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Churchill and the Reign of King George V, Part 2: War and Peace
- By FRED GLUECKSTEIN
- | December 19, 2022
- Category: Churchill in Film and Video Explore The Literary Churchill
Continued from Part 1… In the summer of 1934, film producer Alexander Korda asked Winston Churchill to produce a script for a new film entitled The Reign of King George V. The film was to dramatize 25 years of British history from the 1910 coronation of King George V to his Silver Jubilee in 1935. As a first-time screenwriter, Churchill faced more difficult challenges than anticipated, since there were no precedents in telling the history of a sovereign’s reign on cinema.
Page references (in parentheses) are from Winston S. Churchill, “The King’s Twenty-five Years,” in the Evening Standard, 5-9 May 1935, republished in Michael Wolff, ed., The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, 4 vols. (London: Library of Imperial History, 1974, III: 214-36.)
King George V: from film to newsprint
Korda said Churchill’s screenplay was a “really splendid basis for preliminary work.”1 However, he thought there was too much politics, and Churchill revised his script in January 1935. More difficulties then arose. First, Korda had competitors, and the government unsuccessfully tried to coax them to form a semi-official consortium. Second, the film did not find support with Korda’s staff. Korda told Churchill he was not satisfied with the way his technicians had handled it, and it would not do at all.’”2
A final wrinkle ended the project, as Churchill informed his wife: “It appears that an Act of Parliament says that a film which does not consist wholly or mainly of topical news reels, and which is longer than two reels, must be provisionally released six months before it can be finally released.”3 That meant it could not be released until November, far too late for the Silver Jubilee in May.
Churchill was shattered, but resolved to recoup his efforts. “I hope to sell the articles based on the film in America for £1000,” he wrote Clementine, “and have already sold the English counter-part to the Evening Standard for £1000.”4 There Churchill ultimately published seven commemorative essays in a series entitled, “The King’s Twenty-Five Years.” The series ran between May 2nd and 9th, nicely timed with the Jubilee celebrations. (The subheadings below are Churchill’s titles.)
“The Accession”
Churchill’s first essay begins with the death of King Edward VII, a deft explanation of tradition and protocol (only just replayed following the death of Queen Elizabeth II):
The demise of the Crown entails prompt and swift action and ritual. The Privy Council met the new King in the throne room of St. James’s Palace the next day at noon. We were perhaps one hundred persons. The new Sovereign entered, supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury and some other high dignitaries, and was immediately recognized as King George V, and acclaimed as the lawful ruler of the British Empire (214).
***
Churchill discusses the upbringing of King George and his experience in the Royal Navy. “He visited every part of the British Empire and had knowledge of its leading men…. His manly, straightforward nature, his happy home, were examples admired throughout the land.” He describes Queen Mary as “a consort who shone equally at the centre of the most brilliant ceremonial or in one of the happiest family circles in Britain” (215).
Churchill then turns to political and social problems: “The Lords and Commons were in deadlock. The great parties were in furious strife.” Militant strikes and suffrage demonstrations were rife. The Lords had rejected the Lloyd George Budget. A Parliament Act restricting their veto was before the House of Commons. Irish Home Rule made “its fullest impact.” Ulster resolved to resist, “if necessary by force of arms.” The German Navy was expanding while Britain’s ally France “quaked under the threat of their army” (216). Churchill concluded: “All these grave troubles we shall now explore. King George inherited them with his Crown” (216).
“The King Faces his First Crisis”
A constitutional crisis “had been gathering for three years” (216). The overwhelming Liberal majority elected in 1906 passed reforms in Education and Licensing which the Tory-dominated House of Lords rejected. When H.H. Asquith became prime minister in 1908, the nation seemed evenly divided (217). Then Asquith’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, issued his 1909 Budget, providing Liberals “all the fighting and controversy that would be likely to need in order to keep themselves in health and vigour” (217).
Lloyd George’s “People Budget,” Churchill wrote, led to Britain’s modern system of graduated taxation. It provided health insurance, old age pensions, a road fund, and large increases for the Navy. He also proposed taxing the “unearned increment” of land values and minerals. He “left it for the Lords to choose whether they would swallow them or not” (217). Precedent prevented the Lords from rejecting a money bill, and the Budget passed.
The Lords veto was something “that King George V was from the very first days of his reign forced to face,” Churchill wrote (218-19). The Liberals won only a bare majority in the January 1910 election. Asquith asked for another election in December, to be fought over the Lords veto. If returned, he wanted King George to appoint enough new peers “to outvote the Tory majority in the House of Lords” (219).
Hoping to break the crisis, King George agreed to appoint new peers if, after the election, Asquith still possessed the confidence of the Commons. Churchill concluded: “We have only to set out the facts in their crude relation for anyone to see how very rough were the times and how fierce were the stresses that centered upon the Throne” (220).
“War Clouds Gather”
The December 1910 election produced practically no change in the composition of the House of Commons (221). King George V was crowned the following June:
The festivities, parades, and rejoicings took their course. Politicians, harshly opposed, met in friendly mood in all the agreeable settings of the English Court. Potentates soon to be in mortal war sat amicably at the Royal table. British democracy, brushing out of sight all the rough horse-play and superficial rancours of our class and party quarrels, celebrated the occasion with hearty goodwill” (222).
Then foreign worries intruded. Germany, “resolved to test the strength of what was called ‘the Triple Entente’ [Britain, France, and Russia]”: It was a challenge that would prove, incidentally, “where England stood” (224).
In July 1911 a German cruiser, SMS Panther, suddenly appeared at the port of Agadir in French Morocco. “Agadir was worthless from all points of view,” Churchill wrote. “But what lay behind this movement? There lay behind it the massed power of tremendous empires and the tramp of innumerable hosts” (224).
The threat of war subsided after in a crucial speech by Lloyd George, who declared that Britain would join France in any war with Germany. “The German Government was taken aback…. Eventually they made a compromise with the French and awaited in patience a more favourable occasion” (224).
Despite many crises, Churchill describes prewar Britain as prosperous. Employment was high, trade good; new social services aided the weak and poor. Churchill’s essay ends with a warning: “We were all of us about to roll over Niagara Falls in a barrel—which luckily was ironclad” (225).
“Royal Courage: Durbar Splendour: Frenzied Women”
Despite unease in India, “it was decided that the King and Queen should attend the Coronation Durbar,” in celebration of their accession (225). Happily the pageant passed “without one uneasy incident” (226). Churchill vividly described events:
The King-Emperor rode through the Delhi gate, guarded by great stone elephants and sacred to the Great Moguls. The procession of the Indian princes was five miles long, and it flowed past for an hour of barbaric richness, gold and silver carriages, horsemen in bright mail, camel corps from Bikaner and Bahawalpur, dancers, running footmen, fierce-visaged Arabs, Shans in velvet… (226).
Their Majesties sat on thrones of solid silver and above their heads was a golden dome. Fifty thousand troops paraded. Trumpets sounded, the proclamation announcing the Coronation was read and a salute of guns was fired (226).
Returning home, the King as promised said he would create new peers to pass the Parliament Act if the Lords rejected it. The Lords consented, ending their veto of money bills and limiting their veto of other bills to two years. But now Irish Home Rule and women’s suffrage became major issues; and Germany methodically kept building its navy. Churchill understood
how out of so much discordance should have sprung such latent unities and such effective preparation….. [O]n several occasions the periods of fiercest party strife have corresponded to the periods on maximum national vigour. It was so under Queen Elizabeth, it was so under Queen Anne. It was so under King George V (230).
“War in the King’s Name”
Churchill’s script is brief on the First World War. Even in 1935, he was fearful that strife was not over: “The horrible possibility dawns upon us in the later days that perhaps there will be an anticlimax; some even more appalling hazard-and perhaps a sombre end…. We must watch and pray” (230).
On 20 July 1914, King George reviewed what Churchill described as the greatest naval fleet ever in world history: “Nearly 70 battleships and as many great cruisers, with hundreds of important smaller craft steamed past the Royal yacht, and more than 100,000 seamen cheered the King” (231). Churchill recalls “a united nation swept by a passionate conviction plunged into Armageddon” (231). On the night of 4 August 1914, “men and women were drawn in their thousands to Buckingham Palace. Few were light-hearted; the sky was dark and ominous” (232).
Churchill himself had promoted a “kingly conference” to settle arguments. But King George V,
…when his intervention had failed set his face and squared his shoulders and threw every ounce of his energy into the fight for victory. Some other pen, writing from the isolation of a hundred years hence, may be able to estimate justly the part the King played in the struggle, the effect of his quiet courage and self-effacing example and, above all, of that strong but intangible virtue of kingship, which did more than any other cause to keep the Empire welded to resolve” (232).
Queen Mary, for her part, was “the inspiration and guide to Englishwomen. Her work, especially her care of wounded men and of the bereaved, endeared her forever” (232).
“The King with his Troops”
Before 1914 was out King George V was with his troops, the first British monarch to meet soldiers in the field since George II led his army against the French at Dettingen. There was also a personal aspect: “His son, the Prince of Wales, after much insistence had at last been allowed to go to France” (233).
“I cannot share in your trials, dangers and successes,” he told his men, “but I can assure you of the proud confidence and gratitude of myself and your fellow countrymen” (233).
Again in 1915 the King went to France. At Hesdignuel his horse, frightened by cheering troops, reared and fell on him. “But even while being moved away on a stretcher he insisted on greeting Haig and French,” Churchill writes.
“He was placed in a hospital train filled with wounded soldiers. On his way to the coast one wounded man caught his eye. He called his aide-de-camp and asked for a Military Medal. Then he leaned over and pinned it to the tunic of the soldier” (233).
***
Churchill goes on to record King George’s contribution to the war effort:
The King in those four years had been no shadowy figure behind high palace walls. He had walked and talked and worked among his people, sharing their anxieties and enduring their dangers. By bringing himself to the common level he had raised the monarchy to the highest place and sent a new fire of patriotism to the farthest footholds of the Empire (235).
Churchill then turned to the future: “A more splendid world is opening its portals…. But the sinister alternatives are already near at hand. Individually we may each have our choice, but he would be a bold man to say whether blessing or cursing will be our lot” (236).
“Aftermath of War”
Churchill’s final installment sees the postwar world divided into two parts. First came the Aftermath, and secondly—a much longer spell—the Baldwin-MacDonald epoch. “The first of these periods lasted from the victory election of December, 1918, to the fall of Mr Lloyd George four years later. We are still experiencing the blessings of the second dispensation” (236).
Churchill described the “whirligig” of five million soldiers being reabsorbed into civilian life: “A vast lethargy descended upon the British spirit” (236). Unemployment and hardship rose.
Abroad, the Egyptian Protectorate ended. “A vast sentimental scheme for unsettling the British Empire in India in the vain hopes of gratifying political agitators slipped through both Houses of Parliament without a division almost a without query…. Finally, a treaty was made with the Irish Sinn Feiners which constituted the Irish Free State as a Dominion of the Crown.” Churchill does not “shirk my share of responsibility before history. I resisted the first of these policies. I acquiesced in the second, and I bore an active though subordinate part in the third” (236-37).
Churchill went on to discuss the General Strike and King George’s words when it ended. “Let us …now address ourselves to a peace which will be lasting…with the hopefulness of a united people.” His Majesty, Churchill adds, was “foremost in this work” (238).
Despite the Great War and domestic turmoil, Churchill wrote positively of George V. His Jubilee deserved celebration. He was “one of the best and truest of all Sovereigns who have occupied their ancient throne. When King George V drives through the streets of London his welcome will be sincere and universal…” (240).
Filmscript turned to prose
In his newspaper series, Churchill maintained the theme he had strove to depict as screenwriter Korda’s stillborn film:
His reign has seen enormous perils and a triumph the like of which the annals of war cannot equal. It has seen moral, social, political and scientific changes in the life of all countries and of all classes so decisive that we, borne along upon the still hurrying torrent, cannot even attempt to measure them. The means of locomotion, the art of flying, the position of women, the map of Europe, the aims and ideals of all nations—East and West, white and black, brown and yellow—have undergone a prodigious transformation.
But here at the centre and summit of the British Empire, in what is the freest society yet achieved in human record, a King who has done his duty will be reverenced by the ceremonial of his ancestors and acclaimed by the cheers of his faithful people (240).
It is unfortunate that Churchill’s filmscript for Korda never saw production. The public was denied an opportunity to appreciate his writing combined with the skill of a renowned filmmaker. Nevertheless, Churchill should be remembered for a notable achievement. Although not prominent in his career as a statesman, soldier and historian, his contribution to cinema deserves appreciation.
Endnotes
1 David Lough, No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money (New York: Picador, 2015), 233.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 234.
The author
Mr. Glueckstein, of Kings Park, New York, is freelance writer and a longtime contributor to the Churchill Project.
Further reading
Raymond A. Callahan, “Churchill in the Age of Lloyd George,” Part 1 of 4, 2022
Andrew Maclaren, “Henry George and Churchill’s The People’s Rights,” Part 1, 2019
Fred Glueckstein, “Churchill’s Sovereigns: King George V,” 2017