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Page 40
Mr. Lloyd George once remarked to me that the trouble with Lord
Leverhulme is that he cannot work with other men. But this is only true
in part. Lord Leverhulme can work very well with men who are not fools.
When I told him of Mr. Lloyd George's remark, "Well, I don't know," he
replied, "I have been working with other men all my life!" Yes, but
this, too, expresses only part of the truth. He has been working with
these other men as an accepted master.
It is not so in politics. There a man of power cannot pick and choose
his colleagues. He must work with fools as well as men of ability. And
never can he work as a master. Always at the Cabinet table he will find
a cabal of deadheads opposed to the exercise of his authority, and in
the department over which he is set to rule a bunch of traditional
Barnacles, without one spark of imagination between them, who will fight
his new ideas at every turn.
The essence of politics and government is mediocrity. The good sense of
the House of Commons is a conspiracy to resist genius and to enthrone
the average man. A department of the State is well governed only when
its chief Civil Servant, by the grace of God, chances to be a man of
statesmanlike capacity.
Like Lord Rhondda, Lord Leverhulme was approached by the Government
during the numerous crises of the war to render service to the State.
His experience in this respect confirmed his judgment that our system of
government is a chaos which would hardly be tolerated in a business
establishment of the second class. I will give an incident.
It was a matter of grave urgency to the Government that margarine should
be manufactured in this country. A Cabinet Minister begged Lord
Leverhulme, on the score of patriotism, to set up such a factory. Lord
Leverhulme expressed his willingness to take up the project, but said
that he must go to the public for a certain sum of money to carry it
out. The Cabinet Minister made no demur to this very natural proposal,
but suggested that it might be well if Lord Leverhulme would call at the
Treasury and inform them of his purpose.
Accordingly the great industrialist, able as was no other man in this
particular to serve his country's need, called humbly at the Treasury
for permission to ask the public for capital. He was received by an
official who refused point-blank to listen to such a proposition. Lord
Leverhulme mentioned again the name of the Cabinet Minister who had
requested him to embark on this venture. This was nothing to the
official. He had nothing to do with other departments. His business was
to see that the public's money came to the Treasury; he was certainly
not going to countenance the raising of money for an industrial purpose.
You could no more have got into this gentleman's head than you could
have got into the head of a rabbit the idea that money invested in an
essential industrial undertaking pays the State far better than money
advanced to it at the cost of five per cent.
Not to weary the reader with an incident, however telling, the end of
this affair was that after going backwards and forwards between a
Cabinet Minister and a Treasury official, Lord Leverhulme was at last
permitted to ask the public for a small sum of money which he himself
considered inadequate for the Government's purpose.
I have never heard him speak bitterly of his political experiences, but
I have never heard him express anything but an amused contempt for the
antiquated machinery which passes amongst politicians for a system of
government.
The English [he says] have pushed their fortunes, never by the aid
of Government, but on the contrary almost always in the teeth of
Government opposition. There is no man so lacking in imagination as
a Government official, and no man, unless it is a banker, so
wanting in courage as a Cabinet Minister. The wealth of England is
the creation of her industrial population. The brains, the faith,
the energy of the capitalist, and the brains, the loyalty, the
strength of labour, these have made us the first nation of the
world. There has been only one real obstacle in our path. Not
foreign competition, for that is an incentive, but the cowardice
and stupidity of Governments. We possess an empire unrivalled in
its opportunities for trade and commerce, an empire which, you
would surely think, could not fail to inspire a statesman with
great ideas. But what happens? We have a Government which thinks it
has exhausted statesmanship by crippling industry at home in order
to pay off our war debt as quickly as possible. Instead of setting
itself to create more wealth, with the wealth of the world lying at
its feet, it sets itself to dry up the sources of wealth at the
centre of the empire. But it is no use talking. One thing a
Government in this country cannot stand is imagination; and another
is courage. The British Empire is in the hands of a lot of
clerks--and timid clerks at that. We must do our best to get along
without statesmanship at the head.
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