Thus, at the inner cabinet meeting of March 18, the government faced two Churchillian challenges: his call for a Grand Alliance and a demand that the government join France in a defensive alliance with Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain had asked the military Chiefs of Staff whether they were ready for war. He knew the answer; though his rearmament record was better than Baldwin’s, it could hardly be compared to Hitler’s. Production of the Hawker Hurricanes had begun five months earlier; the gull-winged Spitfire, now being redesigned to accommodate four additional machine guns (for a total of eight), had followed. Both were superior to the Luftwaffe’s best fighters, but tightfisted budgets meant only a handful could be put in the sky now. Therefore, the Air Ministry’s reply to the prime minister concluded that the RAF “cannot at the present time be said to be in any way fit to undertake operations on a major war scale.” The Admiralty and the War Office agreed that Britain was “at a stage of rearmament when we are not ready for war.” After these précis had been reviewed by the inner cabinet, according to the minutes summarizing the meeting, Halifax said they demonstrated “conclusively” that it “behooved us to take every step that we could and to use every argument that we could think of to dissuade France from going to the aid of Czechoslovakia.”130
But this argument was specious in itself. The questions the P.M. had put to the chiefs had been highly selective, and minority reports had been suppressed. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, who headed the RAF’s Fighter Command and would lead it during the Battle of Britain, believed that the speed and high rate of climb which marked Britain’s new fighters, combined with the chain of radar towers now rising along England’s southeast shores, demonstrated that hostile bombers could be intercepted in clear weather, when 60 percent of enemy raids could be expected. Radar also meant that continuous fighter patrols could be discontinued, and radar accuracy was improving every day.
Halifax had previously told his FO advisers that negotiations for Churchill’s alliance would by their very nature be protracted, proving “both a provocation and an opportunity for Germany to dispose of Czechoslovakia” before the ink had dried. Colonial Secretary Ormsby-Gore thought the commitment would be “bad and dangerous”; Lord President Hailsham believed it would “hasten an attack” on the Czechs; Minister for Defence Inskip called Czechoslovakia “an unstable unit in Central Europe”; and Chancellor of the Exchequer Simon, agreeing, added that it was a “very artificial creation with no roots in the past.” (The border between Germany and the Sudetenland had endured for two hundred years.) The decisive voices, however, were those of the foreign secretary and the prime minister. Halifax advanced the remarkable argument that without a formal commitment both France and Germany would be kept “guessing,” and would be less inclined to precipitate a general war. Chamberlain agreed. England, he told the cabinet, was “in no position from the armament point of view” to go to war—the responsibility for that plight was unmentioned—and France was “in a hopeless position…. No effective help could be swiftly brought to Czechoslovakia,” and if the Reich could get what it wanted through negotiation, there was “no reason to suppose that [it] would reject such a procedure in favor of one based on violence.” The British should take the initiative in pursuing a solution “more acceptable to Germany.” The cabinet agreed that it would be “a mistake to plunge into a certain catastrophe in order to avoid a future danger that might never materialize.” Bringing pressure on Prague to yield to Sudetendeutsche demands was, Halifax acknowledged, “a disagreeable business” to be accomplished “as pleasantly as possible.” He endorsed the prime minister’s conclusion “that we must decline to undertake any fresh commitment in regard to Czechoslovakia and that we must try and persuade Dr. Beneš and also the French Government that the best course would be for Czechoslovakia to make the best terms she could with Germany,” meanwhile “impressing on the French… the imperative necessity… of arriving at some amicable and permanent settlement.”131
Afterward Halifax told Cadogan that the members had been “unanimous” in agreeing that “Czechoslovakia is not worth the bones of a single British grenadier.” That was not entirely candid. Duff Cooper, first lord of the Admiralty, had protested the note to the French as a “cold refusal to give any support to France” which “read like a declaration of isolation.” If France and Germany went to war, he argued, “we should have to fight too, 132
To the world outside No. 10 and even to backbenchers, Chamberlain and his cabinet gave the impression that they believed that the Germans and Czechs would reach a sensible settlement of their differences. In such a tangled web England could not be blindly committed by French decisions, but should war come, the Union Jack would fly beside the tricolor—or so the world outside supposed. In fact, the prime minister and his foreign secretary were determined that under no circumstances should England and France go to war to save Czechoslovakia. On March 21 Halifax told Foreign Office aides that the great thing was “to dissuade France from going to the aid of Czechoslovakia.” Or, as Hilaire Belloc put it while lunching with Duff Cooper, Chamberlain’s policy was:
Dear Czecho-Slovakia,
I don’t think they’ll attack yer
But I’m not going to back yer.
As part of their report to the prime minister, the combined chiefs, in an assessment which would have amazed their counterparts in Berlin, had declared it to be “certain that Germany could overrun the whole of Czechoslovakia in less than a week.” That Friday, March 18, Chamberlain told the cabinet of his conviction that Hitler’s concern was limited to the Sudetenland—that he had no designs on the rest of the country because it was his policy “to include all Germans in the Reich but not to include other nationalities.” It was not one of Neville’s more prescient statements, but he enlarged upon it the following Thursday afternoon in a House of Commons foreign policy debate. His Majesty’s Government, he said, had decided to stand aloof from continental alliances. If France chose to go to war over the Sudetenland, Britain would not be committed to join her. In Czechoslovakia, the prime minister said, British “vital interests” were not concerned. Of course, the French had been told that legalities were irrelevant “in the case of two great countries like Britain and France, with long associations of friendship, with interests closely interwoven, devoted to the same ideals of democratic liberty, and determined to uphold them.” An aide-mémoire to that effect had been sent to the British ambassador in Paris. The Russians had received no such assurance.134
As Churchill rose to respond, Virginia Cowles, in the Strangers’ Gallery for the first time, “looked down,” she wrote, “on the sea of black coats and white faces.” To her Winston first “seemed only one man of many; but when he spoke his words rang through the House with terrible finality.” As he often did, he attributed to Chamberlain opinions Chamberlain did not hold. He was glad to hear that Britain’s arrangements for mutual defense with the French republic amounted to a defensive alliance. But “why not say so?” he asked. “Why not make it effective by a military convention of the most detailed character?” A similar commitment might be made to the Czechs, not “a permanent or automatic pledge,” but one contingent upon “an act of violent aggression” by the Germans. Unless the Nazi pressure on Prague were counterbalanced by other great powers, the democratic state Beneš and Masaryk had founded “will be forced to make continuous surrenders, far beyond the bounds of what any impartial tribunal would consider just or right, until finally her sovereignty, her independence, her integrity, have been destroyed.” It was absurd, said Churchill, to pretend that England could remain detached, and naive to believe that the Sudeten crisis would be Hitler’s last: “The might behind the German Dictator increases daily. His appetite may grow with eating. The forces of law and freedom have for a long time known nothing but rebuffs, failures, and humiliations. Their influence would be immensely increased by any signs of concerted action and initiative and combination.” England should be committed not only to Paris and Prague but to
the integrity of every state which might come within range of Wehrmacht artillery.135
Great danger lay, he continued, in growing complacent during lulls in Hitler’s demands: “After a boa constrictor has devoured its prey, it often has a considerable digestive spell.” Each Nazi outrage—the defiant unveiling of the Luftwaffe and conscription, the seizure of the Rhineland and then its fortification—had been followed by a pause. “Now,” he said,
after Austria has been struck down, we are all disturbed and alarmed, but in a little while there may be another pause…. Then people will be saying, “See how the alarmists have been confuted; Europe has calmed down, it has all blown over, and the war scare has passed away.” The Prime Minister will perhaps repeat what he said a few weeks ago, that the tension in Europe is greatly relaxed. The Times will write a leading article to say how silly those people look who on the morrow of the Austrian incorporation raised a clamor for exceptional action in foreign policy and home defence, and how wise the Government were not to let themselves be carried away by this passing incident.
To take such an attitude, he said, was indefensible, a flagrant defiance of the facts. Every day, every week, the people of Austria were being subjected “to the rigors of Nazi domination.” Every hour, every minute, the forces “of conquest and intimidation” were regrouping for another assault. Soon “another stroke” would fall. “What I dread,” he told the House, “is that the impulse now given to active effort may pass away when the dangers are not diminishing, but accumulating and gathering, as country after country is involved in the Nazi system, and as their vast preparations reach their final perfection.”
He was nearing the end. The Commons was still as still. He lowered his head and continued, the slight impediment in his speech adding to the drama of his delivery as he followed the psalm form of his notes:
For five years I have talked to the House
on these matters—not with very great success.
I have watched this famous island
descending incontinently, fecklessly,
the stairway which leads to a dark gulf.
It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning,
but after a bit the carpet ends.
A little farther on there are only flagstones,
and a little farther on still
these break beneath your feet….136
Then, in measured tones:
If mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory—gone with the wind!
Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery. That is the position—that is the terrible transformation that has taken place…. Now is the time at last to rouse the nation…. We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilisation.137
As he took his seat, the House broke into a hubbub of noise; members rattled their papers and shuffled their way to the lobby. Virginia Cowles was in the House lobby, awaiting a prominent Conservative MP who had invited her to tea. As he strode up she asked him his opinion of Winston’s speech. He replied: “Oh, it was the usual Churchillian filibuster; he likes to rattle the sabre and he does it jolly well, but you always have to take it with a grain of salt.” She recalls: “That was the general attitude of the House of Commons in those days.” Even Churchill realized that Chamberlain’s determination not to “rouse the nation” was echoing the mood of countrymen who did not want to be roused. Fleet Street, in step with its readers, ignored Churchill’s speech and reported Chamberlain’s. The liberal Manchester Guardian declared, “Mr. Chamberlain has overcome the enemies in his own camp,” and in the New Statesman John Maynard Keynes urged the Czechs to negotiate a settlement with Hitler. The Chamberlains and the Cadogans drove to Cliveden for a weekend party with, as Cadogan put it, an “ordinary sort of crowd.” The P.M. won the after-dinner game of musical chairs every time. They always let him win. It meant so much to him.138
The morning after his dire warning to the House, Churchill received an unexpected, dismaying, and most unwelcome letter from the editor of Beaverbrook’s Evening Standard, terminating his contract—in effect, firing him. Thus ended two years of fortnightly columns, depriving him of his most valuable public rostrum, because, the editor wrote, “it has been evident that your views on foreign affairs and the part this country should play are entirely opposed to those held by us.” Winston replied that his “divergence from Lord Beaverbrook’s policy” had been “obvious from the beginning, but it clearly appears to me to be less marked than in the case of the Low cartoons.” Then, scathingly: “I rather thought that Lord Beaverbrook prided himself upon forming a platform in the Evening Standard for various opinions including of course his own.”139
It was a setback, an annual loss of £1,820—about $9,000 at the then prevailing rate of exchange—and the timing could scarcely have been worse. He was broke. He sat in his Chartwell study, staring at columns of figures which should have made him blush. As chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920s he had presided over England’s fiscal affairs for nearly five years, yet his personal finances were hopelessly muddled. Few writers could match his income; during the past eight years he had earned £102,102, an annual average of £12,763, the equivalent of about $62,000. Chartwell, his London flat, and general expenses alone exceeded £10,000 each year, and his travels, secretaries, researchers, and the lavish lunches and dinners he gave for colleagues and visitors from the Continent drove him deeper and deeper into the red.140
The year before, he had faced his first real financial crisis. His letters to Clementine in the first weeks of 1937 are shadowed by a veiled and then explicit preoccupation with money which was wholly out of character—small attempts at economizing while he spread himself elsewhere. He had set up Randolph and Sarah in Westminster Garden flats and had “told Sarah I will give her £200 toward expenses.” But, he added defensively, he was only fulfilling promises made long before. Fuel for Chartwell, delivered “in five ton batches at £9.11.0 each… used to last a fortnight,” he reminded her, but the last load kept them warm for three months, despite weather that was “raw and generally damnable.” Moreover, he had lost only £12 at bezique, he wrote, and “the wine has been very strictly controlled and little drunk.” Also, telephone bills showed “a marked reduction. We are having fortnightly accounts from the Post Office which enables us to check it.” Finally, he wrote, on a note of triumph, “I am not taking Inches with me abroad.”141
Clemmie knew that the little saved by leaving his valet behind would shrink to insignificance beside his Riviera expenses. And indeed, he glumly wrote on February 2 that he had been talking to a Mr. Frank Capon, a real estate agent. Capon “tells me,” he wrote, “that there is a lady nibbling around for a house like Chartwell, and even mentioning Chartwell.” The agent said he would “on no account mention any figure less than £30,000. If I could see £25,000 I should close with it. If we do not get a good price we can carry on for a year or two more. But no good offer should be refused, having regard to the fact that our children are almost all flown and my life is probably in its closing decade.”142
Experience had taught him that budgets did not work with his family. The reason—though he would never have acknowledged it—was that he was the family spendthrift. Nevertheless, in April he drew up a balance sheet cutting their personal expenses to £6,000, solemnly telling them: “This cannot on any account be exceeded.” In that year, as in the years preceding, it was exceeded by over £4,000. The flaw in the budget was that the head of
the household was exempt; and Churchill had no intention of curtailing his own extravagant life-style. Indeed, no one except Clemmie dared raise the question. By the process of elimination, therefore, he concluded that he would have to work harder. He wouldn’t rattle a tin cup, but he could no longer turn his back on lecture fees, though earning them meant a loss of time better spent working toward the strengthening of England’s defenses.143
Now, a year later, he seemed to have no choice—his home and its eighty acres must be sold. Even so, it appeared he would have to quit Parliament to make money, as a writer, lecturer, and/or businessman. His security had lain in his reserve of American stocks. It was from there, where he felt safest, that the blow fell. Early in March 1938 the U.S. recession hit Wall Street. Stock prices plummeted so swiftly, and so deeply, that Churchill’s brokers, Vickers da Costa, told him that his American investments had been wiped out. In fact, it was worse than that—his share account owed the brokerage firm £18,000. Where could he find so tremendous a sum? After his History of the English-speaking Peoples was finished—but only then—he would be paid £15,000. Even so he would be £3,000 in the red. His earnings as a journalist were high; but they weren’t large enough to meet Britain’s income tax and supertaxes. Chartwell must be put on the market.
In his youth Churchill had been the highest-paid correspondent in the Empire; perhaps the world. His articles still brought premium rates from newspapers and magazines, but he knew little of modern journalism. He decided to buy a full page from The Times to advertise Chartwell’s attractions and availability. It was scheduled to run on April 2. He expected, at most, that the fact of his putting up his home for sale might merit a discreet paragraph in The Times’s “Londoner’s Diary.” But famous writers often forget that they are famous, and the malice of political enemies slips the memory of statesmen who hold no grudges themselves. Thus Winston was unprepared for what actually happened. Beaverbrook’s Daily Express picked up the story immediately, and Winston’s once and future friend, now a devout appeaser, managed to insinuate that Churchill was irresponsible, telling the Express’s readers that he was auctioning off his home while attempting to sabotage Chamberlain’s thrifty budgets. The paper’s March 17 headline read: “CHURCHILL FOLLOWING L.G. TO PARIS.” To the Beaver, Paris meant intrigue with a weak ally when the sound course was to embrace virile Nazi Germany. The story beneath the head drove in this long needle: “In some quarters there has been a disposition to question the desirability of British politicians visiting Paris at this juncture.” Hearst never sank lower. And The Times ran an account on its main news page—in those days its front page was still all ads—headed: “MR CHURCHILL’S HOME IN KENT FOR SALE,” and including personal details which deeply offended Winston.144