Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [98]
Churchill’s old colleagues—the likes of Balfour, Lloyd George, Chamberlain, Baldwin, Halifax—had for years rolled their eyes impatiently in the face of such outpourings. Familiarity with Winston’s extravagant rhetoric rendered them readily bored by it, especially when it had been deployed in support of so many unworthy and unsuccessful causes in the past. Yet now, at last, Churchill’s words and the mood of the times seemed perfectly conjoined. His sonorous style had an exceptional appeal for Americans. Hopkins had never before witnessed such effortless, magnificent dinner-table statesmanship. He was entranced by his host: “Jesus Christ! What a man!” He was impressed by the calm with which the prime minister received news, often bad. One night during the usual evening film at Ditchley, word came that the cruiser Southampton had been sunk in the Mediterranean. The show went on.
During the weeks that followed, Hopkins spent twelve evenings with Churchill, travelled with him to visit naval bases in Scotland and blitzed south coast towns. He marvelled at his host’s popularity and absolute mastery of Britain’s governance, though he was less impressed by the calibre of Churchill’s subordinates: “Some of the ministers and underlings are a bit trying,” he told Roosevelt. Eden, for instance, he thought talked too much. Hopkins attained a quick, shrewd grasp of the private distaste towards the prime minister that persisted among Britain’s ruling caste: “The politicians and upper crust pretend to like him.” He was in no doubt, however, about the fortitude of the British people. “Hopkins was, I think, very impressed351 by the cheerfulness and optimism he found everywhere,” wrote Churchill’s private secretary Eric Seal. “I must confess that I am surprised at it myself … PM … gets on like a house afire with Hopkins, who is a dear, & is universally liked.” Roosevelt’s envoy told Raymond Lee, “I have never had such an enjoyable time352 as I had with Mr. Churchill.”
Back in Washington, the president was much tickled by reports of Hopkins’s popularity in Britain, as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes noted: “Apparently the first thing that Churchill asks for353 when he gets awake in the morning is Harry Hopkins, and Harry is the last one he sees at night.” Maybe so, growled the cynical Ickes, but even if the president had sent a bubonic plague carrier, Britain’s prime minister would have found it expedient to see plenty of him. Among the envoy’s most important functions was to brief Churchill about how best to address the American people and assist Roosevelt’s efforts to assist Britain. Above all, the prime minister was told, he should not suggest that any commitment of U.S. ground troops was either desirable or likely. Hopkins concluded his report to the president: “People here are amazing from Churchill down,” he wrote, “and if courage alone can win—the result will be inevitable. But they need our help desperately.”
When the envoy landed back at New York’s LaGuardia Airport in February 1941, the new ambassador-designate to Britain, “Gil” Winant, called out to him as he descended from his plane, “Are they going to hold out?” Hopkins shouted back, “Of course they are.” This was a self-consciously theatrical exchange for the benefit of the assembled throng of reporters, but nonetheless sincere. Thereafter, Hopkins’s considerable influence upon the president was exercised towards gaining maximum U.S. support for Britain. Londoner Vere Hodgson was among those who thrilled to a BBC broadcast by Roosevelt’s envoy: “He finished with really glorious words of comfort354: ‘People of Britain, people of the British Commonwealth of Nations, you are not fighting alone.’ I felt after this the War was won.”
Yet, however successful was the Hopkins visit from a British perspective, it did not alter fundamentals. “Winston is completely certain of America’s full help,”355 the Australian prime minister, Robert Menzies, wrote doubtingly during a visit to Chequers at the end of February 1941. “Is he right? I cannot say.” Franklin Roosevelt was conducting his