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Page 16
The moral and intellectual condition of the world, a position from which
only a great spiritual palingenesis can deliver civilization, is a
charge on the sheet which Lord Northcliffe will have to answer at the
seat of judgment. He has received the price of that condition in the
multitudinous pence of the people; consciously or unconsciously he has
traded on their ignorance, ministered to their vulgarities, and inflamed
the lowest and most corrupting of their passions: if they had had
another guide his purse would be empty.
All the same, it is the greatest mistake for his enemies to declare
that he is nothing better than a cynical egoist trading on the enormous
ignorance of the English middle-classes. He is a boy, full of adventure,
full of romance, and full of whims, seeing life as the finest fairy-tale
in the world, and enjoying every incident that comes his way, whether it
be the bitterest and most cruel of fights or the opportunity for doing
someone a romantic kindness.
You may see the boyishness of his nature in the devotion with which he
threw himself first into bicycling, then into motoring, and then into
flying. He loves machinery. He loves every game which involves physical
risk and makes severe demands on courage. His love of England is not his
love of her merchants and workmen, but his love of her masculine youth.
He has been generosity itself to his brothers, with all of whom he does
not, unfortunately, get on as well as one could wish. The most beautiful
thing in his life is the love he cherishes for his mother, and nothing
delights him so much as taking away her breath by acts of astonishing
devotion. A man so generous and so boyish may make grave mistakes, but
he cannot be a deliberately bad man.
MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR
THE RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
Born in Scotland 1848; s. of Jas. M. Balfour and Lady Blanche
Cecil; nephew of the late Marquis of Salisbury and therefore 1st
cousin to the present Marquis, Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Hugh
Cecil. Educ.: Eton and Trinity Coll., Cambridge; LL.D. Edinburgh,
St. Andrews, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool,
Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Columbia (New York); D.C.L. Oxford.
M.P. for Hertford, 1874-85; Private Sec'y to his uncle, the late
Marquis of Salisbury, 1878-80; served on Mission to Berlin with
Salisbury and Beaconsfield, 1878; Privy Councillor, 1885; President
of Local Government Board, 1885-86; Sec'y for Scotland, 1886-87;
Lord Rector, St. Andrews, 1886; Sec'y for Ireland, 1887-91; Lord
Rector, Glasgow, 1890; Chancellor of Edinburgh since 1891; First
Lord of Treasury, 1891-92; President British Association, 1904;
Prime Minister, 1902-1905; Leader of the Commons, 1895-1906; 1st
Lord of the Admiralty 1915-16; Head of British Mission to America,
1917; Author of a series of philosophical and economic works.
[Illustration: RT. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR]
CHAPTER VI
MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR
_"A sceptre once put into the hand, the grip is instinctive; and he
who is firmly seated in authority soon learns to think security and
not progress, the highest lesson of statecraft."_--J.R. LOWELL.
In one of the _Tales_ Crabbe introduces to us a young lady, Arabella by
name, who read Berkeley, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke and was such a prodigy
of learning that she became the wonder of the fair town in which, as he
tells us, she shone like a polished brilliant. From that town she
reaped, and to that town she gave, renown:
And strangers coming, all were taught t'admire
The learned Lady, and the lofty Spire.
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