Asquith (56 page)

¹
_{“I have never known either of the two Nationalist members at all well,” he wrote in reply, “ and have no great liking for them—for Dillon indeed rather the opposite, so that George is far more likely to be able to cajole or frighten them, or both, than I could be. . . .”
(Asquith Papers
, box 46, f. 213).}

²
_{Later Lord Craigavon and first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.}

Two days later—“ a black letter day in my Calendar ”—he announced the failure of the conference to the House of Commons. He also described the closing stages to Miss Stanley:

The last meeting this morning was in some ways dramatic, tho’ the actual business consisted merely in “settling the words to be publicly used.” At the end the King came in, rather
emotionne
, & said in two sentences (thank God! there was not another speech) farewell, I am sorry, and I thank you. He then very wisely had the different members brought to him privately, and saw each in turn. Redmond was a good deal impressed by his interview, especially as the King told him that he was convinced of the necessity of Home Rule.

We then had a meeting at Downing Street—Redmond & Dillon, Ll. George, Birrell & I. I told them that I must go on with the Amending Bill
—without
the time limit: to which after a good deal of demur they reluctantly agreed to try & persuade their party to assent. It will come on on Tuesday . . .

Asquith then permitted himself a few thoughts about the mysteries of the Celtic mind:

Redmond assured us that when he said good-bye to Carson the latter was in tears, and that Captain Craig who had never spoken to Dillon in his life came up to him and said: ‘ Mr. Dillon, will you shake my hand? I should be glad to think that I had been able to give as many years to Ulster as you have to the service of
Ireland' Aren’t they a remarkable people? And the folly of thinking that we can ever understand, let alone govern them!

When the following Tuesday came, however, the Amending Bill was not proceeded with. During the intervening week-end the Nationalist Volunteers followed the example of Ulster with a gun-running exercise of their own at Howth. This led to a mild street scene in Dublin on the Sunday afternoon. A foolish Assistant Commissioner of Police sent for the military—“ a most improper proceeding,” in Asquith’s view—and a minor incident was turned into a massacre. Three Nationalists were killed and thirty-eight were wounded. Asquith, as was described in chapter XVII, was hurriedly summoned back from the Wharf to London to deal with this “ malignity of fortune.” One effect of the incident was to disillusion Asquith, perhaps none too soon, with the quality of the administration in Dublin Castle and even with the agreeable and easy-going Chief Secretary. “ I am tempted to regret,” he wrote, “ that I didn’t make the ‘ clean cut ’ 6 months ago, and insist upon the booting out of Aberdeen, . . . & the whole crew. A weaker and more incompetent lot were never in charge of a leaky ship in stormy weather; the poor old Birrell’s occasional & fitful appearances at the wheel do not greatly improve matters.”

The second effect was a hardening of opinion amongst the Nationalist M.P.s. The Amending Bill had obviously to be postponed for at least a day or so in order to allow their mood to steady. The Government Chief Whip pressed hard for a delay until the following week, but Asquith reacted with surprising violence against what he described as this “ idiotic proposal which would have made everyone say we were drifting on.” He announced on the Monday that the bill would definitely be taken on Thursday.

But Thursday brought another postponement, although for a different reason. Throughout these last stages of the Irish crisis the international situation provided increasingly loud off-stage noises. The Sarajevo murders occurred while the House of Lords was busy re-fashioning the Amending Bill. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia became known as the Buckingham Palace conference was breaking up. But, at least until the Tuesday of the following week (July 28th), Ireland was the central worry in the Prime Minister’s mind, and the “ Eastern problem,” as he called it, a peripheral one. After Tuesday the balance shifted. On the Wednesday he wrote that “ the Amend
ing Bill & the whole Irish business are of course put into the shade by the coming war.” Then, on the Thursday morning, as he described it to Miss Stanley:

I was sitting in the Cabinet room with a map of Ulster, & a lot of statistics about populations & religions, and some choice extracts from Hansard (with occasional glances at this morning’s letter from Penrhôs), endeavouring to get into something like shape my speech on the Amending Bill, when a telephone message came from (of all people in the world) Bonar Law, to ask me to come & see him & Carson at his Kensington abode—Pembroke Lodge. He had sent his motor, which I boarded, and in due time arrived at my destination: a rather suburban looking detached villa in a Bayswater street,
¹
with a small garden, and furnished and decorated itself after the familiar fashion of Glasgow or Bradford or Altrincham. It was quite an adventure, for I might easily have been kidnapped by a section of Ulster Volunteers.

I found the two gentlemen there, & B. Law proceeded to propose, in the interest of the international situation, that we should postpone for the time being the 2nd reading of the Amending Bill. He said that to advertise our domestic dissensions at this
moment wd. weaken our influence in the world for peace & c----

I of course welcomed this attitude, but I said I wd. consult some colleagues before giving a definite answer.

¹
_{A curious topographical inaccuracy for Asquith; Pembroke Lodge was not within a mile of Bayswater.}

The colleagues consulted were Lloyd George and Grey, who both agreed that the offer should be accepted. So did Redmond, whom Asquith saw at the House of Commons immediately after luncheon. The intention was that the Home Rule Bill itself should become law, but that its operation should be suspended until a new amending bill could be passed. On this basis Asquith announced a further and indefinite postponement on the Thursday afternoon. That was the end of the pre-war phase of the Irish dispute. The unsolved problem was bundled into cold storage. But it took a little more effort, after the outbreak of war, to get the door of the storage room closed upon it. And when the issue was next exposed to view, at Easter, 1916, the freezing plant was shown to be disappointingly ineffective. The maggots had been hard at work.

7
_{Until 1918 the acceptance of any Cabinet office made it necessary for a member to seek re-election. In fact Simon’s subsequent advice was that Asquith had probably committed a technical offence by appearing to announce his own appointment, and that a bill of indemnity was necessary. If this was blocked by the opposition, Simon’s suggestion was that “ 250,000 working men ” should be asked to subscribe 1d. each.}

8
_{Lord Northcliffe, Rothermere’s brother, spent a week in Ulster at this time, and Murray, perhaps because he thought it would ease his negotiations with Rothermere, was anxious that Asquith should see Northcliffe. Asquith was reluctant. “ I hate and distrust the fellow and all his works,” he wrote, “ and will never make any overture to him ; so I merely said that if he chose to ask me directly to see him, and had anything really new to communicate, I would not refuse. I know of few men in this world who are responsible for more mischief, and deserve a longer punishment in the next: but it doesn’t do to say this to Winston.”}

_{Murray persevered, and the meeting took place three days later in his flat in Ennismore Gardens. Whether or not it served any other purpose, Asquith remarked that he used it “ to impress upon (Northcliffe) the importance of making
The Times
a responsible newspaper.”}

From 1911 onwards the European scene was menacing, and in a general way was recognised as such by Asquith and his leading ministers. But there was no especial menace in the first half of 1914. The Balkan wars were over, and no fresh crisis had developed. It was a period of relative calm. There was no slow, inevitable edging towards war as in
1939
.

Even after the murders at Sarajevo, the mood did not change. When the Cabinet could take time off from the Irish crisis it was more concerned with planning for the end of the Parliament than with the international scene. After a meeting on July 8th Asquith informed the King that the intention was to prorogue in August, and then to have one more short session beginning in December and leading on to a general election in the summer of 1915.

On July 24th, when the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia had been delivered, Grey made a report to the Cabinet. It was the first foreign affairs discussion that month. But it riveted attention. Asquith’s Cabinet letter spoke of the Austrian ultimatum as “ the gravest event for many years past in European politics ” and a possible “ prelude to a war in which at least four of the great powers may be involved.” At that stage he nevertheless believed that we should have little difficulty in remaining outside the conflict. “ Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators,” he wrote later that day.

During the week-end of July 25th-26th he remained of the same mind. Indeed he was somewhat divided on the merits of the issue. “ The curious thing is,” he wrote on the Sunday, “ that on many, if not most, of the points Austria has a good and Servia a very bad case. But the Austrians are quite the stupidest people in Europe (as the
Italians are the most perfidious), and there is a brutality about their mode of procedure which will make many people think that it is a case of a big Power wantonly bullying a little one.” On the Monday he was heavily occupied with Ireland. On the Tuesday he noted with sadness the collapse of Grey’s attempts to organise a 4-power conference, and assumed that “ nothing but a miracle ” could now avert a war. But he did not necessarily mean a British war. That night, after entertaining at dinner the Churchills, Benckendorffs (Russian ambassador) and Edward Marsh, he walked across Downing Street and sat in the Foreign Office with Grey and Haldane until 1 a.m.