Sir William Deakin, D.S.O. , March 18, 1984
President Saunders, ladies and gentlemen!
I regard it as a single honour to
be invited today to address you as the third Crosby Kemper lecturer, and very specially
to be conferred by you with the first honorary degree which I have received in my
life. I appreciate also that I am speaking to you in
Westminster College – in a place of beauty dedicated to Sir Winston Churchill
and to his contribution towards creating a ‘special relationship’ between
our two countries.
When he addressed you on the ‘Sinews
of Peace’ in March 1946, he was 71-years-old – the same age I am this
afternoon.
If I may strike a brief personal note: at the time he was considering his lecture, I was engaged
on assembling material for his ‘Second World War’ and had returned to
him as his literary assistant – a close and privileged association which began
in 1935.
I have chosen to speak today on the
subject of ‘Churchill and Europe in 1944’ and hope to present to you
an image of the man, at a particular moment in time, when he was faced with the
supreme crisis in the conduct of the closing war in Europe, and the as yet, unresolved
debates within the Grand Alliance on the shore of peace still beyond the horizon
– before the chips were down.
The balance of power on the continent
– a traditional concern of Great Britain, one of whose central purpose in
going to war in 1939 was to re-establish – was in the last stages of disintegration.