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Those of us in this hall who are privileged to be present are gazing for the last time upon one of the supreme pages of history, before it is turned back for ever and stored away on the dusty shelves of time.

The peroration to this speech might well serve for one on the greater sacrifices and the darker days that were yet to come. He had recited a long list of glittering names, Lawrence, Henry and John Nicholson, Outram, Havelock, Colin Campbell, and others, and after ushering them formally and with noble diction into the halls of fame he continued:

And together with these, let us not forget the hundreds more of unknown and inconspicuous dead, who were not the less heroes because their names are not engraved on costly tablets, or because their bodies rest in unmarked Indian graves. Equally with their comrades they were the martyrs and the saviors of their country. Equally with them their monument is an Empire rescued from the brink of destruction, and their epitaph is written in the hearts of their countrymen. The Ridge at Delhi which they held against such overwhelming odds, the Residency at Lucknow which they alternately defended and stormed, the blood-soaked sands at Cawnpore these are by their act the sacred places of the British races. For their sake we will guard them with reverence, we dedicate them with humble pride, for they were the altar upon which the British nation offered its best and bravest in the hour of its supreme trial. . . .

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The tribute to Scott and his comrades, made as president of the Royal Geographical Society, is worthy of the subject and the occasion. Could any Englishman listen to this untouched:

These are the five men whom we mourn, with whose widows and families we condole, but for whose shining example their country is grateful and the world the better. May I add the expression of a personal hope that, subject to any strongly avowed wish by those who have an incontestable right to

utter it, their bodies may be left where they lie, with the snow as their winding-sheet, the eternal ice as their tomb, and the solemn Antarctic wastes as the graveyard in which it has pleased God that they should sleep. Scott, in particular, could not have a more fitting resting-place than on that great

frozen Barrier, whose secrets he was the first to reveal, and amid the scenes which his life and death have rendered immortal.

The manner in which an orator prepares a speech that is, in the fullest sense of the word, successful must always be of interest. If he is to compete with the greatest he must do three things: he must profoundly move his immediate hearers; he must be good to read afterward; and he must achieve something that has form as well as substance. Few orators can do these things to an equal degree. A man may be supremely good at the first, as Mr. Lloyd George, for example, is, and the result at best will be eloquence, at worst rhetoric; it will not be oratory. Like Burke, Lord Balfour is better to read afterward than to listen to, and, while he disdains anything like deliberate form, he achieves a unity all his own by the brilliance of his mind and the perfection of his logic.

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Curzon, as a young man, studied Gladstone and his methods, had listened to Bright and Disraeli, and, later, had learned lessons from Chamberlain, Wyndham, and many more. In strictness most noted speakers are only men of great eloquence; they are not orators, because oratory implies- indeed necessitates preparation, and is higher than eloquence. Curzon desired to become supreme. He succeeded. With the exception of Lord Rosebery and Lord Oxford, it is doubtful if any of his contemporaries equaled him. Rosebery, silver-tongued and versatile, had hardly Curzon's depth, but Lord Oxford can pack more thought into fewer words than any man alive, and it is

interesting to note that one of Curzon's happiest orations was the fine tribute he paid to Asquith in a speech at Balliol College in June 1913.

Directly the war broke out Curzon set himself the task of going up and down the country addressing great gatherings of people. I was preoccupied by soldiering, and had completely forgotten about Subjects of the Day, when I received a letter asking me when the volume was going to press! I pointed out with some diffidence that the time seemed to me no longer opportune, and, moreover, that the title was now meaningless, as there was only one 'subject of the day,' and all that had gone before was as idle words. Curzon did not agree, and, as the event proved, he was right, because when the book appeared in the early part of 1915 it attracted much attention, and its high spirit, and patriotism wide and sane, served in those early hectic days to place the war in a truer perspective. I was summoned to Hackwood for a week-end, and we arranged to include one or two war speeches, thus bringing the volume up to date and justifying its title. I thereupon selected the war speech at Glasgow delivered on September 10 and the address at Harrow School on October 12, 1914.

Curzon foresaw a long war I think he realized it even before Kitchener did. From the first he showed his devoted admiration for Belgium and her King, and he raised the whole subject of our participation in the war to the highest and noblest plane. At Glasgow, speaking of India, which, as we have seen, ever warmed him to his highest effort, he said:

Why are these men coming? What has induced them to volunteer to take part in our fighting? They are thousands of miles away. They cannot hear the thunder or see the smoke of the guns. Their frontiers have not been crossed; their homes are not in

jeopardy. They are not of our kith and kin; no call of the blood appeals to them. Is it not clear that they are coming because the Empire means much to them, much more than mere government or power? It speaks to them of justice, of righteousness, of mercy, and of truth.

On such occasions Curzon was at his best; he was the Elder Statesman praising those whom he knew to be worthy. And he never praised without knowledge; therefore the task was satisfyingly and convincingly done.

In a Royal Literary Fund address on 'Literature and Poverty,' made in 1913, he displayed a common sense and sympathetic understanding with which the undiscerning would never have credited him. It was an echo of the early days when the fee he received for an article was a matter of real moment to him:

I decline to admit that there is any stimulus in poverty or any inspiration in squalor. Byron was a genius although he was a peer; Burns was a genius although he was a ploughman. But Burns's genius was not due to his being a ploughman, any more than Byron's genius was due to his

being a peer.

The speech entitled 'Indian Careers and Indian Viceroys' is in reality the germ of the last task of his life, that great work on the Indian viceroyalty which has recently been published. The idea of making this exhaustive study was in his mind for a very long time. He wanted to write an adequate and permanent record of all that service as a viceroy meant. The following quotation from the speech delivered in 1909 might well serve as an introduction to his final literary task:

There is no one of us who has served in India who regrets one day or one hour that he has given to it. Whatever of health or strength he may have sacrificed, and the sacrifice is sometimes not inconsiderable, it has been gladly rendered. And

although, when we come back to this country, we occasionally find that nobody quite knows where we have been, and still less what we have been doing, we feel that our experience in India, whatever it may have been, is something with which we would not part for anything else the world has to offer that we have had our hand, so to speak, on the pulse of the universe, and have played a part, however humble, in the greatest work that can be given to human beings to perform.

To prove conclusively that he had his full and generous allowance of the milk of human kindness it is only necessary to read the personal tribute to John Oliver Hobbes that he delivered at the unveiling of her Memorial at University College in 1911. It is the measure of a friendship never rashly bestowed but, once given, firm, magnanimous, and understanding, and in it the word fits the thought as the perfume fits the flower.

Although Curzon took immense pains in the preparation of his speeches, he always delivered them from a few simple notes. All the headings, even the details, were first carefully worked out, and as a result became familiar to his mind. He wrote and spoke with the greatest ease, and never hesitated for the right word. Like the ancients, I think he must have written out in full his more important passages, and, unlike them, he then destroyed them. Anyhow, he held that a fine passage should be as good to read as to hear. After all, the famous funeral oration of Pericles was probably written beforehand by Thucydides from notes supplied to him by his distinguished friend.

Curzon, having accumulated his facts, ordered them, and, having decided what he was going to say, had no difficulty in endowing his materials with vivid and forceful life and a grave and dignified form.

Admittedly his spoken orations some

times lacked that touch of personal warmth which many lesser men have commanded, and which was his at will when he used his pen. It was an abiding misfortune that in the presence of others a deep-rooted pride that had in it elements of nobility, and an unconquerable shyness, made it almost impossible for him to be at his very best. Nevertheless, among his contemporaries no speaker kept a higher all-round excellence, commanded richer beauty of phrase and diction, or touched with equal skill the clarion and the lute. It is true that as he spoke he did not always succeed in making you inhale the sweet perfume of Alexander's body and garments, or see the sunburn on his face and neck; but the large grave outlines, the integrities and nobilities, if not the elusive intimacies, of his subject were always truly there, and, as we have seen, when he spoke under the stress of personal emotion he could command a sure and moving tenderness.

It would be impossible to deal with Curzon the orator and writer apart from Curzon the man. It was always so. However exalted the seat he occupied, men forgot it when they came into contact with the holder; he was so much bigger than the stage on which any of his actions were set! This may sound extravagant, but it is not really so. He had that overmastering quality which cannot be hidden by any office however exalted, and which forced those with whom he dealt into the open in all their thin nakedness.

A truth that must be faced is that he was unpopular with his colleagues, and it was so because he was superior to the majority of them; he knew more than they did; his quick mind had reached the right conclusion before theirs had started fumbling on the way. They did not like this, and perhaps, glutton that he was for work and activity, he showed

them small patience. He was a great Foreign Secretary. He, of course, knew Europe like the palms of his hands, and he had an intimate knowledge of places in Asia and the East of which his titular chiefs had often never even heard the name! He was born to rule as well as to govern; India was his ideal background, and he should have been Viceroy for life. His great work there was sacrificed to a man who was in the wrong, as events have since clearly proved. It was so throughout his career; misfortune dogged him. His richly happy home life failed to give him the son and heir he so ardently desired. Indifferent health was his almost lifelong portion. He hated inefficiency, and was compelled in public life to wink at it; he hated mediocrities, and in politics and public life he was always among them. The corollary to this was notable; it meant that he appreciated all excellence and always went out of his way to praise it.

He had a right and noble ambition to be Prime Minister a legitimate a legitimate aspiration which a cruel combination of circumstances frustrated.

He had great magnanimity, as the last two years of his life magnificently proved. Denied the Premiership, he was later even denied the Foreign Secretaryship. He was offered and meekly accepted the empty honor of Lord Privy Seal. He never complained or repined, and never once in a long career affording many legitimate and tempting opportunities did he retort, 'I told you so.' These are not little things to record of any man; in truth Curzon was in the great succession.

We have been told that late in life he complained to an outsider and said he felt himself a cipher. To those who knew him best this does not ring true. He never complained; he could never have named himself a cipher, because

none knew better than he that, however it may have appeared, he never once in his life occupied that position; men always had to take Curzon into account. At the end he bowed to what he was told was best for his country and his Party. His high sense of public duty never once deserted him.

As with all men, his defects stood between him and the supreme success to which he was entitled. It is one of the unfathomable paradoxes of life that it must ever be so. The man can always measure his own possibilities, and has the heart's bitterness of knowing how far he has fallen below them. Also he can make allowances for himself with a clarity denied to all but God. To a man like Curzon, realizing how truly great were his own gifts and how comparatively trivial his imperfections, the failure of his contemporaries to give him the highest place was indeed bitter. Yet the moment he passed from the sound of human praise or blame we, seeing truly with that terrible, that sudden illumination of death, divined him in his fullness and forgave him all his faults. Already, as is the kindly way of men, we think only of his wit, his charm, his boyish abandon, his high gift of unfailing friendship and helpfulness; of his greatness and his magnificent services to the State all are now agreed. Soon everything of him but what was sweet and fair and great will pass away; his personality will no longer stand between him and his achievements. Then shall we acclaim him as one of the greatest of our sons; he will undoubtedly stand for all time in the first rank of British statesmen. The restraint, dignity, and magnanimity of his last years will be held in sad remembrance now that we realize that to him, as to us, life did not come with both hands full, only because it does not to any man.

'SEDET ATRA-'

BY CECIL DAY LEWIS

[Spectator]

WHEN you see the dwarf stare In through the lattice Puckered with malice,

Householder, beware!

Do those glum eyes peer? (Slam-to the shutter)

They are melting your butter And curdling your beer. Before many moons

He will crack all the crockery

With his thin mockery

And tarnish the spoons.

Yet worse shall betide;
For he will clamber
To the bridechamber
And glower at the bride,

Fading the gold

That livened her tresses,

Souring caresses

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