A Roving Commission
THE MAN of the MONTH A Roving Commission [Scribners, $3.50]
A Roving Commission is the story of Winston Spencer Churchill’s first twenty-six years on earth. It is not a solemn book. The author evidently derives a good deal of humorous satisfaction from the contemplation of his youthful self. He records with a chuckle the continuous examples of that push and ’bounce’ of his which so disturbed his contemporaries and elders; he is quite without shame in his admissions of wirepulling, and the indomitable and persistent pestering of superiors which refused to take no for an answer. It may be said, parenthetically, that only in Kitchener did he meet his match There the irresistible force met the immovable obstacle and was obliged to go around it.
Envy, Churchill admits, dogged his footsteps. ‘The expressions “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 readers of these notes. It is melancholy to be forced to record these less amiable aspects of human nature, which by a most curious and indeed unaccountable coincidence have always seemed to present themselves in the wake of my innocent footsteps, and even sometimes across the path on which I wished to proceed.’
This driving energy, this intense ambition, were part and parcel of his nature and the motive force of his great career. Even for the grandson of a duke and the son of a lord, even if his father was a great figure in English political life and his mother an indefatigable and charming hostess, even with all the advantages of such a background in pre-war England, his accomplishment, remains amazing. At the age of twenty-six he could look back on a record as successful as it was varied. After ineffective years at Harrow, where, his inability to learn Latin or mathematics forced him into a military rather than an academic or legal career, he went to Sandhurst, where he changed overnight to a successful student of his profession and a keen sportsman.
Then followed service in the Fourth Hussars, a trip on leave to Cuba, where Marshal Martinez Campos was dealing rather ineffectively with revolution, then service in India as a subaltern, quartered at Bangalore. It was in this period that Churchill really educated himself, reading resolutely and hungrily, in the intervals between his polo and his military duties. In characteristic fashion he wangled his way into the Malakand Field Force and fought through the campaign on the Indian frontier This experience he promptly capitalized by writing a book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, which was very well received.
Sir Herbert Kitchener, who was then organizing the Sudan campaign, did not want Mr. Winston Churchill in his army, but by great ingenuity and persistence Mr. Winston Churchill got himself into a branch of Sir Herbert Kitchener’s army which was not under the latter’s direct control, and so managed to take a part, and a fairly important one, in the fantastic battle of Omdurman. This too he capitalized by writing and publishing The River I War, and after playing on the polo team which won the Inter-Regimental Tournament of 1899 in India he resigned from the army to devote himself to letters and politics.
After contesting and losing a by-election as a candidate for the House of Commons, he was engulfed in the Boer War. As a war correspondent, he worked and wrastled his way into the thick of things. It was n’t enough to be made prisoner in the famous ‘Armored Train’ episode; he must be captured personally and alone by the most famous Boer who ever rode the veldt
—Louis Botha. By escaping from Pretoria he became front-page news, and making his way to Portuguese East Africa, and then to Durban, he found himself, not without satisfaction, a popular hero. Adventure and advertisement!
There followed service as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, campaigning in Natal, at Spion Kop, and the relief of Ladysmith, and in the Orange Free State with Lord Roberts to Johannesburg and Pretoria, acting in the double Capacity of obscure subaltern and popular press correspondent. After the capture of Pretoria, he resigned his commission and returned to England to be triumphantly elected member for Oldham. He became a ‘star turn’ as a speaker at campaign meetings during the election, and for three weeks had what seemed to him ‘a triumphal progress through the country. I was twenty-six. Was it wonderful that I should have thought I had arrived?’
With no means of support except the results of his own effort, he turned to lecturing, and after touring England and the Uinted States he emerged with the rewards of his writings and lectures, 10,000 pounds, which he turned over to Sir Ernest Cassel ‘with the instruction, “Feed my sheep."'
There we leave him, at twenty-six, the veteran of three campaigns and one war, author of three successful books, Member of Parliament, a national, almost a world figure, and the proud earner of 10,000 pounds. This, I submit, is achievement.
A word as to Mr. Churchill’s style. He started to learn to write good English at Harrow, where he discovered himself to be a hopeless duffer at Latin. As a young author and correspondent, he worked constantly to improve and clarify his expression, and with very happy results. He writes easily and gracefully, with no touch of pedantry or swank in a style which is as clear as his thinking and as intimate as conversation. Only occasionally does he turn to metaphor, but always on such occasions he is picturesque. Speaking of the dreadful heat of campaigning on the Indian frontier, he says: ‘You could lift the heat with your hands, it sat on your shoulders like a knapsack, it rested on your head like a nightmare.’ Moreover he writes with humor, with the tolerance of experience, and the wisdom of one who has dealt with great affairs and lived with the great men of his time. The result is a book intensely interesting as a story and a picture of a day that is past, and as the expression of a most vital and vigorous personality. You close the volume with a feeling of real respect for the author and a real liking for young Mr. Winston Churchill.
RICHARD DANIELSON