H. H. Asquith

"It was reserved for Mr. Asquith to cast away a second opportunity. After the general election men of all parties turned cordially and even eagerly to a veteran statesman whose sterling qualities, though tried by both extremes of fortune, have always commanded respect. But Mr. Asquith would not help. He proclaimed himself first and last a party man. Assuming airs of superiority for which there was little warrant, Mr. Asquith and his friends declared that all common action with Conservatives was improper, immoral, degrading in the last degree, and not to be thought of in any circumstances. Farther than that, they would place and keep a Socialist minority in office and beg in the most humane manner for any crumb which might fall from their table. Under this guidance the Liberal party deliberately cast away their opportunity of rendering an immense service to the public, and delivered themselves over bound hand and foot to their implacable Socialist foes. How swift are time’s revenges? Only a few months have passed, but now they can appreciate the almost fatal consequences of their failure to place country before party at a fateful juncture."

"A fierce, resolute Asquith, fighting with all his powers would have conquered easily. But the whole trouble arose from the fact that there was no fierce resolute A. to win this war or any other."

"The impression of Mr. Asquith that remains with me is of a man of great dignity, somewhat aloof and Olympian. He belonged to the Victorian age. He would have thought it ill-bred to discuss current politics at the dinner-table, or to criticise other politicians. The guests who were staying in his house, especially those who claimed to know him best, would tell you what he was thinking, but his own conversation never gave a clue. I have an entry in my diary for June 25th 1916, when I was staying at The Wharf: "They say the Prime Minister is worried about having made Lloyd George Secretary of State for War. He thinks it is the mistake of his life." Perhaps it was."

"The present Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, represents a type of public speaking carried to higher perfection than by anyone else in modern times. Possessed of a copious vocabulary, an extraordinary and effortless command of the right word, a remarkable gift of lucidity and compression, and a resonant voice, he produces an overpowering effect of Parliamentary and forensic strength. Whether in exposition or declamation, in opening or in reply, on a great subject or a small, he never falls below a certain stately level, even though he never soars above it into passion or kindles an audience into flame."

"Where another speaker would stretch himself out over an hour and a quarter, Mr. Asquith has said all that is to be said in fifty minutes. It is a miracle of succinctness, the apotheosis of business-like efficiency. There is no gesticulation, no self-abandonment, no flash or glow, but the case is stated, illustrated, argued, and proven with a force that is almost stunning. Further, the Prime Minister is the master of one incomparable art—the result, I imagine, of early practice at the Bar. He can represent the weakest of cases as though it were of overwhelming strength, the most startling of innovations as though it were an everyday procedure, the most disputable of propositions as though it were an axiom of universal acceptance. This combination of gifts, intellectual, personal, rhetorical, renders Mr. Asquith a Parliamentary workman of the highest order."

"In my first year in the House of Commons, Mr. Asquith was leader of the Liberal Party and I give him pride of place among the parliamentary debaters of that time. His speeches were models of lucidity and brevity, with the English language at its best. In an age when prolixity was already becoming a substitute for conviction, he never wasted a word."

"It was not merely as administrator, but as parliamentarian, that office exalted him. Strong in argument, but weak in imagination, his terse Latinized oratory had never in itself the magic which compels attention. But when there was attention already (as for an important minister there must be), its exceptional precision and concision told on men's ears and minds with monumental effect. From the first to the last year of his premiership he was the giant of the commons' debates. In cabinet he conceived his role as the chairmanship of a board, whose members it was his business to hold together by genial tact and judicious compromises. He was not the devotee of causes or ideals; he rarely looked far ahead; his concern was to carry on the king’s government from day to day."

"From the beginning he meant to be Prime Minister, sooner or later. For this position nature had endowed him to a great extent, but not completely. He had as fine an intellectual apparatus, in the way of grasp and understanding, as I ever saw in any man. In his earlier political days he was a very serious person. I remember once passing along the Horse Guards with him. He touched my arm and pointed to the figure of John Bright walking in front of us. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is the only man in public life who has risen to eminence without being corrupted by London Society.’"

"He was a man of sound judgment who lacked the flame—heavenly or demonic—of genius."

"I always regretted then, as I regret now, that I never knew Asquith... Although party feelings were strained in those pre-war years and he necessarily stood out as the principal actor to most of what party loyalty impelled us to condemn, I never listened to him making a speech without being greatly impressed by the strength of the qualities that he could command. Complete mastery of his case, and perfect choice of language appropriate to its deployment before an intelligent and critical audience, went with what looked like an equally complete indifference, once his decision had been taken, to the opposition that might be aroused. However unwillingly, such qualities extorted admiration from his most bitter opponents. But whether because of this sort of feeling or in spite of it, he always remained for me a figure aloof, alarming and unapproachable."

"The Liberals whom Asquith led formed one of the most talented administrations in British history, dominated in 1914 by such figures as Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty; Richard Haldane, a former reforming war minister, now Lord Chancellor. The prime minister himself was a survivor of an earlier era, old enough to have seen, as a boy of twelve in 1864, the bodies of five murderers dangling from the gallows outside Newgate, their heads concealed by white hoods. A lawyer of modest middle-class origins, 'a Roman reserve was always natural to Asquith,' in the words of his biographer. He fought against any expression of his stronger feelings.' George Dangerfield went further, asserting that Asquith lacked imagination and compassion; that, for all his high intelligence, he failed convincingly to address any of the great crises which overtook Britain during his years of office 'He was ingenious but not subtle, he could improvise quite brilliantly on somebody else's theme, He was moderately imperialist, moderately progressive, moderately humorous, and being the most fastidious of Liberal politicians, only moderately evasive.' If this judgment was cynical, it was plain that by August 1914 Asquith was a tired old man."

"If the British Empire was viewed around the world as rich and powerful, the Asquith government was seen as chronically weak. It was conspicuously failing to quell violent industrial action or the Ulster madness. It seemed unable effectively to address even the suffragette movement, whose clamorous campaign for votes for women had become deafening. Militants were smashing windows all over London; using acid to burn slogans on golf club greens; hunger-striking in prison. In June 1913 Emily Davison was killed after being struck by the King's horse in Derby. In the first seven months of 1914, 107 buildings were set on fire by suffragettes. Asquith's critics ignored an obvious point: no man could have contained or suppressed the huge social and political forces shaking Britain. George Dangerfield wrote: 'Very few prime ministers in history have been afflicted by so many plagues and in so short a space of time.' The prominent Irish Home Ruler John Dillon wrote Wilfrid Scawen Blunt: 'the country is menaced with revolution.' Domestic strife made a powerful impression on opinion abroad: a great democracy was seen to be sinking into decadence and decay. Britain's allies, France and Russia, were dismayed. Its prospective enemies, notably in Germany, found it hard to imagine that a country convulsed in such a fashion - with even its little army riven by fraction - could threaten their continental power and ambitions."

"Asquith drunk can make a better speech than any one of us, sober."

"A jovial bon-vivant, fond of the ladies, especially the young and pretty ones, he is partial to cheerful society and good cooking; and his zest for enjoyment is shared by his wife. Formerly a well-known barrister with a large income, and for a number of years in Parliament, then a Minister under Mr. Gladstone, a pacifist like his friend Grey, and favouring an understanding with Germany, he treated all questions with the cheery calm and assurance of an experienced man of business, whose good health and excellent nerves were steeled by devotion to the game of golf."

"He won't fight the Germans but he will fight for Office."

"I recollect Lord Morley once saying to me: “Asquith ought to have been a judge. He would have made a great one. I remember,” he said, “a conversation I had recently with Arthur Acland about early days when Acland, Asquith and I used to meet together often to discuss politics, and I said what a pleasant fellow he was. Acland replied, ‘Yes, but did you ever hear him make any suggestion of his own?’ I had to confess that although he discussed every proposition advanced by others with great intelligence and force, he never submitted any ideas of his own for our consideration.” Asquith undoubtedly had not only the mind, but the temperament of a judge."

"He gave dignified but not rousing and vigorous leadership to the nation. But a War Minister must also have vision, imagination and initiative—he must show untiring assiduity, must exercise constant oversight and supervision of every sphere of war activity, must possess driving force to energise this activity, must be in continuous consultation with experts, official and unofficial, as to the best means of utilising the resources of the country in conjunction with Allies for the achievement of victory. If to this can be added a flair for conducting a great fight, then you have an ideal War Minister. Mr. Asquith at his best did not answer sufficiently to this description to make him a successful Chief Minister in a war which demanded all these qualities strained to the utmost. But apart from these shortcomings the nerve of the Prime Minister at this time was clearly giving out, and he gave the impression of a man who was overwhelmed, distracted and enfeebled not merely by the weight, but by the variety and complexity of his burdens. Whether he was ever fitted for the position of a War Minister in the greatest struggle in the history of the world may be open to doubt, but that he was quite unfitted at this juncture to undertake so supreme a task was not open to any question or challenge on the part of anyone who came constantly in contact with him at the time."

"Asquith's will became visibly flabbier, tardier and more flaccid under the strain of the War. Then came the personal tragedy which shattered his nerve. The death of his brilliant son, Raymond, came upon him with stunning effect, and he visibly reeled under the blow. It came at a time when he needed all the calm poise and firmness of mind which man can command. For a crisis had arisen where statesmanship had to intervene, decide and direct. It was a misfortune for Britain that the great statesman who had the supreme responsibility was less equal to his task than he had ever been in the whole course of his distinguished career."

"In all the appreciations written after his death his ‘impersonal’ attitude was made a subject of comment, but amid all the praise lavished upon him there was frequently a suggestion that his master faculties were perhaps, after all, those of the judge or possibly the historian or scholar. That he was extraordinarily impartial, that he was a scholar and would have made an admirable historian was clear to all, but that he was a scholar, or historian, pitchforked into active life is, I believe, an utterly false reading of him. I knew him during twelve years, and for a considerable part of them I was on terms of affectionate familiarity with him, though never on those of intimacy. This was, at any rate, sufficient to enable me to form a positive opinion about his nature, and my conclusion was that the caste of his intellect and imagination was essentially that of a man of action."

"His drawback as a leader during times of frenzied anxiety was a concomitant of his two strongest points: his immunity from the contagion of excitement, and his instinct to think things over by himself. There is a passage in one of his later letters in which he says there are three kinds of men: those who can think when they are by themselves—they are the salt of the earth—those who can only think when they are writing and talking, and those who cannot think at all—they, of course, are the majority. He was a man who did his thinking alone. To talk while he was still making up his mind was repugnant to him. In war, when the urgency of this or that measure is vividly brought home to those in immediate contact with one aspect and everybody is seething with projects and suggestions, self-withdrawn composure is apt to be exasperating, and the habit of postponing discussion to undermine a nervous confidence. Mr. Winston Churchill, in his article on Lord Oxford, gave an example of the surprise it was to find, after imagining that Lord Oxford had dismissed some urgent matter from his mind, that he had all the time thought it over and reached a conclusion upon it. Conversation did not help him, but when he met others in council they found that he was prepared."

"His reluctance, in private as well as public, to discuss what was not yet clear to him seems to me to be the manifestation of a fundamental characteristic—one which I personally admire more than any other—a perfect integrity of mind. The foundation of his character was the adamant stone of intellectual integrity. It made magnanimity natural to him for, est animi exiguique Ultio (Revenge is the joy of a starved and puny soul). It made it easy for him to put aside personal considerations when the interests either of the nation or his party were concerned. At such junctures the soul of his honour was at stake, and I do not believe that the historian will discover one instance in his long career in which he risked it."

"Such intellectual integrity is necessary to a man of action who can be trusted to be effective not merely once or twice, but continuously. Yet it also prevented him from touching some of those levers which circumstances may compel a man of action to pull. He could not make an unfair appeal. In the War he lost the confidence of the mob. The change from the Asquith to the Lloyd George régime was a change to an appeal to the subconscious and usually the baser side of it, both in the public and in those actively concerned in carrying on the War administratively. He knew all about such appeals, but he could not bring himself to make them. He was out of touch, therefore, with what is instinctive and emotional in human nature, and especially prominent at such times."

"You have stood for what is fine in the soul of this country in the greatest months of her history, and my wife and I send you our heartiest and most thankful congratulations that you are now to bring back fineness and sanity to the councils of this heaving time."

"Asquith was also Victorian in his habitual insistence that the methods of a great government should be beyond reproach: rebels and revolutionaries might break the rules, that was in their programme; authority must accept the disadvantage of never lowering its standard. I have seldom seen him so moved with indignation as he was over the Black and Tans in Ireland in the ‘time of troubles’. The Irish extremists were using murder as a political weapon and had imported men of a criminal type to serve them; the Lloyd George Government retorted by sending notorious ‘hard-nuts’ from the army and giving unusual licence. Perhaps the post-war electorate could excuse such methods; to Asquith they seemed an impossible degradation."

"Is it at all strange that, with these qualities of character, with his unchallenged intellectual leadership of the House of Commons, with his very long and uninterrupted tenure of office, first as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister, he never became a national hero like Mr. Gladstone, or Mr. Churchill, or even Mr. Lloyd George? I think I see how it happened. For one thing, he never paid much attention to the popular press; more important still, he tried deliberately to keep all political questions as free as possible from the element of mere emotion. It was a part of his essential liberalism to discourage popular prejudice. At the beginning of the war of 1914, when people began to wreck German shops and to see spies everywhere, he was contemptuous: indeed, he incurred a good deal of odium for protecting an old German governess."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A strenuous education in the classics had given him an effortless command of language. I do not believe that he ever wrote, or spoke, a slipshod sentence in his life. His reading ranged wide; but he had a useful word, possibly of his own coining, to describe certain books as ‘skipworthy’. Perhaps his temperament left him a little insensitive to the arts, other than literature. Music was not merely distasteful to him; it caused him real discomfort. His philosophy and his statesmanship—his whole cast of mind—were matter-of-fact rather than imaginative. His virtues were those of commonsense and efficiency. He was a Roman rather than a Greek. His mind had a massive momentum that carried him along, with others behind him, and broke through obstacles. However arduous or exasperating the conditions, he always kept his composure. But he had in him an element of disdain—of contempt for the underhand and base. I do not recall ever seeing him angry, but I often knew him scornful. In the course of his public life he suffered many disappointments and defeats. He faced them with a Roman stoicism; and when I look for terms to describe the qualities that were notable above all others in his character, I can find them only in words that come to us from the Latin—magnanimity and equanimity."

"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."

"[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.”"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Let them take the debate which had recently been carried on with so much vivacity on the subject of Imperial expansion. There was a process of expansion which was as normal, as necessary, as inseparable, and unmistakable a sign of vitality in a nation as the corresponding processes in the growing human body. We might control and direct it by oversight and by means adapted to the end, but we could not arrest it. ... [I]t was not part of the most illustrious apostles and disciples of Liberalism to condemn expansion in the sense which he had described it."