278 Asquith's Character Discussed [ I 9°9 



same, he says that he was strongly in favour of the law taking its 

 course, even to the extent of refusing to give back the body of the 

 hanged man to his friends for their own funeral rites. He quite 

 understood that it would have been an additional torture to have com- 

 muted the sentence." [For text of Dingra's speech see Appendix III.], 

 " Churchill's opinion of Lloyd George is high, but I doubt if he so 

 regards any of his other colleagues in the Cabinet, though he is careful 

 in his words about them. Of Burns he said, ' His attitude is quite 

 excusable. He has been attacked out of jealousy by his fellow Social- 

 ists past endurance ; but he does not care. He has been three years in 

 office, drawing £2,000 a year salary, of which he only spends £300. 

 He has saved up all the rest. He can afford to snap his fingers at 

 them.' There was much discussion between him and Cust about 

 Asquith's character, and a comparison made by them between him and 

 Arthur Balfour. ' Asquith,' Churchill said, ' is a very simple-minded 

 man, very ingenuous, but he has a wonderful talent for work, and the 

 clearest possible head for business. He will sit up playing bridge 

 and drinking late at night, and yet in the morning he will come to his 

 office or to the House and enter into the most complicated business 

 with his head entirely clear and work on for six or seven hours. He 

 will attend committees and give full attention to every point of dis- 

 cussion, and draft amendments in his perfectly clear handwriting with- 

 out altering a word clause after clause, and he is far and away the 

 best speaker in the House. That is what gives him his power. He is 

 single-minded and good. Arthur, on the contrary, is in his nature 

 hard; he could be cruel. I call him wicked. He is very courageous, 

 the most courageous man alive. I believe if you held a pistol to his 

 face it would not frighten him. He is not appalled by adverse cir- 

 cumstances, by the number of his enemies. I look on him as my enemy, 

 and I say this of him. The difference between him and Asquith is 

 that Arthur is wicked and moral, Asquith is good and immoral.' This 

 was a propos of a question put by Harry as to which of the two it 

 would be pleasantest to spend a week with. According to both of them, 

 Asquith of late years has gone morally downhill. From the Puritan 

 he was, he has adopted the polite frivolities of society. Harry told 

 stories of this, and compared him to Fox and Arthur to Pitt. He had 

 gone all to pieces at one time, but pulled himself together when he 

 became Prime Minister. He had lost his influence with the Radicals 

 by his addiction to fine society. ' But,' said Churchill, ' Lloyd George 

 and I have re-established his credit with our Budget. It has put a 

 stop to his social career.' This evolution of the square-toed Asquith, 

 with his middle-class Puritanical bringing up and his severity of con- 

 duct, into the ' gay dog ' of London society is to me irresistibly funny. 

 It needs a Balzac to deal with it properly. As to Morley, Churchill is 



