A GREAT CRISIS

Evening Star, Issue 19409, 18 November 1926, Page 5

A GREAT CRISIS

SOME SECRET HISTORY PEERS WHO WERE NOT MADE The memories of my friend, the late Harold Spender, colleague in so many enterprises and newspapers, recall the story of a whole generation of delirious years (writes the Right Horn C. F. 6. Masterman, in the ‘ Evening Standard’)- It is always difficult to estimate when intimate affairs can be revealed and politics become history, I do not wish to enter into discussion or to supplement Mr Spender’s account of any events _ likely _ to affect living persons, or excite prejudice or passion. But I have - been extraordinarily im-_ pressed in these memories, supplemented by my perhaps more intimate knowledge. by the difference, in great crises, of wiiat was actually happening and what the public thought was happening, or indeed what tin public even now think happened long alter the interest has passed to other issues. And there is a fascination in recalling the amazing hazard—a camel’s hair, a thread of silk, a spider’s web, which has switched the course of such human history from one side to the other and completely changed the course of human affairs Let me take, for example, the history of the famous Lloyd George Budget of 1909. with a controversy which consummated in the passing of the Parliament Act and the breaking of the House of Lords’ veto two years afterwards. All the polemic that once waged with such furious and passionate fire has long since passed into dust and ashes, separated from us to-day by the graves of a million dead. It may be that what was done in those days was well done or ill done; in any case it was done. How it was done is only to-day being revealed. A LLOYD GEORGE FAILURE.

Mr Lloyd George introduced the famous Budget in a four hours’ speech read from manuscript, which was a complete parliamentary failure. Out of the variegated fare provided his opponents selected the land taxes as the battle ground most favorable to themselves. He selected the land tax as the battle ground most favorable to himself. On these humble proposals was the issue joined which shattered friendships, decided two elections, maintained the Liberal Party in power, with a Liberal Prime Minister at the head of the Government for the next thirteen years, and broke the power of the hereditary Chamber. ■ Yet at the time wo found an almost universal demand among the leaders of the party to throw this frail freight overboard. One scarcely realises to-day how much the Cabinet consisted then of men of wealth and property. Mr Lloyd George’s proposals had few friends then. 1 remember a prolonged walk one evening in St. James’s Park, in the light of a gorgeous sunset over Buckingham Palace, Mr Churchill trying to persuade Mr Lloyd George and myself to permit him to announce at a meeting to be held, I think, in Edinburgh next day that we had dropped one of the most controversial, of these small imposts. He departed exceeding sorrowful, for, more by instinct than by reason, Mr George realised that a controversy on the laud question would rouse failing and dispirited forces of the Liberal Party. The taxes were saved, as Mr Lloyd George recently announced, by the action of Mr Asquith vheu a vote in the Cabinet would have rejected them by an overwhelming majority. THE CRITICAL DEBATE. The critical debate was on the clause authorising ill© valuation of all the land of England. The Opposition had assembled to laugh it out of court. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was called away by domestic bei'eavemeut. Mr Asquith undertook to defend a proposition perhaps as unpopular on the Liberal as on the Conservative side. 1 spent the morning with him in the Cabinet room, in which he used to walk up and down with hands in pockets, absorbing facts and arguments far faster than one could feed him, a mind different not only in degree, but in kind, from any other lawyer that I have had to “ brief ” in any department of Government.

In the afternoon, with his amazing ability to convince, his power of words, his use of the appropriate phrase, he made a speech which seemed to leave half the House of Commons assured (for the moment) that this valuation was the only salvation of the country and the other half ashamed that it had never been done before. Before the day was over this most controversial of clauses had been received with meekness, and passed almost with enthusiasm. But as the long summer went by these land taxes were torn to pieces. They wore torn to pieces not by the Opposition, whose numbers w r ero negligible, but by the continual demands for concessions from our own people. Such tattered remnants as remained when the Budget reached the House of Lords seemed so innocuous that we had the gravest doubts whether the Budget would he thrown out at all. Three or four members of that body could easily have paid the whole revenue to bo raised from them without feeling the difference. Fortunately from our point of view insane counsels prevailed. If the House of Lords had passed the Budget in December instead of forcing an election which compelled them to pass it three months later, the Liberal Party vyould have been like a beetle on its back. We had entered into a streak of bad unemployment. The slogan, “Tax the foreigner,” would no longer have been dominated by our slogan, “ God gave the land to the people.’’ Half the electors hated our Education Bill, almost all the electors hated_ our Incensing Bill, distrustful of a raid on the working man’s beer. We were losing every by-election, and had nothing to offer but Welsh Disestablishment, which would have pul the lid on as far as England and Scotland wore concerned. The Conservatives would have been returned with a great majority in 1910. England would have become a Protectionist instead oi a FreetracTe country, and in the Agadir crisis of the following year the European War would probably have broken out three years before its appointed time. So the gods play with the passion and pride of men. MR ASQUITH’S SECRET. Still more hazardous and sensational is the story of the passing of the Parliament Act as seen from inside. After the election of December, 1910, Mr Asquith, determined to keep the name of the King out. of the contest, refused to divulge the fact that if the Lords persisted in resistance the Monarch had promised to exercise his prerogative in creating new peers. Never in history was a secret of so sensational a character and known to so many so securely concealed. Mr Harold Spender was rebuked in Parliament by Mr Arthur Balfour for what a journalist calls an intelligent anticipation of events. As the weeks and months of fiery controversy passed, the leaders in the Lords were more and more convinced that the Prime Minster was bluffing without the leading card in his hand. I believe that the first intimation came to the Opposition when Mr Lloyd George and Mr Arthur Balfour were sharing a hymn-book at the investiture of the Prince of Wales at Carnarvon Castle, and that under the concealment of the lusty sihging of Welsh melodies, the one who knew conveyed to the one who did not the true facts of the situation.

A secret meeting was hastily convened in a room of a member of the Government in the House of Commons, and the leaders of the Upper House

there informed of the condition which had been accepted six months before. The effect upon them, as described to me, was that of an almost physical collapse. THE FIVE HUNDRED. Even then the end was not over. The Opposition newspapers kept up the illusion that the creation of 500 new peers—practically doubling the peerage, was a thing inconceivable. They serted that we should have to go *■. dustmen and drain cleaners to ftaa men who would vote away their own powers. The Master of Elibank knew different. Ho got his list of 500 potential peers with the greatest ease, as with the greatest ease he could have got a list of 5,000 Mr Spender describes how the Chief Whip branished the parchment with the names before his astonished face. I hope that some day that list will he published. It might be placed in the same case in the House of Commons Library, as the list of those who signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I. I can only assert, so far from being scavengers and dustmen, the bulk or the names were of far more recognised distinction than those of the actual peerage. There were men honored in art and literature, generals, baronets, knights, ex-Ministers, and ex-members of Parliament, as well as a litter of “ business men ” and of those who appear in ordinary honors lists with the euphemistic diescription “ for special services.” Lord Beauchamp, to Mr Spender, then Chief Commissioner of Works, had already arranged for Westminster Hall to be fitted up for a meeting of over a thousand members of the Lords; though, as a matter of fact, I suppose, had the “ Die-hards ” triumphed, the old peerage would have refused to attend, or the combination of the two would have come as near actual violence as is possible among peers. The “ Die-hards ” died hardly. I remember walking with Mr Lloyd George and Lord Morley from the Carlton Hotel to 10 Downing street, and Lord Morley pausing in the middle of the street to declaim with his oracular voice and upraised arm: “ George, the idea that you can pass the Parliament Bill by creating or threatening to create 500 new peers is insane—insane.” Three weeks afterwards the whole thing had been settled. Constitutionally there is no difference between the King creating five peers to pass a Parliament Bill and creating five hundred. And even if all our candidates had been ennobled the proportion of peers to population would have been far less than that of a hundred years before. Mr Spender well describes the crisis which he saw from the Press Gallery. Lord Cromer had marshalled the “ hands-uppers,” Sir Edward Carson and Mr F. E. Smith had organised the “ Die-hards.” Lord Lansdowne and Lord Curzon looked down from the gallery on the scenes of confusion below. Orators uttered sentiments, but no one took the slightset notice of their rhetoric. One of the “ also ran ” potential peers, who has since received his heart’s desire, told me of his varying sentiments as the hours_ passed, and of the suppressed imprecations that ho was muttering against the Archbishop of Canterbury, as he watched him go in and out, coaxing, cajoling, persuading, arguing in favor of surrender. At the last, when victory for the “Die-hards” seemed assured, the Archbishop led the whole bench of bishops into the other lobby, and the peerage was saved from dilution by seventeen votes._ It is interesting to conjecture what would have happened otherwise. A vear after a Liberal majority in the House of Lords would have passed the Homo Rule Bill. This might have resulted in civiLwar in Ireland, and, m Mr Spender’s testimony, from nigh members of the Government, in civil war in England. If there had been civil war in England it would probably have produced an immediate attack by Germany and Austria on France _ and Russia at so favorable a moment with a potential ally out of action, and before such an attack France and Russia would have gone down, and there would have been a German hegemony of Europe. Mr Asquith, by his tremendous constitutional appeals in the Commons, Me Lloyd-. George by his raising of Acheron in the country, and the Master of Elibank by his iron and unshaken will created a constitutional revolution in England. But it is queer to think that it was the votes of seventeen non-hero-ditary bishops, whoso names are forgotten, and wlioso very existence in a House of six hundred hereditary peers is forgotten, which changed the whole history of the world.