Winston’s War by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page B

lives his life on the veryedge of disaster. Not a man of sound judgment, Geoffrey—why, just look at his women. Pulls them off the street. Some of them are foreign, with completely inappropriate contacts…I sometimes wonder whether his rather lurid liaisons haven't weakened his mind.”
    “And The Times of all newspapers can't go peddling Jew propaganda, Geoffrey,” Ball added. “Heavens, it's an organ of propriety and eminence. Of the Establishment, not the revolution. We all recognize your newspaper's special position—just as we recognize your own personal contribution to it.” Ah, the final twist. All three of them were acutely aware that Dawson was the only man in the room who hadn't yet been handed his knighthood. It was occasionally the subject of uneasy banter between them, an honor pledged but a promise yet to be delivered. And while he waited, he would behave.
    “That's why I needed your guiding hand. Is the Duff Cooper story so damned important? Worth the aggravation I'll get if I play the heavy-handed censor and rewrite the damned copy?”
    The expressions of the other two men eased. Ball's feet swung up onto the desk. The eminent servants of the people smiled at their guest, and expressed their mind as one.
    “Oh, yes, Sir Geoffrey. Please!”
     
    The editor of The Times did as he was told. Destroyed the copy as though he were laying siege to a medieval fortress. Then he reconstructed it. “ Emotional gourmets had expected a tasty morsel in Mr. Duff Cooper's explanation of his resignation,” he wrote, “ but it proved to be rather unappetizing. Speaking without a note, the former First Lord fired anti-aircraft guns rather than turret broadsides. The speech was cheered by the Opposition, but Mr. Chamberlain disregarded it for the moment with only a pleasant word of respect. ”
    The copy still went out under the name of Anthony Winn, the paper's parliamentary correspondent. The followingmorning he resigned. He would be one of the first to be killed on active service in the war that was to follow.
     
    And so the House of Commons gathered to debate the Munich agreement. The arguments continued for four days—far longer than the resistance shown by Chamberlain at Munich. It was a debate awash with nobility and bitterness, defiance and servility, with servility by far the larger portion—although, of course, at Westminster it is never known as that, being dressed up in the corridors and tea-rooms under the guise of loyalty and team spirit. Play the game, old fellow! Chamberlain demanded loyalty and dominated his party—those men of mediocrity who gathered around him knew he had the offices of state at his disposal, along with the substantial salaries and residences those offices commanded. Duffie had thrown away his London home and five thousand pounds a year—a small fortune in an era when those who enlisted to die for their country still did so for “the King's shilling” plus a couple of coppers more a day. Anyway, an election was due at some point, perhaps soon, and disloyalty to the Great and Popular Leader was certain to be repaid in kind. Appeasement was inevitable , it was argued, and nowhere more vociferously than in the Smoking Room of the House of Commons, where MPs throughout the ages had gathered in pursuit of alcohol and the secret of everlasting electoral life.
    “What's your poison, Ian? Gin? Tonic? Slice of the Sudetenland?”
    “Make it a whiskey, Dickie, would you?”
    “Large whiskey coming up.”
    A pause for alcohol.
    “You ever been to Czechoslovakia, Ian?”
    “Not even sure I could find it on a map. Faraway places, and all that.”
    “What did Neville say the other night after he came backfrom Munich?” Dickie imitated a tight, nasal accent. “ And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.”
    “Somebody's bed, at least. Whose was it last week, Dickie?”
    “I adhere to a strict rule. In the six months before any election I deny myself the