COLONEL WINSTON CHURCHILL.
INprivate life Colonel Churchill may very likely have all the virtues, or even the graces, of personal conduct. We should not be surprised to learn that he was scrupulously loyal to his friends, and willing always to think of others first and himself last ; that he scorned the marauder's motto, "Thou shalt want ere I want " ; that he was unselfish in thought, word, and deed; that he could be trusted implicitly under temptation ; that he was a man who would never take advantage of another man's friendly indulgence or willingness to share burdens which he need not share • in fact, that he was chivalrous, straight- forward, open, and sincere, a man who would scout any- thing in the nature of an intrigue, and would no more engage in tortuous action than stab a friend in the back or strike a secret and felon blow in the dark. But if these are the qualities which Colonel Churchill shows in private life, as for aught we know they are, they are not his qualities in public life. That there may be this disparity between a man's public and private record is, unfortunately, no new experience. Too often political ambition sweeps away the safeguards of domestic honour, and somehow makes a man justify to himself action in public life from which he would shrink back in horror in any other sphere of activity. The man who would scorn to be guided in private life by the principle that all is fair in love and war" will apply the maxim without a qualm in the region of political competition. In any case, we must judge Colonel Churchill solely by his "public form." During the sixteen years in which he has been in public life, it is impossible to say that he has conformed to the standard which we are willing, and more than willing, to allow him as a private individual. No man can review his public career, exciting and fasci- nating as it is from many points of view, without having to admit that Colonel Churchill has lowered instead of having raised the moral standard. He has played the part of a political adventurer, and played it with a skill and audacity, hut also with a want of scruple and want of consideration of public interests, and with a reckless selfishness, to which our political history affords no parallel, or affords it alone in the political life of Charles James Fox. Pope knew and sketched the type in the days of the first George, but his verses, prophetic as they were of Fox, are still more so of the man who made the speech of Tuesday last, and who had the colossal impudence, considering all that has happened, to urge the Government to take into their counsels the man with whom some nine months ago he engaged in an envenomed personal quarrel which shook to its foundations the Administration of which he formed a part. Here are Pope's lines on the restless party dema- gogue, the man who keeps his callous, unscrupulous course, who knows no doubts and has no fears as long as he thinks his action will pay him, will lead to self-advancement and the satisfaction of his own ambitions :— " Sce the same man, in vigour, in the gout, Alone, in company, in place or out, Early at business and at hazard late, Mad at a fox chase, wise at a debate, Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball, Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall."
No one has ever accused, or ever will accuse, Colonel Ohurchill of being "drunk at a borough" or anywhere else, but, save for this happy change in our public manners, the picture of the fearless, feverish, irrepressible political gambler is drawn to the life for all time. The gambler in private life is a curse to his family and friends, but the evil stops there. The political gambler is a public danger so great as to be utterly unendurable. As soon as the sin of gambling with the essential interests of the nation has been discovered in a politician, there is but one course to adopt. He and his influence must be eliminated at once and for ever. If this is not done, and done quickly and thoroughly, the dangers to which the State must be exposed are beyond calculation. Remember, it is the curse of the gambler in all spheres of action, a curse from which he cannot free himself, to advance by a crescendo. The temptation to pile folly upon folly, risk upon risk, danger upon danger, never to withdraw a false step but always to plunge further in, grows and grows and grows till the inevitable end is reached. He has always before his eyes the thought that if he is only bold enough he can retrieve any mistake. A turn of the card (` The luck must change some day, and may change at any moment') and sour despair will change to glorious exhilaration. The gambler always believes himself to be but an inch or a yard or a mile from complete victory. His will-power may seem in full vigour, capable of making the extremity of effort, yet in reality it has ceased to exist. At any rate, it is no longer capable of that highest manifestation which can hold a man back at the very edge of an abyss, which can give him the opportunity of retracing his steps. The gambler can only go full steam ahead. With him the brakes of will-power will not work. Thus, except for a miracle, he who is gambling with his country's interest in order to further his own ambition is sure to plunge from disaster to disaster.
If we follow Colonel Churchill's career throughout the war, it will be seen that the gambler's spirit is everywhere apparent. The attempt to relieve Antwerp may have been, and doubtless was, good strategy in the abstract. Conceived and carried out as it was by Colonel Churchill in the gambler's spirit, it failed disastrously. The Dar- danelles expedition was also probably sound enough as an abstract proposition of war. [War proposi- tions sound in the abstract are easy enough to devise ; the difficulty is to give them a sure and concrete expo- sition.] But again the methods adopted were those of the gambler—any risk to achieve a quick success. And here we cannot be considered unjust in calling the transaction a gamble, for we are only using Colonel Churchill's own word. He risked all on the throw of the dice and again he lost, and with far worse consequences than in the case of Antwerp. He urged and pushed and pressed for this throw of the dice just because his previous throw at Ant- werp had been so unsuccessfuL Ile doubtless felt that the only way for him to play a game which should leave him master of the field was to swallow up an audacious failure in an audacious victory.
We know, of course, that we shall be told that' it is most unfair to talk as if the responsibility for the Gallipoli failure was solely Colonel Churchill's and not also that of his colleagues. Theoretically, no doubt, this defence is true. By endorsing his recklessness they made it their own, and we should not be in the least surprised if Colonel Churchill had explored this ground of defence before the expedition was undertaken. Gamblers are often very alert, very subtle, and in a sense very cautious. By recording memoranda pointing out all the difficulties and dangers of the proceeding, and by advising his colleagues not to enter upon the proposed course without the most anxious consideration and without weighing the great risks to which they were exposing themselves, he could clear himself by anticipation of the accusation that he lured the Cabinet into the Dardanelles expedition. But even if these documents exist and could be produced by Colonel Churchill, we would advise the public not to be misled by any such tactics. No matter what hedging documents exist, the Dardanelles expedition in its inception was due to Colonel Churchill. The proof is to be found in the fact that he could and would have claimed the victory as his own, if victory there had been. It is plain that, whatever the mechanism, he manceuvred his colleagues into the mad attempt to open the Straits by unsupported naval action. Colonel Churchill's speeches during the time when there still seemed a possibility of success, the speech, for example, when he spoke of being within a few miles of victory, have a proprietary tone about them which is most noticeable, and which, consciously or unconsciously, betray the secret of the whole transaction.
Colonel Churchill's resignation of office was in reality another gambler's throw, and one very characteristic of the gambler's methods. An essential mark of the gambler is want of judgment. Colonel Churchill has always shown, in spite of his political genius, for such it is, an amazing lack of judgment, but he never showed it more conspicuously than in this case. His superficial if wide studies of history led him to the conventional conclusion that England does not love Coalitions, that a Coalition Ministry is sure to be torn by faction and intrigue, and so can easily be uprooted. He thought he knew his colleagues and their weaknesses au fond, and that he would only have to go out of the Ministry for a short time. Then he would use the first lever that came to his hand to uproot the Government and bow himself back into office as the necessary man, the saviour of the nation, the new Chatham.
The pistol Colonel Churchill loaded so ingeniously behind the door has gone off at half-cock. The Coalition has not broken up. It is not going to break up. Instead of the loyalty of its members to each other growing less, it is growing greater. Colonel Churchill—to return to our former metaphor—gambled on the innate treachery of the party politician and has lost the throw.
It is a mark of the gambler as things go worse and worse with him, and as the money available grows scantier and scantier, to increase his risks. While he has gold to spare he may be content with equal chances, with red or black, odd or even. When he has only silver left in his pockets he must take desperate chances. Even thirty-five to one against him must be hazarded. That is the ex- planation of Colonel Churchill's amazing and intolerable attempt of Tuesday last to push his former enemy, Lord Fisher, into the Ministry. The world knows what were the relations between Colonel Churchill and Lord Fisher last summer, and now Colonel Churchill is actually putting his money upon the possibility of Lord Fisher turning up a winning number. Before those who have watched the faces at a public gaming-table there rises the sordid picture of the gambler who once played with nothing but rouleaux of gold, but who has now come down to silver and is in the act of throwing down his last five-franc-piece on zero. His pose of imperturbability is only betrayed by the gleam in his eyes. But for that one might imagine him engaged in carrying out some most commonplace piece of business routine. The frequenters of the table, however, and the players who before had been inclined to follow the great plunger and back his luck, know well what has happened, and await, even if still half spellbound, the final catastrophe. That was apparent in the reception of Colonel Churchill's speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Admiral Sir Hedworth Meux, who pro- claimed himself an old friend and admirer of Colonel Churchill, took a line for which all patriotic men will be grateful. He evidently realized the true inwardness of the situation with which the House was confronted. He saw that the act which was labelled in such large letters "The patriot's plea" was in reality "The gambler's last stake."
He did not mince his words. He used the word" intrigue," and used it deliberately and bluntly. Colonel Churchill, he stated, was asking the Government to commit suicide.
"That is the meaning of the intrigue, to turn out the Government, and nothing else." Sir Hedworth Meux went on to remind the House that when Colonel Churchill and Lord Fisher were at the Admiralty "they were at daggers drawn, and everybody knew it."
Sir Hedworth Meux's speech was the best of omens. It shows that Colonel Churchill is being found out. The charm, once universal, no longer works, or works only occasionally and on a limited number of those exposed to it. The eyes of the rest are opened, and they look with horror and dismay, but with complete enlightenment, on the wizard whose " familiar " has deserted him. It is, indeed, a fateful spectacle, and might move pity in any man were the cause not so precious. To watch this fevered, this agonized struggle to regain the political fortune • which the arch-gambler threw away by his own acts is to witness one of the tragedies of life. But we dare not be compassionate. The wizard's spell is accursed in origin, and thrice accursed when cast as it is being cast now :— " Out is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel bough."
There is, as we have said, only one thing to be done to prevent further gambling with our dearest interests. Tuesday's speech, though diabolically clever, was a wicked speech. That is the plain English of the whole business.
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