When the French pressed Churchill to appease Mussolini

Charles Xuereb keeps repeating a quote about Malta attributable to Winston Churchill out of context (‘Churchill’s stand on Malta’, March 19). He first raised it in a letter in March 2018, to which I had replied.

The quote, or actually the part of the quote he picks (“…if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta”), infers that Churchill would not have thought twice about bartering the island during the war to protect British interests.

This quote is taken from Neville Chamberlain’s diary and is not reported in the minutes of any of the war cabinet’s three days of talks called to discuss a French proposal to Britain to offer territorial concessions to Mussolini in exchange for Italy’s neutrality in the war.

The proposal had in no time morphed into one that would have sought Mussolini’s mediation with Hitler in an effort to sue for peace terms with Hitler that would not affect Britain’s independence. 

Chamberlain wrote in his diary: “The prime minister (Churchill) disliked any move towards Musso. It was incredible that Hitler would consent to any terms that we could accept, though if we’d get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar and some African colonies, he would jump at it. But the only safe way was to convince Hitler that he couldn’t beat us.” Foreign secretary Lord Halifax had confirmed the quote, though in different words.

Churchill did at times appear to go along with suggestions of making an approach to Mussolini. This is not at all surprising given the very grave situation of the moment. However, an objective analysis of the talks in their entirety shows that Churchill was far from having been prepared to “negotiate”, as some claim, with the enemy over Malta or any other territory.

The only explanation for his apparent vacillation was that, having just taken over as prime minister of a coalition government, he was not inclined, at that point in time, to ruffle the feathers of the chief architects of appeasement, Chamberlain and Halifax. In other words, Churchill would not say no to considering any suggestion but that is not the same thing as saying he was prepared to accept any suggestion.

What is intriguing is that Xuereb does not say it was the French prime minister himself, Paul Reynaud, who, in an effort to secure Mussolini’s neutrality, had pressed Churchill to offer territories.

Winston Churchill, together with Britain’s Allies, saved Europe- Victor Aquilina

When, before the war cabinet talks, Churchill pleaded with Mussolini to stay out of the war “to avoid a river of blood”, he was rebuffed in no uncertain terms. Churchill was therefore reluctant to go down what he called “a slippery slope”. He felt the French proposal to offer territorial concessions to Mussolini, or to sue for peace with Hitler, was simply not a realistic possibility. It was turned down.

In the very grim circumstances in which the cabinet was discussing the French proposal, there was hardly any room for emotive considerations of the kind sought, or fanned, by Churchill’s critics in an invariably anti-British/imperial/colonial sentiment. The fight against the might of Nazi Germany, then smashing up the “small” countries “one by one like matchwood” (another of Churchill’s quotes), was for survival.

In facing up to Hitler’s challenge, Churchill, together with Britain’s Allies, saved Europe, and in the process the territories France wanted Britain to offer to Mussolini as well.  Xuereb strips the quote of its context (and the above is only a part of the overall context), as he did in his 2018 letter to this newspaper.

The other quote he mentions is by Lord Harcourt, then secretary of state for the colonies, made at a cabinet meeting on August 27, 1914. The full quote is: “I (Harcourt) said ‘you can buy Italy by giving her Malta. This shocked Kitchener and Asquith, but Churchill agreed with me …”’

Churchill may have agreed with Harcourt at that point in time but, considering his frame of mind, would he have given up Malta had he been in the saddle? Italy had not yet joined the war by then; it joined the allies on May 23, 1915, only after it had been promised territorial gains up to the Brenner Pass. But Britain held on to Malta.

Victor Aquilina

Victor Aquilina, a former editor of Times of Malta, is author of Churchill, Malta, and Gibraltar (Kite, 2021).