CIVIL STRIFES
“It gives me a serious concern to see such a Spirit of
Dissention in the Country; not only as it destroys Virtue and
Common Sense, and renders us in a manner Barbarians towards one
another, but as it perpetuates our Animosities, widens our
Breaches, and transmits our present Passions and Prejudices to
our Posterity. For my own Part, I am sometimes afraid that I
discover the Seeds of a Civil War in these our Divisions; and
therefore cannot but bewail as in their first Principles the
Miseries and Calamities of our Children.”—ADDISON in the
_Spectator_, July 25th, 1711.
DURING his foreign tour in 1908 Mr. Lloyd George always carried with him
a small pocketbook, in which he jotted down ideas and suggestions as
they came to him in thought or talk. These were jottings for that great
Budget of which he already perceived the necessity.
For when he took over the Treasury in April 1908, he found British
finance at the parting of the ways. Old Age Pensions had just been
promised; a Bill was already drafted on non-tributory lines. He quite
approved. But no provision had been made in the Budget of 1908 to pay
for this great social boon.[57]
Here was a great opportunity for the Tariff Reform cause, at that time
still languishing from the staggering blow of 1906. It was up to Free
Trade to show that it could meet the coming deficit.
We all know how Mr. Lloyd George faced that crisis at the Exchequer—by
what audacious drafts on the great reserves of our national wealth—by
what determined levies on the luxuries of all classes. The Budget of
1909 is still one of the landmarks of English history. Its rejection by
the Lords and its final triumph in the first General Election of 1910
are thrice told tales.
How did Mr. Lloyd George bear himself through the stress of these
tremendous evils?
He did not spare himself. He bore the burden of the midnight sitting as
well as of the day labour. He revolutionised the habits of the Treasury.
He had now left his private house and come to live in Downing Street.
His life was practically lived in public. It was at about this time that
he instituted his famous habit of breakfast parties at which the affairs
of the nation were discussed. Strenuous gatherings were these, opening
with merry chaff, but soon passing to earnest debate and discussion over
coffee and bacon—debates always human and thrilling, enlivened by the
swift jest and epigram of the host, always one of the best of talkers.
But he never allowed these talks to drift into triviality. He always
directed them to moulding and shaping policy. He compelled his guests to
face vital decisions.
Great gatherings! Where the best of the nation met, not with idle gossip
or silly scandal, but with high converse and swift, eager discourse,
ever touched with hope and light!
He could not have lived this strenuous life without some relaxation. He
found it, like so many other busy moderns, in golf. It was shortly after
the opening of the twentieth century that he took to this game, and
found in it his physical salvation. Up to 1900 he had never been robust.
Often he had long periods of ill-health. But the steady tramps round
those wonderful courses that now surround London made a great change.
Golf has given him a tough physique, equal to resisting great strains.
Those of us who, during 1909, worked in the “Budget League” to help
forward this great cause saw something of the energy and resourcefulness
which went to achieve the hardly won victory of the first 1910 General
Election.
One of our methods was to cover England with posters. I remember one
glorious poster of an ermined and coroneted duke. We were very proud of
it. But it passed through great troubles. Mr. Winston Churchill
protested against it because it was too much like his cousin, the Duke
of Marlborough. So we changed the face and darkened the colouring. The
result was that the new duke came out precisely like our splendid and
energetic chief, Sir Henry Norman, M.P.!
All this poster business was very expensive. We spent till we were
exhausted; we swamped the Budget Protest League in paste. But, however
much money we spent, we got more money. We only had to send across to
Downing Street. Mr. Lloyd George seemed to have the key to the treasures
of Golconda. He had the amazing gift of being able to persuade
millionaires to subscribe in order to be taxed.
The Liberal Cabinet, as a whole, refused to believe that the Lords would
throw out the Budget; and it was steadily set about through the summer
of 1909 that Mr. Balfour and Lord Lansdowne were in favour of passing
it. But Mr. Lloyd George persisted in believing the contrary. “They will
throw it out all right!” he would always say cheerfully enough; and the
only shadow that would pass over his face would come when some one would
half convince him to the contrary. I believe that up to September there
was some real doubt. But then the Tariff Reform League came into the
fight; the first flush of the Budget popularity seemed to pass; our
street-corner orators were met by rivals—often hired Socialists; and
the “Die-hards” grew more powerful. The Lords determined to face the
great risk. They threw out the Budget in November; Mr. Asquith was
forced to dissolve; and in January 1910 came the General Election.
The Lords nearly won. The Liberals emerged with a diminished majority of
124 as compared with the 1906 majority of 354, meaning a loss of 115
seats, and a turn-over of 230 votes.
For a moment this fall in the majority shook the constancy even of that
strong Cabinet. There was talk of resignation. Even Mr. Lloyd George was
bitten for a moment by the idea of substituting House of Lords Reform
for the policy of the Parliament Bill.
In a few weeks they steadied. They found that if they were disappointed,
the other side were more so. The Lords had staked all; the Tariff
Reformers had assured a win. The Opposition was as much “down” as the
Government.
It was fated that a tragic event should give sudden pause to this
rending strife. Just when the first shadow of civil war was falling
across the nation, on May 6th, 1910, King Edward died. The presence of
death brought a calmer mood; men saw realities for a moment, and shrank
from the edge of the abyss. They were like travellers from whose path
the mist suddenly clears, and lo! they find themselves stumbling along
the edge of a precipice.
Mr. Lloyd George made a suggestion to the new King which was taken up
and resulted in the remarkable conference of party leaders which lasted
from June to November 1910. It was a pause of halcyon calm in the midst
of storm.
Mr. Lloyd George was a member of that conference; he was always among
those who took a sanguine view of its prospects; and he has always
infinitely regretted its failure. He took a long view. He foresaw the
civil perils that lay ahead of the country. He was ready to come to a
large and comprehensive settlement. He knew that a settlement could not
mean a victory for either side. He was ready to accept that view; and
there were those on the other side—especially one, Mr. Arthur
Balfour—who were large enough to accept it also.
But neither of the great parties, organised for combat and victory,
could be brought to the height of so great a treaty. The secrecy of the
conference had been perhaps all too faithfully observed. There had been
no “spade-work” in preparing the parties for a self-denying ordinance so
sweeping. The “Snakes” they say, “committed suicide to save themselves
from slaughter.” But in this case both parties still hoped for life and
victory.
So, in November 1910, the conflict was resumed; and in December there
took place the second General Election—this time, by agreement between
the Prime Minister and the King, a test Election on the Veto Bill. The
decision of January was practically repeated; and Mr. Lloyd George,
again leaving his electioneering chances in Carnarvonshire to his local
friends, was returned by a second sweeping majority.[58]
The second Election proved too much even for the strength of Mr. Lloyd
George. After speaking up in Scotland with a strong fever actually on
him, he was struck with a touch of serious throat trouble. His voice was
threatened. After many efforts to go on, he finally accepted the verdict
of seclusion, and spent a prolonged rest in a spacious, restful mansion
behind the Sussex downs, lent to him by Mr. (afterwards Sir Arthur)
Markham. He grew to a genuine love of this peaceful life; and when he
returned to the turmoil, it was with a certain reluctance.
Driven back on reading as his sole diversion, he rambled widely through
literature and read a great deal of history.
But his chief occupation during these months was the preparation of the
famous Insurance Bill of 1911.
All who saw much of Mr. Lloyd George at that time knew that that measure
was inspired by nothing less than a profound compassion for the sick and
the suffering—a passion sobered by reflection, but still burning with
an intense fire behind all his cool and calculated moves.
He was moved by a spirit best expressed in Blake’s golden verse:
“I will not cease from mental strife,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”
Before drafting the Bill he took a prolonged and careful survey of the
condition of the people: in Mr. Charles Booth’s books, in the Poor Law
Commission Reports, and from every possible source of the written and
spoken word. He was appalled; and he expected every one else to be
appalled. Carried forward by his own emotion, he did not perhaps realise
the power of familiarity, the force of usage, the strength of vested
interest.
He was greatly surprised and disappointed by the attitude of the
doctors. He had always held the medical profession in the highest
admiration[59]; and perhaps he expected more from them than any
organised profession could supply. He had been so absorbed by
conferences with the Friendly Societies that he perhaps did not
sufficiently realise the importance of constant consultations with the
doctors in the preparation of his schemes.
He was also sincerely surprised at the attitude of the well-to-do
classes. He had imagined that the enforcement of contributions would
disarm their hostility. As it was, he lost on both sides; though he
never regretted his decision in favour of contributions. With all his
sympathy—perhaps because of it—he entertained a great horror of a
pauperised working-class.
Here, too, he had to face a revolt of the timid within his own party.
There arose in the autumn of 1911 the same cry for
“postponement”—always the first step to abandonment. He resisted it
steadily; pushed forward his Bill, this time with the help of the
strongest closures; and in December the House of Lords, perhaps
chastened by events, allowed the Insurance Act to pass into law.
So ended the first stage of that great scheme of social reform with
which he designed to change the face of England. Insurance against
sickness and kindred ills was combined with an Act for insurance against
unemployment; and for the first time in our history labour was backed by
security.
Then, in 1912, amid the distractions of the growing crisis in Ireland,
Mr. Lloyd George proceeded to approach the greatest of all fastnesses of
privilege—the English Land Laws. Here was a more formidable enterprise
than any he had yet undertaken. He had to carry out his own
inquiries—for it had been proved by experience that the tenants of
English land were in too precarious a position to venture an open
disclosure of their wrongs to an open Commission. He appointed an able
Land Committee, of which Mr.(now Sir) Arthur Acland became the Chairman.
That Committee carried out its work with great courage and ability, and
published two books which are still classical summaries of the main
features of our land system, stated with fairness and thoroughness.[60]
In a series of great speeches, Mr. Lloyd George in 1912 and 1913
announced his intention of making legislative proposals and carrying out
the conclusions of this Committee.
But, in the meantime, across this great endeavour, there had arisen a
hue and cry which had given new hope to the friends of the existing
order. The great controversy of the Marconi shares seems now very far
away. The whole case fabricated against Mr. Lloyd George in those days
seem very ridiculous now. The perspective has changed very much since
one of the great English political parties could deliberately set out to
ruin a political opponent on account of one act of carelessness.[61]
But it does not do to throw stones. Party strife is an ugly business at
best; and he would be a bold man who should say that, in similar
circumstances the Liberal Party would have shown a spirit very much
better. In this matter of rushing readily to false accusations we have
all sinned pretty deeply in our public life. Suspicion is the peculiar
vice of democracies; and he would be bold who should say that the real
scandal of the Marconi affair—the scandal of accusation so poisoned and
exaggerated as to amount to calumny adopted as a policy and a
cause—will not occur again.
Mr. Lloyd George suffered very much through this affair. For the moment
it achieved its object of holding up his whole activities in furthering
his Land Campaign. But at last the fever of the assault died away, and
men began to return to the light of common reason, and to see the thing
in its real proportions. Then there succeeded in the public mind a fit
of remorse which worked in Mr. Lloyd George’s favour; and both in London
and in Wales he was banqueted and acclaimed. For, if the victims survive
the rigours of the “ordeal by torture,” then the populace applauds.
From another campaign of the same sort at an earlier date (1908) Mr.
Lloyd George had emerged victorious in the Courts with damages of
£1,000, which enabled him to adorn his native village of Llanystumdwy
with a very handsome Institute, where all his fellow villagers can now
read the newspapers and enjoy the advantages of a well-chosen library.
So out of evil sometimes good proceeds.
In 1914 Mr. Lloyd George resumed the preparations for his Land Bills. It
was his intention to introduce them into the House of Commons during the
Session of this year, thus placing them before the country with a view
of the General Election already looming ahead.
But across all these designs there came, in June and July 1914, a flood
of reverberating events—the Ulster crisis, the officers’ revolt, the
gun-running, first of Larne and then of Dublin. Like other Ministers,
Mr. Lloyd George was absorbed in a situation which threatened instant
civil war.
Then once more, across the threat of civil war, came the even greater
menace of an even vaster peril—world-war.
In the tremendous crisis that followed Mr. Lloyd George took the middle
course. He was not for war against Germany at all costs. On Saturday,
August 2nd, he was inclined to vote for peace; and if, necessary, to
resign for peace.
On that day—as he has told the world—the biggest financiers in the
City, including the Governor of the Bank of England, came to him, as
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and urged that peace should be preserved,
and that we should stand aside from the strifes of Europe. On Monday it
was known that Germany had invaded Belgium. At once all these men swung
over to the side of war.
Mr. Lloyd George himself, separately and independently, followed the
same course. Eager as he had been in the past for peace, he had no
hesitation from the moment that Germany invaded Belgium.
We had pledged our word; and we must keep it.
On Monday he was for war.
He had definitely chosen his part.
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[57] Old Age Pensions were then estimated to cost £9,000,000, but were
found to cost £13,000,000 (now (1920) £28,000,000). There was also the
new Dreadnoughts, and so forth. The deficit for 1909 thus amounted to
£16,000,000 even in prospect.
[58] His majorities in the Carnarvon Boroughs have been rising on the
whole steadily since the first election in 1890. In 1892 he defeated Sir
John Puleston by 196, as against 18 in 1890. In 1895 he again defeated
Mr. Nanney by 194. In 1900 he defeated Colonel Platt by 296. In 1906 he
won by 1,224; January 1910 by 1,078; in December by 1,208.
[59] There is a remarkable and eloquent passage on the doctor’s work in
the Limehouse speech.
[60] _The Land. The Report of the Land Inquiry Committee_, Vol. I.
Rural, and Vol. II, Urban. (Hodder & Stoughton, 1913.)
[61] It is a strange fact that nothing worse was ever distinctly charged
against him by his worst foes, although much was insinuated.