June 1, 2015

Finest Hour 107, Summer 2000

Page 20

By Michael McMenamin


One hundred years ago:

Summer 1900-Age 25

“[A war] is not a long line of continuous successes.”

Churchill returned home on 20 July 1900 on the Dunottar Castle, the same ship on which he had arrived in South Africa eight months earlier. On the very next day he began inscribing copies of his latest book, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria, beginning with an inscription to Oliver Borthwick, the Morning Post editor who had sent him there (see FH 105, p. 45). An election was in the offing so Churchill next set out for Oldham, for his second try at elective office.

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“Over 10,000 people turned out in the streets with flags and drums beating and shouted themselves hoarse for two hours,” Churchill wrote his brother Jack. “Although it was 12 o’clock before I left the Conservative Club, the streets were still crowded with people.”

Churchill criticized opponents of the war: “I noticed this evening a flaring newspaper placard announcing another British military disaster….I do not like the exaggerated use of words. These incidents of war are the inevitable accompaniment of military operations. What is a war? It is not a long line of continuous successes. At least it is not usually that. It is an out and out fight with rough and tumble in which both sides must give and bear good blows. If we are going to call every insignificant operation on the line of communications a British disaster we should soon run a great danger of losing the calm and self-possession which has hitherto distinguished the demeanour of the country.”

Churchill declined many invitations to speak for other candidates, but an exception was his appearance at Plymouth on behalf of his cousin, Ivor Guest, where he spoke at length on the sorry state of military defence, a theme that was to recur thirty-five years later in his life:

“The fear of invasion seems to influence our daily lives as little as the fear of death. Somewhere perhaps, in the future, how or where we know not, the hour will come….These are matters worthy of most serious attention. Indeed, they are exciting the concern of British statesmen of all parties [who] are agreed that this country has entered on a period of grave national danger, that the great Powers of Europe, armed to the teeth, view us with no friendly eye, and that our arrangements for military defence are not such that we can contemplate the situation without anxiety….For seven years I have been trained in the theory and practice of modern war. Heaven forbid that I should pose as an expert; but I know enough to tell you that there are very few things in military administration which a business man of common sense and a little imagination can not understand if he turns his attention to the subject; and any one who tells you the contrary is nothing better than a humbug.”

Parliament was not dissolved until 17 September, and the election was spread over a three-week period with the Oldham constituency scheduled for an early vote on October 1st. Two Liberal seats were up and the Conservatives took both. It was close. Churchill placed second, sixteen votes behind the leading vote-getter but only 222 votes ahead of the third-place finisher out of over 50,000 votes cast.

Seventy-five years ago:

Summer 1925-Age 50

“…I am getting my own way in nearly everything.”

Churchill’s Finance Bill was making its way through the House. “…I am driving forward at least ten large questions, and many smaller ones all inter-related and centering on the Budget,” he wrote his wife on June 5th. “So far I am getting my own way in nearly everything. But it is a most laborious business, so many stages having to be gone through, so many people having to be consulted, and so much detail having to be mastered or explored in one way or another.”

In the same letter, Churchill explained one of his techniques for getting support: “I am seeing a great deal of my colleagues now through the week-end parties, and also at lunch and dinner in Downing Street….” Doubtless he needed the friendly talk because his words in debate were still sharp and cutting. Responding on 9 June to criticism of the Government’s reintroduction of the wartime McKenna Duties to raise revenues and compensate for his across-theboard income tax cuts, Churchill observed that the Duties had “been voted for again and again during the last ten years, and in the Great War, when the troops of the Dominions were sent to our aid from all parts of the world, when we were fighting for our lives, [and] when the hon. and gallant Gentleman was playing a much more useful part in the defence of the country than he is playing at the present time below the Gangway.”

C. P. Scott, the editor of the Manchester Guardian, recounts that during a dinner party on 30 June with the Polish Ambassador present, Churchill “talked incessantly” and proffered advice, prescient but unwelcome, on Polish relations with Germany, arguing “that Poland should by all means cultivate the friendship of Germany. Else, if Germany were driven back on Russian support, Poland in the end would be crushed between them.”

During July, the crisis in the coal industry came to a head with the owners threatening wage cuts and the miners a strike. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin formed a Special Cabinet Committee headed by Churchill, which proposed a £10 million mine subsidy over nine months to avert the wage cut. Churchill’s old rival, Neville Chamberlain, praised WSC’s debate performance in a private letter to Baldwin: “…I think our Chancellor has done very well, all the better because he hasn’t been what he was expected to be. He hasn’t dominated the Cabinet, though undoubtedly he has influenced it: he hasn’t tied us up to pedantic Free Trade, though he is a bit sticky about Safeguarding of Industries. He hasn’t intrigued for the leadership, but he has been a tower of debating strength….What a brilliant creature he is! But there is somehow a great gulf fixed between him and me which I don’t think I shall ever cross. I like him. I like his humour and his vitality. I like his courage….But not for all the joys of Paradise would I be a member of his staff! Mercurial! a much abused word, but it is the literal description of his temperament.”

In July, Churchill played polo for the House of Commons team against the House of Lords. He would continue to play the game until 1927 (see FH 72).

Fifty years ago:

Summer 1950 • Age 75

“We have as great dangers to face as we had ten years ago.”

Churchill supported the Attlee government’s backing of the U.S. resolution in the United Nations Security Council when North Korea invaded the South on 25 June 1950. Nevertheless, he was openly critical of British defence policy in debate on 27 July 1950:

“…so far, I have only spoken of the Soviet forces with which we are confronted—eight or nine to one against us in infantry and artillery, and probably much more than that in tank formations….If the facts that I have stated cannot be contradicted by His Majesty’s Government, the preparations of the Western Union to defend itself certainly stand on a far lower level than those of the South Koreans….I warn the House that we have as great dangers to face in 1950 and 1951 as we had ten years ago. Here we are with deep and continuing differences between us in our whole domestic sphere, and faced with dangers and problems which all our united strength can scarcely overcome….It is with deep grief that I have to say these things to the House, and to reflect that it is only five years ago almost to a month when we were victorious, respected and safe.”

In early August, Churchill spoke at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in favor of a European Army: “There must be created, and in the shortest possible time, a real defensive front in Europe. Great Britain and the United States must send large forces to the Continent. France must again revive her famous army. We welcome our Italian comrades. All— Greece, Turkey, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Scandinavian States—must bear their share and do their best…. Those who serve supreme causes must not consider what they can get but what they can give. Let that be our rivalry in these years that lie before us.”

Later that month, he urged President Truman to guarantee West Germany’s defense should it contribute troops to a European Army: “…I said at Strasbourg that if the Germans threw in their lot with us, we should hold their safety and freedom as sacred as our own. Of course I have no official right to speak for anyone, yet after the firm stand you have successfully made about Berlin, I think that the deterrent should be made to apply to all countries represented in the European Army. I do not see how this would risk or cost any more than what is now morally guaranteed by the United States. Perhaps you will consider whether you can give any indication of your views. A public indication would be of the utmost value and is, in my opinion, indispensable to the conception of a European front against communism.” Truman’s reply was noncommittal.

During this period, Churchill continued to work on Volume IV of his war memoirs at the expense of his leisure. He declined an offer from his son-in-law, Christopher Soames, to accompany him pheasant hunting and momentarily gave up even his beloved painting, observing in a letter to a cousin that “I have had to give up all my holiday and cannot even squeeze a tube. Volume IV is a worse tyrant than Attlee.”

Later in the summer on 12 September and based on confidential information from a source in private industry, Churchill strongly condemned the Attlee government for continuing to sell machine tools to the Soviet Union based on a trade agreement negotiated three years earlier by future Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. “It is intolerable to think that our troops today should be sent into action at one end of the world while we are supplying, or are about to supply, if not actual weapons of war, the means to make weapons of war to those who are trying to kill them or get them killed. I was astonished when I was told what was going one. I was astounded by the attitude that the Prime Minister has taken. I should think that the feeling of the great majority in this House would be that no more machine tools of a war-making character and no more machines or engines which could be used for war-making purposes should be sent from this country to Soviet Russia or the Soviet satellite nations while the present tension continues.”

Twenty-five years ago:

Summer 1975

Winston’s Whisky

The “letters” column of the Telegraph was exercised over condemnations of Churchill’s drinking by a Dr. Merry: “The inappropriately named Dr. Merry is undoubtedly correct when he says that Sir Winston Churchill was responsible for lengthening the war. Had it not been for Churchill the war would have ended much earlier—in Britain’s defeat,” wrote M. A. Wicking of Tunbridge Wells. Added Leon Drucker of London: “What did Lincoln say when it was reported to him that Grant was getting through a bottle of whisky a day? ‘Fine, find out what brand and send a case with my compliments to all the other generals.'”

Churchill’s drinking was perennially overblown, thanks largely to Churchill, who reveled in his alleged capacity. “He was not an alcoholic,” quipped one waggish observer—no alcoholic could drink that much.” Another suggested WSC was perhaps “alcohol-dependent.” Whether or not, Churchill once abstained from hard liquor for a year to win a bet with Beaverbrook, so it is difficult to judge exactly what he depended on!

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