204 



The Review of Reviews. 



February 2U, 2906. 



had risen. His career had been meteoric, both in 

 its brilliance and in its duration. It began, so far 

 as the great public was concerned, in 1880, and it 

 closed in 1886. In these six years he had been the 

 chief agency in .destroying the Gladstone Administra- 

 tion. As Secretary for India he annexed Burmah, as 

 Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of 

 the Exchequer he sketched out a budget which he 

 was never able to carry into effect _ Xo great mea- 

 sure of legislation is associated with his name. He 

 was a brilliant free lance, a dashing kind of dema- 

 gogic Rupert, who always showed sport, even 

 although that sport was death to some of his col- 

 . ''agues. 



Such is not a very harsh rendering of the general 

 estimate of Lord Randolph Churchill V career, but 

 it is admittedly the evidence of outsiders. Now, in 

 this biography we have the inside view, which en- 

 ables us to correct the estimate of the outsider. The 

 superficial Rand) of the popular platform —I had 

 almost said of the music-hall stage — disappears from 

 view, and in its stead there < -merges the heroic figure 

 of the saviour of Toryism and of democracy the 

 on.- man who stood between the living and the dead, 

 to whom a grateful countrx reconciliation of 



two forces which otherwise would have plun§ 

 headlong into ruin. 



Mr. Winston's " Lord Randolph" dawns upon us 

 as a kind of demagogue transcending .ill his con- 

 temporaries by his piercing insight and demonic 

 energy. In the midst of the clash of parties, and 

 even while he was apparently engaged in the fiercest 

 strife, he stands aloof, alone and apart. More 

 liberal than the Liberals, he was nevertheless the 

 idolised gladiator of the militant Tories ; but for 

 him the Ton' party, that great instrument which had 

 governed Britain for the last twenty years, would 

 have perished miserably. To his genius, to his 

 prescience, to his statesmanlike grasp of the great 

 verities of the situation, is due the resolution of the 

 great ideal of a Ton* democracy, Primrose-leagued 

 around an imperial crown. Such a conception of 

 Lord Randolph Churchill should be true : it is cer- 

 tainly new. but it is put forward with such sincerity 

 of conviction, and such plausible and persistent ar- 

 gument, that it is certain to win much more accept- 

 ance than anyone would have believed to be possible 

 "before Mr. Winston Churchill took in hand the 

 apotheosis of his father. 



The pivot upon which everything turns in the 

 ■estimate of Lord Randolph was his resignation at 

 the end of 1886. According to the official announc- 

 ment put about by Lord Salisbury, and accepted bv 

 the public, that resignation turned entirelv upon 

 Lord Randolph's refusal to provide the money neces- 

 sary for the fortification of coaling stations. That 

 was the ostensible ground upon which he left the 

 Government. T remember rushing up to his house 

 on the morning on which the fatal announcement 

 appeared in the Times, to ask him to contradict it. 



He declined to see anyone. I. wrote a note and sent 

 it in, I think, by his wife, which was to the effect 

 that the news that he had resigned rather than pro- 

 vide money for the defence of coaling stations, which 

 were the indispensable basis of our Naval power, 

 seemed to me so utterly inconceivable that I refused 

 to publish it unless I had it confirmed by himself. 

 It seemed to me sheer madness. He ^ent out word 

 that I might regard the statement in the Times as 

 accurate. 



From that time I felt that Lord Randolph was a 

 lost man. The question of the coaling stations was 

 one to which 1 had devoted no small measure of 

 attention in " The Truth About the Navy." The 

 necessity tor defending the coaling stations was 

 treated as a vital and integral part of the re-estab- 

 iishment of our sovereignt) of the sea. Lord Ran- 

 dolph might have cut down the Army estimates by 

 millions, and no i>nv would have protested, but to 

 base die whole scheme of retrenchment upon what 

 aed to be a vital weakening of the first line of 

 defence, seemed to nie absolutely insane. Such 

 was ni\ opinion then, and until I read this book I 

 saw no reason to modify my judgment. 



I- must he admitted that Mr. Winston Churchill 

 places a very different construction upon the circum- 

 stances which led to Lord Randolph's resignation, 

 irding to him, the ultimate difference of opinion 

 concerning the money needed for the coaling stations 

 was a comparatively trivial accident which precipi- 

 tated j <>n which had before that become in- 

 e\ table. Lord Randolph had taken office as the 

 ally of Mr. Chamberlain, and when he became 

 Leader of the House of Commons it was with a full 

 determination to lead the party in a Liberal direc- 

 tion. He regarded the Liberal measures as things 

 good and desirable in themselves, whereas his col- 

 leagues, from Lord Salisbury downwards, regarded 

 them as so many unholy surrenders to the powers 

 of evil. Lord Randolph, in short, was a Radical in 

 disguise. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and his 

 appetite for mutton had begun seriously to alarm the 

 denizens of the sheep-fold of which he had been 

 constituted the bell-w r ether. 



The month before he resigned, on November 6th, 

 Lord Randolph wrote to Lord Salisbury: — 



Alas! I see the Dartford programme crumbling into 

 pieces every day. The Land Bill is rotten. I am afraid 

 that it is an idle schoolboy's dream to suppose that the 

 Tories can legislate, as I did stupidly. They can govern 

 and make war and increase taxation and expenditure A 

 mervielle, but legisation is not their province in a demo- 

 cratic constitution. I certainly have not the courage and 

 energy to go on struggling against cliques, as poor Dizzy 

 did all hia life. 



Lord Salisbury, in reply, bemoaned the difficulties 

 of the situation. He admitted the Ton- partv was 

 composed of very varying elements, and there was 

 merely trouble and vexation of spirit in trying to 

 make them work together, but he warned his lieu- 

 tenant that " the classes, and the dependents of 

 classes, were the strongest ingredients in the com- 

 position of the parry 7 ." As Mr. Winston says, a gulf 



