Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  King Edward’s doctors were eager to get him away from the fogs and damp of London into the sun of Biarritz. He left on March 8, 1910, stopping in Paris, where he suffered an attack of acute indigestion with shortness of breath and pain near the heart. On the Basque coast, he struggled for six weeks with severe bronchitis. Mrs. Keppel helped to distract him, and on April 26 he returned to England, apparently refreshed. That evening he felt well enough to go to the opera at Covent Garden. The following morning, he resumed his appointments, seeing Asquith and Kitchener; the next day he received Haldane, Morley, and the Russian Ambassador, Count Benckendorff. Friday night he was back at the opera for five hours of Siegfried. On Saturday he left for Sandringham and seemed in good form, telling stories at dinner and afterwards enjoying bridge. Sunday, May 1, a cold wind and showers of rain swept over Norfolk, but the King insisted on taking his regular Sunday afternoon walk to inspect his farm and pedigree animals. He caught a chill. Monday, he turned to London in a pouring rain and, by the time he was back in Buckingham Palace, he had a severe bronchial attack and was breathing with difficulty. Queen Alexandra, discreetly vacationing in Corfu while her husband was with Mrs. Keppel in Biarritz, was notified. Assuming the King’s illness to be another of his recurrent attacks, she started home slowly; upon reaching Venice, she thought of spending twenty-four hours in the city.

  On Tuesday, May 3, the King saw the American Ambassador, Whitelaw Reid, to discuss the forthcoming visit to London of former President Theodore Roosevelt, whom King Edward had never met. “Our talk,” said Reid, “was interrupted by spasms of coughing.” That night, the King skipped dinner but smoked a huge cigar and played bridge with Mrs. Keppel. He could not sleep. Through Thursday, the King continued to receive visitors, saying of his illness, “I must fight this.” When visitors begged him to rest, he replied, “No, I shall not give in. I shall go on. I shall work to the end.” Ponsonby, bringing him papers to sign, found him sitting at his writing table with a rug around his legs. “His color was grey and he appeared to be unable to sit upright and was sunken. At first he had difficulty with his breathing... but this gradually got better.” The King signed some papers and then looked at Ponsonby and said helplessly, “I feel wretchedly ill. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. They really must do something for me.” That afternoon, Queen Alexandra reached Calais and, a few hours later, London. It was the first time during their marriage that her husband, while present in the city, had not welcomed her at the station. When she reached the Palace, the sight of the King fighting for breath, his face chalky and gray, told her the truth.

  The next day, Friday, May 6, was King Edward’s last. In the morning, he insisted that his valet dress him formally in a frock coat. He received his friend Sir Ernest Cassel and said, “I am very seedy but I wanted to see you.” Then he collapsed. Through the afternoon, he sat hunched in his armchair as a series of heart attacks hammered at his stricken body. Five doctors declared there was no hope. Morphine was administered to dull the pain. He had moments of consciousness, during which friends appeared. One of these was Mrs. Keppel, whom the Queen, in a display of generosity, had sent for so that she might say good-bye. At five P.M., the Prince of Wales informed his father that one of the King’s horses, a two-year-old named Witch of the Air, had won a race at Kempton Park. “I am very glad,” said the King. Early in the evening, he sank into a coma. At eleven-thirty, he was carried to his bed and at eleven forty-five, with the Archbishop of Canterbury pronouncing a blessing, he died34.

  Queen Alexandra, looking at her husband’s body, said to Ponsonby how peaceful he looked and that it was not the cold wind at Sandringham but “that horrid Biarritz”35 that had killed him. She said she felt as if she had been turned to stone, unable to cry, unable to grasp the meaning of her husband’s death, unable to do anything. She mentioned that she would like to go and hide in the country, but there was the state funeral, and all the arrangements that had to be made. King Edward’s son, now the new King George V, wrote that night in his diary, “I have lost my best friend36 and the best of fathers. I never had a word with him in my life. I am heartbroken and overwhelmed with grief.” Jacky Fisher, newly retired, sat for half an hour with Queen Alexandra and, at the lying in state, felt that, if he could touch the body, the King would awake. “The world [is] not the same world,”37 he wrote. “I’ve lost the greatest friend I ever had.... I feel so curious a sense of isolation—which I can’t get over—and no longer seem to care a damn for anything....”

  Bernhard von Bülow recorded that “the death of Edward VII38... was of the greatest assistance to our foreign policy. I do not think he had really wanted to fight us.... But inspired by hostility to his nephew, by his fear of our economic rivalry, and the accelerated rhythm of our naval tempo, Edward VII created difficulties and, whenever he could would put a spoke in our wheel.”

  The Kaiser privately hailed “the death of the ‘Encircler’”39 and rushed immediately to London to participate in the public pageantry of a state funeral.

  H. H. Asquith was using the Easter recess to escape politics on board the Admiralty yacht Enchantress, accompanying the First Lord, Reginald McKenna, on an inspection trip to Gibraltar. Informed by radio that the King’s condition was worsening, Asquith decided to turn the yacht around immediately. At three A.M. on the morning of May 7, he was handed a wireless message from the new King: “I am deeply grieved40 to inform you that my beloved father the King passed away peacefully at quarter to twelve tonight (the 6th). George.” Asquith went up on deck and found himself surrounded by a predawn twilight dominated by the blaze of Halley’s comet: “I felt bewildered41 and indeed stunned. At a most anxious moment in the fortunes of the State, we had lost without warning or preparation, the Sovereign whose ripe experience, trained sagacity, equitable judgement and unvarying consideration counted for so much.... His successor, with all his fine and engaging qualities, was without political experience. We were nearing the verge of a crisis almost without example in our constitutional history. What was the right thing to do?”

  The Kaiser enjoyed his uncle’s funeral. He relished the prominent place accorded him among his relatives. He preened himself that “the entire royal family42 received me at the railway station as a token of their gratitude for the deference to family ties shown by my coming.” In Westminster Hall, he admired the “gorgeously decorated coffin” and the “marvelous play” of colors created when rays of sunlight filtering through the narrow windows touched the jewels in the Crown of England surmounting the coffin. He delighted in prancing through London on horseback beside his cousin, the new King George V, past “the vast multitude... clad in black,” at the head of a “splendid array” of “gorgeously” dressed English guardsmen: “Grenadiers, Scots Guards, Coldstreams, Irish Guards—in their perfectly-fitting coats, white leather facings, and heavy bearskin headgear; all picked troops of superb appearance and admirable martial bearing, a joy to any man with the heart of a soldier43.” In another way, it also gladdened the Emperor to telegraph his new Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, that the Liberal government of England was in trouble. His impressions, based on “many talks44 with... relatives, with gentlemen of the Court, with certain old acquaintances, and many distinguished persons,” were “somewhat as follows: People’s minds are wholly occupied with the internal situation.... The outlook all around is black. The Government is thoroughly hated.... It is reported with satisfaction that on the days after the King’s death and during the lying-in-state, the Prime Minister and other of his colleagues were publicly hissed in the streets, and that expressions like ‘you have killed the King’ were heard. A demonstration against the Government is looked for... and a strong reaction in a Conservative sense is thought not improbable.” The Kaiser’s skills as a political reporter can be judged by the fact that the “regicide” government had five months earlier won a seven-year term in a General Election and eight months later was to reconfirm its authority in a second General Election.

  Neverthele
ss, it was true that King Edward’s death had put the government in an awkward position. Asquith could not now avoid attacking the veto power of the House of Lords even if he wished to; it was part of his commitment to the Irish members who gave him his majority. Yet the only power that could humble the Lords was the royal prerogative. Everything rested on the King; first King Edward, now King George. Only the monarch could create the mass of new peers necessary to vote the Upper House into political impotence. And the new King was, as the Prime Minister had described him, “without political experience.” To pressure him immediately after his accession was, at the least, distasteful. At worst, it might be damaging to the government. The alternative, proposed on June 6, was an armistice and a conference in which four leaders from each party, including Asquith and Lloyd George, Balfour and Lansdowne, would meet quietly and seek to resolve their differences. Although a fervent minority in both parties—extreme Radicals on one side, extreme Tories on the other—objected to their principles being compromised behind closed doors, and strict constitutionalists worried at the nation’s basic political structure being altered in secret, the first meeting was held, at 10 Downing Street, on June 17. Twenty-one meetings were held during the summer and autumn of 1910—without success. Along the way, Lloyd George grew impatient, proposed a coalition government, and admitted that his desire to create hundreds of new Liberal peers was no greater than Balfour’s. “Looking into the future,”45 he told the Unionist leader, “I know that our glorified grocers will be more hostile to social reform than your Backwoodsmen.” Balfour did not want a coalition; neither did Asquith; and on November 10, 1910, it was officially announced that the Constitutional Conference had failed.

  Asquith moved immediately. On the afternoon of November 10 the Cabinet agreed that Parliament should be dissolved and the issue of the veto power of the Lords put to the country. The following day, the Prime Minister called on King George at Sandringham to ask that, if the General Election produced another Liberal victory, the King pledge himself to create enough new peers to pass a Parliament bill through the House of Lords. On November 16, Asquith went to Buckingham Palace for the King’s answer. In great distress, King George asked if the Prime Minister would have made the same request of his father. “Yes, Sir,”46 said Asquith, “and your father would have consented.” Reluctantly, the King agreed. With this promise—kept secret for the moment—Asquith led his party into a December election, the second within a year. Despite the excitement at Westminster, the country appeared to be even more bored than it had been in January. Five hundred thousand fewer voters went to the polls, and the results were almost identical: the Liberals lost two seats and returned to the House of Commons with 272. The Conservatives gained two seats and returned to Westminster with 272. As before, the Irish Nationalists (84 seats) and Labour (42 seats) held the balance and would vote with the government.

  Nothing now could save the Lords. Asquith had a specific mandate from the country, a majority in the House of Commons, and the King’s secret promise to create new peers. In February 1911, the Parliament bill was introduced in the Commons. By May, the bill had passed and come to the Lords. Still not knowing that the King was pledged, if necessary, to overwhelm them in their own chamber, the peers treated the bill with traditional disdain, referring it to committee, where it was sufficiently disfigured by amendment to render it harmless. On July 18, Lloyd George called on Balfour and revealed the promise extracted from the King the previous December. Balfour and Lansdowne immediately saw that they were defeated; the best that could be managed now was a graceful surrender. In order to convince his followers, Lansdowne asked the Prime Minister to state his intentions in writing. On July 20, Mr. Asquith obliged with identical letters to the Unionist leaders in both houses:

  Dear Lord Lansdowne47 (Mr. Balfour):

  I think it courteous and right, before any public decisions are announced, to let you know... [that] should the necessity arise, the Government will advise the King to exercise his prerogative to secure the passing of the Bill in substantially the same form in which it left the House of Commons; and His Majesty has been pleased to signify that he will consider it his duty to accept, and act on, that advice.

  Yours sincerely,

  H. H. ASQUITH

  The following morning, July 21, Lord Lansdowne brought the Prime Minister’s letter to a meeting of two hundred Unionist peers at Grosvenor House, the London mansion of the Duke of Westminster. Lansdowne read Asquith’s letter and said that he believed the government was not bluffing.fn3 He advised that, to avoid dilution of the peerage, the Lords pass the bill as sent from the Commons. Either way, he pointed out, the House of Lords would lose its veto power.

  Lord Lansdowne’s argument failed to persuade a number of his titled listeners, who declared themselves implacably opposed to passing the bill no matter what the consequences. Lord Curzon, a former Viceroy of India, himself a fledgling peer and therefore anxious to prevent devaluation of a recent honor, defied the government, the monarch, and Lord Lansdowne by crying, “Let them make their peers.48 We will die in the last ditch before we give in!” thus giving the name “Ditchers” to the bill’s diehard opponents. “Ditcher” resistance rallied around the stumpy, red-faced figure of Lord Halsbury, a former Lord Chancellor, then eighty-eight (he lived to be ninety-eight), who as a lawyer and judge had worked his way up to the Woolsack and an earldom, and who, said one of his followers, “invariably objected on principle49 to all change.” Lord Halsbury already had announced that he would vote against the bill as a “solemn duty to God and country.”50 At Grosvenor House, he cried that he would cast that vote “even if I am alone,51 rather than surrender.” At least sixty Ditchers stood with this bantam gladiator, and the number was thought to be growing.

  Those who supported Lord Lansdowne were known as “Hedgers.”fn4 And no one hedged more carefully than Arthur Balfour. Perhaps because he sensed that nothing he could say would deter Lord Halsbury; perhaps because, after thirty years of party leadership, he was weary and wanted only to lose gracefully and move on to other issues; perhaps because for Arthur Balfour politics was never more than a game; perhaps for all these reasons, Balfour was reluctant to become involved. Unwilling to appear before the angry peers, he would only agree to writing a letter to the Times: “I agree with Lord Lansdowne52 and his friends,” he announced. “With Lord Lansdowne, I stand. With Lord Lansdowne, I am ready, if need be, to fall.” It was the statement of a man who knew and accepted that he was about to be beaten. In ultra-Tory clubs in London and at weekend parties in the country houses of England, the cry “B.M.G.—Balfour Must Go” grew louder.

  Balfour’s abdication of leadership became manifest at a scene in which Asquith suffered the most conspicuous public humiliation of an English Prime Minister in the history of Parliament. On July 24, Asquith arose in the House of Commons53 to announce the King’s promise and to explain how this would affect passage of the Parliament bill. The opposition, believing the government had forced the pledge from the King and was bent on the destruction of not only the House of Lords but the class system, private property, the Anglican Church—everything that for centuries had made England “a green and pleasant land”—refused to let him speak. From the seats behind Balfour, Unionists shouted “Traitor!” It was the beginning of a cannonade of vilification. Whenever the rage ebbed slightly, Asquith began a sentence; immediately he was drowned by hoots and jeers: “Traitor!” “Dictator!” “Who killed the King?” Lord Hugh Cecil, a son of Lord Salisbury, stood repeatedly and screamed, “You have disgraced your office!” A Labour M.P., staring in disgust at Lord Hugh, finally rose and shouted back, “Many a man has been certified for less than half of what the noble lord has done this afternoon!” For forty-five minutes, Asquith stood at the dispatch box waiting to speak. In the Gallery, Margot Asquith, blazing with fury, scribbled a note and sent it down to Sir Edward Grey, who sat behind Asquith on the Government Bench: “For God’s sake, defend him54 from the cats and cads.” Grey
could do nothing and sadly tore up the note. Eventually, the Prime Minister gave up. “I am not going to degrade myself,”55 he said and sat down. The din continued; fists were brandished on both sides, until the Speaker halted the proceedings.

  Through the afternoon, Arthur Balfour lounged on the Opposition Front Bench, taking no part in the brawl, but doing nothing to halt it either. Some observers thought they saw concern on his face, others thought he seemed revolted. Nevertheless, out of a sense of weariness, or understanding that there were pleasures—in philosophy, perhaps—superior to involvement in such a scene, or perhaps from sheer indifference, Balfour did not act.

  In the end, to save the House of Lords from ridicule, Lansdowne persuaded the majority of Unionist peers to abstain from voting on the bill. The vote was narrowed to the Liberals versus the Ditchers. Even then, as Lord Halsbury increased the numbers of his adherents, it seemed that the bill must die. On the day of the vote, August 10, with the temperature at one hundred degrees, the greatest heat recorded in England in seventy years, many Ditchers still believed that the government’s threat to create new peers was “pure bluff.”56 The Liberal Lord Morley, who had moved the bill, attempted to disabuse them: “I have to say57 that every vote given tonight against my motion is a vote in favor of a large and prompt creation of peers.” In the end, it was Lord Curzon, hating what he had to do, who saved the House of Lords from an invasion of Liberal “grocers.” When the final division took place, Curzon grimly led thirty-seven Unionist peers into the lobby in favor of the government bill. They were joined by eighty-one Liberals and thirteen bishops and opposed by 114 Ditchers; the final vote was 131 to 114. The Parliament bill became law and the House of Lords lost its power to veto. The Ditchers were “boiling with rage.”58 Lady Halsbury hissed from the Gallery when the result was announced and subsequently refused to shake Lord Lansdowne’s hand. That night at the Carlton Club, peers who had voted with Lord Curzon and the government were denounced to their faces as “Traitor!” and “Judas!”59