THREE GREAT MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16904, 1 December 1922, Page 3

THREE GREAT MEN.

AS SEEN BY AMERICAN AMBASSADOR. Another remarkable instalment cf the “ Life and Lexters of Walter HPage.” late American Ambassador n London, appears in the “Worlds Work.” Mr Page’s shrewd estimates of the value of the British statesmen and politicians with whom he was, . brought into contact are well worth r , quoting. Especially was he impressed by the qualities of Lord Balfbar and Grey. I am afraid,” he writes to Pres*- s dent Wilson. “I'm afraid I’ve glmosfv;outgrown ray living-hero worship. There isnj’t worshipful material enough lying around in the world to keep -* vigorous reverence in practice. But these two gentlemen by birth and culture have at least seemed of" heroic size to me. It has meant much to know them well. J shall always be grateful to them, for in their quiet, forceful way ihey / helped me much to establish right relation* with these people—which, pray God. f hope to retain through whatever new trials we may yet encounter. For ‘it * will fall to us yet to loose and to free the British, and a Briton set free is an American. That’s all you can do for a man or for a nation, of men. These Foreign Secretaries arc not only men of much greater cultivation than their Prime Ministers, but of greater moral force. Mr Balfour is one of the most interesting men that I’ve ever had the honour to know intimately—he and Lord Grey. Mr . , Balfour is a Tory, of course: ami In the general T don’t like Tories. yet 7 Liberal he surely is—a sort- of high ! ; toned Scotch democrat, I have i studied him with increasing charm and interest, Not infrequently, when 1 am in bis office just before luncheon. ‘ r he says. 4 Come, walk over and we’ll ... y have lunch with the family.’ He's a bachelor. One sister lives with him. Another (Lady Rayleigh, the wife of the great chemist and Chancellor of. Cambridge University’) frequentlv visits him. Either of those ladies could rble this Empire. Then there are ... nieces and cousins always about - i people of rare cultivation, every on? of ’em. “We’ve been lucky. Mr President. in these days of immortal horrors and of- difficulties between two Governments that did not know one another uncommonly lucky, in the large chances that politics give for grave errors, to have had two such men in the Foreign Office here as Lord Grey 1 and .Mr Balfour.” Later in the same letter. Air Page . confesses that “ I’ve come to like. ' Lloyd George very much. He'd never deliver a lecture on Dryden. and he doesn’t even play a good game of golt : ' but lie has what both Lord Grey an 1 Mr Balfour lack—a touch of genius- - whatever that is—not the kind that takes infinite pains, but the kind that acts as. an electric light flashed in the dark. Lloyd George will outlive the war a* an active force, whatever happens to him in the meantime. He’s too heavily charged with electricity to stop activity. The wai j has ended a good many careers that. , . ; seemed to have long promise. Tt is ending more every day. But ther* is only one Lloyd George, and, whatever else he lack, he doesn’t lack life.” -■