TOPICS OF THE DAY
MR. 13ALDIVIN : A CHARACTER STUDY
IL—THE POSITIVE SIDE.
[COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE Independent (BOSTON).] HAVE up till now made my analysis of Mr. Baldwin's 1- political character somewhat negative ; but he has a very positive side. In the first place, he is a man of the best and most intense form of patriotism. To me this means, and I hold ought to mean to others, a man who is a convinced upholder of Democracy—a man who believes that the Will of the Majority must prevail, though, of course, it must prevail, not by force, but by persuasion ; not by arbitrary or tyrannical methods, but by the due process of law. Mr. Baldwin is no doc- trinaire who would say that it was his business to give the people what was good for them and to deny them by all the means in his power what he would consider injurious. He has, of course, his own ideas of what is right, and he wants to see them carried out for the benefit Of his fellow-countrymen ; but he is not going to use any arbitrary means to attain his ends. If he cannot convert his countrymen at once, he will acquiesce in their decisions till he is able to move them with the lever of persuasion. He no more thinks that the man of so-called knowledge, education, and culture has a Heaven-sent mandate to rule his fellows than he believes that any set of oligarchs should rule by inheritance—i.e., by being the grandsons of their grandfathers. In a word, Mr. Baldwin is felt to be a Constitutional, popular and democratic statesman in the very best sense of the words.
. He has a real and a genuine sympathy with the mass of the population, and does not look upon them as an uneducated herd which has to be managed, controlled, and cajoled by people of greater ability. Though man of intellectual force and of no small culture, he is by no means the kind of person whose mind finds it very difficult to get en rapport with the uneducated man. Mr. Baldwin finds himself at home with plain people and really understands their point of view, and that is why, of course, in the long run they understand him and like him. They feel that, though he is essentially the instructed man, he is not always looking over their heads. That is in a very wide measure why the country has given him its confidence in so marked a manner. First the Conservative Party gave it to him when, comparatively unknown, he came forward and in effect made it clear that the Unionist Party could no longer tolerate the political vagaries of Mr. Lloyd George and the Coalition Ministry. He did this, his party saw, out of no personal ambition and with no thought that he himself would step into Mr. Lloyd George's shoes. The country saw what he had done and approved it and his method of doing it. Then he became Chan- cellor of the Exchequer and made his memorable settle- ment of the American Debt. That settlement was made contrary to the opinion of the Prime Minister, Mr. Bonar Law, and also met at first with opposition from one or two of the most prominent men in the Cabinet. Yet Mr. Baldwin was able to make his view, honestly held and fearlessly driven home, prevail over that of the Prime Minister. In the end Mr. Baldwin gained for his scheme the approval, not only of the Cabinet and the Party, but of the country as a whole.
He was universally felt to have been the inter- preter of the country's determination to stand . by its contract, though it might be to its own hurt. That was a great achievement, and when Mr. Bonar Law's illness made it necessary to choose a new leader there was no question as to the choice. Then came Mr. Baldwin's defeat at the polls—a defeat largely brought about by the annoyance of the country at his having dissolved instead of carrying on. Next followed the episode of the Labour Ministry, and then the defeat of Socialism at the polls last autumn and the consequential vote in favour of Mr. Baldwin. Here Mr. Baldwin must be said to be at the parting of the ways, If he retains the confidence of the country, he will become one of the great forces in English public life. If, on the other hand, he does not maintain that confidence, hit fall may be as rapid as his rise. Therefore we have got to ask whether the qualities which made his rise so rapid are of the kind which will enable him to maintain the position he has won. He certainly will not maintain it unless he shows activity, energy, and the positive qualities of leadership. He obtained the Premiership by negative virtues. He must keep it by the positive qualities of action. It is not enough to be the man who divides the country least. A Prime Minister must be dynamic.
Mr. Baldwin may prove to be one of the men who unex. pectedly develop driving power and leadership. I sincerely hope and trust he will. He is straight, and he really does want to do the fair thing and the right thing by the country, and, what is still rarer, by his political opponents, In this respect he is most emphatically doing what the country likes—that is, making no attempt to run down his rivals or to claim a monopoly of political virtues for himself and his colleagues. While playing up manfully for his own side, he never takes mean or unfair advantages, Yet this virtue is one that must be admitted to have its dangers in leadership. A leader must be a bit of an egotist to be successful. I will not say that he must claim a monopoly of the power to do the right thing— but, at any rate, he must believe in himself to some extent, as did Chatham when he insisted that the country needed saving and that he was the man who could save it. Mr. Baldwin has not quite this extremity of heroic egotism, but he has all a man's proper confidence in hit own views.
I sometimes wonder, however, whether he has in sufficient quantity a particular quality which no states- man in troublous times can afford to be without. A Victorian statesman of great insight and great power of expression said of the late Duke of Devonshire, one of the soundest English statesman of recent times; " What I like about him is his You-be-damnedness.' " He was right. The Duke though he was a moderate man-without any desire to push himself, yet had in a high degree this quality of " You-be-damnedness." Anyone can stand up to and fight his enemies. The difficulty is to stand up to your friends, and the Duke of Devonshire, though not an irascible man, could through a certain simplicity of character stand up to his friends when he thought them in the wrong. Has Mr. Baldwin got a sufficient amount of this " You - be - damnedness " — this power of disappointing, when necessary, the hopes, aspirations and personal desires of his followers ? I confess to being rather anxious on this point. If he has not, he will not, be able to keep permanently the confidence of the nation. —unless, of course, he is the super-lucky man, who breaks' all rules.
Whatever happens, Mr. Baldwin will never be hated, or despised, or even disconsidered by his fellow-countrymen. If he falls, he will fall with his honour and his dignity.
(Conclusion.) - -
Previous page
