Gore Agricultural & Pastoral Association's Twenty=T

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2648, 14 December 1904, Page 42

Gore Agricultural & Pastoral Association's Twenty=T

A GERMAN ESTIMATE OF CHAMBERLAIN. The Frankfurter Zeitung of a recent date contains an article — the third of a series

■dealing with the social, political, and industrial life of England — on Chamberlainism, contributed by Dr B. Guttmann. It is written in a fresh and racy style, and, notwithstanding exaggerated or one-sided statements here and there, evinces on the whole shrewd observation, clear judgment, and a close acquaintance with the inward

ness of English politics remarkable in a foreigner. The paragraphs likely to be most interesting to British readers are those descriptive of the personality and influence of the apostle of tariff reform. We herewith submit a translation: — The dominating position of Chamberlain

in the Government party does not rest upon any special enthusiasm which good society feels for the screw-manufacturer of Birmingham. It fears him, but does not love him. The place he maintains in the estimation of the people is exceedingly high. Even when he is not in the House, the greatest attention is bestowed upon what the right

honourable member for West Birmingham : to his colleagues. But Chamberlain ha-> has said, done, or written. In the first made the most of the means of success at place it is his immediate influence over a I his command. To his subordinates his large section of the people that has procured energy appears uncanny. The officials ot him the power, and in the second place the Colonial Office can tell a story or two he surpasses the fine gentry in one respect — ' about it. When Chamberlain, of his own he works; in fact, to the amazement of accord, undertook this ministry the fact of

everybody, he does nothing else. He cultivates no sport, as almost every Englishman does ; he loses no time with art and literature, for he understands nothing about them ; he has only politics and his orchids. His education is rudimentary; when in the Ministry he more than once made elementary mistakes which were very distressing

his haying chosen it excited astonishment. He might have claimed a better place in the Salisbury Cabinet than the Colonial Secretaryship was at that time. Hitherto it had been regarded as one of those posts the appointment to which is mainly a question, so to speak, of providing for the needy: the foremost men would not think

, of it. The business was conducted in even a more aristocratic fashion than is the case, according to the statements of those who know, in the other departments of the English Ministry. Chamberlain put an end to ile old bureaucratic dawdling, and afforded the astounded officials the spectacle

enormous, although he stan light. He is> not an agreeab he is " — here my Tory frienj carefully at the other membej " a regular middle-class man nature of a tradesman, oonsider him. to be a great

of a hard-working Minister. Accordingly » The a\ erase Englishman he is not liked, and people are afraid of chiefly as ths strong man him. Many of his partisans, while giving |,'which for the German savoi him all his due, have a secret aversion to | the showman's booth, I ha him. He does not belong to them ; he of times : " H .e .is a, ver^ is "no gentleman." "Chamberlain's in- Tiiat 1S tne °P mlon of h" 1 fluence," said to me a Conservative who 6 numerous little-educafc is closely connected with the Ministry, '"is >rom which he himself spr