TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A NORTHCLIFFE MINISTRY.
" Security was their ruin. . . . If they had been aware that such a thing might happen, such a thing never could have hap- pened."—(Iimum's " LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD.") BURKE'S words, chosen as the text for this article, must not be the verdict of history on the British people. Yet there is a real danger of such a verdict being passed upon us if we do not look ahead and, remembering that in moments of great stress and peril all things are possible, take every precaution for the safety of the State. We may run risks with everything but the supreme Government of the country and yet survive. There the treasure is so precious that no one need be ashamed of being meticulous on every point of safety. The danger of the hour is that, by some sudden accident in home politics, the present Ministry may be brought down with a run, and that then, through supineness, or at any rate through want of due precaution, we shall let the supreme Government of the nation fall into the hands of those who, in spite of appearances, are not really capable enough, or steady enough, to hold the helm. Many people who read these words will think that we are greatly exaggerating the danger, and will demand the grounds on which our assertion is based. They shall have them.
In spite of its faults, we have no desire to see Mr. Lloyd George's Administration destroyed by a Press typhoon. We would much prefer at the present juncture that the Prime Minister should change his methods and steer a steadier course. But this feeling in favour of supporting the existing regime must not blind us to the facts, or prevent us giving warning of the dangers ahead. Mr. Lloyd George's course has been strewn with foolish and precipitate actions which may at any moment react upon him. Take his refusal to deal with the question of Irish Conscription directly upon entering office and in the full plenitude of his strength. Take the perverse and gratuitous inclusion of Mr. Winston Churchill in the Administration. Take the unnecessary seeking for trouble in India involved in the appointment of Mr. Montagu. It is always possible that a pouncing squall may descend from these or other quarters upon Mr. Lloyd George's vessel and doom it to destruction.
But there are further dangers than these. There are abundant signs for those who look below the surface that there are persons, and very powerful persons, who were originally strong supporters of Mr. Lloyd George, and who helped to bring him into power, but who now think for various reasons that his rule has lasted long enough. It is idle to say that he is too strong for this to matter. We must not forget that just as those who take the sword shall perish with the sword, so those who get their power through the Press shall perish by the Press. A breath can unmake them, as a breath hath made. In the last resort the force that blew Mr. Lloyd George into 10 Downing Street was a hurricane campaign in a very powerful section of the Press, a campaign so sudden and so violent that before the country had time to look round and consider the situation, Mr. Asquith was hurled from power and Mr. Lloyd George was already in his place. The full blast of what the Germans call " mass sug- gestion ":had gone forth, insisting that it was necessary, not only to act, but to act with lightning speed. This, as we have said, is the coining danger. On a sudden, through Mr. Lloyd George's own fault, or through some pure accident such as may befall any Minister, a situation may arise which will give those who think that the pear is ripe the opportunity to shake the tree with a storm of words and bring the fruit to the ground. This does not, of course, imply that the shakers of the tree will be unpatriotic or insincere in intention. They may honestly think that the Ministry is unfit to live any longer.
In a situation like the present nothing is to be gained by beating about the bush or dealing in long-winded innuendoes. The public have a right to say to us : " What do you mean exactly by your alarmist talk ? Deal plainly with us about the dangers you suspect, or not at all." The danger which we suspect is what is freely termed in club and Lobby gossip " A Northcliffe Administration." It is alleged that Lord Northcliffe and the people who surround him think that, like a new Chatham, he can save the country, and that nobody else can. We feel sure that Lord Northcliffe, and no doubt also his supporters, are perfectly sincere and patriotic in their aspirations. We believe them to be absolutely, nay, fatally, mistaken, but this is no challenge of their personal sincerity. Lord Northcliffe, like ninety-nine per cent. of the nation, is unquestionably deeply engaged in his country's cause, and deeply anxious to serve her, be his personal sacrifice never so great. Again, like himdreds of other men, he no doubt cherishes the belief that he can save the nation, and that no one else can. But that does not prevent us from feeling sure that a Northcliffe Administration would be a very great misfortune, might indeed spell utter ruin.
In the first place, there is not the slightest reason for trying a sensational, nay, fantastic, remedy of this kind ; there is no crisis of the sort which would justify men in saying : " Things are so bad, we had better try any expedient rather than go on as we are." Further, we are convinced that neither by training nor by temperament is Lord Northcliffe likely to make a good Prime Minister. All the evidence is in the opposite direction. Lord Northcliffe is a very successful busi- ness man, and endowed with very great business abilities. He could not have succeeded as he has succeeded without them, for, remember, his success, financial and otherwise, is due entirely to his . own good. management. Again, in spite of the breath of slander to which men who rise rapidly are specially exposed, no one has ever been able to throw the slightest discredit upon his financial methods. His great fortune has been acquired with perfect financial honesty, which is perhaps more than can be said of most rapid makers of millions. But the fact that Lord Northcliffe can manage his own affairs so well is no proof that he will manage those of the nation well. On the contrary, we believe that not only former experience, but the special experience of the past year, shows that success in business is no pledge for success in government, but the reverse. As the writer in Ecclesiasticus, so often quoted in these columns, has pointed out, the business man fails in the art of governing because he has not had the opportunity of leisure :- " He that hath little business shall become wise. . . . How can ho get wisdom that holdeth the plough and that glorieth in the goad . . . and whose talk is of bullocks ? He giveth his mind to make furrows. . . . The smith . . . fighteth with the heat of the furnace ; the noise of the hammer and the anvil is over in his ears. . . . They shall not be sought for in public counsel, nor sit high in the congregation. . . . They cannot declare justice and judgment."
Business provides a perpetual false analogy to politics. The phenomena seem so alike, and arc in truth so utterly different. They are different because the motives and mainsprings of action are not the same but utterly dissimilar. Therefore the consequences of action cannot be the same. Success in busi- ness has private, self-contained results, results which lie in water-tight compartments. The business man works, from the spiritual point of view, in a self-regarding isolation, in an exhausted receiver, in which none of those forms of life upon which statesmen depend, can live or flourish. As we are seeing to-day in half-a-dozen Departments, business training and business ideals are tripping the feet of many able and self-sacrificing men—men whose aims and aspira- tions at the moment are solely to help their country. Another objection to a Northcliffe Administration is founded upon the old but perfectly sound test which our forefathers were wont to apply to their statesmen. They did not merely want to know the man himself, but invariably added the ques- tion : " With whom is he acting ? " Who are the men who act with Lord Northcliffe, and who would be his agents, his lieu- tenants, and his instruments ? The answer to this question has little of promise. We do not suggest that to say this involves any personal condemnation of Lord Northcliffe. It does nothing of the kind. It is merely another proof that the isolation of money-making and of business success is' a bad preparation for ruling a great State. But not only do Lord Northcliffe's business training and business temperament unfit him for supreme rule. The particular form of business in which lie has been successful offers an additional drawback. Thanks to the safeguards of our Constitution, it is as a rule easy to try men in office, and equally easy, if the experiment fails, to get rid of them. The House of Commons can nearly always retrace a false step. In the case of a man who commands so tremendous a power as that of the Press, this safeguard hardly applies. A Premier who is also the greatest newspaper proprietor in the country, and therefore the greatest fashioner of public opinion, might prove very difficult to dislodge if he were fighting for his political existence, as of course he would be at such a time as the present, and would from his own point of view be justified in fighting. If a man of Lord Northcliffe's temperament were in power, he would honestly believe himself to be abso- lutely indispensable to the nation. To protect himself, as he would hold, would be to protect the country. The function of the Press—and it may be a public service of untold good- is to act as critic and watchman, to be perpetually warning the country of the dangers that beset the State. But no one in a moment of great danger takes the watchman away from his patrol round the house and places him inside the building.
We have said enough as to our belief in the dangers of a Northcliffe Administration. The way to avoid these dangers is not to abuse Lord Northcliffe, to attack him, as do so many of his rivals in the Press, for faults which are not his. The light way to prevent this untoward event, or, if we must make one more concession to the incredulous, to render it certain that the improbable shall not happen, is to make proper preparation—to have in our minds a Ministry capable of carrying on the war and of making a just and secure peace, a Ministry ready to take the place of the present Ministry should an attempt be made to stampede the country into a sensational Administration of the kind we have suggested. For ourselves, we think the danger of a sudden collapse of the present Ministry so great that we would like to see it reconstructed without delay. We should like to see Mr. Lloyd George's colleagues in the War Cabinet advise him that in their opinion the time had come, not to deprive him of office, but to enlarge the Ministry under a new head, till it should so completely include all the best elements in our public life that there would be universal agreement that it must remain in power till the war was over. We are quite prepared, however, to be told by those better informed in regard to the War Cabinet than we can profess to be that this is more than you could expect Mr. Lloyd George's colleagues to do, even though it would only be applying to him the methods that were applied to Mr. Asquith. Therefore what we suggest is that our leading statesmen in and out of office, and those public men behind the scenes who can so greatly affect the course of events, should quietly get ready in their minds the outlines of a National Ministry, should in fact prepare a scheme of insurance against the effects of a sudden debacle and a sudden attempt to try a patent " get-well-quick " remedy on the national patient. The National Ministry which we desire should continue to include Mr. Lloyd George in high office. It should also include Mr. Balfour, Mr. Bonar Law, and Sir Edward Carson—to name three examples from the Unionist side ; with Mr. Asquith, Lord Grey of Fallodon, and Mr. McKenna from the Liberal side—again we only mention three names by way of illustration. It should indeed be capable of being called the Ministry of All the Premiers, though none of them would preside over its deliberations. As our readers know, we have ventured to suggest that the Speaker would be an ideal President for such a Grand Council of the nation's elder and younger statesmen. But if for any reason it should be found that he was not available, then let one of our younger administrators be chosen to stand at the helm. It does not need a man of long political experience for such a task-. What it does require is sincerity, straightness of aim, clearness of vision, and not merely the intention to do the fair thing, but the power to impress other men with the belief that the leader's sole desire is that the fair thing should be done.
The majority of our readers will no doubt be inclined to think that we are much too viewy, will even disbelieve that anybody has ever seriously contemplated the hypothetical events with which we have been dealing. To them we will only say, by way of apology—Let them ask themselves the question whether - any harm can come from mental preparations such as we have described. If no harm is in- volved, then at such a moment as the present we claim to have done a public service. Remember Napoleon's words. He declared that when he was looking into the future, he was the most pusillanimous man in the world. When it came to action, no one was less afraid than he of doubts and shadows. Let them remember, also, the strange events of the past week. It is true that the campaign in the Northcliffe Press against the High Command appears to have missed fire, but it may be revived again in some new form a month hence or less. An attack that fails may show the attacker's intentions quite as well as one that is successful.
Those who have read thus far may perhaps be surprised that we have chosen such a moment as this to point out the dangers of a Northcliffe Ministry, and to suggest that though Lord Northcliffe played so signal a part in bringing in the present Coalition, he may now desire to undo his work. Such, surprise is natural, for the situation is indeed tangled and confused. We have dealt elsewhere with the grossly unjust and most dangerous attack on the Imperial General Staff, and the soldiers of the High Command generally, which has been begun in the Daily Mail and Weekly Dispatch, two important organs of the Northcliffe Press, and which, if we are to judge by such signs as the resignation of Colonel Court Repington from his post as Military Critic of the Times, are only too likely to break out in other quarters. Mr. Lovat Fraser's attack in the Daily Mail upon our leading soldiers for desiring to free the Belgian coast from the enemy, and for not desiring to go Snark-hunting in Aleppo, may seem at first sight as almost the reverse of an attack upon the Prime Minister. Did not the Paris speech open the batteries against Generals who gave us casualties on the Western Front, instead of quick victories at Jerusalem, Mesopotamia, Salonika, Aleppo, and elsewhere ? Is it likely, then, that those who support the Civil power against the Military would be intriguing to shove " Mr. Lloyd Georgo from his place ? Our answer to this is that those who love to fish in troubled waters, those who grow angry and self- satisfied at opposition, often fail to think out consequences exactly. They are content with a general feeling that if they only storm sufficiently and make enough fuss and trouble, heat and dust, they will ultimately be able to get what they want out of the situation. The Jacobites used to believe that the Pretender had said : " Box it about and 'twill come to my father." But there is an older and even better precedent for the manufacture of confusion in the interest of restlessness and ambition. Remember the close of Antony's speech over the dead body of Caesar :- " Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot.
Take thou what course thou wilt!"
Assuredly Mischief has been afoot this week. But if the men of good and steady mind in the country will only do their duty, Mischief will not be allowed to take what course she will, but will be met and defeated as soon as she raises her head.
Previous page
