FEET OF CLAY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XI, Issue 17, 5 January 1921, Page 6

FEET OF CLAY.

CAUSTIC SKETCHES OF THE GREAT.

The author of the vastly entertaining “The Mirrors of Downing Street” (Mills and Boon) writes as one having authority and not as the scribes. His caustic sketches of statesmen, soldiers, and captains of industry are written with the affectation of inside knowledge, but I suspect that it is little more than clever affectation. Indeed. I would hazard a guess that “A Gentleman with a Duster’’ (the pseudonym under which the author bides himself) is a brilliant journalist, who has listened well and iudges shrewdly. “A Gentleman with a Duster” lias evidently sat in the front row of the stalls and has heard almost word of the plav. but T don’t think that lie has himself appeared on the stage—even as a super. MR. LLOYD GEORGE. The sketch of Mr. Lloyd George begins as follows:— “If you think about it, no one since Napoleon has appeared on the earth who attracts «o universal an intemst as Mr. Llovd George. This is a rather startling thought, “A democratic acre, lacking in colour, nnd antipathetic to romance, somewhat obscures for us the pictorial achievement of this remarkable figure. Ho lacks only a crown, a robe, and a gilded chair easilv to outshine in visible picturesqueness the great Emperor.” AN APPEAL. Mr. Lloyd George nossesses, we ;”e told. amazing mental quickness.. He prefers to win others bv persuasion to his way of thinking. “If he fails, and • f they still persist in attacking him, he proceeds to destroy them.” Physically and morally, he is “a giant mounted on a dwarf’s legs.” There is much more on these lines, clever waspbuzzings, familiar enough to those readers acquainted with the anti-Lloyd George press. As evidence against his own verdict, the Husted Gentleman tells this storv, which is quite new to me. During the struggle to obtain a sufficient snnplv of munitions for the armv Mr. Llovd George called a meeting of armament manufacturers and tried to persuade them to pool their trade secrets. For a long time the manufacturers bluntly refused. Their trade secrets were the foundations of their businesses. They could not be revealed. “At a moment when the proposal of the Government seemed lyst. Mr Llovd George leant forward in his chair, very pale, very quiet, nnd very earnest. ‘Gentlemen.’ he said, in a 'mice which prodv lan extraordinary hush, ‘have v . Ur gotten that vmir sons, at this moment, are being killed—killed in hundreds and thousands? They are being killed by German runs tor want of British guns. Your sons, your brothers—bovs at the dawn of nianr hood!—ihev are being wiped out of life in thousands! Gentlemen, give me guns. Don’t think of vour trade secrets. Think of your children. Help them! Give me those guns!’ “This was no stage acting. His voice broke, his eves filled with tears, and his hand, holding a piece of notepaper before him, sTibok like a J<?jif. J here was not a man who heard him whose heart was not touched and whose humanity was not quickened. Jhe trade fleets were pooled. The supply of munitions was “This is the secret of his power, ixo man of our period, when he is profoundly moved, and when lie permits his genuine emotion to carry him auav.

can utter an appeal to conscience with anything like so compelling a simplicity.” .. . The book abounds with striking picturesque phrases. For instance. Lord Fisher was “this dare-devil of genius, this pirate of public life”: Lord Northch ffo is “a boy. full of adventure, lull of romance, full of whims ; Mi. Arthur Balfour is “at once spinsterish and architectural” : Ixird Robert Cecil is “the shadow of great statesmanship leaning diffidently over the shoulder of political brute force ; Mr. Churchill “has loved with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his strength three things—war, politics and himself.” And so on. But no man can ever be correctly summarised in a phrase, however, pie turesque the phrase may be « a,l “ a " these clever sayings will be found more than a little misleading if they are examined as well as applauded. MR. ASQUITH’S FALL.

On the whole the sketch of Lord Northcliff e is notably fair, and the sketch of Mr. Asquith brilliantly cruel “Nothing in Mr. Asquith’s career is more striking than his tall from power. It was as if a pin had dropped. “Great men do not at any time fall in so ignominious a fashion. . . . “The truth is that Mr. Asquith possesses all the appearance of greatness but few of its elements. He has dignity of presence, an almost unrivalled mastery of language, a trenchant dialectic, a just and honourable mind; but he is entirely without creative power, and has outgrown that energy of moral earnestness which characterised the early years ol his political life. “He has never had an idea ol his own. The ‘diffuse sagacity’ of his mind is derived from the wisdom of other men. ...

“One must trespass upon the jea-lously-guarded private lile to discover the true cause of his bewildering collapse. Mr. Asquith surrendered some years ago the rigid Puritanism of early years to a domestic circle which was fatal to the sources ol his original power. Anyone who compares the photographs of Mr. Asquith before and after the dawn ol the twentieth century may see what 1 mean. In the earlier photographs his face is keen, alert, powerful, austere; you will read in it the rigidity of his Nonconformist upbringing, the seriousness of his Puritan inheritance, all the moral earnestnest of a nobly ambitious character. In the later photographs one is struck by an increasing expression of festivity, not by any means that beautiful radiance of the human spirit which in another man was said to makj his face at the age of 72 ‘thanksgiving for his former life and a love-letter to all mankind,’ but rather the expression of a mental chuckle, as though he had suddenly seen something to laugh at in the very character of the universe. The face has plumped and reddened, the light-colour-ed eye has •acquired a twinkle, the firm mouth has relaxed into a sportive smile. You can imagine him now capping a mot or laughing deeply at a daring jest, but you cannotimagine him with pro found and reverend anxiety striving like a giant to make light reason ami the will of God prevail.” A VICTIM Ol? THE WAR.

‘‘A Gentleman with a Duster” regards Lord Haldane as one of’the most conspicuous victims <»f th<» >ur. Lori Morley is said to regard him as responsible for the war. The Germans accuse him of having stolen their War Office secrets. And many Englishmen deride him as a pro-German. Our author says that when it was apparent that war could not bo avoided Lord Haldane, against the will of tho generals, insisted on immediate and rapid mobilisation, even though, war had not been formally declared.

“On leaving the War Office that same day after having mobilised the British army, he went across to the Foreign Office, and was there stopped by a certain soldier, who asked him how many divisions he was sending to France. Lord Haldane very naturally rebuked this person for asking such a question, telling him that war was not yet declared, and that therefore perhaps no division at all would go to France. “Never was a just reproof more fatal to him who administered it. “I believe this soldier went straight ofi: to an important civil servant with

the sensational news that Lord Haldane was holding back the Expeditionary Force, and afterwards carried the same false news to one of the most violent anti-German publicists in London, a frenzied person who enjoys nevertheless a certain power in Unionist circles. Tn a few hours it was all over London that the Liberals were going to desert France, that Lord Haldane, a friend of the German Kaiser, had got back to the War Office, and that he was preventing mobilisation. ’ ’

So, indeed, is history very often written —an believed.—‘ ‘ Pom, ” in “J ohn o’ London’s Weekly.”