Читать книгу Winston Churchill, A Biography - Rene Kraus - Страница 8

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Of course they had heard in London of Winston Churchill’s adventures in the Soudan. The thing that made him most popular was the incident of the Arab baby that he picked up at the capture of Omdurman. The brown dwarf was howling piteously. Evidently he was hungry. A good-natured Lancer tried to thrust a piece of sausage into his mouth. The baby with his five or six teeth was eating no sausage. “Of course not,” said Lieutenant Churchill, who happened to be passing. “Biscuit soaked in water,” he declared with positively maternal authority. He even had a few biscuit with him. The young ladies at home found him charming.

The young gentlemen found him remarkable. They were remarkable young gentlemen themselves: a group of Tory back-benchers who ranged themselves around Lord Hugh Cecil, son of the veteran Prime Minister. They received Churchill amiably into their circle. Later they were all to become his followers, and Lord Hugh was to be his first lieutenant in the struggle against the party machine. For the moment, however, Churchill could not feel quite at home among these suddenly made friends. They were all so much more highly polished. They had all passed their examinations at Oxford and Cambridge with distinction. And all had inherited traditional Conservative constituencies. You could never quite tell what they took seriously, and what they were making fun of. Slavery, for example, they defended as an eminently honorable institution. When Churchill raged against it in the name of the rights of man, the tranquil, worldly-wise Lord Hugh Cecil, who was already twenty-six, mildly said that they were not too much in earnest about slavery. They wanted to give their new friend a work-out, so that he should learn to argue.

Winston Churchill now saw plainly that he simply could not get on in life without the rhetorical learning of Oxford. The moment he got back from the Indian polo tournament he would matriculate. But alas, he learned that in order to do so he must pass entrance examinations, and, worst of all, learn Latin and Greek from the bottom up. When a man had wrestled for years with Cubans and Pathans and howling dervishes, he was too worn out to struggle with irregular verbs. And so he finally crossed Oxford off his agenda. The wound was never quite to heal.

He had now definitely decided to go into politics. At the end of November, barely two months after his return from the Soudan, he sought out the “Skipper,” Mr. Middleton, the Chief Whip of the Conservatives, at St. Stephen’s Chambers. Later he did not get along so well with party managers as on this first visit. Certainly Mr. Middleton would find him a constituency, and hoped to see his young friend soon in Parliament. Both the glorious memory of his great father and his record, which should be particularly popular with the working class, were excellent recommendations. There remained, however, the little matter of money. A candidate must not only pay his own expenses, he must devote some money to his constituency too. Some M.P.s contributed as much as a thousand pounds a year to the local charities, in exchange for the honor of holding the seat. Risky seats, of course, were considerably cheaper.

All at once young Churchill did not like the world he was trying to break into quite so well. But as he was asked to enter his name on the Speakers’ list before he left the Central Offices of the Conservative Party, the sun shone again. He had not dreamed that there was a “Speaker-wanted” book. He had supposed that he would have to go to great trouble, perhaps putting Mamma to work again, in order to make a speech somewhere.

He made his platform debut at Bath before a gathering of the Primrose League, founded by his father. At least it was his official debut, since his rebel speech at the Empire Theatre was not on record. Of course he began with a profession of faith in the Tory Democracy that his father had brought into being. “England would gain far more from the rising tide of Tory Democracy than from the dried-up drainpipe of Radicalism.” The sentence hit the mark. And indeed he had repeated it a hundred times before he dared mount the platform. The speech was a success. The Morning Post even devoted a short leader to the political initiation of their former war correspondent.

The first newspaper article that devoted serious, nay, prophetic, discussion to the new star in the British firmament did not appear until some months later. On the vessel that brought back Winston Churchill from the Indian polo tournament—he had faithfully done his duty, and shared again in the victory of his team—he met G. W. Stevens. This man was the ace reporter of the newly founded Daily Mail, which introduced a new style into English journalism. The sensation sheet came to birth. The old Daily Telegraph, which hitherto had served as printed food for the masses, took on positively Victorian respectability in comparison with the new product. In Mr. Harmsworth’s Daily Mail the world was described in terms of people, not events alone, and the slogan was “Boom the Boomsters!”

G. W. Stevens, an old-timer in the newspaper world, could spot a boomster when he saw one. He had not altogether recovered from the impact of his encounter with Churchill when he told his boss back in London of this writing, adventuring soldier. “Write him up!” Mr. Harmsworth decided. So there appeared the famous article, “The Youngest Man in Europe,” the first biography of Winston Churchill.

It said:

“He is the eldest son of Lord Randolph Churchill, and his mother is an American. Lord Randolph was not so precocious as he was popularly supposed to be, but they begin early in America. From his father he derives the hereditary aptitude for affairs, the grand style of entering upon them. But that inheritance alone would not give him his grip and facility at twenty-three. With us hereditary statesmen and party leaders ripen later. From his American strain he adds to this a keenness, a shrewdness, a half-cynical personal ambition, a natural aptitude for advertisement, and, happily, a sense of humor.... He was born a demagogue, and he happens to know it. At dinner he talks and talks, and you can hardly tell where he leaves off quoting his one idol, Macaulay, and begins with his other, Winston Churchill.

“At the present moment he happens to be a soldier. He may or may not possess the qualities that make a great general, but that question is of no sort of importance. In any case they will never be developed, for, if they exist, they are overshadowed by qualities which make him, almost at will, a great popular leader, a great journalist, or the founder of a great advertising business. What he will become, who can say? At the rate he goes, there will hardly be room for him in Parliament at thirty or in England at forty.”

As a matter of fact Churchill was just thirty when he completed his shift from the Conservatives to the Liberals, and at forty he was a member of the Inner War Cabinet in the first World War.

In the summer of 1899 he was invited to call on Mr. Robert Ashcroft, Conservative member in the House of Commons for Oldham, Lancashire. Oldham was a two-member constituency, and Mr. Ashcroft was looking for a partner for the coming by-election. “I know,” he said, “that young people often do not have as much money as older ones ...” and with this the agreement was concluded.

As it happened, Mr. Ashcroft died a few weeks later. But as it was known in the constituency, which had held him in great respect for years, that he had fixed on Mr. Churchill for his running-mate, the candidature passed almost automatically to the latter. As a partner he was given Mr. James Mawdsley, the secretary of the Operative Spinners’ Association. Mr. Mawdsley was a typical Tory labor man of the old days. His own party, the Conservatives, he argued, were not good for much either. But the Liberals were rogues and swindlers. As things were, Oldham had better go for the Tories.

Oldham was a notoriously fickle constituency. The “Skipper” in the Conservative Central Office congratulated Churchill on his candidacy with the remark that the Government of Lord Salisbury was not particularly popular at the time among the workmen of Lancashire. Better to lose both seats at the by-election, and recapture Oldham in time for the next General Election. At the clubs people were not too well pleased that Lord Randolph’s son had joined forces with a labor representative, a notorious socialist, even if a Blue. But Churchill was enthusiastic. He was always enthusiastic when he was starting into a fight.

When he contested Oldham for the first time he had only a very limited idea of the fights that were to fill his parliamentary life from now on. But he settled into the hard work of electioneering with astonishing speed. Those were the days when the candidates drove from house to house in a landau and pair. First they stopped at the doors of the local magnates, then presented themselves to the committees, the Council and the executive. Then they learned by heart all the figures upon their political home: its industrial interests, its character, its likes and dislikes had to become part of the contestant’s second nature. He must strike precisely the right local note in his election address, shake the hands of the local gentlemen of the press, appear at the Town Hall on nomination day, and smile amiably at the opposing candidate: “The weather is very cold ... very hot, I meant to say ... for this time of the year, isn’t it? By the way, if there is anything I can do for your convenience, pray don’t forget to let me know!”

The opposing candidates for the Liberals were Mr. Emmott, an Oldham grandee whose family had operated many thousands of spindles in the neighborhood for generations, and Mr. Walter Runciman, with whom Churchill was to come into conflict all the rest of his life. When the later Lord Runciman had the chief share in the betrayal of Czechoslovakia, the clash was to be deadly.

Messrs. Emmott and Runciman did indeed plead the cause of the little man, rebelling against the Conservative regime that had already lasted too long; but both were well-to-do representatives of industrial capital. The “Socialist and the Scion,” as the ill-matched pair, the labor man Mawdsley and the heir of the Dukes of Marlborough, soon began to be called, did uphold the ruling order of society. But only with difficulty could they raise among themselves the five hundred pounds that their campaign swallowed up.

The campaign started off at a brisk pace. Labor in Lancashire—the constituency was entirely a working-class district—was prosperous but tough. It was still quite well off. It was still producing the textiles for India, Ireland, Japan. Unfortunately it was also producing the machines with which India, Ireland, Japan, would soon shamefully undercut their own products. Nevertheless they took no particular delight in tax increases. Now it happened that the Government supporting Churchill was just planning the Clerical Tithe Bill, soon rechristened the Clerical Dole Bill by the Opposition, to assure the clergy a minimum livelihood.

Photo from European

CHURCHILL AS A NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT

1898

The by-election in Oldham provided the first opportunity to argue this proposal before the people. By-elections were always a dangerous experiment. Cranks and fanatics gathered from all over the country to let off steam. Oldham enjoyed some wonderful rowdy meetings. On the first occasion the “Scion” was a little startled at the unaccustomed tone of things. But soon he plunged head first into the stream. Even today, when he has a moment free for his memories, Winston Churchill recalls that the rowdy meetings during the fifteen or sixteen contests he has fought through were the best recreation he ever had. They gave him his elixir of life: excitement. You don’t have to make the same old speech. Whereas a long sagacious argument makes the audience yawn, a good answer at a turbulent meeting makes friends by the dozen, even sometimes of the enemy. You must simply take care never to let the smile leave your face. You must remain casual and quite easy, as if you were talking to a single friend in some peaceful place. If an adversary in the audience comes too close, you may throw off your coat like a flash, but in that case it is a good idea to whisper to your party friends at the back of the platform, “Hold me back! Hold me back!”

Unquestionably Churchill allowed his party associates to hold him back from supporting the Clerical Tithe Bill. The temper of the gathering of thrifty small people to whom he was speaking at the moment was obviously against the new expense. His friends on the platform murmured: “Don’t you antagonize ’em!” And so Churchill let go the reform that his own party had proposed.

Hearing of this incident the following morning, Mr. Arthur Balfour, who was just in the process of taking the venerable Lord Salisbury’s place at the head of the Conservative Party, said with a gentle, dangerous smile: “I thought he was a young man of promise. But he seems to be a young man of promises.”

The phrase stuck, and in the middle of the first World War Mr. Balfour was still refusing to give Churchill a seat in a reconstructed coalition Cabinet.

Naturally his Liberal opponent made the best use of the handle that Churchill in his youthful insouciance had given them. “Do you want to vote for a Government whose own candidates do not stand behind its measures?”

Churchill had learned his first political lesson: a Party man must stand for many things he considers wrong or—as in this case—irrelevant. It did nothing to endear the Party system to him.

Polling Day approached. From early morning on the candidates circulated and meandered among the polling-booths and committee-rooms. One more despairing smile here and a beseeching handshake there. By nine o’clock all was over. Churchill was defeated by 1300 votes. His socialist running-mate was thirty votes behind him. Odd, but the first sign of encouragement after the defeat came from Mr. Balfour, of all people. Politics at that time was still a gentlemanly sport. A friendly note bridged even a personal disappointment. “I was very sorry to hear of your ill-success,” Mr. Balfour wrote on July 10, 1899, “as I had greatly hoped to see you speedily in the House where your father and I fought many a good battle side by side in days gone by ... Never mind, it will all come all right and this small reverse will have no permanent ill effect upon your political fortunes.”

The great Joe Chamberlain, whom Churchill met two weeks later at the house of Lady Jeune, did not waste a word on the mishap. Cool and highly polished as the man looked, as if he had never had a worry in the world, he had worked his way up far too painfully, and reached the top by much too close a margin, to be upset by an early failure of a friend.

Deep in animated conversation the two, imperialist and beginner, cruised in a launch along the Thames. Chamberlain talked of nothing but Great Britain. The man who is building a world empire has no second interest. And for that matter, the moment was far too serious. The negotiations with President Kruger down in South Africa were not getting forward. Tensely the whole world watched London: Would the English strike?

The great Chamberlain was at once an activist and a realist. “It is no use blowing the trumpet for the charge and then looking round to find nobody following!” he said. Just then his glance, which usually seemed to hide in unconcern behind the gold-rimmed monocle, fell upon the boyish face opposite. Here was a young officer who would follow when the trumpet blew for the charge.

The two shook hands. Neither knew that this handshake was the beginning of a relationship whose stress and intensity would one day throw the whole Empire into turmoil.