MR. G. W. SMALLEY'S STUDIES STUDIES OF MEN.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9321, 23 January 1896, Page 2

MR. G. W. SMALLEY'S STUDIES STUDIES OF MEN.

» " Weekly Press and Referee." The author of this book is a journalist of singular distinction. For years he represented in Europe the interests of a great American journal, and represented them with brilliant success He was at homo in every European capital, nowhere more so than in London, where, since his return to the States, there has been no one to quite take his place. He met in easy converse celebrities of high and low degree; he was honoured with the friendship of distinguished literary men; great politicians unbent to him, and the leaders of fashionable society poured their confidences into his ears. A man of keen observation, it i 3 no wonder, with these unequalled opportunities, that he gained a knowledge of affairs at once vast and er.cyclopcedic. He knows, too, how to impart what he has acquired. "He is like a ripe orange; puncture him at any point and out floy/a a eucculent stream." Anecdote, illustration, reminiscence pour from him in ceaseless profusion. There is scarcely a figure on the crowded stago of European politics about which he has not had something to say— something, too, well worth the saying. In these " Studies of Men " Mr Smalley has gathered together some of the fugitive papers that he has given to the world from time to time within the past dozen years. The volume is a fascinating one. From the point of view of literature, it would, doubtless, have gained by the lo3s of its distinctively journalistic character. Tho book is avowedly made up from newspaper files. And there are evidences that the contributions to the Tribune have been transferred into thcae pages bodily and without change. That, of course, is Mr Smalley's aifair. It leaves something to be desired perhaps on the score of style, although it really detracts little from the freshness of a volume that ia readable in every page. L—Berlin- in tiik Piping Times of Peace. The mo3fc graphic and, in all respects, the best chapters in this book are those dealing with the German Emperor and with Prince Bismarck. Mr Smalley is no lover of the Kaisar, and writes of him with critical asperity. Everybody i 3 impatient of the egotism and self-autiicioncy of the young Emperor, with his purpotual staccato note ; but his American critic allows his strong aversion to switch him away so sharply from the track of judicial appreciation that one is ofton compelled to cry a halt, A dispassionate obaorver feels obliged to make this reservation; but for the rest there is little in Mr Sinalloy's actual conclusions to quarrel with. I know of no writer who enables one to realise more adequately the military fanaticism of the Kaiser. And the picture of Berlin, subjugated and held in thrall by the military spirit, is as forbidding as any that civilisation can present. This is the capital city of Germany in the piping days of pcaco : — "We had a spectacle from our windows opening on tho Wilhelms Platz every morning, if wo chose to get itp to look at it, at six o'clock. The garrison of Berlin is a restless body, and some part of it for ever in movement—infantry, cavalry, and perhaps artillery most frequently of all. Lest we might miss it, or lest the good Berliners should forget they are in a state of semisiege, or lest they should sleep too late, the troops have bands with them at this early hour, and magnificent bands they are. No better, if so good, martial music anywhere now to be heard. So we did nob mind being waked up. It did not signify whether you minded or not. The convenience of the military, not of the civilians, is considered first of all in Germany and most of all in Berlin. Later in the day are to be seen the regiments coining back from their morning's work at Tempelhof ; the Emperor at their head perhaps. And there is no hour in the day when you may not see some sort of a military procession; all in the way of business, and as part of the regular operations of the army in time of peace."

H.—Tub Kaiser and His Army. In every detail of the army the Kaiser takes the keenest interest. , "The State, in fact, or the Empire, seems to be to the Emperor a kind of diversion from the serious business of his life. The serious business is the army. That is one view. On the other hand, there are Germans who will tell you that the army is the Emperor's toy. It really does amuse him to devote five or six hours a day to the duties of a drill sergeant; drill, manoeuvres, dress, the least details of military life afford him an infinite delight. Did he not the other day issue anothor of those military encyclicals for which lie is famous ? The solemn documents bear on various subjects relating to the business of soldiering—sometimes duel-fighting, sometimes beer-drinking—both which pastimes his Imperial Majesty encourages, by precept if not by example This time the exhortation of the Hohen' Eollern monarch related to the wearing of pointed shoes and of high collars; both of ■which his Imperial Majesty strongly disapproves and discourages." Whether with his strong propossessions Mr Smalloy is a reliable witness is, perhaps, open to question. Ho has certainly presented the young Emperor in a most unlovely light. Talent he does not deny him, but he insists it is a talent for detail. Worse than ftU, he will not listen to advice.

•'The Emperor of Russia cxcepted.noman living wields such power as this precocious Hohenzollern. The Emperor of Russia, however, is amonable to advice. The German Emperor notoriously is not, whether in lesser or greater affairs. Ho will not hearken to the experienced officers who hint to him that he is overdoing it with his Boldiers; that mere human flesh and blood, with no Divine right or Hohenzollorn lineage to fall back on, are not equal to tho task he sets and the work he exacts." Mr Smalloy had the opportunity of beholding the manoeuvres of tho German Army on the Tempelhof parade ground, an enormous stretch of territory on the edge of the moat thriving side of Berlin, three thousand acres in extent, set apart for purely military purposes. •' Tho Emperor was there, with the hard face with its self-contained and self-satisfied look, the eyes too near together, the expression of unrest, the air of irrepressible vigour, which makes him seem always to want to be doing something else; the critical gaze fixed on his troops, which forgets to note no fault, no mistake, no speck on any button, no wavering in the line which ought to he drawn across the field as with a pencil and a ruler on a sheet of paper. I imagine there is not much fault to be found, yet they say His Majesty never omits to summon about him, after a review, the colonels and field officers of regiments, and general, if there be one, and read them one and all a lecture on the art of war, and on their shortcomings in the exercise of the morning. He i 3 a terror to his own soldiers, whatever he may prove to be to the foe." According to Mr Smalley, the headstrong caprices of the Emperor have undone half the work accomplished by the great founders of German unity. " His confidence in himeelf is unshaken by a long series o* mistakes and failures. He at any rate is not only infallible, but infallibly certain that he is infallible. He does not want ministers, he wants clerks. *>

lll.—Bismarck at Home. It is a natural transition from the Kaiser to the great statesman whom he dismissed from his councils with contumely and contempt. Mr Smalley bends down in wholehearted admiration before " the man of blood and iron," and the portrait of the aged statesman in the seclusion of his home in Friedrichsruhe is drawn with a loving and reverent touch. When Mr Smalley arrived at the Castle, Prince Bismarck was awaiting him at lunch. "He was in black from head to foot; black double-breasted frock coat, buttoned to the throat across the chest, relieved by no order or decoration or any touch of colour except that he wore around his neck a yellow, pale yellow, or perhaps cream coloured, soft silk neck-cloth, something like the cravat which prevailed in England in the earlier part of the century, but less voluminous, and tied carelessly. Hs had no collar. He wore hie coat like a uniform. It set off the breadth of the shoulders, tho depth of the chest, and the whole huge framework and vast body which of itself seemed to fill tha room, whether he stood or sat. He towered far above everybody. . . . The power of the head and face is what it was. Age has altered, not impaired it. The firmness of outline remains. The muscles of the neck have not lost their elasticity, the head risee aloft and alert; in the carriage of it something haughty, something almost defiant and victorious, as one who all his lifo long has had enemies to deal with and the habit of overcoming them. The lines and outlines are drawn I with a free hand and a wide sweep; with the breadth to which Nature more I often attains when she works on a great scale, as in fashioning a mountain range or shaping a continent. The actual measurements of the skull must be extraordinary. I do not know what they are, but no figures could express tha sense of intellectual force and force of character. . . . The face is the man, with all his individuality; and the eyes are the man. They are deep blue—the blue seems to have grown deeper with vcar3 —large, fall, wide apart, beautiful in repose, and capable of expressing, without any help from the other features, the most various moods ; authority, tenderness, anger, and many other 3. . . . He looks at you very directly when speaking. Sat very straight in his high, straight-backed arm-chair, one hand holding his pipe, and the other generally on the head of one of the dogs." IV.—Bismarck's Apologue. No one would associate humour with the grim figure that has stood for so many years in the forefront of the German people, but Mr Smalley found Bismarck in a playful mood, and gives an amusing account of the statesman's lament over the troublous politics of Friedrichsruhe :— "They are quite enough to occupy me,' *he said, ' and quite as intractable as any I have had to deal with elsewhere. For here we have swans and ducks and rats who will not live at peace with each other if left to themselves. The swans are not on good terms with the ducks—in fact, they want to eat them or their young, and the rats are the enemies of both. It is extremely difficult to construct a constitution under which they can all thrive, or to make them understand what is best for each, especially the rats.' The disquisition on the politics of the ducks and rats proceeded for soma time with the utmost gravity."

Incidentally Bismarck vindicated the Opportunist. His guest quoted De Tocqueville's remark : " I have always noticed that in politics grave errors are often due to having too good a memory." Bismarck agreed, adding on his own account, "Ye 3 ; mere imitation does not answer. No two situations are alike, and a man should not copy even himself. We carried on the government of Prussia from 1862 to 1866 without a budget and without a majority. ... I should not do it again. A policy of that kind is not to be drawn into a precedent." V.—Bismarck and Public Opinion. The imperious temper of Bismarck peeped out in his references to public opinion. Great as he was, he never realised that freedom of speech is a source of strength to the State, not a cause of weakness. The Prince indicated his view clearly enough of his own way of meeting calumnies. It came out apropos of a brief discussion of the various kinds of journalism in Germany, France, England, and America. Renan, I said, laid it down as a rule which he had adopted early in life on the counsel of Bertin, editor of the Journal dcs Debats, never to contradict anything. He did not contradict the current story that the Rothschilds had paid him a million francs for the Vie de Jesus, nor even deny the authenticity of spurious writings published under his name. "What is that," said the Prince, "but contempt for public opinion ? A writer of books like Renan, a recluse, a man who holds aloof from the world, may be able to afford himself that luxury. A statesman, a politician, cannot. Public opinion is one of the forces on which he relies. If it is corrupted, is he not to purify it? What becomes of his usefulness if he is discredited?" It is interesting to learn that in Bismarck's judgment the next war will be won by the best artillery. "So changed are the conditions of war that without a competent artillery the best infantry can no more by itself win a battle than cavalry could."

Vl.—Lord Randolph's Tribute to Mr

Gladstone. In British politics Mr Smalley's sympathies sometimes lead him astray. He has, too, a habit of looking at men and things from an oblique standpoint. A professed admirer of Mr Gladstone, he nevertheless pays that illustrious statesman many a lefthanded compliment; but we in this page know nothing of political predilections, and it is enough that Mr Smalley is well informed and an agreeable writer. His sketch of Lord Randolph Churchill's career is an entirely worthy one. They were on terms of warm friendship, and it was to Mr Smalley that Lord Randolph confided the account of his famous interview with Mr Gladstone at Dollis Hill. " I owe to Lord Randolph himself an account of his one personal interview with Mr Gladstone on public business. It was while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr Gladstone was then at Dollis Hill, the Kilburn villa which Lord Aberdeen put at his disposal as often and as long as he cared to use it; half-an-hour's drive from Con-naught-place, where Lord Randolph then lived. Finance is one of the two or three subjects which have always had a permanent interest for the great Liberal, and he had asked the yourg Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer to come out and talk with him on some points then at issue with respect to the public accounts. He went the next afternoon, and wa3 received by Mr Gladstone under an apple tree in the garden. You may be certain that on neither side was there a thought of the political antagonism between them, or of their contests in the House. Such contests in England seldom leave any bitterness behind. They met as two English, gentlemen who had something to discuss. They had a long talk. Mr Gladstone stated his views with that tremendous energy so characteristic of him ; putting all his force of character, as well as all his force of intellect, into the argument. 'Forthe first time in my life, , said Lord Randolph, ' I felt myself in the presence of a superior

being. . That always seemed to mc a remarkable confession. It became more so when he went on to draw a kind of contrast between Mr Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. ' I have known Lord Salisbury all my life intimately. I was his friend and colleague. He was my chief. He is a great man and a great leader, with the mental range and force of character, you know. It never occurred to mc to be afraid of him, or to think of myself with reference to him as other th&n an equal. A better man than I, no doubt, and an older, but still of the same clay. Mr Gladstone is a being apart. You know how the royalties regard thomselves, as if they were of another race,, and the meanest royalty far above the highest of other than Royal blood. That i 3 the impression Gladstone made on mc. He was not merely greater but dissimilar. I had to discuss finance Avith him. I did the best I could with the discuseion and argument, as I do in the House, where I never hesitated to face him as you know. In private it is another matter. I could argue, but before the man himself I bent. , "

Vll.—Loed Randolph and the Paris Embassy. Mr Smalley mentions—on what authority I do not know—that Lord Kandolph, after his Parliamentary eclipse, cast longing eyes on the Viceroyalty of India. It is certain that he aimed at the Paris Ambassadorship:— " When the Embassy at Paris fell vacant, Lord Randolph was in South Africa. He wired home that he would accept it if offered. I could give you the name of the friend to •whom the despatch was sent. Every influence was brought to bear on Lord Salisbury. He so far yielded as to sound the Foreign Office at Paris, or perhape the Elysee, in order, as the custom is, to make sure that Lord Randolph would ba acceptable to the Government to which he was to be accredited. A peremptory " No" came back. This was the Nemesis which his political coquetries with Boulanger and the Royalists brought upon him. To Lord Randolph personally the French Government offered no objection. To the friend and ally of that ignoble adventurer who had aimed at the life of the French Republic they had a rooted objection. He was in their eyes compromised past redemption by his intrigues—or what they thought such—with Boulanger and the Orleanist aiders and abbetors of that very contemptible, yet at one time, undoubtedly very dangerous conspirator. And ao slipped away from Lord Randolph the one real opportunity of his later years." Till.—Me Balfour as a ParliaMEXTAHIAN. One of the essays in this volume is devoted to Mr Balfour. It is eulogistic without being fulsome. The following passage is worth noting, indicating as it does the view taken of Mr Balfour's Parliamentary position by what Matthew Arnold would call " a pensive outsider " :— " As to Mr Balfour, it may be said, on the evidence of the best judges on both sides of the House of Commons, that he is rapidly becoming a very great member of Parliament indeed. I have heard from a dozen sources the remark that Mr Gladstone's mantle has descended upon him, and not upon any of those who eat by the great Liberal's side. Mr Balfour inherits the great traditions which to Mr Gladstone were always precious —traditions from which he never departed till late in life, and seldom then. He has something of the dignity, the elevation of tone, the courtesy, the grand manner which distinguished Mr Gladstone. It might be hard to say who else on the floor of the House has them."

Of Mr Balfour's debating powers his critic says:— "As matters now stand, Mr Balfour has but one rival in the House as a debater, and if you look at oratory as something more than a provision for the contentious necessities of the moment, he has none. Alone he touches the note which rang from the silver trumpet that was Mr Gladstone's. Alone he breathes the upper air. Alone he treads with a sure foot the heights which Mr Bright and Mr Gladstone—and in our time no other —trod before him. He is not yet, and he probably may never be, the equal of either ; but he is of kin to both. He has not Bright's noble simplicity. He has not Mr Gladstone's infinite variety, nor his august personalitj*. But he has the intellectual integrity of the one, and the power which the other possessed in a still higher degree, of broadening the range of debate, and lifting it into a purer region."

IX.—Lord Rosebery at the Foeeign Office. Lord Rosebery is one of the men for whom " G.W.S." has unstinted admiration. There is, however, nothing very new or striking in his estimate of a mueh-discvissed, and even yet little understood, personality. I will content myself with giving a single extract dealing with the ex-Premier's association with the Foreign Office.

"In the Foreign Office Lord Rosebery made his mark from the beginning of his first tenure of office in 1836. He mastered the business. He grasped the points. He inspired the permanent chiefs with respect. Men who have grown grey in the service said that his minutes on the despatches were such as the oldest and ablest Minister might have penned. He took command of hie department. The rule is that the department takes command of the Minister. I will add one other thing, based on the testimony of half-a-dozen men in the Foreign Office in various positions. They agreed in saying that from the heads of the great departments into which the Foreign Office is divided down to the portera and messenger boys, there was no one who did not deplore Lord Rosebery's departure. There, as elsewhere, he made himself something more than liked; the feeling for him was, and is, one of affection." Mr Smalley does not conceal his belief that Lord Rosebery has great reserves of power, and that he is destined to play a noble part in British politics in the future. X.—Sir William Harcourt. The friendship which subsisted between Sir William Harcourt and the late Lord Beaconsfield is thus recalled :— "" Not Mr Gladstone, but Mr Disraeli was his model. It is not to be understood that Mr Vernon Harcourt, as he then was, set himself consciously to imitate Mr Disraeli or anybody else. Imitation is the foible of weak men, and Sir William, whatever else he may have been, was never weak. But most men have an ideal, or most men see in some other man certain qualities and methods which attract them strongly and influence them strongly. Mr Disraeli and Mr Harcourt were friends, or at least were on terms of easy, if not of intimate acquaintance. It might be profitable, were it permissible, to re-state in a different way some of the terms of comparison or of contrast between Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone. Bat such a statement to have any value, would require to be drawn with entire frankness, and it may be doubted whether American public opinion is, on this subject, in a state to welcome entire frankness. At any rate, this is not the moment for such a study, nor the place. I content myself with saying that the two great members of Parliament who, since Sir Robert Peel's death, have divided the suffrages of the English people, were j the complements of each other, and perhaps the counterparts. I imagine that one of the qualities which made Mr Disraeli interesting to Mr Harcourt was his complete exemi>- 1

tion from these enthusiasms which disturb the judgment in public affairs.

" There is hardly a more interesting social spectacle than to see Sir William Harcourt take possession of a dinner table and keep it. The smooth, strong flow of talk is fed from many springs. He lias authority, but is never didactic ; learning which escapes the reproach of pedantry ; wit that is too genial to scorch." Xl.—James Anthony Fkottde. In his appreciation of Froude Mr Snialley takes up the cudgels right manfully against the critics of the great historian. The notorious inaccuracies of Froude he passes over lightly, and he is angry because Fresman and Mr Lecky did not do likewise. 'Mr Froude's offences were critical and literary. Mr Freeman treated them as if they were offences of morals, violations of the Divine law, and as if ho (Freeman) had been appointed by the Almighty to execute justice upon this miserable sinner.' Freeman, we know, was a man of strong opinions and vehement speech; but even so to describe in these terms his attitude towards Froude is a piece of exaggeration that might well have been avoided. We arrive at common ground in the generous eulogy bestowed on the personal qualities and private character of Mr Froude. Mr Smalley lays emphasis on the ethical side of Froude's teaching and the moral fibre of the man. Carlyle came to exercise a deep influence over Froude, but, as we all know, the disciple never subscribed to the dictum of might is right, or abased himself in worship before mere Force, which, as Mr Goldwin Smith has reminded the world, is really no more adorable than mere Fraud, the force of those who are physically weak. "For religion, or anything that called itself such without morals, or of which morals did not form an integral part, Froude had a just abhorrence. The man who wrote the sentence about the Avill of God as evident in the whole history of the world —' a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong'—that man cannot have been other than deeply religious in tho best sense of the word, and that man was Froude." '£«As an American, Mr Smalley has naturally much to say about the influence of Emerson over Froude—an influence to which he surrendered himself when he turned " distrustful of preachers and zealots.'" . No one, not his most severe critics, has ever denied to Froude sincerity of mind and transparent honesty of purposo. The story of his stand aa a young man for what he conceived to be the truth may be said to contain his character in epitome. "When he began to feel that he was drifting away from the Church, he told his father. His father was the Vonerable Archdeacon Froude, not only a Churchman, but a dignitary of the Church, and something of a devotee. The father naturally sought to dissuade tho son. Presently he added the weighJj of paternal authority to his entreaties. Finding this also ineffectual he told young Froude plainly that if he renounced the Church he must renounce his expectations of fortune. The father was rich ; wealth lay within the son's grasp ; poverty was the price of resistance. Froude told the story very simply. He never said whether he hesitated. He only said, ' I fjave up the fortune. I thought I could earn my own living, and I have earned it. . Yet when he threw off the frosk he resigned his fellowship and resigned the headmastership of a school which had just been offered and accepted, and began life over again as a man of letters. He had no income, and no certainty of xxiy for his writings." Success was not long in coming, but that detracts little from the homage due to the loyal courage"with which he faced poverty for conscience sake. Xll.—Lord Bo wen. The bench of judges in this country never had a more gracious figure than that of Lord Bowen, and I am delighted to find in this volume a warm appreciation of that most winning and most lovable of men. Constant cerebral activity was to Bowen a condition of existence. Hard work never seemed to stale the freshness of his mind nor impair its elasticity. The bow was always bent, yet it was always Apollo's. Philosophy and the most abtruse metaphysics were the atmosphere in which he lived. The problems of science were his diversion ; he seemed never so much at his ease as when he was working out difficulties from which other men shrank, or to which they applied themselves by an. effort of the will. The same was true in after life of his handling of the law. He delighted in complications and subtleties. With all this, what left the deepest and most permanent impress on Bowen'a xnind was the beauty of the literature to which he devoted himself. The beauty sank into his soul. He was above all else a Virgilian, and the note of Virgil is above all else the note of beauty. It coloured" his whole life. It flowed along the years in one unfailing stream, between banks sparkling with flowers ; a stream which took a new colour from the rich foliage which it nourished. The beauty, tho stateliness of diction, the elevation of thought, the serenity, the even views of life which he found on every page of the Mantuan poet charmed and fascinated Bowen."

The strength and charm of Lord Bowen's personality was known only to a few. But those few will cherish his memory for all time as the knightliest of men, a man of white purity and inexhaustible sweetness, on whose escutcheon there is neither fleck nor stain. H.J.