NOBLE LORDS'S "NIGHT OUT"

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 154, 25 March 1919, Page 7

NOBLE LORDS'S "NIGHT OUT"

BRITISH STATESMAN IN GENIAL MOOD.

1 "The first night out I have bad for over five months," was Lord Curzou s description of his dinner with the members of the Eccentric Club recently. Oilier features of a speech mainly humorous were:— 1 do not know the tfifterence between a politician and a statesman unless it is that a statesman is a politician who has succeeded and a politician is a man who lias tried to be a statesman and failed. A man who aspires to become a member of Parliament is a most honourable man, bu.t his entry into Parliament is the fust blot on his escutcheon. The popular theory of a Minister is a very idle person surrounded by a number of secretaries and female typists. Hut a- Minister's life is something like this: He starts with his correspondence and the usual newspaper denunciations. 110 meets his secretaries, goes to the Cabinet nearly every day. That takes him until 2 o'clock. He has a hurried luncheon, and from 3 to 8 presides over committees, attends conferences, and interviews persons, lie snatches a hasty dinner, and' I have not been in bed till past 2 o'clock for livo months. He never gets a holiday. Yet he is regarded ns an idle lascard. The Governmrnt is being described as the "Old Gang"—a, lot of old fogies. It is said that a man is too old at GO. 1 have reached that unfortunate ngo. But, when I turn my eyes to Paris and see men like Clemencoau (73), Mr. Balfour, Marshal Foch, and Mr. Lloyd Georgewho has only four years to go before he becomes useless—the best old fogies leading the Peace Conference, I am consoled eomowhat,