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Churchillian | Winter 2013 the Churchillian the Magazine of the National Churchill Museum The Churchillian Winter 2013 | Volume 4 | Issue 4 The Magazine of the National Churchill Museum Churchill in the Nuclear Age Churchill, Science and the Bomb • Scientific Weaponry The Bomb and the future Board of Governors of the Association of Churchill Fellows FROM THE Jean-Paul Montupet MESSAGE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Chairman & Senior Fellow St. Louis, Missouri A.V. L. Brokaw, III Hello from Fulton and welcome to another St. Louis, Missouri edition of The Churchillian. At this time of Robert L. DeFer year, a time of reflection on life in general, Chesterfield, Missouri it’s always good to look back and assess the Earle H. Harbison, Jr. year in retrospect and what a busy year it was! St. Louis, Missouri William C. Ives A wonderful Enid and R. Crosby Kemper Chapel Hill, North Carolina Lecture, delivered by eminent Cambridge Rob Havers at US Capital with R. Crosby Kemper, III Roger Daltry from British rock Professor Peter Clark was matched by a Kansas City, Missouri and roll band legend The Who record crowd in attendance and marvelous Barbara D. Lewington reviews of Peter’s lecture and his willingness St. Louis, Missouri to engage with all he encountered during his time in Fulton. Hard on Richard J. Mahoney the heels of this bumper weekend we presented the Churchill Medal to St. Louis, Missouri William R. Piper Westminster alumnus, St. Louis businessman, former US Ambassador to St. Louis, Missouri Belgium, Stephen Brauer and longtime ‘Churchillian’. This event was an Suzanne D. Richardson unprecedented success both in terms of the actual evening as well as for St. Louis, Missouri the funds raised in support of the National Churchill Museum’s strategic The Honorable Edwina Sandys, M.B.E. plan. These funds saw a quick, initial, deployment in the culmination of New York, New York a long held ambition fully to install a more sophisticated heating and air James M. Schmuck conditioning provision in our temporary gallery space. This, a necessary Wildwood, Missouri Lady Mary Soames L.G., D.B.E. prerequisite to bolster our array of exhibition offerings, is a vital step London, U.K. forward for our institution. Linda Gill Taylor Edgerton, Missouri We continue to emphasize our role as America’s National Churchill John C. Wade Museum on a much broader stage with our active participation in the Wildwood, Missouri planning committee for the commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of Hjalma E. Johnson, Emeritus Dade City, Florida Churchill’s death in 2015. This committee, and associated plans, will John R. McFarland, Emeritus mark this date in an appropriate fashion looking back to 1965 but also St. Louis, Missouri forward as Churchill’s memory and legacy is cemented in the wider Harold L. Ogden, Emeritus public consciousness. The committee is chaired by Professor Sir David Seal Beach, California Cannadine, our Kemper Lecturer from 2012, and this group is in good William H. Tyler, Emeritus hands with him at the helm. With the wider Churchill world in our minds, Pebble Beach, California new Senior Fellow Jean-Paul Montupet and I were delighted to be present Churchill Institute & Museum Committee of the Board of Trustees, at the dedication the new Churchill bust in the Capitol in Washington DC. Westminster College More details and photographs can be found on page 28. James M. Schmuck, Chair Wildwood, Missouri As ever I hope you find this edition of The Churchillian stimulating Jane Bell, Vice Chair and insightful. In a seemingly unstable world it is of course well worth Fulton, Missouri Bruce Brookby reminding ourselves that twas ever thus and the articles in this issue speak Bartlesville, Oklahoma to that time when ‘the bomb’ was a topic of concern and consternation, Ron J. Kostich security for some and confidence for others. Upland, California Ken Meyer As this year ends we, of course, look forward to next year, and the 100th Springfield, Missouri anniversary of the outbreak of The Great War. We look forward too to the J. Christopher Panettiere 2014 Kemper Lecture and I am delighted to announce, as a well as our Atlanta, Georgia William H. Roedy Kemper Lecturer Paul Reid that we will welcome special guest Randolph London, U.K. Churchill, son of the late Winston Churchill who will join us for a very Linda Gill Taylor special Churchill Fellows’ dinner in advance of the Lecture. Edgerton, Missouri Ronald D. Winney I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and look forward to seeing you in Edwardsville, Illinois the New Year! George K. Parkins Dr. Rob Havers Prairie Village, Kansas Executive Director, Suzanne D. Richardson National Churchill Museum St. Louis Missouri Rob Havers Executive Director 2 the Churchillian | Winter 2013 The Churchillian The Magazine of the National Churchill Museum Winter 2013 | Volume 4 | Issue 4 Churchill, Science and the Bomb 4 Richard M. Langworth Scientific Weaponry: How Churchill Encouraged 6 the “Boffins” and Defied the “Blimps” by Antoine Capet — Page 6 — The Bomb and the Future: 16 Excerpts from Speeches and Conversations by Winston S. Churchill Book Review: Scientists and Statesmen, 22 Churchill and the Nuclear Age by Erica Chenoweth Book Review: Churchill the Indispensable 24 by Richard M. Langworth 26 Churchill in the News Meet the New Marketing Specialist 30 Caroline Slavin — Page 16 — 31 Message from the Director of Development by Kit Freudenberg The National Churchill Museum is located on the Westminster College campus in Fulton, Missouri, and From the Archives designated by Congress as America’s 32 by Liz Murphy National Churchill Museum. 573-592-5369, www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org Educational and Public Programming Copyright material by Winston S. Churchill 33 by Mandy Plybon is reprinted within The Churchillian with the permission of Curtis Brown, London, on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill. Letters to the Editor 34 by Dr. Rob Havers Cover: Intaglio print by Sarah Churchill and Curtis Hooper, part of a series issued in the 1970s, reproduced by kind permission of 35 Calendar of Events Lady Soames. the Churchillian | Winter 2013 3 Churchill, Science and the Bomb Richard M. Langworth e knew the world would not politics than bad physics. 3) Somewhere along be the same. A few people the line, around 1940-41, Winston Churchill, by “Wlaughed…A few people cried… refusing to stand down when no one else was Most people were silent. I remembered the standing, saved civilisation. line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita....‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of Notwithstanding that Churchill was worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way proclaimed Person of the Century by most or another.” authorities, Time’s choice was a disappointment. Churchill is forever seen by casual thinkers as a The speaker was J. Robert Oppenheimer, man of war, who had his moment in 1940 and head of the Secret Weapons Laboratory at Los faded away. Few recall his early warnings of Alamos. The date was July 16, 1945, culmination “a bomb no bigger than an orange,” or his late, of the Manhattan Project: the successful first test lonely campaign for a “final settlement” with of the atomic bomb. the Soviets in the 1950s, as the hydrogen bomb emerged and the terror of imminent extinction When Time magazine named Churchill flickered. “Man of the Half-Century” in 1950, it was widely assumed that, nobody of his stature having since Hardly for the first time, this issue reminds emerged, Time would name him Person of the us that Churchill, far more than the defiant war Century in 2000. Before Time gave its accolade leader, was a thinker who considered “Things to Albert Einstein, when editor Walter Isaacson That Matter”—and still matter in our own asked for comment, I offered him three facts: 1) time. I believe he is so frequently remembered, Churchill wrote “Shall We All Commit Suicide?,” quoted, misquoted and referenced today because warning of a possible nuclear holocaust, fifteen we believe he really stood for something. He years before Einstein sent his famous letters exemplified certain critical human possibilities to President Roosevelt warning of the same that are always worth bringing to the attention possibility. 2) Einstein suggested that the world of thoughtful people, who mean to perpetuate was far more likely to come to grief from bad what he held dear: respect of country, the 4 the Churchillian | Winter 2013 fraternal relationship of the Great Democracies The decades that followed saw fresh tyrants and English-speaking Peoples, their common come and go, but Kennedy’s common link, heritage of law, language and literature; and fragile and wavering sometimes, still held. Even above all their love of liberty. the worst of them, Mao and Khruschev and Kim Jon Il, were not suicidal. Churchill was far from a scientist, as Antoine Capet tells us in the following article. But he had a “But that’s the point,” argues Charles scientist’s curiosity. He made sure he was advised Krauthammer, whose Things That Matter we by experts not only eminent but able to explain also review herein. “We’re now at the dawn technical matters in terms he could grapple with. of an era in which an extreme and fanatical The first of these was Frederick Lindemann, religious ideology, undeterred by the usual a leading subject in Dr. Capet’s piece, and calculations of prudence and self-preservation, is Graham Farmelo’s new book, Churchill’s Bomb, wielding state power and will soon be wielding reviewed herein by Erica Chenoweth. But there nuclear power….This atavistic love of blood and were many others whom Churchill listened to, death, and indeed, self-immolation in the name and he never automatically accepted everything of God may not be new—medieval Europe had any one of them recommended.
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