Puddings (not all desserts) that lacked a theme

A columnist and former presidential advisor asks us to confirm Churchill’s rejection of a tasteless pudding (generic word for dessert in Britain). “It has no theme.”

While not actually published under his byline, Churchill sometimes used the expression when dining. Along with puddings, he applied it to soups. I asked the late Lord Soames: What gave a pudding a theme? “I think,” he replied , “Sir Winston referred to a distinctive flavour or ingredient.”

What I didn’t expect, researching the phrase in the Hillsdale College database of WSC’s published words, was that Churchill used the theme line politically. And more than once. I found five occurrences, each illustrating what he thought about the flaws of legislation or leaders.

1935: the India Bill

A concentrated dose of Churchillian vocabulary poured forth on the Government of India Act. Some analogies were a bit strained, but his word-pictures were vivid. The Act granted more autonomy to the provinces. It also provided for a federation with the “princely states,” and increased the franchise sevenfold.

The historian Zareer Masani said it might have let to a united independent India, but Hindu-Muslim rivalries made that politically impossible. Aware of this problem, Churchill argued against the legislation:

[W]hat is this India Home Rule Bill? I will tell you. It is a gigantic quilt of jumbled crochet work. There is no theme; there is no pattern; there is no agreement; there is no conviction; there is no simplicity; there is no courage. It is a monstrous monument of shams built by the pygmies….

The faithful, trustworthy Indian police, the mainstay of peace and order, are to be disturbed and harassed by divided allegiances arising from unsure, irrational compromise. The supreme government of India is to be racked by Dyarchy—rival authorities clutching at the levers of power.

Churchill’s efforts were ultimately in vain, but his magnanimity was evident after the Act passed. Through a mutual friend, he advised Gandhi “to use the powers that are offered and make the thing a success.”

1939: Napoleon versus Hitler

Churchill always deprecated comparisons between the great French emperor and “a squalid caucus boss and butcher.” In 1939 he wrote:

There is no question of comparing the present ruler of Germany with Napoleon…. Hitler can traverse in his aeroplane, in a few hours, distances which Napoleon’s coach, with all its special relays, could scarcely cover in twice as many days. One of Hitler’s mechanized divisions could certainly disperse all the armies Napoleon ever led. Hitler can add a nought or two to most of the figures with which Napoleon dealt.

1940: Third Reich

Churchill was one of the first to identify Hitler for what he was. And, unlike Napoleon, in WSC’s 1940 language, Hitler’s Reich had no theme:

It is the rule of the Herrenvolk—the master-race—who are to put an end to democracy, to parliaments, to the fundamental freedoms and decencies of ordinary men and women, to the historic rights of nations; and give them in exchange the iron rule of Prussia, the universal goose-step, and a strict, efficient discipline enforced upon the working-classes by the political police, with the German concentration camps and firing parties, now so busy in a dozen lands, always handy in the background. There is the New Order.

Napoleon in his glory and his genius spread his Empire far and wide. There was a time when only the snows of Russia and the white cliffs of Dover with their guardian fleets stood between him and the dominion of the world. Napoleon’s armies had a theme: they carried with them the surges of the French Revolution.

But Hitler—Hitler has no theme, naught but mania, appetite and exploitation. He has, however, weapons and machinery for grinding down and for holding down conquered countries which are the product, the sadly perverted product, of modern science.

1946: “Vague palimpsest of officialese”

Albert Victor Alexander had served as First Lord of the Admiralty in Churchill’s wartime coalition. Alexander was a socialist, but there was affection between them. In 1945, Alexander became Minister of Defense in the new Labour government. Even so, Churchill insisted, he could not have written a document (the Defence White Paper) without a theme:

I must again remind the House that the Rt. Hon. Gentleman used very hard language about the arguments of his political opponents the other night, and about their style. No more barren, dismal, flatulent, platitudinous documents than his White Paper—if you can call it “his” White Paper—has ever been laid before the House of Commons.

His friends—and I am certainly a wartime friend—hope that it is to his credit that he had nothing to do with writing it. It was one of those rigmaroles and grimaces produced by the modern bureaucracy into whose hands we have fallen—a kind of vague palimpsest of jargon and officialese, with no breadth, no theme and, above all no facts.

1949: Nature of a new threat

Speaking at a dinner given by Henry Luce, Churchill revived his belief that Nazism had no theme save racial supremacy. Communism, by contrast, did. And that made it an even more formidable challenge than Hitler:

We are now confronted with something which is quite as wicked but much more formidable than Hitler, because Hitler had only the Herrenvolk stuff and anti-Semitism. Well, somebody [WSC was referring to himself] said about that—a good starter, but a bad stayer. That’s all he had. He had no theme.

But these fourteen men in the Kremlin have their hierarchy and a church of Communist adepts whose missionaries are in every country as a fifth column, and not only a fifth column, in your country, ours, everywhere, and so on, with a feeling that they may be running a risk but if their gamble comes off they will be the masters of the whole land in which they are a minority at the present time. They will be the Quislings with power to rule and dominate all the rest of their fellow countrymen. Therefore they have a good prospective advantage.

In a way, the late conservative leader William F. Buckley, Jr. shared this concept: “My thought has always been that Nazism had absolutely no eschatology,” he told me years ago. “It would wither on the vine. Only the life of Hitler kept it going, and I can’t imagine he’d have lasted very long. The Communists hung in there [after the war] for forty-six years.” (In the context of the 1930s, I respectfully disagreed.)

Words for our time?

It is interesting how Churchill consistently relied on a favored phrase in his oratory. But the remarks above involved issues long past.

Now comes what he said about the lack of “theme” in the 1930 Socialist government. It is remarkable how close this seems to certain situations today:

[T]his island and this Empire are passing through a period of eclipse which may well be converted into a period of decline. There is anxiety abroad, and can we wonder at it! Why should the Government complain? Look at all they have said. Look at all they protest they stand for….

They have no theme [and] have deluded the masses of their supporters in the country into believing they are about to bring into being some vast, splendid, new world. They have climbed and ensconced themselves upon the structures of Capitalism, and they are shouting to the mob below that they are going to pull them down….

Can they wonder there is confusion and anxiety abroad in the nation; and can they wonder that the electors are showing an increasing reluctance to entrust the task of restoring confidence to a bankrupt Government…?

The British electors spoke last on July 4th. Of course, history doesn’t repeat.

Related reading

“William F. Buckley , Jr.: A True Churchillian in the End,”  2020.

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

“Coming: New Churchill Phrase Index in My Next Quotebook,” 2024.

“All the Quotes Winston Churchill Never Said,” Part 1 of four parts, 2018.

“Do you know where Churchill made this statement? ‘Here is a law which is above the King which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.'” —J.F., Phoenix, Ariz.

A: The Birth of Britain, 1956

His “Above the King” quotation occurs in Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples, vol. 1, The Birth of Britain (London: Cassell, 1956), 256-57. He was explaining Magna Carta, the Great Charter of Freedoms, one of the towering benchmarks of Western Civilization. Churchill wrote:

If the thirteenth-century magnates understood little and cared less for popular liberties or Parliamentary democracy, they had all the same laid hold of a principle which was to be of prime importance for the future development of English society and English institutions.

Throughout the document it is implied that here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.

The reign of Henry II, according to the most respected authorities, initiates the rule of law. But the work as yet was incomplete: the Crown was still above the law; the legal system which Henry had created could become, as John showed, an instrument of oppression.

Q: “All will be well”: repeated remark or one-off?

“Churchill had a famous phrase, ‘All will be well.’ Was this a one-time appearance or an habitual expression?”

A: Habitual. Thank the Boers

Although not exclusive to Churchill by any means, “all will be well” was a very frequent expression. In South Africa in 1899-1900, the young Winston had picked up the Afrikaans phrase alles sal regkom—which translates “all will come right.” He used both “all will come right” and “all will be well” interchangeably because they expressed his sentiment. As he said at least once: “For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else…” (Guildhall, London, 9 November 1954, Churchill by Himself, 10.)

There are a half dozen instances of “all will be well” in my quotations book and many scores in his speeches. For example: “…live dangerously; take things as they come; dread naught, all will be well.” (1932, Churchill by Himself, 20.)

The most famous use of the phrase was on 9 February 1941 in Churchill’s broadcast reply to Roosevelt, who had sent him the Longfellow poem, “Sail on, O Ship of State”:

What is the answer that I shall give, in your name, to this great man, the thrice-chosen head of a nation of a hundred and thirty millions? Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: “Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.” (Churchill by Himself, 6-7.)

In those days, a lot of people thought Churchill was whistling in the wind. And so did he on occasion–privately, of course–up until Pearl Harbor. From then on, he had no doubt about victory.

Related reading

“Churchill Quotations: Youth, Maturity, Principle, Regulations,” 2023.

“Quotations: The Best Telegram He Ever Sent,” 2023.

“Churchill Quotations: The Artist, The Invalid and the Sybarite,” 2022.

“The Biblical Churchill: His Largest Single Source of Quotations,” 2021.

Quotations Department, since 2009.

“Command the Moment to Remain” is one of several Churchill remarks in my compilation of “Red Herrings” that he said but did not originate. Since, by quoting them, he gave these lines new life, I will break them out in a separate appendix in the new expanded edition of Churchill by Himself. Many readers today, who might not be aware of  the original, learned these famous lines from Sir Winston.

Sometimes Churchill gave credit to the original author, sometimes not. Often he simply expected his audience to recognize the source. An example is his broadcast of 27 April 1941, ending, “But westward, look, the land is bright.” WSC didn’t bother to credit Arthur Hugh Clough and his poem, “Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth.” He just assumed, in that better-read time, that every English schoolchild knew the words. Back then, they probably did.

“Command the Moment”: from Goethe’s Faust

The distinguished historian Andrew Roberts writes:

On Lake Como in 1945 Churchill, speaking to a Guards officer, “bids the fleeting moment to stay,” or something along those lines. Well, I came across this line from Somerset Maugham’s Up at the Villa (1941) where it says of the anti-Nazi Austrian hero: ‘He quoted that celebrated line of Goethe’s in which Faust, satisfied at length, begs the fleeting moment to stay.’ So I think WSC was quoting Goethe.”

In 1686 the Oxford English Dictionary described “red herring,” 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.” I apply the term to quotes, allegedly by Churchill, which he never said—or if he did, was quoting somebody else.

Hence my Red Herrings Appendix, updated herewith, for the new, expanded edition of my quotes book Churchill by Himself. Chapter references are to that book. “You could fill a book with what Winston Churchill didn’t say,” remarked his sometime colleague, Rab Butler. “It would be almost as long as one made up of genuine quotes.” Well, not quite; but fake quotes are a problem. And they keep coming at us on that daily cacophony of wisdom and foolishness, the World Wide Web.

Without further ado, here we go. More “red herrings” will be added here as the list grows. (I do not dignify them with quotemarks, since none of these quotes originate with Churchill.) See also: “Churchillian Drift.”

Accept – Amusing

Accept or Change: Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted. • No attribution.

Agreement: If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. • No attribution.

America and World War I: America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these “isms” wouldn’t today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government—and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.

• Supposedly 1936. Posted on the Internet in 2002, these quotes caused a stir. In 1942 a $1 million lawsuit was brought against WSC (who had denounced the quotation as fiction) by publisher William Griffin of the New York Enquirer. The quotes and the lawsuit were dismissed when WSC admitted to the interview but denied the statement. See Winston Churchill: Myth and Reality, Chapter 14, “America and World War I.”

Amusing and serious: You cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you also understand the most amusing. • No attribution.

Anecdotes – Arboricide

Anecdotes: Anecdotes are the gleaming toys of House of Commons history.

• No attribution. He did call anecdotes “gleaming toys of history,” but did not confine this to the House of Commons. See Chapter 5, Anecdotes and Stories, King Alfred.

Arabs – Bedouins: En masse the Bedu is a dirty, cowardly cut-throat, with very primitive passions indeed and about as trustworthy as a King Cobra.

 •  Actually the words of an alienated colleague, Desmond Morton, who said Churchill’s view was entirely opposite. WSC envisioned the “superlatively courageous, courteous, urbane, masculine, Arab, terrible in his wrath, living an ascetic life in company with Allah, a camel, a spear and rifle, an Arab mare and a Selukhi dog, jealous of his honour above all, like a medieval knight of chivalry, etc.” Quoted in R.W. Thompson, Churchill and Morton, 194.

Arboricide:  You are guilty of arboricide!

• Alleged remark to Clementine Churchill, circa 1935, when she cut down a favorite tree. Although Churchill once accused his wife of “arboricidal mania,” he did not originate this word (meaning “wanton destruction of trees”). The Oxford English Dictionary tracks it to H.G. Graham’s Social Life of Scotland (1899): “the crime of arboricide was distressingly frequent.”

Arctic Convoys – Attlee

Arctic Convoys (Second World War): The worst journey in the world.

• No attribution, despite at least 18 appearances on the web all citing Churchill.

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. • No attribution.

Attlee, Clement: An empty car drew up and Clement Attlee got out ….  A sheep in sheep’s clothing! [Some quotes read: “A sheep in wolf’s clothing.”]

• Circa 1950. Neither quote is Churchill’s, who thought much better of Clem Attlee, a gallant colleague and servant of the crown, he often said. The Quote Verifier tracks the taxi quote back to 1879 when the victim was Sarah Bernhardt (a notably thin woman), arriving in an empty carriage. Churchill himself said the sheep quip “was based on a more pointed remark he’d once made about someone else,” The Quote Verifier editor Ralph Keyes wrote: “British quote maven Nigel Rees thought the comment might have originated with newspaper columnist J.B. Morton in the 1930s.” Morton (1893–1979) wrote a joke-filled column called “By the Way.” 

Balfour – Birth

Balfour, Arthur: If you wanted nothing done, Arthur Balfour was the best man for the task. There was none equal to him.

• Supposedly WSC made this crack when Lloyd George said he heard that Arthur Balfour was “dominating the League of Nations.” (“Like a rabbit dominating a lettuce” is another one I can’t track.) The quote has been ascribed to Lord Riddell’s War Diary, but no such words appear there.

Beer Bottles, hit them with: …we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills…and we will hit them over the heads with beer bottles, which is about all we have got to work with.…

• Allegedly 4 June 1940. The only published reference to this offhand remark (with Churchill allegedly covering the BBC microphone during his rebroadcast of the speech), was by Robert Lewis Taylor, Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness, 223-24, who says it was heard by “one of England’s highest clergymen, who was present at the studio.” Sir John Colville, who was present, told me he never heard it. Regrettably, for it is a wonderful line, it must be considered fictitious.

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

Birth: Although present on that occasion I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.

• Manchester, Last Lion I, 107. Remarkably, this oft-quoted expression cannot be tracked. In the canon it is not among Churchill’s own words, and it appears only in Manchester, whose notes do not lead the reader to its origin.

Botswana – Cabinet

Botswana: What is Botswana worth?

• Allegedly posed circa 1960 by Churchill in Parliament (“£40,000” was the supposed answer). But he said nothing in Parliament after retiring as Prime Minister in 1955, and Bechuanaland did not adopt the name Botswana until 1966.

Bring a Friend if You Have One: [George Bernard Shaw: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.”] WSC: Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.

• Allegedly over Shaw’s play, “St. Joan,” reported by Kay Halle, Irrepressible Churchill, 116. Long believed genuine, this famous exchange was bluntly denied in writing by both Shaw and Churchill. Asked to confirm it, Shaw said he would sue if he was ever so quoted; Churchill agreed with him. (Thanks to Allen Packwood, Director, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.)

Cabinet: Reconstructing a Cabinet is like solving a kaleidoscopic jigsaw puzzle.” • Repeated in several law magazines, without attribution.

Caring – Cheap and nasty

Caring what others think: When you’re 20 you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60 you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.  • No attribution.

Catto lying doggo: Lord Catto is lying doggo.

• Allegedly said when unable to contact Lord Catto. The Independent, 21 September 2001, reported that this was a staple joke in the financial press.

Cheap and nasty: Cheap for us and nasty for the enemy.

• Allegedly 1941. According to Elizabeth Longford in Winston Churchill, 1974, Churchill supposedly referred to the fifty aged destroyers loaned Britain by Roosevelt as “cheap and nasty,” startling Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s envoy. Supposedly Churchill then amended his remark as above. There is no other reference to this, and it is not in the Hopkins Papers at the FDR Library.

Champagne:  [The imperial pint bottle] is the ideal size…enough for two at lunch and one at dinner.

[The compromise of the pint] pleases everyone, even the Producer.

• Reported without attribution by the Daily Express, December 2021. Although WSC did favour the imperial pint (1/8th of a gallon), neither quote carries attribution to him.

Cigars – Common language

Cigars and Women: Smoking cigars is like falling in love; first you are attracted to its shape; you stay for its flavour; and you must always remember never, never let the flame go out. • No attribution.

Clementine’s riposte: [Clementine Churchill spoke for awhile with a street sweeper.] WSC: What did you talk about for so long? [CSC: Many years ago he was madly in love with me.] WSC: So you could have been the wife of a street sweeper today. [CSC: Oh no. If I had married him, he would have been the prime minister today.] No attribution, and Lady Soames said she never heard it in family conversation. 

Collar the Lot [or “Collar Them All”]: [Churchill’s command for rounding up aliens in World War II.]

• No attribution, though it is possible he gave such an order. As Norman Rose explains (Unruly Giant, 265-66): WSC was “convinced that he was protecting them from ‘outraged public opinion’. Some committed suicide rather than be confined in British camps…At first ‘strongly in favour’ of expelling all internees from Britain, Churchill later relented. Rather than treat ‘friends as foes,’ would it not be more humane, and profitable, to conscript these anti-Nazi refugees into public service, or even the Pioneer Corps, or perhaps as ‘a Foreign Legion’ to serve in Iceland? Most internees were released within eighteen months.” 

Common Language: Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language.

• 1940s, also credited to Bernard Shaw and Dylan Thomas, but without attribution. Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier suggests it originated in Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost” (1887): “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.” Verdict: adapted Wilde.

Conviction – Cross of Lorraine

Conviction: One man with conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions.

• Not Churchill but journalist Alfred George Gardiner: “One man with a conviction will overwhelm a hundred who have only opinions, and Mr. Churchill always bursts into the fray with a conviction so clean, so decisive, so burning, that opposition is stampeded” 

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. •No attribution.

Courage and Fear: Courage is a decision, fear is a reaction. • No attribution.

Courts: Are the courts functioning? Thank God. If the courts are working, nothing can go wrong.

• Supposedly said during the Blitz (as if he wouldn’t know the answer). No attribution or even an approximation. Likely manufactured to convey Churchill’s relief that the courts were unaffected by the bombing. But the words are not really his style.

Crisis, good: Never let a good crisis go to waste.

• Said in 2009 by Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. There is no attribution to Churchill, who was less cynical. See Chapter 6, Britain, Empire and Commonwealth…Foreign policy of.

Cross of Lorraine: The heaviest cross I have to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.

• Supposedly 1943 in reference to de Gaulle and the Free French, this remark was actually made by General Edward Louis Spears, WSC’s military representative to the French in 1939–40.

Cyprus and Greece – Danger

Cyprus and Greece: I think it only natural that the Cypriot people who are of Greek descent should regard their incorporation with what may be called their mother country as an ideal to be earnestly, devoutly and fervently cherished. Such a feeling is an example of the patriotic devotion—which so nobly characterises the Greek Nation.

• These words appeared on a set of 1954 Greek postage stamps favoring the union of Cyprus with Greece. The quotes are not Churchill’s; no such statement is found in Hansard or his speech volumes.

Damn everybody: Whenever I can’t sleep I draw the blinds, pull down my eyeshade, say “damn everybody,” and then I go right off.

• With embarrassment, because I’ve quoted a variation of this once myself, I cannot track any valid attribution, though I have no doubt he did that on occasion.

Danger, threat of: One ought never to turn one’s back on threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching you will reduce the danger by half. • No attribution

Defenders of the Peace – de Gaulle

Defenders of the Peace: People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. [Alternative: We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.]

• No attribution to Churchill, but perhaps semi-George Orwell. Wikiquotes reports: “There is no evidence that Orwell ever wrote or uttered either of these versions of this idea. They do bear some similarity to comments made in an essay that Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling.”

De Gaulle, Charles: Do I regard de Gaulle as a great man? Let us see; he is selfish, he is arrogant, he believes he is the centre of the world….You are quite right. He is a great man.” • No attribution; possibly quoted in a de Gaulle biography by Julian Jackson.

Democracy – Diplomacy

Democracy

The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

• Commonly quoted without attribution. Though he sometimes despaired of democracy’s slowness to act for its own preservation, Churchill had a much more positive attitude towards the average voter. See Chapter 21, Political Theory and Practice…Democracy.

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

• Although these are Churchill’s words in Parliament, 11 November 1947, he clearly did not originate the famous remark about Democracy. Credit Churchill as publicist for an unsourced aphorism.

Dignity: I know of no case where a man added to his dignity by standing on it.

• Manchester, Last Lion II, 25. • Rather than answer Labour attacks, Churchill’s colleagues supposedly urged him to “stand on his dignity.” No attribution.

Dinner, Wine and Women: Well, dinner would have been splendid if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.

• Sometimes you can identify manufactured quotes intuitively. WSC would not have stayed for the second course of such a meal, and his remarks about women were with rare exceptions gallant.

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

Dog Days – Dukes

Diversity: Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it every day.

• No attribution. The words “diversity” and “celebrate” clearly suggest fabrication long after Churchill’s time.

Dog Days: Every dog has his day.

• 1944, 16 November, Ten Downing Street, WW2 VI, 611. An old saying not originated by Churchill, used in his memo to chief of staff General Ismay regarding the shipping of World War I era long-range heavy guns to bolster the invasion of Germany.

Doing what’s necessary: A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality. • No attribution.

Drugs: Dear nurse, pray remember that man cannot live by M&B alone.

• Carthage, 1943. Not found in the canon, though it sounds like him. Churchill delighted in the sulfa drug M&B, and referred to his doctors, Lord Moran and Dr. Bedford, as “M&B”. For genuine quotes about M&B, see Chapter 27, Science and Medicine, Drugs.

Dulles, John Foster: He is the only bull I know who carries his china shop with him.

• No attribution, which is not to say WSC didn’t have other bouquets for the American Secretary of State. See Chapter 20, People…Dulles.

Dukes: A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep as two Dreadnoughts; and Dukes are just as great a terror and they last longer.

• Supposedly Newcastle, 9 October 1909. Sometimes attributed to Churchill, actually uttered by his ally in the campaign to reform the House of Lords, David Lloyd George. Credit Lloyd George.

Dundee: Dundee’s grass will grow green through its cobbled streets, and the vigour of its industry will shrink and decay.

• No attribution. Allegedly said after losing Dundee, his “seat for life,” in the 1922 general election.

Effort – Europe

Effort: Continuous effort—not strength or intelligence—is the key to unlocking our potential. • No attribution.

Eloquence versus wisdom: He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom. • No attribution.

Enemies: You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life. • No attribution. Quoteinvestigator.com tracks something similar to Victor Hugo in  his 1845 essay”Villemain”: “You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea.”

Enemy, the real: The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you. • No attribution.

England and France: England crumbles in order, France gets up in disorder. • No attribution.

Europe vs. America: If Britain must chose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea.

• Incorrect. Actually referred to choosing between de Gaulle or the Free French and Roosevelt. The correct quotes in order are: “Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea.” And: “Each time I must choose between you and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt” (de Gaulle, Unity, 153).

European Union: It is only when plans for uniting Europe take a federal form that we ourselves cannot take part, because we cannot subordinate ourselves or the control of British policy to federal authorities.

• Often attributed to Churchill, but actually by Anthony Eden, in a letter to the European Council in Strasbourg, 6 December 1951 (Charmley, Churchill’s Grand Alliance, 250). See “EU and Churchill’s Views.”

Fake quotes continued in Part 2….