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wanted. He was vice-chairman of Baldwins Ltd and could get his way in the firm when he wished, without having to take full executive responsibility for what was becoming an increasingly large business. He had succeeded his father on the board of the Great Western Railway, although not in the chairmanship. He counted as a significant businessman on the Conservative benches. He had a growing circle of friends, almost entirely non-aristocratic, both in Worcestershire and in London, both inside and outside the House of Commons, and he entertained on a moderate scale. Being a backbench Member of Parliament rounded off his life rather than offering a springboard for future achievement. Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, F. E. Smith strove for the glittering prizes of politics. So, somewhat less rumbustiously, did Bonar Law and Austen Chamberlain. • Asquith and Balfour enjoyed them without the striving. Baldwin at this stage appeared to contemplate neither the strife nor the prizes.
    The outbreak of war made him more restless. He was forty-seven, too old for military service yet young enough to feel that something more was required of him than the life he had hitherto led. At first the main change was that he began to give away quite a lot of money, mainly to Worcestershire charities.Over a few years he disposed of about £40,000. Then he served on several Government committees of enquiry or review as well as engaging in a little more political manoeuvring than had been his habit. In the early part of the first coalition he was rather anti-Lloyd George and pro-Asquith, but by December 1916 he was ready for a change and accepted the pro-Lloyd George lead of Bonar Law, who had a little hesitantly made him his parliamentary private secretary a few months before. He was also ready for office, and was delighted when an offer came in the first few weeks of the new Government. It came in a rather strange form. Nominally he merely continued as parliamentary private secretary to Law at the Treasury. But Law was without a junior minister in the Commons. The new Financial Secretary was Sir Hardman Lever, a businessman brought in from outside politics to galvanize the Treasury. But as he was at first without a seat in Parliament and in any event left almost immediately for extended duty in the United States, he was unable either to galvanize or to discharge any of the traditional functions of his office. Quite exceptionally, therefore, Baldwin was allowed to perform as a member of the Government and spoke from the front bench from February 1917 onwards. In July the position was regularized and he was given the title and salary of Joint Financial Secretary. He was a few weeks short of his fiftieth birthday, a somewhat elderly junior minister. But for the last two years of the war he at least had something to do.

CHAPTER TWO

The Leap to Fame
     
    Baldwin remained Financial Secretary to the Treasury for four years. He served two Chancellors, Bonar Law in war and Austen Chamberlain in peace. He preferred Law, who was less stiff, although Chamberlain’s more leisurely pace of work was better suited to Baldwin’s own practice. Both of them regarded Baldwin as an acceptable and agreeable assistant, but not as a great deal more. He spent long hours in the House of Commons and he was skilful at the quiet conduct of minor business. Although it was recorded that ‘he could read a balance sheet’ (not in fact a particularly useful attribute for the Treasury), there is no evidence that he left any imprint upon Exchequer policy. Both his Chancellors—the two most important figures in the Conservative Party—thought of him, not as a man of promise, but as a man who deserved some reward by virtue of his service. In 1920 he was offered the Governor-Generalships, first of South Africa and then of Australia, together with a peerage. He declined. His name was also mooted for the Speakership of the House of Commons. It is not clear whether he was tempted or