The Pursuit of Laughter (15 page)

The highlight of Mr Duff Cooper’s political career was his resignation after Munich. He resigned, apparently, because he thought England should go to war then and there, though as First Lord of the Admiralty and a former Secretary of State for War he must have been fully aware of her unpreparedness. On 28 September, 1938, he notes in his diary: ‘I lunched at Buck’s with Diana and the Cranbornes. They are of course boiling with anti-government indignation’. Lord Cranborne must have been longing to resign, but could not do so for the excellent reason that he had resigned already a few months before, over Abyssinia. (He had boiled when the Prime Minister decided to discuss our differences with Mussolini, he boiled again when he went to discuss our differences with Hitler, and more recently he seems to have simmered at the thought of the present Prime Minister discussing with Malenkov ways and means of ending the cold war. Nobody minds such ministers resigning; unfortunately this time he did not do so; both his chiefs were ill and he was able to do his worst as Acting Foreign Secretary.)

Was Mr Duff Cooper’s resignation the wise act of a selfless and high-principled
statesman
?
Was it a futile gesture, a sort of veiners in public? Or was there a resemblance to Georges Mandel, who, like him, knew the state of his country’s defences, but was quite happy at the prospect of war? He gives the following account of a visit to the latter in March 1940 when he was Minister for the Colonies: ‘I saw Mandel, who was gay and brave. I asked him about the French air force, of which I had heard disquieting reports. He laughed and said that every time he asked about it he was told there were fewer machines than when he last enquired. He seemed so cheerful I thought I had misheard him, but he had meant what he said.’ Very funny no doubt—for France; but considering everything, would not ‘frivolous and irresponsible’ meet the case better than ‘gay and brave’? However all this may be, Mr Duff Cooper is proud of his resignation, pleased with the speech he made, and altogether very much satisfied. Perhaps he imagines he was being gay and brave too—brave, because ‘political acquaintances cut me’ and because when he visited France ‘I was distressed to find that my French friends were even more enthusiastic in their
support
of the Munich policy than were the majority of my friends in England, and that there were fewer exceptions.’ The Prime Minister was relieved to see him go, and Hitler saw that the war party in England had gained another recruit. Mr Duff Cooper frankly admits that many of his contemporaries regarded him as a war-monger, and quotes some of their
letters
abusing him. He seems to be proud of it.

So much for the statesman. Now for the writer. He has produced an excellent life of Talleyrand, a good life of Haig, and a novel with the embarrassing title
Operation Heartbreak
. He tells us that he has always loved poetry, and aspired to be a poet. He has composed verse on and off all his life, and is good enough to include a few examples of his work so that we may judge for ourselves the poetic talent of a man who, although he understands the German language, writes ‘Heine is the only German writer in whom I really delighted.’ Thus he dismisses Goethe, Schiller and Hölderlin—the very pinnacle of poetic genius. (He admits he is tone-deaf and does not like music.) Here are a couple of verses from a poem he wrote on the outbreak of war in 1939:

He sent this effort to the Editor of
The Times
, but ‘he neither published the verses nor answered the letter.’ He probably felt it was the kindest thing to do.

The best part of
Old Men Forget
, and by far the most interesting, is about General de
Gaulle and his relations with Sir Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt. It is an almost incredible story, from which Mr Duff Cooper, who served as Ambassador first in Algiers and later in Paris, emerges with great credit. He endured endless snubs, frustrations and rebuffs in his efforts to prevent England and France, or rather their capricious and huffy rulers, from quarrelling fatally at the end of the war. The fact that the two countries had every interest in common would not in itself have been enough to keep them united, given the characters of the men involved. Eight months after the end of the war, with Roosevelt dead and Churchill and de Gaulle out of office, this particular danger had passed. In 1947 Mr Duff Cooper was recalled, and an Ambassador whose views were more in accord with those of the English government of the day was installed in his place. He had, apparently, learnt nothing. Although in 1946 he wrote: ‘Today the mighty arm of Russia is paramount in the countries that are nearest to her borders, and the muscular
fingers
of that arm are busy in the lands that lie beyond. In no European country is there a Communist majority, but almost everywhere the Communists are gaining ground because of the support from abroad on which they know they can rely,’ yet in 1947 he says: ‘He (Bevin) said there was only one point on which he agreed with me, namely that the
danger
still came from Germany rather than from Russia’.

Politician, author, man of the world—it is a far cry from the old song, referring to his famous wife, which went:

Unfortunately however, it remains true, as a witty person remarked, that a little Norwich is a dangerous thing. Such little influence as he was able to exert in the 30s was a dangerous influence, for England and for Europe, as we can now all too clearly see.

Lord Winterton’s memories of the House of Commons cover the period 1904 to 1951. The book is not, in its terms of reference, an autobiography; there are no cold grouse, no
Miracle
, no poems to beguile us. Lord Winterton is obviously not such a practised writer, and possibly not such a clever man as Lord Norwich, yet his book is of
lasting
value as a record of English politics.

He has the rare gift, so valuable in a Parliamentarian, of being able to judge a speech, a debating point, or even a rude retort with himself as target, strictly on its merits, and
distributes
praise among the talented on both sides of the House. He also realises, which is very clever of him, and unusual in a real House of Commons’un, that House of Commons jokes generally seem much less funny when repeated outside than they did at the time they were made, so much do they depend on atmosphere and timing. He
frequently
compares the House with a school presided over by the Speaker-headmaster; (a Speaker like Colonel Clifton Brown was not nearly severe enough with the unruly boys, he tells us, and looked far too benign) and on 2 May, 1940, he notes in his diary: ‘Very grave
news. The Boches have now taken… Amiens and Abbeville. Notwithstanding these events, the House of Commons at its very worst at question time—frivolity, foolish chaff and indulgence in ridiculous arguments…’ and he adds: ‘I have remarked before that the House of Commons sometimes shows its anxiety and nervousness on great and serious occasions during question time by behaviour reminiscent of an infants’ school.’

The pages of Hansard for the last half century are sprinkled with Lord Winterton’s interruptions and ejaculations; nobody was in more rows, and he was quick to anger. In moments of tension, he says, ‘the centre vein of my forehead swells—a characteristic I share with Sir Alfred Duff Cooper.’ Nevertheless he remained through it all a well-
mannered
, public-spirited English gentleman, without a trace of spite in his character.

His fault, as an historian, is that he is often too generous. After writing a passage eulogising President Roosevelt he showed it to an American friend, who said: ‘Yes, I know, it’s the same story with everyone who meets him for the first time… that is his harlot’s charm.’ Lord Winterton was very much annoyed by this, and writes: ‘It is easy to be cynical about Presidents and Prime Ministers…. But I prefer not to be cynical about Franklin D. Roosevelt.’ There is virtue in this naïve approach, for it demonstrates a fact so often ignored by the historian who has never left his study—namely, the power of charm in a politician to dazzle even such an old hand at the game as the author of this book. It is a quality shared by all who rise to the very top in politics in every country in the world, and nothing is harder to explain or to define.

Lord Winterton visited another famous charmer, Lloyd George, in 1941. ‘His main theme was that, whoever won the war, the end of it would see Western civilisation in ruins, with little chance of the re-emergence of Britain as a great Power within the lifetime of the youngest person alive. Though it was a dark and gloomy day, with deep snow on the ground, I left Mr Lloyd George’s house without any great feeling of depression about what he had said to me, because I thought it represented the views of an old and tired man who would be naturally inclined to look at matters in a pessimistic way; but I have often pondered on his words since then. It was not a fashionable view at the time, as everyone forced themselves to believe that when Nazism and Fascism were destroyed a great new era of hope would begin for the world,’ he writes.

Mr Lloyd George’s plea in the House of Commons, early in the war, that we should negotiate peace while there was yet time to save England and Europe from disaster, had called forth a furious speech from Mr Duff Cooper, denouncing the old war leader for defeatism. It is easy enough now to see which of these two men was right; but the
counsels
of sanity, balance and foresight were disregarded, while silliness and hysteria
triumphed
.

Orders of the Day
contains much that is interesting and much that is amusing; also the best defence of the Munich settlement and the most intelligent attack on Socialist policy in Africa yet written by any Tory. It is worth reading for these alone; let no one be put off this book by the rather unappetizing extracts which have been appearing in a Sunday
paper.

Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper,
Cooper, D. (1953)

Orders of the Day,
The Rt. Hon. Earl Winterton, P.C. (1953)

Self-made men are two a penny, but whoever heard of a self-made boy? The answer is, everyone who knew Brendan Bracken. One was told: ‘Brendan, an Australian orphan, sent himself to school in England and paid the fee out of money he had made.’ The truth about his beginnings, which Andrew Boyle has so cleverly searched out, is much stranger than any of his friends can have imagined, and much stranger than the assorted fictions he himself indulged in. Who could have guessed that he was one of a large family who were alive and well and living only a few hundred miles away across the Irish Sea? ‘Everything about the man is phoney. Why, even his hair, which looks like a wig, is real!’ exclaimed an American who did not take to Brendan.

In the early 30s we dined with him sometimes at his pretty old house in North Street; we thought he was an Australian because he said so. He was very good company, held right-wing views, and was devoted to Winston Churchill. The Churchill children had a story that he was ‘papa’s’ son, and we were inclined to think that perhaps he was and that his name, which suited him so well, was probably a brilliant invention of Mr Churchill’s. Yet, like his fuzzy red hair, the name Brendan Bracken turns out to have been his very own.

He was born in 1901 at Templemore in Co Tipperary; his father, who sculpted
gravestones
and was an active Fenian, died when he was three and his mother married again. There were several brothers and sisters. Brendan was sent to a Jesuit boarding school where he was so unhappy that he ran away. His relations arranged for him to go to Australia, where he worked at various jobs including teaching and journalism. He also read enormously, and came to admire England so much that he decided to become an Englishman. For this purpose he considered it essential that he should go to an English public school, so having saved a few hundred pounds he sailed for England. Here he made his way to Sedbergh and called upon Mr William Nassau Weech, the headmaster. He told him several lies. He said he was an Australian orphan whose parents had perished in a bush fire, and that he was 15 years of age. Whether or not he was believed, Brendan talked Mr Weech into accepting him into the school.

Brendan, lapsed Catholic and lapsed Irishman, an enormous ‘boy’ aged 19, drew a cheque book out of his pocket and paid his fees there and then. He stayed at Sedbergh only one term, but the Weech family had grown so fond of him that they invited him to spend Christmas with them. When he left, he had an old school tie and a near-English
accent; certainly it was neither Irish nor Australian, but what is now called mid-Atlantic. In his rather thick voice he talked incessantly, and if anyone else succeeded in saying a word or two Brendan kept up a sort of humming sound until he could break in and resume his monologue. Part of the reason why he and Randolph Churchill so often quarrelled was that they both wanted to talk and both became exasperated when neither would listen.