... I lunched with Asquith, he was more than cordial! How funny it is that I did infinitely more for the Conservatives than for the Radicals, and yet the Radicals have given me all I have got and the Conservatives have only given me abuse and calumny!
The Radicals gave me my Pension and a Peerage, and yet I increased the Radical estimates nearly ten millions! I decreased the estimates 9 millions and reduced prospective charges by nineteen millions sterling for the Conservatives, and they never lifted even a little finger to help me, but on the contrary have heaped dunghill abuse on me! How do you explain this?
McKenna, whose life has been a burden on my account, gives me a thing that would do for an Ascot Gold Cup with the inscription I enclose—luckily it’s in Latin or I dare not let it be seen! (The Craven Scholar writes to me it’s the best Latin he ever read in his life!) I wouldn’t write all this to anyone else, but is it not all of it phenomenally curious? Well, longo intervallo I took your advice and seized an opportunity which called for my communicating with Winston, and he sent me by return of post a most affectionate letter and says I am the one man in the world he really loves! (Well! I really love him because he’s a great Fighter.) What a joke if you, I and George Clarke were put on to reform the House of Lords!
* * * * *
1910.
March 24th.
I sent you a telegram from Ely on my way down (I caught my train by ½ a minute!) as my cogitations impelled me to suggest to you that Asquith obviously does not see the fallacy of ——’s reasoning, which as you very acutely observed would kill the Defence Committee as a whole in its guiding, but not its administrative or executive power, which are non-existent and inimical to its existence. But its “guiding” power is England’s all-in-all, if only its sufficiency and efficiency could be digested.
I had an immense talk with McKenna.... He was “dead on” for your Committee. Of course the Ideal was your being President, but I suppose the “Shifting Man” as President, according to the subject and the Department concerned, has its merits and advantages.
* * * * *
1910.
April 8th.
Old Stead’s letter in Standard on 2 keels to 1 is unsurpassable! It ought to be circulated in millions as a leaflet!... What d—d fools the Tories are not to swallow it whole—the 2 keels to 1!... I told “the Islanders” secretly I could do more as the “mole,” so not to put my name down—(The Mole is my métier! only to be traced by upheavals!) Get Stead’s letter sent all over the Nation as a leaflet.