The Balance of Power in British Politics

PHILIP GUEDALLA

A Discussion of the Political Methods and the General Public Unobtrusiveness of Mr. Herbert Asquith

THERE are some actors to whom the most important part of any theatre is the gallery. The stalls may yawn; the boxes may indulge in discreet conversation; and the dress circle may exchange audible information about the trains for home. But so long as the attention of the gallery is riveted, he will die (histrionically) happy. Those remote and turbulent auditors, unseen behind the glare of the footlights and the black distances of a great theatre, are the sole object of all his art. For them every note is forced, and every sweeping gesture takes on a broader sweep. Their eyes are flattered by a garish make-up, which dazzles the front seats by its crudity; and the thundering voice, which deafens the stalls, sounds pleasantly in their ears. That is how any actor plays to the gallery.

The same disparity of method can be observed in public life. In politics, as upon the concert platform, one performer may devote a lifetime of effort and ingenuity to the captivation of crowds. The voice, the pen, the printing press, the arts of facial expression, the very forces of Nature may be pressed into his service, and he will emerge triumphant, with a national, a world-wide, almost a Los Angelic reputation, before which jockeys turn pale, and operatic divas reproach their press agents. Another may prefer a quieter style, which satisfies the stalls but leaves the gallery silent. This method earns a limited esteem from those around him. Connoisseurs approve; critics are comfortably certain that there will be no surprises. Assemblies, of which he is a member, hear him with respect. But there are no crowds in the street outside to cheer the familiar outline of his hat. One method or the other (for they can hardly be combined) must be adopted. It is a choice of roads which lies before every young political Hercules. And it is Mr. Asquith's weakness (or, perhaps, his strength) that he has chosen the second.

Politics and the Praying Trumpet

PUBLICITY is, for a politician, the line of least resistance. In a party leader, it may sometimes be a duty, and in avoiding it, he has manifestly followed his private inclination against the stream of public life. The warmest of his admirers has observed, in tones which verge upon disappointment, that his "modesty amounts to deformity". It is a rare virtue to discover in a prize boy. For that sedate progress from London to Balliol, from Balliol to the Bar, and from the Bar to Downing Street, exposes him to that dismal imputation. There is much in it that would have gratified Samuel Smiles. Yet there is little enough in him of the self-satisfaction which is the frequent accompaniment of such bright examples of self-help. A tolerant conviction of the incurable stupidity of other people is almost his only sympton of success.

But his public figure is innocent of all arrangement. The draperies fall round it just as they happen to; and he owes nothing to those lighting effects which scientific showmanship has lent to politics. Rarely guilty of a pose, he never struck the familiar attitude of the Coming Man in the distant days when he used to dine at the Blue Posts with Mr. Haldane, and anxious Radicals like Mr. Wilfrid Blunt regarded him with favour as the most advanced element in Lord Rosebery's new Government. He refrained from the more ample gestures of a Saviour, when he saw his country through the most perilous months in its history.

Indeed, it may be doubted whether, in all his time, he ever struck an attitude. That long career has abounded in rich dramatic possibilities, which he has scandalously neglected. Quite sedately, he led an irritable democracy against an ancient institution. His composure was barely ruffled when he took a cheering country into war. He scarcely raised his voice above an even tone when he was a principal actor in two great schisms of his party, cast on the first occasion to play Luther, and on the second to play the Pope himself.

That apparent stillness has evoked the criticism which is normally directed against inaction. Yet Mr. Asquith has never been inactive. A colleague watched him, in the crowded days before the war, "attend committees and give full attention to every point of discussion, and draft amendments in his perfectly clear handwriting, without altering a word—clause by clause". Perhaps it is not necessary to be always in a hurry in order to make haste. The same ease seemed to attend his grasp of fresh problems and new points of view. Some minds cannot keep, as they say, abreast of the times without a vast deal of splashing in the water, of sudden side-strokes, of spectacular natation. But their more fortunate competitor, starting from further down the course, maintains his level with an easv stroke. He must have learned it at Balliol"

The Asquithian Style

FEW men, perhaps, have been more accurately reflected in their style. The classical dialect of English politics derives from Edmund Burke; and Mr. Asquith treads that solemn measure with consummate grace. It has, of course, its weakness. The slow movement of the grand manner, which used to follow the Grand Tour, is sometimes out of place in a more hurried world. The delicate balance of its syntax leaves little room for "cheers" and "laughter"; and no man who formed his style in the immediate vicinity of Doctor Johnson will ever let one word do work that could be done by two. But deliberation and lucidity are two rare virtues in modern rhetoric; and his manipulation of that majestic idiom is singularly effortless. Other speakers have tried to bend the bow; but one can always see the strain. Lord Birkenhead has managed to acquire a passable command of grave, Johnsonian polysyllables. But his diction always bears traces of the grease-paint; the style seems to come straight from Clarkson's, and that eloquent jurist struts in it like a self-conscious modern in Georgian fancy dress. Mr. Asquith always manages to wear his ruffles with the most natural air in the world. One feels that he could hold his own at Mr. Dilly's table. Mr. Topham Beauclerk might converse with him without ennui; his conversation would be scarcely unworthy of Sir Joshua's ear trumpet; and he need hardly withdraw in panic if the door swung slowly open and a great figure rolled into the room in tow of Mr. Boswell.