Q: What was it?

The Atlantic Charter was issued by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in August 1941. “We had the idea,” Churchill later told Parliament, “to give all peoples, and especially the oppressed and conquered peoples, a simple, rough and ready wartime statement of the goal towards which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way, and thus make a way for others to march with them….”

A reader asks if the Charter had a second iteration:

In your review of Cita Stelzer’s Churchill’s American Network, you link Martin Gilbert’s 2005 lecture on Churchill and America. In it, Sir Martin said: “One of the documents which I’ve never seen reproduced…was the Declaration of Principles which Churchill and Eisenhower signed in the White House.” Was this, as he hinted, a second Atlantic Charter?

A: “Perhaps—perhaps not”

Sir Martin was quoting, actually paraphrasing, Churchill’s description of the charter he signed with Eisenhower in 1954. He correctly said it was never published. Finding it proved a challenge.

Sir Martin’s book Churchill and America references the Eisenhower Papers at Johns Hopkins University. The university library could not find it. They referred me to the Eisenhower Library, which did not reply. (Some libraries seem to have difficulties even answering queries about materials in their care.)

Repeated online searches eventually produced the text. Back in 2005, Sir Martin wished that President Bush and Prime Minister Blair publish the “Second Charter” as a gesture of solidarity during the Iraq war.

The Hillsdale College Churchill Project met Sir Martin’s wish that the “charter” be published, albeit on its seventieth anniversary. The wording certainly bears the imprint of Sir Winston.

Washington, 29 June 1954

As we terminate our conversations on subjects of mutual and world interest, we again declare that: 

(1) In intimate comradeship, we will continue our united efforts to secure world peace based upon the principles of the Atlantic Charter, which we reaffirm. 

(2) We, together and individually, continue to hold out the hand of friendship to any and all nations, which by solemn pledge and confirming deeds show themselves desirous of participating in a just and fair peace.

(3) We uphold the principle of self-government and will earnestly strive by every peaceful means to secure the independence of all countries whose peoples desire and are capable of sustaining an independent existence. We welcome the processes of development, where still needed, that lead toward that goal. As regards formerly sovereign states now in bondage, we will not be a party to any arrangement or treaty which would confirm or prolong their unwilling subordination. In the case of nations now divided against their will, we shall continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections supervised by the United Nations to insure they are conducted fairly.

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(4) We believe that the cause of world peace would be advanced by general and drastic reduction under effective safeguards of world armaments of all classes and kinds. It will be our persevering resolve to promote conditions in which the prodigious nuclear forces now in human hands can be used to enrich and not to destroy mankind. 

(5) We will continue our support of the United Nations and of existing international organizations that have been established in the spirit of the Charter for common protection and security. We urge the establishment and maintenance of such associations of appropriate nations as will best, in their respective regions, preserve the peace and the independence of the peoples living there. When desired by the peoples of the affected countries, we are ready to render appropriate and feasible assistance to such associations.           

(6) We shall, with our friends, develop and maintain the spiritual, economic and military strength necessary to pursue these purposes effectively. In pursuit of this purpose we will seek every means of promoting the fuller and freer interchange among us of goods and services which will benefit all participants.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston S. Churchill 

Self-government, self-determination

In the original Atlantic Charter, Churchill had been careful to distinguish self-government from self-determination. Britain and the U.S. agreed to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.”

Churchill’s hand was again evident in the 1954 declaration, with its closely similar wording: “We uphold the principle of self-government…the independence of all countries whose peoples desire and are capable of sustaining an independent existence.” They welcomed “the processes of development, where still needed, that lead toward that goal.” (Italics mine.)

The British Empire was much diminished by 1954. But this wording preserved a certain flexibility for Britain over the colonies that remained. In the years which followed, under Churchill’s successors, colony after British colony became independent. Most evolved peaceably, and with far less strife than colonies of other empires. Today many are members of the useful, if sadly underutilized, Commonwealth of Nations.

“Rough-and-ready”

Churchill glossed over minor semantics in his report to Parliament. The statement, he said, was only “a declaration of our basic unity.” Angl0-American unity, he continued, was “the strongest hope that all mankind may survive in freedom and justice.

This was virtually the same meaning Churchill had attached to the 1941 Atlantic Charter: “A simple, rough-and-ready” statement by which Britain and America “mean to make their way.”

In retrospect

Was the 1954 Washington declaration a second Atlantic Charter? Probably not, writes Roosevelt-Churchill scholar Warren Kimball: “I’m a bit dubious about ordaining that statement, since it apparently attracted little attention and had no effect on history.”

Indeed, Churchill’s bright hopes for a “new charter” were quickly dashed. The Prime Minister was at sea, returning to England. There he dashed off a telegram to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov, suggesting a high-level meeting with the Russians—absent Eisenhower.

Churchill informed Eisenhower, furious that he had not been consulted. ‘‘You did not let any grass grow under your feet,” he fired back. Back in London, the Cabinet was “even more indignant.” The Prime Minister had not consulted them, either.

Though the President later insisted he was “not vexed,” he wanted no Soviet summit. Privately, later, Eisenhower voiced the concern that “Winston would give away the store.”

Churchill’s initiative came to nothing. “I cherish hopes not illusions,” he replied. “And after all I am ‘an expendable’ and very ready to be one in so great a cause.”

In April 1955, convinced at last that he could not foster “a meeting at the summit,” Churchill resigned.

Three months later his successor and Eisenhower met with the Russians in Geneva.

Related reading

“Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing, After All Other Possibilities are Exhausted,” 2021.

“Researching the Atlantic Charter Conference, Argentia, Newfoundland, August 1941,” 2019.

“Bull in a China Shop (Dulles): Not Churchill’s Line,” 2022.

“Churchillian Phrases: ‘Special Relationship’ and ‘Iron Curtain,’” 2019.

“Cita Stelzer on the Angl0-American Special Relationship,” 2024.

A recent article declares: “Winston Churchill once described American diplomacy as  ‘a bull who carries his own china shop around with him.’” Is this an accurate quote, and if so, in relation too what? —L.K., Texas

It’s not Churchill but frequently cited—not regarding American diplomacy but an American diplomat. The alleged victim was President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. But Churchill never said that about him, nor anyone else. Nor did Churchill call Dulles “the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.” (Though the thought might have occurred to him.)

These or similar words do not track among Churchill’s 20 million published words (books, articles, speeches, papers, letters), or 60 million about him by biographers and memoirists digitally scanned by the Hillsdale College Churchill Project. (The “china shop” phrase comes up 22 times, most of them remarks about Churchill!)

“Dull, Duller, Dulles…”

This is not to say Churchill issued no barbs at the American Secretary of State. Well before they met, at the December 1953 Bermuda Conference, WSC told John Colville “I will have no more to do with Dulles, whose great slab of a face I dislike and distrust.” Colville added:

W. was really worked up and, as he went to bed, said some very harsh things about the Republican Party in general and Dulles in particular, which Christopher [Soames] and I thought both unjust and dangerous. [1]

At Bermuda, where he was anxious to plan a summit conference with Stalin’s successor in Moscow, Churchill told his doctor Lord Moran that Dulles was blocking his efforts:

fellow preaches like a Methodist Minister, and his bloody text is always the same: that nothing but evil can come out of meeting with Malenkov. Dulles is a terrible handicap. 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.

We also  have this bouquet, recorded without a date by WSC’s last private secretary: “Dull, Duller Dulles.” [3] Despite it all, with his usual magnanimity, Churchill paid a hospital visit to the dying Dulles on his visit to Washington in 1959. Winston Churchill was not a hater.

Endnotes

1. Colville Diary, 7 January 1953, in John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries 1940–1955, 2 vols. (Sevenoaks, Kent: Sceptre Publishing, 1986–87), II, 320.
2. Moran Diary, 7 December 1953, in Charles Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London, Constable, 1965), 540-41.
3. Anthony Montague Browne, Long Sunset: Memoirs of Winston Churchill’s Last Private Secretary (London: Cassell, 1995), 126.

It may seem odd, since baseball is not an English sport, and its closest counterpart over there is rounders. But—ever obedient to the whims of Churchillians—I offer what he had to say on the matter.

The interesting photo above accompanied a nice article, “Churchill on Baseball,” by Christopher Schwarz, which I published  a few years ago in Finest Hour 163. I supplied the following Churchill quotes as a sidebar to Mr. Schwarz’s article.

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Baseball by Churchill

“Millions of men and women are in the market, all eager to supplement the rewards of energetic toil by ‘easy money.’ From every part of its enormous territories the American public follows the game. Horseracing, baseball, football, every form of sport or gambling cedes its place to a casino whose amplitude and splendours make Monte Carlo the meanest midget in Lilliput.”

—WSC, “What I Saw and Heard in America,” Part IV: “Fever of Speculation in America,” Daily Telegraph, 9 December 1929; reprinted in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols. (London: Library of Imperial History, 1975), IV 42.

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“Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. It is no use offering the manual labourer, tired out with a hard week’s sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball on Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has been working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the week-end.”

—WSC, “Hobbies,” in Thoughts and Adventures, 1932. (The best current edition is by ISI, thoroughly edited and re-footnoted by James W. Muller and Paul Courtenay.)

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“‘The written word remains.’ The spoken word dies upon the air. The news bulletin is coming through on the broadcast. The telephone bell rings – your wife asks you if you remembered to post that letter—and by the time you can again give your attention to the announcer, he has passed to another item. Without the newspaper you will never know the result of that baseball match, or the President’s latest message to Congress.”

—WSC, “You Get It in Black and White,” Colliers, 28 December 1935; reprinted in Collected Essays IV, 317. (Churchill should have said “game” not “match.” Baseball is not cricket!)

Prime Minister’s Questions, 21 July 1952:

Mr. Fenner Brockway (Lab.): “Is [the Prime Minister] aware that…the Iver Heath Conservative Party Association held a fete to raise money for party purposes to which it invited American Service baseball teams to participate for a ‘Winston Churchill’ trophy…and had a note from him saying he was honoured that his name was linked to the trophy?”

WSC: “I read in the Daily Worker some account of this. I had not, I agree, fully realized the political implications that might attach to the matter, and in so far as I have erred I express my regret.” [Laughter.]

Mr. John H. Hynd (Lab.): “While Hon. Gentlemen opposite may try to laugh this one off, may I ask whether the Prime Minister would contemplate the attitude of his Hon. Friends if this incident had happened in connection with a Labour Party fete?”

WSC: “I hope we should all show an equal spirit of tolerance and good humour”

Mr. Brockway (Lab.): “Can the Prime Minister estimate what would be the reaction of Mr. Eisenhower if British Forces participated in a Democratic Party celebration?”

WSC: “I certainly should not attempt to add to the many difficult questions which are pending at the present time by bending my mind to the solution of that question.”

Peck: “I beg your pardon?”

Gault: “Seriously, we’ve got a press message here which says quite clearly that it’s all over. If so, nobody has told the General and he thought you would be the most likely to know at your end.”

Peck: “Well, if it has ended, nobody has told the Prime Minister either.”

Gault: “Do you think we had better carry on?”

Peck: “Yes, I think so.” [John then went back to sleep, and the war went on.]

Joys of The Churchill Documents

It is a privilege to help edit and proof Hillsdale College‘s final document volumes in the Churchill official biography. We fall over so many gems. Here is one.

This document may be a “reject”—we can’t publish everything. It was culled by Sir Martin Gilbert for Document Volume 21. That volume will release in 2018, covering the period from January to July 1945 and the end of Churchill’s premiership. (After that, we have only two more volumes to go.)

The exchange quoted above is by former Churchill Private Secretary John Peck to Dr. Robert Price of Lexington, Massachusetts, 18 July 1981. They had met at a commemorative ceremony at Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms in London. Price had sent Peck an article on the exchanges between Churchill and Truman, via Admiral Leahy, at the end of war in Europe (VE Day). Peck’s reply is an amusing insight, a thing we would never know otherwise. It shows us the richness of the Churchill Documents (Admiral William Leahy was Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman from 1942 to 1949.)

John Peck writes:

I happen to have been the Private Secretary concerned in the Leahy/Churchill exchanges on the secret telephone on May 7th, 1945…. My recollection of events, admittedly written many years later without the benefit of official records, runs as follows:

The instrument of total unconditional surrender was signed in the small hours of 7 May 1945 and all hostilities were to cease the following midnight. Evidently, as Leahy records, Churchill had sent a telegram to President Truman, the substance of which was that he wanted to declare VE Day on 8 May. There was evidence that the President felt the same way. However, from Leahy’s telephone conversation with Churchill, it was evident that the President felt obliged to go along with Stalin‘s wishes [to delay] perhaps until 9 May….

Churchill very reluctantly acquiesced, but much later he suddenly said to me, “Go and ring the President and tell him that I have got to announce the end of the war tomorrow (the 8th) as we originally intended, as the crowds know of the German surrender.” (Or words to that effect.)

I duly put through the call, thinking it highly improbable that I should speak to President Truman himself. Indeed, the call was naturally taken by Admiral Leahy. Although it is not verbatim, the following is a pretty accurate account of our brief dialogue:

Peck: “The Prime Minister wants to announce the end of the war tomorrow. The Russians want to go on until the 9th. On balance he is inclined to go ahead and end it on the 8th.”

Leahy: “We want to end it too.”

Peck: “Right, so we will both end it tomorrow.”

Leahy: “Yes, fine, okay.”

To the best of my knowledge no record of any of these conversations was kept at the London end.

Is the War Over?

John Peck’s letter continues:

I seem to have specialised in odd telephone calls around that time. You may be amused by the following extract from an autobiographical work I once wrote recording another telephone conversation, on an open telephone line , on the night of Sunday, 29 April 1945…. [After this] I ceased to be surprised at anything.

During the weekend of 27-30 April 1945 I was on duty at Chequers [the PM’s official country residence]. On the Sunday night we had finally got the PM off to bed at 3.00 am. I had just fallen into a deep sleep when my bedside telephone rang. An apologetic telephonist put through an even more apologetic Colonel Gault, the Military Assistant to General Eisenhower, speaking from his headquarters in Reims.

Gault: “John, is that you? Sorry to bother you at this hour, but the General told me to ask you if the war is over.”

Peck: “I beg your pardon?”

Gault: “Seriously, we’ve got a press message here which says quite clearly that it’s all over. If so, nobody has told the General and he thought you would be the most likely to know at your end.”

Peck: “Well if it has ended, nobody has told the Prime Minister either.”

Gault: “Do you think we had better carry on?”

Peck: “Yes, I think so. I’ll let you know if there are any developments here.”

Gault: “Many thanks. So I can tell the General to go on with the war?”

Peck: “Yes.”

Gault: “Goodnight. Sorry to bother you.”

Peck: “Not a bit. Goodnight.”

So it was that Private Secretary John Peck, on his own recognizance, bid World War II continue. Neither Churchill, nor Truman, nor Stalin were consulted, Peck writes: “I went back to sleep, and the war went on.”