August 5, 2013

Finest Hour 120, Autumn 2003

Page 04

Finest Hour 119

Thanks for this stunning issue. I had never read Seven Pillars of ‘Wisdom; you’ve made me rectify this omission! I was fascinated to read of the rapport between Churchill and Lawrence. The selected correspondence was a joy to read, for which much credit to Paul Alkon. Lloyd George may have been a better orator, but did not match Churchill for literature. Where can you read prose like Churchill’s essay on TEL in Great Contemporaries*. Even his book review is a work of art. It’s all your fault. If I had not read your seductive introduction, I would have likely just glanced at it all I’m hooked!
JIM GLIBBERY, BROADWAY, SOMERSET

Lawrence was superb. The striking and well reproduced cover painting immediately draws one into those well-written commentaries of and about him and Churchill. The relevance of this collection to current affairs in the Middle East is of particular interest. I absorbed it all in one sitting and look forward to a second reading. May we have more Finest Hour features connecting those whose paths crossed with Churchill’s in shaping history May I suggest Michael Collins?
RALPH WILBUR, LAWRENCE, MASS.

Michael McKernan’s review of David Day’s The Politics of War: Australia at War, 1939-1945 (FH 119:46) is a curious combination of complaints about Day’s style (certainly not a problem in his previous works) along with what I read as a sarcastic summary of the main points in the book.

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Whatever McKernan’s disagreements with Day’s interpretations and prose, qualified reviewers have a right to their opinion. But McKernan offers a question, perhaps intended as rhetorical, that demands an answer. “What else might Churchill have done [except to] cajole, berate and, possibly, deceive” the Australians?

How about telling the truth? How about laying out the realities of Imperial defense and making a convincing argument for them? How about accepting the inherent right of self-government and self-determination that Churchill truly believed in for Englishmen? How about being a statesman? His “colonialism” made it difficult, even impossible, for him to understand that nationalism was a greater force than empire.

Churchill once minuted the Foreign Office: “Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names.” It appears that he similarly believed Australia was made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for Australia.

There is a grim, sad postscript. However much Churchill was a prisoner of the British establishment’s mythical “Singapore Strategy,” the lies and deceptions and calculated temper tantrums reviewer McKernan alludes to got Australia into line only once—in early 1941, when several thousand Australian troops, along with the British 18th Division, were diverted to the defense of the “impregnable” fortress of Singapore. They arrived just in time to surrender to the Japanese conquerors.
WARREN E KIMBALL
MARK CLARK VISITING PROFESSOR, THE CITADEL

FH 119 even inspired me to watch the movie again! But I do have one question. If Churchill’s portrait of Lawrence appeared in the mid-1950s, why does he refer in the first paragraph to the “First World War”?
STANLEY SMITH, LITTLETON, MASS.

Editor’s response: You’ve caught me out! I edited his words, changing “war” to “First World War”for contemporary purposes. Editors have no respect, even for Knights of the Garter.

What He Said on September 11th

I recently learned what Churchill said on September 11th:

“We entered upon this war reluctantly after we had made every effort, compatible with honour, to avoid being drawn in….The war will be long and sombre. It will have many reverses of fortune and many hopes falsified by subsequent events….”

He spoke these words at the London Opera House, 11 September 1914.
CURT ZOLLER, AMORA, CALIF.

FINEST HOUR 118

I was struck by the Orpen cover portrait: a fabulous picture. Reading Jeanette Gabriel’s excellent interview with Winston Churchill, I remembered Sir Winston’s own opinion of the Orpen told to Sir John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery in London: “Yes, it’s good; in fact when he painted it I’d lost pretty well everything.”

I was fascinated to read Chris Sterling’s “Churchill and Air Travel.” In the Studio at Chartwell hangs Churchill’s sketch portrait of “the heroic Jack Scott.” He was the pilot who saved Churchill’s life in 1919 when the plane they were flying crashed at Croydon Aerodrome. Churchill tells this story as “In the Air” in Thoughts and Adventures.
DAVID COOMBS, GODALMING, SURREY