Presently Champion was introduced and called upon to speak. He was personally unknown to the crowd before him, although his name was familiar to them. But in five minutes he had the entire audience in his grip. He made them laugh, and he made them cheer; he made them breathe hard, and he made them chuckle. There were moments when the vast throng sat in death-like silence, while Champion, with his voice dropped almost to a whisper, cajoled them as a woman cajoles a man. Then suddenly he would blare out another battle-call, and provoke a great storm of cheering. He made little use of gesture—occasionally he punctuated a remark with an impressive forefinger, but he had the most wonderful voice I have ever heard. I sat and watched him with whole-hearted admiration. It is true that he was not doing our cause any particular good. He had forgotten that he was there to make a party speech, to decry his opponents, and crack up his friends. He was soaring away into other regions, and—most wonderful of all—he was taking his audience with him. He besought them to be men, to play the game, to think straight, to awaken to a sense of responsibility, and to remember the magnitude and responsibility of their task as controllers of an Empire. He breathed into them for a moment a portion of his own great spirit; and many a small tradesman and dull-souled artisan realised that night, for the first (and possibly the last) time, that the summit of the Universe is not composed of hides and tallow, and that there are higher things than the loaves and fishes of party politics and the petty triumphs of a contested election.
From a strictly tactical point of view all this was useless, and therefore dangerous. But for a brief twenty minutes we were gods, Utopians, Olympians, joyously planning out a scheme of things as they should be, to the entire oblivion of things as they are. That is always worth something.
Then he sat down, and we came to earth again with a bump, recollecting guiltily the cause for which we were assembled and met together—namely, the overwhelming of an Italian warehouseman and the retention of a parliamentary seat in an unimportant provincial district.
Once only have I heard that speech bettered, and that was in the House of Commons on a night in June fifteen years later, when a Prime Minister started up from the Treasury Bench to defend a colleague whose Bill—since recognised as one of the most statesmanlike measures of our generation—was being submitted to the narrowest and meanest canons of party criticism. It was another appeal for fair-play, unbiassed judgment, and breadth of view, and it took a hostile and captious House, Government and Opposition alike, by storm. The name of the Prime Minister on that occasion was John Champion, and the colleague whom he defended was Robert Chalmers Fordyce.
After Champion had sat down—nominally his speech was a vote of confidence in my unworthy self—Robin rose to second the motion. I did not envy him his task. It is an ungrateful business at the best, firing off squibs directly after a shower of meteors. Even a second shower of meteors would be rather a failure under the circumstances. Robin realised this. He put something into his pocket and told his audience a couple of stories—dry, pawky, Scottish yarns—which he admitted were not new, not true, and not particularly relevant. The first was a scurrilous anecdote concerning a man from Paisley,—which illustrious township, by the way, appears to be the target of practically all Scottish humour,—and the other treated of a Highland minister who was delivering to a long-suffering congregation a discourse upon the Minor Prophets. Robin told us how the preacher worked through Obadiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, Malachi, "and many others whose names are doubtless equally familiar to you, gentlemen," he added amid chuckles, "placing them in a kind of ecclesiastical order of merit as he proceeded; and finally he came to Habakkuk.
"'What place, my friends, what place will we assign to Habakkuk?' he roared.
"That, gentlemen," said Robin, "proved to be the last straw. A man rose up under the gallery.
"'Ye can pit him doon here in my seat,' he roared. 'I'm awa' hame!'
"Gentlemen," added Robin, as the shout of laughter subsided, "I fear that one of you will be for offering his seat to Habakkuk if I go on any longer, so I will just second the motion and sit down."
After that I rose to my weary feet and offered my contribution. I have no intention of giving a précis of my speech here. It was exactly the same as all the speeches ever delivered on such occasions. Thucydides could have written it down word for word without ever having heard me deliver it. It was not in the least a good speech, but it was the sort of speech they expected, and, better still, it was the sort of speech they wanted. Everybody was too excited to be critical, and I sat down, perspiring and thankful, amid enthusiasm.