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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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article by Winston Churchill, which I hope I can find to include in this, which was published by the Saturday Evening Post, in January of 1939, and which was called “Let the Criminal Tyrants Bomb.” Winston Churchill, at the time, realized that England was probably going to have to go to war with Germany and he realized that they had more planes than the English had, but he thought that it didn't matter because he'd seen that in the Spanish War that air power hadn't been decisive. That was largely true because their planes were small and their fire power and bombs were small. At anyrate, he miscalculated the importance of air power at that time, but after the Battle of Britain his point of view changed very much. And it interested me at the time because I had always understood the importance of the development of aviation, had always been interested in it, and that anyone who was so farsighted as to understand that the English and the rest of the world were going to have to fight the Germans in '39--and I remember seeing him in the summer of '39 and seeing people sneer at him and saying, “He's a Cassandra,” and talking a lot of foolishness--but within the year he was responsible for saving Great Britain; his energy and courage really saved, them, I think. But at any rate, in this one essential area, he had made a miscalculation, which seemed curious to me. I have a copy of the article, and I also have a letter from General Eisenhower, to whom it once mentioned it by chance and sent a copy of the article. It's interesting to see what people's points of view were and how they changed.
