Evening Post. MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1928. LORD MORLEY'S JUDGMENT

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 87, 22 October 1928, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1928. LORD MORLEY'S JUDGMENT

Mr. Lloyd George complains that it is difficult to reply to Lord Morley's "Memorandum of Resignation" because the writer is dead. He was put in a similar position a year ago by the publication of those extracts from the late Sir Henry Wilson's diary of which many were so indiscreet and so violent that it is hardly possible to suppose either that they were written for publication or that the writer would have authorised their publication. But the very vio--lence of Sir Henry Wilson's strictures supplied to a large extent its own antidote, and Mr. Lloyd George had another in the shape of a testimonial from the diaries himself which, whether merited or not, discounted the attacks by about 99 per cent. Lord Morley is, however, a critic of another calibre. Prima facie, his trained and balanced mind gave him much better qualifications for an objective judgment on transactions in which he had been himself concerned than nine men out of ten, and certainly Mr. Lloyd George, with his shallower faculties and his impulsive temperament, was one of the nine. But Avar, "which breaks the converse of the wise," hit Morley in this instance so hard that he would have been either more or less than human if it had left his judgment working as coolly as when it was dealing with the problems of Cromwell or Walpole. ■ "Great thoughts come from the heart" was one of Morley's favourite sayings, and Professor J. H. Morgan describes it as his motto. But Morley himself had in his "Recollections" supplied the necessary correction:— You know the French saying, and a fino saying it is, that great thoughts, conic from the heart —to which I am always for adding a i little rider that is apt to scandalise my friends: "Yes, out they must go round by the head." If in August, 1914, the nation was doing most of its thinking with its heart, it was not wholly through his head that Lord Morley arrived at a different conclusion. It is not exactly along these lines that Mr. Lloyd George argues, but he suggests that an emotional disturbance incidental to the great issue had upset Lord Morley's balance. Allowance, he says, must be made for the fact that lie wrote in a moment of petulance, when he found himself alone, but he distorted the facts. Apart from the ultimatum to Germany, the shock of parting from so many political comrades and personal friends must have been a severe one for so sensitive a nature. There was also a certain captious vanity about Morley which makes the term "petulance" less. inapt than it may appear at first sight in so tremendous a context. And it is just possible that occasional suspicions that he was wrong after all may have increased his sensitiveness in the matter. If, as even the gentle and judicial Lord Grey complained, Morley's colleagues never fully understood the reasons for his resignation, it certainly was not Mr. Lloyd George's fault. Morley's feelings were so deeply wounded that he declined to discuss the subject with one of those who had the best right to know his mind, Mr. Lloyd George once told mo in Paris in. May, 1919, writes Professor J. H. Morgan, that whenever he met Lord Morley, which was not often, the latter always began the evening with the admonition, "No conversation about the last five years, please!" Disraeli's saying that the cause which will not bear discussion is doomed is one of which in ordinary circumstances nobody appreciates the force better than Morley, and in the extraordinary circumstances to which he found himself unable to apply it his action raises at least, a presumption that he was better fitted to be the accuser than the judge of his colleagues and his country. But to Professor Morgan at any rate he spoke freely, and even showed that "secret memoir" which it was ultimately decided not to publish. As the years went on, writes Professor Morgan, he elaborated his position and wrote that secret memoir . .. in which he sought to exculpate himself from all responsibility for our entry into the War, and to inculpate throe of his colleagues. I doubt if its publication, which will now never take place, would have added to his reputation as a practical politician. I am not sure it would not subtract from it, though it might Well havo enhanced his fame as a far-seeing thinker. Some of Morley's personal judgments which Professor Morgan records are shrewd and striking:— Of Mr. Asquith ho then (9th August, 1914) predicted: "Mark my words, he is not the pilot to weather this storm"— a prophecy remarkable in its foresight in that the subject of it was thou at the zenith of his fame and never appeared more secure in his position: he had carried his Cabinet with him and had ranged the Opposition on his side. Of Mr. Lloyd George, Morley had said about a week previously:—• gpk ;gaa; gods i&£ gace between. Mm.

and Winston; his heart is not in this business —lie is a man of peace. But Winston! There'll be a great naval victory in the North Sea and he'll go down to history as the Chatham of his age. Though neither Mr. Churchill nor anybody else won that great naval victory, he will certainly go down to history as the man to whom we owe it that the Navy was ready for its job. But how was Lord Morley to know that the "man of peace" was to come out in the course of a day or two as the most powerful advocate of the War, to eclipse Mr. Churchill in the popular estimation, to oust Mr. Asquith, and ultimately to win the War? At the time wheii Morley spoke Mr. Lloyd George was even in his own estimation a man of peace. Lloyd George's motives were a riddle, said Morley in the memorandum cabled on Friday. He knew his stock was dangerously low and peace might be a popular card against Winston's adventurous energy and the break-up of the Government Party might well make any man pause. Tho truth was that the Liberal Party was already shattered and Lloyd George on the eve of the mistake of his life. Let him and tho others do what they would, for me there was no choice. Lord Morley here does Mr. Lloyd George an injustice. It was the German invasion of Belgium that transformed him from a man of peace into a man of war, and at the same time effected a similar change in the nation and the Empire. Mr. John Burns alone, Mr. Lloyd George tells us, had dissented from the conclusion that if Belgium were invaded Britain could not stand aside, but Lord Morley joined him. after the condition had been realised. If this statement is correct, the inconsistency was on the part not of Mr. Lloyd George but of his critic.