March 12, 2015

“The House was enraged in an ugly mood towards Mr. Churchill,” declared the Daily Despatch, following WSC’s 14 March speech on Europe. Undaunted, he spoke again on 13 April:

“The rise of Germany . . . to anything like military equality with France, Poland or the small states, means a renewal of a general European war.” He was now consulting with Maj. Desmond Morton, who would later be an important source of information for WSC’s successful attacks on Government defense policies.

After declining to serve on the Parliamentary Committee on India, Churchill led a public crusade against the Government’s India policy, causing an open split with Baldwin. Almost all WSC’s former Cabinet colleagues and a majority within the party supported ‘S.B.’ But there was substance to WSC’s charges and the Government knew it.

Clementine rarely spoke out publicly on controversial matters but, at a Conservative Party Women’s Advisory Committee meeting in May, she supported a motion quite compatible with Winston’s point of view.

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Churchill’s writing continued, with more revised drafts of Marlborough, Volume I of which began serialization in The Sunday Times on II June (Woods C216). He wrote a foreword to a biography of his late friend, F. E. Smith (Woods B21), and reviewed Volume II of The Life of Joseph Chamberlain by J. L. Garvin (Woods C215).

Fortunately, the title of an article, “Great Fighters in Lost Causes” (Woods C212) was not a harbinger of his own experience, though stormy weather on both domestic and foreign fronts lay between now and ultimate victory.