WC02 - Never Surrender (26 page)

"And it's a breach of the peace, too," one of them said, lifting her off her feet. She seemed so light, they scarcely had to use any effort.

"Stop! Please stop!" she pleaded. "I am a friend of the Prime Minister. Please ask his office. Please ask Mr. Churchill," she shouted as they carried her towards the door.

The two detectives began laughing. One waved the piece of paper. "Winston Churchill? Why, it's him who sent us."

They went at it again for the third, fourth no, fifth time in the last thirty hours. It wasn't simply that one was defeatist and the other intemperate and often irrational, although the Prime Minister frequently ventured far beyond the border that marked off reason from the completely absurd.

Halifax believed that if the French gave up the fight and in truth they had barely started it then the war could not be won on the battlefield. The only alternative was diplomacy and negotiation, which might salvage something from the wreck. It was more difficult to be precise about what Churchill thought. In one moment he would grasp at the prospect of American intervention, in the next he would argue the merits of nations going down in flames in order to rise from the ashes. At times his arguments were little more than oratory swamped in emotional incontinence. And as they argued, face to face across the Cabinet table, their restraint and mutual deference began to be cast aside.

Halifax had done what Churchill had requested and had prepared a paper setting out the conditions on which an approach to the Italians should be considered. But Churchill had no intention of considering it.

"I grow increasingly oppressed by the futility of contemplating any approach to the Italians. Mussolini would treat it with nothing but contempt."

"But yesterday'

Churchill held up his hand to stay the inevitable intervention. "In all my life I have never known a time when British prestige has hung so low in the esteem of Europe. Are we to push it even lower by creeping cap in hand to the Italians? We shall get nothing while we are on our knees, yet if we fight .. . ! If we continue with the struggle for two or three months longer, then our prestige will return and our fortunes may look very different."

Halifax gave up the struggle to hide his exasperation. "Two or three months? In two or three weeks France may be gone."

"Let us not be dragged down with the French."

"We may have no choice," Halifax responded, too sharply.

"Then let us not be dragged down like the French. How much more broadly will history smile upon us if we go down fighting than if we go down like craven spaniels? How much sooner will our country rise up again?"

"Are you saying that under no circumstances'

"To walk into negotiations now would be to step upon a slippery slope from which there would be no return and where we would find no salvation. Once upon that slope we could never resist the temptation to slip a little further, and slip a little further still, until we found ourselves in a place where there was no light, no hope and no way back."

"But while we are talking there is always hope. Of reason, of compromise."

"As you discovered at Munich?"

Oh, but now it had become bitingly personal.

"We neither wanted nor invited this war," Halifax reminded them. "We have done our best. No one else has found a way to win it'

"Except for Hitler."

"If the Prime Minister will allow me to finish!" Halifax was beginning to find his task impossible. "There is no disgrace in having fought and failed. But what every jot of experience from across Europe tells us is that if we continue to fight a hopeless war, it will invite only destruction. The time has come to put aside this mad adventure and allow cool heads to find a different solution. And if we act in combination with the French, our powers will be greatly enhanced. We must negotiate."

"To throw away our independence would be to throw away all hope! Our independence stands like a glowing beacon of light in the darkness that has fallen across the continent. Hitler will eventually be swept aside, that we must believe, by a great uprising of all those oppressed nations in Europe who retain the desire to be free. Our independence, our continued struggle, feeds their hope and brings that day ever closer. We must fight this to the finish!"

Halifax had come to his sticking point. He had swallowed more than enough of Churchill's blustering and ridiculous romanticism, had suffered too often from having his arguments twisted and discarded by cheap debating tricks. Cabinets were intended for sober reflection, not as a stage for one man's empty theatricality. This was an abuse too far.

"No one, Prime Minister, is suggesting that we throw away our independence! And I resent most bitterly the insinuation that it forms any part of what I propose. It is precisely to preserve our independence that we have to open a dialogue'

"There is no independence upon that slippery slope'

"There is no independence in cities that have been turned to cinders and a countryside that has been laid waste. That's what fighting to the finish means." Halifax was picking up the other man's words and throwing them in his face. Now he spoke in a more measured tone, and very much for the record. "And I, for my part, doubt that I could ever accept such a view."

They all understood what he was saying. He would not follow Churchill down that path.

"I want to be clear about where we stand," Halifax continued. "Let's not waste our time with an empty debate about hypothetical proposals. Let me put it as simply as I can. Are you saying, Prime Minister, that you would never consider any peace proposals, at any time?"

It was the same fork with which he had pierced Churchill on the previous day. But this time Churchill was more determined or perhaps more desperate. He would not give way.

"I would never consent to asking for terms. Oh, there may be some imaginary circumstances in which we might be offered terms, in which case perhaps we should give them consideration, but we could be waiting for a thousand years. And it will never happen if we ask for them."

"How can you be so .. ." Stupidly stubborn? Suicidal? Stuck in your own little delusion? But Halifax had never honed his tongue as sharply as Churchill, and didn't share his taste for the cruel. "How can you be so certain?"

"Because, Foreign Secretary, until we make it clear that we shall fight on, and on, and on, we shall be given nothing. No peace terms, no alliances, no help from the Americans. Why, why, why do you think that Roosevelt sits back and does nothing? Nothing!" He was banging the table now, bullying. "Why does he ignore all our requests and offer us nothing but empty words? Why? Because while he and the rest of the world believe we may stop fighting, there is not a reason in paradise for him to lift a finger!" He was breathing heavily, struggling to retain his composure. "I will go even further. We shall need America in this war if we are to win it. But there is skulduggery afoot, even a little treason." Treason? The restraint had gone. "For instead of being encouraged to lend us his support, Roosevelt is being offered an irresistible incentive to do nothing, for by doing nothing he stands to gather every sort of windfall. Our navy. Our western possessions. Our influence in half the world. And he gets all this simply by sitting back and waiting for pieces of the British Empire to fall into his hands!"

The two men were glaring at each other across the table, their faces suffused, their eyes locked in passion.

"And do you know who has provided him with that incentive, Foreign Secretary?" At least he had refrained from describing it as treason once again. "Those amongst us who insist that we talk."

Argument was one thing, accusation quite another. Halifax forced his chair back from the table, wanting to place as much distance between him and his accuser as possible. If he stood up, he would leave, and no one could vouch for the consequences. The Cabinet was about to be torn in two.

It was at this point that Chamberlain intervened. He had played little part in the discussions; from his perspective he thought himself to be above the general fray. As an elder and former chief of the tribe he was willing to stand back and watch others plough the field, but this quarrel had gone many fields too far. He coughed.

"Prime Minister, I wonder .. ." The voice was so familiar to them all. It had called them to order for so many years and did so again now. Everyone around the table took in the sallow, angular features, the strained eyes. No one knew, not even he, that the cancer that would kill inside six months was already at its work. "I fear I am not as young as the rest of you. Could we pause for a break? Resume in ten minutes, perhaps?"

He had broken the spell. He couldn't know it, but by disappearing to the bathroom he had also performed arguably the greatest service of his long career.

"Of course. Inconsiderate of me, Neville," Churchill responded. "Ten minutes, then. I think I shall take a breath of fresh air in the garden. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary would like to join me."

"How the sun always manages to shine upon English disasters, Winston."

"Comes of playing cricket. Edward. Never did care for the game."

"I've always rather enjoyed it. Civilizing influence. A game for gentlemen."

"Precisely."

They had emerged from the gloom of the Cabinet Room into the heady light of a May afternoon when the walled garden of 10 Downing Street received its quota of full sun. The beds of flowers were an abundance of colour, the trees freshly green, the birds declaring their ownership of every branch and bush. The softest time of year. They began walking slowly.

"Do you remember, Edward? Almost twenty years since first we set against each other. I was in the Colonial Office and you'd been appointed my junior. Didn't want you, wanted someone else. Can't remember who. So I ignored you. For an entire fortnight I refused to meet you. Then you marched straight into my office and told me that you had never wanted to be my under-secretary, that you were ready to resign that very moment, but so long as you remained, you expected to be treated properly. As a gentleman."

"I remember."

"I behaved appallingly. I had to apologize to you then, and on many occasions since."

"Today wasn't the first time you have accused me of high treason."

"But always, in the end, we have found a way to sit with each other."

"Not any longer, Winston."

They walked on, Halifax tall and stooping, Churchill stamping with the impatience of unused energy, both preferring to admire the flowers rather than to catch each other's eye.

"My father resigned, Edward. Got up from that same table, in anger, and walked into misery. He never came back. It was the end of his influence."

"Forgive me, are we discussing the merits of resignation, or the merits of being a Churchill?"

Churchill halted abruptly. "That is cruel, Edward."

"And so is being falsely accused of treason! Winston, if the price of sitting at your table is to be bullied and constantly threatened, then I quit my place with a clear conscience."

"This is a time for embracing public duty rather than dancing upon a conscience."

"You cannot serve the public duty by denying your private conscience, Winston. At least, I cannot."

Churchill kicked the turf in anger. "Why do you attack me so?"

"Because you are so utterly and ridiculously intransigent."

"Intransigent? You think Hitler got where he is by conciliation and debate?"

"We are not German."

"No, but in a few weeks we damn well might be!"

Churchill turned away. Passion and invective had failed to win over Halifax in the Cabinet Room and he knew it would prove no more successful in the garden. He had to find a different way. He squinted into the sun.

"Edward, we cannot go on like this. We must find a way of resolving our impasse and without resignation. Like gentlemen."

"I fear it's too late for that. One of us must go."

"Neither of us must go, Edward. That we must agree above every other issue. If either of us steps aside in anger it would only hand the pass to Hitler. We must fight this out between ourselves and with our colleagues, but whoever wins the argument, there can be no resignation. His Majesty's Government will continue to fight, or if you prevail it will begin to negotiate. But in either event, our cause is lost if that Government is divided and rent by resignation. Division would be death to both our causes."

"Yet we cannot carry on as we are."

"I discussed these matters with the King this morning. He is as determined as I that there should be no division whatever else happens, our disagreements must remain private and unpublicized. Between gentlemen."

"Gentlemen," Halifax countered with emphasis, 'do not accuse each other of treason."

"Edward, I beg pardon for my excess. I was prompted by fear. You know I hold you as a man of the highest honour and I ask your forgiveness. I also ask your patience for a little while longer. I want you to remain in your seat at the Cabinet table until the evacuation from Dunkirk is complete. In the interests of your own reputation and your own conscience, you cannot quit at the moment of our soldiers' greatest peril. It would appear too selfish, too open to misinterpretation, something even your closest friends would find difficult to forgive."

It was a telling point. Halifax didn't immediately respond.

"Just a couple of days, Edward. You continue to argue your case, but you do it from inside the Government, not as an outsider, not in the' his arms waved in the air as though trying to ward off wasps 'futile manner of my father."

"The evacuation will not change the arguments, Winston. Even if we succeeded in bringing off numbers beyond our wildest dreams say, fifty thousand troops they will be beaten troops, in no condition to continue waging your war."

"Nevertheless ... a proud country, with an air force and a great navy, and still some sort of army. The best negotiating hand you will ever have, Edward, for if that is what the Cabinet desires, I shall step aside not resign in public dispute, but step aside and hold my silence in order to allow you to do what you so passionately think is right. And I would pray God's blessing on your labours."