Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  The really great men of the world are the geniuses & the saints. You belonged to neither category. Your intellectual equipment (well cultivated and trained) still left you far short of the one; your spiritual limitations, and your endowment of the “ Old Adam,” left you still shorter of the other.

  Nevertheless, with all these curtailments & shortcomings, you were what is called in the slang vocabulary of your time a “ good get out.”

  The same Luck helped you in external tilings—in unforeseen opportunities, in the disappearance of possible competitors, in the special political conditions of your time: above all (at a most critical & fateful moment in your career) in the sudden outbreak of the Great War.

  Everything was going well for you; the Fates, often malignant, or at least perverse, seemed to be conspiring to help you. I had almost given up hope, for years to come, of seeing you here at my bar: and yet, by your own choice, here you are.

  The Shade (interrupting): There is a modicum of truth, and a good deal of plausibility, in your rather prolix allocution. But, so far, you have not got near the essential and dominating fact.

  Rhad: You mean, I suppose, that I have omitted any reference to the softer and more emotional side of your not very complex nature. Very well. I agree that, in this respect, you rather took in your contemporaries. The world in which you lived regarded you as hard, calculating, insensitive. In almost all the popular “ appreciations ” which as a conspicuous personage, you provoked, you were depicted as shy, reserved, unforthcoming, coldblooded. Even those who saw more clearly did not credit you with more than a certain capacity for the enjoyment of comfort and luxury, with a moderate fondness for social pleasures, and (perhaps) a slight weakness for the companionship of clever and attractive women. As I am the embodiment & Minister of strict Justice, I will go a step further. You hated and eschewed domestic dissension, and your sons & daughters were genuinely fond of you. So, in a sense, were your colleagues and political followers. At first they looked rather askance at your leadership, with wistful retrospective glances at the much-lamented shade of the defunct C.B. It is odd, but true, that in the course of time—apart from old friends like Haldane, E. Grey, & Crewe—you gained the loyal attachment of men so diverse as Lloyd George & Winston Churchill, as Illingworth, McKenna & Montagu. Some people, sadly wanting in perspective, went so far as to call you “ chivalrous”; it would be nearer the truth to say that you had, or acquired, a rather specialised faculty of insight & manipulation in dealing with diversities of character and temperament. But the conclusion, by whatever road it is reached, is the same: that you ought not to have left them in the lurch.

  The Shade: “ Tired with all these, for restful Death I cried.”

  Rhad: Pooh! You know very well that that was not the reason for your precipitate appearance here. You had excellent health, a good digestion, an adequate capacity for sleep, unabated authority in your Cabinet, big events to confront & provide for. No man ever had less temptation to violate the “ canon fixed by the Everlasting against self-slaughter.”

  The Shade: Not bad! I could have made the same speech, without preparation, in the House of Commons. Its only defect is that it ignores the central reality of my life.

  Rhad: What was that?

  The Shade: It is something beyond the ken of your damned tribunal. Give me my sentence, and call up the next Ghost.

  (Curtain)

  A few days later Asquith completed his joke by constructing an imaginary sentence which was passed upon him by the infernal judge. It was an interesting revelation of the fate which he would have regarded as worse than death:

  The sentence of the Court upon you is that you go back to the World whence you came.. . . There you are to be born again in a new body, with the bare average of faculties and brains, and are to live up to the allotted span a toilsome monotonous existence—an inconsidered item in the dim millions of mankind. You will not even be a madman or a criminal. You will have no big moments, no exceptional chances, no “ roses & raptures.” You and your environment will be equally homespun and humdrum.

  Poetry, art, politics, the living interests and ideals of your country and your age, will be to you a sealed book. You will not even have the curiosity to try & break the seal. From birth to death you will be surrounded by, imprisoned in, contented with, the commonplace.

  Thus does Infernal Justice redress the balance of the Upper World, and secure an equal lot for the Sons of Men.

  It was dull obscurity, therefore, rather than excessive burdens which Asquith feared. There rarely can have been a man who had less desire to return to the life of his childhood. “ You shall go back to Morley and shall live there the rest of your days without contact with the great world outside ” would not be an unfair parody of the worst fate which he could envisage. If, in occasional moments of depression, he thought of release, he did so in terms of sudden death rather than of calm retirement. In spite of his “ guise of lethargy ” he rather despised those who liked living at half-pressure. “ Anything would be better than to rust,” he wrote in October, 1914.

  This outlook to some extent affected his attitude towards his various colleagues. There were two members of his Cabinet—Lloyd George and Churchill—who could, under no circumstances, have been accused of living at half-pressure. For both he had a curious semiadmiration, modified by a lack of faith in their consistency and judgment. In Lloyd George’s case the admiration was further modified by an assumed lack of social compatibility and by a belief that he lacked “ the best sort of courage.”

  “McKenna and I had a walk & talk,” Asquith wrote on November 28th, 1914, “ about persons & particularly about courage (of which, with all his limitations, he is a shining example). I found that we didn’t differ much, both marking Ll. George rather low in this respect, & E. Grey too nervy to put really high.”

  On another occasion Asquith commented that Lloyd George “ was kept at Walton Heath by one of those psychological chills which always precede his budgets when he does not feel altogether sure of his ground.... (He) would like to see me take his budget for him.. .. I’ll see him a long way off first.”

  At the same time Asquith’s letters were studded with constant (if faintly surprised) tributes to Lloyd George’s skill in committee and the penetration of his contributions. Much less frequently he would deliver himself of a strongly disparaging comment: “ . .. Lloyd

  George, who almost got down to the level of a petty police court advocate" he wrote after one Cabinet row.1 But he never referred to him as George, a form of address particularly disliked by the Chancellor, and one which, no doubt for this reason, was constantly employed, not only by most of the Tories, but by Crewe, and one or two other Cabinet members as well. Furthermore, on the one occasion during the first year of the war when Lloyd George was a guest at the Wharf,2 Asquith found the week-end unusually agreeable.

  1 But he thought McKenna, a much closer friend, had behaved at least equally badly on this occasion.

  2 During this period Lloyd George also stayed a very brief week-end with the Asquiths at Walmer Castle.

  At the root of Asquith’s attitude to Lloyd George there lay a puzzled conflict of emotions. He admired the energy of the Chancellor’s mind, but disliked what he regarded as its uncontrolled indiscipline. Some part of the conflict emerges from this passage of a letter written “ after midnight ” on March 3rd, 1915. It was, however, a moment when Asquith felt more than usually exasperated by Lloyd George’s darting unpredictability:

  No sooner had I settled the row between Ll.G. and McK(enna)... and all but settled the earlier row between Ll.G. and K(itchener), than this versatile and volatile personage goes off at score on the question of drink, about wh. he has completely lost his head. His mind apparently oscillates from hour to hour between the two poles of absurdity: cutting off all drink from the working man, which wd. lead to something like a universal strike; and buying out (at this moment of all others) the whole liquor trade of the country, and replacing it by a
huge State monopoly, which wd. ruin our finances and create a vast engine of possible corruption. He is a wonderful person in some ways, but is totally devoid of either perspective or judgment: and on the whole during these 7 years he has given me more worry than any other colleague.

  But Asquith never understood the Celts, particularly their Cambrian variety. “ As you know I am not passionately fond of the Welsh,” he wrote before a Cardiff visit.

  From Churchill he was separated by no similar barrier. On the contrary, his half-admiration was in this case fortified by a bond of strong, if occasionally exasperated, affection. “ I can’t help being fond of him,” Asquith wrote on October 27th, 1914, “—he is so resourceful and undismayed: two of the qualities I like best.” He carried his fondness to the extent, during the autumn of 1914, of spending more time in Churchill’s company, despite the twenty year gap between their ages, than in that of any other member of his Cabinet. There were innumerable small dinner parties at 10, Downing Street or Admiralty House as well as frequent country Sundays. Yet Asquith could sometimes be strongly critical of Churchill’s social qualities— in particular his addiction to monologues and his indifference to the views or reactions of his neighbours. “ He never gets fairly alongside the person he is talking to,” Asquith wrote on one occasion, “ because he is always so much more interested in himself and his own preoccupations and his own topics....”

  About Churchill’s command of the Admiralty, Asquith was usually enthusiastic, but about his general political prospects he was uncertain.

  “ It is not easy to see what W(inston)’s career is going to be here,” he wrote on February 9th, 1915: “ he is to some extent blanketed by E. Grey and Ll. George, & has no personal following: he is always hankering after coalitions and odd regroupings, mainly designed (as one thinks) to bring in F. E. Smith & perhaps the Duke of Marlborough. I think his future one of the most puzzling enigmas in politics....”

  At that stage Asquith was playing with the idea that, after the war, he might make him Viceroy of India.

  Six weeks later he wrote in similar but more critical terms. He had been told that Churchill was intriguing to push Grey out of the Foreign Office and have Balfour brought in to replace him, and he thought Churchill was to blame at least to the extent that his temporary but excessive friendliness towards Balfour laid him open to such a charge: “ He has him at the Admiralty night and day, and I am afraid tells him a lot of things which he ought to keep to himself, or at any rate to his colleagues.”1

  1 Ironically enough, when Balfour was brought into the Government, by Asquith, only two months later, it was Churchill at the Admiralty and not Grey at the Foreign Office whom he replaced.

  “It is a pity,” Asquith continued, “ that Winston hasn’t a better sense of proportion, and also a larger endowment of the instinct of loyalty .... I am really fond of him, but I regard his future with many misgivings.. .. He will never get to the top in English politics, with all his wonderful gifts; to speak with the tongue of men and angels, and to spend laborious days and nights in administration, is no good if a man does not inspire trust.”

  Yet on another occasion, only a few months previously, Asquith could write of Churchill as “ certainly one of the people one would choose to go tiger-hunting with.” And he could be fascinated by the extravagance of his personality even when he was treating him as a figure of fun.

  “His mouth waters at the sight and thought of K(itchener)’s new armies,” Asquith wrote on October 7th, 1914. “Are these ‘ glittering commands ’ to be entrusted to ‘dug-out trash' bred on the obsolete tactics of 25 years ago—‘ mediocrities, who have led a sheltered life mouldering in military routine ’ & c & c. For about ¼ of an hour he poured forth a ceaseless cataract of invective and appeal, & I much regretted that there was no shorthand writer within hearing—as some of his unpremeditated phrases were quite priceless. He was, however, quite three parts serious, and declared that a political career was nothing to him in comparison with military glory. He has now left to have a talk with Arthur Balfour, but will be back here at dinner. He is a wonderful creature, with a curious dash of schoolboy simplicity (quite unlike Edward Grey’s), and what someone said of genius—‘a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain ’.”

  Amongst the members of his Cabinet, Asquith placed both Lloyd George and Churchill high and equal—but not at the top. His precise views on this subject—at least as they stood on February 26th, 1915— he conveyed to Miss Stanley:

  I will give you what I think (if it were an examination, & you had to classify the candidates—like a Tripos at Cambridge) is the order in which I would put them: I leave out myself and (Montagu) as a newcomer— & our dear Birrell, who is in a class by himself. 1, 2, 3, 4.

  1. Crewe

  2. Grey

  3. McKenna

  4. (bracketed) Ll. George

  Winston

  Kitchener (he ought perhaps to be put in a separate class)

  7. Harcourt

  Simon (again a bracket)

  9. Haldane bracketed

  10.Runciman

  11. Samuel

  12. Pease Beauchamp Emmott Lucas Wood

  Crewe owed his eminence to never irritating Asquith, except by the extreme slowness with which he played golf, and to the unobtrusive steadiness of his judgment. He did not offer opinions on a wide range of topics, but when appealed to, he was firm, moderate, and generally, but not automatically, on the side of the Prime Minister. Furthermore, as a legatee of the Whig tradition, he gave the impression of representing a wide body of uncommitted outside opinion; and he was useful in relations with the King. He made little impact on the public, and he could never have run a government. But, partly perhaps for this reason, he was an almost ideal colleague to a Prime Minister. Thirty years later, Lord Attlee found a similar solace in Lord Addison.

  Grey was different. He made a considerable public impact, and, despite their old and close political friendship, he often irritated Asquith, mainly by his lack of buoyancy. “ E. Grey (as usual) was most dolorous and despondent,” was a typical Asquith comment on one of the Foreign Secretary’s Cabinet appearances. Fortified himself by unusually good health, Asquith found it difficult to comprehend Grey’s physical infirmity. Then he was constantly struck (and a little puzzled) by how different Grey’s mental processes and modes of relaxation were from his own. Nevertheless, he had the greatest respect for the integrity and determination of the Foreign Secretary, as well as for the general direction of his views. It has already been seen how sharply the Prime Minister reacted to the rumour of a Churchill “ plot ” to get rid of him and bring in Balfour.

  The other notable features of Asquith’s list were provided by McKenna, because his position was so high, Haldane, because his position was so low, and Kitchener, because he was such a strange addition to an otherwise wholly Liberal and wholly civilian Cabinet.

  As soon as the war broke out it was obvious that Asquith himself could not continue as Secretary of State for War. On August 3rd Kitchener, on his way to Egypt, was summoned back from Dover and asked to hold himself available for consultation. On August 5th, believing that none of his colleagues were suitable for the post, Asquith decided on the “ hazardous experiment ” of appointing Kitchener as Secretary of State. The latter reluctantly accepted. His appointment was to be for the emergency only. It was recognised that he had no politics— not Liberal ones at any rate—and his special status, as Sir Philip Magnus has informed us, was symbolised not only by his sitting on the right hand of the Prime Minister in Cabinet, but also by his drawing three salaries.a

  Asquith’s early impressions of Kitchener as a Cabinet colleague were mostly favourable. “ My own opinion of K’s capacity increases daily,” he wrote on November 3rd, 1914. “ I think he is a really fine soldier, and he keeps his head and temper, and above all his equability wonderfully, considering how all three are tried.” But he often found him slow to grasp a new point (“ K. who generally finds things out sooner or
later—as a rule rather later,” was an October comment), and inclined to provoke Cabinet disputes by an unnecessary inflexibility. The first, but by no means the last of these disputes was with Lloyd George and the subject was Welsh recruiting. Kitchener’s view was that no purely Welsh regiment was to be trusted and Asquith thought his handling of the argument “ clumsy and noisy.”1

  In addition, there was the constant ill-feeling between Kitchener and Sir John French.2 At first Asquith, who had been very well-disposed towards French at least since the days of the Curragh, put this down to a simple incompatibility, and rationalised the position by saying that there was much to be said for having an optimist at the front balanced by a pessimist in the rear. In November, 1914 he sent French a confidence-giving letter expressing in the most unqualified terms the trust of the Government in his leadership in the field; and in the following January he noted sadly that the King, “ a strong Kitchenerite,” underestimated French. But as the winter and early spring of 1915 wore on Asquith became more inclined to accept Kitchener’s view of the Commander-in-Chief.