THE SLIPS OF THE MIGHTY.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1210, 25 February 1922, Page 2

THE SLIPS OF THE MIGHTY.

WHEN THE GREAT BECOME MERE MORTALS. There is solace for the forgetful in a story that is told in the new .installment of the letters? of the late Ame;ican Ambassador. In a conversaion at the Ministry of Blockade, Mr Page had advised Lord Robert Cecil that he must "not forget the Boston Tea Party," and it seems that Lord Robert, rather at a loss, had explained that he had never been in Boston, and therefore had no recollection of any tea. party there. It is a comforting example of the truth that eminence is not dependent upon a faculty for remembering faithfully everything that one ever knew. " I wish I wasi as cocksure of one thing as Macaulay is of everything," was, after all, a tribute to a very unusual kind of eminence. Nor is it a very endearing kind. Lord Randolph Churchill and the "damned dots" is a more engaging figure, and for every individual who was genuinely shocked by Mr Lloyd George's ignorance on the subject of Teschen there must have been dozens, or hundreds, who were secretly pleased to discover that they had this much, at any rate, in common with the greatest figure on the European stage of the moment. In fact slips of this kind leave everybody ; pleased. Those who could correct the distinguished stumbler are gratified to observe the superiority of their position, and those who are in the same boat as the blunderer rejoice to see it proved once more that, in the conduct of affairs, character counts for more than an encyclopaedic knowledge of tacts. We are oppressed by the fluency of the official interpreter ; but when the Foreign Secretary ■ himself cannot manage a speech in French we are at once reassured, and the accomplishments of the interpreter are placed in the perspective that we would prefer for them. It would, in fact, be a very gratifying and popular event if all our notables- could be put through a yearly examination on things that they ought to have learnt and might therefore be presumed to know. We are familiar enough nowadays with the "general knowledge papei"which examines the unfortunate schoolboy on all manner of things which are outside his proper curriculum. The idea might be reversed for the exposure of his distinguished elders—instead of the general knowledge that floors the schoolboy they might have to sit down to a seriesi of short papers on history, geography, and languages, with which the schoolboy would be quite at ease. The result would probably be diverting—except for the notables.—Manchester Guardian