SCHOLAR OR STATESMAN?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18571, 1 December 1923, Page 4 (Supplement)

SCHOLAR OR STATESMAN?

DANGER OF CLEAR VISION. ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. " Politics and History," so named from an address delivered in 1912 by the author as Chancellor to the University of Manchester, \ consist* £of several •; lectures, addresses, ■'■ and reviews by the late Lord Morlev, and forms-part' of the uniform edition qffhis ; works now being published in 12 volumes by Macmillan and Co. •}. > Joseph Conrad somewhere remarks that it is not the clear-sighted ; who lead the world. The greatest achievements, he dcdares, are accomplished in £*;£ sort of blessed mental fog. And when wo read the present collection of scholarly, pro--found and lucid essays we are forcibly reminded of that dictum, for -Lord Morle? will surely go down to posterity ashman of letters rather than of affairs, as student, not as statesman. -a F*„ ~ i;In " Words and Their Glory," the presidential address before the English Association in 1911, he commends the quality of " iustesse," ; which he , interprets to mean equity, balance, .a, fair mind, measure, reserve." All these virtues he himself possessed, yet it 'was Lloyd George (who. lacks almost all of them) who brought us triumphantly through the dark days of the war, while Lord Morley bowed before the storm. , That he was fully conscious of the danger, politically speaking, of seeing two sides of a question is clear from the followin passage in " Politics and History :— The most dogmatic agree that truth is

prodigiously, hard to find. Yet what rouses intense* anger than balanced opinion? It would be the ruin of the morning paper. It takes fire out of conversation, it may destroy the chance of a seat in the Cabinet. . ... y The reason is simple. For action, for getting things done, the balanced opinion is of little avail or no avail at all. . "He that leaveth nothing to chanco" said the shrewd Halifax, " will do few things ill, but he will do very few things." As King Solomon put it "He that oonsidoreth the wind shall not sow. and he that looketh to the clouds shall not reap." . The most interesting portion of the book is undoubtedly the study of Machiavelli. Here we have a brilliant analysis of the aims and claims of the man who has become the synonym for the lowest depths of scheming treachery. . Yet without " white-washing" the character in the least, Morley makes it clear that every Stat©, even in our own day, unpalatable as it may be to modern self-righteousneso to admit it, is swayed to some extent by tho principles inculcated by Machiavelli. The wily Italian is " not a vanishing force, but a constant and contemporary influence." This is because energy, force, will, violence, still keep alive in the world their resistance to the control of justice and conscience, humanity and right. In so far as he . represents one side in that unending strugglo, and suggests on© set of considerations about it, he retains a place in the literature of modern political systems of tho Western morals.