Past Caring by Robert Goddard Read Free Book Online Page A

question of my joining the Conservatives. On all issues of substance—free trade, Ireland, the Empire, the House of Lords—I was firmly of the Liberal mind, but such volatility at the helm was a trifle disconcerting. It was my brother, ever a good judge of land, who pointed out to me how it lay in this regard. For, as he said, a time of flux was ideal for a young hopeful to win his spurs.
    In the short term, what was needed was patience. And just as, kicking my heels at Barrowteign , I began to exhaust mine, Gerald Couchman came to my rescue. In the summer of 1898, he at last graduated from Cambridge and took up residence in London as a young man about town , living with an indulgent aunt in St. John’s Wood. He invited me to stay with him there awhile and, since this would enable me to follow events in Parliament at first hand, I was encouraged to go. In the event, my visits became frequent and lengthy, so delightfully open-handed was Couch’s aunt in the accommodation of guests. Her nephew led me into bad habits with a cheery smile, but I refrained from his worst excesses and kept my ear close to the ground at Westminster, where my time was well-spent.
    But not, alas, reassuringly spent. There was perceptible during the spring and summer of 1899 a drift to war with the Boer republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State that appeared, to me at any
     

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    rate, to possess an inevitability borne of the most extreme and swag-gering nationalism amongst the populace of London (and, I have little doubt, of Pretoria too). The low halls and taverns which Couch sometimes induced me to visit generally rebounded at this time with the most unreasoning war sentiment and caused me to doubt, for the first time, my faith in the demos. It became clear that the Liberal Party would be divided should war come. Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George opposed hostilities and came to be roundly abused for their pains; Asquith and the former leader, Rosebery, supported them.
    My position was equivocal, which met with Sir William’s approval but which considerably put out my father, who judged that methods employed against the sepoys in 1857 should be followed against the Boers in 1899; in vain did I seek to dissuade him. It was Couch who convinced me that one could carry reason too far, never being one to do so himself. We were seated at Lord’s one day in June—watching Victor Trumper score a century for the Australians—when we fell to discussing what we should do in the event of war. Couch was all for enlisting at once and sampling the excitement of action. The subtleties of the dispute were of no interest to him where an opportunity for overseas adventure was concerned. To a great extent, he won me over. If war did come, I felt sure that an election would be delayed, not hastened, so time was likely to hang heavy if I stayed at home. There seemed, moreover, no substitute for first-hand experience upon which to base my own view of the matter. Accordingly, we pledged, as only young men can , to enlist together.
    Fortuitously, my father was not unacquainted with General Buller, the Commander-in-Chief, whose career had started in India just as my father’s was coming to fruition there and whose family home was near Crediton. Through his good offices, Couch and I were admitted that summer to the volunteer reserve of the Devonshire regiment. When war did break out, in October, we were gazetted second lieutenants.
    So it was that, on October 11, we set sail from Southampton with General Buller and the rest of the regiment, bound for Capetown.
    Aboard, I encountered amongst our fellow-passengers that youthful veteran of Omdurman , Winston Churchill, like me set upon a 36

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    political career, but (at this stage) in the Conservative interest. He was going to South Africa as a reporter for the Morning Post and little did I think that I would one day sit in Cabinet with him.
    We reached Capetown at the