"But now," observed the Governor-General, "there is no more reason for discussing the annexation of Canada by the United States than for discussing the annexation of the United States by Canada."
It was a straight hit from the shoulder, but the audience rose to it and cheered him as I had heard no Englishman cheered in New York before that time. He became in a moment a great figure, filling the public eye. He delivered his tremendous sentence with simplicity and good humour. There was nothing like defiance or menace. Everybody saw that he felt himself on a level with his hearers. He spoke as Governor-General of the Dominion to the people of the United States, d'égal à égal. He spoke as an Englishman to Americans. Mr. Price Collier may say, if he chooses, that English and Americans do not like each other, but I will ask him what other two nationalities have the same, or anything like the same, points of contact and of sympathy? There stood Lord Grey, just an Englishman, holding out his hand to his American cousins. If the hand happened for that moment to be clenched it was none the less a greeting, and was understood as such. You could not look into his face without seeing in it the spirit of kinship and of friendship. Lord Grey is pre-eminently one of those men who think the best relations between men or between communities must spring from frankness. He wanted to clear the ground, and he did clear it. If he had asked anybody's advice he would certainly have been advised not to say what he did. He preferred to trust to his own instincts, and they proved to be true instincts. The danger was that a freedom of speech which would be accepted from his lips might be resented when read in cold print. But it was not.
No American will have forgotten Lord Grey's gift of his portrait of Franklin to Philadelphia. That endeared him to us still further. It was a prize of war which he surrendered, taken in the War of the Revolution by General Sir Charles Grey. It used to hang near the ceiling in one of the reception rooms of Howick House, Northumberland. I saw it there some time before the gift and Lord Grey told me its history, but did not tell me he meant to give it back to America. I believe he did ask whether I thought Philadelphia would care to have it again, a question to which I could not but say yes. Yet it might almost be thought of the family, with a good deal more than a hundred years of possession behind it. But in this country a hundred years do not count so much as elsewhere. The English have long since got into the habit of reckoning by centuries.
When Lord Grey went to Washington the President asked me to bring him to the White House. Mrs. Roosevelt had a reception that evening and I said with her permission I would bring him then. "Very good," said the President, "and mind you bring him to me as soon as you come." I did as I was told. The President greeted him, as he did everybody, warmly, but in a way that made Lord Grey understand he was welcome. Within thirty seconds they were deep in political economy, a matter of which Lord Grey had made a profounder study than the President. For the Englishman had not, like Bacon and Mr. Roosevelt, taken all knowledge to be his province, and was able to master his subjects. More than once I had occasion to see something of his familiarity with difficult subjects—once at dinner when the late Mr. Beit, the South African magnate, sat on his right, and the two discussed financial and political questions. Mr. Beit had made a great fortune in South Africa, and Lord Grey had not. The Chartered Company had not then proved a mine of wealth to its administrator. But the minds of the two were at one. The knowledge of each was immense. The power of grappling with great subjects was common to both. Perhaps Lord Grey sometimes took an imaginative view, but the feet of the capitalist were planted on the solid earth.
The President and the Governor-General became friends at once, neither of the two being the kind of man to whom friendship requires length of years to come into being. It is, of course, for the interests of both Canada and the United States that relations of sympathetic good-will should exist between the rulers of each. A few hours before their meeting the President knew nothing about Lord Grey. Even to Mr. Roosevelt's omniscience there are limits. But he desired to know, and when he had heard a little of Lord Grey's history, said joyfully: "All right; we have subjects in common and ideas too." So the doors of the White House opened wide to the Governor-General, and Lord Grey was the President's guest, and the impression in Canada was a good impression.
CHAPTER XXXI
LORD KITCHENER—PERSONAL TRAITS AND INCIDENTS
It does not appear that Lord Kitchener's refusal to accept the Mediterranean post to which he was assigned has impaired his popularity or diminished the general confidence in him. Possibly even official confidence survives, in a degree. The tone of the Prime Minister's replies to questions about the refusal may denote resentment but hardly censure. So I think I may still venture to reprint sundry personal reminiscences which were written before this collision between the great soldier and the Prime Minister—or was it the War Minister?—had occurred.
"The greatest chief-of-staff living," said the Germans of Lord Kitchener; possibly with a reservation in favour of themselves. They would not go beyond that limited panegyric. The remark was made by a German officer, high in rank, not long after the Boer war, and it was Paardeberg which rankled in his German mind and would not suffer him to award to the English general a great power of leadership in the field. But I believe German opinion on that battle has since undergone revision. Whether it has or not Lord Kitchener's military renown can easily take care of itself; nor is it his soldiership which I am going to discuss. I happen to have met him now and then, and what else I have to say about him is personal. I hope not too personal.