“The hand of destiny”

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project’s updated bibliography of works about Churchill has produced gratifying interest in early biographies. Parker H. Lee wrote us about the very first, Winston Spencer Churchill by Alexander Maccallum Scott, in 1905. Scott produced an expanded edition in 1916 and a modern reprint is available. “The remarkable thing about the book,” Mr. Lee writes, “is that Churchill’s political future was predictable to MacCallum and others around that time.” One those others was Harold Begbie—of whom more anon.

“It’s easy enough to see things like that today,” Mr. Lee observes—“but in 1905?” When Maccallum Scott updated his book in 1916, Churchill looked like a busted flush. He’d gone to fight on the Western Front after six idle months with no voice in the war, having been cashiered from the Admiralty over the Dardanelles disasster.

In 1988, Sir Alistair Cooke spoke about his perception as a young man of Churchill in those years. Cooke turned 21 in 1929, just as Churchill began another period as a rejected politician. “Of course his own account of his going ‘into the wilderness’ is dramatic,” Sir Alistair said. “Churchill is nothing if not a dramatic writer. But the political Churchill was not dramatic. If anybody asked us then, ‘Where’s Winston Churchill?,’ we would say: ‘In the House of Commons, but not doing very much, because he’s had his day.’”

Begbie: “Gentleman with a Duster”

Standing athwart the general perception was Harold Begbie’s The Mirrors of Downing Street in 1921. Its byline then was “Gentleman with a Duster.” Few people knew the author’s real name. Alistair Cooke described Begbie as “the man who did God for the Westminster Gazette…. His character sketches had an intensity and eloquence of a kind I don’t think we see today. He wrote this, astoundingly for the time—yet it could also have been written ten years later”…

Begbie called Churchill “perhaps the most interesting figure in the present House of Commons. There still clings to his career an element of promise and also of unlimited uncertainty.”

Churchill was then 47. Begbie was hedging his bets a little, because when he wrote that, Churchill had somewhat rehabilitated himself. Since 1917 he had held four offices of State in the Lloyd George government. He was then redrawing the map of the Middle East and negotiating the Irish Treaty. But few beside Begbie would believe this man might one day be prime minister.

“He would eat out his heart in Paradise”

Let us look a little more deeply into what Harold Begbie saw:

From his youth up, Mr. Churchill has loved with all his heart, his soul, his mind and strength three things: war, politics and himself. He loved war for its dangers, he loves politics for the same reason, and himself he has always loved for the knowledge that his mind is dangerous. Dangerous to his enemies, to his friends, to himself. I can think of no other man who would so quickly and so bitterly eat out his heart in Paradise.

Alistair Cooke said of the late Duke of Windsor, “he was at his best only when the going was good.” Churchill was at his best when the going was terrible. He was not, as William Buckley once said, “a peacetime catastrophe.” But in peacetime, Begbie wrote,  Churchill lacked

the unifying spirit of character which alone can master the antagonistic elements in a single mind. Here is a man of truly brilliant gifts, but you cannot depend upon him. His love for danger runs away with his discretion. I am not enamoured of the logic of consistency; on the other hand, who can doubt that one who appears this moment fighting on the left hand and at the next moment on the right creates distrust in both armies? His power is the power of gifts, not character. Men watch him, but they do not follow him.

“That sounds today rather savage,” said Sir Alistair. “It wasn’t really, but it does sum up the way people of all parties felt about him.”

“He must be carried away by some great ideal”

Begbie suggested that Churchill’s faults were the result of “a forcible and impetuous temperament.” Then he wrote, with extraordinary prescience:

All Mr. Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road to destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality. This is to say, that to be saved from himself. Mr. Churchill must be carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal.

Harold Begbie died in 1929, eleven years short of that great ideal. Professor Warren Kimball, a scholar of Churchill and Roosevelt, understands what Begbie foresaw: “A Hitler dominated Europe provided that enthusiasm. Churchill wasn’t Prime Minister in 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany. But it was his d war from then on. I’d suggest that the great ideal was as Lord Palmerston always advised: having a genocidal sociopath as the enemy was an invaluable asset—though not the only one.”

Harold Begbie concluded:

At the present Mr. Churchill is in politics as a man is in business, but politics for Churchill, if he is ever to fulfill his promise, must have nothing to do with Churchill. It must have everything to do with the salvation of mankind … It is not to be thought that Mr. Churchill is growing a character which will emerge and create devotion in his countrymen.

So history proved. All Churchill needed was a cause that had “everything to do with the salvation of mankind.”

In April 1995 Johnson, then a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, deplored the £12.5 million purchase of Churchill Papers for the nation. The lottery-supported National Heritage Memorial Fund, said Johnson, was frittering away money on pointless projects and benefiting Tory grandees. Johnson added: “…seldom in the field of human avarice was so much spent by so many on so little …”

The Memorial Fund replied the Churchill Papers were a national heirloom under threat of being sold outside the country. Johnson snorted that they had simply “run out of sporting and artistic projects to endow.” His “unsentimental approach to Churchill’s records may seem surprising given that in 2014 he published a eulogistic biography of the former Conservative premier,” wrote The Guardian. 

I remember the Great Churchill Papers Flap very well, having published articles about it back then. It is the same tempest in a teapot today that it was in 1995. Except that nowadays, Churchill and his memory are fair game to grunting mobs and virtue-signaling nannies. So the whole business is again somehow newsworthy.

A threat to Britain’s heritage

Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s foremost biographer, called the Churchill Papers “the largest single private repository of recent British history.” Their acquisition, he said, was “an imaginative stroke of national policy.” Among other triumphs, the Papers inform thirty-one volumes of Winston S. Churchill, the longest biography on the planet.

Scholars have long mined these fifteen tons of documents. Many individual items have been reproduced. It was the possibility that they might be sold to an overseas buyer, Gilbert explained, that focused concern on their physical future:

The first alarm involved certain specific documents, such as Churchill’s wartime speeches, which clearly constitute part of the national heritage. Photocopies and reproductions are all very well, but the actual pieces of paper are what matters. The originals alone convey the full sense of historical drama.

The idea that Churchill’s final draft of “we will fight on the beaches” would end up in a library overlooking a beach in the Pacific, or some other distant shore, was not attractive. As a result of the decision to use National Lottery money to secure the Churchill Papers, it is not only letters written by Churchill that are to be preserved in this country and guarded, as hitherto, in the specially designed archives of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Sir Martin explained that “Churchill’s Papers” are very much more than his own notes and monographs. Of course they include handwritten or typed manuscripts of books and speeches, if not copies of his own letters. He also kept every letter that he received. “These letters, written to him, constitute the real historical value of this collection.”

A great glory saved

Churchill’s original letters reside in 500 libraries and archives around the world. The Churchill Papers, however, represent the whole range British history. Sir Martin offered examples:

Here we have letters from David Lloyd George, setting out the most radical proposals for social reform before the First World War. Here we have Lord Kitchener’s letters during the early months of the First World War, including the ill-fated Gallipoli expedition. We see here the Irish leaders on both sides struggling for a compromise to end the civil war. Here, too are Labour leaders negotiating with Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to resolve the 1926 coal strike. Secretly, they visited him at a house in London to work out a compromise.

Throughout the 1930s the Churchill Papers abound in letters from civil servants, airmen and members of the intelligence community. They sent secret information, much of it from Nazi Germany, enabling Churchill to wage his campaign for greater rearmament. While his own letters consist in the main of carbon copies, it is the originals from other people that are the great glory of the papers saved for the nation.

A letter from his good friend Val Fleming (father of Ian) describes the slaughter on the Western Front. There is a letter from his brother Jack describing the first awful moments of the Dardanelles campaign. Letters from his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, are full of the political gossip of 1916. There are letters from Admiral “Jackie” Fisher urging Churchill to return from the trenches and break the government. Churchill did return, but his efforts to harm the government in debate were a dismal failure.

A rich seam of historical gold

“The Papers represent every twist and turn of British political debate,” Sir Martin continued. Every file contains gems. “Having read and edited them all, I can only conclude that the Churchill archive will provide in the future, as it is already doing, a rich seam of historical gold.”  It is the richest seam outside the Government’s own National Archives, which house Churchill’s voluminous war papers, and those of his four-year peacetime premiership.

Every VE-Day, the Churchill Papers are there to prompt remembrance of heroic times. A letter on VE-Day itself was sent to WSC from Anthony Eden: “All my thoughts are with you on this day which is so essentially your day. It is you who have led, uplifted and inspired us through the worst days. Without you this day could not have been.”

And among the hundreds of letters from Churchill’s children is one from his daughter Mary, written when he was an old man long parted from power or influence: “In addition to all the feelings a daughter has for a loving generous father, I owe you what every Englishman, woman and child does, Liberty itself.” For this reason alone, Sir Martin concluded, “the assurance that the Churchill Papers are to remain in Britain is to be welcomed.”

Controversy and rebuttal

Remarkably in view their importance, some historians and media were outraged that one-fourth of the Churchill Papers’ value inured to private parties. They should have been donated, they said. On which, a few observations:

1) In later years, Churchill considered how he could provide for his family. Almost his only property of significant value was his papers. A typical Victorian, he willed them to his male heirs. However, as his daughter Mary told me, “all his dependents were provided for, and all were appreciative of what he did for them.”

2) Appraisals of the papers were £40 and £32.5 million respectively. The government took the lower estimate, subtracted £10 million for anything official and £10 million for tax. That left £12.5 million. J. Paul Getty II generously put up £1 million and the Heritage Lottery Fund £11.5 million—a fraction of their value on the open market.

3) Taxpayers did not provide the £11.5 million. Lottery profits go to various sports, arts, charities and Heritage materials. Almost always, Heritage items are in private hands, so their acquisition often benefits private parties.

4) Comparisons to the post-1945 papers left to Churchill College are irrelevant. Lady Churchill bequeathed them late in life, knowing her children had been provided for. Had she been younger she could have sold them, and would have had every right to do so.

5) While the copyright was retained (to documents originated by WSC), this should be kept in perspective. Until Hillsdale College took them on, no publisher would underwrite the final document volumes. Academic publications, non-profit institutions, even hostile biographers, have used the material without charge.

Why the uproar?

The reason for the flap has nothing to do with the rights of ownership, and everything to do with making political hay and sowing scorn. Such activities have vastly multiplied in the last quarter century. The biographer William Manchester was well aware of this when he memorably wrote The Times in 1995:

The controversy over the sale of the Churchill Papers to the British nation, with proceeds going to members of his family, is bewildering. One British historian in a U.S. newspaper labeled the transaction “just tacky.” One wonders why it is even newsworthy.

When out of office, Churchill, a professional writer, supported his household with his pen. His literary estate was his property. He had every reason, both moral and legal, to expect that title to it would pass on to his survivors through the trust fund which he established before his death. The sum of £12.5 million, however raised, seems hardly excessive. The collection would sell for far more than that in the United States. But that would have raised a genuine storm, which would have been justifiable.

Some critics believe that the Papers should have been donated to the country. That has a familiar ring. Authors are forever being told that they should give their work to society—that to expect money in return is, well, tacky. The origin of this presumption lies in a misapprehension of the word “gifted.” Many believe that talent is literally a gift, which the writer should pass along. The fact is that writing is very hard work, and that here, as elsewhere, the laborer is worthy of his hire. Surely any working person should be able to understand that.

Q: “Undefeatable Race”

I have unsuccessfully searched the web for a speech Winston Churchill gave to Parliament referring to the Welsh as “the undefeatable race.” Do you know the speech? I believe it was in Churchill’s address following the death of David Lloyd George in March 1945. —S.D.

A: “Unconquerable Welsh”

It did occur in that speech, but Churchill’s word was “unconquerable,” not “undefeatable.” Churchill used it in a tribute. I have emailed you the full text of “The Death of Earl Lloyd George,” in 1945. It is in Winston S. Churchill, Victory. 1946, and in Robert Rhodes James, editor, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963 (1974). 

Churchill’s last paragraph tends to refute the notion, which we hear occasionally, that he cared little for others. He had many ups and downs with Lloyd George over the years. The Welsh Wizard was unsupportive in 1915, when WSC fell from grace over the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. He refused to join the Churchill coalition government in 1940. (Some historians consider that this was more out of intense dislike for Neville Chamberlain, who stayed on as Lord President of the Council.) Nonetheless, Churchill’s final words on his Welsh colleague are worth considering. They exemplify his skill at oratory, and his abundant magnanimity.

House of Commons, 28 March 1945:

Thus the statesman and guide whose gentle passing in the fullness of his years we mourn today served our country, our Island and our age, both faithfully and well in peace and in war. His long life was, from almost the beginning to almost the end, spent in political strife and controversy. He aroused intense and sometimes needless antagonisms. He had fierce and bitter quarrels at various times with all the parties.  [And] he faced undismayed the storms of criticism and hostility.

In spite of all obstacles, including those he raised himself, he achieved his main purposes. As a man of action, resource and creative energy he stood, when at his zenith, without a rival. His name is a household word throughout our Commonwealth of Nations.

He was the greatest Welshman which that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors. Much of his work abides, some of it will grow greatly in the future, and those who come after us will find the pillars of his life’s toil upstanding, massive and indestructible; and we ourselves, gathered here today, may indeed be thankful that he voyaged with us through storm and tumult with so much help and guidance to bestow. —WSC

Whether invented by the President or his scriptwriters, some of Trump’s nicknames were very effective. “Low-energy Jeb” torpedoed Governor Bush‘s 2016 presidential campaign better than any debate gaffe. “Mini-Mike” didn’t help Mayor Bloomberg‘s in 2020. But except in extreme cases like Hitler, Churchill’s name-calling was more effective and less wounding. Especially when he rather admired certain qualities in opponents. (He called Lloyd George a “cad” in his youth, but ever after praised the “Welsh Wizard.”)

* Asterisks indicate nicknames not used in a public setting. Churchill, after all, had some discretion. But I leave them in for fun. 

Nicknames: Admiral Row-Back to Can’t Tellopolus

Admiral Row-Back: Admiral Sir John Roebuck (1862-1928), Royal Navy officer. Commanded the initial Anglo-French attempt to force the Dardanelles in 1915. Having nearly succeeded, he turned back after losses to mines, incurring Churchill’s permanent loathing and censure and an appropriate nickname.

*Block: Herbert H. Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister, 1908-16. He let Churchill dangle in the Dardanelles/Gallipoli debacle, which sent WSC packing as First Lord of the Admiralty. This was a private nickname between Churchill and his wife. It may refer to Asquith’s frequent role as a block to Churchill’s proposals.

Bloodthirsty Guttersnipe: Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German Chancellor and Führer, 1933-45. First publicly declared in a broadcast after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. It wasn’t the first Churchillian jab, nor by any means the last.. There is no shortage of insulting nicknames in Hitler’s case; but this is as good an example as any. (See also “Corporal Schicklgrüber,” in comments below.)

Boneless Wonder: James Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937), Labour Prime Minister, 1924, 1929-35. A devastating comparison to a circus attraction, applied in 1931. Churchill was ridiculing Ramsay Mac’s lack of principle and wavering domestic policies. In private he considered MacDonald a servant of Crown and Parliament. But only in private.

Canting Bus Driver: Frank Pick (1878-1941), headed London Passenger Transport Board 1933-40. “Never let me see that-that-that canting bus driver again.” Churchill wrote this in red ink on a memorandum from Minister of Information Alfred Duff Cooper when Pick resigned.

*Can’t Tellopolus: Panagiotis Kannelopoulos (1902-1986), Minister of Defense, Greek exile government in Cairo, 1942-45. Churchill was impatient with his indecision about Greek resistance to the occupying Germans. Alexander Cadogan, Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs, heard these “mutterings from Churchill’s bathroom, between the splashings and gurgles.”

Chattering Cad – Green-Eyed Radical

*Chattering Little Cad: David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Liberal Prime Minister 1916-22. Said in 1901, when Churchill was still a Conservative. After he switched to the Liberals in 1904, his attitude changed. He rarely spoke ill of Lloyd George afterward, despite many provocations. WSC’s wife regarded LG as treacherous. He duly refused to join the Churchill coalition in 1940.

*Coroner: Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940). Conservative Prime Minister, 1937-40. Originally coined by Brendan Bracken (also “Ironmonger” for Baldwin), this remained in the family lexicon. In 1961, Lady Diana Cooper introduced young Martin Gilbert to Randolph Churchill by saying “he hates the Coroner.” (A bit strong—he surely didn’t hate Chamberlain).

*Dull, Duller, Dulles: John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, 1952-60. After Stalin’s death, Churchill argued for a “settlement” of the Cold War, but Dulles (and Eisenhower) were obdurate. “Ten years ago I could have dealt with him. Even as it is I have not been defeated by this bastard. I have been humiliated by my own decay.” —Churchill at the Bermuda Conference, December 1953.

Green-eyed Antipodean Radical: David Low (1891-1963), New Zealand cartoonist. Churchill had a certain affinity for the left-wing cartoonist whose attacks he admired. He called Low the greatest of modern cartoonists. There was mutual respect despite political differences, and Low drew a beautiful cartoon tribute on WSC’s 80th birthday.

Half-Naked Fakir – Llama

Half-Naked Fakir: Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian independence leader. The worst sobriquet attached to the Great Mahatma, when Churchill thought Gandhi an upperclass Brahman posing as a champion of the downtrodden. Yet they both nursed a private respect for each other and, in the end, were more forgiving. See “Welcome, Mr. Gandhi” herein.

Holy Fox: Edward Wood, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881-1959, Foreign Minister, 1938-40, Ambassador to Washington, 1940-46. Verified by Halifax biographer Andrew Roberts, who writes: “It was a Churchill family nickname, of course a reference to his High Church beliefs as well as his love of hunting. And a certain amount of political foxiness….”

*Home Sweet Home: Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel (1903-1995), British Prime Minister 1963-64. Neville Chamberlain’s “eyes and ears” in Parliament, he always maintained that the Munich deal had saved Britain by giving it an extra year to prepare for war, ignoring the fact that it also gave Hitler an extra year, and he prepared far more rapidly. (His name was pronounced “Hume,” but that didn’t stop Churchill.)

*Llama: Charles de Gaulle ( 1890-1970 ), French General and President. Lord Moran wrote: “Was it true, [Lady Limerick] asked, that he had likened de Gaulle to a female llama who had been surprised in her bath? Winston pouted, smiled and shook his head. But his way of disavowing the remark convinced me that he was in fact responsible for this indiscretion…”

Limpet to Prince Palsy

Lion-hearted Limpet Leader: Clement Attlee (1883-1967), Labour Prime Minister 1945-51. Many disparaging cracks about Attlee (arriving in an “empty taxi”) are apocryphal. But this was an April 1951 jibe at Attlee and Labour MPs clinging to power. Churchill and the Conservatives turned them out in a general election the following October.

Minister of Disease: Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960), Labour Minister of Health 1945-51, founder of the National Health Service. One of the rougher nicknames, applied in the Commons, 1948. “…is not morbid hatred a form of mental disease, and indeed a highly infectious form?” Churchill asked. He also called Bevan a “squalid nuisance.”

Old Grey Tabby: Arthur James Balfour (1848-1930), Conservative Prime Ministers, 1902-05. After he succeeded Churchill at the Admiralty in 1915, WSC feared the “Old Grey Tabby” would dissolve the Royal Naval Division. (Balfour did resemble a tabby cat in old age, but Churchill continued to admire him, and memorialized him in Great Contemporaries.)

Pink Pansies: Harold Nicolson (1886-1968) and his friends. Member of Parliament, 1935-45. I am aware this violates P.C. decorum and will no doubt be added to Churchill’s “sins.” True, Nicolson was bisexual, but a) Churchill was emphatically not homophobic, and b), the reference (Parliament, late 1945) was to non-combative young Tory MPs.

Prince Palsy: Paul of Yugoslavia (1893-1976), Prince Regent of Yugoslavia, 1934-41. His palsied hand signed a treaty with Hitler. This  assured German occupation, the end of his Regency, and Churchill’s disdain. Exiled in Kenya, he appealed for refuge in Britain, but Churchill considered him a traitor and war criminal.

Scheming Prelate to Turnip

Scheming Prelate: Damaskinos Papandreou (1891-1949), Archbishop of Athens, 1945-49. Churchill, mediating the Greek civil war in late 1944, allegedly asked if he was “a man of God or a scheming Mediterranean prelate?” Assured that he was the latter, Churchill supposedly said, “Good, he’s just our man.” (Not verified)

Snub-nosed Radical: Liberal heckler, 1887. Aged only twelve, young Winston was attending a pantomime where he heard a man hissing a portrait of his father. He burst into tears, then turned on the perpetrator: “Stop that row, you snub-nosed radical!” This may be Churchill’s first political zinger.

Spurlos Versenkt (Sunk without a Trace): Sir Benjamin Smith (1879-1964), Labour Minister of Food, 1944-46. After he resigned from Parliament, Churchill searched “for the burly ‘and engaging form of the Rt. Hon. Gentleman. He has departed ‘spurlos versenkt,’ as the German expression says—sunk without leaving a trace behind.”

Turnip: Stanley Baldwin (1867-1947), Conservative Prime Minister, 1925-29, 1935-37. Baldwin made Churchill Chancellor in 1925, but later kept him out of the Cabinet. After his final resignation, “S.B.” appeared in the House of Commons smoking room. Churchill quipped, “Well, the light is at last out of that old turnip.”

Useless Percy to Wuthering Height

*Useless Percy: Eustace Percy, First Baron of Newcastle (1887-1958). Board of Education President, 1924-29. At the Exchequer 1924-29, Churchill tried to lower the defense budget. Percy and Minister of Health Chamberlain  were opposed. “Neville is costing £2 millions more and Lord Useless Percy the same,” WSC wrote his wife on 30 September 1927.  “…these civil departments browse onwards like a horde of injurious locusts.”

Whipped Jackal: Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian Prime Minister, 1922-43, Duce of Fascism, 1943-45. Churchill praised him briefly before the war, but after joining Hitler he became a “whipped jackal… frisking up at the side of the German tiger with yelpings not only of appetite—that can be understood—but even of triumph!”

Wincing Marquess: Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne (1845-1927), House of Lords, 1886-1927. Churchill, 1909: “he claimed no right…to mince the Budget, [only] the right to wince when swallowing it. Well, that is a much more modest claim…. If his Party are satisfied with the Wincing Marquess, we have no reason to protest.”

*Wuthering Height: John Charles Walsham, 1st Baron Reith (1889-1971),  BBC Director General, 1923-38. The towering Reith was briefly in the wartime Coalition Cabinet. But he’d kept Churchill off the air in the 1930s, and no love was lost between them. WSC rejoiced to have seen “the last of that Wuthering Height” around 1940.

A reader refers us to The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America’s Forgotten Invasion of Russia 1918-1919 (2019). It repeats a misunderstanding about Churchill’s role in aiding the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. By the spring of 1919 in Russia, we read:

…the cat was out of the bag: whether its allies—English, French, White Russians—liked it nor not, the U.S. was pulling out. On March 4, the British War Cabinet decided to follow suit, ignoring the arguments of the virulently anti-Bolshevik Winston Churchill, who as secretary of war had proposed increasing the Allied commitment in Russia to one million men.

“The passage makes Churchill sound like a madman,” our reader writes. “What is the truth of the matter?”

The Allied Venture

First, it wasn’t simply America’s invasion. After the Armistice of November 1918, various Allies sent troops to assist Anton Denikin and Alexander Kolchak, leading rebels against Lenin’s Soviet government. Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians involved hundreds of thousands of troops. By far the largest contingents, up to 70,000 each, were from Czechoslovakia and Japan. America’s commitment was 11,000, Britain’s 7,500, France’s 15,000. Czech casualties dwarfed those of the others. Second, Winston Churchill never demanded the Allies send a million troops. He did mention the likely involvement of a million White Russians.

What really happened? Sir Martin Gilbert’s Official Biography, World in Torment 1916-1922, offers the truth. Churchill did powerfully support aiding the White Russians. He was also mindful how far the Allies could go. He also favored a firm decision. When he realized they would not go far enough, he urged disengagement.

Quandaries over White Russians

The British War Cabinet met on 10 January 1919, a week before the Paris Peace Conference began. The day before, Churchill had accepted Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s offer of the War Office. Churchill’s chief task was to demobilize and bring home four million men. He was well aware of their sacrifice. A million British, Indian, Canadian, Australian and other soldiers had given their lives. Martin Gilbert describes the White Russians discussion:

Sir Henry Wilson pointed out that during the past week “there had been signs of unrest in the Army at home, and it was notorious that the prospect of being sent to Russia was immensely unpopular.” [But Marshal Foch had said it was urgent] “to stop the advance of Bolshevism before it penetrated Austria and Germany.” Churchill supported Foch’s appeal…. He then suggested that the defeated German army should be used to check the westward advance of Bolshevism….

Wilson was Churchill’s senior adviser on military affairs, but frequently disagreed with his civilian chief. Wilson was convinced, he wrote in his diary, “that we (British) should keep out of the scrum. If the Americans and French like to go in, let them.” He agreed with Churchill’s idea about using the defeated German army: “We should order the Boches to hold up Bolshevism.” But few in the Cabinet wanted that.

Paris Peace Conference

So informed, the Prime Minister went to Paris. Lloyd George, Gilbert continues, “favoured conciliation rather than intervention.” Backed by U.S. President Wilson, he invited the Bolsheviks to a peace conference at Prinkipo, a Turkish island near Constantinople. Learning of the Prinkipo proposal, Churchill protested that it would amount to recognizing Lenin’s vicious regime.

In London, Cabinet opinion was strongly against British intervention. Lord Curzon, shortly to become foreign minister, wanted other countries to act. Austen Chamberlain wanted no intervention by anyone. President Wilson in Paris opposed intervention. If it occurred, he said, Britain and France would “have to sustain the whole cost.” The White Russians, Wilson believed, could not survive “for a moment” by themselves.

Above all, Gilbert writes, Churchill wanted a firm decision. “He offered his colleagues three clear choices: authorize him to intervene with British troops; aid the Whites with guns and equipment; “or to withdraw.” Lloyd George, continues Martin Gilbert,

… asked Sir Henry Wilson to prepare a statement showing the military effect of each of the three possible policies…. Churchill himself sent a long note to Wilson, in which he asked him to assume, in his calculations: (a) that the Prinkipo Conference will not take place and that the Allied Governments will instead make a united appeal to all loyal Russians to exert themselves to the utmost against the Bolsheviks; (b) that no troops can be sent from this country by compulsion to carry on the war in Russia.

Churchill’s Views

Churchill envisioned helping the Whites but not bearing the full burden. Repeatedly he insisted, “the only chance of making headway against the Bolsheviks was by the use of Russian armies,” Gilbert continues:

There were, he said, nearly half a million anti-Bolshevik Russians under arms, and the Russians themselves planned to double this figure. “If we were unable to support the Russians effectively,” he added, “it would be far better to take a decision now to quit and face the consequences, and tell these people to make the best terms they could with the Bolsheviks.”

“I am all in favour of declaring war on the Bolsheviks,” Sir Henry Wilson declared, “but the others, except Winston, won’t.”

Before leaving  the Peace Conference, President Wilson supported the Prinkipo meeting, but later he waffled.  The Bolsheviks had “raised a number of issues” he said, which were “insulting”: repayment of debts, concessions and territorial compensations. In the event, the Prinkipo conference never occurred.

A Plea for Decision

Winston Churchill didn’t waffle. Again as Martin Gilbert shows, he implored his colleagues to make a decision—but to understand what withdrawal would mean:

The complete withdrawal of all Allied troops was, at least, “a logical and clear policy,” but [Churchill] feared that its consequences “would be the destruction of all non-Bolshevik armies in Russia,” a total of half a million men, whose numbers were increasing. “Such a policy,” he continued, “would be equivalent to pulling out the linch-pin from the whole machine. There would be no further armed resistance to the Bolsheviks in Russia, and an interminable vista of violence and misery was all that remained for the whole of Russia.”

“There is no ‘will to win’…”

The President no sooner arrived in Washington than he announced withdrawal of U.S. troops “at an early date.” On 23 February, a British battalion, the 13 Yorks, refused to march in support of fellow forces on the Archangel front. Their Commander, General Ironside, said they’d been aggravated by the American announcement. Four days later, Churchill  sent Lloyd George an anguished letter, which perfectly understood the attitude of the British battalion: “The lack of any “will to win” communicates itself to our troops and affects their morale: it communicates itself to our Russian allies and retards their organisation, and to our enemies and encourages their efforts…. [The Alliles] are pausing midway between these two courses with an equal dislike of either…. It is necessary [that you] hammer out a policy…. No one below you can do it.”

Withdrawal

Lloyd George acted. When he returned from Paris, the War Cabinet voted to begin evacuating British troops from Russia. On 5 March Churchill asked his chiefs of staff to implement withdrawal. Again we have Martin Gilbert to thank for his exact words. They show Churchill as anything but a mad warmonger. He asked for

a definite timetable for this operation prepared with the necessary latitude… I am extremely anxious about this position, and from day to day my anxieties increase [and] I have announced to Parliament and pledged the War Office to leave no stone unturned [so long as we act in] a manner not incompatible with the honour of our army. I should like also to be able to raise the morale of our men out there by promising them definitely in a message direct from me that they will either be relieved by volunteers from England or withdrawn altogether as soon as Archangel is open….

In Retrospect

Historical assessments of the Allied intervention on behalf of the White Russians are almost all negative. The Bolsheviks concluded that the West wished to destroy them. The operation prolonged a bloody civil war with nothing to gain at the end but Russian enmity. It is debatable whether that enmity still mattered when Russia and the West faced a more implacable foe in 1940. Stalin was many terrible things, but he was also a pragmatist.

Churchill’s view in 1919 was clear:  As he wrote to General Harington, Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff: “We may live to regret bitterly the opportunities and resources we are losing through the present indecision.” Churchill’s view many years later was unaltered. “If I had been properly supported in 1919, I think we might have strangled Bolshevism in its cradle,” he said at a Washington press conference in 1954. “But everybody turned up their hands and said, ‘How shocking!’”

No evidence exists that Churchill wished to commit a million Allied troops. The British contingent he envisioned was small, and made up of volunteers. Above all, Churchill wanted decision, not hesitation, which he abhorred all his life.

My friend Steve Hayward had the wit to paraphrase, in reaction to the arrival of Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, some comments about another incoming PM, eighty years ago next May. “Cambridge Cute,” says another friend of Steve’s good piece.

Speaking of Cambridge Cuties, I immediately thought of what Andrew Roberts described as “The Respectable Tendency,” the British establishment, in his great book, Eminent Churchilllians.  So I dug into the sources to find more of what they said back then about the new Prime Minister. (Lightly paraphrased.)

“Coup of the rabble…”

“Even whilst the new PM was still at Buckingham Palace kissing hands, the junior private secretary and Chamberlain’s PPS, Lord Dunglass [Alec Douglas-Home] joined Rab Butler and ‘Chips’ Channon at the Foreign Office. And there they drank in champagne the health of the ‘King over the Water’ (not King Leopold, but Mr. Chamberlain).”

“Rab said he thought that the good clean tradition of English politics, that of Pitt as opposed to Fox, had been sold to the greatest adventurer of modern political history…. The sudden coup of the rabble was a serious disaster and an unnecessary one. The ‘pass had been sold’ with a weak surrender to a half-breed American whose main support was that of inefficient but talkative people of a similar type.”

“Since the new PM came in, the House of Commons had stunk in the nostrils of the decent people. The kind of people surrounding him are the scum and the peak [bottom? -RML] came when Brendan [Bracken] was made a Privy Counsellor! For what services rendered heaven knows. The PM’s adventurism is suspect, and his promotion of those  in whom he detected the buccaneering spirit, doubly alarming.”

“A bright blue suit, cheap and sensational looking…”

“He has not put his own henchmen in the highest offices. That does not prevent his detractors from convincing themselves otherwise. Butler is one of a number who contend with the fact that they are serving in an administration led by the man they have spent the best part of a decade briefing against and cat-calling.”

“His appointment sent a cold chill down the spines of the staff at 10 Downing Street…. Our feelings were widely shared in the Cabinet Offices, the Treasury and throughout Whitehall. Seldom can a Prime Minister have taken office with the Establishment…so dubious of the choice and so prepared to find its doubts justified.”

“He sees no way of putting his ideas into practice at present and is not ashamed of admitting the fact. Lloyd George was afterwards offered the Ministry of Agriculture (for which the cheap press has always tipped him). He refused it because he thinks the country is in a hopeless position and he is generally despondent.”

Jock Colville: “I spent the day in a bright blue new suit from the Fifty-Shilling Tailors, cheap and sensational looking, which I felt was appropriate to the new Government. But of course Winston’s administration, with all its faults, has drive, and should be able to get things done….”

Retrospective

Thus spake the Respectable Tendency of new Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940. Flash forward seventy-nine years. Nobody, of course, knows what Mr. Johnson will make of his honorable and ancient office. Friends of Britain must wish him well. What happens now is up to him. But opinion can change rapidly.

Back in 1940 Jock Colville soon shed his cheap blue suit. June 1940 found him in conservative pinstripes, an ardent admirer of his new Prime Minister. Correctly he surmised that the PM’s administration would “get things done.”

On getting things done today, refer to a thoughtful piece by John O’Sullivan on the now-nearly-complete Johnson Cabinet.

We report, you decide. And for historical perspective on the British establishment in days gone by, read Andrew Roberts’ book.

“Villain — Tonypandy”

Mr. McDonnell’s swipe at Churchill was brief. Asked if he saw Churchill as a hero or villain, he replied: “Villain—Tonypandy.” The Guardian completed the drive-by assassination, not only by headlining the remark, but with an inaccurate rehash of the Tonypandy riots in 1910.

Sir Winston’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, focused on McDonnell, calling him a “Poundland Lenin.” Maybe, but what about the Guardian? Ironically, at the time, the same newspaper had defended Churchill for his moderation.

There was one death at Tonypandy, but that occurred during the rioting and before Churchill was involved. However, troops did cause two to four deaths nine months later, during another strike at Llanelli. Quoting from my book, Winston Churchill, Myth and Reality, Chapter 8….

Rhondda Valley, 1910

For over a century the story has been part of socialist demonology. Churchill, as Home Secretary in 1910-11, “sent troops to attack striking coalminers” in the Rhondda Valley, Wales. In an otherwise generous tribute following Churchill’s death in 1965, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson found it necessary to remind Parliament of Sidney Street, Gallipoli, and “the sullen feet of marching men in Tonypandy.”

In concern over possible rioting during the Rhondda miners’ strike, Churchill met with Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane. They resolved to dispatch police constables, but no troops. Churchill declared the use of soldiers inappropriate in a civil disorder. He also promised the strikers an immediate Board of Trade inquiry into their grievances. He sent them this message:

[Your] best friends here are greatly distressed at the trouble which has broken out and will do their best to help [you] get fair treatment…. But rioting must cease at once so that the enquiry shall not be prejudicial and to prevent the credit of the Rhondda Valley being impaired. Confiding in the good sense of the Cambrian workmen we are holding back the soldiers for the present and sending police instead.

Lo the Poor Horses!

The Tory press attacked. The Times said that Churchill

hardly seems to understand that an acute crisis has arisen which needs decisive handling. The rosewater of conciliation is all very well in its place. But its place is not in face of a wild mob drunk with the desire of destruction. Men’s lives are in danger, not to mention the poor horses….

The Liberal press defended Churchill, praising his restraint. “The brave course was also the wise one,” wrote the Manchester Guardian: 

One can imagine what would have happened if the soldiers instead of the policemen had come on the rioters while they were pillaging. Bayonets would have been used instead of truncheons… Instead of a score of cases for the hospital, there might have been as many for the mortuary.

Tonypandy, 1910

The decision to withhold troops was short-lived. Rioting did not end, and spread to the town of Tonypandy, where one man was fatally injured and sixty-three shops were vandalized. The officer commanding the Southern Command dispatched 400 standby soldiers. On 8 November, Churchill ordered that “in no case should soldiers come in direct contact with rioters unless and until action had been taken by the police.” If police were overpowered, troops could be deployed. But even then, a number of police should remain, “to emphasise the fact that the armed forces act merely as the support of the civil power.”

“By preventing bloodshed,” Paul Addison wrote, “Churchill also prevented a debacle for Liberalism.” Writing to David Lloyd George the following spring, Churchill attempted to follow-up his November promise to address grievances. The government, he said, should institute stronger safety regulations and inspections. It should finance the expense with a surcharge on mineowners’ royalties.

His hopes were thwarted, Addison continued: “The soldiers did not kill anybody, but they remained in the Rhondda until October 1911 and as David Smith observes, their presence ‘ensured that the miners’ demands would be utterly rejected.’”

Llanelli, 1911

Nine months later at Llanelli, during a national railway strike, the only fatalities from the use of troops against strikers occurred. Ironically, they happened two days after the strike had ended. Rioters held up a train and knocked the engine driver senseless. Soldiers attempted to clear the track but looting began, and they fired into the crowd, killing either two or four rioters (accounts vary).

In handling the rail strike, Ted Morgan wrote, what Churchill’s critics could not see

was the number of saved, and the number of tragedies averted. In their drunken frenzy, the Llanelli rioters had wrought more havoc and shed more blood and produced more serious injury than all the fifty thousand soldiers all over the country.

Why use military force at all? Defending himself to William Royle, organizer of the Manchester Liberal Party, Churchill explained:

The progress of a democratic country is bound up with the maintenance of order. The working classes would be almost the only sufferers from an outbreak of riot & a general strike if it c[oul]d be effective would fall upon them & their families with its fullest severity.

Churchill told Royle, as he had Lloyd George, that wages were far too low. The rise in the cost of living, he wrote, required higher wages. “I believe the Government is now strong enough to secure an improvement in social conditions without failing in its primary duties.”

Old Men Remember

Among those interviewed by the BBC fifty-five years later for their memories of Tonypandy was W.H. (Will) Mainwaring, one of the youngest militants in the South Wales coalfields. He was subsequently co-author of a famous pamphlet, The Miners’ Next Step. Half a century on, he still spoke with pride of championing the miners and of his record as a protestor.

Of Churchill’s decision to send troops into the Rhondda in 1910 Mainwaring said on camera:

We never thought that Winston Churchill had exceeded his natural responsibility as Home Secretary. The military did not commit one single act that allows the slightest resentment by the strikers. On the contrary, we regarded the military as having come in the form of friends to modify the otherwise ruthless attitude of the police forces.

Further Reading

“Churchill, Troops and Strikers, Part 1”
“Churchill, Troops and Strikers, Part 2”

A: There are several candidates and variations. Taking them as a group, Churchill had from six to 100 ideas daily, of which between one and six were good. In order of the most likely. But it could be one of those all-purpose cracks applied to many people.

Roosevelt: fifty to 100 ideas, three or four good.

President Roosevelt is the most likely to have said this, since he’s quoted more than anyone else. Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, heard the line from Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor. In his alleged diaries, Moran was with WSC in Marrakesh in December 1947. “When I told him that Frances Perkins had quoted the President as saying that Winston had a hundred ideas a day and that four of them were good, he blew up: ‘It is impertinent of Roosevelt to say this. It comes badly from a man who hadn’t any ideas at all.'” That was an unusually rough dismissal of FDR—but possible. WSC was then writing his early war memoirs.

The journalist Colin Coote, longtime friend of Churchill and secretary of The Other Club, might have had this from Moran, but he published it before Moran did. Coote wrote the chapter, “Churchill the Journalist,” in Charles Eade’s excellent compilation, Churchill by His Contemporaries (1953). Churchill, Coote wrote, had “a prodigious memory and a mental activity like a dynamo. ‘He has,’ said the late President Roosevelt, ‘a hundred ideas a day, of which at least four are good.’ Moreover, he does not forget what he has read; and since he has now read a lot he is a walking reference library.”

In 1988 William Manchester repeated the FDR line but changed a number in The Last Lion, volume 2: “Franklin Roosevelt later said: ‘Winston has fifty ideas a day, and three or four are good.'”  He provides no footnote. Since he wasn’t always pinpoint accurate, he might have got the “fifty” wrong.

Alanbrooke: Ten ideas, one good.

Andrew Roberts in Hitler and Churchill offered a dual credit. Of Churchill he wrote: “He had an astonishingly fertile mind: ‘Winston had ten ideas every day,’ his Chief of the Imperial General Staff Lord Alanbrooke used to say of him, ‘only one of which was good, and he did not know which it was.'” But then Roberts adds that “Roosevelt made a very similar remark, saying that the Prime Minister had a hundred ideas a day of which six were good (a much larger number if an even lower percentage).” Fine historian that he is, Roberts expanded on the theme:

Nothing was too minute a detail to escape Churchill’s notice. He laid down the precise number of apes that should occupy the Rock of Gibraltar (twenty-four), tried to find out whether captured First World War trophy weapons could be reconditioned for use, worried about the animals in London Zoo during the bombing, and made sure that beer rations went to the fighting men at the front before those behind the lines. He even tried to discover whether wax might be used to protect the hearing of soldiers during bombardments.

Duke of Kent: Six ideas, zero to six good.

In Menzies and Churchill at War, the critic David Day writes that Prince George Duke of Kent told Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies that Churchill “has six ideas a day; they can’t all be right!” Day adds: “For such an ardent Royalist as Menzies, this apparent Royal displeasure with Churchill must have weighed heavily.” Menzies later became more critical of Churchill.

Lloyd George: Ten ideas, one good.

Another critic, Keith Sainsbury, wrote in Churchill and Roosevelt at War: “Roosevelt’s intelligence was not, perhaps, primarily a creative one, but to compensate for this he was extremely receptive to new ideas and would take them from as wide a range of sources as possible…. Churchill, however, was inordinately fertile in ideas, which flowed from him in a steady stream, but less sure in judgment. His early mentor, Lloyd George, had remarked of him, ‘There’s Winston, now. He has ten ideas a day, but he does not know which is the right one.'”

Verdict: FDR

It seems most likely that crack about Churchill was uttered by Roosevelt. Whether Lloyd George preceded him is a good question, and possible—LG had a pretty good wit. The others might have heard the FDR remark and kept it in readiness for their own version. Or, some gnomologist (see “Churchillian Drift” for the definition) may reveal that all these are variations on an ancient witticism dating much farther back!

Red Herrings: Quotes not by Churchill (or things he said quoting someone else), continued from Part 2.  Compiled for the next expanded edition of Churchill by Himself.

A reader suggests that the list of “Red Herring” fake Churchill quotes be subdivided. We should separate quotes he actually said, but borrowed from someone else, from quotes simply invented out of whole cloth. Not sure we have much to learn from that. First, while I try to name the originator of a quotation not by Sir Winston, I don’t always succeed. Second, my brief extends only to disproving that the words originated with Churchill. If you have reliable attribution identifying the true author of any quotes here, please let me know.

In 1686 the Oxford English Dictionary described “red herring” as a metaphor to draw pursuers off a track, as “the trailing or dragging of a dead Cat or Fox (and in case of necessity a Red-Herring) three or four miles…and then laying the Dogs on the scent…to attempt to divert attention from the real question.” That is what these misquotes all have in common: they distract or divert us from what Churchill really did originate. Chapter references are to Churchill by Himself, with over 4000 genuine, attributed quotations in thirty-four chapters or categories. The next edition will contain over 5000. Anyway, that’s my pitch and I’m sticking with it.

Lies – Looking Ahead

Lies: There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

• Churchill used these words on 22 February 1906, but quickly explained that they were the remark of a “witty Irishman.”

A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.

• Among quotes commonly ascribed to Churchill (who would have said “trousers,” not “breeches”), this was actually written by Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull (Memoirs I, 220).

Living and Life: You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give.

• Sometimes expressed using “we” instead of “you.” Often heard in tv ads. An old saying, origin unknown. One of thosse quotes put in Churchill’s mouth to make it more interesting.

Living Dog, Dead Lion: A living dog is better than a dead lion.

• Originally Ecclesiastes 9:4: “But for him who is joined to all the living there is hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.” In HESP II, 95, WSC quotes it from John Dudley, First Duke of Northumberland, before being executed by Mary Tudor in 1553.

Looking Ahead: It is always wise to look ahead—but difficult to look further than you can see. • No attribution.

Looking Backward – MacDonald

Looking Backward: The further backward you look, the further forward you can see. [Or: The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.]

• Circa 1944, commonly ascribed to WSC, even by HM The Queen (Christmas Message, 1999). What Churchill actually said was “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.” See Chapter 2, Maxims.

MacDonald, Ramsay: After the usual compliments, the Prime Minister [MacDonald] said [to Lloyd George]: “We have never been colleagues, we have never been friends—at least, not what you would call holiday friends—but we have both been Prime Minister, and dog doesn’t eat dog. Just look at this monstrous Bill the trade unions and our wild fellows have foisted on me. Do me a service, and I will never forget it. Take it upstairs and cut its dirty throat.”

• 28 January 1931 in Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 114. According to Kay Halle, this was “an imaginary conversation dreamed by WSC between Ramsay MacDonald and David Lloyd George, directed at MacDonald because of the debate on the Trades Disputes Act.” Halle’s version begins with “We have never been colleagues” and substitutes “the monstrous Bill” for “this monstrous Bill.” No other attribution.

Martinis – Metaphors

Martinis: I like to observe the vermouth from across the room whilst I drink my Martini.

• No attribution. Pure invention, since WSC did not like cocktails. He particularly eschewed Martinis with liberal infusions of vermouth, mixed by President Roosevelt. He was once observed dumping one in a nearby flowerpot.

Marx Brothers: You are my sixth favourite actor. The first five are the Marx Brothers.

• Reported in at least one Churchill quotes book, but no sign of this comment appears in the literature. WSC enjoyed the Marx Brothers; for what he did say about them, see Chapter 32, Tastes and Favourites, Marx Brothers.

Metaphors: How infinite is the debt owed to metaphors by politicians who want to speak strongly but are not sure what they are going to say.

• Stated by the Sunday Times, 22 October 2022. No attribution.

“Mettle” – Mussolini

“Mettle”: [A junior MP: “What is the greatest quality in a leader?”] WSC: “Mettle.”

• Supposedly a one-word response to a perennial question. Although “mettle” was a favorite word, this is unsubstantiated. It was credited without attribution to Nigel Nicolson, editor of Harold Nicolson’s diaries, but it does not appear in those volumes.

 Achievement is not last, disappointment is not deadly: It is the mettle to proceed with that matters.

• Posted as a Churchill quotation by Quotefancy.com. As close as we come to the “mettle” response above, but no attribution can be found, either for the full phrase or any components of it.

Montgomery, Field Marshal Bernard: In defeat, indomitable; in victory, insufferable. [Or: Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance, insufferable in victory.]

• Widely bruited about, but not in Churchill’s canon. Likely conjured up lately from “Indomitable in victory, insufferable in defeat,” by American football coach Woody Hayes. For a number of genuine remarks see Chapter 20, People, Montgomery.

The Field Marshal lived up to the finest tradition of Englishmen. He sold his life dearly.

• WSC allegedly said this in 1958 when advised that Monty’s memoirs were earning more than his History of the English Speaking Peoples. It seems unlike Churchill. “Sold his life dearly” comes up only once in the canon, when Alanbrooke opined that Churchill would have done so if ever backed up against a wall by invading Germans.

Muslims: When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned with minority rights. When they are in the majority there are no minority rights. No attribution.

Mussolini’s Consolation: [Son-in-law Duncan Sandys: “Hitler and Mussolini have an even greater burden to bear, because everything is going wrong for them.”] Ah! But Mussolini has this consolation, that he could shoot his son-in-law!

• Refers to the execution by firing squad of Count Galeazzo Ciano (1903-1944). This non-quote originated in newspaper proprietor Cecil King’s war memoir,With Malice Toward None (1970). But King said it was “obviously concocted by some wag.” Another version involves WSC’s son-in-law Vic Oliver, whom he disliked, asking which war leader Churchill most admired.

Naval Tradition – Nuisenza

Naval tradition: Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, buggery [sometimes “sodomy”] and the lash.

• In 1955 WSC denied this, but Harold Nicolson quotes him on 17 August 1950: “Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers and the lash.” However, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations lists “Rum, bum, and bacca” and “Ashore it’s wine women and song, aboard it’s rum, bum and concertina” as 19th century naval catchphrases. Verdict: not original to Churchill.

Never Give In [Three-word speech. Also sometimes: “Never give up.”]

• Harrow School, 29 October 1941. Often represented as a three-word speech which Churchill allegedly made, and then sat down. This is incorrect. The complete quotation is in Chapter 2, Maxims, Perseverance.

Never quit: Never, never, never quit! [Also sometimes quoted as “Never, never, never give up!”

• Misquotations of “Never give in – never, never, never, never, except to convictions of honour and good sense.”

Nuisenza: It is a nuisenza to have the fluenza.

• Dated 25 October 1943 in WW2 V, 279. Represented in places as a Churchillism, this was actually Roosevelt writing to Churchill.

Oats and Sage – Organ grinder

Oats and Sage: The young sow wild oats, the old grow sage.

• Constantly ascribed to Churchill, it is not among his published words. Henry James Byron (1835–84) in “An Adage” wrote: “The gardener’s rule applies to youth and age; When young ‘sow wild oats,” but when old, grow sage.”

Opportunity: To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

• Commonly attributed, but neither the quotation nor parts of it can be found. That it is manufactured is suggested by its use of “finest hour” from WSC’s famous speech of 18 June 1940, which he would have been unlikely to repeat in so offhand a context. Verdict: apocryphal Churchill.

Organ grinder and monkey: Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

• Badly garbled from what Churchill said about Hitler and Mussolini: “The organ grinder still has hold of the monkey’s collar.” See Chapter 20, People, Mussolini.

Palestinians – People

Palestinians: It is crazy to help the [Palestinian] Arabs, because they are a backward people who ate nothing but camel dung.

• Reported only by Michael Makovsky, in Churchill’s Promised Land, pp. 168-69 as a remark to Malcolm MacDonald in re the 1939 Palestine White Paper. Makovsky added, “these might not have been Churchill’s exact words.” Verdict: insufficiently established. (Churchill’s one verified reference to “camel dung” is an amusing story. See Part 2 Comments.)

Past, forgetting the: A nation that forgets the past has no future. • No attribution.

Past, remembering the: Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

• Famous among quotes by George Santayana (1863-1952) in The Age of Reason (1905). Churchill shared the sentiments, but never repeated the exact words.

People Will Put You Out: [Lord Shawcross: “We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.”] Oh no you’re not. The people put you there and the people will put you out again.

• Supposedly 1946 with the Labour Party newly in power. Shawcross is often misquoted as saying, “We are the masters now.” He maintained that he spoke as above, but Churchill’s retort is not established and likely apocryphal.

Perfection – Pessimist

Perfection is the enemy of progress.  • No attribution.

Persistence: Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential.

• No attribution. Reported August 2008 in Investor’s Business Daily.

Pessimist and Optimist: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

• No attribution. For what he did say about them, see Chapter 5, Anecdotes and Stories…Optimists and Pessimists.

Planning – Poison

Planning: Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential. • No attribution.

Plan to fail: People who fail to plan, plan to fail.

• No attribution. For what he did say, see “Planning” in Chapter 21, Political Theory and Practice and Chapter 22, Politics: The Home Front.

Poison in Your Coffee: [Nancy Astor: “If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.”] If I were married to you, I’d drink it.

• Blenheim Palace, circa 1912, Balsan, 162; Sykes, 127. Martin Gilbert (In Search of Churchill, 232) concluded that the author was F.E. Smith, Lord Birkenhead, “a much heavier drinker than Churchill, and a notorious acerbic wit”. But Fred Shapiro (Yale Book of Quotations) says the riposte dates back even farther, to a joke line in the Chicago Tribune of 3 January 1900: “‘If I had a husband like you,’ she said with concentrated scorn, ‘I’d give him poison!’ ‘Mad’m,’ he rejoined, looking her over with a feeble sort of smile, ‘If I had a wife like you I’d take it.’” Verdict: F. E. Smith, giving new life to an old wisecrack.

Politics – Prepositions

Politics: Politics is the art of inclusion, not exclusion.

           •  No attribution. He did say, “Politics is the art of looking forward…” See Chapter 2, Maxims…Politics.

Positive Thinker: The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. • No attribution.

Power: Power is a drug. Who tried it at least once is poisoned forever. • Reported by tribuneindia.com, 2020. No attribution.

Prepositions, Ending Sentences in: This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put. [Sometimes rendered as “tedious nonsense” or “offensive impertinence.”]

• Per Benjamin Zimmer, originally attributed to WSC by The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, 28 February 1944. Fred Shapiro (Yale Book of Quotations) writes: “The Times…made one change that seems to undercut Churchill’s humor completely: they ‘fixed’ the quote so that there are no fronted prepositions. The Wall Street Journal, 30 September 1942, quotes an undated article in Strand Magazine: When a memorandum passed round a certain Government department, one young pedant scribbled a postscript drawing attention to the fact that the sentence ended with a preposition, which caused the original writer to reply that the anonymous postscript was ‘offensive impertinence, up with which I will not put.’”

Principle – Public Schools

Principle: Never stand so high upon a principle that you cannot lower it to suit the circumstances. • An all-purpose bon mot put in WSC’s mouth to make it more interesting; no attribution.

Prisoner of War: A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him. • No attribution.

Profits and Losses: Socialists think profits are a vice. I consider losses the real vice. • No attribution.

Public [Private] Schools: A public school education equips a boy for life and damns him for eternity.

• No attribution. (In Britain, a public school is a private prep school.)

Rich and Poor – Sex

Reputation: The most important man in the world, when he dies, leaves as lasting an impression as a fist withdrawn from a bucket of water. • No attribution.

Rich and Poor: You don’t make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. • No attribution.

Risk, Care and Dream: Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.

• No attribution. Quoteworld.org credits Claude Thomas Bissell (1916–2000), Canadian author and educator.

Rough men stand ready: See “Defenders of the peace,” Part 2.

Saving: Saving is a very good thing, especially if your parents have done it for you. • No attribution.

Saying and Doing: I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behaviour never lies. • No attribution.

Schooldays: At Harrow they taught us not to piss on our hands. • No attribution.

Sex: It gives me great pleasure.

• At The Other Club, a member drawn at random would chalk a word on a blackboard. A second member, chosen by lot, had to make an impromptu speech about it. This is supposedly Churchill’s speech on the word “sex.” No attribution is found.

Concluded in Part 4…

_________

Learn …

Who was Winston Churchill? Why, half a century since his death, is he the most quoted historical figure? Scholars know the answers. Do you? Why does it matter?

It matters because Churchill continues to offer guidance and example today. His indomitable courage, his ability to communicate, his knowledge of history, his political precepts, are as valuable now as they were in his time.

Courage and resolution

Churchill himself said “nothing surpasses 1940.” We must look there for to learn of his greatest accomplishment. Without him the world today would be unrecognizable: dark, impoverished, tortured. Churchill didn’t win the Second World War. That took more than he alone could offer. His triumphant achievement was not losing it.

Churchill did that in two ways: pursuing the paramount goal to the exclusion of all others; and communicating that goal to a baffled and frightened world.

The great movements that underlie history are the development of science, industry, culture, social and political structures, wrote Charles Krauthammer:

These are undeniably powerful, almost determinant.  Yet every once in a while, a single person arises without whom everything would be different…. The originality of the 20th century surely lay in its politics. It invented the police state and the command economy, mass mobilization and mass propaganda, mechanized murder and routinized terror—a breathtaking catalog of political creativity. And the 20th is a single story because history saw fit to lodge the entire episode in a single century. Totalitarianism turned out to be a cul-de-sac. It came and went. It has a beginning and an end, 1917 and 1991, a run of seventy-five years neatly nestled into the last century. That is our story.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon? Yes, it was the ordinary man and woman, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. True, it was America and its allies. Indeed, it was the great leaders: Roosevelt, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Learn more: Winston Churchill’s War Leadership, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill and War, by Geoffrey Best.

Right and freedom

Almost all his life, Churchill’s quarrel was with tyranny. But singularly among politicians of his time, he saw the future—and its implications for good or ill. Churchill predicted today’s age of instant communications. He foresaw the nuclear age, the mobile phone, social media, genetic engineering. He feared the challenge to free government through what he called “Mass Effects on Modern Life.” It is useful to learn how he expressed these warnings, which still apply.

As early as 1908, Churchill’s ideas, speeches and legislative accomplishments produced pioneering reforms in the social structure. His aim was to reform what was bad and to preserve what was good, without disrupting the enterprise that produces the wherewithal to make life worth living. That is still a worthy goal.

* * *

At the same time, Churchill foresaw the all-powerful administrative state. Many an advance in science, technology and communication, Churchill argued, “suppresses the individual achievement.” He deplored the rise of the collective at the expense of the individual: “Is not mankind already escaping from the control of individuals? Are not our affairs increasingly being settled by mass processes? Are not modern conditions—at any rate throughout the English-speaking communities—hostile to the development of outstanding personalities and to their influence upon events; and lastly if this be true, will it be for our greater good and glory?” Today such questions merit examination by thoughtful people.

The newspapers do a lot of thinking for us, Churchill wrote. Substitute “media” for “newspapers” and he could be speaking today. He particularly worried about the superficiality of media. True, it provides “a tremendous educating process. But it is an education which passes in at one ear and out at the other. It is an education at once universal and superficial.” Such a process, taken to its ultimate ends, would produce “standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments, according to their class or party.”

These considerations alone, writes Larry Arnn,

offer ample practical reasons to know Churchill’s story; but there are other reasons beyond the manifestly practical. Justice and the duty to pursue it are central to true statesmanship. It is certainly worth our time to consider how Churchill, who held to that idea as strongly as any, understood his and his country’s purposes and navigated toward them.

Learn more: Churchill’s Political Philosophy, by Martin Gilbert; Churchill’s Trial: Winston Churchill and the Challenge to Free Government, by Larry P. Arnn.

Magnanimity and generosity

Another quality worthy to learn was Churchill’s magnanimity. He was not a hater. “I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming victory,” he said, “and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished.” He proved this repeatedly.

As a young statesman Churchill fostered a generous peace with the Boers after their defeat in the Boer War. In 1918, he urged (vainly) that shiploads of food be sent to blockaded Germany. He fought the 1926 General Strike, then argued for redress of strikers’ grievances. His hate for the Germans in World War II “died with their surrender.”

* * *

He held the same attitude toward individuals—something we can only wish for among today’s politicians. Admiral Fisher nearly destroyed his career in 1915; a year later Churchill advocated Fisher’s return to the Admiralty. In 1945 the socialist Clement Attlee inflicted his greatest political defeat. Yet when confronted with jokes at Attlee’s expense, Churchill refused to be drawn into lampooning a man he described as a “gallant servant of his country.” In the 1930s he fought a bill granting India greater independence, and then urged the Indian leader Gandhi to “make the most of it,” and promised to see that India would get “much more.”

His eulogies to Neville Chamberlain and Lloyd George were masterful in their generosity, Andrew Roberts wrote: “He did not believe in vengeance against domestic political opponents, but rather in what he called, ‘A judicious and thrifty disposal of bile.’”

This was a rare quality, even then. It remains an example worth imitating. To those who had wronged him in the past Churchill would say, “time ends all things,” or “the past is dead.” In 1940, having finally risen to the pinnacle, he warned critics of his predecessors: “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Learn more: Churchill as Peacemaker, James W. Muller, ed.; Great Contemporaries: Churchill Reflects on FDR, Hitler, Kipling, Chaplin, Balfour, and Other Giants of His Age, by Winston S. Churchill.

“A man of quality”

We do tend to be discouraged about how things are going—although in our time, they haven’t gone all that badly. The fall of the Soviet Union, the prevalence of free market economics, were not things people would bet on forty years ago. Churchill saw them coming twenty years earlier than that. He was always the optimist. Humanity, he believed, was not going to destroy itself.

“In every sphere of human endeavour, Churchill foresaw the dangers and potential for evil,” wrote Martin Gilbert:

Many of those dangers are our dangers today. He also pointed the way forward to our solutions—for tomorrow. That is why it is useful to learn about his life. Some writers portray him as a figure of the past, an anachronism, a grotesque. In doing so, it is they who are the losers, for he was a man of quality: a good guide for our troubled decade and for the generations now reaching adulthood.

Q: Did Winston Churchill ever use public transport while PM, particularly the tube?

On Courage

Q: We accept that the screenplay is a dramatisation of events. But is it likely that Churchill would have left a government car for a no-security ride on the tube? Would he stop to talk to the people before such an important speech? If not, why not?

David Franco, reviewing the film Churchill, starring Brian Cox, raises questions he says everyone should be asking. “Isn’t the ability to accept one’s mistakes part of what makes a man a good leader? …. To what extent should we rely [on] past experiences in order to minimize mistakes in the future? These are the questions that make a bad movie like Churchill worth seeing.”

Well, I won’t be seeing this bad movie. Described as “perverse fantasy” by historian Andrew Roberts, it joins a recent spate of sloppy Churchill bio-pics that favor skewed caricatures over historical fact.

Revisionism: A Thriving Industry

Makers of movies might think it novel to criticize Churchill, but this is far from the case. Attacks on his leadership began early after World War II and have continued ever since. There’s a thriving mini-industry in “Churchill revisionism.” But it started with books, not movies.

In 1963, R.W. Thompson’s The Yankee Marlborough portrayed Churchill as a man of flesh and blood, who made mistakes, like anybody else. In his 1970 study, Churchill: A Study in Failure 1900-1939, Robert Rhodes James focused on Churchill’s political gaffes, such as his dogged support of King Edward VIII in the 1936 Abdication crisis. Edward, later Duke of Windsor, gave up the throne to marry an American divorcee. The Duke’s tepid admiration of Hitler, and dismal performance as Governor of the Bahamas, caused Churchill to reflect: “I’m glad I was wrong.”

In 1993, John Charmley’s Churchill: The End of Glory rocked Churchill’s supporters by claiming that he should have backed away from the Hitler war to preserve Britain’s wealth, power, and empire. More recently, Max Hastings criticized Churchill’s war leadership on multiple issues in both World Wars: Catastrophe 1914, on the opening months of WW1, and Winston’s War, 1940-45.

Whatever we make of their assessments, these historians were qualified critics whose thoroughly researched theses merit consideration. Alas, we cannot say the same about the recent round of Churchill movies.

Movies Faithful to Reality

Churchill movies started off well and were honest for decades. Young Winston (1972), starring Simon Ward as WSC and Anne Bancroft as his mother, was a vivid presentation based on Churchill’s own account of his first twenty-five years. Its inaccuracies stemmed from Churchill himself in his autobiography. (In it, Anthony Hopkins played David Lloyd George. Lady Randolph says: “He has the most disconcerting way of looking at women.”)

In 1974, Lee Remick brilliantly reprised the role of Lady Randolph the television series Jennie: as accurate a portrayal as ever existed. We Churchlllians gave her an award for it—the dying Lee’s last public appearance. It was attended by Gregory Peck, who co-starred with her in The Omen, who praised her “depth of womanliness.”

That same year, Richard Burton played a believable Churchill in The Gathering Storm, about the years leading up to World War II. Again, it didn’t deviate from fact, although Burton spoiled the effect by denouncing Churchill for fictitious acts against Welsh miners, including Burton’s father. Privately, Burton had expressed his admiration for “the old boy”.…but later, the cameras were on.

The 1981 TV series Churchill: The Wilderness Years, remains the model Churchill bio-pic. Herein Robert Hardy showed us both Churchill’s human frailties and his greatness. Hardy and his writers partnered with Churchill’s official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert to portray the anxious politician of the 1930s, out of power, vainly warning of the Nazi menace. Brilliantly cast, the result was a masterpiece.

More Recently…

Albert Finney was a solid Churchill in the second Gathering Storm (2002), a 90-minute film for television. As skillfully cast as The Wilderness Years, it featured Vanessa Redgrave in a bavura performance as Clementine Churchill. The story line, while not uncritical, did not deviate from fact. Even in the cynical, anti-heroic 21st century, it seemed, filmmakers could still tell his story without reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or godlike caricature. Then came “Into the Storm,” a 2009 television drama broadcast by the BBC and HBO. Here in a series set in 1945 with 1940 flashbacks, Brendan Gleeson gave us the most accurate Churchill since Robert Hardy. Things were looking good.

Or so I thought. Alas, in the last couple of years, we’ve had three films which can only be described as “fake history,” and a one-dimensional documentary that fails to tell the full story.

A Turn to the Worse

The Crown, a 2016 Netflix series covering the early reign of Queen Elizabeth II, was well acted. But John Lithgow portrayed a senile prime minister who hides his 1953 stroke from the Queen and repeatedly paints his goldfish pond in a muddle of depression. Factually, the Queen knew of Churchill’s stroke three days after it happened—and he was never so dotty as to make repeated paintings of his fish pond. The Duke of Windsor resurfaces here, promising that he will get the new Queen to move into Buckingham Palace if Churchill restores his royal allowance. Where do they think of this stuff?

Viceroy’s House has not been seen yet in the US, and we’re missing nothing. A visually elaborate production, it covers the end of British rule in India, under the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, whitewashing the latter at Churchill’s expense. Mountbatten’s insistence that Britain leave before the India-Pakistan boundaries were settled led to violent strife and the massacre of millions. Somehow, the film manages to blame this on Churchill, who was not even in power at the time.

* * *

Churchill starring Brian Cox is built around the myth that Churchill opposed D-Day virtually to the moment of the Normandy landings. In reality, Churchill had sought “a lodgment on the continent” since the British were thrown out of Dunkirk in 1940. His concept of floating “Mulberry Harbors” for landing tanks and equipment dated back to 1917. This hasn’t prevented Mr. Cox from flaunting his ignorance in interviews repeating a host of canards, including the notion that Churchill wanted to invade Germany over the Alps.

I held my breath when the film Dunkirk appeared, hoping it would not be another dose of lame propaganda. Churchill doesn’t appear in it. But his absence, along with other heroes of the Dunkirk evacuation, reduces the film to a one-dimensional portrait. It’s war on a beach, with moving scenes of heroism and survival. Who was the enemy? A viewer has no idea why Churchill said after Dunkirk, “We shall never surrender”—though his words are read movingly by a soldier in the final scenes.

Hope Ahead? We’ll See

There’s no question that fictitious scenes and conversations are legitimate devices in bio-pics. But they must not depart from what we know. And thanks to historians like Martin Gilbert and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project, we know a lot.

There is cause for hope. This autumn, Gary Oldman will star as Churchill in another bio-pic, Darkest Hour, about facing Hitler’s armies in 1940. Promisingly, Oldman has consulted with qualified historians, striving to find “a way in” to the real Churchill. Colleagues who’ve seen previews say he has Churchill down perfectly. But his script contains some bizarre counterfactuals.

One can only wish him success. Perhaps this film will answer David Franco’s questions. Yes, accepting one’s mistakes does make a person a good leader. Yes, Churchill did learn from his mistakes. He was a man of quality—a good guide for our troubled decade. And after a long lapse, he deserves a film that does him justice.

Did WSC Send Troops Against Strikers?

For a century it has been part of socialist demonology that Churchill sent troops to attack strikers during a 1910 miners’ work stoppage in Tonypandy, Wales. In 1967 an Oxford undergraduate wrote that Churchill faced down strikers with tanks. This was very prescient of him, since tanks didn’t exist in 1910.

And for half a century Churchill’s defenders, beginning with his son and including this writer, insisted all this was a lie. Churchill, were said, deferred from using troops against the mineworker strikers and left law enforcement to the local constabulary.

Out of this has grown a considerable muddle, to which I have added my share. So this is to correct the record: Churchill did send troops to areas containing strikers and riots in 1910-11. He withheld their deployment in 1910, but in 1911 their presence at one location resulted in fatalities.

Now, as the traffic judge used to allow me to do in my leaded-footed days as a teenage driver, I shall plead on Churchill’s behalf: “Guilty with an explanation.”

Tonypandy, Wales, November 1910

A coal miners’ strike grew out of disputes over wage differentials for working hard and soft seams. Up to 30,000 miners were involved, and local authorities appealed for troops to the Secretary of State for War, Richard Haldane, who consulted Churchill, then Home Secretary. They agreed to send police, but to station some troops nearby if worst came to worst.

Churchill reported to the King that he had restored peace without resort to soldiers. The Conservative press attacked. The Times said that he did not understand the need for “decisive handling.” The Liberal press defended him, a Liberal MP. “The brave course was also the wise one,” wrote the Manchester Guardian…“Instead of a score of cases for the hospital there might have been as many for the mortuary.”

Writing to David Lloyd George the following spring, Churchill expressed his wish to help the miners. The government, he said, should meet their requests for stronger safety regulations and inspections, given the highest death rates since mining statistics had begun—and finance the expense with a surcharge on mineowners’ royalties.

Llanelli, Wales, August 1911

Nine months later, a national railway strike broke out when rail operators refused to recognize the unions as negotiators. This time troops arrived at numerous scenes of disturbances around the country. Mostly they acted with caution, and when they did fire, they usually aimed over the heads of crowds.

Lloyd George settled the strike by convincing the railways to recognize the union negotiators. But in Llanelli, Wales—two days, ironically, after the strike had ended—the only fatalities from the use of troops occurred. Rioters held up a train and knocked the engine driver senseless. Soldiers attempted to clear the track but looting began, and they fired into the crowd, killing two or four rioters (accounts vary).

Troops left when the strike ended. On August 20th King George V telegraphed Churchill: “Glad the troops are to be sent back to their districts at once: this will reassure the public. Much regret unfortunate incident at Llanelli. Feel convinced that prompt measures taken by you prevented loss of life in different parts of the country.”

Randolph Churchill wrote in the official biography:

For all the criticism that came Churchill’s way from the Labour members of Parliament for his attitude to the use of troops during this strike, there is little doubt that the King’s telegram represented public opinion at the time. But Labour was not to forget….

Concluded in Part 2…

Lloyd George was personally not revenge-minded. But as a politician he was all too ready to adopt the popular cry “Hang the Kaiser.” (Punishing the Kaiser was resisted by very few besides Churchill. A dangerous vacuum, Churchill warned, might occur if the Hohenzollerns were deposed.)

Churchill, as Thompson says, criticized severe retribution against Germany at the time. He continued to say so in The World Crisis, his memoir of World War I. He was true to his maxim, “In victory, magnanimity.” As Secretary of State for War in 1918-19, Churchill argued that the Allies should ship boatloads of food to blockaded Germany after the Armistice. Lenient terms, he added, should be offered the defeated enemy.

Squeezing Germany

“Squeezing Germany until the pips squeak” was a good vote-getting slogan, but it is too sweeping to say that the peace of 1919 led directly to Hitler. As the historian R.J.Q. Adams wrote:

Britain required a restored Germany, returned to economic stability…. Though defeated, Germany remained a unified vital nation of more than 60 million souls who had fought the British and French to a standstill on the western front for more than three years. Her recovery, regardless of the desires of her former enemies, was virtually inevitable. It is not difficult to see why there were many to whom appeasing such a nation was attractive.

“Squeezing” was the advertised approach, at least in public, of most Allied leaders. It committed Germany to vast reparations, contributing (but not solely causing) an economic collapse in the 1920s. We should not however overrate this. The Germans paid many millions in reparations. But they also received about 50 percent more than that in US loans.

Of course it can be argued that without the drain of reparations, the German state would have been better able to withstand postwar economic chaos that led in due course to Hitler. But other aspects of the treaty were also questionable. For example, Churchill argued that the return of Germany’s forfeited colonies, was a realistic form of appeasement.

Thanks to Clay Thompson for puncturing this particular instance of “Churchilllian Drift.”