by Roy Jenkins
In Rome, according to Hankey, Asquith created an excellent impression 011 the Italian ministers, and the visit was “ a gigantic success,” contributing substantially to Italy’s decision, later that year, to declare war against Germany—at first she was only at war with Austria. Asquith made a number of excellent speeches, some in French and some in English, as well as impressing Hankey with his “ vast store of knowledge on all classical and historical matters.” “ However can he remember it all amid his tremendous burden of State affairs? ” the latter wrote. He was received in audience by Pope Benedict XV, and when His Holiness hinted at the desirability of an early peace “ pursed up his mouth and said words to the effect that we should continue to the end.”e At the station he was seen off by an enthusiastic crowd and some shouts of “ Viva Asquitti!” The Prime Minister then paid a two-day visit to King Victor Emmanuel at his farmhouse headquarters near Udine. He arrived back in London at 4.0 a.m. on April 7th and was almost immediately confronted with two major crises.
The first was a renewal of the old compulsion trouble. Recruiting under the January system did not go as well during the early months of 1916 as had been hoped. There was mounting pressure for general conscription from the Press, from the Unionist back-benchers, organised under Carson, and from Lloyd George. The "Military-Finance Committee,” meeting again with the addition of Lansdowne, recommended a further compromise, but half the Cabinet were unwilling to accept this. By April 17th and 18th London was thick with rumours that Asquith was on the point of resignation. They were not far from the truth. In the words of his official biographers, he was buffeted and mortified. And all, he believed, for a controversy which had been unnecessarily forced upon the Government at that particular stage. "The argument has become purely academic,” he told Lady Scott on April 18 th. "Why could they not have waited till the June attack1 has shown us more clearly what to expect for the future.”2 The chief blame he put on Lloyd George, with whom his relations had deteriorated drastically. "Of course Lloyd George is the villain of the piece,” he said, " you know what I think of him.” But his feelings towards Grey, who was once again "reconsidering his position ” were also fairly sharp.
1 The Somme, which was in fact postponed until early July.
2 In the way of casualties and military demands.
The next morning Asquith was so near to resignation that he wrote of44 preparing to order my frock-coat to visit the Sovereign this afternoon.” But a three-hour Cabinet improved the atmosphere. It was agreed that the House of Commons should meet in secret session on the following Tuesday and Wednesday, and that Asquith should open the debate with a disclosure of new facts and further suggestions for a compromise. Even so, when announcing this parliamentary plan that afternoon, he told the House that the Cabinet was divided and that unless the difference could be settled by agreement the Government must break up. It was an unusual disclosure. The only comfort he could offer to members was that the Cabinet was at least united in thinking that such a break-up would be "a national disaster.”
That evening (April 19th) a hundred Liberal members, including Simon, met at the House of Commons and unanimously passed a resolution assuring the Prime Minister of their conviction that 44 his continuance as the head of the Government is a national necessity.” On the following day, the King, believing a little prematurely that the difficulty was over, wrote a letter of warm congratulation to Asquith:
During the last six years you and I have passed through some strenuous and critical times and once again, thank God, we have “ weathered the storm ” . . .. In expressing my relief at the termination of the crisis, I wish again to assure you of my complete confidence in my Prime Ministerf
With such crumbs to comfort him he departed for an Easter week-end at the Wharf. He read Quiller-Couch’s lectures on The Art of Writing and recorded that, although the house was “ almost over-guested (not in quality but in number),” he was “ spending a more placid Easter than I could have hoped for.”*7 On the Monday afternoon Hankey arrived to help Asquith prepare his speech for the following day. Hankey’s diary entry was as follows:
I arrived at 4 p.m. and spent three hours with the P.M. ... There was a conclave to decide whether it would be best for him to spend the night at ‘ The Wharf’ or to motor to Town that night. Finally it was left to me to decide—in fact the whole party treated me as though I were a “ trainer ” charged with the duty of bringing “ the Bantam ” into the ring in the pink of condition.
I decided, knowing his habits, to go up that night, so he and I started at 10.30 p.m. to motor to Town. He was very chatty and jolly and I thoroughly enjoyed the ride... . On arrival (at 12.30 a.m.) we got the first news of the Dublin outbreak. Asquith merely said “ well, that’s something ” and went off to bedh
In spite of these preparations the secret session speech was not a success. The House was disappointed with the Asquith proposals, of which the essence was that unattested married men were to be given a further opportunity to come forward voluntarily. Unless 50,000 of them did so by May 27th, and 15,000 a week thereafter, general conscription would be introduced. There were subsidiary proposals involving immediate legislation, and Walter Long introduced this bill “ very badly ” on Thursday, April 27th. The House reacted violently against it. Asquith, deeply embroiled at Downing Street with the problem of Ireland, was hurriedly sent for. He sized up the atmosphere in the chamber and decided that the bill must be withdrawn and a more drastic solution propounded. “ It was very difficult, for it wanted a light touch to do such a humiliating thing,” was his curious comment to Lady Scott.
The Cabinet met on the Saturday morning to face the new situation. Asquith opened by saying that the House of Commons had left the Government with no alternative but to proceed immediately with legislation for general compulsion.
“ This view,” he wrote to the King, “ met with the assent of the whole Cabinet. Mr. Henderson referred to the difficulties of his own position and, while agreeing with the Prime Minister’s proposals, warned his colleagues of the possibilities of serious labour trouble, especially in South Wales. Mr. Runciman also expressed apprehension as to the attitude of the railwaymen. Mr. Lloyd George believed that all these fears and forebodings were exaggerated. Lord Curzon and Mr. Chamberlain thought the Government ought to show more vigour and self-defence in debate and on the platform. Lord R. Cecil believed that the right course was for the Government to resign or be re-constructed,1 but yielded to the Prime Minister’s objection that, in view of the troubles, actual or threatened in Ireland, Mesopotamia and elsewhere, “ this was not the moment for such a change.”i
1 On the previous day he had sent Asquith a memorandum urging this course. If Asquith resigned the King would have to send for Sir Edward Carson. Carson would fail to form a government, and Asquith could then come back in a much stronger position, at the head of a “ National Government ” rather than a Coalition of party representatives. (Asquith Papers, box xxx, ff. 78-81).
Asquith himself introduced the new measure on May 2nd. Hankey witnessed the scene and wrote:
He did not much like the job and was not at his best. The House was astonishingly cold. The fact was that the people who wanted compulsory service did not want Asquith, and those who wanted Asquith did not want compulsory service. Nevertheless Asquith faced the situation with his usual courage.j
He could console himself with the thought that the issue was at last out of the way. The bill met with little opposition and was through all its stages by May 25th. On third reading only twenty-seven Liberals and ten Labour members voted against. Fourteen Labour members voted for, and the Irish Nationalists (the bill did not apply to Ireland) abstained.
Throughout the controversy Asquith was at fault in over-estimating the feeling in the country against the final solution. The verdict of history is also firmly against voluntary recruitment as an efficient method of deploying the manpower resources of a nation engaged in total war. There was no question of depending upon it i
n the Second World War. But on the other aspect of the anti-conscriptionists, case—their scepticism about the wisdom of Britain concentrating her resources upon a mass army to be used for offensive operations against heavily defended positions in France—there is more room for argument. From the decision to do that, a distinguished American military commentator has recently written, stemmed “ the beginning of the end of Britain’s long preponderance as a world power.”k
The second major crisis which followed Asquith’s return from Italy was the Dublin Easter Rebellion. The first news of this, as Hankey mentioned, reached the Prime Minister when he returned to London late on the Monday night. That afternoon James Connolly’s Citizens’ Army had risen in Dublin. St. Stephen’s Green and the General Post Office were occupied. A provisional republican government, with Patric Pearse as president, was proclaimed. There was sporadic rioting elsewhere in Ireland, but this was easily suppressed. The German ship which was supposed to supply ammunition had been sunk off the coast of Kerry three days before, and Sir Roger Casement, landed by a U-boat, had been immediately arrested.
In Dublin the rising was more serious. The Government in London immediately sent over General Sir John Maxwell and moderate military reinforcements (Asquith would have liked to have sent more). Augustine Birrell, the Chief Secretary, also made a hurried crossing of St. George’s Channel. Even so it was six days before British control could be re-established in the Irish capital. Eventually the insurgents were forced into surrender, but before this happened there was bitter fighting and heavy killing. Much of Sackville Street and several important public buildings went up in flames. Flames were also lit in the hearts of many Irish patriots who were tired of Redmond’s ineffective constitutionalism. And these took longer to extinguish.
The revolt left the Cabinet with two problems. First there was the question of the future government of Ireland. The existing system depended upon a colonial type administration in Dublin Castle, a Viceroy in Phoenix Park, and a Chief Secretary, nominally the Viceroy’s chief of staff but in fact the real source of power, who spent most of his time in London. It was not only unpopular but ineffective. The Royal Commission on the rebellion, which reported in July, described the system as “ anomalous in quiet times, and almost unworkable in times of crisis.”
Resignations were inevitable. Birrell, who had received plenty of warnings about the dangers of a Sinn Fein outbreak but had chosen to discount them, was insistent that he must go. No doubt he wished that he had slipped out quickly before, as he had several times offered to do. On this occasion he was more determined. He pressed his resignation upon Asquith in a series of letters written from Dublin on April 28th, 29th and 30th. The Prime Minister accepted it by telegram “with infinite regret” on May 1st. The following day he saw Birrell in Downing Street, and was greatly distressed at the parting. “ I don’t remember what he said” Birrell wrote, “ but I know he wept and stood staring out of the window jingling some half-crowns in his pocket.”l Apart from a deep personal attachment Birrell was one of the few Cabinet colleagues left from the first days of Asquith’s government. There were only three others and one of them was Lloyd George.
On May 3rd, Sir Matthew Nathan, the permanent under-secretary, also resigned, but a good deal more reluctantly. Asquith thought that Lord Wimborne, the Viceroy, should go too, and sent Pease, the Postmaster-General, over to Dublin, partly to look into the disruption of the postal services, but also to tell him this. Wimborne argued hard,1 and although a grudging letter of resignation was obtained from him on May 9th, he was recalled to England for only a short time and was back in Dublin by August.
1 Asquith always had difficulty in removing Lords Lieutenant of Ireland. Wimborne’s predecessor, Lord Aberdeen, had clung like a limpet over the winter of 1914-15.
Resignations were not enough. It was the whole system of government, and not merely the competence of individuals, which had been found wanting. Asquith himself became quickly convinced that the Lord Lieutenant and the Dublin Castle system must be swept away. Much of the summer was occupied in an unsuccessful search for something to put in its place.
The second problem was that of suppressing the revolt sufficiently firmly to ensure that it did not recur, while not acting so harshly as either to drive the bulk of Irish Nationalist opinion into the arms of Sinn Fein or to alienate opinion abroad—particularly in America. Birrell before he went gave the Government some good advice in this direction, but it would be an exaggeration to say that they profited greatly from it or avoided the dangers of harshness. Part of the trouble was that, with martial law proclaimed throughout the country and the civil administration in practical dissolution, the military were given an almost free hand in the week or so after the surrender of the rebels. During this period fifteen executions were carried out after summary trials by courts martial. James Connolly, the labour leader, too badly wounded to stand, was carried on a stretcher to the execution point and shot sitting in a chair. Patric Pearse, the Gaelic romantic, went to his death with immortal words of revolt upon his lips, and his grave soon became a national shrine. They both found prominent places in the list of Irish martyrs.
Lord Wimborne thought the policy of retribution by execution was carried too far, but he hardly knew what was happening until it was over. The Cabinet was also a little nervous, but decided, on May 6th, that General Maxwell must be given discretion in individual cases, subject to general instructions that no woman should be shot, that “ death should not be inflicted except on ringleaders and proved murderers,” and that the executions should be brought to an end as soon as possible.
On the night of May 11th Asquith himself crossed to Dublin. After the resignations of Birrell and Nathan, he had sent over the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Sir Robert Chalmers, to try to pull together the civil administration, and this official wrote to him on May 9th begging for a new political head of the Irish Office as quickly as possible. Asquith's difficulty was that he did not know whom to appoint. He had played with the names of Montagu, Runciman and McKinnon Wood, and rejected them all. He had staved off a Unionist demand for Walter Long. He had thought of Crewe as Lord Lieutenant (in the Cabinet) with “ some underling ” as Chief Secretary, but Redmond would not have that. “ I am in despair for a Chief Secretary,” he wrote. “ If only Simon were available.”m
In these circumstances Asquith fell back upon a characteristic solution. Whenever a department was in difficulties he was always willing temporarily to add its burdens to his own and to try, for a time, to pull its administration together. This is what he did in Dublin. He could not find a Chief Secretary to send, so he sent himself. Loath though he would have been to admit it, his visit was also an exercise in public relations, designed to reassure the Irish parliamentary party. But it was by no means only this. He spent long hours sitting in Dublin
Castle with Sir Robert Chalmers and performing, with his usual expedition, the work of a Chief Secretary.
He was particularly concerned to investigate the administration of justice, relating both to the executions and to the large numbers of imprisonments. He went in detail through a list of cases which had been submitted to him by Dillon. He was not too dissatisfied with what he found. Maxwell assured him as soon as he arrived that, after the two that morning, there need be no further executions. “ On the whole,” he wrote, “—except the Skeffington case1—there have been fewer bad blunders than one might have expected with the soldiery for a whole week in exclusive charge.”n But there were a lot of men in jail who ought not to have been. He visited 300 to 400 “ Sinn Fein (or so-called) prisoners” in Richmond Barracks and found them “ very good-looking fellows with such lovely eyes.” He ordered a drastic comb-out before they were transferred to England.
1 Sheehy Skeffington, a Dublin journalist who was in no way implicated in the rising, had been shot without the knowledge of Maxwell. The officer responsible was subsequently court-martialled and found guilty but insane. But the incident was a frightening
example of the casualness with which judicial bullets had been discharged.
From his headquarters at Viceregal Lodge Asquith also made expeditions about the country, to Cork, where there was some fear of further trouble, and to Belfast, where he met eight or ten of “ the most hard-bitten Carsonite leaders.” He was rather impressed by them, as by the whole Orange capital, which had so heavily scarred his political life but which he had never before visited. “ Certainly Belfast, which is to look at a very superior Manchester,” he wrote to his wife, “ is a wonderful creation of its kind—in marvellous contrast to the ‘ out of repair ’ look which everything (including the scenery) wears in the greater part of Ireland.”0 He noted with more curiosity than distaste the implacable hatred and contempt of the Orange leaders for the Catholics of the South, but he thought they might accept an immediate Home Rule settlement for a partitioned Ireland.
Back in London, on May 19th, he told Lady Scott that he “ was inclined to put much of the Rebellion down to economic conditions. Some 12,000 families in Dublin live in single rooms.” But the solution he was looking for was a political one. The “ Home Rule in cold storage ” arrangement which the Unionists had forced upon him at the outbreak of war would clearly no longer work. A fresh attempt at a deal between Redmond and Carson, which would enable the Irish parliamentary party to regain its power by taking over the government of the South, was his strategy. To carry this through he needed a strong and resourceful Chief Secretary. His mind turned towards Lloyd George. Lady Scott wrote on May 24th:
