LORD NORTHCLIFFE
_" ... We cannot say that they have a great nature, or strong, or
weak, or light; it is a swift and imperious imagination which
reigns with sovereign power over all their beings, which subjugates
their genius, and which prescribes for them in turn those fine
actions and those faults, those heights and those littlenesses,
those flights of enthusiasm and those fits of disgust, which we are
wrong in charging either with hypocrisy or
madness."_--VAUVENARGUES.
A great surgeon tells me he has no doubt that Carlyle suffered all his
life from a duodenal ulcer. "One may speculate," he says, "on the
difference there would have been in his writings if he had undergone the
operation which to-day is quite common."
This remark occurs to me when I think about Lord Northcliffe.
There is something wrong with his health. For a season he is almost
boyish in high spirits, not only a charming and a most considerate host,
but a spirit animated by the kindliest, broadest, and cheerfullest
sympathies. Then comes a period of darkness. He seems to imagine that he
may go blind, declares that he cannot eat this and that, shuts himself
up from his friends, and feels the whole burden of the world pressing on
his soul.
It is impossible to judge him as one would judge a perfectly healthy
man.
The most conspicuous thing in his character is its transilience. One is
aware in him of an anacoluthic quality, as if his mind suddenly stopped
leaping in one direction to begin jumping in a quite contrary direction.
It cannot be said that his mind _works_ in any direction. It is not a
trained mind. It does not know how to think and cannot support the
burden of trying to think. It springs at ideas and goes off with them in
haste too great for reflection. He drops these ideas when he sees an
excuse for another leap. Sequence to Lord Northcliffe is a synonym for
monotony. He has no _esprit de suite_. But he has leaps of real genius.
An admirable title for his biography would be, "The Fits and Starts of a
Discontinuous Soul." There is something of St. Vitus in his psychology.
You might call him the Spring-Heeled Jack of Journalism.
A story told of one of his journalists illustrates the difficulty of
dealing with so uncertain a person. Lord Northcliffe invited this
journalist, let us call him Mr. H., to luncheon. They approached the
lift of Carmelite House, and Lord Northcliffe drew back to let his guest
enter before him--he has excellent manners and, when he is a host, is
scrupulously polite to the least of people in his employment. Mr. H.
approached the lift, and raising his hat and making a profound bow to
the boy in charge of it, passed in before Lord Northcliffe. Nothing was
said during the descent. On leaving the lift Mr. H. again raised his
hat and bowed low to the boy. When they were out of earshot Lord
Northcliffe remonstrated with him on his behaviour. "You shouldn't
joke," he said, "with these boys, it makes discipline difficult."
"Joke!" exclaimed Mr. H., "good heavens, I wasn't joking; how do I know
that to-morrow he will not be the editor of the _Daily Mail_?"
This story has a real importance. It emphasizes a remarkable
characteristic of Lord Northcliffe's variability. It emphasizes the
romantic quality of his mind. Nothing would please him more than to
discover in one of his office boys an editor for _The Times_. His own
life has given him almost a novelette's passion for romance. He lives in
that atmosphere. Few men I have known are so free from snobbishness or
so indifferent to the petty conventions of society. The dull life of the
world is hateful to him. He would make not only the journalism of the
suburbs sensational, he would make the history of mankind a fairy-story.
It is difficult to understand his power in the world. He is not the
great organizer that people suppose; all the organization of his
business has been done by Lord Rothermere, a very able man of business;
nor is he the inspirational genius one is so often asked to believe. Mr.
Kennedy Jones is largely responsible for the journalistic fortunes of
Lord Northcliffe.
I am disposed to think that it is the romantic quality of his mind which
is the source of his power. All the men about him are unimaginative
realists. He is the artist in command of the commercial mind, the poet
flogging dull words into a kind of wild music. Mr. Kennedy Jones could
have started any of his papers, but he could never have imparted to them
that living spirit of the unexpected which has kept them so effectually
from dulness. Carmelite House could give the news of the world without
Lord Northcliffe's help, but without his passion for the twists and
turns of the fairy-story it could never have presented that news so that
it catches the attention of all classes.
I have never been conscious of greatness in Lord Northcliffe, but I have
never failed to feel in his mind something unusual and remarkable. He is
not an impressive person, but he is certainly an interesting person. One
feels that he has preserved by some magic of temperament, not to be
analyzed by the most skilful of psychologists, the spirit of boyhood.
You may notice this spirit quite visibly in his face. The years leave
few marks on his handsome countenance. He loves to frown and depress his
lips before the camera, for, like a child, he loves to play at being
somebody else, and somebody else with him is Napoleon--I am sure that he
chose the title of Northcliffe so that he might sign his notes with the
initial N--but when he is walking in a garden, dressed in white
flannels, and looking as if he had just come from a Turkish bath, he has
all the appearance of a youth. It is a tragedy that a smile so agreeable
should give way at times to a frown as black as midnight; that the
freshness of his complexion should yield to an almost jaundiced yellow;
and that the fun and frolic of the spirit should flee away so suddenly
and for such long periods before the witch of melancholy.
Of his part in the history of the world no historian will be able to
speak with unqualified approval. His political purpose from beginning to
end, I am entirely convinced, has been to serve what he conceives to be
the highest interests of his country. I regard him in the matter of
intention as one of the most honourable and courageous men of the day.
But he is reckless in the means he employs to achieve his ends. I should
say he has no moral scruples in a fight, none at all; I doubt very much
if he ever asks himself if anything is right or wrong. I should say that
he has only one question to ask of fate before he strips for a fight--is
this thing going to be Success or Failure?
In many matters of great importance he has been right, so right that we
are apt to forget the number of times he has been wrong. Whether he may
not be charged in some measure at least with the guilt of the war,
whether he is not responsible for the great bitterness of international
feelings which characterized Europe during the last twenty years, is a
question that must be left to the historian. But it is already apparent
that for want of balance and a moral continuity in his direction of
policy Lord Northcliffe has done nothing to elevate the public mind and
much to degrade it. He has jumped from sensation to sensation. The
opportunity for a fight has pleased him more than the object of the
fight has inspired him. He has never seen in the great body of English
public opinion a spirit to be patiently and orderly educated towards
noble ideals, but rather a herd to be stampeded of a sudden in the
direction which he himself has as suddenly conceived to be the direction
of success.
The true measure of his shortcomings may be best taken by seeing how a
man exercising such enormous power, power repeated day by day, and
almost at every hour of the day, might have prepared the way for
disarmament and peace, might have modified the character of modern
civilization, might have made ostentation look like a crime, might have
brought capital and labour into a sensible partnership, and might have
given to the moral ideals of the noblest sons of men if not an
intellectual impulse at least a convincing advertisement.
The moral and intellectual condition of the world, a position from which
only a great spiritual palingenesis can deliver civilization, is a
charge on the sheet which Lord Northcliffe will have to answer at the
seat of judgment. He has received the price of that condition in the
multitudinous pence of the people; consciously or unconsciously he has
traded on their ignorance, ministered to their vulgarities, and inflamed
the lowest and most corrupting of their passions: if they had had
another guide his purse would be empty.
All the same, it is the greatest mistake for his enemies to declare
that he is nothing better than a cynical egoist trading on the enormous
ignorance of the English middle-classes. He is a boy, full of adventure,
full of romance, and full of whims, seeing life as the finest fairy-tale
in the world, and enjoying every incident that comes his way, whether it
be the bitterest and most cruel of fights or the opportunity for doing
someone a romantic kindness.
You may see the boyishness of his nature in the devotion with which he
threw himself first into bicycling, then into motoring, and then into
flying. He loves machinery. He loves every game which involves physical
risk and makes severe demands on courage. His love of England is not his
love of her merchants and workmen, but his love of her masculine youth.
He has been generosity itself to his brothers, with all of whom he does
not, unfortunately, get on as well as one could wish. The most beautiful
thing in his life is the love he cherishes for his mother, and nothing
delights him so much as taking away her breath by acts of astonishing
devotion. A man so generous and so boyish may make grave mistakes, but
he cannot be a deliberately bad man.
MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR
THE RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
Born in Scotland 1848; s. of Jas. M. Balfour and Lady Blanche
Cecil; nephew of the late Marquis of Salisbury and therefore 1st
cousin to the present Marquis, Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Hugh
Cecil. Educ.: Eton and Trinity Coll., Cambridge; LL.D. Edinburgh,
St. Andrews, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool,
Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Columbia (New York); D.C.L. Oxford.
M.P. for Hertford, 1874-85; Private Sec'y to his uncle, the late
Marquis of Salisbury, 1878-80; served on Mission to Berlin with
Salisbury and Beaconsfield, 1878; Privy Councillor, 1885; President
of Local Government Board, 1885-86; Sec'y for Scotland, 1886-87;
Lord Rector, St. Andrews, 1886; Sec'y for Ireland, 1887-91; Lord
Rector, Glasgow, 1890; Chancellor of Edinburgh since 1891; First
Lord of Treasury, 1891-92; President British Association, 1904;
Prime Minister, 1902-1905; Leader of the Commons, 1895-1906; 1st
Lord of the Admiralty 1915-16; Head of British Mission to America,
1917; Author of a series of philosophical and economic works.
[Illustration: RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR]