A MIRROR OF POLITICAL LIFE

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 102, 30 April 1921, Page 4

A MIRROR OF POLITICAL LIFE

"The Mirrors of Downing Street," by " A Gentleman with a Duster," is an attempt to weigh British- political leaders, in the scales of political sincerity, and the general verdict is " weighed and found wanting." A dispassionate American reviewer of the book is driven to the conclusion that its anonymous author is " a despairing moralist, with so high a standard that it is clear only the greatest can reach it—and remain at that height during the trying vicissitudes and temptations to which the politician is specially prone." At the same time the reviewer values the book as a warning against political hypocriey, and as a needed remindei to the world that " without the old-fashioned acid test of cha/raoter—a sincere, creative, and unselfish moral purpose—no brilliancy of intellectual or moral success can be anything but arid and fruitless." Further, the reviewer guesses with confidence who the 'author is, and guesses Mr. A. G. Gardener, of London Daily News fame, author of the pre-war political biographs published under tho title of " Prophets, Priests, and Kings," and auth* also of an open* letter to Mr. Lloyd George bitterly attacking that statesman (or self-styled "political strategist") at a critical etage of the war and of the British Cabinet crisis. At that time the United Kingdom was practically compelled to choose between Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. No alternative was in sight; and it certainly appeared tb>t there was no broad public reason for a ! special personal effort to overthrow Mr. Lloyd George unless Mr, Asquith was^ deemed his superior. But in the new book, if it is his book, Mr. Gardener indicates no pro-Asquithism; indeed, the reviewer says that to Mr. Asquith is de^ voted "one of the most trenchant and one of the most, biting of these etchings." And the foUowingxpassage appears to coii> firm his estimate : <

Mr. Asquith possesses all the appearance of greatness, ibut few., of its elements. He had never an idea of hia own. The "diffused sagacity" of his mind is derived from the wisdom of other men. He is * cistern and not, a fountain. His soholarship has made no difference to scholarship. His moral earnestness *has made no difference to morality. ... It is a mistake to say that he brought England into the war. England carried Mr. Asquith into the war. A House of Commons that had hesitated an hour after the invasion would have been swept out of existence by the wrath and indignation of the people. If this is Asquith, can anyone regret his critid's failure, during the war, to prevent the succession to the Prime Ministership of " the temperamental Welshman " ? Criticism "of Mr. ■ Lloyd George, in "The Mirrors of Downing Street," runs along the familiar lines of Mr. Gardener, by one or two tributes. There is much in the portmanteau sentence : "His intuitions are unrivalled, his reasoning powers inconsiderable." Apparently nothing is said of Mr. Lloyd George's absorptive power, which another writer regards as phenomenal. The Prime Minister boardis a train with two or three experts, listens to them on some complicated industrial or financial question, and at the end of the journey delivers a public address as " grippy" as if he were the expert himself. As reflected in " The Mirrors," Mr. Lloyd George has permitted himself to be swayed by political factions, by certain suctions of the press; has surrounded himself by second-rate men, and in growing increasingly lethargic haa become (

more and more open to the beguilements both of luxury and cynicism. According to " a woman who knows the Prime Minister well" :

He is clever and he is stupid; truthful ■and untruthful, pure and impure, good and wicked, wonderful and commonplace; . in a word, he is everything.

But the author of "The Mirrors of Downing Street" is most unsparing when he writes of Mr. Balfour :

He has said nothing, written nothing, done nothing, wh.ich lives in the heart of his countrymen. To look back upon his record is -to see a desert, and a desert with no altar'and no monument, without even one tomb at which a friend might wcop. . i. . From its outset until now that career stretches before our eyes in a. flat and uneventful plain of successful but inglorious and ineffective self-seeking. All branches of " the political game " asg played by Mr. Balfour are condemned as insincerity, and into the same wastepaper basket is cast " The Foundations of Belief"! Admiral Lord Fisher had "daredevil " genius, using unscrupulous methods to gain positive' onds. Lord Fieher was " a- pirate of public life, who more than any other Englishman saved British, democracy from Prussian domination " ; but he himself was more dominant than democratic. When, in August, 1914, Mr. Winston Churchill asked for Lord Fisher's advice, the latter gave it with no hesitation :

He told Mr. Churchill that he muafc do three- tilings, and do them by telegram before he left that room: he must mobilise the fleet, he must buy the Dreadnoughts building for Turkey, and; ho must appoint Admiral Jelliooe Comman-dar-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. To do either of the first two was a serious breach of Cabinet discipline: to do the last was to offend a string of admirals senior to Admiral Jellicoe. Mr. Churohill hesitated. Lord Fisher insisted. "What does it matter," he eaid, "whom you offend? The fate of England depends on you. Does it matter if they shoot you, or hang j'ou, or send you to the Tower, so long as England isj saved ?" And Mr. Churchill did as he was bidden

... one of the most courageous acts in the history cf statesmanship.

Yet it seems that this is just the sort of unconstitutional practice that by the Daily News is generally regarded as profoundly shocking.

Of Kitchener the author writes that his power was " the undefinable greatness of personality. He had no gifts of any kind." A little known trait was his passion for Hroome Park; he stopped at nothing that would enrich that house. '' He had knowledge," said Lady Sackville, from whom he borrowed many ideas, "he had knowledge, but no •taste." But her daughter said of him, "Every chair he sits in becomes a throne," referring to the atmosphere of power and dignity which surrounded him. Yet Lord Kitchener .

lacked every grace of the spirit. Very few men liked him a. great deal, and none, I should say,- loved him. I do not think he was brutal by nature, but ho cultivated, a brutal manner. Ho had tho happiness of three 01 four friendships with cultivated and good women, but the beautiful oreature whom he loved hungrily and doggedly, and to whota ho proposed several times, could never bring herself to marry him.

How different us mankind when viewed through the telescope, and when viewed through the microscope! After all, does the microscope method pay ?