It has been the argument of this book that the nature of the formative experience Churchill underwent in the conception, preparation, conduct and aftermath of his Cuban adventure of 1895 is such that it can properly be said that through it he ‘came of age’ in the full sense of that term, and that therefore this experience is worthy of greater interest and attention from historians dealing with the development of this great man.
As a statesman who had enormous stature, possibly the greatest of his age, Churchill was to go on to operate on the most important stages for much of the twentieth century. But his first direct exposure to its challenges, and his first study of its pitfalls, was during and after his Cuban trip.
As one of the great adventurers and soldiers of fortune of an age of adventurers and soldiers of fortune, Churchill was to undertake such adventures many times in his life, especially in the years immediately after 1895. But his first foreign adventure was in Cuba that year.
As one of the most impressive students and practitioners of politics of his era, Churchill was to hold several Cabinet posts, including prime minister at a time of great national and international peril, and live the great game for most of his life. But his first opportunity for serious political analysis came with his visit to the Caribbean island.
As a military analyst of great skill, he was often called upon to make, or thrust himself into making, decisions based on those analyses, over the many years of his military career and military-related political life. But the first occasion where such skills were brought to bear in a public arena, and counted, was in Cuba in 1895.
Churchill was to become one of the most renowned, and best paid, war correspondents at the turn of the twentieth century.1 But his first experience of that exciting field of work was his reporting for the Daily Graphic during the unsuccessful Spanish campaign to suppress the second major Cuban independence war.
Churchill is surely almost unique in being a man who was to be minister of all three armed services at one time or another over his political career and closely connected with the forces for almost all his life. Yet his first assignment from the War Office came with the request that he study and report on the Spanish rifle round being used against the Cuban insurgents in the rebellion of 1895.
Churchill is known for always dealing with those at the top, whatever his own rank and position, and using fully his connections as well as those of his father and mother and the rest of the family. The first deployment of those skills, thereafter something of a system or formula for him, was in order to obtain the permissions and make possible his trip to Cuba with Reggie Barnes.
Related to this, it is extraordinary how often in his life he dealt with the great, from those he met through his father to those who made his funeral the spectacular event it was. But it was in connection with the Cuba trip that for the first time, and as a result of his own efforts, he came into contact with some of the great men of three countries and of the period.
And related to that, Churchill had a life peppered with coincidences which brought him into contact with the great events of the day. In Cuba, he had his first of these when he found himself in the middle of the invasion of the west, the most decisive event in what was then a 27-year-old story of conspiracy and revolution, and only a short distance from two of the greatest figures in Cuban, and indeed Latin American, history.
Winston has become the symbol of resolution and ‘not giving in’ to many not only of his own time, and especially during the Second World War, but to this day. This trait was first visible to the public in his handling of the obstacles to this visit.
Just as much as for resolution, Churchill is known for personal courage of the highest order. He deployed it on innumerable occasions ranging from Cuba through North-West Frontier of India, the Sudan, South Africa, Antwerp and right up to and through the ‘blitz’. His first personal test of that courage, however, was still his baptism of fire on 1–2 December 1895 during the actions around La Reforma.
Winston became one of the most decorated figures of the modern world. The medals he received were from many countries and for many services and he treasured them all his life. His first, for steadiness under fire, was awarded him during and for his service in Cuba.
Churchill later felt that you were known by your enemies: if you did not have any, the chances were you did not stand for anything. In his case, a subject of controversy for all of his public life, that aspect of his life appeared for the first time in dramatic form as a result of the Cuban experience.
That controversial side of his life was also present in a diplomatic sense. Churchill spent a life dealing with complex and delicate diplomatic contexts. In Cuba, serving ‘with’ an army engaged in repressing a revolution generally supported by the British public, made for his first exposure to the more dicey side of international life.
A powerful writer, author of 58 books, 842 articles and 9,000 pages of printed speeches, Churchill went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.2 But his first writing was done for The Daily Graphic, the newspaper that commissioned him, for The Saturday Review, and for other papers in Britain and the United States while covering the political and military events of late 1895 Cuba.
Winston, especially after the Dardanelles debacle of 1915, began to sketch and paint in an increasingly serious way, and became an accomplished painter. But his first serious and published works of art were his sketches, admittedly improved by professionals, for The Daily Graphic, done in the rebellious colony.
Churchill travelled all over the world during his life and must be considered a truly great traveller, even well beyond his days as a young adventurer. But his first trip outside the tranquil life of north-west Europe was to the far from tranquil Caribbean island of 1895.
Winston found in his mother an ally of great value, and one now totally devoted to his advancement. But the support she gave him for the Cuban adventure’s success was to mark the beginning of this new phase in their relationship and her acceptance that further control of her son would be unlikely. From Cuba on, he was solidly in the driver’s seat in his new formula for bringing her skills into a firmly supporting role for his future endeavours.
These are only some of the ‘firsts’ associated with Churchill’s planning and execution of his Cuban adventure. A proper list would include his first ‘near death experiences’, at least as an adult, his first military operation, his first coming to the notice of foreign royalty in his own right, his first time serving with a foreign army, his first public shows of what was to become the enormously famous ‘Churchill wit’, his first time working in a sustained way in a foreign language, and his first real exposure to Cuban cigars and to the invaluable practice of the siesta.
On 30 November of that year, Churchill had his 21st birthday as he moved along rural Cuban roads to his baptism of fire the next day. In almost every sense, it is in the Cuba of 1895 that he comes of age.
1. Manchester, The Last Lion, p. 12.
2. Figure provided in June 2014, by Ronald Cohen, specialist in Churchill’s writings and publications about him. See also his definitive Bibliography of the Writings of Sir Winston Churchill, London, Thoemmes Continuum, 2006.