Just three weeks after Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, Churchill arrived in Washington, having crossed the Atlantic on the battleship Duke of York in rough weather.

On 26th Dec 1941, he stood before a joint session of Congress, and this draft shows how he was still working on his speech right up to the very last minute.

Churchill likely knew how much was riding on this moment, and how important it was to get the tone and substance just right. One of the most quoted lines is the one about his mother, Jennie Jerome, born in Brooklyn, and his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, born in England.

“I cannot help reflecting that if my father had been American and my mother British, instead of the other way round, I might have got here on my own.”

We love how this document shows just how personal the Anglo-American relationship was to Churchill, and how his mixed parentage meant that the special relationship was about more than just diplomacy.

Anthony Scaramucci’s recent piece on this Substack makes exactly that case, calling Churchill “the merger before the merger existed.” This glimpse into the past offers convincing support for his argument.

I’ve spent thirty-seven years on Wall Street, and if the business teaches you anything, it’s the difference between a trade and an investment. A trade is transactional. You’re in, you’re out, you count your money. An investment is a bet on character. You’re betting the thing is worth more tomorrow because of what it’s made of today.

Churchill understood that the relationship between America and Britain was an investment. He was basically its first portfolio manager. Almost eighty years after he coined the phrase “special relationship” in a gymnasium in Fulton, Missouri, of all places, we should remember what he actually meant by it. Especially right now, when the alliance feels a little stretched on both sides of the Atlantic.

Start with the man himself, because he was the merger before the merger existed. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was born in Brooklyn. Her father was a New York speculator who made and lost fortunes with a frequency that would make a crypto trader blush. So Churchill was literally half American, and he never let us forget it. He stood before Congress in December 1941, weeks after Pearl Harbor, and joked that if his father had been American and his mother British, he might have gotten there on his own. The room laughed. But the joke carried a thesis. These weren’t allies of convenience. This was family, with all the friction that implies.

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Churchill knew America the way you only know a place where you’ve lost money. He got wiped out in the crash of 1929 like everybody else, then lectured his way across the country to rebuild his finances, selling his words the way immigrants of that era sold their labor. He understood something about us that a lot of foreign leaders never figure out. Americans respect people who get knocked down and get back up. His whole wilderness decade was one long comeback story, and there is nothing, nothing we love more than a comeback.

The wartime alliance wasn’t held together by sentiment, it was held together by the boldest structured deal of the twentieth century. Lend-Lease. In 1940, Britain was functionally insolvent. Fighting alone, burning through gold, burning through dollars. Churchill wrote Roosevelt what may be the greatest pitch letter in history, and America became the arsenal of democracy. Roughly $31 billion in materiel was extended to a borrower with no collateral, because the borrower’s character was the collateral. Britain made its final payment on that era’s debt in 2006. Show me another sixty-year loan that performed and I’ll show you another alliance worth keeping.

That’s the cornerstone of the special relationship. The returns compound over generations, not quarters. NATO. The intelligence sharing. The financial plumbing between London and New York that still runs underneath the whole global economy. All of it goes back to a bet that trust between free peoples was the most productive asset either nation held.

Is the relationship stretched right now? Sure it is. Alliances go through drawdowns, same as marriages, same as portfolios. Churchill never confused a bad quarter with a bad investment.

So picture him today, back in that same chamber where they laughed at his joke in 1941, addressing a joint session one more time. I think it goes something like this. Wake up, America. You did not become the arsenal of democracy to grow weary of the work. We are your oldest friends and your closest kin, bound not by treaty alone but by blood, by language, by the long habit of standing together when the storm comes. Our bond is not conditional. It does not rise and fall with the quarrels of the moment. When you are strong, we rejoice. When you stumble, we do not walk away; we take your arm. Do not doubt us, and do not doubt yourselves. The English-speaking peoples still hold the watch, and the watch is not over.

That’s not nostalgia. That’s a term sheet.

My grandfather came over from Italy and went down into the coal mines of Pennsylvania. My father operated a crane. Neither one of them could have found Chartwell on a map. But the world where a coal miner’s grandson could go from a middle-class house on Long Island to Harvard Law to founding his own firm, that was a world Churchill’s alliance made possible. That’s the dividend. It lands in the accounts of people who never read a word he wrote.

Churchill made the best long-term call in modern history. He went long on us before we went long on ourselves. The least we can do is hold the position.

Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital.

At various points in his career, Churchill pursued ideas of greater Anglo-American unity, and in 1951, while en route to the United States, he even drew a symbol for what a proposed joint currency might look like.

We’ve found the item in the archives and are posting it here along with an envelope explaining its provenance. The writing on the envelope is that of Jock Colville, brought back as Winston Churchill’s Principal Private Secretary in 1951.

In his book Footprints in Time (Collins, 1976, p.234) Colville wrote of this voyage:

“On the Atlantic voyage, it was difficult to persuade Churchill to read the array of briefs and memoranda which had been laboriously prepared in Whitehall. When I tried to engage his attention to one or two of the more important, he protested that he was going to America to re-establish relations, not to transact business. A protoplasm, he said, was born sexless. Then it divided into two sexes which, in due course, united again in a different way to their common benefit and gratification. Such, too, should be the story of Great Britain and America and it was not going to be told in a lot of turgid briefs.”

Welcome to Mad About Churchill.

Mad About Churchill is a brand new Substack that’s secured the rights to Churchill’s combined works and access to the official Churchill archives at Cambridge University with the support of his literary estate and the Churchill family. With help from some of the sharpest minds on both sides of the Atlantic, we have already begun work to bring it to life for a contemporary audience, and we’re very excited to start sharing our insights with you.

Churchill made a huge contribution to twentieth-century history. His career spanned the most traumatic events ever experienced — war, Depression, tyranny, as well as rapid advancement in technology and human power. What’s truly remarkable is how much still chimes today, how much still seems relevant to the big issues we face.

Over the next month, we have some exciting articles to share, beginning with a look at what exactly makes a ‘good alliance’.

In August 1941, Winston Churchill crossed the Atlantic on a battleship to meet with Franklin Roosevelt and thrash out, face to face, the moral and strategic framework that would eventually win the war — the Atlantic Charter. The meeting proved that the personal touch can smooth over differences and build relationships strong enough to shape history. On the 250th anniversary of American independence, with the transatlantic relationship under a strain it has rarely seen in peacetime, we’re launching Mad About Churchill with James Holland’s account of that fateful first wartime encounter.

Anthony Scaramucci has spent nearly four decades on Wall Street learning the difference between a trade and an investment. In Churchill’s stewardship of the Anglo-American alliance, he sees the greatest long-term bet in modern history. The Lend-Lease deal indirectly helped build NATO, the intelligence relationship, and the financial architecture still underpinning the global economy today. Just when the special relationship feels rather more like a trade than an investment, Scaramucci makes an unsentimental, Wall Street-plain case for holding the position.

Of course Roosevlet wasn’t Churchill’s only vital ally. He and de Gaulle quarrelled constantly, and yet their alliance held firm because, beneath the rows, their interests and values kept pointing in the same direction. That shared foundation, Tim Bouverie argues, is what distinguished a productive partnership from a merely fractious one, and it is what made possible the walk down the Champs-Élysées in 1944, Churchill in tears, the band playing in his honour. On a continent now asking, with some urgency, whether the United States can still be relied upon as of old, the lesson of these two difficult, brilliant, indispensable men feels pertinent to where we stand today.

This is only the start. We pledge to work tirelessly on your behalf to uncover new material, share fresh perspectives and use them to generate great articles for you to read every week. We’ll create space for our contributors to ask hard questions and, with Churchill’s help, offer compelling answers.

We’re honoured to have you join us. There is so much to share, and we can’t wait to get started.

‘We are just off,’ wrote Winston Churchill to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 4 August 1941 as he set sail across the Atlantic. ‘It is twenty-seven years ago today that the Huns began their last war. We must make a good job of it this time. Twice ought to be enough. Look forward so much to our meeting. Kindest regards.’ Churchill was writing from spacious quarters at the stern of the battleship, HMS Prince of Wales, which, although only commissioned in January that year, was already a veteran of the epic chase over the Atlantic and subsequent sinking of the mighty German warship, the Bismarck, back at the end of May.

Churchill was thrilled to be aboard this massive new warship and eagerly anticipated this trip to Newfoundland, for there he was to meet Roosevelt. Although they had crossed paths very briefly twenty years earlier, this was to be their first face-to-face meeting as political leaders of their respective countries.

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Out at sea, a storm soon whipped up, forcing Churchill to move to a smaller but more comfortable cabin near the battleship’s bridge. It was too rough for the escorting and much smaller destroyers, so it was agreed the Prince of Wales should steam on at full speed alone. What a tasty target this giant ship would have been for any skulking U-boat – yet thanks to decrypted German Enigma traffic, known as ‘Ultra’, to high-frequency direction finding – HF/DF, or ‘Huff-Duff’ – and to the 29-knot speed of the ship, it was about as safe a means of travel as any in the summer of 1941. Nonetheless, in order to dodge lurking U-boats, absolute radio silence was maintained, although messages could be received. ‘Thus, there was a lull in my daily routine,’ noted Churchill, ‘and a strange sense of leisure which I had not known since the war began.’ He even had time to read a book for pleasure.

The Prince of Wales safely reached Placentia Bay in Newfoundland, and the British contingent made their rendezvous with the Americans on the morning of Saturday, 9 August. For Churchill, this was a big moment. He had been striving to draw ever-closer co-operation from the United States since his time at the Admiralty and was equally eager to forge a sense of common purpose and even friendship. ‘He is excited as a schoolboy on the last day of the term,’ noted Churchill’s secretary Jock Colville before the PM left. Should President and Prime Minister forge a firm bond of friendship and understanding, Churchill knew, the alliance of their two nations could prove a war-winning one; the stakes, then, could hardly have been higher.

The sides began gently. There was a dinner and discussions on the USS Augusta, anchored nearby, then, the following day, a church service and lunch on the Prince of Wales. Finally, on Monday 11th, by which time Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Production and close confidant of the Prime Minister, had joined them, Churchill and Roosevelt had a more intimate, less formal lunch. Much of the discussion was about the growing aggression of Japan, but it was also reaffirmed that if the US entered the war, then together with Britain, they would focus on the defeat of Nazi Germany before Imperial Japan. US naval participation in the Battle of the Atlantic was also reaffirmed, and it was agreed there would be a three-way conference between Britain, the US and the Soviet Union in September, while a pledge of aims, which became known as the Atlantic Charter, was also drawn up and signed. In it, Churchill and Roosevelt declared to the world eight common principles. They sought ‘no aggrandisement, territorial or other’. They also respected the rights of all peoples ‘to choose the form of government under which they will live’. The sixth point dealt directly with Germany: ‘after the final destruction of Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.’

It was heady, utopian stuff, and back in Britain caused some embarrassment for Churchill; India, for example, had been on the cusp of independence before the war, but there were many there who believed they were not being given the chance to choose their own government. The Atlantic Charter hardly endorsed empire. Nonetheless, the charter was significant and placed the war firmly on a moral footing in the eyes of Britain and the United States. This alone set the current conflict apart from those that had come before. Just as importantly, Roosevelt and Churchill had finally had the chance to meet one another properly and, while neither forgot that theirs was a professional relationship, they liked one another and got on well. Roosevelt was a head of state, Churchill was a chief minister – and there was a difference – but both were global military-politico leaders speaking the same language and with the same essential aims.

The importance of this meeting in Placentia Bay has often been played down. But it should not be because the coalition of Britain and the United States really did pave the way for victory, and at its heart lay the relationship between Roosevelt and Churchill, begun by letter but affirmed at Placentia Bay. Britain may be diminished as a world power today, but the Atlantic Meeting proved the importance of political leaders sitting down together and establishing bonds of mutual respect. The personal touch still counts, and it was this vital first wartime meeting that began what would become known as the ‘special relationship’: two nations, with similar aspirations to preserve democracy and peace, with a shared language and many of the same ideals and whose mutual support during the war ensured both countries became brothers in arms.

President Trump is a very different man from FDR, and the new prime minister-in-waiting, Andy Burnham, shares little with Churchill. Even so, on this 250^th anniversary of the United States’ birth, there remains much that still binds the two countries. History is always here to help, and this first, critical meeting of the Second World War reminds us of how much can be achieved when both the will and the personal connections are there to smooth over disagreements and encourage common aims, hopes and aspirations.

When Winston Churchill stepped aboard the battleship HMS Prince of Wales in August 1941, the world was tearing itself apart. London was still bearing the scars of the Blitz, Europe was under Nazi occupation, and the United States remained, at least officially, on the sidelines of the war.

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Yet anchored in the fog of Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, history was about to be made over turtle soup and roast grouse. This was the first time Churchill and Roosevelt had sat face-to-face as allies with shared purpose, and the atmosphere in that steel-walled dining room — where the blueprint for the post-war world was being sketched out between courses — must have been extraordinary.

Look closely at the original menu and seating plan, retrieved here from the archives. Note who is sitting next to whom. You can practically trace the birth of the Special Relationship by scanning the names around that table — generals, admirals and diplomats from both sides of the Atlantic, packed in shoulder to shoulder, beginning the vital work of defeating tyranny together.

Tragically, just four months later, HMS Prince of Wales was done for, sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea. Captain John Leach, who had presided as host over this historic lunch, went down with his ship, but for one brief afternoon, his dining room aboard HMS Prince of Wales had been the absolute epicentre of the free world.

August 24, 1941

I thought you would like me to tell you something about the voyage which I made across the ocean to meet our great friend, the President of the United States.

Exactly where we met is a secret, but I don’t think I shall be indiscreet if I go so far as to say that it was somewhere in the Atlantic. In a spacious, land-locked bay which reminded me of the west coast of Scotland, powerful American warships, protected by strong flotillas and far-ranging aircraft, awaited our arrival and, as it were, stretched out a hand to help us in.

Our party arrived in the newest, or almost the newest, British battleship, the Prince of Wales, with a modest escort of British and Canadian destroyers. And there for three days I spent my time in company, and I think I may say in comradeship, with Mr. Roosevelt, while all the time the chiefs of the staff and naval and military commanders, both of the British Empire and of the United States, sat together in continual council.

President Roosevelt is the thrice-chosen head of the most powerful State and community in the world. I am the servant of King and Parliament, at present charged with the principal direction of our affairs in these fateful times. And it is my duty also to make sure, as I have made sure, that anything I say or do in the exercise of my office is approved and sustained by the whole British Commonwealth of Nations. Therefore this meeting was bound to be important because of the enormous forces, at present only partially mobilized, but steadily mobilizing, which are at the disposal of these two major groupings of the human family, the British Empire and the United States, who, fortunately for the progress of mankind, happen to speak the same language and very largely think the same thoughts, or anyhow, think a lot of the same thoughts.

The meeting was, therefore, symbolic. That is its prime importance. It symbolizes, in a form and manner which every one can understand in every land and in every clime, the deep underlying unities which stir and, at decisive moments, rule the English-speaking peoples throughout the world. Would it be presumptuous for me to say that it symbolizes something even more majestic, namely, the marshalling of the good forces of the world against the evil forces which are now so formidable and triumphant and which have cast their cruel spell over the whole of Europe and a large part of Asia?

This was a meeting which marks forever in the pages of history the taking up by the English-speaking nations, amid all this peril, tumult and confusion, of the guidance of the fortunes of the broad toiling masses in all the continents, and our loyal effort, without any clog of selfish interest, to lead them forward out of the miseries into which they have been plunged, back to broad high road of freedom and justice. This is the highest honour and the most glorious opportunity which could ever have come to any branch of the human race.

When one beholds how many currents of extraordinary and terrible events have flowed together to make this harmony, even the most sceptical person must have the feeling that we all have the chance to play our part and do our duty in some great design, the end of which no mortal can foresee. Awful and horrible things I have seen in these days.

The whole of Europe has been wrecked and trampled down by the mechanical weapons and barbaric fury of the Nazis. The most deadly instruments of war science have been joined to the extreme refinements of treachery and the most brutal exhibitions of ruthlessness and thus have formed a combine of aggression, the like of which has never been known, before which the rights, the traditions, the characteristics and the structure of many ancient, honoured States and peoples have been laid prostrate and are now ground down under the heel and terror of a monster.

The Austrians, the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Greeks, the Croats and the Serbs, above all the great French nation, have been stunned and pinioned. Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria--have bought a shameful respite by becoming the jackals of the tiger. But their situation is very little different and will presently be indistinguishable from that of his victims. Sweden, Spain and Turkey stand appalled, wondering which will be struck down next. Here then is the vast pit into which all the most famous States and races of Europe have been flung and from which, unaided, they can never climb.

But all this did not satiate Adolf Hitler. He made a treaty of non-aggression with Soviet Russia, just as he made one with Turkey, in order to keep them quiet until he was ready to attack them. And then, nine weeks ago today, without a vestige of provocation, he hurled millions of soldiers with all their apparatus upon the neighbour he had called his friend with the avowed object of destroying Russia and tearing her in pieces.

This frightful business is now unfolding day by day before our eyes. Here is a devil who, in a mere spasm of his pride and lust for domination, can condemn two or three millions, perhaps it may be many more, of human beings to speedy and violent death. Let Russia be blotted out. Let Russia be destroyed. Order the armies to advance. Such were his decrees. Accordingly, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, six or seven millions of soldiers are locked in mortal struggle.

Ah, but this time it was not so easy. This time it was not all one way. The Russian Armies and all the peoples of the Russian Republic have rallied to the defence of their hearths and homes. For the first time Nazi blood has flowed in a fearful flood. Certainly a million and a half, perhaps two millions of Nazi cannon-fodder, have bitten the dust of the endless plains of Russia. The tremendous battle rages along nearly two thousand miles of front. The Russians fight with magnificent devotion. Not only that, our generals who have visited the Russian front line report with admiration the efficiency of their military organization and the excellence of their equipment. The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered. For the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands, literally scores of thousands of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on such a scale or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning. Famine and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler’s tanks.

We are in the presence of a crime without a name.

But Europe is not the only continent to be tormented and devastated by aggression. For five long years the Japanese military factions seeking to emulate the style of Hitler and Mussolini, taking all their posturing as if it were a new European revelation, have been invading and harrying the 500,000,000 inhabitants of China. Japanese armies have been wandering about that vast land in futile excursions, carrying with them carnage, ruin and corruption, and calling it “the Chinese incident.” Now, they stretch a grasping hand into the southern seas of China. They snatch Indo-China from the wretched Vichy French. They menace by their movements Siam, menace Singapore, the British link with Australasia, and menace the Philippine Islands under the protection of the United States.

It is certain that this has got to stop. Every effort will be made to secure a peaceful settlement. The United States are labouring with infinite patience to arrive at a fair and amicable settlement which will give Japan the utmost reassurance for her legitimate interests. We earnestly hope these negotiations will succeed. But this I must say: that if these hopes should fail we shall, of course, range ourselves unhesitatingly at the side of the United States.

And thus we come back to the quiet bay, somewhere in the Atlantic, where misty sunshine plays on great ships which carry the White Ensign or the Stars and Stripes.

We had the idea when we met there, the President and I, that without attempting to draw final and formal peace aims, or war aims, it was necessary to give all peoples, and especially the oppressed and conquered peoples, a simple, rough-and-ready wartime statement of the goal towards which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way, and thus make a way for others to march with them on a road which will certainly be painful and may be long.

There are, however, two distinct and marked differences in this joint declaration from the attitude adopted by the Allies during the latter part of the last war, and no one should overlook them. The United States and Great Britain do not now assume that there will never be any more war again. On the contrary, we intend to take ample precaution to prevent its renewal in any period we can foresee by effectively disarming the guilty nations while remaining suitably protected ourselves. The second difference is this: that instead of trying to ruin German trade by all kinds of additional trade barriers and hindrances, as was the mood of 1917, we have definitely adopted the view that it is not in the interests of the world and of our two countries that any large nation should be unprosperous or shut out from the means of making a decent living for itself and its people by its industry and enterprise.

These are far-reaching changes of principle upon which all countries should ponder. Above all, it was necessary to give hope and the assurance of final victory to those many scores of millions of men and women who are battling for life and freedom or who are already bent down under the Nazi yoke.

Hitler and his confederates have for some time past been adjuring and beseeching the populations whom they have wronged and injured to bow to their fate, to resign themselves to their servitude and, for the sake of some mitigation and indulgences, to collaborate--that is the word--in what is called the new order in Europe.

What is this new order which they seek to fasten first upon Europe and, if possible--for their ambitions are boundless--upon all the continents of the globe? It is the rule of the Herrenvolk--the master race--who are to put an end to democracy, to parliaments, to the fundamental freedoms and decencies of ordinary men and women, to the historic rights of nations, and give them in exchange the iron rule of Prussia, the universal goose-step and the strict efficient discipline enforced upon the working classes by the political police, with the German concentration camps and firing parties, now so busy in a dozen lands, always handy in the background. There is the new order.

Napoleon in his glory and genius spread his empire far and wide. There was a time when only the snows of Russia and the white cliffs of Dover with their guardian fleets stood between him and the dominion of the world. Napoleon’s armies had a theme. They carried with them the surges of the French Revolution--Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. That was the cry. There was a sweeping away of outworn, medieval systems and aristocratic privilege. There was the land for the people, a new code of law. Nevertheless, Napoleon’s empire vanished like a dream.

But Hitler--Hitler has no theme, naught but mania, appetite and exploitation. He has, however, weapons and machinery for grinding down and for holding down conquered countries which are the product, the sadly perverted product, of modern science.

The ordeals, therefore, of the conquered peoples will be hard. We must give them hope. We must give them the conviction that their sufferings and their resistances will not be in vain. The tunnel may be dark and long, but at the end there is light. That is the symbolism and that is the message of the Atlantic meeting.

Do not despair, brave Norwegians; your land shall be cleansed not only from the invader but from the filthy Quislings who are his tools.

Be strong in your souls, Czechs; your independence shall be restored.

Poles, the heroism of your people, standing up to cruel oppressors, the courage of your soldiers, sailors and airmen shall not be forgotten. Your country shall live again and resume its rightful part in the new organization of Europe.

Lift up your heads, gallant Frenchmen. Not all the infamies of Darlan and of Laval shall stand between you and the restoration of your birthright.

Stout-hearted Dutch, Belgians, Luxembourgers, tormented, mishandled, shamefully cast away peoples of Yugoslavia, glorious Greece, now subjected to the crowning insult of the rule of the Italian jackanapes, yield not an inch. Keep your souls clean from all contact with the Nazis. Make them feel even in their fleeting hour of brutish triumph that they are the moral outcasts of mankind. Help is coming. Mighty forces are arming in your behalf. Have faith, have hope, deliverance is sure.

There is the signal which we have flashed across the waters, and if it reaches the hearts of those to whom it is sent they will endure with fortitude and tenacity their present misfortune in the sure faith that they, too, are still serving the common cause and that our efforts will not be in vain.

You will, perhaps, have noticed that the President of the United States and the British representative, in what is aptly called the Atlantic Charter, have jointly pledged their countries to the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny. That is a solemn and grave undertaking. It must be made good. It will be made good. And, of course, many practical arrangements to fulfil that purpose have been and are being organized and set in motion.

The question has been asked: “How near is the United States to war?” There is certainly one man who knows the answer to that question. If Hitler has not yet declared war upon the United States it is surely not out of his love for American institutions. It is certainly not because he could not find a pretext. He has murdered half a dozen countries for far less. Fear, fear of immediately redoubling the tremendous energies now being employed against him, is no doubt the restraining influence. But the real reason is, I am sure, to be found in the method to which he has so faithfully adhered and by which he has gained so much.

What is that method? It is a very simple method. One by one--that is his plan. That is his guiding rule. That is the trick by which he has enslaved so large a portion of the world.

Three and a half years ago I appealed to my fellow-countrymen to take the lead in weaving together a strong defensive union within the principles of the League of Nations, a union of all the countries who felt themselves in ever-growing danger. But none would listen. All stood idle while Germany rearmed.

Czecho-Slovakia was subjugated. A French Government deserted their faithful ally and broke a plighted word in that ally’s hour of need. Russia was cajoled and deceived into a kind of neutrality or partnership while the French Army was being annihilated. The Low Countries and the Scandinavian countries acting with France and Great Britain in good time even after the war had begun, might have altered its course and would have had at any rate a fighting chance. The Balkan States had only to stand together to save themselves from the ruin by which they are now engulfed. But one by one they were undermined and overwhelmed. Never was the career of crime made more smooth.

Now Hitler is striking at Russia with all his might, well knowing the difficulties of geography which stand between Russia and the aid which the Western democracies are trying to bring. We shall strive our utmost to overcome all difficulties and to bring this aid. We have arranged for a conference in Moscow between the United States, British and Russian authorities to settle the whole plan. No barrier must stand in the way. But why is Hitler striking at Russia and inflicting this suffering on himself, or rather making his soldiers suffer this frightful slaughter? It is with the declared object of turning his whole force upon the British Islands and, if he can succeed in beating the life and strength out of us, which is not so easy, then is the moment when he will settle his account, and it is already a long one, with the people of the United States and generally with the Western Hemisphere.

One by one--there is the process. There is the simple dismal plan which has served Hitler so well. It needs but one final successful application to make him the master of the world.

I am devoutly thankful that some eyes at least are fully opened to it while time remains. I rejoice to find that the President saw in their true light and proportion the extreme dangers by which the American people, as well as the British people, are now beset. It was indeed by the mercy of God that he began eight years ago that revival of the strength of the American Navy without which the New World today would have to take its orders from the European dictators, but with which the United States still retains the power to marshal her gigantic strength and, in saving herself, render an incomparable service to mankind.

We had a church parade on the Sunday in our Atlantic bay. The President came on to the quarterdeck of the Prince of Wales where there were mingled together many hundreds of American and British sailors and marines. The sun shone bright and warm while we all sang the old hymns which are our common inheritance and which we learned as children in our homes. We sang the hymn founded on the psalm which John Hampden’s soldiers sang when they bore his body to the grave and in which the brief precarious span of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him to whom a thousand ages past are but as yesterday and as a watch that is past in the night. We sang the sailors’ hymn “For Those in Peril,” and there are very many in peril on the sea. We sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and indeed I felt that this was no vain presumption, but that we had the right to feel that we were serving a cause for the sake of which a trumpet has sounded from on high.

When I looked upon that densely packed congregation of the fighting men of the same language, of the same faith, of the same fundamental laws, of the same ideals and to a large extent of the same interests and certainly in different degrees facing the same dangers, it swept across me that here was the only hope, but also the sure hope, of saving the world from merciless degradation.

And so we came back across the ocean waves uplifted in spirit, fortified in resolve. Some American destroyers, which were carrying mails to the United States marines in Iceland, happened to be going the same way too, so we made a goodly company at sea together.

And when we were right out in mid-passage one afternoon a noble sight broke on the view. We overtook one of the convoys which carry the munitions and supplies of the New World to Sustain the champions of freedom in the Old. The whole horizon-the whole broad horizon--seemed filled with ships. Seventy or eighty ships of all kinds and sizes, arrayed in fourteen lines, each of which could have been drawn with a ruler, hardly a wisp of smoke, not a straggler, but all bristling with cannon and other precautions on which I will not dwell, and all surrounded by their British escorting vessels, while overhead the far-ranging Catalina airboats soared, vigilant, protecting eagles in the sky.

And then I felt that hard and terrible and long-drawn-out as this struggle may be, we shall not be denied the strength to do our duty to the end.

The Atlantic Charter was one of the most important statements of wartime principles issued by Winston Churchill. Agreed in August 1941 during a secret meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt off the coast of Newfoundland, the charter set out a vision for the world after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

At the time, the United States had not yet entered the Second World War, but Churchill understood that Britain’s survival depended on a deep partnership with America. The Atlantic Charter was therefore both a diplomatic signal and a moral declaration: a statement that Britain and the United States wanted not simply to win a war but to shape a better peace.

The document outlined several principles. It rejected territorial expansion, supported the right of peoples to choose their own governments, called for freer trade and economic cooperation, and endorsed freedom of the seas. It also envisaged a postwar system of collective security that later helped inspire the creation of the United Nations.

For Churchill, the charter reflected his belief that Britain’s power rested on alliances—especially with the United States. It presented the war as a struggle for liberal order rather than empire alone, and helped frame the moral purpose of the Allied cause.