THE CRISIS IN ENGLAND

And Its Relation to the Freedom of the Press

Frederick James Gregg

THERE has been a crisis in England. It arose over the question of method in conducting the War. The whole thing amounted to this: should the Government risk the safety of the Empire by muddling along, trusting to luck, or frankly take the public into its confidence when the situation was serious enough to call for more strenuous cooperation on the part of the whole people?

There can be little doubt that when the history of the present war comes to be written one newspaper publisher will be among its conspicuous figures, no matter how great the tendency is on such occasions, to ignore everybody but heads of states, generals, admirals, statesmen and diplomatists. The reason why Lord Northcliffe stands out so prominently, and seems destined to be remembered by the historians of the future, is that it has fallen to him to join issue with the government on the freedom of the press, the shortage of ammunition, the blundering at Antwerp and the Dardanelles, the Balkan muddle and conscription.

Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, the son of a lawyer, was born near Dublin at Chapelizod—where Iseult of Ireland came from—some fifty years ago.

Like his brother Harold, now Lord Rothermere, he went to England to make his fortune, and did it. By his own energy he became the owner of many publications, and Mr. Balfour elevated him to the House of Lords, for journalistic services to the party. His most conspicuous papers are the Daily Mail and the London Times. Thelatterhasbeencalled "The Thunderer" ever since Anthony Trollope gave it that felicitous name in his great little novel, "The Warden."

Lord Northcliffe is very unpopular with a great many persons in Great Britain, both official and private. But when their criticism of him comes to be examined, it is found to be based on motive. The ultimate verdict will depend on whether people decide that he was interested first and last on keeping himself and his newspapers before the public, or, on the other hand, that in taking various steps which have aroused bitter controversy he considered that he was only doing his duty as a man and a patriot. It is not straining credulity to suggest that the latter view will prevail ultimately, for it is easy to make out a good case for it—one that will hold water.

THE great offence of Lord Northcliffe, in the eyes of his critics, is that he has been an uncomfortably candid critic of the Government in time of war. But surely, seeing that England is the holy of holies of precedent, he could point to history for his justification! First of all, however, it is important to keep in mind his simple theory of the relation of the press to the Administration at home and to the army in the field, for it contains the essence of the whole matter. He holds that, so far as the censorship is concerned, it is absurd to hide from the nation facts which are well known to the enemy, seeing that the only true and legitimate function of the censor is to keep the foe in the dark about military plans of all sorts. The climax to the stifling of criticism of the conduct of the war arrived when Mr. Asquith was forced by criticism in the Northcliffe papers to put an end to Parliamentary government, for the time being, by forming the coalition Cabinet. By bringing every party leader of the first rank into the Administration—with the exception of Mr. John Redmond who refused to join—the conservative chiefs were deprived of their proper function, that of sceptical watchfulness, and became as responsible as any or all of the Liberals for each and every blunder that might be made in the future. The old working rule, "It is the duty of the Opposition to oppose," had vanished, for the Opposition leaders had joined the group that they were supposed to keep an eye on for the general good.

Lord Northcliffe has offended the more sentimental and less practical school of patriots by assuming that if the truth is not, and may not be told in the House of Commons, or the House of Lords, then, within certain reasonable and proper limits, it ought to be and must be told in the press. Because he has put the cap of blame on heads that it fitted, he has been accused of wanting to destroy the Ministry, of desiring to be a sort of modern Warwick, a maker and unmaker of Prime Ministers—in short, a sort of Fleet Street Dictator.

Of course it is admitted that there has been bungling. Northcliffe revealed the shortage of ammunition that led to the creation of the office of Minister of Munitions with Lloyd George at the head of it. He revealed the folly of the Antwerp fiasco. The Dardanelles affair is still an unsolved problem. British diplomacy allowed the more vigorous Prussian article to get the better of it in the Balkans. But to judge from the attitude of the Cabinet anybody might think that the important thing was to cover up the mistakes of statesmen who had been responsible for the unnecessary loss of men at Gallipoli, on the one hand, and the failure to have men where they ought to have been—in Belgium for instance— on the other.

LORD NORTHCLIFFE had no patience with the smug complacency of the politicians who announced that the peoples of Germany and AustriaHungary were being kept in the dark by the Kaiser as to German losses in the field, while these same politicians considered it all right for the British Government to conceal in a dense fog of suppression the exact situation of the Allies which, if known, would stimulate recruiting. Lawyers like Sir Henry Blake pointed out that what was practically conscription had been an English method from the earliest time. But, it was asked, Do you want to turn the country into another Prussia? Why another Prussia? Why not another France? Carnot, the organizer of victory, saved the French Republic by that means. It is admitted that none of the Zeppelin raids did as much damage as was suffered time and again in small unreported skirmishes in Flanders, while the recruiting sergeants liked them as helping business. Yet the censors fixed matters so that the details of what had happened on any such occasion only reached England, from Flanders by way of the New York newspapers.

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It was urged against Lord Northcliffe by Liberal Statesmen, that, in time of storm and stress, everybody must be behind the Government. This rule never held in England or America. Burke was for the Americans in the Revolutionary War. Fox was for the French as against the Allies. The elder Pitt and, later the younger Pitt had strong oppositions to contend with. Washington created this nation, and Lincoln saved it, while hampered by those who were supposed to be of their own political households. Henry CampbellBannerman, who was to be Prime Minister some years later, bitterly condemned certain features of the Boer War on the floor of the House of Commons. But nobody had the temerity to accuse him of disloyalty.

It was not through any regard for Germany that Lord Northcliffe became the most troublesome critic of the Government. It was because he was convinced that the future of the Empire depended on looking facts in the face, that he was determined that the facts should be supplied. There is a story to the effect that one day Lord Kitchener sent for him and hinted very pointedly that, under certain circumstances, the London Times would not appear. This is almost too Teutonic to be true. But the mere fact that the yam should have been spread around shows to what an extent English traditions had been changed through the "wait and see policy" of the present administration.

A ray of light was let into the darkness of the Cabinet Room, when Sir Edward Carson resigned from the great office of Attorney General, the other day and told why he had got out. He made it plain that the Cabinet was so large that it had become top-heavy. An inner cabinet, consisting of a few men, held all the secrets and did all the real work. The rest had to stand for and stand by what a little group decided on in secret. Now whatever may be said of Sir Edward Carson, on account of his former incitement of Ulster to rebellion against the authority of Parliament, in connection with the Home Rule bill, his bitterest foes will not accuse him of insincerity. He has proved and forced home one of the Northcliffe contentions as to the inefficiency of the administration. Hardly was Carson out when there was talk of the formation inside the Cabinet of a War Council, or Committee in addition to a committee of the Allied Generals, to bring about unity of action in the field. All this had an ominous sound, for it suggested the Committee of Public Safety of the blackest hours of the French Revolution.

If the present Cabinet breaks up, what is there to succeed it? All the big men of public life are in office. There could be only a weeding out of those who have failed, like Mr. Winston Churchill. There would be a reassignment of portfolios such as took place in France recently. But if Viviani could give place to Briand, why should not England set her Administrative house in order? Perhaps the difficulty is that the French have clearer minds than their friends on the other side of the channel as to the extent to which individual interests should be substituted to the great matter in hand.

Those office holders who accuse Lord Northcliffe of being preoccupied with ambitious designs ought to look into their own hearts and see if they are not concerned, for the most part, with keeping their own well paid jobs.