With Victory, the Veto. As Hitler's defeat became certain, the victors
gathered at San Francisco to build a new and better league of
nations--"peace-loving nations," the phrase went. A charter, sharply restricted
by the Big Power veto, emerged from San Francisco. The veto, it was agreed,
would be used sparingly, a word that turned out to have different meanings in
English and Russian; up to the end of 1949, the Russians have used the veto 43
time in the United Nations Security Council.
The intense nationalism that led to the veto was even proof against atomic
bombs. The U.S.S.R. steadily refused to enter international atomic control
agreements containing provision for genuine inspection and enforcement. By 1949
the Russians became able to make atomic bombs, and the hope of atomic agreement
faded further.
In July 1945, Britain held its first general election in ten years.
Churchill has described the surprising result: "I acquired [in 1940] the chief
power in the State, which...I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years
and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having
surrendered unconditionally, or being about to do so, I was immediately
dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs."
Britain at that point preferred Clement Attlee (Churchill called him: "That
sheep in sheep's clothing") and his Socialists, who continued the grim, grey
wartime regime of "fair shares for all"--and not much for anybody.
Attlee presided resolutely over the partial dissolution of the Empire on
which Churchill cast a Cassandra eye: "It is with deep grief that I watch the
clattering down of the British Empire, with all its glories and all the
services it has rendered to mankind." It was too late for such regrets. Asians
were determined to break the imperialist tether even at the risk of chaos and
subsequent Communist control. In April 1949, Chinese Reds fired on British
naval vessels in the Yangtze River; anti- Communists in Korea, Hong Kong and
Shanghai hung pictures of the wounded ships in their homes to celebrate
Britain's humiliation.
Asians 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.
