LORD CURZON

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 June 1934, Page 10

LORD CURZON

LIFE OF PUBLIC SERVICE J. B. Firth writes in the London “Daily Telegraph”:— No man in our time strove more consciously than the late Marquis Curzon to shape his career on Disraeli’s maxim that life should be a grand procession from the cradle to the grave. If he never rode in Tamburlane’s “crystal carriage drawn by unicorns,” the ex-Viceroy of India never forgot “the feel of the gold howdah against his back.”

He achieved all he could desire of opulence, magnificence and dignities, and almost all that he desired of power, though what he just missed of that broke his heart. “Always to be first and stand higher than the rest” was his ambition. Nor was it a vulgar ambition, since ho strove to win by sheer excelling. To the last he kept the Processional Way. Mr. Harold Nicholson in his book, “Curzon, The Last Phase, 191925”, says that his last glimpse of his chief was of “a scarlet coffin with golden nails being carried down the steps of the Kedleston frontage towards the village church”—and towards the exquisite private chapel which he himself had raised. “Proud intransigence,” says the author, “achieving simple form.” Curzon did not even trust another hand

to write his epitaph. This book is described as “A Study in Post-War Diplomacy.” It is a vivid and searching analysis of the man, the Secretary of State and of British foreign policy during a. most eventful tenure of the Foreign Office under

three Prime Ministers —Lloyd George, Bonar Law. and Baldwin. It is a conspectus of the dreadful quinquennium after the war during which British prestige abroad suffered partial—at times almost total — eclipse. The story is told with insight and understanding by one who watched with trained, observant eyes the

strength and weakness of his chief. Mr. Nicholson is fair to both. He delights in Curzon’s belated triumph at Lausanne. But the awe of the Presence is with him still. The author’s general thesis is that for the failures of British policy from pit) to 1922 Cuzon was little responsible. Lloyd George was for the most part his own Foreign Secretary. He short-circuited the Foreign Office. He encouraged “the Garden Suburb” which sprang up at the rear of No. 10 to ignore, as far as possible, the dis-

j gruntled and frowning Department j over the way. I Curzon, it seems, was left with a ; free hand only as regards Persia, and by cruel mischance circumstances in Persia combined to make his policy there a total failure, through no fault of his. But in the matter of Reparations, Security, Germany the Confer-! prices, Egypt, and above all the fatal i policy of encouraging the Greeks in ' Asia Minor, Curzon had to keep step 1 with Lloyd George, in acute disagree-1 ment almost-all the time, and dragged i unceremoniously and protestingly I along. i

The Foreign Office had been great'y coveted by Curzon. Ide had schooled himself for thirty years to qualify. But. there were long periods during the Coalition Government when if he

loved life a little he loathed it more. Mr. Lloyd George took a malicious delight nor. merely in ignoring his expert knowledge, but in heaping humiliations upon him.

“Curzon, as Mr. Lloyd George remarked at a later date, ‘was always sending me letters of resignation. He would send them by a messenger afflicted with a club-foot. A second and mere nimble messenger would thereafter be despatched with a second letter.' It was from the early months of 1921 that Curzon first came to long, with passionate ardour, for the disappearance of Lloyd George.” Why did lie not resign? Because, says Mr. Nicholson, he had had one experience of the results of resignation—after his quarrel with Kitchener in India —when he was left to languish neglected in the shade for seven years. He dared not run that, risk again. If he resigned he knew that the waves would close over him, and that his colleagues would be as cold as the waves.

PRO-CONSUL WHO “RATTED.” If he resigned it meant the total extinction of the hope which he nursed in every waking hour —the hope of the Premiership, the great prize, the summum boniun, the’earthly crown, to miss which was failure at. the last. • Mr. Nicolson skates very lightly over Curzon’s share in “L.G.’s” downfall, which has only recently been fully revealed in the Salvidge memoir. There it is shown that it was Curzon’s desertion—after he had sworn to stand firm —which ruptured the Tory phalanx in the Cabinet loyal to Lloyd George, and which determined Bonar Law to head the mutineers. As one of them said, it was the great

Proconsul who had “ratted,” and who had sought out Bonar Law to arrange the terms of his support. They included a free hand for himself at the Foreign Office and its restoration to its old place in the scale of the Administration. Under Bonar Law—already a very sick man—he might still hope to stamp his name on British foreign policy, and he would be —in the absence of the other Tory chiefs—the Prime Minister’s natural successor.

This was as well-timed a defection as Norfolk’s before Bosworth Field, Curzon was acutely sensitive to the feel of a sinking ship. “Dependability,” says our author, “is the essence of efficient diplomacy.” Unhappily, in the solitary case where we “followed” persistently the fortunes of one horse and one jockey they both j proved to be losers. Mr. Lloyd . George’s blind faith in Venizelos I brought Great Britain, France, and i Italy to loggerheads over the Turkish settlement, and at one ghastly moment the flushed and excited hosts of Kemal -were right up against the wire entanglements of Chanak. held by a few weak companies of the British Army, which a year or two before had j torn the Ottoman Empire to tatters. Those who desire to “impose” settlements—whether just or unjust—

must keep their armies strong. Great Britain not merely demobilised in frantic haste, but she scrapped her will to victory in peace. The British role sank to that of thrusting little brittle spokes in Poincare’s chariot wheels. j

The painful scene in 1922 when Curzon accused Poincare of disloyalty to Great Britain, is graphically described :—

“tn the afternoon Poincare responded to tin's attack. His voice was dry, his words were clipped, his insults were lancets of steel. Curzon's wide white hands upon the green baize cloth trembled violently. He could stand it. no further. Rising from his seat, he muttered something about an

adjournment and limped hurriedly into the adjoining room. “He was accompanied by his secretaries and by Lord Hardinge, then cur Ambassador in Paris. He collapsed upon a scarlet settee. He grasped Lord Hardinge by the arm. Cliarley,’ he panted, ‘I can’t bear that horrid little man. I can’t bear him. I can’t bear him.’ He wept.” MORTAL BLOW These were tears of impotence and rage. On a later and still more famous occasion the Curzonian tears came from the depths of a “divine despair.” That was when he realised that not he. but Stanley Baldwin, was to be Prime Minister in succession to Bonar Law. Lord Stamfordham had summoned Curzon from Montacute to London. He came radiant and confident that the prize was already his. He was photographed—all smiles —at Water- ■ 100 Station, and ’ again at Carlton House-terrace.

I “They lunched expectantly. They ! waited; they waited. At 3.30 p.m. I Lord Stamfordham was announced, j With some embarrassment he explain- ! ed that the King had decided to send ■ for Mr. Baldwin. Curzon insisted that : so ludicrous a decision should imme- , diately be reversed. Lord StamfordI ham explained that at that very moi inent Mr. Baldwin was being received at Buckingham Palace. I “Curzon gasped. The dream of his lifetime lay shattered at his feet. Lord ■ Stamfordham left him.- In an agony |of mortification he collapsed into a chair. Lady Curzon tried to console him. He wept like a child. “He had forgotten Baldwin. Nobody had ever thought of Baldwin. 'Not even a. public figure,’ sobbed Curzon. ‘A man of no experience. And of the utmost insignicance.’ He bowed his face in his hands. ‘The utmost insignificance,’ he repeated. What is there to say save ‘that “ambition should be made of sterner stull'”? Yet Curzon’s personal “claims”

were paramount in all respects but one. But that one was vital. There was in the field a better man. Half a score of better, because stronger, men were within call. Even Curzon’s Roman gravitas, on which Mr. Nicolson lays just emphasis, was at this stark moment no more than a mask.

True, he rallied, and proposed Baldwin’s election as Leader of the Conservative party in a speech -which successfully concealed his deep mortification. Seemingly, there was not a crack in the enamelled surface of his magnanimous self-control. But the blow was mortal. His most intense and constant preoccupation was always his own ego and its advancement. The “more stately mansions” which he exhorted his soul to build had always their earthly counterparts.

I It is never to be forgotten, howj over, that his body was frail and that i for forty years it. was encased in si eel supports owing to curvature of ■the spine. I The torture of it under an Indian sun! The ache of it when, after a long day at the. Foreign Office and a night of ceremonial banqueting and receptions, lie would sit up to all hours | preparing for and rehearsing the next day's duties, tinder the lash of ambilion he toiled harder than any galley slave. Mr. Nicolson’s book is a masterpiece of compression, brilliant, phrasing.! and shrewd judgment. Sometimes he

is more than kind; often he is cruel in his candour. Curzon was a great public servant, as jealous for his country’s fame as for his own advancement. But great man he was not. The Processional theory of life has its Nemesis. Those who might best stand the ordeal are wise to prefer the closed carriage to the pitiless glare of the spotlight and the merciless scrutiny of a million eyes. Moreover, iron nails win hold as fast as gold.

I The lane was dark and almost deI scried. Little Jones was suddenly I accosted by two men, the larger of i whom stopped him, and said, politely: “Excuse me, s.'v—l wonder if I you could oblige me with the loan of [a penny, or some similar small coin?” I “Why—er—yes, I think so,” Jones I-.eplied. feeling in his pockets, producing a penny, and handing it over. “It’s a small request—er-—may I ask for what, purpose you require it?” “Oh —certainly, sir,” the fellow replied. “My mate and I wish to toss J’s coin to set He our little argument as to which of us shall have „ your watch and which your wallet!”