Foreign News: Mr. Prime Minister!

In Rome last week, while newsmen shot questions at him, Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat down on an open barrel of political TNT and calmly lit a cigar. He had arrived in Italy four days before the Allied armada invaded southern France, three days after the sudden arrival of Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito. Since then he had talked to Tito, to Italy’s Premier Ivanoe Bonomi, Marshal Badoglio, Lieutenant of the Realm Prince Umberto, to Pope Pius XII. These talks might have concerned military plans. They almost certainly concerned the future plans of Britain and Russia in the Balkans, in Italy, in the eastern Mediterranean. In the case of Pope Pius XII, they concerned Poland. The newsmen wanted to know what had been said. Winston Churchill had his own reasons for not telling.

“Mr. Prime Minister! Mr. Prime Minister! What did you and Bonomi talk about?”

(It was almost the fifth anniversary of the beginning of World War II. Then, they had handed him a disaster. With Norway overrun by the Nazis, he had said: “‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. . . .”‘)

Winston Churchill looked at the newsmen, chewed at his cigar, belched smoke, said nothing.

“Mr. Prime Minister! Mr. Prime Minister! What did you and Badoglio talk about?”

(Then Dunkirk had come and Britain stood alone against totalitarian might and night. The cigar chewer had said: “. . . We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until in God’s good time the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and liberation of the Old.”)

Winston Churchill looked at the newsmen, puffed at his cigar, said nothing.

“Mr. Prime Minister! Mr. Prime Minister! What did you and Pope Pius talk about?”

(Then had come the Battle of Britain.

A handful of men <& boys had gone up with wings and, though outnumbered, was fighting the Luftwaffe to a standstill. Was not that aerial battle the Marathon of World War II? “Never. . .” the cigar-chewer had said, “was so much owed by so many to so few.”)

Winston Churchill squinted at the questioning newsmen, lit his second cigar, said nothing.

“Mr. Prime Minister! Mr. Prime Minister! What-did you and Marshal Tito talk about?”

(Then, in the deepening darkness, the battle of the dinosaurs began—Germany leaped at the throat of Russia. The cigar chewer had never been a friend of totalitarianism in any form. Now he spoke to the world over the air: “Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe.”)

Winston Churchill, 69, puffed at his cigar, looked at the newsmen, said nothing.

What did they think he was bargaining for in Italy? (“Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terrors, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” No survival for Britain and—to the degree in which Britain was the bulwark of Western civilization—no survival for civilization.)

“Mr. Prime Minister! Mr. Prime Minister!” I.N.S. Correspondent James Kilgallen was asking a question: “How many cigars do you smoke a day?”

Winston Churchill belched smoke, got up from his barrel of political TNT, and answered. “That depends,” he said, “on how big they are.”