Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  It was not an easy start. Bonar Law remained suspicious of Lloyd George and at the end of the discussion arrived at the blinding conclusion that his “ plans boiled down to one simple proposal—to put Asquith out and to put himself in.” & Yet there was one substantial ray of light. Law had assumed before that Carson would never again agree to serve in a government of which Asquith remained even the titular head. Now he seemed disposed to join Lloyd George’s War Committee. If that could be brought about it would be an immense relief to Law.

  From this stage onwards the negotiations gathered momentum. The next day Bonar Law saw Carson at the House of Commons, first alone and then with Lloyd George. That evening he had a further meeting with Lloyd George at the Hyde Park Hotel. At luncheon on the Wednesday Lloyd George told Hankey of the proposed composition of his committee—himself, Carson, Bonar Law and Henderson— and pressed him, unsuccessfully, to join the first three of them at dinner that night.0 On the Thursday there was a further “ protracted and fruitful ” session of the Triumvirate. Bonar Law was moving slowly, unhappily, but steadily along the road to full co-operation. At first he had not understood that Asquith was to be completely excluded from the new committee, but he swallowed this new knowledge without too much difficulty during the week. By the Saturday (November 25th), when there was yet another meeting, this time at his own house, Pembroke Lodge, he was ready to accept a written agreement and to put it before the Prime Minister. This document, drafted by Aitken, was in the form of a statement of re-organisation to be issued by Asquith himself. The operative portion of it ran as follows:

  I have decided, therefore, to create what I regard as a civilian General Staff. This staff will consist of myself as President and of three other members of the Cabinet who have no portfolio and who will devote their whole time to the consideration day by day of the problems which arise in connection with the prosecution of the war.

  The three members who have undertaken to fulfil these duties are:

  [Here was left a blank space for the filling in of names but it was an understood part of the scheme that, apart from Lloyd George, they were to be Carson and Bonar Law1.] and I have invited Mr. Lloyd George, and he has consented to act as chairman and to preside at any meeting which, owing to the pressure of other duties, I find it impossible to attend.

  I propose that the body should have executive authority subject to this—that it shall rest with me to refer any questions to the decision of the Cabinet which I think should be brought before them.d

  1Henderson appeared to have been dropped.

  This was a compromise document. It sought to reconcile Carson, who openly wanted Asquith out, Law, who wanted Carson in but also wanted Asquith to retain both his position and some power, and Lloyd George, who wanted to transfer as much power as possible to himself without seeming so self-seeking as to frighten off Law. It was skilfully drafted so as to offer to all three the possibility of achieving their objectives. It was not the last of the ambiguous communications of the next few weeks.

  Bonar Law took the document to Asquith on the Saturday afternoon. During the preceding week the Prime Minister had been less preoccupied with the battle for position than his principal colleagues. His concern had been more with the search for a Food Controller (Speaker Lowther, the third man to be offered the job, declined on November 23 rd); with the composition of another mission to Russia; with a joint demarche from the unlikely combination of Arthur Henderson and Lord Robert Cecil saying that they could not agree to a franchise reform to give votes to soldiers without women's suffrage being dealt with as well; with trouble in the South Wales coalfield; and with the growing menace of the exhaustion of British credits in the United States. Until the Thursday he was hardly aware that a crisis was brewing. On that morning, however, he was to some extent alerted. The Morning Post, one of the papers which Asquith read, came out strongly for a Lloyd George premiership. Gwynne, the editor, was a close associate of Carson’s, but he had not hitherto been well-disposed towards the man whom he now proclaimed as the necessary “ saviour of society.” As recently as October 11th he had written to Asquith complaining bitterly about an anti-Haig intrigue, in which he said Lloyd George was joined by Churchill, F. E. Smith and Lord French.1 Asquith did not fail to note the significance of his change of front.

  1 “You know, of course, of the visit of Mr. Lloyd George to General Foch, where, with the Lord Chief Justice as interpreter, he ventured on criticism of the British Generals and the British armies in France. This has aroused considerable indignation among our officers of all ranks out there. ... It will need your personal intervention to put matters straight.” (Asquith Papers, box xxx, ff. 261-4).

  Nevertheless he did not react sharply to Bonar Law’s visit. He reiterated his suspicions that this was not the last of Lloyd George’s territorial demands and his lack of confidence in Carson as a minister, but left on Law’s mind the impression that he was not “ altogether opposed to the idea ” (of the small War Committee), to which he undertook to send a considered reply from the Wharf, where he was going that same afternoon. Bonar Law, his willingness to perform a Cassius-like role once again weakened by contact with Caesar, retired to the War Office to report to his more resolute allies. The probability seems to be that he had failed to inform Asquith of the full significance of the demand he was presenting. At any rate the Prime Minister’s considered answer, written on the Sunday, and given to Bonar Law in an interview on the Monday morning, contained the following paragraph:

  But the essence of your scheme is that the War Committee should disappear, and its place be taken by a body of four—myself, yourself, Carson and Lloyd George.e

  Even without appreciating how completely and immediately he was to be excluded, Asquith returned a firm but friendly negative to the scheme which Bonar Law had outlined. He argued against it on three grounds. First, while he by no means ruled out changes in the composition or procedure of the War Committee, he did not believe that the body could work effectively unless it had the heads of the War Office and the Admiralty amongst its members. Second, he would not promote Carson over the heads of Balfour, Curzon or McKenna, all of whom, in his view, had better claims to be a member of a small War Committee. To do so would cause great resentment amongst both Liberal and Unionist ministers. “ It would be universally believed to be the price paid for shutting the mouth of our most formidable parliamentary critic—a manifest sign of weakness and cowardice.” Third, there was the question of Lloyd George :

  He has many qualities that would fit him for the first place, but he lacks the one thing needful—he does not inspire trust... . Here, again, there is one construction, and one only, that could be put on the new arrangement, that it has been engineered by him with the purpose, not perhaps at the moment, but as soon as a fitting pretext could be found, of his displacing me. In short, the plan could not, in my opinion, be carried out without fatally impairing the confidence of loyal and valued colleagues, and undermining my own authorityf

  Bonar Law took this reply back to a meeting with Lloyd George and Carson in his room at the Colonial Office. It threw “ the Triumvirate ” into a state of considerable confusion. No consensus of view emerged as to what they should do next. Carson wanted to declare full-scale war against Asquith, but Bonar Law was still hesitant, and Lloyd George was somewhat inhibited, perhaps by his desires, certainly by his position. During the ensuing week the three seem to have acted more independently than had been the case in the immediately preceding period.

  Carson, supplemented more effectively by Aitken, tried to increase the newspaper pressure upon Asquith. On the Wednesday (November 29th) the Daily Chronicle, an important Liberal paper, came out with a strong criticism of the direction of the war. The editor, Sir Robert Donald, had been in close touch with Aitken and Law. He was a man either of exraordinary naivete or of considerable disingenuousness for he wrote later: “ The article had precisely the opposite effect intended. It was intended to be helpful to the Government, but
it was most useful to Mr. Lloyd George in pushing his scheme for the reform of the War Committee.”g

  By the end of the week the Daily Express (not then owned by Aitken but greatly influenced by him) and the Daily Chronicle had published main news stories which took the crisis before the public in a form highly favourable to Lloyd George. The Daily Mail, at this stage, was a little less well-informed about the detailed moves behind the scenes, but on the Saturday it published a leader headed “ The Limpets: A National Danger.”1 The Times was of course in line with its stablemate, and the Morning Post, uninformed by Carson that Law had moved over to Lloyd George—perhaps he thought a little further harrying fire would do his leader no harm—continued to denounce the Prime Minister’s conduct of affairs and Law for supporting him.

  1 Northcliffe was only dissuaded at the last moment from advertising this with a placard of “Asquith: A National Danger.” (Tom Clarke: My Northcliffe Diary, p. 105).

  In the meantime Bonar Law had decided that he had better consult tne other Unionist ministers. It is an extraordinary fact, explicable only by the extent to which he was influenced by Aitken and frightened by Carson, that he had not done this before. He called them together for the afternoon of Thursday, November 30th. Lansdowne, Curzon, Austen Chamberlain, Walter Long, Robert Cecil and F. E. Smith all attended. Did Balfour? Nearly all accounts, following Beaverbrook. say that he did not, owing to illness. But Balfour himself says that he did, and that his influenza did not strike him until later that evening.7* This discrepancy apart, there is substantial agreement about what took place at this meeting—which was by no means the case with subsequent Unionist gatherings during the crisis. The essence of the agreement lies in the fact that Aitken’s description obtained from Law immediately after the meeting, is confirmed by Austen Chamberlain, who has supplied much the best account of these events to be written by any ministerial participant. But he was not a central participant.

  Chamberlain (in a letter to the Indian Viceroy, Lord Chelmsford, dated December 8th) described how Law told the meeting of the proposals that he had made to Asquith, with the agreement of Carson and Lloyd George. The Unionist ministers were affronted both by their leader having proceeded so far without consulting them, and with the nature of the proposals themselves. There was no dispute about the need for some considerable change in the machinery of government. But no-one except Bonar Law wanted to do it in such a way as to give Lloyd George complete power. Perhaps not even Bonar Law wanted to do this. He gave Chamberlain the impression that he still wanted Asquith as Prime Minister. But nearly all his colleagues thought that, whatever his intentions, he was playing directly into the hands of the War Minister. It was at this meeting that Cecil accused him of “ dragging the Conservative Party at the coat-tails of Lloyd Georgei’

  The Unionist ministers, Chamberlain says, “ made certain alternative proposals ” to Bonar Law. These, however, “ did not commend themselves to (him) who had, it was evident, committed himself too deeply to Carson and Lloyd George.”* The proposals were similar to a scheme which had been put forward by Cecil and provisionally adopted at the Cabinet—the last over which Asquith was ever to preside—on the previous morning. This provided for two small committees instead of one, the first to look after military and foreign affairs and the second to concern itself with the home front. Even if Lloyd George was to secure the chairmanship of the first—and there was no suggestion of this; Hankey, indeed, believed that he might be offered that of the second—he would certainly have to bring in the Prime Minister on matters which overlapped both committees. Bonar Law firmly rejected these proposals, and the Unionist meeting broke up in dissagreement.

  Ironically, the preceding 48 hours may have seen Asquith moving a little way towards the Lloyd George/Bonar Law proposals. On the Tuesday he had summoned Hankey to luncheon and told him that he was inclined to support the scheme, provided that matters of personnel could be satisfactorily arranged. But this may not have meant much more than that Asquith was in favour of a small War Committee under his own chairmanship. At any rate, when Lloyd George made his next definite move, on the Friday morning, this was reported, again by Hankey, as having reduced Asquith to a state of mild gloom.

  “War Committee at 12.45,” his diary entry for December 1st ran. “ I noticed that the Prime Minister was rather piano and I learned afterwards that Lloyd George had delivered his ultimatum, practically threatening to resign unless the War Committee was reconstituted with himself as Chairman, and demanding that Carson should have a place in the Government and Balfour leave the Admiralty. It is all an intolerable nuisance.. . . ”j

  Whether or not Hankey correctly observed Asquith’s mood he gave a moderately accurate summary of what Lloyd George had put to the Prime Minister, in an interview, at noon that day. Lloyd George had accompanied his words with a brief written memorandum. The essence of this was conveyed in the first three clauses:

  (1) That the War Committee consist of three members, two of whom must be the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary of State for War, who should have in their offices deputies capable of attending to and deciding all departmental business, and a third Minister without a portfolio. One of the three to be Chairman.

  (2) That the War Committee should have full powers, subject to the supreme control of the Prime Minister to direct all questions connected with the war.

  (3) The Prime Minister in his discretion to have power to refer any question to the Cabinet.k

  This was the first definite proposal for his own exclusion from the War Committee which was put to Asquith. On the other hand the new scheme was in one respect nearer to his own view than the one which had been put to him by Bonar Law on the previous Saturday; the Committee was not to be largely non-departmental, but was to include the two Service ministers. Perhaps for this reason the answer which he returned to Lloyd George, in a letter written that same Friday afternoon (December 1st), was somewhat more conciliatory than the one which he had given to Bonar Law:

  My dear Lloyd George,

  I have now had time to reflect on our conversation this morning and to study your memorandum.

  Though I do not altogether share your dark estimate and forecast of the situation, actual and prospective, I am in complete agreement that we have reached a critical situation in the War, and that our methods of procedure, with the experience that we have gained during the last three months, call for reconsideration and revision.

  The two main defects of the War Committee, which has done excellent work, are (1) that its numbers are too large, and (2) that there is delay, evasion, and often obstruction on the part of the Departments in giving effect to its decisions.

  I might with good reason add (3) that it is often kept in ignorance by the Departments of information, essential and even vital, of a technical kind, upon the problems that come before it; and (4) that it is overcharged with duties, many of which might well be delegated to subordinate bodies.

  The result is that I am clearly of opinion that the War Committee should be reconstituted, and its relations to and authority over the Departments be more clearly defined and more effectively asserted. I come now to your specific proposals.

  In my opinion, whatever changes are made in the composition or functions of the War Committee the Prime Minister must be its Chairman. He cannot be relegated to the position of an arbiter in the background or a referee to the Cabinet.

  In regard to its composition, I agree that the War Secretary and the First Lord of the Admiralty are necessary members. I am inclined to add to the same category the Minister of Munitions. There should be another member, either with or without portfolio, or charged only with comparatively light departmental duties. One of the members should be appointed Vice-Chairman.