Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1922, SIR ARTHUR BALFOUR

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 55, 7 March 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1922, SIR ARTHUR BALFOUR

\ ..' ■ Mr. A. G. Gardiner opens his character sketch of " Arthur James Balfour " with a ' characteristic paradox. " Mr. A. J. Balfour," he says, " has. probably done the greatest service to' his country of any man of his time. He has saved it from Protection." Great as the service was in the opinion of this whole-souled partisan of Freetrade, the compliment has become a decidedly back-handed" one by the time he has done with it. It was, in Mr. Gardiner's opinion, not by faith but by scepticism, not by Statesmanship but by sophistry, not by action but by inaction and hesitation, that the man who was then Prime Minister was, in Mr. Gardiner's 'opinion, able to turn the edge of Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal crusade and render this signal service to the State. "Mr. Chamberlain," says Mr. Gardiner, " was' destroyed by delay. And it was Mr. Balfour who wrought "the delay." The party which he thus saved from disruption was not so grateful to its leader as it might have been, and in view of its gathering discontent in Opposition, Mr. Gardiner referred to his future as. " one of the most interesting speculations of the political world " : '

He retains the titular leadership, but the army has passed him by. It has gone over, horse, foot, and artillery, to a now idea. It openly scoffs at him. It distrusts His lukewarm surrender, and has ceased to find any pleasure in a, conundrum which seems to have no solution. ' Its, most powerful voices in the press have called repeatedly for his deposition. He is without a policy,. without a following, withqut a purpose. He has nothing but a crown. It is the crown of Richard.the Second. His party only await the advent of Henry Bolingbroke.

Mr. Balfour's Bolingbroke ""was not long in' coming. He appeared in 1911 in the person of Mr. Bonar I/aw, and Mr. Balfour retired from the Unionist leadership in favour of this full-blooded Tariff Keformer. Whether their retirement is voluntary or involuntary,' it is customary for statesmen to heave a clearly audible sigh of relief when they are released from'the cares of office. Mr. Balfour is above ostentation of this kind, but it is probable that no statesman ever retired with less reluctance, or sang his " nunc dimittis" with deeper gratitude. He has been described as " a finished scholar, a brilliant debater, and a metaphysician; a mail of letters who became a politician less from ambition than force of circumstances." It was assuredly no hardship for such a man to be set free by the force ,of circumstances for the .studies that he loved. At this pointy at 1 any rate, Mr. Gardiner's historical parallel ceases to apply. !' Hath Bolingbroke deposed thine intellect?" is a question put to the despairing Richard 11. ■in Shakespeare's play. ' Mr. Balfour's Bolingbroke did not depose his intellect, but released _i.b for deeper and more congenial studies than affairs of Stale. Did ever a statesman find an abstruser or more exacting employment for his leisure hours.than did Mr. Balfour in the Gifford lectures on "Theism and Humanism" which he is said to have delivered, substantially as printed, from a few meagre notes? Not the deposed King Richard, but the philosophers of Plato's ideal State, who, after a period oF compulsory service in the dark cave of politics, were released to spend the' evening of their days in the bright light and\the free air of philosophy^ supply the parallel that we need.

By all the rules of the game, Mr. Balfour's retirement in 1911 should have been filial. He had led his, party to an unprecedented disaster at the polls'in 1906, and had been himself defeated. The defeat of the party had been twice repeated, less overwhelmingly but decisively, oh another issue, and the disaffection of the rank-and-file had compelled him to resign the leadership, in 191 i. But at the age of sixty-six, with v the laurels of his Gifford lectures, and also those of a lawn tennis campaign in the South of France which he is said to have conducted "with agility and success," fresh upon him, Mr. Balfour was recalled to office. The outbreak of the' Great War demanded the co-operation of the best man of both parties in a Coalition Cabinet, and Mr. Balfour became First Lord of the Admiralty. When the present Coalition was formed, he succeeded Sir Edward Grey at the Foreign Office. The special miscjon of which he had charge in the United States a few months later,, on the entry of that country into the war, was conducted with brilliant success. Though he expressed a'wish to retire when the war was over, Mr. Balfour has been hard at work ever since.

It is, indeed, probable that history will regard the work which the veteran statesman has accomplished since the celebration of his seventieth birthday a few months before the Armistice as the most important of his 'whole career. On the League of Nations Mr. Balfour lias been the leading British delegate, and though his sceptical nature inclined him at first to a distrust of the experiment, he has played an essential and leading part ia the proceedings/of the first two meetings oi: its General Assembly. The experience which lie had acquired at' the Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the League oil Nationn, not to mention his years

of service as Prime Minister and in other official capacities, combined with intellectual strength and agility to make Mr. Balfour quite the best-equipped statesman at the Washington Conference. His knowledge, his'candour, and his dialectical skill gave him great weight with his fellow-delegates. He pleased the American people even more than he did when he visited them in 1917. And even the irrepressible American reporters were delighted with the readiness and the good temper with which he faced their cross-examination and parried their, curiosity when he was unable to satisfy it. ...'.,.

The Empire hardly yet realises the extent of its obligations to Mr. Balfour for his masterly presentation to the Conference of the case against the'submarine. Rarely has argument achieved so great a triumph. He found the American delegates, the American press, and the American people all wedded to the submarine as a defensive weapon. He left them doubting, wavering, very .much disposed to be ashamed of it, and withinmeasurable distance of conversion to i't3 total abolition. The success is described by .the Morning Post's Washington,^ rrespondent as "one of the great personal triumphs of our generation." How many other generations can surpass this feat of persuasive argument at the age of seventy-three? We may sureiy say without exaggeration of Sir Arthur Balfour that he has added lustre to "the most noble order " to which the King has admitted him.