Asquith (53 page)

The lobby correspondent published his information on the following morning, which was held to be a grave embarrassment both to the Government and to the Irish leaders. Asquith reacted so sharply that he took what he called “ the very unusual step of sending round to the Cabinet a rather scorching document ” and demanding written answers from all ministers. It was in the following, somewhat magisterial terms, and produced a large number of more or less characteristic replies:

The Prime Minister, with much regret calls the attention of the Cabinet to the disclosure in today’s
Daily News
of what was agreed at yesterday’s meeting.

Cabinet discussion & action becomes impossible if breaches of confidence of this kind are to continue.

He must, therefore, request that he should be at once informed if any member of the Cabinet has held any communication with Mr. Nicholson (the
Daily News
reporter) on the subject.

5
March 1914

I have not seen Nicholson for many months.
L.H.
¹

None.
W.R
.
²

¹
_{Lewis Harcourt.}

²
_{Walter Runciman.}

The only communication I have had with Nicholson since he went
to the D.N. was to tell him (in answer to his request that I should treat him better than I did when he was on
The Times)
that he was the same prying knave
now
as he was
then
.
A.B.
¹

I have not spoken to Nicholson since the Cabinet meeting or had any communication with him.
J.Mck. W.
²

I have not spoken to Mr. Nicholson since Feb. 12. C.H.
³

Had no communication with him. J.B.
⁴

I have not seen or spoken to Mr. Nicholson for nearly a year.

H. of
C.
⁵

I have not seen or had communication with him for several months. B.
⁶

Before Wednesday I had never heard the suggestion of polling by counties, and I have not seen Nicholson since. About a week ago I saw him in the Lobby, he asked me if I had any news—I said, “Yes, I am going to Germany to study German educational methods on Saturday.” He referred to it in the Press next day, but
nothing more was said by me on any other subject
nor was the Irish topic ever mentioned by him to me.
J.A.P.
⁷

I saw Nicholson the day before the Cabinet. He asked me what the Prime Minister was going to say on Monday. I said that if I knew I shd. not tell him. I have not seen him since the Cabinet.

W.S.C.
⁸

I have not seen Mr. Nicholson. C
.
⁹
6 :iii 114.

I have not seen him, nor had any sort of communication with him. M.
¹⁰
6.3.14.

Not seen Nicholson for weeks. D.Ll.G.
¹¹

As far as I can recollect I haven’t seen Nicholson for more than a year. I haven’t yet seen the disclosure in the Daily News. E.G,
¹²
6.3.14.

1
_{Augustine Birrell.}
2
_{J. McKinnon Wood.}
³
_{Charles Hobhouse.}
⁴
_{John Burns.}
⁵
_{Haldane of Cloan
.}

⁶
_Beauchamp.
⁷
_{J. A. Pease.}
⁸
_{W. S. Churchill.}
⁹
_Crewe.
¹⁰
_Morley.
¹¹
_{D. Lloyd George.}
¹²
_{Edward Grey.}

I have been in bed or away at Ramsgate since the proposals were told to me by J.A.P. after the Cabinet which I was unable to attend.
J.S.
¹
10.3.14.

¹
_{John Simon.}

Five members of the Cabinet apparently failed to submit a written certificate of innocence, but one of these (McKenna) delivered a somewhat elaborate verbal exculpation to the Prime Minister. Asquith wrote at first that he knew whom he suspected, but two days later he sounded less certain: “ The mystery of the leakage is still impenetrated: I can see that Ll.G. suspects Winston....”

The King’s reaction presented a more serious problem for the Government than did the disclosure of the
Daily News.
If he regarded a three-year exclusion as much too short and thought that Carson would do so too, the chance of securing Unionist agreement seemed small. Accordingly, on the morning of March 6th, Birrell was deputed to see Redmond and tell him that the three years must be extended to six. Redmond wrote to Asquith that afternoon, reluctantly accepting the change. The way was then clear for the concession to be publicly announced when Asquith moved the second reading of the Home Rule Bill—in its third parliamentary circuit—on Monday, March 9th. “ There was a huge crowd,” he wrote, “ but I did not count to excite them: so I adopted rather a funereal tone. Bonar Law was really at his worst.” But it was Carson and not Law who most decisively threw the concession back in the face of the Government. “ We do not want,” he said in one of the more memorable phrases of
the controversy, “ sentence of death with a stay of execution for six
years."

Nevertheless Asquith thought “ the
general
effect of (the) proceedings not too bad, tho’ it is too soon yet to say whether there is a real chance of rapprochement ”; and he went off to dine at Grillion’s, where he sat next to the Bishop of Winchester and opposite Sir Edmund Gosse, in a reasonably good humour. There were several weeks in which the Unionists could decide whether they would come round to accepting an Amending Bill embodying the Government’s concession, or some variant of it.

The immediate menace lay not in the political situation in London, but in some move by the Ulster Volunteers against the arms depots in the province. At the Cabinet on March 11th a committee was set
up, composed of Churchill, Birrell, Seely and Simon, with Crewe in the chair,
¹
to consider this danger. Asquith did not appear to take the threat too seriously. He commented that this Cabinet, “ after recent excitements and agitations. . . was a rather tame affair.”

¹
_{On the following evening Crewe was taken ill in the Savoy Hotel, and took no part in the work of the committee.}

The committee reported on March 17th. The guard on the depots was to be reinforced, and this was to be achieved by moving troops in from the South and from England. The constabulary in Ulster was to be concentrated in five or six centres. The First Lord of the Admiralty told the Council that “ the forthcoming practice ” of the 3rd Battle Squadron would take place off the Isle of Arran. Two or three destroyers were being ordered to the South of Ireland. In the meantime Churchill had been to Bradford, on March 14th, and had delivered his powerful speech of warning to those who sought to challenge parliamentary institutions by force. If that was to be done, he concluded, “ let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof.” His warships, Unionists subsequently noted, he had already ordered forward to Lamlash.

These developments provoked a sharp parliamentary reaction. Already on Monday, March 16th there was what Asquith called “ a regular rough and tumble ” at question time. The tension was still higher on the Thursday when Bonar Law proposed a vote of censure. The Government’s military moves were turning Ulster into “ a new Poland ” he claimed. Asquith replied with his voice in such “ bad condition that I had difficulty in keeping it up.” Carson, as usual, provided the real drama. He launched a great attack on Churchill. He announced in a threatening way that his own real place was not in the arid debates of Westminster but at the head of his movement in Ulster. Then, twenty-five minutes before the departure of the Belfast mail from Euston, he accused Devlin of telling “ an infamous lie.” When ordered by the Speaker to withdraw he went no further than to substitute the words “ wilful falsehood ” and stalked from his place. When he got to the far end of the front opposition bench he turned and raised his hand in a gesture of departure. The Tories gave him a standing and tumultuous farewell. He left to catch his train. Had he gone to proclaim the provisional government of Ulster? Or had he merely given a classic example of how to frustrate parliamentary discipline? No one was certain, which was no doubt his intention.

Carson proclaimed no provisional government. Despite the drama of his departure, the boat trains to Ireland that night contained another passenger whose journey was of great significance in the history of the Ulster dispute. Soon after Carson left for Belfast, General Paget,
¹
the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, left for Dublin. He had been in London for two days of War Office consultation about the troop movements into Ulster and the consequent strain which might be imposed upon the loyalties of some officers. As with all the military events and consultations of those and subsequent days, there were varying versions of what was said and what was contemplated. The report of the Secretary of State for War to Asquith, dated the day after Paget’s departure, was in the following terms:

I discussed the question of officers’ resignations with C.I.G.S.,
²
A(djutant) G(eneral)
³
and Sir A. Paget yesterday. Sir A. Paget strongly urged that in the few exceptional cases where officers have direct family connection with the disturbed area in Ulster, so that in the event of serious trouble arising their future private relations might be irretrievably compromised if they were engaged with our troops, they should be permitted to remain behind either on leave or with details. Sir John French and Sir Spencer Ewart having expressed their concurrence with this view it was decided that this course should be followed.

In all other cases Sir A. Paget wished to be able to say that any officer hesitating to comply with orders or threatening to resign should be removed. Sir John French was of opinion that such officers should be court-martialled, a view which he had urged upon me a year ago. Upon Sir Spencer Ewart pointing out the technical difficulties and delay that might be involved, Sir John French agreed for the present that removal should be the course followed. Sir John French and Sir Spencer Ewart agree to this memorandum.

J.S.
20.3.14.
^h

¹
_{General Sir Arthur Paget (1851-1928), a grandson of “ One-leg,” 1st Marquess of Anglesey, a close friend of King Edward VII, and a gallant rather than a clear-headed or notably diligent officer.}

²
_{General Sir John French (1852-1925), later 1st Earl of Ypres.}

³
_{General Sir Spencer Ewart (1861-1930).}

This document strongly suggests that the discussions had not been wisely handled by the Secretary of State and his principal military advisers. But their lack of wisdom was as nothing compared with the crass foolishness of Paget’s behaviour when he returned to Ireland. There is no suspicion that Paget, like Sir Henry Wilson at the War Office, was engaged in a calculated plot against the Government. No doubt he subscribed to sound anti-Liberal views and found it natural at a meeting of officers under his command to speak of" those swines of politicians.” But these opinions were subordinate, as he later put it to Asquith, to " my way of thinking, viz. that duty came before all other considerations.”

The trouble was that his method of carrying out his duty was so inept. Within a few hours of landing at Kingstown on the morning of Friday, March 20th, he held a conference of seven senior officers in the Royal Hospital, Dublin. He briefed them about the precautionary moves he had been instructed to carry out, but did so in such alarmist terms that he spoke of the whole country being "ablaze” within twenty-four hours. He told of the concession he had obtained for officers living in Ulster, but said that this must be very strictly interpreted. For the rest, he wished to know what were the officers’ intentions. Were they prepared to do their duty or would they rather accept dismissal? Paget himself did not dispute that he put this hypothetical question to his senior officers. Those who were not prepared to accept the former course were to absent themselves from the second part of the conference at two o’clock that afternoon. But he denied that he intended the question to be put in the same form to subordinate officers. Two of those present—Major-General Fergusson, commanding the 5th Division and Brigadier-General Hubert Gough, commanding the Cavalry Brigade within that division—got a different impression. Fergusson recorded that brigadiers were told to go at once and put the alternatives before their officers; and he was a clear-headed general who expressed himself well on paper and was resolved throughout "to do his duty.”

Gough may have been less cool and he was certainly more partisan. He was an Ulsterman, but as he had no house there he was excluded from the protection of the concession. He absented himself from Paget’s afternoon conference, and spent the remainder of the day with his three regiments, mostly at the Curragh, thirty miles south-west of Dublin. That evening he reported that five of the officers under his
command could claim Ulster domicile. Of the remainder, twelve were prepared to obey whatever orders were given, but sixty,
¹
including himself and the commanding officers of the 4th Hussars and the 5th and 16th Lancers, preferred to accept dismissal than be involved in “ the
initiation
of active military operations against Ulster.”
²
This was the so-called Mutiny at the Curragh. Other, less fashionable regiments in the area showed signs of restiveness but were restrained by Paget or Fergusson or Pulteney, the commander of the 6th Division. The news of the cavalry revolt was telephoned to London that Friday night.