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Asquith's own speech on the second reading, "This is a bill to enfranchise male persons only, etc.", we were not able to discover; but the net result was that he found himself in a position in which it was impossible for him to fulfil the promises he had given us.
Ireland has ever been more of a problem suited to statesmen than to soldiers; indeed, the soldier has more often than not come in to spoil the work of the statesman, and Mr. Asquith's hurried visit to Dublin, Cork, and Belfast after John Dillon's speech was chiefly undertaken in order to prevent any repetition of the old mistake.
Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily addressed. At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who should have authority over Volunteers in a State?
Asquith's policy of curtailing his autocracy on the occasions when he was abroad had the greater wisdom. I shall not trouble to correct the popular idea of Lord Kitchener's character beyond saying that he was the last man in the world to be called a machine, and that he solemnly distrusted the mechanism of all organizations.
I would earnestly beg of you to take this matter vigorously in hand, so that some satisfactory announcement may be made before I return to Ireland next week. Very truly yours, Mr. Asquith's speech on September 24th was at least an indication that the Prime Minister desired to act in the spirit of Redmond's suggestions. The Chief Secretary was of the same disposition.
There is no occasion here to explain in detail the proposals contained in Mr. Asquith's Home Rule Bill. They form part of the general history of the period, and are accessible to all who care to examine them.
And she could not ask you back to her room, for it was "not very clean, I'm afraid," so she must catch you in the passage, or take a chair in Hyde Park to explain her philosophy. Asquith's Irish policy, and Shakespeare comes in, "and Queen Alexandra most graciously once acknowledged a copy of my pamphlet," she would say, waving the little boys magnificently away.
Troopship after troopship had crossed the Channel carrying Sir John French's little army to the Continent, while the boasted German fleet, impotent to menace the safety of our transports, lay helpless bottled up, to quote Mr. Asquith's phrase, "in the inglorious seclusion of their own ports."
Asquith's that nothing of the sort is ever to happen again. The programme of the British and their Allies seems to contemplate something like a forcible disarmament and military occupation of Belgium, the desertion of Serbia and Russia, and the surrender to Germany of every facility for a later and more successful German offensive in the west.
Moreover, many of Mr. Asquith's supporters, and one at least of his most distinguished colleagues in the Cabinet of 1912, had themselves organised resistance to an Education Act which they disliked but had been unable to defeat in Parliament.
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