Читать книгу Ordeal by Fire - Ralph Allen - Страница 25
ОглавлениеExit Sam Hughes—“Tell ’em to go like blazes!”
THE demise of the Ross rifle coincided almost exactly with the exposure of Sam Hughes’s proudly acknowledged “guide and counselor,” J. Wesley Allison. A man of more flexible temper might have been crushed by two such blows. But Sir Sam, though he was hurt and indignant, was not even mildly deflated, much less apprehensive of his future. He had as yet seen no reason to revise his old estimate of Borden, carefully pondered and written out in the days just after the party came into office: “A most lovely fellow ... gentle-hearted as a girl.” Acting on that estimate and fully aware that many of his colleagues in the Cabinet were imploring Borden to get rid of him at once, he coolly wrote Borden: “The general opinion is that Sir Thomas [White] bores you until, out of patience, you finally accede to his plans. I can assure you the effect on the country or the party is not beneficial.” And in another message, sent from England, Sir Sam comforted the Prime Minister on the burdens imposed on him by the men in his Cabinet: “Your road is more or less a hard one. It is generally understood that White and Foster seek to impose their influence, adverse to me, upon you. But I know you are capable of seeing through them.”
But after five tempestuous years, Borden had begun to develop some resistance to Hughes’s blandishments and bullying. He had written in his diary, in the aftermath of the Ross rifle and Allison revelations: “It is quite evident that Hughes cannot remain in the government.” Nevertheless, it required another four months and another first-class public row before the two men made their parting.
The Cabinet’s liaison with the overseas forces had been chancy and sporadic from the outset. For information about higher strategy and higher statesmanship, Borden was wholly dependent on the occasional confidences of the British Cabinet and the War Office, who told him very little, usually very late. And for information on the interior housekeeping of the Canadian Corps, its welfare, armament, and state of mind, he was largely dependent on Hughes. Through General Carson, his special representative in London, various other plenipotentiaries, and his own frequent voyages abroad, the Militia Minister had established a highly efficient intelligence system of his own. But Borden had begun to feel the need of an overseas agent or agency whose first loyalty was not to Sam Hughes but to the government.
With that in view he instructed Hughes to study the whole overseas organization of the Canadian forces—excluding their actual combat role within the British Army—and cable recommendations for a change back to Ottawa. The risks he took in thus asking Hughes to preside over the liquidation of his own powers must have preyed on the Prime Minister’s mind. For within a few days of Sir Sam’s arrival in England, Borden cabled him: “When you have reached conclusions respecting your proposals for reorganization, please cable fully, as they should be definitely embodied in order-in-council and it would be desirable to consider them before they are actually put in operation.” Two weeks later Borden cabled again asking for Hughes’s proposals. Finally, after three more weeks, the Prime Minister learned through an announcement to the London newspapers that his Militia Minister had appointed a Canadian Militia Subcouncil in England and given it major responsibilities in liaison and administration. A son-in-law of Hughes was to act as secretary to the council. Borden cabled Sir Sam to come home at once.
At their meeting in Ottawa in October, it was Borden who had disquieting news to convey. He had decided to appoint a Minister of Overseas Forces. As the holder of cabinet rank, the Overseas Minister would, of course, report directly to the government. Moreover, the man proposed for the job, Sir George Perley, was one of Hughes’s oldest and bitterest enemies. Sir Sam, Borden recorded in his diary, “objected strongly and argued against it, saying there would be nothing left for him, that he would be humiliated and that he would have to leave the Government. He gave a tirade against Perley and decried his ability. Said that everything he had done was perfect, etc. Complained that White was conspiring against him.”
A week or so later Hughes attempted a compromise. He would support the new Overseas Ministry if Borden would drop the idea of appointing Sir George Perley and offer the position to Sir Max Aitken. The Prime Minister’s refusal did not deter Sir Sam from cabling Aitken and offering him the appointment anyway; Aitken fortunately declined, on the ground that he wasn’t qualified.
A few days later Borden carried out his intention. Sir Sam put his last sulphurous and mutinous protests into a letter, and Borden, to his own vast relief, now had no possible choice but to demand his resignation. This was duly provided on November 11, 1916. Sir Sam’s valedictory as minister contained few surprises. It was liberally peppered with complaints about meddling and intrigue and it roundly taunted Borden for the very quality, or lack of quality, which had permitted him to put up with Hughes so long. “Well, Sir Robert,” his departing colleague wrote, “each one’s manner is his own. It might be well if we could all possess your soft mannerisms, but I’m very much afraid, judging by all periods of history, that human liberty and human progress would not make much advance, as they never have made much advance, under such diplomatic forms and utterances.”
And thus, except for a few minor postscripts, there ended one of the most bizarre and astounding public careers in all of Canadian history. For three of its most momentous and critical years the country’s energy and resources had lain to a very considerable degree under the command of a man who would have had the utmost difficulty in passing a standard medical test for sanity. Almost as remarkably, the hypersane Borden was aware of Sam Hughes’s infirmities—or later said he was—before he took him into his Cabinet, and often reflected on them during the five years before discharging him. Borden, who arranged his memoirs in 1928, then remembered the man he made Militia Minister in 1911 in these terms: “While he was a man of marked ability and sound judgment in many respects, his temperament was so peculiar, and his actions and language so unusual on many important occasions, that one was inclined to doubt his usefulness as a Minister. There was much pressure on his behalf from various sources; and my cousin, Sir Frederick Borden, who sought an interview with me on behalf of Hughes, expressed the firm, and I believe the sincere, opinion that Hughes, under proper control, would be of great service to the country. I discussed with Hughes when I appointed him his extraordinary eccentricities. On one occasion when I impressed strongly upon him the perverse nature of his speech and conduct, he broke down, admitted that he often acted impetuously, and assured me that if he were appointed I could rely on his judgment and good sense. This promise was undoubtedly sincere but his temperament was too strong for him. He was under constant illusions that enemies were working against him. I told him on one occasion that I thoroughly agreed that he was beset by two unceasing enemies. Expecting a revelation he was intensely disappointed when I told him that they were his tongue and his pen. In my experience his moods might be divided into three categories; during about half of the time he was an able, reasonable and useful colleague, working with excellent judgment and indefatigable energy; for a certain other portion he was extremely excitable, impatient of control and almost impossible to work with; and during the remainder his conduct and speech were so eccentric as to justify the conclusion that his mind was unbalanced.”
Rescinding the appointment of Hughes caused Borden as much soul searching as making it. Hughes had a gift of great value to any public figure: the appearance of standing four-square and unafraid between the common man and a shadowy but various host of tormentors called “they.” “They” appeared in a dozen guises. One month they were the rapacious Yankees, trying to drive the wedge of reciprocity between Canada and the mother country; another month they were the haughty British, trying to deny Canada its rights. They were the incompetent English generals, throwing away the lives of Canadian boys to defend a useless and almost indefensible salient at Ypres. They were the English admirals who, but for Sam Hughes’s personal warning against German submarines, would have let the first Canadian contingent cross the Atlantic all but unprotected. They were the brass hats at the War Office, bent on breaking up the Canadian divisions and dissuaded only by Sam Hughes’s manliness and spunk. They were the proud and distant Governors General, trying to deny a fair hearing to a wronged Ontario Orangeman, but not quite getting away with it, not against Sam Hughes. They were the wicked munitions makers and bumbling corps commanders, giving Canadian infantrymen bad shells and trying to blame the result on bad rifles. They were the permanent officers swanking and posturing in front of the militia officers. They were the militia officers swanking and posturing in front of the sergeants and privates. They were the politicians conspiring and whispering behind plush curtains while far better men died in the mud of Flanders. They were the wretched creatures of the Pope of Rome, cowering among their beads and candles while the flower of the L.O.L. marched gladly forth to save mankind.
Hughes, largely at his own instigation, leaped in rank all the way from colonel to lieutenant general during his term in the Cabinet; yet he managed to give the impression that rank was distasteful to him. When he became Sir Sam, most people took his knighthood as a deserved tribute to a rough-and-ready man who probably didn’t want it. In short, Hughes had been appointed to the Cabinet because he looked like a political asset at the time (his prestige in the Orange Lodge alone made him an invaluable makeweight against the Quebec nationalists, as the Liberal Toronto Globe sourly pointed out). And he continued to look like a political asset, for his blunders, numerous though they were, included few of the kind that arouse great popular indignation. Thus, Borden, once committed to him, had to ask himself again and again where the greatest danger lay: with Hughes raising modified hell as a member of the Cabinet or with Hughes raising unlimited hell as a former member. As Borden himself put the matter in his memoirs: “After his dismissal I sometimes heard expressions of surprise that I had not taken that action at an earlier date.... I knew that Hughes had a considerable following, the force of which was an undetermined factor, and, while I felt that his continued presence in the Government was a handicap rather than a support, I determined to let him continue until I was perfectly sure that his dismissal would not entail any serious danger to my Administration.”
After his dismissal from the Cabinet, Hughes kept his seat in Parliament. In the summer of 1921, in his sixty-ninth year, he fell seriously ill in Ottawa and asked to be taken home to Lindsay. Someone with a good memory and a sense of chivalry recollected that, in his days as minister, one of the old man’s favorite vanities had been riding back and forth on inspection visits aboard special trains. A special train was provided to bear him on his last journey. Before the train pulled out of the Ottawa station the conductor came to Hughes’s private car and asked if the engineer should be instructed to travel slowly. “No!” the dying man commanded. “Tell ’em to go like blazes!”
