ENERGY AND LOQUACITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13692, 7 March 1908, Page 5 (Supplement)

ENERGY AND LOQUACITY.

MR. HALDANES POWER TO TALK. Mr. Hai.d.vne, officially known as Minister for War, but in practice the Government'is Minister for Words, is the little Gladstone of modern politics. Week after week, month after month, he has stumped the country, hurling hundreds of thousands of words—military words, .scientific words, and words only to be found in complete dictionaries—at the heads of electors whose single offence is an inclination toward the Radical view in polities. Since MV. Gladstone's most active days there has been no such irrepressible force going about creating minor convulsions as the well-preserved Chancery barrister, who reformed the Army with a fountain-pen, and has spent the last lour months in the country explaining "how ho did it. Parliament rose '■- the last week in August. Since then Mr. Haldane has delivered about sixty speeches, or ten times as many as any other member of the Cabinet except Mr. Asquith. It was nothing to him that lie worked twice as hard as any pf his colleagues during the long session, that he was at St. Stephen's night after night during the lengthy progress of his Army Hill through both Houses of Parliament, and that he spoke so much that the echoes in the Chamber could give back no other sound but that of his voice. .He remained—to adapt Mr. Kipling" afflicted with the magic of the unnecessary words," so he went into the country and said a. few hundred thousand mure; to the electors?, show-, ing how life will be breathed into his paper .Army. WAI.KI.Ni; TO BRIUHTO.V. When Mr. Gladstone had done as much brain work us would kill two ordinary men, lie got an axe, and smote the trees in Haw den Park. Mr. Haldane chooses the less spectacular method of working off his spare energy by walking to Brighton. Take his sixty speeches of the recess. Everyone knows that the mere act of rising in a 'hall and delivering a although suffragists may bo there—is the least arduous part of the performance. There is, first of all, a tiring railway journey to get there, a reception by the local leaders of the party, who thrust the largo glad hand at their guest, a banquet cooked by an indifferent chef, and then 'the time spent amid the excitement of a. superheated hall, and the return journey. These little things send politicians to an early grave. But Mr. Haidane revels in them. He sometimes speaks at three meetings in as many towns in the same day. Mr. Haldane' would like to till the dual offices of Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor, and if there wore some rapid means of transit between Downing-street and Calcutta he would combine them with the Viceroyalty of India. One of his ambitions is to settle the education difficulty, for he understands the subject, in all it's branches. He would like, too, to have a hand in the solution of the Irish problem, which bafiled, Mr. Gladstone and every other politician since Pitt. He lias written " Kssays in Philosophical Criticism," a. metaphysical disquisition called " The Pathway to' Reality," and has translated Schopenhauer from the German. Further, he in one of the greatest authorities on the subject of explosives. now IB IT DONE? How- does ho do it all? For his own part he thinks it is by never losing bis temper. His urbanity is not the least striking part of his curious personality. Mr. Haldane owns one of the old houses in Queen Anne's Gate that look out on St. James' Park. From here he emerges every morning between six and .seven o'clock for a stroll of five or ten miles. Even this phenomenal man must have breakfast, but Mr. Haldane tsavea the time by talking business or adding to his store of knowledge over his morning meal. Mr, Haldane's average day at the War Office is from ten o'clock until seven or eight in the evening. His advent in the official dreamland was like the bursting of a tornado over a peaceful village that had never before been disturbed by anything worse than the braying of the local donkey. Nowadays in the War Office clerks remain at their desks as late as four o'clock in the afternoon even in the summer, while the cricket and tennis clubs of the suburbs are in revolt. ' . — _ ; _