitting that this was a battle he would be wise to lose: ‘I bow to the King’s wish about the battleship’s name and will submit the name Valiant as a substitute.’ (OBCV III, Part 3 pp. 1664-71, OB II, pp. 646-54, and Kenneth Rose King George V, pp 160-1).
HMS Valiant, launched on 4 November 1914 Winston had lost this ill-chosen battle. One of the many reasons was that King George V, the Conservatives and the Irish Nationalists were strongly opposed to the statue erected to Oliver Cromwell outside the Palace of Westminster in 1899:
The controversial statue at the Palace of Westminster, erected in 1899. The Cromwell Association currently looks after the statue, and organises appropriate ceremonies.
The 1913-14 Naval Estimates As First Lord of the Admiralty since October 1911, Churchill’s principal concern in November 1912 was to maintain naval superiority, in quantity and in quality, over Germany and Austria. On 18 November 1912 he wrote to Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, explaining the significance of the Austrian decision to build three extra Dreadnoughts. On December 9 he wrote again to the Chancellor about the need to increase significantly the 1913-14 Naval Estimates (OBCV II, Part 3, p. 1671): I am prepared to take the whole responsibility of the present and prospective naval expenditure upon myself. Everything that is not uncontrollable and automatic can be fully justified in detail to Parliament and the public, in consequence of naval development elsewhere‌(OBII, p. 607)
In the first volume of The World Crisis, published in April 1923, Churchill wrote about the naval building programme for the years 1912-14, starting with the switch from coal to oil which he had inherited when he became First Lord of the Admiralty: To commit the Navy irrevocably to oil was indeed ‘to take arms against a sea of troubles’ (See Note 1 below) Wave after wave, dark with storm, crested with foam, surged towards the harbour in which we were sheltered. Should we drive out into the teeth of the gale, or should we be contented where we were? Yet beyond the breakers was a great hope… The three programmes of 1912, 1913 and 1914 comprised the greatest additions in power and cost made to the Royal Navy… I had, however, the unfailing support of the Prime Minister. The Chancellor of the Exchequer whose duty it was to be my most severe critic, was also my most friendly colleague. And so it all went through. Fortune rewarded the continuous and steadfast facing of these difficulties by the Board of the Admiralty and brought us a prize from fairyland far beyond our brightest hopes. (WSC The World Crisis, vol I, pp. 130-2)
Note 1: From Hamlet’s well-known soliloquy in Act III, Scene I of Hamlet: To be, or not to be; that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
HMS Colossus at anchor, Scapa Flow, 1916
The Admiralty Christmas Card 1912
The Sweet Little Cherub was keen to come across as the friend of ‘Jolly Jack Tar’; in this he was nobly assisted by Bernard Partridge’s well-known cartoon in Punch.
Book Reviews George Orwell’s review of Their Finest Hour
The cover of the first Cassell edition, published in 1949
George Orwell’s review of Their Finest Hour was published in the New Leader (New York) on 14 May 1949. It was his last piece of writing to be published. He died on 21 January 1950. An extract:
One of the most interesting chapters in Their Finest Hour deals with the exchange of American destroyers for bases in the British West Indies. The letters that passed between Churchill and Roosevelt form a sort of commentary on democratic politics. Roosevelt knew that it was in the American interest that Britain should have the destroyers, and Churchill knew that it was not to the disadvantage of Britain— rather the contrary—that the United States should have the bases. Nevertheless, apart from the legal and constitutional difficulties, it was impossible for the ships to be simply handed over without haggling. With the election ahead of him, and with one eye on the Isolationists, Roosevelt had to give the appearance of driving a hard bargain. He also had to demand an assurance that even if Britain lost the war, the British fleet would in no circumstances be handed over to the Germans. This, of course, was a senseless condition to impose. It could be taken as certain that Churchill would not hand over the fleet: but, on the other hand, if the Germans succeeded in over-running Britain, they would set up some kind of puppet government, for whose actions Churchill could not answer. He was unable, therefore, to give as firm an assurance as was demanded, and the bargaining was prolonged accordingly. The one quick solution would have been to secure a pledge from the whole British people, including the crews of the ships. But Churchill, curiously enough, seems to have shrunk from publicising the facts. It would have been dangerous, he says, to let it be known how near Britain was to defeat—perhaps the only occasion throughout this period when he underrated public morale. The book ends in the dark winter of 1940, when unexpected victories in the desert, with vast hauls of Italian prisoners, were offset by the bombing of London and the increased sinkings at sea. Unavoidably, as one reads, the thought moves to and fro in one’s mind: ‘How freely is Churchill capable of speaking?’ For the main interest of these memoirs is bound to come later, when Churchill tells us (if he
does decide to tell us) what really happened at Teheran and Yalta, and whether the policies there adopted were ones that he himself approved of, or whether they were forced upon him by Roosevelt. But at any rate, the tone of this and the preceding volume suggests that when the time comes, he will tell us more of the truth than has been revealed hitherto. Whether or not 1940 was anyone else’s finest hour, it was certainly Churchill’s. However much one may disagree with him, however thankful one may be that he and his party did not win the 1945 election, one has to admire in him not only his courage but also a certain largeness and geniality which comes out even in formal memoirs of this type, much less personal than a book like My Early Life. The British people have generally rejected his policies, but they have always had a liking for him, as one can see from the tone of the stories about him that have been told throughout most of his life. Often, no doubt, these stories were apocryphal, and sometimes they were also unprintable, but the fact of their circulating is significant. At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, for instance, when Churchill made his often-quoted fighting speech, it was rumoured that what he actually said, when recording the speech for broadcasting, was: ‘We will fight on the beaches, we will fight in the streets. . . . We’ll throw bottles at the b-s, it’s about all we've got left’—but, of course the BBC’s switch-censor pressed his thumb on the key at the right moment. One may assume that this story is untrue, but at the time it was felt that it ought to be true. It was a fitting tribute from ordinary people to the tough and humorous old man whom they would not accept as a peace-time leader but whom in the moment of disaster they felt to be representative of themselves.
Great Contemporaries, a new edition edited by James W. Muller
As we all know, Churchill was a prolific writer — fifty books, 150 pamphlets, over 800 press articles, plus many forewords and introductions. In the 1930s, the Wilderness Years, he was out of office. As he wrote in the first volume of his The Second World War: The years I spent from 1931 to 1935, apart from my anxiety on public affairs, were personally very pleasant to me. I earned my livelihood by dictating articles which had a wide circulation not only in Great Britain and in the United States, but also, before Hitler’s shadow fell upon them, in the most famous newspapers of sixteen European countries. I lived in fact from mouth to hand. (The Second World War vol I, p. 62 in the Cassell edition, p. 79 in the Houghton Mifflin edition) The phrase ‘from mouth to hand’ is an amusing play on the familiar phrase ‘from hand to mouth’. It refers to the fact that, in the 1930s, Churchill dictated most of his press articles. It was only through dictation that he was able to write so many articles: 43 in 1935, 49 in 1938, and another 35 in 1939 before the outbreak of war. He needed to write almost one article a week to maintain his simple lifestyle: ‘We live vy simply — but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for — hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy.’ (OBCV III, Part 2, p. 1042) Some of the articles were ‘pot-boilers’ (light-weight articles written quickly to meet contractual obligations, with titles such as Are There Men In The Moon?, Ides of March, What Do You Know About Yourself?, Life Under The Microscope etc…) However, many of the articles were sketches of people whom Churchill knew well and whom he admired — Rosebery, John Morley, Balfour, Birkenhead — and sketches of people whom he only knew at a distance, such as Franklin Roosevelt whom he admired, but, in 1934, had only met once — in 1918. Since many of these articles had been well received, Churchill realised that he could improve his earnings by republishing them in book form. He may have been influenced by John Aubrey (16261697) whose Brief Lives, chiefly of contemporaries between the years 1669 and 1696 had been republished in two volumes in 1898.
It is also most likely that he remembered the three books of ‘brief lives’ written by the A. G. Gardiner, the editor of the Liberal Daily News (1902-1919): Prophets, Priests and Kings (1908), The Pillars of Society (1916), and Certain People of Importance published in America as Portraits and Portents (1926). I say ‘most likely’ because in each of these books Gardiner included an essay on Winston Churchill; many of the other essays were about people who resurfaced in Great Contemporaries — Balfour, George Bernard Shaw, the Kaiser, Curzon, Rosebery, Kipling, Philip Snowden, Kitchener, King George V, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Fisher, Asquith, Earl Haig, Hindenburg, and Charlie Chaplin. Gardiner’s first essay on Churchill , included the following comment: He has the genius which consists of taking infinite pains. The speech with which he leapt into Parliamentary fame was that in which, while the youngest recruit of Toryism, he shattered Mr. Brodrick’s army scheme [the audacious ‘tattered flag’ speech in the House of Commons on 13 May 1901 ‘I am very glad the House has allowed me, after an interval of fifteen years, to lift again the tattered flag of retrenchment and economy.’] It electrified the House by its grasp of the problems of national defence and its spacious movement in the higher realm of moral purpose. ‘I wrote that speech out six times with my own hand,’ he told me. (Prophets, Priests and Kings p. 105, and ‘young’ Winston’s Never Give In! p. 11) Thornton Butterworth published a selection of Churchill’s ‘brief lives’ as Great Contemporaries in 1937. There were twenty-one sketches in this first edition. The book was a great success; it had to be reprinted within a few weeks. A second edition was published the following year, 1938, with an additional four sketches. James W. Muller, professor of political science at the University of Alaska, has recently edited a new edition of Great Contemporaries, to which he has added another five sketches, bringing the total to thirty: The twenty-one essays in the first edition (1937): The Earl of Rosebery (first published in Pall Mall in October 1929) The Ex-Kaiser (Strand Magazine November 1930) George Bernard Shaw (Pall Mall August 1929)
Joseph Chamberlain (Pall Mall February 1930) Sir John French (Lord French of Ypres) (Pall Mall January 1930) John Morley (Pall Mall November 1929) Hindenburg (Daily Mail August 1934) Boris Savinkov (Pall Mall February 1929) Herbert Henry Asquith (Pall Mall August 1928) Lawrence of Arabia (News of the World May 1935) ‘F. E.’ (First Earl of Birkenhead) (News of the World March 1936) Marshal Foch (Pall Mall July 1929) Leon Trotsky, Alias Bronstein (Pall Mall December 1929) Alfonso XIII (Strand Magazine July 1931) Douglas Haig (Pall Mall November 1928) Arthur James Balfour (Strand Magazine April 1931) Hitler and His Choice (Strand Magazine November 1935) George Nathaniel Curzon (Pall Mall January 1929) Philip Snowden (Sunday Pictorial August 1931) Clemenceau (Strand Magazine December 1930) King George V (News of the World January 1936, six days after the King died) The four essays in the second edition (1938): Lord Fisher and His Biographer (News of the World January 1936) Charles Stewart Parnell (Strand Magazine October 1936) ‘B.-P’ ( Baron Baden-Powell) (Sunday Pictorial August 1931) Roosevelt From Afar (Collier’s December 1934) The five additional essays in the Muller edition (2012): H. G. Wells (Sunday Pictorial August 1931) Charlie Chaplin (Collier’s October 1935) Kitchener of Khartoum (News of the World January 1936) King Edward VIII (Collier’s June 1937) Rudyard Kipling (John O’London’s Weekly November 1937) This new edition is much more than a reprint of earlier editions; it is an annotated edition with hundreds of detailed Footnotes and Endnotes. The 1938 edition of Great Contemporaries was about 80,000 words long (or ±300 pages). With the five extra sketches and the numerous footnotes and endnotes, Muller’s Great Contemporaries
runs to just over 500 pages. It is a hefty tome, and worth every cent of the list price of $22.00. This new edition of Great Contemporaries is ground-breaking in many respects. It opens with a very interesting 32-page Introduction. All readers of this book are strongly advised to read this Introduction carefully, not only because it provides brief summaries of most of the 30 articles, but also because it explains the methodology — how best to use the book. The main body of the book opens with Churchill’s Preface to the 1937 edition. Muller includes no less than 14 detailed footnotes to this two-page Preface. All the footnotes in this new edition were written by his collaborator in England, Paul Courtenay. This reviewer much enjoys a good footnote, the more the merrier, and does not share John Betjeman’s opinion, as expressed in his sharp remark about ‘Foot & Note disease’ (a play on ‘Foot & Mouth disease’). The footnotes in the Muller/Courtenay Great Contemporaries are sometimes obscure, sometimes anecdotal, sometimes joyous; they are always enlightening. They are a tour de force. For example, one of the footnotes in the Preface is about the date below Churchill’s signature, vis. August 13, 1937 A footnote explains that this was the date of the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. At the time, 1937, Churchill was writing the fourth and last volume of his magnum opus, the 4-vol Marlborough, His Life and Times. The Preface for each of the four volumes was dated August 13 (followed by the appropriate year: 1933, 1934, 1936 and 1938).
Marlborough His Life and Times, ‘A Family Visit’
‘IT WAS A GREAT WORK, AND I WISH YOU COULD NOW ADD ANOTHER CHAPTER TO YOUR OWN CAREER.’ Punch 2 November 1938
Let me amplify my comment regarding footnotes ‘the more the merrier’. The last two lines of Churchill’s Preface about ‘the events attending Mr. Bonar Law’s resignation and the choice of Mr. Baldwin as his successor by King George’ require a new explanatory footnote. I suggest: Churchill is referring to the story of Lord Balfour’s meeting with King George V on Tuesday, 22 May 1923, during which Balfour convinced the King that a Prime Minister must always sit in the House of Commons, thereby ensuring that Curzon, in the House of Lords as Marquess Curzon of Kedleston since 1921, would not receive the Royal nod which he felt was his due. In his essay on Curzon, Churchill tells how Balfour, when later asked ‘Will dear George be chosen?’ replied ‘No, dear George will not.’
Balfour’s actual reply was even wittier ‘No, dear George will not, but he will still have the means of Grace.’ This was a reference to Curzon’s second wife, a very wealthy widow, the American Grace Elvina Duggan (1877-1958) whom he had married in January 1917.
But there is a second tour de force, the Endnotes. In these Notes there is, first, a brief account of where and when each essay was first published — the title of the periodical and the date of publication. Similar information is provided for later reprints where appropriate. This preliminary ‘initial note’ is then followed by a detailed, page-by-page review of any textual changes and/or deletions in the periodicals where the essay appeared. This difficult and demanding task was undertaken by Jim Muller’s other collaborator — Erica L. Chenoweth. I do not know how Ms Chenoweth did it. The mind boggles when considering the time required to do a word-by-word comparison of the texts as published in two, and sometimes three, different periodicals, when compared to the text as finally published in Great Contemporaries. Has it been worth the effort? The answer is Yes. Not least because most of the essays in Great Contemporaries are of a very high standard. One week after the publication of the first edition by Thornton Butterworth on October 4, 1937, the distinguished historian George Macaulay Trevelyan, Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, wrote to Churchill on 10 October about Great Contemporaries:
George Macaulay Trevelyan
Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Master of Trinity College He wrote to Churchill about Great Contemporaries:
I wish I had your gift of historical writing. ‘Though they are only biographical portraits, there is profundity of political and historical wisdom, perfectly expressed. I wish I had your gift of historical writing.’ (Martin Gilbert Winston S. Churchill, Volume V, 1922-1939, p. 872)
Some examples: Churchill on Rosebery: (p. 16 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 9 in Muller) He made many things not only arresting but merry. He seemed as much a master of trifles and gossip as of weighty matters. He was keenly curious about every aspect of life. Sportsman, epicure, bookworm, literary critic, magpie collector of historical relics, appreciative owner of veritable museums of art treasures, he never needed to tear a theme to tatters. In lighter vein he flitted jauntily from flower to flower like a glittering insect, by no means unprovided with a sting. The Earl of Rosebery, Prime Minister
and later: (pp. 16-17 in Thornton Butterworth, pp. 9-10 in Muller) His life was set in an atmosphere of tradition. The Past stood ever at his elbow and was the counsellor upon whom he most relied. He seemed to be attended by Learning and History, and to carry into current events an air of ancient majesty. His voice was melodious and deep, and often, when listening, one felt in living contact with the centuries which are gone and perceived the long continuity of our island tale.
Churchill on John Morley: (p. 100-1 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 101) Morley was always a fascinating companion, a man linked with the past, the friend and contemporary of my father, the representative of great doctrines, an actor in historic controversies, a master of English prose, a practical scholar, a statesman-author, a repository of vast knowledge on almost every subject of practical interest. It was an honour and privilege to consult and concert with him on equal terms, across the gulf of thirty-five years of seniority, in the swift succession of formidable and perplexing events. Such men are not found today. Churchill and John Morley
Churchill on Marshal Foch: (pp. 192-3 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 189 in Muller) It was in this situation, depressed, precarious, disputed, half undermined, that Marshal Foch, faced by the new German offensive of 12 July, did not hesitate to overrule PĂŠtain, to withdraw the reserves which stood between Paris and the enemy and hurl them under Mangin at the German flank. This decision, judged in its circumstances and in its results, must ever be regarded as one of the greatest deeds of war and examples of fortitude of soul which history has recorded. Marshal Foch, Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces in April 1918
(To Mr. Winston Churchill ‘remembering the great war’)
Churchill on Balfour, on leaving Asquith for Lloyd George in December 1916: (p. 249 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 240 in Muller) He passed from one Cabinet to the other, from the Prime Minister who was his champion to the Prime Minister who had been his most severe critic, like a powerful graceful cat walking delicately and unsoiled across a rather muddy street. Arthur James Balfour, Foreign Secretary
and on the death of Balfour: (p.p. 256-7 in Thornton Butterworth, pp. 246-7 in Muller) I saw with grief the approaching departure, and — for all human purposes — extinction, of a being high-uplifted above the common run. As I observed him regarding with calm, firm and cheerful gaze the approach of Death, I felt how foolish the Stoics were to make such a fuss about an event so natural and so indispensable to mankind. But I felt also the tragedy which robs the world of all the wisdom and treasure gathered in a great man’s life and experience, and hands the lamp to some impetuous and untutored stripling, or lets it fall shivered into fragments upon the ground.
Churchill on Curzon: (p. 288 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 275 in Muller) The morning had been golden; the noontide was bronze; and the evening lead. But all were solid, and each was polished till it shone after its fashion. George Nathaniel Curzon, 1920
Churchill on Georges Clemenceau: (p. 312 in Thornton Butterworth , p. 300 in Muller) He [Clemenceau] meant to sit on the safety valve, till he won or till his world blew up. He had no hope beyond the grave; he mocked at death; he was in his seventy-seventh year. Happy the nation which when its fate quivers in the balance can find such a tyrant and such a champion. Georges Clemenceau in retirement
After meeting Georges Clemenceau for the last time in Paris in 1927: (p. 313 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 302 in Muller) The old man appears, in his remarkable black skull-cap, gloved and well wrapped-up. None of the beauty of Napoleon, but I expect some of his St. Helena majesty; and far back beyond Napoleon, Roman figures came into view. The fierceness, the pride, the poverty after great office, the grandeur when stripped of power, the unbreakable front offered to this world and to the next — all these belong to ancients.
‘F. E’ First Earl of Birkenhead
Churchill on ‘F. E.’(First Earl of Birkenhead): (p. 183 in Thornton Butterworth, p. 180 in Muller) Some men when they die after busy, toilsome, successful lives leave a great stock of scrip and securities, of acres or factories or the goodwill of large undertakings. F. E. banked his treasure in the hearts of his friends, and they will cherish his memory till their time is come.
The Muller/Courtenay new edition of Great Contemporaries can be highly recommended. In the year 2012, most of Winston’s ‘Great Contemporaries’ are but shadowy figures from days long ago. Muller’s Introduction and the Courtenay footnotes for each essay, allied to Churchill’s marvellous prose, help bring these ‘Great Contemporaries’ back to life. Apart from a few minor errors, most of the Footnotes and Endnotes display an attention to detail which is
quite remarkable. Another important bonus in this new edition is the Index, which in our digital age is much more detailed than earlier editions. However, there are some blemishes: The first is a caveat — the book’s layout and methodology. It would be easier for the reader if each essay was self-contained. But this is not the case, for two reasons: 1. For a brief profile of each essay, the reader first has to turn to the Introduction, where there is no easy way of finding the brief profile of the subject of any specific essay. (It should also be noted that Muller has failed to provide brief profiles for the five new essays which he added in this new edition. This is an unfortunate omission.) 2. For the publishing history of each essay, the reader then has to turn to the long Endnotes section, noting in advance the page number for the beginning of each essay. This is time-consuming. The reader has to turn many pages of the book which, especially with a paperback, is not the easiest of tasks. The second blemish concerns the photographs. All the photographs in the first Thornton Butterworth edition, as well as the photos in the post-war Odhams editions were printed on photostandard glossy paper. Unfortunately, all the photographs in the Muller/Courtenay edition are printed on plain paper; the quality of reproduction is poor. It is for this reason that all the photographs in this edition of Glow-Worm have been scanned from the Thornton Butterworth 1937 edition of Great Contemporaries. These blemishes are primarily concerned with layout, printing and publishing; they have nothing to do with content. As far as content is concerned, the new Muller/Courtenay edition of Great Contemporaries is an enlightening and significant contribution to Churchillian scholarship.
Message from the Editor
My Lakeland terrier Tommy is wearing a white collar and a black bow tie, similar to the one worn by the dog Uggie in the 2011 movie The Artist. The collar and tie were presents to Tommy from Carol Mueller.
Contact details: Email: I ask any fellow Churchillians who would like to write an item for Glow-Worm to contact me on my email address: jimlydtom@gmail.com Telephone: You can call me on 00 33 2 33 43 52 48 (nine hours ahead of PST)
Mailing address: Jim Lancaster 12 Hameau Boutron 50330 Brillevast France I have several ideas for interesting items, but so do many Glow-Worm readers. Let us have a dialog. I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, Jim Lancaster