The Quintessential Politician
The Endless Adventure. By F. S. Oliver. (Macmillan. 15s.)
" Statecraft is not a sport, but an undertaking on which the gravest issues depend, and no man who takes this business seriously, no man who is really worthy of the national confidence, will ever give his enemy a fair field, if he has the power to sow it with pitfalls."
This sentence, taken at random from his pages, may well serve as a key to the political philosophy to which Mr. Oliver devotes one hundred pages before he comes even to the pre- cincts of the brief period with which he is to deal. The period
is that of Walpole, and Mr. Oliver, disclaiming alike the roles of historian or biographer, declares that he is writing about politics and merely commenting on Walpole and his age. The philosophy may be due to his close study and admiration of Walpole, or he may have selected Walpole as the most perfect embodiment of his philosophy. In either case, no more sympathetic, and withal discerning, commentator on that statesman could be conceived.
Government, Mr. Oliver holds, is much the same in all ages. It is one of the highest, if not the highest of functions, and can only be conducted by very considerable men. But they must not be confused with divinities or heroes or even supermen.
Indeed, it is essential that in some quite important respects they should not be of too lofty a morality and should most certainly not be inspired by too remotely soaring ideals. For example, it is essential that a statesman should command the support of that " strange monster " the public. To do this he must obviously descend to the simulation of many enthu- siasms and beliefs, which a man of his necessary intelligence could hardly affect to share. Again, he must be convinced that it is better for his country that he should be in power rather than his opponents. It becomes his duty, therefore, if his opponents are in power, to oppose whatever they do and to get rid of them in any possible manner ; and, when he himself succeeds them, as the above quotation indicates, he must not have any highly moral or sportsmanlike idea of being fair to them. If it becomes necessary, he must eliminate them alto- gether, in earlier ages by poison or the knife, in Walpole's age by bills of attainder or court intrigues, in our own day by financial or matrimonial scandals. Statesmanship is very much concerned with morals, but they must be the morals of the masses. Statesmanship is very much concerned with ideals, but chiefly for the purpose of avoiding them or curing the effects of their too hasty translation into realities. Such ideals tend, like tadpoles, to alter their shape when they grow older and to become idols. Then the statesman, while render- ing them the homage that the mob expects, must be keenly con- scious of their feet of clay and be careful not to become a real worshipper. He must not deceive himself either as to the reality of his worship or the existence of his hypocrisy. He must lie—yes, but the lie must not be in the soul.
Above all, the statesman must be pragmatic. In his diffi- cult and complex function he will find it quite hard enough to solve each problem as it presents itself. Since he must govern a whole people and at the same time prevent anyone else from governing it, he will have his hands full enough without looking too far ahead. He must get on with his innumerable tasks and be polite to his innumerable advisers, but only pay any atten- tion to them when from their own experience they have some- thing to tell him which he does not already know. Above all, he must remember that the mass of the people only want to go about their daily affairs without disturbance and, if possible, with a greater measure of material success than they have hitherto enjoyed. They may occasionally be swept away by the passions of revolution. But "post-revolutionary politi- cians are the salvage men of revolutions."
With this philosophy Mr. Oliver comes to the age of Walpole. If Walpole was not the salvage man of a revolution, he was at all events the reconstructor of a very shaky concern. The dynasty, the established religion, public and private finance, and, worst of all, the daily life of the ordinary man were insecure. Walpole did not regard dynasties or Pro- testantism as sacrosanct, but he did regard economic soundness and the securing of his customary life to the ordinary man as a primary function of government, and he knew that dynasties and forms of religion were closely bound up with these things. So for twenty-five years he devoted himself with slowly maturing success to the attainment of security in these things. No other statesman could probably have succeeded in this, so Mr. Oliver holds, and demonstrates clearly enough. At what sacrifice of moral purpose, of national conscience, and of spiritual values these more material benefits were secured Walpole was sublimely unconscious ; and so, perhaps, is Mr. Oliver. But there is no doubt about Walpole's success and about his being a most perfect exponent of Mr. Oliver's philo- sophy. In whatever category it is to be placed, Mr. Oliver's is a good book, an important book, and a vastly entertaining book. When his two succeeding volumes appear it will be possible to say whether it is more than this. Meanwhile we have to thank him for a philosophical treatise on politics in which he combines the greatest respect for politicians with the clearest appreciation of the dishonesty of their media of well- doing. We have to thank him too for many a veiled as well as an open commentary on the politics of our own time due to his insistence on the maxim plus fa change, plus c'est la Male chose. Finally, we have to thank him for illuminating with the bright light of his commentary the persons and happenings of a rather dim and murky period of our history.
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