"But when in office—April, 1880, to June, 1885—I was exceptionally powerful, and nearly always got my own way in my department. That could never have been repeated—a strong reason why I have all along preferred the pleasant front seat in the house to a less commanding position on the stage."
When Mr. Haldane's name was announced for the War Office, Mr. Arnold- Forster sent a message agreeing with Sir Charles's high estimate of the new War Minister's abilities. "By far the best appointment they could possibly make—with the one exception." And Mr. T. R. Buchanan, Financial Secretary to the War Office, wrote in reply to Sir Charles's congratulations:
"I have taken the liberty of showing your letter to Haldane, and he desires me to thank you for what you say about him, and he values it all the more highly because of your generosity. You would certainly have been the natural man to be now in his place, and it is a public loss that you are not in it."
At the election which followed Sir Charles was re-elected by an enormous majority for his old constituency, after issuing this, the shortest of all his habitually short addresses:
"Gentlemen,—I solicit with confidence the renewal of your trust.
"Believe me, your devoted servant,
"Charles W. Dilke."
In the autumn of 1905 he had delivered a series of addresses, mainly to audiences of Labour men, advocating a general co-operation of Radicals with the Irish and Labour groups. For Ireland he urged a return to the "Parnell-Chamberlain scheme of 1885," but applied as a part of Home Rule all round. His proposal was that the Irish members should in the autumn sit in Dublin, the Scottish members in Edinburgh, the Welsh in Wales, and the English at Westminster, and should then transact local affairs, their decisions being ratified or rejected by the United House when it met in spring as an Imperial Parliament.
In December, 1905, he wrote to Mr. Deakin:
"The composition of the new Ministry seems to me, as to everybody else, good. The Imperial question will slumber, I think, until the Irish question has become again acute. The Ministry ought to be able to do very well in 1906; two Sessions up to Christmas. In 1907 I expect a row with Redmond, in which I shall be more or less on Redmond's side. The Liberal party will not face the fact that they cannot avoid dealing with the Irish question without the certainty of the Irish moderates, of whom Redmond is the most moderate, being forced to say: 'We can no longer keep Ireland quiet for you.' The Liberal party will not have coercion, and, that being so, they have no alternative except to do what they ought to do. It would be wiser to do it before they are compelled; and if they did it before compulsion was applied, they would have more chance of carrying the country with them."
In a lighter vein he wrote to Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, commenting on the extraordinary predominance of Scottish members in the Cabinet, on December 15th, 1905: