THE PERSONAL TOUCH.
(By our tireless Political Penetrator.)
For some time past, I understand, the Government has been considering steps to bring the personalities of Cabinet Ministers more prominently into the public eye. “We are not sufficiently known,” said Sir William Sutherland, who has the matter in hand, “as living palpitating figures to the man in the street. We do not grip the nation’s heart. We lack pep.”
I told him that it was a pity about pep. I felt that the Government ought to have pep. and plenty of it. If possible they ought to have vineg. and must. too.
“You are right,” he said. “Occasional paragraphs in the Press, snapshots which take us very likely with one leg stuck out in front as if we were doing the goose-step, rare provincial excursions and bouquets from admiring mill-girls are all very well in their way, but they are nothing to constant personal appearances at stated times and in stated places before an admiring mob. The heroes of sport are overshadowing us,” he continued with a sigh, pushing me over a box of cigars.
“What are you going to do about it?” I asked, lighting one and putting another carefully behind my ear.
“You must remember first,” he replied, “that this is quite a modern difficulty. Statesmen of the past used to make their leisurely progress through the town surrounded by retainers on horseback, or in sedan-chairs, beautifully dressed and scattering largesse as they went. Thomas à Becket, the great Primate and Chancellor, used to have poor men to dine with him and crowds thronging round to bless him. To-day, I suppose, Joe Beckett in his flowered dressing-gown would be a more popular figure than Lord Birkenhead and the Archbishop of Canterbury, if you can imagine them rolled into one. In Charles II.’s reign, when politicians used to play pêle-mêle where the great Clubs are now, anyone could rub shoulders with my lord of Buckingham and, if he was lucky, get a swipe across the shins with the ducal mallet itself. That is the kind of thing we want now.
“I had thoughts of running popular excursions down to Walton Heath, but I am not sure that the people would care to go so far even to see Sir Eric Geddes carrying the home green and Lord Riddell—the Riddell of the sands, as we call him affectionately down there—getting out of a difficult bunker. So I am trying to arrange for a few putting greens in railed-off spaces in St. James’s Park near the pelicans, and we also propose to hold there on fine summer days the breakfast parties for which the Prime Minister is so famous. We shall make a point of throwing not only crumbs to the birds, but slices of bread and marmalade to the more indigent spectators. We shall also try to get two or three open squash racket courts in Whitehall, so that on hot summer days the most carping critic who watches a rally between Mr. Austen Chamberlain and the Secretary of State for War will have to admit that we are doing our utmost to eliminate waste-products.”
“But what about the clothes and the stately progress and the largesse?” I asked; the largesse idea had struck me with particular force.