I was born in 1942 (Niagara Falls, New York) and have a sentimental curiosity over where Churchill was as his pocket watch second hand swept from 1941 to 1942. Do you know the circumstances on that New Year’s Eve? —E.C., Michigan, USA
Unexpectedly (because I don’t know many of his end-of-year pronouncements), I do. Don’t tell me you were born on January 1st—if you were, Churchill might have been hurtling past Niagara Falls virtually at the same time!
As 1942 began Churchill was on a train returning from Ottawa, Ontario (where he had made the “Some chicken–some neck!” speech to the Canadian Parliament) to Washington, where he resumed his meetings with President Roosevelt in the ominous days following Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion of southeast Asia.
The Prime Minister called his staff and newspaper reporters to the dining car of his train to welcome the New Year. Then, raising his glass to the company, he made this toast:
Here’s to 1942, here’s to a year of toil—a year of struggle and peril, and a long step forward towards victory. May we all come through safe and with honour.
His sentiments at that time are not entirely inappropriate for the circumstances in which we find ourselves at the beginning of 2009….
—from Churchill by Himself page 498, the predictions chapter entitled “Churchill Clairvoyant.” The first published reference is in Churchill’s speech volume, The End of the Beginning (London: Cassell, 1943, page 3).
