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Asian nationalists had little else to celebrate. The Communist imperialists in China had reached the borders of Indo-China. Burma was in turmoil, Malaya restive. Indonesians and Dutch had finally patched up a hopeful peace. India seemed to be groping its way toward stable nationhood. But the Communist menace hung over all the East, the gravest long-range threat to the world's peace.
In March 1946 Churchill performed one of his greatest services for Western civilization in a speech at Fulton, Mo. He flourished his membership card in the union of practicing prophets: "Last time I saw it all coming and cried aloud to my own fellow countrymen and to the world, but no one paid any attention." He said: "There is nothing [the Russians] admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness . . . If the Western democracies stand together in strict adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter, their influence for furthering those principles will be immense, and no one is likely to molest them. If, however, they become divided or falter in their duty and if these all-important years are allowed to slip away — then indeed catastrophe may overwhelm us all."
The Leadership of Freedom.
The Fulton speech defined the main issue hanging over the world as the half-century closed. Out of Fulton came the Marshall Plan, Western Union, the military aid program, the decline of the Communist threat to Western Europe, and the spirit of defiance that inspired the great airlift to Berlin in the teeth of the Russian blockade.
Harry Truman had been with Churchill at Fulton. He agreed with what Churchill said — but Harry Truman did not make the speech. He was another kind of politician, unsurpassed at guessing what the people wanted — as he was to prove in a memorable surprise on Nov. 2, 1948. Truman's kind of leadership might not be able to mobilize the free world against ambushes ahead. Now that the center of power had shifted to Washington, a Churchill was needed there. But no Churchill was visible on the U.S. horizon, In 1941 he had warned: "Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature. I see [it said that] leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture." Leadership in the cold war called for more than Harry Truman's exquisitely sensitive, ground-gripping ear.
As the half-century ended, Churchill was getting ready for his 13th British general election. He would fight it — as he had fought all his other great battles — on the issue of freedom. Churchill likes freedom. He has been with freedom on some of its darkest and brightest days.
*In 1908 Churchill married Clementine Hozier "and," he reported, "lived happily ever afterwards." Mrs. Webb noted that Churchill's bride had no fortune, "which is to Winston's credit." Mrs. Webb had inherited money and, like other similarly fortunate 20th Century characters (including Franklin Roosevelt), she had a deep-seated prejudice against the accumulation of money by any other means.
*Writing in 1930, Churchill was to pay the Kaiser a compliment which was also a somber comment on the 20th Century: "Time has brought him a surprising and paradoxical revenge upon his conquerors . . . The greater part of Europe . . . would regard the Hohenzollern restoration . . . as a comparatively hopeful event . . . This is not because his own personal light burns the brighter . . . but because of the increasing darkness around. The victorious democracies in driving out hereditary sovereigns supposed they were moving on the path of progress. They have in fact gone further and fared worse."
*Even Churchill, no pacifist, understood the revulsion to the trenches. In the midst of a World War II blitz a friend spoke disparagingly of pacifism; Churchill quoted pages of Sassoon to him.
*Clemenceau's vintage flavor and color have been all but forgotten. After the war a French court asked him to suggest a sentence for a man who tried to assassinate him. Clemenceau was first inclined to let him go free, but then he had a second thought: "We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who at point-blank range misses his target six times out of seven. I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery."
*Herbert Hoover, in lightsome vein, said that "the aspirations of the American people seem to have advanced from two chickens in every pot to two cars in every garage." Some Republicans adopted this as a serious slogan. After the depression the phrase came home to roost as a bitter joke. But it was no joke in 1949 when U.S. automobile registrations were estimated at 35,750,000. California had 3,350,000 cars, about 20% more than the number of families in the State.
*An interlude in Churchill's Cassandra years was his defense of King Edward VIII in the 1936 abdication crisis over Wallis Simpson. When the abdication was decided upon Churchill walked weeping from Buckingham Palace. He wrote Edward's speech: "At long last . . ."