While I Remember

by Stephen McKenna

"It makes all the difference in the world whether we put Truth in the first place or in the second place."

Whateley (quoted by Lord Morley in Compromise).

I

Though by the outbreak of war, their progress towards the House of Commons had brought but few of the younger politicians to a constituency and fewer still to a contested election, a great part of the years from 1909 until 1914 was inevitably taken up by political studies in a highly-charged atmosphere. The controversies of that time were waged with a bitterness of which the straitest recluse could not remain unaware; and the unsated passions of Westminster were carried to Pall Mall and fed to new inspiration in the adjoining, ever-open temples of the two great parties.

The Reform Club, own sister to Bridgewater House, standing between the Travellers' and the Carlton, is the home constructed by Sir Charles Barry for the supporters of the reform act of 1832 and for their successors. A necessary qualification for membership is that the candidate shall be a "reformer", though the rules do not indicate whether it is sufficient for him to support the reform of the divorce law or of the tariff; and until 1886 a reformer and a liberal were synonymous. After the home rule split of that year, the Gladstonians in this as in every liberal club blackballed a Hartingtonite candidate, the Hartingtonites blackballed a Gladstonian candidate, and both combined to blackball an uncertain candidate till a truce had to be declared if the club was to survive. In the headquarters of the liberal party, so loveless a union was doomed to a short life; when incompatibility of temper passed beyond patience and hope, judgement was given for the home rulers; and, though a few of the unionists kept their names on the books, the majority of the seceders drew daily closer to the conservative party, and the club once more became the headquarters of liberalism.

So it has remained to this day; and the chief party meetings, such as that in December 1916 when Mr. Asquith announced to his followers the resignation of the first coalition, take place within its walls; though mercifully free from the control of the party whips, it is still to liberalism very much what the Carlton is to conservatism; a liberal member of Parliament takes precedence of other candidates in the order of election; and the only problem that can now perplex the club is the old question, "What is a liberal?" and the new rider, "Who is leader of the liberal party?"

It was not to be expected that the conditions of life in even the oldest and most famous clubs could escape the social revolution which was observable before the war and which the war accelerated. For several years before 1914 the peculiar glory of club life in London was coming to be regarded as one of London's departed glories: the parsimonious father no longer automatically entered his infant son's name for five or six clubs, the impatient candidate was no longer content to linger indefinitely in the upper reaches of a waiting-list, and the growing absence of restraint in all social relationships broke out into intolerance of the crusted conservatism to which young members of other days had submitted uncomplainingly. The war, in checking the normal flow of fresh blood, caused some clubs to waste and die, others to turn a more anæmic scrutiny on the qualifications of their candidates; and, with the coming of peace, the cry has again been heard that even the most historic institutions must modernize themselves or forfeit the allegiance of those who require a place where they can play squash racquets and invite women to meals. It is so doubtful whether club life will ever regain its Victorian popularity and prestige that a student of changing manners may perhaps be forgiven for halting to uncover at the sound of one more passing bell.

As the nebulous quality of being a reformer is the sole positive requirement of a candidate for the Reform Club, the membership is more varied than in most. Naturally, liberal politicians abound; the bar and civil service are well represented, but probably no association which is primarily political contains also quite so many non-political elements. From the days of Thackeray and James Payn to those of H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett it has always bound a spell on men of letters: Henry James had a bedroom there in his later years; and novelists, whether or no they can boast the honour of membership, alike seem unable to keep it out of their novels. Jules Verne laid the first and last scenes of Round the World in Eighty Days in the card-room of the club, and it is chastening for a vegetarian to reflect that in those virile days your reformer breakfasted succulently off steaks and chops; it is impossible not to suspect more than one sly description in some of H. G. Wells' later novels, while in Marriage—beyond doubt or cavil—one character leaves the ice and idealism of Labrador, if not for the flesh-pots of the Reform Club, at least with the knowledge that "pressed beef, such as they'll give you at the Reform, too, that's good eating for a man. With chutnee, and then old cheese to follow...."

From a corner of the Reform Club young political aspirants had an unrivalled opportunity of watching for ten years the history of liberalism in the making. With hardly an exception the ministers were all members; and most of them used the club regularly. The great liberal triumph of 1906 had brought everything but homogeneity: there was enthusiasm, authority and numbers, but there was also suspicion and a memory of old feuds. The Liberal Leaguers, it was generally believed, would have liked to banish Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to the House of Lords; but both he and his backing of nonconformist radicals were too strong for them. On his resignation the liberal party presented the anomalous spectacle of a radical, peace-loving, nonconformist body with a Liberal League head; and the first election of 1910 was required to unify the party. In the cabinet and in the House of Commons there is a difference, almost incomprehensible to those outside, between the position of a prime minister who has succeeded to the heritage won by another and the position of a prime minister who has gone into action at the head of his army and has been invoked and acclaimed in five hundred single combats. Though he had squandered the vast majority which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman bequeathed to him, Mr. Asquith returned in 1910 with enhanced prestige as the leader of a party which had gone to the polls in his name.

The years from 1906 until 1910—the "Mad Parliament"[18]—had been primarily a time of political education or disillusion for the liberals who entered the House of Commons with unlimited idealism, limited experience and unbounded ignorance of parliamentary forms. In the first flush of victory they cleared the Rand of its indentured Chinese labour and carried out the settlement of South Africa by a grant of self-government: to such an avalanche of power the opposition could offer no resistance, and, so long as the government effected its reforms by executive action, the reserve of the old guard could not be brought up. It was when, with a curiously negative passion for reversal, ministers tried to upset the Taff Vale judgement and the Balfour education and licensing acts that new legislation was needed; and to new legislation the conservatives could offer an opposition to overcome the most bloated of majorities. The Birrell education bill and the new licensing bill were destroyed by the House of Lords; the trades disputes bill, after hanging by the neck, was cut down before it was dead. Of the three, this was the one most open to attack in that it placed trades unions, in some respects, above the law; it was allowed to pass, amid salvos of abuse, because the House of Lords would not then risk a direct challenge to organized labour; and this cynical opportunism discredited the Lords far more than had their partial and reactionary assault on all bills submitted by a liberal government.