THREE MUSKETEERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 638, 15 April 1929, Page 7

THREE MUSKETEERS

A TRIO OF STATESMEN FOREIGNER’S KEEN VIEWS Several bright portraits of leading British statesmen were given in Mr. Knut Hazberg’s new book, “Kings, Churchills and Statesmen/’ Of Mr. Stanley Baldwin this foreign observer writes: “He is no genius, and he has not been lucky in most of his undertakings. He is a simple man; there is nothing brilliant or striking in his personality. He is no orator, he is no thinker, he is not even a skilful tactician. As long as he could, he remained in the background; he is as far I as possible from the type of the polii tical climber. | “Both on his father’s and his ; mother’s side Baldwin is descended j j from zealous sectaries; in himself one ! can find traces both of the Quaker and : the Methodist. “He is an open-air man who never feels himself really at his ease anywhere but in the country. There are not many parts of England that he lias not explored, and his best friends are simple farmers. “Baldwin is moral and jovial; his i third characteristic is that he is a man of business. His father was a successful ironmaster; the son inherited both the business and the capacity for I its management. He knew how to !

manage a business before be began to consider how to manage a kingdom. “It cannot be disputed that the at- j mosphere of Downing Street has become purer since he took up his abode > there.” MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL “Brilliant as Churchill s career has j been, it has yet been much less brilliant than he himself has expected, than he himself had a right to expect. What for others would have been success, for him has been felt as a tragic failure. “He has given proof of greater intelligence, energy and courage than almost any other contemporary statesman. “His knowledge is astounding, he is a master of the smallest details in questions concerning strategy, mechanics, administration, national fin- j ance, industrial organisation, history and geography. “It is strange that this man, who is j so superior to his rivals, has never succeeded in calling forth the confidence of the English people, has never attained that dominant position for which he might seem predestined. “He has had difficulty in getting on with his superiors and he has never mastered his inclination to tell the mighty the unadorned truth. “His physique is frail. His heart, j lungs and nerves have often failed him. ' “He is out of touch with the masses. ■ He has never been able to make any J secret of the fact that for him the ( only value of existence lies in unremitting toil, the exertion of will and j the endurance of suffering. _ AND MR. LLOYD GEORGE “He has succeeded in much, failed in . still more; the importance of his sue-j cesses and failures can hardly be overestimated.

“For a number of years he governed England more absolutely and with less dependence upon Parliament than anyone since the days of Cromwell. “He has never acted upon any settled plan, he has never considered the implications and consequences of his actions. “He is the typical Celt, a descendant of a people whom it is said that they give vent to their melancholy in song and their gladness in battle. “Under the surface, behind the smiling, the jocularity, the amiability, the softness, Lloyd Gorge is as hard as diamond; he is a more ruthless personality than JKitchener or Cecil Rhodes. “His .maiden speech was not much of a success. He rose on a question of taxation, warned the Conservative Government of the wrath of the free traders of Carnarvonshire . . . and worked off a number of amusing invectives against .Joe Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill. ... A newspaper described the speech as “very ! clever.” Gladstone complimented the

speaker but forgot the name of th« constituency which he represented. “He has been fantastic, irresponsible, inconsistent, but he has never been dull. “There were people who believe*! that Lloyd George was under tha special protection of Satan. “His unprincipled and thoroughly emotional nature made him more independent than anyone else of antiquated political traditions.”