THE SPECTACLES OF PANIC.
PEOPLE are beginning once again to talk about the possibilities of a Cabinet collapse. If, it is said, the attempt to relieve Kut fails, the Government must fall. The anti-sensationalist naturally opposes to this view the state- ment that there is no reason whatever why the loss of a fore. of no great size, which unfortunately has already ceased to be effective through wounds and disease, should bring down this or any Government. If the matter is looked at in its true proportions, it may prove to be a ground of blame for the Ministry, or for the General Officers concerned, or for both, but certainly it is not a military event of capital im- portance. The man who demands that common-sense shot& be applied even to defeats in the field must of course expect to be told that he is merely making "far-fetched excuses;" and that the country, right or wrong, will sweep away the Government if a disaster happens. To this rough-and-ready view we oppose an absolute negative. There is no sort of reason why the Government should fall. We cannot go so far as to say that they will not fall, because, as old John Silver says in Stevenson's fable, 'there is no limit to what virtuous charac- ters may do.' If, however, the Ministry are governed by the considerations which govern sane and reasonable people in other walks of life, they will certainly not be so foolish as to desert their posts because of a small and temporary, •11 acutely painful, blow. Rather, they will assume a bold and masterful attitude, and tell the country plainly that they have got the job in hand and mean to carry it through, an that, short of a revolution, which they dare the House of Commons and their critics in the country to bring about. they will not lay down the reins of government, if people begin to talk about a Dictatorship, they will have to be reminded with befitting firmness that the existing Cabinet is the Dictatorship in commission. This is certainly the position which the Government ought to adopt, and which, if they de adopt it, will win them the confidence of the country. To faE before a puff of newspaper indignation would be to offer 41, . pitiful example of political pusillanimity. Let us look fairly and squarely, and not through the spectacles of panic, at what could legitimately destroy the Cabinet, or to put it more accurately, could justify the collapse of the Cabinet. No doubt the belief of its members that they we incapable of carrying on the Government, and that they ought to resign in favour of men with stouter hearts and better brains, would afford a justification. But clearly this is a state of things which does not exist. Again, justi- fication would exist if the Cabinet as a whole were to come to the conclusion that the Prime Minister was unfit for his position. Under our Constitution the power accorded to the Prime Minister is so great that, given a want of confidence in his capacity on the part of his colleagues, the formation of a brand- LOW Cabinet might prove the only way of displacing him. A moment's reflection will show, however, that this also is a condition which does not exist. Mr. Asquith may in realityhave all the faults which are attributed to him by his most vehement critics, but at a fly rate he has not lost the confidence either of his old or of his new colleagues in the Cabinet. The most remarkable and the most clearly established fact in regard to the Prime Minister is that he has, without losing the con- fidence of the majority of his old Liberal colleagues, gained a very firm hold upon the Unionists who came to the assist- ance of the Government last May and formed the Coalition. It is an open secret that many of them went into the Govern- ment with most serious doubts and hesitations as to whether it would be possible for them, however good their intentions, to work with the Prime Minister. It is equally an open secret that these same men, without in the least having become converted to Mr. Asquith's principles, have come to believe very firmly in his capacity to carry on the work of government. We will go further and express our belief that there is not one of the Unionists in question who would not assert that, taking all the circumstances into consideration, Mr. Asquith is the man at the present moment most fitted to preside over the Government, and that it would be a capital error to remove him. Working with him and under him has not diminished but immensely increased their confi- dence in his powers. They have not come to hold this view because of any special magnetism on Mr. Asquith's part, or because he has laid them under any personal obligation. These sorts of considerations do not come into play in crises like the present. They hold the view we have just expressed simply and solely on public grounds. Surely that is a very significant and far-reaching fact.
This may seem surprising to certain outside critics, but that it is the truth there can be no doubt whatever. The Cabiaet, if it falls, will not fall because his colleagues have lost faith in Mr. Asquith or come to the conclusion that he is not the man to conduct the war to a successful issue. Again, it will not fall because its members believe that there is a body of unexhausted, capable, and self-confident men standing outside ready to take on the job of waging the war successfully, who ought to be given a chance to show their mettle, and who would be likely to do better than the men now in office. It is notorious that the present Cabinet dces not believe in the existence of such a band of " ready-for- service " Ministers. It does not see before it an alternative Cabinet into whose hands it could safely and patriotically resign its powers. This ground for the fall of the Ministry must, then, be dismiss3d for reasons as strong as those which we have just stated in regard to the confidence in the Prime Minister of those who serve with and under him. Next, the Cabinet is not going to fall because of internal dissensions so strong that they cannot be got over, or can only be got over by some compromise which will satisfy nobody. The popular view of a cat-and-dog Cabinet in which everybody is flying at everybody else's throat does not square with the facts. That there are differences of opinion in the Cabinet over certain important matters we do not doubt. It is conceivable, indeed, that in one or two instances those differences may be found incompatible with the continuance in office of certain members. All we say—and we say it with the fullest assurance of its truth—i3 that if this is happening now, or were to happen in the immediate future, the solution would be found, not in the collapse of the Ministry, but in the resigna- tion of an individual member or members of the Cabinet, as happened in the case of Sir John Simon. In other words, the disagreements are not of a kind which cannot be met by a process which is familiar in the working of ordinary Committees. There are moments with all groups of men acting together for common objects when some of the units which compose them have to chcose between bowing to the views of the majority or giving up their membership of the group—i.e., resigning. There is no reason to suppose that differences on vital points cannot in the present case be settled in this normal and reasonable manner. In our belief, they will be settled by the minority agreeing to defer to the views of the majority. If, however, this forecast should prove wrong, then we believe that there will be no difficulty in replacing the recalcitrants by men who will agree with the majority.
But it may be said : "How if the minority in the Cabinet represent a very large body of opinion in one of the two parties who make up the Coalition ? In that case the resignation of even a numerically small minority of the Cabinet may undermine its foundations." Our objection to this line of argument—and it is, we hold, conclusive—is that the differences of which we are speaking do not follow the old party divisions. Therefore the building will not become unstable. The foundations will not be, as it were, cut away from one corner, and the equilibrium of the structure be thus destroyed.
Previous page
