The Testimony of Sir Austen BOOKS OF THE DAY

By J. A. SPENDER

SIR AUSTEN'S " Epistolary "Chronicle 1906-1914 " fascinates me, but I wonder a little what sort of impression it will make on young people who " knew not Joseph," and have as yet learned little about the struggles and crises of those years. Will they think still worse of the " dreadful old men " who are supposed to have governed the country before the War ? Will they think Governments incredibly incom- petent and Oppositions incurably factious ? Will they even begin to understand what it was all about—for Sir Austen's introductions to his chapters, necessarily brief, leave a large number of the allusions in the letters he prints shrouded in mystery to those. who do not hold the clues ?

Let me . set down a few general ideas gleaned from this Look and. many, other political memoirs and biographies. First, British politicians are very honest and rather simple. They do really believe, nine times out of ten, that their own side did amazingly well in last night's debate, and that the other side was beaten to a frazzle. " Dumb dogs, beaten curs and they know it," records Sir Austen, speaking of the Government in a debate in March, 1907, and the same verdict is recorded, if in less picturesque language, dozens of times in the letters that follow. One would infer from it that in these years Opposition speakers almost always surpassed themselves, and that members of the Government almost invariably made deplorable speeches. It is nevertheless generally conceded that this Government, however wicked it may have been, possessed one of the finest debating teams that ever presented itself to Parliament.

Next, these same politicians, in spite of Mr. Belloc and the late Mr. Chesterton, are not playing any game but do honestly and even ardently believe in the policies that they advocate, and are convinced that they are appointed to save the country which their opponents are endeavouring to destroy. The British augurs scarcely ever wink, as their foreign counter-' Farts habitually do, when they are seen comparing notes behind the scenes. In these letters Sir Austen is setting down day by day his real thoughts for the benefit of his father,' who, sadly disabled, is- still an eager watcher of the fray from which he haS been compelled to retire. They are absolutely confidential ; there is no reason why the writer should pose or pretend in this act of filial devotion. They leave no doubt that both father and son were ardent and convinced believers in the policy they were advocating. Nothing is More illumin- ating in this respect than the son's doubts—often torturing doubts—how to . reconcile loyalty to his father with the adhesion to Mr. Balfour, to which, with his father's consent; he had pledged himself by becoming Chancellor' of the Exchequer in 1904.

I own in these years I used to find it difficult to under- stand how fathei or son or any other " whole-hogging Protectionists could be enthusiastic about a policy which consisted mainly in taxing people, especially taxing their food. This might be a hateful necessity, but how could it inspire enthusiasm ? Yet evidently it did.

Next, British politicians are'so absorbed in 'what are called practical politics—the polities of the next step—that they seldom, if ever, think of the step after next. In this record we see Unionist leaders taking each measure in the pro= gramme of the 1906 Government separately, deciding quite honestly that they disliked it, and therefore that they ought to use the House of Lords to destroy it or emasculate it. Conscience and conviction, in their view, -required them to act thus. But at no point do they appear to have sat down to consider what sort of constitutional and Parliamentary Politics from the Inside : An Epistolary Chronicle,' 19116-.- 1914. By the Rt. Hon. Sir .Austen Chamberlain; K.G., P.C:, 31.P. (Cassell. 18s.) situation they were creating, if they were thus to render a Liberal victory at the polls of no account.. In this way, taking each measure separately on its demerits, they slipped. into the disastrous mistake of using the House of Lords to reject a Budget and " damning the consequences" —the consequences being still enshrined in the Parliament Act

of 1911.

Finally, when we come to the Irish question we see both parties acting in the same way and both being unfeignedly astonished and alarmed at the situation in which between. them they had landed the country. The Government, misled by its Irish supporters, miscalculated the Ulster resistance ; the Unionist leaders had no idea what they were doing when they gave their sanction to the arming and drilling of Ulster, or what the consequences would be in South Ireland.

A few jottings will show the quality of this book. ..A conversation at Grillon's Club in 1910 lifts the curtain on one incident in. the - formation of Balfour's Government in 1902—a subject on which Mrs. Dugdale tells us nothing in her Life of her uncle. Sir Michael Hicks Beach " at first refused Balfour his help, then said he would give it if Balfour pledged himself in your (Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's) absence in bed to have nothing to do with your ideas of Colonial Preference, and when this was indignantly refused by Balfour, whose sense of loyalty was outraged by the suggestion, finally declined to go on in office or even to attend the party meeting. It was a fitting climax that as we were going in without him he should stalk in without a word to anyone."

It might be thought incredible but it seems to be true that the fact of Sir Austen's being nominally a Liberal Unionist weighed heavily against him as leader of the " Unionist " Party. When Balfour resigned in 1911, Walter. Long uprose to vindicate the claim of the old landed Tory Party to rule the roast, and he had behind him a solid phalanx of country gentlemen, who apparently were willing to accept a Canadian-born Glasgow man of. business rather than a Liberal Unionist bearing the name pf Chamberlain.

I believe the general verdict will be that Sir. Austen behaved very well, and Mr. Long very badly on this occasion, and that much of the subsequent trouble might have been avoided if the former had been appointed and had brought to his leadership the sober and statesmanlike qualities which have won him respect and influence. in subsequent years. ,.

It was - perhaps fortunate that the conversation which Sir Austen had with Sir Arthur Bigge (afterwards Lord Stamfordham) at Buckingham Palace in March, 1911 (p. 326) was interrupted, for its continuance must have been .an embarrassment to Sir Arthur, who was aware that the King

had promised to create peers in the circumstances they were discussing. The secrecy which was essential if the Crown was to be kept out of the electoral conflict undoubtedly had its drawbacks, but what Sir Austen reveals of the plans• of his party—plans to change the issue and wear down the

Liberal majority in successive dissolutions—shows that Asquith might have been in a hopeless position if he had not obtained " guarantees " before he went to the country in December, 1910.

But it is not in these details that the,merits of this book con- sist. It is an entirely honest first-hand record of the political struggles in six of the most important years of _modern. history, and the more valuable because Sir Austen is not the literary kind of letter-writer, but a straightforward narrator of facts and events as they seemed to happen. He is by no means without humour or light and shade, but his merit is that of an honest chronicler who shows us the transient and fugitive side of the day-by-day life of the politicians—a thing very difficult to r, cover,. but essential to

the right understanding of history. .