Heart of Suffering: A Winston & Churchill Case

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This was but one of many examples of how personalized and unstructured Eden's decision-making had become in 10 Downing Street. Eden was depending on his political instinct from 14 October onwards, but how sound were those instincts at that time when he had only a week earlier an exceptionally high fever, was daily taking a mixture of sedatives to sleep and stimulants to counter the effect of the drugs, and had been under prolonged stress since the end of July?

Alec Douglas Home, one of nature's gentlemen and someone who would always lean over backwards to be fair, was a supporter of Eden's policy, serving on the Egypt Committee. He described Eden's conduct of such meetings in a retrospective BBC radio programme in Extraordinary, strange things happened. He described Eden's and Lloyd's mood, saying: He makes no attempt to hide that Eden was highly strung, but he writes that he seldom became angry when really important matters were involved, but instead did so over irritating trivialities, usually in his own home, and very seldom did he lose his temper in public.

An exception to this that he cites was when Eden lost his temper on the floor of the House of Commons. General Glubb, the British Commander in Chief of the Jordanian Army, had been peremptorily dismissed by King Hussein, and Eden, who thought Nasser had been trying to destabilize Jordan for some time, overreacted. The Labour Opposition forced a debate in the House of Commons on 7 March , and when Eden came to make the wind-up speech, the House was in a noisy mood.

He is fighting very bad fatigue which is sapping his power of thought. Tonight's winding up of the debate was a shambles. I want him destroyed, can't you understand? Another example of Eden's irritability is described in an incident involving the Foreign Office lawyer who reported back to Eden on the research he had ordered into the legality of Nasser's action, saying that Nasser's action was indeed perfectly legal so long as he did not close the canal to shipping.

Eden allegedly tore up the report in front of the lawyer and flung it in the lawyer's face. Two people who knew Eden's movements challenged whether he could have made such visits, and his biographer, Richard Thorpe, pointed out that his housemaster had died in February Another example is an incident described in Leonard Mosley's book on Dulles, 30 in which the widely respected military expert and historian, Captain R. Yet this story is pure fiction, as Liddell Hart's wife and son confirm, since the men never actually met during the Suez Crisis.

Drinamyl is now very rarely used, as the medical profession have become more aware of their effect on judgement, energy and mood. There have been a number of stories about Eden being on very large doses of amphetamines such as Benzedrine.

Hugh Thomas, the historian, alleges that Eden told an adviser that he was practically living on Benzedrine. Hunt—thought he would not have acted very differently in the Suez Crisis if he had been in robust health. Hugh Thomas, nevertheless, went on to write, despite that viewpoint, that he felt it was also possible that from his fever in October onwards, Eden was really ill and that his doctors should have recommended his resignation. If Eden had decided to resign on grounds of ill health, or more likely to go to Jamaica to recuperate, in the week of the Party Conference beginning on 9 October, not as he did later in November, the history of the Suez Crisis would have been very different.

Selwyn Lloyd's negotiations in New York with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, which Eden and Nutting considered with a measure of optimism before meeting Challe at Chequers, would have been given a few more weeks. Neither a caretaker Prime Minister, like Rab Butler, nor any new Prime Minister would have been in any position even to consider a totally new policy like that proposed by Israel until after the US Presidential elections on 6 November.

Guy Millard, Eden's junior Private Secretary in the Foreign Office during the Second World War who then served the Prime Minister within 10 Downing Street, was not only present at all his most important meetings on international affairs, but would see him late at night, early in the morning, read his notations on documents and listen in on many of his telephone conversations. A contemporaneous diary entry of 1 November on Eden's state of mind in October by a Foreign Office diplomat quotes Millard: Eden was certainly not mad, nor drugged in a way that he could not conduct himself as Prime Minister, and his stamina was in many ways remarkable after his fever.

What is at issue was whether his decision-making, his judgement, were functioning at the same levels of consistency, caution, courage and calculation in October , as during his conduct of Foreign Policy over the previous two decades. For example, Eden deliberated carefully and consulted widely during his period of disillusionment with Chamberlain, which led up to his resignation in During the Second World War, on numerous occasions it is well documented how he provided stability to Churchill's decision-making. After , when he returned to government as Foreign Secretary, Eden's foreign policy decisions were taken dispassionately and like the Suez Canal Agreement, explicable in the context of the time.

Yet analysing the crucial month of October , one sees an honourable and courageous man, borne down by illness and fatigue, weighing very difficult questions but then making too many decisions which were not in keeping with his past record. In Eden's defence, why did the Cabinet of healthy men on 23 October and on 4 November go along with the policy and then by 6 November be ready to disown the policy? The short answer to both questions is realpolitik, and for a few of them, particularly Macmillan, party politics. Any Prime Minister on international affairs supported by the Foreign Secretary has great influence on a Cabinet—similar to, but rather greater than, the effect on domestic affairs when supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It was only when his judgement of Eisenhower's reaction was proved wrong that on the night of 5—6 November he changed, 37 and this was powerful because he was able to speak with the authority of being Chancellor about the danger to the pound. Eden's authority, never more brittle than on 6 November, could have been challenged by Macmillan, the one man who could have swayed a Cabinet that had already lost its nerve to disown Eden.

Eden summoned the Cabinet to meet in his room in the House of Commons at 9. It was not the threatening letter from the Soviet leader Bulganin, or even the pressure on the pound: It was a diplomatic debacle. It would have been wiser from Eden's point of view to have delayed calling the Cabinet together until 7 November, taking the whole Canal in the meantime and then veto with the French any UN resolution on sanctions. Undoubtedly Eden saw Russia and their short- to long-term intentions in the Middle East as an immense threat.

Of course Egypt is no Germany, but Russia is, and Egypt just her pawn. If we had let events drift until the spring I have little doubt that by then, or about then, Russia and Egypt would have been ready to pounce, with Israel as the apparent target and western interests as the real one. Russians don't give away all that equipment for fun. Eden has written his own memoirs in which he refers to the Russian threat and relations with the US. The private and succinct explanation of the reasons for the initial military intervention and then its withdrawal that he gave to his former and still very trusted Private Secretary, Bob Pierson Dixon, gives a special insight.

The trouble was that one could never prove that the situation would have been worse if action had not been taken. He still felt that the issue against Nasser was really the same as the issue against Mussolini — something had to be done to stop dictatorship. To take another example, had we moved against Hitler over the Rhineland there would have been much criticism but it would have been the right thing to do and many millions of lives would have been saved.

His calculation was that Nasser and the Russians would have moved in the Middle East presumably against Israel about March or April of this year. Since the troops could not be kept hanging on indefinitely in Cyprus, he had felt bound to take the decision at the end of October to strike before the Egyptians. What he did object to was the way in which the United States had pushed us into immediate withdrawal. Mr Lodge [US Ambassador at the UN] was the real nigger in the woodpile and could not easily be forgiven for his failure to support the Belgian amendment.

He had good reason to believe that President Eisenhower did not want to push us into immediate withdrawal which, of course, spoilt the whole operation. On the morning of the ceasefire the President had telephoned to him and said he was glad about the ceasefire and had added that now that we were ashore he supposed that we had all we needed. Sir Anthony had not been able to pursue the conversation since he was off to the House of Commons to announce the ceasefire and had told the President that he would call him back.

The President had agreed, and asked when. Sir Anthony had said, the sooner the better. The President then suggested that M. Mollet ought to come too, and Sir Anthony had agreed to bring him along. The President had said something about resolutions that were being prepared in the United Nations, to which Sir Anthony had said that he did not want to talk about the United Nations.

With some difficulty he had then persuaded M. Mollet to fly to Washington that evening. Later in the afternoon the President had again telephoned and said that, on thinking the matter over, he believed that the moment was not ripe for a visit from the British and French Prime Ministers. Sir Anthony believed that he had consulted Mr Dulles in hospital and that Mr Dulles had advised against the visit. But how could he have done this? It would simply have brought Mr Dulles across the Atlantic for the fifth time and it would have been very difficult to have gone ahead in the face of US objections.

It is easy to be overly moralistic about what is done to win in times of war. Collusion is certainly not unknown in war time. There was also a structured Egypt Committee of the Cabinet, though this was suspended from 17 October to 1 November. Eden's conduct was not, however, like Tony Blair's conduct of the Cabinet over Iraq, where we learn from the Butler Enquiry in there were no detailed papers circulated by Tony Blair before Cabinet discussion, no detailed papers circulated or minutes taken in informal meetings with senior Cabinet colleagues before the invasion, and no structured decision making.

Sadly neither Prime Minister gave sufficient detailed consideration as to how to handle the aftermath of their respective invasions. There was a crucial difference, however. It can be justified that no hint of collusion was given to the House of Commons during the actual military operation, but it was Eden's attempt to send two diplomats back to Paris to gather up and to destroy all the copies of what was later called the Protocol of Sevres, 43 a suburb of Paris, which was so bizarre.

Selwyn Lloyd attended the initial meeting at Sevres, and the second Sevres meeting involved a senior diplomat, Patrick Dean, and Lloyd's Private secretary, Donald Logan. In democracies, Eden should have known there can be no question of perpetual secrecy. The French and the Israeli leaders afterwards resented the British Cabinet's decision to halt the advancing troops down the Canal and they had no guilty consciences about the military operation even after its failure.

It was also a wholly unrealistic view of Eden's that any cover-up could be kept from American intelligence for much longer than a few weeks at best. Indeed, the CIA claimed to have known at the time. More realistic than Eden, Pineau told the US about the facts of their collusion while Eden was still pretending to the Americans that no collusion had taken place, compounding US anger. As a patient, undergoing surgery, Braasch pays tribute to Eden, writing that he was a model of cooperation and possessed an even humour at times of stress.

But it is hard to escape the conclusion that as a politician under the stress of holding the job of Prime Minister during the Suez crisis, Eden's illness and his treatment got to him in ways that did affect his judgement and decision-making. There should be no shame for Eden's family in acknowledging this. He was having to make critical judgements hour by hour, courageously struggling with a serious illness. In some of these decisions he showed the careful consideration on which his great reputation deservedly rested. Yet in relation to three crucial decisions—to collude with Israel; mislead the American President and to lie to the House of Commons, even after the invasion—I believe his judgement was impaired, and his illness and treatment contributed to that impairment.

We need to create a climate of opinion that Heads of Government are not immune to the discipline that should and usually now is applied to all other decision-makers, whether Generals or Chief Executives; namely that when ill one must cease to take major decisions. They told a gloomy tale: The Allies needed an immediate morale boost and a long-range plan to reverse the tide of fascism. The year-old prime minister proved an eccentric houseguest.

White House staff often saw the prime minister in his nightclothes, a silk gown with a Chinese dragon on it and a one-piece romper suit. Churchill and Roosevelt ate lunch together every day. Daytime was a prelude to his deepest work hours, from dinner long into the night. He kept Roosevelt up until 2 or 3 a. But FDR hit it off with Churchill. FDR at War, He brought Churchill along to his December 23 press conference with American reporters, who cheered when the 5-foot-6 prime minister climbed onto his chair so they all could see him.

After attending a Christmas Day service with Roosevelt at a nearby church, Churchill spent most of the holiday working nervously on the speech he would deliver the next day to a joint session of Congress. That night in his suite, Churchill was struck by a pain in his chest and arm—a minor heart attack.

References

Churchill, undaunted, took a train trip to Ottawa and addressed the Canadian parliament on December 30, then returned to Washington to continue the summit. The pact included a historic new phrase: He did, revealing Churchill standing naked on the bath mat. After a five-day vacation in Florida, Churchill returned to Washington on January 10 to conclude the summit. His three-week visit was fruitful for the war effort. We have, therefore, in this Island today a very large and powerful military force. This force comprises all our best-trained and our finest troops, including scores of thousands of those who have already measured their quality against the Germans and found themselves at no disadvantage.

We have under arms at the present time in this Island over a million and a quarter men. Behind these we have the Local Defense Volunteers, numbering half a million, only a portion of whom, however, are yet armed with rifles or other firearms. We have incorporated into our Defense Forces every man for whom we have a weapon. We expect very large additions to our weapons in the near future, and in preparation for this we intend forthwith to call up, drill and train further large numbers.

Those who are not called up, or else are employed during the vast business of munitions production in all its branches--and their ramifications are innumerable--will serve their country best by remaining at their ordinary work until they receive their summons. We have also over here Dominions armies. The Canadians had actually landed in France, but have now been safely withdrawn, much disappointed, but in perfect order, with all their artillery and equipment.

And these very high-class forces from the Dominions will now take part in the defense of the Mother Country. Lest the account which I have given of these large forces should raise the question: Why did they not take part in the great battle in France?

I must make it clear that, apart from the divisions training and organizing at home, only twelve divisions were equipped to fight upon a scale which justified their being sent abroad. And this was fully up to the number which the French had been led to expect would be available in France at the ninth month of the war. The rest of our forces at home have a fighting value for home defense which will, of course, steadily increase every week that passes. Thus, the invasion of Great Britain would at this time require the transportation across the sea of hostile armies on a very large scale, and after they had been so transported they would have to be continually maintained with all the masses of munitions and supplies which are required for continuous battle--as continuous battle it will surely be.

Here is where we come to the Navy--and after all, we have a Navy. Some people seem to forget that we have a Navy. We must remind them. For the last thirty years I have been concerned in discussions about the possibilities of oversea invasion, and I took the responsibility on behalf of the Admiralty, at the beginning of the last war, of allowing all regular troops to be sent out of the country.

That was a very serious step to take, because our Territorials had only just been called up and were quite untrained.

Never has overstaying one’s welcome been so important

Therefore, this Island was for several months particularly denuded of fighting troops. The Admiralty had confidence at that time in their ability to prevent a mass invasion even though at that time the Germans had a magnificent battle fleet in the proportion of 10 to 16, even though they were capable of fighting a general engagement every day and any day, whereas now they have only a couple of heavy ships worth speaking of--the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau.

We are also told that the Italian Navy is to come out and gain sea superiority in these waters. If they seriously intend it, I shall only say that we shall be delighted to offer Signor Mussolini a free and safeguarded passage through the Strait of Gibraltar in order that he may play the part to which he aspires. There is a general curiosity in the British Fleet to find out whether the Italians are up to the level they were at in the last war or whether they have fallen off at all. Therefore, it seems to me that as far as sea-borne invasion on a great scale is concerned, we are far more capable of meeting it today than we were at many periods in the last war and during the early months of this war, before our other troops were trained, and while the B.

Now, the Navy have never pretended to be able to prevent raids by bodies of 5, or 10, men flung suddenly across and thrown ashore at several points on the coast some dark night or foggy morning. The efficacy of sea power, especially under modern conditions, depends upon the invading force being of large size; It has to be of large size, in view of our military strength, to be of any use.

If it is of large size, then the Navy have something they can find and meet and, as it were, bite on. Now, we must remember that even five divisions, however lightly equipped, would require to ships, and with modern air reconnaissance and photography it would not be easy to collect such an armada, marshal it, and conduct it across the sea without any powerful naval forces to escort it; and there would be very great possibilities, to put it mildly, that this armada would be intercepted long before it reached the coast, and all the men drowned in the sea or, at the worst blown to pieces with their equipment while they were trying to land.

We also have a great system of minefields, recently strongly reinforced, through which we alone know the channels. If the enemy tries to sweep passages through these minefields, it will be the task of the Navy to destroy the mine-sweepers and any other forces employed to protect them. There should be no difficulty in this, owing to our great superiority at sea.

Those are the regular, well-tested, well-proved arguments on which we have relied during many years in peace and war. But the question is whether there are any new methods by which those solid assurances can be circumvented. Odd as it may seem, some attention has been given to this by the Admiralty, whose prime duty and responsibility is to destroy any large sea-borne expedition before it reaches, or at the moment when it reaches, these shores.

It would not be a good thing for me to go into details of this. It might suggest ideas to other people which they have not thought of, and they would not be likely to give us any of their ideas in exchange. All I will say is that untiring vigilance and mind-searching must be devoted to the subject, because the enemy is crafty and cunning and full of novel treacheries and stratagems. The House may be assured that the utmost ingenuity is being displayed and imagination is being evoked from large numbers of competent officers, well-trained in tactics and thoroughly up to date, to measure and counterwork novel possibilities.

Untiring vigilance and untiring searching of the mind is being, and must be, devoted to the subject, because, remember, the enemy is crafty and there is no dirty trick he will not do. Some people will ask why, then, was it that the British Navy was not able to prevent the movement of a large army from Germany into Norway across the Skagerrak? But the conditions in the Channel and in the North Sea are in no way like those which prevail in the Skagerrak. In the Skagerrak, because of the distance, we could give no air support to our surface ships, and consequently, lying as we did close to the enemy's main air power, we were compelled to use only our submarines.

We could not enforce the decisive blockade or interruption which is possible from surface vessels. Our submarines took a heavy toll but could not, by themselves, prevent the invasion of Norway. In the Channel and in the North Sea, on the other hand, our superior naval surface forces, aided by our submarines, will operate with close and effective air assistance.

This brings me, naturally, to the great question of invasion from the air, and of the impending struggle between the British and German Air Forces. It seems quite clear that no invasion on a scale beyond the capacity of our land forces to crush speedily is likely to take place from the air until our Air Force has been definitely overpowered.

In the meantime, there may be raids by parachute troops and attempted descents of airborne soldiers. We should be able to give those gentry a warm reception both in the air and on the ground, if they reach it in any condition to continue the dispute.

120 Winston Churchill Quotes Proving He Was A Powerful Force

But the great question is: Can we break Hitler's air weapon? Now, of course, it is a very great pity that we have not got an Air Force at least equal to that of the most powerful enemy within striking distance of these shores. But we have a very powerful Air Force which has proved itself far superior in quality, both in men and in many types of machine, to what we have met so far in the numerous and fierce air battles which have been fought with the Germans.

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