Asquith (26 page)

“
_{There are two more delicate offices we’ve not mentioned Asquith—the Colonial and the Foreign Office? ”}

Henry said he thought Edward Grey should have the Foreign Office; C. B. answered that he had considered Lord Elgin for this, but Henry was very strong upon Grey. He said that he was the
only
man, and that it was clear in his mind that Grey’s appointment as Foreign Minister would be popular all over Europe. He expatiated at great length and convincingly on Grey’s peculiar fitness for a post of such delicacy.

C.B. said he wanted him for the War Office, but Henry told me —having been unshakable upon this point—he felt pretty sure he had made an impression, as C.B. ultimately agreed that Lord Elgin would do well in the Colonial Office.

Henry ended our talk by saying to me:

“ I could see that C.B. had never before realised how urgently Grey is needed at the Foreign Office and I feel pretty sure that he will offer it to him.”
^t

A few days later there was another meeting between Asquith and Campbell-Bannerman, but on the second occasion Grey was also present and it was policy—in relation to Ireland—and not personalities which was discussed.
¹
At this meeting a compromise approach to Home Rule was worked out, to which Campbell-Bannerman gave expression in a speech at Stirling on November 23 rd. Full self-government for Ireland remained the objective of the Liberal Party, but the Nationalists were given clear notice that in the next Parliament Home Rule would not be given the priority of 1886 and 1892. It would have to wait its turn, and in the meantime the Irish were advised to accept any degree of devolution they could get, “ provided it was consistent with and led up to (the) larger policy.”

¹
_{On November 25th, however, during a Wiltshire week-end, Asquith sent Campbell-Bannerman a letter of exceptional length, almost the whole of which was devoted to a determined advocacy of Haldane’s claims to the Woolsack. (
Campbell-Bannerman Papers
, 41210, 247-52).}

In this way the only likely remaining source of pre-election policy dissension between Campbell-Bannerman and the Liberal Imperialists was disposed of. But Rosebery remained unaware of the agreement which Asquith and Grey had reached with Campbell-Bannerman, and proceeded completely to misinterpret the Stirling speech. In a speech of his own at Bodmin on November 25th he referred to it as “ the
hoisting of the flag of Irish Home Rule,” and announced “ emphatically and explicitly and once for all that I cannot serve under that banner.” Rosebery intended the Bodmin speech to mark his “ final separation ” from Campbell-Bannerman. In fact, its greater significance lay in marking his final separation from Asquith and Grey, both of whom reacted with some impatience to such a maladroit performance at that particular time.

The timing was especially unfortunate, because although no one knew whether Balfour would resign or dissolve, or exactly when he would act, he clearly could not much longer avoid doing one thing or the other. His position had been further weakened during November by the National Union of Conservative Associations insisting, against his advice, on passing a “ whole-hog ” tariff reform resolution. But although the Liberals were eager for office many of them were frightened about accepting it before a dissolution. “ I am strongly against our taking office, if Balfour resigns now,” Grey wrote to Asquith on November 24th. “ He ought to be made to carry on till January when a dissolution can take place.”
^u
Herbert Gladstone wrote in the same sense on the same day.

Asquith at first shared these fears. “ The storm signals are flying, and everything points to an early break-up,” he told Campbell-Bannerman in his letter of November 25th. “ It is obviously right that these people should themselves dissolve, and that the Liberal Party should not be compelled to form a Government until the country has given its decision, and the composition of the new Parliament is ascertained.”
¹⁷
But when Campbell-Bannerman wrote from Scotland a week later saying that he, like Morley and Lord Ripon, was strongly in favour of acceptance, Asquith did not persist in his opposition.

He received this letter on the morning of Saturday, December 2nd. It was by then widely known that Balfour was to resign on the following Monday or Tuesday, and the new situation involved Asquith in a sudden and costly change of plan. He was about to leave for Egypt, where he had been briefed by some members of the family of the ex-Khedive at a fee of 10,000 guineas—by far the biggest he would ever have received. It was clear he could not go. He cancelled his passage, returned his brief, and prepared for the next and most important phase of his life. But what was to happen to the “Relugas compact ”?

Campbell-Bannerman left Scotland for London by the night train on Sunday, December 3rd, and arrived only a few hours before Balfour’s Monday afternoon resignation. It had required urgent telegrams from Morley and Herbert Gladstone to bring him south even then. From Euston he went straight to his recently acquired house in Belgrave Square, and passed the day there in a series of interviews. He saw Asquith and Grey together early, and found “ there was no difference worth thinking of between him and them.” This was because they again discussed policy—and mainly Ireland—rather than the allocation of offices and the arrangements for leadership in the two Houses.

On these latter matters Asquith and Grey were united in wishing the objects of the Relugas compact to be achieved, but divided on the amount of pressure they were prepared to apply to this end. Whatever he may have thought in September, Asquith was clear from the beginning of these December discussions that he could not coerce Campbell-Bannerman by threatening to stand out from the Government. His reasons for this change of position were most firmly set out in a letter which he wrote to Haldane (urging him to accept office) three days later:

The conditions are in one respect fundamentally different from those which we, or at any rate I, contemplated when we talked in the autumn. The election is before and not behind us, and a Free Trade majority, still more an independent majority, is not a fact but at most a probability.

I stand in a peculiar position which is not shared by either of you.

If I refuse to go in, one of two consequences follows either (1) the attempt to form a Govt, is given up (which I don’t believe
in the least would now happen) or (2) a weak Govt, would be formed entirely or almost entirely of one colour.

In either event in my opinion the issue of the election would be put in the utmost peril. It would be said that we were at issue about Home Rule, the Colonies, the Empire, etc., etc., and the defections of the whole of our group would be regarded as conclusive evidence. The
tertius gaudens
at Dalmeny
¹
would look on with complacency. I cannot imagine more disastrous conditions under which to fight a Free Trade election.

And the whole responsibility, I repeat, would be mine. I could not say, after the offers made to Grey and you,
²
that our group had been flouted, and the only ground I could take would be that I and not C-B must from the first lead the new H. of Commons.

I could not to my own conscience or the world justify such a position.

If the election were over, and Free Trade secure, different considerations would arise.
^a

¹
_{Rosebery, irritation at whose Bodmin performance helped to make Asquith more conciliatory towards Campbell-Bannerman during these negotiations.}

²
_{p. 156
infra.}

Grey saw the matter differently. The most moderate of the three at Relugas in September, he now became the most intransigent in London in December. This was partly because he was the least interested in office, and partly because of a certain awkward inflexibility in his character. As Arthur Acland had written about him to Asquith five years earlier: “ I think he is a man rather to see difficulties than to help people over them. . . .
^b
In any event Grey went back to Campbell-Bannerman at ten o’clock on the night of the same Monday, “ all buttoned up ” as the latter described him, and firmly told the Prime Minister-elect that unless he went to the House of Lords he (Grey) would accept no office.

This move of Grey’s was foolish as well as intransigent. Campbell-Bannerman, his biographer tells us, was “ greatly wounded and surprised ” by this interview. But he was only worried by it because he thought that Asquith as well as Haldane must be a party to the ultimatum. For Haldane—“ Schopenhauer ” as he derisively called him—he had at this stage neither affection nor respect. He was determined not to give him the Woolsack and would have been quite
happy not to have him in the Government at all. Grey he regarded as much more useful, but, as his conversation with Asquith on November 13 th had shown,
¹
by no means indispensable. Asquith himself he did regard as nearly indispensable, and would have been hesitant about trying to form a Cabinet without him.

Grey, however, unlike Campbell-Bannerman, knew perfectly well by the time of his Monday night interview, that Asquith was not with him in his ultimatum. He did not resent this. “ If you go in without me eventually,” he had written earlier that day, “ I shall be quite happy outside and I shan’t think it the least wrong of you... .”
^c
But he did not comprehend that without Asquith to give it force his ultimatum was likely to be more irritating than persuasive. Campbell-Bannerman was in fact undecided about a peerage when Grey saw him. He was by no means confident about facing Balfour in the House of Commons, and in addition the advice of his Viennese doctor, on whom he leant heavily, was against the double burden.
²
Grey turned what might have been an easy personal adjustment into a major political choice.

On the following morning Campbell-Bannerman went to Buckingham Palace to kiss hands. In the event he failed to secure his sovereign’s hand for this symbolic act, but the King did not fail to slip in an expression of his own view that a peerage might be best for the new Prime Minister’s health. This did nothing to make the proposition more agreeable to Campbell-Bannerman. He merely assumed (and not without foundation) that Haldane had been intriguing with the King. Was Asquith a party to the plot? Campbell-Bannerman had seen him early that Tuesday morning before the visit to the palace, had told him of Grey’s attitude on the previous night, had expressed his own fears that he might be thought lacking in courage if he went to the Lords, and had asked for Asquith’s views. Margot Asquith recorded in her diary the account which her husband gave her of his reply:

Henry answered that the position was almost too delicate and personal for them to discuss; but C.B. pressed him to say frankly everything that was in his mind. Henry pointed out what a fearful labour C.B. would find the combination of leading the House and being Prime Minister, as they were practically two men’s work; that no one could possibly accuse him of being a coward; that the House of Lords was without a leader, and that it was placing him (Henry) in a cruel and impossible position if under the circumstances Edward Grey refused to take Office; he was his dearest friend as well as supporter, and to join a Government without such a friend would be personal pain to him, as they had never worked apart from one another.
^d

This was strong moral pressure, but it did not sound like an ultimatum; and the fact that it was not became completely clear when Campbell-Bannerman again saw Asquith soon after his return from the King, formally offered him the Exchequer, and received an unconditional acceptance. This acceptance more than outweighed the delicate pressure of the previous interview. As soon as he had received it Campbell-Bannerman telegraphed to Lord Cromer in Cairo and offered him the Foreign Office. This was an extraordinary move. Cromer was a great pro-consul, but he had no experience of British politics, he had never been a Liberal, and within two years he was to become an active (although moderate) Unionist. He was Grey’s first cousin, but this in the circumstances was a doubtfully conciliatory consideration. Fortunately, after twenty-four hours’ thought, he refused the offer on the ground of weak health.

That evening before dinner Asquith went to Hatfield, to keep (with almost excessive social meticulousness) an engagement to join a Salisbury house party. Margot was there already, having arrived with her step-daughter Violet during the afternoon; and the fullest account of the events of the next few days comes from her diary.
¹
On this first evening of the visit she found her husband “ profoundly anxious.” He was apparently unaware of the Prime Minister’s offer to Cromer, but he had seen Grey again before leaving London and had found him
as adamant as ever—“ in an uncompromising three-cornered humour.”