Winston Churchill
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SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir Winston Churchill HDT WHAT? INDEX SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL 1874 November 30, Monday: Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Sir Winston Churchill “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WINSTON CHURCHILL SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL 1900 Winston Churchill escaped from a Boer prisoners of war camp. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir Winston Churchill HDT WHAT? INDEX SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL 1903 In an article published in Strand Magazine, H.G. Wells described the sort of armor-plated behemoths that would be carrying machine guns about the battlefield of the future. Although at this point Wells’ vision of “land ironclads” was viewed as “pure phantasy,” within a dozen years this magazine article would cause Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, to establish a “Landships Committee” charged with designing such an battlefield armored tractor (for reasons of security, for the time being, this new military device would be referred to as a “tank,” but then this temporary coded designator would come to be ensconced in our warfare lingo). From this year into 1905, Ezra Pound would be studying at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir Winston Churchill HDT WHAT? INDEX WINSTON CHURCHILL SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL 1914 July 26, Sunday: Austria-Hungary rejected the Serbian response to their list of ten demands. Montenegro ordered mobilization. Hoping to produce “a sobering effect” on Germany and Austria-Hungary, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill announced that he had ordered the Royal Navy to battle stations. On a visit to Bayreuth Ernest MacMillan first experienced Wagner, at a performance of Das Rheingold. Charles Ephraim Burchfield continued his belated encounter with Henry Thoreau’s WALDEN: Afternoon calm and peaceful. A few wisps of clouds appear. Sunset the “yellow light” kind. What a miracle that yellow light is coming as it does well after the sun has dropped below the rim of the world. All things become saturated with yellow light, even our thoughts. And so I sit in the saffron air, climbing the heights. At times I read slowly from Thoreau’s Walden. I bless the chance that sent the book into my hands. It had always been my intention to read it, but like most good resolutions, it was put off. From reading it, the doubts that have assailed me –i.e. whether a spiritual life was to be preferred to a sensual existence, and whether to work for money, or for the love of my work– were banished. Thus as I sat and dreamed into the future, my mind was dissolved into the yellow and carried by it to undreamed of heights. Life seemed full of good things. We know from Burchfield’s manuscript autobiography, on file at the Whitney Museum of American Art, that he was encountering not only WALDEN but also the selections out of Thoreau’s JOURNAL that had been incorporated by H.G.O. Blake into the AUTUMN season-book of 1892. H.G.O. BLAKE’S SELECTION DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Sir Winston Churchill “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL 1915 April 25, Sunday: In the 1st modern amphibious assault, the British went ashore at the Gallipoli peninsula just to the north of the Dardanelles, and got pinned down on the beach. (Winston Churchill’s reputation would scarcely survive this debacle. The sad history of this British invasion force would bring home the idea that amphibious operations amounted to a special, difficult problem of warfare, for the successful prosecution of which special tactics, special tools, and special training would be imperative.) Dawn. The invasion of the Gallipoli (Gelibolu) peninsula begins. Some of the 200 Allied ships sailing from Lemnos enter the Gulf of Saros and open fire on Bulair. French troops land at Kum Kale and capture the Turkish fortress there. Anzac forces reach shore north of their intended landing point at Gaba Tepe. Australians scale the Sari Bair cliffs and put the Turks there to flight. However the Turks rally and halt the Australians’ advance. British troops attempt to land at Sedd el Bahr on Cape Helles, but withering Turkish fire allows only about 200 to reach shore. British land successfully at Tekke Burnu and take the high ground at Eski Hissarik Point. British also land unopposed six kilometers north at Y beach. German forces recaptured Lizerne. WORLD WAR I A prominent Moscow surgeon made two incisions into Alyeksandr Skryabin’s swollen lip. A blood test revealed the presence of streptococcus and staphylococcus. The Armenians arrested during the previous day were sent into the interior of Turkey. November 15, Monday: Winston Churchill resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty. The German Charge d’affaires Baron Konstantin von Neurath, welcomed the new ambassador, Paul, Count von Wolff-Metternich, who would represent Imperial Germany from this date until October 3, 1916. The Charge d’affaires had been in charge of the German diplomatic representation in Turkey since October 2, 1915, when Hohenlohe had departed. ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Sir Winston Churchill “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WINSTON CHURCHILL SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL 1931 February 17, Tuesday, 2:30PM: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi walked up the steps of the Viceroy’s palace for his first meeting with Lord Irwin, and negotiations. Of the scene, Winston Churchill would recollect how revolted he had been by “the nauseating and humiliating spectacle of this one-time Inner Temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy’s palace, there to negotiate and to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.” WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Sir Winston Churchill “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL 1939 October: Tyler Gatewood Kent was transferred from the US Embassy in Moscow to the US embassy in London. He would serve as a code clerk with access to diplomatic dispatches from American missions across Europe to Washington, all of which were being routed through the London embassy’s code room. When he began this duty assignment, war had already broken out in Europe but both US law (the Johnson and Neutrality Acts) and overwhelming US public sentiment seemed to be ensuring that the USA could not become entangled in this conflict. However, from this special vantage point, Kent would quickly become aware that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was working behind the scenes to get his nation embroiled in this war, subverting US law and deceiving the voters. He decided to “pull an Ellsberg” by making copies or summaries of the diplomatic dispatches demonstrating Roosevelt’s secret agenda in order somehow to bring this to the attention of unsympathetic federal legislators. The most incriminating evidence he accumulated consisted of top secret correspondence between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which began with a letter the President had sent behind the back of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 11, 1939, while Winston Churchill was still only the 1st Lord of the Admiralty (that is, not a head of state, but merely at the head of the British navy with no official responsibility for national policy). This was enormously problematic as, officially, a head of state such as the US President might communicate only with his counterpart heads of state and, officially, any communications routed through underlings understood to be for the ultimate attention of that counterpart head of state. Churchill was signing his messages to Roosevelt simply “Naval Person,” because his treasonous agenda in dealing directly with the American head of state was to supplant Chamberlain as head of state. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir Winston Churchill HDT WHAT? INDEX WINSTON CHURCHILL SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL December 25, Monday: The Montgomery Ward department store introduced a 9th reindeer on Santa’s team, out in front guiding all the others, named Rudolph. Winston Churchill sent a message (Telegram 2720) to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that the code clerk in the US Embassy, Kent, was able to intercept, making a complete copy. The 1st Lord of the Admiralty was informing the head of the American state, behind the back of his Prime Minister, that British warships would continue to violate American sovereignty to seize German ships within the US three-mile maritime territorial zone. However, in order to keep these violations secret, Churchill was pledging that all such seizures would be out of view from the American shore. “We cannot refrain from stopping enemy ships outside international three-mile limit when these may well be supply ships for U-boats or surface raiders, but instructions have been given only to arrest or fire upon them out of sight of United States shores.” WORLD WAR II HDT WHAT? INDEX SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL WINSTON CHURCHILL 1940 February 28, Wednesday: Winston Churchill sent Telegram #490 to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Tyler Gatewood Kent was able to intercept it and make a complete copy. In this telegram the 1st Lord of the British Admiralty was, behind the back of his Prime Minister, informing the head of a foreign state that in violation both of American neutrality and of international law the British government was intending to continue to seize and censor US mail from American and other neutral ships on their way to Europe.