At 5 a.m. on 11 November 1918, in a railway carriage parked in the Compiègne forest, General Foch signed the armistice agreement with Germany on behalf of the Allied forces. At 11 a.m. that day, the moment the agreement came into effect, Philip was with Haig and the army commanders at Cambrai, to share in the moment of celebration. The news of the pending armistice had reached Folkestone in Philip’s constituency, no doubt with his help. Reporting on the events of 11 November the Folkestone Express noted that
There had been quite an electric feeling about the townspeople from early morning. Folkestone was one of the first towns, although not officially, acquainted of the fact that the war was at an end. Consequently in the vicinity of the Town Hall crowds began to gather as early as nine o’clock all full of the news. The townspeople were augmented by soldiers from every part of the British Empire, and representatives of practically all our gallant Allies.
In the drizzling rain of a November morning, the town’s mayor, Sir Stephen Penfold, announced the news of the armistice ‘in a voice trembling with joy and maybe with grief at the thought of those who had gone never to return … Pandemonium reigned for some minutes, for motor horns and anything that could make a noise were used for the purpose of spreading the glad tidings. The bells of the Parish church rang out their joyous song. At once flags and bunting were exhibited.’82
Philip Sassoon would have little time for rejoicing as three days after the armistice David Lloyd George called a general election for 14 December. The Prime Minister wanted an immediate mandate for the coalition government that had won the war to negotiate the peace. The Conservative leader Andrew Bonar Law agreed that candidates from his party who supported the coalition should receive a joint letter of endorsement, from both himself and the Liberal leader Lloyd George. It was the first time that such an electoral pact between parties had been organized. The endorsement letters were dismissed as a ‘Coupon’ by Herbert Asquith (now leader only of a splinter group of Independent Liberals), but it proved to be a highly effective tactic. This wasn’t the only revolutionary change to be rushed through for the election. The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave the vote for the first time to all men over the age of twenty-one, and to some women as well. Philip Sassoon had supported votes for women when he first stood for Parliament in 1912, and this reform, so long campaigned for by the suffragettes, had finally been achieved, if not yet on a fully equal basis to men.fn21 The new Act of Parliament expanded the electorate from 7.7 million to 21.4 million; and three-quarters of these had never voted before.
The election campaign was famous for its promises that Germany would be made to pay for the war, and that there would be rewards for the people in return for their sacrifice and forbearance, most notably homes ‘fit for heroes’. Philip was still on active service with Douglas Haig at GHQ, but the Chief gave him leave to make flying visits home to campaign in his constituency. His first trip back was on Thursday 21 November, and he addressed a series of public meetings before returning to France the following Monday.
Philip was ‘enthusiastically received’ at his first election rally at a packed Folkestone town hall. Some pride was expressed by his supporters in the role he had played supporting Douglas Haig during the war. Philip, now returning to the stage of the civilian politician, set out his wholehearted support for the coalition: ‘no government’, he said, ‘but a coalition government could have won the war and I am convinced that nothing but a coalition government can secure a satisfactory peace and start the country wisely, safely and prosperously on a new path. That is why I am a coalition candidate. On some points I may not, perhaps, see eye to eye with the Prime Minister, but I leave my personal views behind.’83
This speech also demonstrated the impact of the war on Philip as a politician, and his belief that things could not just go back to the way they had been in 1914. ‘The lesson of this war’, he told his listeners, ‘is that all sections of the community are dependent on one another, and why only by unselfish desire to help the common-good can happiness come.’ It was a message that his Eton friend Charles Lister, who had died of his wounds fighting at Gallipoli, would have appreciated. Charles, who had devoted much of his time to the school’s mission to the poor in Hackney Wick, would have noted the change in Philip, from the student who seemed to care only for beautiful things to the champion of opportunity for all.
In particular, Philip focused on education, care of children and their mothers, and his belief that ‘every child born should be given a chance to become a fit and useful citizen of the Empire’. He also told his audience in the town hall that housing was ‘one of the most important questions before them. It has always been important and should have been taken up before the war.’
Even on the question of home rule for Ireland, something he had campaigned against when he first entered Parliament, the war would seem to have softened his position. The Folkestone Express reported him as stating at the meeting that
He had always held very strong views and he had not abandoned them but he realised the need of a solution which would allow Ireland to build up her industrial and political prosperity. Mr Lloyd George said he would have nothing to do with any settlement which involved the forcible coercion of Ulster and on that basis he would support any measure which would bring peace and prosperity to that much troubled land.
On the Saturday after this speech at the town hall, Philip addressed an open-air meeting in the cobbled Fishmarket in Folkestone harbour. He was again given a rapturous reception and the crowd sang ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ as he stood on the podium. Here, from the harbour that had sent millions to fight on the Western Front, he turned his fire on the Germans. He declared that the Allies ‘had given the Germans a damned good hiding, although he thought they had not given them the hiding they deserved’, at which there were cries of ‘hear, hear’ from the crowd. He stated that Germany should be made to pay towards the cost of reconstruction following the damage it had brought about during the war.84 At an eve-of-poll public meeting at the Sidney Street School in East Folkestone,fn22 he told the audience that ‘He wanted the Germans from the Kaiser down to be punished.’85 He also advocated that Germany should be permanently deprived of its colonies.
The election was held on 14 December, but the result was not declared until 28 December, to allow time for the counting of postal votes from soldiers still on active service. Philip Sassoon safely defeated his Labour Party opponent, Robert Forsyth, by 8,809 votes to 3,427.
Immediately after the election Philip went back to GHQ, where he would stay until he was demobilized on 1 March 1919. His last service for Douglas Haig would bring him to the positive attention of Lloyd George. In February he was sent to London to negotiate the terms of Haig’s retirement settlement; it was not uncommon for military leaders to receive a generous pension for winning a war. Haig was prepared to accept a peerage as part of his settlement, most probably an earldom, but would need the means to afford the estate that would be expected to go with it. Sassoon proposed to Lloyd George that Haig should receive a cash settlement of £250,000, a relatively modest sum to a millionaire like himself, and equivalent to what he had spent on Port Lympne. The Prime Minister countered with £100,000, which was the amount that was eventually agreed, plus the earldom, and the purchase of Bemersyde House in the Scottish Borders. It was a much better deal than the settlement for generals like Edmund Allenby, who received £30,000 and a peerage.fn23 Philip had also insisted at Haig’s request that the settlement for the generals should be granted alongside the agreement on the war pensions for all servicemen. Lloyd George accepted this in principle, but the delivery of that end of the bargain took longer to realize.
GHQ had been Philip’s home for more than three years, and he had been a serving army officer for over four. He was returning to his half-finished estate at Port Lympne and a House of Commons from which he had been largely absent since war was declared. ‘I am demobilising on March 1st – but with a rather heavy heart,’ Philip wrote to Alice