Herbert
Fisher was
born in London in 1865. Educated at Winchester
and New College, Oxford and in 1888 achieved
a first class degree and was elected to a fellowship. While a tutor
in modern history at Oxford University,
Fisher published several books including Bonapartism
(1908), The
Republican Tradition in Europe
(1911) and Napoleon
(1913).
In 1916 Herbert
Fisher was elected MP for the Hallam division of Sheffield
and David Lloyd George appointed him as
President of the Board of Education. As part of the reconstruction
legislation promised by Lloyd George during the war, Fisher began
work on a new education act. Passed at the end of the war, the 1918
Education Act made attendance at school compulsory for children
up to the age of 14. Other features of the legalization included the
provision of ancillary services (medical inspection, nursery schools,
centres for pupils with special needs, etc.).
Fisher remained in the government until the fall of David
Lloyd George in 1922. He retired from the House
of Commons in 1926 and in his final years concentrated on his
three volume History
of Europe
(1935). Herbert
Fisher died in 1940.
(1)
On 15th October, 1918, Virginia Woolf had
tea with Herbert Fisher, Education Minister
in David Lloyd George's government.
"We've won the war today" he said at once. "The Germans
have made up their minds they can't fight a retreat. The General Staff
has faced the fact, and they've had what I think the considerable
courage to admit it. There is now a good prospect of a complete defeat
of the German army."
Foch says "I have not had my battle". Despite the extreme
vindictiveness of our press and the French press, Herbert believes
that we are going to balk Foch of his battle, partly because the Germans
will accept any terms to avoid it. "Lloyd George has told me
again and again that he means to be generous to the Germans. We want
a strong Germany, he says."
So we talked on. I tried to think it extraordinary but I found it
difficult - extraordinary, I mean, to be in touch with one who was
in the very centre of the very centre, sitting in a little room at
Downing Street where, as he said, the wireless messages are racing
through from all over the world, a million miles a minute; where you
have constantly to settle off-hand questions of enormous difficulty
and importance - where the fate of armies does more or less hang upon
what two or three elderly gentlemen decide.
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