Yet Alfred Deakin, to do him justice, has struggled manfully against his disadvantages. Nature intended him to be disliked, undoubtedly, but it is well-nigh impossible to dislike him. He has fought a great and, on the whole, a successful battle against the load of adulation that has been pressed upon him. This circumstance must always stand to his credit, while it explains a great deal that would otherwise be incomprehensible. With every inducement to develop into a snob, he has made conscientious efforts not to become one. Any unknown and undistinguished person, aware of the blighting effects of success on the average temperament, would hesitate to approach Alfred Deakin. He would say that such a man could not retain his sense of proportion, could not judge except by appearances. As a matter of fact, the Prime Minister is at his best when talking to little-known people. If you happen to be a newspaper reporter, travelling in the same train with Mr Deakin—and the present writer has often been in that position—you need not bother either to entertain him or to keep out of his way. It is more than likely, unless circumstances keep him otherwise occupied, that he will make it his business to entertain you. There are certain qualities he recognises. He has always time to spare for a man who is intelligent and earnest and anxious to get on. He does not worship success; because he has had too much of it, he knows how to value it. My own opinion is that Alfred Deakin is intensely tired of all this talk of himself as a “silver-tongued orator.” If some one could convince him that he was not really an orator at all, and had only a blundering acquaintance with the fine points of the English language, he would be intensely grateful. I remember an incident, slight but significant, which took place when he was moving, in presence of a full and adoring House, the second reading of his High Court Bill. There was only one individual—a rash and sacrilegious individual—who ventured to interject. The House was astonished; one or two members looked as if they expected the roof to fall. The Speaker’s wrath blazed out against the offender, but Mr Deakin took the latter’s part. “It was a friendly interjection, sir,” was his comment, as he replied to the rash person’s remark. The episode may have been trifling, but at least it went to show that Mr Deakin is weary of his very remarkable reputation; that he dislikes being looked upon as either a tin god or a hot-house flower, and that he would welcome anything that brought him to the ordinary level of political war.
It is necessary to get away from the glamour of Alfred Deakin’s oratory, and the shining white light of his character, in order to arrive at some reasonable estimate of his value as a politician. On the latter subject a great deal has been written, and a great deal could be written, not all of it in the language of extravagant eulogy. It is said that the “tempers” of the man of words and of the man of action are necessarily distinct. That may or may not be the case. What is certain, is that there is no instance on record of a politician combining such a gift of speech as Deakin’s with an equal faculty for wise, clear, vigorous, and resolutely determined action. As a State Minister, this darling of the gods was chiefly remarkable for what he wished to do, but failed to do, in connection with Victorian immigration. He had a great poetic conception of what might be achieved in the arid regions of Northern Victoria by letting in healing streams of water, and causing wildernesses to rejoice and blossom as the rose. He constructed channels, built reservoirs, and expended public money; but the channels ran dry, the reservoirs became barren, and the local bodies repudiated the debt. It was a splendid failure on the Minister’s part, but none the less a failure. As an advocate of Federation, Mr Deakin was a complete success. Eloquence was required, and it was forthcoming. As Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, Mr Deakin did little during his first term—as a matter of fact he had time to do very little—but he spoke finely, and went down heroically on a question of abstract principle. If he had vanquished a continent he could not have been more vociferously applauded on the manner of his downfall. He has now another magnificent opportunity, and it remains to be seen how he will use it. If he has done nothing else he has lifted the dull business of politics out of the rut of the commonplace. And that of itself is no mean achievement.
The third Prime Minister of the Commonwealth was, and still is, the chosen of the organised democrats of the continent. Careful observation of Mr Watson, both in and out of Parliament, impels the writer to the reflection that Nature intended him to be undistinguished. The reasons for coming to this conclusion are not far to seek. To begin with, Mr Watson has no aggressive, or specially assertive characteristics, whether physical or mental. He has not the gift of dazzling beauty on the one hand, nor the still more useful gift of excessive ugliness on the other. In appearance he is just an ordinary, good-looking, well-set, upright man. In times of crisis there is nothing so calculated to help its possessor as fanaticism; and Mr Watson cannot boast of being a fanatic. Fortune was never kind enough to him to treat him very unkindly. He was never assisted in his campaign on behalf of Labour by any act of injustice or sense of gross personal wrong at the hands of privileged persons. No friendly capitalist helped to make him a statesman by turning his wife and family out of doors. He has had a few ups and downs, but they have been of a minor sort. Undoubtedly it was the intention of Nature that he should go through life without attracting too much notice, that he should set up type and cultivate a garden, and assist in his spare moments at those illuminating debates that shake to their foundations the suburbs of Carlton and of Wooloomooloo.
These original designs have been upset. Certain political currents took possession of Mr Watson, and he could not get away from them. As a matter of fact, he did not wish to get away from them. He was shrewd enough to realise what an important bearing they might have on the future of a continent, and incidently on the future of Chris. Watson. The Federation movement was a timely one, so far as he was concerned. The inauguration of the Commonwealth Parliament brought with it the division of political parties into Free Trade and Protectionist, with neither of the two sides sufficiently strong to crush or always to out-vote the other. It was a great opportunity for a Labour party, which did not care two constitutional straws about either Free Trade or Protection, to hold the balance of power, and practically to usurp the functions of Government. But the Labour party wanted a leader. It wanted a man who would be sufficiently strong for the purpose—and it was a tremendously important purpose—but not one who would err from excess of strength. It did not want a notorious man, or a violent man, or a man whose name would cause any sort of alarm. It did not want a man who had been too extensively advertised in connection with socialistic movements in the past. It did not want a distinguished anarchist or a social outlaw. It wanted neither a Danton nor a Robespierre. It discovered Mr Watson, and it has made the most of the discovery.
It is not too much to say that this man, who was intended to be nothing, has become the most important political figure in the English-speaking world—or, at least, of the English-speaking world south of the Equator. That is not to assert that he has been the most talked of, or has wielded the most power. But the movement that he leads in Australia is the most momentous political-cum-social movement known to the present age, and in Australia it has gone further than in any other part of the British dominions. It happened three years ago, for the first time on record, that a man who was the avowed leader of a socialistic party—for the Labour party is socialistic in aim and purpose, if not always in detail and in method—was chosen as the political head of four million English-speaking people. That man was Watson. Without much notice and without much warning, he found himself raised to a giddy height. All eyes were upon him, all responsibility rested with him, all honours that were the gift of the electors were showered on his head. It was a trying situation, and the predictions of immediate and disastrous failure were numerous. However, the expected did not happen, and the deluge, though on general principles due to arrive, held off. Mr Watson as head of the Commonwealth Ministry acted precisely as he had acted when private member, or when leader of the irrepressible Labour party. Probably he knew that a tremendous head of limelight was being turned upon him; but he gave no outward evidence of the knowledge. If he suffered from self-consciousness, he kept the circumstance from the world.
The man’s whole career is an object lesson in the importance of keeping cool. Any study of the ex-compositor’s character must impress one fact on the mind. It is a terrible thing to suffer from what the French call tête montée; it is a magnificent thing to be able to keep cool. Whether Mr Watson’s coolness is the result of temperament or of will power, might be difficult to say. It is more than probable that it is due to the latter. So far as temperament is concerned, the man is impressionable, and many sided. You can tell by glancing at his good-looking, half-oval, half-practical face, that he has sensuous as well as mental perceptions; that he is not naturally a stoic; that the taste of power and pleasure is not wasted on him; that “the laurel, the palms, the pæan” are to him something more than names. If it were merely a question of temperament, he could let himself go with the best or the worst of us. But the man is master of himself. If Nature and preliminary training have not given him all things; if certain magnetic gifts such as oratorical fire and intellectual fervour are not his; if it be that
Knowledge to his eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll,
it is yet a fact that he has a marvellous faculty for showing the mens æqua in arduis, for keeping his head, for being true to himself in every emergency and at any hour. Temperament may have something to do with the faculty; but it seems to be mainly the result of a resolute and altogether admirable will. People who know Mr Watson best have never been able to detect any difference in his manner as applicant for work in Sydney, as political chief of a sectional party, or as head of the Commonwealth Government. He performed the impossible when, for the better part of a session, he led the House of Representatives in the face of a large and hostile majority. A man who listened to the extremists behind him, a man who could not think and reason with bullets whistling all round him, could not have done this for a week. Mr Watson did it for four months, and he did it very well. It is more than likely he will have the opportunity of doing it again.
The fourth member of this famous quartette is Mr George Houston Reid. It is melancholy to think what vast quantities of bad writing and indifferent caricaturing have been called forth by this Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. Melancholy, because the subject is such a good one that it should have been reserved for adequate and original treatment. It is only possible now to repeat a few truisms which are known and recognised of all men. One of these truisms is that Mr Reid represents the apotheosis of intelligence, the triumph of mind over matter. He is not beautiful, or graceful, or slim, or heroic-looking. No one ever accused him of being a glass of fashion, or a mould of form. The ingenious Mr Crosland tells us that a man has no business with a figure; that it is his duty to look like a clothes-prop in youth, and like a balloon in middle life. Mr Reid and Mr Crosland are at one in this matter, with the difference that the Premier has put into practice what the mentally and physically smaller person merely suggested. Certain well-meaning but bat-eyed individuals have accused the ex-Prime Minister of being inconsistent; they point out—good, worthy souls!—that he is found talking in favour of a project at one time, and talking against it at another. These people, well meaning as they are, do not understand. Mr Reid, for his part, does understand. We see here the whole secret of his vast popularity, of his wonderful rise to power. He UNDERSTANDS. When one recollects how few people understand, there is little further to be said.