Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII Never Despair 1945-1965 (1988)
Part Three: Second Premiership
45
Stroke
...At Chartwell on June 29 Churchill had another close friend to lunch, Lord Cherwell. Once more Lord Moran was a witness to the conversation, and to his patient’s improved mood:
The Prof to luncheon. He has developed diabetes. When he asked the PM how he was, Winston answered with a touch of levity:
‘I eats well and sleeps well and drinks well, but when I get alongside any business I go all of a tremble. I could do without smoking but not without my liquor; that would be a sad impoverishment.’
...
Among the dinner guests on June 30 was Sir Norman Brook. ‘Winston likes him, and they talked for a long time,’ noted Moran. It was Brook and Jock Colville who asked the questions. Churchill told them of the mutiny over demobilization at the end of the First World War:
They came to him at the War Office and said that this was a serious mutiny. The soldiers were dissatisfied with the regulations for demobilization; they felt it was not being done fairly. They had gathered on the Horse Guards Parade, and things looked ugly. Winston asked: ‘How many troops have we to deal with them?’ They answered, a battalion of the Guards and three squadrons of the Household Cavalry. ‘Are they loyal?’ Winston asked. ‘We hope they are,’ was the doubtful answer. ‘Can you arrest the mutineers?’ ‘We are not certain.’ ‘Have you any other suggestions?’ They had none. ‘Then arrest the mutineers.’ He stood watching from a window over the parade ground. He expected firing to break out any minute. But the mutineers allowed the Guards to surround them.
We asked the PM what he did when the mutineers were under arrest.
PM: ‘Oh, I changed the system of demobilization overnight: the first to join was the first to be demobilized, and any man with a wound stripe or a decoration could go when he wished. This removed their strong sense of injustice. It was one of the best things I did.’
ну в натуре, гений же... никто ведь без него не догадался бы...
…
46
Recovery
...One of the first matters which had to be resolved in those early days of recovery was Eisenhower’s request that all references to him in the final volume of Churchill’s war memoirs must be submitted to General Bedell Smith for scrutiny.
...Lord Moran, who was also present, wrote in his diary:
Winston spoke of death. He did not believe in another world; only in ‘black velvet’-eternal sleep. He kept taking up different subjects and then dropping them, almost at once, as if he could not be bothered to go deeply into anything. He spoke of some African chiefs drinking beer, armed with staves, inflamed with alcohol and inspired by liberal principles-the old love of words-and then of Buddhism, ‘a Tory religion’. He used not to believe in rationing or in any other device which would lead to bureaucracy, but Sam Hoare had converted him.
...On July 5 Field Marshal Montgomery came to lunch and stayed for dinner. At one point in the discussion Montgomery asked Churchill ‘What is our policy in Korea?’ In his diary, Moran noted Churchill’s reply:
PM: ‘If I were in charge I would withdraw the United Nations troops to the coast and leave Syngman Rhee to the Chinese. But the American public would not swallow this. Korea does not really matter now. I’d never heard of the bloody place till I was seventy-four. Its importance lies in the fact that it has led to the rearming of America. That may have saved the peace of the world. And Indo-China, too, does not really matter. We gave up India. Why shouldn’t France give up Indo-China?’
Monty (demurring): ‘Indo-China matters strategically. If Indo-China goes, Siam goes too. And then Malaya would be in danger.’
PM: ‘We could hold the Isthmus.’
Monty: ‘Yes, perhaps we might.’
PM: ‘It’s Germany, not Korea, that matters.’