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VOLUME TWOLAW LIFE AND
LETTERS

BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE

EARL OF BIRKENHEAD

PICS D:D: GC. wie D:

HIGH STEWARD OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY,
HONORARY FELLOW OF WADHAM AND
MERTON COLLEGES

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOLUME TWO

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANYFirst Printed 1927

Made and Printed in Great Britain.
Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

CONTENTS

I8TH BRUMAIRE ; : , ‘ ;
PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY

SIR SIDNEY LEE’S LIFE OF KING EDWARD
LORD CURZON AND INDIA.

‘

THE TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH” .
ELOQUENCE

REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

MILESTONES OF MY LIFE
EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT
THE BOLSHEVIST MIND

A WORD FOR ENGLAND

PAGEX

I8TH BRUMAIRE

O speculations in history are more fascinat-
N:: than those which concern themselves
with the effect upon great events of fortune or
accident. This is particularly true when the
incidents are of picturesque importance in the
life of a great historical personage. It is, for
instance, an interesting source of conjecture
whether Disraeli would ever have become Prime
Minister if denied the opportunity which Peel’s
volte-face on the Corn Laws afforded him. But
the most conspicuous instance in history is that
in which it seemed upon the 18th Brumaire as if
a trivial incident had determined at once the
career of Napoleon and the fortunes of Europe.

The coup d’état cannot be reconstructed without
realising the position of Napoleon when it
occurred, for it is impossible otherwise to do
justice to the views of those who believe that,
even if it had failed, his reputation and genius
would nevertheless have succeeded in asserting

a system of personal government. His career
78 I8TH BRUMAIRE

had been one of success, swift, brilliant, and
complete. Few lives have crowded more achieve-
ment into three and a half years than his between
the early months of 1796 and October 1799.
On March 2 in the earlier year he became Com-
mander-in-Chief of the Army in Italy. The
battles of Montenotte, Milesimo, Dego, Cherasco,
and Lodi followed in quick succession. In May
he entered Milan. The capitulation of Mantua
in February 1797 followed upon the battles of
Castiglione and Arcola. And in the same short
period Napoleon’ made it clear that he com-
pletely recognised both the strength and the
detachment of his personal position. He nego-
tiates the Treaties of Cherasco and Tolentino and
arranges the conditions of the Peace of Campo
Formio. His dependence upon the authorities
in Paris continually dwindles; and the convic-
tion insensibly spreads that France has produced
not only a brilliant soldier but a stubborn and
dominating personality,

On his return to Paris in December of 1797 he
found himself a popular hero; and even then
discerning observers formed the opinion that his
career was one to which no limits could be
assigned. Nor were many deceived by the
apparent modesty with which he affected theI8TH BRUMAIRE 9

seclusion of private life. His aspiring nature
was both obvious and notorious. At this time
his thoughts were all of splendid warlike enter-
prise. A single sentence, however, in reply to a
deputation showed that other thoughts attendant
upon opportunity were even then present in his
mind. ‘“‘ France,” he said, “‘ has need of a better
political system.”

But he concerned himself principally at this
time with those plans for the destruction of
England which gradually obscured his judgment,
and, developing into monomania, finally ship-
wrecked his career. He became Commander of
the Great Army against England. After reject-
ing the direct, but doubtful and hazardous,
attempt of invasion, he decided to strike at
England through Malta and Egypt. None can
say how far the immense megalomania, which
in later years clouded his faculties and caused his
fall, and which even now inspired him with the
crazy ambition of marching in conquest to Hin-
dustan, was contributory to a decision which was,
in fact, defensible by strategical considerations
of a simpler character.

The Egyptian Expedition set sail on May 19,
1798. It evaded the observations of Nelson’s
fleet, which was cruising in the neighbourhood ofIo 18TH BRUMAIRE

Crete, and captured Alexandria on July 2. On
July 2z the Battle of the Pyramids was fought,
and two days later Napoleon was in possession
of Cairo. But shortly afterwards he sustained
the crushing blow of the Battle of the Nile.
Whether Napoleon ever suggested to Admiral
Brueys that he should fall back on Corfu is dis-
puted. The later orders, which are undoubted,
came too late. It was the misfortune of Napo-
leon that in Nelson he met one hardly inferior to
himself in genius, his equal in tenacity, his
superior in singleness of view. Pitted against
an ordinary opponent, Brueys would probably
have been safe in the shoals of Aboukir Bay.

The result of this battle left Napoleon trium-
phant indeed upon the land, but deprived of all
communication with France, and without the
means of transporting his army home should
circumstances render such a course necessary.
Napoleon met the blow with extraordinary com-
posure, allowing it to disturb neither his military
nor administrative activities. Confronted with a
declaration of war by Turkey and the information
that two Turkish armies were converging upon
Egypt, he marched in February for Syria. A
month later he commenced the siege of Acre.
It was resisted with resolution and success byI8TH BRUMAIRE TT

a great English soldier, Sir Sidney Smith, and
late in May Napoleon was compelled to abandon
the investment. He marched swiftly back to
Egypt and overthrew the second Turkish Army
in decisive rout.

His position at this moment was of extreme
interest. He had become aware of the state
of affairs at home, both domestic and foreign,
and surmised with unerring clearness that the
psychological moment for his reappearance had
arrived. Nor was there any particular induce-
ment to remain in Egypt. He was in effective,
if somewhat precarious, occupation of the
country, and was at the same time embarrassed
by the knowledge that no prospect existed
either of extending his success or of conveying
his army home. Egypt offered nothing further
to his personal ambition, and, on the other
hand, a dazzling prospect of incalculable greatness
awaited him in France.

He handed over his command to Kléber, and
entered upon his perilous voyage in August of
1799. The spirit in which he went is revealed
in his message to Marmont: ‘‘ What can one
expect from the incapable men who are at the
head of affairs? Theirs is a rule of ignorance,

folly, and corruption. I alone have borne theA eames

12 I8TH BRUMAIRE

burden, and by constant successes have strength-
ened the Government, which without me would
neither have been able to get into power nor keep
there. When I leave, everything falls to pieces.
Let us not wait till the ruin is complete. The
news of my return will reach France simultane-
ously with that of the destruction of the Turkish
Army at Aboukir. My presence will raise the
people’s spirits, restore to the troops their lost
confidence, and to good citizens their hope of
happier days to come.”’

The two frigates Muiron and Carrére eluded
the observations of Sir Sidney Smith, and against
baffling winds and by a circuitous course made
their way along the African shore towards Car-
thage. One of Nelson’s cruisers guarded the
dangerous channel between Tunis and Sicily.
This peril was escaped at night, but Napoleon
was thereafter detained for many days at Cor-
sica. The risk was not over when at last they
were able to sail, for early in October they were
sighted by an English squadron, which immedi-
ately gave hot chase. Once again fortune be-
friended him; he escaped under the shelter of
night, and on October g landed in Fréjus Bay.

The circumstances of this exciting voyage
have necessarily been summarised, but enough18TH BRUMAIRE 13

has been said to show its extremely hazardous
nature. It was hardly less likely, on the whole,
that he would be captured than that he would
escape. At the moment his star was in the
ascendant and his career on the upward plane.
Had he been captured either by Sir Sidney Smith
or between Tunis or Sicily, or, later still, off the
Islands of Hyéres, how different might the his-
tory of France and of Europe have been in the
years which followed !

The moment of Napoleon’s arrival was most
happily timed. There was a general conviction
in France that the men at the head of affairs were
inadequate to the necessities of the crisis, and
a general longing for the advent, upon a stage
filled by commonplace actors, of some player of
outstanding brilliancy and prestige. Innumer-
able difficulties confronted the Government of
the day: the country was full of disorder, the
finances embarrassed, and the Directory unpopu-
lar. Business in Paris was at a standstill, no
recruits were forthcoming for the Army, a wide-
spread reaction had followed upon the excesses
of the Revolution, and a passionate desire was
spreading through every class for order, stability,
and discipline. Nor was the situation of foreign
affairs more fortunate. The success of FrenchA

Sn a

14 18TH BRUMAIRE

arms against Russia had by no means com-
pensated for the loss of Italy Here the national
pride had sustained a severe blow, and the fruits
of Napoleon’s brilliant campaigns appeared to
be irreparably lost.

Nor was compensation to be derived from any
general confidence in the Constitution of the
year III. Under this Constitution the Directory
wielded the principal executive and administra-
tive power. The Legislature, to which con-
siderable powers of delay and control were con-
ceded, consisted of the Council of the Ancients
and the Council of the Five Hundred. Of the
five Directors the most remarkable was Sieyés.
He was in many ways a man of striking
ability. A theorist, a constitutional lawyer, and
a man of extraordinary industry, he had long
busied himself in dissecting the shortcomings
of a Constitution which he had always disliked,
and in forming schemes for the construction of
a new one. Sieyés would have been com-
pletely happy in any country if given a blank
sheet of paper and the right to reconstruct its
Constitution. He was, moreover, a man of
great ambition, though without the nerve and
personal daring which were necessary if he was
to play that part in the turbulent politics ofI8TH BRUMAIRE 15

contemporary France which he so ardently
desired.

The meeting of two such men as Napoleon and
Sieyés at such a moment was in itself a remark-
able event. The latter had long been aware that
association with a soldier and a man of affairs
was necessary to his plans, but that he would
have chosen Napoleon for a confederate if he could
have found a man more pliable, but possessed of
the necessary powers, is inconceivable. Either
Napoleon or some other distinguished soldier was
necessary to Sieyés, for the latter perceived
clearly enough the conspicuous part which it
would be possible for him to play, in association
with a man of action, in the changes which he
contemplated. And Sieyés was equally necessary
to Napoleon. There can be no doubt that the
latter was determined at this time to become in
form as well as in fact the first man in France.
He looked around him and saw everywhere
pessimism and disillusionment. He saw amongst
those in control failure, incompetence, and a
degree of unpopularity which was rapidly
approaching detestation, and he discerned with
complete clearness that the country as a whole
would welcome any change which guaranteed the

permanence of the land reforms and secured to16 I8TH BRUMAIRE

 

all citizens the right to carry on their business
without interruption and without the risk of
recurrent political disturbance.

But Napoleon did not fail equally to observe
how great were the difficulties which would have
met a single-handed attempt on his part to
execute a coup d’état. His prestige was indeed
immense, and his popularity in Paris apparently
unbounded, but no one could tell with precision
how far Jacobinism was extinct among the mob,
or what would be the consequences if the cry
were raised, and believed, that he or anyone else
was attempting to establish a Dictatorship. And
it has been pointed out that great powers of
resistance were still possessed by the Directory
which, if reinforced by the two legislative bodies,
could only have been borne down by an exercise
of violence involving the greatest risk and uncer-
tainty. Napoleon’s own influence was not great
either with the Directory or with the two Councils.
His brother Lucien, indeed, was President of the
Council of the Five Hundred, and was, as will be
seen, destined to bear an intrepid and distin-
guished part in the events which followed, but
this Council as a whole was tenaciously insistent
upon the retention of its constitutional powers.
In these difficulties the help of Sieyés wasI8TH BRUMAIRE 7,

vital. He had been elected to the Directory in
May 1799, after refusing to serve four years
earlier on the ground that he disliked the Con-
stitution and disbelieved in its permanence. He
gained over to his side another Director, the
supple Barras. The two deposed La Réveilliére-
Lépaux and Merlin, who were incorruptible ; and
the Directory, as reconstructed in Brumaire,
consisted of Sieyés, Barras, Gohier, Ducos, and
Moulin. Of these Sieyés, Barras, and Ducos
were favourable to Napoleon’s designs; the
Council of Ancients was readily manageable ;
and Lucien, whom at the moment no one sus-
pected of treachery to the Constitution, had a
considerable following in the Council of the Five
Hundred. It is hardly necessary to repeat that
Sieyés and Napoleon wanted quite different things.
Sieyés wanted a new idealogue Constitution,
which he would have the pleasure of drafting, and
under which his academic powers would have
full scope for what he conceived to be their
legitimate influence. Napoleon wanted to be the
first man in France, and the only man in France,
and was contemptuously and justly certain that
he could fling Sieyés aside as soon as he ceased
to be useful.

Such was the position at the moment when it
1I—218 I8TH BRUMAIRE

 

was determined by these strangely assorted
accomplices to put everything to the hazard.

On November 6, at a banquet given by the
Chamber to Moreau and Bonaparte, the arrange-
ments were completed. The attempt was to be
made on the 18th and 19th Brumaire. Napoleon
had satisfied himself that he could in the main
count upon the Army. He was, as always,
idolised by the private soldiers, and had concili-
ated by skilful manipulation the more important
Generals. The general public was prepared for
unusual measures by adroitly disseminated
reports that the Jacobins were contemplating
insurgent movements, and that a recrudescence
of violence was to be apprehended. On the 18th
Brumaire a memorable session of the Council of
Ancients began. It was then decided, under
a preconcerted plan and within the powers of the
Constitution, that the sitting should be trans-
ferred to Saint-Cloud. On the motion of Regnier
it was resolved that both Councils should meet
at the Palace on the 19th Brumaire, and that this
decree should be carried out by General Bona-
parte, who for that purpose was given the com-
mand of the National Guards, the Guard of the
Legislative Body, and the garrison of Paris. A
further resolution provided that General BonaparteI8TH BRUMAIRE 19

should appear before the Council of Ancients
and take the oath.

While these momentous resolutions were in
process of adoption Napoleon was awaiting news
in his house, in the midst of the most trusted of
his military supporters. Who can tell what
strange ambitions, what uneasy apprehensions,
filled that inscrutable head at this supreme
moment of his destiny ? That he was consumed
by the most poignant anxiety is certain ; that his
nerve was very considerably affected was proved
by the events which followed in quick succession.
The two dissentient Directors, Moulin and Gohier,
at once perceived the significance of Regnier’s
motion. Gohier was placed under arrest, Moulin
made good his escape. In the meantime Napo-
leon, informed a little prematurely of the com-
pliance of the Ancients, rode to the Tuileries.
Fournier reminds us that in his route he passed
the Place de la Concorde, where the Statue of
Liberty was under repair. It will be remem-
bered that Napoleon was to take the oath to the
Constitution. He evaded this obligation, plung-
ing instead into vague rhetoric which was much
applauded by the soldiers in the gallery, but
produced very little impression upon the Ancients ;
and, indeed, even before the Council, largely20 I8TH BRUMAIRE

favourable to himself, which he first addressed,
he appeared to little advantage.

It seemed as if his personality, so overpower-
ing amid familiar surroundings, had failed him
under circumstances of which he had so little
experience. He left the Council unconvinced,
and engaged in doubtful whisperings and uneasy
consultation.

A greater ordeal awaited him, and one to which
he was to prove even more unequal. It became
necessary to face the Council of the Five Hundred.
The influence of Lucien Bonaparte had induced
this Council to acquiesce without undue suspicion
in the transference of the session to Saint-Cloud ;
but its members were wholly unprepared to
acquiesce in any violent inroad upon the Con-
stitution. Napoleon entered the hall, and as he
entered the uniforms of his military companions
became clearly visible to those within. Imme-
diately there rang out the cry, which in the
last few years had sounded the death-knell of
so many daring adventurers, ‘‘ Outlaw him !
Down with the Dictator!’’ These cries were
taken up all over the Chamber, and seemed
for a moment to spell the message of doom.
Napoleon flinched, and for a moment every-
thing was lost. He did not even altogetherI8TH BRUMAIRE 21

escape physical violence, but was roughly jostled
by indignant members. The soldiers formed
around him, and escorted him from the hall pale,
dismayed, incoherently babbling, no longer his
own man. This was the supreme crisis of his
life, and he was saved not by himself (for he
had failed himself), but by Lucien.

Both within the Chamber and even without
among the soldiers the position was hazardous,
uncertain, and critical. Within arose an immedi-
ate demand that a vote of outlawry should be
passed by the Council. It is impossible to say
with dogmatic certainty what would have been
the consequences of such a vote, but that it would
have involved Napoleon in the gravest and the
most immediate peril is apparent. Lucien Bona-
parte, with swift and brilliant instinct, realised
that the only hope of saving the situation was to
suspend the sitting. This he did, flinging aside
his official robes, and leaving the Chamber under
the protection of soldiers who entered in order
to extricate him,

Observe how charged with danger the situa-
tion now was. The Ancients were unconvinced
and sullenly antagonistic to Napoleon’s confused
and almost unintelligible arguments. The Five
Hundred, in a state of violent resentment, and22 I8TH BRUMAIRE

undeterred by the secession of the President,
were still discussing the propriety of a vote
of outlawry.

The last hope now lay with the soldiers. In
which scale would they throw their weight ?
Even this question could not be answered with
certainty. They were, it is true, devoted to
Napoleon ; they believed in his star, and recog-
nised with admiration his brilliant military gifts.
But prejudice against the assumption of despotic
power was in their very marrow, and there was
proceeding before their eyes, evident and unmis-
takable, the violent destruction of the whole
fabric of the Constitution. The issue hung in the
balance. The Revolution and all it stood for were
at the hazard. It became evident that it could
only be determined favourably to the conspirators
by one of those skilful, daring, and dramatic ap-
peals of which very great men are capable in
times of very great crisis.

Crisis stared Napoleon in the face, but it was
not Napoleon who rose to the height of resource
which that crisis demanded. The essential falsity
of the antithesis so frequently attempted between
men of words and men of deeds—for there are
many occasions in which words are deeds—

received a signal illustration. Napoleon, the man18TH BRUMAIRE 28

of deeds, was still not master of himself: Lucien,
the man of words, was equal to the needs of a
moment both poignant and decisive.

Mounting a horse, he addressed the excited
soldiers. ‘‘ Frenchmen,” he said, “ the President
of the Council of the Five Hundred assures you
that the vast majority of that assembly is at
present terrorised by a number of deputies armed
with daggers who besiege the tribunal, threaten-
ing their colleagues, and proposing the most
violent resolutions. I tell you, these insolent
brigands, doubtless in the pay of the English
Government, are rebelling against the Council
of the Ancients, and are demanding outlawry
of the General deputed to carry out the Council’s
decree. I assure you this handful of violent men,
by their assaults upon the liberty of this assembly,
have put themselves outside the law. To the
soldiers I entrust the duty of liberating the
majority of the nation’s representatives, so that,
protected from daggers by your bayonets, we may
be able to deliberate in peace on the interests
of the Republic. You will regard those only
who have come here among you with their Presi-
dent, as Deputies of France. As for those who
have stayed behind in the Orangerie to vote
upon the act of outlawry, thrust them out. These24 I8TH BRUMAIRE

robbers are no longer representatives of the
people—but of the dagger,”’?

Even this adroit and impassioned speech did
not at once succeed in inducing the soldiers to
march upon the assembly. They contented
themselves with giving cheers for Bonaparte,
but hesitated before resorting to violence against
the Deputies, Here, again, it was Lucien who,
with a sure melodramatic instinct, captured the
waverers, He drew his dagger, pointed it at
Napoleon’s heart, with an oath that he would
kill his brother if he ever failed in fidelity to the
liberty of France. The point was carried. The
troops under Murat burst into the hall. The
Deputies met their entry with defiant cheers for
the Republic. But the discord melted into
silence before the menacing drums of the sol-
diery, and the Councillors were driven in head-
long flight through the doors and the windows.
Such were the methods adopted in dealing with
the body which was most hostile to the plans of
the conspirators, It remained to apply the
necessary degree of persuasion to the Ancients.
Here, again, the resourceful Lucien played that
indispensable part. He prevailed upon the
Council to resolve that the “ Consular fasces,”’

1 Fournier,I8TH BRUMAIRE 25

the illustrious symbol in old days of republican
liberty, should be adopted to confound slan-
derers and reassure the nation, ‘“‘ the unanimous
consent of which will consecrate your labours.”’
It was therefore decided that a provisional
Government should be created of three Con-
suls, and that both Chambers should at once be
adjourned. On the same night Lucien har-
angued the complaisant Rump of the Five
Hundred into acceptance of similar resolutions.

It is not necessary to trace subsequent events
in any detail. The coup détat was complete,
and after a brief interval it became clear that
nothing stood between Napoleon and auto-
cratic power. The true interest of the whole
attempt is to be found in the narrow margin by
which it succeeded. Sieyés had been under no
apprehension as to the reality of his danger.
A coach with six swift horses ready harnessed
outside his house bore witness to his appreciation
of the risk. The more one considers the story
of the attempt, the more extraordinary does its
complete success become.

It is evident from the admissions of the con-
spirators themselves that they were in the greatest
doubt as to the disposition of the mob in Paris.
The whole number of soldiers readily available26 I8TH BRUMAIRE

was inconsiderable, and no one could confidently
expect that such soldiers as these were could be
induced to carry out by force of arms a revolu-
tion for which neither they nor their leaders,
other than Napoleon, were prepared. Napo-
leon’s astuteness, his lack of scruple, his daring,
and his judgment of human nature were most
strikingly illustrated in the preparatory stages
of the attempt, but all his most characteristic
qualities failed him at the supreme moment. It
is probable that he overrated alike the influence
of Sieyés over the Ancients, of Lucien over the
Five Hundred, and of himself over the soldiers.
There is, at any rate, evident ground for the
conclusion that he was disconcerted by his
reception among the Ancients, dismayed by the
open hostility of the Five Hundred, and unpre-
pared with that appeal to the soldiers which he
of all men should have known how to make in
direct and telling language. One could have
understood that Lucien, the practised and accom-
plished Parliamentarian, should have been more
at home in the Council, but it is amazing that the
decisive appeal to the soldiers—an appeal of
which we cannot afford to deride the melodrama,
for it conquered a supreme situation—should
have proceeded from him and not from the greaterI8TH BRUMAIRE 27

brother who knew better than any soldier ever
knew how to speak to his soldiers language that
penetrated at once to their very hearts.

What would have happened if the event which
so narrowly succeeded had, in fact, failed ? It
is very doubtful whether Napoleon could have
escaped with his life. He might, indeed, have
galloped away for a last appeal to the mob of
Paris, or to repeat to the rest of the Army Lucien’s
tale of an attack upon his life. It is utterly
impossible to give a confident opinion whether
he would have succeeded or not; but there can
be little doubt that had he fallen into the hands
of the hostile majority of the Council of the Five
Hundred, he would have been in great danger
of paying the penalty of his attempt with his
life. He might easily have fallen as Cesar fell.
Indeed, his enterprise was plainly of a character
which, in the eyes of Republicans, admitted
neither of defence nor extenuation.

Every action taken was explicable only as
part of a carefully considered coup d état the
object of which was to subvert the existing Con-
stitution of France. If Napoleon, convicted of
such an attempt, had been spared, those who
spared him would have deserved all the retribu-
tion which his survival would assuredly have28

 

I8TH BRUMAIRE

brought them. In its more personal aspect the
incident, as I have attempted to show, did little
justice to the desperate courage which Napoleon
so often exhibited, both earlier and later. On
at least one other well-known occasion in his
career he lost his nerve when he needed it most.
The presence of mind, the resource, the bold-
ness, and the ready falsehoods of Lucien were
really the qualities which carried the day, and it
may be doubted,whether the whole of history can
afford a more striking instance of energy and
inspiration shown by one brother in the crisis of
another’s destiny.XI

PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCH ¥

HAT every sentient being must live for
| outside the individual self is
a wholesome proposition not likely to be dis-
puted, even by the most paradoxical reasoner
who may capture the fancy of the passing hour.
At the same time, there are many legitimate
divergencies of opinion concerning the duty which
man or woman should accord to the family, the
hamlet, the country, or the race—perhaps to
mankind at large. There are differences here,
indeed, which I should like to reconcile. For it
would rejoice me, in contemplating those difficult
tasks of statesmanship which yet lie ahead, to
give a new direction, possibly a new meaning,
to the ideal of patriotism. This ideal has been a
fact of history. And more than that. It has
been an important factor in international develop-
ment: one which we have to consider with care
in facing the immediate future.

Not long ago, in the pages of a widely circu-
lated magazine, I referred to patriotic feelings as
29PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCH

 

30
though they should possess, in essence, something
of the passionate. If this be conceded, there
follows a challenge to the anti-patriotic which
cannot fail of force. In a word, if anybody
denies patriotism to be a virtue, a necessity, and
a power: all I can say is—there will soon be
“wigs on the green.”’

Patriotism is not a quality or a qualification,
a theory or a thing, easily to be understood or
to be taken absolutely for granted. A charming
and rhythmical aphorism of Sir Walter Scott’s
lingers universally on the ear. All will agree
that those must be devoid of soul who have no
love for their native land. Many poets might
be quoted to the same effect. Leaders have died
with this very thought on their lips. This does
not mean that we can forget current warnings.
Nor yet the past. For ourselves, owning allegi-
ance to a land great in tradition, in history, in
natural and varied beauty, pride touches passion,
as soon as the unparalleled expansion of our
political strength and influence is taken into
account. For us, patriotism has overflowed the
banks of rivers.

Such is our country. The local has already
swelled into the imperial. There has been some-
thing more than natural growth. The man whoPATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY  3F

is conscious of it might easily be persuaded that
he had succeeded to that poetic inheritance which
in olden times made one nomad people to be, of
all in the known world, the divinely chosen race.

We ourselves are not nomads. We are varied
and commingled, and very widely we wander ;
but, as a people, we have settled down. The
dominions over which our sympathy, with autho-
rity, is farthest flung, look back to their original
home, satisfied that it is the most stable thing in
a changing universe; and much more than
satisfied in affection and allegiance.

But, in all this absorption, the knowledge
persists that stability is not the only thing that
makes for patriotism. Patriotism of the highest
kind is for those, above all others, who possess
language, and with this, it may be, the conscious-
ness of race. Local habitation is not necessary.
Language alone gives very much more than a
name. What more poignant passage is recorded
in the sacred literature which we ourselves have
adopted than the song of those exiles by the
waters of Babylon who wept when they remem-
bered Zion ? But we, fortunate in cherishing a
patriotism which does not need to weep, would be
less than grateful if we showed ourselves oblivious
of the springs which still give us internal and22) PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARGEHS

external strength. And still we continue to rise,
as a people, higher than these sources. We have
to prove ourselves mightier yet.

Were we to dwell too fervently on the past,
on its glories or its sorrows, we should run the
risk of losing all our common sense in sensibility,
in sententiousness. If patriotism of any kind is
worth having, it will be well to have more of it.
But one can have too much of a good thing. I
find it necessary, indeed, to draw a definite line
at this point. It is not only that there are differ-
ent kinds of patriotism. There are different
degrees. Patriotism may be true or false. After
all, many a thief masquerades as a specially
honest man. Once more, we have to draw a
line. We have to draw many lines.

There is the line, for example, which separates
the near from the distant. But when we come to
examine the boundaries, we realise that there
runs through all time an express unity of char-
acter; human nature does not change. Give
anything a fair start and you can imagine the
rest: every river must reach the sea, but the
spring and the stream and the ocean are of varying
magnitudes, So itis with all the tributaries which
together constitute patriotism. There is an
instructive parallel, perhaps, in literature, oncePAwntOLisM AND THE MONARCHY 35

we regard literature as Art and Science combined ;
and perceive the significance of the combination.
An academic contemporary of my own, one
who has developed into a real pundit, once read
a paper before a critical but inchoate assembly.
He discoursed not unwisely on the beginnings
of literature. I remember how he remarked,
in the attitude of one who had made a discovery,
that the lamp over the portals of his own obscure
lodging bore a number. This, said he, was for
him ‘“‘ the beginning of literature.’”’” How many
things that solitary number postulated and
suggested! There was the Man who made the
Lamp—and the Man who had Spun the Glass—
and the Art of Writing—and the Power of Calcu-
lation—and the idea of an Entrance used by
beings who would also find an Exit—all this was
involved. From which a clever mind could educe
almost anything, from birth to death, from the
cradle to the grave. Imagination being once
invoked, the record—that is Literature—was
concurrently secured. The cacoethes scribendt
came into action, I think, long before lamps, but
still this parable I will now relate to my subject
of patriotism, tracing that beyond its origins
likewise: for the evolution of patriotism is not
unlike the evolution of literature itself.
1I—334 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCEG

The cavemen, people who are so often used in
parables, must positively have instructed them-
selves in the rudiments of patriotism as soon as
they realised that a fissure, a rock, or a stream
might make, not natural barriers only, but actu-
ally coincide with differences of opinion; and
divisions of opinion did spring to life as soon as
ever there was a meeting with other barbarians.
Happily for the human race, the resulting con-
fusion came to be adjusted, often enough, as soon
as the first shock of the meeting was over. But
we still retain the primitive feeling that a preli-
minary clash is by no means the worst prepara-
tion for the ultimate shaking of hands. That
is the lighter way of putting it. For hence comes
war and all the terrific panoply of armament.
Any pleas based on the need of patriotism here—
a thing that must not be neglected, because wars
righteous and unrighteous are equally fought
under that egis—calls for the use of heavier
guns. It is all very well to think and talk of
that final handshaking. But the intervals are
filled with tremors of earth and sky. This means,
very likely, that we have not as yet got very far
on the road which the cavemen trod, But all
experience was in their experiments, just as all

literature was in the number on the lamp.PAR TOTISM AND THE MONARCH YV BS)

I make a gift of the admission to those who will
read into it a charge against patriotism itself.
For truly, looking candidly at internecine feuds,
those who blame an exaggerated patriotism may
have some critical sense within them. There are
occasions when the critic may justly vote for
an enlargement of that famous dictum of Dr.
Johnson: “ Patriotism is the last refuge of
a scoundrel.”

These considerations are in truth on the larger
side already. But patriotism has an inner side,
an intimate side, a natural and a very homely
appeal. It is because of this, high politics
apart, that everybody can understand it; be-
cause of this, that of late its claim, its necessity,
and its power have increased among us.

I revert, for a moment, to more primitive types
and to their gradual evolution. In the very
simplest societies the desire to accentuate worthy
rivalries between tribe and tribe produced, by
degrees, emergence of individuality and also of
the civic sense. The more civilised a race be-
came, the more a feeling for home was developed.
But civilisation cannot live on itself, any more
than literature can.

Millions of the best people have been content
to live for home and not to live outside it, but36 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY

gregariousness has not been starved in conse-
quence. School, college, guild—the development
is continuous. Either might provide enough
patriotism for any individual soul to account for
a cosmos. Perhaps civilisation would be more
real, certainly mankind would be a good deal
happier, if we could stop at this; but we cannot.
Patriotism cannot be stagnant. It must respond
to the laws of growth. The groups of which I
have spoken will scatter seeds, Patriotism has

c

been defined as ‘‘a consciousness of nationality
together with the will to realise such nationality
further.” That is pretty good for a scientific
definition. The theme is abstract, and I did not
put this attempt forward for the sake of knock-
ing it down; the positive idea which is implied
is suggestive enough.

But to be more precise, patriotism is in truth
a sense of duty to one’s own people and one’s
own time which will not limit itself to the life in
being but will sacrifice all that life can give to
this duty. In the definition I have cited, I find
there is more excluded than there is admitted.
I find in it small sign of duty; non of sacrifice,
Scientific definitions are rather like flowers frozen
in a block of ice. You break the ice and set the
flowers free; and then they die. I want some-thing less liable to perish in the free air of thought
and conviction. Most of us accepted in youth
the old moral: Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mors. The words, of course, familiar as they
are, may be carped at. Is it always sweet, is it
noble, always, to die for one’s country? Is it
the most fitting of all deaths ? Not so; we can-
not accept the unvarying validity of such a
decree. Nevertheless there have been Roman
deaths, in the fuller sense, in all the years since
Rome was a power, which make such words
infallibly just. And the consensus of reasonable
opinion takes this kind of sacrifice and all it in-
volves as inseparable from the idea of patriotism.
But there is a point at which some of our young
men of to-day will have none of this. In their
caustic discommendation something ‘lies, which
the old notion of patriotism must nerve itself
to meet.

I think it all comes back to the thought of
sacrifice enlarged ; all the more because this is a
matter concerned not nearly so much with death
as it is with life. Our country needs us for the
doing of things which carry with them no par-
ticular honour or joy. There are many common
duties inseparable from the community’s require-
ments. Some of them are highly irksome. But

EoaOuntOLISM AND THE MONARGH Y¥ S/38 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONAKRECETY

there may be pleasure too. We may take the
smooth with the rough.

One juror may smile—another may make a
wry face—when, for his endurance of tedium for
a week, due to the enemies of society, one of his
Majesty’s Judges offers a personally conducted
tour over one of his Majesty’s prisons by way of
recompense for his trouble. It is the smiler who
gets the best of it. The grimacer can be bowed
out of court without ceremony. I take this
trivial instance of sacrifice for duty as a form of
patriotism liable to be indulged in by anybody,
not oblivious of the fact that many thousand of
acts performed daily in our land possess the same
humoursome virtue. But I think our collective
virtue, of a more serious kind, greatly transcends
this. Our sacrifices within living memory, and
for really great causes, have been on the rising
scale. Our own proverbs are above the prover-
bial now. They strike a pean, such as might
have been struck in Athens long ago. And there
has been an increase in all the spheres of interest
involved. To the rank and file, the chance of
performing a patriotic service may come but once
in a lifetime. To others the service itself may be
almost naturally lifelong. There is a vast amount
of unrecognised service astir. Committees thatraeRlLOTioM AND THE MONARCHY 39

care for the blind at home are but shadows of those
greater councils which open the eyes of the world
to our magnified mission wherever the sun of our
influence is shining.

Here is the enlarged patriotism which must
strike every imagination and warm every heart.
That acute observer, Dean Inge, on his return
from America, charged us to remember that
in this vast continent of States patriotism is
taught in every school. Americans enter on life
believing in a patriotic system; and this is the
America which we lost through an excessive
devotion to the idea of nationality. It may be
doubted, however, whether any formal organisa-
tion of our teaching would alter the invincibility
of Britain, as it grows in the average mind through
our temperament, our casual upbringing, or
other form of natural growth. It would seem
that with every setback to our pride we brace our-
selves afresh.

But it is when we look over a widened field and
see things undone, or only partially progressing,
that we are most deeply concerned. Even here
there are some favourable omens. The pageantry
of existence is a fine medium of expansions in
itself. The Earl of Meath saw this, when he
let his ideas of symbolism in action break upon40 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONAKGH*

the country, and spread his thoughts about the
faith of patriotic unity far and wide. And the
Dean inclines to Lord Meath. The Dean’s brief,
which I am happy to hold with him, was engrossed
with an equally important plea. He was speak-
ing up for schemes of settlement overseas. The
congestion of our own country, the pressing need
for the movement of men and families, cannot
fail to attract every spirit that looks forward to
better times. Endurance and sacrifice are not to
be left unconsidered when these ideas are venti-
lated. And it was right to associate herewith
an expression of faith in the British tribal creed
which, ethically speaking, has come to embrace
every nation on earth.

It is not least by those charters of freedom which
now are held unassailable—or else, failing this,
to be defended by us to the death—that the aid
of the individual and of the community are
found to be at one. Those charters are in them-
selves the proof of our extended patriotism. I
do not forget, as I write these words, some draw-
backs, some weaknesses, In the course of a long
and varied experience of the world I have occasion-
ally met specimens of that unwelcome’ intruder
who will praise “every century but this, every
country but his own.” I have been confronted,PoLrkveoLrisM AND-TDHE MONAKGHY At

in the Courts and elsewhere, with individuals and
coteries not unversed in chicanery. But I think
we are discovering daily fresh antidotes, for the
confusion of these poisoners of the wells of
patriotism. And again I look far afield.

The patriotism of which I am thinking most
has an outward show, and it has an inner work-
ing. It chances that appositely enough there
has recently appeared a very remarkable book.
It exemplifies a complete concentration of what
I have been saying here. It professes an un-
bounded belief in those beneficent activities
which have been characteristic of our race; its
pages teem with constructive ability, graceful
writing, and all the manifestations of a fervent
spirit ready to work and suffer. I am speaking
of the late Lord Curzon’s British Government in
India.

That a life is a bigger thing than a book, and
that a man is greater than his work, might well
prove a congenial theme on which to build some
interesting hypotheses and for the enforcing of
certain conclusions, But my readers will be
ready to absorb the moral without effort. Once
more, the triumphs best worth preserving in the
recollection of a race are individual triumphs.
In all the vigorous life of the Marquess Curzon wasA2 PATRIOTISM AND THE MOWSAKC HS

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

i a fine outward show together with a splendid
| inner working. And I commend that example
to all. I make here, of course, no declaration of
Indian policy. Nor will anyone think of such a
H thing as a political secret in connection with a
| subject which declares itself practically identical
| in all its aspects with the light of day. But I
) deem myself happy to have this effulgent example

| before me.
Of the fascinating records which concern so
| many famous personalities, future generations
will judge; but I imagine that these will give
a new lease of life to many memories. Indeed,
} everything we have here considered is repre-
} sented in the services of men who for the most
part were willing exiles. Duty and sacrifice are
\ written on every page. We have analysed those
i two words with sufficiency. We see how, in one
way and another, patriotism is concentrated
; | within them; and strange to relate, as a correc-
tive to national diffuseness, concentration: on
! patriotism is the greatest need of our people
2 | to-day,

 

; But here, as Lord Curzon’s contribution to his
\ fi own fame, even as the book must prove a con-

tribution to the fame of others, so no feature
is more important than an unveiling of person-PAnRLOTISM AND: THE MONARCHY 43

ality. The writer shows the shrouded life in the
highest place. He pictures, again and again,
the difficulty, the isolation of the patriotic soul.
He reveals the secrets of many, not hesitating to
uncover his own. At the root of all this is
patriotism: a man’s love of his country. Am
I going beyond my commission if I urge that the
lesson here given in the highest place is the
lesson most urgently needed for our rank and
file in the interests of individuality as well as of
the highest patriotism? The mantle of the
Secretary of State for India is assuredly broad
enough to cover this appeal. And India, still
requiring service, requires our men.

There are fears, justifiable fears, for those who
are oppressed by circumstances, when venture-
someness in foreign fields is not eagerly accepted.
And yet I do not think that we are deficient in
breed, in many ways, as far as risks are concerned.
Wide is the possible choice, even in these days, for
the young. I would urge every reader of these
lines to take patriotism as some part of his neces-
sary equipment for the rest of his life, whether
the span be long or short in prospect. For those
in youth, there is fascination in change, For
those who have seen and done, there is influence
to be wielded, To those who think of an imperial44 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY

liberty as their guide, the way is clear. True
patriotism can still be employed at home, but
still it beckons from a far distance for the sake

of the future generations.

The recent ill-mannered Clydesdale outbreak
against the Prince of Wales must neither be
taken too seriously nor must it be imputed to the
Labour Party as a whole. In fact, the two most
responsible leaders of that Party, Mr. Ramsay
MacDonald and Mr. Clynes, have shown great
courage in dissociating themselves from the
attitude of their extreme left wing. It is notori-
ous that Mr. J. H. Thomas takes the same view.

The incident would have very little importance
if it did not illustrate in a very convincing manner
how completely démodé the extreme section of the
Labour Party is becoming.

Forty years ago there was an anti-monarchical
section in this country which was potentially
formidable. It numbered among its leaders men
of such conspicuous power as Mr, Joseph Chamber-
Jain and Sir Charles Dilke. Henry Labouchere
was in the same camp. There were moments in
the life of Queen Victoria in which she became
extremely unpopular, and by her temporary
unpopularity gave some encouragement to thosePATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY 45

in this country who were anti-monarchical. The
golden evening of the life of this great lady more
than atoned for the errors of omission, such as
they were, which she committed in the lifelong
stress of a bitter and poignant bereavement.

Then came King Edward. He was extra-
ordinarily human, extraordinarily English, full
of bonhomie, and animated by an intuitive
flaiy which made him completely at home—and,
indeed, a dominating personality—in the com-
pany of very various societies. King Edward
left the Monarchy at least as strong as he found
it, which is a very high tribute if one reflects
for a moment upon the venerable but steady
lustre of Queen Victoria’s declining years.

Of the present King it would be impertinent
to say more than this—that by universal admis-
sion no one has ever sat upon the Throne in this
country who has more conscientiously, stead-
fastly, and laboriously contrived to become the
hereditary President of the destinies of a demo-
cratic country. His influence is and always will
be great in public affairs.

This does not mean that the influence of every
monarch in this country will always be great,
It means that the influence of every monarch will
always be great who not only perfectly under-- “

46 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCHY

stands his own constitutional position, but con-
scientiously adjusts that position to that of the
Prime Minister of the day and to the party which
sustains that Prime Minister in office. It is
sufficient to say upon this matter that no one
has even criticised the King since his accession
to the Throne. He has been always correct ;
he has been always helpful.

The attack upon the Prince of Wales was
particularly stupid, because it fastened upon
the beggarly sum which was to be voted to meet
the expenses of an additional tour to which the
Prince had assented (though it added much to
his formal exertions) upon very warm invitations
from South American Republics,

Every sensible man knows that in our present
industrial stress we have great hope of commercial
development by the increase of trade with the
South American Republics, Everyone but a
Socialist would realise that if we would increase
the goodwill which may lead to better business
it would be wise to send as our Ambassador to
these communities the man whom they will most
gladly and most respectfully welcome.

Oddly enough, they asked for the Prince
of Wales, and not for a Clydesdale member of
Parliament. We should have gladly paid thePoeetiolo hisSM AND DHE MONARCH Y 47

expenses of either, but few of us on the whole
have any doubt as to which will afford the greater
value for the expenditure.

It would be almost as impertinent to speak in
praise of the Prince of Wales as of the King.
But this, perhaps, may be plainly said, that the
Prince combines many of the good qualities of
King Edward with many of the good qualities
of King George. He is brave, human, and abso-
lutely determined not to conceal from his fellow-
countrymen that he looks upon life as a great
complex adventure in which solemn duties must
be fully discharged, but with which, nevertheless,
he is entitled to combine a measure of gaiety and
relaxation.

In my humble judgment, the British people
(taken as a whole) will completely sympathise
with the Prince’s wish that his countrymen shall
understand him as he is, and England likes that
kind of man. He will be not weaker but stronger
in virtue of his determination to make plain, and
pursue without deflection, his own philosophy of
life. For it is defensible, well thought out, and
consonant with the discharge of high public duty.

The real truth is that the British people, in-
cluding, to their great credit, all the leaders of the
Labour Party who count in the estimation of the48 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONARCH

country, are more and more clearly resolved that
the Monarchy is indispensable. It is economical ;
it is completely loyal to the democratic principle ;
it has become more easily and more impressively
the mouthpiece of that principle than any sub-
stitute which could be suggested.

Have those who attack the Monarchy, openly
or covertly, ever considered what position we
should be in if it were suddenly abolished ?
Modern Republics furnish no satisfactory solu-
tion. Even presidencies are somewhat expen-

A a et rey: Pe ser, Noe

sive to maintain, are sometimes filled by unpopu-
lar or disingenuous personalities, and are liable to
become the seats of party chicanery and political

)
| manipulation.
| The great value of an enlightened and wisely
| guided Monarchy, such as the British Empire
: possesses, is that it stands high above faction,
. and is of itself (as was proved during the life of
\} the Labour Government) the surest guarantee of
| stability at times when the nation has failed to
. express itself decisively.
I I Without the House of Windsor something
Lit irreplaceable would be torn from the fabric of
our imperial, civic, and social existence. We
might make Mr, Baldwin our first President, or

Mr. Lloyd George, or even Mr. Ramsay Mac-

ai a .Donald, but the moment we did so we should
introduce controversy into the headship of the
State, and should lose about the only institution
we now possess which stands aloof from the
jealousies and antagonisms that beat about almost
every other institution, except the Judiciary.

The Monarchy is an ancient symbol admirably
adapted to modern practices, It provides the
nation, at home and overseas, with a fund of
interest, romance, and dignity which no alterna-
tive could possibly supply.

And a far more formidable consideration
remains. By the Monarchy, and by the Mon-
archy alone, the Empire can be held together.
What President will exhibit in Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand the inextinguishable prestige
which belongs to him who sits in the seat of the
Norman William, and still brings a mind attuned
alike to the historic traditions of his exalted
rank, and to the democratic problems of a post-
war world? The British Monarchy will endure
until there arises a monarch unworthy to support
its traditions. It might even survive (so great
is its inherent hold upon the nation) such a one.
But we are happily so situate that we need not
even contemplate such a remote contingency.

We may, therefore, wave away the recent
1I—4

Mavi COTrisSM-AND THE MONARCHY 4050 PATRIOTISM AND THE MONAERCHY

feeble demonstration in the House of Commons
as a foolish antic, repelled by the fair and reason-

able sense of the democracies which constitute

this Empire and without whose support this

Empire could not survive.XIT

Sim SIDNEY LEE S ELF OF KING
EDWARD

HIS conscientious biography is as scholarly
and as thorough as those who are familiar

with the artistic craftsmanship of Sir Sidney Lee
would expect. His work is throughout solid,
and it is readable, with qualifications, just as suet
pudding is eatable, with qualifications. One
feels, in other words, in the intervals of reading
it, the need of a change of diet. I read it all
through at one and the same time on a long rail-
way journey and its return; and I am bound to
confess that I found the process difficult and even
a little disciplinary, though the compensations
for such a task are many and ingeniously distri-
buted through the volume.

It is a very discreet book. And, indeed, Sir
Sidney Lee would have been most gravely to
blame if in the lifetime of persons of the highest
consequence he had published anything but
a discreet book. Yet the King Edward whom the
people loved, and who founded the Monarchy

5!a ee Ped, i

 

52 LIEE OF KING EDWAKD

upon a tide of higher national affection and
admiration even than Queen Victoria, was
neither a cold nor an ascetic man. Few particu-
larly likeable people are. The English nation
has never, on the whole, been extremely puritani-
cal. It rallied round the Duke of Wellington ;
it supported Lord Melbourne; it was extremely
appreciative of the eccentricities of Lord Palmer-
ston. King Edward’s greatest charm—and, it
may be added, his greatest gift—was his spon-
taneity, his patience in irksome duties, his tact,
and his bonhomie. He understood the English
people, and the English people understood him.
They treated him, and rightly treated him—for
in cool perspective he justified the view—as a
great King.

He was the loyalest of friends. “I may have,
and have,” he wrote, ‘‘ many faults; but I have
held one great principle in life from which I will
never waver, and that is loyalty to one’s friends,
and defending them when they get into trouble.”

He was not in the least intellectual. In con-
trast with his mother’s there is hardly a letter of
his which exhibits any close or sustained grasp
upon any difficult political question. He thought
indeed with a good instinct but rather in frag-
ments. There is not on record any conversationLIFE OF KING EDWARD 53

with him which I can recall exhibiting him as one
who had mastered the complex details of any
difficult public problem. And yet he had a
quality as elusory as undefinable, which you
might with equal accuracy describe either as
intuition or the power of a general assimilation
which immensely influenced the political fortunes
of this country. The final Life of King Edward
still remains to be written. It is no fault of Sir
Sidney Lee that he has failed to write it. But
it cannot be faithfully rendered in this generation.

The conscientious pages of Sir Sidney Lee make
this at least plain: that no more sweet and ami-
able personality has, in the long and varied
history of the British Crown, been called to the
highest place. His youth must have been quite
terrible. The Prince Consort was a very remark-
able personality. He was even, in a way, a great
man. But perhaps it may be permitted to one
of a later generation to adventure the criticism
that he must have been a very trying father.
He was an incredibly conscientious pedant,
knowing nothing of English youth and its tradi-
tional freedom. From the moment that King
Edward was born to the moment that the Prince
Consort died, the youth was submitted to an
educational and moral régime which few could54 LIFE OF KING EDWARD

have survived without mental and physical col-
lapse. Baron Stockmar did indeed disappear
at the most relevant periods. But his doctrines
and his discipline survived his disappearance.
It is terrible to most of us who have to work out
our own lives, to think of the constant wearing
and uncongenial discipline to which the Prince
of Wales was subjected. If he was not born in
an incubator, he was treated as if he ought to
have been. He was to be screened from the
world ; he was to have eight hours’ work a day
at least browsing disagreeably upon intellectual
problems, which did not in the least interest him,
and which perhaps in his education as a Prince
need not particularly have interested him. He
was allowed no fun. He was to be surrounded
and as it were suffused by the educational influ-
ence of a certain number of middle-aged gentle-
men, whose moral influence must always have
been sound, but whose company cannot always
have satisfied a young and very human boy.
To-day the attitude of the Prince Consort
seems simply incredible. To the Dean of Christ
Church he wrote in 1858: ‘‘ The more I think of
it, the more I see the difficulties of the Prince
being thrown with other young men, and having
to make his selection of acquaintances.’”’ AndLIFE OF KING EDWARD 55

again in 1859, in a passage for which Oxford,
ancient and modern, will thank him: ‘“ The
only use of Oxford is that it is a place for study,
a refuge from the world and its claims.”

I must not be supposed to be giving the final
voice upon the very difficult question of the
degree of freedom which ought to be accorded
to young people of the female sex; but I never-
theless make it perfectly plain that I do not
believe that there is one young débutante of the
present year who would allow her mother to treat
her as King Edward was treated by the Prince
Consort and by Queen Victoria. His sweetness
of disposition, his pliability, his responsibility to
inherited discipline, exhibited him during the
whole of this period in an extremely attractive
and docile light. Very rare were his movements
of revolt. He is expected all the time, under
the swollen programmes of intellectual consump-
tion placed before him, to make a deep assimila-
tion of very difficult and diverse subjects; but
he is not in the least intellectual: he is only
human and intelligent.

And so we find General Bruce, to whom the
Prince was always supremely loyal, faithfully
recording disparaging observations upon the
growth of his pupil’s stature. To me it is amazing56 LIFE OF KING EDWARD

that a boy so educated, so over-tutored, so over-
governed, should have reached a stature so great.
He was brought up secluded from the world.
Except for the very occasional companionship
of a few Eton boys, he was hardly allowed to see
a young man for fear that he might be contami-
nated. He was not allowed to rely upon his own
innate manly qualities to meet and defeat, as all
of us must try to do, the temptations of his age
and sex. Sufficient consideration has not, in my
judgment, been given to the difficulties of his
youth. The Prince Consort was a man academic
in type and character: not in the least in sym-
pathy with the budding dispositions—how diffi-
cult to explain—of a son. The only idea of the
boy’s father was to educate him. And education
meant eight hours a day of General Bruce or of
General Bruce’s equally dogged deputies. So
over and over again we are confronted by General
Bruce’s complaints that the boy is not develop-
ing either in solid knowledge or in learned con-
versation. The truth, of course, is evident.
The Prince of Wales was doomed day by day
and night by night to listen to conversation of
middle-aged men who probably had nothing to
say of absorbing interest to one whose life was
dawning, and who were all talking with a viewLIFE OF KING EDWARD 57

to educating. What a hideous fate! A young
man must always rely for his education upon
older men. But the camouflaged extension of
education to the whole of social life, when all
that a high-spirited temper imperiously calls for
is absolutely denied, is surely intolerable. It is
to the eternal credit of King Edward that he
supported for so long and without apparent
impatience a régime which would have ruined
nineteen out of twenty of the young men whom I
know to-day.

Nor was relief to come with the death of the
Prince Consort, which deeply moved the Prince.
The maintenance of this pia hereditas of tedious,
intensive, and largely futile labour was passion-
ately insisted upon by the Queen, almost, it
seemed, as one more way of demonstrating her
love for her dead husband. The Prince was then
nineteen, of an age to long for, and with a record
of conduct which had deserved, a reasonable

d

freedom. ‘“‘ No human power,” wrote the Queen
to King Leopold, ‘‘ will make me swerve from
what he decided and wished. I apply this par-
ticularly to our children, Bertie, etc., for whose
future he had traced everything so carefully.”’
One cannot help wishing that ‘“‘ Bertie” had dug

his heels in a little at this point. There was a58 LIFE OF KING EDWARD

a limit, after all, to the weapons in a mother’s
il arsenal, even though that mother was a Queen.
¥ Queen Victoria was a very great woman ; but
great men and great women have made mistakes.
: She has become so much a dominating figure of
history that one may say quite plainly that she
made an incredible error in not more closely
. associating her son in the responsibilities of
| government after the death of the Prince Consort.
| To put the matter perfectly plain, she did not
i really quite play her own part in the years
which I am considering; and she would not
| allow the Prince of Wales to play his part.
H And after all, the Queen had loved dancing and
. innocent amusement well enough before her
marriage.
| We have observed that King Edward—as he
was afterwards to become—could not claim that
he was a great statesman or had an extremely
! sophisticated intellect. But those who knew him
L best realised always that he united to an armoury
4! of immense dignity the qualities of a swift and
i intuitive perception. He did not succeed to his
7 || inheritance until he was comparatively old, but
iI when he succeeded he was already a personality
) and not merely a Prince. The British people is

very curious in this respect. It judges slowlyLIFE OF KING EDWARD 59

both of its politicians and of its princes. But,
in a well-known phrase, “‘ It commonly attains
to think right.’”’ King Edward was loved by this
people because he exhibited in his character and
in his life alike their strength and their weakness.
We must not exaggerate, although it was con-
siderable, the part which he played in the state-
craft of his generation. To talk of him as pre-
conceiving, and then of determining, high inter-
national policies would be to use courtier talk.
But he had none the less a robust and extremely
helpful conception of the realities of politics, which
often would have exceeded his ability to define
either the realities or the politics. These observa-
tions do not imply any disparagement. Great
Kings, when they are dead, do not depend upon
flattery. If they have been great as Kings, their
ultimate valuation will depend upon candid and
accurate statement, rather than upon adulation
or sycophancy.

In the conception which I have formed of that
constitutional monarch who most completely
answers to the type of the wise king, I place
King Edward very high. He was, if you choose
to press the point, not at all gifted in the pro-
cesses of abstract thought ; but he had a shrewd
conviction of what the ordinary people of theeo

  

60 LIEE OF KING EDWARD

country were thinking. He was, in fact, a typical
and a characteristic Englishman.

I have in perspective said so much that is
favourable of this important biography that I
may perhaps, without giving offence, call atten-
tion to one or two inaccuracies in the edition
which is before me.

King Edward, for instance, was the great-
grandson of George III, not the grandson, as the
author describes him on p. roo (last line).

The relationship between the Grand Duchess
of Mecklenburg and Queen Alexandra as set out
on p. 120 is surely contradicted by the author’s
own genealogical table.

Nor did Prince Francis of Teck ever command
the Royal Dragoons as stated on p. 676. Asa
lieutenant he was one of the regimental mission
to Berlin, which was headed by the Commanding
Officer, Colonel Tomkinson.

I have not myself noted any other inaccuracies.
The number is not considerable in a large volume
which deals with so many issues of fact. The
book should be judged as a whole, not by slight
and unimportant matter of this kind, but by the
far more vital question, how far does it present
a true and faithful picture of King Edward as heLIFE OF KING EDWA-:RD 61

was? Will a reader who never had the good
fortune to know the King rise from the book with
a reasonably accurate understanding of the man
as he was, with his strength and his weakness ?
On the whole, and subject to the qualifications
already made plain, I think that he will. If
I am right, the author has succeeded in a very
difficult and a very delicate task.

He points out in an interesting passage that a
constant feature may be observed in all King
Edward’s references to books. His letters con-
tain many such references. He hardly ever
says, “‘I have read such a book and my opinion
of it is as follows,’’ He almost always says, “I
must read such and such a book’ 73).0rm . 2
intend to read it.’”’ One is indeed reminded by
the strange and recurrent circumstance of the
remark attributed to Disraeli when an author
presented him with a book. “ Dear Mr.
It is very kind of you to have sent me your book.
I shall lose no time in reading it. Yours ever,
BS Disraeli.”

Mr. Gladstone once said in an epigram, which
was both witty and true, ‘‘ The Prince of Wales
knows everything except what is written in
books,” But it must nevertheless be clearly

 

borne in mind that he was a close and constantaT i EE Si
=~

Se

LIFE OF KING EDWAED

 

62

reader of newspapers. I once heard him say,
“T get all my information from the papers.”
This was on an occasion when he was annoyed
because something appeared in the Press before
he had been advised of it.

The Prince’s knowledge of people and of their
pedigrees, and of their domestic affairs, was so
extraordinary as to be quite uncanny. Both at
home and in France he would often inform his
friends of family and collateral relationships of
which they themselves had little definite know-
ledge.

The author dwells on the Prince of Wales’s
friendship with Delcassé, This suggests an
interesting page of history, and one which the
Prince filled with the accomplishment of a finished
man of the world. The Marquis du Breteuil
once invited him to breakfast. The invitation
was accepted, and his host asked the Prince
whom he would like to meet. ‘ Pray let me
see Delcassé,’’ was the reply. This was the first
meeting between the Prince and the French
Foreign Minister, But the former was not con-
tent with a merely casual acquaintance with one
whom he liked and admired; he used his great
social influence in Paris to link Delcassé up with
French society. The result was not unimportant.LIFE OF KING EDWARD 63

French Government officials and French society
have not always been in warm sympathy. It is,
on the whole, better for the French nation that
the relations between them should be good. The
Prince undoubtedly made a considerable con-
tribution to this result. When he became King
he specially insisted that the members of his
Embassy should cultivate private as well as
official relations with the leading political figures
in France; and in the same way, with a very
interesting thoroughness, he took pains to bring
members of the Napoleon family, such as Prin-
cess Mathilde, into touch with Orleanists and
Ministers of the Republic. It was particularly
noticed, for instance, that at the Embassy he
himself introduced Princess Mathilde to Mme
Waddington, who, as everyone remembers, had
been Ambassadress in London and wrote more
than one volume of very interesting memoirs.
Sir Sidney Lee might, perhaps, have called more
attention to the undoubted physical courage of
King Edward. He was always quite unperturbed.
Since Thackeray dealt faithfully with them, the
eighteenth-century Georges have not had a very
good name in history. But whatever their
demerits may have been, they were all incapable
of fear. In this respect at least King Edward~~

64

   

LIFE OF KING EDWAKOD

was no unworthy son of the House of Hanover.
The idea of personal danger never seemed to occur
to him. On a visit to Brussels an assassin fired
several shots at him as he sat in a railway carriage.
The bullets passed over his head and in disagree-
able proximity to it, as most owners of such a head
would have supposed. The Prince was completely
unmoved, not even rising from his seat, and with
a degree of composure which almost seemed an
affectation resumed the conversation in which
he was engaged. I suspect that there was in
his temperament some easy quality of fatalism.
He was at Cannes, I think in the year 1887, when
the earthquake came. Most people left their
beds and rushed into the streets. The Prince
stayed in his, and resumed his slumbers almost
before the rumbling ceased. I suspect that he
had thought the matter out, or reached a true
conclusion without thinking it out, that he was
as safe in bed as anywhere else. His complete
sang-froid upon this occasion produced no small
impression upon those who were about him.

At this point there occurs to me a matter upon
which a word of not unfriendly criticism may be
said of the book before me. It deals at great
length with many persons, and records most
conscientiously many incidents, But it does not,LIFE OF KING EDWARD 65

I think, do justice to the tact, the personality,
and the social charm of the Princess of Wales,
of that lady whom we knew as Queen Alexandra.
It may be the intention of the author to reserve
his panegyrics for a later volume; but I think
this a mistake, for, in my judgment, this dis-
tinguished lady played a more important part
as Princess of Wales even than as Queen Alexan-
dra. Queen Victoria, so to speak, caught her
very young; and without losing time began to
warn her against any attempt to inoculate the
Prince with Danish prepossessions. The Prin-
cess of Wales never obtruded her natural love and
loyalty for Denmark upon those who were associ-
ated in one way or another with her new life. I
am not even aware of any occasion on which she
expressed indignation at our attitude, neither
very kindly nor very dignified, to Denmark in
1864. Nor do I recall that she ever allowed her
hatred of Prussia to colour her official life,
except that she resolutely refused to go to
Berlin except upon formal occasions when it was
plainly necessary to do so; and in private life she
trod a difficult path with incredible tact, dignity,
charm, and patience. She gained and preserved to
the end the confidence and affection of Queen Vic-

toria, and by her ever-growing popularity rendered
II—5—

66 LIFE OF KING EDWARD

a service to her husband which has not perhaps
received as much public recognition as it deserves.

I recall an instance of the King’s courtesy and
tact as shown to myself when I had first the
honour of being presented to him. He was a
great friend socially of a most delightful lady, the
late Lady Savile, and used frequently to dine at
Lord Savile’s house. After the first General
Election of 1910, when the Liberals lost 100 seats,
their position became difficult and even dangerous,
inasmuch as they were dependent upon the
Irish vote, and serious controversies arose between
themselves and the Irish on the question whether
Home Rule should have precedence in the legisla-
tive programme. So critical did the situation
become that many Cabinet Ministers spoke
openly of the prospect of an early resignation.
In the end, of course, as we all know now, these
differences were composed, but while they were
at their height, and it seemed quite possible that
the Conservatives might be called upon to form a
Government at short notice, it occurred to King
Edward that he had not made the acquaintance
of some of the younger members of the party
who had emerged between the years 1906 and
1910, He accordingly asked Lady Savile to
give a party, and himself suggested almost all theLIFE OF KING EDWARD 67

names of those who should be invited. When
he came into the room, he walked round the
circle shaking hands with those whom he already
knew, while those whom he did not were presented
to him. When it came to my turn, he said:
“ Ah, yes! I read your speeches with growing
interest.’’ This has always seemed to me an
exquisitely polite thing for a great King to say
to a young man. Consider, for instance, the
implication—that he had always been a student
of these efforts and had noted a culmination of
value and interest. The study may have been
imaginative, but it was at least a very kindly
imagination. I was once asked whether I said
anything in reply. I countered with Johnson’s
famous observation after the interview in the
Royal library : “‘ Sir, it was not for me to bandy
compliments with my Sovereign.”

Before closing this note, I turn once again for
a moment to consider the question how far King
Edward really influenced public, and more
particularly, foreign policy. I have already made
it plain that he did not do so in the sense that he
conceived and induced his Ministers to undertake
a scheme of policy which they had not thought
out for themselves. Such a suggestion is treated
as frankly ridiculous by the still surviving memberswe

—

nope sie

68

LEFE OF KING EDWARL

 

of the Government which made the “ Entente.”’
But, whilst this is true, it is none the less the fact
that the King’s broad instincts and intuitions
in the matter of our European interests were
sound. He greatly distrusted and disliked his
nephew, the ex-Kaiser, and saw with unerring
eyes through the veneer of that young man’s
treacherous civilities. I have no doubt that he
discerned very plainly in him, long before others
in this country who had not the same opportunity
of forming a judgment as he, that the Kaiser
was a possible, and even a probable, enemy in the
field. And in another way, the King made a
great contribution. The French people, and par-
ticularly those of them who live in Paris, are very
sensitive to an atmosphere, and swift to discern
and value social charm. The King was un-
doubtedly, for almost all his life, the most popular
Englishman in France. And in this way he made
a very powerful contribution to the growth of a
feeling of real friendliness which greatly simplified
the task of statesmen.

Sir Sidney Lee has laid us all under an obliga-
tion by compelling us once again, in days when
memories are short, to recreate in our minds
the figure of this courteous, charming, con-
scientious, and kindly Englishman.XIII

LORD CURZON AND IN DTA

ORD CURZON’S last work is entitled
i, Bnitish Government in India. Had this
been an expressive title, the present writer could
hardly have reviewed it. But it deals with
everything except politics. History, art, archeo-
logy, architecture—such are the topics on which
Lord Curzon loves to dwell.

The two noble volumes not only furnish us with
a rare literary feast, but in their scope and detail
provide the world with a posthumous exhibition
of Lord Curzon’s amazing industry. When one
remembers his distaste for dictation, his dislike—
perhaps his disability—to delegate to anyone
any of the drudgery of research or compilation,
when one reviews the manifold and multiform
interests which—apart from the cares of high
office—claimed his consideration and in turn
absorbed his attention, one cannot but marvel
at an output demanding the most patient investi-

gation, the closest scrutiny, the most careful
69SF peri na a Sat AN ~ ~~ pans =

 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
   

70 LORD CURZON AND INDTS

sifting, as well as the command of stately language
with which the author was so opulently endowed.

Lord Curzon suggests that British Government
in India is a debt long overdue to India generally,
and to Calcutta in particular. It is a debt which
he constituted for himself when in the enjoyment
of his Viceroyalty, which he has constantly
acknowledged, and which he has ceaselessly
endeavoured to pay. More than a score of years
ago he had begun to collect his cherished material,
but the claims first of public life and then. of
office imperiously asserted themselves, so that the
task of cutting out, piecing together, and colour-
ing the rich stuff he drew into his hands had to
be suspended awhile, resumed with long intervals,
and finally completed in what the author alludes
to—with unconscious pathos—as his odd moments
of leisure.

‘“How do you contrive to do your day’s work
with all its accessories ? ’’ was the puzzled inquiry
of one of his earliest and most intimate friends

ce ,

when “ Foreign Affairs ’’ were specially exacting.
‘‘ By working sixteen hours a day,”’ was the quiet
—and absolutely truthful—reply. Lord Curzon
tells us how in Calcutta he would daily take his
chair in the great south room at Io a.m., and

rarely leave it, with the exception of an hour orhOnD CURZON AND INDIA Ta

so for meals, a public function, or a short private
drive, until 2 a.m. the following morning. Al-
ways when in office the same austere curriculum
was followed in London, except that for the short
private drive was substituted the still shorter
journey between Carlton House Terrace and
Downing Street. Between 8 a.m. and Io p.m.
official and other papers had been closely read
and conscientiously noted, and when at 2 a.m.
the hardly driven body sought—but seldom sank
to—rest, the tireless brain was still functioning
with undiminished vitality. The labours of the
day over were indeed regarded as chiefly valuable
in their relation to the labours of the day to come.
Work was the sum and substance of Lord Cur-
zon’s life: for him, whatever contributed to,
ennobled, and enriched that work must be care-
fully considered; whatever detracted from it
must be ruthlessly rejected. And so one greets
with real pleasure the sentence—penned when
perhaps the pen was just beginning to be loose
in the writer’s hand—that the °
book has been to me far less a labour than a

‘writing of this

recreation,”

India was Lord Curzon’s first love; he told
us so publicly and on more than one occasion ;
his love for her was surely strong till death, for—_

72 LORD CURZON AND INDTA

it is said that with some of the last breath which
fluttered from his lips he instructed those around
him about the pages which he had traced with
little less than the finger of love itself. And now
we learn a delightful secret, for we mark and
learn that it was the alleged correspondence
between his stately home in Derbyshire and the
noble building reared by Lord Mornington which
first fixed his boyish attention on the great Asiatic
Dependency and implanted the desire—if not
the determination—to translate himself sooner
or later from Kedleston in the Midlands to Kedles-
ton in Bengal.

Through his two volumes, from introduction
to index, Lord Curzon moves about among his
facts and figures, his periods and his perrons—
from Clive’s conquests to Lady Canning’s chintzes
—with an ease and intimacy which serve to set
a seal on his accuracy (the date attributed to Lord
Mayo is obviously a printer’s error), and to con-
vince again and again that his affection for his
subject is nurtured by a profound knowledge
Of at;

Roughly, the first volume describes the cir-
cumstances in which lived and moved the emi-
nent persons who are summoned to appear before
us in the second ; the great houses, and the greatLORD CURZON AND INDIA as

rooms within them, are to be accounted of scarcely
less historic interest than their famous occupants.
Lord Curzon understands, and wants his readers
to understand, all the meaning of a room. He
would remind us what notable parts rooms have
played in the drama of history, what scenes of
momentous importance and of lasting interest
have been enacted in them—from the Upper
Chamber at Jerusalem to the Salle des Batailles
at Versailles, from the kitchen where Alfred burnt
the cakes to the railway-carriage where Foch
dismayed the delegates. And yet of a thousand
persons who could put a finger to the date of an
occasion, not ten might certify its venue. It is
in the big room in Government House that Lord
Curzon loved to linger: here Wellesley dictated
haughty replies to the exasperating censures of
the Directors in London ; here Bentinck threshed
out with Macaulay the new scheme of education
which has revolutionised India, and had more
momentous consequences than any decision of
Indian policy during the past century ; here Lord
Auckland bent his head over the agonising news
from Kabul; here Lord Dalhousie penned those
masterly minutes which have been the model
and despair of his successors ; here Lord Dufferin
turned his polished phrases; here Lords Lans-—

74 LORD CURZON AND IN Eis

downe and Roberts planned the strategy of
another Afghan campaign; here, also, though
he does not say it, Lord Curzon imposed his own
imperious will, gave effect to his vision, and drafted
the famous prose upon a higher level than the
most cultured of his predecessors could attain ;
here the most sumptuous of Durbars was con-
ceived ; here Bengal was rent in twain.

The theme of official dwelling-places is, of
course, traced back to the thatched hut where
Job Charnock ‘‘ smoked and drank and did his
huckstering with the natives, and lived with his
native wife, the unconscious forerunner and
father of dominion.” I admit I winced a little
at this; I adhere to my liking for Charnock ;
I would rather dwell on his pluck than hint at his
pilfering. Enough for me that the Directors
spoke of his “ good and faithful service’”’; that
they dubbed him “ honest Mr. Charnock,” and
scarcely qualified their praise in referring to him
as ‘‘ a person that has served us faithfully above
twenty years, and hath never, as we understand,
been a prowler for himself beyond what was just
and modest.’’ And I have always relished the
tradition that Charnock married a young and
lovely Hindu widow whom he had forcibly
dragged from the funeral pile, and by her heLORD CURZON AND INDIA 75

begat several children. Lord Curzon admits the
children, but refuses the marriage lines; in the
baptismal register, he bluntly says, “there is
no mention of the mother’s name, a thing almost
invariably done in the case of legitimate children.”’

The removal of the ancient capital to Delhi was
a draught which Lord Curzon could never allow
himself to swallow. While the circumstances
which attended his resignation are touched on
lightly and without bitterness, his laments on the
translation of the seat of Government are strewn
up and down the pages. “An historic city,” he
murmurs, ‘‘ was deprived of her pride of place” ;
and again, ‘‘The Government of India was
banished to crumbling graveyards.’’ The finance
of India he believed to be still burdened with an
indeterminate charge of many millions; “ there
is hardly an authority on India, English or
Indian, who does not disapprove and deplore the
rapidly formed decision of 1912.” There lies
before the writer a letter from Lord Curzon,
written just when the momentous announcement
had been made; dismay and anger can be traced
on every line—dismay that an irreparable break
should have been made with a noble past, anger
that so large a step should have been taken with-
out consulting—or at least informing —Lorder 2

a

76 LORD CURZON AND InN Gis

Hardinge’s predecessors in office, who would
have urged their opinion, born of experience,
against it.

With his second volume, Lord Curzon beckons
into his arena, and submits for examination,
successive Governors-General and Viceroys, being
careful to explain that the latter title has no
statutory sanction and that the true designation
of the Head of the Indian Government is the
Governor-General. For many of the rulers who
pass under review the reviewer has something
little more than faint praise. There is a modest
disclaimer of any desire to pass “ final judgment ”
on Warren Hastings. Cornwallis has “ quite
mediocre intellectual gifts, but does his best in an
honest, common-sense way.”’ Shore is an “ up-
right, dull, respectable man,” who certainly
found his true home in the Clapham Sect. Ellen-
borough’s errors spring from “lack of self-
restraint and overweening temper.’”’ Dalhousie as
an Imperial administrator and an organiser of
peace is “‘ second to none of the men who have
built the British Empire in the East,” but .. .
In spite of the ‘‘ buts’ Dalhousie seems to share
with Lord Canning Lord Curzon’s loftiest tributes.

Lord Curzon’s keen sense of humour, a quality
with which his obituary notices were slow toLORD CURZON AND INDIA 77

credit him, is especially pungent in his exposure
of Lord Wellesley’s pomps and vanities, his
public peculiarities and private peccadilloes,
which, however, do not prevent his being “ actu-
ated in all that he did or planned in India by the
highest sense of duty, always operating, however,
as a gracious dispensation from a benign Provi-
dence.’’ Curiously enough, Lord Curzon does
not illustrate his just condemnation of the pre-
sence of Lord Hardinge with Lord Gough’s army
by quoting the letter of Colonel Wellesley, who
with fraternal frankness wrote to the Governor-
General in 1799: ‘‘ Your presence in the camp,
instead of giving confidence to the General, would,
in fact, deprive him of the command of the army.
If I were in General Harris’s situation, and you
joined the army, I should leave it.”

In his note on Lord Hastings—‘ an excellent
and hard-working ruler’’—we learn that the
disasters on the Turf of his spendthrift grandson
were among the most vivid recollections of Lord
Curzon’s childhood. Hermit’s victory in the
Derby, which caused Lord Hastings’ financial
crash, and induced his untimely death, was scored
when Lord Curzon was eight years old—surely
a tender age at which to take an interest in racing,
a sport to which Lord Curzon, as an adult, was78 LORD CURZON AND INDIA

a total stranger. Lord Curzon also alludes to
the cruel treatment meted out to Lady Flora
Hastings. Queen Victoria excused herself on
that occasion on the plea of her own extreme
youth. The same pretext could not have been
used with regard to the Sovereign’s hostile atti-
tude to the daughter of Lord Dalhousie.

iif Lord Lawrence is not one of Lord Curzon’s
it favourites ; perhaps because the one was a good
tA deal what the other most definitely was not.
, Lawrence was rough in manner and often almost
rugged in dress; he was intolerant in debate,
destitute of oratory, and poorly equipped with
| learning, though he spoke Hindustani fluently,
| if incorrectly. His personal economy was ex-
treme, though he was generous to a fault in
charity ; in his religion, which he rigidly practised,
he was a professed and profound Evangelical.
Lord Curzon was not blind to Lawrence’s “ super-
lative services,” but sums up his tenure of office
‘undesirability of rais-

‘

as an illustration of the

ing even the most eminent of Indian civilians

| to the Vice-regal throne.”

r | . Sir Bartle Frere Lord Curzon dismisses with a

Wii) scornful back-hander as Lawrence’s “ capable
Pte but unruly subordinate.” With subordinates—

always excepting private secretaries—Lord Cur-LORD CURZON AND INDIA 79

zon has little concern. Of fierce capability there
can be but little doubt ; of his unruliness there
is little evidence to adduce. The two men
differed as to frontier policy. Lawrence above all
deprecated any line of policy which might give
needless offence to Russia; Frere sought to
secure a definite and friendly relation with the
Afghan, and pointed to the danger of a territory
under Russian influence permeated by Russian
agents, while an English envoy could not show
his face over our border. There never arose any
shadow of dispute between the two as to any
action on Frere’s part, and their discussions were
confined chiefly to finance, which Lawrence’s
secretariat had centralised to a hitherto unknown
point. Their personal relations were wholly
cordial, and though politeness was not a weapon
in Lawrence’s armoury, Frere could write that
“Sir John is officially as civil to me as to anyone
who does not belong to the Punjab or to the
County of Delhi or to Exeter Hall.”

Opinions may differ as to the merits and value
of the portraits which Lord Curzon hangs before
our eyes; there can be little reproach to be
thrown on his background with its wealth of
sober hues, its skilful shadows, its correctitude
of order. And in that background there towers80 LORD CURZON AND INDES

the figure of Lord Curzon himself, majestic in
mien, magnificent in gesture, magniloquent in
phrase, facile princeps among the rulers of India ;
infallible in pronouncement, irrefutable in argu-
ment, and withal an historian who can draft a
history intense with interest and weighty in
worth, and present it in the guise of a delightful
narrative.

For the purposes of his biography of Lord
Curzon, Lord Ronaldshay who, it is believed, has
already made so much progress in a work which
he is specially qualified to perform, will find to
his hand a continuous series of official and private
papers arranged “in a wonderful order,’’ and
carpeting all the ground which he will have to
traverse. He will have much to examine and
to sift; perhaps much to reject; there will be
little to mask and nothing to conceal. The writer
must not be hurried in his task, and if it is well
done there will emerge, though the breezes of
controversy may blow for a while, a statesman to
whom will surely be accorded a profound salute.
But the historian, when he approaches an out-
standing period before addressing himself to
unpublished documents, may perhaps skim
through two volumes—one stout and the other
slender—which take diametrically opposite viewsLORD CURZON AND INDIA 81

of Lord Curzon in India. ‘‘ Look on this picture
and on that.”

Mr. Lovat Fraser, in his India under Lord
Curzon, and After, was perhaps suffering from a
touch of (what Macaulay might have called)
“ lues Curzoniana ’’—though his later utterances
suggest that Mr. Fraser had completely shaken
it off. The eulogy is consistent, almost to mono-
tony; Lord Curzon’s merits are all his own;
his mistakes, if such could be charged to him,
would be due to his subordinates or his surround-
ings ; roses are strewn all the way ; Lord Curzon
is escorted by his chronicler to a pinnacle from
which he is bidden to look down alike on his
predecessors and on posterity,

On the other hand, a writer veiled as Twenty-
eight Years in India, in an open letter to Lord
Rosebery, which he pleasantly entitled ‘‘ Lord
Curzon’s Failure,’ would tear Lord Curzon’s
work in India to shreds and cast the pieces on the
dust-heap. What Lord Rosebery thought of the
letter—perhaps, as it was an open one, it never
reached him—has never transpired, but the public,
for whom it was intended, probably recognised in
Mr, Lovat Fraser’s output, after allowing due
discount for obvious partisanship, a more reliable

and certainly more readable record of an appoint-
1i—082 LORD CURZON AND INDTA

ment made by Queen Victoria and resigned—
to that monarch’s infinite regret—into the hands
of King Edward.

It may be at once too early and too late for
anyone to deal exhaustively with all that Lord
Curzon planned and performed in India, but the
careful reader of the two fine volumes now on
every well-furnished library shelf will recognise
that in nominating an Under-Secretary for Foreign
Affairs to succeed Lord Elgin, Lord Salisbury
made up his mind to match a big man with a big
opportunity.

‘“ Remember,” said Queen Victoria to the out-
going Ambassadress in 1893, ‘“‘ that my last two
Ambassadors in Paris have both been Viceroys
in India, the highest post a British subject can
occupy.” The remark contained, of course, a
delicate unofficial hint that the British Sovereign
expected a suitable choice to be made in the matter
of a successor to Monsieur Waddington; it was
meant also to remind the peoples of Europe what
that august and astute lady considered the finest
jewel in her Imperial crown. No one knew
better than the venerable Queen, with all her
simple tastes and dowdy habiliments, the meaning
of the word “splendour,” and “splendid ” was
an epithet which could never be detached from theLORD CURZON AND INDIA 83

man whom in 1808 she selected to represent her
—and to carry out her very precise wishes—in
her Indian Empire. Seven hundred thousand
square miles and a hundred and twenty-four
million souls had been brought under her direct
sway ; her life was closing, and the next nomina-
tion of an Indian pro-Consul would scarcely be
hers; she brought her long experience and her
personal love for India to bear on the names which
were submitted, and, with little hesitation,
declared in favour of a comparatively young man,
with whom and whose family she had little, if
any, acquaintance. Ample justification can be
shown for her choice. Whatever Lord Curzon
was not, he was a great deal more than a great
Viceroy. To the conscientiousness of Lord Can-
ning, the sagacity inherent in both Lords Elgin,
the courage of Lord Lawrence, the faculty of
exciting enthusiasm which marked Lord Mayo,
the dignity and sense of art of which Lord North-
brook gave abundant proof, the sheer hard work
of Lord Ripon, the literary qualities and resource-
fulness of Lord Lytton, the statesmanship of Lord
Dufferin, and the diplomacy bred-in-the-bone
of Lord Lansdowne, Lord Curzon added the fire
of his own genius. He seems to have summed
up in himself the qualities of all his prede-84 LORD CURZON AND INDTA

cessors, and to have been splendid beyond them
all; splendid in appearance, splendid in out-
look, splendid in open-handedness, splendid in
oratory, splendid in success, and, on rare occasions,
equally splendid in failure.

It is in no part of this paper to attempt
any review of a famous rule, but it is possible
just to draw attention to two or three very
human measures which the ruler instituted with
infinite care and regarded as his largest legacies.
Lord Curzon’s educational reforms, his land
revenue policy, and his care for agriculture were
all of the first-rate importance, and they must
not in the flux of time be allowed to escape from
their sponsorship. The land question, in a
country where nine-tenths of the population is
rural, lies at the back of almost every other
question, and, in a word, the question which
Lord Curzon set himself to answer was not as to
how the local Governments could get in their
money, but as to how the condition of the people
could be bettered, and how agriculture could be
developed on right and reasonable lines for their
benefit,

Of agriculture Lord Curzon personally knew
little ; he had taken no part in the management
of his paternal estates; he had enjoyed littleEORD CURZON AND INDIA 85

experience of country life ; his own life had been
that of a traveller and a dweller in cities; and
there is something of pathos in the reflection
that he was hesitating whether—when his official
career should close—he would take up residence
in Oxford as Chancellor of the University, or
go back to the land and devote himself wholly
to his interests in Derbyshire—the latter alterna-
tive finding favour in his eyes. But he knew that
without intelligence and science, agriculture
must languish, and while merely leading the
ryot to better, if still quite simple, methods, he
lifted the craft itself on to a far higher level in
India than it had before reached. He created an
Imperial Agricultural Department, and gave it
in charge of an Inspector-General; he exalted
and expanded the agricultural service ; he sought
advice from Europe, and summoned experts to
put it into effect; he encouraged experimental
farms ; he did all he could for Indian cotton and
Indian cattle. With the {£30,000 which was
given to him absolutely for the good of the Indian
people, he founded the Research Laboratory, from
which rose the Agricultural College at Pusa.

In the region of education Lord Curzon was
treading on familiar ground, and the education
for which he pronounced, and which he strovea

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86 LORD CURZON AND IN OLA

to promulgate, was education as he always saw
it, quite distinct from mere instruction ; for him
“how to learn” always took precedence of
“what to learn.” Yet perhaps in no other
department than this did the winds of hostility
whistle more shrilly in his teeth. He was nothing
daunted, and it may surely be claimed for him
that he weathered, with head held high, the storm
of criticism which assailed him from those who had
regarded education as a close preserve, that he
improved every section of the educational system,
that he set the Universities to work out their own
salvation, and that he sought to give to the
humblest of his Sovereign’s Indian subjects a
chance of judging things some day for them-
selves.

Less than anything else would it be seemly
or suitable to comment on the battle royal which
raged about the subject of military administra-
tion—except, in justice to Lord Curzon’s many
friends in the Government of that day, to remind
oneself that his resignation was due not to the
main ruling of the Cabinet on the matter of Dual
Control, but to their refusal to appoint his nominee
to the newly constituted post of Supply Member.

Two thoughts in connection with this subject
often appeal to me, and always seem to reflectLORD CURZON AND INDIA 87

on the largeness of Lord Curzon’s character.
When he first proceeded to India it was a matter
of common knowledge—and none knew it better
than himself—that the military house required
a great deal of setting in order.

“‘T do not conceal from you,”’ he wrote in 1900,
“that there are many respects in which Army
Administration in India seems to be capable of
great reform. I see absurd and uncontrolled
expenditure; I observe a lack of method and
system; I detect slackness and jobbery ; I
lament, in some respects, a want of fibre and
tone.” Something less than a really great man
might well have chosen the military instruments
he had to his hand to carry out a task of Imperial
importance, and thus secure for himself, as direc-
tor of their labours, a good deal of military
credit. Lord Curzon preferred to wait—and to
wait for two years—until the man should be
available who, as he believed, was pre-eminently
capable of effectively renumbering, reorganising,
and redistributing the Indian Forces of the
Crown.

And in the years which followed Lord Kitchener’s
tragic death there must have presented themselves
many occasions on which Lord Curzon could

quite aptly have represented his own case in theSS

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88 LORD CURZON AND INDIA

controversy of 1905 in a light wholly favourable
to himself, On the technical points—as on any
other where he was known to have differed
sharply from Lord Kitchener—he was always and
altogether silent ; on all other matters he was
eager and forward to record his unstinted eulogy
of a great Patriot.

There will be, perhaps, some like myself who,
as they lay down the story of British Government
in India, will turn back to re-read a glowing
passage which seems to expose in a moment the
writer’s constant search after Beauty, wherever,
and however simply, Beauty can be found.
“ Neither, even at this distance of time,” he writes,
“is it possible to forget the solemn pageantry of
the evening, as we returned by the river bank,
in the fading twilight, when, through a pall of
mist and smoke, the tall mists and spars of the
big sailing ships made patterns in ink against
the sky, when the newly lit street-lamps twinkled
like fire-flies along the Strand, and amid the
gathering gloom the crimson sun sank down to
his grave in the black and rushing waters.”

And there may be many who, musing over a
life so tense with interest, so sparkling with
enthusiasm, so rich in result, will feel sure that
Lord Curzon belongs to that category of publicLORD CURZON AND INDIA 89

men who will grow and grow in stature as they

recede further and further into history; nay,

more, that he may perhaps be classed with those
servants of the Crown—to whom all our history
points—who spend their lives in the service of
the country, and to whom their country only
does full justice long after they have passed away.XIV

THE TRUTH ABOUT : MARGOT

,

ASQUITH

ADY OXFORD—for so we must in these
L days describe the lady who was so well
known, first as Margot Tennant and afterwards
as Mrs. Asquith—has published another book,
consisting, indeed, in the main of new material,
but very similar in its outlook and range to her
well-known Autobiography. The place in litera-
ture of this kind of contemporary gossip, reminis-
cence, personal valuations—give it whatever name
you like—is very difficult to determine. When
it is extraordinarily well done its permanent
place in the literature of the period is assured ;
for it will illustrate habits, manners, and morals
in a manner which will both enrich and humanise
the labours of graver historians hereafter.

The Diary of Pepys will always, of course,
furnish the classic illustration of this truth.
But to generalise from the case of Pepys would
evidently be absurd ; for he wrote down every-

thing that came into his mind simply because
goTRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITE ~. Or

he believed that his cipher was undecipherable.
The Diary of Evelyn is of almost equal contem-
porary interest ; and it is a truer illustration of
the possible value of this kind of writing, when
carried out conscientiously and with sincerity,
than the Diary of Pepys, because it was compiled
in the certain conviction that it would never be
read. The Greville Memoirs, though Greville
painted upon a larger canvas with a graver and
more responsible brush than that of Lady Oxford,
afford perhaps the nearest parallel to the class of
literature which I am making a superficial attempt
to examine.

Let me, however, make my view plain that
when the last criticism has been uttered, and the
last disparagement made, the books of Lady
Oxford will survive and will afford much useful
guidance to the historian of the future, both as
to what did happen and as to what did not happen
in her day and generation.

She is very clever and very vivacious, if an
intensely egotistical lady. She writes of Mr.
Winston Churchill (in effect) that no man can be
a competent navigator who only looks at a single
star. Surely for Lady Oxford, the authoress of
so many works the central and dominating
personality of which she has herself been, to utter92 TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH”

such a taunt must require all that fortitude which
we know her to possess. But the egotism in her
case is not merely personal, though the personal
element looms very large. She is like a lioness
fighting for herself, her husband, and her children.
Her egotism attempts to fling itself round all of
them as resolutely as it is used to enlarge and
render important her own personality. And yet
no one can read these pages, or any which she has
written, without realising that, in spite of all the
egotism and the occasional indiscretions, the
authoress of this book is a warm-hearted woman,
very acute in observation, very swift in compre-
hension, very tenacious of friendship, very mind-
ful of injury sustained.

There is something positively naive about the
conviction perpetually recurring—almost on every
page—that everything relating to herself must
necessarily interest every reader. As a matter
of fact, in conversation Lady Oxford is always
most delightful. She talks sympathetically,
intelligently, and acutely about the great people
whom she has known so well, often enlisting the
“ ego ”’ only so far as to draw upon her own vivid
and almost unmatched narrative powers, She
has, indeed, known, I suppose, for a period of
thirty-five years almost everyone who has playedTRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH’ 93

a great part in English life. The accuracy of
many of her autobiographical stories has been
impeached from time to time in many authorita-
tive quarters. But whether her recollection has
in some cases played her false or not, it is un-
questionably true that, with her pen in her hand,
Lady Oxford is quite incapable of being dull.

The most astonishing thing in the book and the
most inexplicable is undoubtedly to be found in
Lady Oxford’s references to Mr. Lloyd George.
At the time when the book appeared, the Liberal
Party, as we all know, was reunited. Lady
Oxford, as far as she was concerned, put the
public stamp upon this happily regained unity
by walking on to a Liberal platform arm-in-arm
with Mr. Lloyd George. Mr. Lloyd George, after
a record of incomparable public distinction, what-
ever errors he has committed—and others have
committed errors, too—was now the leader of the
Liberal Party in the House of Commons. And
yet I find Lady Oxford writing in her book :

‘An intelligent Frenchman asked me if the
British had much ill-feeling against the French,
and if there is anyone left who believes in Mr.
Lloyd George.

‘‘T answered that Mr. Lloyd George’s absence
of political principle, incapacity of straight deal-94 TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH”

ing, and pathetic ignorance of foreign affairs
had brought a dazzling career into seclusion.”’

Many people will express themselves in differ-
ent terms, either of praise or censure, in the
attempt to measure Mr. Lloyd George’s career
as a whole. He is, I believe, acknowledged by
the general body of his fellow-countrymen to have
rendered brilliant and unforgettable service in the
darkest days which this country has confronted
since the Napoleonic wars. He has received in
generous recognition of his exertions the freedom
of about thirty English cities. He was now, if I
understand the exiguous politics of what remains
of the Liberal Party aright, the second in com-
mand under Lord Oxford. And at this moment
Lady Oxford publishes to the world this estimate
of Lord Oxford’s principal lieutenant and repre-
sentative in the House of Commons. I do not
profess to understand these things.

It is perhaps unfair to treat Lady Oxford’s
politics too seriously ; for she has never had, with
all her gifts, any coherent outlook upon the
political world, in broad or philosophic perspec-
tive. She has always been far too volatile. She
has always looked upon the political world
through the eyes of an intense egotism; or at
least through the eyes of those political personali-TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH 95

ties with whom she has been at the moment
associated, and whom she has supposed to be
necessary to her immediate political purposes.
She rejoices, for instance, at the fall of the Coali-
tion, not because she had made any sober calcula-
tion as to whether that fall could advance the
Liberal cause, but because it publicly stilettoed
one whom she deemed an implacable enemy of
Lord Oxford, and one whose spectacular and
actual successes had been as gall and wormwood
to her for a period of years.

I do not carry this particular reflection further,
because it is ungenerous to probe too deeply into
the dissensions of a party which has perished
because it founded itself upon a false philosophy.
At the present moment I do not know how many
follow Lord Oxford, Mr. Lloyd George, Sir John
Simon, Mr. Runciman, and Captain Guest. I
suppose that I should strike a generous average
if I gave them eight followers apiece in the
House of Commons. And really, in the face
of this ludicrous result, and in spite of all the
friendship and admiration which I have for Lady
Oxford; I must be allowed to say quite plainly
that it ill becomes those who have shattered
into fragments the superb majority which they
inherited from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman96 TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASGULIE

to speak and write in terms of such intellectual
contempt of their opponents. Lady Oxford
writes, for instance, very contemptuously of
“ Birkenhead, Churchill, and Co.’’ The firm so
described may have been a good one or a bad
one, but it is, after all, still carrying on business.
Lady Oxford’s firm—she will forgive me for
making the matter quite plain—is in very dis-
creditable liquidation.

The real truth is that Lady Oxford’s book is
far more interesting when she deals with social
or personal matters than with questions of high
politics. In such affairs she is a shrewd, viva-
cious and animated observer; high politics she
never understood, or at least always failed to
disentangle them from an atmosphere of per-
sonalities, She had, indeed, a sense of humour ;
but she sometimes seems determined to make
us forget it. For instance (on p, 223), she says,
quoting a phrase of mine:

‘There are some ‘ glittering prizes’ not worth
having, and leaders, however brilliant, are apt
to become ridiculous, if not extinct, when they
are sure of neither their gold nor their followers.”

How is it possible that a tactful woman of the
world can have used such an expression without
perceiving its ironic reactions upon her and hers ?TRUTH ABOUT “MARGOT ASQUITH 97

It is, in truth, upon the joze de vivre, the vivacity,
and the indestructible youth of Lady Oxford
that posterity will concentrate. She is often
indiscreet; her judgment, except upon per-
sonalities, is often wrong; but she has a broad
philosophy of life which will appeal to many if
it repels others. ‘‘ A horse to ride: a book to
read: a sun to make love in!” Such, she
decides, are the most important things in life.
If it be the right horse, the right book, the right
person to make love to, even a stickler for pleasure
might compromise at least upon this point with
Lady Oxford.XV
ELOQUENCE

T is easier to understand the meaning of
he... than to define it, Johnson in his
dictionary describes it as “‘ the power of speaking
with fluency and elegance,’’ while the New English
Dictionary adds ‘force and appropriateness ’
to this. The ancients, and it is of them I am

writing here, leaving classical British and modern

?

eloquence for later consideration, fully realised the
difficulty of definition. Quintilian, the Roman
orator, collected the principal Greek and Roman
attempts to solve the problem, ‘ What is elo-
quence ?’”’ he asked. Some, he says, defined it
as the art of persuasion. This is indeed Plato's
view. But, argues Quintilian, ‘ money too per-
suades, and influence, and the authority and
importance of the speaker,’’ and so also may a
trick. He recalls the pleader who tore open his
client’s robe and disclosed his honourable scars,
thus securing an acquittal by the patriotic jury.
There was also the man, impeached by Cato, who

successfully brought his children into court as
98ELOQUENCE 99

mute appeals for mercy, a practice not unknown
in various forms in modern times. And the divine
Phryne, accused of impiety, unveiled her bosom
and was at once set free by the impressionable
judges. Was Phryne eloquent ? asks Quintilian.

Aristotle, he continues, defined eloquence as
“leading men by speech to do what the speaker
desires.” To this Quintilian objects that harlots,
flatterers, and seducers also must on this basis
be considered eloquent. He mentions other
definitions—‘‘ the ability to discover persuasive

arguments,” “‘ the art of speaking,” “the art of
deceiving,’ “skill in giving pleasure,’’ and so
forth.

Then, summing up, he offers his own version.
Eloquence, he says, is the science of speaking
well, This, he explains, makes it necessary for
the speaker himself to be good, “‘ for only a good
man can speak well.”

Gratifying as is this identification of eloquence
with virtue, it seems to be inconclusive. I re-
member the classical example of Hegesias of Cyrene,
who declaimed so effectively on the miseries of life
that many of his audience hurried away to com-
mit suicide. It would surely be wrong to call
Hegesias virtuous, but I think we must admit
his eloquence.oes

a

Ste ee aa

Sees

a a re

St ens

I0O ELOQUENGE

Aristotle’s definition, that eloquence is the
art of persuasive speech, comes perhaps nearest
the truth. If indeed this would include harlots
and seducers, we must take comfort in the thought
that the Devil is known to quote Scripture for
his own ends; my legal and political experience,
moreover, convinces me that the Devil can be
very eloquent on occasion.

I should weary my readers if I examined in too
great detail the principles upon which the classical
orators based their art. Examples will show
these more effectively. I may, however, quote
an admirable remark of Cicero, the most eloquent
of all the Romans. ‘‘ He is the best speaker,”
he said, “ who by his speaking instructs, delights,
and affects the minds of his audience.’’ Let us
see how the greatest speakers of those days put
this precept into practice.

Pericles, the Athenian, has been famous for
his eloquence from his own generation to ours.
There is a story of a man who was asked whether
he or Pericles was the better wrestler. He replied
that he could always throw Pericles to the ground,
but the latter would rise, deny that he had fallen,
and do this so effectively that even the specta-
tors would believe him. We have unfortunately
no first-hand record of Pericles’s speeches, butELOQUENCE IOI

the words Thucydides, the historian, put into his
mouth were probably founded upon constant
tradition. If it is asserted that Thucydides, and
not Pericles, is their real author, I can only echo
the Frenchman who was told that not Voltaire but
some anonymous playwright had written Zaire.
‘““So much the better,’’ he said; ‘‘ we have two

”

geniuses instead of one.’ There are few finer pass-

ages of eloquence than this in Pericles’s famous
funeral oration over the Athenian dead:

‘‘The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous
men; not only are they commemorated by
columns and inscriptions in their own country,
but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten
memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the
hearts of men.”’}

Comparison with this speech is challenged by
Lycurgus’s eulogy of the Athenians who perished
at the disastrous battle of Cheroneia. It ends

as follows:

“These men were victorious in death. To
brave men the prizes of war are freedom and
valour ; both of these the dead may possess. .. .
Alone of all in Greece these men had freedom
in their bodies; for, as they passed from life,
all Greece passed into slavery ; the freedom of the

1 Jowett’s translation.—

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
   

ee ee a rete

       
 
 
  
 
 

I02 ELOQUENCE

rest of the Greeks was buried in the same tombs
with their bodies. . . . Their souls are the gar-
land on the brows of their country.” }

The same defeat, which set Greece at the feet
of the Macedonians, was the occasion for one of
the finest images of ancient eloquence. Hy-
perides was impeached for having proposed an
illegal measure. He replied, “‘ The arms of Mace-
don made it too dark to see the laws; not I but
the battle of Cheroneia proposed that decree.”

The most consistently eloquent of the Greek
orators were Isocrates and Demosthenes. An
ancient critic drew an apt comparison between
them. When he read Isocrates, he said, he
became sober and serious, as if he were listening
to solemn music, but when he took up a speech
of Demosthenes he was moved by one passion
after another: suspicion, distress, fear, contempt,
hate, pity, kindliness, anger, and envy—all the
emotions that can obtain a mastery of the human
mind. Isocrates never spoke in public; his
speeches were written for others to deliver or to
read. He was, indeed, the first great political
journalist ; his opposite number might well have
been Mr. Garvin. Demosthenes, however, essayed
the bigger task of swaying an audience; his

1 Dobson’s translation, slightly modified.ELOQUENCE 103

greatest eloquence was expended in appeals
to his countrymen to take arms against the
Macedonian invaders :

‘As long as the vessel is safe, whether it be
great or small, the mariner, the pilot, every man
in turn, should exert himself and prevent its being
overturned either by accident or design: but
when the sea has rolled over it, their efforts are
vain. .. . Though all other people consent to
be slaves, we at least ought to struggle for freedom.
When we have completed our own preparations
and made them apparent to the Greeks, then let
us invite the rest. . . .

“Tf you imagine that other States will save
Greece, while you run away from the contest,
you imagine wrong. Well for any of them, if
they are safe themselves. This work belongs to
you: this privilege your ancestors bequeathed
to you, the prize of many perilous exertions.
But if every man sits seeking his pleasure and
studying to be idle himself, never will he find
others to do his work.”

We miss in this, of course, the verbal glory of
the original; no translation could render it.
But in the following passage, where Demosthenes
introduces the names of battles famous in Athenian
history, we may catch a faint echo of his words :

‘Never, never can you have done wrong, O
Athenians, in undertaking battle for the freedom
and safety of all! I swear it by your forefathers104 ELOQUENCE

—those who met the peril at Marathon, those
who took the field at Platza, those in the sea-fight
at Salamis, and those at Artemisium, and many
other brave men.”’ 2

Of all the Roman orators, Cicero approached
most nearly to the eloquence of his beloved
Greeks. The Roman spirit is nearer to our own,
its vocabulary more akin to ours. When we read
the famous opening to his first oration against
Catiline, its thunder breaks upon us almost as
it did upon the anxious senators who heard it:

“How far wilt thou, O Catiline, abuse our
patience ? How long shall thy madness outbrave
our justice? To what extremities art thou
resolved to push thy unbridled insolence of guilt ?
Canst thou behold the nocturnal arms that watch
the Palatine, the guards of the city, the con-
sternation of the citizens, all the wise and worthy
crowding for consultation, this impregnable situa-
tion, and the reproachful looks of the Roman
fathers—canst thou, I say, behold all this and yet
remain undaunted and unabashed ? ”’?

The effect of this oration was to drive Catiline
out of Rome, but Cicero held to the attack :
“ He has gone, he has vanished, he has escaped,

he has sailed forth, No longer now shall that

1 Kennedy’s translation, slightly modified.
* Guthrie’s translation,ELOQUENCE 105

prodigy, that monster of men, scheme the ruin
of the city, while she harbours him in her
bosom. .. -

“T hold in utter contempt his army, composed
of aged despair, of clownish debauchery, and
rustic intemperance; of men who rather chose
to fly from their bail than from their army, of
fellows so unfit to stand the look of an enemy that
they would tremble should one show them the
writ of a magistrate.”

There are, I believe, people who suppose that
classical oratory consisted of solemn verbosity
interspersed with such “ purple patches” as I
have quoted. But in fact the old speakers
appealed to their audience's sense of humour as
readily as do those of our own day. There are
few more amusing passages than that in which
Cicero, to teach his opponent modesty, relates
how he himself was once humiliated. He had
been questor of the Lilybeum district of Sicily,
and imagined his work there was the common

talk of all his countrymen.

“It happened that on my way back I arrived
at Puteoli, just at the season when the place was
thronged with fashionable people ; and I nearly
swooned when someone asked me on what day I
had left Rome, and whether there was any news.
When I replied that I was on my way back from106 ELOQUENCE

my province, he said, ‘ Why, of course, you come
from Africa, don’t you ?’

““* No,’ I answered somewhat coolly, for I was
now in high dudgeon. ‘I come from Sicily.’
Thereupon another of the party interposed with
an omniscient air, ‘ What, don’t you know that
your friend has been questor at Syracuse ?’
To cut my story short, I dropped the dudgeon,
and made myself just one of those who had come
for the waters.’’}

Punning was another means by which classical
authors introduced light relief into their dis-
courses ; but I shall not try to render any of their
efforts into English, Among the Greeks the
most scandalous imputations against opponents
and their forbears were a usual means of brighten-
ing aspeech. We find Demosthenes, for example,
in one of his most earnest orations, inveighing
against his opponent in this fashion :

“I am at no loss for materials concerning you
and your family, but am in doubt which to men-
tion first—whether how your father was a servant
who kept a reading-school and wore a weight of
fetters and a thieves’ collar round his neck; or
how your mother reared up you, you beautiful
statue, you fine third-rate actor ; or how Phormio,
the galley-piper, the slave, took her away.”

1 Watts’s translation.ELOQUENCE 107

“IT am ashamed to mention the name of my
adversary,’ remarked Andocides pleasantly in
one of his speeches; “his father is a branded
slave and still works in the Public Mint ; he him-
self is a foreigner, a barbarian, and a lamp-
maker ! ”’

The neatest example of true humour, however,
in the old orators is, in my opinion, the reply of
Hyperides, defending a lady whose accuser had
minutely described the torments of the hell that
was awaiting her. ‘‘ How is my client to blame,”’
asked Hyperides, ‘‘ for the fact that a stone hangs
over the head of Tantalus?” I see in imagina-
tion the stern faces of the Athenian judges break-
ing into smiles and hear the sound of their laughter,
amidst which the solemn pleading and prophetic
threats of the prosecution are dissipated and

utterly forgotten.

Since the ancients laid down their rules of
eloquence, the invention of printing has raised
a new problem. May the title of eloquence be
given to what is written as well as to what is
spoken? May a book or an article be called
eloquent in the same sense that a speech is ? The
problem is really much older, for many of the
most eloquent passages in ancient orations have108 ELOQUENCE

come down to us, not in the form in which they
were originally delivered, but as their author
afterwards decided, in the leisurely reflection of
his study, that they should have been spoken.
It is, for example, on record that Cicero’s veiled
defiance of Pompey, when the senate was packed
with troops for the trial of Milo, was written, or
at least made public, after the event. On the
occasion itself Cicero was very nervous and broke
down ignominiously.

A more modern instance of a similar kind is
the elder Pitt’s reply to Walpole in the House of
Commons, when the latter taunted him with his
youth. We all know it as follows :

“The atrocious crime of being a young man,
which the honourable gentleman has with such
spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall
neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content
myself with wishing that I may be one of those
whose folly may cease with their youth, and
not of that number who are ignorant in spite of
experience,

‘“ Whether youth can be imputed to any man
as a reproach, I will not assume the province of
determining: but surely age may become justly
contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings
have passed away without improvement and vice
appears to have prevailed when the passions have
subsided. The wretch who, after having seen theELOQUENCE 109

consequences of a thousand errors, continues
still to blunder, and whose age has only added
obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of
abhorrence or contempt, and deserves not that
his grey head should preserve him from insults.”

This fine passage is part of Dr. Johnson's
“report” of Pitt’s speech; the style of the
lexicographer shines through every sentence.
Another contemporary, however, has left on
record that what really happened was that “ Mr.
Pitt got up with great warmth, beginning with
these words: ‘ With the greatest reverence to
the grey hairs of the honourable gentleman ! ’
Mr. Walpole pulled off his wig, and showed his
head covered with grey hairs: which occasioned
a general laughter in which Mr. Pitt joined and
all warmth immediately subsided.”

It is clear, therefore, that Johnson’s report
is more eloquent than the speech actually spoken.
On the other hand, it would be absurd to call
every brilliantly written passage eloquent ; and
in this survey I shall restrict the term either to
words actually spoken or to such examples of
writing as, like Johnson’s invention just quoted,
are really speech crystallised and cannot be read
by the eye without the involuntary participation
of the tongue.IIo ELOQUENCE

With such a passage, indeed, I must commence
my observations on what may be called the
classical British period of oratory ; our national
poet is my subject. For Shakespeare, master
as he was of law, of seamanship, of a hundred
other branches of life and learning, was no
less master of the art of advocacy. This is
admirably demonstrated by Mark Antony’s speech
over the body of Julius Cesar. Antony, as
my readers know, addresses the populace after
Brutus, who has set out the grounds for Cesar’s
assassination. Brutus’s oration is uninspired:
“ Believe me for mine honour, and have respect
for mine honour, that you may believe.” He
asks rhetorical questions of a type beloved by
every stump orator. ‘“‘ Who is here so base that
. . Who is here so
vile that will not love his country? If any,
speak ; for him have I offended. I pause for a
reply.”

Antony now ascends the pulpit. ‘‘ ’Twere best
he speak no harm of Brutus here,”

would be a bondman?,.

murmurs the
crowd; “this Cesar was a tyrant.” Cunningly
he repeats the conspirators’ charge of ambition
against the dead man and batters down their
case with three shrewd strokes, ramming home
each point with a thrust—‘‘ Did this in CesarELOQUENCE IEICE

seem ambitious?” ... ‘“‘ Ambition should be
Inage Of Sterner Stuff, © = .* > Was’ this
ambition ?’’ Meanwhile he plays on the secret

of Czsar’s will, known to himself alone; the
appeal to curiosity is insistent :

“Let but the commons hear this testament
—which, pardon me, I do not mean toread,...
Have patience, gentle friends, I must not read

it... . Tis good you know not that you are
his heirs. . . . I have o’ershot myself to tell you
of it. . . . You will compel me then to read the
will? .. . You have forgot the will I told you
Ont

When the mob at last rushes away to fire the
conspirators’ houses, Antony, left alone, admires,
as we must too, the effect of his eloquence: ‘‘ Now
let it work, Mischief, thou art afoot!”

Cromwell comes next, chronologically, for con-
sideration, and here, as with the elder Pitt, we
are forced to rely on somewhat dubious records.
He was, however, eloquent only in fragments,
and need not detain us long. Some few phrases
are immortal, as, for instance, his famous appeal
to the Scottish Presbyterians: “‘I beseech you,
by the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may

,

be mistaken,’ and a passage from his speech to

Parliament in 1658:112 ELOQUENCE

‘“T can say in the presence of God, in compari-
son with whom we are but like poor creeping ants
upon the earth, I would have been glad to have
lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock
of sheep—rather than undertake such a parlia-
ment as this.”’

But in general Cromwell’s rhetoric, though fervid,
was too ponderous to rise to the heights of
eloquence,

It is with the elder Pitt that we enter upon the
great period of British oratory. I have already
quoted a fine passage he did not utter, but the
following sarcasms at the expense of the Hano-
verian troops have rather better warrant of

authenticity :

‘The troops of Hanover, whom we are now
expected to pay, marched into the low countries,
where they still remain. They marched to the
place most distant from the enemy, least in danger
of an attack, and most strongly fortified, had an
attack been designed. They have, therefore,
no other claim to be paid, than that they left their
own country for a place of greater security... .
I shall not, therefore, be surprised if, after such
another glorious campaign, the opponents of the
ministry be challenged to propose better men
and be told that the money of this nation cannot
be more properly employed than in hiring
Hanoverians to eat and sleep.”’ELOQUENCE 113

For a specimen of the grand manner of* the
elder Pitt, his well-known denunciation of the
use of Indian levies against the American colonists
must be quoted :

“My lords, who is the man that, in addition
to those disgraces and mischiefs of our army,
has dared to authorise and associate to our arms
the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage ?
To call into civilised alliance the wild and in-
human savage of the woods; to delegate to the
merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights ;
and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war
against our brethren? ... Besides these mur-
derers and plunderers, let me ask our ministers—
what other allies have they acquired? What
other powers have they associated to their cause ?
Have they entered into alliance with the king of
the gipsies? Nothing, my lords, is too low or
too ludicrous to be consistent with their counsels,”

We cannot be sure that Pitt actually said these
words, and we know that on occasion he could
fail utterly. It is on record that, speaking twice
in one evening in the House of Lords, he
remarked of his first speech, “In no house, I
hope, have I ever so disgraced myself,’ and of
his second, ‘‘I think I have now redeemed my
credit.””’ But we know that his eloquence aston-

ished and even terrorised his audience.
u—8II4 ELOQUENCE

The story is told of his sitting in the gallery of
the Commons when an election petition was being
tried. Hearing a member laugh at some revela-
tion of electoral corruption, he descended to
the floor and made an impassioned demand for
dignity and honour in public life. ‘‘ This thunder-
bolt,” said one who was present, “ thrown in a
sky so long serene, confounded the audience ”’ ;
his first two sentences ‘‘ brought the House to
a silence and attention that you might have
heard a pin drop.”

Pitt’s most famous passage is, fortunately,
well authenticated. He was speaking of the
hostile combination of the Duke of Newcastle

and Fox, and said :

‘‘T who am at a distance from that sanctum
sanctorum, whither the priest goes for inspiration,
I who travel through a desert and am over-
whelmed with mountains of obscurity, cannot
so easily catch a gleam to direct me to the beauties
of these negotiations—but there are parts of this
that do not seem to come from the same quarter
with the rest—I cannot unravel this mystery.”

Then he clapped his hand suddenly to his fore-
head, and continued :

‘Yes, I too am inspired now! It strikes me !
I remember to have been carried to see the con-ELOQUENCE II5

flux of the Rhone and the Saone; the one a gentle,
feeble, languid stream, and, though languid, of
no depth; the other, a boisterous and impetuous
torrent; but, different as they are, they meet
at last.”

Macaulay, quoting this image in his essay on
Pitt, ignores the spontaneity of its utterance, and
thus fails to do justice to its effectiveness.

With Edmund Burke we are well afloat on the
stream of British eloquence. No words in all our
Parliamentary history are better known than
these, in his speech on Conciliation with the

Colonies :

“The question with me is, not whether you
have a right to render your people miserable, but
whether it is not your interest to make them
happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do,
but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me
I ought todo. Isa politic act the worse for being
a generous one? Is no concession proper but
that which is made from your want of right to
keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace
or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious
claim, because you have your evidence-room full
of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms
to enforce them? What signify all those titles
and all those arms? Of what avail are they
when the reason of the thing tells me that the
assertion of my title is the loss of my suit, and- a
a nS EL tin tl

  

116 ELOQUENCE

that I could do nothing but wound myself by the
use of my own weapons ? ”

It seems incredible that the House should have
emptied as Burke delivered this, the greatest
of all his speeches, and that it was only when
men read it that they came to admire it. Our
attitude nowadays approximates much more to
that of his enthusiastic supporter, who, having
heard Burke speak, cried, “I say ditto to Mr.
Burke !’’ There are other passages in the same
oration of a purer eloquence than that quoted
above ; for example, the two passages on liberty :

“The temper and character which prevail in
our colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any
human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedi-
gree of this fierce people, and persuade them that
they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins
the blood of freedom circulates. The language
in which they would hear you tell them this
tale would detect the imposition. Your speech
would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest
person on earth to argue another Englishman into
slavery.”

And:

‘As long as you have the wisdom to keep the
sovereign authority in this country as the sanctu-
ary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated toELOQUENCE 117

our common faith, wherever the chosen race and
sons of England worship Freedom, they will turn
their faces towards you. The more they multiply,
the more friends you will have. The more ar-
dently they love liberty, the more perfect will be
their obedience. Slavery they can have any-
where. It is a weed that grows in every soil.
They may have it from Spain; they may have
it from Prussia; but, until you become lost to
all feeling of your true interest and your natural
dignity, freedom they can have from none but
you. This is the commodity of price, of which
you have the monopoly.”

Another speech of Burke’s which astounds us
by its eloquence but which, when delivered, was
considered by his political opponents undeserving
of notice and reply, is his address on the Nabob
of Arcot’s debts, which first showed Burke’s
interest in Indian affairs. It contains the famous
description of the havoc wrought by Hyder Ali
in the Carnatic :

“Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which
no eye had seen, no art conceived. All the
horrors of war before known or heard of, were
mercy to that new havoc, A storm of universal
fire blasted every field, consumed every house,
destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabi-
tants, flying from their flaming villages, in part
were slaughtered ; others without regard to sex,118 ELOQUENCE

to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of
function, fathers torn from children, husbands
from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry,
and amidst the goading spears of drivers and the
trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into
captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those
who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the
walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword,
and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.”’

This speech prefaced Burke’s terrific attack
three years later upon Warren Hastings, for
whose impeachment he more than any other
man was responsible. Where so much might be
quoted, I will reproduce only the solemn words
with which Burke concluded his great speech :

‘‘T impeach Warren Hastings of high crimes
and misdemeanours.

‘I impeach him in the name of the Com-
mons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled,
whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

‘‘T impeach him in the name of all the Com-
mons of Great Britain, whose national character
he has dishonoured.

‘‘T impeach him in the name of the people
of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has
subverted ; whose properties he has destroyed,
whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

‘‘T impeach him in the name and by virtue
of those eternal laws of justice which he has
violated.ELOQUENCE 11g

‘‘T impeach him in the name of human nature
itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and
oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situa-
tion, and condition of life.”

The effect of this speech at least was immediate.
Macaulay tells us that © handkerchiefs were
pulled out, smelling-bottles were handed about,
hysterical sobs and screams were heard, and Mrs.
Sheridan was carried out in a fit.” And Warren
Hastings himself said, as Burke sat down, “I
thought myself for the moment the guiltiest
man in England.”

My brief survey of the great age of British
oratory brings me now to the younger Pitt. Rox
said of him, that whereas he himself could always
find a word, Pitt always found the word. This
does not mean, I imagine, that Pitt always chose
the most beautiful or most striking expression,
but that he could always frame in admirable and
formal English an argument to turn his audience
to his opinion. For, in fact, the younger Pitt was
not a very attractive speaker ; his orations were
business-like rather than eloquent. Asa debater,
however, he had no equal. This was recognised
from the outset of his career. There is a well-
known anecdote of his being introduced as a
youth to the steps of the Speaker’s chair in theI20 ELOQUENCE

Commons by Fox, the then undisputed master
of debate. As the young man listened to the
arguments directed against the Government, he
whispered to Fox, ‘‘ But surely, Mr. Fox, that
might be met thus,’ suggesting replies that moved
his companion to admiration. It is no wonder
that Burke, hearing Pitt’s first speech, compared
him ‘with Chatham, his father, and said: “It is
not a chip of the old block; it is the old block
itself.”

I find little in Pitt’s recorded speeches to repro-
duce here, though I cannot pass over that brilliant
impromptu with which he concluded his famous
speech in support of the abolition of the slave trade.
“We may hope,” he was saying to a House that had
sat late through the night, ‘‘that even Africa,
though last of all the quarters of the globe, shall
enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those
blessings which have descended so plentifully upon
us in a much earlier period of the world.” At
that moment the first rays of dawn shone through
the windows of the chamber, and Pitt burst
into a sonorous Virgilian quotation :

“ Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens affiavit anhelis ;
Illtc sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper,”

which hexameters I may translate thus :ELOQUENCE I21I

“Where first the Dawn inspires us with its
panting steeds, there the Evening-Star kindles
its tardy torches.”

This is, I think, the aptest classical quotation
that ever was made in our Parliament, where
formerly such references were frequent, although
now they have almost wholly disappeared.

I come now to Charles James Fox, the greatest
Opposition speaker our country has known. I
must confess that many times, in the political
disputes of to-day, I have wished that Socialist
speakers would study his speeches to the improve-
ment of their own. They, who so often over-
stress the superficial likeness of the French
Revolution with the Russian upheaval of our
own time, should surely not ignore Fox’s magni-
loquent pleas for the French. Their arguments
for the Russians would, I agree, be no more
weighty than hitherto, but at least the tone of
their utterances would rise above the appeal to
envy and selfishness in which they usually are
clothed to-day. I make them a present of a
quotation from Fox’s oration on Peace with
France :

“No man regrets more than I do the enormi-
ties that France has committed ; but how do theyI22 ELOQUENCE

bear upon the question as it now stands? Are
we for ever to deprive ourselves of the benefits of
peace, because France has perpetrated acts of
injustice? We cannot acquit ourselves upon
such ground. We have negotiated. With the
knowledge of these acts of injustice and disorder,
we have treated with them twice; yet the right
honourable gentleman cannot enter into negotia-
tions with them now; and it is worth while to
attend to the reasons that he gives for refusing
their offer. The Revolution itself is no more an
objection now than it was in 1796, when he did
negotiate ; for the Government of France at that
time was surely as unstable as it is now. The
crimes of the French, the instability of their
Government, did not then prevent him; and
why are they to prevent him now?”

Here is another fragment of the same speech :

““ As to the restoration of the House of Bourbon,
if it shall be the wish of the people of France, I
for one shall be perfectly content to acquiesce.
I think the people of France, as well as every
other people, ought to have the government
they like best themselves ; and the form of that
government, or the persons who hold it in their
hands, should never be an obstacle with me to
treat with a nation for peace, or to live with them
in amity; but as an Englishman, and actuated
by English feelings, I surely cannot wish for
the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the
throne of France. I hope I am not a man to bearELOQUENCE 123

heavily upon any unfortunate family. I feel for
their situation—I respect their distresses—but
as a friend of England, I cannot wish for their
restoration to the power which they abused. I
cannot forget that the whole history of the
century is little more than an account of the wars
and the calamities arising from the restless
ambition, the intrigues, and the perfidy of the
House of Bourbon.”

It was in the same cause of peace with France
that Fox uttered his eulogy of Washington and
the American nation, in words that have a signi-
ficance even now, a hundred and thirty years

after their utterance:

“Happy Americans! While the whirlwind
spreads desolation over one quarter of the globe,
you remain protected from its baneful effects,
by your own virtues and the wisdom of your
Government. Separated from Europe by an
immense ocean, you feel not the effects of those
prejudices and passions, which convert the boasted
seats of civilisation into scenes of horror and
bloodshed. You profit by the folly and mad-
ness of contending nations, and afford in your
more congenial clime an asylum to those blessings
and virtues which they wantonly contemn, or
wickedly exclude from their bosom. Cultivating
the arts of peace under the influence of freedom,
you advance by rapid strides to opulence and
distinction; and if by any accident you shouldnes i all anata
~ ——

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 

124 ELOQUENCE

be compelled to take part in the present unhappy
contest, if you should find it necessary to avenge
insult, or repel injury, the world will bear witness
to the equity of your sentiments and the modera-
tion of your views, and the success of your arms
will, no doubt, be proportioned to the justice of
your cause.”

I have already quoted from Burke’s magnifi-
cent impeachment of Warren Hastings, but the
speech which most powerfully presented the case
against the Indian governor-general was delivered
by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and
orator. His words, we are told, were poorly
reported, but there is no doubt of the effect they
produced. A convinced supporter of Hastings
went to the House to hear Sheridan speak. At
the end of the first hour he said to a friend, ‘‘ All
this is declamatory assertion without proof” ;
an hour later, ‘‘ This is a most wonderful oration ’’;
an hour later still, “‘ Mr. Hastings has acted most
unjustifiably ’’; then, ‘“‘ Mr. Hastings is a most
atrocious criminal’; and finally at the end of
the fifth hour, “ Of all the monsters of iniquity,
the most enormous is Warren Hastings,”

Burke and Pitt declared that Sheridan’s oration
against Warren Hastings was the most eloquent
of which there was record; Fox said that “ allELOQUENCE 125

he had ever heard, all that he had ever read,
when compared with it, dwindled into nothing,
and vanished like vapour before the sun.”

The fragments of this great effort that have
come down to us are so unworthy of the original
that I shall not quote from them, but I may be
permitted to offer a few sentences from Sheri-
dan’s speech delivered four months later at the
trial :

‘My lords, I have closed the evidence. I
have no further comments. What I have done
with the evidence I have done with everything that
is near my heart. It is by the majesty, by the
form of that justice that I do conjure and implore
your lordships to give your minds to this great
business. .. . We know the result must be
inevitable. Let the truth appear, and our cause
is gained. It is to this I conjure your lordships,
for your own honour, for the honour of the nation,
for the honour of human nature now entrusted
to your care, that I, for the Commons of England
speaking through us, claim this duty at your
hands. They exhort you to it by everything
that calls sublimely upon the heart of man, by
the majesty of that injustice which this bold man
has libelled, by the wide fame of your own re-
nowned tribunal, by the sacred pledge by which
you swear in the solemn hour of decision, knowing
that that decision will bring you the greatest
reward that ever blessed the heart of man—theFk are RN a D0 PeE

  

126 ELOQUENCE

consciousness of having done the greatest act of
mercy for the world that the earth has ever yet
received from any hand but by Heaven.”

In view of Sheridan’s success as an orator it is
curious to recall that a friend said to him of his
first Parliamentary speech: “‘ You had much
better have stuck to your former pursuits,’
to which the disappointed playwright replied,
“Tt is in me, however, and, by God, it shall
come out.” It certainly “came out” in the
Hastings trial.

Every speaker has tasted the sorrow of finding,
when his eloquence is well under way, that his
time is coming to an end. With equal discom-
fort I notice that the space I have allotted myself
for a review of the great age of British oratory is
already nearly filled, while I have not yet treated
of a dozen or more great examples. I must
perforce be brief now, and therefore omit any
mention of such admirable speakers as Grattan,
Windham, Curran, Erskine, Canning, Plunket,
Macaulay, Cobden, O’Connell and “ Angel of
Death” Bright. But if these remarks have at
all stimulated interest among my readers in the
treasures of British eloquence, my object will
have been attained if they turn to the recorded
utterances of these men to supply the deficienciesELOQUENCE I27

of this essay. I have space left only for three
names—Lincoln, Gladstone, and Disraeli.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is, I am inclined
to think, the most eloquent funeral oration of all
time. There is a beauty in its phrasing, a dignity
in its sentiments, and, most of all, a marvellous
harmony among all its parts that makes it stand
out from the other speeches in our language. I
am perhaps wrong to quote it, for it must be
familiar in its entirety to so many who are reading
these lines, but yet I cannot bring myself to omit
it altogether or to attempt to choose one portion
and omit the rest. All who share my admiration
for it will not cavil at finding it set out here once

More :

‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers
brought forth on this continent a new nation,
conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the pro-
position that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war,
testing whether that nation, or any nation so con-
ceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final
resting-place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fit
and proper that we should do this.

“But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate,
we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this128 ELOQUENCE

ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here have consecrated it far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little
note, nor long remember, what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to
the unfinished work which they who fought here
have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain-
ing before us, that from these honoured dead we
take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion, that
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain, that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.”’

There is nothing in Gladstone’s speeches of
this quality, but he too could assume the grand
manner on occasion. It is difficult to select
passages from his orations that are pure jewels
of eloquence, for he usually, like the younger
Pitt, held himself closely to the matter under
discussion and disdained the iteration of general
appeals to the sentiments of his audience. At
the same time his denunciation of the supineness
of the British Government in regard to Turkish
outrages has outlived the moment that called
it into being. For example:ELOQUENCE I29

“That burden of woe and shame—the greatest
that exists on God’s earth—is one that we thought
united Europe was about to remove; that in the
Protocol united Europe was pledged to remove ;
but to removing which, for the present, you
seem to have no efficacious means of offering even
the smallest practical contribution. But the
removal of that load of woe and shame is a great
and noble prize. It is a prize well worth com-
peting for, It is not too late to try to win it.
I believe there are men in the Cabinet who
would try to win it, if they were free to act on
their own beliefs and aspirations.

“Tt is not too late, I say, to become com-
petitors for that prize; but be assured, whether
you mean to claim for yourselves even a single
leaf in that immortal chaplet of renown, which
will be the reward of true labour in that cause,
or whether you turn your backs upon that cause
and your own duty, I believe for one that the
knell of Turkish tyranny in those provinces has
sounded. So far as human eye can judge, it is
about to be destroyed. The destruction may not
come in the way or by the means that we should
choose; but come this boon from what hands it
may, it will be a noble boon, and as a noble boon
will gladly be accepted by Christendom and the
world.”

Everyone is familiar with the episode of Dis-
raeli’s maiden speech in the House of Commons,

when he turned on the jeering members and cried ;
II—9oy a OS

    
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
   

130 ELOQUENCE

“Tam not surprised at the reception I have
experienced. I have begun several times many
things, and I have often succeeded at the last.
I will sit down now, but the time will come when
you will hear me.” It is only fair to his audience
to say that the jeers came chiefly from the Irish
members, who even in those days occasionally
displayed that ebullience which afterwards became
one of their chief claims to Parliamentary fame.
Disraeli, when his long period of prominence
arrived, was a witty and sardonic speaker. His
style is so modern that quotations from it would
seem, except for their brilliance, transcripts from
the Hansard of to-day. I must content myself,
however, with a single reference, which I take
from one of his attacks upon Peel, his nominal

leader :

‘Whether a Tory Ministry exists or not, I do
not pretend to decide: but I am bound to believe
that the Tory majority still remains and, there-
fore, I do not think it is the majority that should
cross the House, but only the Ministry. . . . The
position of the right honourable gentleman is
clear and precise. I do not believe he is looking
to any coalition, although many of my consti-
tuents do. The right honourable gentleman has
only exactly to remain where he is. The right
honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing,ELOQUENCE 131

and walked away with their clothes. He has
left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal
position, and he is himself a strict conservative
of their garments. . . . I look on the right
honourable gentleman as a man who has tamed
the shrew of Liberalism by her own tactics. He
is the political Petruchio, who has outbid you all.”

It is no wonder that, after the speech of which
the above is a fragment, Peel, in Disraeli’s own
words, ‘‘ was stunned and stupefied, lost his head
and, vacillating between silence and spleen, spoke
much and weakly ” in reply.

Gladstone and Disraeli, however, bring us to
our own times.

Many complaints have recently been made by
members of the House of Commons of the length
of the speeches made by those orators who have
been successful in catching the eye of Mr. Speaker
in important debates. It is demonstrated, not
without bitterness, that in recent Second Reading
debates the average duration of the speeches has
been an hour, and that so great a lack of considera-
tion has greatly curtailed the period available to
less fortunate members. The provocation has
indeed revived the movement associated with
the name of the late Major Rasch, who carried132 ELOQUENCE

on for many years a programme in favour of
shorter speeches. An appeal, we are told, has
been made to private members, with the result
that a considerable majority of the House is
pledged to reform in the direction indicated. The
movement has its origin in the back benches, but
it would be wrong to assume that the grievance
is one of the private member against the front
bencher. It is a movement of those who are not
fortunate enough to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker
directed against those who have succeeded in
catching his eye.

The greatest offenders are by no means mini-
sters, ex-ministers, or future ministers. It 1S; of
course, true that members of the two front
benches are naturally accorded the principal
places in debate. They speak when important
measures require detailed exposition or detailed
criticism ; but when, as occasionally happens,
the rejection of a measure is left in the hands of
a private member the substitution has not been
found to induce economy of debate. The truth
is that, under modern conditions, less time is
afforded to what are known as full-dress debates ;
while far more members are competent and,
being competent, desire to take part in them.
It may be true that the great luminaries of theELOQUENCE 133

House of Commons are small in comparison with
their predecessors, though even this admission
must be qualified by the notorious tendency of
mankind to exaggerate the past at the expense
of the present ; but whether this be true or not,
it is undoubtedly true that a constantly growing
number of private members has attained to a
degree of debating efficiency which would have
astonished as much as it would have incon-
venienced those who stage-managed Parliamen-
tary debates in the younger days of Disraeli.
Everyone will admit that brevity, concinnitas
of speech, is one of the great gifts of oratory, more
valuable because conceded to so few; but the
admission does not exclude the reflection that
most of the greatest speeches which have ever
been delivered in the history of oratory have
not been brief. The occasion often dictates the
quality of the oratory which is addressed to that
occasion. Great subjects stimulate great speakers,
but great subjects are not usually treated with
adequacy within a short compass of time. Many
of Cicero’s greatest speeches are models of com-
pression, but few of his greatest speeches are
short. I should myself contemplate with no
small aversion any proposal to limit the length
of speeches in the House of Commons. Some of134

 

ELOQUENCE

the best speeches I have ever heard there have
lasted an hour. It is true that some of the worst
have lasted the same time ; but it is a far smaller
misfortune that an empty House should be bored
by a long and foolish speech, than that a crowded
House should be denied, in the absence of special
leave, the opportunity of hearing a long and wise
one.

It is clear that a proposal to grant any special
privilege to the members of the front benches
would be resisted by private members of all
parties. Labouchere, Parnell, Gibson Bowles,
Harold Cox, and many other ornaments of Parlia-
mentary debate never sat on the front bench at
all; and there will always be in the House of
Commons a limited number of men of distinguished
parliamentary capacity who from idiosyncrasy,
independence, or accident have never sat upon
the front bench. To apply a form of closure to
such persons in favour of Under-Secretaries and
Junior Lords would be as absurd as it would
be intolerable. Any discrimination, therefore,
between private members and those who sit on
the front bench may be rejected ; and I am aware
of no other form of discrimination which can be
defended by plausible arguments. It has been
proposed that special privileges should be con-ELOQUENCE 135

ceded to the minister introducing a Bill and to
the Opposition spokesman against it, but it is
evident that the course of debate may easily
produce changes which would make it reasonable
and proper that later speakers should receive’
similar indulgence. The House of Commons is a
very generous assembly ; it listens with pleasure
to good speeches, however bitter and extreme
the standpoint ; but to ask for special indulgence
in favour of an able partisan making an extreme
and bitter speech might easily impose an exces-
sive strain upon this quality.

Nor do I place much hope in the most recent
suggestion that intending speakers should inform
Mr. Speaker of the probable length of their
speeches. I assume an honest intention, but
even with this assumption the security is miser-
ably poor. No man ever says to himself and no
man ever believes, when he rises to make a speech,
that it will be a very long one; still less does he
believe that it will be a very dull one; but the
mischief which requires correction is that many
esteemed persons do, without anticipating their
destiny, make speeches which are both very long
and very dull. A record of these falsified inten-
tions would merely supply a few stanzas to the
vanity of human wishes.136 ELOQUENCE

The House of Commons (s, after all, not defence-
less. If an inopportune prolixity annoys it at
an intolerable moment, it can and does end the
mischief by the time-honoured admonition
© Vide, “vide.” If the complaint is not that an
unwelcome speech has been interposed after the
leaders have spoken, and immediately before a
division, but merely that, though delivered at a
legitimate moment, the speech is dull and the
orator a bore, members are not compelled to stay,
and do not stay, in the Chamber. No Govern-
ment, however vast its majority, would venture
to put so great a strain upon the loyalty of its
supporters,

The House of Commons always listens with
interest, if not always without interruption, to
really able speeches; and interruption in a
crowded and otherwise silent House is itself one
of the greatest compliments that can be paid to a
speaker. Members do not interrupt a dull man
who is making no impression; they have other
weapons—they either leave the Chamber or they
talk,

Those who speak with pessimism of our modern
orators seem to me somewhat to ignore the
tendency, to which I have already referred, of
mankind to make heroes of their predecessors.ELOQUENCE ES 7.

I am sure that in the early days of Gladstone
and Disraeli, old men who could still recall the
brilliant contemporaries of Canning drew compari-
sons entirely in favour of the early generation.
It is true that the taste of the House of Commons
has undergone a complete change, but I am by
no means satisfied that there have not been a
certain number of members in the House of
Commons in the present century who could have
conformed with striking and even brilliant success
to the Parliamentary standards of fifty years ago.
It is probably safe to predict that no great House
of Commons triumph will be attained hereafter,
as in the days of Robert Lowe, by Virgilian quota-
tions thrice retorted ; still less will a contention
be effectively crystallised in a line of Euripides.
Had such methods survived, perhaps the late
Mr. Jebb and the late Mr. Butcher would have
suggested matter for reflection to the undiscri-
minating laudator temporis acti. The House of
Commons has become more business-like, respond-
ing with faithful reflection to the general tendency
in every department of life and letters. We are
less florid than our forefathers were ; we do not
write novels in the method of Rienzi, nor do we
attempt, if we could, perorations of the diffuse
eloquence demanded by the heroes of the past.138 ELOQUENCE

Yet in cultivation, in natural eloquence, in the
subtlety of dialectics, there are probably at least
as large a number of speakers in this generation
entitled to a high place, as have ever debated in
the House of Commons at any period of its
history.

Nothing, for instance, would persuade me that
there has ever been a time in the history of the
House of Commons in which Lord Balfour would
not have reached the ascendancy which made
him for so many years a unique figure in our
Parliamentary debates. Many people can speak
better. I have never heard anyone who can
think aloud so brilliantly, so spontaneously, and
so conclusively. I have heard him rise to speak
in vital occasions where it was certain that every
word, reported exactly as he uttered it, would
be read and re-read by hundreds of thousands,
with no notes except such as he had hurriedly
scribbled on an envelope during the progress of
the debate. Often his speech as delivered has
produced a great impression, sometimes an
extraordinary impression; but I have never
heard Lord Balfour speak without reading his
speech with a wonder infinitely greater, for its
structure, its logical evolution, and its penetrat-
ing subtlety of thought always supply elementsELOQUENCE 139

which help him very little at the moment just
because it is not possible instantly to appreciate,
while listening to him, their amazing excellence.
Several people can make better extemporary
speeches than Lord Balfour in Parliament, judged
by their instantaneous impression, and many
can make better ones upon the platform, but I
have never heard anyone make better extemporary
speeches than he, and I am certain that I never
shall, judged, not by the impression at the moment
upon an excited assembly, but by the far more
searching criterion of the deliberate judgment
of critical men.

Take, for example, a portion of his speech in
seconding the address to the King and Queen-
Mother on the death of King Edward, in the House
of Commons. It is a noble example of Lord
Balfour’s gift for easy, yet exact, expression :

‘‘ There have been, I think, strange misunder-
standing with regard to the relation of the great
King who has just departed, to the administration
of our public affairs. There are people who sup-
pose that he took upon himself duties commonly
left to his servants, and that, when the secrets
of diplomacy are revealed to the historian, it will
be found that he took a part not known but half
suspected in the transactions of his reign. Sir,
that is to belittle the King. That is not to pay140 ELOQUENCE

 

him the tribute which in this connection he so
greatly and justly deserves.

“We must not think of him as a dexterous
diplomatist. He was a great monarch, and it
was because he was able naturally, simply through
the incommunicable gift of personality, to make
all feel—to embody to all men—the friendly
policy of this country, that he was able to do the
work in the bringing together of nations which has
fallen to the lot of few men, be they king or be
they subject, to accomplish. He did that which
no ministers, no Cabinet, no ambassadors, neither
treaties nor protocols nor understandings, which
no debates, no banquets, no speeches, were able
to perform. He, by his personality alone, brought
home to the minds of millions on the Continent,
as nothing else we could have done could have
brought it home to them, the friendly feelings
of the country over which King Edward ruled.

‘Sir, he has gone. He has gone in the pleni-
tude of his powers, in the noontide of his popu-
larity, ripe in experience. He is gone, and he
will never be absent from the memory, or from
the affections of those who were his subjects.”

Lord Oxford—whom posterity will certainly
recall better as Mr. Asquith—also possesses extra-
ordinary Parliamentary gifts. His methods, I
am well aware, might very persuasively be cited
in disproof of the protest already made against
correction of prolixity in debate. He seldomELOQUENCE I4I

speaks for more than forty minutes—often, and
on important occasions, for only half an hour—but
it is given to few to bend the bow of Odysseus.
He can confine his remarks within reasonable
compass simply because he possesses the gift of
never saying a word too much; he always has
at his command not merely the appropriate but
the inevitable word; and it is therefore never
necessary for him to use two words when one
would express his meaning. Whether he has
prepared his speech or whether he is speaking
extempore, the one word is swiftly available.
He produces, wherever and whenever he wants
them, an endless succession of perfectly coined
sentences conceived with unmatched felicity, and
delivered without hesitation in a parliamentary
style which is at once the envy and the despair
of imitators. He never perhaps takes a point
very subtle, very recondite, very obviously out of
the reach of the ordinary member of Parliament.
He lacks Lord Balfour’s chief fascination—that
of never taking part in the discussion of a
great subject without jlluminating it by rays of
penetrating analysis wholly novel, wholly unat-
tainable to the average member, and yet immedi-
ately compelling attention and assent, But, on
the other hand, he realised completely the merit142 ELOQUENCE

of saying better in the House of Commons than
anyone else in it what all his party were thinking,
and of giving to their thoughts a felicitous and
cogent expression of which they were incapable.

His Guildhall speech on November g, 1914,
however, transcended party and set out once and
for all the objects for which this country had
entered the War, and its closing passage was
destined to be remembered throughout the long
years that lay ahead:

‘‘ We shall never sheathe the sword which we
have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers
in full measure all and more than all that she has
sacrificed ; until France is adequately secured
against the menace of aggression; until the
rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are
placed upon an unassailable foundation: and
until the military domination of Prussia is wholly
and finally destroyed. That is a great task,
worthy of a great nation. It needs for its accom-
plishment that every man among us, old or
young, rich or poor, busy or leisurely, learned or

simple, should give what he has and do what he
can.”

Burke never uttered a nobler appeal.
Bonar Law employed methods of preparation
which were, so far as I know, unique. In his
most carefully prepared speeches he made noELOQUENCE 143

notes, but formulated in his mind the sequence
of his argument in the very words in which it was
to be expressed ; and then by a series of mental
rehearsals he made himself as much master of
the whole speech as if he read it from a manu-
script on the table. It might have been supposed
that such a method of preparation would have
imposed an almost intolerable mental strain, but
it appeared to cause Bonar Law neither trouble
nor anxiety. Later events conclusively showed
that he could make extremely successful speeches
on occasions also on which no preparation was
possible. Whether he was making a carefully
prepared or an extemporary speech he used
no notes whatever, and in neither case did he
ever transgress in the slightest degree the exact
proportional treatment which the immediate
subject required.

His style as a speaker was peculiar to himself :
he was simple, perspicuous, and extremely cogent.
Very few Latin words overloaded his sentences ;
indeed, his style and diction resembled those of
Bright more closely than of any parliamentary
speaker who reached a great position in the
interval between them, He possessed a pun-
gency and a degree of combative brilliancy which
made the closing speeches of many a fierce party144 ELOQUENCE

debate a scene of unmixed triumph to his delighted
supporters. But his oratory does not lend itself
to piecemeal quotations.

Mr. Lloyd George is undoubtedly a speaker of
extraordinary variety, jlaiy, and plausibility.
He has three wholly distinct styles of speech.
The first is that of Limehouse; the second that
of the House of Commons in an excited party
debate ; the third that of the House of Commons
when he was concerned in forwarding business
and conciliating criticism. His cleverness and
address in the third method are beyond all praise.
He thanks his opponents for their assistance, he
compliments them upon their public spirit, he
accepts their co-operation with gratitude, and the
whole proceeding is conducted with an ingratiat-
ing bonhomie which, at its best, is extraordinarily
clever, if, at its worst, it recalls the emollient
properties of highly scented soap. His second
style, that employed in the combative party
speech in a full-dress debate, does not impress
me equally. He is, indeed, a very adroit contro-
versialist on these occasions, but the methods
employed are a little crude, His speeches are
wholly lacking in that literary quality which
marks all the best House of Commons oratory,
and when he trusts, as he sometimes does, to theELOQUENCE I45

eloquence of the moment, it is usually more that
of the platform or pulpit than of the House of
Commons.

He is beyond question a very powerful contro-
versialist, but his special merits are to be found
rather in his first or third styles than his second.
I have never heard him speak on the platform
to a great party audience, but I should imagine
that amid these surroundings he is head and
shoulders above any contemporary speaker. He
is in fact an unmatched demagogue; but it is
only fair to add that he is a demagogue not by
affectation or from policy, but because he is the
sincere mouthpiece of his antecedents and his
temperament. His speeches at Limehouse and
Newcastle were open to the gravest criticism both
on the ground of taste and in relation to their
accuracy, but each of them was a formidable
dynamic fact.

A passage from the Newcastle speech will show
Mr. Lloyd George at his most effective :

‘“‘ What is the chief charge against the Budget
by its opponents? That it is an attack against
industry and an attack on property. I am going
to demonstrate to you that it is neither. . . . Only
one stock has gone badly—there has been a great
slump in dukes. They used to stand rather
II—I0gy a
ae

146 ELOQUENCE

high in the market, especially in the Tory market,
but the Tory Press has discovered that they are of
no value. They have been making speeches
recently. One especially expensive duke made a
speech, and all the Tory Press said: ‘ Well now,
really, is that the sort of thing we are spending
£250,000 a year upon ? ’—because a fully equipped
duke costs as much to keep up as two Dread-
noughts; and dukes are just as great a terror
and they last longer. As long as they were con-
tented to be mere idols on their pedestals, pre-
serving that stately silence which became their
rank and their intelligence, all went well, and the
average British citizen rather looked up to them
and said to himself, ‘ Well, if the worst came to
the worst for this old country, we have always
the dukes to fall back on,’ But then came the
Budget, they stepped off their perch, they have
been scolding like omnibus-drivers, purely
because the Budget cart has knocked a little of
the gilt off their old stage-coach, Well, we cannot
put them back again. That is the only pro-
perty that has gone down badly in the market ;
all the rest has improved.”

But it would be cynically unjust to Mr, Lloyd
George to omit a quotation from one of his more
serious speeches in the War, which by his energy
and moral courage he did so much to win,

What follows is from his speech at the Queen’s
Hall on September 19, 1914:ELOQUENCE 147

“May I tell you in a simple parable what I
think this war is doing for us? I know a valley
in North Wales, between the mountains and the
sea. It is a beautiful valley, snug, comfortable,
sheltered by the mountains from all the bitter
blasts. But it is very enervating, and I remem-
ber how the boys were in the habit of climbing
the hill above the village to have a glimpse of the
great mountains in the distance, and to be stimu-
lated and freshened by the breezes which came
from the hilltops, and by the spectacle of their
grandeur.

“We have been living in a sheltered valley for
generations. We have been too comfortable and
too indulgent, many, perhaps, too selfish, and the
stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation
where we can see the everlasting things that
matter for a nation—the great peaks we had
forgotten of Honour, Duty, Patriotism, and, clad
in glittering white, the towering pinnacle of
Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to heaven.
We shall descend into the valleys again; but as
long as the men and women of this generation
last, they will carry in their hearts the image of
those mighty peaks whose foundations are not
shaken, though Europe rock and sway in the
convulsions of a great war.”

Mr. Winston Churchill is a speaker of a wholly
different type. He could not, of course, have
made so great a reputation as a speaker without
extraordinary ability, but equally I think he148 ELOQUENCE

could not have done so if his perseverance and
tenacity had been less dogged; for he hardly
belongs to the class of orators who are sometimes
called ‘‘ natural.’”’ He bestows upon his import-
ant speeches a degree of almost meticulous
preparation ; he elaborates and sometimes over-
elaborates. In old days an excessive dependence
upon his manuscript a little impaired the par-
liamentary success of some of his most important
speeches, but his hearers enjoy the compen-
sating qualities of these defects. His speeches
are marked by an arresting literary quality.
Some of his phrases are scarcely less happy than
those of Disraeli; and nearly all his carefully
considered speeches bear the impress of deep
and fruitful thought. He is more instinct with
the House of Commons spirit than any of the new
generation. He has brooded deeply upon the
records of parliamentary oratory, has analysed
with inexhaustible patience the temperament
of the House of Commons, and will perhaps recall
to a generation which has almost forgotten them
the parliamentary standards and modes of ex-
pression amid which Mr. Gladstone, Sir William
Harcourt and Lord Chaplin served their appren-
ticeship,

There are many passages that I might chooseELOQUENCE I49

to illustrate Mr. Churchill’s eloquence, for he is
a speaker of infinite variety. I select two as
typical, one of them delivered early, the other
later, in his career. First, then, the peroration
of one of his speeches at Dundee in 1908 :

“ Cologne Cathedral took six hundred years to
build. Generations of architects and builders
lived and died while the work was in progress.
Still the work went on. Sometimes a generation
built wrongly, and the next generation had to
unbuild, and the next generation had to build
again. Still the work went on through all the
centuries, till at last there stood forth to the world
a mighty monument of beauty and of truth to
command the admiration and inspire the rever-
ence of mankind. So let it be with the British
Commonwealth. Let us build wisely, let us build
surely, let us build faithfully, let us build not for
the moment, but for future years, seeking to
establish here below what we hope to find above
—a house of many mansions, where there shall be
room for all.”’

Next I take a portion of the last speech he de-
livered in the House of Commons in 1915, when he
left the Cabinet to go into the trenches of Flanders ;

“We are the Reserve of the Allied cause, and the
time has come when the Reserve must be thrown150 ELOQUENCE

fully into the scale. . . It is vital to us, as a matter
of honour and sacred duty, to increase and main-
tain the numbers of our Armies in the Field, and
to render this possible the best economic organisa-
tion and the most unsparing thrift must be applied
at home. It is no doubt disconcerting for us to
observe the Government of a State like Bulgaria
convinced, on an impartial survey of the chances,
that victory will rest with the Central Powers.
Some of these small States are hypnotised by
German military pomp and precision. They see
the glitter, they see the episode; but what they
do not see or realise is the capacity of the ancient
and mighty nations, against whom Germany is
warring, to endure adversity, to put up with
disappointment and mismanagement, to recreate
and renew their strength, to toil on with boundless
obstinacy through boundless suffering to the
achievement of the greatest cause for which men
have ever fought.”

Seven-and-twenty years ago Mr. Winston
Churchill and Lord Hugh Cecil first became
intimates, confederates, and in a sense rivals.
Lord Hugh was then a far more spontaneous
speaker than Mr. Churchill, and he has other
qualities which, so far as I know, no one in the
House of Commons but himself possesses. He
unites to the most tenacious combativeness an
idealism of view which even those who are most
affronted by his controversial bitterness admitELOQUENCE Tr

in their hearts. Indeed, nothing is more striking
than to observe how the opposite benches,
almost unable to control their disagreeable anti-
cipations when Lord Hugh rises to speak, are
compelled in spite of themselves to listen and often
even to sympathise with an outlook upon affairs
which has so little in common with their own.

I am told, for I was not present myself, that
Lord Hugh’s speech on the Education Act of
1904 was the most effective he ever made. Des-
pite the embittered controversy that raged upon
the subject, it held the six hundred members of
the House in absolute silence to the end. And
Lord Hugh was a young man of thirty-four. It
does not read as well as it sounded, but the
peroration has the marks of true eloquence :

‘No one desires to use the national schools
of the country to convert children from one
religion to another. All I desire is to make each
child as good a Christian of his father’s denomina-
tion as is possible. I agree that the springs of
human conviction lie beyond the schools to a
great extent ; but still in the schools much good
might be done for Christianity. Even if they
could influence one child in that direction, its
worth doing, The enemy outside is more to be
dreaded than the opponent within. The differ-
ences which divide the extreme Nonconformist152 ELOQUENCE

from the extreme Roman Catholic are trivial
compared with the differences which separate
the Christian from the non-Christian. I ask you
to approach the question of education from this
point of view, and to make the schools of the
country the citadel of Christianity.”’

In many ways I consider Mr. Horatio Bottomley
to be one of the most attractive speakers to whom
I have ever listened. He certainly attained to
a higher degree of excellence in three quite dis-
tinct types of speech than any speaker known to
me. His House of Commons style was almost
ideal. Self-possessed, quiet, irresistibly witty,
and distinguished equally by common sense and
tolerance, he made for himself an outstanding
position in the House of Commons. I am assured
by good judges that he was, if possible, even more
effective when addressing a great audience of
many thousands, and as a forensic speaker I can
say with experience that his force, his persuasive-
ness, and the perfection of his form were un-
rivalled. Many men can speak well in the Law
Courts who speak well nowhere else; some can
speak well in the Law Courts and in the House
of Commons; some, again, in the Law Courts
and on the platform. I have never met anyone
who reached so high a degree of excellence in allELOQUENCE

 

153

three methods of speech. He united to a brilliant
native humour a broad range of treatment,
nerves of steel, an original outlook upon affairs,
and an exact grasp of detail which hardly ever
accompanies the other qualities.

The best speech he ever made was, in my
opinion, his address to the Bradlaugh Fellow-
ship, from which I quote the following :

“ To-night we mourn him; and though many
of you, most of you, are resigned to the belief
that he is dead and gone for ever and for ever,
still, even you, and all of us, may surely take this
comfort to our hearts, that, if it should some day
prove to be the fact that the almost universal
instinct of mankind is right, and that somewhere
beyond what we call death, there be another life,
a life where the great and the good receive their
reward—then, if in that world there count for
righteousness, true nobility of character on earth,
inviolability of honesty, purity of purpose, and
inflexibility of courage, there, amongst the highest
and most honoured amongst the noblest, will
be found the majestic soul of brave Charles
Bradlaugh.”’

The tragedy of Mr. Bottomley’s later career must
not allow us to forget that he was a man of infinite
wit, infinite variety, and one capable at times of

a vein of very elevated eloquence.154 ELOQUENCE

The present Prime Minister, Mr. Stanley Bald-
win, is an orator of a very different type. He
affects to despise rhetoric, and has publicly dis-
paraged and, as I think, defamed it as “ the har-
lot of the arts.” I suspect here an affectation
of which Mr. Baldwin himself may quite possibly
be unconscious.

Rhetoric, after all, means only the art of using
language so as to persuade or influence others.
Unless, therefore, it is an unworthy thing to
attempt to persuade or convince others, rhetoric
cannot without absurdity be dismissed as in it-
self an unworthy art. And it is, of course, quite
evident that the noblest purposes of human life
may be attained by persuasion. To disparage
rhetoric, therefore, is to throw contempt upon
the beautiful, sometimes the almost inspired,
instrument by which alone the highest of human
aspirations may win to the goal of achievement.
And, indeed, Mr. Baldwin’s attitude, half play-
ful as I believe it to be, will be found to involve
him in the strangest of paradoxes and confusions.
Mussolini can no doubt afford—precisely as the
Roman Emperors could—to laugh at orators
and decry their art.

Mr. Baldwin cannot. For both he himself
and the party of which he is the conscientiousELOQUENCE 155

and most worthy trustee can only hope to survive
politically in as far as they are successful in per-
suading the people of this country that their
salvation lies in the maintenance of a high
national and historic tradition, and not in the
prairie-fire bitterness of class hatred. Mr. Bald-
win has himself made in the House of Commons
more than one speech which has produced an
immense impression, and which has definitely
affected the decision of that critical and hetero-
geneous body. How did he persuade his hearers ?
The answer, of course, is that he did it by rhetoric.
Being a man of very great common sense, he
knows exactly the strings upon which he himself
can play with most effect. Both his language
and his argument are in fact carefully and subtly

considered.

« Artis abest species ; ars in utroque latet.”’

I suspect that what Mr. Baldwin really had in
mind was that meretricious and overdone style
of rhetoric which has often brought the art into
discredit, But if I am right here, his charge
should be brought not against good rhetoric, but
against bad rhetoric. A good spade is a good
spade ; a bad spade is no particular use to any-156 ELOQUENCE

i | one. But no useful purpose at all is served by
| abusing spades generically.
1 | Some of the greatest rhetoricians have been
i} men of extraordinary simplicity. Such was John
Hi Bright. Such, in the main (though far more
wily eloquent), was Demosthenes. Cicero, on the
i i contrary, was elaborate and parenthetic, much
| more akin to Mr. Gladstone, though infinitely
more readable, because more literary.
‘| No generalisations are possible in relation to
the subject of rhetoric. Its purpose is to per-
| suade. If it persuades without unworthiness, it

| cannot be bad rhetoric, and it deserves com-
WW mendation, not depreciation.

| As a matter of fact, the Sermon on the Mount
| (as rendered by the translators of the Authorised
vit Version) is the most superb specimen of rhetoric
| | which the English language can afford. It is
| simple ; it is tender ; its language is most exquis-

hy ite ; its appeal to all that is noblest in humanity
: {| most poignant.
a. I In a very different style, it may perhaps be
a: i claimed that Mark Antony’s speech to the popu-
‘| lace in Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar is the second
most instructive example of advocacy in our
| language. And yet this speech is as subtle and
sophisticated as the Sermon is sweet and simple.ELOQUENCE L557

I select these two illustrations because it is
necessary to make it plain that the finest oratory
may be either very simple or very studied. You
may have bad (because unpersuasive) ornamen-
tation ; but equally, you may have bad (because
unpersuasive) baldness. The orator’s purpose,
once again, is to convince and to persuade. His
instrument is his tongue; his success must
almost always determine the valuation of his
personal art.

There is a certain quality in Mr. Baldwin's
speech which is individual. He contrives always
to throw over the footlights the conception of
himself—strictly founded upon fact—that he is
a very sincere and one-purposed man. To attain
this result, even where the facts support one,
requires no small gift of advocacy. In the second
place, he has derived something both from his
business training and from his strongly pro-
nounced rural tastes which produces an interest-
ing and even an arresting complex. In one
sentence he is the man of business, the last of an
honourable line of shrewd steel-merchants ; in the
next he seems somehow to stray into the character
of a man in gaiters looking at a pig, and yet with
an eye of vivid, almost sensuous, pleasure in the
beauties of the surrounding English countryside.158 ELOQUENCE

His rhetorical strength is therefore twofold.
On the one side it springs from an inherited
business acuteness; on the other from the love
of England, and of all that England stands for,
of the vernal countryside, of narrow winding
lanes hidden by sweet-scented English hedges.

No one who has read as widely and as fastidi-
ously as Mr. Baldwin should even affect to under-
rate rhetoric. His own public vocabulary is
selected with much literary nicety. The speech
which he recently delivered at the dinner of the
Worcestershire Association would, if published
to-morrow, be recognised everywhere as an essay
of distinction.

And so I find myself quite unable to resist
the conclusion that just as Saul was ironically
acclaimed among the Prophets, so Mr. Baldwin
must be dragged into the great company of the
Rhetoricians. Never again must he describe the
Lady of Rhetoric in the disparaging phrase with
which I began this short notice; for he has pur-
sued that Lady, and he has caught her.

For quotation I select a passage from the
Worcestershire Association speech to which I
have referred :

‘I like to think that through the centuries,ELOQUENCE 159

though much has changed, in some parts little
has changed. There have abided through all
time two features—the Forest of Wye and the
Severn Valley. Nothing has altered that and
nothing can. In the valley no plough has ever
been. From the earliest times men have tended
there their cattle and sheep, and that swift turbid
stream has rolled on from the beginning of history,
beautiful but treacherous to strangers. Yet
to those who have been born in that valley, whose
people have lived in it and who hope to die in it,
that river represents the heart and the core of
all they love. It is an unchanging countryside.
There is a field near my home, more than a mile
long, curving through woods down to the river,
which I never enter without feeling I have stepped
back into the days of Chaucer, and it would not
surprise me to meet his pilgrims ambling on their
palfreys over the greensward, ”

And of Mr. Baldwin’s Parliamentary speeches
I take the peroration of his moving address in
the House of Commons on the Trade Union
(Political Fund) Bill two years ago:

“We offer the country to-day this: We, at
any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We
stand for peace, We stand for atmosphere, a
new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new
age, in which the people can come together, We
abandon what we have laid our hands to, We
know we may be called cowards for doing it.ioral tai
——

eens gages aaa Slee

  

160 ELOQUENCE

We know we may be told that we have gone back
on our principles. But we believe we know what
at this moment the country wants, and we believe
it is for us in our strength to do what no other
country can do at this moment, and to say that
we at any rate stand for peace... .

“ Although I know that there are those who
work for different ends from most of us in this
House, yet there are many in all ranks and all
parties who will re-echo my prayer: ‘ Give peace
in our time, O Lord.’ ”’XVI

REALITY AND) OF PORT UNI ray

EALITY and opportunity at the present
FR ay are rightly contrasted, like truth in
the unity of its varying aspects, by the image
of two sides of the same shield. No thinking
man will be disposed to deny that while realities
are stern, opportunities to live well are still
abundant in this, the third decade of the twentieth
century. Opportunities mean, in the long run,
a chance for men and women to make good in
the world. They must be differentiated in terms
of hope, from whatever starting-point of class or
fortune they may be envisaged in advance. Thus,
though realities are very often stern, sometimes
afflicting, the necessary discipline of life is part
of that affliction; and faith, with nerve, will
overcome every difficulty, if only the will to win
keeps _ strong.

A dubious peace has followed a devastating
war, and this dual fact must influence every
prospect, every human conception of present

duty. But the problem before us, the choice
elon 161162 REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

 

of a career, has never been deeply affected by the
ravages of time.

Each generation in turn is confronted with it
and with its inherent difficulties. It remains an
issue of paramount interest for young and old,
whether the nations be positively at variance or
relatively at rest. But it is the young who must
concentrate their attention upon it. Happily,
no man grows old all at once. Just at what
stage he may be forced to develop no more is an
open question. Science constantly offers new
possibilities. Meanwhile, there is nothing cruelly
oppressive or finally disabling in the obstacles
thrown up by reality. But caution is always
necessary.

My own word of caution at this stage shall be
a very gentle one. Anyone who sets out adven-
turously will always find it an asset of great
value—an asset which will be appreciated by
others—if temperament, apart from training,
incline him to think respectfully of the past.
These are times when a tendency to chastise the
experienced, on the part of those by whom ex-
perience has yet to be gained, is one of the more
distressing because one of the most prevalent
of errors.

Therefore I would pray from the gods—forREALOLY AND OP PORTUNET Y 163

anyone in whom I might be specially interested
—one endowment: one precious gift: the bump
of veneration. Reserve should mark its expres-
sion, of course. There is no advantage in excess.
But I emphasise this point, in considering the
reality of the world of youth, as related to oppor-
tunity, because I could not hope to offer a liberal
and open-minded contribution to a most import-
ant subject if I did not first utter a plea for
established values; in a word, for that reasoned
conservatism on which alone the hopes of a
country can be built up anew. No sophistica-
tion of reasoning will ever prove that we can
legitimately be independent of our forefathers,
or indifferent to the accumulations, material,
spiritual, or moral, which they have left behind
them.

The need of education presses hardly on many
a young spirit, but the times at least are propi-
tious for those who desire, above all, to extend
the period of learning before their individual
fight against uncertain odds must begin. Here,
though much has been done, much still remains
to be done. But those demonstrations in favour
of the highest available culture, which are every-
where observed, are neither formal nor unneces-

sary.164 REALITY AND OPP ORDUNIT®

The realities of the present day are full of
anxiety for every human being—for the employer
or employed, for the teacher or the taught—for
individuals who have to solve the crucial pro-
blems of family life, or for adolescent units,
themselves active factors in the recurrent struggle
for existence. Nevertheless we are emerging
from years pregnant with perplexity. And that
prognostication is perfectly safe which asserts
that our leadership in the world’s affairs has not
yet failed, and is not likely to fail. A conviction
of this kind will be of value to all who are setting
out in life. Any young man of to-day, dubious
though he may be when considering the course
he desires or can afford to follow, may sink his
identity for a moment in contemplation of that
big family, it may be of the nation, it may be of
the Empire, of which he is a part.

It is good to recognise personal defects, indivi-
dual limitations, but weak and dangerous to
exaggerate them. All cannot take a part in
leadership. But it is open to all to make some
contribution to the civic strength of a leading
nation, And this is, in a sense, to lead. More-
over, a desire to serve the community is a form
of altruistic zeal which will often receive its special
reward. The man who puts the whole before theREALITY AND, OPPORTUNITY 165

part, and his fellows before himself, will not go
very far wrong in the practical efforts which make
up the essence of his own life. We stand or fall,
as a nation, by our playing of the game. So, too,
the man who learns early in life the lesson of
team-work will find, eventually, the best way to
win a definite place for himself. As Mr. Rudyard
Kipling and Sir Edward Elgar have sung between
them :
‘“ The game is more than the player of the game,
And the ship is more than the crew.”’

Having thus postulated that real gain will
come to a man if he steeps himself in tradition ;
having spoken up for physical activities, knowing
that skill in any wholesome pastime reacts on
the soul; having commended the salutary use
of time in service to others ; I will turn to those
vague aspirations towards a distinctive if not
actually distinguished life which are no incon-
siderable part of youth’s equipment.

It may even happen that life opens with a kind
of disillusion. Some arrow may fail its mark,
or the very target be suddenly snatched out the
sight. The results are embitterments, despairs.
Not so can realities be faced. Manly independ-
ence is essential. Measures, of which every mind
is capable, must be taken by the individual to166 REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

check the sense of injury, to banish despondency,
to make what Mrs. Dombey in the famous novel
failed to make, an effort. Besides, all men do
not aim at the same thing, though there is always,
in the narrowest circle, something worth aiming
at. Therefore we need not rebel, even vicari-
ously, on behalf of those who start to become,
and remain for the whole of their mortal existence,
hewers of wood and drawers of water for others.
To “fling away ambition’’ may prove a good
thing in some cases; and a virtuous, plodding
life, ‘‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d,’’ may be the
happiest career.

But the idea that there is any virtue in standing
stock still—accepting one’s natural endowments
as they are, or one’s position, often the accident
of an accident, as practically immutable—these
notions are exploded and hopelessly out of date :
they are, like the proceedings against St. Joan of
Arc, ‘‘ annihilated, null, of no value or effect.’

No, faint-heartedness in any emergency is
foreign to the spirit of man, and it is not neces-
sary to reach down the Poet Laureate’s anthology
from its shelf to establish my reasons for saying
so. Rebellion against the stationary condition
in character or in affairs is as natural to the
average young man of to-day as “the gloomyREALITY AND OPPORTUNITY 167

slumber of the stagnant soul’ was odious to Dr.
Johnson: though that great man could smile
on “the towering confidence of twenty-one.”
But youth should have its own confidence. For
youth is the time for dreams, and in the idea that
“the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,”
all the poets are at one. The newest feeling of
all, that every child born amongst us has a right
to go forward beyond his progenitors, does tally,
I verily believe, with all reasonable aspirations.
And so I find myself on the same side as the
rebels and the sages and the poets; on the side,
too, of every individual on the look out for a
satisfactory future, by which must be under-
stood development, progressiveness, success, and
a satisfactory share of the good things of this
earth.

Here, as I am thus ranged, even against some
traditionalists, with the friends of freedom, I
will try to explain on what principles, and by what
actions, the dreams of which I have spoken may
become realities.

Of one tradition it is necessary to speak in
balanced language, not only because for long it
was loaded with prejudices, but also because it is
not absolutely clear how far these prejudices have
been removed. There are plenty of rough-and-it

  

T68 REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

ready definitions which divide the professional
from the business man. Some sections of society,
some localities, are still petrified by an unwilling-
ness to perceive that dividing lines of class have
grown thinner. The countryside will long keep,
I trust, some distinctions which make for dignity
and refinement, but the provinces have ceased
to regard with amazement their own drift to the
towns. And town life has amalgamated profes-
sional and business interests in a remarkable
way. Add to these facts, without depreciating
other centres, the overmastering appeal of Lon-
don, Urbs Urbium, and those in search of a career
will recognise how life has become centralised.
‘“ All things precious, or useful, or intoxicating,”
said Emerson some eighty years ago, “‘ are floated
to London.’’ London has vastly increased this
absorptive power since then. Let the neophyte
keep his eye on this, the hub of our moving
world’s wheel, which seems to be at one moment
the heart of the commercial and intellectual
universe ; at another the head; or, again, these
vital organs combined,

All this is a reminder that as business and
professional interests commingle—as the provin-
cial circumference feels itself often to be at one
with the central metropolis—as the intellectualREALITY AND OPPORTUNITY 169

interests of the country link themselves up with
the commercial—so, with a completeness that
would satisfy my noble and learned friend Lord
Haldane and his most subtle teaching about
relativity, the essential unity of things which
seemed diverse is proven. And we are back,
once more, at the point where we were considering
the vital need which there is for every man to
extend his knowledge. For reality and oppor-
tunity are sometimes terribly at variance over
education,

Thomas Carlyle, whom I might dispraise for
exuberance, but must commend for insight, used
to declare that the true and sufficient university
for any man was a collection of books. The
declaration was fine and fair, and will be appre-
ciated here, where the necessity of earning a
living is not for an instant to be lost sight of.
Many of us have a knowledge of attaining univer-
sity status ; and sympathise with the difficulties
which surround this particular aim. Here is
some encouragement, The conditions are grow-
ing easier, But, whether a man reaches the
university or not—and any effort will be worth
the strain—he must to a great extent lean on
books for ideas, I could indeed wish a worse
fate for a man than a university consisting only70 KREALITY AND OPPORTU NT os

of books. And access to the best of books is
free in every populous centre. Whatever we may
learn from books, however, will not carry us
far unless we supplement them by our own
imagination, our own idiosyncrasy. Imagination
is a great force in professional life. In business
it is greater.

It will not be doubted, however, bearing in
mind these realities, especially the ves angusta
domi, that the university itself must be the best
of openings to the learned professions. And here
we rub shoulders with other men in friendly
rivalry; here, and with their aid, “our own
felicity we make or find.’ Education is more
than ever in a state of flux. The university
system is partial and inadequate. The Univer-
sity Extension movement grows slowly. But
chances are increasing, and a man who has the
root of the matter in him may well find encourage-
ment in the scholarship system as it is. It offers
many a chance of assistance which can be accepted
with pride, for it recognises individual merit, and
it is based on self-help as much as it is furthered
by benevolence.

But now we will suppose that the adaptation
of means to ends has been overcome. The pro-
fessions in which the higher education still playsREALTY AND OPPORTU Nia wy = a7

a special part are the Church, the Law, Educa-
tion, Medicine, Science, the Arts, and the Ser-
vices: these latter including the naval and
military and civilian branches in all their rami-
fications. Now, though there is in a sense a
cleavage between these lines of life and the life
commercial, business is in reality the source of
all wealth in the community; and thus there
is one sense in which business, as such, has a right
to take a lead over the professions. But the
universities of to-day, and even the universities
which take precedence in prestige, are, being the
homes of reason, alive to the business claim,
and it will not be denied by the strictest pundit
on earth that every professional man is the better
for business methods, and that every academic
attainment is enhanced if it is supplemented by
a business training.

And so, let us consider the professions.

The Church, speaking of it as a profession for
active men, is rightly a vocation above others,
although every profession should be looked at
in this light. We mean, for instance, quite as
much when we speak of a “call” to the Bar.
One practical consideration, a sincere belief,
should permeate the man who seeks such essential
work as this. I need not stress the importance,REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

 

172
the necessity of religion. In candour, however,
discontent with religion as professed and practised
is actually rife. Disappointment with the intel-
lectual performances of the clergy, unpopularity
and alleged inefficacy of churches as a whole—
these things must be faced as realities, But the
opportunity for every man who would become
an apostle of high thoughts, who would serve his
age by acts of usefulness and mercy—combined
with practical work, which no minister can escape
—such opportunity is really ample to-day. Not
only is the field open, it is greatly understaffed.
In the higher branches of such service, though
not on the business scale, the prospects of pay
and of distinction are sufficient. And any man
whose conscience permits him thus to assume
leadership and guidance of his fellows will find
that so great is the need of suitable men, that,
as regards the expense of training, his path can
be smoothed in innumerable ways by organisations
which have been established and must necessarily
respond to a growing need, And these identical
things are in every way as true for the profession
of a don, a schoolmaster, a teacher of any kind.
Of the Bar as a profession, it is not even neces-
sary to attempt a disquisition concerning those
majestic principles which the law embodies inREALITY AND OPPORTUNITY 2175

order to recommend it. Here, as the essence of
truth, probity, equity, it excels most other possi-
bilities for a man, regarded simply as a vocation.
For the exceptional man it is the finest profession
in the world. But here it is sadly true that
too many are called, too few are chosen. A ten
years’ apprenticeship is practically necessary for
any man who will follow with success this exi-
gent profession. It means some support, some
crutch, all the time. Reality, in the sense of a
deterrent, is too strong, therefore, to reassert
in this particular the encouraging prospects which
may or may not materialise. The Bar demands
the highest staying-power. But, outside the
courts, it is good that there are many cases where
to be a barrister is to validate some purely ex-
traneous claim to work of varying kinds—to
service, to business, to promotion. Some of the
highest successes at the Bar have been grasped
by men who have qualified in other professions
first. This is another aspect of those variations
and amalgamations which have become so com-
mon in modern life, It is at least of hopeful
augury to young men that it is no crime to
change one’s profession, For the rest, oppor-
tunities at the Bar are never wanting, though
it is a fact that those who can negotiate thei74 REALITY AND’ OPPORTUR TERY

preliminaries for a call find they have set them-
selves the hardest task to succeed.

The solicitor’s branch of the legal profession is
even more solidly fenced round by vested inter-
ests. Its labours are intricate and considerable ;
they require assiduity and grip. They involve
some serious risks. But the work involved leads
to a general average of pecuniary returns which
is not to be despised, and while it does not rank
socially with the Bar, its character as a link
between the professional and business sides of
life is very important, and the man who can pass
into it may as a rule consider himself satisfactorily
settled for life.

As to the arts and services, I do not think there
will be much conflict concerning the outlook
everywhere. Reality interposes its obstacles in
every branch, for all are affected by the complex
problems created by the taxation we are bearing.
There are some peculiarities about the fighting
services, as there are about the pacific arts,
which must resolutely be borne in mind. The
boy intended for the navy must have his mind
fixed for him very early. A ship, it has been said,
is nothing but a prison. Yet it is to those who
have manned our ships that this great country
owes its freedom, its security, its life. For aReb Aid Ye “AND? OORT U NEA Ye 75

maritime people, we are strangely inappreciative
of the work of the navy. The reason doubtless
lies in the fact that this is a silent service. Entry
to the navy is not difficult for those who have
a family tradition behind them, or an inclination
of the mind, a thing that often betrays itself in
childhood and does not change. The restrictions
as to entry, and even the expenses, are not so
formidable as they are in many other professions,
and as a career those who make it their objective
and their pride seldom have reason to regret it.
Service in the army is naturally the centre ofa
thousand devotions. To acquire his Majesty’s
commission presents difficulties which still have
to be surmounted by the aid of a fairly elastic
purse. It would be a deception to declare that
the path which was to have been made much easier
has followed that praiseworthy and munificent
intention, of which much was made in the later
stages of the Great War. Still, the ladders that
are being set up by which assistance is procurable
for men with the right kind of physique, brain,
gifts, are by no means negligible.

The universities are being drawn into an official
scheme which is not lacking in generosity, and
those who have the required virility, and are keen
to stand up for their country throughout their176 REALITY AND OPPORDUNGTTY

lives, will not be baulked of their desire if the
true determination seizes them. Events have
altered the position of the regular army, no doubt.
We have learned that every man must answer
the country’s call. But still the scope of the
profession remains unchanged. Unaltered are
the grand traditions which have made us a great
military nation,

If there is a service which cannot be written
of in terms so glowing as these, it is the service
of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy will never appeal
to the really great man. And yet it need not
become a deadening vocation. The indefinable
duties of statesmen could not be performed with-
out expert official help. And here is a service
with multifarious branches. Access to any of
them is jealously guarded. But realities, for a
civil servant, are compatible with many oppor-
tunities. It has even been found possible for
men in this occupation to supply their full meed
of work and yet to make a mark in literature.
Here is that ideal position for some temperaments:
a regular occupation, an adequate pension on
retirement, a certain recognised position. For
those who possess restful but capable qualities of
mind, the chances in the civil service are decidedly
alluring; and this remains true at a _ timeRESET T YY AND OP VOR UNL RY, | 4177

when the system of appointments causes some
searching of hearts. Admission to the service
may be temporarily difficult, but it remains a
legitimate ambition for the promising boy, and
he who casts a longing eye upon it should be
encouraged.

There remain the Arts. A great subject, for
it comprises the highest of individualistic claims.
It is concerned with the determination of talent,
perhaps of genius. Imagination is useful to any
profession or business, but here imagination and
its congeners are supreme. Art covers some
great scientific interests in its domain, of which
the healing art comes first, and those who would
adopt the high calling of the doctor know, without
being told, that this is a profession requiring a
long and expensive training, with prospects of
distinction equal to the value of the service
ultimately rendered. But this branch of activity
would need a dissertation to itself. Art, in fact,
includes the student of every conceivable type.
That is why scholars were designated—in the
Middle Ages—Masters of Arts. The musician,
the painter, the naturalist, the researcher, the
author, the journalist : to these, yes, and to their
sacrifices, the greatness of a country will very

often be due. Rules it is impossible to lay down
II—12178 REALITY AND OPPORTUN TY

where the artist’s temperament has stepped in ;
but this is to be said, as showing that there are
some principles which remain eternally true.
Even genius must take pains. But genius does
take them. The greatest artists have won the
day against the greatest conceivable odds. Here
lies the exceeding importance, herein is assured
the ultimate triumph, of individualism.

Perhaps the strongest bond between all the
forms of activity will always be the man who can
write; write well, inspire, educate, persuade.
The publicist creates this bond. The entry to
his world of usefulness is free to all. In him
reality and opportunity are constantly meeting.
He may be trained; he may find his medium of
expression by accident. From him the fresh
light on current affairs or the hopes of the future
may spring. And thus it is not surprising that
energy of this kind is on the increase, that
the profession of the writer is recruited from
every possible source, and that the whole of
the business world conspires to give fresh op-
portunities to the individual who can express
himself well.

In the end, business capacity rules the world
in which we live. The liberal professions and the
commercial world have united. What is good forREALITY AND OPPORTUNIZY “L170

the one is good for the other. This is promising
enough for the youth of to-day. It is fruitful
enough in anticipation to dissipate some fears
which still linger, drawn from the obscurantism
of a day that is dead. Business is business, says
the proverb. The saying is sometimes cynically
quoted as conveying the idea that any sharp
practice can be condoned, that the course to be
run need not necessarily be a straight one. But
business is only really good business which has
no canker of unfairness at the heart; and this
country stands to-day erect throughout the world,
with a standard nobly borne and fairly flown.
There is here no need to declare in what this pre-
eminence of honour has consisted. It is all
blazoned on the devices of our merchant princes,
It can be read on the signs which succeed the
quaint emblems which studded the old shop-
fronts of Lombard Street. This is a country in
which commerce has long held its own established
and perfected sway. And a clerk behind any
counter, a traveller for any firm, has the ball at
his feet. For him reality can have no terrors.
For him opportunities are more abundant than
ever before. From any humble beginning he has
all before him, the very highest of possibilities,
provided that he recognises that the commercialTSO REALITY AND OPPORTUNITY

life, of all lives, leaves him free to use that
imagination for the use of which I have pleaded,
and offers him, in the vast expansion of the
countries of the earth, greater chances of adven-
ture and of fortune than any other century
has known.

Having offered one gentle word of caution at
the outset, I now offer another of a different
type. There is a great need for every man who
is entering life to know himself; to recognise
that only the exceptional man can win the
exceptional place. But as the reasonable man
will accept this without demur, it only remains
to press home the truth that everything in life
must depend on the emergence of character.
Due weight has been given to the peculiar con-
ditions of our time. Due heed must be paid to
the dangers of the immediate future. Emergence
of character means emergence of the individual.
For dead-levels of mediocrity the centuries that
are coming can have no possible use. We are
sometimes threatened with the control of socialistic
or communist theorists. Even the suggestions
they have made are grown to a parlous horror of
infertile and insane ideas. The individual who
faces reality, conscious of opportunity, will
fight against these. He will do it the betterREALITY AND OPPORTUNITY “ISt

if he studies with care the work of those
who have toiled before him, accepting rough
and smooth, ready to strive and to endure,

unafraid of any reality, eager to embrace any
opportunity.

“ The world belongs to those who come the last,
They shall find hope and strength, as we have done! ”’XVII
MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

1. A CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP AT WADHAM
COLLEGE, OXFORD

HAVE been invited to select six occasions
] in my life which could fairly be described as
“milestones ” in the sense that each was vitally
important to me in that life as I look back upon
its chances, possibilities, and uncertainties in
retrospect. Such a series of studies must, in the
very nature of the case, be egotistic. But I
hope that some allowance may be made for this
circumstance. There must be many young men
very willing to hold some of the offices which
I have held, and not disinclined to consider any
steps in the career of one very willing to help
them, which may happen, even if only here and
there, to afford some guidance.

Once and for all, therefore, I make my apology
that the very nature of what I have been asked
to write makes it necessary to bring myself con-
stantly into the forefront of the picture. I hope
that I shall be able to tell the story, such as it is,

182MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 183

without overvaluing that which I am, or that,
such as it is, which I have achieved.

I was educated at an old and excellent school,
Birkenhead School. It is larger now than in
my day. Indeed, I believe that with the Pre-
paratory School, which is really part of it, it con-
sists of nearly five hundred boys. In my day
the Headmaster was the Rev. A. Sloman, Editor
of Terence, once a President of the Oxford Union
Society, and, before he came to Birkenhead,
Master of the Queen’s Scholars at Westminster.
Birkenhead School has the distinction in the
athletic world of having produced a larger number
of distinguished Rugby football players than any
other school of the same size in the kingdom. It
has for years fed the famous Birkenhead Park
Football Club; its county players and its Uni-
versity Blues have been innumerable. Nor has
it lacked distinguished international players.
Indeed, in the present English team the famous
centre three-quarters, Locke, was a former cap-
tain of the Birkenhead School team.

I may perhaps recall with loyal satisfaction the
circumstance that when I was in the Upper
Sixth under Sloman, the form consisted of only
five boys; there being about sixteen in the
Lower Sixth. Of the five boys who constituted184 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

the Upper Sixth, four, Patterson, Duckworth,
C. T. Wood, and myself, obtained Fellowships
at either Oxford or Cambridge; while the fifth,
Robson, obtained an important Exhibition at
Trinity College, Cambridge. I have caused
inquiries to be made, and I believe it to be a fact
that at the date in question no Public School
in England—Eton, Harrow, Winchester, West-
minster, or any of them—could show such an
extraordinary record.

There comes to every ambitious and promising
boy when he nears the end of his school days the
necessity of choosing a career. It often happened
at Birkenhead, where many of the prosperous
Liverpool merchants sent their sons, that the
decision was an easy one; for a comfortable
paternal business awaited at least the eldest son.
But Birkenhead School has always sent a con-
siderable number of its members to one or other
of our Universities. I yield to no one in my
admiration for our modern Universities, or for
the public spirit and munificence which have so
admirably equipped them. But I shall give
offence to no one if I make it plain that, excepting
the Scottish Universities (though the case of
Scotland is a little, but not entirely, different),
the cleverest boys at all our great schools willMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 185

always try, to the best of their powers, to go either
to Oxford or to Cambridge. If their abilities lie
in the direction of what are called the Human-
ities—pure scholarship, Philosophy, Ancient
History, or Literature—they will probably on
the whole do well, if they can, to drift towards
Oxford. The mathematician, the scientist, the
engineer, and the medical man of the future will,
on the whole, whether he be right or wrong, be
advised to set his eyes towards the River Cam.

The kind of boy who interests me is not so much
the one who can go to Oxford or Cambridge aided
by acomfortable allowance from his father, but the
boy who can only goif he wins a scholarship. If
such a one is clever enough to win either a scholar-
ship or an exhibition (the value of scholarships was,
I believe, and still is, between {100 and £80 a year,
and that of exhibitions between £60 and £30),
he has a nucleus which may perhaps be reinforced
by aschool scholarship. I do not think that these
values have altered much since the War, though
evidently the spending value was much higher
in the happy pre-War days.

I belonged to the class which could not have
gone to Oxford unless its members obtained a
scholarship. My father died at the early age of
forty-three, when I was seventeen years old,186 MILESTONES OF MY BIES

leaving my mother in straitened circumstances
and with five children to bring up and educate.
An uncle of mine, the late Mr. E. P. Smith, of
Birkenhead, whose genial memory still lives in
the town of Birkenhead, was willing to give me
a degree of assistance which in all the circum-
stances was extremely generous. But he had a
large family of his own, and his help was reason-
ably made conditional upon my winning an
open scholarship. In those days Balliol College
held its examination first in the academic year.
That examination was closely followed by those
jointly held at Trinity and Wadham Colleges.
I was to have competed at Balliol, but was pre-
vented by an attack of neuralgia. I do not,
however, think that I should have succeeded,
for I was not a particularly exact scholar, and in
those days the methods of discrimination employed
at Balliol seemed to me to be somwhat formal
and precise—perhaps a little too Balliol-like.
Nor had my only previous attempt at winning
a scholarship been crowned by much success.
As a boy of thirteen I tried for a scholarship
at Harrow School when Bishop Welldon was
Headmaster. In those days the examiners re-
jected what were known as “ half-wits” after
two days’ examination, thereby making it plainMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 187

that those who were so rejected were merely
cumbering up the ground to the embarrassment
of really promising young scholars. I was among
the “half-wits.’ But time brought its con-
solations. For so also were Ramsay, destined
to win an open scholarship (I think the senior
one) at Eton, to become a distinguished House
Master in that ancient foundation, and to be
one of the best classical scholars of our genera-
tion ; and Amery, one day to hold high Cabinet
rank, to win two First Classes and a Fellowship
at All Souls’, to be a wonderful linguist, and to
develop into a versatile and gifted historian.

It was, however, in no spirit of excessive con-
fidence that I went up in the month of December
to try my fortune at the Trinity and Wadham
examination. I was advised by a frugal friend
to stay at the Wilberforce Temperance Hotel,
where I was made extremely comfortable, though
I have never happened to stay there since. After
dinner on the night of my arrival I proceeded to
survey the ferrain. Trinity College was rather
fashionable, Wadham not at all so. But I looked
at the two colleges on a brilliant moonlight night,
when the beauty of Oxford was rendered even
more exquisite, and if possible purer, by a dazz-
ling mantle of snow. I saw Trinity first, and then188 MILESTONES OF MY LPDRERE

I passed along the Broad Street to that grey and
perfect fagade which has remained unaltered since
the enlightened and splendid bounty of Nicholas
and Dorothy Wadham dedicated a noble build-
ing for the education of students from the West
of England. I passed into that quadrangle
which has undergone no change, save where time
has mellowed it, since a divine architect gave
expression to his genius in terms of stone; and
advancing through the quadrangle towards the
chapel, I turned, left-handed, into the most
beautiful garden in Oxford, walked to the old
cedar tree, which, alas! has since perished, then
turned round and saw, radiant in the moonlight,
the grey, almost white outlines of the chapel and
the long line of ancient gables which make,
whether you see it by day or whether you see it
by night, the most enchanting spectacle which
Oxford can afford. The haunting beauty of
that winter scene determined my choice in one
swift moment. I cared then, I am glad to recall,
little for fashion; I cared intensely for beauty.
Every candidate was required to express a pre-
ference for one college or another. While I
entertain the most profound respect for Trinity
College, I shall all my life rejoice that I chose
Wadham.MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 189

And so the examination began. It lasted for
about five days. It took place in the beautiful
hall of Wadham College, and culminated in a
viva voce held in the oak-panelled common-room
at the top of an old and winding wooden stair-
case. I was asked, I remember, by Warden
Thorley whether I was a candidate for an exhibi-
tion if I were not selected for scholarship. I
replied that I could not afford to go to Oxford
except as a scholar. The answer, I have always
suspected, was a judicious one.

And then there came some days of extreme
suspense, In my own case it was not even cer-
tain that I should be able to afford the £10 journey
money necessary to make another attempt if I
failed in this; and therefore I lingered on, anxi-
ously but temperately, at my Temperance Hotel,
waiting for another group of scholarships
(probably my last) if I failed at Wadham. And
then it became known that the list would be
published at the Porter’s Lodge at 11 o'clock on
Monday morning. Five minutes before that
hour, a young man—almost a boy—feeling ex-
tremely unsuccessful, remembering (how vividly !)
all the mistakes he had made, was waiting in the
Porter’s Lodge. He little suspected that he would
live to be Fellow of Wadham, Fellow of Merton,SS Pe

   
  
  
 
   
   
  
 
    
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

 

I9gO MILESTONES OF MY Ure

Vinerian Scholar, and High Steward of Oxford
University.

I can still see the old porter, a veteran, I
believe, of the Indian Mutiny, coming from the
Warden’s lodging—how slow he was !—with a
sheet of paper. He opened a glass case—again
how slowly !—produced four brass pins, and
proceeded to pin up an announcement written
in the scholarly hand of Warden Thorley, which
I can see before me as I write, to the effect that
the scholars elected at Wadham College as the
result of the examination were, in the following
order :

CB. Eny.

A. B, Willimot.
W. H, Anstie.
F, E, Smith.

I was indeed the junior of all four scholars, but
I had won, none the less, an open classical scholar-
ship, and whatever straits and difficulties lay in
front of me, it was at least certain that I should
have the opportunity of an Oxford career. I
took the next train back to Birkenhead. The
Great Western express (it was called, I still re-
member, the Zulu) was fast enough, but I was
travelling in my mind faster far. For I knewMLLESTONES OF MY EPEE Igt

perfectly well, that though in the last place on
the list, I had been afforded an opportunity which
might be decisive of my whole future career. I
was to be educated side by side with those who
were to be my rivals and competitors for the rest
of my life. They would enjoy no advantage,
social or educational, which was denied to me.
The field thereafter was open to competition ;
and I felt confident that I was able to compete.

I did not, of course, fail to realise that I was
going to Oxford with very slender and inadequate
financial resources. But I was sanguine enough
to believe that the first thing was to get there ;
that somehow or other things would work out for
the best afterwards. I had, indeed, a very small
income upon which I could rely. It proved,
even with reasonable economy, quite inadequate
to the life which I was called upon to lead, having
regard to the social and athletic commitments
which soon proved to be necessary. But here
a much-abused, though occasionally indispensable,
Oxford institution came to my aid—I mean its
disputable credit system, which I for one can
never find it in my heart to disparage. In the
absence of that system I could certainly never
have completed my University career. When I
took my degree I suppose I was in debt to theacini NS
a =

  

192 MILESTONES O}F MY Lite

extent of about £300. Had my creditors chosen
to have done so, or found it worth while to do so,
they could easily (and, indeed, without resistance)
have made me bankrupt. They never showed the
slightest disposition to do so: but, on the con-
trary, always treated me with the greatest
patience and consideration, And I had the
satisfaction within two years (it was in the year
1895 that I took my Final School) of discharging
the last penny of my indebtedness. I still deal
with many of the tradesmen who showed me
kindness at a moment when it counted for so much
in my life,

I have, I hope, said enough to justify the view
that the winning of this scholarship at Wadham
College was the first memorable ‘ milestone ”’
in my career.

2. My MAIDEN SPEECH AT THE OXFORD
UNION SOCIETY

The Oxford Union Society is probably on the
whole the most famous debating Society in the
world. It is much disputed whether or not it
is older in date than the sister Society at Cam-
bridge. But it is hardly necessary for Oxford men
to pursue this particular dispute too closely ; forMILESTONES OF MY LIFE I93

it is indisputable that the roll of distinguished
men contributed by the Oxford Union to the
service of the Empire is incomparably more
brilliant than can be claimed by the sister Society.
There have debated in the Oxford Union : Glad-
stone, Salisbury, Manning, Milner, Swinburne,
Asquith, Curzon, and hundreds of others whose
names are household words in statecraft, in
letters, and in theology.

But the very exceptional prestige of this par-
ticular Society must not be allowed to obscure
the general advice which I offer to all students
at all Universities. It does not matter whether
the University be Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow,
Liverpool, or Sheffield: each of these Universi-
ties has a general, as contrasted with a sectional,
Debating Society; and my earnest advice to
all young men is regularly to attend these societies
and regularly to take part in their discussions.
The motto of the undergraduate, however self-
conscious and diffident his nature, should be:
Semper ego auditor tantum ?

The reason which underlies this advice is
evident. It is far too early to say whether
democracy as a form of government will be per-
manent in the political systems of history. It

may prove so; and on the other hand it may not.
I—13194 MILESTONES OF MY ITKve

If it abuses its numerical power in such a man-
ner or to such an extent as to imperil the safety
of the whole body politic, there will certainly
result reactions, possibly revolutions, which will
in the last resort put its pretensions to the deci-
sion of the sword. This decisive test may be
applied in a variety of ways. In Soviet Russia
democracy has undergone sabotage by those
who proclaimed themselves its high-priests. In
Italy the Fascist Movement has contemptuously,
without even troubling to pay it lip-service,
scourged it from the seats of government. But
in this country, in our Dominions, and in the
United States of America democracy is far too
deeply intrenched to afford such a prospect ;
unless, therefore, it is guilty of wild and incredible
excess it will not be violently dispossessed as a
system of government.

These speculations may appear to diverge
somewhat widely from my particular purpose.
But the divergence is apparent rather than
actual. A wise and philosophical Roman writer
once observed that the art of rhetoric was of
incomparable value in a democracy, but counted
for comparatively little under an autocracy.
This generalisation is profoundly true. Julius
Cesar cared little, and Augustus less, for thoseMILESTONES OF MY LIFE I9Q5

who possessed this golden gift. To Oliver Crom-
well an orator was merely a bore; and except
upon the 18th Brumaire Napoleon the Great had
no use for “ spell-binders.”’

But it seems, on the whole, worth while to
assume, though not over-confidently, that the de-
mocracy of this country will not so grotesquely
abuse its evident numerical advantages as to
involve the country, or alternatively itself, in
ruin. Untilit does so the divine gift of persuasive
speech will count for as much in Great Britain
as in any country in the history of the world;
not even excluding ancient Athens, whose citi-
zens profoundly admired their orators, but
generally neglected to accept their advice.

I assume, therefore, for the purpose of the
counsel which I am about to offer, the probability
that a democratic system of government will
endure for a considerable, if not even for an in-
definite, period in this country. If we accept this
hypothesis, it becomes evident at once how foolish
and inconsiderate any young man is who neglects
any opportunity of acquiring the gift of public
speech, or if he possesses it by nature, of neglect-
ing its improvement. It is exactly at this point
that the Debating Unions of our Universities,
old and new, afford a priceless opportunity.196 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

At Oxford and Cambridge each separate col-
lege possesses its own debating society. Con-
siderable opportunities are there afforded for
advancement and improvement. But on the
whole the debates are conducted either too form-
ally or too informally. If too formally, they
become extremely dull; if too informally, they
degenerate into flippancy. That Society which
represents the whole University may be open to
criticism upon many. points ; but at least it pro-
vides him who would master the art of speech
with a theatre where debate is formally conducted,
and where he is compelled to equip himself by
preparation and arrangement for the delivery
of a set speech. I have frequently heard men,
sometimes of the greatest distinction, who never
spoke at the Oxford Union regret their omission.
I have never heard anyone who took part in its
debates regret that he did so.

I am naturally more familiar with the Oxford
Union than with any other great debating society.
I was junior Treasurer there and afterwards
President. I was indeed elected to each office
without a contest. Many of the happiest and
most exciting memories of my University life
centred around that Society. It was indeed
in my day a wonderful club. A subscriptionMILESTONES OF MY, LIP: 197

of ten guineas without an entrance fee made a
man a life-member of the Society. And among
the privileges—though since the War I under-
stand that this has been withdrawn—was that of
having all his letters stamped free of cost even if
if he chose to write a hundred a day. The
club-rooms, greatly reinforced since my day, are
hardly inferior to those of any club in the world,
and it offers too—what hardly another club in
the world can offer—the opportunity of acquir-
ing and perfecting public speech in the historic
surroundings which have been adorned at one
period or another by almost all the great orators
of the British Empire.

I therefore most earnestly advise every fresh-
man at every University—and particularly
every Oxford freshman, for after all I know
Oxford best—not only to join his Union Debating
Society but to speak at it constantly. Above
all, do not be afraid of boring your audience.
That, after all, is more their worry than yours.
And inasmuch as in your earlier stages you will
rise late in the evening when few are present,
you will probably be right in drawing the infer-
ence that the majority of those who are giving
you an unwilling audience are desirous of speak-
ing themselves and resent the preference which198 MILESTONES OF MY LIE

has been given to you. These deserve no mercy
at your hands. And after all you have paid
your subscription and you are entitled to speak
whenever the President calls upon you to do so;
and it is far better that you should bore a number
of young gentlemen at the University of Oxford
than that you should bore other people after-
wards, whose disapproval might easily prove more
serious. Remember that Charles Fox partly
explained his amazing gift for Parliamentary
debate by the fact that he had spoken on every
single night for two whole sessions of Parliament.
Frequently his hearers were considerably fatigued
and annoyed ; but he was by no means concerned
to consider their wishes ; and constant practice,
combined with shining natural gifts, went to
make him one of the two first orators of his
generation.

I had not myself, when I went to Oxford, given
any particular indication that I possessed any
gift of public speech. My father indeed, the late
Mr. Frederick Smith, of Birkenhead, both as a
barrister and as a politician had gained an
immense local reputation in Birkenhead and
Liverpool as a powerful and eloquent speaker.
But I can hardly remember a period of my life
at which it was not my steadfast purpose to ac-MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 199

quire, as far as I could, the gift which I had so
much admired in him. I had always, therefore,
made up my mind that if ever I made my way to
Oxford I would try my fortune at the famous
Oxford Union Debating Society. It so happened
that in my day this Society was enjoying one of
its recurrent periods of efflorescence. Contem-
porary with me were the Earl of Crawford, Earl
Beauchamp, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, the Earl of
Donoughmore, Sir John Simon and many others
who have since sat in British Cabinets.or stamped
their names upon the world of letters.

As a rule a new member of the Society must
work his way up from the bottom. In every
debate four speakers—two on each side—are
invited by the President to conduct the earlier
stages of the debate. The names of these
speakers are printed and circulated in every
college in Oxford. When their considered efforts
are concluded, the debate is thrown open to all
and sundry. It usually therefore happens that
before an aspiring orator is given an opportunity
of speaking, as the phrase goes, “on the paper,”
he must attract attention by a promising speech
made in a comparatively empty house. I was
fortunate in this respect that an ex-Secretary of
the Union, Mr. C. H. Eliot, son of the late Dean200 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

of Windsor, came as a guest to the Wadham
Debating Society. I made a flippant speech
about some subject or other which I have for-
gotten. The result was, however, that he caused
me to be invited to speak “‘ on the paper ”’ in the
most important debate of his Presidency. Sir
Wilfrid Lawson, then at the height of his reputa-
tion as the wittiest speaker hitherto produced by
the Teetotal Movement, had been induced to
visit Oxford and deliver an oration in favour of
local option. I was invited to speak in opposi-
tion to the motion and immediately before the
guest of the evening. By a strange chance, the
motion was recommended also in a maiden
speech by the present Earl of Crawford (then
Lord Balcarres), who, I suppose, has made no
other speech in favour of local option, and has
consistently voted against it since, both in the
House of Commons and in the House of Lords.
I cannot pretend that even upon this exciting
occasion I was exactly nervous, although I was
completely unknown. I had never given the
slightest evidence, even to myself, that I possessed
any gift of public speech; there were at least
800 undergraduates and guests present ; and the
occasion was undoubtedly to a freshman a very
serious one.MILESTONES OF MY LEVEE 201

Looking back and having regard to my stand-
ing, and the standing of our distinguished guest,
I cannot doubt that I made an extremely imperti-
nent speech. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, on his acces-
sion to the Baronetcy, had inherited a noble
cellar, established and maintained by the piety
of many excellent and thoughtful predecessors.
He flung it into the gutter, regarding all that it
contained as a vile and dangerous instrument
of corruption. In language of generous indigna-
tion I branded this unspeakable act. I recalled
the generous burgundies, the delicate clarets, the
stimulating champagnes, the warm and ancient
brandies, which had perished in this insensate
outrage. And I inflamed the honest resentment
of a youth, to most of whom these beverages were
extremely rare, by my reproaches upon their
cruel and uneconomic dissipation. My views
upon this subject have altered little since the date
of my speech in the year 1891; nor have I any
reason to suppose that I could express my indigna-
tion with greater powers of sarcasm than I was
the master of thirty-two years ago.

I have, I hope, already in the first of these
articles sufficiently disarmed the charge of egotism
or conceit which might be founded upon produc-
tion of a series of memories such as this, in which202 MILESTONES OF MY ERES

I recall many events as interesting landmarks in
my life. But it is so long ago (and so much has
happened since) that I shall not be deterred from
quoting the criticisms on my speech which
appeared a week later in the two principal Uni-
versity papers, the Oxford Magazine and the Isis.

The Oxford Magazine said: “‘ It is long indeed
since the house has listened to a maiden speech
of such power, conciseness, and brilliancy.” And
the Isis said: ‘‘ The speech of the evening, with
all respect to our guest, was the amazingly viva-
cious and brilliant performance of Mr. F. E. Smith,
the Wadham freshman.”

For myself, I say quite plainly that the success
of that evening marked an epoch in my life. I
was thereafter satisfied that I possessed a power
of speech which, if sustained and developed, must
lead me, along one path or another, to some
degree of eminence in the State. I did not, I
hope, make the mistake of supposing that rhetoric
alone could open the golden gates of success. But
I had at least become certain that, if I could make
myself the master of solid knowledge, I should
not be found lacking in the task of its expression
and elucidation.

Let me, therefore, before I part from my
purpose, which is to offer advice to young menMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 203

in the same position as I was then, impress upon
them most strongly that they must not make
the Union everything, or exaggerate the value
of a glib facility in speech. No rhetoric can be
valuable which is not supported by study and
reinforced by knowledge. No sensible under-
graduate, therefore, will sacrifice his prospects
in the Schools for his prospects at the Union.
Rather should both march hand in hand, so that
the acquisition of knowledge should always
be matched by the growing power of ex-
pressing it in lucid, intelligible, and persuasive
speech.

If this very necessary caution is borne in mind,
no one, I am sure, who reads this will ever in
after-life regret that he has followed the advice
which I here so confidently offer. Nor is it
limited to those who have the advantage of
studying at our Universities old or new; I sup-
pose that every considerable town or centre of
population has a debating society of some kind.
Every cultivated man should be ashamed of being
unable to express himself coherently and intelli-
gibly in public as in private speech.

It is indeed a fine thing “‘ to witch the world
with noble horsemanship.” But it is finer far to
witch it by noble oratory harnessed to nobleMILESTONES OF "MY Etre

 

204

i purpose. Not all can compass this result ; but
all can try.

3. Mr. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN AND TARIFF
Mi REFORM
Hh | I had myself, even as a young man at Oxford,
a , become convinced that a Free Trade system was
Wa not economically advantageous to a nation which
nhs, had to live its life in a Protectionist world. The
\ controversy before the War was obviously not a
very easy one: for our immense material pros-
hi perity and our accumulated wealth furnished
| powerful arguments in favour of the existing
Hh fiscal system; but none the less, rightly or
I wrongly, a little influenced I think by the argu-
! . ments of Disraeli but still not without some
| independent reflection, I had convinced myself,
ya while still a boy at Oxford, that it was not possible
he for a Free Trade country to compete over an
| | indefinite period of time with those who enjoyed
our market and denied us theirs. I remember
| well involving myself in considerable discredit
pi |) | by a paper which I wrote upon this subject in the
| year 1892. In it I established some small con-
Tas troversial advantage by calling attention to the
| iy predictions, so ludicrously falsified by the event,
| which had been so confidently made by CobdenMILESTONES OF MY LTEE 205

and Bright. These two great men, unlike their
fluid followers, were rigidly consistent. They
were indeed fanatics. They looked at the world
through the spectacles of economics. But unfor-
tunately, the world never has been governed, and
never will be governed, by professors of economics.
Economics is a dismal and it is also a purely
empirical science, if indeed it can be called a
science at all. Its professors grope more faith-
fully, but with less certainty, towards the light
(or towards the dark) than the titular exponents
of any other branch of human learning.

We might perhaps have expected that the
professors of political economy would have
afforded the world some warning of the dance to
death which was to mark the hectic dawn of
European exchanges. I cannot recall myself
one useful warning which any doctrinaire writer
addressed to his countrymen upon this technical
but immensely important subject at a moment
when his counsel might have been useful.

The intervention of the War has made it almost
impossible, and certainly useless, to pursue the
old controversies in the old terms. It is suffi-
cient to say that, even if the War had not taken
place at all, many arguments could be alleged in
favour of the view that our Protectionist rivals,206 MILESTONES OF MY LIPE

basing themselves upon a creed which would
have made Cobden gnash impotent teeth, would
have wrenched from us our supremacy in trade.

Holding even before the War, and at a time
when they were very unfashionable, the views
which I have indicated ; repelling (as I had done)
the extreme Free Trade argument at a moment
when Mr. Joseph Chamberlain would undoubtedly
have supported it; it may easily be supposed
that I was one of the earliest recruits who rallied
in the year 1904 to his standard.

Mr. Chamberlain, of course, made one fatal
mistake ; and one which I believe (though I
am not certain of this) he afterwards admitted.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the time
when Mr. Chamberlain returned from his arduous
tour in South Africa, was Mr. Ritchie, a dull,
second-rate man, who had no real position either
in the Cabinet, the House of Commons, or the
country. But he was an inveterate Free Trader.
He would be. There was in existence at the
moment of Mr. Chamberlain’s return a duty on
corn, which had been generally accepted by the
country, and which would have sufficed as a basis
for Mr. Chamberlain’s proposals. As long, indeed,
as it existed, it supplied a complete antidote
and corrective to the traditional and passionateMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 207

Liberal falsehoods in relation to dear food. Mr.
Ritchie insisted in Cabinet upon the withdrawal of
a duty to which no one seriously objected, but
which carried with it the whole germ and promise
of the Tariff Reform proposal. Had Mr. Ritchie
resigned at that moment, not a ripple would have
been caused upon the political wave. He was
utterly unimportant ; and no one would have
even remembered three months afterwards that
he had ever been Chancellor of the Exchequer.
No one remembers it now; except by reason of
that which, quite unnecessarily, he was allowed
to do. Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, at
that moment was a political figure of the utmost
consequence. No Prime Minister could have
hesitated, if the choice had been presented to
him, of choosing between Mr. Chamberlain or
Mr. Ritchie. The difference was between Pitt
and Addington, between London and Padding-
ton. But Mr. Chamberlain, I think, at almost
the unhappiest moment of his career, perhaps
suffering a little from the lassitude induced by
his laborious efforts in South Africa, did not meet
the challenge as I thought he ought to have done,
having regard to the schemes which he had
already formed. He did not, in other words,
elect to fight at a moment when his decision must

Cee ge208 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

have been accepted, and his challenge conceded.
He allowed Mr. Ritchie to withdraw the duty
on corn; and, by doing so, armed the Liberal
Party with a characteristically dishonest pre-
text: that Tariff Reform must increase the price
of the people’s food.

Mr. Chamberlain undertook in his seventieth
year an unforgettable campaign. But he paid
almost the only forfeit which he ever paid in his
life to indolence ; perhaps it should be said, to
an understandable fatigue. Incredible as was
his energy, lucid as was his power of exposition,
undaunted his will-power, it became evident that
even he had overrated his strength. His cam-
paign might have hoped for happier results had
he been assaulting a Liberal Government in a
moment of weakness. But unhappily for him
and for his efforts, it began in a moment of
reactions when everything conspired to make the
Conservative Government detestable.

Nor could he himself be judged entirely blame-
less for this reaction. At the election which
became known as the ‘“‘ Khaki Election ”’ he had,
speaking with high authority, and in plain lan-
guage, announced that the only business of a new
Parliament would be or ought to be to achieve
the peace, and deal with the débris of the war,MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 209

The Parliament which came into existence was
in reality only authorised and inspired by the
country for that purpose. The moment that it
set itself to new and highly disputable legislative
proposals, it became evident that it was lacking in
moral and political validity. Both the Licensing
Bill and the Education Bill were admirably con-
ceived. The Liberal Party shrieked at both in
partisan rage. It has never indee dbeen able to
alter the fundamental principles of either of
these great measures. But nevertheless it had
an argumentative case. The verdict of the con-
stituencies had been invited upon a single issue;
so invited it should not have been deflected to
controversial party issues, however masterly the
treatment proposed might be. And from the
moment that this Parliament, having disposed
of the South African War, addressed itself to
most vexed subjects of domestic politics, its
doom was certain. The reactions of every war,
even of a comparatively small war, are perilous
to Governments. Soon these reactions united
against the then Conservative Government the
most formidable catena of antagonisms with
which my experience of political life has made me
familiar,

The Taff Vale decision, “Chinese Slavery,”

1I—I4210 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

the Education Act, the Licensing Act—all com-
bined to increase the discredit and instability of
the Government. And no scruple in the Liberal
Party avoided any argument which might dis-
credit the Government of the day. Nor was the
personnel of that Government well chosen to meet
Parliamentary assault. Whenever the Con-
servative Party has been in power for a long
period of time it has always been afflicted by an
incredible tendency in the direction of nepotism.
Young men are neglected ; old and incompetent
men, wholly without Parliamentary gifts, are
promoted to the highest places in the State. If
youth is advanced at all, you may generally
identify in one so promoted the son of an aristo-
crat.

Mr. Chamberlain, therefore, could hardly have
chosen a worse moment to launch his campaign.
For the only Party on which he could rely to carry
it was already stricken and doomed.

But even now, when with our later knowledge
we read of his marvellous personal effort in cool
retrospect, and realise fully how hopeless it was,
we must salute the courage and the inspiration
of its prophet.

I was first brought into contact with him in
this campaign when he visited Liverpool, I think,MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 2I1I

in the early part of 1905. I had never met him
before; and was at that time leading a forlorn
hope in the Scotland Division of Liverpool. I
met him at a luncheon party, given at the Town
Hall by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, my old
friend, now Sir Watson Rutherford. I was intro-
duced to him after lunch. And I knew, I think,
almost as well as he did, that Tariff Reform was
impossible, except from the basis of a tax upon
food. But I was most clearly convinced that
there was not the slightest chance in existing
political circumstances of a tax on food being
accepted by the nation. It might easily have been
accepted if a reasonable treatment could have
been expected from our opponents. Nothing in
the history of those opponents (nor in our treat-
ment of them) entitled us to expect the slightest
mercy at their hands. And seeing these things,
with the confidence of youth (which later experi-
ence, I may add, has not greatly shaken) I ven-
tured to say to Mr. Chamberlain, “‘ Cannot you
postpone the proposal to tax food until a moment
when we are politically stronger? Cannot you
in the first place use the Protectionist argument,
which has great value in the industrial constitu-
encies, and postpone until we are stronger the
full and ultimately indispensable programme ?”’212 MILESTONES OF MY @EUTEE

I can still see him, smoking a very large cigar,
in the banqueting-hall of the Liverpool City
Council, looking at me almost with amusement
and saying: ‘‘ My young friend, you have mis-
taken my purpose. All these matters were
deeply considered by me before I conceived and
declared my proposals.” The snub was complete.
My age and standing gave me no choice but
acquiescence. Had my age and standing author-
ised it, I should have pursued the controversy
further; for I was completely unconvinced.
In the evening Mr. Chamberlain addressed a
great audience of about five thousand at Heng-
ler’s Circus, He made an incisive and very
closely reasoned speech. But the qualities in
that speech which were most valuable detracted
a little by their detail of illustration from its
superficial attractiveness. At that moment all
the Liverpool constituencies except the Scotland
Division, where I was Conservative candidate,
were held by Unionists. My old friend Sir
Archibald Salvidge, now leader of the Conserva-
tive Party in Liverpool, professing himself unable
to decide the competitive claims of the Liverpool
members of Parliament to support Mr. Chamber-
lain’s speech, decided that the opportunity should
be given to the only Unionist candidate in theMILESTONES OF MY Line 213

city who was not a member, and accordingly I
was afforded the opportunity, while many willing
orators remained silent, of making the second
speech after Mr. Chamberlain. Sir Archibald
Salvidge has often told me that, while I was
speaking, Mr. Chamberlain turned to him and
said, ‘““Who is this young fellow? He was
arguing with me to-day. Who is he?” Sir
Archibald replied, “He is a young barrister,
called F. E. Smith, of whom we have a very
high opinion in Liverpool.” To which Mr.
Chamberlain replied, ‘‘ What seat is he standing
for? ”’ Salvidge replied, ‘‘ The Scotland Divi-
sion.” To which Chamberlain replied, ‘‘ Well,
my advice to you is to get him into a seat which
he can win.’’ And when the meeting was over,
he came up to me and said, “ I have told Salvidge
that he must get you a safe seat. You will be
returned to Parliament: come up to me in the
Lobby of the House of Commons, and recall your-
self to my recollection.”

I took him at his word eighteen months later.
He treated me with the greatest kindness and
consideration ; and I owed entirely to his inter-
vention the opportunity of making on a very
favourable occasion my maiden speech in the

House of Commons. All of us who have beenESE hs

    

 

214 MILESTONES. OF MY Eley

engaged for a long period of years in politics incur
great debts to powerful friends and patrons.
Let me here, long after he is dead, place on record
the deep admiration which I had and have for
the lucid intellect, the incisive speech, and the
supreme intelligence of Joseph Chamberlain.
Let me above all add an expression of gratitude
to a great man who, at the very moment of his
greatness, held out a helping hand to one who,
at that moment, was inconceivably obscure.

4. How I ENTERED PARLIAMENT

To every young barrister who has grasped, or
sees within his grasp, real success in his profes-
sion, there comes a moment when he must decide
whether he will adhere closely to the legal side
of that profession or whether he will attempt to
unite with it a political career. The decision is
an extremely grave one, and should be con-
sidered and reconsidered. Unless a man has a
particular gift for politics, he is surrendering the
scanty leisure of a busy professional life without
the certain prospect of any return at all. He must
live laborious days and tedious nights seeking
to persuade a constituency which he may never
win. And if, on the other hand, he wins the seat,MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 215

he not only has the anxiety and expense of
maintaining it, but much of his vacations must
be given up either to protracted sessions in the
House of Commons or to a series of engagements
in his constituency.

Nor can the question of expense be excluded
from the accounts. In one way or another, most
elections, even under modern conditions, cost
nearly {1,000. Nor, again speaking generally,
does the £400 a year which is now paid as salary
(less income tax) to members defray the charges
of an ordinary constituency. Unless, therefore,
the rising barrister whom we are attempting to
advise has given some distinct evidence of
political as distinguished from forensic capacity,
he will, on the whole, be well advised to write
politics off the slate of his life. Nor does such
decision deny to him a very distinguished career.
He may, if he be among the elect, become a
Judge of the High Court; thence he may be
promoted to be a Lord Justice of Appeal; if he
be one of the foremost men in his legal generation,
he may even become a Law Lord and a Life Peer.
So that even for the non-political barrister, if he
be a real winner in the legal Derby, a career of
extraordinary distinction is open. He may live
to make the laws of England ; even to administer216 MILESTONES OF MY Litre

justice in the far-flung and complex jurisprudence
of the British Empire in virtue of membership
of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

But of course such a man misses much.
Every intelligent man must take an interest in
politics, whether he wishes or not. For politics
means only the science of government. And we
are, in my judgment, approaching a period in
which no man who has the slightest stake in the
country will be able to afford himself the luxury
of abstinence from politics; and if you are
interested in politics, it is, after all, at West-
minster that the great game is and must be
played. It is there that you may measure your-
self, not only with your fellow King’s Counsel, but
with all the great political gladiators of the day.
Parliament, after all, is the microcosm of the
talent of Great Britain; and no man of great
ambition, conscious of great powers, will will-
ingly throughout his career be excluded from
its arena.

And it is of course not less apparent that the
most dazzling prizes of the profession fall to those
who have proved alike their political and their legal
efficiency. Except by strange and infrequently
recurring chances, no man becomes Lord Chan-
cellor who has not sat in the House of Commons.MILESTONES OF MY ETDEE 217

The Lord Chief Justice of England, except by the
same kind of accident, is always one who has
passed through the Parliamentary hurly-burly.
And the Law Officers of the Crown, with all the
dazzling possibilities which their offices afford,
must from the very nature of their duties find
seats in the House of Commons,

It may, therefore, be confidently predicted
that the lure of Parliament will always make an
irresistible appeal to the most adventurous and
gifted members of the legal profession. But
nevertheless, as I have already indicated, unless
their debating and political capacity marches in
equal step with their adventurous qualities, they
may easily abandon the substance for an elusive
shadow, drawing no prize, after years of expendi-
ture and disillusionment, from the political
lucky-bag.

I myself, whether I proved right or wrong, had
irrevocably made up my mind that the moment
my position at the Bar justified it, I would try
my hand at the Parliamentary game. My success
at the Junior Bar at Liverpool had been very
rapid. For when I first joined the Northern
Circuit and took chambers at Liverpool, the
juniors with whom I was brought into com-
petition were as formidable, and were to prove as218 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

brilliantly successful, as any at that moment
to be found among the Bar of London, in the
Temple. Mr. Leslie Scott, K.C., afterwards
Solicitor-General, Mr. Justice Greer, Mr. Justice
Rigby Swift, Mr. A. G. Steel, K.C., Mr. Colling-
wood Hope, K.C., Judge Tobin, Judge Thomas,
Judge Maxwell, Mr. Greaves Lord, K.C., Mr. Ross
Brown, K.C., and many others who have since
reached high professional distinction, were
actually practising in Liverpool chambers when I
joined the local Bar. Nor was the Bar of Man-
chester, with which one was constantly brought
into competition, very much inferior. But the
support of many powerful clients, none of whom
I had known when I went to Liverpool, afforded
me the opportunity of an unusually swift success.
Among these I would particularly mention the
late Mr. George Harley, of the celebrated firm of
Simpson and North; Sir Joseph Hood, M.P.,
now of the British-America Tobacco Company ;
Mr. Pearce, Deputy Town Clerk of Liverpool ;
and last, but in some ways most important of
all, my lifelong supporter and friend, the late
Sir Robert Houston. And I must not omit
from this list Lord Wavertree, who directed to
my chambers a constant stream of licensing
business at a time when the volume of work inMILES@tONES OF MY LCPPE 219

that branch of legal administration was probably
greater, and more remunerative, than it had ever
been before or since.

If it interests any one to learn the exact finan-
cial results of my first years of practice, there is
no reason, at my time of life, why the figures
should be withheld. In my first year I made
{120 ; in the second year, £1,200; in my third
year, £3,100; in my fourth year, £4,200; in my
fifth year, £5,150; and in my sixth year, just
over £6,000. These figures in pre-War days, and
with no real taxation to pay, were very sub-
stantial, and I should doubt whether within so
short a period of time they have been exceeded
by anyone who commenced his legal life without
the slightest real influence behind him. At any
rate, they seemed to justify me in an unusually
early attempt, even as a junior, to enter Parlia-
ment. Itis not easy, particularly on the Unionist
side, for a young man without influence to obtain
a seat which there is a reasonable prospect of
winning, and it is especially difficult when every-
thing is going wrong with the Conservative Party,
so that it has become certain that they must lose
almost fifty per cent. of their seats when an
election takes place. Such was the situation in
1904, when I was searching for a constituency.= — — _
AES et Se BE ts aaa

  

yal y
=e

:)

t|

220 MILESTONES OF MY ETRE

All the safe Liverpool seats were already held by
others.

I was told that I must win my spurs by fighting
my old friend Mr. T. P. O’Connor, who was in a
secure and evidently indisputable position in the
Scotland Division of Liverpool. No other avenue
presented itself ; and though I knew that I had
not the slightest chance of success, it appeared to
me to be worth while to pick up a forlorn hope.
And so for six months I addressed meetings,
usually very much interrupted, in this Nationalist
stronghold. But fate was to be kind to me. The
Walton Division of Liverpool, far the largest
constituency in the whole city, was then held
by Mr. Stock. Though a most amiable, worthy,
and public-spirited representative, he was not
possessed of controversial gifts upon the platform,
or indeed elsewhere, of a very high order. And as
the fateful days of 1906 approached more closely
it became increasingly evident that a sterner
fight awaited the Conservatives of Walton than
any by which they had been previously confronted.
I did not know how the matter was ultimately
to be adjusted ; but I shall not soon forget the
occasion upon which my old friend Mr, Edwin
Berry, a very powerful member of the Executive
Association in the constituency, first approachedMILES@TONES OF MY TIPE 221

me with the suggestion that I might take
the place of Mr. Stock. His influence was very
great with the Selection Committee ; his judg-
ment was very good; and I never doubted
that his influence would prove decisive,
especially when reinforced by the general realisa-
tion that in the débacle which impended no
one but a very strong fighting candidate could
save the seat.

I knew, of course, how much it meant to me, not
merely that I should enter the House of Commons
young, but that I should enter it in opposition.
And it was already evident to me that the Con-
servative Party would not only be in opposition,
but that it would constitute an Opposition almost
negligible in numbers. Provided, then, that I
could become a member of that Opposition, it
was quite certain that if I exhibited the necessary
ability, a political future of no small distinction
was assured. And I felt certain that I did pos-
sess that ability. You can easily conceive, then,
the suspense and anxiety with which, in an ante-
room, I awaited the decision of the Committee
after I had addressed them for an hour upon the
political situation.

The suspense was not intolerably protracted,
and in ten minutes it was announced that I had222 MILESTONES OF MY EtRe

been selected as the Conservative candidate for
the Walton Division of Liverpool.

This selection undoubtedly formed the princi-
pal milestone in my life; thereafter began nine
months of the most strenuous work of my career.
And I desire, twenty years afterwards, to place
on record my deep debt of gratitude to those who
selected me when an obscure man and by doing
so first placed my feet upon the political ladder.
I can hardly recall, even to-day, without emotion,
the devoted men and women who canvassed for
me on bitter winter evenings. I have often
reflected how much they did for me, and how
little, though I tried hard enough, I was able to
do for them. If these words, written so long
afterwards, should happen to meet the eye of any
man or woman who supported and worked for
me then, I hope that he or she will accept an
expression of genuine gratitude as warm as it
may be belated.

But the work was strenuous enough. I held
two or three meetings a night, and when the
in-door meetings were concluded, I made it my
invariable practice to go out in a wagonette with
a loud-sounding bell, and with Dr. Richardson,
my combative and indefatigable chairman, to
hold open-air meetings in vacant spaces of theMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 223

constituency. The task, of course, was always
very uphill. We had to fight, in a constituency
where there were many Welsh voters, the un-
popular but very statesmanlike Education Act.
We had to fight the infamous Chinese Slavery
cry which branded the Liberal Party with so much
indelible infamy. We had to fight against the
persistent falsehood with which that Party
exploited the cry of ‘‘ Dear Food!”’; and, most
formidable of all, we had to fight with the fact
that the country was thoroughly tired of us, of
our policy, and of everything about us, and was
irresistibly determined to make a change.

And so, week after week and month after
month, I waged an uphill fight, I may, perhaps,
after so long a period of time, be allowed to say
that I did it myself. For it did not appear to
me to be particularly helpful in a very large
artisan constituency to rely upon imported
speakers. The electors in Walton wanted to
know, not what others were able to say to them,
but what their candidate said. And accordingly,
when I held—and I frequently did—three meetings
a night, the proceedings consisted of a short
speech from the chairman and a more elaborate
argument from the candidate.

As the contest approached more closely, the224 MILESTONES OF MY LREE

elements which made for despondency increased.
Our party managers in Lancashire were out-
manceuvred ; so that it was arranged that the
Manchester and Salford election should take
place on Saturday, whereas the Liverpool elec-
tions were postponed till Monday. On Saturday
night we had the encouragement of learning that
a landslide was in progress; and that every
Manchester and Salford seat, including that of
Mr. Arthur Balfour, had been lost. Similar
returns came from all over the country. The
occasion seemed desperate enough. All that
could be done was to keep up the appearance
of a good heart, however far it lagged behind
reality, And accordingly, on Monday morning
every hoarding in the constituency of Walton
which I could control or purchase was adorned
by a gigantic poster, on which the impudent
legend ran: “Js Balfour Out ? Then all the more
veason for putting Smith in.”

And then the hectic day which probably was
to decide my whole career began its rain-sodden
course, In those days there were few motors,
and we were dependent in the main upon horse-
drawn vehicles. It was no occasion for half-
measures ; and I sent from my own stables eight
hunters belonging to myself and my wife, hardlyMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 225

one of which had ever been in harness until a
week before. Few indeed of the voters could
have realised the risks that they were running.
But it is a singular coincidence that the vehicles
which they erratically propelled conveyed in the
aggregate almost the exact number of the majority
by which I was elected.

At I1I.30 p.m. it was announced that I had
been elected member of Parliament for the
Walton Division of Liverpool by a majority of
about 750. Having regard to the fact that the con-
stituency consisted of eighteen thousand electors,
and that I had been opposing a Liberal candidate
who until a few days before the election was absent
from the constituency, the success cannot be con-
sidered dazzling; but it must be measured by
the conditions of the day, and it sufficed.

This election was incomparably the greatest
milestone which I ever had passed—or ever was
destined to pass—in my career. I was at least
to be afforded the chance of measuring myself
with those who were to determine the fortunes
of the country.

5. My CAREER IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

The House of Commons is, as almost everyone

knows, a most extraordinary place, with a dis-
II—I5226 MILESTONES OF MY LIEE

 

tinctive atmosphere wholly unlike that of any
other assembly. ‘“‘ That House,” a wise man
once said, ‘‘ has corporately more intelligence,
more humour, and more humanity than any
individual member of it.’”’ It is evident, there-
fore, that no one, whatever success he has met
with outside it, can be sure that that success will
be repeated in an atmosphere so novel and so
incalculable. Many a hero of the hustings, whose
dazzling periods have been cheered to the echo
by delighted supporters discerning in him a new
Disraeli, has retired with public discomfiture
from the arena of Parliamentary competition.
When I was a young man, two of the most
effective speakers upon the platform for the Con-
servative Party were the late Dr. Rentoul and
the late Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. Each of
these orators travelled all over England, rendering
incalculable service to the Unionist Party. The
valuation of party speakers at Headquarters is
commonly measured in terms of the audience
whom they can actually collect and successfully
address. Each of these speakers was a five-
thousand audience man ; or in the rare event that
a hall could be found capable of accommodating
ten thousand, each was fully equal to the occasion.
Dr. Rentoul was, in my opinion, the more effec-MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 227

tive of the two, perhaps because he had greater
reserve power, and did not fling everything, body
and voice alike, into a frenzied rhetorical effort
as completely as Sir Ellis. I heard both these
speakers as a boy, in successive years, at the
same theatre, the Metropole at Birkenhead,
where I suppose special efforts were being made,
because the seat, then held by the present Earl
of Albemarle (formerly Viscount Bury), was
considered not without reason to be in some
small danger. I was at the time a freshman
at Oxford, vitally interested in the subject of
oratory, and very anxious to discern the secrets
which might contribute to its mastery. I was,
of course, at an impressionable age ; but I never-
theless believe that even then I had a critical
faculty in such matters not altogether to be des-
pised. Dr. Rentoul had a most imposing pres-
ence, a fine voice, an extraordinarily valuable
quality of platform humour, and an extremely
composed manner. He certainly made one of
the best platform speeches which I have ever
heard. His future engagements were published
in the Liverpool papers. His next meeting was
at Warrington. You may judge of the impres-
sion which he had made upon me when IJ tell
you that I took the trouble to obtain the Warring-228 MILESTONES OR MY LVGE

ton paper in order that I might read his speech.
You may equally judge of the impression made
upon me when I tell you that I, who never
made the same speech twice in my life,
read verbatim, to the extent of four and a half
columns, the oration which I had applauded with
so much enthusiasm at the Birkenhead Theatre.
Neither Dr. Rentoul nor Sir Ellis Ashmead-
Bartlett ever spoke with the slightest success
in the House of Commons ; indeed, it is no harsh
judgment to say of both that they were dismal
failures in that Assembly.

A similar illustration was furnished by the case
of Sir George Doughty, for so long the Conserva-
tive member for Grimsby. He was a short,
stout, rosy little man; with a humorous, even
a whimsical expression. His voice was very
powerful ; his method of speech none the less
effective because it was extremely homely. The
niceties and the details of contemporary political
controversy he was very content to leave to
others ; but with a broad brush he swept over the
political canvas of the moment. He projected
over the footlights the personality of a shrewd
and honest man who was fortunate enough to
have a good case; and competent, in his un-
sophisticated way, to make it plain to others.MILESTONES OF MY LIFE 229

It must, I think, be clearly recognised that no
aspirant to Parliamentary success must found
excessive hopes upon his platform triumphs.
Other qualities, and these far more important,
are requisite. Mere rhetoric in Parliament is
entirely useless. It really passed away with
William Pitt. Nor is the list of surprising failures
exhausted by the number of those who have been
the darlings of great audiences, but have left
Westminster cold and, even worse, bored. Many
a great lawyer who has held juries spellbound by
his eloquence, or even retained the respectful
attention of the House of Lords in its judicial
capacity by an intellectual argument, sometimes
lasting for days, has failed to make the slightest
impression upon the House of Commons. The
golden-tongued Erskine, the greatest of advocates
ever produced by the English Bar, was a failure
in the House of Commons, and a failure in the
House of Lords. So dazzling was his reputation
that when he rose to make his maiden speech,
the great William Pitt made special arrangements
to be present and, if necessary, to reply to him.
He listened for ten minutes and then left the
front bench with the decisive observation: “ This
man is no good here.”

The same humiliating experience was to awaitMILESTONES OF MY ED

 

230

him who probably, after Erskine, was the most
imperious advocate whom the English Bar has
produced—Charles Russell. His oratory in its
own forensic and jury atmosphere was supreme.
But his rhetoric, though dominating in utterance
and inspired by a profound knowledge of human
nature, was always jejune, and often cheap, in
its verbal exposition. And he too, though he
became Attorney-General, must be pronounced
to have been an unutterable Parliamentary
failure. In an almost frenzied attempt to obtain
political audiences who would listen to him with
favour, he undertook in the middle of his over-
whelming legal labours laborious provincial tours
into remote towns. The personality of Lord
Reading—whom the Bar still affectionately
recalls as Rufus Isaacs—was far more charming
than that of Charles Russell. His subtlety was
greater, his tact altogether superior, if his per-
sonality was less dominating. But even he never
attained to Parliamentary success. It appears
hopeless to give explanation ; one can only indeed
record a relentless and unappealable verdict.
You succeed or you fail ; and that is the end of
the matter.

Enough has, I hope, been said to make it plain
that hardly anyone is so highly gifted rhetoricallyMILESTONES OF My, ELTEE 231

that he may dare to enter Parliament with a
confident expectation of meeting with success
of the highest order. A secondary or at least
tertiary measure of success is, of course, always
within the grasp of laborious men, innocent of
vanity, who will take the kind of opportunity
which is suited to their particular capacities, and
present to the House of Commons concise and
carefully considered arguments upon some sub-
ject with which they are specially acquainted.
But we are dealing at the moment with a higher
and a more ambitious claim.

Some believe that that recent and menacing
incursion into the Mother of Parliaments of men
who have affected to despise alike its history and
its traditions will alter that history and sap those
traditions. I do not believe it. The House of
Commons will destroy (unless it is itself destroyed)
those who attempt to destroy it. Nor is this
surprising. For you cannot influence the House
of Commons except by adopting the weapons
which it recognises, and to which it assigns a
victorious force; so that, paradoxically enough,
he who would conquer it must first equip himself
by the only gifts which this Assembly recognises ;
and by the time that he has attained consum-
mate mastery of those gifts, he has himself becomeMILESTONES OF MY LIFE

 

232

a House of Commons man, and no longer aspires
to destroy an Assembly by virtue of which he
himself has become great.

No one can be counted a really great speaker
who is not at once infinitely resourceful, diversi-
fied, and adaptable. For of oratory there are
many illustrations; indeed, a man may well
be a capable orator who has attained to complete
mastery over any one of the manifold possible
expressions of rhetorical power. There is the
platform speaker. There is the forensic speaker.
There is the after-dinner speaker. There is the
House of Commons speaker. There is the House
of Lords speaker. I may, I believe, claim to have
exhibited some slight degree of competency in
every one of these types of rhetoric. If the
claim be not excessive—and I have, I hope,
already excused myself from the obvious charge
of egotism—my advice may be of some assistance
to those who are about to enter the House of
Commons.

Oratory is in part a natural, in part an acquired
gift. In so far as it is natural its inspiration
cannot be supplied by effort or study. But it
is almost incredible how little of it, and in how
few cases it is explained by the presence of
natural genius. Men still record indeed howMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 233

Demosthenes remedied an imperfect articulation
by speaking on the sea-shore with pebbles in his
mouth. I have often wondered what was the
infirmity which required a treatment so singular.
But the moral of the story is unimpaired ; there
is hardly an infirmity in speech which cannot
be cured by the man who is determined to become
an effective speaker. Mr. Winston Churchill is
affected by a kind of lisp or stammer which in
the case of an ordinary man might from the very
first have excluded him from the circle of high
Parliamentary competition. But upon this point
Mr. Lloyd George once made a very shrewd
observation to me. He said: ‘‘ Watch Winston's
stammer closely ; note the occasions upon which
he is affected by it; you will nearly always find
that he is specially liable to it when he has
something particularly good to say.”

Let me, however, add a few words on the sub-
ject to which I suppose I have given more study
than to any other save that of the law. Many
qualities are requisite for him who would speak
well in a critical assembly. First, he must know
exactly that which he wishes to say. Secondly,
he must pay his audience the compliment of pre-
paring his argument closely enough to make it
certain that he can deliver his message with what234 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

the Romans call “ concinnity.” Thirdly, he must
give to his argument the most forcible and even
epigrammatic expression which is within his
compass. Fourthly, he must cultivate wit and
irony.

To some men these qualities come more easily
than to others. But a student of rhetoric who
studies Gibbon conscientiously will acquire some
conception, however dim, of the elements which
constitute superb irony ; and examples of wit are
manifold, easy to appreciate, however difficult
to imitate. No man will ever be a great speaker
who has not read widely and constantly of great
books. This does not mean that he must be a
master of the classic authors of Greece and Rome;
though he will be a more widely effective and
literary speaker if he is. But Bright—that con-
summate exponent of English spoken rhetoric—
acquired his superb mastery of the noble English
language in the undefiled wells of the Bible and of
Shakespeare. I should suppose that fewer Latin
words were used in the speeches of John Bright
than in those of any great orator who has ever
addressed the House of Commons; and if I
wished to take two contrasted illustrations of
great lords of the English speech who approached
it with strongly contrasted education and pre-MILESTONES OF MY EEE 235

judice, I should select Dr. Johnson and Mr.
Bright.

After these somewhat pretentious generalities,
I feel that it is somewhat of an anticlimax to
decline into a drab modern period and still more
to recur to my own incursion into the House of
Commons. I had the good fortune to enter it
when my party was not only a small, but a dis-
pirited opposition. We were, indeed, only one
hundred and fifty strong. Exercising no in-
considerable self-control, I did not attempt to
address the House for many weeks, although
more than one occasion arose upon which I was
tempted to do so.

At last an opportunity offered which seemed to
me altogether favourable. Sir James Kitson,
a Liberal Yorkshire member, moved a resolution
in a conventional and extremely dull speech
recording the satisfaction of the House that the
country had recorded a verdict in favour of Free
Trade. The debate was limited to a single day.
The House was crowded almost beyond human
memory for the whole of the day ; and every-
body, or almost everybody, desired to speak. It
was extremely difficult to obtain an opportunity
of taking part in the debate. I asked Mr. Joseph

Chamberlain (with whom, as explained in an236 MILESTONES OF MY LIEE

earlier page, I had established some intimacy)
whether he would use his influence with Mr.
Speaker in order that I might be called upon.
He most generously undertook this task: and
returned with the message that I should be called
at the best hour in all the debate, at ro o’clock :.
and he added the words: ‘‘ This is the chance of
your life, my friend; see that you use it.” By
an interesting coincidence the late Chancellor of
the Exchequer, Mr. Philip Snowden, universally
admitted at that time to be the first platform
speaker of the Socialist Party, made his maiden
speech immediately in front of me. It was
fairly well received, but it was not of extraordinary
merit ; and did not make it certain that he would
develop the high Parliamentary qualities which
he has since disclosed. When I rose to speak,
the House was densely crowded. Not one in
twenty had the slightest idea who I was. I had
made up my mind that I would try a dazzling
gamble. It seemed to me that my party was
almost in despair. Never in its history had it
sustained such a disaster at the polls. The
swollen insolence and bad Parliamentary manners
of the mammoth majority, which overflowed
over four-fifths of the available sitting space,
seemed to me to have asserted a depressing—MELESTONES OF MY ETEE 237

almost a cowing—effect upon the tiny Conser-
vative minority. I judged the occasion, there-
fore, inopportune for a very scientific or economic
examination of the subject of debate. There
was, after all, plenty of time for that. But I
asked for no indulgence because I was making
a maiden speech. The request for indulgence
seemed to me could only come gracefully from
the lips which made a modest appeal, couched
in uncontroversial language, and I had not it
in my mind to make such an appeal. I spoke
for sixty-five minutes, which I believe to be a
record for a maiden speech; and I spoke with
a degree of calculated insolence and sustained
invective which I am quite sure has never been
attempted before or since by one who addressed
the House of Commons for the first time. As I
drove down to the House of Commons with my
wife, I said, ‘‘ I shall either make a brilliant suc-
cess or a greater failure than that of Disraeli.”
Before I sat down it was obvious that it was a
tour de force; the speech had at least, whatever
its real merits, been a great success. How great
a success I did not realise until I read the papers
next day at Chester. For I had to journey down
by midnight train to argue a complicated case of
Extraordinary Traffic against the present Lord238 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

Justice Elton Bankes at Chester. But I carried
with me into my sleeping-berth on that train
the words of Mr. Chamberlain, who sat immedi-
ately in front of me while I spoke: “ Very good,
but you made one great mistake.” A little
surprised (for I was not conscious of any mistake),
I said: “ What was that?” He replied, ‘‘ You
put far too many good things in one speech.”

I did not think that it was for me to bandy
compliments with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.

6. THE LorD CHANCELLORSHIP

On my recall from France in May 1915, when
the first Coalition Government was formed, I
became Solicitor-General, the present Lord Car-
son being Attorney. A few months afterwards
he résigned his office upon the ground that Serbia
had been unnecessarily abandoned by the Allies,
and left to a cruel and, in his view, an avoidable
fate. But I am sure that the reason which
really determined his decision was that he had
convinced himself that the whole conduct of the
War was languid and spasmodic, wholly lacking
in the grip and vigour which the cruel emergencies
of the day required.

However this may be, he resigned ; and I becameMILESTONES OF MY LIFE 239

Attorney-General, with a seat in the Cabinet.
Thereafter, until the Coalition Government was
destroyed at the Carlton Club nearly eight years
later, I must accept, with the reservations I here-
after explain, my full responsibility for all that was
done and all that was decided. This admission
is subject to one reservation only: that after the
second Coalition Government, of which Mr. Lloyd
George became head, was formed, the real and
absolute direction of affairs passed into the hands
of the War Cabinet. The larger Cabinet sur-
vived indeed in name. But it survived in noth-
ing else. In the clash of arms, full Cabinet
responsibility in the old sense disappeared. In
fact, the name of Cabinet Minister for those who
were not members of the War Cabinet became a
kind of anachronism, somewhat like the almost
ceremonial title of Privy Councillor. This state
of affairs lasted until, and included, both the
Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles period.
During the whole of this time the influence of
Mr. Lloyd George was supreme and predominant.
No one in England has, in my recollection of
English history, wielded such authority with so
little reference to anyone else, since the days of
Chatham in his moments of imperious triumph ;
or perhaps those of Disraeli, who broughtMILESTONES OF MY LIFE

 

240

‘Peace with Honour” from the Congress of
Berlin.

It is fashionable now, in the long and cold
disillusionments by which we are confronted, to
disparage the Treaty and to belittle its authors.
But I think that history will recognise more fully
the difficulties by which our negotiators were
confronted, arising partly out of the anomalous
position which President Wilson occupied; and
partly out of the bewildering maze from which
those who were so profoundly stricken could
hardly compass a successful issue.

I do not wish to escape the responsibility which
any Minister who continued to be a Minister
must accept for this period, and for all that
happened in this period. But it is important
constitutionally to make it plain where the actual
authority and responsibility resided in these
very critical years. Some months after the
Armistice Election the full Cabinet was re-col-
lected, assuming, in accordance with the old
precedent, the supreme control over affairs ;
and the War period, with its constitutional con-
vulsions and anomalies, came to a definite end,

I contested the Walton Division once again in
the Armistice Election, being at that time
Attorney-General, and not having the slightestMILESTONES OF MY LIEE 241

desire to change my office, I had for four years
been at the head of the profession to which I had
upon the whole devoted most of my active and
working life. It had been my duty to master the
whole complicated code of emergency legislation
which, in many important departments of life,
superseded the common law of England, I had
for four years been responsible for the conduct
of prize business at a time when we had to
accommodate ourselves to greater innovations
and larger developments than even in the
spacious days of Lord Stowell. I neither expected
nor was prepared to exchange an office of such
high importance and emolument for any other.
Of the emolument, indeed, little need be said.
I myself, Lord Cave, who was my first Solicitor-
General, and Lord Hewart, who was my second,
voluntarily deprived ourselves of £5,000 a year
of our salaries as a contribution to the necessities
of the time. Sir John Simon, who was Attorney-
General before the War, and the present Lord
Chief Justice of England, who respectively pre-
ceded and succeeded me in my office, each made
more than {20,000 a year, I could reasonably
and almost indefinitely look forward to making
such an income as Attorney-General ; and I shall

not, I believe, be accused of egotism if I claim
1I—16242 MILESTONES OF MY EVPE

that, in private practice, I could very easily and
very considerably have exceeded it.

But when the new Government was constituted
after what I have called the Armistice Election,
my mind was made up upon one point. Sir
Edward Carson, Sir John Simon, and Sir Rufus
Isaacs had all occupied the position of Attorney-
General, and had all been Cabinet Ministers. I
had myself been Attorney-General for four years,
holding Cabinet rank; though, as I had made it
plain, for a part of this period full Cabinet respon-
sibility was suspended. I was not prepared—
and upon this point I had definitely made up my
mind—to continue in the office of Attorney-
General unless I was given a seat in the Cabinet.
This decision was not founded upon the merits
of the question whether the Attorney-General
ought to sit in the Cabinet at all. It was founded
upon the fact that, wisely or unwisely, a change
had been made in this respect; and I was not
prepared to acquiesce in so definite a decline in
my political position as removal from the Cabinet,
of which I had so long been a member, would
have involved.

The argument against the inclusion of the
Attorney-General in the Cabinet is very strong.
This Minister has many important judicial func-MILESTONES OF MY LEbE 243

tions to discharge. He decides, for instance,
judicially, and not ministerially, whether a pro-
secution is proper and ought to be directed. In
such matters, the Public Prosecutor is, in fact,
merely his servant. Similarly he must decide,
judicially, and not ministerially, whether he will
enter a nolle prosequi, which brings to an end a
prosecution which has already been commenced.
It is of vital importance that he should never be
influenced, or should even appear to be influenced,
by political colleagues in matters in relation to
which he has a solemn, an individual, and a
judicial responsibility. It is my considered
opinion that it is wiser, from the constitutional
point of view, that the Attorney-General should
not be in the Cabinet ; though it must always be
irritating to the holder of that position to see so
many men of inferior intellectual calibre enjoying
the prestige of Cabinet rank, and the intimate
knowledge of official secrets which membership
of the Cabinet brings with it.

The history of the business is not without
interest. When Lord Loreburn’s health rendered
it impossible that he should continue to discharge
the arduous duties of the Chancellor, Sir Rufus
Isaacs was Attorney-General. A Roman Catho-
lic is debarred by statute from becoming Lord244 MILESTONES OF MY Lite

High Chancellor of Great Britain. A Jew is not
so debarred; but obvious inconveniences and
even indelicacies would follow if a member of that
persuasion were called upon to administer the
very important ecclesiastical patronage which
the Lord Chancellor must distribute. And
furthermore, Mr, Asquith was deeply committed
to the present Lord Haldane, These two old
friends, side by side with Sir Edward Grey, had
struggled in vain against the Chancellorship of
Lord Loreburn. They were foiled by the pawky
determination of Sir Henry Campbell-Banner-
man, but I cannot doubt that Asquith has always
determined that if the Woolsack ever fell in his
gift, it should go to Haldane, On the other
hand, intimate ties of personal friendship bound
him to Rufus Isaacs, In this dilemma he decided
that Haldane should become Lord Chancellor ;
but that Rufus Isaacs should be afforded the
unprecedented solace of becoming a Cabinet
Minister while he was still Attorney-General. It
was, of course, elaborately proclaimed that the
appointment was not to be a precedent, This
meant nothing, It became a precedent. LEvery-
one knew it must become a precedent. Sir John
Simon and Sir Edward Carson after him were
So was I, And accord-

   

made Cabinet Ministers.MILESTONES, OF MY ELPFE 245

ingly, rightly or wrongly, I had made up my mind
that, if I were to remain Attorney-General, it
should be strictly upon the condition that I
retained my position in the reconstituted Cabinet.

And accordingly, when in the month of January
I was summoned to No. ro Downing Street by
Mr. Lloyd George, I met his observation: ‘“‘I
am able to offer you your old office as Attorney-
General,’’ with the question: “‘ How about my
seat in the Cabinet?” To which Mr. Lloyd
George replied, ‘‘ That will be more difficult,
because there is a strong feeling that the numbers
of the Cabinet must be greatly reduced.” I
made it quite plain, almost in a sentence, that
nothing would induce me to accept the office of
Attorney-General upon this condition. And I
added that I was in full sympathy with the
Government, but that I was perfectly prepared
to resume my practice at the Bar; and that I
was sure I should be able to give him independent
support from the back benches. As quick as
lightning the Prime Minister retorted, ‘‘ How
about the Woolsack?’”’ It is literally true that
at that time it had never even occurred to me to
bring to an end my membership of the House of
Commons. When Lord Finlay became Lord
Chancellor, at a time when, as Attorney-General,246 MILESTONES OF MY LIFE

I was fully entitled to demand that my claims to
that office should at least be considered, I most
expressly made it known that I was not a candi-
date for this distinguished office. The decision
indeed is, and always must be, an immensely
grave one for any man who has the capacity for
earning one of the great incomes of the Bar,
and who has established a considerable position
in the House of Commons. Mrs. Brougham wrote
to her son Henry, bitterly remonstrating with
him when he accepted the Woolsack. The
genius of Erskine lingered only as a pale memory
when once he passed to the cold shades of the
Upper House. The salary of Lord Chancellor
is indeed {10,000 a year; but he is involved in
much ceremonial expenditure, so that in these
days of high taxation the emolument is relatively
small, and incommensurate with the dignity and
the greatness of the office. The pension, which is
invariably, though not as a matter of obligation,
earned by judicial service whenever it is desired,
is only £5,000 a year.

It will be evident that the decision proposed
to me so suddenly and so unexpectedly by Mr.
Lloyd George was a very grave one. Nor did he
diminish its gravity by informing me that he
must have my answer by ten o’clock on theMILESTONES OF MY? ELEE 247

following morning, as it was necessary to give
the King at that hour the names of his leading
colleagues, including, of course, that of the Lord
Chancellor. My wife was in the country; it
was impossible, without disclosing what must
not be disclosed, to communicate with her by
telegram; and I had accordingly to take the
decision for myself. I promised the Prime
Minister to breakfast with him on the following
morning, and to give him my answer at this
melancholy meal. I spent most of that night
in debating the matter in my mind. I had not
reached a complete decision when I arrived at
No. ro Downing Street. Winston Churchill was
breakfasting there also. He had hitherto shown
himself inflexibly opposed to any proposal that I
should leave the House of Commons. But after
ten minutes’ discussion, before our arrival was
announced, he greatly weakened. I suppose that
I was hardly conscious of having reached a con-
clusion. I had nevertheless groped my way to
one in the long hours the previous night. At any
rate, I left the breakfast table on that morning
with the knowledge that I was to become Lord
Chancellor.

I am not unwilling to recall, having held office
for four years, and having sat in judgment as an248 MILESTONES OF MY Tite

ex-Lord Chancellor for four years more, the words
which I used at a dinner given to me by the
Liverpool Conservative Club to congratulate me
upon having become Lord High Chancellor, I
believe at an age younger than any save Jeffreys
and Thurlow, of whom I say no more in this place.
I said: ‘‘I approach the discharge of the high
duties which await me in a spirit of anxious
solicitude ; but not, believe me, in one of morbid
self-distrust.”

It should, I think, be added that I could not,
and would not, in justice to my family, have
confronted the great change in fortune which
awaited me, even at the moment, and still more
that which must follow when I was reduced to
the pension of an ex-Lord Chancellor, if I had not
confidently believed that I had in my pen an
instrument which would considerably supple-
ment an income so much declined.

I have often speculated since, as all of us have
the habit of doing when great decisions have been
taken, as to whether I was right or whether I was
wrong. I cut myself adrift to some extent from
the direct democratic life of the country. I left
the House of Commons, which I believe I had not
ceased to interest and where there was much to
attract me. I became a Peer, and saddled myMILESTONES OF MY LEPE 249

only son with an hereditary responsibility against

most of my own desires and intuitions. But I
am not at all sure—I cannot put it higher—that
in the same circumstances I should not take the
same decision. And at any rate I still have an
interesting—I hope not a useless—life, and I can
say with Dryden after Horace :

“Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power;
What has been has been; and I’ve had my hour!”XVIII
EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

I

HE populations of Great Britain are con-
oe The vast spaces beyond her
boundaries, which own her sway with pride, are
crying out for men and women and families.
In this essay I shall endeavour to deal with facts,
ideas, conceptions, and plans directly connected
with Empire settlement. These projects are of
dimensions so great—in essence they are so
inspiring—that they might well induce in poet
or prophet the feelings which create, in the multi-
tude, enthusiasm for a cause. I shall try to make
vital the questions involved by relating them
specifically to the life of to-day.

All the outlying parts of the Empire look to
Britain for a lead. I am writing this survey
with especial reference to the Dominion of Canada,
for it may be said that the problem of Empire
settlement affects Canada more acutely, but more
favourably, than any other amongst our self-

governing possessions. It can be truthfully said
250EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 251

that Britain’s necessity is Canada’s opportunity.
I have been in Canada, to my own great advantage
and delight. I have witnessed the changes and
the upheavals of a whole human generation
amongst whom I have worked hard at home ;
never without a conscious desire to be of service
to our kinsmen beyond the seas. The greatest
upheaval of all, which found us, at the conclusion
of a terrible war, wavering and bewildered in the
throes of a perplexing peace, has focussed atten-
tion upon the problem of imperial re-settlement.
For myself, and for all who think in terms of
Empire, the whole of this great subject is now
touched with a new and an increasing fascination.
Let me turn for a moment to the companionship

of overseas visitors to the homeland. They are
wont to observe that the whole country is like a
garden. Nor do they withhold their love from
Scotland or Wales. They approach Ireland with

sympathy. They appreciate the charm which

pervades every portion of the British Isles. The

vastness of the greater cities is in itself an object-

lesson to the stranger, who feels that he has become

a partaker, an actual shareholder, in their develop-

ment. As he renews his observations day by

day, he finds that it is not enough to marvel and

admire. He sees that mere criticism is likely to252 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

prove as useless as unfruitful. And yet, there is
much to criticise. The astounding growth of our
manufacturing and distributing communities has
become a danger to the State. Overcrowding is
not only the concomitant of misery. It is also
the cause of a distress which must lead to degen-
eracy, perhaps to anarchy, if it be not brought
to an end,

But our Canadian visitors are to be credited with
busy brains and minds. They have discovered,
if I am not mistaken, something which cannot be
overlaid by the mere affection or interest, which
pleasant days of travel may awaken in them.
Any man of business who spends a week of careful
study in London or Liverpool, in Burslem or on
the Clyde, in Cumbria or in Cambria, in crowded
centres or in remote agricultural districts, will
find a hundred facts to impress him. There is
one thing, I am certain, which will fill him with
profound concern, for herein lies the cause of
much of our troubles at home. It is the burden
laid upon us by the Great War which began in
August 1914, and more than twelve years later
still shakes the civilised world by its repercussions,
affecting our nation more, even now, than any
other, on account of our world-wide respon-
sibilities and commitments. These are responsi-EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 253

bilities which I, for one, have no doubt that we
could not honourably avoid. I also believe that
we should be unworthy of our past history if we
were now to show any weakness in accepting them,
whatever dangers we may encounter thereby.
Until he sees for himself, our Canadian or other
visitor does not consider sufficiently what our
burden has been. Unless he does so, and takes
the knowledge back with him, this lack of consid-
eration affects his own political judgment, as
well as his practical dealing. Especially is this
the case with one problem in which he cannot fail
to be concerned. I mean the great problem of the
redistribution of our people,

Although compared with the weight which
presses on the inhabitants of the British Isles,
the burden of other nations is relatively light, this
very fact has some consolation in it, Heresis
proof of our inherent strength. If this could be
freely recognised in our outlying dominions, I
should feel that a new bond was being forged.
For we need the aid of others. That the parental
sacrifices are a part of the bond which links with
us the daughter-nations—that these gave loyal
service in the prolonged struggle against a threat-
ened tyranny—all this is freely conceded, But
perhaps, during the equally strenuous days of254 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

peace, these younger nations have not fully
measured the practical extent of parental pro-
tection and devotion. There appears to be a gap,
not of sentiment, which is full and complete, but
of co-operation, as yet inadequate, which has
to be filled.

Canadians hear of unemployment in Britain.
It is not open to any great proportion of indivi-
duals to see this for themselves. There is unem-
ployment in Canada itself. To some extent
there is unemployment in every part of the world.
Of Dominion and Colonial unemployment gener-
ally, I think it may be said that local, accidental,
transient conditions are in the main responsible
for the difficulties involved. Here, in the face
of the enormous tracts of territory available for
productive use, it is impossible to think that any
energy can remain for long unexercised. But it
is different at home. Our problem was already
deeply rooted before the war. We have a popu-
lation vastly too large for the country. In itself,
it is not well distributed. On this population
rests a burden of debt so heavy that without
great efforts even our great-grandchildren cannot
hope to remove it. These efforts will be made,
but I should like to think that we could lessen the
burden which must fall on posterity. The truthEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 255

is that we have pledged our honour, knowing that
our successors will not falter in its redemption.
Our forefathers did the same. It was arighteous,
an inevitable policy, which overthrew the threat-
ened domination of Napoleon. All that has
followed since then has justified our hopes, and
testified, before the whole world, to our faith-
fulness.

I think we ought to thank Providence that our
will, in adverse circumstances, has often proved
so strong. The fertile properties of our race are
solid assets. In pursuing my theme, I shall find
an opportunity of taking into account this very
important matter of nationalincrease. In passing,
let me say that the diminution of man-power can
never prove to be of advantage to a people; but
I must pass from this generalisation, by no means
a hasty one, to the particular point at issue.

Our people are wrongly distributed. When
they remember the sacrifices we have made,
extending over centuries; when they consider
the financial responsibilities we have more recently
assumed ; I am sure that our overseas brothers,
our companions-in-arms, will look homeward now,
resolute in sympathy, decided in action. Their
aim must be that a definite step forward shall be
taken. We must establish, develop, distribute,HI

  

256 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

and settle afresh on the grandest possible scale.

I do not forget what has been done already.
There have been many policies of emigration
and of its corollary, immigration. Some of these
policies have succeeded. Others have failed. I
refuse to take any failure as final, Each experi-
ment has taught something in relation to the
problem asa whole, I recollect the work of many
pioneers in Australia or New Zealand or in many
other latitudes which, but for British enterprise
and solidarity, would have remained unknown.
One stroke of policy, one element of practical
unity and comradeship, is responsible for all the
success which has been attained, For everything
has rested on individual character being encour-
aged; on individual enterprise being given its
chance, So, under wise personal direction, did
great companies, as in India, or in Canada itself,
create the policy and the subsequent good fortune
of the earliest imperial settlements.

The same principle is necessary for their exten-
sion. The truth here enunciated has a special
application to Canada, For Canada, in the long
chain of Empire which runs—a girdle glittering
in sun and snow—through many climes, is not
the least brilliant of all the link of jewels. Our
Empire is a unit. From what has been accom-EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 257

plished elsewhere, Canada has little to learn, But
her duty to the Old Country is clear. She has to
play a special part in the development of private
enterprise. The clear-cut question of the redun-
dant population on the one hand, of the vast
open spaces on the other, awaits only the solution
of perseverance and of intuitive perception.
Millions of men, “‘ cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d’”’ in
a stagnancy which offers no present attraction, no
future scope, await release from what has grown
to be an intolerable position in a world of growth
and development. But there is dawn on the
horizon. As a happy omen, Britain has quite
lately reasserted her belief in practical progress,
as opposed to visionary, and worse still com-
munist, theories. I think we shall see, as we
proceed, that the horizon is clearer ; and that
those who hope for a great accession of strength
to our distant populations throughout the Empire
—with commensurate relief to the struggling
masses at home—have based their calculations
on facts as they are and equally on principles

which cannot be assailed.

II
Of the forty-six millions of our population, at

least six millions are people in the wrong place,
II—17258 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

I have met reformers who have staked out a
definite claim for these six millions. They demand
a wholesale transportation from crowded British
areas to open lands; and, provided that we can
secure for the world at large an era of peace, there
are good grounds for thinking that this very thing
can be done by degrees. Any plans that we may
make for the realisation of this dream should be
based on the expectation of such a peace, though
we ought always to be prepared for the peace to
be broken. But to anticipate nothing else would
be to place ourselves under the domination of
unworthy fears. The most devastating of wars
have done nothing to retard the advance of the
British Empire as a whole. Wherever her pro-
gress flags, it is the distribution of her people
which is at fault. “ Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the face of the earth’’ was the
ancient command. We must read the instruction
as meaning, for us: “ Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the face of the Empire, which has
been given you for a great purpose.”

I draw this thought from a fountain of principle.
“He hath not dealt so with any nation.”’ Provi-
dence shapes our ends. I resist the mistaken
philosophy, or the scientific caution, which de-
mands, without consideration of a wider need, theEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 259

drying up of any supply of human life. No lack
of virility or fecundity now affects ourselves. Of
course I do not advocate excessive families. Dr.
Johnson was clearly of opinion that we should
propagate with understanding. But the advocacy
of cowardice in relation to man-power, by which
nations live, is immoderate in itself, and in some
forms is equivalent to a condonation of racial
decay. I do not believe that we can afford to
lessen by one individual the lives that are now
in being. Rather, we ought to take new steps
to conserve the lives we have ; and to prolong exis-
tence by liberal provision of measures for the
general health. In all these things it may be
said that public opinion, of recent years, has grown
more enlightened. Nevertheless, as I look round
my own country and observe the signs of the
times, I am conscious of the emptiness of too many
existences. Opportunity should be at every man’s
door. It would belie much that I have already
said if I did not credit the unit with some power
to defend himself and to overcome obstacles ; or
if I did not make a very considerable claim for
the ingenuity and pertinacity not less than for
the stolid patience of the British race. But
opportunities are not missed solely through
stupidity. There are uncontrolled factors work-260 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

ing in society at present which compel us to treat
unemployment as an exceptional but intractable
feature of the situation.

According to the official registers, there has
been an average of not fewer than a million and a
quarter unemployed individuals in Great Britain
during the last few years. These figures always
convey a reproach the more forcibly, because in
Europe generally the position is less vexatious,
even in those countries which possess problems—
such as the virtual extinction of the professional
class—from which we ourselves are free. But if
we are true to ourselves, it is possible that recovery
will soon be at hand. And in any event we are
encouraged by the influences both of our character
and of our history. We must not forget our
unemployed, and we must have still deeper
concern for our unemployable; but the more
crucial difficulty lies elsewhere, and it demands an
alteration in the methods of land-settlement
hitherto devised. It is not, in fact, the unem-
ployed of the official register who constitutes the
normal problem of an over-populated Britain.

For the sake of the argument, let me assume
that the eventual transfer of six millions overseas
is a consummation of effort to be desired and even
to be expected. I think we must accept theEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 261

underlying truth that these multitudes are not
only, at the moment, wrongly distributed. They
are examples of activity misapplied. They are
wastefully, unhappily occupied. In the mass, we
see nothing but a conglomeration and congestion
annually increasing. For the individual, we can
see that the shoe pinches and that the shackles
are irksome; but, because he bears this
with patience, nothing is done to relieve him.
Relief, however, can be brought to him by the
concentration of effort, which is even now based
on the need as it actually stands; and by instru-
ments rendered effective by experience. Some
of these instruments are financial. All require
skill and practice in the user. But each one of
them rests on the recognition of individuality.

I am thinking, of course, more particularly of
young men as I write these lines: of those who
still have the world before them. If it is true
that large numbers of these are so many square
pegs in round holes, I want them to get out of
them before it is too late. Such counsel, it may
be, was easier to follow some twenty years
ago. But I will look back through that space
of time.

I look back to the year 1903. In that year a
young man, a printer in an office in London, Mr.262 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

George Saunders, now of Purdue, Saskatchewan,
started farming in Canada, unversed in the
country’s ways, unpractised in agricultural life.
Twenty-one years after, Mr. Saunders could say :
““We have never regretted coming to Canada.
We had no capital when we came. We own a
well-equipped farm and have not a debt or a
mortgage against us. We have provided for our
family and for old age. We have a home of which
we are proud, and hope that it will remain in our
family for generations.’ These words I have
quoted for several reasons. Such testimony as
this could be almost indefinitely multiplied.
There is sound English character on the face of
them. But if, after twenty years, such results
are harder of attainment, there must be a hiatus
of discouragement somewhere ; its cause requires
analysis.

We know, of course, that there has been an ebb
in the tide of emigration since 1914. There have
been years when the flow has nearly ceased.
Moreover, Canadians, after 1918, left their own
country in large numbers for the United States.
They sought higher wages. The causes, it is
clear, were economic; but they brought into
being a repatriation problem, now, at the expira-
tion of another short term of years, slowlyEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 263

resolving itself by the gradual return of those who
had gone away.

Other episodes, other fluctuations, affecting the
individual who might follow the example I have
given, must now be taken into account. When
we realise—through the demonstrations so often
given of the greatness, the variety, the opulence
which Nature spreads over our outlying British
domains—how attractive is the invitation offered,
the wonder must be why it should so frequently
be disregarded. With so many millions of acres
calling out for the work which men can bring to
them, the adjunct of adventurousness alone seems
to be wanted. From Alfred the Great and onwards,
through ‘‘ the stirring days of great Elizabeth,”
under Caroline sway or Victorian influence, even
down to the days of the present King George, a
spirit of adventure has never been lacking to our
seafaring, spacious, and country-loving people.
It may well be that we appreciate the amenities
of crowd and mart. We have raised civic pride
to the zenith, But we love the open air.

I return to Mr. Saunders, of Purdue, Saskat-
chewan. He came to Canada without capital.
He is stillin his prime. Still a young man, he can
claim the success that might adorn a lifetime.
He has seen great changes which have come over264 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

the face of the world since he ventured forth into
this newer sphere at the age of twenty-six. His
example should be decisive to any young and
adventurous Englishman who has no obvious
career in England. Only one difference really
exists at the present time, in contrast with the
period before the war. Certainly the efforts
which have been made on behalf of the indigent,
the unemployed, even the unemployable, have
not slackened in the least. But for the ordinary
man, skilled or partially skilled, equipped rather
with willingness to learn and do rather than with
any formal or conventional accomplishment, it
is almost a truism to point out that conditions
have completely changed. No mancan now move
an inch forward, whatever his capacity, without
the aid of capital in some form or shape. This
fact brings us to a cleavage. Character and capa-
city have given us a lead which on the whole I
believe that we shall not lose. But there are rules
of normal times which abnormal experiences
nullify, Heaven helps those who help themselves.
But this does not alter the compulsion which rests
on every man to help his own brother. And in
the British Empire all are kinsmen.

It is in this spirit that individual enterprise must
strain every nerve to develop the territory of theEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 265

Empire by releasing those in bondage at home for
a freer life under broader skies; not minimising
in any sense its hardness or need for endurance,
not encouraging soft and useless men ; but granting
facilities for possession greater than have ever been
granted before, and allowing every conceivable
credit that character may justify. This means
a new departure. Our Empire can only be
developed by liberal provisions framed for those
who are at present hampered or depressed ; and a
certain imaginativeness, heedless of possible risks,
is absolutely necessary for all who would achieve
or serve. The complete achievement, a thorough
redistribution of man-power, only the far future
can secure; but present service towards this
ultimate result is within the reach of us all.

III

Since experts in economics are agreed that
human lives, rather than commodities, constitute
the real wealth of a country, it follows that the
redistribution of families, on a large scale, repre-
sents the one guarantee essential to the general
well-being of this far-flung Empire of ours, Waste
of potential energy, as I have shown already, is
a stubborn fact; and wars, of necessity, are266 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

wanton in their wastage. The losses of peace
are certainly the more avoidable. And I cannot
deal with the situation which has now arisen with-
out showing further cause for the estimate I have
formed of the chance of future progress. This I
conceive to be as great, in itself, as the need to
attain it is imperative. In all such matters there
is invariably a principle at stake. At every turn
we are met by the teaching of history, by the
influence of statesmen who have gone before us,
by the work of pioneers in this very field of imperial
development.

All those principles by which, as a nation, we
live and move, have their reflex action on the
life of the individual. I have already said some-
thing about private enterprise in business. But
I cannot be oblivious of the fact that there is a
social side to everything that happens in a com-
munity. As we anticipate a new uprising and a
new incoming which shall work towards access of
population on the one hand, towards depopulation
on the other, it is important to know exactly how
far the benevolence of Governments will assist
the movement. And here it may be moderately
claimed that this benevolence is assured; and,
more especially, that the Empire Settlement Act,
passed in the year 1922 in London, is a gestureEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 267

of the highest importance. But none the less we
do well to remember how in things which call
for strong individual action, the energy of official
departments can only be thought of in an auxiliary,
almost a tepid sense. The main business must
be done by men who can think on independent
lines and work on their own initiative, taking in
the process their own risks, and relying on the
personal factor, especially in finance, to carry
them through.

Here, then, I must recur to the ground of
principle ; before I proceed to some matters
which will, I hope, give further point to the
championship of the individual, on which so
much, perhaps everything, depends. Any Empire-
settlement scheme must be framed with reference
to constitutional principles. These are, in them-
selves, the mainspring of our political strength,
as well as of our power among the nations of
the world. To the community, they are of the
highest, most practical value. To the citizen,
they are of vital concern. The British Consti-
tution has broadened down from precedent to
precedent. Consequently, as our American and
Canadian guests at the recent legal Conference in
London conceded, the expounders of our law are

everywhere respected. By this system, the com-268 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

munity and the individual are equally protected.
If I lay stress on this, it is because the rights, both
of the individual and of the community, have of
late been subject to attack. It is under the
constitutional egis that progress has been gradu-
ally achieved. Canada exists under the wise
provisions which have been enlarged in the
direction of liberty. Unity with the mother-
country, under the Crown, fosters both indepen-
dence and pride. That every nerve must be
strained to prevent our Constitution being placed
again in jeopardy is a warning that has sometimes
seemed necessary. It is not, however, requisite
for legislators to propound such a lesson at the
present moment ; for the people have themselves,
throughout Great Britain, proclaimed it at the
polls. But we must remember that eternal vigilance
is the price of liberty.

On one point I find it necessary to add an
observation. There was a time when the separa-
tion of Canada from the motherland was freely
mooted, One famous English writer (he was,
however, a crank as clever as notorious) who made
his home in Canada actually advocated the
severance. The danger seems to have passed.
Nor does any immediate cause threaten any
recurrence ; though I should like to see in remoterEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 269

Canada a stronger appreciation of the blood-tie
with the Old Country. But this risk the improve-
ment of communications may and probably will
correct.

Conversely, it seems that our own people who
might otherwise contemplate a change of scene
with equanimity, are often deterred by the thought
of remoteness and of isolation. But as with
material transport, so with the spread of education,
comes the dissemination of ideas ; and the reasons
for loyalty to Britain have only to be expounded
clearly to carry all before them, Underlying
them, all the time, is the progressive conservatism
of our proudest institutions. These have proved
themselves unique in their adaptability. Educa-
tion, I am informed, is steadily gaining strength
in every way in Canada. Teachers of every grade
cannot fail—by simple instruction in our history,
by study of the principles of our law—to keep the
younger generation in touch with traditions of
loyalty such as those which brought Canada quite
recently to our side in valiant defence of the right.
We may calculate that the trials of the war-period
are now nearly at an end, It behoves us all,
therefore, to pay special heed to the possible
wastage of peace,
Since the Empire Settlement Act was passed270 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

ni Hl there has been a curious interlude in the history
of our country. Episodes, throwing much light
on the divergence of principle in matters political,
| have brought to a head all that can be advanced
| in favour of more direct activity on the part of
Ht My officialism. We owe it more or less to the Labour
Party at home that we can imagine what a
| Socialist State would be like. One thing is
eT certain. No scheme of Socialism yet formulated
Hi) i would consolidate, or is reconcilable with the
i survival of our Empire. The Government
which two years ago passed to its rest at home
had one conspicuous defect which aggravated its
natural debility. It was, as some other Govern-
ments have been, the friend, or would-be friend,
of every country but its own. With a great
ae Hy appearance of superiority and ethical unction it
| gave adherence to constitutional usage, rather by
1h lip service (I have in my mind its extreme elements)

| than from rooted conviction that Britain will
| Hi always rally round a Throne. It must come,
my) therefore, with some relief to those who have
a: I | always supported the wisdom of our temperate
| ; kings, to know that those who are indifferent to
) this form of stability no longer have even a formal
i right to speak for the people. One of the more
| enlightened Labour leaders, it is true, has borneEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 271

his testimony, on leaving office, to the capacity of
King George himself as the first official of the
State. But this is not enough of sensibility to
leaven the whole lump. Nor does it bring to
Socialism more than a crumb of wholesome
seasoning.

I think I can say of those who are now my
colleagues that there is not one who is not ready
to work heart and soul for the Empire in which
they all believe. They have, I think, a clearer
view of what can be done in the way of progress
than theorists or visionaries usually possess.
They take the Throne as a great centralising fact.
They believe that it is more important to rely on
our own flesh and blood, our kindred, far or near,
than to tamper with institutions which are of
proven value, in some unstable hope of adapting
them to systems foreign to ourselves and seldom
tested elsewhere except with disastrous results.

These reflections will have special weight in
Canada because a fine object-lesson in patriotism
and principle has been afforded by the Prince of
Wales, whose visits to his ranch in Alberta have
shown exactly where, outside the British Isles,
he finds himself most completely at home. The
Prince’s ranch preaches the gospel of the talents
to the world. But there is more in it than that.

a
-
oi272 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

In virtue of the regal position, this constitutional
asset is of highest value. Canada is proud of what
the whole Empire accepts in a spirit of warm
affection. If we lost ourselves in this, we should
become the prey of mere sentimentalism. But
the Prince himself would rightly repudiate any-
thing of that kind. His adventures in Alberta
have been straightforward attempts to encourage
good things and to support the claims of honest
and progressive business, while never consenting
(why should he?) to divorce them either from
sport or from sporting considerations. No man
is considered worth his salt who does not pay his
footing among his fellows. We cannot, if we are
men of the world in the right sense, expect to take
any step forward unless we recommend it as a
paying proposition. In relation to Canadian
interests, the Prince of Wales has striven on the
sanest of lines—‘‘ the utmost for the highest.”

We all want to be good farmers in England.
We may have to come to Australia, to Canada,
to New Zealand, for instruction in matters apper-
taining to the oldest and most fascinating of all
commercial pursuits, For agriculture has always
had its trading side, and we have long memories
in the Old Country. We think of life, very often,
in immemorial terms of the shepherd and hisEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 273

sheep. In one sense we are like the oxen of Holy
Writ. We are patient of any yoke that may be
put upon us. But we mean business when we
follow the plough. We take an infinite amount of
trouble when excellence is the object of our attain-
ment. We think in terms of life and act accord-
ingly. England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, have
striven for generations to breed the finest stocks
useful for the service of man.

With wonderful climatic advantages—for these
include many alternations—our Dominions have
often bettered our example. The invention of
cold storage, the development of transport, have
proved of the greatest use to our markets and
also to our consumers. And it is opportune now
that men in authority should be in a position to
base their actions on anything that can tell in
favour of national or colonial interests. With
sympathy greatly intensified at the headquarters
of Imperial Government, it may be said that the
keys of industry are ready to open the gates of
enterprise. These certainly give access to terri-
tories far greater than any we possess at home.

Here, then, is work for statesmanship. We
must use the powers of the individual to the full,
whilst recognising that the exercise of public aid

is by no means negligible. But we have seen
11i—18274 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

royal and constitutional influence at work. Canada
has observed, in the devoted labours of successive
leaders, in men like Earl Grey, Lord Byng, the
Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Connaught,
that a system which excludes neither sensibility
nor system in practical affairs can be combined
with commercial strength to the advantage of
all. We are now at the parting of the ways.
For we are in a time of transition, But we cer-
tainly have the power of infinite development on
sound and practical lines, if only we decide to
employ it by making full use both of public and
private resources,

IV

All that has been accomplished in our long
historical progress has been due to the cultivation
of certain qualities which are recognised as British ;
and their simplicity is something which enables
them to be spread abroad without conscious effort
on our part. It has even been said that we have
acquired our Empire ina fit of abstraction. On
the whole this is true,

But we are in a strong position, In common
life, there is nothing more natural than our habit
of judging by results; and nothing quite so
satisfactory aS paying our way.EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 275

The necessity of Empire development on an
increasing scale is frequently made the subject of
far-reaching declarations at home. ‘ In England,”’
said a well-known member of the House of Com-
mons recently, ‘‘ there is hardly room to move,
whilst Canada and Australia are as empty as a
drum.’”’ When it is remembered that a census of
Australia gives to that great island-continent less
people than are contained in Greater London and
its suburbs ; when it is noted that, in contrast
with England’s seven hundred to the square mile,
Canada has only two for that same area; the
implicated challenge stands out as a thing that
must be met and fought and overcome.

I am encouraged to think, both from observation
on the spot and in consultation with those who
have given their lives to imperial interests, that
the mentality with which the whole problem is
now being approached is totally different from that
which prevailed, on both sides of the intervening
oceans, before the War. We have given to the
whole world an unassailable proof of what we mean
by paying our way; and in anything we propose
for the community or for the individual the same
all-persuasive thought must be our guide. But I
have shown, in dealing with our own descendants
and progenitors, that time is of the essence of theRag henge dele : ; ee oo ae a

  

276 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

contract. Time is an elastic term. But we shall
be wise if we do not stretch it too far; she is a
charming but an inexorable mistress.

And at this point in my argument I take up a
pregnant utterance which comes with all the force
that belongs to a skilled man of affairs. Sir
Henry Hambling, addressing the Institute of
Bankers, has lately testified to the soundness of
our race and to our character. He prophesied a
continuance of international, inter-racial success
for our people. Unemployment he showed to be
an evil, aggravated by an artificial creation of
slackness in labour, exemplified by many restric-
tions which ought to be removed. Then he told
his audience of financial experts that nothing of
good to the State could accrue by a lessening of
individual responsibility ; that, however much
might be done by a Government, it could only be a
palliative. His main thesis was undoubtedly right.

Some risks officialism is not entitled to run.
The trusteeships created by and through our
Government departments are a great network,
the justification of which, in all its complications,
is that thereby both the community and the
individual gain protection. Risks, on the other
hand, are a part of his life for every individual.
He would not be a man who never took any risks.EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 277

He might as well be a vegetable. It is no doubt a
venture implying some hazard on any man’s part
to chance everything he has, or can earn, far from
the land which is the home of his childhood. But
on grounds of pure convenience many thousands
have taken such a risk bravely and carried it out
successfully. And to contrast the open life in
the Dominions with much that passes for life—
but really supplies only a dull and drab existence—
becomes, by the nature of the case, an appeal to
the reason.

I am unwilling to believe that our young men
are afraid of strenuous work; indeed I know the
contrary. Hardship, to which they are inured
at home, is a thing that sears their very souls
with a blankness of disappointment founded
upon the absence of prospect. When it comes
to a struggle in new surroundings, zest grows with
every change of condition. The man who merely
endures the oppression of a life which is nothing
but a blind-alley with no ultimate prospect, rouses
himself to the full height of all his latent powers
when confronted (for instance) with such danger
as a prairie fire. In using this illustration, drawn
as it is from experiences with which Canadians
are familiar, I would add that we learn by our
trials. We profit by our disasters. I do not278 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

assume, in advocating the exchange of which I
have spoken, that difficulties must not be con-
fronted in remote countries as great as those
which are left behind. Coelum non animum
mutant qui trans mare currunt. But the reward
which must be fought for has an aspect (and
rather a romantic one) which the gains of the Old
World do not possess. The future must be like
the past in one way only. The men of the present
day are still in the position of pioneers. Those
writers lie who say that the age of adventure is
past. Our sons to-day are already inheritors of
a tradition which has even now become historic ;
and yet they are only at the beginning of things,
so vast are the continents which ought still to be
peopled with British stock.

Now whether it be unemployment, the exchange
of goods, or the supply of people, development of
Empire must depend, first and last, upon the
increase of trade. I have been sorry to read in
the newspapers from time to time conflicting
prognostications, and even contradictory reports,
concerning this most important factor in the life
of our nation, and, indeed, of the whole world.
Frequently a column of optimism appears side by
side with a column of despair. In consequence,
the public mind grows bewildered.279

There is really no cause for bewilderment, for
these manifestations of uneasiness are nearly
always based on shortness of view. Just because
the area over which we have spread ourselves is
vast, largeness of vision and forecasts long
extended both backward and forward must be ap-
plied to the labour which lies ahead. We have to
build on character. We must base expectation on
an assured stability. The operations of trade have
fluctuated enormously in recent years. Yet we
can declare that the City of London still amazingly
remains the centre of the financial universe. In
trade, our own dominions are amongst the best
of our customers. Their natural resources are
unbounded. One consideration is indissolubly
interlocked with another. Differences have
existed concerning preferential treatment, here or
there. In the preference which our people express
for goods that are British made, the assumption
is a natural one. There is both a belief and a
knowledge at work. And there is also a spirit

alive, to give more practical power to this natural

EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

idea.
We shall never be unconcerned in the affairs

or in the trade of the world at large. But
figures, sentiments, facts, often point to solid
things wherein the British Empire sees itself as280 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

HH self-contained. Once again, these are circumstances
vi greatly in favour of the deliberate extension of our
‘ps individual and private enterprises ; and they affect
the different classes of workers in an almost equal
degree. The capitalist—whether an individual
or a corporation—is never divorced in interest
from those who look to such springs of help. I
am sure we shall never devise any working scheme
He) from which capitalisation can be excluded. But
| every aspirant to a share in the commercial
prosperity by which we must stand or fall has a
right to consider himself, by reason of his capacity
Bi) and his character, not less essential to the general
Milly success than the capitalist himself can be.
| If, then, I were to address the banking interest
on the one hand, the beneficiary on the other, I
ay hy should say to the first that, because there is a new
;
}

: rs
==: SEES ay _ a By CEES — z ean

~

4 spirit awake, he will find it of benefit to all con-
ae cerned if he devises new and more generous terms
for the settler. To the settler, in his turn, the
Hin | clear assurance can be given that, if his heart is
) stirred to make the fresh departure, those who
have means to help will go with him all the way.

V
| Looking into the long and interesting story of
emigration, I find many a page imbued withEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 281

romance no less than with reality, wherein every
class, every interest, seems to receive its baptism
of fire. Every step forward has been fraught
with struggle ; whilst to set the coping-stone on
the edifice of imperial construction still requires
all the ingenuity and surely all the encouragement
that we can bring to bear. And for this reason
it is essential to give some particular attention to
what has happened in the past.

I have mentioned the interests of classes.
To-day there is no class which is not directly
concerned with emigration prospects and even
with immigration laws. Long ago, the idea
of emigration was in the main an affair of
philanthropy, and there was even a period when
the whole business was inextricably mixed with
the administration of our penal code. At one
time we looked on our colonies as convenient
possessions, in one way and another, to be ex-
ploited. We even had the impertinence to con-
ceive of them as suitable dumping ground for
criminals. These tactics involved rebellions
which now rank with the most decisive events of
the world’s history. For ourselves, such things
are highly instructive. On the whole, they are
not discouraging. We learned long ago to respect
the rights of the younger nations. Distance is282 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

the only bar to the fullest understanding. It
must be admitted that inter-communication is in
some ways merely spasmodic. But, as the years
go by, distances are lessened, even annihilated.
Modern invention is perpetually wrestling with
problems of land and sea and air and solving them.
Since the introduction of wireless, the idea of
distance as a barrier has undergone a complete
transformation. Concurrently with the liberalis-
ing effect of policies which enlarged the emigra-
tion-field, the imperial idea dawned upon our
national consciousness long ago. This is reflected,
in many ways, in the creative literature of the
century that has now passed out of sight.
Eighty years ago Thomas Carlyle lamented the
narrowness of our own island-atmosphere. He
fulminated, in his characteristic fashion, against
the folly of those who did not remove themselves
forthwith from its vapidities and vapours. Others
who came, like Emerson, from a long way off,
showed something to our credit by taking the
comprehensive attitude in relation to our expan-
sive and receptive powers. “As they are many-
headed,” he said of our people, ‘‘so they are
many-nationed. Their colonisation annexes
archipelagos and continents, and their speech
seems destined to be the universal language ofEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 283

men.” The prescience of the great American
writer is not less worthy of acknowledgment
because the speech of England was also his own ;
but evidence to the same effect is continually
increasing, and is not likely to be diminished.
And yet, though our expanding destiny as leaders
of mankind was always visible to the conscious-
ness of many observers, there remained for quite
two-thirds of the century with which I am dealing,
a reluctance to shoulder the whole of the accumu-
lated imperial burden. There were hesitations.
There were divisions of opinion. The “ Little
England ” parties were vocal, and even now they
are not altogether inarticulate. And when our
people left us for remote shores, though sheltered
still beneath our flag, the propensity to think of
them as lost or at least estranged was on the whole
stronger than any desire to recall them. But now
and again voices were raised to stem this tide of
indifference. Froude, Carlyle’s disciple, drew a
fine picture of possibilities and of achievements
in his Oceana. Sir John Seeley united scholarly
with patriotic truth in his Expansion of England.
Rudyard Kipling’s manly and patriotic muse had
a message for the scholar, the traveller, the man
in the street. When Joseph Chamberlain flung
aside the cloak of parochialism, it was to place on284 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

his virile shoulders the mantle of inspiration. It
had been given to a teacher no less idealistic than
John Ruskin to fill the mind of a Cecil Rhodes at
Oxford with the duty of young men to go forth
making imperialism the whole business of their
lives. And so, as we consider such testimony as
this in the aggregate, it would seem that we might
well take heed of all the divergent testimony that
exists. For it actually anticipates that greater
future of the Empire to which all whose views we
value look forward.

But I was speaking of classes; and we must
bring it clearly before our own perception that
during the relatively long period which saw emigra-
tion flowing freely, there remained at home a large
percentage of our population untouched by the
outward movement. In fact, there has never
been anything like a concerted or organised scheme
of settlement affecting the nation as a whole.
The tendency has always been to support the
indigent during his efforts to rise; and very
gratifying have been the successes gathered in
this great field of effort and benevolence. Coming
to quite recent times, the Salvation Army, which
owed its distinctive methods to the eccentric but
uncompromising genius of William Booth, can
claim to have settled 150,000 from Britain inEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 285

Canada within the last twenty years. As one
spokesman has said: ‘To-day we place the
immediate transplantation of thousands of boys
as first in importance. To-morrow we shall stand
ready to assist in the greater movement of all
classes. This must take place, if the Empire is
to continue to fulfil its destiny.”

Here, I think, we see by gradual unfolding the
development of ideas concerning emigration ; and
as numbers must not be kept out of sight, I will
once again remind my readers that something
like six millions constitute to-day the excessive,
the redundant portion of the home population.
Closely connected with this axiomatic circum-
stance are certain facts. The outflow to our
Dominions—to Australia, Canada, New Zealand,
South Africa—was at one time very large. It is
now very small. It is even exiguous. The effect
of a measure such as the Empire Settlement Act
has been insignificant. Yet I will not call the
Act a failure. Still, its operation, even on lines
of money alone, has not been one tithe of what was
intended. The reason for this is not partial or
temporary. There has been an underlying cause ;
and the explanation is to be found in another, a
remoter but still an extremely important chapter

of history.286 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

We must return to the idea of classes; of the
somewhat arbitrary divisions which we find
embedded in our sociology. Some of these are
real, some are artificial. I must not leave con-
sideration of the unprovided, the outcast section,
without remarking that our religious organisations,
great and small, have contributed much to
scientific treatment of a great difficulty, one which
no nation on earth has yet wholly solved, We
may sum up the labours of bodies like the Church
Army—or of institutions like that founded by
Dr. Barnardo—by admitting the excellence of
much that has been done, very often against heavy
odds, and not without a measure of personal
sacrifice which seldom obtrudes itself into the
light of day, Other agencies, such as those
engineered by men of the calibre of Bishop Lloyd
of Saskatchewan, have taken the educational
need in hand, persuading many teachers to leave
England for work in Canada; whilst, to look at
Australia for a moment, all who know anything
of the appalling conditions from which it is impera-
tive for our youth to be rescued must feel encour-
aged by the results attained by the late Mr.
Kingsley Fairbridge, the founder of the Child
Emigration Society. He chose this way of doing
the work of Cecil Rhodes as his own, which hap-EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 287

pened also to be the way of the Rhodes Scholar ;
and thus it will be realised how it is quite possible
for statesmanship and study, theoretic aptitude and
far-sighted benevolence, to coincide in endeavour.
From every angle, the same truth is presented
to us. Our duty as practical men is to begin
at the beginning, with the child; to start with
the most hopeless cases, even the abandoned.
But as we proceed, we cannot fail to discover that
other sections of the community require almost
as much care and thought. Whilst it is good to
know that so much has been done for the despair-
ing, these have happily never been more than
an insignificant fraction of the populace.

At another extreme are those refined and
excellent individuals largely reposing in the even-
ing of life yet, through the exigencies of the time,
wondering in great anxiety what they ought to
do next. They present a case which is a perplex-
ing one at home, all the more because very often
it is found to be complicated with a further drain
on slender resources, due in some measure to the
despised “ remittance-man ” abroad, Here a
movement, which is not to be neglected, proceeds
on a co-operative plan. Sir Roland Bourne has
spoken for this scheme; and there can be no

doubt that those are wise, even late in life, who288 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

give the idea of a colonial career their attention.
But this class can hardly help taking the habits
of the remittance-man with it. The quietude of
Bath and Cheltenham is a byword. And yet
the denizens of such places are an asset to the Old
Country as they are. It is hardly to them that
the Dominions can now look for any really fruitful
contribution to the main problem. Their slender
resources, no doubt, are attractive to the mere
speculator. But the energy here available is not
sufficient for the risks that must be run. These
uprootings come too late. I do not dismiss what
is being planned for such cases with any lack of
sympathy. But the very fact of the possession of
a moderate amount of capital only throws into
stronger relief the preponderant section which
has no capital at all. Thrift is not unknown in the
British Isles. I make no suggestion of financial
incapacity or folly. But a definite move, at the
present time, is practically impossible for nine
out of ten of our unsettled people, owing to sheer
lack of immediate realisable capital.

And we must continue to think in millions.
I have not set up the figure of six millions of
transferable people as something to be knocked
down again. It may well be that we have far to
go before we restore the number to the half-EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 289

million yearly which represented the average of
emigrants from Britain before the war. Never-
theless we have to think in millions still; and at
least a hundred thousand families yearly, com-
puting them as an average of six souls for each
family, is only a moderate estimate of those whom
a systematic system of group-settlement can now
begin to supply ; given that emergence from war-
troubles which can now safely be expected and
granted that financial goodwill without which
nothing can be done.

Once more, we must think in millions. Millions
of good money are awaiting investment. With
the incentive of the development of the Empire,
added to reasonable security, these millions can
be applied to land-development, and thus to
human development, overseas.

Millions, again, of available acres, teeming with
riches, invite the application of individual energy,
the true wealth of nations. And the supply of
such energy has never been more abundant than
it is at the present day amongst ourselves,
though untoward conditions temporarily restrict
us. The Empire, by wise redistribution, has
power within itself to bring all this repression

to an end.

1I—I9290 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

VI

As I gather the threads of this survey, impressed
while I am by the resources of our vast Empire,
I hold an even stronger impression of the fight
that lies before. It is not a fight for domination.
I do not believe that the weight of power and
responsibility which is our portion is too heavy
for us. We have no desire to add to it. But
experience compels us to assume that our tasks
will become ever more exacting. There will be
joy in performing them. It is not only in height
of aspiration that we, as a people, have become
the inheritors of ideals which our forefathers
dimly apprehended. We have acquired, through
diverse experience, through adventures and
experiments, a greater breadth of view. We
must continue to build upon this capacity for
assimilation and construction, in the interests
of an Empire which is continually absorb-
ing some of the best elements of other races
than our own.

I see, in the course of history, many proofs that
we have risen even above the splendid classical
tradition. If I have said little of the French
infusion, which—next to our own—is the outstand-
ing feature of Canadian honour and prosperity,EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 2901

it is not that I fail to appreciate how much it
means, or how it may occasionally perplex those
who hold the reins of official power. I am satisfied
that the interests of the two sections are in the
end identical: that we have solved the all-
important question of unity. The clouds that
sometimes disturb the surface presage nothing
more than a passing storm.

Here I would add that I have been alive also
to the occasional superiority of other nationalities
in adapting themselves to the labours and endur-
ance necessary to wrest from Nature her bounty.
The Norwegian and the Dane often make sturdier
colonists than our own people. While I believe
that it is nearly within our reach to solve our own
great problem, I see that Canada would have
nothing to lose by adopting a policy of emigration
which encouraged in equal degree all European
countries. To their sturdiest qualities of inde-
pendence, the vast majority of our stock add
patience, even stoicism. Rivalry with other
nationalities only accentuates the determination
of the Briton.

Edmund Burke, great in prevision, was not the
only man among our predecessors who thought
of Empire in terms of millions. He foresaw a
gigantic growth; he expected that we should292 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

prepare ourselves for overwhelming responsibili-
ties by means of untiring efforts. These efforts
must not be relaxed. The forest and the prairie,
the mine and the ocean, are not the only spheres
of energy which it is desired that our adventurers
should exploit. Canada now offers many other
openings. Her manufactures are full of life.
There is no invention in engineering, in machinery,
in building, which is not being utilised. I have
myself seen, what a multitude learned at Wembley,
how Canada keeps abreast of modern progress in
all the departments of the world’s business.
Whatever the future holds for the scattered
but allied possessions which our continuous pro-
gress must secure and our common history must
keep united, it is certain that we cannot gain by
departing from those business principles which,
for the service of all, are rooted in individuality.
If any evolution is taking place—and there must
be some change, as liberty through education is
passed on to increasing numbers—it will eventually
take the form of easier financial terms for those
who follow us. It may well be claimed that our
generation has borne the burden and the heat of
a very expensive day. Unreflecting criticism
often declares that the Victorian element sowed
in folly nothing but the seeds of strife. OtherEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 293

extremists assert that, this being the very age
wherein all human wisdom is concentrated, wars
can be made to cease. Accordingly, those who
rely on the ensuing reign of peace and goodwill
may sleep in their beds without the protection
either of armies or of fleets.

I think that the British Empire must be very
differently inspired. We have given not a few
well-meaning people free rein for their theories.
The result has been, once more, the discovery that
strength and determination are better than weak-
ness. If our policy in dealing with difficult racial
problems had ever been less than humane and
generous, we should not possess the right, which
is ours to-day, to assert controlling authority
wherever mingled interests meet under our own
flag. I like to think, as I see young men, or
groups of cheering children, proceed from some
London terminus for the new world of Canada,
South Africa, or wherever the advance of settle-
ment-policy may send them, that it is for them,
as they grow up, to realise that union is force.

In contemplating these departures, which make
for patriotism, I come back to a familiar stand-
point. Not one migrant has been arranged for
without some combination of benevolence and
some respect for the law of contract. The business204 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

side has not been neglected. And those who have
taken advantage of the new spirit of activity
which pervades the overseas movement are con-
fident that these very children are the nucleus of
an improving security. But there are other
securities which are improving. There is much
to be done to re-establish our export trade. Never-
theless, in the neck-and-neck race with the United
States, British ships carry a larger share than
the ships of othernations to and from America ;
whilst in foreign trade generally, our home-port
entries show a total comparing most favourably
with that of all other ships combined. Our
sea-strength, then, is unimpaired. Financiers
everywhere await the gradual restoration of
world-trade as a certainty. And of Great Britain
it can be said that the conviction of strength—
that is, of security, in, on, and under the water—
has never wholly failed us.

This sense of security must have its reflex on
the land, and therefore on land-settlement. This
is supported, again, by history and by character.
As with the Hudson Bay Company, as in India,
as on the Niger—as, too, with recent events in
mind, I would add, even in Egypt—private
enterprise, public leadership, and Government
support have worked together to encourageEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 295

individual enterprise. Burns was near the truth
when he said:
“To make a happy household clime
For weans and wife,

Is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.”’

I will not emphasise the anxiety and wistfulness
of the poet. Recent trials have emphasised a
manly and natural yearning. It cannot be satis-
fied in grooves which have no outlet, where all is
cramped and uncongenial. He who would escape
must have security before he can move.

But one essential part of this security he will
find in himself. He can offer skill and character
and an adaptable mind. Those who have lived
and worked for the land-settlement idea, the
group-settlement concentration which has become
so necessary, especially in Canada, have laid their
plans with caution from this very point of view,
and are confidently prepared to bring them into
action. Settlers cannot provide much cash for
land, improvements, equipment. Landowners

cannot always sell their property on extended
terms. Finance, however—the finance of private
corporations—will be found equal to these require-
ments. Money supplies are abundant where
security is good; if the process of selection,296 EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT

applied both to land, to industry, and to men, is
associated with a system of appropriate advances,
no possible reason exists why the past should not
swiftly be wiped out and an era of prosperity
set in.

Let me conclude, then, with an appeal to the
individual in words which shall not be merely
individualistic. I reject, but I do not resent,
those criticisms which are launched against Conser-
vatism as a faith or Imperialism as a creed. To
all extremists their extremes. They are welcome
to them. Strong statements clear the air. But
the most masterly strokes of policy are always
achieved by attainment of the golden mean.
There is nothing in the Conservatism which has
lately been re-asserted which is unprogressive.
Our Imperialism is based on justice, on security,
on enlightenment, on common sense.

Our destiny is inevitable, whether we look upon
it as that which is woven on the loom of Time by
a higher power, or regard it as the reflection of a
mighty past, the forecast of a still mightier future.
Imperium et libertas, the idea of dominion and
freedom, reverberates to us from the ages. Burke
echoed it when he said: ‘‘ Magnanimity in politics
is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great
Empire and little minds go ill together.” As ourEMPIRE DEVELOPMENT 297

people proceed in increasing numbers, thus en-
couraged, thus supported—for the application of
every principle postulates a commensurate practical
effort on the part of those who give and those who
take—those who receive the newcomers will
discover that it is not only the individual, the
family, or the group, that is incorporated. It is
the Empire itself which stands to gain by the
plans which I have sought to advocate in their
real comprehensiveness, in their essential sim-
plicity. Every life is of value, and every indivi-
dual should have his chance in a world which is
rich in material good and infinite in opportunities.
The satisfaction of imperial needs will stretch
“the bounds of freedom wider yet,” and contri-
bute, by the extension of that freedom, to the

welfare of the world.AIX

DHE BOLSHEVEST MIiLND

T is very surprising to reflect that the term
[: Bolshevism,” with all its obscene associa-
tions and connotations, is not more than ten years
old. The Russian Bolshevist party, from whose
name the term is taken, is itself barely twice that
age. But surprise may be modified by the reflec-
tion that, except for the name, there is little new
in the psychology of Bolshevism. Before there
were Bolshevists there were revolutionaries. And
the revolutionaries of earlier days presented much
the same appearance and, apparently, abused
much the same mental processes as the Bolshevists
of to-day.

Yet it would be idle to suppose that the triumph
of the Bolshevists in Russia has not exposed many
new facets of their psychology. What before had
been momentary at best (or at worst) is now an
established thing. The creatures of the shadows
have come into the daylight and clothed themselves
with substance, just as the white things under an

old stone crawl into daylight if you lift it.
298THE BOLSHEVIST MIND 299

The world has seen Bolshevism in the making
and in its rise to power. We have seen for nine
jll-omened years this system in control of what was
once a civilised, a cultivated, and a prosperous
country. We have not yet seen Bolshevism in
complete decay ; but the prophecy is not hazard-
ous that most of us will live to see this too. So
long, however, as it holds its defiled place in the
forefront of the contemporary world, the pheno-
mena associated with it deserve pathological
study. The more malignant the microbe, the
more exacting the duty of the scientist.
Bolshevism is not purely a Russian manifesta-
tion. It is the common observation of everyone
who has to deal in an educational capacity with
young men and women that there is a stage in
their psychological development, a kind of mental
puberty, at which they are curiously subject to
infectious ideas of an extreme virulence. As with
infectious diseases of the body, not everyone is
equally liable. Many, perhaps the majority, of
intelligent and balanced boys and girls pass from
mental childhood to adolescence without infection.
But a considerable minority, whether from a
nervous reaction to the fever of modern civili-
sation, or from some strange degenerate defect of
mind or body, do in their teens become convinced300 MAE: BOLSHE Vist MIND

of the desirability of the overthrow of the moral
and administrative foundations of society. It is
rare indeed to find a genuine Bolshevist in any
country who has not become one (even though by
another name) before his or her twentieth year.

A deep toll is taken of the immature. One
must catch fools young. Little or nothing, it
seems, can be done for the unfortunates who,
attacked by the disorder, are unable by a healthy
natural process to expel it from their system.
Nature has no cure for this form of madness,
though I have known a legacy from a rich relative
work wonders. The subject is both complex and
interesting. Social psychologists and _ alienists
might well join forces in its exploration. I shall
not attempt here to discuss the subject fully—
ten times the space at my disposal would be
insufficient for its full consideration—but a few
observations upon the mentality of the Russian
Bolshevists may help to open up a fruitful train
of investigation.

,

The word “ Bolshevism,” strictly used, means,
I understand, the policy of the “‘ majority ”’ group
of the Russian Social Democratic Party after its
split twenty years ago. The out-voted rival
group—thereafter called the ‘‘ Menshevists ’’—

put forward a more moderate programme whichTHE BOLSHEVIST MIND 301

has since been associated with their name. The
programme of the Bolshevists envisaged the
attainment of an extreme Socialism by extreme
means. The Menshevists were the more influential
party from the time of the split until 1917.
Kerensky, a rhetorical half-wit, though nominally
a member of yet another Socialist party, was
in close sympathy with them, and under his
short-lived régime the Menshevist leaders enjoyed
a brief hour of prominence. The Bolshevists’
turn came, however, at the end of the year,
and it came, and could only have come, through
the sloppy and gaseous weakness of Kerensky.
He talked and talked and talked at the one moment
when a single battery of artillery, resolutely
directed, might have saved the world.

The Bolshevists, who at least knew their own
horrible minds, seized power, emerged successful—
if shaken—from the civil war, and have ever since
controlled Russian policy.

The first characteristic of this engaging tyranny
to which I draw attention is its immorality, its
insolent defiance of every accepted moral standard.
Its members were notorious in Russia before the
revolution for corruption, cowardice, and treachery.
The whole revolutionary movement was honey-

combed with police spies ; the proportion of these302 THE BOLPSHEVIST MIND

to wholehearted revolutionaries varied in the
different parties, but it is said on good authority to
have approached the almost incredible figure of
sixty per cent. among the Bolshevists.

This must not be taken as indicating that the
Bolshevists were especially feared by the authori-
ties—they were in fact the least dangerous of the
extreme parties—it was simply that six out of
every ten Bolshevists volunteered their service to
the police, and were prepared, for the sake of a
monthly pittance, to betray their colleagues.
Even the leader of the Bolshevist fraction in the
Duma, a man who had made himself conspicuous
by the violence of his language, was exposed as
recelving a salary from the police. Unmasked
and driven by public opinion out of the country,
he went to Lenin, the head of the Bolshevist party
committee abroad, who whitewashed him and tried
to reinstate him in the party councils. Lenin cared
nothing for such lapses. He himself described
his party in the heyday of his power, as comprising
ninety-nine rogues and fools to every one genuine
member. Surely Mr. Cook must be that one
member and may have remembered it as he kissed,
on entering, with a series of obeisances, his master’s
tomb. Just as Lenin endeavoured to rehabilitate
a convicted renegade in his party before the War,THE BiOws mew lst) Molen D 303

so he was ready during it to play the traitor to
his country, and accept help and money from its
enemies.

It has seemed incomprehensible to many that
Lenin was able to carry his party with him in these
directions, so repugnant to every kind of decency,
so contrary even to the honour which is said to
reign among admitted thieves. Some have thought
to find the solution in picturing him as a man with
an unnational but original genius for leadership and
organisation. I cannot agree with this view ;
Lenin’s failures and incompetence have been much
too clearly revealed for him to take high rank
even among the less successful of revolutionary
leaders.

The explanation is, to my mind, to be found in
a second characteristic of the Bolshevist mind:
servility. Theirs is aslave mind. Itis not a good
Jewish mind. It is a Jewish mind drenched in a
low cosmopolitan sink. No party in the world

offers such unquestioning obedience to its leaders
as the Bolshevists. Any act of independent
judgment, any suggestion that a man dares to think
or speak for himself, brings drastic, probably
mortal, punishment. Lenin was a man eaten up
with the lust for power. To him every means was
justified by the increase of his personal authority304 THE BOLSHEVIST MIND

in the Russian revolutionary movement. While
Lenin lived, his word was law to his lawless
followers. They might—six out of every ten of
them before his emergence did—send a copy of
his instructions to the local police, but they
obeyed him. This was certainly not due to the
quality of his eloquence, for since Karl Marx
himself, no revolutionary has written, or spued
out, words with more consistent unreadableness
than Lenin. But he represented some kind of
authority, and the maniacs who had cast off
obedience to the established rulers of their country
gladly bowed their necks to his more tyrannous
yoke.

Where he piped, however dissonantly, they
danced. It was an erratic course, like the foot-
steps of a man either very drunk or lost in a desert.
At one moment he led them in the direction of an
extreme Communism; when the failure of this
experiment threatened to overthrow the position
of his party in the country—for even the torturers
and executioners of the Cheka could not have held
down for ever a population desperate with starva-
tion—Lenin turned a full circle and ordered his
slaves to accept a ‘‘ new economic policy,”’ which
was nothing less than an attempt to return to
capitalism. Hardly a voice was raised in protest.THE BOLSHEVIST MIND 305

Such criticism as came was from other Bolshevist
leaders, seeking the reversion of the leader’s
authority.

The rank and file of the party throughout
Russia—indeed throughout the world—accepted
without reservation the reversal of a policy which
they had for years advocated, in favour of an
economic system which they had spent their lives
in denouncing. It is hardly necessary to say that
the English zanies galloped over one another in
accepting this repudiation of Bolshevist Gospel.
Not even Mr. Lansbury bleated. But not much
excites him unless England seems to be doing well.

The servile ‘‘rebels”’ could not ignore the
absurdity of their position. They took refuge,
therefore, in what must be regarded as the third
main characteristic of the Bolshevist mind—
cynicism. In all the chronicles of political chic-
anery, I know nothing to rival the impertinent
cynicism of the Bolshevists. Men have lied before
now for the sake of their country, party, or family.
But no one has lied in and out of season over a
period of years with the easy disregard of prob-
ability or consistency displayed by the Bolshevists.
To such confirmed liars one lie is, I assume, as
good as another; but this is not enough; the
Bolshevists habitually proffer both lies, and add a

Li ——ZO306 THRE BOLSHEViISTDT MIND

third, as a courteous alternative, if they find it to
hand.

Let me mention a typical example. The first
appearance of the Bolshevists on the horizon of
world-events was when they stood forth in the
early days of the Russian Revolution as the
extremest kind of pacifists. Concealing the fact
that they were financially and otherwise supported
by Germany, they denounced Tsarist Russia and
the Allies as nations intent on annexation and
spoliation. Simultaneously, however, they offered
secretly, through representatives of the Allies in
Russia, to join forces with the Allies against
Germany. Just to round off the fraud, they
addressed a pamphlet to the British troops at
Archangel, denouncing the long-deposed Tsarist
Government for desiring to conclude a separate
peace with Germany ; declaring that the Empress
had secretly communicated the Allied military
secrets to German Headquarters; and setting
themselves forward as the true champions of
Allied interests.

Their whole attitude was a triple example of
filthy and cynical falsehood.

They have not changed their methods. It is
impossible to shake their self-possession. As
recently as a few months ago Litvinov (aliasTHE BOLSHEVIST MIND 307

Finkelstein, alias Wallach) sent an impudent
reply to a Note in which the British Government
had complained of infringements of the trade
agreement in the unconcealed anti-British activi-
ties of Bolshevist representatives in all countries.
To this Litvinov replied that—

“in accordance with the decision for peace of the
toiling masses of the Soviet Union, which are in
entire conformity with the same aspirations of the
popular masses of Great Britain, the Soviet
Government will in future also pursue its peace-
loving policy, which excludes all aggressiveness
towards other countries.”

But since even Litvinov could not hope that this
sentence would go unchallenged, he was at pains
in his reply to explain that the Bolshevist Govern-
ment could not assume responsibility for the
actions of the Bolshevist International and other
similar organisations. Only one comment is pos-
sible upon this. The attempt to separate the
Bolshevist International, the Bolshevist Party,
the Bolshevist Government, and the half a dozen
other Bolshevist organisations that have their
headquarters at Moscow, is a most impudent
attempt at deception. It is on a par with the
book-keeping of a fraudulent bankrupt to deceive
his creditors, or of a man preparing to set fire to308 THE -BOLSHEVIST MIND

his warehouse in order to obtain money from an
insurance company.

The personnel of the various Bolshevist bodies
in Moscow consists of a small and privileged set
of men. It is ridiculous to suppose that a high
Bolshevist official ceases to be a high Bolshevist
official when, as a member of the Bolshevist
International, he sends money to the aid of the
participants in a British general strike; or
proffers assistance to a Chinese force whose
express aims are anti-British. Equally cynical
is the implication in Litvinov’s note that the
Bolshevist Government can accept no responsi-
bility for the Bolshevist Press. From his in-
dignation, his tone of hurt surprise, a complete
simpleton might imagine that Russia to-day was
a free country with a free Press. Litvinov,
unless he is even a greater fool than I think him,
must recognise that the whole world knows that
Bolshevist Russia is a force-imposed tyranny ;
and that no newspaper can exist which does not
obsequiously present the official Bolshevist view.

Why, then, it may be’ asked, does this man
make a public display of his cynicism? The
answer is, of course, that his note was conceived
and intended to evade the basic demand of the
British note—namely, that anti-British activitiesTHE BOLSHEVIsST MIND 309

must cease—by a smoke-screen of impudent
defiance. And it was, of course, principally
intended for our own local fools.

Litvinov (alias Wallach, etc.), on the absurd
ground that the British Government was com-
plaining of words rather than deeds, went
out of his way to quote, as a tu quoque, a passage
from one of my speeches in which I referred to the

c

Soviet Government as a “ gang of assassins and
robbers.” This, says Litvinov, is an example
of the ‘‘ most immoderate abuse of the right to
engage in propaganda within Great Britain
against the Soviet Government” by British
ministers.

Of the phrase I used, that the Bolshevist leaders
are ‘‘ assassins and robbers,” there is only one
observation to be made: THEY ARE!

The men who have been openly responsible for
the execution and torturing to death of hundreds
of thousands of their fellow-countrymen can
hardly regard the word “assassins ’’ as mere
abuse. If I knew a stronger word, I would use
it. For the men who murdered in cold blood
the innocent children of the Tsar, to object to the
name of assassin, is only a crowning example
of the cynicism which is so repelling an ingredient

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As for the charge of robbery, it is hard to see
how the word could give offence to a government
which has consistently preached the doctrine of
“robbing the robbers,” in other words, of plun-
dering the wealth acquired by any man in any
class of the community ; and whose first act in
power was to seize the banks, and to make
house-to-house requisitions of all articles of
value. Let it then be repeated quite plainly
that the Bolshevists are both murderers and
thieves.

There is one other facet of Bolshevist cynicism
which has struck me very forcibly during the last
few years. Shortly after they came into power
there was an attempt, almost world-wide, to
advertise the alleged merits of their régime. We
were told with nauseating repetition that, if there
was one thing more than another that the Bol-
shevists had done to improve conditions in
Russia, it was in regard to the education and care
of children. This lie, for such it was proved to
be, flourished for several years, until at last evi-
dence was overwhelming of the actual condition
of children in Bolshevist Russia.

We then learned—from sources which could not
be controverted, and which were confirmed by
outspoken Bolshevists themselves—that the con-ho EB OL SHE V1 sD; MEN D SLE

ditions of child-life in Russia were, and are,
almost beyond description. It was not merely
that the schools have vastly decreased in number ;
that teachers have been driven out and killed ;
that neither fuel nor writing materials nor books
are available. We discover that the Bolshevists
are seeking to consolidate their power in Russia
by degrading the present generation of children
to acquiescence in their principles. Undegraded,
they could not acquiesce. Such schools as
exist are hot-beds of vice and immorality. The
streets of the great cities are infested with bands
of children like packs of pariah dogs—the boys
thieves and the girls prostitutes. No mother
can any longer hope to control or even to guide
her growing children. In existing Russian con-
ditions the child is caught at the most impres-
sionable age and deliberately dragged down to
the moral and intellectual level of the Bolshevists
themselves.

Cynicism is a word too feeble for the attitude
of mind of a set of men and women who seek to
secure their political ascendancy by the deliberate
degradation of even one generation of children.
The attempt itself exhibits the taint of insane
cruelty, of perversion, of utter mental corruption.

If the alienists have a pathological category inSZ THE BOLSHEVIST MIND

which the Bolshevist mind, Russian or English,
takes its special place, they would do well to
declare it. If they have a cure, other than
execution or forcible restraint—I doubt if they
have—let us know it.

Meanwhile, in dealing with the Bolshevist
leaders, let us remember that we are dealing with
homicidal megalomaniacs, not with normal men
and women. And when we are told that the
remonstrances which I and other ministers have
made in plain language against their activities
afford some kind of justification for those activi-
ties, I reply that no one abuses them for the sake
of diversion. It would not be worth while. A
man cannot dine out on the strength of adverse
criticism at the expense of Judas Iscariot or of the
Emperor Nero.

We become only concerned to make plain the
filthy vices, the blood-thirsty tyranny, and the
economic failure of the Bolshevist leaders, when
we realise that a febrile and hysterical minority
of our population is inclined to take its orders
from the decaying and bloodsodden system of
Moscow.

Opposed by such a movement we claim the
right—and we propose to exercise it—of examin-
ing the records of the gang of murderers and bri-THE BOLSHEVIST MIND 313

gands who are openly challenging the British
Empire. They may perhaps find the attempt
to destroy that Empire more difficult and more
dangerous than to do to death in a Bolshevist
cellar charming and innocent Russian princesses,

who, being princesses, were still children.=

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A WORD FOR ENGLAND

“f WORD for England’? must be, first

and foremost, a word in favour of the
predominant partner in the greatest federation
that the world has ever known. There can be no
hesitancy in claiming success for this individual
and collective power; and, for success itself,
there can be no shame in declaring a certain
partiality. ‘‘If there be one successful country
in the universe for the last millennium, that
country is England.”’ This witness is American:
but such testimony might be quoted from foreign
writers all the world over. The sentiment, which
bears within it something more than eulogy, also
carries forward hope of achievement in fields as
yet unknown. For success is a plant which
scatters its own seeds.

The successes of England in arms or commerce,
still regarding things from the foreign standpoint
and still looking at the universal interest, should
have killed envy outright. So generously, in

fact, have these advantages been used. But envy
314A WORD FOR ENGLAND 315

has been rife in recent years. It would indeed
savour of the unctuous and hypocritical if I repre-
sented England as perpetually inoffensive or
quixotically scrupulous. But success does more
than succeed. In this way, the proverbial proves
its point; thus does the fabulous display its
practical usefulness. The story of St. George,
for instance, had only the other day its most
victorious hour, when a friendly king, a hero and
an ally, unveiled at Zeebrugge a memorial to men
of our blood, honouring the emblematic but by no
means enigmatic figure which faithfully represents
England to the world as tramping down the forces
of evil in the shape of a dragon. Alien envy
receives its quietus here. Thus does the voice of
England speak for our composite race to foreign
ears. With that knowledge, I reject the idea of
envy as a thing unlikely to be cherished by open-
minded readers of universal history, But domestic
envy is a different thing.

Our own islanders feel, almost to a man, that
they lead the world in matters of moment. But
a good many of them like to divide the honours,
split the credit, deny any special place to England.
These sensibilities are worthy of something more
than passing notice. England herself would lose

a great deal if these were cavalierly treated. A316 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

composite race cannot ignore any of its constituent
parts. And they have the fighting spirit, these
lesser units, which so much resemble independent
nations. Men of Scottish origin, or Welsh, seldom
forget that a loyalty to their own racial sense
transcends any other allegiance. It is more than
local and provincial. It is national. The same
thing can only be predicated of Ireland with a
difference. But the Irish have become difficult.
They have become, for the time being, a race
apart. That the commingling strains will reassert
themselves, that reactions will recur, I cannot
doubt. As I consider these things, I look beyond
divisions to an underlying unity, affecting the past
and the present through the call of the blood :
manifestly a thing not without some hope for
the future. At this point I am not thinking of
things political I am thinking linguistically.
And, because the resurrection of Erse as a language
leaves me cold, because I cannot even warm to
Cymric or Gaelic, I wish, with all my heart, that
north of the Tweed or west of the Usk the lessons
of the Tower of Babel had the force of the Riot
Act. But this should be used for the cohesion,
not the dispersal, of misguided people. The
English language has a linking, not a fettering
power.A WORD FOR ENGLAND S17,

Language apart, however, a refusal to acknow-
ledge English supremacy on English soil has
definitely to be accounted for. The expansion of
England into every region of the known world has
followed, very naturally, the adventurer whose
natural element is the water. But in the history
of a people the unexpected often happens. An
Empire is acquired in absence of mind, and the
public at large are both ignorant and inarticulate
about it until a poet like Rudyard Kipling arises
and asks the reason why. Then, and not till then,
we all look round, wondering if justice is being
done to England, if England is doing justice to
herself. Soon it is seen that when all contributors
to national greatness have been considered there
must be an apex, there must be a centre, there must
be a rallying round the pole that carries the united
flag. Honour must be given to whom honour is
due. This is as necessary for a country as it is
for a man. And here, since 1 am speaking of a
country, let me look at our own for a few moments
from the geographical point of view.

London, for instance, like England herself, is

a good deal more than a mere geographical expres-

sion. Some of our great ports may challenge even

London in this point of supremacy OF that ; but
London shows, more effectively than any other318 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

city in the world, what financial mastery means.
London is a world-centre, superficially regarded.
But her internal strength makes London England’s
very heart. By dominating so much of the world
in a commercial sense it seems only fair to England
that all tributaries should consider the source of
their own increase of strength. For hence, quite
directly, it proceeds. And it gathers a certain
momentum by the use which English character
is wont to make of some doubtful advantages.
One of these is the English climate. As our
character is unjustly treated when it is called
perfidious, so, too, the climate we enjoy might
complain when arraigned in some personification
or other for the effects of its temperate variabili-
ties. Bad weather is a nuisance, but is no great
hardship to the temperament which adjusts itself
accordingly. A little roughness of the elements
is a very good thing. It is something to stand up
to. It might seem strange that I should commend
the climate which, like other Englishmen, I have
often enough found fault with myself, but such
abuse is positive, not comparative; and a little
observation teaches that many climates are infin-
itely worse. King Charles the Second knew what
he was talking about when he said that it was
possible to fare forth abroad on a greater numberA WORD EFEOR ENGLAND 319

of days in the year than would be possible any-
where else ; and when another Charles, a moderate
but very breezy poet, set his praises to the melody
of the north-east wind, he preached an English
parable, though some of its inspiration came from
outside. The truth is that English manhood
suits itself to all weathers and is glad to be out
in the storm. I could even say a word in favour
of the fogs of England, if I did not realise that a
London fog is to a great extent, in its abnormal
inconvenience, no natural phenomenon, but the
result of lack of science in countering its more
objectionable features. Yet even here the main
contention is sound. English temperament is
strong because of its capacity, tenacious as hope
itself, to bear and to endure against any odds.

If English character and climate combine to
bring out the higher qualities of manly nature,
there are other conquests which confirm the
priority that England, in the course of her eventful
history, has gained. Manifold though these have
been, no factor forces them on the cosmic con-
sciousness so admirably, and withal so pacifically,
as the triumphs of her language. All forms of
envy, home-made or foreign-grown, are reduced
to silence here. Were spoken speech the only
instrument at work, the miracle of a tongue which320 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

advances in its general usefulness would be worthy
of special notice. The indirect influence of Greek
and Latin has not waned. Of living languages,
I concede a very high importance to French and
Spanish. But English, directly and indirectly,
spoken or written, wields as great a power in
the world as all the others in combination, and
does this partly by that absorptive facility which
is the peculiar feature of the English racial
temperament.

It is when we come to the writers of English
that the greatest field of all spreads itself attrac-
tively before the mind. The internal dissentients
disappear. Burns or Scott pay their homage,
by no means sub silentio. Swift and Goldsmith
echo the English claim in literature which they
made a province of their own. A moment’s
reflection will be sufficient to establish the growing
prominence which in retrospect we may see
heralded by Bunyan or Shakespeare, maintained
by Dryden or Milton, extended by Tennyson and
Matthew Arnold, and gathering impetus through
the work of many men now living, some of them
recognised, some of them disregarded. English
pens have proved themselves more powerful than
many swords. Even if this were not so, looking
at the component parts of that influence so oftenA WORD FOR ENGLAND 321

disguised as Britannic, England stands first
and the rest nowhere. Though the scholar may
be fully justified in his laborious researches
amongst the obscurer dialects of our country,
he will suffer the fate of the mere pedant amongst
all thinkers if he confuses the curiosities of human
language with their real force. The real force
of England does not, indeed, rest on this impreg-
nable rock; for the simple reason that rest
implies repose. The symbolism most fitting
here has often appeared on an English penny.
It is that of a lighthouse, which is continually
kept burning, shedding forth a living and a
perpetual ray.

If language is one exemplary criterion of great-
ness, there are others which will prove, if proof
be required, the true predominance which English-
men feel belongs to them at home. Continental
Courts and mouthpieces are for the most part
content to accept the English pre-eminence and
to take it for granted that the leader represents
the whole. So much for the foreign attitude.
Once more, it is the home attitude that matters
to us all. The criteria we are now thinking of
must be examined a little more carefully, for
patriotism of the finest and most essential kind

is at stake whenever a country is treated unjustly ;
1I—21322 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

whenever, in peace or war, her rightful dues are
withheld by friend or foe.

England is treated unjustly when her rightful
place is disguised or annulled by expressions which
show a tendency in meticulous writers to become
almost fashionable. Where national or inter-
national interests are concerned, England should
stand incontestably primus inter pares when re-
presenting the British Raj. To this primacy it
would be a graceful act if all the home com-
munities would bow, as the African or Asiatic
or Trans-Oceanic bow. But is this always so ?
In the face of mere grudging admissions, occasion-
ally merged into denials, the gorge of the practical
Englishman rises. Justifiably so. Naturally so.
The Englishman is nothing if he is not practical.
Sometimes the practical ground in reasoning is
the highest ground of all. And it is this very
practical sense that often gives to the English-
man his passion for statistics.

Even as I pen these lines, there lies before me
a most interesting pamphlet, full of facts and
figures. Those who invited me some little time
ago to identify myself more specially with the
Royal Society of St. George could not have paid
me a greater compliment, and their pleadings in
favour of England’s greatness, though their truthA WORD FOR ENGLAND 323

may be taken for granted in the court of public
opinion, could hardly be set forth more engag-
ingly than a simple tabulation of names and
facts affords. The existence of such a Society
of St. George is in itself a proof that the patriotism
which should increase our pride is occasionally
dormant. The need for it testifies to a certain
neglect. Yet the case for England has only to be
stated to awaken the indolent, to confound the
hostile. If all the world were against her, Eng-
land would stand alone. As Shakespeare knew !
But England does not stand alone now. Rather,
having assumed the titanic burden, having fought
the battles of the weaker nations, the recognition
given should be commensurate to her responsi-
bility in leadership, numbers, government,
methods, men. Let me come to figures and
facts.

In the late War, England provided four times
as many fighting men as the rest of the United
Kingdom put together, and actually sustained
82 per cent. of all the Empire’s casualties. In
peace, where an average of a hundred millions
sterling a year have represented her average
contribution to imperial and local revenue, one-
eighth of that sum is the burden borne by Scot-

land, one-fifteenth by Wales. Whether in peace324 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

or in war, American tests will show that England
responds splendidly to any test which seeks out
intellectual superiority or such adaptability as
goes to the strengthening of nations. And the
elaborate examinations which are used in America
for these tests provide evidence in favour of
England of a very high value. Looking farther
afield, at the vaster spheres of trade, I find that
in the total value of imports and exports dealt
with in the ports of the several kingdoms at home,
England holds the honours with a percentage of
no less than 87 per cent.; and I do not think it is
too much to say that this fairly represents not
merely the lead which England holds, as we know
it, but her relative position in the eyes of the
whole world.

Nevertheless it is true of England, as it is of
every land that needs to build some part of the
new era in life and work, that “happy are they
who can hear their detractions and put them to
mending.” Even England could not be improved
by language of indiscriminate eulogy. But I
think it is true to say of our country that her
strength is in some respects made perfect in
weakness. It would be a commonplace admis-
sion, that alien influences in finance, in art, in

character even, have been absolutely necessaryA WORD FOR ENGLAND 325

to English evolution. But the absorptive power
which has helped to make this evolution possible
only unifies her laws and amplifies her liberties.
It can never be said of England that she has
not recognised the dangers of insularity.
That detraction, once hinted, has been met
through active lives and written books. And the
result has been, amongst her own people, a
deserved pre-eminence: for other races, an
admired example.

I hold it right, then, that at this eventful stage
of the world’s history, the pre-eminence of England
should be better understood by her sons: more
valued, more widely propagated through the
celebration of anniversaries, in assemblies where
young and old may meet together, and in other
sane and festive ways. Our territory, so small
in extent, but great in the unconquerable spirit
of its inhabitants—one which has established
continents and fathered great nations, including
that exuberant Republic, the United States—
offers lessons of concentration and of principle
which it is the duty of us all to inculcate in the
rising generation. These scions of our stock will
be more widely travelled than their fathers were.
But travellers will also come to us. There will
be scope for the acceptance, the promulgation,326 A WORD FOR ENGLAND

of English ideas. And for every form of culture
that makes for wisdom and liberty, this garden
of England will continue to find room.

Those who visit us from afar are very fond
of describing all England as a garden, and Francis
Bacon thought that a garden afforded the very
highest of human pleasures. We may take these
parallels a little farther still. The multifarious
cultivation for which our land is famous ranges
from the fertilisation of little fields to the mak-
ing of magnificent cities. Historically, we have
shown how the amazing Cromwell falls into line,
in patriotism, with victorious Marlborough or
epoch-making Chatham. With all these growths
and inseparable from their graces, there has
ever been, in English character, a love of the
generous, the simple, the human. Our open-air
life was once a merry one, and all we have to do
for its continuance is to be true to ourselves and
our traditions, for wherever these are spread in
the world, there too will be echoed a good word
for England.

END OF VOLUME TWO