June 23, 2015

Finest Hour 114, Spring 2002

Page 12

More than the usual number of clangers got by us last issue, for which we are mortified, and offer apologies. —Ed.

• Page 12: Churchill visited the United States fifteen times, not fourteen as we stated. We omitted a key visit: June 1942 when, visiting Roosevelt, he first heard of the loss of Tobruk. Thanks for this to Dr. R. I. MacFarlane. Nobody else saw this?

• Page 14, righthand column: Eric Bingham reminds us that Sedbergh School, famed for its association with Brendan Bracken, is in “Cumbria,” not Lancashire. We maintain, and believe Bracken would agree, that Sedbergh is in the traditional county of Westmoreland, not some political contrivance like “Cumbria.”

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• Page 17, righthand column: Penelope Dudley Ward was, of course, mistress to the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII; not the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII. Thanks for this to Paul Courtenay.

Page 31: Curt Zoller informs us that Orange County Churchillians, which sponsored an ad for the San Diego Conference, was omitted from the list of sponsors and supporters.

• Page 36: Stupidly, the editor omitted HMS Cossack in describing Churchill’s speech to the crews of HMS Exeter and Ajax on 23 February 1940 (top of middle column). Of course it was Cossack, not the other ships, which, off Norway, liberated British seamen aboard the German prison ship Altmark. Thanks for this to Robert J. Brown.

PAGE 5: ARRRGH!

So help us, it was there! The third column of “Despatch Box” was exactly where we put it, on the lefthand side of page 5, when we last saw the proofs. The final magazine showed up with the first column of letters (from page 4) reprinted in its place! We know what happened, and it will never happen again because we are changing file transfer methods. Here are the missing letters which were omitted from page 5:

Vanishing National Anthems (FH 111)

Enjoyed your National Anthems article and so will my Canadian cousins, who know only two verses of “O Canada.” Surely no one living ever heard of “Roger Young” and no one (possibly not even yourself because you are too young) knows all the words—except for yours truly!
GERALD LECHTER, FORT LEE, N.J.

For the record, Gerald…

O they’ve got no time for glory in the infantry,
And they’ve got no use for praises loudly sung,
But in every soldier’s heart in all the infantry,
Shines the name, shines the name of Roger Young.

chorus:

Shines the name…Roger Young,
Fought and died for the men he marched among.
Yes in every soldier’s heart in all the infantry,
Lives the story of Private Roger Young.

It was he who drew the fire of the enemy,
That a company of men might live to fight,
And before the deadly fire of the infantry,
Stood the man, stood the man we hail tonight.
chorus: Stood the man….etc.

On the island of New Georgia in the Solomons
Stands a simple wooden cross alone to tell
That beneath the silent coral of the Solmons,
Sleeps a man, sleeps a man remembered well.
chorus: Sleeps a man….etc.

—Not bad from the eighth grade! Ed.

Holland’s “Wilhemus” Preceded “God Save the King”

Though I count myself a loyal subject of the Queen and carry British and Canadian passports, Linda Colley (FH 111:31) is wrong: “God Save the King/Queen” was preceded by more than a century by the Dutch “Wilhemus” song. The “Wilhemus” was adopted in the 1580s as the Dutch fought their way out of the Spanish Hapsburg empire. Probably written by Philip Marnix (1540-98), it became a little more familiar in England after the Dutch Statholder, William III, arrived in England in 1688 and was crowned King the next year. William reigned until 1702 and fought with Churchill’s ancestor, John Duke of Marlborough, since the War of Spanish Succession, in which the Duke won his glory, was just beginning.
JOHN F. BOSHER, OTTAWA, ONT.

Unadulterated Praise

I bumped into Hugh Segal (“Churchill as a Moderate,” Churchill Proceedings 1996-1997) today and he pulled me aside to tell me how much he enjoys FH. From the articles to the recipes, he thinks it’s a bang-up job. He was reading it on a plane and a seatmate asked about it and he told him it was a secret and he wouldn’t tell him how to get one! Of course, I shot him on the spot! I told Hugh I would share his plaudits, so consider it done.
RANDY BARBER, PRESIDENT, ICS CANADA

Randy, the immoderates still claim, in the wake of Hugh’s speech, that WSC was always immoderate, like them. —Ed.