PUBLIC MEN UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16468, 21 June 1919, Page 4

PUBLIC MEN UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.

“Uncensored Celebrities,” by E. T. Raymond (Fisher Unwin), is a very clever book, and as original in its way as Mr. Strachey’s much criticised “Eminent Victorians.” But there is no bitterness in Mr. Raymond. However smart, ho is always urbane and honest. His book is full of unexpected and witty sentences —you never know how the paragraph will turn or end. He ends when the beaker is full to tho brim and lie does not slop over. Ho deals with some obvious people like tho Prime Minister, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Asquith. But some of the most interesting are the lesser-known people—but all are good. “E. T. Raymond” is said to be a mask—but nothing conceals the cleverness of his handiwork. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND ITS OWNER. Hero is Lord Burnham, the present proprietor of tho Telegraph and the son of the man who made it. “There is scarcely a limit to the good a thinking man with Lord Burnham’s ample means could have effected in half a dozen directions. “Lord Burnham, however, has been content to carry on. Ho has not cut tho shop. He is greatly interested in it—as a shop. The advertisement columns of the Daily Telegraph seem to be his special care. ... “It is becoming increasingly difficult to find what class of man derives stimulus from Lord Burnham’s editorial direction. . . . Even in these days of paper famine it still has a decided advantage in bulk; its usefulness for wrapping things in and putting under carpets recommends it to economical households. But what special kind of intellectual hunger it satisfies is less easy to discover.” LORD BEAVERBROOK. “Lord Bcaverhrookj a comparatively small man financially, has Scaled heights forbidden to the great Randlords, and possesses a control of tho press which Rhodes, in tho plenitude of his power, never • attained. This particular ascent into Olympus may be satisfactorily explained. But tho facility of the thing suggests doubts as to the quality of tho largely increasing population of divinities.” “It is undeniably a little disquieting to observe tho ease with which an ambitions man, coming as a. stranger to this country, can in a few years raise himself to a position of great and undefined political- influence. Still more disturbing is the extraordinary public indifference to such a phenomenon.” THE MORNING POST AND ITS EDITOR. “The Morning Post is tho most individual of all the fiondon morning papers. It is also tho best written. Its chief contributors really arc scholars, though, like ladies, when young and fair, they have tho gift to know it. “Mr. G.vwnne is a fighting rather than a thinking editor. He knows everybody in politics, but strangely little of political questions. . . In literature he has one idol, Mr. Kipling, and several botes noircs, of whom Mr. H. G. Wells may be taken as a typo.” “With more balance, and equal distinction in writing, the Morning Post might, under him. he a tremendous power for evil; without tho piquant charm of his chief loader.writer s style it would ho merely contemptible.” LODD NORTHCLIPEE AND HIS GENIUS. “Lord Northcirifo was certainly underrated in his vigorous youth; it may ho that in middle ago the blaze of his prestige is too blinding for a reasonable estimate of his real qualities. Apart from the artist sort he is, of all the men I ever met, he who best satisfies my conception of genius.” “Lord Northcliffe’s genius is like that of certain men for games of skill; it can co-exist with something very like general mediocrity. Lord Northcliffe’s genius is perhaps as narrow as that of a chess-player. But nobody who has had the privilege of observing his methods as a newspaper man—ho is very much more than a newspaper proprietor—can possibly fail to acknowledge a power quite different in kind as well as in degree ' from more business or professional acumen.” “Lord Northcliffo in his proper business has the gift of intuitive perception in extraordinary measure. He possesses a supreme instinct for the right thing in the sense of tho expedient thing.” A MAN AND HIS HEROES. “There is some significance in Lord Northcliffe’s choice of heroes, Dickens in letters. Napoleon in history. Dickens he admires for the sureness with which he aimed at the heart of tho masses, Napoleon for the way m which he controlled men and got things done. The truth is that he is himsdf a sort of composite parody of the two men. Hi), message to the common man is perhaps n>.-< worth delivering, but he gets it delivered. The things he has got done may not have been worth tloing, hut he has no equal in the ‘Art of getting things done.’ ” “In his office he is surrmndxl by rtipendiarv cherubim and seraphim, raising an eternal chorus of ‘Brainy, brainy, brainy.’ ”

THE HEAVENS AND THE HEAVIES. Lot us leave the journalists and look elsewhere. Mr. Raymond is equally happy in putting politicians under the miscroscope. Mr. Sidney Webb is well in the public eyes just now, for he is asking vital questions at the Coal Commission. Here is what Mr'. Raymond says of him and his wife: “These twain the Heavens and the Heavies—the Eternal Blue and tho Eternal Blue Book—have joined together; let no man put them asunder. “No man with a sense of the fitness of things is likely to try. For here, if anywhere, is the perfect marriage; two minds ’ with hut a single set of thoughts, two typewriters that click as onel It is hard to imagine Marshall without Snelgrove, Swan divorced from Edgar; but all that is nothing to the strain of thinking of Beatrice and Sidney Webb ns two distinct and unrelated individuals. “The Webbs might have been compounded out of half a dozen Dickens’ characters. There is a good deal of Gradgrind in them—‘acts, facte; give me facts.’ ” MR. HAROLD COX.' Mr. Harold Cox, editor of the Edinburgh Review, once a Fabian, is now one of the most active opponents of the Webb policy. “It is easy to understand why nobody speaks ill of Mr. Harold Cox. It is not so clear why all men should con-

spire with exaggeration to speak well of him,” says Mr. Raymond. “It seems to bo everybody’s business to give Mr. Cox a friendly shove forward. But what is everybody’s business is also nobody’s. . . . He rather resembles the village grocer whom tho local magnates respect highly, while dealing exclusively with the stores. For him there is always a pleasant ‘good morning,’ and a courteous raising of the whip hand, but the gentry continue to get their currants from town.” VISCOUNT GREY—ENGLISHMAN. Now for a groat man. “Viscount Grey is an example of the truth that a man may bo larger than the sum of his qualities. If. he 'is not a great man he is certainly a ■ great Englishman. . “His chief weakness as a. Foreign Minister was that he was too English. It is, I think, Ilia chief strength today. Ho stands for English justice, English moderation, English avoidance of extremes. The world knows exactly what ho means when he speaks of a' League of Nations—that he is neither chasing a sentimental will-o’-the-wisp nor fashioning an instrument of permanent oppression for the defeated. The English people know what ho moans when he avows himself a democrat while leading the life of an aristocratic recluse.”