Asquith

by Roy Jenkins

  P.M. came about 6, very stimulated by Ireland. He has suggested Ll.G. going there as Chief Secretary. Bonar Law upheld suggestion. Ll.G. consulted Irish leaders who agreed, but thought it should only be until the situation was settled. He would keep on his present position. The P.M. said in response to my many protests that he (Lloyd George) was an ambitious man, he’d stand or fall by the success he made. Couldn’t grind any axe, etc.

  The invitation to Lloyd George was conveyed in slightly more flattering terms. “ It is a unique opportunity,” Asquith wrote, “ and there is no-one else who could do so much to bring about a permanent solution.”p Lloyd George, who wanted to go on a mission to Russia with Kitchener, hesitated for a short time. He was not prepared to contemplate a permanent assignment such as might be implied in his taking the Chief Secretaryship. Nor would he accept responsibility for the Irish administration. But he agreed to attempt a settlement. By so doing he probably saved his own life.

  With Redmond and Carson, Lloyd George was completely and quickly successful. By mid-June he had secured the agreement not only of the negotiators, but of their followers as well, to a settlement on the basis of immediate Home Rule, with the whole of the Six Counties excluded for the period of the war. The ultimate solution for this area, and, indeed, the long-term future of Irish government as a whole was to be determined after the war by an Imperial Conference; in the meantime all the 80 Irish members were to continue to sit at Westminster.

  The publication of these terms provoked a Unionist revolt. It was not the Ulstermen, but the bulk of the English Conservatives, particularly the peers with Southern Irish connections, who made the trouble. Back-benchers and members of the Cabinet were equally involved. Once again the Coalition seemed on the brink of breaking up. June 28th was a day of Cabinet crisis—there were meetings from 11.0 until 2.0 and again from 7.0 until 9.0, but Lord Selborne had already resigned without waiting for these deliberations. Asquith’s account to the King, the longest he ever wrote,1 described the course of the argument. The scheme, he said, was strongly opposed by Lansdowne and Long, with Lord Robert Cecil in their camp but a little less firm. Bonar Law differed sharply from these colleagues and said that he would recommend the plans to a meeting of Conservative M.P.s, but that his own subsequent actions must depend upon their decision. Curzon spoke rather tentatively against the proposals, mainly on the ground that it would be impossible to get them through the House of Lords.

  1 He was still doing so in his own hand, as he continued until the end.

  In the evening “ Sir E. Grey strongly supported an arrangement on the lines proposed and dwelt with great force on the effect of its rejection and a divided Ministry in the situation in America/’ Then: Mr. Balfour delivered the most effective pronouncement in this prolonged conclave. As a veteran Unionist he dissociated himself entirely from the position taken up by Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Long. .. . (He) laid stress on the importance of not alienating American opinion at this juncture and declared himself a wholehearted supporter of the policy of Sir E. Carson and Mr. B. Law. Mr. Lloyd George intervened to point out that if the resignations of Unionist members of the Cabinet could be averted by a further consideration of possible safeguards for the maintenance of imperial naval and military control during the war, he would do his best to secure such an arrangement, and he suggested that a small Committee of the Cabinet. . .. should be at once appointed to discuss its terms. Lord Curzon and Mr. Chamberlain intimated that they were ready to fall in with this suggestion, as was also Lord Lansdowne. Mr. Long was still recalcitrant....

  Thereupon the P.M. intervened. He told his colleagues frankly that in his opinion at this critical conjunction in the War1 a series of resignations and a consequent possible dissolution of the Government would be not only a national calamity but a national crime. He appealed with much emphasis to all his colleagues to avert such a catastrophe. The proposed settlement would in his opinion have been accepted on all sides before the War and would be accepted with equal unanimity after the War. He therefore proposed (and the Cabinet with the exception of Mr. Long unanimously agreed) that a Committee consisting of the P.M., Mr.

  1 The British offensive on the Somme was just about to begin.

  Lloyd George, Lord R. Cecil and the Attorney-General (F. E. Smith) should at once proceed to consider and to formulate such additions as seemed to them to be necessary . . . between now and next Monday. On this footing all the Ministers who had threatened resignation (including with much personal reluctance Mr. Long) agreed to retain in the meantime their offices.q

  The division in the Unionist Party was a strange one. The “ new men ” who had made the running over Ulster in 1913 and 1914— Bonar Law, Smith and Carson—were all moderates on this occasion. So was Balfour, whom Asquith had described at the time of the Buckingham Palace Conference as “ a real wrecker ” on the Irish issue. It was the old Tories who made the trouble, men who had never cared much for the Orange cause, but who were wedded to Imperial supremacy throughout Ireland. They had the bulk of Conservative opinion with them. The combined efforts of Bonar Law and Balfour made little impression upon a Carlton Club meeting.

  The Cabinet met on July 5th to receive the report of its committee of five. The opening of Asquith’s account of this occasion is as succinct a commentary on the relationship of the Cabinet at this time to military affairs, on its pre-occupation with other matters, and on the character of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, as could reasonably be wished for:

  Sir W. Robertson attended and with the aid of a large map described and explained to the Cabinet the operations in France so far as they had proceeded. His account was of a very reassuring character and gave general satisfaction. The Prime Minister then invited the attention of the Cabinet to the latest development in the Irish negotiationsr

  The meeting went more easily than had been expected. The committee proposed that when the plan became a bill there should be a special provision safeguarding imperial naval and military rights for the duration of the war. Asquith thought this unnecessary, but was prepared to agree to its insertion as the price of agreement with the Unionists. So was Redmond. Long and Lansdowne did not pretend to be pleased with the proposals, but they reluctantly agreed to accept them and to abandon the idea of resignation. Asquith thanked them for their “ patriotism and public spirit ” and wrote with relief to the King: “The result, Mr. Asquith humbly submits to your Majesty, is very satisfactory. ...”

  This time it was the Prime Minister and not the Sovereign who was prematurely optimistic. On July nth, Lansdowne, a moderate on many issues but always a cold and determined extremist on anything touching his position as a Kerry landlord, placed a dagger firmly into the back of the agreement. Speaking for the Government in the House of Lords, he stressed that the exclusion of Ulster must be permanent and that Southern Ireland would in effect be governed by a strengthened Defence of the Realm Act, with which the Dublin Parliament would have no right to interfere. Asquith wrote sadly to Crewe: “ Lansdowne’s speech has given the greatest offence to the Irish, and it was with difficulty that they were dissuaded from asking me today whether it represented the policy of the Government. It is, of course, the general tone and temper which especially irritates them.”s

  The practical significance of Lansdowne’s speech was that it created a new atmosphere of suspicion amongst the Nationalists. This strengthened the position of Dillon, who, Lloyd George said, was the difficult man throughout the negotiations, and weakened that of Redmond and Devlin. Such a change might not have been decisive without Bonar Law’s decision that he could continue to support the agreement only with a further substantial concession. The Irish members at Westminster must either be drastically reduced or confined to voting on issues which directly concerned them. Whether Redmond could in any circumstances have agreed to this is not known. Asquith believed that he did not really object. But after Lansdowne’s speech he would ask for no more from his followers. It was even possible that he, like Bonar Law,
had by this time become anxious to escape from any arrangement. On July 24th Asquith told Lady Scott that he thought Redmond was now “ trying to kill the whole thing.” “ In fact it’s dead,” he added; and when asked what alternative was proposed, he replied hopelessly: “ They have nothing to suggest but despair.”

  At the Cabinet of July 27th arrangements were made for burying the agreement, and putting into operation this policy of despair. Wimborne was to be sent back as Lord Lieutenant. A Unionist lawyer (H. E. Duke), the least distinguished holder of the office since 1880, was appointed Chief Secretary. The old Dublin Castle system went on, and the troubles of 1921 and 1922 became inevitable. Asquith had again tried hard to solve the Irish problem, but the prejudices of some of his Unionist colleagues were too great, and his authority over them too small, for this last opportunity to be seized.

  Before Ireland could be entirely tucked back under the carpet, there remained one further matter for the Cabinet to settle. This was the question of Casement’s execution. After his arrest on the coast of Kerry, Casement had been brought to London for trial. On June 29th, with F. E. Smith prosecuting, he was convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. The case was taken to the Court of Criminal Appeal on July 17th and 18th, but his appeal was there rejected by a panel of five judges. Smith declined to give his fiat for a further appeal to the House of Lords. All that remained, therefore, was for the Home Secretary1 to decide whether or not he should exercise the prerogative of mercy. Exceptionally, he did not attempt to decide this for himself. Casement’s execution was a Cabinet matter even before the Court of Appeal had given its decision. At the end of the meeting of July 5th it was decided to submit his now famous homosexual diaries to an “ alienist,” as the word then was. “ Several members of the Cabinet (including Sir E. Grey and Lord Lansdowne),” Asquith wrote, “ were strongly of opinion that it would be better (if possible) that he should be kept in confinement as a criminal lunatic than that he should be executed without any smirch on his character2 and then canonized as a martyr both in Ireland and America.t

  On July 12th the Cabinet received the alienist’s report and noted that it declared him “to be abnormal but not certifiably insane.” On July 19th, the day after the Court of Appeal decision, Asquith told the King that “ it was the unanimous decision of the Cabinet that (Casement) should be hanged.” On July 27th it was decided that the Foreign and Home Offices should co-operate in drawing up a statement of the Government’s reasons for proceeding with the execution. Since the previous meeting Asquith had received strong representations for a reprieve from Bryce (who had been both Chief Secretary and Ambassador to Washington), Dillon and Devlin. On August 2nd: The greater part of the sitting was occupied in a further and final discussion of the Casement case, in view of some further material and the urgent appeals for mercy from authoritative and friendly quarters of the U.S. The Cabinet was of the opinion that no ground existed for a reprieve, and Lord Grey3 drew up a statement of reasons to be shown by Sir C. Spring-Rice2 3 to Senator Lodge and others.u

  1 Herbert Samuel, who had succeeded Simon in January.

  2 A curious phrase in the context.

  3 Grey had become a peer at the beginning of July. Asquith had wanted to make him an earl, but Earl Grey (the third successor of the Reform Bill

  On August 3rd Casement was hanged. There can be few other examples of a Cabinet devoting large parts of four separate meetings to considering an individual sentence—and then arriving at the wrong decision. The effect in the United States was as bad as it could have been. In Ireland, Casement became a martyr. And even in England the effects of the case reverberated on for forty years or more. Asquith himself would have preferred a reprieve based on medical evidence, but in the absence of this he did not feel it right to treat Casement more leniently than his supposed followers had been treated by Maxwell.

  1 McKenna presented this argument in too intelligent a way. He was asked whether it meant that, as Chancellor, he could not afford to pay for 70 divisions. Had he returned a firm ex cathedra affirmative, both Kitchener and Austen Chamberlain (a strange couple of Gladstonians) might have bowed to the mystique of the Treasury. But when he patiently explained that it was not so much money as the physical allocation of resources, or the “ depletion of industry ” as it was then called, which was the trouble, they became mystified and unconvinced.

  2 Prime Minister) objected, in these circumstances, to his retaining his name in his title. The Foreign Secretary then said that he cared much more for his name than his rank and became Viscount Grey of Fallodon.

  3 The British Ambassador in Washington.

  A DECLINING AUTHORITY

  1916

  In the middle of May, when Asquith was in Dublin, Kitchener received an invitation from the Czar to visit Russia. For a month or so the Government had been considering sending a mission to help with the military and supply situation there. Kitchener, although he had worked much better with Robertson than might have been expected, was restless with his lack of power and eager to get away for a time. Once again, although less urgently on this occasion, his colleagues were anxious to see him go. A plan for Lloyd George to accompany Kitchener and deal with the munitions side of the problem was abandoned when he accepted the Irish assignment. Except for a small staff Kitchener went alone. He left London on the night of June 4th. On the following evening he was drowned off the Orkneys. The news was published at noon on June 6th.

  On May 30th Asquith had called on Lady Scott for one of his regular conversational exchanges. She recorded in her diary:

  The Prime Minister came in the evening. He was wonderful. Talked a great deal about Kitchener. I asked him why he was going to Russia. First he said “ to occupy his leisure, incidentally to talk about munitions, finance, etc.” Later he said “ He’s abdicated. He’s going to be abused in the House tomorrow,” & the P.M. said “ I suppose I must defend him, I can’t leave it to little Tennant, but upon my word I don’t know what I shall say, he’s such a liar! ”

  “ In South Africa . . . they thought they’d got a plain bluff soldier in Kitchener and a subtle diplomat in Milner. They were wonderfully wrong. If K. can put a thing in a tortuous fashion he always prefers to—& then he repeats himself so horribly; he came to me this morning to say a thing which could be said in 2 minutes— & he said it in 2 minutes, & then began again, & then again”

  Yet there remains considerable doubt as to whether these disillusioned, harsh words represented Asquith’s final view of Kitchener. Lady Scott’s diary never catches the exact turn of Asquith’s phraseology. His cynicism was softer, more tolerant, less brittle, than she allows. Hankey, who knew Asquith very well at this time, supplies an element of confirmation for Lady Scott by saying that, when he first told him that Kitchener wanted to go to Russia, “ Asquith . . . was rather amused.” But Hankey also wrote, admittedly as part of a posthumous justification of Kitchener, that the latter never lost the confidence of those who knew him best and about whose opinion he cared most, the King and the Prime Minister.a And Asquith wrote in his own memoirs of the importance which he attached to Kitchener’s mission to Petrograd: “I have always thought, and still think, that his arrival there might have deflected the subsequent course of history.” b

  No doubt the truth, allowing for all the changing moods of human feeling, lies somewhere between Lady Scott and this. But whatever opinions he left behind him, Kitchener was dead. Twice in five days the country had been rocked by news of great events. On May 31st and June 1st Admiral Jellicoe had engaged the German High Seas Fleet in the drawn battle of Jutland, and the first communique had presented a picture still less encouraging than the reality. Now Kitchener, who was still such a public legend that rumours denying his death persisted for years, had gone. Greatly though his power had been pared, he left vacant, at a critical stage in the struggle, one of the offices most vital to its prosecution. Asquith’s next problem was whom to make Secretary of State for War.

  It was three weeks
before a decision was made and another week after that before the new Minister—Lloyd George—took over the department. The currently accepted view of what took place during this interval is that Asquith found himself confronted by two almost equally unwelcome candidates for the post—Lloyd George and Bonar Law; that he decided to procrastinate in the hope that time would enable him to slip Lord Derby in between the two as a more accommodating occupant of the office; but that Law and Lloyd George frustrated this plan by getting together at Lord Beaverbrook’s Leather-head house on Sunday, June 11th and agreeing that Lloyd George should have the job. On the following morning — Whit Monday — Law drove from Leatherhead to the Wharf to see Asquith1 and present him with a joint ultimatum. Asquith countered by offering the job to Law himself, as the lesser of the two evils. But when Law told him it was too late for that, he capitulated and agreed to accept Lloyd George.c

  Such an account is not wholly convincing, although it contains substantial elements of truth. Asquith did delay over the appointment. He wrote to the King on June 8th to say that he did not intend to rush into a precipitate solution. He did make a tentative offer to Bonar Law on the Monday, and a firmer one to Lloyd George on the Tuesday evening. But there is no indication that he regarded his hands as tied after the Law interview, or that this was decisive in securing the appointment for Lloyd George. The latter, in his War Memoirs, writes as though he assumed from the beginning that the office was available to him, provided he was prepared to take it on the terms which Robertson had imposed upon Kitchener.^ Mr. Robert Blake says that the forcing of a modification of this agreement was an essential part of the Bonar Law-Lloyd George compact. But was this even raised, let alone agreed, during Law’s brief discussion at the Wharf? It may have come up during the Prime Minister’s interview with Lloyd George on the Tuesday; but it may not have emerged until another interview two days later. On the Thursday evening (June 16th) Asquith told Lady Scott, with apparent surprise, that “ Lloyd George was behaving absurdly, & suggesting tremendous powers for himself at the W.O.— much more than K. had had. Also he was suggesting leaving the Cabinet altogether, saying he could be more useful outside it.”