THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1951.
The Churchill Story: 18th Instalment HIS FINEST HOUR
THROUGHOUT that
be sitting in
""finest hour" year in By Colin Frame ing at second-hand or watche
which Britain fought alone, | a voice which its owner"had often regarded as a handi- cap became one of the most important weapons in our armoury.
decisive battles of the world.
His eyes never left that of pasteboard map, the symbolic the winking lights; but the discs,
his stout heart was un- of doubtedly with, young Britain in the boundless terror-filled skies.
as
all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs
Thus will shine heroes. dawn." Many tales are told Churchill's narrow escapes the bombs fell on London.
The Night after It is true that, for the lone
He spoke only once. night, eluding
lowest row of electric light year and for four years after anxious friends, he set off in a wards.
(the reserve of planes) Winston Churchill's uniform of his own invention bulbs bowed shoulders
carried the-a dark Blue "siren-suit" like had all gone out. heaviest weight of vital and a cross between dungarees and varied decisions.
Morale-Builder
battle-dress-to see "incidents"
1
а
in
His brain, finely balanced for himself. between the twin poles of His steel helmet was usually military and political judg- at a jaunty angle. He had ment, his vision and his energy stick in one hand, a torch dominated the five-year drama, the other and a cigar between his teeth." In his war book "Their Finest Hour" (published by Cassell and Co) he describes being in Downing-street in those days as "exciting. might as well have been at battalion headquarters in line."
PUT it was his voice, made D characteristic by the slur red, short-tongued S which had caused him so much embarrass ment as a boy, that became the morale-builder of Britons at home and interpreted Britain to her friends abroad.
He broadcast usually at 9 on a Sunday, after the chimes of Big Ben had told
the world that London's
heart still beat unhurriedly. In barrack-rooms the horse- play ended; in quiet hotels old ladies brought their knitting into the lounge; in suburban homes husbands fussed over last adjustments to the set; on. airfields pilots, fur-collared and leather-jacketed, put their cards, and lolled back to listen.
All Over Europe [OR only in
NOR
In
up
One
a the
a
Later he used to race up to the Annexe roof "to have look at the fireworks."
Bomb At No. 10 NE raid which stands
in his
on
out
on
memory was
He records October 14, 1940. it in "Their Finest Hour."
He broke off his dinner at No
and 10 during a raid
the went
impulse to kitchen where he became of a big "acutely aware" unshuttered window in from
which Mrs Landemare, the cook, and the rest of the kitchen staff worked.
of
No Reserves
667HAT other reserves have
VY we?" he asked. ""There are none,"
told.
-115.
OK SEVAY EVENING, A
he was
EDITORS PACSS SERVICE INC.-NUEVA YORK
K
"Oh
so you finally woke up?"
But fifteen minutes later the Germans had gone home. That day 183 Germans planes were claimed. Post-war corrections now put the figure at 56,
But it was a famous vic- tory. Two days later Hitler secretly postponed indefin- itely plans for the invasion of Britain.
What of the immortal phrase Churchill coined about this battle? It came to him suddenly as he was driving back from a visit to a fighter airfleld.
the field of
"Never
human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." Parliament stirred gently. There was a low murmur. His a phrase hearers recognised that would be quoted by their children and grandchildren and rest for ever in the history
books. V
He ordered them all to the Red Ink Notes
crash By
the
UT since. wars are not won
appearances Or even by superbly built morale, this is only a superficial picture of
words, by personal
the
He these islands.shelter.
sat had hardly ocean-tossed ward-down
again when а rooms; in darkened cottages showed the house had been all over Europe where patriots struck. He went back to lay with their heads under kitchen. It was a shambles. blankets to muffle the sound; The window was in a million behind barbed-wire
near at pieces. radio painstakingly built from dustbin scraps; beside Britain's few tanks where troopers brewed their tea under desert stars-there, too, was his at- tentive audience.
"My fortunate inspiration, which I might have so easily. neglected, had come in the nick of time," he wrote.
Tours Of Britain How gratifying it must have гWICE a week, in. been to the man who had been breathless summer heckled for twenty years at autunn days, meetings ranged from Dundee Whitehall for the Front to London to know that, at of Britain. He travelled last, the free world hung special train fitted with
every syl- room and bath.
breathless on his 'lable,
While
Churchill spoke Britons were so absorbed they would scarcely have heard ä bomb drop.
They listened awed by his resounding phrases. They
those and Churchill left
He clambered round
Lines
in a bed-
man Churchill was those stirring days.
in
He was the Orator of Free-
dom; Britain's Prime Minister, but also Minister of Defence.
Day by day a stream of
directives flowed from his mouth to every Whitehall department.
Notes signed WSC in red ink whirled like some grim paper- chase on to the desks of Ser- vice chiefs, ministers and officials.
the
the And steadily but surely fol- shore defences. He stumped lowing the trail of paper came the hounds of war-the guns, across fighter stations.
He
the toured
tanks, the shells, He war factories. stumbled over the rubble of secret weapons, the planes- the East End.
and the plans. "Look, he's
an
FOR THE BUSINESSMAN
America's Share In
Financing Of
The Colombo Plan
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT)
London, Jan. 10.
An announcement is expected to be made in a few days on the part America will play in financing the Colombo Plan for economic develop- ment in south and southeast Asia, I learn on good authority today.
Discussions are now going on in London between British and American officials to decide how America can help in raising the £650,000,000 which remains to be found out of the total estimated cost of the plan-£1,868,000,000.
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1944 »
10:00
crying. You heard with chuckles his de- see he really cares," said
Lunch With King scription of dictators "the East End woman to the crowd
HURCHILL lunched with crafty, cold-blooded, black-pressing round him to cheer; the King every Tuesday, hearted Italian" and "the
even, so great had the Chur-an innovation which lasted for whipped jackal, Mussolini. chill legend
rest of the war. There become, to touch the frisking up by the side of the his clothes.
were no servants; they help d German tiger" and when At factories his presence each other. Churchill spoke of Hitler as acted. like
some wonderful During the invasion scare he "this wicked man" it was new machine
on the produc- tock the King a new American through sheer terrifying sim- tion figures. Workers pressed short-range carbine and they plicity, more effective than cigars on him. At Brighton he practised at a shooting range in any searing'epithet.
watched the Guards sand- the Palace garden. bagging pier kiosks to make)
He wrote regularly to Presi- machine-gun nests where, as a dent Roosevelt, and there schoolboy,
is he
had watched enthralled a flea circus.
no knowing how much this And not far
friendly correspondence led to at away Lancing he met for the
that war-winner, Lease-Lend. first
(twice). On another Sunday (August; time a little-known soldier
Churchill personally 10, 1941) who staged for him a demon- stration
banded to Roosevelt-they met with his half-dozen available Bren carriers
at sea off Newfoundland-the The soldier
first draft of what became the was Bernard Mont-
Atlantic Charter. gomery,
Snarl Of Contempt HYIS deliberate mispronun- A ciation of foreign, names appealed to them too. "Nar- zees" he called the enemy, and it was at once a snarl of con- tempt.
Here was the British Don with lashing tail; here was John
Bull and his bulldog; and here was also the man- in-the-street, using bold, well-chosen, honest words which expressed what he had always wanted to say. For the first part of blitz the Churchills lived No 10. Then they moved "The Annexe" reinforced on the silver wings of a Government offices overlooking hundred RAF St James's Park near Storey's on a Sunday-a Gate--and there, above the for the Churchill War Room, they spent the war the war-that
years.
On another Sunday (June The Vital Battle
22. 1941) his belief, re- THIS chief concern in those
corded in a letter to Smuts II months was with the
air
as long ago as June 27, 1940, thethe Battle of Britain in came true; he was awakened at which the whole future of with the news that Hitler to the free world was borne up had invaded Russia.
few That evening he broadcast. world wel- pilots. It was to the wondering
day fateful coming as an ally a country story during whose ideology he had fought this battle all his life.
reached zenith.
One Septem- "If Hitler invaded hell," he
S.
K973 2 94 ◊ Q 5 ♣ AQ 5 4 Another example of "blast- Ing" versus slow approach methods. At the six tables in the 1947. Masters' Individual Championship, the following were the results: Four Spades undoubled, one down (three times); Four Spades doubled, one down (once); Five Hearts doubled. made
At the first three tables, North's One Spade was jumped straight to Four by South, and no player sitting West had the temerity to enter the bidding, vulnerable, at such a high level By losing 50 points only, these North-South pairs tied for top match point score.
The other South players gave the temporising response of Two Clubs and East-West got together. Eleven tricks could be made in either red sult as the cards lay.
London Express Sarcies.
We are
That evening, Churchill records in "The Grand Al- liance" (also published by Cassell) he went to bed and slept "the sleep the saved and thankful.”
Although no details of the American participation are yet known, it is believed it may come under the Point Four Pro- gramme. Any appropriation, for this purpose would have to be approved by Congress.
me
A British Treasury official told today that Ceylon will shortly be sending out invita- tions to members of the Com- monwealth Consulative Com- mittee for a further meeting to be held at Colombo next month. This meeting will be on the official level and may be attended by an American representative.
The Manchester Guardian to- day regrets the lack of publicity for the Colombo Plan.
"The official attitude" it says, "is that it would be unfair to raise the expectations of the people of Asia. But the only way of checking Communism is for non- Communist governments to raise expectations that
they provide superior benefits-and- also of course to fulfil these ex- pectations.
can
"Communism will win unless the imagination of the peoples of Asia can be caught by pro- jects such
as the Colombo Plan...it is a pity the south Asian countries themselves have not talked more about their in- dividual parts in the Colombo Plan.
"There is apparently another reason why too much dis- cussion of the plan is depre eated," it adds. "It is feared it may frighten off America. But facts are the language in which to talk to America."
London Rubber
Market
London, Jan. 10. Prices in the rubber futures.
It was from the Annexe, ber 15 he and Mrs Churchill said to some friends, "I would said, "Yes, it's true. with bombs thudding down as drove from Chequers to the make at least a favourable re- all in the same boat." he spoke, that Churchill made Fighter HQ's bomb-proof ference, to the devil in the on October 21, 1940 what operations room at Uxbridge. House of Commons." many consider his most mov- There, after being told "all is Britain was no longer alone. ing broadcast. It was in quiet, they watched by means French. He rewrote it several of dises on a huge
Called Roosevelt times. The good it did is in-coloured lights on the wall the December 7, 1941) that ho
map and
also on TT
a Sunday calculable.
air battle from which Ger Many Frenchmen can. re- many never fully recovered. heard on his ordinary radio set] Despite the confidence of his market here closed today s cite it to this day.
How strange it must have at Chequers something about a oratory over twenty months, It ended: "Good night, seemed to the Churchill of the Japanese attack at then; sleep to gather strength North-West
Pearl he saw on that Sunday for the
rubber (in cents per 3.) Frontier, of the Harbour.
first time victory, clear and Febrisary for the morning. For the desert charge on horseback. of It did not register with him beckoning
March morning will come. Brightly the bullet spattered train in at first. His
Apell/Jime butler Sawyers. will it shine on the brave South Africa and
July/September the shell came in to confirm it. Chur
October
and
the true, kindly upon scarred trenches of Flanders, to chill phoned Roosevelt who
His reaction, he says, was: "So we had won after all."
(MORE TOMURBSW)
follows-
inber