ASQUITH'S QUALITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 39, 16 February 1928, Page 7

ASQUITH'S QUALITIES.

"Unrivalled Master Of The House." VALUE or WAR SERVICE, We published on Tuesday a sketch of Lord Oxford's career. We give below some estimates of the character and achievements of the man who curbed the power of the House of Lords, was the hfead of the British Government when the greatest of wars broke out, and laid the foundations of victory.

"It is the accident of events that has made Mr. Asquith the pilot during the most stormy period of British politics for certainly a century," wrote Mr. A. G. Gardiner in his "War Lords." "He is himself, by temperament, the least adventurous of statesmen. His quality is intellectual rather than imaginative,

and he is congenitally indisposed to pluck the peach before it is ripe. At no time in his career has he forced issues on the public. He is content to leave the pioneering work to those who like it, and prefers to make his appearance when the air has been warmed. It would be wholly wrong to assume from this that he is an opportunist, or that he is governed by the motions of the weathercock. Nothing, indeed, could be further from the truth. It is simply that he is neither an adventurer, nor a political gambler, nor an idealist, but a plain politician interested only in practicable things and a little indifferent to dreams, even though they arc on the point of becoming realities. But once engaged, his mind works with unequalled power. All the resources of the most capacious .intellect that has been placed at the disposal of Parliament since Gladstone die* appeared are brought into play with an economy of method, a startling clearness of thought, and a passionless detachment of rpirit that give him an unrivalled mastery of the House."

The emergency, continued Mr. Gardiner, had always found him greater than the occasion. "Among the many German miscalculations in regard., to England there was none more disastrous than the misunderstanding of Mr. Asquith. He is slow to anger, but, his indignation aroused, there is in him a concentrated passion and .a sense of power that give extraordinary weight and impetus to his onset." No one who heard that tremendous impeachment of Germany on the day following the declaration of war could ever doubt the fierce passion for fundamental things that blazed beneath this drilled and disciplined exterior.

In his "Uncensored Celebrities" (published in 1918), Mr. E. T. Raymond said that Mr. Asquith's words at the opening of the war were of almost incalculable worth to the Allies. "A mishandling, of our case might have had the gravest effects; it 'was, in fact, handled with supreme skill." A reviewer of Asquith's speeches published-last year said that the transfoi'mation of Britain into - a great military power might have been much more difficult but for the effect of Asquith's appeals to the nation. Administration was also characterised by great energy and judgment, continued . Mr. Raymond. "Mr.. Asquith . has. been assailed both for oilr unpreparedness for

war and for the delay with which, after the actual declaration, our latent forces were made available. The fuller knowledge of another generation will probably render an entirely different verdict. It will lay stress on the speed with which moderate existing means were mobilised, on the astonishing efficiency of their employment, and on the wide-scop© and vigorous nature of the measures taken for the ultimate increase of Great Britain's contribution." After discussing Mr. Asquith's fall in 1916, and eertain features of his character which appeared to the writer to support the general indictment of him as a War Minister, Mr. Raymond wrote that Mr. Asquith was a wholly true man. "He is not least English in his complete honesty. The machine of his mind may not be fitted for some work, but it is true and well wrought. His character may lack some of the graces, but its foundations are as adamant. The victim of much small meanness is himself incapable of anything small or mean." Mr. Gardiner quoted about him a remark made by a brilliant woman. "Asquith has three great virtues. Hje has no egotism, no jealousy, and no vanity." He was aßsailed vehemently and bitterly over the shell shortage in 1915, but he reserved his defence until the war was over. Then, provoked by French's version, he spoke, and the broadside left little of the soldier who had been commander of the army at the time.