Winston Churchill: Another View of a Paper God

by Brian Harring

The personality of Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill could very well be a subject of interest to an alienist who, by definition, is a physician who treats mental disorders. There is a saying that the world is governed with very little sense and there are times when one could add to this statement that it often has been governed by lunatics.

Churchill was born in 1874 and died in 1965. His father was Randolph Spencer-Churchill, a son of the Duke of Marlborough. The first Duke was John Churchill, one of England’s most capable military commanders, who died without male issue in 1722 and the title was given to one of his nephews, a Spencer. As a courtesy, the Spencer family was allowed to add Churchill to its name, separated by a hyphen. Winston always wanted to believe that he was a gifted military leader in the mold of the first Duke but his efforts at generalship were always unqualified disasters that he generally blamed on other people. This chronic refusal to accept responsibility for his own incompetent actions is one of Churchill’s less endearing qualities.

Randolph Churchill died early as the result of rampant syphilis that turned him from an interesting minor politician to a pathetic madman who had to be kept away from the public in the final years of his life. His mother was the former Jennie Jerome, an American. The Jerome family had seen better days when Jennie met Randolph. Her father, Leonard, was a stock-market manipulator who had lost his money and the marriage was more one of convenience than of affection.

The Jeromes were by background very typically American. On her father’s side, Jennie was mostly Irish and on her mother’s American Indian and Jewish. The union produced two children, Winston and Jack. The parents lived separate lives, both seeking the company of other men. Winston’s psyche suffered accordingly and throughout his life, his frantic desire for attention obviously had its roots in his abandonment as a child.

As a member of the 4^th (Queen’s Own) Hussars, in 1896 Churchill became embroiled in a lawsuit wherein he was publicly accused of having engaged in the commission of “acts of gross immorality of the Oscar Wilde (homosexual)  type.” This case was duly settled out of court for a payment of money and the charges were withdrawn. Also a determinant factor was the interference by the Prince of Wales with whom his mother was having an affair.

In 1905, Churchill hired a young man, Edward Marsh (later Sir Edward) as his private secretary. His mother, always concerned about her son’s political career, was concerned because Marsh was a very well known homosexual who later became one of Winston’s most intimate lifelong friends. Personal correspondence of March, now in private hands, attests to the nature and duration of their friendship.

Churchill, as Asquith once said, was consumed with vanity and his belief that he was a brilliant military leader led him from the terrible disaster of Gallipoli through the campaigns of the Second World War. He meddled constantly in military matters to the despair and eventual fury of his professional military advisors but his political excursions were even more disastrous. Churchill was a man who was incapable of love but could certainly hate. He was viciously vindictive towards anyone who thwarted him and a number of these perceived enemies died sudden deaths during the war when such activities were much easier to order and conceal.

One of Churchill’s less attractive personality traits, aside from his refusal to accept the responsibility for the failure of his actions, was his ability to change his opinions at a moment’s notice.

Once anti-American, he did a complete about-face when confronted with a war he escalated and could not fight, and from a supporter of Hitler’s rebuilding of Germany, he turned into a bitter enemy after a Jewish political action association composed of wealthy businessmen hired him to be their spokesman.

Churchill lavishly praised American President Franklin Roosevelt to his face and defamed him, with the ugliest of accusations, behind his back. The American President was a far more astute politician than Churchill and certainly far saner.

The Forgery of the Casement Diaries

by Brian Harring

Sir Roger David Casement was born on September 1, 1864 in Dublin County, Ireland. Although from an Ulster Protestant family, Casement was sympathetic to the cause of the Irish nationalist movement which sought to establish an Irish state free of British political and military control.

As a diplomat in the service of the British government, Casement gained great recognition for exposing the numerous atrocities practiced by the Belgians against the natives in their Congo colony, an endeavor that forced the Belgians to reform their administration. While posted to Brazil, Casement uncovered similar murderous activity by Brazilians in the Putymayo River area. This activity gained him a knighthood in 1912.

At the end of 1913, retired from the Foreign Service for health reasons, Casement became involved with the Irish nationalist movement and formed the Irish National Volunteers.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Casement went to Germany in November of that year and attempted to secure German aid for an Irish rising against the British. The Germans proved to be unwilling to participate in this venture and Casement went back to Ireland in a German submarine on April 12, 1916. It was his intention to persuade the Irish nationalists to halt their impending Easter rising but he was captured in Ireland by the British a week later, removed to London where he was imprisoned in conditions of considerable barbarity and brutally treated until such time as he was put on trial for treason, found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. International attempts to secure a reprieve for Casement because of his previous humanitarian activities were nullified by the sudden release by British intelligence of diaries purporting to have been written by Casement which detailed alleged homosexual activities.

The documents, it now transpires, were forged at the order of Captain Reginald Hall. Captain, later Rear Admiral, Reginald Hall, had been appointed Director of British Naval Intelligence in October of 1914. He was a brilliant but completely amoral intelligence officer and as the war progressed, virtually dictated British naval policy. Unscrupulous to a degree, Hall has long been very strongly suspected by non-British historians as being the moving force behind the forgery of the Casement diaries.

Casement was duly hanged on August 3, 1916.

The Easter rising was eventually suppressed by the British Army under circumstances of singular atrocity against the participants in particular and the population of Dublin in general. Boys as young as twelve were hanged for curfew violations and unarmed civilians, including women, were shot and bayoneted in the streets by the occupying forces. One of the leaders of the rising, though dying of untreated gangrene, was dragged from his cell and tied to a stretcher before being shot by a firing squad.

This was a strikingly ugly episode in the history of a country with an official policy that resulted in countless historical examples of similar oppressive actions but noteworthy in that it was performed, not in some remote and unobserved area of Africa or India but within the borders of ostensibly civilized England and directed against white Christians.

The question of the authenticity of the diaries immediately arose and has attracted strong partisanship on both sides of the issue. In 1959, the British government released the diaries for inspection by scholars. Predictably, sympathetic British academics proclaimed them original while others held opposite views.

In February of 1965, Casement’s remains were finally returned to Ireland and given a state funeral. The funeral oration was read by Irish President Eamon de Valera.

Ireland marks 1916 Easter Rising as thousands greet Dublin parade

April 17, 2006
AFP

Some 100,000 people lined the streets of Dublin, according to Irish police estimates, to celebrate a major military parade marking the 90th anniversary of Ireland's 1916 uprising against Britain.

The Easter Rising parade, which was the first for over 36 years, was attended by Irish President Mary McAleese and Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.

Some 900 guests -- half of them representatives of the families of those who died during the 1916 Rising -- joined McAleese and Ahern to review the parade at the General Post Office (GPO) in O'Connell Street in central Dublin.

The iconic GPO was the main building occupied by the insurgents some 90 years ago and was the headquarters for the uprising.

During the ceremonies at the GPO, an army officer read a copy of the Proclamation of a Republic and the national flag was lowered to half-mast.

A minute's silence was observed and wreaths were laid for all those who died, including rebels, British soldiers, policemen and civilians.

Sunday's march began at 12:00pm (13:00 GMT) and took around one hour.

About 2,500 personnel from all sections of Ireland's defence and police forces took part in the parade.

Represented were the army, the Air Corps, the Naval Service, as well as members of the Irish UN, the veterans association, and the Organisation of Ex-Servicemen and Ex-Servicewoman.

It marked the biggest display of military pomp associated with 1916 commemorations since the 50th anniversary in 1966.

The April 24 to May 1 1916 uprising ended in failure with an estimated 500 dead, 2,500 wounded and more than 2,000 imprisoned.

On April 24 that year, one of the Rising leaders, Patrick Pearse, read the proclamation of the sovereign rights of Irish people outside the GPO.

All seven signatories of the proclamation were tried by court-martial after they surrendered. They were executed by British forces.

Earlier on Sunday, Irish PM Ahern stressed inclusiveness and reconciliation when he began the day's ceremonies by laying a wreath in the Stonebreaker's Yard in Dublin's Kilmainham Jail, where most of the 1916 leaders were executed.

"Today is a day of remembrance, reconciliation and renewal," Ahern said.

"As we look to the future, we must be generous and inclusive so that all of the people of Ireland can live together with each other and with our neighbours in Great Britain on a basis of friendship, respect, equality and partnership.

"And every day, in every place, we will continue to work for peace, for justice, for prosperity and for reconciliation between all who share and who love this special island."

At the ceremony, Ahern was accompanied by Roman Catholic priest Father Joseph Mallin, 92, the only surviving child of any of the 1916 leaders, who had travelled from Hong Kong to take part.

Mallin's father, Michael, was a commandant of the Irish Citizen Army in the uprising, and Ahern read from his last letter to his wife pointing out its lack of bitterness and emphasis on reconciliation.

"I find no fault with the soldiers or police," Michael Mallin's letter read.

It added: "I forgive them from the bottom of my heart. Pray for all the souls that fell in this fight, Irish and English."

In 1970, as violence sharply increased in Northern Ireland, Dublin's government abandoned the tradition of Easter Sunday military parades to mark the insurrection.