by John Buchan
A week later the cruiser, which was carrying the Secretary of State for War on a mission to Russia, was sunk by a mine west of the Orkneys, and Lord Kitchener went down with it. The news filled his country and the Allied nations with profound sorrow. Labour leaders, trade union delegates, and the patrons of the conscientious objector were as sincere in their mourning as his professional colleagues and the army which he had created. At the time he was beyond doubt the most dominant personality in the Empire, and the foremost of Britain’s public servants. Yet in a sense he was fortunate in the hour of his death, for his work was done. In twenty-two months he had expanded six divisions into seventy and made a great army. Now he was living in an unfamiliar atmosphere. He did not understand, nor was he understood by, certain of his colleagues. For politics in the ordinary sense he had no aptitude. After the smooth mastery of his earlier career, he was often puzzled and unhappy in the vortex in which he found himself. His epitaph might well be the words written of a very different figure, but applicable to any career of splendid but incomplete achievement: “A little space was allowed him to show at least a heroic purpose, and attest a high design; then, with all things unfinished before him and behind, he fell asleep after many troubles and triumphs. Few can ever have gone wearier to the grave; none with less fear.”
IV
The temper of Britain, as the year 1916 wore to its close, was becoming different both from the excitement of the first months of war and the exasperation and confusion of 1915. We were beginning to learn the meaning of the task we had undertaken. The old civilian fury against the enemy had gone; the mood of the people had become more like that of the men in the field, in its ironical resignation and the sense that the business was too grave to permit of any “vileinye of hate.” The War was no more a reported tale; enemy aircraft had stricken down men and women in English streets, the life of the trenches could be envisaged by the dullest, and death, which had left few families unbereaved, was becoming once more the supreme uniter.
But this new seriousness and poise must inevitably make a nation more critical. There was a growing belief that the Government was trying to cure an earthquake with small political pills. The Coalition formed in May 1915 had not been a mobilisation of the best talent of the nation, but a compromise between party interests. Its machinery, too, was not fitted for the prompt dispatch of business. During the autumn men of all classes were beginning to ask themselves whether a Government so constituted was capable of winning the War. It is probable that for many months the great majority of the people of Britain had been convinced that a change was necessary, but the Government was slow to read the weather signs. Hence, when the blow came, there was a tendency to attribute it to a malign conspiracy and a calumnious press. But in the crisis of such a war no Government could have been driven from office by backstair intrigues alone or by the most skilful newspaper cabal. The press which criticised owed its power solely to the fact that it echoed what was in most men’s minds. The nation felt that the results achieved were not adequate to its sacrifice or its spirit.
Mr. Lloyd George was, now as ever, the interpreter of the subconscious popular mind. Alone of his Liberal colleagues, he realised that the political expertise, of which they had been such masters, was as much in the shadow as the champion faro-player in a Far Western township which has been visited by a religious revival. His powerful intelligence was turned into other channels, and he brought to the conduct of this war between nations the same passion which in other days he showed in the strife between classes. When he succeeded Lord Kitchener at the War Office he found himself with little authority; he was convinced that things were being mismanaged at the front, and he was determined to infuse into their conduct a fiercer purpose, and to win back policy and major strategy to the control of the Cabinet. To do this he must either be Prime Minister himself, or head of a small War Directory which had full executive responsibility. At the close of November he put the latter proposal before Mr. Asquith.
In the beginning of December the matter got into the newspapers. The Conservative leaders, when consulted by Mr. Bonar Law, showed little love for Mr. Lloyd George, but were anxious that Mr. Asquith should resign in order that he might reconstruct his Cabinet; they themselves were willing to tender their resignations, but it was clear that they hoped that the new Cabinet would not include the War Minister. Mr. Asquith thereupon accepted Mr. Lloyd George’s proposal for a small War Committee, of which he should not be a member, but over whose decisions he should have control. But, partly because of an apparently inspired campaign in the press and partly on the advice of his Liberal colleagues, he presently changed his mind and withdrew his consent. Mr. Lloyd George resigned, and Mr. Asquith made the mistake of also resigning, since he believed himself indispensable. The King sent for Mr. Bonar Law, who declared himself unable to construct an administration, and on December 7th Mr. Lloyd George kissed hands as Prime Minister. Owing to the magnanimity of Mr. Balfour, who accepted the Foreign Office though Mr. Lloyd George had long been trying to oust him from the Admiralty, the Conservative statesmen came in, and a Government was duly formed. Its most important feature was a War Cabinet of five — Mr. Lloyd George; Mr. Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Curzon, the Lord President of the Council; and, as Ministers without departments, Mr. Arthur Henderson, the Labour leader, and Lord Milner, in whose political faith imperialism was joined to wide dreams of social reconstruction.
It is easy to criticise the whole business — to point out, for example, that Mr. Lloyd George became president of the War Cabinet while in his first proposal he had insisted that the Prime Minister should not be a member of it. The momentous transformation was no doubt tarnished by intrigue and personal ambition, and by much ungraciousness in the manner of it. Mr. Asquith and Sir Edward Grey, who had laboured long in the service of their country, retired to the accompaniment of coarse abuse from a section of the press. Yet beyond question the change was necessary, and it had behind it the assent of a people not careless of the decencies. That new leaders should be demanded in a strife which affects national existence is as natural as the changes of the seasons. Few men are so elastic in mind that, having given all their strength to one set of problems, they can turn with unabated vigour to new needs and new conditions. The nation, again, must be able to view its masters with hopefulness, and in all novelty there is hope. There was that, too, in the temperament and talents of the Prime Minister himself upon which men had begun to look coldly. He left on the ordinary mind the impression that he thought more of argument than of action. It seemed to his critics impossible to expect the unresting activity and the bold origination which the situation required from one whose habits of thought and deed were cast in the more leisurely mould of an older school of statesmen.
When a people judges there is usually reason in its verdict, and it is idle to argue that Mr. Asquith was a perfect, or even the best available, leader in war-time. But history will not let his qualities go unacclaimed. He had admirable nerve and courage, and as a consequence he was the most loyal of colleagues, for he never shrank from accepting the burden of his own mistakes and those of his subordinates. He was incapable of intrigue in any form. He had true personal dignity, caring little for either abuse or praise, and shunning the arts of self-advertisement. And if his optimism had at times an unfortunate effect, there can be no doubt that his coolness and patience did much to keep an even temper in the people during months of disappointment and darkness. History will see in him a great parliamentarian, a great public servant, and a great gentleman.
Swinburne on Byron.
CHAPTER III. THE SALLIES
Up till now the War had been fought largely on traditional methods, by combatants whose national integration was still intact. But with 1917 a change came over the scene. Ancient constitutions began to crack, old faiths to be questioned, potent, undreamed-of powers to be released. Everywhere in the world was heard the sound of things breaking.
In half-conscious ant
icipation of this change there began a fumbling movement towards peace. The wiser heads in every country were coming to fear that their nations might crumble through sheer weariness, and that absolute victory, even if it were won, might only mean absolute chaos. The first move came from Germany, but her peace offer of December 1916 was framed in the arrogant terms of one who felt that she held the winning cards. Her main motive was prudential. The Somme had shown her that her military machine was being strained to breaking-point; if it broke all would be over, and at any cost that catastrophe must be averted. If the belligerents consented to treat, she believed that she had certain advantages in any conference. She had much to give up which she could not hold, and her renunciation might win her the things she considered vital for her future. Moreover, once her opponents were entangled in discussion, there was a chance of breaking up their unity and shifting the argument to minor issues. It was a matter of life and death to her that a rift should appear in the Allied lute before she suffered any irremediable disaster. She had also an eye on neutral states, especially America, who would not be likely to welcome a summary bolting of the door against negotiations. Finally, there was a tactical motive. She was contemplating new and anarchic methods of naval warfare, and to justify herself she had to appear as an angel of peace who had been rudely repulsed. Action which proceeds from so many mixed reasons is apt to be a blunder, and the impression left by the German overtures on men’s minds was one of maladroitness carried to the pitch of genius. The reply of the Allies on December 30th exposed their emptiness, and the German Chancellor at long last assented to the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare which was to come very near being the end of Britain.
The effects of the War were so catastrophic and terrible that the historian, looking back, is not inclined to be contemptuous of any effort to end it. But it is clear that the German offer was impossible. There was more hope in the overtures of Austria, whose new Emperor Charles, through the medium of his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon, made secret proposals for a separate peace. They shipwrecked principally upon the opposition of Italy and France, whose reply was that of Lucio’s comrade in Measure for Measure—”Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!”
Nor could there be any practical issue from President Wilson’s offer of mediation in the closing months of 1916. He had just been re-elected as a peace-President, but he saw the clouds thickening ahead, and he felt that he must be able to justify himself to his people if he were forced to a course which was not pacific. He asked for a definition of war aims—”that soundings be taken in order that we may learn, the neutral nations with the belligerents, how near the haven of peace may be for which all mankind longs.” The Allied Governments, in spite of a certain irritation among their peoples, had the wit to see Mr. Wilson’s purpose. In a remarkable document they set forth patiently and temperately, not indeed their war aims in detail, since these could not be formulated till the hour for negotiation arrived, but their general purpose, which was wholly consistent with American ideals. Nearly two years before the coming of peace they stated almost all the principles on which that peace was founded.
I
Alone of the Allies Britain had now attained a certain unity in the direction of the War, for she had a Prime Minister who could draw together and maximise all the powers of the nation. Mr. Lloyd George’s pre-War record had shown that he had unsurpassed demagogic talents, and that rarer gift, a sense of political atmosphere. He might err in his ultimate judgments, but rarely in his immediate intuitions; if his strategy was often erroneous, his tactics were seldom at fault. His interest was not in doctrine but in life, and his quick sense of reality made him at heart an opportunist — one who loved the gross persistency of facts, and was prepared to select, if need be, from the repertory of any party. This elasticity, combined with his high political courage, had made him even in his bitterest campaigns not wholly repugnant to his opponents, for he was always human, and had none of the dogmatic rigidity, the lean spiritual pride, of the elder Liberalism.
Now he had found his proper task, and was emerging as one of the most formidable figures in the world. Lord Milner, who had historical perspective and did not praise unadvisedly, considered him the greatest War Minister since Chatham. He was a born coalitionist, sitting always loose to parties, a born War Minister, since strife was his element, and a born leader of a democracy. Of democracy, indeed, both in its strength and weakness, he was more than a representative — he was a personification. He had its fatal facility in general ideas, its sentimentality, its love of picturesque catchwords; and he had also its incongruous realism in action. Devotees of consistency were distressed by his vagaries, for a tyrant or an oligarchy may be consistent, but not a free people. He had a democracy’s short memory, and its brittle personal loyalties. Perhaps his supreme merit as a popular leader was his comprehensibility. No mystery surrounded his character or his talents. The qualities and defects of both were evident to all, and the plain man found in them something which he could himself assess — positive merits, positive weaknesses, so that he could give or withhold his confidence as if he were dealing with a familiar. This power of diffusing a personality, of producing a sense of intimacy among millions who have never seen his face or heard his voice, is the greatest of assets for a democratic statesman, and Mr. Lloyd George had it not only for Britain but for all the world.
His character and mind were curiously of a piece. He had no petty vulgarities in his composition, though he was shrewdly aware of them in others and knew how to use them; he was good-humoured and friendly; he had little personal vanity, for the monotonous infallibility of his later Memoirs does not fairly represent the man in his great days. Lacking the normal education of British public servants, he had large gaps in his mental furniture, and consequently was without that traditional sense of proportion which often gives an air of wisdom to mediocrities. He had a unique power of assimilating knowledge, but not an equal power of retaining it. Hence his mental processes were somewhat lacking in continuity; all was atomic and episodic, rather than a steady light. His mind had in it little of the scientific, it was insensitive to guiding principles, and there was no even diffusion of its power through many channels.
But his virtues were to a notable degree the qualities of his defects. The lack of ordinary knowledge saved him from the dominion of the ordinary platitudes. The fact that his mind was not a continuum, as the phrase goes, but a thing discrete and perpetually re-made, kept him from lassitude and staleness. The world to which he woke each morning was a new birth of time, to be faced with all the interest of the pioneer. And the fact that one subject must at the moment exclude all others gave him in that one subject a tremendous velocity, that one-ideaed concentration which is a most formidable weapon in war. His loose hold on principles kept him from formalism, and opportunism is often the right attitude in a crisis. The whole combination — limited knowledge, limitless ardour, absorption in the task of the moment, adventurous interest — spelled that first of virtues in a War Minister, courage de tête, fearlessness in the face of a swiftly changing world. He did not ask to see a map of the road, but he was prepared without reservation to grapple with any and all of the terrors of pilgrimage.
As the months passed, critics were found to depreciate his wisdom, his honesty, even his talents, but none ever denied his vitality. His physical appearance was a clue to the man; the thick-set figure, the deep chest, the bright, wary swordsman’s eye — all spoke of ebullient and inexhaustible life. He was exhilarated rather than depressed by misfortune, even though he might be also a little scared. His strength was that he overflowed at all times with zest and interest and fervour. The Allied cause now made the same appeal to him that the handicaps and sufferings of the poor had made in earlier days. He was not only energetic himself but an inspirer of energy in others, for, like a gadfly, he stung all his environment to life. Many of his endowments, such as his parliamentary tact, his subtlety in the management of coll
eagues, his debating skill, even that eloquence which at its best was a noble poetry, however invaluable to a statesman in normal times, were of less account in war. But that one gift he had which is so rare and inexplicable that it may rightly be called genius. In the darkest days his vitality soared above the fog and made a kind of light by its very ardour. He might be himself impatient of the long view and the wise course, but the magnetic effluence was there to inspire sager heads and not less resolute hearts. He could not be defeated, because his spirit of buoyancy and zeal was insatiable, and therefore unconquerable, and that spirit he communicated to the nation.
The machine which he fashioned, the War Cabinet, worked on the whole with vigour, if not always with precision. Much was due to its secretary, Sir Maurice Hankey, who in every circumstance of the War showed an uncanny foresight and a supreme competence. The special executive duties fell chiefly on two men. One was General Smuts, who in a certain kind of informal diplomacy had no equal, and who was in consequence often charged with impossible missions. The other was Lord Milner, who from the start of the War Cabinet bore the weight of its most difficult tasks. He was the ablest living British administrator, and no more powerful intellect and purer and more resolute character have been devoted in our time to the public service. Caring nothing for popularity and without oratorical gifts, he was by a fortunate chance in most things the natural complement of the Prime Minister.
