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Page 12
MR. ASQUITH
_"Not to mention loss of time, the tone of their feelings is
lowered: they become less in earnest about those of their opinions
respecting which they must remain silent in the society they
frequent: they come to look upon their most elevated objects as
unpractical, or at least too remote from realization to be more
than a vision or a theory: and if, more fortunate than most, they
retain their higher principles unimpaired, yet with respect to the
persons and affairs of their own day, they insensibly adopt the
modes of feeling and judgment in which they can hope for sympathy
from the company they keep."_--JOHN STUART MILL.
Nothing in Mr. Asquith's career is more striking than his fall from
power: it was as if a pin had dropped.
Great men do not at any time fall in so ignominious a fashion, much less
when the fate of a great empire is in the balance.
The truth is that Mr. Asquith possesses all the appearance of greatness
but few of its elements. He has dignity of presence, an almost
unrivalled mastery of language, a trenchant dialectic, a just and
honourable mind; but he is entirely without creative power and has
outgrown that energy of moral earnestness which characterized the early
years of his political life.
He has never had an idea of his own. The "diffused sagacity" of his mind
is derived from the wisdom of other men. He is a cistern and not a
fountain.
His scholarship has made no difference to scholarship. His moral
earnestness has made no difference to morality. He acquired scholarship
by rote, politics by association, and morality by tradition. To none of
these things did he bring the fire of original passion. The force in his
youth was ambition, and the goal of his energy was success. No man ever
laboured harder to judge between the thoughts of conflicting schools;
few men so earnest for success ever laboured less to think for
themselves. He would have made a noble judge; he might have been a
powerful statesman; he could never have been a great man as Mazzini,
Bismarck, and Gladstone were great men.
There are reasons for suspecting his moral qualities. When he allowed
Lord Haldane to resign from the Cabinet at the shout of a few ignorant
journalists he sacrificed the oldest of his friends to political
exigencies. This was bad enough; but what made it worse was the
appearance of heroic courage he assumed in paddling to Lord Haldane's
rescue long after the tide of abuse had fallen. During the time he
should have spoken to the whole nation, during the time he should have
been standing sword in hand at the side of his friend, he was in
negotiation with Sir Edward Carson.
It is a mistake to say that he brought England into the war. England
carried Mr. Asquith into the war. The way in which politicians speak of
Mr. Asquith as having "preserved the unity of the nation" in August,
1914, is index enough of the degraded condition of politics. A House of
Commons that had hesitated an hour after the invasion of Belgium would
have been swept out of existence by the wrath and indignation of the
people. Mr. Asquith was the voice of England in that great moment of her
destiny, a great and sonorous voice, but by no means her heart. He kept
faction together at a moment when it was least possible for it to break
apart; but he did not lead the nation into war. It was largely because
he seemed to lack assurance that Lord Haldane was sacrificed. The Tories
felt that Mr. Asquith would not make war whole-heartedly: they looked
about for a scapegoat; Lord Haldane was chosen for this purpose by the
stupidest of the Tory leaders; and the bewildered Prime Minister, with
no mind of his own, and turning first to this counsellor and then to
that, sacrificed the most intellectual of modern War Ministers, called
Sir Edward Carson, to his side, and left the British war machine to Lord
Kitchener.
We must make allowance for the time. No minister in our lifetime was
confronted by such a gigantic menace. Moreover, the Cabinet was not
united. Mr. Asquith came out of that tremendous ordeal creditably, but
not, I think, as a great national hero. As for his conduct of the war,
it was dutiful, painstaking, dignified, wise; but it lacked the
impression of a creative original mind. He did not so much direct policy
and inspire a nation as keep a Cabinet together. One seemed to see in
him the decorative chairman of a board of directors rather than the
living spirit of the undertaking.
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