A Cecil in British Politics

IT is typical of Lord Robert Cecil, and of his family traditions, that he resigned from the Lloyd George Administration on a point of conscience. Indeed, the family is distinguished for conscience — for a delicate sense of soul. Such nicety of rectitude is unhappily infrequent in this wicked world, and, some skeptics would say, particularly so among politicians. None the less, there is something quixotic, to many of his countrymen, in the fact that he severed himself from front-rank politics at a period when his presence would have meant so much to his own career, because of his objection to Welsh Disestablishment. ’Oh,’ said the worldlywise, ‘it is impossible. No one resigns for so quaint a motive — not in the twentieth century. Divorce of Church and State, especially in a little country where Nonconformity is proverbially strong—what could be more appropriate, or better accord with the principles of justice, of free expansion, of abolition of privilege, of equality for all? ’ Yes, such arguments would have seemed unanswerable if they were applied to an ordinary man. But Lord Robert Cecil is not ordinary — far from it. That is why the incredulity expressed in people’s faces at the reason given did not respond to the realities. They could not understand — because it was outside their daily experience. Suddenly to jerk one’s self from office for such a reason was so fabulously impossible, so incredibly unreal, to a generation that is less and less churchgoing. It was as fantastic as meeting a lion in the path on one’s way to the Hampstead Tube.

Recently I talked to a distinguished American diplomat about Lord Robert Cecil. He had met him frequently at the Foreign Office, when his lordship was Minister of Blockade, and, later, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. ‘ I admire him immensely,’ he said. ‘ We get on together splendidly — until I come suddenly against a stone wall. Behind that wall what is passing? I do not know. I can only guess. He has dropped back into past centuries, it seems to me, in my modern mind. He has become mediæval, as remote from earthly things as a monk in his cloister. It is charming, but it is also disconcerting. Honor and high principle belong to such an attitude, but it is not of to-day.’

Lord Robert stands for that aloofness from the present, for that detachment from material things, which marks a lofty disinterestedness. Like all his family he is clerically minded, set on High Church ritual. The little black cross on his watch-chain betokens his beliefs and his refusal to conceal them. It is the symbol of his sincerity. When those beliefs clash with politics and his career, so much the worse for both of them. His faith is not an adjunct, but a guiding inspiration. It explains him. It explains why, when the eyes of the world were fixed upon him, when even voices from unlikely quarters called for him to be sent to Paris as one of the British delegates, he chose the way of retirement. As head of the British section of the League of Nations, he remains a servant of his country, but he has ceased to direct its policy. For to Lord Robert there is a thing more precious than rubies, more estimable than pure gold, and that is the satisfaction of his scruples. Welsh Disestablishment is to him something not to be measured by worldly expediency or success, or even by the logical trend of politics. In his eyes it is the rupture of a contract, the breaking of a plighted troth, the snapping of a link binding to God, and to a nation’s spiritual development.

Doubtless, also, he sees a dangerous precedent in the measure removing the Established Church from its position of privilege in the Principality. After Wales, England and the blood of all the Cecils will be up to the fighting-point when that discussion comes before the Mother of Parliaments. That it is inevitable makes no difference. It is inevitable in the terms of modern progress, but is not to be approved merely on that account, for it may be progress away from heaven.

His brother, Lord Hugh Cecil, is the champion of the Church in the House: a man greatly respected for his unbreakable opinions; a splendid speaker, with an impressive appearance and a conviction that shines, invincibly, from the countenance. He is as fearless as he is disinterested. When his cousin, Mr. Balfour, was Premier and seemed to be flirting with Protection in the guise of Mr. Chamberlain’s Tariff Reform, Lord Hugh, as a free trader, warned him of the danger of such practices. And the House secretly enjoyed the spectacle of the Hotel Cecil, as it has been scoffingly called, divided against itself. Family counts for a great deal with the Cecils, but not above principle.

Yet Lord Robert is in many ways modern and democratic. He appreciates scientific development, and is not in the least interested in customs merely because they are old. He is engagingly frank, an enemy to secret and tortuous diplomacy. One felt this when received by him at his weekly talks with the press, which he inaugurated at the Foreign Office during the war. You might meet him in this semi-public manner many times without becoming aware of his idiosyncrasies as they affected his daily conduct, and formed part of his spiritual being. You would only be struck by his earnestness, by his power for cool and detached thinking, by the ready grasp of his mind, by his insight and sympathy, by the great qualities of his intellect. But the visitor, if in the least observant, will certainly note his delightful and unique mannerisms. He will walk suddenly out at you from in front of the blazing fire, in the large, comfortable room that gives on to the Horse-Guards Parade, as if he were going over the top — over your body; but the movement is only apparently dangerous, and presages no harm. It is intended merely to mark a mood, to translate a phrase into appropriate action. Another of his mannerisms is even more humorous. Ensconced in the depths of a low easychair, he thrusts out his long legs in front, and reclines at such an angle that he seems to be sitting on his neck. This is rather a Parliamentary attitude, often pictured with a delightful whimsicality by Harry Furniss, in Punch, in the old days.

His voice and phrasing, also, belong to Parliament, where his affections most deeply lie. He has the forensic manner gained in public speaking, an incomparable practice in dialectics which comes from electioneering, and the gift of swift and incisive reasoning developed at the Parliamentary Bar. In that field he greatly distinguished himself, coming to it, as most men do, from the Common Law. The Court of Parliament, composed of the legal lights of both Chambers, is peculiarly amenable to the sort of eloquence that Lord Robert knows how to employ. His lofty generalities, his generous appeals to reason and the spirit of adjustment, made him an acceptable advocate before such a tribunal. Indeed, it is in arguing before a committee of his fellow men that Lord Robert particularly shines, not only because of his personal qualities, but from the prestige surrounding his great name. For the shadow of the glory of Lord Salisbury, his illustrious father, rests upon him; his brows glisten, already, with laurel.

But though he was successful in his cases, and particularly in arbitrations, where he showed special ability, he did not seem, to his friends, quite happy in this work. His thoughts, they suspected, were always turning to the sphere where his father shone. There is no family in England other than this which has given three great public servants to the Crown. The famous Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, was descended directly from Lord Burleigh, who held the highest post in the land: Chief Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer under Mary and Elizabeth; and Viscount Cranborne, the present Marquess of Salisbury became Lord Privy Seal in the Balfour Administration. John Adams’s family in America presents some analogy, but its line of distinction does not reach to the spacious days of good Queen Bess.

Lord Robert seemed to be hankering after political life in the midst of legal activities. Though his sharp and leaping mind gave him an unquestioned advantage in convincing judges or in straightening out disputes, atavism was playing with his heart-strings, and secretly but surely drawing him to Downing Street, to the anvil where foreign policy is shaped into enduring form.

Lord Robert was somewhat poor as a cross-examiner, notwithstanding his powers of pure logic. I have heard his performance in this direction described as ‘woolly.’ He has not the born lawyer’s Satanic gift of making the best of bad points. He eschewed them, for they disconcerted him; he was never able to turn them to his ends. His mind rejected this sort of inferior suggestion — the doubtful argument. He was not an Autolycus, who could gather up trifles and gratefully stow them in his bag. ‘You put that on me,’ he would declare to a baffling witness, as if astonished at such intention to get the better of him. Indeed, it was a sort of formula with Lord Robert. His astonishing integrity is his strong point as a man, but it does not always serve in court. How removed from him is all desire of gain is shown by the fact that he renounced an income of £7000 or £8000 a year, to enter politics. As under-secretary he received hardly a fifth of that. And now, by an explosion of his superb scrupulosity, he has sacrificed place and power, — at least for the moment, — the stepping-stone to higher things.

His tastes are simple. Though he has married a peer’s daughter and is himself the scion of a noble house, he lives in a modest villa on the banks of the Thames, not far from the Tate Gallery, and leads a life of austere regularity and unremitting toil. There is nothing in the unpretentious door and equally plain interior, into which one is shown by a maid-servant instead of by the usual butler, to suggest the abode of a famous politician. He has the family disregard for all coquetry. It was dominant in the late Lord Salisbury, who never minded in the least about his clothes. He was so unconventional in his appearance that, when living at Beaulieu, he was refused admittance to the gaming rooms of Monte Carlo. When he gave his name and quality to the clerk in the office, the latter said, ’Oh, we have had several of that name here to-day! ’ It was only later that he learned his mistake, when a horrified Britisher informed him that he had turned away the Prime Minister of Great Britain. ’How was I to know that so shabby-looking a man was a great nobleman?’ asked the native; and, from his point of view, the defense was unanswerable. A messenger full of apology ran after the Marquess, but it was characteristic of him that he would not return; nor did he attempt again to enter the Temple of Chance.

His son Lord Robert is just as indifferent to externals. His soft felt hat is as floppy as his father’s and as shapeless. His overcoat has no particular cut. If your eye travels to the shoes, you notice how broad and unfashionable they are. The rough-ribbed socks are evidently not held in place, but allowed to sink at will. That disdain for the valet in human nature, for which we like him all the more, showed itself at Eton. He was there for five years, and became captain of his house during the last part of the time. He was not popular, because he showed no particular aptitude for games, but principally, I think, because he would not bow the knee to Baal. The traditions of the school were stronger then than now. That he defied them showed a positive heroism. Etiquette, indeed, thirty or forty years ago, had a terrible importance in the eyes of the average boy in the great English public school. Then he was a reformer: intractable upon certain points involving questions of ethics and personal conduct. This is rarely a spirit that gains friends for a lad, and Cecil had no great following, though those who were attracted to his sturdy character were extraordinarily faithful. He had in him the stuff that makes a fighter — particularly against odds; though I fancy that he would say of himself in those days, that he was wanting in tact.

As a small child he had a serious illness, and seemed likely to die. The specialist summoned said, ‘The boy is worth saving; he will be a great man some day.’ He was, as a contemporary says, ‘like polished steel,’ sharp and finely set, ceaselessly active in body and mind, not much given to erudition or to poring over books, but practical in his speculations, and determined to do his utmost to advance the cause in hand.

At the Foreign Office, he gained the reputation of an untiring worker. He was at his desk in Downing Street shortly after ten, and did not leave it, except for an interval for lunch, until eight o’clock. His time was spent in receiving diplomats and attending to the office routine. But often in those days of his Cabinet position he had to attend Parliament, where, as Minister or as Under Secretary, he had to stand fire from members of the House whose knowledge of foreign affairs was less conspicuous than their desire to obstruct or undermine the position of a Cecil. Afterwards, in the quietude of his room at the Foreign Office, Lord Robert would diagnose the opposition. He glowed a little from the fight, and would particularize the points with the zest of a schoolboy recounting his first successful ‘mill.’ It is clear that he revels in dialectics and forensic power.

‘Ah!’ he would say of a certain opponent who had been particularly pertinacious at the sitting of the Commons, ‘really, he should know better. He knows very well that I cannot give the information he asks without assisting the enemy. He is a “ bad ” man’ — using the term, of course, in a technical sense. That was always his first thought: whether any word of his in the heat of political argument would encourage the Germans. No sounder, shrewder patriot ever sat on the ministerial bench. Of his shrewdness I had ample opportunities to judge in my conversations with him, which arose from his readiness to help to enlighten the British public on points of foreign policy. He was singularly accurate in his estimate of German policy. He knew whither it tended, what was the meaning of it, when to others it seemed contradictory and obscure. He would put his finger on certain signs and was rarely misled in his reading. I remember, notably, how clearly he foresaw the German collapse. He was very well informed about events, and was clear in his interpretation of them. To his mind there was no doubt about the genuineness of the peace overtures — long before others had cleared their mind of skepticism on the subject. He knew the hopeless case of the enemy, and that if he had put out feelers for peace, it was because he meant to obtain it.

I found him, also, well inspired in regard to Russia. He was never greatly attracted by Kerensky, even when that volcano was in his most eruptive state. When, finally, the burning mountain became a heap of ashes, none was less surprised than Lord Robert. Perhaps he felt that a speaker of extraordinary volubility and facile eloquence is rarely a practical statesman. He had read, also, with disconcerting vision, the inwardness of the Bolshevik movement. This, however, did not prevent him, if I mistake not, from suggesting the Prinkipo meeting between Peace Conference representatives and delegates from the Russian governments. It is the British principle to recognize ‘ de facto ’ governments, — there have been few exceptions in history, — and, probably, his keenly trained mind realized that, while the project gave no excuse to the Bolsheviks to continue their practices on the ground that they were outlaws and unrecognized, and therefore was good in principle, it was in itself unworkable because of the inherent bad faith of Lenin and Trotzky. It cut the ground from much soft sawder among British sympathizers; it exposed the Bolsheviks to the judgment of their generation in Russia, marked by the refusal of respectable governments to associate with them. I think he saw all this, and still felt justified in a much-criticized course.

Lord Robert is the rare combination of the critic with the enthusiast. He is one of the few diplomats who have really believed in the League of Nations as a working concern. His zeal for this magnificent conception springs, not from airy ignorance, but from the profound conviction born of knowledge of European conditions. His great political science, as well as his love for the subject, made him, indeed, an ideal figure for a Peace Commissioner. This was said in most unlikely quarters— such is his transparent competence. Yet it is strange that Cecil, aristocrat of the aristocrats, in whose blood runs the very principle of class government in England, and of law and order as evolved in centuries of tradition, should be an apostle of the New Times — a dreamer of dreams, a believer in modern miracles, in the abolition of war by the creation of a new order of things, in the erection of a super-nation, which should call the world to witness before it chastened anyone in the name of a common civilization and common moral standards. One does not expect, somehow, a visionary from the dim corridors of the Foreign Office, but a sharp suspicion and the wisdom of the serpent. It is not the place, you would say, for generous ideals, for a beatific vision of the unseen world.

Yet, although constitutionally addicted to abstract reasoning along practical lines, Lord Robert is a prophet. Democrat he is, also, in a peculiar, almost a religious sense. He was favorable to female suffrage, but one has to remember Welsh Disestablishment as the touchstone of his modernity. To us it seems a boundary mark of the centuries, something curiously outworn, a hoary survival of another age, incompatible with human progress, with the development of man. To him it is the living symbol of Christianity among the people.

That is the root difference between his lordship and you and me. He is as remote in that particular as a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table is from the common man. Indeed, the Cecils are knights looking at life from the turretwindow of a castle. Occasionally they descend to take a part in the joust, and return dusty to their window. But the armor soon gleams spotless as before.

It is this aloofness, this inveterate seclusion of soul, which prompts many to ask whether Lord Robert, notwithstanding his good stout sword and his lusty blows, is sufficiently of his generation to serve, say, the ends of Labor or of some ministry socially advanced. Only the future can tell, but I admit to a robust confidence in his destiny. If, as is likely, Labor rules in the England of to-morrow, it will, I suspect, be as keen to find competence as any of its predecessors. Now, Lord Robert’s special province, the foreign field, is not open to everyone. Even without esoteric diplomacy, there is much to learn for the most diligent student. The head of the British section of the League has a good deal of his father’s skill in untying knots and in ability to impress foreigners. Indeed, when I see him sitting in the big room at the end of the corridor on the first floor of the Foreign Office, overlooking St. James’s Park and the glimmering lake, — Mr. Balfour’s present official quarters, — I think, inevitably, of the illustrious figure in white marble at the foot of the stairs, wearing the Oxford Chancellor’s robes. Lord Salisbury in this very room presided over Cabinet meetings; that flowing mantle seems to have descended upon his son.

He has Roosevelt’s enjoyment of a tussle for its own sake. At meetings at Hitchin in front of his constituents, fencing with obstructionists in the House of Commons, or gayly standing up to be fired at by press correspondents, he is always the perfect Bayard without fear and without reproach. For all his old-world attitude upon certain questions, almost inseparable from such a family, connected so intimately with British history and development, he is, I am sure, capable of leading the hosts of Democracy into some new Promised Land. But he will be no mere timeserver, but a conscientious, faithful servant of the Law. Whether or not he assumes the rôle of his cousin, Mr. Balfour, none can seriously question his success as Blockade Minister. The present state of Germany proves it. Yet there could be no greater certificate of his tact and firmness than that he brought no power in, on the other side, by reason of excess of zeal. Neither America nor Scandinavia could complain that this son of England’s great Foreign Minister regarded lightly his responsibilities, or blustered in interpreting them. Courtesy was his habitual method. So delicate a business intrusted to less able hands might have worked incalculable harm to our cause. It would seem that this wise and accomplished statesman, in the splendor of his talents, had ever before him the possibility of American intervention as the Champion of Right. If for no other reason, his doigté and savoir faire in this special business of restricting imports would make him acceptable to Washington in the post of Lord Reading, if such is to be.