Winston Churchill's War Leadership Read Online Free PDF Page B

appealed to his fellow parliamentarians in these words: “I say, let pre-war feuds die; let personal quarrels be forgotten, and let us keep our hatreds for the common enemy. Let Party interests be ignored, let all our energies be harnessed, let the whole ability and forces of the nation be hurled into the struggle, and let the strong horses be pulling on the collar.”
    Three months later, as Prime Minister, he was to reiterate this theme with even greater force. After describing the recriminations between France and Britain on the eve of the fall of France as well as the neglect by the pre-war British government to provide an adequate army for fighting on the continent, he told the House of Commons:
    I am not reciting these facts for the purpose of recrimination. That, I judge, to be utterly futile and even harmful. We cannot afford it. I recite them in order to explain why it was that we did not have, as we could have had, between twelve and fourteen British divisions fighting in the line in this great battle instead of only three. Now I put all this aside. I put it on the shelf, from which the historians, if they have time, will select their documents and tell their stories. We have to think of the future and not of the past. This also applies in a small way to our own affairs at home. There are too many who would hold an inquest in the House of Commons on the conduct of the Governments—and of Parliaments, for they are in it too—during the years which led up to this catastrophe. They seek to indict those who were responsible for the guidance of our affairs. This also would be a foolish and pernicious process. There are too many in it. Let each man search his conscience and search his speeches. I frequently search mine.
    Churchill continued: “Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”
    Churchill rejected the demand that those who had been at the centre of the pre-war appeasement policy not be rewarded for their pre-war stance. He told the House of Commons: “Every Minister who tries each day to do his duty shall be respected, and their subordinates must know that their chiefs are not threatened men, men who are here today and gone tomorrow, but that their directions must be punctually and faithfully obeyed. Without this concentrated power we cannot face what lies before us.”
    One of Churchill’s ministerial appointments— Captain David Margesson as Chief Whip—was particularly criticized by those who wanted to see the pre-war “Men of Munich” excluded from government. Margesson had been both Stanley Baldwin’s and Neville Chamberlain’s Chief Whip, active in helping to keep Churchill out of office and in dragooning the serried ranks of Conservative Members of Parliament to vote against many of his proposals on national defence, including his advocacy of a Ministry of Supply to enable industry to prepare for the eventuality of war. To a Conservative anti-appeasement Member of Parliament who had voiced his opposition to the retention of Margesson, Churchill wrote: “It has been my deliberate policy to try to rally all the forces for the life and death struggle in which we are plunged, and to let bygones be bygones. I am quite sure that Margesson will treat me with the loyalty that he has given to my predecessors.” He added: “The fault alleged against him which tells the most is that he has done his duty only too well. I do not think that there is anyone who could advise me better about all those elements in the Tory Party who were so hostile to us in recent years. I have to think of unity, and I need all the strength I can get.” As to the Chief Whip’s qualities, Churchill wrote, “I have long had a very high opinion of Margesson’s administrative and executive abilities.” Not long after writing this letter, Churchill appointed Margesson to be Secretary of State for War.
    At the centre of Churchill’s mental