To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [13]
It certainly was amusing to some extent, but it had its trying side. For instance, they came equipped with several barrel-organs, which, of course, they never ceased playing from the time of their arrival until their departure. Their womenfolk accompanied them, and dancing went on during the greater part of the day, on the lawns and on the drive.
My father ... threw himself nobly into the breach, and helped to organize sports for the men.... I think he was more amused than anyone at the extraordinary antics of the invaders of our peace and quietness. They swarmed all over the place, and when the evening came and they set off on the return journey to London, we, at any rate, were not sorry that the entertainment had at last come to an end.
John French's family might have resented the "invaders of our peace and quietness," but Courtlands was, after all, Despard's estate, although she now occupied only a small cottage on the grounds for her weekend visits. French remained fond of the sister who had helped raise him. When as a Poor Law Board member she gave her first public speech at Wandsworth town hall, he accompanied her. And when she was overcome at the door by stage fright, he encouraged her with the comment: "Only nervous people are ever of any real use."
Despite their disparate views of the world, the warmth and loyalty between this brother and sister would continue for several decades, through a grim, divisive colonial conflict about to break out, and then a global war that would leave more than 700,000 of their countrymen dead. Only events after that great watershed would finally break the bond between them.
2. A MAN OF NO ILLUSIONS
JUST AS SOME of the major commanders and protesters of the First World War came onstage well before it began, so too did one of the war's key weapons. It made a spectacular early appearance the year after Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
The site was Omdurman, in the Sudan, the vast African territory whose inhabitants, in London's eyes, did not understand their proper role, which was to be loyal subjects of the British Empire. Under a militant Muslim leader, Sudanese Arabs had overrun an occupation force and beheaded the British general who led it. Thirteen years later, in 1898, Britain sent a large body of troops up the Nile to the Sudan under the command of legendary Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener, who had served in various corners of the empire, from Palestine to Cyprus to Zanzibar, and whose mission now was to teach the Sudanese their place, once and for all.
An adventurous young soldier with this force was peering through his binoculars at a hillside, crossed by what he thought was a defensive barricade of tree branches. "Suddenly the whole black line ... began to move. It was made of men, not bushes.... We watched, amazed by the wonder of the sight, the whole face of the slope become black with swarming savages. Four miles from end to end."
Marching toward him from Omdurman, the headquarters of the Sudanese, were some 50,000 troops carrying spears, swords, horns, drums, and antiquated rifles. "The whole side of the hill seemed to move. Between the masses horsemen galloped continually; before them many patrols dotted the plain; above them waved hundreds of banners, and the sun, glinting on many thousands of hostile spear-points, spread a sparkling cloud."
The witness was 23-year-old Winston Churchill, who was both correspondent for the London Morning Post and an officer in Kitchener's forces. As the scion of a well-placed family, he was, of course, in the cavalry. With the decisive battle about to begin, "standing at a table spread in the wilderness, we ate a substantial meal," he wrote. "It was like a race lunch before the big event."
The future prime minister was hardly the only ambitious Briton who had lobbied hard to be here for the showdown—or who ate well while awaiting glory. Consider