MAKERS OF POLITICS

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7392, 21 March 1911, Page 4

MAKERS OF POLITICS

SOME NEW TYPES OF STATES-

MANSHIP.

(By 11. W, Massingham, in London "'Leader/')

Thinking of Six* Charles Dilko’s death, and of the gap that it left in the ranks of what one may call expert statesmanship. [ fell to speculating on the typo of intellect to which the destinies of modern States and democracies are likely to Ijo committed. The world lias many different kinds of governing minds, adapted to its various stages of development. The pure bureaucrat hardly concerns us. Wo do not lin<i much use for the Kiderlins and Stoiypins, or even for the Uelcasses. They have their place-—a restricted place —in the public service, and, tempered with our democratic atmosphere, they have their use. Sir Charles Dilko, indeed, possessed a good deal of the objective mind—the gilt for expertise—which is the hall mark of the bureaucrat. You must have clear, thorough knowledge of detail; you must have the capacity for mastering a case and presenting it—the kind of capacity of which perhaps the most remarkable modern instance the Frime Minister, But we are not governed by this sort of person. Nobody, for instance, could bo less like the typical bureaucrat than .Sir Edward Urey. One often criticises his policy, when one is least disposed to rank its author with the hard fact-crammed personages with whom he is confronted # For one thing, our Foreign Minister is a man of conspicuous truthfulness. And no one could say that truthfulness was the besotting sin of the average European bureaucrat. Well,on tho other side of the fence is the American type of public man. Here one confesses to a certain reserve ot judgment. It is a little alarming to think of a great continent oven formally dominated by a man like Mr Koosevelt. For you feel that with the Roosevelt the influence of public opinion, oi tho newspapers, of the limelight jm modern life is excessive and distorting. ■Our Roosevelts live for popularity: nay, more, they live for notice, for reclame. They arc like the stars ot tho theatre or the concert room; they must bo always on the bill and having the biggest, lettering on it. So that when y examine their utterances, you take from them an enormous discount on account of tho unreal, rhetorical melodramatic atmosphere m which then authors live and breathe. And statesmen hud it difficult to deni with them, for they do not know how far the towns of public opinion on 'vliioh they rely will allow them to go. Ot course, beneath their extravagances there ??. ‘} soli* jocund of sense and practical character. But one has to go a good way down to get at it.

LAUEIER AND CLEMENGEATJ,

But Roosevelt is an extreme type ol the leaders of the now democracies. Another kind is that represented by Sir Wilfrid Laurier a.nd Mr Deakin, who in some respects are remarkable examples of the power and feeling for culture and refinement which comparatively new States may develop an their political loaders. Both are men of wide sympathies and literary instincts. Both are great politicians incessantly alive, to the movements of the Both have executed surprising feats in strategy in order to keep political power Both are products not of a strict party system, so much as of the tendency of our- colonial democracies—more especially in Australia—to form combinations of men of talent, and to give them a considerable latitude in the interpretation of policy. These men are highly trained opportunists, who, nevertheless, have not much in common (save in their dabbling with Protection) with our own Tory statesmen. They are political Radical l * and democrats, quite indifferent to and not a little contemptuous of, the mere lumber in our Statd—our House, _ ten Lords, property voting, laud owning, sport-mad aristocracy, and the rest of it. They are men of their'ago 'and clime, and of the new ns against the old AngloSaxon world. A more highly-trained body of political leaders—intellectually the most highly trained in the world—exists in France. They are a product, by themselves. They come of tho centralised systems of education—“ the University,” as it is called —that France has developed. They are children of tho soil, grown with the utmost skill and care. Lawyers, scholars, thinkers, writers, journalists, orators, diplomatists of the newspaper, the cafe, the Chamber, the public office—they have in them a considerable element of the bureaucrat. Of this typo are nearly all the great French leaders of the day— Clemenceau, Briand, Jaures. They could do half a dozen things, and do them well—edit a newspaper, run a company, write a philosophical history. They never come from the aristocratic classes. They are of the common school, the boulevard, the platform. They are not pure idealists; they belong, even M. Jaures belongs, to what -Mr Jerrold cleverly calls "the real France." Then characters are, perhaps, somewhat oversliarpeued by tho incessant pressure of personal rivalries, tho high' tension of the intellectual atmosphere in French life and politics, the mental quickness, and therefore instability, of their public. They are much more accomplished men than is the average political leader in this country. In character we may possibly have some superiority. But most of the salient figures in modern. French politics have suffered ordeals of courage and temper such as our calmer public Life does not afford.

THE NEW BRITISH TTPB.

In Great Britain, indeed, a now type of party chieftain is arising. I .say “party” because, on tho whole, independent personalities do not emerge in great strength. On tho contrary they seem to decline. Mr Cos, Sir Belloc, have their day and interest ns awhile; but it is a brief one. Tho soil seems uncongenial to tho adventurer; Disraeli is almost an unique example of a completely successful 'and really eminent career for him.. Nor is the Tory party fed by any fresh or abundant springs of talent, Mr Austen Chamberlain is wuat the French would call tres peu de chose. Mr Smith is merely a smart lawyer on tho make. But larger contn buttons to the political forces are being made by the middle and the industrial" classes. Tho workmen have given us Mr Burns, Mr Burl, Mr Barnes, Mr Broadhurst. Tho smaller middle-classes have thrown up Mr Lloyd George. (Bright and Cobden came from the wealthier strata of tho samo class). And on the other hand an aristocratic family given to brilliancy at intervals in the centuries has produced Mr Winston Churchill, who is something more than tho sou of his father. What will these younger types do for nsT They are Doth (superior and inferior to the mid-Victorian Radical leader. Mr George is not so weighty, so grave a character as John Bright. But ho has a greater practical genius, an equal courage, and a mind of quicker adaptability. Mr Churchill, again, has almost revived the art of oratory. He uses argument and rhetoric much as Gladstone used them, and as, for example, Mr Balfour never can use them, to kindle enthusiasm, and keep a cause at a high level of interest. Withal ho has the curious, informing mind, the passion for activity, which is a quite opposite mental development to that of the bureaucrat. He will see for himself, investigate, innovate. A certain. sensational quality is the characteristic of our new Radical states manship, and is. I suppose, inseparable from modern democracies. Our younger

statesmen have not been as widely and incessantly educated as. for example, was Sir Charles ITjJko; their powers of mere physical application and mental assimi lation have still to be fully tested. The world is still rather fresh to them; they want to know, like the poets, the depth, as well as the tumult of the soul. -But tho freshness of their minds, their boldness. their inquisitive view of the social arid political structure, are qualities invaluable to an old. State liko our own, passing rapidly into new phases of life and development, it. will bo interesting to see what they make of their fortunes.