GREAT MEN IN A FEW LINES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18446, 6 January 1922, Page 6

GREAT MEN IN A FEW LINES

Mr Herbert Sidebotham, for years the parliamentary correspondent of The Times, is an acute observer of men, with a capacity of comparison and appraisement which makes his writing valuable and suggestive. His new book, “Pillars of the State’’ (Nisbet), is a book of altogether unusual interest. Take, for example, the summary of Lord Curzonj “There is no aristocracy left but ours capable of throwing up men like Lord Curzon, who assume rule over others like a cross of duty, and practise the duty like a vice. And this of Mr Asquith: “A sound Yorkshire stock gave him health, his first marriage help, his second fashion and society, but Oxford made Mr Asquith what he has been and still is.”

The sketch of Mr Lloyd George is the most elaborate in Mr Sidebotham’s volume. He says of the Prime Minister : “He is a Colossus wtih two strides, not one; and each must be considered separately. On the first stride, history will pronounce him the Welshman who failed to reverse the Norman Conquest. On the second, he bestrides not only (England, but the world; but one foot is still in suspense, and so is the judgment of history.” Referring to the causes to which Mr Lloyd George owes his great, position, Mr Sidebotham sa^sf “Not to his oratory, for, despite some war speeches of lyrical perfection, and some admirable recent examples of lucid exposition, he is not* in the apostolic succession of English oratory. . An incomparable actor, a spell-binder, a perfect conductor of electrical discharge, a crowdcompelier and master of mass-psychology, but not a builder of stately argument nor a sculptor in words of ideals of such mental, and moral beauty that all who hear must forsake everything else and follow them. Nor to intellectual equipment, though this was much greater than is qommonly supposed.. The whole world was Mr Lloyd George’s school, and he never ceased learning; but •he suffered from the lack of the early mental discipline, without which a man rarely attains the great virtue of intellectual patience. Mr Lloyd George has the quickest mind in politics, but it is impatient of detail, incapable of avoiding a short cut, and prone to the skimble-skamble when he is not interested, ....

“He (is very human, amiably so as a rule, blit not always. He draws his refreshing drink,from springs that are pure, but the wells of politics are situate in muddy and trampled fields, and some of his people often have noticeably dirty boots. He avoids Gladstone’s mistake of leaving human nature put of account,; but tactics, at any rate since his rupture with the official Liberals, have had too great an influence on his policy.” Mr Sidebotham summarises Mr. Winston Churchill as follows :

“Some men hang themselves on their politics, others. hang their politics on themselves, and these need to be stout pegs, well screwed into the scheme of things, as indeed Mr Churchill is. . “Mr Churchill belongs' to no school of politics, ain'd will not found one, and he has ceased even to be the revenant of the old Fourth Party. ' But he will never, be out of politick for long, for he. is even more dangerous as an enemy than as a friend. He has latterly become steadily more Conservative, less from conviction than from the hardening of his political arteries. His early Liberal velleities have dried up, the generous impulses of youth throb more slowly, and apart from some intellectual gristle his only connections with Liberalism are personal. He is out of sympathy with the Prime Minister’s [Russian policy, and he has a vigorous contempt for the Parliamentary Labour Party, which he takes no trouble to conceal. “In certain directions he has seemed'to suffer from the fixed idea. If the Conservatives were wiser they would have made ap attempt to recapture him, but there again personal feelings stand in the way, for neither Bourbons nor Orlcanists can get on with the Bonapartists.” Mr Sidebotham is caustic in his sketch of Lady Astor: “She has adopted a kind of parliamentary uniform, consisting of a dark bine skirt, a white blouse, and white gloves, which she often wears about her wrists, leaving her hands bare the better to hande papers. She has acquired the parliamentary habit of leaving .the House when the bores are up, but, not the trick of asking questions, which w;ith her leave the interrogative and acquire the hortatory or reproachful mood, and get her ruled out of order. She speaks rarely, and not attractively. “Her voice is, in its upper notes, a little harsh (a common fault amongst fashionable women'’ in England), has one or two good deep notes, but no intermediate tones. There are faint traces of an American accent, and dropped final g’s, like flies in amber, show that she must have entered English society about 20 years ago, when the smart set boycotted this-letter. She pleads and coaxes (like a missionary to an assembly of inebriates), but does not argue.” Writing of Lord Birkenhead, Mr Sidebotham says: “Some people do their work, as the Pharisees did their praying, in public, so that all men may see, and they have their reward in being taken very seriously. Mr Smith in this matter of work was—still is as Lord Birkenhead —one bf the Sadducees. Work with him is a disagreeable necessity, the mere kitchen and back apartments of the palace that is life, not to be explored, still less exhibited. But the work gets done, which is the main thjng, and when it is done, secretly and by stealth, as a duke might keep a toffeeshop to add to his income, the real business of a free man, which is to enjoy, the phantasmogoria of life and power, begins. Lord Birkenhead has always enjoyed the magnificences, like his distinguished predecessor on the Woolsack, Cardinal Wolsey. • “The apocryphal story of how Mr Justice Bingnam, as he then was, pretended to mistake the Mersey Dock and Harbour Board’s new 1 buildings for Mr F. E. Smith’s chambers, dates back to his days as a junior in Liverpool; and after- that beginning £3500 for a Lord Chancellor’s bathroom is not' much to make a song about. Aristotle, it will be remembered, puts magnificence amongst the virtues.’’ For Sir Robert Horne, the Scotch lawyer, of whose personality the public knows so little, Mr Sidebotham,finds two rather odd prototypes: “He has something in common' both with Sir Robert Walpole and with Sir Henry CampbellBannerman. He has the Walpole gift of seeing every political question in the terms of human nature; Walpole’s coarseness, which was behind his age, has been refined in him to a genial and realistic view of affairs, illustrated from an inexhaustible fund of good stories; his humanity, so much in advance of his age, has descended in full measure.” Sir Gordon Hewart is another of the big little-known men. He has apparently determined to be a great judge. If ho chose he could be a Prime Minister. “He has not the sonority of Mr Asquith, but he has greater subtlety, as sure *a grasp of masses of detail, equal tightness, arid more plasticity in argument. His speech, is smooth and pure; the words fall unerringly into their place, not with the somewhat shambling fluency of Lord Haldane, but eyes right and shoulders back like toy soldiers. Even his impromptu speeches still manage to convey the same impression of perfect prose, and, when he is arguing, you are lost unless you dispute the premises, for there is never a nick in the smooth surface of the development.”