by John Buchan
The King had played a large part in these attempts at compromise, and the narrowing of the question was largely his doing, for he had patiently striven to present to each side the difficulties of the other. He had cause to be anxious, for he saw looming before him a crisis far graver than the Parliament Act. Correspondents everywhere were appealing to him to use his royal power, and the leaders of the Opposition were turning their eyes to the prerogative. Mr. Bonar Law considered that the King had the right to dismiss his present Ministers and force a dissolution so that the will of the nation could be ascertained. Lord Lansdowne held that, since the Parliament Act had destroyed the power of the Lords to compel an election, that power was now vested only in the Crown, which could either force a dissolution or decree a referendum. Mr. Balfour thought that the King had a right to insist on an election in order to consult the country, and that the country would appreciate such a course. This was also the view of lawyers like Professor Dicey and Sir William Anson. Lord Rosebery, on the other hand, believed that for the King to refuse his assent to the Home Rule Bill, for which he had no personal responsibility, would be a breach of constitutional practice.
Mr. Asquith’s views were fully stated in a memorandum which he wrote that September:
A constitutional monarch . . . is entitled and bound to give his Ministers all relevant information which comes to him; to point out objections which seem to him valid against the course which they advise; to suggest (if he thinks fit) an alternative policy. . . . But in the end the Sovereign always acts upon the advice which Ministers, after full deliberation and (if need be) reconsideration, feel it their duty to offer. They give that advice well knowing that they can, and probably will, be called to account for it by Parliament.
After pointing out that the only departure from this rule for 130 years had been the request by William IV for the resignation of Lord Melbourne — a disastrous precedent which Queen Victoria had always refused to follow — he continued:
Nothing can be more important, in the best interests of the Crown and of the country, than that a practice, so long established and so well justified by experience, should remain unimpaired. It frees the occupant of the Throne from all personal responsibility for the acts of the Executive and the Legislature. . . . If . . . the king were to intervene on one side, or in one case — which he could only do by dismissing Ministers in de facto possession of a parliamentary majority — he would be expected to do the same on another occasion and perhaps for the other side. Every Act of Parliament of the first order of importance, and only passed after acute controversy, would be regarded as bearing the personal imprimatur of the Sovereign. He would, whether he wished it or not, be dragged into the arena of party politics.
Words could not express more clearly the normal constitutional practice of Britain. But the Prime Minister’s statement did not exhaust the question. It was conceivable that a Government, placed in power by an election on a different issue, might attempt some measure which offended the great majority of the nation. What if such a measure were certain to lead to civil war? Edmund Burke had written: “I see no other way but the interposition of the body of the people itself, whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law and establish an arbitrary power.” Might it not be the duty of the King, as the trustee of the people, in such a desperate case to use the prerogative and permit this popular interposition? Mr. Balfour thought so, and he was a sober councillor with a nice perception of constitutional points. The personal responsibility would be terrible, the risk to the prestige of the Throne incalculable, but might it not be right to face that risk rather than the calamity of a mutinous army and a war between citizens? It was a graver problem than any sovereign had had to face for two hundred years. Small wonder that the King was assiduous in his labours for peace.
IV
During 1912 and 1913 the other main concern of Ministers, the situation abroad, became more tangled and menacing than ever. Italy fought Turkey over Tripoli; Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro allied themselves against a crumbling Turkey and won a victory: the conquerors quarrelled over the division of the loot, the other allies flew at Bulgaria’s throat, and Bulgaria was left angry and despoiled. The settlement after these Balkan wars was, in Sir Edward Grey’s words, “not one of justice but of force,” and it left a store of troubles for the future. The British Foreign Minister did his best to prevent the mischief spreading by calling a conference of the Ambassadors of the Powers, which sat in London from December 1912 to August 1913. The immediate danger was averted, but the Treaty of Bucharest left an open wound in south-eastern Europe. Austria’s hopes of a port in the Ægean had received a final blow, and a new and formidable Slav Power now stood in the way of Germany’s Drang nach Osten, with behind it Russia, the protector of the Slav peoples.
The situation drew Germany, still sore over Morocco, to reflect most seriously upon her position. She saw the various avenues to world-power, on which she had formed her plans, rapidly closing up. The Near East might soon be shut by the new Slav renaissance; the Far East was too dangerous with Japan at its door; South America was barred to her adventures by the United States, and most of the rest of the world by Britain. Her navy had come to maturity — it now stood second in the world — and was eager to win laurels. She was already the greatest military Power on earth. She saw the Triple Entente solidifying into an alliance, an alliance accompanied by a steady growth of sympathy and good will. She was afraid of Britain’s naval strength and the twenty million addition to Britain’s naval estimates; to her, as a World Power, it seemed intolerable that any single nation should be so omnipotent at sea. She did not appreciate the necessities of an island, administering a world-wide Empire, and read ambition into schemes based only on administrative needs and the desire for a decent security. To Germany it appeared that her neighbours sought to isolate her, to ring her round with hostile alliances and then overwhelm her with the weight of an armed coalition. Her forward policy, entered upon under the impulse of national self-confidence, began now to quicken its pace under the spur of baseless but not wholly unnatural fears.
Early in 1912 Lord Haldane, who had left the War Office for the Woolsack, paid a private visit to Berlin at the request of Sir Edward Grey. He met the Emperor, the Imperial Chancellor, Admiral von Tirpitz and others, and went fully into the whole international situation and all possible matters of dispute. Throughout his difficult task he played the part of a conciliatory but faithful British envoy, jealous alike for his country’s interests and his country’s honour. He stood out stiffly against Tirpitz for a modification of the German naval programme as a guarantee of good faith. He was scrupulously loyal to Britain’s unwritten obligations to France, and kept in close touch with M. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador. A provisional agreement was reached on many points, but on two there could be no settlement. Germany was resolute to proceed with her new naval programme, and the magnitude of the increases provided for made it impossible for Britain to do otherwise than lay down two ships to her one. On that matter our attitude could not be compromise, but watchful competition. Again, Germany insisted, as the basis for an understanding, upon a formula of Britain’s unconditional neutrality in the event of a European War, to which Britain could not assent without a betrayal of France. The conference ended with expressions of friendship, but without much practical result, though undoubtedly it did something to clear the air.
Lord Haldane returned home with a divided mind. There were many things to disquiet him — the personality of Tirpitz, the spirit of the General Staff, the character of the latest German naval law; above all, the unconditional neutrality formula. On the other hand, he believed that the Emperor and his civilian Ministers sincerely desired peace in their then mood, and there is reason to think that in the spring of 1912 this was true. Lord Haldane and his colleagues came to a definite conclusion as to their immediate policy. They mu
st avoid any pinpricks, and any blowing of warning trumpets in Britain, for these would be misconstrued in Germany, and would strengthen the hands of those who clamoured for war. By judicious quiescence on their part the Imperial Faustus might be prevented from making a bargain with the devil. Such a decision was acceptable to a Government perplexed and a little weary. It was acceptable to the Prime Minister, in whose philosophy of life the doctrine of a “friendly Universe” held a conspicuous place, and who considered that most political questions, if left alone, would settle themselves. It was acceptable to Sir Edward Grey, whose success as a conciliator had inclined him to the belief that patience and good humour would tide over the worst times. On the information then at their disposal the decision was natural and right.
But, so far as we can read the dark riddle of these years in Germany, in 1913 there came a change of mood, which British Ministers did not diagnose. Their minds were monopolised by their difficulties at home, and the whole political atmosphere prevented any close attention to the creeping shadows and broken lights of the European situation. That year saw the completion of the first quarter-century of the Emperor’s reign, and the celebrations, with their awakening of historic memories, sent a sudden surge of pride through the German people. The time had come to make a settlement with rivals not by the slow methods of diplomacy, but by the summary power of the sword. It was the year of the new German army law, and every military chief, from the younger Moltke downward, was busy with arrogant defiances to the world. As early as April the French Government received a secret report setting forth the purpose for which the swollen army of Germany was to be used at the appropriate moment. In November the Emperor told the King of the Belgians at Potsdam that he looked upon war with France as inevitable and close at hand. About the same time M. Jules Cambon warned his Government that the balance had now clearly swung to the side of the war party, and that the Emperor would not resist them. Fear of Russia was perhaps the chief motive; the Austrian Conrad von Hoetzendorff had been pressing the need for the “great solution” on the German Staff, and the Emperor was a convert to an “inevitable war between East and West.”
No exact date can be fixed for this momentous change. It was no doubt a gradual process, at first a subtle altering of outlook and perspective which slowly drew to a conscious policy. So far as we can judge the Emperor’s mind, he did not then conceive of the coming conflict as a world conflagration; Britain would stand out — on that point Germany, plentifully supplied with the reports of secret agents, was positive; France would speedily be broken; after some sullen fighting in the East the Slav peril would be checked; Germany would emerge as indisputably the greatest of the Powers, heavy indemnities would pay her bills, and her mailed diplomacy would not be denied in future conclaves of the peoples.
It was the decision primarily of the army and navy chiefs, whose influence with Emperor and nation far outweighed that of the civilian ministers. But there were many elements in the new Germany on which it could count for support. There was the Prussian squirearchy which had made the army; there were the new kings of trade whom success had smitten with megalomania; there were the theorists who from Treitschke had learned a strange doctrine of history and from Nietzsche a perverted philosophy of life. There was no great dæmonic figure who imposed his creed upon the people; the preceptors were for the most part excited mediocrities; but there was deadly peril in the conjunction of a flamboyant Emperor ambitious of ranking with the makers of history, an army and a navy burning to prove their prowess to the world, an aristocracy intolerant of all democratic ideals, rulers of industry at once exultant and nervous, popular teachers preaching a gospel of race arrogance, and throughout the nation a vague half-mystical striving towards a new destiny.
The British Government, faced with a risk of war which was not yet a certainty, were bound to take no steps to insure that certainty. The most that can be said in criticism of them is that too many sedatives were applied to the national mind. For example, Lord Roberts’s scheme for national training, impossible as it may have been, was repelled by the ordinary Government apologist with arguments that were foolish except on the assumption that the age of Saturn had returned. One thing, however, was efficiently done. The Haldane regime at the War office had produced an army as perfect for its size as any in the world; the latest German navy bill forced Britain proportionately to expand and equip her Fleet. That Fleet, by an arrangement with France, was concentrated in home waters, and the new maritime front was the North Sea. There was a great naval assembly in the spring of 1912 at Portland, when for four days the King abode among his sailors. Mr. Churchill, whose post was now the most vital in the Government, made the Admiralty yacht his office and his home.
The increased naval estimates for 1914 were strongly opposed by a section of the Cabinet, and for a month it seemed as if the First Lord must resign. Even for this, our traditional first line of defence, it was hard to get proper attention, since their opponents had always made a specialty of it, and in the embittered state of party feeling to appear to agree with the Opposition seemed to many of the Government followers a betrayal of principles. Yet all the time the weightier members of the Cabinet had in their hearts the knowledge that behind the crudities of their opponents’ criticism there was much deadly truth, and that at any moment what they labelled as scaremongering might be terribly justified as foresight. Mr. Lloyd George, “forgetting the bright speed he bore” at the Mansion House in the Agadir crisis, joined the ranks of the prophets of smooth things. On January 3rd 1914, in a press interview, he deplored the folly of outlay on armaments, with special reference to naval expenditure, praised the unaggressive temper of Germany, declared that the prospects of the world never had been more peaceful, and implored Liberalism not to betray its trust.
V
After his return from India the King was at the disposal of his subjects for those ceremonial duties traditionally associated with the Throne. Buckingham Palace, once the dingiest object in London, had its façade reconstructed and no longer shamed the dignity of St. James’s Park. There were a few big functions, like the Windsor garden party in the summer of 1912, and the State banquet to President Poincaré in June 1913, when the King spoke eloquently of “l’esprit de confiance et de franchise mutuelles avec laquel la France et la Grande-Bretagne ont abordé ces divers problèmes.” In May 1913 their Majesties visited Berlin, where they were well received, and the King had luncheon with the officers corps of the dragoon regiment which bore Queen Victoria’s name and of which he was colonel-in-chief. But for the most part his work lay in getting into touch with the varied activities of his people. He visited ancient schools and new universities; he had a long tour in South Wales, where he laid the foundation stone of the new National Museum of Wales at Cardiff; he saw something of the mining areas, both north and south; he paid a week’s visit to Lancashire, after a tour of the Potteries; he laid the foundation stone of the new London County Hall. He had his father’s concern for the work of the great municipalities and especially for their housing schemes. In these tasks — a new form of royal progress — he gained an insight into aspects of the nation’s life to which few politicians attain. He had a quick and catholic interest in all human activities, he made friends readily, and, having a tenacious memory, he did not forget what he heard and saw.
For the rest, the life of the Court was a peaceful enclave to which the eyes of his subjects could turn with comfort. It was simple and homelike and very close to their own. In 1912 the Prince of Wales entered Magdalen College like any other undergraduate, very different from his grandfather’s secluded and pedestalled university career. The King shared fully in the interests and tastes of the ordinary man. His chief relaxation was shooting; he was one of the two or three best shots in England — the first monarch since Charles II who had been in the first rank as a practitioner of a field sport. It was a Court without courtiers. The King had no favourites, no inner circle of the privileged, but he had a thousand attached friends.
There was need of some such cool and orderly background in England, for in these years there was a fevered spirit abroad. The internal-combustion engine had speeded up the pace of life. The old horse-bus had disappeared from the streets, and motor-cars or motor-bicycles were now common in every class. London had become notably noisier and less attractive to quiet people. The first stages had been won in the conquest of the air, and in 1913 M. Pégoud was “looping the loop” and giving the world a new notion of what air stability meant. The defence services had to adjust their ideas; motors were beginning to replace horse-transport in the army, the immense importance of the submarine was being slowly understood, and in the beginning of 1912 Lord Fisher was writing to Mr. Churchill, “For God’s sake trample on and stamp out protected Cruisers and hurry up Aviation.” In society the financier was more popular than he deserved to be, and the parade of luxury had increased and the craze for quickly-won wealth. There was everywhere a kind of comfortless excitement, a vulgarity of outlook, a coarsening of fibre, and what looked to old-fashioned people like a weakening of stamina. The Russian ballet had popularised new types of dancing, and from America came rag-time music, and from outlandish places various uncouth forms of motion. In the ball-room a novel type of young man appeared, with lank hair plastered back from a lean brow. I remember in 1913 a French visitor calling my attention to them, and quoting Falstaff’s “cankers of a calm world and a long peace.”
