ASQUITH MEMOIRS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20028, 18 August 1928, Page 8

ASQUITH MEMOIRS.

[THE "COUPON" ELECTION. LOSS OF EAST FIFE SEAT. DISINTEGRATION OF LIBERALS. A WELL-EARNED HOLIDAY. BT THE LATE EARL Off OXI'ORD. (Copyright.) NO. XXVI. After his retirement from office Mr. 'A sou ilk expressed his opinions on various matters id letters to bxtracts from the?e letters are civen m todav's artirle Mr. Ascimth a defeat at Last Fife in 191S i 3 the chief point of interest. October 30: (To a correspondent.) We had a sort of full-dress service at the House yesterday. LI. G. took an hour and a quarter to cover the ground. I thought tho "bulk of his speech what is vulgarly called "tosh," and a much-ap-plauded passage about the "Cavalry of tho Clouds" —called (I see) by Lord Curzon the "Knight-Errantry of the Air —brought back to my irreverent mind the remark of Lothair, as he entered a hansom in St. James' Street: " "lis the gondola of London." November 12: We had a fine and sunny Sunday at The Wharf. In the afternoon wo 'drove to Boars Hill and called on John Masefield, the poet, whom we found m khaki, feeding his rabbits, and still struggling with his narrative of the battle of (ho gomme. He is a delightful man. December, 1917: "Oc" (my third son. 'Arthur) has been rather badly wounded reconnoitring outsido Cambrai. lie has a compound fracture of tho left ankle, which may lead to the amputation of the foot. ... It was bad luck, as ho had just got the command of his brigade and is now called general. As usual, ho was behaving with both gallantry and initiative. He received the D.S.Q. with two bars.

March 16, 1918: We dined last night at the French Embassy to meet Clemenceau, who is hero for one of the inter-Allied pew-wows, of which I gathered he does not think much. I had a long and quite interesting talk with him; no Frenchman has a better or quicker gift of expression. Getting Eid of the Kings. November 12, 1918: ('lo Mrs. Harrisson.) We have been this morning to a thanksgiving service at St. Paul's, attended by the King and Queen. I sat next Lady Lansdowne, and as one after another of our female royalties was led up the nave, I said to her. "How long do you think this will last?" '"About fifty-five minutes," she replied, imagining that I was referring to the service and not to the Institution! I see that they have got rid of eight kings in Germany in the course of the last two or three days, and there are more to follow. (A year later the King of Spain estimated to me the number of monarchical victims as thirty-five.) President Wilson was unwise enough at this time to slip down, from his oracular tripod at Washington, and to rub .shoulders with European diplomacy at Paris and Versailles. I had an interesting talk with him as he passed through London; among other topics, on the difference between the position and authority of the Cabinet in the United States and here. On one rather critical occasion during the Civil War, Lincoln (lie told me) summoned his Cabinet, which contained some exceptionally able and distingushed men, and asked them their opinion as to what ought to be. done. They were unanimous in favour of a particular policy, and the President took the unusual course of calling for a division. When they had all voted " aye," he said curtly, " 1 think the noes have it." Ths "Coupon Election." Tn November. 1918, Parliament was dissolved, and in the general election I took an active part. December —Electioneering: 1 have put in here (Alderley) for a Sunday in this comfortable haven ot refuge, but it is only a respite, for I go to-morrow to Lincoll. and Nottingham, and by Wednesday morning shall be back in Fife. Wherever I go, I hear the same story—confusion, apathy-, bewilderment. There never was such a nightmare of an election.

[The general election to which Mr. 'Asquith refers—that which is known in history as the " Coupon " election of December, 1918—was hold almost immediately after the Armistice. The phraso was used by Mr. Asquith in a speech at Huddersfield on November 28. Speaking of the bartering of seats, he said: "It. (tho Liberal Association) is not a conHave makinc a deal around a table in London, where seats are bartered, candidates are ticketed and political coupons aro distributed in a fashions that recalls the palmiest days of secret diplomacy." Mr. Asquith lost the East Fife seat—which ho. had held continuously for 32 years—al this election.] Tho disintegration of the Liberal Party began with t'.ie coupon election. It then received a blow, from which it has never sinco recovered. After the election I ■went for a holiday to the South of France. May 15, 1919 (to Mrs. Harrisson.) I ■went with Ma-rgot to the Cavell funeral at. Westminster Abbey, where, oddly enough, there was a crowded but most undistinguished and unrepresentative congregation. Tlie most impressive thing was the reveille on the drums, which pave one a quite dramatic feeling of an advancing and then retiring force.