The Life of Lord Curzon
The Life of Lord Curzon. By the Earl of Ronaldshay. Vol. LEI (Bann. 218.) THERE is much to be said, not only from a reviewer's stand- point, for Lord Ronaldshay's plan of publishing his Life of Lord Curzon in three separate instalments. The public gets a chance to take in the story, which at one gulp would clog the most active digestion. And the reviewer has the pleasure of noting that as the second volume was better than the first, so the third is better than the second. Here for the first time Lord Ronaldshay gives himself full freedom of critical comment. Since there are so many candid friends in this branch of literature, let us be quite clear what free criticism means.
He does not insinuate the defects to disparage the excellencies. a method much in vogue : but he has facts to explain and, more especially in this last volume, he has to be quite definite.
Oddly, the main interest of this volume lies in its pathos Lord Curzon achieved nearly every object of ambition, except one. He was never Prime Minister ; and life at the end was dust and ashes to him, because of this disappointment. It was, natural that he should be disappointed. Mr. Bonar Law, unknown when Curzon was famous as Viceroy of India, passed him in the race : yet even now, it is already clear that Curzon will be far the more notable figure to posterity. Then again, Mr. Baldwin passed him, though no comparison was possible at the time between the two men's record of service. Failure is written large over Lord Curzon's career, because that career was so consciously directed to one object. Why did he fail ? One reason is, no doubt, that he made a host of enemies, and Lord Ronaldshay does not hesitate to tell us that throughout life, though he was more than commonly zealous in doing acts of kindness, he constantly gave offence by lack of consideration of others.
" Recognition of what was due to his subordinates floated idly on the surface of his mind and sometimes attracted his passing notice. But it was an affectation rather than a conviction, for except when his attention was called specifically to it by outside agency, he acted in complete oblivion of it. From the higheit official to the humblest messenger, there was scarcely a man in the Foreign Office Staff who at some time or other during Lord Ctirzon's tenure of the post of Foreign Minister did not nurse a grievance against his chief for some unconscious act lacking in consideration. Yet he had only to be told that he was giving cause for umbrage, to make amends."
This accounts for much, but there is more. Lord Ronald- shay lays stress on two conspicuous instances in which Lord. Curzon promoted a course of action and then headed retreat from it. The first was over the Parliament Act, when, after fierce denunciation, he paved the way for its passage through a reluctant Upper House. The second was in his refusal to vote against the Bill enfranchising wome,u, though he con- demned the measure as revolutionary and was still President of a League for opposing it. Both of these were no doubt stigmatized as betrayals.
But the essence of his failure lay elsewhere. The War gave all statesmen their chance (except, indeed, Lord Haldane) and Lord Curzon brought into the service of the Coalition an equipment of knowledge and experience that none else possessed. Lord Ronaldshay has shown that in many important matters he saw clear and his vision was matched with the power to expound it. More especially in all that concerned Eastern affairs, he was, as compared to his col- leagues, a master of arms among novices. Yet there is scarcely an instance in which his view was followed. He lacked the special gift indispensable under Cabinet government for making an opinion prevail. In a page of acute dissection at the close Lord Ronaldshay writes :
" His analysis of a situation was superb : his exposition of it unsurpassed in picturesqueness and lucidity. Yet his advice as to the action to be taken in the circumstances which he had so brilliantly expounded was strangely undecisive and disappointing. Why so ? The answer, I think, is that his whole interest lay in the actual work of analysis and presentation."
Yet that is hardly complete. He did not lack will to decide on a course, to set action in motion, and to direct it. As. Viceroy he was effective. But there is no Viceroy in a Cabinet. There may be—and in this case there was—a man having the power to ensure that action follows from his adoption of a view. If Lord Curzon had been able to put into
the mind of Mr. Lloyd George more of the knowledge which he possessed and which the Prime Minister lacked, it had probably been well for mankind. Lord Ronaldshay is, necessarily, silent on the personal relation between these two so sharply contrasted figures, though he has much to say that is justified about the disorganization which grew up while the Prime Minister was not only dealing freely with the foreign policy but had actually his own rival secretariat.
One comes back to the conclusion that Lord Curzon was passed over when a successor to Mr. Lloyd George had to be chosen, not really because it was inconvenient to have a Prime Minister in the House of Lords, but because with all his amazing ability and industry he had not proved himself the kind of man who can keep a team together, because he had been of less value in a Cabinet than his accomplishments should have made him. For all his imperiousness, and his natural zest for ascendancy, he had not proved himself a leader. A great figure in the classic land of parliamentary government, he had attempted and achieved all manner of distinction ; but he had never .succeeded as a parliamentarian. And even when war conditions rendered Parliament itself of secondary importance, and a group of men drawn from all parties held control of the nation's destinies, though he was in that group by right of his knowledge, his eloquence, and his record, he sank rather than rose by contrast with the other picked men. He did not make his party feel that he was their best or most trusted man.
His failure was very far from ignoble, but it has to be admitted as a fact. Lord Curzon's was a fine life and these volumes are worthy of it.
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