'"Yours sincerely,
'"W. E. Gladstone."
'I sent the letter to Chamberlain, asking whether he thought he could say at Hackney, where he was about to speak, anything flattering to Spencer, and he replied: "I am not certain that I shall say anything about Spencer; at most it would be only a personal tribute."'
With these words ends the story of Sir Charles Dilke's official relations with his party.
* * * * *
Looking back on that story, Sir George Trevelyan writes: 'I never knew a man of his age—hardly ever a man of any age—more powerful and admired than was Dilke during his management of the Redistribution Bill in 1885.' This influence had been built up by the long years of sustained work, of which the story has been told in his own words.
He combined two unusual characteristics: he was one of the Radical leaders at home, and he also carried extraordinary authority on the subject of foreign affairs both here and on the Continent.
The depth of his convictions as a Radical is attested by a note to Mr. Frank Hill, [Footnote: Undated, but evidently written about this time.] editor of the Daily News: 'As a man I feel going out on this occasion very much indeed, but Chamberlain and I are trustees for others, and from the point of view of English Radicalism I have no doubt.' Yet Radicalism never fettered his capacity for working with all men for the great questions which are beyond party, and uniting their efforts on big issues of foreign policy.
It was this gift which frequently made him more the spokesman of the House of Commons than of party in Government counsels. The approval of the House of Commons was, in his opinion, essential to the development of foreign policy, and his views as to the undesirability of unnecessary concealment were strong. While recognizing that everything could not be disclosed, he thought that the House of Commons should be in the Government's confidence as far as possible in diplomatic relations, and he looked on the tendency to surround all official proceedings with secrecy as more worthy of a bureaucrat than a statesman. Bismarck, Dilke said in 1876, was the diplomatist of foreign Europe who was never believed because he told the truth. He had no sympathy with the isolation of Great Britain, which had been a feature of our policy during his early career. But when Lord Beaconsfield would have plunged into a war with Russia in 1878, without an ally or a friend, he opposed that policy as suicidal. Of that policy he said at that time: 'English Radicals of the present day do not bound their sympathies by the Channel … a Europe without England is as incomplete, and as badly balanced, and as heavily weighted against freedom, as that which I, two years ago, denounced to you—a Europe without France. The time may come when England will have to fight for her existence, but for Heaven's sake let us not commit the folly of plunging into war at a moment when all Europe would be hostile to our armies—not one Power allied to the English cause.' [Footnote: Vol. I., Chapter XVI., p. 239.] The keynote of his policy was friendship with France. His experience in the Franco-German War had for ever changed the friendly impression which led him first to follow the German forces into the field.
Germany at war and Germany in a conquered country taught him in 1870-71 a lesson never to be forgotten, and affected his whole attitude to that Great Power. It has been seen how in the eighties he opposed, to the point of contemplated resignation of office, the Governmental tendency to accept German aggression—'to lie down' under it, as he said; and he fought for the retention of the New Guinea Coast and Zanzibar in 1884-85, as later he fought against Lord Salisbury as to the surrender of Heligoland. [Footnote: Present Position of European Politics, p. 242.]
It was this courage as well as consistency of policy that bound Gambetta to him, and made Bismarck wish that he should be sent to Berlin at a critical moment in 1885 'to have a talk.' [Footnote: Life of Lord Granville, vol. ii., p. 439.] Strong men recognize one another.