Harry in England. Chapter Two: Meeting the VIPs.
The first morning Harry visited the damage from the bombing. He encountered Winston and Clementine and Pamela doing the same. Bracken took him to meet Halifax and Eden who made him welcome.
This Chapter: On a slow tour of the previous night’s bombing, Harry and his handlers ran into Winston Churchill, inspecting damage with his wife and daughter-in-law. It was inspirational. And then he was handed off to Brendan Bracken who took him to Edward Gray, the Lord Halifax, who would become Churchill’s new Ambassador to America, and Anthony Eden who would fill Halifax’s role as Foreign Secretary. Both men were either naturally frank and candid, which Harry doubted, or had been counseled to be by Winston.
Contents of “Harry in England”:
Queen Wilhelmina and Edward R. Murrow
Meeting The VIPs
With Winston
“Even to the end.”
“A little touch of Harry in the night.”
The Good Grind of Hard Work
Willkie comes to London. Not for long, but too long.
Hopkins Reports Details of British Needs
“Lord Root of the Matter.”
Chapter Two: Meeting the VIPs
Reading time: Fifteen minutes
He was right. There wasn’t much you could do with the hat. Otherwise, Claridge’s had improved his appearance a good deal. The externals, anyhow. The suit and such. His shoes gleamed.
Wisham Herbert and Harvard met him in the Humber Pullman at the curb, along with Herschel Johnson who came to his room to fetch him. Johnson asked about his sleep and his morning and Harry said it hadn’t been bad. Johnson said he thought the dinner last evening had been exceptional, and Harry agreed and said he had tried to put the remnants of it to good use. Johnson said he meant the conversation, and Harry agreed with that. The chat about food led Johnson to ask about his breakfast, which had been stewed prunes, though he didn’t say so. Placing the order over the phone, he had asked for toast and coffee and whatever fruit they had. Stewed prunes had arrived and he thought it wasn’t his place to complain, so he ate them. And probably should have.
He asked for a slow tour from the hotel to the Foreign Office to get a sense of the damage from the previous night. Herschel Johnson said, “Look for the smolders. That’ll be last night’s result.” Harry thought “smolders” was almost certainly a word unique to London at this time in its history, thought it probably had a “u” in the middle. Smoulders.
They crossed Piccadilly on St. James and where it bent left to Pall Mall, Harry said, “Down there,” pointing to the right where smoke churned. Chasing it, they entered a street marked as Stable Yard Road. Just ahead, another car stopped before a house that seemed to have lost its façade to a giant slicer, revealing the rooms of three floors. It brought to Harry’s mind the back side of a child’s dollhouse. On either side the houses were apparently undamaged, although almost certainly not. People were gathered on the sidewalk, some sorting the rubble and others engaged in acts of consolation.
Two women emerged from the other car with the assistance of a uniformed attendant who then extended a hand to the interior and assisted the emergence of none other than Winston Spencer Churchill. He wore a bowler and a dark topcoat, carried a walking stick, and sported a cigar. Several breaths were audibly sucked by some of the four men in Harry Hopkins’s car, now stopped, perhaps even by Harry himself.
Harvard made to move, to open his door, but Harry said, “Wait. Don’t interrupt. I want to see this.” A large man emerged from the car and stood by the curb a few yards away. Herschel Johnson said, “Thompson. His bodyguard.”
The women were attractively dressed, one middle-aged and the other much younger and quite beautiful. The people on the sidewalk were momentarily off-kilter by Winston’s presence and then, adaptively, accepting of it, the men shaking his hand and the women awkwardly touching his shoulder and putting arms around his bulky immensity. The women bowed clumsily at the older woman, Clementine, Harry was sure, and the younger, surely Pamela. There was joy in the encounter, and great deference, even as it interrupted their awful pain.
Harry opened his door and stepped out. He walked up to the scene and stood silently behind the cluster until Churchill noticed him and said, “Good morning.”
Harry Hopkins said, “Good morning to you, Prime Minister. I am Harry Hopkins and Franklin Roosevelt, the President of the United States, has sent me to meet with you to see what our nation can do to help your courageous people at moments just like this.”
“Well, that is just grand, Mr. Hopkins.” He shook Harry’s hand warmly and then turned back to the people and said, “My friends, my friend Franklin Roosevelt, the American president, has sent this gentlemen to us to help in our time of need. His name is Harry Hopkins and he is the president’s most trusted adviser. Let us give him a welcoming cheer. Hip-hip-hooray Harry Hopkins,” he said, and then again, and they all joined in, “Hip-hip-hooray Harry Hopkins! Hip-hip-hooray!”
Harry’s voice caught in his throat as he said, “The people of America are so proud of you, so … uplifted by your courage. We will move heaven and earth to ease your pain and bring you justice and the victory you deserve over the barbarians who have done this to you. God bless you all.” And without cue, they did it again, “Hip-hip-hooray, Harry Hopkins! Hip-hip-hooray!”
Harry was introduced to Clementine and to Pamela, whose gaze brought to him a slight shudder he hoped hadn’t been noticed but by her, and then Churchill said, “Go now to your meetings, Mr. Hopkins, so that you are not late for our meeting at mid-day. I will take our first encounter as fortuitous, propitious, evidentiary of great things to come.”
Harry said, to the gathering, “May I take any message from you back to my president?”
One man stepped up and said, “You may, Mr. Hopkins. You may tell Franklin Roosevelt that the people of London’s Stable Yard Road are made of the same stern stuff that he has shown in his own life. Please tell him that.” And tipped his cap.
*
The Foreign Office was four stories of stone — “Italianate,” Johnson said. “The old girl’s about seventy now and bursting at the seams.”
The Humber had entered Downing Street off Whitehall. Number Ten was on the right as they entered and the “old girl” was a block-long building on the left as Downing Street went west toward St. James Park, with the Foreign Office at the park end. “All those colonies,” Harry said in a sort of mutter.
“Best not raise that one, sir, if I may,” said Johnson.
“Yes,” Harry said. “It’s a sticky wicket, I know. The president takes a dim view of the colonial behavior of the British Empire.”
“And it’s everything to them. And should you care, the Colonial Office is down there at the Whitehall end. India is tucked in here, though, with the Foreign Office.”
“India? Tucked in right here?”
“The India Office,” Johnson said, getting the bad joke.
Brendan Bracken stood on the sidewalk, conspicuously. Herbert pulled up and Harry said to Bracken, through a lowered window, “May I let these men return to serving my country’s interests? Placing me in your hands?”
“Will I have to sign something? A Bill of Lading?”
Harry told Bracken of meeting his boss, and his wife and daughter-in-law, on Stable Yard Road while they were signing in at the front desk, acquiring identifying badges, and rising to the third floor on an ancient lift made entirely of wrought iron that sounded as though prisoners were hoisting its chains in the basement. Workmen were everywhere dealing with bomb damage, some sweeping, some hauling, some glazing, some caulking. Everywhere.
“Pamela’s a joy to behold, isn’t she?” Bracken said.
“Gave me a tremor. An actual palpitation,” Harry said.
Harry and Halifax settled into a comfortable setting over tea and nibbles. The future ambassador was a few inches taller than Harry’s six-two, with sharpened facial features beneath a retreating hairline, and an absent left hand, from birth, that he disguised with the prop of a phony in a glove. He said, “I must apologize for the bombs that rained down on your arrival last night.”
“I didn’t hold you responsible.”
“I have decided that you should. My earlier assessment of the people who are more directly responsible was mistaken. They should have been stopped at Munich. Or at birth.”
Harry chuckled and said, “One might also argue that a negotiated settlement last spring might have been even more beneficial to your people. And made my arrival unnecessary.”
“Such an argument would not pass muster with me. And I’m the one who made it last spring.”
“A full reversal then. I’m very much interested in your analysis of all that. See me as a blank slate.”
“Very well,” Halifax said. “But it’s inconsistent with your profile as provided to me.”
“By whom?”
“You know. Them.”
“Yes. They work for us too and I often find them overrated. Your support of the Chamberlain position of appeasement is, of course, public record. And I’m told of your strong arguments for capitulation in May. So my slate is already smudged. Those days must have been … trying.”
“Yes. I considered our position hopeless. The Italians understood that and courted my fears relentlessly. It was clear their offers had the weight of the Reich behind them and they were quite generous. I now am convinced there is almost nothing they wouldn’t have granted us at the table because they would have violated it before the ink dried.”
Harry said, “I’m told Winston deceived you.”
“Mr. Hopkins, I must say that’s not the talk of diplomacy. A little too blunt, I think.”
“It’s the war thing. And my inexperience. Did he?”
“Not deceive, so much as manipulate me, handle me. It was his job to do so. One can’t be the top man in a vast enterprise without self-belief. It must not give way to egomania. The leader must be endlessly open to information, hungry for it actually, and willing to use it to change his mind to reach his goal. The simpler, the narrower, the thing of belief is the better. Winston has those qualities.”
“What is his belief?”
“Then — and now, and evermore — that Hitler can be beaten. I learned the most remarkable thing about Winston during those days. He lusts to fight. Others of us looked to any opening to avoid it. But Winston had his mind made up. He wanted to go to war with Adolf Hitler. He had no fear of it. He was angry and he wanted to fight.”
“We have that impression of him from where we are.”
“He knew how hard and horrible it would be, how many years it would take and how many would suffer and die and that made him sad. As it should. But he saw it as something that had to be done. It was as though he was having a private conversation with Hitler in his head where he said, ‘You are the repository of the most virulent hatreds that ever corroded the human breast and you must be put down like a rabid dog. It is my job and I shall do it. You shall die by my hand.’ ”
Harry sat quietly, staring at the man, lost in his language and his sentiment.
“I know he’s sending me over there to get rid of me,” Halifax said. “And I can’t blame him. But I’ve come to his side over these awful months. Not that I’m filing a complaint about the demotion.”
“We don’t see it as a demotion. Quite the contrary.”
“Yes,” Halifax said. “All good credit to Lothian.”
“Good sized shoes for you.”
“I’ll do my damnedest.”
“I hope we can spend some together before you go. Perhaps have lunch. I could give you a tip or two about the town.”
“Kind of you to suggest it, but I’m leaving Tuesday.”
Harry said, “Well, it’s not like I won’t see you over there. When I get back.”
“Yes. Good. I’ll look forward to that. Down the hall from the president? Is that where you live?”
“Yes. Don’t overblow it. He’s in a wheelchair and I’m at death’s door. It’s just handy for us.” Harry told Halifax when he arrived at his new post he should find a restaurant — “a joint” — in Washington where the owner would trade British patronage for the favor of good tables on short notice. He said, “Washington is no fun until the sun goes down. Be the best host in town and you’ll do just fine. Do you drink?”
“As necessary.”
Harry was surprised that he liked Halifax and that it was harder to get there with Eden, just down the hall and on the other side. He wrote it off to the first impression Eden presented that perfectly conformed to Murrow’s lingering comment about the man’s pin-striped Britishness. At first glance, he was perfect for the role of Foreign Secretary, a triumph of Central Casting that grated because he was, and you weren’t. You couldn’t blame a guy for looking good in his clothes, Harry thought, no more than he should be criticized for his appearance. That wasn’t an argument he wanted to engage, so he just chose to give the point to Eden, a fine-looking man.
Harry was amused by Eden’s recollections of the days of last May and June when Churchill had flown to France four times, three of them with Eden aboard, to do all he could to stiffen the spine of the French. The humor was mitigated by the hell of the collapse of old men faced with a foe who was as implacable as they were weak.
Eden said, “I shall never forget Winston when the emotionally defeated Pétain said to him, ‘Mr. Churchill, what do you propose to do when Hitler’s armies arrive at your shores?’
“Winston said, ‘Well, I must say I haven’t given it much thought. I suppose we shall drown as many of them as we can and then hit the rest of them on the head with blunt instruments.’ ”
Harry said he knew of the conquests of the Italian army in Egypt. It was, he said, “impressive and useful at a time when we needed it to brace our people for what we had in mind.”
“Thank you. So did we for own people. The Mediterranean is simply the key to everything. If Wavell and O’Connor can finish the job by entirely driving the Italians off North Africa, it will go a long way to making it our sea, and not their lake. We can’t effectively compete if we have to send our troops around Cape Hope while they can dip their toes from Sicily. It is dicey. And it will remain so for a good while yet.”
Eden shared his opinions, and his maps, with Harry. He said, “I believe Gibraltar is safe. We’re told Hitler is having his problems with Franco over the advance. Whether or not that’s true, they’ll be biting on a hard bone if they go there. It’s a rock, and we’re dug in. And Jack Standish is a hard man.” Standish was Lord Gort, one of the heroes of Dunkirk and now the commander of the British forces at Gibraltar.
Eden said, “Greece is very difficult. If it were merely a war between the Greeks and the Italians, Greece would win. But Hitler, in my mind, won’t let Mussolini collapse. And Winston is determined to honor our treaty no matter the peril. He insists that is a defining difference between our honor and theirs, to be as good as our word. It will get worse before it gets better because we simply do not have the resources it requires. The same argument of Hitler’s intentions applies to Egypt. I do not expect he will let our current successes prevail. We shall see. For the moment, for many moments to come, the Mediterranean is all. Malta is in great jeopardy and of immense importance. And we are spread very thin.”
Harry was flattered by Eden’s offer, which he accepted, to walk him the long block down Downing Street to Number Ten for his meeting with the Prime Minister. Bracken joined them, the three enjoying the sunshine of a winter morning. Eden supported the view that the French collapsed from the top down, ancient generals revered for ancient successes whose courage had leaked away with the passage of time. Eden said, “There’s no doubt the Blitzkreig, the German onslaught, tanks roaring in with air support and massive infantry in their wake, took them by surprise. When the Nazis bypassed Maginot as though it was an irrelevant anachronism, which it was, I think the generals decided perhaps they ought beg for mercy.”
Bracken said, “I believe the French saw their country becoming Hitler’s favorite vacation spot. Their view of subjugation to the Reich took on an odd kind of romantic glow in their minds. Beautiful frauleins cavorting on the Riviera, that sort of thing.” Then, sort of to himself, he said, “Though my impression of the species is that they tend to ugly ankles.” Then, back on serious point, he said, “Accounting for the rise of DeGaulle and the furious hatred he engendered in the old guard. He so objected to their surrender that his own compatriots were about to arrest him for obstinacy, which they called treason. Winston saved him. Put him on a plane, had to smuggle him to do it, and brought him here. DeGaulle was obscure before those few weeks, a military nobody until all the somebodies ran for cover.”
Eden said, “The man’s an absolute nightmare of an ally. There is no global view with him. He has no ambition other than a free France and a defeated Germany.”
“Lot to be said for narrow-mindedness when you’re at war,” Hopkins said, and then wished he hadn’t for the implied criticism it contained that he hadn’t meant. Or had he?