My Early Life: The Autobiography - Winston Churchill

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contemporaries. But he had a style and distinction of manner which were exceptional, and a mature outlook and conversation the like of which I never saw in any other Harrow boy. He was always the great gentleman, self-composed, cool, sedate, spick and span and faultlessly dressed. When my father came down to see me, he used to take us both to luncheon at the King's Head Hotel. I was thrilled to hear them talk, as if they were equals, with the easy assurance of one man of the world to another. I envied him so much. How I should have loved to have that sort of relationship with my father! But alas I was only a backward schoolboy and my incursions into the conversation were nearly always awkward or foolish.

      Milbanke and I embarked upon one adventure together. We discovered that by an old custom there should be no compulsory football in trial week. This rule had fallen into desuetude for some years. We therefore refused to play, citing the custom and alleging that we must concentrate upon our studies. By so doing we courted a severe caning from the monitors. Nevertheless it could not be denied that we 'had the law of them.' The issue was gravely debated in the highest circles. For three or four days we did not know what our fate would be. Our case was prejudiced by the suspicion that we were not wearing ourselves out by study, but on the contrary might even have been called idle. However in the end it was decided that we must have our way, and I trust the precedent thus boldly established has not been lost in later generations.

      Milbanke was destined for the Army and had set his heart upon the 10th Hussars. His father allowed him to go in through the Militia, a course which though slightly longer, avoided most of the examinations. He therefore left Harrow a year before I did and soon blossomed out into a Militia subaltern. We kept up a regular correspondence and often saw each other in the holidays. We shall meet him again in these pages. He was destined to the highest military honours. He gained the Victoria Cross in the South African War for rescuing, when he was already grievously wounded, one of his troopers under a deadly fire. He fell in the Gallipoli Peninsula, leading a forlorn attack in the awful battle of Suvla Bay.

      *****

      I enjoyed the Harrow songs. They have an incomparable book of school songs. At intervals we used to gather in the Speech Room or even in our own Houses, and sing these splendid and famous choruses. I believe these songs are the greatest treasure that Harrow possesses. There is certainly nothing like them at Eton. There they have only got one song and that about Rowing, which though good exercise is poor sport and poorer poetry. We used also to have lectures from eminent persons on scientific or historical subjects. These made a great impression on me. To have an exciting story told you by someone who is a great authority, especially if he has a magic lantern, is for me the best way of learning. Once I had heard the lecture and had listened with great attention, I could have made a very fair show of delivering it myself. I remember five lectures particularly to this day. The first by Mr. Bowen, the most celebrated of Harrow masters and the author of many of our finest songs, gave us a thrilling account in popular form of the battle of Waterloo. He gave another lecture on the battle of Sedan which I greatly enjoyed. Some years afterwards I found that he had taken it almost literally from Hooper's Sedan—one of my colonel's favourite books. It was none the worse for that. There was a lecture on climbing the Alps by the great Mr. Whymper with wonderful pictures of guides and tourists hanging on by their eyelids or standing with their backs to precipices which even in photographs made one squirm. There was a lecture about how butterflies protect themselves by their colouring. A nasty-tasting butterfly has gaudy colouring to warn the bird not to eat it. A succulent, juicy-tasting butterfly protects himself by making himself exactly like his usual branch or leaf. But this takes them millions of years to do; and in the meanwhile the more backward ones get eaten and die out. That is why the survivors are marked and coloured as they are. Lastly we had a lecture from Mr. Parkin on Imperial Federation. He told us how at Trafalgar Nelson's signal—'England expects that every man will do his duty'—ran down the line of battle, and how if we and our Colonies all held together, a day would come when such a signal would run not merely along a line of ships, but along a line of nations. We lived to see this come true, and I was able to remind the aged Mr. Parkin of it, when in the last year of his life he attended some great banquet in celebration of our victorious emergence from the Great War.

      I wonder they do not have these lectures more often. They might well have one every fortnight, and afterwards all the boys should be set to work to write first what they could remember about it, and secondly what they could think about it. Then the masters would soon begin to find out who could pick things up as they went along and make them into something new, and who were the dullards; and the classes of the school would soon get sorted out accordingly.

      Thus Harrow would not have stultified itself by keeping me at the bottom of the school, and I should have had a much jollier time.

      Chapter IV

       Sandhurst

       Table of Contents

      At Sandhurst I had a new start. I was no longer handicapped by past neglect of Latin, French or Mathematics. We had now to learn fresh things and we all started equal. Tactics, Fortification, Topography (mapmaking), Military Law and Military Administration formed the whole curriculum. In addition were Drill, Gymnastics and Riding. No one need play any game unless he wanted to. Discipline was strict and the hours of study and parade were long. One was very tired at the end of the day. I was deeply interested in my work, especially Tactics and Fortification. My father instructed his bookseller Mr. Bain to send me any books I might require for my studies. So I ordered Hamley's Operations of War, Prince Kraft's Letters on Infantry, Cavalry and Artillery, Maine's Infantry Fire Tactics, together with a number of histories dealing with the American Civil, Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars, which were then our latest and best specimens of wars. I soon had a small military library which invested the regular instruction with some sort of background. I did not much like the drill and indeed figured for several months in the 'Awkward Squad,' formed from those who required special smartening up. But the practical work in field fortification was most exciting. We dug trenches, constructed breastworks, revetted parapets with sandbags, with heather, with fascines, or with 'Jones' iron band gabion.' We put up chevaux de frises and made fougasses (a kind of primitive land mine). We cut railway lines with slabs of guncotton, and learned how to blow up masonry bridges, or make substitutes out of pontoons or timber. We drew contoured maps of all the hills round Camberley, made road reconnaissances in every direction, and set out picket lines and paper plans for advanced guards or rear guards, and even did some very simple tactical schemes. We were never taught anything about bombs or hand-grenades, because of course these weapons were known to be long obsolete. They had gone out of use in the eighteenth century, and would be quite useless in modern war.

      All this was no doubt very elementary, and our minds were not allowed to roam in working hours beyond a subaltern's range of vision. But sometimes I was invited to dine at the Staff College, less than a mile away, where all the cleverest officers in the Army were being trained for the High Command. Here the study was of divisions, army corps and even whole armies; of bases, of supplies, and lines of communication and railway strategy. This was thrilling. It did seem such a pity that it all had to be make-believe, and that the age of wars between civilized nations had come to an end for ever. If it had only been 100 years earlier what splendid times we should have had! Fancy being nineteen in 1793 with more than twenty years of war against Napoleon in front of one! However all that was finished. The British Army had never fired on white troops since the Crimea, and now that the world was growing so sensible and pacific—and so democratic too—the great days were over. Luckily, however, there were still savages and barbarous peoples. There were Zulus and Afghans, also the Dervishes of the Soudan. Some of these might, if they were well-disposed, 'put up a show' some day. There might even be a mutiny or a revolt in India. At that time the natives had adopted a mysterious practice of smearing the mango trees, and we all fastened hopefully upon an article in the Spectator which declared that perhaps in a few months we might have India to reconquer. We wondered about all this. Of course we should all get our commissions so much earlier and march about the plains of India and win medals and distinction, and perhaps rise to very high command like Clive when quite young! These thoughts were only partially consoling, for

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