THE New Zealand Herald AMP DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1930. A GREAT CAREER CLOSED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20519, 21 March 1930, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AMP DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS FRIDAY, MARCH 21, 1930. A GREAT CAREER CLOSED.

Writing about a year ago of the Earl of Balfour, a contributor to the Quarterly Review said, "We can at least feel morally certain that, of all the living men of our time and country, there will be no other that posterity will more greatly desire to have known and spoken with." The judgment is approved now, as those earliest bereft of Lord Balfour's presence look back, even from this distance of a day, across his deathbed to the life that for more than fifty years was so much- a part of all that mattered most in Britain. In years to come, when the men who made Our nation in the second half of the nineteenth century and the critical epoch of the twentieth

are recalled for the measuring of their, worth and work, one thing above others will be noted by that wistfully appreciated posterity. It will be. that he, a product of the British. Parliamentary system, could not have had such full scope for his diverse talents in any other. When there are considered his antecedents,' his entry into politics, his rapid rise to highly responsible office, his spokesmanship for his country in the councils of the nations, and when with these things there is remembered his deeply philosophic bent, not indulged as a relaxation but ceaselessly pursued in all the background of his life, this impossibility of imagining him at home anywhere else than in Britain is inescapable.' That he is far from being the sole instance of this gives weight to the fact, but he is the outstanding instance, and therein lies the chief attraction of his career. "He justified his fortune," said Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald of Lord Balfour's easy passage from Cambridge to Parliament and the Foreign. Office as a young man. It, was well said. Fortune he had. With the Marquess of Salisbury for uncle, ready to take him up when he forsook his alma mater, his aristocratic languor of bearing and his unconcealed disesteem of the rough vigour met in some customs of the Commons—qualities that would have made ineffective any unsheltered aspirant for place—were not allowed to prevent his passing" through doors of opportunity. They were opened by waiting hands. But, once within, he gave such proof of capacity and purpose that soon all who met him were persuaded that he had come to stay, and that it was well for Britain that so splendid a son should wish to serve her. It is difficult to see at a glance! even the main events of Lord Balfour's great career, so crowded is it with deed on deed of tremendous

national and international importance. His early years in Parliament, when that career was opened under :the regis of Lord Salisbury, present only minor difficulties for memory and judgment. Member for Hertford at twenty-six, private secretary to his distinguished uncle when Lord Salisbury was Foreign Minister, then again member for Hertford and linked with a few others in the "Fourth Party" leagued against Mr. Gladstone, . next. representing Manchester East and in succession President of the Local Government Board and Secretary for Scotland—so the story goes from 1874 to 1886. It is the story of an unusually successful Parliamentarian. Had it stopped there, the name of Balfour would have been inscribed in the records of. the Commons indelibly and with some brilliance. But what came 'afterwards dazzles even a vision accustomed to see him prominently set wherever great things are in the doing. As Irish Secretary he was successful to a degree openly judged impossible. A lusty Liberal journal likened his appointment to breaking a butterfly on a wheel, and predicted his inevitable failure: before long the butterfly had steadied and controlled the wheel, and in four years his administrative reputation was secure. To leadership of his party he was bound to attain. He came to the

•head of it and to the utmost eminence that leadership could give, though as Prime Minister he disappointed, because of his lack of the magnetic inspiration that has often been, an indispensable asset in others. But greater things were in store, and they make his career a marvel of accomplishment. When the' Great War broke out, it flung opportunity in his path, and' i he' seized this with conscientious ardour, though he was within a year or two of seventy. In 1915, back in office, he was First Lord of the I Admiralty; in 1916 he unmade one Government and made another; in 1917 he was Foreign Minister, and finding energy enough to attend to Palestine's problem and to undertake a momentous diplomatic mission to the United States ; in 1918 he was at the greatest of peace conferences ; in 1921 he went to Washington for the first* real attempt to agree on naval disarmament; in 1922 he saved Austria from bankruptcy by the convincing eloquence of a speech at Geneva; and since then he has had a guiding hand on many things, including the promotion of scientific research in the Empire and the setting out of the constitutional position to which Imperial development has brought the Motherland and the Dominions. When the Imperial Conference meets this year and takes up the questions left by its predecessor of 1926, it will be the findings of the latest of "Balfour Committees" that will most closely hold its attention. Even the most rapid review of this activity in matters of high, policy reveals Lord Balfour as a statesman of the first

rank. The. estimate, put thus, seems

weak. -It is. In him were both depth and brilliance. He could see

life steadily and see it whole, yet he had a -wonderfully acute sense of immediate executive needs. He could see the wood—and the trees. Sometimes, it seemed as if he was meant for an armchair philosopher,

but his penchant for dealing with doubt and conflict in this realm argued a leonine tenseness underneath the poise; and soon he would be risking his life among Arabs angry at his Zionist Note or away across the Atlantic to fight against submarines. He will be remembered for a galaxy of gifts, of him several full-size men could have been made. But Providence willed it that Arthur James Balfour should be them all ;and so, as lover of learning, lover of debate, lover of thought, lover of work, lover of Britain and lover of the wider world, he filled his long day with service. He never married. The fact may be turned this way and that in idle contemplation. Against it stands his devotion to great fields of thought and action. Such men beget influences that are immortally prolific. Lord Balfour's living legacy is immensely large and greatly good.