BOOKS OF THE DAY
A Liberal Statesman
Memoirs. By Viscount Samuel. (Cresset Press. 15s.)
ANYONE who knows Lord Samuel and has followed his public career would expect to find his autobiography an admirably com- petent piece of work ; but he would not necessarily expect to find it so superlatively good as this volume seems to me to be. Lord Samuel is, of course, a Jew—incidentally, the first member of the Jewish community to sit in a British Cabinet (Disraeli having seceded from the community before he entered public life)—and, as he says, " the Jewish brain is a rather remarkable thing." In this case it certainly is, and when its owner is at once scholar, states- man, administrator and philosopher, the story he has to tell is likely to be remarkable too. The writer's long political career bridges the most critical generation in the country's history, and his own memories, coloured by an unwavering Liberalism but based on a uniformly conscientious objectivity, form a singularly illuminating record of the fifty years that began with the eviction of the Liberals from office in 1895. Much of Lord Samuel's career, of course, is matter of public knowledge. His Liberalism: Its Principles and Proposals, written in 1902, is still available as testimony to his political faith. But he is not given to self-advertisement, and many of the facts he mentions here are, so far as I know, published for the first time. One con- cerns the part he played, by his secret consultations with trade union leaders, in bringing the General Strike of 1926 to an end ; another his initiative, dating back to 1914, in proposals which led ultimately to the Balfour declaration on the Jewish National Home in 1917 (Lord Samuel quotes here rather sardonically Mr. Lloyd George's imaginative and completely inaccurate account of the same events in his War Memories); another, Mr. Chamberlain's offer to him of a seat in the Conservative Cabinet in 1938. More personal revelations relate to such matters as the young candidate's decision to concentrate on colonial questions at the beginning of his political career, and the exciting journey he undertook in Central Africa in 19o2 in pursuance of that resolve ; while a not altogether familiar aspect of the Elder Statesman of today is presented in the passage in which, describing the equestrian achievements of some hundreds of Bedouin horsemen who came on one occasion to salute him as High Commissioner of Palestine, he adds, " I put spurs to my mare, which could out-distance them all, and led the whole cavalcade in a gallop across the plain, to their great delight." The whole chapter on his High Commissionership is abundantly instructive in relation to present problems in Palestine—and so, in bearing on another current problem, are the pages he devotes to his chairmanship of the Coal Commission in 1925.
In its ease and lucidity the volume is a peculiar pleasure to read. Lord Samuel, moreover, has a singular gift for turns of phrase that are half-way to epigram—such touches, for example, as, regarding Campbell-Bannerman: " His premiership was common-sense en- throned "; regarding Ramsay MacDonald: " He was not a man to
be indifferent to the greatness of his position"; regarding Winst Churchill on his advent to Liberalism: " Churchill spoke the langu age of Liberalism with correctness--perhaps with the careful articu lation and the slight accent with which one may speak a language learnt a little late in life." A passage of ten lines on monarchy and democracy (in connection with the abdication of King Edward VIII) leaves nothing relevant to be added ; and though Lord Samuel ii anything but an emotional writer, the bitterest anti-Semite could hardly read unmoved the half-page which describes how he visited for the first time the ancient synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Jerusalem: " Now, on that day, for the first time since the destruction the Temple, they could see one of their own people governor in the Land of Israel. To them it seemed that the fulfilment of ancient prophecy might at last be at hand. When, in accordant: with the usual ritual, I was ' called to the Reading of the Law, and from the central platform recited in Hebrew the prayer and the blessing, 'Have mercy upon Zion, for it is the hope of our life, and save her that is grieved in spirit, speedily, even in out days. Blessed art Thou, 0 Lord, who makest Zion joyful through her children ': and when there followed the opening words of chapter of Isaiah appointed for that day, ' Comfort ye, comfort yt my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished and her iniquity is pardoned '—the emotion that I could -not but feel seemed u spread through the vast congregation. Many wept. One could almost hear the sigh of generations."
There are inevitably a few errors to be corrected in the next edition; one of them a little surprising. Lord Samuel writes: "I July, 1911, the Kaiser's demonstrative visit to Tangier and the pr vocative dispatch of the German warship Panther to Agadir seeme likely to bring Europe to the verge of war." But the Kaiser' descent on Tangier had taken place in 1905. And is it accurate t. include Lord Hugh Cecil among the Conservatives like Church 1! and Seely who in 1903 " aligned themselves with the Liberal Party"? At one point, moreover, where the writer's attitude needs defini- tion, he leaves it undefined. Of the Spanish Civil War he lays it down wisely that " the issue was for the Spanish people themselv, to settle. It was not the business of this country to intervene." Bu: " neither," he adds, " was it the business of the Germans and Italian. to intervene. Nevertheless they did intervene." And what then? All that Lord Samuel says is that the proceedings of the Non Intervention Committee were a farce, and the results for this count ignominious. What would he himself have done? Should w have risked war over Spain in 1936? That is the vital questi and it is left unanswered.
But these are trifles. The book as a whole is one of the mos notable autobiographies of a generation. Incidentally, since by eve visible sign Lord Samuel has twenty good years of work in him y the most arresting statement in the volume is the allegation th
Previous page
