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By Root 1025 0

a joking informality and a moratorium on pomposity and cant—and also a degree of frankness in intercourse which, if not quite complete, was remarkably close to it. But neither of them ever forgot for one instant what he was and represented or what the other was and represented … They were two men in the same line of business—politico-military leadership on a global scale … They appraised each other through the practiced eyes of professionals, and from this appraisal resulted a degree of admiration and sympathetic understanding of each other’s professional problems that lesser craftsmen could not have achieved.” While the prime minister eagerly succumbed to sentiment in forming a view of his fellow potentate, the president did not reciprocate. The American and British peoples felt that they understood their respective leaders, but the British had better reason to make the claim. Churchill was what he seemed. Roosevelt was not.

The prime minister brilliantly stage-managed his part in the Placentia meeting, himself choosing hymns for the Sunday church service beneath the huge guns of Prince of Wales, before a pulpit draped with the flags of the two nations: “Onward Christian Soldiers,” “O God Our Help in Ages Past” and “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” Scarcely a man present went unmoved. “My God, this is history!”381 muttered a fellow clerk “in a hushed, awed voice” to Corporal Geoffrey Green. As excited photographers clicked shutters from vantage points on the turrets and superstructure, a colleague said to Ian Jacob that the occasion must fulfil the fantasies of “a pressman high on hashish.”382

That afternoon, Churchill took a launch383 on a brief visit to the shore, wandering awhile with Cadogan, the Prof and his secretaries, and somewhat unexpectedly picking wildflowers. Senior officers of the two nations continued to shuttle to and fro between their ships, each arrival and departure being greeted with full ceremony by bands and honour guards, which ensured that the anchorage was never tranquil. The next day, there were further talks, desultory as before, between the service chiefs. Roosevelt marginally raised the stakes in the Atlantic war, by agreeing that U.S. warships should escort convoys as far east as Iceland. He justified this measure back in Washington by asserting that there was little purpose in providing American supplies to Britain without seeking to ensure that they reached their destination.

The most substantial outcome of the president and prime minister’s encounter was the Atlantic Charter, a strange document. It had its origin in a suggestion by Roosevelt that the two leaders should issue a statement of common principles. As published, it represented a characteristically American expression of lofty intentions. Yet it was drafted by Sir Alexander Cadogan, the attendant Foreign Office mandarin. The charter was signalled to London for approval by the War Cabinet, whose members were dragged out of bed for the purpose. In the small hours of the next morning—another drizzly affair, like most in Newfoundland—an officer reported to Churchill just as he was going to bed that London’s reply had arrived. “Am I going to like it?”384 the prime minister demanded—in Jacob’s words “like a small boy about to take medicine.” Yes, he was told, all was well. His ministers had endorsed the Anglo-American statement. When published, its noble phrases in support of a common commitment to freedom rang around the world, and gave hope to colonial subjects in a fashion that Churchill certainly did not intend. Back in the United States, however, the charter roused little popular enthusiasm. It was never signed, because this would have made it necessary to present the document to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.

Before they parted, the president offered the prime minister warm words of goodwill and a further 150,000 old rifles. But there was nothing that promised America’s early belligerence. This was what Churchill had come for, and he did not get it. By 2:50 p.m. on August 12 it was all over. Low cloud cut off the ships