The "Imperialism" of Winston Churchill Herbert L. Stewart I hate all this international sharping . If the Empire is anything at all, it is something infinitely more than a combination in restraint of trade. H. G. WELLS. HAVE not", said Mr. Churchill, in an sible though in intense alarm at every di- "J oft-quoted passage, "become the King's vision (with a majority, as Mr. Churchill First Minister to preside at the liquidation says, of "two or three or whatever it is") of the British Empire." Since those words indicates what he expects next time the were used, events have moved fast. people have a chance to express their will. "British Empire" is a term now generally Whether Mr. Attlee's iquidating the Em- avoided (except by those who use it for pire was resented and led to his punish- propagandist denunciation of Britain). ment at the polls, I do not presume to Even "British Commonwealth" seems to judge. But whatever may yet befall his off end, preference being shown for the policies, a great deal that was done during vague term "Commonwealth countries", these last five years could be undone only omitting "British." In Canada the Brit- by a process not inaptly compared to "the ish North America Act has now little more unscrambling of eggs." than antiquarian interest, all its significant Mr. Churchill, whose absorbing con- clauses having been superseded if not re- cern for half a century has been the govern- pealed. 'fo speak of "British North Am- ment of his country, watched the process erica" is to invite the sharp retort (especi- of liquidation since 1901 with intense con- ally in Montreal or Quebec.) "'l'here is cern. He discerned its beginning, to which no such place- any more than there is a others were blind, and exerted all his pow- British South Africa, a British India, or a ers to remove or amend the circumstances British Burma." which were facilitating it. For he believed These changes were not effected under in the British Empire, though not with an the presidency of Mr. Churchill. On the uncritical but with a reforming faith. To contrary, his removal from the Premiership borrow a similitude from theology, he may was held indispensable to their completion. be called a modernist, not a fundamentalist, Five yea,rs of a very different leader pro- in his imperialism. His political ortho- duced in the British electorate the revolt doxy, like the orthodoxy of many a church- of 1950, and as these lines are written, Mr. man, was such as he found it difficult and Atlee's resolve to hang on as long as pos- evep painful to adjust. But he knew that 16 PUBLIC AFFAIRS adjustment was needful if the essence was effectiveness to quote. In that remm1s- to be preserved, and for preservation of cent book he recalls his thrill of joy at news the essence he feels that he has now to of the Jameson Raid, his scorn for the fight the extravagant modernists much scruples of "Little Englanders" about more than the stubborn fundamentalists. British occupation of Egypt, his hope that Like many a theologian becoming "a re- somehow international harmony would so actionary" after years of "liberal" leader- break down as to give British soldiers a ship? chance to practise the technique of Wool- It is to tracing this development in Mr. wich and Sandhurst against foes more Churchill that the following pag·es will be worthy of their steel than either Zulus or 1 devoted. Afghans • The Winston Churchill of those / late 1890's was dominated by martial in- stinct which took him wherever war was to II be witnessed or shared- to Cuba with the Spanish forces fighting a native insurrec- HOW radiant, and how uncritical, was tion, to the Indian frontier for chastise- his original imperialism may be seen ment of Pathan tribesmen, to the Soudan in his youthful publications, such as Lon- and to South Africa on a mission to avenge don to Ladysmith via Pretoria, or The River Gordon by slaughter of Dervishes and War, or The M alakand Field Force, each Majuba by slaughter of Boers. of more than half a century ago. They have the unmistakable ring of what, in the jargon of the time, was called "jingoism" III - the doctrine expounded to the world of business and finance by Cecil Rhodes, ap- plied in foreign policy by Joseph Chamber- WHETHER these were justifiable un- lain and Sir Alfred Milner, instilled in song dertakings seems at that time for the masses by Rudyard Kipling. "The scarcely to have suggested itself as a question day of small kingdoms, with their petty to his mind. He was not surely too young jealousies, has passed", said Chamberlain, (at twenty-four or twenty-five) to bother in one of the rapturous speeches at the with such puzzle. Others, much younger, Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria- whose were considering it, but he had passed heart Disraeli had won by having her pro- straight from school to a military college, claimed "Empress of India." Just two immune from the provocatives to thought years later, the Minister who had spoken which Oxford or Cambridge would have so would illustrate his doctrine by initiat- applied. A quaint reminiscent passage ing imperialist war in South Africa on the tells how, when he was almost twenty-two, Transvaal and on the Orange Free State. a friend remarked to him that Christianity Books on foreign affairs by Englishmen was "the last word in Ethics", and how, of the late nineteenth century- such as though he had been enough at church to Seeley's Expansion of England and Dilke's know something of Christianity, he was Problems of Greater Britain- belong by altogether at a loss to guess what "Ethics" meant. "They had never been mentioned their very titles to a way of thinking which 2 it now requires an effort to recall. But to me at Harrow or Sandhurst" ! And to Mr. Churchill in his early twenties this yet he must surely have observed at least was the faith by which every Englishman in the British press of the later 1890's how should live. How completely he had ab- some critics, with a prima facie claim to sorbed the imperialism which his country's respect, were thinking about martial enter- leaders are now so concerned to repudiate, prises in a manner different from any_ to is made plain in his autobiography of his which he had been introduced at Sand- early years entitled A Roving Commission. hurst or at Harrow. For example, they Those who now brand him (on the Mos- were writing about the dreadful cruelty cow radio) as a "war-mong·er" mig·ht find and selfishness shown to the natives of there passages of at least very plausible Cuba by Spanish officials- the sort of of- THE "IMPERIALISM'! OF WINSTON CHURCHILL 17 ficials whose honoured English guest he As he went on to urge reduction of arma- had been in the war to castigate the na- ment at a time when the Secretary for War tives. He had himself contemplated in was proposing its increase, and used the Calcutta what Indian Congress Jeaders mottoes so familiar on Liberal Opposition were denouncing as "palaces" of the mag- lips about "peace, retrenchment and re- nates from the West, erected and decorated form", th'-l Tory party organizers who had · at the cost of an overworked, starved, ex- worked to get him elected in Oldham began ploited Hindu proletariat. Projects of to wonder whether they had made a bad avenging Gordon and avenging Majuba mistake. Balfour's cynical comment, that were being branded as infamous, inhuman, when they thought they had found a young anti-Christian, by leaders of British liberal man of promise they proved to have found .opm10n. But for the time- an extraordin- only a young man of promises, was annoy- arily long time in one so highly endowed- ing to those who had chosen him. "So all this questioning of the imperial purpose here was I already out of step", Mr. seems to have been dismissed by Second- Churchill has reflected in his reminiscent Lieutenant Churchill as a piece of lower- mood about his first years in parliament. class impudence. His spirit was that of Those who remembered the doings of his the jeunesse doree, whose tradition was the father, Lord Randolph Churchill, in the heritage from Beaconsfield guarded by House twenty years before were least sur- Primrose Knights and Dames against the prised. "If there is anything at all in sacrilegious touch of a ''Radical.'' heredity of disposition", they exclaimed, Something developed in the early 1900's "what else would you expect?" to upset in the mind of this devout young No one indeed could say of him, as of the imperialist the faith in which he had been younger Pitt, that in politics he had been nurtured and whose questioning by others "taught by his dad on a stool." He has he had resented. told us that between himself and his father there had never been a sharing of thought on public controversies. As far IV back as his school days at Harrow, Win- ston knew, and proudly mentioned, that F'11 ER leaving the army, he had entered his father was "a great man", but at no A parliament, conformably to the cus- time did Lord Randolph encourage him to tom of the ruling class in which he was discuss in conversation the public issues born. He was elected, of course, as a upon which this "greatness" was showing Conservative, but the Conservative leader itself.