MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL

The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill (Leonard Spencer) son of Lord
Randolph Churchill. Born, 1874. Educ: Harrow and Sandhurst. Entered
army in 1895; served with Spanish Forces in Cuba, 1895; in
operations in India, 1897-98; on the Nile and at the Battle of
Khartoum, 1899; was given the Khartoum Medal in that year;
Correspondent of the _Morning Post_ in South Africa, 1899-1900;
taken prisoner and escaped, 1900; in long series of actions
including Spion Kop, Pieters, and capture of Pretoria; M.P. Oldham,
1900-06; M.P. for Manchester, 1906-08; commissioned Colonel, 1916;
retired, 1916; Under Colonial Secretary, 1906-08; President Board
of Trade, 1908-10; Home Secretary, 1910-11; First Lord of the
Admiralty, 1911-15; Minister of Munitions, 1917; Rector of Aberdeen
Univ., 1914; Chairman of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1915; Author of a
series of books (campaign records), and also of the _Life of Lord
Randolph Churchill_.

[Illustration: RT. HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL]

CHAPTER IX

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL

_"He was not free from that careless life-contemning desperation,
which sometimes belongs to forcible natures.... He was too heedless
of his good name and too blind to the truth that though right and
wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is
of an awful sacredness."_--JOHN MORLEY (of Danton).

Mr. Winston Churchill was one of its most interesting figures in the
Parliament which included Joseph Chamberlain, Charles Dilke, and George
Wyndham. With the fading exception of Mr. Lloyd George, he is easily the
most interesting figure in the present House of Commons.

There still clings to his career that element of great promise and
unlimited uncertainty which from his first entrance into politics has
interested both the public and the House of Commons. He has disappointed
his admirers on several occasions, but not yet has he exhausted their
patience or destroyed their hopes.

His intellectual gifts are considerable, his personal courage is of a
quality that makes itself felt even in the bosom of hate, and he
possesses in a unique degree the fighting qualities of the born
politician. No man is more difficult to shout down, and no man responds
more gratefully to opposition of the fiercer kind. If on several
occasions he has disappointed his friends, also on several occasions he