“The people of this country have no experience in revolutions,” said Hornbeck. “When you have a riot, it’s always the rioters who need police-protection.”
3
The tumult, which had seemed to be so mysteriously suspended, broke out anew on the day when I sent my memoir of Bertrand to the printers and walked out of Princes Gardens into the traffic of Knightsbridge. Clamorous contents-bills at the street-corners reminded me that I was come back to a world where new wars were imminent; the Guards had sailed for Chanak; a general election could no longer be averted.
My ultimate duty to Bertrand was fulfilled when I persuaded my staff to carry out his last wishes for Peace. Though he mocked the empty conceits of recording protests and demonstrating moral superiority, he was not scheming to stand well with enlightened posterity when he lay murmuring: “Un sacrifice inutile? Un sacrifice inutile?” O’Rane’s question was an affront to him; he was wishing himself fifty years younger, to make an answer that would satisfy him; and we must take up the burden which his hands could no longer hold.
As soon as I had their promise of support, I left my colleagues and set out for Berkeley Square to learn the secret history of the long-threatened conservative revolt.
This menace of war had done what the grotesque treaty of Versailles, the organized anarchy in Ireland, the paralysis of government in every limb had so far failed to do. Others, besides my butler, were saying that the long record of misrule was beyond a joke; and the party-managers, in concert with the independent wire-pullers who were now an established part of our public life, had decided to wreck the coalition. ‘Blob’ Wister had already spoken; and Saltash told me that Woburn and the Press Combine would speak next day.
I found my father-in-law engaged on a letter to The Times, protesting against the exclusion of peers from the Carlton Club meeting; and for a long spell he reiterated like a sulky child that he could tell me nothing because he was allowed to know nothing. Then he relaxed and informed me that the fight was taking place over foreign policy in general and, in particular, over the prime minister’s dictatorial habit of conducting his foreign relationships through his own secretariat over the head of the Foreign Office.
“If I’d been Curzon, I’d have thrown the whole thing up years ago,” said Crawleigh with that eagerness for resignation so often exhibited by men who have not been invited to hold cabinet office.
“He may feel he’s more useful as a brake on the prime minister,” I suggested.
“If the prime minister goes, the foreign secretary must follow . . . unless he precedes him, when he sees how the cat’s jumping,” said Crawleigh with ill-concealed malice. “Well, it’s quite simple; Chamberlain has pledged himself to support the coalition; Birkenhead and Horne are with him; and the rump is meeting to see if it can overthrow Chamberlain.”