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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 8, 23 February 1910, Page 2

BACK TO OFFICE.

ZZY OMEDODY once wrote a book vjJjL about the eight Lord RosejPpj berys. We propose to write an article about the two Mr. Asquiths. For there are two Mr. Asquiths. There is Mr. Asquith as he seems, and there is Mr. Asquith as he is. Of Mr. Asquith as he seems, there is no need to say much more than merely to call attention to the fact that he is believed by most people to be the only Mr. Asquith. The Pseudo-Asquith.

This is a Mr. Asquith who is eold as crystal and as clever as the devil, of imagination so far from being all compact that it appears to have been left •nt of his : composition. A man whose intellect is of tempered steel, but whose heart is made of the same material. A

man without a generous illusion, harsh, hard, rude, unsympathetic. One whom all respect, many fear, and no one loves. A man who repels rather than attracts, without magnetism, incapable of a generous weakness, reserved, forbidding, ruthless, ambitious.

This is the Mr. Asquith who as Home Secretary was merciless to the imprisoned dynamitards, and was ruthless even to slaying in dealing, with the strikers of Featherstone. Everything that C.-B. was. this other Mr. Asquith is not. C.-B. was the friend of the Boers; Mr. Asquith was the friend of Lord Milner. C.-B. was as zealous for Home Rule as Mr. Gladstone; Mr. Asquith was a henchman of Lord Rosebery’s—a vice-president of the Liberal League m whose pledges against carrying Home Rule this Parliament the Unionists place their trust. And to all these things add this above all—that al-

THE LIBERAL, PREMIER OF BRITAIN.

though he has married one of the cleverest political women in London, he is still as he has been from his schoolboy days—an enemy of the recognition of the right of woman to be recognised as a citizen, excepting by the payment of taxes and obedience to a law in which she is never to be allowed a voice in the making. That is one Mr. Asquith. I have purposely exaggerated the harsh contour of the portrait, but in its broad outline the features are not much caricatured. Even his eulogists admit that “he does not appear to have that magnetic personality', that power of striking the popular imagination possessed in an eminent degree by Mr. Gladstone, etc.

There seems to rest in his nature a repressive power that paralyses the expression of his passion.” As for his enemies, who has not heard the cry that the blood of the miners is on his hands? Mr. Healy’s passionate out-

burst at the close of the debate on Mr. Redmond’s Home Rule resolution illustrates the rancour with which Mr. Asquith is regarded by the Irish Nationalists. We now turn to the much pleasanter task of revealing the other Mr. Asquith, of whose existence millions have no suspicion, but who nevertheless and notwithstanding we shall prove to be the real Mr. Asquith, Prime Minister of England. The Asquith Ancestry. Herbert Henry Asquith was born of Puritan stock in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He had stiff knees, the Puritan, That were not made for bending, The homespun dignity of man He thought was worth defending. Yorkshire men are blunt of speech,

though warm of heart. If, in addition to their sterling virtues, they were to kiss the Blarney Stone, they would possess an altogether unfair advantage over their fellow men. But tliese things are on the surface. The Yorkshire tyke, like the Puritan, has the defects of his qualities, and it is impossible to combine the lighting qualities of the Ironside with the gallantries and graces of the Cavalier. That the Asquiths were of the right sort is proved by the faet that an Asquith, H.H.’s ancestor in a direct line, was a trusted leader in an. attempted rebellion in 1664. England, had then four years of the glorious and blessed Restoration. In Asquith’s mind and those of his fellow-conspira-tors, arid had had enough' of it. So they entered into what was known as the Farnley Wood Plot to raise the country, to send the Stuarts packing, and to restore the Commonwealth. The plot failed; Charles IT. did not die for twenty years, and the Stuarts did not finally disappear till 1688. But against such dominion of the Evil One as the Stuart Restoration, it was better to have plotted and failed than never to have plotted at all. It is good to have a strain of the rebel in the blood, for rebellion has been the cradle of all our liberties, and no one who is not in heart “contingently” a rebel can ever, govern with sympathy and justice peoples who are struggling, and rightly struggling, to be free. IT.If. at School. , • ,Of his early youth we gain stray gliriipses. When four years old he carried a flag in a Sunday School procession which walked through the streets of jdorley, singing patriotic songs to commemorate the close of the Crimean War—a curiously early initiation into international politics, the four-year-old thus taking an active part in a festival of peace. His father died when he was eight. After a couple of years at a Moravian boarding senool—-which, perhaps, helped to give a graver tinge ta tliq boy’s character —he came up to the City of London School. It is said he would lather spend an hour in reading the “Times” at a convenient bookstall than spend his time in football or cricket. But he also was a devoted admirer of Dickens, and developed so early the oratorical gift that Dr. Abbott could not correct the exercises of his scholars when "Asquith was up.” He was in hi- 5 , teens an earnest Liberal.. and even then—the.young . misogynist—obsessed by an antipathy to woman’s suffrage, a cause which in the later sixties eould hardly be said to have come - within the pale.even of .speculative politics. He delighted his masters bv his painstaking study, and when he became Captain of the 'School he was an invaluable assistant to Dr. Abbott in keeping up the tone of the school. Even at that early age he never got tangled in his sentences, he saw the end from the beginning, and made his meaning clear to all who heard him. The School of London Streets. Here is a vivid little glimpse of the schoolboy Asquith as the -man remembers him-.—“ For my part, when I look back upon my old school life, 1 think not only, and perhaps not so much, ‘of the hours winch I spent in the class-room, or in preparing the lessons at night-' I think rather of the daily walk through the crowded, noisy, jostling streets; I think of the river, with its barges and its steamers, and its manifold active lifeI think of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and of the National Gallery ; I think even sometimes of tha Houses of Parliament, where I remember we used occasionally to watch with a sense of awe-struck solemnity, the members disappearing into the inner recesses which we were not allowed to cross.”

The winning of the Balliol Scholarship was to him, as late as 1906, “the happi-i est, the most stimulating, and the most satisfactory moment of his life.” It waa “a pure, an unalloyed, and an unmitigated satisfaction.” This is, perhaps, more than can be said of his accession to the Premiership. At Oxford he fell under the influence of Jowctt. Those who know the real Mr. Asijurth declare that in the following description of the Master of Balliol the Prime Minister unconsciously described his own character: “He had none of the vulgar marks of a successful leader, either

of thought or of action. . • . But to US who knew him, and saw him in daily life, the secret of his power is no mystery. • . . We cannot hope to see

again a character such as his—a union Of worldly sagacity with the most (transparent simplicity of nature, ambition keen and unsleeping, but entirely detached from self, and wholly absorbed In the fortunes of a great institution and its members, a generosity upon which no call could be too heavy, and a idelicate kindness which made the man himself, always busy in great and exciting studies, always ready to give the best hours, either of the day or night, to help and advise the humblest of those who appealed to him for aid.” At Oxford.

The picture which the President of Magdalen gives of him in his Oxford days -—to which he adds a sketch of him when as one of a reading party he first visited the ancient Kingdom of Fife, which he Was hereafter to present in Parliament ,—is that of a youth able, alert, direct, confident of his powers, capable of arousing and forming strong attachments, but to the outsider not exactly “hail fellow well met.” He played at quoits, but was remembered in boats only as a passenger. He never played at cricket, football, fives or racquets. He was no physical athlete, but he was more human than 'John Morley, who has never known any physical recreation but walking. He quailed the cider cup, loved his pipe, was fond of bathing, and at least once surprised his companions by appearing on the outside of a horse. He was a good companion, full of talk about everything from Gibbon to Swinburne.

After Mr. Asquith left Oxford he devoted himself to the law. He was called to the Bar in 1876, and, when still an almost briefless barrister, he married his first wife at the age of twenty-five, ffhe real Mr. Asquith did that. It was a triumph of the heart over the head ■of which the imaginary Mr. Asquith could never have been guilty. This early marriage, like his later successful pursuit arid capture of Miss Margot Tennant, his second wife, are outstanding facts utterly irreconcilable with the popular misconception of his character. He is a man capable of ardent affection, of romantic devotion to the woman he loves, an affectionate father, and a devoted husband.

Success Came but slowly, as is not unusual with young barristers. But Sir George Lewis got his eye upon him, and recognised him as a coming man. Then he became junior to Sir Charles Russell, and his fortune was made. His Defence of John Burns.

There was one occasion in which he did good service at the Bar. He defended Cunninghame Graham and John Burns at the Old Bailey for their gallant attempt to vindicate the right of popular meeting in Trafalgar-square. It is an interesting reminiscence. John Burns an the dock, defended by Asquith at the bar, and defended in vain. For John Burns was packed off to Prison. How little he dreamed in 1887, as Black Maria was carrying him off to Coldbath-in-the-Fields, that in twenty years time he would be President of the Local Government Board and his talented young Counsel Prime Minister of the Kings So much for Mr. Asquith as student and’ as barrister. We now turn to Mr. Asquith’s political career. Home Rule M.P.

Mr. Asquith entered Parliament* in 1886. The raison d’etre of his candidature was Home Rule. He went down to Ladt Fife to defend the Gladstonian cause “as a member of the advanced section of the Liberal Party.” That Mr. Asquith was a Radical and a Home Ruler from the start has been forgotten by BO many Radicals and Home Rulers that it is worth while insisting- upon the fact. He was certified as sound in the faith by Mr. Gladstone, and elected over his Liberal Unionist opponent in-order to vote for Home Rule to Ireland. That was .the mandate he asked for, that was the mandate he received.

Re-elected in 1892. In 1892 he was re elected for East Fife. His election address has a genuine Radical ring. He was still a convinced Home Ruler:—

“The supposed difficulties in the way of reconciling local autonomy with Imperial supremacy are academic cobwebs which do not trouble practical men, and which will yield to good sense and good faith.” *

On the question of social reform, he was equally outspoken: —

‘•New- want's, of Which the people have long been half conscious, but which are now for the first time .finding articulate expression, have to be faced and dealt with. I am one of those who believe that the collective action of the community may and ought to be employed positively as well as negatively, to raise as well as to level, to equalise opportunities no less than to curtail privileges, to make the freedom of the individual a reality and not a pretence.” The electors responded once more to his appeal, and Mr. Asquith, returned a second time to Parliament, was selected to move the amendment' to the Address on which the Unionist Administration was turned out. When Mr. Gladstone came in he appointed Mr. Asquith Home .Secretary, and the “.Spectator” ruefully declared that he was selected because •he was “the chief mover in the agitation for Home Rule all round, and as the leader of the advanced Liberals.”

Up till now Mr. Asquith’s Radicalism was unimpeached. As a Home Ruler he was second only to Lord Morley in his zeal for the cause. This was the real Mr. Asquith. How was it, then, that after his accession to office the real Mr. Asquith began to be obscured? It is not difficult to answer this question. He preserved in the House the downt'humpness and directness of speech and unconciliatory attitude towards opponents already noted as his characteristics at Oxford. Three questions came up during his tenure of office which tempted him to indulge in this uncompromising vein.

Trafalgar Square. The London Radicals asked him to restore Trafalgar-square to the people as their meeting ground. He had defended Graham and Burns at the Old Bailey for asserting this right. He replied that the state of things that grew up in 1887 constituted an intolerable public nuisance, and “so long as I am responsible for the peace and good order of the metropolis it shall not be permitted to recur.” Only on Saturdays, Sundays, and bank holidays, and only then after fitting notice had been given to the police, might meetings be held in the Square. The compromise might not Ire the best possible, but it was a compromise. Asquith’s fault' at Oxford, said a young Balliol don, “was that he would never do a thing at all better than would just suffice: he had no uncalculating idealism.” The second question was the release of the dynamitards. They were regarded by the Irish as political prisoners, and Mr. Redmond -asked for their liberation. Mr. Asquith refused, and not only refused, -but declared with uncompromising severity that' dynamitards were outside the pale of mercy. They “are persons who deserve and will receive no consideration or indulgence from any British Government.” Featherstone,

The third and most abiding cause of the disappearance of the real Mr Asquith was the action which he took with regard to the strike riots at Featherstone Colliery. The facts are now almost forgotten. The idea prevails in some quarters that Mr Asquith called out the troops ami ordered them to shoot down the men on strike. What really happened was this. There was a strike at Featherstone Pit. The strikers, instead of contenting themselves with refusing to work, attacked the pit, destroyed property, and attempted to burn down the colliery buildings. The local authorities telegraphed the Home Office that they could not answer for law and order unless they were allowed to call out the troops. If Keir Hardie had been at the Home'Office he could Hot have refused

his assent. The troops were called out’. They were a small company, and they stood on the defensive. A savage mob pelted them with stones and refused to disperse. The Riot Act was read, full and fair warning was given, and at last a volley was fired. Two men who had no part in the disturbance were killed, and the riot was at an end. Air’Asquith

ordered a inquiry into all the circumstances. The Commission unanimously decided that no blame attached to the local authorities or to the troops. A fortiori Mr Asquith could not be blamed. I do not believe that any honest man, be he Socialist or Anarchist, who examines the facts for himself, can say anything else but that Mr Asquith not only acted as he ought to have done, but that no one in his position could possibly have acted otherwise, without failing in the first duty he owed society.

A Great Home Secretary. These incidents, however, somewhat caused the good in Mr Asquith to be evil spoken of. They would, however, have been speedily forgotten in the enthusiasm aroused by his administration of the Home Office. He was the first great Home Secretary of modern times. He made the Secretary of State the tribune of the sweated workman. By legislation reforming the Factory Acts and by administration he exhausted every available resource for improving the conditions of labour. He appointed women factory inspectors—notwithstanding his prejudice against women who leave the sphere of the home. He introduced an Employers’ Liability Bill which was wrecked by the Lords; he improved the prisons, and, in short, revealed himself as a beneficent reformer. Those who saw him at work—like Mr Massingham, for instance —were almost ecstatic in their admiration and devotion. The Prescience of Lord Tweedmouth. As Home Secretary in the GladstoneRosebery Administration of 1892, he admittedly enjoyed the affectionate confidence of his chief, Mr Gladstone, and was so much appreciated by his colleagues that on Mr Gladstone’s retirement at least one of them, the present Lord Tweedmouth, was strongly in favour of making him Prime Minister instead of Lord Rosebery. Of one thing we may be sure —that if the Cabinet had held together and agreed to accept the leadership of Mr Asquith, the later years of that Cabinet would not have been marred by the bitter personal feud which raged between the then Prime Minister and the leader of the House of Commons.

As an administrator Mr Asquith was admittedly the most successful Home Secretary of our time. Himself supremely loyal to his chief, he succeeded in inspiring equal loyalty on the part of those who served him. His advent was the signal for a revolution in the whole spirit of the Home Office administration. His quiet, resistant, but resolute personality infused a new enthusiasm into the ranks of the Government inspectors.

His career as Home Secretary was distinguished by three things. Firstly, his firm administration of justice; secondly, his intelligent but compassionate administration and amendment of the factory and industrial legislation; and thirdly, his heroic attempt to disestablish and disendow the Church in Wales. Mr. Asquith, it must never be forgotten, is a Liberationist. The Liberation Society has of late somewhat receded into the background, but when it was more powerful than it is to-day, it found in Mr. Asquith one of its most vigorous champions.

In Opposition. When Lord Rosebery resigned, and Mr. Asquith, with the rest of his colleagues. took his seat on the front Opposition Bench, he went back to the Bar for the necessary (but prosaic object of earning his living. It is difficult to combine a large practice at the Bar with active attendance in the House of Commons; 'but Mr. Asquith, thanks to his robust physique, bis great power of work, and his almost uncanny quickness of appreciation of questions under discussion, either in the Law Courts or in the Legislature, was one of the two exMinisters who improved rather than impaired their position. Lord Rosebery resigned, and shortly afterwards his example was followed by Sir W. Harcourt and Mr. Morley. Sir Edward Grey, who had not the excuses of Mr. Asquith for slackness in flic discharge of 'his Parliamentary duties, almost disappeared from public life. Hence, when the Liberal Party met to choose its leader.

there were only two possible candidates. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith. The Party rallied round the

older man. and Sir Henry 'became leader of the Opposition, with a title to the next Premiereihip. Mr. Asquith showed no trace of disappointment or resentment, but served his new leader Js loyally as he had served all his predecessors.

During the Boer War. It was not until the Boer War that Mr. Asquith strained the confidence witi which he had up to this point been re* garded by the whole of the Party. As it is the only fly in t-he ointment oi the apothecary, it may be worth while to trace its origin.

If the Liberal Party had done its duty and had fearlessly probed the Jameson Conspiracy to the bottom, the confidence of the Boers in the integrity of the British Government would have been established, and the war would have been averted. To Mr. Asquith’s credit may be put the faet that he publicly condemned the action of the Committee in refusing to insist upon the production of the suppressed telegrams.

The second contributory cause to Mr. Asquith’s mistake was the personal devotion with which he regarded Lord Milner. The third was his belief that when once your country goes to war, whither the war is right or wrong, just or unjust, you must back it to the last.

Affairs came to a head when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was invited to the famous banquet at the Holborn Restaurant, at which he made the momentous speech condemning the “methods of barbarism” in South Africa, which proved the turning-point in the fortunes of the Party. Mr. Asquith was not invited to that'meeting, nor were any of his colleagues who sympathised with the war. He begged Sir Henry to remain on the fence, and to abstain from identifying himself either with the pro-Boer or the anti-Boer section of the Parly. Sir Henry listened to his lieutenant’s appeal with the courtesy and respect which ho always showed to Mr. Asquith, but the shrewd political instinct and the warm heart of the older man were proof against Mr. Asquith's arguments. lie went to the dinner, and at that dinner pronounced his famous phrase concerning the “methods of barbarism,’’ which precipitated the breach with Lord Rosebery, but secured South Africa for the Empire.

That result, however, which is now obvious to all men, was at that time hidden behind the veil of the future. The immediate consequence of the speech was the formation of the Liberal League, under Lord Rosebery’s leadership. Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Haldane became vice-presidents of the League, while Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-man was left with what was regarded as the pro-Boer minority in a condition of comparative impotence. In that condition he remained until the time of the General Election, when a change came o’er the spirit of the scene.

C.B.'s First Colleague. When Sir Henry formed his Administration, the first man to whom he offered office was Mr. Asquith, and it was Mr. Asquith’s prompt acceptance of the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer which paralysed an abortive cabal which it was attempted to organise on 'behalf ot the Liberal-Leaguers. Nor did Mr. Asquith do anything by halves; he became, as Sir Henry afterwards said, “the most loyal colleague a Minister ever had,” and their personal relations were characterised down to the very last by the most affectionate intimacy. If anything could have reconciled Sir Henry Camp-'bell-Bannerman to the resignation of 'his high post, it was the knowledge that he Was to be succeeded by Air. Asquith. On foreign affairs Mr. Asquith has always tbeen on the right lines. He has Confessed, more strongly than many English statesmen, his anxiety' to maintain the closest and friendliest of relations with the United States. Speaking during the Spanish-American War. he said: “My sympathies are, and have been from the first, entirely and heartily with the United States.” In liberating Cuba, he said, the American nation were respond ing to the demand of humanity and liberty, and were set ting a worthy example to the great Powers of the world. Speaking later in the same year, he rejoiced in the drawing together of the two great English-speaking races, “not in a men gust of transient enthusiasm, but by : strong and durable bond.” A better understanding between the two peoples, lie rejoiced to believe, which had formerly been a dream, had been consolidated and crystallised by the pressure of events, until it was now a firm and vital reality. His Foreign Policy. On another crucial question he has spoken with mi uncertain isounJL He has never pandered M

Russophobia, and has always supported the efforts that have been made to establish good relations between St. Petersburg and London. On general principle?, of foreign policy his best-remembered speech is that in which he asked “what the people of Great Britain had done or suffered that they were now to go touting for alliances in the highways and by-ways of Europe?” Mr Asquith, we may depend upon it, will be true to the tradition of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-man’s leadership. While holding by the entente cordial with the French, he will regard it but as the first step towards a series of other ententes in which Germany will find her place. A Prime Minister as active, energetic, and resolute as Mr Asquith ean do a great deal towards promoting more friendly feelings between England and her neighbouring nations than has yet been attempted by any Government. In the Cabinet.

The position of Mr Asquith vis-a-vis with Mi- Lloyd-George curiously reproduces the position of Mr Gladstone vis-a-vis with Mr Chamberlain in the Cabinet or x. 580. But Mr Lloyd-George has in the Cabinet a much more powerful and trustworthy ally in Mr Winston Churchill than Mr Chamberlain was ever able to command. There is no reason at present to anticipate that between the new and the late Chancellor of the Exchequer there will be any antagonism. Mr < hamberlain was loyal enough to Mr Gladstone as long as the Cabinet of 1880 lasted, and it is not likely that Mr Lloyd-George will prove less amenable than Mr Chamberlain when he was President of the Board of Trade. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We need not prolong our speculations into the dim and distant future. It is enough that the real Mr Asquith is likely to be a much more powerful Minister than the pseudo Mr Asquith, who unfortunately has too much dominated the public imagination.