On November 2 they sailed aboard the Cunard Royal Mail Steamship Etruria. The voyage was “tedious and uncomfortable… & I shall always look upon journeys by sea as necessary evils.” But in New York they forgot their grievances. Originally they had scheduled three days in the city, and, aboard ship, had considered cutting this in half. Actually, they were there a week. The man responsible for this revision in plans was Bourke Cockran, a wealthy Irish-American lawyer, congressman, and power in the Tammany wigwam. Cockran was one of Jennie’s men—at one time he had been her favorite—and like the rest he cut a remarkable figure, towering, leonine, with deep-set eyes and a massive forehead. His mobile features gave a contemporary the impression of “something Spanish, Celtiberian as well as Celtic.”8 His oratory was remarkable. Twice, in 1884 and 1892, his deep, resonant brogue had held Democratic national conventions spellbound. Churchill was to be one of his early conquests. Among the last was Adlai Stevenson, who modeled his rhetoric on Cockran’s. In the early 1950s Churchill would astound Stevenson by quoting long passages from Cockran speeches.
Jennie and two of her lovers (Count Kinsky on left)
Churchill and Barnes were Cockran’s guests in his sprawling apartment at 763 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street. Jennie had written him that they would be calling, and he made wonderful things happen. Her son wrote her that he had “engagements for the next few days about three deep. It is very pleasant staying here as the rooms are beautifully furnished and fitted with every convenience & also as Mr Cockran is one of the most charming hosts and interesting men I have met.” Twelve judges, including a Supreme Court justice, came to dine with them the first evening. The two young English officers dined out at the Waldorf, were entertained at Koster and Bial’s, toured the harbor in a tugboat, attended the annual horse show, were shown around the ironclad cruiser New York, attended five fires with the fire commissioner, were received by the Cornelius Vanderbilts—whose niece would be the next Duchess of Marlborough—and visited West Point. Winston wrote: “We are members of all the Clubs and one person seems to vie with another in trying to make our time pleasant.”9
He was not an uncritical tourist. To Jack he wrote that West Point discipline was so strict as to be “positively disgraceful.” He wrote his aunt Leonie that he had paid his fare across the eleven-year-old Brooklyn Bridge “with a paper dollar,” which he thought “abominable currency.” It seemed to him that “the essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.” Considering the character of Pulitzer’s World and Hearst’s new Journal, this was not unjust. Besides, he qualified it: “I think mind you that vulgarity is a sign of strength. A great, crude, strong, young people are the Americans—like a boisterous healthy boy among enervated but well bred ladies and gentlemen.” And New Yorkers, by their treatment of him, won his heart. “What an extraordinary people the Americans are! Their hospitality is a revelation to me and they make you feel at home and at ease in a way that I have never before experienced.” He adored America’s most popular song that year:10
When you hear dem a bells go ding, ling ling,
All join ’round and sweetly you must sing,
And when the verse am through, in the chorus all join in,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight!
But there is no doubt about which New Yorker impressed him most. He wrote: “I have great discussions with Mr Cockran on every conceivable subject from Economics to yacht racing. He is a clever man and one from whose conversation much is to be learned.” Night after night, long after Barnes had retired, they sat in the flat’s large library, sipping brandy, smoking cigars—Churchill’s first—and talking, talking, talking. Jennie’s intimate admirer introduced her son to the works of Edmund Burke. He told him: “Burke mastered the English language as a man masters the horse. He was simple, direct, eloquent, yet there is a splendor in his phrases that even in cold type reveals how forcibly he must have enthralled his visitors.” Churchill was enthralled by his host’s fire, vision, vigor, and, most of all, by his own mastery of English. In speaking, Cockran advised him, one should avoid scurrility, affectations, and cant. He said: “What people really want to hear is the truth—it is the exciting thing—speak the simple truth.” All his life Winston would remember, and frequently quote, some of the phrases he heard by the fire in that Fifth Avenue apartment. Cockran said: “The earth is a generous mother. She will provide in plentiful abundance food for all her children, if they will but cultivate her soil in justice and peace.” He also said: “In a society where there is democratic tolerance and freedom under the law, many kinds of evils will crop up, but give them a little time and they usually breed their own cure.” Thirty-seven years later Churchill would write of Cockran: “I have never seen his like or, in some respects, his equal. His conversation, in point, in pith, in rotundity, in antithesis and in comprehension, exceeded anything I have ever heard.”11 By then Winston knew scores of great men. But even in 1895 he had met Rosebery, Salisbury, and Balfour. The difference was that they had all regarded him as his father’s misfit son. In New York, for the first time, he found himself in the company of a distinguished man who treated him as a peer. Today Bourke Cockran’s papers gather dust in the New York Public Library. He is forgotten in his own city. Yet a man who aroused young Churchill, and inspired Stevenson’s gallant campaign in 1952, deserves remembrance.
Cockran seemed omnipotent in New York. At a word from him, the two English lieutenants had a private compartment for the thirty-six-hour train trip through Philadelphia, Washington, Savannah, Tampa Bay, and Key West, where they boarded the steamer Olivette. In the early hours of Wednesday, November 20, they sighted Havana and the rugged coast outlined against the deep blue horizon. Winston felt “delicious yet tremulous… I felt as if I sailed with Long John Silver and first gazed on Treasure Island. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.” In his first dispatch as a war correspondent he wrote:
High up on the cliffs, as the ship enters the narrows, one sees the fortress of El Moro, formerly a place of great strength, and commanding the channel to the port. It is now only used as a prison for political and military offenders, and an occasional place for execution. Here it was that the sentence of death on Lieutenant Gallegos was carried out in May last. This officer had the charge of a small post with some fifty soldiers, and was unfortunate enough to be breakfasting in a café when the insurgents happened to pass.12
A carriage carried them to the Gran Hotel Inglaterra and then to the office of Alexander Gollan, the British consul general. Everything had been arranged. In the morning they would leave the capital for a twelve-hour train trip to Santa Clara, the headquarters of Captain General Arsenio Martínez de Campos. Unfortunately, they could not be guaranteed a safe passage. Rebels frequently used passing trains for target practice. Sometimes they set them afire, or blew up the tracks. Winston was excited. He told readers of the Graphic that the train preceding theirs, carrying a Spanish general, “had been thrown off the line a few miles beyond Santo Domingo, and… fifteen of its occupants had been severely injured.” Their train, however, completed the trip without incident. “Marshal Campos, to whose headquarters we went, received us very kindly, and readily gave us the necessary passes and letters.”13
Campos turned them over to Lieutenant Juan O’Donnell, son of the Duke of Tetuán. The lieutenant was fluent in English. Unfortunately, he had a sad tale to tell. Churchill was introduced to the most exasperating problem of correspondents covering a guerrilla war—finding the front. A Spanish mobile column was camped twenty miles away, pursuing a force of four thousand insurgents, but the jungle between here and there was “infested by the enemy.” To get there, Churchill and Barnes must take another train to Cienfuegos, proceed by steamer to Tuna, and then travel, again by train, to Sancti Spiritu. “Though this route forms two sides of a triangle, it is—Euclid notwithstanding—shorter than the other, and
we shall catch the column there.”14
Altogether he filed five “Letters from the Front” for the Graphic, each of which ran under the head “The Insurrection in Cuba,” was by-lined “From Our Own Correspondent,” and concluded with the initials “WSC.” They show a keen eye for detail, a gift for clarity, and a sure grasp of tactics. The fourth was the best. By November 30—his twenty-first birthday—he had joined troops commanded by General Juarez Valdez in the fortified village of Arroyo Blanco. At 5:00 A.M., wearing his British uniform, he accompanied two battalions, seventeen hundred men, who were feeling their way toward a band of rebels led by Gómez. “No sooner had we got clear of the town than we heard the sound of firing.” To deceive Gómez’s scouts, the Spaniards retraced their steps and approached from a different direction, “through swampy meadows of coarse grass traversed by frequent water-courses.” At 10:00 A.M., to his astonishment, they halted and everyone except sentries slept for four hours. This was his introduction to the siesta, a custom which he would appropriate and use during both world wars to turn one working day into two. Rising, they advanced and came upon a rebel encampment; the enemy’s line of march could be traced “by broken branches and trampled grass, and this line the column followed.” At 5:00 P.M. the Spaniards found rebel campfires “still smouldering, and signs of a hasty departure were to be seen on every side.” Here they dug in for the night, with four companies of infantry posted as sentinels. “The whole scene, bathed in brilliant moonlight—in strong contrast to which the tall palm trees and the surrounding woods showed in deepest black”—was compared with “the numerous watch fires, against whose glaze the figures of the soldiers were silhouetted.”15
At 5:15 A.M. they were off again. “The sun had not yet risen, and a mist hung over all the low-lying ground.” The path ahead “lay through the thickest and most impenetrable forest.” Until now Valdez’s plan had been to throw one battalion ahead, with two extended companies guarding each flank, but here the flank guards had to be abandoned; the dense jungle confined them to a narrow path. “Daylight slowly broadened, and the long Spanish column insinuated itself like a snake into the endless forests and undulations of a vast, lustrous landscape dripping with moisture and sparkling with sunshine.” Their siesta was interrupted by rebel sharpshooters. Back on the trail Winston lit a Cuban cigar—he had the habit now—and noted that the bush here “gave place to a forest of extraordinary palm trees of all possible sizes and most peculiar shapes.” The column forded a river and camped at a place called Las Grullas, where he persuaded two officers to join him in a swim. As they were dressing, “suddenly we heard a shot fired. Another and another followed; then came a volley. The bullets whistled over our heads.” Like Chinese Gordon and George Washington, he found it thrilling to be under fire: “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.” He coolly observed that while Valdez’s men carried Mausers, the enemy used Remingtons, “and the deep note of their pieces contrasted strangely with the shrill rattle of the magazine rifles of the Spaniards.”16
That night a bullet passed through the thatched hut in which he was sleeping and another wounded an orderly just outside. Battle—the battle of La Reforma—was joined in the morning. The Spanish column debouched into open country, and the general, scanning the field through his field glasses, saw the enemy’s main position. He ordered an attack. His infantry advanced three hundred yards in silence; then “from the distant crest line came a lot of little puffs of smoke, followed immediately by the report of the insurgent rifles.” The Spaniards’ rifles replied as the infantrymen continued their advance. “The firing on both sides became heavy.” There was “a sound in the air sometimes like a sigh, sometimes like a whistle, and at others like the buzz of an offended hornet.” Valdez, “in his white uniform and gold lace, mounted on a grey horse, was a mark for every sharpshooter,” yet he rode up to within fifty yards of the firing line, urging his men on while bullets felled staff officers riding on either side of him. “Presently the sound of the Mauser volleys began to predominate and the rebel fire to slacken, till finally it ceased altogether.” Churchill saw “figures scurrying to the shelter of the woods,” then silence. Spanish troops occupied the enemy’s position. They had but one day’s rations left, however, and pursuit of the insurgents “was impossible owing to the impenetrable nature of the woods.” Valdez, triumphant but foiled, returned to his base in Cienfuegos.17
Campos—who was about to be relieved by Veleriano Weyler, whose suppression of rebellious Cuban civilians helped precipitate the Spanish-American War—awarded Churchill and Barnes the Red Cross, a Spanish decoration for officers. In London the War Office announced that they wouldn’t be permitted to wear it, however; sympathy for the insurrection was still strong on both sides of the Atlantic. New York newspapers reported that Winston had fought under the Spanish colors. In Tampa he hotly denied it: “I have not even fired a revolver. I am a member of General Valdez’s staff by courtesy only.” But in England the Newcastle Leader, ignoring British army precedents, observed that “spending a holiday in fighting other people’s battles is rather an extraordinary proceeding even for a Churchill,” and the Eastern Morning News predicted that “difficulties are certain to arise and Lord Wolseley will probably order him to return at once and report himself.” Wolseley did no such thing; if he reprimanded officers for serving in foreign armies, he would lose his best men. American editors were more cutting; the two subalterns were described as “emissaries of the British Government sent to teach Campos how to whip the secessionists” and proof that England was “throwing more bricks at the Monroe doctrine.”18
Back in Cockran’s flat, Churchill, stung, held his first press conference. Some of his remarks were foolish. If Campos took two Cuban strongholds before spring, he said, “he will, in my judgment, break the back of the revolution.” The rebels might then “carry on the war for a year or two longer, but ultimately they will be forced to accept virtually dictated terms.” Campos was, “in my judgment, one of the most distinguished men that Spain has ever produced,” a leader of “rare judgment and great humanity.” The rebels were “not good soldiers, but as runners would be hard to beat.” That inspired derisive headlines across the United States. He was described as a “pleasant faced young officer” wholly lacking in judgment. Yet he had qualified his predictions. If the Cubans held their present gains, he said, they would “be in a position to demand more favorable terms in the event of any attempt at settlement or arbitration.” The Spaniards were valiant and energetic, “but the nature of the country is against them, and, furthermore, there is too little combination in the movements of their various columns.” This could turn the tide. Indeed, “If the insurgents hold out until the spring rains set in, they may yet win.”19
He and Barnes sailed home on the Etruria, but the Cuban dilemma still weighed heavily upon him. He dashed off a piece for the Saturday Review denouncing rebel cruelty and adding, “They neither fight bravely nor do they use their weapons effectively.” Bad as the Spanish administration was, “a Cuban Government would be worse, equally corrupt, more capricious, and far less stable. Under such a Government revolutions would be periodic, property insecure, equity unknown.” The best solution, he wrote Cockran, would be an American takeover of the island: “I hope the United States will not force Spain to give up Cuba—unless you are prepared to accept responsibility.” If the rebels won, the government would be dominated by “the negro element among the insurgents,” who would “create renewed and even more bitter conflict of a racial kind.”20
Cuba had been the first test of his courage and his sagacity. He had handled himself well under fire, inviting death near the firing line when, as a nonbelligerent, he might honorably have sought safety in the rear. His reportorial skills were already remarkable. On the other hand, he had failed to grasp the essential nature of guerrilla warfare, so important to an understanding of the century ahead. He had been, and in some respects always would be, a defender of the established o
rder. Imperialism would never be a pejorative for him. Of the infamous Jameson Raid, which took place a week after his return from New York, he later wrote, “I was all for Dr. Jameson and his men. I understood fairly well the causes of the dispute on both sides. I longed for the day on which we should ‘avenge Majuba.’ I was shocked to see our Conservative Government act so timidly in this crisis. I was ashamed to see them truckling to a misguided Liberal Opposition and even punishing these brave raiders, many of whom I knew so well.” His forecasts of Cuba’s immediate future would soon be discredited. But in the long run his pessimism about the island would be vindicated. He had just reached his majority. He had been growing in acumen since his father’s death, and was continually revising his judgments. Little more than a year after his return from embattled Cuba, he expressed misgivings over his first interpretation of the revolution there. “I reproach myself somewhat,” he wrote, “for having written a little uncandidly and for having perhaps done injustice to the insurgents. I rather tried to make out, and in some measure succeeded in making out, a case for Spain. It was politic and did not expose me to the charge of being ungrateful to my hosts, but I am not quite clear whether it was right…. I am aware that what I wrote did not shake thrones or upheave empires—but the importance of principles do not [sic] depend on the importance of what involves them.” One principle was clear. It was inconceivable to him that a colony could survive as a sovereign state. After the Maine blew up, he told a reporter that “America can give the Cubans peace, and perhaps prosperity will then return. American annexation is what we must all urge, but possibly we shall not have to urge long.” To him the very thought of Cuban independence was as absurd as, say, an independent India.21