I here relate an episode which made a deep impression on me and one never effaced. At the time of Gladstone’s death I was looking at his picture in a shop window. Two working men were doing the same. The one said to the other: “That man died poor, but could have died rich, had he used his knowledge as Prime Minister to make investments quite lawfully; but he didn’t!”
It really is a very fine thing in the public men of this nation.
I have always worshipped Abraham Lincoln. I have elsewhere related how he never argued with Judge or Jury or anyone else, but always told a story, thus following that great and inestimable example in Holy Writ: “And without a parable spake he not unto them.” But one wishes it were more known how great were his simple views. His sole idea of a Christian Church was to preach the Saviour’s condensed statement “to love God and your Neighbour!” He said that summed up all religion. He gloried in having been himself a hired labourer and believed in a system which allowed labourers “to strike” when they wanted to, and did not oblige them to labour whether you pay them or not. He said: “I do not believe in a law to prevent a man getting rich (that would do more harm than good), so while we do not propose any war upon Capital we do wish to allow the humblest an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. I want every man to have a chance to better his condition.” And what Lincoln says of diligence is very good: “The leading rule for the man of every calling is DILIGENCE! Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping do all the labour pertaining to it which can be done.”
That most moving account of Lincoln’s simple eloquence at the graves of Gettysburg is a most touching episode. The thousands listening to him never uttered a sound. There was a dead silence, when he stopped speaking. He left thinking himself a failure. It was the success of his life. A great orator just before him had moved the multitude to cheer unboundedly! but after Lincoln their feelings made them dumb.
While on personalities, I should like to say a little on one of the best friends I ever had and in my opinion the greatest of all journalists. Lord Morley once told me that he had never known the equal of W. T. Stead in his astounding gift of catching the popular feeling. He was absolute integrity and he feared no man. I myself have heard him tackle a Prime Minister like a terrier a rat. I have known him go to a packed meeting and scathe the whole mob of them. He never thought of money; he only thought of truth. He might have been a rich man if he hadn’t told the truth. I know it. When he was over sixty he performed a journalistic feat that was wondrous. By King Edward’s positive orders a cordon was arranged round the battle-cruiser “Indomitable,” arriving late at night at Cowes with the Prince of Wales on board, to prevent the Press being a nuisance. Stead, in a small boat, dropped down with the tide from ahead and swarmed up a rope ladder under the bows, about 30 feet high and then along a sort of greasy pole, known to sailors as the lower boom, talked to one of the Officers, who naturally supposed he couldn’t be there without permission; and the Daily Mail the next morning had the most perfect digest I have ever read of perhaps one of the most wonderful passages ever made. This big battle cruiser encumbered with the heaviest guns known, and with hundreds and hundreds of tons of armour on her side, beat the “Mauretania,” the greyhound of the seas, built of gingerbread, carrying no cargo, and shaped for no other purpose than for speed and luxury.
Of course no other paper had a word.
Stead always told me he would die in his boots. Strife was his portion, he said. I am not sure that my friend Arnold White would not have shot him at sight in the Boer War. Stead was a pro-Boer, and so was I. I simply loved Botha, and Botha gave me great words. He said: “English was the business language of the globe”—that’s good! Of course every genius has a strain of queerness. Does not the poet say: “Great wits to madness often are allied?” I remember a book which had a great circulation, entitled “The Insanity of Genius.” I very nearly wrote a letter to The Times only I was afraid they might think me mad, and I was afraid that Admiral Fitzgerald might not think me modest (see his letter in The Times of Sept. 8th, 1919). This was my letter to The Times:—
“Genius is not insanity, it only means the man is before his time. That’s all.”
That was the whole of the letter.
There was a very great scientist (he is a very great friend of mine and he discovered something I can’t remember the name of) who said: “A man must be mad to think of flying machines!” and he lived to see them as plentiful as sparrows.