THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1937 A GREAT ENGLISHMAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22741, 29 May 1937, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1937 A GREAT ENGLISHMAN

To hand back the seals of his high office means much to Mr. Baldwin. Three times, at intervals, they have been entrusted to him. He held them for less than a year the first time. Expecting party defeat, he then said, " Well, having been Prime Minister will have been an interesting experience." But this light word, true to his habit of calm, must be taken with another if a just view of his regard for national service is to be got. When Bonar Law, too ill to carry on, resigned early in 1923, the King was given no recommendation about a successor and had to choose between Lord Curzon, Foreign Minister, and Mr. Baldwin, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He chose Mr. Baldwin; a Prime Minister in the Lords was not likely, in existing circumstances, to have a satisfactory term. Curzon was resentful: " Not even a public figure," he complained of the man the King had delighted to honour : " a man of no experience; and of the utmost insignificance!" As for Mr. Baldwin's thoughts, they were briefly and simply told to journalists he received after his momentous visit to the palace—" I don't need your congratulations, but your prayers." Never has he sought eminence. His tastes and instincts have looked away from it. He was 41 when he took his seat in the Commons, having won at a byelection the seat made vacant by his father's death; four months passed before he made his maiden speech, and he was so little noticed that Hansard, confusing father with son, recorded it mistakenly as made by "A. Baldwin"; in his first nine years he made only five speeches. However, his gifts for work, and particularly his character, were not unseen ; Bonar Law, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, made him his parliamentary private secretary, and afterwards financial secretary of the Treasury —on the threshold of Cabinet. So, by slow and quiet steps, he came to premier position, as one to be trusted. How fully he was entitled to this confidence needs to-day no syllable of proof, although much must be gratefully said about it. Mr. Baldwin himself has lately spoken out of his heart the deep appreciation of opportunity for national service that has so long actuated him, and all else that can be uttered is but honest attestation of the simple, splendid fact. How true is this reading of Mr. Baldwin's impulse, as one of gladness to serve rather than to attain eminence or wield power, can be understood best of all when certain unobtrusive incidents in his career are recalled. That gift of £120,000, made in purchase of £150,000 of a War Loan, the bonds being presented to the Government for cancellation, was made with studied secrecy. In order to inspire other gifts, it was notified in a letter he wrote to the Times —over the initials F.S.T., which were long unsuspected of standing for Financial Secretary of the Treasury—but the editor kept the secret as he was instructed to do. The same avoidance of publicity is seen in an incident recorded by Mr. Wickham Steed. Tramping one day in Gloucestershire, Mr. Baldwin overheard two old ladies discussing plans for scraping together enough money to maintain an asylum for feeble-minded girls. He collected two hundred dirty one-pound notes, wrapped them in a bit of old newspaper, and sent them to the ladies with a letter, purposely badly-written, describing them as from "a passing vagabond." His salary as First Lord of the' Treasury —the supreme office, long without constitutional status, had none attached to it—was apparently spent in such ways, for he has confessed that he had to live on capital and borrowings. He has no expensive hobbies. The things he likes best are books, and the literary bents he follows include paths trodden by common folk; Lamb and Dickens are loved no less by him than are Homer, Thucydides and Horace. These self-revelations, along with all the rest, declare Mr. Baldwin to be an intimate sharer of the life of the people. They have been more to him than the most valued of official associates. His friendship with the workers in his father's foundry has been carried on into wider fields. And he has a pride as well as an affectionate interest in ordinary folk. "No man who knows our people," he said one day in conversation, "can be a pessimist; nor should he be an alarmist. But there is work to do. It is a work for those brave people. Their true nature must be given a chance. The big cities are apt not only to shut out the wide horizon of the Empire, but to sap the force and gaiety of English character. We do not want masses. We want Englishmen." This was utterly characteristic. Greater than his loyalty to party, j than his devotion to its leadership, has been his profound love for all that is English in a living, practical sense, and his whole-hearted dedication to national welfare. No statesman of our time has a more wholesome outlook; none has so unaffectedly striven to keep politics clean; nor can any public man voice with equal simplicity and naturalness the religious faith that is his own supreme inspiration. " From my knowledge of the man," writes one long and intimately able to judge, " I am bold to say that he is in Parliament for no other purpose under heaven than to do his duty as an Englishman, and that his definition of a statesman would be ' a politician who tries to do the will of God.' " Stanley Baldwin will not be canonised ; nor has any claim to saintliness ever passed his li js. But it can honestly be said tl at he leaves office, to use a description he lias delighted to give to others, approved as "bone good" —is a true man and a great Englishman.