'Of course it aggravates the meanness that C.B. twice consented and twice withdrew: but, apart from that, the salient feature is that he (the P.M.) knowing that his decision would exclude me from public life, deliberately took that step on party and political grounds. The post of Viceroy of India is beyond and above party. No one can say that I administered it in a party spirit. I was supported throughout by both parties in the House of Commons. The Liberal party and C.B. and Morley themselves agreed with me in the controversy over which I resigned. Lord Beaconsfield could give an Earldom to Lord Northbrook, a strong Liberal who had been appointed by Gladstone and had actually resigned because of a disagreement with Lord Beaconsfield's Government, after a Viceroyalty of only four years. Lord Salisbury could give the Garter to Lord Elgin, though he had been appointed by Gladstone-but he, like myself, had been thrown over by his own party. So manifestly were Northbrook and Elgin party men that both, though honoured by Tory Prime Ministers, became members of the next Liberal Administration.

'But C.B. could not even give an English Peerage to a man who had devoted seven years of his life to India, who had twice been Viceroy and whose only opportunity of public service it was, simply because he had been a member of the opposite party and because the return of such a man to public life might be distasteful to the tail of his own party. Again, as you know, though it is impossible for me to state who intervened on my behalf (viz. The King and Morley) it is yet absolutely true that I never either solicited, demanded, or requested it of C.B. myself, as the Radical and some Tory papers assume.'

It would be idle to pretend that, upon a man of Curzon's vitality and proud ambition to serve his country, this decision did not leave a wound which it took long years to heal; nor to disguise the fact that, in his mind, the Conservative Government might have had the magnanimity to do him bare justice, according to precedent, before they were turned out of office at the General Election. Let it be remembered, however, that it was only in the circle of his more intimate friends that he ever unburdened himself on this question; so far as the public and the press were concerned, he was content to let them think and say what they chose.

But it was unthinkable that such a man could be kept permanently out of public life by the arbitrary action of a political opponent. It, therefore, occurred

to some of his friends that a way might be found if the Irish Peers, of whom Curzon was one, could be persuaded to elect him as a Representative Peer in the place of Lord Kilmaine who had recently died. I remember that it was an easier matter to enlist the necessary support for him than to secure his own acquiescence in using this method of re-entering public life. Once, however, he was convinced that it was (in the opinion of many whose views he respected) his duty to be nominated, he entered the fray with characteristic energy and was elected in January 1908 by a small majority over his friendly rivals, Lords Farnham and Ashtown. But he found it difficult to take any real interest in Irish affairs, much to the disappointment of many of those who had voted for him at the election; partly through diffidence, owing to his lack of knowledge of Irish subjects, and partly through some oversight whereby he was not summoned to the regular meetings at which the Irish Peers discussed the affairs of their country. This was speedily remedied when it was brought to their notice; but I do not remember that it altered his rather aloof attitude to Irish business, or that he ever made any very striking contribution in the Lords to their discussions upon the vexed problems of Ireland.

From 1909 onwards, I saw far less of Curzon than I had previously. We met, of course, constantly in Society and he was always the same busy, genial soul; but we had no work in common, and I always thought that Oxford or work were the bonds that bound him to his men friends. It was towards the end of the war that the accident of official ties brought us together again, for I was working with Mr Balfour (as he then was) at the Peace Conference in Paris whilst Curzon was Acting Foreign Secretary at home. It was the post that he had always coveted and he was supremely happy at his work. I am under the impression that he did it admirably, reorganising the work of the whole office, beautifying the principal apartments, and attending to the greatest problems and to the minutest details of administration with the same fastidious care and untiring industry that he bestowed on every task to which he set his hand. It was generally feared that, once in the seat of authority, he would be a domineering character. There was

certainly some foundation for this apprehension; but, as a matter of fact, whilst he was acting for the absent Foreign Secretary, there was no trace of this inconvenient trait. Letters passed almost daily between them, discussing the many complex problems that were constantly arising, in connexion with or apart from the Peace Conference. It is not difficult to believe that both statesmen exchanged views and proposals with the utmost lucidity; they generally agreed. But, when they disagreed, then it was most frequently Curzon who accepted the decision of the elder statesman with a grace which did him credit, whilst adhering to the opinions which he had previously expressed. Subsequently, when he became Foreign Secretary, the position was less easy; and I for one do not pretend to understand what appeared to be the perpetual acquiescence of the Foreign Office in the views of the Prime Minister (Mr Lloyd George) whose interest in and knowledge of external politics were of comparatively recent birth. I confess that to me, at any rate, this attitude of complete subordination was, and is, inexplicable; but, as I had then no means of forming a reasoned opinion owing to the absence of inside knowledge, I declined to criticise, or to pass judgment upon, a situation which I profoundly regretted. When Mr Bonar Law became Prime Minister, things gradually righted themselves, and, once more, the Foreign Secretary and his office came into their own. The amount of work was formidable, but, under a system which was not unlike 'forced labour,' it was performed with commendable punctuality, though at the expense of the health of the Chief and of his staff, as well as of his own personal popularity. I suppose that his prestige was never higher than during the negotiation of the Treaty of Lausanne where he was dealing with problems of the Near East with which he was entirely familiar, and with types of the Oriental mind which he had studied for thirty years.

Not long after this came the beginning of the end, when Mr Baldwin was preferred before him as Leader of the Party (and therefore as potential Prime Minister) on the death of Mr Bonar Law. Too much immersed in the exacting business of his office, Curzon had no time to canvass the opinion of his party in Parliament in

order to ascertain what their views might be; always temperamentally indifferent to the pulse of the public, he knew nothing, and perhaps cared less, about its preferences. We had several talks together during those days, whilst the Tory party was quietly and soberly examining its needs and its personnel with a view to deciding upon the leader whom it should choose. Curzon could not believe that there was any practical alternative to himself; he felt that, although there were admitted drawbacks nowadays to having a Peer-Premier, his services to the Crown and his other attainments were such that they could not be passed over and must overwhelm, in so grave a choice, not only all rivals but also such personal prejudices as might be harboured against him. But it was not to be; it was he who was overwhelmed, when he learned the decision of his old party and, as he wrote me, it has cut me to the quick.' That was all; the mortal wound he bore in silence; and, to his everlasting credit, he continued to serve, and to serve loyally, at the Foreign Office under the new Party Chief until the new Cabinet was formed and then, until the day of his death, as Lord President of the Council. To leave the Foreign Office was, I know, as gall and wormwood to him; but not one word of bitterness or of recrimination did he ever utter after those two heartbreaking pass-overs.

To this evidence of a truly noble public spirit Mr Baldwin paid the fullest and finest tribute in his speech in the House of Commons on Lord Curzon's death.

And so he leaves us, sorrowing for the man but rejoicing in his memory. It is not probable that, in our time at any rate, we shall see another like him: so true a friend, so gay a companion, so loyal a colleague, so wise a statesman, so untiring a workman, of whom it may well be said that death brought him his first real holiday.

IAN MALCOLM.

Art. 2.-PUBLIC SCHOOL STORIES.

1. The Hill. By H. A. Vachell. John Murray, 1905.

2. Hugh Rendal. By Lionel Portman. Alston Rivers, 1905.

3. The Bending of a Twig. By Desmond Coke. Milford, 1906.

4. Fathers of Men. By E. W. Hornung. John Murray, 1919.

5. The Loom of Youth. By Alec Waugh. Grant Richards, 1917.

6. The Oppidan. By Shane Leslie. Chatto & Windus, 1922.

7. Playing Fields. By Eric Parker. Philip Allen, 1922. And many other works.

'How hard to draw our distant boyhood near,
To hold in sight the flying fading past,
To rub the glass of Memory clean and clear!
The many fail: the one succeeds at last.'

THE test of success of a school story or novel should, we suppose, be a double one. We should ask, first, does it carry conviction of truth to the old boys of the school the life of which it is describing? and, secondly, does it appeal to intelligent readers, who were at other schools, as a true presentment of boyhood? For it would be vain to ask whether it appeals to the boys actually present in the particular school; we can, indeed, hear their comments: 'Oh, I say, Ginger, did you ever hear such tosh? he calls a smug a scug!' 'What the devil does he mean by a pothouser?* Oh, take the bally book away.' The Lower School is indeed too busy making the stuff of future school stories to care about the vates sacer of its fathers' days, and the criticisms of the Olympians in the Sixth are apt to be distorted by their naturally superior wisdom and knowledge.

Perhaps even the former of the two tests suggested is not wholly a trustworthy one, for the best men (and

At a school situated on a river that was once canalised the disused locks used to be called 'pots,' and the lock-houses, now vanished, 'pothouses' a 'pothouser' is believed to have been a dive taken from the roof of the little house into the lock. But there were variæ lectiones.