Hillsdale Dialogues: The World Crisis

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

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

Auspicious beginnings

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

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

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

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

“Admiral de Row-back” 

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

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

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

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

Peninsula landings

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

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

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

“Mortal folly done and said”…

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

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

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

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

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

The scapegoat

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

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

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

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

Retrospectives and what-ifs

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

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

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

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

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

Failures of high command

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

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

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

Inquiry and conclusions

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

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

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

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

More on Gallipoli

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

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

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

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

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

Hillsdale Dialogues: The World Crisis

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

Churchill and the Straits

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

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

Asquith, Fisher and Kitchener

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

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

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

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

Getting around the slaughter

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

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

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

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

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

Hesitation and naïveté

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

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

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

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

Admiral Carden eyes the Dardanelles

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

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

Genesis of the naval attack

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

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

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

“By ships alone”

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

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

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

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

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

The enthusiastic Admiral Fisher

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

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

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

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

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

Almost total euphoria

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

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

Unanswered questions

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

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

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

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

Next: the Gallipoli landings.

More on the Dardanelles

“Dardanelles-Gallipoli Centenary,” 2015.

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

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

The World Crisis Hillsdale Dialogues

The Hillsdale Dialogues are weekly broadcasts of discussions between Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn and radio host Hugh Hewitt. They currently offer an extended discussion of Churchill’s The World Crisis: his outstanding memoir of the First World War.

Upon publication in 1923, the first two volumes drew close attention. Churchill’s colleague Arthur Balfour (who quite admired it) referred to “Winston’s magnificent autobiography, disguised as a history of the universe.” A century later, Dr. Arnn considers it one of Churchill’s best works. It ranks with Marlborough and The Second World War for its lyrical style and powerful message. Chancing across Volume 1, 1911-1914, he marveled at the beauty of the writing and the somber warning Churchill conveyed.

Mr. Hewitt, for his part, considers The World Crisis a baleful portent of a world not unfamiliar now. He asks, does reading this great work make you pessimistic today? “No,” replies Dr. Arnn. “It’s a glorious story. Churchill is good proof against trouble. He always expected war to be hell. And he always expected to prevail. One must reason about that, of course—but one must cultivate the attitude.”

What follows is a modest accompaniment to these important Dialogues, which are worth one’s time. Discussions of the early chapters proceed at this writing. The links appear here as the sessions continue.

Availability

Many connoisseurs of Churchill and the Churchill style, who found him through The Second World War or A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, soon learned of his earlier, multi-volume memoir of the First World War. Published 1923-31 by Thornton Butterworth, Scribners and Macmillan of Toronto, it was an immediate best-seller.

Abridgments began as early as 1931, but for many years a complete set was obtainable only in the early editions. (The 1963-64 Scribners illustrated edition had a small press run and was harder to find than the originals.) In 1991, I persuaded the Easton Press to issue a complete edition with the postwar Scribners illustrations. Later, booksellers offered an inexpensive complete text by combining the unabridged 1939 Odhams two-volume edition (covering 1911-18) with two volumes Odhams did not publish: The Aftermath and The Eastern Front (from theCollected Works)

Today, availability is much better, and prices considerably lower. Bloomsbury publishes the six books as paperbacks, while Rosetta offers e-books. See Amazon.com. For earlier editions, search Bookfinder.

The volumes

Though commonly described as a six-volume work, The World Crisis is actually five volumes in six books. The middle two volumes, subtitled 1916-1918, sold as a pair, slipcased together in the USA and Canada. The fastidious refer to them as “Volumes 3a and 3b.” Thus the last two volumes, The Aftermath and The Eastern Front, are correctly Volumes 4 and 5 respectively. Booksellers describe the full set as “5-in-6.”

Volume 1, 1911-1914, begins with the great power rivalries that led to the war, and the opening campaigns. Volume 2, 1915, is the most personal, largely devoted to Churchill’s failed efforts to break the deadlock in Europe by forcing the Dardanelles, knocking Turkey out of the war and succoring the Russians. The third volume, 1916-1918 (two parts) covers the carnage on the Western Front, the German victory over Russia, Germany’s near-victory over the Allies in 1918, and the final, exhausted end of the war. Volume IV, The Aftermath, chronicles events involving Churchill during the ten years after victory, including the Irish Treaty. The final Volume V, The Eastern Front, recounts the titanic battles between Russia and the German-Austrian armies.

It is important to note two major additions not in the original text. In 1931 for a one-volume abridgment, Churchill added extensive commentary on the Battle of the Marne (1914) and Lord Fisher’s resignation (1915). Be sure to read these in the 1931 abridged one-volume edition or the unabridged 1939 Odhams two-volume edition (both covering 1911-18 only), or modern editions (such as the Kindle e-book) which incorporate these vital additions.

The World Crisis: An Appreciation

Asked to recommend a “big work” by Churchill, I always suggest The World Crisis. Like all of his war books where he was involved, it a personal testimony, tending to defend his role in affairs. But one of his worthy characteristics was his unabashed honesty: he learned from his mistakes and was forthright in admitting them. He stoutly defended the personal approach. He declared it was “not history, but a contribution to history.” Later, of The Second World War, he would say similarly, “This is not history; this is my case.”

It is hard to think of another 20th Century statesman who not only spent most of the two World Wars in high office and was able to write about them in beautiful prose. Even those who do not usually read war books admire Churchill’s account of the awful, unfolding scene. The “war to end wars” is described as if the reader were a colleague, observing the march of events over Churchill’s burly shoulder.

The virtues Churchill honors are, awfully, those of the peoples smashed in the general wreckage. It is above all to demonstrate how the chronic infirmity of political and military command made them suffer as they did that Churchill writes this history.

“Are you quite sure?”

Among the grand passages of Volume 1 was a favorite of the late General Colin Powell, who asked for its attribution (pages 48-49 of the first edition). Churchill is describing the Agadir Crisis when, amid calm, diplomatic messages, Germany and France almost went to war in 1911. Agadir was a stark warning not lost on Britain, and propelled Churchill to the Admiralty. It summarizes General Powell’s prudence about resort to arms, something he shared with Churchill:

So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing…. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half-awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well-guarded hitherto, at last defenceless? No, it is nothing. No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.

“The Vials of Wrath”

In the first Hillsdale dialogue on The World Crisis Dr. Arnn examines Churchill’s arresting first chapter, “The Vials of Wrath.” Here, he realized on his first encounter, was something out of the ordinary. A great writer was setting a dramatic stage. This quotation is the best possible argument for reading The World Crisis:

It was the custom in the palmy days of Queen Victoria for statesmen to expatiate upon the glories of the British Empire, and to rejoice in that protecting Providence which had preserved us through so many dangers and brought us at length into a secure and prosperous age. Little did they know that the worst perils had still to be encountered and that the greatest triumphs were yet to be won….

It seemed inconceivable that the same series of tremendous events through which since the days of Queen Elizabeth we had three times made our way successfully, should be repeated a fourth time and on an immeasurably larger scale. Yet that is what has happened, and what we have lived to see.

“Fearful agencies of destruction”

The Great War through which we have passed differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought….

Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals often on a greater scale and of longer duration. No truce or parley mitigated the strife of the armies. The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered, often slowly, in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries….

When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.

Further reading

“Wikipedia: Churchill’s War Accounts: History or Memoirs?” (2022)

My German grandmother, Connecticut-born, was as patriotic an American as George Washington. She always referred to November 11th as Armistice Day, which has always been good enough for me these many years. But numerous soldiers have died since 1918. Accordingly, the holiday was rebranded Remembrance Day in Canada, and then in Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth. In the USA, Armistice Day was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

The teaching of history is very uneven now. I fear not enough know what Armistice Day was about. Wikipedia records the truce signed at 5:45 am between the Allies of World War I and Germany  in the forest of Compiègne. It took effect at 11:00 am—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.” But both sides fought on for the rest of the day, ending only at nightfall. “The Armistice expired after a period of 36 days and had to be extended several times. A formal peace agreement was only reached when the Treaty of Versailles was signed the following year.”

In The World Crisis, his memoir of the Great War, Winston Churchill pondered that eleventh hour. He was then Minister of Munitions—relieved suddenly from the quandary of arming the forces for yet another year of grim battle.

It was one of Churchill’s most ringing passages and, on this day of Remembrance, it seems appropriate. From The World Crisis, Vol. 3, Part 2 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927), pages 541-44:

Armistice Day 1918

It was a few minutes before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I stood at the window of my room looking up Northumberland Avenue towards Trafalgar Square, waiting for Big Ben to tell that the War was over. My mind strayed back across the scarring years to the scene and emotions of the night at the Admiralty when I listened for these same chimes in order to give the signal of war against Germany to our Fleets and squadrons across the world. And now all was over!….

The minutes passed. I was conscious of reaction rather than elation. The material purposes on which one’s work had been centred, every process of thought on which one had lived, crumbled into nothing. The whole vast business of supply, the growing outputs, the careful hoards, the secret future plans—but yesterday the whole duty of life—all at a stroke vanished like a nightmare dream, leaving a void behind…

“Triumphant pandemonium”

And then suddenly the first strokes of the chime. I looked again at the broad street beneath me. It was deserted. From the portals of one of the large hotels absorbed by Government Departments darted the slight figure of a girl clerk, distractedly gesticulating while another stroke resounded.

Then from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street. Streams of people poured out of all the buildings. The bells of London began to clash. Northumberland Avenue was now crowded with people in hundreds, nay, thousands, rushing hither and thither in a frantic manner, shouting and screaming with joy….

The street was now a seething mass of humanity. Flags appeared as if by magic. Streams of men and women flowed from the Embankment. They mingled with torrents pouring down the Strand on their way to acclaim the King. Almost before the last stroke of the clock had died away, the strict, war-straitened, regulated streets of London had become a triumphant pandemonium….

It was with feelings which do not lend themselves to words that I heard the cheers of the brave people who had borne so much and given all, who had never wavered, who had never lost faith in their country or its destiny, and who could be indulgent to the faults of their servants when the hour of deliverance had come.

“Is this the end?”

The curtain falls upon the long front in France and Flanders. The soothing hands of time and nature, the swift repair of peaceful industry, have already almost effaced the crater fields and the battle lines which in a broad belt from the Vosges to the sea lately blackened the smiling fields of France….

Only the cemeteries, the monuments and stunted steeples, with here and there a mouldering trench or huge mine-crater lake, assail the traveller with the fact that 25 millions of soldiers fought here and 12 millions shed their blood or perished in the greatest of all human contentions less than ten years ago. Merciful oblivion draws its veils; the crippled limp away; the mourners fall back into the sad twilight of memory. New youth is here to claim its rights, and the perennial stream flows forward even in the battle zone, as if the tale were all a dream.

Is this the end? Is it to be merely a chapter in a cruel and senseless story? Will a new generation in their turn be immolated to square the black accounts of Teuton and Gaul? Will our children bleed and gasp again in devastated lands? Or will there spring from the very fires of conflict that reconciliation of the three giant combatants, which would unite their genius and secure to each in safety and freedom a share in rebuilding the glory of Europe?

Further reading

“Churchill Clairvoyant, 1891: Confidence or Realism?”

“Wikipedia: Churchill’s World War Accounts: History of Memoirs?”

A piece in the Wall Street Journal was entitled, “Once Again, Churchill Sets a High Standard.” It explained that Churchill “had a rule of never criticizing a policy after the event unless he had given his opinion before.” Did he really have such a rule? —M.M., Cleveland

A: Churchill’s rule

The Journal could say that on good authority.

In the third paragraph of his preface to The World Crisis, Churchill writes:

I have made no important statement of fact relating to naval operations or Admiralty business, on which I do not possess unimpeachable documentary proof. I have made or implied no criticism of any decision or action taken or neglected by others, unless I can prove that I had expressed the same opinion in writing before the event…. In every case where the interests of the State allow, I have printed the actual memoranda, directions, minutes, telegrams or letters written by me at the time, irrespective of whether these documents have been vindicated or falsified by the march of history and of time. The only excisions of relevant matter from the documents have been made to avoid needlessly hurting the feelings of individuals, or the pride of friendly nations.[1]

Second World War memoirs

In the third paragraph of his preface to The Gathering Storm, Churchill writes:

I have adhered to my rule of never criticising any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it. Indeed in the after-light I have softened many of the severities of contemporary controversy. It has given me pain to record these disagreements with so many men whom I liked or respected; but it would be wrong not to lay the lessons of the past before the future.[2]

I provide the second quote in full context because it shows Churchill’s characteristic collegiality. That is something sadly lacking in today’s political discourse. Churchill’s practice, wrote Sir John Keegan, invested “the whole history with those qualities of magnanimity and good will by which he set such store, and the more so as it deals with personalities.”[3]

Qualifications and afterthoughts

The World Crisis and The Second World War comprise Churchill’s formal memoirs of the two great cataclysms of the past century. They were written 25 years apart. Yet it seems reasonable to consider the precept he expressed in both as his “rule of criticism.”

Cynics might rightly observe that Churchill was often on both sides of major issues: Free Trade, India, Soviet Russia. Thus he could cite the side which suited his later memoirs. That is true, but in time he usually ended up with the right conclusion. William Manchester beautifully captures this quality:

Churchill, however, always had second and third thoughts, and they usually improved as he went along. It was part of his pattern of response to any political issue that while his early reactions were often emotional, and even unworthy of him, they were usually succeeded by reason and generosity. Given time, he could devise imaginative solutions. Russia [in 1919-21] had been more than he could handle—though it should be remembered that he would have been content to see a socialist regime there provided it renounced wholesale slaughter. But his record had been impressive in South Africa, the Middle East, and Ireland. He was prepared [in 1930-35] to accept provincial self-government in India provided Britain retained certain rights of “paramountcy,” including control of foreign affairs, communications, and defense. What he could not overlook was that India, Gandhian satyagraha notwithstanding, was a land of violence.[4]

Endnotes

[1] Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, vol. 1, 1911-1914 (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923, 6-7).

[2] Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The Gathering Storm (London: Cassell, 1948), xi.

[3] John Keegan, quoted in Richard M. Langworth, “A Connoisseur’s Guide to the Book of the Century,” in Finest Hour 108, Autumn 2000, 42.

[4] William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, vol. 1: Visions of Glory 1874-1932 (Boston: Little Brown, 1983, 844-45.

Further reading

“Wikipedia: Churchill’s World War Accounts, History of Memoirs?,” 2022

“Churchill’s Magnanimity: Stanley Baldwin,” 2021

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

From a colleague:

Someone has written asking for the source of a quote in Wikipedia about Churchill’s book, The World Crisis. It appears in your Connoisseur’s Guide to the Books of Sir Winston Churchill.  about the World Crisis. You quote Churchill as saying the book is: “not history, but a contribution to history.” Are those actually his words?

If not, it’s kind of a mess, because, as the inquirer points out, the quote now appears on Wikipedia in the first paragraph of The World Crisis entry and it is sourced to my firm! I’ll correct it on our site but I think you should try and correct it on Wikipedia. I will too.

I’ll share your reply with the inquirer. They wanted to use the correct quote in a new book. Oh, the quotation ripple effect. As who better than you knows…

Caught out by quote marks

Indeed my friend and Wikipedia have caught me in excessive quote marks. Back in 1998, I wrote in the Connoisseur’s Guide: “Of The World Crisis he declared that it was ‘not history, but a contribution to history’; later, of The Second World War, he would say similarly, ‘This is not history; this is my case.'”

The Second World War quote is right. His literary assistant, Bill Deakin, related it to official biographer Martin Gilbert. See Winston S. Churchill vol. 8, Never Despair 1945-1965, page 315. But I muffed the first one.

The correct quotation is in The World Crisis, vol. 2, 1915, on page 9 of the first edition (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1923):

I must therefore at the outset disclaim the position of the historian. It is not for me with my record and special point of view to pronounce a final conclusion. That must be left to others and to other times. But I intend to set forth what I believe to be fair and true; and I present it as a contribution to history of which note should be taken together with other accounts. I cannot expect to alter the fixed and prevailing opinions of this generation. They lived and fought their way through the awful struggle in the light of the knowledge given to them.

Not history but his case

Churchill wrote more or less the same thing in his preface to The Gathering Storm, the first of his six volumes on the Second World War:  “I do not describe it as history, for that belongs to another generation. But I claim with confidence that it is a contribution to history which will be of service to the future.”

It is important to get this right, because Churchill’s accounts of the two world wars are often incorrectly described as histories. He was adamant that this was a job for later historians. His own texts were his recollections—which, of course, were his “case.” He certainly wanted the books to explain and defend his own actions.

Kudos to Wikipedia

I was able in a few minutes to correct the World Crisis entry on Wikipedia. The entry now reads: “Churchill denied it was a ‘history,’ describing the work in Vol. 2 as ‘a contribution to history of which note should be taken together with other accounts.'”

My colleague and I are donors to Wikipedia and often respond to their periodic pledge drives. I often wonder how Wiki manages to be so evenhanded in its entries—particularly in today’s strained political climate. After all, anyone at all can make a correction, and there is a lot of misinformation out there.

I am assured that Wikipedia has a crack team of editors and fact-checkers. Indeed they require anyone making edits to identify themselves, and to explain the nature of the correction. A friend advises that one of his own entries was immediately deleted, while Wikipedia emailed him asking him to please provide a quotation source. It turned out that he was quoting himself! Nevertheless, the Wiki editors were on guard lest someone’s copyright be infringed. Good for them.

Better yet, join 60,000 readers of Hillsdale essays by the world’s best Churchill historians by subscribing. You will receive regular notices (“Weekly Winstons”) of new articles as published. Simply visit https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/, scroll to bottom, and fill in your email in the box entitled “Stay in touch with us.” (Your email remains strictly private and is never sold to purveyors, salespersons, auction houses, or Things that go Bump in the Night.)

The Question

“What do you think are Churchill’s best books on war? Though he was a great peacemaker, his work there is eclipsed by the climacterics of war. What are his best?”

The River War

In 1885 the Sudan had been overrun by Dervish tribesman under their religious leader, the Mahdi (Muhammad Ahmad). Fourteen years later, London sent Lord Kitchener and an Anglo-Egyptian force (including Churchill) to reestablish sovereignty. Notwithstanding the superiority of British weapons and tactics, the obstacles presented by the Nile, the desert, the climate, cholera and a brave, fanatical Dervish army were formidable.

Churchill excitingly describes the British victory, culminating in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. Yet he doesn’t hesitate to criticize the actions of his own side. He is particularly critical of Kitchener, whose treatment of the dead Mahdi was shameful, even barbaric. Far from accepting uncritically the superiority of British civilization, Churchill appreciates the longing for liberty among the indigenous Sudanese. But he finds their native regime defective in its disdain for the human rights of its inhabitants.

***

In 1902 for an abridged edition, Churchill excised one-fourth of the narrative, including his criticisms of Kitchener. By then he had entered Parliament, and was wary of burning bridges. He also added some material, so there are two texts: 1899 and 1902. A new and complete edition, prepared by Professor James Muller, containing both the original and 1902 texts has long been developing. It will be linked here when available. (For Dr. Muller’s video presentation at Hillsdale College, “Lessons from The River War, “ click here.)

Uncommonly for a Victorian, Churchill had words of praise for the Muslim warriors, while deploring their savagery toward other Muslims. There are in The River War many examples of Churchill praising Muslims. He considered his Dervish enemies “as brave men as ever walked the earth.” Years later he wrote with deep feeling of Muslim and Hindu soldiers of the Indian Army in the Second World War. Context matters.

For further reflections see Dr. Paul Rahe’s essay, “The Timeless Value of Winston Churchill’s The River War.”

The World Crisis

In 1905 Churchill hired a polymath who was to remain his literary assistant for thirty years. Edward Marsh was a classical scholar, a civil servant and a brilliant litterateur. From that time, Churchill stopped writing his books in longhand and began dictating to teams of secretaries. Marsh vetted the drafts for Churchill’s final approval. They made a marvelous team.

Marsh appears frequently in Churchill’s life. When he died in 1953 Churchill, who seemed to outlive everybody, waxed eloquent: “He was a master of literature and scholarship and a deeply instructed champion of the arts. All his long life was serene, and he left this world, I trust, without a pang, and I am sure without a fear.”

Marsh helped Churchill write The World Crisis, his memoir of World War I. Here Churchill began as First Lord of the Admiralty, fell disastrously from power and volunteered for the front. Then he returned to office as Minister of Munitions. He became Secretary of State for War ironically, just as the war ended. Perhaps not ironically, for the appointment was made by Prime Minister Lloyd George, who nursed a wry sense of humor.

“All about himself”

Whenever I’m asked to recommend a big book by Churchill, I always name The World Crisis. Like all of his war books it is highly personal. One of his friends called it, “Winston’s brilliant autobiography, disguised as a history of the Universe.” One of his enemies said, “Winston has written an enormous book all about himself and calls it The World Crisis.”

A thoughtful critic, Sir Robert Rhodes James, regarded The World Crisis as Churchill’s masterpiece. But he correctly noted that “one can never quite separate Churchill the orator from Churchill the writer.”

Even if you do not read war books you will be entranced by Churchill’s account of the awful, unfolding scene of the First World War. Readers learn of the great power rivalries that caused the war. We observe Churchill’s failed effort to break the deadlock on the Western Front by forcing the Dardanelles, knocking Turkey out of the war. We revisit the carnage of the Somme and Passchendaele. Finally we see Germany almost win and then lost the war in 1918. A fifth and final volume, The Eastern Front, relates the lesser-known horrors of the war in Russia and Austria-Hungary. In his fourth volume, The Aftermath, Churchill covers the decade after victory.

“Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong”

Two brief excerpts from The World Crisis. The first is a favorite of Colin Powell, who asked me to look it up when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It tells us a lot about Powell, said to be the voice of caution before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 1911, the Germans sent a gunboat to Agadir, Morocco, and almost went to war with France over it. Churchill here describes the exchange of diplomatic telegrams between Berlin, Paris and London as the Agadir Crisis deepened.

They sound so very cautious and correct, these deadly words. Soft, quiet voices purring, courteous, grave, exactly measured phrases in large peaceful rooms. But with less warning cannons had opened fire and nations had been struck down by this same Germany. So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing…less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the twentieth century….

No one would do such things. Civilization has climbed above such perils. The interdependence of nations in trade and traffic, the sense of public law, the Hague Convention, Liberal principles, the Labour Party, high finance, Christian charity, common sense have rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.

“The King’s ships were at sea…”

Of course, the mistakes were made, and the world plunged into war, with Churchill running the Royal Navy. In 1914 he did a prescient thing. In July Britain’s Grand Fleet had assembled for a Naval Review. On his own authority, Churchill ordered the Fleet not to disperse. Instead, it sailed in darkness through the English Channel to its war station at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys. Here is Churchill’s description of the passage of the armada:

We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs….

If war should come no one would know where to look for the British Fleet. Somewhere in that enormous waste of waters to the north of our islands, cruising now this way, now that, shrouded in storms and mists, dwelt this mighty organization. Yet from the Admiralty building we could speak to them at any moment if need arose. The King’s ships were at sea.

One has to look far and wide for writing like that. When he wrote it, our author was 49. 

 The Second World War

The first book New York Mayor Giuliani read after 9/11 was Churchill’s The Second World War. Anyone who wonders whether Winston Churchill remains relevant today need only consider it.

Consider the major criticisms of Churchill’s most famous work: It is not history. It is filled with grandiose prose, inflicted on an apathetic postwar public who only wanted peace and a quiet life. It is highly biased—the author never puts a foot wrong. He publishes hundreds of his own memoranda and directives, but few replies to them. It moralizes incessantly about dictators and their empires, but not the British Empire. It is vague on the impact of the war on Britain, or the details of Cabinet meetings. Churchill alone seems to confront the French, Hitler, the Soviets, the Americans.

In the words of Arthur Balfour, these complaints contain much that is trite and much that is true. But what’s true is trite, and what’s not trite is not true.

Perhaps one of the best descriptions is by Professor Manfred Weidhorn: “a record of history made rather than written….No other wartime leader in history has given us a work of two million words written only a few years after the events and filled with messages among world potentates which had so recently been heated and secret.”

Humor: his secret of survival

The Second World War  is conducted like a symphony, Weidhorn continues—or a first class novel:

Such is the eerie sense of déjà vu and ubi sunt upon his return in 1939, as First Lord [of the Admiralty], to Scapa Flow, exactly a quarter of a century after having, at the start of the other world war, paid the same visit during the same season in the same capacity…. The collapse of the venerable and once mighty France and Churchill’s agony are beautifully rendered by the sensuous detail of the old gentlemen industriously carrying French archives on wheelbarrows to bonfires.

The end finds our hero in Berlin amid its “chaos of ruins.” Churchill walks Hitler’s shattered chancellery for “quite a long time.” The great duel is over; the victor stands where so much evil originated. “We were given the best first-hand accounts available at that time of what had happened in these final scenes.”

“Amid the pathos, humour bubbles,” writes Robert Pilpel. It is “as if Puck had escaped from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and infiltrated Paradise Lost.” There is Churchill’s desert conference with his Generals, “in a tent full of flies and important personages.” There is lunch with King Saud, whose religion forbids tobacco and alcohol—which Churchill says are mandated by his religion. In 1941 he sends a courtly letter to the Japanese Ambassador, signed “Your Obedient Servant.” He announces “with high consideration” that a state of war exists between their countries. (“When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.”)

Prudence in statesmanship

What was it, I’ve wondered, that Mayor Giuliani paused over? I’m told he read Volume 2, Their Finest Hour, about Britain in the Blitz. I can only wish today’s leaders, who squabble over inconsequentia as danger mounts, read from Volume 1, The Gathering Storm:

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story…. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong. These are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

How often must we slide slowly down from invincibility, only to be reminded by sudden calamity that we have neglected the primary mission of the state: to provide for the common defense? Churchill wondered. In an unpublished passage for The Gathering Storm he wrote:

Some historians will urge that admiration should be given to a Government of honourable high minded men who bore provocation with exemplary forbearance…. I hope it will also be written how hard all this was upon the ordinary common folk who fill the casualty lists. Under-represented in Government and Parliamentary institutions, they confide their safety to the Ministers of the day.

The Second World War, a prose epic like The River War and The World Crisis, is in the first rank of Churchill’s books. Flaws and all, it is indispensable reading for anyone who seeks a true understanding.

Last thoughts

In the last few years of his life Churchill gave in to the pessimism he had always dodged before. In the late Fifties he told his private secretary, Anthony Montague Browne: “Yes, I have worked very hard and accomplished a great many things—only to accomplish nothing in the end.”

I ventured that Churchill was thinking of the “special relationship” with America, which never reached the closeness he sought. Then too, there was his failure to reach a “settlement” with Russia, although in 1949 he predicted communism would expire. “Yes,” said Sir Anthony, “It was very sad.”

Here anyway are three Churchill books that are must reading: The River War, The World Crisis and The Second World War. They represent an understanding of statesmanship in times of duress. And also, Manfred Weidhorn wrote, “fascinating products of the human spirit.”

They are “epic tales of the depravities, miseries, and glories of man.”

“How many speeches did Churchill make, and in how many words? Also, how many words did he write in his books and articles? [Updated from 2014.]

Word counts

Through the wonders of computer science (Ian Langworth and the Hillsdale College Churchill Project), we know that the present corpus of works by and about Winston S. Churchill exceeds 80 million words (380 megabytes). This includes 20 million (120 megabytes) by Churchill himself (counting his letters, memos and papers in the 23 volumes of Churchill Documents. Here are his the top word counts among his books:

The Churchill Documents: 10,000,000*

Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963: 5,200,000

The Second World War: 1,600,000 (not counting appendices)

The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill: 860,000

The World Crisis: 824,000

Marlborough: His Life and Times: 779,000 (not counting appendices)

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: 510,000 (not counting appendices)

Lord Randolph Churchill: 278,000

The River War: 200,000

*Total word count for the twenty-three volumes is 15.3 million; we estimate 10 million are WSC’s own words.

Word count: speeches

To be precise you’d have to count (I won’t!) the speeches listed in the Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches 1897-1963. Rough estimate: there are forty speeches per page of contents, about eight contents pages per volume, and eight volumes. So, at a guess, 2500 speeches.

But the Complete Speeches are not complete. Try to find his famous Durban speech after escaping from the Boers in 1899, for example. And some are only excerpts—as from his lecture tours of North America. Also, you must deduct notes by editors. But let’s add say 10% for missing speeches and guess that he made about 3000 in all.

The 5.2 million-word Complete Speeches, at eight volumes, is the longest book-length “work by Churchill.” Subtract 100,000 words of introductions and add missing speeches or verbiage. Let’s estimate six million words of speeches alone.

Official Biography

Some readers also ask about word counts for the Official Biography. The total for the eight biographic volumes is over 3,000,000 words. The twenty-three Companion or Document Volumes  add 15.3 million, for a grand total of over 18 million words (80+ megabytes). Of course, these include many million words not by Churchill.

Someone once told Sir Martin Gilbert,  “You’ve only published one-tenth of Churchill’s story!” Sir Martin replied: “Really? That much?”

Digital capacity

This doesn’t impress software engineers, but it does me: A single, old fashioned 250 gigabyte hard drive disk would hold over 1800 copies of all Churchill’s words and all the words in the Official Biography.

A modern hard drive holds about 3 terrabytes (3000 gigabytes). Therefore, your personal computer could house about 200,000 copies of Churchill’s works and the Official Biography.

What would Sir Winston Churchill make of this? No one can say, except to remember one of his maxims: “Words are the only things that last forever.”

Hillsdale College has announced acquisition of an important part of the Ronald Cohen collection of the writings of Sir Winston Churchill. It numbers almost 2000 individual items. They comprise six categories: forewords, prefaces, and introductions by Churchill; periodical articles; works and periodicals containing Churchill speeches; letters, memoranda, statements and letters to the editor. Some 15% of these writings have not seen print since their original, limited editions, and therefore comprise a “submerged canon,” because they open a fresh field of Churchill scholarship.

Hillsdale College also has a temporary, exclusive purchase option for the balance of the collection, books written by Winston Churchill. They number over 1200 volumes, and 640 are first editions in their country of origin. Seven books are signed by Churchill. As a whole, this is the most comprehensive Churchill library ever assembled.

This material was collected over fifty years by Ronald Cohen, author of the Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, a three-volume definitive work listing and describing each edition, translation, and imprint of everything by Churchill ever published.

“Present at the Creation”

I had the privilege of seeing “what Cohen wrought” at Ron’s home in Ottawa last November. It brought back memories because I was “present at the creation.” In 1984, Ron and I toured scores of British bookshops in a friendly rivalry. We took turns at “first choice” in each venue. So in Lyme Regis, Ron walks through the door and says, “Do you have anything by….” He turns around, and sees a row of The World Crisis in its rare original dust jackets. “I’ll take those.” Because I was out parking the car, I was fuming!

Assembling such a collection is the work of a lifetime. It could not be reproduced today because the sources have dwindled, and many items are one-of-a-kind. It is a treasure trove for researchers, students, and scholars. I am very glad also to have been “present at the finale.”

Cohen in His Own Words

Let Ron Cohen explain the uniqueness of his achievement:

“It has virtually every edition, issue, printing, state and variant of every work (save, for obvious reasons, The Second World War), many, perhaps most (but not all) in their original jackets. Plus a very large number of translations, including one previously thought not to exist (The World Crisis in Serbian).

“There are eighteen editions of Churchill’s first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force (every variant). More African Journeys are here than anywhere, including all three variants of the American issue, which is almost unknown. There is every printing of every Cassell war speech volume in jackets (plus American, Canadian and Australian editions). Included are 416 Churchill-written pamphlets and leaflets.

“No stone was left unturned, including the Korean and pirated Taiwanese English-language editions of The Second World War and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. There is complete Hansard for all the years of Churchill’s service in Parliament. Hillsdale has acquired the bibliographically Churchill forewords, introductions, letters, statements, interviews virtually unknown today.

* * *

“I have seen virtually every, if not every, significant collection, private or public, of WSC’s writings, as a part of my bibliographical research. None of these notable collections carry the same bibliographical depth. I also visited all the great public libraries with focused Churchill collections, such as Trinity College and the Fisher Library at the University of Toronto, the Forsch Collection at Dartmouth, Fulton, Longleat, the Schweizerische Churchill Stiftung Bibliothek in Zurich, the University of Illinois Mortlake Collection, and the Churchill Memorial Trust Library (Canberra).

“Also I visited the great public libraries with excellent Churchill holdings, such as the British Library, Library of Congress, Bodleian, House of Commons, Houghton Rare Book Library and Widener Library at Harvard, the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), the Dundee and Guildhall Libraries. None were as complete as mine. Of course I was on a mission. I felt it was my duty as bibliographer to describe every edition, issue, state, printing and variant.

“I do not believe this collection could be duplicated today. Even back then, it was extremely difficult to assemble. To collect everything, one had to know what there was. Would a bookseller have offered a major collector the sixth printing of Into Battle—or any printing other than a first? Is there anyone who’d have looked at Churchill in Ottawa closely enough to see whether the date of WSC’s arrival in Ottawa was on the 29th or 30th of December (hence two states of that pamphlet)? Would anyone have offered, or sought to purchase, a Colonial Malakand with a raised 1 in the page number 231? Or a copy of Victory with a missing 1 in page number 177? So it went!”

A Churchilliana Triad

The Cohen Collection forms a triad with the recently acquired Martin Gilbert Papers and Sir Martin’s meticulous Official Biography. His thirty-one volumes include twenty-three volumes of documents besides Gilbert’s “wodges” of papers, news reports, and, most importantly, interviews for each day of Churchill’s life. Hillsdale earlier acquired the Cohen audio collection: the voice of Churchill dating back to 1909. The college is digitalizing these for ease of access by scholars.

We thus acquire the Cohen collection, or most of it, and, besides, Ron himself, as a sometime curator, lecturer and speaker: an invaluable asset, as I know from experience.

Hillsdale College launched the Churchill Project to propagate a right understanding of Churchill’s record and to better understand his contributions to statecraft and leadership. The Project seeks to promote Churchill scholarship through national conferences, scholarships, and other resources. For more information on the Churchill Project, visit its website and subscribe for mailings.

Your book Churchill By Himself is a treasure to which I frequently refer. I am a retired professor who recently lost his wife. I am preparing a memorial to her and found Churchill’s words as quoted in Andrew Roberts’ recent biography to be perfect. The sense of his words is that his wife Clementine was was a frequent, strong and fair critic of his writings, always helpful. I know that is not much to go on but I would appreciate corroborating information.  —M.S., via email

A: “Here firm, though all be drifting”

I will have to ponder your question, because his remarks about Lady Churchill are mainly tributes to her as wife, friend and advisor, not literary critic–although of course she was that too. I don’t think she vetted many of his books. An exception perhaps is The World Crisis, which she experienced personally, often painfully. “Here firm,” he often said of her in those harder days, “though all be drifting.”

Her counsel was more frequently sought over his speeches, but was sometimes rejected. In 1945, for example, she warned him not to say the Labour Party would have to rely on “some form of Gestapo” to enforce their programs if they were elected. Aside from the injudicious comparison, voters had a hard time seeing Clement Attlee, the mild-mannered Labour leader, as a stormtrooper. (I can’t resist a note: In the 1980s a London friend, lifetime Labour voter, said the activities of certain London Labour councils “indeed remind me of the Gestapo.” Whoops!)

“…shaking her beautiful head [over] some new and pregnant point I am developing…”

There are probably many instances where she closely influenced his compositions. We must look out for them. (I am compiling a new, extended and revised edition of Churchill by Himself.) Her role as critic was noted by many beside her husband. One such was  Lady Diana Cooper, quoting WSC in on page 512 of my book. I will elaborate on that by supplying some of the surrounding words:

Calm she also had, with a well-balanced judgment of people and situations—consistent and reliable. She often knew the sheep from the goats better than Winston did. “Clemmie sits behind me on the platform, shaking her beautiful head in disagreement with some new and pregnant point I am developing,” I remember his saying, with pride in her stable Liberalism, after some Tory meeting. Her devotion never subjected her to becoming a doormat or to taking the easier way with her high-powered Hercules.

Lady Diana’s tribute to CSC is beautiful. You can read it in a few minutes, and you should. Her son, Lord Norwich, did not know it existed until we wrote him for reprint permission. The full text (elaborated somewhat with excerpts from her other writings) is on the Hillsdale College Churchill Project website.

“Warm summer sun, Shine kindly here…”

I will keep your request in mind and add anything I find to this page. Baroness Spencer-Churchill died on 12 December 1977, outliving her husband by over a dozen years. After cremation, her ashes were placed in Churchill’s grave at Bladon at a private family service on 16th December.

My sympathies on your loss. I cannot imagine that myself, and always hope I shall go first. This was Churchill’s luck. It is, I realize, selfish. On wifely tributes, my favorite, from Mark Twain to his wife Livvy, also applies to to Clementine:

Warm summer sun,
Shine kindly here,
Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.
Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.

The Dream…

… is the most mysterious and ethereal story Winston Churchill ever wrote. Yet the more we know about him, the better we may understand how he came to write it.

Replete with broad-sweep Churchillian narrative, The Dream contains many references to now-obscure people, places and things. The new online version published by Hillsdale provides links to all of them. You need only click on any unfamiliar name or term for links to online references. After reading the story, click here for a thoughtful appreciation by Katie Davenport, a Churchill Fellow at Hillsdale College.

Churchill wrote The Dream in 1947, a low point in his political career. Two years earlier, British voters had turned his Conservative Party out of office. The former Prime Minister was now a frustrated Leader of the Opposition. But political reverses often brought out the best in his writing. Churchill’s great war memoir, The World Crisis, began appearing at a similar low point, after he had lost his seat in Parliament in 1922-24. Marlborough, his noble biography, was written in the 1930s, as he grieved over the nation’s failure to heed his warnings about Hitler.

Origins

The poignancy of The Dream is heightened by the appearance of Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill. Dead in 1895 at the age of forty-six, Lord Randolph had not lived to see, nor indeed ever imagined, his son at the pinnacle of their country’s affairs.

Lord Randolph’s own career had lasted scarcely twenty years. Elected to Parliament in 1874, he rose meteorically. By 1884 he was Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in 1886 he resigned over a trivial matter, never to rise again. Compared with Winston, Randolph was a footnote in British history.

The boy Winston worshiped his father from afar, but never conquered Lord Randolph’s disdain. It was his lifelong regret that his father did not live to see what he had achieved. It is part of the artistry of this tale that the inquisitive young father of forty never learns what his seventy-three-year-old son became.

The Dream was first mentioned during a family dinner at Chartwell, Churchill’s beloved home in the lush Kentish countryside, twenty-five miles outside London. He entitled the story “Private Article,” showing it only to his family, resisting their urgings that it be published. In his will he bequeathed the text to his wife, who donated it to Churchill College, Cambridge. On the first anniversary of his funeral, 30 January 1966, it was published in The Sunday Telegraph. The Dream has also appeared as a stand-alone volume in two private printings and a fine 2005 edition by Levenger Press.

Reactions

Winston Churchill was a man of transcendental powers. He could, it seems, peer beyond reality. Jon Meacham, author of the seminal Franklin and Winston, believes The Dream sheds light on Churchill’s ability to put a better face on things than they really were: to revere a father who overlooked him; to revere Roosevelt, who, in their later encounters, was less than forthright.

Margaret Thatcher, in my view the greatest British prime minister since Churchill, took a right and kind view of The Dream’s Victorian lurches—which are anything but politically correct. In 1993 I presented her with a private printing. She thanked me in her own hand the next day. “I read it in the early hours of this morning,” she wrote, “and am totally fascinated by the imagination of the story and how much it reveals of Winston the man and the son.” Later I asked what she thought of Churchill’s remark about women in the House of Commons: “They have found their level.” Lady Thatcher beamed: “I roared at that one.”

While vague about the hereafter, Churchill always held that “man is spirit,” and believed in a kind of spiritual connection with his forebears. On 24 January 1953, he told his private secretary, John Colville, that he would die on that date—the same date his father had died in 1895. Twelve years later Churchill lapsed into a coma on January 10th. Confidently, Colville assured The Queen’s private secretary: “He won’t die until the 24th.” Unconscious, Churchill did just that.

One question about The Dream that tantalized his family  is whether the story was really fiction. When asked this question, Sir Winston Churchill would smile and say, “Not entirely.”

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.”