assaults upon the leaders of his own party closed to
him, even in his own constituency, the Conservative debating clubs,
again his ill-wishers said: "This _is_ the end. He has ridiculed those
who sit in high places. He has offended his cousin and patron, the Duke
of Marlborough. Without political friends, without the influence and
money of the Marlborough family he is a political nonentity." That was
eighteen months ago. To-day, at the age of thirty-two, he is one of the
leaders of the Government party, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, and
with the Liberals the most popular young man in public life.

Only last Christmas, at a banquet, Sir Edward Grey, the new Foreign
Secretary, said of him: "Mr. Winston Churchill has achieved distinction
in at least five different careers--as a soldier, a war correspondent,
a lecturer, an author, and last, but not least, as a politician. I
have understated it even now, for he has achieved two careers as a
politician--one on each side of the House. His first career on the
Government side was a really distinguished career. I trust the second
will be even more distinguished--and more prolonged. The remarkable
thing is that he has done all this when, unless appearances very much
belie him, he has not reached the age of sixty-four, which is the
minimum age at which the politician ceases to be young."

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born thirty-two years ago, in
November, 1874. By birth he is half-American. His father was Lord
Randolph Churchill, and his mother was Jennie Jerome, of New York.
On the father's side he is the grandchild of the seventh Duke of
Marlborough, on the distaff side, of Leonard Jerome.

To a student of heredity it would be interesting to try and discover
from which of these ancestors Churchill drew those qualities which in
him are most prominent, and which have led to his success.

What he owes to his father and mother it is difficult to overestimate,
almost as difficult as to overestimate what he has accomplished by his
own efforts.

He was not a child born a full-grown genius of commonplace parents.
Rather his fate threatened that he should always be known as the son
of his father. And certainly it was asking much of a boy that he should
live up to a father who was one of the most conspicuous, clever, and
erratic statesmen of the later Victorian era, and a mother who is as
brilliant as she is beautiful.

For at no time was the American wife content to b