Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  It seemed to us at that time that the only hope of a stable Government still lay in combining somehow or another in one administration the separate forces represented by both Lloyd George and Asquith. It was not for us to say which of the rival Liberals could secure the greatest amount of support in the Liberal Party and the Parties which habitually worked with it.v

  If the hope of these Conservative ministers was to combine the forces of Asquith and Lloyd George, it was singularly foolish of them to stand indifferently aside and leave the Liberal battle to be fought out—particularly as they knew that their own leader was pursuing no such policy of neutrality. But this was typical of the ineffectiveness of the “ three C’s ” (and of Long) throughout the crisis. Not knowing quite what they wanted, and without close contact with Asquith, Lloyd George, or even Bonar Law, they never managed to exert much influence on events.

  Nevertheless the clause in the Conservative resolution rebuking Lloyd George for his press disclosures might well weaken Bonar Law’s hand when he showed it to the Prime Minister. So at least Aitken thought. He spent the whole of Sunday luncheon trying to persuade Law to delete it. “ But he did not take my persistency in good part,” Aitken wrote. Eventually Law fled from the table, but Aitken quickly followed him upstairs to his study and renewed the pressure. It was then agreed that F. E. Smith, who maintained a fairly detached position throughout the battle, should be brought in to give a third opinion. He gave it unequivocally against deleting the disputed clause. To do this would be to pervert the intentions of the Unionist ministers.

  Bonar Law then drove to Downing Street to see Asquith. He went with the resolution in his pocket, and there it remained throughout the interview. About this there is no dispute. It is stated by Asquith,w and confirmed by Law, who says that although he communicated the contents, “ I forgot to hand him the actual document.”x But how completely and how accurately did his verbal explanations convey the contents? About this there can never now be certainty. Asquith took the meaning to be that all the Unionist ministers had swung into a position of complete hostility to him. Aitken, to whom Law returned immediately after the interview, confirms this, although he claims that this misapprehension was Asquith’s own fault: “ (He) seized on nothing in the Tory resolution except the demand that he should resign. This single word resignation frightened him.... The point that caught his sole attention was not therefore the motives which induced the three C’s and Walter Long and others to urge him on to resignation—but the mere fact that they demanded that he should resign.”y

  This passage is part of a long refutation of the possibility that Law could have acted dishonestly. Such behaviour, Aitken argued (and so later did Mr. Robert Blake), would have been so out of keeping with his character as to be inconceivable. The much more likely explanation, Mr. Blake suggests, is that Asquith lost his head—about as uncharacteristic a piece of behaviour, it might be thought, as any temporary fall on the part of Law from his normal high standards of probity. Furthermore, it is clear from what is known that Law was behaving most oddly that afternoon. Had the morning’s resolution been in the terms he wanted, and had he therefore given it little further thought before going to see Asquith, his failure to produce it, while careless, might have been comprehensible. But as nearly the whole of the three hours between the end of the morning meeting and the beginning of the interview had been occupied with a wearing dispute as to whether part of the resolution could be deleted (the starting point being fear about the effect on Asquith of reading this part) his “ forgetfulness ” becomes simply incomprehensible. Nor can any faith be placed in his ability to have given Asquith an equally satisfactory verbal explanation. In the first place Bonar Law himself did not know exactly what the resolution meant. (Nor probably did anybody; but this was an additional reason for allowing Asquith to make his own interpretation.) Secondly, Law was notoriously ineffective, as there were many previous examples to show, in exposition to Asquith.

  The onus for misunderstanding at the Downing Street meeting must therefore rest squarely upon Law. To say that Asquith must have lost his head, because this is the only way in which Law’s honesty can be defended, is not good enough. One or other of the two men clearly acted out of character, and we cannot now be certain which it was. In either event Law plainly neglected his duty—which was to show Asquith the resolution and let him decide for himself what it meant.

  Did this omission make any difference to the outcome of the crisis? On Beaverbrook’s showing it did. It led Asquith to under-estimate (and, indeed, to alienate) his Unionist support by seeking an unnecessary accommodation with Lloyd George. On Mr. Blake’s showing, however, it did not. The Unionist support was not really there. They would all have agreed to serve under Lloyd George at any moment at which the pistol was put to their heads. These assumptions of Mr. Blake are probably correct, but he does not allow for the fact that the Conservative ministers might have been confronted with a different pistol. Had Asquith been shown the resolution, and had he, like everyone else, found it confusing, and discovered from Bonar Law that it was the product of a confused meeting, a natural reaction on his part would have been a demand to see the other Unionist ministers, who were still serving under him.

  A meeting later that afternoon between Asquith and the “ three C’s ” might have had considerable effect. To begin with, he would no doubt have found them wavering. But he was not without influence over them. In the course of the discussion their doubts about Lloyd George would have come to the surface, and the conclusion might have been that they would have stiffened Asquith, and he would have stiffened them. The only obstacle to such a meeting would have been Asquith’s reluctance, due to a mixture of inertia and distaste for promoting his own interests, to take the decisive step of summoning it.

  The possibility did not arise, however. Law left Asquith with the impression that the Unionists were almost solid against him. In these circumstances the Prime Minister saw his next caller—Lloyd George. Lloyd George had been summoned from Walton Heath by a telephone call from Bonham Carter. Before going to Downing Street he had called in at the War Office and had smoked a preparatory cigar with the ubiquitous Aitken. Then he walked across to see the Prime Minister. Aitken thought that he "had never seen any man exhibit so much moral courage in the face of such great events.” z For the moment it was unnecessary. The interview with Asquith, in the words of Montagu, who was present in an adjoining room and had almost assumed the role of a Liberal Aitken, was “ long and very friendly/’ Asquith gave way to a substantial part of Lloyd George’s previous demands. He agreed that there should be a small War Committee under Lloyd George’s chairmanship, operating with certain safeguards, which he subsequently defined as follows:

  The Prime Minister to have supreme and effective control of War policy.

  The agenda of the War Committee will be submitted to him; its Chairman will report to him daily; he can direct it to consider particular topics or proposals; and all its conclusions will be subject to his approval or veto. He can, of course, at his own discretion, attend meetings of the Committee.aa

  Lloyd George accepted this, and an amicable but inconclusive discussion about personalities appears to have followed. The main difficulty was still Balfour versus Carson as First Lord of the Admiralty. Asquith, in an earlier conversation with Montagu, had thought that this might be a breaking-point, but it did not prove so at this stage. Asquith also wanted a Committee of four (including Henderson), not of three, and Lloyd George agreed readily to this, although he had been playing with the idea of Montagu as an alternative additional member.

  After the Asquith-Lloyd George meeting had made some progress, Bonar Law came back and joined them for the last half-hour. It was agreed that all ministers other than the Prime Minister should resign, and that Asquith should reconstruct on the basis of the new War Committee. Bonar Law then left for another meeting of the Unionist ministers at F. E. Smith’s house in Grosvenor Crescent. Lloyd George went back to the War Office
, pausing on the way out of 10, Downing Street to tell Hankey “ that the Unionists had insisted that he should become Prime Minister, but he had flatly declined, and had insisted that he would only serve with Asquith.”bb Thus is history quickly confused by even the most intimate participants—or misreported by even the most reliable witnesses.

  Lloyd George was closely followed to the War Office by Montagu.1 Six days later Montagu recorded his mixed impressions of that visit:

  I joined George at the War Office, where he expressed his great gratification at the fact that he was going to work with Asquith... and see (him) every day. He recognised my share in this happy issue and urged me to persuade Asquith to put the agreement in writing that night, in order that there might be no watering down or alterations, and in order that it might not be misconstrued. I told him that I would do my best.

  1 It is surprising that he and Beaverbrook did not frequently collide with each other, like characters in a stage farce, as they scurried from one focus of power to another.

  As I came away I saw, with fear and foreboding in my heart, Northcliffe waiting in his Private Secretary’s room. This secret has been locked in my knowledge ever since; I have told nobody but Primrose that I know George did see Northcliffe that night.cc

  For the moment, therefore, the apparition of Northcliffe made no wider impact. That night Asquith dined with Montagu in the familiar ambience of Queen Anne’s Gate. Mrs. Montagu was in the country, but Crewe and Reading came in after dinner. Montagu, as he had promised, urged Asquith to enshrine the afternoon’s agreement in a late-night letter to Lloyd George; but that was not done. Instead a brief Press statement was sent out at 11.45 p.in. This merely said that “ the Prime Minister, with a view to the most active prosecution of the war, has decided to advise his Majesty the King to consent to a reconstruction of the Government.”

  Beaverbrook thought that from Asquith’s point of view this was a “ disastrous statement ”—because it alerted both the unconsulted Liberals and the unconsulted Unionists—and he attributed the mistake to Montagu’s insistence. For once Beaverbrook was imperfectly informed about developments within the Bonar Law camp. Law had written to Asquith earlier that evening (presumably during his visit to F. E. Smith’s house, for the letter was on Attorney-General’s writing paper), demanding just such a statement:

  My dear Prime Minister,

  I think it is almost certain that it will be stated in the papers to-morrow that the Unionists Ministers have sent in their resignations. The only way to prevent the danger resulting from this is, in my opinion, that it should be formally stated tonight that you have decided to reconstruct the government.

  Yours sincerely,

  A. Bonar Law.dd

  That night, however, Asquith worried neither about the statements nor about the possible machinations of Lord Northcliffe. He believed that another very disagreeable crisis was nearly over, and expressed his thoughts in a private letter:

  I drove down to Walmer yesterday afternoon hoping to find sunshine and peace. It was bitterly drab and cold, and for my sins (or other people’s) I had to drive back soon after n this morning.

  I was forced back by Bongie & Montagu and Rufus to grapple with a “ Crisis ”—this time with a very big C. The result is that I have spent much of the afternoon in colloguing with Messrs. Ll. George & Bonar Law, & one or two minor worthies. The “ Crisis ” shows every sign of following its many predecessors to an early and unhonoured grave. But there were many wigs very nearly on the green.ee

  On this occasion Asquith’s calm was misplaced. The situation changed sharply the next morning, and the Government reached its grave earlier than did the crisis.

  A PALACE REVOLUTION II

  1916

  The next morning (Monday, December 4th) The Times published a leading article which grew to a fame unmatched by any similar emission until 1938. This article was written throughout in a tone that was hostile and insulting to Asquith. From the Northcliffe Press the Prime Minister was used to this. Such a fact alone would not even have caused him to show much interest, let alone to react strongly. What was more significant was that the article (and the despatch from the Parliamentary Correspondent which appeared alongside it) had obviously been written or inspired by someone who was privy to Sunday afternoon’s Downing Street discussions, and who was interpreting them to mean that Asquith, persuaded even by “ his closest supporters ” that he was ineffective as a war leader, had made a complete surrender of power to Lloyd George.

  Asquith had not been told of Northcliffe’s visit to the War Office on the previous day. But even without this enormous piece of circumstantial evidence he assumed that Lloyd George was the source of the leak, and that it was due, not to carelessness, but to a deliberate policy of using the Press to make the Sunday arrangements unworkable except on the basis of a complete Lloyd George hegemony.

  In a narrow sense his suspicions were probably unfounded. The article does not appear to have stemmed directly from Lloyd George. Northcliffe left Tom Clarke of the Daily Mail, who was close to him at the time, with the impression that he had written the leader himself.1

  1 “Then he (Northcliffe) came to town, saw L.G., and then wrote a two-column article on the political crisis,” Clarke wrote on the Monday. (My Northcliffe Diary, p. 106).

  But there is strong evidence that Dawson, the editor, was in fact theauthor, and that he acted independently of Northcliffe. Hankey wrote:

  Long after I learned the true history of this episode. It was at dinner at Reading’s house on Sunday, December 15th, 1920, on which I wrote in my diary:

  ... Perhaps the most interesting item was contributed by Lloyd George, who said that 011 the previous week-end he had learned the true history of The Times article, which four years ago, wrecked Asquith’s government. Geoffrey Dawson had told him that he wrote the article himself at Cliveden (the Astors’ place on the Thames) without prompting from anyone, and without communication of any sort or kind with Northcliffe, and because he disliked the arrangement agreed between Asquith and Lloyd George. The particulars of the proposed arrangement had been given him by Carson.a

  But Carson could hardly have supplied this information before Dawson left for Cliveden, for it was not then available. Beaverbrook avoided this contradiction by explaining that Dawson wrote the first half of the article in the country on the Saturday, but completed it in London on the Sunday after talking to Carson. This is confirmed in Sir Evelyn Wrench’s life of Dawson.

  It still leaves two points for explanation. First, if there was no collusion between Lloyd George and Northcliffe, why was the latter paying such frequent visits to the quarters of the Secretary of State at the War Office? Northcliffe was not the man to waste his time in pointless errands. Yet he was there on the Friday morning (December 1st), the Saturday morning (December 2nd) and the Sunday evening (December 3rd). No politician, at a moment of acute crisis, should expect to hold such a series of private interviews with a partisan and editorially active newspaper proprietor, who is the sworn enemy of his own governmental chief, without accepting that some of the responsibility for what then appears in the proprietor’s political columns will be pinned upon him.

  Secondly, where else except from Lloyd George did Carson get his detailed knowledge of the Downing Street arrangement to pass on to Dawson? And if he received facts was it not likely that he received views as well? It is not, after all, in dispute that he and Lloyd George were working in the closest association. The introduction of Carson as an intermediary does not therefore, as Hankey for instance assumes, dispose of the view that The Times article gave Lloyd George’s interpretation of his agreement with Asquith.

  In any event this is what Asquith thought—and not without considerable justification. Beaverbrook stated that Asquith’s beliefs were fortified by a visit which a group of Liberal Ministers paid him early on the Monday morning. McKenna, Harcourt, Runciman and Grey were all there, according to this account: “ Their note was one of surprise, di
smay and protest. When they heard Lloyd George’s terms they objected to them altogether.” b As a result of these objections (and of expressions of determined loyalty), Beaverbrook suggested, Asquith decided to go back on his Sunday agreement with Lloyd George and to use The Times leader as an excuse for doing so. The meeting was the direct cause of his writing to Lloyd George in the following terms:

  Dec. 4th, 1916

  My dear Lloyd George,

  Such productions as the first leading article in today’s Times, showing the infinite possibilities for misunderstanding and misrepresentation of such an arrangement as we considered yesterday, make me at least doubtful as to its feasibility. Unless the impression is at once corrected that I am being relegated to the position of an irresponsible spectator of the War, I cannot possibly go on.

  The suggested arrangement was to the following effect:

  The Prime Minister to have supreme and effective control of War policy.

  The agenda of the War Committee will be submitted to him; its Chairman will report to him daily; he can direct it to consider particular topics or proposals; and all its conclusions will be subject to his approval or veto. He can, of course, at his own discretion, attend meetings of the Committee.