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FINEST HOUR
THE JOURNAL OF WINSTON CHURCHILL AND HIS TIMES • FALL 2018 • NO. 182

he Centenary of
the Armistice

November 11
1918-2018
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 FINEST HOUR
FALL 2018 • NUMBER 182

he Centenary of the Armistice

4 From the Editor

5 Letters to the Editor
8 Perfect Preparation: What Churchill Learned from
the First World War • Andrew Roberts
14 he Mistaken View of Churchill’s First World War “Mistakes”
Allan Mallinson
20 War Lord in Training: Churchill and the Royal Navy
during the First World War • Matthew S. Seligmann
26 Churchill’s World Crisis • Peter Clarke
30 November 11, 1918: he Hour of Deliverance
Winston S. Churchill
34 he Fulton Report • Timothy Riley
36 Cohen Corner • Ron Cohen
40 Action his Day • Michael McMenamin
50 #Armistice100 • Megan Spilker The Cenotaph,
Whitehall, London

Books, Arts, & Curiosities

42 Churchill: Walking with Destiny • John Campbell
44 Rum, Sodomy, Prayers, & the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill Tomb of the Unknown Warrior,
and Social Reform in the Royal Navy, 1900–1915 • W. Mark Hamilton Westminster Abbey
46 Nursing Churchill: Wartime Life from the Private Letters of Winston
Churchill’s Nurse • Katherine Anne Carter
47 Churchill’s Spy Files: MI5’s Top Secret Wartime Reports
David Staford
48 he Prisoner in the Castle: A Maggie Hope Mystery
Michael McMenamin
Pressure • Jane Flaherty

On the Cover
Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves
Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing
is the largest cemetery for Commonwealth
forces in the world. Photo credit: Alamy.com

Founded in 1968 by
Richard M. Langworth CBE
Fall 2018 • Number 182
ISSN 0882-3715
www.winstonchurchill.org
____________________________
The International Churchill Society, Publisher
info@winstonchurchill.org
David Freeman, Editor
dfreeman@winstonchurchill.org
Department of History
California State University
Fullerton, CA 92834-6846
__________________________
Deputy Editor
Justin Reash
Senior Editors
Paul H. Courtenay, James W. Muller
Contributing Editors
Ronald I. Cohen
Michael McMenamin
Timothy Riley
Contributors
Peter Clarke, David Stafford Canada
John Campbell, Katherine Anne Carter,
Allan Mallinson, Andrew Roberts,
Matthew Seligmann
United Kingdom
Jane Flaherty, W. Mark Hamilton,
Megan Spilker United States
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Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.
From The Editor
he Centenary of the Armistice
“When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two
expedients the civilized, scientiic, Christian States had been able
to deny themselves: and these were of doubtful utility.” Such was
Winston Churchill’s grim verdict on the Great War. It also explains
the euphoria he witnessed when the tragedy inally concluded on
Armistice Day and the description of that scene he recorded in his
memoirs, which we reproduce here.
One hundred years on, emotions have subsided, and it is
possible to make sober reckonings of what was accomplished in and
what lessons taken from the First World War. Andrew Roberts, whose
Churchill biography is published this fall, traces the connections
between Churchill’s experiences in 1914–1918 and his leadership
in 1939–45. Allan Mallinson then deconstructs the myths about
Churchill’s leadership in the First War and shows that the perceived
mistakes were more oten the deliberate misrepresentations of lesser
men. Next, Mathew Seligmann reminds us that Churchill did not
always get things right when directing the Royal Navy in 1914–15 but
also shows that the reality is much more complex than the myth.
We also have two very diferent ways of looking at Churchill’s
history of the Great War. Peter Clarke examines he World Crisis as
a work of history writen by a still very active politician, while Ronald
I. Cohen walks us through the somewhat confusing publishing record
of the ive volumes (in six parts!) that Churchill produced.
he appearance of a major new Churchill biography demands
serious atention. We asked award-winning political biographer John
Campbell (himself the author of detailed studies of Edward Heath,
Margaret hatcher, and Churchill’s best friend F. E. Smith) to review
Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts. His thoughtful
and elegant analysis should encourage any reader to secure a copy.
In relecting on the First World War, it is consoling to know that,
although as shocked by the brutality of the conlict as any, Churchill
also knew how best to proceed into the peace that followed. In words
that echoed Lincoln in 1865 but which also presaged Churchill himself
in 1940, he said in November 1918: “Repair the waste. Rebuild the
ruins. Heal the wounds. Crown the victors. Comfort the broken and
the brokenhearted. here is the batle we have now to ight. here is
the victory we have now to win. Let us go forward together.”
David Freeman, October 2018 
Finest Hour 182 / 4
 LETTERS | Email: info@winstonchurchill.org

Finest Hour 181
LEXINGTON, VA—Congratulations
on the fantastic issue about “Chur-
chill and the British Army”! It was
nice to see the leter of introduction
from the commandant of RMA
Sandhurst. As a civilian “veteran” of
Sandhurst, the institution remains
close to my heart. he article by
Churchill’s great-grandson Alex-
ander Perkins is especially impres-
sive.—R. P. W. Havers,
President and CEO,
George C. Marshall Foundation
NASHVILLE—I have never enjoyed
an issue more than this one. Con-
gratulations! FH 181 could be
“sold separately” and/or used for
recruitment. I wish I had ten extra
copies.—Richard H. Knight, Jr.
Finest Hour Extras
ROUEN—hanks to Monroe Trout
and Allen Packwood for their excel-
lent “FH Extra” story about Chur-
chill’s aborted visit to the United
States in 1951 (“he Speech Chur-
chill Never Gave”).
I was struck by a passage: “he
traditional sympathy for the man
who is up against authority, the na-
tional pride which is starved of
heroes to worship, the appreciation
of oratorical power, and the love
of a good show have atracted to
MacArthur Americans from every
group, from every stratum of soci-
ety and from both parties.”
Substitute “Churchill and
Britons” in the spring of 1939 for
“MacArthur and  Americans” in
1951, and most historians would
agree with the phrasing.
—Antoine Capet
Finest Hour Extras are feature arti-
cles uniquely published on our website
www.winstonchurchill.org that may
not pertain to the themes of printed
issues but which deserve the atention
of readers. 
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Finest Hour 182/ 7

 Perfect Preparation:
What Churchill Learned
from the First World War
By Andrew Roberts
W inston Churchill famously
wrote about his feelings on
becoming prime minister in
May 1940, “I felt as if I were walking
with Destiny and that all my past
life had been but a preparation for
this hour and for this trial.”1 It was
true, and no part of his life had been
a better preparation than 1914–18.
he way that Churchill learned from
his and others’ mistakes of the Great
War, putting the lessons to good use
in the Second World War, is an object
lesson in statesmanship.
O n the outbreak of the First World War in Au-
gust 1914, Churchill set up the Admiralty War
Group, which consisted of himself and the four
most senior admirals there. It met daily—sometimes sev-
eral times a day—to take all the most important strategic
decisions. his concentration of power worked well, and
agreed upon the overriding objectives for the Royal Navy
in the conlict. Elsewhere in Whitehall, however, the or-
ganization of the war under Herbert Asquith, the prime
minster, was ludicrously haphazard. Decisions were taken
by a few ministers called together ad hoc in emergencies
without minutes being taken. Only at the end of Novem-
ber 1914 was a War Council of eight members formed,
which soon grew to thirteen. From his own experience,
therefore, Churchill learned how important it was to take
a grip on the organization of the central decision-making
bodies and to keep the numbers involved as small as pos-
sible.
In the irst days of the war, Churchill also set up a new
Royal Naval Division, an infantry force under the control
of the Admiralty rather than the Army, which was repeat-
FINEST HOUR 182/ 8
edly to distinguish itself in action in many of the bloodiest
engagements of the war. It proved the template for later
units that he brought into being in the Second World
War, such as the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service,
Commandos, and Parachute Regiment.
Locus in quo
O n 19 August 1914, only a fortnight ater the out-
break of war, Churchill visited the mayors of
Calais and Dunkirk to discuss the redoubts they
were building there. His personal knowledge of these
Channel ports was further enhanced in May 1918 when
Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig gave him the Chateau de
Verchocq in the Pas-de-Calais. Knowing the area intim-
ately was to prove invaluable in the Second World War
when decisions had to be taken about the defence of Cal-
ais and evacuating the British Expeditionary Force from
Dunkirk.
On 26 August 1914, Britain’s Russian allies captured
the code and cypher books from the German light cruis-
er Magdeburg ater it ran aground on the Estonian coast.
hese allowed the cryptographers in the Admiralty’s
Room 40, the codebreaking operation that Churchill had
set up some time earlier, to start decoding German signals
in real time. Churchill did not inform the Cabinet, but
kept the secret within the Admiralty War Group. It was
also Room 40 that intercepted the Zimmerman Telegram
that helped bring the United States into the war in April
1917. Long before Bletchley Park, therefore, Churchill
appreciated the vital importance of signals intelligence.
On 7 September 1914, the Belgian Government asked
for a force of twenty-ive thousand men to defend Ant-
werp against the German Army moving rapidly towards it.
“he Admiralty regard the sustained and efective defence
of Antwerp as a mater of high consequence,” Churchill
told Asquith, Secretary for War Lord Kitchener, and For-
eign Secretary Sir Edward Grey. “It preserves the life of
the Belgian nation: it safeguards a strategic point which,
if captured, would be of the utmost menace.”2 Churchill
went to Antwerp to try to prevent the city falling, which
it did not do until 10 October. He was much criticized,
and in 1931 he relected on the whole episode in his es-
say A Second Choice: “I ought, for instance, never to have
gone to Antwerp,” he wrote. “I ought to have remained in
London….hose who are charged with the direction of
supreme afairs must sit on the mountain-tops of control;
they must never descend into the valleys of direct physic-
al and personal action.”3 Yet in going, he displayed the
same determination to be at the centre of events that he
was to show again and again in the Second World War, as
he climbed onto rootops during the London Blitz, tried
to watch D-Day from the Channel, atended Operation
Dragoon in a warship, visited the front line in Italy, and
so on. Doing so gave him insights into the conlict that he
could not get from the mountain-tops.
Ater the batleship HMS Audacious hit a mine of
Lough Swilly on 27 October 1914 while carrying out
iring practice, Churchill kept the information out of the
newspapers, not wanting to advertise that the Grand Fleet
was north of Ireland. His belief in trusting the people oc-
casionally had to be tempered by common sense, and in
the Second World War there were also several occasions
that Churchill similarly ordered press black-outs, such
as ater the loss of the RMS Lancastria with 4,000 lives
in June 1940, the Bethnal Green tube disaster that cost
173 civilian lives in March 1943, and the Slapton Sands
debacle that killed 800 American soldiers in April 1944.

Chain of Command

C hurchill’s appointment of the seventy-three-

year-old Lord “Jacky” Fisher, whom he described
as “a veritable volcano of knowledge and of in-
spiration” taught him a lesson he was not to forget in the
Second World War.4 Along with Haig, Beaty, and Field
Marshal Sir William Robertson, Fisher became an over-
mighty subject, virtually unsackable by the politicians. In
the Second World War, Churchill always kept his generals
and admirals under no illusions about their subordination
to the civil power. Similarly in the Great War, Lord Kitch-
ener could not be removed due to his enormous popu-
larity, despite the many mistakes he made. In the Second
World War, Churchill made himself Minister of Defence,
giving him command over the Service ministers, none of
whom he allowed to wield anything like the power that
Kitchener had possessed.
Churchill diferentiated between “the brass-hats”
of the military and “frock-coats” of the politicians and
thought that all too oten in the Great War the former de- Above top: British leaders of WWI
cided on which batles and campaigns were fought where, Above bottom: David Lloyd George
using their immense authority with the press and public,

FINEST HOUR 182/ 9

 PERFECT PREPARATION
while the politicians all too oten had to accept it. In his the Sea of Marmara and anchoring of Constantinople
Second World War memoirs, Churchill cited the fact that
ater the failure of the naval atack of 18 March 1915, he
had been wrong in “trying to carry out a major and car-
5
dinal operation of war from a subordinate position.” As
Minister of Defence ater May 1940, he would come up
against some tough and even domineering Service chiefs
in the Second World War—Alan Brooke, Andrew Cun-
ningham, and Arthur Harris among them—but they
knew themselves always to be in a subordinate position.
On the day that Fisher took up his post, the enemy
ships Goeben and Breslau shelled Odessa and Sevastapol
in the Black Sea. In reply, Churchill ordered the bombard-
ment of the Turkish Outer
Forts of Sedd-el-Bahr and
Kum Kale in the Dardan-
elles, which was duly done
on 4 November, the day be-
fore Britain and France de-
clared war on Turkey.6 To
commence hostilities with-
out a formal declaration of
war was a serious mater, but
Churchill was to do it again
on 3 July 1940, when he
ordered the shelling of the
Vichy French leet at Oran.
“he British people have
taken for themselves this
moto,” Churchill declared
at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet Clement Attlee
at the Guildhall on 9 Novem-
ber 1940, “Business carried on
as usual during alterations on the map of Europe.”7 he
phrase “Business as usual” was to be employed frequent-
ly during the Second World War, when it raised morale
when chalked up on seemingly bombed-out enterprises
during the Blitz. Later, in November 1914, Churchill
raised the fearful prospect of having to ight on without
France, saying, “But even if we were single-handed, as
we were in the days of the Napoleonic Wars, we should
have no reason to despair of our capacity—no doubt we
should sufer discomfort and privation and loss—but we
should have no reason to despair of our capacity to go on
8
indeinitely.” his too, was a useful preparation for the
speeches he had to give ater the Fall of France in 1940.
he Dardanelles
A t the irst meeting of the War Council on 25 Nov-
ember 1914, Churchill loated the idea of the
Navy forcing the Dardanelles by sailing through
Finest Hour 182/ 10
(modern-day Istanbul) and then either shelling the city
into submission or occupying it, or both. he resulting
Dardanelles campaign proved central to Churchill’s ap-
preciation of war-ighting during the Second World War.
Historians will long debate the pros and cons of the cam-
paign, but one participant who approved of it was a thirty-
two-year-old Captain (later Major) Clement Atlee of the
South Lancashire Regiment, who believed all his life that,
as he put it, “the strategic conception was sound.”9 On 20
December 1915, Atlee was to be the penultimate man to
leave Suvla Bay. He was convinced that the Dardanelles
strategy had been a bold and correct one, and, in the view
of his biographer John Bew,
this “gave him his lifelong
admiration for Churchill as
a military strategist which
contributed enormously to
their working relationship in
the Second World War.”10
he Dardanelles debacle
taught Churchill a great
deal that was to stand him
in excellent stead during the
Second World War. “A sin-
gle, prolonged conference,
between the Allied chiefs,
civil and martial, in January
1915, might have saved us
from inestimable misfor-
tune,” he wrote in his history
of that time, he World Crisis.11
He learned much about his
own limitations, never once overruling his Chiefs of
Staf when they unanimously rejected his schemes in
the Second World War, and he did not encourage or be-
come complicit in their silence if they disagreed with him,
as he had with Fisher. Churchill also learned that it was
sometimes beter to cut one’s losses than massively to in-
crease the stakes, as the Allies had at Gallipoli. So in Nor-
way, Dakar, Greece, and elsewhere in the Second World
War—and especially with AF ighter squadrons over
France in mid-May 1940—he vigilantly guarded against
mission-creep, and disengaged without allowing con-
siderations of prestige to suck him into deeper military
commitments.
“I would not grudge a hundred thousand men be-
cause of the great political efects in the Balkan Penin-
sula,” Churchill wrote to Fisher in January 1915 of the
coming Dardanelles atack, “but Germany is the foe, and
it is bad war to seek cheaper victories and easier antagon-
 PERFECT PREPARATION
ists.”12 Churchill was to follow this important Clausewitz-
ian precept during the Second World War, when he and
President Franklin Roosevelt pioneered the Germany
First policy, giving the job of punishing Imperial Japan
only second priority despite its atack on Pearl Harbor.
At the time of his expulsion from the Admiralty in
May 1915, Churchill wrote, “I am strongly in favour of a
national Government, and no personal claims or interests
should stand in its way at the present crisis.”13 Asquith’s
ability to form a Coalition Government presaged what
Churchill was able to do a quarter of a century later, when
Atlee and Churchill’s friend Archie Sinclair, by then lead-
er of the Liberal Party, joined him in his own National
Government. On 9 June 1915 Churchill had told Sinclair,
then serving in the 2nd Life Guards, “Between me and
[David] L[loyd] G[eorge] tout est ini. I want a breath of
fresh air.”14 he crisis had inally allowed Churchill to see
through the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, his former
friend but in fact secret enemy. “You are a clever fellow!”
he told Lloyd George to his face, “You have been schem-
ing for this for months, and have let no stone unturned
to get what you wanted.”15 he Dardanelles put iron into
Churchill’s soul, and it taught him that he could not trust
Lloyd George or that there could be such a thing as true
friendship at the top of politics. In the Second World
War, Lloyd George supported peace negotiations with
Hitler, and Churchill was forced to sack or demote close
friends—such as Bob Boothby, Alfred Duf Cooper, and
Roger Keyes—who had failed in their jobs for one reason
or another.
Gallipoli also taught Churchill how to behave in a
supreme crisis, something he never forgot during the
Second World War. It is not true that he sufered from
depression, let alone manic depression or bipolar disor-
der, but like anyone else he did get depressed when things
went disastrously wrong. he strains of the Second World
War—when there were plenty of similarly low moments
such as the sinkings of HMS Prince of Wales, Repulse, and
Hood and the fall of Singapore and Tobruk—saw him
emotionally prepared in a way he would not have been
had it not been for his devastating experiences over the
Dardanelles.
he failure of the Allies’ imaginative plan to turn the
Turkish lank at Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli Peninsula in
August 1915 was due in large part to Lt-Gen. Sir Fred-
erick Stopford’s wasting of opportunities that were never
to recur. Almost exactly the same thing was to happen at
Anzio in January 1944, which gave Churchill a terrible
sense of déjà vu, though neither could be blamed on him.
Yet he never sought to escape responsibility for what had
happened at Gallipoli, so long as it was fairly distributed.
Finest Hour 182/ 11
“Not a line, not a word, not a syllable that was produced
by naval and expert brains of high competency,” he said
in his resignation speech, “without the slightest non-ex-
pert interference, but I approved of the plan; I backed
the plan; I was satisied that in all the circumstances that
were known to me—military, economic, and diplomat-
ic—it was a plan that ought to be tried, and tried then.”16
When during the Second World War his leadership was
questioned, he always insisted upon votes of conidence
being debated in the House of Commons as soon as
possible. “Criticism is always advantageous,” he told the
House of Commons. “I have derived continued beneit
from criticism at all periods of my life, and I do not re-
member any time when I was ever short of it.”17
“I should have made nothing if I had not made mis-
takes,” Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine soon af-
ter resigning.18 He had made colossal mistakes during
the Dardanelles debacle, but the lessons he learnt from
them were of immense value a quarter of a century later.
General Stopford’s performance at Suvla Bay in particu-
lar joined those of the Boer War generals in a long cata-
logue of military incompetence. One of the reasons that
Churchill sacked so many generals in the Second World
War was that he had formed a generally low opinion of the
caste in his wide personal experience before that point.
Into Batle
C hurchill’s time in the trenches of the Western
Front in 1915 and 1916 was an excellent prepar-
ation for his hour and trial a quarter of a century
later. It was while he was there that his several near-death
experiences convinced him that he was indeed “walking
with destiny,” and was being saved for great things. he
way that he took Clementine’s excellent advice regard-
ing staying in the trenches and not returning to politics
prematurely—advice that it broke her heart to give, as it
could have led to his death—also convinced him about
her sound political judgement and made him heed her
words of warning in June 1940 about becoming unbear-
able to his staf.
Above all, Churchill’s time in the trenches taught him
what the men in the front line wanted and needed in or-
der to ight well—in terms of leadership, of course, but
also more practically in terms of bread and beer, weap-
onry and equipment, de-lousing exercises and entertain-
ment, length of sentry duty, the least tiring way to shoul-
der a rile, and all the other myriad issues that he sent
blizzards of memoranda about to the War Oice in the
Second World War. He understood soldiers’ psychology
beter than any prime minister since he had entered the
Commons, all of whom had been civilians.
 PERFECT PREPARATION
When visiting the headquarters of Gen. Haig on the
Western Front, Churchill was deeply unimpressed by the
way that the chiefs of Intelligence emphasized evidence
to support Haig’s preconceived theories. “he temptation
to tell a chief in a great position the things he most likes to
hear is the commonest explanation of mistaken policy,”
Churchill later wrote in he World Crisis. “hus the out-
look of the leader on whose decisions fateful events de-
pend is usually far more sanguine than the brutal facts
admit.”19 In the Second World War, Churchill deliber-
ately appointed senior commanders such as Alan Brooke
and Andrew Cunningham who made it their business
never to sugar the pill for him.
Total War
T he need for Total War, the complete harness-
ing of the power of the State for victory, became
clear to Churchill by 1916. “Everything in the
State ought now to be devised and regulated with a view
to the development and maintenance of our war power at
the absolute maximum for an indeinite period,” he told
the Commons that August.20 “his nation at war is an
army,” he added in November, “it must be looked upon
as an army; it must be organised like an army; it must be
directed like an army; and it ought to be rationed and
provided and supplied like an army. hat is the brutal fact
to which we are being hurried remorselessly by events,
which we cannot in the least control.”21 He urged the
Government to control food prices, nationalize shipping,
and prevent “the accumulation of extortionate proits in
the hands of private individuals.”22 his speech was his
irst advocacy of the Total War measures that were not
fully adopted in the First World War, but generally were
in the Second.23
Churchill’s godfathering of the concept of the tank
in the Great War also presaged his support for all kinds
of new weaponry in the Second World War. “It would be
quite easy in a short time to it up a number of steam trac-
tors with small armoured shelters, in which men and ma-
chine-guns could be placed, which would be bullet-proof,”
he had suggested in 1914. “Used at night they would not
be afected by artillery ire to any extent. he caterpillar
system would enable trenches to be crossed quite easily,
and the weight of the machine would destroy all wire en-
tanglements.”24 he success of the tank encouraged him
to support the eforts of military inventors in the Second
World War such as Sir Percy Hobart, who promoted the
use of various ingenious variations of the tank for use on
the beaches of Normandy, known as “Hobart’s Funnies.”
It was not until 26 April 1917 that the Admiralty inally
Finest Hour 182/ 12
adopted the convoy system to protect merchant vessels
at sea. Churchill had long argued for a system where-
by merchantmen moved only in large groups protect-
ed by warships, regardless of the fact that they would
inevitably atract far more atention from U-boats,
but he was never able to convince the rest of the Ad-
miralty on the issue. “he astonishing fact is that the
politicians were right,” he was later to write, “and
the Admiralty authorities were wrong.”25 Here, too,
Churchill learnt from the Great War, and the convoy
system was adopted early in the Second World War.
Give Us the Tools
W hen Churchill was appointed as Minister of
Munitions on 17 July 1917, he was at last able
to get to grips with the shells shortage that had,
along with Gallipoli and other failures, brought down the
Asquith Government. He mobilised the war economy as
far as he was able, in a position that employed two and a
half million workers and was the biggest purchasing busi-
ness and industrial employer in the world. his import-
ant post in the Great War gave Churchill an enormous
advantage when it came to dealing with his Ministers of
Supply and Production during the next world war. He
also suggested to Lloyd George, prime minister by 1917,
the idea of using artiicial loating harbours to atack the
Frisian Islands of Borkum and Sylt in 1917, a precursor
to the use of the Mulberry Harbours of the Normandy
coast on D-Day.
Visiting the front line in February 1918, Churchill
conceived the idea that he later worked up into a Cabinet
memorandum advocating the dropping of “not ive tons
but ive hundred tons of bombs each night on the cities
and manufacturing establishments” of the enemy.26 he
war was won before that became technically possible, but
the seeds of what was to become the Combined Bomb-
er Ofensive of 1943 were clearly already in Churchill’s
mind.
He was only a few miles behind the Allied lines when
the Germans launched their massive Ludendorf Ofen-
sive along the Western Front on 21 March 1918, in the
hope of inally breaking through and winning the war
before American troops started to arrive in large num-
bers. Churchill would reminiscence about the Spring Of-
fensive for years aterwards. It let him with a profound
respect for the German capacity for atacking even while
seemingly exhausted and helps explain why he was less
surprised than others when the Germans launched their
massive Ardennes Ofensive counteratack in December
1944.
 PERFECT PREPARATION
Foreshadowing
O n 30 March 1918, Churchill discussed the stra-
tegic situation with Georges Clemenceau, the
French Prime Minister. “he old man is very
gracious to me and talks in the most conidential way,” he
told Clementine.27 “He is an extraordinary character. His
spirit and energy indomitable.” Churchill was particularly
impressed when, in a discussion about the Parisian mu-
nition and aircrat factories that were under threat from
the German advance, Clemenceau told him, “I will ight
in front of Paris; I will ight in Paris; I will ight behind
Paris.”28 Echoes of this speech can be heard in Church-
ill’s own exhortation to the war council of French premier
Paul Reynaud at the Tours prefecture on 12 June 1940,
to ight in Paris and behind Paris. hese urgings, how-
ever, were ignored by the French, who—unbeknownst to
Churchill—had already declared Paris an open and un-
defended city.
In an extraordinary memorandum of April 1918,
Churchill suggested that Britain should try to persuade
the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky to re-enter the
war ater the Bolsheviks signed a peace treaty with Ger-
many at Brest-Litovsk in March. “Let us never forget that
Lenin and Trotsky are ighting with ropes around their
necks,” he argued. “Show them any real chance of con-
solidating their power…and they would be non-human
not to embrace it.”29 he ofer was not made, but it is easy
to see in it the precursor of the immediate ofer of the
evening of 22 June 1941 to ally with Stalin’s Russia the
same day that Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, despite
Churchill’s lifelong anti-Communism.
In a speech celebrating America’s Fourth of July in
1918, Churchill propounded a message that was to be-
come central to his thinking during the Second World
War. “Deep in the hearts of the people of these islands,”
he said, “in the hearts of those who, in the language of
the Declaration of Independence, are styled ‘our British
brethren,’ lay the desire to be truly reconciled before all
men and all history with their kindred across the Atlantic
Ocean, to blot out the reproaches and redeem the blun-
ders of a bygone age, to dwell once more in spirit with
them, to stand once more in batle at their side, to create
once more a union of hearts, to write once more a history
in common.”30 he Churchill of the Harvard Speech of
1943, in which he went so far as to ofer something ap-
proaching a common Anglo-American citizenship, is evi-
dent.
Again and again, therefore, in maters great and small,
the First World War was a lesson for Churchill of how to
ight the Second World War. In successes and failures, it
was the perfect preparation for his hour and trial. 
Finest Hour 182/ 13
Andrew Roberts is author of Churchill: Walking with
Destiny (reviewed on page 42) and a member of the
International Churchill Society Board of Directors.
Endnotes
1. Winston S. Churchill, he Gathering Storm (London: Folio
Society, 2000), p. 525.
2. Martin Gilbert, ed., Winston S. Churchill, Companion
Volume III, Part 1, May 1915–December 1916 (London:
Heinemann, 1972), p. 97.
3. Winston S. Churchill, houghts and Adventures (London:
hornton Buterworth, 1930), pp. 11–12.
4. Royal Archives, Windsor, GV/PRIV/GVD/1914.
5. Winston S. Churchill, heir Finest Hour (London: Folio
Society, 2000), p. 15.
6. Julian hompson, Gallipoli (London: Carlton Books, 2015),
p. 3.
7. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete
Speeches, Volume III, 1914–1922 (London: Chelsea House,
1974), p. 2340.
8. Ibid., p. 2348.
9. John Bew, Citizen Clem (London: Quercus, 2017), p. 13
and p. 86.
10. Francis Becket, Clem Atlee (London: Haus, 2015), p. 61.
11. Winston S. Churchill, he World Crisis, Volume II, 1915
(London: hornton Buterworth, 1923), p. 4.
12. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume III, he Chal-
lenge of War, 1914–1916 (London: Heineman, 1971), p. 236.
13. Gilbert, Companion Volume III, Part 2, p. 898.
14. Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, THSO 1/1/2.
15. A. J. P. Taylor, ed., Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances
Stevenson (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 59.
16. Complete Speeches, p. 2399.
17. Ibid., p. 2343.
18. Mary Soames, ed., Speaking for hemselves (Boston:
Houghton Milin, 1999), p. 149.
19. Winston S. Churchill, he World Crisis, Volume III, Part 1,
1916–1918 (London: hornton Buterworth, 1927), p. 193.
20. Complete Speeches, p. 2485.
21. Ibid, p. 2503.
22. Gilbert, he Challenge of War, pp. 801–02.
23. A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1965), p. 65.
24. Gilbert, Companion Volume III, Part 1, pp. 377–78.
25. Churchill, houghts and Adventures, p. 137.
26. Winston S. Churchill, he World Crisis, Volume IV, he
Atermath (London: hornton Buterworth, 1929), p. 146.
27. Soames, p. 206.
28. Winston S. Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London:
hornton Buterworth, 1937), p. 300.
29. Martin Gilbert, Churchill: A Life (New York: Holt, 1991),
pp. 389–90.
30. Complete Speeches, p. 261.
 A common verdict on Churchill’s First World War
is that he was the perpetrator of costly disasters,
but that he learned from his mistakes. Consider
this, from the Imperial War Museum’s website:

At the outbreak of war in 1914, Churchill was serving

as First Lord of the Admiralty. In 1915 he helped or-
chestrate the disastrous Dardanelles naval campaign
and was also involved in the planning of the military
landings on Gallipoli, both of which saw large losses.
Following the failure of these campaigns, Churchill
was demoted and resigned from government. He be-
came an oicer in the Army and served on the West-
ern Front until early 1916. In 1917, under Prime Min-
ister David Lloyd George’s coalition government,
Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions, a
position he held until January 1919.

Churchill’s First World War in a litle more than a hun-

dred unfortunate words.
He did not of course “become an oicer in the
Army”—he already held the rank of major in the Terri-
torial Force (in the Oxfordshire Hussars)—but that is a
minor point compared with the implication that the fail-
ure of the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign was in signii-
cant part due to him. Or with the omission of any men-
tion of the tank, the batle-winning innovation that would
almost certainly not have been ielded so early had it not
been for Churchill’s creation of the Admiralty Landships
Commitee. No mention either that his decision to keep
the naval reservists with their ships ater the practice mo-
bilization in early July 1914, rather than standing them
down to return home, gained the Admiralty precious days
when war came. Or, indeed, of his unilateral decision on

The Mistaken View 28 July to order the Grand Fleet to steam from its grand
review at Spithead (in the Solent, Southern England)
“at high speed, and without lights” through the Straits of
of Churchill’s Dover into the North Sea and onwards to its batle sta-
tion, the lonely Orkney anchorage of Scapa Flow. In one
preemptive stroke, Britain had gained command of the
First World War North Sea and thereby the English Channel. It was one
of the decisive moves of the war, yet it goes largely un-

“Mistakes” acknowledged. And it was taken by the youngest member

By Allan Mallinson
of the Cabinet—who was considerably younger than the
senior leadership of the Royal Navy.
At least the Imperial War Museum pays tribute
to Churchill’s leadership in the Second World War:
“Churchill made planning and decision-making—both
political and military—simpler and more eicient.”
he inference, however, is that Churchill inter alia
had learned from his mistakes in the First World War and

Finest Hour 182/ 14

that this was somehow his great redemption. his view
is facile. Indeed, to characterize Churchill’s strategic and
military judgement in the First World War as deicient—
at best the understandable result of youthful inexperience
(in 1915 he was, ater all, only forty), or at worst the un-
forgivable upshot of an imperious impetuosity—is not
only facile but plain wrong.
Born Leader
C hurchill had been an unusual Victorian cavalry
subaltern, to say the least. In India he had thrown
himself into the usual sports—polo especially—
and relished the skirmishing on the North-West Fron-
tier, but he had also demonstrated a precocious interest
in strategy. He was of course drawn to his Marlburian
ancestry. John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, the
Captain-General, was England’s greatest practitioner of
the art—more so even than the great Duke of Welling-
ton. But young Winston was able to combine this study
with direct experience. By time he was twenty-eight he
had seen four major campaigns in three continents—and
by later observation on two occasions the annual German
army manoeuvres. he Duke of Wellington used to say
that he learned everything about the art of war by observ-
ing how not to do it. Churchill could certainly have said
something of the same—but he could also have added
that he had absorbed a very great deal from reading about
how not to do it (as well as reading of how to do it by his
study of Marlborough and Wellington). And by thinking
continually and originally. But in truth, ultimately such
men as Marlborough and Wellington—and a fortiori
Churchill—are born rather than made.
If there is any doubt about Young Winston’s excep-
tional grasp of the higher direction of war (“grand strat-
egy”) and campaigning, rather than of mere tactics, then
he River War (1899) should persuade. So would an
examination of Churchill’s speeches ater entering parlia-
ment in 1901. He was a soldier through and through, but
in 1903 he believed the Tories’ plans to increase the Army
Estimates—based on no very obvious requirement—was
misguided. Consider both the wisdom (and majesty) of
this line from his speech to parliament, as reported in
Hansard: “He did not defend unpreparedness, but, with
a supreme Navy, unpreparedness could be redeemed;
without it, all preparation, however careful, painstaking,
or ingenious, could not be of any avail.”1
Opposite page:
French General Joseph Joffre
Finest Hour 182/ 15
Conlicting Forecasts
C hurchill’s superior strategic intuition (although
unrecognised at the time) was never beter dem-
onstrated, however, than on 23 August 1911,
during one of the periodic crises in far-away places which
seemed to threaten the peace of Europe—in 1911 it was
Agadir, Morocco. he prime minister, H. H. Asquith, had
called a meeting of the Commitee of Imperial Defence
to ask the two service chiefs to present their ideas for as-
sistance to France in the event of war. He invited Church-
ill, then Home Secretary, although as Home Secretary
Churchill had limited oicial interest in the subject. As-
quith knew full well, though, that Churchill was the only
member of the inner cabinet with military experience,
and that he remained active in his thinking.
Churchill proved him correct even before the meet-
ing, sending Asquith a memorandum, “Military Aspects of
the Continental Problem,” which came to a diferent con-
clusion from that of the General Staf. At the meeting, the
Director of Military Operations (DMO), Brigadier-Gen-
eral (later Field Marshal Sir) Henry Wilson, gave an ap-
preciation of the situation as seen from Paris, on which
the War Oice based its planning. he German army fully
mobilized, he said, would ield 110 divisions, each one
15,000 to 20,000 strong. he igure was sobering, espe-
cially when the British contribution to the equation could
be, at best, six divisions. Knowing they would be ighting a
war on two fronts because of the Franco-Russian alliance,
Wilson explained, the Germans would mount a hold-
ing operation in East Prussia with twenty-two divisions,
while delivering a crushing blow to France, whereupon
the victorious divisions would be sent east by rail to de-
feat the slower-mobilizing Russian bear—the celebrated
Schliefen Plan.
French intelligence believed that the German main
efort would be on the Franco-German border, in Al-
sace-Lorraine, but that in order to envelop the strong
frontier defences the Germans would probably disregard
Belgian neutrality by marching through the Southeast
corner and Luxembourg. Britain had no formal treaty
obligations with the French, while under the Treaty of
London (1839), she was pledged to guarantee Belgian in-
dependence (as were the other major European powers).
Precisely how this was to be done was not speciied in the
treaty, nor ever clariied in the seventy-ive years that fol-
lowed. Wilson argued, however, that the British Exped-
itionary Force (BEF) might just tip the balance if it came
to war.
At the meeting, Churchill pressed Wilson on the
General Staf’s assessment of German capability and in-
tentions: what would be the efect on the French army,
 CHURCHILL’S MISTAKES?

Map of the Western Front, 1914

and therefore the BEF, of far greater German strength
west of the Meuse than anticipated? His own memoran-
dum concluded, “France will not be able to end the war
successfully by any action on the frontiers. She will not
be strong enough to invade Germany. Her only chance
is to conquer Germany in France” (emphasis added).
Churchill calculated that by the fortieth day of mobilisa-
tion, “Germany should be extended at full strain both in-
ternally and on her war fronts, and this strain will become
daily more severe and ultimately overwhelming, unless it
is relieved by decisive victories in France. If the French
army has not been squandered by precipitate or desper-
ate action, the balance of forces should be favourable ater
the fortieth day [and improving]....Opportunities for the
decisive trial of strength might then occur.”2
For this reason therefore Churchill proposed that
the BEF should concentrate not at Maubeuge, as Wil-
son proposed, but at Tours, midway between Paris and
Finest Hour 182/ 16
St Nazaire, and that during those forty days the Royal
Navy should bring back troops from their imperial bases,
replacing them with colonial troops or territorials, and
together with yeomanry and Indian troops boost the BEF
to some 300,000—more than double that which could be
sent at once to Maubeuge.
he DMO was in no mood to give the thirty-six-
year-old yeomanry major’s ideas anything other than
a polite brush-of, however, though in fact Churchill
had seen a good deal more of war than he had. “Win-
ston had put in a ridiculous and fantastic paper on a
war on the French and German frontier, which I was
able to demolish,” wrote Wilson in his diary.3 he Ger-
mans would not have enough divisions to develop a
strong ofensive west of the Meuse, he insisted, because
of the number they would have to keep in East Prus-
sia, and for their major ofensive in Alsace-Lorraine.
 CHURCHILL’S MISTAKES?
Sir Henry Wilson
Wilson’s argument for the forward deployment of the
BEF would be accepted by default as the basis of plan-
ning. Churchill’s consolation was his appointment three
months later as First Lord of the Admiralty to reform its
staf procedure and align its plans with those of the War
Oice. Yet Churchill’s memorandum was in fact a paper
of extraordinary prescience. In 1914 the BEF, led by Sir
John French and consisting of only four infantry divisions
plus the Cavalry Division (two divisions being held back
in Britain because of the perceived threat of invasion),
were almost overwhelmed in their irst encounter of the
war. Exactly three years to the day ater the meeting in
which Churchill was told that the Germans would not
have enough troops to thrust far into Belgium and pose
any threat, the BEF was almost overwhelmed at Mons
on 23 August. he Germans had crossed the Meuse in
strength, for the ofensive through Belgium was in fact the
main efort, not Alsace-Lorraine, and the four British div-
isions found themselves astride the axis of advance of two
German armies—First and Second. his litle force would
be joined by a ith division a few days later when the BEF
Finest Hour 182 / 17
Sir John French
was in full retreat—only to be caught on the hop as it de-
trained at Le Cateau—and four more divisions would ar-
rive in turn piecemeal during the next two months and
join the ight. he casualties mounted accordingly.
Superior Strategist?
W hat, then, of Churchill’s 1911 (which he again
advocated in August 1914) proposal to keep
the BEF out of the ight on the frontiers, to
build up its strength to 300,000 and then to make it avail-
able for “decisive action” ater the fortieth day of German
mobilization? In light of actual events, would it have been
a beter strategy?
What, for example, of the gap that would have been
let in the French line of batle? Did the BEF really tip the
balance, as is oten claimed?
If the French had not been able to plan on the assump-
tion that the BEF would join the line immediately, they
would have made alternative arrangements—the normal
work of a general staf. With ninety divisions, they had the
lexibility. Indeed, even if the decision had been taken on
 CHURCHILL’S MISTAKES?

Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith

5 August to hold back the BEF, the French had nine div-
isions that could have replaced them—the divisions that
were earmarked for the army of observation on the Italian
border. hese could have been put at notice to move as
soon as the Italians declared their neutrality on 3 August,
and the move begun as soon as French intelligence con-
irmed that the Italian army, although recalling some re-
servists to the colours, was not moving to a war footing.
Indeed, this is what actually happened: the French Army
of the Alps was stood down on 17 August (at which time
much of the BEF was still encamped near their ports of
landing), but its divisions were then spread thinly across
the entire French line. hey were all in place when batle
was joined, and could have been at Mons instead of the
BEF.
Had this happened, the situation at the end of Sep-
tember would have been the same as actually occurred:
the French would have mounted a successful counter-at-
tack on the Marne. Having the BEF in the line may well
have boosted French morale, but it is unreasonable to
suggest that the French would not have been able to
manage things on their own.
French General Joseph Jofre had brilliantly impro-
vised and delivered a blow on the Marne that sent the
lower of Brandenburg reeling; but it was not enough.
He had executed the irst two of (in modern parlance)
the four requirements of victory: “ind” and “ix.” He had
found the weak point, the lank of the great hook through
Belgium by the armies of Generals Kluck and Bülow, and
by the counter-atack had ixed them—temporarily at
least—on the Aisne. What he then needed was to “strike”
and then “exploit” (cf. Churchill’s “Her only chance is to
conquer Germany in France”). Jofre had not, however,
been able to create the requisite striking force. What he
needed was what the BEF would have had to ofer if it
had been allowed to build its strength at Tours—a fresh,
strong, virtually all-regular army of 300,000.
Jofre did not, however, simply need to atack on the
Aisne, to apply more brute force where brute force had al-
ready exhausted itself. What was needed was overwhelm-
ing force applied as a lever rather than as a sledgehammer.
he German lank was not just open in a localized way ater
the retreat to the Aisne; the entire Schwenkunglugel—the
“pivot” or “swing” wing—of the vaunted Schliefen Plan
was extended in an east–west line through mid-Cham-
pagne and southern Picardy, and it was beginning to bow
back on the right. With each successive encounter on the
extremity of that lank (the “race for the sea”), even as the

Finest Hour 182/ 18

 CHURCHILL’S MISTAKES?
Germans brought up new troops their line backed further
north rather than projecting further west.
In the third week of September, therefore, with the
Belgians still holding out at Antwerp, a 300,000-strong
BEF, fully equipped, its reservists now ighting it, could
have launched a counter-stroke from Abbeville east be-
tween Arras and Albert (or even more boldly, further
north between Arras and Lille), on a thirty-mile front
with strong reserves and artillery. And with simultaneous
pressure by the French along the Aisne—indeed, across
the whole front (and the Belgians making a sortie from
Antwerp)—to continue to ix the Germans on the Aisne
so that they could not further reinforce the right, all that
the German 1st, 2nd and 4th Armies in Western France
would have been able to do to avoid being enveloped was
turn through 90 degrees to face west. And they would
have had to pivot somewhere that did not form too sharp
an angle and therefore a dangerous salient—Rheims,
or even Verdun. In the best case for the allies, with the
Germans unable to ind a natural line on which to try to
halt the BEF, and a renewed ofensive by the French and
Belgians, 1st, 2nd and 4th Armies would have had to pull
back to the Meuse.
Even supposing, then, that at that point the Germans
had been able to check further allied progress east, the
situation on the Western Front would have seen a stra-
tegic sea change. he allies, to exploit, could now have
used the growing Russian strength on the Eastern Front
to advantage: the Germans would have been truly caught
between two giant hammers. With so catastrophic an end
to Schliefen, the possibilities are intriguing. he allies
would have been in a vastly superior strategic position
to that in which they actually found themselves in 1915.
he possession of most of Belgium would have been sig-
niicant in terms of the extra men and materiel available.
And the failure of Germany to achieve victory would not
have been lost on the neutrals. It was almost certainly im-
possible that Britain could have avoided war with Turkey,
but if it were possible in May 1915 to persuade Italy to
enter the war on the allies’ side it should also have been
possible to persuade the Dutch and the Danes to consider
their position too, especially once the Germans had been
removed from the southern Dutch border.
At the very least the BEF counter-stroke, forcing the
Germans back into Belgium, perhaps as far as the Meuse,
would have given the allies far beter ground on which to
ight—and with a strong Belgian army, and a much short-
er front, and therefore more reserves. At best, an ofensive
by the allied armies on the Meuse in spring 1915, with
Dutch–Danish action directed against Germany, might
have ended the war that summer.
Finest Hour 182/ 19
Churchill never boasted of his superior military ap-
preciation ater the war. In part, recrimination was not in
his nature; but also, he bore the failure of the Dardanelles.
Well Prepared
T here has never been a British prime minister in
time of war who possessed such operational and
ministerial experience as Churchill in 1940, nor
who furnished so much evidence of sustained, applied
strategic thinking, as well as such remarkable energy in
looking for tactical, oten technical, solutions. he 1911
memorandum shows just how profound was Churchill’s
grasp of war in Europe on a Napoleonic scale, at a time
when most of the British military establishment was still
thinking in small-war terms.
If only his admirals—and Field Marshal Lord Kitch-
ener, his opposite number at the War Oice—had had
such a grasp and applied themselves to the task, the bold
strategic bid to seize the Dardanelles Straits should have
succeeded. With incalculable strategic dividends—Tur-
key knocked out of the war; Bulgaria tempted in on the
Entente’s side rather than the Germans’; the Romanians
tempted in earlier and with more efect; and above all,
Russia kept in the ight (and no Communist revolution).
Clement Atlee, who fought at Gallipoli, and as leader
of the Labour Party in 1940 would serve as deputy prime
minister from May 1940 until the end of the Second
World War, remained convinced that Churchill had been
right. In his memoirs he declared: “I always held that the
strategic concept was sound. he trouble was that it was
not adequately supported. Unfortunately the military au-
thorities were Western Front-minded.”4
Nice as the narrative of “Redemption” is—Church-
ill learning from his mistakes, just like “Everyman”—it
was more the mistakes and misjudgments of others, cor-
rupting sound strategy, that made him determined that
the same would never be visited on his premiership. 
Allan Mallinson’s Fight to the Finish: he First World
War—Month by Month is published by Penguin
Random House (UK) in October 2018.
Endnotes
1. Hansard (Commons), 24 February 1903.
2. CAB 38/19/50, National Archives.
3. Major General Sir C. E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry
Wilson: His Life and Diaries, Volume I (London: Cassell, 1927),
p. 127.
4. Clement Atlee, As It Happened (London: Viking, 1954),
pp. 49–56.
 War Lord in Training: Churchill and the
Royal Navy during the First World War
By Matthew S. Seligmann

C
hurchill’s contribution to naval afairs in the First World War is
a polarizing topic. It divided people at the time and it remains
a matter of sharply delineated opinions even now. he reasons
for this are not diicult to spot. Although no decisive sea engagement
was fought while Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, the
opening ten months of the war were nevertheless eventful, and the
operations that took place at that time appeared to highlight the worst
aspects of Churchill’s character as a civilian naval leader. he reality
is—inevitably—more complex, but a quick check of what went visibly
wrong and what appeared to go right will illustrate the point.

T he First World War began at a fortuitous mo-

ment for the Royal Navy: a test mobilization had
been carried out in July 1914, and the main leet
of dreadnought batleships and batle cruisers was there-
fore already assembled and crewed when the moment of
destiny arrived. All that was required was to withhold the
order to disperse and despatch the ships instead to their
designated war stations. hat was all well and good, but
what would happen thereater was less clear.
here is a famous story recorded in the brutally frank
diary of Captain Herbert Richmond, then Assistant Dir-
ector of Naval Operations, that on the second day of the
conlict Churchill had remarked that “Now we have our
war, the next thing is to decide how we are going to carry
it on.”1 For the intellectual and hyper-critical Richmond,
Churchill’s of-the-cuf admission was simply appalling.
It was, he conided, “a damning confession of inadequate
preparation for war.”2 Richmond’s outrage would have
been fully justiied had the First Lord’s quip been illus-
trative of the state of the Royal Navy in 1914. It was not,
however, strictly speaking, true; or, at least, it was not en-
tirely true, and Churchill had played an important role in
Finest Hour 182 / 20
many important reforms instituted prior to the outbreak
of hostilities.
Home Waters
I n the period from October 1911, when Church-
ill was appointed to the Admiralty, to August 1914,
when war broke out, a great deal of time and efort
had been expended on readying the Royal Navy for a
trial of strength against Germany. A naval staf had been
created, new ships had been designed and ordered, more
powerful weapons had been introduced, steps had been
taken to create a naval aviation service, a start had been
made to transform the coal-powered leet into one that
would be fuelled in the future by oil, pay and conditions
for both oicers and men had been improved in the quest
to ensure that the service could both recruit and retain
the number and quality of personnel that it needed, and
plans of various kinds had been drawn up for what to do
should the cataclysm come. Churchill had played a char-
acteristically signiicant role in these reforms, and many
of his contributions were positive. For example, the Ad-
miralty had been charged with making sure that should
the government decide to send an army to France, it
would get there safely. Come the day,
the Navy was prepared to protect the
transports carrying the Expeditionary
Force across the Channel. All of them
arrived without mishap.
here were, however, other areas
where things did not run smoothly.
In the years before 1914, for example,
the British naval leadership had wres-
tled with the question of how to con-
duct a campaign against Germany.
In some respects this was straight-
forward. he British Isles were a nat-
ural 600-mile breakwater blocking
Germany’s access to the open ocean.
German warships could be hemmed
into the North Sea, German merchant
vessels denied access to the high seas,
and neutral trade with Germany could
be signiicantly curtailed. he funda-
mental ingredients for a campaign of
economic warfare were thus in place.
Geography, although an aid in
some respects, was a hindrance in
others. In particular, Britain’s 600-
mile east coast was diicult to defend.
Warships scatered along its length to
protect all parts could easily be isolat-
ed and defeated in detail. Concentrat-
ing the leet in one location, however,
also created challenges, since there
were no fortiied harbours along the
majority of this coastline that could
accommodate such an array of war-
ships in safety. his compelled the avert this, parts of the leet were regularly dispatched to
Admiralty to seek a base out of range of German torpedo the supposedly safer waters west of Scotland. It was there
boats where the Royal Navy’s big ships would be safe from that the brand new super dreadnought HMS Audacious
a surprise atack. Several such anchorages existed in Scot- struck a German mine and foundered.
land. here were advantages and disadvantages to each, Was this perilous position Churchill’s fault? It is al-
however, and the Admiralty found it hard to make a de- ways possible that this disaster would have happened any-
cision. he result was that come August 1914 some work way: that even without the fear of u-boats, big ships would
had been undertaken at each location, especially Rosyth. have been sent away for gunnery practice and one of them
Churchill had requested extra funding from a reluctant would have struck a mine and been lost. hat, however,
Treasury to expedite maters, but none of the anchor- is a counter-factual. In reality it was fear of u-boats that
ages was actually complete. hus, when the leet sailed for drove the Grand Fleet to practice shooting in western
Scapa Flow at the start of August, the ships reached a spa- waters. Arguably, therefore, Audacious was a victim—and
cious but largely unsecured position. It did not take long an expensive one—of the Admiralty’s inability to decide
for the lack of defences to become a source of anxiety. As upon and secure funding for a properly defended base in
the potential of German submarines became ever more advance of war.
obvious, the fear grew that Scapa Flow could be penetrat- he second challenge posed by the selection of Scot-
ed by u-boats and British ships sunk while at anchor. To tish harbours was that they were located at the very north-

Finest Hour 182/ 21

 WAR LORD
Preceding page:
Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge
Above:
The Admiralty, Whitehall, London
Below:
Painting of the German fleet
at Scapa Flow, Scotland,
following the Armistice, 1918
Finest Hour 182/ 22
ernmost tip of Britain. Consequently, ships based there
were stationed at a considerable distance from much
of the shoreline that they were supposed to protect. In-
deed, they were further away from East Anglia and the
south Yorkshire coast than was the German leet in Wil-
helmshaven. his raised the possibility that should the
Germans undertake an operation against a British port,
not only might they reach their target unimpeded, but
worse still, having made an atack, they might get clean
away before the British force sailing south from Scotland
could intercept them. his unwelcome prospect had long
been known to British authorities. Manoeuvres in 1912
and 1913, both of which had modelled German raids, had
illustrated this clearly, and the danger had been admited
by Churchill at the Commitee of Imperial Defence.
 WAR LORD
Although the so-called “North Sea Problem” had
been easily identiied, no viable solution had been found
by the time the ighting started; and the war would show
that it was no mere hypothetical possibility. On 3 Nov-
ember 1914, German batle cruisers shelled the Norfolk
coastal town of Great Yarmouth. On 16 December, a raid
was undertaken against Scarborough, Hartlepool, and
Whitby. Civilians were killed, and the British public railed
against the brutal German “baby killers,” as Churchill
promptly labelled them—thus alchemizing this vivid
demonstration of national vulnerability into a valuable
propaganda coup. Nevertheless, the fact that the Royal
Navy could not prevent such atacks relected badly on
the service and its leaders, Churchill included.
Overseas
D iiculties also existed in preserving British in-
terests in more distant waters. Much thought
had gone into the defence of the wider empire.
Nevertheless, many early war-time eforts went badly
awry. he irst major mishap occurred in the Mediterran-
ean. his was a vital artery of empire, linking the metrop-
olis to territories in India, Australasia, and the Far East.
As a result, the Royal Navy had traditionally maintained
a strong presence there. Admitedly, in 1912, Churchill
had wanted to scale this back in order to concentrate on
the North Sea, but ater the Germans created their Mit-
telmeer Division—consisting of the new batle cruiser
Goeben and the modern light cruiser Breslau—there was
no doubt that a powerful British force was needed to
counter this. Accordingly, at the outbreak of war, the Brit-
ish Mediterranean Fleet consisted of two batle cruisers
and four armoured cruisers. heir mission was to locate
their German counterparts, bring them to batle, and de-
stroy them. hey failed.
Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne, the C-in-C Mediter-
ranean, had assumed that the German ships would head
west in order to return to Germany and had deployed
his batle cruisers accordingly. When the German vessels
actually sped east to Constantinople, he was ill-placed
to stop them. he armoured cruisers, commanded by
Rear-Admiral Ernest Troubridge, were beter situated
and actually had an opportunity to bring the Germans
to batle. Troubridge, however, had previously received
orders not to engage a superior force. Believing that his
armoured cruisers were outclassed by the German batle
cruiser and that his instructions meant that he should not
therefore oppose them, he declined to ight. As a result,
the German ships were able to reach Constantinople un-
harmed. Once there, they added impetus to the decision
of the Otoman government to aid Britain’s enemies.
Finest Hour 182/ 23
he escape of the Goeben and Breslau was a iasco that
did no credit to the Royal Navy; and Churchill, although
not the commander on the spot, cannot escape a share of
the blame. Indeed, he was directly implicated. To begin
with, he had appointed both Milne and Troubridge—nei-
ther of whom could be said to represent the cream of the
naval oicer corps—to these desirable and, as it turned
out, highly important commands. Moreover, especially in
the appointment of Milne, Churchill had done so against
the explicit advice of the former First Sea Lord, Lord
Fisher. In Fisher’s opinion, Milne was more courtier than
naval leader and would prove a disaster in any serious test.
He berated Churchill for puting relations with the King
ahead of his duty to the Navy. Events did not suggest that
Fisher was wrong. his was not all. Churchill had played
a part in drating the orders that Milne and Troubridge
had received and had also sent out a number of ambigu-
ous signals during the vital early days of the war. his poor
staf work, which both Milne and Troubridge would later
cite in defence of their actions, again came down partly to
Churchill.
If the war began badly in the Mediterranean, it did
not prove any more successful in Latin America. At
the outset of the conlict, the German East Asia Squad-
ron commanded by Maximilian Graf von Spee had dis-
appeared into the vast wastes of the Paciic Ocean. Where
it would reappear was a mater of conjecture, but British
forces were deployed to meet it wherever that turned out
to be. One of these was the North American Squadron
led by Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock. Cradock’s
armada was something of a hodgepodge. At its heart were
two obsolescent armoured cruisers: Good Hope and Mon-
mouth. In addition, Cradock had at his disposal the aging
pre-dreadnought batleship Canopus, the armed mer-
chant cruiser Otranto, and, his sole modern warship, the
light cruiser Glasgow. Quite how such a ramshackle force
was supposed to engage the modern and powerful Ger-
man East Asia Squadron was not entirely clear, and Cra-
dock’s orders, like those to Milne and Troubridge, were
not free of ambiguity.
It appears that Churchill expected Cradock to keep
his ships together so that, in the event of an encounter
with the Germans, the heavy artillery of the Canopus
could keep the Germans at bay. his was hardly a winning
strategy. Moreover, given that Canopus could barely make
twelve knots (half what Spee’s ships could do), keeping
the rest of the squadron under the shelter of its guns ef-
fectively ruled out searching for the Germans. If Cradock
was going to ind his opponent, he would need to leave
the Canopus behind. He did so. Unfortunately that meant
that when his rag-tag collection of vessels located Graf
 WAR LORD
Spee’s greatly superior force, the result was catastrophe.
At the batle of Coronel, both Monmouth and Good Hope
were sunk with heavy loss of life. As with the escape of the
Goeben and Breslau, Churchill was not there on the spot
and cannot take the blame for batleield decisions over
which he had no control. At the same time, however, it
was his administration that put together Cradock’s ill-as-
sembled squadron and exposed it to its doom.
Victories?
O f course not every engagement ended in defeat,
but even the victories displayed deiciencies that
relected badly on the Churchill Admiralty. One
such was the batle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914,
when the Royal Navy undertook a raid in strength into
German home waters during which three German light
cruisers were cut of and sunk. To all intents and purposes
this was a clear victory, not the least because it intimidat-
ed the Kaiser, who—fearing further losses—placed heavy
restrictions on his admirals’ ability to conduct ofensive
operations. What this masked, however, was the total
confusion that surrounded the British atack. Owing to
poor staf work and inadequate communication, not all of
the British units taking part in the batle were aware that
the Admiralty had ordered additional forces to sea that
day. As a result, on several occasions British vessels were
misidentiied by other British vessels as hostile. Only
good fortune prevented a series of blue on blue atacks
that might well have produced serious losses.
Failings also marred the Batle of Dogger Bank. On
24 January 1915, the batle cruisers of the German First
Scouting Group were ambushed by their British counter-
parts. In the ensuing engagement, the German armoured
cruiser Blücher was sunk—a photograph of her inal mo-
ments providing an excellent propaganda piece for the
Royal Navy. Once again, apparent success masked an
underlying failure, namely that the remaining German
ships escaped; and they did so due to poor British com-
mand, control, and communications procedures. To add
insult to injury, ater-batle analysis, which might have
corrected this defect, did not do so. Once again, while one
cannot blame Churchill for decisions taken on the spot,
deiciencies in organization can be laid at his door.
he Dardanelles
Opposite above:
The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Westminster Abbey
Opposite below:
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Ottawa
Finest Hour 182/ 24
O f course, Churchill’s tenure as First Lord is
inescapably tarred by the atempt to force the
Dardanelles. As Christopher Bell has shown,
Churchill’s political opponents used this campaign, oten
in unfair ways, as part of their eforts to oust him. he op-
probrium he has received for this ill-executed and costly
operation is, thus, not fully deserved. Equally, however,
for all the eloquence and skill of his defence, it was un-
doubtedly a failure—one moreover that cost Churchill
his job. As with the batles previously described, poor
staf work played a major part in this. his is signiicant,
because inadequacies in this area underscored so many of
the problems faced by the Royal Navy in the First World
War.
But can Churchill be blamed? In one sense, clearly he
can. he Admiralty War Staf was an organization he had
devised, and its wartime activities were under his super-
vision. On the other hand, the Naval Staf was a new cre-
ation. It had come into being in early 1912, meaning that
fewer than two years were available to hone and reine it
before war came. Unsurprisingly, the Naval Staf was not
ready, but the ways in which it was deicient would not
become evident until it was put to the test. Eventually,
the problems would be ironed out, and the Naval Staf
would be transformed into a proicient planning body.
his, however, came too late for Churchill, who neither
escaped criticism for the Naval Staf’s early failures nor
reaped the beneits of its later successes. Such is politics.
Accordingly, it would be in the Second World War rather
than the First that Churchill would make his reputation as
a successful war leader. 
Mathew S. Seligmann is Professor of Naval History at
Brunel University, London, and author of Rum, Sodomy,
Prayers, and the Lash Revisited: Winston Churchill and
Social Reform in the Royal Navy 1900–1915.
See review on p. 44.
Endnotes
1. A. J. Marder, ed., Portrait of an Admiral: he Life and Papers
of Sir Herbert Richmond (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1952), p. 92.
2. Ibid.
FINEST HOUR 182/ 25
 notoriety as a politician, in asking for more; and he got it.
he deal that his agents put together ofered advances of
Churchill’s no less than £27,000, and although the pound was now
worth less than pre-war, this would be at least three-quar-
World Crisis ters of a million pounds at today’s values.

Big History

By Peter Clarke L itle wonder that, although a busy cabinet minis-

ter, Churchill pressed on with his literary commit-
ment. Previously his books had been drated in his
luent longhand; but the exercise of government respons-
ibility had brought with it a panoply of administrative and
clerical support that he learned to use and indeed to rely

T oday, whenever major political leaders come to

the end of their careers, we have learned to expect
an announcement at no distant point that a con-
tract has been signed for the publication of their mem-
oirs, with large advances mentioned. A hundred years
upon. Henceforth his books were all to be dictated, taken
down in shorthand and then typed up by his secretaries
in drats, and even set up in proofs, all of which he would
subject to extensive revision. In this sense, the volumes of
he World Crisis provide the template for all of Churchill’s
ago, there was no such expectation. Indeed the Armistice
subsequent published books, as well as an increasing low
can be seen as triggering the inception of a golden cen-
of well-paid articles. “I lived in fact from mouth to hand,”
tury in the modern memoirs industry, signing up authors
as he liked to say.2 his undoubtedly afected his literary
with the usual motives of political vindication and—
style: not only in tempting him to rely upon extensive
not least—inancial reward. In this respect, as in many
quotation from documents but also in licensing sonorous
others, Winston Churchill was a pioneer. Moreover, the
passages that oten lacked the spare rigour that had previ-
ive volumes that he published under the title he World
ously disciplined his handwriten composition.
Crisis (1923–29)—there was later a sixth on the Eastern
he format of the work was inluenced by Churchill’s
Front—were not the work of a retired politician. hey
own ministerial career in another way. In his telling, this
were begun when he was still in his late forties, writen in
international crisis had begun in 1911; but so, of course,
the midst of an active career. His cabinet colleague Arthur
had his own direct involvement, with his appointment as
Balfour, a generation older, called it an autobiography
First Lord of the Admiralty in Asquith’s Liberal Govern-
disguised as a history of the universe.
ment, an event that comes at the end of his third chapter.
hat Churchill felt in need of money at this time will
Churchill held this oice until May 1915, when, with the
come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his incorri-
failure of the atempt to force the Dardanelles and the
gible spending habits. He was a cabinet minister in Lloyd
consequent bloody stalemate on the Gallipoli peninsula,
George’s postwar government (1918–22) with a salary of
he was in efect dismissed from the Admiralty. “For thirty-
£5000 a year, which would be worth over two hundred
four months of preparation and ten months of war I had
thousand pounds today. But this was not enough, in his
borne the prime responsibility and had wielded the main
eyes, to provide for the education of his four children nor
executive power,” he reminds us in he World Crisis.3
to fulil his ambition to purchase a country house of his
Readers have by this point waded through no fewer than
own. Politics was indeed his vocation but, as I see it, writ-
thirty-six chapters on the author’s tenure at the Admiral-
ing was his profession, in the sense that his highly pro-
ty plus six on the termination of the Gallipoli campaign,
fessional commitment as an author always provided an
thus forty-two in all. his compares with the twenty-three
indispensable source of income.1
remaining chapters, dealing more briskly with the rest of
Before the First World War, quite apart from publish-
the World War. he Armistice was the terminus of the
ing volumes of his political speeches, Churchill had him-
original fourth volume; the irst two had been published
self writen half a dozen books that brought in substan-
during 1923 and volumes three and four in March 1927.
tial earnings. he most serious of these, in every sense,
was his biography of his father Lord Randolph Churchill
A Sea Change
(1906), for which he got an advance of £8000, say half a
million pounds in today’s money. In 1920 he built on his
prior reputation as an author, as well as upon his current
T
Finest Hour 182/ 26
he fact that the work seems rather unbalanced
as a history of the universe—Balfour’s point, of
course—is plainly because its origin was as “my
 CHURCHILL'S WORLD CRISIS
The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors by Sir William Orpen, 1919
volume of War Memoirs,” which is how he had described
the proposal to his literary agent in 1920. But there was a
further reorientation. In 1921, when the irst two volumes
were in preparation, Churchill revealed that he envisaged
giving his work the title he Great Amphibian.4 his was
indeed a dominant theme in what he was currently writing
in defence of the Gallipoli campaign. By the end of 1914,
he argued, the land war on the western front, begun by
the German invasion of Belgium and France, had setled
into a stalemate. “It was our turn now,” wrote Churchill.
“he initiative had passed to Britain—the Great Amphib-
ian.”5 In a land war, relative advantage lay with Germany;
only by exploiting Britain’s own relative advantage in sea
power could the tables be turned. Hence the strategic
choice that the author now posed, using the present tense
for immediacy: “Shall our armies toil only in the mud of
Flanders, or shall we break new ground? Shall our leets
remain contented with the grand and solid results they
have won, or shall they ward of future perils by a new in-
exhaustible audacity?”6
It was Churchill’s American publishers Scribners
who vetoed he Great Amphibian as the title of the work,
insisting instead upon he World Crisis. But Church-
ill’s text, of course, remains animated by the idea that,
whatever the laws of the Gallipoli campaign, it ofered a
means of deploying the leverage of British sea power; and
the only alternative grand strategy was the immiserating
experience of trench warfare on the western front. hus
Churchill quotes at length his memorandum to Asquith
on 29 December 1914: “my impression is that the pos-
ition of both armies is not likely to undergo any decisive
change—although no doubt several hundred thousand
FINEST HOUR 182/ 27
men will be spent to satisfy the military mind on that
point.” Hence the strategic choice: “Are there not other
alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire
in Flanders?”7 All of this read well in the 1920s.
ANZAC Atack
B ut if he could thus appeal to his readers’ hindsight
about the futility of the western front, he also had
to acknowledge their hindsight about Gallipoli,
where the total Allied losses eventually totalled 46,000.
Among these, unforgetably, were 8,700 Australians and
2,700 New Zealanders.8 heir joint forces, under the
acronym ANZAC, had indeed served with notable hero-
ism, which Churchill readily acknowledged: “Anzac is the
greatest word in the history of Australasia.”9 he author
had special reason to put this on record. For the publica-
tion in 1921 of the irst volume of the oicial Australian
war history he Story of Anzac, writen by the journalist
Charles Bean, had already made a highly signiicant im-
pact. Bean had served as a war correspondent himself; he
had landed at Anzac Cove only hours ater the irst troops,
whose story he now told with the imprimatur of the Aus-
tralian government. His judgment was damning: “So,
through a Churchill’s excess of imagination, a layman’s
ignorance of artillery, and the fatal power of a young en-
thusiasm to convince older and more cautious brains, the
tragedy of Gallipoli was born.”10
Churchill knew that he could not ignore this; in fact
he quoted this comment at the end of the relevant chap-
ter, professing the hope that the Australian people “will
not rest content with so crude, so inaccurate, so incom-
plete and so prejudiced a judgment, but will study the
 CHURCHILL'S WORLD CRISIS
facts for themselves.”11 hough Bean’s work proved foun-
dational in entrenching the Anzac myth in Australian na-
tional consciousness, the political reality was that British
public opinion matered more in Churchill’s efort to lay
the ghost of Gallipoli. And he World Crisis indeed met
with a generally appreciative recognition of the merits
of Churchill as author. he literary power of the work, as
displayed in the initial two volumes, is frankly not so well
sustained in the later ones. his is partly for the obvious
reason that Churchill had been not only out of oice but
out of Parliament when volumes I and II were published
in 1923, with time to prioritise his writing. By contrast,
having become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Novem-
ber 1924 in Baldwin’s Conservative government, he was a
busy man at the Treasury when volumes III and IV were
brought to publication in 1927.
Master Manipulator?
I n these years, Churchill was reinventing himself as a
Conservative. He had gone into politics as a Conserv-
ative MP in 1900, but from 1904 to 1922 he had sat as
a Liberal; Baldwin’s invitation to him to go to the Treas-
ury in November 1924 came as a surprise. It was a great
boon but also raised an obvious question: how could the
public trust a man who had changed party twice? And
The first British edition of Churchill’s The World Crisis
FINEST HOUR 182/ 28
this sharpened the reputational problem that Churchill
already faced, with the cry of Gallipoli functioning as a
code word in raising the character issue, rather than just
an argument over strategy. One prime example is the
publication of a book in 1931 with the title he Tragedy
of Winston Churchill. It was by Victor Wallace Germains,
a military correspondent who had been a prominent de-
fender of Lord Kitchener (and had published a previous
book with the memorable title he Gathering Storm).
Germains was plainly out to discredit Churchill and,
in mounting his indictment, an exegesis of he World
Crisis took up up two-thirds of his own book. he insidi-
ous problem, he claimed, was that he World Crisis was
“a brilliantly writen and powerfully reasoned work,” with
a corresponding capacity to deceive. “It is the work of
a man specially trained in siting and arranging the evi-
dence,” Germains tells us. “Churchill the writer is the spe-
cialist successful in his own sphere; Churchill, the military
leader, is the amateur who blundered.”12 In its way, then,
this is a perverse tribute to the literary efectiveness with
which he World Crisis had put Churchill’s case before
the reading public.
Armistice or Victory?
A sixth volume of he World Crisis,
published in 1931, was to deal
with the Eastern Front; but it is
the intervening ith volume, he Ater-
math (1929), that has been unduly neg-
lected. In the original four volumes of
he World Crisis, the inal chapter was
simply titled “Victory” and ended with
the Armistice of 11 November 1918.
his surely masked a sleight of hand. Was
this indeed an outright victory for the
Allies? Or had Germany, with its armies
still undefeated in the ield, agreed to an
Armistice during which a peace setle-
ment would be negotiated? he detailed
terms of the Armistice suggest that this
was in fact a defeat for Germany, which
had to agree to the efective immobilisa-
tion of its armed forces, on land and at
sea, giving it no option to continue the
war should the negotiations fail. “Parlia-
ment was disposed to be suspicious of the
Armistice terms when they heard them,”
is how he World Crisis put it at the end
of its fourth volume. “But when the docu-
ment was read over-whelming thankful-
ness illed all hearts. No one could think
 CHURCHILL'S WORLD CRISIS
Since we are commemorating the centenary of the
Armistice, it is perhaps iting to note that its very ambigu-
ity stored up further problems, as Churchill thus came to
recognise. As the outcome of a victors’ peace, the Treaty
of Versailles could be considered quite lenient to Ger-
many; but considered as the outcome of a freely negotiat-
ed setlement, the harshness of the proposed reparations
became an enduring German grievance. At the end of the
Second World War, Churchill and Roosevelt were to in-
sist on Germany’s unconditional surrender. No second
Armistice, then, but a peace setlement in keeping with
Churchill’s own moto, “In Victory: Magnanimity.”16 his
time, things turned out beter for everyone. 

Peter Clarke is author of Mr. Churchill’s Profession

(2012) and former Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

Arthur J. Balfour
of any further stipulation.”13 “Armistice” is thus elided
with “Victory.” But the great controversy over the terms
of the Treaty of Versailles, as imposed on Germany in the
summer of 1919, lushed this issue out of hiding.
his is where the ith volume of he World Crisis,
published as he Atermath (1929), signals a signiicant
shit in interpretation, relecting a change in public opin-
ion both in Britain and in the United States. he narrow
point here concerns a verbal distinction between Victory
and Armistice. “Had the Germans, instead of asking for an
armistice, sought a peace by negotiation and meanwhile
fought on, the interpretation placed upon the Fourteen
Points by them and by each of the Allies might have been
reduced to an exact and concrete form,” Churchill now
suggested. But the rapidity of their collapse meant that
“they became uterly prostrate and inally submited to
conditions which let them henceforward helpless.”14 he
classic denunciation of the Treaty, of course, had been
that published by John Maynard Keynes as he Economic
Consequences of the Peace (1919). Ten years later, Church-
ill now called him “a man of clairvoyant intelligence and
no undue patriotic bias” and accepted Keynes’s view of
the lawed economic setlement imposed on Germany.15
Endnotes
1. See Peter Clarke, Mr. Churchill’s Profession (London:
Bloomsbury, 2012), esp. pp. 73–79.
2. Winston S. Churchill, he Gathering Storm (London:
Cassell, 1948), p. 62.
3. Winston S. Churchill, he World Crisis, 1911–18, 2 vols.,
continuous pagination (London: hornton Buterworth,
1938), p. 812. Further page references are to this edition. For a
useful academic study of the book see Robin Prior, Churchill’s
“World Crisis” as History (London: Croom Helm,1983).
4. See Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Volume IV,
he Stricken World, 1916–1922 (London: Heineman, 1975),
pp. 750–59 for the composition and publication of the work.
5. World Crisis, p. 456.
6. Ibid., p. 457.
7. Ibid., p. 484.
8. Paul Addison, Churchill: he Unexpected Hero (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 80; this is an excellent
brief account of the signiicance of Gallipoli.
9. World Crisis, p. 905.
10. C. E. W. Bean, he Story of Anzac (1921; facsimile edn.
(1942) as vol. 1 of the Oicial History of Australia in the Great
War, 8 vols., 1923–33). On Bean’s inluence, see also David
Reynolds, he Long Shadow: he Great War and the Twentieth-
Century (London: Norton, 2013), pp. 372–73.
11. World Crisis, p. 553.
12. Victor Wallace Germains, he Tragedy of Winston Churchill
(London: Hurst and Blacket, 1931), p. 47.
13. World Crisis, p. 1399.
14. Winston S. Churchill, he Atermath (New York: Scribners,
1929), p. 100. I explore further aspects of this book in
he Locomotive of War: Money, Empire, Power and Guilt
(London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 329–31.
15. he Atermath, p. 115.
16. hese words, of course, form part of the “Moral of the
Work,” printed in each of Churchill’s six volumes, he Second
World War.

FINEST HOUR 182/ 29

 November 11, 1918:
The Hour of Deliverance
In his memoirs of the First World War published as he
World Crisis, Winston Churchill vividly recalls the scene he
witnessed at the moment the Armistice took efect.
I t was a few minutes before the eleventh hour of the
eleventh day of the eleventh month. I stood at the
window of my room looking up Northumberland
Avenue towards Trafalgar Square, waiting for Big Ben to
tell that the War was over. My mind strayed back across
the scarring years to the scene and emotions of the night
at the Admiralty when I listened for these same chimes
in order to give the signal of war against Germany to our
Fleets and squadrons across the world. And now all was
FINEST HOUR 182/ 30
over! he unarmed and untrained island nation, who
with no defence but its Navy had faced unquestioningly
the strongest manifestation of military power in human
record, had completed its task. Our country had emerged
from the ordeal alive and safe, its vast possessions intact,
its war efort still waxing, its institutions unshaken, its
people and Empire united as never before. Victory had
come ater all the hazards and heartbreaks in an absolute
and unlimited form. All the Kings and Emperors with
whom we had warred were in light or exile. All their Ar-
mies and Fleets were destroyed or subdued. In this Brit-
ain had borne a notable part, and done her best from irst
to last.
 Above:
Depiction
of the signing
of the Armistice

Left:
Churchill
as Secretary of State
for War on an
inspection
tour shortly after
the Armistice

Finest Hour 182/ 31

FINEST HOUR 182/ 32

Above left:
Armistice Day crowd
outside Buckingham Palace
Below left:
Tyne Cot Cemetery
near Zonnebeke, Belgium
he minutes passed. I was conscious of reaction rather
than elation. he material purposes on which one’s work
had been centred, every process of thought on which one
had lived, crumbled into nothing. he whole vast busi-
ness of supply, the growing outputs, the careful hoards,
the secret future plans—but yesterday the whole duty of
life—all at a stroke vanished like a nightmare dream, leav-
ing a void behind. My mind mechanically persisted in ex-
ploring the problems of demobilization. What was to hap-
pen to our three million Munition workers? What would
they make now? How would the roaring factories be con-
verted? How in fact are swords beaten into ploughshares?
How long would it take to bring the Armies home? What
would they do when they got home? We had of course a
demobilization plan for the Ministry of Munitions. It had
been carefully worked out, but it had played no part in our
thoughts. Now it must be put into operation. he levers
must be pulled—Full Steam Astern. he Munitions Coun-
cil must meet without delay.
And then suddenly the irst stroke of the chime. I
looked again at the broad street beneath me. It was de-
serted. From the portals of one of the large hotels ab-
sorbed by Government Departments darted the slight ig-
ure of a girl clerk, distractedly gesticulating while another
stroke of Big Ben resounded. hen from all sides men and
women came scurrying into the street. Streams of people
poured out of all the buildings. he bells of London began
to clash. Northumberland Avenue was now crowded with
people in hundreds, nay, thousands, rushing hither and
thither in a frantic manner, shouting and screaming with
joy. I could see that Trafalgar Square was already swarm-
ing. Around me in our very headquarters, in the Hotel
Metropole, disorder had broken out. Doors banged. Feet
clatered down corridors. Everyone rose from the desk
and cast aside pen and paper. All bounds were broken.
he tumult grew. It grew like a gale, but from all sides
Finest Hour 182/ 33
“All the Kings and
Emperors with whom
we had warred were in
flight or exile. All their
Armies and Fleets were
destroyed or subdued.”
simultaneously. he street was now a seething mass of
humanity. Flags appeared as if by magic. Streams of men
and women lowed from the Embankment. hey mingled
with torrents pouring down the Strand on their way to ac-
claim the King. Almost before the last stroke of the clock
had died away, the strict, war-straitened, regulated streets
of London had become a triumphant pandemonium. At
any rate it was clear that no more work would be done
that day. Yes, the chains which had held the world were
broken. Links of imperative need, links of discipline, links
of brute force, links of self-sacriice, links of terror, links of
honour which had held our nation, nay, the greater part of
mankind, to grinding toil, to a compulsive cause—every
one had snapped upon a few strokes of the clock. Safety,
freedom, peace, home, the dear one back at the ireside—
all ater ity-two months of gaunt distortion. Ater ity-
two months of making burdens grievous to be borne and
binding them on men’s backs, at last, all at once, suddenly
and everywhere the burdens were cast down. At least so
for the moment it seemed.
My wife arrived, and we decided to go and ofer our
congratulations to the Prime Minister, on whom the cen-
tral impact of the home struggle had fallen, in his hour
of recompense. But no sooner had we entered our car
than twenty people mounted upon it, and in the midst
of a wildly cheering multitude we were impelled slowly
forward through Whitehall. We had driven together the
opposite way along the same road on the aternoon of the
ultimatum. here had been the same crowd and almost
the same enthusiasm. It was with feelings which do not
lend themselves to words that I heard the cheers of the
brave people who had borne so much and given all, who
had never wavered, who had never lost faith in their coun-
try or its destiny, and who could be indulgent to the faults
of their servants when the hour of deliverance had come.

 THE FULTON REPORT
)URP WKH 1DWLRQDO &KXUFKLOO 0XVHXP
+LJK+RSHVDQG8QERXQGHG&RQÀGHQFH"
The Aftermath of the GreatWars
I was a minister at the time of the
Versailles Treaty and a close riend
of Mr. Lloyd George, who was
the head of the British delegation at
Versailles. I did not myself agree with
many things that were done, but I have
a very strong impression in my mind
of that situation, and I ind it painful
to contrast it with that which prevails
now. In those days there were high
hopes and unbounded conidence that
the wars were over, and that the League
of Nations would become all-powerful.
I do not see or feel that same conidence
or even the same hopes in the haggard
world at the present time.
By Tim Riley
On the other hand I repulse the idea
that a new war is inevitable; still more
that it is imminent. It is because I am
sure that our fortunes are still in our
own hands and that we hold the power
to save the future, that I feel the duty to
speak out now that I have the occasion
and the opportunity to do so.
—Winston Churchill
“Sinews of Peace,” 5 March 1946,
Fulton, Missouri
Two documents in the collection
of the National Churchill Museum
contrast Churchill’s feelings in the
atermath of the two world wars.
Finest Hour 182/ 34
he irst is a leter dated 10 Janu-
ary 1919, two months ater Armistice
Day and two weeks ater the British
general election of 1918. Churchill
was completing his successful tenure
as Minister of Munitions and moving
on to become both Secretary of State
for War and Secretary of State for Air.
In one of his inal acts at Munitions,
Churchill wrote to Lieutenant Colo-
nel Sir James Forrest Halket Carmi-
chael CBE, who served as Assistant
Director of Munitions Supply. In vic-
tory’s wake, Churchill’s magnanimi-
ty is on full display. He expresses his
“high appreciation for the ability and
devotion which you have contribut-
ed to the admirably successful work
carried out by the Steel Department
during the War.” he leter is a small
act of kindness and a typically Chur-
chillian expression of gratitude for
valued service rendered.
he Carmichael leter was writen
the week before the Paris Peace Con-
ference began at Versailles, where Al-
lied leaders atempted in vain to build
the framework for a lasting peace in
Europe. hough Churchill was criti-
cal of the Treaty of Versailles—he be-
lieved the punitive terms for German
reparations overly harsh—he was a
participant with a particular interest
in promoting anti-Bolshevik policy.
Churchill’s warnings about com-
munism continued later and more

overtly on 5 March 1946, when he
recalled the Treaty of Versailles in his
“Sinews of Peace” speech, commonly
known today as the “Iron Curtain”
address, at Westminster College in
Fulton, Missouri. he near-inal drat
of the speech, with edits dictated to
secretary “Jo” Sturdee the day be-
fore Churchill and President Harry
Truman departed Washington by
train for Missouri, reveals Churchill’s
careful recollection of the immediate
post-First World War period.
In the Fulton speech, Churchill
notes that he was a minister at Ver-
sailles (in the inal drat he edited out
the adjective “high” to describe his
new ministerial oice) and did not
“agree with many of the things that
were done.” He recalls, though, the
general sense of buoyancy in 1919
when “there were high hopes and
unbounded conidence that the wars
were over.”
Churchill contrasted the opti-
mism of 1919 with his feelings in 1946:
“I do not see or feel the same coni-
dence or even the same hope in the
Timothy Riley is Sandra L. and Monroe E. Trout Director and Chief Curator of the National Churchill Museum.
Opposite page:
Churchill on an inspection
as Minister of Munitions
Photo: Imperial
War Museum
Left:
Typescript for the
Iron Curtain speech
with Chuchill's notes
scribbled in
Below:
Churchill letter in the
collection of the
National Churchill Museum,
Fulton, Missouri
haggard world at the present.”
Churchill’s “haggard world”
view set the stage for the se-
nior statesman’s stern warning
in Fulton. For Churchill, in
the atermath of the Second
World War, there could be no
room for idealistic fantasies
if something concrete were
to be achieve—and another
global conlict has not been
seen or experienced since.
he Carmichael leter is now on
long-term loan to the National
Churchill Library and Center at
the George Washington Univer-
sity in Washington, D.C.
he complete ity-folio drat
of “Sinews of Peace” will be ex-
hibited for the irst time outside
Fulton in Winston Churchill:
A Legacy of Leadership, open-
ing November 17 at the Mid-
land County Library (Midland,
Texas). 
Finest Hour 182/ 35
 COHEN CORNER
The World Crisis
Breeds New Publishing
5HODWLRQVKLSVIRU&KXUFKLOO
By Ronald I. Cohen
T his is a behind-the-scenes article. It focuses not
on the content of he World Crisis (which former
Prime Minister A. J. Balfour described as “Win-
ston’s brilliant Autobiography, disguised as a history of
the universe”) but rather on how that multi-volume his-
tory of the Great War—Churchill’s twelth work—came
to be published in both the UK and the USA.
As an established author, Winston Churchill had had
a number of publishing relationships on both sides of the
Atlantic, some of which were more enduring than others.
His irst was with Longmans Green, which had published
his irst ive books (from the he Story of the Malakand
Field Force to Ian Hamilton’s March) in both London and
New York between 1898 and 1900. hen, ater a brief
ling with Macmillan (which had overpaid for the rights
to Lord Randolph Churchill), Churchill moved to Hodder
& Stoughton in London between 1908 and 1910 for the
publication of My Arican Journey and the speech volumes
Liberalism and the Social Problem and the now exceeding-
ly rare he People’s Rights.
here followed a publication famine from Church-
ill’s appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911
through the end of the decade. Consequently, when
Churchill determined to write a history of the First World
War, he had no obvious publishing irm to approach. He
was very much a free agent.
Mr. hornton Buterworth
B y chance, on 22 October 1920, the Associated
Newspapers asked Churchill to review the new
Autobiography of Margot Asquith for the munii-
cent sum of £250 (the rough equivalent of which today
would be $12,200). he article appeared on 4 November,
and Asquith’s grateful publisher hornton Buterworth
wrote Churchill ive days later, saying:
Finest Hour 182/ 36
I have been deeply gratiied by your most recent ad-
mirable review in “he Daily Mail.” I was greatly im-
pressed by the tactful kindness of such criticism as
had to be adverse and entire fairmindedness shown to
the book throughout….May I add that if at any time
you decide to write a new book, I should esteem it a
very great favour if you would allow me the privilege
of publishing it.
Timing is everything. Churchill had just entered into
a literary agency agreement with Curtis Brown (there-
ater, and even today, his literary agents) regarding his
First World War history. he deal with Buterworth was
quickly made, Churchill securing an advance against roy-
alties of £5,000 against the irst volume (the initial deposit
was a rich £2,000 or roughly $97,500 today) and, with the
assistance of Buterworth, an agreement with he Times
for a similar sum for the British serialisation of the irst
volume. he book contract was signed on 29 November
1920.
Connecting with Scribner’s
S ince Buterworth had no publishing arm in the US,
that market was open for Churchill’s new and still
untitled book. It was Buterworth himself who pro-
posed the project to Charles Kingsley, the London repre-
sentative of US publisher Charles Scribner, who relayed
to his boss the details provided to him by Buterworth:
As originally ofered the book was to be in two vol-
umes for publication in 1921 or 1922—probably the
later date….It will not be a very lengthy work, each
volume probably containing not much over 100,000
words….Buterworth was extremely anxious that I
emphasise the fact that Churchill proposes to make
all sorts of revelations; that large numbers of unpub-
lished naval, diplomatic, and military papers will be
brought to light, and that, in short, it will be a work
of sensational character in which Churchill will fully
live up to his reputation of being an “enfant terrible”.
Buterworth, Kingsley explained, “is anxious to throw
the book our way if we care for it and frankly confesses that
he does so in the hope of reciprocity on our part, but he
is hesitant about doing so in the fear that we should have
some feeling about doing business along these lines.” he
British publisher was unequivocal regarding Churchill’s
intentions; he “is frankly out for all the traic will bear.”
 Despite his view of Churchill’s inancial ambitions
for the work, Buterworth was so enthusiastic about the
author’s writing skills that he almost seemed to be acting
as Churchill’s agent when he advised Scribner of these tal-
ents in a leter several weeks later:

Under separate cover, I have sent your irm particu-

lars concerning the Churchill book. Full as I have
tried to make them, I cannot help feeling they fall
very far short of what they should be to enable your
irm to visualise its potentialities. But you will realise
that Churchill is a statesman—a statesman of the irst
rank next to Lloyd George, but, unlike Lloyd George,
he has the power—and the very great power of writ-
ing.

To encourage Scribner, Buterworth divulged that

he Times had paid a considerable amount for the serial
rights, and he disclosed the igure that he had contracted
to pay Churchill. As Buterworth put it: “You may con-
sider them [the terms that I am paying] somewhat high,
doubtless they are, at the same time I anticipate on a
very conservative estimate to make a very considerable
proit.” He also explained that Curtis Brown was seek-
ing other ofers in the United States but that Scribner’s
had been let to him. No inancial beneit was to accrue
to Buterworth; the commission on the American sale
would beneit Churchill’s literary agent, Curtis Brown.
On 25 January, Charles Scribner cabled Buterworth:
“Ofer for Churchill twenty per cent royalty, tax free, with
sixteen thousand dollars advance. Division of payments
like your own.” hree days later, Buterworth cabled
Scribner back, “CHURCHILL OFFER ACCEPTED.” Scribner
was very pleased by the result and wrote Buterworth on
2 February:

We were delighted to hear that you had been able to

secure for us the Churchill books and we owe you
thanks on the double score of having given us your
good oices, as well as having bagged the game....We
should like to have a clause to the efect that the book
publication should be simultaneous in Great Britain
and the United States; and of course this is important
to avoid copyright complications.

he contract (dated 8 February) anticipated delivery of

150,000–200,000 words in two volumes, the irst to be
delivered “not later than 31 December 1922” and the
second within one year thereater. Publication was to Individual serialized volume of the memoirs
occur within one year of delivery of manuscript and the and bound copies of the serial edition
selling price was to be “not less than Five Dollars.” Scrib-

Finest Hour 182/ 37

 COHEN CORNER

Above (from left to right):

The Scribner title page of volume I; dust jacket of the same;
a review copy of the British first edition from Thornton Butterworth
(all photos from the collection of Ronald I. Cohen)

ner’s acquired the rights for the United States and Canada
for an advance of $16,000 against royalties.
Charles Scribner had concerns about how well the
book would fare. He was anxious about serialisation in
the United States and expressed consternation that “pub-
lication by representative papers in diferent sections of
the country would greatly lessen the sale of the book.” On
the other side of the Atlantic, hornton Buterworth was
worried about the anticipated publication date of Lloyd
George’s Memoirs, which, in the end, did not appear until
a decade later. Scribner added that “the publication date
should be earlier than April 1st [1923], as our Spring sea-
son is not as long as yours and a book published ater that
date has litle chance.”
here was in any case no ill feeling between Churchill
go ahead polishing and revising.” He also had discussions
with his publisher about length. Churchill recorded that
Buterworth was insisting, “that the irst volume must be
one volume only and not two, but his reader thinks all the
stuf so good that it is a pity to cut any of it out. I am not
at all sure.”
Length was a serious issue. Contracted at 100,000
words, the manuscript ran to 165,000. his had the ef-
fect of increasing Buterworth’s production costs by
approximately 70%, and he expressed an interest in re-
ducing both the amount of the advance and the level of
royalties in consequence. Needless to say, Churchill did
not accede to his requests.
he Title

and Lloyd George regarding their potentially competing
books. Churchill wrote Clementine that Lloyd George
had “read two of my chapters in the train & was well con-
tent with the references to himself. He praised the style
and made several pregnant suggestions wh[ich] I am em-
bodying.” Churchill also observed more personally that
“It is a g[rea]t chance to put my whole case in an agree-
able form to an atentive audience. And the pelf will make
us feel v[er]y comfortable.”
Defeat Helps
O
ne of the maters that remained unresolved was
the title. Among the ideas bandied about by
Churchill in January and February 1923—only
sixty days before publication—were: “he Administra-
tion of the Admiralty 1911 to 1916,” “he Great Amphib-
ian,” “he World Convulsion,” “he Meteor Flag,” and
“Within the Storm.” Buterworth ofered: “he World
Crisis 1911–1916,” “he Decisive Years 1911–1916,”
and “My Admiralty Tenure.” Scribner and Buterworth
together came up with: “he World Crisis,” “Sea Power
and the World Crisis,” or “Sea Power in the World Crisis.”

I ronically, Churchill’s subsequent political misfor-

tune worked to his beneit as a writer. When he was
defeated for re-election in 1922, Churchill spent the
next two years outside Parliament. his gave him time “to
It is perhaps for this reason that when he Times began
serialisation of the irst volume on 8 February 1923, the
paper simply titled it “Mr. Churchill’s Book,” which title
they retained for further serialised volumes.
Finest Hour 182 / 38
 COHEN CORNER
Finally, on 2 February, Churchill returned with
“Fateful Days.” In Britain, Buterworth and Kingsley
were at their wits’ end. Kingsley desperately cabled his
boss in New York: “CHURCHILL WANTS TITLE FATEFUL
DAYS PLEASE CABLE RETURN UNSATISFACTORY USING
WORLD CRISIS.” And that was that.
he Publication Date
F or many years it was thought, not unreasonably,
that the British edition was the irst edition of he
World Crisis. While that may appear to be a nitpick-
ing issue to readers of this article, it is an important one to
booksellers and collectors and can be crucial to the legal
question of copyright. In any case, it is clear that Fred-
erick Woods, the earliest Churchill bibliographer, did not
consider the Scribner correspondence with Churchill and
Buterworth.
What did in fact happen was this: the British were in-
deed ready before the Americans, but ultimately they did
not publish irst. As soon as the dates for he Times seri-
alisation were irmly established, Churchill announced
that “Mr. Buterworth may therefore publish on March
irst.” Kingsley, though, was successful in holding back
this date and informed Scribner on 23 February of his
success:
Buterworth is I believe proving more reasonable
than I expected in regard to publication date. He
has given up all idea of publishing before Easter and
asked me to-day when I thought we would be able to
cable a date.
Churchill himself was pushing for an earlier date
than Easter (1 April in 1923), either 14 or 21 March,
but Kingsley responded by stating that the delay in the
arrival of Churchill’s corrected proofs had made March
publication an impossibility. He reminded Churchill and
his literary representatives of the tacit understanding that
simultaneous British and American publication had been
agreed.
In a leter to Churchill on 4 April 1923, Scribner
deinitively established the date of Friday, 6 April. With
that leter, Scribner included “two advance copies of the
irst volume of ‘he World Crisis’ which is to be pub-
lished here on April 6th.” his date was conirmed in a
leter of 9 April 1923 from the American publisher to A.
W. Barmby (General Manager of the New York oice of
Churchill’s literary agent) in which Scribner’s sent the
inal payment due to author upon publication and stated:
Finest Hour 182 / 39
Enclosed I am sending a cheque for $5,000 in
payment of the advance royalty due on Winston
Churchill’s “he World Crisis”, half of this sum
being due on the delivery of the MS. and half on
the day of publication, now setled as April 6th.
Given that hornton Buterworth had been ready to
proceed well before that date, it was ironic that irst pub-
lication occurred on Friday, 6 April in the United States
and only on Tuesday, 10 April in Great Britain. he fact
that the American edition of he World Crisis is the irst
edition of the work is something I disclosed in my 2006
Bibliography.
As it happened, Churchill was very pleased by the
American publication and wrote Scribner to this efect on
21 April:
I think they [referring to the two copies sent him] are
admirably produced, and I am particularly struck by
the fact that some serious mistakes which have been
allowed to remain in the English Editions, have been
pruned out by the vigilance of those charged with the
make-up in America.
From this episode arose Churchill’s long publishing
relationships with hornton Buterworth and Charles
Scribner during the inter-war years.
he End of the Afair
T he World Crisis was irst published in a format that
we book aicionados describe as “ive volumes in
six.” he irst three volumes are 1911–1914, 1915,
and 1916–1918, with this last forever confusing the world
by being published in two parts. Two more volumes came
later: he Atermath and he Eastern Front. In 1933–34,
George Newnes issued an illustrated edition in twenty-six
weekly parts as he Great War. Collectively these added
up to a staggering 1,127,358 copies in print—an average
of 43,360 per issue. Of these, 928,401 copies were sold
at one shilling apiece, and 78,000 were bound in 3,000
sets of either three or four volumes each. One or another
of the foregoing editions were translated into twelve lan-
guages: Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Ital-
ian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, and
Swedish, puting he World Crisis into third position as
the most translated of Churchill’s works. 
Ronald I. Cohen MBE is author of A Bibliography of the
Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, 3 vols. (2006).
 MI C HAE L McME NAMIN’S
125 YEARS AGO
Autumn 1893 • Age 19
“Sandhurst Has Done
Wonders for Him”
O nce Winston was at Sand-
hurst, Lord Randolph’s
previously caustic atitude
towards his son appears to have sot-
ened. Ater taking Winston to Tring,
Lord Rothschild’s country estate,
Lord Randolph wrote a leter on 24
October to his mother Frances, the
Duchess of Marlborough: “I took
Winston to Tring on Saturday….He
has much smartened up. He holds
himself quite upright and he has got
steadier. he people at Tring took a
great deal of notice of him but [he]
was very quiet & nice-mannered.
Sandhurst has done wonders for him.
Up to now he has had no bad marks
for conduct & I trust that it will con-
tinue to the end of term. I paid his
mess bill for him…so that his next al-
lowance might not be [encroached]
upon. I think he deserved it.”
While there is no record that he
ever had Lord Randolph’s new-found
sentiments expressed to him directly,
Winston nonetheless appreciated his
father’s changed atitude and wrote
in My Early Life that “Once I became
a gentleman cadet I acquired a new
status in my father’s eyes, I was enti-
tled when on leave to go about with
him, if it was not inconvenient.” his
included “Tring, where most of the
leaders and a selection of the rising
men of the Conservative Party were
oten assembled,” and meeting Lord
Randolph’s racing friends, who pro-
vided “a diferent company and new
topics of conversation which proved
equally entertaining.”
Nevertheless, while Churchill
was thrilled to accompany his father
(“In fact to me, he seemed to own
the key to everything or almost ev-
erything worth having”), a more ma-
ture Churchill was able to relect in
My Early Life that his father’s atitude
had not sotened nearly so much
as the young Winston would have
liked: “But if ever I began to show the
slightest idea of comradeship [em-
phasis added], he was immediately
ofended; and when I once suggested
that I might help his private secretary
to write some of his leters, he froze
me into stone.”
100 YEARS AGO
Autumn 1918 • Age 44
“Winston Began Sulky”
W
hile Churchill publicly
warned on 7 October
against the possibility of
“the speedy termination of the con-
lict,” the Great War was indeed com-
ing quickly to an end, and Churchill
knew it. he Armistice was signed the
following month.
Finest Hour 182/ 40
As Martin Gilbert wrote in Chur-
chill, A Life, “he struggles of war
were over, the conlicts of peace had
begun.” No one knew this beter than
Churchill, whose irst conlict began
a few days before the war ended.
His unlikely adversary was his close
personal and political friend Prime
Minister David Lloyd George.
Deprived as Minister of Muni-
tions of a major policy-making role,
without having a seat in the War
Cabinet, Churchill was concerned
that ater the war he would also be
excluded from making policy during
the peace. his anxiety put him at
cross purposes with Lloyd George,
who very much wanted Churchill in
his peacetime government. But such
a government would be a coalition in
which Conservatives greatly outnum-
bered Liberals. Once before, in 1915,
the Conservatives had made their
participation in a coalition under a
Liberal prime minister conditioned
upon Churchill’s exclusion from
the inner Cabinet and had rebufed
Lloyd George’s initial atempts as
prime minister to bring Churchill
back into oice in 1917. Lloyd
George obviously wanted his hands
free to dump Churchill again if the
Conservatives made it a requirement
for their continuing support.
he conlict between Chur-
chill and Lloyd George began on
6 November, with Lloyd George
taking the lead. He invited Chur-
chill and Edwin Montagu, the
most senior Liberal Party cabinet
members, to discuss with him the
political future. Churchill was not
in the best of moods and, in Mon-
tagu’s words, “Winston began sulky,
morose and unforthcoming.” When
Lloyd George advised the two that
he planned to abolish the small
ive-member War Cabinet at the end
of the war and replace it with a larger
and more traditional twelve-member
cabinet, Churchill’s atitude changed.
As Montagu recorded, “he sullen
look disappeared, smiles wreathed
the hungry face [and] the ish was
landed.”
he ish soon dislodged the hook,
however, and what followed was
an exchange of lengthy correspon-
dence—two from Churchill with
one from Lloyd George in between.
Ater a reference to Lloyd George’s
“energetic and sagacious leadership”
of the war, Churchill’s 7 November
leter got right to the point: “It is not
possible for me however to take the
very serious & far-reaching political
decision you have suggested to me
without knowing deinitely the char-
acter & main composition of the new
Govt you propose to form for the
period of reconstruction….”
Lloyd George was obviously
displeased and pulled no punches
in his 8 November reply: “Ater the
conversation we had on Wednesday
night…your leter came upon me
as an unpleasant surprise. Frankly
it perplexes me. It suggests that you
contemplate the possibility of leaving
the Government, and you give no
reason for it except an apparent dis-
satisfaction with your personal pros-
pects. I am sure I must in this mis-
understand your real reason for no
Minister could possibly adopt such
an atitude in this critical moment in
the history of our country….”
Churchill seized the lifeline
Lloyd George ofered him, i.e., that
he had misunderstood Churchill’s
“real meaning.” He wrote in his 9 No-
vember reply that “You have certain-
ly misconceived the spirit in wh my
leter was writen.” He then referred
Lloyd George to a speech he had
given on 7 November as evidence of
“how far I am from contemplating
any ‘desertion’ of you or yr Govern-
ment….” Churchill concluded his
leter with what was really bothering
him—the Conservatives’ unrelenting
hostility toward Churchill.
In the event, their friendship was
restored when, ater the 14 December
election where Coalition Conserva-
tives and Coalition Liberals received
a vast majority, Churchill became
Secretary of State for both War and
Air in the new Government.
75 YEARS AGO
Autumn 1943 • Age 69
“If I die, don't worry—the war
is won.”
A
utumn 1943 is best remem-
bered for the Big hree
Conference in Tehran, when
Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin met
together for the irst time, irmed
up plans for the invasion of France
in 1944 and more or less setled
the post-war eastern boundaries of
Poland in the absence of any Polish
representatives. What is not so well
remembered is that Churchill was
unwell throughout the entire fall, in-
cluding the Tehran Conference, and
nearly died in its atermath.
During the summer, Churchill
had journeyed extensively in North
America for a series of meetings
with President Roosevelt. By the
end of September, according to Roy
Jenkins, “Churchill was reported by
his staf as being tired and bad-tem-
pered.”
Despite his disposition, Churchill
was prepared on 7 October to ly to
Tunis to meet with General Marshall
to discuss Churchill’s Mediterra-
nean strategy to invade the island of
Rhodes and plans to bring Turkey
into the war on the side of the Allies,
and to express new concerns on the
perils of Operation Overlord. Mar-
shall was unavailable, so Churchill’s
next journey began on 12 November.
He was so ill already that he had
been unable to preside over a War
Cabinet meeting the previous day.
Nevertheless, he let for Algiers and
Malta, where he disembarked for
Finest Hour 182/ 41
two days that he spent mostly in bed.
It was then on to Alexandria on 21
November and Cairo the day ater
that. Despite still not feeling well,
Churchill went to the airield to meet
Roosevelt’s plane on 22 November.
Several days of conferences followed.
When Churchill departed for Tehran
on 27 November, he had come down
with a bad sore throat, doubtless ex-
acerbated by a British dinner for the
Americans the night before.
Upon arriving in Tehran, Chur-
chill was so ill that he could not
atend a dinner that night with Roo-
sevelt and Stalin. At the conclusion
of the Tehran Conference, Churchill
lew back to Cairo on 2 December,
where a stomachache prevented him
from atending a dinner with the
Turks. He was now so weak that he
could not towel dry himself ater a
bath. On 10 December, he made an
eight and a half hour light from Cai-
ro to Carthage and slept most of the
next day. hat night, he was stricken
with a severe headache and a fever of
101 degrees. He was soon diagnosed
with pneumonia. Jock Colville’s joke
on being asked by a new junior secre-
tary what to do in the event Churchill
took ill [“You telephone Lord Moran
and he will send for a real doctor”]
became a reality.
Lord Moran called in specialists
from Cairo, Italy, and Britain. On
the night of 14 December, Moran
thought Churchill’s heart was so
weak that the prime minister was go-
ing to die. Indeed, Churchill told his
daughter Sarah at the time, “If I die,
don’t worry—the war is won.” he
next day, Clementine was summoned
from England, and Churchill sufered
a mild heart atack. Clementine ar-
rived on 17 December, and Churchill
had another, milder heart atack on
the 18th. he patient did not leave
his bed until 24 December. 

Heroic Biography
Andrew Roberts, Churchill:
Walking with Destiny, Viking,
1105 pages, $40/£35.
ISBN 978–1101980996
Review by John Campbell
G
iven his publisher’s claim
that there have already been
more than a thousand biog-
raphies of Churchill, not counting
hundreds of specialist studies rang-
ing from his war leadership to his
taste in cigars, one’s irst reaction
to Andrew Roberts producing an-
other thousand-page biography is
incredulity. Can there really be any-
thing new to discover or say? It is
as if Churchill has become the Ever-
est, which all biographers feel they
must tackle before they hang up
their pen, like great actors crown-
ing their career by playing King
Lear. Roy Jenkins wrote the last
major biography when he was near-
ly eighty on the back of an equally
substantial life of Gladstone; Rob-
erts comes to him just four years
after knocking of Napoleon. (But
Roberts is only ifty-ive, so one
wonders where he can go next.) On
the other hand, Jenkins has held
the ield for seventeen years, so
maybe it is time for a big new reas-
sessment for a new generation.
If so, Roberts has risen magnii-
cently to the challenge. Jenkins’
book was an elegant tour-de-force
Books, ARts,
& Curiosities
of interpretation, but based almost
entirely on his reading of the exist-
ing published sources, shrewdly re-
fracted through a lifetime’s experi-
ence of politics. Roberts by contrast
is a professional historian whose
thorough research draws on a far
wider range of sources, old and
new. As a result, he has managed to
assemble an enormous mountain
of detail that will be fresh even to
seasoned Churchillians.
First, he has gained access to a
number of important new sources,
most notably King George VI’s dia-
ry, which records the weekly lunch-
es throughout the Second World
War at which Churchill gave the
King his frank assessments of the
course of events; but also the diary
of Marian Holmes, his favourite
secretary for the latter part of the
war; the minutes of the Other Club
(the cross-party dining club Chur-
chill founded with F. E. Smith in
1911, where he surrounded himself
with his closest friends for the rest
of his life); and the Chartwell visi-
tors’ book, as well as other recently
published goldmines such as the di-
aries of the Soviet ambassador Ivan
Maisky—another to whom Chur-
chill unburdened himself before
and during the war with surprising
freedom.
Second, Roberts’s bibliography
lists nearly a hundred archives,
around six hundred books, and
another hundred scholarly articles
and theses—and a inger in the
footnotes shows that he has drawn
Finest Hour 182/ 42
fruitfully on all of them. On the
one hand, he is up to speed with a
lot of new, very recently published
scholarship on diferent aspects of
Churchill’s career (some of which
irst appeared in Finest Hour); and
on the other he has trawled doz-
ens of obscure and long-forgotten
memoirs of secretaries, drivers,
diplomats, and others for unfamil-
iar anecdotes and human glimpses,
many of them very funny.
hird, he quotes extensively
from Churchill’s own writings,
including his enormous output
of journalism—some of it trivial
and eccentric, dashed of quickly
for money, much of it powerful
and prophetic (such as his grasp
of the potential of nuclear energy
in 1931), but all of it demonstrat-
ing his extraordinary breadth of
interest and imaginative power of
language—to the extent that his
award of the Nobel Prize for Liter-
ature begins to seem not so incon-
gruous after all.
Most remarkably, Roberts has
managed to assemble all these
sources into a well-constructed
mosaic of vivid detail without get-
ting bogged down for long in any
one subject, but conveying the
multifariousness of Churchill’s in-
terests and activities on practically
every page. His deft chronological
narrative of huge world-shaping
events is constantly lightened by
personal touches that keep the
focus on Churchill himself—his
humour, his drinking, his tears and
his unsinkable optimism. Roberts
has no truck with the idea of Chur-
chill as a depressive, pointing out
that he only ever used the term
“Black Dog”—which has stuck to
him—once. He likewise rejects
the rumour that Churchill had an
afair with Doris Castlerosse in
1933 (though he does concede that
Clementine may have had a brief
shipboard afair with Terence
Philip in 1935). he book also in-
cludes twenty-four pages of excel-
lent maps, so often lacking in books
that badly need them, and a good
index. he author thanks a number
of people for their help, but cred-
its no research assistants, which
makes it simply as a feat of organi-
sation a phenomenal achievement.
While not exactly hagiograph-
ic, Roberts’ view of his subject is
unashamedly admiring: he is not
afraid to write of Churchill’s “sub-
lime” words in 1940, or his “noble
heart” cracking at the end. As his
subtitle announces, the book is
built around the theme of Chur-
chill as a man of destiny. Taking up
Churchill’s own statement that his
whole life up to 1940 had been “but
a preparation for this hour and this
trial,” it is divided into two parts of
roughly ive hundred pages each:
he Preparation—up to May 1940,
by which time Churchill was al-
ready sixty-ive and had been at the
top of British politics for nearly for-
ty years—and he Trial, covering
the war and (more briely) his post-
war premiership and inal years.
Churchill clearly did have an ex-
traordinary sense of destiny, ex-
pressed most astonishingly at the
age of sixteen when he told a school
friend that at some time in the fu-
ture London would be in danger
of invasion and “it will fall to me
to save the capital and save the
Empire.” All his life he showed
a reckless disregard for danger,
exposing himself gleefully to en-
emy ire in ive wars—“Nothing
in life is so exhilarating as to be
shot at without result”—and
surviving several car and plane
crashes, as well as political set-
backs that would have inished
most careers. Nevertheless, the
idea of destiny is a diicult one
to take seriously unless you
accept the full Calvinist notion
of predestination. he most
remarkable thing is that Chur-
chill’s sense of destiny was ulti-
mately justiied.
What Roberts brings out par-
ticularly well is Churchill’s aris-
tocratic sense of entitlement, his
deep sense of history—admittedly
a story-book history of kings and
battles—and his belief in his place
in it, and his immensely thorough
self-education from an early age in
the arts and techniques of writing
and oratory, as well as in military
strategy and weaponry, so that
when he inally was called to lead
his country in its moment of cri-
sis he was thoroughly prepared.
Ever since his painful experience
at the Admiralty in 1914–15, he
Finest Hour 182/ 43
had been thinking seriously about
civil-military relations in wartime,
which was why he was determined
to be Minister of Defence as well
as Prime Minister, to avert a rep-
etition of the friction between
“Frocks” and “Brass Hats” which
had marked the previous war.
(“here will be no more Kitcheners,
Fishers or Haigs.”) By compar-
ison all his possible rivals were
stumbling amateurs, which is why
the Tory establishment that had
loathed, distrusted, and disparaged
him for years had no choice but to
accept his succession to Chamber-
lain. here really was no alternative
in May 1940. Destiny?
Churchill was often portrayed
as an unprincipled careerist, but
Roberts sees a lifelong consistency
in his belief in the civilising mission
of the British Empire, which he
calls Churchill’s “secular religion.”
(Churchill had no traditional be-
lief in Christianity or an afterlife.)
Of course by modern standards
Churchill, like almost all his con-
temporaries, was a “racist,” in that
he believed unquestioningly in the
superiority of the white race (and
the British in particular); but he
was always genuinely, if paternal-
istically, concerned for the welfare
of the peoples of the empire whom
he believed it was Britain’s duty to
protect and raise—albeit slowly—
to European standards. He unhes-
itatingly condemned the Amritsar
massacre of 1919 (“a monstrous
event which stands in singular and
sinister isolation”); and even his
diehard opposition to Indian inde-
pendence in the 1930s was at least
partly justiied by anxiety to avert
the bloodshed that he rightly saw
would follow a premature British
withdrawal.
Of course he got some things
badly wrong. His career up to 1940
is littered with reckless episodes,

which allowed his enemies to dis-
parage his judgement—above all
the doomed Dardanelles campaign
of 1915. (“here is some tragic law
in Mr Churchill,” the Morning Post
typically declared in 1918, “which
determines him on every occasion
in the wrong course.”) Roberts
defends him on most of these
episodes—Tonypandy, Sydney
Street, Antwerp, the return to the
gold standard. Frequently Roberts
sets the record straight by giving
the full context of quotations of-
ten used to damn Churchill—for
instance on the use of poison gas
in Iraq in 1921; though of course
Churchill said and wrote so much
on so many subjects, often contra-
dicting himself, that it is always
possible to quote selectively, and
Roberts is unashamedly an advo-
cate for the defence.
Where Roberts thinks Churchill
was clearly wrong, however—for
instance in allowing his visceral
anti-Communism to blind him to
the dangers from Mussolini and
later Japan, his quixotic support
for King Edward VIII’s wish to
marry Wallis Simpson, or his initial
willingness to put too much trust
in Stalin—he says so; nor does he
disguise Churchill’s grim enthusi-
asm for the retributive “strategic”
bombing of German civilians—not
just factories and military tar-
gets—until near the end of the
war, when he began to get cold feet
about it. Churchill’s critics will say
that Roberts lets Churchill of too
lightly for the bombing of Dresden
(which he suggests was “signed of
by Attlee in London” while Chur-
chill was at Yalta). But he is surely
right to reject the absurd allega-
tion of genocide recently levelled
at Churchill for not doing more
to alleviate the Bengal famine of
1943, maintaining that the prime
minister sent all the help he could
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
without diverting critical resources
from the war with Japan. Of course
these and other issues will remain
controversial. But Roberts is enti-
tled to insist that overall Churchill
got most of the big things right—
the danger posed successively by
Wilhelm II, Hitler, and the Soviet
Union—when most of the political
class were looking the other way
or in denial; and that his crazy
conidence in ultimate victory over
Nazism, when he had no rational
plan for how it was to be achieved,
was decisive in keeping Britain in
the war until Russia and America
eventually came in to bring that
hard-won victory about.
In focussing, as a biographer
must, on the central igure of Chur-
chill, Roberts inevitably does less
than justice to some of the other
players in the story—notably Lloyd
George, whom he insistently pres-
ents as a false friend, constantly
doing Churchill down while pre-
tending to support him. He makes
Churchill the leading igure in ne-
gotiating the Irish treaty of 1921,
for instance, which he was not.
Arthur Balfour famously described
Churchill’s ive-volume history of
the Great War, he World Crisis, as
“Winston’s brilliant autobiography,
disguised as a history of the uni-
verse”; and there is a touch of that
solipsism in this biography. But it
is what I would call a heroic biogra-
phy, appropriately matched to the
ambition, egotism, and undoubted
achievement of the life it describes.
It will surely remain the outstand-
ing Churchill biography for many
years to come. 
John Campbell’s books include major
biographies of Margaret hatcher, Edward
Heath, and the oicial biography of Roy
Jenkins.
Finest Hour 182/ 44
A Modern
Major Reformer
Matthew S. Seligmann, Rum,
Sodomy, Prayers, & the Lash
Revisited: Winston Churchill
and Social Reform in the Royal
Navy, 1900–1915,
Oxford University Press, 2018,
183 pages, £60/$78 (hardcover).
ISBN 978–0198759973
Review by W. Mark Hamilton
W
inston Churchill as First
Lord of the Admiralty
from 1911 to 1915 was
not the archconservative politician
he is sometimes thought of as to-
day. In fact, in the period before
the First World War, Churchill
was viewed by his contemporaries
as a social reformer and agent for
change.
Arriving at the Admiralty in
October 1911, Churchill announced
an interest in pursuing need-
ed naval reforms, but the Lords
of the Admiralty objected that
these would violate Royal Navy
traditions. “Naval tradition?” the
First Lord supposedly challenged.
Although Churchill denied ever
having said it, a secondhand ac-
count credits him with labeling the
traditions in question as “nothing
but rum, sodomy, prayers, and the
lash.” Historian Matthew Selig-
mann transforms this famous if
disputed riposte into the outline
for his book, examining how each
of the four social issues afected
the Navy and Churchill’s addressed
them as First Lord. here is also an
opening section on “pay, promo-
tion, and democratization.”
Each of the social issues had a
signiicant efect on life at sea, and
Seligmann notes that Churchill’s
concern for social reform in the
navy had been shared by Admiral

Sir John Fisher several years earli-
er. Both men were convinced of an
impending European war and be-
lieved that the Royal Navy required
both reform and strengthening to
be ready.
Churchill’s greatest concern,
according to Seligmann, was the
status and well-being of the oi-
cers and men who made up the
Royal Navy. he First Lord wanted
to make life in the navy more at-
tractive. Sailors’ pay was low and a
source of widespread discontent, so
Churchill worked to get higher pay
for the lower deck and to develop
a more diverse oicer class. Naval
oicers who came from a privileged
stratum of Edwardian society were
not typically the brightest or best-
suited for their positions. Churchill
was in contact with social reform-
ers such as Lionel Yexley, editor of
he Fleet, the annual naval year-
book, which urged improvements
for the lower deck. he British Navy
League also encouraged reforms as
a result of its civilian visits to naval
ships, where its representatives
talked directly to sailors. Enabling
faster promotion was a Churchill
goal, especially because of the
chronic shortage of junior oicers
and the need for more ships in the
Anglo-German naval race.
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
he daily rum ration, or “grog,”
dispensed in the Royal Navy be-
came an increased concern for
the Admiralty as the Temperance
movement gained strength under
the new Liberal government. While
Churchill appeared rather indif-
ferent to the controversy, possibly
because of his own well-known en-
joyment of spirits, he was pressed
to address the issue. Seligmann
describes the various reforms ex-
amined—including making the
rum ration an option, with sailors
who abstained receiving a small
payment—but inancial costs and
Treasury opposition resulted in
failure. British sailors continued to
enjoy a rum ration for another ifty
years; it did not end until 1970!
Sodomy, Seligmann observes,
was yet another issue of concern
for the First Lord and the Admi-
ralty on the eve of the First World
War. Homosexuality was a strong
taboo in late Victorian and Edward-
ian society, as the public trial of Os-
car Wilde attests. hough sodomy
trial cases were uncommon in the
Royal Navy, with evidence being
hard to collect and personal confes-
sions extremely rare, strong suspi-
cion of sodomy would result in dis-
missal without a formal court-mar-
tial. Despite the fact that the Navy
was anxious to avoid public em-
barrassment, the volume of “vice”
cases, which included sodomy, was
on the increase. Churchill, however,
having many homosexual friends
and associates, took a rather toler-
ant view of the morality issue.
he spiritual well-being of the
oicers and enlisted men in the
Navy was another controversy
faced by the Edwardian Admiralty.
Only Church of England chaplains
were allowed on Royal Navy ves-
sels, much to the unhappiness of
Catholic clergy and their adherents.
heir objections increased the pres-
Finest Hour 182/ 45
sure on the Admiralty for non-An-
glican representation.
In 1904, Admiral Fisher worked
to shorten the enlistment term
for Anglican chaplains in order
to introduce “fresh blood” to the
naval chaplaincy. hough Fisher’s
plan did not work well, it was fol-
lowed with limited compensation
of “non-conformist” clergy and
permission for sailors to attend
dockside and port churches. Pres-
sure from Irish Catholics continued
to increase, and Catholic clergy
ultimately served aboard naval
warships when the World War com-
menced.
hough Churchill himself was
not terribly religious—historian
Andrew Roberts describes him as
having had a “comfortable relation-
ship with the Almighty”—Churchill
worked hard to balance the various
sides. As the grip of the Anglican
church on the British Navy slowly
abated, the needs of the non-Angli-
can and Catholic clergy were met,
but complete freedom of worship
aboard ship was not achieved until
the Second World War.
Discipline in the Royal Navy
had always been harsh before
Churchill’s time. In 1911, the Roy-
al Navy still embraced corporal
punishment, especially for young-
er sailors, who were occasionally
caned. Attitudes were changing,
however. Questions were raised in
Parliament about the practice, and
the British Navy League and the
Humanitarian League were writing
letters of concern. Besides ques-
tioning the morality of the practice,
many naval oicers saw corporal
punishment as counterproductive
to discipline. Churchill, who had
been sadistically caned as a school-
boy, requested an oicial review
of the issue and added to earlier
reforms, but he did not oppose cor-
poral punishment outright, even

though he was always a friend of
the common sailor.
Seligmann is a recognized au-
thority on the Anglo-German naval
race and the events resulting in the
1914 Armageddon, a well-trodden
subject. He is, however, the irst to
delve into the Edwardian Admiral-
ty through the lens of social and
cultural reform during the pre-war
era. In illing a missing gap, Selig-
mann shows that Churchill was
by Edwardian standards a social
reformer as First Lord of the Admi-
ralty. he author has delved deep
into primary sources, which are
carefully explained in a bibliograph-
ic essay, to create a must-read book
for any scholar working on Chur-
chill and the Admiralty on the eve
of the First World War.
W. Mark Hamilton is author of he
Nation and the Navy: Methods and Or-
ganization of British Naval Propaganda,
1889–1914 (1986). 
Impatient Patient
Jill Rose, Nursing Churchill:
Wartime Life from the Private
Letters of Winston Churchill’s
Nurse, Amberley Publishing,
2018, 286 pages, £18.99.
ISBN 978–1445677347
Review by Katherine Anne Carter
T
he prospect of another medi-
cal history of Churchill is one
we might initially approach
with caution. A previous history of
Churchill in this vein was said to be
a breach of patient conidentiality
and remains contentious to this
day. So how does Nursing Churchill
compare?
From the outset, it is clear
that the intentions of Doris Miles,
the woman who nursed Churchill
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
back to health from life-threat-
ening pneumonia in 1943, were
very diferent from other authors',
including those rumoured to have
written notes on their sleeve-cufs
during time spent with the patient
so as to write up memoirs at a later
date. Miles’s letters were intended
as a private correspondence, but
through this book her words and
memories of her time with Prime
Minister Churchill have been pre-
served and can now be shared.
Author Jill Rose is the daughter of
Miles, and she approaches the sub-
ject with due care and sensitivity.
Rose cleverly moves from intro-
ducing Churchill to describing in-
ternational events, outlining their
impact on the home front, and
then relaying how the unique cir-
cumstances of war positioned her
mother at the ready when Chur-
chill’s physicians sought out skilled
nursing care to aid his recovery.
One reservation, however, is
the detail given to Doris’s ancestry,
upbringing, and her immediate
circumstances leading up to her
appointment as Churchill’s pri-
vate nurse. Whilst her story is re-
markable in its own right, it is too
lengthy for a work entitled Nursing
Churchill (approximately 150 pages)
Finest Hour 182 / 46
before our two protagonists, Miles
and Churchill, irst encounter each
other.
When nurse and patient do
meet, we are given a glimpse of a
Churchill few chroniclers can ac-
count for, yet it is reassuring to
know that, even in a time of illness
and vulnerability, he was still “all
he is cracked up to be.” From this
point on, the completely unique
and quite extraordinary letters
chart not only Churchill’s illness
but also the relationship that devel-
oped between the two.
Insights into the great man
during his recovery and convales-
cence range from his treatment to
his day-to-day life: from the lack
of pyjamas and the sponge-baths
to the check-ins from Clementine
and doomed attempts to moderate
his diet with Ovaltine. Champagne
was always going to win the day,
appearing consistently at the top
of his “luid intake” charts. he
relationship developed, and Miles
records discussing with her patient
the progress of the Beveridge Re-
port (seen by many as the foun-
dation stone of Britain’s National
Health Service) as well as the prog-
ress of the war.
What really makes this book
compelling is the insight into
Churchill the patient. Character-
istically, he displays humour with
occasional tantrums. Churchill
also mixes a determination to KBO
(Keep Buggering On) with a gen-
uinely caring nature, which is em-
bodied in Miles’s recollection: “the
whole time he treated me more as
an intimate friend than a nurse.”
hough their time together was just
a few weeks, it was a crucial time
in terms of Churchill’s health and
Miles’s career. Her diligence and
care contributed to the war efort
probably more than she ever knew.
For her dedication and round-the-

clock eforts at the vital point in
the Second World War, we should
all be truly grateful. 
Katherine Anne Carter is Project Cura-
tor and Collections Manager at Chartwell.
News from MI5
Nigel West, Churchill’s Spy
Files: MI5’s Top Secret Wartime
Reports, he History Press, 2018,
464 pages, $35/£25.
ISBN 978–0750985499
Review by David Staford
I
n April 1943, as the North Af-
rican campaign approached its
climax in Tunisia, MI5, Britain’s
Security Service, began sending
monthly reports on its activities
to the Prime Minister. Churchill
and secret intelligence had been
companions-in-arms for most of
his political career. As Home Secre-
tary before the First World War, he
authorized the use of general war-
rants for the clandestine opening
of the suspected mail and presided
over the passing of a draconian
Oicial Secrets Act. At the Admi-
ralty in 1914 he created Room 40,
its code breaking operation, and
delighted in reading its reports.
Since becoming prime minister in
May 1940, he had regularly been
receiving the products of its suc-
cessor operation based at Bletchley
Park. Its “Ultra” reports based on
intercepts were delivered to him
personally each day by Sir Stewart
Menzies, head of the Secret Intelli-
gence Service.
Now, MI5 chimed in with its
own regular reports. Designed
for the Prime Minister’s personal
consumption only, they were not
shared with any of his staf, mili-
tary advisers, or even the Cabinet
Secretary. Each document was
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
hand-delivered by MI5 Direc-
tor-General Sir David Petrie, who
took the ile back to his oice when
Churchill had inished reading it.
he last of the reports was dated
June 1945, after the German sur-
render, and detailed the ifty or so
British and Empire soldiers who
had been recruited into the Wafen
SS.
hanks to Nigel West, all these
reports have been brought together
in a single helpful volume accom-
panied by his expert commentaries.
West has written extensively on
MI5’s war, including such celebrat-
ed successes as that of the “Double result of enemy espionage or sub-
version but of simple human care-
Cross System” and its celebrated
lessness. he March 1944 report
agent “Garbo,” which fooled the
included a breach of security con-
Germans so brilliantly about the
cerning a component of the artii-
place and timing of the D-Day land-
cial harbours, codenamed Mulber-
ings.
ry, being constructed for D-Day. In
Success was also the key word
an excess of zeal to ensure that the
in making the careful selection for
work should go smoothly, a Trades
Churchill’s eager eyes. What to tell
Union oicial had sent out to more
him and what to withhold was a
than two hundred addresses, in-
delicate task. he reports had to be
cluding one in the Irish Republic,
kept short, as he was already over-
the minutes of a meeting called to
burdened with paperwork. Yet they
consolidate production. Fortunate-
also had to be interesting enough
ly, the copy posted to Ireland was
to engage his attention while not
intercepted by the censors, and all
encouraging the meddling in detail
the others were recovered. So this
and occasional impetuosity for
was a success story. But Churchill
which he was notorious. Above all,
furiously demanded to know more.
they were designed to highlight
After all, as West explains, the
success stories and draw a veil over
merest hint to the Germans that a
operations that went awry. MI5
scheme had been devised to make
was especially cautious about in-
the capture of ports unnecessary
cluding reports on cases of internal
would betray a central plank of the
subversion in case Churchill raised
entire D-Day project. he trades
them with the Home Secretary Her-
union oicial involved received a
bert Morrison. A Labour member
severe reprimand, and all trades
of the coalition Cabinet who was
unions were warned to be more
fully briefed about MI5’s activities,
careful in the future. he case pro-
Morrison shared his Party’s tradi-
vides telling evidence of how thor-
tional suspicion about the agency
oughly wrought up Churchill was
meddling in domestic politics.
about the Normandy landings.
Interestingly, however, one of
he book reveals a great deal
the more revealing episodes in the
about MI5 operations. What it
dozens of fascinating cases brought
does not explain is why the agency
to Churchill’s attention was not the
Finest Hour 182 / 47

began sending Churchill reports in
the irst place. Yet this is no secret.
By 1943, the Prime Minister was
acutely aware of the enormous do-
mestic powers the security service
Susan Elia MacNeil, he Prisoner
had amassed. “Look what has hap-
pened to the liberties of this coun-
try during the war,” he complained
to one leading newspaper editor
while thinking of the case of the
Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley,
who had just been released after
T
three years of internment. “Men
of position are seized and kept in
prison for years without trial…a
frightful thing to anyone concerned
about British liberties.” It was pre-
cisely because of such suspicions
by Churchill that MI5 decided to
disarm him by persuading him of
the necessary and excellent work it
was doing. It was already clear that
at war’s end there would be a bitter
inter-service struggle over signii-
cantly reduced resources. Some ur-
gent PR by Petrie’s secret army was
vital for the agency’s future health
and prosperity. West’s volume nice-
ly reveals what a skilled operation
they concocted. 
David Staford is author of Churchill
and Secret Service (1997), Roosevelt and
Churchill: Men of Secrets (2000), and
Mission Accomplished: SOE and Italy
1943–1945, the oicial history (2011).
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
Churchill as a Literary
Character: WSC
in Fiction
in the Castle: A Maggie Hope
Mystery, Bantam, 2018,
320 pages, $26.
ISBN 978-0399593826
Portrayal *** Worth Reading ***
he Prisoner in the Castle is the
eighth Maggie Hope Mystery.
his one has Maggie a prison-
er in a castle on a remote Scottish
island where the government con-
ines Special Operations Executive
(SOE) agents who know too much.
It is 12 November 1942 when the
novel begins, and Maggie has been
there since 22 June 1942. he book
is vague as to what exactly Maggie
knows, but it includes “he secret
of Pas-de-Calais and Normandy and
the invasion of occupied Europe.”
Well, Maggie does not really know
about Normandy because in June
1942 the selection of Normandy
as the location for the invasion of
Europe had not been made and was
not to be made until late 1943 after
the Tehran Conference.
For those who have not read
the previous book in the Maggie
Hope series, he Paris Spy, this may
be a bit of-putting. In that book,
Maggie is in Paris as an SOE agent
in June 1942 at Churchill’s behest
to ind out who is betraying SOE
agents in the ield to the Nazis.
Maggie does ind out, and she is
locked away because the truth in-
volves a deception the Allies intend
to use once the D-Day location is
chosen. his deception Mattie re-
fuses to condone. You really should
read he Paris Spy irst if you want
to understand why she is a prison-
er. I suspect that MacNeal did not
say more about precisely why Mag-
Finest Hour 182/ 48
gie is locked away in he Prisoner
in the Castle because it would be a
spoiler for he Paris Spy.
he fact that Maggie is a prison-
er in the castle is not even known
to Churchill. he plot itself is a
reprise of a British country-house
murder mystery where SOE agent
prisoners on the island are being
killed one by one by a Nazi double
agent, while Maggie’s friends in
MI-5 and Scotland Yard are trying
to ind her because she is needed
as a witness in the murder trial of a
serial killer.
MacNeal is back up to three
stars for her portrayal of Churchill,
since there is no repeat of the myth
from he Paris Spy that Churchill
“let Coventry be destroyed in a
Luftwafe attack to protect the se-
crets of Bletchley Park.” If you liked
the earlier books in the series, you
will enjoy this one as well. here
will be more to come. It is only No-
vember 1942 after all. Lots more
for the SOE to do. 
Novels are rated one to three stars
on two questions: Is the portrayal of
Churchill accurate, and is the book
worth reading?
Michael McMenamin and his son Patrick
are co-authors of the Winston Churchill
hrillers he DeValera Deception, he
Parsifal Pursuit, he Gemini Agenda, he
Berghof Betrayal, and he Silver Mosaic.
Heavy Weather
Pressure by David Haig
premiered in Edinburgh in 2014
and played at the Ambassadors
heatre, London, through
1 September 2018.
Review by Jane Flaherty

P
ressure brings to life the
taut, dramatic days before
the launch of Operation
Overlord. At the Southwick House
headquarters in Portsmouth, En-
gland, Allied Supreme Commander
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
has assembled the Allies’ leading
strategists to inalize plans for
the cross-channel D-Day invasion.
Included in the team are weather
trackers led by American Colonel
Irvin P. Krick and Scotsman Dr.
James Stagg, portrayed with great
intensity by the playwright himself
David Haig. Keeping the group co-
ordinated and Eisenhower focused
during these tense days is Lieu-
tenant Kay Summersby, Eisenhow-
er’s driver, conidential assistant,
and alleged paramour.
he play opens on Friday, 2
June 1944, with Stagg’s arrival at
his spare room. Stagg complains
to Summersby that he does not
have all the “urgent” equipment he
requested. “Everything, Dr. Stagg,
is urgent,” she replies coolly in
the most understated moment of
the play. Indeed, “7,000 vessels,
160,000 ground troops, 200,000
naval personnel, 15 hospital ships,
8,000 doctors, and 4 airborne di-
visions” await Eisenhower’s signal
to go, and Ike demands accurate
forecasts from the team of meteo-
rologists every four to six hours to
ix the timing of the attack.
Enter Colonel Krick, the young
and dashing “irst celebrity weath-
erman.” Krick and Stagg disagree
about the forecast for Monday, 5
June. Based on his study of the cur-
rent weather patterns, Stagg rec-
ommends postponing the invasion,
forecasting a storm on Monday.
Krick believes they should launch
as planned, predicting there will be
calm seas and clear skies. Ironically
the young, brash American relies
on historical weather patterns
BOOKS, ARTS, AND CURIOSITIES
to frame his recommendations,
whereas the older, dowdier Stagg
uses the latest scientiic under-
standing of meteorology. Over the
next four scenes, this interplay
continues. hrough the talent of
the actors, the audience feels the
tension and pressure mount as
reports arrive, generals deliberate,
and weathermen disagree.
As we know, Stagg’s analyis
proved accurate. Early on 5 June
there were wind gusts, rough seas,
and a “helluva storm” over the
Channel. Stagg predicted a break
in the weather on 6 June, when
the successful invasion inally
launched. he tight script reveals
the challenge of working through
forces one cannot control; the
movement of storms becomes
central factors in determining the
fate of millions. Haig’s play shows
in deeply moving fashion how
knowledge, tenacity, and humility
can help shape history, despite the
obstacles of nature.
As Kay Summersby, Laura Rog-
ers unequivocally shows longing
for Eisenhower despite his wooden
and, at times, cold responses. he
backstory of Stagg’s wife going into
a diicult labor at a distant hospital
is marred by the intrusive reality
of Haig’s age. At the time of the
D-Day launch, Stagg was forty-four
years old; Haig is sixty-two. While
his age served the story well as a
counter to the younger, American
antagonist, it proved a distraction
here.
Finally, this script is not kind to
the legacy of Eisenhower, portrayed
here by Malcolm Sinclair. Ike blus-
ters and curses, tries to understand
the rules of rugby, speaks of va-
cationing with Summersby, then
reminisces about his deceased son
and longing for family. In Act Four,
after the invasion has launched,
Ike passes out after three drinks
Finest Hour 182/ 49
of single malt whiskey. In the inal
scene, Eisenhower curtly dismisses
both Stagg and Summersby. “Lieu-
tenant Summersby, good luck with
your future. Would you excuse me,”
he states, then turns and departs
leaving Summersby heartbroken. In
truth, Summersby worked beside
Eisenhower through V-E Day. Her
conlicting accounts of their war-
time relationship have kept mem-
oirists and historians speculating.
Stagg wrote in his published diary
that his assignment to the D-Day
planning was temporary and that
he continued to “cherish” the letter
of gratitude Eisenhower sent him
after returning to his regular duties
and family.
Even though we know before
the curtain rises how the story will
end, the dialogue throughout the
play is crisp and moving, and the
performances by the talented ac-
tors kept the audience enthralled.
he staging and lighting, partic-
ularly the displays of wall-sized
weather charts and storms outside
the French windows, were brilliant,
and contributed to a great evening
of theater. 
Jane Flaherty teaches history at Texas
A&M University.
 Churchill’s New Audience | #Armistice100
F
or the past four years, the centenary of the
Great War, I have been managing social media
content for the National World War I Museum
of the United States in Kansas City, Missouri. he
challenge of the job is holding the attention of more
than 150,000 followers. he 24/7
business of reaching new audien-
ces with bite-sized history works
best when we combine pithy
By Megan Spilker
quotes with vibrant imagery in a
steady low of articles that keep our younger demo-
graphic engaged and interested in learning about an
often-forgotten war and people like Churchill, who
survived the experience and learned from it.
he complex legacy of soldier-statesman Win-
ston Churchill during the First World War is not
easy to share in 280 characters or less, but our
collection shows snippets of his experience through
objects and documents from the Royal Navy (which
he oversaw in 1914–15) and photographs from
the Royal Scots Fusiliers (with which he served in
1916). A clipping from he Sydney Mail in 1916, for
instance, declares: “Mr. Lloyd George stated last
The Renault FT-17 French tank, on display at the National World War I Museum, Kansas City
Finest Hour 182 / 50
week that the credit for the introduction of the
new British armoured cars [tanks] was due to Mr.
Churchill, who enthusiastically took up the idea of
making them and long ago converted him.” he mu-
seum also has a glowing review by Andrew Dewar
Gibb of the Royal Scots Fusiliers,
who wrote of Churchill: “No more
popular oicer ever commanded…
he left behind men who will always
be his loyal partisans and admirers.”
hese cameo portraits of Churchill in the Great
War successfully engage our younger audience and
encourage them to learn more.
As we mark the centenary of the Armistice, you
can check in with #Armistice100 hashtag to stay on
top of events and content from my desk that will
commemorate the fallen and celebrate peace. It is a
day that I hope will inspire many new followers to
set aside time for remembering and exploring the
past. 
Megan Spilker is Social Media Manager
at the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
 ƗƝƎƛƗƊƝƒƘƗƊƕƑƞƛƌƑƒƕƕƘƌƒƎƝƢƏƏƒƕƒƊƝƎƛƐƊƗƒƣƊƝƒƘƗƜ
Please send updates to this list to info@winstonchurchill.org
International Churchill Society Australia
John David Olsen, Representative
(0401) 92-7878
jolsen@churchillcentre.org.au
International Churchill Society–Canada
G. R. (Randy) Barber, Chairman
(905) 377-9421 | randybarber@sympatico.ca
www.winstonchurchillcanada.ca
INDEPENDENT SOCIETIES
AB–CALGARY: Rt Hon Sir Winston Spencer
Churchill Society of Calgary
Mark Milke
mmilke@telus.net
AB–EDMONTON: Rt Hon Sir Winston
Spencer Churchill Society of Edmonton
Dr. Roger Hodkinson | (780) 433-1191
rogerhodkinson@shawbiz.ca
BC–VANCOUVER: Rt Hon Sir Winston
Spencer Churchill Society of British Columbia
www.winstonchurchillbc.org
April Accola | (778) 321-3550
aprilaccola@hotmail.com
ON–OTTAWA: Sir Winston Churchill Society
of Ottawa
www.ottawachurchillsociety.com
Ronald I. Cohen | (613) 692-6234
churchillsociety@chartwellcomm.com
ON–TORONTO: Churchill Society for the
Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy
www.churchillsociety.org
Robert A. O’Brien | (416) 977-0956
ro’brien@couttscrane.com
Churchill Club of Iceland
Arni Sigurdsson, President | (354) 846-0149
arni.sigurdsson@icloud.com
The Churchill Centre
New Zealand
Mike Groves, Representative | (9) 537-6591
mike.groves@xtra.co.nz
International Churchill Society, Portugal
João Carlos Espada, President
(0351) 217214129
jespada@iep.lisboa.ucp.pt
The International Churchill
Society (United Kingdom)
Andrew Smith, Executive Director
(01223) 336179
andy@amscreative.co.uk
ESSEX: ICS (UK) Woodford / Epping Branch
Tony Woodhead | (0208) 508-4562
anthony.woodhead@virginmedia.com
KENT: ICS (UK) Chartwell Branch
Tony Millard | (01737) 767996
tonymill21@hotmail.com
N. YORKSHIRE: ICS (UK) Northern Branch
Derek Greenwell | (01795) 676560
dg@ftcg.co.uk
N. WALES: The Churchill Club of Conwy
Barbara Higgins | (01492) 535311
higginsrbm@aol.com
The International Churchill Society
Michael F. Bishop, Executive Director
(202) 994-4744
mbishop@winstonchurchill.org
AK: Rt Hon Sir Winston Spencer
Churchill Society of Alaska
Judith & James Muller | (907) 786-4740
jwmuller@alaska.edu
CA–BAY AREA: Churchillians-by-the-Bay
Gregory B. Smith
gbslist@comcast.net
CA–LOS ANGELES SoCal Churchillians
Leon Waszak
leonwaszak@aol.com
CO: Rocky Mountain Churchillians
Lew House | (303) 661-9856
lew@lew1874.com
DC: Washington Society for Churchill
Samuel D. Ankerbrandt | (703) 999-7955
sankerbrandt@gmail.com
FL: Churchill Society of South Florida
Rodolfo Milani | (305) 668-4419
churchillsocietyofsouthflorida@gmail.com
GA: Winston Churchill Society of Georgia
www.georgiachurchill.org
Joseph Wilson | (404) 966-1408
www.georgiachurchill.com
IL: Churchill Society of Chicagoland
Dr. Joseph Troiani | (708) 220-4257
cdrjet@aol.com
Finest Hour 182 / 51
LA: Churchill Society of New Orleans
J. Gregg Collins | (504) 616-7535
jgreggcollins@msn.com
ChurchillSocietyNewOrleans.com
MI: Winston Churchill Society of Michigan
Richard Marsh | (734) 913-0848
rcmarsha2@aol.com
MO: Mid-Missouri Friends of the National
Churchill Museum
Anne Weller
wella4203@gmail.com
NEW ENGLAND: New England Churchillians
Joseph L. Hern | (617) 773-1907
jhern@jhernlaw.com
NY: New York Churchillians
Gregg Berman | (212) 751-3389
Gregg.Berman@tklaw.com
NC: North Carolina Churchillians
www.churchillsocietyofnorthcarolina.org
Craig Horn | (704) 844-9960
dcraighorn@carolina.rr.com
OR: Churchill Society of Portland
William D. Schaub | (503) 548-2509
wdschaubpc@gmail.com
PA: Churchill Society of Philadelphia
Earl M. Baker | (610) 647-6973
earlbaker@idv.net
TN: Churchill Society of Tennessee
Jim Drury
jimdrury@bellsouth.net
churchillsocietytn.org
TX: Churchill Centre South Texas -
Austin & San Antonio
Ron Luke, Co-Chair | (512) 371-8166
rluke@rpconsulting.com
Don Jakeway, Co-Chair | (210) 845-2405
Actionthisday@satx.rr.com
WA: Churchill Centre Seattle
www.churchillseattle.blogspot.com
Simon Mould | (425) 286-7364
simon@cckirkland.org
WI: Churchill Society of Wisconsin
Stacy G. Terris | (414) 254-8525
stacy@churchillsocietyofwi.org