finest hour - Winston Churchill

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FINEST HOUR
Summer 1997 • Number 95
Journal of The Churchill Center and The International Churchill Societies
THE
CHURCHILL CENTER
PATRON: THE LADY SOAMES D B E
I N T E R N A T I O N A L C H U R C H I L L " S O C I F TT F S
" " " ^ S T A T E S U N I T E D K I N G D O M . C A N A D A - AUSTRALIA
The Churchill Center is an international academic institution which encourages shiHv nf tv, re
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Churchill; fosters research about his speeches, writings and deeds; advances knowleovJ ofZ
?d t h ° U g h t °f W m s t J o n l . S grammes of teaching and publishing, imparts that learning to men, women and young p e o S e a S * * ^ " T ' r I Y F°~
sponsors Finest Hour, special publications, international conferences and tours The Cent
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Churchill Societies,, which were founded in 1968 top preserve interest in andnowledge
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Winston S.
S. Churchill,
Churchill, and
and are
are independent
independent non-nrnfit
non-profit aaffiliates
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e: www:winstonchurchill.org.
THE CHURCHILL CENTER
A non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0482584
TRUSTEES
The Hon. Celia Sandys, Fred Farrow, George
A. Lewis, Ambassador Paul H. Robinson, Jr.
BOARD OF GOVERNORS
(1996-1997)
William C. Ives, Richard M. Langworth,
Parker H. Lee III, Dr. John H. Mather,
Dr. Cyril Mazansky, James W. Muller,
John G. Plumpton, Douglas S. Russell,
Jacqueline Dean Witter
OFFICERS
Richard M. Langworth, President
181 Burrage Road, Hopkinton NH 03229
Tel. (603) 746-4433, Fax. (603) 746-4260
William C. Ives, Vice President
77 W. Wacker Dr., 44th fir., Chicago IL 60601
Tel. (312) 634-5034, Fax. (312) 634-5000
Parker H. Lee, III, Executive Director
117 Hance Road, Fair Haven NJ 07704
Tel. (908) 758-1933, Fax. (908) 758-9350
E-mail: PHLeeIII@aol.com
EXECUTIVE COMMIITTEE
William C. Ives, Parker H. Lee in,
Richard M. Langworth, Dr. Cyril Mazansky,
John G. Plumpton
ACADEMIC ADVISORS
Professor James W. Muller (Chairman)
University of Alaska Anchorage
1518 Airport Hts. Dr., Anchorage AK 99508
Tel. (907) 786-4740 Fax. (907) 786-4647
E-mail: afjwm@uaa.alaska.edu
Prof. Keith Alldritt, Univ. of Br. Columbia
Dr. Larry Arnn, Pres., Claremont Institute
Prof. Eliot A. Cohen, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Prof. Kirk Emmert, Kenyon College
Prof. Barry Cough. Wilfrid Laurier Univ.
Prof. Warren F. Kimball, Rutgers University
Prof. Patrick Powers, Assumption College
Prof. Paul A. Rahe, University of Tulsa
Dr. Jeffrey Wallin, Pres., National Academy
Prof. Manfred Weidhorn, Yeshiva Univ.
DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Garnet R. Barber, Colin D. Clark,
Max L. Kleinman, James F. Lane,
Richard M. Langworth, Parker H. Lee III,
Michael W. Michelson, Alex M. Worth, Jr.
Consultant: Anthony Gilles
THE CHURCHILL CENTER, contd.
ICS Canada, continued
INVESTMENT COMMITTEE
John M. Mather, Douglas S. Russell,
Parker H. Lee, III
John G. Plumpton, Executive Secretary
130 Collingsbrook Blvd,
Agincourt ON M1W 1M7
Tel. (416) 497-5349 Fax. (416) 395-4587
E-mail: Savrola@ican.net
ONLINE COMMITTEE
Homepage: www.winstonchurchill.org
Listserv: Winston@vm.marist.edu
John Plumpton, Editor, Savrola@ican.net
Moderator: Jonah.Triebwasser@marist.edu
Books and FH: Malakand@aol.com
Associate: Beverly Carr, bcarr@interlog.com
Assistant: Ian Langworth Catrap32@aol.com
CHURCHILL STORES
(Back Issues and Sales Dept.)
Gail Greenly
PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229
Tel. (603) 746-3452 Fax (603) 746-6963
E-mail: greengail@aol.com
INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY
HONORARY MEMBERS
The Lady Soames, DBE
The Duke of Marlborough, JP, DL
The Rt Hon the Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, FRS
The Hon. Caspar W. Weinberger, GBE
William Manchester • Colin L. Powell, KCB
Wendy Russell Reves • Paul H. Robinson, Jr.
Winston S. Churchill • Sir Martin Gilbert, CBE
Grace Hamblin, OBE • Robert Hardy, CBE
James C. Humes • Yousuf Karsh, OC
Anthony Montague Browne, CBE, DFC
COUNCIL OF CHURCHILL SOCIETIES
The Rt. Hon. Jonathan Aitken, Chairman
45 Great Peter Street
London SW1P 3LT, England
ICS AUSTRALIA
Subscriptions and renewals: Robin Linke,
181 Jersey Street, Wembley, WA 6014
ACT Representative: David Widdowson
167 Chuculba Crescent, Giralang, ACT 2617
ICS CANADA
Revenue Canada No. 0732701-21-13
Ambassador Kenneth W. Taylor,
Honorary Chairman
Garnet R. Barber, President
4 Snowshoe Cres., Thornhill, Ont. L3T 4M6
Tel. (905) 881-8550
Jeanette Webber, Membership Secretary
3256 Rymal Road, Mississauga ON L4Y 3P1
Tel. (905) 279-5169
Bill Milligan, Treasurer
54 Sir Galahad Place, Markham ON L3P w
Tel. (905) 294-09523
The Other Club of Ontario
Bernard Webber, President
3256 Rymal Rd., Mississauga, Ont. L4Y 3C1
Leslie A. Strike, President
701-1565 Esquimalt Av.,
W.Vancouver BC V7V 1R4
ICS UNITED KINGDOM'
Charity Registered in England No. 800030
David Boler, Chairman (through 6Jul97)
PO Box 244, Tunbridge Wells, K e n t S 0 Y F
Tel. and Fax. (01892) 518171
"C1INJOYF
UK TRUSTEES
The Hon. Nicholas Soames MP (Ch^m ^
TheDukeofMarlboroughjyDL™
Bo.er Richard C . G . J
^
^
COMMITTEE
Lt Col. Nigel Knocker; Dominic Waltersothers to be appointed at AGM, 6 July!
f"miTEDslATEsTmc~
A non-profit corporation, IRS No. 02-0365444
Ambassador Paul R Robinson Jr
Chairman, Board of Trustees '
George A. Lewis, Treasurer
°ad, Westfield NJ 07090
5, Fax. (908) 518-9439
CONTENTS
£••<
FINEST HOUR
Summer 1997
Journal of The Churchill Center and Societies
5 Churchill Center Associates Programme Launched
Endowment Campaign Hits $460,000
Lady Soames authorizes the naming of three levels of
Associates; Canada and UK represented on Board.
8 Founding Members of The Churchill Center
From Wendy Reves, the first to express faith in us, to
the hundreds who joined her: our grateful thanks.
compiled by Barbara F. Langworth & Parker H. Lee, III
17 The 1997 Manard E. Pont Seminar:
A Triumph for the Churchill Center
Sixteen American and Canadian students assembled
with faculty to discuss "Thought and Action in the Life
of Winston S. Churchill." The result: brand new
insights into My Early Life and Thoughts and Adventures
20 The Churchill Portraits of Alfred Egerton Cooper
One of Sir Winston's most prolific portrayers, Cooper
succeeded where many failed: WSC liked all his works.
by Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel
26 From the Canon: The Maiden Speech, Bath, 1897
Young Winston envisioned profit sharing, long before
it was widespread.
by Winston S. Churchill, Aged 22
4 Amid These Storms
5 Churchill Center Report
11 International Datelines
14 Local & National Events
16 Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas
25 Despatch Box
36 Action This Day
43 Churchill Online
44 Woods Corner
45 Churchilltrivia
46 Immortal Words
47 Ampersand
Churchill in Stamps resumes in FH 96.
Number 95
28 Winston Churchill and the Litigious Lord
How Lord Alfred Douglas libeled Winston Churchill,
lived to regret it, and survived to repent it; and
How Winston Churchill was Magnanimous in Victory
by Michael T. McMenamin
BOOKS, ARTS & CURIOSITIES:
38 There are at least twenty-seven Churchill portraits
on "display," sort of, notes Douglas Hall, though it
might take a Cabinet Minister to get to see some of
them....There's a good book out on Churchillian leadership, says The Editor....The Churchill-Conover
Correspondence has novel virtues, thinks Chris
Bell....Barbara Langworth interprets Georgina
Landemare's Recipes From No. 10 for modem kitchens
equipped with Cuisinarts....Cyberspace Churchillians
debate who really were Honorary American
Citizens....Cecil King's memoirs, With Malice Toward
None, are never dull....You won't believe the latest
computerland breakthrough, says Woods Corner.
41 Churchilliana
Commemoratives Calendar, Part 5:1951-64
A relatively lean time for bric-a-brac: the quiet period
before the flood of memorabilia to come.
by Douglas }. Hall
y.
Cover: Found in a Chelsea bookshop loft,
Alfred Egerton Cooper's 1947 work study for
a finished portrait of Winston Churchill at
Chartwell set Jeanette Gabriel on a quest for
information about the artist. This led to her
research on one of the most prolific
Churchillian artists, a dapper painter whose
work was invariably appreciated by its greatest sitter. A Churchill contemporary, "Fred"
Cooper died at the same age as WSC, with
much the same outlook: "Do not tell them
how old I am....They might not give me any
more commissions." Story on page 20.
ERRATUM
Fastidious readers will notice that the Cooper work study
on the cover of this issue (Finest Hour #95) has been printed in reverse.
Our apologies to our readers, the author, and Mr. Peter C. Cooper.
The Editor
AMID THESE STORMS
W
FINEST HOUR
ISSN 0882-3715
Barbara F. Langworth, Publisher
Richard M Langworth, Editor
Post Office Box 385
Hopkinton, New Hampshire
03229 USA Tel. (603) 746-4433
E-mail: Malakand@aol.com
Senior Editors
John G. Plumpton
130 Collingsbrook Blvd.
Agincourt, Ontario
M1W1M7 Canada
E-mail: Savrola@ican.net
Ron Cynewulf Robbins
198 St. Charles St.
Victoria, BC, V8S 3M7 Canada
News Editor
John Frost
8 Monks Ave, New Bamet,
Herts. EN5 1D8 England
Features Editor
Douglas J. Hall
183A Somerby Hill, Grantham
Lines. NG31 7HA England
Editorial Assistant
Gail Greenly
Contributors
Sir Martin Gilbert, United Kingdom
George Richard, Australia
Stanley E. Smith, United States
James W. Muller, United States
David Boler, United Kingdom
Wm. John Shepherd, United States
Curt Zoller, United States
FINEST HOUR is published quarterly for
The Churchill Center and the International
Churchill Societies, which offer several levels
of support in their respective currencies.
Membership applications and changes of
address should be sent to the appropriate
national offices on page 2. Permission to
mail at non-profit rates in the USA granted
by the US Postal Service, Concord, NH,
Permit no. 1524. Copyright 1997. All rights
reserved. Designed and produced for The
Churchill Center by Dragonwyck Publishing
Inc. Production by New England Foil
Stamping Inc. Printed by Reprographics Inc.
Made in U.S.A.
ASHED up for reading matter in February, I read Eminent Churchillians
by Andrew Roberts, which /"//panned back in issue 85. I concluded that
there is more to recommend it than I had imagined. The author is
biased—who isn't—but not so much anti-Churchill as anti-Tory-establishment. His
book records the Royal Family's devotion to Appeasement, to the point of meddling
in areas where they did not belong, and their aversion to Churchill in 1940;
Mountbatten's long skein of failures, culminating in the disastrous result when he
arbitrarily selected a premature date for Britain's exit from India; the postwar Tories
who continued the economic damage that Labour had commenced in 1945; Arthur
Bryant's decade of testimonials to Nazism before his overnight conversion to an
English patriot; Walter Monckton's deals to placate the unions during Churchill's second premiership. Roberts's claim is that mistakes were made by people who have
tended to be beyond reproach. I will unsay none of the things our observant reviewer
said: Eminent Churchillians has many typos and a frustrating number of footnotes
that read "private information." I did find it thoughtfully devastating of several icons
If Churchill can suffer revision, why not George VI? So few people today are willing
to call a spade a spade. Roberts at least has the courage of his convictions.
* A recent issue of the American TV Guide "cheered" Churchill for his supposed
retort to Lady Astor about drinking poison if she were his wife. Evidently this line
was used in the sitcoms "Home Improvement" and "Fraser" on NBC and ABC
respectively. It received a lot of laughs on the former but fell flat on the latter, as duly
reported via our E-mail listserver (Winston@vm.marist.edu).
We should not be surprised that indicators of the popular taste like "F
and "Home Improvement" fall for such canards. After all, the popular media have
variously conjectured that Churchill arranged to sink the Lusitania, engineered the
1929 Wall Street Crash, kept secret his prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack,
murdered Sikorski, offered peace to Mussolini, sacked the British Empire, laid the '
groundwork for the Red Chinese revolution, and rescued Martin Bormann from the
Berlin Bunker to set him up as a Sussex squire. And he did all this in between reeling
off one-liners to Nancy Astor. What a man—er, person!
* Members of ICS United States will be interested to know that a consolidation
plan has been adopted by its directors, and those of The Churchill Center that will
see ICS/USA consolidated into the Center in 1998. No changes in any of'the programs of either organization will occur, but present "Friends of ICS/USA" will
become "Members of the Churchill Center." The word "members" was deemed much
more appropriate and suitable, since everbody uses it anyway. The changes will have
no effect on the Churchill Societies in Canada, the UK or Australia, which will be
esteemed affiliates or The Churchill Center (see opposite).
This consolidation will reap many advantages by combining two parallel
administrative and managerial structures, yielding considerable savings in operating
costs and time spent by volunteers and staff. In fact, many improvements have
t 7 n y i < T k t f r ° m i h e Cemer>S beginning t0 C ° n d u C t P r e v i o u s ^ t i o n s of
ICS/USA such as academic events, seminars and publications. The final step in the
process will be the consolidation of budgets, financial statements and transfer of
assets, followed, finally, by the opening of the Center's office in Washington D C
The celebration of all these accomplishments will occur at the l 5 th International"
Churchill Conference at Williamsburg, Virginia on 5-8 November 1998 Please save
that date and plan on being there with us.
"
RICHARD M. LANGWORTH
The Churchill Center: Summer 1997
The mission of the Churchill Center is to encourage international study of the life and thought of Sir Winston Churchill; to foster research about his speeches, writings and deeds; to advance knowledge of his example as a statesman; and by programmes of
teaching and publishing, to impart that learning to men, women and young people around the world. Programmes include
course development, symposia, standard and electronic libraries, CD-rom research, an annual Churchill Lecture, visiting professorships, seminars, publishing subventions, fellowships, and publications.
»
Churchill Center Associates Programme Launched
Endowment Campaign Hits $460,000
T
HE Churchill Center Associates Programme, which
$49,999). Their names will appear at the Center and on
all publications of the Center, forever.
will build the Churchill Center, is now in place.
• Winston Churchill Associates. (Gifts of $50,000 and
Fifteen Associates joined in the first three weeks, includup; from the $100,000 level up are many named gift
ing, to date, eight of the Churchill Center Governors.
opportunities, including a large variety of programmes;
Together with major contributions by ICS/USA and the
the library, conference room and other rooms; and the
Center itself, Associates have pledged $460,000, which
Churchill Center building itself.) Their names will
will build to a seven-figure endowment and create—at
appear at the Center, on all publications of the Center,
long last—our dream.
and on the programmes of all events sponThe Associates programme is designed
sored by the Center, forever.
expressly for members of ICS who wish to be
Associates are already pledged at all
part of this exciting project. Over the next
three
of these levels, including one
year, many ICS members who have expressed
Clementine Churchill and five Winston
interest in supporting the Center in the past
Churchill Associates. ICS members who genwill be contacted by members of the Board of
erously responded to the 1997 Annual Report
Governors or Development Committee.
with gifts of cash will be pleased to know that
They will be able to view our new video, nar100% of their contribution, some $8,000, has
rated by Gregory Peck, along with relevant
C.C. BROCHURE
been transferred to the Endowment
printed materials. If you wish to do this but are
Campaign, and may be credited against the cost of their
unsure whether you are on the list, please contact the
Associateships.
Center's Executive Director, Parker Lee. A toll-free numChurchill Center Associates may remit their chosen
ber has been established for this and any other questions
amount
in self-determined installments over four years,
involving the Associates programme: (888) WSC-1874.
and
it
is
possible, now and in the future, to move to a
Success breeds success. A strong commitment from
higher level through an additional gift. Those pledging
our Associates will allow principals of the Center to
more than $10,000 may defer any amount over $10,000
approach high-level donors of named,gifts, and foundathrough a bequest or later gift. For example, one may
tions, with the backing of hundreds of Churchillians. A
become a Winston Churchill Associate with a gift of
successful Associate campaign is the key to achieving the
$10,000 in the 1997-2000 period, and a bequest of
high-level support necessary fully to endow the Center. If
$40,000, substantiated in a memorandum of underwe ever needed you, we need you now!
standing, and a copy of the applicable bequest. Associate
names may include the name of a spouse.
THE ASSOCIATES PROGRAMME
The Churchill Center is a registered non-profit instiOur Patron, Lady Soames, has authorized the naming
tution
in the United States and contributions to the
of three Associates levels. All Associates will have their
Endowment
Fund are 100% tax deductible. Canadians
names engraved on a plaque in the reception room of the
may
contribute
at similar tax-deductibility through the
Center, to commemorate their faith and generosity:
International Churchill Society, Canada, which is han• Mary Soames Associates. (Gifts of $10,000 to
dling the Canadian Endowment Campaign. The person
$24,999). Their names will appear at the Center, as
in charge is John Plumpton, Executive Secretary of ICS,
described above.
Canada (address on page 2).
continued >»
• Clementine Churchill Associates. (Gifts of $25,000 to
FINEST HOUR 95 / 5
METHODS OF GIVING
Aside from outright gifts, there are methods in place
to ease payment by completing it in installments, the installments set by yourself, through 31 December 2000.
You may also become a Winston Churchill or a Clementine Churchill Associate now by pledging $10,000 or
more spread over the next four years and the balance in a
future gift or bequest. This has the advantage of raising
you to the upper levels immediately, assuring you of all
the commemorations those benefactors receive.
A method of giving which surprisingly few people
consider is appreciated securities. For American citizens,
the full current value of appreciated securities is tax-deductible, whereas, if sold outright, sellers would be subject to high capital gains taxes on the appreciated amount.
The Center can provide information on its account and
broker, to which appreciated securities can be transferred
directly for an immediate tax deduction.
We have on retainer a planned giving consultant who
can advise you on other, truly brilliant alternatives, such
as the charitable remainder trust. By donating, say, a piece
of property to the Center, a couple or single person may
receive an annuity for life, leave the property's full value to
their heirs, and that same value to the Center. This in effect doubles your legacy, free of federal tax: a remarkable opportunity that should appeal to many.
"WE SHAPE OUR HOUSES, AND AFTERWARD
OUR HOUSES SHAPE US. " -WSC
WHAT YOUR SUPPORT MEANS:
NOW AND FIFTY YEARS FROM NOW
The Churchill Center's goal is aggressively to project
Winston Churchill's thought, word and deed deep into
the next millennium. You can share in Sir Winston's immortality by helping to provide the wherewithal to make
these activities continue as far as the eye can see.
Churchill said of the House of Commons: "We shape
our houses, and afterward our houses shape us." That
same philosophy governs The Churchill Center: an institution that, fifty years on, will still be doing the things it
is doing today.
A question many donors put to us is: "How do you
mean to assure me that ten or twenty or fifty years from
now, The Churchill Center won't have become just another wishy-washy academic establishment, paying no
more than lip service to its titular hero, dispensing grants
and benefits to a constituency which cares and knows little about Churchill?" Given the number of institutions
founded in someone's name, now doing things that
would never have their namesake's blessing, this is a legitimate question.
The answer in The Churchill Center's case is twofold:
1) By having the right people in charge, and 2) By having
the right programs in place.
• Having the right people in charge: "Time, the churl, is
running." Changes in personnel are inevitable and,
frankly, desirable. New people will always have to be
found "to keep the memory green and the record accurate,* in our Patron's words. Thus The Churchill Center
has a very clear and firmly fixed understanding of what
we are and do, and what we aren't and don't do—together
with a fierce resistance to being budged from it. The key
personnel provision is that the Board of Governors—the
sole management authority—chooses its own. The people
now in charge will choose their successors, in installments
of three Governors annually, ad infinitum. Each Governor serves for a three-year term, and three terms end each
year. There are also term limits: twelve years maximum.
The Board of Governors is solely entrusted with choosing
new Governors to fill new terms. (And we have had a lot
of past experience to guide us.)
• Having the right programmes in pla.rp- Specific programmes have often been outlined in these pages, and are
set out in detail in The Churchill Center brochure that is
now available. In supporting documents for these activities, our plans and purposes are being drafted as guidance
for the years ahead. Academic symposia must be built
around some aspect of Churchill's career or thought. Student seminars must discuss Winston Churchill not
something that somebody believes might have interested
him were he alive today. Publications and publishing
grants must relate to our namesake, and serve to further
interest in his life and thought.
In choosing like-minded collaborators on these and
other programmes, many of whom we will welcome, we
rorge a tight circle around our fundamental purposes and
direction, so that we aren't pushed off course by current
feshions-or personal ambitions—at variance with the
Center s purpose. We welcome critics as well as champions of Winston Churchill. What we don't welcome are
deviations from our course.
If we think of the ways that the foundations set up by
many prominent persons have, insensibly but dramatically departed from the purposes expected by their
rounders, we must admit that this problem is not imaginary The Churchill Center chooses to address this problem directly now, while those who have launched this institution are still here, still active, still situated and still
committed.
We have often listed things that The Churchill Center
can usefully do. We say equally what it is for, and why w<
we
want to do those various things. The Churchill Center is
FINEST HOUR 95/6
not founded out of hero-worship. It exists because Winston Churchill stands for something. He exemplifies certain critical human possibilities that are always worth
bringing to the attention of thoughtful people, in order
to perpetuate what Winston Churchill held dear: respect
of country; the fraternal relationship of the Great Democracies and the English-speaking peoples; their common
heritage of law, language and literature; and above all the
love of liberty. All of these are summed up in his words,
"Withhold no sacrifice. Grudge no toil. Seek no sordid
gain. Fear no foe. All will be well."
These guiding principals ensure that the Founders
have done as much as is humanly possible to see that
what we launch lasts.
Canada and UK Representatives to
Churchill Center Board of Governors
The Executive Committee of The Churchill Center,
meeting in Boston last May, moved to invite representatives of the International Churchill Societies of Canada
and the United Kingdom to attend the annual Board of
Governors meeting, scheduled this year for Washington.
The persons appointed are left to the Societies, and are
additional to citizens of either country (such as John
Plumpton) who may actually be serving as Governors already. In this way, two key affiliates of The Churchill
Center will continually be kept informed, and be able to
contribute to, decisionmaking at the highest level.
I
THE CHURCHILL
CALENDAR
Local event organizers are welcome to send entries for this calendar; owing to our quarterly schedule, however, we need copy at least three months in advance
1997
6 July: Annual General Meeting of ICS United Kingdom, Chartwell, Westerham, Kent.
26 July: Centenary of Churchill's Maiden Political Speech, American Museum, Claverton Down, Bath, Somerset.
27-28 August: Combined meeting of Churchill Center Board of Governors and Development Committee, Washington, D.C.
28 August: Launch of the book Churchill as Peacemaker, (papers from the first Churchill Center Symposium), Washington.
29 August: Churchill Panel at the American Political Science Association Convention, Washington.
September: Inauguration of the course, "Winston Churchill: The Making of a War Leader,"Edinburgh University, Scotland.
16-19 October: 14th International Churchill Conference, hosted by ICS, Canada at Toronto and Niagara Falls, Ontario.
1 November: Annual General Meeting of The Churchill Center Board of Governors, Army & Navy Club, Washington, D.C.
30 November: Sir Winston Churchill's 123rd Birthday Anniversary.
1998
1-2 May: Executive Committee meeting of The Churchill Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
15-16 May: Third Churchill Center Symposium, "Winston Churchill's Life of Marlborough," Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.
15-27 May: Ninth International Churchill Tour: Blenheim, Lake District, Edinburgh, Scottish Lowlands, Yorkshire.
15 June: International Churchill Society Thirtieth Anniversary (founded at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, 1968).
5-8 November: 15th International Churchill Conference & First Annual Churchill Lecture, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia.
1999
August: "Winston Churchill's Escape Into Fame," Tenth International Churchill Tour: Republic of South Africa.
Spring: Second Student Symposium
Autumn: 16th International Churchill Conference.
2000
Spring: Fourth Churchill Symposium
'.
14-17 September: 17th International Churchill Conference, Anchorage, Alaska.
2001
14 February: Centenary of Churchill's Entry into Parliament
Autumn: 18th International Churchill Conference.
2003
Twentieth International Churchill Conference and 50th Anniversary of the Bermuda Conference, Hamilton, Bermuda
Forthcoming Books Produced with the Aid of The Churchill Center
August 1997: Churchill as Peacemaker: Papers from the First Churchill Center Symposium (Cambridge Univ. Press)
Autumn 1997: Churchill Proceedings, 1994-1995.
1998: Churchill's "Sinews of Peace": Papers from the 50th Anniversary Sinews of Peace Conference, Fulton, Mo.
1998: Connoisseur's Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill, by Richard M. Langworth (Brasseys UK Ltd.)
1998: Winston Churchill in the Postwar Years. Papers from the Second Churchill Symposium.
1999: The River War Centenary Edition (the 1899 unabridged edition, the 1902 additions and a critical appraisal).
FINEST HOUR 95 / 7
Foun ding Memhers of The Churchill Center
From Wendy Reves, tke first to express faitk in us ty underwriting
tke Churchill War Papers, to tke kundreds wko joined ker to found tke
Ckurckill Center: our grateful tkanks.We are forever in your debt.
"... We in it shall be remember 'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin 's Day. "
-Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3
' I 'he origins of The Churchill
_L Center can be traced to our
Founding Members. It is they
who put up Si00, or the equivalent, or more—some $8000 in
all—which covered the cost of
developing the Associates
Programme now launched. We
honor them for the commitment
we share, that Winston Spencer
Churchill's thought, word and
deed shall never be forgotten by
those who come after us.
$1.000 plus
M. Emery Reves &
Mme. Wendy Reves, France
Fred Farrow, USA
Amb. Pamela Harriman, USA
John F. Hawkridge, II, USA
Mr & Mrs Richard Leahy, USA
Ethel Maisler Pont, USA
Robert M. Sprinkle, USA
Aequus Institute, USA
The Edelman Foundation, USA
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, USA
Philip Morris Companies, USA
$101-$999
In Memory of Walter Percy
Abott, England
Larry P. Arnn, USA
Randy & Solveig Barber, Canada
Marquis Henri Costa de
Beauregard, Austria
Herbert Peter Benn, USA
In Memory of James &C
Lavina Bonine, USA
Leslie Bradshaw, Erie
Mr & Mrs C.C. Brown, England
Harry Fisher, England
The Rt. Hon. Sir Winston
Spencer Churchill Society
(Calgary), Canada
In Memory of Dan Clark, USA
Brendan J. Conkling, USA
Peter Coombs, England
Major J. A. Dure, Canada
Thomas Faesi, Switzerland
J. C. Fleury, France
In Memory of Donald Logan
Forbes, CBE, FCA, JP, England
Harry R. Freer, Canada
Mr & Mrs Anthony Gilles, USA
Dr R. W. Gillmann, USA
M. Pierre Godec & Mme. Marie
Godec, England
MrTeddR. Haas, USA
The Rt. Hon. The Earl Jellicoe, KBE, DSO, MC, FRS, England
Eric R. Jones, MBE, Wales
L. J. Jouhki, Finland
Mr & Mrs Gerald Drake
Kambestad, USA
Dr G. Donald Kettyls & Mrs
Barbara Kettyls, Canada
D. Barry Kirkham, QC, Canada
Diana M. Kropinska, Canada
In Memory of Richard A.
Lavine, USA
Dr C.J. Maats & Mrs H. C.
Maats-Holm, Netherlands
Dr/Mrs A. MacDonald, Canada
Drs. John & Susan Mather, USA
T. W. McGarry &
Marlane McGarry, USA
Dr Forrest C. Mischler, USA
Dr A. Wendell Musser, USA
Marvin S. Nicely, USA
John W. Parke, USA
Robert G. Peters, Canada
John & Ruth Plumpton, Canada
M. & Mme. Christian
Pol-Roger, France
Ueli Prager, England
Mr & Mrs R.W.J. Price, England
Ambassador & Mrs Paul H.
Robinson, Jr., USA
Serge Roger, Canada
Frederick S. Rutledge & Jane A.
Rutledge, USA
In Memory of Patrick James
Schneider, USA
Dr J. Stewart Scott, Scotland
Mr Claude Sere & Mrs Yoshino
Sere, England
Jack Shinneman, USA
L.Neal Smith, Jr., USA
Mr &C Mrs Donald L.
Stephens, Jr., USA
Roger John Thomas, England
George Touzenis, France
Peter J. Travers, USA
William G. Underhill, USA
Lodewijk J. Hijmans Van den
Bergh, England
Bernard & Jeanette
Webber, Canada
Mr & Mrs Geoffrey J.
Wheeler, England
In Memory of Ralph Follett
Wigram, USA
Mr Si Mrs William E.R.
Williams, Canada
Mr &c Mrs Kenneth J.
Yule, Canada
Mr&Mrs Richard Zimbert, USA
$100
George W. Abel, USA
Mr & Mrs Thomas Abert, USA
Mr &c Mrs Conrad
Abrahams-Curiel, England
Ronald D. Abramson, USA
William B. Achbach, USA
Mr &: Mrs Christopher
Adams, USA
Sam F. Adams, USA
Sharon Agee, USA
Ian A. Aitchison, USA
Jonathan Aitken, England
Timothy L. Alexson, USA
Professor Paul Alkon, USA
Mr & Mrs Karl W.
Almquist, USA
Miles Alperstein, Anne Alperstein
& Zaccary Alperstein, Canada
Mr & Mrs Joseph C.
Amaturo, USA
Dr Arnold E. Andersen, USA
Mr & Mrs Charles
Anderson, Canada
George D. Anderson, Canada
The Annenberg Foundation.USA
Mr & Mrs Richard D.
Applegate, USA
Randall Abbott Baker, USA
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 8
Scott A. Balthaser, USA
Dr Richard N. Baney, USA
Mary Stuart Barnhart, USA
Major & Mrs J. W. Frank
Battershill, Canada
Danforth Beal, USA
Mr & Mrs Wm. E. Beatty, USA
Brant Scott Beaudway, USA
Stephen Allen Becker, USA
Mr & Mrs Robert W.
Beckman, USA
James B. Bennett, USA
Rev. Msgr. William Benwell.USA
Dr Michael A. Berk, USA
Donald A. Best, USA
Mr & Mrs David Randolph
Billingsley, USA
Eric & Hilda Bingham, England
Mr & Mrs Ronald W.
Birmingham, USA
Stephen F. & Anne M.
Black, USA
L. J. Blackwell, England
Gordon Bloor, England
Charles K. Bobrinskoy, USA
Mary Anne Bobrinskoy, USA
Mr & Mrs Robert E.
Boen, Jr., USA
Mr & Mrs Bruce Bogstad, USA
Mr & Mrs Henry Bohm, USA
David & Diane Boler, England
Charles S. Price, Esq., USA
Bruce F. Bond, USA
Daniel &c Susan Borinsky, USA
Dorothy M. Boyden, USA
Arthur Bray, Canada
Mr & Mrs Herman L.
Breitkopf, USA
Dr & Mrs John M. Briggs, USA
Alec W. Brindle, USA
Thomas E. Brinkman, USA
Mr & Mrs Ronald Broida, USA
Captain Thomas P. Brooks, USA
David B. Brooks, USA
J. Mayo Brown, USA
Andrew Brown, USA
John S. Bunton, USA
Dr & Mrs James W.
Burkson, USA
Graham J. Butler, England
Hon. Harry F. Byrd, Jr., USA
Mike Byrne, USA
Dr & Mrs Douglas Cairns, USA
Thomas M. Campbell, USA
Robert S. Campbell, Jr., USA
Mr & Mrs Arnold Carter, USA
Robert T. Castrey, USA
John R. Chace, USA
In Memory of Jeffrey
Van Vleet, USA
Mr/Mrs W. Chapman, England
Harry Chapman, Jr., USA
Dr Yong-Min Chi, USA
Colonel & Mrs Forrest S.
Chilton, USA
George E. Christian, USA
Dr John William Churchill, USA
Winston S. Churchill, England
Captain &C Mrs Winston G.
Churchill, USCG, USA
Lt. Col.John P. Chutter, Canada
Dr Michael W. Clare, USA
Colin D. Clark, USA
Norman & Irene Clark, Canada
Michael & Nancy Close, USA
Colonel &C Mrs Robert Coe, USA
Dr & Mrs Gordon Cohen, USA
Michael G. Comas, USA
Mr & Mrs Brock Comegys.USA
Michael D. Connole, Australia
John D. Connolly, USA
Alistair Cooke, USA
Dr & Mrs Chester Cooper, USA
G. R. Cooper, England
Charles C. Cornelio, USA
Elliott H. Costas, USA
Martin & Ruth Cousineau, USA
John Cox, USA
John J. Crabbe, USA
Norman D. Crandles Canada
Henry E. Crooks, England
Dr Philip T. Crotty, USA
Mr & Mrs Fenton S.
Cunningham, III, USA
Brig. General Dick Danby (Ret),
OBE, DSO, CD, Canada
Roy &; Janet Daniels, England
D. George Davis, USA
Gregory Davis, USA
G. Kevin Davis, USA
Dr Alan H. DeCherney, USA
Evelyn deMille, Canada
David Devine, FCA, Canada
James Doane, USA
Steven A. Draime, USA
Ken Dreyer, USA
Mr/Mrs David Druckman, USA
Richard A. C. Du Vivier,England
Hon. Stephen M. Duncan, USA
Robert H. Dunn, USA
Alan Durban, England
William N. Durkin, USA
Donald Easton, Canada
Richard Eaton, England
Michael V. Eckman, USA
In Memory of John Galbraith
Edison, Canada
Tom Edwards, USA
Mr/Mrs Simon Eedle, Singapore
Timothy C. Egan, USA
David W. Eisenlohr, USA
D. C. Elks, USA
Mr & MrsTony Ellard, England
Warrick E. Elrod, Jr., USA
Kirk & Elizabeth Emmert, USA
Mr & Mrs John S. Evans, USA
Mr & Mrs William Evans, USA
In Memory of Mr William D.
Faulhaber,Jr.,USA
Mr & Mrs C. Fenemore, Canada
Dr Ronald A. Ferguson, USA
DrJohnA. Ferriss, USA
Dr Edwin J. Feulner, Jr., USA
In Memory of Don Lipsett, USA
Mr & Mrs Wm. S. Field, USA
Dr Joseph J. Fins, USA
Richard L. Fisher, USA
Edward W. Fitzgerald, USA
James R. Fitzpatrick, USA
Tranum Fitzpatrick, USA
Dr & Mrs J. Will Fleming, USA
Edward R. Flenz, USA
Mr & Mrs Matthew C. Fox, USA
Mr & Mrs J.A. Houghton, England
Jane Fraser, USA
Dr & Mrs Alfred Fratzke, USA
Lars E. Frieberg, England
David Fromkin, USA
Mr & Mrs Angelo J. Gabriel, USA
John R. Garner, USA
Dr Patrick J. Garrity, USA
Richard Arthur Gaunt, England
Walter J. Gavenda, USA
Mr & Mrs Laurence Geller, USA
George A. Gerber, USA
John L. Gibson, USA
Sir Martin Gilbert,CBE, England
Robert S. Gillan, Canada
Roger M. Gold, USA
Dr Russell Golkow, USA
Jay S. Goodgold, USA
Norman & Evelyn Gordon, USA
Dr & Mrs Nicholas Gotten, USA
Michael J. Gough, Canada
Mr & Mrs John E. Grant, USA
David Grant, Canada
Derek John Greenwell, England
B. J. Greenwood, USA
James Hill Gressette, USA
Frauke Grundel, Germany
Andrew J. Guilford, USA
Marie B. Haas, USA
Matthew Walsh Haggman, USA
Alfred W. Hahn, USA
Douglas J. Hall, England
H. Robert Hamilton, USA
David A. Handley, USA
Sidney & Marilyn Hanish, USA
Mr & Mrs Warren Hanscom, USA
Frederick C. Hardman, USA
David E. Harlton, Canada
Dr Christopher C. Harmon.USA
The Keepers & Governors of
Harrow School, England
Stuart B. Hartzell, USA
Caroline R. Hartzler, USA
John E. Harvey, CBE, England
Dr & Mrs William Hatcher, USA
John T. Hay, USA
Drs Lonnie & Karen Hayter.USA
Mr & Mrs Richard Hazlett, USA
Duvall Y. Hecht, USA
Sue M. Hefner, USA
Anthony B. Helfet, USA
Ron & Jean Helgemo, USA
Mark Helprin, USA
Mr & Mrs J. D. Henry, USA
Dr & Mrs John Herring, USA
Robert J. Hewitt, Jr., USA
Dr John R. Hewson, Canada
James L. Hill, USA
Douglas Hilland, QC, Canada
C. Paul Hilliard, USA
Mr & Mrs Thomas Hirsch.USA
Dr & Mrs Brooks Hoffman, USA
Mr & Mrs Oscar Hofstetter, USA
Derek Hollingsworth, Australia
Mr & Mrs Stephen Holstad, USA
Jon C. Holtzman, USA
Robert Randall Hopper, USA
D. Craig Horn, USA
Joseph O. Horney, USA
Dr Lee S. Hornstein, USA
Glenn Horowitz, USA
Daniel R. Hughes, USA
Mr & Mrs Nathan Hughes, USA
James C. Humes, USA
Van Garlington Hunt, USA
Robert R. Hunt, USA
J. Jeffrey Hutter, Sr., USA
Intl. Churchill Society, Canada
Intl. Churchill Society, UK
Intl. Churchill Society, USA
Mr & Mrs K. Ikeya, Japan
Mr & Mrs Gilbert H. lies, USA
William C. Ives, USA
Geo. M. Ivey, Jr., USA
Dorothy Jackson, BEM &
Dennis Jackson, OBE, England
Dr Harry V. Jaffa, USA
Wm. & Beatrice Jennings, USA
David A. Jodice, USA
Dr Tom M. Johnson, USA
J.Willis Johnson, USA
John R. Johnson, USA
Mr &c Mrs Corbett Johnson and
Drew Johnson, USA
Donald R. Johnson, USA
Allan W. Johnson, USA
Peter Johnson, England
Derek Lukin Johnston, Canada
Dorothy Jones, England
Johnie Jones, USA
Dr Russell M.Jones, USA
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 9
Mr & Mrs Joseph Just, USA
Alexander Justice, USA
Dr Thomas R. Kain, USA
Raymond H. Kann, USA
Dr William J. Kay, USA
Dr Yvonne F. Kaye, USA
Mr & Mrs John H. Keck, USA
Senator Tim Kelly, USA
The Hon. Jack Kemp, USA
S. J. Kernaghan Family, Canada
David H. Keyston, USA
Dr & Mrs David King, Canada
Charles Graham King, Canada
Dr Henry A. Kissinger, USA
Hersch M. Klaff, USA
Mr & Mrs Max Kleinman, USA
Mr & Mrs Richard Knight, USA
John Michael Kops, USA
Robert Kraff, USA
George Kropinski, Canada
Allan Kruse Nielsen, Denmark
Mr & Mrs Hollis Lane, Canada
Mr & Mrs R. Langworth, USA
In Memory of Harriet and
Michael Langworth, USA
Eugene Larson, USA
"Raymond A. Lavine, USA
Mr & Mrs Robin Lawson, USA
Paul S. Leavenworth, Jr., USA
C. A. Lebsanft, Australia
Mr & Mrs Parker Lee, III, USA
Terrence & Mary Leveck, USA
Dave Levering, USA
Laurence B. Levine, USA
Victor B. Levit, USA
George A. Lewis, USA
Morgan Lewis, USA
Ulf Lindeborg, Sweden
Dr & Mrs Roy Lindseth, Canada
Walter P. Linne, USA
Andrew L. Lluberes, USA
Amb. John L. Loeb, Jr., USA
Mr & Mrs J. Wm. Lovelace, USA
Richard S. Lowry, USA
Mr & Mrs Jas. Lukaszewski, USA
Gerard P. Lynch, USA
Philip J. Lyons, USA
George Macintosh, QC, Canada
Sir Fitzroy Maclean of
Dunconnel KT, Scotland
J. Alexander MacMurtrie, USA
Tamara Madai, USA
Gordon Maggs, QPM, England
Mr & Mrs Rafe Mair, Canada
William Manchester, USA
Dorothee Ryfun Senich, USA
Count & Countess Guagni Dei
Marcovaldi, England
Mr & Mrs John J. Marek, USA
Mark Edward Marhefka, USA
The Duke of Marlborough,
England
David Marriott, England
In Memory of Mr George C.
Marrs, Canada
INTERNATIONAL DATELINES
Richard said that in 1969!" (As WSC
remarked, "I have often had to eat my
words, and have found them a wholesome diet.") John aims to index every
issue from #1 to #100. The Index will be
published with special commemorative
issue #100, appearing for the Churchill
Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia in
November 1998.
MAJOR SUCCESS AT BLETCHLEY
BLETCHLEY PARK, BUCKS.— Over 1300
schoolchildren have toured Jack Darrah's Churchill Rooms Exhibition at
Bletchley Park (featured in FH 85 and
91) in the last six months alone—a titanic contribution by Jack and his wife Rita
toward "keeping the memory green
and the record accurate"—for as visitors to the Exhibition know, Jack is a
stickler for accuracy. This is a great
effort and Jack is to be congratulated for
this outstanding educational endeavor.
To help support the Churchill
Rooms fund, readers are invited to purchase a special edition designer tea
towel, shown here with Rita Darrah
and ICS/UK and Churchill Center
Trustee Celia Sandys, with her son
Alexander. Designed by Rita and her
granddaughter Clare, the 30xl9-inch
Rita Darrah, Celia Sandys and her son
Alexander with the Bletchley tea towel.
100% cotton tea towel is English-made,
and printed with a view of the Mansion
and Churchill's famous tribute, "...My
geese that laid the golden eggs but
never cackled." Aside from its practical
uses, the tea towel makes a wonderful
display item. Order several!
Cost including airmail postage
worldwide is £6 per towel provided
payment is made by sterling cheque or
International Money Order. This is the
way to go, because payment in US dollars has to be $25 per towel to cover the
(shocking) conversion charges. Cheques
and IMOs should be made payable to
J.E. Darrah and should be sent to 9
Cubbington Close, Luton, Bedfordshire
LU33XJ, England. -DRH
THATCHER ARCHIVES GIFT
LONDON, MARCH 18TH— Baroness Thatcher announced today that she is permanently loaning her personal and political archives to Churchill College Cambridge, allowing scholars to study the
longest premiership of the 20th century.
More than 1000 boxes of documents,
videos, photographs and personal
effects will be handed over for safekeeping in the college strongrooms,
where they will join the archive of Lady
Thatcher's hero, Sir Winston Churchill.
Lady Thatcher said that she wanted her
papers always to remain in Britain: "I
hope they will be a valuable source for
students and scholars who wish to
study the great changes brought about
by the governments that I had the privilege to lead."
OPJB: TRUTH OR FICTION?
TORONTO, JUNE 12TH— Norman Crandles
of ICS, Canada, wrote to us of a new
spy book, Op JB: The Lost Great Secret of
the Second World War, by "Christopher
Creighton," allegedly a personal spy
recruited by Churchill (codename "Tigger") to perform extraordinary top
secret missions assigned directly by the
Prime Minister. Op JB was described in
some quarters as factual, and Mr. Crandles wonders if anyone has read it and
can comment?
In Finest Hour #48 (1985), we
reviewed The Paladin by Brian Garfield
(Macmillan:1980), a supposed novel
starring "Christopher Creighton," who
hops a Kentish garden wall and finds
himself face to face with Churchill, who
recruits him as a master spy. At a tender age Christopher unmasks the Belgian plan to surrender in 1940, sabotages a Dutch ship bringing news of the
Japanese fleet headed for Pearl Harbor
(thus to get the Americans into the
war), murders his girlfriend to prevent
her from spilling the beans, blows up
secret U-boat pens in Eire, and tricks
the Germans into expecting the D-Day
invasion at Calais. The stories make for
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 1 2
an entertaining yarn. Garfield tantalizes
readers by saying, "The hero is a real
person. He is now in his late fifties. His
name is not Christopher Creighton."
It seems more than coincidental
that "Christopher Creighton" has now
surfaced to recount the war's "last great
secret." We sent this information to the
Churchill internet community, suggesting that Op JB and its "author" are
products of the imaginative Brian
Garfield, author of The Paladin. Professor David Stafford of Edinburgh University, author of the forthcoming (and
factual) Churchill and the Secret Service
(due in October from John Murray Publishers, London), replied as follows:
"I felt obliged at least to glance at
this book, despite extreme skepticism
induced by media-hype. When, on the
first page, my eye fell on an egregious
factual error that even a cursory reading of Martin Gilbert's short biography
would have prevented (I now forget
what), I decided it was pure fiction.
Nothing that I have read or heard of
since persuades me otherwise, and
your comments reinforce this. Churchill
did on one occasion employ a personal
secret agent behind the back of 'C/ the
head of the Secret Intelligence Service.
But this was before the First World
War, when he was still young, impetuous, and unschooled in the ways of the
secret service. More details can be
found in my book!"
Readers may query Professor
Stafford personally at the International
Churchill Conference in Toronto this
October, where he is one of the participating faculty.
CHURCHILL GRAVE TRUST
JULY 23RD— Mr. Winston
Churchill has founded a Trust, Charity
Registration no. 1049202, whose object
is to refurbish and maintain the
Churchill Graves at Bladon, which have
become run down over the years and
are urgently in need of improvement.
The Trustees are the Duke of Marlborough, Lady Soames, Rev. Humphreys
(Rector of Bladon and Woodstock) and
Mr. Churchill (chairman).
Some five years ago Peregrine
Churchill (WSC's nephew) and Winston Churchill commissioned a > » »
LONDON,
INTERNATIONAL DATELINES
Grave Trust, continued...
distinguished architect, William
Bertram, who has done work for the
Prince of Wales and the Prince's Trust,
to draw up a plan to deal with the twin
problems at Bladon: an enormous volume of visitors (two or three coach- »
loads at a time is common), and the
fact that the graves, situated on a slope,
are slowly but perceptibly sliding
downhill.
The provisional estimate of cost is
$500,000, of which Mr. Churchill hopes
to provide a significant amount.
All Friends of Sir Winston who
wish to donate to this cause are most
welcome to do so. The editor will be
pleased to send a copy of the plans and
problem analysis to anyone in North
America who wishes to review them;
elsewhere (and, if you prefer in North
America), please contact Mr. Churchill
at 4 Belgrave Square, London SW1X
8PH, tel. (0171) 245-9534.
8
ICS United Kingdom Report
by David Boler, Outgoing Chairman (1994-1997)
T
he Annual General Meeting of the
International Churchill Society,
United Kingdom, occurred at Chartwell
July 6th; the results will be reported in
the next issue of Finest Hour.
The past twelve months were dominated by the International Conference
which the UK Society had the honour
and privilege of hosting in October
1996. I am delighted that this was the
largest and most successful Conference
ever held by the Society on this side of
the Atlantic and I am extremely grateful
to all those who gave so generously of
their time and, more importantly,
expended so much energy and hard
work, to ensure ICS UK a major triumph. It was pleasing to see so many
UK Friends at the various events.
I have reached the end of my three
year term as Chairman, which has been
enormous fun and involved a steep
learning curve in all aspects of the Society's affairs! I have found that the
increasing workload, including ever
more foreign travel for Lloyd's, is such
that I cannot give the time and effort
that the Society deserves or expects,
and therefore I am standing down to
allow others to take the Society forward
into the next millennium.
In this regard, Nigel Knocker, who
was coopted onto the Committee earlier
this year, has very kindly allowed his
name to be considered for the position
-©3
David Boler
presents the
ICS Blenheim
Award to
Miss Grace
Hamblinfor
her years of
service to the
Churchills
and as Chartwell's first
Administrator, April.
of Honorary Chairman by the new
Committee. Nigel has the support and
warm wishes of both the Trustees and
members of the Churchill family for
offering his services in this way.
Dominic Walters, son of Celia Sandys
and great grandson of Sir Winston
Churchill, was also coopted onto the
Committee during the year, and both of
them are being formally elected to the
Committee at this AGM. I am sure all of
you welcome this commitment by
Dominic, as a member of the Churchill
family, to our Society. Anyone who is
interested in serving on the new Committee is most welcome to apply. I must
stress that the Committee will have
much hard work to do and I urge only
those prepared to offer a lot of time and
energy to consider serving.
I was honoured to be asked by the
FINEST HOUR 95/13
Trustees at their May meeting to serve
as a Trustee of the Society, and I am
delighted to accept this responsibility.
The Society faces a paradox in
financial terms: on the one hand the
doubling of cost of Finest Hour over the
last three years, against a static basic
subscription of £20 for individual membership, has now resulted in an annual
loss of some £2,000 on the Society's
ordinary income and expenditure. The
good news is that the surplus generated
by the various major events we have
held in the last three years, notably the
V.E. Day Dinner and 1996 Conference,
has more then compensated for this.
However, despite reserves now
totalling several thousand pounds, the
Society must not rely on profits of
events such as these to survive, and we
must have a subscription charge that
covers annual expenditure leaving surplus from functions to be distributed
for charitable and other purposes. Consequently as a matter of urgency the
July 6th meeting considered an increase
of £10 in the annual subscription. (This
writing June 20th).
Also retiring from the Committee
are Mark Weber, Dennis Jackson, and
Vice Chairman Wylma Wayne. Wylma
has been indefatigable in her devotion
to ICS and we are all eternally grateful
to her for her work on the V.E. Day
Dinner and the Blenheim Banquet for
last year's Conference. My thanks to all
those who have served on the Committee with me over the last three years.
I cannot conclude my remarks
without giving heartfelt thanks to Joan
Harris for her wonderful work as Secretary to ICS. She is the focal point for all
members in their dealings with the
Society, and has worked way above
and beyond the call of duty on many
occasions, notably during the Conference, when, despite suffering a broken
ankle, she continued organising events
and, as many of us saw, attended the
Conference on crutches, whilst in
severe pain. Joan deserves all our
thanks.
I also pay tribute to my wife Diane
and to my family who so often allowed
me to put ICS before them.
CONTINUED OVERLEAF >»
INTERNATIONAL DATELINES
Local and National Events
TORONTO
for each event is C$75, of which $50 is a
charitable deduction to support the educational work of ICS, Canada. We are anxious
to know the outcome of these fascinating
proposals and wish we could attend each.
Toronto area members should contact
Bernie Webber (address on page 2).
DALLAS
16TH— A sherry reception at
the home of Mr. & Mrs. David Willette
preceded a lecture by Dr. Dorothy
Rushing to North Texas Churchillians.
Her discussion, "A Great American Citizen," highlighted the many American
influences on Churchill's early life and
light-hearted anecdotes about his
encounters with America. Dr. Rushing,
an award winning history instructor at
Dallas Community College, compared
some of Churchill's characteristics with
those of Washington, Jefferson, Edison
and other prominent Americans. Following the presentation, the group
enjoyed high tea with cucumber sandwiches, scones and trifle. The speaker is
shown third from right with other
members of the Dallas support group.
ERRATA, Finest Hour 94:
Page 7: Contrary to our statement, Churchill was still only 22
when he delivered his maiden political speech, turning 23 in November.
Thanks to Fred Hardman.
Page 47: The answer to trivia
question #747 states that Churchill
was knocked down by a New York
taxi in December 1931. According, to
the official biography, Volume 5,
page 421 footnote, Churchill was hit
by a private motorcar, not a taxi.
Thanks to Nick Gotten.
FEBRUARY
Randy Barber with speaker Hugh Segal.
29TH— The Other Club of
Ontario held its annual Tribute Dinner
at the Albany Club, welcoming Albany
Club members in recognition of their
interest in the International Churchill
Conference next October. The result: an
exciting event for 167 people, the largest
so far in the Other Club's history.
Club President Bernie Webber
"emceed" an interesting program featuring a tribute to Churchill's memory
by Other Club member Bill Williams
and a fond look at Sir Winston's continuing relevance by guest speaker Hugh
Segal, former chief of staff to Canadian
Prime Minister Mulroney and advisor
to former Ontario Premier William
Davis. ICS Canada President Randy
Barber introduced Mr. Segal who, after
a knowledgeable address as one of
Canada's foremost political affairs commentators, was thanked by Other Club
member Henry Rodrigues. Randy also
outlined plans for the conference,
announcing that Mr. Segal will be one
of the featured speakers. This drew an
enthusiastic response from the gathering and the evening was a fine kickoff
to the Conference Year. -Bernie Webber
JANUARY
Northern Ohio events are frequent.
Anyone in the area interested in the latest
plans should contact Michael McMenamin
at 1300 Terminal Tower, Cleveland OH
44113, telephone (216) 781-1212 (days).
NEW ENGLAND
Dr. Dorothy Rushing (3rd from right)
with members. Dallas Churchillians meet
regularly. For details contact Nathan
Hughes, 1117 Shadyglen Circle, Richardson TX 75081, tel (972) 235-3208.
OHIO
To liand as we go to press are a series
of summer dinner proposals from The Other
Club, no fewer than four of them, all
intriguing: "A Picnic en Provence," as
Churchill might Ixave enjoyed on a painting
trip in King City; a "Churchillian Dinner"
hosted by the Watts and Weatheralls in
Rosedale; a 1930s Patriotic Dinner in
Brampton; and a "Sail Around the Harbour" from the RCYC city station. Tlie cost
to The Churchill Center, I maintained
photocopies of all the materials and had
reproductions made of the photographs. These were all on display,
and I gave a brief background on how
the archive came to the attention of our
firm, the appraisal process, and our
decision to bequeath it to ICS, and ultimately to The Churchill Center, as the
best way to carry out our client's wishes. We also have a discussion of topics
for presentation at forthcoming meetings. -Michael McMenamin
MAY nth— Northern Ohio Churchillians
met this evening to discuss the new
Churchill Center publication, The
Churchill-Conover Correspondence (see
book review this issue). These letters
were a gift to The Churchill Center
from the estate of my law firm's client,
David Conover. While the entire correspondence and accompanying photographs have indeed been turned over
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 1 4
MAY 19TH- A handsome sum of $2,985
was donated to The Churchill Center
Endowment Fund today by Dr. Cyril
Mazansky. This represents proceeds on
events held by New England Friends of
ICS over the past three years. The
Churchill Center is deeply grateful to
Dr. Mazansky and all the friends of the
Center and Society in New England.
EDINBURGH
"Winston Churchill: The
Making of a War Leader" is the new
course being offered for Msc. students
at the Centre for Second World War
Studies, University of Edinburgh. The
Churchill Center has promulgated two
scholarships for American or Canadian
students registering for this course,
which will be taught by Drs. Paul Addison and David Stafford, both closely
associated with the Churchill Center
SEPTEMBER-
and Societies.
continued opposite >»
INTERNATIONAL DATELINES
"In spite of Churchill's enduring
fame/' states the course description,
"few University courses have ever
sought to analyse the nature of his
achievement and his strengths and
weaknesses as a war leader. This course
will provide a unique opportunity for
an intensive study of his war leadership, set in the context of his life and
career as a whole. Extensive use will be
made of primary sources and students
will have access to all the primary
printed materials on Churchill's life.
"The first term will be devoted to
studying Churchill's character and multifarious career from his birth in 1874 to
his appointment as Prime Minister in
May 1940. The second term will focus
on his conduct of the war as grand
strategist, military leader, diplomatist,
Prime Minister and historian, along
with the myth, controversy and debate
that have sprung up in the wake of this
period. In the third term, students will
begin a dissertation on an aspect of
Churchill's career of their own choice
relevant to the main themes of the
course." The reading list includes
Churchill's war memoirs and wellknown works by Addison, Charmley,
Gilbert, Rhodes James and Rose.
For an application to this course
and consideration for Churchill Center
scholarships, please contact Mrs. Kate
Marshall, Postgraduate Admissions,
University of Edinburgh, Faculty of
Arts Office, David Hume Tower,
George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JK,
telephone (0131) 650-3578.
VANCOUVER
The Rt. Hon. Sir Winston S. Churchill
Society of British Columbia's essay contest, which stemmed from an earlier
Scholarship Foundation and student
debates programme, has been in place
since 1993, when it replaced the previous debating competitions. The contest
is open to British Columbia university
undergraduates taking coursesJn History, International Relations or Political
Science. Although essays on any important topic of contemporary political relevance are eligible, preference is given
to essays related to Churchill's life and
times or essays on issues with which he
was especially concerned.
Stanley Winfield of the BC Society
has sent Finest Hour a copy of the 1996
winning essay, "The Diary of Felix Bartmann," by Lucy Harrison, a 31-year-old
history major at Langara College in
Vancouver. Her account is historical fiction, based on research and interviews
with her mother, who was a Kindertransport child, evacuated to England
from Vienna in 1938. Comprehensively
researched and footnoted, the essay in
part consists of diary entries, and
describes the situation of an Austrian
Jewish family in Vienna from the time
of the Anschluss (13 March 1938) until
the end of that year, when the children
arrived via Kindertransport in England.
"100,000 children from Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia wanted to
leave via Kindertransport," Ms. Harrison footnotes. "Only 10,000 children
actually arrived in Britain between
December of 1938 and August of 1939,
while this service was in operation."
Finest Hour will make copies available
to anyone who would like to peruse
this fine essay.
LONDON
CALL 1-800-WINSTON
Here's a hopeful sign that
children are not entirely forgetting the
Man of the Century: "One 2 One," a
mobile phone company, ran a national
poll asking who people would most
like to have a mobile phone conversation with. The top three choices were
Richard Branson (Chairman, Virgin
Airways), Nelson Mandela and Winston Churchill. Not bad! (At the bottom
of the list were Oasis's Liam Gallagher,
just under Pamela Anderson.)
MARCH 12TH—
HASTINGS SALE NETS £50,000
LONDON, JUNE 6TH— Christie's sale of the
Robert Hastings Churchilliana collection netted the Winston Churchill
Foundation £50,000, according to our
good friend, WCF President Ambassador John Loeb, Jr. Bob Hastings,
inveterate collector in Pasadena, California, willed the proceeds of the sale to
the Foundation, which provides scholarships for Churchill College Cambridge. We are very pleased that Bob's
fine collection went to a good cause.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 1 5
ABSENT FRIENDS
DICKDANBY
1ST- I am sorry to
report the death of a dear friend of the
Churchill Societies, Brigadier General
(Ret.) Ernest Deighton Danby, DSO,
OBE, CD, aged 81.1 told his wife Jean
that I was letting Finest Hour know, and
she spoke warmly of the Churchill Tour
we all shared, and Dick's moving tribute to Sir Fitzroy Maclean (ICS Proceedings for 1987, p. 31). I know little of
Dick's army career; he rarely spoke of
himself. I do know he was awarded his
DSO during the Italian Campaign, in
the fighting for the Hitler Line. He was
wounded at this time but returned to
the war in Northern Europe. A service
of celebration of his life was held at
West Vancouver United Church. Their
many friends may like to write Jean
Danby at 1007 - 195 21st Street, West
Vancouver, BC, Canada V7V 4A4. We
are the poorer for his loss. -Don Kettyls
VANCOUVER, APRIL
JACKFISHMAN
LONDON,
APRIL
23RD— Jack Fishman, the famous
journalist friend of
Churchills
and
author of My Darling Clementine (the
first CSC biography, on best-seller lists for a year) has
died aged 76. Fishman wrote many
best-sellers and popular songs; he also
had a hand in the exposure of Kim Philby as a Soviet spy. For his Men of Spandau (1954), he was threatened with
imprisonment by the British Government for breaking the Official Secrets
Act. He went on to write songs for thirty feature films and became music
supervisor for Cannon/MGM, overseeing more than 100 feature films. In 1966
he edited a posthumous Churchill work
using Sir Winston's writings on the
theme, /// Lived My Life Again, Fishman
was to have been honoured this year at
the Cannes Film Festival for his contributions to film music. He had attended
every festival since its inauguration fifty
years ago. Jack Fishman married, in
1944, Lillian Richman; they had two
sons. -The Times
M
Send your questions (and answers) to the Editor
Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas
Q
I am trying to find
the video "The
Finest Hours."
Living in a
rather remote
part of Canada,
I am having a
hard time locating it.
A
Write to:
Electronic Publishing
Corporation,
Ltd., 68-70
Wardour
Street, London
W1V3HP,
England and
be sure to ask them for a NTSC version.
-Jonah Triebwasser
O
From Ma]. Gen. Ken Perkins in England comes a telephone request from
wifeCelia, lecturing in London on her
grandfather: What commercial brands of
cigars and spirits did Sir Winston prefer?
A
Cigars: a lot were specially made
up for him, bearing his name on
the wrapper with no brand indicated.
But his favorite commercial brands
were Camacho and Romeo y Julieta,
both Havanas, and therefore for the
time being unavailable, legally, to
denizens of the USA. (Wm. F. Buckley,
Jr., speaker at the ICS1995 Conference,
wrote recently that he was told that the
Dunhills he received from ICS were
Churchill's favorites, earning an E-mail
riposte from the editor that Dunhill's
man must have been smoking something other than tobacco.)
Scotch: Johnny Walker Red (Sir Winston was a personal friend of Sir
Alexander Walker, judging by the fine
jacketed copy of Into Battle inscribed to
Walker, which I have just added to my
collection.) He apparently did not have
any special preference for single malts.
Brandy: Vintage Hine. An early
issue of Finest Hour recalls that a London wine merchant, sent to appraise
the cellar at Chartwell, pronounced it a
"shambles," the only items of value
being a large supply of vintage Pol
Roger Champagne (regularly topped
up by shipments from Madame Odette
Pol-Roger in Epernay); cases of Hine
brandy; and some bottles of chardonnay which Churchill had bottled with
Hillaire Belloc and which WSC forbade
anyone to touch. Despite its Belloc association, the merchant pronounced the
chardonnay "undrinkable"!
Q
Offered at a recent art auction was a
pencil sketch of Winston Churchill
done and signed by Sarah Churchill that
was entitled "Iron Curtain." I believe that
tlie bottom part of the piece also had some
words from that speech and was embossed
with a seal. The price of the piece started at
$650 and it sold to a local banker for $750.1
opened the bidding and wish now that I had
continued with a bid, but presumably the
purdiaser would liave prevailed. Can you
tell me about this artwork, what tlie "going
price" elsewhere is, and where I might find
another one like it? It was new to me and I
found it a very attractive rendering.
A Sarah
•^^•Churchill published a number of
intaglio sketches of
her father signed by
her, but apparently
not all done by her,
in large quarto size. The sketches also
exist in a smaller format, about 8x10.
The large ones, of which yours is one,
often attract bids of $500, but some collectors tell us that they are not worth
that much singly. The complete set is of
course of considerable value. We
recently were asked to appraise one of
the large ones (WSC riding to hounds,
c.1947). The owner attached an
appraisal of $5000! We had to advise
that this figure was a "terminological
inexactitude." Comments from readers
would be appreciated.
FINEST HOUR 95/16
Q
l have seen a quote attributed to
Churchill, "History is what the winners say it is," and I am wondering when
and where he said it. -Joe Just, Chicago
A Our references fail to turn up that
z~\.quote—can any reader help?
Churchill certainly held that sentiment;
he remarked to Ismay during the
Nuremberg Trials that it was a good
thing they had won, lest they be standing in the dock. He often told critics to
leave the past to history, especially
since he planned to write that history
himself. But we suspect the line you
quote is one of those bon mots that could
have been said by many people.
Q
l am looking for information about
Sir Winston Churchill's fondness of
cats. I am particularly interested in the
names of his pet cats (if he ever liad any,
which I understand he did) and some rescuable anecdotes.
A
All we know are the conventional
things, viz...that he had a particular fondness for animals, although he
considered cats aloof. ("Dogs look up to
you, cats look down on you, pigs look
you in the eye and treat you like an
equal.") His private secretary, Jock
Colville, presented him with a marmalade cat which he duly named
"Jock." Jock HI today lives at Chartwell.
Churchill owned several cats. Honorary member Grace Hamblin, private
secretary from 1932 and first Chartwell
Administrator, told us in 1987 of an earlier pet cat which she fed and cared for.
Churchill said, "Good morning, Cat,"
but "Cat made no effort to be near him.
He slashed at it with his papers and the
cat ran from the house. Cat didn't
return the next day or the next or the
next. Finally he said, 'Do you think it's
because I hit him?' Of course I said,
'Yes, definitely.'" Sir Winston was contrite and made Grace put a card in the
window saying, "Cat: come home, all is
forgiven." Miss Hamblin continues:
"Cat did come home several days later
with a wire round his neck. Given
cream and the best salmon and so on,
he did recover, I'm glad to say." (Reference: Proceedings of the International
Churchill Society 1987.)
m
The 1997 Manard E. Pont Seminar:
A Triumph for The Churchill Center
Sixteen outstanding American and Canadian students assembled with faculty to
discuss "Thought and Action in the Life of Winston S. Churchill." The result:
brand new insights into Churchill's My Early Life and Thoughts and Adventures
W
HAT stood
out about the
Manard Pont
Seminar was the vibrant
experience sixteen outstanding
students
derived from what was
for most of them their
first reading of Churchill.
Said one of our professors, Paul Rahe: "I
remember Adam Ake of
West Point addressing
questions of military
strategy, and Kathryn
Shea of Harvard suggesting something wonderful: that, in a sense,
Churchill had two families—an aristocratic family, made up of his parents, and a democratic
family, in Tocqueville's
sense, constituted by
Nanny Everest. Daphna Renan, our only
Faculty members for
the seminar were Paul
K. Alkon, Leo S. Bing
Professor of English at
the University of Southern California; Mark N.
Blitz, Professor of Government at Claremont
McKenna
College;
James W. Muller, Professor of Political Science at the University
of Alaska, Anchorage;
Paul A. Rahe, Jay P.
Walker Professor of
History at the University of Tulsa; and Peter
Stansky, Frances and "
Charles Field Professor
of History at Stanford
University.
freshman, held her own without trouble, commenting on
the theme of magnanimity as it evidences itself in My Early
Life...! had fun with the animal imagery in the early part of
My Early Life: horses to ride, elephants that march, a mother who is compared with a panther—all animals with a
certain grandeur. And I made much of WSC's spiritedness
(and of the spiritedness of the animals which he admired)."
The 1997 Manard E. Pont Seminar, a project of The
Churchill Center, was held at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, on 18-19 April. This inaugural seminar
brought together sixteen outstanding undergraduate students and six faculty members to talk about two of
Churchill's most evergreen books. Our students, the 1997
Manard E. Pont Fellows, were nominated by faculty at
thirteen leading North American colleges and universities.
They ranged from freshmen to graduating seniors. Each
Fellow received a grant to cover books, transportation, and
lodging for the seminar, as well as an honorarium of $100.
Ti
HE Churchill
Center named
this seminar
after the late Manard
E. Pont, M.D., a distinguished neurosurgeon who had an
abiding interest in Churchill. It was made possible by a
generous gift from his wife, Ethel M. Pont, with additional
funding by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. It was one
of the events recognized by the British Consulate General
in San Francisco as part of their spring program, "Britain
Meets the Bay."
Fellows and faculty gathered on Friday, 18 April,
at the Stanford Park Hotel in Menlo Park, California. After
a brief orientation, they met several dozen Friends of The
Churchill Center and the International Churchill Society at
a reception, followed by an address on "Churchill the Writer" by Professor Muller, who connected Sir Winston's long
literary career to his lifelong endeavor to educate himself
about politics. Fellows and faculty had a chance to talk
with their benefactress Ethel Pont afterwards over dinner.
Gerald A. Dorfman, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, welcomed them as host. continued overleaf >»
1997 Manard E. Pont Fellows. Top row: Jeffrey Metzger, Adam Ake, Scott Watson, Rohit
Khanna. Third roiu: Caleb Richardson, Mahindan Kanakaratnam, Micah Schwartzman,
Alicia Mosier. Second row: Jeffrey Giesea, Dark Spiers, Mark Pickup. Front row: Kathryn
Shea, Julie Johnson, David Raksin, Daplma Renan. Not pictured: Kevin Wack.
FINEST HOUR 95/17
Above (L-R): Ethel Pont, the lady who made it possible,
toasts the memory of Sir Winston Churchill; at the Saturday
banquet, Dr. Mark N. Blitz reviews the statesmanship of
The Gathering Storm; Adam Ake of West Point toasts
Mrs. Pont. Left; Singing Harrow Songs at the Hoover
Institute. Below: Our talented organizers: Churchill Center
Executive
Director
Parker Lee
presents a gift
of thanks to
the Center's
Academic
Chairman
James. W.
Muller.
T
HE seminar discussion began the next morning on
Saturday 19 April, in Stauffer Auditorium at the
Hoover Institution. In addition to the faculty and
Fellows, about thirty observers were present for an invigorating day of thinking about Churchill. It was interesting to
watch some of the best college students in America and
Canada grappling with Sir Winston's screed. When faculty
members called on them by name, they remembered,
quickly found, read aloud, and talked about particular passages in the books. "Now then, Mr.
," asked Professor
Rahe, "what did Churchill say about horses?" With the
rapidity of a Nexis survey, the student found and quoted
that famous advice to fathers in My Early Life to give their
sons horses, not money. It was a bravura performance
which left many listeners amazed. "It was fascinating to
hear Winston Churchill, about whom we all know so
much, interpreted and analyzed by young people who had
mostly not read his books before," said Parker Lee.
Both morning sessions were devoted to My Early
Life. Professor Rahe led the first session, a lively discussion
of Churchill's perspective on life in which Fellows argued
over his moral education, his viewpoints on war, and his
relations with his parents. After the singing of the Harrow
School song "The Silver Arrow" and a break, Professor
Stansky led the second session, offering his thoughts on the
social and historical context of Churchill's early years.
After luncheon on the terrace and a chance to tour
an exhibit of British posters organized by Professor Stansky's students, seminar participants returned to the auditorium for a presentation by Paul Rahe on "The River War:
Nature's Provision, Man's Desire to Prevail, and the
Prospects for Peace."
T
HE afternoon sessions considered Thoughts and
Adventures. Professor Alkon asked the Fellows
about some of Churchill's literary devices, and they
argued over whether Churchill was wise to use so many
counter-factual hypotheses in its writing—to ask what else
would have been different if a given thing had happened
otherwise. After a break, Professor Muller led the discussion of Churchill's reflections on the threats to twentiethcentury statesmanship posed by mass democracy and
modem science. The seminar ended with the singing of the
Harrow School anthem "Stet Fortuna Domus," including
the special verse written in honor of Churchill in December
1940. Afterwards many of the Fellows enjoyed the view
from the top of the Hoover Tower.
The Saturday evening banquet at the Stanford
FINEST HOUR 95/18
Above (L-R): Ethel Pont congratulates Daphna Renan
(Harvard), who had also proved adept at air traffic control;
and Mahindan Kanakaratnam (University of Toronto), who
will next appear at the Toronto panel on WSC's "The
Dream"; Constance Reid pays tribute to Manard Pont.
Right: Lively interchange at Hoover Institute, 19 April. Left:
Parker Lee
presents Pol
Roger to
fellow
organizer,
Churchill
Center
Governor
Jacqueline
Dean Witter.
Park Hotel was a salute to Manard Pont, featuring warm
reminiscences of the man by two associates, his student
and associate Jeffrey B. Randall, M.D., and his teacher Constance Reid. Master of Ceremonies Parker H. Lee, III, Executive Director of the Churchill Center, thanked Ethel Pont
for her generosity as benefactress of the seminar. He presented her certificate as a Founding Member of The
Churchill Center and an Oscar Nemon Churchill bust.
The after-dinner speech, "What Churchill's Gathering Storm Teaches about Statesmanship," was delivered by
Professor Blitz. Afterwards Ethel Pont presented each of
the Fellows with a certificate. Adam Ake of West Point,
chosen class marshall by his peers, replied by thanking her
on behalf of the Fellows. Just before the Fellows withdrew
for their photograph on the hotel stairs, Ethel Pont ended
the formal proceedings by proposing a toast, in his favorite
Pol Roger Champagne, to the memory of Sir Winston.
T
he seminar committee—Jacqueline Dean Witter,
Parker Lee, and Jim Muller (all Governors of The
Churchill Center)—fine-tuned the seminar to perfection; the faculty launched the discussion with pointed
questions; but what really brought it to life were the intelligence and high spirits of the Fellows, who warmed to
Churchill's example as they argued over his books.
In the beautiful surroundings of Stanford University and a first-class hotel, the Fellows enjoyed above all the
chance to meet each other and to talk over their own plans
and dreams in the shadow of the exuberant Winston. Fellows, faculty, and observers all left looking forward to the
next chance to come together to talk about Churchill.
O
ne small postscript by Paul Rahe testifies to the
resourcefulness of the Pont Fellows: "American
Airlines kept Daphna Renan and me sitting at JFK
for something like seven hours, parading us on and off the
plane, retaining our tickets (which they had collected when
we first boarded), and telling us repeatedly not to worry,
the repair work was almost done. Finally, they confessed
that they no longer had a pilot and crew to fly the plane. At
that point, I headed for the main desk in the hope of finding another flight. While I did so, Daphna located a flight
& talked the desk agent into letting us on it...without tickets (which we could not get back from the desk agent for
our original flight). In short, my presence at the gathering
was a consequence of the moxie displayed by an exceedingly capable undergraduate. You can say that I was rescued from passivity by an intrepid freshman!"
®
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 1 9
COVER STORY
The Winston
Churchill
Portraits of
Alfred Egerton Cooper
One of the most prolific portrayers of Sir Winston
Churchill, Cooper succeeded
where many others failed: the
Great Man liked all his works.
By Jeanette Hanisee Gabriel
W
HILE searching for bargain books and autographs in London two years ago, my husband
and I happened upon an old Chelsea bookshop.
Already we had looked up, telephoned or visited every
Churchilliana dealer we could find, but had bought only a
signed 1901 photo. Entering the ancient premises, we
asked if they had any autographs. "Maybe up on the
fourth floor," the clerk replied. Following his pointing finger, we found and panted up a steep, narrow, Dickensian
staircase. At the topmost level we emerged and, turning,
saw hanging high above us in the stairwell an oil portrait
of Sir Winston Churchill at Chartwell, gazing at us with a
sweet, pensive expression.
It was the consummate serendipitous experience. Had
we set out to find such a portrait we would never have
looked in an out-of-the way antiquarian bookshop. Those
who have encountered Destiny in her boldest garb will
know what we felt: this portrait was meant for us.
The proprietors knew little of the artist or the history
of the work. In fact, a continuing mystery is the number
"59" affixed in the upper left corner—perhaps a sale or
inventory number. On the back is painted "Chartwell
1947." Only after returning to the United States and scramMs. Gabriel is writing a book on Churchill portraits and sculpture,
and would be most grateful to know of their location and owners. Please
write to her at 1341 Stanford Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404 USA.
bling for information did an outline emerge of the artist
responsible: the prominent portraitist A. Egerton Cooper
(1883-1974). We were especially fortunate to reach (via
Finest Hour) the artist's son, Peter. C. Cooper, who is Director of the Grosse Pointe Art Gallery near Detroit, Michigan.
The impetus behind the 1947 portrait is not known,
but there is an anecdote connected to it, related by a former
owner. It is said that during his first long sitting for the
study, Churchill, bored with inactivity, fell to bedeviling
poor Cooper. Raconteurs tend to embellish their Churchill
stories, and it's quite likely that the exchange went two
ways, with a deal of good-natured joking, since Churchill
had sat for Cooper before. In fact, Cooper had painted one
of the Prime Minister's favorite portraits, the famous "Profile for Victory" (cover, Finest Hour 75).
Our present cover portrait is unusual in that it shows
Churchill at home in a familiar and informal setting: a
sunny corner of Chartwell. Behind him is a large model of
a ship, inventoried today as "an eighteenth or nineteenth
century three-masted sailing barge" and housed in
Churchill's Chartwell studio.
Cooper's portrait is 30 by 24 inches unframed, and
executed in a very loose, painterly style akin to that adopted by Churchill in his own paintings. Sir Winston was
influenced by the impressionistic brushwork of Sir John
Lavery and Richard Sickert; Cooper was of the same gener-
FINESTHOUR95/20
PAGE OPPOSITE: Cooper with the final version of the our cover portrait (OPPOSITE RIGHT), presented to the Junior Carlton Club in 1950; it hangs
at the Carlton today, along with Cooper's famous "Profile for Victory" (ABOVE RIGHT), which graced the cover of Finest Hour 75. ABOVE LEFT:
The final Cooper portrait, begun 1953, completed 1965, owned by Schweppes. Photos courtesy Schweppes Cadbury Ltd. and Peter C. Cooper.
generation. One can see the similarity in execution of
Cooper's portrait to Churchill's own 1928 painting, "Tea at
Chartwell" (Coombs #35, plO3), which portrays the Sickerts, Diana Mitford, Eddie Marsh, Diana Churchill and
Clementine Churchill seated around the table with Winston). The face of Churchill looking over his shoulder at the
viewer bears an uncanny resemblance to Cooper's portrait,
particularly the bold planes of light on the face.
Our cover portrait is actually the first version of a lifesize oil which would be created later at Egerton Cooper's
studio. Being a preparatory work for a more formal painting, is called a "study," but it has all the substance and
merit of a finished work of art. The final, full-scale portrait
is shown in the photo opposite, loaned by Peter Cooper,
with his father standing beside the completed painting.
One can see that it is more technically refined and realistically detailed than the earlier study. This larger painting
was completed in 1950 and given to the Junior Carlton
Club, whose records, unfortunately, are not sufficient to
reveal the donor. It is illustrated in Gentleman's Clubs of
England, in the Club dining room, and was pictured in
color on a Christmas card issued by the Club in the Fifties.
The Carlton and Junior Carlton merged in 1977, and the
painting now hangs at the Carlton Club building at 69 St.
James's Street. Adjacent to it, on the same wall, hangs a
portrait of Lord Randolph Churchill.
Both Lord Randolph and his son were members of the
Carlton, certainly the most famous political club of modern
times. Formed in 1832 by opponents of the Reform Bill, its
tables have traditionally been crowded with Members of
Parliament and Cabinet Ministers. Winston Churchill was
elected to membership in 1925, after he had "re-ratted," as
he put it, returning to the Tories following twenty years as
a Liberal.
T
HE Carlton Club actually has two Cooper portraits
of Churchill, the second being the aforementioned
"Profile for Victory." According to Cooper's son, the
"Profile" was acquired through the generosity of Sir
Edward Mortimer Mountain (1872-1950), Chairman of
Eagle Star Insurance Company, who donated the portrait
in 1948. Sir Edward was a member of the Carlton Club and
the Royal Auto Club (where Cooper's portraits of the
Dukes of Connaught and Kent hang), and had himself
been painted by Cooper, a close friend who often joined
him for salmon fishing in Scotland.
Cooper's "Profile" had a curious inception. One
evening in 1942, Cooper was at the Arts Club in Dover
Street playing billiards with a group of members. Among
these was the distinguished sculptor William Reid Dick,
King's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland and President of
the Royal Society of British Artists. Dick had done busts of
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 1
George V and the model for his memorial at Westminster
after the King's death. His later subjects would include the
Duke of Windsor, George VI, Queen Elizabeth The Queen
Mother, Princess Elizabeth, a model for Kitchener Memorial in St. Paul's, and the statue of President Roosevelt in
Grosvenor Square.
In the midst of shooting billiards, Dick related that he
had been commissioned to sculpt a bronze of Churchill,
who had protested that he didn't have the time, but the
King had prevailed upon WSC to meet the sculptor. Dick
said he would soon be going to Downing Street to take
preliminary measurements. Cooper became excited at this
and, eager for a chance to see the great man firsthand,
asked if he might accompany Dick in the capacity of an
assistant. Dick agreed, the arrangements were made, and
on the assigned day the two departed for Number 10.
The meeting came off without a hitch. Churchill sat
while Dick took his measurements and read them off to
Cooper, who quickly recorded them as he rapidly sketched
Churchill's profile. What had come to Cooper's mind was
ABOVE LEFT: "Tea at Chartwell, 29 August 1927" by Churchill, 1928 (The National Trust). Seated around the table from left to right are Therese
Sickert, Diana Mitford, Eddie Marsh, Winston Churchill, Frederick Lindemann, Randolph Churchill, Diana Churchill, Clementine Churchill
and Richard Sickert. The face of Churchill bears a resemblance to Cooper's cover study. ABOVE RIGHT: The painting now at Lloyd's (see also the
article in FH 67). BELOW: Dinner at Lloyds, 1948: Clementine Churchill, Lloyd's Chairman Sir Eustace Pulbrook, WSC and Lady Pulbrook.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 2
a series of "Profile" biographies of prominent persons in
the Observer. After finishing his sketch, Cooper wrote
below it, "Profile For Victory." Then, taking a calculated
risk, he showed it to Churchill. After some small talk and a
reasonable interval, he asked if he might paint the PM's
portrait in that pose.
Churchill grumbled and puffed, remarking that Cooper was not a sculptor and must have therefore come under
false pretenses to make this request. Nonetheless he soon
calmed down and must have admired the sketch, for he
did indeed consent to sit for Cooper. The resulting portrait,
considered by Cooper to be his finest work, was exhibited
at the Royal Academy in 1943 and later published as a
morale-boosting poster for the general public. The painting
itself was purchased by Cooper's friend Sir Edward Mountain, who, according to Cooper's son, commissioned several signed reproductions of the painting from Cooper for
"important persons in the UK and overseas."
M
ANY eminent artists have executed portraits of
Winston Churchill, but few if any artists have
painted more than A. Egerton Cooper. Like
most painters of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, little documentation is available on Cooper, but it is
worthwhile from the perspective of art history to record
something about this talented artist, born the same year as
Churchill himself.
Cooper showed artistic talent early, exhibiting (for the
first of forty times) at the Royal Academy at eighteen and
graduating on a scholarship from London's Royal College
of Art in 1911. While still a student, Cooper entered a competition for which John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was one
of the judges. Sargent was perhaps the most celebrated
artist of his generation, called by Rodin "The Van Dyck of
our times." Impressed by the young artist's work, Sargent
voted for Cooper, who came in second. Fortuitously, Sargent asked' Cooper to work with him at his studio, the
famous 31-33 Tite Street in Chelsea which had belonged to
James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Cooper spent about a
year there as Sargent's assistant, doing backgrounds and
details for his paintings. What the master passed along to
his disciple is evident on our cover.
When the Great War came, "Fred" Cooper joined the
famous 28th County of London Volunteer Regiment, the
Artists Rifles. At the end of the war he was made official
artist to the R.A.F. He became an expert in the art and technique of large scale aerial camouflage, sketching and painting landscapes from a variety of aircraft. Some are now at
London's Imperial War Museum.
One of Cooper's R.A.F. friends was Dr. Barnes S. Wallis, a leading British aircraft designer after World War I,
and responsible for the famous Wellington bomber. Wallis's most famous invention was the "bouncing bomb,"
popularly known as the Dam Buster, which wrought
havoc on German dams of the Ruhr River. A 1954 motion
picture called "The Dam Busters" starred Michael Redgrave as Wallis. It was filmed at the Wallis house, where
some of Cooper's paintings can be seen hanging on the
walls.
W
HILE training Army recruits in 1917 near Romford, Essex, Cooper met his future wife. Her
parents entertained local officers at their home.
After getting to know the young man and learning he was
an artist, his future father-in-law referred to him as 'Teter
the Painter," and Cooper was "Peter" to his friends and
family the rest of his life.
An odd link lies behind this anecdote. One morning in
early 1911, Churchill, then Home Secretary, was called
dripping from his bath to the telephone and informed that
a gang of anarchists were surrounded at 100 Sidney Street,
Whitechapel. Their leader, apparently absent, was the infamous Peter Piaktow, aka "Peter the Painter," so-named
because he, like Hitler, had once been a house painter.
Churchill despatched the Scots Guards and, throwing on
his clothes, soon arrived in person. It was a scene of intense
tumult, with barrages exchanged between the rebels,
Guards and police. William Manchester believes that
Churchill's inspiration for the tank came at this moment, as
he speculated whether to storm the hideout using metal
shields. In the end, the house caught fire and the anarchists
were incinerated. This historical drama so imprinted itself
on the public mind that seven years later it inspired the
nickname of Cooper, who ironically was also destined to
play a role with Churchill.
Cooper's career progressed and his reputation spread;
he was primarily a portraitist, but also painted landscapes,
coastal and harbor views, and racing scenes including the
Derby and Ascot. His contact with the Royal Family came
in the 1920s when an American painter friend was asked to
portray George V's horses. Since he painted only horses, he
asked Cooper to paint the backgrounds. On Sunday mornings, the two of them would confer with the King, who, it
is said, used their meetings as a reason to avoid attending
church with Queen Mary. Instead the three of them would
hold a pleasant rendezvous at Buckingham Palace, leisurely drinking Black Velvets (half Guiness, half Champagne)
while they discussed the work in progress!
Over the course of his career Cooper painted countless
notable persons, including two portraits of George VI commissioned in 1939. One depicts the King in Naval attire, the
other in uniform of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. They
hang respectively in the Sea Cadets Barracks and Hounslow Barracks. After his preliminary study of George VI at
the Palace, Cooper worked on the portraits in his studio at
27 Glebe Place, Chelsea. The King's military medals and
decorations were delivered for him to copy at a time when
the Blitz was in full swing, and Cooper was in a state of
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 3
nervous anxiety lest they be blown to bits, not to mention
himself.
Another Royal commission took place at the 1954
Light Brigade Ball, a centennial celebration honoring the
Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava in the Crimean
War. His large canvas, entitled "The Queen and The
Queen Mother at the Light Brigade Ball," depicts the Hyde
Park Hotel ballroom filled with whirling figures, the
Queen and Princess dancing with their partners. The
Queen examined the developing painting and chatted with
Cooper, who was working in white tie and tails at his easel
alongside the orchestra. His son, who owns a second copy
of this painting,* relates that Cooper generally looked more
like a retired British Colonel than an artist, and always
dressed to the nines, even in his studio.
L
LOYD'S of London owns the penultimate Cooper
Churchill portrait. Churchill's connection with
Lloyd's originates with his father-in law, Colonel
Henry Montague Hozier (1838-1907), an army officer and
pioneer in military intelligence. Like Churchill, Hozier was
a military correspondent: he covered the Austrian-Prussian
War for The Times and was a prolific writer of military history. In 1874 Hozier left the army to become Secretary of
Lloyd's, a position he held for thirty-two years. One of his
most significant innovations was setting up wireless stations to monitor sea traffic, a system which in 1911 put
Lloyd's in touch with First Lord of the Admiralty Winston
Churchill. From that time, Lloyd's shipping information
was routinely passed to the Admiralty, where it played a
vital intelligence role during the First World War. (See also
"Churchill and Lloyds" by David Boler, Finest Hour 67.)
In 1944 Lloyd's elected Churchill an Honorary Member of their Society, the fifth so honored after Marconi,
Admiral Beatty, Lord Haig and Admiral Sturdee. Too busy
at the time to attend the ceremony, the PM later made a
public appearance at Lloyd's in 1948 for a dinner in the
Captains' Room. A press photo of the dinner shows Mrs.
Churchill, Sir Eustace Pulbrook (Chairman of Lloyd's),
Winston Churchill and Lady Pulbrook.
Anticipating the approach of his eightieth birthday in
1954, Lloyd's commissioned a portrait of Churchill by A. E.
Cooper. It was one of several commissioned by various
artists for that occasion, not all of which had happy repercussions. But of Cooper's work Lloyd's said with relief, "he
actually liked it!" This portrait was again sited at
Chartwell, Churchill seated tranquilly beneath an old oak,
symbolic perhaps of his own evolutionary status in life.
The painting hangs at the entrance to the famous company
restaurant, the Captains' Room, situated below the Under* Mr. Peter Cooper says he would like to sell this painting. Anyone
interested may contact him at 36231 Grand River Ave., Apt 203,
Fdrmington, Michigan 48335 USA.
writing Room at Lloyd's 1 Lime Street headquarters. The
Captains' Room had its beginnings in a seventeenth-century coffee house owned by Edward Lloyd, where the firm
had its inception.
T
HE final Cooper portrait of Churchill, owned by
Cadbury Schweppes, is displayed in the firm's executive directors offices, which since 1992 have been at
25 Berkeley Square, London. This painting was purchased
by Schweppes from the artist in 1967 when the firm was at
2 Connaught Place—another site with significant Churchill
connections.
From 1883 to 1892, during Winston's formative schooldays at Brighton and Harrow, Lord and Lady Randolph
Churchill lived at 2 Connaught Place. Winston was his
father's epigone, pasting press cuttings and cartoons of
Lord Randolph in scrapbooks. To Connaught Place Winston addressed his admiring, yearning letters to his father,
who in 1886 reached his political pinnacle as Chancellor of
the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, only
to resign abruptly before the year was out. In 1893, expenses forced Lord, Randolph's family to sell Connaught Place
and move in with the dowager Duchess of Marlborough at
50 Grosvenor Square.
Begun in 1953, the Schweppes portrait was set aside
when Churchill suffered a stroke, and was only completed
after Sir Winston's death in 1965. Churchill here appears in
stem visage, in full evening dress with decorations, seated
in an armchair, the ubiquitous cigar in his left hand.
There is at least one copy of the Schweppes portrait in
the United States. Beginning in the 1960s, Cooper made
annual excursions to the American midwest, where Carl
Weinhart, Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Art
(whose secretary, Gloria, was married to Cooper's son)
brought him numerous clients. Robert Naegele, head of a
Twin Cities advertising firm, and his wife both sat for
Cooper. Being admirers of Churchill, they ordered a copy
of the Schweppes portrait. The Naegeles later gave it to
Lord Fletcher's Restaurant in Minnetonka, Minnesota,
where it still hangs today.
Like Churchill, Alfred Egerton Cooper lived a long
and productive life, working until he died at age ninety.
Some of his last words might equally have been appropriate to Churchill: "Do not tell them how old I am," he
would say with a smile: "They might not give me any
more commissions."
$
For kind assistance in research the author wishes to thank
Mr. Peter C. Cooper, Director of the Grosse Point Art Gallery in
Michigan; Mrs. Gloria Cooper; the Carlton Club; Cadbury
Schweppes Ltd.; Mr. David Bolcr of Lloyd's of London; Mrs. Jean
Broome; Mr. Richard Langivorth; and Mr. Alan Bell, manager of
Lord Fletcher's Restaurant.
FINEST HOUR 95/24
DESPATCH BOX
Editor's response: Many thanks. Per Finest
Hour 67, page 6, the Hastings Winkle Club,
whose badge is a replica winkle shell, is an
exclusive men's club whose members must
shell out a fine (to charity) if they fail to produce their winkle at the command, "Winkle
Up!" Prince Philip and Montgomery were
longtime members. Chartwell rail tactics were
discussed in "Despatch Box" (FH 91, page 5),
where Oxted seemed to be the best choice; your
advice is a timely reminder.
PONT
met at the 1992 Conference in England. By
SEMINAR
the time I reached the 1996 tour article I
(Letters to
was in floods. But thank you for the kind
Parker Lee)
words.
l am
B*W
writing ELIZABETH SNELL, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
•^"^
to thank you
once again for inviting me to be a Pont
During a visit to Chartwell in 1987,
Fellow. As I mentioned to Professor Tar- my wife and I were joined by a charming
cov upon my return, the conference on man who offered to show us round. He
Churchill was simply exceptional. I left in clearly had an intimate knowledge of WOODFORD CAMPAIGN, 1945
(To Derek Brownleader) You may be
awe of Churchill, and in some ways Churchill and the house. He was, of
interested
to know that as a 17-year-old I
believe that his life will always be in the course, Ed Murray. We had a fascinating
actively
campaigned for Winston
back of my mind. The best part of the con- insight into many of the things that only
ference was interacting with the students, he could have known and was happy to Churchill during the 1945 General Elecall of whom were very impressive. In relate, including the way the house had tion. He represented our Parliamentary
sum, I enjoyed and profited from the changed over the years, and what each constituency of Woodford & Wanstead.
experience tremendously and now hold room contained and meant to Sir Winston. Although, of course, he won handsomely,
his party lost the election. I have still not
Churchill as one of my heroes along with
At the end of our "guided" tour, I asked recovered from the shock! He was then,
Lincoln and Gandhi.
what his relationship had been to the big and still is now, in my 69th year, the
ROHTT KHANNA, CHICAGO
man, whom I had read could be quite dif- supreme inspirational influence in my life.
ficult to work for. He replied, "I loved that All continued success in your efforts to
I found the seminar fascinating and man. I would have died for him." This, I make The Churchill Center viable for the
have the impression that for most of the now know, was typical of Ed, a comment 21st Century.
students it was effective in awakening expected of him. As a result of that visit I
PETER BROWNE, ESCONDIDO, CALIFORNIA
them to Churchill. They were certainly an learnt about the ICS and joined. I also
impressive group: the superb people one bought a copy of his book, which he subKARSH COVER OF FH94
always dreams of having but never gets in sequently inscribed. He was a lovely man.
Your cover photo last issue reminds
such concentrated doses in ordinary class- MAKTIN SMITH, PENN, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
me of an experience twenty-odd years
es or even most honors sections. My chief
ago. I was on the sleeper train from Chicaregret is that we did not have more time WINKLE PHOTO
go
to Los Angeles and was reading a book
for discussing the readings in greater
• The photo- about Churchill in the lounge car. It had a
detail, pursuing points brought up, and
graph on page 33 cover with one of the famous 1941 picfor talking informally. There are so many
of FH 87, for tures of WSC on it. The man to my left
more things to say about the two books,
which you had said, "I took that picture." It was Yousuf
and Churchill. I hope there will be more
requested identifi- Karsh! He told me how he got the "angry
such seminars. [There will!]
cation, was taken lion" photo by removing the PM's cigar.
PAUL ALKON, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
in Hastings on 7 We had a good chat!
UNTV. OF SO. CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
September 1955, when Sir Winston CHARLES R. BERGH, BREWSTER, N.Y.
Churchill became a member of the Winkle
ABSENT FRIENDS
Club. There is a very good painting of the
Last issue's cover of the
Returning to Nova Scotia I plucked presentation in the Hastings Museum, on dynamic, dauntless lion, an
issues 92 and 93 out of the pile and was what is known as the Stade (the fish mar- excellent selection, recalls a
deeply saddened to read of the death of ket, where fishing boats are drawn up on matter that has long troubled
your mother. Jaime and I had breakfast the beach). In the painting, "Dear Murray" me: the statue of Churchill in
with her that last morning in Boston and is standing beside the Humber Staff car Parliament Square. I have
we thought her the finest lady. She spoke and to the left of Field Marshal Mont- always been appalled that
so proudly of her family. As you write so gomery.
such a monstrosity could be erected. My
movingly, words don't help—not at this
Recent letters drew my attention to senses are assaulted each time I see it. It
time; they do later. And then H. Ashley the problem of travelling to Chartwell does not conjure up the dynamics and
Redburn, a gentleman of the old school, where one of our members was misled vivaciousness of the great man, but
such a lovely, lovely man. My post con- into taking a train to East Croyden, a long instead shows an stooped, infirm old man
tained a Christmas card from him which taxi drive away. I have found that the best leaning on his cane. What will future gensaid he was delighted to have met my route is by train to either Oxted (Surrey) or erations think of the man who led Britain
"charming daughter." More correctly, she Edenbridge (Kent) from Victoria and a through one of its most perilous crises?
had the opportunity of meeting a delight- taxi from either station. I hope this infor- Cannot the Churchill Societies undertake
ful, dedicated person. Thank goodness he mation will be of assistance to members an effort to replace that "object" with a
received the Blenheim Award in time. who travel by rail.
proper remembrance?
And Edmund Murray, whom Jaime and I W. S. OSBORNE, CH3CHESTER, W. SUSSEX
JOHN GALLAGHER, MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C M)
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 5
FROM THE CANON
The Maiden Speech,
Bath, 1897
"At the present time it is
exceedingly difficult to find
anything to talk about/' But
Young Winston envisioned
profit sharing, long before
it was widespread
By Winston S. Churchill, Aged 22
I
F it were pardonable in any speaker to begin with the
well worn and time honoured apology, "unaccustomed
as I am to public speaking," it would be pardonable in
my case, for the honour I am enjoying at this moment of
an audience of my fellow-countrymen and women is the
first honour of the kind ever received. (Cheers.) I can
assure you that it was a very great pleasure able to accept
Mr. Skrine's invitation to come down to the ancient city of
Bath and to do what little I can to forward the great work
of the Primrose League. (Cheers.)
But every pleasure has its corresponding drawback,
just as every rose has its thorn, and the corresponding
drawback in my case is that at the present time it is
exceedingly difficult to find anything to talk about. Everyone has been feeling so loyal and patriotic during the last
few weeks that now all is over and the Jubilee is dead and
done, a sort of reaction has set in, and people do not want
to get enthusiastic about anything for quite a long time to
come.* (Laughter.) Even Parliament is affected by a general dullness, for the truth is politics are extremely dull, no
exciting debates, no close divisions, no violent scenes ruffle
the serenity of the House of Commons, no violent agitation
disturbs the tranquility of the country—all is rest and
sleepy, comfortable peace. (Laughter.) In fact in the words
of the popular song you might have heard:
Every eyelid closes,
All the world reposes,
Lazily, lazily, drowsily, drowsily,
In the noonday sun.
But sleepy, comfortable peace, I must remind you,
involves sleepy, comfortable progress, and leads eventually
to comfortable prosperity. So that, although bad for the
speaker, this rest is good for the people. And though Parliament is dull, it is by no means idle. (Hear, hear.) A mea*Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee was celebrated in early 1897. The
actual anniversary of her accession was 20 June. This speech is published by kind permisison of the copyright holder, Winston S. Churchill.
sure is before them of the greatest importance to the working men of this country. (Cheers.) I venture to hope that, if
you think it presumptuous in one so young to speak on
such a subject, you will put it down to the headstrong
enthusiasm of youth. (Hear, hear and laughter.)
T
HIS measure is designed to protect workingmen in
dangerous trades from poverty if they become
injured in the service of their employers. (Hear,
hear.) When the Radicals brought in their Bill and failed,
they called it an Employers' Liability Bill. Observe how
much better the Tories do these things. (Hear, hear.) We
call the Bill the Workmen's Compensation Bill, and that is
a much nicer name. (Laughter and hear, hear.) This Bill is
a great measure of reform. It grapples with evils that are
so great that only those who are intimately connected with
them are able to form any idea of them. (Cheers.) Every
year it is calculated that 6,000 people are killed and
250,000 injured in trades in this country. That is a terrible
total, larger than the greatest battle ever fought can show.
(Hear, hear.) I do not say that workmen have not been
treated well in the past by the kindness and consideration
of their employers, but this measure removes the question
from the shifting sands of charity and places it on the firm
bedrock of law. (Cheers.) So far it is only applied to dangerous trades. Radicals, who are never satisfied with Liberals,
and always liberal with other people's money (laughter),
ask why it is not applied to all. That is like a Radical—just
the slapdash, wholesale, harum-scarum policy of the Radical. It reminds me of the man who, on being told that ventilation was an excellent thing, went and smashed every
window in his house, and died of rheumatic fever. (Laughter and cheers.)
That is not Conservative policy. Conservative policy
is essentially a tentative policy—a look-before-you-leap policy; and it is a policy of don't leap at all if there is a ladder.
(Laughter.) It is because our progress is slow that it is sure
FINEST HOUR 95 / 26
and constant. (Hear, hear.) But this Bill might be taken as
indicating the forward tendency of Tory legislation, and as
showing to thousands of our countrymen engaged in
industrial pursuits that the Tories are willing to help
them, and besides having the inclination, that they also
have the power (hear, hear), and that the British workman has more to hope for from the rising tide of Tory
democracy than from the dried-up drainpipe of Radicalism. (Laughter and cheers.)
I am sorry to say that what is being done in one
direction is being undone in another. I allude, of course, to
the great strike of engineers. (Hear, hear.) A great war
between capital and labour has broken out, and it can not
fail to leave a most dreadful desolation behind it (hear,
hear), and must bring misery on thousands. Whoever is
right, masters or men, both are wrong, whoever might
win, both must lose. (Hear, hear.) In the great economic
struggles of nations no quarter is ever shown to the vanquished. Every individual and every community has, no
doubt, a right to buy the best goods in the cheapest market, and if the British manufacturer can not produce goods
for export-at the lowest price in the market of our trade—
the pride of England and the envy of the foreigner—would
simply go to the German Emperor or some other equally
unattractive individual. (Laughter and applause.)
O
NE of the questions which politicians have to face
is how to avoid disputes between capital and
labour. (Hear, hear.) Ultimately I hope that the
labourer will become, as it were, a shareholder in the business in which he works, and would not be unwilling to
stand the pressure of a bad year because he shares some of
the profits of a good one. But this is a solution which can
be only reached in the distant future, and in the meantime
it is the duty of everyone who has influence and opportunity to do what he can to bring these continual disputes to
an end. It is still more the duty of any political Organisation to do this, and it is no more the duty of any such
Organisation than it is the duty of the Primrose League.
The League has indeed set itself many hard tasks in
the past fifteen years. It has been teaching the people of
Great Britain the splendour of their Empire, the nature of
their Constitution, and the importance of their fleet. But
more remains to be done. (Cheers.) We must carry out the
work of popularising those institutions which have made
this country what it is, and by which we can alone maintain our proud position. (Cheers.) It is a heavy task, but we
are not without encouragement. All this Imperial sentiment, this desire for unity, this realisation of Empire
which has characterised and glorified the sixtieth year of
The Queen's reign (cheers), is in entire harmony with the
principles and sentiments of the Primrose League.
(Cheers.) I do not go so far as to say it is entirely the outcome of it, because that would be an exaggeration, and
when you have a good cause there is no need for exaggeration. (Hear, hear.) But we might fairly claim to have
afforded the rallying point for all who sympathise with the
Imperial movement, a sphere of action for all who are
enthusiastic about it; we have, as it were, collected public
opinion throughout the country and concentrated it for a
definite end. And as we have home our share of work, we
might claim our share of the credit. (Hear, hear.)
Those reflections are not unpleasant to many of
those who, like Mr. Skrine and Colonel Wright, our Ruling
Councillor, have watched the Primrose League from its
early humble commencement. At first regarded merely as
a trick of the Fourth Party, viewed with contempt by the
Radicals and with suspicion by the Tories, the League had
a narrow shave of existence at all. But it grew, in the face
of ridicule and opposition, and extended its ramifications
into almost every town and village in the land (cheers);
and its influence pervaded all classes, until we see it in one
of the most complicated arrangements of political machinery, and one of the most tremendous monuments of Constitutional power that the world has ever seen. (Cheers.)
I
N 1880 the Tory party was crushed, broken, dispirited.
Its great leader, Lord Beaconsfield, was already
touched by the finger of Death. Its principles were
unpopular; its numbers were few; and it appeared on the
verge of extinction. Observe it now. (Cheers.) That struggling remnant of Toryism has swollen into the strongest
Government of modern times. (Cheers.) And the great Liberal party which in 1879 was vigorous, united, supreme,
was shrunk to a few discordant factions of discredited faddists, without numbers, without policy, without concord,
without cohesion, around whose neck is bound the millstone of Home Rule. (Cheers.)
In all this revolution of public opinion the Primrose
League has borne its share. (Cheers.) It has kept pegging
away, driving the principles of the Tory party into the
heads of the people of this country, and, though the task
has been heavy and labour long, we have had in the end a
glorious reward. (Cheers.) The Radical party has been
knocked out of time. It is flat upon the ground, and it is
the business of the League to see that it never gets up
again. (Laughter.) The Primrose League has stood the test
of ridicule, it has borne defeat, it remains now to see
whether it can stand the higher test of victory. We must
not rest. We have three years before the next election. Let
us select our quarry—some stalwart Radical—run him
down, hold him until the moment comes to take him in triumph to the poll, and then the election of 1901 will be as
glorious for the Empire as the election of 1895. (Cheers.)
T
HERE are not wanting those who say that in this
Jubilee year our Empire has reached the height of
its glory and power, and that now we shall begin to
decline, as Babylon, Carthage, Rome declined. Do not
believe these croakers but give the lie to their dismal
croaking by showing by our actions that the vigour and
vitality of our race is unimpaired and that our determination is to uphold the Empire that we have inherited from
our fathers as Englishmen (cheers), that our flag shall fly
high upon the sea, our voice be heard in the councils of
Europe, our Sovereign supported by the love of her subjects, then shall we continue to pursue that course marked
out for us by an all-wise hand and carry out our mission of
bearing peace, civilisation and good government to the
uttermost ends of the earth. (Loud cheers.)
$
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 7
an o. one
Vvinsfon
[IOTULS JL^OFO.
JL^OF
How Lord Alfred Douglas libeled. vVinston
.Lived to regret it, and survived to repent it°, and
flow Winston C^niircliiM was JVILagnaniiniioiis in
ry,
ly Mickacl T.
2 June 1916:
TAT
Accordingly, Balfour was pleased and gratified to
hear that Churchill was not taking a critical view of
the recent North Sea encounter. Rather, Churchill had
taken the longer and more optimistic view that the
battle was at best a draw which exposed the inferiority of the German Fleet; removed any lingering doubts
that the Germans had naval surprises in store; and left
the British Navy with the same margin of superiority
it had enjoyed before the battle. This latter point was
key. Worldwide control of the oceans was critical to an
island people like the British, and their dominions
scattered throughout the globe. Without it, survival
was in peril. Not so with Germany, a land-based
power in the center of Europe.
Winston Churchill said as much in a communique the Admiralty issued over his name the next
day. Stock in British companies on the New York
Stock exchange, which had suffered dramatic drops
after the first reports of Jutland, bounced back after
the release of Churchill's report. Churchill probably
never noticed. He was more keenly aware that the
Commander-in-Chief of the British Fleet, Admiral
John Jellicoe, was the one man in the world who
could "lose the war in an afternoon." Faced with that
opportunity on 31 May 1916, in the North Sea, Jellicoe
had not lost. If Jellicoe had not been as aggressive as
some would have liked, Churchill knew he had been
following previously agreed upon grand strategy
crafted while Churchill was at the Admiralty helm.
Little did Churchill realize that the simple act of
preparing, at his government's request, a favorable
postmortem of the Battle of Jutland would lead him
seven years later into playing a major role in two
prominent libel trials within a six-month period.
The trials would involve Lord Alfred Douglas, a
notorious British literary figure, son of the Marquess
of Queensbury, who was to accuse Churchill of plot-
l / \ / Churchill
V V was surprised, perhaps even
a little flattered.
Advisers to Arthur
Balfour, Churchill's
successor as First
Lord of the Admiralty, had asked him to
their offices to offer
his views on the Battie of Jutland, so they
could be released to
the public. The press
had widely reported
the encounter in the
North Sea between
the British Grand
Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet
as a defeat for the
British Navy, with
fourteen ships sunk
and 6,000 lives lost,
compared to eleven
ships and German
losses of 2,000 to
2,500.
Churchill still
received grudging
admiration, even
from his many political enemies, for his
role in building up
the British fleet in the
years leading up to
Mr. McMenamin is a partner with Walter, Haverfield,
the outbreak of war
Buescher & Chockley in Cleveland, Ohio. This article is conin August 1914.
densed from the first publication, in Litigation, Winter 1995.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 8
ting with Jewish financiers to manipulate stock
exchanges through issuance of false communiques on
Jutland. The two trials would involve identical fact situations but entirely different legal standards which,
inadvertently but presciently, illustrate how presentday American and English libel law would deal with
the same defamation action involving the same public
figure.
The Publication
26 April 1923:
LORD Alfred Douglas was angry. This was not an
unusual condition. A convert to Catholicism and
something of a puritan in later life, he was still best
known for his scandalous affair with Oscar Wilde as a
young man just before the turn of the century. His
relationship with Wilde had played a prominent role
in the latter's conviction and imprisonment for gross
indecency and procuring—a conviction brought
about through a campaign waged by Lord Alfred's
outraged father, the man who had formulated the
modern rules of boxing. According to Lord Douglas's
biographer, the British barrister and historian, H.
Montgomery Hyde, the notoriety from the Oscar
Wilde scandal left Lord Alfred, now in his early fifties,
"a man with a permanent chip on his shoulder,
aggressive, quarrelsome and apt to take offense easily." And when Douglas took offense, he frequently
ended up in court as a libel plaintiff or defendant.
Douglas was angry today because the Conservative newspaper, The Morning Post, a paper with
whose politics he agreed, had published an article
containing the following sentence: "It must no longer be
The stories about Churchill were equally far
fetched. According to Douglas, Churchill had caused
an initial false report to be issued about the Battle of
Jutland at the behest of a group of Jewish financiers,
thus producing a decline in the stock markets.
Churchill then issued a more optimistic report a day
later; the financiers profited: and so, did Churchill,
receiving a check for £40,000 (over £1,250,000 or
$2,000,000 in current value) from his friend, Sir Ernest
Cassel.
Douglas instructed his solicitors to sue for libel.
He had not "invented" anything. He had sources for
his stories. He believed them. His pleadings alleged
that the plain meaning of the words in The Morning
Post were that he knew the articles to be untrue but
published them anyway in order to make money.
The First Trial
17 July 1923:
Trial commenced before Mr. Justice Salter. Arthur
Comyns Carr represented Douglas. The famed barrister Patrick Hastings—called by some "the finest crossexaminer seen in the courts in this century"—represented The Morning Post.
According to Hyde, Douglas testified in direct
examination that he had no personal prejudices
against Jews and had many friends among them....It
was simply a question of evidence. All the articles
were based on information received by him or in his
possession, and he believed them to be true. Douglas
identified his primary source as a former British
Secret Intelligence Service officer, Captain Harold
Spencer, who had unsuccessfully stood for Parliament
a paying proposition for men like Mr. Crosland and Lord
in 1918. Spencer was an American of uncertain menAlfred Douglas to invent vile insults against the Jews."
tal stability who had been invalidated out of the serDouglas believed he had been defamed. Along
vice by an army medical board in September 1917. He
with the Yorkshire journalist T. W. H. Crosland, he
claimed to have talked about Jutland with Churchill
had been a major contributor to an anti-Semitic week- at a luncheon in Dundee in 1919, and that Churchill
ly journal, Plain English. Douglas pursued editorial
had confirmed "We did it to get the money out of the
policies at the publication designed to illustrate his
Yanks." Another source was the prominent physician,
belief in international financial conspiracies led by a
Sir Alfred Fripp, who Douglas claimed told him that
"clique of rich Jews."
Sir Ernest Cassel had given Churchill £40,000 in one
The "inventions" to which The Morning Post
check after the Battle of Jutland.
referred were a series of articles in Plain English which,
The major portion of Hastings's cross-examinaaccording to Hyde, "purported to show the sinister
tion of Douglas (and the most readily accessible
influence exercised by the Jews in recent world
source for testimony in the first trial) appears in
events, notably the death of Lord Kitchener and the
Hyde's biography of Douglas:
Battle of Jutland ..." Kitchener had died a few days
after Jutland, when his warship, bound for Russia,
Hastings: Your article says, "It may also be said
sank after hitting a mine. Douglas claimed that Kitchthat the Cabinet Minister who drew up and issued the
ener was murdered by a Jewish conspiracy to keep
false report about the Battle of Jutland which prohim from reaching Russia and preventing the Bolsheduced this fall in stocks had spent the week-end with
vik revolution.
one of the most powerful members of the financial
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 2 9
group, Sir Ernest Cassel." Who was the Cabinet Minister referred to there?
Douglas: Mr. Churchill
Hastings: Do you happen to know that Mr.
Churchill had not been First Lord of the Admiralty for
twelve months before the Battle of Jutland?
Douglas: That has been explained as being a slip of
the pen.
Hastings: Do you know that Lord Balfour has
stated in his evidence taken on commission that the
only person who drew up the so-called false report
was himself?
Douglas: I know, but I don't believe it.
Hastings: You suggest that he has committed
perjury?
Douglas: He has either committed perjury or his
memory failed.
Hastings: Do you suggest now that Mr.
Churchill drew up mat report?
Douglas: Certainly.
Hastings: What information have you on the
point now?
Douglas: The same information as I had then. It was
told me by Captain Spencer.
Hastings: You say later on in reference to Mr.
Churchill: "It is true that by most subtle means and by
never allowing him more than a pony ahead, this
ambitious and brilliant man, short of money and
eager for power, was trapped by the Jews. After the
Jutland business his house was furnished for him by
Sir Ernest Cassel." Do you mean to say that Mr.
Churchill was financially indebted to the Jews?
Douglas: Yes, certainly.
Hastings: Do you want to persist in that now?
Douglas: Of course 1 do.
Hastings: Who were the Jews in whose clutches
he was?
Douglas: Chiefly Cassel.
Hastings: What justification had you in your
own mind for making that charge against Mr.
Churchill?
Douglas: I had the evidence of what was told me by
men at the Admiralty, and Sir Alfred Fripp told me that
Cassel had given Mr Churchill £40,000 in one cheque.
Hastings: Was it after the Battle of Jutland he
got a cheque for £40,000?
Douglas: Certainly.
Churchill were true. Instead, he claimed that his client
had acted honestly and in good faith in publishing
them. Accordingly, after the plaintiff's case had been
concluded, he advised the Court that he would
decline to cross-examine any defense witnesses about
the truth of the articles on Jutland and Kitchener.
Ti
I HE first defense witness was Lord Balfour, who
appeared by deposition. Balfour testified that
he himself had drawn up the first communique
on Jutland. Minor alterations were made, and it was
issued on 3 June. Churchill had absolutely nothing to
do with it. Balfour admitted that the next day he had
shown Churchill the telegrams received from the fleet
and asked him to write his own analysis of the battle
to rebut "the misleading statements issued by the
German Admiralty." Comyns Carr declined to read
his cross-examination of Balfour into evidence, whereupon his client, Lord Douglas, stormed out of the
court room in protest.
With Douglas absent, the stage was set. Hastings called Churchill as his next witness. Churchill
flatly denied the accusations about Jutland and Cassel, calling them "an absolute lie":
Hastings: When you first saw these articles, did
you consider the advisability of prosecuting the man
who wrote them?
Churchill: I sent the articles to the Law Officers, and
the Attorney General gave a great deal of attention to the
matter. He most strongly advised me against instituting a
prosecution either personally or through the Director of
Public Prosecutions. His view was that the status of the
paper was so obscure and contemptible that it would only
give it a needless advertisement and notoriety if a State
prosecution or an action for libel were started. Lastly, he
considered that the character of Lord Alfred Douglas made
it unnecessary for me to take any notice at that stage of
these very gross and cruel libels, but he assured me that if,
at any time, the question was raised why I had not taken
action to clear my honour, he would himself testify to the
advice he had given me and the reasons for doing so. That
was the reason I abstained from prosecuting.
Hastings: Between the date when you left the
Admiralty and the date of the battle—just over a
year—did you have any share or part in the direction
of the Admiralty?
Hastings: Do you realise that Mr Churchill is
Churchill: None whatever, except that I was a memcoming here and can be asked questions financial and ber of the Cabinet and had an opportunity of discussing the
Admiralty.
otherwise, which it is desired to ask him?
Douglas: Of course I realise it.
Hastings: Had it [Churchill's analysis of Jut-
Douglas's barrister, Comyns Carr, had no intention of arguing to the jury that the articles about
land] anything to do with any manipulation of stocks
in any market in the world?
Churchill: Such an idea never entered my mind.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 3 0
Hastings: Did you make a penny piece of
money in any way out of it?
Churchill: No.
After Churchill stepped down, without being
cross-examined by Douglas's counsel, Hastings called
only one more witness, W. D. Geddes, who had been
Cassel's business secretary. Cassel had died in 1921,
and Geddes testified that Cassel neither bought nor
sold stocks for months before or after Jutland.
H
ASTINGS rested and the case was sent to the
jury. As Hyde tells us, the issue before the
jury was identical to The New York Times
"actual malice" standard in public figure libel cases:
The question which the jury had to determine...
was not whether the stories about the Jews were
true.or not but whether in publishing them Lord
Alfred Douglas had acted in good faith or whether
he had "invented" them—in other words, as the
judge told the jury, whether he neither knew nor
cared if they were true or false.
It is tempting to say that Comyns Carr outlawyered Hastings on this occasion. After having
received fair warning from Comyns Carr that he was
not going to prove the truth of the Jewish conspiracy
articles but would instead focus on the good faith
belief of Douglas, Hastings made no attempt to attack
the sources Douglas relied upon, especially the unstable Captain Spencer. Instead, he put on an abbreviated defense, designed to prove the articles false as to
Churchill.
In less than a day of deliberations, the jury
returned a verdict for the plaintiff, but it was Hastings, not Comyns Carr, who left the courtroom with a
smile. The jury only awarded damages of one farthing to Douglas and, as a consequence, the judge
suspended the rule that the prevailing party receive
his costs and attorneys fees, and directed each side to
pay their own costs.
Hastings had instinctively understood what
present-day American media defense lawyers have
discovered in defending public figure libel trials: try
the case on the truth. The jury won't forgive you if
your client got the story wrong. Save that actual malice standard for your appeal. Unfortunately for Lord
Douglas, his jury did understand the actual malice
standard on which his counsel tried the case but
didn't forgive him for getting the story wrong. The
contemptuous award of one farthing reflected this.
But, as we shall see, Douglas learned nothing from
the experience.
Republication
3 August 1923:
Lord Alfred Douglas was angry again. He told a
Mend in a letter that he had "won a great victory in
s p it e of the miserable cowardice of my counsel" He
i a t e r elaborated on this in an incredible post-trial letter
to Patrick
• Hastings:
-Your delightful clients and the gang behind them,
including "dear Winston," may make the best of
the fact that I was done out of the heavy damages
which were my due, because my counsel had not
the pluck to use the ample material with which I
supplied him for cross-examining Churchill, and
because he and you between you succeeded in
keeping Balfour's cross-examination out. But you
can tell them with my compliments that this action
is only the first roundNow, standing in Memorial Hall on Farringdon
Street in London, Douglas addressed a meeting organized by "The Lord Kitchener and Battle of Jutland
Publicity Committee." He repeated his accusations
against Churchill's receiving a large sum of money
from Sir Ernest Cassel after issuing a false account of
the Battle of Jutland. He then dared Churchill to sue
him for libel:
.... I have always taken it to be fairly well established that if you bring a serious accusation against
a man involving his honour, and if you bring that
accusation in the most public manner possible,
and if that man ignores your accusation and takes
no proceedings against you, you are entitled to
believe that your accusation is true....If the positions were reversed, if Mr. Churchill were editing
a paper and if he printed in his column one-half,
one-quarter, one-fifth of what I printed about him,
I would have him round at Bow Street magistrates' court with his nose hanging over the edge
of the dock to answer a charge of criminal libel. I
promise you.
HURCHILL didn't rise to the bait. He was
probably unaware of the speech before such
an obscure anti-Semitic forum. Douglas was
undaunted. Churchill's biographer, Martin Gilbert,
tells us that Douglas had the speech printed as a pamphlet and distributed over 30,000 copies in London,
one of which he sent to Churchill with the following
note: "I challenge you to show your face in the witness box & answer the questions I shall put to you."
G
FINEST HOUR 95/31
IG mistake. Or, as Douglas's biographer
Hyde—and also the biographer of Patrick Hastings—more gently put it:
B
Churchill: In no way.
Hogg: Did you know anything about it until it
appeared in the Press?
Churchill: Nothing whatever.
Taking the most charitable view of [Douglas's]
behaviour, it was due to his ignorance of the law
and his counsel's tactics that he reacted as he did.
[His counsel] was quite justified in not-crossexamining Churchill or any of the other defendant's witnesses, the reason being that such tactics
would not have helped his client's case. There was
no point in attempting to prove the truth... .The
only question at issue was not whether the allegations were true or false but rather whether [Douglas] regarded them as being true when he made
them, although they were in fact not so....Brilliant
as he had shown himself as a witness in earlier
cases, this time he had brought his pitcher to the
legal well once too often. The result was a warning
which he chose to ignore with what were to prove
tragic consequences to himself.
The consequences were swift. Douglas was
arrested on 6 November 1923 on a warrant charging
him with criminal libel. Hyde tells us that it was
unusual publicly to prosecute a libel case involving
someone like Churchill, who was no longer a government official. He reports that the Attorney General, Sir
Douglas Hogg, believed that the libel was directly
related to work Churchill had done for the government at its request and that Churchill should not have
to bear the expense of a private prosecution.
The Second Trial
20 December 1923:
At long last, Lord Alfred Douglas had Winston
Churchill just where he wanted him—in the witness
box to undergo cross-examination. Douglas's counsel,
Cecil Hayes, a junior barrister, was much more likely
than his predecessor, Comyns Carr, to follow his
client's precise instructions on the questions to put to
the well-known, 49-year-old politician.
Churchill was the second witness for the prosecution. Hogg asked him about the first communique
which admittedly had caused a drop in the market for
stock of British companies (the most readily accessible
source for transcript excerpts from this trial is Hyde's
book, Their Good Names):
Hogg: Did you know anything about the communique of June 2nd before it was issued?
Churchill: Nothing wliatever.
Hogg: Were you consulted as to its issue?
Churchill then described the process by which,
at the government's request, he had come to write his
"appreciation." Typical of Churchill's writing style, he
had dictated the communique to an Admiralty
stenographer. Thereafter, he had taken it to Lord Fisher, Churchill's First Sea Lord when he was at the
Admiralty. Now retired, Fisher told Churchill that his
appreciation was "exactly right." Churchill said he
then telephoned the Admiralty and authorized it to
issue the communique over his name.
Hi
"OGG next explored Churchill's friendship
with Sir Ernest Cassel, a German and natu.ralized British subject who had been knighted and appointed a Privy Councillor. Churchill admitted to his close friendship with Cassel, who had long
been a friend of the Churchill family, including Lord
and Lady Randolph Churchill. Upon his father's
death in 1895, Churchill had turned to Cassel to invest
his literary earnings as a foreign correspondent in the
Boer War, as the author of several books and as a
speaker on the lecture circuit. The amount given to
Cassel to invest (apparently at no charge to Churchill)
was substantial—£12,000 (over £125,000 or $800,000 in
current value). None of this had come out in the first
trial, although Churchill insisted that "There was not
the slightest secrecy about it."
Churchill had earlier in his testimony denied
that Cassel had given him a gift of furniture or anything else after the Battle of Jutland. But there was an
element of truth hidden in the charge, which Hogg
brought out on direct examination:
Hogg: Did Sir Ernest Cassel give you any furniture?
Churchill: The foundation for this was that in 19051
took a small house in South Bolton Street, and Sir Ernest
asked Lady Randolph wliether fie could furnish a library for
me. She consented.
Churchill also volunteered that Cassel had
given him a wedding present in 1908 of £500 (over
£20,000 or $35,000 in current value). None of this had
come out in the first trial either. None of it was especially scandalous, and perhaps not even uncommon,
for politicians like Churchill who did not have inherited wealth. But it was previously unknown by the
public, as was Cassel's management of Churchill's literary earnings. It is a tribute to Hogg's lawyering that
FINEST HOUR 95/32
all of this was brought out on direct examination, not
on cross, where it could have appeared more sinister.
To his client's dismay, young Cecil Hayes was
no match for Churchill on cross-examination:
Hayes: Did you know that Sir Ernest Cassel was
born in Germany of German parents?
Churchill: I knew that.
Hayes: He came to England a German subject?
Churchill: Certainly.
Hayes: He became naturalized in England.
Churchill: He did.
Hayes: And in due course was made a knight
and a Privy Councillor?
Churchill: Yes.
Hayes: You know he started in the City of London as a clerk at £2 a week?
Churchill: Is that very much against him?
Hayes: In your book The World Crisis, you said
that in 1907 you first met Lord Fisher and that you
stayed with him as guest of a common friend. That
common friend was Sir Ernest Cassel?
Churchill: Yes, he had a villa in Biarritz.
Hayes: You did not mention the name of your
host in your book?
Churchill: No.
Hayes: In your book are the words, "We [Fisher
and I] talked all day and far into the night."
Churchill: I had nothing to do with it!
Judge: Is all this supposed to show the domination of Sir Ernest Cassel over Mr. Churchill?
Hayes: I suggest that Mr. Churchill was influenced as a young man and dominated by Sir Ernest
Cassel.
Judge: Why don't you ask him?
Hayes: I put it to you that you were influenced
by Sir Ernest Cassel in these German overtures and
dominated by his personality?
Churchill: Certainly not. I was not at all. I was influenced by an earnest desire to prevent a breach between England and Germany.
Hayes: You were the First Lord of the Admiralty, and I suggest that owing to your blunders in the
war there was great loss of life and that it was therefore to the public benefit that the words which are the
subject of the alleged libel should be published.
Churchill: It would be most important that I should
be punished if such foul charges were true.
Hayes: I suggest that throughout the war you
were a wholly discredited person.
Churchill: I repudiate your suggestion. I do not
believe it is true; if it were it would be undeserved.
Hayes: I will put some questions to you to show
that you were.
Churchill: I shall be delighted to answer them.
H
Churchill: We did not talk continuously for twentyayes followed this up a short while later with
four hours, but we had some conversations in the daytime
a question about Churchill's Achilles' heel,
and some at night. Sir Ernest Cassel was not present on
the failed attempt in 1915 to force the Dardany occasion. All these talks were secret conferences on con- anelles, which led to the defeat of British, Australian
fidential matters and were talks between ourselves alone, as and New Zealand forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula:
I have said.
Hayes: Did you send your host to bed to get
him out of the way?
Churchill: The point never arose.
Hayes: It was rather lonely for the poor man,
was it not?
Churchill: No, he had other guests.
Hayes also asked Churchill about his trip in
June of 1914, as the guest of the Kaiser at the Kiel
Regatta, followed by a series of questions about Cassel's influence over Churchill:
Hayes: Had you any idea that the Emperor was
humbugging you with that hospitality at Kiel?
Churchill: I do not think he was. I do not think that
at the time of the Kiel Regatta there was any intention of
going to war on the part of Germany, but the whole situation was altered by the murder of the Archduke.
' Hayes: We do not know the cause of that murder.
Hayes: Would it be right to say that the attempt
to rush the Narrows was a reckless enterprise without
any possible hope of success?
Churchill: It would be wholly incorrect to say so.
Some people hold that view; but, as I have said, some of the
highest and best naval authorities, including Admiral
Keyes, believed that it could be done, and I believe that the
best opinion is steadily focusing on that view.
Later, Hayes returned to The World Crisis:
Hayes: I suggest that the book is really what
happened to Winston Churchill and not to the nation.
Churchill: No. I think that would be a very inadequate appreciation of the book.
Hayes: Would it surprise you to know that in
thirteen lines there are thirteen "I"s?
Churchill: It would be a great pity if there were, and
if you will show me the passage I will endeavour to cut out
a few in the next edition.
FINEST HOUR 95/33
Hayes: You had a considerable sum of money
out of it?
Churchill: Yes
Hayes: £20,000?
Churchill: No.
Hayes: £15,000? [over £300,000 or $500,000 in
current value]
Churchill: Yes.
Hayes: And that money goes to you privately.
Churchill: Yes.
Hayes: And you are not spending any of it on
this prosecution?
Churchill: Thanks to the decision of the AttorneyGeneral I am not.
Finally Hayes questioned Churchill about his attendance at the civil luncheon given for Lord Haig in
Dundee in 1919, when Captain Spencer claimed that
Churchill had made damaging admissions about the
Jutland incident:
Hayes: Did you say to him "Hello, Spencer,
what are you doing here?" and the captain replied,
"Oh, I am going to turn you out at Dundee"?
Churchill: I don't remember that at all.
Hayes: You said, "What is your grouse?"
Churchill: I never remember using that expression.
Hayes: He said, "That Jutland business was
pretty thick, wasn't it?" Do you remember that?
Churchill: No.
Hayes: And you said, "What do you care anyhow? We got the money out of the Yanks"?
Churchill: I am sure I did not.
Shortly thereafter, with Churchill having been in the
witness box for approximately one and a half days,
Hayes concluded his cross-examination. After calling
several Admiralty witnesses, including Lord Balfour's
Assistant Private Secretary, Sir Edward, Packe, as well
as Cassel's Private Secretary, W. D. Geddes, the prosecution rested.
I
N his opening statement for the defense, Cecil
Hayes attempted to make the case a credibility
contest between Churchill and Douglas. Perhaps
to draw attention to the fact that Churchill's mother
was American, he asked the jury in his opening statement to consider whether Churchill, like George
Washington, was incapable of lying, conceding that if
that were so, the defense would have no case. He then
tried to put Churchill and Douglas on the moral scale:
Hayes: Historically, and by lineage, Lord Douglas's family is perhaps the premier family of Scotland. Mr. Winston Churchill is descended from the
great Duke of Marlborough. Therefore both men
stand before you as members of the same caste and
class. Nobody in the world can ever say that anything
Lord Alfred Douglas has ever done in any journal
was for pay or money. He is an honest man and was
once called an honest fool. It is through his honesty
perhaps that he has been brought to his present position, and everyone must come to the conclusion that
he believes everything he has written.
Lord Alfred was Hayes's first witness and
proved to be less than temperate on the stand as evidenced by the following exchange with the judge:
Judge: Your attention has been called to the
issue of Plain English of March 19th, 1921, which contains a letter to the Home Secretary. Did you write it?
Douglas: Yes.
Judge: Did you write the article?
Douglas: Yes. I wrote it.
Judge: Including this passage? "We are not in
the least afraid of the Public Prosecutor, because even
that official, backed up by the evil forces which control the present Government, has no power to dispense with a jury. We take the liberty to tell him that if
he fondly imagines he will be able to obtain a conviction against us by prosecuting us in the absence of the
person whom we have accused [Mr. Churchill] he is
making even a bigger mistake than the Government
made when they put up Mr. Justice Darling in a vain
attempt to secure the conviction of Mr. Pemberton."
Did you write that?
Douglas: I did. I wrote that about Mr. Justice Darling because I was present in court when the case was tried,
and by the evidence of my own senses saw that Mr. Justice
Darling was very anxious to get Mr. Pemberton Billing
convicted and used every possible art.
Judge: You wrote that he had been put up by
the Government to secure a conviction?
Douglas: These things are done. I have not been
allowed to put my case before the court at all. I have been
treated grossly unfairly. Every time I tried to present my
case to the jury I have been prevented from doing so. I have
never been able to tell the jury why I did it or where I got
tlie information, and everything has been stopped. It is the
most abominable piece of unfairness I have seen in my life.
After the testimony of Lord Douglas, Hayes's
case lay in shambles. Hayes had bluntly suggested in
his opening statement that Churchill was a liar: "You
have seen his charm of personality and exquisite
manners, but I trust you will not be led away by
them. Stripped of the kudos of Right Honourable and
the solemnity of high office, Mr. Churchill is nothing
but a professional politician...."
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 3 4
But Churchill had been backed up by
Balfour, a former Prime Minister, while Douglas had come off as something akin to a raving paranoid. The cross-examination of
Churchill which Douglas had meticulously
engineered through his counsel had come to
nothing. The rest of the case was anticlimactic.
Douglas's main source, Captain Harold
Spencer, was the next witness. He confirmed that he
had supplied Douglas with the alleged conversations
about the Battle of Jutland. He also testified that Sir
Edward Packe had told him on the evening following
the Battle of Jutland that Churchill had been responsible for the issuance of the false report. [Packe had
already rebutted this in the prosecution's case.]
In Hogg's relatively brief cross-examination,
Spencer admitted that in September 1917, an Army
Medical Board had examined him and certified
that he was insane and unfit for further service. On reexamination by Hayes, Spencer dug an even deeper
hole for the defense. According to Hyde:
Spencer was asked about his war service and he
retailed a fantastic story of how he had compiled
an intelligence report when in the Balkans forecasting the assassination of the Russian royal family and that the report had eventually reached the
Prime Minister, then Lloyd George, in Downing
Street. He denied that the doctor who examined
him at this time had said he was insane; the doctor
told him he merely had "a touch of the sun."
After a summation from the Judge, the jury
deliberated for only eight minutes before rendering a
decision of guilty.
Lord Alfred Douglas had prevailed before a
jury on the same libel for which he was now convicted. The first jury had believed he had not acted in
"reckless disregard" of the truth. The second jury
wasn't so constrained. While the second jury did not
have to judge Lord Douglas by an actual malice standard. Mr. Justice Avory stated in passing sentence
that, based upon the evidence, Douglas would not
have prevailed even under such a lenient standard:
"Alfred Bruce Douglas. It is to be regretted that
your undoubted literary abilities should have been
degraded to such purposes as these. If I could have
taken the view that you have been honestly deceived
into believing the truth of these accusations, I should
have taken a different and more lenient course. In
view of the fact that in the action tried in the High
Court against Vie Morning Post you had full notice
that these accusations were untrue, and in view of the
fact that the only person upon whom you apparently
sought to rely in support of this plea of justification was a person like Harold Spencer,
whom you yourself had denounced in your
own paper as unworthy of belief, I must act
on the view that you have deliberately persisted in this plea of justification without the
slightest excuse, or without the slightest
ground for believing that you are now telling
the truth in this plea..."
Douglas was sentenced to six months in jail,
most of which was spent in the prison hospital.
Two cases over the same libel involving the
same public figure were tried in entirely different
ways. One focused more on the journalist's conduct
and good faith belief than the truth, and the public
figure "lost." The other focused entirely on the truth,
and the public figure "won." Yet far more embarrassing information about dose financial ties between
Churchill and Cassel came to light in a trial based on
the truth than had emerged in the earlier trial.
The Aftermath
4 July 1941:
Lord Alfred Douglas was no longer angry. He looked
down at his copy of the Daily Mail and found, prominently featured, a sonnet he had recently submitted,
entitled Winston Churchill:
Not tliat of old I loved you over-much
Or followed your quick changes with great glee
While through rough paths or harsh hostility
You fought your way, using a sword or crutch
To serve occasion. Yours it was to clutch
And lose again. Lacking the charity
Which looks behind Hie mask, I did not see
TJie imminent slwdow of "the Winston touch."
Axe for embedded evil's cancerous roots,
Wlien all the world was one vast funeral pyre,
Like genie smoke you rose, a giant form
Clotlied with the Addisonian attributes
Of God-directed angel. Like your sire
You the rode the whirlwind and out-stormed the storm.
D
OUGLAS'S nephew sent an advance copy of
the poem to the 66-year-old Churchill, who
had been Prime Minister since May 1940, rallying the British people against German air attacks in
what Churchill called Britain's "Finest Hour." In
responding to this gesture, Churchill lived up to his
lifelong motto: "In victory, magnanimity":
"Thank you very much for the sonnet you sent
me which I shall keep and value. Tell [Lord Douglas]
from me that Time Ends All Things.'"
g
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 3 5
ACTION THIS DAY BYJOHNG. PLUMFTON
One hundred years ago:
Summer 1897 • Age 22
Seeking Blood...
On July 26th Churchill made his
maiden political speech, which is published on pages 26-27 in this issue. He
was pleased with the press reports.
On the same day an uprising
began on the Indian frontier. Sir
Bindon Blood had offered to let him
join future expeditions in the area,
and Churchill left England so quickly
that he had no time to say goodbye to
his brother and mother. Aboard the
SS Rome, near Aden, he wrote of the
conditions to his mother:
"We are just in the hottest part of
the Red Sea. The temperature is something like over 100 degrees and as it is
damp heat it is equal to a great deal
more. Several people who have been
about 20 years in India tell me that
they have never known such heat. It is
like being in a vapour bath. The
whole sea is steamy and there-is not a
breath of air—by night or day."
It was so hot, he said, that his
views on a new novel he had just read
(Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure)
had melted.
While he waited in Bangalore,
India for word from Blood, he worked
on his own novel, subsequently published as Savrola. When word did
come, it was disappointing news:
Blood was unable to get "his pals"
appointed to his staff. He advised
Churchill to come to the frontier as a
war correspondent and, as soon as
possible, he would have him appointed to the staff of the Malakand Field
Force.
Churchill sent his brother the following comments on India: "Nothing
can impress one with the size of this
country so much as to take a journey....! asked how far my destination
was. Two thousand and twenty seven
miles. Nearly as far as across the
Atlantic. It is a proud reflection that all
this vast expanse of fertile, populous
country is ruled and administered by
Englishmen." In a letter to his mother
he reflected on the irony of risking his
life in a profession which he soon
intended to discard: soldiering.
"I feel that the fact of having seen
service with British troops while still a
young man must give me more
weight politically—must add to my
claims to be listened to and may perhaps improve my prospects of gaining
popularity with the country. Besides
this—I think I am of an adventurous
disposition and shall enjoy myself not
so much in spite of as because of the
risks I run."
Upon arrival at the Malakand
camp, he began writing a series of letters for the Daily Telegraph on the
adventures of the Malakand Field
Force. He told his mother not to worry
about him. "A philosophical temperament should transcend all human
weaknesses—from fear or affection."
Seventy-five years ago:
Summer 1922 • Age 47
Chartwell and Mary...
The Patron of the Churchill Center and
Societies, 1922. Many happy returns!
Churchill was consumed by the Irish
situation during the summer. The Provisional Government and the Irish
Republicans engaged in armed struggle which led to a civil war. In
Churchill's words "the Irish labour in
the rough sea." He supported Michael
Collins and wrote him these encouraging words:
"...I have a strong feeling that the
top of the hill has been reached, and
that we shall find the road easier in
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 3 6
the future than in the past....there is
nothing we should like better than to
see North and South join hands in an
all-Ireland assembly without prejudice to the existing rights of
either....The prize is so great that other
things should be subordinated to
gaining it. The bulk of people are slow
to take in what is happening, and
prejudices die hard. Plain folk must
have time to take things in and adjust
their minds to what has happened.
Even a month or two may produce
enormous changes in public opinion."
Collins asked for the support of
Churchill and the British Government
in opposing the Local Government
Bill for Northern Ireland. He argued
that it would "oust the Catholic and
Nationalist people of the Six Counties
from their rightful share in local
administration." His pleading was
unsuccessful. The cause of peace
received two serious blows in August
with the loss of two signatories to the
Irish Treaty. The first was Arthur Griffith, whom Churchill described as "a
man of good faith and good will."
Eight days later Michael Collins was
assassinated in County Cork.
Churchill had just received this message from Collins through an intermediary: "Tell Winston we could never
have done anything without him."
Churchill now feared his greatest
problem would be in dealing with "a
quasi-repentant De Valera. It may
well be that he will take advantage of
the present situation to try to get back
from the position of a hunted rebel to
mat of a political negotiator."
While Michael Collins was being
ambushed, Churchill was returning
from a holiday in France which was
marred by cold and wet weather. On
their fourteenth wedding anniversary
Clementine wrote:
"...if only we could get a little country home within our means and live
there within our means it would add
great happiness and peace to our
lives." Unknown to his wife, on the
next day he offered to buy Chartwell
Manor near Westerham in Kent for
£4,800. It would bring him great happiness and peace but not his wife,
Finest Hour Editor Dalton Newfield
had recently visited Churchill College,
Cambridge, and quoted Sir Winston
on the college named for him: "Technological progress is of vast significance not only to our Commonwealth
and Empire, but also to the United
States. It is a theme on which the
English-speaking peoples can and
must work together, disregarding
national boundaries and seeking unity
in the benefits their joint efforts can
offer to all men."
Dal was most impressed by what
he saw at Cambridge. How pleased
"A little place within our means," as interpreted by Winston, 75 years ago. (Family Album).
and proud he would have been to
know that his early efforts laid the
principally because they could not
Churchill's summer was spent foundation for The Churchill Center.
maintain it "within our means."
working on his memoirs with a team
Finest Hour noted that Sir Winston
On that very same day, however, of researchers led by Bill Deakin. had no compunction about drinking
another event occurred which Denis Kelly's recollections of this phe- German wines during the war. It was
brought great and lasting peace and nomenal effort are told in Sir Martin reported that he said, before downing
pride to them both: the birth of their Gilbert's "Never Despair." Despite this a glass of hock: "I think anything Gerdaughter Mary, now Lady Soames, busy schedule he still had time for man should be interned."
Patron of The Churchill Center and relaxation, according to one of his
And then there was this nugget,
detectives, Ronald Golding. While gleaned by the ever-watchful Dal,
the International Churchill Societies.
rabbit hunting on his farm:
from David Niven's new book, The
"Mr. Churchill clambered slowly Moon's A Balloon:
Fifty years ago:
out of the Jeep. Just as he got his feet
"Guy Gibson, the master bomber,
on the ground there was a shout from spent a weekend with us just after he
Summer 1947 • Age 72
the others and a rabbit darted from had been awarded the Victoria Cross
"Cast care aside..."
the centre of the field. In a flash Mr. for blowing up the Eder and Mohne
As Churchill went into surgery for Churchill raised his gun and fired one dams. He was in a rare state of excitea hernia operation he told the doctor: barrel. The rabbit keeled over dead. It ment because Winston Churchill had
"Wake me up soon, I've got lots of was a wonderful shot, and the usual invited him to dinner at 10 Downing
work to do." In addition to his politi- Churchill luck. The others had been St. on the Monday. Guy made a date
cal duties, he was eager to get on with waiting hours for the opportunity."
with us for luncheon at one o'clock on
his six-volume war memoirs (and he
the following day so he could report
still had to publish his four-volume
everything the great man said.
History of the English-Speaking Peoples).
Back at Chartwell, the bedridden,
recuperating patient received enough
visitors to tire a healthy middle-aged
person. He was 72! At the same time
he was concerned with the health of
Clementine. "Cast care aside," he
wrote her. "What we may have to face
cannot be worse than all we have
crashed through together."
Before he could return to London,
backroom politicians plotted to create
a Coalition Government led by Bevin,
but Eden and Macmillan killed the
plan. Some Conservatives wished
Churchill to retire as party leader but
none was willing to suggest it directly.
Twenty-five years ago:
Summer 1972
Churchill at Fulton (2)
Finest Hour #25
reported
a
speech given
by Winston S.
Churchill, Sir
Winston's
grandson,
upon receiving
an Honorary
Doctor of Laws
degree from Westminster College,
Fulton. He was presented the degree
by his mother, Pamela Harriman.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 3 7
"Primmie [Mrs. Niven] and I were
at the Berkeley sharp at one—no Gibson. Two o'clock—no Gibson. We
were just finishing our ersatz coffee
around three o'clock when he came
tottering in, looking ghastly.
"How was it?" we asked.
"Marvelous—fabulous!"
he
croaked. "God! I'm tired. That was the
best yet!"
"What did he say?"
"Who?" said Gibson.
"Churchill," I said with a touch of
asperity.
Gibson looked stricken, then he
clutched his head. "Jesus Christ! I
FORGOT!"
¥>
ly annotated and clearly laid out, as
one would expect, but they are also
reproduced in facsimile, along with
their envelopes! This attention to
detail pervades every page of this
small booklet and makes it a delight
to read. The only significant error to
mar the work is the unfortunate misdating of the letter mentioned above
(see sidebar).
Sir Martin Gilbert has also included
two appendices to provide the reader
with further background information.
The first is Churchill's speech of 1
June 1899 to the Midland Conservaletters, printed here for the first time, tive Club in Birmingham, which
do not by themselves make for partic- Churchill alluded to in one of his letularly interesting reading, being ters to Conover when he complained
that The Times—"a vy pompous
invariably brief and largely confined
to trivial matters. The first missive is paper, but with tremendous
typical. "Many thanks for your let- power"—was not paying sufficient
ter," Churchill wrote from the Savoy attention to him. This early speech,
the full text of which was not printed
Hotel in Cairo. "I should like to go for
a drive this afternoon & if you will in Rhodes James's Complete Speeches,
come with me I will call at Shep- provides a fascinating glimpse of the
young Churchill's world view and
heards hotel at a half past four."
Readers should not, therefore, shows how strongly it had been
pick up the Churchill-Conover Corre- shaped by the social Darwinism so
typical of the late-Victorian era:
spondence expecting any literary
"I do not hesitate to say that if
nuggets or important new informathe
idea
of brute force as an ultimate
tion. Nor should they expect
possibility
were removed from the
Churchill's letters to form a rich and
minds
of
men,
much that is essential
detailed narrative, as they did so
to
human
improvement
would be
effectively in an earlier ICS publicaremoved
as
well."
tion, The Chartwell Bulletins. In fact,
the full story of Churchill's long asso"The second appendix is a report
ciation with Conover only emerges of this speech from the next day's
from Sir Martin Gilbert's introduction Morning Post, a paper which
(revealing what Churchill was doing Churchill was happy to note did
when he heard from Christine 37 devote adequate space to his "perforyears after their last correspondence)
mances," calling him "a fresh strain in
and an engaging memoir by Christine political life." British understatement.
herself, written in 1943. Gilbert proBy making these forgotten
vides the flesh and bones to the story, pieces of Churchilliana available to
while Christine gives the tale a spark
the public, The Churchill Center has
of life with its charming and intimate performed a valuable service, one for
portrait of the young Churchill—and
which this non-profit institution is
his photographic memory when,
uniquely qualified. There remains a
while visiting Washington in 1943, he
vast amount of material written by
instantly remembers her from the disChurchill which has never before
tant past.
been published—and still more
which has been published and is now
This minor reservation should
all but forgotten—none of which is
not be taken as a criticism. The story
is a fascinating one, and the volume is viable for commercial publishers. It
in all respects a first-rate production, can only be hoped that The Churchill
for which much credit must go to the Center will continue to unearth this
editor and The Churchill Center. The material and bring as much of it as
$
letters themselves are not only expert- possible into print.
Correspondence:
Winston S.
Churchill to Christine Lewis
Conover18991943. With a Foreword by Sir Martin Gilbert. Washington: The
Churchill Center,
1996.36 pages in card wrappers,
illustrated. Available for $15 (US)
from Churchill Stores, PO Box 96,
Contoocook NH 03229.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 4 0
Conover Correspondence:
Errata
Chris Bell, in reviewing the
Churchill-Conover Correspondence
(now available to all readers of
Finest Hour), and Ron Cohen (who
is writing a Churchill bibliography)
have found errors in our booklet of
a nature that makes the editor
reach for his GOD! rubber stamp,
except that he doesn't have one for
E-mail.
The first letter published,
dated 4 February 1899, was in fact
written on 2 April, since on 4
February Churchill was still in
India, which he did not leave until
March, spending only two weeks
in Cairo, Egypt.
That Churchill would use
American dating in this letter to
Miss Conover, while using British
dating on all the others, simply
never occurred to the editor or Sir
Martin. Accordingly, the letter on
page 10 of the Correspondence is not
the first -but the fourth letter from
Churchill to Miss Conover, following the one on page 13.
Also, in the letter of 30 March,
we have mistranscribed the word
"dine" (line 9 of the holograph letter) as "drive." Clearly in the
evening Churchill would be
proposing to dine, not drive.
In announcing the book in
Finest Hour 93, I stated (bottom of
page 19, on to page 20) that a brief
excerpt of Churchill's speech to the
Midland Conservative Club in
1899 appeared in Robert Rhodes
James's Complete Speeches. This is
incorrect; no part of the speech
occurs in the Complete Speeches and
its publication in the Conover
booklet is therefore its first appearance in volume form.
Sir Martin Gilbert took these
discoveries with his usual aplomb,
and cheered us up: "One can only
console oneself in the face of
inevitable errors with Churchill's
marvellous comment: 'The man
who makes no mistakes makes
nothing.'"
RML
DOUGLAS HALL'S
CHURCHILLIANA
Churchill Commemoratives Calendar Part 5:1951-64
C
HURCHILL'S second term as
Prime Minister and the final
years of his life did not see the
issue of too many noteworthy commemorative pieces, but the steady
flow of volumes of his two block-
busters, The Second World War and A
History of the English-Speaking Peoples,
and various compilations of speeches,
ensured that there was always plenty
to interest his followers.
Harry Fenton's trio of Royal
Doulton tobies remained best sellers
throughout their second and third
decades. John Beswick's "We shall
fight on the beaches..." toby remained
in production until 1954.
The 1951-54 period saw a number
of cheap plaster caricature figures in
various shapes and sizes (top right).
Most were fairly crude and poorly
painted but there were exceptions—
the figure on the left with medal ribbons, Garter Sash and Star, and the
dimunitive, three-inch-tall figure in
the front centre.
Commemorative medals were
struck in Italy, Venezuela, Germany,
Australia and Holland between 1951
and 1964 but the only British one,
available to the general public, was
the Eightieth Birthday Commemorative medal issued by the Conservative
Association in 1954. These 1 1/2-inch
diameter medals, in silver or bronze,
carried a not-entirely-successful portrait of Churchill on the obverse. On ,
the reverse was the inscription: "18741954. To commemorate the 80th birthday of the Right Honourable Sir Winston S Churchill KG OM CH. Britain's
wartime leader. Never was so much
owed by so many."
Throughout the period, china
plates, dishes, beakers, mugs and like
items, carrying the same portrait
transfer, came from a great number of
potteries. Many were unmarked but
among the backstamps can be found
Conway Ridgway, Harleigh, Vogue
Tarns, Rydalra and Royal Imperial.
Quality varies. During the early 1950s
most of the pieces were in plain white
ABOVE: Plaster caricatures from the early 1950s. BELOW LEFT: A popular transfer on 1950s and
1960s chinaware; fine engraved glass goblets by Royal Brierley and Webb Corbett, both rare.
BELOW: One of the most delectable pieces
of Churchilliana for bibliophiles is the
book-end set by Jon Douglas, which both
Mr. Hall and the editor desire desperately.
Alas they appear to be as rare as For Free
Trade, which would look wonderful sandwiched between. PHOTO BY RONALD SMITH
lEisaf
or cream china, but in the 1960s the
transfer was used on some nicely decorated plates. A selection is shown in
the centre photograph.
Churchill's retirement in 1955 was
also marked by a fine pair of bookends in the form of waist-length
creamware portrait busts modelled by
Jon Douglas (above right, from
tal glass goblet by Royal Brierley
(lower photo) is actually dated 1964. It
was originally commissioned to celebrate Churchill's award of Honorary
Citizenship of the United States, but
his death intervened and most of the
goblets in the limited edition of 500
had an additional line engraved
recording the death date. They sold
Ronald Smith's Churchill: Images of
originally for £31.50 but are very rare,
Greatness). The edition was very small valued at £130 in the UK and much
and the book-ends are rarely seen on
more in the USA. Illustrated alongside
the secondary market—value £100+.
the Royal Brierley goblet is another, of
The Worshipful Company of Makers
an entirely different shape, from
of Playing Cards produce a special
Webb Corbett. It has an engraving of
commemorative pack every year; in
Big Ben on the reverse and was issued
1955 they marked Churchill's retireto celebrate the Churchill Centenary
ment with a pack of cards bearing his
in 1974. A limited edition of 1,000, it
portrait and depicting him wearing
came in a blue leatherette box with
the insignias of the Order of the
brass fittings and blue and white satin
Garter and the Order of Merit.
lining. It is fairly rare: about £75 in the
United
Kingdom.
$5
Jon Jones's superb engraved crysFINESTHOUR95/41
RECIPES FROM NO. 10
Edited and Annotated for the Modern Kitchen by Barbara F. Langworth
A
S MUCH interest surrounds
Winston Churchill's taste in
food as in cigars and spirits,
but much less information is available. The best source is Georgina Landemare's Recipes From No. 10 (Collins:
1959), based on her experiences as the
Churchill family cook from 1939
through 1954.
I recently spent a delectable afternoon with Lady Soames, leafing
through Mrs. Landemare's book. She
would chortle with delight when she
recognized an old favorite recipe, and
had nothing but praise for Mrs. Landemare's culinary skills. She also
reminded me how much has
changed: prepared foods are available in today's markets which weren't
there for Mrs. Landemare, who had
little choice but to start from scratch.
I thought it would be fun to
update Mrs. Landermare's recipes for
modem usage, and with Lady Soames's guidance, offer herewith the
first installment.
Introduction to
Recipes From No. 10
by Clementine Spencer-Churchill
republished by kind permission
of Lady Soames
I
have all my life had a taste for
cooking, having inherited this interest from my Mother and Grandmother. I have known Mrs. Landemare for
a long rime—in fact since the early
Twenties. Her husband, with whom
she had worked for many years, was
a renowned chef; and when he died
she decided to do temporary work.
She used to visit Scotland in the
Autumn, Newmarket during racing
weeks, and in London she cooked
delicious dinners and ball suppers.
Mrs. Landemare used to come to
Chartwell for week-end parties,
because in those days I had eager but
inexperienced young cooks, and to
them she would impart as much of
her knowledge and skill as they were
able to absorb. And so, when at the
outbreak of
War in 1939,
Mrs. Landemare came to
see me and
offered us her
full-time services, I was
enchanted
because I knew
she would be
able to make
the best out of
rations and
that everyone
in the household would be
happy and
contented. She
then remained
with me for fifteen years, and
when in 1954
she retired, I
was at a loss.
GEORGINA LANDEMARE
Mrs. Landemare's food
Collins
With an Introduction by Lady Churchill
is distinguished. She is an inspired intuitive
cook, and it is I who encouraged her
2 sticks softened butter (7oz)
to write a book. I hope her readers
2 cups flour (7oz)
will find it of value, but I expect they
1/2 cup dark brown sugar ("2 oz
will have to try again and again
dark foot sugar")
before they get the magic touch.
large jar of good marmalade
RECIPES
FROM NO.10
-C.S.C.
Gateau Hollandaise
"""phis gateau makes a delicious hot
X sweet if the layers are sandwiched with raspberry jam. It should
then be served with hot raspberry
sauce and whipped cream.
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 4 2
Cream butter and sugar; blend in
flour to form a soft dough. Divide
into six equal pieces. (You may need
to refrigerate dough if you have used
a food processor.) Roll each piece into
a 6" circle (a small plate can be used
as a guide) on a lightly floured surface or between two pieces of waxed
paper. Place two at a time on a well
greased baking sheet and bake at 350°
for 10-12 minutes. They will be like
large cookies. Carefully loosen with a
spatula. Slip one carefully on to a flat
plate. Spread with marmalade while
still warm; repeat with the second.
Continue until all six are baked and
layered with marmalade. Sprinkle
confectioner's (icing) sugar on top. $
CHURCHILL ONLINE
INTERNET EXCHANGES ON SIR WINSTON
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THE CHURCHILL WEBSITE:
Aim your web browser at the above
Internet address and the Churchill
Page should appear. Press any of the
red buttons to be led to the latest
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HONORARY
AMERICAN
CITIZENSHIP
hono(u)red by Congress. If so,
Lafayette's must have come via
Presidential edict. I think that is evidence enough to change the name of
the park across from the V/hite House
to Churchill Park! -
From: tronnel9@IDT.NET
(Todd Ronnei)
I conducted an Internet search for the names of persons granted Honorary U.S. citizenship. Multiple
sources agreed that there have been five honorary citizenships granted by acts of Congress: Sir Winston
Churchill (1963), Raoul Wallenberg (1981), William
and Hannah Penn (1984) and Mother Teresa (1996).
Neither Lafayette nor Solzhenitsyn were mentioned by
any source. Any comments?
From: awjm@uaa.alaska.edu (James W. Midler):
I had always heard that Lafayette was the first
honorary citizen of the United States, Churchill the
second, and Solzhenitsyn the third. Wallenberg was
added later, and there may now have been others. But
I have recently been told that those researching the
Lafayette precedents in the early Sixties, when it had
been proposed to honor Churchill, found Lafayette's
situation different and that Churchill was therefore the
first honorary citizen of the US. I don't know the
details, and it would be worthwhile for someone to
sort them out.
From: savrola@ican.net (John Plumpton)
My understanding (as a Canadian looking down
from the far north) is that Churchill was the first to be
From: SHEPHERW@CUA.EDU
(W?n. John Shepherd)
This topic continues to bemuse. My understanding
was that Lech Walesa was also made an Honorary
Citizen a few years back.
From: 104335.2371@compuserve.com
(Frederick C. Hardman)
I have recently been reading through some issues
of the Nezv York Times from 1954, around the time of
Sir Winston's 80th birthday. Among the many stories
about him, I came across an editorial that also said
this:
"...we have an illustrious precedent for honorary
citizenship for Sir Winston himself. In 1784 the
General Assembly of Maryland passed a law bestowing citizenship on the Marquis de Lafayette. It would
take a law of Congress now, but Congress is a
sovereign body and could do it if it were deemed
proper."
Despite all of the above, we are still not satisfied
that we have a definite list of all Honorary American
citizens, nor do we believe we have all the facts on the
Marquis de Lafayette. Enlightenment requested!
$3
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 4 3
WOODS CORNER
A BIBLIOPHILE'S COLUMN NAMED FOR THE LATE BIBLIOGRAPHER, FRED WOODS
Newspaper
magnate
Cecil
King
WTHMAUCETOWARDNONE
C
ecil King's war diary (London:
Sidgwick & Jackson 1970) is a
useful book for the Churchill
library. During the war King directed
the policies of the Daily Mirror and
Sunday Pictorial, two popular papers
whose circulation had reached
7,000,000 by 1945. King's papers were
among the few that had backed
Churchill during the 1930s, but the
relationship cooled during the war:
King thought Churchill was not
tough enough in chucking the Neville
Chamberlain crowd that he held
responsible for Britain's dangers.
King writes about many encounters with the Prime Minister, not all
friendly but every one fascinating, if
only for the height of King's misjudgement. For example, he describes
one of Churchill's broadcasts as "a
few stumbling sentences to the effect
that the situation was disastrous, but
all right..it was the poorest possible
effort on an occasion when he should
have produced the finest speech of
his life." King was referring to the
"Finest Hour" speech!
An impressive demonstration of
Churchill's political philosophy
comes early in the book, when King
urges the new PM to "clean house"
and rid the government of the "Men
of Munich"—and WSC flatly refuses.
According to King, Churchill said "it
was all very well to plead for a Government excluding elements that had
led us astray of recent years, but
where was one to stop? They were
everywhere, not only in the political
world, but among the fighting service
chiefs and the Civil Service chiefs. To
clear these out would be a task
impossible in the disastrous state in
which we found ourselves. In any
case, if one were dependent on the
people who had been right in the last
few years, what a tiny handful one
would have to depend on."
As to Chamberlain, Churchill
was "very glad to have him. He was
clearheaded, methodical and hardworking, and the best man he had—
head and shoulders over the average
man in the administration, who was
mostly pretty mediocre." (This incidentally defies the revisonist notion
that Churchill chose a mediocre Government—by suggesting that he
didn't have much to choose from!)
Of particular relevance today is
Churchill's reaction to King's argument that he would be justified in
sacking Chamberlain because public
feeling against Chamberlain was very
strong. Churchill replied that "he
didn't see that the public had any
right to take such a line. They had
voted for Chamberlain when he was
making these blunders: why should
they seek his blood when he (and
they) were proved wrong?"
Technically they hadn't voted for
Chamberlain, who succeeded to the
Premiership on the retirement of
Baldwin without an election. But can
you think of any political leader
presently in office who would so
thoroughly stick to a discredited predecessor, on the ground that he was
"head and shoulders over the average," and refuse to accept "that the
public had any right to take such a
line"? The President of Estonia,
maybe. Lennart Meri happens to be a
Churchillian...
That steadfast loyalty to principle and colleagues, which refused to
bend to public opinion when in his
judgment the public was wrong—so
regularly displayed by Churchill,
often to his political disadvantage—is
a characteristic that continues to distinguish the great man.
RML
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 4 4
INTERNET BREAKTHROUGH!
Announcing the new Built-in Orderly
Organized Knowledge device (B.O.O.K.):
I
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Here's how it works: Each BOOK
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the sheets in their correct sequence.
By using both sides of each sheet,
manufacturers are able to cut costs in
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Each sheet is scanned optically,
registering information directly into
your brain. A flick of the finger takes
you to the next sheet. The BOOK may
be taken up at any time and used by
merely opening it. A "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to
any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Most come with
an "index" feature, which pinpoints
the exact location of any selected
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An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to
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Portable, durable and affordable,
the BOOK is the entertainment wave
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Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus
$5
CHURCHILLTRIVIA
BY CURT ZOLLER
T
EST your knowledge! Most questions can be answered in back
issues of Finest Hour or other
Churchill Center publications, but it's
not really cricket to check. 24 questions
appear each issue, answers in the following issue. Questions are in six categories: Contemporaries (C), Literary
(L), Miscellaneous (M), Personal (P),
Statesmanship (S), War (W).
793. About whom did Churchill comment: "We know that he has more than
any other man the gift of compressing
the largest amount of words into the
smallest amount of thought"? (C)
794. How much was Churchill paid for
his articles from Cuba? (L)
795. Whom did the Germans try to use
to contact the Duke of Windsor and
ask him if he would assume the throne
after German victory? (M)
796. In 1943 on a drive with President
Roosevelt to Shangri-La, (now Camp
David), Churchill recited a famous
poem by an American poet. Can you
name the poem and the author? (P)
797. How did Churchill characterize the
statesman in his speech at the
unveiling of the monument to The Earl
of Oxford and Asquith? (S)
798. Who replaced Vice-Admiral
Sackville Hamilton Carden as
Commander-in-Chief of the
Dardanelles Naval Forces? (W)
799. What was Malcolm Muggeridge's
opinion of Churchill as writer and
orator ? (C)
800. Roosevelt included a poem in an
introductory letter to Churchill. Whom
did the letter introduce, and what was
the poem ? (L)
801. In May 1961 Sotheby's sold
Churchill's painting "The Olive Tree."
What was the price? (M)
802. When was Churchill made an
Honorary American Citizen? (P)
803. What was the famous comment
Churchill made regarding the liquidation of the British Empire? (S)
804. What was Churchill's first military
award? (W)
805. Who wrote "The Malakand is one of
Churchill's most literary works,
in its striving after 'poetic' effects, its
many epigraphs, allusions, and
quotations, and its references to historical events...."? (L)
the League of Nations failed because its
principles were deserted by the States,
because the governments feared to face
the facts, and act while time remained.
806. When Churchill met Miss Christine
Lewis on board the Carthage, which
book was he working on? (L)
(774) Colville was Private Secretary to
three PMs: Chamberlain, Churchill and
Attlee. (775) Churchill commented in
1929 to his son Randolph that he was
leading a perfectly useless existence.
(776) Churchill gave his last Parliament
speech on 3 Marchl955. {777) "Great
peoples are always groping for the
truth" was written by Churchill in 1906
in the Preface to For Free Trade.
807. What was Churchill's favorite card
game? (M)
808. Who owned Chartwell when
Churchill purchased it? (P)
809. In what reference did Churchill
declare, in a speech on 23 May 1939:
"...I could not stand by and see solemn
engagements into which Britain has
entered before the world set aside for
reasons of administrative
convenience...."? (S)
810. Who coined the phrase: "Now the
hour had come for him [Churchill] to
mobilize the English language and send
it into battle"? (W)
811. Where did Churchill comment, "To
gain one's way is no escape from the
responsibility for inferior solutions"? (L)
812. About what book did Churchill
comment, "I have consistently urged my
friends to abstain from reading it"? (L)
813. In what reference did Churchill
comment, "Why do you have to have
all these committee meetings"? (M)
814. What was the paternal name of
Churchill's grandfather? (P)
815. Which speech ended: "....if all
British moral and material forces and
convictions are joined with your own in
fraternal association, the high-roads of
the future will be clear, not only for us
but for all, not only for our time, but for
a century to come"? (S)
816. Who became First Lord of the
Admiralty when Churchill became
Prime Minister? (W)
Answers to last issue's questions:
(769) Air Vice Marshal Sir Arthur
Tedder was named Deputy Supreme
Commander by Churchill. (770)
Churchill did not meet with Hitler in
Munich in 1932. (771) In My Early Life
Churchill described a typical day while
in service in India. (772) During the discussions on Home Rule, Clementine
reminded Winston to go along with
Lloyd George. (773) Churchill believed
FINEST HOUR 9 5 / 4 5
(778) His comments on the Policy for
the Unionist Party was made in favor of
Free Trade in response to Joseph
Chamberlain's Tariff Reform and
Imperial Preference proposal in May
1903. (779) Prime Minister Menzies of
Australia wrote to Neville
Chamberlain, "....if Winston got into the
Government it would not be too long
before it were at war." (780) Lady St.
Helier, aka Lady Jeune, convinced Sir
Evelyn Wood to get Churchill to the
Omdurman campaign and in March
1908 held a dinner party where
Winston devoted all his attention to his
beautiful neighbor, Clementine Hozier.
(781) Churchill addressed Miss Violet
Asquith when he identified himself as a
"glow-worm." (782) Major Desmond
Morton, Industrial Intelligence Centre;
Michael Creswell and Ralph Wigram,
Foreign Office; Squadron Leader
Charles Torr Anderson; and Group
Captain Lachlan Maclean helped
Churchill with intelligence data. (783)
"Hambone" was the name used by
Churchill's children to address Grace
Hamblin. (784) Averell Harriman
accompanied Churchill to Moscow.
(785) The British Gazette was published
by the presses of The Morning Post. (786)
The Garron Tower estate brought £4000
a year income. (787) During the Cairo
Press Conference, 1 February 1943,
Churchill made the statement regarding
prophesy. (788) General Montgomery
did not allow Churchill to address the
troops. (789) Churchill characterized
General Montgomery: "In defeat
indomitable; in victory unbearable."
(790) Neville Chamberlain was Lord
President of the Council in Churchill's
1940 Government. (791) Hastings,
Romney, Hythe, Dover and Sandwich
were the original Cinque Ports. (792)
ARGONAUT was the codeword for the
Big Three at Yalta; Churchill's headquarters was the 100-year-old
Vorontsov Villa, located in Alupka. $5
"WE HAVE COME THROUGH"
I am often asked to say how we are going to win this war.
I remember being asked that last time very frequently,
and not being able to give a very precise or conclusive answer.
vwe kept on doing our best; we kept on improving.
We profited by our mistakes and our experiences.
We turned misfortune to good account.
\rJe were told we should run short of this or that,
until the only thing we ran short of was Huns.
We did our duty.
We did not ask to see too far ahead, but strode forth upon our path,
guided by such lights as led us
and then one day we saw those who had forced the struggle
upon the world cast down their arms in the open field
and immediately proceed to beg for sympathy,
mercy, and considerable financial support.
Now we have to do it all over again.
Sometimes I wonder why.
Having chained this fiend, this monstrous power of Prussian militarism,
We saw it suddenly resuscitated
in the new and more hideous guise of Nazi tyranny.
We have only to face once more the long struggle, the cruel sacrifices,
and not be daunted or deterred by feelings of vexation.
With quite a little forethought, a little care and decision,
and with rather a greater measure of slow persistency,
we need never have had to face this thing
in our lifetime or in that of our children.
However, we are all resolved to go forward...
A year and three months ago we found ourselves absolutely alone....
Every country in the world outside this island and the Empire
to which we are indissolubly attached had given us up,
had made up their minds that our life was ended
and our tale was told.
o u t by unflinchingly despising the manifestations of power
and the threats by which we were on all sides confronted,
we have come through that dark and perilous passage,
now once again masters of our own destiny.
The Guildhall, Hull, 7 November 1941
FINEST HOUR 95/46
AMPERSAND
-<
•
The Things
They Say:
Part 1,790
A
LONDON PR firm named
Wolf-Ollin has volunteered
some tips for upgrading the
image of the United Kingdom, beginning with a change of name. "UK,"
they say, "sounds like a radio station"
(don't radio call signs contain three or
four letters?), so "UK" goes in the
dustbin. And England is too limiting.
What about "Great Britain"? Ah,
but "if we're great, and know we're
great, we don't have to proclaim it, so
let's drop 'Great' and call it simply
'Britain.'" (Isn't "Great" as used here a
geographic collective for an island
containing England, Scotland and
Wales?)
As for the Union Flag ("stodgy,
and captured now as a symbol of the
radical right"), Wolf-Ollin wants "a
simple, red and blue banner with the
word 'Britain' in white letters, flying
over Buckingham Palace." The
National Anthem also has to go: "It's
all very nice and emotional," says a
Wolf-Ollinperson, "but of course
obsolete." "Would you change just the
words or the music too?," asked the
clearly impressed American interviewer on "The People's Radio"
(NPR). "Oh, the whole thing," said the
agency's representative-"Why not?"
Why not indeed? As a modest
contribution to this new, with-it
image, Finest Hour respectfully offers
additions to the Wolf-Ollin programme. Since the national flag does
not fly over Buckingham Palace when
HM The Queen is in residence, they
need also to revise the Royal Standard: dump all those lions and wotnot for a simple red and gold banner
with white letters reading "queen."
(Lower case, notice—we don't want to
be too assertive. In fact "britain" is
much better than "Britain.")
To take this a step further,
Clarence House could have a powder
blue flag reading "queenmum," while
The Duke of Edinburgh could have a
personal banner of Scots plaid reading
"edinburra," teaching tourists correctly to pronounce his title. Speaking of
lions, those obsolete statues in Trafalgar Square would bring a pretty price
at Christie's, helping to support the
cost of these important changes.
Finally, since Coca-Cola recently
scrapped its long running slogan,
"Just for the fun of it, Diet Coke," this
outstanding motto is there for the taking. So why not replace "Dieu et Mon
Droit" with "Just for the fun of it,
quiet britain?" This is exactly the ticket as britain quietly becomes the 51st
state (of "europe").
RML
Wit and Wisdom:
Score One for
Arthur Balfour
W
E should start compiling
the bons mots attributed to
Churchill which he never
said. The most famous are: "If I were
married to you I'd drink it [poison]"
(F.E. Smith to Nancy Astor) and the
one about "The only traditions of the
Royal Navy." (There are several
earthy variations of the rest of this
quote, but this is a family magazine.)
The Navy quip was mentioned to Sir
Winston in 1955 by Anthony Montague Browne; WSC said he hadn't
said it, but wished he had.
But there are many more. A
Washington law firm recently asked
us to confirm an alleged Churchill
quote they had paraphrased in a brief
they were about to file: Their opponents' brief "contains much that is
obviously true, and much that is relevant; unfortunately, what is obviously
FINEST HOUR 95 / 47
true is not relevant, and what is relevant is not obviously true."
Unfortunately, neither the quote
nor the attribution was accurate. This
was not said by Churchill, but
Churchill quoting Arthur J. Balfour
(Prime Minister, July 1902-December
1905), in Great Contemporaries (London
& New York, 1937, last reprinted 1990,
page 250 of the first edition): "...'there
were some things that were true, and
some things that were trite; but what
was true was trite, and what was not
trite was not true'..."
A Man of the
Century Nomination
by Ryan Thornburg
(To Parker Lee)
I just wanted to get back
to you about
my 7th grade
son who was
working on the
book
report
about Winston Churchill. You were
kind enough to send him some material and information from The
Churchill Center. We received the
package and used most of the pictures
for the poster part of the report. You
will be glad to know that he received
a 100% on his work! I will send a copy
of his report with a picture of Ryan
and the poster as soon as he gets it
back from the teacher. All the work
was displayed in the classroom.
You asked if Ryan chose his subject. Yes, he did. The children could
have chosen anyone from any field—
past or present. You can imagine the
range of subjects. This was an English
assignment, and not a History project
as you might think. Ryan will send
you a personal thank you note along
with a contribution to the Center. We
appreciate all your help.
MARY KAY THORNBURG,
TOPEKA, KANSAS
Readers will enjoy Ryan Thornburg's
excellent "Man of the Century" poster on
our back cover.
M>
WANTED:
THE MAN OF
THE
CENTURY
LOOKING FOR THE MAN WHO:
CAN LEAD HIS COUNTRY TO VICTORY AGAINST
ALL ODDS.
IS AN ENGLISHMAN WHO NEVER QUITS.
CAN INSPIRE A NATION AND'THE WORLD WITH
HIS WORDS.
ENTERTAIN ALL PEOPLE WITH HIS WTT.
IS AN HISTORIAN. WRITER AND STATESMAN.
ACCEPTS DEFEATS. FAILURES AND SETBACKS
AND CARRIES ON ANYWAY.
MTNOft CHARACTER FLAWS THAT ARE ACCETT*
SOMEWHAT EGOTISTICAL A N D ARROGANT
NOT ALWAYS WFLUNG TO NEGOTIATE
I BE CRITICAL OF NEARLY EVERYTHING. BUT ALMOST I
ONLY ONE PERSON NEED APPLY:
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL
POLITICAL CABTOON I M 6
o!: the C e n t u r v N o m i n a t i o n : Poster hv R i . m T;
iy VM-'f p a g e d / ; .