While I Remember

by Stephen McKenna

I

In the life of the English generation which found its climax and catastrophe in the war, the last chapter opened on armistice day and closed with the signature of the German peace treaty on July 19th, 1919. As with the armistice terms, so with the treaty: no one doubted that it would be signed, but, until it had been signed, all efforts at reconstruction, all attempts to resume a normal life of peace were tentative and provisional. The House of Commons in effect declared a legislative moratorium and, in the absence of the prime minister, marked time to the command of Mr. Bonar Law with the disciplined noise and the calculated absence of progress inseparable from that part of infantry drill.

As the general election of the previous December had been won on the cry that a coalition was necessary to the conclusion of a lasting peace, it might have been expected that the supporters of the coalition would have influenced the course of the peace negotiations. Beyond an occasional question, however, which seldom brought enlightenment to the questioner, and an occasional telegram of protest which can never have brought satisfaction to the protester, coalition members gave the government a free hand. In part, there were comparatively few with any parliamentary experience; in part, there was none who could draft a desirable alternative ministry, if his dissatisfaction with the present prime minister stimulated him to effective revolt; and, in part, there has probably never, since 1832, been a House of Commons so bankrupt in public spirit, courage, independence or conscience. Since the end of 1918 the government has triumphantly carried its supporters against their inclinations through a dozen crises of which any single one would have seen any other ministry disowned and broken by a less servile house: the peace treaty with Germany, as mischievous as it was dishonourable, was flung at parliament with an air of "Take it—or leave it and take the consequences"; the treaty with Turkey established the Ottoman government in Constantinople with licence to misgovern and to massacre as freely as in the past; the Russian policy began with invective and threats of war against the bloody-handed soviet and ended with the cordial grip of a hand which had only become more bloody in the interval; Ireland drifted through pats of conciliation and dabs of coercion to a state of anarchy which ministers hoped to end by means of a new home rule bill abhorred by every section of Irishmen; and, while financiers protested that the country had reached its taxable capacity, the government continued to live beyond its means and the chancellor of the exchequer complained that it was not in his power to retrench effectively.

For a similar display of cynical incompetence and reckless disorder the historian must go back to the days of a great autocracy in dissolution. The government of Louis XVI or of the last Roman emperor, would perhaps shew an equal record of vacillations, lethargy and light-hearted misrule; but in both instances anarchy ended in downfall; and, if history be past politics, present politics are future history. It is hardly straining the parallel to suggest that such misgovernment is always attributable to one cause, the lack of an efficient opposition; a composite government unchecked by fear of overthrow and uninspired by any loftier ideal than a groping instinct of self-preservation, is no less tyrannical and prone to abuse than a single ruler.

"These various Cæsars and their successors and their women-kind," says H. G. Wells, "were probably no worse essentially than most weak and passionate human beings, but they had no real religion, being themselves gods; they had no wide knowledge on which to build high ambitions, their women were fierce and almost illiterate, and they were under no restraints of law or custom. They were surrounded by creatures ready to stimulate their slightest wishes and to translate their vaguest impulses into action. What are mere passing black thoughts and angry impulses with most of us became therefore deeds with them. Before a man condemns Nero as a different species of being from himself, he should examine his own secret thoughts very carefully."

It is less profitable to condemn the present government than to enquire why there has been no effective opposition to hold it in check. The political revolution which placed Mr. Lloyd George in power was described by Mr. Asquith as a "conspiracy"; it was generally regarded as a discreditable piece of trickery, and even the stalwarts of the new order were for the most part reduced to mumbling that the end must justify the means and that, without a change, the war would have dragged on for ever. It is possible to see now that a psychological crisis was reached in December 1916 and that after more than two years of unending and unended fighting the herd-instinct demanded that someone should be made responsible. To the bulk of the liberal party who stood by Mr. Asquith, forgiving his high-handed behaviour in resigning without an adverse vote and without consultation of his supporters, the December crisis seemed a trial of strength between two men; it was believed first that no alternative ministry could be formed and then that it could not endure; the opposition liberals would have been more than human if they had cherished no hope of revenge; and they could claim disinterestedly and honestly that the new prime minister was at least not superior to the old in scruple and was certainly inferior in ability.

However great their resentment, however, the new management had to be given a trial; any show of factiousness would have been doubtful patriotism and disastrous tactics; and the chief subject of discussion among the wire-pullers was how long the trial should continue. Much noise and dust accompanied Mr. Lloyd George's triumphal progress to No. 10 Downing Street; at last a "business government" had taken office, and Whitehall became filled with the unfamiliar forms of shipping-men and railway-men, newspaper-men and mining-men, all disciplined by practical experience at the head of great commercial enterprises, though unschooled to the teamwork of administration in which the pace and independence of each are regulated by his fellows. For a moment the political crisis seemed a successful bourgeois protest against the spirit and methods of Balliol: neither Mr. Lloyd George nor Lord Beaverbrook, neither Lord Northcliffe nor Lord Rothermere, neither Sir Eric Geddes nor Sir Joseph Maclay, neither Lord Rhondda nor Mr. Neville Chamberlain was a Balliol man; and in his strength and in his weakness, in his mechanical efficiency and blank want of imagination, in his intellectual aloofness and touching belief that others too observed an Oxford standard of honour, Mr. Asquith was a typical product of Balliol.[56]

Nevertheless, when the dust and noise of removal had abated, there were found to be at least as many defects of administration as before; the wizard's wand failed to charm food from air or to conjure up men from the vasty deep in place of those who were being sent to rot in Salonica; the German front remained impregnable in the west; the new war-cabinet, for all its dash and fire, was "too late" to prevent the Russian revolution; and German submarine-commanders, perhaps in ignorance of the change that had taken place, continued to sink allied and neutral shipping. No improvement was observable until the United States entered the war; and the warmest panegyrist of the new government has never suggested that the credit for this decision should be given to the new prime minister. Those who look for a single principle or detail in which the second coalition varied the policy of the first are rewarded with an encomium on the blessings of a unified command; but official rhetoric did not conceal that the French were being given, with much advertising display, what was waiting for them whenever they chose to ask for it; and, if this be Mr. Lloyd George's sole innovation, the assertion that he won the war stands in need of revision, the more so since the publication of the memorandum in which Lord Milner, who was sent to "report," is shewn to have carried out the unification of command on his own responsibility and without reference to the prime minister.[57] Liberals of the rank and file, growing weary of phrases about "instant daily decisions" and the advantage of "doing it now," over "waiting and seeing," found so little improvement abroad and so much calamitous disorder at home that within six months the new management seemed to have had a long enough trial: in that time cabinet rule had been abolished, nothing had been put in its place and the empire was at the mercy of half-a-dozen men who were alike only in the distrust which they aroused. From time to time the more ardent liberal skirmishers criticised the government; but their enthusiasm was damped by consistent failure to "make the red-hats go over the top"; it was finally destroyed by the faint-hearted attack of their leaders when at last they called ministers to account in 1918.

The "Maurice Debate" is of party importance in registering the death of the liberal party; it had indeed breathed its last eighteen months before, but the certificate was only written when Mr. Asquith was defeated on a division which challenged the honour of the prime minister and certain of his colleagues. Since the party meeting at the Reform Club on December 8th 1916 some of the more enterprising had snatched at office, others awaited their turn; of those who still sat on the opposition benches several were transferring their energies to commerce; and the division lists shewed that all but a faithful ninety-nine voted with the government or abstained from voting. For the next and last six months of the parliament's life, Mr. Lloyd George had nothing to fear in the House of Commons from the man whom he had supplanted.

Following up his advantage, he took care in December that he should have nothing to fear from Mr. Asquith in the country. He that was not with the prime minister was against the man who had won the war and who aspired now to win the peace; there was no room for independence or qualification; a candidate went to victory with a "coupon" or to defeat without it. At such a time there was no lead or guidance from "old gang" headquarters; no alternative programme was offered; and the bemused elector was left to imagine that the liberals who refused the "coupon" without putting forward a policy of their own were plotting an assassin's war against a man whom they dared not fight openly. The coalition swept the country; the old liberal ministers were hurled from seats which some had occupied for a generation; and, as empty benches have their value in a division, the ministerial majority was strengthened by every vacant place once filled, before the Sinn Fein landslide, by a nationalist. So complete was the rout that, when Sir Donald Maclean and his scarred following of "Asquithian liberals" took their seats, the labour party challenged his right to be considered the leader of the opposition.