COULD NOT FAIL

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 11

COULD NOT FAIL

IRON CHAMBERLAIN

A NEW VIEW OF HIS CAREER

HIS LIMITED RANGE

One of the occasions in my life 'which I most vividly remember is an evening at JoEn Morley's house in the year 1898 when. Joseph Chamberlain discoursed to a little company over the wine after dinner about politics and his own career. "We sat till midnight and the subject was far from exhausted, writes J. A. Spender in the "News-Chronicle." He spoke with, frank disappointment about his position at that moment. He said quite simply and without any boasting that ,up to the year 1886 he had every reason to suppose that he would in due course become Liberal leader and Prime Minister. Now all that was gone owing to Mr. Gladstone's precipitancy in breaking the Liberal Party. He had no illusions; there was only one thing worth being in public life and that was Prime Minister. If you were Prime Minister you could do what you liked, even if, it was only for a short time; if you were anything else, you were always at other people's beck and call. But though he was reduced to the second best, he meant to make the very best of the second (best and —addressing the radicals at the table with some vehemence—-he didn't care a damn for our jibes at him on the point of consistency. He was going to get as much as he. could of his original radical programmes out of the Tory Party and pay any price within reason. "We might call him. an opportunist if we liked; all practical politicians were opportunists, there was a right and a wrong land of opportunism and his was the right kind. RADICAL DAYS. This comes back to me as I read the first volume of Mr. Garvin's "Life," which deals wholly with Chamberlain's Radical days up to the beginning of 1885. What a wrench, it must have been, when he crossed over to the other camp,' taking with him all this purely democratic equipment and experience, all this highly developed skill and knowledge in the arts of crowd-compelling and agitating described in this volume, and with it a character and disposition obviously designed by nature for the perfect radical leader! Mr. Garvin with: his peculiar faculty for concentrating on the event of the hour and seeing it big with fate for what is to come makes an astonishingly vivid story of Chamberlain's early career, and at times almost persuades us that the. battles of the Education League and the Birmingham Municipal struggles were as Titanic and momentous as they appear to be in his pages. They had, indeed, a real significance, for the method of the Birmingham group, which he applied successively jto the Education League, to Municipal, and finally to political organisation, spread outwards to the whole country; and in both parties alike dethroned the inner coterie of whips, influential persons, and political clubs which till then had nominated candidates to Parliament and largely controlled political action. The much reviled "caucus," alleged to "Americanise our institutions," is now the normal machinery «j>f all parties. Chamberlain was right—for his day at all events—in perceiving that there was no way of stirring the dry bones of municipal politics except by infusing into them the political party spirit, and he got things done in this way which would never have been done in any other way. His record as a local leader is highly, honourable and creditable, and one need not at all grudge lim the evident pleasure he took in wigs being on the green. SEVERELY PRACTICAL. ' Checked by a memory which holds pictures of him. only a little later than these d_ays, I cannot quite colour him as Mr. Garvin does. I see him as the embodiment of combativeness with an extraordinary efficiency within a deliberately limited range. His sallies 'carried far when reported, but on the platform or in the House of Commons he was quiet, restrained, cutting, bringing his softly-spoken sentences to a biting and sometimes hissing conclusion. He .was severely practical and indulged in no flights of imagination. The House of Commons, which, judging from his reputation, had expected to find him a noisy demagogue, was pleasantly surprised at the dapper, well-groomed, accomplished man of the ;world who actually appeared there. The story was told that in his second session he asked an old and' much-re-spected member to tell him frankly how he was doing. "It is all very nice, .very nice, Mr. Chamberlain," was the answer, "but the House would take it as such a compliment if now and again you could manage to break' down." This all through' his life, was quite beyond his capacity. One parts with regret, on Mr. GarYin's. assurance that they are untrue, with some legends of the political wild bats which Chamberlain was supposed to have sown in his "Eepublican" 3ays, but in return we get a charming picture of him in his home and among his friends.. WORK HIS PASSION. He suffered desolating domestic afflictions which plunged him into despair,, bnt he rallied from them to .concentrate more than ever on his public ■work. This was his passion; he had no shame in calling himself a professional politician and small patience with amateurs who.treated politics as a diversion. Possibly Mr. Garvin is right in sayIng, that he disliked Whigs more than Tories, but his hand was against all aristocratic and privileged persons who treated polities as their preserve and 'looked disdainfully on the "new man ■from the provinces." He would force ihis way through them all and get right into the Cabinet at the first time of asking, and when there he would break down their solemnities and proprieties and bring blasts of provincial fresh air into the inner sanctum. This was the main cause of his quarrel with Mr. Gladstone who, though very hospitable to new ideas, loved the solemnities arid proprieties. Again and again, as time went on, ho was heard saying of Chamberlain and Dilke, "They don't know the rules of the game," and they did not, as he understood these rules. They had the very modern habit of stirring up outside agitation and taking newspapers into their confidence about differences in the Cabinet; and Chamberlain on the platform constantly used language thought highly improper in a Cabinet Minister. What is more, he went on doing, it in spite of the remonstrances of Queen and Prime Minister. The disaster of the 1880 Government was, in fact, the unresolved quarrel between Whips and Radicals which paralysed -the Cabinet for decisive action at critical moments; and it must in fairness be said that Chamberlain himself contributed not a little to it. "Working with Dilke and Morley (as his spokesmen in the Press) and with a group of radical .members behind him, he was too powerful to be ignored, but not powerful enough to have his own way. I cannot think that his part in the Gordon tragedy was sufficient to require the reJelling of that story, but he was a force ito be reckoned with in all domestic

affairs, and the German documents reveal that ho and Dilke together busied themselves in foreign affairs in a manner which would have horrified the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, if he had known of it. There is more material here than Mr. Garvin has used. Mr. Garvin has taken 624 pages to bring his story up to the beginning of the year 1885. Nothing is long, but what seems long, and Mr. Garvin's-ani-mated and brilliantly coloured narrative forbids tedium. . If he proposes to publish one volume at a time, each will be read by itself- and judged by itself. But if he is thinking of his book being finally read as a whole, on what scale must the later and presumably more important parts be, and how will he get the sense of sequence and climax into so vast a scheme, unless he spares himself at tho start? Tho political biographer is always in a difficulty; he must either fill in a background which is familiar to tho seniors or take this for granted and write a book which will be unintelligible to the young. Whenever there is a doubt, I would give it for the young, but there are risks on either hand.