Politicians From England

"When C. P. Scott died, the innumerable tributes to him all emphasised his courage and integrity, his humanitarianism and his championship of unpopular causes. They omitted comment on his remarkable astuteness, his diplomatic gift, his caution, his capacity for compromise, his knowledge of when to strike and when to forebear. C. P. Scott had something of the fox in him, as well as much of the lion. He was no champion of lost causes; he was, on the contrary, the benignly Machiavellian advocate of causes which less far-sighted men thought lost or Utopian. He could claim, above all, that he had been right—right about the Boer War, right about Home Rule, right about Women's Suffrage, right about the Versailles Peace Treaty, right about a host of other smaller causes which we have forgotten because they have been won. The influence of the Manchester Guardian was due to the fact that the causes it took up were never run as stunts, taken up in the hot mood and dropped in the cold; they were clearly imagined lines of policy, consistently and moderately pursued year after year, boldly urged in season, persuasively advocated out of season, but never abandoned until victory was achieved."

"[He is] one of the heroes of the struggle, one of the ablest men they had and the most courageous Member who had ever been returned. ... He had made sacrifices and had run risks which few realised in the part which he had taken in this struggle—the greatest that England had passed through, he thought, for a century."

"The following are the sentiments of Mr. Sidney: I know it is objected that he is a republican; and it is dishonestly suggested that I am a republican, because I commend him as an excellent writer, and have taken a passage or two out of him. In answer to this, I shall only take notice, that the passages which I take from him are not republican passages, unless virtue and truth be republicans: That Mr. Sidney's book, for the main of it, is eternally true, and agreeable to our own constitution, which is the best republick in the world, with a prince at the head of it: That our government is a thousand degrees nearer a-kin to a commonwealth (any sort of commonwealth now subsisting, or that ever did subsist in the world) than it is to absolute monarchy: That for myself, I hope in God never to see any other form of government in England than that which is now in England; and that if this be the style and spirit of a republican, I glory in it, as much as I despise those who take base methods to decry my writings, which are addressed to the common sense and experience of mankind. I hope that it is not yet made heresy in politicks, to assert that two and two make four."

"One characteristic feature of Sidney's book associates him with Machiavelli. That is his celebration of warlike virtue and foreign conquest. Like Machiavelli, Sidney prefers imperialist Rome to nonexpansionist Sparta. He asserts that “That is the best government, which best provides for war.” Popular governments do this best, for their citizens are hardy and spirited, and there is a mutual rivalry for the honor that anyone may earn (II.15, II.22–23). But unlike Machiavelli, Sidney qualifies his imperialism with the requirement that a war of acquisition be a just war, carried on for a just cause and by just means."

"An author, who can never be too much valued or read; who does honour to the English nobility, and to the English name; who has written better upon government than any Englishman, and as well as any foreigner; and who was a martyr for that liberty which he has so amiably described, and so nobly defended. He fell a sacrifice to the vile and corrupt court of our pious Charles II. He had asserted the rights of mankind, and shewed the odiousness of tyranny; he had exposed the absurdity and vileness of the sacred and fashionable doctrines of those days, passive obedience, and hereditary right; doctrines, which give the lie to common sense, and which would destroy all common happiness and security amongst men! Doctrines, which were never practised by those that preached them! and doctrines, which are big with nonsense, contradiction, impossibility, misery, wickedness, and desolation! These were his crimes, and these his glory. The book is every way excellent: He had read and digested all history; and this performance of his takes in the whole business of government: It makes us some amends for the loss of Cicero's book De Republica. Colonel Sidney had all the clear and comprehensive knowledge, and all the dignity of expression, of that great master of eloquence and politicks; his love of liberty was as warm, his honesty as great, and his courage greater."

"He yearns for the virtue, the discipline, the frugality, the public spirit, of ancient Rome. He longs too for its martial ardour and glory. "All governments", he maintains, "deserve praise or blame as they are well or ill constituted for making war." Here as elsewhere Sidney is the disciple of Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine republican... There is no more eloquent testimony in the English language to the imaginative hold that classical images of political liberty can exert than Sidney's Discourses."

"A man of the most extraordinary courage, a steady man, even to obstinacy, sincere, but of a rough and boisterous temper, that could not bear contradiction, but would give foul language upon it. He seemed to be a Christian, but in a particular form of his own. He thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in the mind, but he was against all public worship, and every thing that looked like church. He was stiff to all republican principles, and such an enemy to every thing that looked like monarchy, that he set himself in a high opposition against Cromwell when he was made protector. He had indeed studied the history of government in all its branches beyond any man I ever knew."

"Sidney, though not included in the number of the regicides, was one of the main pillars of the republican cause, and was personally obnoxious to Charles the second, for some occasional offensive remarks that he had recently made — especially for two Latin lines that he had written in the album of the royal library at Copenhagen:"

"At the moment my most intimate liaison is with Mr. Algernon Sidney; he is the man in England who seems to me to have the greatest understanding of affairs; he has great relations with the rest of the Republican party; And nobody in my opinion is more capable of rendering service than him."

"That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed."

"I have lately undertaken to read Algernon Sidney on government. … As often as I have read it, and fumbled it over, it now excites fresh admiration that this work has excited so little interest in the literary world. As splendid an edition of it as the art of printing can produce — as well for the intrinsic merit of the work, as for the proof it brings of the bitter sufferings of the advocates of liberty from that time to this, and to show the slow progress of moral, philosophical, and political illumination in the world — ought to be now published in America."

"If these rules have not been well observed in the first constitution, or from the changes of times, corruption of manners, insensible encroachments, or violent usurpations of princes, have been rendered ineffectual, and the people exposed to all the calamities that may be brought upon them by the weakness, vices, and malice of the prince, or those who govern him, I confess the remedies are more difficult and dangerous; but even in those cases they must be tried. Nothing can be feared that is worse than what is suffered, or must in a short time fall upon those who are in this condition. They who are already fallen into all that is odious, shameful, and miserable, cannot justly fear. When things are brought to such a pass, the boldest counsels are the most safe; and if they must perish who lie still, and they can but perish who are most active, the choice is easily made. Let the danger be never so great, there is a possibility of safety, whilst men have life, hands, arms, and courage to use them; but that people must certainly perish, who tamely suffer themselves to be oppressed, either by the injustice, cruelty, and malice of an ill magistrate, or by those who prevail upon the vices and infirmities of weak princes. It is in vain to say, that this may give occasion to men of raising tumults, or civil war; for tho' these are evils, yet they are not the greatest of evils. Civil war, in Macchiavel's account, is a disease; but tyranny is the death of a state. Gentle ways are first to be used, and it is best if the work can be done by them; but it must not be left undone, if they fail. It is good to use supplications, advices, and remonstrances; but those who have no regard to justice, and will not hearken to counsel, must be constrained. It is folly to deal otherwise with a man who will not be guided by reason, and a magistrate who despises the law; or rather, to think him a man, who rejects the essential principle of a man; or to account him a magistrate, who overthrows the law by which he is a magistrate. This is the last result; but those nations must come to it, which cannot otherwise be preserved."

"The Discourses re-established Sidney's posthumous prestige. He would always be associated in the public mind with extreme republicanism, but he had undoubtedly suffered as a martyr in the cause of liberty, define 'liberty' how you will, and he had been a practising politician of great experience and a scion of the nobility. This lent his words an authority denied to middle-class intellectuals and journalists like Toland and Locke, and for the rest of this period his Discourses were certainly much more influential than Locke's Two Treaties. They were much less abstract and drew upon a wide range of historical analysis, and they were couched in a much superior literary style."

"Men lived like fishes; the great ones devoured the small."

"God helps those who help themselves."

"Liars ought to have good memories."

"It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun."

"[T]he British Cassius, fearless bled; Of high determined spirit, roughly brave, By ancient learning to the enlighten'd love Of ancient freedom warmed."

"The Lord sanctify these my sufferings unto me, and though I fall as a sacrifice unto the — Idols, suffer not idolatry to be established in this land. Bless thy people and save them. Defend thy own cause and those that defend it. Stir up such as are faint. Direct those that are willing. Confirm those that waver. Give wisdom and integrity unto all. Order all things so as they may most redound unto thine own glory. Grant that I may die glorifying thee for all thy mercies and that (as the last) thou hast permitted me to be singled out as witness of thy truth, and even by the confession of my oppressors, for that Old Cause in which I was from my youth engaged and for which thou hast often and wonderfully declared thyself."

"Manus haec inimica tyrannis Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem."

"I am persuaded to believe that God had left nations to the liberty of setting up such governments as best pleased themselves, and that magistrates were set up for the good of nations, not nations for the honor and glory of magistrates. That the right and power of magistrates in every country was that which the laws of that country made it to be. That these laws are to be observed and the oaths taken by rulers to be kept. And that having the force of contracts between magistrates and people, they cannot be violated without danger of dissolving the whole fabric."

"I thought fit to leave this testimony to the world, that, as I had from my youth endeavored to uphold the Common rights of mankind, the lawes of this land, and the true Protestant religion, against corrupt principles, arbitrary power and Popery, I doe now willingly lay down my life for the same; and having a sure witness within me, that God doth absolve me, and uphold me, in the utmost extremityes, am very littell sollicitous, though man doth condemne me."

"Few men would be so gentle as to spare even the best, if by their destruction vile usurpers could become God's anointed, and by the most execrable wickedness invest themselves with that divine character."

"If his Majesty is resolved to have my head, he may make a whistle of my arse if he pleases."

"I was long since told that I must die — or the plot die. And lest the means of destroying the best Protestants in England should fail, the Bench must be filled with such as had been blemished at the Bar. None but such as these would have advised with the King's Council of the means to bring a man to death: suffered a jury to be empanelled by the King's Solicitor and the Under-Sheriff: admit of jurymen who are no freeholders: receive such evidence as is above mentioned … they assume unto themselves not only a power to make constructions, but such constructions as neither agree with law, reason nor common sense. By them and their means, I am brought unto this place. The Lord forgive their practices and avert the evils that threaten the nation from them."

"We live in an age that makes truth pass for treason, and as I dare not say anything against it, so the ears of those that are about me will probably be found too tender to hear it. This my trial and condemnation do sufficiently evidence."

"Fuller’s finest wartime moment was the promulgation of his Plan 1919. Believing World War I would continue into 1919, he suggested victory with a single penetrating, surprise, mass tank attack aimed not at killing lots of German soldiers but at reaching and killing the enemy “brain”—the rear-area command-and-communications infrastructure—and thus paralyzing the body. But Fuller’s most meaningful tactical concept came to naught, as the war ended in November 1918. Had it continued, Fuller today might be as widely known as Guderian, Montgomery and Patton."

"In the early 1930s he predicted, as Anthony Trythall wrote, “future armies would be surrounded by swarms of motorized guerillas, irregulars or regular troops making use of the multitude of civilian motorcars that would be available.” Fuller also mused that one day “a manless flying machine” would change the face of war. Early on he was intrigued by the development of radio, not only for communication but also as a way to control robot weapons. He also thought then-primitive rocket technology would one day lead to the development of superb anti-aircraft weapons. And as early as the 1920s, Fuller was a proponent of amphibious warfare. He envisioned a naval fleet “which belches forth war on every strand, which vomits forth armies as never did the horse of Troy.” Indeed, he foresaw future navies as being entirely submersible. On the negative side of the balance sheet, Fuller also championed the military use of poison gas, particularly when spread by airplanes. Even as late as 1961, with the publication of his book The Conduct of War, he blamed resistance to chemical warfare on “popular emotionalism.” If Fuller had a fatal flaw as a tactician, it was that he derided the importance of putting infantry “boots on the ground.” To him, combat was simply a matter of wool uniforms versus steel armor—and that seemed to him a no-brainer. Of course, Fuller had failed to consider the development of portable, shoulder-fired and helicopter-borne antitank weaponry."

"Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller was, during World War I and through the early 1930s, the British army’s tank warfare go-to guy. He was the man who taught the Wehrmacht how to blitzkrieg, George Patton how to rumble and the Israelis how to kill Syrians."

"The good news for Liddell Hart was that his work was hugely influential. The bad news was that it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany. With the notable exception of Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, senior British commanders like Field Marshal Earl Haig simply refused to accept that 'the aeroplane, the tank [and] the motor car [would] supersede the horse in future wars', dismissing motorized weapons as mere 'accessories to the man and horse'."

"It might have been the greatest lost weapon of World War II. Major-General JFC Fuller, the man credited with developing modern armored warfare in the 1920s, called failure to use it "the greatest blunder of the whole war." He even suggested that British and American tank divisions could have overrun Germany before the Russians – if it had been deployed, that is."

"Everyone was talking and chatting, when slowly came into sight the first tank I ever saw. Not a monster but a very graceful machine with beautiful lines.…Here was the missing tool of penetration, the answer to the dominance on the battlefield of small-arms fire."

"An absolute doctrine is impossible, for once a doctrine and its articles become dogma, woe to the army which lies enthralled under its spell."

"What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear."

"In 1919 I was the sole person who saw war in the form it would be; yet saw it only as an acorn and not as an oak."

"I believe that, in future warfare, great cities, such as London, will be attacked from the air, and that a fleet of 500 aeroplanes each carrying 500 ten-pound bombs of, let us suppose, mustard gas, might cause 200,000 minor casualties and throw the whole city into panic within half an hour of their arrival. Picture, if you can, what the result will be: London for several days will be one vast raving Bedlam, the hospitals will be stormed, traffic will cease, the homeless will shriek for help, the city will be in pandemonium. What of the government at Westminster? It will be swept away by an avalanche of terror. Then will the enemy dictate his terms, which will be grasped at like a straw by a drowning man. Thus may a war be won in forty-eight hours and the losses of the winning side may be actually nil!"

"The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both internal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind—men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh — who founded the English colonies in America."

"Members rise from CMG (known sometimes in Whitehall as "Call Me God") to KCMG ("Kindly Call Me God") to GCMG ("God Calls Me God")."

"In America journalism is apt to be regarded as an extension of history: in Britain, as an extension of conversation."

"Once you touch the trappings of monarchy, like opening an Egyptian tomb, the inside is liable to crumble."

"He was not at all distressed at being the leader of an almost non-existent party. As long as he could conduct amorous correspondence with his lady friends, Asquith was content. He remained complacent to the end. This had always been his great fault and also his great virtue."

"Asquith had a kind heart and was unfailingly gracious to such as gave him no contrary cause, even to those who did, for he was blessed or laden with kindness or weakness when sterner stuff was required. Lucid and restrained, he found it as difficult to be severe as other Prime Ministers with whom I have worked more intimately. I saw more of him after Gosse's introduction, being often invited to his modest and pleasant home in the country at Sutton Courtney. (I shrink from such conventional epithets, but one must be truthful.) His second marriage had pushed him into Society, though he was free from its snobbery... Asquith enjoyed his position but less gratingly than most of his kind. Hospitable, even matey after dinner, he drew nobody out, but one found oneself getting into good company as the port ran its laps... Asquith inspired no enthusiasm but an honest desire to be useful except on fine Sundays. Not that foreign affairs cropped up often in the country, and when they did he seemed too patient. Like Pitt, he put patience first in statecraft instead of third, after vision and the courage to apply it. How often has that British mistake been made! He seemed especially tolerant of German complaints about encirclement by a putrefying Russia, a petrified France and an armless Britain. Home affairs were his cup of tea, and I cared little for the beverage, beyond wondering where he would find 500 duds to swamp the House of Lords. In the House of Commons the Home Rule Bill caused some of the most violent scenes on record. We are not really self-controlled. Feelings ran higher than I had thought possible in Britain, and there was rant of civil war in Ireland, which Asquith bore affably in a family circle endowed with some of his gifts."

"It has been argued by his admirers that he was driven from office. This is not so. The compromise with Lloyd George made him perfectly safe, and he deliberately went back on it. When battle was joined, he lost, but this is not proof that he did not try to fight at all. Rather it shows that the spirit had gone from him, whether for political warfare or for any other, and this is the justification for those such as Aitken who sought to bring him down."

"Muddled and lethargic as usual, he bore the final responsibility for the killings after the Easter rising, just as he bore the main responsibility for the failure of Home Rule – one of the most disastrous prime ministers in British history."

"[H]is interventions on critical occasions more than ever confirmed his reputation as the most formidable debater in the House. Campbell-Bannerman called him the “sledge-hammer,” and on critical occasions when Asquith happened not to be in the House, he used to say to the Whips, “send for the sledge-hammer.”"

"He had no vision, no power or desire of prevision, no ounce of drive in his composition, not a spark of initiative, no power of leadership of any sort or kind. He gave the Cabinet no lead; he never bound our work together; Cabinets were mere wastes of time; he was the worst chairman I ever sat under at any committee; he kept no sort of order at Cabinet councils nor even attempted to bring us to a decision; he hardly ever expressed any opinion himself. The desire on all occasions to avoid a decision was an absolute disease with him. That the Cabinet was always too late in everything it did, the supply of munitions, the reconstitution of the General Staff, the supply of men, the supply of food, was his fault."

"The first picture that springs to my mind is of the Prime Minister, at the summit of his career and at the height of his powers, speaking in some momentous debate to a crowded House of Commons; faced by an eager and vehement Opposition, backed by the confidence of the cheering ranks behind him. His appearance is one of dignity and power. The handsome head, with its strong features and silvery hair; the sturdy figure; the resonant voice and forceful delivery; the argument, clear, logical, concise, flowing in an easy stream of perfect sentences, clinched now and then by passages of eloquence—all this, added to the authority of his high office, made him, without question, the dominant figure in the Parliament."

"His mental powers were of the highest order. An astounding memory enabled him to acquire knowledge without difficulty, and a critical spirit let him put it to the best uses. He had a strong Yorkshire constitution; he himself said that it was ‘equally compounded of iron and leather’. I never saw him overstrained; and, until his last years, do not remember his ever being ill."

"It may be that Asquith, great man as he was, was not cut out for a popular leader in time of war. His character and his whole training were against slogans, war cries, and popular nationalism. Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador, mentions that when he took his leave on the outbreak of war in 1914, he saw tears stealing down the cheek of the grave, imperturbable Prime Minister. To him, as to Edward Grey, the coming of war meant the failure of their work and their hopes. They had known the danger; they had laboured hard to prevent it. They had enabled the country, if war must come, to enter it with full strength and preparedness."

"It was not his way to arouse enthusiasm. He sought to convince, not to stimulate. Even in his own party he was often, like Mr. Gladstone, unpopular but indispensible, yet his record was remarkable. I will not attempt to recapitulate it. But in the long run perhaps his great service was to build a bridge from the old, somewhat rigid Victorian statesmanship to a more constructive and more social liberalism. He was the first to formulate clearly the idea of a national minimum, that is, a standard of welfare below which no citizen should be allowed to sink, to establish a difference in taxation between earned and unearned incomes, to exempt trade unions from responsibility for the torts of their members, to start the regular medical inspection of schools, and school-care committees, to say nothing of the non-contributory Old Age Pensions and the National Insurance system which his skilful finance had now made possible. However, the radicals of his party felt that he sometimes disappointed them. As an acute critic has said, when in power he was admirable; he knew what to do and how to do it. But in opposition he did not satisfy the more ardent spirits. He did not rouse enthusiasm or make play with popular catchwords. Typical were the series of Free Trade speeches in which he followed Joseph Chamberlain from meeting to meeting and, in the opinion of most economists, shattered point by point the ‘Tariff Reform’ programme; but he neither had nor sought to have the almost religious appeal of Bright and Cobden."