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Great Contemporaries: Asquith: The Last Victorian Liberal (2)
- By RAYMOND A. CALLAHAN
- | March 6, 2023
- Category: Churchill in WWI Explore Great Contemporaries
Asquith in the Great War
The First World War was unlike anything British society had ever experienced. It required the disruptive mobilization of people, increased productive capacity, complex financing, and great emotional strain. The world of Jane Austen was barely touched by war. The world of Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon was swallowed by it. Asquith was ill-prepared by temperament to cope with the war he faced. Most of the errors Asquith and his Cabinet made in 1914-15 could be attributed to an unwillingness to see what total war required.
Asquith began by retaining peacetime methods for conducting government business. He allowed his colleagues to discuss issues at length, either summarizing their views in a way that subtly shaped their thoughts into the decision he wished, or postponing a decision entirely. Minutes were not taken. There were no controls to ensure the execution of Cabinet decisions by government departments.
Asquith often wrote during Cabinet discussions, but not to keep records. He was writing—as Churchill put it—for “brighter eyes” than those of politicians and civil servants. They belonged to the 27-year-old Beatrice Venetia Stanley, daughter of the Baron Stanley of Alderley, a collateral descendant of a famed beauty at the courts of James I and Charles I. Churchill noted Asquith’s attraction to young, good looking, intelligent women. There is no evidence that his epistolary friendship ever became physical, but it was increasingly important. Its ultimate collapse played a role in the fall of the Liberal government in May 1915.7
Dilemmas of personnel and production
Liberals resisted conscription (the basis of most European armies by 1914). They had long believed in a British Army recruited by (mostly) voluntary enlistment. Continental armies, which had been recruited by conscription since the Napoleonic era, had massive reserves to call upon and well-established methods for turning civilians into soldiers. The British Army had suffered massive casualties by November 1914. It had only small reserves (the Territorial Army) and no large training mechanisms for a quick build-up.
In an astonishing burst of patriotic fervor, volunteers flooded the recruiting stations in the opening months of the war. But the Army lacked the barracks, uniforms, rifles, officers, or experienced trainers to turn them quickly into competent solders.8 Asquith’s Secretary of State for War, the imperial icon Lord Kitchener, knew he was at least a year away from having a field army on a continental scale.
To support a massive army required a huge increase in the production of every sort of war materiel. This meant industrial mobilization and government direction of labor. These operations necessitated a vast increase in the size, reach, and power of the government, which went against deeply-held Liberal beliefs about government interference with business. They were also disliked by the Trade Unions and Labour Party, both now crucial to Asquith’s political survival. Although these issues would be resolved—mostly by Lloyd George in 1915-16—the inevitable fumblings of 1914-15 became crucial grounds for indicting Asquith’s government. The Conservatives, and much of the press, soon began to raise voices of opposition.
Grasping for a strategy
With the government’s initial failure to understand the need for men and materiel, its fumbling response in the opening months of the war is not surprising. The bulk of army—the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)—moved swiftly to France. The operation had been meticulously planned in conversations between the British and French general staffs. There were parallel unofficial arrangements on the division of naval responsibilities. Authorized by Asquith, these discussions were never revealed to the Cabinet until just before the war. Nevertheless, those conversations amounted to an unofficial but real commitment to support France in a war with Germany.
Soon the “short war illusion” was shattered. As the Western Front congealed in stalemates. Asquith’s Cabinet was left grasping for a national strategy. The question was what strategy Britain should follow in an ever-deepening conflict. The turmoil precipitated the downfall of Britain’s last Liberal government, forcing Asquith into a very uncomfortable coalition with Bonar Law for the last 18 months of his premiership.
The BEF commander in France, General Sir John French, agreed with the French that the Western Front was a key point. They were supported by the Tory leadership and the Tory press. Throughout the war the Conservatives would maintain that the generals knew best. By the late autumn of 1914, however, there were some powerful dissents from the approach of the “Westerners.”
Westerners versus Easterners
The Royal Navy pondered action in the Baltic and against the German North Sea coast. Turkey’s entry into the war in November 1914 opened another range of problems and opportunities. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher, wanted an expedition into the Baltic. Troops would land on the German coast to march on Berlin—an idea more fantastic than anything Churchill proposed.
Churchill, as First Lord, favored an amphibious assault on the islands off Germany’s north coast. That would have afforded bases to blockade the German High Seas Fleet in its harbors. Lloyd George had teetered on the brink of resignation at the war’s outbreak. Now he thought of operations in the Balkans to aid “gallant little Serbia.” Kitchener, whose previous career made him an instinctive “Easterner,” thought of an attack on Alexandretta (now Iskenderun) on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. This, he thought, would interrupt Turkish communications and threats against the Suez Canal. What all these ideas had in common was their utter impracticality. They are a testimony to the weakness of the Naval War Staff.
Dardanelles and Gallipoli fiascos
Ultimately, aided by the desire to open lines of communication with Imperial Russia, attention centered on the Dardanelles. This narrow strait linked the Mediterranean to the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (Istanbul). Churchill became the leading advocate for the operation, first conceived as one for the navy alone.
A close study of Dardanelles action reveals how flawed Asquith’s Cabinet was on strategy, and the War Office and Admiralty on planning and coordination.9 Confused Cabinet discussions produced orders to the Navy to “bombard and take” the Gallipoli peninsula flanking the Dardanelles. How warships were to take a land objective was never clear. Those orders led to a badly organized fleet attempt to force open the waterway, which failed with heavy losses.
As the pressure on Asquith mounted, his drinking became more noticeable. The number and length of his letters to Venetia Stanley (up to three a day!) mounted. The Dardanelles “ships alone” operation was forsaken. There followed a hasty, amateurish amphibious assault on Gallipoli. A few expensively bought footholds on the peninsula were immediately sealed off by the Turks. The Allies ended with two mini–Western Fronts. Gallipoli was a futile operation heroically executed by Australian, New Zealand, British, Indian, and French troops. It was closed in December. The evacuation, flawlessly conducted, was the only well-planned part of the entire campaign.
But long before the last soldier left the Gallipoli peninsula, a political crisis erupted in London. A defeat on the Western Front, the withdrawal from Gallipoli, and war production problems had combined to bring an end to the Liberal government.
Asquith’s worsening fortunes
Sir John French launched the bloody, futile frontal assaults that would characterize the next two years. The attacks were a failure. French, who hated Kitchener, told a friendly reporter that the failure was due to an inadequate supply of artillery shells. Small wonder: his preliminary bombardments had fired more shells than the Army used in the entire Boer War.
The day the “shells scandal” broke in London, Fisher, the First Sea Lord and professional head of the Navy, resigned. He had been arguing with Churchill about the Dardanelles-Gallipoli campaign for months, threatening resignation in a series of slightly deranged letters. In long retrospect, appointing Fisher was a worse mistake for Churchill than advocating the campaign against Turkey.
The defeats in France and Gallipoli in addition to a (largely contrived) munitions scandal by a the still-inefficient British war economy would have been hard enough to manage. But simultaneously Asquith suffered a devastating personal blow—Venetia Stanley dropped him.
Throughout their lengthy and increasingly intense epistolary relationship (141 letters in the first three months of 1915), Venetia was being courted by a Cabinet minister, Edwin Montagu. He was Jewish and required, to preserve his inheritance, to marry within his faith. Venetia balked, at least initially, at conversion. Asquith referred disparagingly to Montagu as “the Assyrian” and Venetia seemed to share his condescending disdain. But she began to feel the pressure of her relationship with Asquith. The Prime Minister not only inundated her with information that today would be classified, but sought her advice. To escape, she rebounded to Montagu, accepting conversion. Venetia’s sudden abandonment devastated Asquith.
Forced Coalition
Asquith, as a result of these difficulties, restructured his government, entering a Coalition with Bonar Law’s Tories. One of the sacrifices his new partners demanded was Winston Churchill. Long an object of Conservative ire, Churchill was removed from the Admiralty. Clementine Churchill was furious and excoriated Asquith to his face. Although momentarily crushed (“I thought he would die of grief,” Clementine said), Winston would rise again. For Asquith, the remaining 18 months in Downing Street were a time of slow, inexorable decline.
Asquith showed a flash of his old skill in the distribution of cabinet offices. The Tories got Churchill’s head, but no major offices. Bonar Law, whom Asquith loathed, was pigeon-holed as Secretary of State for the Colonies. Nevertheless, Asquith and the Liberalism he represented were steadily losing ground.
One result of the alleged shell scandal was the creation of the Ministry of Munitions. Headed by Lloyd George, it signified the total war mobilization which was to come. Another Tory bête noire, he rapidly become known as the man who “could get it done.” And Britain desperately needed such a leader.
Through all of this, Asquith—remarkably—continued to maintain an essentially peacetime routine. He spent evenings playing bridge and weekends in the country. His alcohol consumption steadily increased. He was still in charge, but drifting out of touch and very much on the defensive. All this came to a head in late 1916.10
Conscription, Ireland and the Somme
Ever-increasing casualties and employment opportunities in the growing war industry ended the great surge of voluntary enlistment. With Conservatives demanding the prioritization of the Western Front, demands rose for conscription. War had suspended the Home Rule Bill and saw 44,000 Irishmen enlist in 1914.11 But in exchange for Coalition, Bonar Law extracted a promise that Ulster would never be “coerced” into an Irish government. Irish partition was thus ultimately assured. Redmond’s Irish Party had nothing to show for their efforts save a promise of truncated Home Rule, some day.
Radical Irish nationalists reacted fiercely. On Easter 1916, British authorities in Dublin were shocked when nationalists seized Dublin’s main post office and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The “Easter Rising” was quickly crushed, but then Asquith made one of his worst mistakes: he left the matter in the hands of a local military commander. There were courts martial and surviving rebel leaders were executed. It all seemed vindictive, causing the radicalization of Irish nationalist opinion that would lead to the 1919-21 Anglo-Irish War. By the time Asquith realized the situation could not be left to the soldiers, it was too late.
Then came the Somme, a major Anglo-French offensive under General Sir Douglas Haig, who now commanded Britain’s army. On 1 July 1916, Haig’s attack saw nearly 60,000 casualties, about a third being mortally wounded. It was the deadliest single day in the history of the British Army. Incredibly, Haig pushed on until November. By that time, the casualty total had reached 415,000 British and 200,000 French; victory was as far away as ever. Among the dead was Asquith’s eldest son, Raymond. “It is difficult to believe,” wrote Steven Bates, “that some of the fight did not go out of Asquith from that time on.”12
Asquith’s fall
The rest of the story is quickly told. Throughout the autumn of 1916, pressure steadily mounted for a Cabinet reorganization. The favored leader was Lloyd George, who had galvanized war production at the Ministry of Munitions. In December, a complex political crisis over the direction of war brought Asquith down. Lloyd George, with Bonar Law’s backing, became prime minister. The Liberals fractured, some following Lloyd George and some remaining loyal to Asquith. For the first time in his career, Asquith became Leader of the Opposition.
The Liberal Party would never reunite. Labour, accorded token representation in the 1915 Coalition, was a much more substantial presence in Lloyd George’s government. It would only grow in strength after the war.
Asquith was not a particularly aggressive Leader of the Opposition—except for one fraught moment. In the summer of 1917 Haig launched major offensive: Passchendaele. It was another bloodbath for the British Army—375,000 casualties and no significant gain. Asquith moved for an inquiry, a not-so-thinly-veiled attack on Lloyd George’s leadership. The motion lost, but proved to be the last nail in the Liberal coffin.
When victory finally came in November, Lloyd George called an election. He and Bonar Law had issued a letter of endorsement to their supporters, derided by Asquith as a “coupon.” It was not sent to any supporter of Asquith’s Passchendaele inquiry. The Welshman’s Coalition won a decisive victory over the Asquith Liberals. Asquith himself lost East Fife, the Scottish seat he had held for over 30 years.
Evening star
Asquith returned to Parliament in 1920 in another Scottish seat, rather ungratefully remarking that he really did not like trips to Scotland. He now led a sadly shrunken Liberal Party. In 1923 he made one last contribution to the smooth transition of power—a thing which had come to characterize British politics. A general election left neither Conservatives nor Labour with a clear majority, and Asquith’s Liberals held the balance. Asquith chose to back the Labour Party headed by Ramsay MacDonald, a wartime conscientious objector.
MacDonald’s brief administration (1923-24) established Labour’s bona fides as a party of government. Contrary to fears of many on the Right, it was not “Bolshevist.” (One of its first actions was to agree that Cabinet members would wear official court dress, rented from the theatrical costumers Moss Brothers, when calling on the King). But the Labour coalition soon fell and another election was called. Weakened by his support for Labour, Asquith again lost his seat. It was the end of his political career.
The King awarded him the Garter and he was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Oxford and Asquith. What he really coveted, however, was the Chancellorship of Oxford University. This he never attained. He also had money worries. He wrote four volumes of memoirs, little read then and now. Margot Asquith’s two volumes of outspoken autobiography easily outsold them. In 1926 his health began to fail. Shortly before his death he paid a final call on Venetia, who had been widowed in 1922.13 He died at his country home in 1928, leaving a very modest estate.
Churchill’s retrospective
H.H. Asquith rapidly faded from the view of historians. There was a two volume “official” biography by J.A. Spender, a prominent journalist and editor, and Asquith’s son Cyril.14 Churchill’s essay in Great Contemporaries was in part a critical review of that work. Toward Asquith, who had proven so often a thorn in his side, Churchill was magnanimous:
Mr. Asquith was probably one of the greatest peacetime Prime Ministers we have ever had. His intellect, his sagacity, his broad outlook and civic courage maintained him at the highest eminence in public life. But in war he had not those qualities of resource and energy, of prevision and assiduous management, which ought to reside in the executive…. The nation, by some instinctive, almost occult process, had found this out….
Asquith fell when the enormous task was but half completed. He fell with dignity. He bore adversity with composure. In or out of power, disinterested patriotism and inflexible integrity were his only guides. Let it never be forgotten that he was always on his country’s side in all her perils, and that he never hesitated to sacrifice his personal or political interests to the national cause…. The glittering honours, his Earldom and his Garter, which the Sovereign conferred upon him in his closing years, were but the fitting recognition of his life’s work, and the lustre and respect with which the whole nation lighted his evening path were a measure of the services he had rendered, and still more of the character he had borne.15
Asquith in recent historiography
After Churchill’s gracious valedictory, silence predominated for a generation. In 1964 Roy Jenkins, a prominent Labour Party figure (and, at heart, an Asquithian Liberal) wrote a fine biography. But with Asquith’s daughter, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, standing guard over her father’s memory, he could not make a full use of Asquith’s letters to Venetia Stanley, about which he knew. Only with the publication of those letters in 1985 did this strange relationship become known.16
In long retrospect it seems clear that Churchill’s assessment was spot on: Asquith was a great peacetime prime minister. His 1908-14 government laid the foundations for 20th century Britain. The beginnings of a social safety net were put into place and the power of the Lords, incompatible with democracy, was broken. The Third Home Rule Bill was passed despite the fulminations of Law, Carson, and Craig. What would have happened without the outbreak of war must always remain a question. But until that moment, Asquith’s record had been a series of major successes.
The war destroyed him and his party. Unlike Lloyd George, he could not adjust to total war. The break with Lloyd George disrupted the Liberals irreparably just at the point when Labour came of age and became Britain’s left-of-center party. When he died, the taint of failure clung to him. He deserves to be remembered as much for what he did before 1914 as his failures later. If Churchill, so badly treated by him 1915, could be magnanimous in retrospect, posterity should be as well.
Endnotes and further reading
7 Asquith’s correspondence with Stanley provides the best evidence we have of Asquith’s management of his Cabinet—and the war. See Michael Brock, ed., H.H. Asquith: Letters to Venetia Stanley (Oxford, 1985).
8 W. J. Reader, A Duty’s Call: A Study in Obsolete Patriotism (Manchester, 1988) is a brilliant exploration of this episode.
9 Hastings “Pug” Ismay was chief of staff to Churchill in his capacity as Minister of Defence 1940-1945. A crucial figure in Britain’s war effort, he discussed in his memoirs how Gallipoli operations would have been staffed and studied the Second World War. It is the best succinct critique of how inadequate the planning machine that serviced Asquith and his government really was in 1915. See Memoirs of Lord Ismay (London, 1960), 164-65. Recent research has made the point that concern about the stability of Czarist Russia, the effect on domestic morale in many countries if wheat exports from Russia (i.e., Ukraine) were not resumed and food prices rose, and anxiety about how much financial support Russia would require from Britain if Russian grain exports were blocked, all contributed as much, if not more, to the Cabinet’s thinking as Churchill’s advocacy of the operation. Churchill bore far less responsibility than was popularly supposed, then and later. See Nicholas Lambert, The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster (Oxford, 2021).
10 A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-1945 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 25-33 is excellent on the May crisis. Stephen Bates, Asquith (London, 2006) 108-12 also has a good succinct account.
11 When the war broke out there were already 58,000 Irish serving in Britain’s armed forces. Ultimately some 200,000 Irish served in World War I, mostly in the British Army.
12 Bates, op.cit, p. 123
13 Venetia Montagu lived until 1948. The only child of her marriage to Edwin Montagu, Judith, became a close friend of Churchill’s youngest daughter Mary.
14 J.A. Spender and Cyril Asquith, Life of Herbert Henry Asquith, Lord Oxford and Asquith, 2 vols. (London, 1932)
15 Winston S. Churchill, “Herbert Henry Asquith,” in Pall Mall, August 1928. Reprinted in Great Contemporaries (1937; London: Leo Cooper, 1990), 92-93.
16 Roy Jenkins, Asquith, (London, 1964). Violet Bonham Carter, as a young woman, was in love with Winston Churchill and distraught when he married Clementine Hozier. She also introduced a member of her circle, Venetia Stanley, to her father. A lifelong friend of Churchill’s, she wrote a very readable memoir of him, Winston Churchill: An Intimate Portrait (New York, 1965). Created Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, she died in 1969. Her granddaughter is the British actress Helena Bonham Carter.
The author
Dr. Callahan is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware and a leading scholar of the Indian Army in the two World Wars. He taught at the University for 38 years and was director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program, where an annual student prize bears his name. Among his books are Churchill and His Generals (2007) and Churchill: Retreat from Empire (1997).