LATE SIR CHARLES DILKE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24, 30 January 1911, Page 7

LATE SIR CHARLES DILKE.

TRIBUTES FROM ALL PARTS. MESSAGE FROM THE KING OF GREECE. By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright. (Received January 30, 8.35 a.m.) LONDON, 29th January. Tributes to the late Sir Charles Dilke have been received from all parts. Theyinclude a message from King George of Greece. The Greek Government has sent a wreath. The funeral takes place to-morrow. AN APPRECIATION. A correspondent sends us the following interesting note on the late statesman :—: — In the early '80's, when Mr. Gladstone, in his Second Administration, was guiding the destinies of Great Britain through the stony paths of Irish coercion, Boer War, and Egyptian campaign —the latter only to end in the death of Gordon in Khartoum —and when many of his friends doubted if, at his advanced age, the Prime Minister could have the physical strength to carry on the^ struggle in the face of a strong opposition and a relentless fate, .if the average thinking man in politics were asked who was to succeed the great statesman as leader of the party, the answer would have be£n Sir Charles Dilke. Lord Hartington had led the ■party in the Commons through the dark night of Opposition from "74, but now, with the advent of Radicalism, and advanced Liberalism, it was felt that the heir of the great ducal house, with his old;time Whiggism, hac? not the prestige to guide the party, whose extreme section required something more in accord with the times. Mr. Chamberlain, then the reddest of red Radicals and the practical and business man of the party, might have been considered ]}y some g<s a likely aspirant, but his qualifications were, after all, merely local. Sir Charles Dilke had already established himself as an outside observer, a traveller, a keen critic of naval and foreign policy; and the more advanced members of the party felt I that he had not only the power of re- ! moving homo abuses, but possessed a knowledge of foreign affairs not second Ito Disraeli or Salisbury. In his hands the foreign policy of England waa sate. Though no demagogue, Sir Charles i Dilke was always the friend of the people, and he made no secret of his sentiments. In early life he proclaimed himself a Republican, though a Republican of the stamp that wished rather to educate hie fellow-citizens to a sense of responsibility than to adopt a "sans culotte" regime of plunder and defiance of law. To the colonies generally, per- | haps, Sir Charles Dilke appeals more than any statesman in Great Britain. Long before the advent of Mr. Chamberlain to the Colonial Office, and before the spirit of Overseas Dominions was inspired, Sir Charles Dilke had spoken and written, brought before the British public and the woild at large the importance of the colonies that have since become sister States to each other, and fully-grown daughters of the Motherland. He was essentially a true Imporialist, with no wide-mouthed jingoism. Though sentiment is hardly an adjunct of statecraft, yet there lurks a degree of pathos in the fall of a man whose early promise predicted a life of honourable and high service to his country, through one mistake, which, perhaps to the credit and public repute of British politics, conld not be forgotten, and which forced into practical retirement a genius that would have otherwise shed luslro upon his party and