The Mirrors of Downing Street Part 3

It is a mistake to say that he brought England into the war. England carried Mr. Asquith into the war. The way in which politicians speak of Mr. Asquith as having "preserved the unity of the nation" in August, 1914, is index enough of the degraded condition of politics. A House of Commons that had hesitated an hour after the invasion of Belgium would have been swept out of existence by the wrath and indignation of the people. Mr. Asquith was the voice of England in that great moment of her destiny, a great and sonorous voice, but by no means her heart. He kept faction together at a moment when it was least possible for it to break apart; but he did not lead the nation into war. It was largely because he seemed to lack a.s.surance that Lord Haldane was sacrificed. The Tories felt that Mr. Asquith would not make war whole-heartedly: they looked about for a scapegoat; Lord Haldane was chosen for this purpose by the stupidest of the Tory leaders; and the bewildered Prime Minister, with no mind of his own, and turning first to this counsellor and then to that, sacrificed the most intellectual of modern War Ministers, called Sir Edward Carson, to his side, and left the British war machine to Lord Kitchener.

We must make allowance for the time. No minister in our lifetime was confronted by such a gigantic menace. Moreover, the Cabinet was not united. Mr. Asquith came out of that tremendous ordeal creditably, but not, I think, as a great national hero. As for his conduct of the war, it was dutiful, painstaking, dignified, wise; but it lacked the impression of a creative original mind. He did not so much direct policy and inspire a nation as keep a Cabinet together. One seemed to see in him the decorative chairman of a board of directors rather than the living spirit of the undertaking.

When the historian comes to inquire into the trivial consequences of Mr.

Asquith's fall from power he will be forced, I think, to lift that veil which Mr. Asquith has so jealously drawn across the privacy of his domestic life. For although he ever lacked the essentials of greatness, Mr. Asquith once possessed nearly all those qualities which make for powerful leaders.h.i.+p. Indeed it was said in the early months of the war by the most able of his political opponents that it pa.s.sed the wit of man to suggest any other statesman at that juncture for the office of Prime Minister.

His judicial temperament helped him to compose differences and to find a workable compromise. His personal character won the respect of men who are easily influenced by manner. There was something about him superior to a younger generation of politicians--a dignity, a reticence, a proud and solid self-respect. With the one exception of Mr. Alfred Spender, a man of honour and the n.o.blest principles, he had no acquaintance with journalism. He never gave anybody the impression of being an office-seeker, and there was no one in Parliament who took less pains to secure popularity. Above all things, he never plotted behind closed doors; never descended to treason against a rival.

Search as men may among the records of his public life they will fail to discover any adequate cause of his fall from power. He was diligent in office; he took always the highest advice in every military dispute; settled the chief difficulty at the War Office without offence to Lord Kitchener; he gave full rein to the fiery energy of Mr. Lloyd George; he was in earnest, but he was never excited; he was beset on every side, but he never failed to maintain the best traditions of English public life; he was trusted and respected by all save a clique. Even in the humiliation of the Paisley campaign he was so n.o.ble a figure that the indulgence with which he appeared to regard the rather violent aid of a witty daughter was accepted by the world as touchingly paternal--the old man did not so much lean upon the arm of his child as smile upon her high-spirited antics.

One must trespa.s.s upon the jealously guarded private life to discover the true cause of his bewildering collapse. Mr. Asquith surrendered some years ago the rigid Puritanism of early years to a domestic circle which was fatal to the sources of his original power. Anyone who compares the photographs of Mr. Asquith before and after the dawn of the twentieth century may see what I mean. In the earlier photographs his face is keen, alert, powerful, austere; you will read in it the rigidity of his Nonconformist upbringing, the seriousness of his Puritan inheritance, all the moral earnestness of a n.o.bly ambitious character. In the later photographs one is struck by an increasing expression of festivity, not by any means that beautiful radiance of the human spirit which in another man was said to make his face at the age of seventy-two "a thanksgiving for his former life and a love-letter to all mankind," but rather the expression of a mental chuckle, as though he had suddenly seen something to laugh at in the very character of the universe. The face has plumped and reddened, the light-coloured eye has acquired a twinkle, the firm mouth has relaxed into a sportive smile. You can imagine him now capping a "_mot_" or laughing deeply at a daring jest; but you cannot imagine him with profound and reverend anxiety striving like a giant to make right, reason, and the will of G.o.d prevail.

Like Mr. Lloyd George, his supplanter, he has lost the earnestness which brought him to the seats of power. A domestic circle, brilliant with the modern spirit and much occupied in sharpening the wits with epigram and audacity, has proved too much for his original stoicism. He has found recreation in the modern spirit. After the day's work there has been nothing so diverting for him as the society of young people; chatter rather than conversation has been as it were prescribed for him, and when he should have been thinking or sleeping he has been playing cards.

It is possible to argue that this complete change from the worries of the day's work has been right and proper, and that his health has been the better for it; but physical well-being can be secured by other means, and no physical well-being is worth the loss of moral power.

There are some natures to whom easy-going means a descent. There are some men, and those the strongest sons of nature, for whom the kindest commandment is, "Uphill all the way."

Mr. Asquith, both by inheritance and temperament, was designed for a strenuous life, a strenuous moral life. He was never intended for anything in the nature of a _flaneur_. If he had followed his star, if he had rigorously pursued the path marked out for him by tradition and his own earliest propensities, he might have been an unpleasant person for a young ladies' tea-party and an unsympathetic person to a gathering of decadent artists; he might indeed have become as heavy as Cromwell and as inhuman as Milton; but he would never have fallen from Olympus with the lightness of thistledown.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE

LORD NORTHCLIFFE, FIRST VISCOUNT (ALFRED CHARLES WILLIAM HARMSWORTH)

Born, 1865, in Dublin. Educ.: in Trade Schools; trained as a book-seller, and worked in the establishment of George Newnes; LL.D., Rochester Univ., U.S.A.; Proprietor of the London _Times, Daily Mail_, and a number of other journals; Cr. Bart. in 1904; Viscount, 1917; Chairman of the British War Mission to the United States, 1917; Director of the Aerial Transport Committee, 1917; Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, 1918.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD NORTHCLIFFE]

CHAPTER V

LORD NORTHCLIFFE

_" ... We cannot say that they have a great nature, or strong, or weak, or light; it is a swift and imperious imagination which reigns with sovereign power over all their beings, which subjugates their genius, and which prescribes for them in turn those fine actions and those faults, those heights and those littlenesses, those flights of enthusiasm and those fits of disgust, which we are wrong in charging either with hypocrisy or madness."_--VAUVENARGUES.

A great surgeon tells me he has no doubt that Carlyle suffered all his life from a duodenal ulcer. "One may speculate," he says, "on the difference there would have been in his writings if he had undergone the operation which to-day is quite common."

This remark occurs to me when I think about Lord Northcliffe.

There is something wrong with his health. For a season he is almost boyish in high spirits, not only a charming and a most considerate host, but a spirit animated by the kindliest, broadest, and cheerfullest sympathies. Then comes a period of darkness. He seems to imagine that he may go blind, declares that he cannot eat this and that, shuts himself up from his friends, and feels the whole burden of the world pressing on his soul.

It is impossible to judge him as one would judge a perfectly healthy man.

The most conspicuous thing in his character is its transilience. One is aware in him of an anacoluthic quality, as if his mind suddenly stopped leaping in one direction to begin jumping in a quite contrary direction.

It cannot be said that his mind _works_ in any direction. It is not a trained mind. It does not know how to think and cannot support the burden of trying to think. It springs at ideas and goes off with them in haste too great for reflection. He drops these ideas when he sees an excuse for another leap. Sequence to Lord Northcliffe is a synonym for monotony. He has no _esprit de suite_. But he has leaps of real genius.

An admirable t.i.tle for his biography would be, "The Fits and Starts of a Discontinuous Soul." There is something of St. Vitus in his psychology.

You might call him the Spring-Heeled Jack of Journalism.

A story told of one of his journalists ill.u.s.trates the difficulty of dealing with so uncertain a person. Lord Northcliffe invited this journalist, let us call him Mr. H., to luncheon. They approached the lift of Carmelite House, and Lord Northcliffe drew back to let his guest enter before him--he has excellent manners and, when he is a host, is scrupulously polite to the least of people in his employment. Mr. H.

approached the lift, and raising his hat and making a profound bow to the boy in charge of it, pa.s.sed in before Lord Northcliffe. Nothing was said during the descent. On leaving the lift Mr. H. again raised his hat and bowed low to the boy. When they were out of earshot Lord Northcliffe remonstrated with him on his behaviour. "You shouldn't joke," he said, "with these boys, it makes discipline difficult."

"Joke!" exclaimed Mr. H., "good heavens, I wasn't joking; how do I know that to-morrow he will not be the editor of the _Daily Mail_?"

This story has a real importance. It emphasizes a remarkable characteristic of Lord Northcliffe's variability. It emphasizes the romantic quality of his mind. Nothing would please him more than to discover in one of his office boys an editor for _The Times_. His own life has given him almost a novelette's pa.s.sion for romance. He lives in that atmosphere. Few men I have known are so free from sn.o.bbishness or so indifferent to the petty conventions of society. The dull life of the world is hateful to him. He would make not only the journalism of the suburbs sensational, he would make the history of mankind a fairy-story.

It is difficult to understand his power in the world. He is not the great organizer that people suppose; all the organization of his business has been done by Lord Rothermere, a very able man of business; nor is he the inspirational genius one is so often asked to believe. Mr.

Kennedy Jones is largely responsible for the journalistic fortunes of Lord Northcliffe.

I am disposed to think that it is the romantic quality of his mind which is the source of his power. All the men about him are unimaginative realists. He is the artist in command of the commercial mind, the poet flogging dull words into a kind of wild music. Mr. Kennedy Jones could have started any of his papers, but he could never have imparted to them that living spirit of the unexpected which has kept them so effectually from dulness. Carmelite House could give the news of the world without Lord Northcliffe's help, but without his pa.s.sion for the twists and turns of the fairy-story it could never have presented that news so that it catches the attention of all cla.s.ses.

I have never been conscious of greatness in Lord Northcliffe, but I have never failed to feel in his mind something unusual and remarkable. He is not an impressive person, but he is certainly an interesting person. One feels that he has preserved by some magic of temperament, not to be a.n.a.lyzed by the most skilful of psychologists, the spirit of boyhood.

You may notice this spirit quite visibly in his face. The years leave few marks on his handsome countenance. He loves to frown and depress his lips before the camera, for, like a child, he loves to play at being somebody else, and somebody else with him is Napoleon--I am sure that he chose the t.i.tle of Northcliffe so that he might sign his notes with the initial N--but when he is walking in a garden, dressed in white flannels, and looking as if he had just come from a Turkish bath, he has all the appearance of a youth. It is a tragedy that a smile so agreeable should give way at times to a frown as black as midnight; that the freshness of his complexion should yield to an almost jaundiced yellow; and that the fun and frolic of the spirit should flee away so suddenly and for such long periods before the witch of melancholy.

Of his part in the history of the world no historian will be able to speak with unqualified approval. His political purpose from beginning to end, I am entirely convinced, has been to serve what he conceives to be the highest interests of his country. I regard him in the matter of intention as one of the most honourable and courageous men of the day.

But he is reckless in the means he employs to achieve his ends. I should say he has no moral scruples in a fight, none at all; I doubt very much if he ever asks himself if anything is right or wrong. I should say that he has only one question to ask of fate before he strips for a fight--is this thing going to be Success or Failure?

In many matters of great importance he has been right, so right that we are apt to forget the number of times he has been wrong. Whether he may not be charged in some measure at least with the guilt of the war, whether he is not responsible for the great bitterness of international feelings which characterized Europe during the last twenty years, is a question that must be left to the historian. But it is already apparent that for want of balance and a moral continuity in his direction of policy Lord Northcliffe has done nothing to elevate the public mind and much to degrade it. He has jumped from sensation to sensation. The opportunity for a fight has pleased him more than the object of the fight has inspired him. He has never seen in the great body of English public opinion a spirit to be patiently and orderly educated towards n.o.ble ideals, but rather a herd to be stampeded of a sudden in the direction which he himself has as suddenly conceived to be the direction of success.

The true measure of his shortcomings may be best taken by seeing how a man exercising such enormous power, power repeated day by day, and almost at every hour of the day, might have prepared the way for disarmament and peace, might have modified the character of modern civilization, might have made ostentation look like a crime, might have brought capital and labour into a sensible partners.h.i.+p, and might have given to the moral ideals of the n.o.blest sons of men if not an intellectual impulse at least a convincing advertis.e.m.e.nt.

The moral and intellectual condition of the world, a position from which only a great spiritual palingenesis can deliver civilization, is a charge on the sheet which Lord Northcliffe will have to answer at the seat of judgment. He has received the price of that condition in the mult.i.tudinous pence of the people; consciously or unconsciously he has traded on their ignorance, ministered to their vulgarities, and inflamed the lowest and most corrupting of their pa.s.sions: if they had had another guide his purse would be empty.

All the same, it is the greatest mistake for his enemies to declare that he is nothing better than a cynical egoist trading on the enormous ignorance of the English middle-cla.s.ses. He is a boy, full of adventure, full of romance, and full of whims, seeing life as the finest fairy-tale in the world, and enjoying every incident that comes his way, whether it be the bitterest and most cruel of fights or the opportunity for doing someone a romantic kindness.

You may see the boyishness of his nature in the devotion with which he threw himself first into bicycling, then into motoring, and then into flying. He loves machinery. He loves every game which involves physical risk and makes severe demands on courage. His love of England is not his love of her merchants and workmen, but his love of her masculine youth.

He has been generosity itself to his brothers, with all of whom he does not, unfortunately, get on as well as one could wish. The most beautiful thing in his life is the love he cherishes for his mother, and nothing delights him so much as taking away her breath by acts of astonis.h.i.+ng devotion. A man so generous and so boyish may make grave mistakes, but he cannot be a deliberately bad man.

MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR

THE RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR

Born in Scotland 1848; s. of Jas. M. Balfour and Lady Blanche Cecil; nephew of the late Marquis of Salisbury and therefore 1st cousin to the present Marquis, Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Hugh Cecil. Educ.: Eton and Trinity Coll., Cambridge; LL.D. Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Columbia (New York); D.C.L. Oxford.

M.P. for Hertford, 1874-85; Private Sec'y to his uncle, the late Marquis of Salisbury, 1878-80; served on Mission to Berlin with Salisbury and Beaconsfield, 1878; Privy Councillor, 1885; President of Local Government Board, 1885-86; Sec'y for Scotland, 1886-87; Lord Rector, St. Andrews, 1886; Sec'y for Ireland, 1887-91; Lord Rector, Glasgow, 1890; Chancellor of Edinburgh since 1891; First Lord of Treasury, 1891-92; President British a.s.sociation, 1904; Prime Minister, 1902-1905; Leader of the Commons, 1895-1906; 1st Lord of the Admiralty 1915-16; Head of British Mission to America, 1917; Author of a series of philosophical and economic works.