September 26, 2013

Finest Hour 104, Autumn 1999

Page 28

BY MICHAEL MCMENAMIN

One hundred years ago:

Autumn 1899-Age 25

“World Famous Overnight”

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Autumn 1899 began with war correspondent Churchill traveling by ship to South Africa to report on the AngloBoer War. It ended with escaped prisoner Churchill traveling by train surreptitiously out of South Africa into Portuguese East Africa. In between these two journeys, Churchill became famous throughout the world.

Churchill had accompanied an armored train which was ambushed by the Boers on its way to Ladysmith. While technically a non-combatant, he had been armed with his Mauser pistol and had volunteered his services to the train’s commander, Captain Aylmer Haldane, after the train came under fire. Several rail cars had been derailed by Boer artillery, preventing the engine from retreating to safety. Under constant machine gun and technically a non-combatant, he had been armed with his Mauser pistol and had volunteered his services to the train’s commander, Captain Aylmer Haldane, after the train came under fire. Several rail cars had been derailed by Boer artillery, preventing the engine from retreating to safety. Under constant machine gun and artillery fire from the Boers, Churchill directed the clearing of the line, helped load wounded onto the engine’s tender and then accompanied the engine to safety at Frere Station. After doing so, he returned on foot to the action to assist the remaining wounded and was captured. The driver of the train was quoted in contemporary accounts as saying of Churchill that “there is not a braver gentleman in the army.” One wounded officer whom Churchill helped lead to safety called him “as brave a man as could be found.”

Brave, but forgetful. In returning to help the wounded, Churchill had left his Mauser on the engine, so that he was unarmed when confronted by a Boer rifleman on a horse. Churchill described the moment of his capture in My Early Life:

I thought there was absolutely no chance of escape, if he fired he would surely hit me, so I held up my hands and surrendered myself a prisoner of war. “When one is alone and unarmed,” said the great Napoleon, in words which flowed into my mind in the poignant minutes that followed, “a surrender may be pardoned.”

Unfortunately for Churchill, his daring exploits in rescuing the train were widely reported in the press by his fellow correspondents, undermining his efforts to persuade the Boers to release him on the grounds that he was a non-combatant. Churchill claimed in a letter to the Boer Secretary of State for War that he had taken “no part in the defence of the armoured train” and was “quite unarmed.” The Boers weren’t fooled. They read the newspapers too. Contemporary correspondence from South African government officials gave Winston complete credit for the train’s escape:

…but for [Churchill’s] presence on the train, not a single Englishman or solider would have escaped. After the train was forced to a standstill the officers and men would definitely have fallen into enemy hands had he not directed proceedings in such a clever and thorough way, whilst walking alongside the engine, that die train together with its load escaped capture.

Having failed in his efforts to secure his release voluntarily, Churchill determined to escape. He joined a plot conceived by Captain Haldane and a British sergeant who spoke Afrikaans and a native language. The plan was to escape through the window of a latrine. Churchill was the first out the window and over the wall. He was also the only one to make it, because patrolling sentries made it impossible for the other two. After waiting an hour and a half and conversing with Haldane through the latrine window, Churchill determined to go it alone and, as he later described it, “got up without any attempt at concealment and walked straight out at the gate” into the streets of Pretoria.

Churchill’s escape made headlines around the world and one Boer official posted a £25 reward for him “dead or alive.” He had walked through Pretoria unrecognized until he came to the railway leading to Portuguese East Africa and hopped aboard the train, concealing himself beneath empty coal bags. Churchill was lucky to make it as far as Witbank, 75 miles from Pretoria and still 200 miles from the frontier. He was luckier still to happen upon the house of John Howard, British manager of coal mines in Witbank, who hid him in one of the mines and engaged the local storekeeper, Charles Burnham, to smuggle him by train out of the country concealed in a consignment of cotton bales Burnham was shipping to Delagoa Bay, Portuguese East Africa. He made it across the border 21 December and to Durban by the 23rd. His son wrote in the Official Biography, “Churchill arrived to find that he had become world-famous overnight….”

Seventy-five years ago:

Autumn 1924* Age 50

“This Fulfills My Ambition”

In October Churchill returned to the campaign trail, standing for a seat at Epping as a “Constitutionalist,” but giving “wholehearted support” to the Conservative Party. During the campaign, he attacked the Socialist government’s proposal to loan the Soviet Union £40 million: “Why should we do that? During the war we lent Russia £600 millions when they were fighting bravely on our side, but the Bolshevists, when they made the revolution, deserted the Allied cause and repudiated the debt. At the same time they stole £120 millions of British property in Russia, and we are at present whistling for our money….But it is not only a question of money—it is a question of honour. Russia is a tyranny, the vilest tyranny that ever existed. The great mass of the Russian people are gripped by a gang of cosmopolitan adventurers, who have settled down on the country like vultures and are tearing it to pieces.”

On October 29th Churchill returned to Parliament with a substantial majority. The Conservative Party won in a landslide, 419 seats against 151 for Labour. As a consequence, Churchill wrote to a friend, “I think it is very likely that I shall not be invited to join the Government, as owing to the size of its majority it will probably be composed only of impeccable Conservatives.”

Churchill was wrong, however, and the man he had attacked in strong personal terms only a year earlier, now Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, invited him to join the government as Chancellor of the Exchequer: the second-highest post in the government. Churchill readily accepted, telling Baldwin, “This fulfills my ambition. I still have my father’s robe as Chancellor. I shall be proud to serve you in this splendid Office.” The appointment was not well received by the Conservative Party. The Times was critical and Austen Chamberlain said in a letter to Baldwin, “I am alarmed at the news that you have made Winston Chancellor, not because I do not wish Winston well but because I fear that this particular appointment will be a great shock to the Party.”

Churchill promptly produced a budget, which included substantial tax reforms, notably lower income taxes. He strongly opposed the Admiralty’s request of over £27 million to be spent for the construction of new ships, ridiculing the claim that this was necessary to prepare for a possible war with Japan: “A war with Japan! But why should there be a war with Japan? I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime.”

Fifty years ago:

Autumn 1949 • Age 75

“Chickenham Palace”

Churchill was still recuperating from the minor stroke he had suffered while on holiday in France. He continued to work on his war memoirs, submitting draft chapters for comment to a wide variety of people including his wife, Clementine, who told him one night at dinner: “…I hope you will pay some attention to the little notes I have made in the margins. You must make a great many changes. I got so tired of the endless detail about unimportant battles and incidents. So much of the material is pedestrian.”

Kept informed by Prime Minister Clement Attlee of significant defense and foreign policy developments, Churchill privately gave advice, writing Attlee: “A defenceless Britain can play no part in the defence of Europe. Her power to help in the past has arisen from an integral, insular security. If this falls, all falls. If it endures, all may be defended or regained. Mere contributions, however generous, to European schemes of defence will be useful to Europe if Britain is herself no longer a living military entity. It is not isolationism to set this first objective first. On the contrary it is the only foundation upon which effective help can be given to Europe and to other parts of the Empire.”

By mid-December, Churchill went to Chartwell where one of his guests, Sir Archibald Sinclair, later wrote about his visit: “Clemmie was younger, more active and agile in supervising everything, more exquisitely neat than ever and in excellent queenly looks. Winston was recovering from a very bad cold but he was in grand form—as lively and incessant in his conversation as he was in Cabinet in the old days, eating, drinking and smoking as voraciously as ever. He took me round the farms, showed me short-horns and Jerseys, and then a huge brick hen-house which he had built himself—’Chickenham Palace.’ Alongside was a noisome &
messy little piece of bare ground—’Chickenham Palace Gardens.'”

Twenty-five years ago:

Autumn 1974

“Never Give In….”

In mid-October editor Dalton Newfield struggled to produce the second and final issue of Finest Hour of the year, announcing that the annual subscription had been raised from $5 to $6: “Finest Hour is irregular because we want to bring you as fine a bulletin as possible, and this means, among other things that it should be offset printed, with illustrations. But we cannot afford the plates [so] a friend who does this for a living has given us the plates! The only thing that he asks is that he not be given a deadline.” Dal was spread too thin, and there was nobody to take his place. “We were relaxing in the knowledge that the editorship was in good hands when, abruptly, Steve King reported he could no longer continue. We have no details to give you.”

Finest Hour was packed with all the material we had come to enjoy: “As Others Saw Him” (Mortimer Menpes on Young Winston in South Africa), “Immortal Words” (“Never Give In…”), a big feature about new Churchill Centenary postage stamps, a jumbo column “About Books,” and a report of another meeting of the UK branch at London’s Regent Palace Hotel: “I wish that we could have such meetings in the USA and Canada, as there is no one benefit to be derived from ICS so valuable as meeting, face to face, the wonderful people who compose the Society….a bit of business was discussed. Altogether, it was fun.” How gratified Dal Newfield would be twenty-five years later to know that we closed out the 125th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s birth with two meetings, one in England and one in America, attracting a combined 350 people; and helped launch a new naval vessel bearing the great man’s name, which drew a crowd of 8000.