From
January-February 2005
Brother
Winston
S. Churchill
By Robert Morris
On a faded high school diploma dated
June 28, 1940, one can still see the signature of the High
School Principal, W.C.
Scott. He was born shortly after the turn of the century
and his full name was Winston Churchill Scott. While still
in his twenties, Winston S. Churchill had achieved enough
fame that parents were naming their sons after him forty
years before he became Prime Minister of Great Britain on
May 10, 1940.
Long before the advent of the automobile and airplane,
Brother Churchill was born in Blenheim Place in Victorian
England
on November 30, 1874. He was from a distinguished family
descended from the famous Duke of Marlborough. He was, however,
only half English, his mother being Jennie Jerome, an American
and daughter of Leonard Jerome, editor and proprietor of
the New York Times.
At age 12, Churchill was admitted to Harrow, Britain’s
prestigious school for boys. Upon graduation, he was admitted
to Sandhurst, “Britain’s West Point,” from
which he graduated as a Second Lieutenant in December, 1894.
The following month, he was saddened by the unexpected death
of his father at age 45. H he greatly admired his father
and later to resolve to take over in Parliament, where his
father had left off.
His first significant assignment was as an observer to
a Spanish military force sent to Cuba in 1895. On the way
there,
he stopped by New York City to visit his American relatives.
The next two years were spent as a war correspondent in India.
In 1898, he volunteered to serve with General Kitchener in
the latter’s attempt to re-conquer the Sudan and participated
in one of history’s last great cavalry charges in which
he came close to losing his life.
During the Boer War in South Africa, Churchill was a war
correspondent for the London Morning Post. On November 15,
1899, he was captured by the Boers and became a prisoner
of war. He soon made a daring escape and, with a price on
his head, made his way back to the British lines. He was
then commissioned a Lieutenant in the British Forces and
helped in leading them to Pretoria, where he helped release
his former fellow prisoners of war. He returned to England
a hero in 1900.
Deciding to run for Parliament, he was elected in 1900.
He had reached the ripe old age of 25 and had already seen
military
action in Cuba, India, Sudan, and South Africa. Before taking
his seat in Parliament, he decided on a lecture tour of America.
There he was introduced to Mark Twain and, later, both Vice
President Theodore Roosevelt and President William McKinley.
The fact that Churchill’s father and those three were
all Brother Masons must have gotten him to thinking because
upon returning to England he applied for the Degrees in Freemasonry.
He was initiated in Studholme Lodge #1591, London, and raised
to the Third Degree on March 25, 1902, in Rosemary Lodge
#2851.
Prime Minister Asquith appointed Churchill as First Lord
of the Admiralty, a position similar to that of the United
States Secretary of the Navy. Churchill held this appointment
from 1911 to 1915. He saw to the strengthening of Britain’s
Navy, and when World War I broke out in 1914, the fleet was
ready. Churchill, however, did get the blame for one unfortunate
campaign. The defeat of the British forces at Gallipoli in
1915 resulted in his dismissal from the Admiralty. At age
41, his career seemed finished. Later analysis proved that
not Churchill but others closer to the scene were the actual
culprits. All was not lost though, because as a result of
Churchill’s prior planning, the British Navy was later
to give the German Navy a resounding defeat at the Battle
of Jutland in June 1916.
In July 1917, just as the United States entered the World
War I, Bro. Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions.
His American contacts were of inestimable value in working
out various logistical support arrangements between the two
countries. At the end of the war, Churchill became the only
Englishman to receive the prestigious United States Distinguished
Service Medal.
The period 1921-1922 was not a good one for Churchill.
In 1921, he was saddened by the death of his mother, and
the
following year, he lost his bid for reelection to Parliament,
a harbinger of things to come a generation later. Of all
Britain’s statesmen, Churchill was by far the most
prolific of writers. Already, since the turn of the century,
Churchhill had been turning out volumes related to historical
matters. Among them were works about the Malakand Field Force
in 1898; his escape from the Boers in 1900; a biography of
his father, The Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, in 1906;
a five-volume history, The World Crisis, about World War
I, in 1923 and, later, a four-volume biography of his famous
ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough in 1933.
In 1924 at age 50, Churchill was again back in Parliament,
this time appointed to the prestigious position of Chancellor
of the Exchequer—similar to the American Secretary
of the Treasury. This was the period when Mussolini had already
taken over Italy and Adolf Hitler was agitating in Germany,
finally becoming Chancellor in 1932, the same year that Franklin
D. Roosevelt was elected President of the United States.
To Churchill the handwriting was on the wall, and he perceived
the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain as a pacifist and
appeaser. He railed against these policies, especially after
Chamberlain returned to England from a conference in Munich
waving a piece of paper and announcing that he had agreed
to giving a piece of Czechoslovakia to Germany. The subsequent
occupation of all of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland
by Germany finally caused both Britain and France to declare
war on Germany in September 1939. Churchill was asked to
reassume the position of First Lord of the Admiralty on September
21, 1939.
No sooner had Churchill been appointed than his Brother
Mason Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote a congratulatory note to
him
beginning a series of personal letters which lasted until
Roosevelt’s death in April l945.
When France fell in 1940, the Chamberlain government also
fell, and Churchill was appointed Prime Minister at age 65.
In his acceptance speech, he was candid with his countrymen
in notifying them that “I have nothing to offer but
blood, sweat and tears.”
Among Churchill’s activities during the period May
10, 1940, to April 12, 1945, was the deep personal relationship
which had begun to grow with President Roosevelt. The first
two years were spent in dealing with the United States as
a non-belligerent and in finding ways to tap the seemingly
inexhaustible war supplies of that country without violating
America’s neutrality laws. In September, 1940, they
successfully negotiated the trading of 50 U.S. destroyers
for a 99-year lease of British military bases in the Atlantic
and also the subsequent shipping of war supplies to Britain.
During a visit to Washington on December 26, 1941, Churchill
became the first British Prime Minister to be invited to
address a joint session of Congress. On May 19, 1943, he
again addressed that august body, one of only a few foreigners
ever to receive that distinct recognition. He noted that
if his parents’ nationalities had been reversed, he
might have gotten to Congress on his own.
In 1945, Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.
Although now out of office, Bro. Churchill was still the
leader of the opposition in Parliament, and the growing intransigence
of Stalin gave him great concern. Accordingly, he was pleased
to accept President Truman’s invitation to speak at
Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946.
There he gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech,
saying “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the
Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” This
was, in effect, the beginning of the Cold War which was to
continue long after Churchill’s death.
Between l948 and 1951, Churchill took time out to produce
another of his historical masterpieces, a 6-volume history
of the Second World War. On January 20, 1953, Churchill was
again in Washington, where he visited Truman on his last
day in the White House. Churchill then entertained Truman
at a dinner at the British Embassy. The year 1953 saw his
being knighted by the Queen into the Order of the Garter
and thenceforth to be known as Sir Winston, his participation
with President Eisenhower in the ill-fated Bermuda Conference,
and his being awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature.
Age was now beginning to take its toll, and Churchill resigned
as Prime Minister in April 1955. Although he maintained his
seat in Parliament, he now began to take more time with his
favorite pastimes, especially writing. Between 1956 and 1958,
he produced his final epic masterpiece, the four-volume History
of the English Speaking People.
In his personal life, he adored his wife, Clementine, and
in addition to saying that “they lived happily ever
after” noted that “what can be more glorious
than to be united in one’s way through life with a
being incapable of an ignoble thought.” They were married
for over 56 years. His beliefs were also truly Masonic. Ever
since the end of the Boer War, he had always advocated magnanimity
for a defeated foe. He was a Mason for over 62 years.
When he died on December 12, 1965, at the age of 91, he
had earned a respected and honored position on the world
scene.
No other leader in the Western World had done more to contain
tyranny and despotism. To paraphrase one of his more memorable
statements: “Never in the history of modern statesmanship
have so many been influenced for so long by one man.” He
truly was one of the great men of the century and one whose
attitudes, beliefs, tenacity, and accomplishments will be
noted for all time.
Bro. Robert Morris is
Secretary of Manchester Lodge, Manchester-by-the-Sea,
Manchester, Mass., a 32° Mason in the Northern Masonic
Jurisdiction, and a staff member of the TROWEL,
a publication of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. This
text, taken from a Short Talk Bulletin (May
2003) published by the Masonic Service Association of
North America and based on an article published in the TROWEL (Spring
2001).It is reprinted here with permission from the author
whose mailing address is Robert Morris, 3 Laurelwood
Circle, Haverhill, MA 01832-1512
