Churchill's Legacy by Alan Watson

Author:Alan Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Published: 2016-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

PART V

EUROPE RESTORED

16

Zurich

‘I am now going to say something that will astonish you . . .’

As with his Fulton speech, Churchill’s second great intervention of 1946 was activated by an academic invitation facilitated by a holiday. There was a conjunction of platform, pleasure and the hinge of fate. To put it another way, Churchill believed in seizing the hem of history and in September 1946 he did not doubt he held it in his grip. He was not the dispirited man who in the previous year had spotted the opportunity provided by Truman’s footnote on the invitation from Westminster College in Missouri. He was newly invigorated and confident. Thus the invitation now before him, to speak at the University of Zurich, represented an opportunity he grasped without hesitation. It was made all the more attractive by the Swiss government’s offer of an excellent holiday in their country, as their guest.

In August, accompanied by his wife, Clementine, and his daughter, Mary, he arrived in Switzerland to savour Swiss hospitality. Churchill rejoiced in its undamaged beauty, an oasis at the heart of war-torn Europe, and received endless tributes to his statesmanship and Britain’s wartime courage. He returned the flattery with his own. On arriving in Zurich at the Town Hall, showered with flowers and the cheers of the crowd, he said to the Swiss:

You have solved many of the difficulties which have led other countries into suffering and misfortune. You have thus managed to be united in spite of the differences of language and race and there is no reason why your example should not be followed throughout the whole of this wrecked continent of Europe.1

His purpose was not to advocate the neutrality that had kept Switzerland out of the war. The last thing he wanted was a neutral Western Europe, helpless before Stalin. His wish, fervently held, was for Western Europe to unite, economically, politically, spiritually – overcoming the ‘differences of language and race’. The idea of a restored Europe would motivate and justify the commitment of the USA. It would be helped by Britain and the Commonwealth. It could turn the tide in what would soon be recognised as the Cold War.

For this to happen, however, Churchill would once again, as at Fulton, have to startle and indeed ‘astonish’ the world. He knew he had the power to provoke and inspire and, since Fulton, he also knew that he had the authority to do so. This time was different in that he did not need the backing of the British Foreign Office, which he neither requested nor received. This was his moment and he would fulfil his mission by articulating a vision of European reconciliation so bold that Europe’s self-awareness would be reshaped for ever.

To the crowds around the Town Hall, who cheered him to the echo every time he waved his famous ‘V for Victory’ hand-sign, Churchill paused to explain that this, his most defiant and famous gesture, now had a different meaning. It no longer ‘stood for the

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