Radicals, who are never satisfied with Liberals, always liberal with other people’s money (laughter), ask why it is not applied to all. That is like a Radical – just the slap-dash, wholesale, harum-scarum policy of the Radical. It reminds me of the man who, on being told that ventilation is an excellent thing, went and smashed every window in his house, and died of rheumatic fever. (Laughter and cheers.) That is not Conservative policy. Conservative policy is essentially a tentative policy – a look-before-you-leap policy; and it is a policy of don’t leap at all if there is a ladder. (Laughter.) It is because our progress is slow that it is sure and constant. (Hear, hear.) But this Bill might be taken as indicating the forward tendency of Tory legislation, and as showing to thousands of our countrymen engaged in industrial pursuits that the Tories are willing to help them, and besides having the inclination, that they also have the power (hear, hear), and that the British workman has more to hope for from the rising tide of Tory democracy than from the dried-up drain-pipe of Radicalism. (Laughter and cheers.). . .

There are not wanting those who say that in this Jubilee year our Empire has reached the height of its glory and power, and that now we shall begin to decline, as Babylon, Carthage, Rome declined. Do not believe these croakers but give the lie to their dismal croaking by showing by our actions that the vigour and vitality of our race is unimpaired and that our determination is to uphold the Empire that we have inherited from our fathers as Englishmen (cheers), that our flag shall fly high upon the sea, our voice be heard in the councils of Europe, our Sovereign supported by the love of her subjects, then shall we continue to pursue that course marked out for us by an all-wise hand and carry out our mission of bearing peace, civilisation and good government to the uttermost ends of the earth. (Loud cheers.)

‘ESCAPE!’

23 December 1899

Durban Town Hall, Natal, South Africa

In South Africa to report the Anglo-Boer War for the London Morning Post, Churchill had been taken prisoner of war by the Boers (Dutch settlers in South Africa) on 15 November 1899 in what came to be known as ‘The Armoured Train Incident’. He spent his 25th birthday behind barbed wire in a prisoner-of-war camp in Pretoria, plotting his escape. On the night of 12/13 December he escaped and, after ten days on the run – including several nights concealed in a rat-infested coal mine by an English mine-manager – he reached Portuguese East Africa and freedom. (For a fuller account of his capture and escape the reader should consult Winston Churchill’s My Early life). He then made his way by ship to Durban, where British settlers gave him a rapturous welcome. As he relates in My Early Life:

I reached Durban to find myself a popular hero. I was received as if I had won a great victory. The harbour was decorated with flags. Bands and crowds thronged the quays . . . . Whirled along on the shoulders of the crowd, I was carried to the steps of the town hall, where nothing would content them but a speech, which after a becoming reluctance I was induced to deliver.

By his capture and escape, Churchill had become the hero of the hour and had made a name for himself sufficient to launch forth on a political career, which was his ambition.

‘Escape!’ Durban Town Hall, South Africa, 23 December 1899.

This is not the time for a long speech. We have got outside the region of words: we have to go to the region of action. We are now in the region of war, and in this war we have not yet arrived at the half-way house. But with the determination of a great Empire, surrounded by Colonies of unprecedented loyalty, we shall carry our policy to a successful conclusion, and under the old Union Flag there will be an era of peace, liberty, equality and good government in South Africa. I thank you once again for your great kindness. I am sure I feel within myself a personal measure of that gratitude which every Englishman who loves his country must feel towards the loyal and devoted Colonists of Natal.

‘THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY ESCAPE’

13 December 1900

Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York City

Elected Member of Parliament for Oldham, Lancashire, in the election of October 1900, Winston Churchill, who urgently needed to repair his finances, embarked on a six-week lecture tour of the USA and Canada on the subject of the Anglo-Boer War and his dramatic escape. He was disconcerted to discover the extent of American sentiment in favour of the Boers, Mark Twain, who chaired his inaugural meeting, introduced him to his New York audience with the elegant accolade: ‘Mr Churchill by his father is an Englishman, by his mother he is an American, no doubt a blend that makes the perfect man.’

This is the anniversary of my escape, many accounts of which have been related here and in England, but none of which is true. I escaped by climbing over the iron paling of my prison while the sentry was lighting his pipe. I passed through the streets of Pretoria unobserved and managed to board a coal train on which I hid among the sacks of coal.

When I found the train was not going in the direction I wanted, I jumped off.