“I am afraid,” he said, “I am afraid you found my message wanting in literary flavour.”
“On the contrary, I should say its flavour was almost too pronounced.”
He smiled ruefully.
“Well,” he said, “you may be right—though personally I thought one or two passages rather fine. But, of course, Hyde ... the truth is, the fellow has an unerring flair for political situations; and he’s always bringing forward these highly flavoured sentiments and fathering them on to me, on the plea that they’re what the public wants. And the worst of it is, he’s right. The public likes that kind of thing.”
“Not the intelligent public,” I remonstrated.
“I don’t know what you mean by that. If you mean the intelligentsia, they don’t count politically.... Suppose my Government fell, what would happen? There’d be a General Election—in which I’m afraid Hyde George would come to the front—which I might lose. Another Government would replace me—perhaps Edward Grey and Bob Cecil. And then? One of two things. Either they’d carry on in the same quiet, undistinguished and often shifty manner, as I do, balancing one interest against another, and being satisfied with the occasional inch of progress that one makes from time to time; or they’d launch out in an ambitious way, and the conflicting interests of modern society would crush them in six months.”
“Surely,” I said, “government in accordance with principle——”
“The fundamental principle of Government,” he interrupted, “is reputed to be the consent of the governed. But one is not always dealing with first principles; and for practical purposes one of the most indispensable things is the goodwill of the Press. The Press is controlled by capital interests. That is a consideration. The organisation of Labour is another consideration—powerful, though less powerful than formerly. There is the Entente with France to maintain, without going so far to maintain it as will offend large numbers of people here. There is an understanding to keep with America, and an Alliance to modify with Japan. There is a part to be played in the League of Nations, and that must often inevitably conflict with the cordiality of this country’s relations with certain countries, that are doing us no harm but are misconducting their relations with other countries—instances abound. There is the question of raising revenue—who is to contribute; in what proportions; how? Every decision you make on any detail of these subjects, is going to hit somebody hard in the pocket, perhaps turn him out of employment.... And you talk of principles like a professor of mathematics considering the functions of π. I get so tired of this unpractical nonsense. That’s why I can’t get on with Bob Cecil. It’s a thousand pities; for if only he’d recognise these things and take his head out of the clouds, he’d be invaluable at the Foreign Office.... But to hear him talk, anyone would think, not only that my Government was a set of ill-balanced, self-seeking opportunists, inaccessible to any consideration except their own profit, but that what he calls honest government was as simple as beggar-my-neighbour.”
“You know, sir,” I interjected deferentially, “some people can’t help feeling that a little more adherence to principle in dealing with Ireland would have saved——”
“My dear young friend,” he said in a pitying tone, “have you ever studied the Irish question divorced from the rhodomontade of Ulster, and the hysteria of the South? If you have, you’ll see that there’s right—a lot of it—on both sides. It would have been easy enough to apply a catchpenny solution to Ireland—that’s what we’ve been doing for generations, as each successive crisis occurred. Any twopenny Tory demagogue can denounce me for not giving Ireland another taste of Cromwell. But can you see British troops engaged in the process? Any paltry crank can storm at my want of faith in not giving them a Republic long ago; but can you see this country acquiescing in the Balkanisation of the British Isles? And can you see the outside world welcoming the creation of another small State in Europe?... You’ve got to come to solutions slowly in these matters; and the only principle that counts, is the preservation of the Commonwealth of Nations to which we belong.”