This is John Batcher, conversation with my colleague Conrad Black, distinguished

biographer National Post columnist, writing about Winston Churchill, the significance of

Churchill and Roosevelt, meeting in the Christmas season of 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor,

after the U.S. had declared war in Japan and Germany and Italy had declared war in the US. Churchill was vital to the defense of Europe.

However, he also became the driving energy to put together the US in concert with Great Britain.

And Roosevelt saw this and the two worked together throughout the war.

Great Britain was the un-sinkable aircraft carrier, where the supplies

and the people would go to open the second front. They knew it right away. This is Conrad Black speaking of how important Churchill was then

and how much we depend upon he and FDR and what they did for all of us, Europe, the United States, the Pacific, it's endless.

That is substantially true.

Look at it for three years approximately the entire future of our civilization

rested on the shoulders of those two men in Churchill and Roosevelt.

I mean, I know Roosevelt's still a controversial figure in the U.S.

But on this point, if he had not been reelected to a third term the only time it's ever been

attempted and Wendell Wilkie's opponent was a very fine man and very pro-British

but they wouldn't have had lend lease and they wouldn't have had the

arrangements that enabled Britain and Canada to continue in the war. So it was

just providential that those two were there at that time.