The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1930 A VERY GREAT EARL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 926, 20 March 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1930 A VERY GREAT EARL

IN the death of the first Earl of Balfour, after a long day and a lingering, tranquil twilight, Scotland has lost its most scholarly laird, England its most intellectual statesman, Ireland its most polite and sympathetic castigator, Jewry its best friend in international polities, and the world one of its most versatile minds. Viscount Traprain of Whittingehame (who ever really knew him by that secondary title of aristocratic detachment?) was all these and a great deal more besides, for his whole life was spent in the realm of'culture and high national service. The Lothian laird was a Scot by birth, but became through the inheritance of the Cecil influence in his Ration’s affairs an improved Englishman. In other words he waf gifted with Scottish tenacity of purpose in climbing to the best places in English life, and acquired the aloofness and cold philosophy of the long line of Cecils. He was of the clan of intellectuals—perfect Tories —about whom poets sing “They are all gone to that world of light . . . their very memory’s calm and bright.” No one has served the people better and more loyally than Earl Balfour did with all his might, yet no other statesman and national servant was ever more aloof from them. As others have said of the man, even when he descended in the arena of politics to the level of democrats he was always an aristocrat in disguise. Men raged at him often, we have seen Irish politicians in the House of Commons shake their fists under his lofty nose, but he overwhelmed them all with a disarming smile. Many people, of course, saw him differently and differed in their interpretation of his polities and philosophy. He remained to the end a mystery to American observers and admirers. Their verdict was piquant, but not quite true, which often is the way of Americans :—“Cultured, good-looking, blue-blooded, and with red tape hanging out of every pocket.” And the French, during the days of the Peace Conference, could not understand why so distinguished a delegate who was conning his arguments in their language, while the thirteen other delegates of the British Empire were awaiting the words of an interpreter, rarely ever wore the conventional tall hat, but preferred to perch a felt hat jauntily on the back of his head, as though he did not care a Devon pippin for Woodrow Wilson, as very probably he didn’t. But such was the man. , But all that is wide of the high mark of the great statesman’s character and work. Death always rents the veil in twain, and in this instance, as the curtain rolls aside, one looks back and across over more than half a century of splendid achievement. Although on many occasions patient and understanding friends desired to shake him out of what too often appeared to be the Laodicean habit of being neither hot nor cold, “A.J.” (as best known for more than half a lifetime) could be an aggressive fighter with a whirling sword. It was lie who threw Joseph Chamberlain in the dust, and consolidated Great Britain in its obdurate and obsolete policy of Free Trade. On the platform, as a rule, the greatest Tory of them all was dull and uninspiring. But hear and see the man in the clash of one of those intellectual battles in the House of Commons in bygone days ! Then and there Balfour became the master of debate and always, like Alan Breek, “a bonnie fechter.” Wherever intellectual ability had scope for brilliant exercise his brilliance outshone everything' else. But when that inspiration was lacking, as it often was and must ever be in democratic politics, he became a passive drifter, a dilletante, too much like a superior scoffer. Indeed, it is neither a fanciful noy a harsh picture to recall him as like unto an owl among rooks, rather bored with their chatter, perhaps wondering why so many of them had escaped the guns of sportsmen in the rooking season. A glance at the distinctive Balfourian career suffices to place him high among the greatest of Britain’s statesmen. From the far-off days when a slim youth went to the Berlin dongress with Salisbury and Beaconsfield, until the silver-haired veteran, still youthful and lean, delivered an oration on the Mount of Olives and gained the unique honour of being the first Freeman of the new Jewish city of Tel-a-viv in the new Zion, triumph marched with him hand-in-hand. Biographers will catalogue his achievements and extol his versatile accomplishments. In the heyday of life the very name of Balfour was a synonym for scholarly grace and winsome ability. His own nation and other nations honoured him with decorations beyond brief enumeration. The British Order of Merit was the supreme distinction. Earl Balfour won it as a pure reward. Now that a familiar figure in Empire politics 'has disappeared, all his political faults will be forgotten and forgiven. A nobleman has slipped away.