Asquith (54 page)

¹
_{The number has usually been given as 57, probably excluding Gough himself, but the itemisation given in A. P. Ryan’s highly informative
Mutiny at the Curragh
adds up to 60, with ambiguity as to whether or not Gough was included.}

²
_{The form in which the decision was announced is a striking illustration of the foolish way in which Paget posed his questions, even assuming that he had to pose them at all.}

Asquith was dining with Lord and Lady Sheffield in Mansfield Street. He made a hurried departure from the bridge table to Downing Street. The letter which he wrote to Miss Stanley (who had been at her parents’ party) on the Saturday evening described both what he found when he got there and his immediate view of the trouble:

I found there Winston, the Arch-Colonel,
¹
Sir John French and Gen. Ewart with some pretty alarming news. The Brigadier and about 57 officers of the Cavalry Brigade at the Curragh had sent in their resignations sooner than be employed in “ coercing ” Ulster. The Brigadier—Gough—is a distinguished Cavalry officer, an Irishman, and the hottest of Ulsterians, and there can be little doubt that he has been using his influence with his subordinates to make them combine for a strike. We sent orders for him and the 3 Colonels to come here at once and they will arrive this evening. Meanwhile, from what one hears today it seems likely that there was a misunderstanding. They seem to have thought, from what Paget said, that they were about to be ordered off at once to shed the blood of the Covenanters, and they say they never meant to object to do duty like the other troops in protecting depots & keeping order. This will be cleared up in a few hours: but there have been all sorts of agitations & alarums in high quarters, and I
had a visit this morning from Stamfordhain
²
who wore a very long face. I took the opportunity of saying that the main responsibility for all this mutinous talk rested with Lord Roberts, who is in a dangerous condition of senile frenzy.

¹
_Seely.

²
_{The King’s Secretary.}

The King not only sent Lord Stamfordham. He also wrote saying that he was “ grieved beyond words at this disastrous and irreparable catastrophe which has befallen my Army ” and complained bitterly at the lack of information with which he had been provided.
ⁱ
Altogether Asquith soon began to think that his initial view had been too optimistic. After a Sunday which included an hour with the King, a call from the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a letter from Bonar Law giving notice of House of Commons trouble on the following day,
¹
he wrote:

The military situation has developed . . . and there is no doubt if we were to order a march upon Ulster that about half the officers in the Army—the Navy is more uncertain—would strike. The immediate difficulty in the Curragh can, I think, be arranged, but that is the permanent situation, and it is not a pleasant one. Winston is all for creating a temporary Army
ad hoc
—but that of course is nonsense ... This will be the third successive Monday that we have a “ crisis ” in the House.

As the parliamentary situation developed, Asquith began to feel a little easier. On the Monday he wrote:

What with Paget’s tactless blundering and Seely’s clumsy phrases, and the general Army position, I had rather a tough job to handle. A.J.B., who is the only quick mind in that ill-bred crowd, hit the right nail, or rather touched the sore spot.
²

¹
_{Also, Asquith recorded, “ (contrary to my settled practice) I saw Geoffrey Robinson of the
Times,
& gave him a few hints of a quieting kind.”}

²
_{The inexcusable foolishness of the way in which Paget, apparently acting on the direct instructions of the Secretary of State for War, put the issue at his conference of senior officers.}

By the Wednesday he thought the opposition were winning his battle for him:

Never in the whole of my experience at the bar and in Parliament have I seen a really strong and formidable case... so miserably presented and so coldly backed up. It is quite clear the Tories
are thoroughly cowed over this army business; they think it is going to do them harm in the country. Our people on the other hand are really hot and excited—more than they have been for a long time, and I am beginning to believe that we are going to score out of what seemed an almost impossible situation.

Unfortunately, if the Liberals were that week winning the battle in the House of Commons, they were losing it in the War Office. Gough, with his three colonels, was in London for Sunday and Monday. In his discussions at the War Office he showed an inflexible determination to get his own way. It was as though he were disciplining the Secretary of State and the General Staff. When it was suggested, in view of the misunderstanding, that he should go back and carry on as though nothing had happened, he declined absolutely—unless he were given a written assurance that the army would never be used to impose Home Rule on Ulster. After some havering Seely allowed Ewart to produce a draft of such an assurance. This came before the Cabinet on the Monday morning, March 23rd, and Asquith, after a short discussion, wrote out an amended and unexceptionable version in his own hand:

“ You are authorized by the Army Council,” it ran, “ to inform the Officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade that the Army Council are satisfied that the incident which has arisen in regard to their resignations has been due to a misunderstanding.

It is the duty of all soldiers to obey lawful commands given to them through the proper channel by the Army Council, either for the protection of public property and the support of the civil power in the event of disturbance, or for the protection of the lives and property of the inhabitants.

This is the only point it was intended to put to the officers in the questions of the General Officer Commanding, and the Army Council have been glad to learn from you that there never has been and never will be any question of disobeying such lawful orders.”

Seley was absent—he had been summoned to the King—when this was discussed. He returned to Downing Street just as the Cabinet was breaking up. The Prime Minister, according to a letter which Margot Asquith subsequently wrote to Lady Islington, gave him the document and he stuffed it in his pocket, and remained in the Cabinet room talking to John Morley. While these two were still
talking, but after Asquith had left the room, a messenger arrived from the War Office to ask if Gough could have his reply. Seely and Morley—the one a notably incautious and relatively new minister but the other the most experienced member of the Cabinet—then proceeded to add two paragraphs of their own. One paragraph added nothing of substance; the other gave Gough far too much. They were as follows:

His Majesty’s Government must retain their right to use all the forces of the Crown in Ireland, or elsewhere, to maintain law and order and to support the civil power in the ordinary execution of its duty.

But they have no intention whatever of taking advantage of the right to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the Home Rule Bill.

How Morley ever came to take part in this totally unwarranted re-drafting is incomprehensible. Margot’s explanation, given in the same letter, was that “ J. Morley is quite deaf and
much
too vain poor dear to own up that he did not know what was going on (in the Cabinet)and this seems as good as any other.

The document was then given to Gough. The brigadier was as insatiable as he was intrepid. He told French and Ewart that it was not good enough. He asked for a further written assurance that the correct interpretation of the last paragraph was that the army in Ireland would not be used to enforce the Home Rule Bill upon Ulster. After a little hesitation, French wrote “ That is how I read it. J.F. ” beside this interpretation. With this in his pocket Gough set off as soon as he could for Dublin. He was able to return in triumph. It was not surprising that Sir Henry Wilson, the arch Unionist intriguer in the War Office, wrote in his diary: “ So long as we hold the paper we got on Monday, we can afford to sit tight.
^j

Asquith was not so fortunately placed. As soon as he saw the offending paragraphs—on the Monday evening—he realised that they could not be allowed to stand without giving away the entire position on civilian control over the army. Officers would have been persuaded back to duty at the price of extracting a policy concession from the Government. He immediately sent for Seely and told him that the additions must be struck out. It was too late. Gough had already taken the document to Ireland. Asquith’s only course was therefore that of public repudiation, although this would clearly make it difficult
for Seely and the two generals to remain in office. How much he cared about losing Seely is doubtful. He liked him, but had by this stage lost all confidence in his judgment and sense—“ the greatest fool of all after Paget,” was Margot's description of him. But Asquith was most reluctant to see French go. “ French offered his resignation but has withdrawn it for the moment at any rate,” Asquith wrote. “ His position is a very difficult one, but he has been so loyal and has behaved so well that I would stretch a great many points to keep him.”
¹
This was written on the Thursday, although Asquith had already repudiated by inference both Seely’s added paragraphs and French’s special assurance.

¹
_{Margot Asquith (still in the same letter to Lady Islington) added an intriguing—but certainly unauthorised and probably inaccurate—gloss to this by writing: “ French put his name to what he thought was a Cabinet document so he said he had better go—he is a hot Liberal & of course comes back to a high place in a very short time.”}

On the Friday Asquith made a statement in the House of Commons promulgating a new Army Order, which was intended to clear up the whole position. He had hoped to do this at noon, after a morning Cabinet with French and Ewart in attendance. He then planned to take an afternoon motor drive with Miss Stanley. But the meeting was more protracted than he had anticipated, and he was forced to delay his statement until five, taking his motor drive first. The new order conveyed in different words the substance of the three original paragraphs.

Asquith went to the Wharf for the Saturday and Sunday, where he had the Churchills and “ Bluey ” Baker, the under-secretary at the War Office, as guests. While there he contemplated the problem of how to fill Seely’s place—although there was still some doubt as to whether the resignations would take place—and decided that the most steadying solution would be to take the job himself.

“ I started the idea of the two offices at once,” he wrote to Miss Stanley when he had returned to London on the Monday (March 30th), “ and I need not tell you that Winston’s eyes blazed and his polysyllables rolled, and his gestures were those of a man possessed. Even Bluey’s wary deep-set gaze lighted up. On Sunday Bongie (Bonham Carter) arrived with a long hazy diplomatic document which Haldane had drawn up, & over persuaded the wretched 2 Generals to accept, as a
pièce justificative
for not
resigning. I saw at once that from their point of view it was a sophistical evasion, and from ours a surrender of the whole position. Winston and Bluey quite agreed, & Bongie took back a discouraging negative.”

Soon after Asquith got back to London on the Monday morning it was settled that the resignations were to take place:

The Generals (i.e. French and Ewart) had come back to the position that as a matter of personal honour they must go. Poor Seely, who was there, of course was bound to follow suit. French behaved admirably, & when I told him privately that I thought of going to the W(ar) O(ffice), he was delighted and promised all his help. So then I proceeded to the King and put my scheme before him. He remarked—naively, as Bonar Law wd. say—that the idea had never occurred to him! But he was quite taken with it and gave it his emphatic approval. So after questions—as you will see by the papers—I threw two bornbshells on the floor of the House, and I think the effect was all that one cd. have hoped. On the advice of the Impeccable I cleared out at once, not wishing to incur a penalty of £500 for sitting after my seat was legally vacant.
⁷
So I am no longer an M.P.

At the end of that week, accompanied by his wife and elder daughter, Asquith went to Fife. “ Such a journey!! ” Margot wrote. “ I thought I shd. have died—I’ve never known the Tories so vile, so rude and so futile as now.” Asquith himself found the experience more encouraging:

“ Wherever we stopped we had a cheering crowd, with a deputation, address & c,” he wrote to Miss Stanley, “ and the climax was at Edinburgh where the Waverley Station was simply packed. They cheered and reared & sang “jolly good fellow ” and “ Scots wha hae,” and I only protected Violet from loud demands for a speech by asking them to sing “ Auld Lang Syne,” of which they proceeded to give us 2 or 3 verses, ending up with “ Will ye noe
come home again.” We arrived at last just before 8 at Cupar where there was a final demonstration.”

On the Saturday afternoon he addressed a “wonderfully enthusiastic ” meeting at Ladybank. “ The Army,” he said, “ will hear nothing of politics from me, and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the Army.” He returned to London after two days, but he was still out of the House of Commons. It was another four days before he heard that no candidate had been nominated against him, and another five after that before, on Easter Tuesday, April 14th, he was able to take his seat.