FINEST HOUR...Publishing Inc. Production by New England Foil Stamping Inc. Printed by Reprographics Inc. Made in U.S.A. GOOD NEWS ON CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE AND PEACEMAKER The prices of

FINEST HOURSummer 1998 • Nlmber 99

Journal of the Churchill Center and The International Churchill Societies

THE CHURCHILL CENTERTHE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETIES

AUSTRALIA • CANADA • UNITED KINGDOM • UNITED STATES • www.winstonchurchill.orgPATRON: THE LADY SOAMES, D. B. E.

The Churchill Center is an international non-profit organization which encourages study of the life and thought of Winston S.Churchill; fosters research about his speeches, writings and deeds; advances knowledge of his example as a statesman; and, by pro-grammes of teaching and publishing, imparts that learning to men, women and young people around the world. The Center also

sponsors Finest Hour, special publications, international conferences and tours. The Center was created by the InternationalChurchill Societies, which were founded in 1968 to preserve interest in and knowledge of the life, philosophy and heritage of the

Rt. Hon. Sir Winston S. Churchill. The several Societies are independent affiliates of The Churchill Center.

7HE CHURCHILL CENTERA non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0482584

TRUSTEESThe Hon. Celia Sandys,Fred Farrow, George A. Lewis,Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Ir.,The Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger

BOARD OF GOVERNORSWilliam C. Ives, Richard M. Langworth,Parker H. Lee III, Dr. John H. Mather,James W. Muller, Charles D. Platt,John G. Plumpton, Douglas S. Russell,Jacqueline Dean Witter. Ex-officio:Lorraine Horn; Garnet R. Barber, 1CS Canada;Nigel Knocker, 1CS United Kingdom

OFFICERSRichard M. Langworth, President181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229Tel. (603) 746-4433, Fax. (603) 746-4260Email: [email protected]

William C. Ives, Vice President77 W. Wacker Dr., 43rd fir., Chicago IL 60601Tel. (312) 845-5798, Fax. (312) 845-5828

Dr. John H. Mather, Secretary12144 Long Ridge Lane, Bowie MD 20715Tel. ( 202) 565-8312, Fax. (202) 565-8476Email: [email protected]

Douglas S. Russell, TreasurerPO Box 2416, Iowa City IA 52244Tel. (319) 351-5610, Fax. (319) 351-6409

Charles D. Platt, Endowment Director14 Blue Heron Drive W., Colorado Spgs. CO 80121Tel. (303) 721-8550, Fax. (303) 290-0097Email: [email protected]

Lorraine C. Horn, Administrator8016 McKenstry Drive,Laurel MD 20723Tel. (888)WSC-1874, Fax. (301) 483-6902Email: [email protected]

DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEEGarnet R. Barber, Colin D. Clark, D. Craig Horn,James F. Lane, Richard M. Langworth,Parker H. Lee III, Michael McMenamin,Michael W. Michelson, Charles D. Platt,Consultant: Anthony Gilles

INTERNET COMMITTEEHomepage: www.winstonchurchill.orgListserv: [email protected]

John Plumpton, Editor, [email protected]: [email protected]: Beverly Carr, [email protected]

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARYDerek Brownleader, 1847 Stonewood Dr.,Baton Rouge LA 70816Tel. (225) 752-3313

Churchill Center, continuedCHURCHILL CENTER ASSOCIATES

Winston Churchill Associates:Intl. Churchill Society USA, Churchill Center,Mr. & Mrs. Matthew Wills, Mr. & Mrs. Parker H.Lee III, Alex M. Worth Jr., Fred Farrow, Colin D.Clark, Michael & Carol McMenamin, David &Diane Boler, Raymond L. & Patricia M. Orban

Clementine Churchill Associates:Barbara & Richard Langworth, James F. Lane,Drs. John H. & Susan H. Mather, Lorraine &Craig Horn, Mr. & Mrs. Charles D. Platt,John B. Thomison, Ronald D. Abramson,Ambassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.,Angelo & Jeanette GabrielMary Soames Associates:

Mr. & Mrs. Wm. C. Ives, Jacqueline & MalcolmWitter, Mr. & Mrs. John G. Plumpton,Gary J. Bonine, Mr. & Mrs. James W. Muller,Frederick C. & Martha S. Hardman,Douglas S. Russell, Elizabeth Churchill Snell,Mr. & Mrs. Richard A. Leahy, Mr. & Mrs. GeraldDrake Kambestad, Richard & Jenny Streiff,Daniel & Susan Borinsky

CHURCHILL CENTER ACADEMIC ADVISORSProf. James W. Muller, Chairman,

University of Alaska Anchorage1518 Airport Hts. Dr., Anchorage AK 99508

Tel. (907) 786-4740 Fax. (907) 786-4647Email: [email protected]

Prof. Paul Addison, University of EdinburghDr. Larry P. Arnn, President, The Claremont InstituteProf. Kirk Emmert, Kenyon CollegeSir Martin Gilbert, CBE, Merlon College, OxfordProf. Barry M. Gough, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityProf. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers UniversityProf. Patrick Powers, So. New England School of LawProf. Paul A. Rahe, University ofTulsaDr. Jeffrey Wallin, President, The American AcademyProf. Manfred Weidhorn, Yeshiva UniversityProf. John A. Ramsden, Queen Mary & Westfield

College, University of London

CHURCHILL STORES (Back Issues & Sales Deft.)Gail Greenly, PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229Tel. (603) 746-3452 Fax (603) 746-6963Email: [email protected]

INTERNATIONAL COUNCILOF CHURCHILL ORGANIZATIONSAmbassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr., Chairman208 S. LaSalle St., Chicago IL 60604 USATel. (800) 621-1917, Fax. (312) 726-9474

ICS AUSTRALIASubscriptions and renewals: Robin Linke,181 Jersey Street, Wembley, WA 6014

ACT Representative: Lee Deegan,12/63 Tindery Circuit, Palmerston, ACT 2913

ICS CANADARevenue Canada No. 0732701-21-13Ambassador Kenneth W. Taylor, Hon. Chairman

ICS Canada, continued

Garnet R. Barber, President4 Snowshoe Cres., Thornhill, Ont. L3T 4M6Tel. (905) 881-8550

John G. Plumpton, Executive Secretary130 Collingsbrook Blvd,Agincourt ON M1W 1M7Tel. (416) 497-5349 Fax. (416) 502-3847Email: [email protected]

Jeanette Webber, Membership Secretary3256 Rymal Road, Mississauga ON L4Y 3C1Tel. (905)279-5169

Charles Anderson, Treasurer389 Stanfield Drive, Oakville ON L6L 3R2

The Other Club of OntarioBernard Webber, President3256 Rymal Rd., Mississauga, Ont. L4Y 3C1

Winston S. Churchill Society of Vancouver (Affiliated)Leslie A. Strike, President701-1565 Esquimalt Av.,W.Vancouver BC V7V 1R4

ICS UNITED KINGDOMCharity Registered in England No. 800030

Nigel Knocker, ChairmanPO Box 1257, Melksham, Wilts. SN12 6GQTel. & Fax. (01380) 828609Email: [email protected]

TRUSTEESThe Hon. Celia Sandys, Chairman;The Duke of Marlborough, JP, DL;David Boler; David J. Porter; Geoffrey J. Wheeler;The Rt Hon The Earl Jellicoe, KBE, DSO

COMMITTEENigel Knocker, Chairman;Wylma Wayne, Vice Chairman;Paul H. Courtenay, Hon. Secretary;John Glanvill Smith, Editor ICS UK Newsletter;Timothy Hicks, Hon. Treasurer;Michael Kelion; Fred Lockwood;Dominic Walters

ICS UNITED STATESA non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0365444

Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.Chairman of the Board of Trustees208 South LaSalle Street, Chicago IL 60604Tel. (800) 621-1917

TRUSTEESRichard M. Langworth; George A. Lewis;Wendy Russell Reves; Hon. Celia Sandys;The Lady Soames, DBE; Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger

TABLE OF CONTENTS

•r-

Summer 1998

FINEST HOURJournal of the Churchill Center and Societies Number 99

THE CENTENARY OF OMDURMAN13 The Omdurman Exhibit at Belvoir Castleby Douglas }. Hall

33 Let the Ghosts of Omdurman Sleepby The Rt. Hon. The Lord Deedes, M.C.

48 The Sensations of a Cavalry Chargeby Winston S. Churchill

FEATURE ARTICLES5 Churchill Center Report: The First PlateauEndowment Hits $1,053,291;Genesis of the Connoisseur's Guide;Symposium 3: "Churchill's Life of Marlborough"

14 Mary Soames:"My Parents Talked Politics All the Time"On the eve of her latest book, our Patronremembers what her parents were like up close.by Ray Connolly

16 Personality of the Century (5):Stranger Than Fiction:Patterns in Churchill's Charmed Lifeby Manfred Weidhorn

12353738414546474748

Amid These StormsInternational DatelinesLocal and NationalAction This DayRiddles, Mysteries, EnigmasWit & Wisdomwww.winstonchurchill.orgDespatch BoxChurchilltriviaAmpersandRecipes From Number TenImmortal Words

(Woods Corner and Churchill in Stampsresume next issue)

24 English-Speaking Peoples:Where Have All the Leaders Gone?Or, Total Quality Leadershipby Stephen Hayward

26 Churchill as Coalition War LeaderIdeas may be splendid,but they have to be worked with to be realized.Visions may be dazling, but they require labor.by Christopher C. Harmon

34 As Others Saw Him: Neville Chamberlain"Winston is a very interestingbut a d—d uncomfortable bedfellow."

BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES:39 Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan has beencriticized as not saying what WW2 was about andbeing anti-war. None of the above, says Dick Feagler:it is a masterpiece that tells us what we've lost. CraigRead's Challenging the Tribe is interesting, its messageis not WSC's challenge, reports Michael Richards

43 Churchill Commemoratives Calendar, Part 91975-1979: After the Delugeby Douglas J. Hall

Cover:Dame Mary, The Lady Soames,

whose recollection of her parents appears onpage 14, has been Patron of the ChurchillCenter and Societies since 1983. We have

never tried too carefully to define her officebecause her influence is universal. On the eveof our 100th issue we dedicate this number to

her, with gratitude for her unwaveringfriendship and wise counsel.

Photograph by Chris Harris, reproduced bykind permission of Times Newspapers Ltd.,

London © 1995.

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 3

AMID THESE STORMS

FINEST HOURNumber 99 • Summer 1998ISSN 0882-3715www.winstonchurchill.org

Barbara F. Langworth, PublisherRichard M Langworth, EditorPO Box 385, Hopkinton,NH 03229 USATel. (603) 746-4433Fax. (603) 746-4260E-mail: [email protected]

Senior Editor: John G. PlumptonBOCollingsbrookBlvdAgincourt Ont. M1W 1M7 CanadaEmail: [email protected]

Senior Editor: Ron Cynewulf Robbins198 St. Charles Street, Victoria,BC, V8S 3M7 Canada

Features Editor: Douglas J. Hall183A Somerby Hill, Grantham,Lines. NG31 7HA England

News Editor: John Frost

Editorial Assistant: Gail Greenly

Contributors

Sir Martin Gilbert, Nigel Knocker, UK;George Richard, Australia;James W. Muller, Manfred Weidhorn,Curt Zoller, Dr. John H. Mather,Michael McMenamin, USA.

Finest Hour is made possible in partthrough the generous support of mem-bers of The Churchill Center andSocieties, and with the assistance of anendowment created by The ChurchillCenter Associates (page 2).

FINEST HOUR is published quarterly byThe Churchill Center and InternationalChutchill Societies, which offer various lev-els of support in their respective currencies.Membership applications and changes ofaddress should be sent to the appropriateoffices on page 2. Permission to mail at non-profit rates in USA granted by the US PostalService, Concord, NH, permit no. 1524.Copyright 1998. All rights reserved. De-signed and edited by DragonwyckPublishing Inc. Production by New EnglandFoil Stamping Inc. Printed by ReprographicsInc. Made in U.S.A.

GOOD NEWS ON CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE AND PEACEMAKERThe prices of the two new books produced in association with The Churchill Center

are reduced dramatically.A Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill (described in FH98, page

5) is reduced from $48 to only $30. It sells for £40 in Britain, but only $39.95 in theUSA; the member price is based on the USA price and applies wherever you live, includ-ing Britain. Churchill As Peacemaker, edited by James Muller, is reduced from $50 to $45.(Bookshop price is $59.95.) See Finest Hour 97, page 28 for a review of this fine work.

Both books may now be ordered directly from the CC New Book Service, PO Box385, Contoocook NH 03229. Make checks out to "Churchill Center." Add for shipping:$5 for first book, $1 for each additional book. British members will get faster delivery ofthe Connoisseur's Guide from ICS/UK (address on page 2),which charges £21.50 inclusiveof post. A portion of this goes to ICS/UK, the rest to the Center.

The Churchill Center made both these books possible by purchasing a quantity ofthe Guide while underwriting much of the Symposium that produced Peacemaker.Between these two books, eleven authors have now been published in what are as muchChurchill Center publications as Finest Hour or the Churchill Proceedings.

WORKING ON A CHURCHILL BOOK?One of The Churchill Center's primary goals is to help implement publication of

worthwhile Churchill Studies without getting into the act of publishing itself. These newbooks have furnished us with models and experience for future projects. We are layingplans for more books based on our symposia, and working with people who haveapproached us with other book projects. We will announce these titles as soon as arrange-ments are locked up. (See the report opposite for more details.)

The Center has adopted publishing guidelines which outline how we approach theseprojects. The first step is for the author to circulate his or her book proposal to publish-ers. If the book is accepted without our involvement, we cheer; if not, we consider waysby which we might help get a desirable book into print. We like to see commercial or aca-demic publication, because either produces books with large scale distribution that isbeyond our own resources. If you are an author with a Churchill book project, I will behappy to send you the CC's guidelines and samples of book proposals to publishers.

BARRY GOLDWATERFor the frontispiece of his photography book, People and Places, Barry Goldwater

chose a photo he'd taken of President Kennedy, whom he had expected to run against in1964. (They'd even discussed making joint debate appearances, using the same airplane.)The inscription read: "To Barry Goldwater, whom I urge to follow the career for whichhe has shown much talent—photography! From his friend - John Kennedy." Theirfriendship despite deep political differences was a Churchillian characteristic of each.

In 1964 I cast my first Presidential vote for Goldwater, knowing it was in vain, sick atheart over the smears of that campaign, and the way he had handled them. But I willnever forget his earlier, electric words, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,"which I classified with those of John Kennedy: "Let every nation know, whether it wishesus well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, supportany friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." Nowwe deplore the absence of figures like them, the one so graceful, the other so genuine; butin so doing we forget that the world has changed. And that we, too, have changed.

We all know what John Kennedy said about Winston Churchill, when declaring himan honorary American citizen. On this subject Barry Goldwater profoundly agreed."Winston Churchill is one of the people on my list of the truly great," Goldwater wroteto me eight years ago. "And I can assure you, that's a damn short list."

Rest in peace, Senator.RICHARD M. LANGWORTH, EDITOR

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 4

Churchill Center Report: Summer 1998

"We may allow ourselves a Drier period or rejoicing

Churchill Center Endowment Hits $1,053,291

This summer we thought it appropriate to send a small lapelpin to the Churchill Center Associates listed below, who

have brought us to where we are today. An accompanying letter

77

read as follows:"As a Churchill Center Associate

you should be among the first toknow that our endowment has nowexceeded one million dollars. Givenour small numbers, this is an impres-sive achievement which will encourageother members to become Associatesand provide powerful evidence to themajor financial backers we will beapproaching this autumn, as to whatwe have already accomplished on ourown. The present amount is notinsignificant: by the end of 2000 itwill total over $600,000 cash and over$400,000 in further pledges orbequests. Pursuant to our goals, thisprincipal will never be touched, butcarefully invested to produce incomethat will guarantee the continuance ofour work forever.

"The Endowment is separatefrom our operating funds, and ouroperating expenses have never beenmet solely by annual subscriptions.Accordingly, our Annual Report willalso be accompanied by the traditionalHeritage Fund appeal, for donationsthat help underwrite our day-to-dayexpenses. Also included in the packagewill be Churchill Proceedings 1994-1995, a book containing all theaddresses delivered at ICS and Churchill Center functions duringthose years. A later edition will cover the same material for 1996-

1997."The gratitude of our Governors, Trustees and members to

you for your powerful aid can never be properly expressed; butwe hope these exiguous tokens of thanks will represent theirappreciation to you as co-creator of a unique institution."

While thanking our Associates, we must also thank our over600 founding members in America, Canada, Britain and manyother countries, who thought enough of our plans to get the

Winston Churchill AssociatesInternational Churchill Society, USA

The Churchill CenterMr. & Mrs. Matthew B. WillsMr. & Mrs. Parker H. Lee, HI

Alex M. Worth, Jr.Fred Farrow

Colin D. ClarkMichael & Carol McMenamin

David & Diane BolerRaymond & Patricia Orban

Clementine Churchill AssociatesBarbara & Richard Langworth

James F. LaneDrs. John H. & Susan H. Mather

Lorraine & Craig HornMr. & Mrs. Charles D. Platt

John B. ThomisonRonald D. Abramson

Ambassador & Mrs. Paul H. Robinson, Jr.Angelo & Jeanette Gabriel

Mary Soames AssociatesMr. & Mrs. William C. Ives

Jacqueline & Malcolm WitterMr. & Mrs. John G. Plumpton

Gary J. BonineMr. & Mrs. James W. Muller

Frederick C. & Martha S. HardmanDouglas S. Russell

Elizabeth Churchill SnellMr. & Mrs. Richard A. Leahy

Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Drake KambestadRichard & Jenny Srreiff

Daniel & Susan Borinsky

Center off the ground three years ago; and our 3000 membersworldwide, whose regular renewals and many contributions sus-tain all these efforts. We could not do it without you. All of

you. In any organization dependingheavily on volunteers and donations,inevitably some can do more than oth-ers, but the work of the few could notbe sustained without the support ofthe many. Thank-you.

MOVING RIGHT ALONGEighteen months ago, The

Churchill Center was so extended withseminars, symposia and book projectsalready authorized that its Boardinstructed its Governors to avoidencouraging the many people withbook projects, scholarship needs orother worthy Churchill Studies pro-jects in the hope of our assistance. Westalled, worried that anything as ambi-tious as this major new enterprisemight be beyond our capacity.

Our position has since improvedconsiderably. The initial success of ourendowment campaign has greatlyencouraged us. We have started in amodest way to offer scholarships, fortwo students enrolled in the Centre forSecond World War Studies, Universityof Edinburgh. We have organized thefirst Churchill Lecture, by AmbassadorRaymond Seitz, in Williamsburg, Vir-ginia on November 6th. We havecommissioned editorial work on three

new books: papers from our two 1996 symposia ("Churchill andthe Postwar Years" and the Fulton Speech 50th Anniversary) anda new edition of The River War incorporating both the original1899 and revised 1902 texts, exhaustively annotated to indicatewhich parts were 1899 and which were revisions. James Mullerseditorial work on die latter is nearly complete and publishingconcepts have been approved by the Churchill literary interests; itremains only to find a publisher. A fourth book began with ourMay 1996 symposium in England: "Churchill's Life of Marlbor-ough," about which more overleaf continued >»

FINEST HOUR 99 / 5

Churchill Center Report, continued

GESTATION OF THE CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDESix years ago the Directors of the International Churchill

Society, USA asked Richard Langworth to produce a guide toChurchill's books similar to previous ICS booklets, such as Dou-glas Russell's Orders and Decorations of Sir Winston Churchill, JohnWoods's The Boer Conspiracy and the Churchill Conover Corre-spondence. With the press of other business the project was repeat-edly postponed—fortunately, as it turned out. In 1996, theauthor secured the interest of Brassey's (UK) Ltd. in publishingdie work as a book, provided that The Churchill Center wouldassist by buying a quantity of books hot off the press. Instead ofproducing a smaller booklet, at considerable expense, whichwould circulate mainly to members, we ended up with a muchbetter deal: the Center recoups most of its investment throughsales of the book to members, who benefit through a special 25%discount off the regular price, and the book is simultaneouslyavailable to the public through the retail book trade.

The formula by which the Guide was produced provides apattern for future, desirable book projects which might otherwisebe of marginal interest to publishers. The cost to the Center of ahardbound book turned out to be much less than an ICS book-let; by mid-August the Center had already recouped a third of itsinvestment in copies; and commercial publication gave the booka circulation we couldn't have achieved on our own.

This success would not have been possible without theresponse of members who advance-ordered over 150 copies, evenwhen die price appeared to be much higher. We are very gratefulto all who bought (and are buying) copies, and hope you will beas pleased by the product as you will be with the lower price.

WINSTON CHURCHILL'S LIFE OF MARLBOROUGHThe most comprehensive symposium ever undertaken by

The Churchill Center brought fifteen renowned authorities fromBritain, Canada and the United States to the Spencer-ChurchillConference Room, Blenheim Palace, to discuss, dissect, debate,criticize, praise and ponder Marlborough: His Life and Times, thebiography Leo Strauss called "the greatest historical work writtenin our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom andunderstanding." About fifty members and friends of theChurchill Center and Societies attended all or some phase of theevents, including a finale dinner on May 16th with the Duke andDuchess of Marlborough, Lady Soames and Celia Sandys, whereour good friends Pol Roger Champagne kindly donated the liba-tion. Our after-dinner speaker was Sir Martin Gilbert, whostepped back for a broad retrospective of the subject on which hehas spent much of his adult life. Programmes, which containabstracts of the papers and descriptions and photos of the sym-posiasts, are available free from the editor upon request.

Our able "symposiarch," Piers Brendon, Keeper of theArchives at Churchill College Cambridge, kept discussions mov-ing and rescued diem on die few occasions where diey lagged.Although he did not write a paper himself, Dr. Brendon obvious-ly had read diem all in advance, and was ready widi penetrating

Blenheim, May 16th. L-R: Piers Brendon, Morton Frisch, James Jones, David Stafford,Seth Cropsey, Paul Rahe, Geoffrey Treasure, Robert Eden, John Mather, Melissa Lane,James Muller, William Speck, Stephen Webb, PaulAlkon, Barry Gough. Photo byJ.P-

insights, keen critiques and humorous asides which animated thesymposiasts and kept the audience riveted. Here are someexcerpts from the abstracts:

William Speck, Professor of Modem History, Leeds University:

"To make die Duke recognizable to twentieth century readers,Churchill strove to present the historical context in modernterms. For example, he persistently called the Spanish Nether-lands 'Belgium.' He presented Louis XT/ as a threat to the liber-ties in Europe in much the same way that the Kaiser had beenand as Hider was becoming. The result was that Churchill identi-fied himself more and more with his hero."

Kirk Emmert, Professor of Political Science, Kenyon College,

Ohio: "The dominant dieme is the centrality and supremacy ofpolitics. The theme is vital to Churchill's measured defence ofMarlborough and is the major lesson his work teaches to hispolitically uneducated and disengaged countrymen. Churchilldemonstrates Marlboroughs awareness of the intrinsic superiorityof political purposes and virtues deriving from their connectionto individual and national well-being."

Barry M. Gough, Professor of History, WilfridLaurier Univer-

sity, Ontario: "British maritime ascendancy secured Gibraltar andMinorca during die War of Spanish Succession and established aBritish presence in the Mediterranean diat lasted three centuries.Queen Anne's war at sea dius demonstrates die crystallization of apolicy that served Britain well into the twentieth century andeven into die Cold War."

Geoffrey Treasure, History Master (retired), Harrow School: "As

biography Marlborough is grand, compelling and irreplaceable. Asa history of die times, inevitably, it is flawed. Especially this is trueof Churchill's treatment of France....My paper suggests ways inwhich the balance can be restored. To do Louis and his ministersjustice is in no way to reduce the stature of Churchill's hero.Rather, it enhances the significance of his achievement."

John H. Mather, M.D., Assistant Inspector General, U.S.Department of Veterans Affairs: "Marlborough lived when medicalknowledge was based on strong beliefs about the origin and curefor disease and injury. He was exposed to maladies, common inlarge armies, but avoided all the serious infectious diseases. Hisavoidance of personal trauma and his support for the reparative

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 6

needs of his troops are a comment on his own good fortune andhis serious commitment to the welfare of his armies."

James W. Muller, Professor and Chairman, Dept. of PoliticalScience, University of Alaska, Anchorage: "Churchill's biographicalmasterpiece is a tragic story which shows the extent and the limitsof human power. We see in Churchill's portrait the power of agreat commander to shape the course of human history. YetMarlborough was unable to prevent his own fall, nor did he con-template his limits with the same philosophic interest thatChurchill shows as a biographer."

David A. T. Stafford, Visiting Fellow, Institute for AdvancedStudies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh: "Churchill'suse of secret service while he was prime minister is now legendary,but he had long experience of all forms of intelligence long before1940. This is apparent in his biography of Marlborough, wherehe is the first biographer to highlight this particular dimension ofhis hero's strategy; it contains many references to secret service,secret agents, and deception. None of them is very full, but hisaccount stands up well to what specialists have later learned aboutintelligence and its use by armies of the eighteenth century."

Paul K Alkon, Leo S. Bing Professor of English, University ofSouthern California, Los Angeles: 'The book's literary merits can bereassessed by considering the narrative methods Churchill adoptsto achieve his announced intention to recall this great shade fromthe past.' Churchill warns against the distortions inherent in ret-rospective narration; his combination of Boswellian and Richard-sonian narrative techniques partly succeeds in bringing Marlbor-ough forward as a living and intimate presence. But the bookendures by its success in bringing us even closer to its narrator."

Paul A. Rahe, Jay P. Walker Professor and Chairman, Dept. ofHistory, University ofTulsa: "That Winston Churchill was award-ed the Nobel Prize for Literature might, with some justice, beattributed to his statesmanship. But it would be an error to denythat he had earned such recognition as a writer. The life he wroteconcerning his renowned ancestor bears comparison with the his-tories of Thucydides, Hume, Gibbon and Macauley. The under-standing that Churchill formed while writing this biography sus-tained him through the travails of the late 1930s and 1940s."

Stephen Saunders Webb, Professor of History, Syracuse Univer-sity, New York: "The life of Marlborough is Whig history. It mis-takes Parliament for politics and Europe for the world. America isabsent from the life, although evidence of the importance of theEmpire to the builder of Blenheim filled the Palace archives.Because Churchill did relatively little research, compilation ofconceptualization for the life, it did little to give life to the Ameri-can empire that owed so much to Marlborough."

Robert Eden, Professor of History and Politics, Hillsdale College,Michigan: "Today, Churchill's natural audience must learn aboutChurchill and World War II from historians, most of whom can-not find or make the time to read Marlborough. The book standsin a certain tension with that context. Even well-informed scholarsand statesmen, who are persuaded of the book's relevance forunderstanding Churchill's wartime statesmanship, find themselvesembarrassed and perplexed by Churchill's biography."

James R Jones, Emeritus Professor of History, University of EastAnglia: "The problems which Marlborough had to overcome inpersuading his allies to adopt a defensive strategy, in coordinatingtheir campaigns, and in maintaining allied unity in the later statesof a victorious war when they were no longer afraid of the enemy,have intrinsic similarities to those which Churchill himself was toencounter. Churchill learned from Marlborough the vital impor-tance of establishing mutual confidence with allied leaders inorder to maintain the unity of purpose necessary to win the war."

Seth Cropsey, Chairman, Dept. of Democratic Decision Mak-ing, George C. Marshall Center College of Strategic Studies: "Theobstacles that members of the Grand Alliance offered to its collec-tive success, and the leadership that Marlborough displayed inovercoming them, are a better model for thinking about alliancestoday than the Anglo-American alliance of World War II, inwhich the major partners were in large agreement; or NATO,which did not fight to win the Cold War; or the Desert Stormcoalition, which was political rather than military."

Melissa S. Lane, University Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty ofHistory, University of Cambridge: "This paper explores the formsof reasoning about peacemaking in the period 1708-10 asdescribed by Churchill in Volume IV of Marlborough. It is in parta philosophical exploration of some notions on which Churchill'shistoriography draws: for example, Marlborough's willingness toaccept a reward is analyzed in order to explore the differencebetween reward and bribe from the standpoint of an agent."

Morton J. Frisch, Professor of Political Science, Northern Illi-nois University: "Churchill's biography is as close as he ever comesto writing a manual for statesmen. By pointing to what he sees asMarlborough's cautiousness in the peace negotiations of 1709,Churchill draws our attention to the core of his own politicalthought. Churchill rejects caution, which he believes considerablylowers the status of statesmanship."

The Marlborough Symposium owes its success to manypeople besides Piers Brendon and the symposiasts quoted above:the Duke of Marlborough, who attended one of the sessions andwith the Duchess the concluding dinner; Bill Gunn and PolRoger UK for the fine Champagne; academic chairman JamesMuller for the recruitment of symposiasts, organization of papersand editing of programme; Parker Lee for preliminary arrange-ments; and general manager John Plumpton, who worked tire-lessly to pull together complicated travel and transportationrequirements, to produce the outstanding catering at WroxtonCollege and Blenheim, and to assure that everything went off intimely fashion. On the surface it might be supposed that Johnwas treated to a wonderful junket to England. Those who werepresent know there wasn't a moment from dawn to dark that hewasn't working full-time for the success of the operation.

To make them more widely available to teachers and stu-dents, papers delivered at this Symposium are later be publishedas a book. Now indeed the real work begins for our symposiasts:refining their papers for that book, based on the points that weremade around the table. We are sure that we will be pleased andproud with the book that eventually results. $

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 7

INTERNATIONAL DATELINESQUOTE OF THE SEASON

"I have noticed...a tendency...to hush everything up, to make everything look as fair aspossible, to tell what is called the official truth, to present a version of the truth which

contains about 75% of the actual article....all the ugly facts are smoothed and var-nished over, rotten reputations are propped up, and officers known as incapable areallowed to hang on and linger in their commands in the hope that at the end...they

may be shunted into private life without a scandal."WSC, House of Commons, 12 March 1901

HOMONYMS......are words that sound alike but spelled(spelt) differently. What do you callwords which sound different but arespelled alike? Let us know, because in1999 we have two events in Bath: one inBath, Maine (launch of USS Winston S.Churchill, 17 April); and Baaahth, Eng-land (16th International Churchill Con-ference, 22-25 July). More below...

VIVE LA GREECENEW YORK, JULY 15TH— Winston Churchillhas passed Kemal Ataturk in the "lead-ers and statesmen" category in the on-going Time magazine Internet poll forpeople of the century. Apparently,Ataturk's surge (FH 97 pp 8-9) wasprompted by Turkish newspaper urg-ings; the Greeks got wind of this, andvoted en masse for Winston Churchill. IfOnassis were still around he could havejust bought Time.

OMDURMAN COVERSUDAN, TEXAS, SEPTEMBER 2ND— Church i l l

Center commemorative cover #51,marking the 100th anniversary of theBattle of Omdurman and Churchill'scharge with the 21st Lancers, was issuedhere today: another gem by covers man-ager Dave Marcus to follow his"Malakand" cover, posted from Pak-istan in March. On this one, the "Sudan"postmark is applied to the U.S. 1965Churchill commemorative and 1948"Rough Riders" commemorative. Thelatter is ideal, since it says nothing aboutTeddy Roosevelt and depicts a mountedcavalryman. The cachet design is basedon Bud Bradshaw's Omdurman print onthe cover of FH 77.

Commemorative covers are free butyou must ask to be put on the mailinglist. If you are not on the list, you may

obtain cover #51 for $3 or £2 postpaidairmail from Dave Marcus, 3048 VanBuskirk Circle, Las Vegas NV 89121. Tobe added to the list, include your cur-rent FH mailing label. Congratulationsto Dave, who has been turning out thesefascinating covers since 1970.

TURNOVERLONDON, MAY 20TH— The talk aroundtown is that the year-old Labour Gov-ernment wishes to do away with heredi-tary peers in the House of Lords.(Churchill, with Lloyd George an earlyadvocate of curbing the Lords, referredto the Upper House in 1911 as "one-sided, hereditary, unpurged, unrepre-sentative, irresponsible, absentee.") Butthere is greater turnover in the House ofLords (from superannuation) than thereis in the United States House of Repre-sentatives (where 99% of the incum-bents who ran for office were returnedin the last election). Makes us wonderwho the hereditary peers are.

ICS/UK FORGES CLOSERLINKS WITH MEMORIAL TRUSTLONDON, MAY 14TH— Discussions with SirHenry Beverley, Director General of theWinston Churchill Memorial Trust,have produced closer ties between theInternational Churchill Society of theU.K. and the Trust. The two organisa-tions have identifiable common threads.The Trust uses the words, "to follow his[WSC's] inspiration," whilst the Societyuses the words, "to inspire and educatefuture generations through the worksand example of Sir Winston Churchill."The principal difference is that the Trustspecialises in awarding Fellowships foroverseas projects covering a wide vari-ety of subjects; whereas the Society ismore narrowly defined with two main

complementary strands, educationaland historical.

The Winston Churchill MemorialTrust is a living tribute to Sir Winston,whose life and example are the inspira-tion. He died in 1965 and many thou-sands of people, in respect for hisinspired leadership, gave generously toa public subscription to fund TravellingFellowships. These enable men andwomen from all walks of life and everycorner of the UK to acquire knowledgeand experience abroad. In the process,they gain a better understanding of thelives and different cultures of peopleoverseas and, on their return, their effec-tiveness at work, as well as their contri-bution to the community, are enhancedgreatly. All British citizens are eligiblefor the 100 or so annual awards;Churchill Fellows can be of any age, andany occupation. Everyone has an equalchance; a lack of qualifications is not abar to an award as every application isjudged on the worth of the individualand the relative merit of the project.

The 1999 categories include fellow-ships for projects in animal welfare,small business, teaching and education,community health, science and technol-ogy, adventure and exploration, urbandesign, rural planning and develop-ment, projects requiring travel to aEuropean Union country, problems ofageing and—most significantly to us—"A project in the Field of History."

ICS/UK members, or anyoneknown to members, who would like toapply for a Churchill Fellowship in "Aproject in the Field of History" wouldreceive consideration with all otherapplicants. They are advised to applyfor a fellowship in a history projectspecifically related to a historical aspectof Churchill's life. 23 October 1998 is theclosing date for application forms. For abrochure and an application form, senda self-addressed envelope (22cm x11cm) to: The Winston Churchill Memo-rial Trust, 15 Queen's Gate Terrace, Lon-don SW7 5PR, telephone (0170) 5849315, fax (0171) 581 041, [email protected]. Or visit the Trust'swebsite at http://www.wcmt.org.uk.-Nigel Knocker

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 8

INTERNATIONAL DATELINES

THE CHURCHILL CALENDARLocal event organizers arc welcome to send entries for this calendar; owing to our quarterly schedule, however, we need copy at least three months in advance.

19985-8 November: Fifteenth International Churchill Conference, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

27-29 November: "Churchill's Secret War" Symposium, Royal Armouries, Leeds, England1999

2 April: Annual General Meeting, ICS/UK, Cabinet War Rooms, London17 April: Launch of USS Winston S. Churchill, DDG81, Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine

22-25 July: Sixteenth International Churchill Conference, Bath, Somerset26 July-10 August: "Churchill's South Africa" Tour, Capetown to Pretoria

24-26 September: Theme Conference, "Churchill & Eisenhower at Gettysburg," Gettysburg, Pennsylvania2000

14-17 September: Seventeenth International Churchill Conference, Anchorage, Alaska2001

14 February: Centenary of Churchill's Entry into Parliament Autumn: Eighteenth International Churchill Conference2003

Twentieth International Churchill Conference and 50th Anniversary of the Bermuda Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda

IT'S OFFICIAL: THE NAME ISUSS WINSTON S, CHURCHILLBATH, MAINE, JUNE 26TH— Bath Iron WorksPresident Allan Cameron and Vice Pres-ident for AEGIS Programs John Masonadvised today that the middle initial"S." has officially been added to thename of DDG81, the guided missiledestroyer to be launched here in April1999. The lack of the "S.," which SirWinston always used, was brought toour attention by a member of ICS/UK,Armido I. Valori of Norwich, England,and endorsed by Ambassador PaulRobinson. Family approval was securedby Secretary of the Navy John Dalton.

We are grateful to Messrs. Cameron

ERRATUM, FH 98Page 25: John David Marshall

informs us that apparently the famousexchange ("Winston, if I were your wifeI'd put poison in your coffee"/"Nancy,if I were your husband I'd drink it") isnot something that occurred betweenAstor and F. E. Smith, as we stated. SeeThe Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Van-derbilt Balsan (1953, pl62), who says theexchange occurred at Blenheim Palacewhen her son was host. ChristopherSykes, said to have made the correctioncrediting F.E. Smith, confirms Balsan'sversion in his Nancy: The Life of LadyAstor (Harper & Row, 1972, pl27): "Itsounds like an invention but is wellauthenticated. [Churchill] and the Astorswere staying with Churchill's cousin, theDuke of Marlborough, at BlenheimPalace," where WSC and Nancy had"argued ferociously all weekend."

and Mason for kindly welcoming oureditor and his family to the historicshipyard, where DDG81 is already tak-ing shape. A member wrote us sayingWSC's name should have been used ona larger U.S. Navy vessel. The only larg-er ones still being built are aircraft carri-ers, and not many of those. At 509 feetoverall, this is a vessel to which enemieswill give a wide berth.

Winston S. Churchill will break newground for her class by her long-range5-inch gun (more range and accuracythan any battleship), upgraded displayconsoles, and a few other cutting-edgeenhancements. She will certainly be the"best of the best" when she sets to sea.We believe Sir Winston would be morethan pleased with his namesake's tech-nical wizardry and, if taken along on tri-als, would undoubtedly insist on pop-ping off a few practice rounds.

Lerft: Fred Koch, FH's Bath cor-respondent, attended the keel-laying on May 7th. Fred writes:"this is the actual ship section,called the 'keel,' that was laidupon the building ways for theceremony."

We have issued acomplimentary member-ship to Churchill's designat-ed captain, Cdr. M. T.Franken, who informs usthat DDG81 will be portedin Norfolk, Virginia, "goodnews for the thousands ofcrew members who willone day call the shiphome." Visits to Britain

will occur "whenever feasible ...for yearsto come."

Cdr. Franken has also settled on amotto for the ship's crest: "In War: Reso-lution; In Peace: Good Will."

The launch date is tentatively Satur-day 17 April 1999, with Lady Soamespresent. Members are invited, so holdthe date! Note, however, that there issome agitation for 24 April, the 50thAnniversary of NATO. In that case thelaunch will probably be attended byvery senior officials indeed, but there's ahitch. Tides in Bath, ten miles up theKennebec, are critical, and vessels thislarge have to be launched at peak-highlest they end up stuck on a mudbank!So nature, not officialdom, may play thegoverning hand. Our man in Bath, FredKoch, USN (Ret.), will keep us informedof developments, -RML

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LIBRARY GIFTSBLENHEIM PALACE, MAY 16TH— The Chur-

chill Center is most grateful to Mr. Gor-don Bloor of Bath, Somerset, who verykindly donated a first edition of Win-ston Churchill's first book, The Story ofthe Malakand Field Force, to benefit TheChurchill Center. Many other membershave donated books to The ChurchillCenter library, including former ICS,Canada chairman Celwyn Ball andEdwin Russell of New York, a brother-in-law of The Duke of Marlborough.The Center library will comprise all edi-tions of all Churchill books in all lan-guages, including fine archival copiesand reading copies for loan or reference.

Donated books are professionallyappraised and we can furnish appraisalsto donors for tax purposes. We do notguarantee that all donated books will beretained; inevitably there will be dupli-cates and these must be sold to allowacquisition of books we don't have, orgiven to other worthy libraries. All bookdonors will be acknowledged in thesepages, and their names will one dayappear on a plaque on the library wall.

McMENAMIN TO "A.T.D.""INSIDE THE JOURNALS" REVIVESTORONTO, JULY 31ST— Senior Editor JohnPlumpton, who replaced Dal Newfieldas author of "Action This Day" in FinestHour 37 after Dai's death in 1982, pub-lishes his last column in Finest Hour 100.He will be replaced by Michael McMe-namin, a skilled writer and organizer ofthe member meetings in Cleveland,Ohio. John Plumpton will now revive"Inside the Journals," our important butlately absent column of abstracts ofChurchill articles in periodicals. He willbe assisted by a second contributor,Tom Reinehr. Readers who spotChurchill articles in the periodicalsshould send copies either to John(address on page 2) or to Tom at 12415W. Monte Vista Rd Avondale, AZ 85323(e-mail [email protected]).

Our deepest thanks to John for hisseventy-four successive columns. He isone of those writers editors dreamabout, sending us exactly the right num-ber of words, beautifully expressed, vir-tually camera-ready, well before dead-line, every single time. -RML

FRENCH RESISTANCEPARIS, MAY 12TH— Brian Reeve, a busi-nessman who started campaigning forthe first Churchill statue in France afterthe British honoured de Gaulle with a£300,000 bronze in central London, sayshe has raised only £35,000 of the£200,000 anticipated cost of the sculptorJean Cardot's 11 ft. bronze and wasexpecting in May to borrow from banksto pay the second of three installmentsdue. "If the worst comes to the worst, Ishall just have to stand in front of thestatue with a hat," Reeve says. The stat-ue is to be unveiled on the Avenue Win-ston Churchill near the Champs-Elyseeson Armistice Day, 11 November. Reevehas received hundreds of enthusiasticand moving letters from French veter-ans and a substantial donation fromChampagne Pol Roger, although headmits to receiving "a few nasty notes"from Frenchmen who still bear a grudgeover Dunkirk (why? British ships res-cued thousands of poilus, at great risk)and over the Royal Navy's attack on theFrench fleet at Mers el-Kebir whenChurchill feared French ships would fallinto German hands. Reeve says thesecontroversies are beside the point: "If it

Left: The Churchill bronze with sculptor JeanCardot and ex-Premier Pierre Messmer.Photograph by Michael Ginies.

hadn' t been for Churchill at Yalta,France would have been put under anallied government after the war. Itwouldn't be France at all. I'm convincedthat the French feel great gratitude....It'sjust a question of working away at thefund-raising."

DOWN THE RIVERLONDON, 15 JULY— Sotheby's "PoliticalSale" offered the greatest selection ofChurchilliana ever assembled in a singlesalesroom. Among the highlights: twopaintings, "Blue Grass, La Capponcina"(Coombs 471) and "Garden Scene atBreccles" (Coombs 54), £84,000 and£45,500 respectively; a gold cigar casepresented by Onassis, £44,300; "the Vic-tory Watch," an inscribed gold watchpresented to Churchill in 1945, £26,450;one of Churchill's black top hats,£25,300; Churchill's own Proclamationof his honorary U.S. Citizenship £18,400;his despatch box when he was Ministerof Munitions, £13,800; his silver cigarashtray, hallmarked 1903, £10,350; hiscopy of the abridged one-volume SecondWorld War (Woods A123c) bound in redmorocco, £9,200; a pair of blue velvetslippers monogrammed "WSC," £6,325;a "Don Joaquin" cigar box given tobodyguard Eddie Murray, £2530. Twomaquettes by Oscar Nemon, a 24-inch-high bronze of the House of CommonsStatue and a 22-inch-high resin bronzeof the Westerham Green statue, brought£28,750 and £10,925 respectively. Ididn't buy anything but noted with sat-isfaction a useful hike in the value of anumber of items in my collection, -DJH

SIR DAVID HUNTLONDON, 31 JULY— Attlee's andChurchill's private secretary, whoaddressed the 1992 Churchill Confer-ence in England, has died aged 84.David Wathen Stather Hunt was bornin 1913 and was educated at StLawrence College, Ramsgate andOxford. In 1938 he enlisted in the WelchRegiment and served in the MiddleEast, Balkans, North Africa and Italy,being mentioned in despatches threetimes and receiving the OBE and the

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U.S. Bronze Star. Emerging from thewar a colonel, he joined the Common-wealth Relations Office and laterbecame assistant private secretary to thePrime Minister in 1950. From 1954 heserved in numerous high positionsabroad, culminating as Ambassador toBrazil from 1969 to 1973. He achievedcelebrity by winning the BBC televisionMastermind title in 1977 and the Cham-pion of Champions title in 1982.

When Labour lost the 1951 generalelection David Hunt automaticallybecame a prviate secretary to WinstonChurchill. (Downing Street secretarieshad never been political appointees andproudly served Prime Ministers of anyparty with impartiality.) Sir Davidalways looked back on that period of hiscareer with affection and pride. He wasnot afraid to stand up to Churchill andrecalled that whilst the latter wouldoften be indignant at being opposed, hewould usually give way when herealised he might be wrong. He particu-larly enjoyed helping Churchill to pre-pare his speeches, partly because he wasrequired to intervene if the speechseemed to stray from the brief, butmostly because Churchill liked to havean audience and David Hunt delightedin being it.

Sir David was a droll speaker withwonderful memories of the two PrimeMinisters, telling us in 1992 that it wasdifficult to get close to Churchill, whomhe served under principal private secre-tary David Pitblado. One evening Huntthought he'd cracked it. When he men-tioned that he had just attended his ownbirthday dinner party, the PM congratu-lated him warmly and said, "We musthave a drink together." Then, summon-ing a messenger, he said, "Get Mr. Pit-blado a whisky and soda." -DJH

JAMES W. WIMMER, JR.MADISON, WISCONSIN, IUNE 22ND— F o r

twenty-five years, at the close of theannual "Other Other Club" dinner inMadison, club founder Jim Wimmerwould rise to deliver the eulogy for SirWinston Churchill, who co-founded"The Other Club" in London when anestablished club gave him the order ofthe boot. Each eulogy was the same,except for a few minor alterations Jim

AROUND AND ABOUT

O ur pages can't keep up with everything that's happening in the Churchill world in thedetail we'd like; we offer these briefs from cuttings received from news editor John

Frost. We will run expanded articles at the request of readers and as space permits. -Ed.Over 200 people now booked at 15th Intl. Churchill Conference, November

5-8th; keep 'em coming!....Great Britain spending £1.3 million to renovate its dilap-idated but historic embassy in central Tehran, where the Big Three met in1943....Public Record Office at Kew released thick dossier detailing a 1944 Britishplot to kill Hitler, authorised by Eden and apparently approved by WSC....Churchill's Cabinet kept down costs of the 1953 Coronation because Britain wasstill on austerity, it was revealed in June....Lady Churchill was so angered byDavid McFall's statue of WSC (the last from life, erected at Woodford, 1959) thatshe wrote him saying it was "a caricature"; the letter was sold by Sotheby's inJuly....The Armenian distillery whose brandy, sent by Stalin, was said to beChurchill's favourite, has been sold to Pernod-Ricard....Angry reaction over St.Paul's Cathedral's plan to build huge altar over the brass plaque marking whereChurchill lay in State in 1965: "We will mark the spot even though it is covered,"retorts St. Paul's Chancellor John Halburton....Still picking favourites: Time maga-zine lists Churchill, Hitler, Mao and Thatcher in a 20-strong list of century's mostinfluential "leaders and revolutionaries." List includes Ayatollah Khomeini,among other ringers....A Churchill film based on WSC's diaries, speeches and let-ters has been commissioned for the first time by his family; Lady Soames is a con-sultant to the project so we can count on it "keeping the memory green and therecord accurate"; Anthony Hopkins is leading contender for starring role....BillBrooks, WSC's Communist opponent in the 1950 election, has died at 87: Bill gar-nered 827 votes to Churchill's 37,239....Churchill adhered to the notion that oneshould sleep along a north-south line, says the Daily Mail, pointing to his bed inthe Cabinet War Rooms, which faces due north....Edwina Sandys threw open herSoHo studio in New York City, selling a huge collection of accumulatedlithographs, including two of Sir Winston (she wisely made prints of these; onewill be available at Williamsburg Conference, where Edwina will join us with herhusband, Richard Kaplan)....The Great War Society is committed to the study ofthe First World War and subsequent events, with large concentrations of membersin New York City and Dallas/Ft. Worth: PO Box 4585, Stanford CA 94309 ([email protected])....The Winston Churchill Foundation has awarded elevenAmerican students with fellowships of $25,000 for study next year at ChurchillCollege Cambridge....At 50, Nicholas Soames, MP says he's "quietened down"(we hope not); but he's still a joy on the subject of Food, the Ministry of which heonce adorned: "Unfortunately, nowadays there's this awful Labour puritanismwhich is hell on wheels. If they really want one to eat bat's droppings and fizzywater, I'm not their man." M>

would make to be sure fellow memberswere still listening after a long night ofwine, cigars and frozen vodkas. Longand boisterous applause would follow,not for the speech but for the man whogave it.

Born in Portage and raised in Wis-consin Dells, Jim was a lobbyist and aDemocrat who, like Churchill, under-stood the need for cordiality with theopposition. Recently he became an allyof and advisor to Republican GovernorTommy Thompson, as he had been ear-lier to Democrat Governor Gaylord Nel-

son. He died aged only 62, from compli-cations of a fall he suffered at his homewhile cleaning up after an auction forone of his many charities. He fell back-wards down a flight of stairs and neverregained consciousness.

Jim Wimmer was never elected toanything, but his advice was valued bythose who were. He understood powerbut aspired never to abuse it. Mainly heknew what it meant to be a contributingcitizen in a free society.-Thomas W. Still, Wisconsin State Journal

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DR. LARRY DAVIDSONFULTON, MISSOURI, JUNE 20TH— PresidentEmeritus Larry Davidson, 89, died in atragic automobile accident. "For manypeople, Larry Davidson was Westmin-ster College," said College PresidentJames Traer. "Larry was involved withthe College up to the very end. He willbe deeply missed by scores of currentand past students, faculty and friends."Davidson served as President of West-minster from May 1955 to June 1973, thelongest tenure of any Westminster Col-lege president. Among Churchillians hewill be remembered as the Presidentresponsible for the acquisition andtransfer of the Church of St. Mary,Aldermanbury, originally located inLondon, to Fulton. The church was ded-icated in May, 1969 and serves as themain building of the Winston ChurchillMemorial and Library.

Born in Dover, Delaware in 1909,Robert L.D. Davidson received his A.B.degree from Dickinson College in 1931.He later received the M.A. and Ed.D.degrees in history from Temple Univer-sity in Philadelphia. He served in WorldWar II, attaining the rank of LieutenantCommander in the U.S. Navy. On 15June 1971, Dr. Davidson received theOBE from Her Majesty The Queen.

Davidson began his career as a highschool teacher and administrator. Fol-lowing World War n, he began his col-lege teaching career at Temple, wherehe rose to the rank of dean. He was pre-ceded in death by his wife, Lois, whodied in December 1997. He is survivedby a daughter, a son and three grand-children.-Dan Diedriech,

Asst. Vice President, College RelatbnsWestminster College

1999 Conference & South Africa TourCHURCHILL CONFERENCE XVIBATH, SOMERSET, 22-25 JULY 1999— ICS Unit-ed Kingdom, which is hosting the 16thInternational Churchill Conference on22-25 July next year, has now completedits recce's of Bath, the Conference site;prepared an outline programme; andconfirmed bookings with the very effi-cient Bath Conference Bureau. Thetheme will be "The Emergence of aLeader," and the programme will becentred around the turn of the centuryto tie in with Churchill's adventures inSouth Africa etc. "It all fits togetherquite neatly," reports Chairman NigelKnocker. "Early days yet though." TheConference will precede departure ofChurchill's South Africa Tour.

"CHURCHILL'S SOUTH AFRICA"CAPETOWN, 26 JULY-10 AUGUST 1999— Sir

Winston's granddaughter, Celia Sandys,and South African member NicholasSchofield are hosts of a unique two-week tour of South Africa during theCentenary Year of Churchill's adven-tures there during the Anglo-Boer War.The tour, to be joined by Lady Soames,was arranged by Celia and SouthAfrican member Nicholas Schofield. Itcombines traditional African touring

(game parks, animals, Victoria Falls, aluxury overnight steam train, the MountNelson Hotel in Capetown) and special-ized Churchill events, including visits toall the places made famous in his books,London to Ladysmith Via Pretoria and IanHamilton's March.

The tour begins in Capetown onMonday 26 July and costs $5500/£3400per person based on double occupancy,plus airfare. Noteworthy are a completetour of the Boer War battlefields includ-ing the site of the armoured trainambush, Churchill's prison in Pretoria,and Durban, where he made a speechfollowing his epic escape. The finale is agala dinner with descendants of thepeople whom Churchill met in 1899: theengine driver, the mine operator, theOldham man who hid him, the grand-son of Jan Smuts, former private secre-tary Elizabeth Nel, and many more. Anofficial flight from London (returningfrom Pretoria) can be booked for£450/$750 per person, or you may jointhe party in Capetown on other flights.A complete itinerary was mailed withthis issue of Finest Hour; for a copy con-tact ICS/UK (address on page 2). Thistour is scheduled to follow the ChurchillConference on 22-25 July.

Recent Events

NEWARK, DELAWAREOCTOBER 23RD, 1997— Member Thomas M.Fairchild ably related the story of 1940to over sixty-five eighth-grade studentsat the Independence School here today:"I sat them at tables each carrying aplacard for a western European country,reading Churchill's words as Europesuccumbed. As Hitler moved throughEurope (their classroom), I covered eachcountry placard with an 'Occupied bythe Nazis' sign. After France fell Iswitched off the lights and Europe wasdark—except for the 'Britain' placard,starkly lighted against the dark by astrategically aimed flashlight. After apause I asked them to look closely at thedimes I had given each of them as theyentered the class.

"A stack of 39 million dimes, eachrepresenting one death caused by WW2,would reach 31 miles into the sky, ashigh as 110 Empire State buildings. Iurged them to remember the souls lost,and to remember Winston Churchill.Students were attentive and askedinsightful questions. Several days later,as I walked with my own childrenthrough the neighborhood for Hal-loween, a group of teenagers passed mein the dark and I heard them stop andsay, 'Hey look, it's that Churchill guy.'

"Perhaps they will remember."

WASHINGTONAPRIL 2ND— Williamson Murray, fre-quent contributor to Military HistoryQuarterly and a symposiast at TheChurchill Center's 1994 Symposium"Churchill as Peacemaker," gave a fasci-nating talk on the newly publishedAlanbrooke diaries tonight at the OldEbbitt Grill. He also answered manyquestions on the complex relationshipbetween Churchill and "Brookie."

Washington meetings are frequent, var-ied and always interesting. Contact RonHelgemo, 12009 Taliesin Court, Apt 13,Reston VA 20190, tel. (703) 476-4693.

PHILADELPHIAAPRIL 18TH— Dr. John Mather repeat-ed his Toronto Conference discussion ofChurchill's health for area members »

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at No. Ten Downing Street Pub inDowningtown, outside Philadelphia.

For future meetings contact RichardRaffauf, 116 Hampshire Road, Reading PA19608, telephone (610) 777-1653.

BELVOIR CASTLELEICESTERSHIRE, MAY 12TH— W i n s t o n S.

Churchill opened the Omdurman Exhi-bition at Belvoir Castle to mark the100th Anniversary of the battle. Theexhibit runs through September.

Belvoir (pronounced "bea-ver"),which established the 17th/21st Lancersregimental museum in 1964, is the homeof the Duke of Rutland, whose great-great-great-great-grandfather raised the21st Dragoons in 1760. That regimentwas restyled the 21st Lancers (Empressof India's) in 1897. It amalgamated withthe 17th Lancers (Duke of Cambridge's)in 1922 to become the Queen's RoyalLancers. The museum has since addedthe 16th and 5th Lancers muniments.

Centrepiece of the exhibit is a huge1899 Adrian Jones oil painting of thecharge at Omdurman, whose sheer size,says the Duke of Rutland, "makes youfeel you are actually in the charge." Asmaller painting, by G. D. Rowlandson,graphically depicts the climax of thecharge. A third painting by Bud Brad-shaw (cover, FH 77) portrays Churchillon his grey Arab pony. Churchill Storeshas received a new consignment ofprints of this painting; contact GailGreenly (address on page 2.)

Other showcases contain letters anddiaries written at the time which give aremarkable insight into the bloody reali-

BLADON MAY 8TH— The Churchill gravesites have been beautifully restored, and the groundaround them protected from their 20,000 visitors per year, by the Churchill Grave Trust, set uplast year by Sir Winston's family and admirers to fund the £350,000 restoration. Family andfriends gathered at Bladon Churchyard to rededicate the site. Front row, l-r: The Duchess andDuke of Marlborough, Lady Soames, the Hon. Celia Sandys, Winston S. Churchill, Col. NigelKnocker, Mrs. Churchill. Photo courtesy Hello magazine. More photos to follow in EH 100.

ty of hand-to-hand fighting. There isregimental silver, captured Dervishswords and spears, a tunic and weapon-ry of the 21st Lancers. Information pan-els relate firsthand accounts includingthose of Lt. Winston Churchill. A fadedcontemporary photo of Churchill, defi-antly posed hand on hip, shares a show-case with what for me was one of thegems of the collection. Bearing in mindthat he was being handsomely paid foreach word he wrote for the Morning Post

Below: the Jones painting, Belvoir Castle

he was dearly ill-inclined to be verbosein his message to his mother. His tele-gram, despatched from Nasri at 1835 on3 September 1898 simply reads: "ALLRIGHT - WINSTON." DJH

CLEVELANDSEPTEMBER 22ND— Members held a dinnertonight for Yvonne Kent, who spoke of1940 in her address, "Every Man to HisStation." Mrs. Kent is author of a novelabout England during the Blitz entitled,Don't Say Goodbye. A British war bride,Yvonne experienced those events first-hand in her home town of Salisbury.She moved to Ohio with her husband, aU.S. Air Force sergeant, in 1946. "Youngpeople don't know about World WarII," Mrs. Kent says. "It's just not taught;or it's taught in ways that leave outwhat matters. It's important for youngerAmericans to hear from those whoexperienced the war—everyone can,because there are eight million veteransof WW2 still alive in America today."

The next Cleveland meeting is sched-uled for November 3rd. Contact Alexis atthe office of Michael McMenamin, 1300Terminal Tower, Cleveland OH 44113, tel.(216) 781-1212, fax (216) 575-0911. $

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Mary Soames:"My Parents Talked Politics All the Time7

On the eve of her latest book, Speaking For Themselves,a collection of her parents7 correspondence, our Patronremembers what her parents were like up close.by Ray Connolly

One evening Winston Churchill suggested to Mary,his youngest daughter, that if she came to thedrawing room before dinner she would see an

Arabian prince. What she saw was Lawrence of Arabia,then calling himself Aircraftman Shaw, dressed from headto foot in cream-coloured Arab dress, with a great curvedscimitar at his waist. "Now that was something. He wouldarrive at Chartwell on his motorbike, dressed in his AirForce uniform, when I was about fourteen. My father hadgreat admiration for him.

"I always had to feed my animals and milk my goatsbefore I went to school, and on my way back to havebreakfast I would come across him walking on the lawn.We would have some very courtly conversations, al-though I don't suppose it can have been very interestingfor him. He had extraordinary blue eyes. I was very un-happy when he was killed."

To Mary Churchill (who went on to marry ChristopherSoames, her father's parliamentary private secretary, andis now Lady Soames, Patron of the Churchill Center andSocieties) the walls of Chartwell, the Churchills' countryhouse in Kent, were very largely the boundaries of herchildhood world. The youngest of the family (Sarah waseight, Randolph eleven and Diana thirteen when she wasborn), she was the one who stayed behind, went to anearby day school and rarely went to London.

In some ways her parents were rather distant; certainlyshe does not feel that she knew her mother well until theybegan going on skiing holidays together when she was

Reprinted by permission, Times Newspapers Ltd., © 1990.

thirteen. "I didn't have a complex about it. I was a veryhappy child. I had this wonderful Chartwell childhood. Iknew that mama and papa adored me. Actually I think Iwas the most awful spoilt little brat, very precocious, be-cause I lived almost entirely with grown-ups."

She was born in 1922 on the day her father, against hermother's wishes, bought Chartwell. She was brought uplargely by her nanny/governess, a cousin of her mother's,who, she thinks, had the greatest influence on her earlylife.

Although Winston Churchill had no deep well of capi-tal to fall back on, Chartwell employed at least six indoorservants as well as three or four gardeners. "My motheralways said there should have been more gardeners. Nowthat the National Trust has the house there are five. Eatyour heart out, mama."

She was a solitary little girl. Her friends were Doris, thegardener's daughter ("I saw her the other day, actually")and Olive, the parlourmaid. Her sister Sarah was her greatheroine. "She was the only one of the children I remembercoming into the nursery. I loved her. Later on I would beenamoured of all the wonderful young men she wouldbring down to play tennis.

"I was in awe of Diana and Randolph, who were awayat boarding school. They were beyond my ken. The firstvision I have of Diana was of her practising her curtsy,with a dust sheet around her shoulders, in the drawingroom of 11 Downing Street before she was presented."

When her parents were at home, talk of politics gov-erned the house and the children were never excluded."People talked politics all the time. Torrents of it, everyday of my life. In my childlike view of things there weregoodies and baddies. Stanley Baldwin and Neville Cham-berlain were the baddies." That was later on. As a littlegirl she remembers more leisured times, her father end-lessly working with a retired bricklayer from the village.Churchill loved bricklaying. Mary never helped for long."Have you ever tried handing bricks to someone buildinga wall? It's a damn boring way to pass an afternoon."

She would sit and watch him paint, too, but that wasequally boring. "He was very unconceited about his paint-ings. I can't remember more than one or two being hung

FINEST HOUR 99/14

at Chartwell. When he'd finished a painting he wouldbring it in to show us and I would think, 'oh, how clever'but I had no idea how clever it really was."

In her earlier book, Winston Churchill, His Life As APainter, Lady Soames redresses her early lack of apprecia-tion by tracing her father's work as a painter. "I took it allvery much for granted, as children do. Now, writing thisbook, I suddenly realised what an amazing flood tide hislife took in the Thirties. Out of office, but politicking, writ-ing, journalisting and painting to the full — at the zenithof his powers. But as a child I didn't think it remarkable. Isuppose I imagined everybody's fathers did all thosethings."

The weekdays were ebbtide socially at Chartwell whenthe centre of activity moved to the London home, leavingher to get on with her homework and animals. But at theweekends and in the parliamentary recesses, the housewould be constantly filled with guests.

"If there was an extra special lunch we would push twotables together and there would be sixteen or eighteen, butusually it was just eight or ten of us at a round table. Therewould be my parents, Professor Lindemann [professor ofexperimental philosophy at Oxford and Churchill's friendfor forty years], Eddie Marsh [another old friend], BobBoothby, perhaps, the Duff Coopers came quite often,Max Beaverbrook, Lord Camrose — oh, all sorts of people,with nearly always a foundation of family." On one occa-sion Albert Einstein came to stay, but much more memo-rable was Charlie Chaplin. City Lights was the first filmshe had ever seen.

School at the Manor House, Limpsfield, was quite diffi-cult at first, as she gravitated naturally towards adults andwas something of a goody-goody. "A quaint, tiresomechild really. And a prig." On top of that, her father's viewswere not popular among many of the parents of herschoolfriends. "I found that puzzling."

As the Thirties went on she became more involved inher "father's great campaign," and the books he was writ-ing. "Often, when we were just family for luncheon, myfather would bring a chapter of one of his books in proofform and read it to my mother."

Only once does she remember questioning her father'svision, when at the age of about thirteen a Quaker mis-tress at school, who was a pacifist, suggested she readVera Britain's Testament of Youth. It affected her deeply.

As the threat from Hitler grew the ideal of pacifism re-ceded. "Sometimes people would come to Chartwell, Ger-mans, at great risk to themselves, and my mother wouldsay it was not necessary to know their names. I felt out oftouch with my contemporaries because they had no com-prehension of what was going on in Germany.

"I remember getting very upset at school after Munich,when we said prayers for Mr. Chamberlain. I had a terri-

ble outburst, saying it would be better if we prayed for theCzech nation that we had betrayed."

Academically, she thinks she was a plodder who flab-bergasted the entire family by doing well in her schoolcertificate. She had a week of euphoria. Then, at seven-teen, she left school on the day war was declared. She alsoleft Chartwell.

By now her father's public image was changing to thatof saviour of the nation. At first she went to live at Admi-ralty House and did Red Cross work, then worked as abilleting officer in the Women's Voluntary Service. Whenshe heard that her father had been appointed prime minis-ter, she cried. Her first sitting room was in 10 DowningStreet, where she would invite schoolfriends to tea. Whenshe was eighteen she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Ser-vice.

The change in life could hardly have been more com-plete. After basic training at Aldermaston, she was postedto a huge camp in Oswestry for anti-aircraft battery train-ing, forty to fifty in a barracks, bunks three tiers deep.

She loved it, was two years in the ranks and rose to theposition of sergeant. "My parents were so proud of me.Then I came down in the world to become an officer cadet— the lowest form of life in the British army."

For five years she served with ATS, going with her bat-tery through Belgium and eventually to Hamburg. "It wasa tremendous experience. Yes, I was frightened some-times. I don't like bangs, but I wanted to be a part ofthings. The only difficult times were when one went to anew unit and people were suspicious. But after a time onefound one's friends.

"To be truthful, as a child I had not really been aware ofgreat social differences. Obviously I must have realisedsome things, I wasn't half-baked, but it didn't impingeupon my life. I didn't see great contrasts. So it was onlywhen I went into the army that I fully realised the differ-ences. But then the army was also a great leveller, particu-larly because we were all in uniform.

"At one point half of my battery was made up oftremendous toughies from Liverpool. They were wonder-ful, with appalling language. I took to it. My own lan-guage is appalling to this day."

Mary Soames was demobilised in 1945. In 1947 shemarried Christopher Soames. Now widowed, she has fivechildren and seven grandchildren. "I decided early on thatI wasn't going to leave my children as much as my motherleft hers. I remember her coming to see us one day whenthe children were playing in the garden and she said,rather wistfully I thought, T see you have great fun withyour children. I think I missed that.'

"My whole life has been as a daughter and a motherand a wife. I'm not whingeing about that. Not at all. Actu-ally I'm extraordinarily proud of it." $

FINEST HOUR 99/15

Personality ol the Oemfairy (5)

&>tr<aiiger 1 t a n FictionPATTERNS IN CHURCHILL'S CHARMED LIFE • BY MANFRED WEIDHORN

It would not be far fetched to call WinstonChurchill a genius. He not only lived an un-commonly rich life but also left a large intel-

lectual legacy. From his brilliant words anddeeds, much may be gleaned about history,statecraft, diplomacy, war prevention, militarystrategy, peacemaking, social justice, the democ-ratic process, oratory, painting, the range of the © KARSH, OTTAWA

English language, and, not least, the making ofmemorable phrases.

What was the secret of his success? Such a question cannever be answered fully, but tentative suggestions arehelpful. Clearly, his numerous achievements were theproducts of a rare accord between nature and nurture."Nature" refers to the diverse talents he was born with,and "nurture" refers to the circumstances into which hewas born: circumstances which turned him into a highlyambitious person compelled to use those very talents.

Without becoming too Freudian, one can say that theremoteness of his parents from the young Winston left avoid in his sensitive soul; he had to fill that void with ac-tivities which would teach them that he was worthy of at-tention after all. The distance maintained by his fatherLord Randolph, a brilliant but erratic politician, was espe-cially painful: the latter feared his son would become a"social wastrel" and died just as Winston was beginningto relate to him man to man. Churchill spent the rest of hislife proving to the ghost of his father that the son was nota prodigal but a prodigy.

As a fledgling politician, he would "lift again the tat-tered flag [of his father]...found lying on a stricken field"1

of political battle—and carry it much farther than Ran-dolph could ever foresee for his son, or dream of doinghimself. In the process, Churchill would justify not onlyhimself but also his father's aborted career. "I havestriven," Churchill wrote late in life, "to vindicate his mem-

Announced in FH 97 with three initial articles, "Personality of theCentury" is an ongoing series of op-ed pieces designed to qualifyChurchill for Time magazine's designation by the end of the century.Selected articles will be targeted to op-ed sections of major newspapersand compiled for presentation next year to the editors of Time. Sendyour contribution to the editor. Dr. Weidhorn is Guterman Professor ofEnglish Literature at Yeshiva University and a member of TheChurchill Center academic advisory board.

ory.2 Churchill's moving short story, "TheDream," is a late record of that complex relation-ship, as well as, implicitly, a report to his deadfather on the theme of "mission accomplished."This driven man could never cease proving him-self.

But nature and nurture do not suffice. Suc-cess requires that they be joined, and their con-vergence is due to a third ingredient—luck, i.e.,

being in the right place at the right time. Clement Attleesaid of him, "Winston was supremely lucky, and one ofthe most charming things about him is that he neverceased saying so."

Churchill's greatness is the result not just of the compul-sive application of his massive intellect to sixty years ofproblem solving, but also of a series of events which pro-jected him into a unique career of having many nationalproblems to solve. "Luck" means, then, the innumerablethings that happened to him which initially had little to dowith his talents or his striving. In other words, we are awedby the phenomenon called Churchill in part because his lifeis filled with incidents that, were they narrated in a novel,would beget dismissive remarks about poetic license.

Such a tale is not, up to a point, unprecedented. Most ofthe giants of history, good and evil, led lives which sug-gest that they won the lottery for rising above mediocrityand oblivion, and therefore led lives in which one cantrace the finger of fate. Subtle thinkers like Dr. Johnsonand Gustave Flaubert have, moreover, asserted that thereis a novel in every human being; even the humblest lifecan be dramatized with the proper story-telling approach,skills and style. Life itself, if duly studied, is so rich that, asWilliam Blake put it, one can see a world in a grain ofsand. But the Churchill story often reads like an improba-ble melodrama, even when set beside that of the other his-torical giants.

Imagine, then, a novel about a fictional character calledWinston S. Churchill. It will of course be long: what usedto be called a Victorian triple decker. For the first melodra-matic or factitious detail that strikes the reader is thelongevity and continuity of the career. Churchill is justabout the only person to have played a major role in twoworld wars. Other individuals similarly involved servedin one of the two wars in a lesser role (Roosevelt, John

FINEST HOUR 9 9 / 1 6

Simon) or a disgraceful role (Petain).Nor is that all. The beginning of each war—exactly a

quarter century apart—even finds Churchill at the samedesk, as the head of the Navy. It is rather like a stage di-rection in a play: "Act II: same setting, twenty-five yearslater!" A bit far fetched, wouldn't one say?

Churchill's participation in the two wars results in anunusual repetition of events and situations. Take the de-feat of the Lloyd George Government in 1922. One ofChurchill's early biographers, "Ephesian" (BechhoferRoberts) justly remarks (in 1928):

A General Election followed. The Coalition hadcarried England through a period of unparalleledstress. No single Party and no other political combi-nation could possibly have achieved the same re-sults. Yet this very success of its record united its op-ponents against it. Its merits were forgotten, itsfaults exaggerated. In Churchill's case not merelywas dissatisfaction with the Coalition and the gen-eral irritation of an exhausted people visited uponhis head, but the old fables about his responsibilityat Antwerp and the Dardanelles were brought outagain.3

Substitute the words "General Strike" for "Antwerpand the Dardanelles" and the entire paragraph could beapplied to the defeat of the Churchill Government in 1945.

Or take Churchill's defeat in the race for a seat in Par-liament in 1923 and "Ephesian's" comments on it:

But if the issue of the Leicester contest looked unlucky,it was perhaps really lucky. By his defeat he was savedfrom any part in the petty Liberal intrigues which endedby Mr. Asquith's aiding the Socialist Party.4

This language is remarkably close to that used both byChurchill himself and by historians about the disguisedblessing of his being kept out of government in the 1930s,and of his thereby remaining free of the compromises andderelictions of the Baldwin and Chamberlain administra-tions.

Finally, consider in that biography this passage onAnglo-American cooperation in World War I:

Nothing indeed ever pleased him [Churchill]more than the trust the American Governmentplaced in him after the United States entered theWar. Whether or not they recognized his blood-rela-tionship with them, the Americans gave him an un-precedented free hand. Their praise delighted him5

Again, if the words were applied to World War II—atleast as Churchill presents it in his memoirs—not a sylla-ble would have to be changed.

Mention of Churchill's war memoirs reminds us thatthe uniqueness of his active life is matched by his unique

feat of writing voluminously about each war. Especiallynoteworthy—indeed historically rare—is writing compre-hensively about the view from a leadership position in thecockpit of power in a major world war. Lloyd George didthat as well, but his memoirs gather dust while Churchill'sconstitute one of the best selling books of all time. Andwho else so wrote, besides Lloyd George? Not Roosevelt,nor Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Genghis Khan,Tamerlane. World historical figures just don't do that sortof thing.

No less unlikely is the Churchill-Lloyd George connec-tion itself. After beginning his Parliamentary career, andsoon finding himself out of place among Conservatives,Churchill switched to the Liberals. Within a few years hebecame, in conjunction with Lloyd George, a leader andphilosopher of the movement known as the New Liberal-ism and devoted to state intervention on behalf of the lessfortunate.

Contemplate for a moment this curious pair—the one acomplete insider and the other a complete outsider, thegrandson of an English Duke, working in tandem with aWelshman from a poverty-stricken family. Like some"gold-dust twins" in American football—running, kick-ing, passing—they plan, orate, and legislate for the sake ofwhat John Kenneth Galbraith in another connection called"comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable."Hard was it in those days for members of the aristocracy,the landed gentry, the manufacturing interests, the rich,and the smug to open the daily newspaper without winc-ing. The reign of terror by the terrible twins lasted only ashort while, as history goes, but during that period theywere the cynosure of the British political world.

At this point in the story, the novelist injects himselfbriefly into the narrative with a prolepsis, a glance ahead:Who could tell that this period of youthful efflorescenceand rebelliousness was not the climax of their careers—as itwould have been for most politicians—but a mere prelude?Who could foresee that two world wars were to enter theirlives and that each would take his turn in dynamically lead-ing Britain to a successful conclusion! It is as if each, havingdone his political apprentice work in domestic matters, wasnow ready for the big time, for foreign policy, diplomacy,and, above all, for the challenge of war, real war, not themetaphorical war of normal peacetime politics. The twowarriors who stood out in their cabinet level fight against

1. Winston Churchill, Mr. Brodrick's Army (London: ArthurHumphreys, 1903; rpt Sacramento: The Churchilliana Co., 1977),p. 16.

2. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt,1991), p. 908.

3. Ephesian (Bechhofer Roberts), Winston Churchill, 3rd ed.(London: Newnes, 1936), p. 266.

4. Ephesian, p. 276.5. Ephesian, pp. 302-03.

FINEST HOUR 99/17

poverty and injustice went on to become leaders separatelyin the fight against German aggression and imperialism.Little did they know, when together immersed in the strug-gle with the House of Lords, that they would some day in-dividually struggle with the far more titanic threat of theGerman warlords. First it was the turn of the older man,then of the younger one. After shining jointly, they shoneseparately, and bold would he be of soul who could ascer-tain how much, in those golden seminal days of 1909-11,they gained from each other insights which were to helpthem prosper in the greater and solitary struggle.

"Come now," we say to the novelist, "you are pushingthings a little. Your tale depends too much on fantasy andcoincidence, and not on a curious double plot. Life isn'tquite as neat as that."

The novelist impassively looks us in the eye and saysthat he has up his sleeve another interesting twist inthe plot: a roller-coaster career. This aspect is, once

more, not peculiar to Churchill. Think of Ronald Reagan,first washed up as an actor and then, narrowly missingout on the Republican presidential nomination in 1976 atthe age of 65, apparently washed up as a politician as well.

Think especially of Richard Nixon,6 who was only ashort time a congressman and, by virtue of his role in theAlger Hiss case, quickly became senator and quickly VicePresident. His meteoric career was suddenly stopped bythe sharp staccato blows of fate: a painful loss by awhisker (and by probable voter fraud in Chicago andTexas) to John Kennedy in the presidential race of 1960and to Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial electionof 1962. "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore,"he said to reporters, with the bluntness that only someonesurely retired from politics can muster.

But time passes, things change, and suddenly he is onthe rise again. Not only does he win the presidency in1968, but in 1972 he is reelected by one of the greatestlandslides in modern times. Yet a few months later he ispolitically besieged, and a year after that he is the onlypresident ever to resign in order to avoid impeachment.What a fall there was!

But these examples are child's play compared toChurchill's case. They span only a couple of decades and afew catastrophes and successes. For a real political roller-coaster ride spanning a half century and involving numer-ous rises and falls, come aboard the Winston ChurchillSpecial!

Before even entering Parliament, Churchill was already aphenomenon. He had hit the ground running. Coming offhis frontier war books and his Boer War adventures anddispatches, he was at a mere twenty six a world-renownedwar hero and a much sought-after speaker. He proceededto build on that. Overcoming a defeat in his first run for

Parliament, he started in 1901 a long string of legislativeand executive successes. Alienation from the Tories in 1904,while awkward for a while, soon worked to his advantage,as he was happily embraced by a Liberal Party with careersopen to talent. Joining the Liberals just in time to partici-pate in their long period of domination,7 he held variousgovernment posts, rose in influence and reputation, becameco-warrior with Lloyd George, and served as informal advi-sor and friend to Prime Minister Asquith. All this wascapped with what he long afterwards called his "goldenage,"8: four years as the civilian chief of Britain's most im-portant military weapon, the Navy. In this prominent posthe was able to champion one of the few major strategic ini-tiatives of World War I, the Gallipoli expedition.

Alas that initiative resulted in catastrophe and dis-missal. Churchill's world was in ruins; he touched bottomin political disrepute and personal dejection. "I am fin-ished,"9 he lamented, and his wife Clementine "thoughtthat he would die of grief."10

Slowly did he pick himself up. After two years in thewilderness, he made his comeback. In five subsequent tu-multuous years near the seat of power, he served in im-portant cabinet posts. He grappled with major issues ofwaging war and making peace. He tried to strangle Bol-shevism in the cradle. He negotiated peace treaties andborder settlements in Ireland and the Middle East. Likesome Napoleonic figure, he invented Arab countries bydrawing lines on a map and placing their kings onthrones.

But in the perilous post-World War I whirlpool, he losthis hold. The Liberals fragmented, Labour rose, the Con-servatives distrusted him still. Lo, in 1922 he was abruptly"without an office, without a seat, without a party, andwithout an appendix."11 He had hit another low point—not as low as in 1915, to be sure, but certainly with con-tracted horizons. He was, in fact, for the first time intwenty-two years, out of Parliament. This shocked himinto speechlessness. "He thought," noted an observer, "hisworld had come to an end."12 In attempting a comeback,he was defeated two more times, and naturally his friendslikewise "feared that his political career was at aft end."13

The result was another two years in the wilderness.Then he was on the upswing again. He was back in poli-tics, back in the Parliament, back in the ConservativeParty, back in the cabinet, and, most surprising, Chancel-

6. The analogy was also drawn by Richard Langworth inFinest Hour 83 (1994), p. 4.

7. Ephesian, p. 137.8. Gilbert, p. 309.9. Gilbert, p. 319.10. Gilbert, p. 321.11. Gilbert, p. 454.12. Gilbert, p. 457.13. Ephesian, p. 276.

FINEST HOUR 99/18

lor of the Exchequer in a Tory government. No smallcomeback, this was indeed another meteoric rise. The postof Chancellor is one of the most important in the cabinet, away station to the premiership. As the position his fatheronce had held at the pinnacle of his truncated career, itwas a source of deep personal satisfaction for the son.Once again Churchill raised his father's tattered flag ofTory Democracy, i.e., moderate conservatism. For thethird time now, Churchill was riding high. Here was yetanother five-year stint of advising the Prime Minister andbeing at the center of decision-making. Churchill could beforgiven if he now harbored ambitious thoughts, just ashe might have in the early and late 1910s.

The Tories were, however, defeated in 1929 andChurchill started a long descent which at various timesseemed to be permanent. First he was only out of govern-ment, and held on to power by means of a seat in theShadow Cabinet. Then, becoming once more estrangedfrom the Tories, he resigned that seat. He was now in thewilderness for a third time. This was no two-year stint asin 1915-17 or 1922-24 but a dreary, drawn-out phase last-ing nearly a decade. Like someone falling from the heightsand bouncing painfully on a hard surface, he touched bot-tom several times. He was alienated from the Conserva-tives (not to speak of the liberal politicians and intellectu-als) over India, over the Abdication, over Germany. Hehimself spoke in the early 1930s as if his career was proba-bly over. And why not? He could look back on threedecades—long as political careers go—filled with high po-sitions and massive accomplishments. He may not havewon the first prizes nor the golden rings but the consola-tion prize of having lived a rich political life would do.

Again the novelist intervenes to remark that littledoes Churchill know that the best is yet to be; thehalf-submerged sun on the horizon is not setting,

as it seems, but rising. The long hoped for and long post-poned climax is at hand. And what a climax it is to be!

During the later 1930s, popular opinion shifted in hisdirection. With war coming in 1939, Churchill was back ingovernment. Then, amid a terrible political crisis at homeand a worse crisis abroad in May 1940—talk of the longreach of novelistic coincidence!—he reached at long lastthe top of the greasy pole. Then came yet another tumul-tuous five years of action and energy: his greatest by far.

But in 1945, the magnificence of the achievement wasmatched by the precipitousness of the fall. The shockingelection returns administered yet another crushing set-back, emotionally as draining as the one thirty years ear-lier. In 1915, he had left things in an inconclusive, evenperilous state, while in 1945 he could take pride in havingwon a war with heroic striving. Yet because joy in victorywas almost eclipsed by the anxiety over the nascent Cold

War, 1945 seemed to him at least as bad as 1915. While re-jection and defeat always hurt, apparent ingratitude rubsthe salt in, and the blessings, if any, are effectively dis-guised. "A cloud of black doom" settled on the leaderwho had "wanted to do the peace too." As a "bitter" man,he lived through the "longest week" of his life.14

Thus came yet a fourth stint in a wilderness of sorts. Itwas, of course, nowhere near as serious as his earlier ex-iles from the center of decision-making, for he remained inParliament, continued as Leader of the ConservativeParty, and led the Loyal Opposition. But absence from thenow familiar levers of power was for Churchill the equiv-alent of being in the wilderness. In 1947, worried overBritain's economic woes, he thought that his anxiety overthe Battle of the Atlantic in 1941 was comparatively slight."Never in his life," says his official biographer, "had hefelt such despair."15

Eventually there was yet one more comeback, as he be-came Prime Minister again. This ministry was but ashadow of the first one, as the circumstances were lessdramatic, the workload lighter, his dominance less com-pelling, and the accomplishments less cosmic. But thenovelist has yet one more serious twist in store. Churchillheld on to power, despite ill health and a shrinking atten-tion span in order to erase his reputation as a warmongerand to round off his career by preventing World War IIIand by making the greatest peace of all, one that wouldend the cold war. "It is the last prize I seek to win."16

It was not to be. Churchill repeatedly attempted toarrange a summit meeting or, at least, a visit to Moscowby him alone, in order to bring about a reconciliation be-tween the USA and the USSR.17 But he was rebuffed byAmerican recalcitrance, Soviet suspiciousness, his owncabinet's veto, and the ravages of time. After fifty-fiveyears in Parliament, he made a quiet and soft final land-ing, in frustration rather than triumph.

clome now, dear Novelist, has anyone else in mo-dern democratic politics had so long a career at ornear the top, so many ups and downs, so many

two year periods of isolation and five year periods ofachievement at the highest reaches of government, so manyand so thorough crashes as the ones in 1915,1922,1945, and1955? The Reagan or Nixon story is credible, but your talelacks verisimilitude. One has to go all the way back toQueen Elizabeth I, perhaps, or to Louis XTV; or at least toGladstone in more recent times. But the very comparisonundermines itself. What a stage Churchill played on! How

14. Gilbert, pp. 856-58.15. Gilbert, p. 878.16. Gilbert, p. 897.17. Gilbert, pp. 908,910,934,938.

FINEST HOUR 99/19

"As a young man, Churchillput the world on notice..."CHURCHILL IN 1898 • BELVOIR CASTLE EXHIBITION

slight Elizabeth's or Gladstone's problems seem next toChurchill's. When did they ever grapple with wars thatspanned the globe and saw the death of some 85,000,000people? You're overdoing it, Mr. Novelist. The career ofthis fictional character is just too long, too repetitious, toodramatic to be believable!"

Undeterred by the reader's complaints, the Novelistproposes one more far-fetched theme: the role ofpredestination in Churchill's career. On this mat-

ter, the historical record is uneven. While a goodly num-ber of the makers of history have felt themselves to beelected souls, others have not. As Shakespeare put it,"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and somehave greatness thrust upon 'em."

Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, matured slowly.First he led a successful boycott against segregated seatingon buses in one Alabama city. Then it dawned on him thatlocal problems could not be solved without the dissolu-

tion, by means of Ghandian non-violence, of the nation-wide pattern of segregation in all areas of life. That insightin turn enabled him to see how a connection existed be-tween institutional racism and persistent poverty. Finallyhe saw those phenomena as part of the larger problem offalse national priorities and misdirected energies, and hejoined the anti-Vietnam War movement. Whether he wasright in these assessments is not the issue here. What isclear is that he came by his prominence one step at a time;he was not born or raised to lead a crusade againstpoverty and war.

It is likewise difficult to regard Hitler, especially in hisyears of obscurity, drift, and even homelessness, as imag-ining or having others imagine about him—a great careerahead of him. Bill Clinton may have dreamed very earlyof becoming president; Truman and Reagan probably didnot. Nor, on a different plane, was Oskar Schindler a likelycandidate for heroism. In fact, for such serendipitous indi-viduals, an unclear vision might have been an advantage,for as Cromwell memorably put it, "A man never rises togreater heights than when he does not know where he isgoing." Those without a clear goal manage to succeed be-cause they have the flexibility and improvisational skillsthat Machiavelli thought to be crucial, that chess playerscannot function without, and that Iago in Shakespeare orthe slaves in Latin comedy exemplify.

uite different is that other class of great men,| those who have sensed even in their young yearsthat they were special. In literature, for instance,

DanteTMilton, Wordsworth, and Keats—to name a few—have left on record early intimations of literary success. Sowas it in the political sphere with Churchill. The fallacyhere is, of course, that many other individuals have sensedthey were destined for greatness but never made it. Theirerror is not on record precisely because they remained ob-scure. The law of averages dictates that some of thesedreamers succeed. Churchill was one of them. Hence he isthe hero of our hypothetical non-realistic novel.

As a young man, Churchill put the world on notice withhis memorably declared resolve to be an achiever by either"notability or notoriety." Perhaps because of his ducalblood, his famous ancestor Marlborough, and his promi-nent father, he was conditioned to think big. At any rate,not only did he harbor the idea that he would somedaylead his country, but a lot of other people thought so too.As early as 1898, the journalist G. W. Steevens predictedthat only the sky would be the limit for this "youngest manin Europe" who "has the twentieth century in his marrow"and who has already at 22 "gone through so manyphases."18 Two years later, in his first lecture tour in Amer-ica, Churchill was introduced by his enthusiastic manager

FINEST HOUR 99/20

"Who could have foreseen the course of events that led the

most unlikely combination of people to turn to him?...He entered the

seat of power at the age of 65, when most people retire."

as "the future Prime Minister of Great Britain."19 One ex-pects such hyperbole from an American impresario, butthe sentiment was soon echoed by a more levelheadedBritish Liberal journalist, H. W. Massingham, who in 1901prophesied that Churchill "will be Prime Minister."20

Within a few years (1905 to be exact), a biography of himwas written. How many individuals have had a biographyof themselves at the age of thirty? It is enough to turn any-one's head, especially as the author, A. MacCallum Scott,also predicted a leadership role for him.21

That he did not become Prime Minister for a long timewas due to ill fortune—i.e., the Gallipoli disaster—and tohis abrasive, erratic personality. He was not a party man,not a prisoner of any ideology. His rugged individualismcaused him to chart a highly irregular course so that hewas one of the few politicians who could sometimes be—or at least seem to be—on the far left (as in the days of thePeople's Budget), sometimes on the far right (as in thedays of the General Strike, the India Bill and the Abdica-tion) and sometimes in the center (as in the later 1920s andthe early 1950s). To become prime minister, one is sup-posed to be consistent, predictable, partisan—everythingthat he was not.

Yet, despite Gallipoli, he continued to believe hecould make it. In a 1915 letter to Clementine fromthe trenches, where men all around him were

dropping like flies, he arrogantly wrote, "the greatest ofmy work is still to come."22 At about the same time, aprominent editor, J. L. Garvin, predicted, "His hour of tri-umph will come,"23 while another journalist, A. G. Gar-diner, said, "Keep your eye on Churchill...He will writehis name big on our future."24 Then, as a result ofChurchill's large role in settling the Irish troubles—urgingnegotiations, participating in negotiations, working withMichael Collins, guiding the Treaty through the House—aprominent person declared in 1922: "This exercise of judg-ment brings him nearer to the leadership of the countrythan anyone would have supposed possible."25 When hebecame Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1924, an observerprophesied that he would be Prime Minister,26 and in 1927some even thought that, coming off a respectable job asChancellor, he was on the verge of replacing Baldwin.27

No wonder that a biographer of Churchill noted in 1936that "for over thirty years he has been marked out as a po-

FINEST

tential Prime Minister."28

By 1929 and the early 1930s, to be sure, when his careerseemed finished and he was approaching the age of sixty,he gave signs of wishing to retire from politics; yet he heldon because he continued to hope, as a very long shot, tobecome prime minister: "Only one goal still attracts me,and if that were barred I should quit the dreary field forpastures new."29 Soon he held on because he was galva-nized by new challenges: at first by the India question andthen by Germany rearming. The nuisance he thus becamemade him now truly isolated, anachronistic and deluded.His individualism had left him so bereft of allies and fol-lowers that at various times in the 1930s he could not havebeen elected for the proverbial post of dogcatcher.

Who could have foreseen the course of events that ledthe most unlikely combination of people to turn to him asa political leader? For, with war looming, he seemed tomany the only choice both because he had prophesied warand because "he was an experienced man of war." (Eventhe harried and dubious Chamberlain confided to hisdiary in June 1939 that "Churchill's chances [of enteringthe Government] improve as war becomes more proba-ble.")30 At long last his early intimations were fulfilled, justwhen it was virtually too late. He entered the seat ofpower at the age of 65, when most people retire; he him-self remarked that he would have to run hard to keep upwith younger men. "I was almost the only antediluvian....Ishould have to strive my utmost to keep pace with thegeneration now in power and with fresh young giantswho might at any time appear. "31

18. Martin Gilbert, ed., Churchill (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Pren-tice-Hall, 1967), pp. 75-78.

19. Virginia Cowles, Winston Churchill (New York: Grosset &Dunlap, 1953), P. 68.

20. Ephesian, p. 114.21. Gilbert, 1967, p. 82.22. Gilbert, p. 337.23. Gilbert, p. 320.24. Gilbert, 1967, p. 99.25. Gilbert, p. 446.26. Gilbert, p. 465.27. Gilbert, p. 482.28. Ephesian, p. 314.29. Gilbert, p. 493.30. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, 6 vols. (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1948-53), I, p. 356.31. Second World War, I, p. 420.

HOUR 99/21

"Go back to your word processor,

Mr. Novelist...Such a protagonist

as you portray could never exist

in real life. This Churchill of

yours himself intimated that

his life was at best fictional..."

What a historical irony that he finally made it asprime minister at perhaps the very worst mo-ment in Britain's long history. If he had not

been saddled with Gallipoli and had become Prime Minis-ter in the early 1920s, taking his turn at bat after LloydGeorge, or in the later 1920s in the wake of Baldwin; or ifthere had not been the heroics of World War II but onlythe ministry of 1951-55, chances are that such peacetimetours of duty by him at the top would not have been re-markable. Competent, steady, mildly progressive, nodoubt, but not remarkable. Historical necessity dictatedthat someone with his melodramatic, histrionic tenden-cies, his bellicose instincts, his profound military interests,his nostalgic outlook, and his romantic vision of theBritish Empire should be chosen for the great crisis of1940, in which none but he was up to the "level of events."For a brief interlude, his idiosyncratic character traits be-came terribly relevant.

There is, of course, the unending controversy betweenproponents of the Great Man theory of history and theGreat Forces theory of history. It turns on the question ofwhether prominently placed men are the masters or thevictims of historical events. Modern thought tends (some-what inconsistently) toward the latter, towards the idea ofmen as puppets in the grip of Great Forces. But ifChurchill had been killed in that encounter with a car onFifth Avenue in 1931, what would have been the fate ofBritain in 1940? One would prefer not to think about that.

The rendezvous with destiny, the coming together ofman and moment, the assignment to Churchill of a nearlyhopeless cause, cannot be surprising to any close student ofChurchill's career. From the beginning, Churchill left clearfootprints in his long march to wartime splendor. There isan eye-catching sentence in his second book, The River War.If evil days were to come and "the last army which a col-lapsing Empire could interpose between London and theinvader were dissolving in rout and ruin," Churchill hopesthat "even in these modern days some men "would notcare to accustom themselves to a new order of things and

tamely survive the disaster. "32 This, written in 1899 at theage of 25, looks eerily ahead (even including the phrase"new order") to 1940. Could the man who wrote that sen-tence with conviction have acted any other way whenBritain confronted Hitler's juggernaut alone?

Or consider that this man also wrote an essay in the1930s on "Great Fighters in a Lost Cause." This peculiarlyChurchillian topic turns out to have been not just detachedspeculation but fervent prophesy. MacCallum Scott haddeclared in 1905, "He will ever be a leader, whether of aforlorn hope or a great party."33 So had Harold Nicolson in1931: "He is a man who leads forlorn hopes, and when thehopes of England become forlorn, he will once again besummoned to leadership."34 A nice adumbration of 1940 isthat word "forlorn," recurring here like the tolling of a bell.Writing in 1936, "Ephesian" prophesied that "the day maywell come when the Pitt in Churchill will be called in to re-store the Empire's affairs after a disaster or in anothersupreme crisis like that of 1914."35

All these observers sensed that he was fitted only for acertain type of role, not for the premiership in any circum-stance. The point has often been made but deserves re-peating: Only the man with such an idiosyncratic love offighting, of adverse odds, of patriotism, of Empire, of tra-dition and principle could qualify for leadership at such aperilous hour. All other politicians—decent, normal, com-mon sensical—would have seen the writing on the walland most likely have had the good sense to have savedBritain, as they thought, by making a humiliating peacewith Hitler.

As happens only in a well-composed novel making itsleisurely way to a climax, Churchill had to bide his time fora long while until the history of his nation took a turn soprecarious as to require him and him alone. Without thatturn he would never have made it, and his temperamentbecame especially relevant only for that brief emergencyperiod. Just as the historical course of events caused theGermans to seek out a leader who gave full vent to theirfrustrations, revanchism, and anti-Semitism, so did the his-torical course of events cause Britons to seek out someonethey had rejected before as antiquated and unreliable. Thehypothetical case of defending an imperiled London, whichhad been a mere daydream of his in the sheltered days ofBritish predominance in the late Victorian period, had nowbecome a grim reality. Little did he know that the historicalforces that kept him, to his deep frustration, from the pre-miership in the 1920s and from the cabinet in the 1930swere preserving him for a period when no one but he could

32. Winston Churchill, The River War, 2 vols. (London: Long-mans Green, 1899), II, p. 162.

33. Gilbert, 1967, p. 82.34. Gilbert, 1967, p. 125.35. Ephesian, p. 316.

FINEST HOUR 99/22

do justice to the challenge. Even Baldwin, who when be-coming Premier in 1935 deeply chagrined Churchill by notoffering him a post, half wittingly spared Churchill fromcontamination by the compromises and vacillations of thelate 1930s and preserved him for a higher purpose: "If thereis going to be. war ... we must keep him fresh to be our warPrime Minister."36 Can one therefore blame Churchill forfeeling some supernatural sponsorship? "I felt as if I werewalking with Destiny, and that all my past life had beenbut a preparation for this hour and for this trial....Over mebeat the invisible wings."37

"No, dear Novelist, you'll have to do better than that.This tale is too neat, too cleverly designed. The symme-tries and patterns of your fiction are too much like the aes-thetic principles that also govern painting and music andarchitecture; they therefore have little to do with the chaosthat is history. You cannot expect us to believe this fantas-tic story."

The novelist, ignoring our complaint, has one last cardto play: the tragic card. Many long narratives, beginningwith their archetype, Homer's Iliad, end tragically. So doesthis one. The moment of Churchill's supernal success was,ironically, also the occasion of a national calamity that wasnot of his making. Empires decline as surely as bananasturn brown. After a century in the sun, the fall of theBritish Empire—the largest the world had ever known—was at hand. It was Churchill's painful fate to preside overpart of that decline, notwithstanding his defiant rhetoricabout refusing to do so.

What was worse, his finest hours, his dynamic wartimeactions in resisting Hitler and then forging an alliance todefeat the Hun, paradoxically hastened that decline. Sur-vival required dependence on Russia and America, and,as Machiavelli had predicted long ago, such dependenceresulted inescapably in the allies overshadowing Britain.Without such an alliance, Britain could not have survived,either alone or in league with Hitler. Without Churchill'svision, courage, and personal diplomacy, therefore, theremight well have been no Britain left to decline, only againas, in Roman times, a remote island province of a conti-nental martial empire. And the rise of Russia and Americahad in any case been foreseen exactly a hundred years ear-lier by de Tocqueville.

The hero of the 1940 back-to-the-wall stand and of the1945 victory thus had the misfortune to see the deleteriousside effects of his triumph, for survival and victory camewith expensive price tags. It was Churchill's tragic fate tosave the world from Hitlerism only at the cost of soon los-ing the Empire, advancing communism beyond Russia's

36. Gilbert, p. 647.37. Second World War, 1, 667,181.38. Winston Churchill, A Roving Commission: My Early Life

(New York: Charles Scribner, 1930), p. 59.

borders, boosting Americanism, and opening the door tosocialism at home.

Notwithstanding the fantasy of some recent critics, hehad no alternative. Though he did his best, fate (aka his-torical forces) was against him. In the transition from aNazi hegemony in Europe to a nearly worldwide Ameri-can-Soviet condominium, Britain declined from being amajor player to being a satellite. It could not play a role,even in Churchill's peacetime ministry, in reconciling thetwo sides of the Cold War. Thus, having had the good for-tune to be at the right place at the right time in 1940,Churchill remained in power long enough to end up beingin the right place at the wrong time in 1945. What a savagefate for the man who had groomed himself for the greatday when he would save his country.

Here, in short, is the tale of a man who expected to be—and was expected by others to be—prime minister; whohad a wild, roller coaster career with numerous triumphsand disasters; who, because of that uneven career, had towait to take his turn as wartime prime minister overtwenty years after his formidable former ally and friendLloyd George had done so; who had a unique tempera-ment that fitted his leadership talent only for the chal-lenges of the early 1940s; who had a lifetime of expectationof, and preparation for, a back-to-the-wall stand; and whobecame prime minister at just the most critical and there-fore for him the most opportune moment.

That this man would fulfill his promise, succeed be-yond his wildest dreams, and then preside over the de-cline of Britain as it was overtaken by Russian, Americanand socialist currents is the final twist to this hardly credi-ble novel. A life that sees a personal triumph so inter-twined with national decline and sees the climax of onecareer so involved with communal loss can only be con-sidered tragic. Here was a fulfillment so often predicted,so long delayed, so triumphantly accomplished, and sohopelessly compromised by the consequences.

The destiny that groomed him for high office at a timeof supreme crisis had played a trick on him. He would getwhat he wanted, leading Britain out of the abyss, but hisbeloved country would pay dearly for that survival. Allthose prophecies and all that ambition and striving re-sulted in an ambiguous denouement. Like Macbeth, hediscovered that Fate speaks with a forked tongue.

"Go back to your word processor, Mr. Novelist, andstart from scratch. Your novel shows great promise, butyour acrobatics in plotting keep it from being credible,verisimilar, and relevant. Such a protagonist as you por-tray could never have existed in life. In fact, this Churchillof yours himself intimated that his life was at best fic-tional. In speaking, in his (alleged, of course) autobiogra-phy (1930), of his career as being great fun and never bor-ing, he confessed that 'It was an endless moving picture inwhich one was the actor.'"38 $

FINEST HOUR 99/23

English-Speaking Peoples

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?or,

Total Quality LeadershipEnglish-Speaking Peoples

by Stephen Hayward

No refrain is more typical today than the lamentthat we lack leaders worthy of the name. Buton closer inspection it can be seen that many of

the complainers wouldn't recognize a true leader if hewalked up and poked them in the nose.

Consider the following indicator: Back in 1949, Timemagazine named Winston Churchill "Man of the Half-Century," observing that "no man's history can sum upthe dreadful, wonderful years, 1900-1950. Churchill'sstory comes closest." But then last autumn, Life maga-zine, the other flagship of the Time-Life empire, offeredits list of the 100 most important people of the 20th cen-tury, and Churchill was not on the list. Meanwhile,back at Time, a burst of modesty led the editors to giveup on their own editorial judgment in the run-up to theinevitable Person (or People) of the Century designa-tion, and so Time is taking a poll on its website askingTime readers who they think should be included amongthe top 100 most important people. Churchill is still ontheir list of suggestions, but so are a quite a few peopleof decidedly lesser stature, who appear chiefly becausethey conform more closely to the newer understandingof leadership. (These are the same people, remember,who still had confidence enough back in the late 1980sto name Gorbachev the "Man of the Decade.")

If you thought that this obvious degeneration is an-other expression of elite media bias or Orwell's Mem-ory Hole at work, you would be mistaken. There is anemerging intellectual theory—"leadership studies"—tojustify disregarding the great personalities of our pastin favor of the mediocre men and women of our pre-sent. Leadership studies is one of the fastest-growingsubfields in academia (though whether it belongs inbusiness or political science is unclear, which is the firsthint of trouble), as well as a subject of intense interest inthe world of executive seminars. Leadership books and

Steven Hayward, Bradley Fellow at the Heritage Foundationand Senior Fellow with the Pacific Research Institute, is the au-thor of Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in theFace of Adversity (Prima Publishing), available from theFinest Hour New Book Service for $15/£10 + shipping.

their gurus have been rightly dismissed, as do JohnMicklethwait and Adrian Woolridge in their recentbook The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the ManagementGurus (Times Books), as little more than faddism,cliches, one-part motivation, one-part obvious commonsense, one-hit wonders, and less. G. K. Chesterton re-marked that there is but an inch of difference betweenthe cushioned chamber and the padded cell, and thedifference between Tony Robbins and Tom Peters oftenseems slight indeed. You might call it "Total QualityLeadership."

But the problem with leadership studies is a lot moreserious than mere hucksterism.

I came face to face with the problem when I set out towrite for a general audience a book about Churchill'sexecutive management practices. Such books are ex-tremely popular these days. Donald Phillips's Lincoln onLeadership has sold several hundred thousand copies. Itwas a great surprise that no such book had been writtenabout Churchill, who is in many ways a better subjectfor this kind of treatment than Lincoln, and certainlybetter than Attila the Hun, who was the subject of one ofthe first big-selling books in this genre. Though therewas no single book on Churchill, I expected to find himappearing frequently in the leadership literature.

But he is almost nowhere to be found. He is scarcelymentioned in James McGregor Burns's 500-page tomeon leadership, which, published way back in 1977, is re-garded as among the more serious works in the field.Even more startling was a recent offering from DonaldHeifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Harvard Uni-versity Press), which goes on for several pages aboutHitler but mentions Churchill not at all. "When influ-ence alone defines leadership," Heifetz writes, "Hitlerqualifies as an authentic and successful leader: he mo-bilized a nation to follow his vision....Furthermore, bythe standard of organizational effectiveness, Hitler ex-ercised formidable leadership. Within hundreds of spe-cific decision-making instances, Hitler succeeded in de-veloping the effectiveness of German organizations."

This passage suggests what has gone wrong. Thegeneral disapprobation of the "great man theory of his-

FINEST HOUR 99 / 24

tory" has now extended to the idea of leadership itself,the one area that might reasonably have been expectedto survive the modern assault of relativism. Like everyother area of what were once "moral sciences," leader-ship studies have succumbed to a value-free viewpoint.An acquaintance reports to me that when she offeredChurchill as an example of leadership in a "total qualitymanagement" course, the instructor huffed thatChurchill was an example of obsolete "linear dichoto-mous absolutism"—whatever that is.

"Understandably," Heifetz writes, "scholars whohave studied 'leadership' have tended to side with thevalue-free connotation of the term because it lends itselfmore easily to analytic reasoning and empirical exami-nation." The obvious problem of Hitler promptsHeifetz to offer the important qualification: "Rigor insocial science does not require that we ignore values; itsimply requires being explicit about the values westudy. Placing Hitler in the same general category asGandhi or Lincoln does not render the theory value-free. On the contrary, it simply leaves its centralvalue—influence—implicit."

Another leading author, Joseph Rost, in his Leadershipfor the 21st Century (Praeger), is even more explicit thatthe old sources are passe: "The extended discussions ofPlato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Weber are beside thepoint, as none of them wrote about leadership."

Instead of leadership based first and foremost onmoral character and clarity of purpose, the most highlyprized trait of "leadership" today is the ability to forge"consensus" through "non-coercive models of interac-tion." In this model, "hierarchy is out, and loosely cou-pled organic networks are in." (These phrases appear inthe several of the, er, leading books on the subject.) Oneof the most popular definitions of "consensus leader-ship" is "an influence relationship between leaders andfollowers who intend real changes that reflect their mu-tual purposes." Such definitions make it possible to goon at length about Hitler's leadership abilities. It raisesnew possibilities for a sequel to my Churchill on Leader-ship, such as Stalin on Leadership: The Complete Guide forthe Command-and-Control Executive.

Now, what would Churchill say about this "mush,slush, and gush"? Early in Their Finest Hour Churchillremarks that "An accepted leader has only to be sure ofwhat is best to do, or at least to have made up his mindabout it." There is no reference here to the necessity offollowers, of "mutual purpose," or of consensus. In fact,though Churchill, like anyone in the public life of ademocracy, had to operate within a structure that re-quired collective deliberation and persuasion, he hatedthe tendency of drifting toward the lowest common de-nominator that we today praise as "consensus," and itwas precisely this aversion to consensus that accounts

for his success. Churchill wrote that most strategic fail-ure owed to "the total absence of one directing mindand commanding willpower." He complained end-lessly about the tendency of collective bodies where"everyone claims their margin at every stage, and thesum of the margins is usually 'no.'"

There is a memorandum on this problem whichChurchill wrote at the Admiralty in 1912 that could eas-ily be the germ of a Dilbert cartoon: "There is one epicy-cle of action which is important to avoid, viz—recogni-tion of an evil; resolve to deal with it; appointment of acommittee to examine it and discover the remedy; for-mulation of the remedy; decision to adopt the remedy;consultation with various persons who raise objections;decision to defer to their objections; decision to delayapplication of the remedy; decision to forget all aboutthe remedy and put up with the evil."

Another person who is conspicuously absent fromthe leadership literature is Margaret Thatcher. And nowonder. The Iron Lady had nothing but contempt forthe central value of modern leadership gurus: consen-sus. "The Old Testament prophets did not go out andask for consensus," Thatcher remarked. She describedconsensus more expansively as "the process of aban-doning all beliefs, principles, values and policies insearch of something in which no one believes, but towhich no one objects; the process of avoiding the veryissues that have to be solved, merely because you can-not get agreement on the way ahead. What great causewould have been fought and won under the banner 'Istand for consensus'?"

Thatcher does rate an entire chapter in HowardGardner's Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership(Basic Books), but despite the recognition of her successin office, she does not come off well—in part becauseher formative political years occurred duringChurchill's wartime premiership (from which she pre-sumably learned stubbornness), rather than during amore normal epoch. "Her self-confidence slid easilyinto intolerance, inflexibility, and moralism," Gardnerlaments. He thinks she would have been better off hadshe "built bridges" to her critics. Finally, he thinks, "Wewill not know for decades whether she effected a fun-damental reorientation in British political life or only amomentary detour." Gardner wrote this in 1995. TonyBlair would likely give a different answer.

The good news is that, as usual, the general public isnot yet wholly contaminated by the vacuousness of theintellectual approach to leadership. My modest volumeis selling briskly, as is a new offering by Tom Morrispromisingly titled If Aristotle Ran General Motors (HenryHolt). Now if we can get Aristotle back in the universi-ties, we just might get a few leaders who think emulat-ing Churchill is not such a bad idea. $i

FINEST HOUR 99 / 25

Churchill As Coalition War LeaderIdeas may be splendid,

but they have to be worked with to be realized.Visions may be dazzling, but they require labor.

by Christopher C. Harmon

Planning Allied Strategy at the White House, 27 May 1943. President Roosevelt and WSC pose with members of their staffs.Standing, left to right: Field Marshal Sir John Dill, Lt. Gen. Sir Hastings Ismay, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal,

Gen. Sir Alan Brooke, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, Admiral William D. Leahy, Gen. George C. Marshall,Admiral Ernest J. King, and Lt. Gen. J. T. McNarney. (King Features Syndicate)

On the morning of Winston Churchill's first full dayas Prime Minister, he met with subordinate minis-ters. Among Churchill's chief concerns was

whether Sweden could be brought into the war on the Al-lied side.1

Sweden never joined the coalition, of course, but thecase pointed to a major problem for Britain: given thepower of the Axis of Germany, Austria, and Japan, howcould London forge an international coalition that couldwithstand the aggressors? By war's end, there were onlynine sovereign states on the globe which had not taken

sides, and nearly all aligned against the Fascists. Even thealliance Italy had with Germany had been broken.2

Churchill's greatness in this war was in making Britain thedefensible rock, and in building outward a great coalitionthat could not merely survive but win the war.

We will explore Churchill's leadership in creating thisinternational coalition in four ways. First, there are hisideas and vision; second, his hard work; third, his pursuitof the neutrals and smaller powers; fourth, the Grand Al-liance with the United States and Soviet Russia. Finally,I'll offer a few closing points.

FINEST HOUR 99/26

IDEAS AND VISIONThe first stones laid, in this great construction project,

were those of ideas. Churchill had to establish the anti-Fascist cause as one with political and moral credibility.That only sounds easy. It sounds easy today because it hasbeen done; fascism has been discredited for half a century.Then, it seemed more like the ideology of the future.

Why?Some people had come to understand the full evils of

Russian communism. Disturbed by it, they frankly hopedthe new Nazism would be a continental check on the Bol-sheviks. Many Conservative Party members thought so.Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania probably thought so.

Some people were slow to respond to Churchillian callsfor arms because they remained transfixed by the massdeath they had seen in Western Europe in their own time.As Churchill wrote—about pacific, democratic, demoral-ized France after World War I—every cottage had itsempty chair.3

Some opinion makers in Europe in the 1930s under-stood fascism's viciousness, but whether from fear or opti-mism, chose to be dishonest about it. The editor of thepowerful London Times, Geoffrey Dawson, admitted pri-vately in 1937 that he was so protective of German feel-ings that "I spend my nights taking out anything which Ithink will hurt their susceptibilities and in dropping [in]little things which are intended to soothe them."4

Finally, there were some people in Europe who delayeddoing anything about ascendant Nazism because, fromtheir positions of civil responsibility, they coolly judgedthat chances for preserving their national life and sover-eignty were better if they remained aloof from any fraywith the Fascist powers. Self-preservation was their first,and their only, rule. Strong strains of this approach are ev-ident in the public remarks of Lord Halifax, NevilleChamberlain, and Australian Prime Minister Robert Men-zies.

One must admit that there was a plausible argumentfor neutrality, if one judged only by immediate self-inter-est. But that is just my point. Churchill rarely assessedworld political matters solely from self-interest. For him,that was moral and political bankruptcy. Churchill, no lesscalculating than other leaders, made his calculations onanother basis. With Britain behind him he stood up and hestood fast. With time and with Hitler's attacks, more andmore states and governments in exile came to stand withhim.

Christopher C. Harmon presented this talk at Washington So-ciety for Churchill's meeting on 20 October 1994. He has since of-fered similar addresses to audiences at the Marine Corps' Com-mand and Staff College, Hillsdale College in Michigan and, mostrecently, the World War II Veterans Committee, meeting inPhiladelphia on 3 February 1998.

There are two different problems with the neutrals' andappeasers' argument to a moral self-interest, and bothhave to do with how coalitions form—or do not form.First, even cynical self-interest may not serve your self-in-terest. Consider the factual record of this war. If immedi-ate self-interest were the best ground for foreign relations,then Italy in both world wars proved herself the wisestcountry of all! And that is clearly false. Italy, Finland, theSoviet Union—all these jumped to and fro during WorldWar II, and none profited much from the effort. Second,the so-called pure realists can be as bankrupt as the purelyself-interested. Take one of today's brightest minds of theschool of hard-boiled realists, Colin Gray, a major name ingeopolitics. Perhaps you have seen his book War, Peace andVictory, which has a chapter on coalition war. Here aresome of the principles he says history teaches to states thatare considering joining coalitions for war:

"Identify the side which will win...""Intervene sufficiently early in a war so as to make a

difference valued highly by new allies, but not so earlythat undue national effort is required."

"When in serious doubt [about who will win], stay neu-tral."5

This admirable intellect has not one word to say in thischapter about the differences between just war and theother kinds, or about high-toned statesmanship and lowpolitics. His advice on these pages is mere Machiavellian-ism. His guides for coalition warfare are the obvious, shal-low ones of the uncourageous neutrals of 1939 and 1940and 1941. Gray is a man who really believes in nationaldefense and national power. But there is a principle here:power, shorn of moral force, is a hollow and sometimeseven an ugly thing.

That is part of the answer to our question of howChurchill created the great coalition. He gave the world apolitical and moral vision. The vision was that of the

1. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (Boston: Houghton Mif-flin, 1983), vol. 6, Finest Hour, 326.

2. The London Times, Atlas of the Second World War, ed. JohnKeegan (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 202.

3. Churchill quotations to the effects World War I had on will-ingness to oppose Nazism abound, as in volume one of the Sec-ond World War history, The Gathering Storm (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1948), 177, 384. Perhaps the most powerful words wereLord Moran's comment to George Marshall, describingChurchill's resistance to the premature opening of a groundcampaign against the Nazis in Western Europe: "You are fight-ing the ghosts of the Somme." Quoted by Ronald Lewin,Churchill as Warlord (New York: Stein and Day, 1973), 224 n.

4. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1977), vol. 5, The Prophet of Truth, 850.

5. Colin S. Gray, "The Perils and Pleasures of Coalition," inWar, Peace, and Victory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990),257. A fuller list of such rules or principles follows the assertionthat "rank opportunism can be prudent..."

FINEST HOUR 99 / 27

democracies standing up against better armed tyranniesand prevailing with moral force until such time as theycould win with material force.6

The best illustrations of just how far he would go tomake that vision tangible may be his proposals for unify-ing Britain with France and with the USA. In the wake ofthe war, and the victory, these proposals for joint citizen-ship seem odd. In fact, when France was falling in 1940and the suggestion was first made that the British andFrench peoples should be joined in common citizenship, itstruck Churchill as odd. De Gaulle agreed to it, althoughhe thought it was odd. Yet the reality is that these two cre-ated a formal proposal, and within days Churchill gotaboard a train in London for a trip to France to finalize thepact of mutual citizenship. But before the train couldleave, word came that France had fallen. The idea expiredon the spot.7

Less well known is a similar gesture Churchill made tothe United States three years later. At Harvard in 1943,speaking on the theme of "Anglo-American Unity," heraised the prospect that our common tongue might oneday develop into a "common citizenship."8 He did thisagain at Fulton in 1946.

HARD WORKIdeas may be splendid, but they have to be worked

with to be realized. Visions may be dazzling, but they re-quire labor. The second way Churchill built the Grand Al-liance was by tremendous personal effort.

Adolf Hitler and the Japanese warlords worked hardbut not necessarily at the right things. They did not workwith each other. They never met at the uppermost levels,in years of combat and alliance. Is it any wonder that theirstrategies were uncoordinated? By contrast, Churchill metRoosevelt at ten World War II conferences. They ex-changed 1700 letters and cables which they often draftedpersonally, in addition to the usual flow of government-to-government messages.

Churchill's travels were another form of notable exer-tion. He covered half a million miles during the war.Many trips were by air, the dangers of which were no ab-straction; he had already been in two plane crashes. Andhe was now in his late sixties. His son Randolph, specialenvoy to Serbia's leader Tito, was in a wartime crash inCroatia, which he survived. A top British general waskilled flying in North Africa, and a prominent purchasingagent sent to America, Arthur Purvis, was killed in a re-turn flight to England in 1941. One part of the British dele-gation to the Yalta conference in the Crimea was killedwhen their plane crashed in the Mediterranean.Churchill's closest call personally came in January 1942 ona return flight home from America in a bomber; six British

fighters rose up to intercept the unidentified plane, andonly pulled away at the last moment.9

Another form of Churchill's hard work was in theprodigious use of voice and pen. There were streams offormal letters, official communiques, and internationalbroadcasts.

Since any Churchill Center audience already knows agreat deal about Sir Winston's masterful English, it maybe interesting to relate a few anecdotes about his politicalspeeches in his inadequate French. Always the diplomat,always courting a foreign audience, and always up to achallenge, Churchill used his French freely. He madebroadcasts in it; he used it on the telephone to speak withFree French forces; he spoke in French to foreign groupswho had no English but could use French as an intermedi-ary tongue. He was clumsy with the language, and his ac-cent was poor. Any of us who mangle French (and I do)can enjoy these stories.

Churchill told one French audience: "Be on your guard,because I am going to speak in French...which will putgreat demands on your friendship with Great Britain." Hetold a French theater director translating text for him atthe BBC before a broadcast: "What I want is to be under-stood as I am, not as you are, not even as the French lan-guage is. Don't make it sound too correct." When he wasspeaking to some Turkish leaders in French, AnthonyEden cut in, trying to help and WSC snapped: "Will youplease stop translating my French into French!" In aspeech to a group of Italians, Churchill's first words were:"I'm going to speak to you today in the French tongue. It'sbad French...the kind of French you speak yourselves."

6. According to Williamson Murray, Churchill recognizedthat British survival in political and cultural and moral terms de-pended on total defeat of Nazism, "...at the heart of Churchill'sopposition to Nazi Germany,...he understood that the Germandanger was both strategic and moral." From his chapter onBritain in volume three of Military Effectiveness: The Second WorldWar, eds. Allan Millett and Williamson Murray (Boston: Allenand Unwin, 1988), 99.

7. Gilbert, Finest Hour, 556-565. Kay Halle claims he did makethe offer in France, on June 16 1940, but it was rejected; The Irre-pressible Churchill, ed. Kay Halle (New York: Facts on File Publi-cations, 1985), 124.

8. Winston Churchill, speech on Sept. 6,1943, Onwards to Vic-tory, ed. Charles Eade (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1944), 236-7. Churchill expanded on this theme when speaking at theBritish Embassy on the same trip: see Halle's IrrepressibleChurchill, 6-7, including the illustration of "the dollar sterling"which WSC drew for FDR's son James (in 1933 at Chartwell).

9. See Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill (Boston: HoughtonMifflin, 1986), vol. 7, Road to Victory, 855,1047, 1163-1168, andother sources such as Lewin's Churchill as Warlord. The last inci-dent, involving Churchill personally, is described in MartinGilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1991), 716.

FINEST HOUR 99/28

THE NEUTRALS AND LESSER POWERSIn forging the coalition, Churchill worked hard for the

neutrals and the smaller prizes as surely as he did forgreat powers like the United States or the Soviet Union.

In political philosophy, as in practical politics, there is agreat tension between Empire and Freedom. British policywas to preserve the Empire as surely as it was to fulfill theideals of liberty and democracy in the Atlantic Charter.From the beginning, Churchill's many appeals abroad hadbeen phrased not just for the English, and not only gener-ally to the world, but for the dominions and possessions ofBritain in their many corners of the globe. And all, ornearly all, responded.

Dominions like New Zealand, Australia, Canada, andSouth Africa had no constitutional duty to put up soldiersunless their own soil had been attacked. But they did putup soldiers. In this conflict, Australia gave nearly 30,000 ofits young men's lives, and Canada almost 40,000. India,then moving towards dominion status, yielded 36,000.These figures compare with 271,000 military dead offeredup by Great Britain.10

The dominions also gave the Grand Alliance materiel.While we all know of America's Lend-Lease program, at alower level, "A more modest reciprocal aid programmefrom the British Empire helped to cover the very greatcosts of operating large US forces overseas." Australiagave back to us two-thirds as much in value as we ex-tended her. So did India. New Zealand gave back a stillhigher ratio. Britain herself returned to us a full sixth ofwhat the Americans gave, or a total of over five and a halfbillion dollars worth."

Small powers lying outside the British spheres werenaturally less cooperative. Why should they be, given Eu-rope's essential abandonment of Czechoslovakia, and thenthe destruction of Poland and other small states? Thiscould give little encouragement to neutrals like Norway,Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, and the oth-ers. These states Churchill set out to woo, as First Lord ofthe Admiralty and then as Prime Minister. But the truth isthat often he did not get what he wanted.

Ireland was a faithful dominion in the First World Warbut a more independent power in the Second. In fact, shewas a neutral. The six northern counties of Ulster con-tributed many officers and troops to the Allies, but the IrishFree State denied British appeals for access to ports and air-fields, both valuable for the protection of merchant ship-ping and for the prosecution of war against the U boats.

Churchill coaxed his Irish counterpart, Eamon deValera, quietly raising the legal argument that the HomeRule Treaty and Constitution Act of 1921 and 1922 af-forded "in time of war or strained relations with otherpowers such harbour or other facilities as may be neces-sary."12 No luck. Churchill got rough. He cut off the supply

of foodstuffs and fertilizers coming in courtesy of RoyalNavy convoys.13 No change of mood occurred in Dublin.Meanwhile the British worried over reports of Germanmachinations among the Irish. Churchill finally appealeddirectly to the US to send troops to Eire. When Washing-ton did not move, London was reduced to pleading for aport call in Ireland by US warships.14

Iceland was a happier story. Although fearing Ger-many, it was generous to the Anglo-Americans; bothmoved in before 1941 ended.15 Iceland thus helped plug thehole southern Ireland left in the North Atlantic defenses.

Spain, another neutral, was a delicate case, especiallyduring and after Torch, the allied invasion of North Africain 1942. British and American troops passed through theStraits of Gibraltar. Once they were landed, thoughtsturned to whether Germany might punch through theIberian Peninsula from Southern France and take thosestraits. But Spain's continued neutrality was crippling toHitler's Mediterranean aspirations.16

Turkey lies astride equally critical straits, which join theMediterranean to the Black Sea, which is to say to the So-viet Union. When it was the Ottoman Empire, it was pur-sued by both sides in World War I, and erred in choosingthe Central Powers. Now in World War II the Turkish Re-public took the road of extreme caution and remained neu-tral almost until the bitter end (March 1945).17One night in1944, after dinner at Chequers, private secretary JockColville was surprised to see the PM smoking cigarettes—Turkish cigarettes. Churchill told him they were the only

10. Times, Atlas, 202. Newfoundland and the Irish Free Statewere also "dominions."

11. Ibid., 202-203.12. Major D. H. Cole, Imperial Military Geography (London:

Sifton Praed and Co., 1937), 402-403. Professors Harold W. Roodand Charles Robert Harmon were each helpful in explaining theconstitutional arrangements of the empire and commonwealth.

13. 400,000 tons had been delivered by then. (Ireland was alsoshipping food to England, but Churchill ruled that this could beforegone.) Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspon-dence, ed. Francis Loewenheim et al. (New York: Saturday Re-view Press, 1975), 127.

14. Correspondence, 95,100.15. "We cordially welcome your taking over Iceland at the

earliest possible moment, and will hold ourselves and all our re-sources there at your disposal," Churchill wrote to Roosevelt onMay 29,1941; Correspondence, 143.

16. Dr. Harold W. Rood made this point occasionally in lec-tures at the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California, 1978-1983.

17. Churchill called Turkey "the great prize of the South";Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (London: Cassell andCo., 1959), vol. 3, The Grand Alliance, 412. Admiral Kelly, prod-ded by WSC to get Turks to do more, told a colleague they lackthe "faintest intention...of anything offensive" and are "quite un-moved by treaty obligations." David Day, Menzies and Churchillat War, (New York: Paragon House, 1988), 102.

FINEST HOUR 99 / 29

thing he ever got out of the Turks.18 Later, of course,Turkey became one of the best allies NATO had.

Greece was attacked from the north by Italian forces,and both New Zealand and Britain sent troops to her de-fense. Greece survived until the Germans moved south inforce in April 1941. British forces then had to be evacu-ated. When the Nazis, in turn, were later forced to with-draw, civil war broke out in Greece. Churchill got on an-other airplane, spending his Christmas holiday of 1944 inAthens attempting to negotiate an end to the fighting.Greece meant a great deal to the British, not all of it meretrade; Greece was the birthplace of democracy: volunteerslike the poet Byron served in an earlier Greek war, andtroop commitments were made to Greece during WorldWar I. Washington, for its part, saw the intervention asmeddlesome and criticized it, making the episode painfulfor the Prime Minister.

The neutrals sometimes galled Churchill, and he said sopublicly when he thought it necessary. In March, 1940 hemade a broadcast on the need for armed cooperation, exco-riating those waiting on the sidelines. "With Poland's fatestaring at them," he growled, "there are still thoughtlessdilettanti or purblind worldlings, who sometimes ask us:'What is it that Britain and France are fighting for?' To this Ianswer: 'If we left off fighting, you would soon find out.'"19

When coaxing and criticism did not work, he was notabove escalation or coercion, as the case with convoys toIreland shows. Consider also Norway, early in the war.British occupation of Norway came after failed diplomaticefforts. Unable to remain idle while German transportscarried Swedish iron ore south through Norway's waters,Churchill had those waters mined. And then Britain in-vaded, but arrived a day or so too late to obstruct a Ger-man naval task force's doing the same thing.

Norway raises an interesting point on the moral basisof Churchill's leadership. How could he justify armed ac-tion against a neutral? He told the War Cabinet that themoral doctrine of "supreme emergency" justified the ac-tion. "Small nations must not tie our hands when we arefighting for their rights and freedom. The letter of the lawmust not in supreme emergency obstruct those who arecharged with its protection and enforcement. It would notbe right or rational that the Aggressor Power should gainone set of advantages by tearing up all the laws, and an-other set by sheltering behind the innate respect for law oftheir opponents. Humanity, rather than legality, must beour guide."20

This is a difficult argument, but an important one, be-cause Churchill knew that for Britain morale was very af-fected by whether war policy was moral.

THE GRAND ALLIANCEThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United

States are in a category all their own with respect to thiscoalition war. They were, for London, the two greatprizes.

Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt worked gradually to-wards de facto partnership for many months before 7 De-cember 1941. By that day, it was evident just how divisivea seemingly simple concept like neutrality can be. Ameri-can neutrality bore little resemblance to what it had beenunder the same President in 1936. There was the AtlanticCharter, the common declaration of principles which Roo-sevelt and Churchill wrote in August 1941, before the USAwas even at war. Churchill wrote later of the AtlanticCharter that it was "astonishing" to see a neutral like theUnited States make such a common pledge with Britain,then fighting a total war.21

He made many arguments to Americans. There weremoral appeals, already mentioned. Doubtless he felt FDRhad answered him with the "Four Freedoms" speech inJanuary, 1941. Churchill appealed to a mutual sense ofdanger, as when he argued with Americans that Germanhegemony could reach well beyond the European conti-nent, whereas survival of the Royal Navy would meancontinued safety for America's Atlantic seaboard.22 Hewarned that without Britain and her navy, the Germanswould begin to act aggressively against South Americanrepublics, which would undermine the Monroe Doctrineand threaten American interests to the South.23 He tuggedupon the strings of sentiment as when, in appeals toAmericans, he would refer to the heritage of his mother,Jennie Jerome of New York.

Once America was in the war, Churchill argued power-fully for his own strategic schemes but was also a helpfulally. He won strategy debates that preceded operations inNorth Africa, Sicily and Italy. But as American powergrew and U.S. resources outpaced those of the British,Churchill recognized the need to yield more often. Look-ing back over the Anglo-American wartime record I seetension and argument, but I fail to see rancor and hostilityas an enduring characteristic of either side.

The last word on the spirit of this alliance is an incredi-ble Churchill speech we never hear about. It was a speechby one national leader praising the greater military powerof another nation, reflecting such magnanimity toward anally that most coalition partners could never give it with-out appearing craven. Stalin could never have uttered it;only as great a man as Churchill would think to write it ordare to give it.

18. Gilbert, Road to Victory, 700.19. Gilbert, Finest Hour, 136-140.20. Ibid., 106; see also 137,171.21. Churchill, Grand Alliance, 394.22. Correspondence, 122,103.23. Correspondence, 92.

FINEST HOUR 99/30

The speech was given in the Albert Hall in London be-fore a gigantic picture of Abraham Lincoln on AmericanThanksgiving Day, 1944. The Prime Minister said, in part:"It is your Day of Thanksgiving, and when we feel thetruth of the facts which are before us, that in three or fouryears the peaceful, peace-loving people of the UnitedStates, with all the variety and freedom of their life in suchcontrast to the iron discipline which has governed manyother communities—when we see that in three or fouryears the United States has in sober fact become the great-est military naval and air power in the world—that, I sayto you in this time of war, is itself a subject for profoundthanksgiving. "24

By contrast the relationship with Russia was cold, ascold as a bear's nose. It was calculated, like most alliances,but it was limited to calculation. As late as 1940 Churchillwould still vilify Soviet communism as the moral equal ofNazism. Even after 1941 and the alliance between Moscowand London, for every smiling reference to "Uncle Joe" wefind in the books or newsreels, there is some private ex-pression of continuing reserve, or even contempt.

The Soviet Union did in time acknowledge the AtlanticCharter, but there is little evidence that Churchill believed,as FDR seemed to, that Stalin's state could be calmeddown and coaxed towards reason over time. The feelingChurchill had for the Russian chief of state was mutual.Roosevelt saw this, writing Churchill in 1942: "I think youwill not mind me being brutally frank when I tell you thatI think I can personally handle Stalin better than eitheryour Foreign Office or my State Department. Stalin hatesthe guts of all your top people. He thinks he likes me bet-ter, and I hope he will continue to do so."25

What Washington and London had no difference overwas the need to move material aid into Soviet Russia. Ifthe British obsession before 1941 had been how to getAmerica into war, that same year witnessed the birth of ajoint Anglo-American obsession: how to keep Russia inthe war. We have heard so much so often about the invin-cible Russian will in the face of invaders that we forgetthey had given up, only a generation before, in 1917. Allpartners in the Grand Alliance knew all about that formersurrender to German power, and they feared an encore.26

And so, Britain and America took unending pains.They sent military supplies, clothing and industrial prod-ucts they could ill afford. Most of it went by sea, with pre-dictable losses, enough that the Admiralty begged thePrime Minister to stop the convoys.27 He would not; coali-tion strategy required that the losses be accepted.28 Here isa great example of the difference between a purely mili-tary view of war and the wider political one; as GeorgeMarshall once said of this aid to Russia, it may have hadlittle operational effect, but a very large, significant andlong-lasting political effect.28

"And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes,

comes in the light;In front the sun climbs slow,

how slowly!But westward look, the land is bright.

Churchill to Roosevelt, Spring 1941,quoting dough's "Slave of the Lamp"

Strategic bombing is something we often think of inmoral terms, or in purely military terms. Yet it too had animportant role as a strategy of coalition war. In his firstletter to Stalin after Russia had been overrun by the Ger-man army in Operation Barbarossa, Churchill promisedbomber attacks...not against the invading German army,already out of reach and moving East, but against Ger-many itself. The explicit purpose was drawing back theGerman fighter aircraft to defend the homeland, depriv-ing the Nazi advance of its air arm. The British bomberscould thus be a kind of decoy, useful for affecting the East-ern Front's ground campaign and air fighting.29 Obvi-ously, they also had their central role in a strategy for de-stroying Germany's war-making capability.

Over and over again, Churchill telegraphed not merelynews but precise details of bombing raids to Stalin, orcommunicated them in person at their summits. This wastrue at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of thewar. In Moscow in August 1942, for example, Churchillwas unable to answer demands for opening a second frontin France, but he could tell of recent bombing raids and ofyet greater bombing efforts to come. Stalin observed that"...it was not only German industry that should bebombed, but the population too." Answering, Churchillspoke of German "morale as a military target" and of Al-

24. The Dawn of Liberation, ed. Charles Eade (London: Casselland Co., 1945), 253. Charles Eade printed the full speech in nor-mal paragraph form. I have taken the liberty of arranging theseselected lines of prose in the style Churchill sometimes used forpublic speeches. I did this by my own lights, having heard thetaped speech but never seen the original text.

25. Message of March 18,1942, in the Correspondence.26. See for example Grand Alliance, 409.27. Correspondence, 211,223.28. Churchill's judgment was: "If they (the USSR) keep fight-

ing, it is worth it; if they don't, we don't have to send it"; mes-sage to FDR on Sept. 7,1941, Correspondence. See also Churchill'sGrand Alliance, 438,456.

29. Churchill suggested as much several times in 1941 and1942; see Gilbert's one-volume Churchill: A Life, 668,702-703,719-720.

FINEST HOUR 99/31

lied plans to shatter twenty more German cities. Stalinwas then seen to smile—apparently for the first time—inthat long meeting.30 In fact, the longer they talked ofbombing the more jovial he became.

What I am suggesting is that, for a long time, bombingwas the de facto second front: an aerial front. This wastrue even though no one called it the second front, or be-lieved it was all they would need. This was true eventhough Stalin never ceased demanding a second front onthe ground. All expected and planned for a front on theground in the west of Europe; this was a temporary sub-stitute.31

The United States sometimes differed with its Britishpartner about the targets of bombing and other air opera-tions, but not about the utility of bombing for coalitionwar. Early on a planner named Dwight Eisenhower pri-vately recorded the need for air assaults on Germany al-most as if it were a second front: "If we're to keep Russiain...we've got to begin slugging with air at West Europe,to be followed by a land attack as soon as possible." In asubsequent memorandum, Ike argued that "Defeat of theRussian armies would compel a complete reorientation ofAllied strategy. It would practically eliminate all opportu-nities of defeating Germany by direct action..."32

The air plan developed at Yalta in February 1945 identi-fied three purposes for the bomber offensive by theAnglo-Americans: (1) draw off the Luftwaffe; (2) smashthe German war economy; (3) ruin German communica-tion routes and troop movements in the East.

That last strategy helped dictate the death sentence ofDresden in February 1945. Dresden was chosen not onlybecause it was one of the last remaining large cities, but

30. Gilbert, Road to Victory, 179.31. Gilbert, Churchill: A Life, 702-3; 719-720, etc.32. The first of Ike's memos was private; the second was to

George Marshall and Admiral King; see Steven Metz, Eisenhoweras Strategist: The Coherent Use of Military Power in War and Peace(Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania: Strategic Studies Institute, Feb-ruary, 1993), 17, 20. In his book American Strategy in World WarTwo, Kent Roberts Greenfield says that in 1944 we wielded "along-reaching, heavy, and powerful air fist, and a comparativelysmall though compact ground fist." And he writes, "The Ameri-cans had to be satisfied with the combined bomber offensive asthe only means available in 1943 for a direct body blow at theGermans." (6,13). So if my formulation of this argument is some-what unique, it expresses a military understanding of the timeby some of the leaders involved.

33. There are many thorough treatments of Allied bombingstrategy. One brief essay, which includes issues surrounding theburning of Dresden, is the author's monograph for the NavalWar College: 'Are We Beasts?': Churchill and the Moral Ques-tion of World War II 'Area Bombing', (Newport, R.I.: Center forNaval Warfare Studies, Dec, 1991).

34. Arthur Clough, Slave of the Lamp, cited in Gilbert, FinestHour, 1022.

because it was a rail and road center lying just behind theGerman Eastern Front. The Allies apparently believed thatGerman armor had arrived at Dresden from Italy and waspassing through on the way to the fighting just to theeast.33 In this instance, as in countless others, strategicbombing was playing a part in coalition war.

CONCLUSIONSThe Grand Alliance had historical singularity. For ex-

ample, it was unusual for the U.S. to bind itself so closelyto any other power, even Britain. This partnership wasamong the closest bilateral relationships between indepen-dent powers in all of history. It might also serve as amodel alliance. It brought together three global powers,each very different from the others. Here was a joining ofunlimited efforts for a limited common purpose.

It was, by war's end, an enormous alliance: "GreatAmalgam" is perhaps more apt a tag than "Grand Al-liance." Wartime coalitions with so many partners cannotbe a blissful union. But the whole did survive immensetests; it did last through the war. And then, after victory, itbecame fractious and discontented. That is very commonfor alliances.

The final point is that Churchill understood how moralforce is a strategic principle and a strategic asset. Manythings are necessary in war: logistics, operational skill, suf-ficient force size... But there's nothing like being in theright and having morale on your side. And for that,there's nothing like a clear-eyed statesman who articulatesthe principles of justice and war. For democracies, thatwhich is moral is often very good for morale.

It is remarkable to consider how often Churchill'sgreatness of spirit buoyed up the morale of citizens andsoldiers and civil servants during this war. His famous de-fiance, his occasional anger, his growling invective towardthe foe are well known. But what this now obscures is theremarkable optimism he conveyed, helping to draw oth-ers into his efforts. Among my favorite illustrations of thisis his broadcast in the spring of 1941, when London wasbeing bombed and the Battle of the Atlantic was goingbadly. Consoling and inspiring his countrymen, in part byanticipating increased help from the United States, heended the broadcast with this verse:

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,Seem here no painful inch to gain,Far back, through creeks and inlets making,Comes silent, flooding in, the main.And not by eastern windows only,When daylight comes, comes in the light;In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!But westward, look, the land is bright.34

And so it was. M>

FINEST HOUR 99 / 32

Let the Ghostsor Omdurman Sleepby Tke Rt. Hon. The Lord Deedes, M.C.

One could hardly be in Khar-toum, as I was recently, with-out speculating on how we

shall deem it appropriate to mark thecentenary of the Battle of Omdurman,which falls on September 2nd. It was,after all, a singular battle. As WinstonChurchill observes in My Early Life,nothing like it will ever be seen again.

In the course of a single day, Kitch-ener's army of some 20,000 Britishtroops defeated the Mahdi's army,which was almost three times as strong.Churchill took part in the 21st Lancers'cavalry charge and was lucky to escapewith his life. In a matter of minutes, theLancers lost five officers and sixty-fivemen killed or wounded and 120 horses.The regiment was awarded three VCs.

Some years ago when I was inKhartoum, our then ambassador, SirAllen Ramsay, called for me beforedawn and took me round the battlefield.We had to go at dawn, he explained, forthat was when the decisive engagementwas fought. I have forgotten the detailsof the battle, but I do remember thememorial we found there: "In memoryof the officers, NCOs and men of the

Lord Deedes, a Member of Sir Winston'spostwar Cabinet, addressed the 13th Inter-national Churchill Conference at Ash-down Park, East Sussex, in 1996. His arti-cle is reprinted by the author's permission.

21st Lancers who fell here."The first name is that of Lt. Robert

Grenfell, one of nine sons, five of whomdied in the country's service, and cousinof Julian and Billy, who were killed inthe First World War. I have speculatedsince on how far our history might haveturned out differently had Churchill'sname been on that memorial.

AH of which explains my interest inthe Battle of Omdurman. But I shouldhave known better than to anticipateany sounding of trumpets over the cen-tenary of the battle.

Kitchener of Khartoum, the defeatof the Mahdi, the gallantry of theLancers in hand-to-hand conflict, thesacrifices of the Grenfell family, allbelong to our past. In these times, theyare ghosts better not disturbed. So theBritish Council will mark the centenaryby staging a seminar on British relationswith the Sudan, past, present andfuture—and that can hardly cause hardfeelings. [Written before 20 August!-Ed.]

There does survive in Khartoum,however, one relic of our glorious past.At the Blue Nile Sailing Club, foundedin 1822, there survives on dry land whatis said to be Kitchener's gunboat.

In the course of our other duties,we thought it right to pay our respectsto what remains of the vessel. It standson the banks of the Nile opposite theRoman Catholic Cathedral in Khartoum

FINEST HOUR 99/33

and is, as one might suppose, a shadowof its former self. But the single funnelstill stands, the wheel house is still there,and one can draw an impression of howKitchener conducted his operationsfrom the waters of the Nile.

I entertained faint doubts about theauthenticity of this gunboat until Ireturned home at the weekend. There Iconsulted Churchill's two volumes onThe River War—an account of the recon-quest of the "Soudan," lavishly pub-lished by Longmans, Green & Co. in1899. Stamped in gold on the blue-greencover is the vessel we had just seen inKhartoum.

Though a source of so much of ourimperial history, and where my fatherserved for a while as a soldier, Khar-toum these days seems totally removedfrom our world. In the course of twodays, we never set eyes on a Europeanin our hotel.

One surviving outpost from the lasthalf century is the Acropole Hotel, runby two friendly Greek brothers by thename of Pagoulatos. The few old handswho still visit Khartoum, such as jour-nalists and archaeologists, home inthere. From September onwards, theproprietor told us, the hotel, with itsforty bedrooms, is busy. It suffered aterrorist bomb attack in 1988 whichkilled eight people, but nobody holdsthat against it. Such is the isolation ofKhartoum these days that a brief thirtyminutes in the Acropole, watching a lit-tle bit of a familiar world go round,seemed a blessed relief.

Khartoum's Hilton Hotel offers anexciting range of cocktails—"Sunshine,""Hilton Dream," "Lady in Red,""Banana Shake," "Nile Waves,""Karkadeh Cooler." Unfortunately,Khartoum being Muslim and strictlydry, all these delights are non-alcoholic.

Agreed, in temperatures hoveringaround the 42C mark, such beveragesare much better for you, and a shortperiod of abstinence does no harm. Yet,decadent though it seems, around thetime the sun went down, I did sorelymiss a long whisky and soda.

Travelling round the city and look-ing at all the mosques, a thoughtoccurred to me about our MillenniumDome. It is a much more appropriatesymbol of Islam than of Christianity. &

As OTHERS SAW HIMNeville Chamberlain:"Winston is a very interestingbut a d d uncomfortable bedfellow.You never get a moment's rest and younever know at what point hell break out.

Ai£ £ A ssuming that we [theConservatives] come

.back next year with adiminished majority and stay in thefull term, most of us will be a gooddeal older and a good deal theworse for wear. Probably weshould then have several years ofOpposition and that would giveWinston his chance of establishinghimself in the party's favour....Inopposition, his want of judgementand his furious advocacy of half-baked ideas would not matter,while his wonderful debating andoratorical gifts would have freeplay....

"Over [the issue of de-ratingschemes, a kind of 'supply-side eco-nomics' of its day, which Churchillstrongly advocated as Chancellor]we had numerous battles. I accusedWinston of reckless advocacy ofschemes the effect of which he him-self did not understand. He accusedme of pedantry and of personaljealousy of himself. At times feel-ings became rather acute. But I hadone advantage over Winston ofwhich he was painfully conscious.He could not do without me.Therefore in the end I was the solejudge of how far to go becausewhenever I put my foot down hewas helpless. As a matter of fact Ionly put it down once and he gaveway directly. But it was a veryharassing time for me and to tellyou the truth, Edward, Winston is a

very interesting but a d duncomfortable bed fellow. Younever get a moment's rest and younever know at what point he'llbreak out....

"One doesn't often come acrossa real man of genius, or, perhaps,appreciate him when one does.Winston is such a man and he hasles defauts de ses qualites. To listen tohim on the platform or in the Houseis sheer delight. The art of thearrangement, the unexpected turn,the master of sparkling humour,

FINEST HOUR 99/34

and the torrent of picturesqueadjectives combine to put hisspeeches in a class by themselves.Then as you know there is no sub-ject on which he is not prepared topropound some novel theory and tosustain and illustrate his theorywith cogent and convincing argu-ments. So quickly does his mindwork in building up a case that itfrequently carries him off his ownfeet.

"I have often watched him inCabinet begin with a casual com-ment on what has been said, then asan image or simile comes into hismind proceed with great animation,when presently you see his wholeface suffused with pink, his speechbecomes more and more rapid andimpetuous till in a few minutes hewill not hear of the possibility ofopposition to an idea which onlyoccurred to him a few minutes ago.

"In the consideration of affairshis decisions are never founded onexact knowledge, nor on careful orprolonged consideration of the prosand cons. He seeks instinctively forthe large and preferably the novelidea such as is capable of reinter-pretation by the broadest brush.Whether the idea is practicable orimpracticable, good or bad, provid-ed he can see himself recommend-ing it plausibly and successfully toan enthusiastic audience, it com-mends itself to him.

"There is too deep a differencebetween our natures for me to feelat home with him or to regard himwith affection. He is a brilliant way-ward child who compels admira-tion but who wears out hisguardians with the constant strainhe puts upon them."

-12 August 1928Chamberlain, then Minister of Health,was writing to Lord Irwin, later LordHalifax. Ref: Gilbert, the OfficialBiography, Vol. V, Prophet of Truth(1976),pp295-97. »

ACTIONTHIS DAY by John G. Plumpton

One hundred years ago:Summer 1898 • Age 23"I do not accept theChristian or any other form ofreligious belief."

Shortly after he arrived back in Eng-land from India Churchill, as author

of The Story of The Malakand Field Force,was invited to meet "the Great Man,Master of the British world, the unchal-lenged leader of the Conservative party,a third time Prime Minister and ForeignSecretary at the height of his longcareer" (as he referred to Lord Salis-bury).

Salisbury told him: "I have beenkeenly interested in your book. I haveread it with the greatest pleasure and, ifI may say so, with admiration not onlyfor its matter but for its style." Heoffered to be of any assistance request-ed by young Churchill. Winstonresponded immediately with a requestto join the expedition to Khartoum.

For whatever reason, a vacancyoccurred to which Churchill wasappointed. In order to avoid a recall toIndia, he caught "a filthy tram" out ofMarseilles, thus keeping himself out oftouch from the authorities in London.

Before leaving for Egypt he madehis second political speech (not inRobert Rhodes James's Complete Speech-es). He wrote his mother that the 15 Julyspeech at Bradford was a complete suc-cess.

During preparations for the expe-dition up the Nile, he worked on hisdispatches for the Morning Post. He

could find little time to write letters buthe did write his mother that "if I am[killed] you must avail yourself of theconsolation of philosophy and reflecton the utter insignificance of all humanbeings....I do not flinch - though I donot accept the Christian or any otherform of religious belief....I shall comeback afterwards the wiser andstronger....and then we will think ofother and wider spheres of action."

Ashe pre-pared forbattle, hecomment-ed abouthis Com-mander- f( •';• </*•in-Chiefa n df u t u r eCabine tcolleague:"Kitchen-er said hehad known I was not going to stay inthe army - was only making a conve-nience of it; that he had disapproved ofmy coming in place of others." Headded that Kitchener "may be a general- but never a gentleman."

Churchill participated in the Battleof Omdurman on 2 September. Thebest account of this event is his own inThe River War. Professor Paul Rahe (FH85) presents a powerful argument forthe book's contemporary relevance:"Churchill's great, neglected work is,like Thucydides' history, a prose epic.His subjects—the Nile and its peoples;the conflict between Islam and moder-nity; the origins, character, and course

FINEST HOUR 99/35

of the Mahdist revolt against Egyptianrule with the Sudan; the resistancemounted by General Gordon at Khar-toum; the fecklessness of Gladstone'sLiberal administration; and the cam-paign of reconquest ultimately mount-ed on behalf of Egypt and Britain by SirHerbert Kitchener—offered him thesame sort of canvas available to Thucy-dides, and he took the endeavor as anoccasion for reflection on the moralresponsibilities attendant upon a greatpower and as an opportunity to explorethe relationships between civilizationand decadence, between barbarism andcourage, and between modern scienceand the changing character of war.

"In an age when the Great Democ-racies are likely to be called on torespond to ugly little conflicts markedby social, sectarian and tribal rivalriesin odd corners of the word.. .1 can thinkof no other historical work that betterdeserves our attention."

"All right-Winston." Telegram to his motherafter Omdurman. (Photo by Douglas Hall)

K1-S-M*. -IJ» « , • v " I !M*IT MM mfati-M I U

Seventy-five years ago:Summer 1923 • Age 48Hosey Rigge = Cozy Pig

In May Stanley Baldwin replaced thedying Andrew Bonar Law as Prime

Minister. While his family holidayed atCromer on the North Sea, Churchillspent the summer at Sussex Squareworking on the second volume of TheWorld Crisis, with periodic excursions tosupervise the renovation of Chartwell.While there he lived at a rented house,Hosey Rigge (which he immediatelynicknamed "Cozy Pig"), on the Wester-

ham Road. After her return, Clementinesuffered a throat infection so she stayedat Hosey Rigge while Churchill restedin the Mediterranean aboard the yachtof his wealthy friend the Duke of West-minster.

Clementine later told MartinGilbert that she did not want to go toChartwell "but Winston had his heartset on it." She did not wish to leaveLondon and she doubted the familycould afford the costs of renovation andmaintenance. But Churchill wrote herfrom the Duke's yacht: "My beloved, Ido beg you not to worry about money,or to feel insecure...Chartwell is to beour home.. .We must endeavour to livethere for many years and hand it overto Randolph afterwards." He outlinedhow he intended to make the necessarymoney by serving as a consultant withoil companies and writing, primarilythe latter. Furthermore, he was confi-dent that "if we go into office we willlive in Downing Street!" (Both thePrime Minister and Chancellor of theExchequer reside there. He wouldeventually hold both offices.)

On 14 August he went to see thePrime Minister. To Clementine hewrote; "I entered Downing Street by theTreasury entrance to avoid comment.This much amused Baldwin. HoweverMax [Lord Beaverbrook] rang up thismorning to say he hoped I had had apleasant interview and that I had great-ly heartened the PM about the Ruhr!He is a little ferret."

Fifty years ago:Summer 1948 • Age 77Publishing Volume I

Many Poles objected to certaincomments made by Churchill in

the U.S. edition of his first volume ofThe Gathering Storm. He deleted theoffending passages from the British edi-tion, explaining to Eddie Marsh that "itwas written in a feeling of anger againstthe behaviour of the present PolishGovernment and the temporary sub-servience of the Polish people to them."

Rebecca West reviewed the book inThe Saturday Review of Literature: "Mr.Churchill's account of the events lead-

ing up to the Second World War is apuzzling book. It is clear as crystalabout everything except the man whowrote it. He is without match in hisgeneration for his exquisitely feline por-traits of his enemies. But Churchill isthe leader of the Tory Party, and he isnot going to make it lose face altogeth-er, so though he gives Baldwin awayentirely, and frankly reveals NevilleChamberlain's incompetence at certainperiods, he preserves certain reticences.This leads him at times into slight falsi-fications of history....

"This volume indicates that someof Mr. Churchill's difficulties with hiscolleagues may be due to his phenome-nal egotism.. ..England loves him; it dis-trusts him, it fears him. England hasalways kept Winston Churchill becausebehind him they see the towers andparks of the great houses which werethe nerve centres of the old order; inhim they fear the insolence which wasthe occupational disease of those wholived in the great houses....We sigh inastonishment at the fools who year in,year out, kept out of power the man towhom we British owe our lives."

They not only kept him out ofpower before the war, but they threwhim out as soon as possible after. Butthey could not silence him. While con-tinuing to call for the defeat of theLabour politicians "whose crazy theo-ries and personal incompetence havebrought us down," he supported theGovernment's firm stand against theRussians who had established a block-ade of Berlin.

He desired a holiday in France butcurrency restrictions limited theamount of money he could take out ofEngland. This problem was solvedwhen Time-Life paid for serializationrights for The Second World War inFrench francs. He ended the summerwith a holiday in Aix-en-Provence, buta holiday for Winston Churchill wasunlike that of anyone else's, as we willsee in the next installment.

Twenty-five years ago:Summer 1973

F inest Hour announced the Library ofImperial History's Collected Works of

Sir Winston Churchill and published a

FINEST HOUR 99/36

press account of the launch in London:"The dwindling band of British

World War II heroes and statesmenstepped unsteadily from the pages ofhistory to honour Sir WinstonChurchill, smoke his favourite cigars,and drink his favourite brandy. Theoccasion was a luncheon in the chande-liered, blue-and-cream rococo ballroomof the Savoy Hotel to launch the firstpublication of the revered wartimeleader's entire literary works in one 34-volume set.

"Up to the high table falteringlystepped aging wartime heroes whoseexploits in the air, on land and at seahelped turn the tide against Nazi Ger-many and its allies as Churchill ledBritain through its 'finest hour.' Theywere joined by a generation ofChurchills, from Sir Winston's 88-year-old widow Lady Clementine, frail butproud, to his grandson Winston, 33,now a Member of Parliament."

The eulogies to Churchill, eightyears after his death, flowed as fast asdid his favourite brand of Champagne(Pol Roger) and cognac (Hine) amongthe 400 guests. Prime Minister Heath,presenting Lady Churchill with the firstvolume of the £945 ($2364) leather-bound, gold-embossed set, said, "onlyJulius Caesar matched Churchill'sachievement in writing history and liv-ing it."

The affair sought to recaptureeverything Churchill loved: From hisfavourite brand of Havana cigars(Romeo y Julieta), passed around afterthe meal, to the red roses and pinktulips decorating the tables, to "Beginthe Beguine" and other old favouritesplayed by the Savoy Blue Room stringquintet.

Guests included former PrimeMinister Harold Macmillan; the rela-tives of ten deceased prime ministersbesides Churchill, including his contro-versial predecessor, Neville Chamber-lain; and at least twelve retired wartimegenerals and twenty-five Battle-of-Britain pilots who with now-deceasedcomrades swept the Luftwaffe from theskies over Britain in 1940, earningChurchill's accolade:

"Never in the field of human con-flict was so much owed by so many toso few." M>

Send your questions (and answers) to the Editor

Riddles, Mysteries, EnigmasQhisaa

\Where are the graves of Churchill's'beloved nanny, Mrs. Everest, and

hlsliaughter Marigold, who died beforethe age of three?

g l have yetto read aission of a

Churchill erroror a flaw in hischaracter. Yet Iknow that a lotof historianswouldfindmany flawswhile still con-sidering him agreat man.

(on Listserv"Winston")

It's aLvalid

point, apetard onwhich we are

occasionally hoisted by our critics.But try these:

1) Deserting his natural home, theTory Party, at an opportune politicalmoment (over the issue of Free Trade,which he later abandoned) only to beforced to return to it afterward.

2) Championing the Dardanellesoperation without plenary authorityto bring it to a successful conclusion.

3) Misjudging his First Sea Lord,Fisher, who brought about his (tem-porary) political destruction in 1915.

4) Restoring the Gold Standardwithout commensurate reforms inemployment and wage policies.

5) Not listening to Bernard Baruchbefore plunging into the Wall Streetstock market in the late 1920s.

6) Wasting political capital oppos-ing the India Bill in the early 1930s,which was clearly going throughwith thumping majorities.

7) Trying to skewer Sam Hoare onan issue of Privilege when Sam's Toryfriends could stack the deck to protecthim, despite his guilt.

8) Standing up for Mr. DavidWindsor in the Abdication Crisis,long after that worthy had lost theright to support from anybody.

9) Abject miscalculation during theNorway invasion of April 1940,although some of this was due toCabinet dithering.

10) Placing faith in the FrenchArmy.

11) Confusing Blitzkreig with thestatic warfare of WW1.

12) Believing that capital shipswere safe from hostile aircraft.

13) Accepting leadership of theConservative Party in 1940.

14) Believing he could trust Stalin.15) Comparing poor Clem Attlee

and his friends to "a kind of Gestapo"in the 1945 General Election.

16) Staying on too long as PrimeMinister in the 1950s.

17) Believing that personal diplo-macy would make a difference inSoviet behavior after Stalin's death.

18) Not interceding more forceful-ly to resolve the Anglo-Americansplit over Suez in 1956.

Not everybody on the Listservbought this list, but Churchill mayhave. In The Grand Alliance, over thesinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse,he writes: "The efficiency of theJapanese in air warfare was at this timegreatly underestimated both by our-selves and by the Americans" (Ch. 12).During the Blitzkreig in France, hewrites, "I was shocked by the utter fail-ure to grapple with the Germanarmour, which, with a few thousandvehicles, was encompassing the entiredestruction of mighty armies" (Chapter3). Some respondents held theDardanelles unwinnable, even hadChurchill been in charge (the Turkishforts may have been short of ammuni-tion, but their mobile batteriesweren't), and questioned what wouldhave been gained had the fleet gotthrough—would Turkey have surren-dered, as Churchill thought? Thesepoints are worthy of further discussionand we will welcome articles on them.

The main point I wished to makewas that Churchill's faults were, likehis virtues, on a fairly grand scale,but that the latter outweigh the for-mer. And, as Professor Paul Addisonwrote, "I always feel that, paradoxi-cally, it diminishes Churchill whenhe's regarded as super-human, andI'm delighted to see the ChurchillCenter airing these issues." -Ed.

A Everest's grave (see photo, FH 88.£Xp43) is at the City of LondonCemetery, a short walk from the maingate to the right of the chapel. If youare in London and wish to visit, tourmanager Garry Clark can direct youto the location of the Cemetery andthe grave. Telephone: (01438) 723684or mobile phone (0836) 225099. Thegatekeepers can also direct you; it hasmany visitors. The first ChurchillTour visited the grave in 1983 andfound it in decrepit condition. As wedug around the base of the elegantold marble cross we found the namesof Winston and Jack Churchill, whoerected the monument. ICS/USApaid for raising and leveling the stoneand sandblasting to restore itsappearance ICS/UK, under GeoffreyWheeler, David Boler and NigelKnocker, has paid for perpetual care.

Marigold, whose grave is in KensalGreen Cemetery, London, is the onlydeceased child not buried at Bladon.

iThis department in issue #64 said'Churchill appeared on five covers of

hme magazine. Is that the full count?

AWe were way off! Churchilloccupied seven full Time covers:

14 April 1923,11 May 1925,4September 1939, 30 September 1940, 6January 1941 ("Man of the Year1940"), 2 January 1950 ("Man of theHalf-Century") and 5 November 1951.He also appeared with Stalin as smallillustrations behind the main coversubject, Franklin Roosevelt ("Man ofthe Year 1941") on the 5 January 1942issue, the artwork shown herewith.

*Does the 1942 FDR cover count as aChurchill one? Thanks for this data toPhyllisRuoff.Note:editorwillgivewholebloodfor the1923and1925issues!

FINEST HOUR 99/37

WitSWisdom

HUMES'S WIT AND WISDOMOn Listserv Winston (see p41)

the question arose over whereJames Humes's The Wit and Wisdomof Winston Churchilll (which sadlyomits attributions) sourced WSC'squote of Beaverbrook beingChurchill's "foul weather friend."Lord Moran's Churchill: The Strugglefor Survival, pl99, quotes Churchillas saying on 22 September 1944:"Max is a good friend in foul weath-er. Then, when things are goingwell, he will have a bloody rowwith you over nothing."

A question involved the originof another Churchill quote inHumes's book: "There is nothingwrong in change, if it is in the rightdirection. To improve is to change,so to be perfect is to have changedoften." It appears to be part of anexchange in the House of Commonswith Philip Snowden whenChurchill defended his first budgetin 1924, cf. Ephesian, WinstonChurchill, (1936 edition), p288.•Karl-Georg Schon

IDEA VS. COINCIDENCEOn one occasion, Sawyers

[Churchill's valet] was coping witha Churchill who was in a particular-ly bad mood. For one thing, thePrime Minister had been losingthings all morning.

"Sawyers, where are my glass-es?" he demanded petulantly.

"There, sir," saidSawyers, leaning overChurchill's shoulder as hesat, and tapping his pocket.

Getting ready forhis afternoon nap, thePrime Minister found him-self balked by anotherproblem."Sawyers, where is my hotwater bottle?" he asked.

"You are sitting onit, sir," said the unruffledSawyers. "Not a very goodidea," he added.

"It's not an idea, it'sa coincidence," triumphantlyreplied the reigning masterof English, so pleased with

his brilliant correction that he forgotall about his other troubles.

-Incident aboard "Commando," theLiberator bomber that conveyedChurchill on many of his wartimeflights, reported by the pilot, BillVanderkloot, in Bruce West's TheMan Who Flew Churchill (Toronto:McGraw Hill Ryerson 1975).

UNWELCOME AT RICHMONDClarence Martin writes:

"Reading We Happy WASPs byParke Rouse, Jr. (Dietz Press), amemoir of Richmond, Virginia inthe 1930s and 1940s, I came acrossthe following on page 45:

"Senator Byrd was not given tojocularity, but he relished two sto-ries about the Richmond visit ofWinston Churchill when Byrd wasGovernor (1926-1930) and Churchillcame to Richmond visiting the bat-tlefields of the Civil War (1929). TheByrds invited Churchill to stay atthe Governor's Mansion, andChurchill accepted.

On Churchill's first night theByrds entertained him at a black-tiedinner at the Governor's Mansion.R. Gray Williams, a Winchester Va.attorney, was also a house guest ofthe Byrds and was in the drawingroom when Churchill came down-stairs before dinner. MistakingWilliams for the butler, Churchillasked him for a cigar.

"I don't have one, sir," Williamsreplied, "but I'll get you one." Hehot-footed it across Capitol Squareto Scher's Confectionary andreturned with several splendid sto-gies. Hewouldn't accept Churchill's tip.

When Churchill asked forbrandy, evidently unaware thatVirginia was legally dry, Byrd putin an emergency call to his friendJohn Stewart Bryan for the loan of abottle. In those Prohibition timesbrandy was rare, but Bryan rusheda bottle to the Governor. Churchillconsumed so much that Byrd hadto open another bottle the nextnight.

As the Byrds bade Churchillgood-bye at the end of the visit,Mrs. Byrd turned to her husband."Harry," she said, "I don't knowmuch about Mr. Churchill, but Ihope you won't invite him to thishouse again."

Editor's note: Mr. Martin's quotewas repeated almost verbatim by retiredSenator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., addressingan ICS meeting in Richmond, Virginiain 1991. Senator Byrd also addedanother reason for his mother's displea-sure: "At the formal dinner the night ofhis arrival, he asked for English mus-tard. His hostess sent his request to thekitchen only to be informed that therewas none in the house. Mrs. Byrd toldMr. Churchill of her predicament and,trying to pass it off lightly, said shewould be glad to send someone to thestore if Mr. Churchill would like. Hesaid yes, that was what he would like!So Mrs. Byrd slowed the dinner to asnail's pace, while I was dispatched tothe grocery." M

FINEST HOUR 99/38

BOOKS, ARTS

& CURIOSITIES

"Earn This..."DICK FEAGLER

In a battlefield cemetery each marblecross marks an individual crucifix-ion. Someone—someone very

young, usually—has died for somebodyelse's sins.

The film "Saving Private Ryan"begins and ends in the military ceme-tery above Omaha Beach. By sundownof D-Day, 40,000 Americans had landedon that beach, and one in nineteen hadbecome a casualty.

The military brass purposely chosetroops with no combat experience forthe bulk of the assault force. The brassreasoned that an experienced infantry-man is a terrified infantryman. The oddsof dying in the early waves were sogreat that an informed soldier might beparalyzed with well-founded despair.But the young and idealistic mightmove forward into the lottery of death.

Director Steven Spielberg made"Saving Private Ryan" as a tribute to D-Day veterans. He wanted, reviewerssay, to strip the glory away from warand show the '90s generation what itwas really like. The reviews havepraised the first thirty minutes of thefilm and the special effects that graphi-cally show the blood and horror of theD-Day landing.

Unfortunately, American movieaudiences have become jaded connois-seurs of special effects gore. In thehands of the entertainment industry,violence has become just another pan-dering trick. But Spielberg isn't pander-ing.

Shocked by and wary of his depic-tion, I bought a copy of StevenAmbrose's book, D-Day. The story of

Mr. Feagler is a columnist for the ClevelandPlain-Dealer. Reprinted by permission, thanks tothe author and Marshall Wright, USMC, WW2.

the Normandy invasion is a story ofunimaginable slaughter: worse than Iever knew, and I thought I knew some-thing about it.

Saving Private Ryan,Steven Spielberg, Director;Dreamworks, 1998.

The young men who lived throughthose first waves are old men now.Many have asked themselves, every dayfor more than fifty years, why they sur-vived. It is an unanswerable question.The air was full of buzzing death. Whenthe ramps opened on many of the land-ing craft, all the men aboard were rid-dled with machine gun bullets before

In the early hours of D-Day, withthe outcome of the battle still in the bal-ance, the nation prayed. Ambrose tellsus that The New York Daily News threwout its lead stories and printed in theirplace the Lord's Prayer.

"I fought that war as a child," a his-torian on television said the other night.I knew what he meant. So did I. We allsaved fat and flattened cans and grewvictory gardens. But we did not all go toOmaha Beach. Or Saipan. Or Anzio.Only an anointed few did that.

The soldiers of World War II arebeginning to leave us now. In my fami-ly, six have gone and two are left. Wehave lost the uncle who was on Oki-nawa, the cousin who worked his wayup the gauntlet of Italy, and the cousinwho brought the German helmet backfrom North Africa.

These men left us with a simplerequest. You can hear that request in"Saving Private Ryan." I haven't read areview that has mentioned it, but it iswhat makes Spielberg's movie a master-piece.

they could step into the water.Beyond this cauldron of cordite and

carnage, half a world away, lay anAmerica and Canada united in purposewith their British brethren like no citizenunder sixty has ever seen. The wartouched everyone. The entire startinglineup of the 1941 New York Yankeeswere in military uniform. Almost everyfamily could hang a service flag in thewindow, with a star embroidered on itfor each relative in uniform.

FINEST HOUR 99 / 39

In the film, a squad of rangers issent behind enemy lines to save a manwhose three brothers have been killed inbattle. Higher headquarters wants himshipped home to spare his mother theagony of having all her sons killed incombat. So eight Rangers risk their livesfor one man. And when one of theRangers is mortally wounded, he asksPvt. Ryan to bend over so he can whis-per to him.

"Earn this," he says. >»

Saving Private Ryan...

And that is the request of all theyoung men who have died in all thewars, from Normandy to the ChosinReservoir to Da Nang to the Gulf.

Earn This.When the movie ended, the theater

was silent except for some muffled sobs.But the tears that scalded my eyes werenot just for the men who had died on

the screen, and in truth. Or for the menwho had lived and grown old and werebaffled about why they had beenspared.

I walked out into the world ofHoward Stern and Jerry Springer and"South Park," into the world of front-page coverage of Monica Lewinsky."Earn this" was still ringing in my ears.And the tears in my eyes were tears ofbetrayal. M>

Not Really Churchill's ChallengeMICHAEL RICHARDS

CHALLENGINGTHETRII "

Challenging the Tribe: Sir Winston S.Churchill, World Government and

World Leader-ship, by CraigRead. MinervaPress, London,1997, 402 pagesoversize paper-back, £8.99 in UK,$20 from theChurchill CenterNew Book Ser-vice.

Craig Read believes in WorldGovernment, and believes thatWinston Churchill did, too. But

(1) Churchill didn't; and (2) no one isgoing to "Challenge the Tribe" anytimesoon. This does not prevent Read's bookfrom being thought-provoking; but itwould be more fun to read had he stuckto his theme, instead of masqueradinganother superfluous and inaccuratebiography as a specialized study.

There are many errors. At Harrow,Churchill shows "no ability at work,games or schooling" (ix). At the Admi-ralty, Churchill aligns himself with LordFisher, who had "modernised the entireBritish navy, including replacing sailwith steam power..." (130). Jan Smuts isintroduced as "Jan Smut" (122). Read ison firm ground where he reiterateswhat we all know, but verbose: "Thereason why Churchill's numbers [onGerman rearmament] were basicallytrue and on balance fairly stated was theaddiction to detail in their composi-tion....This missionary gathering of per-sonal contacts and data provision tran-

scended all political boundaries andissues" (292). Churchill, that incisive edi-tor, would have scratched all this outand replaced it with something like this:"The figures were accurate because theywere carefully researched."

And then there are passages thatseem utterly indecipherable. The re-marks above are followed by this:"Political restraints and lines, neverstrong enough to obstruct Churchill'sroving appetite and curiosity, certainlywere not considered at that mortalmoment as deterrents"(293). Urn...

The last section of his book,"Churchill's Leadership and WorldGovernment," occupies only fortypages, but forms the nub of Mr. Read'sargument: "We must begin to employthe term 'world-society' instead of inter-national relations... (347). To supportthis view he brings together every wordof regret Churchill uttered over the sadhistory of the twentieth century, all themistakes the nations made, as an argu-ment for abolishing the nations. And tobe sure he found some good ones."Think of these people, decent, educat-ed, the story of the past laid out beforethem," Churchill wrote, in a letter toStanley Baldwin in 1928, musing overthe mistakes of Versailles. Mr. Read fas-tens on all this Churchillian sorrow anddiscontent as a launching pad for hisworld government solution, but he doesnot realize that Churchill usually accom-panied his catalogues of mistakes withhis own formulations, by which thenations (sovereign nations) might haveavoided them—or might avoid them inthe future. Instead he adds his own arti-cles of faith: "...the globe cannot support

FINEST HOUR 99 / 40

a massive system of interdependentdemocracies or semi-democracies, intenton economic growth and desirous of thebest lives possible for their citizens,including population growth, lowerinfant mortality and a gradual cessationof natural deaths. Something will haveto collapse" (31).

There are lots of examples ofmankind despoiling its nest. So whycan't "interdependent democracies" dosomething about it? Well, Mr. Readsays, "witness the demise of the currentgovernmental structure and politicaledifice. Such as already occurred in Rus-sia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Italy and inCanada." Canada?

Churchill was a believer in greatcombinations, but he never built hisdreams at the expense of nationalsovereignty, and held that with the helpof high minded leaders (like himself, ofcourse) the nations could reach "thebroad, sunlit uplands." He pointed tothe Chiefs of Staff system of World WarII as proof of this—a level of coopera-tion between two sovereign nations, hesaid rightly, that the world had neverbefore seen.

Churchill did not live to evaluatethe result of a half century without amajor war, although there certainlywere plenty of minor wars in his lasttwenty years and since. He was unableto contemplate the effect of having nogreat impetus toward unity amongdemocratic states, which he espoused;or on the international level, which Mr.Read espouses. There were a lot ofunpleasant movements and struggles,and there still are; but they are nothingcompared to the movements led byHitler, or by Stalin and his successors.

Maybe we have gone soft. Perhapslow morals and low morale and lowexpectations of leaders are the effects ofhaving no Great War to fight, no D-Daytroops to pray for, no great calamity, noinvader to occupy and enslave us.Maybe the Martians will finally launch awar of the worlds that will bring ustogether,' as in the film "IndependenceDay." In the meantime we would per-haps do well to observe Churchill'sexample, developing national leaderswith a semblance of the comprehensionhe focused, on international affairs andthe hopes of mankind. $

h t t p : / / w w w . w i n s t o n c h u r c h i l l . o r gRecent Discussions on Listserv "Winston"

LISTSERVWINSTON:Subscribe free to our discussion forum. Sendthe e-mail message SUSCRIBE WINSTON [email protected]—you'll receive a con-firmation and will then be able to send andreceive comments on all aspects of Churchill byour online community by e-mailing [email protected]. In case of problems con-tact our List Manager, Jonah Triebwasser:[email protected]

TOPIC EUROPETerrence Leveck, [email protected]:

I call the list's attention to the edito-rial page of The Wall Street Journal, 25March, "The Case for the Euro," wherethe author quotes Winston Churchill'sviews on a united Europe: "If Europewere once united in the sharing of itscommon inheritance there would be nolimit to the happiness, prosperity, andglory which its 300 or 400 million peo-ple would enjoy." One wonders if theEuropean Union as it is presently con-ceived, with its supra-national bureau-cracy immune from popular influenceand control, was what he had in mind.As a staunch defender of free enterprise,he would surely be dismayed by a com-mitment to socialism which has resultedin alarming rates of unemployment andflight of capital. Would he be willing togive France and Italy a say over thevalue of the British currency?

D. Spencer Hines:Churchill is still probably the great-

est person of the 20th Century, but Iknow a number of people who wouldnot agree. They dislike/hate himbecause they blame him for selling outEastern Europe to the Communists byallowing Stalin to take control. Personal-ly, I have no bias as I don't know whatcould have been done otherwise.

Rafal Mankoo, [email protected]:It is ahistorical to blame Churchill

for the communization of Eastern

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Europe, which was, indeed, a greattragedy. Only the military power of theUnited States, on the ground, broughtquickly to bear against Stalin, couldhave prevented that. Such an optionwas a foolish pipedream. The Ameri-cans wanted to bring the boys home.

Editor, [email protected]:Ratal's comments remind me of an

arresting conversation in Liepaja, Latvia,during our 1995 bicycle tour of the Lat-vian coast on the 50th anniversary of VEDay. (It was no such thing to the Lat-vians, who were by then fighting withthe Germans in a rearguard actionagainst the oncoming Red Army,equipped with Sherman tanks courtesyUncle Sam. The defenders didn't surren-der until May 8th.) It illustrates a depthof feeling which I think we in the Westrarely comprehend.

The British Ambassador to Latvia,Richard Ralph, had kindly arranged forlocal officials to meet us enroute. InLiepaja on our second morning out wewere told that the mayor would comeround for coffee. When we mentionedChurchill, he mentioned Yalta. I gamelymade the case for Yalta, which endedwith certain "guarantees" toward

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Poland but no hope for the Baltic States,which we maintained was the bestChurchill could get out of it, given theposition of the Red Army and FDR'sreluctance, for the reasons stated, tobreak with Stalin while there was stillsome hope. The mayor replied: "But youand the British made a serious mistake.You didn't nuke Moscow. Think of howmuch trouble you would have savedyourselves-not to mention us."

We swallowed hard and tried tosay there was no way the British orAmerican people would have stood forthat after what they'd been through, andthere were few Baltic-Americans amongthe voters to influence the political lead-ership. It didn't do any good. "Youshould have nuked them," he repeated.He then told us he had strafing scarsacross his stomach, received as a boywhen he dared venture onto the Liepajabeach one night. The beach was strungwith barbed wire from the Polish-Lithuanian border to northern Estonia,swept dean every evening after curfew,and patrolled by armed guards withAlsatians. (The barbed wire didn't dis-appear until 1991.) He and his pals usedto walk backward into the water andthen forward, over and over again, leav-ing masses of footprints, to goad theSoviets into thinking there had been araiding party landing in the night. Onenight the guards caught them andopened fire. The kids got away—just.Some of them were hit.

I guess how we look at these thingsall depends on our experience. >»

FINEST HOUR 99/41

CHURCHILL and GEN. LEEA spirited discussion occurred over the

summer as to what Churchill thought of theAmerican Civil War and the decision ofRobert E. Lee to adhere to Virginia and theConfederacy. Hoping to keep this one goingwe posted as follows:

Debaters on Lee may wish to readtwo good papers in the Proceedings of theInternational Churchiill Societies 1990-1991: "Churchill's 'American Civil War1

as History," by Col. Joseph B. Mitchell,and '"The Noblest and Least AvoidableConflict...' Winston Churchill and theAmerican Civil War" by Dr. James W.Muller. This is available for $10 fromChurchill Stores (address on page 2).

A signal moment at the VirginiaChurchill conference in 1991 came whena passage by Dr. Muller caused Col.Mitchell to get up and announce that hehad never heard Gen. Lee spoken of insuch terms, particularly in Richmond ofall places, and that he did not intend tolisten any more, whereupon he dulyleft. Dr. Muller, qualifying himself forour croix de guerre, remained unruffledand carried on. Later he was permittedto leave the Confederate capital under aflag of truce. Muller stated:

"...it is disappointing that Churchilldoes not ask whether this noble soldiermade the wrong choice. There is aninescapable contradiction in Lee's posi-tion. At West Point, as he became acadet, he adhered to the motto bindinghim not only to duty and honor but alsoto country; and it was on the last pointthat the Virginian erred. He mistookVirginia for his country, though he hadsworn to defend the Constitution of theUnited States. Since he agreed with Lin-coln that secession was unconstitutional,one is forced to conclude that Lee know-ingly violated his oath. That he did soon account of his lifelong allegiance tothe State of Virginia does not excuse hismisdeed, however poignant it makeshis quandary. The Confederacy was notonly, as the event proved, a lost cause; itwas also a bad cause, as Lee knew fromthe start. His nobility is thus tinged witha tragic flaw. [Col. Mitchell stood up.]

"Yet Churchill breathes not a hint ofcriticism of the Virginian. He comes to

the fair conclusion that 'the great Ameri-can Civil War' was 'the noblest and leastavoidable of all the great mass-conflictsof which till then there was record.' Itmay seem almost churlish to criticizethe greatest captain of that war here in'world-famous Virginia,' but for all thatwe admire Lee we must not shrink fromdefending the Union. Robert E. Leecould not have avoided the war, but hecould have avoided fighting on thewrong side of it..." [Col. Mitchell left.]

Readers may like to reviewChurchill's marvelous might-have-been,"If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Get-tysburg" (Collected Essays, 1974). Wehope to reprint it next year for a mini-conference to be held at Gettysburg("Churchill and Eisenhower at Gettys-burg," 24-26 September 1999).

WHAT WOULD HE SAY?Karl-Georg Schon, [email protected]:

In the background of some debateson "Winston" there lies the question,What would Churchill do, think, saytoday in this or that situation or on thisor that issue? Now this is of course avery intriguing question, especially asno one will ever be proven right orwrong. But perhaps it might be interest-ing as well to know which Churchillyou are talking about.

Is it the one who said, "I believe thatworking classes all over the world arerecognising they have common interestsand not divergent interests" (Swansea,17 August 1908)?

Or is it the Churchill who said, "Ihave not become the King's First Minis-ter in order to preside over the liquida-tion of the British Empire" (MansionHouse, London, 10 November 1942)?

Or could it be the Churchill whowrote, "We are fighting to reestablishthe reign of law and to protect the liber-ties of small countries" (War CabinetPaper on Norway, 16 December 1939)?

Or perhaps the Churchill of the per-centages deal with Stalin?

I do not write this in a neo-revision-ist vein. What I would like to stress isthat any statesman (in Lloyd George'sdefinition "a politician with whom youhappen to agree") is bound to see prob-lems and situations under different

FINEST HOUR 99/42

aspects depending on the situation heand his country happen to be in at themoment. This, in fact, is the essence ofthe art of statesmanship.

"To improve is to change. To beperfect is to change often" (Churchill asChancellor of the Exchequer in thedebate on his first budget, April, 1925.)

It would be important to define theexperiences you are thinking of whenyou consider the Churchill who woulddo or say this or that today. The cavalrycharge at Omdurman? The trenches ofFlanders? Dunkirk? The Finest Hour?VE-Day? The H-Bomb? The collapse ofthe Soviet Union? The establishment ofthe Euro? What would be the positionof his country? Victorian Empire? JuniorPartner of the USA? Pre-ThatcherBritain? Today's Britain?

To take Churchill's views more orless for granted on some question ofpresent-day politics or policy is not onlyadventurous; it debases "the most won-derful man" Field-Marshal Lord Alan-brooke had "ever met" (Diary for 27May 1941).

WSC and FDR vs. STALINProf Brian Villa, [email protected]:

Is there really any good evidencethat Churchill was prepared to be moreconfrontational with the Soviets thanwere FDR and the American diplomaticestablishment? Let me now lay out afew elements that might stimulate dis-cussion.

The view that WSC knew betterand was blocked by the Americans wasfirst advanced by Chester Wilmot basedon no particular evidence and by ElliotRoosevelt who said his father Franklinwas upset at Winston's inclination to beconfrontational and who confessed toworking to block Churchill. The othermajor evidence was provided byChurchill's physician, particularly in hisrecollections of remarks Churchill madein Teheran in 1943. The view thatChurchill was not very anti-Soviet andeasily caved in to FDR is made by JohnCharmley in his very controversialworks. Where are the good evidenceand the good argument? Any takers?

More on this next issue; all commentswelcomed, by email or mail. H>

DOUGLAS HALL'S CHURCHILLIANA

Churchill Commemoratives Calendar Part 91975-1989: After The Deluge

LEFT: Hand-made doll representing Churchill in the ceremonial robes of a Knight of the Garter, by Peggy Nisbet; and a character jugfrom Wood & Sons of Stoke-on-Trent in their "Pride of Britain"series, both 1980. RIGHT: A cold-cast bronze bust, six inches tall, and a

pewter effect high relief wall plaque, five inches in diameter, both by Marcus Replicas, designed by Elizabeth Sharp, 1986.The large items are flanked by a pair of bone china thimbles from Francesca China, 1987

The Churchilliana industry abatedsomewhat after the deluge of thecentenary year. Some limited edi-

tion 1974 issues continued to sellthroughout the rest of the 1970s. Insome cases the full edition was not sold.

Karin Churchill (no relation)missed the centenary but in 1975 pro-duced a cold-cast bronze limited editionfull-length figure of Churchill in Garterrobes and in the following year came upwith a small limited edition bust. AlvaMuseum Replicas of New York intro-duced a copy of Oscar Nemon's bust ina plastic resin/marble dust compositematerial they called "Alvastone"—quitea nice reproduction, 9 1/2 inches tallincluding its polished wooden plinth,which continues to be available fromChurchill Stores (address on page 2). In1976 Grantmere marketed a 10-inch-tallbust, modelled by John Armstrong, ineither black basalt or bronze effect.Although not so controversial as theEpstein bust Mr. Armstrong's renditionwas not universally liked and not toomany copies were sold, giving it a rarityvalue in 1990 of £500 in the UK and$2000 in the USA.

The Franklin Mint offered in 1977 asmall purple crystal glass paperweightcontaining a white relief portrait of

Churchill. In the same year IvorRoberts-Jones made available a 32-inch-tall bronze maquette of his ParliamentSquare statue. On its black graniteplinth it was a faithful replica of the full-size effigy, but its smaller scale tendedto exaggerate "the considerable allegori-cal illusion"disliked by Lady Soames.The maquettes were offered with abreathtaking price tag (I forget just howmuch but one sold in the USA a fewyears ago at $10,000, albeit with a pol-ished marble plinthe) and fewer thanhalf the intended edition of 500 weresold.

A nice ceramic piece was commis-sioned by the Observer newspaper in1977 for the Queen's Silver Jubilee. Themug, more of a tankard really at 4 1/2inches tall x 4 inches diameter, had sepiaportraits on a white background of theQueen and the seven Prime Ministers,who had served during her reign.

Nineteen-eighty brought a superbglass-bottomed one-pint pewter tankardfrom the Naval and Military Club, com-memorating the 40th anniversary ofChurchill's first appointment as PrimeMinister. Engraved all around with thedates and titles of Churchill's offices, itcarried a high relief cameo bust byOscar Nemon. In the same year Wood

FINEST HOUR 99/43

& Sons of Stoke-on-Trent commencedtheir "Pride of Britain" series of charac-ter jugs with a nice 5 1/2-inch-tall jug ofChurchill in grey hat, black jacket, yel-low waistcoat and spotted bow tie. Thiswas another one that earned little familyapproval.

Peggy Nisbet introduced two veryunusual pieces of Churchilliana: 7 1/2-inch-tall dressed dolls, one in morningdress and the other in full Garter robes.To coincide with the 1981 TV serial "TheWilderness Years," starring RobertHardy and Sian Phillips, Keith Leemodelled a 12-inch-tall cold-cast bronzefigure of Churchill in a limited editionof 250. Widely acclaimed as one of thebest Churchill bronzes, the edition soldout very quickly and within a few yearsI was turning away offers of six timesthe original price! A heavy eight-inch-long polished pewter paper knife with afull-length figure of Churchill as thehandle appeared in 1982, and later thesame year Staffordshire character jugsreissued the Sylvac jug, primarily forexport to the USA. This jug hasChurchill wearing a cream coat with ablack collar and black hat; a silver-tipped cane forms the handle.

In 1983 the National Trust's"Churchill at Chartwell" plate, designed

Churchilliana, continued...

by John Holder and made by OakleyFine China, went on sale at Chartwell.Originally priced at £35, it has sinceappreciated threefold on the secondarymarket. An enduring 1983 introductionby Royal Doulton, still on sale in HighStreet china shops, was Adrian Hugh-es's "Man-in-the-white-suit," a 10 1/2-inch-tall earthenware figure. Originallyoffered at £55, it is now ticketed £85, or$180 in the USA.

The highlight of 1984 was the open-ing to the public of the Cabinet WarRooms, Churchill's underground opera-tional headquarters, opposite St. James'sPark. This brought another rich collec-tion of Churchilliana into the publicdomain plus, in the form of a well-stocked souvenir shop, another sourceof Churchill memorabilia. The WarRooms shop always stocks a range ofChurchillian gifts including audio cas-settes, badges, books, busts, figures,fridge magnets, hip flasks, jugs, lighters,medals, mugs, pictures, plates, post-cards, posters, plaques, playing cards,Punch cartoons, sweets, table mats,tankards, teaspoons, thimbles, tobiesand videos—quite enough to start a col-lection! Don't miss it in London.

In 1985 from Holland came a brassmedal commemorating the 40thanniversary of "Operation Manna" (thedropping of food supplies to the liberat-ed Dutch civilian population) whichincorporates a portrait of Churchill.

Perhaps the highlight of that yearwas the 11 1/2-inch-tall figure—de-signed by Andrew Turner for the Histo-ry in Porcelain Company—in a limitededition of 375, of Churchill standing onthe steps of 10 Downing Street. The fig-ure was endorsed by ICS, Lady Soamesand Sir John Colville, and was originallyoffered for £535 in the UK and $980 inthe USA. Not surprisingly the price lim-ited the market and the edition was notsold out until the early 1990s (colourphoto on cover of FH 55).

Caverswall China celebrated the40th anniversary of VE-Day with a bonechina plate and a thimble. The plate, notthe best thing Caverswall ever did, hasthe crowd scene in front of BuckinghamPalace on 8 May 1945 in the centre withthe Royal Family and Churchill in twoseparate inserts at top and bottom.

Marcus Replicas of Bottesford, in1986, launched their highly regardedsix-inch-tall cold-cast bronze bust ofChurchill, together with a 5-inch-diame-ter pewter effect wall plaque. Both were

BELOW LEFT: Keith Lee's 12-inch-tall cold-cast bronze figure, 1981, in a limited editionof 250, issued to coincide with the TV series "The Wilderness Years" starring Robert

Hardy. (Author's collection) BELOW RIGHT: Karin Churchill's cold-cast bronze limitededition full-length figure of Churchill in Garter robes. (Editor's collection)

on sale in the Blenheim Palace andImperial War Museum gift shops aswell as High Street outlets. Later thatyear Staffordshire Fine Ceramics intro-duced a "War Heroes" series of minia-ture character jugs, just 21/2 inches tall,which included a nicely modelled andpainted representation of Churchill.

In the following year StaffordshireFine Ceramics produced a toby jug ofChurchill, seated and wearing a morn-ing suit, with the front door of 10Downing Street at his back. This was ina limited edition of 1000 exclusively forthe North American market; but,although nothing like the full editionhas been sold, SFC seem reluctant to sellone in the UK (to me) and will not evenquote a price! Francesca China issued apair of bone china Churchill thimbles in1987, one image bare-headed, the otherwith a black hat; both are beautifullydecorated but useless as sewing aids.

In 1988 we saw the first of PeggyDavies's Churchill designs followingher retirement from Royal Doulton. Itwas not memorable, just a fairly ordi-nary character jug with the "Prestige"backstamp. Later that year, MichaelSutty produced his superb 16-inch-tallporcelain figure of Churchill as a twen-ty-year-old Second Lieutenant in the 4thHussars (see back cover). Expertlysculpted and very finely painted, thefigure was to have been in a limited edi-tion of 250 selling at £500. An examplewas on display at the Chartwell giftshop, where orders could be placed.Margaret Thatcher, a devotee of Sutty'swork, purchased one of the first pieces.Unfortunately before the edition couldbe completed Sutty's business wasbankrupted when an American cus-tomer defaulted on payment for a largeorder.

Nineteen eighty-nine saw PeggyDavies's first commission for KevinFrancis Ceramics: the splendid "Spirit ofBritain" toby jug in a choice of threecolourways and a limited edition of5000. Staffordshire Fine Ceramics reis-sued Shorter's 1939 "Admiralty" charac-ter jug, using the original moulds butadding a cigar, while Wood Potters ofBurslem brought out a new characterjug to commemorate the 50th anniver-sary of Churchill's return to the Admi-ralty. M>

FINEST HOUR 99 / 44

DESPATCH BOXMORECHESSAnent my

"The TwoChurch i l l s

and Chess" (FH 97 and this column inFH 98), I have found another referenceto the game in Churchill's History of theEnglish-Speaking Peoples, Vol. 3: "Marl-borough was so sickened by the slaugh-ter of Malplaquet and disheartened bythe animosities crowding upon him athome that he would henceforward onlywage war as if it were a game of chess."-HENRY CROOKS, WANTAGE, OXON., UK

THE WEST INDIES REMEMBER(To Nigel Knocker) Permit me the

honour of congratulating your groupfor its sterling work in keeping alive thememories of one of the most importantfigures of the 20th century. We in theEnglish-Speaking Caribbean still trea-sure not only the language and com-mon cultural traditions shared with ourgreat motherland but also still hold inhigh esteem the memory of the coura-geous leadership and statesmanshipdisplayed by the late Sir WinstonChurchill.

The West Indian Regiment servedwith pride and distinction during theSecond World War in every major the-atre that witnessed British militaryinvolvement, including North Africa.My own country, Guyana (formerlyBritish Guiana), produced the longestserving Secretary General of the Com-monwealth, Sir Shridath Ramphal.

There has recently been expressed aneed to start a similar institution hereand thus do our part to preserve andrecognize the legacy of this great believ-er in freedom, democracy and moraljustice. I have been mandated the task ofput t ing it all together and as suchwould graciously welcome your kindestassistance in this regional initiative.-MIKE SINGHCOORDINATOR OF THE CHURCHILLPROJECT FOR THE COMMONWEALTHCARIBBEAN, GEORGETOWN, GUYANA

ON THE CHURCHILL TRAILMy wife and I and our eleven year-

old son recently returned from a holi-day in the UK, including a bit ofChurchill's Britain. The Third WinstonChurchill Symposium, on Churchill'sLife of Marlborough (see also pp6-7)was interesting and most stimulating.The symposiarch, Piers Brendon, Keep-er of the Churchill Archives, directed alively exchange by symposiasts. It wastoo bad that there was only a handful inthe audience to enjoy it. We thought itwas all just as good as the first two sym-posiums, which we also attended,although the surroundings were consid-erably more genteel.

During the Friday afternoon breakat Blenheim, nearly everyone visited thenewly renovated graves of Sir Winstonand family in the churchyard of St. Mar-tin at Bladon. Even though a consider-able sum was spent repairing the dam-age done from years of wind, rain andvisitors, the effect is unchanged. It is stilla simple and peaceful grave (see pl3).

We also spent a day in Woodford,Churchill's constituency, with DavidThomas, author of Churchill, Member forWoodford. There we visited several sitesbut there was little evidence ofChurchill's years in the area. This dis-turbs Mr. Thomas very much. AtHawkey Hall we did see a bronzeplaque, which Churchill presentedupon its opening in 1955. And there wasa photo of Sir Winston and Clementineplaced on the wall at Bancroft School,where they were both awarded theFreedom of the Borough in 1945. Exceptfor the statue of Churchill at WoodfordGreen, however, there was nothing thatthe average citizen might note.

There are quite a number ofChurchill statues about the country, andI did not see one that I did not like:Westerham, Chartwell, Woodford; andin London at Bond Street, Westminsterand the Guildhall. For beautiful sur-roundings, though, none are more love-ly than those of the Oscar Nemon statueof Churchill in the Pines Garden at St.

Margaret's Bay near Dover. There in apeaceful and quiet setting (just we threeand two gardeners), Churchill looks outover a lake and six-acre garden towardsa stunning view of the white cliffs. Itwas really quite impressive.

While in Dover, we toured thesecret wartime tunnels under DoverCastle. It was from here that the evacua-tion from Dunkirk was directed byVice-Admiral Ramsay. And it wasamazing to learn the extent of otherwartime activity that went on in thosetunnels. As our guide was leading usthrough them, I noticed a copy ofArthur Pan's portrait of Churchill hang-ing on the tunnel wall. The guide saidthat of the thousands of school childrenthat pass through the tunnels each year,very few are able to identify whose pic-ture it is. My son, who is a buddingChurchillian, immediately piped in withthe answer.

I could go on about the CabinetWar Rooms, Chartwell and more, but Iwon't. However, I cannot end this nar-rative without telling of Jack Darrah atBletchley Park. Jack is doing a valuableservice to enlighten many of thoseschool children about who WinstonChurchill was and what he did. Jackrolled out the red carpet for us in open-ing his display of Churchilliana housedin several large rooms of the mansion atBletchley Park. The exhibit, arranged inchronological order, takes you fromChurchill's youth and early career inone room to his funeral in the last room.While most of the items are inside giantglass display cases, Jack doesn't hesitateto take them out for a closer look. Thecollection includes both old and newitems, though nearly all of them areperiod pieces. And they run the gamutfrom old posters, photos and flags tobooks, clothing and ceramics. There'seven a life size cut-out of WSC. In show-ing us all this, Jack described how healso guides groups of children throughit. I am certain that hearing Jack's storiesof Churchill while surrounded by hisenormous exhibit is a hit with youngand old. I salute Jack on the wonderfuljob he is doing to "keep the memorygreen." (See also FH 91 ppl8-19. -Ed.)-FRED HARDMAN, SPENCER, W.V., USA $

FINEST HOUR 99 / 45

CHURCHILLTRIVIA

BY CURT ZOLLER ([email protected])

Test your knowledge! Most ques-tions can be answered in backissues of Finest Hour or other

Churchill Center publications, but it'snot really cricket to check. 24 questionsappear each issue, answers in the fol-lowing issue. Questions are in six cate-gories: Contemporaries (C), Literary(L), Miscellaneous (M), Personal (P),Statesmanship (S), War (W).

865. At what occasion was Churchill aguest of Kaiser Wilhelm in 1914? (C)

866. What are the Chartwell Bulletins? (L)

867. Where can you find a memorial toWinston Churchill representing a hugebronze hand raised in a V-sign? (M)

868. How often was Churchill on thecover of Time Magazine? (P)

869. What did Churchill call the "mostunsordid act in the history of anynation"? (S)

870. What uniform did Churchill wearat his meeting with Roosevelt atArgentia in August 1941? (W)

871. On what occasion did Churchill'snephew John Spencer-Churchill com-pose a coronation march for him? (C)

872. What was the last major literarywork Churchill handled withoutresearch assistants? (L)

873. Name the sculptor who created thebronze statues of Roosevelt andChurchill sitting on a bench in NewBond Street, London. (M)

874. What commercial brands of cigarswere Churchill's favourites? (P)

875. Who was the British statesman andphilosopher in whose practices Chur-chill viewed political leadership? (S)

876. Who captured Churchill during theBoer War? (W)

877. Who described Churchill as "ridingin triumph through Persepolis"? (C)

878. What was Adam Marshall Diston'sconnection with Churchill? (L)

879. What personal airplanes didChurchill use during 1943-1945? (M)

880. When did Churchill give his maid-en speech in the Commons? (P)

881. What is the "Armistice Dream"which Churchill mentioned in The WorldCrisis? (S)

882. On 27 April 1941 Churchill wroteabout war: "There is only one thingcertain about war " What was "cer-tain"? (W)

883. Who sponsored Churchill's wife,Baroness Spencer-Churchill, when sheentered the House of Lords? (C)

884. Name the title of the British editionof While England Slept. (L)

885. Which American Vice-Presidentargued with Churchill against anAnglo-American bloc? (M)

886. When were Winston Churchill andClementine Hozier married? (P)

887. What did Churchill consider toremain "the sovereign definition ofdemocracy"? (S)

888. On what occasion did Churchillsend the following message to GeneralWilson: "This is a time to think of Cliveand Peterborough and of Rooke's mentaking Gibraltar." (W)

Answers to Churchilltrivia FH 97:

(841) "In his speeches he revealed arange of thought, an authority ofmanner and a wealth of knowledge,which neither friends nor foesattempted to dispute" was the wayChurchill characterized his father'sspeeches. (842) Churchill was paid £5for the Indian frontier articles, althoughhe wanted £10. (843) It took Churchillthree tries to get into Sandhurst. (844)Churchill attended a football game inearly 1930 when he visited at ColumbiaUniversity and commented, "Actually itis somewhat like Rugby. But why doyou have to have all those committeemeetings?" (845) "....prejudices diehard" wrote Churchill to MichaelCollins on the Irish problems, 7 July1922.

(846) Lord Alfred Douglas accusedChurchill of issuing false communiqueson the battle of Jutland. (847) The "Pro-file for Victory" was painted by AlfredEgerton Cooper. (848) "How to StopWar" was printed in the Evening Stan-dard of 12 June 1936 and in Step by Step1936-1939, p.37.

(849) Michael Collins was assassinated22 August 1922. (850) Churchill waswithout an office after his defeat atDundee in 1922. (851) The Curzon linewas established as the Eastern frontierof Poland. (852) The Lee-Metfordrifles had a range of 2900 yards whenoutfitted with a dial sight.

(853) Hugh Franklin, a military suffrag-ist, attacked Churchill on the train,blaming Churchill for Franklin's beingarrested on "Black Friday" 9 December1910. (854) Savrola's adversary wasPresident Antonio Molara of Laurania.(855) Churchill was 22 when he madehis first political speech on 26 July 1897.(856) Sir Ernest Cassel furnished alibrary for Churchill's new house.

(857) James Louis Garvin, editor, wrotein The Observer of 9 August 1914 thatChurchill" understands the nature ofwar." (858) Germany's surrender: Gen.Eisenhower telephoned Gen. Ismay,who called John Martin, Churchill'sPPS. Martin didn't want to wake thePM, so next morning Capt. RichardPirn, in charge of the map room,brought the news to WSC. (859) LordDerby in a letter to Lloyd George on 19August 1916, considered Churchill"untrustworthy." (860) Churchillreceived £10,000 for the British Empirebook rights to Marlborough.

(861) The name of the steamer whichtransported Churchill from Delagoa Bayto Durban on 21-23 December 1899 wasthe Induna. (862) Mary Churchill (LadySoames) was born on 15 September1922; on the same date, Churchill wroteto Knight, Frank and Rutley offeringto buy Chartwell. (863) The 1947 note,"It showed where we stood," referred tothe orders Churchill gave to attack theFrench fleet at Oran. (864) OperationCATAPULT was the seizure of Frenchships in British ports and the actionagainst French ships at Oran in July1940. M>

FINEST HOUR 98/46

AMPERSAND

WESTERHAM, KENT, JUNE 5TH— A n e w SUm-

mer coach service to Chartwell hasproved very popular and successful,"both in terms of being a 'green' trans-port initiative and in providing an excel-lent service to visitors at much less costthan rail and taxi," writes Chartwelladministrator Carole Kenwright. (Seerail notes in this column, FH 91.) The"Chartwell Explorer" left Charing Crosson weekends through September 6thand added three-weekday service dur-ing the summer. Return tickets cost only£3 adult and £1.50 children, or £12/6

respectively including entry toChartwell (less for National Trust mem-bers). This will be published too late tobe of value to members this year, but wewill announce next year's schedule inour Spring number.

Til 1JojpougJh.

JLVuissian iCVfesWASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 1ST— A n e wexhibit, "World War II Through RussianEyes," opened today at the Ronald Rea-gan Center for International Trade, 130014th St., NW. The exhibit opens the eyesof its many visitors, more than 10,000 inthe first weekend, to the terrible carnageinflicted on the Russian people. Over 27million Russians died; German forcesburned 1710 cities and towns and 70,000villages completely or partially.

Among the many interesting topicsis the controversy concerning thealleged conduct of Russian troops inBerlin after the signing of the cease-fire,who were said to have committed manyrapes, murders and robberies of Ger-

man citizens, while shelling and burn-ing the city, long after the cessation ofhostilities. A document on exhibit, fromthe Russian commander on proposedcease-fire terms, clearly shows his desireto end the misery of the people on bothsides and the needless slaughter of thelocal citizenry.

This is a terrific exhibit includingsome notable references to Churchill inan accompanying film. -Craig Horn

Jke Firs

SYDNEY, JULY 18TH—As we go to press,word arrives of what may be the oldestvessel named for WSC, the yawl Win-ston Churchill, built in Hobart, Tasmaniain 1942. This beautiful, 15.5-metre yachttook part in the August 1998 Southport-to-Queensland Race, mainly for the funof it, according to her owner, RichardWinning, who has spent A$360,000 tobuy and restore her. We are trying tocontact Mr. Winning, and to obtain pho-tographs for FH. Our thanks to AlfredJames and Clarence Martin. $

Number Ten by Georgina LandemareEdited and annotated for the modern kitchen by Barbara F. Langworth

(Email: [email protected])

Mrs. Landemere's cooking was much appreciated by the Churchills. In a letter to her daughterMary, Mrs. Churchill wrote from a villa near Carthage: "Last night we had partridge for din-ner which... was cooked for an hour and a half. The result was concrete....Mrs. Landemere cookspartridges for only fifteen minutes. Your poor father literally cannot eat the food."—Clementine Churchill by Mary Soames

SUMMER SALADSCelery, Beetroot and Apple Salad(upper right in photo)

2 large dessert (sweet) apples peeled,cored, cut into squares and placedin cold, salted water to keep crisp

1 head of celery cut into small strips(about 1 cup)

1 large cooked beet(root), diced

Dressing: 4 Tb cream, 1/2 oz (1 Tb)sugar, salt and pepper (seasonings),1 Tb vinegar, 1/2 tsp preparedmustard

Strain off water from apples, mix inwith dressing; add beetroot and celery.

Mimosa Salad-for 4 (photo, upper left)

One small head of lettuce, quarteredFour oranges, peeled and quarteredDressing: 3/8 cup cream, 1/8 cuplemon juice, salt to taste.Yolk of hard-boiled egg pressed

through a sieveChopped parsley

Arrange lettuce and oranges on individ-ual plates. Pour dressing over salad andsprinkle with egg yolk and parsley.

Tomato Salad (photo, front)Skin and seed one pound of toma-

toes.* Cut each tomato into 8 pieces. Putin a dish with a sprinkle of sugar, saltand pepper.

Dressing: 4 Tb oil, 1 Tb tarragonvinegar, 1 Tb chilli [sic] vinegar, 1 tspprepared mustard, 2 Tb chopped chivesand 2 Tb snipped tarragon leaves.

Put the tomatoes into the dressingand leave to stand for 2 hours beforeserving.

*Dip the tomato into boiling waterfor about ten seconds, then drain. Re-move the core with a sharp knife andpeel off the skin. Cut the tomato in halfhorizontally and gently remove seeds. &

FINEST HOUR 98/47

IMMORTAL WORDS

"In one respect a cavalry charge is very like ordinary life.

So long as you are all right, firmly in your saddle, your horse in hand, and well armed,

lots of enemies will give you a wide berth. But as soon as you have lost a stirrup, have a

rein cut, have dropped your weapon, are wounded, or your horse is wounded, then is

the moment when from all quarters enemies rush upon you."

-Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life (1930)

Though Churchill was only briefly a full-time regular soldier, he wrote about it as few soldiers ever have. Undoubtedly the best portray-al of him as a soldier is this splendid china figure by Michael Sutty, a foremost military modeller, produced in 1988. It depicts

Churchill in 1898, two years before the Charge at Omdurman, in the full dress uniform of a second lieutenant of the Fourth Hussars.PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUGLAS HALL • SEE "CHURCHILL COMMEMORATIVES," PAGES 43-44.

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FINEST HOUR...Publishing Inc. Production by New England Foil Stamping Inc. Printed by Reprographics Inc. Made in U.S.A. GOOD NEWS ON CONNOISSEUR'S GUIDE AND PEACEMAKER The prices of