April 18, 2013

DATELINES: FINEST HOUR 152, AUTUMN 2011

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THE VALIANT YEARS AVAILABLE AGAIN

BAYONNE, N.J. AUGUST 8TH— Larry Kryske notifies us that Jack LeVien’s famous 26-episode documentary of Churchill in World War II, “The Valiant Years,” has been remastered in a 7-disk DVD, offered for $44.49 from MediaOutlet.com. It can be ordered here.  Although hagiographic, LeVien’s epic is widely admired. The film footage is simply fantastic, providing a real insight into Churchill and the major war of the last century. The narrator is Richard Burton, who despised Churchill politically, but a job’s a job. Burton’s dislike is not apparent in his narrative—nor was it in his later role as WSC in the original “Gathering Storm” production.

CHURCHILLFLORA

LONDON, JULY 14TH— The second breed of hybrid tea rose named for Sir Winston, developed by Churchill College to mark its 50th-anniversary last year, was planted in the garden at Ten Downing Street by Prime Minister David Cameron. The first “Rose Sir Winston Churchill,” a pinkish orange variety with strong fragrance which blooms throughout the year, was developed in 1955 by Alexander Dickson III. The new Churchill rose, developed for Churchill College by Peter Beales Roses in Norfolk, a peach-coloured variety, debuted this year at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Churchill’s daughter Lady Soames, Patron of the Churchill Centre, gave Cameron “firm instructions” on how the rose should be planted as Churchill College Master Sir David Wallace and Richard Beales of the Norfolk firm looked on.

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The new rose is also planted at Chartwell in the gardens designed by Clementine Churchill and Victor Vincent. On the way up to the house from the visitor centre is the Lady Churchill Garden, devoted to hybrid tea roses. On the other side of the house is the Golden Rose Walk, bordered by spectacular yellow varieties given by their family to Winston and Clementine on their 50th Anniversary.

Several plants and trees other than roses are named for Sir Winston, as noted by the late Douglas Hall in Finest Hour 81 (1993). “How better to keep the memory green,” Hall wrote, “than to fill your garden with a collection of plants named in honour of WSC?” We offer Mr. Hall’s roster: Chamacyparis lawsoniana Winston Churchill is a golden ever-green, one of the showiest of this huge family of conifers. Slow growing and of medium height, it reaches six feet in about ten years. It should be planted in full sun to encourage it to retain its bright golden colour, which remains spectacular on dull winter days.

Fuchsia Winston Churchill was first bred in the USA in 1942 and after seventy years remains a favourite. It has a deep pink tube and sepals, and petals of a luminous lavender.

Michelmas Daisy Aster Novi-Belgii Winston S. Churchill is another old variety with rich ruby-red petals and bright yellow centre.

Narcissus Sir Winston Churchill features double creamy-white flowers with an orange-red cup. A fairly tall variety, it grows to around 16 inches and is late flowering. It is best left undisturbed to naturalise on banks, between shrubs or in not too heavily- shaded areas beneath trees. Bulbs are widely available, including by mail.

Rhododendron Azalea Mollis Winston Churchill grows to five feet with a five-foot spread after ten years in a semi-shaded position, requiring acid soil.

Saxifraga Winston Churchill is a rock garden perennial preferring partial shade, which sends up soft pink flowers about six inches high, from a bright green mound of mossy leaves, in April and May. It is available by mail order and from nurseries.

IRON CURTAIN MEMORIAL

FULTON, MO., MAY 13TH— Edwina Sandys, Sir Winston’s granddaughter and Churchill Centre Trustee, helped dedicate a new sculpture by noted St. Louis artist Don Wiegand at a special unveiling ceremony at the National Churchill Museum today. Ms. Sandys herself created “Breakthrough,” a sculpture erected here in memory of her grandfather, using eight sections from the Berlin Wall—the longest contiguous section of that monument to oppression in North America.

“This new sculpture, which will be erected on the newly constructed Plaza in front of the National Churchill Museum, will create a much more dramatic entrance to attract visitors to our remarkable Museum,” says Rob Havers, Executive Director of the National Churchill Museum. “It captures the decisive moment here in March 1946 when Churchill vividly described the Iron Curtain that had fallen across the Continent and, in doing so, provided the metaphor that would encapsulate the Cold War for the next forty years.” (See “Iron Curtain,” letters column, page 4.)

The bas-relief sculpture was donated by Richard J. Mahoney of St. Louis, a Churchill Fellow and longtime supporter of the Museum. He was also instrumental in the creation of the “Life in Leadership Gallery” at the Museum. Speakers on the program included Sandys, Wiegand, Mahoney, Havers, and Westminster College President George Forsythe.

“BRING A FRIEND— IF YOU HAVE ONE…”

CAMBRIDGE, JUNE 15TH— Alas! The famous exchange between Churchill and George Bernard Shaw is fiction. According to the usually reliable Kay Halle, in her quotations book Irrepressible Churchill (Cleveland: World, 1966, 116), Shaw wrote to Churchill in 1923: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Halle said Churchill wrote back: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second— if there is one.” Finest Hour editor Dalton Newfield suggested in the 1970s that the play in question was Shaw’s St. Joan, debuting in 1924.

Now Allen Packwood, director of the Churchill Archives Centre, has ended this grand story with a discovery in the Churchill Papers (CHUR 2/165/ 66, 68). As Erica Chenoweth explains in “Churchill and the Theatre” (see page 41), both Churchill and Shaw denied this exchange of mock-insults.The famous retort has been reprinted in many quotation books— including the editor’s, but it will be scrubbed from the next printing. (If there is one.) —RML

H.M. AT BLETCHLEY BLETCHLEY PARK

BUCKS., JULY 15TH— Her Majesty The Queen unveiled a memorial sculpture by artist Charles Gurrey to wartime codebreakers during a historic visit to Bletchley Park today. In her dedication, Her Majesty said: “We gather here to commemorate the work of that remarkable group of people. It is impossible to overstate the deep sense of admiration, gratitude, and national debt that we owe to all those men and, especially, women. They were called to this place in the greatest of secrecy—so much so that some of their families will never know the full extent of their contribution— as they set about on a seemingly impossible mission; a massive challenge in the field of cryptanalysis: for the first time pitting technology against technology. And so, these huts and buildings became the centre of a world-wide web of intelligence communications, spanning the Commonwealth and further afield.

“This was the place of geniuses such as Alan Turing. But these wonder- fully clever mathematicians, language graduates and engineers were complemented by people with different sets of skills, harnessing that brilliance through methodical, unglamorous, hard slog. Thus the secret of Bletchley’s success was that it became a home to all the talents.

“We can be proud of the legacy of Bletchley: proud that Colossus was the first computer, and that the British people, supported by our friends and allies, rose to the challenge. At heart we have always been a nation of problem solvers. This natural aptitude was taken to new heights by the emergency of war, showing that necessity is indeed the mother of invention, and that battles can be won, and many lives saved, by using brainpower as well as firepower; deliberation as well as force.

“To those veterans who remain, I offer nothing but praise. You were history-shapers and your example serves as an inspiration to the intelligence community today, as they continue the vital work to protect the people of this country. For your many achievements I give my heartfelt thanks, on behalf of an eternally grateful nation.”

For more on Turing and his colleagues see Martin Gilbert’s “Churchill and Intelligence,” FH 149-51.

CERCLES WEB REVIEWS

ROUEN, FRANCE, MARCH 14TH— The Cercles team (University of Rouen, France) is pleased to announce its monthly series of Internet reviews of books on the English-speaking world, accessible here. Of particular interest was the March issue, covering Garry Campion’s The Good Fight: Battle of Britain Propaganda and the Few (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), reviewed by Paul Addison here. —PROF. ANTOINE CAPET, HEAD OF BRITISH STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF ROUEN

LULLABY OFF BROADWAY

LONDON, AUGUST 1ST— In our last issue (page 33), Sir Martin Gilbert recalled how Randolph Churchill used his country home, Stour, in “Operation Sanctuary,” as a refuge for John and Valerie Profumo. In 1963 Profumo, Harold Macmillan’s Minister of War, was forced to resign after being found to have lied in his earlier denial of having been involved in wrongdoing with the so-called model, Christine Keeler, who at the time was also “seeing” the Soviet naval attaché.

Profumo’s son David, in his book Bringing the House Down: A Family Memoir (2006) wrote that in 1954, when his father was engaged to marry Valerie Hobson, then playing the starring role in the London production of The King and I, he notified Sir Winston of his intentions. “You are a very lucky young man,” said the Prime Minister. “She will be able to sing you to sleep.” Churchill family loyalty was long-standing, as Sir Martin explained: “Profumo had been one of the Conservative Members who voted against Neville Chamberlain on 8 May 1940, making possible Winston Churchill’s premiership two days later.”

Profumo died in 2006 aged 91, having devoted himself to charity work since the scandal. Keeler is 69. —PHC

THINKER NOT THINKING

EL CERRITO, CALIF., MAY 10TH— In a piece on the American Thinker website, author Robert Morrison asserts that a) President Obama is no Churchill; b) Hitler, who in 1940 was ready “to parachute 10,000 commandos on London,” was scarier than Osama bin Laden; c) Obama, who dislikes Churchill for the torture of his grandfather in Kenya, “tossed” the bust of Churchill from the Oval Office; and d) just last week, “spilt his guts” on the media about the Bin Laden assassination. Dear oh dear.

Quoting Churchill’s famous remark that in May 1940 he felt as if he “were walking with destiny,” Morrison writes: “I want my president to have concerns, but not fears. I don’t want him to go on television and kvetch. I want my president to walk with destiny.” Among the comments to this article is one asserting that Churchill and President Wilson “orchestrated a plan” to get America into World War I by sinking the Lusitania. (Is that all?)

Reader Caroline Mitchell, who notified us of this article, writes: “Among the many distressing currents in life today are the falsehoods held by so many uninformed citizens. I see so many parallels between Churchill’s time and our own, with, alas, no one on our horizon even remotely approaching his. It would be a small triumph if we could set the record straight in this one.”

We thank Ms. Mitchell for taking up the forlorn cause of truth. The false notions are a product of Churchill’s continuing fame, and refuting them is more than a full-time job. Some of our efforts are our website in the “Leading Myths” section. We did respond to this one with a note on our website, as follows:

For writers to offer comparisons of today’s politicians with Churchill is reminiscent of what Churchill said (drawing laughs) to the U.S. Congress in 1941, just after the Japanese had attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor: “They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking.”

“Kvetching” and the U.S. president aside, you simply don’t parachute 10,000 commandos on a city, a feat beyond even Hitler’s Luftwaffe. President Obama’s grandfather was released in Kenya before Churchill returned to power in 1951. Churchill actually expressed sympathy toward the Kenyan rebels. The details are here. The bust business was treated by us with reductio ad absurdem (see FH 142:7-8), and while President Obama is certainly no Churchill, neither is anybody else.

It’s been acknowledged for years that during World War I the British were shipping arms on passenger liners; the big lie was that Churchill, if not Wilson, purposely set up RMS Lusitania to be torpedoed by withdrawing a supposed naval escort and/or ordering a course that magically put the ship in the crosshairs of the U-20. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe they knew where all the U-boats were, too.

The Lusitania nonsense was refuted years ago by Professor Harry Jaffa in the book Statesmanship, in a detailed article which he allows us to email to any interested reader.

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

PARIS, MAY 15TH— Port Winston, Arromanches is being targeted for a complex project of 100 offshore wind turbines towering 150 meters. According to the Port Winston Churchill Association of Arromanches, “These enormous wind engines will be spotted 10 km. away, and will be seen from all five landing beaches: Gold, Sword, Juno, Utah and Omaha.”

Of all the forms of alternate energy, huge, noisy, bird-killling windmills may be the most dubious, posing problems of expense, transmission and maintenance; a reader in California remarks at how many of them, built with the hope of replacing some other source of electricity, are standing motionless out of poor maintenance or weather damage.

Four volunteer organizations have come together to oppose this by a petition to President Sarkozy and other authorities. Their aim is to place the Normandy beaches under UNESCO’s World Patrimony “so they may remain protected once and for all from any industrialization.” Nearly 4000 international signatures have been collected from forty-five countries.

On 6 June 1944 the largest armada in history, 6939 ships with 150,000 troops, was hurled at Hitler’s Fortress Europe. The floating harbor at Arromanches, also known as Port Winston, became the gateway to the liberators, remaining functional from June to November 1944 and successfully contributing to the invasion efforts. Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches have become memorials. J.L. Butré, chairman, European Platform Against Windfarms, declares: “With no exception our organizations regard this as an invasion of sacred grounds where so many warriors gave their lives.”

Late word is that the plan has not been altered. To view and consider the petition go here.

HESS FLIGHT AUTHORIZED?

BERLIN, MAY 29TH— Daily Mail correspondent Allan Hall states baldly that “Hitler gave go-ahead to Rudolf Hess’s mission to secure peace with Winston Churchill.” Hall’s only evidence is a 28-page notebook in a Russian archive, written in 1948 by Major Karlheinz Pintsch, Hess’s longtime adjutant, who was captured by the Soviets and tortured and interrogated at their hands.

People under duress will say anything, and Pintsch’s testimonial has a Soviet ring. Per Pintsch, Hess’s true aim was “a military alliance of Germany with England against Russia.” (Russians and Germans consistently call Britain “England.”) Hitler was not surprised at the news of Hess’s flight, and read a letter from Hess saying that if he failed, “it will always be possible for you to deny all responsibility.” Hall concludes: “This is what happened, with both Hitler and Churchill claiming Hess was deranged.” (Query: If Hitler knew in advance, why would he need Hess’s letter advising what to do if he failed?)

The theory, which is always good for a flutter in the press, is not new. Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw quoted two other Nazis, Gauleiter Ernst Bohl and General Karl Bodenschatz, who were sure Hess acted with the Führer’s approval, who thought that Hitler’s rage was an act. But the perceptive Kershaw added: “Hitler was indeed capable of putting on a theatrical performance. But if this was acting, it was of Hollywood-Oscar caliber….All who saw Hitler [at that time] registered his profound shock, dismay and anger at what he saw as betrayal.”*

While Hess’s postpartum letter was indeed delivered to and read by Hitler, there is ample testimony from Hitler’s circle that he neither expected it nor felt anything other than angry surprise. Albrecht Speer, for example, heard “an inarticulate, almost animal outcry” from the Führer, who said: “Who will believe me when I say that Hess did not fly there in my name, that the whole thing is not some sort of intrigue behind the backs of my allies?” Hitler then said, “If only he would drown in the North Sea!” Finally, to preempt the news, he announced that Hess was mad. Years later, in Spandau Prison, Hess told Speer the whole idea had been inspired “in a dream by supernatural forces.”**

Madness? Works for us… The story also fails on background. Hess knew there was no chance of a peace deal with Churchill. His aim, therefore, was to contact what he thought were anti-war elements in Britain. His immediate target, the Duke of Hamilton, was, alas for him, totally loyal. The Duke’s late son, whom we visited in Scotland on the 2008 Churchill Tour, told us that his father’s reaction (and that of Churchill) varied between incredulity and amusement.

*Ian Kershaw, Hitler, vol. 2, 1936-1945: Nemesis (New York: Norton, 2000), 376.
**Albrecht Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 174-76.

LIFELONG LIBERAL

WASHINGTON, JUNE 25TH— In “The Forgotten Churchill,” in the Summer 2011 issue of The American Scholar George Wilson, Fellow of St. John’s College Cambridge, offers a very thorough and accurate article about Churchill’s role as a creator of Britain’s welfare state.

Wilson poses an interesting thesis: that Labour’s socialists resisted the “mixed economy” Churchill and Lloyd George envisioned because they knew it would be the death of pure socialism. It may be a stretch to suggest that Churchill favored the National Health Service Labour enacted, or that a benefit of the NHS was expanded private health care. It expanded because the NHS became rationed and inadequate.

And then (there’s always an “and then”!) Wilson says that Churchill’s books are “disappointing” and “needlessly extensive,” which is disappointing and needlessly silly. Leo Strauss called Marlborough “the greatest historical work written in our century, an inexhaustible mine of political wisdom and understanding.” Nor are Churchill’s biographies “devoid of any sense of personal weakness.”

Books aside, this is a stimulating and thoughtful article about Churchill’s lifelong Liberalism; and in Martin Gilbert’s words “the modernity of his thought, the originality of his mind, the constructiveness of his proposals….”

RICHARD HOLMES R.I.P.

LONDON, APRIL 30TH— A military historian and a charismatic writer and presenter of historical series on television, Richard Holmes, has died aged 65. I first met Richard in 1975, when I became his commanding officer in the Army: I was a Lt. Col., he a captain. He eventually became a brigadier in the Territorial Army (senior reservist in the military). In the thirty months we were together, I always gave him top marks and I heard him lecture many times in recent years.

I always remember his TV programme on Dunkirk. The shot opened with a close-up of his face while he gave the introduction. Then the camera zoomed away, and viewers found that he was wearing a steel helmet, standing in the sea with the water up to his neck, and holding a rifle above his head.

Many will have read his discerning book In the Footsteps of Churchill, which accompanied his television series by the same name. Richard was no hagiographer and, while greatly admiring Churchill, was not afraid to discuss his faults. His book scores particularly in its readable commentaries on contemporary events which shaped Churchill’s policies and career, some of which are hard to find elsewhere. For example, the return to the Gold Standard in 1925 is especially well covered: we learn that even opponents of the idea, such as John Maynard Keynes, considered that Churchill had no choice in the matter, though this did not stop Keynes from publicly attacking him.

Holmes was on the mark when he wrote: “WSC’s failings as a politician were the reverse side of his greatness as a statesman: he was protean where most people can only sustain a narrow expertise, brave where most are timid, decisive where most dither, strong where most are weak, diligent where most are casual, a brilliant manager of his own time where most are disorganised.” (For a comprehensive review of In the Footsteps of Churchill, see FH 128.)

A passage from Churchill’s Marlborough, Holmes wrote, defines the standard which the Great Duke’s direct descendant set for himself:

“Nothing but genius, the daemon in man, can answer the riddles of war, and genius, though it may be armed, cannot be acquired, either by reading or experience. In default of genius nations have to make war as best they can, and since that quality is much rarer than the largest and purest diamonds, most wars are mainly tales of muddle. But when from time to time it flashes upon the scene, order and design with a sense almost of infallibility draw out from hazard and confusion.”

Holmes had been looking forward to speaking at the upcoming Churchill Conference in London at my invitation, where he would have undoubtedly given one of his dazzling performances and accumulated a new set of admirers. —PAUL H. COURTENAY

CHURCHILLʼS UGANDA

KAMPALA, AUGUST 5TH— In My African Journey, Churchill wrote, “…concentrate upon Uganda! Nowhere else in Africa will a little money go so far. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial or more rapidly realised. Uganda is from end to end one ‘beautiful garden,’ where the staple food of the people grows without labour. Does it not sound like paradise on earth? It is ‘the pearl of Africa!'”

The Uganda we are living in today is obviously much different from the one Churchill left. Soil fertility on farms has been declining sharply: about 1.2 percent of nutrient stock stored in the topsoil is depleted by farmers each year….With 6.7 children per woman and population growth rate of 3.4% per annum, Uganda has the world’s third highest population surge; 78% of it is rural and depends on subsistence agriculture for a livelihood. While home to over 5000 plant species, 345 mammals, 1015 birds, 165 reptiles, and 43 amphibians, between 1990 and 2005

Uganda lost 26.3% of its forest cover. Is this the “paradise on earth” that Churchill saw? Certainly not….Uganda cannot sit on a green belt and continue to sit on its hands as the continuously arid region starves to death. President Museveni’s government has failed to curb the situation described above but the opposition also seems to be bankrupt on ideas for taking the country forward from where Museveni has gotten stuck in the mud dug by himself. – ENOCK MUSINGUZI IN THE INDEPENDENT, KAMPALA

ERRATA

Finest Hour 149, page 62 Quiz: Reader Michael Petzoid advises us of an error in the answer to question 20. Churchill was photographed riding to hounds in 1948 on his 74th birthday, not his 78th.

Finest Hour 151, page 34: The poem quoted (“A young Apollo…”) was not by Rupert Brooke but about Brooke. It was written by Frances Cornford after Brooke’s death in World War I. Thanks to David Herder for this correction.

FH 151, page 43: We regret that several errors were not spotted in our proofing. In the 26 March 1945 photo (below), Brooke is not in the bow, but next to Churchill. The figure seeming to lean on WSC is General Sir Miles Dempsey, Commander, British Second Army—not Eisenhower who (according to Brooke’s diary and contrary to a note on the back of the photo) was not present on either crossing. Montgomery is misidentified as the figure behind WSC, wearing only a single cap-badge; he is in fact second from the right, wearing two badges as usual. Similar corrections apply to the other photo we ran of this 26 March crossing.

FH 151, page 61: The Churchill-Stalin “spheres of interest” talks (“Tolstoy”) were in 1944, not 1942

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