GLADSTONE
The enthusiasms and antagonisms set alight by Mr. Gladstone in his long
career flame now, a generation after his death, quite as fiercely as
they did before the Great War. Not that he was a warlike man, except
upon the hustings and in the House. You would think that everybody
could see now that Gladstone was right about the Turks. But Woodrow
Wilson and the ex-Kaiser have not seen so much. They were on the side
of the Turks and Bulgarians. Wilson was so much on their side that he
would not fight them, and by his abstention contributed to the
situation which made the Armenian massacres a continuous entertainment
for Berlin, and isolated Russia from her Allies. And there is Ireland,
of course, Ireland with De Valera instead of with Parnell. And there
is Egypt. And there is India. All of these synonymes for trouble, and
debates in the House. All these troubles to be healed by talk. But
there is no one now who talks so well as Mr. Gladstone.
When Gladstone died, men did not agree about what he had done in his
more than sixty years of public life,--done, that is, for the United
Kingdom {139} and the Empire. They do not agree now. What was the
outstanding achievement of his life, the thing, above all, by which
posterity will remember him? Was it his devotion to the freedom of
human kind? Perhaps. But the main question is so difficult to answer
that I shall not attempt the task, not merely because it is difficult,
but mainly because it is not my intention to tread the mazes of British
politics.
The Nineteenth Century, the despised Victorian Age, if you please, was
an age of great men. Some of them seem smaller now than they did
before July, 1914. Bismarck, for example. Bismarck was a liar.
Gladstone was not. And yet he had a theological mind. Gladstone's
stature has not diminished with the shrinking process of time. But
will it diminish? Who can tell? The world salutes his integrity.
Does it salute for integrity and courage any political personage of
to-day?
The world was taught, generation after generation, that the emergency
produces the man. The year 1914 and its six successors brought
emergency to every country, such emergency as no country had ever known
before. But the emergencies did not produce the political men. Only
France produced the political man. Without him, German intrigue would
have overrun the world, even after the Germans fled from France and
Belgium and the East. We would have been smothered by words and
machinations, as northern France and Belgium had been smothered by the
Teutonic cloud-bursts. But there was Clemenceau,--Clemenceau who had
appointed Foch.
{140}
These two men and the Allied commanders brought victory to
civilisation. If the politicians do not destroy the work and plans,
the "peace" they are making now will endure for a while. If the
politicians, toying with their new doll, the League of Nations, keep
their heads in the clouds, I believe they will come crashing to earth
within ten years, frightened and amazed by a greater and longer war
than has yet been known. They sowed its seeds in the Armistice and at
Versailles. And later when, month after month, they changed their
plans from day to day.
It is sometimes unwise to avoid digressions. No apology is made, or
considered necessary, for this one.
I was speaking of Mr. Gladstone. It was my privilege to see him and
hear him frequently during twenty years. Perhaps it was due to some
defect of nature that I was never much influenced politically by him.
His eloquence was anything you may choose to imagine it, and you would
have admired it, if you could dissociate from it the involved phrases,
the delicate adjustments, the hair-split meanings which might balance
any interpretation that might be put upon them, the contradictions, the
finely-spun arguments which, woven into the texture of his speeches,
would enmesh the unwary,--you would have admired it hugely if you could
have dissociated these things from it. His majorities probably did not
make the effort. He had the magic of making them forget.
He could be, and was, eloquent on any subject, {141} and, for that
reason, he could and did unsettle many minds on many themes. He was a
word-spinner of extraordinary skill and charm, and he made multitudes
think they had opinions of their own when their opinions were what he
had taught them. That is one of the gifts of leadership. And it was a
special privilege of Mr. Gladstone's leadership of democracy that he
remained an aristocrat by habit and inclination. Morley's "Life" of
him contains this passage from a privately printed account of Ruskin at
Hawarden:
"Something like a little amicable duel took place at one time between
Ruskin and Mr. G. when Ruskin directly attacked his host as a
'leveller.' 'You see _you_ think one man is as good as another, and
all men equally competent to judge aright on political questions;
whereas I am a believer in an aristocracy.' And straight came the
answer from Mr. Gladstone, 'Oh dear, no! I am nothing of the sort. I
am a firm believer in the aristocratic principle--the rule of the best.
I am an out-and-out _inequalitarian_,' a confession which Ruskin
treated with intense delight, clapping his hands triumphantly."
Eloquence has not been rated modestly among the arts during some
thousands of years. Whether it has done more for the advancement or
the retardation of man may be a subject for dispute. That it has done
both is unquestioned by those who talk less than they think. It is a
useful accomplishment when the object is to get a body of men to think
and act in unison; it is equally useful in promoting disunion. It is
therefore of most service to politicians {142} and preachers, the aim
of these gentlemen being to promote unity for their own causes by
promoting disaffection in and with all other causes. Of all the
statesmen of the nineteenth century, Mr. Gladstone was preeminent in
the promotion of disaffection. I do not know that he uprooted anything
that deserved to remain among the habits or institutions of mankind; I
do not know that he preserved anything that should have been cast upon
the dust heap; I do not know that he originated anything; but I always
think of him as a great opportunist who was sometimes on the right
side, and quite as likely to be on the wrong. But he differed from
other conspicuous opportunists in this: he always wrestled with the
devil of unbelief. Before adopting a policy he would ask himself, "Is
this right?" If he adopted it, you would know that he was convinced of
the righteousness of his cause. That he had converted himself,
convinced himself by his own eloquence, did not make his conviction
less sure, but made it perhaps, more clinching because he had talked
himself into belief. His eloquence, therefore, had effect upon himself
no less than upon others, as Lord Beaconsfield more than implied when,
in a political speech at Knightsbridge, in 1878, he alluded to Mr.
Gladstone as "a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance
of his own verbosity."
If Mr. Gladstone has been credited too much and too often with all the
qualities of a saint, it was, perhaps, because his opponents were
always ready to attribute to him the traits of a devil. In our later
time there has been no such adulation and no {143} such hatred as were
poured upon him. And I take it that these excesses were due to his
absorption in things, or subjects, rather than to interest in men.
Individuals did not interest him; causes did. The cause, whatever it
might be, filled the universe. He could not see men, the people were
so conspicuous.
It may have been a fault, it was certainly a characteristic, that when
he had once resolved, he expected his followers to exchange, as quickly
as himself, old ways of thought for new. It did not occur to him until
after the event that he had struck not only the wrong but the unpopular
note in the American Civil War. He saw the thing in one way only, and
he was immensely surprised when he learned that there was another side
to the question, and that it was taken by the country most concerned.
But he did what he could and subsequently made a long and almost abject
confession of error, which might have shaken, if it did not, the
general appreciation of his powers of judgment. It will be said there
was the case of Ireland. To be sure there was the case of Ireland. It
is always with Britain, even if the Irish are not,--as in the war
against Germany. But Mr. Gladstone understood Ireland and the Irish as
little as,--well, as little as the Americans understand them. Lord
Salisbury, on a certain occasion, said that he (Salisbury) had never
seen Mr. Parnell. Almost any one, then, might have repeated to him the
famous injunction of Oxenstiern: "Go forth, my son, and see with how
little wisdom the world is governed."
Lord Salisbury did not know Parnell by sight, and {144} he gave
Heligoland to the Kaiser. Neither Parnell nor Heligoland were
important enough in his opinion to justify even visual acquaintance.
The world has suffered for his superior neglect in one particular,
perhaps in both. But if he, or if Gladstone, or if Gladstone and
Salisbury had foreseen what would happen, the world might not have
acted any more wisely than it did. It is always too late to be wise.
Nobody would have believed the oracles; the truth was in opposition to
the world's inclinations. It is usually so. And that is why great men
are shunted to the wrong tracks, and so are "great" men only for their
age and hour; it is why prophets are stoned, and mediocrities arise and
talk, prevailing by sound. Nowadays the eminence of men is fixed by
their capacity for catching votes and the commotion they make in doing
so.
I thought Mr. Gladstone a vindictive old gentleman. It was not the
fashion to think of him in that way. You were supposed to insist upon
his more saintly qualities, but there is some difficulty in associating
attributes of saintship with eminent politicians during their lifetime,
and at the same moment keeping your face straight. The Roman Church,
in its sagacity, defers consideration of saintship until long after the
decease of the candidates for canonisation. Some centuries, indeed,
are required before the purely human element in man may be superseded
by the purely divine, even in cases where the voting majority is heavy.
If Mr. Gladstone were not vindictive, I do not see how he contrived so
successfully to give that {145} character to his countenance when he
was not speaking. One does not say when his countenance was in repose.
Repose was unacquainted with his countenance, or with any part of him.
The energy which fully charged his body flowed through his mind in a
restless and surging torrent. And if he were vindictive, I do not see
anything strange, or much that is derogatory in that. A leader of
politics must be genuine, or fall far short of greatness. His
opponents cannot be opposed to him merely in a parliamentary sense.
They may be as genuine as he, but if he hates their acts as evil in
nature and result, he cannot in honesty refrain from distrusting the
men who lead and inspire the acts, though he may pretend as much as he
pleases to do otherwise. His indignation against men and measures does
not cease with the adjournment of the House, or with the close of an
electioneering campaign, unless he is a hypocrite. And if he fail to
pursue his public enemy for the purpose of making him ineffective for
public harm, does he not give a too generous interpretation to public
duty? That a man is to be hated only at certain hours, or when he says
certain things, is conceivable only by the tolerant mass which must
usually be told what to think, and which, nine times out of ten, can be
relied upon to think to order, especially on party matters. A
political party, in any country, is not intended for thinking purposes,
but, like an army, is for fighting purposes. If it's in, it fights to
stay in; if it's out, it fights to get in. It uses speeches and
programmes as military leaders use smoke-screens and gas-discharges,
{146} to obscure the real operations and confound the enemy. In the
last century we had not learned, although we may have suspected, that
the world must be made safe for hypocrisy. It remained for the
twentieth century to announce this.
A journalist who gets below the surface of things cannot remain a party
man, for the more useful he is to one party the less useful he is to
journalism. Sooner or later, and usually sooner than later, he must
come up against the barbed wire which divides proprietary or editorial
interests from the area of his own convictions. Perhaps the latter are
less important than they seem. But they may be more important. At any
rate, like Touchstone's Audrey, they are his, and if he has a
conscience, which is to be presumed, a conflict between his pen and his
principles is bound to occur, unless his chief, or his employer, is a
paragon of courage.
"I can't afford the truth, as you call it," said an editor-proprietor
one day,--it was over an article about Gladstone. "I must go with my
public." He went with it, but his contributor did not. The latter was
given the choice of resigning or writing. He did both. He wrote his
resignation. How Mr. Gladstone heard of this I do not know, but hear
of it he did. It was to his interest to side with the editor, as he
did politically, but he met later the contumacious subordinate and said
that he was glad to see a junior who stood by his principles and knew
how to do so.
"If I have any advantage over others," said the G.O.M., "it is the
advantage of a long experience {147} which has taught me to value the
quality that Cromwell attributed to his soldiers. Oliver said, 'They
make some conscience of what they do.' If we are not ruled by
conscience, we are in anarchy. Good conscience makes for fair fighting
in politics or war."
"Yes, but, Mr. Gladstone, if the opponent _does n't_ fight fairly?"
"'Bear it that the opposed must beware of thee!'"
That is well as far as it goes. But we do not "fight by the book of
arithmetic." Did "the opposed" in Mr. Gladstone's wars beware of him,
or of his England? One does not seem to recall their wariness. Not
even the Mahdi's. Gordon fought with the front door open, so to speak.
Gladstone did not then "make the opposed beware" of his administration,
_i.e._ England, for the time being. And there were other cases. Is it
only one's own side that must beware of a policy of dilly-dally? The
"ecstatic madman", as Lord Acton, in one of his letters, called Gordon,
gave the world furiously to think. But Gladstone knew what Gordon was
when he sent him out. And it is more difficult now than it was then to
relieve the venerable statesman of responsibility. Gladstone hated
war. But his hatred of it did not make war any the less inevitable or
less necessary. The enemy rejoiced because the G.O.M. hated war. Let
the Pacifists note!
Of the many times when I saw Gladstone at close range, I recall at the
moment a night at the Lyceum while Irving was playing "The Merchant of
Venice." From my seat it was easily possible to observe the {148}
Grand Old Man in his stall. The eagle eyes had always fascinated me.
It was as interesting to watch his terrific face as to watch Irving.
"Terrific" is not too strong a word. Gladstone's face during the Tubal
scene reflected every emotion of vengeance that forced itself from
Shylock's soul, and during the Trial scene he glared at Antonio with
inquisitorial ferocity while Shylock whetted his knife. It would be
the usual and conventional thing to describe this as a tribute to
Irving's acting, and in support of this to quote Gladstone's
appreciation of that distinguished man, "Shylock is his best, I
think"--but the spectator at a play, if we may take Hamlet's word for
it, is readier to show sympathy with the victim than with the
tormentor; and it was not until after Shylock had whetted his blade
that he became changed from the victorious torturer to the abjectly
tortured man. Up to that point Gladstone's face expressed demoniacal
glee; after it he did not appear to be interested. The psychologists
and the partisans may quarrel over this as they please. I think that
non-partisans who had much opportunity to study the old
parliamentarian's face at close range, amid varying conditions, will
not quarrel over this interpretation, or with the adjective employed.
Take another and a very different instance, when Gladstone was the
central figure of a moving scene. It was a Liberal Conference at
Manchester, in December, 1889. Gladstone had been ill. The press had
reported him seriously ill. It was unlikely, the papers said, that he
could again address a public {149} meeting, unlikely that he would
reappear in the political field. But he appeared at Manchester, and
his appearance drew the attention of all Liberal Britain, and a good
share of its representative men in person. The immense hall was
packed. The seats had been removed from the floor to make room for a
greater throng than could otherwise gather. So close was the pressure
that it was impossible to move one's arms, even to raise them. The
audience worked itself, or rather was worked, to a high pitch of
enthusiasm by a skilful organist who played upon them with patriotic
songs and Scottish, Welsh, and English ballads. When the kettle was
boiling merrily over this fire, and the lid rattling up and down, an
old, grey head, world-famous, was seen rising through the
platform-crowd, and the alert and venerable figure which carried it
moved quickly to the front against a whirlwind of cheers. The roar was
like that of a gale-driven sea beating against cliffs. It did not
cease until its idol had raised his hand for silence. When it had
ceased he sat down, and the chairman called the meeting to order.
A few minutes later, the chairman called upon Mr. Gladstone to speak.
The G.O.M. rose to another outburst of welcome, and, upon obtaining
silence, said: "Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen." And then the
storm of cheering broke anew. It continued for a quarter of an hour,
gaining constantly in force and volume. It was taken up in the crowded
streets. It was a tempest of sound, within, without. The five words
had started an avalanche! When had those five words, or any five,
unloosed {150} such clamour? The voice that uttered them had boomed
through the great hall like the discharges of big guns. The deep,
strong tones, the alertness of motion, the flash of the eagle eyes,
said to the assemblage more than the words. Eighty years? Yes, but
eighty years young, with health, vigour, fighting power undiminished.
The audience could not restrain its joy. Roar upon roar succeeded,
wave upon wave of emotion rolled over the crowd; it was a demonstration
of thanksgiving, of congratulation, of delight. I have never seen or
heard its equal in all the pageants, conventions, progresses,
demonstrations of popular enthusiasm that I have witnessed in many
parts of the world. Above them all this stands alone, unique in
fervour and significance.
"Standing as I do on the verge of four score years"--was the note to
which the audience again responded. The shouting was a personal
tribute, not merely a political one. I cannot remember what the G.O.M.
said in his speech, but I remember that there was scarcely anything of
a specific character concerning political measures or men. Gladstone
was keeping his powder dry. He dealt in generalities. He was always
at his best when so dealing. He lifted his themes to an exalted pitch
and did not wreck himself on details.
It was only his greyness that acknowledged age. His voice was as deep
and rich as ever it had been, his bearing as alert, his movements as
graceful. He seemed to say, "It is impossible to grow old, but, as I
cannot live forever, let us get on with the work in {151} hand." His
capacity for believing that the moon is made of green cheese, and, what
was more important, of making others believe it, was boundless. What
was the spell he cast upon his hearers? Even when he was in
Opposition, perhaps because of that, for he was best then, the House of
Commons would be crowded when he spoke. I have seen him at such a time
switch on his green-cheese oratory and hold the House for an hour or
two, tense, expectant, submissive under the spell. When he finished,
great cheering would rise from both sides,--from his followers because
they were charmed, or overwhelmed, and, being of his party, believed in
the green-cheese theory and were ready to eat the cheese; from his
opponents because they too were charmed, or all but overwhelmed, and
for the moment forgot that fealty to their own party should have left
the other side of the House to do the cheering. If a vote could have
been taken when Gladstone ended his speech, the House would have been
unanimous for cheese. But parliamentary procedure permits, or compels,
a leading opponent to reply, and the reply broke the spell and recalled
several hundred Britons to their partisan duties.
It was always amusing to watch Gladstone's face when he came before an
enthusiastic audience either in the outer world or within the House of
Commons. As the cheers of welcome increased, he would look about him
in a puzzled way, as if he were wondering what caused the
demonstration, as if he were asking himself, "What have I done to be
dragged from obscurity?" It has often been said that "he could {152}
have been a great actor." But he was one. It has also been said that
he would have been a great archbishop. But archbishops in his time led
such tame lives that Mr. Gladstone would have been discontented with
the episcopal lot. It is easy, though, to imagine him cursing
magnificently with bell, book, and candle. He was a great performer.
His detachments were even more remarkable than the attachments of other
men. No subject absorbed him save when he was working on it. That is
another way of saying that his power of concentration was absolutely
under control at all times. He would turn from the subject which he
had dropped for the day to another subject which he would work at for
half an hour, or six weeks, or six years, or a lifetime, and give all
his energies to the task in hand, and yet be ready to concentrate at a
minute's notice on whatever might turn up. They say he had no sense of
humour. Perhaps they mean that he was not witty. Perhaps he did n't
appreciate jokes. It is not always easy to know what "they" mean by a
sense of humour. I have known Gladstone to keep the House of Commons
laughing for a quarter of an hour by sheer exercise of the comic
spirit, although it must be said that he did not often exercise this.
But when he did it, there was purpose in it. The tragedy, that is to
say, the serious business of the hour, was to follow. Seeing Gladstone
in his great moments was like seeing Edwin Booth as Richelieu; you had
similar thrills, smiles, and satisfaction.
Very few persons outside his family knew him really well, no matter how
long they might have {153} been associated with him in public work.
All the men who knew him that I knew agreed in one thing, however much
they disagreed in others,--he had the spirit and the manner of command.
A public gathering, a cabinet council, a dinner party were equally his.
It will be remembered that he addressed Queen Victoria as if she were a
public meeting, and she did n't like it. But that illustrates what I
mean when saying that he was not interested in persons but in causes,
or subjects; he was not interested in a dinner party but in what he had
to tell it. The other guests--his hosts, too--might have been
disembodied spirits, but it was he who would "communicate" with them,
not they with him. He would detach himself from them as easily as from
politics.
He made his own "atmosphere", and it was often far removed from
politics. Thus, at the approach of the political crisis of 1886, just
before the House was to vote on his first Home Rule Bill, he was
staying with his wife at Lord Aberdeen's house at Dollis Hill. A
friend of mine, not a political personage, was of the house party, and
he told me how the G.O.M. would drive out from town alone, after dark,
in an open carriage, and forget the fate of governments, especially his
own, although that fate was to be decided within a few hours.
Entering the drawing-room, he said, "While driving out here from the
House last evening I counted twenty-eight omnibuses going in one
direction. To-day being Saturday, I thought the number would be larger
than that, and I estimated thirty-five. I {154} counted thirty-six."
And then he discoursed on the increasing business of passenger
transportation in the metropolis. Not a word about politics.
On the following afternoon (Sunday) the members of the Cabinet and
other prominent partisans went out to Dollis Hill for an informal
consultation with the Prime Minister. They were uneasy in their minds.
The vote would be taken next day, and they might find themselves out of
office,--as indeed they did for the six years following. The afternoon
being fine, they walked in the garden and discussed the perils of the
situation, and waited for Mr. Gladstone to summon them, or to come and
join them. They continued to walk and wait. But Mr. Gladstone did not
appear, nor did he summon any one. But the Secretary for Ireland
thought that he might be engaged with the Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, and the Home Secretary thought that he might be with the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Still Gladstone did not send word, and
the political mountains waited for Mahomet. Concluding that the old
gentleman was fatigued and had gone to his room for a nap, they began
to retreat homeward. They left singly, and by twos and threes, after
some hours of vain waiting. By and by the Gladstones appeared and told
their host that they had had "a charming afternoon." They had strolled
to the garden gate and had stopped to look at the view. The country
road enticed them. They came to a pretty church, and as service was
about to begin, they entered and remained for the benediction. They
had returned slowly, but highly edified. The next day Gladstone {155}
met his foes and was cast into the cold shades of opposition.
Doubtless he had expected this, but, doubtless, he had not expected to
be cast so deep,--six years' deep.
I remember what a former ally of his had said to me just before the
Manchester Conference: "No, I am not going to Manchester. I don't
agree with Gladstone's Irish policy, but I know that if I were to go to
Manchester I would shout with the rest." Those were days when the
world had sunk far into the morasses of parliamentary talk. All things
were to be settled by talking and voting and pious intentions. A
complacent faith in Democracy was to save the world, if, indeed, the
world were not already saved by it. In English-speaking countries it
had become little short of dishonourable to praise naval and military
valour; and reliance upon force as the defence of a nation was thought
to be unchristian. Democracy was to be shielded by its own virtue. We
have heard that since the Great War, too. It is the old story of an
old dream. Envy, hatred, and malice had departed from the world.
There would be no more cause for great wars. The era of perpetual
peace was about to dawn. Nations were to put their trust in a
parliamentary God, a Deity of Congresses. When every one voted, there
would be a new heaven on a new earth. The credulous invented a new
kind of treason of which any one was accused when he expressed,
publicly, doubts of the sanity of a democracy which could not see that
the voter unprepared to defend his "sacred vote" by arms was risking
his privilege, his goods, his kith and {156} kin, was imperilling his
right to live as a freeman. He had put his faith in words. Mr.
Gladstone was the nineteenth century's greatest conjuror with words.
But he was incapable of demanding, as Woodrow Wilson did, that a nation
should be "neutral in thought", while freedom, the very right to think,
was being beaten down. Gladstone would not have blundered like that,
you say. But it was not a blunder, it was a crime.
{157}