Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILLSPRING 2009 • NUMBER 142

THE CHURCHILL CENTRE & CHURCHILL MUSEUMaT THE CabINET WaR RooMS, LoNdoNUNITEd STaTES • UNITEd KINGdoM • CaNada • aUSTRaLIa® ®PaTRoN: THE LadY SoaMES LG dbE • WWW.WINSToNCHURCHILL.oRGFounded in 1968 to educate new generations on theleadership, statesmanship, vision and courage of Winston Spencer ChurchillTHE CHURCHILL CENTRE IS THE SUCCESSOR TO THE WINSTON S. CHURCHILL STUDY UNIT (1968) AND THE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY (1971),BUSINESS OFFICES200 West Madison StreetSuite 1700, Chicago IL 60606Tel. (888) WSC-1874 • Fax (312) 658-6088info@winstonchurchill.orgChurchill Museum & Cabinet War RoomsKing Charles Street, London SW1A 2AQTel. (0207) 766-0122CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARDLaurence S. Gellerlgeller@winstonchurchill.orgEXECUTIVE VICE-PRESIDENTPhilip H. Reed OBEpreed@iwm.org.ukCHIEF OPERATING OFFICERDaniel N. Myersdmyers@winstonchurchill.orgDIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATIONMary Paxsonmpaxson@winstonchurchill.orgEDUCATION PROGRAMS COORDINATORSuzanne Sigmansuzanne@churchillclassroom.orgDIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENTCynthia Faulknercfaulkner@winstonchurchill.orgBOARD OF TRUSTEES*EXECUTIVE COMMITTEEThe Hon. Spencer Abraham • Randy BarberDavid Boler* • Paul Brubaker • Randolph S. ChurchillWinston S. Churchill • David Coffer • Manus CooneyPaul Courtenay • Sen. Richard J. DurbinMarcus Frost* • Laurence S. Geller*Sir Martin Gilbert CBE • Richard C. Godfrey*Philip Gordon* • Hon Jack Kemp • Gretchen KimballRichard M. Langworth CBE* • Diane LeesThe Rt Hon Sir John Major KG CHChristopher Matthews • Sir Deryck Maughan*Michael W. Michelson • Joseph J. Plumeri*Lee Pollock • Philip H. Reed OBE* • Mitchell ReissKenneth W. Rendell* • Amb. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.Elihu Rose* • Stephen RubinThe Hon. Celia Sandys • The Hon. Edwina SandysHONORARY MEMBERSWinston S. Churchill • Sir Martin Gilbert CBERobert Hardy CBE • The Lord Heseltine CH PCThe Duke of Marlborough JP DLSir Anthony Montague Browne KCMG CBE DFCGen. Colin L. Powell KCB • Amb. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.The Lady Thatcher LG OM PC FRSFRATERNAL ORGANIZATIONSChurchill Archives Centre, CambridgeThe Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, UK, AustraliaHarrow School, Harrow-on-the-Hill, MiddlesexWinston Churchill Memorial & Library, Fulton, Mo.INTERNET RESOURCESDanMyers, Webmaster, dmyers@winstonchurchill.orgJonah Triebwasser, Chatlist ModeratorWeb committee: Ian W.D. Langworth, Dan Myers, JohnDavid Olsen, Todd Ronnei, Suzanne SigmanACADEMIC ADVISERSProf. James W. Muller, ChairmanUniversity of Alaska, Anchorageafjwm@uaa.alaska.eduProf. John A. Ramsden, Vice ChairmanQueen Mary College, University of Londonjohn@ramsden.netProf. Paul K. Alkon, University of So. CaliforniaSir Martin Gilbert CBE, Merton College, OxfordCol. David Jablonsky, U.S. Army War CollegeProf. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers UniversityProf. John Maurer, U.S. Naval War CollegeProf. David Reynolds FBA, Christ’s College, CambridgeDr. Jeffrey Wallin, PresidentAmerican Academy of Liberal EducationLEADERSHIP & SUPPORTNUMBER TEN CLUBContributors of $10,000 or more per year.Kenneth Fisher • Laurence S. GellerMichael D. Rose • Michael J. ScullyCHURCHILL CENTRE ASSOCIATESContributors to The Churchill Centre Endowment,which offers three levels: $10,000, $25,000 and $50,000+,inclusive of bequests. Endowment earnings support thework of The Churchill Centre & Museum at the CabinetWar Rooms, London.Winston Churchill AssociatesThe Annenberg Foundation • David & Diane BolerFred Farrow • Barbara & Richard LangworthMr. & Mrs. Parker H. Lee IIIMichael & Carol McMenamin • David & Carole NossRay & Patricia Orban • Wendy Russell RevesElizabeth Churchill Snell • Mr. & Mrs. Matthew WillsAlex M. Worth Jr.Clementine Churchill AssociatesRonald D. Abramson • Winston S. ChurchillSamuel D. Dodson • Marcus & Molly FrostJeanette & Angelo Gabriel • Craig & Lorraine HornJames F. Lane • John & Susan MatherLinda & Charles PlattAmbassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson Jr.James R. & Lucille I. ThomasMary Soames AssociatesDr. & Mrs. John V. Banta • Solveig & Randy BarberGary J. Bonine • Susan & Daniel BorinskyNancy Bowers • Lois BrownCarolyn & Paul Brubaker • Nancy H. CanaryDona & Bob Dales • Jeffrey & Karen De HaanGary Garrison • Ruth & Laurence GellerFred & Martha Hardman • Leo Hindery, Jr.Bill & Virginia Ives • J. Willis JohnsonJerry & Judy Kambestad • Elaine KendallDavid M. & Barbara A. Kirr • Phillip & Susan LarsonRuth J. Lavine • Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. LeahyPhilip & Carole Lyons • Richard & Susan MastioCyril & Harriet Mazansky • Michael W. MichelsonJames & Judith Muller • Wendell & Martina MusserBond Nichols • Earl & Charlotte NicholsonBob & Sandy Odell • Dr. & Mrs. Malcolm PageRuth & John Plumpton • Hon. Douglas S. RussellDaniel & Suzanne Sigman • Shanin SpecterRobert M. Stephenson • Richard & Jenny StreiffPeter J. Travers • Gabriel Urwitz • Damon Wells Jr.Jacqueline Dean WitterALLIED NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS_________________________________CHURCHILL CENTRE - UNITED KINGDOMPO Box 1915, Quarley, Andover, Hampshire SP10 9EETel. & Fax (01264) 889627CHAIRMANPaul. H. Courtenayndege@tiscali.co.ukVICE CHAIRMANMichael KelionHON. TREASURERAnthony Woodhead CBE FCASECRETARYJohn HirstCOMMITTEE MEMBERSSmith Benson • Eric Bingham • Robin BrodhurstRandolph S. Churchill • Paul H. CourtenayRobert Courts • Geoffrey Fletcher • Derek GreenwellRafal Heydel-Mankoo • John Hirst • Jocelyn HuntMichael Kelion• Michael Moody • Brian SingletonAnthony Woodhead CBE FCATRUSTEESThe Hon. Celia Sandys, ChairmanThe Duke of Marlborough JP DL • The Lord MarlandDavid Boler • Nigel Knocker OBE • David PorterPhilip H. Reed OBE_________________________________________INTL. CHURCHILL SOCIETY OF CANADAwww.winstonchurchillcanada.caAmbassador Kenneth W. Taylor, Honorary ChairmanMEMBERSHIP OFFICESRR4, 14 Carter RoadLion’s Head ON N0H 1W0Tel. (519) 592-3082PRESIDENTRandy Barberrandybarber@sympatico.caMEMBERSHIP SECRETARYJeanette Webberjeanette.webber@sympatico.caTREASURERCharles Andersoncwga@sympatico.ca__________________________________CHURCHILL CENTRE AUSTRALIAAlfred James, President65 Billyard Avenue, Wahroonga NSW 2076Tel. (61-3) 489-1158abmjames@iinet.net.au________________________________________________CHURCHILL SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENTOF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACYwww.churchill.society.orgRobert A. O’Brien, Chairmanro’brien@couttscrane.com3050 Yonge Street, Suite 206FToronto ON M4N 2K4, CanadaTel. (416) 977-0956

CONTENTSThe Journal ofWinston Churchill,Number 142SPRING 2009Cover: An illuminated presentation to Alderman Charles Ross, President of the EarlyClosing Association, photographed from his stock by Mark Weber (The Churchill BookSpecaliast, www.wscbooks.com). Mr. Weber considers this remarkable item the most beautifulautograph he has ever encountered. Story by Paul Courtenay on page 6.Tolppannen, 16Churchill, 28CHURCHILL, CALIFORNIA AND HOLLYWOOD16/ Winston Churchill and Charlie ChaplinPerfect Combination or the Original Odd Couple? • Bradley P. Tolppannen22/ Chaplin: Everybody’s Language:He Made the Whole World Laugh • Winston S. Churchill28/ Nature’s Panorama in CaliforniaImpressions of a Traveller, Eighty Years Ago • Winston S. Churchill33/ Churchill and OrwellA Gentle Accoldate from One Giant to Another • Robert Pilpel35/ Leading Churchill Myths: “Churchill Caused the 1943-45 Bengal Famine”Fact: The Blame Rests with the Japanese • Richard M. LangworthCHURCHILL PROCEEDINGS36/ Sheriffs and Constables:Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s Postwar World • Warren F. KimballBOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES48/ Churchill as a Literary Character • Michael McMenamin49/ Reviews: Churchill by Himself • The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire‘Blinker’ Hall, Spymaster • Best Little Stories from the Life and Times ofWinston Churchill • Churchill: The Greatest Briton Unmasked• Reviewed by Manfred Weidhorn, David Freeman, Antoine Capet,Christopher H. Sterling and Michael McMenaminPilpel, 33DEPARTMENTS2/ Churchill Centre Administration • 4/ Despatch Box • 5/ Editor’s Essay6/ Datelines • 8/ Around & About • 10/ Leading Churchill Myths (16)11/ Official Biography • 12/ Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas • 14/ Action This Day20/ Wit & Wisdom • 32/ History Detectives • 47/ Churchill Quiz54/ Eminent Churchillians: Jay Piper • 62/ Ampersand • 63/ Regional DirectoryCFINEST HoUR 142 / 3

Number 142 • Spring 2009ISSN 0882-3715www.winstonchurchill.org____________________________Barbara F. Langworth, Publisherbarbarajol@gmail.comRichard M. Langworth CBE, Editormalakand@langworth.namePost Office Box 740Moultonborough, NH 03254 USATel. (603) 253-8900Dec.-March Tel. (242) 335-0615___________________________Editor Emeritus:Ron Cynewulf RobbinsSenior Editors:Paul H. CourtenayJames R. LancasterJames W. MullerNews Editor:Michael RichardsContributorsAlfred James, AustraliaTerry Reardon, CanadaAntoine Capet, FranceInder Dan Ratnu, IndiaPaul Addison, Winston S. Churchill,Robert A. Courts,Sir Martin Gilbert CBE,Allen Packwood, United KingdomDavid Freeman, Ted Hutchinson,Warren F. Kimball,Michael McMenamin,Don Pieper, Christopher Sterling,Manfred Weidhorn, United States___________________________• Address changes: Help us keep your copiescoming! Please update your membership officewhen you move. All offices for The ChurchillCentre and Allied national organizations arelisted on the inside front cover.__________________________________Finest Hour is made possible in part throughthe generous support of members of TheChurchill Centre and Museum, the NumberTen Club, and an endowment created by theChurchill Centre Associates (page 2).___________________________________Published quarterly by The Churchill Centre,offering subscriptions from the appropriateoffices on page 2. Permission to mail at nonprofitrates in USA granted by the UnitedStates Postal Service, Concord, NH, permitno. 1524. Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.Produced by Dragonwyck Publishing Inc.DESPATCH BOXFORTY YEARS OF FHI have read the thick FortiethAnniversary issue number 140, truly amagnum opus. First, it is a review of agreat journal. Second, it is a review of agreat man. Third, but no less important,it is a tribute to a great editor. Wemembers of The Churchill Centre andChurchill Museum owe our editor atremendous debt of gratitude.DR. CYRIL MAZANSKY, NEWTON CENTRE, MASS.Forty years, and at the helm formost of them! That’s one grand accomplishment,and a huge gift to theliterature over the years. So glad myfavorite cartoonist is on the cover. I wassurprised and tickled to see I’d evenmade the top hundred articles list. Kudosto you and Barbara for all your effortsover the years.PROF. CHRISTOPHER H. STERLINGGEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, D.C.Thank you for yet another fabulousissue of Finest Hour.DAN BORINSKY, LAKE RIDGE, VA.Best Finest Hour ever. The factthat you mentioned me proves it!AL LURIE, NEW YORK, N.Y.Awesome: a great issue with manyfine contributors. Our man would beproud. Thank you for the photo andacknowledgements of Naomi and me.May the cognac and cigar at your appearancein Dallas November 30th bememorable. I’ll be with you and theNorth Texas Churchillians in spirit.LARRY KRYSKE, PLANO, TEX.I just enjoyed a few hours with the40th Anniversary issue of Finest Hour,and all the memories you recalledtherein. Another fine piece of writingand editing. It has been ages since I revisitedthe story of the mysteriousdouble-fleet of trolleys at the 1995Boston conference (page 47). We neversolved that mystery, but we also nevermissed a beat that evening.All this looking back made me alsorecall our many accomplishments, suchas the Churchill Centre FoundingMember campaign, the Associatesprogram, the Gregory Peck video toname a few. I cannot imagine FinestHour without you, so for now, I will not.PARKER H. LEE III, LYNCHBURG, VA.FINEST HoUR 142 / 4I spent two days reading FinestHour 140 cover-to-cover. My personalcongratulations on the greatest issue yet.The content was not only uniformlyinteresting, but what I would describe as“smashing!” The issue will be savedamongst my most important publicationsand memorabilia.GARY GARRISON, MARIETTA, GA.In the list of contributors on page78 you indeed forgot a name. (See FH107: 29-33, “Toy Troopers, SmallStatesmen.”) Also, I held together theOmaha chapter with time, talent andtreasure until deterioration of my healthbegan to limit my activities recently, duesand contributions continuing. Keep upthe good work.EDWARD W. FITZGERALD, OMAHA, NEB.Edward, our net slipped when itcame to “Books, Arts & Curiosities,”since those articles weren’t indexed individually.So sorry. We appreciate yoursupport. RMLThe incomparable Finest Hour140 provokes many thoughts. First, aslots of us watch with glee as PresidentBush vacates the White House, let’s considerChurchill’s valediction to NevilleChamberlain, quoted in this issue: “Inone phase men seem to have been right,in another they seem to have beenwrong. Then again, a few years later,when the perspective of time has lengthened,all stands in a different setting.”Second, many hands will havebeen wrung by the close of the interregnumbetween 4 November and 20January. Cooperation between the not yetold and the not yet new is seeminglyunprecedented. But not really.As noted by Gordon Walker in“Election 1945: Why Winston ChurchillLost,” even when Churchill was facingthe voters he brought his opponent (andDeputy Prime Minister) Clement Attleeto the Potsdam conference. The votecount was sandwiched within the conference.When the votes were counted, itwas Attlee not Churchill who concludedthe conference, and then the war. Thebrutally tough issues of that day werehanded off seamlessly—and quickly—toa new administration. WinstonChurchill’s statesmanship continues toprovide a ready guide. ,SHANIN SPECTER, GLADWYNE, PENNA.

E D I T O R ’ S E S S AYSheet Anchor in “Sterner Days”AChurchillian born in Niagara Falls, New York asked if we knew what Winston Churchill was doing on NewYear’s Eve, 31 December 1941. Surprisingly—because we don’t have many accounts of his ninety NewYear’s Eves—we did.On that evening, Churchill was hurtling past Niagara Falls itself, en route from Ottawa, where he’ddescribed Britain as a chicken with an unwringable neck, to Washington, where he would resume urgent conversationswith President Roosevelt in the wake of Japan’s onslaught in Asia and the Pacific.As the sweep second hand of “The Turnip,” his beloved pocket watch, counted down the remaining momentsof 1941, Churchill called his staff and accompanying newspaper reporters to the dining car of his train. Then, raisinghis glass, as the train rocked and swayed over the tracks, he made this toast:“Here’s to 1942, here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward towards victory.May we all come through safe and with honour.”How apposite those words are right now. No, there is no Third Reich, no Imperial Japan—but there are statelessenemies who seek our ruin; there is economic chaos of epic proportions. As our chairman Laurence Geller writes:“People are holding back for fear of the unknown. Unemployment will soon double. This quarter most G-8 economieswill experience a negative GDP. For the year it will almost certainly be negative and next year at best will be flat orinsipid. People are frightened, inventories are diminished, business and consumer confidence is at an all-time low.”What a time for Churchill. And there he is, still hoping we will all come through safe and with honour.How often Churchill knew exactly what to say! True, he insisted that the British people had the “lion heart,”that he had merely provided the roar; that he had always earned his living by his pen and tongue. What else did theyexpect? Makes no difference. His incandescent words remain. Vivre à jamais dans l’esprit des gens, n’est-ce pas l’immortalité?To live forever in the minds of men, is not that immortality? “When men said to each other, ‘There is noanswer,’” wrote the poet Maxwell Anderson, “You spoke for Trafalgar, and for the sombre lions in the Square.”I cast around for a Churchill “quotation of the season” to lead off this edition of Finest Hour: in this season tomark the largest peacetime expansion of government in history, and the arguments swirling around it. I found morethan one. (See next page.)We never proclaim what Churchill would think about a modern Act of Congress or Parliament. We haven’tthe foggiest. But we have his words, and as always his words are worth the attention of thoughtful people.Leaders of parties or governments, like Mr. David Cameron, will often inevitably be influenced and encouragedby Churchill’s experience: his triumphs and tragedies, his mistakes and failures, for it diminishes Churchill toregard him as superhuman. Yet there was nobody like him when it came to communicating the unchanging verities bywhich, as he put it, “we mean to make our way.”We are right to worry over events. And right to remember Churchill’s optimism, his determination, hisunswerving faith in the English-Speaking Peoples, in their capacity to come through, safe and with honour.Churchill was a fatalist, but never troubled by what he could not control. “One only has to look at Nature,” hewrote his mother from India at the age of 24, “to see how very little store she sets by life. Its sanctity is entirely ahuman idea. You may think of a beautiful butterfly: 12 million feathers on his wings, 16,000 lenses in his eye; amouthful for a bird. Let us laugh at Fate. It might please her.”Mr. Cameron will likely conclude with Winston Churchill: “For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem tobe much use being anything else.” There certainly does not seem to be much use in pessimism if you are charged withthe leadership or a country, or a party, or a company, or an institution.And we know Mr. Cameron would agree with the Harrow Old Boy who, on his first visit there since hisschooldays, substituted “sterner days” for “darker days” in a Harrow song verse written for him:“Do not let us speak of darker days; let us rather speak of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are greatdays—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of usaccording to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.” RMLFrom a programme note in a Churchill Centre dinner in London for the Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP.FINEST HoUR 142 / 5

DateLinesSEASON’S QUOTES:WSC ON THE “STIMULUS”MARCH 20TH— No, Sir Winston hasnot interrupted his first millionyears painting to comment (right)on the U.S. government’s “fiscalstimulus package.” And we’re notgoing to suggest what he wouldthink of it—heaven forbid. Our“Quotations of the Season” areranged without comment inchronological order. Draw yourown conclusions.“NOT MUCH IN THAT...”LONDON, MARCH 1ST— From JohnCharmley to Pat Buchanan, we’ve readthe same story: Churchill destroyed theBritish Empire and laid the way forRusso-American hegemony by rejectingRealpolitik and refusing to “do a deal” towind down the war with Hitler after theFall of France.We were reminded that Churchillhimself was asked that question—afterhis retirement in 1955 while re-readingprivate secretary Sir Anthony MontagueBrowne’s book, Long Sunset (London:Cassell, 1995, 200).Churchill’s answer: “You’re onlysaying that to be provocative. You knowvery well we couldn’t have made peaceon the heels of a terrible defeat. Thecountry wouldn’t have stood for it. Andwhat makes you think that we couldhave trusted Hitler’s word—particularlyas he could soon have had Russianresources behind him? At best we wouldhave been a German client state, andthere’s not much in that.” Exactly.Quotations of the Seasonou may, by the arbitrary and sterile act of Government—for, remem-Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what“Yber,they have first taken away—you may put money in the pocket of one setof Englishmen, but it will be money taken from the pockets of another setof Englishmen, and the greater part will be spilled on the way.”—WSC, BIRMINGHAM, 11 NOVEMBER 1903“Where you find that State enterprise is likely to be ineffective, thenutilise private enterprises, and do not grudge them their profits.”—WSC, GLASGOW, 11 OCTOBER 1906“Every new administration, not excluding ourselves, arrives in power with brightand benevolent ideas of using public money to do good. The morefrequent the changes of Government, the more numerous are the bright ideas;and the more frequent the elections, the more benevolent they become.”—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 11 APRIL 1927“There are two ways in which a gigantic debt may be spread over newdecades and future generations. There is the right and healthy way; andthere is the wrong and morbid way. The wrong way is to fail to make theutmost provision for amortisation which prudence allows, to aggravate theburden of the debts by fresh borrowings, to live from hand to mouth andfrom year to year, and to exclaim with Louis XV: ‘After me, the deluge!’”—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 11 APRIL 1927“Squandermania…is the policy which used to be stigmatised by the lateMr. Thomas Gibson Bowles as the policy of buying a biscuit early in themorning and walking about all day looking for a dog to give it to.”—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 15 APRIL 1929“Democratic governments drift along the line of least resistance, takingshort views, paying their way with sops and doles, and smoothing theirpath with pleasant-sounding platitudes. Never was there less continuity ordesign in their affairs, and yet toward them are coming swiftly changeswhich will revolutionize for good or ill not only the whole economic structureof the world but the social habits and moral outlook of every family.”—WSC, “FIFTY YEARS HENCE,” STRAND, DECEMBER 1931“I do not think America is going to smash. On the contrary I believe thatthey will quite soon begin to recover. As a country descends the ladder ofvalues many grievances arise, bankruptcies and so forth. But one mustnever forget that at the same time all sorts of correctives are being applied,COVER STORYReaders may wonder why WinstonChurchill signed this particular presentationto Alderman Charles J. Ross,President of the Early ClosingAssociation, 1923-26.When President of the Board ofTrade (12 April 1908 to 18 February1910) Churchill was very active in promotingbetter conditions for shopworkers; among them was “one earlyclosing day a week.” WSC must havebeen inducted by the Early ClosingAssociation (established 1842) in recognitionof his initiative over this matter.“Albert” is undoubtedly HRHThe Duke of York (later King GeorgeVI), who interested himself in industrialrelations; but he would not have beeninvolved with such an Association untilFINEST HoUR 142 / 6much later than 1910, and most probablyfrom about 1923 until 1936.“Sutherland” is likely the FifthDuke of Sutherland (1888-1963), whowas contemporaneously involved withThe Duke of York. He succeeded hisfather in 1913 and was very active inpublic life, holding various governmentposts. He was a member of Baldwin’s

1924-29 government while WSC wasChancellor of the Exchequer, serving asPaymaster General (1925-28) andUnder-Secretary of State for War (1928-29). Churchill and Sutherland knew eachother well socially. See Mary Soames,Speaking for Themselves, WSC’s letterfrom the Duke’s Scottish estateDunrobin Castle, dated 19 [18]September 1921; also the link passageabout Marigold immediately above.Edmund Ashworth Radford(1881-1944) was a Unionist MP for twoManchester seats (Salford, South 1924-29, Rusholme from 1933). The onlyother detail I can find is that he was achartered accountant who became seniorpartner of his own firm of charteredand adjustments being made by millions of people and thousands of firms. Ifthe whole world except the United States sank under the ocean that communitycould get its living. They carved it out of the prairie and the forests. Theyare going to have a strong national resurgence in the near future. Therefore Iwish to buy sound low priced stocks. I cannot afford any others.”—WSC TO HIS STOCKBROKER, H.C. VICKERS. 21 JUNE 1932“Change is agreeable to the human mind, and gives satisfaction, sometimesshort-lived, to ardent and anxious public opinion.”—WSC, HOUSE OF COMMONS, 29 JULY 1941“Nothing would be more dangerous than for people to feel cheated becausethey had been led to expect attractive schemes which turn out to beeconomically impossible.”—WSC TO FOREIGN SECRETARY AND OTHERS, 17 DECEMBER 1942I do not believe in looking about for some panacea or cure-all on whichwe should stake our credit and fortunes trying to sell it like a patentmedicine to all and sundry. It is easy to win applause by talking in anairy way about great new departures in policy, especially if all detailedproposals are avoided.—WSC, BLACKPOOL, 5 OCTOBER 1946“The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudestdelusions which has ever fuddled the human mind.”—WSC, ROYAL ALBERT HALL, 21 APRIL 1948“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and thegospel of envy.”—WSC, PERTH, 28 MAY 1948“The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty andState domination; between concentration of ownership in the hands of theState and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals;between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition;between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energyand ingenuity; between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunityfor all to rise upwards from a basic standard.—WSC, WOLVERHAMPTON, 23 JULY 1949“In America, when they elect a President they want more than a skilfulpolitician. They are seeking a personality: something that will make thePresident a good substitute for a monarch.”—WSC TO LORD MORAN, 19 MAY 1955 ,accountants; whether this involved himwith the Early Closing Association isunclear. —PAUL H. COURTENAYWINSTON IS BACK:(IN EIGHT VOLUMES)LONDON, JANUARY 23RD— The BBCannounced that President Obama sentGeorge W. Bush’s Jacob Epstein bust ofChurchill packing from the Oval Office(while retaining a bust of AbrahamLincoln), producing a buzz of speculationover the implied symbolism.The bust is one of four or fivecopies sculpted by Jacob Epstein, andregarded as the most valuable of its kindever commissioned. Bush’s was from theBritish government collection atCockburn Street, London; another is atWindsor and others are in private hands.In 2001 President Bush explained: “Myfriend the Prime Minister of GreatBritain heard me say that I greatlyadmired Winston Churchill and so hesaw to it that the government loaned methis and I am most honored to have thisJacob Epstein bust....”But zealots soon urged us todemand its return, since in their viewBush was undeserving, or using it to proclaimhimself a Churchill. In fact, he wassimply an admirer, like most of us.Plus ça change....Now that the busthas been returned, we are encouraged toprotest its removal.The BBC speculated that Obamawas “looking forward not backward,”while The Daily Telegraph ventured thatthere might be personal reasons: “It wasduring Churchill’s second premiershipthat Britain suppressed Kenya’s MauMau rebellion. Among Kenyans allegedlytortured by the colonial regime includedone Hussein Onyango Obama, thePresident’s grandfather.”Diana West exploded that theoryon Townhall.com (http://xrl.us/beipaj) byexplaining that this allegation stems fromObama’s “Granny Sarah” (who alsoclaims that he was born in Kenya, whichwould make him ineligible to bePresident). In Obama’s Dreams of MyFather, West wrote, the President“describes his grandfather’s detention aslasting ‘over six months’ before he wasfound innocent (no mention of torture).Whatever the case, Churchill didn’tbecome prime minister for the secondtime until the end of 1951. The MauMau Rebellion didn’t begin until the >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 7

D AT E L I N E SOVAL OFFICE CHURCHILLIANA: The Epstein bust has bitten the dust, but the OfficialBiography has taken its place. The White House now has more Churchilliana than ever.end of 1952, one year after Obama’sgrandfather’s release.”But President Obama now hasmore Churchilliana than President Bushhad: in a March visit to Washington,British Prime Minister Gordon Brownpresented him with “a first edition of SirMartin Gilbert’s seven-volume biographyof Winston Churchill.” (Yes, “sevenvolumes”—Sir Martin was short VolumeV, but Chartwell Booksellers in NewYork City helped him out, and the fulleight volumes were delivered.)Asked for comment by Newsweek,FH’s editor said he read little into thecontroversy: “Mr. Obama admiresLincoln, and it seems perfectly reasonablethat he should have a the bronze totemof his choice in his office. Since theEpstein bust was a loan to a previousPresident, it is unremarkable that a newPresident would wish to return it.President Obama, an intelligent man,probably appreciates that theParliamentary forms finally emerging inKenya stem from the colonial British, asthey do in much of the old Empire,notably India and what Churchill calledthe ‘Great Dominions.’ To paraphraseMark Steyn (whose bust will never adornthe Oval Office either), imagine howKenya might have developed if it hadbeen colonized by, say, the Germans,Japanese or Russians.”This will not prevent the mediafrom using Churchill to promote sundrypolitical viewpoints. But in the March2nd issue of Newsweek, editor JonMeacham (a fair and balanced ChurchillCentre trustee) struck what we believe isthe right note: “A long-dead foreignleader, then, has become a kind of partisanfigure. This is unfortunate, forChurchill offers one of the great casestudies for any leader in how to buildand maintain public confidence in thebleakest of hours....It is also worth amoment’s reflection on how Churchillviewed the duty of a leader in a time ofcrisis, for Obama, perhaps unconsciously,is working within that tradition.”The editor’s own amusement onthis business is in the sidebar below.A CHURCHILL IS BACKLONDON, MARCH 20TH— A Churchill willonce again hold dominion over Westminster.Duncan Sandys, Sir Winston’s affable35-year-old great grandson who sits asa Conservative councillor on the citycouncil, is a shoo-in as the next LordMayor of Westminster, after he was putforward as the official Tory candidate forthe election in May. Sandys, who servesBUST-OUT, 2013In March an American writer claimed that Obama said of theChurchill bust: “Get that blank-blank thing out of here” (but offered noattribution). And a British writer snipped that the cheap CD Obamagave British Prime Minister Gordon Brown doesn’t work on British TV.The media just demonstrates its degenerate irresponsibility infanning non-issues. Fifty years ago a different media would have publishedthoughtful pieces on the future of the US-UK relationship. We arewitnessing the triumph of Britney Spearsthought.The President has more pressing matters of concern, as dowe. So, with acknowledgement to the Daily Telegraph, here is a pasticheon a future “Bust-Out” which might well erupt four years hence.H H HWASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 15, 2013— A bust of Abraham Lincoln, loaned toPresident Obama from the State of Illinois art collection after his inaugurationfour years ago, has now been formally handed back.Where has the Lincoln bust gone? Reporters have tracked it tothe palatial Springfield, Illinois residence of Rod Blagojevich, who wasreinstated as Governor in 2011 after the State Supreme Court ruledthat his 2009 impeachment was unconstitutional, following Blagojevich’stwo-year campaign for redemption on Oprah and Larry King.Lincoln is no hero to Mr. Calhoun, who prefers to quote WinstonChurchill, author of the famous alternative history, “If Lee Had NotWon the Battle of Gettysburg.” (FH 103, http://xrl.us/beipam). Now abust of Churchill, retrieved from storage at the British Embassy inWashington, has replaced Lincoln’s in the Oval Office.Lincoln, remember, sent General Sherman marching throughCalhoun’s home state of Georgia to defeat the Confederacy. AmongConfederates allegedly imprisoned by the Federals was one AloysiusBeauregard Calhoun, the President’s great-great grandfather.Governor Blagojevich says he will offer another evidence ofIllinois’ esteem to the new President when he meets Mr. Calhoun inWashington this month. One state senator has suggested that, givenPresident Calhoun’s interest in the Civil War era, Mr. Blagojevichshould offer a bust of Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s leadingopponent during the 1860 Presidential Election. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 8

on the Churchill Memorial Trust Counciland is a grandson of Lord Duncan-Sandys,the former cabinet minister, will be theyoungest person to occupy the role.—TIM WALKER, DAILY TELEGRAPHFREE DEPLORABLE SPEECHCHICAGO, MARCH 6TH— Churchill Centrechairman Laurence Geller spoke onCNBC of the “McCarthyism” beingdirected by politicians against conventions(http://xrl.us/beiohf): “Thehyperbole and rhetoric was notched upto gigantic levels during this recent politicaldebate season.....We’ve lost an awfullot of major businesses, and it’s not justthose receiving government bailouts thatare affected, but there’s a general fear ofcriticism by people not only making thebookings but people attending these conference....Thehotel industry lost 200,000jobs last year. We thought if things wentthe same way we’d lose 240,000. Thisyear, since the hyperbole got ratcheted upto these levels, we’re on track to lose350,000, 400,000 jobs. The ripplethrough the economy is gigantic,touching 15 million jobs; lodging andtourism is the third largest retail businessin the country. A colleague and Iattended a conference last week, and wewere joking in the car to the hotel,saying: ‘If the CNBC van is out front,keep driving!’”What has this to do with WinstonChurchill? It reminds us what he saidabout free speech, including class warfareagainst the convention business (Houseof Commons, 18 June 1951):“One cannot say that the man orthe woman in the street can be broughtup violently and called to accountbecause of expressing some opinion onsomething or other which is sub judice.They are perfectly entitled to do that.They may say things that aredeplorable—many deplorable things aresaid under free speech.”BEST BOOKS: ADDENDUMIn our “Fifty Best Books [AboutChurchill] in the Last Forty Years” (FH140:22) we inadvertently left out two ofProfessor Paul Addison’s picks of hisfavorites in FH 128. (We also left outMy Early Life because it was by notabout Churchill.) Since we warned thatyou omit Addison’s choices at your disadvantage,we hasten to list the two weomitted, along with his remarks:AROUND & ABOUTThe 2009 Finest Hour Re-Rat Award (issuedinfrequently) goes to Senator Judd Gregg(R.-N.H.), who, after accepting nomination asPresident Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, withdrew,saying he could not balance “being in the Cabinet versus myself as anindividual doing my job.” Gregg’s nomination had sewn fear among Republicanswho learned that New Hampshire’s Democratic Governor,John Lynch, would appoint a (liberal) Republican in his place. ThusJudd re-rats. (WSC to private secretary John Colville, 26 January 1941:“Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”kkkkkAlfred James of Churchill Centre Australia reports that (moving rightalong) the 1911 Census has just been released in England (www.ancestry.com).No address was “private” in those days: Churchill is listed at 33Eccleston Square (17 rooms) with Clementine, Diana and eight servants(cook, nurse, lady’s maid, housemaid, parlourmaid, under-parlourmaid,kitchen maid and hall boy). Ah for the days when help was cheap. Ionce tried Churchill’s method of getting two days out of one by copyinghis Chartwell routine: an hour of sound sleep in mid-afternoon, bath, dinner,cinema, work from 11pm to 3am, bed, breakfast at 8am, work in bedall morning, bath #2, lunch, afternoon amble and start over again. Worksfine if you have a staff of fifteen. Barbara Langworth was not amused.kkkkkIran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissed overtures tohis country from President Obama, saying Teheran did not see anychange in policy under the new U.S. administration. “They chant theslogan of change but no change is seen in practice,” Khamenei said inhis speech, broadcast live on state television. “We haven’t seen anychange.” In his video message, Obama said the U.S. wanted to engageIran and improve decades of strained relations.We hear echoes in this of Harold Nicolson’s note to his wife, VitaSackville-West, 1 March 1938 (Nicolson Diaries, I, 328). Churchill, hesaid, “spoke of ‘this great country nosing from door to door like a cowthat has lost its calf, mooing dolefully now in Berlin and now in Rome—when all the time the tiger and the alligator wait for its undoing.’” ,• Harbutt, Fraser J. The IronCurtain: Churchill, America and theOrigins of the Cold War, 1986, 370pages: “It is no secret that Churchill isrevered by many Americans as a philosopher-kingand role model for leadership.Whereas in Britain we see him as a manof the past, he is admired in the U.S. as aguide to the present and the future. Hisunique stature on the western side of theAtlantic owes something his wartimealliance with Roosevelt, but as FraserHarbutt shows in a powerfully arguedbook, the decisive factor was the partChurchill played, while he was out ofoffice, in facilitating the entry of theUnited States into the Cold War. Thetipping point was his ‘Iron Curtain’FINEST HoUR 142 / 9speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946.”• Taylor, A.J.P., editor. Churchill:Four Faces and the Man (ChurchillRevised in USA), 1969, 274 pages: “Thissparkling collection of essays anatomisedChurchill’s qualities as a statesman (A.J.P.Taylor), politician (Robert RhodesJames), historian (J.H. Plumb), militarystrategist (Basil Liddell Hart) and depressivehuman being (Anthony Storr).Research has moved on since then, but asan analysis of the essential Churchill ithas never been surpassed. It founded theBritish school of Churchillians whoadmire him “warts and all.”Many disagree with Anthony Storrthat WSC was “depressive,” except invery old age, since the troubles he saw >>

D AT E L I N E SBEST BOOKS...would depress anybody; or thatChurchill’s relevance and leadership arenot appreciated outside America. We alsodoubt that Winston Churchill had asmuch influence on the U.S. plunge intothe Cold War as Harbutt suggests. (Onthis subject, see the compelling essays inJames W. Muller, editor: Churchill’s“Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later,1999, 180 pages.)A’BLOGGINGWE SHALL GOFEBRUARY 15TH— We were amused by aChurchill-derived comment describingthe new digital activity known as “blogging”(personal web logs) and Internetchatrooms: “Never have so many peoplewith so little to say said so much to sofew.” However, some bloggers have interestingangles.Take for example “Amazing Ben”(www.badassoftheweek.com): a 28-yearoldcollege administrator, whose style is,well, different.Churchill, Ben says, was known“for his unyielding tenaciousness and hisawesome ability to train killer attackhounds to run up and bite Fascists in thejugular when they weren’t looking…oneof the most badass world leaders of themodern era. This dude was a totallyrighteous asskicker who enjoyed puffingon Cuban cigars, shooting guns, drinkingcopious amounts of booze, and kickingNazis in the ___ ___ with a Size 10steel-toed boot, and he didn’t give a crapabout anything that didn’t further hisgoal of accomplishing one of those fourtasks. He fought hard, partied hard, worea lot of totally awesome suits, and prettymuch always looked like he’d juststepped out of a badass 1930s pulpfiction detective story.”We linked this on our website. Wewere going to reprint Ben’s essay, but weare not so badass. However, we’re glad tosee the use of profanity in Churchill’sfavor for a change.ERRATA, FH 140Page 15: Paul Alkon is a Professorof English and American (not French)Literature. Page 48: The photo of MartinGilbert’s walking tour is 1996 (not1999), during the previous ChurchillCentre Tour of England.PORTSMOUTH, 2001: Patrick Kinna (left) aboard USS Winston S. Churchill, with thencommandingofficer Capt. Mike Franken, USN, at the International Festival of the Sea.PATRICK KINNABRIGHTON, MARCH 14TH— Churchill wasflying home from the Continent late inWorld War II when his Dakota began tolose power and altitude, and passengersjoked over what to jettison. “It’s no usethrowing you out,” Churchill grinned atPatrick Kinna. “There’s not enough ofyou to make a ham sandwich.”Kinna, one of Churchill’s keywartime secretaries, and had many fondmemories (see “Eminent Churchillians,”FH 115, Summer 2002; the above wasrelated to Paul Courtenay by Kinna’snephew at the funeral). He was recommendedto Churchill by the Duke ofWindsor, whom he had served while theDuke was with the British militarymission in Paris. From 1940 to 1945 histiny, trim figure rarely left the PrimeMinister’s side. Kinna was present whenPresident Roosevelt unexpectedlyencountered Churchill emerging from hisbath at the White House. (WSC laterremarked to the King, “Sir, I believe I amthe only man in the world to havereceived the head of a nation naked.”)Patrick Francis Kinna was born insouth London on 5 September 1913. Hisfather had been decorated for his part inthe relief of Ladysmith during the BoerWar. After leaving school Patrick took acourse in shorthand and typing, thenjoined Barclay’s Bank as a clerk whiledeliberating whether to be a journalist ora skating instructor (he had trained withthe ice-skating star Belita).In 1939, Kinna joined the reserves,but because of his skills (he had won theAll-England championship for secretarialspeeds), he was quickly assigned to theIntelligence Corps and sent to Paris asclerk to the Duke of Windsor.As the Germans drew near theywere ordered to evacuate. After a daydestroying secret documents, the Dukewas spirited to safety while Kinna hitchhikedto the coast to find a ship home.Back in England, Kinna got a telephonecall from 10 Downing Street andjoined Churchill aboard HMS Prince ofWales, sailing to Newfoundland for theAtlantic Charter meeting with Roosevelt.Kinna’s duties included trying to discouragesailors from whistling—a noiseChurchill could never abide. But onceChurchill and Roosevelt got down tobusiness in Argentia Bay there was no letup:“I was terribly busy all the time. Ispent days and days typing.”Churchill was so impressed withKinna’s work that he wanted him to joinhis staff. One reason was because, in theearly part of the war, women were notallowed to travel on warships. Kinna wassubstituted, often taking along the worknormally done by Elizabeth Layton,Kathleen Hill and others. From then on,Kinna accompanied Churchill on allWSC’s trips abroad.Some accounts suggest thatChurchill was initially charmed by Stalin,but that was not Kinna’s impression.After their first encounter in Moscow,FINEST HoUR 142 / 10

Kinna recalled Churchill storming backto the British Embassy: “I have just had amost terrible meeting with this terribleman Stalin...evil and dreadful,” he began.The British Ambassador interrupted:“May I remind you, Prime Minister, thatall these rooms have been wired andStalin will hear every word you said.”The next morning, though it wasobvious that Stalin had heard, he was“very nice and polite and sweet,” Kinnarecalled: “He couldn’t afford to tell Mr.Churchill to buzz off.” Later on, afterWSC’s return from the Yalta conference,Kinna recalled that WSC asked to havehis clothes fumigated, suspecting theyhad acquired some unwelcome residents.Churchill had a reputation forbeing brusque and inconsiderate with hisstaff, but Kinna recalled him as “basicallyvery kind,” though if he was in full flight“nothing else mattered and politenessdidn’t come into it.” Secretaries wereinstructed never to ask WSC to repeathimself. As his dictation was fast andfluent, this was difficult, but Kinna madesure repeats were kept to a minimum.After the 1945 election, Churchill,now Leader of the Opposition, askedPatrick to stay on, but Kinna had hadenough of long hours—Churchill habituallyworked past midnight—anddeclined. Ever magnanimous, Churchillwrote a glowing testimonial (“He is aman of exceptional diligence, firmness ofcharacter and fidelity”) and nominatedKinna for an MBE (Member of the MostExcellent Order of the British Empire).The two men kept in touch andalways exchanged white pelargoniums ontheir birthdays. After Churchill died,Lady Churchill sent a chauffeur toKinna’s home with a present of a set ofelegant tea tables used by her husband.News of Kinna’s skills reached theears of Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary inthe postwar Labour government. “If hewas good enough for Winston, he’s goodenough for me,” Bevin is supposed tohave said. Kinna worked with him untilBevin’s death in 1951, and in 1991 hepresented a Douglas Robertson Bissetbronze bust of his former boss to theForeign Office, where it has pride ofplace on the grand staircase.Kinna’s subsequent career was a“bit of an anticlimax.” In the early 1950she joined the timber firm MontagueMeyer, rising to personnel director. Heretired in his sixtieth year and went tolive with his sister Gladys in Brighton,making occasional outings to eventscommemorating the lives of the greatmen for whom he had worked. In 2000he was welcomed on board the USSWinston S. Churchill at the InternationalFestival of the Sea in Portsmouth. In2005 he stood alongside HM the Queenat the opening ceremony of the ChurchillMuseum at the Cabinet War Rooms. Healso lectured, donating the fees to charity.SOME EXERPTS ARE FROM THEDAILY TELEGRAPH, 18 MARCH 2009.JOAN BRIGHT ASTLEY“MISS MONEYPENNY”LONDON— JoanBright Astleybore uniquewitness to theinner workingsof the BritishHigh Commandduring World War II, as a key secretaryon Winston Churchill’s staff.From 1941 she was responsible fora special information centre in theCabinet War Rooms, supplying confidentialinformation to British commandersin-chief.From 1943, she accompaniedBritish delegations to the key conferencesof the “Big Three.”Her memoir, The Inner Circle(1971), contained eloquent portraits ofAllied leaders. And she was one of threeor four women Ian Fleming used to forma composite Miss Moneypenny, a centralcharacter in his James Bond series.Bright Astley was born inArgentina, one of seven children of anEnglish accountant working for a railwaycompany and his Scottish governess wife.After a period in Spain, Penelope JoanMcKerrow Bright finished her educationin Bristol, did a secretarial course inLondon and worked as a cipher clerk atthe British legation in Mexico City.In 1936 she declined an offer toteach English to the family of the Nazileader Rudolf Hess, in Munich; she alsopassed on a job with Duff Cooper,working on his biography of Talleyrand.On the eve of war, she became personalassistant to Colonel Jo Holland,head of MI(R), a secret war office departmentexploring ways of causing troubleinside enemy-occupied countries.Holland’s staff was small andmostly amateur, but included ColinGubbins, the future head of the SpecialOperations Executive. With Sir PeterWilkinson, another MI(R) recruit, BrightAstley would publish the biographyGubbins & SOE (1993). When SOEreplaced MI(R) in 1940, she remained atthe War Office, assigned to Churchill’sjoint planning committee secretariat inthe Cabinet War Rooms beneathWhitehall, London. Calling the rooms“quiet dungeon galleries,” she wrote: “Anoticeboard showed us if it was ‘fine,’‘wet’ or ‘windy’ outside, red or green >>AVAILABLE AGAIN! THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHYSupport Hillsdale College in republishing of all past volumes and seven newCompanion volumes. Winston S. Churchill is already the longest biography ever publishedand the ultimate authority for every phase of Churchill’s life.Not only are these books affordable (Biographic volumes $45, Companions $35)but Hillsdale College Press will sell you all eight Biographics for $36 each and alltwenty-one (eventually) Companion Volumes for $28 each by subscription.Better yet, if you subscribe for all thirty volumes, you get the Biographic volumesfor $31.50 and the Companions for $24.50. That includes the upcoming, 1500-pageCompanions to Volume V, first editions of which are trading for up to $1000 each!How can you not afford these books? Order from:www.hillsdale.edu/news/freedomlibrary/churchill.asp or telephone toll-free (800) 437-2268.FINEST HoUR 142 / 11

D AT E L I N E SJOAN BRIGHT ASTLEY...lights if an air raid was ‘on’ or ‘off.’From 1941, she ran, for GeneralSir Hastings Ismay, Churchill’s defencechief, an underground information roomwhere commanders-in-chief could perusevital briefing papers in confidence andseclusion.General Archibald Wavell, whobecame a friend, asked in 1942 thatBright Astley go to India to establish asecretariat on the London model.(Wavell, promoted to Field Marshal, wasappointed Viceroy of India in 1943.)Ismay refused and, in 1943, made her anadministrative officer for the British delegationmeeting the Americans inWashington. By the end of the war shehad attended six conferences, includingthose attended by Roosevelt, Stalin andChurchill at Teheran and Yalta.Accommodation had to bearranged, offices equipped, passes issued.At Yalta she also had to cope with Sovietofficialdom—and snow. On the journeyto Quebec, General Sir Alan Brooke waspeeved at being allocated a train compartmentabove the wheels; WingCommander Guy Gibson complained:“They’ve taken away my name. It’sDambuster here and Dambuster there.”During the final conference at Potsdam,Joan visited the shattered ruins of Hitler’schancellery in Berlin: “In one passagethere were hundreds of new Iron Crossmedals strewn about the floor....a grimand macabre place, its evil spirit hangingover the grim city it had destroyed.”Joan Astley was appointed OBE(Officer of the Most Excellent Order ofthe British Empire) in 1946. She attributedher singular war career to solidtraining, shorthand skills and luck.But she also possessed independence,integrity and a warm and disarmingpersonality. “For Joan,” wrote GeneralIsmay inside her copy of his memoirs,“who was loved by admirals and liftmenalike—and who made a far bigger contributionto the successful working of thedefence machinery than has ever beenrecognised.”In 1949, she married Philip Astley,a retired army officer who was divorcedfrom the actress Madeleine Carroll. Hedied in 1958. Her son, three grandchildrenand a sister survive her.—THE GUARDIANREPRINTED BY KIND PERMISSION, WITHTHANKS TO ALFRED JAMES.GOSLING UP: “Retire to stud?” Churchilllater joked. “And have it said that thePrime Minister of Great Britain is living offthe immoral earnings of a horse?”TOMMY GOSLING1926-2008TREMONT, NORMANDY— Jockey TommyGosling will forever be linked with twoother indefatigables of the 20th Century:Churchill and his battling grey thoroughbred,Colonist II, the most popularEnglish racehorse of the postwar era.The Scottish jockey rode WinstonChurchill’s colt, then a four-year-old, toan astonishing eight victories, six in succession,in the 1950 racing season, to thedelight of WSC and the racing public.(See Fred Glueckstein, “WinstonChurchill and Colonist II,” Finest Hour125, Winter 2004-05).Churchill found himself somewhatin the doldrums as Opposition leader,and in 1949 his son-in-law, ChristopherSoames, persuaded him to try the avocationof thoroughbreds, despite the doubtsof WSC’s wife. Clementine wrote to afriend of “a queer new facet in Winston’svariegated life. I must say I don’t find itmadly amusing.”Churchill forked out £2000 for theFrench-bred thoroughbred and the followingyear, 1950, Churchill’s trainerWalter Nightingall enlisted the grittyGosling, who had been UK joint championapprentice jockey of the year in1945. An injury in 1951 forced the battlinggrey’s early retirement to stud.Some political commentators suggestedthat the horse’s popularity helpedChurchill return to power in 1951, afterhaving suffered a shock defeat to Labourin 1945. Friends thought Colonist II’ssuccess revitalized the Prime Minister,who was 75 when he bought him. Seeingthe great man cheering Colonist homereminded ordinary Britons of his humanside, they believed.Shortly before Gosling died in hisFINEST HoUR 142 / 12retirement home in Normandy, France,he said one of his proudest possessionswas a painting by Churchill, with a noteof appreciation for what the jockey andColonist (“II” had long since beendropped by the general public) had doneto brighten his twilight years. Churchill,a great admirer of the Scottish regimentsduring the war, said he believed theGosling’s will to win had transmitteditself through the saddle to a horse of thesame nature.In 1956, Churchill was one of thefirst to send a message of support toGosling after the jockey’s career almostended in both victory and tragedy on theturf at Leicester Racecourse. He had justwon on a horse called Edison when hewas thrown from the saddle and kickedin the head. There were fears for his lifebut he was back in the saddle withinmonths and his accident was the catalystfor the introduction by the Jockey Club(of which Churchill was by then amember) of mandatory hard hats underthe traditional silk caps.Hounded by weight problems,Gosling retired relatively young in 1963at the age of 37, having won 363 of morethan 3000 races he rode. But he went onto become a successful trainer, based atthe Priam Lodge stables in Epsom, forthe next 20 years.He saddled 129 winners, mostmemorably Ardent Dancer in the 1965Irish 1000 Guineas, his only “classic” winas a trainer. As a rider, he had won thesame race on Lady Senator in 1961, hisone “classic” success in the saddle. In1960, he came third in the last “classic”of the season, the St. Leger at Doncaster,on Churchill’s horse, Vienna.Thomas Gosling was born in thecotton mill village of New Lanark on theriver Clyde on 24 July 1926. Afterworking as a grocers’ message boy and apetrol pump attendant, he followed hisdream of becoming a jockey and wastaken on as an apprentice at Lambourn,Berkshire, known as the “Valley ofHorseracing.” Gosling retired as a trainerin 1983, going first to Dorking, Surrey,then to Trémont, Normandy, where hebred horses until he died on Churchill’sbirthday, aged 82. He is survived by hissecond wife, Valerie (née Vickery), andthree sons.—PHIL DAVISON IN THE FINANCIALTIMES; REPRINTED BY KIND PERMISSION. ,

RIDDLES, MYSTERIES, ENIGMASAChurchill was a hero and iconic figureain America, but in Britain heremained a politician, and as such as notuniformly admired. David Stafford wroteabout the relatively equable view ofChurchill among British citizens in “TrueHumanity,” Finest Hour 140:50.Many believe Churchill was “past it”after the war, or by his second administration(1951-55). Sir Martin Gilbert hasargued convincingly that WSC’s efforts tobuild a permanent peace were not those ofa senile has-been.Douglas Hall in “Churchill theGreat? Why the Vote will not beUnanimous” (Finest Hour 104) noted: “Bytransferring his allegiance from theConservatives to the Liberals and backagain he was successively at odds with all ofthe people for at least some of the time”(www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=822).Some think of Churchill’s lasttwenty years as a coda to his prior life: afterWorld War II, anything would be. The lastten years were a sad time of aging anddecline—but not 1945-55.Churchill began as a scintillatingLeader of the Opposition, one of the mosteffective in postwar history. But the mainthing that engaged his interest was a questfor peace in a troubled age. The “IronCurtain” speech at Fulton in 1946 was adecisive moment; so were his speeches onEuropean reunification at Zurich and TheHague. In the early 1950s, the irony ofEisenhower resisting his proposals for ameeting with Stalin’s successors, and thenimmediately meeting with them once WSChad resigned, is a sad story.Recommended reading: MartinGilbert, Churchill and America for theEisenhower-and-Russians controversies;Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunsetfor the personal side; Anthony Seldon,Churchill’s Indian Summer, for the mostthorough treatment of the 1951-55 premiership;Martin Gilbert, Winston S.Churchill, vol. 8, “Never Despair” 1945-1965 for complete detail on everything.Be careful of Lord Moran’sChurchill: The Struggle for Survival.Past It After 1945?QI’d be interested in your opinion on the final years of WinstonChurchill’s life, from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1965. MyBritish friends think little of them. —Arnold Foster, New York CityMartin Gilbert found that much of whatMoran wrote was not in his diary at thetime. It could only have been made uplater. Jock Colville said: “Lord Moran wasnever present when history was made, buthe was sometimes invited to lunch afterward,”which is perhaps too harsh, butnevertheless succinct.Speaking of Churchill’s health, a verygood but often overlooked piece on his firststroke by Michael Wardell is “Churchill’sDagger: A Memoir of La Capponcina”(winstonchurchill.org, pageid=1225).QaI am an undergraduate composing aapaper in my British literature classabout the influences of Winston Churchill.I have found that he quoted Tennyson in anumber of speeches and writings and amcurious to know if any other authors cometo mind when you think of Churchill.Namely when Churchill himself wrote inreference to particular styles or quotationsof other authors.—ALLISON HAY, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMAAaYou ask a good question. He had noaUniversity training and educatedhimself by devouring books his mother senthim when he was stationed in India in1896-97: all of the above authors alongwith Malthus, Darwin and many more.You will find those books enumerated inour “Action This Day” website page(www.winstonchurchill.org, pageid=176.)You can access many sources on ourwebsite “search” engine. As a boy WSCread Walter Scott, George Alfred Hentyand Robert Louis Stevenson. His chiefinspirations were the King James Bible,Shakespeare, Gibbon, Macaulay, Plato,Darwin and Malthus. If you enter thesewords in “search,” on our home page, youwill be led to numerous references.Poets: right about Tennyson--thereare seven “hits” on our site. Also tryClough, Milton, Keats, Byron, Burns,Blake, Thomas Moore, Emerson, Kipling.Also enter “Kinglake” (AlexanderWilliam Kinglake, 1809–91). When askedhow to excel at writing history, Churchillonce replied, “Read Kinglake.” There areSend your questions to the editorlines in Kinglake’s TheInvasion of the Crimea (1863)which closely prefigureChurchill’s style. In an 1898article on British frontier policy inIndia Churchill wrote: “I shalltake refuge in Kinglake’s celebratedremark, that ‘a scrutiny so minute as tobring a subject under a false angle of visionis a poorer guide to a man’s judgment thanthe most rapid glance that sees things intheir true proportions.’”“Churchill and the Art of theStatesman-Writer,” shows how he strung allthis background together: (winstonchurchill.org,pageid=813).Check the new book of quotations,Churchill by Himself. Many quotes ofthese authors are included in Churchill’sremarks.Finally, Darrell Holley’s Churchill’sLiterary Allusions (MacFarland, 1987) is aninvaluable compendium of hundreds ofChurchill’s sources, organized by subject,including Shakespeare, RomanticLiterature, Victorian Poets, Macaulay, 19thand 20th century literature, etc. There aremany copies on www.bookfinder.co: thecheapest are listed on Amazon. Althoughpricey, this is an important work.Holley’s largest chapter is on theKing James Bible, which he considersChurchill’s “primary source of interestingillustrations, descriptive images, and stirringphrase....For him it is the magnum opus ofWestern civilization.” This is an interestingpoint, because Winston Churchill was nota devout observer. Yet he admired the Biblefor its eternal truths and literary quality.Note: Miss Hays’ paper will shortlyappear in Finest Hour. —Ed.HILLSDALE’SOFFICIAL BIOGRAPHYQaWhy did volume IV of the newedition of Winston S. Churchillchange its title from The Stricken World toWorld in Torment?AThe titles of all volumes in the newaedition, both narrative and document,are determined by Sir MartinGilbert. It was also Martin’s idea to contrivea new and less confusing numberingsystem for the document volumes.—DOUGLAS JEFFREY, EDITOR, HILLSDALECOLLEGE PRESS, HILLSDALE, MICHIGAN ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 13

1 2 5 - 1 0 0 - 7 5 - 5 0 Y E A R S A G O125 YEARS AGO:Spring 1884 • Age 9“Cannot be trusted to behave...”Winston was in what was to be hislast term at St. George’s schooland his record was not improving. Hisreport for March shows the low regard inwhich he was held by the Headmaster:“Diligence. Conduct has been exceedinglybad. He is not to be trusted to doany one thing. He has however notwithstandingmade decided progress. GeneralConduct. Very bad—is a constanttrouble to everybody and is always insome scrape or other. Headmaster’sRemarks. He cannot be trusted to behavehimself anywhere.”By 20 June the Headmaster’sreview was only slightly improved.“General Conduct. Better—but still troublesome.Headmaster’s Remarks. He hasno ambition—if he were really to exerthimself he might yet be first at the end ofthe Term.” Churchill left St. George’s atthe end of the Summer Term in 1884,never to return.100 YEARS AGO:Spring 1909 • Age 34“A mind that has influenced...”In early April 1909, Churchill had asharp exchange of letters with theConservative MP Alfred Lyttelton, whohe believed had publicly accused him ofleaking Cabinet secrets. Lyttelton deniedthe accusation and claimed in a letter toChurchill that newspaper reportsimproperly juxtaposed his comments togive an inaccurate impression. Churchillreplied that Lyttelton’s comments“might, without the sacrifice of any argumentativeadvantage, have been couchedin a more gracious style. Still since itclearly & specifically repudiates anyintention to make a personal chargeagainst the Ministers whose names youmentioned, I express my thanks for it, &my regrets to have put you to anytrouble.” Churchill, however, couldn’tresist a final jab at his formerConservative Party colleagues: “Had itnot been for the sentence to which I havereferred, I should certainly not havewritten to you about your speech. I knowhow hard it is sometimes to find thingsto say....”During this period, Churchill’sletters kept his wife informed in somedetail about parliamentary proceedings.On 27 April 1909, when the bill to raisehis salary as President of the Board ofTrade was under consideration, he wroteto her that “the debate last night was poisonous.”The next night went better: “Iwrite this line from the Bench. The TradeBoards Bill has been beautifully received& will be passed without division.A[rthur] Balfour & Alfred Lyttelton weremost friendly to it, & all opposition hasfaded away.” Then Churchill turned todomestic matters—the library in theirnew home: “You certainly have made amost judicious selection of carpets & Ientirely approve it. I am not quite convincedupon the stained boards in theLibrary—but it does not press. The workis going on vy well. The bookshelves arebeing put in the cases & the colour isbeing most attractively polished.”On 30 May 1909, Churchillattended Army maneuvers with his regimentand, to Clementine, was critical ofwhat he had observed, noting how muchbetter he could have done:I daresay you read in the papers aboutthe Field day. My poor face was roastedlike a chestnut and burns dreadfully.We had an amusing day. There werelots of soldiers & pseudo soldiers gallopingabout, & the 8 regiments ofyeomanry made a brave show. But thefield day was not in my judgment wellcarried out – for on one side theinfantry force was so widely extendedFINEST HoUR 142 / 14by Michael McMenaminthat it could not have been used withany real effect, & on the other themounted men failed to profit by thisdangerous error. These military men vyoften fail altogether to see the simpletruths underlying the relationships ofall armed forces, & how the levers ofpower can be used upon them. Do youknow I would greatly like to have somepractice in the handling of large forces.Later in the same letter, he invitedher to meet his mentor:Bourke Cockran—a great friend ofmine—has just arrived in Englandfrom U.S.A. He is a remarkablefellow—perhaps the finest orator inAmerica, with a gigantic C. J. Foxhead—& a mind that has influencedmy thought in more than one importantdirection. I have asked him tolunch on Friday at H of C & shall goto London that day to get my MoneyResolution on the Trade Boards Bill.But what do you say to coming up too& giving us both (& his pretty youngwife) lunch at Eccleston?75 YEARS AGO:Spring 1934 • Age 59“We might learn something fromyour German friends.”Churchill was preoccupied almost exclusivelyduring the spring of 1934 with theCommittee of Privileges investigationinto the question he had raised againstthe Secretary of State for India, SamuelHoare, and Lord Derby, for improperlypressuring the Manchester Chamber ofCommerce to revise evidence it had submittedto the Joint Select Committee onIndian Constitutional Reform. The bulkof the correspondence for this period in

Winston S. Churchill, CompanionVolume V, Part 2, the official biographyby Sir Martin Gilbert, is concerned withthis subject.Notwithstanding this preoccupation,Churchill gave a speech in theCommons on 14 March, highly criticalof Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’sfailed policy of disarmament:False ideas have been spread about thecountry that disarmament meanspeace. The Disarmament Conferencehas brought us steadily nearer—I willnot say to war because I share therepulsion from using that word, butnearer to a pronounced state of ill-willthan anything that could be imagined.So in the end what have we got? Wehave not got disarmament. We havethe rearmament of Germany.Churchill then went on to explain howan alliance with a France that had disarmed,as the British government hadurged. would have made it more likely toinvolve Britain in a European conflict:Suppose France had taken the advicewhich we have tendered during the lastfour or five years, and had yielded tothe pressure of the two great Englishspeakingnations to set an example ofdisarmament....what would be theposition today? Where should we be?I honour the French for their resolutedetermination to preserve the freedomand security of their country frominvasion of any kind; I earnestly hopethat we, in arranging our forces, shallnot fall below their example....TheRomans had a maxim, “Shorten yourweapons and lengthen your frontiers.”But our maxim seems to be, “Diminishyour weapons and increase your obligations.”Aye, and diminish the weaponsof your friends.On 21 March, Churchill addressedthe necessity of creating a Ministry ofDefense over the three services of theArmy, Navy and the Air Force. Ironically,in doing so, he held up the new Naziregime in Germany as a model to follow:In organizing industry, not only actuallybut prospectively, surely we mightlearn something from our Germanfriends, who are building up anentirely new army and other fightingServices, and who have the advantageof building them up from what iscalled a clean-swept table—starting fairin the respect, unhampered indeed. Ihave been told that they have createdwhat is called a ‘weapon office,’ orWaffenamt, which makes for all thethree arms of the Service which theyare so busily developing. It seems tome that this expression, ‘weaponoffice,’ is pregnant, and that it mightwell enter into and be incorporated inour thought at the present time.During this period, Churchill wasalso adding to his reputation as one ofEngland’s most prolific and well-paidjournalists. A list of his published articlesduring the spring of 1934 demonstratesthe range of his interests:“Singapore—Key to the Pacific,”Pictorial Weekly, 24 March 1934.“Penny-in-the-Slot Politics,”Answers, 31 March 1934.“The Greatest Half-Hour in OurHistory,” Daily Mail,13 April 1934.“Fill Up The Empire!,” PictorialWeekly, 14 April 1934.“Have You A Hobby?,” Answers,21 April 1934.“Let’s Boost Britain,” Answers, 28April 1934.“A Silent Toast To William Willet,”Pictorial Weekly, 28 April 1934. (SeeFinest Hour 114 or our website.)“What’s Wrong with Parliament?,”Answers, 5 May 1934.“This Year’s Royal Academy IsExhilarating,.” Daily Mail, 16 May 1934.“Great Deeds that Gave Us theEmpire,” Daily Mail, 24 May 1934.50 YEARS AGO:Spring 1959 • Age 84“The President is a real friend”Churchill made plans to visit America.His private secretary, AnthonyMontague Browne, wrote to BernardBaruch: “I should tell you for yourstrictly private information that SirWinston has not been very well, and wewere in doubt as to whether he shouldgo. However, he is determined to visitAmerica again, so that is that! I knowthat you will safeguard him from fatigueas much as possible.”From Washington, Churchill wroteto his wife on 5 May:Here I am. All goes well & the Presidentis a real friend. We had a most pleasantdinner last night, & I caught up myarrears of sleep in eleven hours. I amFINEST HoUR 142 / 15Churchill, Montague Browne and PresidentEisenhower, May 1959.invited to stay in bed all the morning &am going to see Mr. Dulles afterluncheon. Anthony will send you morenews. I send my fondest love darling.The visit went well and, in a report tothe Foreign Office, Montague Brownewrote: that during the three days spent inthe White House Eisenhower showed anaffectionate care and consideration for SirWinston and spent a great deal of timewith him: “He looked well and seemedalert. He said that he is troubled by deafness,but this was not apparent.”Montague Brown continued:His working day seems to be fromabout half-past eight in the morninguntil luncheon. In the afternoon, whenhe was not with Sir Winston, heseemed either to be resting or takinglight exercise.The President spoke with what seemedrelief of the approach of the end of histenure. I do not think that this wasassumed. In general he seemed ratherless than optimistic….At one point heconcluded his remarks about the futureof NATO with approximately thesewords: ‘The big question is, will theWest have the endurance and thetenacity and the courage to keep upthe struggle long enough?’ (Mr.McElroy spoke in rather similar termsto Sir Winston and hinted to him thatGreat Britain was not pulling itsweight in defence matters. I did nothear this conversation, but Sir Winstonsaid that the sense of it was quiteclear.)To sum up, the President seemedrelaxed, healthy and following a régimethat was light enough to keep him so.His outlook seemed on the melancholyside, and it did not appear that hismind was receptive to ideas differingfrom those he already held. ,

GREAT CONTEMPORARIESCHARTWELL, 19 SEPTEMBER 1931. From left: Mr. Punch, Mary Churchill’s pug (known for “committingindiscretions” on the carpet), The Hon Tom Mitford, Clementine’s cousin and great friend of Diana and Randolph, the onlybrother of the Mitford sisters, killed in Burma in 1945; Freddie Birkenhead (Second Earl of Birkenhead) who hadsucceeded his father, Churchill’s best friend, the previous year and became a historian and his father’sbiographer; Winston Churchill; Clementine Churchill (then aged 46), Diana (22), Randolph (20), Charlie Chaplin (46).Churchill and ChaplinA PERFECT COMBINATION OR THE ORIGINAL ODD COUPLE?CHAPLIN FIRST THOUGHT CHURCHILL ABRUPT, BUT AFTER A DEBATE ABOUT THENEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT THEY STAYED UP TALKING UNTIL 3 AM.CHURCHILL THOUGHT CHAPLIN “BOLSHY IN POLITICS & DELIGHTFUL INCONVERSATION,” AND WAS CERTAIN HE SHOULD PLAY THE LEAD IN THE NEXT FILMABOUT NAPOLEON—AND IF HE WOULD, WSC PROMISED TO WRITE THE SCRIPT.BRADLEY P. TOLPPANENMr. Tolppanen (bptolppanen@eiu.edu) is a librarian and history bibliographer at Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois.FINEST HoUR 142 / 16

On 14 December 1940, as Britain struggled aloneagainst a triumphant Nazi Germany, the BritishPrime Minister briefly set aside his heavyresponsibilities to watch “The Great Dictator”with his family and advisers. They were atDitchley Park, Oxfordshire, placed at his disposal by itsowner, Ronald Tree MP, on nights when the full moonmade Chequers, the PM’s official country house inBuckinghamshire, too inviting a target.An avid film lover, Churchill enjoyed this pre-releaseviewing of a production that not only lampooned Hitlerbut starred and was directed by his friend CharlieChaplin. He laughed through it, especially the scenewhere two dictators threw food at each other. It ended,and he returned to his immense workload, composinganother secret cable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1Churchill had met Chaplin over a decade earlier,during WSC’s tour of North America, shortly after theConservatives had been defeated in the 1929 election andChurchill had resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer.Despite sharp political differences, he and Chaplin hadcome to admire and appreciate each others’ qualities, andChaplin had twice been Churchill’s guest at Chartwell.Churchill in 1929 was a world renowned soldier,war correspondent, historian, author, journalist andMember of Parliament, not to mention painter, bricklayerand traveler. Accompanying him on his trip were his 18-year old son Randolph, his brother Jack, and his20-year-old nephew Johnny. WSC dubbed the party the“Churchill Troupe.”Welcoming them in Los Angeles was newspapermagnate William Randolph Hearst, their host in southernCalifornia. Hearst introduced the Churchills to the city’sfilm industry, which Winston later called “a strange andan amusing world.” 2 They attended receptions in theirhonor, toured movie studios, and met several film stars,including the actress Marion Davies, Hearst’s long-timemistress and a former chorus-girl.Davies, whose parties were legendary, quicklyarranged for the Churchills to be entertained at a starstuddedfestivity. It was probably she who convinced herclose friend Charlie Chaplin to come; the other celebritieswere delivered by Hearst, who had told Randolph andJohnny to prepare a list of all the stars they wished to meetand leave it to him. The only notable to elude him was thereclusive Greta Garbo. 3On September 21st, after a day of touring LosAngeles, the “Churchill Troupe” motored north to OceanHouse, Davies’ opulent mansion in Santa Monica. Hearsthad spent $7,000,000 expanding the villa to 110 rooms,importing furnishings from European castles. 4 Eighteencolumns lined its beach façade, prompting Chaplin toquip that there were “more columns than the SupremeCourt building.” An impressed Churchill called it a“palace on the ocean.” 5After bathing in Davies’ heated Italian marble swimmingpool, Winston and his party dressed for dinner withsixty glitterati, including Mary Brian, Billie Dove, BessieLove, Bebe Daniels, Dorothy Mackaill, Wallace Beery,Harold Lloyd and Pola Negri. 6 The most famous guestwas certainly Chaplin. After a Dickensian childhood inLondon he had built a long career as a comedian and filmmaker,and was declared by some newspapers the mostfamous figure in the world, known to millions throughhis unforgettable performances as the “Little Tramp.”Chaplin was milling about with other guests whenChurchill arrived, accompanied by Hearst. Chaplinrecalled the future prime minister standing apart,“Napoleon-like with his hand in his waistcoat” as hewatched the dancing. 7 He seemed lost and out of place, soHearst waved Chaplin over and introduced him to theEnglish statesman.At first Chaplin found Churchill abrupt in manner,but when he started talking about Britain’s new Labourgovernment Churchill brightened. “What I don’t understandis that in England the election of a socialistgovernment does not alter the status of a King andQueen,” Chaplin remarked.“Of course not,” Churchill replied with a quickglance that Chaplin thought “humorously challenging.”“I thought socialists were opposed to a monarchy,”Chaplin persisted.“If you were in England we’d cut your head off forthat remark,” Churchill countered with a laugh. 8The dinner party was a great success. Davies persuadedChaplin to join her in impersonations. She didSarah Bernhardt and Lillian Gish, he played Napoleon,Uriah Heep, Henry Irving, and John Barrymore asHamlet. 9 The Davies-Chaplin duo then performed acomplicated dance, during which Johnny Churchillnoticed that Charlie’s feet were small enough to fit intoMarion’s shoes. 10In a sure sign of favor, Churchill kept Chaplin upuntil three in the morning. He wanted Chaplin to take onthe role of a young Napoleon as his next film; if Chaplinwould do it, Churchill promised to write the script.“You must do it,” Churchill pressed, describing theopportunities the role presented for drama and comedy.“Think of its possibilities for humour. Napoleon in hisbathtub arguing with his imperious brother who’s alldressed up, bedecked in gold braid, and using this opportunityto place Napoleon in a position of inferiority. ButNapoleon, in his rage, deliberately splashes water over hisbrother’s fine uniform and he has to exit ignominiouslyfrom him. This is not alone clever psychology. It is actionand fun.” 11Randolph Churchill had not immediately recognizedChaplin, but wrote in his diary that the actor was“absolutely superb and enchanted everyone.” 12 Chaplin inturn was impressed by Randolph’s father, who he >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 17

GREAT CONTEMPORARIESSUNSET BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES, 24 SEPTEMBER 1929: Chaplin played host to Winston, Jack, Randolph and Johnny Churchill athis studio, where he presented three private film showings including the rushes for Chaplin’s upcoming silent film “City Lights.” The greatactor hoped that the silent film was not dead; Churchill said that if anybody could keep it alive it was Charlie Chaplin.CHURCHILL AND CHAPLIN...thought dynamic with “a thirst for accomplishment” aswell as a wonderful talker who could “rattle off brilliantepigrams.” 13Chaplin met Churchill several more times duringthe visit to Los Angeles, including an evening when hedined with the Churchills in their suite at the BiltmoreHotel. The actor spent a delightful evening listening toWinston and Randolph pleasantly bantering. 14On September 24th, Chaplin hosted the Churchillparty at his studio at Sunset Boulevard and La BreaAvenue. After lunch, Chaplin showed them around andprovided a private screening of his 1918 film “ShoulderArms,” one of his great movies, followed by the rushes forhis upcoming silent classic, “City Lights.” 15Churchill and Chaplin discussed the revolution inprogress by the introduction of “talkies.” Chaplinacknowledged the popularity of the new form but wasunwilling to concede the demise of the silent film, whichhe called the true “genius of drama.” 16 Churchill said“City Lights” was Chaplin’s attempt to prove silent filmssuperior to talkies, and predicted an “easy victory” for theproduction. 17“City Lights” was followed by film from Chaplin’sarchives that had never been produced. JohnnyChurchill, in his memoirs, described one scene consideredparticularly unsuitable. Chaplin had wanted to filmthe rapid harnessing of a horse-drawn fire engine, butfound that putting a harness on a horse took too muchtime; so he filmed the harness being taken off (a quickerprocess), intending then to reverse the film. Alas thehorse relieved itself while the scene was being filmed,and when the footage was reversed Johnny saw “thehorse’s matter” leap off the ground and disappear backinside the animal! 18That evening the Churchills and Chaplin accompaniedMarion Davies to the premiere of “Cock-EyedWorld” at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where a crowdincluding an array of film stars had gathered for hours.The hoopla did not prevent Randolph Churchill fromloudly denouncing the film as the worst he had ever seen.Davies apparently forgave him, hosting a dinner at theRoosevelt Hotel where sherry and champagne were serveddespite the strictures of Prohibition. 19A few days later, after leaving Los Angeles, Churchillrecounted his, Randolph’s and Johnny’s fascination withChaplin: “a marvelous comedian—bolshy in politics &delightful in conversation.”(Although a common enoughexpression, this is the only occurrence of “bolshy” inChurchill’s 15 million published words.) 20FINEST HoUR 142 / 18

In February 1931 Chaplin came to England for thepremiere of “City Lights,” the first leg of a worldtour. Welcomed by excited crowds, he met a hostof public figures, and lunched at Chequers withLabour Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald. 21Inevitably Chaplin was invited to Chartwell, onFebruary 25th; Churchill asked his onetime ParliamentaryPrivate Secretary Robert Boothby MP, to accompany theactor from London. 22 Chaplin was accompanied by hisfriend Ralph Barton, an artist and cartoonist who hadjoined him for the early part of his tour.They arrived on a bitterly cold evening, but Chaplinthought Chartwell a beautiful country residence, “modestlyfurnished, but in good taste with a family feelingabout it.” 23 He bathed and dressed in Churchill’s ownbedroom, noticing that it was piled high with papers andhad books stacked against every wall. Among the volumeswere a set of Plutarch’s Lives, the Parliamentary Debates(Hansard), and several books on Napoleon. Chaplin mentionedthe latter to Churchill, who replied, “Yes. I am agreat admirer of his.” 24 Probably they again discussedChaplin’s prospective role as the young Emperor, thoughChurchill never wrote the script, which he had hoped todo for the producer Alexander Korda.Along with Boothby, Churchill had invited BrendanBracken, another young MP and loyal follower. ThoughClementine Churchill was away, Winston’s brother Jackand nephew Johnny were on hand, along with two ofWinston’s daughters: 21-year-old Diana and eight-yearoldMary, who was allowed to stay up for the occasion bywhat WSC termed a “special arrangement.” 25The evening had a difficult start when Chaplinremarked that Britain’s return to the Gold Standard in1925 (under Churchill as Chancellor) had been a greatmistake, and then launched into a long soliloquy whichJohnny Churchill deemed “pacifist and communist.” 26Winston fell into a moody silence and Johnny felt badlyfor Chaplin.But the actor was himself no mean judge of humanreactions. Suddenly changing course, he began toperform. Sticking forks into two bread rolls, he did adance from his film “Gold Rush”; the ice melted,everyone relaxed, and an enjoyable dinner ensued. 27Chaplin thought the evening “dialectic,” as Churchillharangued his guests with humor and wit.In a momentary lapse back into contentious subjects,Bracken declared Gandhi a “menace” to the peace inIndia. Chaplin replied forcefully that “Gandhis or Lenins”do not start revolutions, but are forced up by the massesand usually voice the want of a people. (Later in the year,Chapin would visit Gandhi in London.)“You should run for Parliament,” Churchill saidwith a laugh.“No, sir, I prefer to be a motion picture actor thesedays,” Chaplin replied. “However, I believe we should gowith evolution to avoid revolution, and there’s every evidencethat the world needs a drastic change.” He laternoted that both he and Churchill were all for progressivegovernment, and that even Churchill believed much hadto be done to preserve civilization and guide it safely backto normal after the Depression ended. 28To his wife, Churchill wrote that Chaplin had been“most agreeable” and had performed “various drolltricks.” Both Churchill daughters enjoyed the actor’s performances,young Mary being “absolutely thrilled.” 29Two nights later Chaplin premiered “City Lights” inLondon at the Dominion Theatre. Churchill probably didnot attend the film, but was present at a party for 200guests afterwards at the Carlton Hotel. Here Churchillproposed the toast, saying Chaplin was “a lad from acrossthe river” who had “achieved the world’s affection.”Speaking in reply, Chaplin stumbled by referring toChurchill as “my friend, the late Chancellor of theExchequer.” Churchill laughed: “The late, the late! I likethat—the late.” Embarrassed, Chaplin replied: “Pardonme. I mean the Ex—the Ex-Chancellor of theExchequer.” Amid laughs he started over again with themore appropriate, “My friend, Mr. Winston Churchill.” 30Eric Whelpton, a Conservative back-bencher, told awhimsical story that must have occurred during Chaplin’sLondon visit. He was approaching the St. Stephen’s >>CARLTON HOTEL, 27 FEBRUARY 1931: Churchill toasts Chaplin(seated) as “a lad from across the river” who had “achieved the world’saffection” following the premiere of “City Lights.” Seated next to Chaplin(at left in photo) was his co-star Virginia Cherrill. Flustered by WSC’spraise, Chaplin thanked “the late Chancellor of the Exchequer.”FINEST HoUR 142 / 19

GREAT CONTEMPORARIESCHURCHILL AND CHAPLIN...entrance to Parliament when he was approached by aninteresting trio, arms linked. Churchill was in the centre,Chaplin on one flank and Bracken on the other.“Apparently oblivious of bystanders, they were in highspirits, as if someone had just told a droll story,” wrote aBracken biographer.Whelpton, who had been with Bracken at theirpublic school, Sedbergh, smiled across in recognition asthe trio sauntered past. “It was then that the unexpectedhappened. Without releasing his arm from Churchill’s,Bracken looked across at Whelpton and said tersely andwithout a hint of amusement, ‘I don’t wish to know you,so kindly bugger off.’”Evidently Bracken, the arch-Conservative, hadfallen like Churchill for Chaplin’s charms. Whelptondined out on that story for weeks. 31From London, Charlie Chaplin made a triumphaltour across Europe, opening “City Lights” to enthusiasticcrowds in Vienna, Berlin and Paris. He probably met andlunched with Churchill at Biarritz in August, whereChurchill had arrived on a research trip for his biographyof John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough.The following month, with both of them back inEngland, Chaplin again visited Chartwell, probablyarriving on Friday, September 18th, and staying throughSunday. Clementine was present, along with all their children.Bracken, Winston’s brother Jack, the young LordBirkenhead, Tom Mitford, Venetia Montagu, RudolfKommer, and Gabrielle L’Honore also signed the visitorsbook. 32 Sarah Churchill said she and her siblings were surprisedby the actor’s appearance: a “rather good-looking,desperately serious man with almost white hair.” 33At lunch that weekend Churchill attempted to talkabout films and acting, but Chaplin was again eager todiscuss politics, a disappointment to the others atChurchill’s so-often-political table. Eventually WSCasked what Chaplin’s next role would be. “Jesus Christ,”Chaplin replied with all seriousness.After a pause Churchill asked, “Have you clearedthe rights?” There was a silent pause before Clementinereturned the conversation to politics. 34Chaplin was amused by Churchill’s family sittingunmoved at the table while WSC held forth, despite beinginterrupted by telephone calls from Lord Beaverbrook,and other demands. 35During the visit, Chaplin expressed interest inChurchill’s hobbies, painting and bricklaying. Examiningone of his host’s paintings over the fireplace in the diningroom, Chaplin said, “But how remarkable.” Churchillreplied: “Nothing to it—saw a man painting a landscapein the South of France and said, ‘I can do that.’” 36On a stroll along the brick walls Churchill had constructed,Chaplin remarked that bricklaying must be“Then there was the great daywhen Charlie Chaplin arrived. Wechildren adored his films, and were ina fever of excitement....Just as hewas about to leave he said: ‘Is there awalking stick?’—’Yes,’ we said andpointed to the hall cupboard. He disappearedinto it and emerged with abowler hat and a stick. In a twinklingof an eye there was the little figurethat had endeared itself to us and tomillions all over the world. And thiswasn’t the only thing he did, he gavesome very amusing mimicry of otheractors. The day was made for us“and we were sorry to see him go.—Sarah ChurchillA Thread in the TapestryNew York: Dodd Mead, 1967difficult. “I’ll show you how and you’ll do it in fiveminutes,” said his host. And he did.Just before Chaplin left, he asked, “Is there aFINEST HoUR 142 / 20

walking stick?” He was directed to a cupboard, only toemerge moments later with a bowler hat and stick,instantly transformed from the serious guest to theendearing “Little Tramp.” His “enchanting performance”impersonating other actors included his John Barrymorein Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be”—while picking hisnose! “The day was made for us,” Sarah wrote, “and wewere sorry to see him go.” 37Chaplin, who had really come to know Churchill onthis visit, concluded that WSC had charming family, livedwell and had more fun than most people. Although polesapart politically, Chaplin considered him a “sincerepatriot” who had played for the highest stakes and hadsometimes won, though his friend’s political future was atthat time doubtful.That weekend visit was the last substantial meetingbetween Churchill and Chaplin. They remained friendly,but at a distance. In 1932 Chaplin joined Bracken andother Churchill friends in contributing to a gift for WSCafter his car injury in New York City: a new Daimler,which had cost £2000, and presented to Churchill uponhis return from America. 38Churchill made use of his personal knowledge topen an article on Chaplin in 1935, writing of the actor’sfilm-making brilliance. 39 The following year RandolphChurchill visited Hollywood and had tea with Chaplinand Paulette Goddard. They had long been rumored to besecretly married and Randolph was apparently given permissionto reveal this was indeed true. The scoop wastransmitted worldwide with Randolph Churchill’s nameattached. Randolph’s sister, Sarah became an actressherself, and visited Chaplin after World War II. 40A final, brief meeting between Chaplin andChurchill occurred on 25 April 1956, after Churchill hadretired and Chaplin was living in Switzerland, havingbeen barred from reentering the United States at theheight of the McCarthy era in 1952. They met at theSavoy Grill in London: a rather strained encounter,Chaplin said, because he had failed to respond to a letterChurchill had sent congratulating him on his film“Limelight” two years before.Chaplin told WSC he thought his letter wascharming but did not think it required a reply. Somewhatmollified, Churchill accepted his explanation, adding, “…I always enjoy your pictures.” 41Endnotes1. John Colville, The Fringes of Power, 2 vols.(Sevenoaks, Kent: Sceptre Publishing, 1986-87), I: 375.2. Winston S. Churchill, “Peter Pan Township ofthe Films,” Daily Telegraph, 30 December 1929, 8.3. John Spencer Churchill, A Churchill Canvas(Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), 90.4. Anne Edwards, “Marion Davies’ Ocean House,”Architectural Digest 51:4, April 1994, 171-72.5. Martin Gilbert, editor,Winston S. Churchill,Companion Volume V Part 2, The Wilderness Years1929-1935 (London: Heinemann, Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1981), 97.6. Randolph S. Churchill, Twenty-One Years(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 89. John SpencerChurchill, 91.7. Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography (New York:Simon and Schuster, 1964), 339.8. Ibid. 339.9. Randolph S. Churchill, 89-90.10. John Spencer Churchill, 91.11. Charles Chaplin, “A Comedian Sees theWorld,” Woman’s Home Companion, 60:10, October1933, 15.12. Randolph S. Churchill, 90.13. Chaplin, “A Comedian Sees the World,” 15.14. Chaplin, My Autobiography, 340.15. Randolph S. Churchill, 90.16. Winston Churchill, “Peter Pan Township,” 8.17. Gilbert, 97.18. John Spencer Churchill, 92-93.19. Randolph Churchill, 90.20. Richard M. Langworth, Churchill by Himself(London: Ebury Press, 2008), 331.21. “Mr. Charles Chaplin: A Visit To Chequers,”The Times, 23 February 1931, 9.22. Robert Boothby, Recollections of a Rebel(London: Hutchinson, 1978), 51.23. Chaplin, My Autobiography, 340.24. Ibid. 341.25. Gilbert, 282.26. Boothby, 51. John Spencer Churchill, 133.27. Boothby, 51.28. Chaplin, “A Comedian Sees the World,” 15.29. Gilbert, 282.30. Chaplin, “A Comedian Sees the World,” 15.31. Andrew Boyle, Poor, Dear Brendan (London:Hutchinson, 1974), 174.32. Chartwell Visitors Book.33. Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1967), 35.34. Ibid. 35.35. Chaplin, My Autobiography, 341.36. Ibid. 340.37. Sarah Churchill, A Thread in the Tapestry, 35-36.38. Gilbert, 394.39. Winston S. Churchill, “Everybody’s Language,”Collier’s, 26 October 1935, 24.40. “Randolph Churchill Says Chaplin is Wed,”The New York Times, 11 November 1936, 55. SarahChurchill, Keep on Dancing: An Autobiography(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), 130.41. Chaplin, My Autobiography, 484. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 21

FROM THE CANONIn a room in St. Thomas’Hospital, London, aman lay dying. He hadhad a good life—a fulllife. He had been afavourite in the music halls.He had tasted the triumphsof the stage. He had won ameasure of fame as a singer.His home life had beenhappy. And now death hadcome for him. While he wasyet in the prime of manhood,with success still sweet in hismouth, the curtain wasfalling—and forever.The other windows ofthe hospital were dark. In thisone alone a light burned. Andbelow it, outside in the darkness,shivering with cold andnumbed with fear, a childstood sobbing. He had beentold that there was no hope,but his wild heart prayed forthe miracle that could nothappen, even while he waitedfor the light to go out and thecompassionate hesitationsthat would tell him his fatherEverybody’s Language“HAD THEIR PRODUCERS AND STARS LEARNED FROM CHAPLIN AND THEEUROPEANS, THE SILENT SCREEN MIGHT HAVE DEFIED THE TALKIES.PANTOMIME IS THE TRUE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.WINSTON S. CHURCHILLwas no more. The dying man and the child outside thewindow both bore the same name—Charles Chaplin.Destiny shifts us here and there upon the chequerboardof life, and we know not the purpose behind themoves. His father’s death brought a safe, comfortable worldFirst published in Collier’s, 26 October, 1935; later published as “HeHas Made the Whole World Richer” (Sunday Chronicle, London, 9February, 1936); and “Chaplin—The Man Who Has Made the WorldRich with Laughter” (Screen Pictorial, May 1936). Reprinted by kindpermission of Winston S. Churchill. Cohen C480.crashing about Charlie Chaplin’s head, and plunged hismother, his brother and himself into poverty. But poverty isnot a life sentence. It is a challenge. To some it is more—it isan opportunity. It was so to this child of the theatre. In thekaleidoscopic life of London’s mean streets he found tragedyand comedy—and learned that their springs lie side by side.He knew the problems of the poor, not from the aloofangle of the social investigator, but at first hand. They werehis mother’s problems—and his own. But the very struggleof life gave a new zest to common things. And upon themargin of subsistence human nature has few reticences. ItFINEST HoUR 142 / 22

eveals itself far more clearly and fully than in more shelteredsurroundings. So daily Charlie’s keen eyes noted somenew aspect of the exposed expanse of life around him.In somewhat similar circumstances, many years before,another boy had found, amid the rank luxuriance ofLondon life, a key to fame and fortune. He also had beendesperately poor. He also had missed much that should bethe birthright of every child. But the alchemy of geniustransmuted bitterness and suffering into the gold of greatliterature and gave us the novels of Charles Dickens.Between these two there is, I think, an essential similarity.Both knew hardness in childhood. Both made theirmisfortunes stepping-stones to success. They developedalong different lines, chose different mediums of expression,but both quarried in the same rich mine of commonlife and found there treasure of laughter and drama for thedelight of all mankind.Mark Twain, left fatherless at twelve, had substantiallythe same experience, though in a different setting. Hewould never have written Huckleberry Finn had life beenkinder in his youth. So we need not regret the shadows thatfell over Charlie Chaplin’s early life. Without them his giftsmight have shone less brightly, and the whole world wouldhave been poorer. Genius is essentially a hardy plant. Itthrives in the east wind. It withers in a hothouse. That is, Ibelieve, true in every walk of life.The reason the historic English families have producedso many men of distinction is that, on the whole,they have borne great responsibilities rather than enjoyedgreat wealth. Their younger sons, especially, have usuallyhad to make their own way in the world, to stand on theirown feet, to rely on their own merits and their own efforts.I am glad that I had to earn my living from the time that Iwas a young man. Had I been born heir to millions Ishould certainly have had a less interesting life.Naturally and inevitably, once school days were over,the youthful Charlie Chaplin found his way on to thestage. And when he was twenty-one he signed a contractwhich took him to the United States and Canada with theFred Karno Comedy Company. This American tour was, insome ways, as important to the development of theChaplin that we know as were his early days in London. Itwas one of the great formative experiences of his career. Wein England like to think of Charlie Chaplin as anEnglishman, but America gave a new direction, a new edgeto his quality. It opened to him new fields of character andcircumstance.Twenty-five years ago, when the young actor crossedthe Atlantic, life in the States was more fluid than inEngland—more fluid perhaps than it is today. Its formshad not set. Personalities were more important than conventions.Democracy was not only a political institutionbut a social fact. Class distinctions mattered comparativelylittle when the hired hand of today was so often theemployer of tomorrow, and the majority of professionalmen had paid for their university training with the work oftheir hands.Tramps and HobosEven poverty wore a different face in America. It wasnot the bitter, grinding destitution Charlie had encounteredin the London slums and which has now, thanks tothe extension of social services, largely disappeared. Inmany cases it was a poverty deliberately chosen, rather thanimposed from without.Every cinema-goer is familiar with the Chaplintramps, but I wonder how many of them have reflectedhow characteristically American are these homeless wanderers.In the dwindling ranks of the English tramps onefinds all sorts of people—from varsity graduate whosecareer has ended in ruin and disgrace, to the half-imbecileilliterate who has been unemployable since boyhood. Butthey all have one thing in common—they belong to thegreat army of the defeated. They still maintain the pretenceof looking for work—but they do not expect to find it.They are spiritless and hopeless.The American hobo of the early 1900s was of anentirely different type. Often he was not so much anoutcast from society as a rebel against it. He could notsettle down, either in a home or a job. He hated theroutine of regular employment and loved the changes andchances of the road. Behind his wanderings was somethingof the old adventurous urge that sent the covered wagonslumbering across the prairie towards the sunset.There were also upon the highways of America, inthe days of prosperity, many men who were not tramps atall in the ordinary sense of the term. They were travellingcraftsmen, who would work in one place for a few weeks ormonths, and then move on to look for another job elsewhere.Even today, when work is no longer easy to secure,the American wanderer still refuses to acknowledge defeat.That indomitable spirit is an integral part of the make-upof the screen Charlie Chaplin. His portrayal of theunderdog is definitely American rather than British. TheEnglish working man has courage in plenty, but thosewhom prolonged unemployment has forced on the road arenowadays usually broke and despairing. The Chaplin tramphas a quality of defiance and disdain.But the American scene as a whole has influencedChaplin—its variety, its colour, its animation, its strangeand spectacular contrasts. And the States did more thanthis for the little English actor; they provided the opportunityfor which, without knowing it, he had been waiting.They introduced him to the ideal medium for his genius,the motion picture.The BreakIt was a sultry day in July, 1913. A bored filmmagnate, Mr. A. Kessel, was strolling along Broadway.Pausing at Hammerstein’s Music Hall to chat with themanager, he heard roar upon roar of laughter. The soundinterested him. It had been a long time since anyone hadmade him laugh. “I expect it’s that young Chaplin that’scausing the cackle,” said the manager. “He’s pretty good.” >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 23

FROM THE CANONEVERYBODY’S LANGUAGE....So in went Mr Kessel to see the Fred Karno ComedyCompany perform “A Night in a London Music Hall” andto investigate young Chaplin.Soon he was laughing with the rest of the audience.But when Mr. Kessel laughed in a place of public entertainment,his mirth meant business. Round he went to theback, was ushered into Chaplin’s tiny dressing-room, andat once proceeded to offer the Englishman seventy-fivedollars a week to play in Keystone comedies. It was moremoney than he had ever earned before, but Charlie said“No.” That only made Mr. Kessel more determined. Heraised his bid to one hundred dollars a week. Still Charliesaid “No.” For the moment the film magnate left it at that.But now he was no longer bored. He had a new interest inlife. He wanted Chaplin.Presently he returned to the attack. This time hisoffer was one hundred and fifty dollars. Charlie still hesitated,but in the end he accepted. And so to Hollywoodand the beginning of the most astounding career in cinemahistory.The Chaplin PersonaIt is Mr. Chaplin’s dream to play tragic roles as well ascomic ones. The man whose glorious fooling made“Shoulder Arms” a favourite with war-weary veterans of thetrenches wants to re-interpret Napoleon to the world. Thereare other characters, as far removed from those in which hewon pre-eminence, which he desires to portray. Those whosmile at these ambitions have not appreciated Chaplin’sgenius at its true worth. No mere clown, however brilliant,could ever have captured so completely the affections of thegreat public. He owes his unrivalled position as a star to thefact that he is a great actor, who can tug at our heartstringsas surely as he compels our laughter. There are moments, insome of his films, of an almost unbearable poignancy.It is a great achievement, and one possible only to aconsummate actor, to command at once tears and laughter.But it is the laughter which predominates, and Mr. Chaplinis perfectly right in desiring an opportunity of playingstraight tragedy. Until he does so, his pathos will beregarded as merely a by-product of his toothbrush moustacheand the ludicrous Chaplin walk.I believe that, had it not been for the coming of thetalkies, we would already have seen this great star in aserious role. He is the one figure of the old silent screen towhom the triumph of the spoken word has meant neitherspeech nor extinction. He relies, as of old, upon a pantomimethat is more expressive than talk. But while thesilence of Charlie Chaplin has lost none of its formermagic, would Mr. Charles Chaplin, in a role of a kindcompletely unfamiliar to his audiences, and of which theywould almost certainly be highly critical, be able to “getaway with it”?Frankly, I do not wonder that he hesitates, just as hedid when Mr. Kessel offered him his first film contract. Buthe would be taking no greater risk now than he did then.SCREEN PICTORIAL, MAY 1936 (COHEN C380c): Last periodicalappearance prior to Finest Hour, unknown until publication ofRonald Cohen’s Churchill bibliography. R.I. Cohen collection.So I do not think that he will hesitate forever. Pantomime,of which he is a master, is capable of expressing everyemotion, of communicating the subtlest shades of meaning.A man who can act with his whole body has no need ofwords, whatever part he plays.It is the supreme achievement of Mr. Chaplin that hehas revived in modern times one of the great arts of theancient world—an art the secret of which was as completelyand, apparently, as irrevocably lost as that of thoseglowing colours, fresh and vivid today as when they werefirst applied, which were the glory of the van Eycks.The golden age of pantomime was under the earlyCaesars. Augustus himself, the first of the Romanemperors, is sometimes credited with its invention. Neropracticed it, as he wrote poetry, as a relaxation from themore serious pursuits of lust, incendiarism and gluttony.But the greatest pantomimes—the name in Ancient Romedenoted the performers, and not the art of which they werethe exponents—gave their whole lives to acting in dumbshow, till they had mastered the last potentialities of expressionin movement and gesture.When Christianity triumphed, the pantomimes fled.FINEST HoUR 142 / 24

Their favourite subjects were too frankly physical for theFathers of the Church, and they were not sufficientlyadaptable to seek new ones in the shadow of the Cross. Butthe subjects were there, had they realized it. Chaplinshowed that in “The Pilgrim.” You remember the sequencein which, as an escaped convict disguised in clerical attire,he finds himself in the pulpit, and tells the story of Davidand Goliath? It is a wonderful piece of miming, in whichwe follow every detail of the drama.Pantomime RevivalIt was by accident that Chaplin rediscovered the artwhich, 1900 years ago, cast its spell over the City of theSeven Hills. As a youth he was a member of a varietycompany touring the Channel Islands, home of a sturdyrace to whom the King of England is still the Duke ofNormandy. The islanders, speaking mainly the Norman-French patois of their ancestors, could not understand theCockney phrases of the players, whose best jokes fell flat.At last, in desperation, the company decided to try toget their effects by action and gesture. A single performanceunder the new conditions revealed Charles as a mime ofgenius and also showed him how powerful was the spellwhich this acting without words could cast over an audience.From that time he developed his natural gift for pantomimicexpression and so unconsciously prepared himself for the daywhen the whole world should be his audience.But the full flowering of his art came only after hewas launched on his film career. He adapted his techniqueto the cinema and as he grew to appreciate at once the limitationsand the possibilities of the screen, his mastery ofthe new mode of acting was perfected. He had realizedthat, as he himself had put it, “People can be moved moreintensely by a gesture than by a voice.”American films generally were then in a highlyfavourable position. They were simpler, more direct thanthe best of the continental pictures, and consequently metthe needs of a far wider audience. Had their producers andstars learned from Chaplin and the Europeans, the silentscreen might have defied the talkies. The sound picturewould have come just the same, but it would not havescooped the pool.If we are ever to realize to the full the art of thecinema, I believe that it may be necessary deliberately tolimit the mechanical aids we now employ so freely. I shouldlike to see films without voices being made once more, butthis time by producers who are alive to the potentialities ofpantomime. Such pictures would be worth making, if onlyfor this reason, that the audience for a talkie is necessarilylimited by the factor of language, while the silent film cantell its story to the whole of the human race. Pantomime isthe true universal tongue.There are thousands of cinemas throughout the worldwhich have never been wired for sound, and which constitutea market for non-talking pictures. Nor is it safe toassume that this is a shrinking market. There are manycountries which lack the resources to make their own“IF WE ARE EVER TO REALIZE TO THEFULL THE ART OF THE CINEMA, IBELIEVE THAT IT MAY BE NECESSARYDELIBERATELY TO LIMIT THE MECHANI-CAL AIDS WE NOW EMPLOY SOFREELY....THE AUDIENCE FOR A TALKIEIS NECESASRILY LIMITED BY THEFACTOR OF LANGUAGE.”talkies. There are millions of people whose mother tonguewill never be heard in any cinema and who understandthoroughly no other speech. As the standard of life risesthroughout Asia and Africa, new cinemas will be built anda new film public will be created—a public which can beserved most effectively by means of pantomime.The English-speaking nations have here a greatopportunity—and a great responsibility. The primitivemind thinks more easily in pictures than in words. Thething seen means more than the thing heard. The filmswhich are shown amid the stillness of the African tropicalnight or under the skies of Asia may determine, in the longrun, the fate of empires and of civilizations. They willpromote, or destroy, the prestige by which the white manmaintains his precarious supremacy amid the teeming multitudesof black and brown and yellow.To Play NapoleonI hope that we shall not have to wait another fouryears for the next Chaplin picture. But it would be worthwaiting for if he built up a team of actors and actresses whocould use pantomime effectively. He has already shown hispower of inspiring others by his production of “A Womanof Paris” and the grim realism with which the hardships ofthe Klondike pioneers were portrayed in “The Gold Rush.”And I see no reason why, if he can train such a company,he should not realize his ambition of playing the victor ofArcola. I think he might give us a picture of the youngNapoleon that would be one of the most memorable thingsin the cinema.Our difficulty in visualizing him in such a role is thatwe think of him as he appears on the screen. We thinkespecially of his feet. Napoleon never had feet like that.Neither has Chaplin. The feet are a “property”—thefamous walk is the trick of a clever actor to suggest characterand atmosphere. They are, in fact, the feet and walkof an ancient cabman, whom the youthful Charlie Chaplinencountered occasionally in the Kensington Road inLondon. To their original owner they were not at allhumorous. But the boy saw the comic possibilities of thatuneasy progress. He watched the old man and copied hismovements until he had mastered every step in the dismalrepertoire and turned it into mirth.The same power of observation, the same patient >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 25

FROM THE CANONCOLLLIER’S, 26 OCTOBER 1935 (COHEN C380a): First appearance of Churchill’s article (“Can silent movies ever come back?”), whichappeared in volume form only in the limited edition Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill (1975). Courtesy Ronald Cohen collection.thoroughness, could be used—and would be used—to giveus convincing characterizations of serious roles. CharlieChaplin’s feet are not a handicap; they represent an asset—the power to convert the thing seen into the thing shown.And the real Chaplin is a man of character and culture. AsSidney Earle Chaplin put it, when interviewed at thetender age of five, “People get a wrong impression of Dad.It’s not good style to throw pies, but he only does it in thefilms. He never throws pies at home.”I believe, therefore, that the future of Charlie Chaplinmay lie mainly in the portrayal of serious roles in silent, orrather, non-talking films, and in the development of a universalcinema.He need not ignore sound entirely. His pictures canbe wedded to music. Natural sounds may be introduced.But these effects would be accessories only; the films couldbe shown, without any serious weakening of their appeal,in cinemas which were not wired for sound.If Mr. Chaplin makes pictures of this kind, I thinkthat he will not only increase his already great reputation,but he will blaze a trail which others will follow, and addenormously to the range of cinematic art.It is a favourite cliché of film critics, in discussingtalking pictures, to say that we cannot go back. In effect,they suggest that, because technical progress has given ussound, all films must be talkies and will continue to be sofor ever. Such statements reveal a radical misconception ofthe nature of progress and the nature of art. As well saythat, because there is painting in oils, there must be noetchings; or that because speech is an integral part of astage play, dialogue must be added to ballet. To explore thepossibilitiesof thenontalkingfilm, tomake of ita new andindividualart form,would notbe a retrogradestep,but anadvance.Thereare manybrilliantandoriginalmindsassociatedwith thecinema today. But there is no one so well equipped for thisexperiment as Mr. Chaplin. Possibly no one else woulddare to make it. I wish him good luck—and the courage ofhis own convictions and his own magnificent powers. But Ihope also that he will not forget the world’s need oflaughter. Let him play in tragedy by all means. Let himdisplay to us the full extent of his histrionic genius. But lethim come back—at least occasionally—to the vein ofcomedy that has been the world’s delight for many years. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 26

Contemplating China“There is another Chinese saying...’The tail of Chinais large and will not be wagged.’ I like that one. TheBritish democracy approves the principle of movableheads and unwaggable national tails.”Wit & WisdomAreader asks, “Why wasChurchill so down on China asa fourth member of the BigFour in World War II and aSecurity Council permanentmember afterward?” Before we adopt anysweeping conclusions, considerChurchill’s statements on China, whichexpress considerable balance of thought:• “If the Chinese now suffer thecruel malice and oppression of theirenemies, it is the fault of the base andperverted conception of pacifism theirrulers have ingrained for two or threethousand years in their people....China,as the years pass, is being eaten by Japanlike an artichoke, leaf by leaf.”—”The Wounded Dragon,”Evening Standard, 3 September 1937,reprinted in Step by Step, 1939.• “I was very much astonishedwhen I came over here after Pearl Harborto find the estimate of values whichseemed to prevail in high American quarters,even in the highest, about China.Some of them thought that China wouldmake as great a contribution to victory inthe war as the whole British Empiretogether. Well, that astonished me verymuch. Nothing that I picked up afterwardsled me to think that myastonishment was ill-founded....I thinkon the whole you will not find a largeprofit item entered on that side of theledger, but that doesn’t alter our regardfor the Chinese people.”—Ritz-Carlton Hotel, New York,25 March 1949, published inIn the Balance, 1951, 34• “Ought we to recognise them[Communist China] or not? Recognisinga person is not necessarily an act ofapproval. I will not be personal, or giveinstance. One has to recognise lots ofthings and people in this world of sinand woe that one does not like. Thereason for having diplomatic relations isnot to confer a compliment, but tosecure a convenience.”—House of Commons, 17November 1949“[Invading Chinafrom Korea] would be thegreatest folly. It would belike flies invading fly-paper.”—1951, Anthony Montague Browne,Long Sunset, 1995, 317.• “...I am by no means sure thatChina will remain for generations in thecommunist grip. The Chinese said ofthemselves several thousand years ago:‘China is a sea that salts all the watersthat flow into it.’ There is anotherChinese saying about their countrywhich dates only from the fourthcentury: ‘The tail of China is large andwill not be wagged.’ I like that one. TheBritish democracy approves the principleof movable heads and unwaggablenational tails.”—U.S. Congress, Washington, 17January 1952, published in Stemmingthe Tide (1953), 223.• “To hear some people talk,however, one would think that the wayto win the war is to make sure that everyPower contributing armed forces andbranches of these armed forces is representedon all the councils andorganisations which have to be set up,and that everybody is fully consultedbefore anything is done. That is, in fact,the most sure way to lose a war.”—House of Commons, 27 January 1942During World War II (emphasisours), Churchill saw no reason to includeChina in the Security Council because hedoubted China’s status as a first-ratepower, based on her internal divisionsand performance against Japan. Chinahad been engaged with Japan, not verysuccessfully, long before World War II.But Churchill supported recognizingChina after the communist takeover, andbelieved Chinese communism would notprevail—as it probably will not.MASTERS OF OUR FATEOne of Churchill’s immortal passagescame in the House of Commons onFINEST HoUR 142 / 279 September 1941: “The mood ofBritain is wisely and rightly averse fromevery form of shallow or premature exultation.This is no time for boasts orglowing prophecies, but there is this—ayear ago our position looked forlorn andwell nigh desperate to all eyes but ourown. Today we may say aloud before anawe-struck world, ‘We are still masters ofour fate. We still are captain of oursouls.’”A reader in England wrote to ask:“Did Churchill place ‘We are stillmasters of our fate’ etc. in quotemarks asa rhetorical flourish, or was he quotingsomeone else, and if so, whom? I’mstudying World War II. My great unclewas a pathfinder for the Dambusters andstill alive today. Would you recommend?”(contact@olie.co.uk)The Dambusters were among theheroes of the war. The book to start isChurchill’s six volume memoir, TheSecond World War. Next, try one ofGeoffrey Best’s books, Churchill at Waror Churchill: A Study in Greatness, orPaul Addison’s Churchill: TheUnexpected Hero.“Masters of our Fate” soundedvery familiar but offhand we couldn’tplace it, and asked our friend RalphKeyes, author of The Quote Verifier(http:// ralphkeyes.com). Ralph firstthought Kipling, but then found it inthe Yale Book of Quotations (a verygood book, incidentally). It is from oneof Churchill’s favorite poems, “Invictus,”by W.E. Henley, English poet and playwright(1849-1903):It matters not how strait the gateHow charged with punishments thescroll,I am master of my fate:I am captain of my soul.—”Invictus” l.13 (1888) ,

FROM THE CANON IIAS WE GATHER INCALIFORNIA FOROUR TWENTY-SIXTH IN-TERNATIONAL CON-FERENCE INSEPTEMBER, IT ISAGREEABLE TO RE-CALL WINSTONCHURCHILL’S BEAMINGIMPRESSIONS OF THESTATE EIGHTY YEARSAGO THIS YEAR—ANDHIS REFLECTIONS ONPROHIBITION, WITHWHICH, HAPPILY, WENEED NOT CONTEND.Nature’s Panoramain CaliforniaWINSTON S. CHURCHILLThe State of California has a coastline nearly 1000miles long, and I was assured that its whole population—man,woman, and child—could get intothe motor cars they own and drive from one end ofit to the other at any time they had the inclination.They would certainly be well advised to try the experiment,for a more beautiful region I have hardly ever seen.The long strip of hilly or undulating country, rising ofteninto mountain ranges, presents, through fifteen degrees of latitude,a smiling and varied fertility. Forests, vineyards, orangegroves, olives, and every other form of cultivation that the nativesdesire, crowns or clothes the sunbathed peaks and valleys.The Pacific laps the long-drawn shores,and assures at all seasons of the year anequable and temperate climate. The coolocean and the warm land create in their contact a mistycurtain which veils and mitigates the vigour of the sun. By astrange inversion you ascend the mountain to get warm, anddescend to the sea level to get cool. Take it for all in all, thewestern slopes of the Rocky Mountains offer a spacious,delectable land, where we may work or play on every day inthe year.The prosperity arising from the calm fruitfulness ofagriculture has been stimulated and multiplied by theflashing apparition of gold and oil, and is adorned by the gaytinsel of the Hollywood filmland. The people who haveestablished themselves and are dominant in these thrivingscenes represent what is perhaps the finest Anglo-SaxonFINEST HoUR 142 / 28

stock to be found in the American Union. Blest with abundantfood and pleasing dwellings, spread as widely as theymay wish in garden cities, along the motor roads, or in theirfarms, the Californians have at their disposal all the naturaland economic conditions necessary for health, happiness andculture.Their easily gathered foods afford a diet in which milk,fruit, vegetables, and chicken predominate; while endlessvineyards offer grape juice in unfermented, or even sometimesaccidentally fermented, forms. A buoyancy oftemperament, a geniality of manner, an unbounded hospitality,and a marked friendliness and respect towards OldEngland, her institutions and Empire, are the characteristicsmost easily discerned among them. Poverty as we know it inEurope, slums, congestion, and the gloomy abodes of concentratedindustrialism, are nowhere to be seen.It was my good fortune to spend nearly a month inthese agreeable surroundings and conditions, motoringthrough the country from end to end; and certainly it wouldbe easy to write whole chapters upon the closely packed processionof scenes and sensations which salutedthe journey. Here I can only give a few thumbnail sketcheson which, however, the reader may care to cast an eye.Heart of the RedwoodsEntering California from the north, we travel alongthe celebrated Redwood Highway. The road undulates andserpentines ceaselessly. On either side from time to time aregroves and forests of what one would call large fir trees. Aswe go on they get taller. The sense that each hour finds oneamid larger trees only grows gradually. At length we stop totake stock of the scene, and one is surprised to see how smalla car approaching round a bend 100 yards away appears inrelation to the trunks which rise, close together, in vastnumbers on either side. Still full realization does not come.Another hour of swift progression! Now we are in the heartof the Redwoods. There is no mistake about it this time.The road is an aisle in a cathedral of trees. Enormouspillars of timber tower up 200 feet without leaf or twig to atapering vault of sombre green and purple. So close are theytogether that the eye is arrested at a hundred yards’ distanceby solid walls of timber. It is astonishing that so many vastgrowing organisms find in so small a space of air and soil thenourishment on which to dwell and thrive together. If abattle were fought in such a forest every bullet would bestopped within 200 yards, embedded in impenetrable stems.At the bases of these monsters men look like ants and motorcars look like beetles. Far above, the daylight twinklesthrough triangular and star-shaped openings. On the groundis vivid green or yellow bloom and leafage. These scenesrepeat themselves at intervals for perhaps 80 or 100 miles.Suddenly we reach a notice with a finger-point: “TheBig Tree.” We turn off the well-oiled turnpike and jolt andbump eight miles through sandy tracks, surrounded by enormoustrunks and ceilinged by broodingfoliage. We walkgingerly across a river bed on a bridge formed by one fallenmonster, and here at last is “The Big Tree.” They tell us it ismore than 400 feet high. At its base some hospitableCalifornians are entertaining the petty officers from a Britishcruiser. We all join hands around the tree. It takes fifteen ofus stretched to the full to compass it! >>AUGUST 1929: With the Conservatives turned out by Labour in thespring General Election, Churchill resisnged as Chancellor of the Exchequerand had time on his hands. On August 3rd he sailed forAmerica with his brother Jack (above left) and their two sons. “I donot want to have too close an itinerary,” he had written in July. “Onemust have time to feel a country and nibble some of the grass.” Butgreat and ambitious writer that he was, WSC could not resist penningarticles about his journey. The Great Crash of 1929 was less than twomonths away, and WSC would witness it personally in New York.Below, in California, he stopped for a picnic and fed a chipmunk.This text comprises the sixth and seventh in a series of twelve essaysentitled “What I Saw and Heard in America,” first published in TheDaily Telegraph, 23 and 30 December 1929; later in The CollectedEssays of Sir Winston Churchill (London: Library of Imperial History,1975). Reprinted by kind permission of Winston S. Churchill.FINEST HoUR 142 / 29

FROM THE CANON IINATURE’S PANORAMA...After compliments, jokes, and photographs, the guideremarks that this tree is certainly 4000 years old. It has beengrowing all this time and is still full of life and vigour.Devastating fires have swept through the forest scores oftimes during its existence, and have licked up the undergrowthand all ordinary trees and vegetation, but they couldnot harm the giants. Sometimes a large ring of burnt woodfrom flames extinguished a thousand years ago is foundwhen Redwood trees are cut down. They can survive everythingand heal every wound they receive.These trees were already old “when the smoke of sacrificearose from the Pantheon and camelopards bounded in theFlavian amphitheatre,”* and, but for the timber companies,they may “still continue in undiminished vigour” whenMacaulay’s traveller from New Zealand “takes his stand upon abroken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s.”They will grow as long as the Californians allow them to grow.Lick ObservatoryLet me turn another page of my scrap book. I am atthe top of the tallest building in San Francisco. Dizzy depthsyawn beneath the window-sills. The Chairman of theTelephone Company has invited me to have ten minutes’talk with my wife in England. I take up the instrument. Mywife speaks to me across one ocean and one continent—oneof each. We hear each other as easily as if we were in the sameroom, or, not to exaggerate, say about half as well again as onan ordinary London telephone. I picture a well-known scenefar off in Kent, 7000 miles away. The children come to thetelephone. I talk to them through New York and Rugby.They reply through Scotland and Canada. Why say the ageof miracles is past? It is just beginning.Turn over. We are in the Lick Observatory. A broad,squat cupola has been built by the munificence of a privatecitizen at the summit of a conical mountain 4000 feet high.All is dark within the Observatory. The telescope, its girthnot unworthy of the giant trees, peers through a slit of palebut darkening sky. The dome rotates, the floor sinks, thenrises slightly.I sit upon a ladder. The planet Saturn is about to set; butthere is just time to observe him. Of course I know about therings around Saturn. Pictures of them were shown in all theschools where I was educated. But I was sceptical. We all knowhow astronomers have mapped the heavens out in the shape ofanimals. We can most of us—by a stretch of the imagination—recognizethe Great Bear, but still one quite sympathizeswith those who call it The Plough. Bear or Plough—one is aslike it as the other. So I expected to see, when I looked atSaturn, a bright star with some smudges round it, whichastronomers had dignified by the name of rings.In this mood I applied myself to the eye-piece. I receivedthe impression that some powerful electric light had been*Churchill is quoting Thomas Babington Macaulay, most likely hisLays of Ancient Rome, which WSC absorbed and partly memorizedas a youth. “Camelopard” is Middle English term for a giraffe.switched on by mistake inthe observatory and wasin some way reflected inthe telescope. I was aboutto turn and ask that itmight be extinguished,when I realized that whatI saw was indeed Saturnhimself. A perfectly modelledglobe, instinct withrotundity, with a clear-cutlife buoy around itsmiddle, all glowing withserene radiance. I gazedwith awe and delightupon this sublime spectacleof a world 800million miles away.Again the domerotates, and the floorrises or falls. I am told tolook at the heavens withthe naked eye. Can I see avery faint star amidseveral bright ones? It isvery far off and quite anachievement to discern it.I see the faintest speck orrather blur of light. Nowlook through the telescope.Two pairs of lovelydiamonds, dazzling intheir limpid beauty,gleam on either side of the field of vision. “You are looking,”says the astronomer, “at one of our best multiple stars. Thatfaint speck you saw with the eye consists of these doubletwins, the stars in each pair revolving around the other pair!”Celestial jewellery! I forget how long they take torevolve, if indeed, it is yet known to man, or how far they areapart. Perhaps the light would pass from one to the other infour or five years. But it is all in the books.Then we return swifter than light across the gulfs ofspace, and come to the moon, where dawn has just risen onthe mountains, tipping them with flame, and casting theirsilhouettes in violet shadows upon the lunar craters.Thereafter for some time we talk about the heavens and mykindly teachers explain all—or perhaps not all—aboutnebulae and spiral nebulae.It appears that outside our own universe, with its thousandsof million suns, there are at least two million otheruniverses, all gyrating and coursing through the heavens likedancers upon a stage. I had not heard of this before, and wasinspired to many thoughts sufficiently commonplace to beomitted here. I was disturbed to think of all these universeswhich had not previously been brought to my attention. Ihoped that nothing had gone wrong with them.It is sixty miles from the Lick Observatory toLICK OBSERVATORY: Churchill undoubtedlydid not have as good a view of Saturn as that ofthe Cassini orbiter. Wikipedia Commons photos.PEBBLE BEACH: Painting in a chill Pacific fogaccompanied by his hostess, Helen Russell.FINEST HoUR 142 / 30

Burlingame, the garden suburb of the San Francisco notables,where we were sheltered for the night. It was a relief, afterthinking about two million universes and countless millions ofsuns, many complete with planets, moons, comets, meteoricstreams, etc. and the incomprehensible distances which separatethem, to take up the morning paper (which, according toAmerican custom, is always published the evening before),and to read that the stock markets were still booming, that MrJ.H. Thomas* had a new idea (which he was keeping secret)about the unemployed, and that Mr. Snowden,** by his firmstand for Britain, had surrendered only half a million more ofthe taxpayers’ money. And so to bed!Fermented! Do Not Be Alarmed...We follow from north to south the great road whichruns the entire length of California. Our stages are sometimesas long as 250 miles. Night in the Redwoods isimpressive. Every dozen miles or so rest camps—”motels,” asthey are called—have been built for the motorist population.Here simple and cheap accommodation is provided in clustersof detached cabins, and the carefree wanderers uponwheels gather round great fires singing or listening to theubiquitous wireless music.Great numbers motor for amusement, travelling verylight, usually in couples, and thinking nothing of a thousandmiles in their little cars. Continuous streams of vehicles flowup and down at speeds which rarely fall below forty miles anhour. The road by day recalls the Corniche roads in characterand beauty of scenery, but is often more crowded. Its ribbonsurface follows in the main the mountainous coastline, nowrising to a thousand feet or more, with awful gulfs andhairpin turns, now spinning along almost in the ocean spray.What with the traffic, the precipices, the turns, the ups anddowns, and the high speeds, the journey is not dull, and thescenery is splendid.As we progress the vegetation changes. The giantRedwoods die away; oak and other English-looking treessucceed them; and we flash across trout streams and rivers,much attenuated by the summer, and some even reduced tochains of pools. From the town of Eureka onwards I noticedthe palm, and a hundred miles further south the vegetationand aspect of the landscape became Italian. We now comeinto the land of grapes and pause for luncheon at animmense wine factory. I forget how many millions of gallonsof Californian wines are stored in the mighty vatsof its warehouses.Fermented! Certainly! Do not be alarmed, dear MissAnna, it is “for sacramental purposes only.” TheConstitution of the United States, the God of Israel, and thePope—an august combination—protect, with the triple*J.H. Thomas (1874-1949), Labour MP (1910-36), Minister ofEmployment and Lord Privy Seal at the time of Churchill’s article.He was elected to the Other Club in 1925, but resigned in 1930. Hislast office was Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1935-36.**Philip Snowden, later Viscount Snowden (1864-1937), LabourMP (1906-18, 1922-31), Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time ofChurchill’s article. His last office was Lord Privy Seal, 1931-32.sanctions of Washington, Jerusalem and Rome, this inspiringscene. Nevertheless, there is a fragrance in the air which eventhe Eighteenth Amendment cannot deprive us.Not to be tantalized, we hasten on, and fifty miles tothe southward alight for refreshment before the verandahsand porticos of a pretty inn, whose advertisement proclaims,“Good Eats and Soft Drinks.” Yielding to these allurements,I am supplied with a glass of “near beer.” This excellent andinnocent beverage is prepared in the following way:Old-world beer is brewed, and thereafter all thealcohol in excess of one-half of one percent is eliminated,and cast to the dogs. The residue, when iced, affords apleasant drink indistinguishable in appearance from thenaughty article, and very similar in flavour. But, as the lessregenerate inform us, “it lacks Authority.” I was told thatsometimes distressing accidents occur in the manufacture.Sometimes mistakes are made about the exact percentage,and on one melancholy occasion an entire brew was inadvertentlyreleased at the penultimate stage of manufacture, tospread its maddening poison through countless happyhomes. But, needless to say, every precaution is taken.I have not concealed my own views upon Prohibition,but candour compels me to say that, having been for twomonths for the first time in my life exposed to its full rigours,I have found the effects upon my constitution very much lessdisturbing than I had expected.The shades of evening were already falling as weapproached San Francisco. I had been dozing and awokewith a start to find myself in the midst of the ocean. As faras the eye could reach on all sides in the gathering darknothing but water could be seen. The marvellous roadwas traversing an inlet of the sea, or perhaps an estuary, by anewly constructed bridge seven miles long, and only a fewfeet above the waves.On either side the water reaches depths of eighty feet,and in the centre we climbed by easy gradients to a sort ofTower Bridge with bascules to allow the passage of shipping.This remarkable piece of engineering, brilliantly illuminatedthroughout its entire length, has been constructed to avoidthe delays or inconvenience of detour or ferry. That themotor traffic—mainly pleasure traffic—should warrant theformidable outlay involved is a fair measure of the wealthand enterprise of California.The City of San Francisco was, as everyone knows,destroyed by fire, not earthquake (this is important), at thebeginning of the century. It has risen again from its ashes (notruins) in quadrupled magnificence. Its forty-storey buildingstower above the lofty hog-backed promontory on which it isbuilt. The sea mists which roll in and shroud it at frequentintervals rob it of sunshine, but ensure a cool temperateclimate at most seasons of the year. I was eager to see the sealions for which the bay is renowned, and made a specialjourney to view the rocks on which they are accustomed tobask. In this I was disappointed. The rocks were occupiedonly by large and dreary birds; and when I asked a bystanderwhen the sea lions would appear, he replied gaily in Italian,“Damfino,” meaning no doubt “in due course.” >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 31

FROM THE CANON IIHOLLYWOOD: At a lunchon hosted by LouisB. Mayer of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.From left, Randolph S. Churchill, WilliamRandolph Hearst, Winston Churchill, Louis B.Mayer, unknown (Spencer Tracy? He signedwith MGM in 1935), Jack S. Churchill, unknown,and Jack’s son Johnny Churchill.NATURE’S PANORAMA...Peter Pan TownshipSouth of San Francisco we entered the latitude and vegetationof North Africa. The houses became increasinglyMauresque, the soil more sandy, and water—except, of course,for drinking purposes—scarce. Resting for a while at theseaside resorts of Pebble Beach and Santa Barbara, we draw byeasy stages nearer to the latest city of the Pacific Coast, LosAngeles. Ignoring St. Augustine’s famous pun, the inhabitantspronounce the “g” hard, as in “angle.” A keen rivalry existsbetween Los Angeles and San Francisco. Each populationexceeds a million, but by how much depends on whichsuburbs are included; and on this point there are disputes.No two cities could present a greater contrast. SanFrancisco stretches up to the heavens; Los Angeles spreadsmore widely over the level shores than any city of equalnumbers in the world. It is a gay and happy city, whereeveryone has room to live, where no one lacks a small, butsufficient dwelling, and every house stands separate in itsgarden. Poverty and squalor have never entered its broadavenues of palms. The distances are enormous. You motor tenmiles to luncheon in one direction and ten miles to dinner inanother. The streets by night are ablaze with electric lightsand moving signs of every colour. A carnival in fairyland!All this opulence and well-being is prominently supportedby two 20th-century industries. The first is oil.Everywhere scattered about in the city, all around it, on thebeach, even in the sea itself, stand the pylon structures orderricks used for the finding and extraction of oil. At Calgaryin Canada, where the oil lies a mile below the surface, thesederricks are very tall; but in California they seem to averagefifty or sixty feet. The hills to the south of the city are coveredwith them. They are packed so densely together as to look ata few miles’ distance exactly like forests of fir-trees.Democratic principles have shaped the laws governingthis newcomer industry. Oilfields, like goldfields, are parcelledout in small holdings, almost in allotments. Amultitude of small proprietors are pumping away in madhaste, lest their neighbours a few yards off should forestallthem. There is an immense production of oil at cheap prices.For the present everyone is content, especially the consumers.Whether this system is the last word in the scientificutilization of oil resources is doubtful; that it will not last forever is certain. It may well be that the natural oil age will synchronizewith the twentieth century.The second staple industry is found in the films associatedwith Hollywood. Here we enter a strange and anamusing world, the like of which has certainly never beenseen before. Dozens of studios, covering together thousandsof acres, and employing scores of thousands of very highlypaid performers and technicians, minister to the gaiety of theworld. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre magnifieda thousand-fold. Battalions of skilled workmenconstruct with magical quickness streets of London, ofChina, of India, jungles, mountains, and every conceivableform of scenery in solid and comparatively durable style. Ina neighbouring creek pirate ships, Spanish galleons andRoman galleys ride at anchor.This Peter Pan township is thronged with the mostodd and varied of crowds that can be imagined. Here is astream of South Sea Islanders, with sweet little nut-brownchildren, hurrying to keep their studio appointments. Thereis a corps-de-ballet which would rival the Moulin Rouge.Ferocious brigands, bristling with property pistols, cowboys,train robbers, heroines in distress of all descriptions, agedcronies stalk or stroll or totter to and fro. Twenty films are inthe making at once. A gang of wild Circassian horsemenfilters past a long string of camels from a desert caravan.Keen young men regulate the most elaborate processes ofphotography, and the most perfect installations for bridlinglight and sound. Competition is intense; the hours of toil arehard, and so are the hours of waiting. Youthful beauty claimsher indisputable rights; but the aristocracy of the filmlandfound themselves on personality. It is a factory in appearancethe queerest in the world, whose principal characteristics arehard work, frugality and discipline.The apparition of the “talkies” created a revolutionamong the “movies.” Hollywood was shaken to its foundations.No one could challenge the popularity of theseupstarts. Their technique might be defective; their voices inreproduction rough and unmusical; their dialect weak; buttalking films were what the public wanted; and what thepublic wants it has to get. So all is turned upside down, andnew experts arrive with more delicate apparatus, and a farmore complicated organization must be set up. Everywherethroughout filmland the characters must be made to talk aswell as act. New values are established, and old favouriteshave to look to their laurels. Now that everyone is makingtalking pictures, not only darkness but perfect silence must beprocurable whenever required, and balloons float above thestudios to scare away the buzzings of wandering aeroplanes.Alone among producers Charlie Chaplin remainsunconverted, claiming that pantomime is the genius of drama,and that the imagination of the audience supplies better wordsthan machinery can render, and prepared to vindicate thesilent film by the glittering weapons of wit and pathos.On the whole, I share his opinion. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 32

GREAT CONTEMPORARIES IIChurchilland OrwellA GENTLE ACCOLADE, FROM ONE GIANTOF OUR HERITAGE TO ANOTHER ON THEOPPOSITE END OF THE POLITICAL SPEC-TRUM, MAKES MY EYES MIST OVER.ROBERT PILPELLet us now praise an unreconstructedTory and a self-proclaimed Man ofthe Left. The former was aHarrovian, the latter an Etonian.No great difference there. Theformer was of noble lineage, thelatter lower middle class.The former thought hehad lived too long forhis own good, the latterdied far too soon. Theformer was astatesman/politician, thelatter a philosopher. Theformer was father to five children,the latter adopted one.The former was a NobelLaureate in literature, the latterhad trouble getting published.Oddly enough, that almostcovers their differences. Considernow their similarities.Both were truth-tellers—veracity’s fools. Both had the ability, inOrwell’s words, to face unpleasant facts.Both were deemed traitors to their class.Both were exiled from their political circles.Both had been fugitives. Both saw action incombat—Churchill in India and Africa, Orwell in Spain.Both were partial to tobacco, if you can call Orwell’s lungscorchingWoodbines tobacco. Both were chronically shortof money, though on slightly different scales. Both hadMr. Pilpel is the author of Churchill in America (1976). His “WhatChurchill Owed the Great Republic” (FH 125) won the FH JournalAward for the best article of 2005. In this piece he has “refrainedfrom dilations on the many arresting similarities between Orwell andChurchill, not to mention their diametrical differences.”awe-inspiring physical and moral courage. Both felt thattheir fathers regarded them as disappointments. Both hadonly one son. Both flirted with suicidal thoughts. Andboth, above all, were children of the Enlightenment.We know little about Churchill’s opinion of Orwell,although late in life he told his physician thathe’d read 1984 and found it so remarkablethat he planned to read it again. But,Nobel Prize notwithstanding,Churchill was hardly a litterateur,and in theyears beforeOrwell’sdeathin1950 hisfocus wason a returnto power. Hewas also aluminary ofmonumental proportionsby then, anicon of western civilization,while Orwell’scontributions to humanprogress have becomepillars of our intellectualheritage only in the decadessince his death. It’s not strange,accordingly, that Orwell had farmore to say about Churchill thanChurchill did about him. So in orderto gauge the symmetry between theirbasic values it is to Orwell’s works wemust turn—hardly an onerous task.The “hero” of 1984,George Orwell’s chilling predictionof a totalitarian future, isWinston Smith. Mere coincidence?No. The names offictional characters are neverchosen haphazardly, especially when thecharacters in question are prime protagonists, andmost especially when the author and the characters’eponyms are contemporaries.But the question for us Churchillians is not Orwell’sliterary motivations. There has been endless speculationabout this subject, most of it endlessly gaseous. Suffice it tosay that Orwell had many layers of irony in mind when hedubbed his hero “Winston.” But far more interesting is hisview of Churchill: the person, persona and personality.As a political analyst Orwell often had occasion toexpress himself on the subject of our paragon. By contrast,Churchill’s only known reference to Orwell comes fromLord Moran’s “diaries,” wherein WSC, on the eve of his >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 33

GREAT CONTEMPORARIES IICHURCHILL AND ORWELL...GEORGE ORWELL(ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR) 1903-1950Wikipedia Commons photosecond premiership,age 76—andof Orwell’suntimely death,age 46—told hisphysician thathe’d just read a“remarkable”novel that he wasplanning to reread.It will come asno surprise thatOrwell’s feelingsabout Churchillwere decidedlyambivalent.Although he wasa self-describedman of the Left,he was also fartoo clear-sightedand intellectuallyhonest to acceptthe standard left-wing view that Churchill was a right-winggrotesque. But in common with many of his countrymenhe’d had just about enough of Churchill by the summer of1942. In the wake of the shocking losses at Namsos,Norway, followed quickly by France, Crete, Dieppe,Singapore, the Prince of Wales, the Repulse and Tobruk,and numerous other Britannic disasters, he noted in his wardiaries that his friends were delighted with his quip that itmight be best for England if WSC, en route back fromRussia, were torpedoed and sunk, like Kitchener in 1915.But in most respects this comment was uncharacteristic.It reflected the widespread sense of disaffection thatpervaded public life in Britain when the auspicious formationof the Grand Alliance in 1941 led only to acontinuation of the calamity-of-the-month scenario in1942. The stunning U.S. naval victory at Midway hadreceived only the sketchiest press coverage, lest America’sachievement in deciphering Japanese radio codes be inadvertentlydivulged. And the momentous turning points ofStalingrad and Alamein were still months away. From theaverage Briton’s viewpoint, therefore, 1942 hadn’t heraldeda new dawn but only a dreary continuation of Britishincompetence, of which Churchill was presumably theimpresario.But if we review Orwell’s comments about WSCduring and after the war the clear impression we get is oneof grudging admiration and even reluctant affection.(Granted, Orwell’s self-awareness was so acute that he wascapable of writing that he’d never managed to feel muchanimosity toward Hitler personally, although “I would certainlykill him if the opportunity arose.” His affection forChurchill involved no such homicidal undertones.)Because of Churchill’s prominence—nay, preeminence—Orwellwas often stimulated to refer to him in thecontext of both praise and blame. But perhaps the embodimentof his commentaries came near the end of hisfar-too-brief life, when he reviewed Churchill’s account ofhis own and Britain’s epitome in the second of his WorldWar II volumes, Their Finest Hour. In this short essayOrwell demonstrated the broad expanse of perspectivecharacteristic of WSC himself. Rising far above ideologicalissues and taking an almost Olympian stance, Orwellreached across the vast political chasm separating him fromhis subject and saluted a fellow child, and evangel, of theEnlightenment:The political reminiscences [Churchill] haspublished...have always been a great dealabove the average, in frankness as well as literaryquality....His writings are more likethose of a human being than of a publicfigure....and whether or not 1940 was anyoneelse’s finest hour, it was certainlyChurchill’s....One has to admire in him notonly his courage but also a certain largenessand geniality which comes out even in formalmemoirs of this type....The British peoplehave generally rejected his policies, but theyhave always had a liking for him, as one cansee from the tone of the stories told abouthim....At the time of the Dunkirk evacuation,for instance, it was rumoured that what heactually said, when recording his [House ofCommons] speech for broadcast, was: “Wewill fight on the beaches, we will fight in thestreets...we’ll throw bottles at the bastards;it’s about all we’ve got left!” One may assumethat this story is untrue, but at the time itwas felt that it ought to be true. It was afitting tribute from ordinary people to thetough and humorous old man whom theywould not accept as a peacetime leader [in1945] but whom in the moment of disasterthey felt to be representative of themselves.Speaking as a considerably less tough and more sentimentalold man, I confess that this gentle accolade fromone giant guardian of our heritage to another on the oppositeend of the political spectrum always makes my eyesmist over. I offer this confession willingly, even cheerfully,happy in the knowledge that many readers of this splendidjournal—no matter what their age—may actually go meone better and shed a tear. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 34

LEADING CHURCHILL MYTHS (16)Myth: “Churchill Caused the1943-45 Bengal Famine”Fact: The Blame Rests with the Japaneseinest Hour bestows our 2008Utter Excess Award on MWC(“Media With Consceience”) inVancouver for Gideon Polya’scharming editorial, “Media Lying OverChurchill’s Crimes” (http://xrl.us/bem6de):“Churchill is our hero because of hisleadership in World War II,” but hisimmense crimes, notably the WW2Bengali Holocaust, the 1943-45 BengalFamine in which Churchill murdered 6-7million Indians, have been deleted fromhistory by extraordinary Anglo-Americanand Zionist Holocaust Denial.”Polya cites a long list of Churchill“crimes,” including all the old chestnuts(poison-gassing the Iraqis, warmongeringbefore WW1, Gallipoli, bombingGerman cities, etc.); and some new ones:“Churchill actively sought the entry ofJapan into World War II.” That onereminds us of Churchill’s observationthat he had never heard the opposite ofthe truth stated with greater precision.We have dealt with most of thesebefore (over and over)—so let’s considerthe new flagship accusation.Gideon Polya dismisses all who disagreewith him, including Sir MartinGilbert, as Zionist propagandists. Sinceit’s always a good idea to question theaccused, we asked Sir Martin. “Churchillwas not responsible for the BengalFamine,” he replied. “I have beensearching for evidence for years: none hasturned up. The 1944 Document volumeof the official biography [Hillsdale CollegePress] will resolve this issue finally.”We next turned to Arthur Herman’sGandhi & Churchill, (FH 138: 51-52).There is much on the Bengal Famine(512 et. seq.). Secretary of State for IndiaLeo Amery, Herman writes,Fat first took a lofty Malthusian view ofthe crisis, arguing that India was “overpopulated”and that the best strategywas to do nothing. But by earlysummer even Amery was concernedand urged the War Cabinet to takedrastic action....For his part, Churchillproved callously indifferent. SinceGandhi’s fast his mood about Indiahad progressively darkened. [He was]resolutely opposed to any food shipments.Ships were desperately neededfor the landings in Italy....Besides,Churchill felt it would do no good.Famine or no famine, Indians will“breed like rabbits.” Amery prevailedon him to send some relief, albeit onlya quarter what was needed. A quarterof what was needed may also havebeen all that was possible by ship; butChurchill was also hoping for more aidfrom India itself.Mr. Herman elaborated in a note to FH:The idea that Churchill was in anyway “responsible” or “caused” theBengal famine is of course absurd. Thereal cause was the fall of Burma to theJapanese, which cut off India’s mainsupply of rice imports when domesticsources fell short. It is true thatChurchill opposed diverting food suppliesand transports from other theatersto India to cover the shortfall: this waswartime. Some of his angry remarks toAmery don’t read very nicely in retrospect.However, anyone who has beenthrough the relevant documentsreprinted in The [India] Transfer ofPower volumes knows the facts:Churchill was concerned about thehumanitarian catastrophe taking placethere, and he pushed for whateverfamine relief efforts India itself couldprovide; they simply weren’t adequate.Something like three million peopledied in Bengal and other parts ofsouthern India as a result. We mighteven say that Churchill indirectlybroke the Bengal famine by appointingas Viceroy Field Marshal Wavell, whomobilized the military to transportfood and aid to the stricken regions(something that hadn’t occurred toanyone, apparently).If the famine had occurred in peacetime,Herman added “it would have beendealt with effectively and quickly by theRaj, as so often in the past. At worst,Churchill’s failure was not sending moreaid—in the midst of fighting a war forsurvival. World War II, of course, is whatChurchill’s slanderers avoid considering.”Martin Gilbert added:The Japanese were already inside Indiaat Kohima and Imphal. Gandhi’s QuitIndia movement, and Subhas ChandraBose’s Indian National Army thenfighting alongside the Japanese, providedthe incentive for a full-scaleJapanese invasion. The RAF and theArmy were fully stretched. We knowwhat terrors the Japanese wreaked nnon-Japanese natives in Korea, thePhillipines, and Malaya. If the RAFplanes supporting India’s defence werepulled off for a famine airlift, far morethan three million would have died.The blame for insufficient famine relieflies with those who prevented thoseplanes from being used: the Japanese.Despite Churchill’s expressions aboutGandhi, clearly he did attempt to alleviatethe famine. As William Manchesterwrote, Churchill “always had second andthird thoughts, and they usuallyimproved as he went along.”So what have we left besides the lieabout “deliberate, sustained, remorselessstarving to death of 6-7 million Indians”?As a wrap, “Media With Conscience”offers every critical quote it can find byChurchill on Indians. Thirteen years agoat our 1995 conference, one of these wasrecited by William F. Buckley, Jr.:Working his way through disputatiousbureaucracy from separatists in NewDelhi he exclaimed, to his secretary, “Ihate Indians.” I don’t doubt that thefamous gleam came to his eyes whenhe said this, with mischievous glee—anoffense, in modern convention, ofgenocidal magnitude.And sure enough, here is that remark,represented just as Buckley described it.Polya’s piece is a prize-winningexample of the myopic determination tofind guilt where there is none. Yes, WSChad a blind spot about Gandhi—despitehis positive initiatives to Gandhi in 1935,Nehru in 1953. Churchill was humanand made mistakes; He remainsadmirable, in part because he gave all hispapers to an archive where carpers canpore over them. And fifty years of poringhas not significantly changed the verdictof history about him.The best summation of this nonarticleis the line by Jack Nicholson inthe charming film As Good as it Gets:“Sell crazy someplace else. We’re allstocked up here.” RML ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 35

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSThe Irish Experience: Insight forToday’s WorldROBERT L. PFALTZGRAFF, JR.________________________________________________Dr. Pfaltzgraff, our leading moderator at Boston, is Presidentof the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and ShelbyCullom Davis Professor of International Security Studies, atthe Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.He has advised key U.S. officials on military strategy, defensemodernization, the future of alliances, proliferation andcounter-proliferation issues, and arms control policy.Although we often think of him as the great World War II leader, what fascinates somany about Churchill is his connection, a very direct connection, with the greatevents in the history of the early to mid-20th Century. He was an influential andoften decisive player in so many of these events. In fact, to study that history through theChurchill lens is a good place to begin—in fact, difficult to avoid.So it is with Churchill and Ireland. The Boston Churchill Conference of 2008 examinedin detail the central role Churchill played in the Irish question—and the central rolewhich the Irish question played in pre-World War I politics. It is little wonder thatChurchill, always where the action was, intensely involved himself in the effort to reconcileHome Rule in the south of Ireland with the Unionist demands of the north.World War I delayed and postponed but did not stop efforts to resolve the Irish question.The setting that faced Churchill, as well as Ireland and Britain, after the Great War, asit was then called, led to the outbreak of armed conflict, civil war, the 1920 Government ofIreland and the Irish Treaty of 1921: key events for Ireland and Great Britain which wouldshape their relations from World War II to the present time.“Churchill and Ireland” addressed issues that have 21st Century counterparts. In thesepapers, eminent scholars talk about and study Irish partition as a less-than-perfect solution,though sometimes the only solution, to ethno-nationalist religious conflicts. They considerstrategies of “non-state armed groups,” one of the great buzz-phrases of today’s internationalsecurity studies field. And they ponder the irregular issues which Churchill, Britishand Irish politicians faced in the years after the First World War.Many lessons and insights may be derived for today’s world from what the British andthe Irish faced and fought, in what became known as the Interwar Years. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 36

The Churchills inIreland, 1877-1914THE RECENT CONFLICTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND, WHICH TOOK CLOSE TO 4000LIVES, WERE THE PRODUCT OF POLITICAL STRATEGIES AND PATTERNS ESTAB-LISHED in 1912 TO 1914: NOT AN ESPECIALLY POSITIVE LEGACY FOR THOSE WHOFAILED TO FOLLOW WINSTON CHURCHILL’S LEAD IN TRYING TO WORK OUT AFAIR AND REASONABLE RESOLUTION OF THE ULSTER/HOME RULE IMBROGLIO.CATHERINE B. SHANNONL-R: John Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough; Lord Randolph Churchill; WSC.Churchillian involvement with Ireland, beginningwith the appointment of the Seventh Duke ofMarlborough as Irish Viceroy in 1877 and continuingon with his son Randolph and his famousgrandson Winston, coincided with the high watermark of Irish political nationalism between the 1870s andthe mid-20th century.Inspired by the rationalist and democratic ideals of theEnlightenment and the French Revolution, 19th centuryIrish nationalism had as its primary goal the repeal of the Actof Union of 1800, which had abolished the Irish Parliamentand established the Parliament at Westminster as legislativeauthority for Ireland. The national movement developed inboth constitutional and revolutionary forms, illustrated bythe tactics employed by the Irish Home Rule leader, CharlesParnell, in his links with former Fenians and his support forthe Irish Land War of 1879-81. Yet the pre-1900 Home Rulemovement was essentially constitutional, and had as itsprimary goal the establishment of an Irish legislature responsiblefor domestic affairs.________________________________________________Dr. Shannon is Professor Emerita of History, Westfield State College,Massachusetts, where she was Director of Irish Studies; she also taughtIrish history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.By the middle of the 1870s, falling agricultural priceshad resulted in widespread rent defaults by Irish tenantfarmers, but the early Home Rule movement’s deferentialposture in the House of Commons, and the vagueness of itsfederalist proposals, held little attraction for the formerFenians and tenant farmers, who joined an association calledthe Home Rule League. Then in 1874 a young ProtestantMP named Charles Stewart Parnell and others launched acampaign of parliamentary obstruction, or filibustering. Thisreached its zenith in May 1877, when they kept the Houseof Commons in session for seventy-two consecutive hours.Marlborough and His SonThe challenges were formidable when the Duke ofMarlborough arrived in Dublin as Viceroy in January 1877,accompanied by the Duchess, their son Randolph (anunpaid private secretary), their daughter-in-law Jennie andtheir two-year old grandson Winston. The Viceroy and LordRandolph traveled widely through Ireland, observing thedeterioration of economic and social conditions. Randolphestablished firm and lasting friendships with Protestanturban professionals, like Gerald FitzGibbon, later Solicitor-General of Ireland, and John Gibbons, the future LordAshbourne, as well as with academics like J.P. Mahaffy of >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 37

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSDRAMATIS PERSONAE: Charles Stewart Parnell (left) led the early Home Rule movement in Parliament. The great Liberal PrimeMinister Willam Gladstone (center) twice tried to pass it. Arthur Balfour, Lord Randolph’s friend, tried to kill it with kindness.CHURCHILLS IN IRELAND...Trinity College. These men, while committed to the preservationof the Union, wanted London to pursue moreprogressive policies. Indeed, the Viceregal family did not hesitateto socialize with various Catholic clergy and membersof the Catholic hierarchy.In a February 1877 Belfast speech, the Viceroydeplored the sectarian attitudes and rioting that had come tocharacterize that city in the previous two decades.Marlborough and his son held that progressive policies werethe most effective means to combat Fenianism, to preservethe Union and to undercut the obstructionist campaignParnell and his party were waging at Westminster. Randolphexpounded on this approach, perhaps a little too forcefullyfor the comfort of his father and Prime Minister Disraeli, inan autumn 1877 speech in his Woodstock constituency:…it was inattention to Irish legislation that had producedthe obstruction to English legislation [in theCommons]. There were great and crying questionswhich the government had not attended to, did notseem inclined to attend to and perhaps did not intendto attend to. These were questions of intermediate andhigher education, the assimilation of municipal andparliamentary electoral privileges to English privileges,and other matters that he would not go into. Theymust remember that England had years of wrong,years of crime, years of tyranny, years of oppression,years of general misgovernment to make amends for inIreland. 1Although his father attributed these embarrassingcomments to an excess of champagne, Randolph could havebeen trying to steal thunder from Herbert Gladstone, theLiberal leader, who was due soon in Ireland. But over thenext three years Marlborough and his son consistently promotedgovernment assistance to enable small tenants topurchase their holdings and opposed landlords’ demands forcoercion or summary justice to quell rural unrest. Both supportedthe Intermediate Education Act of 1878 thatwidened hitherto limited post-primary education opportunitiesfor the Catholic majority, and, a year later, unsuccessfullylobbied to establish a Catholic university.As a Cabinet minister in the mid-1880s, LordRandolph Churchill put a high priority on solving theCatholic higher educational grievance as the best tactic toattract the Catholic hierarchy and middle classes to the Toryparty and the Unionist cause. Although Arthur Balfour,Randolph’s Tory contemporary and friend, made two unsuccessfulattempts to address this issue, it was not resolved untila Liberal government, including Randolph’s son Winston,passed the National University of Ireland Act in 1908.When western Ireland faced the looming threat ofanother potato famine in 1879, the Duchess ofMarlborough, aided by Randolph and Jennie, organized arelief effort that eventually raised over £135,000, mostlyfrom English sources, providing assistance for food, fuel,clothing and seed potatoes. Randolph warned his mother tobe careful not to legitimize by her efforts the widespread agitationfor rent reductions and the boycotting of landlordsurged by Michael Davitt’s new Land League. AtWestminster, Parnell quipped that the government wasfighting the famine, or perhaps the Land League “frombehind the Duchess’s petticoats.” 2The Viceregal efforts failed to alleviate the agrariancrisis or to check the growing political popularity of Parnell’sHome Rule movement. Realizing that the land question wasthe steam that drove the Home Rule engine, Parnell alliedhimself and his party with the Land League’s campaign ofrural agitation and intimidation of landlords to secure rentreductions and prevent evictions. Former Fenians in Americahelped fund nationalist politics. A sign of the increasing Irishhostility to the British government was when theMarlboroughs were pelted with eggs by Dubliners upontheir final departure from Ireland in April 1880. 3FINEST HoUR 142 / 38

Randolph Plays the Orange CardRandolph Churchill’s experience in Ireland influencedhis belief that progressive policies on land, local government,economic development, and higher education, wouldbenefit both the Conservative Party and Irish society.Although in opposition for the next five years, Randolphkept au courant with Irish friends and Dublin Unionists;Irish Nationalist MPs like Tim Healy, Joseph Biggar, andTimothy Sexton; and even reform-minded Liberals likeJoseph Chamberlain, Charles Dilke and Henry Labouchere.His opposition to Gladstone’s reintroduction of coercion in1881 led many to believe that Randolph had become aHome Ruler, and even that he wished to form a newfusionist party with Liberal friends and fellow “ToryDemocrats.”These suspicions were acute after Gladstone’s 1885resignation and in the Conservative caretaker government ofLord Salisbury. Hoping to secure Irish votes for the Tories inthe approaching general election, Randolph unofficiallyassured Parnell that the Tories would not renew coercion. Bythen, Parnell had a network of 1200 National Leaguebranches in the south and west of Ireland and a well financedand highly disciplined Irish party of eighty-three MPs, whosesupport could determine whether Tories or Liberals formeda government. The new Tory Viceroy, Lord Carnarvon,joined with Churchill, even urging a devolved Irish assembly.Salisbury and most of his Cabinet opposed these moves andrejected a confidential offer from Gladstone to cooperate ona bipartisan solution to the Irish question.The canny Salisbury believed that Gladstone’s commitmentto the Irish cause would split the Liberal Party.When the Irish Nationalists won eighty-six seats in theDecember 1885 election, giving them the balance of power,Salisbury resigned in January, allowing Gladstone to returnto office pledged to Home Rule.The political battle waged over Gladstone’s 1886Home Rule Bill was one of the most bitter in modern Britishhistory. It catapulted Lord Randolph Churchill into thepolitical spotlight when, in a dramatic appearance at Belfast’sUlster Hall, he invoked threats to loyal and industriousUlster Protestants as the principal objection to a Home Rulelegislature. Repeatedly using “Protestant” instead of“Loyalist” or “Unionist,” he proclaimed that England wouldnot leave the Protestants of Ireland in the lurch….Itwas only Mr. Gladstone who could for a momentimagine the Protestants of Ulster would yield obedienceto the law, would recognize the power or wouldsatisfy the demands of a Parliament in Dublin—aParliament of which Mr. Parnell would be the chiefspeaker and Archbishop Walsh the chief priest.” 4In a May 8th letter to The Times, Randolph more or lessjustified armed resistance to Home Rule when he said “Ulsterwill fight and Ulster will be right”—a slogan that energizedUlster Protestants against Home Rule for decades to come. Amore sectarian slogan was “Home Rule is Rome Rule.”Was Lord Randolph acting more out of opportunismthan conviction? Historians A.B. Cooke and John Vincentargue that he was secretly a Home Ruler but cynically“played the Orange card” knowing it would split theLiberals, paving the way for a Tory government. This ignoresthe consistency with which Lord Randolph denouncedHome Rule before 1886 and even more forcefully in hispublic speeches against Gladstone’s Second Home Rule Billin 1893, a time when it held no political gain and when hishealth was failing badly. Cooke and Vincent confuse LordRandolph’s advocacy of land reform, equality of franchiseand local government with support for Parnell’s goal of abolishingthe Act of Union.What then accounts for Randolph’s passionate andprovocative language in 1886? Although political considerationscannot be entirely discounted, his opposition to HomeRule was influenced by several factors.First, his mother was a Londonderry: a family withextensive Ulster holdings and a distinguished history ofservice to the Crown. Randolph respected his mother’s politicalviews and was concerned for the property of his relativesand other landlords under a Home Rule administration thatwould be dominated by politicians who had openly supportedthe land war.Second, Randolph’s sister-in-law Leonie had marriedinto the County Monaghan Leslie family, which had Orangeconnections and held some 50,000 acres in Ulster. Althoughthe Leslies had good relations with their tenants, they wereforced to sell 6000 acres between 1878 and 1883, owing tothe agricultural crisis and a steep decline in rental incomefollowing the land war and Gladstone’s 1881 Land Act.Another sister-in-law was married to Moreton Frewen,whose family also held Irish lands.Third, in autumn 1883 Churchill came to the defenseof Lord Rossmore, a County Tyrone magistrate dismissed byGladstone because of his participation in an Orange protestagainst Nationalist campaigns for Home Rule among UlsterCatholic voters, which decimated the vote of Protestantswho had heretofore voted Liberal. In the 1883 Monaghanby-election the Liberal candidate secured only 247 votescompared to the 4247 Liberal votes in the 1880 general election.From then on, mid-Ulster Protestant Liberals voted forTory or Liberal Unionist candidates. The significance of thisin Churchill’s 1886 Orange posture, and in laying thegroundwork for seventeen Unionist victories in the l886Home Rule election, is considerable. 5Fourth, Lord Randolph had long relied for Irish adviceon Gerald FitzGibbon. In December 1885, FitzGibbon hadurged him to do something for Irish education, but asregards “the National Question—For heaven’s sake don’ttouch it! It is red hot.” 6 It was at FitzGibbon’s 27 Decembersalon that Randolph first proposed using Ulster as the mainweapon to defeat Home Rule. A few weeks later he wrote toFitzGibbon, “…the Orange card is the card to play, PrayGod it may turn out the ace of trumps.” 7Churchill’s focus on Ulster underlined the reality thatby the 1880s, most Ulster Protestants considered themselvesa people apart from the rest of Ireland. Led by Belfast, the >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 39

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSCHURCHILLS IN IRELAND...economy of the northeast was a stark contrast to the economicallydevastated south and west, and there was a strongsense of Ulster pride and identity. Protestant-Catholic relationsin Belfast had been good in the early 19th century, butreligious tension grew as rural Catholics flocked to Belfastafter 1850, competing with working class Protestants, andsectarian rioting increased after 1856. By 1880 Catholicswere a third of the city’s population, nurturing Protestantfears of Catholic engulfment.Home Rule Fails, 1886The phenomenal success of Parnell’s Irish Nationalists,especially in Ulster, effectively destroyed the last vestiges ofliberalism and led to a common Protestant alliance againstHome Rule. The prospect of a Home Rule Parliamentpassing protectionist legislation was anathema, especially tobusinessmen. These factors continued to reverberate throughto the era of the Third Home Rule Bill on the eve of WorldWar I—as Randolph’s son Winston would soon learn.Ulster Protestants’ loyalty to the Union ignored thefact that Catholics were the majority or close to it in manyparts of the province, as the map on page 49 illustrates. Theimplications of this religious demographic would hauntUlster politics through recent times.But Ulster did not have to fight. Gladstone’s bill wasdefeated on 8 June 1886, when ninety-three Liberals votedwith the Conservatives against it. Gladstone resigned went tothe country. In the June election, the Tories and their LiberalUnionist allies won 317 seats, a majority of 141 overGladstone and the Irish Nationalists. In Belfast, inflammatoryrhetoric by politicians of both sides produced the worstsectarian rioting and intimidation in history. Between Juneand late August 1886, fifty people were killed, 371policemen injured, property was looted and burned.Except for a brief 1892-95 Liberal rule, when thesecond Home Rule Bill again failed, Tory/Unionists wouldgovern Ireland until 1906. Salisbury had called for “twentyyears of resolute government,” so effectively implemented byhis nephew and Irfish Chief-Secretary Arthur Balfour thathis sobriquet “Bloody Balfour” is familiar in Ireland today.But the Tories knew that they could not govern Ireland withcoercion alone, and eventually the kind of progressive policiesLord Randolph advocated were introduced. Randolphand his Liberal Unionist friend Joseph Chamberlain werenow spokesmen for Ulster Unionists who, while opposed toHome Rule, lobbied for additional land purchase legislationand a system of democratically elected local government.Arthur Balfour, his brother Gerald, and GeorgeWyndham, the Irish Chief-Secretaries from 1887 to 1905,hoping to “kill Home Rule with kindness,” initiated measuresthat transformed the Irish countryside. Governmentfinancing through five Tory and one Liberal land billsthrough 1909 provided £157 million, enabling over 200,000tenants to purchase over nine million acres of Irish land.Only three percent of the population owned land in 1870;by 1916 it was 64 percent. This represented the virtualundoing of the 17th century land confiscations and initiatedthe most profound, if quietest, economic and social revolutionin modern Irish history.When local government began in 1898, county andurban councils demonstrated that the Irish were capable ofefficient, honest administration, but council elections providedan opportunity for Nationalists to demonstrate thatHome Rule could not be killed by kindness. Nationalistswon 218 council seats to only twenty-eight Unionists inLeinster, 145 to fourteen in Munster, ninety-three to five inConnaught. In Ulster Nationalists won ninety-five seatswhile Unionists won eighty-six, over half of the latter concentratedin Counties Antrim, Armagh and Down. 8Another Conservative legislative measure was theCongested Districts Board in l891, which used state funds topurchase large tracts of land in the west and convert it intoviable small farms for the impoverished people ofConnaught and other areas. This measure enabled mymother’s family to come down from their desolate and rockymountain rental in County Mayo to take up a small farm atTurlough near Castlebar. My relatives are still on that propertyover a century later.Other measures were introduced to provide badlyneeded agricultural training and craft instruction as well asto improve transport facilities with light railways during thisperiod of Tory/Unionist government. New cultural andsocial movements that emphasized Irish national identityproved that conditions were now improving. Irish emigrationslackened.But to Conservative disappointment, their conciliatorypolicies did more to promote Home Rule than to erode it.As Winston Churchill observed to Bourke Cockran in April1896: “Home Rule may not be dead but only sleeping—butit will awake like Rip Van Winkle to a world of new ideas.” 9Winston Churchill as Home RulerHome Rule did awaken, when the Liberals returned topower in 1906, but instead of new ideas, it ultimately waswrecked by the old ideas and habits of English politicians:indecisiveness and ambivalence about Ireland, cynical politicalintrigue, Orange bigotry, the stubbornness and theconditional nature of Ulster Protestant loyalty.The 1906 Liberal government, with its vast majority,felt little pressure to commit to Home Rule. An attempt wasmade to fob off the Irish with the very limited Irish CouncilBill in 1907, but this was rejected outright by the Irish. Eventhough Winston Churchill had abandoned theConservatives and joined the Liberals in May 1904, and hadacknowledged that Ireland was more stable and law-abidingthan in his father’s day, he publicly remained opposed toHome Rule until 1908. But, as Michael McMenamin willdemonstrate, there is evidence to suggest that his oppositionwas gradually diminishing because of the positive changes inIrish economic, political and social conditions.Liberal opposition to Irish Home Rule evaporated in1908 when by-election losses and the challenge of passingLloyd George’s controversial budget gave the party leaders aFINEST HoUR 142 / 40

new appreciation for the eighty-three Irish MPs. Thus, whenIrish leader John Redmond tabled a Home Rule resolutionon 30 March 1908, Winston Churchill endorsed an IrishParliament for domestic affairs with the proviso that it wouldbe subject to the supremacy of Westminster. Speaking atDundee on 20 April he explained:I have become convinced that a national settlement ofthe Irish difficulty on broad and generous lines isindispensable to any harmonious conception ofLiberalism—the object lesson is South Africa…At thenext election I am strongly of the opinion that theLiberal Party should claim full authority and a freehand to deal with the problem of Irish self-governmentwithout being restricted to the measures ofadministrative devolution of the character of the IrishCouncil bill. 10Home Rule Reawakens...Within a year Home Rule was at the center of the politicalstage. The veto of Lloyd George’s budget by theTory-dominated House of Lords—the first such veto in 250years—effectively paralyzed the government. The Liberalsresigned and appealed to the country, their leader H.H.Asquith announcing that if returned to government, theywould introduce legislation to curb the Lord’s veto and createIrish self-government compatible with imperial integrity.Liberals campaigned on “Peers vs. the People,” whileTory/Unionists campaigned on the triple threat of HomeRule, Welsh Disestablishment and socialistic revolution. Inthe January 1910 election the Liberals secured only twomore seats than the Tory/Unionists, giving the balance ofpower to eighty-two Irish and forty Labour members.The Irish MPs supported the resubmitted budget andgladly anticipated quick action in the Lords. John Redmondsaid: “With us this question of the veto is the supreme issue.With us it means Home Rule for Ireland.” 11The Lords finally approved the budget in April, butthe issues of the Lords’ veto and Home Rule were linked inbitter political discourse for the rest of the year. TheTory/Unionists attacked the Liberals for entering into to a“corrupt bargain” with the Irish, whose support for thebudget they alleged had been contingent on an explicitLiberal promise to destroy the Lords and introduce HomeRule. Redmond was attacked as the “dollar dictator” after hisparty’s successful fundraising in America. In fact, the budgetwas carried by thirty-four votes independent of the Irish andAsquith had given no specific promises to Redmond.The Tories continued to perpetuate the “corruptbargain” because they had nothing else to offer. Their partywas divided over Free Trade. Voters, they perceived, equatedtariff reform with “stomach taxes” and were angry that theLords had tried to smash Lloyd George’s budget, whichfunded old age pensions and health insurance. 12The death of King Edward VII in May 1910 broughta temporary pause in this bitter debate and occasioned a constitutionalconference to seek compromise over the powers ofthe House of Lords. Home Rule was the proverbial elephantin the room at conference sessions, but Unionist leaderArthur Balfour refused to compromise, even over a proposalfor federal devolution instead of Home Rule. AlthoughBalfour knew the federal idea commanded some sympathywith Churchill and Lloyd George, he refused to budge,hoping to drive the Liberals out of office over the Lords issuein the next election.Dining with Balfour that summer, Winston’s uncleMoreton Frewen and Bourke Cockran urged him to considera federal solution for Ireland. The failure of the conferenceon 18 November brought the dissolution of Parliament andanother election in December. Meanwhile, Asquith hadsecured a secret promise from the new King, George V, tocreate sufficient new Liberal peers to vote for Lords reform ifhis party won.The election was another tie: 272 seats each to theLiberals and Tory/Unionists, with the Irish and Labour againholding the balance of power. On 10 August 1911, aftermonths of bitter debate, a Parliament Bill limiting the Lord’spower to delay organic legislation to three years received theroyal assent. The path was now open for Asquith to table thethird Home Rule Bill, which he did on 11 April 1912.Ulster Unionists watched these events with horror andanxiety, knowing that Parliament Act had removed the lastobstacle to Home Rule. Over the next three years theyengaged in an escalating propaganda campaign, drilling,marching and arming, making “Ulster will Fight” more thana rhetorical threat, and bringing the region to the brink ofcivil war by 1914....and Fails AgainWithin six weeks of the passage of the Parliament Act,Edward Carson, the leader of the Irish Unionist Alliance,declared that Home Rule was “the most nefarious conspiracythat had ever been hatched against a free people,” and urgedthe creation of a “Protestant Province of Ulster.” In OctoberWinston Churchill, who had become the government’spoint man on Ireland, announced that a Home Rule billwould be introduced in the next Parliamentary session. It issignificant that he admitted the government’s duty toaddress Ulster anxieties by providing “secure and effectivesafeguards for civil and religious equality and freedom.” 13Churchill and his wife made a well-publicized trip toBelfast on 8 February 1912, where he was prevented fromspeaking at the Ulster Hall, the very site where his father hadcondemned Home Rule and urged Ulster to resist a quartercentury earlier. Arriving at their hotel, the Churchills werejeered by a crowd of about 10,000, and his car was nearlyoverturned by protesters as he made his way to the alternativevenue of Celtic Park in Catholic West Belfast.Churchill tried to assure all that religious discriminationwould not happen under Home Rule. He urged UlsterProtestants to unite as Irishmen and to fight, not againstHome Rule, but to ensure it would be a success for all.His message fell on deaf ears. Orange lodges escalatedtheir drilling, marching and training; rifle clubs proliferated >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 41

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSCHURCHILLS IN IRELAND...and provided legal cover for arms acquisition. By January 1913an Ulster Volunteer Force was constituted from local groupsand English Tories actually cooperated in the search to secure aprofessional soldier to command it.Having written a biography of his father a few yearsearlier, Winston Churchill knew about Lord Randolph’s rallyingof Ulster Protestants in 1886. His Belfast tripundoubtedly convinced him that despite the positivechanges in Ireland since, the Protestant opposition to HomeRule had not abated and must be taken into account.Over the next few weeks, he and Lloyd George trieddiligently but unsuccessfully to convince the Cabinet thatsome provision to satisfy Ulster Protestants be included inthe initial Home Rule Bill. Asquith feared this wouldalienate Redmond and the Nationalists so he choose hisusual tactics of “wait and see,” and had introduced the thirdHome Rule Bill without any provision that addressed theUlster problem.This was a fatal mistake. It gave Edward Carson, JamesCraig and the other Ulster leaders ample opportunity overthe next two years to agitate further and organize and expandthe Ulster Volunteer Force. Equally as serious was the factthat by not including Ulster in the initial draft, any subsequentproposal would have to be brought in as separatelegislation, and subject to a three-year delay if the Lordsvetoed it. As time would tell, trying to figure out which areasof Ulster could legitimately be excluded from Home Rulewas an almost impossible task.On 9 April 1912, two days before Asquith introducedhis bill, Andrew Bonar Law, Balfour’s successor asTory/Unionist leader, proclaimed to 100,000 people atBelfast’s Balmoral Showgrounds that Ulster was holding thepass not only for itself but for all people of the BritishEmpire. Carson added: “Even if both parties in Great Britainwere committed to Home Rule, Ulster would still resist.” 14“THEIR IRISH MASTER”: Irish Nationalist Party leader JohnRedmond leads Asquith, Lloyd George and Churchill by the nosein this contemporary cartoon published in the Unionist press.The above cartoon conveys the dangerous watersChurchill and his colleagues were entering. Despite WSC’seloquence, passion and convincing speech during the bill’ssecond reading, Carson’s followers and the English Unionistswere not charmed into abandoning their resistance.On July 29th, in a speech in the shadows ofChurchill’s ancestral home at Blenheim, Andrew Bonar Lawdeclared: “I can imagine no length of resistance to whichUlster can go in which I should not be prepared to supportthem, and in which, in my belief, they would be supportedby the overwhelming majority of British people.” Behind thescenes on at least two occasions, Law tried to pressure theKing to dismiss the government, despite its majority.Ulster Will FightIn late September 1912, the Ulster Unionist Councilorganized the elaborate and religiously resonant UlsterCovenant: nearly half a million Ulster citizens sign a pledgeto use “all means necessary” to resist Home Rule and torefuse to recognize the authority of any Dublin Parliament.Prominent English Unionists participated, giving theirstamp of approval to threats of revolution.In September 1913 a thoroughly alarmed George Vinvited Bonar Law, Balfour and Churchill to Balmoral to seeif some deal could be worked out. Again Churchill tried andfailed to broker a compromise which would confer HomeRule on Ireland but keep the Protestant parts of Ulster separate.He even suggested that Redmond make an “exclusionoffer” to Carson, but the furthest Redmond could go politicallywas to suggest regional autonomy under a DublinParliament—and that of course was a non-starter.Equally alarmed, Prime Minister Asquith began aseries of secret talks with Bonar Law in October, to see if thelength and area of an Ulster exclusion could be negotiated.Initially Bonar Law and Balfour were conciliatory, but followingTory victories in two by-elections in mid-November,they rejected any compromise. In Dublin on 28 November,Bonar Law taunted Asquith: either crush the UlsterVolunteers and face an army rebellion or concede a generalelection. He even contemplated crippling the army by suspendingthe Army Annual Act when it came up for renewal,an idea he eventually dropped as dangerous and unprecedented.In February 1913 Balfour called for the permanentexclusion of all of Ulster as the only way to avoid civil war,even though he knew this was not justified demographicallyor economically. 15 In March, Carson rejected Asquith’sbelated offer of a six -year exclusion for those Ulster countieswhich opted out. Within days the government received intelligenceof potential Ulster Volunteer Force raids on armyammunition depots in four Ulster towns. Plans were madeto send troops to secure these supplies and Churchill, withthe approval of Cabinet, ordered naval ships to the area toprovide possible assistance in the movement of troops.Bonar Law’s previous references to army disobedience,and the ham-fisted conveying of orders to the army unit atthe Curragh, provoked the so-called Curragh Mutiny, whenfifty-seven army officers resigned their commissions in themistaken impression that they were going to be ordered todisarm the Ulster Protestants and enforce Home Rule. Theaffair was patched up, but did not prevent the army fromFINEST HoUR 142 / 42

intervening when a few weeks later the Ulster Volunteers illegallylanded 35,000 guns and large quantities ofammunition at Larne. Over 10,000 Ulster citizens wereinvolved in this clearly treasonable act, but no one was everarrested or prosecuted. Churchill was quick to emphasize inParliament the hypocrisy of so-called law-abiding Ulster loyalistsopenly defying the law.The Curragh affair provoked a Parliamentary furor,Balfour calling Churchill an “agent provocateur” who, “inone of his Napoleonic moods [would encircle] Ulster with amilitary and naval force that it could be…strangled into submission.”Balfour believed that the government was in sucha pickle over the amending bill that nothing should be doneto help them unless they agreed to a general election. Herejected efforts of Austen Chamberlain to revive the federalidea as a way around the difficulty. Even at the subsequentBuckingham Palace Conference in late July, which was calledby the King to try to hammer out an exclusion agreementbetween Redmond and Carson, Balfour was uncooperative.Dublin Nationalists tore a page from Ulster’s book inJanuary 1913 by forming the Irish Volunteers, 75,000 strongby 1914. On 26 July the Irish Volunteers landed a largequantity of German arms in open daylight at Howth—notto attack the Ulster Volunteer Force but to uphold HomeRule if it took effect. In contrast to Larne, police and troopsnow intervened and seized some of the arms, with threepeople killed and thirty-eight wounded. Passions in Irelandwere inflamed by the difference in treatment.World War I IntervenesBut for the outbreak of World War I, Ireland may havebeen plunged into civil war in 1914. Home Rule was put onthe statute book on September 15th, but was suspended forthe duration of the war. There was no amending bill forUlster. John Redmond’s subsequent call for the IrishVolunteers to join the war effort effectively destroyed theIrish Nationalist Party in Parliament, opening the door formore militant Irish Republicans like Padraig Pearse and TomClarke to seek Irish opportunities in England’s wartime difficulties.The result, of course, was the Easter Rising in 1916,which put the final nail in the Home Rule coffin. After thewar Winston Churchill would again face the difficultiesposed by the “muddy byways and dreary steeples ofFermanagh and Tyrone.”Walter Hines Page, American Ambassador to theCourt of St. James’s, summed up the tragedy of these yearswhen he observed:The Conservatives have used Ulster and its army as aclub to drive the Liberals out of power, and they havegone to the very brink of civil war. They don’t reallycare about Ulster. I doubt if they care much aboutHome Rule. They’d slip Ireland out to sea withoutmuch worry—except their own financial loss. It’s theLloyd George programme that infuriates them, andUlster and Home Rule are all mere weapons to stopthe general Liberal Revolution. 16At this stage of his involvement in Ireland, WinstonChurchill made a sincere effort to reconcile the claims of theIrish majority to self-government, and at the same time toinsure that the Protestants of Ulster would be secure. Thechallenge of achieving such a settlement was to remain forthe remainder of the century.The challenge of reconciling opposing religious andethno-political groups is not unique to Ireland, as conflictsin our contemporary world illustrate. I’ll leave it to subsequentspeakers to evaluate the nature of Churchill’sinvolvement and legacy after World War I, when he wasdrawn into controversies over the Anglo-Irish Treaty and thecontrol of the Irish naval ports.Endnotes1. Roy F. Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill; A PoliticalLife (Oxford University Press, 1981), 43.2. Ibid., 51.3. Ibid., 55.4. Roy F. Foster, “To the Northern Counties Station:Lord Randolph Churchill and the Prelude to the OrangeCard,” in F.S.L. Lyons and R.A.J. Hawkins, eds., Irelandunder the Union: Varieties of Tension; Essays in Honour of T.W. Moody (Oxford University Press, 1980), 254.5. Catherine B. Shannon, “The Roots and Symptoms ofSeparatism in Nineteenth Century Ulster, 1840-1886,” apaper delivered to the American Historical Association, 1977.6. Foster, “Northern Counties,” 242.7. Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 2,Young Statesman 1901-1914 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1967), 435.8. Catherine B. Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland,1984-1922 (Washington: Catholic Univesity of Amrica Press,1987), 104.9. Randolph S. Churchill, ed., Winston S. Churchill,Companion Volume I, Part 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,1966), 669.10. Churchill, Young Statesman, 434-35.11. Ibid., 438.12. See St. Loe Strachey to Balfour and G.A. Arbuthnottto Sandars in Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour, 144, 159.13. Churchill, Young Statesman, 444-45.14. Ibid., 452.15. Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour, 186.16. Ibid., 206.Other works consulted:A.B. and John Vincent Cooke, The Governing Passion:Cabinet Government and Party Politics in Britain, 1885-86(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1974).R.W. Kirkpatrick, “Origins and Development of theLand War in Mid-Ulster, 1879-85” in Ireland Under theUnion, cited above.Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill, CompanionVolume III, Part 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).Ronald E. Quinault, “Lord Randolph Churchill andHome Rule” in Reactions to Irish Nationalism, Alan O’Day,ed. (London: Hambledon Continuum, 1987). ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 43

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSChurchill and Home RuleOFTEN CRITICIZED AS A MAN WHO LOVED WAR, CHURCHILL DID HIS BEST BEFOREWORLD WAR I TO BRING ABOUT A PEACEFUL RESOLUTION IN IREALND, IN THEFACE OF OPPONENTS WHO WERE SPOILING FOR A FIGHT. HE PLAYED THE GAME INA WAY COMPATIBLE WITH LIBERAL DEMOCRACY. HIS OPPONENTS DID NOT.MICHAEL McMENAMIN“THE HARP THAT ONCE AGAIN”: F. Carruthers Gould in the Westminster Gazette, 1 May 1912. (An allusion to St. Brendan, charmingthe fishes.) Gould’s title was from the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852, author of “Oft in the Stilly Night”): “The harp that once throughTara’s halls / The soul of music shed / Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls / As if that soul were fled.” The fish in the water is Sir EdwardCarson, leader of the Ulster Unionists, who adamantly opposed the Home Rule Bill Churchill and the Liberals had just introduced.Winston Churchill throughout his long parliamentarycareer was frequently accused ofpolitical inconsistency, a charge seeminglymade plausible by the fact that he twicechanged parties. Churchill himself consideredthe charge false. He thought it more important to adhere toprinciple rather than to party, and believed he had done so.But Irish Home Rule seems to offer, upon first impression,an example where Churchill in just eight years did a 180-degree turn, from opposing Home Rule as a Conservativeupon his election to Parliament in 1900, to supporting it asa Liberal in 1908.Churchill was never as conservative as his opponentson the left liked to claim. In 1897, well before entering______________________________________________________Mr. McMenamin, a regular contributor to Finest Hour, is a firstamendment and media defense lawyer in Cleveland and co-author ofthe critically acclaimed Becoming Winston Churchill: The UntoldStory of the Young Churchill and His American Mentor.public life, he wrote to his mother explaining that he was aLiberal and that, but for Home Rule, he would stand forParliament as a Liberal:There are no lengths to which I would not go in opposing[the Conservatives] were I in the House of Commons. Iam a Liberal in all but name. My views excite the pioushorror of the Mess. Were it not for Home Rule—towhich I will never consent—I would enter Parliament asa Liberal. 1Seemingly he maintained this position until 1908when he first voted in principle to grant Home Rule toIreland. Two years later as Home Secretary, Churchillbecame the government’s leading spokesmen on Irish HomeRule, thereby earning him the undying enmity of theConservative Party. Conservatives disliked and distrustedChurchill before then; but Home Rule took their hostility toa new level.FINEST HoUR 142 / 44

Did Churchill really do a complete turnaround onHome Rule? A detailed examination of his correspondenceand speeches suggests that he did not. From a young age,Churchill supported self-government for Ireland in a wayUnionists and their Conservative allies never did. That positionnever changed, but his views on how practically toimplement some form of Irish self-government evolved inresponse to changed circumstances.A remarkable letter from a twenty-one-year-oldChurchill in April 1896 to his American mentor and oratoricalrole model Bourke Cockran, sets out his views on Irishself-government: a benchmark from which to analyze theevolution of his views through 1908. He freely admits thehistorical wrongs Ireland suffered at English hands, but suggeststhat is all in the past and that, in twenty years, “thenecessity” for Home Rule “will have passed away.”Cockran, a passionate Home Ruler, quickly recognizedthat the two men were not really that far apart in their opinionsand principles and, as he would often do in his uniqueformative relationship with the budding young statesman,went out of his way to coinvince Churchill that they sharedthe basic assumptions of a liberal democracy.An analysis of Churchill’s views on Home Rule fallsinto four phases:First are the years 1896 to 1900, before Churchill waselected to Parliament.Second are his years as a young Conservative MP, from1900 to 1904, when he left the Conservative Party to jointhe Liberal Party over the issue of Free Trade.Third is the 1904-08 period where, after the overwhelmingLiberal victory in 1905, Liberals ruled theCommons without depending upon the Irish Nationalists tostay in power. Now Churchill began to see the successful selfgovernmentnegotiated in South Africa in the wake of theBoer War as a template for Irish self-rule.Fourth are the years from 1910 to the outbreak ofWorld War I in 1914, when the Liberal majority in theCommons was so reduced that the Irish Nationalist Partyheld the balance of power. But perhaps we should letChurchill speak for himself (with a few observations).His Father’s Son: 1896-1900Despite his youth, Churchill at twenty-one was wellinformed on Ireland. In his 1896 letter to Cockran he commentson a speech Cockran had sent him stronglysupporting Irish Home Rule:Of course—my dear Cockran—you will understand thatwe approach the subject from different points of view andthat your views on Ireland could never coincide withmine....Six years of firm, generous, government in Irelandwill create a material prosperity which will counteract theefforts which able and brilliant men—like yourself—make to keep the county up to the proper standard ofindignation. Not for twenty years could a Home Rule billpass the English people—so sick and tired are they of thesubject.... The problems & the burning questions oftoday will be solved and Home Rule for Ireland as likelyas not will be merged in a wider measure of ImperialFederation.” 2Cockran promptly replied, attempting to minimizethe differences between their views:I do not think you and I are very far apart in our convictions.We differ more in phrases than in principle. If youridea of Imperial Federation be the solution of the Irishquestion nobody will rejoice at it more than the men whohave struggled for the same result under the name ofHome Rule.” 3We are fortunate that young Winston expressed hisviews in such detail at an early time: a baseline with which toevaluate the evolution of his position on Home Rule over theyears. Cockran promised that he would go into the subjectof Irish Home Rule “more freely” once he and Churchill metagain. Presumably they did but, if so, Churchill was not yetpersuaded. In the aforementioned 1897 letter to his motherhe declared his Liberal principles, but added: “As it is—Torydemocracy will have to be the standard under which I shallrange myself.” 4Opening His Mind: 1900-1904Irish policy did not much concern Churchill in 1900-04, but he was especially well informed on it: at this time hewas writing a biography of his father, Lord Randolph, whohad been one of the leading Conservative spokesmen onIreland, having spent five years there as secretary to hisfather, the Duke of Marlborough, who had served as theIrish Viceroy (see previous article).Conservatives in the early 1900s believed that landownership was more important to the Irish than Home Rule.So they used government subsidies to allow Irish tenantfarmers to purchase the land on which they worked.Churchill supported this policy. A letter on 28 December1903 from Churchill to an unknown addressee (probably aFree-Trade Conservative hesitant to support the Liberalsbecause of their support for Home Rule) suggests his familiaritywith the issues, although his position on Irishself-government was ambiguous.I do not believe that the Liberal Party have any intentionof introducing a Home Rule Bill for Ireland in theimmediate future; nor do I think that the question ofHome Rule can be in any degree at stake at the nextgeneral election. No doubt there is an immensenumber of people of both political parties who adhereto the general principle that countries should be governedby their own consent from within & not byother authority from without. But the objections tothe Home Rule Bills of 1886 & 1893 were more effectiveagainst the details of that legislation than againstthe principles & aspirations by which it was supported.5 >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 45

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSCHURCHILL AND HOME RULE...Churchill was correct that the Liberal Party had nointention of introducing a Home Rule Bill in the immediatefuture. But after he left the Conservatives for the Liberals inMay 1904, his views on Ireland continued to evolve as hebegan to see “practical solutions” to the problems posed byIrish self government.His Opinions Ripen: 1904-1910As a newly minted Liberal, Churchill continued hispublic stance against Home Rule, but a speech inManchester on 30 September 1904 foreshadowed his eventualshift. Typically, he presented two extreme points ofview—Ireland as a colony, Ireland as an independentrepublic—leaving the reasonable middle for himselfYou have doubtless read the account of the plan forsecuring to the Irish people a more effective and intimatecontrol of their own purely local and domestic concerns,of their private bill legislation, for certain portions oftheir local legislation, and for the spending and auditingof their own money—a plan which has been broughtforward by Lord Dunraven and other prominent IrishUnionists and landowners. These proposals have ofcourse been attacked, and from two extreme points ofview. They have been attacked by those who wish to seeIreland a foreign country and even a hostile country, andthey are attacked by those whose plan is to hold it as aconquered and subjugated country. This is just the reasonwhy they seem to me so very interesting—that theyshould be attacked from both these points of view.I implore you not to let this new Irish hope die. Let ustake it for what it is worth. Do not let us allow ourselves,on the one hand, to be frightened by extravagantdemands not now before us, or on the other to be bulliedout of what is right and reasonable and what is practicaland prudent. 6On 20 February, 1905, Churchill addressed the Houseof Commons and openly moved closer to the LiberalParty’s’s position on Home Rule:The most obvious objection to the present Irish systemwas that the people had no sense of ownership in governmentsimilar to that existing in this country. We mighthave a poor thing of a Government, but at least it was ourown, and slowly the electoral machinery could change it;but in Ireland there was no change possible, it was anarbitrary authority under the specious guise of representation.”7Churchill’s moderate tones, and his 1906 biography ofhis father, were drawing notice. Lord Randolph’s friend WilfridScawen Blunt wrote that WSC’s father “was far more of aHome Ruler than you seem to know, and I have alwaysthought that, if the Election of 1885 had gone rather morefavourably and Gladstone had not taken up the Irish causewhen he did, your father would have persevered with it.” 8During the 1906 general election campaign, Churchillcontinued to support reform in Irish government but notHome Rule: “I am persuaded that considerable administrativereforms are required in the government of Ireland, and Iwould gladly see the Irish people accorded the power tomanage their own expenditure, their own education andtheir own pubic works according to Irish ideas. 9 In anotherspeech Churchill said: “I do not think we should be frightenedfrom dealing with the question [of Irish reform]because we have the harsh and senseless reiteration of the cryof Home Rule.” 10Churchill’s position on Home Rule began to changeopenly in 1908, after he had been appointed to his firstcabinet position at the Board of Trade. In March 1908, JohnRedmond, the head of the Irish Nationalist Party, introduceda Home Rule resolution in the House of Commons.Churchill proposed to vote for it, and wrote Redmond: “Myvote for your resolution will undoubtedly expose me to considerableattack, as it will rightly be interpreted as beinganother step forward on my part towards a full recognitionof Irish claims to self-Government.” 11Ten days later, Churchill wrote to Prime MinisterAsquith seeking his approval of the answers he proposed togo all-out for Home Rule in the next Parliament:At the last election I precluded myself as did others of mycolleagues from attempting what is called the “largerpolicy” [Home Rule] in respect of Ireland during the representParliament. By that I am bound so far as thisParliament is concerned. I have for some time resolvednot to be fettered in that way in any subsequentParliament. I am encouraged by the striking success of abold and generous policy in South Africa to approachIrish difficulties in a similar spirit—and when thisParliament has reached its close, I am strongly of opinionthat the Liberal Party should claim authority to deal withthe problem of Irish self government as indicated in Mr.Redmond’s resolve. 12During the 1908 by-election, which Churchill had tocontest after being appointed to the Board of Trade, heexplained how his position on Home Rule had changed:My opinion on the Irish question has ripened during thelast 2 years when I have lived in the inner or nearly in theinner councils of Liberalism. I have become convincedthat a national settlement of the Irish difficulty on broadand generous lines is indispensable to any harmoniousconception of Liberalism—the object lesson is SouthAfrica….At the next election I am strongly of the opinionthat the Liberal Party should claim full authority and afree hand to deal with the problem of Irish self-governmentwithout being restricted to measures ofadministrative devolution of the character of the IrishCouncils Bill. 13FINEST HoUR 142 / 46

Churchill continued to support Home Rule during theelection campaign which began in December 1909. In doingso, he persuaded the Irish of his sincerity in a way Asquithdid not. On 10 February 1910, Wilfrid Blunt wrote in hisdiary about a conversation with Churchill:He would like the Home Office. He would not takeIreland, unless it were to grant Home Rule. I questionedhim as to his understanding of the Home Rule to begiven, and he said it would be complete ParliamentaryGovernment for all Irish affairs in Dublin, includingfinance, police, and everything, but not the power oflevying Custom duties against England, or altering theland settlement and, of course, none of levying troops orof treating foreign Powers. He would have the Irishmembers still sit at Westminster, but in diminishednumbers.14Taking the Lead: 1910-1912Churchill became Home Secretary in 1910 but notbefore turning down the Irish Office. As Churchill wrote toAsquith in early February, 1910:I am sensible of the compliment you pay to my personalqualities in suggesting that I should go to Ireland at thisjuncture, & I realize the peculiar importance to theGovernment of successful conduct of that post. I am themore grateful to you for not pressing me to undertake it.The office does not attract me now. There are many circumstancesconnected with it which repel me. Except forthe express purpose of preparing & passing a Home RuleBill I do not wish to become responsible for Irish administration.And before that situation can be reached, wemust—it seems to me—fight another victorious battle inthe constituencies. 15But the Liberals did poorly in the first 1910 election,holding a two-vote lead over the Tories, which dropped toone after another election in December. Now the Liberalshad to seek support of the eighty-two Irish Nationalist MPs,which gave leverage to Home Rule proponents.Addressing Parliament on 15 February 1911,Churchill spoke of all that had changed since 1886 whenLord Randolph had opposed Home Rule: “better houses,better clothes, more food, more money, more education,expanding prosperity, an astonishing absence of crime, a newactivity of enterprise, a new culture. But the biggest change,he asserted, was “events in South Africa which had followedupon the grant of self-government to the Transvaal andOrange River colonies....” The speech also demonstratedChurchill’s perception of Irish history and its impact oncurrent British politics. 16Churchill first addressed the question of military riskattendant with Home Rule. Alluding to the Spanish Armadaand the abortive French involvement in Irish “troubles” inthe 1790s, Churchill pointed out that in those days, weatherwas crucial and communications were poor. But now therewere steamships, railways, telegraphs, and telegraphy: “wehave been absolutely relieved from all apprehensions of adescent upon Ireland.”On population, Churchill noted that Ireland’s hadfallen to 4.3 million while Great Britain’s had rise to 41million. Ireland was now so dependent that “the fortunes ofthe two islands are so profoundly interwoven that I submitto the party opposite that any disagreement upon primarymatters has become morally and physically impossible.”Churchill conceded that Irish representation atWestminster must fall, but pointed out that this would “be anadvantage and not a disadvantage to the Conservative Party.”He brushed aside religious fears, saying Irish Protestantswould be “shielded and guarded by the Imperial Parliament.”And he held out the promise of broad, sunlit uplands: “If wecould reconcile the English and the Irish peoples and rally theIrish nation around the Monarchy...then we should havegained an addition for the British Empire equal to many divisionsof the Fleet and the Army.”Churchill concluded his speech with an appeal to theConservative Party to correct its mistake when it had rejectedself-governance for the Transvaal colony in South Africa.When he had moved approval of the Transvaal Constitutionfive years earlier, he recalled, “I said that, with our greatmajority, we could only make the Transvaal Constitution agift of party, but that they could make it the gift of thenation as a whole.” Now the Conservatives faced the samequestion: “Do not choose wrongly again!”But not only did the Conservative Party choosewrongly again; it brought the country to the brink of civilwar by opposing Home Rule over the next four years. A fewmonths later, Churchill was appointed First Lord of theAdmiralty, a position from where he continued to be thegovernment’s chief spokesman on Home Rule for Ireland.Opposing Treason: 1912Catharine Shannon has already described the violentopposition that greeted Churchill in Belfast in February1912, where he characteristically went to parlay with theUlster voters. “It seemed to me,” wrote The Times reporter,“that Mr. Churchill was taking a greater risk than ever heexpected….Yet he never flinched and took hostility visualisedas well as vocalised calmly and no harm fell him.” 17Trying to assure the Protestants, Churchill listed six specificsafeguards designed to protect their interests, including theright of the Crown, the Imperial Parliament and PrivyCouncil to invalidate legislation deemed unjust toProtestants. Realizing that his father’s famous “Ulser willfight” declaration would be thrown in his face, Churchillturned it to his advantage:...it is in a different sense that I accept and repeat LordRandolph Churchill’s words, “Ulster will fight and Ulsterwill be right.” Let Ulster fight for the dignity and honourof Ireland. Let her fight for the reconciliation of races andfor the forgiveness of ancient wrongs. Let her fight for theunity and consolidation of the British Empire. Let her >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 47

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSCHURCHILL AND HOME RULE...fight for the spread of charity, tolerance, and enlightenmentamong men. Then, indeed, “Ulster will fight andUlster will be right.” [loud cheers]. 18Throughout 1912, SirEdward Carson, leader of theUlster Unionists, and Toryleader Andrew Bonar Law,frequently urged Ulster violentlyto resist Home Rule.Referring to their speeches as“almost treasonable,”Churchill declared on 30April they were inciting openrebellion: “As the detestableincidents which have latelytaken place in Belfast provethey have been only too wellinterpreted by those to whomthey were addressed.” 19Bonar Law kept pilingon. Lamenting “a revolutionarycommittee which hasseized upon despotic powerby fraud,” he could imagineno Ulster act of resistance he“should not be prepared tosupport.” 20Churchill, deeply disturbed,wrote to J.L. Garvin,editor of The Observer: “Dothey [the Tories] think theywill never come back topower? Have they no policyfor Ireland except to make itungovernable?...no one that Iknow of has ever contemplatedthe application of force to Ulster. The principle anddoctrine lately enunciated would dissolve the framework notonly of the British Empire, but of civil society.” 21Churchill took the initiative in appeasing theUnionists by suggesting, in a 31 August, 1912 letter to JohnRedmond, that a proposal to allow counties to opt out ofHome Rule for a limited period would best be made by theIrish nationalists and not the government:My general view is just what I told you earlier this year—namely that something should be done to afford thecharacteristically Protestant and Orange counties theoption of a moratorium of several years before accedingto an Irish Parliament. I think the time approaches whensuch an offer should be made—and it would come muchbetter from the Irish leaders than from theGovernment....These opinions are personal so far as I amconcerned—they have not been arrived at from consultation,they are for your private eye alone.” 22In a letter written on 14 September 1912, Churchillscorned the possibility of the persecution of Protestants byCatholics in Ulster:There is not the slightest danger in my opinion ofProtestants in Ulster beingpersecuted for their religionunder a system of HomeRule. The danger is entirelythe other way, viz—that thevery strong and aggressiveProtestant majority in partsof North East Ulster willmaltreat and bully theCatholics in their midst.This has recently occurredon several occasions, and isin my opinion the directresult of the encouragementgiven to bigotry and lawlessnessby the Leaders of theConservative Party. 23Lords Again: 1913By August 1913 HomeRule had twice been passed bythe House of Commons andtwice rejected by the House ofLords. Since the Lords couldno longer effectively veto a billafter this happened, HomeRule was scheduled to becomeeffective by the middle of1914. Regardless of the compromiseseventually put forthto appease Ulster, it must beUNIONIST POSTCARD lauding Carson and other leaders.remembered that the UlsterUnionists and their conservativeallies were opposed to any Home Rule for Ireland evenif Ulster were excluded.Churchill and the Liberals were looking for a way toappease Ulster, but not at the expense of denying self-governmentto the rest of Ireland. What Churchill and theLiberals resented were the threats of violence and civil warfrom the Ulster Unionists. One diarist wrote that Churchillindicated that Liberals were not opposed per se to some sortof exemption for Ulster from an Irish government but:“he strongly resents that Ulster should talk of ‘Civil War’ &do everything in her power to stir up rebellion before eventhe H.R. bill [is debated]....Naturally the Opposition wish toturn out the Government. But it is not ‘playing the game’ totry & do this by trying to raise a threat of civil war.” 24At the same time, however, the Irish Nationalistsremained opposed to a divided Ireland. T.P. O’Connor, anIrish Nationalist MP from Liverpool, wrote Churchill on 7October 1913, telling him that his party was “irreconcilablyhostile” to any break up of Ireland, and would prefer post-FINEST HoUR 142 / 48

ponement of Home Rule “for some years” rather than to “amutilation of the country.” 25Since the Liberals needed the Irish Nationalists to stayin power, they could not agree permanently to exclude Ulsterfrom Ireland. But the most the Irish Nationalists werewilling to do, as Redmond told Asquith in November, 1913,was to provide for autonomy of Ulster under an IrishParliament, much Quebec’s autonomy in Canada.Churchill made repeated attempts to reach an accommodationwith the Conservatives, to no avail. Sir EdwardCarson’s threat to declare in essence unilateral independencefor Ulster in the event of Home Rule was anathema toChurchill, who believed that violence or even its threat hadno place in a democratic society governed by the rule of law.Ireland and Ulster were to pay a heavy price in bloodat various times during the 20th Century, and Bonar Lawand Carson were more responsible for it than their counterpartsin the IrishNationalist Party.While theNationalists were inChurchill’s words“playing the game,”Bonar Law andCarson courtedtreason with GreatBritain’s mortalenemy, ImperialGermany. Moreimportantly, theydid so withimpunity. There aremany aspects to allthis remindful ofmore recent timesand issues in otherlands.Passage and War: 1914In March 1914, Asquith produced his final compromise,without the support of Conservatives but with theIrish Nationalists. It provided that each of the Ulster countiescould decide in an election to exclude itself for six yearsfrom the provisions of Home Rule—giving theConservatives in effect two elections in which to overturn it.Within a week of the compromise being introducedChurchill gave a speech, approved in advance by Asquith,which goes a long way toward explaining the sheer hatredand vitriol in which the Unionists held Churchill. Afterexplaining the nature of the compromise the Liberals hadproposed, Churchill examined the options open to UlsterProtestants and their Conservative allies:Strictly speaking, no doubt, the Constitutional remedy ofthe Ulster Protestants and the Unionist Party is clear andplain. They should obey the law [loud cheers]. If theydislike the law—it is a free country—[hear, hear]—letthem agitate for a majority when an election comes, andthen, if they choose, they can amend or at the very worstrepeal a law against which the country would then havepronounced. That is a full remedy. It is the only remedywhich is open to Liberals when we are in a minority. ButI repeat what I said in Dundee that the most extremecourse in which the Opposition would be justified wouldbe to obtain a majority, and then to amend or repeal theHome Rule Bill. That is their right. It is their extremeright. And it is their only right. 26Churchill enjoyed public speaking and, while he freelyused self-deprecating humor, he just as frequently usedhumor, if not ridicule, against his opponents—which he didnow, in commenting upon the Conservative rejection ofAsquith’s compromise. The bracketed audience reactions arefrom the verbatim transcript in Hansard:But are they satisfied,are theypleased, are theygratified? Oh, dear,no. Within a fewhours of the PrimeMinister’s statementLord RobertCecil was writing tothe Times newspaperpointing outthat two generalelections would beno protection toUlster, because thecountry might voteLiberal on othermatters [laughter].What! Two general elections are no protection for Ulster!Where, then, are the Tory hopes of victory? [laughter andcheers]. Don’t they think they can even win one out of thesetwo elections—not even the second one, six years hence?ULSTER PARLIAMENTARY DIVISIONS: The shaded areas are majority Catholic,showing that Ulster itself was by no means overwhelmingly Protestant.Why, gentlemen, to satisfy these gentry [laughter] youwould have not only to promise them an election, butyou would have to guarantee that it will go the way theywant [laughter]. You will have to promise that they are tohave a majority at the election, or else, of course, therewill be civil war [laughter]. To satisfy their friends inUlster you must not only arrange that the counties wherethere is an Orange majority should be excluded, but thosecounties where they are in a minority must be excludedtoo. Of course—what did you expect? [laughter].Majority or minority, they must have their own way—orelse it will be civil war [laughter]. 27A later passage in this speech perfectly illustrates the contemptChurchill held for the Ulster Protestants whoselegitimate concerns he had tried to so hard to appease: >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 49

CHURCHILL PROCEEDINGSCHURCHILL AND HOME RULE...The Prime Minister asked in one of his great speeches—”If Home Rule were to fail now, how could you governthe West of Ireland?” Captain Craig, an Ulster Member,a man quite representative of those for whom he speaks,interjected blithely, “We have done it before.” Ah! now,observe that here is a man claiming to rebel himself, andasking for special consideration, asking that he shall notbe ridden rough-shod over, and in the very midst of thisagitation, of this act of his, he shows the kind of measurehe would mete out to others.There you get the true insight into the Tory mind.Coercion for four-fifths of Ireland is a healthful, exhilarating,salutary exercise, but lay a finger upon theTory fifth—sacrilege, tyranny, murder [laughter]. “Wehave done it before, and we will do it again.” There isthe ascendancy spirit. There is the spirit with which weare confronted. There is the obstacle to the peace andunity of Ireland. There stands the barrier which, whenall just claims have been met and all the fears, reasonableand unreasonable, have been prevented, stillblocks the path of Irish freedom and British progress....If Ulstermen extend the hand of friendship it will beclasped by Liberals and by their Nationalist countrymenin all good faith and in all goodwill. But ifthere is no wish for peace, if every concession that ismade is spurned and exploited, if every effort to meettheir views is only to be used as a means of breakingdown Home Rule and of barring the way to the rest ofIreland, if Ulster is to become a tool in party calculations,if the civil and Parliamentary systems underwhich we have dwelt and our fathers before us for somany years are to be brought to the crude challenge offorce, if the Government and the Parliament of thisgreat country and greater Empire is to be exposed tomenace and brutality, if all the loose, wanton and recklesschatter we have been forced to listen to all thesemany months is in the end to disclose a sinister andrevolutionary purpose—then, gentlemen, I can onlysay to you let us go forward together and put thesegrave matters to the proof. 28A little over a month later Edward Carson and theUlster Volunteers, conspiring with Imperial Germanyagainst the Crown, illegally landed 35,000 rifles and3,000,000 rounds of ammunition in Ulster. While this hardenedBritish public opinion against the Ulster Protestants,not a single person was ever charged let alone convicted ofthis open act of treason.Churchill had taken the lead in persuading the IrishNationalists to allow any Ulster county temporarily to optout of Home Rule, while at the same time being the mostoutspoken opponent of what he labeled the “almost treasonableactions” of Carson and the Unionists in opposingit—actions encouraged and facilitated by Andrew BonarLaw and the Conservative Party, who supported the die-hardopposition to any self-government anywhere in Ireland. Itwas a view Winston Churchill never shared.In August 1914, Irish Nationalist Party leader JohnRedmond agreed that, while the Home Rule Bill was to beput in the statute book, its actuation would be suspended forthe duration of the war that had just broken out in Europe.His agreement was his political death warrant at the hands ofNaionalist extremists. The last chance for a peaceful resolutionof Irish self-government was forever lost.While he is criticized even today as a man who lovedwar, Winston Churchill did his best in those days before thecoming of the Great War to bring about a peaceful resolutionin Ireland, in the face of opponents who were spoiling for afight. Carson and his followers, by openly arming themselves,and by conspiring with Britain’s adversary, set anexample for the “physical force” Nationalists who wantedIreland to be an independent republic, not the self-governingDominion promised by Home Rule. Decades of bloodshedwould follow in Ireland.Churchill played the game in the only way compatiblewith liberal democracy. His opponents did not. ,EndnotesBV and CV refer to Biographic and Companion volumes ofthe official biography: Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S.Churchill (London: Heinemann, 1966-67).1. CV I, Part 2, 751.2. Michael McMenamin and Curt Zoller, BecomingWinston Churchill (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 2007), 86.3. Ibid., 88.4. CV I, Part 2, 751.5. CV II, Part 1, 273.6. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His CompleteSpeeches 1897-1963 (New York: Bowker, 1974) 8 vols., I: 360.7. Ibid, 421.8. CV II, Part 1, 491.9. Complete Speeches, I: 531.10. Ibid.11. CV II, Part 2, page 764.12. OB II, 431.13. OB II, 434.14. OB II, 437.15. CV, II, Part 2, 1133.16. Complete Speeches, II: 1678.17. OB II, 450.18. Complete Speeches, II: 1899.19. Complete Speeches, II: 1947.20. OB, II, 453.21. CV II, Part 3, 1393.22. OB II, 454.23. CV, II, Part 3, 1397.24. CV, II, Patt 3, 1399.25.CV, II, Part ?, 1401.26.Complete Speeches, II: 2224-2233.27. Ibid.28. Ibid.FINEST HoUR 142 / 50

BOOK REVIEWSBooks, Arts&CuriositiesOld Story, Different ApproachChurchill Centre Book ClubManaged for the Centre by ChartwellBooksellers (www.churchillbooks.com),which offers member discounts up to25%. To order please contactChartwell Booksellers, 55 East 52ndStreet, New York, NY 10055.Email info@chartwellbooksellers.comTelephone (212) 308-0643Facsimile (212) 838-7423TED HUTCHINSONWarlord: A Lifeof WinstonChurchill at War1874-1945, byCarlo D’Este.Harpers, 2008,846 pp., illus.,hardbound,$39.95, memberprice $31.95.Carlo D’Este’s agreeable new book isneither a cradle-to-grave biographyor the specialized study seemingly promisedby the title. It is instead a curiousoverview of Churchill’s nearly lifelonginvolvement in the British armed forces,a study which focuses tightly on someaspects of his subject’s relationship withthe military while, frustratingly, givesothers only the most fleeting of glances.D’Este himself calls his book “thestory of the military life of WinstonChurchill,” and asserts that “very littlehas been written about the militaryChurchill” (xvi)—which is not categoricallytrue.Virtually every book ever writtenabout Churchill (excepting, perhaps, bookson his paintings) contains at least someelement of his varied relationship with themilitary and war, and specialized studieshave been penned by Ronald Lewin(Churchill as Warlord ), Max Schoenfeld(The War Ministry of Winston Churchill),R.W. Thomson (Generalissimo Churchill),David Jablonsky (Churchill, The GreatGame and Total War), and DouglasRussell (Winston Churchill: Soldier)among others.Still, D’Este seems to be doingsomething a little different. He focuseson Churchill’s role as “warlord” duringWorld War II (the book contains someinteresting passages about how Churchillcombined the roles of Prime Ministerand Minister of Defense in May 1940,essentially making himself the undisputedhead of military affairs) and howthis role was informed by Churchill’slong career both in serving and leadingmilitary departments.D’Este begins by tracing youngWinston’s boyhood fascination withthings military, following the young manto Sandhurst and to military postsabroad. He dogs Churchill’s path, likecountless other biographers, from Indiato the Nile to South Africa before finallyassuming his first parliamentary seat afterthe turn of the 20th Century. There islittle new here, but D’Este writes welland seems commendably up-to-date onthe latest in the voluminous Churchillliterature. I found his writing on actualmilitary engagements (such as the battleof Omdurman) to be particularly strong,as befits a renowned military historian.After an interlude the author takesus through the First World War, from theAdmiralty to the trenches. He spends therequisite pages on the Dardanelles andconcludes that Churchill must shouldermuch of the blame for the operation,even if there was still much to go around:tough but fair. It is to D’Este’s credit thatI never felt he had an axe to grind; I donot necessarily agree with all of hismethods or conclusions, but heapproached the topic, in my mind, withfairness and even-handedness.This is not to say that D’Este isn’tseriously critical of Churchill and hisbehavior. At the Admiralty in 1914-15,he writes that Churchill “lost sight of theenormousness of his responsibility asFirst Lord” as he got caught up in theFINEST HoUR 142 / 51excitement of the war. (226) This themerecurs again and again, contradicting thebelief held by many.Virtually everyone who has studiedChurchill acknowledges that, in hisyouth, WSC was fascinated by war; butin World War I, exposed to the slaughterin the trenches, many scholars argue thathe was a changed man who approachedwar in a more mature and cautious way.D’Este does not dispute thatChurchill hated war’s mindless destructionor regretted its immense humancosts. By he also writes with some convictionand much evidence that WSCnever really lost his fascination for battle,which was both a strength and weaknessin World War II.The inter-war years are traversed ina handful of pages, which may seem reasonablein a book already overlong at 846pages. But in retrospect, I think greatercoverage of the late 1920s (whenChurchill served as Chancellor of theExchequer and fought for reduced militaryspending), and the 1930s (when hefamously advocated rearmament), wouldhave been more illuminating. D’Estemight have examined these periods ratherthan focus so much energy on the earlyyears, where he offers little new or evenrelevant material.There are moments in the bookwhere it almost seems that D’Este wasundecided about whether to write a bookabout Churchill as a warlord or as asoldier. In some ways he tried to do both,and thus succeeded in doing neither aswell as the reader would hope.Regardless, the bulk of this studycovers World War II, which is appropriateconsidering its focus, and here theauthor is on firm and familiar ground.(D’Este’s biography of General GeorgePatton is one of his outstanding >>

BOOK REVIEWSCHURCHILL AS WARLORD...works.) As expected, his analysis anddescriptions of the ground battles of thewar are extremely lucid; his words onNorth Africa, Italy and Northern Europe,are helpful for both the expert and thenovice; I understood the events leadingto Alamein much better after reading hisaccount.The main thrust of the book isthat Churchill was in many ways a poorwarlord, one who frequently misunderstoodstrategy and tactics, had littleconception of the difficulty in supplyingarmies, and pushed for action even whenprudence was a better course. All of thiswas driven, argues D’Este, by Churchill’sunderlying weakness: a fascination forwar driven more by romance than reality.D’Este readily concedes, however, thatthis glaring weakness was ironically alsoChurchill andAustralia, byGrahamFreudenberg,Macmillan, 614pp., illus., hardboundA$59.99,available fromchaos.com at$51.98.ncomparably, Winston Churchill“Ithought more about Australia andmore about what Australia thought ofhim than any world leader before orsince, or ever will again.…the best lessonto be drawn from the long story ofChurchill and Australia is how much, inthe final analysis, we must rely upon ourselves.And, of course, the lesson of hiswhole life: ‘Never Despair.’”So says Graham Freudenberg at theend of his incisive and lengthy account ofChurchill’s interaction with Australia. Heis not a “rusted-on” conservative but akey figure in the Australian Labour Partywho was principal speechwriter to twoprime ministers and three premiers ofChurchill’s greatest strength as a warleader. Churchill’s lack of pragmatism,his disgust with surrender, his love ofaction, his belief in daring offensives andhis innate belief in the will of the Britishpeople were not just hindrances to theBritish war effort but the very thing thatmade him such an acclaimed war leaderin 1940. For at that moment, during hiscountry’s finest hour, Britain did notneed a pragmatist; they needed aromantic dreamer.It is to D’Este’s credit that he recognizesthis truth, and thus leaves uswith a deeply ambiguous portrait: onethat is greatly critical of Churchill thestrategist while deeply appreciative of hisqualities as a national leader in a crisis. Itis this ambiguity that is truly reflective ofChurchill himself, and makes the bookworth reading. ,WSC as Prop for a Larger StoryALFRED JAMES____________________________________Mr. James (abmjames@iinet.net.au) representsThe Churchill Centre in Australia.New South Wales, our largest state.Churchill supposedly has or had abad press in Australia over Gallipoli in1915 and Singapore in 1942. GrahamFreudenberg says the first problem beganwith a statement in the 1921 OfficialHistory of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 by C.E.W. Bean: “So, throughChurchill’s excess of imagination, alayman’s ignorance of artillery and thefatal power of a young enthusiasm tooverwhelm older and slower brains, thetragedy of Gallipoli was born”—a remarkcoloured by Bean’s emotional attachmentto the Australian soldier, whom heregarded as heroic and above fault.In The World Crisis (vol. 2, 1923)Churchill responded: “It is my hope thatthe Australian people, towards whom Ihave always felt a solemn responsibility,will not rest content with so crude, soinaccurate, so incomplete and so prejudiceda judgement but will study thefacts themselves.” It is doubtful that “theAustralian people” had ready access tothe information that the Dardanelles/Galllipoli campaign was designed tobreak the deadlock in the mud ofnorthern France by diverting the Turksfrom their alliance with Germany and tocontrol the Black Sea, allowing suppliesto reach Russia. Nor would they haveknown of the prevarication and bloody-FINEST HoUR 142 / 52minded obstinacy of leaders likeKitchener and Fisher, which ensured thatthe element of surprise was lost to theANZAC attacking forces.The Singapore complaint involvesthe degree of help by Britain to Australiain World War II. Early on, Churchill toldAustralians that Japan was not a threatand that Singapore would always beunassailable, and they did not muchobject when Churchill himself movedAustralian troops and personnel around.He ordered the 7th Division of the 2ndAustralian Imperial Force (AIF) to jointwo other divisions in the Middle Eastand not go, as Australia expected, toMalaya; he even sent one brigade to assistin the forlorn invasion of Greece, where3000 Australians were captured.Everything changed with the attackon Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941.Australian Prime Minister Curtin at onceannounced that Australia was at war withJapan “because of unprovoked attacks onBritish and U.S. territories,” hoping thatAustralia would become the base fromwhich Australia, Britain and the U.S.A.would repel and then attack Japan. Hesoon realized that he was more likely toget help from the U.S., declaring on 27December that “Australia looks toAmerica, free of any pangs as to our traditionallinks or kinship with the UnitedKingdom.”This did not go down well withChurchill who, inter alia, saw it as apropaganda gift to the enemy. EvenRoosevelt allegedly thought it bespoke“panic and disloyalty.” Freudenbergclaims that “Churchill’s overheated reactionto Curtin’s message to the Australianpeople distorted his relations withAustralia for the rest of the war andbeyond.”Churchill, of course, wantednothing to interfere with his carefullywroughtcase for the policy of “HitlerFirst.” Australia, he wrote later, had a

duty to “study their own position withconcentrated attention....we had to try tothink for all.” Freudenberg in his prologueputs it differently: “Churchill’spriority was not saving the British Empirebut using the Empire to save Britain.”But Paul Keating, a Labour PrimeMinister in the 1990s, wrote recently:“Churchill could be truculent or evenpetty but never mean....His fight withCurtin was about the management of thewar and his priorities; it was in no wayabout punishing or ostracising Australia.”The prologue also makes a lot ofLord Moran’s claim that Churchill,annoyed by Curtin’s independence, saidAustralians came from “bad stock.” Therepresentations of Churchill’s doctor arenot always reliable, but regardless, abouthalf of the 300,000 Australians whofought in the Great War were born inBritain or were children of Britons. Manyothers were descendants of free immigrants,including gold-seekers, whoflooded the country from 1840 and,perhaps, no more than ten percent weredistant descendants of the 160,000 convictssent to Australia, mostly in thehalf-century after 1788.After Singapore fell, Australiabecame much more self-interested andassertive and properly requested that the7th Division return from the Middle Eastto fight in New Guinea, while Churchillwanted them to assist in the defence ofBurma. Fortunately, the Japanese threatto the Australian mainland did notamount to much, and paradoxically, theAIF was left with little to do in the laterstages of the War, tending to blameDouglas MacArthur for ignoring them.As one who has lived in Australiafor sixty years, I’ve never found anunderlying current of dislike forChurchill. Ex-servicemen in particularhave great respect for him. When theWinston Churchill Memorial Trust waslaunched in February 1965, Australiansdonated over £2 million, more than wasraised in Britain.In his Man of the Century, JohnRamsden notes that the appeal coincidedwith Britain’s closer identification withEurope and with Australia’s imminentinvolvement with the Vietnam War, andwondered whether the appeal was “onelast rally” for all that Churchill had stoodfor in the Anglo-Australian identity.”Maybe so, but there was a further “rally”in 1999 when 55 percent of Australiansvoted against a republic and to retainElizabeth II as Queen of Australia.Freudenberg’s work must beregarded as fair analysis. Its generositytowards Churchill and his vagariesreminds me of that of Roy Jenkins (FH114, http://xrl.us/bejq78)—also no politicalsoul-mate. Freudenberg reliesstrongly on the series Documents inAustralian Foreign Policy and Sir MartinGilbert’s official biography. Oddly, hedoes not mention the CompanionVolumes or the Churchill Papers atChurchill College (whose index produces1080 hits for the keyword “Australia”).Why was this book written whenmost of the facts are well known? Itseems that Freudenberg has employedChurchill as a prop to tell the broaderstory of Britain and Australia.FINEST HoUR 142 / 53He states, for example, that“Churchill’s ambivalence about Australiawas a mirror image of Australia’s ambivalenceabout itself.” For a century, leadingAustralian politicians made three-monthround trips by sea to London to asserttheir Britishness and to allow themselvesto be “duchessed” by their hosts. In theGreat War, Australians were keen todemonstrate that “the British race in theAntipodes had not degenerated” and, inWorld War II, “in an almost theologicalsense Australian Britons had been reborninto the baptism of fire at Anzac Cove.”Was this a lack of confidence and selfdeterminationarrested only whendragged too far into someone else’s war?If so, not much has changed under thenew protection of the U.S.A. in the pasthalf-century. ,The Wine of Life was in His VeinsDAVID DILKSChurchill byHimself: TheLife, Times andOpinions ofWinstonChurchill in HisOwn Words,Richard M.Langworth,editor. PublicAffairs, 620 pp.,illus., hardbound,$29.95, member price $24.Let it be said at once: this is far andaway the most comprehensive andilluminating book of its kind yet published.For half a century and more, wehave not lacked compendia which offerextracts from Churchill’s speeches, writingsand talk (indeed rather more thanthat; for many a quote has been wronglyattributed to him over the years). Nowwe have something of a different order.Churchill by Himself is a massive____________________________________Professor Dilks is former Vice Chancellor ofthe University of Hull and author of TheGreat Dominion: Winston Churchill inCanada 1900-1954. As stated last issue, thisreview was mistakenly assigned twice; thisreport is therefore the British version.affair, made possible by a confluence oftalent and circumstance which wouldhave pleased WSC himself. Appliedscience, which always fascinatedChurchill and in which he had a seriousinterest, has enabled computers to storeand cross-reference, in a way hithertounimaginable, huge tracts of knowledgeand fact. The editor thus created a mechanismwhich overcomes the frailties ofhuman memory and omission.Since Churchill published some 15million words, however, no merelymechanical process will suffice. Even avolume of this size, at more than 600pages, can accommodate but a tiny fraction.To the testing task of selection theeditor has brought his long experiencewith Finest Hour. He knows which subjectsare most interesting to readers, andwhich misapprehensions are the mostcommon. Indeed, this bible has its ownApocrypha in the shape of an amusingappendix entitled “Red Herrings.”That Churchill had an elephantinememory is well known; let us call it aNapoleonic memory on account of hisprofound admiration for the Emperor.Even in old age, he could recall with easeverses not read for thirty or fifty years.Those who possess so extraordinary afaculty are often themselves lacking inoriginality and become mere sponges, asuitable pressure upon which causes >>

BOOK REVIEWSCHURCHILL BY HIMSELF...the words of others to spill out. WithChurchill, the process was quite other.To an astonishing power of recallwas allied an irrepressible physical andmental vitality. To adapt a phrase whichhe used of own mother, the wine of lifewas in his veins. He received his real education,after the formalities of Harrowand Sandhurst, devouring as a youngofficer in India great works of literature.Suddenly he envied those fortunateyoung cubs at universities before whomthe treasures of the ages in history andphilosophy were laid. As he later taughthimself to paint, so Churchill taughthimself to write, speak and think. BillDeakin, his literary assistant and closefriend of latter days, once said “Alone hehad created his own school and graduatedfrom it; this was the essential role ofhis own writings in the formation of hispersonality and career.”*To the end of days, Churchillacknowledged his gratitude to the masterat Harrow who had taught him English,Mr. Somervell (whose son servedthroughout the war as Attorney-Generalin Churchill’s government, and thenbecame Home Secretary in the caretakerCabinet of May 1945). Perhaps ourCentre should institute a Somervell Prize,for we all have ample cause to bless thissplendid teacher.To young Churchill’s prodigiousmemory was married an instinctiverather than tutored taste for language, acapacity to surprise and amuse, a remarkableflair for the ambush of theunexpected word or phrase. Smallwonder that he was soon earning a handsomeliving as a journalist. Never did astatesman owe so much for so long tomastery of words. This very facilitycarried its own dangers. When he wasexhausted or unduly pressed, as in thelater stages of the war, his English sometimesbecame florid.From an early stage he dictated hisbooks, and the more sonorous passagessound better if read aloud than they lookon the page. That master of a moreaustere style, Evelyn Waugh, characterisedChurchill’s as “sham Augustan.”At any rate, this book provides its____________________________________* “Churchill the Historian”: The ThirdWinston Churchill Memorial Lecture, SwissChurchill Society, University of Basle,Switzerland, 10 January 1969.reader with material upon which to forma judgement. Here is a man of powerfulintellect with a taste for reflection, notinvariably consistent and quite willing toadmit the fact. As he used to remark, hehad often had to eat his own words, andfound them on the whole a very nourishingdiet. The variety of subjectscovered testifies to the range ofChurchill’s thought. The material is classifiedpartly by subject (each of theArmed Services, the Second World War,Germany, Empire) and partly in generalways (maxims, foresight, ripostes).The editor concedes (xi) that hehas put “the best possible spin” onChurchill’s words through the explanatorynotes. That is often so. An unwaryreader may well not realise, for example,that remarks made by Baldwin inNovember 1936, and twice cited in thisbook, refer not to the General Electionwhich took place in the previousautumn, but to an election which mighthave been held at the end of 1933 orearly 1934. Some of the footnotes andreferences are being corrected in the nextedition and are already posted on theinternet (http://xrl.us/j2uc8).Even this massive volume does notexhaust the possibilities. We learn that onthe digital database underlying the bookare 35 million words written aboutChurchill, and there are millions beyondthat. A selection from them, discardingthe gushing or the venomous, wouldcontribute much to our understanding. Itmight begin with a dictum of Baldwin:“The furnace of war has smelted out allthe base metal that was in him.”Meanwhile, perhaps the editor maycompile a new collection of Churchill’swords, a literary equivalent of the salondes refusés; or, if that will not do,perhaps a page now and again in FinestHour for such gems as these:“My dear young man, thought isthe most dangerous process known toman” (said to the future Prime MinisterLord Home, who had asked for a littletime to brood over a complicated issue ofpolicy); or, to the same interlocutor, andin respect of Stalin’s appetite for expansion,“A bear in the forest is a propermatter for speculation; a bear in the zoois a proper matter for public curiosity; abear in your wife’s bed is a matter of thegravest concern”; or, in reaction to theMinister of Transport’s proposal that inorder to demonstrate confidence in theredesigned Comet aircraft, a largenumber of Conservative MPs should beflown in it to Italy, “I absolutely declineto place all my baskets in one egg.”That is for the future, however.Here is a volume which enables us tomake acquaintance in many contextswith a man of genius. It should be in thelibrary of everybody who reveres hismemory and admires his example. ,Empire’s End: The American RoleCHRISTOPHER H. STERLINGThe LastThousandDays of theBritish Empire:Churchill,Roosevelt, andthe Birth ofthe PaxAmericana, byPeter Clarke.BloomsburyPress, 560 pp., illus., paperback, $25,$13.60 from Amazon.com.Clarke argues cogently that decisionsmade in the last year of World WarII, leading to the end of Empire, wereincreasingly made by the Americans,reflecting their growing portion of thefighting forces. The decisions rangedfrom military strategy to politicalnecessity to (and this was central)Britain’s ongoing financial exigency.Wrapping up his argument withthe British pull-out from India andPalestine in 1947, Clarke makes clearthat the writing was on the wall for theBritish Empire years earlier. Yet manyin Britain (Churchill sometimes amongthem) didn’t see or refused to see thesigns, until the termination ofAmerican Lend-Lease in August 1945helped to precipitate Britain’s postwarfinancial crisis.____________________________________As stated last issue, this review was mistakenlyassigned twice, and this is the second review.A new paperback edition is now available.FINEST HoUR 142 / 54

LAST THOUSAND DAYS...A masterful meld of personalitiesand policy, Clarke’s review of September1944 to August 1947—the “thousanddays” of the title—provides insight onthe fast-changing relationship betweenBritain and the U.S. Much is alreadknown, but this is one of the better versionsof this sad tale of Britain’stransition in the postwar years.For all his doubts about Empire,FDR knew and supported the Britishview on some issues (such as sharingatomic secrets). But Truman’s teambegan to forge different pathways whichhastened the end of the Empire.The first part of the book, “Broad,Sunlit Uplands” (Churchill’s hoped-forpostwar world) brings the story toautumn 1944. “False Summits” coversthe six months from the 1944 Quebecconference to the Yalta summit ofFebruary 1945, including the tensionbetween Eisenhower and Montgomeryover strategy in the war’s endgame.“Hollow Victories” centers on the first sixmonths of 1945, through to Potsdamand the British election. Part four, somewhatovertitled “the liquidation of theBritish Empire,” covers the time from VJDay in August 1945 through the departurefrom India and Palestine in 1947.Ongoing power plays in this periodincreasingly came down to money:Britain’s insufficient wherewithal to runher Empire. Lend-Lease negotiationsfigure large, especially the difficult 1945deliberations between Britain (led byeconomist John Maynard Keynes) andthe U.S. (lesser players, but in control ofthe outcome). So do the political realitiesof the postwar American and Canadianloans to Britain as the latter faced whatsome termed an economic Dunkirk.Britain’s departures from India andPalestine were driven as much by theneed to slash military expense as by thepolitical deadlocks that hindered quickresolution of either case. They would leadto a wider unraveling in the years tocome—the beginning of the end of theEmpire, as Churchill foretold and feared.Written for a general audience byan accomplished historian, and based inconsiderable part on his close reading ofthe published and private diaries of manyof the participants, this book combinesthe important role of historical assessmentwith a vivid sense of what peopleactually thought at the time. The two areusually quite different things.We know how these events turnedout, but the key players at the time didnot. American military power, vital towin the war, spelled the end of Britain’slong hegemony. The fighting was over,and hard decisions followed. Those decisionsfell eventually to Labour, whichruled the austere postwar world ofrationing, shortages, and often difficultchange; yet American policy and circumstancemade many decisions inevitable.This book makes it abundantlyclear that Clementine Churchill had itexactly right when she said that the 1945election loss was, for her husband, a“blessing in disguise.” ,Churchill for the Young: TwoHits, One Miss, and an ArtifactDAVID FREEMANWinston Churchill: British Soldier,Writer, Statesman, by Brenda Haugen.Compass Point, 112 pp., illus., paperback,Amazon.com, $9.95.Did Fleming Rescue Churchill?, byJames Giblin, illustrated by ErikBrooks. Henry Holt, 64 pp., hardbound,$16.95, Amazon.com $13.22.Winston of Churchill: One Bear’sBattle Against Global Warming, by JeanDavies Okimoto, illustrated by JeremiahTrammell. Sasquatch, 32 pp., hardbound,$16.95, Amazon.com $11.53.The Happy Warrior: The Life Storyof Sir Winston Churchill, by CliffordMakins, illustrated by Frank Bellamy,commentary by Richard M.Langworth. Levenger Press, 96 pages,hardbound, $38, available only fromthe publisher, www.levenger.com.The fecund field of Churchill literatureextends to books for youngreaders nearly as broadly as it does toadults—and with equally mixed results.Winston Churchillby Brenda Haugenis a straightforwardbiographyfor children publishedas part of aseries known asSignature Lives.Haugen lives inNorth Dakota,and this book is clearly written forAmericans. The text consists of aboutninety pages of narrative illustrated withmany good photos in color and blackand white. A time line sets Churchill’slife in a global context, and a glossaryexplains unfamiliar terms. Altogether,this is a good introductory account forchildren aged 10-13.Haugen does make a few errors:Blenheim was Churchill’s birthplace butnot his boyhood home; Winston andClementine were married not inWestminster Abbey but in the neighboringChurch of St. Margaret’s.I nterestingly,Haugen includesthe apocryphalstory aboutChurchill beingcaptured by LouisBotha during theBoer War. Shemight haveavoided such an error if she had read DidFleming Rescue Churchill? by JamesCross Giblin. This excellent little booktells the story of a fifth grade studentwho is assigned to write a biographicalessay about Sir Alexander Fleming. In theprocess it teaches students the importanceof critical thinking and modernresearch practices.“Jason,” our hero, plans to beginhis Fleming research on the Internet, buthis wise teacher warns him that much ofthe material found there is inaccurate. SoJason begins his work by looking throughtraditional biographies and encyclopedias.Finding this disappointingly dull, heturns again to the web, where he quicklyencounters an urban myth: that youngWinston had once been rescued fromdrowning in a bog by Fleming’s father.In gratitude, Winston’s father, LordRandolph, agrees to pay youngAlexander’s school fees, including thecosts of medical school. >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 55

BOOK REVIEWSCHURCHILL FOR CHILDREN...The rest is history: as an adult, Dr.Fleming discovers penicillin, and theadult Winston’s life is saved by theantibiotic when he contracts pneumoniaduring the Second World War. But Jasonfinds variant accounts of this story on theInternet, carrying the suggestion that thetale may not be true at all. What to do?Resourcefully, Jason turns to theone website that provides the mostauthoritative information aboutChurchill: our very own ChurchillCentre, www.winstonchurchill.org. “Itmust be an English site since they didn’tspell center the way we do,” Jason concludes,not realizing that we spell “centre”the way most of the world spells it.Visiting the Churchill Centre’shome page, he sees a tab marked“Churchill Facts.” He clicks on it: “Upcame a list of frequently asked questions,and would you believe it? The very firstone was ‘Did Sir Alexander Fleming saveWinston Churchill’s life?’”Having gone to the source, Jasonlearns that: “Charming as the story is, itis certainly fiction. It apparently originatedin Worship Programs for Juniors,by Alice B. Bays and Elizabeth JonesOakberry, published around 1950 by anAmerican religious publisher. The storyappeared in a chapter entitled ‘ThePower of Kindness.’”Jason reports his findings alongwith a factual account of Fleming’s life ina paper so impressive that his teacherreads it to the entire class. A scholar isborn—and readers learn the lesson ofchecking their facts before publishing.Fact checking isprecisely whatdid not happen inthe case ofWinston ofChurchill: OneBear’s BattleAgainst Global Warming, by Jean DaviesOkimoto. “Winston” is a cigarchomping,Churchill-quoting polar bearwho sets out to warn his fellow ursidsabout the sources of greenhouse gas emissionscontributing to the deterioration oftheir habitat. The bears of Manitoba, inturn, stage a successful demonstration fortourists who have come to view theinhabitants of the “polar bear capital ofthe world.”Unfortunately Winston’s research(and that of Okimoto) has failed touncover that the primary sources ofatmosphere-threatening change are fellowmembers of his animal kingdom: cattle,sheep, goats, deer, giraffes and camels.The gaseous emissions of these ruminants(animals with multi-chambered stomachs)account for more greenhouse gasemissions than all carbon-burningsources combined—by a wide margin.We do not learn how Winston ofChurchill proposes to solve globalwarming by abolishing the beef, dairyand woolen industries. PerhapsOkimoto’s sequel will be an allegoricaltale about a Fascist Nazi grizzly bear whoorganizes the deportation of offendinganimals to death camps in an effort toestablish an ruminantfrei environment.But cheeryourself upwith this:Levenger Presshas broughtout anotherhandsomevolume in itssmall butimpressive listof Churchilltitles. TheHappy Warrior, by Clifford Makins withcartoons by veteran illustrator FrankBellamy, and a commentary by FinestHour editor Richard Langworth, tells thelife of Winston Churchill in comic-bookformat. The series, which took its titlefrom Wordsworth, appeared in England’sEagle comic in 1957-58.The Eagle, as some Finest Hourreaders will remember, was very much a“boy’s own” publication, intended by itscreator, the Rev. Marcus Morris, to inculcate“standards and morals as itentertained with action and adventure.”The Happy Warrior appeared in weekly,full-colored installments on the Eagle’sback cover. Likely it did not disappointits readers. By the second week, youngWinston was being shot at without resultin Cuba; the following week had himreporting for duty on India’s northwestfrontier. Action follows action from thatpoint on, the cartoonist and narratordeftly skipping the duller periods like thegreat Liberal government of 1906-10, theGeneral Strike and Depression.The publisher may have been avicar, but he knew what boys wanted toread. This “biography” is long onChurchill’s military adventures and theSecond World War accounts for half thebook, while the postwar years are on thebottom of the penultimate page.Langworth’s commentary is frank:“The only hints of criticism in TheHappy Warrior are the suggestion thatWinston traded his English for anotherboy’s Latin at school, and that it wasfoolhardy—which it probably was—todefend Crete in World War II. Theshoals on which Churchill briefly wentaground—the gold standard and GeneralStrike in the 1920s, die-hard oppositionto the India Bill and Gandhi in the early1930s, over-zealous support of EdwardVIII in the 1936 Abdication crisis—areall untouched by this account. Of course,it is a war book, not a biography, so successeslike settling the Middle East in1921 or helping write the Irish Treaty in1922 are similarly omitted. But even militarily,The Happy Warrior is almostuniversally positive.”Yet Langworth argues that this wasthe right approach for the time: “Fewever argued that there was anyone else tolead the country in May 1940. AbsentChurchill, who? This comic was produced,of course, in glorious hindsight,but the reader may consider whatChurchill’s daughter Mary often says:‘Remember—nobody knew in those dayswhether we were going to win.’”The commentator quotes the lateWilliam Buckley’s remarks to TheChurchill Centre in 1995, thatChurchill’s words were “indispensable tothe benediction of that hour,” Britain’sfinest, Langworth says, “whatever theglories that came before or the disappointmentsthat came after. It is nocoincidence that our view of Churchill isstill more or less that of Makins andBellamy fifty years ago. For those whoremember, or are willing to learn,Churchill is still the Happy Warrior.”Offered more as an artifact of abygone era when history was presentedquite differently to children—and farmore handsomely bound than it was fiftyyears ago—The Happy Warrior makes anattractive addition to any Churchilllibrary. For both Churchillians and adolescents,it is a unique and captivatingintroduction to the Great Man’s life. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 56

BIBLIOGRAPHYAbout Winston S. Churchill:Books Published in 2003-09ADDENDUM TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS ABOUT SIR WINSTON CHURCHILLCURT J. ZOLLERWhen the editor asked merecently to update myAnnotated Bibliography ofBooks About Sir Winston Churchill(2004), it was a difficult decision. It hadtaken me ten years to generate the original.Finally we decided to limit therevision and establishing some groundrules which will provide maximum information,within my own limitations andin a reasonably short time frame.We determined to upgrade onlySection A—books with WinstonChurchill as the main subject—with thefollowing extensions:I also added books which includeChurchill, and up to three other individuals,or Churchill and a key subject, suchas Andrew Roberts’ Masters andCommanders and Raymond Callahan’sChurchill and His Generals. In my originaltext, these fell into Section B.Since I was not in a condition totravel and personally to review eachbook, I relied on a program listing anybook with an ISBN number, which providedinformation such as author, title,place of publication, publisher, year ofpublication or revision, page count.Although this program lists everybook published in every language, Idecided, with few exceptions, to includeonly European languages and ignorebooks in Asian languages (Russian,Hebrew, etc.), because I had no way toverify English transliterations.This abridged Addendum of booksabout Churchill since 2003 is offered forthe enlightenment of Finest Hourreaders, and refers to first publicationtitles only, not later editions.Far more extensive is myunabridged Addenum, which goes tobuyers of copies of my Bibliography soldby the Churchill Centre (right). Thisincludes reprints and new entries forbooks as early as 1940, along withreprint information for works publishedin 2003-08. If you alreaady own a copyof my Bibliography, the unabridgedAddendum is available by email from theeditor.Several people helped me createthis revision. I am indebted to three finehelpers at the Mission Viejo, CalliforniaLibrary: Thea Blair for identifying thedigital application that made this projectpossible; Kathy Walker for locatingcertain scarce titles through inter-libraryloan; and Dianne Nixon who was able toidentify index information about booksof which I could locate only a singlecopy. I also owe gratitude to my friendand our editor, Richard Langworth, whoconvinced me to tackle the project andprovided repeated advice and suggestions;and to Dave Turrell who edited this listfor publication.2003A684. Adams, Simon. WinstonChurchill. Twentieth Century HistoryMakers Series.London: Franklin Watts;Austin, Texas: Raintree Steck-Vaughn,112 pp. (juvenile).A685. Arthur, Max. Churchill atWar. London: Carlton, 160 pp.A686. Ball, Stuart. WinstonChurchill. New York: NYU Press;London: British Library, 144 pp.A688. Delpla, François. La facechachée de 1940: comment Churchillréussit à prolonger la partie. Paris:Guibert, 192 pp. (French text.)A689. Dover, Katherine. WinstonSpencer Churchill, 1874-1965: TheHealth of a World Leader. London: privatelypublished, 58 pp.A690. Enright, Dominique.Winston Churchill: The Greatest Briton.London: Michael O’Mara, 256 pp. >>Curt Zoller’s Annotated Bibliographyof Works About Sir Winston S.Churchill, at 410 pages, is the mostcomprehensive bibliography of worksabout Churchill. It includes frank,forthright reviews on 700 booksspecifically about WSC. Also listed areworks substantially about Churchill,articles, lectures, reviews, dissertationsand theses. The book was a FarrowAward winner in 2004. Selling for upto $189 on the web, it’s indispensablefor the serious Churchill library.SPECIAL! We will include Curt’sunabridged Addendum (specifywhether you want this by email orhard copy): $65 postpaid in USA.TO ORDER: Send check payable to The Churchill Centre, 200 West MadisonStreet, Suite 1700, Chicago IL 60606 USA. Or phone toll-free (888) WSC-1874using Visa, Mastercard, Amex. (Alas postage costs extra outside USA.)FINEST HoUR 142 / 57

BIBLIOGRAPHYBOOKS SINCE 2003...A691. Fowells, Gavin. AnAlternate View of Churchill. London:Gavin Fowells, 68 pp. (paperback).A692. Gilbert, Martin. Churchillat War: His “Finest Hour” in Photographs,1940-1945. London: Carlton;New York: W.W. Norton, 160 pp.A693. Gilbert, Martin. Churchilland the Middle East. Toronto: ChurchillSociety for Advancement of ParliamentaryDemocracy, 48 pp. (softbound).A694. Gilbert, Martin. WinstonChurchill’s War Leadership. New York:Vintage Books; Continue to Pester,Nag and Bite: Churchill’s WarLeadership. Toronto: Vintage Canada;London: Pimlico, 104 pp. Churchillovovále ne v dcovstvi: neustále dotírejte,sekýrujte a kousejte [Continue to Pester,Nag and Bite]. Prague: BB Art, 2004,116 pp. (Czech text).A695. Hack, Karl and Blackburn,Kevin. Did Singapore Have to Fall?:Churchill and the Impregnable Fortress.London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 300 pp.A696. Humes, James C. WinstonChurchill. New York: DK Pub. andA&E, 160 pp.A697. Macdonald, Fiona.Winston Churchill. Milwaukeee: WorldAlmanac Library, 48 pp. (juvenile).A698. Maurer, John H. Churchilland Strategic Dilemmas Before theWorld Wars: Essays in Honor of MichaelI. Handel. London and Portland,Oregon: Frank Cass, 164 pp.A699. Neillands, Robin H.Winston Churchill: Statesman of theCentury. Cold Spring Harbor, New York:Cold Spring Press, 2003, 216 pp.A700. Roberts, Andrew. Hitler andChurchill: Secrets of Leadership. London:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 202 pp.; Hitlery Churchill; los secretos del liderazgo.Madrid: Taurus, 310 pp. (Spanish text);Hitler i Churchill: sekrety przywództwa.Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie,236 pp. (Polish text); other foreign editionspost 2003.A701. Rogers, Anthony.Churchill’s Folly: Leros and the Aegean:The Last Great British Defeat of theSecond World War. London: Cassell,2003, 288 pp.A702. Rubin, Gretchen. FortyWays to Look at Winston Churchill: ABrief Account of a Long Life. New York:Ballantine, 2003, 308 pp.A703 Sandys, Celia. Churchill.London: Contender, 2003, 160 pp.A704. Sandys, Celia. ChasingChurchill: The Travels of WinstonChurchill. London: HarperCollins; NewYork: Carroll & Graf, 294 pp.A705. Sandys, Celia and Littman,Jonathan. We Shall Not Fail: TheInspiring Leadership of WinstonChurchill. New York: Portfolio, 284 pp.A706. Thompson, W.H. Beside theBulldog: The Intimate Memoirs of Churchill’sBodyguard. London: Apollo, 144 pp.2004A707. Binns, Tristan. WinstonChurchill: Soldier and Politician. NewYork: Franklin Watts, 128 pp.A708. Cannadine, David andRoland Quinault. Winston Churchill inthe Twenty-First Century. Cambridgeand New York: Cambridge UniversityPress for the Royal Historical Society,2004, 250 pp. (paperback).A709. Cantalapiedra Cesteros,Luis. Winston Churchill: el rugido delléon. Madrid: Dastin Export, 268 pp.(Spanish text)A710. Catherwood, Christopher.Churchill’s Folly: How WinstonChurchill Created Modern Iraq. NewYork: Carroll & Graf, 268 pp.A711. Gilbert, Martin. Churchilland the Great Republic. Washington:Library of Congress with D. Giles Ltd.,94 pp. (softbound).A712. Giminez, Manuel. Churchill.London: Edimat Books, 190 pp.A713. Hatter, David. WinstonChurchill: His Politics and Writing.Privately published, 30 pp. (softbound).A714. Kastory, Andrzej. WinstonSpencer Churchill. Warsaw: ZakladNarodowy imienia OssolínskichWydawn, 488 pp. (Polish text).A715. Kimball, Warren; O’Brian,Robert; Tisch, Daniel. The Place inHistory of Churchill, Roosevelt and theSecond World War. Toronto: ChurchillSociety for Advancement of ParliamentaryDemocracy, 38 pp. (softbound).A716. MacDonald, Alan. WinstonChurchill and His Great Wars. London:Hippo, 2004, 192 pp. (paperback).A717, Mann, Heinrich. Zur Zeitvon Winston Churchill. Frankfurt:Fischer, 544 pp. (German text).A718. Packwood, Allen. Churchill:Forging an Alliance for Freedom.Washington: Heritage Foundation, 12pp. (softbound).A719. Reynolds, David. InCommand of History: ChurchillFighting and Writing the Second WorldWar. London: Allen Lane, 600 pp.A720. Ruotsila, Markku. Churchilland Finland: A Study in Anticommunismand Geopolitics. London: Routledge, 256pp.; English edition of Churchill jaSuomi (2002).A721. Ržesevskij, OlegAleksandrovich. Stalin i Cherchill’:vstrechi, besedy, diskussii: dokumenty,kommentarii: 1941-1945. Moscow:Nauka, 562 pp. (Russian text). Stalin andChurchill. London : Constable &Robinson, 2007.A722. Theakston, Kevin. WinstonChurchill and the British Constitution.London: Politico’s, 264 pp.A723 Zoller, Curt J. AnnotatedBibliography of Works About SirWinston S.Churchill. Armonk, NewYork: M.E. Sharpe, 2004, 412 pp.2005A724. Addison, Paul. Churchill:The Unexpected Hero. Oxford and NewYork: Oxford University Press, 308 pp.A725. Bercuson, David Jay andHolger, J. Herwig. One Christmas inWashington: The Secret Meeting betweenRoosevelt and Churchill that Changed theWorld. Woodstock, New York: OverlookPress; Toronto: McArthur & Co.;London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 320 pp.A726. Best, Geoffrey. Churchilland War. London and New York:Hambledon and London, 354 pp.A727. Cannadine, David. WinstonChurchill: Abenteurer, Monarchist,Staatsman. Berlin: Berenberg, 188 pp.(German text).A728. Charmley, John. DerUntergang des Britischen Empires:Roosevelt: Churchill und Amerikas Wegzur Weltmacht. Graz: ARES Verlag, 472pp. (German text).A729. Dilks, David. The GreatDominion: Winston Churchill inCanada 1900-1954. Toronto: ThomasAllen Publishers, 472 pp.A730. Fenby, Jonathan. TheSinking of the Lancastria: Britain’sFINEST HoUR 142 / 58

Greatest Maritime Disaster andChurchill’s Cover-Up. London and NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 2005, 270 pp.A731. Fisher, David E. A SummerBright and Terrible: Winston Churchill,Lord Dowding, Radar and theImpossible Triumph of the Battle ofBritain. Washington: Shoemaker &Hoard, 288 pp.,A732. Forster, John and Bapasola,Jeri. Winston and Blenheim. Woodstock:Blenheim Palace, 20 pp. (softbound).A733. Gilbert, Martin. Churchilland America. New York: Free Press;London: Pocket Books; Toronto:Mcclelland & Stewart, 504 pp.A734. Hayward, Steven.Greatness: Reagan, Churchill and theMaking of Extraordinary Leaders. NewYork: Crown Forum, 204 pp.A735. Hickman, Tom. Churchill’sBodyguard. London: Headline, 312 pp.A736. Holmes, Richard. In theFootsteps of Churchill. London: BBCBooks, 352 pp.A737. Hunter, Ian, ed. Winstonand Archie: The Letters of Sir ArchibaldSinclair and Winston S. Churchill, 1915-1960. London: Politico’s, 530 pp.A738. Jong, Oebele de. Churchillen de Nederlanders. Zutphen: Walburg,238 pp. (Dutch text).A739. Kenny, Mary. Allegiance:Michael Collins and Winston Churchill1921-22: A Dramatised Account.Dublin: Kildare Street Books, 96 pp.A740. Legrand, Jacques and Nida,François. Churchill. Trélissac: ÉditionsChronique, 128 pp. (French text).A741. Lénárt, Levente. Churchillés az európai gondolat. Pomáz: MarconiKft. 160 pp. (Hungarian text).A742. Lewis, Brenda Ralph.Churchill: An Illustrated History.London: Reader’s Digest, 2005, 256 pp.A743. Lloyd George, Robert.David and Winston: How the FriendshipBetween Churchill and Lloyd GeorgeChanged the Course of History; How aFriendship Changes History. London:John Murray, 304 pp.A744. Mahoney, Richard J. andDalin, Shera. The Quotable WinstonChurchill. Fulton, Missouri: WinstonChurchill Memorial Library, 160 pp.A745. Moradiellos, Enrique.Franco frente a Churchill: España y GranBritaña en la Segunda Guerra Mundial(1939-1945). Barcelona: EdicionesPeninsula, 2005, 480 pp.A746. Nicholson, Arthur Pole.Hostages to Fortune: Winston Churchilland the Loss of the Prince of Wales andRepulse. Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 234 pp.A747. Paterson, Michael.Winston Churchill: Personal Accounts ofthe Great War Leader. Newton Abbotand Cincinnati, Ohio: David & Charles;320 pp.A748. Paterson, Mike. WinstonChurchill: His Military Life 1895-1945.Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 320 pp.A749. Rompuy, Hubert van.Winston Churchill: kampioen van de vrijheid.Antwerpen; Apeldoorn: Garant,2005, 146 pp. (Dutch text).A750. Russell, Douglas S.Winston Churchill, Soldier: The MilitaryLife of a Gentleman at War. London:Brassey’s, 2005, 280 pp.A751. Sandys, Celia. Churchill:The Book of the Museum. London:Imperial War Museum, 160 pp. Newappearance of A703.A752. Walters, Neil and Ramsden,John. Churchill, Gifts to a Hero.Westerham, Kent: National TrustChartwell, 2005, 40 pp. (softbound).A753. Wigg, Richard. Churchilland Spain: The Survival of the FrancoRegime, 1940-1945. London and NewYork: Routledge, 2005, 212 pp.Churchill y Franco: la politica británicade apaciguamiento y la supervivencia derégimen, 1940-1945. Madrid: Debate,368 pp. (Spanish text.)A754. Williamson, Daniel Charles.Separate Agendas: Churchill, Eisenhowerand Anglo-American Relations, 1953-1955, Lanham, Maryland: LexingtonBooks; Oxford: Oxford University Press,146 pp.A755. Winckelmann, Thomas.Winston Churchill, England’s Lion.Glenview, Illinois: Pearson/ScottForesman, 16 pp. (softbound).2006A756. Alkon, Paul. WinstonChurchill’s Imagination. Lewisburg,Pennsylvania: Bucknell Press, 268 pp.A757. Allende, Juan Martin.Winston Churchill: visto por unsudamericano. Buenos Aires: EditorialDunken, 2006, 550 pp. (Spanish text).A758. Alter, Peter. WinstonChurchill (1874-1965): Leben undÜberleben. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 326pp. (German text).A759. Berthon, Simon and Potts,Joanna. Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-Creation of World War II through theEyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill,Roosevelt and Stalin. Cambridge,Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 358 pp.A760. Cohen, Ronald I..Bibliography of the Writings of SirWinston Churchill. London and NewYork: Continuum, (3 vols.), 2184 pp.A761. Daynes, Katie. WinstonChurchill. Tulsa, Oklahoma: EDC;London: Usborne, 64 pp. (juvenile).A762. Delaforce, Patrick. 274Things You Should Know AboutChurchill. London: O’Mara, 192 pp.A763. Gilbert, Martin. The Willof the People: Winston Churchill andParliamentary Democracy. [Toronto]:Vintage Canada, 152 pp. (paperback).A764. Hamilton, Janice. WinstonChurchill. Minneapolis, Minn.: Twenty-First Century Books, 112 pp. (juvenile).A765. Haugen, Brenda. WinstonChurchill: British Soldier, Writer,Statesman. Minneapolis: Compass PointBooks, 112 pp. (juvenile).A766. Kersaudy, François.Winston Churchill. Buenos Aires:Ateneo, 562 pp. (Spanish text).A767. Kinvig, Clifford.Churchill’s Crusade: The British Invasionof Russia, 1918-1920. London:Hambledon Continuum, 2006, 374 pp.Krucjata Churchilla: brytyjska inwazja naRosje 1918-1920. Warsaw: Bellona, 430pp. (Polish text).A768. Paterson, Mike. WinstonChurchill: Photobiography. NewtonAbbot and Cincinnati, Ohio: David &Charles, 208 pp. Winston Churchill:fotobiografie. Prague: Metafora, 204 pp.(Czech text).A769. Read, Craig. Winston S.Churchill: Last of the Conservatives: AnAnalysis of Churchill, Recent History,and His Conservative Ideals.Philadelphia: Xlibris, 138 pp.A770. Thomson, Malcolm.Fenomén Winston Churchill. Prague:Vladimir Korinek, 394 pp. (Czech text).2007A771. Addison, Paul. WinstonChurchill. Oxford and New York:Oxford University Press, 138 pp. >>FINEST HoUR 142 / 59

BIBLIOGRAPHYBOOKS SINCE 2003...A772. Andriola, Fabio. Carteggiosegreto Churchill - Mussolini. Milano:Sugarco, 406 pp.A773. Bar-Noi, Uri. Anglo-SovietRelations During Churchill’s PeacetimeAdministration. Brighton: Academic.A774. Bennett, Gil. Churchill’sMan of Mystery: Desmond Morton andthe World of Intelligence. London: andNew York: Routledge, 404 pp.A775. Buczacki, Stefan. Churchill& Chartwell: The Untold Story ofChurchill’s Houses and Gardens.London: Frances Lincoln, 324 pp.A776. Callahan, Raymond,Churchill & His Generals. Lawrence,Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 310 pp.A777. Churchill, Winston andKupfermann, Thomas. Zum Teufel alle >>miteinander!: Anekdoten über Churchill.Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag, 126 pp.A778. Fenby, Jonathan. Alliance:The Inside Story of How Roosevelt,Stalin and Churchill Won One War andBegan Another. San Francisco:MacAdam/Cage; London: Simon &Schuster, 464 pp. Alianci:: Stalin,Roosevelt, Churchill: tajne rozgrywkizwyciezców II wojny swiatowej. Krakow:Znak, 642 pp. (Polish text).A779. Gilbert, Martin. Churchilland the Jews. London: Simon &Schuster; New York: Holt; Toronto:McClelland & Stewart, 360 pp.A780. Hesse, Helge. Das Churchill -Prinzip: mit Persönlichkeit zum Erfolg.Frankfurt: Eichborn, 236 pp. (German text).A781. Hunter, Ian. CollectedCorrespondence of David Lloyd Georgeand Winston S. Churchill 1904-1945.London: PalgraveMacmillan.A782. Kersaudy, François. Lemonde selon Churchill: sentences, confidences,propriéties et reparties. Paris:Alvik, 282 pp. (French text).A783. Lavery, Brian. Churchill Goesto War: Winston’s Wartime Journeys.Annapolis: Naval Institute Press; London:Conway, 392 pp. (paperback)A784. Lee, Celia and John.Winston & Jack: The Churchill Brothers.London: privately published, 408 pp.A785. Lukacs, John. Blood, Toil,Tears and Sweat: Winston Churchill andthe Speech That Saved Civilization. NewYork: Basic Books, 148 pp.A767. Makovsky, Michael.Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism andStatecraft. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 342 pp.A787. McGinty, Stephen.Churchill’s Cigar. London: privately published,then by Pan Books, 214 pp.A788. McMenamin, Michael andZoller, Curt. Becoming WinstonChurchill: The Untold Story of YoungWinston and his American Mentor.Westport, Connecticut: GreenwoodPress, 276 pp.A789. Moody, Joanna andMargerison, Olive. From Churchill’s WarRooms: Letters of a Secretary, 1943-45,Stroud, Glos.: Tempus, 256 pp.A790. Olson, Lynne. TroublesomeYoung Men: The Rebels Who BroughtChurchill to Power and Helped SaveEngland. New York: Farrar, Straus andGiroux; London: Bloomsbury; Toronto:Bond Street Books, 436 pp.A791. Serra, Enrico. WinstonChurchill: luci e hombre. Firence: Lelettere, 90 pp. (Italian text).A792. Smith, Berthon and Potts,Joanna. Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-Creation of World War II Through theEyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill,Roosevelt, and Stalin. New York: DaCapo, 358 pp.A793. Toye, Richard. LloydGeorge & Churchill: Rivals forGreatness. London: Macmillan, 2007,504 pp.2008A794. Bar-Noi, Uri. The ColdWar and Soviet Mistrust of Churchill’sPursuit of Detent 1955. Brighton:Academic Press; Portland, Oregon: SussesAcademic Press, 238 pp.A795. Buchanan, Patrick, J.Churchill, Hitler, and the UnnecessaryWar: How Britain Lost Its Empire andthe West Lost the World. New York:Crown Publishers, 518 pp.A796. Clarke, Peter. The LastThousand Days of the British Empire:Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth ofthe Pax Americana. New York:Bloomsbury Press, 560 pp.A797. Courtinat, Roland. Lesaccords secrets Pétain-Churchill (octobrenovembre1940). Coulommiers:Dualpha, 100 pp. (French text).A798. D’Este, Carlo. Warlord:Churchill at War, 1874-1945. London:Allan Lane. Warlord: A Life of WinstonChurchill at War, 1874-1945. New York:Harper, 846pp.A799. Duchesne, Jacques [Saint-Denis, Michel]. Deux jours avec Churchill,Londres, 21 octobre 1940, Paris, 11novembre 1944. LaTour d’Aigues: Éd. deAube, 78 pp. (French text).A800. Herman, Arthur. Gandhi &Churchill: The Epic Rivalry ThatDestroyed an Empire and Forged OurAge. New York: Bantam; London:Hutchinson, 722 pp.A801. Knight, Nigel. Churchill:The Greatest Briton Unmasked. NewtonAbbot: David & Charles, 400 pp.A802. Langworth, Richard, M.(editor). Churchill by Himself: The Life,Times and Opinions of Winston Churchillin His Own Words. London: Ebury Press;New York: Public Affairs, 646 pp.A803. Reid, Walter. Churchill1940-1945: Under Friendly Fire.Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd., 320 pp.A804. Rhys-Jones, Graham.Churchill and the Norway Campaign 1940.Barnsley, Pen & Sword, 240 pp.A805. Roberts, Andrew. Mastersand Commanders: How Churchill,Roosevelt, Alanbrooke and Marshall Wonthe War in the West, 1941-45. London:Allen Lane. Massters and Commanders:The Military Geniuses Who Led theWest to Victory in World War II. NewYork: HarperCollins, 674 pp.A806. Weigold, Auriol. Churchill,Roosevelt and India. New York:Routledge, 210 pp.FORTHCOMING IN 2009Catherwood, Christopher.Winston Churchill: The Flawed Geniusof World War II.Dixon, Jack. Dowding &Churchill: The Dark Side of the Battle ofBritain. Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 320 pp.Ive, Ruth. The Woman WhoCensored Churchill. Stroud, Glos.:History, 160 pp.Langworth, Richard M. TheDefinitive Wit of Winston Churchill.London: Ebury Press; New York: PublicAffairs. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 60

THE CHURCHILL QUIZJAMES R. LANCASTEREach quiz includes four questions insix categories: contemporaries (C), literarymatters (L), miscellaneous (M),personal (P), statesmanship (S) and war(W), with the easier questions first. Canyou reach Level 1?Level 4:1. Whose bridge game did LordBeaverbrook describe as “exceedinglycareless, and his card sense almost nonexistent”?(M)2. In which country wasChurchill’s mother born? (P)3. What was the monogram onChurchill’s slippers? (P)4. Who wrote to Churchill: “I oweyou what every Englishman, woman andchild does—Liberty itself”? (P)5. In which essay did Churchillwrite: “Happy are the painters, for theyshall not be lonely. Light and colour,peace and hope, will keep themcompany to the end, or almost to theend, of the day”? (L)6. Which country influencedChurchill’s ideas on social reform in1909? (S)Level 3:7. Whom did Churchill refer to asl’homme du destin [man of destiny]? (C)8. Who told her listeners, inManchester in 1905: “The Conservativesgive you dear coal, I give you dearWinston.” (S)9. When playing Hamlet in theOld Vic Theatre in London, whom didRichard Burton hear uttering his linesword by word in the front row? (M)10. In January 1942, Newsweekwrote that Churchill received “thegreatest ovation which has been accordedto any person in that chamber in livingmemory.” What was the occasion? (S)11. About which event did WSCsay on 18 June 1940: “…our terrible foecollapsed before us, and we were soglutted with victory that in our folly wethrew it away”? (W)12. Which U.S. President said,“When there was darkness in the world,and hope was low in the hearts of men, agenerous Providence gave us WinstonChurchill”? (S)“Congratulations on becoming an officer and a gentleman.Don’t let the double promotion go to your head.”—WSC, 1895Level 2:13. WSC in a world broadcast 10May 1942: “There is a winter, youknow, in Russia…. —— forgot aboutthis Russian winter. He must have beenvery loosely educated.” Who forgot? (C)14. To whom did WSC write inSeptember 1898: “…I speculated aboutthe shoddiness of war. You cannot gildit. The raw comes through”? (W)15. In a letter to The Times publishedon 30 January 1964, WSC wroteto support a fund “to preserveDoornkloof in memory of this manwho shone among his contemporaries.”Who was the man? (C)16. Where was Churchill whenhe wrote to his wife in February 1918:“Nearly 800,000 of our British menhave shed their blood or lost their liveshere during 3½ years of unceasing conflict”?(W)17. What did their children giveWinston and Clementine for theirgolden wedding anniversary? (P)18. Which Churchill book washis first best-seller in America? (L)Level 1:19. In which of Churchill’s bookswas the Iron Curtain speech first published?(L)20. When did WSC tell his companions“Keep cool, men. This willmake good copy for my paper”? (W)21. How many races didColonist II, Sir Winston’s most famousthoroughbred, win? (M)22. Which three hymns, allchosen by Churchill, were sung onboard HMS Prince of Wales inPlacentia Bay on Sunday 10 August1941? (M)23. “Vials of Wrath” is the titleof the first chapter of which ofChurchill’s books? (L)24. To whom did WSC write in1895: “Many congratulations onbecoming an officer and a gentleman.Don’t let the double promotion go toyour head”? (C) ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 61Answers(19) The Sinews of Peace, first published1948. (20) 15 November 1899,after the armoured train was ambushedin South Africa. (21) Thirteen, earninghis owner £12,000 in prize money.(22) “For Those in Peril on the Sea,”“Onward Christian Soldiers” and “OGod our Help in Ages Past.” (23) TheWorld Crisis, from Revelations XVI:1,“Go your ways, and pour out the vialsof the wrath of God upon the earth.”(24) His fellow Sandhurst cadetCharles Maclean, father of FitzroyMaclean.(13) Adolf Hitler. (14) His mother.(15) Field Marshal Smuts. (16) TheYpres Salient in Flanders “…this vastcemetery, ennobled & rendered foreverglorious by their brave memory.” (17)An avenue of golden roses in thegarden at Chartwell. (18) Blood Sweatand Tears (speeches, 5 May 1938 to 9November 1940), compiled by his sonRandolph, was published in April 1941by G.P. Putnam’s Sons; it sold nearly60,000 copies.(7) Charles de Gaulle. (8) Winston’smother, Lady Randolph Churchill. (9)Winston Churchill. During the intermission,the actor’s dressing-room dooropened. A familiar face appeared andits owner said, “Beg pardon, my LordHamlet, may I use your loo?” (10) Hisspeech to a joint session of Congress on26 December 1941. It was also broadcastto the world. (11) The end of theGreat War. (12) Lyndon Johnson, 24January 1965.(1) Churchill’s. (2) America. (3)Churchill. (4) Mary Churchill (LadySoames) in a letter to her father in1960. (5) “Painting as a Pastime.” In1929 the Earl of Birkenhead includedthis essay in his anthology TheHundred Best English Essays. (6)Germany, where he visited the newLabour Exchanges in Frankfurt.

AMPERSAND&A pot-pourriof grist thatdidn’t fit elsewhere.PAUL H. COURTENAYThe Debate We’ve Been Waiting ForAt 7pm on Thursday 3 September—the 70th anniversaryof the outbreak of World War II—IntelligenceSquared will be hosting a debate at the Royal GeographicalSociety in Exhibition Road, London, on the motion:“This House believes Winston Churchill was more of a liabilitythan an asset in the Second World War.” ProfessorNorman Stone and Pat Buchanan will be proposing themotion and Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor AnthonyBeevor and Andrew Roberts will be opposing it.We look forward to this as much as Churchill andLloyd George (above right) confronting Tories in the1905 election. Lloyd George: “I say, Winston, what arewe going to do to those poor old Duffers?” WSC: “We’vemade them take a back seat already, they’ll have to learnto like it.” (Pall Mall, 1905, John Frost Collection.)Tickets to this blessed event are available fromwww.intelligencesquared.com.Nun So Fine (Or: Uncle Rebus)When my wife Sara was at school in the 1940s andearly 1950s, her geography teacher was a nun, SisterMary Barbara (Verren), who was also a well-known artist.Sara recently found this rebus which her teacher haddrawn as part of a lesson on Canada. I am sure it willtake ourreaders only afew microsecondstodecode.Who will bethe first toprovide thesolution?Note: Forthose wholack aWinchestereducation (toborrow a jibe by WSC), a rebus is a puzzle in whichwords are represented b pictures or individual letters; forinstance, apex might be represented by a picture of anape followed by the letter “x." —Ed.California Dreamin’: 28 September 1929During WinstonChurchill’s visit to California(page 28) he wentfishing for marlin offCatalina Island. Withthe usual Winstonianluck he hooked a 180-pounder in next to notime. It was, of course,the catch of the day, andeveryone was amazed.There was no room inChurchill’s article hereinfor the photo, but it’stoo good to miss.14 August 1971Out of a dusty filedrops a brochure markingthe 25th anniversary ofChurchill’s investiture asLord Warden of theCinque Ports—the firstmembership flyer we everproduced, We had 300members and offices inAustralia, Britain and theUnited States. ,FINEST HoUR 142 / 62

Churchill Centre Regional and Local OrganizationsChapters: Please send all news reports to the Chartwell Bulletin: rlangworth@winstonchurchill.orgLOCAL COORDINATORSMarcus Frost, Chairman(mfrostrock@yahoo.com)PO Box 272, Mexia TX 76667tel. (254) 587-2000Judy Kambestad (JAMMPOTT@aol.com)1172 Cambera Lane, Santa Ana CA 92705-2345tel. (714) 838-4741 (West)Sue & Phil Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)22 Scotdale Road, LaGrange Park IL 60526tel. (708) 352-6825 (Midwest)D. Craig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com)5909 Bluebird Hill Lane, Weddington NC28104; tel. (704) 844-9960 (East)®LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS(AFFILIATES ARE IN BOLD FACE)For formal affiliation with the Churchill Centre,contact any local coordinator above.Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer ChurchillSociety of Calgary, AlbertaMr. Justice J.D. Bruce McDonald, Pres.(bruce.mcdonald@albertacourts.ca)2401 N - 601 - 5th Street, S.W.,Calgary AB T2P 5P7tel. (403) 297-3164Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer ChurchillSociety of Edmonton, AlbertaDr. Edward Hutson, Pres. (jehutson@shaw.ca)98 Rehwinkel Rd., Edmonton AB T6R 1Z8tel. (780) 430-7178Rt. Hon. Sir Winston Spencer ChurchillSociety of AlaskaJudith & Jim Muller (afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu)2410 Galewood St., Anchorage AK 99508tel. (907) 786-4740; fax (907) 786-4647Churchill Centre ArizonaLarry Pike (lvpike@chartwellgrp.com)4927 E. Crestview Dr., Paradise Valley AZ 85253bus. tel. (602) 445-7719; cell (602) 622-0566Rt. Hon. Sir Winton Spencer ChurchillSociety of British ColumbiaChristopher Hebb, Pres.(cavellcapital@gmail.com)30-2231 Folkestone Way, W. Vancouver, BCV6S 2Y6; tel. (604) 209-6400California: Churchillians-by-the-BayRichard Mastio (rcmastio@earthlink.net)2996 Franciscan Way, Carmel CA 93923tel. (831) 625-6164California: Churchillians of the DesertDavid Ramsay (rambo85@aol.com)74857 S. Cove Drive, Indian Wells CA 92210tel. (760) 837-1095Churchillians of Southern CaliforniaLeon J. Waszak (leonwaszak@aol.com)235 South Ave. #66, Los Angeles CA 90042tel. (818) 240-1000 x5844Churchill Friends of Greater ChicagoPhil & Susan Larson (parker-fox@msn.com)22 Scottdale Road, LaGrange IL 60526tel. (708) 352-6825Colorado: Rocky Mountain ChurchilliansLew House, President(lhouse2cti@earthlink.net)2034 Eisenhower Dr., Louisville CO 80027tel. (303) 661-9856; fax (303) 661-0589England: CC-UK Woodford/Epping Branch.Tony Woodhead, Old Orchard,32 Albion Hill, Loughton,Essex 1G10 4RD; tel. (0208) 508-4562England: CC-UK Northern BranchDerek Greenwell, Farriers Cottage,Station Road, GoldsboroughKnaresborough, North Yorks. HG5 8NTtel. (01432) 863225Churchill Centre North FloridaRichard Streiff (streiffr@bellsouth.net)81 N.W. 44th Street, Gainesville FL 32607tel. (352) 378-8985Winston Churchill Society of Georgiawww.georgiachurchill.orgWilliam L. Fisher (fish1947@bellsouth.net)5299 Brooke Farm Rd., Dunwoody GA 30338tel. (770) 399-9774Winston Churchill Society of MichiganRichard Marsh (rcmarsha2@aol.com)4085 Littledown, Ann Arbor, MI 48103Tel. (734) 913-0848Churchill Round Table of NebraskaJohn Meeks (jmeeks@wrldhstry.com)7720 Howard Street #3, Omaha NE 68114tel. (402) 968-2773New England ChurchilliansJoseph L. Hern (jhern@fhmboston.com)340 Beale Street, Quincy MA 02170tel. (617) 773-1907; bus. tel. (617) 248-1919Churchill Society of New OrleansJ. Gregg Collins (jgreggcollins@msn.com)2880 Lakeway Three3838 N. Causeway Blvd., Metairie LA 70002Churchill Society of Greater New YorkGregg Berman (gberman@fulbright.com)c/o Fulbright & Jaworski666 Fifth Ave.New York NY 10103 • tel. (212) 318-3388North Carolina Churchillianswww.churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.orgCraig Horn (dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com)5909 Bluebird Hill LaneWeddington NC 28104; tel. (704) 844-9960Churchill Centre Northern OhioMichael McMenamin (mtm@walterhav.com)1301 E. 9th St. #3500, Cleveland OH 44114tel. (216) 781-1212Churchill Society of PhiladelphiaBernard Wojciechowski(bwojciechowski@borough.ambler.pa.us)1966 Lafayette Rd., Lansdale PA 19446tel. 610-584-6657South Carolina: Bernard Baruch ChapterKenneth Childs (kchilds@childs-halligan.net)P.O. Box 11367, Columbia SC 29111-1367tel. (803) 254-4035Tennessee: Vanderbilt UniversityYoung Churchill Club; Prof. John English(john.h.english@vanderbilt.edu)Box 1616, Station B, Vanderbilt University,Nashville TN 37235Texas: Emery Reves ChurchilliansJeff Weesner (jweesner@centurytel.net)2101 Knoll Ridge Court, Corinth TX 76210tel. (940) 321-0757; cell (940) 300-6237Churchill Centre South TexasDon Jakeway (churchillstx@gmail.com)170 Grassmarket, San Antonio, TX 78259Tel. (210) 333-2085Sir Winston Churchill Society ofVancouver IslandSidney Allinson, Pres. (allsid@shaw.ca)3370 Passage Way, Victoria BC V9C 4J6tel. (250) 478-0457Washington (DC) Society for ChurchillDr. John H. Mather, Pres.(Johnmather@aol.com)PO Box 73, Vienna VA 22182-0073tel. (240) 353-6782Churchill Centre Seattlewww.churchillseattle.blogspot.comSimon Mould (simon@cckirkland.org)1920 243rd Pl ., SW, Bothell, WA 98021tel. (425) 286-7364

Moments in Time:Columbia University, New York City, 18 March 1946BY STEPHEN JOEL TRACHTENBERG • PHOTOGRAPH BY MANNY WARMANPROFESSOR TRACHTENBERG WAS PRESIDENT OF THE GEORGE WASHINGTONUNIVERISTY FOR NINETEEN YEARS BEFORE RETIRING TO RESUME TEACHING.This photograph portraysChurchill’s visitto Columbia thirteendays after his “Iron Curtain”speech at Fulton, Missouri.We see him passing before thefamous statue of Columbia’s“Alma Mater” by DanielChester French. It is characteristicChurchill, cigar andall. I like him, but I particularlyenjoy the collection ofSecret Service men and policesurrounding him. And isn’tthe face on that big policeofficer to his right a classic?Manny Warman was formany years Columbia’s officialphotographer. When Iwas still President of theUniversity of Hartford inConnecticut, I saw this in aColumbia alumni magazineand wrote to Manny, whosent me this print.Editor’s note: Churchillwas being criticised in thedays after Fulton by thosewho saw what he said there asa call to arms. At Columbiahe was at pains to point outhis actual goal: “In my heartthere is no abiding hatred forany great race on the surfaceol the globe. I earnestly hopethat there will be no pariahnations after the guilty arefully punished. We have tolook forward to a broader,fairer world, richer and fullerin every way under the aegisand authority of the worldorganization, to guard thehumble toiler, the smallhomes of all nations, fromrenewed horrors andtyranny.” ,