• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 936 0

throughout the crisis was never categorically opposed to British leadership in Greece and the Mediterranean, but strongly objected to the possible imposition of an unrepresentative and unpopular government on the Greek people, and to the possible creation of a closed British sphere of interest.” Drew Pearson’s final column of 1944 unfavourably compared Churchill’s “outgrown imperialism” with more enlightened attitudes elsewhere in the British body politic. Criticism of British shortcomings at home and abroad was now a running theme in the U.S. press. Virginius Dabney wrote in the New York Times on December 31 that opinion in the American south, traditionally friendly to Britain, was turning hostile: “The development which has provoked most adverse comment is Winston Churchill’s policy in Greece and Italy. Even in this strongly pro-British region criticism is being heard, not only of Churchill but of the British people.”

The British did not receive this bombardment in silence. On December 30, after a surge of U.S. comment which added allegations of “slacking” to other charges against America’s ally, the Economist delivered a counterblast:

What makes the American criticisms so intolerable is not merely that they are unjust, but that they come from a source which has done so little to earn the right to postures of superiority. To be told by anyone that the British people are slacking in their war effort would be insufferable enough to a people struggling through their sixth winter of black-out and rations and coldness—but when the criticism comes from a nation that was practising Cash-and-Carry during the Battle of Britain, whose consumption has risen during the war years, which is still without a national service act—then it is not to be borne.

There is still a great deal of wishful thinking in Britain, even in the highest quarters, to the effect that good behaviour on our part will procure some great prize, such as an Anglo-American alliance … It is as well to be brutally frank: there is no more possibility of any of these things than of an American petition to rejoin the British Empire … What, then, is the conclusion for British policy towards America? Clearly it is not that any quarrels should be picked … But let an end be put to the policy of appeasement which, at Mr. Churchill’s personal bidding, has been followed, with all the humiliations and abasements it has brought in its train.

Following the Economist’s outburst, the State Department recorded “an orgy of recrimination1037 between the American and British presses.” The Washington embassy reported to London the following week on U.S. attitudes: “The general reaction is that although the British attack1038 was not unprovoked and the British cannot have been expected to take the flood of criticism poured by the United States press and radio lying down, yet the British are surely much too touchy and the tone of their retort is much too harsh.” Though a January 14 Life magazine editorial described the Economist’s criticisms as well-merited, many U.S. publications remained hostile. Office of War Information and State Department surveys1039 in the early months of 1945 found that Americans consistently rated the British more blameworthy than the Russians for the difficulties of the Grand Alliance.

The State Department study noted: “Despite recent press comment sympathetic to the British1040, a confidential opinion poll indicates that dissatisfaction with the British has increased among the public at large. The tabulation shows that mass opinion, dissatisfied with the way in which Russia, Britain and the United States are cooperating, blames chiefly Britain … The ‘nationalist’ press, even in comment praising Field-Marshal Montgomery and the British people, continued to charge that the ‘British and Russians are playing power politics against each other in the middle of this war, while we, at least at this moment, do most of the fighting.’”

Churchill found little to celebrate in what he called the “new, disgusting year” of 1945. Russian intransigence was familiar, but