Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [30]
When Victory in Europe Day came—on May 8, during the conference’s second week—Jack responded by writing eloquently in the Herald-American: “Any man who had risked his life for his country and seen his friends killed around him must inevitably wonder why this has happened to him and most important what good will it do. It is perhaps normal that they would be disappointed with what they have seen in San Francisco. I suppose that this is inevitable. Youth is a time for direct action and simplification. To come from battlefields where sacrifice is the order of the day—to come from there to here—it is not surprising that they should question the worth of their sacrifice and feel somewhat betrayed.”
In a letter to one of his war buddies, he phrased his message more bluntly: “We must face the truth that the people have not been horrified by war to a sufficient extent to force them to go to any extent rather than have another war.”
Chuck Spalding, keeping an eye on his friend as well as on the tone of his articles, was starting to draw his own conclusions. “Either wittingly or unwittingly, he began to write as a politician.” Just as in the South Pacific, he was acting more as a leader than as an observer. “The war makes less sense to me now,” Jack wrote, “than it ever made and that was little enough—and I would really like—as my life’s goal—in some way at home or at some time to do something to help prevent another.”
While still on the job in San Francisco, Jack learned his next assignment was to be London. There he’d be reporting on the fierce political struggle taking place as the British home-front coalition broke down. The opposition Labour Party was going all out to contest Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s Conservative government in the first postwar British general election. For Jack, it was a chance to see his most enduring hero fight for his political life, and yet he was stunned. How could Churchill, whose indomitable leadership had meant so much to his nation in wartime, now be in such serious trouble?
What Jack was about to learn is how quickly economic concerns replaced wartime loyalties. The war had been hard on the British working class and, suddenly, voters were remembering how the Conservatives had supported appeasement of the Germans before the war. The same Tories were now clinging to power with warnings of socialist dictatorship. But, more to the point in the postwar climate, the Tories were preaching belt-tightening. Just when the people were looking for a break from the depressed economy—the rationing, the empty cupboards—they were being promised more of the same.
Unfortunately, when the votes were counted, both Jack’s front-row position and his empathy didn’t help his critical judgment. Unable to imagine a Labour victory, he filed a wrap-up election piece predicting a close Tory win. He wasn’t alone; Churchill’s overwhelming defeat was a shock to many.
While in England, Jack took advantage of the opportunity to catch up with old friends. One of them, Alistair Forbes, registered this impression: “He struck me then that he was more intellectual than any other member of the family. He read more. He had a fantastically good instinct, once his attention was aroused to a problem, for getting the gist of it and coming to a mature judgment about it. He had a detachment which reminded me very much of Winston Churchill in the sense that his life had been protected by money.”
Another friend, Hugh Fraser, who was running for Parliament himself at the time, saw him similarly. “He was always a great questioner. He always asked an enormous number of questions. He was very interested in things. For every one question I asked him he asked two at least.”
“Political to his fingertips” is how the British economist Barbara Ward recalled him. “He asked every sort of question of what were the pressures, what were the forces at work, who supported what.” Such curiosity, such a need to inform himself and to sift carefully through what he was learning,