A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ACURIOUS little incident, throwing an instructive light on the success with which Cabinet secrets could be kept thirty years ago, is related in Mrs. Masterman's new life of her husband, C. F. G. Masterman. Before the second General Election of 1910, as everyone now knows, the King promised Mr. Asquith that in case of need he would agree to the creation of enough peers to secure the passage of the Parliament Bill through the House of Lords; but he stipulated that his undertaking should be kept secret till the Election was over and as long afterwards as possible. That was on November t6th. It was not till July i8th of the following year, 1911, that the existence of the guarantees was revealed to the leader of the Opposition, Mr. Balfour, by Mr. Lloyd George. Why by Mr. Lloyd George, and not by the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith? Here comes in Mrs. Masterman's anecdote. At some ceremonial religious function Lloyd George and Balfour were sharing a hymn- book and carrying on a sotto voce conversation on the current situation under cover of the melody. "Well," said Lloyd George suddenly, "nil be frank with you. You know we've got the guarantees." Balfour answered that he had sus- pected it, but that many of his own people, including Lord Lansdowne (Conservative leader in the Lords), wouldn't believe it. He thereupon arranged a meeting the next day, well known to political historians, between himself, Lans- downe and Lloyd George. But for ten months twenty Cabinet Ministers had kept a fact of the first moment so secret that the Opposition leader in the Commons only suspected it and the Opposition leader in the Lords dis- believed it.
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