Asquith possesses all the appearance of greatness
but few of its elements. He has dignity of presence, an almost
unrivalled mastery of language, a trenchant dialectic, a just and
honourable mind; but he is entirely without creative power and has
outgrown that energy of moral earnestness which characterized the early
years of his political life.

He has never had an idea of his own. The "diffused sagacity" of his mind
is derived from the wisdom of other men. He is a cistern and not a
fountain.

His scholarship has made no difference to scholarship. His moral
earnestness has made no difference to morality. He acquired scholarship
by rote, politics by association, and morality by tradition. To none of
these things did he bring the fire of original passion. The force in his
youth was ambition, and the goal of his energy was success. No man ever
laboured harder to judge between the thoughts of conflicting schools;
few men so earnest for success ever laboured less to think for
themselves. He would have made a noble judge; he might have been a
powerful statesman; he could never have been a great man as Mazzini,
Bismarck, and Gladstone were great men.

There are reasons for suspecting his moral qualities. When he allowed
Lord Haldane to resign from the Cabinet at the shout of a few ignorant
journalists he sacrificed the oldest of his friends to political
exigencies. This was bad enough; but what made it worse was the
appearance of heroic courage he assumed in paddling to Lord Haldane's
rescue long after the tide of abuse had fallen. During the time he
should have spoken to the whole nation, during the time he should have
been standing sword in hand at the side of his friend, he was in
negotiation with Sir Edward Carson.

It is a mistake to say that he brought England into the war. England
carried Mr. Asquith into the war. The way in which politicians speak of
Mr. Asquith as having "preserved the unity of the nation" in August,
1914, is index enough of the degraded condition of politics. A House of
Commons that had hesitated an hour after the invasion of Belgium would
have been swept out of existence by the wrath and indignation of the
people. Mr. Asquith was the voice of England in that great moment of her
destiny, a great and sonorous voice, but by no means her heart. He kept
faction together at a moment when it was least possible for it to break
apart; but he did not lead the nation into war. It was largely because
he s