l be irresistible."
Lest so large an order as making the Anglo-Saxon race irresistible might
turn the head of a subaltern, an antiseptic cablegram was also sent him,
from London, reading:
"Best friends here hope you won't go making further ass of yourself.
"McNEILL."
One day in camp we counted up the price per word of this cablegram, and
Churchill was delighted to find that it must have cost the man who sent
it five pounds.
On the day of his arrival in Durban, with the cheers still in the air,
Churchill took the first train to "the front," then at Colenso. Another
man might have lingered. After a month's imprisonment and the hardships
of the escape, he might have been excused for delaying twenty-four hours
to taste the sweets of popularity and the flesh-pots of the Queen Hotel.
But if the reader has followed this brief biography he will know that
to have done so would have been out of the part. This characteristic of
Churchill's to get on to the next thing explains his success. He has no
time to waste on postmortems, he takes none to rest on his laurels.
As a war correspondent and officer he continued with Buller until the
relief of Ladysmith, and with Roberts until the fall of Pretoria. He
was in many actions, in all the big engagements, and came out of the war
with another medal and clasps for six battles.
On his return to London he spent the summer finishing his second book on
the war, and in October at the general election as a "khaki" candidate,
as those were called who favored the war, again stood for Oldham. This
time, with his war record to help him, he wrested from the Liberals one
of Oldham's two seats. He had been defeated by thirteen hundred votes;
he was elected by a majority of two hundred and twenty-seven.
The few months that intervened between his election and the opening of
the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a lecturing tour at
home, and in the United States and Canada. His subject was the war and
his escape from Pretoria.
When he came to this country half of the people here were in sympathy
with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they supposed would
be a strictly British version of the war. His manager, without asking
permission of those whose names he advertised, organized for Churchill's
first appearance in various cities, different reception committees.
Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for these
committees, wrote indignantly t
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