A FRIENDSHIP OF MANY MOODS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31091, 21 June 1966, Page 9

A FRIENDSHIP OF MANY MOODS

Churchill And Aitken A Disparate Pair

<By

KENNETH YOUNG)

precise date on which Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook first met is not known, but it was some time early in 1911. Edward had been dead a year but London society still had its Edwardian glitter. Nightly the hansom cabs clattered through the gas-lit streets taking the famous, the rich, and the beautiful to their assignments. Great issues of state were still decided in great houses. The dinner party was a political as well as a social institution.

It was at a dinner party that Churchill met Beaverbrook, then Max Aitken. The host was the brilliant young Tory barrister F. E. Smith. Churchill and . Aitken were a disparate pair.

Aitken was the son of a Presbyterian minister of Newcastle, New Brunswick, and grandson of a Scottish tenant farmer.

At 31 he was a millionaire, having progressed from solicitor's clerk and life-insurance salesman to be right-hand man of a bank president; and from there to be the initiator of company mergers. But he had decided there were other and more entrancing things than amassing further millions. Public life and politics fascinated him, but Canadian politics seemed provincial. Only in the Mother Country, the centre of a still-great empire, was there real power. So to Britain he came in 1910, driving on his first day from Liverpool to London in his Daimler car with his wife and two young children. His entry into politics was speedily achieved through the

help of Andrew Bonar Law,] the Tory statesman with| whom he had had business dealings. Within a few months of arriving in Britain Aitken stood at a byelection as a Tory at Ashton-under-Lyne and to everyone’s surprise he won. By Christmas he was In Parliament on the Opposition benches. On the Government benches opposite sat Asquith, Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey. Meeting One other celebrated, ad mired and detested figure sat there too: Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, then Home Secretary. Possibly it was the first time Aitken had seen him in the flesh. Churchill had entered the Commons as a Tory, had crossed the floor to join the Liberals —doing so, many Tories believed, only for the sake of office. They regarded him with detestation as “rat Churchill,” a traitor to his own: and this detestation of Churchill was heartily shared by Law. To Aitken, however, Churchill was of fascinating interest And F. E. Smith, one of his new political friends, arranged the meeting. We know that Aitken was at first “dazzled” by Churchill’s brilliant powers. We can guess that as usual Churchill emitted a Coleridgean monologue; ideas in his head were always more real than people around him. We can imagine the blue-grey eyes of Aitken set in the place face, boring into the blue eyes of Churchill, pinkly healthy and Churchill oblivious to Beaverbrook’s stare.

It cannot be called friendship at first sight. Aitken and his wife were not immediately admitted to the domestic intimacies of Churchill and his beautiful wife Clementine.

Indeed, Mrs Churchill for long had the sharpest distrust of some of her husband’s gayer friends, among whom she numbered F. E. Smith and Aitken. She disliked them keeping him up late and

thought they would wreck his strong principles. Years went by before she really accepted Aitken.

During the early months of 1911, however, Aitken sought to woo Chuchill to greater intimacy. He invited him to go with him to Canada to meet the most important politicians and enjoy all the Dominion had to offer. Churchill was tempted to go. But by May be felt reluctantly compelled to postpone the trip, because of his duties in the Government. The First Churchill’s letter declining Aitken’s invitation is the first in a correspondence that continued for half a century. He wrote it in his own hand from Blenheim Palace. It is in last-name terms, and he did not even get the spelling of Aitken’s name correct so much for the impact (as yet)

of millionaire on Minister. It is dated May 5, 1911: My dear Aitkin (sic). ft is with very great reluctance that I hare come to the conclusion that our Canadian project must stand over till next year. 1 am very much indebted to you for the kindness with which you offered to smooth my path. I shall look forward to arailinp myself of you- powerful aid in the not distant future. I hope you will eome and dine on Tuesday night to meet Louis Botha. I hope L.G may be there too Yours sincerely. Winston S Churchill. Botha, South Africa’s first Prime Minister, had personally taken Churchill prisoner during the Boer War and subsequently became an intimate political friend. Knighted Whether or not Aitken met him on that Tuesday night, it seems that Lloyd George, the controversial Chancellor of the Exchequer, was not there, for in the second letter from ! Churchill —it was not sent until three months later, on August 12—he observes that “We must make another plan for you to meet the Chancellor of the Exchequer.” The project of a joint voyage to Canada never came to fruition. Instead, next year, 1912, Aitken took F. E. Smith. Aitken’s intimacy with Bonar Law grew. On Law’s recommendation he was granted a knighthood. When the leadership of the Opposition was about to become vacant Aitken applied the skill he had shown earlier in arranging business mergers to ensuring Law became the new leader. Law lived in Edwardes Square, Kensington: Aitken in repose somewhat resembled an effigy in a niche of a medieval cathedral. Hence the verse composed by F. E. Smith at this time:— Round Pembroke Lodge in Edwardet Square, Like rooks the claimants caw, While Aitken keeps with gargoyle stare His vigil over Law. ' The verse succinctly inti-

mates Aitken’s new and enlarged status in politics: Law was the new king, but Aitken was widely known to have been the king-maker. When war came, Churchill, who had been transferred from the Home Office to the Admiralty, quickly acquired the reputation of being the instigator of disastrous enterprises. Gallipoli and the failure of a landing at Antwerp were both blamed on him.

Thus, when Asquith, the Premier, reconstructed his Government in 1915 as a Coalition, bringing on Tories, Churchill’s old foes in that party decided the time of reckoning had come. Aitken tried to influence Law to insist to Asquith that Churchill must be retained at the Admiralty. He got a blank refusal. Law told him that it was useless to argue; the Tory Party was quite determined not to have Churchill there or anywhere else, and that any attempt to instal him “would result in the complete and sudden collapse of the sub-structure of the new Coalition Government.” Law added that Churchill had even lost the confidence of his own Liberal associates (and he was right). These cruelly accurate observations were to be conveyed to Churchill by Aitken —with Law’s approval. Thunder-Struck Aitken was dining with F. E. Smith and together they went on to the Admiralty. Happily, Aitken did not have to break the news. Churchill was already aware of his imminent dismissal though he could yet scarcely credit it. He had never understood the extent of Tory hatred of him nor of the feeling against him in Liberal Government circles. Single-minded and self-absorbed, such enmity had never occurred to him. Learning of it, he was stricken as though by a flash of lightning coming out of a clear blue sky. During that night in May 1915 as the darkness deepened and then turned into a slow, grey dawn. Aitken observed him with fascination—and pity. As it happened a message had been received at the Ad-

miralty that the whole German Fleet was coming out and had determined to attack by day. It was the moment Churchill had waited for, and so had the Fleet. What a twinge of fate that it had to occur when he was under notice to leave his high office. Doubts He, with Smith and Aitken, spent much of the night at the Admiralty watching the messages coming in from the Navy. These were hours of torment for Churchill. Was it just possible that if the British Fleet tackled and destroyed the Germans he would be recognised as the hero of the hour and allowed to stay at his post? As gently as possible, Aitken expressed his doubts that even such a notable victory could save him. He wrote afterwards:—

“Churchill was on the Tuesday night I saw him at the Admiralty a maih suddenly thrown from power into impotence, and one felt rather as if one had been invited to 'Come and look on fallen Antony/ (, What a creature of strange moods he is—always at the top of the wheel of confidence or at the bottom of an intense depression. back on that long night we spent in the big, silent Admiralty room till day broke, 1 cannot help reflecting on that extreme duality of mind which marks Churchill above all other men —the charm, the imaginative sympathy of his hours of defeat, the selfconfidence, the arrogance of his hours of power and prosperity That night he was a lost soul, yet full ot flushes of wit and humotit “But all those days of our aquaintance were his bad times, and then one could not resist the charm of his companionship or withhold from him a tribute of sympathy” Shortly before full light

Aitken and Smith left and Churchill went to bed. In a few hours he was up again, only to discover that even his eleventh-hour hopes of glory had disappeared: the German Fleet had turned tail and gone home. His big opportunity was gone. The policital crisis was back in the forefront of his mind. He turned to pleading with Law, but was met by implacable silence; he wept in his room with the Prime Minister’s daughter, Violet It was probably during the long night at the Admiralty that Churchill and Aitken passed from acquaintance into something approaching friendship.

A few days later, Churchill having accepted his misfortune (along with the minor Government post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster), visited Cherkley Court, Aitken’s country house, the first of many sojourns in one or other of the millionaire’s homes. (To be continued) This series Is adapted from the book "Churchill and Beaverbrook: A study in friendship and politics.” Lord Beaverbrook's letters are copyright The Beaverbrook Foundation 1966 Sir Winston Churchill’s letters are copyright C. and T. Publications, Ltd., 19M