Blood, Class and Empire

by Christopher Hitchens

  I am most anxious that nothing should be published which might seem to others to threaten our current relations in our public duties or impair the sympathy and understanding which exist between our two countries. I have therefore gone over the book again in the last few months and have taken great pains to ensure that it contains nothing which might imply that there was in those days any controversy or lack of confidence between us.

  His anxiety, which may have been occasioned by the imminent publication of the State Department papers on the Malta and Yalta conferences, was understandable. In fact, almost from the declaration of war against Nazi Germany, Churchill was engaged in a sort of “Second Front,” to protect the British Empire, against his putative ally. The letters, which were not published in full until 1984, make this plainer than even the most daring revisionist historians had previously suggested.

  The first thing to notice is that, contrary to a widespread impression, the exchange of letters was actually initiated by Roosevelt. This may seem a slight thing but was not. For a President to write to a British minister (Churchill was still at the Admiralty on September 11, 1939, when the first letter arrived) was unusual and would have been unusual even if one country had not been a belligerent and the other a neutral. Roosevelt had been Woodrow Wilson’s Assistant Secretary of the Navy during the First World War and kept up an interest in matters nautical. He had, we know, read Admiral Mahan with great care. He began thus:

  My dear Churchill,

  It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the World War that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back again in the Admiralty. Your problems are, I realize, complicated by new factors but the essential is not very different. What I want you and the Prime Minister to know is that I shall at all times welcome it if you will keep me in touch personally with anything you want me to know about. You can always send sealed letters through your pouch or my pouch.

  This was the sort of communication which would have, had it been leaked, maddened the American isolationists beyond words. So, if they had known the details, would the first “incident” that arose for discussion between the two men.

  In an eerie reminiscence of 1915, a naval attaché in Berlin reported a conversation in which Nazi Grand Admiral Erich Raeder warned that the American merchant vessel Iroquois would be sunk by the British in order to implicate Germany. The nearest seaport to the position of the Iroquois in early October 1939 was Queenstown, off which the Lusitania had been torpedoed. Churchill cabled Roosevelt that “U-boat danger inconceivable in these broad waters. Only method can be time-bomb planted at Queenstown. We think this not impossible.” Nothing eventuated, but perhaps the shades of Room Forty gibbered a bit.

  The next incident was more tangible. In December 1939, three British cruisers bottled up the Nazi pocket battleship Graf Spee in the Uruguayan port of Montevideo, where her captain ordered her scuttled. The battle had violated the nonbelligerency zone set up by the United States and the Latin American nations at Panama shortly before. Thus the first British naval victory of World War II was met by a Monroe Doctrine protest from the State Department.

  But, by May 15, 1940, Churchill was Prime Minister and made it his first order of business to send Roosevelt a long message. Using the pseudonym “Former Naval Person,” which he was to retain for the course of the war, he appealed for the very thing— an American declaration of nonbelligerency—which had so offended the British when proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson. He also appealed for the sending of aid on a “cash and carry” basis, stressing, with what his editor, Professor Warren Kimball, called “a tone of desperation,” that “we shall go on paying dollars for as long as we can, but I should like to feel reasonably sure that when we can pay no more, you will give us the stuff all the same.” Churchill also requested “the visit of a United States squadron to Irish ports, which might well be prolonged.” This plea, which aimed to forestall German exploitation of Irish neutrality, was brushed off in Roosevelt’s reply. No American politician would ever again repeat Wilson’s mistake of ignoring Irish susceptibilities in favor of British interests. But he looked forward to negotiating with the Canadian Arthur Purvis, head of the British Purchasing Mission in the United States.

  There was another hint of the teachings of Admiral Mahan in a message Roosevelt sent to the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, on June 13, 1940. This cable, which was wrongly interpreted by Churchill as a pledge to enter the war, ended with the sentence: “Naval Power in world affairs still carries the lessons of history, as Admiral Darían well knows.” But Roosevelt’s firm grasp of Mahan’s classic and its lessons became evident on August 13 of that year, when he wrote that some fifty superannuated destroyers, together with motor torpedo boats and planes, could be made available for the defense of Britain only on this condition:

  if the American people and the Congress frankly recognized that in return therefor the national defense and security of the United States would be enhanced. For that reason it would be necessary, in the event that it proves possible to release the materiel above mentioned, that the British Government find itself able and willing to take the two following steps:

  1.Assurance on the part of the Prime Minister that in the event that the waters of Great Britain become untenable for British ships of war, the latter would not be turned over to the Germans or sunk, but would be sent to other parts of the Empire for continued defense of the Empire.

  2.An agreement on the part of Great Britain that the British Government would authorize the use of Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad and British Guiana as naval and air bases by the United States in the event of an attack on the American hemisphere by any non-American nation; and in the meantime the United States to have the right to establish such bases and to use them for training and exercise purposes with the understanding that the land necessary for the above could be acquired by the United States through purchase or through a 99-year lease.

  Churchill’s reply contained gratitude and protest in about equal measure. He was particularly anxious that Roosevelt did not publish the details of the agreement in the form adumbrated. Here was a dilemma: Roosevelt feared anti-British reaction from the isolationists in the 1940 election if it did not look as if America was profiting by the deal, and Churchill feared anti-American reaction in Britain if it did. Churchill was especially touchy about discussing contingency plans for the disposal of the British fleet in the event of conquest or surrender—two eventualities he was at pains to rule out in public. He artfully employed phrases like “beyond a per-adventure” and “instrumentalities,” which were borrowed from Woodrow Wilson. He also distrusted the suggestion that the fleet be sent to Canada, which seemed too blatant an invitation to its annexation by the United States Navy. But he finally gave the required assurance, adding with a characteristic growl that “these hypothetical contingencies seem more likely to concern the German fleet or what is left of it than our own.”

  At this early stage, both men habitually referred to “the British Empire” in their exchange of communications, a style which was to be amended considerably as events wore on. The first sign of it came in a draft letter from Churchill in November 1940, which anticipated Fulton, Missouri, by some years and looked forward to a postwar world in which

  peace comes from power behind law and government, and not from disarmament and anarchy. Power in the hands of these two great liberal nations, with the free nations of the British Commonwealth and the American Republics associated in some way with them so as to ensure that that power is not abused, offers the only stable prospect of peace. It is clear that we shall be able to build nothing for many years out of the youth of Europe, which has been educated in Nazi and Communist doctrines.

  Clearly the word “liberal” and the word “Empire” did not sort well together. In the message as finally sent the following month after discussion in Cabinet, paragraph one refers to “the British Commonwealth of Nations” though paragraph four describes the
first half of 1940 as “a period of disaster for the Allies and for the Empire.” No less of interest was the way in which the message illustrated the difference in standing between the two countries compared with 1914:

  While we will do our utmost and shrink from no proper sacrifice to make payments across the exchange, I believe that you will agree that it would be wrong in principle and mutually disadvantageous in effect if, at the height of this struggle, Great Britain were to be divested of all saleable assets so that after victory was won with our Blood, civilisation saved and time gained for the United States to be fully armed against all eventualities, we should stand stripped to the bone.

  Churchill’s epistolary style was never suppliant, and it always sought to appeal both to pride and to self-interest in its recipient. Great effort and reflection went into the composition of these cables and letters, which were seldom crude or hasty in their manner despite the laconic breeziness of many of Roosevelt’s replies. Roosevelt, indeed, failed to reply to Churchill’s message of congratulation on his 1940 election victory, perhaps because Wendell Willkie had been making demagogic use of early Churchillian attacks on the “socialist” New Deal and Churchill had not disowned the remarks employed. This did not prevent Churchill from beginning to refer to Roosevelt in almost religious tones, once thanking him for “this very present help in time of trouble” and once directing him gratefully to look up 2 Corinthians 6:2. The letter quoted above, moving from the question of natural justice to the matter of realism, went on to point out that a Britain “stripped to the bone”

  would be unable after the war to purchase the large balance of imports from the United States over and above the volume of our exports which is agreeable to your tariffs and domestic economy. Not only should we in Great Britain suffer cruel privations but widespread unemployment in the United States would follow the curtailment of American exporting power.

  This was an abrupt shift to Keynesianism from a former champion of the gold standard. Not that gold ceased to figure in Anglo-American relations. In a later communication, Churchill struck out a reference to “a sheriff collecting the last assets of a helpless debtor.” This was his immediate response to the American proposal to load an American warship with thirty million pounds’ worth of South African gold and carry it to the United States for insurance on British debt. In the context of this plan (which was eventually carried out) Churchill preferred to allude to “the Dominions.” In the case of the West Indies bases under the proposed Lend-Lease exchange, he at first objected to some of the American terms— such as the provision for British subjects arrested there to be tried in American courts—but in the end gave in, noting in a March 1941 memo that “the strategic value of these Islands or bases is incomparably greater to the United States than to Great Britain. They were in fact chiefly valuable to us as a means of attacking the United States.” Another vindication of Mahan. As soon as May 1941, he was again having to allay American fears of British imperialism, by promising that any move to seize the Azores from Portugal would be for the duration of the war only.

  In compensation for these indignities, it could be felt and seen that American neutrality was eroding fast. Not until 1974 was it officially acknowledged that the German battleship Bismarck, sunk in May 1941, had actually been spotted by an American flier named Ensign Leonard B. Smith, who had been flying as a copilot in combat for some weeks before doing the Boyal Navy this historic favor and who had thus made nonsense of the Neutrality Act. (He more than made up for Tyler Kent, a code clerk in Joseph Kennedy’s American embassy, who had until mid-1940 been leaking Churchill-Boosevelt cables to fellow isolationists and to pro-Axis consulates.)

  But the imperial theme never ceased to recur. In June 1941, Churchill felt bound to reassure Roosevelt about troop movements in the Middle East, saying “we have no political interests at all in Syria, except to win the war.” A few days later, he was offering the United States a bomber base at Bathurst in Gambia on the same terms as those concluded in the West Indies, but, it seems, without consulting any Gambians. The next month, Adolf Berle minuted Roosevelt from the State Department that Britain had designs on Syria and the Balkans, too, and intended “to channelize the trade and economics of this area through London when the war is over.” Again, there was a determination not to repeat Wood-row Wilson’s humiliation over “secret treaties.”

  This determination was made exceedingly plain to Churchill at the Atlantic Conference, held at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, at one of the new American bases being readied on former “Dominion” soil. Churchill had actually solicited the meeting, but got slightly more than he had bargained for when it eventually took place.

  A noticeable absence from the Atlantic Conference, and indeed from most of Churchill’s pleading and argument at this time, was that of the theme of blood. Anglo-Saxon consanguinity and tradition were a staple of British output on the American propaganda market, but did not figure very greatly, if at all, in public diplomacy. In his own public efforts, Roosevelt was just as inclined to stress France as an ally (she was, after all, in theory America’s oldest) as he was Britain. And there was no repeat of anti-Germanism—in fact, until quite late in 1941, pro-German forces in America were active and confident. (The fete of German-Americans in 1917 was to be reserved, in even more bitter and concentrated form, for Japanese-Americans after 1941.)

  The final draft of the Atlantic Charter excluded proposed State Department phrasing about the undesirability of closed and protective economic systems, but included an endorsement of the principle of self-determination. These two issues continued to nag at Churchill whatever the general fortunes of war might be. Having bid adieu to Roosevelt (in the name of “His Majesty’s Government and the British Commonwealth” this time), Churchill found himself upon his return to London faced with a demand from Cordell Hull, imposing stern control over British reexport of Lend-Lease goods. This was an aid to American firms who might wish to try their hand in territories hitherto barred to them by Imperial Preference. A short while afterward, at the International Wheat Meeting in Washington, the United States pushed hard for fixed prices and production controls, which broke the Imperial Preference system in the case of Australia and Canada. Since the Neutrality Acts were in the process of being amended to allow American merchant ships to be armed and to enter zones of war, there was little the British side could do but complain.

  This phase came to an abrupt end on December 7, 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor. For his next three cables to Churchill, announcing Congress’s declaration of war and speaking about “the same boat,” Roosevelt employed the word “Empire.” Churchill, according to Sir Arthur Bryant, told the War Cabinet that the time for soft talk with America was past. “Oh! That is the way we talked to her while we were wooing her; now that she is in the harem we talk to her quite differently!” This, it turned out, was a mere emotional interlude on both sides.

  Unconsciously inaugurating a long period of Conservative suspicion about American designs on the Empire, Churchill wrote to Roosevelt on January 14, 1942, asking for a guarantee that there were no plans to transfer sovereignty in British possessions in the West Indies. Artlessly, he suggested the appeasement of his colonial-minded backbenchers “possibly in reply to an inspired question at a Press Conference.” Next month came the first note of self-pity—Churchill canceled an intemperate reply to a message to Roosevelt in which the latter had urged him to accept the abandonment of Imperial Preference as the price of Lend-Lease. Again there were mutterings from the Tory backbenchers, one of which mutters got as far as the unsent cable but had lodged in numerous British minds along the way:

  As I told you I consider situation is completely altered by entry of the United States into the war. This makes us no longer a consultant receiving help from a generous sympathizer, but two comrades fighting for life side by side. In this connection it must be remembered that for a large part of 27 months we carried on the struggle single-handed . . .

  Two days late
r, in the cable that was sent, Churchill dropped this catty reminder but did say:

  I found Cabinet at its second meeting on this subject even more resolved against trading the principle of Imperial Preference as consideration for Lease-Lend [sic]. I have always been opposed or lukewarm to Imperial Preference but the issue did not turn on the fiscal aspect. . . The great majority of the Cabinet felt that if we bargained the principle of Imperial Preference for the sake of Lease-Lend we should have accepted an intervention in the domestic affairs of the British Empire, and that this would lead to dangerous debates in Parliament as well as to further outbreak of the German propaganda of the kind you read to me on the second night of my visit about the United States breaking up the British Empire and reducing us to the level of territory of the Union. [Italics mine.]

  Two weeks later, the Master Lend-Lease Agreement was signed, with the nondiscriminating Article VII included and Imperial Preference set aside. In the context of Preference, Churchill could hardly avoid the use of the term Empire, though the notion of that Empire having “domestic affairs” must have struck American readers as a bit farfetched. (The notion of the British being reduced “to the level of territory of the Union” could probably, even given the emotional circumstances, have been more tactfully put.) In the course of the discussion, Roosevelt had sought briefly to be emollient and had chosen a revealing example by writing:

  It seems to me the proposed note leaves a clear implication that Empire preference and, say, agreements between ourselves and the Philippines are excluded before we sit down at the table.

  When Churchill read that butter-wouldn’t-melt reference to “say, . . . the Philippines,” did he recall his conversation with Mark Twain about imperial scrounging four decades before? It’s probable that he did not, because Roosevelt’s message arrived on February 11, 1942, and on February 10, 1942, Churchill was frantically engaged in cabling Wavell about the unthinkable prospect of the loss of Singapore. The call to Wavell might have frozen even Kipling’s blood: