BOOKS OF THE DAY

PAGE

Chatham as a Strategist (Christopher Hobhouse) 6o The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (Herbert Read)

61

Latin America (Professor C. K. Webster) 61

PAGE

News from Tibet (Michael Spender) John Skelton (Philip Henderson) ..

. .

.

62 63

Fiction (Forrest Reid) •

64

Current Literature ..

.. 65

CHATHAM AS A STRATEGIST

By CHRISTOPHER HOBHOUSE

*ENGLAND never put forward a more amazing effort of will and courage than at the moment when her administration appeared to be most cumbersome and most corrupt. During the reigns of the first two Georges, the most pernicious of all political systems, the one-party monopoly, had thriven and spread its poison into every branch of the country's life. Connexions and families fought struggles for power which it is impossible even at this distance to follow with-interest or comprehension. An ever growing crowd of pensioners and placemen fastened on the public revenue, and not the slightest change of posts could be effected without some increase in the number or value of their " jobs." The Navy lacked a Pepys, or even a Duke of York. In the Army, or what there was of it, commissions were to be bought, and the more lucrative commands to be wangled by means of influence at Court. Yet this was the age in which were won the East Indies, the West Indies, and the hinterland of America.

The organiser of these victories was to all appearance the incarnation of all the shortcomings of his time. Lord Chatham was so grandiose that he made his under-secretaries stand in his presence. He was so obsequious that when, gout forbade him to stand in the royal presen,ce, instead he knelt, if need be for hours on end. On the receipt of the slightest message from the King, he would declare himself " penetrated " and " confoUnded " by so much gracious favour, to a length of several pages. He enveloped his opinions upon the clearest issues in a fog of pretentious verbosity. Burke spoke truly of " some significant, pompous, creeping, explanatory, ambiguous matter, in the _true Chathamic style." This man, who kept his foothold in public life by virtue of his Grenville relationship and a couple of chance legacies, seemed sometimes to combine in himself the worst airs of a flunkey and a duke. Yet the House of Commons trembled as he rose : and it was to him without doubt or hesitation that both England and America attributed each one of their successes.

Chatham's life falls into three periods. Up to the time of his marriage, at the age of forty-six, he achieved no great distinction save in opposition. His reputation as a speaker was established, and he had won the public confidence by renouncing the perquisites of the Pay Office. But during all this time he showed himself prone to attacks of the mental instability which marked his family. His marriage seemed to have brought about a cure, and between 1754 and 1761 he put forth his full powers. From about the year 1767 and onwards he relapsed into a state of intermittent madness, though recovering from time to time sufficiently to terrify the younger generation. Mr. Tunstall diagnoses Chatham's mental disease as manic-depressive insanity. His contem- poraries did not use these words : but they saw well enough that Chatham's energy and fire derived from the same abnor- mality which caused his long periods of seclusion and despair.

Johnson said that Chatham possessed the power of setting the State in motion. At the touch of his hand, all the rusty machinery of Empire set to move : impossible New-Englanders put aside their law-books, and " bedchamber " colonels hastened to their camps. What was this extraordinary power ? It was not the power of oratory, it was no Napoleonic magnetism which drew activity and devotion from regiments in India and garrisons in the new world. The Great Britain of Chatham's day contained the present population of London.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. By Brian Tunstall. (Hodder and Stoughton. 2os.) His despatches took six or eight weeks to reach America. What magic did he breathe into them ?

The perfect biographer of Chatham would be he who could make this clear, who could explain how one man's personality was sufficient to affect the issue of half a dozen campaigns all over the world. A factor so intangible may be impossible of explanation : if Mr. Tunstall has failed to explain it fully, it is not for want of endeavour. He has tackled his imposing subject with courage and spirit. He gives point and interest to one of the most difficult periods in party politics. His portrayal of Chatham himself is authoritative. But the most industrious research and the most intelligent interpretation scarcely solve the one outstanding question : Wherein did Chatham's greatness lie ?

Mr. Tunstall is principally concerned to find the secret of Chatham's success as a strategist. His book is not only important as a careful political study, but interesting as an essay upon the warfare of the period. Two schools of strategical opinion ranged themselves with the two political parties ; and Chatham succeeded because he wed himself to neither. The " continental " theory was the Whig tradition, born of William the Third's anxiety for the safety of his native land, and consecrated by the splendour of Marlborough's career. Blenheim and Ramillies look well in tapestries, and their sanguinary glory thrills in the periods of Marlborough's great descendant. By contrast with such resounding successes, it is easy to throw ridicule on Colonel Hill's Canadian expedi- tion. But the Tories held another view, to which Swift gave incomparable expression. What, they asked, was Marl- borough doing, hammering away at Ghent and Lille and Mons, when all the wide ocean lay open to the British navy ? Why fight the battles of the Dutch, when Canada and India invited our marauding armies ? When Marlborough had got to Paris, what was he going to do there ? It was not too easy to find an answer. The " Blue-Water " theory.was the obsession of the Tories. They hated our allies, despised the army, and dreaded the sound of a " Captain-General." Employ our ships, they urged, to seize an empire overseas while Europe was settling continental differences.

During his period of opposition to Walpole,. Pitt posed as an uncompromising adherent of the " Blue-Water " school. Though never a Tory, he ridiculed the costly and unproductive Whig strategy, and extolled the possibilities of a proper use of naval superiority. Yet it was the same man who later claimed to have conquered America in Germany. The phrase was a sweeping exaggeration, intended to emphasise his conversion to the continental system. Chatham did not merely succeed by virtue of his subsidies to Frederick the Great. He did not even maintain a continental army sufficient to do more than occupy the French. He did not build an empire by his policy of " breaking windows with guineas " up and down the coast of France. It was to the outposts of the world that he sent the superior forces at his disposition. When he sought a victory, he sought' t far afield ; and had he possessed a Marlborough, he would have shipped him to Canada or India.

It is an unsatisfactory conclusion : but Mr. Tunstall's analysis shows that the success of Chatham's strategy was due to compromise. There is no triumphant victory for Swift, no decisive vindication for Marlborough. Nor do Chatham's theories steal the victory from himself ; for his own strategy failed in the hands of his own son. At the end of it all, the one important lesson is that nothing succeeds like success.