May 11, 2013

DATELINES: FINEST HOUR 142, SPRING 2009

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SEASONAL QUOTES: WSC ON THE “STIMULUS”

MARCH 20TH— No, Sir Winston has not interrupted his first million years painting to comment (right) on the U.S. government’s “fiscal stimulus package.” And we’re not going to suggest what he would think of it—heaven forbid. Our “Quotations of the Season” are ranged without comment in chronological order. Draw your own conclusions.

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COVER STORY

Readers may wonder why Winston Churchill signed this particular presentation to Alderman Charles J. Ross, President of the Early Closing Association, 1923-26.

When President of the Board of Trade (12 April 1908 to 18 February 1910) Churchill was very active in promoting better conditions for shop workers; among them was “one early closing day a week.” WSC must have been inducted by the Early Closing Association (established 1842) in recognition of his initiative over this matter.

“Albert” is undoubtedly HRH The Duke of York (later King George VI), who interested himself in industrial relations; but he would not have been involved with such an Association until much later than 1910, and most probably from about 1923 until 1936.

“Sutherland” is likely the Fifth Duke of Sutherland (1888-1963), who was contemporaneously involved with The Duke of York. He succeeded his father in 1913 and was very active in public life, holding various government posts. He was a member of Baldwin’s 1924-29 government while WSC was Chancellor of the Exchequer, serving as Paymaster General (1925-28) and Under-Secretary of State for War (1928-29). Churchill and Sutherland knew each other well socially. See Mary Soames, Speaking for Themselves, WSC’s letter from the Duke’s Scottish estate, Dunrobin Castle, dated 19 [18] September 1921; also the passage about Marigold immediately above.

Edmund Ashworth Radford (1881-1944) was a Unionist MP for two Manchester seats (Salford, South 1924-29, Rusholme from 1933). The only other detail I can find is that he was a chartered accountant who became senior partner of his own firm of chartered accountants; whether this involved him with the Early Closing Association is unclear. —PAUL H. COURTENAY

“NOT MUCH IN THAT…”

LONDON, MARCH 1ST— From John Charmley to Pat Buchanan, we’ve read the same refrain: Churchill destroyed the British Empire and laid the way for Russo-American hegemony by rejecting Realpolitik and refusing to “do a deal” to wind down the war with Hitler after the Fall of France.

We were reminded that Churchill himself was asked that question—after his retirement in 1955—while re-reading private secretary Sir Anthony Montague Browne’s book, Long Sunset (London: Cassell, 1995, 200).

Churchill’s answer: “You’re only saying that to be provocative. You know very well we couldn’t have made peace on the heels of a terrible defeat. The country wouldn’t have stood for it. And what makes you think that we could have trusted Hitler’s word—particularly as he could soon have had Russian resources behind him? At best we would have been a German client state, and there’s not much in that.” Exactly.

WINSTON IS BACK: (IN EIGHT VOLUMES)

LONDON, JANUARY 23RD— The BBC announced that President Obama sent George W. Bush’s Jacob Epstein bust of Churchill packing from the Oval Office (while retaining a bust of Abraham Lincoln), producing a buzz of speculation over the implied symbolism.

The bust is one of four or five copies sculpted by Jacob Epstein, and regarded as the most valuable of its kind ever commissioned. Bush’s was from the British government collection at Cockburn Street, London; another is at Windsor and others are in private hands. In 2001 President Bush explained: “My friend the Prime Minister of Great Britain heard me say that I greatly admired Winston Churchill and so he saw to it that the government loaned me this and I am most honored to have this Jacob Epstein bust….”

But zealots soon urged us to demand its return, since in their view Bush was undeserving, or using it to proclaim himself a Churchill. In fact, he was simply an admirer, like most of us.

Plus ça change….Now that the bust has been returned, we are being encouraged to protest its removal.

The BBC speculated that Obama was “looking forward not backward,” while The Daily Telegraph ventured that there might be personal reasons: “It was during Churchill’s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion. The Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama, the President’s grandfather.”

Diana West exploded that theory on Townhall.com By explaining that this allegation stems from Obama’s “Granny Sarah” (who also claims that he was born in Kenya, which would make him ineligible to be President). In Obama’s Dreams of My Father, West wrote, the President “describes his grandfather’s detention as lasting ‘over six months’ before he was found innocent (no mention of torture). Whatever the case, Churchill didn’t become prime minister for the second time until the end of 1951. The Mau Mau Rebellion didn’t begin until the end of 1952, one year after Obama’s grandfather’s release.”

But President Obama now has more Churchilliana than President Bush had: in a March visit to Washington, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown presented him with “a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.” (Yes, “seven volumes”—Sir Martin was short Volume V, but Chartwell Booksellers in New York City helped him out, and the full eight volumes were delivered.)

Asked for comment by Newsweek, FH‘s editor said he read little into the controversy: “Mr. Obama admires Lincoln, and it seems perfectly reasonable that he should have a the bronze totem of his choice in his office. Since the Epstein bust was a loan to a previous President, it is unremarkable that a new President would wish to return it. President Obama, an intelligent man, probably appreciates that the Parliamentary forms finally emerging in Kenya stem from the colonial British, as they do in much of the old Empire, notably India and what Churchill called the ‘Great Dominions.’ To paraphrase Mark Steyn (whose bust will never adorn the Oval Office either), imagine how Kenya might have developed if it had been colonized by, say, the Germans, Japanese or Russians.”

This will not prevent the media from using Churchill to promote sundrypolitical viewpoints. But in the March 2nd issue of Newsweek, editor Jon Meacham (a fair and balanced Churchill Centre trustee) struck what we believe is the right note: “A long-dead foreign leader, then, has become a kind of partisan figure. This is unfortunate, for Churchill offers one of the great case studies for any leader in how to build and maintain public confidence in the bleakest of hours….It is also worth a moment’s reflection on how Churchill viewed the duty of a leader in a time of crisis, for Obama, perhaps unconsciously, is working within that tradition.”

Our own amusement on this business is in the sidebar below.

A CHURCHILL IS BACK

LONDON, MARCH 20TH— A Churchill will once again hold dominion over Westminster. Duncan Sandys, Sir Winston’s affable 35-year-old great grandson who sits as a Conservative councillor on the city council, is a shoo-in as the next Lord Mayor of Westminster, after he was put forward as the official Tory candidate for the election in May. Sandys, who serves on the Churchill Memorial Trust Council and is a grandson of Lord Duncan-Sandys, the former cabinet minister, will be the youngest person to occupy the role.

—TIMWALKER, DAILY TELEGRAPH

FREE DEPLORABLE SPEECH

CHICAGO, MARCH 6TH— Churchill Centre chairman Laurence Geller spoke on CNBC of the “McCarthyism” being directed by politicians against conventions: “The hyperbole and rhetoric were notched up to gigantic levels during this recent political debate season….We’ve lost an awful lot of major businesses, and it’s not just those receiving government bailouts that are affected, but there’s a general fear of criticism by people not only making the bookings but people attending these conferences….The hotel industry lost 200,000 jobs last year. We thought if things went the same way we’d lose 240,000. This year, since the hyperbole got ratcheted up to these levels, we’re on track to lose 350,000, 400,000 jobs. The ripple through the economy is gigantic, touching 15 million jobs; lodging and tourism is the third largest retail business in the country. A colleague and I attended a conference last week, and we were joking in the car to the hotel, saying: ‘If the CNBC van is out front, keep driving!'”

What has this to do with Winston Churchill? It reminds us what he said about free speech, embracing class warfare against the convention business (House of Commons, 18 June 1951):

“One cannot say that the man or the woman in the street can be brought up violently and called to account because of expressing some opinion on something or other which is sub judice. They are perfectly entitled to do that. They may say things that are deplorable—many deplorable things are said under free speech.”

BEST BOOKS: ADDENDUM

In our “Fifty Best Books [About Churchill] in the Last Forty Years” (FH 140:22) we inadvertently left out two of Professor Paul Addison’s picks of his favorites in FH 128. (We also left out My Early Life because it was by, not about, Churchill.) Since we warned that you omit Addison’s choices at your disadvantage, we hasten to list the two we omitted, along with his remarks:

• Harbutt, Fraser J. The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America and the Origins of the Cold War, 1986, 370 pages: “It is no secret that Churchill is revered by many Americans as a philosopher-king and role model for leadership. Whereas in Britain we see him as a man of the past, he is admired in the U.S. as a guide to the present and the future. His unique stature on the western side of the Atlantic owes something his wartime alliance with Roosevelt, but as Fraser Harbutt shows in a powerfully argued book, the decisive factor was the part Churchill played, while he was out of office, in facilitating the entry of the United States into the Cold War. The tipping point was his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri in 1946.”

• Taylor, A.J.P., editor. Churchill: Four Faces and the Man (Churchill Revised in USA), 1969, 274 pages: “This sparkling collection of essays anatomised Churchill’s qualities as a statesman (A.J.P. Taylor), politician (Robert Rhodes James), historian (J.H. Plumb), military strategist (Basil Liddell Hart) and depressive human being (Anthony Storr). Research has moved on since then, but as an analysis of the essential Churchill it has never been surpassed. It founded the British school of Churchillians who admire him ‘warts and all.'”

Many disagree with Anthony Storr that WSC was “depressive,” except in very old age, since the troubles he saw would depress anybody; or that Churchill’s relevance and leadership are not appreciated outside America. We also doubt that Winston Churchill had as much influence on the U.S. plunge into the Cold War as Harbutt suggests. (On this subject, see the compelling essays in James W. Muller, editor: Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later, 1999, 180 pages.)

A’BLOGGING WE SHALL GO

FEBRUARY 15TH— We were amused by a Churchill-derived comment describing the new digital activity known as “blogging” (personal web logs) and Internet chatrooms: “Never have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few.” However, some bloggers have interesting angles.

Take for example “Amazing Ben” (www.badassoftheweek.com): a 28-yearold college administrator, whose style is, well, different.

Churchill, Ben says, was known “for his unyielding tenaciousness and his awesome ability to train killer attack hounds to run up and bite Fascists in the jugular when they weren’t looking…one of the most badass world leaders of the modern era. This dude was a totally righteous asskicker who enjoyed puffing on Cuban cigars, shooting guns, drinking copious amounts of booze, and kicking Nazis in the ___ ___ with a size 10 steeltoed boot, and he didn’t give a crap about anything that didn’t further his goal of accomplishing one of those four tasks. He fought hard, partied hard, wore a lot of totally awesome suits, and pretty much always looked like he’d just stepped out of a badass 1930s pulp fiction detective story.”

We linked this on our website. We were going to reprint Ben’s essay, but we are not so badass. However, we welcome the use of profanity in Churchill’s favor for a change.

ERRATA, FH 140

Page 15: Paul Alkon is a Professor of English and American (not French) Literature. Page 48: The photo of Martin Gilbert’s walking tour is 1996 (not 1999), during that year’s Churchill Centre Tour of England.

PATRICK KINNA

BRIGHTON, MARCH 14TH— Churchill was flying home from the Continent late in World War II when his Dakota began to lose power and altitude, and passengers joked over what to jettison. “It’s no use throwing you out,” Churchill grinned at Patrick Kinna. “There’s not enough of you to make a ham sandwich.”

Kinna, one of Churchill’s key wartime secretaries, had many fond memories (see “Eminent Churchillians,” FH 115, Summer 2002; the above was related to Paul Courtenay by Kinna’s nephew at the funeral). He was recommended to Churchill by the Duke of Windsor, whom he had served while the Duke was with the British military mission in Paris. From 1940 to 1945 his tiny, trim figure rarely left the Prime Minister’s side. Kinna was present when President Roosevelt unexpectedly encountered Churchill emerging from his bath at the White House. (WSC later remarked to the King, “Sir, I believe I am the only man in the world to have received the head of a nation naked.”)

Patrick Francis Kinna was born in south London on 5 September 1913. His father had been decorated for his part in the relief of Ladysmith during the Boer War. After leaving school Patrick took a course in shorthand and typing, then joined Barclay’s Bank as a clerk while deliberating whether to be a journalist or a skating instructor (he had trained with the ice-skating star Belita).

In 1939, Kinna joined the reserves, but because of his skills (he had won the All-England championship for secretarial speeds), he was quickly assigned to the Intelligence Corps and sent to Paris as clerk to the Duke of Windsor.

As the Germans drew near they were ordered to evacuate. After a day destroying secret documents, the Duke was spirited to safety while Kinna hitchhiked to the coast to find a ship home.

Back in England, Kinna got a telephone call from 10 Downing Street and joined Churchill aboard HMS Prince of Wales, sailing to Newfoundland for the Atlantic Charter meeting with Roosevelt. Kinna’s duties included trying to discourage sailors from whistling—a noise Churchill could never abide. But once Churchill and Roosevelt got down to business in Argentia Bay there was no letup: “I was terribly busy all the time. I spent days and days typing.”

Churchill was so impressed with Kinna’s work that he wanted him to join his staff. One reason was because, in the early part of the war, women were not allowed to travel on warships. Kinna was substituted, often taking along the work normally done by Elizabeth Layton, Kathleen Hill and others. From then on, Kinna accompanied Churchill on all WSC’s trips abroad.

Some accounts suggest that Churchill was initially charmed by Stalin, but that was not Kinna’s impression. After their first encounter in Moscow, Kinna recalled Churchill storming back to the British Embassy: “I have just had a most appalling meeting with this terrible man Stalin…evil and dreadful,” he began. The British Ambassador interrupted: “May I remind you, Prime Minister, that all these rooms have been wired and Stalin will hear every word you said.”

The next morning, though it was obvious that Stalin had heard, he was “very nice and polite and sweet,” Kinna recalled: “He couldn’t afford to tell Mr. Churchill to buzz off.” Later on, after WSC’s return from the Yalta conference, Kinna recalled that WSC asked to have his clothes fumigated, suspecting they had acquired unwelcome residents.

Churchill had a reputation for being brusque and inconsiderate with his staff, but Kinna recalled him as “basically very kind,” though if he was in full flight “nothing else mattered and politeness didn’t come into it.” Secretaries were instructed never to ask WSC to repeat himself. As his dictation was fast and fluent, this was difficult, but Kinna made sure repeats were kept to a minimum.

After the 1945 election, Churchill, now Leader of the Opposition, asked Patrick to stay on, but Kinna had had enough of long hours—Churchill habitually worked past midnight—and declined. Ever magnanimous, Churchill wrote a glowing testimonial (“He is a man of exceptional diligence, firmness of character and fidelity”) and nominated Kinna for an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).

The two men kept in touch and always exchanged white pelargoniums on their birthdays. After Churchill died, Lady Churchill sent a chauffeur to Kinna’s home with a present of a set of elegant tea tables used by her husband.

News of Kinna’s skills reached the ears of Ernest Bevin, foreign secretary in the postwar Labour government. “If he was good enough for Winston, he’s good enough for me,” Bevin is supposed to have said. Kinna worked with him until Bevin’s death in 1951, and in 1991 he presented a Douglas Robertson Bisset bronze bust of his former boss to the Foreign Office, where it has pride of place on the grand staircase.

Kinna’s subsequent career was a “bit of an anticlimax.” In the early 1950s he joined the timber firm Montague Meyer, rising to personnel director. He retired in his sixtieth year and went to live with his sister Gladys in Brighton, making occasional outings to events commemorating the lives of the great men for whom he had worked. In 2000 he was welcomed on board the USS Winston S. Churchill at the International Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth. In 2005 he stood alongside HM the Queen at the opening ceremony of the Churchill Museum at the Cabinet War Rooms. He also lectured, donating the fees to charity.

SOME EXCERPTS ARE FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, 18 MARCH 2009

JOAN BRIGHT ASTLEY “MISS MONEYPENNY”

LONDON— Joan Bright Astley bore unique witness to the inner workings of the British High Command during World War II, as a key secretary on Winston Churchill’s staff.

From 1941 she was responsible for a special information centre in the Cabinet War Rooms, supplying confidential information to British commanders-in-chief. From 1943, she accompanied British delegations to the key conferences of the “Big Three.”

Her memoir, The Inner Circle (1971), contained eloquent portraits of Allied leaders. And she was one of three or four women Ian Fleming used to form a composite Miss Moneypenny, a central character in his James Bond series.

Bright Astley was born in Argentina, one of seven children of an English accountant working for a railway company and his Scottish governess wife. After a period in Spain, Penelope Joan McKerrow Bright finished her education in Bristol, did a secretarial course in London and worked as a cipher clerk at the British legation in Mexico City.

In 1936 she declined an offer to teach English to the family of the Nazi leader Rudolf Hess in Munich; she also passed on a job with Duff Cooper, working on his biography of Talleyrand.

On the eve of war, she became personal assistant to Colonel Jo Holland, head of MI(R), a secret War Office department exploring ways of causing trouble inside enemy-occupied countries.

Holland’s staff was small and mostly amateur, but included Colin Gubbins, the future head of the Special Operations Executive. With Sir Peter Wilkinson, another MI(R) recruit, Bright Astley would publish the biography Gubbins & SOE (1993). When SOE replaced MI(R) in 1940, she remained at the War Office, assigned to Churchill’s joint planning committee secretariat in the Cabinet War Rooms beneath Whitehall, London. Calling the rooms “quiet dungeon galleries,” she wrote: “A noticeboard showed us if it was ‘fine,’ ‘wet’ or ‘windy’ outside, red or green lights if an air raid was ‘on’ or ‘off.’

From 1941, she ran for General Sir Hastings Ismay (Chief Staff Officer to WSC as Minister of Defence) an underground information room where commanders could peruse vital briefing papers in confidence and seclusion.

General Archibald Wavell, who became a friend, asked in 1942 that Bright Astley go to India to establish a secretariat on the London model. (Wavell, promoted to Field Marshal, was appointed Viceroy of India in 1943.) Ismay refused and, in 1943, made her an administrative officer for the British delegation meeting the Americans in Washington. By the end of the war she had attended six conferences, including those attended by Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at Teheran and Yalta.

Accommodation had to be arranged, offices equipped, passes issued. At Yalta she also had to cope with Soviet officialdom—and snow. On the journey to Quebec, General Sir Alan Brooke was peeved at being allocated a train compartment above the wheels; Wing Commander Guy Gibson complained: “They’ve taken away my name. It’s Dambuster here and Dambuster there.” During the final conference at Potsdam, Joan visited the shattered ruins of Hitler’s chancellery in Berlin: “In one passage there were hundreds of new Iron Cross medals strewn about the floor….a grim and macabre place, its evil spirit hanging over the grim city it had destroyed.”

Joan Astley was appointed OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 1946. She attributed her singular war career to solid training, shorthand skills and luck.

But she also possessed independence, integrity and a warm and disarming personality. “For Joan,” wrote General Ismay inside her copy of his memoirs, “who was loved by admirals and liftmen alike—and who made a far bigger contribution to the successful working of the defence machinery than has ever been recognised.”

In 1949, she married Philip Astley, a retired army officer who was divorced from the actress Madeleine Carroll. He died in 1958. Her son, three grandchildren and a sister survive her.

—THE GUARDIAN REPRINTED BY KIND PERMISSION, WITH THANKS TO ALFRED JAMES

TOMMY GOSLING 1926-2008

TREMONT, NORMANDY— Jockey Tommy Gosling will forever be linked with two other indefatigables of the 20th century: Churchill and his battling grey thoroughbred, Colonist II, the most popular English racehorse of the postwar era.

The Scottish jockey rode Winston Churchill’s colt, then a four-year-old, to an astonishing eight victories, six in succession, in the 1950 racing season, to the delight of WSC and the racing public. (See Fred Glueckstein, “Winston Churchill and Colonist II,” Finest Hour 125, Winter 2004-05).

Churchill found himself somewhat in the doldrums as Opposition leader, and in 1949 his son-in-law, Christopher Soames, persuaded him to try the avocation of thoroughbreds, despite the doubts of WSC’s wife. Clementine wrote to a friend of “a queer new facet in Winston’s variegated life. I must say I don’t find it madly amusing.”

Churchill forked out £2000 for the French-bred thoroughbred and the following year, 1950, Churchill’s trainer Walter Nightingall enlisted the gritty Gosling, who had been UK joint champion apprentice jockey of the year in 1945. An injury in 1951 forced the battling grey’s early retirement to stud.

Some political commentators suggested that the horse’s popularity helped Churchill return to power in 1951, after having suffered a shock defeat to Labour in 1945. Friends thought Colonist II’s success revitalized the Prime Minister, who was 75 when he bought him. Seeing the great man cheering Colonist home reminded ordinary Britons of his human side, they believed.

Shortly before Gosling died in his retirement home in Normandy, France, he said one of his proudest possessions was a painting by Churchill, with a note of appreciation for what the jockey and Colonist (“II” had long since been dropped by the general public) had done to brighten his twilight years. Churchill, a great admirer of the Scottish regiments during the war, said he believed that Gosling’s will to win had transmitted itself through the saddle to a horse of the same nature.

In 1956, Churchill was one of the first to send a message of support to Gosling after the jockey’s career almost ended in both victory and tragedy on the turf at Leicester Racecourse. He had just won on a horse called Edison when he was thrown from the saddle and kicked in the head. There were fears for his life but he was back in the saddle within months and his accident was the catalyst for the introduction by the Jockey Club (of which Churchill was by then a member) of mandatory hard hats under the traditional silk caps.

Hounded by weight problems, Gosling retired relatively young in 1963 at the age of 37, having won 363 of more than 3000 races he rode. But he went on to become a successful trainer, based at the Priam Lodge stables in Epsom, for the next 20 years.

He saddled 129 winners, most memorably Ardent Dancer in the 1965 Irish 1000 Guineas, his only “classic” win as a trainer. As a rider, he had won the same race on Lady Senator in 1961, his one “classic” success in the saddle. In 1960, he came third in the last “classic” of the season, the St. Leger at Doncaster, on Churchill’s horse, Vienna.

Thomas Gosling was born in the cotton mill village of New Lanark on the river Clyde on 24 July 1926. After working as a grocers’ message boy and a petrol pump attendant, he followed his dream of becoming a jockey and was taken on as an apprentice at Lambourn, Berkshire, known as the “Valley of Horseracing.” Gosling retired as a trainer in 1983, going first to Dorking, Surrey, then to Trémont, Normandy, where he bred horses until he died on Churchill’s birthday, aged 82. He is survived by his second wife, Valerie (née Vickery), and three sons.

—PHIL DAVISON IN THE FINANCIAL TIMES; REPRINTED BY KIND PERMISSION.

BUST-OUT, 2013

In March an American writer claimed that Obama said of the Churchill bust: “Get that blank-blank thing out of here” (but offered no attribution). And a British writer snipped that the cheap CD Obama gave British Prime Minister Gordon Brown doesn’t work on British TV.

The media just demonstrates its degenerate irresponsibility in fanning non-issues. Fifty years ago a different media would have published thoughtful pieces on the future of the US-UK relationship. We are witnessing the triumph of Britney Spearsthought.

The President has more pressing matters of concern, as do we. So, with acknowledgement to the Daily Telegraph, here is a pastiche on a future “Bust-Out” which might well erupt four years hence.

★ ★ ★

WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 15, 2013— A bust of Abraham Lincoln, loaned to President Obama from the State of Illinois art collection four years ago, has now been handed back by new President Billy-Bob Calhoun. Where has the Lincoln bust gone? Reporters have tracked it to the palatial Springfield, Illinois residence of Rod Blagojevich, who was reinstated as Governor in 2011 after the State Supreme Court ruled that his 2009 impeachment was unconstitutional, following Blagojevich’s two-year campaign for redemption on Oprah and Larry King.

Lincoln is no hero to Mr. Calhoun, who prefers to quote Winston Churchill, author of the famous alternative history, “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.” (FH 103). Now a bust of Churchill, retrieved from storage at the British Embassy in Washington, has replaced Lincoln’s in the Oval Office.

Lincoln, remember, sent General Sherman marching through Calhoun’s home state of Georgia to defeat the Confederacy. Among Confederates allegedly imprisoned by the Federals was one Aloysius Beauregard Calhoun, the President’s great-great grandfather.

Governor Blagojevich says he will offer another evidence of Illinois’ esteem to the new President when he meets Mr. Calhoun in Washington this month. One state senator has suggested that, given President Calhoun’s interest in the Civil War era, Mr. Blagojevich should offer a bust of Stephen A. Douglas, Abraham Lincoln’s leading opponent during the 1860 Presidential Election. RML 
 

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