Winston’s War (38 page)

“We are in a situation”—the words were all but drowned by the clamor around him—“we are in a situation that within a month we may be going to fight. And we may be going to die!” They tried to mock him, howl him down, to prevent his words ever being heard for the record, waving their Order Papers like toreadors tormenting a bull, but his chin was up and his voice carried over the tumult.

“It's all very well for Honorable Gentlemen who are about to take their leave for two entire months to say 'Oh' and to protest. But there are thousands of young men at the moment in training camps, who in the nation's interest have given up
their
holidays.” He gazed in contempt at those who barracked him, yet amongst them, like islands in an ocean, he also found faces of concern and support. His heaving chest grew still, his voice suddenly softer. Now they had to strain to hear him, but strain they did.

“I can't imagine why the Prime Minister couldn't have made a great gesture in the interests of national unity. Surely it's much more important to get the whole country behind you, but…” Cartland shook his head in despair and for a moment he seemed unable to continue. Chamberlain, who had been sitting immobile and unmoved throughout the speech, half turned his head to catch sight of his accuser—a glimpse, a glint of cold and undying enmity in his eye, an old man mocking the young—before once more turning his back. The insult seemed to revive Cartland, who sucked in the stale air of a place he had come so to despise, then launched himself onward.

“It is so very much more important to get the country
behind you,” he repeated, his voice rising as the tumult around him returned to do battle—“than to make jeering, pettifogging speeches which divide the nation. Why can't the Prime Minister ask for real confidence in himself—as Prime Minister—as the leader of the country rather than just leader of the party? I say frankly…”—they were baying at him, like hounds, wanting to rip out his throat—“I say frankly that I despair when I listen to speeches like that which I have listened to this afternoon.”

Cries of treachery erupted all around while from across the House the Opposition roared for more. The Speaker called in vain for order, but Cartland had sat down, the only man seeming unmoved in an ocean of storms. Within minutes the speech had been described by his party colleagues and now-former friends as “poisonous,” but there were others who said it was “a speech of a kind that will live long in the memory of this House.” It divided, because it had exposed the image of Government unity for what it was—an image.

On one thing they were all agreed. It had been a speech of irredeemable self-sacrifice. As the tumult began slowly to die, the Prime Minister's head bent to whisper briefly into the ear of his Chief Whip. Every one of them knew what was taking place.

Cartland was being condemned. He would not be a Conservative candidate at the next election.

Chamberlain would get his wish, for this was to prove the speech of a lifetime for Cartland. Within a month we may be going to fight, and we may be going to die, he had predicted. And so it was to be.

On May 30, 1940, Major Ronald Cartland, aged thirty-three, was shot through the head and killed during the retreat to Dunkirk, and so became the first Member of Parliament to die on active service.

Ignoring the warnings that had been cast at it by Cartland and Churchill and others, Parliament rose for its summer holi
days at the end of the week, on Friday the fourth of August.

It was twenty-five years to the day since the first shots had been fired in the First World War. It wasn't known as that, of course, not then. They had called it the Great War. The Last War. The war to end all wars.

(Daily Express, Bank Holiday Monday, August 7, 1939)

Daily Express holds canvass of its reporters in
Europe, and ten out of twelve say—
NO WAR THIS YEAR

BERLIN EMPHATIC: HITLER IS NOT READY

Daily Express
reporters in Europe believe that there will be no war this year.

That is the result of a canvass conducted in the principal capitals of the Continent last week. Our reporters were asked to give their views to the prospects of peace or war in 1939…It is significant that the three reporters in Berlin are the most confident of peace. None of these men believe that Hitler is ready to wage a major campaign…

Chamberlain left London on Bank Holiday Monday for his holiday fishing for salmon on the River Naver in Sutherland. Four days later his envoy—Admiral the Honorable Sir Reginald
Ranfurly etc., etc., etc.—arrived in Moscow after a long sea voyage to begin talks with the Russians about an alliance.

All the while, and with every passing day, the news from the Polish frontier glowed like a river of molten metal. The Poles were accused of terrorism, of torture, of murder. Every troop movement they made to guard their frontier was described in Germany as a preparation for war. Goebbels, who clearly hadn't read the
Daily Express
, made it sound as if the Poles were about to launch an armed offensive on Berlin itself.

Meanwhile Chamberlain waited, and fished, and prayed that Sir Reggie might prove a persuasive suitor, even though he had been sent to Moscow empty-handed and impotent. But others were more active and began to make preparations for what they feared was to come. City firms began to move documents and staff to the country, so that they could continue their work in the event that London was razed to the ground by the Luftwaffe. The priceless medieval stained-glass windows of Canterbury Cathedral were taken down and placed in storage. Art treasures from museums around London began to be crated and shipped out, and plans were made to kill the poisonous reptiles in the zoo. London became a city of sandbags— mountains of them everywhere. Where they ran out of sand, they filled the bags with old books and election manifestos.

Joe Kennedy cut short his foray in the South of France and flew back to London. The young aircraft captain saluted as the Ambassador clambered down the steps. “You think there will be war, sir?”

“You can bet on it. I have.”

“What are our chances?”

Kennedy looked at the young pilot with astonishment. “About as much as Joan of Arc praying for rain,” he growled, before moving on.

The Ambassador was accompanied by Mrs. Kennedy and his niece, Anna. Mademoiselle Marie-Noëlle Rey arrived on the flight immediately behind.

The trial of a full national blackout was planned, and then postponed because of bad weather. Searchlights and barrage balloons began to fill the parks of London. Traffic lights were dimmed almost to extinction, curbs were painted white to make them visible in the dark, and demonstrations were given of how to convert buses into makeshift ambulances. Even the advertisements changed. Some bright marketing spark grabbed hold of the growing mood of crisis and started to advertise the Terry's Anglepoise as “the only practical blackout lamp.”

But hope—futile, senseless, barren hope—still sprang eternal. The
Illustrated London News
printed photographs of the Polish cavalry at the charge above a caption which announced: “Poland's impressive horse cavalry—probably the best in Europe and equipped with sword, lance, and machine guns. An arm which has been extensively developed and has far greater mobility in difficult terrain than mechanized forces, besides being able to live off the country.”

They would die magnificently.

In Bournemouth, Sue Graham's wedding plans were made, then postponed. She and Jerry were agreed; there would be war and there was work to be done. So they would wait. Sue had already ordered the material for her wedding dress, several yards of pure white satin. She wrapped the material in tissue paper and placed it in a box, and on top of the cascade of white she placed Jerry's dried rose.

On August 21 Chamberlain broke his fishing holiday and returned briefly to London to catch up on events. Crowds gathered around Downing Street, watching the comings and goings of advisers in ever more somber mood. Occasionally a cheer would go up if they caught a glimpse of the Prime Minister himself. Everyone still hoped war might be averted, but few
believed, and those left with any lingering illusions would have them shattered before they went to bed.

On the evening of Chamberlain's return, the most astounding news was announced. Hitler had done a deal with Stalin. A mutual defense pact. While the Russian leader had been waving Admiral the Honorable out through the front door, German officials had been sneaking in through the back. A Faustian bargain had been struck between the two most awesome dictatorships in the world, reaching out for each other, like a vice around Poland which, when squeezed, would make the whole of Europe bleed.

The next day, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi Foreign Minister, flew to Moscow for the official signing ceremony,
his airplane casting a shadow that chilled hearts across the entire continent.

Chamberlain could not sleep. Every time he closed his eyes the night filled with terror. The fist of stone he had felt beneath his heart for so many months now turned into lava, burning into him after every meal and allowing him no rest. He felt exhausted, drained, yet he knew that the trial of his life stretched before him. He lay awake in his bed, sweat soaking into his pillow, staring sightless into the dark and listening to the rustlings of the night, which in his confused mind turned into the voices of his father and brother—mocking him, as they had when he was young.

In the morning he rose and set out on his usual morning constitutional around St. James's Park, but turned back well before he got to the bridge across the lake. As he walked through the door of Number Ten, a feeling of enormous apprehension overcame him, which he described later to his wife as being like that of a dying man taking to his bed for the very last time. He went straight to the Cabinet Room and slumped in his chair. Then he issued three instructions. Those of his Cabinet colleagues who were in London were to be summoned, as was his doctor. And he would need to speak to the King at Balmoral.

When, a little while later, His Majesty's voice came on the line, not even the bakelite echo of a trunk line could disguise the fact that the call was an intrusion.

“Should be out at my p-p-peg, Prime Minister. Can't it wait?”

“I suggest that you return to London, sir. Immediately.”

“Return? I can't return. Too much to do up here.”

“You must return.”

“But why?”

“Because I fear there is…an imminence of hostilities, sir.” A clumsy phrase, stinking of despair.

“War in Poland, you mean? I doubt that. Poland will have to back down, of course she will. Just like Czechoslovakia. And if she doesn't S-s-stalin and Hitler will tear her to pieces. After that they'll start tearing themselves to pieces, you mark my words. No, this couldn't have come out better for us, Mr. Chamberlain. We can sit back and watch all those damned Europeans beat themselves senseless.”

A deep sigh, a cry of exhaustion. “But, sir, we have guaranteed Poland.”

“Yes, I know that, but…” A long pause, to collect both his thoughts and his tongue. “You're not trying to tell me—are you, Mr. Chamberlain?—that we can't get out of the guarantee?”

“We have given our word.”

“Our word, of course, but…” More silence. Then a voice stripped of every shred of confidence. “We can't honor the guarantee. There's no way we can save Poland. It would be suicide to try.”

“Nevertheless, we have given our solemn promise. Drawn a line in the sand.”

“But to what p-purpose? What good would it do anyone if we went to war over Poland? We didn't do it over Czechoslovakia, so why Poland, for God's sake? Doesn't make sense, man.”

Silence.

“W-w-war? What's the bloody point?” the King demanded,
beginning to raise his voice. “It would be nothing more than a futile act of revenge. Leave Europe in ruins. The Empire in chaos.” He made it sound as if it were entirely Chamberlain's fault.

“You know, sir, that I have tried more than any man on this earth to avoid war. If there is going to be a war then at least we have shown that of all the nations under God, we tried to avoid it. No one can doubt who the aggressor is, who is to blame.”