A BOOK OF THE_MOMENT
A LONG SPEAKERSHIP A Speaker's Commentaries. By the Rt. Hon. James William -,Lowther, Viscount Ullswater, G.C.B. (Edward Arnold. 363.) ONLY two Speakers in the annals of the House of Commons hell office for a longer period than Mr. Lowther ; and none saw so many vital changes either within the best club in the world," or in the nation ; and every Other paragraph suggests how immense is the gap between 1905; when-he took office, and 1921, when he resigned. From the first he gave witness of a native gift of good-natured and humorous patience —a quality more valuable than brilliance, or even judicial skill. His training and heredity were in every sense aristo- cratic ; and perhaps for this reason he was accepted by the newer democracy—and " the new woman "—as above preju- dice.
Patience made him a good Speaker. It does not make him a good writer. He sat so many long hours and years in the Chair that he cannot quite shake off the need of discretion. Like George Eliot's Nello he prays : " Heaven forbid that I should fetter my impartiality by holding an opinion " ; and all too patiently he copies into his book the bald and bare records that belong to a condensed diary. Nevertheless, there is the better part of one good book in the two volumes, and a certain percentage of real history. More than this : every reader will like the author ; and this feeling of friend- ship gives half its value to books of autobiography. People we -like do not bore us as much as their conversation may deserve ; and with Mr. Lowther we know that he is going to tell us a good story presently. The diary is pleasantly inter- rupted by what the cinema artists call " throwbacks." It is a habit of this diarist to stop and consider what were the most interesting or crucial experiences in his own and others' official careers. He asked Lord Haig whether and when he had passed a sleepless night during the War. That healthiest and most constant of Generals confessed to two nervous periods.
" His reply was that it has only been so on one occasion, at the moment of the extremest advance of the German army in the Spring of 1918, and that he had spent it [the sleepless night] in drafting his proclamation to the Army, calling upon them to stand with their backs to the wall and, if necessary, die at their posts—a proclamation which became famous. He alto told me that the time when he felt most apprehension was when in 1917 the French made an ineffective attack on the Chemin des Dames and were routed." It is astonishing what " old, far-off, unhappy things " now seem many of the Parliamentary crises, even of this century. Mr. Lowther decides that " of all the debates in the House, except some on Foreign affairs, the debates on the Parliament Bill of 1911 Were in my opinion the most interesting which it was my lot to hear. The novelty of the topic, the far-reaching possibilities of the proposed changes, the references_ to history and prece- dent, the strong feeling aroused on both sides, and the uncer- tainty of the final result, brought to the discussions a vigour and an interest often absent from the discussion of matters the issue of which was never in doubt."
These interpolated summings up are not always quite suc- cessful. He admired Campbell-Bannerman (who incidentally used to recommend him the best French novels), and thus summarizes his titles to fame. " The acts for which he will be chiefly remembered are his success in persuading the Duke of Cambridge to resign the Commandership-in-Chief in 1895, the grant of autonomy to the Transvaal in 1906, and the ability with which he combined the divergent sections of the Liberal and Labour Parties, and led the House of Commons froth 1906 to the time of his resignation." One of the most far-reaching and one of the bravest decisions ever impressed on a Cabinet was Campbell-Bannerman's grant of autonomy to the Transvaal. It stands out in our Imperial history like the Matterhorn from the Swiss Alps. The very form and manner of his words are impressed on the memory, and the act is famous all over the American Continent.- A man of no great- proportions did a great thing by his own inspiration. Nothing but the perspective blindness of a diarist could have set this act of--the-Premier's alongside the other-two, as itit were of equal 'Worth.
The Speaker is an official who, in spite of his high place in the table of precedence, is not behind the scenes and is not. permitted to " fetter his impartiality." He may not lead. His'. business is to trim. Yet Mr. Lowther, who had the Speaker's temperament " as strong as any man in Illyria," exercised, it may be, a permanent influence on British politics in one dirc;ction at any rate. You cannot demonstrate the fact,' but more than one skilled observer believes that Mr. Lowther helped, more than any man, to direct the new Labour Party into the broad stream of Parliamentary precedent. Nothing is of more historical interest than the string of allusions, casual= but crucial, to the altered psychology of the Labour Party, who' emerged as a political force during Mr. Lowther's Speakership.
The references begin with a story told by Campbell-Banner- man : " He was in process of forming his Cabinet (in 1906), he had sent for a prominent member of the Labour Party, he had talked to him for some time on the general situation, and' had then suggested that A. B. (as I will call him) should join his Government. A. B. on receiving the offer rose from his: chair, walked across to C.-B., shook him warmly by the hand, and said, ' Sir 'Enery, that's the most popular thing you've' done yet.' " By the grace of himself and his wife as hosts, by great tact and by common sense he exercised a continued and. happy influence on the newest party, who at first objected very vehemently to such symbols as the wearing of Court dress. He was also, often in collaboration with " Luau" Harcourt, great at domestic details within the.
House, from the introduction of green blotting paper, and a clock instead of an hour glass, to the abolition of the dinner hour.
His memoirs, of course, are not restricted to Parliamentary_ affairs. He was always a traveller. On the return from his first voyage to Russia as a small boy he passed through Danish-Austrian war scenes. He met Bismarck and Moltke,, he knocked over the Archbishop in Battersea Park in those dim days when bicycle-riding there was the fashion, he vainly sought big game in the Okanagan Valley before it was dis- covered to be a paradise for apples. He was always a great sportsman, but the record of those activities is too brief to be of much interest, and the gist of the book is the record of the Speakership itself, of the changes in the House, from the appearance of A. B. to the hat that the Speaker vainly advised Lady Astor not to wear. We may, perhaps, congratulate Lord Ullswater on his success in guiding and conducting the women as well as the Labour Party to a right sense of the dignity of Parliament and patriotism. In this task, too, he had the efficient help of his wife. He saw the Suffragette commotions through their foolish excesses, and had to deal with rebels who penetrated even to the inner sanctum of the House. When the worst was over he records this incident, very characteristic of social feeling just before the War :—
" One night when we were in the middle of an exciting debate and feeling was running very high, not only in the House itself but in my wife's gallery, where some altercations had taken placia between Lady Londonderry and Mrs. AsqUith, I received a pressing appeal from Mrs. Asquith to keep order among the ladies admitted to this sanctum. This duty generally fell to my wife, but sho was abroad, in Madeira, at the time, and so I scribbled the following reply : ' I have as much as I can manage in keeping order among the devils below without having to control the angels above.' This incident and my note were afterwards appropriated (without acknowledgment) by Mrs. Humphry Ward, and introduced into one of her later novels."
This occurred in 1914,just after the resignation of Sir John French from the Army Council and the assumption by Mr, Asquith of the Secretaryship of War. How blind they all were to the approach of August ! The " devils below " were children rather, ruled, to our lasting benefit, by one of the most popular disciplinarians in the annals of the school.
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