That one lies with Cordell Hull

It was Franklin Roosevelt‘s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, not Churchill. I have a slight variation of it in the “Red Herrings” appendix of  Churchill by Himself, page 576: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.”  Although commonly ascribed to Churchill (who would have said “trousers,” not “breeches”), this is definitely down to Hull. See Memoirs of Cordell Hull. 2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1948), I, 220.

From Wikipedia: Cordell Hull (1871-1955) was an American politician from Tennessee. He is best known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for eleven years (1933–1944) in the administration of President Roosevelt during much of World War II. Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his role in establishing the United Nations, and was referred to by Roosevelt as the “Father of the UN.”

Hull resigned as Secretary of State in November 1944 because of failing health. Roosevelt described Hull, upon his departure, as “the one person in all the world who has done his most to make this great plan for peace (the United Nations) an effective fact.” He died on 23 July 1955 at age 83, at his home in Washington, D.C., and is buried in Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea in the Washington National Cathedral.

Winston Churchill on Lies and Lying

As a practicing politician Winston Churchill had a passing acquaintance with lies. It seems he had more affection for them than Cordell Hull. “In wartime,” he famously told Stalin at Teheran in 1943, “Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Stalin, who relied on lies regularly, found this uproariously funny.

Less known but more along Hull’s line is a 1906 Churchill crack—but he didn’t originate it. “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world. And the worst of it is that half of them are true.” (Sounds like Yogi Berra!) That also made my “Red Herrings” appendix. While Churchill used the words, he quickly credited them to a “witty Irishman.”

One original we safely ascribe to Churchill ran in the Daily Telegraph in 1994, from Vice-Admiral Sir William Crawford (1907-2003). It is a line all politicians should subscribe to, but few ever admit they do. On a visit to the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1941, Churchill boarded HMS Rodney. Its officers lined up on the deck to receive him. One asked: “Prime Minister, is everything you tell us true?”

“Young man,” said Churchill, “I have told many lies for the good of my country. I will tell many more.”

A recent article suggests that Japan’s decision to surrender in 1945 was by no means unanimous. A few years ago, Sir Ian Kershaw said the same thing about Japan’s decision to go to war in the first place. Long before the war, Winston Churchill mused:

“What a story! Think of all these people—decent, educated, the story of the past laid out before them—What to avoid—what to do etc.—patriotic, loyal, clean—trying their utmost—What a ghastly muddle they made of it! Unteachable from infancy to tomb—There is the first and main characteristic of mankind.”—Churchill to Lord Beaverbrook, 21 May 1928.

Kershaw, whose two-volume biography of Hitler is highly acclaimed, has written a fascinating book on what Churchill might call the “ten climacterics” of World War II: Britain’s decision to fight on in May 1940; Mussolini’s decision to attack Greece; Stalin’s decision to trust Hitler; Japan’s decisions to expand southward and to take on the United States; Roosevelt’s decisions to help Britain and to wage undeclared war against Germany; Hitler’s decisions to attack Russia, to declare war on the USA and to commit genocide in Europe.

Hull Reconsidered

I had no deep prejudices toward Cordell Hull until I read this book, but Kershaw paints Roosevelt’s Secretary of State the way Churchill allegedly painted John Foster Dulles: “He is the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.”

As the clock ticked in late 1941, Hull frustrated negotiations at every turn. He rightly rejected the Japanese “Plan A,” amounting basically to letting Japan run amok in East Asia. Then he seemed to accept, but finally rejected, “Plan B,” which offered a pullback of Japanese forces from Indo-China and an agreement to vacate China “at an agreed future date.”

Nor was Roosevelt consistent: “While Hull and the State Department dampened prospects of an accommodation, the President himself appeared still open to the possiblity of one” (367). In his vacillating, don’t-tell-them-everything-you’re-thinking approach, he ran hot and cold on requested meetings with Japan’s foreign minister or Emperor. First FDR would hint that he wanted a “modus vivendi”; then he would play hardball, refusing to consider any terms by which he would normalize relations.

* * *

Finally Hull, without consulting either the military or unofficial allies like Britain (which might have had some useful warnings about piling up new enemies) replied with his “Ten Points,” including all previous demands and some new ones. In exchange for normalized relations Japan was required “to withdraw from China and Indochina, renounce extraterritorial rights and concessions dating back to the turn of the century, following the Boxer Rebellion, to recognize no Chinese government but that of Chiang Kai-shek, and effectively to abrogate the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy (369). Those were terms no Japanese government could accept. Also, Hull was unclear as to whether he also demanded Japan’s exit from Manchuria, where it had established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1931. In fact he did not—but he didn’t bother to make this clear.

Too late FDR realized, “this means war”; he did not know Pearl Harbor would be a target, but he must have known he had backed Japan into a corner. Call me a cynic and you’ll be right: but if a modern President and his Secretary of State handled say China like Roosevelt and Hull handled the Japanese, and ended up getting into a war, there would be a full-scale outcry.

Hitler’s declaration of war

Kershaw carefully examines Hitler’s decision to declare war on America four days after Pearl Harbor. He reviews Hitler’s pronouncements and thoughts on the “American Union” from his earliest speeches. The Western Hemisphere never seriously figured in Hitler’s plans (despite the now-famous British forgery of a German map carving up South America).

Hitler thought the European armaments industry was greater than the American. “He had experienced American soldiers in the First World War [and believed] the Germans were far superior” (405). But longer term, he realized that Germany was on borrowed time. He knew when he invaded Russia that he must win quickly, compel Stalin’s surrender, and then finish off Britain with his full forces. By 1943, Hitler said, America’s mighty engine of industry would be fully engaged. Any hope in Germany for European mastery would be ended. Thus the Fuehrer warned his trigger-happy naval chief, Admiral Raeder, to avoid provocations in the Atlantic, even after Roosevelt had occupied Iceland and expanded the Atlantic security zone far to the east.

Why then did Hitler declare war after Pearl Harbor? Logic, Kershaw argues, played no part. The Tripartite Pact (Hitler’s stated reason) required Germany to declare war only if Japan had been attacked. The idea that he went to war to “fulfill a commitment” to Japan seems far-fetched. (When did Hitler honor commitments?) Pearl Harbor infuriated the Americans. Absent a German declaration, Kershaw suggests, Congress might not have declared war on Germany. Churchill’s rush visit to Washington after Pearl Harbor was predicated on his anxiety that America should adopt a policy of “Germany first.” Roosevelt would have preferred to put off that visit, lest Congress get the idea that Churchill was exerting undue influence on Administration policy.

Explaining the inexplicable

In declaring war, Hitler took little military advice other than that of Raeder. Yet even the Navy chief admitted that in December 1941 not one U-boat was anywhere near the United States. The German declaration astonished even sycophants like Goebbels. Many experienced soldiers privately (very privately) confessed they saw doom in Hitler’s act (383).

Why did Hitler do it? The answer, it seems, was a “shrug.” Hitler knew that sooner or later Germany would have to confront the Americans. Why not now? It proved fatal.

Despite his disdain of the Americans, Kershaw notes, Hitler by autumn 1941 had “contemplated for the first time the possibility of defeat,” saying “that if in the end the German people should not prove strong enough, then Germany deserved to go under and be destroyed by the stronger power.” (This reminds us of Hitler’s “scorched earth” orders to Speer as the Russians advanced on Berlin in 1945.) Kershaw sees Hitler’s war declaration as revealing. “Beneath the veneer, Hitler seems to have recognized that his chances of total victory had by now all but evaporated…. It was a characteristic attempt to wrest back the initiative through a bold move. But…doomed from the very outset to failure” (430).

Irrational rationales

“What a story!” Japan is of two minds about going to war. The United States is also of two minds—or is she? Between Roosevelt and Hull, it is hard to tell. Emperor Hirohito and his entire cabinet believe that if they go to war, they will probably lose. So…to war they go!

Hitler through December 1941 practices uncharacteristic restraint in not provoking the Americans. He couldn’t afford such a mighty enemy until the Russians were subdued. If America was involved, he surmised Germany would lose. Then…to war he goes.

Fateful Choices is a revealing commentary on the occasional (one hopes) irrationality of high-level decision-making. This book which ought to be read by our leaders (present and future), before they do something stupid. Again. 

See also: “Pearl Harbor +75: All in the Same Boat. Still.”

“Red Herrings” are part of what quotemaster Nigel Rees calls “Churchillian Drift.” (Click here for the full description.) Several other Churchill sites use my Red Herrings appendix to furnish their own lists of things Churchill never said. This is all to the good. The more who know the truth, the better for history.

Note: A complete list of Red Herrings to date is posted and regularly updated in four parts on this website. Start by clicking here.

AZ Quotes

Dozens of readers have sent email attachments from a website called AZ Quotes. They ask: “Are these accurate?” The answer: Not a lot. AZ Quotes is a serious purveyor of “Churchillian Drift.” I don’t think there is a larger batch of fake Churchillisms anywhere. This is no modest collection. To paraphrase Churchill, it has much to be modest about.

AZ doesn’t hide its goal to be quote king of the Internet: “To ensure that we have the biggest quotes collection of all (and this is true), we’re digging up books, newspapers, magazines and interviews—any source that can give us a good quote.” Indeed so! Apparently any source that can “give us a good quote” is fair game to AZ, no matter how wrong. “Digging up” is apposite.

AZ Quotes claims to care about accuracy: “…it’s an important thing for any quote and any quotes website. Every quote we add to our website we pick up manually and then check. Unfortunately, there can be mistakes: if you’ve found any such bogus quotes, report it to us immediately. Immediately, please!” Good grief, where do we start?

Castaway in Churchillian Drift

The alleged Churchill remarks posted by AZ Quotes take up (at this date) fifty-one browser pages. At about twenty-five per page, that’s roughly 1275 in all. Sporadically, attributions are provided—but not often. I would rather have an appendectomy than examine all 1275. I did look at the thirty-four most commonly sent by readers. Of these, three are fully attributable to Churchill.

To be charitable, eight are roughly approximate, but seriously muddled. Some are cobbled from different appearances, or bowdlerized out of all resemblance to Churchill’s actual words. Others are taken from other speakers. To claim Churchill said it makes a quote more interesting. AZ attaches his name to quotations from Charles de Gaulle to Cordell Hull. They must have reasoned: who cares what Cordell Hull said?

Twenty-three of these thirty-four AZ Quotes bear little or no relationship to anything Churchill uttered. They do not track in the ever-widening store of digital references compiled by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. This file includes 30 million published words by Churchill and in his Official Biography. It adds 50 million more words in books, memoirs and speeches about him. Ultimately, Hillsdale hopes to offer access to this index to students, researchers and scholars on its Churchill website.

I’ve posted my complete updated list of “Red Herrings” as a public service. It may be an antidote to what I’m reading on AZ Quotes. Arrgh! Pass the hemlock.

The Top Ten

AZ Quotes continues to add entries. They seem to post quotations willy-nilly, some perhaps sent by readers, with no attempt to verify. Some duplicate or slightly revise others. Here are the first thirty-four, in the order most often encountered. An asterisk denotes new entries for the next “Red Herrings” appendix in Churchill by Himself. “CBH” denotes current references in that book. Bold face denotes three quotations AZ Quotes actually gets right. (Stand up!)

*1. Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions. ✸ No attribution.

2. You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones to every dog that barks. ✸ From a 1923 speech, but Churchill was quoting someone else. He preceded this by saying, “As someone said…” AZ also mangles the quote. Correctly: “As someone said, you will never get to the end of your journey if you stop to shy a stone at every dog that barks” (CBH 579). 

*3. Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision. ✸ No attribution. 

4. A nation that forgets its past has no future. ✸ No attribution. Possibly muddled from “…if we open a quarrel between the past and present we shall find that we have lost the future” (18 June 1940, CBH 24).

*5. The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. ✸ No attribution. 

* * *

6. If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart. if you’re not a conservative at forty, you have no brain. ✸ No attribution. Mangled from the usual erroneous version: If a man is not liberal in youth he has no heart. If he is not conservative when older he has no brain (CBH 576).

 7. Socialism is [the] philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. ✸ Inaccurate. The words through “envy” are from a 1948 speech (CBH 394). The rest are incorrectly transcribed from a 1945 speech (CBH 13).

8. There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly “…Governments create nothing and have nothing to give but what they have first taken away…” (1903 Speech, CBH 393.)

9. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. ✸ No attribution. He had far more respect for the average voter (CBH 573).

10. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. ✸ No attribution. Often credited to Lincoln, also without proof. Click here.

The Next Worst

*11. A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. ✸ No attribution and out of character for Churchill, who was not given to sexist wisecracks. (See also #30.)

 12. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. ✸ No attribution. See “Churchill on the Optimist and Pessimist.” (CBH 578.)

*13. If Britain must chose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea. ✸ Incorrect. Actually referred to choosing between de Gaulle or the Free French and Roosevelt. The correct quotation: “Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea. Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt” (de Gaulle, Unity, 153). See “EU and Churchill’s Views.”

*14. One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions. ✸ Not Churchill but Alfred George Gardiner, quoted by Robert Rhodes James in the introduction to Churchill’s Complete Speeches: “One man with a conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions, and Mr. Churchill always bursts into the fray with a conviction so clean, so decisive, so burning, that opposition is stampeded” (Complete Speeches vol. I, 12).

15. The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” See #7 above (CBH 13).

* * *

16. However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. ✸ No attribution. See “Mr. Stern, Mr. Trump…” (CBH 580).

*17. You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. ✸ No attribution.

18. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. ✸ Not Churchill but Cordell Hull and incorrectly transcribed. Correctly: “A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.” Also, Churchill would likely have said “trousers” not pants or breeches. See “Galloping Lie” (CBH 476).

*19. Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted. ✸ No attribution.

20. We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?” (1904 speech, CBH 387.

Jackpot: Three out of ten right

*21. I’d rather argue against a hundred idiots than have one agree with me. ✸ No attribution.

22. Islam is more dangerous in a man than rabies in a dog. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy” (CBH 464).

23. In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet. ✸ Correct! WSC once remarked: “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened” (CBH 486).  

*24. Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut. ✸ No attribution.

25. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last. ✸ Inaccurate. Correctly: “Each one [of the neutral nations] hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last” (Broadcast, 1940, CBH 262).

* * *

26. Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they a free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage. ✸ Right again. AZ Quotes is on a roll! (CBH 99.)

27. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science—the science against which it had vainly struggled— the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome. ✸ Two in a row! This gives us hope, but not for long (CBH 464).

 28. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” ✸ No attribution, but very popular (CBH 574).

*29. I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies. ✸  No attribution.

*30. Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds? [Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course.”] Would you sleep with me for five pounds? [“What kind of a woman do you think I am?”] We’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price. ✸ No attribution. Who invents such stuff?

We shall go on to the end…

31. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” ✸ No attribution (CBH 576).

32. Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon. ✸ Roughly right but the last sentence is invented. Correctly: “Only a handful see it for what it really is—the strong and willing horse that pulls the whole cart along” (1959 speech, CBH 392).

*33. A nation that fails to honor its heroes soon will have no heroes to honor. ✸ No attribution.

*34. It is better to do something than to do nothing while waiting to do everything. ✸ No attribution.

There are fifty more pages of alleged Churchill on AZ Quotes. One day if I have nothing else to do, I will investigate further. Help, anybody!

But fame and likability don’t a Churchill scholar make. And in that department, Boris Johnson needs some help.

His remarks are quoted from a November 14th speech at the Yale Club in New York City.

Boris Fact-checks

1) Lend-Lease, Roosevelt’s World War II “loan” of $50 billion worth of war materiel to the Allies, “screwed” the British.

I queried Professor Warren Kimball of Rutgers University, editor of the Churchill-Roosevelt Correspondence and several books on World War II, who wrote:

The U.S. did not construct Lend-Lease to take advantage of Britain. FDR and Treasury Secretary Morgenthau rejected suggestions that America take ownership of British possessions. The initial agreement committed Britain to so-called “free” trade, aimed primarily at the Empire. This angered the British (including Keynes), but turned out to be meaningless.

Britain received 60% of Lend-Lease—$31.4 billion (nearly half a trillion today). Churchill regarded Lend-Lease “without question as the most unsordid act in the whole of recorded history.” (Churchill By Himself, 131)

Destroyers or Bathtubs?

2) Roosevelt’s “Destroyers for Bases” deal (September 1940, six months before Lend-Lease) was “heavily biased against Britain.” The fifty aged destroyers Britain received (in exchange for American bases on British possessions) were “useless bathtubs.”

This is both wrong and beside the point. Churchill said the Americans had “turned a large part of their gigantic industry to making munitions which we need. They have even given us or lent us valuable weapons of their own.” (Churchill By Himself, 129) Naval historian Christopher Bell, Dalhousie University, Halifax, author of Churchill and Sea Power, writes:

Churchill was eager for the old destroyers, knowing full well that they were WW1 vintage. They nevertheless helped fill a gap at a critical time. A measure of Churchill’s determination to obtain them was his willingness (mentioned in my book) to trade one of Britain’s new battleships for them—an idea the Admiralty quickly shot down.

Professor Kimball adds the major point Mayor Johnson misses:

What mattered, as any thoughtful person knew and should know, is that Destroyers-for-Bases was a remarkable commitment by FDR and America to Britain’s aid—if it could hold on. It was seen, and was intended to be seen, as a morale builder in the UK, at a time when morale was crucial.

FDR’s Funeral

3) Churchill did not go to Roosevelt’s funeral in 1945 because he was “miffed” at the President.

Facts: Germany was nearing surrender, in a war that had taxed Churchill and Britain for six years. Would you go? Yet Churchill’s first impulse was to go. I owe these references to my colleague Paul Courtenay:

“At the last moment I decided not to fly to Roosevelt’s funeral on account of much that was going on here.” (Churchill to his wife in Mary Soames, Personal Letters, 526). “Everyone here thought my duty next week lay at home.” (Churchill to FDR confidant Harry Hopkins in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill VII: 1294.) “P.M. of course wanted to go. A[nthony Eden] thought they oughtn’t both to be away together….P.M. says he’ll go and A. can stay. I told A. that, if P.M. goes, he must. Churchill regretted in after years that he allowed himself to be persuaded not to go.” (Diaries of Alexander Cadogan, 727.)

4) Remembering Churchill’s “snub” of the Roosevelt funeral, President Johnson took revenge by not attending Churchill’s funeral in 1965.

No: The President was suffering from a bad case of the flu. He sent Chief Justice Earl Warren and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. President Eisenhower joined them and gave a moving eulogy on the BBC. President Johnson said: “When there was darkness in the world…a generous Providence gave us Winston Churchill…. He is history’s child, and what he said and what he did will never die.”

Misquotes

Boris repeated several alleged Churchill quotations on which “I ‘eard different” from eye-witnesses.

“I’ll kiss him on both cheeks—or all four if you prefer.” The object of that crack was De Gaulle, not the Americans. “Proud to be British” involved an old man making improper advances to a young lady, not the way Johnson spins it. Of course Churchill, who often stored and retreaded favorite wisecracks, might have said the same thing at different times.

On the big issues, though, it would be a nice thing if Boris would run his statements past a scholar, lest they add to the cacophony of Churchill tall stories that pollute the Internet.