The Mirrors of Downing Street Part 6

Now, while a man like Mr. Lloyd George can only affirm his own essence by the exercise of what we may call brute force, and by making use of vulgar methods from which a person of Lord Robert Cecil's quality would naturally shrink, it is nevertheless not at all necessary for a man of n.o.ble character and greater power to employ the same means in order to earn the confidence of his countrymen.

What is necessary in this case is not brute force but fanaticism, and by fanaticism I mean that spirit which in Cromwell induced Hume to call him "this fanatical hypocrite," and which Burke adequately defined in saying that when men are fanatically fond of an object _they will prefer it to their own peace_.

Lord Robert Cecil need not adopt the tricks of a mountebank to achieve leaders.h.i.+p of the British nation, but he must contract so entire a faith in the sacred character of his mission that all the inhibiting diffidencies of his modest nature will henceforth seem to him like the whisperings of temptation. He must cease to watch the s.h.i.+fts of public opinion. He must cease merely to recommend the probable advantage of rather more idealism in the politics of Europe. He must act. He must learn to know that a man cannot give a great idea to the world without giving himself along with it. The cause must consume the person.

Individual peace must be sacrificed for world's peace.

From the very beginning of the War Lord Robert Cecil perceived that the need of the nation was not for a great political leader, but for a great moral leader. He told me so with an unforgettable emphasis, well aware that under the public show of our national life the heart of the British people was famis.h.i.+ng for such guidance. He numbered himself among those anxiously scanning the horizon for such a leader. He should have been instead answering the inarticulate cry of the people for that leader.

No good man of my acquaintance is more powerfully convinced of the goodness of British nature. He watches the British people with an abiding affection. He believes that they possess, even those of them who appear most degraded and sordid, the foundational virtues of Christian character--a love of justice, an instinct for kindness, and faith in truth. He knows that they are more capable than any other people in Europe of generous self-sacrifice, and that any absence of grace in their manner which must distress the superficial observer comes rather of a pa.s.sion for honesty than a lack of beauty. And this knowledge of his goes with the conviction that no man will ever appeal to the British nation in vain who bases his appeal on justice, fair play, and charity.

What a nation to lead! What an inspiration for a true leader!

He is convinced that no moral appeal has ever been made to the British people in vain. And yet he has never made that appeal. With grief and sorrow he watches the stampeding of the nation he so deeply admires into murderous and indiscriminate hatred of our enemies in the late war. He saw the majority of the British people's war-like mood degraded and vulgarized by the propaganda of hate. But he made no move to save the national honour. The better part, and as I firmly believe the greater part, of the nation was waiting for moral leaders.h.i.+p: particularly were the young men of the nation who marched to death with the purest flame of patriotism in their hearts hungering for such leaders.h.i.+p; but Lord Robert Cecil, the one man in Parliament who might have sounded that note, was silent. The voice that should have made Britain's glory articulate, the voice that might have brought America into the War in 1914 and rendered Germany from the outset a house divided against itself, was never heard. Lord Robert Cecil looked on, and Mr. Lloyd George sprang into the prize-ring with his battle-cry of the knock-out blow.

I wonder if even the sublimest humility can excuse so fatal a silence.

Great powers have surely great responsibilities.

I remember speaking to Lord Robert on one occasion of the shooting of Miss Cavell--a brutal act which distressed him very deeply. I said I thought we weakened our case against Germany by speaking of that atrocious act as a "murder," since by the rules of war, as she herself confessed, Miss Cavell incurred the penalty of death. He replied: "What strikes me as most serious in that act is not so much that the Germans should think it no crime to shoot a woman, but that they should be wholly incapable of realizing how such an atrocious deed would shock the conscience of the world. They were surprised--think of it!--by the world's indignation!"

In this remark you may see how far deeper his reflections take him than what pa.s.ses for reflection among the propagandists of hate. Abuse of Germany never occupied his mind, which was sorrowfully engaged in striving to comprehend the spiritual conditions of the German people: he realized, that is to say, that we were not fighting an enemy who could be shouted down or made ashamed by abusive epithets, but that we were opposing a spirit whose anger and temper were entirely different from our own, and therefore a spirit which must be understood if we were to conquer it. It was not merely the armies of Germany which must be defeated, it was the soul of Germany which had to be converted. He saw this clearly: he never ceased to work to that end; but he failed to take the nation into his confidence and the public never understood what he was after. A fanatic would have left the nation in no doubt of his purpose.

Every now and then he has half let the nation see what was in his mind.

For example, he has taken those illuminating, those surely inspired, words of Edith Cavell as the text for more than one address--_Patriotism is not enough_. But beautiful and convincing as these addresses have been, their spirit has always had the wistful and _piano_ tones of philosophy, never the consuming fervour of fanaticism. He knows, as few other men know, that without a League of Nations the future of civilization is in peril, even the future of the white races; but he has never made the world feel genuine alarm for this danger or genuine enthusiasm for the sole means that can avert it. He has not preached the League of Nations as a way of salvation; he has only recommended it as a legal tribunal.

It is apparently difficult for a politician, however statesmanlike his qualities, to realize that politics cannot be even divorced from morality, much less to comprehend that morality is the very sinew of politics, being in truth nothing more than the conscience of a nation striving to express itself in State action. Because of this politics become degraded and sink to the lowest levels of a mere factional manoeuvring for place. They engage the attention of the attorney, and earn nothing but the contempt of the wise. They become like the perversions of art in the hands of those who a.s.sert that art has nothing to do with morals; they interest only a handful of experts.

But a man like Lord Robert Cecil does surely apprehend that the essence of politics is morality and, therefore, his unwillingness to use moral weapons in the political arena is hard to understand. He debates where he should appeal; he criticizes where he should denounce; and he accepts a compromise where he should lead a revolt. He is also altogether too civil for the rogues with whom he has to do.

I remember being in the House of Commons on an afternoon when Mr. Lloyd George was expected to make an important speech. Lord Robert Cecil sat in a corner seat on the back benches; his brother, Lord Hugh, occupied the corner seat on the front bench below the gangway. During the Prime Minister's speech, which was a succession of small scoring points against the Labour Party delivered with that spirit of c.o.c.ksureness which has grown with him in the last few years, I noticed Lord Robert make a pencilled note on a slip of paper and pa.s.s it across the gangway with a nod of his head toward Lord Hugh. I watched the journey of this little paper and watched to see its effect. Lord Hugh unfolded the slip of paper, read it, smiled very boyishly all over his face, and, folding it up again, slowly turned his head and looked back towards his brother.

The smile they exchanged was a Cecilian biography. One saw in the light of that instant and whole-hearted smile the danger of a keen sense of ironical humour. Both these men have the making of creative fanatics; in both of them there is an intense moral earnestness and in both great intellectual power; but nature has mixed up with these gifts, which were intended for mankind, a drollery of spirit, only amusing in the confidence of private life which they have allowed to weaken their sincerities. Humanity may be thankful that St. Paul was without a sense of humour.

During the war, as Minister of Blockade, Lord Robert Cecil rendered services of the greatest magnitude to his countrymen: he kept Sweden out of the war when the Russian Foreign Office could hardly breathe for anxiety on this point, and at a time when many British newspapers were doing their best to facilitate the great desire of Germany to march an army through Sweden and Finland to the thus easily reached Russian capital. His work, too, at the Peace Conference in Paris ent.i.tles him to the grat.i.tude of the nation: he kept the idea of the League of Nations alive in an atmosphere that was charged with war. He prevented these conferences from making "a Peace to end Peace." But on the whole I feel that he is rather the shadow of great statesmans.h.i.+p leaning diffidently over the shoulder of political brute force than the living spirit of great statesmans.h.i.+p leading the moral conscience of the world away from barbarism towards n.o.bler reason and less partial truth.

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL

The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill (Leonard Spencer) son of Lord Randolph Churchill. Born, 1874. Educ: Harrow and Sandhurst. Entered army in 1895; served with Spanish Forces in Cuba, 1895; in operations in India, 1897-98; on the Nile and at the Battle of Khartoum, 1899; was given the Khartoum Medal in that year; Correspondent of the _Morning Post_ in South Africa, 1899-1900; taken prisoner and escaped, 1900; in long series of actions including Spion Kop, Pieters, and capture of Pretoria; M.P. Oldham, 1900-06; M.P. for Manchester, 1906-08; commissioned Colonel, 1916; retired, 1916; Under Colonial Secretary, 1906-08; President Board of Trade, 1908-10; Home Secretary, 1910-11; First Lord of the Admiralty, 1911-15; Minister of Munitions, 1917; Rector of Aberdeen Univ., 1914; Chairman of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1915; Author of a series of books (campaign records), and also of the _Life of Lord Randolph Churchill_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RT. HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL]

CHAPTER IX

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL

_"He was not free from that careless life-contemning desperation, which sometimes belongs to forcible natures.... He was too heedless of his good name and too blind to the truth that though right and wrong may be near neighbours, yet the line that separates them is of an awful sacredness."_--JOHN MORLEY (of Danton).

Mr. Winston Churchill was one of its most interesting figures in the Parliament which included Joseph Chamberlain, Charles Dilke, and George Wyndham. With the fading exception of Mr. Lloyd George, he is easily the most interesting figure in the present House of Commons.

There still clings to his career that element of great promise and unlimited uncertainty which from his first entrance into politics has interested both the public and the House of Commons. He has disappointed his admirers on several occasions, but not yet has he exhausted their patience or destroyed their hopes.

His intellectual gifts are considerable, his personal courage is of a quality that makes itself felt even in the bosom of hate, and he possesses in a unique degree the fighting qualities of the born politician. No man is more difficult to shout down, and no man responds more gratefully to opposition of the fiercer kind. If on several occasions he has disappointed his friends, also on several occasions he has confounded his enemies.

From his youth up Mr. Churchill has loved with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength, three things--war, politics, and himself. He loved war for its dangers, he loves politics for the same reason, and himself he has always loved for the knowledge that his mind is dangerous--dangerous to his enemies, dangerous to his friends, dangerous to himself. I can think of no man I have ever met who would so quickly and so bitterly eat his heart out in Paradise.

He was once asked if politics were more to him than any other pursuit of mankind.

"Politics," he replied, "are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous."

"Even with the new rifle?"

"Well, in war," he answered, "you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."

Unhappily for himself, and perhaps for the nation, since he has many of the qualities of real greatness, Mr. Churchill lacks the unifying spirit of _character_ which alone can master the discrepant or even antagonistic elements in a single mind, giving them not merely force, which is something, but direction, which is much more. He is a man of truly brilliant gifts, but you cannot depend upon him. His love for danger runs away with his discretion; his pa.s.sion for adventure makes him forget the importance of the goal. Politics may be as exciting and as dangerous as war, but in politics there is no V.C.

I am not enamoured of the logic of consistency. It seems a rather ludicrous proceeding for an impecunious young man to join a very strictly political club with the idea in his mind that he will always be in favour of that particular party's programmes. Most of us, I think, will agree that a man who never changes his opinion is a stupid person, and that one who boasts in grave and h.o.a.ry age of his lifelong political consistency is merely confessing that he has learnt nothing in the school of experience. One sees the danger of this state of mind when he thinks of the theologians who burned men of science at the stake rather than be false to their Christian dogmas.

Nevertheless, illogical and ridiculous as consistency may appear, amounting in truth to nothing more than either inability to see the other side of an argument or a deliberate refusal to acknowledge an intellectual mistake, who can doubt that this quality of the mind creates confidence? On the other hand, who can doubt that one who appears at this moment fighting on the left hand, and at the next moment fighting just as convincingly on the right, creates distrust in both armies?

A newspaper which says at one time, "France must be rolled in mud and blood, her colonies must be taken from her and given to Germany, she has no sense of honour"; and at another time describes every German as a Hun and hails France as the glory of civilization, does not encourage the judicious reader to look for guidance in its editorial p.r.o.nouncements. But the newspaper which felt itself obliged to offer France a respectful admonition on one occasion and even to oppose French policy with firmness and to express sympathy with the Germans might afterwards acclaim the great virtues of France and oppose itself to the German nation without any loss of our respect. In the one case the inconsistency arises from hysterical and immoral pa.s.sion, in the other from a moral principle.

There is only one region in which consistency has the great sanction of an indubitable virtue: it is the region of moral character. A good man, a man who makes us feel that righteousness is the breath of his nostrils, may change his intellectual opinions many times without losing our confidence, deeply as we may deplore his change. Goodness has an effect on men's minds which can hardly be exaggerated. Conduct is the one sphere in which consistency has an absolute merit. A man whose whole life is governed by moral principle has a const.i.tuency in the judgment of all honest people and may be said to represent mankind rather than a party. Even a cynical opportunist like Lord Beaconsfield had to confess, "So much more than the world imagines is done by personal influence."

Mr. Churchill has not convinced the world of this possession. He carries great guns, but his navigation is uncertain, and the flag he flies is not a symbol which stirs the blood. His effect on men is one of interest and curiosity, not of admiration and loyalty. His power is the power of gifts, not character. Men watch him, but do not follow him. He beguiles the reason, but never warms the emotions. You may see in him the wonderful and lightning movements of the brain, but never the beating of a steadfast heart. He has almost every gift of statesmans.h.i.+p, and yet, lacking the central force of the mind which gives strength and power to character, these gifts are for ever at the sport of circ.u.mstance. His inconsistencies a.s.sume the appearance of s.h.i.+fts and dodges.

There is one particular way in which I think his inconsistencies have been dangerous to his career. They have brought him too often into inferior company.

Lord Northcliffe, with all his faults, is a man to whom statesmen may speak their minds without loss of influence, but there are other newspaper proprietors, financiers of commercialized journalism, with whom a man of Mr. Churchill's power and position should hold no personal relations. His is a mind which stands in need of constant communion with men of culture and refinement. He knows the world by this time well enough, what he does not know are the heights. His character suffers, I think, from a.s.sociation with second-rate people. He is too heedless of his good name.

Is it too late for him to acquire strength of character? His faults are chiefly the effects of a forcible and impetuous temperament: they may be expected to diminish as age increases and experience moulds. But character does not emerge out of the ashes of temperament. It is not to be thought that Mr. Churchill is growing a character which will presently emerge and create devotion in his countrymen. Character for him must lie in those very qualities which are now chiefly responsible for his defects--his ardour, his affectibility, his vehemence, his impetuous rashness, his unquestioned courage. One thing only can convert those qualities into terms of character, it is a new direction.

There is perhaps only one other man in the present House of Commons who could do more than Mr. Churchill for his country and the world. All Mr.

Churchill needs is the direction in his life of a great idea. He is a Saul on the way to Damascus. Let him swing clean away from that road of destruction and he might well become Paul on his way to immortality.

This is to say, that to be saved from himself Mr. Churchill must be carried away by enthusiasm for some great ideal, an ideal so much greater than his own place in politics that he is willing to face death for its triumph, even the many deaths of political life.

At present he is but playing with politics. Even in his most earnest moments he is only "in politics" as a man is "in business." But politics for Mr. Churchill, if they are to make him, if they are to fulfil his promise, must be a religion. They must have nothing to do with Mr.

Churchill. They must have everything to do with the salvation of mankind.

It is time, high time, he hitched his waggon to a star.