Chapter 6

When at last he arrived in Lorenzo Marques he at once sought out the English Consul, who, after first mistaking him for a stoker from one of the ships in the harbor, gave him a drink, a bath, and a dinner.

As good luck would have it, the _Induna_ was leaving that night for Durban, and, escorted by a body-guard of English residents armed with revolvers, and who were taking no chances of his recapture by the Boer agents, he was placed safely on board. Two days later he arrived at Durban, where he was received by the Mayor, the populace, and a brass band playing: “Britons Never, Never, Never shall be Slaves!”

For the next month Churchill was bombarded by letters and telegrams from every part of the globe, some invited him to command filibustering expeditions, others sent him woollen comforters, some forwarded photographs of himself to be signed, others photographs of themselves, possibly to be admired, others sent poems, and some bottles of whiskey.

One admirer wrote: “My congratulations on your wonderful and glorious deeds, which will send such a thrill of pride and enthusiasm through Great Britain and the United States of America, that the Anglo-Saxon race will be irresistible.”

Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible might turn the head of a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also sent him, from London, reading:

“Best friends here hope you won’t go making further ass of yourself.

“McNEILL.”

One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this cablegram, and Churchill was delighted to find that it must have cost the man who sent it five pounds.

On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air, Churchill took the first train to “the front,” then at Colenso. Another man might have lingered. After a month’s imprisonment and the hardships of the escape, he might have been excused for delaying twenty-four hours to taste the sweets of popularity and the flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel. But if the reader has followed this brief biography he will know that to have done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic of Churchill’s to get on to the next thing explains his success. He has no time to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.

As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until the relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. He was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the war with another medal and clasps for six battles.

On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book on the war, and in October at the general election as a “khaki” candidate, as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham. This time, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals one of Oldham’s two seats. He had been defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected by a majority of two hundred and twenty-seven.

The few months that intervened between his election and the opening of the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour at home, and in the United States and Canada. His subject was the war and his escape from Pretoria.

When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathy with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they supposed would be a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without asking permission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill’s first appearance in various cities, different reception committees.

Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for these committees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that while for Churchill, personally, they held every respect, they objected to being used to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration.

While this was no fault of Churchill’s, who, until he reached this country knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the success of his tour the best kind of advance work.

During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller’s force, Churchill and I had again been together, and later when I joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with which he was a correspondent had chased the army with which I was a correspondent, forty miles. I had been one of those who refused to act on his reception committee, and he had come to this country with a commission from twenty brother officers to shoot me on sight. But in his lecture he was using the photographs I had taken of the scene of his escape, and which I had sent him from Pretoria as a souvenir, and when he arrived I was at the hotel to welcome him, and that same evening three hours after midnight he came, in a blizzard, pounding at our door for food and drink. What is a little thing like a war between friends?

During his “tour,” except of hotels, parlor-cars, and “Lyceums,” he saw very little of this country or of its people, and they saw very little of him. On the trip, which lasted about two months, he cleared ten thousand dollars. This, to a young man almost entirely dependent for an income upon his newspaper work and the sale of his books, nearly repaid him for the two months of “one night stands.” On his return to London he took his seat in the new Parliament.

It was a coincidence that he entered Parliament at the same age as did his father. With two other members, one born six days earlier than himself, he enjoyed the distinction of being among the three youngest members of the new House.

The fact did not seem to appall him. In the House it is a tradition that young and ambitious members sit “below” the gangway; the more modest and less assured are content to place themselves “above” it, at a point farthest removed from the leaders.

On the day he was sworn in there was much curiosity to see where Churchill would elect to sit. In his own mind there was apparently no doubt. After he had taken the oath, signed his name, and shaken the hand of the Speaker, without hesitation he seated himself on the bench next to the Ministry. Ten minutes later, so a newspaper of the day describes it, he had cocked his hat over his eyes, shoved his hands into his trousers pockets, and was lolling back eying the veterans of the House with critical disapproval.

His maiden speech was delivered in May, 1901, in reply to David Lloyd George, who had attacked the conduct of British soldiers in South Africa. Churchill defended them, and in a manner that from all sides gained him honest admiration. In the course of the debate he produced and read a strangely apropos letter which, fifteen years before, had been written by his father to Lord Salisbury. His adroit use of this filled H. W. Massingham, the editor of the _Daily News_, with enthusiasm. Nothing in parliamentary tactics, he declared, since Mr. Gladstone died, had been so clever. He proclaimed that Churchill would be Premier. John Dillon, the Nationalist leader, said he never before had seen a young man, by means of his maiden effort, spring into the front rank of parliamentary speakers. He promised that the Irish members would ungrudgingly testify to his ability and honesty of purpose. Among others to at once recognize the rising star was T. P. O’Connor, himself for many years of the parliamentary firmament one of the brightest stars. In _M. A. P._ he wrote: “I am inclined to think that the dash of American blood which he has from his mother has been an improvement on the original stock, and that Mr. Winston Churchill may turn out to be a stronger and abler politician than his father.”

It was all a part of Churchill’s “luck” that when he entered Parliament the subject in debate was the conduct of the war.

Even in those first days of his career in the House, in debates where angels feared to tread, he did not hesitate to rush in, but this subject was one on which he spoke with knowledge. Over the older men who were forced to quote from hearsay or from what they had read, Churchill had the tremendous advantage of being able to protest: “You only read of that. I was there. I saw it.”

In the House he became at once one of the conspicuous and picturesque figures, one dear to the heart of the caricaturist, and one from the strangers’ gallery most frequently pointed out. He was called “the spoiled child of the House,” and there were several distinguished gentlemen who regretted they were forced to spare the rod. Broderick, the Secretary for War, was one of these. Of him and of his recruits in South Africa, Churchill spoke with the awful frankness of the _enfant terrible_. And although he addressed them more with sorrow than with anger, to Balfour and Chamberlain he daily administered advice and reproof, while mere generals and field-marshals, like Kitchener and Roberts, blushing under new titles, were held up for public reproof and briefly but severely chastened. Nor, when he saw Lord Salisbury going astray, did he hesitate in his duty to the country, but took the Prime Minister by the hand and gently instructed him in the way he should go.

This did not tend to make him popular, but in spite of his unpopularity, in his speeches against national extravagancies he made so good a fight that he forced the Government, unwillingly, to appoint a committee to investigate the need of economy. For a beginner this was a distinct triumph.

With Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Percy, Ian Malcolm, and other clever young men, he formed inside the Conservative Party a little group that in its obstructive and independent methods was not unlike the Fourth Party of his father. From its leader and its filibustering, guerilla-like tactics the men who composed it were nicknamed the “Hughligans.” The Hughligans were the most active critics of the Ministry and of all in their own party, and as members of the Free Food League they bitterly attacked the fiscal proposals of Mr. Chamberlain. When Balfour made Chamberlain’s fight for fair trade, or for what virtually was protection, a measure of the Conservatives, the lines of party began to break, and men were no longer Conservatives or Liberals, but Protectionists or Free Traders.

Against this Churchill daily protested, against Chamberlain, against his plan, against that plan being adopted by the Tory Party. By tradition, by inheritance, by instinct, Churchill was a Tory.

“I am a Tory,” he said, “and I have as much right in the party as has anybody else, certainly as much as certain people from Birmingham. They can’t turn us out, and we, the Tory Free Traders, have as much right to dictate the policy of the Conservative Party as have any reactionary Fair Traders.” In 1904 the Conservative Party already recognized Churchill as one working outside the breastworks. Just before the Easter vacation of that year, when he rose to speak a remarkable demonstration was made against him by his Unionist colleagues, all of them rising and leaving the House.

To the Liberals who remained to hear him he stated that if to his constituents his opinions were obnoxious, he was ready to resign his seat. It then was evident he would go over to the Liberal Party. Some thought he foresaw which way the tidal wave was coming, and to being slapped down on the beach and buried in the sand, he preferred to be swept forward on its crest. Others believed he left the Conservatives because he could not honestly stomach the taxed food offered by Mr. Chamberlain.

In any event, if he were to be blamed for changing from one party to the other, he was only following the distinguished example set him by Gladstone, Disraeli, Harcourt, and his own father.

It was at the time of this change that he was called “the best hated man in England,” but the Liberals welcomed him gladly, and the National Liberal Club paid him the rare compliment of giving in his honor a banquet. There were present two hundred members. Up to that time this dinner was the most marked testimony to his importance in the political world. It was about then, a year since, that he prophesied: “Within nine months there will come such a tide and deluge as will sweep through England and Scotland, and completely wash out and effect a much-needed spring cleaning in Downing Street.”

When the deluge came, at Manchester, Mr. Balfour was defeated, and Churchill was victorious, and when the new Government was formed the tidal wave landed Churchill in the office of Under-Secretary for the Colonies.

While this is being written the English papers say that within a month he again will be promoted. For this young man of thirty the only promotion remaining is a position in the Cabinet, in which august body men of fifty are considered young.

His is a picturesque career. Of any man of his few years speaking our language, his career is probably the most picturesque. And that he is half an American gives all of us an excuse to pretend we share in his successes.

CAPTAIN PHILO NORTON McGIFFIN

IN the Chinese-Japanese War the battle of the Yalu was the first battle fought between warships of modern make, and, except on paper, neither the men who made them nor the men who fought them knew what the ships could do, or what they might not do. For years every naval power had been building these new engines of war, and in the battle which was to test them the whole world was interested. But in this battle Americans had a special interest, a human, family interest, for the reason that one of the Chinese squadron, which was matched against some of the same vessels of Japan which lately swept those of Russia from the sea, was commanded by a young graduate of the American Naval Academy. This young man, who, at the time of the battle of the Yalu, was thirty-three years old, was Captain Philo Norton McGiffin. So it appears that five years before our fleet sailed to victory in Manila Bay another graduate of Annapolis, and one twenty years younger than in 1898 was Admiral Dewey, had commanded in action a modern battleship, which, in tonnage, in armament, and in the number of the ships’ company, far outclassed Dewey’s _Olympia_.

McGiffin, who was born on December 13, 1860, came of fighting stock. Back in Scotland the family is descended from the Clan MacGregor and the Clan MacAlpine.

“These are Clan-Alpine’s warriors true, And, Saxon--I am Roderick Dhu.”

McGiffin’s great-grandfather, born in Scotland, emigrated to this country and settled in “Little Washington,” near Pittsburg, Pa. In the Revolutionary War he was a soldier. Other relatives fought in the War of 1812, one of them holding a commission as major. McGiffin’s own father was Colonel Norton McGiffin, who served in the Mexican War, and in the Civil War was Lieutenant-Colonel of the Eighty-fifth Pennsylvania Volunteers. So McGiffin inherited his love for arms.

In Washington he went to the high school and at the Washington Jefferson College had passed through his freshman year. But the honors that might accrue to him if he continued to live on in the quiet and pretty old town of Washington did not tempt him. To escape into the world he wrote his Congressman, begging him to obtain for him an appointment to Annapolis. The Congressman liked the letter, and wrote Colonel McGiffin to ask if the application of his son had his approval. Colonel McGiffin was willing, and in 1877 his son received his commission as cadet midshipman. I knew McGiffin only as a boy with whom in vacation time I went coon hunting in the woods outside of Washington. For his age he was a very tall boy, and in his midshipman undress uniform, to my youthful eyes, appeared a most bold and adventurous spirit.

At Annapolis his record seems to show he was pretty much like other boys. According to his classmates, with all of whom I find he was very popular, he stood high in the practical studies, such as seamanship, gunnery, navigation, and steam engineering, but in all else he was near the foot of the class, and in whatever escapade was risky and reckless he was always one of the leaders. To him discipline was extremely irksome. He could maintain it among others, but when it applied to himself it bored him. On the floor of the Academy building on which was his room there was a pyramid of cannon balls--relics of the War of 1812. They stood at the head of the stairs, and one warm night, when he could not sleep, he decided that no one else should do so, and, one by one, rolled the cannon balls down the stairs. They tore away the banisters and bumped through the wooden steps and leaped off into the lower halls. For any one who might think of ascending to discover the motive power back of the bombardment they were extremely dangerous. But an officer approached McGiffin in the rear, and, having been caught in the act, he was sent to the prison ship. There he made good friends with his jailer, an old man-of-warsman named “Mike.” He will be remembered by many naval officers who as midshipmen served on the _Santee_. McGiffin so won over Mike that when he left the ship he carried with him six charges of gunpowder. These he loaded into the six big guns captured in the Mexican War, which lay on the grass in the centre of the Academy grounds, and at midnight on the eve of July 1st he fired a salute. It aroused the entire garrison, and for a week the empty window frames kept the glaziers busy.

About 1878 or 1879 there was a famine in Ireland. The people of New York City contributed provisions for the sufferers, and to carry the supplies to Ireland the Government authorized the use of the old _Constellation_. At the time the voyage was to begin each cadet was instructed to consider himself as having been placed in command of the _Constellation_ and to write a report on the preparations made for the voyage, on the loading of the vessel, and on the distribution of the stores. This exercise was intended for the instruction of the cadets; first in the matter of seamanship and navigation, and second in making official reports. At that time it was a very difficult operation to get a gun out of the port of a vessel where the gun was on a covered deck. To do this the necessary tackles had to be rigged from the yard-arm and the yard and mast properly braced and stayed, and then the lower block of the tackle carried in through the gun port, which, of course, gave the fall a very bad reeve. The first part of McGiffin’s report dealt with a new method of dismounting the guns and carrying them through the gun ports, and so admirable was his plan, so simple and ingenious, that it was used whenever it became necessary to dismount a gun from one of the old sailing ships. Having, however, offered this piece of good work, McGiffin’s report proceeded to tell of the division of the ship into compartments that were filled with a miscellaneous assortment of stores, which included the old “fifteen puzzles,” at that particular time very popular. The report terminated with a description of the joy of the famished Irish as they received the puzzle-boxes. At another time the cadets were required to write a report telling of the suppression of the insurrection on the Isthmus of Panama. McGiffin won great praise for the military arrangements and disposition of his men, but, in the same report, he went on to describe how he armed them with a new gun known as Baines’s Rhetoric and told of the havoc he wrought in the enemy’s ranks when he fired these guns loaded with similes and metaphors and hyperboles.

Of course, after each exhibition of this sort he was sent to the _Santee_ and given an opportunity to meditate.

On another occasion, when one of the instructors lectured to the cadets, he required them to submit a written statement embodying all that they could recall of what had been said at the lecture. One of the rules concerning this report provided that there should be no erasures or interlineations, but that when mistakes were made the objectionable or incorrect expressions should be included within parentheses; and that the matter so enclosed within parentheses would not be considered a part of the report. McGiffin wrote an excellent _resume_ of the lecture, but he interspersed through it in parentheses such words as “applause,” “cheers,” “cat-calls,” and “groans,” and as these words were enclosed within parentheses he insisted that they did not count, and made a very fair plea that he ought not to be punished for words which slipped in by mistake, and which he had officially obliterated by what he called oblivion marks.

He was not always on mischief bent. On one occasion, when the house of a professor caught fire, McGiffin ran into the flames and carried out two children, for which act he was commended by the Secretary of the Navy.

It was an act of Congress that determined that the career of McGiffin should be that of a soldier of fortune. This was a most unjust act, which provided that only as many midshipmen should receive commissions as on the warships there were actual vacancies. In those days, in 1884, our navy was very small. To-day there is hardly a ship having her full complement of officers, and the difficulty is not to get rid of those we have educated, but to get officers to educate. To the many boys who, on the promise that they would be officers of the navy, had worked for four years at the Academy and served two years at sea, the act was most unfair. Out of a class of about ninety, only the first twelve were given commissions and the remaining eighty turned adrift upon the uncertain seas of civil life. As a sop, each was given one thousand dollars.

McGiffin was not one of the chosen twelve. In the final examinations on the list he was well toward the tail. But without having studied many things, and without remembering the greater part of them, no one graduates from Annapolis, even last on the list; and with his one thousand dollars in cash, McGiffin had also this six years of education at what was then the best naval college in the world. This was his only asset--his education--and as in his own country it was impossible to dispose of it, for possible purchasers he looked abroad.

At that time the Tong King war was on between France and China, and he decided, before it grew rusty, to offer his knowledge to the followers of the Yellow Dragon. In those days that was a hazard of new fortunes that meant much more than it does now. To-day the East is as near as San Francisco; the Japanese-Russian War, our occupation of the Philippines, the part played by our troops in the Boxer trouble, have made the affairs of China part of the daily reading of every one. Now, one can step into a brass bed at Forty-second Street and in four days at the Coast get into another brass bed, and in twelve more be spinning down the Bund of Yokohama in a rickshaw. People go to Japan for the winter months as they used to go to Cairo.

But in 1885 it was no such light undertaking, certainly not for a young man who had been brought up in the quiet atmosphere of an inland town, where generations of his family and other families had lived and intermarried, content with their surroundings.

With very few of his thousand dollars left him, McGiffin arrived in February, 1885, in San Francisco. From there his letters to his family give one the picture of a healthy, warm-hearted youth, chiefly anxious lest his mother and sister should “worry.” In our country nearly every family knows that domestic tragedy when the son and heir “breaks home ties,” and starts out to earn a living; and if all the world loves a lover, it at least sympathizes with the boy who is “looking for a job.” The boy who is looking for the job may not think so, but each of those who has passed through the same hard place gives him, if nothing else, his good wishes. McGiffin’s letters at this period gain for him from those who have had the privilege to read them the warmest good feeling.