April 25, 2013

ACTION THIS DAY: FINEST HOUR 150, SPRING 2011

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

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125 Years Ago
Spring 1886 • Age 11
“Delight over a Locomotive…”

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Winston was still recovering from pneumonia contracted during the winter, which had brought him close to death. Lord Randolph did not neglect his son and in April brought him a well-received present, writing Lady Randolph: “Winston is going on well & is attended by Dr. Gordon. He cannot go out yet as the weather is raw with a N.E. wind He is in great delight over a Locomotive steam engine I got for him yesterday.”

By May, Winston had fully recovered and was back in school in Brighton, where he wrote his mother on 10 May: “I have much joy in writing ‘Ye sealed epistle’ unto thee….I received your letter and intend to correspond in the best language which my small vocabulary can muster. The weather is fearfully hot. We went to the Swimming Baths today. I nearly swam the length which is about 60 feet. We are going to Play a Football Match tomorrow. Last night we had a certain Mr. Beaumont to give a lecture on Shakespeare’s play of Julius Caesar. He was an old man, but read magnificently. I am in very good health and am getting on pretty well. Love to all.”

100 Years Ago
Spring 1911 • Age 36
Arrival of the “Chumbolly”

During Clementine’s second pregnancy, she and Winston called their unborn child “The Chumbolly” (alternately “Chum Bolly”) who became their only son Randolph. In the second volume of his father’s biography, Randolph writes that “no one remembers why” his parents so nicknamed him. On 18 April, Clementine wrote Winston that she was “counting the days till May 15th when the Chum Bolly is due. I hope he will not have inherited the Pug’s unpunctual habits!” Sure enough, Randolph’s birth was two weeks late on 28 May. His parents took their time naming him, and for well over a week after his birth, they were still calling him the Chumbolly in their letters. Winston wrote on 2 June:

My precious pussy cat, I do trust & hope that you are being good & not sitting up or fussing yourself. Just get well & strong & enjoy the richness wh[ich] this new event will I know have brought into our life. The chumbolly must do his duty and help you with your milk, you are to tell him so from me. At his age greediness & even swinishness at table are virtues….How I wish you were here, it wd be such fun for you—there are lots of young men to [talk] with & sounds of music, & beautiful trees & all sorts of things, including in a corner your ever loving & devoted Pug.

Clementine replied,

The beautiful Chumbolly who grows more darling & handsome every hour & puts on weight with every meal; so that soon he will be a little round ball of fat. Just now I was kissing him, when catching sight of my nose he suddenly fastened upon it & began to suck it, no doubt thinking it was another part of my person!

By June 7th Winston, returning home, was “longing to see you & the Ch B. again…& tell you all my news & give you lots of kisses on your dear cheeks & dearest lips.”

Churchill was now involved in a fierce battle to limit the veto power of the House of Lords over legislation passed by the Commons. In his advocacy, he did not spare even close friends. Of his former best man, Lord Hugh Cecil, a prominent Tory supporter of the Lords, who had urged that referendums be held to decide “contentious issues” rather than entrust them to the Liberal-controlled Commons, WSC said on April 4th:

The Noble Lord has a very bad opinion of the institutions of his country. He is not only in favour of reforming the House of Lords, but he shows us, in speech after speech, in Amendment after Amendment, on subject after subject, that he would like to accompany and precede that operation by abolishing the existing House of Commons. The Noble Lord has the worst possible opinion of His Majesty’s Ministers, and he has frequently expressed that view in terms which have secured the utmost enthusiasm in the Opposition part of this Assembly. His opinion of this Assembly is quite on a par with his opinion of His Majesty’s Government, but his bad opinion of this Assembly is limited to the time when there is a Liberal Government in power. It is only the Liberals who are corrupt; it is only when a Liberal Government is in power that voting by ballot must be instituted.

75 Years Ago
Spring 1936 • Age 61 “Fairies swooped down…”

Churchill was giving many speeches on foreign policy, German rearmament and Britain’s neglected defenses. His words went unheeded by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin who, in Sir Martin Gilbert’s words, “had convinced himself of Churchill’s lack of judgment.” Gilbert quotes Baldwin’s remark to a colleague:

One of these days I’ll make a few casual remarks about Winston….I’ve got it all ready. I am going to say that when Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle with gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability; and then came a fairy who said, “No one person has a right to so many gifts,” picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why, while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.

It is remarkable that someone with such a “lack of judgment” could attract such a wide range of informants eager to bring him classified information—most of it in violation of the Official Secrets Act—at great risk to themselves. A listing of dates and names of individuals forming Churchill’s intelligence network during a single three-month period is startling in scope and number. (For more details, see Gilbert, Chapter 36, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 5 The Prophet of Truth.)

27 March: Ralph Wigram, a highly placed Foreign Office officiaL sends Churchill “a substantial portfolio of documents and material” on Hitler and the Nazis, all of which, Wigram notes, are “SECRET.”

3 April: Desmond Morton, head of the Industrial Intelligence Centre at the Foreign Office, writes to Churchill about inaccuracies in Air Ministry statistics regarding German air strength.

3 April: Notwithstanding his deeply-felt anti-communism, Churchill begins a series of meetings with the Soviet Ambassador, Ivan Maisky.

21 April: At behest of Sir Robert Vansittart at the Foreign Office, Reginald Leeper sends WSC a “secret and official letter” seeking his advice on how public opinion can best be guided to support the League of Nations.

24 April: Morton says he believes WSC’s figures for German arms expenditures are too high.

29 April: WSC thanks Morton but disagrees, saying the figures Morton questions were provided by the prominent London banker Sir Henry Strakosch, and that the government had declined to contradict them.

5 May: Sir Ernle Chatfield, First Sea Lord, writes to Churchill outlining matters affecting the Royal Navy, the first of what Martin Gilbert described as “regular and substantial accounts of the Navy’s work and problems.”

5 May: A.G. Clark, joint managing-director of Plessey, a major radio, telephone and electronics corporation and contractor to the War Office, meets with Churchill to discuss his visit to German munitions factories. 

9 May: Morton sends Churchill the results of Dutch firing tests on naval armor-plate. British armor-plate was destroyed while German armor-plate came through virtually unscathed.

12 May: Wigram sends Churchill additional Foreign Office extracts from Mein Kampf, including two sentences deleted from the English edition, one of which is: “If one tells big lies, people will always believe a part.”

16 May: French Foreign Minister Pierre Flandin sends WSC a statistical summary of French air force expenditures and the latest French estimates of German first-line air strength.

25 May: Squadron Leader Torr Anderson, director of the Air Ministry’s training school, shows Churchill charts and statistics demonstrating that the school’s educational standards are declining.

12 June: Ralph Wigram sends Churchill three more Foreign Office dispatches dealing with Nazism, which he asks Churchill to read and destroy.

12 June: Robert Watson-Watt, one of the principal developers of radar, tells Churchill the Air Ministry is holding back the rate of development of radar, and criticizes its “unwillingness to take emergency measures.” As he did in 1911, Churchill continued to be critical of public positions taken by his former best man, Lord Hugh Cecil. They had remained friends, however, and Churchill’s attacks were now more mellow, if not good-humored. Cecil advocated excluding the Soviet Union and other authoritarian countries like Italy from any alliance Britain formed against Germany, and even expressed doubts about the wisdom of an alliance with France. In reply to Cecil, Churchill wrote The Times on 13 May:

It must be very painful to a man of Lord Hugh Cecil’s natural benevolence and human charity to find so many of God’s children wandering simultaneously so far astray. In these circumstances I would venture to suggest to my noble friend, whose gifts and virtues I have all my life admired, that some further refinement is needed in the catholicity of his condemnation. It might be a good thing, for instance, for him to put his censures down in order of priority, and then try to think a little less severely of the two least bad, or least likely to endanger our own safety. The problem would then simplify itself; and the picture would acquire the charm of light and shade.

50 Years Ago
Spring 1961 • Age 86
Moses or Jesus?

In March, Churchill completed a Caribbean cruise aboard the Onassis yacht Christina, and had intended to fly to London April 13th, but strong winds made it impossible for him to leave the vessel until the next day. Six weeks later in London, he received a visit from Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion of Israel. In briefing the Foreign Office of their talks, Private Secretary Anthony Montague Brown reported that Ben-Gurion believed Iraq would “be strong enough to contain her own Communists,” but was more worried about the survival of Jordan, which he said would depend on the king. Egypt, however, was “slowly preparing for war.”

Churchill expressed his lifelong support for the Jewish people and Zionism, and Ben-Gurion responded with gratitude for Churchill’s leadership in the Hitler war. Churchill said in passing that he had once written an essay on Moses, and promised the Israeli leader a copy of the book containing it, Thoughts and Adventures. (Later, Montague Browne joked, “I thought at first I might have found it in Great Contemporaries.”)

It is incidentally related that the two leaders had a debate: who was the greater man, Moses or Jesus? Churchill, it is said, argued on behalf of Moses, while Ben-Gurion took the side of Jesus! (We have lost the reference and would be grateful for any light readers may shed on this interesting story.)