From http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnist1.asp?main_variable=Columnist&file_name=Premen%2FPremen32.txt&writer=Premen ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India Britain's decline foretold Saturday, June 07, 2008 by Premen Addy I have come late to Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940-65, the diary of his personal doctor Lord Moran. As Sir Charles Wilson, he was president of the Royal College of Physicians, but his appointment as Churchill's doctor was not of Churchill's doing, it was forced upon him by certain members of his Cabinet when he became Britain's Prime Minister in May 1940, following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. It was the country's darkest hour. Adolf Hitler's legions were cutting a swathe through much of western Europe like a knife through butter; and the health of Britain's 65-year-old leader was, therefore, of critical importance to his Government. The first entry, dated May 24, in the 864-page diary, described Moran's noon-time call on Churchill, who was in bed reading a document. The Prime Minister took no notice of the physician's presence. "After what seemed quite a long time, he put down his papers and said impatiently: 'I don't know why they are making such a fuss. There's nothing wrong with me'. He picked up the papers and resumed his reading. At last he pushed his bed-rest away and, throwing back his bed-clothes, said abruptly: 'I suffer from dyspepsia, and this is the treatment.' With that he proceeded to demonstrate to me some breathing exercises. His big belly was moving up and down when there was a knock on the door, and the PM grabbed at the sheet as Mrs Hill came into the room. Soon after I took my leave. I do not like the job, and I do not think the arrangement can last." The good doctor was wrong, as wrong as anyone can be. He was to remain with Churchill throughout the war and well beyond it as doctor, friend and confidant, keeping a record of their association, sharing in Churchill's triumphs and anxieties and black moods of depression, witnessing at first-hand the slow mental and physical decline of the great man's later years. Lord Moran accompanied Churchill to the United States for his meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington; he was part of the Churchill entourage in Moscow, where Churchill conferred with Stalin; and he had a grandstand view of the meetings of the 'Big Three' at Tehran (November 1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Potsdam (June-July 1945). Roosevelt had died in mid-April, some three weeks before Germany's unconditional surrender, Harry Truman was the American President at Potsdam. Half-way through, Churchill, having lost his country's general election, departed and the new British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, took his place. Lord Moran's vignettes, mostly British, naturally, but also American, Russian and French, are memorable. Every detail of worth is faithfully set against the wider canvas. These flesh and blood pages are laced with thought and reflection. Woven into a single set of covers, the work is a literary masterpiece, a wonderful portrayal of men and women at war learning to cope with the increasingly cold and difficult peace. The old order was dying on its feet, the new struggled to emerge. Where does India fit into this? India was part of the British Empire; the 2.5 million-strong Indian Army, the largest volunteer force in history, was fighting on the Allied side in ever theatre of the war. The future of the subcontinent was also at stake in this life-and-death conflict with the Axis. The vision of a free India was an anathema to Churchill, who railed at the idea before the war and would have nothing to do with it as Roosevelt unfolded his plan for the decolonisation of Asia. The American President accorded Chiang Kai-shek's China a place at the high table of the great powers, much to Churchill's annoyance. Lord Moran understood Roosevelt's reasoning: It was the future that was at stake. The weak wartime China would not be disabled forever. "It is when he talks of India or China that you remember that he (Churchill) is a Victorian," was Moran's terse comment. He was last in India in 1897 covering Britain's military campaigns on the North-West Frontier for the London Press. He also wrote for The Pioneer. As the war proceeded, Churchill sensed that Britain's two principal allies, the US and the Soviet Union, with their immense resources of men and material, would determine the course of future developments. Churchill's struggle to maintain the weight of British influence in the counsels of the 'Big Three' were doomed, as Roosevelt and Stalin started calling the shots over his head. A noticeable coolness crept into the once warm friendship between Roosevelt and Churchill. Modern British writers, too, are decidedly lukewarm in their assessment of Roosevelt. Perhaps they, too, if only subconsciously, grieve over the loss of their Indian Empire. The Victorian politician in Churchill drew on the corpus of Curzon's proconsular wisdom. One of Britain's greatest Viceroys in India, Lord Curzon wrote and spoke extensively on a subject closest to his heart: His country's imperial association with India. In a speech to the Philosophical Institute of Edinburgh in October 1908, entitled The Place of India in the Empire, Curzon said, "It was the remark of De Tocqueville that the conquest and Government of India were really the achievements that had given Britain her place in the world... Consider what would happen were we to lose India, and were some other power to take our place, for it is inconceivable that India could stand or be left alone. We would lose its unfailing markets... we would lose... the principal, indeed almost the only formidable element in our fighting strength; our influence in Asia would quickly disappear... our colonies would cut themselves off from a dying trunk: And we should sink into a third-rate power, an object of shame to ourselves and of derision to the rest of mankind. Remember, too, that India is no longer a piece, even a king or queen on the Asiatic chessboard. It is a royal piece on the chessboard of international politics." The younger Churchill was nourished on such sentiments. His country's and his own finest hours lasted from July to September 1940, when the Royal Air Force foiled the German invasion of Britain. Britain's solitary splendour in the conflict ended with the arrival of the USSR and the US. The Allied victory was assured, but its spoils were commandeered by Moscow and Washington. The rise and decline of the great powers has long been grist to the mills of history. ===============