Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [254]
Yet it was not the same, not the England of Jubilee year. The strikes were a reminder of the rising pressure of the working class, as Agadir was a reminder of the pressure of Germany. The assurance of a time characterized in English memory long afterward in terms of “the golden sovereigns, the sense of honor, the huge red blocks on the map,” was gone. The gaiety was “feverish,” the fancy dress ball of the season was given by F. E. Smith, not by the Duchess of Devonshire (the Duke had died in 1908), and in London the last horse-drawn bus had disappeared from the streets; motor-taxis, of which there had been none at the turn of the century, now outnumbered horsecabs 6,300 to 5,000.
The upper class still found life and each other immensely agreeable. At a party given by Mrs. Hwfa Williams and entertained by the wit of the Marquis de Soveral, the conversation was so generally enjoyed that the guests who had come to lunch stayed until one o’clock in the morning. It may have been enjoyment or they may have stayed from boredom, the boredom of having nothing else to do. The laughter, the fun, the practical jokes, the undeniable high spirits of privileged life of the time were the other face of ennui. The endless talk “at luncheon, tea and dinner, at dances and gatherings far into the night,” Masterman believed, was the talk “of a society desirous of being interested, more often finding itself bored, filled with a resolute conviction that it must ‘play the game,’ and that this is the game to be played.” They were “an aggregation of clever, agreeable, often lovable people … trying with desperate seriousness to make something of a life spared the effort of wage-earning.” Writing in 1909 he did not call it the boredom of peace, yet when he wrote of “the present Roman peace which has come upon the western races of Europe,” it was almost with a reluctant sigh.
During the first week of July the House of Lords amended the Parliament Bill so as to cancel abolition of the Veto and to except Home Rule from legislation which could become law without their consent. On July 18 Asquith officially informed Balfour by letter that he was in possession of the King’s promise to create peers, that the amendments were unacceptable and that he proposed to make a statement to the Commons that unless the Lords passed the bill in its original form he would ask the Crown to take appropriate measures. The Diehards flung themselves furiously into organizing resistance like settlers preparing a stockade against the Indians. “Let them make their peers,” declared Lord Curzon at a Diehard meeting, “we will die in the last ditch before we will give in!” To those who did not sympathize they were known as “Ditchers” thereafter. Among them were the new Marquess of Salisbury, his brother-in-law the Earl of Selborne, and, in the Commons, his younger brother Lord Hugh Cecil, Austen Chamberlain, George Wyndham and the two adventurers, Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith. During that hot July, Lord Willoughby de Broke worked feverishly canvassing all the peers, arranging meetings and obtaining speakers. On July 12, fifty-three peers including five dukes signed a letter to Lord Lansdowne stating that unless the amendments were retained they would vote to reject the Parliament Bill at its final reading “even though the consequence be the creation of peers.”
Balfour and Lansdowne, whom the King begged not to force him to the loathsome expedient, summoned a Shadow Cabinet of the Opposition of which a majority, though not all, were willing to follow their recommendation to surrender, that is, to let the Parliament Bill pass without a division, since to die in the last ditch, while upholding principle, would not prevent abolition of the Veto. Unless the Government were bluffing, the result would only be creation of peers and loss of