April 7, 2015

Finest Hour 123, Summer 2004

Page 21

By Michael McMenamin

125 Years Ago:

Summer 1879 • Age 4

“The Fund was warmly supported and grew apace.”

In his biography of his father, Churchill wrote of the difficult summer in Ireland and his grandmother’s efforts to alleviate the resulting hardships: “The wet summer of 1879 produced something like a food and fuel famine‚ in the South and West of Ireland. The potatoes failed, grain would not ripen and the turf could not be dried….But official aid was wholly insufficient without private charity and in these straits the Duchess of Marlborough came forward and appealed to the public. She was a woman of exceptional capacity, energy and decision, and she laboured earnestly and ceaselessly to collect and administer a great fund….

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“The plan unfolded in her letters to The Times was welcomed not only by the Irish Conservative press, but by the Freeman’s Journal….The ultra-nationalist papers were less kindly, but the fund was warmly supported and grew apace. The Queen sent £500 and the Prince of Wales £250. By the end of the year, £8,300 had been subscribed; by March the receipts were £88,000; and before the Viceroy left Ireland [21 April 1880] on the change of Ministry, the fund was £117,000.”

100 Years Ago:

Summer 1904 • Age 29

“Free Trade England occupies a position of advantage.”

Having left the Tory Party to join the Liberals, Churchill quickly became what his son and biographer termed “the Opposition’s most popular and effective exponent of the Free Trade case.” Speaking on 15 June in Manchester, Churchill exposed and held up to ridicule Prime Minister Balfour’s claim that retaliation against foreign tariffs would lead to more free trade: “Retaliation is unprotective in theory [so] let us see how it would work in practice. We are often told the Retaliator is an active Free-trader. Balfour said, ‘We are prepared to fight for Free Trade.’ I wonder what would happen to Free Trade if it had been left alone in a dark lane with such a champion as that. [Laughter.]

“There is a feeling that England has only to retaliate and foreign tariff walls will collapse immediately. Well, but all the great nations of the world are Protectionist; they have been for 100 years past and perhaps for many years before that endeavouring by every dodge of reciprocity or negotiation to get each other to reduce their tariffs in each other’s respective interests. Where have they come to? Have they reached Free Trade? On the contrary, their tariffs have got higher and higher, and at this moment Free Trade England, which does nothing with masterly inactivity [laughter], occupies in regard to the nations of the world and trading conditions, so far as tariffs are concerned, a position of advantage to which few of the Protectionist countries have attained and none of them surpassed.”

Retaliation, Churchill said, was “absurd,” and could lead to unnecessary hostility against England from other Great Powers: “[A]gainst whom were you going to retaliate? It is said, ‘Germany.’ Of course, Mr. Chamberlain does not like Germany [laughter]; of course we will retaliate against Germany. Well, the German tariffs average 30 percent against us; but the United States tariff averages 70 percent against us, and the Russian tariff averages 130 percent against us. With what reason, common sense, justice, and sanity even can you then retaliate upon a Power that taxes you only 30 percent, if you are not going to employ your retaliatory measures against a Power which taxes you 130 per cent? [Hear, hear.]

“If it were thought right in us to retaliate against Germany, and not to retaliate against France or Russia, Germany would say—and would have a right to say—’This is not a commercial movement you are making against us. It is not a mere economic move against us, because then you observe some uniform principles, and Russia and the United States would be involved. No, there is some prejudice’ (they would say) ‘at the bottom of this movement, some national or racial hostility, so that we might easily get into a grave critical condition of affairs.’ [Cheers.]”

Churchill spent the latter part of the summer in Switzerland at the villa of his friend and financial adviser, Sir Ernest Cassel, in the Swiss Alps overlooking the Italian frontier. He wrote to his mother on 22 August 1904 “I have waited a week so as to write with certainty about the effect wh this place produces. It is wholly good. I sleep like a top & have not ever felt in better health. Really it is a wonderful situation. A large comfortable 4 storied house—complete with baths, a French cook & private land & every luxury that would be expected in England, is perched on a gigantic mountain spur 7,000 feet high, and is the centre of a circle of the most glorious snow mountains in Switzerland….Far below in the valleys which drop on both sides of the house, the clouds are drifting, & beneath and through these, green plains and tiny toy churches and towns….The days pass pleasantly & very rapidly….I divide them into three parts. The mornings when I read and write: the afternoons when I walk—real long walks and climbs about these hills or across the glacier—the evenings, of course 4 rubbers of bridge—then bed.” Churchill was relaxing for one of the few periods in his life.

75 Years Ago:

Summer 1929 • Age 54

“We must discuss the future of the world, even if we cannot decide it.”

Churchill left England August 3rd aboard the Empress of Australia, accompanied by his brother Jack, his son Randolph, and his nephew Johnnie. Arriving in Quebec six days later, WSC wrote to his wife: “We had a wonderfully good passage with only one day of unpleasant motion. The ship was comfortable and well found, and we had splendid cabins. It was pleasing to see the green shores of Labrador after six days of grey sky and sea. We passed through the great inland sea between Newfoundland and the mouth of the St. Lawrence. It was calm and bright and steadily getting warmer.”

In Quebec, where they observed Rothermere’s paper mills, Randolph recorded his father’s comment: “Fancy cutting down those beautiful trees we saw this afternoon to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation.” Those bloody newspapers were helping to finance his holiday—£2,500 from The Daily Telegraph for a series of ten articles on Canada and the U.S., plus £750 for two magazine articles.

Churchill actually contemplated leaving politics behind and seeking his future in Canada, writing his wife: “I have made up my mind that if N. Ch. is made leader of the CP or anyone else of that kind, I clear out of politics & see if I cannot make you & the kittens a little more comfortable before I die. Only one goal still attracts me, & if that were barred I should quit the dreary field for pastures new….[However,] the time to take decisions is not yet.”

Churchill’s party arrived in San Simeon on 13 September to visit William Randolph Hearst: “… a grave simple child—with no doubt a nasty temper—playing with the most costly toys. A vast income always overspent: ceaseless building & collecting not vy discriminatingly works of art: two magnificent establishments, two charming wives [the actress Marion Davies, who lived with Hearst in California, and Hearst’s wife who resided in New York]; complete indifference to public opinion, a strong liberal and democratic outlook, a 15 million daily circulation, oriental hospitalities….”

50 Years Ago:

Summer 1954 • Age 79

“Looking incredibly young…”

Churchill traveled to America twenty-five years after his 1929 holiday, in fine spirits. As his physician noted, “Winston was particularly cheerful, looking incredibly young, his face pink and unlined, his manner boyish and mischievous.”

Nothing substantive was accomplished in talks with the Eisenhower administration, but Churchill was in top form at the Washington Press Club. Asked about the tense relations between Israel and Egypt, he replied: “I am a Zionist. Let me make that clear. I was one of the original ones, after the Balfour Declaration, and I have worked faithfully for it. I think it is a most wonderful thing that this community should have established itself so effectively, turning the desert into fertile gardens and thriving townships, and should have afforded a refuge to millions of their coreligionists who had suffered so fearfully….I think it’s a wonderful thing.”

Another question about the Soviet Union brought this response, which was a familiar refrain: “If I had been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle, but everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!’”

Back in England, Churchill was under pressure from his senior ministers to step down in September, as he had earlier proposed. Then he reversed himself, advising Eden he intended to serve until the next election: “I have no intention of abandoning my post at the present crisis in the world. I feel sure that with my influence I can be of help to the cause of ‘peace through strength,’ on the methods of sustaining which we are so notably agreed.”