Ordeal by Battle

by Frederick Scott Oliver

And also, within this brief period, the highest offices had become vacant, and many great figures had passed from the scene. Two sovereigns had died full of honour. Two Prime Ministers had also died, having first put off the burden of office, each at the zenith of his popularity. Of the two famous men upon the Unionist side who remained when Lord Salisbury tendered his resignation, the one since 1906 had been wholly withdrawn from public life, while the other, four years later, had passed the leadership into younger hands.[[10]]

There is room for an almost infinite variety of estimate as to the influence which is exercised by pre-eminent characters upon public affairs and national ideals. The verdict of the day after is always different from that of a year after. The verdict of the next generation, while differing from both, is apt to be markedly different from that of the generation which follows it. The admiration or censure of the moment is followed by a reaction no less surely than the reaction itself is followed by a counter-reaction. Gradually the oscillations become shorter, as matters pass out of the hands of journalists and politicians into those of the historian. Possibly later judgments are more true. We have more knowledge, of a kind. Seals are broken one by one, and we learn how this man really thought and how the other acted, in both cases differently from what had been supposed. We have new facts submitted to us, and possibly come nearer the truth. But while we gain so much, we also lose in other directions. We lose the sharp savour of the air. The keen glance and alert curiosity of contemporary vigilance are lacking. Conditions and circumstances are no longer clear, and as generation after generation passes away they become more dim. The narratives of the great historians and novelists are to a large extent either faded or false. We do not trust the most vivid presentments written by the man of genius in his study a century after the event, while we know well that even the shrewdest of contemporaneous observers is certain to omit many of the essentials. If Macaulay is inadequate in one direction, Pepys is equally inadequate in another. And if the chronicler at the moment, and the historian in the future are not to be wholly believed, the writer who comments after a decade or less upon things which are fresh in his memory is liable to another form of error; for either he is swept away by the full current of the reaction, or else his judgments are embittered by a sense of the hopelessness of swimming against it.

DEATH OF QUEEN VICTORIA

This much, however, may be said safely—that the withdrawal of any pre-eminent character from the scene, whether it be Queen Victoria or King Edward, Lord Salisbury or Mr. Chamberlain, produces in a greater or less degree that same loosening of allegiance and disturbance of ideas, which are so much dreaded by the conservative temperament from the removal of an ancient institution. For a pre-eminent character is of the same nature as an institution. The beliefs, loyalties, and ideals of millions were attached to the personality of the Queen. The whole of that prestige which Queen Victoria drew from the awe, reverence, affection, and prayers of her people could not be passed along with the crown to King Edward. The office of sovereign was for the moment stripped and impoverished of some part of its strength, and was only gradually replenished as the new monarch created a new, and to some extent a different, loyalty of his own. So much is a truism. But, when there is already a ferment in men's minds, the disappearance in rapid succession of the pre-eminent characters of the age helps on revolution by putting an end to a multitude of customary attachments, and by setting sentiments adrift to wander in search of new heroes.

A change of some importance had also come over the character of the House of Commons. The old idea that it was a kind of grand jury of plain men, capable in times of crisis of breaking with their parties, had at last finally disappeared. In politics there was no longer any place for plain men. The need was for professionals, and professionals of this sort, like experts in other walks of life, were worthy of their hire.

The decision to pay members of Parliament came as no surprise. The marvel was rather that it had not been taken at an earlier date, seeing that for considerably more than a century this item had figured in the programmes of all advanced reformers. The change, nevertheless, when it came, was no trivial occurrence, but one which was bound fundamentally to affect the character of the popular assembly; whether for better or worse was a matter of dispute.

Immense, however, as were the possibilities contained in the conversion of unpaid amateurs into professional and stipendiary politicians, what excited even more notice at the time than the thing itself, were the means by which it was accomplished. No attempt was made to place this great constitutional reform definitely and securely upon the statute book. To have followed this course would have meant submitting a bill, and a bill would have invited discussion at all its various stages. Moreover, the measure might have been challenged by the House of Lords, in which case delay would have ensued; and a subject, peculiarly susceptible to malicious misrepresentation, would have been kept—possibly for so long as three years—under the critical eyes of public opinion. Apparently this beneficent proposal was one of those instances, so rare in modern political life, where neither publicity nor advertisement was sought. On the contrary, the object seemed to be to do good by stealth; and for this purpose a simple financial resolution was all that the law required. The Lords had recently been warned off and forbidden to interfere with money matters, their judgment being under suspicion, owing to its supposed liability to be affected by motives of self-interest. The House of Commons was therefore sole custodian of the public purse; and in this capacity its members were invited to vote themselves four hundred pounds a year all round, as the shortest and least ostentatious way of raising the character and improving the quality of the people's representatives.

CHANGE IN HOUSE OF COMMONS

Even by July 1914 the effect of this constitutional amendment upon our old political traditions had become noticeable in various directions. But the means by which it was accomplished are no less worthy of note than the reform itself, when we are endeavouring to estimate the changes which have come over Parliament during this short but revolutionary epoch. The method adopted seemed to indicate a novel attitude on the part of members of the House of Commons towards the Imperial Exchequer, on the part of the Government towards members of the House of Commons, and on the part of both towards the people whom they trusted. It was adroit, expeditious, and businesslike; and to this extent seemed to promise well for years to come, when the professionals should have finally got rid of the amateurs, and taken things wholly into their own hands. Hostile critics, it is true, denounced the reform bluntly as corruption, and the method of its achievement as furtive and cynical; but for this class of persons no slander is ever too gross—They have said. Quhat say they? Let them be saying.