Franklin And Winston Part 16

In his memory, Churchill put many things back together, including his friends.h.i.+p with Roosevelt, which in Churchill's mind also became one of his treasures. He had done the same with his relations.h.i.+p with his father, and with his mother, and with so many other things in his life. As the years went by, he remembered the high moments with Roosevelt more than he did the low.

Politics was part of the reason. During the war and afterward, Churchill believed Anglo-American unity was essential to maintaining Britain's role in the world. He went out of his way to play down his differences with Roosevelt, preferring to look back on the war as a time of warm Allied camaraderie. In the late 1940s, John Kenneth Galbraith dined with the Churchills at London's Connaught Hotel during an international conference. "He invited three or four of us for a long evening of talk-overwhelmingly by him," Galbraith recalled. "We covered the whole range of problems during the war, with a favorable view taken of all decisions in London and in Was.h.i.+ngton." As Churchill surveyed the scene, recalling his time with Roosevelt with unnuanced pleasure, Clementine would occasionally reach out to restrain him from drinking too much of the Connaught's good wine.

Churchill's English-speaking union never quite came to official reality, but the Anglo-American alliance has been a bedrock of the global order for decades. However turbulent, however tinged with sentimentality, however much resented by others in the world, in fact the deep connection between the two nations has been a force for democracy and liberty through what Churchill might have called the "storm and strife" of battles against tyrants and terrorists. When an American president and a British prime minister walk through the woods of Camp David or confer on a transatlantic telephone, they are working in the style and in the shadow of Roosevelt and Churchill.

Churchill's personal grace was another reason for his reimagination of reality. "Churchill has never turned his back on a friend, never shown rancour," said Lord Beaverbrook. "From all small things he had a grand immunity," Violet Bonham Carter recalled. "He seemed to have been endowed by fortune with a double charge of life and with a double dose of human nature, for transcending all was his warm and wide humanity." Very late in Churchill's life, Clementine invited James Roosevelt to call on her husband in retirement. "He'd like that, and maybe it'd perk him up a bit," she said. "He's been a bit down." Churchill seemed feeble, but when he saw Roosevelt his face lit up. Holding his guest's hand, he asked him to sit and talk. "From time to time he'd ask me if I remembered someone I'd never met, and he spoke about a message he'd sent me, when he'd never sent me a message in his life," James recalled. "At first I was puzzled. Then I realized he thought I was my father." Seeing his mistake, Churchill was "terribly disappointed and his expression and posture seemed to sag." For a fleeting instant, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had been at the pinnacle again, if only in an old man's mind, and the thought had been pleasing. "Churchill's att.i.tude toward Roosevelt was one of profound affection and regard," recalled Anthony Montague Browne, "and it never changed."

ON THE FIRST day of March 1955, Churchill made his final major address in the House of Commons. The topic was the hydrogen bomb and arms control, a remarkable subject for a man who had galloped in the cavalry charge at Omdurman so long before. "What ought we to do?" Churchill asked rhetorically. "Which way shall we turn to save our lives and the future of the world? It does not matter so much to old people; they are going soon anyway; but I find it poignant to look at youth in all its activity and ardour and, most of all, to watch little children playing their merry games, and wonder what would lie before them if G.o.d wearied of mankind." But he had endured too much, won too many improbable victories, to give in.

"To conclude: mercifully, there is time and hope if we combine patience and courage . . . ," Churchill continued. "The day may dawn when fair play, love for one's fellow men, respect for justice and freedom, will enable tormented generations to march forth serene and triumphant from the hideous epoch in which we have to dwell. Meanwhile, never flinch, never weary, never despair." No matter how bleak the forecast, courage would carry us forward. For courage, Churchill once said, was the essential virtue because "it guaranteed all the others."

His friend, long dead, had been working on a Jefferson Day speech on the porch at Warm Springs the day before the end, a decade before. "Today, science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another," Franklin Roosevelt wrote. "Today we are faced with the pre-eminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relations.h.i.+ps-the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together in the same world, at peace." And finally, this: "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

It was Franklin Roosevelt's last testament. Winston Churchill had the better of the contest. The Englishman's cadences trumped the American's. But in the end, their hearts were together.

LIKE MOST FRIENDS, Churchill and Roosevelt were sometimes affectionate, sometimes cross, alternately ready to die for or murder the other. But each helped make what the other did possible. Churchill's unflinching countenance in the chaos of 1940 gave the British the strength to endure in the face of the seemingly unendurable. The conviction that someday, somehow, Roosevelt would come to his side was the engine of Churchill's heroic resistance.

Roosevelt's reluctance to fully enter the war before December 1941 was not about opposing totalitarianism-which he did-but about leading an unready and divided nation into combat. Perhaps the only thing worse than America's aloofness from September 1, 1939, to December 11, 1941, would have been a president who pushed an ill-equipped country into political and military battles that, if lost-and they may well have been-might have sent the United States back behind its own walls for good. But for the American president's caution in those early years, we could be living in the grim shadow of an isolationist Age of Lindbergh, not in the light of the Age of Roosevelt.

Roosevelt saw that what happened far from our sh.o.r.es-in Europe, in distant Asia, in caves and camps-mattered. The world was connected, one nation and one people to another, and he understood that we could not-cannot-escape history, no matter how much we might like to. "Wishful thinking," Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "is one of our besetting sins."

In the spring of 1963, Randolph Churchill came to Was.h.i.+ngton to accept his father's honorary American citizens.h.i.+p from President Kennedy in the Rose Garden. Over late-night drinks at Kay Halle's Georgetown house, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. asked Randolph about Roosevelt. Randolph told Schlesinger that he had found Roosevelt "rather a 'feminine' figure with visible prima-donna traits of jealousy"-the a.n.a.lysis of a loyal son. Yet, being his father's son (a phrase young Winston used as the t.i.tle of his biography of Randolph), Randolph generously added: "But his voice-a great voice-instinct with courage. Even more so than my father's." A graceful point.

IN THE MIDDLE of the war, Harry Hopkins noticed a "Notes and Comment" piece of E. B. White's in The New Yorker and pa.s.sed it on to Roosevelt. White had received a letter from the Writers' War Board asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." The request got White thinking.

"Surely the Board knows what democracy is," he wrote in the magazine. "It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don't in don't shove. It is the hole in the stuffed s.h.i.+rt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It's the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee."

"I love it!" Roosevelt said when he read the piece, which he would later quote, adding happily: "Them's my sentiments exactly."

They were Churchill's, too, though he would have phrased the point in a more ornate way. The Americans and the British, he said at Fulton in 1946, "must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence." These were the pillars of free societies. "Here are the t.i.tle deeds of freedom which should lie in every cottage home," Churchill said. "Here is the message of the British and American peoples to mankind. Let us preach what we practise-let us practise what we preach."

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT RETURNED to London in the spring of 1948 for the unveiling of a statue of her husband in Grosvenor Square. No longer prime minister but still in Parliament, Churchill was there, and during the ceremony Eleanor's thoughts returned to the war. "My husband had looked forward to the joy of sharing with Mr. Churchill the grat.i.tude of the people of England," she recalled. Her musings turned bittersweet. "But just as Moses was shown the promised land and could not enter, I imagine there are many men who see their hopes and plans developing but who are never actually allowed to have on this earth the recognition they might well have enjoyed. One can only hope that, if they have labored with the love of G.o.d in their hearts, they will have a more perfect satisfaction than we can ever experience here."

THERE ARE MEMORIALS to Roosevelt and Churchill just inside the West Door of Westminster Abbey. The first, a gray tablet that hangs far below a window depicting Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes of Israel, reads: TO THE HONORED MEMORY OF FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, A FAITHFUL FRIEND OF FREEDOM AND OF BRITAIN. Nearby, a large, dark green marble slab lies on the floor of the great nave, its inscription simple but profound: REMEMBER WINSTON CHURCHILL. On sunny days in London, light slips in the gloom of the ancient church, both through the stained gla.s.s and from the open doors-light from a world Roosevelt and Churchill together delivered from evil.

APPENDIX.

Their Days and Nights:

A Summary of the Roosevelt-Churchill Meetings, 19411945

1941.

Placentia Bay, Newfoundland: Code Name RIVERIA Sat.u.r.day, August 9Tuesday, August 12: Aboard the USS Augusta and HMS Prince of Wales Roosevelt agrees to extend escorts to protect s.h.i.+pping in the Atlantic to Iceland, an important step in the Battle of the Atlantic against German U-boats; a message to j.a.pan warning against continued aggression in the Pacific is considered (but ultimately much weakened); a mission is planned to the Soviet Union to determine Lend-Lease needs for Stalin; the Atlantic Charter, a declaration of war and peace aims, is debated, drafted, and issued.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Code Name ARCADIA Monday, December 22Sunday, December 28, 1941: The White House Monday, December 29, 1941Wednesday, December 31, 1941: Churchill visits Ottawa, Canada 1942.

Thursday, January 1, 1942Monday, January 5: The White House Tuesday, January 6Sat.u.r.day, January 10: Churchill visits Pompano, Florida Sunday, January 11Wednesday, January 14: The White House The strategic principle of Germany First is affirmed; the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee is formed and based in Was.h.i.+ngton; the American-British-Dutch-Australia Command is briefly const.i.tuted to cover the Southwest Pacific; a Combined Raw Materials Board to direct munitions production is established, as is an Anglo-American s.h.i.+pping Adjustment Board to coordinate needs at sea; Roosevelt and Churchill move to alleviate Singapore's military plight as the j.a.panese close in; Roosevelt sends troops to Ireland and Iceland; American production goals are set; the Declaration of the United Nations is signed; debate begins over Mediterranean vs. Western European operations.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Code Name ARGONAUT (1942) Friday, June 19Sat.u.r.day, June 20: Hyde Park, New York Sunday, June 21Thursday, June 24: The White House Thursday, June 24: Churchill visits Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for the day Thursday, June 24Friday, June 25: The White House Roosevelt agrees to supply the British with an emergency s.h.i.+pment of Sherman tanks and other weapons after the fall of Tobruk in North Africa; Churchill argues against American plans for a 1942 cross-Channel operation, instead pus.h.i.+ng for landings in North Africa or Norway; Roosevelt and Churchill agree to work together on the secret project to produce an atomic weapon.

1943.

Casablanca, Morocco: Code Name SYMBOL Thursday, January 14Sunday, January 24: Anfa, Casablanca Sunday, January 24Monday, January 25: Marrakech The Allied doctrine of "unconditional surrender" is proclaimed; Roosevelt agrees to Churchill's plan for further operations in the Mediterranean, including an invasion of Sicily, essentially ruling out a cross-Channel attack in 1943; the Allies debate the allocation of resources between the Pacific and the Mediterranean; Churchill and Roosevelt consent to pursue the strategic bombing of Germany in the Combined Bomber Offensive, code-named POINTBLANK, which would prove essential for the success of OVERLORD in early 1944; Roosevelt and Churchill struggle to bring differing French factions together, a step toward the French National Committee for Liberation, which ultimately (and after much controversy) provided a provisional government for liberated France in 1944.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Code Name TRIDENT Tuesday, May 11Friday, May 14: The White House Friday, May 14Monday, May 17: Shangri-la Monday, May 17Tuesday, May 26: The White House Churchill argues for pus.h.i.+ng Italy out of the war "by whatever means might be the best"; Roosevelt and Churchill receive word of triumph in Tunisia, which gives the Allies control of North Africa; Churchill addresses Congress a second time; the British begin behind-the-lines operations in Yugoslavia to increase pressure on the Axis; the prime minister consents to setting a target of May 1944 for the cross-Channel operation; Churchill and Roosevelt resolve tensions over sharing information over the making of the atomic bomb, and it becomes a truly joint project; the Allies approach Portugal for air and sea rights in the Azores.

Quebec, Canada: Code Name QUADRANT Thursday, August 12Sat.u.r.day, August 14: Hyde Park, New York Tuesday, August 17Tuesday, August 24: The Citadel, Quebec Wednesday, September 1Monday, September 6: The White House Monday, September 6: Churchill visits Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, to receive an honorary degree at Harvard University Tuesday, September 7Friday, September 10: The White House Sat.u.r.day, September 11Sunday, September 12: Hyde Park, New York Plans go forward for OVERLORD, still slated for May 1944; Roosevelt and Churchill agree that an American officer, not a British one, should lead the invasion; the South-East Asia Command is formed under Lord Mountbatten; Churchill and Roosevelt deal with details arising from the collapse of Italy; they affirm Anglo-American cooperation on the atomic bomb; they again invite Stalin to meet with them, this time in the autumn.

Cairo and Teheran: Code Names s.e.xTANT and EUREKA Tuesday, November 23Sat.u.r.day, November 27: Cairo Sunday, November 28Wednesday, December 1: Teheran Thursday, December 2Tuesday, December 7: Cairo At Cairo, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Chiang Kai-shek plan Pacific strategy, particularly concerning BUCCANEER, amphibious landings against j.a.panese-held islands in the Bay of Bengal (Roosevelt, who was always trying to build China into a great power, would ultimately have to tell Chiang BUCCANEER could not happen- OVERLORD and its supporting European operations would foreclose any other options); at Teheran, under pressure from Roosevelt and Stalin, Churchill agrees to a cross-Channel invasion in May 1944; Stalin signals that he will join the fight against j.a.pan once Germany is defeated; Stalin also suggested the Soviets would partic.i.p.ate in a postwar world organization; there are discussions about the fate of postwar Germany; back in Cairo, the Allies try to talk the long-neutral Turkey into the war; and Roosevelt tells Churchill that Eisenhower, not Marshall, would be OVERLORD's supreme commander.

1944.

Quebec, Canada: Code Name OCTAGON Monday, September 11Sat.u.r.day, September 16: The Citadel, Quebec Sunday, September 17Tuesday, September 19: Hyde Park, New York America consents to extend Lend-Lease and indicates that Britain will receive postwar economic aid; Roosevelt agrees to use British sea power in the Pacific; the Morgenthau Plan to pastoralize postwar Germany is signed (but later killed); there is discussion of occupation zones in a conquered Germany; Roosevelt and Churchill agree to keep the atomic project secret and to continue "full collaboration" on what the British call "Tube Alloys" and the Americans the "Manhattan Project"; they also handle details about postsurrender Italy, including economic a.s.sistance as the nation is rebuilt.

1945.

Malta-Yalta: Code Name ARGONAUT Friday, February 2Sat.u.r.day, February 3: Malta and Saki Sunday, February 4Sunday, February 11: Yalta Thursday, February 15: USS Quincy, Great Bitter Lake, Alexandria, Egypt Plans for the Allied treatment of Germany after the war are set, giving each power an occupation zone, including a possible one for France; the Soviets affirm their intention to join in the final stages of the war against j.a.pan in exchange for territorial concessions in the Far East; in a debate over the future of Poland, the nation's borders are s.h.i.+fted west and postwar government arrangements appear to favor Stalin, who wants the nation to be a satellite of the Soviet Union, not a truly independent state; Stalin agrees to partic.i.p.ate in the new United Nations organization partly in exchange for Roosevelt's conceding extra votes in the General a.s.sembly for several Russian republics.

Sources: The dates and summaries of key events have been closely drawn from FDR: Day by Day-The Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDRL; Dear, ed., The Oxford Companion to World War II; Gilbert, Road to Victory and Never Despair; Kimball, Forged in War; Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence; Foreign Relations of the United States; Churchill, The Second World War, vols. IIIVI; Polmar and Allen, World War II: America at War, 19411945, and World War II: An Encyclopedia of the War Years, 19411945.

SOURCE NOTES.

Abbreviations Used C & R Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, edited with commentary by Warren F. Kimball Volume I. Alliance Emerging, October 1933November 1942 Volume II. Alliance Forged, November 1942February 1944 Volume III. Alliance Declining, February 1944April 1945 CC Geoffrey C. Ward, ed., Closest Companion: The Unknown Story of the Intimate Friends.h.i.+p Between Franklin Roosevelt and Margaret Suckley CCTBOM Mary Soames, Clementine Churchill: The Biography of a Marriage CEP The Charles Eade Papers COH Oral History Collection of Columbia University CWP The Churchill War Papers, compiled by Martin Gilbert Volume I. At the Admiralty, September 1939May 1940 Volume II. Never Surrender, May 1940December 1940 Volume III. The Ever-Widening War, 1941 EROH Eleanor Roosevelt Oral History, Graff Collection, FDRL FDRL Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States LBP Lord Beaverbrook Papers MEL Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life MP The Agnes and Eugene Meyer Papers PHP The Pamela Harriman Papers RAH Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History TFOP John Colville, The Fringes of Power: 10 Downing Street Diaries, 19391955 TIR Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember TSFS The Struggle for Survival: The Diaries of Lord Moran WAC Mary Soames, ed., Winston and Clementine: The Personal Letters of the Churchills WSC Winston S. Churchill Volume I. Youth, 18741900, by Randolph S. Churchill Volume I. Companion (in two parts) Volume II. Young Statesman, 19011914, by Randolph S. Churchill Volume II. Companion (in three parts) Volume III. The Challenge of War, 19141916, by Martin Gilbert Volume III. Companion (in two parts) Volume IV. The Stricken World, 19161922, by Martin Gilbert Volume IV. Companion (in three parts) Volume V. The Prophet of Truth: 19221939, by Martin Gilbert Volume V. Companion (in three parts) Volume VI. Finest Hour, 19391941, by Martin Gilbert Volume VII. Road to Victory, 19411945, by Martin Gilbert Volume VIII. "Never Despair," 19451965, by Martin Gilbert INTRODUCTION: A FORTUNATE FRIENDs.h.i.+P.

Epigraph "The future is unknowable" Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, IV, 387.

The light was fading The sun set in Yalta by 4:56 P.M. that day. (U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, "Sun and Moon Data for One Day" for February 4, 1945, Yalta, Crimea.) The first plenary session began at 5 P.M. (FRUS, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, 573.) the Grand Ballroom Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 19291969 (New York, 1973), 180.

"He is very thin & his face is drawn" Air Chief Marshal Charles Portal to Pamela Churchill, January/February 1945, PHP.

suffering from congestive heart failure Clinical Notes on the Illness and Death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Howard G. Bruenn, M.D., FDRL.

"Our friends.h.i.+p" C & R, III, 574.

"He's really absolutely sweet" Kathleen Harriman to Pamela Churchill, January 20February 4, 1945, PHP. Kathleen Harriman would become Kathleen Harriman Mortimer. Her father, Averell Harriman, conducted a love affair with Pamela Churchill, then married to the prime minister's son, Randolph, and the mother of Churchill's eldest grandchild, Winston S. Churchill. Pamela and Averell Harriman would marry in 1971.

"I am sure" Portal to Pamela Churchill, PHP.

"I remember the part" C & R, III, 574.

"My thoughts are always with you" Ibid.

To meet Roosevelt the president Kay Halle Papers, Box 10.

"forged" WSC, VII, 1292.

Between September 11, 1939, and April 11, 1945 C & R, I, 3.

one hundred and thirteen days Churchill put the figure at 120 days in his tribute to Roosevelt after Roosevelt's death. For the eulogy, see Winston S. Churchill, ed., The Great Republic: A History of America by Sir Winston Churchill (New York, 1999), 365. See appendix for my accounting of their time together, which fixes the number at one hundred and thirteen.

the only picture Churchill produced Author interview with the Lady Soames, DBE (Mary Churchill).

The spring that Roosevelt died Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew (New York, 1946), 396.

"In love, there is always" Author interview with Lady Soames.

Their friends.h.i.+p mirrored To be sure, national interests were an essential force in their dealings with each other, but by and large I believe my characterization accurately captures their discernible personal dynamics.

more than a few about the two of them together See, for example, Warren F. Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War (New York, 1997); Joseph P. Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 19391941: The Partners.h.i.+p That Saved the West (New York, 1976); Keith Alldritt, The Greatest of Friends: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, 19411945 (London, 1995); Keith Sainsbury, Churchill and Roosevelt at War: The War They Fought and the Peace They Hoped to Make (New York, 1994); David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets (London, 1999). The relations.h.i.+p is also a running subtheme in many other biographies. See James MacGregor Burns, Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom, 19401945 (New York, 1970); Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York, 1994); Roy Jenkins, Churchill: A Biography (New York, 2001); Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York, 1948).

Told of a new effort to write about his life and work Virginia Cowles, Winston Churchill: The Era and the Man (New York, 1953). In the foreword to her biography, Cowles tells the story of her informing Churchill about her impending book at the French emba.s.sy in London in 1950-and recalled that Churchill "growled good-naturedly" as he reflected on the well-chronicled nature of his own life.

more than fifty-five million people Richard Holmes, ed., The Oxford Companion to Military History (Oxford, 2001), 1004.

there was talk of exploring a settlement WSC, VI, 411413; 417421. Also see, for instance, John Lukacs, Five Days in London: May 1940 (New Haven, 1999), and Andrew Roberts, "The Holy Fox": The Life of Lord Halifax (London, 1991), for detailed discussions of these fascinating days.

And so, on July 16, 1940 William L. s.h.i.+rer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of n.a.z.i Germany (New York, 1960), 753.

was in Berlin when Britain's reply Ibid., 755.

Some historians have argued David K. Adams called the relations.h.i.+p "a marriage of convenience" (see "Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Marriage of Convenience," in FDR and His Contemporaries: Foreign Perceptions of an American President [New York, 1992], eds. Cornelis A. van Minnen and John F. Sears). Warren Kimball wrote of his own "nagging suspicion that, had it been Neville Chamberlain and Wendell Willkie-a plausible prospect-wartime relations between the two nations would not have been fundamentally different. Churchill and Roosevelt did their job well, even magnificently at times, and they are great fun to study. . . . But the basic relations.h.i.+p was that of Britain and the United States, allied in war in large part because of intersected histories, the forces of geography and economics, and a broad range of shared values. Those shared values found expression in the Churchill-Roosevelt relations.h.i.+p, with its ma.s.sive correspondence, its personal touches, its role in smoothing over the rough edges. But it would have found expression, albeit in a different way, in a Willkie-Chamberlain, or Halifax-Hull relations.h.i.+p. There would have been differences, particularly in the arena of post-war planning and relations with the Soviet Union, but Hitler's Germany and j.a.pan would have been defeated, the Red Army would have liberated eastern and central Europe, the atomic bomb would have obliterated part of j.a.pan, and the United States would have a.s.sembled its system of monetary, military, mercantile, and moral leaders.h.i.+p in the post-war world. Moreover, forces outside the grasp of Roosevelt and Churchill-forces of nationalism, revolution, change, and resistance to change-would have acted as much as they did to shape that post-war world." (See Warren Kimball, "Wheel Within a Wheel: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Special Relations.h.i.+p," in Churchill [New York, 1993], eds. Robert Blake and William Roger Louis, 306307.) "A man in high public office" TIR, 349.

"It would, however, be wrong" John Colville in Action This Day: Working with Churchill, ed. Sir John Wheeler-Bennett (London, 1968), 60. Colville pointed out that Churchill's affection for Truman and Eisenhower was also "entirely sincere."

"My father's friends.h.i.+p and love" Author interview with Lady Soames.

"He was the coldest man" Robert H. Ferrell, The Dying President: Franklin D. Roosevelt, 19441945 (Columbia, Mo., 1998), 168.

"Mrs. R. used to say" Author interview with Trude Lash.

calling himself the "President's lieutenant" Sir Ian Jacob in Action This Day, ed. Wheeler-Bennett, 207.

"It's up to the Boss" Frances Perkins, COH, 644.

"You must remember" Author interview with Trude Lash.

thought Churchill too conservative TIR, 253.

"I shall never cease" Ibid., 255.

Churchill, fresh from his bath Author interview with Patrick Kinna.

"You see, Mr. President" Ibid. This story is among the most famous in the Roosevelt-Churchill canon. My telling is drawn from my interview with Kinna.

"Chuckling like a small boy" Grace Tully, FDR: My Boss (New York, 1949), 305.

"It is fun to be" C & R, I, 337.

"The friends.h.i.+p and affection" TIR, 251.

a handwritten letter to Roosevelt Clementine Churchill to FDR, September 16, 1943, FDR Papers, microfilm edition, Diplomatic Correspondence, Part 2, Reel 15.

Robert E. Sherwood, the playwright RAH, 363.

Quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson in an essay C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York, 1960), 97.

"each appeared to the other" Isaiah Berlin, Mr. Churchill in 1940 (Boston, 1964), 3738. Originally a review of Churchill's war memoirs in the Atlantic Monthly, Berlin's essay is an excellent examination of the Churchill-Roosevelt connection, and I am indebted to his a.n.a.lysis of both men and their relations.h.i.+p.

They were men before they were monuments I am grateful to the distinguished Martin Luther King Jr. biographer Taylor Branch for this general point, which arose out of a conversation we once had about why it is important to recall the faults of heroic figures and put those failings in context in order to remind future generations that those who did great things were not perfect-which holds open the possibility of greatness for the most flawed among us.

"To do justice to a great man" Sir Charles Webster, "The Chronicler," in Winston Spencer Churchill: Servant of Crown and Commonwealth, ed. Sir James Marchant (London, 1954), 116. The quotation is from the second volume of Churchill's The River War (London, 1899), 375.

"a fortunate friends.h.i.+p" TIR, 255. In his thoughtful book Churchill and Roosevelt at War, Keith Sainsbury also quotes this observation of Mrs. Roosevelt's, and, in an interesting elaboration, writes: "But perhaps in the end the old adage 'there is no friends.h.i.+p at the top,' must be held to apply to the Roosevelt-Churchill partners.h.i.+p: or maybe the truth lies somewhere between this bleak judgment and Mrs Roosevelt's 'it was a fortunate friends.h.i.+p.' " I believe that if the truth does lie in between, it lies much closer to Mrs. Roosevelt's part of the field than to any other. The Roosevelt-Churchill connection, as I hope to show, was certainly political-but it was also inescapably personal.

CHAPTER 1: TWO LIONS ROARING AT THE SAME TIME.

a typewritten "Memorandum For a.s.sistant Secretary" Memorandum for a.s.sistant Secretary, July 24, 1918. Papers of the a.s.sistant Secretary of Navy, 19131920, FDR Papers, FDRL.

a clear evening National Meteorological Library and Archives, Berks.h.i.+re, England.

portrait of Elizabeth I Author observation. It is a formidable room, and one can see how the young Roosevelt may have been intimidated by both the company and the setting on that summer evening.

She first encountered Roosevelt Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 9.

"There was nothing particularly interesting" Ibid.

They spoke briefly of Roosevelt's cousin Ibid.

"a second thought" until she ran Ibid., 10.

"tall and slender" Ibid., 11.

Later, the toss of the head Ibid.