TOPICS OF THE DAY.
A TALE OF TWO STATESMEN.
AWEEK ago, on July 25th to be exact, the news- papers contained important speeches by two leading inen—speeches which afford a very remarkable contrast i in spirit and in statesmanship. So remarkable indeed is this contrast that it is worth while to pause, even in these crowded days, to consider its import. One was the speech of Mr. Winston Churchill to the Centre Party, a speech the publication of which was characteristically involved in a minor intrigue. The other was the speech made by Lord Robert Cecil to the General Council of the League of Nations Union. Both dealt with great political princi- ples. Mr. Churchill's was concerned with the organization of political service to the nation at home, Lord Robert Cecil's with service on the larger field of international politics and to the world as a whole. No exception therefore can possibly be taken to the occasion of either discourse, nor can either be said to have the advantage in subject. Again, neither speaker need fear comparison in regard to intellectual powers or the arts of expression. Though very different in the type of eloquence they employ, both men are exceptionally able as public speakers and as dialecticians. Both have minds equal to any task which can be assigned to them. Yet between the two speeches and between the spirit which inspires them flows a veritable Atlantic. What is the cause of the difference ? " Character, character, and again character." So different is the essential aim (it is essential aim that makes character in the politician) that to those who read intently and look behind the words the two speakers seem to be moving on different planes. Each in turn catches fire at new thoughts and new ideas, each—happiest of gifts in the politician—can cherish the fire which he has lighted. Yet who can but feel that one of them desires to use the flame to serve and satisfy a personal ambition, the other to use it for the benefit of mankind ? One speaker longs for the Caesarian triumph, yearns to gain the delicious plaudits of the crowd, longs to know that most thrilling of all moments—the moment when 3. man can say, whether in the field of war or in the field of politics : " I came, I saw, I overcame." The other, not perhaps less ambitious, but ambitious for how different a victory, longs to be the builder rather than the magician. He is content with the gratitude of man. He wants to win it, not to enforce it ; to possess. not to ravish ; to receive at willing hands, not to plunder and surprise. He is not wearied or fretted by the thought that true gratitude takes long to come. He is careless of the breathless raptures of a violent and instantaneous success.
One statesman is restless, eager, imaginative, bold, alert, electric, ready alike for flattery or defiance, to wheedle or to browbeat. Whatever is the appropriate weapon of the moment, he will seize and handle it. The other, fair- minded, just, patient, reasonable, self-contained, though not without passion, and by no means devoid of the ambition of success, has no will for the victory which is lost almost as soon as won, the victory which rests on a momentary domination of the will of others rather than upon the conversion of the heart and mind. One sails in tempests down the stream of life, as fascinating as he:is dangerous. The other, remembering that his ship is freighted with the hopes and happiness of mankind, will not risk shooting Niagara in that delightful delirium which Unger alone can give. He does not want the victor's crown to wear as a trophy. He cares not who has the palm, the roaring, and the wreaths if only the goal is won.
We could easily sustain our delineation of Mr. Churchill's political character by reference to the mad rushes of his career. We might recall how, much to the embarrassment of his chief and his colleagues, he brought the Fleet outside Belfast Lough in order to coerce the Protestants of North- East Ulster ; how by a mixture of insistence and persuasion ho forced the Antwerp adventure, with its loss of half the Naval Division, upon the Cabinet ; how he committed us to the great gamble of Gallipoli, the gamble that failed ; how he threw off the garb of the politician with indifferent hand and became the fighting soldier ; how with equal levity he exchanged the trench-line for the Parliamentary lobby ; how when the break-up of the Liberal Party took place he at first elected to stand firm by the side of his old chief Mr. Asquith ; how when it seemed certain that that chief had no political future he left him to his fate ; how with a gallant gesture he placed his political sword at the disposal of Mr. Lloyd George, and became the most ardent and convinced (even if only locally and temporarily) of the present Prime Minister's political entourage. His loyalty to Mr. Lloyd George has had indeed a kind of fierceness for which the hour affords no parallel, or affords it alone in Mr. Montagu and Sir Alfred Mond.
We do not however desire to dwell upon these political alarums and excursions, nor even to probe the Russian policy of the Government and attempt to discover Mr. Churchill's real design. We will base our contention upcn the speech advocating the formation of a Centre Party. With the apparent object of that speech we are, it is hardly necessary to remind our readers, in the strongest agreement. They will doubtless remember how often in the past we have advocated the foundation of a Centre Party, which, wholly democratic in its basis, should bring together those forces of reason and moderation which always have formed and still form the foundation of the English political character. Alas ! handled by Mr. Churchill the Centre Party assumes a very different com- plexion. His Centre Party, founded upon no prohibition or dislike of the excesses of the Party system, affords no antidote to injurious forms of political partisanship. On the contrary, it is but a plea for a more efficient political party " combine " just on the old lines. It is but a new way of raising the old structure a story or two higher. It is not suggested of course that Mr. Churchill admits any of these assertions. His speech is in the letter full of the noblest and highest aspirations, and of the most whole-hearted condemnation of the excesses of partisanship. Only somehow or other the nose and toes and elbows of the old Party corpse to which he is so ostentatiously professing to give Christian burial keep on sticking through the soil and giving one a most unpleasant feeling in regard to what is being covered up. Take for example the following passage :- " The great thing is to have the union of consenting minds, to have the union of people who are aiming at the same objective, and feel that, however they may be divided by political origin or antecedents, however they may be divided by what they happened to say in the past, or anything else like that, they still feel that the greatness and the glory of Britain and the happiness of her people have always been, and are still, the objective on which they are marching. Party spirit, party interests, party organization, must necessarily play a grf at part in British political life. Do not let us underrate that. I understand that your idea is not to break with existing political parties, but to prevent existing political parties from breaking with each other. I understand that you do not challenge the importance of party in British political life, and that you even vindicate it, but that you hold in addition that party spirit, party interests, party organization, must, in these very serious times, be definitely subordinated to organization."
This passage begins admirably, but it must have been very difficult for Mr. Churchill's hearers to pretend to themselves that it did not contain some very dis- agreeable reminders of the " deceased." It is unques• tionably a masterpiece of political camouflage, and yet somehow one cannot help feeling that the American politician who frankly relied for his party's success upon what he pleasantly called " the cement of public plunder " was not only more honest but more effective. Mr. Churchill went on from eloquence to eloquence, and drew a wonderful picture of how mankind in general were admiring our political and social conceptions. These, we were told, are " accepted in the most remote districts, the most obscure places," as being on the whole the best solution of the problem of practical government. " At such a time as this to indulge in faction for the sake of faction would indeed be a criminal enterprise." Mr. Churchill may be right, but we cannot suppress a doubt as to the feelings of some of the persons in " remote districts " and " obscure places " of whom he tells us. Can we be sure that, when they read his speech in those solemn solitudes, they will feel quite so convinced that faction is dead with us as they would have been if he had let the subject alone ? This view, however, does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Churchill. He goes on with some good thundering military metaphors about plunging into faction and " setting our batteries firing at each other with poison-gas shells," and gives wonderful reasons why all the members of the Coalition should love each other since there is no " class interest at stake " and no " deep division of principle " between them. But was not Mr. Churchill on rather dangerous ground here ? In his desire (one with which we are in full agreement) to insist that the Unionist Coalition Party is as democratic as any other, he forgot that if this is so there was no particular reason why he should have thrown over his allegiance to the Unionist Party and become so fierce a Radical. There was nothing at all, as we have always held, to prevent him remaining a Unionist Free Trader. Yet, unless we are mistaken, at the time of his first conversion he expressed the view that the Unionist Party was not democratic enough for him.
In this context we may note another curious example of the faultiness of Mr. Churchill's memory. He refers to the time when " each British Party, girded and goaded on by its Press and its Caucus, each spurred on by its own Irish Party . . . was driven forward with unmeasured violence, until at last we came to the very verge of civil war." Mr. Churchill adds : " And from that horrible situation we were rescued by Armageddon." Surely Mr. Churchill cannot have forgotten that in bringing the Fleet to the North-East Coast of Ulster, and apparently preparing to bombard Belfast, he was the chief instrument in creating what he now calls the " horrible situation." The Press was not in it with him in the work of goading.
We cannot, however, attempt a complete analysis of Mr. Churchill's argument for a Centre Party, or of his plea for Nationalization-and-water. Neither can we deal here with his remarks upon the capitalist system, and his threat, for it sounds almost like that, of a sustained and searching defence of that system. We are bound to say that if we were capitalists we should implore Mr. Churchill to keep off that particular piece of grass. In truth there is nothing when he is in his " Centre " mood which Mr. Churchill finds too difficult to reconcile. Even the contrast between Free Trade and Protection has no terrors for him. " I do not think there is any ground for cleavage there." Centre Party feeling, indeed, acts as a kind of universal solvent upon what we hope Mr. Churchill will pardon us for describing as the nickel-steel-faced armour-plate of his mind. Could anything be more genial than the following ? It has a kind of kiss-in-the-ring, Bank Holiday flavour about it which is curiously appropriate to the season. We seem to see a political exchange of hats !- " We must advance together, hand in hand. We have not only got a common cause and a common danger, but we have also got leaders who by their action and the risks they have run for their opinions have proved themselves in full harmony with modern requirements. I have told you about my friend Mr. Lloyd George, who really is the most necessary man this country has had for many years. There is no man that you can think of in your lifetime in this country who, if he were to withdraw or disappear, would leave a greater blank behind. He is seconded by Mr. Boner Law, who has never had a thought for himself, and who has played a brilliant part as Leader of the House of Commons, and who works in devoted comradeship with a political chief whom he has learned to trust and like. And Plink that with all these circumstances that I have mentioned, general and personal, in this long disquisition which I havi ventured to make, we look forward to a future, you look forward and I look forward with you to a future of bright and useful political work and of real action. We are not only the representatives of constituencies, we are the trustees for the whole people of this island. We have the most enormous responsibility and the most splendid opportunities because of our great power."
It is refreshing to turn from this hubbub of calculated words to Lord Robert Cecil's speech on the forming of public opinion. There is nothing here of " Arma- geddon," or " horrible situations," or " necessary men," or unnecessary " factions," but only the white light from a white mind. But good as was the speech, it is chiefly valuable because it reminds us of the won- derful work which has been done in Paris by the speaker. Lord Robert Cecil, it is universally admitted, is the chief, though not of course the only, architect of the League of Nations. It was his skilful drafting, his skilful diplo- macy—using that word in its best and highest sense—his power of conciliating and compromising without losing the essential spirit of his design, that have enabled him to draw up a scheme which, if it is worked in the spirit in which it has been designed, may literally prove one of the greatest blessings ever given to mankind. For our- selves, we have had, and still have, doubts as to whether that spirit will be shown or maintained, but we have never had any doubts as to Lord Robert Cecil's aims or hie willingness to sacrifice himself to the task before him.
Lord Robert Cecil is a politician whose quality of mind, and above all whose personal character, was sure in the end to win the sympathy and confidence of his countrymen. He is essentially a man of principle, but he is never a man of prejudice. He is not awed by the rumours of the political auction-rooms, or afraid of things because they have ugly or menacing names. His is essentially a free mind, and the mind which can use freedom—which though it is free does not go astray. He does not accept democracy or the will of the majority as some horrible necessity, but accepts it ex animo. At the same time he does not grovel to the popular will, or believe that the will of the greatest number can alter the foundations of right or wrong. That is the kind of man who makes the best servant of the people. We ourselves, though anti-Disestablishers, do not feel as he does in regard to the Welsh Church. But there is nothing which has made us more certain of Lord Robert Cecil's political worthiness than his decision to leave the Government rather than be a party to putting the Welsh Act into operation. That action is a guarantee of political honesty and political honour. A politician must not of course be too fastidious or too unwilling to compromise. If he is, he can never work with other men. At the same time no politician is really worthy of the confidence of his country who does not know how to resign as owell as how to rule.
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