Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

1 2 5 - 1 0 0 - 7 5 - 5 0 Y E A R S A G O
Seventy-five Years Ago
Autumn 1935 • Age 61
“A gentler figure in a happier age”
Churchill continued to warn of the
growing power of Nazi Germany.
On 26 September he told the Carlton
Club in London: “The German nation,
under Herr Hitler’s dictatorship, is
spending this year at least six times as
much as we are on the Army, the Navy,
and the Air Force put together.”
Italy invaded Abyssinia on 3
October and Churchill addressed this
issue at Chingford on 8 October: “It
may well be that Italian ambitions
would never have taken this dangerous
scope if they not been led to believe
that Britain was becoming feeble and
degenerate and that they would soon
become the heirs to all our interests
and rights in the Mediterranean and in
the Middle East.”
Churchill believed that Italy’s
invasion of Ethiopia, while deplorable,
paled in significance to “the scale and
rapidity of German rearmament.”
Speaking in the House of Commons
on 24 October, he reminded Members
that Abyssinia (where slavery was still
practiced) was not a “civilised” nation
and that the League of Nations should
take the opportunity afforded by the
Italian invasion to make Abyssinia “put
its house in order”:
The native independence of Abyssinia
cannot be made a matter for compromise
or barter. But no one…can justify
the conditions that prevail in that
country....No one can keep up the pretence
that Abyssinia is a fit, worthy
and equal member of a league of civilized
nations. The wisdom of the
British policy was shown in our
opposing their admission and the
unwisdom of Continental countries,
who now bitterly regret what they did,
was shown in its admission. It was a
mistake. Steps must certainly be taken
to make sure that the oppression by
the dominant race in Abyssinia of the
tribes which they have recently conquered
is not perpetuated as the result
of League of Nations action.
An article by Churchill in the
November issue of The Strand
Magazine drew a formal protest from
the German Ambassador in London for
its “personal attack” on Hitler. In
fact, Churchill was restrained in his
characterization of the German leader:
Hitherto, Hitler’s triumphant career
has been borne onwards, not only by a
passionate love of Germany, but by
currents of hatred so intense as to sear
the souls of those who swim upon
them….Does [Hitler] in the full sunlight
of worldly triumph, at the head
of the great nation he has raised from
the dust, still feel racked by the hatreds
and antagonisms of his desperate
struggle; or will they be discarded like
the armour and the cruel weapons of
strife under the mellowing influences
of success....[Hitler appears to be] a
highly competent, cool, well-informed
functionary with an agreeable manner.
Ever the optimist, Churchill added that
“we may yet live to see Hitler a gentler
figure in a happier age.”
At the Conservative Party
Conference on 4 October, Churchill
openly praised Stanley Baldwin. A
General Election was set for November
14th. Many of Churchill’s friends—as
well as Hitler—expected WSC to be
given a position in the new Cabinet.
Churchill hoped so too. He campaigned
for himself and other Tory
MPs, urging accelerated rearmament,
but when the Labour Party accused the
Conservatives of planning “a vast and
expensive rearmament programme,”
Baldwin told the Peace Society, “I give
you my word there will be no great
armaments.”
The Conservatives won 432 seats
in the election, 278 seats more than
Labour, but Churchill was not asked by
Baldwin to join the new government.
FINEST HOUR 148 / 48
In a private letter, Baldwin explained
why: “I feel we should not give him a
post at this stage. Anything he undertakes
he puts his heart and soul into. If
there is going to be war—and no one
can say that there is not—we must
keep him fresh to be our war Prime
Minister.”
Fifty Years Ago
Autumn 1960 • Age 86
“Charming and affectionate”
Sir Winston and Lady Churchill
went on holiday in the south of
France in September, staying at the
Hotel de Paris because Emery Reves
had refused WSC’s request to stay at
the villa La Pausa. Reves said his wife
Wendy had been distressed that the
previous January, Churchill had
declined an earlier invitation. Lady
Churchill wrote to Wendy on 23
September 1960 that her husband was
“surprised and sorry that you should
feel the way you do,” while Winston
wrote to Wendy on 9 October: “…the
months I spent at your charming house
were among the brightest in my life.”
Although subsequently invited,
Churchill never returned to La Pausa.
On 22 October, Winston and
Clementine met with President de
Gaulle in Nice where private secretary
Anthony Montague Brown reported
that de Gaulle was “charming and
affectionate.” On 10 November,
Churchill was at Harrow School, where
he gave his last public speech. Five days
later while saying good night to his
wife in her room, he fell and broke a
vertebra. Mary Soames records that he
did not go to hospital but was not well
enough to attend the wedding of his
granddaughter Edwina Sandys to Piers
Dixon in December.
On the 23rd, young Dixon was
summoned to Chartwell to meet his
bride’s grandfather. Edwina later said
that her grandfather “had never looked
so ill.” Later that day, according to his
physician Lord Moran, Churchill suffered
a small stroke, which kept him in
bed for a week but did not prevent him
from receiving birthday visitors,
including Beaverbrook and Onassis. ,