The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1928 A GREAT STATESMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 280, 16 February 1928, Page 10

The Sun THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1928 A GREAT STATESMAN

IT is not necessary chivalrously to soften the asperities of eriti- * cism in the presence of Lord Oxford’s death in the twilight of his long political day. In all the vital respects of public service Herbert Henry Asquith was above.the recriminations of petty faction. The story of his life is a fine record and a fine example. And now “the silver cord is loosed and the golden bowl is broken.” But the memory of the man remains, firmly placed in a high niche of British political history, his name an imperishable symbol of integrity and unassailable character. Throughout a long career which experienced the zenith and the decline and fall of Gladstonian Liberalism, he always, in the triumph of victory as in the bleakness of defeat and even failure, upheld the dignity and uprightness of public life. He was honest and beyond contamination from unclean politics. It can be said that Lord Oxford’s defects as a statesman were due wholly to his virtues as a man. He had all the directness of a Yorkshireman; he retained to the end the shy and rather severe aloofness of the scholar. In the shallow field of democratic politics it is often a disadvantage to be able to think and speak as well in classical Latin as in perfect English. So, even at the summit of his fame, he never commanded the reverence that was Gladstone’s; never enjoyed the perfervid, proud Scottish adoration that was Rosebery’s; nor ever won the affection that was Campbell-Bannerman’s. But he never failed to command respect or to gain and hold the salute that symbolises the esteem of all parties and men of all shades of political thought. And yet, in the political sense, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith was the greatest democrat of them all. He was the complete Parliamentarian, influenced by the traditions of the world’s greatest Parliament, jealously loyal to the exacting principles of its laws, unfalteringly protective toward its dignity. This passion for true politics did not pay him as a noisier zeal has paid lesser statesmen with a flair fox - political intrigue. There was a time when he sacrificed £30,000 a year as a pleader at the English Bar to become Gladstone’s first lieutenant and ultimately one of his great chief’s most brilliant successors; there came a time when he had to accept the gift of an 'annuity from a few friends and political admirers. Such was the material reward of devotion to national duty and a tireless activity which was always purely unselfish, always leal, never without exalted dignity. Fulsome praise of the man’s life work is not essential. It is an open record of great achievement. Much of his service proved to be spade work for others. Many of the historic measures he initiated became the splendid successes of the Tory brigade, whose opportunities for triumph wherein he failed were occasioned by a more sympathetic mood in the nation. He scaled the heights of the noblest character in a statesman when, in 1914, he accepted the vicious challenge of Germany and boldly led an Empire to a terrible duty and a monstrous task. Strangely enough, this complete Englishman was never anything else than a Scottish politician. For thirty years without a break he represented the east nenk of Scotland, the “Kingdom” of Fife. He bore no resentment when his friends rejected him. Then Paisley hailed him, but soon proved fickle. Again he bowed his head to the storm. Granite may be chipped and bruised, but still it is granite, something indesti’uctible, beautifully solid. Looking back across Asquith’s time and place the student of British polities will see an inspiring record of a splendid statesmanship—a life story that death does not diminish, but enriches. The last and strongest pillar in the temple of Liberalism has fallen.