Part 17

Churchill’s restless energy is such that his associates are both inspired and compelled to work harder than they ever did with anyone else. Shortly after he went to the Admiralty I visited his office and chatted with his secretaries. They were obviously sincere in their hero worship of him, but equally sincere in their sighs of weariness over the strenuous schedule they have to follow. Rauschning describes Hitler as an essentially lazy man who “does not know how to work steadily. Indeed is incapable of working. He hates to have to read with concentration. He rarely reads a book through; usually he only begins it.” Could there be found a greater contrast than this with the habits of Churchill whose perpetual industry and powers of concentration are as important elements in his genius as intellect? As an illustration of his ability to concentrate I know no better anecdote than the one told me by Randolph. It was during the months before the war when Mr. Churchill was writing the _History of the English Speaking Peoples_, and every day world without end, he turned out, generally in the evening, his stint of words from 2,000 upward. It made no difference what was happening in international affairs, or what other demands were made upon his time. No excitements or exigencies were allowed to disturb his writing. But events grew bigger and bigger and to the prescient eye of Mr. Churchill it became every day more clear that war was certain to come, and that a violent gesture by Hitler might precipitate it any moment. Suddenly Hitler marched into Prague, breaking the fresh vows he had made at Munich, deliberately insulting Britain and France, cynically strangling the rump state he had sworn to respect. Throughout Europe ran a shudder and the mind of every man was absorbed with anxious exploration of the possibilities. On that evening Mr. Churchill rose from dinner, and as he started upstairs to his workroom to write his stint, he exclaimed to his family, “It will be difficult for me tonight to concentrate my undivided attention upon the reign of King James II, but I shall do so.”

Another time I visited Chartwell with Randolph and as we walked through the garden I saw a new brick building and remarked that it had not been there before. “No,” Randolph explained. “Father just built it.” “You mean, had it built?” I asked. “Oh no, built it with his own hands.” I had heard about Mr. Churchill’s bricklaying but had no idea it extended to building whole houses. This one I found was his studio. He had laid every brick in the building, and evidently was expert as a professional. He particularly likes difficult jobs such as arches and corners and curves. The Brick-layers Union at one time admitted him to membership, but later called in his card on instructions from the central office which objected to the Union’s accepting a Tory politician as a member! This brick house, however, was not built by any honorary bricklayer. If Mr. Churchill ever falls upon evil times it may serve to recommend him for employment. While Churchill, without having to do so and merely as a hobby, became a qualified artisan in the building trades, Hitler could not even out of dire necessity keep a job in the building trades. Churchill might earn a living also as a painter. The studio walls were hung from top to bottom with the product of his brush, signed Charles Morin. There were landscapes, seascapes, and every variety of scene, many of them recording vacations on the French Riviera, his favorite resort. Presently we joined Mr. Churchill swimming in the outdoor pool he had also personally constructed. Later he played cards with his wife. Six-pack bezique was the game. Guests had tea on the lawn in the shade of the trees.

These were the last peaceful days before the hurricane which it is fashionable to say will sweep away all that comfortable, easy, country-home England. I do not believe it will do anything of the kind. The war will certainly leave little of parasitic England. The vast accumulations of inherited wealth are being swept now into the hopper of war. It will no longer be possible for Francis Williams to declare that eighty per cent of the wealth of England belongs to six per cent of the population, and that nearly half of the national income goes to ten percent of the people. But Churchill’s type of good living, country house and all, will not disappear, for it is based upon his own labors, as we could see demonstrated before our eyes. After the card game Mr. Churchill went upstairs to his workroom and about an hour later came down with the manuscript of a 1,500-word article for the _Daily Telegraph_ which he had just dictated. I read it with professional envy, for in only a few minutes he had produced one of his characteristic gems, informative, learned, witty, for which he would receive a remuneration about equivalent to the annual income of an average American newspaperman. He frequently surpasses this feat in economizing time. He used to write many of his newspaper articles on the way up to London in his automobile, dictating to his secretary.

Churchill has now by act of Parliament completely dictatorial powers and can order any British citizen to perform any service or can confiscate any property, but he has yet to be criticized for ruling arbitrarily. He hates silly questions and will walk away from a bore, or cut a hypocrite down with an epigram. Whisky, he believes, is a boon to mankind, and he has never been the worse, but often the better for it. The two men he most abhors in our time are Hitler and Trotzky, both teetotalers. He is a gourmand, that is to say a man with a sensitive taste in food who likes a lot of it. Once he was in ill health and went to a noted specialist who, contrary to the fashion of the day and despite the patient’s well-upholstered body, advised him to eat more food. He follows the prescription enthusiastically.

One night, about eighteen months before the war, traveling from London to Paris, I had the good luck to be on the same train with Mr. Churchill. After he had finished his work he invited me to join him. All the way from London to Dover he had dictated to a secretary who was to return to London. This is the way he works, incessantly, never wasting a moment. Our train was run onto a massive ferryboat, a new system of crossing the Channel and this was Mr. Churchill’s first experience of it. It was bitterly cold. Mr. Churchill wore a heavy fur-lined coat. We started to explore the ferryboat. Word got about among the crew that Winston Churchill was aboard, and speedily men gathered to salute him and mention their service in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, which he organized. The Captain invited us to the bridge. Steaming out of Dover harbor with an icy wind cutting our faces, we listened as the Captain pointed out the lights of two wrecks near the harbor and ventured the opinion that “You, Sir, I believe ordered those ships sunk to block the harbor entrance to submarines?” Mr. Churchill believed the skipper was right.

With unflagging energy Mr. Churchill led the way about the ship from the bridge to the hold, stopping now and then to exchange a few sentences with his admirers. Churchill had been out of the government then for many years, but he remained the best-known figure in the realm and one could measure his popularity by the reception he received on the ferryboat. Toward midnight we climbed to the smoking room where Mr. Churchill as a nightcap consumed a large platter of thick slices of rare roast beef with the appetite of John Bull. As I watched him I thought to myself that this is the way he deals with life, he devours it. When during the quiet period of the war he made an intensive inspection of the French and British positions and the Maginot line, French officers were astonished at his ability to sit up with his hosts studying and discussing the problems of war and probably a hundred other things, including certainly the dry vintage champagne he likes so well, and then appear again a few hours later at dawn for a hearty breakfast with cigar! No Frenchmen and few of any other nationality smoke cigars for breakfast, but Mr. Churchill finds them invigorating. He is seldom without one in his waking hours.

The last time I visited him he received me at about 9:30 A.M. in the upper bedroom at Number Ten Downing Street. The Prime Minister was sitting up in bed, cigar in mouth, hard at work with a kind of bed desk in front of him to hold his papers, and pinned within easy reaching distance on the wall a rack for various colored folders to hold documents of different urgencies. This man who might justly be called the most industrious human being on earth, is a believer in the maxim of Mark Twain who did most of his voluminous writing in bed: “A man’s a fool who runs when he can stand still, or stands when he can sit down, or sits when he can lie down.”

For serious writing Mr. Churchill requires the stimulus of striding up and down, but he finds that for reading and working over state papers and for dictating letters and memoranda, there is no more efficient position than sitting up in bed. To sleep Mr. Churchill does not necessarily require a bed, for such are his powers of endurance that now in his sixty-seventh year he frequently when on tours of inspection takes his night’s rest in his automobile. I remember saying good-by to him one afternoon before the Admiralty and as he was climbing into his car to drive to one of the great naval ports, his aide-de-camp asked him where he would spend the night. Mr. Churchill replied, “In the car driving back.” No Prime Minister has ever moved about his constituency so much, so tirelessly, and so dangerously as Mr. Churchill who travels day and night by blackout and under bombardment. He manages the total war effort of the Empire, but as he has repeatedly emphasized, the war will be won or lost in the British Isles, and inside this mighty fortress the Prime Minister gives the major part of his attention to his duties as Commander in Chief. He is incessantly on inspection.

Like the Captain of an old-time castle under siege, he roams from battlement to battlement, from the South of England to the North of Scotland, viewing the coast defenses, visiting naval stations, driving the newest tanks, witnessing test flights of the latest warplanes, cheering the R.A.F., the troops, the civilian population, sharing their dangers, striding through the dust of bombs, and always everywhere comprehending instantly, offering suggestions, giving the orders of the expert he is in every branch of defense. It is sometimes forgotten that if Hitler is indeed the Marshal in Chief of the German war machine, so is Churchill of the British war machine, and if Hitler has proved a military leader of intuitive genius, Churchill has incomparably more experience and scientific education in war, and certainly no less imagination than Hitler even in the narrow field of strictly military affairs. Hitler had four years of the last war as a private and corporal; has read military history; since he became Chancellor has had the counsel of the Prussian General Staff; and now has had two years’ experience of war. Churchill’s military education began with the exacting instruction of Sandhurst and for practical experience in old-fashioned combat he witnessed or took part in the Boer War, the River War in India, civil war in Cuba, and the Sudan campaign. In the first World War he helped direct the struggle from one of its most important posts, the Admiralty, conceived the tank and numerous other new devices of war, fought in France as a colonel, and all the while before and since, studied and wrote about war until he became one of its foremost historians. These experiences and studies are those of a Doctor of Philosophy compared to Hitler’s grammar school course. In the long run, granting all of Hitler’s genius, I am convinced Churchill, given the tools, will win--but not without America.

You may object that it seems absurd to compare favorably the military abilities of a commander of forces which have constantly been on the defensive with those of the chief of troops so far ever victorious. But the war is a long way from its end, and before that goal is reached, the military qualifications of Churchill may prove their superiority over Hitler’s. Churchill has not yet had the opportunity to show what he can do as a war leader pitted with equal weapons against the enemy, because the war machine he inherited from the feeble hands of Chamberlain was for a long time capable of nothing but defense. Meanwhile as the British plus American war machine is growing, it is encouraging to remember that Churchill with his background of forty years of war, study of war and leadership in war, his youthful inventive mind and eager imagination, is capable of taking everything the Germans have devised or used successfully, and improving it until with the eventually superior resources he will command, victory will be certain, provided always that the United States enters the war in time.

4. WAR AIMS

Q. _What are Britain’s war aims?_

A. We Americans may still find it interesting to inquire “What are they fighting for?” but if we stood in the midst of the ruins of Westminster Abbey or the House of Commons, it would not occur to us to ask the question. Mr. Churchill has joined President Roosevelt in a formal statement, the so-called Atlantic Charter, but it seems to me that he has twice expressed himself far more eloquently and accurately than he did in the Eight Points. In those dread days when despair touched nearly every soul but his, and he had just accepted the responsibility of leading his country at the moment of its greatest peril, Mr. Churchill said: “You ask what is our policy? I say: It is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory! Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the way may be; for without victory there is no survival.”

Simple survival does not seem enough for some comfortably situated critics in this country sheltered by British resistance, but that is only because it is so difficult for those who have not experienced the near threat of death to understand what life means. Mr. Churchill expressed the irritation at such questions that must seize anyone who has witnessed the effect of Hitler’s terrible force when in a discussion of Poland he exclaimed: “What a frightful fate has overtaken Poland! Here was a community of nearly thirty-five millions of people with all the organization of a modern government and all the traditions of an ancient state, which in a few weeks was dashed out of civilized existence to become an incoherent multitude of tortured and starving men, women and children, ground beneath the heel of two rival forms of withering and blasting tyranny. Although the fate of Poland stares them in the face, there are thoughtless dilettanti or purblind worldlings who sometimes ask us: ‘What is it that Britain is fighting for?’ To this I answer, ‘If we left off fighting you would soon find out.’”

Q. _I understand that, but after victory, what? That won’t be the end of the world; after we win we shall have a lot to do. What was the meaning of the Churchill-Roosevelt meeting and their eight-point declaration?_

A. The meeting and its published result, which Churchill calls the Atlantic Charter, made an interesting commentary and answer to the demand for a statement of war aims. Its first importance lay in the fact of the meeting of the two men; its second importance lay in the confidential discussion of ways and means of beating Hitler; its third importance was a statement of war aims. I have not been able to understand why the statement was labeled in this country as an American statement, as though the President had imposed it upon the Prime Minister, or as though the principal ideas contained in it were characterized more by American unselfishness than by British hardheadedness. It may very well be that Churchill was reluctant to make any statement of war aims at all, but now that it has been made it seems to me to be hardheaded, and frankly Churchillian and not at all the sort of statement that American liberals had been discussing.

Q. _Why not; is there anything not liberal in the statement?_

A. Not to my way of thinking, but the average liberal argued there should be a statement of war aims in order first of all to impress the good German people that we are kindly disposed toward them and if they knew how well we intended to treat them after they were defeated they would give up now. What is the sense of the Atlantic Charter? Its chief meaning is that the main war aim and peace aim is to make the world safe against Germany. It names two ways of accomplishing this aim: A. By destruction of the Nazi power and disarmament of Germany and her allies. B. By restoration of the nations now enslaved. Does this constitute an encouragement for the Germans to give up? Hardly. Churchill and Roosevelt were too clear-sighted and too candid to fall in with the argument that the German people could be fooled by a dishonest statement of war aims. They knew that the Germans are bound to realize if they lose this war they will be worse off than if they win. War is Hell, but much more hellish for the defeated side. It is untrue that war never settles anything. It always settles something, whether for a short time, as for the twenty years following the uncompleted war of 1914-1918, or forever as the Third Punic War. The Germans know this better than almost any other people. But now they have had a crushingly frank statement of basic British-American war aims: abolition of German military power. This time they cannot complain they have been deceived.

Q. _Wasn’t that true of Wilson’s Fourteen Points? Weren’t they a frank statement to the Germans of the terms they could expect if they surrendered?_

A. No. In the first place, one great difference between Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the Eight Points of the Atlantic Charter is that Wilson acted alone, and issued his Fourteen Points to the world in January 1918, without consulting Britain or France, so that when the Germans in October finally in the extremity of defeat accepted them, Britain and France were not bound by them at all. In the second place, the Fourteen Points declared there should be general disarmament, and not just a one-sided German disarmament, so that when as a matter of common prudence, the British and French insisted upon and obtained German disarmament ahead of their own, the Germans protested they had been betrayed by Wilson particularly and by the Allies in general. Hitler based his campaign for power in Germany largely upon his complaint that Germany had never been fairly beaten on the battlefield, but had been betrayed by the Fourteen Points. Now it is hard to see how any future Hitler can raise again such a complaint since the Germans are now given fair warning that when they are beaten their present government will be abolished, and their arms will be taken from them while the British and Americans keep their arms intact. This is a refreshing example of common-sense honesty. It seems almost as though Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s clear-sighted candor might finally brush away the mists of false feeling and thinking which have obscured our view of the war and of our own interests.

Q. _You have named what might be called a negative side of the Atlantic Charter as being its most important side._

A. It is, if you call it negative to aim to destroy the power which has torn the whole world apart.

Q. _Yes, but after that power is destroyed, or rendered impotent, what are we or the British going to do to consolidate the gains of victory? How are we going to be better off?_

A. If you think we are going to be better off, or could be better off than we were before 1939, the answer is that we cannot be because no matter which side wins the world as a whole is going to be very much worse off for a long time than it was before the war began. We are not offered the choice now of fighting in order to improve our present position. Our choice is, either to fight and save something of our most precious spiritual as well as material possessions; or not to fight and lose everything. The world as a whole is bound to be materially much poorer after this war no matter who is victor, although the United States ought to come out of it in better condition than any other country. Think of the immense demolition which has been wrought and is now being wrought in Europe. Just to name a few of the cities which have been bombarded and have suffered varying degrees of damage is to compile a roll of casualties never equaled: London, Manchester, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth, Coventry; Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, Cologne, Duisburg, Essen, Dortmund; Warsaw; Belgrade; Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, Smolensk, Odessa, Kiev; Alexandria; Nanking, Hankow, Chungking. From China to Egypt and from England to Central Russia, fire and high explosives have blasted scars it will take a century to heal.

The diversion of billions of man-hours from productive work to the making of war supplies, the loss of lives, and the dislocation of millions of human existences, and of the whole world economy, will impoverish us all for a certain length of time. Happily there are reasons for believing the United States will suffer less than almost any other part of the human family, provided only that we enter the war soon enough to ensure the defeat of the Nazi power and do not wait to face that power alone. We must keep one thing firmly in mind, that though our condition may be poor if we are victorious, it will be definitely better than if we are defeated, and though we may lack in goods and comforts as a result of our participation in the war, we shall be far richer and easier in body, mind, and soul after hard-won victory than if we attempted to purchase from the conquering Nazis a humiliating security.

Q. _Why should the United States, as you suggested, come out of the war in a better economic condition than the others?_