The Hudson Institute  economist Irwin Stelzer penned an interesting article on trade: “Trump girds for War with EU.” I sent it around to colleagues, praising it for properly attributing an alleged Churchill quote:

No one doubts that Trump is gearing up to launch a tariff battle with the European Union. For one thing, he is set to sign a deal ending the trade battle with China, and would not be fighting a two-front war should he take on Europe which, he tweeted last week, “has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop”…. If the EU negotiators think they can use jaw jaw to prevent or delay war war (to borrow Harold Macmillan’s take-off on Churchill’s “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war”), they are misreading the President…. Trump demonstrates his ignorance of the economics of trade by focusing on bilateral trade deficits. But he demonstrates his New York street smarts by selecting opponents who are relatively weak, as China was when he launched a battle to end its predatory trade practices. Now it’s Europe’s turn.

It’s not too often that Churchill is so carefully referenced. Dr. Stelzer also highlighted my book of quotations, Churchill by Himself, as his recommended reading in that column. So I sent his column to colleagues, saying, “It sweetens his kind gesture by the fact that I agree with him.”

Challenge and riposte

This cost a remonstrance over my Churchillian credentials. A friend wrote:

Tariffs are a tax on domestic consumers, not foreign exporters. It’s crony capitalism for those domestic industries being “protected.” Churchill’s early mentor, Bourke Cockran, understood that; so did his protégé. So sad that someone otherwise so knowledgeable about WSC as you still doesn’t get it! Perhaps a re-read of For Free Trade might help you regain our hero’s wisdom? “Wise words, Sir, stand the test of time.” I saw that in a movie somewhere. [He refers to Young Winston.]

Uh-oh. My day in the barrel? But “never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense”:

Churchill wrote For Free Trade…

As Conservatives we are convinced that an effective measure of protection for British industry and British agriculture must hold a leading place in any scheme of national self-regeneration.… Only by walking in company together can the races and states of the British Empire preserve their glory and their livelihood.

On to the End

Irwin Stelzer comments

In asking permission to quote him, I showed Dr. Stelzer my words above and asked what he thought. He replied:

You’ve got it right. After all, Trump did not initiate trade wars; they were in place for years. It’s just that America was a non-combatant victim, eschewing Adam Smith’s advice.* If Trump is telling the truth—that his tariffs are a means of getting those in violation of world trading rules to the table so that trade will end up freer and fairer—they are unobjectionable. His insistence that other countries are paying the tariffs is either stupidity or a lie. I prefer to believe it is the latter.

There is an additional problem you might consider. Free traders concentrate on efficiency and maximizing growth. They ignore the distributional consequences: there are winners and losers. The little old lady sewing sneakers in a southern factory is the loser—collateral damage. The American consumer is the winner, at least until forced to pay taxes to support the losers. Since the average unskilled worker subject to competition from cheap labor is probably poorer than the average consumer, free trade involves an income transfer from poorer to richer. Tariffs are a crude way of preventing that regressive transfer. Better to allow it to occur and spend tax money retraining and/or supporting the innocent losers.

*Adam Smith’s advice

…It may sometimes be a matter of deliberation how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods … when some foreign nation restrains  by high duties or prohibitions the importation of some of our manufactures into their country. Revenge in this case naturally dictates retaliation … when there is a probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. —The Wealth of Nations IV, ii.

In 1927, Winston Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine, “I am becoming a film fan.” He had projection equipment installed at Chequers, the country home of British prime ministers, in 1943, and at his family home Chartwell in 1946. “Churchill and the Movies” is the fourth and final event of the Center for Constructive Alternatives in the 2018-19 academic year. We will view and discuss two films widely regarded as Churchill’s favorites, and two Churchill biographic movies in their historical context.

Hillsdale’s Center for Constructive Alternatives (CCA) is the sponsor of one of the largest college lecture series in America. CCA seminars are held four times each year. Students are required to complete one CCA seminar during their undergraduate years. They may elect to enroll in more. Lectures are open to the public, and out-of-town guests are welcomed. There is no registration fee and the program includes dinners and lunches. “Churchill and the Movies” is now sold out, and up to 400 guests are expected plus students. Watch this space for the web stream video locations.

Partial Schedule:

Sunday 24 March

4:00pm Showing of That Hamilton Woman (1941, 125 minutes). Produced and directed by Alexander Korda, this was Winston Churchill’s clear favorite among movies. It stars two actors he vastly admired, Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier.

8:00 p.m. Filmmaker John Fleet: “Churchill and Alexander Korda.”  Mr. Fleet has made a study of their long and fruitful relationship might have produced several more epic movies, had not World War II intervened.

Monday 25 March

10:00 a.m. “Assault on Churchill”: John Miller interviews Richard Langworth on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 fm. The station will offer an audio stream.

4:00 p.m. Showing of Henry V (1944, 137 mins.) Arguably runner-up in Churchill’s affections was the 1944 British Technicolor adaptation of William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” The on-screen title is “The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agin Court in France” (derived from the title of the 1600 quarto edition). It stars WSC’s longtime friend Laurence Olivier, who also directed.

“The Play’s the Thing…”

8:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Churchill, Shakespeare, and Henry V.”  Excerpt:

How well did Churchill know Shakespeare? Well enough, I think, to ace a Hillsdale Shakespeare course. Both by formal quotations, and by well-known phrases almost hidden in his text, Churchill draws allusions and understanding from sixteen Shakespeare plays, from Macbeth to A Midsummer Night’s Dream—though not, surprisingly, the sonnets.

The producer Marlo Lewis says Henry V introduces us “to urgent problems of statesmanship and, through them, to questions of political philosophy….the delicate matters of legitimacy and the founding of regimes.” I think that is an aspect, but not the most important aspect. Above that and first, the importance of Henry V is what it teaches about leadership.

Churchill wrote in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples that when one of Henry’s officers “deplored the fact that they had ‘but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day,’ the King rebuked him and revived his spirits in a speech to which Shakespeare has given an immortal form: ‘If we are marked to die, we are enough To do our country loss; and if to live, The fewer men, the greater share of honour.’” Compare that to Churchill’s greatest speech, 18 June 1940: “If the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Tuesday 26 March

4:00 p.m. Showing of Young Winston (1972, 143 mins.)

8:00 p.m. “Young Winston and My Early Life,” with James W. Muller, University of Alaska Anchorage. An expert on Churchill’s autobiography, Professor Muller is well qualified to survey of this remarkable 1972 biopic, starring Simon Ward as Young Winston. The cast was sensational. Anne Bancroft as Lady Randolph, is leered at by Lloyd George (Anthony Hopkins). Robert Shaw is Lord Randolph (remember “Quint” in Jaws?). Young Winston’s evil headmaster at St. George’s School is the great Robert Hardy, who would memorably play Churchill many times in later years.

Wednesday 27 March

2:00 p.m. Richard Langworth: “Current Contentions- Winston Churchill and the Invasion of the Idiots.” A review of the virulent attacks on Churchill in the wake of Gary Oldman’s Oscar for his role as WSC in Darkest Hour. We will discuss four slanders in detail: Fake history in the television series The Crown. Churchill’s alleged 1930s “secret affair” with Lady Castlerosse. The continuing fable that Churchill exacerbated the 1943-44 Bengal Famine. And a renewed “golden oldie” beloved of socialists for a century: the Tonypandy riots of 1910. Excerpt:

Netflix’s The Crown is a not-so-crowning-achievement about the present Queen’s ascent to the throne and her first years as monarch. It starts off well enough. Claire Foy is an honest Elizabeth II.  Matt Smith is a gaudy Prince Philip, acting the foolish playboy. Dame Harriet Walter plays a graceful Clementine Churchill.

John Lithgow as Churchill is good on the voice and mannerisms, minimizing his 6-foot-4 stature with a stoop, and by sitting down a lot. But the script gives him a cartoonish image, far from reality. All too quickly, Lithgow becomes a wheezing old gaffer, clinging stubbornly to power. Productions like The Crown suggest that truth and accuracy matter less than style and perception; that reality must bend to fit the creator’s mindset.

* * *

4:00 p.m. Showing of The Gathering Storm (2002, 96 mins.) Stars the late Albert Finney as Churchill and Vanessa Redgrave as Clementine. This is one of the better World War II biographical movies. Even in a cynical and anti-hero age, filmmakers still can avoid reducing Churchill to a flawed burlesque or a godlike caricature. Except for huge gap in the story line, The Gathering Storm is outstanding. (The gap is Munich, because the film skips it in the rush to war.)

8:00 p.m. Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn: “Churchill as War Leader.” Dr. Arnn is co-editor with Martin Gilbert of The Churchill Documents. Few scholars have devoted more time over the years to studying Churchill’s statesmanship; his remarks stand to be the outstanding feature of this event.

Thursday 28 March

4:00 p.m. Faculty Round Table: Daniel Coupland, James Brandon, Darryl Hart, David Stewart

Malakand Field Force?

Without consulting references, I thought the “advice” line involved The Story of the Malakand Field Force (Churchill’s first book, 1898). I was influenced by its last chapter, “The Riddle of the Frontier.” Plenty of advice there, though it is as much political as it is military.

I also remember the fine biopic Young Winston (1972). Here General Kitchener picks up a copy of what looks like a first edition Malakand, scans its cover, and hurls it into a wastebasket!

Churchill was at the time lobbying for appointment as a war correspondent on Kitchener’s expedition to recapture Sudan. Dalton Newfield, the second editor of Finest Hour, wrote in his column, “75 Years Ago” FH #28 (1973):

[Churchill] gathered his forces for a tremendous effort to join Kitchener’s forces In Egypt, after which he would return to England and politics. He unashamedly pulled every string known to him or [his mother] Lady Randolph, but Kitchener remained obdurate. He had read the Malakand, often referred to in military circles as “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals.” He wanted no part of the brash young lieutenant.

Surprisingly, there are few appearances of “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals” in the Churchill canon. Ted Morgan, in Churchill: The Rise to Failure, alludes to it in passing:

Kitchener listened in absolute silence as Winston told him that the enemy was advancing in large numbers between the British position and the city of Omdurman. “You say the Dervish [Sufi Muslim] army is advancing,” Kitchener said. “How long do you think I have got?” The commander-in-chief was asking a subaltern’s advice, which Winston did not hesitate to give. “You have got at least an hour—probably an hour and a half, sir, even if they come on at their present rate.”

The River War?

But that reference proves nothing, really. Churchill historian Paul Courtenay thought “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals” refers to Churchill’s second book, The River War.

Mr. Courtenay based his answer on Richard Harding Davis’s Real Soldiers of Fortune (London: P.F. Collier & Sons, 1906), 108. Admittedly his Churchill chapter contains several inaccuracies, but this reference to River War looked right:

Equally disgusted [with The River War] were the younger officers of the service. They nicknamed his book, “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals,” and called Churchill himself a “Medal Snatcher”…. But Churchill never was a medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irked him…. Indeed the War Office could cover with medals the man who wrote the Malakand and River War and still be in his debt.

I appealed for adjudication to a judge, the Hon. Douglas Russell, who is not only a judge but the author of a distinguished book, Winston Churchill Soldier: The Military Life of a Gentleman at War. Judge Russell replied in detail (reprinted by kind permission)…

Douglas Russell:

If we conclude that the “subaltern’s advice” quip was the reason Kitchener did not want Churchill in the Sudan, the book has to be the Malakand. It could not be The River War, which was published after Churchill left the Sudan campaign. By that time, young Winston was trying to get into the Second Boer War, and the general making the decision was Roberts, not Kitchener.

It is not clear that Churchill’s critiques in the Malakand caused Kitchener’s resistance to him joining the Sudan campaign. I have never verified that. I do not know if Kitchener even read the book. It is clear that Kitchener did not like journalists generally. He certainly knew of Churchill. In August 1898 Winston wrote to his mother:

F[rancis Rhodes, correspondent for The Times] v[er]y kind and amiable. He talked to Sirdar [leader] about me. Kitchener said he had known I was not going to stay in the army—was only making a convenience of it; that he had disapproved of my coming in place of others whose professions were at stake….

This may be the real reason Kitchener did not want Churchill. I do not give great weight to Richard Harding Davis and his Real Soldiers of Fortune. His Churchill chapter has several basic errors on other topics. I have looked at the 1914, 1941 and 1981 editions and there are no footnotes. Davis was a popular rather than a scholarly writer. The subaltern’s advice quip is the sort of thing that would appear in a soldier’s memoir, as something that he had heard someone else say without disclosing the individual who actually said it.

Subaltern’s Advice

So which book contained Lieutenant Churchill’s Advice to his Generals? We concluded that the best reference available is Davis (his errors elsewhere notwithstanding). A war correspondent himself, Davis associated with military types. The wisecrack could have been going around, and if he heard it about The River War, so be it. Churchill in that book deplored certain of Kitchener’s actions after the victory at Omdurman, such as destroying the Mahdi’s tomb.

Still, one could use this humorous subtitle for any of his four war books, all published before he had turned twenty-six. Forever fascinated by war strategy, Churchill never hesitated to speak his mind, whether he was twenty-five or seventy.

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

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

Revisionism: A Thriving Industry

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

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

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

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

Movies Faithful to Reality

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

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

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

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

More Recently…

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

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

A Turn to the Worse

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

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

* * *

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

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

Hope Ahead? We’ll See

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

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

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