A LONG LIFE IN A GREAT AGE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3333, 30 January 1918, Page 54

A LONG LIFE IN A GREAT AGE.

JOHN MOP LEY'S SELF-REVELA-TION. John Moriey—;i venerable man of 79, aiul now known as "John, Viscount Moriey," of the Order of Merit—has published his " Ee-collccti-ons," in 800 pages and in two volumes (Macmillan, 25>). "There'B as much vanily in 'Plain John' as in 'John, Viscount,' " he says. "Why on earth should you go there?" was Mr Asquith's question on hearing his colleague's desire to go to the House of Lords. The answer was, " The comparative leisure of the other place," and it is pleasant to read that the old statesman was gratified as well as surprised by the "immense and unbroken cordiality" with which both political parties agreed that he had earned peace with honour. This book comes at a curiously fit moment to show that a man may be a great politician and yet a gentleman; that he need not always shout with the crowd; and that a busy life spent in doing the world's immediate work need not prevent a man from keeping touch with the great realities of life, or from having a keen sense of the majesty of living and being, and of those great ultimate realities which, for a moment, hide all our to-morrows. The Mark of Distinction. —

John Morley has always carried the mark of distinction. He has been a distinguished journalist, writer, and politician. He has been distinguished in his own personality by all that makes for real distinction, and the self-revelation of his moral stature in these "Recollections" causes some humiliating reflections in the reader on the mentality and gestures of those who fill the political arena to-day. These "Recollections" will have a place among the great autobiographies. They are interesting because of the man who writes, who tells, us how he looks at the world and its great issues. They are also interesting because he tells us what he thinks of the men with whom he has worked, of his friends, and of the public men of his day. Here are some of his pen portraits. First, a group of famous statesmen at Althorp—Lord Spencer's seat—in 1891: The Men and the Puzzle.— After dinner they went into one of the libraries, " the most fascinating room I ever saw in a house," says Lord Morley in describing it. " Spencer, with his noble carriage and fine red beard • Mr Gladstone seated on a low stool, discoursing as usual, playing, keen, versatile ,- Rosebery, saying little, but now and then launching into a pleasant mot; Harcourt, cheery, expansive, witty. Like a scene from one of Dizzy's novels." These men were concerned with the Irish "puzzle." The rare books they unbent over, the treasures of Althorp, " have now gone to a northern city—symbol of the dismantling of territorial power all over England. The men are gone save two, and can meet no more. The puzzle remains." Mr Balfour's Temper.— .Mr Balfour once said to Lord Morley, " I never lose my temper, but one's nerves get on edge, and it takes time to cool." This is, as an explanation of why he "never slept well after a rough night in the House of Commons." Mr Balfour confessed further: "When I'm at work on politics I long to- be in literature, and vice versa." To this Mr Morley replied : "I should think so, indeed. That is the bane of my life. You remember Pascal: ' To dwell on the evils of the present pursuit and think only of the good of things absent' — that is what produces inconstancy. Yet I don't know that you and I are particularly inconstant." Lord Randolph Churchill once gave these two literary men a similar testimonial. "Ah!" he exclaimed to Lord Morley, "but then Balfour and you are men who believe in the solution of political questions." —K. of K.— There is a jolly sketch of Lord Kitchener on his first interview with Lord Morley. So far from being the silent soldier of popular convention, he was the reyerse. " Behold, he was the most cheerful,' and cordial, and outspoken of men, -and he hammered away loud and strong with free gestures and high tones." K. of K. was very keen to go out again as Viceroy. The appointment would have been excellent, as everyone now agrees. King Kclward was eager for it. Mr Asquith was inclined. It was prevented by Lord Morley. A Remarkable Figure.— "Grey followed Percy in- that curiously high, simple, semi-detached style which. combined, as it always is in him, with a clean-cut mautery of all the facts of his case, makes him one of the most impressive personalities in Parliament. Or must I qualify this immense panegyric of mine? He has got no great, ample pinions like Mr Gladstone, he hardly deserves what was said of Daniel "Webster, that every word he used seemed to weigh, a pound. Still, he is a remarkable figure, wholly free from every trace of the theatre, and I confess it warms my heart to think that Ave have two men like Grey and Percy to fill the scats of power in our country when the time comes." Mr Churchill in Brief.— Of Mr Winston Churchill Lord Morley says: "I have a great liking for Winston, for his vitality, his indefatigable industry and attention to business, his remarkable gift of language and skill in argument, and his curious fia.ir for all sorts of political cases as they arise, even though he now and then mistakes a frothy bubble for a great wave. All the sacra, as I often tell him in a paternal "way, a successful politician in this country needs a

good deal more than skill in mere computation of other people's opinions without anxiety about his own." Parnell as a Speaker.— Lord Moriey remarks ot" Parnell : "His politics were a vehement battle, not a game, no affair of a career." As to his oratory : " I once asked Mr Gladstone on the bench if he did not think Parnell a good speaker. ' Indeed I do, for he has got the very rarest of all qualities in a speakermeasure. He always says exactly as much as, and not any more nor less than, he means to say.' His speeches, even when least exciting or rhetorical, were studded with incisive remarks singularly well compressed. Meredith, who thought Mr Gladstone too much of an actor, was immensely struck by Parnell's style in a speech at a public banquet to which I persuaded our poet to go. No public man of his time was mere free of the evil arts of pose, nobody more disdainful of playing to the gallery, though when he had a practical object to gain he did not forget a ruling passion in his hearers, as when he talked of snapping the last, link to a Fenian audience in America. "Of Parnell's character, in which, with his high appreciation, there is more than a hint of the dark shadow, he writes: ' The mixture of the calculating spirit of an election agent with violence, and of invincible pride with something like squalour, made an amazing paradox. We have to remember that he was a revolutionary leader, using constitutional forms, and no varnish of respectable words can make him anything else. To call him a Whig is to stultify our political history and its vocabulary.' " Morlev's Praise of "C. B."—

Here is a very generous and faithful estimate of the quality of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman: " Campbell-Bannerman had none of the shining and indisputable qualities that had marked the last five holders of tins exalted office. Among his colleagues were men superior to him in power of speech, in talent for grasping great masses of administrative difficulty, and —up. to a certain time, but not after his worth was fully measured—even in striking or interesting the popular imagination. And yet he was indispensable, the only man possible, and the time came -when the popular interest in his personality rose to enviable heights, and goodwill passed into cordial admiration and affection. Why ? Because in many trying passages of public life, he had shown unshaken courage, invincible independence even of public opinion itself, steadfast adherence to his own political principles, in spite of busy and untoward dissents inside his party. "In the evil days of Liberal division during the Boer war he had confounded the dissentient wing by plain-dealing. He lost no chance of conciliation with them, and though a ready fighter, he was a- skilful peacemaker, partly for the admirable reason that, being a man of the wise sort of modesty, he always thought more of his policy and making it prevail than he thought of himself." It was felt that he had .the root of the whole matter in him when he declared good government to be no substitute for self-government. This was his solid reply to a current word with much cant in it about efficiency. A Wonderful Thing.—

"He had startled people during the Boer war by speaking of certain military doings of his countrymen as ' methods of barbarism,' and I recollect one of the chiefs of the other side saying to me: 'I never could have believed that a man who had used that language could ever become Prime Minister of England.' Yet this Avonderful thing came to pass. At the dissolution he was confirmed, in office by the largest parliamentary majority that any Prime Minister ever boasted. He had, by patience and good judgment, rallied his party, he had satisfied the vast majority of his electors, and he had never cast an inch of his political skin." Here is an estimate of the character of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister : " As soon as ever Parliament met it was evident that the new leader, with his bonhomie, humour, plain and lively common sense, splendid temper, not without occasional points of pleasant malice, his easy ways in business, was exactly fitted for the now assembly. When he instantly followed one of Mr Balfour's ingenious trains of dialectic by the blunt exclamation that we had ' best have done with all this foolery,' the House felt, with excited refreshment, that they had got the very man they wanted. More and more they liked him and respected him, and felt that he was thoroughly at home in his business and their own. The recent dissensions and the memory of them melted promptly away under 'the cohesion of office,' and he found no more loyal adherents than those who had been the most apprehensive of his failure." —"I Found in My Home " Here is a charming picture of "C. B." and his wife, which shows how her gracious personality greatly affected the political situation at the end of 1905, when a new Cabinet w r as formed. Some Liberals wanted Sir Henry CamjDbell-Bannerman to go to the Upper House, but he disavows the responsibility : " One evening, while these unedifying transactions were still on foot, Tweedmouth and I left Campbell-Bannerman, cool, patient, half undecided as to his course; we were to return after dinner, and the true counsellor of his life was to arrive from Scotland in the meantime. After the event I thought of Tocqueville's account of his own wife, who, by the way, was English. ' I found in my home,' said Tocqueville, 'the support, so rarely precious in time of revolution, of a devoted woman, w r hom a firm and penitrating intelligence, and a spirit naturally high, held without effort equal to the level of any situation, and above every reverse.' Returning, we found the Minister indescribably exultant. ' No surrender !' ho called out to us in triumphant

voice, with gesture to match. The decision was iron. Detachment at once fell to a low discount among the doubters, and this must be added to the many historic cases where women have played a leading pa".. in strengthening the counsels of ministe/s. sovereigns, great reformers, and even popes." Farewell to C. B.— When "C. B." died after his tliatinguished Premiership Lord Morley wrote : " Poor C. B. has gone at last ; for him a great relief, I'm sure, though he hpd borne the weary weeks with a patience and fortitude characteristic of him. Mr Gladstone was less happy in his exit. Ho had months of acute anguish. Harcourt was the most lucky of all, for after .in easy evening in his family circle, be w;>s found dead in his bed with fingers on the pages of a,book. Yet, say what, we will, believers or unbelievers, Deatn is Death."