May 7, 2013

ACTION THIS DAY: FINEST HOUR 146, SPRING 2010

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

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125 years ago
Spring 1885 • Age 10
“Gladstone is a brute”

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Winston was enjoying his new school and was no longer at the bottom of his class, but neither was he at the top. The best showing he could make was fourth out of ten in English, Classics and French. In Conduct, he continued dead last among the twenty-nine pupils.

In April, he wrote to his father describing the enthusiasm about Lord Randolph’s prospects for becoming Prime Minister: “I have been out riding with a gentleman who thinks that Gladstone is a brute and thinks that ‘the one with the curly moustache ought to be Premier.’ The driver of the Electric Railway said ‘that Lord R. Churchill would be Prime Minister.'”

Churchill asked his father “to sign your name in full at the end of your letter” because “everybody wants your autograph.” Winston did not disclose that he was selling his father’s autographs to his classmates! He apparently didn’t tell his mother either, for he was looking to expand his product line. He wrote her in May that his father had sent a half dozen autographs which he was distributing. “Everybody wanted one,” he wrote, adding: “I should like you to send me a few of yours too.”

100 Years Ago
Spring 1910 • Age 35
“Winston thinks with his mouth”

As the new Home Secretary, Churchill had responsibility over a wide variety of subjects. In the official biography, Randolph Churchill listed strikes, prison reform, women’s suffrage, accidents in mines, the “Siege of Sidney Street,” the Shops Act and Early Closing Bill, the Aliens Bill and a letter to the King on House of Commons activity.

Churchill had frequently been the target of suffragettes disrupting his campaign speeches in the recent election, and was nearly pushed in front of an oncoming train during one such disturbance. Yet he believed in women’s suffrage “in principle.” He had written in April to the Secretary of a non-party Conciliation Committee headed by Lord Lytton (husband of his first love, the former Pamela Plowden): “I am…anxious to see women relieved in principle from a disability which is injurious to them whilst it is based on grounds of sex.”

The main political battle was over the veto power of the House of Lords over bills passed by the Commons. The Liberal Party, having campaigned on the theme of “The Peers versus the People,” had seen their majority whittled to only two votes over the Tories. But Churchill continued to advocate privately to Prime Minister Asquith that “The time has come for the total abolition of the House of Lords.”

Asquith did not take Churchill’s advice and had once written to an acquaintance that “Winston thinks with his mouth.” Instead, in March, he proposed three reforms: end the Lords’ power to award or reject a “money bill” (including the government’s budget, the Lords veto of which had led to the January, 1910 election); limiting the Lords’ power to reject other legislation to two years (this was used to pass an Irish Home Rule Bill several years later); and reducing the maximum life of a Parliament from seven years to five.

Speaking in favor of Asquith’s proposals on 31 March, WSC said:

It is not merely a question of regularizing the financial situation. It is more than that, because there is a great series of democratic taxes which constitute the policy of the Budget; and they form not merely the barrier which we erect against a Protectionist system, but they are the actual gage of battle with the House of Lords….I always hesitate to embark upon the domain of prophecy, but I frankly say that I believe at the proper time, in the proper manner, and under proper circumstances we shall succeed in carrying both the Veto and the Budget to the steps of the Throne.

Churchill’s “prophecy” proved correct. The Budget was passed by the Commons on 27 April by a vote of 324-231, and the Lords gave their assent a few hours later.

Seventy-Five Years Ago
Spring 1935 • Age 60
“I long to be folded in your arms”

Martin Gilbert’s official biography recounts the conclusion of Clementine’s six-month voyage to the South Seas, in the company of Terence Philip, a 42-year-old bachelor. Churchill wrote to her on 13 April that “On the whole since you have been away, the only great thing that has happened has been that Germany is now the greatest armed power in Europe…Rothermere [the anti-appeasement press lord] rings me up every day; His anxiety is pitiful. He thinks the Germans are all powerful and that the French are corrupt and useless, and the English hopeless and doomed. He proposes to meet this situation by groveling to Germany. I endeavour to inculcate a more robust attitude.”

He added: “You will find me waiting for you at Dover pier….I think a lot about you my darling Pussie…and rejoice that we have lived our lives together; and have still some years of expectation in this pleasant vale. I have been sometimes a little depressed about politics and would have liked to be comforted by you….I have not grudged you yr long excursion; but now I do want you back.”

A week later, upon reaching Suez, Clemmie responded: “Oh my Darling Winston. The Air Mail is just flitting & I send you this like John the Baptist to prepare the way before me, to tell you I love you & that I long to be folded your arms.”

The next day, Churchill drafted a long memorandum on Germany’s increasing air superiority, which he said contributed to Hitler’s “confident attitude.” The Luftwaffe, he wrote, was regarded by Germans as

the instrument by which Germany will regain dominance in Europe….The conclusions which cannot be avoided are that the Government have allowed themselves to be mistaken in their estimate of British and German strength at particular dates; and that the statements made by Ministers in Parliament are wrong, are admitted to be wrong, and will be proved still more grievously wrong with every month that passes. The German superiority, already large, will now grow upon all counts with progressive speed, to an extent determinable only by the decisions of the German Government.”

Churchill sent copies of his note to Prime Minister MacDonald, Tory leader Stanley Baldwin, and Air Minister Lord Londonderry. They fell on unfertile ground.

In early May came an indirect exchange of views between Hitler and Churchill via Lord Rothermere. Urging an Anglo-German “understanding,” much as he had done in his autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote:

All the so-called mutual-assistance pacts which are being hatched today will subserve discord rather than peace. An Anglo-German understanding would form in Europe a force for peace and reason of 120 million people of the highest type. The historically unique colonial ability and sea-power of England would be united to one of the greatest soldier-races of the world. Were this understanding extended by the joining-up of the American nation, then it would, indeed, be hard to see who in the world could disturb peace without willfully and consciously neglecting the interests of the White race.

Despite the blandishments and temptation, Churchill saw the implications of Hitler’s offer, writing to Rothermere:

If his proposal means that we should come to an understanding with Germany to dominate Europe, I think this would be contrary to the whole of our history. You know the old fable of the jackal who went hunting with the tiger and what happened after the hunt was over. Thus Elizabeth resisted Philip II of Spain. Thus William III and Marlborough resisted Louis XIV. Thus Pitt resisted Napoleon, and thus we all resisted William II of Germany. Only by taking this path and effort have we preserved ourselves and our liberties and reached our present position. I see no reason myself to change from this traditional view. However, I think a reasonable answer to Hitler would be that his plans of an Anglo-German understanding would be most agreeable provided they included France and gave fair consideration to Italy. Perhaps you will consider this.

In the defense debate on 22 May, Stanley Baldwin admitted that in his speech six months earlier on German and British air strength, he had been “completely wrong.”

Churchill suggested a secret session, as in 1917, to discuss defense issues “without our conversation being heard by all Europe.” Baldwin did not respond.

Fifty Years Ago
Spring 1960 • Age 85
“The greatest living human being”

Churchill brought twenty-three books with him on his cruise in the West Indies aboard Onassis’s yacht Christina. Among then were Graham Greene’s A Gun for Sale and Jack London’s Call of the Wild, the latter recalling a youthful Churchill’s attraction to the adventure novels of H. Rider Haggard.

When Churchill arrived at the island of Martinique, he met author Herman Wouk, who later was to write The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. In his diary, Wouk wrote that “I saw the greatest living human being of our time, a man who will stand with Caesar and Napoleon when the years have rolled away.”

In May, Churchill agreed to his son Randolph’s request to be named his official biographer. While the relationship between father and son had been tumultuous, WSC was convinced of Randolph’s ability through his recent biography of Lord Derby. His only stipulation was that nothing be published until ten years after his death. Randolph wrote his father:

Your letter has made me proud and happy. Since I first read your life of your father, thirty-five years ago when I was a boy of fourteen at Eton, it has always been my greatest ambition to write your life. And each year that has passed since this ambition first started in my mind, has nurtured it as your heroic career has burgeoned. When the time comes, you may be sure that I shall lay all else aside and devote my declining years exclusively to what will be a pious, fascinating and I suppose, a remunerative task. Thank you again from the bottom of my heart for a decision which, apart from what I have already said, adds a good deal to my self-esteem and will, I trust, enable to me to do honour in filial fashion, to your extraordinarily noble and wonderful life.