Amery paused. He said: “We are fighting today for our life, for our liberty, for our all. We cannot go on being led as we are.” Again he paused, assessing the mood of the House. He had them rapt. In his research he had come upon another quotation. It was brutal; he might lose his converts if he used it, but he was carried away, and looking toward the front bench he plunged ahead:
I have quoted certain words of Oliver Cromwell. I will quote certain other words. I do it with great reluctance, because I am speaking of those who are old friends and associates of mine, but they are words which, I think, are applicable to the present situation. This is what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament when he thought it was no longer fit to conduct the affairs of the nation:
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”213
In the opinion of some close to Chamberlain, Amery’s pitiless attack shattered him. Churchill later wrote: “These were terrible words coming from a friend and colleague of many years, a fellow Birmingham Member, and a Privy Councillor of distinction and experience.” In Nicolson’s opinion the general impression left by the debate was that “we are unprepared to meet the appalling attack which we know is about to be delivered against us.” The response was “something more than anxiety; it is one of actual fear, but it is a very resolute fear and not hysteria or cowardice in the least. In fact I have seldom admired the spirit of the House so much as I did today.” He believed “there is no doubt that the Government is very rocky and anything may happen tomorrow.” In his diary the loyal Henry Channon noted of the first day’s debate: “The atmosphere was intense, and everywhere one heard whispers: ‘What will Winston do?’ ”214
There is a jeu d’esprit that Frenchmen tell—though only to one another—of how, when God created the earth, he wanted one perfect place, so he made France. Then, seeing what he had done, he decided he had gone too far, so he made Frenchmen. At times foreigners also repeat the story, and it was enjoying an exceptional vogue in early May 1940. Anyone who has studied the fighting which was about to begin as the Wehrmacht surged into France cannot doubt that Reynaud was justified in his determination to cashier the indecisive, almost inaccessible Généralissime Gamelin. However, the premier’s timing was poor. It may be that having no commander in chief was preferable to the French Hamlet in Vincennes, but the problem was larger than that. It was political, because Gamelin’s champion, the republic’s minister of defense, was Daladier, who wanted to be premier again and was awaiting only an opportunity to strike. Cashiering the généralissime would provoke Daladier’s resignation and, therefore, a cabinet crisis. France could survive without a government now, but not if she were invaded. But Reynaud’s mind was made up. By May 8 the document of indictment was ready; the premier called a cabinet meeting for the following day. The prospect, for everyone except Germans, was depressing. Marianne would face a powerful foe with her leaders quarreling among themselves. Once again poilus would reel backward shouting, “Nous sommes trahis!” and in a sense they would be right, though the betrayers would be les députés they had elected to office.
But Paris in the spring! In that second week in May the place God had made was a poem of beauty. The gardens of the Luxembourg and the Tuileries were in full blossom; so were the chestnut trees along the Seine; the overarching sky was unflawed by a single cloud, and on the boulevards and the Champs Élysées one could meditate or amuse oneself with friends in what Henri de Kerillis later remembered as “a bath of sun.” The Duchess of Windsor worked at a canteen for poilus; Clare Boothe Luce, who had come to see her, thought the capital “insanely beautiful,” with “unstartled birds singing in the gardens” and the flower market at the Madeleine “madly colorful.” Theatres, cinemas, and nightclubs were packed; so were the stands at the Auteuil for spring racing; so were the halls of the Grand Palais, where the annual art exhibition was on display. In the rue de la Paix the windows of the great gem stores glittered with rubies, garnets, diamonds, jade, opal, sapphires, and emeralds, and business was brisk. On the Place Vendôme elegantly dressed women moved through the gilded corridors on their way to tea or lunch. Afterward de Kerillis would remember “how carefree and lighthearted” Parisians were.215
London is less celebrated for its beauty, though there are those who prefer it because, among other reasons, it never occurred to Londoners—and certainly not to Churchill—that England’s capital should be surrendered rather than be submitted to the ravages of battle. The British were prepared to sacrifice London house by house, to be destroyed rather than dishonored. The French loved honor, but loved Paris more, as they would demonstrate before summer arrived. On Wednesday, May 8, the second day of the Norway debate in the House of Commons, Hitler set the final date for Fall Gelb. It would begin at 5:35 A.M. on Friday. This would be confirmed Thursday when he flashed the irrevocable code word “Danzig” to his commanders. Meantime, the Führer boarded his special train for his headquarters, Felsennest (Aerie), near Münstereifel, twenty-five miles southwest of Bonn. That Wednesday, as the House of Commons gathered, with its leaders feeling they were on the verge of something tremendous, though none could identify it, Shirer was cabling New York from Berlin. As he later wrote, he advised his home office “to hold one of our correspondents in Amsterdam instead of shipping him off to Norway, where the war had ended anyway.” That evening his military censors “allowed me to hint in my broadcast that there would soon be action in the West, including Holland and Belgium.” Only later did he learn why. The Nazis were deliberately focusing attention on the northern and western parts of the Low Countries, in the hope that no one would notice the German troop concentrations around the Ardennes.216
Wednesday morning Labour’s leaders were busy. Hugh Dalton breakfasted with Hugh Gaitskell, who told him that “high Foreign Office officials are leaking very freely.” Halifax, he had learned, had threatened to resign unless Trondheim were attacked, and Lord Cork and Orrery had said that “in the first twenty-four hours”—before the Germans arrived—“I could have taken Trondheim with my bare hands.” His request to do so had been denied, not by Churchill, but by Whitehall.217
That morning’s Daily Herald, the voice of Labour, reported that the party’s Parliamentary Executive would meet before noon to determine its tactics in the concluding day of the debate. The Herald’s political correspondent, Maurice Webb, predicted “sweeping reconstruction of the Government, involving the possible resignation of Mr. Chamberlain… in the near future.” Webb doubted, however, that events would “take this drastic turn at once. Indeed, as I have previously stated, the Government will get through the present debate without immediate disaster.” He noted suggestions “that the Labour Party should either put down a vote of censure or force a division on a motion for the adjournment, a motion which, if passed, would bring the Government down.” To his subsequent regret, he called this “an unwise tactic…. The view taken by the most experienced critics of the Government is that the debate should be allowed to end without any direct challenge.”218
Herbert Morrison and Dalton had given Webb their assurance that there would be no call for a vote. However, he had not talked to Clement Attlee. Throughout Tuesday’s session Attlee had kept a sharp eye on the benches opposite. He had observed the hostility toward their prime minister, and he meant to measure it. The leadership meeting, which he chaired, opened at 10:30 A.M., and he proposed that the Opposition force a division. Several of his colleagues were reluctant, arguing, as Dalton did, that “a vote at this stage” would “consolidate the Government majority,” that it was precisely what Chamberlain and Halifax wanted. Nevertheless, Attlee’s motion carried and was ratified at a later meeting of Labour backbenchers. Labour therefore prepared to make the first move when Parliament assembled. Morrison rose, as usual, to bait the front bench. At last, he observed, the prime minister had found a newspaper endorsement outside Britain and her commonwealth. It was the official organ of Franco’
s Spanish Falangists. He also read a few lines from Hoare’s Norway speech from the BBC in The Listener. “Today our wings are spread over the Arctic. They are sheathed in ice….” Hoare flushed crimson as the House roared. Morrison said: “Hon. Members understandably laugh, but I am not quoting this for the purpose of arousing amusement, because it really is serious, for it is an indication of the delusions from which the Government are suffering.” He then announced that “in view of the gravity of the events which we are debating… every Member has a responsibility to record his particular judgment upon them.” Therefore, “we feel that we must divide the House at the end of our debate today.” The Opposition was calling for a censure of the government.219
Chamberlain was startled, then angry. The cockiness of Morrison’s manner—he always seemed to be lecturing a particularly stupid child—was enough to get under anyone’s skin. Moreover, the prime minister had not expected this. There was an understanding between whips that if either party planned to ask for a vote, the other would be told, although recently Sir Charles Edwards, Labour’s chief whip, had warned Margesson, his Tory counterpart, that he couldn’t always carry out his side of the bargain, explaining apologetically, “It’s a very difficult party to manage, you know.”220
Thus taken unaware, the prime minister miscalculated. He jumped up and sputtered: “The words which the right hon. gentleman has just uttered make it necessary for me to intervene for a moment or two at this stage.” Dalton thought he showed “his teeth like a rat” as he cried, “It may well be that it is a duty to criticise the Government. I do not seek to evade criticism, but I say to my friends in the House, and I have friends in the House”—here, according to Nicolson, his expression became “a leer of triumph”—“[that] no Government can prosecute a war efficiently unless it has public and parliamentary support. I accept this challenge. I welcome it indeed. At least I shall see who is with us and who is against us, and I call on my friends to support us in the Lobby tonight.”221
Churchill described this as “an unfortunate passage”; his fellow Tories, he noted, “sat abashed and silenced.” “Friends,” in the context and idiom of the time and place, meant members of the P.M.’s party. Thus, in a partisan stroke, he had reduced the debate to the lowest level of politics, demanding that men belonging to the majority vote for him, regardless of how they felt about his prosecution of the war. It led to an unforgettable speech. Churchill called it “the last decisive intervention of Mr. Lloyd George in the House.”222
He was now approaching eighty, and the awesome fire which had fueled the passion of the young Welsh crusader for justice had been reduced to embers. But Chamberlain, by cheapening the office Lloyd George had held in the last war, kindled them; in a final pyrotechnical display he evoked memories of the days when he was in his forties and Churchill in his thirties and the two radicals, the older as chancellor and the younger as president of the Board of Trade, had forged an alliance to emasculate the House of Lords and bring England a maximum work day for miners, pensions for the aged, free meals and free medical attention for all British schoolchildren, and insurance for the jobless and the sick. Violet Bonham Carter, whose father was then the prime minister, had watched them both, and now in 1940, sitting in the Strangers’ Gallery, she thought this, Lloyd George’s last bow, “the most deadly speech I have ever heard from him—voice, gesture, everything was brought into play to drive home the attack.”223
He tried to exculpate Churchill—“I do not think the First Lord was responsible for all the things that happened in Norway”—but Churchill immediately interrupted him: “I take full responsibility for everything that has been done by the Admiralty, and I take my full share of the burden.” After warning Winston not to allow himself “to be converted into an air-raid shelter to keep the splinters from hitting his colleagues,” Lloyd George turned on Chamberlain:
It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister’s friends. It is a far bigger issue. He has appealed for sacrifice. The nation is prepared for every sacrifice so long as the Government show clearly what they are aiming at, and so long as the nation is confident that those who are leading it are doing their best. I say solemnly that the Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory in this war than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.224
Now the outcome of the House vote was a source of speculation. Labour could not win. They held 166 seats to the Conservatives’ 387. Many men could not switch; commitments had been made, papers signed, obligations incurred. To many others, casting a Conservative vote was a sacrament. And still others knew that if they broke with the party they would be pariahs in their own constituencies, even their own homes. But Chamberlain, smug only yesterday, began to feel uneasy. If the great Tory majority thinned perceptibly, his problems could become grave. Keyes, Amery, and Lloyd George had stirred the House. He was lucky Churchill was on the front bench and would anchor the government’s position in the last speech of the evening.
As the debate continued into evening it became obvious that Winston would not be called before 10:00 P.M. He wandered into the smoking room, and was poking a hole in a new cigar when he glanced up and saw Harold Macmillan. Macmillan recalled long afterward: “He beckoned to me, and I moved to speak to him. I wished him luck, but added that I hoped his speech would not be too convincing. ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘Because,’ I replied, ‘we must have a new Prime Minister, and it must be you.’ He answered gruffly that he had signed on for the voyage and would stick to the ship. But I don’t think he was angry with me.”225
Churchill was, however, worried. After Lloyd George’s valediction he had been heard to say to Kingsley Wood, “This is all making it damned difficult for me tonight,” and to Walter Elliott that the old man had been “absolutely devastating.” Nevertheless, when the Speaker recognized him shortly after ten o’clock, he squared away like a prizefighter, assuming his most pugilistic stance. He had taken the queen’s shilling, had signed on for the cruise, and intended to give the captain his best possible performance. In his diary Channon observed, “One saw at once that he was in a bellicose mood, alive and enjoying himself, relishing the ironical position in which he found himself: i.e. that of defending his enemies, and a cause in which he did not believe.” Channon called the speech “slashing, vigourous… a magnificent piece of oratory. I was in the gallery behind him, with Rab”—R. A. Butler—“who was several times convulsed with laughter.”226
Winston said he understood Keyes’s “desire to lead a valiant attack” but regretted “that this natural impulse should have led him to cast aspersions upon his old shipmates and his old staff officers, Sir Dudley Pound and Vice-Admiral Phillips.” Then he turned on those who had deplored the prime minister’s appeal to his friends. He had shared their dismay, but he wasn’t going to let that prevent him from having fun with them. “He thought he had some friends,” he said, “and I hope he has some friends. He certainly had a good many when things were going well.” At one point he said that Allied shipping losses had almost been redeemed by new shipbuilding and the capture of German ships. “Oh!” cried Emanuel Shinwell, an exasperated socialist and a favorite Churchill target. Winston rounded on him. “I daresay the hon. Member does not like that. He would like me to have a bad tale to tell. That is why he skulks in a corner.” A Labour MP, “rather the worse for drink,” according to Channon, had never heard the word “skulks”; he thought Winston had said “skunks” and protested, with the support of several colleagues who had it aright, that he had used unparliamentary language. The brief exchange in Hansard is hilarious:
[Interruption]
Mr. Churchill: What are we quarreling about? [HON. MEMBERS: “You should withdraw that.”] I will not withdraw it.
Mr. Sloan (South Ayreshire): On a point of order—[Interruption]
Mr. Maclean: On a point of order. Is “skulk” a Parliamentary word? The right hon. Gentleman used the word “skulk” and I am askin
g whether it is a Parliamentary word to use to another Member?
Mr. Speaker: It depends whether it applies accurately or not.
Mr. Maclean: Further to that point of order—[Interruption]
Mr. Churchill: Finally—[Interruption]—Hon. Members dare not listen to the argument.
Mr. Maclean: Are we to understand, Mr. Speaker, that a word becomes Parliamentary if it is accurate?
Mr. Churchill: All day long we have had abuse, and now hon. Members opposite will not even listen….227
He had a knack for that—drawing them out and then playing the outraged injured party. “How much of the fire was real, how much ersatz, we shall never know,” Channon wrote, “but he amused and dazzled everyone with his virtuosity.” John Peck, a young civil servant who had recently joined Winston’s staff, was fascinated—and troubled. Winston, he later wrote, “was constantly heckled by the Labour opposition, and he tore into them vehemently and often angrily. I had never heard him in action in the House of Commons and I was strangely uneasy.” Somehow, he felt, “it did not ring entirely true.” Actually, he reflected, it was impossible to offer “a completely sincere and heartfelt reply” to the attacks on the government. “Churchill knew that he was defending positions which were in many respects, indefensible. He knew that if the bitterest critics had their way, Chamberlain would resign. He knew that, in that case, he would probably become Prime Minister himself. But throughout the entire political crisis he never spoke or acted except in absolute loyalty to his Prime Minister.” The fact was that the more eloquent his defense of Chamberlain, the more Chamberlain’s chances shrunk. After this no one would ask: “If not Chamberlain, who?”228