A contemporary review of Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband Charles Masterman

I once wrote of C.F.G. Masterman, Lucy Masterman's biography of her late husband Charles Masterman, in Liberator:

There are too many undigested extracts from her diary for it to rank as great literature, but besides its value as a picture of Masterman, it is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the big beasts of that Liberal government.

For not only did Masterman serve under both Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, he and Lucy became friends of both families

On 3 November 1939 the Salisbury Times published a long review of the book by Alan Campbell Johnson. He was far from disinterested: he reveals that he was Lucy Masterman's research assistant while she was writing it. Still it's a good review and here's an extract:

Mrs. Masterman’s book corrects many misconceptions. Two in particular should be stressed: first, that the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith Governments were made up of shallow optimists who were only scratching on the surface of "the condition of the people" question: second, that Liberalism means laissez faire, and is accordingly both dead and damned. 

The fact that C.F.G. Masterman's work and influence is so little known is testimony to the prevalence of these two falsehoods, Socialist Party propaganda has naturally tended to underestimate the importance of the pre-war social reform, but when a writer like Mr. George Dangerfield, in his book "The Strange Death of Liberal England," makes no reference at all to Masterman and his circle, it is time to protest in the interests of historical accuracy. 

The intellectual movement behind those Liberal Governments with which Masterman was so closely identified, of which many of his contemporaries admitted him to be the leader, was really one of pessimism, of a profound sense that the odds against them were great and that the time was short. 

There are countless quotations in "C.F.G. Masterman" to develop this contention. Here is a random example from a letter Mrs. Masterman received from her husband at the end of 1908:

Above all let's not relax our eagerness to do something for the poor; "all the world's agin the poor!" 1 feel that I am not so much inclined to care or at least to break into revolt against conditions of poverty as I come to settle down in the social order as one of a settled society accepting the whole as whatever is is right. Don’t let's do it; don't let’s ever tolerate the cruelties and injustices of the world. Pray for the fire within adequate to burn up the sins of the whole world.

Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband is surprisingly hard to find, particularly as it was republished around 1970. My mother, bless her, found me this copy one Christmas via a dealer in Brig o' Turk, Perthshire.