NO. 10 DOWNING STREET.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 6 February 1925, Page 8

NO. 10 DOWNING STREET.

HOME OF GREAT MEN. THE HEART OF BRITISH POLITICS. “Just ‘Number Ten’ —at ouce old and ne.v, simple and powerful, hiding, lme i.lt the greatest things in England, its claim to power behind a front of simplicity and homeliness.’’ Thus that fascinating book, “Men and Mansions,” Mr. Harold Spender, a brilliant London journalist, opens the door of No. 10, Downing Street, the official home of British Prime Ministers ever since George 11. gave it to sir Robert Waloole two centuries ago. It has housed 'fifty British Premiers in that time, and to-day it is still the centre of British power. “Number Ten is the. House of Power ill the Street of Power. The other houses—Number 11, the home of tlie Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Number 12, the office of the Government Whips —are merely the appendage of this cential domicle. “Foreigners come to see a palace of marble, and find a cottage of brick. They gaze up at the silent windows and watch the closed door. 'lhere is no street or house that lives more perpetually under the microscope. They scrutinise the big, shining, brass plate like the plate of some provincial doctor, with the awesome inscription, . ‘The First Lord of Treasury.’ They stare at the motor-cars which stand at the door; they wait all the time for something to happen—someone to speak But no one speaks; nothing happens. The forces that eddy round that closed door are silent at the centre; it is the quiet spot in the very middle of the human whirlpool. Violence centres in stillness, vet the house is full of voices the maiestic voices of the past —the voices of the mighty men who hn-e lived and struggled there ; of those who have brought the British power snfe’v through all its tempests and hurricanes.” HAUNTED WITH GREAT PRESENCES. '

“Let us enter the house, and imagine it is still peopled with those mighty tenants—

‘Think ye s ee The very persons of our noble story As they were living.’ '“The big front door of Number Ten closes behind you—and you find yourself in a small square hall, adorned on all its walls with horns and skulls of deer and antelope, the' grim gifts of some sporting Premier, as if they were intended to symbolise the victims of power. You pass down a'long passage into a larger hall, furnished and warmed, and provided with a curtained recess set apart for visitors, as a waiting room. On the mantlepiece of the large fireplace is a bust of Wellington as a young man, heroic and god-like, instinct with a kind of spotless integrity. It is England at her noblest. Or perhaps the true England is better represented in the bust of the younger Pitt now on the mantlepiece in the inner hall. It is Pitt with the smile and the tip-tilted nose; Pitt at the finest moment of his youthful idealism—before his ardour was clouded with the long strain of war. The poise of the hend ; bespeaks indomitable and invincible confidence. MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS.

In the Council Chamber of the Cabinets “here you stand in the central shrine of British power. ;For with certain intervals of wandering, British Cabinets have sat in this . room ever since the mid-eighteenth century. It has echoed with all the most critical controversies of our fate. Here Pitt’s Cabinets sat all through the Napoleonic wars, and reached the vital decisions that ‘saved Europe by our example.’ What moments have passed in this room ! What tragedies! Aye, and what '•■omedies! we look back now at England’s story from the summit of achievement. We forget that here, in this chamber. British Ministers have often looked straight into the Corgon faces of defeat and disaster and re-

mained undismayed. Yet this room, so sacred in history, was once just a typical dining room ofi seventeenthcentury London,.- Here the builder of the house. Sir George Dotvniirg, ,carous-, ed with his friends.

“Down the middle of the room, there runs the long, broad table with the famous cloth of green baize at which the Cabinets sit. The chairs are straightbacked, as befits the consideration of the great issues. This room is shrouded with a cloak secrecy.

“Above the mantlepiece their hangs the only picture in the room —a portrait of the ill-starred Lord Chancellor, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulan, king of knowledge, but slave of himself—rather a strange presence to preside over the fortunes of England. UNDER THE GAZE OF GREAT MEN.

“But the actual historic Room of Deputations’ is up stairs. The walls of- the corkscrew staircase are lined with engravings, in chronological order, of the Prime Ministers who have lived in the house. They were presented to ’Number Ten’ by private munificence, and, with the house, they belong to the. nation. As you mount jou seem to be moving under the gaze of. great men. They were at ease in Zion’ —these great few; they brought more to Downing street than they took away. For -after all, it is the men who make the place sacred; the Pitts, Canning, Grey, Peel, Disraeli. Gladstone—they look at you from the walls.

“The room of Deputations has been iised through the years by many Prime Ministers for their great political reeptions. Here before the great war to darken and sadden the social side of our political life, London society used to gather and gossip, pulsing with the hum and thrill of the great politjca 1 gamble. Here there were ‘sounds of revelry by night-’ “How many memories those rooms recall! There, ‘at the door, I can still see Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman stand to receive his guests; at his side his wife, proud of his achievement, but already stricken. On her pallid face was the hue of death. Within a I year she had gone, and he was on the way to join her. Or, in later days, Mr. Asquith—moving about the rooms a little shyly, as if he were a guest in his own house, but always radiantly cheerful even at the most critical times. “Or Mr. Lloyd George —alert, confident, at home, friendly with everybody and especially with the least of his guests. ' . „ ■ “Or Mr. Bonar Law, shy, reserved, courteous, simple. “Mr. Stanley Baldwin, pipe in mouth. y “Now Mr. Rams'iy MacDonald-—per-haps a little surprised—amid his homespun companv. “How swiftly they succeed! A STUDY OF CONTRASTS. “Two portraits in the receptionroom surpass all others in interest. One is a copy_ of the Dutch portrait of Sir ito-ert Wa.pole, the fust State tenant of the house. " Sir Robert looks genially on the room, ruddy-faced, stout, -onfident. . . He is just the plain, rough squire of the eighteenth cencu .> —. glorified Stjuire Allwortliy—fond of beef and beer, a little rowdy and coarse, but never ready to crook •the knee or how the head. ‘Every man,’ he once said, ‘has his price.’ I could name one exception—Sir Robert Walpole himself. “Turn from that portrait, and you find yourself gazing on a very different pi't ye. It .is Millais’s portrait of the fighting Gladstone—eagle-eyed, lionfayed. . . . Gladstone is seated sideways, dressed in scarlet robes of a doctor of law—an angry blackgrouncf of -010 r to the splendid face. He fixes on you that penetrating gaze which, s his enemies said, seems to pierce vour soul. His eves are alive: with lus s’oop'pss vigilance for good causes and g-eat aims. It is the Downing street mood of the great man. That was how Gladstone looked when he '“•vid on dutv at the post of power. ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ ”