Churchill's Empire: The World That Made Him and the World He Made (15 page)

Moreover, far from being strikingly radical, Churchill’s position was little removed from that of the British government. As the war opened, Chamberlain denounced the treatment of the non-white population of the Transvaal as ‘brutal’, ‘disgraceful’ and ‘unworthy’.
⁵³
However, the Treaty of Vereeniging that brought it to a close guaranteed that the question of extending the franchise to non-whites would be left to the Boers to decide after they achieved the promised self-rule under British sovereignty. This, of course, disposed of any notion that the war had been fought in the interests of racial equality: the British authorities paid lip service to the idea, but in the end they prioritized appeasing the Boers in order to end the war as soon as possible. In their view it was unfortunate if, having been granted self-government, the local white rulers of British territories maltreated other races, but only a limited amount could be done about it. ‘We have got in some cases to put up with those things’, said Churchill regretfully as a Liberal minister in 1906.
⁵⁴

Churchill’s disapproval of Boer racial attitudes was not sufficiently strong to undermine his growing respect for his captors. ‘The Boers were the most humane people where white men were concerned’, he recalled in
My Early Life
. Their treatment of ‘Kaffirs’ notwithstanding, they were ‘the most good-hearted enemy’ against which he had ever fought.
⁵⁵
According to Haldane, the ‘plain-speaking, ignorant’ Boers with whom Churchill argued vociferously about the war, ‘somewhat shook his faith, and certainly gained his sympathy’.
⁵⁶
This did not mean that his belief in the justice of the war was dented. Rather, it reinforced his existing belief that the Boers should be treated magnanimously in defeat. (Before the war he had written that the military blow against the Transvaal ‘must be stunning; afterwards we may be generous’.)
⁵⁷
Imprisoned along with around sixty British officers in the States Model School in Pretoria, he wrote a letter to his American friend Bourke Cockran in which he explained why he did not support the Boers. ‘Perhaps I do sympathise with their love of freedom and pride of race’, he said, but added that to him British imperial self-preservation seemed to involve ‘a bigger principle’ than either of these things.
⁵⁸
(He thus elevated realpolitik into a principle.) Churchill wanted to send telegrams to the
Morning Post
, raising the suspicions of the Boers. J. W. B. Gunning, a camp administrator, believed that one of his draft messages was intended to encourage Britain to send more troops. ‘This he showed clearly during a[n] excited stupid conversation with me yesterday evening’, Gunning reported, adding, ‘I don’t trust that little man’.
⁵⁹
Permission to send that telegram was refused.
⁶⁰

Even though Churchill’s sympathy towards his captors gradually increased, his determination to get out of their hands was not in any way diminished. After his attempts to persuade the authorities to release him as a non-combatant failed – his efforts to defend the armoured train had called that status into question – he determined to break free. Several aspects of his escape on 12 December have caused controversy, but not on the whole deservedly. One of the most significant allegations is that, having originally made a plan with Haldane and another prisoner, he impetuously slipped over the wall without waiting for his colleagues, jeopardizing the other men’s chances of escape. After years of brooding, Haldane – who himself escaped later by another method – concluded, ‘Had Churchill only possessed the moral courage to admit that, in the excitement of the moment, he saw a chance of escape and could not resist the temptation to take advantage of it, not realizing that it would compromise the escape of his companions, all would have been well.’
⁶¹
In other words, the brunt of Haldane’s criticism was directed not at Churchill’s behaviour at the time of the escape, but rather at his subsequent somewhat self-righteous efforts at self-justification. A perhaps more serious charge was levelled in the
Manchester Guardian
a few weeks after the British capture of Pretoria in June 1900. A journalist reported: ‘I gather from private letters written by one of the released officers that considerable resentment was felt at Mr Winston Churchill’s publication of the full details of his escape, as thereby others among the imprisoned officers who had hoped to avail themselves of the same means of escape were prevented from doing so by reason of the extra precautions taken.’
⁶²
Doubtless some new precautions would have been taken anyway, and it is impossible to say whether or not publication did harm anyone else’s chances. Nevertheless, it was surely a little foolhardy, and yet for some reason this particular criticism never achieved the wide currency that others did.

Once he was over the wall, Churchill accomplished the next phase of his escape by hopping onto a moving goods train. He jumped off before dawn, in order to find a hiding-place until dark fell again. The next night, however, there were no trains. Churchill stumbled on on foot and at last found refuge at a colliery that, luckily for him, was managed by a Britisher, John Howard. With the assistance of Howard and other sympathizers, Churchill hid down the mine for a few days before boarding a train for Lourenço Marques in Portuguese East Africa, where he identified himself to the British Consul. ‘I am very weak but I am free’, he wrote in a telegram to the
Morning Post
. ‘I have lost many pounds in weight but I am lighter in heart.’
⁶³
He then headed to Durban by steamer, where he arrived two days before Christmas and was greeted as a hero by the crowds. His escapade provided British loyalists with a point of light in the aftermath of ‘Black Week’ which had seen major Boer victories at Stormberg, Magersfontein and Colenso. In a pair of impromptu speeches he warned, ‘We are in the midst of a fierce struggle with [a] vast military power’ which was ‘resolved at all costs to gratify its reckless ambition by beating the British out of South Africa’. He promised, though, ‘With the determination of a great Empire surrounded by colonies of unprecedented loyalty we shall carry our policy to a successful conclusion’.
⁶⁴
‘I was received as if I had won a great victory’, he later recalled, adding: ‘Youth seeks Adventure. Journalism requires Advertisement. Certainly I had found both. I became for the time quite famous.’
⁶⁵

III

Churchill was by no means sanguine about the progress of the war, and revealed to journalists the Boers’ conviction that they would drive the British into the sea.
⁶⁶
In a telegram to the
Morning Post
he warned that one Boer fighter, in the right conditions, was equal to three to five regular British soldiers. He claimed presciently that 250,000 more men were needed, arguing that South Africa was ‘well worth the cost in blood and money’. Calling for more volunteers, he asked sarcastically, ‘Are the gentlemen of England all fox-hunting?’
⁶⁷
His family, for its part, undoubtedly did its bit. He himself secured a temporary commission in the South African Light Horse but was allowed nonetheless to continue acting as a correspondent. His brother Jack received a commission in the same regiment and when he was wounded in February 1900 he was one of the first patients of the hospital ship
Maine
, the nursing team of which Lady Randolph was managing. She had recently caused more than a few eyebrows to be raised by becoming engaged to George Cornwallis-West, an officer in the Scots Guards who was only a couple of weeks older than Churchill. Cornwallis-West had already been serving in the war but had to return home in the
Maine
after contracting enteric fever; his marriage to Lady Randolph, which subsequently broke down, took place in July.
⁶⁸
Later, Churchill was joined by his cousin, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, known as ‘Sunny’. Meanwhile Churchill’s aunt, Lady Sarah Wilson (Lord Randolph’s sister) was acting as a correspondent for the
Daily Mail
.

Churchill owed permission to revive his dual soldier–journalist role to General Sir Redvers Buller, the commander of operations in Natal. After the Sudan War – not least with Churchill’s own activities in mind – the War Office had forbidden combatants to act as correspondents and vice versa, but he was granted a unique dispensation from the new rule. Churchill’s position, of course, made it difficult for him to publicly attack Buller’s inept conduct. In private he was scathing, writing that were he to begin to criticize Buller he would never stop. Yet given that there was no plausible figure to take the General’s place, he argued, he had to be backed for all he was worth, ‘which at this moment is very little’.
⁶⁹
So, when Buller’s ponderous attempts to relieve Ladysmith met a major setback at the end of January at the Battle of Spion Kop – British troops captured this key summit only to beat an ignominious retreat – Churchill insisted the defeat was not a catastrophe. Rather it was ‘simply a bloody action, in which was effected a lodgement in the enemy’s entrenchments that proved untenable’.
⁷⁰
(A few months later, back in England, he admitted it had in fact been a disaster.)
⁷¹
At the time, Churchill did maintain a reputation as an outspoken figure, which was by no means wholly unjustified. One officer of his acquaintance noted: ‘He is an awfully good little chap, & will undoubtedly make his mark, but not I think a very big one, as he has little power of self restraint – if he is thirsty he
must
drink – if he has nothing to talk about, he still
must
talk – the same with his writing.’
⁷²
All the same, some other journalists were at times prepared to go further than Churchill did. In April one of
The Times
’s correspondents (possibly Leo Amery) wrote, ‘Our generals, regimental officers, and soldiers are all brave, none braver, but it is useless to shirk the fact that the majority of them are stupid.’
⁷³
This, commented
Reynolds’s Newspaper
, ‘out-Churchills Mr Winston Churchill’; indeed, Churchill himself was critical of such attacks.
⁷⁴

Churchill did ruffle some feathers himself, however, as a long-forgotten episode demonstrates. At the end of February, Ladysmith was relieved at last. Churchill gave a dramatic description of the British column’s ride towards the town, and of how a ‘score of tattered men’ came running from the trenches and rifle pits to meet it, some crying, some cheering, all pale and thin.
⁷⁵
The next evening Sir George White, who had led the defence against the siege, granted him an interview. White had been much criticized for allowing his men to be trapped in Ladysmith in the first place. ‘He spoke with some bitterness of the attacks which had been made on him in the newspapers, and of the attempts of the War Office to supersede him, attempts which Sir Redvers Buller had prevented’, noted Churchill.
⁷⁶
This appeared to reveal an intrigue against a man now regarded in Britain – if not amongst his colleagues – as an authentic imperial hero. It was claimed that the War Office had tried to make White a scapegoat for its own blunders.
⁷⁷
White described Churchill’s report as ‘mischievous’ – he appears to have thought he had been having a private conversation – but he pointedly refused to repudiate the comments ascribed to him.
⁷⁸
Perhaps realizing he had been indiscreet, Churchill edited out the phrase about the War Office when his despatches were published in his
London to Ladysmith, via Pretoria
.
⁷⁹

The fighting in Natal now died down as the Boers retreated, and Churchill tried to get moved to a more eventful theatre. While awaiting permission for a transfer, he developed his opinions on how the Boers should be treated after the war. After his escape he had emphasized that his new-found respect for the ‘manly virtues’ of the Boers did not at all reduce his belief in the necessity of fighting them, which was essential for the sake of
British
manhood.
⁸⁰
However, in contrast to the prevailing opinion, he did not favour revenge against the enemy once they had been defeated. In late March he outlined his views in a telegram to the
Morning Post
and a letter to the
Natal Witness
. The pursuit of an ‘eye for an eye’ attitude would lead to the war being prolonged into a lengthy guerrilla phase, he argued. ‘Peace and happiness can only come to South Africa through the fusion and concord of the Dutch and British races, who must forever live side by side under the supremacy of Britain.’
⁸¹
He had genuinely gone out on a limb here. Although the
Manchester Guardian
praised his ‘rare logic and commonsense’, his views were predictably unpopular with British colonists in South Africa.
⁸²
The war correspondent of the
Chronicle
wrote sardonically of how the ‘apparition of a real member of the aristocracy like Mr Winston Churchill advocating clemency has startled them out of their wits’.
⁸³
The
Freeman’s Journal
claimed, improbably, that Churchill’s comments had put his life at risk.
⁸⁴
‘Winston is being severely criticised about his Peaceful telegrams – and everyone here in Natal is going against his views’, wrote his brother in a letter to Lady Randolph. ‘They say that even if you are going to treat these Boers well after their surrender, this is not the time to say so.’
⁸⁵
The latter point would also be impressed upon Churchill by Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner, as they lunched together below Table Mountain a few months later. But Milner was sympathetic to Churchill’s views and he won, if only for the time being, the younger man’s loyalty.