He had been
defeated by thirteen hundred votes; he was elected by a majority of
two hundred and twenty-seven.
The few months that intervened between his election and the
opening of the new Parliament were snatched by Churchill for a
lecturing tour at home, and in the United States and Canada. His
subject was the war and his escape from Pretoria.
When he came to this country half of the people here were in
sympathy with the Boers, and did not care to listen to what they
supposed would be a strictly British version of the war. His
manager, without asking permission of those whose names he
advertised, organized for Churchill's first appearance in various
cities, different reception committees.
Some of those whose names, without their consent, were used for
these committees, wrote indignantly to the papers, saying that
while for Churchill, personally, they held every respect, they
objected to being used to advertise an anti-Boer demonstration.
While this was no fault of Churchill's, who, until he reached this
country knew nothing of it, it was neither for him nor for the
success of his tour the best kind of advance work.
During the fighting to relieve Ladysmith, with General Buller's
force, Churchill and I had again been together, and later when I
joined the Boer army, at the Zand River Battle, the army with
which he was a correspondent had chased the army with which I
was a correspondent, forty miles.
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