March 22, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 18

Q:What were the names of the five or six paintings Churchill consigned to a Paris gallery in 1923 under the pesudonym “Charles Morin”? —James Thomas

A:I’ve still to discover the names, or subjects, of the paintings sold in Paris; in fact I still have to confirm that any paintings were sold at all, as the information is anecdotal only.
—David Coombs, co-author, Winston Churchill’s Life Through His Paintings

Q: I heard Sir Winston’s grandson say that Churchill was a Zionist. Is this true? Also, who paid to fix up Blenheim Palace after the war? —EDWIN POSTLE

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024

More

A: Blenheim Palace was largely used by MI5 during the war, and we believe the British Government made some contribution to its rehabilitation when the war ended.

In the broadest sense (that he believed in the desirability of a Jewish national home) Churchill was indeed a Zionist. In 1952 on the death of Chaim Weitzman, he said: “Those of us who have been Zionists since the days of the Balfour Declaration know what a heavy loss Israel has sustained in the death of its President, Dr. Chaim Weitzman. Here was a man whose fame and fidelity were respected throughout the free world, whose son was killed fighting for us in the late war, and who, it may be rightly claimed, led his people back into their promised land, where we have seen them invincibly established as a free and sovereign State.”

The Balfour Declaration (1917) had declared Great Britain in favor of a Jewish national home, but Churchill was also mindful of the Palestinian Arabs, who had been promised their own independence by T. E. Lawrence at the same time. He had the perhaps naïve idea that Palestine could be shared between Jews and Arabs. Though he applauded the foundation of Israel, he regretted that it had come into being at the expense of the latter. In December 1948 he said:

“We had the power and the chance to impose and enforce—I must use that word—a partition settlement in Palestine by which the Jews would have secured the national Home which has been the declared object and policy of every British Government for a quarter of a century. Such a scheme would, of course, have taken into account the legitimate rights of the Arabs who, I may say, had not been ill-used in the settlement made in Iraq, in Transjordania, and in regard to Syria.”

Churchill may have thought that Jordan, which is today heavily populated by Palestinians, was the solution for Palestinians who refused to live in Israel; but he never spoke specifically to that idea. He did say, in 1936: “I have no hostility for the Arabs. I think I made most of the settlements over fourteen years ago governing the Palestine situation. The Emir Abdullah is in Transjordania, where I put him one Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem.”

Q:Can you confirm a Churchill response to Eleanor Roosevelt’s complaint about how Indians had suffered under British oppression?
—SUE HOPPOUGH, REPORTER, FORBES.

A: Here is the quote, from memory and without much attribution. It is from a speech by the Earl Mountbatten to The Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill Society of Edmonton, Alberta in 1966, and it is a grand one. The questioner was not Mrs. Roosevelt but Mrs. Ogden Reid (of The New York Herald Tribune).

Mountbatten said that the President, in the wry humor for which he prided himself, purposely seated Mrs. Reid, a campaigner for India’s independence, next to Churchill at a White House dinner. Then he sat back, awaiting the inevitable explosion.

Not for long: “Mr. Churchill,” Mrs. Reid finally exclaimed, halfway through the main course: “What do you intend to do about the wretched, poor Indians?” “Madam,” WSC replied, “to which Indians do you refer? Do you refer to the brown Indians of the Asian subcontinent, who under benign and beneficent British influence have multiplied alarmingly? Or do you refer to the red Indians of this continent, who under the current Administration are almost extinct?”

Q: I have searched your website and cannot find if it is true that “Jock” (or another cat) sat in on wartime cabinet meetings.

A: The questions we get! “Jock” lived at Chartwell, which was closed during the war. Churchill did host, at various times, at least three cats at Number Ten: “Munich Mouser” (yes, so help us), “Nelson” and “Smoky.” But they certainly weren’t at cabinet meetings, unless one of them wandered in.

Churchill was, of course, devoted to cats, like all other animals. (On this subject and many more see the late Grace Hamblin’s “Frabjous Days: Chartwell Memories 1932-1965,” Finest Hour 117, pages 19-25.) As Prime Minister he particularly admired Nelson, one of the Number Ten cats. He once told a colleague that Nelson was doing more for the war effort because Nelson served as a prime ministerial hot water bottle! —RML