LORD RHONDDA
"Whereof what better witness can ye expect I should produce than one of your own now sitting in Parliament."—MILTON.
In the Merry Passages and Jests of old Sir Nicholas Lestrange record is made of the following witty definition: "Edm. Gurney used to say that a mathematitian is like one that goes to markett to buy an axe to break an egg."
This perhaps had been the fate of Lord Rhondda, for he was by nature of a true mathematical turn, had not the circumstances of his economic life forced him to apply this natural tendency to the practical affairs of commerce. But nature herself had given him with this aptitude for mathematics another quality which must eventually, one would suppose, have saved him from the unfruitful fate of a theorist—he was a man of rare imagination. And so this mathematician, who was also a poet, brought a unique mind to the affairs of commerce and there scored a success which attracted attention in both hemispheres.
I do not know a better example to illustrate the main thesis of this book than the case of Lord Rhondda. No doubt the case of a greater man, Lord Leverhulme, would lend itself to a far stronger illustration of that thesis, but, unfortunately for my argument and for the nation, Lord Leverhulme has never had an opportunity of vindicating in office those qualities which the House of Commons neglected or overlooked during the years in which, like Lord Rhondda, he sat humbly on its back benches.
For the best part of his manhood Lord Rhondda was a political failure. The House of Commons, which prides itself on its judgment of men, treated him as a person of no importance. He represented one of the largest industrial constituencies in the country, was always returned by an overwhelming majority, and was known to be in his own district an administrator of far-reaching talent; but because he could not speak effectually, and because the House of Commons—that most self-satisfied assembly of mediocrities—did not take to him, he was never offered by his political leaders during all the long years of his patient service even an under-secretaryship.
This was the man who saved the nation from one of its greatest perils during perhaps the most critical period of the war.
As one examines Lord Rhondda's administration of the Ministry of Food one discovers an interesting and surely an important fact in the psychology of our public life.
His triumph, which was one of the greatest in the war, lay almost entirely in the region of personality. For his gravest difficulties were not so much in the office of the Ministry as in the great and grumbling world outside, where toiling men and women stood outside provision shops for hours in the rain and cold only to be told in the vast majority of cases when their turn came that supplies were exhausted for that day.
By the power of his imagination Lord Rhondda saw that the first step towards saving a very perilous situation was to convince this vast world of seething discontent that absolute justice should characterize the administration of his office. To this end, satisfied that those about him were men of devoted zeal and real talent, he set himself to the creation of a public opinion favourable to the discharge of his duties. And by a stroke of inspiration he saw that to achieve this tranquillity of the public mind he must give his own personality to the world. His character must become a public possession. A man, and not an office, must stand for Food Control. The instinct of the Briton for justice and fair play must receive assurance from a moral personality.
Therefore no member of the Government was more accessible, or more ready to be interviewed and photographed, than the Food Controller. It was not vanity, but foreseeing statesmanship, which opened his door to the humblest newspaper reporter who visited the Ministry. His personality—a moral, just, fearless, and confident personality—had to be conveyed to the mind of the public, and every interview he gave to the Press had this important objective for its reason. He saw the morals of an economic situation, and he solved those economics very largely by making a moral impression on the public mind.
The work of his office was carried to victory by Sir William Beveridge, Captain Tallents, Professor Gonner, and other very able men in charge of rationing; but this work must have failed had it not been for public confidence in Lord Rhondda's integrity; and, moreover, Lord Rhondda's character played no small part in firing that work with a zeal and passion which were excelled by no other department of public service. Men not only worked hard for him, they worked for him affectionately.
His choice of Mr. J.H. Clynes was inspired by the same idea. He had heard this labour member speak, and had been impressed by the moral qualities of his oratory; he knew that in choosing him to represent the Food Ministry in the House of Commons he might be sure of the confidence of Labour, both there and in the circles of trade unionism. He was not deceived. Mr. Clynes was the most loyal and impressive of lieutenants, who, on one occasion in particular, saved a difficult situation.
Lord Rhondda realized the moral qualities of statesmanship. He appealed to the highest instincts of his countrymen. This was his greatest achievement.
He was in many ways a lovable man. The quality which chiefly drew people to him was his extreme boyishness. The remarkable beauty of his face always seemed to me an expression of this delightful boyishness—his smile deepening this effect in a most charming manner. He loved life with a boy's fervour, regarding it always as an opportunity for winning success. The difficulties of work, like the difficulties of a mathematical problem called out the athletic qualities of an otherwise shy and almost effeminate nature. He loved to pit his brains against other men, rejoiced to discover obstacles in his path, never despaired when things went against him, and infinitely preferred the battle for success to the success itself. In this, too, he was a boy; he had to win a fight fairly and honourably to enjoy the victory. I believe him to have been one of the most honest and straightforward men that ever made a fortune in business.
There was no man less embittered by failure and disappointment. He seems to have had reason to believe that Mr. Lloyd George frustrated his early efforts as a politician, indeed he told me more than once that Mr. Lloyd George had deliberately set himself to that end; and yet it was at Mr. Lloyd George's earnest beseeching that he accepted the office of Food Controller, and once a member of his Cabinet, he seldom spoke of this old opponent without the warmest admiration. "You can't trust him a yard," he said to me on one occasion laughing very good-naturedly; "but there is not a man in the Government who can hold a candle to him for courage and inspiration. I know very well that I could never have done what he has done. More than any man in the country he has pulled us through the critical days of the war. He is wonderful—nothing short of wonderful—and sometimes I feel almost fond of him, for he has many likeable sides to his character; all the same, I know very well he is not to be trusted. I took office on certain conditions, not one of which has he observed. He is one of those men with whom you cannot deal confidently."
This was the bitterest thing I ever heard him say of his former enemy. As regards the old days in the House of Commons, he told me that there was room for only one leader in Wales, and that, while Mr. Lloyd George could speak, he couldn't, and so Mr. Lloyd George, who was consumed by personal ambition, had won the battle. In saying this he smiled like a boy, and only grew serious when he added of those wasted years, "The bother is I had a lot of useful things I wanted to do for the country."
He was convinced that he could have paid off the whole of the National Debt during those years.
A good judge of statesmen said of Lord Rhondda that he would have made the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer these islands had ever possessed. I do not think there can be any doubt of this, for his genius lay in figures and he had extraordinary swiftness in seeing his way through expensive chaos to economical order. His mind was constructive, if not positively creative. He was never happier—except when birds'-nesting or romping with young people—than when he was in an arm-chair working out with pencil and paper some problem of administration which involved enormous figures. He would sit up to the small hours of the morning over his work, and would come down to breakfast radiant with happiness, bursting with energy, exclaiming, "I had a glorious time last night!" Certainly he would have brought to the Treasury an original mind, and a mind, moreover, profoundly acquainted with the activities of trade and commerce—those important factors in national finance which appear to cut so small a figure in the minds of bankers and officials.
Although a rather dull speaker, few men of my acquaintance were more lucid and convincing in conversation, particularly when he addressed a sympathetic mind. This was notably the case when he was unfolding his ideas on the conflicting theories of Individualism and Socialism. If his conversations on this head could be printed in a book they would make difficult work even for the most ingenious apologists of Socialism. He was persuaded that no theory of Socialism could be put into successful practice without involving the loss of personal freedom, and that without Individualism there would be no initiative, no audacity, and no creative energy in the development of an industry. Whenever he was in conflict with Socialists he would say to them, "Why don't you buy me out and run the mines yourselves? You have plenty of money in your unions, and I am quite willing to sell."
There were several strange and interesting movements in his otherwise quite simple and boyish nature. For example, he had no religious faith worth speaking about, certainly no dogmatic faith of any kind; but he always said his prayers. Then he held the theory that old age was a form of disease, and so avoided, as much as possible, the society of old people, fearing contagion; the young people with whom he loved to surround himself, and on whom he delighted to play many practical jokes, he called his "young germs."
He was entirely free from all forms of snobbishness, and would make fun of titles and honours and ridicule aristocratic pretensions; yet he went somewhat painfully out of his way to get a title from his Party when he retired from the House of Commons, and was justly indignant at the way this bargain was broken by the Liberal leaders of that day. I think he wanted a title at that time chiefly to prove to his constituents that he had faithfully done his duty by them.
He seldom read a book of any account after he came down from Cambridge, but hardly a day of his life passed that he did not learn by heart a number of fine sayings which appealed to him in a book of quotations. These quotations he would fire off at his family till they cried for mercy, or another set.
He was far happier among his Herefords at Llanwern than in London or in Cardiff, but he was for ever postponing the day of his retirement from public life. He kept all his boy's love for birds and animals, and had real feeling for beautiful things in nature; but the game of life drew him always towards the city.
At one time he smoked a prodigious number of cigars and drank a bottle of port every night, but about twenty years before his death he gave up both habits on the challenge of a friend and never reverted to them again. Mr. William Brace, the miners' leader, said to me one day, "Rhondda has the income of a duke and the tastes of a peasant, whereas I have the income of a peasant and the tastes of a duke." I told Lord Rhondda this, and he smiled quietly over the remark, saying, "He's a very pleasant fellow, Brace: fond of pictures, and a good judge of them, too. Yes, I suppose my tastes are rather simple when you come to look at them, but I don't find them cheap." He was on excellent terms with Labour politicians, knew many of the old miners with real intimacy, and could handle large bodies of men with consummate tact.
I do not think for a moment that he was a very great man, but I can think of few Cabinet ministers during the last thirty years who were anything like so well-fitted to render the nation real and lasting service. Lord Rhondda had genius, and though a boyish egoist in his private life he was earnestly and most eagerly anxious to sacrifice all he possessed for the good of the State. That he came so late and for so brief a period to power I regard, if not as a national misfortune, at any rate as a striking condemnation of our methods of government.
LORD INVERFORTH
LORD INVERFORTH 1ST BARON OF SOUTHGATE (ANDREW WEIR)
Born, 1865. Head of firm of Andrew Weir and Co. shipowners of Glasgow, Surveyor General of Supplies, 1917-19; Minister of Munitions, 1919.
