Q: On life and living

If I want to understand Sir Winston Churchill’s philosophy of life and living, what books would you recommend? —B.A., via email

A: Lengthy sources

At first your question reminded us of the old fraternity initiation technique: asking pledges an unanswerable question. I remember mine personally: “Tell us your philosophy for living among men.” This was an intentional red herring. Whatever you answered, it obviously would never satisfy the questioner!

But in pondering the thought, there very definitely is a body of work that helps answer your query. Please use the Hillsdale Churchill Project’s online annotated bibliography for details and notes on books mentioned,  or to search for others in the same field. Search for key words like “philosophy.”

Churchill Style by Barry Singer

The book to start with is Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill. Author Barry Singer owns Chartwell Booksellers and will sell you an inscribed copy—along with copies of other books below, many of them inscribed by the authors.

Churchill Style expertly discusses Churchill’s philosophy of life and how he lived it. Mr. Singer has a unique approach. He considers nine facets of Churchill that were the essence of his style: autos, books, cigars, dining, fashion, friendships, home, imbibing and pastimes. (I”m glad he included cars—there are amusing stories there.)

The publisher, Harry Abrams, is well known for elegant productions, so Churchill Style is an heirloom, finely printed and bound and laden with full color illustrations, including rare first editions of Churchill’s books. It is a book readers will refer to often. Mr. Singer’s Hillsdale lecture on the subject is accessible here.

No More Champagne by David Lough

Churchill (or his friend F.E. Smith) was known to have declared, “Winston is a man of simple tastes. He is quite easily satisfied with the best of everything.”

With no inherited wealth, WSC had to earn enough to finance his pleasures, remarking, “I lived from mouth to hand.” The standard work on his finances is David Lough’s No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money. Reviewing this book for Hillsdale, Michael McMenamin wrote:

Ploughing fresh ground, Lough offers a well-written, deeply researched text about Churchill’s finances, and how they affected his politics. As private as some may regard personal finances, the book does not detract from Churchill’s greatness or humanity. It is an absorbing story about an extraordinary man ensuring his financial survival with one hand, while warning about the danger to, and then leading the fight for, Western Civilization with the other. Uniquely, Churchill did both.

Churchill’s Bestiary by Piers Brendon

Animals were important in Churchill’s life. He was always surrounded by pets—or, at least, animals he thought of as pets. He was fiercely loyal to those he “knew personally,” and liked to use animal analogies in his speeches. Fortunately for students of his life, 2019 brought us a comprehensive book devoted to the subject: Piers Brendon’s Churchill’s Bestiary reviewed here. From my review:

This is an encyclopedic account of Churchill’s life with animals, starting with “Albatross” and ending in “Zoos.” That spans only a fraction of Piers Brendon’s comprehensive book. He avoids repeating material in previous accounts, and goes much deeper into the subject.

Most of the anecdotes have not appeared previously and are thus quite valuable. Mr. Brendon deeply investigates each species. The text is sprightly and readable, “unputdownable.” Anyone interested in this aspect of Churchill’s life owes it to themselves to buy a copy.

In his own words

For Sir Winston’s own comments on his philosophy of life, see the chapters “Personal Matters” and “Tastes and Favorites” in my book, Churchill by Himself aka Churchill in His Own Words. Here are quotations relating to Churchill personally: his character, habits and family, and his prescriptions for living life to the full, which he certainly did.

Many quotations speak to his political and personal characteristics, some with a high degree of frankness. Reactions to election results, and thoughts about his being variously a Conservative and a Liberal, are pithy and pointed. Of course his domestic existence always came second after politics. But family life was a rousing, warm affair, except for his occasionally tempestuous relationship with his son Randolph.

WSC’s comments to and about his wife Clementine, the best of which I trust are here, would make a perfect series of greeting cards for any husband wondering how to express himself. Their daughter Mary gave testimony to her father’s favourite maxim describing his marriage: “Here firm though all be drifting.”

What strikes me about these quotations as a group is what one of his secretaries said about Churchill: “He was so human, so funny—that always saved the day.” Marshal Tito, a most perceptive man, was once asked what most struck him about WSC. “His humanity,” Tito said immediately. “He is so human.”

Philosophy of politics

If your interest extends to political life there are three chapters in Churchill by Himself containing quotations on war and the two World Wars. Another chapter covers “Political Theory and Practice.” Also, there are at least two powerful scholarly studies of his political philosophy that should be part of the serious library.

Sir Martin Gilbert’s Churchill’s Political Philosophy (1981) is rare but worth seeking out. (Try bookfinder.com,) It is based on a Gilbert lecture which uniquely captured Churchill’s attitudes toward politics and government. WSC’s overriding doctrine, Gilbert says, can be summarized in five words: “His quarrel was with tyranny.”

Likewise excellent on political philosophy is Larry Arnn’s Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Survival of Free Government. As a bonus, this book contains WSC’s essay, “Mass Effects in Modern Life.” From the book review by Justin D. Lyons:

Churchill studies reveal important lessons that remain powerfully relevant for the leaders and citizens of free societies. This notion is itself founded on the belief that though the threats to civilization may have altered since Churchill’s day, there is consistency between his challenges and ours—that he is a good guide to follow in the cause of defending freedom.

Such a belief must lie behind any conception of history as providing guidance. If these commonalities do not exist, neither Churchill’s story, nor history in general, has anything to say to us now. This is a unique and important work on Churchill’s political thought.

Addenda

These books focus closely on your question, though we could go on naming specialized studies. For example, who were the mentors who made Churchill what he was in life? For three such individuals, see Michael McMenamin’s “Churchill’s Mentors,” Part 1 of which is posted here, with links to two more parts.

Churchill’s life was long and occupies the authors of over 1200 books, not including the thirty-one volumes of Official Biography. Many contain exaggerations, and it is well to look out for them. For just one such example see “On Churchill’s ‘Sybaritic’ Lifestyle” (2016).

We hope this answers your question and provides at least a start on a complicated but intriguing subject.

“Blood, Sweat and Gears”: Churchill as Motorist

1: “Mors the Pity,” 1900s-1920s.

2: “Daimlers and Austins,” 1930s.

3: “There’s Safety in Humbers,” 1940s-1960s.

“Driving Miss Nancy: Nipped in the Astor Bar,” 2022.

Q: Origins of the Lalique rooster

Many visitors to Chartwell admire the René Lalique crystal cockerel, which resides in the drawing room. It belonged to Clementine Churchill from the 1940s.

The story of its provenance is very strong, since it was a personal gift from Charles de Gaulle, likely in the Second World War era. What little we know is based on Celia Sandys’ description (in Churchill’s Little Redhead). There doesn’t appear as yet to be any textual record in the Cambridge Archives, and I’ve not yet found it mentioned elsewhere in print. Were there any other mentions? —Eugene McConlough, England (Mr. McConlough is a Chartwell docent)

A: De Gaulle’s apologia

René Jules Lalique (1860-1945) was a French jeweler known for his crystal and glass art, from diminutive perfume bottles to chandeliers. Uniquely, Lalique glass sculpture also served as motorcar bonnet mascots (hood ornaments).

As an automotive writer in another life, I am familiar with Lalique’s work on classic luxury cars of the Twenties and Thirties. Of course in that application, it usually comprises only the rooster’s head. The Lalique cockerel at Chartwell is the whole bird—large, complete, and unusually posed with his feathers folded.

The cockerel is the symbol of France—thus often Lalique’s subject. There is no doubt, as you say, that Chartwell’s was a gift to Clementine Churchill from Charles de Gaulle. Katherine Carter, the National Trust administrator, kindly provided the photo above, showing its location in the drawing room.

Celia Sandys, and the guidebook Churchill at Chartwell by Robin Fedden, both mention the Lalique bird. But there another important reference that sheds light on the loyalty and character of Clementine Churchill.

Clementine Churchill, 1979

According to Lady Churchill’s daughter and biographer, the Lalique cockerel symbolized Gaulle’s regard for Clementine. This blossomed after a wartime argument. At Winston Churchill’s personal decision, Britain destroyed large elements of the French fleet at Mers el-Kebir. The object was to prevent their falling into German hands. Mary Soames writes:

On 3rd July [1940],  the Royal Navy opened fire on the French Fleet; three battleships were destroyed, with the loss of 1300 lives, and the remaining French ships at Oran and in other North African ports were either destroyed or immobilised.

It must have been just at the time of these searing events—the painfulness of which no one felt more keenly than Winston himself—that General de Gaulle lunched at Downing Street. The conversation turned to the future of the French Fleet, and Clementine said how ardently she hoped that many of its ships and crews would carry on the fight with us.

To this the General curtly replied that, in his view, what would really give the French Fleet satisfaction would be to turn their guns “On you!” (meaning the British).

Clementine from the first had liked and respected this dour man, but she found this remark too much to bear and, rounding on him, she rebuked him soundly, in her perfect, rather formal French, for uttering words and sentiments that ill became either an ally or a guest in this country.

“Certain things a woman can say…”

From the other side of the table Winston sensed that something had gone amiss and, in a conciliatory tone, said to the General: “You must forgive my wife. Elle parle trop bien le français [She speaks French too well].”

Clementine interrupted him, and said in French: “No, Winston, it is because there are certain things that a woman can say to a man which a man cannot say, and I am saying them to you—General de Gaulle!”

After this verbal fracas, the General was much upset, and apologised profusely; and the next day he sent a huge basket of flowers for Clementine. Later on in the war he was to give her a beautiful Lalique cock—the emblem of France—which she greatly treasured.

“The Constable of France”

Surely whenever Churchill looked upon the glass bird, he must have remembered his many ups and downs with the great Frenchman. Yet their mutual respect survived. WSC wrote memorably in his war memoirs:

On the afternoon of June 16 [1940] M. Monnet and General de Gaulle visited me in the Cabinet Room…. [Monnet] turned to our sending all our remaining fighter air squadrons to share in the final battle in France, which was of course already over…. But I could not do anything to oblige him in this field.

My two French visitors then got up and moved towards the door, Monnet leading. As they reached it, de Gaulle, who had hitherto scarcely uttered a single word, turned back, and, taking two or three paces towards me, said in English: “I think you are quite right.”

Under an impassive, imperturbable demeanour he seemed to me to have a remarkable capacity for feeling pain. I preserved the impression, in contact with this very tall, phlegmatic man: “Here is the Constable of France.”

Related articles

Diana Cooper, “Duckling, Wormwood and the War,” 2024.

“Dieu Protège La France,” 2015.

“Churchill’s War Memoirs: Aside from the Story, Simply Great Writing,” 2023.

”Casablanca, Admiral Darlan, and Rick’s Letters of Transit,” 2021.

“Churchill on Joan of Arc: Agent of Brexit? Maybe Not,” 2020.

“Origins of the de Gaulle Quote, “I’ll Kiss Him on All Four Cheeks,” 2019.

New Year’s Eve, 31 December 1941

Somewhere east of Ottawa, a special train bore the Prime Minister of Great Britain toward Washington. He had been in Canada to address Parliament. His most memorable lines in that speech came as he spoke of the French in 1940:

When I warned them that Britain would fight on alone, whatever they did, their generals told their prime minister and his divided cabinet, “In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken.” Some chicken! … Some neck.

A week earlier Churchill had won cheers from hardened American politicians in Congress, hurling defiance at the enemy:

They have certainly embarked upon a very considerable undertaking…. What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

A high sense of the moment

Few besides those alive and sentient at that time can understand the magnitude of the task as the New Year began. Hitler held Europe from the Channel almost to Moscow. Nazi U-boats prowled the Atlantic, strangling British shipping; Rommel’s Afrika Korps was advancing toward Suez. Stalin’s Red Army was desperately hanging on. America had received a heavy blow at Pearl Harbor. Japan ran amok in China, British and Dutch East Asia and the Pacific.

Churchill saw only opportunity. “I was lucky in the timing of these speeches in Washington and Ottawa,” he wrote….

They came at the moment when we could all rejoice at the creation of the Grand Alliance, with its overwhelming potential force, and before the cataract of ruin fell upon us from the long, marvelously prepared assault of Japan.

Even while I spoke in confident tones I could feel in anticipation the lashes which were soon to score our naked flesh. Fearful forfeits had to be paid not only by Britain and Holland but by the United States, in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and in all the Asiatic lands and islands they lap with their waves. An indefinite period of military disaster lay certainly before us. Many dark and weary months of defeat and loss must be endured before the light would come again.

It didn’t matter. Churchill would make fighting speeches everywhere, to audiences large and small, to listeners grand and ordinary, time and again, until the end. One of his later bodyguards was flying Hurricanes in 1942. He said to me: “After one of those speeches, it didn’t matter that we were outnumbered and outgunned. We wanted the Germans to come.”

Here’s to the New Year

The train rushed on as the last minutes of 1941 ticked away. Soon it was steaming southward on New York Central’s broad tracks along the Hudson. Appropriately close to Roosevelt’s home at Hyde Park, the Prime Minister called staff and reporters to the dining car. He wished, in a few words, to “cast some forward light upon the dark, inscrutable mysteries of the future.”

Of course he voiced confidence in the certainty of victory. He did not minimize the challenges, nor forecast when deliverance might come. That would depend “on our exertions, upon our achievements, and on the hazardous and uncertain course of the war.”

He entered the dining car amid cheers and applause, raising his glass to the company. “It was with no illusions,” he wrote, “that I wished them all a glorious New Year”:

“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.”

Q: Smuggling Lenin

I listened to Larry Arnn and Hugh Hewitt in the Hillsdale Dialogue on Churchill’s The World Crisis, Part 25. I was shocked to hear that Germany instigated or engineered the Bolshevik Revolution by sending Vladimir Ilyich Lenin like a plague virus into Russia. Did I hear this correctly? What reading do you recommend on the subject? —J.P., Arkansas

A: A “mad, wild-eyed scheme”

Dr. Arnn is quite right: The Imperial German government purposely allowed Lenin to pass through occupied territory to Finland, en route to Russia Mitch Williamson, in Weapons and Warfare, provided a good summary:

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had found a safe refuge in Switzerland, where he continued to coordinate the underground activities of his small Bolshevik Party…. Contact was reduced to occasional courier messages and coded telegrams. So he was stuck, seething with frustration as the hated Czarist government collapsed in March 1917….

Finally, he struck on a plan that had a certain surreal quality to it…. Meeting with the German minister in Bern, Lenin laid out his proposal…that Germany would provide transport across their country and help to smuggle him into Finland. From there he would go into Russia, raise a revolution, seize control of the government, and pull Russia out of the war, freeing Germany to turn its full power to the Western Front.

The German minister in Bern, along with his intelligence advisors, must have had a difficult time concealing his grin of amusement over this mad, wild-eyed scheme…. Nevertheless the decision was made to approve it. At the very least it would provide a bit of consternation for the Western Allies, who were terrified that Russia might bail out of the war and it might even help to trigger further revolts in the Russian army, which was already disintegrating in the confusion resulting from the overthrow of the Czar.

For reference I recommend Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, volume 4, World in Torment 1916-1922 (Hillsdale College Press, 2008). Also, Sir Martin’s one-volume work, Churchill: A Life (1991, just reissued), adds details not in his biographic volumes.

“A culture of typhoid”

The plan was authorized by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. In a sealed railway car, Lenin and eighteen cohorts traveled over German-occupied or neutral territory to Helsinki. From Vyborg, then on the Finnish side of the border, they entered Russia. Lenin arrived in Petrograd on 16 April 1917. Churchill completes the story:

Lenin was sent into Russia by the Germans in the same way that you might send a phial containing a culture of typhoid or of cholera to be poured into the water supply of a great city, and it worked with amazing accuracy.

No sooner did Lenin arrive than he began beckoning a finger here and a finger there to obscure persons in sheltered retreats in New York, in Glasgow, in Bern, and other countries, and he gathered together the leading spirits of a formidable sect, the most formidable sect in the world, of which he was the high priest and chief.

With these spirits around him he set to work with demoniacal ability to tear to pieces every institution on which the Russian State and nation depended. Russia was laid low. Russia had to be laid low. She was laid low to the dust.

Ten years later in The Aftermath, Churchill sharpened his analogy:

Full allowance must be made for the desperate stakes to which the German war leaders were already committed…. Nevertheless it was with a sense of awe that they turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.

Poet of Marxism

No less a wordsmith than Churchill could better describe what happened. In a few short months, the obscure dissident became master of the new Soviet state:

Lenin was to Karl Marx what Omar was to Mahomet. He translated faith into acts. He devised the practical methods by which the Marxian theories could be applied in his own time…invented the Communist plan of campaign…gave the signal and he led the attack.

Implacable vengeance, rising from a frozen pity in a tranquil, sensible, matter-of-fact, good-humoured integument! His weapon logic; his mood opportunist; his sympathies cold and wide as the Arctic Ocean; his hatreds tight as the hangman’s noose. His purpose to save the world: his method to blow it up. Absolute principles, but readiness to change them.

Apt at once to kill or learn: dooms and afterthoughts: ruffianism and philanthropy. But a good husband; a gentle guest; happy, his biographers assure us, to wash up the dishes or dandle the baby; as mildly amused to stalk a capercailzie as to butcher an Emperor.

“The Grand Repudiator”

His old colleague Sir Colin Coote thought Churchill privately respected Lenin, believing that had he lived, Russia’s fate might have been different. This indeed was suggested in The Aftermath. Lenin, WSC writes,

repudiated God, King, Country, morals, treaties, debts, rents, interest, the laws and customs of centuries, all contracts written or implied, the whole structure—such as it is—of human society. In the end he repudiated himself.

He repudiated the Communist system…. proclaimed the New Economic Policy and recognized private trade. He repudiated what he had slaughtered so many for not believing…and how great is the man who acknowledges his mistake! Back again to wash the dishes and give the child a sweetmeat. Thence once more to the rescue of mankind….

When the subtle acids he had secreted ate through the physical texture of his brain, Lenin mowed the ground…. His body lingered for a space to mock the vanished soul. It is still preserved in pickle for the curiosity of the Moscow public and for the consolation of the faithful.

Lenin’s intellect failed at the moment when its destructive force was exhausted, and when sovereign remedial functions were its quest. He alone could have led Russia into the enchanted quagmire; he alone could have found the way back to the causeway. He saw; he turned; he perished. The strong illuminant that guided him was cut off at the moment when he had turned resolutely for home. The Russian people were left floundering in the bog. Their worst misfortune was his birth: their next worst—his death.

Was Churchill right?

“Plague bacillus” is a chilling description, and Churchill’s view has been contested by historians. John Charmley quoted Lloyd George’s remark that Churchill’s “ducal blood revolted at the wholesale slaughter of Grand Dukes” in Russia. But Charmley also thought that

Churchill’s instincts were perhaps sounder than the legions of the good and the great who imagined that there was necessarily some relationship between Communist rhetoric and practice….

Churchill’s description of [Lenin] is certainly a trifle overblown: “His mind was a remarkable instrument. When its light shone it revealed the whole world, its history, its sorrows, its stupidities, its shams, and above all its wrongs.” But it is hard to quarrel with [Churchill’s] comment that “in the cutting off of the lives of men and women, no Asiatic conqueror, not Tamerlane, not Jengiz Khan, can match his fame.”

The revolution stirred some of Churchill’s deepest instincts: his sense of history was touched by the fall of an ancient empire; the repudiation of treaties by the Bolsheviks and their withdrawal from the war aroused his indignation at treachery, whilst the overthrow of established authority affronted his deeply conservative sense of social order.

Second thoughts

Dr. Charmley offers a fair assessment, but there is one adjunct worth adding. It illustrates a lifetime Churchillian characteristic: magnanimity.

In March 1918, to Allied consternation, Lenin signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, taking Russia out of the war. A month later, Churchill and Lloyd George were in France, pondering with the French how to bring Russia back in. In 1991 Martin Gilbert revealed WSC’s astounding proposal:

Churchill felt that if the former American President, Theodore Roosevelt, who was then in Paris, or the former French Minister of War, Albert Thomas, “were with [Soviet Military Commissar Leon] Trotsky at the inevitable moment when war is again declared between Germany and Russia, a rallying point might be created sufficiently prominent for all Russians to fix their gaze upon.

“Some general formula, such as ‘safeguarding the permanent fruits of the Revolution,’ might be devised which would render common action possible having regard to the cruel and increasing pressure of the Germans.” The Entente representative might become “an integral part of the Russian Government.”

Sir Martin learned of Churchill’s surprise suggestion after writing the Official Biography. Though WSC made it long before he learned of Lenin’s and Trotsky’s later depredations, it was still remarkable. Yet it was not atypical of Churchill’s attitude.

“I first revealed this in the late 1980s, to a roomful of Soviet dignitaries at a Moscow lecture,” Sir Martin told me. “You could have heard a pin drop.”

Related reading

“The Zinoviev Letter and the Red Scare, 1924: Was Churchill Involved?” 2024.

“Zionism, Bolshevism, and Enemies of Civilization: What Churchill Said,” 2021.

“Churchill, Henry Ford and Sidney Reilly: Anti-Bolshevik Collaborators?” 2022.

“Churchill and the White Russians: The Russian Civil War, 1919,” 2019.

Q: Russians and Greeks

I’m studying Churchill’s The World Crisis, Volume 2, 1915, describing the naval assault on the Dardanelles. It occurs in Chapter 9: “The Fall of the Outer Forts and the Second Greek Offer.”

After the successful naval bombardment of the Turkish outer forts in February 1915, Churchill felt close to gaining the support of the Greeks. His plans fell apart when “the Russian Government would not at any price accept the cooperation of Greece in the Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) expedition”*

What problem did Czar Nicholas II have with Greece?  What did the Russians see as a threat, which caused them to take this position? —J.D.

*Quotations are from Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 2, 1915 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923), and the modern paperback (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pages 201-04.

A: “Quos Deus vult perdere…”

You cite a poignant episode in The World Crisis. In early 1915, the hitherto neutral Greeks became interested in  joining the Triple Entente against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Churchill’s actions demonstrate two of his lifelong goals: coalitions and collective security.

Czar Nicholas’ refusal of aid from the Greeks when victory seemed possible poses an example of what Winston Churchill frequently described as “falling below the level of events.” WSC did not conceal his distress that a supreme opportunity was thrown away:

The time-honoured quotation one learnt as a schoolboy, “Quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat” [Those whom God wills to destroy He first makes mad], resounded in all its deep significance…. This was, indeed, the kind of situation for which such terrible sentences had been framed—perhaps it was for this very situation that this sentence had been prophetically reserved.

Military alliances in 1914. Italy (part of the 1882 Triple Alliance) ultimately joined the war against the Central Powers in May 1915. (Map by Historicair, Futeflute and Bibi Saint-Pol, Creative Commons)

“Before the end of April”

Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, while sympathetic to France and Britain, had refused to join them in the war until the naval assault on the Dardanelles in early 1915. This produced what Churchill calls “an immediate change.” Venizelos now proposed sending three Greek divisions to invade Turkey on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Churchill’s fertile imagination conjured up a stunning vision:

There was surely a reasonable prospect that with all these forces playing their respective parts in a general scheme, the Gallipoli Peninsula could even now have been seized and Constantinople taken before the end of April….

One must pause, and with the tragic knowledge of after days dwell upon this astounding situation which had been produced swiftly, easily, surely, by a comparatively small naval enterprise directed at a vital nerve-centre of the world.

The Czar’s veto

Two days later “a terrible fatality intervened.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Saznonov reported that Czar Nicholas II “could not in any circumstances consent to Greek cooperation in the Dardanelles.”

Russia, which had long coveted Constantinople, had welcomed the Dardanelles operation. But Russia saw Greece as a rival for the spoils. Suppose the Greeks joined in occupying the Turkish metropolis? The Russians would never allow Greek King Constantine to appear in Constantinople.

Desperately, Churchill and Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey sought to save the opportunity. Suppose the Greeks were limited to one division? Suppose Constantine promised not to go to Constantinople? Affronted, the King “relapsed into his previous attitude of hostile reserve.”

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Churchill wrote, Czar Nicholas remained adamant:

Russia—failing, reeling backward under the German hammer, with her munitions running short, cut off from her allies—Russia was the Power which ruptured irretrievably this brilliant and decisive combination….

Was there no finger to write upon the wall, was there no ancestral spirit to conjure up before this unfortunate Prince, the downfall of his House, the ruin of his people—the bloody cellar of Ekaterinburg?

(Churchill refers to the murder of the Czar and his family by the Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.)

Alliances denied

The refusal of Nicholas II to see the larger picture and make the necessary compromises astonished Churchill. Always a proponent of collective security, he could not believe the Czar would throw away such a glittering prospect. Churchill believed even more was at stake. He was sure that victory over Turkey could bring Romania and Bulgaria into a “Balkan Front” against the Germans.

Once the Dardanelles fleet turned back on March 18th, and after the failure to take Gallipoli in succeeding months, the Bulgars weighed their options. In October Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and invaded Serbia. (The term “Prussians of the Balkans,” as Churchill famously labeled the Serbs, was originally applied—disparagingly—to the Bulgarians by Russian Chancellor Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky in 1903.)

Bulgaria’s actions finally brought the Greeks into the Entente, but never with full-fledged zeal. Constantine’s royalists continued to favor Germany, and he and Venizelos sparred, alternately in and out of power, until the King’s death in 1923.

Churchill’s lament

The Greek and Russian imbroglio flew against all Churchill’s instincts to build coalitions. On 6 March 1915—with Dardanelles prospects still promising—he drafted a letter to Sir Edward Grey:

I beseech you at this crisis not to make a mistake in falling below the level of events. Half-hearted measures will ruin all, and a million men will die through the prolongation of the war. You must be bold and violent. You have a right to be. Our fleet is forcing the Dardanelles. No armies can reach Constantinople but those which we invite, yet we seek nothing here but the victory of the common cause.

Tell the Russians that we will meet them in a generous and sympathetic spirit about Constantinople…. If Russia prevents Greece helping, I will do my utmost to oppose her having Constantinople. She is a broken power but for our aid, and has no resource open but to turn traitor—and this she cannot do. If you don’t back up this Greece—the Greece of Venizelos—you will have another which will cleave to Germany.

“Mortal folly done and said”

Churchill decided to sleep on his draft. It proved a wise decision. Morning bought a “laconic telegram” from Athens: “The King having refused to agree to M. Venizelos’ proposals, the Cabinet have resigned.” Churchill’s most powerful Greek ally was temporarily out of the picture.

Churchill published his letter in The World Crisis—“not in any reproach of Sir Edward Grey or the Foreign Office. They felt as we did. They did all in their power. But I print it because it registers a terrible moment in the long struggle to save Russia from her foes and from herself.”

“Mortal folly done and said,” Churchill frequently quoted Housman— “And the lovely way that led To the slime pit and the mire And the everlasting fire.”

Thank-you for your question. It is an example of the myopia of nations and leaders who cannot see the way to their own salvation through concerted action. And it is not so unfamiliar today, as we are often reminded on the evening news. It makes one wonder—as Churchill did—what might happen “if God wearied of mankind.”

Related reading

“Dardanelles Straits, 1915: ‘Success has a Thousand Fathers,” 2024.

“Gallipoli Peninsula, 1915: “Failure is an Orphan,” 2024.

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

“Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges,” 2009.

“Lenin as Plague Bacillus, Churchill as Munitions Minister,” 2024.

“Chief Great Leader”

Churchill took great pride in his half-American ancestry, through his mother Lady Randolph Churchill, the former Jennie Jerome. The Jeromes were descended from Lt. Reuben Murray, who fought in Washington’s army.

Sir Winston further embellished his American connection by repeating a family legend that Iroquois blood ran in his veins. This Churchill myth arose from family stories before he was born. It was the prologue to scores of fables that surrounded Churchill in life.

In 1960, Sir Winston told one of his doctors that he was descended from a Seneca mother. The Seneca were the farthest western branch of the Iroquois people. Before the American Revolution they lived south of Lake Ontario, within the Six Nations or Iroquois League. Thus, wrote Robert Pilpel, “the quintessential Englishman was not only half-American but also one-sixty-fourth Native American.”

“Ba-ja-bar-son-dey”

On 2 November 1963, based largely on his  claim, the National Congress of American Indians made Churchill a chief. They named him “Ba-ja-bar-son-dey,” meaning “Great Leader of Men.” They presented him with the full regalia of a Sioux chief, allegedly been worn in battle. It had belonged (ironically enough) to Chief White Man of the Brulé Sioux, part of the Lakota tribe in South Dakota.

“The tunic was decorated with the scalps of enemies killed in battle and the trousers, made of buffalo hide, were marked with bloodstains,” wrote Roy Howells, Churchill’s nurse in his later years: “The huge feathered war headdress was very heavy and decorated round the band with coloured beads.” Despite his partiality to exotic headgear, we have no indication that WSC ever wore it.

An examination of the items, carefully preserved at Chartwell, disclosed strands of attached black hair possibly from scalps, but only a few droplets of what Howells thought was blood: Chief White Man was evidently a fastidious scalper.

Family lore

The early Churchills believed that Iroquois blood had been introduced into Churchill’s family through Jennie Jerome’s maternal grandmother, Clarissa Willcox. Like Jennie, Clarissa had a pronounced dark complexion. It is quite possible that other children, confronted with Clarissa’s visage, teased and even convinced her that she was in part Native American.

Randolph Churchill, like his sisters, accepted the Native American story. In the Official Biography he wrote that Clarissa was “the grand-daughter of Eleazur Smith, of Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and Meribah (no maiden name recorded), who is believed to have been an Iroquois Indian.” This may have been the origin of the “Seneca” his father mentioned.

Genealogical reality

The Churchill genealogist Elizabeth Snell cut through all this two decades ago, revealing that Meribah was neither Clarissa Willcox’s mother nor an Iroquois woman. She was the daughter of Benjamin and Sarah (Tompkins) Gifford, born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on 30 June 1722. Snell also identified Anna Baker’s mother, and her background, thanks to a 1951 typescript on the descendants of the Baker family.

Anna Baker was the daughter of colonial Americans, Joseph Baker and Experience Martin, who married in Swansea, Massachusetts in 1760. In 1761 the Bakers and other family members moved to Sackville, Nova Scotia, where Anna was born and lived until 1787. Later the family returned to New England. “The ancestry of Joseph Baker,” Snell wrote, “is well documented.” It is possible that the men of Anna’s family were soldiers at the time of her birth.

The Bakers returned to Massachusetts in 1787, where Anna married David Willcox of Dartmouth. By 1791, Snell continues, the couple had moved to Palmyra, in northern New York, where Willcox purchased a 100-acre farm and set up a blacksmith shop. Their home was still extant in 1970, when Anita Leslie, grand-niece of Jennie Jerome, visited Palmyra to promote her book, Lady Randolph Churchill.

Clarissa Willcox

Anna Baker Willcox’s daughter Clarissa was born 30 September 1796. David and Anna Willcox are buried together in Palmyra, where their headstones may still be seen. Anna’s father, Joseph Baker, died 15 June 1796. In his will he named his daughter, “Anne Willcocks.”

As for the conjecture that Clarissa Willcox was the result of an encounter with an Iroquois, Snell wrote: “There were no Iroquois in Nova Scotia, where Anna spent much of her young womanhood. While there were certainly Iroquois in upper New York state, where she moved as a 25-year-old wife and mother, her husband’s will mentions their daughter ‘Clarind Willcox’ and her sisters, which in itself seems definitive.”

Which story is more believable? Was Clarissa an illegitimate half-Iroquois, brought up by the Willcox family as a daughter? Or should we accept, as Snell did, “the simple, forthright facts as recorded by her colonial family in their probate records”? The absence of proof does not make a story untrue; but it does not establish it, either.

The myth continues

Without any evidence we are left only with family legends, passed along through the generations. Clarissa Willcox’s daughter Clarissa or “Clara” (1825-1895) married Leonard Jerome (1817-1891) in 1849. Jennie, the future Lady Randolph (1854-1921) was the second of their four daughters. In 1874 she married Lord Randolph Churchill, and the rest is history—not without continued claims of Iroquois ancestry.

All the “writing Leslies”—descendants of Jennie’s sister Leonie—accepted the story of Native American ancestors. Shane Leslie, WSC’s cousin, believed it. So did his daughter Anita, who cited “half-hushed rumors concerning her Indian blood…. Clara knew herself to be a quarter Iroquois.”

The myth was passed along. Churchill’s daughter, Lady Soames, certainly believed it, until confronted with the facts—as did her children. She once told me: “I remember my daughter Emma, playing with her mates at Chartwell Farm. Suddenly I heard her warn them not to misbehave: ‘My Mama, you know, is part red Indian, and if we are naughty she will go on the war-path.'”

This vision was apparently enough to prevent any hijinks by Emma’s youthful companions.

Randolph elaborates

Churchill’s son Randolph actually embroidered the story. Landing once in Johannesburg, Randolph was incensed by an immigration form asking him to declare his race—required in the time of Apartheid. “Damned cheek!,” exclaimed Randolph, who began writing furiously:

Race: human. But if, as I imagine is the case, the object of this enquiry is to determine whether I have coloured blood in my veins, I am most happy to be able to inform you that I do, indeed, so have. This is derived from one of my most revered ancestors, the Indian Princess Pocahontas, of whom you may not have heard, but who was married to a Jamestown settler named John Rolfe.

And on it goes…

Sir Winston’s grandson Winston loved the tale: “For me,” he insisted, “physical features speak louder than any entry in a register of births.” In the introduction to a collection of his grandfather’s writings on America he wrote: “According to family tradition, Jennie’s maternal grandmother, Clarisse Wilcox [sic], was half Iroquois.”¹⁴

During his accompanying book tour, my wife and I drove Winston to Plimoth Patuxet, formerly Plimoth Plantation, Massachusetts, where the Mayflower landed in 1620. There he encountered a Native American (or a staffer posing as one). He greeted him by suggesting they might be related.

In the car later I could not help tweaking him: “Winston, you are as Iroquois as my cat.” He grinned and said, “It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

The Native American story deserves pride of place in any catalogue of Churchill falsities. It illustrates how, hoping to embellish the saga, some Churchills and various writers seized on legends unsupported by facts. Alas many tall tales that followed this one were less innocent.

Tribal hostilities

Below: The first of two cartoons depicting WSC in Native American regalia (left, about to stab an opponent). Skirmishing in the foreground and definitely identified: Prime Minister H.H. Asquith and Conservative Leader Arthur Balfour. Back row: Austen Chamberlain, David Lloyd George, The Earl of Crewe, John Redmond, Richard Haldane, John Morley and Reginald McKenna. We are undecided about Churchill’s opponent in the knife fight, varying between F.E. Smith, Sir Edward Carson, or Edward Grey.

Related articles

“Pocahontas: Randolph Churchill’s Jibe at the Race Question,” 2020.

“American Jennie and Other Books on Lady Randolph Churchill,” 2020

“Winston S. Churchill 19409-2020,” 2020.

“Present at the Creation: Randolph Churchill and the Official Biography, Part 1,” 2019.

“Present at the Creation, Part 2,” 2019.

Could you tell me if Winston Churchill drove an automobile?  I’m interested in establishing whether the major Second World War leaders could drive a car.  So far, I know only that Franklin Roosevelt drove his own Ford at Hyde Park. It had hand controls but, he was his own motorist when he needed to be.

This may seem an odd line of investigation, but I think it might be illuminating. —P.C., New Hampshire

A: Yes; and sometimes a menace

(Updated from 2011.) He did! I wrote a long-simmering article about Churchill as motorist in 2016. Published in The Automobile, it is linked below: “Blood, Sweat and Gears.”

Churchill owned quite an assortment of cars from  Morrises and Land Rovers to a big Daimler given him by his friends in 1932. But most of the time he was driven—virtually always after 1930. Even around his farmlands at Chartwell, by the “duty Morris” or a Land Rover. Lady Churchill drove until quite late in life; her last car was a Vanden Plas Princess in the 1960s.

Churchill was a motorist himself, mainly in the 1920s. He was a known danger behind the wheel. Always impatient for progress, he thought nothing of driving up on the sidewalk (“pavement” in Britain) to get around traffic jams.

This occasionally put him in trouble with local constables, who let him off with a warning when they recognized him. I have only run into a few photos of him behind the wheel of a Wolseley in 1925. I notice the car has a nice ding in its right front fender.

Roosevelt too was a scary driver with those dicey hand controls, at least when Churchill rode alongside him. The latter wrote that they came precariously close to the cliffs overlooking the Hudson near Hyde Park, in FDR’s Ford V-8, and he was glad when they arrived back at the house.

“Blood, Sweat and Gears”: Churchill as Motorist

1: “Mors the Pity,” 1900s-1920s.

2: “Daimlers and Austins,” 1930s.

3: “There’s Safety in Humbers,” 1940s-1960s.

“Driving Miss Nancy: Nipped in the Astor Bar,” 2022.

Zinoviev clamor

Sensationalized by the Daily Mail, the Zinoviev Letter appeared just before the 1924 British general election. Purportedly issued by Comintern head Grigory Zinoviev, it urged the Communist Party of Great Britain to engage in seditious activities. Electing a Ramsay MacDonald Labour government, it claimed, would awaken the working classes and lead to a Marxist revolution with the CPGB in the vanguard.

Eventually the Letter proved a forgery. It did, however, enable conservative politicians, including Churchill (running as an independent “Constitutionalist”) to raise the specter of Red revolution.

It had little effect on the election: The Conservatives under Stanley Baldwin swamped their Labour and Liberal opposition. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor of the Exchequer and he returned to the Tories. (Zinoviev ultimately suffered execution by his own side, after a Moscow show trial in 1936.)

“The effect of the Zinoviev letter on the 1924 election result is problematical,” wrote Robert Rhodes James, “but it is of interest to see what Churchill’s reactions were.”

Was Churchill involved?

A prominent historian asks if Churchill was implicated the Zinoviev plot:

It is not indexed in Martin Gilbert’s biography…. Given Churchill’s fervent anti-communism, he seems an obvious target for conspiracy theorists. Neither Baldwin, the party stalwart J.C.C. Davidson nor MI5’s Joseph Ball knew of the plot. William Ormsby-Gore knew about it, possibly slightly later. It is hard to imagine that Churchill did not know, but it seems he was not a participant. Is that how you see it? [Yes.]

He was not…

Remarkably, the conspiracy theorists have not got round to accusing Churchill of actually writing the Zinoviev Letter–at least as far we know! It is certain that he was not involved in the forgery, though he initially accepted it as genuine. (He so wrote Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain a month after its appearance. See below.)

Churchill did take political advantage of the Zinoviev uproar. Even if it were forged, he said, it was nothing new where Bolsheviks were concerned. (He called Ramsay MacDonald a “futile Kerensky.”)

The following references are from our digital archive of 80 million words by and about Sir Winston Churchill. Martin Gilbert did not entirely ignore Zinoviev, publishing WSC’s 14 November 1924 letter to Chamberlain. That was written after Churchill’s “Red Plot” article had appeared in the Weekly Dispatch. At the time, WSC seemed to believe the Tories might label it authentic. But on the whole he was non-committal.

 “Futile Kerensky,” 25 October 1924

Speaking a few days before polling day, Churchill highlighted what he saw as a very real danger of Soviet agents in Britain, and MacDonald’s unconcern. (Alexander Kerensky was the Menshevik head of the short-lived 1917 Russian provisional government, ousted by Lenin in the October revolution.)

[Extract] Even if the Moscow letter is a forgery it in no way alters the facts that Bolshevik propaganda has never ceased during the last four years. They have never ceased to stir up bloody revolution in India and to foster strife in this country. The Prime Minister [MacDonald] said he believes this letter is authentic, but the Communist forces are already on his track, and the moment is coming when this futile Kerensky will make another surrender.

The process of conversion has already begun. Mr. MacDonald said he was going to probe the matter to the bottom, and he described the affair as a new Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot.

The Prime Minister is preparing already to turn about, and I venture to predict that before the election is over, we will find Mr. MacDonald singing in chorus with the rest of his Ministers that the letter he has said he honestly believes is authentic is a gross forgery and a dodge of the Conservative Party.

“The Red Letter,” 2 November 1924

Writing three days after the election, Churchill insisted that the Zinoviev Letter represented genuine Soviet intentions. He lampooned the now-defeated MacDonald’s efforts to loan Russia money and expand trade:

[Excerpt] Let us consider this “Red Letter” itself. It contained nothing new. From the earliest moment of its birth the Russian Bolshevist Government has declared its intention of using all the power of the Russian Empire to promote a world revolution. Their agents have penetrated into every country. Everywhere they have endeavoured to bring into being the “germ cells” from which the cancer of Communism should grow….

When, on October 16, the “Red Letter” first received the attention of the Prime Minister, only two courses were possible for any reasonable man. The first was to treat it as a document of no more consequence than many others in the Foreign Office archives or to refuse to accept its authenticity and to continue his advocacy of the loan to Russia. The second was to publish it…and declare that after such an affront, the whole policy of the Russian Treaties must be abandoned.

Mr. MacDonald did neither. He accepted the authenticity of the document; he affirmed its extraordinary importance; he denounced it in sweeping terms, and he continued to appeal to the amazed electors for a guaranteed loan to Russia.

* * *

Was the letter a forgery [or] the Foreign Office hoaxed? Was its chief misled by his officials? Such were the furious questions which the discomfited Socialist Ministers immediately hurled at their leader…. We do not know what evidence they had at their disposal [but] it was weighty and cogent. We know that these attempts to foment disorder and revolt in Britain and the British Dominions have been unceasing.

Such a document is only typical. It might have been sent out as a matter of mere routine from the Bolshevist headquarters….. The “Red Letter” did not illuminate the controversy. Its publication, with Mr. MacDonald’s confirmation and protest, only stultified him and the Socialist Party. But that stultification came as the final stroke in a long process of conviction which at length roused the British nation to an expression of national censure more effective than any which our modern political history records.

Churchill to Austen Chamberlain, 14 November 1924

[Excerpt] We shall in all probability have to proclaim in a few days’ time that we believe the Zinoviev Letter to be authentic, and that is only part and parcel of the general policy of propaganda unceasingly pursued by the Soviets. If we say this, it follows that we believe the Bolsheviks have broken their solemn engagements under which they were admitted to this country both in the days of the Krassin mission and in those of Rakovsky.

If they have thus broken their engagements, and have attempted to stir up rebellion in our midst, what grounds are there that can justify our proceeding to allow them to remain here? The representatives of no other country would be permitted to remain if convicted, in our opinion, or similar offences. I am certain that no mere Note or answer will by itself be sufficient to satisfy either justice or public opinion. It is essential that action should follow a declaration of the authenticity of the Zinoviev letter. The question is what action.

Zinoviev in the War Memoirs

In 1947, Churchill asked the philosopher and historian Isaiah Berlin to read a draft of The Gathering Storm, his first volume of Second World War memoirs. Berlin replied with a mention of the Zinoviev Letter. The Gathering Storm, Berlin wrote

seems to me to take some time to get going properly. The main theme is the Rise of Hitler, and the blindness of England and the Western World. If the story is to start with the earlier “peaceful years” 1924-1929, it may be felt to lack something unless the central events which linger in the popular memory—the General Strike, relations with Russia (the Zinoviev Letter, the Arcos Raid), etc. are placed in proper focus; alternatively all this could be condensed into a general prelude to the real story—with not too rigid a skeleton of chronology—a kind of commentary on the moods and acts of these remote deluded years, not overweighted with specific detail, a background to the awful things to come.

Berlin suggested jettisoning the rather bland Chapters II and III (“Peace at Its Zenith” and “Lurking Dangers”) and going right to Chapter IV (“Adolf Hitler”). Churchill did shorten those chapters. But if WSC’s early drafts mentioned the Zinoviev Letter, it did not appear in the book.

The only reference to Zinoviev in The Gathering Storm was in passing, though abrupt. Describing Stalin’s 1937 purges, Churchill wrote: “Zinoviev, Bukharin, and others of the original leaders of the Revolution, Marshal Tukhachevsky, who had been invited to represent the Soviet Union at the Coronation of King George VI, and many other high officers of the Army, were shot.”

Further reading

“Churchill, Henry Ford and Sidney Reilly: Anti-Bolshevik Collaborators?” 2022.

“Churchill’s Magnanimity: Stanley Baldwin 1867-1947,” 2021.

“Zionism, Bolshevism, Enemies of Civilisation: What Churchill Said,” 2021.

“‘Stalin Never Broke His Word to Me’: Were These Churchill’s Words?” 2020.

“Churchill and the White Russians: The Russian Civil War, 1919,” 2019.

***

Steve Winduss, whose Batting the Breeze podcast refers to Hillsdale College’s piece on Churchill’s meetings with Margaret Thatcher, prompts this reflection on Sir Winston’s longest-serving bodyguard. Edmund Murray served Churchill for fifteen years. Steve interviewed Eddie’s son in a three-part podcast. “I became very attached to Edmund and his unique and colourful life during that period,” Steve writes. “I would have certainly enjoyed meeting him as you did.” In the belief that others might like to know more about Sergeant Murray, I reprise what I wrote after his death in 1996. —RML

“Who is there to talk of?”

Edmund Murray, Sir Winston Churchill’s bodyguard from 1950 to 1965, was born the same year as John F. Kennedy, and underwent similar hair-raising adventures in the same war. He died on the eve of his eightieth birthday and the golden anniversary of his marriage to Beryl, the charming Swiss lady who shared his life after 1947.

Born in County Durham, Murray joined the French Foreign Legion soon after leaving school. After the war he joined the Metropolitan Police. In 1950 he was seconded to Chartwell for protection duties with the Leader of the Opposition.

He recorded his life as a Legionnaire and with Churchill in his 1987 book, I Was Churchill’s Bodyguard. This was expanded in a series of 1995 tapings for the Imperial War Museum. Eddie remained in his trying job to the end. I will never forget the words he uttered when Sir Winston died: “Who is there to talk of?”

The Murray presence

I met Edmund Murray on our first Churchill Tour in 1983, when he heard we were stopping at Bath and joined us for lunch. At first he struck me as T.E. Lawrence had struck Churchill: “A very remarkable character, and very careful of that fact.” Eddie was not inclined to hide his light under a bushel, and what he most loved to talk about was Sir Winston. His droll stories were the life of every Churchillian party.

Over the years, I observed a certain mellowing in his manner. He certainly grew more piquant. He once quoted Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s reference to “Sir Winston’s detective, now dead.”

“By my presence here,” Eddie remarked, “I offer you undeniable proof that no one can trust the pronouncements of politicians.”

Over the next few years his talks became more polished, more rounded and reflective. Perhaps his many appearances, often before youngsters—whose company he loved—allowed him to sit back and take a longer look at the experiences life had so uniquely placed in his way.

Multi-tasking 

Edmund Murray, thirty-three, met Winston Churchill, seventy-five, in 1950. From that day to the end he was ubiquitous, and rarely from WSC’s side. Anthony Montague Browne, who served as private secretary from 1952, was likewise omnipresent:

Sergeant Murray found himself concerned with aspects of his charge which were not really part of his functions. Particularly after Churchill’s resignation as prime minister, there was no longer a large back-up staff. Eddie was effective in matters such as passports at airports, access and exits at meetings, and generally making Churchill’s everyday life smoother.

Murray anecdotes were fun. Once at Shannon Airport, he told me, Churchill’s plane stopped to refuel en route to America. Eddie strode to the duty-free shop to buy a case of Jameson’s for his Secret Service pals in Washington. “What name shall I put on the box?” said the clerk. “Murray,” Eddie told him.

Arriving back to pick it up, the clerk was in full Irish brogue: “So what’s a man with the name of Murray doing working for an old b—— like Churchill?”

Eddie related this to WSC, who roared with laughter. Lady Churchill was not amused. “He was wrong, Winston, he was quite wrong. You do know who your father was!”

Murray also liked to recall the somewhat trying job of keeping admirers away from a boss who did not like being disturbed. This often occurred at Monte Carlo, which Churchill loved for its cuisine and casino.

One evening at dinner a world-famous celebrity spotted WSC: “I want to say hello to my hero, Sir Winston.” The boss didn’t recognize him and signaled to Eddie, who politely ushered a fuming Frank Sinatra to the door. “Did you know who Frank’s friends were?” I once asked him….

Painter and pursuers

“I remember him being in charge of Churchill’s painting arrangements,” continued Anthony Montague Browne. “Sergeant Murray himself painted, as he describes in his book, and was well attuned to Churchill’s idiosyncrasies in this field. He was particularly useful in the increasing periods that Churchill spent in the South of France in his retirement. His fluent French ensured smooth liaison with the local police.”

Sometimes his French was over-fluent, tipping the paparazzi on Churchill’s intended painting expeditions. This kept them easier to control during more serious moments when the boss was meeting with the “Good and the Great”—and incidentally kept Eddie supplied with champagne.

Once the press gaggle grew to such proportions that Anthony suspected a “mole” in the staff. One at a time, he announced to each staffer a fictitious time and venue for the next day’s painting expedition, then checked the spot for media. Sure enough, the trick led him to Sergeant Murray, whose champagne quota was commensurately reduced.

Longtime secretary Grace Hamblin had a stern sense of loyalty and was incensed when she learned of Eddie’s transgression. Significantly, the boss was not bothered at all. Grace herself told me that when she voiced disapproval, Sir Winston just snorted: “Well, you don’t like anyone.”

“A real affection”

Anthony Montague Browne was equally magnanimous:

To be a bodyguard must be a soul-destroying occupation, waiting about for hours and hours with very little to do, but bearing a real responsibility for the well-being of the personality in one’s charge.

We tend to see history from a different point of view. I am bound to say that where I was present at some of the events Sergeant Murray describes, they struck me rather differently. In the words of Field Marshal Robertson, ‘I ’eard different.’ It was all too easy to succumb to irritation with Sergeant Murray at times, but his devotion to Churchill was genuine, and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have stood before him.”

It was all too easy to succumb to irritation with Sergeant Murray at times, but his devotion to Churchill was genuine, and I have no doubt that if danger had threatened he would have stood before him.

He certainly made the great man’s life easier, Anthony added:

The Boss, I think, had a real affection for him. It was Churchill’s inevitable reaction to stand up for any member of his entourage who was under attack. As Lady Churchill once said (looking at me rather pointedly): “Winston is always ready to be accompanied by those with considerable imperfections.”

Old Victory’s pride

I do know this, and I know it as a certitude: One of Eddie’s last speeches was one of the finest ever made about Sir Winston Churchill. It ranks with those of Alistair Cooke, Martin Gilbert, Bill Buckley and Robert Hardy. Here is how he wound it up:

*

I escorted Sir Winston on his last visit to the House of Commons on Monday, 27 July 1964. He had been sixty-four years in politics.

On Saturday, 9 January 1965, he was very quiet at dinner and wanted neither brandy nor a cigar. Only in the early hours was he persuaded to go to his bed. He never got out of it again.

That man had brought Britain through the greatest struggle in its history. Though he did admit to me on several occasions that God had been on his side, his was the voice, the spirit, the courage, the determination. So, from a balcony in Whitehall on 8 May 1945, the descendant of the First Duke of Marlborough proclaimed: “God bless you all. This is your victory. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the Churchill I knew was the epitome of all that was ever good and fine in our island race and he was always proud of his American heritage. Yes, he made mistakes, but then only those who do nothing do not. Always his aim was to make Britain great, and to join all European countries in peace and freedom.

We all have a job to do and indeed the tools to do it are in our hands. Vivre a jamais dans l’esprit des gens, n’est-ce pas l’immortalite? There is the heritage he left us, our raison d’etre. May we all be worthy of his trust.

Related reading

“At Bladon, Fifty-nine Years On: Echoes and Memories,” 2024.

“Winston Churchill on War, Part 3: Anthony Montague Browne,” 2022.

“The Churchill Tours 1983-2008: A Certain Splendid Memory,” 2024.

“Grace Hamblin, Total Churchillian,” 2015.

“Chartwell and Churchill, 1955,” 2016.

Hillsdale Dialogues: The World Crisis

The Hillsdale Dialogues are weekly broadcasts of discussions between Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn and commentator Hugh Hewitt. In 2023-24 they discuss Churchill’s The World Crisis, his classic memoir of the First World War. This essay addresses the operations on the Gallipoli Peninsula. To search for all World Crisis essays published to date, click here. For the accompanying audio discussion, refer to World Crisis World Crisis Dialogue 17, Failure at the Dardanelles and Gallipoli —RML

Approaching the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, we may reflect on an earlier seaborne expedition. The attempts to force the Dardanelles, and the opposed landing on Gallipoli, were abject failures. But many lessons were learned, not least by Winston Churchill. Continued from “Dardanelles Straits, 1915.”

Auspicious beginnings

Churchill’s hopes for Greek or Russian troop support had not materialized. Given Asquith’s declaration to “take” the Peninsula, Churchill logically asked whether there should army as well as navy action.

Again the War Minister, Lord Kitchener, insisted that no British land forces be used. Churchill asked for his dissent to be recorded. The Cabinet agreed to a purely naval attack. There was to be a “feint” at the Peninsula, but no actual landings.

The Anglo-French naval force began bombarding the outer forts of the Dardanelles on 19 February 1915. As Churchill expected, those forts were silenced and the entrance cleared of mines in less than a week. Marines landed to destroy the guns at Kum Kale (Asiatic north coast) and Sedd el Bahr (Gallipoli Peninsula), while ships’ guns trained further in toward Kephez.

Some Turkish batteries were mobile. They evaded the fleet’s guns and fired at a motley assortment of minesweepers manned by civilians (a bad mistake by the Admiralty). Still, as late as 4 March Admiral Sackville Carden, commanding, said his fleet would arrive off Constantinople in as little as two weeks.

“Admiral de Row-back” 

Shortly after Carden’s optimistic forecast he fell ill, and resigned on March 15th. He was replaced by Admiral John de Robeck, who sailed into the straits on the 18 March. For awhile it was looking good. Eighteen battleships, with cruiser and destroyer support and minesweepers in the van, advanced to midway through the narrowest part of the straits, barely a mile wide. By 2 pm, according to the Turkish General Staff, “artillery fire of the defence had slackened considerably.”

Then misfortune struck. Mines sank the French battleship Bouvet and damaged three older British battleships. Some 650 sailors perished.

Other vessels were damaged, and the civilian minesweeper crews were terrified. Admiral de Robeck, believing he could not sustain further losses, issued a general recall.

Churchill was furious. In his original query to Carden he had emphasized: “Importance of results would justify severe loss.” Angrily he denounced the commander as “Admiral de Row-back.” But First Sea Lord Admiral Lord Fisher supported de Robeck and the fleet was withdrawn. It was never to return.

Peninsula landings

Churchill never gave up his belief that the Dardanelles could have been forced by a renewed attack. But Asquith and the cabinet blinked. Those fervent desk-warriors, once so sanguine about the Dardanelles, were suddenly timid. The naval attack, they decided, must not be renewed without a landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula—which Asquith had targeted without committing troops.

Churchill could not overrule his naval advisors or admirals—let alone Asquith and the Cabinet. Their attention was now on a plan for which Churchill was not responsible: an army assault on the Peninsula.

Landings began at the end of April, ultimately gaining little more than a foothold. In view of the disproportionate numbers often bandied about, the nationality of those brave soldiers needs enumeration. There were over 450,000 British (including Indians and Newfoundlanders) 80,000 French. Added to these were 50,000 Australians and about 15,000 New Zealanders. The Turks mustered 315,000. Casualties and losses were horrific: 250,000 among the Allies, a larger number of Turks.

“Mortal folly done and said”…

General Sir Ian Hamilton, commanding the Peninsula assault, pleaded in vain for Kitchener to send more artillery and better trained, regular army troops.

So many died unnecessarily that Churchill has come in for grave blame, especially in Australia and New Zealand. It is hard to understand this, since did not plan or direct the landing. Almost from the start of the war, he had cast around for ways to avoid using British and Empire ground forces in the Peninsula assault.

Nor was Churchill the sole author and advocate of the naval attack. It had a long genesis, dating back almost to the opening of the war, and was approved by high-level authorities up to Asquith and Kitchener.

Lord Fisher, at first all for the expedition, became increasingly hostile, and finally resigned in mid-May 1915. That cost Churchill his position as First Lord of the Admiralty, as Asquith was now pursuing a coalition government with the Conservatives.

Churchill’s anguished, handwritten letters to Asquith “poured out his inner feelings with intensity, holding back nothing, and risking the derision of the Prime Minister.” But the opposition Tories were adamant. The price of coalition was the First Lord’s head.. This became obvious when Asquith callously asked Churchill: “And what are we to do for you?”

The scapegoat

In his political interests Churchill should have resigned after the Cabinet refused to renew the naval attack. A lesser man would have, but resignation wasn’t in his makeup. It is valid to fault Churchill for failing to carry his First Sea Lord with him in advocating a renewed naval effort. But that raises the question of whether bringing back old Admiral Fisher was a good idea in the first place.

From the end of May to 12 November 1915, Churchill held a meaningless sinecure, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His only task was the appointment of rural judges. Frustrated over the ongoing fiasco, he resigned in November to join his regiment on the Western Front.

“Like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted,” he wrote, “my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means of relieving it; I had vehement convictions and small power to give effect to them.… I was forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front seat.”

His wife Clementine had a more poignant remembrance: “When he left the Admiralty he thought he was finished.…I thought he would never get over the Dardanelles; I thought he would die of grief.”

Retrospectives and what-ifs

Clement Attlee, who fought on the Peninsula and later headed the 1945 Labour government, said the Dardanelles-Gallipoli operation was “the only imaginative concept of the war.”

Historians have long debated Attlee’s view. Jeffery Wallin, one of the few early authors to take Churchill’s side, argued that the concept was strategically sound and would have worked. When de Robeck broke off his attack, Wallin wrote, the Turkish forts were almost out ammunition.

Critics countered that the Turkish mobile batteries made up for the loss of fixed cannon, citing their efficiency against the minesweepers. But still others question how much ammunition even the mobile batteries had left. The minesweepers assigned were insufficient, and should not have been crewed by civilians. That detail mistake was the Admiralty’s, thus ultimately Churchill’s.

A further question which has never been answered is: What would have been the effect of the Allied fleet appearing, with guns trained, off Constantinople? Would Turkey have surrendered, as the British thought?

Christopher Harmon wrote that “few analysts, then or now, with the benefit of long hindsight, commit themselves to that assurance. Lord Kitchener, in charge of the War Office, and Churchill, in charge of the Royal Navy, both said at various times that ships alone could suffice. But at other times, each thought otherwise.”

Failures of high command

The record suggests that the immediate failures of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli were owed to gross errors by the commanders. De Robeck was wrong to break off the attack with fourteen of his eighteen battleships intact and some about to pass through the narrows. Hamilton was faulted for landing troops on the Peninsula with uncertain objectives. Professor Harmon summarizes:

Churchill correctly understood the futility of further offensives in the West until some new approach or technology could be ready. He was also correct to want to devote the somewhat inactive Royal Navy to this operation; and with or without troops, he suppoted the naval campaign.

But Kitchener, who offered, then withheld, then provided too late, the 29th Division from Egypt, made a shambles of Admiralty plans to transport the unit, and eliminated any chance of sufficient manpower to sweep away the Turks…. He should have seen that nothing was more important than that this new expedition not fail, not embarrass the Allies, and not waste precious lives of trained men.

Inquiry and conclusions

In 1917 a Commission of Inquiry into the Dardanelles and Gallipoli operations issued its preliminary report. Churchill, it concluded, was “carried away by his sanguine temperament and his firm belief in the success of the operation.” But its main criticism was of Asquith. The Prime Minister had held no War Council meetings from 19 March to 14 May. He fostered an “atmosphere of vagueness and want of precision.

Kitchener “did not sufficiently avail himself of the services of his General Staff, with the result that more work was undertaken by him than was possible for one man to do, and confusion and want of efficiency resulted.” Perhaps Kitchener might not have escaped so lightly, but he had become a martyr, drowning on his way to Russia in June 1916.

What a story! A prime minister unwilling to be prime; a war minister reluctant to make war; backbiting among colleagues; idle babble to outsiders and the press; daily changes of tune; dreaming about unrealistic spoils of war; unwillingness to hear those who understood the real needs.

It doesn’t sound so far removed from the criticism now thrown at Western governments who have inherited the mistakes of a generation, and are expected to mend them overnight.

More on Gallipoli

“Dardanelles Straits, 1915: Success Has a Thousand Fathers,” 2024.

“Get Ready for Churchill’s Anti-Sesquicentennial,” 2024.

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

“Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Admiral De Row-Back to Wuthering Height,” 2020.

Keara Gentry, “Lessons of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli,” Hillsdale College, 2024.

Hillsdale Dialogues: The World Crisis

The Hillsdale Dialogues are weekly broadcasts of discussions between Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn and commentator Hugh Hewitt. In 2023-24 they discuss Churchill’s The World Crisis, his classic memoir of the First World War. This essay addresses the question of who conceived and supported the attack on the Dardanelles. The answers still surprise some people. To search for all World Crisis essays published to date, click here. For the accompanying audio discussion, refer to World Crisis Dialogue 16, Turkey and the War  —RML

Churchill and the Straits

Approaching the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, we may reflect on an earlier seaborne expedition. The attempts to force the Dardanelles, and the opposed landing on Gallipoli, were abject failures. But many lessons were learned, not least by Winston Churchill.

The Allied attempt to force the Straits, and subsequently to land on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula, was a tale of military and political failure at the highest level. It offers timeless examples of hypocrisy, skewed logic, wishful thinking and disloyalty. Winston Churchill observed that such problems often assail countries at war. Yet many historical accounts fix most of the blame on him.

Asquith, Fisher and Kitchener

Over a century later, we may wonder why Prime Minister H.H. Asquith wasn’t pushed aside sooner. Britain, then the superpower among nations, was fighting for survival. At crucial cabinet meetings, Asquith rarely opened his mouth. For almost two months he didn’t hold a war council. Privately he exchanged gossip with his lady friend Venetia Stanley. Most of what we know about his opinions at that time we know through their letters.

In cabinet, Asquith encouraged Churchill; behind his back he doubted and disparaged him. Nor was Lloyd George above criticizing the friend he had mentored. One of Churchill’s civil commissioners, Sir Francis Hopwood, carried slander to the King’s private secretary.

Churchill’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Fisher, military head of the navy, owed his prominence to Churchill. He threatened to resign every time he failed to get his way, and ultimately did so, abandoning his post.

Above all stood Lord Kitchener, Minister of War, enthusiastic for action but unwilling for a time to commit troops when they were first asked for. Vain and unyielding, Kitchener held a veto even over decisions of the Prime Minister. Yet all these people initially backed the Dardanelles naval operation—without reservation.

Getting around the slaughter

It is widely believed that Churchill proposed the Straits expedition to bypass the static slaughter in Europe’s trenches. While this is true in the abstract, the original plan was not his, nor was it hatched overnight.

Churchill and others first contemplated assaulting Germany and Austria-Hungary from the south. Churchill also proposed attacking Germany from the north, even as the Dardanelles operation was being approved by the War Cabinet.

By autumn 1914, Turkey seemed likely to join Central Powers, making Greece a potential British ally. Foreseeing this, Churchill offered the Royal Navy to support a Greek offensive against the Turks. On 4 September he cabled Captain Mark Kerr, on loan to the Greeks to command their navy, authorizing him to raise this possibility with the Athens government.

“The right and obvious method of attacking Turkey,” Churchill wrote Kerr, “is to strike immediately at the heart.” Churchill thought the Greeks could occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula by land, while an Anglo-Greek fleet forced the Dardanelles. This would link up with the Russians via the Bosphorus and Black Sea.

If the Greek plan didn’t work, Churchill offered an alternative: an invasion by Russian troops of European Turkey. Russian casualties might be heavy, but such an enterprise would mean “no more war with Turkey.” At this point he made no mention of British troops.

Hesitation and naïveté

No action was taken on Churchill’s ideas. Then, at the end of September, the Turks mined the Dardanelles, cutting off the Russians from their ice-free link to the Mediterranean. This focused fresh attention on the strategic waterway.

“British military supplies could no longer reach Russia except by the hazardous northern route to Archangel,” Martin Gilbert wrote. “Russian wheat, on which the Tsarist Exchequer depended for so much of its overseas income—and arms purchases—could no longer be exported to its world markets.”

On October 28th, Turkey formally joined the Central Powers. Two days later, Turkish warships began shelling Russian Black Sea ports. The British cabinet fretted over the effect on Russia, and whether the Turks might also attack Egypt.

Asquith wrote to Venetia Stanley: “Few things would give me greater pleasure than to see the Turkish Empire finally disappear from Europe…. Constantinople [might] become Russian (which I think is its proper destiny) or if that is impossible neutralised and become a free port.” These are certainly examples of vapid imaginings.

Admiral Carden eyes the Dardanelles

With the approval of First Sea Lord Fisher, Churchill ordered the Mediterranean commander Admiral Sackville Carden, “without risking any ships,” to bombard the forts at the Dardanelles entrance, at a safe distance from Turkish guns. Carden was instructed to retire “before fire from the forts becomes effective. Ships’ guns should outrange older guns mounted in the forts.”

Carden did so on November 3rd, reporting that the forts were vulnerable to naval bombardment. No allied ships were damaged. One shell hit the magazine of a fort at Sedd-el-Bahr (Gallipoli side of the Straits) which blew up with the loss of almost all its artillery. It was never repaired—nor did the Turks improve other Dardanelles defenses. They remained short of guns, mines and ammunition.

Genesis of the naval attack

The successful shelling of November 3rd caused many to consider Turkey vulnerable. “Like most other people,” Churchill wrote, “I had held the opinion that the days of forcing the Dardanelles were over.” Carden had demonstrated otherwise. The Admiralty War Group concurred.

Results nearby confirmed these views. In December the Mediterranean port of Alexandretta (now Iskerenderun) surrendered under the guns of a single British cruiser, HMS Doris. The Turks actually assisted in demolishing its defenses.

It seemed, Churchill testified, that “we were not dealing with a thoroughly efficient military power, and that it was quite possible that we could get into parley with them.” Characteristically, Churchill was looking for a chance to talk.

“By ships alone”

On 3 January 1915 Churchill, with Fisher’s approval, asked Carden if he thought the Dardanelles Straits could be forced “by the use of ships alone.” Churchill conceived of using a fleet of older British warships, superfluous to the Grand Fleet in home waters.

WSC added: “Importance of results would justify severe loss.” (Emphasis added.)

Carden replied that while he did not think the Straits could be “rushed,” they might be “forced by extended operations with a large number of ships.”

Critics later said Carden was “a second-rate officer who found himself unexpectedly in a sea command instead of in charge of Malta dockyard.” But Carden was the on-scene commander. One only wishes Churchill was blessed with such clear contemporary vision as his hindsight critics.

Churchill telegraphed again to Carden: “Your view is agreed with by high authorities here. Please telegraph in detail what you think could be done by extended operations, what force would be needed, and how you consider it should be used.”

The enthusiastic Admiral Fisher

It is important to note that Churchill’s top Admiralty commander was then still strongly behind the enterprise. Fisher even proposed to supplement Churchill’s older naval vessels with the new battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth. For practice!

The navy’s latest dreadnought, Queen Elizabeth was the first to mount 15-inch guns. She was about to leave for the Mediterranean for test firings. Why not, Fisher suggested, “use her practice shots on the Dardanelles etc. and the possibilities flowing from it.”

Carden said he would need twelve battleships, three battlecruisers, three light cruisers, a flotilla leader, sixteen destroyers, six submarines, eight seaplanes, twelve minesweepers and twenty other craft. Excepting Queen Elizabeth, all could be older, surplus vessels. All were still fit to fight because Churchill had devoted some of his prewar budget to maintaining them.

Carden proposed to start by bombarding the Turkish forts from a safe distance. Then, preceded by minesweepers, he would sail into the Straits, demolishing shore batteries as he found them. He proposed a feint at Gallipoli (Churchill had suggested this in November)—a bombardment but no landings.

Emerging into the Marmara, Carden would keep the Straits open by patrols in his wake. Weather and morale of the enemy were variables, he added, but he “might do it all in a month about.”

Almost total euphoria

The British War Council met on 13 January 1915. Every member was enthusiastic, Maurice Hankey wrote. They “turned eagerly from the dreary vista of a ‘slogging match’ on the Western Front…. The Navy, in whom everyone had implicit confidence, and whose opportunities so far had been few and far between, was to come into the front line.”

Asquith himself drew up the fateful minute. The War Council agreed to a man. Nobody seemed to notice one curious addition. The Admiralty, Asquith wrote, should “prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective.”

Unanswered questions

How do you “take” a peninsula without troops? Did Asquith mean for sailors to land and march on Constantinople? In the general ardor, no one asked. All eyes were on sailing through the Straits. A fleet this size, appearing off Constantinople, would surely cow the Turks into surrender.

Churchill alone held out for an alternate: attacking the north German coast. Kitchener said there were no troops for that. (He was always short of troops, except to be slaughtered in Flanders.) Of the strictly naval enterprise he was fully supportive. Fisher did not demur.

The War Council waxed euphoric about the possibilities. Next, what about a naval attack up the Danube, landing at Salonika, and sending a fleet up the Adriatic? Colonial Secretary Lewis Harcourt wrote a paper entitled “The Spoils.” He envisioned the end of the Ottoman Empire and expansion of the British Empire as far as Palestine.

None of these naively optimistic visions were voiced by Winston Churchill.

Next: the Gallipoli landings.

More on the Dardanelles

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

“Dardanelles Then, Afghanistan Now: Apples and Oranges,” 2009.

“Churchill’s Potent Political Nicknames: Admiral De Row-Back to Wuthering Height,” 2020.

(Updated from 2015.) This historical niche site is exercised over misquotes and tall tales about Winston Churchill that bedizen the Internet—by everybody from sports figures to authors and politicians (see “Churchillian Drift”). They cover everything and everybody from his ancestor Marlborough on up. (See also “Fake Quotes” herein.)

They range from ““Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts” (Fred Tilton said that, but Churchill didn’t) to the fiction that Alexander Fleming twice saved Churchill’s life.

But here’s an amusing example of Churchill himself destroying a Churchill myth—about that early forebear, John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Reference is to the early pages of Marlborough: His Life and Times, vol. 1.

Barbara Palmer

At the beginning of 1671 John Churchill was enjoying the company of Barbara Palmer, First Duchess of Cleveland. She was twenty-nine, he twenty. Winston Churchill writes:

Affections, affinities, and attractions were combined. Desire walked with opportunity, and neither was denied. John almost immediately became her lover, and for more than three years this wanton and joyous couple shared pleasures and hazards…not severed until the dawn of his love for Sarah Jennings [later his Duchess] in 1675.

“You are a rascal, but I forgive you”

Unfortunately or fortunately (we report, you decide), the lovely Barbara had also excited the passions of King Charles II, the product of which were several of Barbara’s children. Churchill continues:

Two of the adventures of the lovers are well known. The first [is] that, being surprised by Charles in the Duchess’s bedroom, John saved her honour—or what remained of it—by jumping from the window, a considerable height, into the courtyard below. For this feat, delighted at his daring and address, she presented him with £5000.

The second anecdote is attributed to the French Ambassador, Barillon. The Duke of Buckingham, he says, gave a hundred guineas to one of his waiting-women to be well informed of the intrigue. He knew that Churchill would be one evening at a certain hour in Barbara’s apartments. He brought the King to the spot.

The lover was hidden in the Duchess’s cupboard (she was not Duchess till 1670). After having prowled about the chamber the King, much upset, asked for sweets and liqueurs. His mistress declared that the key of the cupboard was lost. The King replied that he would break down the door.

On this she opened the door, and fell on her knees on one side while Churchill, discovered, knelt on the other. The King said to Churchill, “Go; you are a rascal, but I forgive you because you do it to get your bread.”

Churchill’s take

Now Winston Churchill loved a good fable as well as the next fellow. When his literary collaborator Bill Deakin challenged a well-known myth in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Churchill declared: “At times of crisis, myths have their historical importance.” But he was having no nonsense about his ancestor John Churchill:

It is a good story, and the double-barrelled insult is very characteristic of Charles. But is it true? Barillon, who did not himself arrive in England till September 1677, probably got it from his predecessor, Courtin. He fixes the date as 1667….

Here is a fine exposure of these gossips. There can be little doubt, as we have shown, that nothing of this kind can have occurred before 1671. It is therefore one of those good stories invented long afterwards and fastened, as so many are, on well-known figures.

Churchill was correctly predicting exactly what has happened to him on the Internet—a medium he never dreamed of.

Marlborough Drift

We have dwelt herein on falsehoods known as Churchillian Drift. File this one under Marlborough Drift.

Churchill was nevertheless under no illusions about the faults of his ancestor. “What a downy bird he was,” he wrote his wife in 1935…

He will always stoop to conquer. His long apprenticeship as a courtier had taught him to bow and scrape and to put up with the second or third best if he could get no better. He had far less pride than the average man.

More Marlboroughh

“Marlborough: His Life and Times for Gift Giving,” 2023.

“The Eleventh Duke of Marlborough 1926-2014,” 2015.

Hillsdale College Churchill Project:

Anna Swartz: “English-Speaking Peoples: Queen Anne and Marlborough,” 2022.

Andrew Roberts: “Marlborough: In It, Churchill ‘Laid the Basis for His Own Greatness,'” 2019.

Churchill’s “overreaction”

One reader wrote that Churchill “overreacted” to the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne by members of the Jewish Lehi (Stern Gang).  This is to misjudge Churchill, who deplored terrorism regardless of its source.

From Churchill by Himself, 442, WSC, House of Commons, 17 November 1944. (Source: Sir Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, VII: 1052):

If our dreams for Zionism are to end in the smoke of assassins’ pistols, and our labours for its future to produce only a new set of gangsters worthy of Nazi Germany, many like myself will have to reconsider the position we have maintained so consistently and so long in the past. If there is to be any hope of a peaceful and successful future for Zionism, these wicked activities must cease. And those responsible for them must be destroyed root and branch.

Bombing Auschwitz

Another reader wrote: “Had Churchill given an order to bomb Auschwitz, rather than simply recommend that it be bombed, it would have been bombed. He did not do so, presumably, because he was loath to quarrel with his General Staff. He did not wish to stand accused of risking air crews to save Jewish lives that had no military value.”

It was more an order than a recommendation, but let that go. The more compelling idea was bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz, rather than the camp itself. The latter, as the Jewish Agency pointed out at the time, would have killed inmates who, it was hoped, would be liberated. (Remember, this was in 1944.) However, early requests by the Jewish Agency did not make this distinction (read on).

***

As to bombing railway lines, Churchill did not have plenary authority over the U.S. Army Air Force—the responsible agency for the Auschwitz sector. Martin Gilbert, in a 1993 lecture at the United States Holocaust Museum, Washington, noted that in mid-1944…

…five prisoners escaped from Auschwitz in order to bring news to the West of what was happening to the Jews there. Four were Jews. One was a Polish Catholic medical student.

The moment their information reached the West, and the truth of the gas chambers made clear, there was a tremendous and understandable outcry. (The first thing that has always struck me: What would have happened if these escapees had made their way West in 1943? Or even at the end of 1942?) The impact of their report on the Jewish and non-Jewish world was dramatic and traumatic….

On 6 July 1944, in a meeting with Anthony Eden, Chaim Weizmann and Moshe Shertok made five urgent and desperate suggestions. The fifth was that “the railway line leading from Budapest to Birkenau, and the death camp at Birkenau and other places, should be bombed.”

When Churchill saw this request by Eden, he did something I’ve not seen on any other document submitted to Churchill for his approval: He wrote on it what he wanted done.

Normally, he would have said, “Bring this up to War Cabinet on Wednesday,” or, “Let us discuss this with the Air Ministry.”

Instead, he wrote to Eden on the morning of 7 July: “Is there any reason to raise this matter with the Cabinet? Get anything out of the Air Force you can, and invoke me if necessary.”

The singularity of Churchill’s order

Martin Gilbert continued:

I have never seen a minute of Churchill’s giving that sort of immediate authority to carry out a request…. I suppose it is a great tragedy that all this had not taken place in July 1943 or October 1942. For when all is said and done, July 1944 was too late to save all but a final 100,000.

There is a vast subtext, in my book, Auschwitz and the Allies. British officials did not know on 7 July that the deportations had ceased. They had to deal with the Prime Minister’s request on the assumption that it still had some validity. Some revealed considerable distaste for carrying out any such instruction.

It is interesting, however, to note that when the request was put to the American Air Force Commander, General Ira C. Eaker, when he visited the Air Ministry a few days later, he gave it his full support. He regarded it as something that the American daylight bombers could and should do.

But as you know, the request died in Washington. On the second occasion it reached the Assistant Secretary of War, John J. McCloy. He told his assistant to kill it.. The debate about bombing the Auschwitz lines continued for more than a month after the lines were no longer in use.

From the bomber crews

Dr. Gilbert interviewed several of those who would have bombed the Auschwitz lines as Churchill had wished. Every one, without exception, was emphatic that he would have done it. Some expressed anger that they were not asked to do it. Sir Martin continues:

I even found the young man who had taken that aerial photograph of Auschwitz displayed in the Museum. He was South African photo reconnaissance pilot. He was in extreme distress that he had no idea what it was he was flying over.

If only he had known, the pilot continued, he could at least have tipped his wings, to signal those on the ground that someone knew they were there.

Winston Churchill instantly recognized the terrible crime. Sir Martin quotes his letter Anthony Eden on the day that the escapees’ account of Auschwitz reached them:

There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe.

It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.”

Further Reading

“Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill and the Holocaust,” 2024.

“The Polish and the Holocaust: What Churchill Knew,” 2021.

“Witold Polecki: A Brave Pole Who Did His Best for Liberty,” 2020.

“Bombing Auschwitz, from my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality,” 2020

The Hitler Essays:

“The Truth About Hitler,” The Strand Magazine, November 1935, Cohen C481.
“Hitler and His Choice,” Great Contemporaries (London and New York, 1937), Cohen A105.
“This Age of Government by Great Dictators,” News of the World, 10 October 1937, Cohen C535.7.

“Did Churchill ever admire Hitler?”

The question, perplexing on its face, is nevertheless sometimes asked. Critics have long quoted selectively from Churchill to show he was “for Hitler before he was against him.”

For Bavarian politician Franz Joseph Strauss, the proof was Churchill’s writing: “We may yet live to see Hitler a gentler figure in a happier age.”

Historian Robert Rhodes James said Churchill “sympathetically” described Hitler’s “long, wearying battle for the German heart.” In fact Churchill’s word was “wearing” not “wearying,” which was rather less sympathetic.

The subject of those essays didn’t think Churchill was sympathetic at all. After reading “The Truth About Hitler” in 1935, an infuriated Führer instructed his ambassador in London “to lodge a strong protest against ‘the personal attack on the head of the German state.’”

Hitler as “Great Contemporary”

“The Truth About Hitler,” first of the Hitler essays, appeared in late 1935. Deciding to republish it in his 1937 book Great Contemporaries, Churchill courteously submitted his text to Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office. This was a careful choice, since Vansittart had been somewhat supportive of Churchill’s demands for rearmament.

But Vansittart was on holiday, so Churchill’s draft was read by Clifford Norton, who recommended it not appear at all:

[I]t is hardly to be thought that this article would be at all palatable to the powers that be in Germany. In the present rather delicate state of our relations with that country, when one does not know which way the cat will jump, it might therefore be questioned whether republication just now was advisable.

Churchill agreed to certain deletions which would “take the sting out of the article,” but said he “would cut out nothing” that he wouldn’t say “on public platforms.” This did not prevent him from restoring some of his deletions in another newspaper article. (Read on.)

It has been questioned why Churchill made room in his book for Hitler. Was he more optimistic than he should have been about the Führer?  Perhaps—or as Martin Gilbert often quipped, “perhaps not.” Hitler was a popular subject for writers in the mid-1930s. Germany’s rearmament and intentions were mounting concerns. Yet, like all three of his Hitler essays, Churchill had little to say that was positive.

Churchill’s textual changes

What part of his 1935 article did Churchill alter in Great Contemporaries? What did the Foreign Office persuade him to “soften”? Bibliogarapher Ronald Cohen came to my aid with a line-by-line digital comparison of the “The Truth About Hitler” and the Great Contemporaries chapter. A Word document containing the 1935 text, showing 1937 deletions in strike-throughs and highlights, is available to readers via email.

This exercise was worth the trouble because it answered many questions. It shows that Churchill barely changed his sentiments between 1935 and 1937. His deletions mainly involve events well known in 1935 that were old news in 1937. His view of the Führer remained consistent.

Minor alterations

There was only one significant deletion in the early part of the Great Contemporaries chapter. That was Churchill’s 1935 assertion that history would “determine whether [Hitler] will rank in Valhalla with Pericles, with Augustus and with Washington, or welter in the inferno of human scorn with Attila and Tamerlane.”

It is not clear what if anything the Foreign Office saw wrong with that. Churchill may have pulled it as a gesture of compliance. Or maybe, by 1937, he had decided that Hitler wouldn’t rank with Washington….

Nor were those words gone for long. On 10 October 1937, six days after publishing Great Contemporaries, they reappeared. This was in Churchill’s third Hitler article, “This Age of Government by Great Dictators,” for News of the World. For good measure, he wrote of Hitler’s “guilt of blood” and “wicked” methods.

Was this third essay a defiance of the Foreign Office? ​Or was it simply written because Churchill was too good a writer to omit a memorable line? Whatever the reason, it does not materially change ​his opinion of Hitler.

Other early changes to the 1935 text were almost all for readability or currency. A minor deletion was his reference to Heinrich Brüning, the anti-Hitler Chancellor of Weimer Germany in 1930-32. In his original Strand article, Churchill wrote that the Nazis “even drove the patriotic Brüning, under threat of murder, from German soil.”

Safe in America, Brüning became a professor of government at Harvard, where he continued to warn of German and Soviet expansionism. In 1937 Churchill asked him to proofread his Great Contemporaries Hitler chapter. Brüning’s only comment was, “I admire very much your description of the feelings of the German people in these fourteen years after the War and the characteristics of the British policy at that time.”

The major deletion

Not apparent until Ronald Cohen’s textual comparison was a long passage at the end of the 1935 Strand article removed from Great Contemporaries. It described the “Night of the Long Knives” in 1934, when Hitler purged Ernst Röhm and the Sturmabteilung (SA). This appears in no edition of the book, nor the Churchill Collected Essays. 

This passage did not appear in Churchill’s third article, “Government of Great Dictators.”  It may well have been considered provocative by the Foreign Office, albeit dated. Readers must judge for themselves. Since it is otherwise inaccessible, we reproduced it in full on the Churchill Project website. Here are excerpts.

From “Government of Great Dictators”

[On 30 June 1934] many hundreds of men and some women were put to death in Germany without law, without accusation, without trial. These persons represented many varieties of life and thought of Germany. There were Nazis and anti-Nazis. There were Generals and Communists; there were Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. Some were rich and some were poor; some were young and some were old; some were famous and some were humble. But all had one thing in common, namely, that they were deemed to be obnoxious or obstructive to the Hitler regime. Therefore, they were blotted out.

The history of the world is full of gruesome, squalid episodes of this kind, from the butcheries of ancient Rome and the numberless massacres which have stained the history of Asia down to the “smellings out” of the Zulu and Hottentot witch doctors. But in all its ups and downs mankind has always recoiled in horror from such events…

Adolf Hitler took upon himself the full responsibility…. But the astounding thing is that the great German people, educated, scientific, philosophical, romantic, the people of the Christmas tree, the people of Goethe and Schiller, of Bach and Beethoven, Heine, Leibnitz, Kant and a hundred other great names, have not only not resented this horrible blood-bath, but have endorsed it and acclaimed its author with the honours not only of a sovereign but almost of a god….

Can we really believe that a hierarchy and society built upon such deeds can be entrusted with the possession of the most prodigious military machinery yet planned among men? Can we believe that by such powers the world may regain “the joy, the peace and glory of mankind”? The answer, if answer there be, other than the most appalling negative, is contained in that mystery called HITLER.

The Hitler essays in retrospect

Churchill’s views plainly underwent no significant change during the two years spanning his three Hitler essays. If his original description of the Röhm purge disappeared, it did not affect the tenor of what he left in.

There is something about those excised passages that arrests the eye today. Because on 7 October 2023, much the same thing happened in Israel.

“All manner of people” were killed by murderers who “caught them in the streets, shot them in their beds, shot the wife who threw herself before her husband…. Sinister volleys succeeded each other through a long morning, afternoon and night.”

And again mankind recoiled in horror. The only difference seems to be that in 1934 Germany, “relations who ventured to inquire for the missing father, brother or son received, after a considerable interval, a small urn containing cremated ashes.” In 2023, the barbarians didn’t bother to do that.

Further reading

“Winston Churchill on Peace with Hitler,” 2023.

“Did Hitler Authorize the Flight of Rudolf Hess?” 2023.

“Hitler’s Sputtering Austrian Anschluss: Opportunity Missed?” 2020.

“The Myth that Churchill Admired Hitler,” 2017.

Q: Did Ike offer to go? 

This question involves the weeks before Operation Overlord, the invasion of France in 1944. The producer of a forthcoming documentary asks if General Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander, threatened to resign over bombing policy. The specific question: “Was Churchill so fixated on bombing German cities that he resisted supplying bombers for D-Day?” 

A: Neither truth nor heresy 

The answer is twofold. Yes, Eisenhower threatened to resign over bombing policy. No, it was not because Churchill wanted withhold bombers in order to maintain bombing of German cities. Contrary to popular cant, Churchill was never an enthusiast of bombing cities; he was the only Allied leader ever to question the practice. (See “The Myth of Dresden and Revenge Firebombing.”)  

Eisenhower’s threat to resign was not made to Churchill, but to his colleagues, General Carl Spaatz and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris.

A related subject is Churchill’s pre-D-Day concern for French civilian casualties—another expression of his sense of morality versus the exigencies of total war. That is also a reminder of current proportional concerns for Gaza.

The vital role of air power 

Dwight Eisenhower appreciated the importance of air superiority. The February 1943 first encounter of U.S. and Axis forces in Africa was at the Kasserine Pass. German General Irwin Rommel inflicted a disastrous defeat, thanks in part to U.S. air power being assigned to local commanders. In his book Crusade in Europe, Eisenhower explained that the invasion of Europe could not happen “until we had established ourselves so firmly that danger of defeat was eliminated—all air forces in Britain, excepting only the Coastal Command, should come under my control.” 

Defeat at Normandy, Eisenhower wrote, would have meant redeploying all U.S. forces accumulated in Britain. “The setback to Allied morale and determination would be so profound that it was beyond calculation.”

In that event, Russia might consider her Allies “completely futile and helpless,” even make a separate peace with Hitler. “[W]hen a battle needs the last ounce of available force,” Eisenhower wrote, “the commander must not be in the position of depending upon request and negotiation….”

Eisenhower’s ultimatum 

The crunch came on Saturday, 25 March 1944. The historian Rebecca Grant wrote: “Eisenhower convened a meeting to settle the issues. On the Wednesday prior, he grimly thought through the idea that if he did not get the decision he wanted, ‘I am going to take drastic action and inform the combined chiefs of staff that unless the matter is settled at once I will request relief from this command.'”*

Lieutenant-General Carl Spaatz, commanding U.S. Strategic Air Forces, believed that air superiority would best be achieved by “sustained strategic bombing of synthetic fuel plants and aircraft factories.” Royal Air Force Marshal Arthur Harris also dissented. He opposed diverting his nighttime bombing of German cities.

Churchill first supported Spaatz and Harris, but in Washington, Generals George Marshall and “Hap” Arnold backed Eisenhower. Churchill then deferred to Roosevelt, who would not countermand his supreme commander. By early April, Harris had come around, and Eisenhower had overruled Spaatz.

*Rebecca Grant, “Eisenhower, Master of Air Power,” Air & Space Forces, 1 January 2000.

Bombing France 

An adjunct to this question is a controversy often involving Churchill: civilian bombing casualties. Pre-Normandy bombing targeted German railroad marshaling yards and airfields in France. Estimates were circulating of French civilian losses as high as 80,000.

Churchill acted with his sense of morality and concern for French allies. On 3 May 1944, he importuned the War Cabinet. What he feared, he told them, was “propaganda to the effect that, while the Russian and German armies advanced bravely despite the lack of air superiority, the British and Americans relied on the ruthless employment of air power regardless of the cost in civilian casualties.”

Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden said French reaction to these necessary bombings had so far been good. But Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee voiced alarm. The “political disadvantages of the plan,” Attlee said, “outweighed its military advantages.”

Churchill asked Air Marshal Tedder whether he could accept a limit of 10,000 French civilian deaths up to D-Day. Tedder said yes. In fact, only 3000-4000 had been killed to date. 

“Piling up an awful load of hatred” 

The “Transportation Plan,” as it was known, went ahead in the weeks preceding D-Day. Churchill followed it with mounting concern. “Terrible things are being done,” he wrote Eden. “The thing is getting much worse.”

To Tedder he wrote they should have attacked the German armies, which “involve no French casualties. You are piling up an awful load of hatred. I do not agree that the best targets were chosen. Have you exceeded the 10,000 limit?”

June 6th came and the troops swarmed ashore at Normandy. Churchill’s alarm proved unfounded. French civilian losses in pre-D-Day bombings remained under the limit he had set.

Some care, some don’t

As supporters of Israel argue over the current civilian casualties in Gaza, this history is relevant. It seems that civilian casualties only occur to leaders of civilized governments. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and certainly Hamas, never worried about deaths of innocents.

In 1944, the arguments, heart searchings and constant changes of targets continued almost up to D-Day. The 1945 Battle of Manila (which had half Gaza’s population) resulted in 250,000 civilian casualties including 100,000 deaths. When told that statistic, Prime Minister Netanyahu was astonished: “100,000…well, we have incurred considerably fewer.” (The proportion is on the order of 15 to 1.)

Civilian casualties: further reading

“The Myth of Dresden and ‘Revenge Firebombing,'” 2023.

“Winston Churchill’s Revulsion Over Napalm Bombing,” 2023.

“Bombing Auschwitz: ‘Get Everything Out of the Air Force You Can,'” 2020.

“Bombing Japan: Churchill’s View,” 2016.

“Churchill and the Bombing of Coventry,” 2012.

“Winston Churchill and the Use of Chemical Warfare,” 2015.

John Spencer – Benjamin Netanyahu Interview, 27 February 2024.

Churchill as sinker of ships? Sir Winston has been blamed for the loss of the Titanic, and for sinking the U.S. Pacific fleet (by not tipping off the Americans to his advance intelligence) at Pearl Harbor. Why not the Lusitania as well? No worries, the experts were on to that one years ago.

Lusitania redux

On 7 May 1915, Royal Mail Ship Lusitania was sunk within sight of land by a German submarine. Of her 1962 passengers and crew, 1199 (some estimates are higher) lost their lives. In the midst of the Dardanelles-Gallipoli crisis, the tragedy seemed incidental to some. Yet for a century, rumors swirled that Lusitania was deliberately sacrificed by the British, chiefly Churchill. His alleged aim was to infuriate the Americans, bringing them into the war against Germany. More recently, critics charged that Churchill’s Admiralty purposely contrived to steer the ship into harm’s way. 

The complaint against Churchill reached critical mass in Colin Simpson’s The Lusitania (1972). This popular work was selected by four book clubs and excerpted in the Reader’s Digest and Life. Simpson’s charges have frequently been repeated, especially since the arrival of the Internet. As recently as 2014, a book on Franklin Roosevelt, The Mantle of Command, casually alleged that the Churchill had a role in the loss of the “ill-fated American liner.”

The Lusitania was British, not American, operated by Cunard, commanded by Captain William Turner RNR. Inbound from New York, she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 eleven miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. She experienced two explosions, the second catastrophic, and sank in only eighteen minutes. Among those lost were 128 Americans. 

Scholarly testimony to the most logical events has been published, but lacking glitz and pathos, it tends to be ignored. Yet rebuttals to Simpson’s claims were in print long before his book, which mainly resurrected old canards.

“Armed cruiser containing troops and munitions” 

After the sinking, the German government referred to its prior warnings to travelers to avoid the vessels of Germany’s enemies. Such ships were liable to be sunk, the Germans declared, particularly if they were armed. Simpson described the sighting of the liner, by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger: “either the Lusitania or the Mauretania [her identical sister], both armed cruisers used for trooping.”

If that was how Schwieger saw her, it is inaccurate. RMS Lusitania (built in 1908 with possible wartime use in mind) did have twelve emplacements for small, six-inch guns. But she carried none. If she did, she certainly would have been an “armed cruiser.” Nor were any troops aboard. 

Even if guns weren’t mounted, Simpson argued, they were there—not explaining what use they would be unmounted. Historian Thomas Bailey confounded even that argument, writing that a German reservist claiming to have seen mounted guns “confessed [to] perjury.” M.R. Dow, a reviewer with family connections to Cunard and the ship, wrote: “Simpson must have seen a German propaganda poster showing the Lusitania with guns popping out all over.”

“Explosives payload” 

Another claim is that Lusitania carried a huge cargo of guncotton, whose detonation blew the bottom out. “This is also pure fantasy,” wrote Dow. Simpson’s explosives count nearly equalled “all the explosives delivered to the Western Front.”

Witnesses confirmed two explosions, the first caused by a German torpedo, the second of unknown but conspiratorial interest. The Lusitania was “loaded with munitions,” goes the story; these caused the second explosion, which did most of the damage. More recent scholarship suggests the second explosion occurred when incoming sea water hit the ship’s boilers.

The Germans’ best case for claiming that Lusitania was a ship of war was an order by the British Admiralty for merchant vessels to ram U-boats. But this was not their main line of defense. Speed, not ramming, was the ocean liner’s chief advantage. At her flank speed of 28 knots, Lusitania was three times as fast as a submerged U-boat, and nearly twice as fast as one on the surface.  

Sailing into danger 

The scholar Harry V. Jaffa placed most of the blame on human error: “Not only was her steam reduced; her crew was also…. Lifeboat davits were virtually unworkable from the moment the ship began to list. But the greatest of all the failures was the captain’s, since he navigated almost exactly as he would have done in peacetime.” Captain Turner had slowed down after striking the Irish coast in order to arrive with the tide at Merseyside. 

In the 1930s, political opponents anxious to discredit Churchill’s warnings about Hitler claimed he had purposely endangered Lusitania. This view was widely held by the Germans, including the Kaiser, Bailey wrote: “No evidence has ever been presented to support the theory.”

In 1972, Simpson claimed that Lusitania had “sailing orders” instructing Turner to rendezvous with a naval escort, the cruiser HMS Juno, off southwest Ireland. This put her on a direct course for U-boat-infested areas. But Sir Courtenay Bennett, the British Consul-General in New York, was quoted by Simpson as saying no such orders were issued.

Captain Turner never referred to any orders, and Churchill said they would have made no sense. The navy did not have the resources to escort hundreds of merchant ships. Exceptions were sometimes made, but not for fast ships like Lusitania. “In a channel, where she could not maneuver, the Lusitania might well have needed an escort,” Jaffa wrote. “But why she should need one forty miles west of Fastnet is something it was incumbent upon Mr. Simpson to explain.”

Lusitania “was now alone” 

The second allegation against Churchill is a meeting said to have occurred on 5 May 1915 in the Admiralty map room. Present were Churchill, First Sea Lord Fisher, Chief of Naval War Staff Admiral Oliver, Director of Naval Intelligence Captain Hall, and Commander Kenworthy of Naval Intelligence. On the map were markers denoting U-20 (apparently the British knew exactly where she was), Juno and Lusitania, “closing Fastnet at upwards of 20 knots.”  

Simpson writes: “Admiral Oliver drew to Churchill’s attention the fact that the Juno was unsuitable for exposure to submarine attack without escort, and suggested that elements of the destroyer flotilla from Milford Haven should be sent forthwith to her assistance.” Here, Simpson wrote, “the Admiralty War Diary stops short…. Shortly after noon on May 5 the Admiralty signaled Juno to abandon her escort mission and return to Queenstown…. The Lusitania was not informed that she was now alone….

Churchill’s “conspiracy” 

The “Admiralty War Diary” mentioned in this melodramatic paragraph appears nowhere else in Simpson’s book, not even the bibliography. No historian has found it. Professor Jaffa concluded that it was mix of accurate records and sheer supposition: “However much the ebullient Churchill interested himself in naval operations, it was not his primary task to make operational decisions”—particularly in the presence of Fisher, with whom Churchill was then “quarreling bitterly over the Dardanelles.” (Fisher resigned ten days later.) 

The only eyewitness Simpson offered was Commander Joseph Kenworthy, later Baron Strabolgi, a Liberal turned Labourite and prominent pacifist. In his 1927 book, The Freedom of the Seas, he said Lusitania “was sent at considerably reduced speed into an area where a U-boat was known to be waiting and with her escorts withdrawn.” The only part of this that is credible is the last four words.  

HMS Juno (laid down 1898) made no sense as an escort. Her top speed was 19.5 knots, well below Lusitania’s. It might be argued that Turner with his “sailing orders” slowed to rendezvous with Juno, having not been “informed” he was “now alone.” But Turner, who survived, never confirmed this. 

Sailing orders that did exist 

In recounting the tragedy in 1937, Churchill himself quoted four distinct Admiralty orders: 

6 May, 0050: To all British ships: Avoid headlands. Pass harbours at full speed. Steer mid-Channel course. Submarines off Fastnet. 

6 May, 0750: To Lusitania: Submarines active off south coast of Ireland. 

7 May, 1125:  To all British ships: Submarines active in southern part of Irish Channel. Last heard of south of Coningbeg Lighthouse. Make certain Lusitania gets this.”  

7 May, 1240: To Lusitania: Submarines five miles south of Cape Clear proceeding west when sighted at 10 am. 

The ship acknowledged all these messages.

Summary 

Except for Kenworthy’s account, no other evidence, even circumstantial, exists of a conspiracy to sink the Lusitania. The chief cause of her loss was Captain Turner’s decision, after sighting the Irish coast, to proceed northward at reduced speed to “make the tide” at Merseyside, as he would have in peacetime. He did not avoid headlands. He did not zig-zag, a routine precaution in submarine-infested waters. Though he had the time, he did not head out to deeper waters, maintaining speed to minimize the danger. At his normal cruising speed, there was far less chance of a successful torpedo attack. There was no advantage and every danger in slowing down. 

Should destroyers have accompanied her? Perhaps. But as Lusitania historian David Ramsay noted: “…the Dardanelles operation entailed the diversion from home waters of destroyers—the one class of ship in which the Royal Navy had a negligible superiority over the Germans. Commenting on the loss of the Lusitania…Admiral Duff wrote: ‘Indirectly the Dardanelles operation contributed; the [destroyers] that should be guarding merchant shipping are being used there.’”

Ramsay, writing in 2004, confirmed the findings of Bailey and Jaffa. He also quoted historians Stephen Roskill and David Stafford, “who are at one in rejecting any conspiracy, by Churchill or anyone else.”

“Who Sank the Titanic? Hopefully Not Churchill Again,” 2019.

“Churchill Knew About Pearl Harbor,” 2015.

“Sinking the Lusitania”, by The Churchill Project, 2020. The first chapter of Nigel Hamilton’s book, The Mantle of Command, states that RMS Lusitania was an “ill-fated American liner.”  He leaves the impression that Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, had played a role in the sinking in order to get the United States into the First World War. Any comment? 

“Churchill Contentions: The Age of Fable and Myth,” by Richard M. Langworth, 2020. Churchill, who won a Nobel Prize, and did a few other things, cannot reply. He lies at Bladon in English earth, “which in his finest hour he held inviolate.” He’d love the controversy he stirs, on media he never dreamed of. He once said the vision “of middle-aged gentlemen who are my political opponents being in a state of uproar and fury is really quite exhilarating to me.”

Hitler to the Reichstag, 7 March 1936

“We dedicate ourselves to achieving an understanding between the peoples of Europe and particularly an understanding with our Western peoples and neighbors. After three years, I believe that, with the present day, the struggle for German equal rights can be regarded as closed…. We have no territorial claims to make in Europe.” (Following this speech, Hitler dissolved the Reichstag.)

The Rhineland challenge 

The Rhineland in western Germany is bordered by the River Rhine in the east and France and the Benelux countries in the west. It includes the industrial Ruhr Valley, the famous cities of Aachen, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, Koblenz, Mannheim and Weissbaden, and several bridgeheads into Germany proper. 

After the end of the First World War, the Rhineland was occupied by the victorious Allies. Though the occupation was set to last through 1935, military forces withdrew in 1930 as a good-will gesture to the Weimar Republic. The Allies retained the right to reoccupy the Rhineland should Germany violate the Treaty of Versailles. 

In March 1936, a few thousand German troops marched into the Rhineland while the populace waved swastika flags. The soldiers had orders to “turn back and not to resist” if challenged by the all-dominant French Army. Hitler later said that the forty-eight hours following his action were the tensest of his life.

Churchill’s defenders correctly cite the Rhineland as confirming his warnings about Hitler. But what Churchill actually proposed to do about it is not as clear.

“Confronted by terrible circumstances” 

In January 1936, Churchill predicted that a Rhineland incursion would raise “a very grave European issue…. The League of Nations Union folk, who have done their best to get us disarmed, may find themselves confronted by terrible circumstances.”

Hitler’s future foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, recorded how Hitler conceived of slipping the occupation past the Western allies. Summoning Ribbentrop in January, Hitler said: “[I]t occurred to me last night how we can occupy the Rhineland without any friction. We return to the League!” Germany had left the League of Nations in 1933.  

Ribbentrop said he too (of course) had this very idea. He suggested they strike while the French and British were on one of their weekend holidays. Hitler acted on Saturday March 7th. France, he said had abrogated the Rhineland agreements by a military alliance with Russia. 

True to plan, Hitler added a sweetener, proposing “a real pacification of Europe between states that are equal in rights.” Germany would return to the League of Nations, provided her colonies, stripped at Versailles, were returned. 

Would France march? 

The question turned on France. Would she reassert control of the Rhineland? Or just dither and do nothing? Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, was sanguine: Great Britain would stand by France, and he offered military staff conversations. 

Unfortunately for staff conversations, the French military was led by General Maurice Gamelin, a “nondescript fonctionnaire.” The French government may have yearned for a way to stop Hitler. Gamelin and his military colleagues were more worried about stopping him from invading France proper.

British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin believed France was unwilling to act—with or without Britain. Churchill was unsure, given the resolve of French Foreign Minister Pierre Flandin. Four days after Hitler’s action Flandin visited London. Churchill recalled: 

He told me he proposed to demand from the British Government simultaneous mobilisation of the land, sea, and air forces of both countries, and that he had received assurances of support from all the nations of the “Little Entente” [Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugoslavia] and from other States. He read out an impressive list of the replies received. There was no doubt that superior strength still lay with the Allies of the former war. They had only to act to win.

Baldwin’s reluctance 

Churchill urged Flandin to press his views with Baldwin, who was unsympathetic. He knew little of foreign affairs, he said, but he did know the British people wanted peace. Flandin modified his plea. Suppose the Anglo-French “invite” Hitler to leave, pending negotiations, which would probably restore the Rhineland to Germany anyway? Even this was too risky for Baldwin. “I have not the right to involve England,” he said. “Britain is not in a state to go to war.” Flandin was deflated, and as Baldwin suspected, the French cabinet was divided.

The pressure in Britain to avoid action was strong. At a dinner of ex-servicemen in Leicester, one of Churchill’s supporters, Leo Amery, gave a fiery speech. Britain’s very existence was threatened, he exclaimed. To the amazement of one observer, the ex-servicemen sided with the Germans. They said in effect: Why shouldn’t they have their own territory back? It’s no concern of ours.

“No fresh perplexities” 

Publicly, Churchill was being cautious. “I was careful not to diverge in the slightest degree from my attitude of severe though friendly criticism of Government policy,” he wrote. The friendliness is more evident than the severity. Churchill did urge a “coordinated plan” under the League of Nations to help France challenge the German action. This was denied. Sir Samuel Hoare replied that the necessary participants in such a plan were “totally unprepared from a military point of view.” 

Churchill had political reasons for treading lightly. He had been urging creation of a Ministry of Defense or Supply, which he hoped to be named to head. Baldwin duly announced a “Minister for the Coordination of Defense,” which was something less entirely. Worse, the job went to Solicitor General Sir Thomas Inskip, who knew nothing of the subject. 

Inskip’s appointment disappointed Churchill, who, hoping to be called to office, had carefully avoided public criticism of the government. Baldwin, Churchill reminisced, “thought, no doubt, that he had dealt me a politically fatal stroke, and I felt he might well be right.”

Churchill as peacemaker 

But Churchill still had an audience. He now began a series of fortnightly articles on foreign affairs for the Evening Standard. In the first, “Britain, Germany and Locarno,” he renewed his call for League of Nations intercession on the Rhineland. He insisted that there was a peaceful way to resolve the problem: 

The Germans claim that the Treaty of Locarno has been ruptured by the Franco-Soviet pact. That is their case and it is one that should be argued before the World Court at The Hague. The French have expressed themselves willing to submit this point to arbitration and to abide by the result. Germany should be asked to act in the same spirit and to agree. If the German case is good and the World Court pronounces that the Treaty of Locarno has been vitiated by the Franco-Soviet pact, then clearly the German action, although utterly wrong in method, can not be seriously challenged by the League of Nations.

This is not Churchill the defiant critic of appeasement, but Churchill the statesman. At this point he was urging prudence and adjudication. He did warn that if the League failed in its duty, it might cause events to “slide remorselessly downhill towards the pit in which Western civilization might be fatally engulfed.”  

He continued to urge strength and resolution: “I desire to see the collective forces of the world invested with overwhelming power. If you are going to depend on a slight margin, one way or the other, you will have war.”

Collective Security 

Churchill’s next article returned to his theme of unified action. This was no task for France and Britain alone, he declared. It was a task for all: “There may still be time. Let the States and people who lie in fear of Germany carry their alarms to the League of Nations at Geneva.” In the absence of French military action he was falling back on Collective Security. 

Aside from political considerations, Churchill was attempting to see things from the view of Britain’s closest ally. The French were “afraid of the Germans,” he wrote to The Times; France had joined the sanctions against Italy over Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Abyssinia, and the resulting estrangement had given Hitler his Rhineland opportunity: 

In fact Mr. Baldwin’s Government, from the very highest motives, endorsed by the country at the General Election, has, without helping Abyssinia at all, got France into grievous trouble which has to be compensated by the precise engagement of our armed forces. Surely in the light of these facts, undisputed as I deem them to be, we might at least judge the French, with whom our fortunes appear to be so decisively linked, with a reasonable understanding….

Did Churchill waver? 

Winston Churchill favored a collective response to the Rhineland, recognizing its implications. One event followed the other, as the hardline Member of Parliament Robert Boothby recorded later:   

The military occupation of the Rhineland separated France from her allies in Eastern Europe. The occupation of Austria isolated Czechoslovakia. The betrayal of Czechoslovakia by the West isolated Poland. The defeat of Poland isolated France. The defeat of France isolated Britain. If Britain had been defeated, the United States would have been given true and total isolation for the first time.

Churchill certainly would have backed French reoccupation of the Rhineland. But evidence suggests that he knew the League was toothless. Churchill’s theme did not dramatically change in 1936; it merely evolved. As early as 1933 he had declared:  “Whatever way we turn there is risk. But the least risk and the greatest help will be found in re-creating the Concert of Europe.”

That was not to be. The failure of a concerted response over the Rhineland was to be repeated. Each time western statesmen hoped the latest Hitler inroad would be his last.

Prudence and statesmanship 

It is the belief of many thoughtful historians that Churchill said and did nothing about the Rhineland, even in the weeks after he had been denied office. His actions are more complex than that. He did give mixed signals, but he also proposed solutions. When France refused unilateral action, he favored collective action. His public declarations were hardly a clarion call. But we must bear in mind also that he was not in office.  

Churchill never admired Hitler, except in the narrow sense of Hitler’s political skills. There is no doubt that he spoke well of Mussolini, up to 1940. Was this because he admired Fascism, or because he hoped to influence the Italian dictator? Until the mid-1930s, Italo-German relations were precarious.

The Rhineland marked Churchill’s final disillusionment over the League of Nations. It impelled his efforts to secure Collective Security through “a coalition of the willing” (to use a more recent and perhaps uncomfortable phrase). The problem was that the willing were few—and demonstrably unwilling to cooperate. 

Author’s note 

This essay appeared in longer form in my book, Churchill and the Avoidable War: Could World War II Have Been Prevented? (2015). It was prompted years before by Robert Rhodes James’s argument that Churchill said and did nothing to stop Hitler over the Rhineland. I argued otherwise, and he kindly agreed to hear me out. Alas my piece appeared too late for his lifetime, and cost me his almost certain learned response. I miss my friend. RML 

Related articles

“Great Contemporaries: The Three Lives of Churchill’s Hitler Essays,” 2024.

“Robert Rhodes James: ‘A Good House of Commons Man,” 2023.

“Churchill and the Avoidable War,” 2015.

“Was the Second World War Avoidable?,” 2015.

Churchill on sacking generals

“It is difficult to remove a bad General at the height of a campaign; it is atrocious to remove a good General.” —WSC, 6 November 1942

A reader asked how Churchill’s firing of two popular generals in 1941-42 compared to the sacking of Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War commander, by President Truman in 1951. There is no comparison.

Churchill’s generals, Archibald Wavell and Claude Auchinleck, were removed in the hope of more vigorous operations against Irwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Moreover, the British generals continued their careers and honorable service. MacArthur was relieved for insubordination to the civilian authority. Though briefly mooted as a presidential candidate, he never served again. “They started raising money to buy him a Cadillac,” Harry Truman cracked. “He never got that car.” (MacArthur might have replied as did Mrs. Robert Taft, who said, “I’m just mild about Harry.”)

Archibald Wavell

General Wavell (1883-1950) was relieved of the British Middle East Command on 21 June 1941. In effect, he changed places with General Claude Auchinleck, becoming Commander-in-Chief India and, two years later, India’s Viceroy.

Churchill wrote that Wavell “received the decision with poise and dignity…. On reading my message he said, ‘The Prime Minister is quite right. There ought to be a new eye and a new hand in this theatre.’ In regard to the new command he placed himself entirely at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government.” [1] Earlier, Churchill had expressed an opinion of Wavell that never wavered: “A master of war, sage, painstaking, daring and tireless.” [2]

Wavell remained in the Army until 1943, when he became Viceroy of India. His first and most important action was to take steps to relieve the Bengal Famine. There he served until 1947.

Claude Auchinleck

General Auchinleck, known as “The Auk” (1884-1981), lost his Middle East Command on 8 August 1942. Churchill offered him the Iraq and Persia Command. Auchinleck declined, believing it was wrong to separate those from the Middle East. He returned to India, and when Wavell became Viceroy he reassumed command of the Indian Army. He retired in 1947 after forty-three years of distinguished service.

The Auk had won the First Battle of Alamein in July 1942. His plans to finish Rommel were in place when he was relieved. Nevertheless, Churchill wrote, he “received the stroke with soldierly dignity.” [3]

“It was a terrible thing to have to do,” WSC added later. “He took it like a gentleman. But it was a terrible thing. It is difficult to remove a bad General at the height of a campaign; it is atrocious to remove a good General. We must use Auchinleck again. We cannot afford to lose such a man from the fighting line.” [4] Churchill—safe in his own skin and utterly disdaining opinion polls—could confidently say such a thing.

The lost art of leaving quietly

The two relieved generals placed themselves at the government’s disposal. They left their commands professing esteem for their civilian chiefs, and vice-versa. They retired years later after illustrious careers.

Leaving quietly was what you did in those bygone days. Lord Halifax in 1940 proposed negotiations with Hitler; rejected by the War Cabinet, he did not offer interviews to air his grievances. Nor would such an act of public disloyalty have occurred to him. George Marshall, a great man, had many disagreements with his civilian chiefs. Offered a million dollars for his memoirs, he declined, saying, “I have already been adequately compensated for my services.”

Endnotes

[1] Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance (London: Cassell, 1950), 310.

[2] Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963, 8 vols. (New York: Bowker, 1974) VI: 6346.

[3] Winston S. Churchill, The Hinge of Fate (London: Cassell, 1951), 422.

[4] Harold Nicolson Diary, 6 November 1942, in Nigel Nicolson, ed., Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, vol. II 1945-67 (London: Collins, 1967), 259.

[5] World Association of International Studies, 24 June 2010.

Further reading

“On Good News from Generals: Churchill’s Experience and Methods,” 2021.

“Winston Churchill’s Three Best War Books,” 2020.

Raymond Callahan, “Great Contemporaries: Wavell, Man of Silences,” 2021.

Raymond Callahan, “Great Contemporaries: Auchinleck, Soldier of the Raj,” 2021.

Having written about cars and Winston Churchill for fifty years, I finally produced a piece on them both. From exotica like Mors, Napier and Rolls-Royce to more prosaic makes like Austin, Humber and Wolseley, the story was three decades in coming. But I am satisfied that it is now complete.

Humber for the Man

After the war, Lord Rootes and Churchill became close friends, exchanging Christmas gifts and farm animals, even collaborating politically. “So sorry that we did not do better in Coventry,” Rootes wrote after the 1950 general election.

Churchill was offered a new Mark III Humber Pullman that October, but demurred. The Tories had lost only narrowly, and he was sure he’d be returned to office soon. The following year they won. He remained prime minister until he retired in 1955.

By then he needed a new limo, but Humber had discontinued the Pullman. Churchill was forlorn: “I’m sure you could build one for me if you tried,” he wrote his friend. “You can’t let me down now, I need another Pullman that I can stretch out in.”

The sympathetic Billy Rootes found a low-mileage Mark IV and expensively rebuilt it. Technically works property, it remained on loan to Churchill for the rest of his life. It is now at the Louwman Museum in The Hague, Netherlands.

Churchill was a loyal Rootes customer. He bought a Hillman Minx in 1948, a Hillman Husky in 1958. In 1955, marking his 80th birthday the previous November, the Rootes Group presented him with a 1956 Humber Hawk Mark VIA estate, “a token of our appreciation of his services not only to the country, but to all of us.” The Hawk often accompanied Churchill on his holidays in France, where it was ideal for transporting his oil painting paraphernalia. 

Auxiliaries

Notable among Chartwell’s postwar farm vehicles was an army-surplus Jeep supplied by Wolfe’s Garage in Westerham (still doing business). Phil Johnson, a mechanic, devised a step to help Churchill climb in and out: “I altered it several times to his instructions. He was a meticulous man.”

In 1954, Churchill was presented by the Rover factory with a new Land Rover. It bore the number plate UKE 80. Rover said this stood for “UK Empire” and eighty years.”

UKE plates were current at the time in Kent, so it must have been easy to get one. I suspect Rover might have hunted around for the owner of UKE 80 to get the number they wanted, plates being transferable in Britain.

The technician who delivered the Land Rover offered to find some rough terrain to demonstrate where it could go: Sir Winston’s response was that he wanted to see terrain where it couldn’t go.

Dead shot

He often rode shotgun to his son-in-law on Chartwell Farm. Once they drove up to a square of uncut wheat, where workers had cornered a rabbit. Aged 80, Churchill alighted, grabbed his piece, and dispatched the hare with one shot. “He was a great marksman,” said Christopher Soames. The Land Rover sold at auction for £129,000 in 2012.

At the end there were two Morris Oxfords: Farina saloons, mostly used by Clementine Churchill. George Weatherley of the Cambridge-Oxford Owners Club has tracked both; they are currently insured, but not taxed. In 2013 the ’64 made £51,000 at auction, through its famous association. There is however no Churchill record of a Vanden Plas 4 Litre R allegedly owned by Lady Churchill, destroyed in a banger car race a few years ago.

“Familiars”

The Churchill car roster lists several “familiars”—not Churchill’s, but known to or used by him.

The best-known over his last years was a 1934 Rolls-Royce 20/25 limousine by Thrupp & Maberly, hired from Frank Jenner of Westerham.

Jenner said he bought the car because Sir Winston hankered for a Rolls-Royce, perhaps recalling his old Silver Ghost with more pleasure than it gave in 1921. In it, Jenner said, Churchill made his last journey from Chartwell to London, in October 1964. He died there three months later. This beautiful Rolls is available for hire from Advantage CarHire.

To the last, Churchill’s staff remembered the sense of urgency so characteristic of the man. In the old Humber, “Murray, the detective, would sit at [the chauffeur’s] side, quietly murmuring, ‘slow down here’ or ‘pull in to the left a little more,’” wrote Roy Howells, a male nurse.

“At the back Sir Winston would be…tapping on the glass partition and calling out, ‘Go on!’ Whenever he felt Bullock was slow in overtaking he would lean forward and bellow, ‘Now!’ It does Bullock great credit that he never really took the chances his passenger would have liked….”

Addendum: Churchill’s last ride

BBC Regional News reports that the Austin Vanden Plas hearse which transported Sir Winston’s coffin at his funeral has been fully restored. The work was by done by Jo Burge of Classic Marine Engines in Suffolk.

The Vanden Plas was used for some time on funeral work, but deteriorated over the years and was head for the scrap heap. Bristol Memorial Woodlands had it restored—a frame-off project which took Burge three years. “It wasn’t really the car we were restoring,” Burge told the BBC. “It was the story.”

“Sir Winston was not a motorist but enjoyed good transport as a means to an end,” recalled Phil Johnson. “Comfort and reliability came through as paramount. He saw cars as incredible time wasters and they were surely not his scene.” Well, they are ours—and intertwine amusingly with the saga of the great man.

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Britain’s Antonine Age 

The columnist George Will quoted a famous line by Churchill: “The leadership of the privileged has passed away, but it has not been succeeded by that of the eminent.”

The rest of Churchill’s remark was worth including: “The pedestals which had for some years been vacant have now been demolished. Nevertheless, the world is moving on, and moving so fast that few have time to ask, ‘Whither?’ And to these few only a babel responds.”

By “privileged,” Will presumably referred to the old aristocracy that governed Victorian Britain, not the pampered elites who govern us today. Churchill was referring to John Morley. “Such men,” he concludes sadly, “are not found today.”

Morley was born in 1838, during a century of peace, prosperity and progress. This, Churchill tells us, “was the British Antonine Age… 

The French Revolution had subsided into tranquillity; the Napoleonic Wars had ended at Waterloo; the British Navy basked in the steady light of Trafalgar, and all the navies of the world together could not rival its sedate strength. The City of London and its Gold Standard dominated the finance of the world. Steam multiplied the power of man; Cottonopolis was fixed in Lancashire; railroads, inventions, unequalled supplies of superior coal abounded in the island; the population increased; wealth increased; the cost of living diminished; the conditions of the working classes improved with their expanding numbers.

“Unquenchable racial animosity” 

John Morley was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of a doctor who wanted him to become a clergyman. Disenchanted with the “High Church” and quarreling with his father, he left Oxford without an honors degree and pursued Law. He was called to the bar by Lincoln’s Inn in 1873. A few years later, to his “long and enduring regret,” he became a journalist. From 1880 to 1883 he edited the radical-Liberal Pall Mall Gazette.  

A strong supporter of Gladstone, Morley in Parliament was a fearless opponent of State intervention. It was wrong “to give the Legislature, which is ignorant [and] biased in these things…the power of saying how many hours a day a man shall or shall not work.” (One wonders what he would say today to a government that governs everything.

After six years out of power, Gladstone returned in 1892 and made Morley Chief Secretary for Ireland. Churchill, then a Tory supporter of the Second Boer War, nevertheless admired Morley’s “fierce, moving phrases” of indictment: 

Thousands of our women have been made widows; thousands of children are fatherless…. The expenditure of £150 million has brought material havoc and ruin unspeakable, unquenched and for long unquenchable racial animosity, a task of political reconstruction of incomparable difficulty, and all the other consequences which I need not dwell upon [in a] war of uncompensated mischief and of irreparable wrong.

Morley’s opposition to adventures abroad prefigured his attitude toward a far greater war to come.

“A quality about his rhetoric”

In 1904 Churchill “crossed the floor” to the Liberals, who swept into office in January 1906. Morley was Secretary of State for India when young Winston became Under-Secretary for the Colonies. In harness, they became friends, and Churchill was eloquent in his praise: 

As a speaker, both in Parliament and on the platform, Morley stood in the front rank of his time. There was a quality about his rhetoric which arrested attention. He loved the pageantry as well as the distinction of words, and many passages in his speeches dwell in my memory…. His gifts of intellect and character were admired on all sides.

There is an affinity between their mutual combination of firmness and magnanimity toward colonial peoples. While opposing lawless rioting, Morley sponsored the 1909 India Councils Act, bringing Indians to his Council and those of Madras and Bombay. This early step toward self-rule mirrored Churchill’s views.  

 “Master of English prose” 

In 1908 the new prime minister, H.H. Asquith, moved Morley to the Lords, where he fought for Liberal reform budgets. He retained the India Office, but by 1910 yearned for retirement. Churchill pleaded that he be kept in the Cabinet, so Asquith appointed him Lord President of the Council. There he campaigned for the 1911 Parliament Act, limiting the powers of the House of Lords. 

Morley linked young Winston to the father he worshipped, while adding qualities of his own. He was solid for “great doctrines”: Free Trade, Irish Home Rule, a social safety net. Churchill saw in him “a master of English prose, a practical scholar, a statesman-author, a repository of vast knowledge.” Despite their 35 years difference in age, they worked together  “in the swift succession of formidable and perplexing events.” Eventually those events would separate them.

“Gently, gaily almost, he withdrew…”

Predictably, Morley opposed continental entanglements, distrusting the system of alliances that impelled the world toward Armageddon. He turned 75 in 1914, frail but not unconscious of what Churchill called “the madness sweeping across Europe.” As Germany and France clanked towards battle, the Liberal Cabinet was divided. But Germany’s invasion of Belgium, and the possibility of a German fleet in the Channel, turned opinion.  

Winston Churchill tried to assure Morley that events gave them no choice. His pacifist friend was sympathetic but unyielding. “You may be right,” he said. “But I should be no use in a War Cabinet. I should only hamper you. If we have to fight, we must fight with single-hearted conviction. There is no place for me in such affairs.” There was no turning him. “Gently, gaily almost, he withdrew from among us,” Churchill wrote, “never by word or sign to hinder old friends or add to the nation’s burden.”

“I do not ask myself if I am a good European” 

Morley was 80 when peace returned, but no less doubtful about the so-called “War to End Wars.” Like Churchill, he criticized President Wilson’s naïveté at Versailles. He had always been a Little Englander, a Home Ruler. He did not object to the new countries created after the war. But he had no faith in a concert of nations to keep the peace. When asked in 1919 about the Covenant of the League of Nations, Morley said: “I have not read it, and I don’t intend to read it. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on. To the end of time it’ll always be a case of ‘Thy head or my head.’ I’ve no faith in these schemes.” He was more right than he knew.

While Churchill had hope for European powers to keep the peace, Morley remained scornful. When a prominent Liberal praised someone as “a good European,” Morley quipped: “When I lay me down at night or rise in the morning, I do not ask myself if I am a good European.” Nations, he insisted, would always act in their own interests. If that coincided with the world’s, it was a mere lucky coincidence. When Ireland erupted again in 1921 he declared: “If I were an Irishman I should be a Sinn Feiner.” When asked, “And a Republican?” Morley said “No.” Home Rule within the Empire was as far as he would go. 

“I foresee…Winston leading the Commons” 

Toward the end, Morley seemed to accept Churchill’s view of him as a Victorian eminence, against which modern politicians were no match. In postwar politics, Morley said, “One man is as good as another—or better.” Yet he still had hopes for his young colleague:  

I foresee the day when Birkenhead will be prime minister in the Lords with Winston leading the Commons. They will make a formidable pair. Winston tells me Birkenhead has the best brain in England…. But I don’t like Winston’s habit of writing articles, as a Minister, on debatable questions of foreign policy in the newspapers. These allocutions of his are contrary to all Cabinet principles. Mr. Gladstone would never have allowed it.

His prediction would have required Churchill to change parties again. Churchill did, but Birkenhead died young, in 1930. Still, Morley was half right: Winston did lead the Commons…and the nation. Alas, that was in another war he would have hated and feared. And, contra Mr. Gladstone, Churchill kept writing—fortunately. Some of what he wrote was in tribute to his old friend. 

“Two hundred definitions of Liberty” 

Churchill considered John Morley “among the four most pleasing and brilliant men to whom I have ever listened…. There was a rich and positive quality about Morley’s contributions, and a sparkle of phrase and drama which placed him second to none….”

Morley died in 1923, not to be replaced. Churchill mourned his loss: “The tidal wave of democracy and the volcanic explosion of the war have swept the shores bare.” No one better resembled or recalled “the Liberal statesmen of the Victorian epoch.” Morley was not born to privilege; he earned it. He deployed “every intellectual weapon, of the highest personal address, and of all that learning, courtesy, dignity and consistency could bestow.”

Churchill wrote: “Each succeeding generation will sing with conviction the Harrow song, ‘There were wonderful giants of old.’ Certainly we must all hope this may prove to be so.” 

Morley pronounced the epitaph for his age in May 1923, four months before he died. His words sound more like 2023:  

Present party designations have become empty of all contents…. Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits’ end—when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate?  

Powerful orators find “Liberty” the true keyword. But then I remember hearing, from a learned student, that of “liberty” he knew well over 200 definitions. Can we be sure that the “haves” and the “have-nots” will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.