May 5, 2013

Finest Hour 151, Summer 2011

Page 27

The Special Relationship – Is This the Man?

London, 12 April 1945: “The Prime Minister was found at his desk with wet eyes”

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By Charles Miner Cooper

Is this the man who rigid stood with bulldog mien and shoulders hunched, feet wide apart, bluntly to tell with throaty growl his island folk:

“There’s nothing left; gone are our guns, gone are our tanks, gone our allies, gone the spearhead of our attack.

“There’s nothing left to offer you but blood and toil and tears and sweat.

“There’s nothing left but our grim will to battle on while our breath holds.

“In this mold cast we’ll build in mass, guns, tanks and arms of new design, more deadly far than those we’ve lost: a new offense of greater thrust.

“While thus we toil our valiant fleet ever our shield, will guard our shores. Our airmen keen as hungry hawks, blood of our blood, bone of our bone, will guard our skies, and in their zeal will give their all, and, giving, win the world’s acclaim and its intent to pray and work for truth and right.

“We shall not flag, and as of old we’ll hew our way, with pit dog grit, through all our ills to our set goal.”

Is this the man who had the nerve to strip his land to make secure Suez Canal, the Empire’s bridge and vital link ‘twixt East and West? Is this the man who quick as thought, when the mad Hun sprang at the Russ, told the Red chief he’d stay with him through thick and thin to the war’s end;

Who sent his ships, despite great loss, through icy seas bearing supplies, guns, tanks and planes to bleak Murmansk for use against the common foe?

Is this the man to whom there came, in a dark hour across the sea, a whisper from his only peer in all the world, one brave as he, whose crippled frame did but enhance his smile serene and serve to lend to his sound mind wings to aspire—

“From this day forth, come weal or rue, I’ll share the load and ride with you, knee touching knee, in this crusade.”

Is this the man who slept in spurs, who sent back word in quick response:

“Our church bells ring as God we praise. Within their stalls the horses champ. The whetted swords whine in their sheaths. With lightened heart girded, I wait.”

Is this that man he who now sits, with wet red eyes, pallid and limp, image of woe, deep in his chair?

Yes, it is he. Hush! Let him weep. Such grief as his must find a vent, or chance the toll of clot or stroke.

He has just learnt his gallant friend from cross the sea who rode with him, knee touching knee, so unperturbed through risks untold, who was to him as David was to Jonathan, will ride with him no more, no more.

BY CHARLES MINER COOPER, physician to President Harding. First published in volume form by John Howell, San Francisco, 1945.

“Is This The Man” appeared in FH 14 (1970), FH 60 (1988) and the 1995 Boston Conference Program. Knowing as we do the bumps and scrapes of the famous relationship—knowing that things weren’t always quite this way—the poem yet has a way of turning up, and sounding right.