Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII Never Despair 1945-1965 (1988)
Part Two: In Opposition 1945-1951
25
‘Poor old Britain…’
...When he spoke in the Foreign Affairs debate on December 10, Churchill congratulated Bevin and his colleagues upon ‘the success, surpassing expectation, of the prodigious airlift to feed the people of Berlin’. The airlift had taught the people of Germany ‘on the other side of the Iron Curtain’, in a way which no speeches, arguments or promises could do, ‘that their future lies in ever-closer association with the Western world’.
Referring to the recent elections in Berlin as a proof of ‘the resurrection of the German spirit’, Churchill spoke of ‘a mighty race’ without whose effective aid ‘the glory of Europe’ could not be revived. It was for these reasons, he added, ‘that I look forward to the day when all this hateful process of denazification trials and even the trials of leaders or prominent servants of the Hitler regime may be brought to an end. At any rate, I should like to put this point-surely enough blood has been shed. I would not take another life because of the quarrels, horrors and atrocities of the past.’
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Notes
In 1922 there were approximately 500,000 Arabs and 90,000 Jews in Mandate Palestine; in 1947 there were 1,238,000 Arabs and 650,000 Jews (Arabs as well as Jews having immigrated in considerable numbers into Palestine between 1922 and 1939).