The Churchill Series - Dec 11, 2005

(One of a series of daily posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

During his long life, Churchill witnessed extraordinary changes. The gas lamp gave way to the light bulb, the horse carriage to the automobile, and the ocean liners he loved were replaced by four-engine planes.

But not everything changed. Churchill, for example, was harried throughout his public career by egocentric and ill-informed newspaper editors.

Here's part of what his biographer, Martin Gilbert, tells us about a Feb. 14, 1932 Washington Post editorial written when Churchill was in Washington during his American lecture tour that year:

As for Churchill's call for "a working agreement between Great Britain and the United States," (the Post) was hostile.

"Not many years ago." it declared, "political and economic unity with the Yankees would have been repulsive to British statesmen."
...
"Now the tables are turned and Mr. Churchill is trying to flatter the United States into taking over some of Great Britain's (World War I debts)."
...
"What contribution has Britain to make to the cooperative bond that Mr. Churchill suggests for the two countries?"

A few years later, the Post's editorial writers began wondering whether the Royal Navy was doing enough to make sure Britain would be able to protect neutral American ships in the Atlantic in the event of a "European war".

In 1939, as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill was responsible for making sure Britain could make that "contribution ...to the cooperative bond" between our two nations.

Do you think Post editorial writers in 1939 remembered the editorial of Feb. 14, 1932?

I doubt it, unless editorial writers are wiser today than they were then, and I really doubt that. How about you?
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Martin Gilbert, Churchill and America. (pgs. 140-141)