FRONT BENCH FIGURES

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 12 February 1921, Page 3

FRONT BENCH FIGURES

SIR ROBERT HORNE.

(By a Student of Politics, in London Times.) j Sir Robert Home, 49, "homo novlssimus, son of ai Scots parish minister, Grammar School boy (or its Scots equivalent), Glasgow and Edinburgh■ Universities, lecturer in philosophy, in. the University of Wales, and later teacher of another kind of philosophy and at more profit to himself as a sue-, cessful member of-.the Scots Bar, at' the National Service Ministry when war came, and associated with Sir Eric Geddes on the army railways in France,! and at the Admiralty, member of Parliament at the Armistice Election, Minister of Labour last year, this year! President of the Board of Trade—there J never was in politics quite so sudden arrival and rapid advancement. He was - certainly lucky in the moment of his arrival in politics, when _ the Prime Minister was on the look- J out for new men and anxious to found! a "new school of administrators. But I his detractors —success so rapid couldnot hope to escape them —are wrong who say that he is only lucky. The; secret'-of his power is elusive. It is: not in his speaking, which has a firm', disciplined tread without wings or se-; duction, strong in argument and often! racy in expression, but no precipitant; of emotion. A vibrant voice, a friend-! ly presence, and a good physique have, helped," but alone could not explain sue-; cess so remarkable. , He is said to be a! ; good administrator, and although one can well believe it in his case, _ civil servants will say that of every political chief who can sign his name, and the less he does besides that the more they think it. The characteristics that have embanked his great natural abilities to success are, one should say, high animal spirits, the Scottish sense of noble adventure, and an irrepressible fondness for the stuff of human nature —-qualities that'have never been given the ; high place in the hierarchy of political i tues that is their due. j Sir Robert Home is said to have warmed both hands at the fire of life; he has heard as many chimes at midnight as Lord Gladstone once boasted; lis has been known to work hard ali, day when in busy practice at the barj and to dance hard all night. I He likes young company for its easy! birth of ideas; he has still enough; philosophy to find perennial interest in_ new views, fresh. generalisations of hu^ man life; but always, before he accepts them, he likes to see them translated into the terms of human nature and action: without this rich vein of

Sottish caution lie could scarcely havej remained until to-day that treasure of] hostesses, an eligible dancing bachelor. I ••Of all the!men in politics, he reminds us most of Sir Robert Walpole and Siri Henry Campbell-Bannerman. He has the Walpole gift of seeing every political question in the terms of human nature; Walpole's coarseness which., was behind his age has been refined in him to a genial and realistic view of affairs; his humanity, so much in ad.-; Vance of his age, has descended in full..' measure. Again, without Bannerman: 3 j Liberal faith, burning inwardly, he has his freshness; his straight-forwardness, and the bluntness that still manages to be persuasive and even coaxing. I The actual achievement of Sir Robert' Home, apart ,from his share in the settlement of the coal strikes, is not in-j considerable. But more important than the legislation- that comes from a Department are the daily and hourly in-( terviews which its head has to conduct | with all and sundry, and it is a Min-j istei-'s handling of these matters, far, more than the changes that he proposes! in Parliament, that make the time jarring or §mooth. He had gained some knowledge of labour matters at the Admiralty, and doubtless it was his* success there during the war, of which, the world knows nothing, that took himj to the Ministry of Labour at the peace.; It was a dangerous and critical time in the history of Labour polities, and a doctrinaire or a viewy man might! easily have brought about a widespread I conflagration. Sir Robert Home was neither. He was liked by the Labour men; he gave the impression of openmindedness and of one who was piecing together the parts of a new and enlightened policy of peace between Capital and Labour, and only anxious to receive suggestions; his * newness to. politics, the fact that he was a Conservative, and his appearance of modesty all helped him; but he succeeded most of all, as might be expected, because he knew his subject amazingly well and knew his men. Sir Robert Home was born a Disraefian Conservative, and he is still without any sort of sympathy with the dogmatic side of Liberalism. An early convert to Tariff Reform, one predicts that his tenure of his present office will modify his views considerably, and that he will end by rejecting both Protectionist and Free Trade theory. In labour matters he believes there is no such-thing as absolute ownership either of work done or profits made; both should be regarded as a trust, and he ■ would probably prefer to express the ideal relations of capital and labour in the terms of a deed of partnership in work and its rewards: rather than in any other way, and the practical problem is to discipline this partnership in the terms of the general J interest. ! It is too early to say that he has pieced what he has learned since he entered politics into a coherent system, but there is no one else among. the younger Conservatives who looks like doing it. On him more than ori anyone else depends the permanence of an alliance between the new Liberals and the new Conservatives. Already, he seems marked out as the natural successor of Mr. Bonar Law, but one does not see him gain the undisputed headship of the Conservative Party which tbe accidents of intestinal quarrel gave to its present leader. As a Conservative pure and simple he has a future, btii not one that will bring out all of which he is capable. To be first Minuter in the State, as he may some day he, he must be head of a new party S made by fusing the progressive ele- , ments that now exist side by side within the Coalition.