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Details
CHURCHILL, Winston S. Two autograph letters signed (“Winston S. Churchill”), to Maurice Levy (1859-1933), London, 6 December 1921 and 16 January 1922. Together 3 ½ pages, 8vo, Colonial Office stationery.
“HIS KNOWLEDGE OF POLITICS MIGHT BE RAPIDLY ACQUIRED…” CHURCHILL PRAISES THE MAN WHO WOULD BECOME HIS WARTIME ENVOY TO DE GAULE
“I shd certainly make it my business,” Churchill tells Levy, “to come & make a speech in support of General Spear if he were adopted, & you are quite at liberty to mention this to the [Liberal Party] Association. I think his knowledge of politics might be rapidly acquired if he had a good political secretary, & I shall certainly advise him on this sense. I have come across a passage in Ld French’s book about General Spears, wh might I think be brought at the right time to the notice of the Association. I will send for the extract in a day or two.” Churchill met Spears on the Western front in 1915, the beginning of a friendship that would break upon the rocks of Anglo-Franco tensions during World War II. In the Great War, however, the bi-lingual Spears distinguished himself as a liaison officer between the French Fifth Army and Sir John French. The episode in French’s memoirs to which Churchill alludes was the timely alert provided by Spears of the French army’s retreat on 23 August 1914, saving the British from being surrounded and annihilated. In 1921 Churchill encouraged Spears to stand for parliament, and these two letters back his adoption by the Liberal Party Association. (The 16 January 1922 letter has Churchill expressing his pleasure over Spears’s nomination.) Spears followed Churchill across the aisle to the Tory benches in 1924, and in the desperate days of May 1940, Churchill tapped him to be his personal envoy to the dying French Republic. He led the British mission to the Free French forces in North Africa, where his support for Syrian and Lebanese independence won him the hatred of De Gaule. Spears’s own Lawrence-esque delusions of being a champion of Arab liberation raised eyebrows in Whitehall as well and Churchill dismissed him in 1945.
“HIS KNOWLEDGE OF POLITICS MIGHT BE RAPIDLY ACQUIRED…” CHURCHILL PRAISES THE MAN WHO WOULD BECOME HIS WARTIME ENVOY TO DE GAULE
“I shd certainly make it my business,” Churchill tells Levy, “to come & make a speech in support of General Spear if he were adopted, & you are quite at liberty to mention this to the [Liberal Party] Association. I think his knowledge of politics might be rapidly acquired if he had a good political secretary, & I shall certainly advise him on this sense. I have come across a passage in Ld French’s book about General Spears, wh might I think be brought at the right time to the notice of the Association. I will send for the extract in a day or two.” Churchill met Spears on the Western front in 1915, the beginning of a friendship that would break upon the rocks of Anglo-Franco tensions during World War II. In the Great War, however, the bi-lingual Spears distinguished himself as a liaison officer between the French Fifth Army and Sir John French. The episode in French’s memoirs to which Churchill alludes was the timely alert provided by Spears of the French army’s retreat on 23 August 1914, saving the British from being surrounded and annihilated. In 1921 Churchill encouraged Spears to stand for parliament, and these two letters back his adoption by the Liberal Party Association. (The 16 January 1922 letter has Churchill expressing his pleasure over Spears’s nomination.) Spears followed Churchill across the aisle to the Tory benches in 1924, and in the desperate days of May 1940, Churchill tapped him to be his personal envoy to the dying French Republic. He led the British mission to the Free French forces in North Africa, where his support for Syrian and Lebanese independence won him the hatred of De Gaule. Spears’s own Lawrence-esque delusions of being a champion of Arab liberation raised eyebrows in Whitehall as well and Churchill dismissed him in 1945.