At Midsummer 1914, that is to say about six weeks before war broke out, the pre-eminent character in British politics was the Prime Minister. No other on either side of the House approached him in prestige, and so much was freely admitted by foes as well as friends.
When we are able to arrive at a fair estimate of the man who is regarded as the chief figure of his age, we have an important clue to the aspirations and modes of thought of the period in which he lived. A people may be known to some extent by the leaders whom it has chosen to follow.
Mr. Asquith entered Parliament in 1886, and before many months had passed his reputation was secure. Mr. Gladstone, ever watchful for youthful talent, promoted him at a bound to be Home Secretary, when the Cabinet of 1892 came into precarious existence. No member of this government justified his selection more admirably. But the period of office was brief. Three years later, the Liberal party found itself once again in the wilderness, where it continued to wander, rent by dissensions both as to persons and principles, for rather more than a decade.
When Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman returned to office in the autumn of 1905, Mr. Asquith became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was speedily accepted as the minister next in succession to his chief. He was then just turned fifty, so that, despite the delays which had occurred, it could not be said that fortune had behaved altogether unkindly. Two and a half years later, in April 1908, he succeeded to the premiership without a rival, and without a dissentient voice.
The ambition, however, which brought him so successfully to the highest post appeared to have exhausted a great part of its force in attainment, and to have left its possessor without sufficient energy for exercising those functions which the post itself required. The career of Mr. Asquith in the highest office reminds one a little of the fable of the Hare and the Tortoise. In the race which we all run with slow-footed fate, he had a signal advantage in the speed of his intellect, in his capacity for overtaking arrears of work which would have appalled any other minister, and for finding, on the spur of the moment, means for extricating his administration from the most threatening positions. But of late, like the Hare, he had come to believe himself invincible, and had yielded more and more to a drowsy inclination. He had seemed to fall asleep for long periods, apparently in serene confidence that, before the Tortoise could pass the winning-post, somebody or something—in all probability the Unionist party with the clamour of a premature jubilation—would awaken him in time to save the race.
So far as Parliament was concerned, his confidence in his own qualities was not misplaced. Again and again, the unleadered energies or ungoaded indolence of his colleagues landed the Government in a mess. But as often as this happened Mr. Asquith always advanced upon the scene and rescued his party, by putting the worst blunder in the best light. He obligingly picked his stumbling lieutenants out of the bogs into which—largely, it must be admitted, for want of proper guidance from their chief—they had had the misfortune to fall. Having done this in the most chivalrous manner imaginable, he earned their gratitude and devotion. In this way he maintained a firm hold upon the leadership; if indeed it can properly be termed leadership to be the best acrobat of the troupe, and to step forward and do the feats after your companions have failed, and the audience has begun to 'boo.'
WAIT AND SEE
Some years ago Mr. Asquith propounded a maxim—wait-and-see—which greatly scandalised and annoyed the other side. This formula was the perfectly natural expression of his character and policy. In the peculiar circumstances of the case it proved itself to be a successful parliamentary expedient. Again and again it wrought confusion among his simple-minded opponents, who—not being held together by any firm authority—followed their own noses, now in one direction, now in another, upon the impulse of the moment. It is probable that against a powerful leader, who had his party well in hand, this policy of makeshift and delay would have brought its author to grief. But Unionists were neither disciplined nor united, and they had lacked leadership ever since they entered upon opposition.
For all its excellency, Mr. Asquith's oratory never touched the heart. And very rarely indeed did it succeed in convincing the cool judgment of people who had experience at first hand of the matters under discussion. There was lacking anything in the nature of a personal note, which might have related the ego of the speaker to the sentiments which he announced so admirably. Also there was something which suggested that his knowledge had not been gained by looking at the facts face to face; but rather by the rapid digestion of minutes and memoranda, which had been prepared for him by clerks and secretaries, and which purported to provide, in convenient tabloids, all that it was necessary for a parliamentarian to know.
The style of speaking which is popular nowadays, and of which Mr. Asquith is by far the greatest master, would not have been listened to with an equal favour in the days of our grandfathers. In the Parliaments which assembled at Westminster in the period between the passing of the Reform Bill and the founding of the Eighty Club,[[11]] the country-gentlemen and the men-of-business—two classes of humanity who are constantly in touch with, and drawing strength from, our mother earth of hard fact[[12]]—met and fought out their differences during two generations. In that golden age it was all but unthinkable that a practising barrister should ever have become Prime Minister. The legal profession at this time had but little influence in counsel; still less in Parliament and on the platform. The middle classes were every whit as jealous and distrustful of the intervention of the lawyer-advocate in public affairs as the landed gentry themselves. But in the stage of democratic evolution, which we entered on the morrow of the Mid-Lothian campaigns, and in which we still remain, the popular, and even the parliamentary, audience has gradually ceased to consist mainly of country-gentlemen interested in the land, and of the middle-classes who are engaged in trade. It has grown to be at once less discriminating as to the substance of speeches, and more exacting as to their form.