Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of Reminiscences

by George William Erskine Russell

"WILL" GLADSTONE

"He bequeathed to his children the perilous inheritance of a name which the Christian world venerates." The words were originally used by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce with reference to his father, the emancipator of the negro. I venture to apply them to the great man who, in days gone by, was my political leader, and I do so the more confidently because I hold that Gladstone will be remembered quite apart from politics, and, as Bishop Westcott said, "rather for what he was than for what he did." He was, in Lord Salisbury's words, "an example, to which history hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great Christian, Statesman." It was no light matter for a boy of thirteen to inherit a name which had been so nobly borne for close on ninety years, and to acquire, as soon as he came of age, the possession of a large and difficult property, and all the local influence which such ownership implies. Yet this was the burden which was imposed on "Will" Gladstone by his father's untimely death. After an honourable career at Eton and Oxford, and some instructive journeyings in the East and in America (where he was an attaché at the British Embassy), he entered Parliament as Member for the Kilmarnock Boroughs. His Parliamentary career was not destined to be long, but it was in many respects remarkable.

In some ways he was an ideal candidate. He was very tall, with a fair complexion and a singular nobility of feature and bearing. To the most casual observer it was palpable that he walked the world

"With conscious step of purity and pride."

People interested in heredity tried to trace in him some resemblance to his famous grandfather; but, alike in appearance and in character, the two were utterly dissimilar. In only one respect they resembled each other, and that was the highest. Both were earnest and practical Christians, walking by a faith which no doubts ever disturbed, and serving God in the spirit and by the methods of the English Church. And here we see alike Will Gladstone's qualifications and his drawbacks as a candidate for a Scottish constituency. His name and his political convictions commended him to the electors; his ecclesiastial opinions they could not share. His uprightness of character and nobility of aspect commanded respect; his innate dislike of popularity-hunting and men-pleasing made him seem for so young a man—he was only twenty-seven—austere and aloof. Everyone could feel the intensity of his convictions on the points on which he had made up his mind; some were unreasonably distressed when he gave expression to that intensity by speech and vote. He was chosen to second the Address at the opening of the Session of 1912, and acquitted himself, as always, creditably; but it was in the debates on the Welsh Disestablishment Bill that he first definitely made his mark. "He strongly supported the principle, holding that it had been fully justified by the results of the Irish Disestablishment Act on the Irish Church. But, as in that case, generosity should characterize legislation; disendowment should be clearly limited to tithes. Accordingly, in Committee, he took an independent course. His chief speech on this subject captivated the House. For a very young Member to oppose his own party without causing irritation, and to receive the cheers of the Opposition without being led to seek in them solace for the silence of his own side, and to win general admiration by transparent sincerity and clear, balanced statement of reason, was a rare and notable performance."

When Will Gladstone struck twenty-nine, there were few young men in England who occupied a more enviable position. He had a beautiful home; sufficient, but not overwhelming, wealth; a property which gave full scope for all the gifts of management and administration which he might possess; the devoted love of his family, and the goodwill even of those who did not politically agree with him. His health, delicate in childhood, had improved with years. "While he never neglected his public duties, his natural, keen, healthy love of nature, sport, fun, humour, company, broke out abundantly. In these matters he was still a boy"—but a boy who, as it seemed, had already crossed the threshold of a memorable manhood. Such was Will Gladstone on his last birthday—the 12th of July, 1914. A month later the "Great Tribulation" had burst upon the unthinking world, and all dreams of happiness were shattered. Dreams of happiness, yes; but not dreams of duty. Duty might assume a new, a terrible, and an unlooked-for form; but its essential and spiritual part—the conviction of what a man owes to God, to his fellow-men, and to himself—became only more imperious when the call to arms was heard: Christus ad arma vocat.

Will Gladstone loved peace, and hated war with his whole heart. He was by conviction opposed to intervention in the quarrels of other nations. "His health was still delicate; he possessed neither the training nor instincts of a soldier; war and fighting were repugnant to his whole moral and physical fibre." No one, in short, could have been by nature less disposed for the duty which now became urgent. "The invasion of Belgium shattered his hopes and his ideals." He now realized the stern truth that England must fight, and, if England must fight, he must bear his part in the fighting. He had been made, when only twenty-six, Lord-Lieutenant of Flintshire, and as such President of the Territorial Force Association. It was his official duty to "make personal appeals for the enlistment of young men. But how could he urge others to join the Army while he, a young man not disqualified for military service, remained at home in safety? It was his duty to lead, and his best discharge of it lay in personal example." His decision was quickly and quietly made. "He was the only son of his mother, and what it meant to her he knew full well;" but there was no hesitation, no repining, no looking back. He took a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and on the 15th of March, 1915, he started with a draft for France. On the 12th of April he was killed. "It is not"—he had just written to his mother—"the length of existence, that counts, but what is achieved during that existence, however short." These words of his form his worthiest epitaph.

XI

LORD CHARLES RUSSELL

A man can have no better friend than a good father; and this consideration warrants, I hope, the inclusion of yet one more sketch drawn "in honour of friendship."