The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  On domestic issues, Churchill chose to tread a mostly metaphorical path during the election campaign. He gave Britons few precise details of Tory economic plans, as he told Moran: “We propose to give the people a lighthouse not a shop window.” During one broadcast he averred: “The difference between our outlook and the Socialist outlook on life is the difference between the ladder and the queue. We are for the ladder. Let all try their best to climb. They are for the queue. Let each wait in his place till his turn comes.” He nebulously pledged to slow the nationalization of steel and coal. Yet he did make two specific promises, which at his insistence were included in that year’s Conservative manifesto. He pledged to build three hundred thousand houses, and in an adroit reading of the public mood, he proposed an excess profits tax be levied on corporations. Britain was re-arming, and would re-arm even more were he to win. Profits were being made on the stock exchanges and in boardrooms, the type of profits the common man did not partake in. Churchill, too, knew how to play the fear card. Ever unable to resist a shot at Bevan, he told an audience at Woodford: “It is certain that a vote for Bevanite Socialism is in fact, whatever its intention, a vote which increases the hazard of a world catastrophe.” A return to power of the socialists, he said, would deal “a real blow to our hopes of escaping a Third World War.”160

  Several Tory and Liberal candidates volunteered not to run against each other in constituencies where a divided vote might throw the seat to Labour. One such was at Huddersfield, where Lady Violet Bonham Carter—daughter of the great prime minister H. H. Asquith—ran as a Liberal. She and Churchill had been best of friends since first meeting at a dinner party in 1906, when he was thirty-two and she nineteen. She later wrote that Churchill “seemed to me to be quite different from any other young man I had ever met.” Churchill did not appear to notice her at first. When he did, he abruptly asked her age. She gave it. “ ‘And I,’ he said almost despairingly, ‘am thirty-two already, younger than anyone else who counts, though.’ Then savagely: ‘Curse ruthless time. Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram in.’ ” He then proceeded on a long discourse on the shortness of human life and the vast potential for human accomplishment, at the end of which he announced, “We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm.” By the end of the dinner Bonham Carter was convinced he indeed was, “and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed.” Now, speaking on her behalf at Huddersfield, Churchill reminded the crowd of his two decades as a Liberal, his service to Asquith, and his role in bringing unemployment insurance and old age pensions to Britons. He told the audience: “ ‘All men are created equal,’ says the American Declaration of Independence, ‘All men shall be kept equal,’ say the British Socialist Party.” He added, “Now is the time to break with these follies.”161

  Speaking in Plymouth on Randolph’s behalf two days before polling day, he denounced Labour and Communist charges of warmongering as “a cruel and ungrateful accusation.”

  It is the opposite of the truth. If I remain in public life at this juncture it is because, rightly or wrongly, but sincerely, I believe that I may be able to make an important contribution to the prevention of a Third World War and to bringing nearer that lasting peace settlement which the masses of the people of every race and in every land fervently desire. I pray indeed that I may have this opportunity. It is the last prize I seek to win.162

  Max Beaverbrook predicted a Tory majority of at least one hundred. Max was well informed, but not always accurately informed, as borne out by the margin of error of his predictions in the last two elections. Moran advised Churchill not to put too much stock in Max’s rosy prognostications. Churchill replied that since Max’s papers were read by millions, “he must know what he’s talking about.” Max may be right, Moran told his diary, but on all sides Tories were worried, not only about the election results but by Churchill’s age and his penchant for neither asking for nor taking advice. Churchill told Macmillan that he hoped for a majority of ninety but would settle for fifty. Macmillan also learned from Brendan Bracken that the Old Man, if victorious, planned to hold office for just one year, perhaps eighteen months at most. Churchill alluded to his planned retirement during a campaign address when he told the audience, “Mr. Eden will carry on the torch of Tory democracy when other and older hands have let it fall.” Eden, though ill, was eager, his arms outstretched, to catch the torch.163

  But Churchill was not prepared to let the torch pass until he claimed his prize—a summit at the top. That was what he sought; it was almost all he sought. Truman was still in the White House, Stalin still in the Kremlin. An election victory would turn the clock back to July 1945, to Potsdam, where the last meeting of the Big Three had been interrupted by the election.

  On polling day, Thursday, October 25, the Daily Mirror accompanied its slogan—Whose finger on the trigger?—with a large photograph of a chubby man in half silhouette, holding a cigar. The man in the photo was not Churchill. By staging the shot, the Daily Mirror crossed the line. Churchill soon filed a lawsuit, and was rewarded with a full, if insincere, apology wherein the editors expressed regret if their words and photos implied in any way that Churchill did not dislike war. But the question asked by Tories on polling day was, how effective had the Daily Mirror been in its underhanded campaign? The answer to that question arrived overnight as the votes were counted. The Tories won, but just. Churchill did not get his hoped-for majority of 100, or even 50, but only 18, over all parties. The Conservatives finished with 321 seats, Labour with 295, the Liberals only 6. In fact, Labour, with 13,866,000 votes, outpolled the Conservatives by 229,000 votes. The results did not in any way resemble a mandate for Churchill. By noon on October 26, Attlee knew he was beaten. Early that evening he motored to Buckingham Palace to hand King George the seals of office. An hour or so later Churchill made his journey to the palace, where for the third time since 1940 he was asked by King George to form a government. Once again, as in 1939, when he was called back to the Admiralty, the signal went out worldwide: Winston is back.

  The King was a very ill man, recuperating from lung surgery to remove a cancer. Weeks earlier, Churchill, shocked by the King’s appearance and always anxious about all things medical, pressed Moran for details of the King’s ailment and his chances for recovery. It was then that Moran understood that Churchill’s anxiety had to do with his own decline, about which he received regular reminders by way of spells of dizziness, bouts of forgetfulness, numbness in his shoulders, and increasing deafness. And it was then that Moran concluded that Churchill had lost much ground along with his grip on things, and if he returned to No. 10 would not be up to the job. Clementine braced herself for the pending ordeal. Shortly after the election, she wrote a short note to Ronald Tree: “I do hope Winston will be able to help the country. It will be up-hill work, but he has a willing eager heart.”164

  Pug Ismay, happily retired from public affairs, had gone to bed early on the night of October 26. Late that night the telephone on his bedside table jangled to life. The familiar ring had heralded the invasion of the Low Countries, the death of Roosevelt, and the surrender of the German armies. Ismay lifted the receiver; a voice on the other end of the line asked him to stand by for the prime minister. A moment later: “Is that you Pug?… I want to see you at once. You aren’t asleep are you?” Ismay explained that in fact he had been. “Well,” said Churchill, “I only want to see you for five minutes.” Ismay put his head under a cold tap, dressed hurriedly, and within fifteen minutes arrived at 28 Hyde Park Gate. There Churchill told Ismay, a career soldier, that he wanted him to take the office of secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, a political post for which Ismay considered himself totally unqualified. “I thought the cold tap had failed to do its job,” Ismay later wrote, “and I was still dreaming.” He accepted the position, “overjoyed at the prospect of serving under Churchill again.”165

  Jock Colville’s summons arrived the next mornin
g, as he and his wife were enjoying themselves at the Newmarket races. A steward of the Jockey Club found Colville in the crowd and told him that the prime minister was on the line and wished to speak to him. “Whatever he asks you to do,” warned Colville’s wife, “say no.” Colville had returned to the Foreign Office after his two years in service to Princess Elizabeth and was content to finish his career there. But it was not to be. When Colville picked up the phone in the Jockey Club, the prime minister apologized for any inconvenience, and asked if Colville might be willing to meet in person. “Tomorrow?” Colville asked. “No,” replied Churchill, “this afternoon.” When they met, Colville asked Churchill how long he thought he’d stay on at Downing Street. The question stemmed from Colville’s concern that another prolonged absence from the Foreign Office would derail his career. One year, Churchill replied. Colville signed on.166

  At Chartwell over the next four days, the Old Man reassembled his old team. Eden would again lead the House and head the Foreign Office, the very same dual role that had exhausted him during the war. Colville came aboard as joint principal private secretary, sharing those duties with David Pitblado, an Attlee appointee. Rab Butler would go to the Exchequer, Oliver Lyttelton as colonial secretary, and Lord Woolton as lord president of the council. The Prof—Lord Cherwell—was to be paymaster general. Harry Crookshank, a party lesser light, was to take on the Ministry of Health. Harold Macmillan was to be minister of housing, with a mandate from Churchill to build the three hundred thousand houses he had promised during the campaign. When Macmillan asked Churchill what that might entail and how to go about it, the Old Man answered, “I haven’t an idea.” Churchill’s sons-in-law were brought in, Duncan Sandys as minister of supply, Christopher Soames as parliamentary private secretary. But the nepotism did not extend to Randolph. Randolph, who had served his father during the war as adviser without portfolio and minister of provocation, no longer even served in those capacities. Churchill had grown weary of the knockdown political arguments that Randolph precipitated with regularity. Such verbal jousts had on occasion stimulated the Old Man during the war; now they tired him. One appointment raised eyebrows on both sides of the Atlantic. As he had in 1940, Churchill named himself minister of defence. “It is just folly for Churchill to become Minister of Defence,” Macmillan told his diary. “It almost justifies the Daily Mirror…. This is a major blunder.”167

  During those autumn weeks, Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of NATO, set about organizing his NATO headquarters in Paris. Eisenhower sought something along the lines of his World War Two SHAEF arrangement, that is, allied countries would put their armies under NATO command in the event of war, but they would otherwise maintain sovereign control over their forces. The French Assembly and Robert Schuman, however, advocated the creation of a European Defense Community, something of a supranational military version of Schuman’s Coal and Steel Community. The European army, as outlined by then–French premier René Pleven in 1950, would exist separately from the armies of the nations that contributed soldiers to it. De Gaulle, still in self-imposed exile from French politics, saw the EDC as an abdication of French sovereignty. The Scandinavian countries feared Franco-German domination if the EDC succeeded, and a German threat if it did not. Political cartoonists throughout Western Europe panned the plan, citing the absurd problems of command and control inherent in trying to guide brigades and divisions—let alone an entire army—made up of a dozen or more nationalities, all speaking different languages and carrying different weapons. The Bevan wing of the Labour Party opposed the EDC on the grounds that a European army, especially one containing Germans, would provoke Moscow. Eisenhower, too, was wary of bringing German forces into the mix, and remained so for three years. Britons were largely apathetic toward Europe, Dean Acheson later wrote, and, like the French, feared a re-armed Germany. America and NATO were where Britons beheld their salvation. For many Britons, including Churchill, the Atlantic was narrower than the English Channel.168

  On December 6, Churchill imparted to the House his thoughts on the matter in an address that marked another milestone in the European journey toward unity, and Britain’s role in that journey. Churchill told the House he foresaw “a European Army, containing a German contribution of agreed size and strength, [that] will stand alongside the British and United States Armies in a common defensive front. That, after all, is what really matters to the life or death of the free world.” Then came the seeming paradox from the man who had argued for almost two decades for a united Europe: “As far as Britain is concerned, we do not propose to merge in the European Army but we are already joined to it. Our troops are on the spot.” As with any future European economic union, Britain would be in and out simultaneously. But it wasn’t a paradox. Unlike de Gaulle, whose loyalty was to France alone, Churchill was loyal to Britain first. It had always been so. He ended his address by declaring that the progress toward a European Defense Community (discussions Attlee had refused to join) amounted to “an enlightened if not an inspiring tale.” Noting that the EDC had not yet taken its final shape, he announced that he would not make a final decision on Britain’s role until it did.169

  But the EDC never took its final shape. Churchill mocked the EDC weeks later in the private company of Truman and Acheson. The EDC talks dragged on until 1954, when France, by then losing a war in Indochina, pulled out. But by then Germany had re-armed, and NATO—including Greece and Turkey—had assumed the command structure that Eisenhower had envisioned, and had formed the defensive cordon for Western Europe, largely funded and manned by Churchill’s American cousins, which was exactly what Churchill had sought since 1945.

  By late 1951, Churchill had reached his goals also regarding the political and economic elements of European union. In February 1949, he had told a council of European ministers meeting in Brussels that their duty, and his, was to return to their respective countries and impress upon the leaders of their governments the wisdom of European unity: “We may even, in the form of an active, enlightened and ever more dominant public opinion, give them the fuel they need for their journey and the electric spark to set all in motion.” It was now in motion.170

  So, too, was the British atomic deterrent, another lynchpin of Churchill’s European defense strategy. During the December 6 address, Churchill outlined the essence of that strategy. Having learned upon taking office that the Attlee government had been in the process of building an atomic bomb, Churchill pledged to bring it to fruition. Doing so, he warned the House, “adds to the deterrents against war, but it may throw the brunt on to us should war come.” The Russians, upon learning of the American atomic bombers in East Anglia, had called Britain an “aircraft carrier.” Britain, therefore, was a prime target. Yet, Churchill added, “We shall not flinch from the duty Britain has accepted.”171

  With the atomic deterrent in hand, he could then proceed to the prize he now saw as the culmination of his career; world peace brought about by a summit meeting between the American president, himself, and Joseph Stalin. He believed still that men of honor keep their word. He shocked one of his private secretaries when he declared that Stalin had never broken his word. Of course Stalin had broken his word, leading to the current state of world affairs. Churchill the romantic was overruling Churchill the statesman and ignoring Churchill the historian.

  In early November, while reiterating the dangers posed by a nuclear world, he told the House: “But our great hope in foreign affairs is, of course, to bring about an abatement of what is called ‘the cold war’ by negotiation at the highest level from strength and not from weakness.” He then read to the House the letter he had sent Stalin in 1945, in which he had warned of a dangerous world with Communists drawn up on one side against the English-speaking nations and their allies. “It is quite obvious,” he had told Stalin, that such a “quarrel would tear the world to pieces and that all of us leading men on either side who had anything to do with that would be shamed before history.” It had all come to pass, he tol
d the House, “with horrible exactitude.” Thus, a summit at the top, Churchill believed, was the only way to avert the ultimate catastrophe of World War Three. He also believed that only absolute Anglo-American solidarity could bring the Soviets to the table. As he put it to President Truman, the Kremlin feared a strong Anglo-American friendship, and would try to drive a wedge between Americans and Britons. But if the Soviets grew to fear the unshakable Western alliance enough, they might then see friendship with the West as more advantageous than enmity. In 1942 he told Americans, “If we are together, nothing is impossible, if we are divided, all will fail.” He believed that yet.172