MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR
_"A sceptre once put into the hand, the grip is instinctive; and he
who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security and
not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft."_--J.R. LOWELL.
In one of the _Tales_ Crabbe introduces to us a young lady, Arabella by
name, who read Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke and was such a prodigy
of learning that she became the wonder of the fair town in which, as he
tells us, she shone like a polished brilliant. From that town she
reaped, and to that town she gave, renown:
And strangers coming, all were taught t'admire
The learned Lady, and the lofty Spire.
One feels that in Mr. Balfour there is something of both the learned
Lady and the lofty Spire. He is at once spinsterish and architectural. I
mean that he is a very beautiful object to look at, and at the same time
a frustrated and perverse nature. Moreover his learning partakes of a
drawing-room character, while his loftiness dwindles away to a point
which affords no foothold for the sons of man. One may look up to him
now and again, but a constant regard would be rewarded by nothing more
serviceable to the admirer than a stiff neck. He points upward indeed,
but to follow his direction is to discover only the void of etheric
vacancy. Like his learning, which may astonish the simple, but which
hardly illuminates the student, his virtues leave one cold. Someone who
knows him well said to me once, "He is no Sir Galahad. Week-ending and
London society have deteriorated his fibre."
He began life well, but he has slackness in his blood and no vital
enthusiasm in his heart. His career has been a descent. He has taken
things--ethically and industrially--easily, too easily.
It is a pity that Nature forgot to bestow upon him those domestic
motions of the heart which humanize the mind and beautify character, for
in many ways he was fitted to play a great part in affairs of State and
with real emotion in his nature would have made an ideal leader of the
nation during the struggle with Germany. He is a conspicuous example of
the value of sensibility, for lacking this one quality he has entirely
failed to reach the greatness to which his many gifts entitled him.
Few men can be so charming: no man can be more impressive. His handsome
appearance, his genial manner, his distinguished voice, his eagerness
and playfulness in conversation, all contribute to an impression of
personality hardly equalled at the present time. He might easily pass
for the perfect ideal of the gentleman. In a certain set of society he
remains to this day a veritable prince of men. And his tastes are pure,
and his life is wholesome.
A lady of my acquaintance was once praising to its mother a robust and
handsome infant who could boast a near relationship with Mr. Arthur
Balfour. "Yes," said the mother, with criticism in her eyes and voice,
"I think he is a nice child, but we rather fear he lacks the Balfourian
manner." Even in childhood!
This Balfourian manner, as I understand it, has its roots in an attitude
of mind--an attitude of convinced superiority which insists in the first
place on complete detachment from the enthusiasms of the human race, and
in the second place on keeping the vulgar world at arm's length.
It is an attitude of mind which a critic or a cynic might be justified
in assuming, for it is the attitude of one who desires rather to observe
the world than to shoulder any of its burdens; but it is a posture of
exceeding danger to anyone who lacks tenderness or sympathy, whatever
his purpose or office may be, for it tends to breed the most dangerous
of all intellectual vices, that spirit of self-satisfaction which
Dostoievsky declares to be the infallible mark of an inferior mind.
To Mr. Arthur Balfour this studied attitude of aloofness has been fatal,
both to his character and to his career. He has said nothing, written
nothing, done nothing, which lives in the heart of his countrymen. To
look back upon his record is to see a desert, and a desert with no altar
and with no monument, without even one tomb at which a friend might
weep. One does not say of him, "He nearly succeeded there," or "What a
tragedy that he turned from this to take up that"; one does not feel for
him at any point in his career as one feels for Mr. George Wyndham or
even for Lord Randolph Churchill; from its outset until now that career
stretches before our eyes in a flat and uneventful plain of successful
but inglorious and ineffective self-seeking.
There is one signal characteristic of the Balfourian manner which is
worthy of remark. It is an assumption in general company of a most
urbane, nay, even a most cordial spirit. I have heard many people
declare at a public reception that he is the most gracious of men, and
seen many more retire from shaking his hand with a flush of pride on
their faces as though Royalty had stooped to inquire after the measles
of their youngest child. Such is ever the effect upon vulgar minds of
geniality in superiors: they love to be stooped to from the heights.
But this heartiness of manner is of the moment only, and for everybody;
it manifests itself more personally in the circle of his intimates and
is irresistible in week-end parties; but it disappears when Mr. Balfour
retires into the shell of his private life and there deals with
individuals, particularly with dependents. It has no more to do with his
spirit than his tail-coat and his white tie. Its remarkable impression
comes from its unexpectedness; its effect is the shock of surprise. In
public he is ready to shake the whole world by the hand, almost to pat
it on the shoulder; but in private he is careful to see that the world
does not enter even the remotest of his lodge gates.
"The truth about Arthur Balfour," said George Wyndham, "is this: he
knows there's been one ice-age, and he thinks there's going to be
another."
Little as the general public may suspect it, the charming, gracious, and
cultured Mr. Balfour is the most egotistical of men, and a man who would
make almost any sacrifice to remain in office. It costs him nothing to
serve under Mr. Lloyd George; it would have cost him almost his life to
be out of office during a period so exciting as that of the Great War.
He loves office more than anything this world can offer; neither in
philosophy nor music, literature nor science, has he ever been able to
find rest for his soul. It is profoundly instructive that a man with a
real talent for the noblest of those pursuits which make solitude
desirable and retirement an opportunity should be so restless and
dissatisfied, even in old age, outside the doors of public life.
The most serious effect upon his character of this central selfishness
may be seen in his treatment of George Wyndham. Mr. Balfour has had only
one friend in his parliamentary life, Alfred Lyttelton, but George
Wyndham came nearer to his affections than any other man in the Unionist
Party, and was at one time Mr. Balfour's devoted admirer. Nevertheless,
in the hour of his tragedy, in the hour which broke his heart and
destroyed his career, Mr. Balfour, who should have championed him
against the wolves of the Party, and might, I verily believe, have saved
both him and Ireland, turned away his face and rendered homage to
political opportunism. Wyndham's grave and the present condition of
Ireland stand as sorrowful reminders of that unworthy act.
Wyndham was by no means a first-rate politician, but he was a sincere
man, something too of a genius, and I think there was genuine
inspiration in his method of solving the Irish question.
This incident reveals in Mr. Balfour a capacity for meanness which
rather darkens his good qualities. It prevents one from believing that
his conduct has always been guided by noble and disinterested motives.
The historian might have said that although he mistook astuteness and
adroitness in parliamentary debate for statesmanship, and although he
accomplished nothing for the good of his country, he yet lent a certain
dignity and nobleness to public life at a time when it was besieged by
new forces in democracy having no reverence for tradition and little
respect for good manners; but when the full truth of the Wyndham
incident is related it will be difficult for the historian to avoid a
somewhat harsh judgment on Mr. Balfour's character.
Nor does the Wyndham incident stand alone. His treatment of Mr. Ritchie
and Lord George Hamilton was very bad. Then there was the case of Joseph
Chamberlain, who had good reason never to forgive him. Some day Mr.
Asquith (or will it be Mrs. Asquith) may tell the story of dealings with
Mr. Balfour which were not of a handsome character. The more these
things are revealed the worse I think it will be for Mr. Balfour's
character.
But such is the personal effect of the man that even those whom he has
treated badly never bring any public charge against him. With the
exception of Mr. Asquith, and Joseph Chamberlain, all forgave him, and
even sought to find excuses for his inexplicable lapse. But I am
inclined to think that this indicates weakness on the part of the victim
rather than grace on the part of the victimizer.
There are other ways in which his lack of sensibility manifests itself
in an unpleasant fashion. He is so self-absorbed that he appears to be
wholly unaware of those who minister to his comfort. Of his servants he
never knows the least detail, not even their names, and even a devoted
secretary who has served him faithfully for many years may find himself
treated almost as a stranger in a moment of need. I fear it must be said
that in financial matters Mr. Balfour is as close-fisted as any miser,
although I believe that this meanness has its rise, not so much in
avariciousness as in a total incapacity to realize the importance of
money to other people.
It has been said that the whole history of philosophical thought is an
attempt to separate the object and the subject. Mr. Balfour appears to
have made this separation complete. For him there is no object. His mind
has embraced his subjective self, and has not merely refused the
fruitless effort of attempting to stand outside its functions in order
to perceive its own perceptions, but, abandoning the unperceived
perceptions and the inactive activities of ultimate reality, it has
canonized its own functions and deified its own subjective universe. So
complete, indeed, is this separation that he can scarcely be called
selfish, since for him there exists no objective field for the operation
of unselfishness.
I lament this self-absorption of Mr. Balfour as much as I lament in his
cousin Lord Robert Cecil the lack of the fighting qualities of
leadership. To no man of the Unionist Party after the death of Lord
Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury have more hopeful opportunities
presented themselves for creative statesmanship. He might have settled
the Irish Question. He might have avoided the Boer War, in the conduct
of which he behaved with real nobleness at the beginning. He might have
saved Germany from her own war-mongers. In any case he might have led
the Unionist Party towards construction and so have prevented the
slap-dash methods at reform set going by Mr. Lloyd George after a long
and irritating period of Tory pottering. For few men in modern times
have exercised so great a fascination over that curious and easily
satisfied body, the House of Commons, and no man in the public life of
our times has enjoyed a more powerful prestige in the constituencies.
Indeed, he stood for many years as the most dignified and honourable
figure in the public life of Great Britain, and his influence in
politics during the first part of that period was without serious
rivalry.
It must not be forgotten, too, that in the days of "bloody Balfour" he
was not merely chivalrous, but even Quixotic, in taking upon himself the
mistakes and misdoings of his subordinates in Ireland. He certainly had
the makings of a chivalrous figure, and perhaps even a great man. One
thinks that he began his descent unconsciously, and that carelessness
rather than any inherent badness led gradually to an egoism which has
proved fatal to his powers and to his character.
To the self-absorbed, vision is impossible. Mr. Balfour, unable to
penetrate the future, has lived from day to day, enjoying the game of
politics for the fun of confounding critics and managing colleagues,
enjoying too the privilege and dignity of power, but never once feeling
the call of the future, or experiencing one genuine desire to leave the
world better than he found it. And now he ends his political career
clinging to a decorative office under the leadership of Mr. Lloyd
George.
At the end of his Gifford Lectures, after an argument which induced one
of his listeners to say that he had _a stammer in his thoughts_, Mr.
Balfour announced his faith in God. One may recall Pascal's exclamation,
"How far it is from believing in God to loving Him!"
I have always thought it significant of his true nature that Mr.
Balfour should be one of the worst offenders in that unlovely Front
Bench habit of putting his feet up on the Clerk's table. The last time I
was in the House of Commons Mr. J.H. Thomas was lying back on the
Opposition Front Bench with his legs in the air and his muddy boots
crossed on the table. The boorishness of this attitude struck my
companion very sharply. But I pointed out to him that the difference
between Mr. Thomas, the Labour member, and Mr. Balfour, the great
gentleman, was merely a size in boots.
LORD KITCHENER
LORD KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM
Born, 1846; entered Army, 1866; Colonel, 1899; Burmah Campaign,
1891; Viscount, 1914; Baron, 1914; Earl, 1914; Sec'y for War, 1914;
died, 1917.
[Illustration: LORD KITCHENER]