Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness

by Taylor, Robert Lewis

  In a sort of epilogue, Churchill quoted his old favorite, Gibbon, as saying that history is “little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” It is interesting to speculate whether he would have presented these dubious nouns had he foreseen how much history he himself was to help manufacture in the coming fifty years.

  Some time after Savrola appeared, Churchill epitomized his novel as a story in which he “traced the fortunes of a liberal leader who overthrew an arbitrary government only to be swallowed up by a socialist revolution.”

  His summary has since been characterized as one of the most dazzling pieces of unconscious personal prophecy on record.

  Chapter 11

  CHURCHILL collected a total of $3500 for Savrola and was content, though he finally took a dislike to his book and wrote that “I have consistently urged my friends to abstain from reading it.” He felt that there was more money, and more fun, in war correspondence. Barring writer’s cramp, there was little chance of incurring serious personal damage while composing a novel, and fictional criticism had an oblique, softened air that he found unsatisfying. With Antonio Molara tumbled down from his high place, he saw that it was time for a second version of A Subaltern’s Hints to Generals.

  At every step in Churchill’s career a convenient war has opened up when he was ready for it. In fact, the cry of “warmonger” has been hurled at him repeatedly, in increasing volume since the Socialists took England into protective custody. Today’s fevered orators in Hyde Park harp with gleeful malevolence on his long and intimate connection with fighting. As a rule, they refrain from pointing out that he has been uniquely influential in bringing wars to a triumphant close and making England safe for orators in Hyde Park to climb up on stepladders and complain about warmongers.

  His unsuccessful attempt to punish and serialize the Afridis had given Churchill a heightened urge to score in some other direction. A golden opportunity awaited him now in 1898. The war offering itself for exploitation was of a romantic nature far exceeding that in the Indian mountains. In the African Sudan, a dark, dusty, superstitious region lying south of Egypt and the Sahara, one Mohammed Ahmed had proclaimed himself the long-lost Mahdi, or guide, of Islam and was goading the people to terrible wrath. The Sudan had been governed by Egypt, which in turn was governed by England. The Mahdi was an early communist; he advocated “universal equality,” a catchall phrase that continues to trap disgruntled minorities, and community property. He had dubbed his followers “Dervishes,” which, loosely translated, means “holy beggars,” and counseled them to keep moving, as a stimulus to the better life. Consequently, they developed a sort of convulsive wriggle that eventually won them the name “Whirling Dervishes,” enriching the language of the demon whites. The Mahdi hated all foreigners, whom he referred to, for reasons he never made clear, as “Turks.”

  Like most communist states, the Mahdi’s Sudan soon shook itself down into an inferior species of capitalism, wherein he and his assistant bureaucrats ran the community’s property and the Dervishes had little left but their whirl. And in a pattern familiar to strong, utopian leaders, he kept his flock apathetic about its hungry lack of property by putting the members out to war. Of late they had slaughtered several thousand Egyptians as well as the English commander in those parts, General C. G. Gordon. At last, moving with characteristic deliberation, the British military were grouping to retaliate. A relief unit had previously been mentioned for Gordon, but by the time it was organized, with protocol settled, the campaign ribbon decided upon, the quadruplicate files made of all the equipment issued, the unfortunate general was long dead and buried and the Mahdi was looking for some new Turks.

  The man whose resistance Churchill had to overcome to join this second punitive thrust was Sir Herbert Kitchener, the Sirdar, or commandant, of the English-Egyptian Army. By mischance, Kitchener was unimpressed by pushy second lieutenants, in general by young men of destiny with exalted antecedents and in particular by Churchill. All the latter’s entreaties to the War Office met with rebuffs that implicitly originated in the highest quarter. The reaction to his quick advancements had gathered wide momentum. Writing of this dismaying period, Churchill later said, “Others proceeded to be actually abusive. ‘Medal-hunter’ and ‘Self-advertiser’ were used from time to time in some high and some low military circles in a manner which would, I am sure, surprise and pain the reader of these notes.” Even the well-groomed enterprise of Lady Randolph was all unavailing. She had dinner upon dinner, at which the best-situated men of military and government were approached without restraint. Their response was an embarrassed mutter that the Egyptian Sirdar was all-powerful in the matter of appointments.

  Throughout his life, Churchill’s luck has been a point of confusion to his rivals and his enemies. It now appeared that even Kitchener could not stand against it. Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, picked up a copy of The Story of the Malakand Field Force in his club, retreated to a secluded corner, and read it through in a single sitting. His approval was so uncontained that he sent immediately for the author, who was again in London on leave. Churchill for once was mildly apprehensive about an interview, going to the length of having his clothes pressed, his shoes shined, and combing his hair. Moreover, without precedent in his social history, he presented himself at 10 Downing Street on time, after calculating that he would make the gesture to leave in exactly twenty minutes. The Prime Minister kept him for nearly an hour and said, at his dismissal, “If there is anything I can do to help you, please let me know.”

  He had scarcely got the words out when the accommodating youth replied, “Indeed there is, sir — I’d like to join Sir Herbert’s expedition into the Egyptian Sudan.”

  A few days later he received a notice from the War Office that he had been attached as “a supernumerary Lieutenant to the 21st Lancers for the Sudan campaign.” The information included the rather cheerless corollary that he would pay his own expenses and see to it that he was buried or patched up without cost to the government if he were killed or wounded.

  Very rightly, Churchill considered that such items should be taken care of by some newspaper or other. Once again he made the rounds of Fleet Street, and this time he nailed down a good assignment, as correspondent for the Morning Post, at the improved rate of fifteen pounds a column. The employment was very welcome, but another macabre note was struck when a funereal-looking stringbean came up to him after a dinner and begged an interview, which went about as follows, according to one of Churchill’s clubmates.

  “Ah, I’m the president of the Psychical Research Society,” said the diner.

  “To be sure,” replied Churchill, in excellent spirits as a result of his appointment. “Any news?”

  “Tolerably slow at this season. We’ve had one or two little triumphs, but nothing of public interest. To be candid, a spectacular abridgment would not be at all amiss.”

  When Churchill seemed puzzled, he went on: “You are, I believe, preparing to go into the Egyptian Sudan on a mission of some danger?”

  “Why, no more than a routine —”

  “In plainer terms, there is an excellent chance you will be shot?”

  “Why, I wouldn’t say —”

  “Precisely. Now I wonder if you would do me a favor,” said the man, producing a card. “In case you should Depart, or Muster Out, as it were, would you be so good as to get in touch with me at my flat? I’m generally in in the evenings. Just rap on anything handy, though I’d be obliged if you would avoid the piece of crockery on the mantel. It’s been patched.”

  “Three raps do?” inquired Churchill, falling into a bantering vein.

  “The number is immaterial.”

  With assignments both mundane and spiritual, Churchill felt that he was richly equipped for his outing. He boarded a train for Marseilles. Six days later he was in Cairo, and he pushed on to the Abassiyeh Barracks. There he found a certain amount of resentment at what was interpreted by some as a bumptious intrusi
on. The 21st Lancers were a proud regiment, known as the “Saucy Devils,” and its officers felt that it was not necessarily reinforced by a warrior who would probably appear on the battlefield with a sword in one hand and a pen in the other.

  In the beginning, then, instead of getting a troop command as he had expected, Churchill was put in charge of the mess store. His own subsequent report of this snarl indicated that his tardy arrival accounted for his lowly command; one or two others remember the facts differently. All the versions agree that Marlborough’s descendant was in no way humbled by the slights and setbacks.

  One day a junior officer met him coming up a path leading a rickety mule and two donkeys. The recollection of the officer, now long in distinguished retirement, is that Churchill said, “Look at that. There’s a trust for a British officer! It’s not even a job for a non-commissioned officer. They’ve said, ‘We’ll break young Churchill’s heart if he comes to us.’ Poor little men! They think I’m as small as they are. But it’s my object to write a big book on this campaign, and as long as I get there I don’t mind how they employ me. Even if they give me a sweeper’s job I shan’t demur.”

  Many of Churchill’s present associates think that part of his greatness has always been his refusal to waste time in petty angers, personal bickering, and dreams of vengeance. Neither his equanimity nor his effectiveness is ever impaired by attempts to frustrate him. Another junior officer having to do with the mess store, Robert Smyth, who later rose to be a brigadier general, wrote to his sister in England, saying, “Winston Churchill is only 23 and frightfully keen. Started by telling me he was more interested in men than horses, so I asked him to look after rations etc. and said I would do the horses. He asked to see the men and spoke to them (very well, too) and had a great success; in fact, they liked him.”

  Robert Grenfell, the subaltern assigned to the command that Churchill had hoped to get, wrote back to his family: “Fancy how lucky I am. Here I have got the troop that would have been Winston’s, and we are to be the first to start.”

  History is violently altered by very small decisions, as somebody has already noted. A few days later, in the terrible charge at Omdurman, Grenfell was pulled off his horse and cut to pieces by a howling Dervish mob. It is engrossing but idle to ponder the probable course of England had Churchill ridden out in the van instead of Grenfell. It is not fantastic to suggest, however, that today’s government in London would be in the hands of either a German or a Russian gauleiter, and that mankind would be much farther advanced on its determined return to all-fours.

  When Kitchener’s army started its hot, hazardous trip up the Nile, Churchill’s duties became less onerous and the tension about his presence slackened. The expedition made its way 350 miles southward by train to Asyut; from there by stern-wheel steamers to Wadi Haifa; thence 400 miles via the new military railroad to the Egyptian Army base at the confluence of the Nile and the Atbara. Omdurman and Khartoum, where the Mahdi and his Khalifa, or chief lieutenant and successor, had killed General Gordon, lay less than 200 miles farther down through the desert.

  Churchill spent much of this trip reading background literature on the Sudan and its troubles and in ingratiating himself with his fellow officers, an occupation for which he had immense talent. People who knew him then say that he was irresistibly entertaining when he chose; few ill-wishers could hold out against his charm. He could talk on a great variety of subjects with an odd quality of infectious excitement. In those days, too, he was an able listener, a skill that he has not seen fit to sharpen with the passage of time. The fact is that Churchill at present is a captive audience of the itchiest sort. He is slightly deaf, and he leans heavily on this useful infirmity. At dinners especially, when he is apt to be flanked by garrulous women, his hearing is nearly invulnerable to the human voice. In the midst of anecdotes about petunias and woman’s suffrage, he will cup one hand over an ear, frequently the far ear, and call out “Hah?” Meetings of defense officers during the last war were a painful trial to him. On one occasion, a minor functionary arose, cleared his throat, and began what promised to be a two-hour report on “buffer stocks.” Churchill endured it for about ten minutes, then whispered hoarsely to a neighbor, “Who is that man?” The expert droned on, and a few minutes later, Churchill’s whisper again interrupted with, “What’s he talking about?”

  “Buffer stocks,” replied the embarrassed neighbor.

  “Butterscotch!” cried Churchill. “Let’s wind this up and get back to the war. He can investigate butterscotch on his own time.”

  The expert threw in the sponge and sat down. Everybody had a pretty good idea that Churchill could hear all right. He simply preferred to talk.

  As the British force pushed into the desert toward Omdurman, reports of a mirage-like enemy filtered in from patrols. It was a parched, uneasy Mohammedan world, alien to the British soldier and his dreams of a green and ordered England. The usual techniques of warfare might be futile against these receding but watchful bands of horsemen. Kitchener’s Egyptian infantry and mounted English lancers moved slowly over the hot dunes, while naval units — gunboats, stem-wheelers, and sailboats carrying supplies — proceeded up the Nile not far away. Churchill was with a forward patrol that caught occasional glimpses of fast-riding scouts but no concentrations of Dervishes. Early on September 1, as he rested his horse near some thornbushes, a sergeant major came galloping back with the welcome shout, “Enemy in sight!”

  “How many are there?” asked Churchill.

  “A good army. Quite a good army,” replied the sergeant major, beaming with pleasure.

  Churchill’s patrol moved forward to a shallow ravine, where he found his commander, Colonel Martin, also in exuberant spirits. Martin’s first greeting was “Good morning!” Then, having disposed of the amenities, he hastened on to say to Churchill, “The enemy has just begun to advance. They are coming on pretty fast. I want you to see the situation for yourself, and then go back as quickly as you can without knocking up your horse, and report personally to the Sirdar. You will find him marching with the infantry.”

  Churchill reconnoitered and put his horse, a gray Arab polo pony, to a gallop toward the rear, with feelings of trepidation. His anxiety was aroused by Kitchener rather than by the Dervishes. The question was, how would the commander-in-chief react when the subaltern to whom he had given an emphatic “No!” came riding up here in the desert with a first report on the enemy? Churchill could not help but wonder if Kitchener’s ire would be so fearsome that he would defer his campaign against the Dervishes and concentrate his resources, both mounted and afoot, on Churchill.

  Everything went off without a hitch. It is believed that Churchill to this day is piqued by the impersonal abstraction with which the Sirdar took his message. Kitchener was riding alone, an impressive figure, with purple jowls, long, waving mustaches, and a mien of portentous solemnity. He listened without interrupting while the author of Malakand gave an eloquent military précis of the situation (well rehearsed as he had sped back over the sand), and then asked, “How long do you think I have got?”

  “You have got at least an hour — probably an hour and a half, sir, even if they come on at their present rate,” replied Churchill. This was a brash and chancy estimate, involving heavy responsibility, but Churchill had no doubts whatever, as usual. Kitchener dismissed him with a slight bow, and the subaltern joined the junior officers for a prebattle luncheon of bully beef, mixed pickles, and stout wines. He gave an excellent account of himself during these preliminaries. Seated at an upturned cracker box, Kitchener dined apart from everybody, on a few dry biscuits. The duties of a commanding general are somewhat more serious than those of lieutenants, as Churchill perhaps began to realize for the first time. The gage of battle, the conduct of the troops, the final outcome with its historic consequences, would be summed up in headlines approximating either “Kitchener Wins” or “Kitchener Loses.”

  When the front was still quiet at sundown, it was rumored that
the Dervishes would attack by night. Orders for strict silence were given out up and down the lines. Thom fences, or bomas, as they are called farther west in the Congo, were thrown up by the infantry. Churchill’s sleep was fitful, and he had arisen, with the others, long before dawn. As the sun came up, the scene was one of preparation and hopeful excitement. The Nile with its crowded flotilla was within view on the left flank, and the cavalry units were disposed at points beside and in front of the infantry, ready for charge and countercharge. Churchill’s squadron leader, a Major Finn, a big, leisurely Australian with the rough-and-tumble sense of humor characteristic of those southern people, had for days carried on a harangue about how he meant to put the untried subaltern-correspondent through his paces. Now he summoned him and sent him forward on reconnaissance, with a half-joking admonition not to try to win the war by himself. Churchill took a patrol and rode ahead into the glassy fields of sand. Far away on both sides he could see other patrols setting out. And behind them Kitchener’s mounted units — the 21st Lancers, the Camel Corps, and the Horse Artillery — started up slowly. Members of patrols on that day recall that from hillocks one could see through binoculars the spectral white buildings and mud huts of Omdurman, and opposite it across the Nile the arsenal and ruins of Khartoum, the ancient former capital.

  But the “good army” reported the day before was no longer in evidence; only black and brown smears of thorn relieved the tumbled white, and now and then a scattered, hurrying group of riders. One of these came within range of the new British Lee-Metford carbines. A volley of shots spilled two Dervishes from their saddles. Their companions reined up, puzzled, and then waved their rifles in an obvious signal. All across the desert, for as far as anybody could see through his glasses, the black and brown smears of what had appeared to be thorn materialized into human life, the well-trained rows of 60,000 fanatics who comprised the Khalifa’s army. They came on in waves, pouring out of gulleys and springing up from behind every sand ridge that offered concealment. Prisoners quizzed afterward gave the composition of the Khalifa’s forces and the names of his leaders. The center of the army, formed in squares and commanded by Osman Sheikh-ed-din and Osman Azrak, included 12,000 black riflemen and 13,000 black and Arab spearmen. The Ali-Wad-Helu rode in front with 5000 horsemen of the Degheim and Kenana tribes. The Khalifa’s bodyguard of 2000 followed the center force, and behind him marched Yakub Emir with 13,000 swordsmen and spearmen. The right wing was the brigade of the Khalifa Sherif, with 2000 Danagla tribesmen; the left flank was formed by 1700 Hadendoa commanded by Osman Digna, a villain of such horrifying reputation that whole villages in his path had been known to fold up and vanish. These first-named leaders flew identifying green, red, or black flags from many spearheads, but the troop of Osman Digna flew no flags at all, feeling that its fame was sufficient without further advertisement. As the infantry drew closer, the British could see the ritual dancing of the Dervishes, intending to establish their fury and discourage the bravest enemy. All in all, as one of Churchill’s patrol nervously remarked, it looked as though there was apt to be “quite a brush.”