Before he was thirty-five Max Aitken had become a multi-millionaire. He worked much as clever but humbler men have invented formulae to beat bookmakers at the races. Having done all this, at so early an age, what was left? Superficially we should have said--public life. He had the money, the talent, the leisure. Canada had the need.
But Max Aitken never so much as became a pound-keeper in Canada, not because he had not the opportunity, but because he had the shrewd sense to feel that the land where he had made "his pile" was not the land in which to serve his country. To serve a nation means as a rule to deal directly with the public. Max Aitken had never dealt with the public.
Neither does he yet--except indirectly through a big daily newspaper of phenomenal circulation. On his last visit to Canada he was invited to public functions. He consistently declined; not because he shunned popularity or hated the limelight, but because he would not have felt comfortable. In one of his speeches he pointed out that the securities which he put on the market years ago were all now listed as paying ventures. It was more comfortable to make that remark as a returned celebrity than to have made it as a citizen.
His own story of why he went to England, and stayed there, is ingenuous.
He said that he went in order to do business; that he tried to talk business; that the public men with whom he had conference insisted on talking politics; that he succ.u.mbed and stayed, winning a seat in the Commons, and almost before an ordinary man could have said "Jack Robinson", he was hobn.o.bbing with men the calibre of Bonar Law, Lloyd George, Northcliffe.
Only fragmentary accounts of Beaverbrook"s political history in England have as a rule drifted over here. To show what an amazing story it is, nothing can be better than to quote a curiously apt summary written for two Canadian periodicals by Arthur Baxter, who for some years now has been a sort of Boswell to Beaverbrook.
In 1910 captured the seat for Ashton-under-Lyne.
In 1912 a vigorous and successful attack on Lloyd George concerning finance matters in the House.
From 1911 to 1914 he entered parliamentary intrigue and gradually his home at Leatherhead became a Mecca for puzzled politicians.
During this time somebody made him a Knight.
The Irish situation was more than threatening; the tariff issue was causing bitterness; Austen Chamberlain with a minority following was fighting Walter Long to lead the Tories and on this troublesome sea Sir Max Aitken"s barque bobbed up and down with the skipper"s eyes keenly alert. He saw the possibilities in Bonar Law. When Chamberlain and Long created a deadlock, Beaverbrook advocated Bonar Law as leader of the Tory Party. To make his voice heard more distinctly he purchased the _Daily Express_ and backed his candidate with a powerful but (then) not very profitable newspaper. Law has the reputation for modesty, but his fellow-Canadian led him to the barrier, started him off and when he stopped running he found himself leader.
For some time it had seemed as if Asquith"s Coalition Government would survive the war, but late in 1917 it was obvious that the old ship was leaking badly. Carson was the first to propose scuttling the frigate.
The others argued that even a sinking ship was better than no ship at all, so the Irishman went overboard and sailed away on his own raft.
Bonar Law representing the good old Tory element kept on working the pumps; Mr. Asquith kept on a.s.suring the crew that all they needed was to "wait and see"; and Lloyd George was wondering whether he had better take a hand at the pumps as well or throw both Asquith and Bonar Law into the sea.
At this juncture a sail was sighted. It was Max Aitken"s barque that "hopped aboard" and took in the spectacle of his old Maritimian sweating at the pumps; and noticed with a critical eye the extremely able appearance of that able-bodied politician, Lloyd George.
Beaverbrook thought the situation over--swiftly. He saw that the genial Micawber on the Bridge could not be routed as long as Bonar Law and Lloyd George stuck to him. But even if they could be persuaded to heave the skipper overboard, could they sail the ship and keep the crew loyal as well?
He decided that Carson had to be brought back to the fold, so jumping into his little craft he scoured the political sea and returned shortly with the uncrowned king of Ireland on board.
But Lloyd George, Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson loved each other as much as three Prima Donnas. They all agreed that Asquith was sailing to disaster, but they weren"t sure that they didn"t prefer disaster under the Old Chief to prolonged life in each other"s company.
Beaverbrook had seen a vision and he knew that Lloyd George was the only man in England capable of forming a ministry that would last six months.
Day after day the Canadian stuck to his task and gradually the three men, all smarting from old political quarrels, agreed to send an ultimatum to the skipper that they demanded a sailing committee under the leadership of "Pincher" Lloyd George.
In other words they demanded a War Cabinet with the Welshman as Chairman.
Finally, in desperation, Lloyd George called for a mutiny. Bonar Law summoned all the Tory crew around him. They went to the bridge and told the Skipper that they were sorry to break the news to him, but it had been decided that, all things considered, he had better walk the plank.
Mr. Asquith was dismayed, bl.u.s.tered, then resigned--defying the mutineer Welshman to do any better. His Majesty called on Bonar Law to form a cabinet; the Canadian declined with thanks but mentioned the name of a certain Welshman as a likely candidate for the job. The Welshman was asked--and accepted. Two days later his Cabinet was formed. Carson took over the pumps; Bonar Law went up to the bridge and Lloyd George delegated to himself the rank of Commander and Pilot of Britain"s ship of State.
And that is the story of Beaverbrook"s tremendous contribution to winning the war. He secured most of the Labour Party, the Tories, and Carson for Lloyd George; without them the Prime Minister could never have formed a government.
Sir Max Aitken wanted more than a Peerage for his work; he had hoped for a position of tremendous power, but the Government made him a Lord and he went back to Canadian publicity.
Imagination tries to conceive of any Englishman coming over here to merge Borden, Laurier and Crerar. Imagination fails. Not even Aitken could have done it. That he succeeded in England where he must have failed in Canada must have reasons.
1. Experience in mergers.
2. Prestige as a Canadian.
3. Advantage of being--Max Aitken.
The first we understand. The second involves the Empire. Aitken was--if anything that could be labelled--a Tory. He had no trouble becoming a Unionist. His success with Bonar Law made it possible in getting rid of Asquith. He could call Carson "Edward". He could think as fast as Lloyd George. It was a time for quick thinking--and action. He had opened all the heavy doors in Montreal--and closed them upon all but those he wanted inside. He tried the same thing in England. His audacity was inspired.
Something had to be done. Somebody must be the middleman. Aitken had an uncanny faculty for sizing up situations; for manipulating men; for interpreting ambition--because no man in England had an ambition surpa.s.sing his own. He could play political chess and absorb superficial culture at the same time. Books, plays, authors, artists, manners, accent--all were grist to his mill. He was an astute actor. He could a.s.sume a virtue; simulate anxiety; hover about closed doors on tiptoe; speak in the awed whisper; in the event of a crisis peer tragically into men"s faces.
England knew she had taken a queer character to bosom; a child who was growing up at Gargantuan speed, an _enfant terrible_ of sudden and prodigious experience; a creature who could sit up o" nights and plot and organize and cabal and next morning rub out the wrinkles at tennis, amiable if he beat his opponent, growling and savage if beaten, ready for a campaign in the afternoon, a speech in the evening and a conference at midnight. Or he could plunge into polite arts, talk familiarly of literature with d.u.c.h.esses, undergo a surgical operation to-day and sit up for correspondence to-morrow. He has a brain whose recipe for complete rest is "change of work"! Barring Lloyd George and De Valera, he has perhaps the most unusual brain in Great Britain.
No Canadian, already a millionaire, had ever done these things. Not even Gilbert Parker had so amazingly cultivated the accent. Greenwood, diligent and talented, had been slow and determined. Aitken--opened the heavy doors. As in Canada, he was at last able to close out all but those who could play the game of the hour. This Canadian could not only talk, but act, Empire; not merely ape, but superficially a.s.similate, England; and he understood the United States--because he was temperamentally something of an American.
His success on the surface is incomprehensible. The one key to it is his persistent cultivation of Bonar Law, who in the Coalition was the great prop to the Premier. Beaverbrook hugely admires Lloyd George. He reverences Bonar Law. The Premier and himself had too many points, though not characteristics, in common to become running mates.
Intimately congenial to the Unionist leader, Aitken was never allowed to become indispensable to the Premier. His brief term as member of the War Cabinet terminated almost suddenly. Was it voluntary? Or ambitious?
What did this Warwick want as reward more than the peerage which may have been designed to chloroform an electric battery?
We are not told. Once during the second year of war he offered to raise and equip and command a battalion from New Brunswick. His offer was not accepted. He went to Sam Hughes. "Sam," he said, "I want a job in the Canadian Army!"
He got it. Aitken"s work as Eye Witness to the Canadian troops and the publication of "Canada in Flanders" was the performance of a man who in the great crisis of war had found a sudden and sincere interest in his native land that he had never exhibited while he was a citizen of this country. He showed a grasp of the human as well as the technical side of war. A man who could so rediscover his own nation could surely do something new in helping to co-ordinate the Empire. He has an astonishing knowledge of great public men in all countries, a thorough commercial knowledge of Europe and Asia, and--may we say a genius for a sort of secret diplomacy? His war record demonstrates most of these qualities. His Canadian War Memorials are a proof that he understands how to make his own country useful to British artists.
What then did Beaverbrook expect as reward for his political services, beyond a peerage and the sublime sense of having "done his duty" where he saw it?
Governor-Generalship of Canada?
Amba.s.sadorship to the United States?
Secretaryship of State for the "Colonies"?
Or the Chancellorship of the Exchequer?
There is really nothing else left for an ambition like this except the Premiership of Great Britain. Brilliant, plotting, crafty and phenomenal, this young man has still the spirit of the corsair. England has not absorbed him. But there is a general election pending over there. The Coalition is not on Gibraltar. Party cleavages are rife.
Labour, Liberals, Socialists, Syndicalists, Bolshevists and old-line Unionists are all pitching camps about the Premier"s Verdun. When the battle really begins will Gen. Beaverbrook be in the citadel, or working in a headquarters tent to merge any three of the common enemy into a force that will haul down the Coalition flag?
"Why do you think Lloyd George will come back as powerfully as ever?" he was asked here, after his admission that for the time being the Premier was in the doldrums of unpopularity.
"Because--he always does!" was his cautious reply; in which one almost detected the suspicion that he might not; and if so--what?
These are some of the unpredictables. Even the answer Beaverbrook himself might give to-day might be challenged by his action of to-morrow.
But this man has always succeeded in finance when a country was prosperous, and in politics when the nation was confronted by emergency.
He is still too ambitious to adjourn permanently to Leatherhead, Surrey; too young to write his memoirs. England is a new world. And it may be--unless he has already alienated his personality from his genius--that one of its picturesque discoverers will be Lord Beaverbrook.
Meanwhile he remarks that most of his friends are in Canada. One misses at least a fumbling guess, if in the days to come he will not value those friends, whoever they may be, more than he ever did when he was making millions here or merging politicians over there. Such a man seldom moves his forces just for parade. As Aitken used this country to get himself preferment in England on account of the Empire, so it may be suspected that he has used England--not impossibly--to reclaim in this country whatever credit he lost some time before he left it.
Meanwhile until the Government of Great Britain finds some better function for this phenomenon, we recommend that he be made the official economic investigator of the Empire. Up to the present this has been a pastime for leisured travellers like Lord Southesk, Sir Charles Dilke, and Rider Haggard. A man with Beaverbrook"s ability to a.n.a.lyze economic conditions and gain the confidence of men in high positions could be of incalculable value in getting a thorough survey of the commercial and political resources of a commonwealth which as yet n.o.body seems to understand. After that the Government might well make him Viceroy of India, where he might apply his talent for group-coalition to the great problem of const.i.tutional Home Rule.