The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (33 page)

Before I replied to the vote of thanks there was a cry, “God Save the King”; and this excited prolonged cheering. I explained, therefore, on the spur of the moment my personal position.

There is another grave matter which overshadows our minds tonight. In a few minutes we are going to sing “God Save the King.” I shall sing it with more heartfelt fervour than I have ever sung it in my life. I hope and pray that no irrevocable decision will be taken in haste, but that time and public opinion will be allowed to play their part, and that a cherished and unique personality may not be incontinently severed from the people he loves so well. I hope that Parliament will be allowed to discharge its function in these high constitutional questions. I trust that our King may be guided by the opinions that are now for the first time being expressed by the British nation and the British Empire, and that the British people will not in their turn be found wanting in generous consideration for the occupant of the Throne.

It is not relevant to this account to describe the brief but intensely violent controversy that followed. I had known King Edward VIII since he was a child, and had in 1910 as Home Secretary read out to a wonderful assembly the proclamation creating him Prince of Wales at Carnarvon Castle. I felt bound to place my personal loyalty to him upon the highest plane. Although during the summer I had been made fully aware of what was going forward, I in no way interfered nor communicated with him at any time. However, presently in his distress he asked the Prime Minister for permission to consult me. Mr. Baldwin gave formal consent, and on this being conveyed to me, I went to the King at Fort Belvedere. I remained in contact with him till his abdication, and did my utmost to plead both to the King and to the public for patience and delay. I have never repented of this – indeed, I could do no other.

The Prime Minister proved himself to be a shrewd judge of British national feeling. Undoubtedly he perceived and expressed the profound will of the nation. His deft and skilful handling of the abdication issue raised him in a fortnight from the depths to the pinnacle. There were several moments when I seemed to be entirely alone against a wrathful House of Commons. I am not, when in action, unduly affected by hostile currents of feeling; but it was on more than one occasion almost physically impossible to make myself heard. All the forces I had gathered together on “Arms and the Covenant,” of which I conceived myself to be the mainspring, were estranged or dissolved, and I was myself so smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was at last ended. How strange it is that this very House of Commons, which had regarded me with so much hostility, should have been the same instrument which hearkened to my guidance and upheld me through the long adverse years of war till victory over all our foes was gained! What a proof is here offered that the only wise and safe course is to act from day to day in accordance with what one’s own conscience seems to decree I

From the abdication of one King we passed to the coronation of another, and until the end of May, 1937, the ceremonial and pageantry of a solemn national act of allegiance and the consecration of British loyalties at home and throughout the Empire to the new Sovereign filled all minds. Foreign affairs and the state of our defences lost all claim upon the public mood. Our island might have been ten thousand miles away from Europe. However, I am permitted to record that on May 18, 1937, on the morrow of the Coronation, I received from the new King, His present Majesty, a letter in his own handwriting:

The Royal Lodge,
The Great Park,
Windsor, Berks.
18.V.37

My dear Mr. Churchill,

I am writing to thank you for your very nice letter to me. I know how devoted you have been, and still are, to my dear brother, and I feel touched beyond words by your sympathy and understanding in the very difficult problems that have arisen since he left us in December. I fully realise the great responsibilities and cares that I have taken on as King, and I feel most encouraged to receive your good wishes, as one of our great statesmen, and from one who has served his country so faithfully. I can only hope and trust that the good feeling and hope that exists in the Country and Empire now will prove a good example to other nations in the world.

Believe me,

Yours very sincerely,

G
EORGE
R.I.

This gesture of magnanimity towards one whose influence at that time had fallen to zero will ever be a cherished experience in my life.

* * * * *

On May 28, 1937, after King George VI had been crowned, Mr. Baldwin retired. His long public services were suitably rewarded by an earldom and the Garter. He laid down the wide authority he had gathered and carefully maintained, but had used as little as possible. He departed in a glow of public gratitude and esteem. There was no doubt who his successor should be. Mr. Neville Chamberlain had, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, not only done the main work of the Government for five years past, but was the ablest and most forceful Minister, with high abilities and an historic name. I had described him a year earlier at Birmingham in Shakespeare’s words as the “pack-horse in our great affairs,” and he had accepted this description as a compliment. I had no expectation that he would wish to work with me; nor would he have been wise to do so at such a time. His ideas were far different from mine on the treatment of the dominant issues of the day. But I welcomed the accession to power of a live, competent, executive figure. While still Chancellor of the Exchequer he had involved himself in a fiscal proposal for a small-scale national defence contribution which had been ill-received by the Conservative Party and was, of course, criticised by the Opposition. I was able, in the first days of his Premiership, to make a speech upon this subject which helped him to withdraw, without any loss of dignity, from a position which had become untenable. Our relations continued to be cool, easy, and polite both in public and in private.

Mr. Chamberlain made few changes in the Government. He had had disagreements with Mr. Duff Cooper about War Office Administration, and much surprised him by offering him advancement to the great key office of the Admiralty. The Prime Minister evidently did not know the eyes through which his new First Lord, whose early career had been in the Foreign Office, viewed the European scene. In my turn I was astonished that Sir Samuel Hoare, who had just secured a large expansion of the naval programme, should wish to leave the Admiralty for the Home Office. Hoare seems to have believed that prison reform in a broad humanitarian sense would become the prevailing topic in the immediate future; and since his family was connected with the famous Elizabeth Fry, he had a strong personal sentiment about it.

* * * * *

I may here set down a comparative appreciation of these two Prime Ministers, Baldwin and Chamberlain, whom I had known so long and under whom I had served or was to serve. Stanley Baldwin was the wiser, more comprehending personality, but without detailed executive capacity. He was largely detached from foreign and military affairs. He knew little of Europe, and disliked what he knew. He had a deep knowledge of British party politics, and represented in a broad way some of the strengths and many of the infirmities of our island race. He had fought five general elections as leader of the Conservative Party and had won three of them. He had a genius for waiting upon events and an imperturbability under adverse criticism. He was singularly adroit in letting events work for him, and capable of seizing the ripe moment when it came. He seemed to me to revive the impressions history gives us of Sir Robert Walpole, without, of course, the eighteenth-century corruption, and he was master of British politics for nearly as long.

Neville Chamberlain, on the other hand, was alert, businesslike, opinionated, and self-confident in a very high degree. Unlike Baldwin, he conceived himself able to comprehend the whole field of Europe, and indeed the world. Instead of a vague but none the less deep-seated intuition, we had now a narrow, sharp-edged efficiency within the limits of the policy in which he believed. Both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Prime Minister, he kept the tightest and most rigid control upon military expenditure. He was throughout this period the masterful opponent of all emergency measures. He had formed decided judgments about all the political figures of the day, both at home and abroad, and felt himself capable of dealing with them. His all-pervading hope was to go down to history as the Great Peacemaker; and for this he was prepared to strive continually in the teeth of facts, and face great risks for himself and his country. Unhappily, he ran into tides the force of which he could not measure, and met hurricanes from which he did not flinch, but with which he could not cope. In these closing years before the war, I should have found it easier to work with Baldwin, as I knew him, than with Chamberlain; but neither of them had any wish to work with me except in the last resort.

* * * * *

One day in 1937, I had a meeting with Herr von Ribbentrop, German Ambassador to Britain. In one of my fortnightly articles I had noted that he had been misrepresented in some speech he had made. I had, of course, met him several times in society. He now asked me whether I would come to see him and have a talk. He received me in the large upstairs room at the German Embassy. We had a conversation lasting for more than two hours. Ribbentrop was most polite, and we ranged over the European scene, both in respect of armaments and policy. The gist of his statement to me was that Germany sought the friendship of England (on the Continent we are still often called “England”). He said he could have been Foreign Minister of Germany, but he had asked Hitler to let him come over to London in order to make the full case for an Anglo-German entente or even alliance. Germany would stand guard for the British Empire in all its greatness and extent. They might ask for the return of the German colonies, but this was evidently not cardinal. What was required was that Britain should give Germany a free hand in the East of Europe. She must have her
Lebensraum,
or living-space, for her increasing population. Therefore, Poland and the Danzig Corridor must be absorbed. White Russia and the Ukraine were indispensable to the future life of the German Reich of more than seventy million souls. Nothing less would suffice. All that was asked of the British Commonwealth and Empire was not to interfere. There was a large map on the wall, and the Ambassador several times led me to it to illustrate his projects.

After hearing all this, I said at once that I was sure the British Government would not agree to give Germany a free hand in Eastern Europe. It was true we were on bad terms with Soviet Russia and that we hated Communism as much as Hitler did, but he might be sure that, even if France were safeguarded, Great Britain would never disinterest herself in the fortunes of the Continent to an extent which would enable Germany to gain the domination of Central and Eastern Europe. We were actually standing before the map when I said this. Ribbentrop turned abruptly away. He then said: “In that case, war is inevitable. There is no way out. The Fuehrer is resolved. Nothing will stop him and nothing will stop us.” We then returned to our chairs. I was only a private Member of Parliament, but of some prominence. I thought it right to say to the German Ambassador – in fact, I remember the words well: “When you talk of war, which, no doubt, would be general war, you must not underrate England. She is a curious country, and few foreigners can understand her mind. Do not judge by the attitude of the present Administration. Once a great cause is presented to the people, all kinds of unexpected actions might be taken by this very Government and by the British nation.” And I repeated: “Do not underrate England. She is very clever. If you plunge us all into another Great War, she will bring the whole world against you like last time.” At this, the Ambassador rose in heat and said, “Ah, England may be very clever, but this time she will not bring the world against Germany.” We turned the conversation onto easier lines, and nothing more of note occurred. The incident, however, remains in my memory, and, as I reported it at the time to the Foreign Office, I feel it right to put it on record.

When he was on his trial for his life by the conquerors, Ribbentrop gave a distorted version of this conversation and claimed that I should be summoned as a witness. What I have set down about it is what I should have said had I been called.

The “Over-all Strategic Objective” — German Expenditure on Armaments — Independent Inquiries — The Conservative Deputation to the Prime Minister, July
28, 1936 —
My Statement of the Case — General Conclusions — My Fear — Our Second Meeting, November
23, 1936 —
Lord Swinton Leaves the Air Ministry, May
12, 1938 —
Debate in Parliament — Lindemann Rejoins the Air Defence Research Committee — My Correspondence with M. Daladier — The French Estimate of German Air Strength,
1938 —
My Estimate of the German Army, June,
1938 — M.
Daladier Concurs — The Decay of the French Air Force — The Careless Islanders.