numbers of persons who thought they were being hardheaded realists
by rejecting the League as romantic. Their successors today are our
isolationists or noninterventionists, as they shamefacedly call
themselves now. Churchill remorselessly revealed how suicidal was this
refusal to cooperate among nations for the maintenance of security for
all. Long before Litvinoff coined the phrase Churchill was preaching
that “peace is indivisible,” that only through collective security
could the security of any single state be secured. His scorn for the
British counterpart of our isolationists was withering: “It is of the
utmost consequence to the unity of British national action that the
policy of adhering to the Covenant of the League of Nations shall not
be weakened or whittled away. I read in the _Times_ a few days ago a
letter in which a gentleman showed that these ideas of preventing war
by international courts and by reasonable discussion had been tried
over and over again. He said they had been tried after Marlborough had
defeated Louis XIV and after Europe had defeated Napoleon, but, he
said, they had always failed. If that is true it is a melancholy fact
but what was astonishing was _the crazy glee_ with which the writer
hailed such lapses from grace. I was told the other day of a sentence
of Carlyle’s in which he describes ‘the laugh of the hyena on being
assured that, after all, the world is only carrion.’”
It is of course plain to everybody now that the world is being torn
apart because _crazy_ people prevented the League of Nations from
functioning, _crazy_ people who believed they were as shrewd as the
Americans who today would like us to wait for the Germans to land on
United States soil before we fight. It has always been considered by
cheap and vulgar men that it is clever to be entirely selfish, and so
our Lindberghs, Wheelers, and Nyes even whisper temptingly the base
suggestion that we may profit by this war if Britain falls and her
Empire crumbles. What retribution would be ours were we to listen to
such voices! Churchill, whom no detractor has ever called a stupid
man, is not afraid to come out boldly and declare: “I think we ought
to place our trust in those moral forces which are enshrined in the
Covenant of the League of Nations. Do not let us mock at them, for they
are surely on our side. Do not mock at them for this may well be a time
when the highest idealism is not divorced from strategic prudence.
Do not mock at them, for these may be years, strange as it may seem,
when Right may walk hand in hand with Might.” This he spoke in 1937.
How the words are crammed with meaning now for America whose vital
self-interest to bring about the defeat of our enemy is identical with
the highest idealism.
Q. _Can Churchill be trusted?_
A. I will answer by citing Mr. Churchill’s attitude toward Ireland. In
1938 when the bill to turn the Irish naval bases back from British to
Irish control was being discussed, Churchill protested that when war
came, if Ireland refused to lend the ports to England, there would be
no way to get them back. Because, he said, “It will be no use saying,
‘Then we will retake the ports.’ You will have no right to do so. To
violate Irish neutrality should it be declared at the moment of a
great war may put you out of court in the opinion of the world and may
vitiate the cause by which you may be involved in war. If ever we have
to fight again we shall be fighting in the name of law, or respect for
the rights of small countries.” Can you imagine Hitler nourishing such
scruples? Churchill has proved, moreover, the hardest way, that he
meant what he said. The British still abstain from occupying and using
the Irish ports. They have lost scores of ships to German submarines
which might have been stopped if the Royal Navy had the use of the
Irish bases. Many people think it wrong for the British to imperil
their cause by respecting the neutrality of Ireland, which like every
other country outside the Axis owes its hopes for national independence
to a British victory.
Q. _What does Churchill think of the United States? I know that his
mother was American and that now during the war he wants as much help
from us as he can get, but what does he really think of America?_
A. We can go as far back as 1932 and find that he had this to say: “Of
course if the United States were willing to come into the European
scene as a prime factor, if they were willing to guarantee to those
countries who take their advice that they would not suffer for it, then
an incomparably wider and happier prospect would open to the whole
world. If they were willing not only to sign but to ratify treaties of
that kind, it would be an enormous advantage. It is quite safe for the
British Empire to go as far in any guarantee in Europe as the United
States is willing to go, and _hardly any difficulty in the world could
not be solved by the faithful cooperation of the English speaking
peoples_.” This was his view of the possibilities of Anglo-American
cooperation before the war; his faith in it now is stronger than ever.
As for his opinion of the American people, one can deduce a good deal
from some of the adjectives he has used about us in the past. He has
called us “active, educated, excitable and harassed”; and “the most
numerous and ebullient of civilized communities.”
Q. _What does Churchill think of Roosevelt and the New Deal?_
A. I am sure he has a profound admiration for Mr. Roosevelt quite
aside from the help he wants from him. Churchill and Roosevelt are
both aristocrats, both expert politicians, both highly cultured men,
both believers in humanity, and in the destiny of the English-speaking
peoples. There are only two factors to make them differ. The first is
that they are rivals, friendly rivals, of course, and allied rivals for
the duration of the war, but rivals just the same, and when the time
comes to translate victory into peace terms it is going to be exciting
to see which of these powerful, determined men will do the leading. It
will be a struggle of titans. As one reviews the chief characteristics
of each man it seems as though each possesses to the ultimate possible
degree the qualities of courage, intelligence, imagination, and
stubbornness.
Churchill has called Roosevelt “this great man, this thrice chosen
head of a nation of 130,000,000.” Another time in 1934 he described
Roosevelt’s administration as a dictatorship, writing: “Although the
Dictatorship is veiled by constitutional forms it is none the less
effective.” Hastily he added: “To compare Roosevelt’s effort with that
of Hitler is not to insult Roosevelt but civilization.” Now both men
have become dictators in the classical sense of the word as it has
been so sapiently defined by Frederick L. Schuman. “‘Dictatorship’ is
a form of power which is resorted to voluntarily and temporarily by
democracies to meet dangers of invasion or revolution. It is a device
to save democracy, not to destroy it.... The disposition of democrats
to regard dictatorship in times of crisis as fatal to democracy rather
than as fundamental to its preservation reflects a tragic confusion
resting upon ignorance of history and misuse of labels.” Schuman points
out that Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini are tyrants or despots, but not,
if one uses the word properly, “dictators.”
The reassuring fact is that both Roosevelt and Churchill believe that
a Pax Anglo-Americana is the key to the future. Churchill believes
that the British ought to take the leading role in such an arrangement
because they have borne the heat of battle to a greater degree than
we shall have done even with our troops in Europe. Roosevelt believes
America ought to be the leader since we are coming out of the war
considerably stronger than Great Britain and the younger nation is now
ready to take over guidance of world affairs from the parent country.
Out of this fundamental difference could come a massive dispute, but
since it will have been based on victory we can hope fervently that the
opportunity for the discussion be provided as quickly as possible.
Churchill has a second difference with Roosevelt in the field of
economic theory and practice. He is distinctly against the New Deal.
There was a time during the period of the Blue Eagle when Churchill
seemed almost to fear that communism was coming to the United States.
He warned: “It is irrational to tear down or cripple the capitalist
system without having the fortitude of spirit and ruthlessness of
action to create a new communist system.” With Churchillian directness
he proclaims his belief in profits. “There can never be good wages or
good employment for any length of time without good profits.”
With equal candor and with much wit he defends rich men. “A second
danger to President Roosevelt’s valiant and heroic experiments seems
to arise from the disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were
noxious beasts.... It is a very attractive sport, and once it gets
started quite a lot of people everywhere are found ready to join in the
chase.... The question arises whether the general well-being of the
masses of the community will be advanced by an excessive indulgence
in this amusement. The millionaire or multi-millionaire is a highly
economic animal. He sucks up with sponge-like efficiency money from all
quarters. In this process, far from depriving ordinary people of their
earnings, he launches enterprise and carries it through, raises values,
and he expands that credit without which on a vast scale no fuller
economic life can be opened to the millions. To hunt wealth is not to
capture commonwealth.” All this, his own economic philosophy, he sums
up in the formula: “Whether it is better to have equality at the price
of poverty or well-being at the price of inequality.”
Does this indicate a narrowly selfish interest by Churchill in his
own class? Not at all. He believes profoundly in the possibility of
extending leisure and well-being to all mankind through the benefits
of science. He takes the evidence of Soviet Russia that the means to
general affluence is not communism, nor does he think it can come
through any form of nationalization of production. He believes the
essence of the problem is monetary. He believes the rights of man are
more important than the success of any economic system. He believes in
the British Empire as a mighty instrument of civilization. He believes
profoundly in cooperation with us. There is no reason why the two
mightiest democratic dictators, Roosevelt and Churchill, should not
emerge from the Peace Conference with a harmonious plan.
Q. _Is it true that Churchill is gifted with a peculiar power to
foresee the event?_
A. I know of no statement which summed up in so few words a complete
forecast of history as was contained in one sentence of Churchill’s
delivered April 6, 1936 in a speech on the fortification of the
Rhineland. You will remember that Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland March
6, 1936. Mr. Churchill had this to say: “The creation of a line of
forts opposite to the French frontier will enable the German troops to
be economized on that line and will enable the main forces to swing
round through Belgium and Holland.” There in thirty-six words you have
the entire story of the Battle of France, told four years before it
took place.
Q. _Tell us what you know of Mr. Churchill as a person. What are his
principal characteristics?_
A. Courage is his principal characteristic. I hesitated a moment but
decided to put his courage ahead of his intelligence, because courage
is a more important quality than intelligence. I remember I once had
a spirited argument on this point with Henri Bernstein, the French
playwright. We were at the country home of Louis Bromfield in Senlis,
the point outside Paris where the Germans during the last war came
nearest to the capital. Bernstein insisted intelligence was the most
valuable quality a man could have, and with enough of it he would not
need more than a minimum of courage. I argued that without courage
the keenest intelligence is useless in a world of action. A couple
of years later Bernstein and I were on the same refugee ship, the
_Madura_ of the British India Line, fleeing from Bordeaux to England
after the fall of France. I reminded Bernstein of our argument and
insisted that the disaster of France proved my contention was right.
Surely the French were still what they have often been called, the most
intelligent people on the continent, but for some reason which nobody
has yet completely fathomed, they had at this moment of their national
history lost the desire or the willingness to fight. I suppose it would
be fair to define that as lack of courage, although I would be the last
to assert that this is a permanent state of mind or of heart on the
part of the French.
The collapse of the French was the signal for Churchill to display the
finest quality of his character. Senator Gerald P. Nye once, with the
good taste characteristic of our isolationists, said: “Britain is a
dead horse. America should not team up with a lost cause.” To France in
her death agony Churchill made the offer that she merge with Britain
and establish a single Franco-British government and cabinet, unite
the resources of the French and British Empires, and fight on to the
last drop of British blood, even if all France were occupied. It took
a Churchill’s imagination, generosity, and audacity to make such an
offer. The French did not have enough strength left to reach out and
accept the hand of rescue. We have heard a great deal about fighting to
the last drop of blood, but Churchill is the only man I have ever seen
among the belligerents who makes it absolutely convincing.
I was in London during those peak months of the Battle of Britain,
August and September 1940 when the Germans were bombing by day as
well as by night, trying to conquer the R.A.F. to make invasion
possible. One day I was driving through London with Mr. Churchill, and
as we passed a particularly large and well-camouflaged machine-gun
emplacement at a street intersection, the Prime Minister called my
attention to it. “Do you see that?” “Yes,” I said, “it seems you really
meant it when you said the British would fight in the streets.” “Meant
it!” exclaimed Mr. Churchill. “Why the Germans could if they liked
drop a hundred thousand parachutists on London, and if they did we
would chew them up and spit them out.” There was in his voice a note
of delight at the prospect. This note is present in all of Churchill’s
references to getting at the enemy. Although no man would act more
quickly to relieve his people of the necessity of shedding their blood,
while the fight is on Churchill revels in it. The responsibilities
which are his now must be greater than those carried by any other human
being on earth. One would think such a weight would have a crushing
effect upon him. Not at all. The last time I saw him, while the Battle
of Britain was still raging, he looked twenty years younger than before
the war began. As we walked across the garden in the rear of Number Ten
Downing Street I had to quicken my pace and almost trot to keep up with
him, so swiftly did he stride along the gravel path.
His uplifted spirit is transmitted to the people and it is my
impression that the British are, just as Churchill said, “proud to
be under the fire of the enemy.” You may think it overdrawn but if
you had shared with them the experience of heavy air bombardment, you
would agree that Churchill was only expressing the exact truth when he
said: “The sublime but also terrible experience and emotions of the
battlefield which for centuries have been reserved for soldiers and
sailors now are shared for good or ill by the entire population.” Even
in the midst of the most fearful danger Churchill taunts the enemy--“We
are waiting for that long promised invasion. So are the fishes.” I
would not be surprised if Churchill really wanted the Germans to try,
for if they were to try and fail it would be a defeat so disastrous
that it might well lead to a German collapse.
Without courage nothing can be accomplished. With it plus intelligence
everything can be done. Churchill’s courage is of every variety. He has
the simple battle courage of the Hussar. Remember the cavalry charge at
Omdurman in the Sudan when the young Lieutenant Churchill fought his
way through a tangle of howling dervishes? He has the enduring physical
courage to play a championship game of polo with a dislocated shoulder.
He has the moral courage to lead a lost cause. It was he who defended
the Duke of Windsor at the abdication, when the once most popular man
in the British Empire had lost every other friend. He has the courage
to take responsibility, and since he has been Prime Minister he has
personally taken the criticism for every ill turn of fortune, every
plan gone wrong. He can meet a hostile mob and talk it down. He can
lead in battle. He can lead in war. Above all he can infuse his courage
into others.
One’s pulse quickens at that immortal peroration of his delivered on
June 18, 1940, when France had surrendered, the British Expeditionary
Force had escaped with the loss of all its tools, and England stood
weaponless before the foe, in greater mortal peril than ever in ten
centuries. The words Churchill spoke then were the equivalent of a
strong army to defend the British Isles. Translated into the deeds of
the R.A.F., they defeated the enemy. Churchill said: “What General
Weygand called the Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is
about to begin. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long
continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might
of the enemy must very soon be turned upon us. Hitler knows that he
will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand
up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move
forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole
world, including the United States and all that we have known and cared
for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister and
perhaps more prolonged by the lights of a perverted science. Let us
therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if
the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men
will still say ‘This was their finest hour.’”
Q. _What was it Churchill said about carrying on even if the British
Isles were conquered?_
A. On August 20, 1940 in the midst of the Battle of Britain, Churchill
said: “If we had been put in the terrible position of France, a
contingency now happily impossible, although, of course, it would have
been the duty of all war leaders to fight on here to the end, it would
also have been their duty, as I indicated in my speech of June 4, to
provide as far as possible for the Naval security of Canada and our
Dominions and to make sure they had the means to carry on the struggle
from beyond the oceans.”
Q. _That would be fine for us if we could depend upon it, but do you
think Churchill really meant it? What good would it do for the British
Navy to carry on if the British Isles were conquered?_
A. I am sure that Churchill himself would do exactly as he said he
would. He would perish with his troops or with his Navy--who can tell
how or where--but he would never surrender. Can you doubt it when you
hear those words of his which are as much an inspiration for us today
as they were for the British when he uttered them on the last day of
the evacuation of Dunkirk? They deserve to be memorized by us all.
“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous states have
fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to
the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas, and
oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we
shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we
shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the
hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a
moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and
starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the
British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time,
the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue
and the liberation of the old.”
With Churchill’s picture these words are placarded in homes and
offices throughout the British Empire. Their spirit is the spirit of
Britain. But having said this I am compelled to add that it would be
feeble-minded for us to expect that the British Navy would continue
resistance to the Germans after the British Isles had been conquered.
Let us examine what the position would be if the British Isles fell.
First let us ask a British Naval Officer what would happen to the Royal
Navy if the British Isles were conquered. He will tell you: “There
wouldn’t be any Navy left.” I can see readily how this would be true.
If the Germans try invasion, the Royal Navy is going to throw itself
between the home island and the invaders with a desperation such as
has never been equaled in British Naval history, and that is saying a
very great deal. The Germans cannot capture the British Isles by air
power alone. They can land men and machine guns by air as they did at
Crete, but the heavy weapons they need to beat off and batter down
the formidable British artillery and heavy tanks now massed at home,
they will have to land by sea. Without these weapons they cannot win.
The Royal Navy will prevent their landing or perish in the attempt.
The Germans will try to clear the way for their invading craft by
torpedoes, mines, speedboats, Stukas, burning oil on the water, and
every conceivable means, and by some perhaps not now conceivable to us.
The British defenders will discard caution and risk everything. They
will hurl themselves at the invader. If they lose there will surely be
little left of the Navy.
But suppose there were left a British naval force large enough when
taken in combination with what we could spare from the Pacific to
continue to maintain practical control of the Atlantic, enough anyway
to prevent any German attempt at sending an invading army to America.
Could we then expect this remnant of the British Navy to retire to
Canada or the United States, and continue resistance to the Germans? I
do not think so.
In the first place, what would be the purpose of the British Navy in
continuing resistance to the Germans after the British Isles had been
captured? Would it be for the purpose of eventually reconquering the
British Isles? No, because that would be impossible. This is one of
those grim facts which are too ugly for most people to look at, but
there is no use turning our eyes away and refusing to see that if the
Germans do invade and conquer the British Isles, the British people
will have finished their life. It would be the end for them, not for
the duration of this war, which would in fact be ended then, but for as
far into the future as the imagination can travel. The Germans might
remain in possession of the British Isles or in effective control for
the thousand years Hitler so often boasts about, or until they became
weak through centuries of good living. Hitler would disarm the people
of Britain and allow hunger to decimate them. He could count on forty
per cent of the population dying of starvation in a year or so. Does
this seem an exaggeration? It is only one more of those facts about
Hitler which nobody would believe. The trusting Dutch would not believe
what Hitler was like until he taught the people of Rotterdam. But the
British people have now learned their lesson. They have totally lost
the wide-eyed faith of our Lindberghs, that Hitler is “human after
all.” The British know Hitler would do just what I have said, he would
deliberately destroy a great part of the population, allowing to remain
alive only those sufficiently broken to become good slaves. But why,
you ask, could not the British Navy reconquer the British Isles, if
they had our wholehearted help? The answer is that there would be no
base from which to operate.