Angry Planet - Churchill – the ‘glowworm’ who changed the fate of modern Europe

Episode Date: January 4, 2017

At the end of World War II, Winston Churchill lost his reelection bid for Prime Minister of England. The British Bulldog was down, but not out. He worried of a coming conflict with Stalin and the growing Soviet Empire, and he wanted the world to listen. On this week’s War College, author Lord Alan Watson argues that two speeches Churchill gave after the war laid the intellectual groundwork for Western geopolitical thought during the Cold War. More than that, he says they saved the world. His new book – Churchill’s Legacy: Two Speeches to Save the World tells the story of the former Prime Minister’s post-war career and how his legacy shaped the West. Without Churchill, Watson argues, there would be no European Union, no NATO and no peace.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' news. But the effect on Winston's morale of the controversy is that the sap rises. I mean, the more he's in the middle of what Truman called a hell of a shindig, the happier in a way he becomes.

The end of World War II spelled the end of Winston Churchill's career. He lost his re-election bid. Until two speeches he gave flipped the world on its head. On this week's episode, why history remembers them and why the world wasn't ready

to hear his message. You're listening to Reuters War College, a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Jason Fields and Matthew Gould. Hello and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters.

And I'm Matthew Galt with War is Boring. In a War College First, we're actually hosting a full British Lord. Lord Alan Watson is Baron of Richmond and High Steward of Cambridge University. He's the former president of Britain's Liberal Party and author of the new book Churchill's Legacy. two speeches that saved the world. So, sir, thank you so much for joining us. Pleased to be here. You have had a lifelong fascination with Winston Churchill.

What is it in particular, he is one of the great heroes of the 20th century, but what in particular is it about him that's fascinated you? Well, in this particular case, it's more about one year in his life. Because when people write and think about Winston Churchill's life, which was a very long one, and of course began, and in the 19th century ends in 1965 in the 20th century. It encompasses so many different things. But I think the conventional view is that the peak was May 1940

when Churchill stood alone in defiance against Adolf Hitler. And indeed, that was an extraordinary moment and in many ways his finest moment. But it wasn't his last moment. and an idea which sort of sees Churchill's life in a way in a decline from that moment on, so that by 1944 he's no longer the most powerful leader in the wartime alliance. Those places have been taken by Stalin and FDR. Then in 45 he goes to the last conference of the Second World War, Potsdam, in Berlin,

but after a couple of days he has to leave to face a general election in Britain, which he loses. He then becomes leader of the opposition, and he didn't much like that job. And some people think, well, when he finally got back into number 10 Downing Street in 51, he was perhaps too old for the job. So in a sense, the trajectory is one which goes down. What I'm saying, and I hope the book proves decisively, is that actually 1946 is the other great peak in his career. and the speeches that he made then, first at Fulton, Missouri, and then Zurich, Switzerland, he himself said of his Fulthin speech, this is the most important speech I have ever made. That was his judgment, even given the background of the great speeches he made in 1940.

If you don't mind, before we get to that year, if you could give us a sense of the man, we all know the name, I think, you know, most people know a bit of his history, but just to give us a background. I mean, first of all, he was not exactly a pauper growing up. I mean, he was very much part of the British establishment. Yes, although he was pretty well until the end of his life quite short of money, because Winston had a great lifestyle. You know, he always said, I'm easily satisfied with the very best, but the truth was, he couldn't always afford the very best. So he was indeed a member of the establishment and the aristocrats. and he was born in Blenheim Palace but that was largely accidental but nevertheless

you know he always had to work and he worked with words words were his tools and they became his sword and his shield if you like and one of the things this gives you an insight into him you know he once said history is far too important to be left to anybody else but me to write it and certainly he wrote his own history his life is in a way shaped by these two world wars and then the Cold War which follows and I think that's important as well to get the measure of the man First World War he's in charge of the Navy at the start and he gets very closely involved with a campaign in Gallipoli

to try and land allied troops mainly Australian and British on the beaches in Gallipoli and take Turkey out of the war. And it fails in the end. It's most ambitious ship and land attempt that's ever been made up to that point, and it doesn't succeed. That influenced him greatly thereafter and was one of the reasons why in the Second World War, he was quite cautious about the date of the Normandy invasion because he didn't wish to see a reoccurrence of what had happened in.

Gallipoli. But just to finish quickly on the First World War, he has to leave office as a result of Gallipoli. And what he does is so characteristic of the man and of one of his most important facets of who he was. He was a man of great physical courage. Some people thought, including the king and the Second World War, that he took completely unnecessary risks. And he had that aspect. So after Gallipoli, he goes and serves in the trenches in France, in the First World War, which was about the most dangerous place on Earth. And he was very – his men loved him in the end, and he was very successful. And then he resumed his political career after. And that takes him through to the Second World War.

But he was not young when he was in the trenches at all. I mean, at that point, how old was he? Well, he's in his 40s. And, of course, by the time he becomes prime minister, he's – 30 years later, you know, life's moved on. And he didn't find age easy. Let me make that clear that although Winston always looked very robust, even flamboyant, you know, he wore in public extraordinary floral dressing gowns and boiler suits and uniforms of every kind.

He loved uniforms, loved medals. He was a theatrical person, but actually his health was quite frail in many ways. And in the Second World War, very frail, and his doctor, a man called Lord Moran, you know, he really, he shared his symptoms with his doctor. And, you know, also, of course, he had a lifestyle which included, as you know, smoking a great many cigars, which would startle us today and drinking a great deal as well. He always said that he'd put more into alcohol than alcohol had put into him, but I'm not so sure about that. but he enjoyed life and he was also very lucky really fortunate

blessed in his wife clementine and she had the ability to stand up to him and there was a moment for example in 1940 when Britain absolutely depended on Winston Churchill and indeed in a larger sense

the free world depended on Winston Churchill if he'd chosen to Pali, as he would have put it, with Adolf Hitler. Britain would have ended up being occupied by the Nazis. If that had happened, the Second Front would never have been possible. The US would not have been able to invade continental Europe. And, you know, the fate of Europe would have been either that it was simply part of this colossal and evil Third Reich. Or if the Russians had nevertheless eventually won, it would have been totally occupied by,

Russia. So, I mean, everything depends on him. And he knows that. And this colossal pressure on him makes him very brusque with the people around him. He's always impatient. Carpe diem, capture the day, you see? And his wife writes him a letter. And she says, you know, we know what is on your shoulders, the weight that is on your shoulders. But you must be careful of how you treat other people. You must listen to them. You must be more considerate. You must be more considerate. You be less brusk. He wouldn't have taken it from anyone else, but he took it from her. She was a very important added dimension to Winston Churchill's life. He was operating in very much a democratic country, so I guess the ability to deal with others was not just, you know, I mean something that's

nice, but actually really important. I think you raised a very important question, which isn't always understood about his direction of the war. It's interesting that if you are in London and you visit what some people call Churchill's bunker, which was when the Blitz was on and then later the attacks by the German rocket offensive, the V1 and the V2, he had to move underground.

And, you know, there he was in this bunker, which he absolutely hated, by the way. During the Blitz, to give you an example of how willing he was to expose himself to risk, he would actually climb to the top of the building and he would stand on a platform up there and watch the blitz happening. He liked to see the fighting. What he did in the Second World War was extraordinary irreplaceable, and even if he did sometimes annoy people, particularly the field marshals and so on who were with him, they all actually acknowledged that without him, the war could never have been won. And I'm arguing in my book

that what happens in 46, which in a way initiates the Cold War, but I don't think the Cold War could have been won without what Churchill did in 1946. All right, so tell us about this first speech then. This is the famous Iron Curtain speech. Is that correct? Yes, he actually called it the sinews of peace, but it became known instantly as the Cold War speech, the Iron Curtain speech, because he used this memorable phrase about an iron curtain as descended across Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, and it was a very vivid image, of course. The background to the speech, where you come back to the psychology of Winston Churchill, remember he's at the Potsdam conference, the last great conference of the Second World War,

and he's there with Stalin, he's there with the new president, Harry Truman, and himself. And he knows that he's going to have to leave and face this election, and indeed he does. And incidentally, it may be apocryphal, but I like to believe the story, that Stalin, who of course couldn't understand at all why he had to leave and face an election, tries to encourage him a little bit by saying, it is all right, I have never lost an election. Churchill knew his fate would be different, and he did indeed lose it and lose it very badly.

And that throws him into a depression. And Winston Churchill, despite the bravery and the courage and the resilience, you know, we are all worms, he once said, but I am a glow worm. but the fact is he has this black dog mood, which was his name for his depression, and it has him by the throat. And he feels that he's lost any ability to control and influence events, that he's fallen from a great altitude to the ground,

and he actually says to Lord Moran, his doctor, it would be better if I were dead. It would be better if, like FDR, I had passed away. And he's quite morose. actually. And he's sitting down at Chartwell, his country house in Kent, and they put a letter in front of him. And it's a letter from a college he's never heard of, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. And it's a fairly conventional letter inviting him to come and speak, and give him an honorary doctorate and all that. But what electrifies him are two sentences at the bottom

in President Truman's handwriting. And he basically says, this is a fine college. in my home state and then the key sentence, if you come, I will introduce you. And Churchill immediately realizes that what this in practice means is about 18 hours on the train with the new president of the United States. So he accepts with alacrity and he goes and the speech when it's made is very powerful and also immensely controversial. the effect on Winston's morale of the controversy is that the sap rises. I mean, the more he's in the middle of what Truman called a hell of a shindig, the happier in a way he becomes. But it's

quite important to realize why it was so controversial. The challenge facing Winston Churchill at Fulton was to try and persuade American public opinion and governmental opinion that Stalin was not good old Uncle Joe, but a tyrant, and a tyrant intent on dominating as much of Europe as he could get his hands on. There are 300 Soviet divisions poised outside Berlin. And of course, within a matter of months, Stalin tries to take by force the Berlin blockade to take West Berlin. And if he'd succeeded, he, that was certainly the view of the British Foreign Office, would have gone on to try and take West Berlin. and Germany, and God knows what would happen thereafter, short of a nuclear war. The West was given a small window of opportunity because we had a temporary, as it turned

out, very temporary monopoly of the atomic bomb, and that was the countervailing force, of course. So Churchill lays out this plan at Fulton in which he says, look, we've got to stand up to tyranny. Democracy can't be passively defended. You have to be defiant against the threat. And then something extraordinary happens. Within one week of his making this speech, Harry Truman, who's sitting next to him on the platform, applauding, you can see it in the Paffe newsreels, actually calls a press conference with Burns in which he says, I had no idea of what Mr. Churchill was going to say. And the fact that I was sitting next to on the platform in no way denotes the support of the administration for what Mr. Churchill

proposes. Now, one of the things I've been able to establish in my book because of a cable that Winston Churchill sends to Ernie Bevin, who was a great ally of his, then Foreign Secretary, describing exactly what happens on the train. And what did happen was that they played cards, they drank quite a lot, but at a certain point Winston gets up in the carriage with the final version. of his speech. And there's an old-fashioned, well, for them it was very new, mimeographed machine there, and he feeds the sheets of his speech into this machine, and he gives them to Harry Truman

who reads them. So Harry Truman knew exactly what he was going to say. Why does he deny it? He denies it because of the shindig that's being created and the fervent opposition of the Roosevelt family to what was being proposed. And indeed, when Churchill leaves New York, a couple of weeks later, it's amazing. The city is divided. There's a ticker tape parade for Winston, but there's also 4,000 demonstrators on the streets holding blackards saying no war for Winston. No war for Winston. So very, very controversial.

I think for a lot of Americans, especially now looking quite far back, 70 years back, I think there's an enormous surprise that Winston Churchill, a man now who is sainted in so many ways, and not, again, not known all that well as a real person, how could he have lost that election? Does that talk to a certain war fatigue, and does that then relate to the American reaction to the speech? Yes, no, I think you've got it absolutely, that he actually lost so badly because of the armed forces, votes. They had, because they mainly were abroad, they had to vote by post, postal votes. And that vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Attlee and the Labour Party and against Churchill and the Conservatives. And the reason was, one, I think a fear that Winston would go

hell for leather to join the war against Japan, in which Britain was, of course, already historically engaged in Burma and so on. But the British commitment would be significantly increased by Churchill, and frankly, I don't think people wanted that. They were war-weary. And the other thing was the Labour Party had very carefully constructed a social program, which hadn't happened after the First World War, so that returning troops and the welfare and the health service provisions and housing and all the rest of it, and Churchill had nothing of equivalence in terms of detail or substance to match that.

And I think you're quite right. It does indeed reflect what happened in America and why this was going on. It's just perhaps important to say that when Churchill comes out to the States to make this speech in March 46, and he's on the Queen Elizabeth, one of the two great Cunard liners, which were so important in shipping American and Canadian troops to Europe, they're now fully engaged in shipping Canadian and American. troops back from Europe. And they were carrying about 12,000 at a time. That's a lot of people. And so Churchill is transfixed by what he's watching, that here are the 300 Soviet divisions

on the one hand, and on the other hand, there are the Western allies, and in particular, North America, basically leaving Europe. And it's that that he feels he has to counter. What really happens with Fulton, and a similar thing then happens six months later with Zurich is that Churchill's speech triggers a process of thought and then action, which is acknowledged and was acknowledged by both Truman later on and also by George C. Marshall about the second speech. In the case of Thornton, within 12 months you get the Truman Doctrine, which basically sets out that America will defend freedom wherever it is threatened, and that is followed in due course by the establishment of NATO and of course by the Berlin air left, which thwarted Stalin's

ambition to capture the whole of Berlin. And that's an extraordinary sequence of events. So these are not just great rhetorical flourishes. They actually lead to specific changes of policy. When you're talking about all of these American and Canadian troops being brought back, the numbers, the actual perspective on how many people were talking about. about, it really does get lost. I mean, when the United States is actually moved forces into Vietnam or Korea or, you know, into the Gulf, we're used to thousands, maybe 500,000, I think, into the Gulf during the first Gulf War. Yeah, but, I mean, we're talking about literal millions. The number of Americans under arms, I think, peaks at around 12 or 13 million men.

it's completely different. And so that's, you know, and the effort to keep that many men in the field is not something that's easy. So I just want people to understand, this is what Churchill is seeing leaving Europe. He's actually seeing these troops which had invaded, safeguarded, and now pulling back, and the Soviet force, the number of men that the Soviets had under arms was enormous as well. And they'd built up incredible material during the war against the Germans. So just, just, just the number of men that the Soviets had under arms was enormous as well. And they'd built up incredible material during the war against the Germans. So just to give a sense of just how large the stakes were at the time. The stakes were incredibly high. And at Potsdam, and Churchill recounts this, he watches very closely as Harry Truman goes up to Stalin and tells him he doesn't use the term atomic bomb, but he talks about this formidable awesome weapon. And there's no change of expression on Stalin's face. The reason being, of course, that there were spies embedded in the man. Stalin actually had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

But instantly, after his conversation with Truman, he gets on the phone to Berea and the head of the secret police and so on in Russia at that time. And he urges the maximum acceleration of the program for the bomb. Fortunately, it isn't and does not explode until after the Berlin airlet has been successful. So we were incredibly fortunate. I mean, fate and timing was on the western side. But it's worth saying about Churchill's attitude towards the Soviet Union. He loathed Bolshevism. He always had opposed Bolshevism.

He believed it was a curse. and he used to say of Bolshevism that it was like a crocodile, you look at it and it's smiling, remember, it thinks it's looking at breakfast or as he expressed that, you know,

an appeaser is a person who looks at a crocodile doesn't attack it hoping that he will eat him last. So he really thought of it in that way as an immense mortal danger. However,

he had a great respect to the Russian people and he acknowledged, which is the fact that up until the Normandy invasion in 44, by far the greater numbers of German soldiers who were killed or maimed were killed or maimed by Soviet forces over 90 percent. And he had great respect for them. But that didn't mean that he believed that they were, you know, in any real sense, allies or friends. And one of the sad things about the end of the war is that it becomes clear to Churchill that FDR is willing, in a way, to appease Stalin.

And the crucial moment comes actually during the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Moscow radio broadcast an appeal to the Polish Home Army. to rise against the Nazis, which they do. Hitler then sends in the SS to eradicate Warsaw, and in the end, 250,000 folks were killed by the SS, by the Nazis, and another 250,000 sent to concentration camps. It's an appalling event.

Why did it happen? Because Stalin orders the Red Army, which has reached the Vistula River to halt. And Churchill is desperate about this. Britain declared war in order to try and protect Poland in 1939. And there's a cable, which he sends to FDR in the hope that FDR will co-sign it, and they will send it together to Stalin. And in it, it basically says, we are willing to supply Warsaw by air, the United States Air Force, the RAF, but of course, this will be a suicide mission, unless our planes can land in Soviet-held

territory afterwards, they can't return to Britain to their bases. And FDR delay is replying, and when he does reply, he simply says that he doesn't think this is something which they should raise with good old Uncle Joe. And I think that was the moment when Churchill really deep down understands what he's up against. And this is also long before the atrocities committed by Stalin were known to the world, the tens of millions who died because of him. So Churchill was speaking, people didn't know this about Stalin, certainly not widely, and maybe not at all. I think that's right. And of course, a lot of people were fooled by the apparently idealistic front of the Communist Party. And also, once the Iron Curtain was established, as Churchill said,

we don't know what's going on behind it. I mean, he may have had a pretty good idea, but what was going on behind it was that wherever the Red Army had occupied a country and it was occupying the whole of central and eastern Europe, they would immediately impose a Soviet system. And that was absolutely the opposite of what they promised to do at the Tehran conference, where they had invocated and signed agreements that there would be free elections in the countries which were liberated by the Red Army, but that simply did not happen, and he knew that. So can you then take us to the second speech and explain exactly the impact of that? Well, and the opportunity I've got with this book, and I've worked very closely with the Churchill

Archives at Cambridge University held in Churchill College, Cambridge, and it's marvelous to have that resource. of course. Quite a lot written about Fawson and there's been some things written about Ziric but pretty well nothing written about the connection and the relationship between these two speeches. Now the reason for the second speech starts when he's in the States at the beginning of the year. He's been given a second task by the British government, which is to try and raise a load in the context of getting an American commitment in the end to the economic reconstruction of Western Europe. And it's desperately needed as far as Britain's concerned. Britain is broke. Lendley stops on VE Day and so he really does his

best. And he's incredibly well connected on the Hill of course. But I think the key thing is that Winston was half American and one has never ever forget this. And he said himself when he addressed Congress during the Second World War, if my father had been American and not my mother, I would have got here on my own. And I'm sure what you would have done. He had a real understanding of where the American governmental opinion was coming from. And in a sense, you know, what you could say is Britain was broke. Germany had been destroyed. France was likely to go communist at any time. Italy was chaotic. Spain was fascist dictatorship. It wasn't worth a goddamn dollar.

there is absolute resistance to the idea of a loan. And so what Churchill does is, he knows that George C. Marshall is coming, has come back by then from China, and is going to take over this crucial role in the Truman administration on the economic restructions side. And he goes to Zurich. He speaks at Zurich University, and it's been a marvelous thing for me. I just have to tell you privately that I was there for the 70th anniversary of the Zurich speech, and I stood actually on the podium where Winston had stood at Zurich University, just as a couple of days ago.

I stood exactly where he had spoken in the gymnasium at Fulton, Missouri. So I felt history for the soles of my feet, marvelous feeling when it happens. Anyway, he gets to Zurich, and he stands up, and he says, and now I am going to start on you. It actually uses that phrase. We have to build a kind, a kind of United States of Europe and it has to be led

by a partnership between France and Germany. This is an extraordinary thing to say. This is September 1946. The Nuremberg trials are on fresh evidence of Nazi atrocities and appalling conduct coming out every day The French have just executed

and they're executing lots of other collaborators. De Gaulle goes absolutely apoplectic. And Churchill writes in a letter, trying to explain why he said what he has said. But Duncan Sands, Churchill's son-in-law, goes to Colombele-Lé-Lé-de-Euse to meet with the general, try and explain. And the general is furious

and says this is a terrible, terrible speech. that Chetal has given. My policy towards Germany is very simple. We occupy the left bank of the Rhine. We set up a committee on which the Soviet Union will be to deal with the Rugerbeet with the industrial area of Germany, which would have been stripped out, and I am going to squeeze them for everything they can give. Voila, my condition for the Lele-Mont. And Duncan Sans is very depressed for that, of course. But just as with Fulton, what Churchill has done is to ignite a process of thought and action. And George C. Marshall acknowledges the importance of this, because George Marshall was quite clear that while he thought it absolutely essential that there should be USA and, of course, this leads within a matter of months to the Marshall Plan, he's equally adamant that therapy.

have got to take action themselves. It's not just going to be the US coming in and saying, well, this is the program, this is how it's going to be done. He needed the cooperation of the European powers, and at the heart of that was a reconciliation between France and Germany.

And I think it is something of the moral stature of Winston Churchill, that in the Zurich speech, he says, there can be no recovery of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany. Imagine how extraordinary that sentence would have sounded

in September 1946. So both speeches have effect and actually Jean Monnet, who was working for DeGoul and knew George Marshall, had been in London during the war and also in Washington, he goes to see the general and he says, Mont-General, there can be no economic recovery of France, no success of Lepland of the plan unless there is a reconciliation with Germany, because there will be no US credits for our reconstruction. And without US credits, it's not going to happen. So to Goal actually changes his mind and his position. And within a quite relatively short period of time, after the Marshall Plan,

you have the proposals for a European Coal and Steel community, which joined the coal and steel industries of France and Germany. So history moves as a result of both these features. And we should mention that the coal and steel alliance turned into a European common market. Then the European Union. So, I mean, yeah, it's hardly something that's passed away. It's something that grew. Yes, but I think we've got to be, I mean, you won't be surprised to hear

when we had our Brexit referendum, I voted to remain. I very clear about that. But I think we've got to be very careful, both over NATO and the European Union, because we have got used to the habit of international cooperation and to some extent integration. But you can easily lose that habit, and then all sorts of other things start to happen.

If you start to question, for example, clause five of the NATO treaty, which commits every member to the defence of any one member which is attacked, and you start to say, well, it all depends on circumstances, and that's sort of come up in the American presidential election. Or, as in the case of Brexit, you say, well, you know, this is not for us, although I'm sure Britain will make enormous efforts in the end of the day to stay within the European single market. but you begin to erode actually the foundations which began to be established back in 46 by Churchill. And Churchill was a man of vision. He didn't just solve a list, a cue, if you like, of problems. He had this ability to step back and see something different. And let me just tell you of something that he wrote in the British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, a couple of months before he makes the Zurich speech.

And he says, it's almost a kind of parable. He says, you know the story of the Spanish prisoner who has been condemned to a dungeon in medieval Spain, and he's been there for decades, and he's wasting away, and his life is total misery. And he manages to gather enough strength to go to the dungeon door and he pushes on the dungeon door and it opens.

And what Churchill is saying is we must not imprison ourselves in the dungeon of our own creation because of lack of imagination, lack of vision, lack of courage. We need to be able to think of fresh and to think anew. And he certainly did that. 1940 enables that to happen in a way, 1946, it actually happens. And I think that's, in a way, Churchill's legacy, which I've called this book, Churchill's legacy today, is we need something of that courage, dimension, imagination, creativity, the ability to think big and to think in you. So then one final question for you, if you don't mind. Do you see the prospect of that on the horizon? Well, in some ways, you know, I am alarmed by what's happening, but also there is one thing which I haven't mentioned yet, and it was very prevalent in his speech at Fulton and always prevalent in his thinking, which is the extraordinary way in which English has become a common language of the world, which I believe augurs in a most critical way towards a few.

of greater cooperation and understanding, but also because English carries within it in its DNA, it's got concepts of freedom and democracy and of the rule of law. And in the Fulton speech, Churchill actually talks about the fundamental documents of democracy and freedom, and he talks about habeas corpus, of course, and the Bill of Rights. the final one on his list is the American Declaration of Independence. And this language has become, as I say, a global language, because not only of the numbers of people who speak it as their first language, but they're second. And there's a moment in the Second World War which many people miss, I think, which is he's

given an honorary doctorate at Harvard University in 1943, and in it he talks about the language as a priceless gift linking the British Empire as it then was with the United States of America. He said that many times before, but then he goes on to say something quite different. He said when this conflict is over and people can once again move around the world, would it not be something of the greatest convenience? It's a very Victorian word to use. The greatest convenience if wherever they go they can use the English language. And if that becomes a fact, would it not be of tremendous help in the organization of peace?

And he had a vision, therefore, as early as 1943, of the connection between globalization, global interdependence, and the English language. And I think that's part of his legacy, and it's one which gives me hope. Well, Lord Alan Watson, thank you so much for your time today and for understanding of someone who is truly a great man. Indeed. Okay, thank you. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for listening to this week's episode.

The show was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hedek. Matthew Galt co-hosts the show and Wrangles the Guest. It's produced by me, Bethelhabte. If you like War College and want to support the show, the best thing you can do is to make sure you're subscribed on iTunes. And leave us a rating and review while you're there. Give us ideas for future shows and any feedback on our Twitter account. That's War underscore College. We're listening. Thanks.