Churchill

by Celia Sandys

  The siege, which had lasted for 118 days, had been lifted. During that time hopes had been raised many times, only to be disappointed as each of Buller’s attempts to lift the siege had failed. Disease and hunger had brought Ladysmith to its last gasp. For the low morale, General Sir George White had a good deal to answer. Hunger had been accompanied by humiliation, many of his officers believing that a garrison of twelve thousand troops should have adopted a more offensive attitude.

  There had also been tensions between the garrison and the relieving force. White felt bitter towards Buller, whose communications to him had sometimes lacked tact or caused misunderstanding. One such occasion was after the repulse at Colenso, when Buller’s so-called ‘surrender message’ seemed to be advocating capitulation: ‘. . . suggest your firing away as much ammunition as you can, and making the best terms you can’. For his part, Buller had always blamed White for getting himself and his men locked up in Ladysmith and forcing its relief to become the main plank of British strategy. The fact that White and the more influential of his senior officers belonged to the ‘Indian’ ring of the army, while Buller was an ‘African’, added to the mutual resentment.

  With the relief, these tensions evaporated. They would return when the Indians and Africans had more time to get at each other’s throats. Meanwhile General White made a speech which received a rousingcheer, and when Buller rode into town the following morning he was entertained with champagne and trek ox at White’s headquarters.

  Churchill may not have been at the head of the relieving force as it rode into Ladysmith, but from the moment he entered the town he was again at the centre of events.

  As I followed in his footsteps I was guided by Pitch Christopher, a local historian and long-established resident of Ladysmith. We traced my grandfather’s movements on that late afternoon from the brown waters of the Klip River to the Christophers’ house, Budleigh, where on the night of the relief he attended a grand dinner given by General White. The colonial-style house with its wide verandahs is virtually unchanged since that day, and as we sat in the dining room where my grandfather had sat a century before we could almost hear the popping of the bottles of champagne, jealously preserved throughout the siege. I could easily visualise the warm welcome Churchill received from his old friend from the North-West Frontier, Colonel Ian Hamilton, one of those who had been cooped up in Ladysmith. ‘Never before,’ wrote the Morning Post’s correspondent, ‘had I sat in such brave company.’

  Mrs Audrey Tanner described for me the meeting in Ladysmith between Churchill and her father, Major Sam Mare, a guide with Buller’s column, as he had related it to her: ‘A short, thickset man was seen tearing about looking for someone who could give him details of the movements of the relief column.’ When Major Mare had provided the information required, ‘The man handed over a £10 note and tore off again.’ Churchill had been anxious to discover the timetable for the parade at which Buller and White would meet.

  He made good use of his information, and gave his readers a comprehensive account of the event. He had positioned himself to advantage, as I discovered from the diary of Lieutenant-Colonel B.W. Martin, which is kept in the Ladysmith Siege Museum:

  I, personally, was fortunate enough to secure standing room . . . opposite the City Hall . . . I therefore enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the official meeting between General Sir Redvers Buller and General Sir George White . . . I stood alongside and conversed with a young man of somewhat untidy appearance . . . He wore the slouch hat with Sakabula feathers . . . he asked me my name and then told me he was Winston Churchill, and that he was a War Correspondent attached to the South African Light Horse.

  Churchill evidently considered himself a correspondent first and a soldier second.

  On 10 March, in some six thousand words written in Durban, Churchill summed up the Natal campaign for his readers. He began by recounting the immediate aftermath of the relief of Ladysmith. He questioned Buller’s decision not to allow the cavalry to pursue the retreating Boers, and offered the thought that the Commander-in-Chief had been deeply moved by the recent heavy losses, and was reluctant to demand further sacrifices.

  As an inquisitive journalist with access to anyone who mattered, Churchill probed for replies to questions which few had asked, and no one had yet answered. He spent some time with General White, asking him why the British had courted disaster by crossing the Tugela and operating so far forward at the outbreak of war. White blamed General Sir Penn Symons, who had been in command before his arrival in Natal, and who had seriously underestimated the Boers’ military strength. On assuming command White had sought the opinion of the Governor of Natal, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, who advised that Penn Symons, having occupied northern Natal, should stay there, as a withdrawal would encourage the Boers and dishearten the loyalists.

  Against his own instincts, White had followed Hely-Hutchinson’s advice and not changed the plans made by Penn Symons, whom he said was ‘a brave fighting man, and you know how much that is worth in war’. Churchill, who had campaigned with Penn Symons, would not have disagreed with that description, though personal bravery was hardly a solution to the problems with which White had been left.

  Churchill asked how White had allowed himself to become locked up in Ladysmith. To White it was not a question of being locked up: ‘I considered it a place of primary importance to hold.’ He said he would not act differently if he had the chance to live through the campaign again. This was an assessment with which Churchill would have disagreed, but as he came away from the interview he remembered how the relieving troops had cheered White as they marched into Ladysmith. Knowing the war was still far from won, Churchill once more opted for a morale-sustaining judgement, declaring that the troops’ verdict was one ‘the nation may gratefully accept’.

  He was also, he wrote, anxious to discuss the campaign from the viewpoint of Buller, who had arrived in South Africa only as White was being driven back into Ladysmith. Churchill did not know to what extent Buller was responsible for the gross underestimate of the number of troops that would be required. What he did know was that everyone, from top to bottom, had miscalculated. He likened the military hierarchy to a scientist whose calculations were exact to a minute fraction, only he ‘had left out a nought’. Churchill discussed the campaign with Buller, who told him that as Commander-in-Chief he could have assigned Natal to a subordinate, but had decided: ‘I was the big man. I had to go.’

  Having considered all the factors, the Morning Post correspondent concluded: ‘it does not appear that the holding of Ladysmith was an unfortunate act.’ The town’s defence and relief would ‘not make a bad page in British history’. This was hardly a ringing endorsement of the British strategy, but rather a further echo of Napoleon’s dictum that in war, which is largely a succession of errors made under pressure, victory goes to he who makes the fewest mistakes.

  In his assessment of the generals, Churchill wrote that Britain was most fortunate after a prolonged peace to find ‘leaders of quality and courage, who were moreover honourable gentlemen’. Of their courage and honour he had no doubts, nor ever would. It was that which probably inclined him against a judgement on their quality. There was, moreover, every reason at this stage of the war to avoid making a frank assessment: they were the only leaders available. Their reputations needed bolstering.

  In the last sentence of his final dispatch on the campaign, Churchill’s opinion is clear: ‘Whatever may be said of the generals it is certain that all will praise the enduring courage of the regimental officer and the private soldier.’

  FOURTEEN

  A Lull in the Storm

  ‘Revenge may be sweet, but it is also most expensive.’

  Natal Witness, 29 March 1900

  FOLLOWING THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH, the Boers abandoned their campaign in Natal and retired through the Drakensberg and Biggarsberg mountain ranges into their own territories. From there they denied the British any easy advance into either the Orange
Free State or the Transvaal. All was now relatively quiet, except for the occasional unimportant skirmish between outposts – unimportant, that is, to all except the few men engaged. Taking advantage of what he called a lull in the storm, Churchill turned his attention to personal matters.

  He was able to digest the reviews of his novel Savrola, which had been published in London and New York in the first half of February 1900. The first book he had started, it had been put aside when his adventures on the North-West Frontier and in the Sudan had led to him writing The Story of the Malakand Field Force and The River War, both best-sellers stamped with the authority of an author who had been present at the scene of great events. Savrola could not compete at that level.

  The plot of the novel is straightforward. The people of the European state of Laurania, refused the franchise by a tyrannical government, rebel. A young revolutionary, Savrola leads them against the military dictator, who uses his beautiful wife Lucile as a decoy, believing that Savrola’s followers will desert him if he is seen to associate with her. Predictably, the two fall in love. Savrola sweeps away the dictatorship, but is rejected by the people he has saved because he insists on a fair trial for the prisoners they have taken. He and Lucile flee the country. However, there is a happy ending: ‘After the tumults had subsided, the hearts of the people turned again to the illustrious exile who had won them their freedom.’

  The reviewers, while praising the scenes of action, thought little of the romance woven into the story. In this they reflected the opinion of Churchill’s grandmother, the Duchess of Marlborough, who when he had sought her comments on the novel had written: ‘It is clear you have not yet attained a knowledge of Women.’ Nevertheless, Savrola provides a fascinating insight into the young Churchillian mind. While he was writing it in Bangalore at the age of twenty-three, he had written to his mother: ‘All my philosophy is put in the mouth of the hero.’ What is remarkable is the maturity of that philosophy, and how it was to be accurately reflected during Churchill’s long career thereafter.

  The burgeoning public reputation of Savrola’s author ensured that the book went through several reprintings, but from the absence in Churchill’s letters of any reaction to the reviews, he would seem to have agreed with the Star: ‘Mr Churchill has travelled far in the three years since he wrote Savrola.’ He had asked his mother to send copies of his other books to a wide circle of friends and influential people, but Savrola was less favoured. ‘I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it,’ was his comment years later.

  Lady Randolph, chafing aboard the Maine in Durban harbour, had, against her elder son’s advice, visited Chieveley while Buller’s troops were still battling towards Ladysmith. In her autobiography, Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill, she described the moment when her train passed the site of her son’s heroic action and capture:

  About twenty miles after leaving Frere we slowed down, and the friendly guard, knowing who I was, rushed to tell me we were passing the place of the armoured train disaster. Sure enough there was the train, lying on its side, a mangled and battered thing, and within a few yards a grave with a cross – three sentries mounting guard – marking the place where the poor fellows killed in it were buried.

  Although a proud and loving mother, Lady Randolph could never have been regarded as maternal; even so, her account can only be called minimalist. This is not necessarily surprising, as in a book of 460 pages she barely refers to her two sons at all.

  She observed the Boer positions beyond Colenso through binoculars, breakfasted with the 7th Fusiliers, and was shown a 4.7-inch naval gun, mounted on a railway truck, which had been named after her by the sailors who manned it. Unfortunately she was unable to see her sons, who were then dashing about the country with the South African Light Horse.

  Now, with Ladysmith relieved, she went up the line again. This time, though Jack was still convalescing aboard the Maine, Winston was able to show her around. He met her at Colenso, where, in her words, ‘after viewing and kodaking the terrible ruin and devastation . . . we got on a trolley, pushed by natives, and left for Ladysmith. This was an excellent way of seeing everything as the whole of the last two months fighting had been along the line.’ Her party toured Ladysmith, where they were offered dinner and beds by General Buller, and returned with an ambulance train the following morning.

  A week later, on 17 March, Lady Randolph and the Maine sailed for England via Cape Town. Churchill, in Durban to see her off, took the opportunity to settle an outstanding debt. Although his finances were as precarious as ever, he sent a letter to a Mr Buckeridge enclosing a cheque for £78 ‘to cover the cost of various articles’, and ‘regretted the delay in payment which had been due to the distressed situation’.

  Churchill realised that the value of his next book, London to Ladysmith, based on his Morning Post dispatches, would be much enhanced by his escape from Pretoria. On 21 March he wrote to Lady Randolph, who was now back in London, asking her to renegotiate his contract with the publishers, Longmans: ‘Make sure I get £2,000 on account of the royalties: but don’t delay publication.’ The following day he again turned to her for help when an American, Major James Pond, proposed a lecture tour of the United States, where his South African exploits had made him a popular hero. She was asked to find out if Pond was the ‘biggest man’, and if not, who was. Churchill thought that a fee of £5,000 for three months’ lecturing would not be excessive ‘for such a labour and for making oneself so cheap . . . we cannot afford to throw away a single shilling’. Lady Randolph was an effective agent, securing the £2,000 advance from Longmans and accurately prophesying that by a lecture tour he could ‘make a fortune’.

  Although Churchill was still on active service with the South African Light Horse, he now decided to write a play. He outlined his ideas in a letter to Pamela Plowden, and asked her to approach Herbert Beerbohm Tree, actor-manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s Haymarket: ‘I will write a play: scene South Africa: time: the war . . . this should be produced by Tree at H. Majesty’s theatre in the autumn’. He expounded at length on how he would bring the play to life: ‘I can make the people talk and act as they would in real war.’ Pamela had sent him a food parcel for her brother-in-law, Major Edgar Lafone, and he concluded his letter by reporting that the Major had been ‘too ill to profit by it, so I am going to eat it myself’. He had not explained how he would find time to write a play while campaigning. In the event he was spared the task, his mother pouring cold water on the idea by telling him that the British public would not ‘stand any war play’.

  With the Boer retreat from Natal came a popular demand by British South Africans for the punishment of the rebels, particularly the British-born naturalised burghers who, anticipating a Boer victory, had supported them. Churchill took an opposite view, advocating reconciliation rather than vengeance, and suggested an approach which combined pragmatism with magnanimity. His view, in a telegram to the Morning Post on 24 March 1900, was repeated and amplified in a letter published in the Natal Witness five days later. A policy of revenge and punishment, he believed, would lead to a long-drawn-out guerrilla campaign. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ were not worth ‘five years of bloody partisan warfare and the consequent impoverishment of South Africa . . . But it is not only or even mainly on these grounds that I urge generous counsels.’ He warned the people of Natal against laying themselves open to the charge of racial animosity – meaning animosity between Boers and British, for although large numbers of blacks were involved on both sides in the war, mainly as labourers, there was an unspoken agreement that this was a ‘white man’s war’. Churchill’s letter ended with an exhortation for racial harmony between the white combatants: ‘Peace and happiness can only come to South Africa through the fusion and concord of the Dutch and British races . . . Let no one try to make the golden days more distant.’

  His words were ill-received both in London and Natal. His own paper, the Morning Post, carried his
message but expressed its disagreement with it, while the Natal press was unanimous in its condemnation. Writing to Churchill, his friend Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, the Governor of Natal, kept a foot in both camps by admitting that leniency might be the best course, although it should not be allowed to alienate loyal feeling in South Africa. The High Commissioner, Sir Alfred Milner, would later say, as he and Churchill galloped in pursuit of jackals under Table Mountain: ‘People must forgive and forget but now passions are running too high. I understand your feelings but it does no good to express them now.’

  At the end of March Churchill obtained an indefinite leave of absence from the South African Light Horse in order to join Field Marshal Lord Roberts’s army, which had relieved Kimberley on 15 February, occupied Bloemfontein on 13 March, and was now poised to advance through the Orange Free State into the Transvaal. Churchill took the train for Durban, and the Morning Post applied for its principal correspondent in South Africa to be accredited to Roberts’s army.

  His dispatch of 31 March, written on the train, could do little more than comment, as he passed them, on various features which had played a significant part in the campaign. He enlivened it with a paragraph on soldiers’ language, prompted by a conversation he overheard between a truckload of volunteer reinforcements, whose arrival in Ladysmith delayed the train’s departure, and a few sunburned old hands who had fought their way through Natal. Churchill explained that ‘the epithet which the average soldier uses so often as to make it perfectly meaningless, and which we conveniently express by a ______, is always placed before the noun it is intended to qualify.’ He cited examples: under no circumstances would any soldier say, ‘______ Mr Kruger has pursued a ______ reactionary policy,’ but rather, ‘Mr ______ Kruger has pursued a reactionary ______ policy.’ Having explained that five days in a boat on the Nile with a company of Grenadiers had given him the chance to become acquainted with these idiomatic constructions, he concluded: ‘I insert this little note in case it may be useful to some of our national poets and minstrels.’