May 15, 2013

ACTION THIS DAY: FINEST HOUR 140, AUTUMN 2008

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

==================

125 YEARS AGO:
Autumn 1883 • Age 8
“Only 18 more days…”

2024 International Churchill Conference

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

More

Lord Randolph was not pleased that Jennie had left Winston and Jack alone at Blenheim for the month of September with their cousin Sunny: “I think it rather rash of you.” The boys appeared to do just fine, however, as Winston wrote to his mother: “I went out fishing today & caught my first fish by my self [sic]. Jack & I are quite well.”

Winston’s return to school that autumn did not show much improvement from the previous term. While his work in history was described as “good,” the previous term it had been “very good.” French had dropped from “fair” to “not very good.” Geography was “weak,” down from “very fair.” But his tardiness improved: late only six times compared to nineteen times the term before. This probably accounts for his overall assessment for the term: “On the whole he has improved though at times he is still troublesome.”

100 YEARS AGO:
Autumn 1908 • Age 33
“HMG will do their duty”

In a speech to his Dundee constituency on 8 October, Churchill covered a variety of subjects. On foreign policy:

We are met to-night with the knowledge that on the continent of Europe there is a period of strain and critical anxiety. The whole Continent is agog. All the diplomatists are enjoying themselves enormously. (Laughter.) All the newspaper offices are buzzing like disturbed hives of hornets. All the wiseacres are pulling the longest possible faces and endeavouring to assume an air of superior wisdom. Let us keep quite calm. Nothing very serious will happen. (Cheers.)

On defense:

If we wish to keep ourselves in these islands free and independent of European difficulties then I say it is indispensable that these islands should be guarded by the strength of a navy sufficiently powerful to make us immune from all possibility of attack. (Cheers.) And you may be quite sure that while His Majesty’s Government have resolved to exert over the spending departments of this country that thrifty control which has long been the traditional policy of the Liberal Government….nevertheless His Majesty’s Government will do their duty, and will see that that great arm of defence, not of defiance, is maintained in the highest state of efficiency and strength, so that when our sailors go to sea they shall not merely go in a superior force, but shall sail the seas in the best ships that science can invent or money can buy. (Cheers).

On Irish Home Rule:

…the Liberal party is a Home Rule party, and its policy is to give Ireland an Irish Parliament and the management of exclusively Irish affairs, subject to and subordinate to the proper control of the Imperial Parliament. When another general election takes place I am of opinion that the party should in no way bind itself not to put forward the whole of that policy.

Churchill spoke in Manchester on 14 October, expressing appreciation to the Liberal Party for the way in which it treated him in 1904 when he left the Conservative Party of his father. In doing so, he made the candid admission that there were, at the time, many issues where “my mind was not fully prepared”:

When I first came to Manchester I was at a very critical and doubtful moment in my political life. I had hopelessly and completely severed myself from one of the great parties in the State. I was not fully prepared at once to associate myself with the other. My views had been expressed often and clearly on many of the great question of the day; and on all of the great issues which were then the current issues of politics I was whole-heartedly in sympathy with the Liberal cause. But there were other questions which were not very prominently before the public at that time and which had not much been debated—issues in the late Parliament, the first Parliament of which I was a member, and on those questions my mind was not fully prepared. I had not studied them sufficiently; I was not thoroughly acquainted with the arguments and the reasonings which might be advanced on either side, and I was not prepared, when I came to Manchester in 1905, I was not prepared to sign any complete or rigid pledge, or to subscribe wholeheartedly to the programme of the Liberal party.

I often think that if at that juncture I had been confronted by men who wished to bind me down in word or letter to every detail of a cut and dried party programme I could never have felt the same internal self-respect and selfconfidence—the consciousness of the truth and sincerity of my action—which have enabled me to make good my case in spite of all the calumny and criticism which is brought to bear on anyone who changes sides. (Cheers.)

Margot Asquith, wife of the Prime Minister, wrote an interesting letter to Churchill on 11 December, asking him to intervene with the editor of the Manchester Guardian to stop its editorial attacks on her husband:

Now lately the Manchester Guardian has been decrying my husband as leader and saying that they will take care that there is no future Asquith regime and all possible odious and disloyal things about their Prime Minister. Do you think a hint from you to the editor wd be a good thing?…Do write and tell the editor that you and others of influence will not support and praise him if he tries to make mischief in a great party…I know you wd do anything for your chief and that you have power with the Press. So I confide my sorrows to you. My husband doesn’t even see the M. Guardian and tho’ he cares what his colleagues and supporters
think of him he doesn’t care what the papers say of him at all. I do I confess. Write one line to cheer me up and tear this letter up.

Churchill’s letter to his accountant the next day offers a revealing glimpse into the state of the newly-wed Churchill’s finances:

My income for the year should be calculated as follows: 1/3 of £7,400, i.e. £2,466—being the last instalment of the profits arising from my Life of Lord Randolph Churchill. This year, I have made as the result of my articles and book on my African journey a profit of £2,000, from which must be deducted £800 which were the necessary expenses of my journey to Africa and an essential condition of the production of the work. This £1200 I propose to spread over 3 years, making £400 income taxable in the present year. There is also a sum of £225 arising from a reprint of my novel Savrola. This I shd propose to pay wholly in the current year. The total income is therefore £3,091, from which shd however be deducted the payments wh I have made of premium on my life policy; of these Messrs Nicholl Manisty can furnish you an account. They are about £200.

75 YEARS AGO:
Autumn 1933 • Age 58
“We cannot be the policeman of the whole world”

Churchill’s concerns over the new Nazi government in Germany continued to mount as he received first-hand accounts of events inside that country. Duff Cooper wrote to him in September, 1933 while on holiday:

We are living here on the frontier of Austria and the inhabitants are nervous of invasion. We motored through the centre of Germany and it was a remarkable sight. Everywhere and at all times of the day and night there were troops marching, drilling and singing. Hitlerite uniform is an exceptionally unpleasant shade of khaki and one sees as much of it in Germany now as one did of khaki in England, in 1918. This is not an exaggeration. They enthusiasm than a whole nation has ever before put into such a preparation.

In mid-October, 1933, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. In the House of Commons on 7 November, 1933, Lloyd George painted a benign picture of Germany and its intentions. Churchill replied to his former colleague and drew entirely different conclusions:

My Rt. Hon. Friend made tonight a deeply interesting speech, to which I listened, like everyone else, with admiration of the persuasive charm and skill with which he pressed his point. There is nothing that he can do so well as to draw one side of a picture in the most glowing manner and then reduce the other side to small and pitiable proportions. He gave an account of the state of Europe. He represented that Germany might have a few thousand more rifles than was allowed by the Treaty, a few more Boy Scouts, and then he pictured the enormous armies of Czechoslovakia and Poland and France, with their thousands of cannon, and so forth. If I could believe that picture I should feel much comforted, but I cannot. I find it difficult to believe it in view of the obvious fear which holds all the nations who are neighbours of Germany and the obvious lack of fear which appears in the behaviour of the German Government and a large proportion of the German people. The great dominant fact is that Germany has already begun to rearm. We read of importations quite out of the ordinary of scrap iron and nickel and war metals. We read of the military spirit which is rife throughout the country; we see that the philosophy of blood lust is being inculcated into their youth in a manner unparalleled since the days of barbarism.

Churchill went on in his speech, to criticize the government’s disarmament policy and warned that Great Britain and the British “cannot be the policemen of the whole world”:

I am glad that an interval has been introduced into this dangerous process of disarmament in Europe, which has played a noticeable part in raising the temperature to its present level. If we wish to keep our freedom, we should forthwith recognize that our role in Europe is more limited than it has hitherto been considered to be. Isolation is, I believe, utterly impossible, but we should nevertheless practice a certain degree of sober detachment from the European scene. We should not try to weaken those powers which are in danger, or feel themselves in danger, and thereby expose ourselves to a demand that we should come to their aid….

I know that it is natural for Ministers, for the Prime Minister, to wish to play a great part on the European stage, to bestride Europe in the cause of peace, and to be as it were its saviours. You cannot be the saviours of Europe on a limited liability. I agree with the statement of the late Mr. Bonar Law, who said that we cannot be the policemen of the whole world. We have to discharge our obligations, but we cannot take upon ourselves undue obligations into which we shall certainly come if we are the leaders in compelling and pressing for a great diminution in the strength of France and other Powers which are neighbours of Germany. How lucky it is that the French did not take the advice that we have been tendering them in the last few years, or the advice which the United States has given them—advice tendered from a safe position 3000 miles across the ocean! If they had accepted it the war would be much nearer, and our obligation to come to their aid would be much more strictly interpreted.

The first volume of Churchill’s biography of Marlborough was published in October, 1933 and Stanley Baldwin wrote to extend his congratulations:

You really are an amazing man! I look sometimes at that row of volumes in my little library, and I cannot think how you can have found the mere time to have got through the physical labour alone of writing them. This last book would mean years of work even for a man whose sole occupation was writing history.