Asquith (74 page)

At any rate Aitken made sufficient progress for him to feel justified in sending Lloyd George a telegram telling him that he should come home quickly and see Law. Lloyd George’s own telegram from Paris appears to have been a reply to this, rather than an initiative of his own.

When he got back to London, however, Lloyd George discovered that Bonar Law would not dine with him alone on the Friday night. Law merely sent him an invitation to make a third at a party with Sir Henry Wilson. This invitation, on Aitken’s advice, Lloyd George refused. He retired to Walton Heath, and dined with his family. Law was clearly not rushing into an alliance.

On the next day Law saw Asquith and informed him, contrary to the expectations of Aitken and their author, of Lloyd George’s plans. Asquith reacted calmly to this information, which was probably not new to him, but expressed scepticism as to whether Lloyd George would regard the chairmanship of such a War Committee as more than a stage on his road to complete power. He also queried the value of bringing in Carson as one of its members, on the ground that when the latter was in the Government he had not formed a very high opinion of his “ constructive abilities ”—a view with which, within six months, both Bonar Law and Lloyd George were more than ready to agree.

As had often been the case in the past, Bonar Law found it difficult to disagree with Asquith in his presence, or for a little time afterwards. But he allowed Aitken to arrange, for the Monday evening (November 20th) the first meeting of “ the Triumvirate ”—Lloyd George, Carson and himself. This took place at the Hyde Park Hotel, and Aitken, the catalyst and the chronicler of this alliance, was also present.
¹

¹
_{Lord Beaverbrook (as Sir Max Aitken became within a month) was very close to Bonar Law at the time, and was present at almost all his meetings with Lloyd George and Carson, although not at those with the other Unionist ministers or with Asquith. His account of what went on (given in Volume Two of
Politicians and the War
, first published in 1932) is detailed, dramatic, and invaluable to any study of the period. But it is self-confessedly partisan. It is a view of the battle seen, not from a hovering aeroplane, but by a deeply committed man operating in the far from calm atmosphere of one of the combatant headquarters. Nevertheless Lord Beaverbrook, for the sake of completing his picture, also tried to describe what went on in the other camps—in 10, Downing Street and amongst the Unionist ministers, notably Curzon, Chamberlain and Cecil, who were operating independently of Bonar Law. Inevitably his information was less authoritative here than when he was dealing with what he himself saw. Yet, so completely has his account come to dominate the field, that his views of when and why Asquith or Curzon or Chamberlain acted as they did are now widely accepted as indisputable facts. Innumerable books on the subject,
including almost all of those published within the last ten years, lean heavily, with or without attribution, upon Lord Beaverbrook’s version. Even J. A. Spender, in the relevant chapter of Asquith’s official biography, used a great number of Beaverbrook’s facts, (mis-transmitting at least one of them), while controverting many of his opinions. It is therefore often the case that, at first sight, a statement appears to be overwhelmingly confirmed from about six different sources; but on closer examination the six “ sources ” all turn out to be subsidiaries of the central Beaverbrook fount. This does not matter so long as the original “ fact ” was within Lord Beaverbrook’s field of highly reliable knowledge. It matters greatly if it began life only as a surmise. Unfortunately there is no source on the Asquith side of the battle which is remotely as clear or gushing as the Beaverbrook one. There we have to gather together a few drops from a variety of sporadic trickles, checking them carefully against each other.}

It was not
an easy start. Bonar Law remained suspicious of Lloyd George and at the end of the discussion arrived at the blinding conclusion that his “ plans boiled down to one simple proposal—to put Asquith out and to put himself in.”
^&
Yet there was one substantial ray of light. Law had assumed before that Carson would never again agree to serve in a government of which Asquith remained even the titular head. Now he seemed disposed to join Lloyd George’s War Committee. If that could be brought about it would be an immense relief to Law.

From this stage onwards the negotiations gathered momentum. The next day Bonar Law saw Carson at the House of Commons, first alone and then with Lloyd George. That evening he had a further meeting with Lloyd George at the Hyde Park Hotel. At luncheon on the Wednesday Lloyd George told Hankey of the proposed composition of his committee—himself, Carson, Bonar Law and Henderson— and pressed him, unsuccessfully, to join the first three of them at dinner that night.
⁰
On the Thursday there was a further “ protracted and fruitful ” session of the Triumvirate. Bonar Law was moving slowly, unhappily, but steadily along the road to full co-operation. At first he had not understood that Asquith was to be completely excluded from the new committee, but he swallowed this new knowledge without too much difficulty during the week. By the Saturday (November 25th), when there was yet another meeting, this time at his own house, Pembroke Lodge, he was ready to accept a written agreement and to put it before the Prime Minister. This document, drafted by Aitken,
was in the form of a statement of re-organisation to be issued by Asquith himself. The operative portion of it ran as follows:

I have decided, therefore, to create what I regard as a civilian General Staff. This staff will consist of myself as President and of three other members of the Cabinet who have no portfolio and who will devote their whole time to the consideration day by day of the problems which arise in connection with the prosecution of the war.

The three members who have undertaken to fulfil these duties are:

[Here was left a blank space for the filling in of names but it was an understood part of the scheme that, apart from Lloyd George, they were to be Carson and Bonar Law
¹
.
] and I have invited Mr. Lloyd George, and he has consented to act as chairman and to preside at any meeting which, owing to the pressure of other duties, I find it impossible to attend.

I propose that the body should have executive authority subject to this—that it shall rest with me to refer any questions to the decision of the Cabinet which I think should be brought before them.
^d

1
_{Henderson appeared to have been dropped.}

This was a compromise document. It sought to reconcile Carson, who openly wanted Asquith out, Law, who wanted Carson in but also wanted Asquith to retain both his position and some power, and Lloyd George, who wanted to transfer as much power as possible to himself without seeming so self-seeking as to frighten off Law. It was skilfully drafted so as to offer to all three the possibility of achieving their objectives. It was not the last of the ambiguous communications of the next few weeks.

Bonar Law took the document to Asquith on the Saturday afternoon. During the preceding week the Prime Minister had been less preoccupied with the battle for position than his principal colleagues. His concern had been more with the search for a Food Controller (Speaker Lowther, the third man to be offered the job, declined on November 23 rd); with the composition of another mission to Russia; with a joint
demarche
from the unlikely combination of Arthur Henderson and Lord Robert Cecil saying that they could not agree to a franchise reform to give votes to soldiers without women's suffrage being dealt with as well; with trouble in the South Wales coalfield; and
with the growing menace of the exhaustion of British credits in the United States. Until the Thursday he was hardly aware that a crisis was brewing. On that morning, however, he was to some extent alerted. The
Morning Post
, one of the papers which Asquith read, came out strongly for a Lloyd George premiership. Gwynne, the editor, was a close associate of Carson’s, but he had not hitherto been well-disposed towards the man whom he now proclaimed as the necessary “ saviour of society.” As recently as October 11th he had written to Asquith complaining bitterly about an anti-Haig intrigue, in which he said Lloyd George was joined by Churchill, F. E. Smith and Lord French.
¹
Asquith did not fail to note the significance of his change of front.

¹
_{“You know, of course, of the visit of Mr. Lloyd George to General Foch, where, with the Lord Chief Justice as interpreter, he ventured on criticism of the British Generals and the British armies in France. This has aroused considerable indignation among our officers of all ranks out there. ... It will need your personal intervention to put matters straight.”
(Asquith Papers,
box xxx, ff. 261-4).}

Nevertheless he did not react sharply to Bonar Law’s visit. He reiterated his suspicions that this was not the last of Lloyd George’s territorial demands and his lack of confidence in Carson as a minister, but left on Law’s mind the impression that he was not “ altogether opposed to the idea ” (of the small War Committee), to which he undertook to send a considered reply from the Wharf, where he was going that same afternoon. Bonar Law, his willingness to perform a Cassius-like role once again weakened by contact with Caesar, retired to the War Office to report to his more resolute allies. The probability seems to be that he had failed to inform Asquith of the full significance of the demand he was presenting. At any rate the Prime Minister’s considered answer, written on the Sunday, and given to Bonar Law in an interview on the Monday morning, contained the following paragraph:

But the essence of your scheme is that the War Committee should disappear, and its place be taken by a body of four—myself, yourself, Carson and Lloyd George.
^e

Even without appreciating how completely and immediately he was to be excluded, Asquith returned a firm but friendly negative to the scheme which Bonar Law had outlined. He argued against it on three grounds. First, while he by no means ruled out changes in the composition or procedure of the War Committee, he did not believe that
the body could work effectively unless it had the heads of the War Office and the Admiralty amongst its members. Second, he would not promote Carson over the heads of Balfour, Curzon or McKenna, all of whom, in his view, had better claims to be a member of a small War Committee. To do so would cause great resentment amongst both Liberal and Unionist ministers. “ It would be universally believed to be the price paid for shutting the mouth of our most formidable parliamentary critic—a manifest sign of weakness and cowardice.” Third, there was the question of Lloyd George :

He has many qualities that would fit him for the first place, but he lacks the one thing needful—he does not inspire trust... . Here, again, there is one construction, and one only, that could be put on the new arrangement, that it has been engineered by him with the purpose, not perhaps at the moment, but as soon as a fitting pretext could be found, of his displacing me. In short, the plan could not, in my opinion, be carried out without fatally impairing the confidence of loyal and valued colleagues, and undermining my own authority
^f

Bonar Law took this reply back to a meeting with Lloyd George and Carson in his room at the Colonial Office. It threw “ the Triumvirate ” into a state of considerable confusion. No consensus of view emerged as to what they should do next. Carson wanted to declare full-scale war against Asquith, but Bonar Law was still hesitant, and Lloyd George was somewhat inhibited, perhaps by his desires, certainly by his position. During the ensuing week the three seem to have acted more independently than had been the case in the immediately preceding period.

Carson, supplemented more effectively by Aitken, tried to increase the newspaper pressure upon Asquith. On the Wednesday (November 29th) the
Daily Chronicle
, an important Liberal paper, came out with a strong criticism of the direction of the war. The editor, Sir Robert Donald, had been in close touch with Aitken and Law. He was a man either of exraordinary naivete or of considerable disingenuousness for he wrote later: “ The article had precisely the opposite effect intended. It was intended to be helpful to the Government, but it was most useful to Mr. Lloyd George in pushing his scheme for the reform of the War Committee.”
^g

By the end of the week the
Daily Express
(not then owned by Aitken but greatly influenced by him) and the
Daily Chronicle
had
published main news stories which took the crisis before the public in a form highly favourable to Lloyd George. The
Daily Mail
, at this stage, was a little less well-informed about the detailed moves behind the scenes, but on the Saturday it published a leader headed “ The Limpets: A National Danger.”
¹
The Times
was of course in line with its stablemate, and the
Morning Post
, uninformed by Carson that Law had moved over to Lloyd George—perhaps he thought a little further harrying fire would do his leader no harm—continued to denounce the Prime Minister’s conduct of affairs and Law for supporting him.

¹
_{Northcliffe was only dissuaded at the last moment from advertising this with a placard of “Asquith: A National Danger.” (Tom Clarke:
My Northcliffe Diary
, p. 105).}