Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [137]
In May 1942, America’s Fortune magazine published an entire issue about the postwar world. Henry Luce, proprietor of Fortune, invited Britain’s foreign secretary to contribute an article about his own country’s vision. Eden declined, prompting an official in the American Department of the Foreign Office, one C. R. King, to express dismay. It seemed to him a serious mistake to snub Luce. Yet he recognised the problem. Eden had no idea what to say: “I do not know that HMG have formulated (much less announced) any ideas on these problems beyond those that find expression in the Atlantic Charter.” King added that there was wide agreement in the United States “that America will emerge, after total victory495, militarily and economically supreme.” The Economist challenged Churchill in an editorial: “When has the Prime Minister made one496 of his great and compelling speeches on the theme, not of world strategy, but of the hopes and fears of the British people? So long as he is silent, Conservatism, the dominant political attitude in Britain, is silent, and Americans inevitably believe that maybe the Conservatives are out to do nothing but conserve.” The intellectuals’ preoccupation with postwar Britain exasperated the prime minister when he was struggling to find means to avert the destruction of European freedom. But in this matter, his instincts were ill-attuned to those of the public.
Early in April, Churchill’s honeymoon with Roosevelt was rudely interrupted. The prime minister had planned to go to India, to address its defence and constitutional future, but crises elsewhere made it seem inappropriate for him to leave London and travel so far. Stafford Cripps was dispatched in his stead, with a mandate to discuss with India’s nationalist leaders prospective postwar self-government. Talks quickly collapsed. The Hindu-majority Indian National Congress rejected delay, and insisted upon immediate admission to political power. Cripps reported accordingly to London, and was told to come home. Churchill had expected, and indeed wished, no other outcome. He was content that the gesture had been made, and that it was Cripps who bore the odium of failure.
On April 11, however, Roosevelt cabled Churchill, urging that Cripps should remain in India and preside over the creation of a nationalist government. The president asserted that American opinion was overwhelmingly hostile to Britain on this issue: “The feeling is almost universally held497 that the deadlock has been caused by the unwillingness of the British Government to concede to the Indians the right of self-government … [if] minor concessions would be made by both sides, it seems to me that an agreement might yet be found.” Many Americans explicitly identified India’s contemporary predicament with that of their own country before the Revolution of 1776. “You’re the top / You’re Mahatma Gandhi!” wrote Cole Porter euphorically, reflecting the huge enthusiasm of his countrymen for the guru of the Indian independence movement. Such sentiment was wormwood to Churchill. At the best of times, he had little patience with the Indian people. His view was unchanged since he served among them as a cavalry subaltern in the 1890s. Leo Amery, the India secretary, found Churchill “a strange combination of great and small qualities498 … He is really not quite normal on the subject of India.” The prime minister opposed, for instance, granting Indian commissioned officers disciplinary powers over British other ranks. He expostulated against “the humiliation of being ordered about499 by a brown man.”
Churchill was ruthlessly dismissive of Indian political aspirations when the Japanese army was at the gates. He could scarcely be expected to forget that the Mahatma had offered to mediate Britain’s surrender to Hitler, whom the standard-bearer of nonviolence and Indian