A new series of Granada’s Men of Our Time begins on Wednesday. There are four programmes in the series dealing with Lenin, King George V, Stanley Baldwin, and Hitler. Here EARL ATTLEE assesses the lives and influence of the four men.

THE four personalities of whom I write today form a totally disparate group.

Two of them are characteristic British figures who exemplify in their careers and qualities that process of continuity and peaceful change which differentiates our island story from that of the continent of Europe.

The other two are dynamic figures whose careers have profoundly influenced world history, the one an anachronism, a throw back to barbarism, the other the protagonist of a new way of life, the ultimate development of which is of profound importance to the human race.

KING GEORGE V had the great advantage, which he shared with his second son, of not being born heir to a throne. Brought up to manhood as a serving officer in the Navy, he was somewhat alarmed when the death of his elder brother opened to him the prospect of succeeding his father to the British Crown.

He was reassured by his cousin, Prince Louis of Battenberg, that there was no better training for a high position than service in the Royal Navy.

Years later the same advice was tendered by his son, another distinguished admiral, Earl Mountbatten, to King George VI, and its wisdom is again illustrated in the Duke of Edinburgh.

King George had no easy time. He had to deal with a constitutional crisis in the clash between the Lords and Commons in 1910. Though fearing an undermining of the hereditary principle, he gave his assent to Mr. Asquith’s threat to swamp the Lords, if they proved obdurate.

He then had to face World War I and give the nation the example of steadfastness and sympathy in critical times.

A few years later he was faced with an unknown quantity, a Labour Government. A narrow reactionary might have tried to avoid this by trying to get the two capitalist parties to combine. Not so King George.

He acted as a constitutional monarch. I did not meet him often, being Postmaster General, but found him friendly and interested in the work of my department.

I would have described him as a good, commonsense man of average ability with a strong sense of duty to his people.

I understand that he was not very successful as a father, his sons being somewhat in awe of him. His son was the first of the Georges to break away from the unfortunate tradition of the dynasty in this respect.

STANLEY BALDWIN I knew well, indeed for some time I was his opposite number in the House of Commons. He was the son of a Midland businessman, but related on one side to the pre-Raphaelite painter Burne Jones, and thus in contact with the circle round poet and artist William Morris, and, on the other, to Rudyard Kipling.

With this background he naturally had a broad outlook.

Though half Scottish he was characteristically English in his love of compromise and his desire for peace at home and abroad. I always felt that, though he disagreed with Labour, he understood our outlook. There was nothing he liked better than having long talks with Labour members.

He did two great services to his country. The first was after the General Strike in which, not unsuccessfully, he sought to assuage the bitter class conflicts in the nation and did much to modernise the Conservative Party. The second was over the abdication crisis when he interpreted the real feeling of the country.

He consulted me at the time and I think I gave him the right advice as to the feelings of the majority of the people. He was less successful in facing the international situation.

He failed to bring about “the great alliance,” to use Sir Winston Churchill’s expression, which would have prevented World War II. Yet he also failed to rearm Britain, which was the alternative.

If he had shown the same courage in facing the dictators as he did the Press Lords, the course of history might have been changed. In other matters, notably India, he showed a forward looking view, thus serving the spirit of peaceful change.

LENIN, whose doctrines still inspire nearly half the peoples of the world, though a prophet of revolution, was essentially Russian. A devout follower of Karl Marx, he got his chance to apply Marxist principles to a great country.

Marx himself was apprehensive at the idea of his principles being applied by the Russians. I think that he had always thought of his principles being applied in a country which had already experienced the bourgeois liberalism which followed the industrial revolution.

A man of tremendous will power and personality, Lenin gave the leadership which the Russian revolution needed and without which it might well have failed owing to sectional and personal rivalries.

He was probably right in thinking that, in a country so backward as Russia, with no democratic tradition, violent revolution and a dictatorship were the only way.

On the other hand, his switch to the new economic policy showed a degree of flexibility and it is known that he distrusted Stalin for his narrow-mindedness.

I recall George Lansbury, telling me on his return from a visit that Lenin would have liked to have had advice from the Socialist thinkers, the Webbs and R. H. Tawney, on future policy.

His views on the minorities in Russia and the impossibility of applying the same methods to countries with a different history showed a wider outlook. It may be that Mr. Kruschev [sic: Khrushchev – Ed] is a better Leninist than Mao Tse-tung.

ADOLF HITLER was unlike Lenin in every respect except will-power. Only in a country such as Germany with a morally and mentally sick people could such a man have attained power. In Britain he would have been only a nuisance and a bad joke, like Oswald Mosley.

There is almost nothing to be said in his favour. A dosshouse loafer with a collection of prejudices which he thought were ideas, he had great powers as a mob orator and considerable ability as a Party organiser.

He was fortunate in operating among a people of no political sense and of encountering no man of character and will power, either civil or military, able to withstand him. Hence his success up to 1940.

I am told that Germans try to forget him and rightly so — for apart from his autobahns he left behind him only ruin.

He was, in effect, a destructive force, resolved to rule without regard to the welfare of any other human being. But for Speer, one of the other Nazi leaders, he would have liked all Germany to perish with him.

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EARL ATTLEE writes about men of our time who are featured in Granada’s new weekly series, starting this Wednesday

IT is said, and rightly, that for a final judgment on men who have played a conspicuous role in the drama of history we must await the verdict of history; nevertheless an interim assessment by contemporaries who lived in the same atmosphere may not be without value.

The four men in this series were very different, yet their careers were conditioned by the circumstances of the time and their national characteristics.

MUSSOLINI was an Italian gangster on a large scale. You may find his like in ancient Rome, the Italian Renaissance and modern Chicago.

He came to power in an Italy depressed by its losses in the First World War and by the failure of the Allies to give her the big extension of territories at the expense of the Slavs, by which she had been bribed to come into the war. Italian politicians were a poor lot. Mussolini himself was in early life a socialist and anti-imperialist.

Hailed by the privileged classes as a saviour from communism, he had a great chance to pull his country round, but the draining of the Pontine marshes is his only real success. He fell a victim to imperialism and to the illusion that Italy was a great military power destined to restore the Roman Empire.

In this he was helped by the connivance of British statesmen like Simon and Neville Chamberlain who hoped to use him as a counter-weight, to Hitler

Thus, for a time, this comic opera dictator strutted about the stage till he backed the wrong horse in Hitler. He declined into the position of a jackal to this tiger and had a fitting end — hanged, with his mistress, by Italian patriots.

I never met the man but my colleague Lord Alexander of Hillsborough who had to meet him over the Naval treaty says that at the height of his power he was not unimpressive, but, like so many wielders of absolute power, he degenerated, inflicted much suffering on his people and left behind only an evil memory.

As a democratic socialist I object to all dictators, whether saints or sinners, but I prefer a saint if I must have one.

GANDHI was part saint and part astute politician. I recall meeting him more than 30 years ago in the House of Commons in company with George Lansbury who shared his pacifist illusions.

This gentle, charming and unworldly man was the inspirer of his countrymen in their claim for independence. He gave the whole character to the movement by his doctrine of non resistance and his opposition to violence.

But for him the great subcontinent might have become the arena for a bloody struggle, both between Europeans and Indians, and Hindus and Moslems. As it was, despite the regrettable loss of life in the Punjab, the transition to Indian rule set an example to the world, though Gandhi himself was murdered by a Hindu fanatic.

Even Gandhi did not entirely escape the danger which besets the holder of great power. The success of his pacifist campaign had a profound influence on Indians and even today has its influence on African nationalists. Yet he, like Mussolini, was the victim of an illusion.

His methods were successful because he had to deal with the British. It was opinion in this country which forbade the use of methods which other imperialist powers would have used without hesitation.

The revulsion in Britain against the action of General Dyer at Amritsar in shooting down unarmed demonstrators was an object lesson. But if Gandhi had been up against Hitler, Stalin, General Franco or Dr. Verwoerd, how long would he have lasted?

His disciple, Jawaharlal Nehru, has had to face aggression by the Chinese dictators and has had to use force. What Gandhi would have done had he been met with this situation, one can only guess.

Gandhi was a great man and his influence remains, but as long as there are evil men like Hitler and Stalin and the like in power, the world’s work has to he done by men of tougher fibre like Sir Winston Churchill, who are realists and do not take refuge from reality by illusions, however beautiful.

RAMSAY MacDONALD was a more complex character than the others. Coming up the hard way, he had great personal advantages, good looks, a fine presence and voice and oratorical power. His enduring work was the building up of the political Labour Movement so that it replaced the Liberals as the expression of progress.

I knew him well and in his early days regarded him with distant awe and reverence, till I became his Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1922, and later a member of his Government.

His task was to lead the underprivileged, but unfortunately in course of time he came to dislike and mistrust the working class and to feel more affinity with those he should have opposed. I recall the seeds of doubt being implanted when he said to me, apropos the joining of our Party by an insignificant peer: “We have a young earl joining us.” He spoke reverently.

As the world economic crisis of 1930 developed he seemed to regard himself as the saviour of society and, too, of Society.

When he went into coalition with the Tories he said: “All the Duchesses will want to kiss me.” Eventually with failing powers he was a mere figurehead to reaction. A tragic end. Loss of faith, vanity and snobbery were his undoing, but his services should not be forgotten.

He raised Labour from being a mere minority group to the second party in the State and paved the way for its triumph in 1945.

FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, in my view, had far more influence on world history than the others. He was perhaps fortunate in living at a time when the world needed his qualities. In this we might compare him to Winston Churchill.

A man of great personal charm and profound political instinct, he rescued the United States from a position of great danger to which it had been brought by the ineptitude of President Hoover and the business and financial magnates.

Lapsing into chaos through economic distress, the United States was restored to prosperity and a new purpose by the New Deal just in time before the dangers of fascism and communism were imminent.

The United States has been fortunate in finding great Presidents like Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and F.D.R. at times of crisis. But F.D.R. did a second great service, not only to the United States but to the world, in bringing America into the Second World War.

The U.S.A. had fallen into isolationism after the days of President Wilson and had had in Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, Presidents who gave no real lead at home and shirked the responsibilities in the international sphere that must inevitably have come to a great Power. In bringing the United States into the world conflict Roosevelt showed great political skill, and, in appreciating the world crisis, great prescience.

I recall talking with him before the U.S.A. became belligerent. He pointed on the map to Algiers, saying: “That is where I want America to be” — a remarkable forecast, and an appreciation of strategy.

I think towards the end of his life he failed to grasp the nature of Russian imperialism and gave Stalin too much at Yalta, while he had an old fashioned idea of British imperialist aims in Eastern Europe that were quite unrealistic.

But still, without his leadership the world might have been dominated by dictatorships and the cause of democracy lost for generations.

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