The Inspired Gift Guide December 6, The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. I make up for lost time when I come home. And the tigers are getting hungry. It was the nation and the race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar. These are not dark days: Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable.
How cruelly short is the allotted span for all we must cram into it! If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.
Pigs treat us as equals. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. We shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
We want a lot of engineers in the modern world, but we do not want a world of engineers. Use a pile driver. I do not think I should be serving the best interests of my colleagues or of the country if I were to continue in my present condition. Robert Carr was as a young man a close friend and admirer of Anthony Eden, and someone whose judgement I respected when we were MPs together.
I agree that he might well have pursued the same basic policy had he been well, but I find it very hard to believe that he would have made such obvious miscalculations in its execution both in the political and the military spheres. His physician, Sir Horace Evans, writing after the Suez crisis, in his letter of 15 January , explains the feverish attacks, certainly those with rigors, of which the most serious was that of 5 October , as indicating a transient ascending infection of the liver ducts, which he treated with mild sulphur drugs.
He suddenly felt freezing cold and began to shake uncontrollably with a fever. He was allowed to leave, it has been reported, much refreshed on Monday, 8 October. Most people were quite unaware of what had happened, including his colleagues. What is harder to unravel, apart from the cholangitis, is the contribution thereafter made by the sedatives and amphetamines that he was taking.
Some have claimed that this high temperature could have been stimulated by taking amphetamines. A survey of the literature provides no convincing evidence for this. To place the fever of 5 October in the context of the time, one needs to acknowledge that the Suez crisis was now coming to a head.
He knew too that as the British troop build up continued in Cyprus and elsewhere there would come a moment when he could not hold them in a state of military readiness, and on 5 October in the Security Council, Egypt complained about both British and French troop movements. On 8 October, Butler chaired the Egypt Committee, which normally would have been chaired by Eden, who came out of hospital that day. Later that week Eden, however, was well enough to speak in the traditional leader's slot on the last day of the Conservative Party Conference on Saturday 13 October at Llandudno. We have refused to say that in no circumstances would we ever use force.
On the same day as his speech, he was informed in Wales by Anthony Nutting that the French Prime Minister Mollet had requested that Eden urgently see emissaries whom he wanted to send over from Paris. The French had been in close contact with Israel ever since Egypt's agreement with Britain. Israel felt the British troop withdrawal from Egypt had made them more vulnerable, while France feared Egyptian interference in their massive military and political challenge in Algeria. French arms sales to Israel were already stretching the balance of arms provision in the Tripartite Agreement which France had signed with the US and the UK.
Jebb had revealed that the French had delivered 75 of the latest Mystere fighter aircraft to Israel without it being cleared with the UK and the Americans as part of the procedures of the Tripartite Agreement. Eden was suspicious, and asked Nutting whether the French were putting up the Israelis to attack Jordan, which was a major British anxiety at the time.
Eden appeared not to have had any inkling that the French were already deep in collusion with the Israelis over Egypt. Anthony Nutting had lunch with Eden first when they discussed with some hope the direct negotiations Selwyn Lloyd was having in New York with the Egyptian Foreign Minister. But in fairness to Eden, once a note had been taken, it would have been hard for the Private Secretary not to circulate it at the very least to the Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office.
He would have then circulated it to other senior diplomats and by telegram to the Foreign Secretary in New York. The circle of people in the know would have inexorably widened.
Winston Churchill Quotes Proving He Was A Powerful Force
It was wholly legitimate for Eden at this early stage to decide for himself who should be in the know. The Challe Plan was that Israel would invade the Suez Canal Zone area, British and French forces having previously agreed with Israel to intervene to separate Israeli and Egyptian forces, posing to the world as peacekeepers between the combatants.
To any Prime Minister, let alone Eden with his vast experience as Foreign Secretary, this was a highly contentious plan, and one that was bound to be fraught with political dangers at home and abroad. Eden did not formally commit himself to the plan, but that was in itself a decision. The nature of his questions left the French in little doubt that he was on board for the concept. The normally cautious pro-Arab Eden might have been expected, on his past record, to have ruled out the plan from the moment he heard of it. And how and why did the man, whose whole political career had been founded on his genius for negotiation, act so wildly out of character?
This was the truly fateful consequence of colluding with Israel and France, and I judge that if Eden had been fit and well, he would have realized that such a course contained the seeds of its own destruction. Eden decided personally to tell Selwyn Lloyd what Challe had proposed and asked for Lloyd to be summoned to fly back to London, where he arrived on the morning of Tuesday 16 October. Eden authorized Nutting to talk only to two senior Foreign Office diplomats, and specifically excluded the Legal Adviser. Eden knew that the Attorney-General and the Foreign Office Legal Adviser would say that what he proposed to do could not be justified in international law.
Instead he relied on advice from the Lord Chancellor, who was not constitutionally the Legal Adviser to the Cabinet or the Prime Minister, but who maintained that intervention could be legally justified. Nutting had had a quick conversation with Selwyn Lloyd before the Cabinet telling him what Eden was up to, and claims that Lloyd replied spontaneously: Nutting spoke to Lloyd again by telephone after his lunch with Eden, but found Lloyd was now in no mood to listen to his pleadings. The relatively inexperienced Foreign Secretary was not only acquiescing in the Challe Plan but saying that his agreement on six principles in New York with the Egyptian Foreign Minister would not be honoured by Nasser.
It was a sign of how desperate Eden had become that he saw the Challe Plan as an opportunity to defeat Nasser, and was ready even to contemplate what the French were advocating. He swept his Foreign Secretary off to Paris within hours of landing from New York, without either man having had, as far as one can determine, any formal professional input from the Foreign Office, though Eden could rely on the Permanent Secretary, Kirkpatrick.
This failure to consult was an action quite out of character. This was but one of many examples of how personalized and unstructured Eden's decision-making had become in 10 Downing Street.
Eden was depending on his political instinct from 14 October onwards, but how sound were those instincts at that time when he had only a week earlier an exceptionally high fever, was daily taking a mixture of sedatives to sleep and stimulants to counter the effect of the drugs, and had been under prolonged stress since the end of July? Alec Douglas Home, one of nature's gentlemen and someone who would always lean over backwards to be fair, was a supporter of Eden's policy, serving on the Egypt Committee. He described Eden's conduct of such meetings in a retrospective BBC radio programme in Extraordinary, strange things happened.
He described Eden's and Lloyd's mood, saying: He makes no attempt to hide that Eden was highly strung, but he writes that he seldom became angry when really important matters were involved, but instead did so over irritating trivialities, usually in his own home, and very seldom did he lose his temper in public. An exception to this that he cites was when Eden lost his temper on the floor of the House of Commons.
General Glubb, the British Commander in Chief of the Jordanian Army, had been peremptorily dismissed by King Hussein, and Eden, who thought Nasser had been trying to destabilize Jordan for some time, overreacted. The Labour Opposition forced a debate in the House of Commons on 7 March , and when Eden came to make the wind-up speech, the House was in a noisy mood. He is fighting very bad fatigue which is sapping his power of thought.
Tonight's winding up of the debate was a shambles. I want him destroyed, can't you understand? Another example of Eden's irritability is described in an incident involving the Foreign Office lawyer who reported back to Eden on the research he had ordered into the legality of Nasser's action, saying that Nasser's action was indeed perfectly legal so long as he did not close the canal to shipping. Eden allegedly tore up the report in front of the lawyer and flung it in the lawyer's face. Two people who knew Eden's movements challenged whether he could have made such visits, and his biographer, Richard Thorpe, pointed out that his housemaster had died in February Another example is an incident described in Leonard Mosley's book on Dulles, 30 in which the widely respected military expert and historian, Captain R.
Yet this story is pure fiction, as Liddell Hart's wife and son confirm, since the men never actually met during the Suez Crisis. Drinamyl is now very rarely used, as the medical profession have become more aware of their effect on judgement, energy and mood. There have been a number of stories about Eden being on very large doses of amphetamines such as Benzedrine. Hugh Thomas, the historian, alleges that Eden told an adviser that he was practically living on Benzedrine. Hunt—thought he would not have acted very differently in the Suez Crisis if he had been in robust health.
Hugh Thomas, nevertheless, went on to write, despite that viewpoint, that he felt it was also possible that from his fever in October onwards, Eden was really ill and that his doctors should have recommended his resignation. If Eden had decided to resign on grounds of ill health, or more likely to go to Jamaica to recuperate, in the week of the Party Conference beginning on 9 October, not as he did later in November, the history of the Suez Crisis would have been very different.
Selwyn Lloyd's negotiations in New York with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, which Eden and Nutting considered with a measure of optimism before meeting Challe at Chequers, would have been given a few more weeks. Neither a caretaker Prime Minister, like Rab Butler, nor any new Prime Minister would have been in any position even to consider a totally new policy like that proposed by Israel until after the US Presidential elections on 6 November.
Guy Millard, Eden's junior Private Secretary in the Foreign Office during the Second World War who then served the Prime Minister within 10 Downing Street, was not only present at all his most important meetings on international affairs, but would see him late at night, early in the morning, read his notations on documents and listen in on many of his telephone conversations.
A contemporaneous diary entry of 1 November on Eden's state of mind in October by a Foreign Office diplomat quotes Millard: Eden was certainly not mad, nor drugged in a way that he could not conduct himself as Prime Minister, and his stamina was in many ways remarkable after his fever.
120 Winston Churchill Quotes Proving He Was A Powerful Force
What is at issue was whether his decision-making, his judgement, were functioning at the same levels of consistency, caution, courage and calculation in October , as during his conduct of Foreign Policy over the previous two decades. For example, Eden deliberated carefully and consulted widely during his period of disillusionment with Chamberlain, which led up to his resignation in During the Second World War, on numerous occasions it is well documented how he provided stability to Churchill's decision-making.
After , when he returned to government as Foreign Secretary, Eden's foreign policy decisions were taken dispassionately and like the Suez Canal Agreement, explicable in the context of the time. Yet analysing the crucial month of October , one sees an honourable and courageous man, borne down by illness and fatigue, weighing very difficult questions but then making too many decisions which were not in keeping with his past record. In Eden's defence, why did the Cabinet of healthy men on 23 October and on 4 November go along with the policy and then by 6 November be ready to disown the policy?
The short answer to both questions is realpolitik, and for a few of them, particularly Macmillan, party politics. Any Prime Minister on international affairs supported by the Foreign Secretary has great influence on a Cabinet—similar to, but rather greater than, the effect on domestic affairs when supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was only when his judgement of Eisenhower's reaction was proved wrong that on the night of 5—6 November he changed, 37 and this was powerful because he was able to speak with the authority of being Chancellor about the danger to the pound.
Eden's authority, never more brittle than on 6 November, could have been challenged by Macmillan, the one man who could have swayed a Cabinet that had already lost its nerve to disown Eden. Eden summoned the Cabinet to meet in his room in the House of Commons at 9. It was not the threatening letter from the Soviet leader Bulganin, or even the pressure on the pound: It was a diplomatic debacle.
It would have been wiser from Eden's point of view to have delayed calling the Cabinet together until 7 November, taking the whole Canal in the meantime and then veto with the French any UN resolution on sanctions. Undoubtedly Eden saw Russia and their short- to long-term intentions in the Middle East as an immense threat. Of course Egypt is no Germany, but Russia is, and Egypt just her pawn.
If we had let events drift until the spring I have little doubt that by then, or about then, Russia and Egypt would have been ready to pounce, with Israel as the apparent target and western interests as the real one. Russians don't give away all that equipment for fun. Eden has written his own memoirs in which he refers to the Russian threat and relations with the US. The private and succinct explanation of the reasons for the initial military intervention and then its withdrawal that he gave to his former and still very trusted Private Secretary, Bob Pierson Dixon, gives a special insight.
The trouble was that one could never prove that the situation would have been worse if action had not been taken. He still felt that the issue against Nasser was really the same as the issue against Mussolini — something had to be done to stop dictatorship. To take another example, had we moved against Hitler over the Rhineland there would have been much criticism but it would have been the right thing to do and many millions of lives would have been saved.
His calculation was that Nasser and the Russians would have moved in the Middle East presumably against Israel about March or April of this year. Since the troops could not be kept hanging on indefinitely in Cyprus, he had felt bound to take the decision at the end of October to strike before the Egyptians.
Never has overstaying one’s welcome been so important
What he did object to was the way in which the United States had pushed us into immediate withdrawal. Mr Lodge [US Ambassador at the UN] was the real nigger in the woodpile and could not easily be forgiven for his failure to support the Belgian amendment. He had good reason to believe that President Eisenhower did not want to push us into immediate withdrawal which, of course, spoilt the whole operation.
On the morning of the ceasefire the President had telephoned to him and said he was glad about the ceasefire and had added that now that we were ashore he supposed that we had all we needed. Sir Anthony had not been able to pursue the conversation since he was off to the House of Commons to announce the ceasefire and had told the President that he would call him back. The President had agreed, and asked when.
Sir Anthony had said, the sooner the better. The President then suggested that M.
Mollet ought to come too, and Sir Anthony had agreed to bring him along. The President had said something about resolutions that were being prepared in the United Nations, to which Sir Anthony had said that he did not want to talk about the United Nations. With some difficulty he had then persuaded M. Mollet to fly to Washington that evening. Later in the afternoon the President had again telephoned and said that, on thinking the matter over, he believed that the moment was not ripe for a visit from the British and French Prime Ministers. Sir Anthony believed that he had consulted Mr Dulles in hospital and that Mr Dulles had advised against the visit.
But how could he have done this? It would simply have brought Mr Dulles across the Atlantic for the fifth time and it would have been very difficult to have gone ahead in the face of US objections. It is easy to be overly moralistic about what is done to win in times of war. Collusion is certainly not unknown in war time. There was also a structured Egypt Committee of the Cabinet, though this was suspended from 17 October to 1 November.
Eden's conduct was not, however, like Tony Blair's conduct of the Cabinet over Iraq, where we learn from the Butler Enquiry in there were no detailed papers circulated by Tony Blair before Cabinet discussion, no detailed papers circulated or minutes taken in informal meetings with senior Cabinet colleagues before the invasion, and no structured decision making. Sadly neither Prime Minister gave sufficient detailed consideration as to how to handle the aftermath of their respective invasions. There was a crucial difference, however. It can be justified that no hint of collusion was given to the House of Commons during the actual military operation, but it was Eden's attempt to send two diplomats back to Paris to gather up and to destroy all the copies of what was later called the Protocol of Sevres, 43 a suburb of Paris, which was so bizarre.
Selwyn Lloyd attended the initial meeting at Sevres, and the second Sevres meeting involved a senior diplomat, Patrick Dean, and Lloyd's Private secretary, Donald Logan. In democracies, Eden should have known there can be no question of perpetual secrecy. The French and the Israeli leaders afterwards resented the British Cabinet's decision to halt the advancing troops down the Canal and they had no guilty consciences about the military operation even after its failure.
It was also a wholly unrealistic view of Eden's that any cover-up could be kept from American intelligence for much longer than a few weeks at best. Indeed, the CIA claimed to have known at the time.
More realistic than Eden, Pineau told the US about the facts of their collusion while Eden was still pretending to the Americans that no collusion had taken place, compounding US anger. As a patient, undergoing surgery, Braasch pays tribute to Eden, writing that he was a model of cooperation and possessed an even humour at times of stress. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that as a politician under the stress of holding the job of Prime Minister during the Suez crisis, Eden's illness and his treatment got to him in ways that did affect his judgement and decision-making.
There should be no shame for Eden's family in acknowledging this. He was having to make critical judgements hour by hour, courageously struggling with a serious illness. In some of these decisions he showed the careful consideration on which his great reputation deservedly rested. Yet in relation to three crucial decisions—to collude with Israel; mislead the American President and to lie to the House of Commons, even after the invasion—I believe his judgement was impaired, and his illness and treatment contributed to that impairment.
We need to create a climate of opinion that Heads of Government are not immune to the discipline that should and usually now is applied to all other decision-makers, whether Generals or Chief Executives; namely that when ill one must cease to take major decisions. I have studied illness in Heads of Government over the last century, 46 and it shows that too often the course of world history has been adversely affected by Heads of Government and by their medical advisers not living with the normal constraints that illness should put on withdrawing from continued decision making when ill.
Whether they resign or not is a different question, depending to some extent on circumstances, but essentially it is a political choice.