THE PRIME MINISTER. T HIS is not a moment when we
desire to waste words and energy in praise of anybody, whether it be the nation as a whole, the Prime Minister, or his Government. We want to give, and we mean to give, the Cabinet strong, consistent, and helpful support, but not adulation. The time for laurels is not in the middle of the fight, but at the end, if they are then earned. All the Goverrtnient have a right to ask for, and we are bound to say that it is all they do ask for, is confidence, not floral tributes. They want to begiven a chance to do their duty unhampered by the distraction either of curses or of lamentations, heady invectives.or stric- tures based upon idle rumour or malicious gossip. You may ask a man to put his whole strength into dragging a motor-car out of a ditch, but unless you are a fool you do not, while the operation is going on, nag at him for his folly in having 'got into the ditch, and for his lack of prescience in not having taken another road. Above all, you do not ask him strings of useless questions as to why he does not use his strength from the other side, or in some unessentially different way, and, if he does not give an immediate, civil, and ingenious answer, call him a sulky, idiotic brute who is trying to tyrannize over his kind employer. " Don't jog his arm," should be the order of the day. But to discountenance nagging is not to encourage laudation. Praise even where it is most deserved, and in many cases it is much more deserved than the ordinary public has the least idea of, can wait. The horse—to change the metaphor—does not want to be "gentled" but kept in his collar, and, above all, he does not want to be irritated by tugs at the reins, flicking of the whip, or attempts by the driver first to back out and then to rush through. So much for the true position which the public ought to maintain towards the Government in the crisis of a great war. Unfortunately there have been moments of late when the public, or rather a section of them, have treated, Ministers, and especially the Prime Minister, with injustiex so grave and so palpable that the gorge of any fair-minded man must have risen at it. In spite, then, of our good intentions in regard to no adulation and strict attention to the job in hand " for the duration," it has become absolutely necessary to say a word on the other side in response to the attacks on the Prime Minister. It is he who in public, and still more in private, has been the butt of every crossgrained critic, and of that ignoble army of war martyrs whose essential impulse when they are worried, nervous, or depressed is to find some one whom they can abuse as " the most callous, indifferent, idle, deceitful, untrustworthy, and unscrupulous of politicians." Painful as it may be to these votaries of the scapegoat cure, we venture to say that the Prime Minister is not the creature of their imaginings. He has plenty of faults as a politician, and in the past—i.e., before the war—he did much evil in the land, chiefly because he carried our system of party government to the extreme point, and used his wonderful powers of Parliamentary management to maintain and increase rather than to mitigate the evils of that system. Since the war, however, he has done his best to retrieve the evils of the past. We must go further. The country owes him a great deal for his conduct of affairs, and when all is known, and the full story is told, history will, we believe, not merely acquit him of the charges which have been brought against him, but pronounce that he has displayed great qualities— qualities which were necessary to our ultimate success.
In the first place, Mr. Asquith did what is essential in the man at the top. He formed a mental picture of what was needed, chose a scheme for carrying out his funct:ons, and has stuck to that scheme ever since. Whether it was absolutely the best scheme we are not now going to discuss. The great thing is that he had a view, and that he adhered to it instead of first obeying one impulse and then another. His plan of cam- paign was to maintain national unity even at the sacrifice of pace, and even if it involved a certain loss of the nation's energies. At the very beginning of the crisis he realized that war could not be avoided without loss of honour and loss of gcod faith, and £0 without incurring the deadliest of perils. Thereupon he made up his mind to bring not only the majority but the whole of his party into line, and thus secure a united nation. He was determined that the nation should move as a whole, and that even if the march were thereby delayed, the advance guard should never run away from the main column. Who can doubt that herein he was wise in principle, even if the halts often tended to exasperate those who do not realize the dangers that come from a disorderly advance. Suvaroff, the great Russian General of the early Napoleonic Wars, is said to have acted on the maxim, La tote de rarmee n'attend pas la queue. But that was a dangerous though a gallant maxim. The Prime Minister from the very beginning saw what was the right course for the ship of State and kept her on it.
Mr. Asquith has shown throughout a quality which is essential to a leader, though it is apt to expose him to every sort of accusation. He has shown the quality of imperturba- bility. This in times of stress can easily be called indif- ference or want of understanding of the true situation. Yet it is a quality which every subordinate in a difficult place wishes above all things to find in his chief. There has never been a trace of panic, or of that used or is recklessness of action which too often used to hide panic. He has kept cool himself, and helped the nation to keep cool. He has never let his mind be awed by rumour, or permitted himself to be deflected from his main purpose by this or that call for excited action. Again, he has not rushed into the other extreme and paraded an indefensible optimism. Further, he has not attempted to make excuses for blunders or miscalculations. He has not bewailed his ill-luck or called upon fortune to vindicate his helpless plight. Without ostentation and without complaint, he has kept the even tenor of his way—not an easy task in such a war as the present, with the world crashing around him, with all eyes upon him, and with angry and sometimes even malignant critics ready to fall upon every slip and magnify it as a crime. Worst of all, a good many of his assailants have represented him as callous to the sufferings of the nation. They have drawn us a picture of a happy-go-lucky middle-aged gentleman taking the war at his ease in Downing Street, little concerned at its horrors or as to how long it may last if only he can keep his comfortable place. That imperturbability of which we have spoken, and which we are sure has been a national asset of no mean importance, has been brought up against him as proof of his want of sympathy or want of apprehension of the greatness of the issues involved. One might imagine, indeed, from some of these personal strictures that the war had not affected him personally ; that he had avoided the personal troubles, anxieties, and sufferings which fall upon other men ; and that he was able to take an Olympian attitude because the war did not touch his life and exact personal sacrifices. And here we must write in a way which, we fear, will give personal annoyance to Mr. Asquith. We must mention a matter to which the Prime Minister has never alluded in public. Yet, had he been of a different temperament, it is one which he might have easily exploited to his own advantage. People who talk as if Mr. Asquith had kept himself clear of the personal sacrifices of the war forget that his home has been touched as much as any in the land. He has had three sons fighting at the front, and all have _held posts of danger. His eldest son is serving with the Grenadier Guards—at what particular place it is not our business to say, but the world knows that the Guards do not get the safe spots in the firing line. Another son, an officer in the Royal Naval Division, was badly wounded at Gallipoli ; and the third, a Blue Marine and an excellent war poet, hal had temporarily to leave his battery through injuries received on active service. The Prime Minister might have bseet excused if, in view of the attacks made upon him, he had let the public realize what the war meant to him and those dearest to him—had explained how truly he could -claim sympathy from the million homes placed exactly as his own. Of no man is it more true to say that the war " lies in his bed, walks up and down with him." That he has never let the world know this is a reticence of a very memorable kind. It is Roman in its quality, and should appeal to all Englishmen. Lastly, no man dare say that the members of his family have asked or received any sort of preference, or have been given the soft or the sensational jobs. They have taken the rough-and-tumble of the war like the sons in any other ordinary well-to-do English family. And this can be no accident. There must have been Generals who would have been by no means unwilling to have one of the Prime Minister's sons on their Staff, and so make sure that the deeds of the Blank Division should come under the notice of Downing Street in " home letters." That Mr. Asquith and his gallant sons have felt too much what belongs to the part of English gentlemen to make play with their sacrifices is something of which the nation as well as they themselves have a right to be proud. Ne sensible man will, of course, exaggerate what they have done in this respect. It was merely a matter of good taste, but it is the kind of good taste which deserves to be remembered when most people count any stick good enough with which to belabour the Prime Minister.
There is one other quality that the Prime Minister possesses which is an asset of some importance at a crisis like the present. He seems to have the power of inverting the usual feeling towards men in high position. As a rule, the men who are nearest to the King or the Vizier are the men who think least of him. With Mr. Asquith Omne ignotum pro magnifier; is reversed. Criticism seems to be at the maximum with those who know him least and who judge on public form and public rumour. He appears to have a power of impressing his colleagues more than the crowd. Take, for example, the Unionist statesmen who joined his Administration last May. Undoubtedly their confidence in him has not declined but has increased. Familiarity has not bred intellectual contempt but just the reverse. It is the notum and not the ignotum which here is pro magnifico. This political oddity is due, in a probability, to the fact that Mr. Asquith, whatever else he may be, is not a selfish man, but inspires his colleagues with the feeling that he is politically playing for the team and not merely for his own hand.
But if we run on we shall end by dropping into eulogy when all we desire to do is to defend Mr. Asquith from unjust charges. To speak frankly, his views, his actions, and his attitude towards politics are not those which have won, or are ever likely to win, approval in the Spectator- There is, and always must be, between our views and his a great gulf fixed. That, however, is not going to prevent us from doing him justice in a time of national crisis, or from recognizing that he has been most unfairly attacked, nay, traduced, and that the public will not merely be guilty of ignoble action, but will actually be weakening the national effort at a moment when it ought to be strengthened, if they pay attention to the insidious attempts to poison their minds against the Prime Minister. Let their motto be that written up above the piano in the Californian " Saloon " in the days of the gold rush : " Do not shoot at the pianist ; he is doing his best."
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