went down, or the electric light went out, on a drawn battle. The methods of the two were as unlike as their opinions. The American came into action with all his forces and sent resounding volleys into the enemy, who nevertheless was not swept off the field. Much familiarity with the art of war had taught Mr. Churchill the art of waiting, and when an opening came his single bullet found its way home.

What interested me most, as I listened and looked on at this combat, was Mr. Winston Churchill's face and demeanour. The conflict did not excite him. He might have been sitting in his library with his six thousand volumes about him, and thinking out a problem of statecraft or a party manœuvre. In the eyes was the glow, not of battle, but of reflection. He thought while his adversary talked, and the processes of thought somehow expressed themselves on the smooth expanse of brow. You may stand sometimes on the upper engine deck of a steamship, and watch through a sheet of plate glass the pulsing of the machinery below. It was so here. If you did not see you felt the working of a great intellectual force.

The scene passed, indeed, as upon a stage. We were dining at the Ritz, and the room was thronged with well-known people. Mr. Balfour sat not far off, a glance of inquiry coming our way at times; possibly wondering whether he might not better have given his former follower the Cabinet office he wanted. With a keener eye for the future and a surer guess at the growth of this young man's capacity for politics, who knows but the Unionist chief might have kept the mutineer in his proper camp? It was evident enough to all these lookers-on that a duel was in progress between Churchill and the American, known

to many of them as Mr. Bourke Cockran, with a great fame as a talker, in London not less than in New York and in Washington and on Long Island. There was no group in the room which so much attracted men and women alike as this pair of athletes ; themselves aware only of each other, and of the struggle over the arid details of finance which they, like Mr. Gladstone, knew how to make fascinating, even to minds which cared not greatly for figures or fiscal puzzles. Since then, night after night and twice or three times a day during the last election, Mr. Churchill has spoken on these dry matters to hardheaded Lancashire audiences and captivated them all. The Home Office was his reward, and in the Home Office, as at the Board of Trade and throughout his adventurous career, he kept the public guessing; and the question was for ever on all lips: "What will he do next?

It was

Presently the question answered itself. thought advisable that Mr. McKenna should leave the Admiralty, and so Mr. Churchill suddenly became First Lord. Another surprise, or rather two surprises; the second being that the new First Lord, though not known as a friend to an adequate Navy, left his Radical or Little England prejudices behind him at the door of the Admiralty, and within a few weeks had reorganized, if not revolutionized, the naval policy of the Government. He set himself to restore the discipline and efficiency which under Mr. McKenna had been impaired; to restore the tone of the Navy; to create a War Staff; and to put the business of the Navy on a business basis. What he will do on the other vital matter of building battleships and cruisers and destroyers is not known as I write; nor does it depend wholly on him. But, if

I understand Mr. Churchill, he is not the man to put his hand to a great and patriotic work and withdraw it before the work is done.

Moreover, there is reason to believe that his transference from the Home Office to the Admiralty was less sudden than it seemed. Wise men in Whitehall will tell you that for many months before he became First Lord Mr. Churchill had been often a visitor at the Admiralty, and that he had studied the organization and business of that great office. If he did that, it certainly was not with a view to careless administration when he took charge. His worst enemies do not deny to him ambition, nor doubt that to whatever station in public life he may be called, he means in that station to achieve success. To success sound administration is the only road, and sound administration at the Admiralty means a Navy equal to the work it has to do.

In Mr. George Peel's The Future of England, lately published, a piece of concise thinking picturesquely phrased, occurs a passage which Mr. Churchill's Radical friends may read with profit. Says Mr. Peel:

"In that danger zone where argument dies away and only might flourishes, we have initiated the reorganization of our armaments; remembering that, of all the gods and goddesses, only one never lays aside her spear and shield and helmet. It is the goddess of wisdom."

With that goddess the advocates of a stingy shipbuilding policy have perhaps no very intimate acquaintance. But since they have votes in the House of Commons, it will be Mr. Churchill's first business, when he introduces his naval estimates, to improve the relations between them.

CHAPTER IX

SIR EDWARD GREY-A PERSONAL AND DIPLOMATIC

IMPRESSION

'WICE last year it happened to Sir Edward Grey

TWI

to become, in a moment, and for a moment, and in one instance apparently by accident, the most conspicuous figure in the British political world. He was already, and had long been, a personage of distinction in public life, and also in private. But I cannot remember that, until he made in the House of Commons his speech on Arbitration, he had ever concentrated public attention on himself as one of the few men in the Ministry, or in public life, who are to be reckoned with permanently. The impression he then made was renewed and strengthened by his more recent speech on the Moroccan question. The quiet power with which he then vindicated the position and diplomatic action of Great Britain showed him a stronger man than his best friends had suspected him to be. Before that there had been hints of indecision, of over-caution, of a preference for tentative policies. But now, without a note of passion or an incorrect phrase, he put Germany in her place; where she has since stayed. Mr. Gladstone said of him long ago that he might be anything he chose, but that he chose to go fishing. He still goes fishing, and has written a book on that gentle art, which is an authority, and is still an example of one of the best types among the

English; the country gentleman. But he is much else than that, Radical Northumberland being his home.

Last summer some of the limelight which was turned so freely on Mr. Roosevelt fell incidentally on Sir Edward Grey, though it is not a thing he cares for. There was something novel and unexpectedly human in the Foreign Secretary's serving as guide to the ex-President through the mazes of the New Forest and introducing the naturalist-hunter of the United States to the birds and flowers of Great Britain. It was an agreeable episode in both those lives. The stalwart Britons-and there were many of themwho could not forgive Mr. Roosevelt for his lecture at the Guildhall and his admonition to them to do for Egypt what Mr. Roosevelt thought right, or get out, took a kinder view of him when he made friends with Nature on the intercession of Sir Edward Grey. And the state of feeling here was for some time such that Mr. Roosevelt's debt to his New Forest friend was considerable.

I first met Sir Edward Grey at Tring Park, Lord Rothschild's delightful place in Buckinghamshire, a house with which many other similar memories connect themselves. The date I cannot give you, but what matters the date ? It was the event which mattered; it is always the event; the meeting with some new human being of interest; the new experience; the new view of life at an angle different from any earlier view; the revision of hearsay impressions in the presence of the man himself. But it must have been before I left England in 1895; and between 1892 and 1895 when Sir Edward was UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs in the ministries of Mr. Gladstone and of Lord Rosebery. Prior to that he