The World Pays Its Tribute. 



487 



J. L. G 



Asked for u few words at the last moment, I cannot 

 iretend to pay a weighed and ordered tribute to the 

 nemory of an extraordinary man. Vet even a few 

 houghts set down as they come may record, if the\- 

 annot express, the profound feeling of a political 

 pponent. Walking in Oxford Street at midday, when 

 he loss of the Titanic was certain, the only name I 

 leard mentioned by the groups on the pavement was 

 lis, and that w;vs in itself significant of the extent to 

 .hich he had made his name a national and an inter- 

 lational word. A few days before he sailed 1 had 

 ecei\ed from him at the Pall Mall Gazette office a 

 onerous letter of congratulation upon my tenure of 

 he chair he had made more famous. One of my first 

 cts was to have the very chair he occupied sought out 

 nd used again, and I shall never sit in it without 

 eeling that there is some shadow of him near. 



Our friendship began late. Perhaps it had not time 

 o i)ecome intimate or fully understanding ; but it wa^ 

 ■erv real in spite of the acute political difficulties nl 

 he last few \ears. It was based upoti an ccjual desire 

 o keep the Fleet above party, and to keep it foremo.-l 

 n the evc-s of Kngland as the condition of her freedom 

 .nd her life, and of all the vital activities of the English- 

 peaking world without thought of aggression again-l 

 iny nation, We came together in support of Lord 

 'isher's reforms at the moment when they and their 

 luthor were most as.sailed. 



When a powerful and many-sided career is over ,ii 

 ast, men may emphasise different aspects of it accord 

 ng to their mind. For me W. T. Stead was, above all. 

 he public man -I will not .say journalist yet, for there 

 »e transcended journalism — whose articles on '" The 

 fruth About the Navy " led to what was little less 

 ;han a renaissance of British sea-power ; and who, 

 vhen the old popular formula was obsolete. ga\e 

 lemocracy a new one — the phrase about " two keels 

 ;o one." Good sense and good English could not Ix- 

 ■jctter united, and there came in the simplifying power 

 — pcrhap>i the quality most essential to journalism and 

 x-coming more and more important as the age becomes 

 Tiore complex— which helped to make him so great a 

 iournalist. His work for the Navy was the work of a 

 ;tatesman. full of the true vision of patriotism, and it 

 *ould have been enough of itself to ensure memory for 

 iny career, and to keep that memory high. 



Yet how much more there was — " unending much," 

 IS the Germans say. Some other aspects of his politics 

 TUist suggest to me more criticism as to others more 

 jraisc, but let us leave them aside. Yet he was one of 

 :he carh' idealists of Imperial Federation, whatever 

 lispule came later over methods ; his steady crusade 

 lor l)etter relations with Russia w.is, in the long run, a 

 I'ital service to our foreign policy and the world's 

 j)eace, vindicated in the eyes of most who had resisted 

 t ; his work for Anglo-American friendship will sooner 

 ir later have justification of a still nobler and almost 

 infinitely more momentous kind. That work ripens 



ARVIN. 



slowly, but he will be remembered, indeed, when it 

 comes to its fruit. 



Now let me speak of his place in my profession. It 

 requires courage and resource if its exercise is to lie 

 worth while. There ne\er can be, I think, greater 

 courage and resource than his were. The journalists 

 of genuine power in whose hands '" the thing became 

 a trumpet "' have been very few ; and few as they ha\e 

 been, they have acted in curiously different ways upon 

 a profession which gives wider scope than any other to 

 the utmost variety of gifts. Comparisons would be 

 useless : in his manner of seizing and driving the 



A Garden Party at Cambridge House, Wimbledon. 



Tile li'i..! ill :\ lively nryuiiiL-iit with llcrhnl Hiirrows 

 and another guest. 



tnai liine he was original. Tic did more than anv other 

 man to change the spirit of journalism in this countrs' 

 and to revolutionise its practice altogether. It his 

 intluence could be clearly traced out — it would be 

 worth doing- -that, I think, could be proxed. 



It was in sheer vitality and \italising power that he 

 excelled. As a living and energising personal force, 

 giving vivid being to the paper stuff that may so easily 

 l)ecome waste, dead matter, and into which no man 

 can put more than he can take out of himself. I doubt 

 whether he ever had an e(|ual in journalism. .More than 

 anyone else he realised that though it works with 



