Asquith (27 page)

¹
_{There is a certain confusion of dates in these diary passages. Mrs. Asquith speaks in one place of the Hatfield visit having begun on Wednesday, December 6th, and in another of the Wednesday being the second day of the visit. It seems most likely that they went to Hatfield on the Tuesday, and returned finally to London on the Friday morning (December 8th).}

The chances of getting him to join seemed remote, and Asquith’s pleasure at office must have been considerably reduced by the separation from his friends which seemed likely to be involved. But he did not brood. “ That night at dimier at Hatfield,” Margot wrote, “ my husband looked worn out, and I admired him more than I could say for throwing himself into the social atmosphere of a fancy ball, with his usual simplicity and unselfcentredness.”
^e

The next morning the Asquiths motored to London for the day. Asquith went to see Campbell-Bannerman in Belgrave Square and Margot went to their own house in Cavendish Square, where Herbert Gladstone came and gave her all the news. Asquith, as he told his wife that evening, when they had both returned to Hatfield, attempted a direct appeal to the Prime Minister:

I said, “It is no use going over the ground again, my dear C.B. I make a personal appeal to you, which I’ve never done before; I urge you to go to the House of Lords and solve this difficulty.
^f

Campbell-Bannerman received this appeal in a friendly but noncommittal way. His wife was arriving from Scotland that evening. When she came he would consult her and be guided by the result. And that was the end of the interview.

Lady Campbell-Bannerman’s advice, conveyed over dinner, was decisively given for a policy of “ no surrender,”
¹
and thereafter the Prime Minister’s mind was not in doubt. He was unable to convey his decision to Asquith that evening, but he told Morley and Tweedmouth, who called at Belgrave Square after dinner. He also discussed with them certain alternative possibilities for the Foreign Office—Cromer’s refusal had arrived. Here Morley, despite what he was later to write about the “ unedifying transactions ” of the Liberal Imperialist group, played an important part in urging Campbell-Bannerman to hold the door open to Grey. He scoffed at the Prime Minister’s other suggestions for the post, and he later wrote warning him against “ light-weights ” and pointing out that “ the F.O. is a terribly weak place in your armour.”
^g

¹
_{The fact that she put it in terms of defiance is a good indication of how self-defeating Grey’s move had been.}

Asquith meanwhile was back amongst the Hatfield festivities. But only for a short time. On the Thursday morning he again travelled
to London and went once more to Belgrave Square. On this occasion his wife recorded him as reporting:

He (Campbell-Bannerman) looked white and upset and began like a man who, having taken the plunge, meant to make best of it. He spoke in a rapid, rather cheerful and determined manner:

“ I’m going to stick to the Commons, Asquith, so will you go and tell Grey he may have the Foreign Office and Haldane the War Office.”
^h

Asquith duly conveyed these offers. He saw Grey, but failed to shake his intransigence. As soon as Asquith had left him, he wrote a letter of definite refusal to Campbell-Bannerman. This covered not merely the Foreign Office but any participation in the Government. He even raised again the difficulty of separation from Rosebery.

Haldane was a more flexible proposition. Unlike Grey, he had been balked of the office which he coveted, but he had a livelier sense of political ambition. In some aspects of his temperament Grey was like Rosebery. He loved creating situations in which he could say no. Haldane was much more like Asquith. On his own terms if possible, he preferred the occupancy of the seats of power to the sterile pleasure of watching his inferiors try to fill them. Perhaps for this reason Asquith did not think it as necessary to see him as it had been to see Grey— despite the fact that he was available in London and, indeed, had Grey staying with him at his flat in Whitehall Court.

Instead, Asquith went to the Athenaeum in the early afternoon and wrote Haldane a long letter for delivery by hand. The central part of this letter has already been quoted as an exposition of Asquith’s own reasons for accepting office.
¹
The beginning may now be added: “ I was empowered this morning to offer the Foreign Office to E. Grey, and an offer of the War Office will soon be on its way to you.” And the end: “ I write this now, because I see no chance of seeing you today as I have to go to the country,
²
and that you may have these considerations in your mind when you receive C.B.’s offer. I don’t want in the
least to attempt to influence your judgment; your position and Grey’s, as regards this particular point, are necessarily different from mine.

¹
_{See pages 151-2
supra.}

²
_{A defensively generalised expression, for Haldane knew perfectly well where Asquith was staying, and disapproved of his being away. “ To make things worse,” he wrote in his
Autobiography
(p. 168), “Asquith and his wife proceeded to keep an engagement to stay with the Salisburys at Hatfield.... Asquith came to town indeed during the day, but it was difficult to see him as much as the circumstances required.”}

But I need not say what an enormous and immeasurable difference your co-operation would make to me. Whatever happens nothing can change our affection and confidence.”
ⁱ

This letter was handed to Haldane at four o’clock, when he was presiding over a committee meeting at the Imperial Institute in South Kensington. At the same time he was given a letter from Campbell-Bannerman. This, somewhat confusingly, offered him not the War Office but the Attorney-Generalship. It added, however, that if he did not want that (which he did not) the Prime Minister would make other proposals “ involving Cabinet rank.”
¹
After his meeting Haldane drove home to Whitehall Court, calling on the way on Lady Horner, Asquith’s old correspondent of the early ’nineties, at Buckingham Gate. Lady Horner, he subsequently recorded, was a decisive influence turning his mind towards acceptance. But he still regarded himself as bound not to accept unless he could also change Grey’s mind. It was not difficult for him to see Grey. When he got home to Whitehall Court he found him lying on a sofa in his library “ with the air of one who had taken a decision and was done with political troubles.” Haldane talked to him for some time. Then, at Grey’s suggestion, they walked to Arthur Acland’s rooms in St. James’s Court. They were with him from 7.30 to 8.15 and “ he poured into (them) arguments about destroying the prospects of the Liberal Party.” When they left they went to the Cafe Royal and dined together in a private room. There, when they had finished their fish—perhaps because he missed the rest of it Haldane was very precise about the stage of the meal which had been reached—Grey agreed that it was his duty to accept office, provided that Haldane were included in the Cabinet.

¹
_{In those days the phrase carried its natural meaning—membership of the Cabinet. Today it is a polite euphemism for exclusion from that body.}

Armed with this news Haldane left Grey at dinner and rushed off to Belgrave Square in a hansom cab. Campbell-Bannerman came out from dinner to see him. He responded with pleasure to the news that Grey’s mind had changed and offered Haldane first the Home Office and then, surprised at his preference, the War Office. By ten o’clock on that Thursday night Haldane had returned to report to Grey in Acland’s rooms. The matter was finally settled the next morning when Grey called upon the Prime Minister.

The Asquiths, at Hatfield, were cut off from these final moves. After sending off his letter to Haldane Asquith had returned there on the Thursday evening thinking that there was little chance of moving Grey.
¹
“ When Henry arrived I saw at a glance that it was all up,” Margot recorded. On the following morning when they travelled up to King’s Cross and opened
The Times
in the train they read the report of Grey’s refusal as the last word. But at Cavendish Square Asquith received a brief note from Haldane, written on the previous evening, telling him that Grey had agreed to “ reconsider his position.” On reading this he went off to find Haldane. By twelve he knew that everything was satisfactorily arranged.

¹
Sometime on that Thursday indeed he wrote the following note to Campbell-Bannerman:

secret

20
Cavendish Square, W.

7
December,
1905

My dear CB,

I deeply regret both your decision and E. Grey’s.

On the assumption that both are irrevocable, Crewe seems to me for many reasons the best man for the F.O.

Yours,

H.H.A

(Campbell-Bannerman papers
, 41210, 253)

The filling of the other offices proceeded smoothly, and the Cabinet list was ready for the King on that same Friday, December 8th. Although only five of its members had ever held Cabinet office before it was a Government of unusual talent. It contained at least five ministers of outstanding intellectual quality: Asquith, Haldane, Morley (Secretary of State for India), Birrell (President of the Board of Education) and Bryce (Chief Secretary for Ireland). In addition there were men such as Lloyd George (President of the Board of Trade), Crewe (Lord President), John Burns (Local Government Board), Winston Churchill (under-secretary for the Colonies), and Grey, whose gifts differed widely both from those of the “ intellectuals ” and from each other, but which were at least equally remarkable.

There was no question of the Cabinet being, in the phrase Asquith had used to Haldane, “ all of one colour.” The strict Gladstonian tradition was represented by Ripon (Lord Privy Seal) and Herbert Gladstone (Home Secretary) as well as by Morley and Bryce. The Prime Minister’s own outlook was closely reflected by that of the
Lord Chancellor, Lorebum, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, John Sinclair. In addition, Lloyd George and John Burns were both regarded as men of the “ new left,” although the latter quickly developed into an outstandingly conservative minister. The “ moderates ” were represented not only by the famous three of the Relugas compact but also by Crewe, by Fowler,
³
who was a vice-president of the Liberal League, by Lord Carrington
⁴
(later Marquess of Lincolnshire), who was one of King Edward’s closest friends,
⁵
and by Lord Elgin,
⁶
to whom
The Times
gave the accolade of saying that he had never made a partisan speech. Lord Tweedmouth (the former Chief Whip, who soon became insane) as First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sydney Buxton as Postmaster-General completed the Cabinet.

The new ministers went to Buckingham Palace to receive their seals of office on the Monday afternoon. It was a day of exceptionally thick fog (even by Edwardian standards), and the atmosphere became even blacker while they were with the King, so that many of them had great difficulty in finding their way to their departments. The Liberal Imperialists were particularly unlucky. Haldane, Grey and Fowler left the Palace together in a hired brougham, but had to abandon it in the Mall. Grey spent an hour walking from there to the Foreign Office. Fowler merely succeeded in finding his way back to Buckingham Palace. And Haldane, clutching his seals in a bag, felt his way, as he rather curiously put it, “ along the horses’ heads,” until he arrived, exhausted and muddy, at the War Office, then in Pall Mall.

Asquith, on his own, did rather better, and arrived in reasonably good order at the Old Treasury building on the comer of Whitehall and Downing Street. The department which he arrived to command was one which had changed little since the days of Gladstone’s first premiership. It had not grown at all; and in 1905, despite there being temporarily two joint permanent secretaries, the cost of salaries was actually lower than it had been in 1872. There were only twenty-two first division clerks (or administrative class civil servants as they would now be called), and the total staff of the department, messengers included, was barely 200.

The two permanent secretaries were as firmly Gladstonian as was the establishment. Sir Edward Hamilton, in charge of finance, had been one of the G.O.M’s secretaries over many years, and Sir George Murray, in charge of administration, had also served as a private secretary during Gladstone’s fourth government. They held joint office throughout Asquith’s time at the Exchequer and constituted a solid official front in favour of the old, nineteenth century view of the functions of the Treasury. Its role was to enforce economy upon other departments rather than to initiate policy of its own. So long as this view prevailed, and particularly if there were no great revenue changes to be made, the Treasury was rather a dull department over which to preside. It carried high prestige, but unless the Chancellor had some outside functions, as with Harcourt who was leader of the House of Commons in 1894-5
¹
it did not necessarily give him a commanding position in the Government.