SELF-DEFENCE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 74, 18 November 1931, Page 6

SELF-DEFENCE

POLITICIANS' ARMOUR HABIT OF MIND BEST DEFENCE AGAINST CRITICISM. SOME PROMINENT EXAMPLES. Mr. Baldwin the other day disclaimed the possession of "tender feelings." As a publia man, of course. He suggested that he does not wear his heart on his sleeve for daws to peck at, writes J. B. Firth in the Daily Telegraph. And yet I seem to j remember that not so many months j ago, when provoked to slow but just wrath at some particularly malicious pecking, he drove off the daws, which have kept their distance since. He had been saying that one of the conditions to which those who enter public life must submit is the constant criticsm of their fellows, and, what is harder to bear, a continual imputation of motive. That being so, it behoves them for their peace to grow a protective tegument, a defensive skin, thick enough to turn either arrow head or sword(edge. Yet even more effectual is a protective habit of mind. Advocates are perhaps best equipped in this 'respeet. A drenching of vituperative abuse leaves them un moved. Sir John Simon sat calmly through Mr. Lloyd George's recent tirade, as though he knew that his opponent was. only further ruining his reputation tby the violence of his abuse, and that the delirious applause of the Socialists across the floor of the House was like the screaming approval of the groundlings at a vulgar jest which just fits the measure of their comprehension. Public men, indeed, are like Sir Peter in the play. At all times they know that when they leave the room they "leave their characters behind them," for candid friends and open foes to tear to pieces. It is part of the political game. Gladstone's Control. I am not commending the brazlen image of a man — "embrowned in native bronze" — who has shed the last vestige of sensibility. I only mean that the wise man in public life schools himself not to show when, he is hurt, and acquires a large disdain of mean and petty attack. Illi robur et aes triplex. Yet if he loses sensbiliity, he becomes soulless, and then is lost indeed. Some touch of the Stoic, though it be on the surface only, is required. Even that most pitiful of Victorian prodigals, the last Marquis of Hastings, compelled the momentary respeet of his contemporaries when they heard how he bore himself when he had staked and lost his last estate, and the unfeeling crowded round to see how he would take the blow. "I did'nt show it did I?" he asked a friend anx'ously. It is that stoicism of outward expression which a man in public life should set himself to acquire — so that he may not show when the shrewd blow has gone home. But not to let the blow strike home implies an even more remarkable degree of self-con-tol. It is recorded of Mr. Gladstone — whose most distinguishing characteristic was that he always lived at fever heat yet kept that heat, as energy in strict control — that only once in his long Parliamentary career was.he carried away by passion so ungovernable that his utterance was choked apd the voice, in the old Latin phrase, stuck to his jaws. Disraeli's Scorn. It was when he rose to reply to Disraeli on the night that the Derby Government crashed in 1852. A violent thunderstorm had raged without, the peals of which were heard within the Chamber, while Disraeli delivered one of his most vehement onslaughts upon the Coalition which had gathered to defeat him. Gladstone had been so stung by his mocking invective that he could hardly frame the reproving sentences in which he told his rival that, "though he had learned much,- he had not learned the limits of discretion, of moderation, and of forbearance that ought to restrain the conduct and language of every member of this House, the disregard of which is an offence in the meanest amongst us, but is of tenfold weight when committed by the Leader of the House of Commons." Disraeli's protective covering was a great scorn if the attacking party were of sufficient consequence to demand notice; others he treated with silent and frigid contempt. Yet no man was a better hater, or kept his hatreds in better repair. To the outward world it might seem that his heart had grown tough as leather. To his lady confidantes he revealed that the tragedy of growing old was when the heart would persist in keeping young. But tio one can ever be quite sure about Disraeli. He was capable of wearing a mask even when he studied his own face in the mirror. Peel sedulously cultivated a cold reserved manner, but apparently this was done to hide a natimal shyness. It had been torture to him to listen to the ferocious philippics of Disraeli in 1846. Greville records in his "Diary" that when Peel on one occasion was greeted by those who had formerly been his most devoted followers with shouts of derision and gestures of contempt, he completely lost his self -possession, and the Speaker said that he expected to see him burst into tears. When Peel Wept. Certa'n it is that as he sat on the Treasury Bench compelled to listen to Disraeli's merciless sarcasm, with his arms folded and his hat pressed well down over his eyes, close observers saw tears of mortification trickle down his cheeks. The unsparing brutality — for it was brutali£y — of the attack could not shake his resolution; but it wounded him to the very quick. Some public men just pretend that nothing is ever allowed to get through their outer defences, though the pretence is patent. .Lord Morley, in his "Recolieetions," presents himself to the reader as cairn, philosophic, unruffled in advers'ty, unperturbed by de1 feat, and treating "those two Impostors" — success and failure — "just the same." Yet Lord Rosebery once described him to the genial CampbellBannerman as "a petulant spinster," and "C.B." took care to repeat the phrase to all their mutual friends. When John Morley was defeated at Newcastle-on-Tyne after a brave last

stand for the old Liberal Individualist faith against the Eight Hours Day men, he called at Hawarden on his way back to London, and says that while he found the G.O.M. fuming at the discomfiture of his lieutenant, he himself took the rebuff with a much serener front. Yet I have been told that when the poll was declared he left Newcastle in a rage, like Naaman, by the next train, but not till he had remembered to cancel his subscription to the local Liberal paper. Lord Rosebery was another bad loser. Not for him the cheery acceptance of defeat which rendered the "incomparable Charlie" of an earlier day so dear to his friends. The elegant aristocrat who, as a boy, had coveted the palm without the dust — in his tutor's searching phrase — retired to a corner and sulked. No " politcian of his time was so temperamental, so capricious, so touchy, so changeable, so much of the playactor. Harcourt, on the contrary, his partieular foe, was given to great rages, when he was crossed or thwarted, which passed off like thunderstorms and clear ed the air. Sure of Himself Joseph Chamberlain had the selfcontrol of the man who has fought his way through one obstacle after another to the top. No man was more sure of himself or cared less for what others said of him. None was better endowed with the quality which seems to be most lacking in the democratic politicians of to-day — resolution. It is one of the ironies of our Parliamentary system that with two men like Balfour and Chamberlain in the same party and the same Government, the Head should have been Balfour. Balfour's was the finer brain, but he was no leader. Yet in Parliamentary self-control . Balfour himself was surpassed by few. By general consent he withstood better than any other Chief Sec- - retary the full blast of the Irish National'st attack, and their fury spent itself in vain on his blandly goodhumoured resistance. He did not yield an inch, and he beat them all the way. He never lost his temper, and remained master of himself and of them.