finest hour - Winston Churchill

Autumn
Book Number
Third Quarter 1994
Number 84
FINEST
HOUR
Journal vtf TlTeMiiTe
UK •Canada
THE
INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETIES
1*1
AUSTRALIA
CANADA • NEW ZEALAND •UNITED KINGDOM
PATRON: THE LADY SOAMES, D. B.E.
UNITED STATES
Founded 1968, the International Churchill Societies work to foster interest in and knowledge on the life, philosophy and literary
heritage of the Rt. Hon. Sir Winston S. Churchill, KG, OM, CH, MP (1874-1965), and the great goals to which he was devoted—
the quest for liberty and democracy. The Societies are independent non-profit organizations which, with the Rt. Hon. Sir
Winston S. Churchill Society of B.C., jointly sponsor Finest Hour, special publications, conferences, symposia, tours, the
"Teaching the Next Generation" programme, and the Churchill Center for the Study of Statecraft in Washington, DC.
HONORARY MEMBERS
Winston S. Churchill, MP
Martin Gilbert, CBE
Grace Hamblin, OBE
Robert Hardy, CBE
Ambassador Pamela C. Harriman
James Calhoun Humes
Mary Coyne Jackman, BA, D.Litt.S.
Yousuf Karsh, OC
The Duke of Marlborough, DL, JP
Anthony Montague Browne CBE, DFC
Colin L. Powell, KCB
Wendy Russell Reves
Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.
The Lady Soames, DBE
The Rt. Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, OM, FRS
The Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger, GBE
COUNCIL OF CHURCHILL SOCIETIES
Jonathan Aitken, MP, Chairman
45 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 3LT, England
Tel. (071) 233-3103
ICS AUSTRALIA
Subscription office: Robin Linke
181 Jersey Street, Wembley, W.A. 6014
ICS CANADA
Revenue Canada No. 0732701-21-13
Garnet R. Barber, President
4 Snowshoe Cres., Thornhill, Ont. L3T 4M6
Tel (905) 881-8550
John G. Plumpton, Secretary-Treasurer
130 Collingsbrook Blvd. Agincourt ON M1W 1M7
Tel. (416) 497-5349 Fax. (416) 395-4587
Committee Members
Edward Bredin, QC; Leonard Kitz, QC
The Other Club of Toronto
Bernard Webber, President
3256 Rymal Road, Mississauga, Ont. L4Y 3C1
Tel. (905) 279-5169
SIR WINSTON S. CHURCHILL SOCIETY OF BC
Ian Whitelaw, President
1110 Palmerston Avenue
W. Vancouver, BC V7S 2J6
ICS NEW ZEALAND
Gordon H. J. Hogg
Riverside Farm, 291 North Road,
Clevedon, RD2, Papakura
ICS UNITED KINGDOM
Charity Registered in England No. 800030
David Boler, Chairman
PO Box 244, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 0YF
Tel. (071) 247-2345 Fax. (071) 247-4488
Jill Kay, Membership Secretary, "Tympany,"
Beckenham Place Park, Beckenham, Kent BR3 2BS
2/FINEST HOUR 84
UK TRUSTEES
Hon. Nicholas Soames MP (Chairman);
The Duke of Marlborough, DL, JP:
Richard Haslam-Hopwood, Hon. Celia Sandys;
L.W. Pilgrim DFC, FCA;
David J. Porter; Geoffrey J. Wheeler
COMMITTEE
David Boler (Chairman); Dennis Jackson OBE, DL,
RAF ret. (Vice-Chmn.); David Jones; Jill Kay;
Barry Coleman, BA; Mark Weber; Wylma Wayne;
L. W. Pilgrim, DFC, FCA (Treasurer)
ACADEMIC ADVISORS
Prof. James Muller, Univ. of Alaska (Chairman)
Prof. Keith Alldritt, Univ. of British Columbia
Dr. Larry Arnn, Claremont Institute
Prof. Raymond Callahan, University of Delaware
Prof. Eliot A. Cohen, Johns Hopkins University
Prof. Kirk Emmert, Kenyon College
Prof. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers University
Prof. Patrick Powers, Assumption College
Prof. Paul A. Rahe, University of Tulsa
Prof. Max Schoenfeld, Univ. of Wis. Eau Claire
Pres. Jeffrey Wallin, The National Academy
Prof. Manfred Weidhorn, Yeshiva University
ICS UNITED STATES, INC.
Internal Revenue No. 02-0365444
Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr., Chairman
135 S. LaSalle St., Chicago IL 60603
Tel. (800) 621-1917, Fax. (312) 726-9474
Richard M. Langworth, President
181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229
Tel. (603) 746-4433, Fax. (603) 746-4260
Merry L. Alberigi, Vice President
PO Box 5037, Novato CA 94948
Tel. and Fax. (415) 883-9076
William C. Ives, Vice President
Keck, Mahin & Cate, 49th floor
77 W. Wacker Dr., Chicago IL 60601
Tel. (312) 634-5034, Fax. (312) 634-5000
Derek Brownleader, Secretary
1847 Stonewood Dr., Baton Rouge LA 70816
Tel. (504) 752-3313
George A. Lewis, Treasurer
268 Canterbury Road, Westfield NJ 07090
Tel. (908) 233-8415
ICS ALASKA
James. W. Muller, tel. (907) 272-7846
1518 Airport Hts. Dr., Anchorage AK 99508
ICS ARIZONA
Marianne Almquist, tel. (602) 955-1815
2423 E. Marshall Ave., Phoenix AZ 85016
ICS CALIFORNIA
North: James Johnson, tel. (408) 353-2103
24595 Soquel-San Jose Rd, Los Gatos CA 95030
South: Bruce Bogstad, tel. (805) 581-0052
1059 Rambling Road, Simi Valley CA 93065
ICS ILLINOIS
William C. Ives, tel. (312) 634-5034
Keck, Mahin & Cate, 49th floor
77 W. Wacker Dr., Chicago IL 60601
ICS MICHIGAN
Judge Peter B. Spivak, tel. (313) 963-2070
3753 Penobscot Bldg., Detroit MI 48226
ICS NEBRASKA
Edward W. Fitzgerald, tel. (402) 390-9932
218 So. 94th St., Omaha NE 68114
USA TRUSTEES
Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr., Chmn.
The Hon. J. Sinclair Armstrong, CBE
Richard M. Langworth, George A. Lewis
Wendy Russell Reves, The Lady Soames, DBE
The Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger, GBE
ICS NEW ENGLAND
Dr. Cyril Mazansky, tel. (617) 296-4000 x5000
50 Dolphin Rd., Newton Center MA 02159
USA DIRECTORS ('Executive Committee)
*Merry L. Alberigi, Marianne Almquist,
Derek Brownleader, R. Alan Fitch,
Larry Kryske, Richard Hazlett, *William C. Ives,
•Richard M. Langworth, *George A. Lewis,
*Dr. Cyril Mazansky, James W. Muller,
Douglas S. Russell, Jacqueline Dean Witter
ICS NORTH TEXAS (Emery Reves Chapter)
Ann & Richard Hazlett, tel. (214) 742-5487
2723 Routh St., Dallas TX 75208
CHAPTER COORDINATOR
Dr. Cyril Mazansky
50 Dolphin Rd., Newton Center MA 02159
Tel. (617) 296-4000 x5000, Fax. (617) 296-2872
ICS STORES (Back issues & Sales Dept.)
R. Alan Fitch
8001 Harrods Landing, Prospect KY 40059
Tel. (502) 228-8774 Fax. (502) 228-7558
ICS NEW YORK
Cynthia Newberry, tel. (212) 535-4008
903 Park Avenue #8-N, New York NY 10021
ICS PENNSYLVANIA
Richard S. Raffauf, tel. (215) 777-1653
RD6, Box 449, Reading PA 19608
ICS WASHINGTON
Ron Helgemo, tel. (703) 351-2967
2037 Wethersfield Ct., Reston VA 22091
CONTEXTS
FINEST HOUR
3rd Quarter 1994
Journal of the International Churchill Societies
D-Day Anniversary Features
10 Operation Overlord 1944-1994
Thoughts from Normandy
with Britain's D-Day veterans, and remarks
to American veterans at Grosvenor Square
by Winston S. Churchill, MP
23 How the King Stopped Churchill
from Risking His Life
Theo Aronson's "Battle Royal" in Monarchy
29 The Kevin Francis D-Day Toby
Genesis of the Commemorative Jug
Number 84
Autumn Book Number
12 Four Outstanding New Books
Amidst an outpouring of attack-books comes
a quartet no Churchillian should be without
by Richard M. Langworth
12 Pure Gold: Gilbert's "In Search of Churchill"
15 ICS New Book Service
16 One of the Best: Rose's "Unruly Life"
18 We Need This!: Lawlor's "Politics of War"
19 Great Quotes: Humes's "Wit and Wisdom"
20 "The Churchill War Papers," Volume II
20 "The Churchills: Pioneers and Politicians"
21 Ponting's "Churchill" by David Marquand
22 "Churchill's Deception," by William Partin
40 D-Day Plus...the Story in Stamps
Overlord and its Aftermath
24 On to Scapa Flow! 7th International Churchill Tour
"I feel like one, Who treads alone,
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!" -wsc QUOTING THOMAS MOORE
by Barbara F. Langworth
4 Amid These Storms
5 International Datelines
23 Inside the Journals
32 Despatch Box
34 Woods Corner
36 Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas
37 ICS People
38 Action This Day
40 Churchill in Stamps
47 Churchilltrivia
48 Immortal Words
29 Bric-a-brac: Kevin Francis & Wedgwood
Today's most prolific producer of Churchilliana faces
change. Noel Thorley revealed as Wedgwood copyist.
by Douglas J. Hall
42 Churchill and Eastern Europe, Part 2
Poland and Germany—the Balancing Act
by Stanley E. Smith
Cover: "After the Battle," reproduced
from a painting by George A. Campbell of
the Prime Minister in the uniform of a
colonel of the 4th Hussars while visiting
the Third Division H.Q. at Schloss
Moyland during the crossing of the Rhine
at Xanten on 24 March 1945. Published
by permission of After the Battle, Battle
of Britain Prints International Ltd.,
London, and Mr. Gordon Ramsey.
FINEST HOUR 84 / 3
AMID THESE STORMS
B
FINEST H O U R
ISSN 0882-3715
Richard M Langworth, Editor
Post Office Box 385
Hopkinton, New Hampshire
03229 USA
Tel. (603) 746-4433
Senior Editors
John G. Plumpton
130 Collingsbrook Blvd.
Agincourt, Ontario
M1W 1M7 Canada
H. Ashley Redburn, OBE
Rosemere, Hollands Mead
Overmoigne, Dorchester,
Dorset DT2 8HX England
News Editor
John Frost
8 Monks Ave, New Barnet,
Herts. EN5 1D8 England
Features Editor
Douglas J. Hall
183 A Somerby Hill, Grantham
Lines. NG31 7HA England
Contributors
Martin Gilbert, United Kingdom
George Richard, Australia
Stanley E. Smith, United States
Ron Cynewulf Robbins, Canada
James W. Muller, United States
FINEST HOUR is published
quarterly for Friends of the International Churchill Societies,
which offer several levels of support in their respective currencies.
Membership applications and
changes of address should be sent
to the appropriate national offices
on page 2. Permission to mail at
non-profit rates in the USA
granted by the US Postal Service,
Concord, NH, Permit no. 1524.
Copyright 1994. All rights
reserved. Designed and produced
for ICS United States by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc. Printed by
Morgan Press Inc. Made in U.S.A.
OOKS ABOUT CHURCHILL are pouring off the presses in greater numbers
than any year since 1974. Although we have designated this issue with its
eight book notices our "Autumn Book Number," as this is written Andrew
Roberts has published Eminent Churchillians and Celia Sandys is about to release
From Winston With Love and Kisses. Coming soon is David Thomas's Churchill: The
Member for Woodford (the story of WSC as a constituency MP) and David
Jablonsky's Churchill and Hitler, a selection of essays on the political-military direction of World War II by the noted military historian. And in the wings is Martin
Gilbert's editing of The Winston Churchill — Emery Reves Correspondence, containing
no fewer than 300 letters from WSC to his publishing collaborator on crucial issues
and bookish pursuits, which should be an important addition to our knowledge of
Churchill as literateur. This is all to the good, of course, especially since it seems
that the rash of muckraking nonsense-treatises which dominated the headlines for
the last year or so has given way to more serious and contemplative studies of
Churchill, by people genuinely interested in the truth.
I think perhaps we don't say often enough that we are genuinely interested in
the truth. In sixteen years as editor of this journal I can count the number of people
who refuse to accept any criticism of WSC on one hand. Churchillians can afford to
be broadminded, for they understand that the great man's virtues far outweighed
his flaws, for he was as Martin Gilbert said a man of quality — a good guide for
the future, and for generations now reaching adulthood.
# WILL the gentleman who telephoned us about his piece on the 1946 Fulton
speech please contact the editor to discuss this subject.
# FLYING HYPHENS have recently bedevilled the text in certain articles, where
they mysteriously enter into words and subdivide them at someplace other than
the end of a line. This is a computer glitch which we are correcting. Apologies.
# BLETCHLEY PARK, near Milton Keynes, England, where experts served
Churchill by cracking the German codes during the war, has recently been opened
to the public for the first time, under the aegis of the Bletchley Park Trust. This is
an important development, about which Douglas Hall will report next issue.
# IT WAS said of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that "she taught us how to grieve,"
which suggests that we didn't know how to grieve before she taught us. Rather, I
think, it was she who reminded a grieving world of certain Churchillian qualities,
and at least two of Sir Winston's maxims: never despair...never give in.
Finest Hour probably published Mrs. Onassis's last words in print, her tribute to
Randolph Churchill in our twenty-fifth anniversary number a year ago. A skilled
editor, she did not write much, and gave only two interviews in her life, one of
which is sealed for years to come. Although she was a very private person, her
judgment of people was much to the point, and worth knowing.
Those who loved or admired her understood her quiet integrity, and much
more besides. Her country is in her debt, not only for her qualities of character but
for her service to it. Unless you lived in that time you cannot conceive what a great
ambassador she was, carrying all before her. "I am the man who accompanied
Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris," her husband said, "and I have enjoyed myself." Her
taste and sensitivity revitalized the White House. With her help Grand Central
Station, ~.n architectural masterpiece, was saved for New York City. She gave her
children a private life in the face of appalling intrusions. And most of all, in the
worst four or five days anyone over the age of forty remembers, she held a nation
together. She will always be the First Lady to me.
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
The editor's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Churchill Societies or their Trustees.
4 / FINEST HOUR 84
IXTERXAllONAL DATELINES
QUOTE OF THE SEASON: "IRELAND"
The Symposium occurs from 26:30
PM on Friday the 28th and from
"Let us on our part be very careful that we do all we have to do in scrupulous
10-noon
and 2-6:30 PM on Saturday.
and meticulous good faith, and even—if I may dare the word—in credulous good faithTickets
cost
$25 each; anyone 25 or
Let us not be led by impatience, by prejudice, by vexation, by anxiety, into courses
under
is
free
and ICS will sponsor
which would lay us open to charges of fickleness or levity in dealing with those issues so
fifty
students.
Please order tickets
long lasting as the relations between the two islands. Let us so direct our steps that, in
from
the
Washington
Chapter, ICS,
spite of every disappointment, we give this Treaty arrangement every possible chance of
2037
Wethersfield
Ct.,
Reston VA
becoming the true act of reconciliation."
22091
or
telephone
Ron
Helgemo
at
-WSC ON BRITAIN AND IRELAND, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 31 MAY 1922
(703) 351-2967.
"Churchill Was Smoker,"
and unique piece of writing, as WSC
Symposium chairman James
Historian's Shock Claim
tells his father the history of the
Muller says, "We are very grateful to
world since Lord Randolph's death
STOP PRESS — The late Sir Winston
the Wilson Center, to our participatin 1895, never revealing the parts he
Churchill was "a compulsive smoking academics, and to the Friends of
played. Also republished for the first
er," according to controversial histoICS whose support makes this event
time in seventy years is Churchill's
rian Andrew Lloyd-Roberts in an
possible." Richard Langworth, Presiprescient essay, "Shall We Commit
article in Spectacularlyboring Magadent of ICS/USA, adds, "This first
Suicide?," an accurate 1924 prediction
zine this week. "Churchill put the
Nation's Capital Symposium turns
of wars to come, $10 from ICS Stores.
lives of his entire Cabinet at risk by
away from war and examines
Finally, though sidetracked by
subjecting them to passive cigar
Churchill's role on an appropriate
ICS work, the editor continues to
smoke," the controversialist explains
subject in 1994. It will prove the value
make progress on his Guide to the
at length. His findings are based on a
of studying Churchill's statecraft: a
Books of Sir Winston Churchill, whose sure guide to modern problems."
photograph from the Daily Telegraph
availability will be announced soon.
on 11 July 1943, showing the hithertorespected war leader puffing a huge
London Take-Off on D-Day +1
cigar. "It is quite clear," the historian
LONDON, JUNE 7TH — On the day
"Churchill as Peacemaker"
continued, "that Churchill imperilled
after D-Day, fifty new Friends of ICS
WASHINGTON, DC, OCT. 28/29TH —
the whole Allied war effort by this
United Kingdom were recruited by
The Churchill Center for the Study of
smokeism and his reckless smokist
Wylma Wayne at a private party she
Statecraft and the Woodrow Wilson
behaviour." Churchill, however, was
hosted in her apartment in St.
International Center for Scholars host
defended by his contemporary Lord
James's, moving the UK past Canada
the first Nation's Capital Churchill
Deedes, the highly respected lawn
as the second-largest Churchill SociSymposium, with ten academic
mower and chainsaw expert, who
ety, now nearing 400 strong. Three
papers by American and British hiswrote in a 3,000-word riposte in the
torians on Churchill's role as peaceDaily Telegraph: "You have to rememmaker over fifty years, from his
ber that, to men of his generation,
youth as a Liberal radical to his
smoking was still regarded as acceptsearch for a "final settlement" in 1953.
able."
British academics are Sir Robert
-By our Historically Correct Staff
Rhodes James, MP; Dr. Paul Addison;
the Duke of Marlboro Country
and official biographer Martin
A UK CUTTING SENT TO US BY
Gilbert. Americans include Mr. DouDR. DAVID STAFFORD, UNIV. OF EDINBURGH
glas Feith; Professors Williamson
Murray, Frank Mayer and Steven
Lambakis; and ICS Academic ComNewly Published: The Dream
Dominic Sandys, Celia Sandys, Lady Soames, June 7th.
mittee
Professors Kirk Emmert, James
and Shall We Commit Suicide
Muller and Manfred Weidhorn. Also
generations of Churchills attended:
NEW HAMPSHIRE, SEPT 20TH — ICS
participating as discussants or moderPatron of the Society Lady Soames;
United States has reprinted The
ators are Professors Warren Kimball,
Winston and Minnie Churchill; Celia
Dream, Churchill's haunting short
Patrick Powers and Paul Rahe. Martin
Sandys and her son, Dominic Walstory about the return of his father to
Gilbert,
who will be busy on Volume
ters. Winston Churchill spoke about
his studio in 1947, which it published
3 of The Churchill War Papers, will be
the D-Day ceremonies he had just
in a limited edition of 500 copies in
absent and his paper read; a full disattended at Normandy (see his piece
1986. The Dream will be available
cussion will follow and be relayed to
this issue), while David Boler, Society
from ICS Stores by the time you read
him for comment.
chairman, spoke to the new Friends
this at $15 postpaid. It is a marvelous
FINEST HOUR 84 / 5
International Datelines...
about the Society's ambitions. "We
are on a drive to pull in youth," Boler
told the Daily Telegraph's reporter.
"Corks exploded, cheques were written, and new conscripts lined up,"
the reporter wrote. Celia Sandys, Sir
Winston's grand-daughter, spoke
about her own upcoming book, From
Winston With Love and Kisses. "There
have been some awful books recently, but I can assure you there'll be
nothing revisionist about mine."
In addition to this impressive
membership campaign, the new UK
committee are planning future
events, including a dinner to commemorate the 120th anniversary of
Churchill's birth in November, and
what Ms. Wayne promises will be "a
spectacular event" to celebrate the
50th Anniversary of V-E Day, in the
Imperial War Museum, 8 May 1995.
UK Friends willing to help with
time and effort are most welcome to
contact David Boler at PO Box 244,
Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN3 OYF, or
ring him at (071) 247-2345.
12th International Conference 1995
Boston, October 26-28th
The Copley Plaza Hotel, "Grand
Dame" of Boston on Copley Square,
is the site of the three-day 1995 International Conference, hosted by ICS
New England under chairwoman
Barbara Langworth. The Copley was
selected for its sophisticated old
world charm and elegant facilities,
but it also offers ICS a very low rate,
$159/£100 per room, 40% below the
"street price" and lower than 1993.
"This underlines our commitment to
make this conference as affordable as
it will be memorable," says Barbara.
"Advance registration will be offered at
money saving rates, and dinner
prices will be reasonable."
To avoid overlapping two
weeks, the Conference runs Thursday-Saturday, with the two main dinners Friday and Saturday nights and
a farewell breakfast Sunday, enabling
6 / FINEST HOUR 84
you to be home Sunday night. Thursday events will be optional—some
panel discussions and a Boston Harbor lobster/clambake cruise, building
on Friday to the Saturday climax.
Mark your calendar now for a
brilliant affair: great speakers, absorbing panels, student presentations,
music and fine dining, and one of the
finest collections of World War II
print media and memorabilia in the
world. Boston, site of our conference
ten years ago, is a compact, elegant
city filled with history and culture.
Volunteers are needed to help with
all kinds of interesting work! If you
wish to help in any way, please contact Barbara Langworth at (603) 7464433 or fax (603) 746-4260 weekdays.
ICS/Australia Sub-Office
WEMBLEY, W.A., MAY 17TH — Longtime Friend of ICS Robin Linke (pronounced "Linkey") has organised a
subscription office for the convenience of Australians who wish to
renew or subscribe in Australian dollars. The Australian rate of A$34 covers four issues of Finest Hour plus
specialized publications.
Although ICS/Australia has
never been independent with its own
rules and committee, Australians
have been able to subscribe in local
currency since 1972. In addition, several Australians are in touch with
ICS/USA about formally establishing
an Australian Society. Any others
interested may write the editor who
will put them all in touch. Whether to
institute a formal Australian ICS is, of
course, the business of Australians;
every possible help, including a supply of publications from ICS/USA, is
assured.
Australians whose Finest Hour
labels bear the number "P84" or
"R84" or lower should renew by
sending $34 to Robin Linke, 181 Jersey St., Wembley 6014. Cheque, Visa
or MasterCard are welcome. Funds
are periodically transferred to the
USA to cover the cost of publications.
The address is 181 Jersey St., Wembley 6014. Many thanks, Mr. Linke.
Pearl Harbor: Churchill Vindicated
LONDON, AUGUST 2ND — Key
wartime documents made public
today by the Public Record Office at
Kew prove conclusively what Finest
Hour and every serious historian
have said all along: that Churchill
didn't know about the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor until it happened. The secret report was prepared in 1945 by A. Hillgarth and R.
T. Barrett of Britain's Naval Intelligence Division to summarize exactly
what Britain knew of the matter.
Dr Anthony Best, lecturer in
international history at the London
School of Economics, cited British
Intelligence as saying, "It is not our
fault, we did not have enough information to go on, and we did not
know anything about the attack until
it occurred." Since the report was
intended for internal use, Best continued, "there was no intention to conceal the truth ... Naval Intelligence
did not know, so it was impossible
for Churchill to have foreknowledge.
"The documents say we had not
penetrated Japan's plan to attack
Pearl Harbour [and] the United States
knew, as did our own command, that
it was impossible to keep track of
every Japanese unit. There was
enough to keep U.S. authorities on
the alert, especially given Japan's
record of making surprise raids without declaring war. [But] the clear
implication of the documents is that
the Americans only had themselves
to blame."Dr Best's book, Britain
Japan and Pearl Harbour, will be published next year by Rutledge.
-MICHAEL SMITH, DAILY TELEGRAPH
Indians (Yes!) Defend Churchill
HULL, UK, MAY 3RD — Indian scholars
have leapt to the defence of Churchill
who was dubbed a "racist" in
Andrew Roberts's new book, Eminent
Churchillians. Bhikhu Parekh, professor of political theory at Hull University says the charge is "far too crude,"
while Nirad Chaudhuri in Oxford
sputtered with rage: "I am an admirer of Churchill." Historian Radhakr-
ishnan Nayar added, "Indians are
more favourably disposed to
Churchill than you might expect."
This robust response by Indians
shows their nation's capacity for
humanity and understanding rather
in the lead of certain British counterparts. Nayar pointed out that
Churchill admired warrior nationalists like the Mahdi, but was contemptuous of lawyer nationalists like
Gandhi. Parekh added, "When India
became a republic [WSC] went out of
his way to accommodate it within the
Commonwealth...I wouldn't say he
was a racist — he was a Zionist, who
called the Jews 'the most formidable
and the most remarkable race which
has ever appeared in the world.'"
Latviesu
Krasts '95
(Latvian Coast '95)
JUNE 1995 — Two directors of
ICS/USA, Douglas Russell of Iowa
and Richard Langworth of New
Hampshire, will bicycle the 300-mile
Latvian coast from Lithuania to Estonia next June, marking "the end of
World War II and the continuing
struggle of Latvia for freedom and
independence." Donations of "X per
mile" will support the Latvian
National War Veterans Association, a
charity benefitting veterans who
fought for Latvia's independence.
"Sir Winston would approve,"
Langworth says. "Although he was
not much for exercise, he was exercised about Baltic freedom. Though
he failed to prevent the postwar reoccupation, he refused to recognize
Soviet annexations, saw that Latvian
gold in London was kept out of Soviet hands and encouraged emigre
organizations in Britain. It was his
oft-stated wish that the Baltic peoples
be free. This trip celebrates that
achievement."
Langworth and Russell are being
assisted in their effort by Richard
Ralph, British Ambassador to Latvia
and a Friend of ICS, formerly Head
of Chancery at the Embassy in Washington. Radio Latvia is assisting with
route planning and the securing of a
van to carry luggage and spares. "I
think a spare wheel and some spokes
might be handy," says Russell.
"Donations of 'X per mile' are only
for bike miles; if we have to cover any
distance aboard the van, it doesn't
count." Riders will use their own
bicycles, and will stay mainly at guest
houses and B&Bs. They are committing two weeks, expecting to average
thirty miles a day. If any cycling reader is interested in joining the team,
please contact the editor.
A Sunny Memory
TORONTO, JUNE 6TH — Sunnybrook
Health Science Centre has been the
healing and restorative home for
thousands of Canadian soldiers,
sailors and aircrew injured in service
to their country, particularly during
the two world wars. It is still the permanent home for several hundred
man and women who served in the
Canadian and Allied forces. What
better way to honour Sunnybrook
war veterans than with a bust of the
man who led the fight for freedom?
ICS, Canada President Randy Barber at Sunnybrook.
A beautiful bronze sculpture of
Sir Winston Churchill by Ernest Raab
was unveiled here today by Ontario
Premier Bob Rae and Secretary of
State for Veterans Lawrence
MacAualy, in the presence of the
British, American and French Consul
Generals. ICS was formally acknowledged at the ceremony, attended by
Friends of ICS Randy Barber, John
Plumpton, Bernard Webber, Charles
Anderson and Glynne Jenkins.
The event was part of Canada
Remembers, a national programme
beginning in 1994 to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of major events
leading to the end of the Second
World War. -JOHN PLUMPTON
Kissinger in NY, Kimball in NJ
NEW YORK, APRIL 26TH—Several
Friends of ICS gathered tonight at
Chartwell Booksellers where former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
was on hand to inscribe copies of his
new book, Diplomacy, and to speak
about Churchill's diplomatic art.
"The problem for statesmen is
that they must act on assessments
that cannot be proved true when
made," Kissinger stated. "Churchill
was such a statesman, who today we
see as an overwhelming personality,
but who in the 1930s was viewed by
many as a failed politician. Churchill
was willing to walk alone with opinions based on a well developed philosophy and clear notion of Britain's
role in world politics."
In Red Bank, N.J. on July 21st,
Professor Warren and Mrs. Jackie
Kimball were hosted by Barbara &
Parker Lee, Gil & Kathy lies, George
& Barbara Lewis and Fr. William
Benwell for a discussion of Roosevelt
and Churchill. So successful was this
that more such meetings are planned
in the near future, -PARKER H. LEE m
ICS Washington
BOWIE, MD., JULY 21ST — Our third
event this year was a picnic at John
Mather's house. Thirty Friends and
guests watched videotapes of WSC
speeches and discussed Dr. Mather's
book on Churchill's health (FH #82
pp28-9). The next chapter event will
be the annual meeting October 20th
at the Marvin Center, GW Univ. For
info, contact Ron Helgemo (page 2).
FINEST HOUR 84 /7
Errata: Finest Hour #83
The review of Dame Felicity Peake's
Pure Chance (pages 32-33) failed to
state availability and price, which
are: £16.95 from Airlife Publishing
Ltd., Shrewsbury, England. Also, re
the cover painting, HMS Indomitable
was launched in 1940, not 1939.
D-Day at Southampton
MAY 27TH — ICS was represented at a
D-Day commemoration at Royal Victoria Park, by former chairman David
Porter, treasurer Pil Pilgrim and Mrs.
Pilgrim, and membership secretary Jill
Kay. Mr. Pilgrim was also attending in
his capacity as chairman of the RAF
Bomber Command Association.
HRH the Duke of Edinburgh
inspected many hundreds of veterans
and combatants, both British and
Allied. At one point David Porter was
pleased to hear the Duke comment of
Sir Winston, "A great man who
shaped the destiny of this country."
The national and armed forces
flags of the United Kingdom and
Allies fluttered on a mild English summer's day as four military bands
played traditional airs and a fly-past of
RAF and USAF WW2 and modern aircraft added to the poignancy of the
moment. After the ceremony a '40s
atmosphere was revived by a superb
performance of Glenn Miller music by
the U.S. Army Field Band. Naval ships
were anchored on Southampton
Water, overlooked by the Park. HRH
Prince Philip aboard Royal Yacht Britannia to carry out a review of the
Fleet. -D.J. PORTER
David Porter Thanked
Lady Soames presents gift of appreciation to outgoing UK chairman David Porter, Chartwell, 16 April.
Seated: Michael Wybrow, Pil Pilgrim, Nick Soames.
8 / FINEST HOUR 84
Liberation Soir Reprints
For those who
didn't get them
years ago, Bill Beatty again makes
available excellent
color photocopies
of the French liberation paper during
the visit of
Churchill to Paris on Armistice Day
1944. This superb memento of the
events fifty years ago is available postpaid for US$15, £10 and $22 Canadian
or Australian. (US checks payable to
Bill Beatty, Aussie cheques payable
Robin Linke, other checks payable to
ICS). Send orders to Bill Beatty, 194
Connor Drive, Henrietta NY 14467.
Proceeds go to ICS treasuries.
French Tribute
MOUGINS, FRANCE, JULY 14TH — An
8' bronze hand
raised in the V-sign
was unveiled on
.V
the French Riviera.
V / .
It was the idea of a
\
;
former Resistance
fighter Jean-Paul
Colas, 83, who said
the French must
remember Churchill's part in the
I
defeat of Nazism: "Without
Churchill there would have been no
De Gaulle, without De Gaulle there
would have been no liberation." Our
only concern about this one is which
way the other side of the hand is facing; not toward the English Channel,
we hope.
Herb Goldberg, R.I.P.
His many friends regret the passing of
Dr. Herbert Goldberg, 85, on 20
August. A native of New York, his
interest in WSC dated from his days as
a medical student. A Fellow of ICS,
Herb lectured widely on Churchill,
including a 1993 Chapter meeting.
It Won't Be Long Now
PORTSMOUTH, MARCH 10TH — The
lunacy of anti-smoking crusaders, who
would sue a car company if they
crashed while speeding, has moved
from grandstanding American congressmen and disregard of scientific
evidence over "passive smoke" to the
logos of grammar schools. Anti-smokists today forced a school named after
engineering genius and cigar aficionado Isambard Kingdom Brunei to
remove the cigar from his mouth in its
logo. A spokeswoman for the Brunei
Middle School in Portsmouth, England, said his smoking image was now
considered "inappropriate" for children. How soon before we have to
defend the hundreds of images of You
Know Who? -RML
Christina Back on the Market
KEENE, NH, USA, AUGUST 1ST — The
sale of the former Onassis yacht
Christina, reported here last issue fell
through. If you missed it the first time,
here's your chance. Only $2.2 million...
Restitution
WASHINGTON, MARCH 1ST — British
Prime Minister John Major, who was
put up overnight in the White House,
was the first British PM so accommodated since Churchill.
Assassination Plot Confirmed
LONDON, MAY 1ST — Four Nazi
assassins with orders to kill Churchill
in North Africa in 1943 were trailed by
British intelligence, newly released
war papers state.The plot was foiled
by intercepted German messages, and
Attlee cabled Churchill, "Attempts are
going to be made to bump you off."
Attlee warned Churchill not to
follow his present route and to cut out
visits to Algiers and Gibraltar, stopping only at Marrakesh. The head of
British SIS, Maj. Gen. Sir Stuart Menzies ("C") named Hans Peter Schulze,
head of German Intelligence, Tangier,
as the man behind the plot. Schulze
had requested pistols, ammunition,
poisons and mines from Berlin. The
files confirm that "at least four saboteurs" crossed the frontier on 4 February, but reveal no further details.
Churchill heeded Attlee's warning
and changed his flight plan.
$
WIT AND WISI)()\1
In the book field, nothing is more popular than Churchillian quotes. Sprinkling them into "International Datelines, "as we've done recently, isn't as effective as this separate column. We concentrate on the lesser known quotes, or well-known ones which have been mangled recently. -Ed.
STATESMANSHIP
"Statesmen are not called upon to
settle the easy questions. These often
settle themselves. It is when the balance quivers and the proportions are
veiled in mist that the opportunities
for world-saving decisions present
themselves." [Attribution requested.]
TRUTH
"Truth is so precious that she
must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." -to Stalin (who enjoyed
it) at Teheran.
USA VS. UK SYSTEMS
"I said it seemed to me that the
British Parliamentary system, where
the leader of government could be
changed within a short time span, had
much to commend it over the American system. I shall never forget Mr.
Churchill's reply: 'Ah yes, Mr. Byrd,
but don't forget this — that the great
strength of the American system is
that the forty-eight states, acting
through their own legislatures, can, to
a very considerable degree determine
their own affairs. You in America are
not centralized like we are in England.'
Never had I heard such an eloquent
appraisal of States Rights." -Sen. Harry
Byrd Jr. addressing ICS, Richmond,
Va. 1991.
MONEY GRUBBING
In his third and final speech to a
joint session of Congress, Churchill is
alleged to have said, "I have not come
here to ask you for money," and then
after a well-timed pause added, "for
myself!" Congress broke up. He had
them in his pocket, and went on to
develop a strong argument for American financial aid to Britain. We have
not found a recording of the passage
and are thus unable to confirm this,
which is never included in printed
versions. Recordings are unreliable as
they could have been edited. Can any
reader confirm that "for myself" was
actually uttered?
"KLOP"
Churchill hated staplers, and used
a hole punch to prepare documents for
threading with "treasury tags": small
metal bars joined by a portion of
string. He referred to the puncher as
"Klop" for the sound it made—an
onomatopoeic invention, writes
Humes in Wit and Wisdom: "He
preferred the hard bite of Anglo-Saxon
monosyllables to Latin polysyllables."
Early in her secretarial career,
Martin Gilbert records, WSC commanded Kathleen Hill: "Fetch me
Klop." Wise about history, Mrs. Hill
found a ten-volume work on the fall of
the House of Stuart by a Dutchman
named Klop on the top shelf of the
library, and proudly laid the volumes
at WSC's feet. "Christ Almighty!," the
great man exclaimed.
INVENTING TERMS
Two items altered in the latest edition of Humes are Churchillisms:
"arboricide" (he accused Clementine
of this when she had his favorite tree
chopped down) and "black velvet." I
am not convinced that Humes's correction to the second term ("a frequent
phrase for death") is absolutely correct. I recall WSC saying that he imagined death to be "a long sleep on a
black velvet pillow," occasionally stirring, but going back to sleep again.
Can a reader confirm that he termed
death itself "black velvet"?
$
Projects Pending
*" Churchill Stamp Catalogue: An upcoming ICS publication will catalogue all the Churchill stamps issued, including locals, labels
and German propaganda Feldpost cards, edited by Celwyn Ball. As the book nears completion, would anyone who has a contribution,
comment or variety to report kindly send the information to C.P. Ball, Unit 7,47 Biggs Drive, Riverview, NB Canada E1B 4T2.
•" "Reader's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill": This is not a Bibliography, but a book designed to tell you what you are
holding in your hand: first vs. later editions, states, variants, dustwrappers and other phenomena which often make the difference
between value and worthlessness. Covered are all hardbound books in "Woods Section A," including foreign language editions,
though the main emphasis is on English, American, Canadian and Australian issues. Anyone with comments or observations in these
areas should kindly write Richard Langworth, 181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229 USA, tel (603) 746-4433, fax 746-4260.
<•" Churchill's Health: Dr. John Mather is writing a book on this subject (see his article in FH #82). Relevant comments and information
are welcome at 12144 Long Ridge Lane, Bowie MD 20715 USA.
<•" Churchill's Military Careen Douglas S. Russell: is writing a book on this subject and welcomes information c/o Stein & Russell, 221
1 /2 E. Washington St., Iowa City IA 52240 USA.
•*" Bibliography: Frederick Woods is preparing a new edition of his "Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill" and is touring North America on research this autumn. Contact him at 266 Hungerford Rd., Crewe, Cheshire CW11HG, England.
$5
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 9
RSARYof
D'
Thoughts from
Normandy
with Britain's
D-Day veterans,
and remarks
to American
veterans
at Grosvenor
Square
BY WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, MP
W
HAT a wonderfully proud day! Britain's D-Day
veterans, and many from America and Canada,
had retuned in their thousands to recall that
heroic day when, in the prime of their youth, they had
stormed ashore in the face of formidable defences and a
withering fire from the enemy. They had returned —
many for the last time — to pay a final, tearful tribute to
their fallen comrades.
While waiting for the formal international ceremony to
start on Omaha Beach, where the Americans had taken
2400 casualties on D-Day, the Prime Minister's wife,
Norma Major, asked, "What would it have been like on
the day?" With the waves gently lapping the stretch of
golden sand in front of us, it was not an easy task to conjure up in the mind's eye the scene of fifty years ago, especially as I was barely 31/2 years old at the time. Nonetheless, I did my best:
"Instead of the eight warships we see today (overshadowed by the looming bulk of the US carrier George Washington), there were 5,000 major warships off these shores,
bombarding the enemy defences with all they had, while
2,000 landing craft, aided by flotillas of minesweepers,
sought to find a path through the minefields to land the
troops,tanks and equipment on the beaches. There fearsome coils of barbed wire and more mines awaited the inSir Winston's grandson is Member of Parliament for Davyhulme,
Manchester, and an Honorary Member of the Churchill Societies.
10/FINEST HOUR 84
vaders and the sand was pockmarked with exploding
shells and mortars as, overhead, some 11,000 Allied
fighter and bomber aircraft pounded the defenders.
"The thunderous noise of the big guns, the explosions
of the shells, the bark of machine-guns, the smell of
cordite, the swirl of smoke, the fear in the hearts of those
young men (their average age was 21 and the majority
had never heard a shot fired in anger), the agony of the
wounded, the sacrifice..."
After the solemnity of the Services of Commemoration
held at Bayeux and four other British military ceremonies
in the morning, with such evocative English hymns as: "O
God, Our help in ages past," "Praise, my soul, the King of
heaven" and a reading from Pilgrim's Progress; after the
pomp of the International Commemoration at Omaha
Beach with parades of units and bands of the twelve nations that took part in the landings, the British Commemorative Parade on the beaches of Arromanches in the
evening was very much a family affair. I felt privileged to
be there, as the grandson of the man who was the inspiration of "Operation Overlord" and, as I arrived, a cheer of
"Good Old Winnie!" went up from the crowd in memory
of the man who had led them from the brink of defeat
through to victory.
With the evening sunlight struggling to break through
the overcast sky, Britain's D-Day veterans were drawn up
in a square on the beach beneath this sleepy seaside village. In the background, the assault ship HMS Fearless had
her gaping bow-doors open, while behind her a flotilla of
Royal Navy ships fired a twenty-four gun salute.
Then they marched past, over 7,000 of them, erect of
bearing and with the same spirit they had shown fifty
years ago, but weighed down by medals, and by age.
They marched past their Sovereign with pride and banners flying, as military bands struck up with such old
favourites as "It's a long way to Tipperary," "Pack up
your troubles in your old kit bag," "Colonel Bogey" and
"We'll hang out the washing on the Siegfreid line."
What a proud moment it was; Among the many thousands of disabled veterans, war widows, families and
spectators, there cannot have been a dry eye. I know that I
had tears of pride and sadness coursing down my cheeks
— pride for what these brave men had accomplished in
the name of Great Britain — the Liberation of Europe —
and sadness for those who had given their lives for our
freedom.
The gratitude of the people of Normandy was well expressed by the Mayor of Arromanches, who declared to
the veterans: "This is a day when our hearts will beat
strongly and eyes will be damp with tears. Normandy is
where memories come together. The whole nation rejoices
to welcome you, the soldiers of the Longest Day, you, the
soldiers of Liberty."
In such an assembly of courage, how proud one felt to
be British!
U.S. soldiers wading ashore, Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944
Remarks by Winston S. Churchill MP
to US D-Day Veterans, Grosvenor Square, 3 June 1944
C
HAIRMAN Montgomery, Representative Michel,
Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Veterans of
SHAEF, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a real pleasure
to welcome back to Britain veterans of General Eisenhower's Army who played such a key role in the Liberation of Europe. Without two million Americans and an
equal number of British and Commonwealth soldiers and,
above all, the sacrifice made by so many, there would
have been no Liberation.
I have to tell you that my grandfather and General
Eisenhower had a major difference of opinion over
my grandfather's determination to accompany the DDay invasion aboard HMS Belfast. He could not resist the idea of participating in the bombardment of
Hitler's Atlantic Wall and being where the action was.
But Eisenhower forbade him to go, although it took
the intervention of the King before the Prime Minister
finally climbed down. Only because of Ike's ban was
Churchill in the House of Commons on the afternoon
of D-Day to report to the House. It is now my privilege
to read to you what he said on that momentous occasion.
"During the night and the early hours of this morning,
the first of the series of landings in force upon the European continent has taken place. In this case the liberating
assault fell upon the coast of France. An immense armada
upwards of 4,000 ships, together with several thousand
smaller craft, crossed the Channel. Massed airborne landings have been successfully effected behind the enemy
lines, and landings on the beaches are proceeding at various points at the present time. The fire of the shore batteries has been largely quelled. The obstacles that were constructed in the sea have not proved so difficult as was apprehended.
"The Anglo-American Allies are sustained by about
11,000 first-line aircraft, which can be drawn upon as may
be needed for the purposes of the battle. I cannot of course
commit myself to any particular details. Reports are coming in in rapid succession. So far the commanders who are
engaged, report that everything is proceeding according
to plan, And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever
taken place. It involves tides, winds, waves, visibility,
both from the air and the sea standpoint, and the combined employment of land, air, and sea forces in the highest degree of intimacy and in contact with conditions
which could not and cannot be fully foreseen.
"There are already hopes that actual tactical surprise
has been attained, and we hope to furnish the enemy with
a succession of surprises during the course of the fighting.
The battle that has now begun will grow constantly in
scale and in intensity for many weeks to come, and I shall
not attempt to speculate upon its course. This I may say
however. Complete unity prevails throughout the Allied
Armies.
"There is a brotherhood in arms between us and our
friends of the United States. There is complete confidence
in the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, and his
lieutenants, and also in the commander of the Expeditionary Forces, General Montgomery. The ardour and
spirit of the troops, as I saw myself, embarking in these
last few days was splendid to witness. Nothing that
equipment, science, or forethought could do has been neglected, and the whole process of opening this great new
front will be pursued with the utmost resolution both by
the commanders and by the United States and British
Governments whom they serve."
&
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 1 1
Four Outstanding New Books
Amidst an outpouring of attack-books comes a quartet
no Ghurchillian should be without
BY RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
Pure Gold
In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey, by Martin
Gilbert (London: HarperCollins Publishers 1994).
Hardbound, illustrated, 338 pages, £20. Available for
$29 + shipping from ICS New Book Service, 181 Burrage Rd., Hopkinton NH 03229 (details, page 15).
N Search of Churchill is Martin Gilbert's finest
hour: as warm, ingenious, generous and humorous
as its subject. For the dedicated student of
/
Churchill it is Guy Fawkes Day and the Fourth of July
rolled into one, an endlessly fascinating panorama of
rare experience, a book no one seriously interested in
WSC will be able to put down.
Ostensibly these are Gilbert's memoirs of his "search
for Churchill" as Sir Winston's official biographer, from
the day in 1962 when at Stour, East Bergholt, he became one of Randolph Churchill's "Young Gentlemen,"
to 1993, when he sat on the Chartwell terrace "overlooking the lakes where Churchill had sat in his last
years, [as] my search reached its final phase."
This is how newspaper reviews have described it, but
In Search is much more. It is deeply personal. It is Martin Gilbert's answer to all those critics over the years
(they are, in his polite way, never mentioned by name)
who accused him of being uncritical about a man others
have spent the last two years denouncing as a powercrazed, warmongering, racist drunk, who sold out the
Empire and upped the Yanks and Bolshies. It is also,
therefore, a self-defense manual for friends of Churchill,
a smorgasbord of historical karate-chops.
Why is Gilbert so pro-Churchill? Because time and
again, as he explains, he would enter a controversial
subject prepared to find the tragic flaw, the feet of clay;
and afterward, having examined more evidence than
anyone alive or dead, he would come away more impressed with Sir Winston's genius, generosity, statesmanship and humanity. As Gilbert once said in these
pages (FH #65), he might find Churchill adopting views
with which he disagreed — "but there would be nothing
to cause me to think: 'How shocking, how appalling.'"
I don't have the space to do this book justice. So
rather than try to capture its essence in the usual way,
let me go through the dog-eared pages I turned down as
I read, too eager to see what was coming next to take
my usual pencil notes.
12/FINEST HOUR 84
The first three chapters deal with Gilbert's years as
researcher for Randolph Churchill, 1962-88 (although
the "Beast of Bergholt" reappears regularly throughout
the book). Martin's friends warned him he wouldn't last
long, but Sir William Deakin, who had worked for
WSC, urged him to take the job, partly because "working with Randolph, for however short a period, would
provide a lifetime of anecdotes."
Martin did survive, and Randolphian anecdotes are
served up wholesale. I will content myself with only
one, about the night a London newspaper editor was
being entertained at Stour, Randolph serving a fine
repast in the hope of getting the biography serialised in
the paper. The conversation turned to the truncated
1930s reports from Berlin on the Nazi military buildup,
and the poor editor made the mistake of saying he had
been responsible. Randolph turned from the carving
table, knife in hand: "S**** like you should have been
shot by my father in 1940!" The editor, Martin recalls,
left the next morning. (He felt able to spend the night!?)
Randolph admitted that he was "an explosion that
leaves the house standing," but there are many vignettes
attesting to his kindliness toward his aides, his fascination with the fruit of their research, which he always referred to as "lovely grub."
A chapter is devoted to the Dardanelles, the first
great controversy Gilbert was called upon to discuss, in
Volume III. Gilbert leads us through his method of
study: photocopy every relevant document in the
archives; explore every source — if necessary, ring
everyone named "X" in the London telephone book. In
this way, Gilbert learned that initially it was Churchill
who was wary about the Dardanelles campaign, Fisher
its ardent backer. Later Churchill, convinced it was viable, overextended himself defending an action he could
not personally control; and his fate was sealed when the
Prime Minister, Asquith, formed a coalition with the
Tories, whose price was Churchill's head.
Why did Asquith give in? Gilbert could not comprehend it — until he found Judy Montagu, with whose
mother, Venetia Stanley, Asquith was besotted at that
time, whose engagement wrecked Asquith's life, and
with it his will to govern. Miss Montagu brought with
her the priceless letters in which Asquith poured out his
despondency. Here was the "lovely grub" which structured Volume Ill's account of Churchill's worst political defeat.
In "Soldiers and Soldiering" Gilbert tells how he
came to know the military Churchill, especially his fearlessness, in both combat and writing about it. (WSC:
"After all in writing the great thing is to be honest.")
Above all emerged Churchill's detestation of war. Biographers who claim the opposite should read this chapter: "Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious
and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern
men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple
folk would see it hardly ever," said Churchill, the warmonger ... (85)
Gilbert found in source after source that his subject
"never lost these sentiments." Contrary to claims that
he gloried in World War II, Churchill would have preferred it had never happened. He was rarely vindictive,
but he never forgave the Prime Minister he held responsible: "I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have
been much better if he had never lived." (106) "In my
long search for Churchill," comments Gilbert, "few letters have struck a clearer note than this one."
In his chapter, "The Inhabited Wilderness," Gilbert
makes a point often made in Finest Hour: that the
"Wilderness Years" were really a decade of blossom for
Churchill the writer, the thinker, the defender of his
country. We are introduced to cronies like Lindemann,
the much-loved "Prof," capable of reducing to a few
words the most complicated scientific theory; and to
those who risked their careers to keep WSC apprised of
German rearmament, among them Ralph Wigram,
Torr Anderson and Desmond Morton.
An embittered Morton extracted his pound of flesh
from the Churchill "legend" in later life, as chief consultant to an early revisionist author. Evidently Morton
forgot the note Churchill wrote him in 1947 — this
Churchill who we are told cared nothing for others:
"When I read all these letters and papers you wrote me,
and think of our prolonged conversations, I feel how
very great is my debt to you, and I know that no thought
ever crossed your mind but the public interest." (120)
he vast writing factory of Chartwell, the many
who provided glimpses of it in action, are described in
three chapters devoted to literary assistants, secretaries
and private secretaries, all of whom rounded and firmed
Gilbert's account. The Churchill papers, Gilbert writes,
"gave me a day-by-day picture of historical teamwork."
Some critics of Churchill's literary life dwell on how
much of his assistants' work he passed off as his own.
In fact he signed off on every word, and his assistants
loved him for the respect and appreciation he paid them.
One quote again suffices, by Maurice Ashley, who said
as much to ICS when he addressed us in 1989 and received our Emery Reves Award: "He treated me with
the utmost consideration, almost as an equal, was exceedingly generous and good humoured, wrote to my father kindly about me, and raised my salary when I told
him I was in difficulties. His secretaries adored him. Although he kept his chief secretary, Mrs. Pearman,
working late at night, he always telephoned himself for
a car to take her home. When she died he gave financial
help to her only daughter." (141)
Winston's secretaries began with a Harrow school
chum named John Milbanke, who took dictation while
Churchill bathed. With the typical drama of Churchill's
saga, Milbanke later won the Victoria Cross in the Boer
War and was killed in action at Gallipoli. (153) A succession of young people followed, many of whom came
to tell of their experiences, including such Friends of
ICS as Grace Hamblin, the late Kathleen Hill, Patrick
Kinna, Jo Sturdee (now Lady Onslow), Elizabeth Layton (now Nel), Doreen Pugh and Elizabeth Gilliatt.
"One lady who worked with Churchill for just under
three months in 1931, while he was in the United
States, did not like him," notes Gilbert, who never
missed a secretary, pro or con. "She made her objections plain when, nearly sixty years later, she was interviewed at length by the BBC. It was curious, and for
me distressing, that the other secretaries, who were
with him for so much longer, and saw him at his daily
work, were given far less time to say their piece." What
a shame that unjust criticism is today so much more
newsworthy than forthright praise.
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 1 3
Another subject of modern hindsight is Churchill's
marriage — which one well publicized biography called
a "loveless farce," a notion Finest Hour took pains last
issue to contradict, with the piece by Lady Diana
Cooper — and his family life, which another biography
repeatedly described as "egregious." Gilbert explored
every aspect, every paper, diary and memory touching
on Churchill's marriage and family: "I became aware of
how close he had been to his wife and children: a closeness shown both by the time spent together, and intimate correspondence; an uninhibited and open relationship within the family circle."
Scores of examples show the love Clementine and
Winston bore each other, one involving a Friend of
ICS, Bill Beatty, who demonstrated to Gilbert "the unending fascination of the search." Volume VIII stated
that Clemmie, Winston's "sagacious cat," prevailed
upon him to wear civilian dress in Paris to receive the
Me'daille Militaire in 1947, instead of his R A F Honorary Air Commodore's uniform — but Gilbert learned,
through Mr. Beatty's on-the-spot photograph, taken on
the day and published in Finest Hour, that WSC had for
once rejected her advice, choosing the uniform of the
4th Queen's Own Hussars, his old regiment.
Churchill's letters about his children "radiate affection," Gilbert continues — reaching even pretense for
their sake. Randolph once told Martin of an occasion
when he and Winston had gone to a cinema, and how
Randolph later "felt ashamed" for diverting his busy father to see a "trashy, slushy" film: "But Winston put his
hand on Randolph's shoulder and said with gentleness:
'We must lend ourselves to the illusion.'"
Even as he profited from such personal recollections,
Gilbert admits that he is probably dealing with just a
fraction of the true record: "How often must Churchill
have spoken on similar occasions, with no mechanical
or human Boswell present, only a small group of listeners caught up in the force of his convictions, and realizing that they had listened to something rare, profound
and extraordinary." (246)
In "Diaries and Diarists" Gilbert describes the
"golden inkwells" that mean so much to a biographer; in
this and a chapter entitled "Dear Mr. Gilbert" he chops
away at the vines of apocryphal stories choking our
image of Churchill, ascribing to Paul Robinson, Chairman of ICS United States, the assurance that a famous
quote about Royal Navy traditions ("rum, sodomy and
the lash!") was not Churchill's. Paul knew this from
Anthony Montague Browne, whose source was WSC
himself; Anthony's speech appeared in Finest Hour #50.
"I felt ashamed to have been caught telling it," writes
Gilbert, "being always so scornful myself of unauthenticated stories." (232)
"Dear Mr. Gilbert" is a grand finale of spiraling fireworks and shooting stars, the biographical equivalent of
the final celebratory moments in New York Harbor on
the American Bicentennial. Here amidst queries of
every kind, Gilbert explodes ridiculous myths with
14/FINEST HOUR 84
which the public, and certain writers, seem besotted:
How did Churchill get by on so little sleep? (Actually
he averaged seven to eight hours a day; Lady Thatcher
operates on much less.) Did WSC allow Coventry to be
bombed to preserve the secrecy of British Intelligence?
(Of course not — see also FH #41.) Did actor Norman
Shelley deliver a Churchill speech over the BBC?
(Never, though a cigar sometimes obfuscated WSC's
delivery.) Was it true that WSC praised Hitler in his
1935 Strand article, repeated in Great Contemporaries?
(Those who say this ignore the context. The Foreign
Office actually tried to suppress this chapter in the 1937
book, fearing it would offend Germany.) Is this signature or that painting a fake? (A surprising number are.)
Was WSC really l/16th American Indian? (A qualified
"yes.") Did he have royal blood? (undetermined) or illegitimate offspring? (No.) Was he unfaithful? (Never.)
Did he rant against the Jews, contrary to his Zionist
pretensions? (Only those Jews working with Lenin.)
Did he blow the 1945 election with his "Gestapo
Speech?" ("The Gestapo speech is always quoted, the
social reform pledge hardly ever.")
questions led to unexpected experiences. ICS
Friend Otis Jones asked: had WSC ever been a
Freemason? (Yes, from 1901 to 1912.) Prime Minister
Heath asked: how did WSC work with his speechwriters? ("He didn't use them," said Martin, incurring the
wrath of a speechwriter present — who is today
Britain's Foreign Secretary.) The Churchill papers on
Dieppe are open only to Gilbert, right? ("This caused
me to blow my top in Canada during a speech of
thanks: I said they were at the Public Record Office at
Kew ... [The speaker] went a bright puce, and I have felt
sorry for him ever since.")
Quote attribution is a heavy Gilbert task, much heavier than for ICS, which is also asked, but less often.
Thus we understand his delight in finding this precursor
to a famous speech, made upon the launch of RMS
Queen Mary in 1935: "Never in the history of transatlantic travel has so much been done for those who
travel tourist."
There are a few trifling mistakes which, after this incredible narrative, I am almost loath to list. But not
quite, since our author is ever ready to amend.
Churchill served under five not four Prime Ministers.
(50) Phyllis Moir's name is misspelled. (206). It is said
that Lullenden, WSC's pre-Chartwell country home,
was rented (297); but at the outset of his Volume IV
Gilbert wrote that Churchill bought it, and in a minor
"search" of my own I was privileged to see the deed,
which Lady Randolph countersigned for Winston, presumably as guarantor, still safely preserved at Lullenden itself. (In a recent note, Martin thinks Volume IV is
right — and will correct In Search at first opportunity.)
That the official biography never paid a royalty is correct, but the inroads of inflation did not go unadjusted;
ICS NEW BOOK SERVICE
New books at discount prices: a service to Friends of ICS.
Shipping $4 first book, $1 each additional, anywhere in the world
(UPS in USA, bookpost elsewhere). US$ or Sterling only please.
Visa/Mastercard cut into the discounts we pass on to you, but we
accept them as a convenience on orders outside USA, or any orders
totaling over $100. Order from Churchillbooks, 181 Burrage Rd,
XJ /.t• * Nti
MU
nntn TTCA
tiominton
03229
USA.
BOOKS BY CHURCHILL
..„„., T ,. „ r J, T
> • , •-.
T-- »
1°, OL ^dm: Defending the Jewel tn the Crown. First American
Edition of the rare 1931 ongmal Facsimile to the first edition
M W e l d h o r a
"
foreword, Illus., 168pp., Woods A38 ($35) ...$25
mm m „ , , , , - , . . ^
...
,
,
.
r ,
r ,
1007.
. . Ihe
. World
. , Crisis.
., New
,. edition ,of the
. ., 1 vol
„, version
, ... „of the
.,
JUST PUBLISHED : IN STOCK NOW
original, with a considerable new material by Churchill. Scnb?*Ll"2- H a r d b o u n d ' m a P s & P l a n s ' 8 6 8 PP- W o o d s A ^
(.!>.').'">)
$£0
1056. Churchill and the Politics of War, 1940-1941, by Sheila
Lawlor. A remarkable use of original sources shows WSC a
sophisticated and astute politician. Reviewed, FH #84. Softbound, 270pp (£16.95)
$26
1013. Early Speeches. Clothbound from the "Collected Works"
volume, including Liberalism and the Social Problem and The
People's Rights. Hardbound, 502pp
$60
1055. Churchill: An Unruly Life, by Norman Rose. In our
opinion the best single-volume interpretive biography, judicious and wise with many new angles. Reviewed, FH #84.
Hardbound, illus., 436pp (£20)
$29
1014. Mr. Brodrick's Army. First American Edition, 1977,
replica of Churchill's rarest book (1903). Woods A6. Collector's edition in half-buckram
$18
1014a. Library edition in brown cloth
$16
1054. In Search of Churchill: A Historian's Journey, by Martin
Gilbert. The best book of Martin Gilbert's career, simply brilliant. Reviewed, FH #84. Hardbound, illus., 338pp (£20) ..$29
1015. For Free Trade. First American Edition, 1977, companion to above, WSC's second rarest book (1906). Woods A9.
Collector's edition, half buckram
$18
1015a. Library edition in brown cloth
$16
1053. The Churchills: Pioneers and Politicians, by Elizabeth
Snell. (See FH #83, p26). A genealogical history of the North
American descendants of the English Churchills. Hardbound,
illus., 228pp (£14.95)
...$19
1016. Lord Randolph Churchill. Bound in red cloth from the
Collected Works, the 1952 edn with new material added,
Illus., 856pp., Woods A8c
$60
1052. The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill, edited by
James C. Humes. Revised and corrected edition: a cornucopia
OTHER BOOKS ABOUT CHURCHHILL IN STOCK
of WSC's quips, quotes and ripostes. Indispensible. Hard,. , „. D . .. „„. „,. . „,
, .„ ,
T- •
1 A C 1 ,,,,
u
J 1W
/iom
«1/; 1051. The Medalhc Portraits
of Sir Winston Churchill, byT J. Eric
bound, 234pp
$16
,-,
r> ui- u J mn A. ± J J
i
n
J i
w ($20)
'
Engstrom. Published 1972, the standard work on all medals,
•TTjir /-XIITD^TJTT T W A D BAU171JC
coins and plaques issued to date, incredibly detailed & illus-
(COMPANION VOLUMES TO VOL VI)
trated
- L g h a r d b a c k > 60 PP
$18
966. Volume I: At the Admiralty, September 1939-May 1940, 1048. Winston Churchill — Architect of Peace: A Study of Statesedited by Martin Gilbert. The ultimate sourcework of a vital
manship and the Cold War by Steven Lambakis. Author of
period. Hardbound, 1400 pp. ($75)
$60
"Churchill vs. Gorbachev" (FH78, pl5) offers brilliant perspective of Cold War strategy. 208pp($48)
$42
967. The English First Edition of the above, identically bound
(£75)
$100
1050. Churchill on the Home Front, by Paul Addison, who
writes of WSC's "unique versatility, psychic stamina, Hi968. Volume II: Never Surrender, May-December 1940. Ready in
malayan ego, and incontestable superiority over every other
November. Puts you at Churchill's shoulder during Britain's
Prime Minister." 494pp illus sftbnd ($20)
$17
finest hour with all the crucial war papers. Hardbound, 1322
pp. ($75). Due in December
$60
1043. Churchill The Writer, by Keith Alldritt. A brillliant book
on Churchill and his books ranking with Weidhorn's Sword
969. The English First Edition of the above, identically bound
and Pen. We found a few more if you missed it. Hardbound,
(£75). Due in December
$100
466pp ($33)
$27
increases were granted over the years, and then there
were the spin-offs, such as this book. On the other hand,
the publishing process was tremendously complicated,
with publishers going through changes of ownership,
mergers and divorces; delays and readjustments of various terms; the American publisher quit, requiring another to be found for the ten final companion volumes.
Anent the latter, in our own files are 300 pieces of correspondence relating to these volumes alone.
In Search of Churchill properly finishes at Ghartwell,
"where every vista, every artifact and every room has a
story behind it." Gilbert writes of his first and last visit
there, and the many in between: things old hands
pointed out to him, the central role Ghartwell played in
Sir Winston's life. Here, in Gilbert's discrete way, are
more polite but firm rebuttals of silly stories spun by less
fastidious biographers: Churchill's alleged ego, lack of
friends, heavy drinking, cavalier treatment of guests.
Again one quote will suffice, by Patrick Buchan-Hepburn, later Lord Hailes, to Martin Gilbert, c. 1970:
"Winston was a meticulous host. He would watch
everyone all the time to see whether they wanted anything. He was a tremendous gent in his own house. He
was very quick to see anything that might hurt someFINESTHOUR84/15
one. He got very upset if someone told a story that
might be embarrassing to somebody else in the room.
He had a delicacy about other people's feelings. In his
house and to his guests he was the perfection of
thoughtfulness." (305)
And, on a broader aspect of his attitudes, BuchanHepburn spoke of the Churchill some call a snob, a
man who didn't understand ordinary people: "He had
no class consciousness at all. He was the furthest a person could be from a snob. He admired brain and character; most of his friends were people who had made
their own way."
The computer tells me I am well over my allotted
2000 words and I haven't told you the half of it. In
Search of Churchill is pure gold, one of the volumes you
simply must have, and mark for reference in your confrontations with scoffers. It deserves to be bound uniformly with the Official Biography itself. It is that
warm, personal side of Martin Gilbert which he set out
not to show in his strictly chronological biographic volumes. Honest critics may argue over the merits of that
approach, and the conclusions it draws; Gilbert himself
admits that he has barely scratched the surface. But
they will come away from this book realizing that Sir
Winston was lucky to have had such a biographer, to
stand as a buffer between his life and the hordes of interpreters, some worthy and some not; and here that biographer has left a monument as stable and lasting as
Chartwell itself.
One of
the Best
One-Volume
Biographies
N O R M A N
ROSE
Churchill: An Unruly Life, by Norman Rose (London:
Simon and Schuster 1994). Hardbound, illustrated, 436
pages, £20. Available for $29 + shipping from ICS New
Book Service.
W
H E N the advance notices said Norman Rose
believed Churchill was pro-appeasement in the
1930s I had my doubts about this book. I
wasn't reassured when I began reading, and found that
Rose can't spell "Bladon" (2), "Eddie Marsh" (68),
"Marigold Frances Churchill" (167) or "Straits" (371);
that he thinks Step by Step is a speech book (186), and
that Churchill wrote something called The War Crisis
16/FINEST HOUR 84
(121). There is also a curious sentence saying Churchill
wanted to restore Czar Nicholas II after he had been
murdered: difficult even for Churchill! (144) But as I
read, my respect for Rose's book grew, and I finished
it believing that it may be the best single-volume interpretive biography yet written: better than Henry
Pelling's Churchill (1974). I am very glad Dr. Rose was
able to find at least one publisher. Like Gilbert's In
Search of Churchill his book has not been published in
the USA.
A history professor at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, Rose comes to Churchill from a neutral corner, and he generally weighs the evidence judiciously.
When he concludes Churchill was wrong he says so;
but far more often he praises WSC, and that fits with
the broad sense of humanity: Churchill's failures,
though great, were dwarfed by his successes.
Rose likes to make points that are new and interesting. To the long-running complaint that Churchill was a
"slave to his rhetoric" who brooked no opposition, Rose
replies that rhetoric was how Churchill reached a decision (46): he would yield, provided you convinced him
he was wrong. Although Rose falls into cant by accusing WSC of "lack of sensitivity," he does admit that
Churchill "was also able to generate loyalty to an unusual degree" (58) and gives examples throughout of
why this was so.
Rose's analysis of the Churchill marriage avoids
the pitfalls of popular muckrakers. He won't quite buy
WSC's claim that from 1908 he lived "happily ever
afterwards," and notes the "incompatibility of temperaments, an in-built tension that on occasion bubbled
over." But he concludes that the marriage "proved solid
enough to withstand the inevitable stresses in any marital union," and handles Winston's and Clementine's
habit of taking separate holidays with precision.
Churchill knew his wife needed those breaks, Rose
says, because of "the work & burdens" he imposed upon
her: "They found partings painful, but inevitable.
Clementine needed a respite, a few days of tranquillity
free of the stress engendered by Churchill's overwhelming presence." (205) The book shows how
Chartwell was a balm to that union, not the source
of conflict others have claimed. "Are you happy?,"
Clemmie asks her husband as he watches his
fish. "Yes, as happy as I can be," Winston replies.
(204)
Churchill's political style was controversial. He took
chances. He played for keeps and to win, and when he
lost he usually went down with guns blazing. Norman
Rose is too good a historian to suggest, as others have,
that early Tory (and Liberal) hostility to Churchill was
all Winston's fault: "Churchill's reputation was such
that he was seldom given the benefit of the doubt. To
the untrained public eye, and naturally to that of his
more jaundiced colleagues, his image as an adventurer
bent on self-glorification was more than confirmed by
his flamboyant behaviour. No doubt, he thrilled to the
ride on a perilous merry-go-round, believing that he
would be able to descend gracefully to general applause.
He was a[n] avid gambler." ( I l l )
Much has been made of Churchill's "flirtations" with
anti-democrats, his admiration for Mussolini, his doubts
about the expanded electorate. Rose happily applies
more light than heat to this subject. In 1930 Churchill
did begin to question "whether institutions 'based on
adult suffrage could possibly arrive at the right decisions
upon the intricate propositions of modern business and
finance.'" But Churchill's concern was that parliamentary institutions be able to prevent universal suffrage
from leading to populism, which would endanger such
institutions. (188) The same kind of worry goes on
today over the ability of populations to elect responsible
leadership with what the media allows them to understand of the issues.
A worthy aspect of this book is its tendency to look
deeper at actions some claim demonstrate WSC's lack
of judgment, finding in them a broader strategic vision.
An example is Churchill's wartime support of Tito in
Yugoslavia, for which WSC has been roundly criticized.
The usual defense of this is that Tito was killing more
Germans than any rival leader, but Rose has a different
answer: when Tito broke with the Soviet Union in
1948, "Stalin held back, tolerating Yugoslavia's growing
links with the West." This, Rose says, must have raised
Churchill's spirits. (312) Past doubt.
Unlike a lot of recent biographies, this book fairly
gleams with unfamiliar quotes. Rose describes WSC's
youthful character with a remark by Charles Hobhouse: "Churchill is ill mannered, boastful, unprincipled, without any redeeming qualities except his amazing ability and industry." (54) Why that's like saying a
Ferrari is expensive, thirsty and hard to keep in tune,
without any redeeming qualities except performance,
handling and beauty!
The author has a knack for the right quote at the
right time, e.g. Sir Edward Grey, 1908, that Winston
was a genius whose only fault was that "words master
him, rather than he them, [but] his faults and mistakes
will be forgotten in his achievements." (64) Equally
good is Churchill's description of Labour's Emmanuel
Shinwell and the Tory Lord Winterton: "Arsenic and
Old Lace" (317); or this description of WSC's scintillating (and therefore almost always ignored) effectiveness
as postwar Leader of the Opposition: "A magnificent
animal" bursting with vigour and vengeance...a stupendous performance, audible, polished, unanswerable, and
damning."
Like all books, there are things here that could have
been better. Rose did not consult one living source, and
relied for his early chapters too heavily on Churchill's
charming but imprecise My Early Life. Thus he falls for
WSC's story about his shoulder injury in India and the
fake Boer wanted poster (37, 42), refuted respectively in
Finest Hour #72 and #57. Rose sometimes uses quotes
out of context and introduces characters, like "Krassin"
and "Collins," with no identification. (They were respectively Lenin's trade negotiator and the Sinn Fein
leader who signed WSC's Irish Treaty.)
To his credit, Norman Rose takes Churchill's literary output seriously, even Savrola. Though he gets its
publishing date wrong (8) he does show how Churchill's
novel, representing his personal philosophy, guided him
during the Dardanelles fiasco. (113, 126) "No less impressive," Rose tells us, were Churchill's "narrative
gifts and his sense of structure. He possessed the skill to
guide his reader through labyrinthine events, to persuade him that it was worthwhile and enjoyable to persevere to the last word." But Rose's view of WSC's
early military books is inconsistent: he calls them "little
more than historical curiosities" in one place and "exciting adventure stories" in another. (36, 210)
Over the Dardanelles, Rose needs to read his Gilbert.
Fisher did not remain "at the Atheneum, accessible to
all" after bolting from the Admiralty in May 1915. (127)
Churchill could not have offered Asquith a reconstructed Board of Admiralty sans Fisher "with so many
Sea Lords against him." (127) Gilbert's battery of secretarial quotes could have prevented Rose from such preposterous remarks as, "[WSC] lacked the capacity to
laugh at himself." (203) The testimony of private secretaries such as Jock Colville counter Rose's judgment
that Churchill "revealed little disposition to think
through to the end the political aftermath of the war."
(315) Rose's belief that Churchill's alternative to Munich "contained nothing new" (244) is odd—fighting
Hitler would have been new! And, contrary to Rose,
Britain had a better shot in 1938 with the Czechs than
in 1939 without them. (245)
So Norman Rose is not perfect: who is? In the main,
his book is fair, judicious, well written. He weighs the
evidence with a proper sense of proportion, never going
off half-cocked on some silly theory based on a single,
doubtful source. He cannot (and need not) assure us
Churchill was the greatest Englishman of his time, perhaps of all time. But he can tell us "with absolute certainty that between 1940 and 1941, at a moment of his
country's greatest peril, and by virtue of his unique abilities, Churchill saved his country from a dreadful
tyranny. And by so doing, through his courage and
leadership, he inspired the rest of the free world and
gave fresh hope to those already crushed under despotic
rule."
If that achievement created certain myths in the public mind, surely they are better myths than the ones
making London headlines for the past two years. In the
1930s, when his advisors urged Churchill not to repeat
the story of King Alfred and the burnt cakes in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Churchill overruled
them, "because at times of crisis, myths had their historical importance." Who can say he was wrong, Rose
asks. Who indeed?
More Reviews ....
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 1 7
"All
Behind
You,
Winston!"
Churchill and the Politics of War, 1940-1941, by Sheila
Lawlor (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Softbound, extensively annotated, 278 pages, £16.95. Available from ICS New Book Service for $26 + shipping.
F
OR SOME time it has been claimed that
Churchill's war memoirs misrepresent Cabinet opinion over whether Britain should fight on
after the fall of France: that there were ministers who
preferred an Anglo-Nazi rapprochement; that the belligerent Churchill ignored them; and that he papered
over their views in The Second World War. His critics insist that it was terribly naughty of Churchill thus to misrepresent history. They never seem to wonder whether,
if he told such lies, he was doing the pacifists a service.
Some readers of Martin Gilbert's Finest Hour (Volume VI of the Official Biography) have likewise deduced that the Cabinet was not united behind
Churchill's resolve. Larry Arnn in Finest Hour #81
(page 37) wrote that the War Cabinet "was ready to resolve for peace until Churchill adjourned it and called
together the whole Cabinet," which he rallied with
those memorable words, quoted in the memoirs of Hugh
Dalton: "I am convinced that every man of you would
rise up and tear me from my place, if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story is to end at last, let it end only when each one
of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground."
With that, as a famous David Low cartoon portrayed, it
was "All behind you, Winston!"
It ain't necessarily so.
In this serious and balanced account of political interplay during the Battles of France and Britain, and during the March 1941 decision to support Greece, Sheila
Lawlor offers evidence that Churchill's war memoirs
are more accurate than either the revisionists or
friendly readers of Volume VI. She also gives the lie to
two other popular notions: that Churchill was blind to
the realpolitik of unleashing Hitler to attack Stalin, and
that he ran the government like an Ottoman Sultan.
18/FINEST HOUR 84
David Low's
famous
cartoon of
14 May 1940.
What reader
can name
all the gents
in the first
two rows?
"The most striking point which emerges," wrote David
Sexton in the Daily Telegraph, "is that, unlike Hitler,
Churchill was extremely receptive to the arguments of
those around him. This is the kind of stuff we need."
We sure do!
Ms. Lawlor's method, which makes this book unique
and valuable, is to analyze what were often conflicting
views and reactions to events by consulting the diaries
and private letters of key players, like Chamberlain and
Halifax, alongside the Chartwell Papers (which I wish
she wouldn't call the "Chertwell Papers"). She then
compares the various reactions to events. It is immediately apparent that Churchill's own position was governed by the uncertainties, differences and vacillations
of his colleagues, and that he was a far more sophisticated politician than he allowed himself to appear.
After the war, when he wrote that a deal with Hitler
was "never thought worth a place upon the Cabinet
agenda, or even mentioned in our most private conclaves," it turns out from Lawlor's evidence that he was
more accurate than misleading — and that Chamberlain and Halifax, contrary to their portrayal as far-seeing realists who had the true interests of the Empire at
heart, were with him all the way once France began
reeling, even when it appeared likely that Britain would
have to make peace or face the Nazi storm alone.
The issue alluded to by Dr. Arnn was the Cabinet
meeting of 28 May 1940, which considered whether
Britain should accept the overtures of Mussolini
(backed by Roosevelt) to mediate a ceasefire. Lawlor's
evidence is that Halifax entertained this idea only as a
sop to the fast-fading French: "Although Halifax had
been sympathetic to French demands for an approach
to Mussolini in late May, that had been in the context of
the fall of France: Halifax had wanted to avoid giving
the French cause for recrimination. Although he did
not believe in such an approach, and did not in substance differ from Churchill about it, it was probably his
conciliatory attitude (albeit to the French) at that stage
which led to Halifax's being associated with a peacemove party. Once the French were out of the fight, Halifax rejected the peace feelers..." (73)
As for Chamberlain, that worldly man of peace who
would have gotten Britain out of this mess, according to
at least one recent apologist: "Like Halifax and
Churchill he did not see that anything would be gained
from talks, though like Halifax he was more willing to
treat the French request for an approach to Mussolini
in May with some sympathy as a means of encouraging
the French. Chamberlain had made up his mind about
Hitler: and whatever the circumstances, even in her darkest hour, there would be nothing for Britain to gain. And
once that hour had passed there was even less reason to contemplate any feelers." (Italics this writer's.) This goes a
long way toward explaining Churchill's generous eulogy
of Chamberlain after the latter's death in November
1940 {Finest Hour #62 back cover), and his far more
censorious view of Baldwin (this issue, pl3 lower left).
Why then has this wrongheaded notion about a
"peace-move" within the Cabinet been allowed to prosper? Primarily because we haven't had Sheila Lawlor
to say wait a minute — let's look at the record.
"Churchill's decision to fight on was more reasonable
and had more in common with that of Chamberlain and
Halifax than his rhetoric might suggest," she concludes,
"but it was his rhetoric which, in the summer of 1940,
had begun to cast him into his wartime caricature. Although this caricature helped to establish him as leader
and particularly as leader of the Conservatives, among
the sources for his rhetoric were Churchill's predecessors, Baldwin and Chamberlain." You may not quite
buy that — but one can certainly understand from
Lawlor's clear examination that on peace with Hitler,
there was less there than has met the eye in recent revisionist argument.
J—/awlor's book is equally fresh about the decision,
fatal as it proved, to divert military resources from the
Middle East to help the Greeks in the face of a German
invasion in 1941, another mortal sin for which
Churchill gets the blame. Her research proves conclusively that this initiative was primarily Eden's, backed
by Generals Wavell, Dill and Wilson. Churchill constantly queried these worthies, reminding them of German military preponderance, suggesting that the Greeks
might feel "we had put undue pressure on them and had
persuaded them against their better judgement to put up
a hopeless resistance." He wished to avoid the charge
"that we had caused another small nation to be sacrificed without being able to afford effective help." (252)
But even as WSC was issuing these statements, Eden in
Athens on 4 March 1941 had signed an agreement for
Britain to go in at Greece's side.
Lawlor admits that hers is a narrow study, confined
to the period when Britain stood alone; but she argues
convincingly that it sheds light on Churchill's subsequent behavior within the Grand Alliance: "For one
thing the often hesitant and tentative nature of
Churchill's strategic leadership in face of the different
and conflicting advice of political and military colleagues
was the corollary to the resolute pursuit of British interests. The problem was not one of identifying national
interests"—on which she shows there was remarkable
unity. "Rather, in face of so many conflicting views and
demands, and given the scarcity of resources, it was
how best they should be pursued. Churchill's position
reflected the uncertainties, differences and vacillations
of his colleagues, far more than appears from his own
account." Thus we may consider that Churchill's The
Second World War is as much an attempt to represent
his colleagues' unity over broad British interests, as it is
a personal apology or defense, as so many have
charged.
Sheila Lawlor, a director of a London political think
tank and a former Fellow of Churchill College, has rendered an important service. Her book shows us that latterday interpretations based on hindsight are no substitute for immersing ourselves in the primary source material, recorded at the time of these terrible and great
events. It is certainly a very worthwhile book for any
one interested in this aspect of Churchill's career.
%eM&Mdmof
Miston Churchill
^cATreasury
Great
Quotes,
Deplorable
Wrapper
N
ft I
IT '
. f O ^ V j
Richard M.Sixan
mJames C Humes
The Wit & Wisdom of Winston Churchill, edited by James
C. Humes (New York: Harper Collins 1994, Fourth
Printing). Hardbound, 234 pages, $20. ICS price $16
(see New Book Service, page 15).
T
HIS ISN'T the best book of Churchill quotes
ever published, but it comes as close as anything
in the last thirty-five years, thanks to an extensive overhaul of the text after two initial printings. The
result is a fine compilation over over 1,000 quips and
anecdotes, well organized by Humes, an honorary
member of ICS United States, speechwriter to four
presidents, familiar sight at ICS meetings, and devotee
of Sir Winston. It is worthy company to his excellent
Sir Winston Method (1991), in which Humes combined
his rules of a good speech with Churchill's practices to
instruct readers on public speaking.
All reviews of this work to date have been mostly
compilations of the reviewer's favorite Churchillisms;
this one will be different. We'll ration you to very few
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 1 9
quotes, trying instead to outline the structure of the
work. To savor the Churchillisms you must buy the
book, which will please us, not to mention Mr. Humes.
The first and largest section, "Observations and
Opinions," is organized alphabetically. Churchill is
"the most frequent source of quotations next to the
Bible and Shakespeare," says Humes (who has also
written a biography of the latter); but Churchill, who
died at 90 with sixty-three years spent in Parliament,
left a wider variety than the Bard, who died at 52.
Humes's list runs from "Action" to "Zionism." The
only trouble with this section is that most entries lack
date or attribution, making readers yearn for the context. I read them all in manuscript form and helped root
out almost every one I thought doubtful, but although I
recognized many, I can't place them all in time, and this
is frustrating.
In "Orations and Perorations" Humes captures most
of the great speeches while warning his reader that this
is no substitute for reading entire speeches aloud, or better yet, listening to WSC himself on recordings. Under
"Coiner of Phrases" he groups terms Churchill invented (arboricide, bottlescape, triphibian) or used exclusively (benignant, purblind, tergiversation). "Saints
and Sinners" records WSC's comments on the great
and near-great of his time, and my wish here is that it
included a one- or two-line biography on them, for so
many will be unknown to younger readers. I like best
the one on Baldwin: "Occasionally he stumbled over the
truth but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if
nothing had happened."
Humes wraps up his book with "Escapades and Encounters," which is anecdotal stuff, in no particular
order, seventy pages of wonderful stories from Omdurman to WSC's last years. These have been carefully
combed to eliminate most of the apocryphal, which is
good. But as Humes states, "in a sense it is misleading
to recount many of the delicious anecdotes about Winston Churchill. They could serve to distract from the
greatness of his accomplishments, for character can slip
into caricature."
He couldn't be more right — and proof of that statement is the very dust jacket of his book, which is one of
the worst caricatures of Churchill I've ever seen.
(Humes shot at this with his publishers — without result.)
Aside from the fact that Churchill never used a cigar
holder, and never was seen with the drunk's red nose,
the artist who drew this seemed to have in mind a combination Bennett Cerf and W. C. Fields. It is an insult to
the greatness of Churchill and frames the wrong image
of the contents. I am inclined to think it may cause the
book to be mis-sold to people who think they're buying
"Jokes for the John." No publisher would run a caricature like that on a book of quotes by Martin Luther
King or John F. Kennedy or Douglas MacArthur. So
why Churchill?
Buy it anyway — and throw away the jacket!
20/FINEST HOUR 84
Alighting under the
watchful eye of
Inspector
Thompson.
8
Short
Takes
The Churchill War Papers: Volume II, Never Surrender,
May-December 1940, edited by Martin Gilbert (London:
Heinemann, New York: Norton, November 1994).
Hardbound, illustrated, 1322 pages, £75 (English edition), $75 (American edition). ICS prices $100 and $60
respectively (see page 15).
I
N T H E first eight months of his prime ministership,
Winston Churchill surmounted more crises than
many leaders face in an entire career: a fast-disintegrating ground war in Europe as the German biltzkrieg
overran Holland, Belgium, and France, and drove the
British army to retreat and evacuate at Dunkirk; the
consolidation of the German occupation of Norway and
Denmark; an ongoing state of emergency at home as
Britain struggled to modernize its army, navy, and air
forces at breakneck speed, and the pivotal weeks of the
Battle of Britain, the "Finest Hour" when Britain stood
fast against the unremitting onslaught of the German
Luftwaffe.
This extraordinary book brings these months before
us in the diaries, memoranda, letters, telegrams, cabinet
minutes, and speeches of Churchill and his closest colleagues. It puts us at Churchill's side in some of the
most tumultuous events of world history and offers an
unparalleled view of his leadership qualities and his
flaws, as he organizes the war effort, bolsters morale,
bullies those who stand in his way, schemes to outstrategize his own generals, and works tirelessly to involve the United States in the fight against Fascism.
This is truly history as it was lived, in the war whose
outcome formed the modern world. Ready by December.
The Churchills, Pioneers and Politicians: England - America - Canada, by Elizabeth Churchill Snell (Devon, UK:
Westcountry Books, 1994). Hardbound, illustrated, 228
pages, £14.95. ICS price $19 + shipping. Copies are on
hand as you read this. Order from New Book Service,
details on page 15.
F
OR OVER 400 years the Churchills have figured prominently in English history — from the
first Duke of Marlborough, soldier, to Sir Winston Churchill, statesman. But the family's origins are
obscure and the story of the Ghurchills who founded
new dynasties in the New World is a remarkable one.
Drawing on extensive research, Elizabeth Snell explores the beginnings of the Churchills in the English
West Country. She then gives a convincing account of
how at least one member of the family, John Churchill,
emigrated to North America in the seventeenth century. From John descended an American novelist of
world renown and a Canadian who created the fifth
largest shipping fleet in the world.
Elizabeth Snell weaves together the threads of the
Churchill story across two continents and a thousand
years to produce a fascinating portrait of this family of
pioneers and politicians in England, America and
Canada. She wrote about her genealogical quest in
Finest Hour #83, and spoke about it at the International
Conference at Calgary/Banff in September.
She herself is of the eleventh generation in North
America and had a grandfather called Randolph Winston Churchill, just thirteen years younger than the
British Prime Minister. Besides a personal interest in
the Churchill family, this subject has also allowed her to
indulge her passion for politics, perhaps stemming from
the fact that at a young age she witnessed Winston
Churchill during one of his last appearances in the
House of Commons.
H. A. Redburn will review this book next issue.
The following books will be ordered based on advance
orders received, one month after you receive this issue.
To order, send no money but advise the New Book Service by post, fax or phone. Bills will be enclosed with
your books.
Priggish
Hindsight
of the
Politically
Correct
DAVID MARQUAND
Churchill, by Clive Ponting (London, Sinclair-Stevenson 1994). Hardbound, illustrated, 898 pages, £20. ICS
price $29; send no money with order (see note above).
N
O MAN is a hero to his valet de chambre, and
we live in a society of valets. With us, heroism
is at a discount. On the wilder shores of polit-
David Marquand is a reviewer for The Independent, London.
cal correctness, it is seen as a form of psychopathology:
a symptom to be analysed rather than a virtue to be emulated. Faced with greatness, exceptional beauty, talent
or courage, our instinct is to search for feet of clay.
In Clive Ponting's new biography, mediocrity has its
revenge. The disorderly and disconcerting mysteries of
political leadership are viewed through the prism of the
tidy-minded bureaucrat which the author once was.
Page after page glows with the knowing smirk of the politically correct, and there are so many warts that the
face is invisible.
Churchill, we learn, drank too much. He treated his
wife and children deplorably. He extorted huge advances from his publishers, sponged shamelessly off rich
friends and spent money like water. He delivered long
monologues at meetings, refused to listen to others and
could not bear opposition. His judgment of other people
was appalling. He was an elitist, a sexist and a racist.
He fought to preserve the privileges of his class, had
contempt for democracy, was beastly to the suffragettes,
despised Hindus, feared coloured immigration and
wanted to sterilise the degenerate. Insensate ambition
drove him to folly after folly. His unnecessary but
never-ending intervention in high strategy were uniformly disastrous, a fact which his grossly overpaid
books were written to conceal. With such a contemptible figure at its head, it is a miracle that Britain
did not lose the war. Since Ponting himself was not
around at the time, we can only assume that his equally
tidy-minded predecessors in the butler's pantry of
Whitehall must have done the trick.
The trouble with Ponting's book is not — emphatically not — that the last word on Churchill had already
been said, still less that the Churchill cult which prevailed in the postwar period should be taken at face
value. As the row over D-Day shows, Britain has still
not come to terms with the painful contrast between
wartime glory and peacetime decline. Indeed, the past
twenty years of British history are inexplicable unless
that failure is taken into account. Part of the explanation for it lies in the iconography of wartime Britain,
and Churchill is still one of the most resonant icons.
There is plenty of room for revisionism.
But revisionism is not for valets. Still less is it for
the priggish hindsight of a politically correct posterity.
Churchill's drinking habits, bouts of depression, monumental self-centredness and ambition-driven errors
of judgment were part of him, and therefore part
of history. A rounded portrait would certainly include
them. But they were not the whole of him. He also had
genius — a word which has no place in Ponting's vocabulary. The key to Churchill's life, and therefore to
an important part of our history, lies in the interplay
between genius and folly. And that interplay is, by
definition, incomprehensible unless both receive due
weight.
Ponting the prig is an even more dangerous guide to
the mysteries of past greatness than Ponting the valet.
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 2 1
His chief message is that Churchill was not a late-20th
century bien pensant progressive, and that this is shocking and dreadful. But how on earth could he have been?
He was born in 1874, not 1974. He could no more escape the limits of time and place than Ponting can. The
elitism and racism which Ponting condemns were commonplace then — and among bien pensant progressives
as much as among reactionary aristocrats. Churchill's
assumption that some races are superior to others, and
his fear that overbreeding among degenerates might degrade the British race, were as politically correct in
1910 as Ponting's shocked distaste for them is today.
And if anything in life is certain, it is that Ponting's
views will seem as shocking and dreadful to progressives of the late-21st century as Churchill's do to him.
"His Reach
Has Exceeded
His Grasp"
WILLIAM PARTIN
Churchill's Deception: The Dark Secret That Destroyed
Nazi Germany, by Louis Kilzer (New York: Simon &
Schuster 1994). Hardbound, illustrated, 335 pages, $23.
ICS price $19; send no money with order (see page 21).
T
HE C U R R E N T growth industry for historians
of Twentieth-Century Britain must surely be
"Churchill-Revisionism." In recent years students of Churchill's life and career have been subjected
to a number of controversial works whose only purpose
seems to be the destruction of Churchill's historical reputation. For example, John Charmley sought to prove
that Churchill lost the British Empire and contributed
to Britain's postwar decline by not accepting Hitler's
peace terms, while Eric Nave and James Rushbridger
argued that Churchill lured the United States into the
Second World War. More recently, a rather scurrilous
book by Pat Riott charged Churchill with the orchestration of the stock market crash of 1929. Now there is
this book by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist — a
work whose basic themes seem to be that Churchill was
able to trick Adolf Hitler into attacking the Soviet
Union and that this deception would lead to the deaths
Dr. Partin is a Professor of History at Salem College and is
interested in organizing a Carolinas Chapter of ICS. Write
him c/o his department at Salem College, Winston-Salem NC
27108, telephone (910) 721-2650.
22/FINEST HOUR 84
of twenty million Russians, the unleashing of the Holocaust, and even the onset of the Cold War.
. The supposed peace mission of Rudolf Hess in May
1941 serves as the key event around which Louis Kilzer
seeks to present his conclusions as to how Churchill
manipulated the "Peace Party" in Britain in such a way
as to encourage Hitler's hopes for peace and his subsequent attack in the East. This effort to deceive the German dictator was to be Churchill's way of conserving
Britain's resources and saving the Empire (especially in
the Middle East). According to the author, Rudolf Hess
was to reveal the intention of Germany to attack the Soviet Union and thereby to strengthen the Peace Party's
efforts to end the war with Germany. The author gives
great attention to Hess's treatment in Britain and even
goes so far as to suggest — quite sensationally, one
might add — that the man who was for so many years a
prisoner at Spandau was an impostor! The implication
of such an argument is that Churchill wanted no witnesses to his deception, yet Kilzer offers no clear explanation as to how or why an impostor was put in Hess's
place.
Much of this book actually goes over very old and familiar background (Hitler's early life, the rise of the
Nazi Party, etc.) for no purpose other than to present
an image of Adolf Hitler as a man of peace where
Britain was concerned. In fact, there are several points
at which Hitler is either praised as "a statesman" (168),
sympathetically portrayed as "confused" (238), or declared to be a visionary who might have made Germany
the "master of a United States of Europe" (125). Kilzer
concludes this book with a portrait of Hitler as the great
proponent of peace at a time when Churchill wished to
wage war only for the sake of saving the British Empire.
Other than these unusual descriptions of Hitler —
and the far-fetched claim of Churchill's deception —
nothing about this book is new or worthwhile for students of Churchill or the Second World War. The stories of the Peace Party and Hess's mission have been
told before in such books as John Costello's Ten Days To
Destiny. The author's arguments about Churchill's great
conspiracy to deceive Hitler and his alleged responsibility for the Holocaust and the Cold War are often so difficult to follow that (to use Kilzer's own words) "the
conspiracy theory gets very complicated and, at times,
borders on the absurd" (78). Furthermore, if Kilzer can
write that "the first task of a statesman is to preserve
the state" (219), then he cannot logically attack
Churchill for doing whatever he could to save Britain.
Apart from its many faults as a work of history, this
book is by no means an easy read, for it is the product of
very poor editing. There are numerous typographical
and grammatical errors, and the name of one source
(John Lukacs) is misspelled in both the text and the
index. With so many problems in terms of both content
and form, it would seem (to paraphrase Robert Browning) that Louis Kilzer's reach has exceeded his grasp. M>
INS1DETHE JOURNALS'
How the King Stopped Churchill
from Risking His Life
ABSTRACT BY JOHN G. PLUMPTON
The PM with Brookie and Admiral Vian approaching the Mulberry Harbour, D-Day +6.
Theo Aronson, "Battle Royal" in
Monarchy Magazine, Vol. 15, No.
6, June 1994.
The anniversary of the invasion
of Normandy also marks the anniversary of a now largely forgotten clash between King George VI
and Winston Churchill concerning
the intention of both men to accompany the invading forces.
Throughout the war George VI,
by his close identification with the
suffering of the civilian population,
had established himself as a new
sort of warrior-king. By their obvious sympathy, as they so tirelessly
toured the bombed out cities, the
King and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, now the Queen Mother, won
great popularity and respect.
Yet the King never ceased to
chafe against the constitutional restrictions which prevented him
from being a warrior-king in the
more generally accepted sense.
"He feels so much at not being
more in the fighting line," admitted
the then-Queen.
In the months before Overlord,
George VI did whatever he could
toward preparations for the great
day. He even attended the famous
secret conference at St. Paul's
School at which the final plans for
Overlord were presented to a distinguished audience which included the Prime Minister, the
Chiefs of Staff and over 150 commanders of the attacking forces.
It was during the last few days
before the launching of Overlord
that the King and his Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, were involved in a clash of wills. Usually
the relationship between the two
men was excellent. The King recognized and admired Churchill's
great leadership qualities, while the
Prime Minister, who was an ardent monarchist, always treated
the King with great reverence and
respect. "The war," Churchill
once wrote to the King, "has
drawn the Throne and the people
more closely together than was
ever before recorded."
On 30 May 1944 Churchill, in
the course of his usual Tuesday
lunchtime audience with the King
at Buckingham Palace, glibly informed the monarch that he intended to watch the invasion of
Normandy from HMS Belfast.
When the King announced his intention of accompanying Churchill, the Prime Minister was all
agreement.
Sir Alan Lascelles, the King's
Private Secretary, was appalled.
For both the sovereign and the
Prime Minister to risk their lives in
this fashion seemed foolish in the
extreme.
By the following morning
George VI realized how foolhardy
it would be for the King and Prime
Minister to proceed, so he wrote to
Churchill suggesting that he, too,
reconsider the plan.
Churchill was not so easily dissuaded. Not even when the King
backed up his letter by seeing
Churchill personally the next day
could he talk the Prime Minister
round. When it was pointed out
that no minister of the Crown
could go abroad without the Sovereign's consent, the Prime Minister answered that he would not be
going abroad, since he would be on
a British warship and therefore on
British territory.
The King became alarmed at
Churchill's continuing obstinacy.
"I am very worried about the PM's
seemingly selfish way of looking at
the matter," he confided to his
diary. "He doesn't seem to care
about the future, or how much depends on him."
Churchill received a second appeal from the King just three days
before the invasion and just as he
was setting out for Portsmouth to
see General Eisenhower. He did
not immediately reply to the letter
so the King, by now very worried
indeed, decided that there was only
one thing left for him to do, he
would have to drive to Portsmouth
at dawn the following morning to
ensure that the Prime Minister did
not embark with the invasion
force.
In the end, this proved unnecessary. The monarch's latest pleas
had proved successful. In deference to his sovereign's wishes, the
Prime Minister had given way.
Not until six days after the successful D-Day landings did
Churchill visit Normandy, and not
until four days after that was the
King able to follow him.
(Theo Aronson's latest book is
The Royal Family at War.)
$
FINEST HOUR 84 / 23
T
HE Seventh International Churchill tour was
one of our most ambitious ever, taking us to the
far north of Britain to the Orkney Isles. Objective: the great fleet anchorage of Scapa Flow, scene of
naval history, where we were joined by Lord and Lady
Jellicoe, the former the son of the World War I Fleet
Commander: "the only man," Churchill said, "who
could have lost the war in an afternoon." We also heard
a fine address by Lord Jenkins, learned of the many
"Churchill pursuits" at the University of Edinburgh,
presented the 11th Blenheim Award to Sir Fitzroy
Maclean, and generally had a wonderful time, due not
least to the magnificent weather.
The Eighth Churchill Tour (summer 1996) will explore early Churchill homesites, World War II-related
places and the haunts of Winston's youth in the south of
England, including, of course, Chartwell and London. If
you wish you had been with us this year, it is not too
soon to put a "hold" on seats for '96: write the editor.
We began on May 19th at Glasgow's Normandy
Hotel, where our party had arrived from Toronto to
Oregon, Texas to Michigan. The next morning we made
our way to Edinburgh, lunched at the Mount Royal,
and enjoyed a coach-borne tour of the city, where we
arrived on the Royal Mile just in time for a wave from
the Prime Minister, who was in town to attend the funeral of Labour leader John Smith. The rest of the day
was spent shopping and sightseeing, or enjoying our
wonderful old railway hotel, the stately Caledonian.
(An attempt was made to impress Gaddenheads
Whiskey Shop, a favorite of ICS/USA's Cyril Mazansky, by us all going in at various times and advising the
management that Cyril sent us. This resulted in no special discounts, but considerable baggage of malt.)
The Scottish Evening on May 20th, complete with
Highland dancers and ritual Presentation of the Haggis,
was a first-rate show, except that the rest of the audience had an average age, Don Stephens estimated, of
115. But we woke them up on occasion.
On the afternoon of May 21st we met at Edinburgh
University, where we were welcomed by Dr. Ged Martin, director of the Centre of Canadian Studies, who
brought two colleagues steeped in Churchilliana: Dr.
Paul Addison ("Churchill on the Home Front") and
Dr. David Stafford, an intelligence specialist who in
1995 will publish a new work on Churchill and WW2
espionage. We received a fascinating glimpse of their researches, Ged telling us about the new MSc. course
comparing the careers of WSC and Mackenzie King.
Students and faculty had also amassed a fine exhibit
tracing Churchill's years as chancellor of Edinburgh
University, and a most impressive index of all the
Churchill cartoons in Punch.
Our three academic friends joined us for dinner at
the Caledonian that night, Ged Martin providing a fine
introduction to guests of honor Roy Jenkins and Dame
Jennifer Jenkins, who were there to recall Churchill
both personally and historically. Lord Jenkins, a histo24 / FINEST HOUR 84
"I feel like one Who treads alot
'Whose lights are fled, Whose garla
CHURCHILL QUOTING THOMAS MOORE IN THE t
German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow
On to Scs
The Seventh Interna
packed naval history \
and speeches by Lord J<
BY BARBARA
The beautiful Italian Chapel on Philippa and George Jellicoe at
Lambholm, built by prisoners of war, the Italian "Triumph of the
is open twenty-four hours a day.
Spirit" statue at Lambholm.
ie, Some banquet hall deserted,
nds dead, And all but he departed!"
FATHERING STORM, BOOK TWO, CHAPTER TWO
ipa Flow!
tional Churchill Tour
vith scholarly pursuits
snkins and Lord Jellicoe
LANGWORTH
Blair Castle: Duchess Kitty, who Don Stephens at the neolithic
sacrificed her Parliamentary career stone circles spotted by the Jelliin support of Churchill in the 1930s. coes, Orkney Mainland.
rian and biographer as well as Parliamentary veteran
with the Labour and Social Democratic parties, had to
reach back to Gladstone to find Churchill's equal, and
we think WSC would have appreciated the comparison.
This was a special event for another reason: the supply of Pol Roger Champagne, provided by our good
friend Christian Pol-Roger in Epernay. The wine was
introduced by Sarah Morphew Stephen of Pol
Roger UK, who noted that the famous black border of
British labels, instituted at Sir Winston's death, has
recently been changed to navy blue, the period of
mourning being long over. The contents are the same,
however!
On Sunday the 22nd we set out for Churchill's old
constituency, Dundee, that "seat for life" from which
he was summarily ousted in 1922, pausing at St.
Andrews, home of golf, which had just welcomed HM
The Queen. At Dundee we visited most of the halls
where Churchill made his famous speeches as a young
radical on behalf of Liberalism and Free Trade. At one
site of a famous confrontation between WSC and suffragettes, the old building had vanished, but this writer
gave a powerful rendition of the feminist interruption of
a Churchill speech eighty-two years ago, and Garry
Clark ably impersonated the constable who carried the
lady away.
Winding narrow
Scottish byways through
Perthshire, we stopped for lunch at Blair Castle, presenting a plaque in remembrance of Katharine Marjory
Ramsay, Duchess of Atholl. "Duchess Kitty," Scotland's first woman MP, was one of Churchill's few allies in the "Wilderness Years," ultimately sacrificing her
career out of loyalty to WSC's campaign for British
rearmament. Then it was on to Inverness to meet the
Jellicoes, and to bed early for an 8AM departure for
Scrabster, Sutherland, and the Orkney Ferry.
When the sun is out (and it was!) the A9 from Inverness to Scrabster is a panorama of scenic splendor.
In the beginning the Highlands are all around, but
their snowcapped peaks recede to the horizon as you
travel up along the North Sea and the land levels
out. The Orkneys, 75 ferry minutes from Scrabster, are
no higher than the outer banks of the Bahamas, emerald green but virtually treeless. Here George and
Philippa Jellicoe, who had cased the scene for us a few
weeks before, showed us fascinating neolithic stone circles, runic inscriptions and the graves of brave sailors
who died here. Evenings were enjoyed amidst fine food
at the comfortable Kirkwall Hotel, where Lord Jellicoe
spoke movingly of his father and Winston Churchill.
During the day, we toured the islands around Scapa
Flow, the largest natural harbor in the world, reliving
history.
On the decision of Lord Fisher and Admiral Sir John
Jellicoe, Scapa Flow was chosen as the northern base
of the British Grand Fleet in 1912. Here in June 1916
Lord Kitchener heard Admiral Jellicoe's account of the
Battle of Jutland aboard the flagship HMS Iron Duke,
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 2 5
The five Churchill barriers link Orkney Mainland to Lambholm,
Glimpsholm, Burray and Ronaldsay. Hand denotes route of U47 in
1939, her path traced by WSC in The Gathering Storm (below).
Brock Comegys, Foster Conklin, George Jellicoe and Norman West at
the neolithic stone circle outside Kirkwall, Orkney.
Domenico Chiocchetti, an Italian prisoner of war, created this magnificent trompe l'oeil vaulted interior of the Nissen hut-Chapel.
26 / FINEST HOUR 84
Above: thanks to Capt. Bob
Sclater, Orkney Harbourmaster, we were
taken aboard the pilot boat to
visit the grave ofHMS
Royal Oak, marked by a
buoy (left). Below: a windblown Jim Pyrros at the fascinating Scapa Flow Visitor
Centre on Lyness Island,
with the propeller from
Kitchener's fated HMS
Hampshire, right,
which sank off Hoy Island.
before Kitchener sailed to his death off Hoy Island
aboard HMS Hampshire; here the captive German High
Seas Fleet steamed in surrender; here the Germans
scuttled that fleet in 1919; here Churchill — First Lord
of the Admiralty for the second time in the second German war within twenty-five years — made his "Admiralty Tour" of 1939, feeling "oddly oppressed with my
memories...
"No one had ever been over the same terrible course
twice with such an interval between. No one had felt its
dangers and responsibilities from the summit as I had
or, to descend to a small point, understood how First
Lords of the Admiralty are treated when great ships are
sunk and things go wrong. If we were in fact going over
the same cycle a second time, should I have once again
to endure the pangs of dismissal? Fisher, Wilson, Battenberg, Jellicoe, Beatty, Pakenham, Sturdee, all gone!
'I feel like one, Who treads alone, Some banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, Whose garlands dead, And all
but he departed!'"
Traveling around these historic islands, we saw the
tiny opening — no bigger than a chip shot — where on
14 October 1939 Lt. Prien navigated U47 past the
block-ship defenses and torpedoed HMS Royal Oak, resulting in the death of 833 British sailors. The First
Lord declared that blockships were not enough —
"Churchill Barriers," 5- and 10-ton concrete blocks,
were piled up to seal the inlets. Today they form causeways over which we drove, linking the islands of Burray and South Ronaldsay to the Orkney Mainland.
On the islet of Lambholm is a former prisoner-of-war
camp. Several hundred Italians, captured during the
North Africa Campaign, were sent here to work on the
Churchill Barriers. They converted two Nissen huts
into a beautiful chapel. The impressive paintings in the
interior were done by Domenico Chiocchetti, one of the
prisoners, who has returned several times to touch them
up, welcomed by his former gaolers.
On Wednesday the 25th came a special pleasure
arranged by the Jellicoes: we were taken on the pilot
boat to the gravesite of HMS Royal Oak, now a war
shrine, and were able to "see" the ship, still intact, on
sonar. Like USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, Royal Oak
still leaks oil, which forms an eerie slick; like Arizona
she still bears a naval ensign, changed annually by
divers in a Navy ceremony. We were grateful to Capt.
Bob Sclater, Director of Harbours, who took us out to
the site, and to Hugh Halcro-Johnston, Convenor of
Orkney Islands Council, who greeted us and exchanged
plaques to mark the occasion.
The Orkney Council is responsible for the Scapa
Flow Visitor Centre on Lyness, which opened in 1990.
Here we spent many hours examining a wonderful
photo history of the naval base, along with film shows
and artefacts that really require a week to appreciate
completely.
On May 26th, after a visit to Highland Park, Scotland's most northerly distillery, and to a burial tomb
that predates the Pyramids, we boarded the ferry back
to the mainland and rambled down the A9 to Inverness,
arriving in time for dinner. The following morning we
set off along Loch Ness and the Great Glen toward Inverary Castle, duplicating Churchill's 1939 picnic in
grand style near Glen Coe, amidst the gorse covered
Highlands. (We did scare away a party of tourists, astonished to see our jumbo coach deftly navigate the car
park and proceed to set up lunch for thirty.) The
scenery continued magnificant, as did the weather,
which was absolutely superb: bright sun daily, only a
few brief sprinkles. The time to visit Scotland is May! In
early June the rains begin and the midges arrive, and it
is gloomy for eleven months. (Personal experience!)
We stopped, of course, at the Loch Ness monster exhibit, declining to pay the exhorbitant "museum" fee; at
the Commando Monument, and at Inverary's Combined Operations museum, which is much better value
for money. Here Churchill had visited commandos
being trained for raids on occupied territory. No visitor
to Inverary should miss the photos and souvenirs displayed. Alas the museum is facing extinction because it
can't meet the overhead.
Arriving the same day as Clint Eastwood, who didn't
know what he was missing, we gazed at Loch
Lomond's blue hills and sparkling water from great
windows of Cameron House, our final and most elaborate hotel. We spent part of the 28th on the water, cruising up the loch, with a piper to entertain us and drams
to sample. On May 28th evening we traveled spectacular Glen Coe and Glen Kinglas to Strachur on Loch
Fyne, the Creggans Inn, and the Macleans.
Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Hereditary Keeper and Captain
of Dunconnel in the Isles of the Sea, served as a diplomat in the British embassies in Paris and Moscow. As a
young foreign service officer he astonished colleagues
by asking for Moscow (considered purgatory by most),
because he wanted to journey to the fabled cities like
Samarkand and Bokhara in Soviet Central Asia. He
succeeded, and his books on those travels have become
classics. During World War II he served in the
Cameron Highlanders and Special Air Service Regiment, taking part in their now famous operations behind enemy lines in the Western Desert. In 1943 he was
secretly dropped by parachute into German-occupied
Yugoslavia as Winston Churchill's personal representative and commander of the British military mission to
the Yugoslav partisans. He is married to Lord Lovat's
sister Veronica, a noted cookery writer. Their combined literary output is equal in volume to Churchill's.
The Blenheim Award is the highest honor the International Churchill Society can bestow. It was established to recognize those individuals who have notably
contributed to the International Churchill Society
and/or the memory of Sir Winston, either by service as
an officer, or by sharing their knowledge of Sir Winston
with posterity. After a memorable dinner of Loch Fyne
salmon, local venison and Pol Roger Champagne, the
FINEST HOUR 84 / 27
Left: The Langworths, Sarah Morphew Stephen and Bolers celebrate Pol Roger.
Above: Killain Hall, Dundee, a WSC speech site; below: the tour party at Dundee.
Eleventh Blenheim Award was presented to Sir
Fitzroy. He deserved it for his service to the great man,
of course, but this presentation took on an added dimension: not only is Sir Fitzroy a Churchillian and a war
hero; but far more recently, at the age of eighty-plus, he
organized two important rescue missions, bringing medical supplies and equipment to the beleaguered people of
ex-Yugoslavia. For that too he deserves the gratitude
and tribute of the English-Speaking Peoples.
Thanks to All Who Helped
(In order of involvement) International Churchill Societies of the United States and United Kingdom; The
Lady Soames, DBE; The Honorable Gelia Sandys;
Garry Clark Cars; Chambers Coaches, Stevenage,
Herts, and driver Ken Cook; Drs. Ged Martin, Paul
Addison and David Stafford and students, University
of Edinburgh Centre for Canadian Studies; Edinburgh
University Library; The Rt. Hon. The Lord Jenkins of
Hillhead, O.M. and Dame Jennifer Jenkins, D.B.E.;
Christian Pol-Roger; Bill Gunn and Sarah Morphew
Stephen of Pol Roger UK; Blair Castle, Blair Atholl,
Perthshire; The Rt. Hon. The Earl Jellicoe, K.B.E.,
D.S.O., M.C., F.R.S., P.C. and Lady Jellicoe; Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.; Lyness Vistor Centre;
28/FINEST HOUR 84
Capt. Bob Sclater; Convenor Hugh Halcro-Johnston
and the Orkney Island Council; Highland Park Distillery; Orkney Naval Cemetery; Loch Ness Visitor
Centre; Combined Operations Museum, Inverary Castle; Loch Lomond Cruises; Sir Fitzroy Maclean of
Dunconnel, K.T., C.B.E., Bart, and Lady Maclean;
Jean-Pierre Puech & Creggans Inn; Ann and Sarah
Clark; David and Diane Boler; Stakis Normandy
Hotel; Mount Royal Hotel; Caledonian Hotel; George
International Hotel; Edinburgh and Dundee City
Guides; Mercury Hotel; Kirkwall Hotel; Cameron
House.
Thanks to All Who Came
Lorraine & Bill Beatty, New York; David & Diane
Boler, Kent; Ann & Garry Clark, Hertfordshire; Addie
& Brock Comegys, Massachusetts; Carol & Foster
Conklin, New Jersey; Peter Coombs, Dorset; Lord &
Lady Jellicoe, Wiltshire; Lord & Lady Jenkins, London;
Barbara & Richard Langworth, New Hampshire;
Posey & Dick Leahy, Massachusetts; Charlotte & Earl
Nicholson, Texas; Betty & James Pyrros, Michigan;
Barbara & Don Stephens, Oregon; Jenny & Richard
Streiff, Florida; Virginia & Norman West, West Virginia; Marjorie & Bill Williams, Ontario.
$
Bric-a-brac:
Kevin Francis & Wedgwood
Today's most prolific producer of Ghurchilliana faces change.
Noel Thorley revealed as the Wedgwood copyist.
BY DOUGLAS J. HALL
W
H E N Kevin Pearson and Francis Salmon got
together to form their twin businesses, Kevin
Francis Ceramics Ltd and Kevin Francis Publishing Ltd, they primarily worked with Royal Doulton,
handling current RD products, discontinued lines, special commissions and various books. Both, however,
had the ambition to revive the traditional art of handmade pottery, and in particular to apply the age-old and
popular toby jug format to up-to-date subjects.
Perhaps it was a lucky piece of timing that their ideas
had evolved to a critical stage just as Peggy Davies
reached the age of retirement from Royal Doulton.
Peggy had no intention of leading an idle retirement and
immediately formed her own business, Peggy Davies
Ceramics, in Stoke-on-Trent. A burgeoning association
was soon formed between the two companies and, in
spite of Peggy's sad death in 1989 (her business carries
on in the hands of her son Rhodri), the Kevin Francis
backstamp quickly became synonymous with innovation and quality in the field of collectable ceramics.
Kevin Francis/Peggy Davies' output of limited edition
toby jugs, character jugs, figures and vases in just over
five years has been impressive. They must surely have
created a record in producing no fewer than seven
pieces of Churchilliana between 1989 and 1993! Now
two more have arrived; a D-Day toby (available in
North America from ICS Stores), and "Midshipmite
Churchill", a limited edition of 150 in a modern series of
Political Midshipmites reviving the satirical tradition of
the earliest toby jugs.
The bad news is that Kevin Pearson and Francis
Salmon have split up. Kevin has married and is now living permanently in the USA; Francis is devoting himself fulltime to his publishing interests and has severed
all contact with the ceramics business. The Peggy
Davies Studios are now directly handling all UK sales
and they will continue to use the prestigious "Kevin
Francis" backstamp. It is understood that Kevin Pearson will continue to promote Peggy Davies/Kevin Francis products in the USA and Canada.
Peggy Davies Studios are a surprisingly small business located in rather unpretentious premises in the
deepest downtown of Stoke-on-Trent, but they have
three of the most highly regarded modellers in the industry: Doug Tootle (ex-Royal Doulton and Wood's),
Geoff Blower (ex-Royal Doulton and Wedgwood) and
Andy Moss (trained by Peggy Davies). Rhodri Davies,
who has been proprietor since his mother's death five
years ago, is a technically accomplished potter who was
formerly a production manager at Wedgwood.
Rhodri bemoans the fact that he is only "a humble
potter at heart" and he is clearly not enjoying the additional marketing and administrative responsibilities
thrust upon him by the break up of the Kevin Pearson/Francis Salmon partnership. I fear that the promotion of KF products in the UK will suffer without the
energetic presence of Kevin Pearson around the larger
fairs, and can only hope that his residence in the USA
will bring dividends there. Except that I would hate to
see every piece crossing the pond!
The Winston Churchill D-Day Toby
I had challenged Rhodri Davies to deliver my toby at
dawn on 6 June 1994! He failed but he did telephone
that morning to apologise, saying that my jug was having its final glazing and would be ready in two days.
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 2 9
I quickly worked out that the jug should therefore arrive on 12 June and replied that that would be highly appropriate. Fifty years earlier on "D-Day + 6," Churchill
crossed the Channel in the destroyer HMS Kelvin and
went ashore in Normandy to visit Montgomery's Headquarters five miles inland. Whilst Montgomery's commandeered chateau bore many signs of battle, Churchill
seemed disappointed that he was not allowed to observe
any actual fighting!
The matter was rectified to his satisfaction on the
way back. HMS Kelvin sailed through a squadron of
battleships and cruisers which were shelling German
positions ashore. "Since we are so near," Churchill suggested, "Why shouldn't we have a plug at them ourselves before we go home?" Admiral Vian replied,
"Certainly." HMS Kelvin fired all its guns to add to the
continuous bombardment before turning about to return the delighted Prime Minister to Portsmouth.
Churchill was to recall, with clear satisfaction, in Volume VI of The Second World War, how it had been the
only time he had ever been on board a naval vessel
when she fired in anger.
Rhodri Davies had described his ideas for the D-Day
toby to me over the telephone some months earlier. His
enthusiasm was so infectious and his concept so apt that
I simply had to order the jug "sight unseen." It is 9 1/2
inches tall and modelled by Andy Moss. Its title is
"Overlord," the D-Day code name, but also a splendid
appellation for Churchill's personal role in its planning
and execution. A determined Churchill, in siren suit
and steel helmet, clutches a cigar in his left hand while
making his famous V-sign with his right. Peering over
his shoulders are the small figures of Montgomery and
Eisenhower acting as finials to the furled flags of Great
Britain and the United States [where's Canada? -Ed.]
which form the V-shaped twin handles. A delightful
touch is Churchill's left foot resting on the cracked head
from a toppled monument of Hitler! Churchill is seated
on a representation of the Normandy cliffs and, on his
left side, small figures of soldiers can be seen scaling the
rock-face whilst on the right there is a cameo of troops
leaping from landing craft.
A really fine piece of sculpture, "Overlord" comes in
a limited edition of 750. UK shop price is £140 and the
ICS Stores price is $195.
Midshipmite Churchill
Some of the earliest tobies, made in the late 17th and
early 18th centuries, were the so-called Fiddler and
Midshipmite jugs. For many years the original jugs
were held to be the work of John Astbury of Shelton
(1688-1743) but recent research, notably by Vic
Schuler ("Mr Toby" of Portobello Road market), has
established that they were almost certainly not made
until many years after Astbury's death. The Fiddler tobies depict seated men wearing a tricorn hat, frock coat
and breeches playing a violin, and usually with a
tankard of ale at their side. Subjects included Admiral
Lord Rodney (1718-92) and Admiral Lord Howe
(1726-99); their portrayal as Fiddlers was a sharply
satirical comment on the substantial bounties they were
awarded for their naval service, Fiddler's Green being
in folklore the sailor's Elysium.
30/FINEST HOUR 84
Douglas Hall convinced
Kevin Francis to add
Churchill to the Midshipmite group of political satire ceramics,
which revises a craft
dating back to the 17th
Century.
The Midshipmite group were similarly dressed but
had the subject holding a sword drawn from a scabbard.
The name "Midshipmite" was corrupted from the junior
naval rank of midshipman and the mite, a coin of very
small value, and thus derogatorily implied a lowering of
the dignity and worth of any "High and Mighty" subject. Two early Fiddlers were sold at Phillips and
Sotheby's in 1988 for £19,000 and £26,000 respectively,
both going to Mr David Newbon of New York.
In 1993 Kevin Francis Ceramics announced that
they intended to revive the Fiddler and Midshipmite
concept, closely following the original designs, in a new
series of political satire featuring prominent 20th century politicians. The series would be 750 jugs overall
with no more than 150 of any one subject. John Major
(playing the same old tune and trying to tell us that the
"Green Shoots" of recovery are here) would be the first,
supplied with a free treatise entitled "The Economic
Consequences of Mr Major" (Lord Keynes' famous
1926 pamphlet was so titled for Churchill).
This went right back to the earliest jugs, which were
often accompanied by a humorous doggerel appropriate
to the subject. KFC issued a list of possible future subjects and invited customers to state a preference and/or
send in their own nominations. When I suggested
Churchill, they showed some nervousness at the
thought of even gently lampooning a subject whose images thus far had been almost entirely adulatory. I
pointed out that the Goss toby of 1927 had hardly been
complimentary and that there had in any event been
many incidents in Churchill's political career before
1939, and probably even after, which would have had
the 18th and 19th century potters reaching for their clay
had they been around at the time.
Thus Midshipmite Churchill, by popular demand (me
at least!), became subject number two in the series.
Nine inches tall, as were the original jugs, Midshipmite
Churchill was modelled by Andy Moss. It is now available in the UK at £120 after a discount for pre-production orders. The toby illustrated is number 154 in a series limited edition of 750 — effectively number 4 out of
a possible 150 Churchills since the first 150 numbers
have been reserved for the John Major jug, which
launched the series and which, for the moment, is still
selling well. ICS Stores is investigating availability in
North America — contact Alan Fitch (p2) for status.
Fifty Years of Bulldogs
Perhaps it was no coincidence that exactly fifty years
separated two famous standing tobies, both entitled
"Bulldogs." The first is on the right.
This fine jug first introduced the Churchill/Bulldog
connection, Ernest Bailey's superb design for Burgess &
Leigh of Burslem which was issued in 1940. This jug
was primarily made for export to the USA and, initially,
only a small number of uncoloured "rejects" were released for sale in the UK. Consequently it has always
been a rarity in Britain and the few examples appearing
on the secondary market have fetched high prices.
At Phillips auction of the Tristan Jones collection of
political commemorative ceramics in January 1991,
"Bulldogs" made £581. There were forty-nine pieces of
Churchilliana included in the sale, which was attended
by many members of both Houses of Parliament, and
all exceeded the catalogue estimates by anything up to
thirteen times! Two different colourways have been observed — see also p. 184 & 187 of Ronald Smith's
Churchill: Images of Greatness. An uncolored version
was listed at $750 in a recent US catalogue.
Kevin Francis Ceramics did not openly proclaim the
"Golden Anniversary" for their standing Churchill
toby, issued 1990. Modelled by Douglas Tootle at the
Peggy Davies Studios, Stoke-on-Trent, it clearly owes
something to Ernest Bailey's design of exactly half-acentury earlier. A limited edition of 750, it sold out
within little over fourteen months. It has a double handle, in the form of a "V", above a scroll bearing the
word "Victory." It was also available in a grey colourway. The original price was £120 (£90 for pre-production orders) and the jug quickly went to £140 on the secondary market in the UK and $250 in the US. (ICS
Stores sold it for less!) A 4 1/2-inch tall "shrink," entitled "Mini Winston Churchill," was issued in 1993, also
in a limited edition of 750. The same year Douglas Tootle added a "Political Churchill," again incorporating a
bulldog.
Check Out Your Wedgwood
A malachite green and bronze portrait medallion of
Churchill (below) bears a close similarity to Wedgwood's blue jasper 1974 centenary issue (below right). I
chanced upon the green/bronze medallion at a local antiques fair and, failing to find a reference to it in any catalogue, sent a photograph to the Wedgwood Museum at
Stoke-on-Trent.
The Information Officer replied, "The overall appearance is identical to the 1974 Churchill medallion
produced in white on pale blue jasper and I can only assume that someone has emulated the appearance of this
piece using an unidentified material. If you would like to
bring the item in for direct examination, this may enable us to furnish you with additional information."
Well, I have not yet had an opportunity to make a
trip to Stoke-on-Trent but, in the meantime, the Daily
Telegraph (9 June 1994) headlined: "Unmasked: the potter who faked Wedgwood." Currently on exhibition at
the International Ceramics Fair at the Park Lane
Hotel, Piccadilly were fifty top class Wedgwood fakes,
the work of one Noel Thorley, deceased. The items on
show were mainly copies of late 18th century basalt or
jasper pieces which would have a value, if genuine, of
up to £8,000. Indeed one of the forgeries on view was
sold earlier this year at Sotheby's in New York for
$12,100.
Peter Williams, a London Wedgwood specialist,
raised the alarm when a piece similar to that sold in
New York was deemed a fake by the Wedgwood Museum. He said it was impossible to speculate how many
fakes might be in circulation or whether Thorley had
been the sole source of them but, "I doubt if this was a
small thing. Wedgwood moulds are easily reproducible,
and their clay formulas have been well-published, but I
do not expect people would go through the effort of
making them if they were producing the things in only
ones and twos. We are going to have to check many
pieces against originals in the Wedgwood Museum.
Most of the fakes are thought to have been slipped on to
market in the United States.
Is my little green/bronze portrait medallion a "Thorley"? If it is, it might now have a notoriety value well in
excess of the £25 I paid for it!
M>
Mr. Hall welcomes your comments; address on page 4.
Possible Wedgwood fake (left) with a genuine article, 1974.
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 3 1
DhSRVICIIBuX
Editor's response: Here is Finest Hour
#82, reporting on our 1993 conference,
wherein you will find that not all young people are interested only in MTV and who's
dating whom. You live in an exciting time:
in just a few years, TV as we know it will
have been replaced by multimedia, offering a
surfeit of others your age who prefer Mozart
and history—and, if our On-Line Committee has its way, Churchill too — broadly accessible on the Internet. Meanwhile, welcome aboard at the under-18 rate of $10.
New Canvas by a New Artist
I enclose a recent painting of mine of Sir
Winston Churchill. I have also made
paintings of Viscount Alanbrooke and
Field Marshal Montgomery. My
Churchill portrait is 22x18" and the
medium is oil on canvas. I am 24 years
old and started drawing at 12, steadily
progressing to the present time, being
self-taught apart from art lessons at
school. My first portrait was painted in
1992.1 will be glad to hear of anyone interested in purchasing these.
ANDREW BRADLEY
26 CHESTERFIELD RD.
SWALLOWNEST, NR.
SHEFFIELD, S31 OTL UK
Weidhorn Pro
I look forward to reading Manfred Weidhorn's latest book. I have always had
the highest regard for him both as a
writer on WSC and as a man. He was
most helpful when I sought information
about his essays for my bibliography
and nothing was too much trouble for
him. In fact I have found nearly all the
historians in the USA responded well to
my enquiries, and I am always singing
their praises. The best work on
Churchill is now being done by American academics. I enjoyed your skirmish
with the author of some of the worst
(FH #78-80) and the reviews by Drs.
Arnn and Schoenfeld (#81). There is not
much zeal for Churchill in British halls
of academe. We have created many new
universities, but the scholars to support
them are lacking.
H. ASHLEY REDBURN
From the Next Generation
As a 16-year-old admirer, I am always
on the lookout for information about Sir
Winston. It's a shame how little the average teenager knows about men and
women of history, who showed great
wisdom, discernment and character. It
frustrates me that the only things I can
discuss with my peers is MTV and
who's going with whom. Sure they've
heard of Shakespeare, but trying to have
a conversation about him is another
thing, let alone to talk about life, politics,
history and the arts. You get only empty
silence. After they get over the fact that I
don't have a TV and favor Mozart to
Madonna, and haven't read the latest
Stephen King (the deepest reading they
do), they haven't anything to talk about.
I can discuss the square root of 49 with
my sister, and the importance of landing
craft in the D-Day invasion with my
brother. Has it always been this way for
people like me?
JENNIFER JAMAR
GIDDINGER TX, USA
32 / FINEST HOUR 84
OWERMOIGNE, DORSET, UK
Weidhorn Con
It was distressing to read Manfred Weidhorn's judgment (FH #83) that
Churchill was a "tragic figure." Weidhorn has missed the basic: it was not
that "Britain went to war to save
Poland," though indeed that was among
the hopes of those gloomy days. The primary fact was that Britain under
Churchill's leadership drew the line
against Hitler. This heroic stand against
the tyrant became in the end the difference between freedom and unleashed
barbarism. Churchill's inspiring leadership while Britain stood alone enabled
the free world to get hold of itself, and
ultimately to see off the Nazi threat. It
was Churchill's, and Britain's, supreme
gift that the West was able to move beyond that evil, and face up to new challenges, however formidable they were,
and are. In light of that achievement,
Churchill is the Man of the Century, the
triumphant hero. It is for his successors
to determine whether history will ascribe triumph or tragedy to these days.
ROBERT R. HUNT
SEATTLE, WASH. USA
"I Was There"
I think I am entitled to one of the
Teheran covers postmarked at Teheran,
since I was there in 1943. Not 30,1 was
in Security as a bodyguard under Inspector W. H. Thompson, attending Sir
Winston's 69th birthday party at the
British Embassy. Around the table sat
British, Russians and Americans. Anthony Eden was well-liked for he could
speak Russian and Parsi. Churchill and
Roosevelt shared jokes and laughed out
loud; Stalin could only join in with a
"Haw! Haw!" or a grunt. Sarah
Churchill was the only female at the
table. Happy Memories!
DANNY MANDER,
LOS GATOS, CALIF. USA
"The Soft Underbelly"
I found your review of my Aegean Adventures {FH #82) brilliant and extremely
well got-out. On your two main points,
firstly, I did not give expected casualties
for an attack through the Balkans and
the soft underbelly of Europe. My point
was, and is, that the casualties would
have been insignificant compared with
the two million-plus incurred on the
Second Front.
Having been in Belgrade at the time,
i.e. 1943,1 doubt if the total casualties on
both sides in that theatre even approached 100,000. Had the Allies and
Turkey attacked along the Danube up to
Vienna, there is no way that Hitler could
have stopped them, due to the length of
his lines of communications and almost
total lack of airpower and oil.
Where you doubt the Germans
would have capitulated to the Western
Allies rather than the Russians, noting
that they did not capitulate to the Allies
in the West, my point is that that was
June 1944, not September 1943, when
the Russian front was over 1,000 miles
east, not a few hundred, and they could
not capitulate without allowing the vast
Russian Armies to overwhelm Germany, resulting in appalling massacres
and destruction. This was entirely different from 1943, when there was no
second front in Normandy. Therefore
the choice for the German generals was
clear-cut and at that time there was a
great conspiracy against Hitler and for
peace, sponsored by over 6,000 top people in Germany, who were behind the
bomb on Hitler, all of whom were liquidated.
The current horrors in Yugoslavia
sprang directly from Churchill's decision to abandon Michailovitch and to
accept Fitzroy Maclean's plan to back
Tito and his communist partisans. My
two connections at the time were the
Commander of the Royal Bodyguard,
Major Miskovitch, and Major Hargreaves (still alive) who was parachuted
into Yugoslavia to liaise with
Michailovitch. He has no doubt of the
tragedy Fitzroy Maclean's decision created and I believe that WSC came round
to the same conclusion.
merely saying that the present Yugoslav
problem has been brought on by changing the whole character of the government and people from being a Royalist
country, with an army run by people
like Michailovitch, to the cruellest and
worst type of communist regime. -MWP
GERALD LOVELL,
SILVERSTONE, NORTHANTS, UK
MICHAEL W. PARISH, LONDON
Editor's Response: Thank-you for your
gallant response to my critiques.
I do not think it likely that the casualties
in the Balkans in 1943 indicated the potential casualties of an all-out Danube invasion,
and if Hitler's communications would have
been stretched in such an action, those of the
Allies would have been stretched even more.
If the Russians were so much closer to Germany in June 1944, is it not possible to believe the Germans would have been more
likely to capitulate to the Allies in France
than to an Allied force on the Danube in
September 1943, with the Russians 1,000
miles away and many Germans still thinking they could win? I also think the Hitler
Plot is considerably overrated as to its
chances for success and the numbers involved.
I think there is some misunderstanding about Fitzroy Maclean's role and advice.
At a dinner with ICS in Argyll last May he
told us: "Sir Winston was very clear as to
what he expected from me. He insisted on
the answer to just one question: who in Yugoslavia was killing the most Germans? To
that question in my judgment after reviewing the scene there could be only one answer:
Tito." As to turning over Yugoslavs to Tito
after the war leading to the current horrors
there, could not one argue that Tito, bad as
he was, actually prevented the thousand
years' war among Balkan peoples from resuming after the WW2 ? It was only after his
death that the fighting began again.
Liberation Bike Ride
Your mention of cycling activities causes
me to wonder if there couldn't be a ride
"to pull back the Iron Curtain" on the
fiftieth anniversary of the Iron Curtain
speech in March 1996. "From Stettin in
the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic" is
about 600 miles as the crow flies. What
about a trip through each of the former
Soviet satellite countries, with a couple
of riders from each country? Would we
get sponsorship? Would it be politically
possible? Give us the tools...
WSC at "La Pausa"
Did you know that the photo on page
33, Finest Hour #82 was taken by Emery
here in our Hall on Sir Winston's and
Lady Churchill's Fiftieth Anniversary?
Lady C always loved sitting on the huge
sofa, which "took two" to plump up afterwards! La-la—memories!
WENDY R. REVES
CAP MARTIN, FRANCE
"Too Much Inside Chattiness"
Regarding this "bug" over Finest Hour in
the recent reader survey (FH #82), I hope
this will be guarded against. On the
other hand, to require that the journal
report "only the facts" and none of
what's happening socially is equally
wrong, even absurd. The vibrancy of an
organization is a reflection of the interest and hard work of its people and
proof of such vibrancy is provided by
reporting activities. It is comforting to
know that I belong to an organization
that has life. I find Finest Hour overflowing with articles of great interest to me
and in keeping with "vibrancy," the report on the Washington Conference was
truly welcomed. I think you deserve an
Everest of commendation.
THOMAS R. FUSTO
FRANKLIN SQ., NY, USA
Britain Needs a Churchill Day!
Thank you very much for running Mrs.
Pannett's drawings of Sir Winston's
hands and sending me extra copies. She
will be very pleased and it is most awfully kind of you.
All we need now is to grant the establishment of a WSC national memorial
day for which I have been unceasingly
agitating ever since he died. Such a gesture would earn worldwide acclaim
judging by the remarks constantly expressed everywhere.
TOM CAWTE
3 CAUSEWAY COURT
QUEEN ST., ARUNDEL, W. SUSSEX, UK
The Moon Needs Humes!
In a recent conversation, author Humes
("The Wit and Wisdom of Winston
Churchill," see Reviews this issue) told
me an interesting story. As a Nixon
speechwriter he was asked to write the
words engraved on the plaque to be left
on the moon: "Here men from the
planet Earth first set foot upon the moon
in July 1969. We came in peace for all
mankind." Then, after he had had three
martinis, Humes penned a second paragraph without capitalizing the first letters of the words. He suggested this
paragraph be added to the moon
plaque: "just as man explores space,
hope unites mankind exalting science."
Unfortunately for Humes, Chief of
Staff H. R. Haldeman "decoded" the
second paragraph, realizing that the first
letter of each word spelled JAMES
HUMES. Haldeman angrily ordered
that the second paragraph not be engraved on the plaque!
GERRY LECHTER, FT. LEE, NJ, USA
Major Parish Replies
I am a great supporter of Sir Fitzroy
Maclean, and in that period of the
war neither Sir Fitzroy nor Churchill
could have made other decisions. I am
Editor's Response: One other very important reason for mentioning people with
regard to events is that it's the only way volunteers can be publicly acknowledged and
thanked.
Editor's Response: Vintage Humes.
WSC would have been tickled, and had it
been a British landing, would have insisted
it remain, if he had a speechwriter write it,
which he wouldn't have!
IS
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 3 3
WOODS CORNER
Addenda, Corrigenda and Comment on the Woods
Bibliography of the Works of Sir Winston Churchill.
the luxury of real leather
the grandeur of 23 carat gold
to honour Sir Winston Churchill in
this Centennial Year of his birth
What more fitting tribute in this Centennial Year of his birth to one of
the greatest men in the history of our nation - the man who became
the living symbol of freedom to the people of all nations - could
there be than his own immortal words magnificently bound into a
family heirloom e d i t i o n . . . to keep alive the values and freedoms
for which he so indomitably fought... to be an inspiration to
our children and their children.
// was this thought that inspired our Swiss craftsmen
to create the truly noble volumes we offer here.
Complete in
12 matching
volumes most
handsomely bound
with richly-grained
leather, tan
marbled Kidron
and 23 carat
gold.
as an introductory gift
take this beautiful volume
SIRWINSTONCHURCHIU
ffiswrr
AND
WISDOM
Oddballs and B a r g a i n s BY THE EDITOR
A123 The Second World War
I
read recently that "not many
non-first edition books appreciate in value over the years,"
and I want to disspell that notion
very firmly! Perhaps we should
not say this out loud, because for
British booksellers especially, little
emphasis is placed on non-firsts,
resulting in incredible bargains.
Ten years ago my shelves received
a fine Colonial Issue Malakand for
£35 because the seller thought it
was not a (apple green cloth) first
edition. In fact it is just as much a
first edition as the home market
binding, since it was printed from
the same plates at the same time.
(You don't find Colonial Mala34/FINEST HOUR 84
kands for £35 in England or anywhere else nowadays, but even
then, it was a bargain.) There are
countless other instances — the
Chartwell Edition Second World
War and English-Speaking Peoples,
the single-volume River War from
1902 through 1965, Canadian and
Australian issues of the war speech
volumes, the Monaco Savrola —
where substantial gains in value
have been made over the years.
The Second World War had an
enormous press run and only now
have first edition prices for fine
jacketed sets begun to rise beyond
the $200 or £130 ceiling. Happily,
however, there are a number of
non-first editions that have hung
pretty steady over the past decade,
Bound with real
leather embossed
with gleaming
golden tooling.
and which may still be enjoyed for
a relative pittance. One of these is
the Heron Books edition of 1974,
here pictured in the original advertisement published in Britain.
Heron's effort, issued to mark
the 1974 Churchill Centenary,
made a twelve-volume set by dividing the original six volumes into
their component "books." They
also added vivid illustrations. This
is the third illustrated edition, following the Chartwell Edition of
1956 and the twelve-volume Gassell paperback of the 1960s.
Douglas Hall rightly calls this
set "one of the best affordable editions," and describes it thusly:
"Bound in marbled Kidron (an imitation goatskin) with gold tooling
and raised bands on a dark brown
leather spine, each volume having
a 2 1/4-inch diameter, 23ct gold
medallion of Churchill embossed
on the front board. Silk head and
tail bands and a silk bookmark
were bound into each copy. For
the budget conscious in 1974, the
edition could be purchased for
twelve monthly installments of
£2.75 (total cost £33) with the
bonus of a charming little goldtooled, leatherbound volume of
'Sir Winston Churchill: His Wit
and Wisdom' by Jack House and a
1 1/2-inch bronze memorial medal.
I was pleased to note recently in a
well-known London dealer's catalogue that this set is currently on
offer for £60, which must be a bargain." It certainly is, but ordinarily
even the typical USA price of
$150-175, given the cost of shipping sets over, is quite attractive,
and Heron Editions are often
bought for gift presentations.
Although the gold cover medallions are usually chafed from the
books rubbing together, Heron
Editions are otherwise almost always found in fine or near-fine
condition. As such, they cost only
about half or a third the price of a
fine 1956 Chartwell Edition (the
most elaborate and beautiful of the
illustrated editions), and usually
less than a jacketed first edition.
The little "Wit and Wisdom" book
is still in print, available at
Chartwell, and presented by
ICS/USA from time to time to
donors and guest speakers.
"Twainiana":
Woods Section D(b)
O
ver the years this column
has tried to keep up with
the plethora of discoveries
of Churchill letters and speeches
appearing in various books and
pamphlets. At right, courtesy
Glenn Horowitz, is a particularly
nice four-page 8 1/2 x 11-inch
printing sample for Old Hampshire
Bond paper, produced by Carew
Manufacturing in South Hadley
Falls, Massachusetts. Page 1 contains the Karsh "Angry Lion"
photo taken after the "Some
Chicken" speech in Ottawa in late
1941. Page 3 contains Churchill's
letter to the International Mark
Twain Society of 25 October 1943,
reproduced by courtesy of Twain's
descendant, Cyril Clemens.
This charming letter is not the
only piece of Churchilliana/
Twainiana. Woods B52/2, Mark
Twain and Dwight D. Eisenhower,
is a rare pamphlet published by the
International Mark Twain Society
in 1953, again by courtesy of Cyril
Clemens. It is one of the most elusive "B" items and I would be
pleased to receive a photocopy if
anyone has an original.
A39a Thoughts and Adventures
C
opies of the 1932 first edition (ICS A39aa) have
been known for quite
awhile to exist in a dark green
scored cloth binding, different from
the standard unscored khaki cloth,
and in fact identical to the cloth
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may
be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hiils; we shall never surrender, and even
if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a
large part ofit were subjugated and starving, then our Empire
beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet,
would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the
New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the
rescue and the liberation of the old."
used on later trade impressions of
this work, and the Keystone
[cheap] Edition by the same publisher (ICS A39ab), first released
in 1933. Mark Weber now reports
discovery of a first Keystone Edition in the khaki cloth of the first
edition! So yet another binding variety is added to our list.
I tend to think modern collectors get too excited about these
variations. By the standards of the
day, given the small runs of first
editions at that time, it was hardly
uncommon for binderies to run out
of a certain color or style of cloth
and substitute another; and it was
a frequent practice (first edition
collectors will hate this) to stop
binding first edition sheets if the
demand didn't look like materializing, and then to take them up
again at a later date (with no indication, of course, anywhere in the
book). About this khaki Keystone
one can only guess, but since the
Keystone imprint didn't appear on
Thoughts and Adventures until
1933, it could not have been issued
continued on page 37...
Dear Ilr. Claiens,
I an writing to express ny thanks to the
International Mark Twain Society for their Gold lledil,
which his been banded to ne by I t . Philip Guedalla.
It will serve to keep fresh ay nenory of a great
American, who showed me nuch kindness vhen I visited
Sew York as a young nan by taking the Chair at ny f i r s t
public lecture and by autographing copies of his iorks,
i*ich s t i l l form a valued part of my l i b r a r y .
Yours very t r u l y .
Ilr. Cyril Clenens.
Not in Woods:
A paper sample of "Old
Hampshire Bond" produced
by Carew Manufacturing
Co., Massachusetts, contains
an unrecorded letter from
WSC (above) and a fine
Karsh photo on its cover.
This is a companion piece
to Woods B52/2, Mark Twain
and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
M
L
M
C
rtlDmb
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 3 5
J-lS.Nn.sTI-KIKS. I:\KJMVS
Errata: WSC's personal car in 1925
was more likely a Wolseley!
DET. THOMPSON, WSC, CUNLIFFE-LISTER, 1925
From Hon. Member, and longtime
Churchill secretary Grace Hamblin: 'I wonder why you think the car in the photograph
is a Daimler, and that "Churchill always
owned Daimlers through the 1920s and
1930s"? Do see Sir Winston's chauffeur
(1928-36) in Martin Gilbert's Companion
Vol. V, Part 3, page 505, item 2: "We still
had the old Wolseley car"; then on page 507:
"...and sat beside me in the Daimler car."
Unfortunately these items are undated. I
think the car in the picture is the Wolseley,
and that the Daimler appeared about 1930.
It needed repainting in 1935 — see
"Chartwell Bulletin" Number 10! Thankyou for the beautiful cover picture on issue
#83 — the best so far! — and for Lady
Diana Cooper's contribution: all so true, and
beautifully recorded.'
More on the "Two Fingered Salute"
-Re this column in the past two issues,
Robert Hardy said that the reverse (palm in)
of Churchill's V-sign was probably in use at
Agincourt. Now John Frost sends a clip
from the Daily Mail answers section (4 January 1994) stating that the "V" gesture was
known "long before the invention of the
longbow, which is drawn with three fingers,
not two. The sign has long been linked with
the occult, being used pointing downwards
'to block the Devil's horns' and stop him rising up to create havoc on Earth. Conversely,
the sign was used conventionally to wish the
Devil on one's enemies. Back in the Hundred Years War, any Englishman falling
into the hands of the French would have suffered far greater injuries than the mere
amputation of a couple of fingers." (Sent in
by M.G. Taylor, Grouville, Jersey. Is he
right?)
Q: Mrs Roslyn Stuart writes: 'I was rereading the wonderful epic poem "Savitri," written in English by the great Indian visionary, Sri Aurobindo (d. 1950),
36 / FINEST HOUR 84
who spent thirty-five years writing it. To
my astonishment, on page 444 in Book
Six, Canto Two ("The Way of Fate and
the Problem of Pain") I found the
words, "A doom of blood and sweat
and toil and tears." I do not know when
they were written though I will endeavor to trace it. My query is, who first
used the words? Or is it a case of dual
inspiration. Remember that "Savitri"
was written over the course of years
from 1915 but not published until 195051. Though many famous people did go
to Pondicherry to visit Sri Aurobindo, I
don't think Churchill ever did, or did
he? Do you know of any connection?'
.A.' We don't, though we hope a reader
might. Churchill had a photographic memory and was an inveterate borrower of good
words and phrases he encountered. "A Roving Commission," the American title of
"My Early Life," was a chapter heading in
his "Ian Hamilton's March" but even earlier, the title of a 19th century Henty novel.
"Iron Curtain" has been traced at least as
far as a travel book published by two ladies
who journeyed to Asia in the 1920s. If
Churchill ever met Aurobindo the phrase
could have permeated, though he was never
in India this century. Given the date of
"Savriti," the osmosis was more likely the
other way 'round.
had the choice between war and shame.
They chose shame. They will get war,
too."? It is not in any of the speech
books I've consulted.
At You can find the quote on page 366 of
The Last Lion, Vol. 2 (Alone: 1932-1940)
by William Manchester (Boston: Little
Brown 1988). His source was Hugh Dalton,
Labour MP in his Memoirs 1931-1945:
The Fateful Years (London: 1957). It was
not part of a Churchill speech but rather a
remark, probably uttered more than once.
Ql Attached is an advert for a U.S.
Army Airforce "briefing bag" said to be
"Winston Churchill's favorite briefcase."
Ever hear of it?
At Never! Can anyone shed some light on
this?
Q'. Why do Americans use the term
"Victorian"? Why not "McKinlean" or
whatever?
Q: I have £100 worth of Churchill
crowns in mint condition. What are they
worth and what should I do with them?
A' The Widow of Osborne cast a long
shadow. America remained a "cultural
colony" of Britain long after 1776 and
copied Victorian Britain in many things
from self-help to crinolines to mutton-chop
whiskers. Even the anti-slavery and early
women's movements took some of their inspiration from British Victorians. (Daily
Mail)
Send your queries to the editor.
At Churchill crowns are still worth only
their face value (25p), so your collection is
still worth that £100. Oscar Nemon was
never happy about the light impression of
WSC on the reverse of the coin. However,
beautiful pendants and medals have often
been made by experts with gilding and jeweler's enamel, which helps to pick out the excellent Nemon likeness.
Q'. What is the origin of Churchill's remark over Munich, "The government
Blenheim Postcard (G. Lovell)
13
FKIHNDS OF 1(5
"You meet good,
interesting people ..."
Pennsylvania's Raffauf
JOHN N. FARRELL
D
ick Raffauf takes his dog
with him on short car trips,
keeps sheep to spare him
from mowing the bulk of his eighteen acres in Cumru Township,
Pennsylvania. He earns his living
working with his son, Richard Jr.,
on figuring ways to get odd, little
industrial necessities made for big
business and the government.
And every so often, Dick delights
in donning black tie, dining well,
and discussing the finer details of a
certain gone, but not forgotten,
British statesman and literary lion.
"He ate too well, and he drank
plenty, so he's my hero," Dick
laughs.
Dick is a director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the International
Churchill Society, which is dedicated to keeping Sir Winston's
memory alive and teaching a
younger generation his principles
and philosophy.
"You meet good interesting people, and you wind up talking about
things Churchill did or said that you
hadn't heard before," Dick says. He
unfortunately did not hear Churchill's famous wartime speeches as
they were made. At the time, Dick
was in the U.S. Army, stationed in
the Pacific, and he was in the first
wave of troops to land in Japan after
the atomic bombs fell.
After the war, however, Raffauf
couldn't help but get caught up on
Joseph N. Farrell is a reporter for
the Reading Eagle-Times.
Woods Corner from page 35 ...
simultaneously with the khaki
1932 first edition. The bindery
probably found a batch of leftover
khaki cloth at the time of the Keystone, and used it up.
A8a Mv African Journey Colonial
For some time collectors have
puzzled over copies of the first edi-
Churchill, who was a favorite subject of a number of early television
documentaries. He also started
reading, and there was plenty of
that to do because Churchill as a
writer was prolific — his memoirs
of the two World Wars alone run
twelve volumes, his nearly fifty
books together won him the Nobel
Prize for literature.
About three years ago, about the
time his wife died, Dick heard about
the International Churchill Society
and joined.
What he received in return was
Finest Hour, the Society's quarterly,
and various special publications.
But it wasn't nearly enough of a
connection. Dick asked the Society
to help him organize a state chapter
so he could discourse with fellow
devotees in a social setting.
The Pennsylvania chapter now
has eighteen active members, although there are over 100 Friends of
ICS statewide. Seven of them, Dick
included, plus two student guests,
attended the chapter's first dinner
this year in Philadelphia.
Over dinner they discussed "The
Wit and Wisdom of Winston
Churchill" with James C. Humes,
author of this latest addition to
the Churchill library. It was, Dick
says, quite a night, and he sees
a good future for the chapter. The
people who buy Churchill books
as quickly as they come out, he
says, can write him at 116 Hampshire Road, Reading, 19608, if
they're interested in pursuing the
matter further.
It should be noted that, while
there was much about Churchill
that was heroic, this is not hero worship as much as it is a celebration of
a flesh-and-blood man whose successes outnumbered his failures.
"He was a simple person," Dick
smiles, paraphrasing the great man,
"who was easily satisfied with the
best."
$
tion with a small star or "asterisk"
emblazoned in gilt on the lower
spine, just below the HODDER &
STOUGHTON imprint. Virtually
dozens of these copies have now
been examined, and every one
whose origins can be traced came
from the British Empire, including
not a few which bear the original
stickers of booksellers in such
places as Cape Town, Bombay,
etc. Although A8 did not have a
formal Colonial Issue as did the
Malakand and Savrola (their title
pages state they are intended for
sale in British Colonies), it seems
logical to assume that the "asterisked" African Journey was similarly intended. Its contents, of
course, are identical to the standard first English edition.
continued on page 39...
FINEST HOUR 8 4 / 3 7
ACTION THIS DAY
JOHN G. PLUMPTON
Third Quarter 1894 • Age 19
Winston Churchill later wrote,
"in the spring of 1894 it became
clear to us all that my father was
gravely ill," but when he said
farewell as his parents embarked
upon a world tour in June he was
still unaware of just how grave it
was. During the summer he began
a stream of correspondence which
totalled thirty letters before they
returned.
While Lord Randolph rested in
Bar Harbor, Maine, he wrote to
his son to remind him that he was
committed to enter the 60th Rifles
infantry regiment and that he
should forget about his wish for
the 4th Hussars. Winston's heart
and goal, however, remained on
the cavalry regiment.
Lord and Lady Randolph
headed west across Canada after a
dispute with the President of the
Canadian Pacific Railway over
the costs of a private railway car.
"A Canadian is not a generous
American," wrote Lady Randolph.
Because of Lord Randolph's deteriorating health, they stopped at
the Banff Springs Hotel in Alberta. Sitting on the terrace Lady
Randolph wrote her sister that "it
is the finest scenery in the Rockies
and is certainly beautiful. I am surrounded by enormous mountains
— and a cascade just below me
falling into a pale green river winding away as far as the eyes can
reach."
Her enjoyment of this idyllic
setting was marred by Lord Randolph's moods. "He is very kind
and considerate when he feels well
— but absolutely impossible when
he gets excited — and as he gets
like that 20 times a day — you may
imagine my life is not a very easy
one."
Winston and Jack were in the
care of their grandmother, the
Duchess of Marlborough, who
was encouraging Winston's entry
into "good society." He was a challenge to her, a fact she frequently
mentioned to his parents, "...he is
affectionate and pleasant but you
38 / FINEST HOUR 84
know he is mercurial" and
"...there is nobody but me to keep
him in order and you know he requires checking sometimes."
During an August visit to
Switzerland Winston received his
term marks from Sandhurst. Although he continued to do well, his
marks had dropped a little, to
which he attributed "the fact that
the papers did not suit me quite as
well as last time — being rather
apart from the notes from which I
worked."
Third Quarter 1919 • Age 44
British political opinion was
split over Russia. Prime Minister
Lloyd George said that although
Britain was "at war with the Bolsheviks she would not make war
with them."
Churchill believed that unless
they actively supported and traded
with the area controlled by the
White Russians "the anti-Bolshevik movement might collapse
within the next few months and
then the Lenin and Trotsky empire would be complete."
He resented having to implement a Cabinet decision to evacuate British troops from Archangel
and Murmansk. According to the
Chief of the Imperial General
Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, Churchill
even considered resigning over
Government policy in Russia.
On 29 July Churchill summed
up his position in a speech to the
House: "I can never clear my
mind from a sense of anxiety regarding the danger of a hostile
Russia and a revengeful Germany.
We should make a fatal mistake if
we assume that the great victory
which has been won can now be
safely left to take care of itself, that
we should not interest ourselves in
the affairs of Russia, and that we
should leave the Russian people to
stew in their own juice."
Many people disagreed with him
and the Labour Daily Herald complained: "here as everywhere else
Churchill cannot see that the revolt against far-off costly and reactionary adventures grows into turbulence at home." The Prime Min-
ister admonished him: "I have
found your mind so obsessed by
Russia that I felt I had good
ground for the apprehension that
your great abilities, energy and
courage were not devoted to the
reduction of expenditures."
In the middle of August,
Churchill, accompanied by his
wife, visited British troops stationed on the Rhine. Clementine
later related to her daughter Mary
how she had unfavorably viewed
the arrogant manner in which
many senior army wives treated
the German populace.
While Churchill was in Germany the Cabinet ordered cuts in
military spending. Churchill's opposition to these cuts was derided
by Maurice Hankey: "Churchill
obviously does not care to be a
War Minister without a war in
prospect."
In the middle of September
Churchill was invited to join Lloyd
George at the Paris Peace Conference. From there he wrote his wife
on their anniversary: "Only these
few lines to mark the eleventh time
we have seen the 12th Sep together. How I rejoice to think of
my gt good fortune on that day!
There came to me the greatest
happiness and the greatest honour
of my life. My dear it is a rock of
comfort to have yr love & companionship at my side. Every year we
have formed more bonds of deep
affection. I can never express my
gratitude to you for all you have
done for me & for all you have
been to me." Clementine responded: "I love to feel that I am a
comfort in your rather tumultuous
life. My Darling, you have been
the great event in mine. You took
me from the straitened little bypath
I was treading and took me with
you into the life and colour and
jostle of the highway."
Third Quarter 1944 • Age 69
In a note to Stalin, Churchill
summed up the military situation:
"The enemy is burning and bleeding on every front at once."
The enemy was still capable of
inflicting serious injury, however,
and many casualties resulted from
the flying bomb attacks against
London. Unfavorable weather
made it difficult for Allied planes to
find the launch sites. An even
greater threat was imminent from
V2 rockets being tested by the
Germans.
On 7 July Churchill received a
full report on the situation in
Auschwitz. His instructions to
Eden were to provide as much assistance as possible to prevent the
Germans from transporting prisoners to the concentration camp,
and to "invoke my name if necessary."
Churchill's family was very important to him. Whenever possible
he took some time to be with them
at Chequers. On one occasion, as
he left to return to London, his
grandchildren, Winston Churchill
and Celia Sandys, cried to the departing car: "Don't go Grandpapa." Churchill commented to his
secretary: "What a world to bring
children into." He was relieved to
hear that Randolph had survived
an air crash upon his return to
duty in Yugoslavia, but greatly distressed when the marriage of Randolph and Pamela broke up.
On the day German officers attempted to assassinate Hitler at the
Wolfs Lair, Churchill flew to
Cherbourg. From there he drove
to Utah Beach and boarded a torpedo boat to Arromanches. After
touring among the British troops
an officer remarked how much it
meant to the soldiers to have
Churchill "see them at work in the
gun pits."
In early August the inhabitants
of Warsaw rose up against the
German occupier. Churchill appealed to Stalin for assistance on
their behalf. He was very concerned about a "summit," yet both
Stalin and Roosevelt declined his
invitation to come to Britain; but
he and the American President
agreed to meet in Quebec in September.
Before that meeting, Churchill
flew to Italy where he met Tito at
the Villa Rivalta in Naples. While
there he had time for relaxation
and on several occasions he swam
in the Bay of Naples. "My vigour
has been greatly restored," he
wrote the King. From Naples he
drove to the battlefield at Cassino
and then flew to Siena for discussions with Alexander, "whose
splendid army," he lamented, "is
pulled to pieces by American policy," meaning the resource requirements of the invasion of the
south of France.
On 23 August, while the French
Resistance revolted in Paris,
Churchill had an audience with
Pope Pius XII. "We had no lack of
topics for conversation" but the
most important to both was the
danger of communism. As they left
the Vatican, Lord Moran remembers Churchill "declaiming a fine
passage from Macaulay's essay on
Ranke's History of the Papacy."
Paris was liberated on 25 August.
Although ill on his return voyage to Britain he immediately
began to prepare to meet Roosevelt
at Quebec. After crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary, they arrived at Halifax amid "great cheers
and cameras clicking," then
boarded a Canadian National
Railways train for Quebec. At the
Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt were awarded honorary degrees by officials of McGill University in Montreal, who had come to
Quebec for the ceremony.
On 17 September, while British
airborne troops were landing at
Arnhem, Churchill went by train
to Roosevelt's home at Hyde Park,
New York. From Hyde Park he
returned to New York City where
he boarded the Queen Mary for the
journey home. Upon his return to
Britain his good health returned
and he immediately prepared to
leave for Moscow.
Churchill was always a peripatetic leader. There was never a
time when he was more so as he
prepared for the final victory over
Germany and the creation of a
postwar world. It was an incredible feat for a man about to celebrate his 70th birthday.
Woods Corner from page 37...
knocked down by a taxi on Park
Avenue) seems to have had its first
appearance in The Consensus, quarterly journal of the National Economic League, Boston, Volume
XVII, No. 1, published March
1932. Thanks to Marvin Nicely
for this discovery.
During the 1930s Churchill
published a number of original articles in the pulp weekly Answers,
a "commuter sheet" which was
usually discarded, making originals extremely rare today. Recently Mark Weber came upon
two additional Answers which are
not listed by Woods, to which we
Three New "C" Items
"C191/1": The World Economic Crisis. Churchill's speech before the
Economic Club of New York on 8
February 1932 (after he had returned from the Bahamas where
he recuperated following his being
Third Quarter 1969
The achievements of Sir Winston Churchill were being honoured throughout Britain. On 3
July Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced that if there was
public support for a fund to erect a
statue of Churchill in Parliament
Square, the Government would
give it all the help they could.
On 23 July virtually the entire
population of Westerham turned
out for the unveiling of a massive
bronze Oscar Nemon statue of
Churchill, on the village green.
The design and site were chosen
by public ballot among the people
of Westerham. The plinthe was a
gift from "the people of Yugoslavia." Former Australian
Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, successor to Churchill as
Warden of the Cinque Ports, unveiled the statue.
Lady Spencer-Churchill, supported by canes because of a fall,
led a large group of three generations of the Churchill family. The
Times reported that when the participants retired for refreshments,
"Churchill was left on the green as
a permanent reminder that the
great man of England and of Westminster had his roots and his affections also in the small country
town in the green heart of England."
M
concluded on page 47...
FINEST HOUR 84 / 3 9
D-Day Plus...
Churchill in Stamps
PLANMING RECONQUEST
Churchill repeatedly urged the Allies to work up toward Germany
through "the soft underbelly" of the Axis via Italy, but Elsenhower, backed by Roosevelt, felt a frontal assault on France
was the only way to decide the war. It was WSC's Dardanelles
strategy all over again and—judging by what happened postwar-who is to say he wasn't right?
BY RICHARD M. LANGVVORTH
ADDENDUM: FIFTY YEVRS U;<)
In commemoration oi ihe e \ e n t s halt" a ieniiii> afjo this season.
«v temporalil\ depart from uur chronolo}:u..il piesentatiou nf
Churchill's life in stamps to dwell mi I he e u - u l s loll.iw NIL Opera
lion Overlord. These pages aic all tii>m pre-i-ompuiei l.i\ouis. .mil
will probabl} be levised in liiuirc installments.
Catalogue numbers .ire Scott I * I aiul Si.mle\ dibbtuis c u i . \
slash mark (/I indicates a ->ei with a c o m m o n design tnini u h i e h
any value may be used.
Meetings
with Ike:
a cordial
if wary
relationship.
\. A huge expansion nf m> c o \ e i a j : e m OpiT.iiii'ii O-.eiloid is
now possible, thanks t" the n u n \ c o m m e m o i a l i \ e Mumps i.sued
on the fiftieth a m m e r s a n . I i l i m i >eais a s o when these pajics
were l.iid out. theie wasn't much besides "sand June" countries
and a Caribbean island 01 two. Churihill i>. -hnv n on u-mp 111tpcciions wilh Lisenhow^i M u r e I)-P.i> mi I-UIK-M Minku- "I
•ind 7 1 A . Dominic;! *4«Ui. \L' 4 . V : and Maii.ini.i Mtuku-s ' " I .
C a m s -M) O-IJa> iinaMon iroops .lie on II.1111 "(iHS and I ' V i " v:
IJ15 and 1120. Nicaragua »j; I'JO^. MinkiiN 2 ! *fi ha- an aiiuiMiis:
I »w
c j u o n n of W S C •XTMIM* .!•» lu^ o w n Liniihiiation
All of the
above "Joint
Chiefs" are
WSC, of
course!
Cartoon
by Low.
"IOII.I
Chiefs i->r Maft."
B. 1'aiis w.i\ libei.iti-d on 2 I \U-.MI-.[ l " 4 l .mJ I J i o v h . i n . .
+ R W 2 - 3 3 . M; lhVi-4ii SIIHWIIIL- (KMI. I e i L u . alum; wuh I S \
t i
t )}A. ««i: 9^1 shkiwwi^ .111 \iui> p.ii.ulc tliroii'-'li th^ \iv - li \ e i >
nian> iimre libeiauon •>i\'in'<« .1111 now ,i\.nl.ihk on i»\i'iii sianip-i.
and the hiL's-'eNt prohleni lot t l v plulaielu* buii:i.:plu-r i» 10 Mini
enough to saj ti) till all the neieN-ai} pa^*«(.*. The SeiMiul Quchei. ContiMi-iui 1 when ( luiulull and Roo
s e \ e l t planned the tinal moppnr: up O[VMIIH>I'I .i^ain^i ihe \\i">.
is ddkimiented with a h.imNoine Can.uli.in Special l ) i - l r . u \
Mamp. ^ l . | 0 , sg s i ? , ami llu- ( an.idiaii ( huu-hill v.oiniiiJinoi.1U\c. W440, sj; 5<»5 In.-n »>2 LI . - o M and -C 1 KL' -2 \ -12? and
4 2 ~ i fill ihe paire hut aie unielaieJ
PARIS LIBERATED
French General Leclerc, whose 2d Armored Division was attached
to Patton, took the surrender of General von Choltltz, commanding
the German garrison of Paris, on 24 August 1944. Leclerc wrote
to De Gaulle, "I have had the impression...of living over again
the situation of 1940 in reverse."
General
Leclerc
I). Chilli-lull's triumphant \ M t t'« I'.nio on \IIIMMH.I- 1) i\ I V >U 1*
ddL'umented heie bv CiR'nada"* WW."1 IV (laulU- issue, -"'"o SL1
4 0 1 : \ j m a n Mmkiis V*". *M and "S< C a m s (*r. (,i)u l l M j n - \
and f-rance f ; 5 0 ' . ss: l )Dl. an .MII; 1IIVI.HI..II lonniKMiioiaiixe
I1'. I h e Ardennes cnunu'i-olleiisive >-i "Ualtle 01 tin- Hul';e" 111
Deci'inbei l'J41 isi-nniini'iiixiau-d h> I s \ - | n 2 ' i . s- | u 2 5 and .1
Luxembourg set. bmh IIIIISU.IIIIIL1 d e n I'aiii-u L .mada - 2 ^ s s«j
s» .'S-l'SS pmir.ixs the lank, c o i u c i s i ' d l\\ ( huiihill and dei'^i-.iat ihe Rul.<:e- the (leimaiiN lan nut ol tuel 1
K. Ciude hut e l l e i i n e 1 I IMM--1 SI
\ IIK.MII - . * " I I . ->.• HM ..\.-i ilu-
iesf nt the phoiojiiaph it w.'s lakju limn i- inieiesuu.'. luu I
should h a \ e s i / e d ihe p h m o 10 ihe saiiu- se.-le as ihe sianip 1 IT11v ill be fixed Widei i i o p p e d \eisii.iis o| t l u same photo, shov.m .
.SC alJuliiiiig on the lai s[,k- ol the Kliiue. an 1 sh.n n on
caragua *C5hk and "( 5'«l •*£ I >1."'v! .uul I ""2
' 11> /'• I 1 •"•".'.".'Ic 1. 1 '
It.
WSC to De Gaulle,
20 November 1944:
"It must be
wonderful to be
a Frenchman 20
years old with
good weapons in
his hands and
France to avenge
and save."
A Paris
invasion
without the
goose step.
SECOND QUEBEC CONFERENCE
CREDIT WHERE DUE
During 11 to l6 September 19^4, Canada once again hosted the
British Prime Minister and American President at Quebec. Mr.
Churchill offered units of the Royal Navy for the final drive
against Japan, and the President accepted. Churchill was in
doubt that Germany would surrender in 1944.
Here too, FDR's
Treasury Secretary
Henry Morgenthau
proposed the
'Morgenthau Plan,"
to render Germany
a mainly agrarian
country after the
war. Churchill was
opposed. Hie idea
did not survive.
Had WSC supported
it, Britain would
have benefitted.
But Churchill felt
postwar Germany
would need to be
placed on equal
footing.
General
George S.
Patton, Jr.
K.
DE GAULLE IN COMMAND
"...The present French Government, under General de Gaulle,
commands the full assent of the vast majority of the French
people...it is the only Government which can possibly discharge
the very heavy burdens which are being cast upon it (to enable
development of) the constitutional and Parliamentary processes,
which it has declared its purpose to reinstate."
—House of Commons, 27 October 1944
"Thus we completed
the process begun
in the dark: and
far-off days of
1940."
—"Triumph
and Tragedy"
WSC made his first
visit to Paris
after liberation
on Armistice Day
1944. On 12
November, he and
General de Gaulle
accompanied
General de Lattre
de Tassigny on an
Inspection of the
revitalized French
Army, holding the
line at Besancon.
"The French
soldiers seemed
to be in the
highest spirits."
After Normandy, General Patton and the U.S. Third Army cleared
Brittany and surged toward Rouen and the Loire. When the furious
Ardennes counter-attack ("Battle of the Bulge") occurred, the
Prime Minister emphasized who was standing up to it—the Yanks:
"I never hesitate...to stand up for our own soldiers when their
achievements have been cold-shouldered or neglected...But we
must not forget that it is to American homes that the telegrams
of personal losses and anxiety have been going...
"...A gap was
torn open as a
gap can always
be in a line
hundreds of miles
long. General
Eisenhower at
once gave the
command to the
north of the gap
to Field-Marshall
Montgomery, and
to the south of
it to General
Omar Bradley...
these highly
skilled commanders (acted in
what may) become
a model for
military students
in the future."
plate flaw lwr rt.
CROSSING THE RHINE
"I desired to be with our armies at the crossing, and Montgomery
made me welcome.. .The next day (25 March 194-5) I said to Montgomery, 'Why don't we go across and have a look at the1 other
side?' Somewhat to my surprise he answered, 'Why not? After he
had made some inquiries we started across the river with three
or four American commanders and half a dozen armed men."
—"Triumph and Tragedy"
Churchill and
Eastern Europe
Part 2: Poland and Germany
The Balancing Act
BY STANLEY E. SMITH
jL Hied negotiations over the composition of the
/ ^ P o l i s h government were accompanied throughJL A. out the war by negotiations over the postwar
borders of Poland.
The shock of the German invasion of Russia in 1941
did not deter Stalin from wanting ultimately to reclaim
the land he had acquired under the notorious Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939.95 This territory included not only a sizable chunk of Poland, but later also a "frontier security" area encompassing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Finland's Karelian isthmus, the Romanian province of
Bessarabia, and Bukovina.96
The wishes of the Soviet government regarding
Poland's frontiers were specific and definite as early as
Eden's visit to Moscow in December 1941, and they
changed little throughout the war. Stalin wanted
Poland's eastern border to be based on a delineation
known as the Gurzon Line, which ran near the border
occupied by the Red Army in 1940. Stalin said he considered this frontier to be "ethnologically correct."97 The
western border was to expand westward at Germany's
expense as far as the Oder River. The Moscow discussions of 1941 left the frontier question open. When
Molotov visited London in May 1942, he offered to sign
a treaty with the Polish government-in-exile in London
on the basis of the Curzon Line or the 1941 border
prior to the German attack on Russia. In exchange,
Britain was to abandon the London Poles. Eden said
this was impossible.98
The Curzon Line quickly became the center of attention in the debate over Poland's eastern frontier. Its
origin dated to 1919, when it was recommended by the
Supreme Council of the Allied Powers as the eastern
frontier of Poland. On 12 July 1920, Lord Gurzon, then
British Foreign Secretary, had sent an official note to
the Soviet government proposing that the frontier line
run along Grodno, Jalovka, Nemirov, Brest-Litovsk,
Dorohusk, Ustiling, east of Grobeshov, Krilov, and then
west of Rava-Ruska east of Przemysl to the Carpathians.99 The Soviets had spurned it but were soon forced
by the Poles to accept a more eastward line.
At the Teheran conference in December 1943,
Stalin prohibited Poland from keeping any territory in
the Ukraine or in White Russia.100 He also asked that
42 / FINEST HOUR 84
Grodno
'/ '•••V.--'' !\
U. IS.
S.
R
U.
r*tf\ Brest-Li tovsk
\soka,
!
Sept 1939 frontiers
Post-war variations
Curzon Line
«o
THE FRONTIERS OF CENTRAL EUROPE
TiilBS
Russia be ceded the cities of Lvov and Konigsberg and
the northern part of East Prussia.101 The following
month, Churchill appeared to concede Estonia, Latvia
and Lithuania to Stalin, noting in a memo to Eden that
Stalin's claim to them "in no way exceeds the former
Tsarist boundaries."102 (See also "Churchill and the
Baltic," Finest Hour #53-54.)
The expectations of the London Polish governmentin-exile about the postwar eastern frontier of Poland
were very different from those of Stalin. Before 1939,
the eastern frontier of Poland had been defined by the
Riga Treaty of 1921, concluded when Polish forces had
repulsed a Russian attack and stood very well militarily.
The Riga Treaty frontier therefore lay considerably
eastward of the Curzon Line. In the rapprochment between Russia and the London Poles following the
German invasion of Russia, General Sikorski, then
Polish Prime Minister, offered to sign an agreement on
the basis of a restored Riga Treaty frontier. The Soviet
Government refused, and in the agreement that was
signed at the end of July 1941, the frontier question was
left open."13 As late as the time of the Teheran conference, Mikolajczyk was telling Eden that the Polish people expected to emerge from the war with their eastern
provinces intact.104
In a meeting with Eden in March 1943, Soviet Ambassador Ivan Maisky argued that the Soviet-Polish
border should be the Gurzon Line with minor adjustments."15 On 10 January 1944, the Soviet government
publicly proclaimed the Gurzon Line as its border with
Poland.1"' On February 4th, Stalin complained to
Churchill that the Polish leaders had not yet publicly
abandoned the Riga Treaty frontier in favor of the Curzon Line.107 By the Moscow conference of October,
1944, the London Poles were willing to accept the Gurzon Line as "a line of demarcation between Russia and
Poland," but the Soviet government insisted on regarding the line as "a basis of frontier." Neither side would
budge. By this time, Stalin was doing business with the
Lublin Poles and had no interest in accommodating
their London counterparts.108
Despite these continued difficulties between Stalin
and the exiled Polish leaders, discussions of the eastern
frontier of Poland among the three major Allies went
fairly smoothly. As early as March 1943, Roosevelt expressed to Eden his opinion that, if granted concessions
in the west, Poland would gain by accepting the Gurzon
Line, and would in any case have to abide by the eventual decision of the Big Three."109
JL he Polish frontier was discussed by the Big Three
at the Teheran conference. Stalin defended the 1939
(Molotov-Ribbentrop) frontier as being "ethnologically
the right one." Churchill proposed that Poland's frontiers be based on the Gurzon Line and the Oder (including East Prussia and Oppeln), but that the actual tracing of the frontier line be done only following a careful
study of the population questions involved. Stalin's attempt to treat the 1939 border and the Curzon Line as
the same did not succeed. Maps were produced, and the
discussion centered for a time on whether Lvov lay to
the east or to the west of the Gurzon Line. Stalin said
he would gladly give up his claim to any district with a
Polish population.110
Agreement was soon reached. Churchill said he was
"not prepared to make a great squawk about Lvov."
Stalin replied that, with Lvov and Konigsberg left in Soviet hands, he was prepared to accept Churchill's formula.111
Much more labored were the discussions between
Churchill and Eden on the one side and the London
Poles on the other following the Teheran conference.
Acting initially through Eden because of a serious illness, Churchill took a very hard line in urging the Poles
to accept the Teheran formulation, at least in principle.
Noting that the Teheran agreement left the Poles with
"a magnificent piece of country," Churchill warned that
if the Poles cast the agreement aside, "I do not see how
His Majesty's Government can press for anything more
for them..."112
The initial hostility of the London Poles to any reduction of their eastern provinces angered Churchill,
who felt that he had done all that could be done for
them under the circumstances. In a 7 January 1944
telegram to Eden, Churchill said he was contemplating
telling the world that Britain had never undertaken to
defend Poland's pre-1939 borders. He noted that Russia
had a right to the "inexpungeable security" of her western frontiers, and that Poland now owed its life to the
Russian armies. Churchill threatened to withdraw help
and recognition from the London Poles, scoffed at the
idea that Britain would consider going to war against
Russia over Poland's eastern frontier, and concluded
pointedly that "[n]ations who are found incapable of defending their country must accept a reasonable measure
of guidance from those who have rescued them and
who offer them the prospect of a sure freedom and independence.""3 Time and circumstances would not bear
out his optimism.
On January 20th, Churchill met in London with
Mikolajczyk, Tadeusz Romer (Polish Foreign Minister), and Edward Raczynski (Polish Ambassador in
London) to discuss the frontier agreement. According to
an aide, the Prime Minister "gave it to them hot and
strong.""4 He said the Curzon Line was the best Poland
could hope to obtain, and that valuable German land
would be awarded to Poland in return for the eastern
lands (including extensive marshland) that would go to
Russia. In return for the agreement of the London
Poles, Churchill said he would stoutly defend their legitimacy against Russia. When Mikolajczyk replied that
he could not survive politically if he ceded any eastern
lands, let alone Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) and
Lvov, Churchill urged him and his colleagues to make a
settlement quickly. On January 28th he told Stalin that
he had advised the London Poles to accept the Curzon
Line, and warned Stalin against setting up a rival Polish
government. As Martin Gilbert points out, Churchill
had thus acted against the deepest wishes both of the
London Poles and of Stalin, and had begun a long and
ultimately futile effort to reconcile these wishes.115
More Anglo-Polish talks were held, but they were
marked by acrimony and little progress. At a February
6th meeting at Chequers, Mikolajczyk reported that
the Polish underground adhered firmly to the eastern
frontier established by the Riga Treaty. Churchill, in
reply, again defended the Gurzon Line and pointed out
that "...the people of Poland have been unable to
maintain their independence throughout the centuries,
and even during their short period of freedom, had not
had a record of which they could be proud. Now they
had a fine opportunity if they were prepared to
take it."116
FINEST HOUR 84 / 43
A,Lt a February 16th meeting at Downing Street,
Churchill told the Poles that "his heart bled for them,
but the brutal facts could not be overlooked. He could
no more stop the Russian advance than stop the tide
coming in. It was no use saying something which would
only make the Russians more angry and drive them
to...a puppet government in Warsaw."" 7
On 20 February 1944, the Polish government relented to the extant of accepting the text of a note in
which Churchill told Stalin that the Poles were ready to
renounce the Riga Treaty frontier line, and that he had
told them of the likely loss of Vilnius, Konigsberg, and
Lvov.118 Churchill followed up his message by announcing his support of the Curzon Line as a "reasonable and
just" border in the House of Commons on 22 February."9 In his reply, Stalin sneered off the Polish concessions.120
The eastern frontier of Poland was further discussed
at the (Anglo-Soviet) Moscow conference of October,
1944. Churchill pressed Mikolajczyk to accept the Curzon Line as a de facto arrangement.121 On October 13th,
Mikolajczyk met with Stalin, who asked that the London Poles publicly accept the Curzon Line, Mikolajczyk was unable to agree to this. Later he offered to
agree to the Curzon Line if Stalin would give up his
claim to Lvov, but Stalin held fast.122 Mikolajczyk returned to London and, being unable to persuade his colleagues to accept the Curzon Line, resigned in November from the government-in-exile.123 This virtually ended
the influence of the London Poles on the frontier question.
At the Yalta conference in February 1945, relatively
quick agreement was reached on the eastern frontier of
Poland. In pressing the acceptance of the Curzon Line,
Stalin argued that he could hardly claim less for the Soviet Union than Curzon and Clemenceau had offered
after World War I.124 He also argued that the Soviet-Polish border was a matter of vital security to Russia.125
Roosevelt noted that Polish-American opinion was
ready to accept the Curzon Line, but he urged Stalin to
cede Lvov and possibly some oil fields in compensation
for the annexation of Konigsberg. As Stalin was not especially sensitive to the feelings of Polish-Americans,
this suggestion went nowhere.'26
Churchill was of course quite willing to accept the
Curzon Line as the frontier, though he too encouraged
Stalin to make the "magnanimous" gesture of ceding
Lvov. To him the frontier question was secondary to
the question of the Polish government.127 The Yalta Declaration stated that "the eastern frontier of Poland
should follow the Curzon Line with digressions from it
in some regions of five to eight kilometers in favor of
Poland."128 Lvov and Konigsberg went to Russia; East
Prussia south and west of Konigsberg went to Poland.129
44/FINEST HOUR 84
The Big Three agreed early in the war that Poland
should be compensated for the loss of its eastern
provinces by territory in eastern Germany. Just how far
to expand Poland's western border was, however, a
matter of considerable dispute.
At the Teheran conference (1943), the "line of the
Oder" was proposed by Churchill as the western frontier of Poland. The Oder River ran south from the
Baltic Sea less than a hundred miles east of Berlin. Between Berlin and Dresden, the Oder divided into the
Western Neisse, which continued to run south, and the
Oder itself, which continued in a southeastern direction.
Further south, the Oder was joined by the Eastern
Neisse, which ran to the southwest. The distinction between the Western and the Eastern Neisse became very
important in the ensuing controversy.
At the Yalta conference, Stalin proposed that the
Oder and Western Neisse Rivers be designated the
western border of Poland.130 Roosevelt objected to this.
He was willing to extend Poland's territory as far as the
Oder in the northwest, but saw "little justification" in
expending Poland to the Western Neisse in the southwest. Churchill agreed with him.131 Though all agreed
that Poland should be compensated by German land in
the West, the Western allies preferred that the frontier
follow the Oder and the Eastern Neisse.132
The British position on this question was consistent
with the discussions between the British leaders and
Mikolajczyk the previous autumn. At that time the
British had been willing to agree to a frontier up to the
Oder in order to strengthen the position of the London
Poles, but, according to Eden, "there had never been
any question of our agreeing to the Western Neisse."'33
Churchill at Yalta argued that Poland should not be
awarded more land in the West than the Poles could
readily assimilate. "It would be a pity," he said, "to stuff
the Polish goose so full of German food that it gets indigestion."134 His principal objection to expanding the
western frontier as far as Stalin proposed was that it
would require moving six million Germans. Stalin disputed that figure, and contended that most Germans
had already fled west of the Western Neisse. Churchill
said that the British War Cabinet would not agree to the
Western Neisse, and suggested that the question be referred to the new Polish government and deferred to the
peace conference.135
Stalin agreed to defer the question to the peace conference. The Yalta Declaration stated that Poland
should in principle receive compensatory territory to the
north and west, that the new provisional government in
Poland should be consulted, and that the delineation of
Poland's western border should await the peace conference. So the matter rested, at least on paper.136
I,Ln reality, the war and its consequences crashed on.
By the time of the next Big Three conference, held in
Potsdam in July 1945, Roosevelt had died, Germany had
surrendered, and Soviet forces had occupied all the land
east of the Western Neisse and turned it over to the puppet Polish government to administer. This effectively
settled the question of Poland's western frontier.
At the Potsdam conference, Stalin again formally
proposed that the Oder and the Western Neisse be recognized as the western border of Poland. President Truman protested the de facto creation of a Polish zone in a
part of what had been eastern Germany without prior
Allied agreement. Stalin replied that the Germans had
fled the area, and that he couldn't stop the Poles from
filling the administrative vacuum. Churchill restated his
objections to a Western Neisse frontier: the territorial
compensation was disproportionate, the food and fuel
were needed in other parts of Germany, millions of Germans would have to be moved. The disputes over the
German population in the territory and over the meaning of the "line of the Oder" phrase used at Teheran
continued.137
Churchill was forced from power in the General
Election held during the Potsdam conference, and so
could not see the conference through to its conclusion.
In his memoirs, he stated that he had planned to confront Stalin at the end of the conference with the "unfinished business" of Poland, including the question of
the western frontier. Rather than agree to the Western
Neisse border, he wrote, he would have made a public
break with Stalin.138
This intention was penned with the benefit of hindsight, but no doubt with sincerity. Whether under different circumstances Churchill would indeed have seen fit
to break with one of his principal allies over the disposition of a relatively minor stretch of territory is perhaps
less than certain. Even less certain is the prospect that
Stalin might have yielded part of his newly won empire
in Eastern Europe when confronted by a rupture with
Britain. Truman had already made what Churchill
called the "fateful decision" to withdraw the Western
Allied forces into the agreed-upon zones of occupation,
so Churchill's real bargaining power was slight. Stalin
held the winning cards.
Clement Attlee replaced Churchill at the Potsdam
conference. On August 2nd, he, Truman, and Stalin
agreed to regard the line of the Oder and Western
Neisse as Poland's de facto western border.
On 16 August 1945, the Soviet and Polish governments signed a treaty recognizing the Curzon Line,
with minor adjustments, as the eastern border of
Poland. Poland's western frontier remained officially
unresolved until June 1991, when a newly reunited Germany signed a treaty with Poland recognizing the OderWestern Neisse line.
Churchill and the Fate of Germany
The Allies began serious discussions about the management of postwar Germany shortly after the war took
a permanent turn in their favor in early 1943. That
summer, a British Cabinet committee chaired by Attlee
recommended that Germany be occupied in three zones
of roughly equal size. Britain would occupy the northwest, the United States the southwest and south, and
Russia the east. Berlin would be jointly occupied.139
The question of occupied Germany was discussed at
the Teheran conference in 1943, but no final decision
was reached.140 At Quebec in September 1944,
Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to the British proposal,
with additional harbor arrangements for the United
States. In September and November, representatives of
the Big Three allies on the European Advisory Commission signed agreements along those lines.141 The ultimate disposition of the occupation zones was still not
settled. At their meeting in Moscow in October 1944,
Stalin and Churchill discussed the possibilities of putting
the Ruhr and Saar regions under international control
and of forming a separate state in the Rhineland.142
Though secondary to the Polish question, the question of the occupation zones was discussed at the Yalta
conference. Churchill there proposed to allot an occupation zone to France. Stalin treated the idea skeptically, but Roosevelt assured Churchill privately that he
was prepared to give France a section of the American
zone. Near the end of the conference, the Big Three
agreed to give France a seat on the German Control
Commission.143
By the time of the Yalta conference, General Eisenhower had been urging Roosevelt for two years not to
set up zones of occupation in Germany. He even sent
his chief of staff, General Bedell Smith, to Yalta to see
Roosevelt and repeat the advice, particularly on the
grounds that the Western Allied forces now appeared
likely to penetrate further into Germany than earlier estimates had predicted. F D R nonetheless stood by the
zones idea.144
The agreed-upon zones came under further pressure
as the armies of the Western Allies advanced through
Germany in the spring of 1945. Churchill urged Eisenhower to push his forces as far eastward as possible, but
the general, for what seemed to him to be sound military
reasons, instead diverted some of his forces southward
to the Leipzig-Dresden area.145 He also stopped short of
taking Prague.146
Though the western armies did not take Berlin, they
did advance over one hundred miles into what had been
designated the Soviet occupation zone in Germany. As
noted earlier, Churchill saw this advance as an important bargaining chip with Russia. He therefore argued
that the western armies should not withdraw into their
occupation zones until agreements were reached with
Russia about Poland and other important political issues. As he noted to General Ismay nearly a month before the German surrender, "we consider the matter is
above the sphere of purely military decision by a commander in the field."147
Churchill expressed his misgivings more fully in a
FINEST HOUR 84 / 45
May 4th note to Eden. He said the withdrawal of the
western armies would mean the "sweeping forward" of
the Soviet armies some 120 miles on a 300-400-mile
front, which "would be one of the most melancholy
[events] in history." In a foreshadow of his 1946 "Iron
Curtain" (or "Sinews of Peace") speech, he noted that
the territory under Soviet control would include "the
Baltic provinces, all of Germany to the occupation line,
all Czechoslovakia, a large part of Austria, the whole of
Yugoslavia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria [and] all the
great capitals of Middle Europe, including Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia..."14*
On May 6th, he advised Truman to "hold firmly to
the existing position obtained or being obtained by our
armies..."149 On June 4th, he told Truman that "I view
with profound misgivings the retreat of the American
Army to our line of occupation in the central sector,
thus bringing Soviet power into the heart of Western
Europe and the descent of an iron curtain between us
and everything to the eastward. I hoped that this retreat, if it has to be made, would be accompanied by the
settlement of many great things which would be the true
foundation of world peace."15" On June 12th Truman rejected Churchill's plea to postpone the withdrawal.151
Though generous to Truman in his memoirs,
Churchill forever afterwards regretted this decision. In
conversation years later with his assistant, John
Colville, Churchill accused the United States of giving
away "vast tracts of Europe" to please Russia. He said
that if he had been less occupied with the British General Election, and if Roosevelt had been alive and well,
matters might have worked out better.152
Keeping the western armies on the territory they occupied at the end of the war would not have changed
the situation entirely, and Churchill probably realized
this. The notion that Stalin might have relaxed his iron
grip on Poland in order to advance further westward
beyond Poland hardly seems plausible. Nonetheless, it
was the only realistic military leverage the West had
against Russia, and the rejection of what could reasonably have been regarded as an obsolete occupation plan
would at least have preserved in freedom the not inconsiderable territory that was ceded by the western withdrawal.
$
FOOTNOTES
125. Stettinius, pp. 154-6.
95. Colville in Commentary, p. 44.
126. Ibid., p. 41; WSC, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 367.
96. Ibid.
127. Ibid., pp. 367-9; Stettinius, pp. 152-3.
97. Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring (Boston:
128. Ibid, pp. 335-8.
Houghton Mifflin, 1951), pp. 394-7; Gilbert, p. 589.
129. Churehill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 661-4.
98. Eden, pp. 335, 338, 342, 370, 380-1.
130. Ibid., pp. 373, 369-71; Stettinius, pp. 181-2.
99. Stalin, p. 391, n. 57; Gilbert, p. 589.
131. Ibid., pp. 209-10; Churchill, Triumph and
100. Gilbert, p. 589.
Tragedy, pp. 376-9.
101. Eden, p. 496.
132. Ibid., pp. 647-8.
102. Gilbert, p. 652
133. Eden, p. 597.
103. Eden, pp. 314-16.
134. Stettinius, p. 184.
104. Colville in Commentary, p. 44.
135. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 374; Stet105. Eden, pp. 429-30.
tinius, pp. 184-6: Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp.
106. Gilbert, p. 642.
385-6; Stettinius, p. 123.
107. Stalin, p. 196.
136. Stettinius, pp. 301, 335-8.
108. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 237.
137. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 647-8, 654109. Eden, p. 432.
7, 659-60.
110. Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp. 394-7; Gilbert,
138. Ibid., pp. 672-4.
pp. 589-93; Stalin correspondence.
139. Ibid., pp. 507-510.
111. Gilbert, p. 590; Churchill, Closing the Ring, pp.
140. Ibid., p. 351.
394-7; Stalin correspondence; Gilbert, p. 593.
141.
Ibid., pp. 507-10; Stettinius, p. 37.
112. Gilbert, p. 615.
142.
Churchill,
Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 240-1.
113. Ibid., pp. 641-2, 648.
143.
Bishop,
p.
323;
Stettinius, p. 262.
114. Ibid., pp. 657-60.
144.
Bishop,
p.
323.
115. Ibid., pp. 657-60, 665.
145. Stettinius, p. 299; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Cru116. Ibid., pp. 672-5; Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 471.
sade
in Europe (Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1948), pp. 396,
117. Gilbert, pp. 681-4.
400,
402;
Colville in Commentary, p. 46.
118. Stalin, pp. 201-4; Gilbert, pp. 686-88.
146.
Ibid.;
Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 506-7.
119. Gilbert, p. 691.
147.
Ibid.,
p.
513.
120. Stalin, p. 207.
148.
Ibid.,
pp.
502-3.
121. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, p. 235.
149.
Ibid.,
p.
501.
122. Eden, p. 563.
150. Ibid., p. 603.
123. Ibid., pp. 574-6.
151. Ibid., pp. 604-5.
124. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, pp. 369-71;
152. Colville, Fringes of Power, p. 658.
Stettinius, pp. 154-6.
46 / FINEST HOUR 84
CHURCHLLTRIVIA
EDITED BY BARBARA F. LANGWORTH
Test your skill and knowledge. Virtually
all questions can be answered in back issues of Finest Hour or other ICS publications (but it's not really cricket to
check). Twenty-four questions appear in
each issue, the answers in the following
issue. Questions fall into six categories:
Contemporaries (C), Literary (L), Miscellaneous (M), Personal (P), Statesmanship (S) and War (W).
553. What was the name of the
Churchill's illustrious cook, who wrote
a book entitled Recipes from Number
10? (C)
554. What well known historian and
Oxford Don did Churchill ask to vet
the Tudor portion of his History of the
English-Speaking Peoples? (L)
555. What vintage of Pol Roger Champagne was Sir Winston's favorite? (M)
556. Name Winston and Clementine's
ten grandchildren. (P)
557. What issue caused Churchill to
part company with the Tory Party in
1930? (S)
567. Churchill's first regiment, the 4th
Hussars, was combined with the 8th
Hussars in 1958 and known as The
Queen's Royal Irish Hussars. They
now have been amalgamated with the
Queen's Own Hussars. What is the
name of the new regiment? (M)
568. In 1919 the Churchills sold their
East Sussex home "Lullenden" to
what well-known general? (P)
569. In 1919 WSC said, "if Russia is to
be saved, as I pray she may be saved,
she must be saved by [whom]"? (S)
570. What British action in July 1940
caused the French government to
sever relations with Britain? (W)
571. In 1934 Churchill accused Sir
Samuel Hoare of what action which
was later decreed by Parliament as
"false charges"? (C)
572. "...their origins, their quarrels,
their misfortunes and their reconciliation" was used by Churchill to describe which of his works? (L)
573. What traditional symbol did the
Roosevelts give the Churchills as a
Christmas present in 1943 and 1944?
558. What were some of the reasons
Churchill gave Stalin for the slow
progress of troops in North Africa in
early 1943? (W)
(M)
559. Who was Wlaydslaw Sikorski?
(C)
575. In 1919, what did Churchill think
would "create a condition of barbarism
worse than the Stone Age"? (S)
560. Name the six individual titles of
The Second World War. (L)
561. According to WSC, who (or
what) "looks you straight in the eye
and treats you as an equal"? (M)
562. Name the first Churchill ancestor
of Sir Winston who purportedly came
to America (from Dorset). Where and
when did he land? (P)
563. What was the Atlantic Charter?
(S)
564. How did Churchill hear about the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? (W)
565. In 1934 Churchill was offered
£10,000 by producer Alexander
Korda. What was it for? (C)
566. Name the titles of the seven volumes of speeches Churchill gave during WW2. (L)
574. Name three painters who influenced WSC. (P)
576. What are the most famous words
in Churchill's first WW2 speech as
Prime Minister on 13 May 1940? (W)
ANSWERS TO LAST TRIVIA
(529) Harry Hopkins encouraged
Churchill to meet with Roosevelt in
1941. (530) The Birth of Britain, The
New World, The Age of Revolution and
The Great Democracies are the four
books of the History of the EnglishSpeaking Peoples. (531) The statue with
feet on UK and US soil stands in
Washington, DC. (532) During his career Churchill held every major government office except Foreign Secretary. (533) Churchill said the Russians
"feared the friendship of the West" in
1949. (534) Churchill considered invading the Baltic island of Borkum in
both World Wars. (535) Cartoonist
David Low thought Churchill gave the
"impression of genius." (536) Into Bat-
tle covers Churchill's speeches between May 1938 and November 1940,
both in Parliament and on the wireless. (537) Churchill served in the 4th
Hussars, 31st Punjab Infantry, 21st
Lancers, South African Light Horse,
Oxfordshire Hussars, Oxfordshire
Yeomanry, Grenadier Guards, Royal
Scots Fusiliers and Oxfordshire Artillery. (538) Jennie was an excellent pianist. (539) Churchill delivered
his "blood toil tears and sweat" speech
in the House of Commons, 13 May
1940. (540) Churchill wanted to support whichever side was killing the
most Germans in Yugoslavia. (541)
Philip
Tilden
was
Churchill's
Chartwell architect; he wrote True Rememberances. (542) A fictitious short
story by WSC, "Man Overboard," appeared in Harmsworth Magazine in
July 1899. "On the Flank of the
Army" appeared in Youth Companion
on 18 Dec 1902. (543) WSC told his
wife that flying gave him a feeling of
"conquest over space." (544) Winston
was listed under the S's as "Spencer
Churchill" when he first went to Harrow. (545) The famous rearmament
quote: "I do not hold that we should
rearm to fight, I hold that we should
rearm to parley." (546) WSC offered
to take up field command of troops
stationed in Antwerp after he toured
the defenses. (547) Edward Marsh
was Churchill's private secretary during three periods from 1905-1929 and
a lifelong friend. (548) The Rockefeller
family asked WSC to write a biography of John D. (549) the purpose of
the Other Club was "to dine." (550)
Pug dogs and pussy kats were drawn
by Winston and Clemmie. (551) The
subject of Churchill's first public
speech (1897) was the Workmen's
Compensation Bill. (552) WSC
thought Hitler might attack France
through Belgium and Holland, or
mount an air attack on British factories and ports, and/or make a peace offensive.
$5
Woods Corner from page 39...
have assigned these "temporary
Woods numbers":
"C342B": The Ebbing Tide of Socialism, published 16 October 1937,
page 3. This is a second appearance of Woods C342 which ran in
the Evening Standard on 9 July
1937.
"C359/1": Must There Be War?,
published 13 November 1937, page
3. This appears to be a first appearance.
$
FINEST HOUR 84 / 47
IMMORTAL WORDS
THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS ...
What a disappointment the Twentieth Century has been
How terrible & how melancholy
its long series of disastrous events
wh have darkened its first 20 years.
We have seen in ev country a dissolution,
a weake.iing of those bonds,
a challenge to those principles
a decay of faith
an abridgement of hope
on wh structure & ultimate existence
of civilised society depends.
We have seen in ev part of globe
one gt country after another
wh had erected an orderly, a peaceful
a prosperous structure of civilised society,
relapsing in hideous succession
into bankruptcy, barbarism or anarchy...
Can you doubt, my faithful friends
as you survey this sombre panorama,
that mankind is passing through a period marked
not only by an enormous destruction
& abridgement of human species,
not only by a vast impoverishment
& reduction in means of existence
but also that destructive tendencies
have not yet run their course?
And only intense, concerted & prolonged efforts
among all nations
can avert further & perhaps even greater calamities?
Notes for an Election Address, Dundee, 11 November 1922
SCAPA FLOW AS WE LEFT IT, PEACEFULLY SLUMBERING, 25 MAY 1994
CHURCHILL IN 1922
NEWFIELD COLLECTION