I’m searching for a quote about William Pitt, used also about Churchill in 1940: something like, “No one left his presence who did not feel braver,” but more eloquent. —M.M., Indiana
Sir John Martin's memoirs (not diary). Foreground L-R: Jock Colville, Churchill, John Martin.
The quote about Pitt is from the 30 May 1940 diary of John Martin, one of Churchill’s private secretaries, first published in Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, Winston S. Churchill, vol. VI, Finest Hour 1939-1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 435-36:
During May 30 [1940] Desmond Morton sent Churchill a seven page note by the Australian High Commissioner in London, Stanley Bruce, arguing, in one of its paragraphs, in favour of an international conference “to formulate a peace settlement.” Churchill struck out this paragraph, and wrote in the margin: “No.” Crossing out Bruce’s final point, that “the further shedding of blood and the continuance of hideous suffering is unnecessary” and that the belligerents should “cease the struggle,” Churchill wrote: “Rot,” and went on to note, for Morton: “The end is rotten.” That night one of Churchill’s private secretaries, John Martin, wrote home: “The PM’s confidence and energy are amazing. ‘Nobody left his presence without feeling a braver man’ was said of Pitt; but it is no less true of him.”
On The Churchill Centre’s Churchillchat, James Lancaster tracked the quote, about William Pitt the Elder, to Colonel Barré, who was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1754, but noted that Martin did not have it quite right. According to R.F. Winch’s Essays on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1898) Barré said: “No one ever entered his closet who did not come out of it a braver man.”
The date of Martin’s comment is significant. Only two days before, on May 28th, Churchill had prevailed in the debate over whether to seek an armistice with Hitler, possibly through Mussolini, as suggested by Lord Halifax:
I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man [Hitler]….The Germans would demand our fleet—that would be called ‘disarmament’—our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state….And I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground. (Gilbert, 420.)
Churchill wrote, with perhaps some exaggeration in his war memoirs:
There occurred a demonstration which considering the character of the gathering—twenty-five experienced politicians and Parliament men, who represented all the different points of view, whether right or wrong, before the war—surprised me. Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back. There is no doubt that had I at this juncture faltered at all in the leading of the nation I should have been hurled out of office. I was sure that every Minister was ready to be killed quite soon, and have all his family and possessions destroyed rather than give in. In this they represented the House of Commons and almost all the people. It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do because they were mine also. There was a white glow over-powering, sublime, which ran through our Island from end to end. (Their Finest Hour, London: Cassell, 1949, 48.)
John Martin’s comparison of Churchill to Pitt was quoted by both David Irving and John Charmley in their critical biographies. A brief toast to Messrs. Irving and Charmley.
Before and since we’ve heard the refrain: Churchill destroyed the British Empire and laid the way for Russo-American hegemony by rejecting Realpolitik and refusing to “do a deal” with “That Man,” Churchill himself replied to this shortly after his retirement in 1955 when it was raised by his private secretary. Sir Anthony Montague Browne records Churchill’s answer in his book, Long Sunset (London: Cassell, 1955, 200):
You’re only saying that to be provocative. You know very well we couldn’t have made peace on the heels of a terrible defeat. The country wouldn’t have stood for it. And what makes you think that we could have trusted Hitler’s word—particularly as he could soon have had Russian resources behind him? At best we would have been a German client state, and there’s not much in that.
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Professor David Freeman at Cal State Fullerton wrote the full 
