Lord Beaverbrook could stroll into an Arab camp and in five minutes be
psychologically persona grata as the man who could make something out of
almost nothing. He could learn the Arab language, adopt their customs,
interpret their ideas, transact their tribal business, and go away
without an Arab to admit that the strange new chief--or whatever they
might call him--would ever learn to be a true Arab.
This man without a congenial country has an unlimited talent for adapting
himself to the necessities of time, place and opportunity. He has little
or no power to assimilate himself to the real life of the people. He
trailed like a comet through the land of his birth and left it in a
mirage of finance before Canada had made him a citizen. He went to
England where in a few months he had made himself intimate with public
affairs; and in ten years, "with all his honours thick upon him," he has
not yet become an Englishman.
Once only I met this extraordinary man, at close range, for a number of
hours. He was a most absorbing study; and he knew it. There never was a
moment when Beaverbrook could not consciously estimate the effect of his
actions upon some other man, or group of men. As an actor he is not a
mediocrity.
A personal friend vividly describes meeting him at a small semi-private
dinner in a Canadian city. The ostensible occasion was a mere
complimentary affair to his lordship. The psychological objective
was--something else. There began the conjecture. What was it?
It must be inferred. There are some men who study the effect of
themselves upon a group. The group method of psychology is essentially
Beaverbrookian.
A number of speeches had been pre-arranged for this dinner on behalf of
various interests. At the close of the talks Beaverbrook was asked to
respond to a toast of his own health. He did so in a perfectly amazing
confessional of a speech, saying things which he said he felt sure no
journalist present would publish. He was asked questions. Each question
meant one more speech. He made four in all, occupying much more than an
hour of time in a most graphic and humanly interesting account of things
that had happened behind the curtain in British politics, shrewd
estimates of the signs of the times, forecasts of coming events and vivid
delineations of great men whom he had intimately met in various parts of
Europe.
In all this there was not a trace of embarrassment or of suspicion. The
little dynamo with the prodigious head and the baby mouth and the
intense, deepset, restless eyes stood by his chair, and with knuckles on
the table much of the time, talked down into the flowers directly in
front of him. He spoke sometimes in a husky, low voice, now and again in
a smothered shriek, again in a tragic whisper. He was in a small
gathering and he seemed to know that though the dingy, mysterious room
was somewhat high, he had no need to lift his voice to the shrill
impetuous discord that is said to characterize his speeches in Commons or
Lords. He was carried away by some indefinable atmosphere. What it was
he scarcely knew. After the dinner he shook hands with people, delivered
himself of a number of snappy brusqueries, laughed a good bit and, almost
the last to leave the charmed precinct where he had unbosomed himself
among "congenial" souls, he wandered out.
Next day, lying poseurishly on a lounge in his room at the hotel, he said
to a confidante who had been with him at the dinner:
"Bunting!" (that is not the true name) "Will you kindly repeat to me some
of the things I seem to have said last evening. I know I talked an
unconscionably great deal. What on earth did I say?"
As it had been a perfectly abstemious occasion, one imagines that
Beaverbrook at the dinner was sincere, though playing the actor, and that
in his room he was both theatrical and insincere.
This man has a confusing, but in his own mind seldom confused, orbit of
his own. He was a conundrum in Canada. He is an enigma in England.
That he still considers himself a Canadian, because he was born here,
fortuned here and voluntarily exiled from here after he had completely
mystified a large number of people as to his working psychology, is
proved by the fact that he continues to come back here. He also
professes to be manning the _Daily Express_ with Canadians. He has been
for ten years the intimate of Bonar Law, also a distinguished Canadian of
sorts. And a few months ago there was a rumour, which no one remembers
him to have refuted, that he was a likely candidate for the
Governor-Generalship of Canada. Of course if ever Rideau Hall should
take Beaverbrook for a tenant, it will be time to take refuge in a
Canadian republic.
It is easy to think disagreeable things about Beaverbrook, because he is
so enormously interesting, so pathologically unusual, and altogether so
brilliant and resourceful a phenomenon. I have called him the Imperial
brainstorm. A dozen other titles would fit him as well. There are times
when one almost imagines himself mingling an element of real liking for
the man with one's unfailing admiration of his remarkable ability. But
always when you feel like that cordial handshake and talking to him with
brusque familiarity, there is the intuitive feeling that one of the two,
perhaps both, might live to regret it.
You cannot absorb the atmosphere of such a man. Whatever the sterling
qualities of his character, the approximate miracles of his achievements,
the warlike strategy of his career, you judge him at last by that
indefinable but inexorable law of common congeniality. To live at close
range with Beaverbrook, to become part of his daily scheme of vibrations,
to work either with, or for, or even over him as a regular part of one's
programme would be to a normal man a penalty almost amounting to a crime.
Though of course tastes differ, even in companions. There are people who
rather like hobnobbing with Beaverbrook. Some are interested in his
idiosyncrasies, as though he were a good subject for a novel. Some enjoy
the sensation of playing moth to a social flame. Others--perhaps--have a
deep respect for his money which, like Carnegie's, is supposed to be a
perplexity to himself to know how to spend it that he may die poor.
Well, the noble lord has his idioms. Discussing the details of the
little dinner already referred to a flippant but devoted critic said:
"I think he would enjoy speaking right in front of that huge fireplace.
He would consider it Napoleonic."
As to the social orbit of Beaverbrook, one may suspect that it is a
rather exotic atmosphere in which the sense of true human equation is
lost in a jumble. A man who can entertain almost simultaneously, at his
country home, financiers, politicians, authors, and actresses from his
own theatre at Hammersmith, may be regarded as a shrewd social mergerist
but scarcely as a subtle entertainer of congenial souls. As for the
discomfort of knowing what to do with his money, Beaverbrook has never
complained; during his latest visit to Canada he was offered and he
refused the purchase of two bankrupt newspapers each of which thought
that the acquisition of such a side line to the _Daily Express_ might
enable him to do some of the good in this country which he failed to
achieve while he lived here.
Estimating this man by the superficial but rather subtle qualities by
which he has achieved success, it seems a sort of irony to think what he
might have done and did not do for the country of his birth. What did he
ever do for Canada? Before the war--nothing. He made huge fortunes
here. He created mergers here. He started consolidated companies here
that in time fought their way into the appreciated valuations of the
stock market. He became Canada's greatest adventurer in creating a sort
of "wealth" from the merging of small, sometimes decrepit, concerns under
a new name and new issues of stock; just as Mackenzie was our greatest
adventurer in creating wealth from borrowed money. Beaverbrook worked
mainly with small groups to whom he left the task of raising most of the
capital. Thus his personal gains came neither from the immediately
increased earnings of companies which he amalgamated, nor directly from
the pockets of the shareholders. Beaverbrook never made a dollar by
defrauding a director or luring unsuspicious dollars out of the pockets
of common people. That species of tactics so often practised by men who
are near criminals was quite beneath him. The laboratory where he got
his results was the stock market, which of course has its own codes of
ethics and plays its own remorseless game of making or breaking men.
His career here had most of the elements of romance. Son of a poor
parson born in a cross-roads Ontario hamlet, brilliant but erratic
student at Dalhousie University, down-at-the-heels insurance agent in
Halifax, youthful merger of two small banks at a time when he was unable
to pay for his own clothes--we have here symptoms of a career which might
have turned into a character of high value in Canadian politics, public
service or social reform.
But Nature thrives on migrations. Even a man sometimes takes better root
when he is transplanted. The Beaverbrook that England has is a more
unusual character than the Max Aitken that Canada lost. Canada to be
sure had lost enough brilliant men to other nations and imported enough
able men from abroad. It was time to produce and to keep our own. There
was national work for them all to do. Aitken came up in the boom time of
Canada. He fitted the time. A nation's financial adversity was no
occasion for him. He followed the wake and profited by the experiences
of builders of railways, industries, banks and provinces. Every move
forward of the country in commercial expansion was a nudge ahead for his
chariot of fortune. He was the most successful "bull" factor Canada ever
had. But in all probability, were he to be flung into one of the
demoralized nations of democratized Europe he could make money even in
disaster.
Before he was thirty-five Max Aitken had become a multi-millionaire. He
worked much as clever but humbler men have invented formulae to beat
bookmakers at the races. Having done all this, at so early an age, what
was left? Superficially we should have said--public life. He had the
money, the talent, the leisure. Canada had the need.
But Max Aitken never so much as became a pound-keeper in Canada, not
because he had not the opportunity, but because he had the shrewd sense
to feel that the land where he had made "his pile" was not the land in
which to serve his country. To serve a nation means as a rule to deal
directly with the public. Max Aitken had never dealt with the public.
Neither does he yet--except indirectly through a big daily newspaper of
phenomenal circulation. On his last visit to Canada he was invited to
public functions. He consistently declined; not because he shunned
popularity or hated the limelight, but because he would not have felt
comfortable. In one of his speeches he pointed out that the securities
which he put on the market years ago were all now listed as paying
ventures. It was more comfortable to make that remark as a returned
celebrity than to have made it as a citizen.
His own story of why he went to England, and stayed there, is ingenuous.
He said that he went in order to do business; that he tried to talk
business; that the public men with whom he had conference insisted on
talking politics; that he succumbed and stayed, winning a seat in the
Commons, and almost before an ordinary man could have said "Jack
Robinson", he was hobnobbing with men the calibre of Bonar Law, Lloyd
George, Northcliffe.
Only fragmentary accounts of Beaverbrook's political history in England
have as a rule drifted over here. To show what an amazing story it is,
nothing can be better than to quote a curiously apt summary written for
two Canadian periodicals by Arthur Baxter, who for some years now has
been a sort of Boswell to Beaverbrook.
* * * * * *
In 1910 captured the seat for Ashton-under-Lyne.
In 1912 a vigorous and successful attack on Lloyd George concerning
finance matters in the House.
From 1911 to 1914 he entered parliamentary intrigue and gradually his
home at Leatherhead became a Mecca for puzzled politicians.
During this time somebody made him a Knight.
The Irish situation was more than threatening; the tariff issue was
causing bitterness; Austen Chamberlain with a minority following was
fighting Walter Long to lead the Tories and on this troublesome sea Sir
Max Aitken's barque bobbed up and down with the skipper's eyes keenly
alert. He saw the possibilities in Bonar Law. When Chamberlain and Long
created a deadlock, Beaverbrook advocated Bonar Law as leader of the Tory
Party. To make his voice heard more distinctly he purchased the _Daily
Express_ and backed his candidate with a powerful but (then) not very
profitable newspaper. Law has the reputation for modesty, but his
fellow-Canadian led him to the barrier, started him off and when he
stopped running he found himself leader.
For some time it had seemed as if Asquith's Coalition Government would
survive the war, but late in 1917 it was obvious that the old ship was
leaking badly. Carson was the first to propose scuttling the frigate.
The others argued that even a sinking ship was better than no ship at
all, so the Irishman went overboard and sailed away on his own raft.
Bonar Law representing the good old Tory element kept on working the
pumps; Mr. Asquith kept on assuring the crew that all they needed was to
"wait and see"; and Lloyd George was wondering whether he had better take
a hand at the pumps as well or throw both Asquith and Bonar Law into the
sea.
At this juncture a sail was sighted. It was Max Aitken's barque that
"hopped aboard" and took in the spectacle of his old Maritimian sweating
at the pumps; and noticed with a critical eye the extremely able
appearance of that able-bodied politician, Lloyd George.
Beaverbrook thought the situation over--swiftly. He saw that the genial
Micawber on the Bridge could not be routed as long as Bonar Law and Lloyd
George stuck to him. But even if they could be persuaded to heave the
skipper overboard, could they sail the ship and keep the crew loyal as
well?
He decided that Carson had to be brought back to the fold, so jumping
into his little craft he scoured the political sea and returned shortly
with the uncrowned king of Ireland on board.
But Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson loved each other as
much as three Prima Donnas. They all agreed that Asquith was sailing to
disaster, but they weren't sure that they didn't prefer disaster under
the Old Chief to prolonged life in each other's company.
Beaverbrook had seen a vision and he knew that Lloyd George was the only
man in England capable of forming a ministry that would last six months.
Day after day the Canadian stuck to his task and gradually the three men,
all smarting from old political quarrels, agreed to send an ultimatum to
the skipper that they demanded a sailing committee under the leadership
of "Pincher" Lloyd George.
In other words they demanded a War Cabinet with the Welshman as Chairman.
Finally, in desperation, Lloyd George called for a mutiny. Bonar Law
summoned all the Tory crew around him. They went to the bridge and told
the Skipper that they were sorry to break the news to him, but it had
been decided that, all things considered, he had better walk the plank.
Mr. Asquith was dismayed, blustered, then resigned--defying the mutineer
Welshman to do any better. His Majesty called on Bonar Law to form a
cabinet; the Canadian declined with thanks but mentioned the name of a
certain Welshman as a likely candidate for the job. The Welshman was
asked--and accepted. Two days later his Cabinet was formed. Carson took
over the pumps; Bonar Law went up to the bridge and Lloyd George
delegated to himself the rank of Commander and Pilot of Britain's ship of
State.
And that is the story of Beaverbrook's tremendous contribution to winning
the war. He secured most of the Labour Party, the Tories, and Carson for
Lloyd George; without them the Prime Minister could never have formed a
government.
Sir Max Aitken wanted more than a Peerage for his work; he had hoped for
a position of tremendous power, but the Government made him a Lord and he
went back to Canadian publicity.
* * * * * *
Imagination tries to conceive of any Englishman coming over here to merge
Borden, Laurier and Crerar. Imagination fails. Not even Aitken could
have done it. That he succeeded in England where he must have failed in
Canada must have reasons.