Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII Never Despair 1945-1965 (1988)
Part Three: Second Premiership
42
Return to the United States
...On another aspect of the Government’s Egyptian policy, Churchill told his colleagues ‘that he had been surprised to learn that it was proposed to allow the Egyptians to draw £10 million of their blocked sterling balances at the beginning of 1953. He had hoped that, as had been done twelve months previously, this release would be delayed and held as a useful card in negotiations over the Sudan and over defence. He had certainly expected that this would be fully discussed in Cabinet before any decision was made.’
...Churchill was not at all satisfied with this answer, telling his colleagues ‘that he found it difficult to regard this as a routine matter. The releases already made had not improved the attitude of the Egyptian Government towards the United Kingdom; and, while it was right that international agreements should be kept, it was possible to make exceptions where the other party to an agreement had repudiated a treaty as Egypt had done.’
да да да... договора важны, но мы важнее...
...Churchill spent New Year’s Day 1953 on board the Queen Mary sailing westward. That evening, Colville noted in his diary, he said that if Colville lived his normal span ‘I should assuredly see Eastern Europe free of Communism’. He also told Colville that ‘Russia feared our friendship more than our enmity’. Recalling the Anglo-American strategic dispute of 1945, Churchill told his Private Secretary that, ‘owing to Eisenhower winning the Presidency he must cut much out of Volume VI of his War History and could not tell the story of how the United States gave way, to please Russia, vast tracts of Europe they had occupied and how suspicious they were of his pleas for caution’.
...From the Queen Mary, Churchill and his wife went to Bernard Baruch’s apartment, where Churchill had stayed the year before. At five o’clock that afternoon General Eisenhower arrived. There were still fifteen days to go before he became President. ‘Well, the one thing I have so far learnt in this damned game of yours,’ he told Churchill, ‘is that you have just got to have a sense of humour.’
...To an after-dinner plea by Baruch for an acceleration of the process of European unity, Churchill commented: ‘It may be better to bear an agonising period of unsatisfactory time. You may kill yourself in getting strong enough.
...Neither Eisenhower nor Dulles had seen the American message about Persia. Both were steadied by its evident complexity and care. Baruch, who has a good deal of influence, talks in the same strain to them.