TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE BELITTLING OF THE GOVERNMENT.
THE Government's first session has come and gone, and in our opinion Mr. Bonar Law and his colleagues have done very well. They are facing the situation exactly in the way in which the country wishes it to be faced—seriously, but not tragically ; reasonably, but not rhetorically ; constitutionally, but yet with a proper sense that the Constitution, like every other thing that is to flourish, must be alive and must move. But though this is our view, and we believe the view of the country as a whole, we do not ignore the fact that the Government have been widely criticized, and that a distinct attempt is being made by the Labour men, by the larger section of the Liberals, and by the Lloyd Georgeites, not only in Parliament, but in the newspapers that they control, to belittle the Government. Ministers are represented as a set of insignificant nonentities, who cannot possibly hold the attention of the country for more than a few months—a set of people who will fade away owing to a kind of self-produced inanition. Now, we have no objection to the Parliamentary opponents of the Government saying such things. It is only what is to be expected of them. Every Government, when it first comes in, is treated by its regular opponents to similar criticisms and is represented as the most feeble and ineffective Government that ever sat on the Front Bench. Such talk is part of the conventional ritual of our Party system. What we object to, and what may turn out to have serious consequences, is the way in which a certain number of the Government's sup- porters re-echo in parrot fashion the criticisms of the Opposition and talk about " the desperate dullness " of the Front Bench, of its want of insight and authority, and of how unfavourably it compares with the late Ministry and with the rows of shining super-men seated on the Front Opposition Benches.
If this were a true bill it would be no good to ignore it. The best thing would be to admit it openly and to meet it by urging the Government to recruit their strength. But it is not a true bill; it is merely a piece of what we must call ill-timed affectation. Nothing is easier, and nothing feeds men's self-esteem more, than to be critical of their chiefs and leaders. Especially is this dear to the younger members of political Parties. It argues much more ability and independence and makes a young man much more important when he turns up his nose at his leaders and calls them " fogies " and indulges in a flirtation with the leaders of the Opposition than when he supports his own chiefs. It is, of course, particularly piquant to do this if the chiefs have—what seems to the criticizing Member the crowning point of their inefficiency—omitted to give him a post in their Ministry.
This attitude is accentuated by the fact that there are such a number of indeterminate units in the present House of Commons ; men whose one and only raison d'être is to be critical. The members of the Unionist Party who at heart wanted to support Mr. Lloyd George and believed in the late Coalition, but who, for fear of losing their seats, had to trim their sails and suppress their own predilections, are not, perhaps, numerous.
Since, however, most of them were Members of the old Parliament their criticism appears to have a good deal of importance to the new Members. Again, there is the band of actual Lloyd Georgeite Liberals who talk about the spacious days of the Coalition, of how they worked with the Unionists, of how strong they were when thus united, and of what wonderful speeches were made by Mr. Winston Churchill and other Liberals, and so on and so forth: What truth is there in the idea that the Government is one of dull demerit, and is confronted by a band of political geniuses—men of such high charac- ter and lofty intelligence that the occupants of the Treasury Bench must naturally cower before them ? This picture of pigmies struggling with giants does not seem to us to bear the slightest resemblance to the facts. Can anyone really say that Mr. Asquith has so great a prestige in the House of Commons that everyone else looks puny beside him ? Mr. Asquith is, no doubt, a very good speaker of the parliamentary-jurisprudential type ; but he is not at all the kind of man who is going to cut Mr. Bonar Law into ribbons, or ride him to death in the Commons as Disraeli tried to ride Peel. Whether in debating ability, political judgment, or steadfastness of purpose, he does not appear to us to stand for anything that Mr. Bonar Law and his colleagues need dread. A similar criticism may be made in regard to Mr. Asquith's lieutenants. Take, for example, Sir John Simon. lie is Mr. Asquith over again, but without Mr. Asquith's great experience of the, House.
But, it will be said, how about Mr. Lloyd George ? Is he not going to prove himself a most dangerous critic of the Government ? Will he not always be hinting faults and hesitating dislikes which his far less adroit opponents will be unable to meet ? We have no such fears. Mr. Lloyd George, though so many people in the House of Commons do not seem yet to have realized it, is the most disconsidered man in the country. There is hardly a subject which can arise in debate which is not very thin ice for him. Finance, for example, is a thing which it is very difficult for him to touch. How can he, the arch-spendthrift, lecture the Government on expenditure ! There is another question of vast importance which for him is haunted by a hundred spectres, and that is the vital question of housing. In ordinary circumstances a leader of the Opposition might do great execution upon a Government which was not prepared with an immediate scheme. But Mr. Lloyd George's past in this matter is too recent, and of too disagreeable a flavour, to be forgotten. Unemployment, again, is a matter which he cannot venture upon. Even when he tries agriculture the response, except in his own special Press, is very poor. There are too many evaded promises scattered over the land. Many years must elapse before they can be ploughed in and lost to memory.
Ireland, and the management of the Army and Navy, are, again, very sore and dangerous subjects. As for foreign affairs, they are a Bluebeard cupboard in which Mr. Lloyd George dares not invite people to rummage.
As for the War and the Peace, they arc surely untouch- ables for him. Mr. Lloyd George is just now supping upon revelations—those which have been made in Mr. Dewar's book on Lord Haig's struggle with the Ministry—reviewed for us this week by General Maurice—or those which emerge from the unfathomed depths of muddy mystery connected with the war between Greece and Turkey, or, finally, from the disillusionment about Reparations.
A statesman with such remembrances can hardly be the stern critic of other men's political foibles and mis- deeds. It is not from such a source that a Government is deprived of its weight and authority. If Mr. Lloyd George gets up and says that the present Government's way of business shows a recklessness and levity and a want of true consideration for the public interests which is without parallel in his memory, and that it shocks him profoundly, the House of Commons and the nation will only smile.
What are we to say of the other critics of the Government ? Is anybody going to be very grievously put out if Mr. Winston Churchill on the platform, or when he returns to,the House of Commons, criticizes the Govern- ment for not knowing their own mind, or for want of judgment, or for not putting duty before self-preservation ? Mr. Winston Churchill has some great qualities. He is a man of no little quickness of mind, a remarkable speaker, and a man full of knowledge ; but his want of political judgment and his inveterate love of a gamble, no matter how great the risks, have tired the public. They are not in a mood to take sporting tips which are " moral certs " and all the rest of it, but which, as experience shows, generally end in disaster. If Mr. Winston Churchill could point to four or five successes and say " You won because you followed me " it would be a different matter ; but there is not one success to his credit in the past, only prognostications for the future or excuses that " If this or that thing had happened differently I should have got home." This sort of thing does not move the public.
But perhaps it will be said that we ought not to think merely of people in the House of Commons. " What about Lord Birkenhead ? Surely you admit his capacity." That the author of the famous certificates of intelligence and brains which were solemnly handed round to the men who stood by Mr. Lloyd George is a very able person we admit. When, however, .he tells us that the group of men opposed to the present Government—himself, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill, Sir Alfred Mond, and Sir William Sutherland—have all the brains, and that the Ministry, having shed the men of light and leading, cannot thrive, we are not converted. Our answer is that we are not disposed to agree with the premises, or to admit that even on the grounds of brains the comparisox is unfavourable to the Government.
If, however, for the sake of argument we were to grant the Birkenhead premises, we should not shiver at the prospects of the Government. In this country, though it sounds a commonplace thing to say, men care for character much more than they do for mere cleverness, which, remember, is often more a matter of power of expression than of anything else. At any rate, if stability of character and intention and political judgment are to be the tests, we are quite content to match Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, Lord Curzon, Lord Salisbury, and the Duke of Devonshire against their five opponents whom we have just named—Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Winston Churchill, Lord Birkenhead, Sir William Suther- land, and Sir Alfred Mond.
Of Mr. Bonar Law and his great ability as a statesman we have written elsewhere, and shall write again. On this occasion we want only to point out that the alleged disparity between the Government and their opponents is fictitious—a piece of political canting which has no substance. No Ministry can last without support, and if any considerable group of the Unionist Members think they are doing their duty to their constituencies by " crabbing " the Government and praising up and otherwise advertising their opponents they are greatly mistaken. Unquestionably Governments, like other human institutions, have a psychological as well as a moral and material basis. If people who are expected to support a Ministry, and whose business it is to defend it, set the example of injuring its repute, they may kill the ablest Government in the world. But let it not be supposed that in saying this we are pleading for the crack of the Party whip, or asking Unionist Members to support a Government in which they do not believe. What we say is very different, and must not be misrepre- sented as a call for blind obedience. If Members really think the present Government unworthy and unable to rule the country *hey will, if they are honest men, put the Government out of office and substitute better men. What is .not permissible, and what is not even honest or honourable, is for them to go on voting in support of the Ministry whenever a special appeal is made to them, but in general spoiling the face of the Government in the Lobbies, Clubs, and West-End drawing-rooms, and wherever political people forgather. Criticism honestly be- lieved in is the duty of the Member. of Parliament. It will do the Government good rather than harm. Indefinite suggestions of incompetence and stupidity, however, made by people who pretend to be friends, and who allege no difference between their own and the Government's principles, cannot be regarded as loyal, even in the freest of Parties. And free the Unionist Party is and ought to be.
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