Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [127]
The New Statesman complained, “Mr. Churchill has been unwilling to give453 so much as a gracious word to win the support of India and Burma.” The prime minister’s later reluctance to release scarce shipping to relieve the Bengal famine, which killed three million people, appalled both the viceroy and Leo Amery, secretary of state for India. When Amery wished454 to make a broadcast to explain British policy, the prime minister vetoed it, saying that such action was making too much of the famine and sounding apologetic. More than any other aspect of his wartime behaviour, such high-handedness reflected the nineteenth-century imperial vision of Churchill’s youth. As the Far East situation deteriorated, for four months there seemed a real possibility that Australia would be invaded. The Canberra government turned openly to the United States for protection, in default of reassurance backed by reinforcements which the threadbare “mother country” could not provide.
On January 27, amid increasing parliamentary criticism, Churchill faced the Commons. “It is because things have gone badly, and worse is to come, that I demand a Vote of Confidence,” he said. This was a device designed to force his critics to show their hands, or flinch. Having won the subsequent division by a majority of 464 to 1, he walked beaming through the throng in the central lobby on the arm of Clementine, who had come to lend support. But he knew that this outcome represented no ending of his troubles. He was unwell, nagged by a cold he could not shake off. On February 9, Eden’s private secretary Oliver Harvey told his chief that he should be prepared to take over the premiership, and noted in his diary: “I think he is.”455 Beyond the risks inherent in Churchill’s wartime travels, the health of a man of sixty-seven, labouring under huge strains, might collapse at any time. Such a contingency was never far from the consciousness of his close subordinates, who were also dismayed by unsurprising evidence of the strains under which he laboured. Brooke, less than two months in his job as CIGS, told Dalton at dinner on February 10: “Sometimes … the PM is just like a child456 who has lost his temper. It is very painful and no progress can be made with the business.”
Churchill signalled Wavell, newly appointed as Anglo-American supreme commander in the Far East, urging that while the Russians on the Eastern Front and the Americans on Luzon, in the Philippines, were fighting so staunchly, it was essential that the army in Malaya should be seen to give of its best: “The whole reputation of our country and our race is involved.”457 Two days later, on February 11, in response to continuing domestic criticism of his government and Beaverbrook’s desire to resign, he offered Stafford Cripps, whom he despised but who had a large popular following, the Ministry of Supply. Churchill grumbled about Cripps’s demand to sit in the War Cabinet: “Lots of people want to458. You could fill the Albert Hall with people who want to be in the War Cabinet.” Denied a seat, Cripps declined office.
There was a new shock on February 12. The German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau left Brest and steamed at full speed up the English Channel, assisted by fog. Churchill’s secretary Elizabeth Layton entered the Cabinet Room at three p.m. to take dictation, where she found the prime minister “striding up and down, all on edge459. He dictated four telegrams like a whirlwind, and then phoned this and phoned that. I wondered if I should go, and once did slip out, but was recalled. Did another telegram, he marched up and down, talking to himself, a mass of compressed energy. Presently he sat down and said, ‘There’s a bloody great battle going on out there.’ I said, ‘Do you think we might get them?’ He said, ‘Don’t know. We winged ’em, but they