Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [21]
At a further War Cabinet meeting that afternoon, Halifax found himself unsupported when he returned to his theme of the previous day, seeking agreement that Britain should solicit Mussolini’s help in exploring terms from Hitler. Churchill said that, at that moment, British prestige in Europe was very low. It could be revived only by defiance. “If, after two or three months, we could show that we were still unbeaten, we should be no worse off than we should be if we were now to abandon the struggle. Let us therefore avoid being dragged down the slippery slope with France.” If terms were offered, he would be prepared to consider them. But if the British were invited to send a delegate to Paris to join with the French in suing for peace with Germany, the answer must be no. The War Cabinet agreed.
Halifax wrote in his diary: “I thought Winston talked70 the most frightful rot. I said exactly what I thought of [the foreign secretary’s opponents in the War Cabinet], adding that if that was really their view, our ways must part.” In the garden afterwards, when he repeated his threat of resignation, Churchill soothed him with soft words. Halifax concluded in his diary record: “It does drive one to despair when he works himself up into a passion of emotion when he ought to make his brain think and reason.” He and Chamberlain recoiled from Churchill’s “theatricality,” as Cadogan described it. Cold men both, they failed to perceive in such circumstances the necessity for at least a semblance of boldness. But Chamberlain’s eventual support for Churchill’s stance was critically important in deflecting the foreign secretary’s proposals.
Whichever narratives of these exchanges are consulted, the facts seem plain. Halifax believed that Britain should explore terms. Churchill must have been deeply alarmed by the prospect of the foreign secretary, the man whom only three weeks earlier most of the Conservative Party wanted as prime minister, quitting his government. It was vital, at this moment of supreme crisis, that Britain should present a united face to the world. Churchill could never thereafter have had private confidence in Halifax. He continued to endure him as a colleague, however, because he needed to sustain the support of the Tories. It was a measure of Churchill’s apprehension about the resolve of Britain’s ruling class that it would be another seven months before he felt strong enough to consign “the Holy Fox” to exile.
The legend of Britain in the summer of 1940 as a nation united in defiance of Hitler is rooted in reality. It is not diminished by asserting that if another man had been prime minister, the political faction resigned to seeking a negotiated peace would probably have prevailed. What Churchill grasped, and Halifax and others did not, was that the mere gesture of exploring peace terms would have impacted disastrously upon Britain’s position. Even if Hitler’s response proved unacceptable to a British government, the clear, simple Churchillian posture of rejecting any parley with the forces of evil would be irretrievably compromised.
It is impossible to declare with confidence at what moment during the summer of 1940 Churchill’s grip upon power, as well as his hold upon the loyalties of the British people, became secure. What is plain is that, in the last days of May, he did not perceive himself proof against domestic foes. He survived in office not because he overcame the private doubts of ministerial and military sceptics, which he did not, but by the face of courage and defiance that he presented to the nation. He appealed over the heads of those who knew too much, to those who were willing to sustain a visceral stubbornness. “His world is built upon the primacy71 of public over private relationships,” wrote the philosopher Isaiah Berlin in a fine essay on Churchill,