14 
LAND & WATER 
Eife anD betters 
Sir Charles Dilke 
By J. G. Squire 
October 4, igiy 
IN almost everv chapter of Sir Charles Dilke 's Life (by 
Stephen GvvvnnandOertnKleM.Tuckwell, Murray, 2 vols. 
■^6s. net), there is enough niaterial for a Quarterly article, 
kis experience of and judgments upon, foreign politics 
would in themselves make a valuable book. He was in politics 
for fifty years: was at one time a candidate for the Premier ' 
ship; he knew and corresponded with what one may call the front 
benches of five continents, and t(juched every sphere of social 
life. His versatility was amazing. At Cambridge he was 
top of the Law Tripos, President of the Union, and, but for his 
doctor, would have rowed twice against Oxford. He read. 
it seems, a large part of the contents of the British Museum ; 
he was asked to do Keats for the " Knglish Men of Letters " 
series ; he travelled, rowed, fenced and dined out almost all 
his life ; and he found time to acquire on every subject of 
current politics an amount of information which was a store- 
house for ever\- individual and organisation that ever 
worked with him. But if it is quite impossible to review his 
biography because there is too [much in it; from another point 
of view it is difficult to review it because there is too little. 
It is largely composed of his own memoirs : but one learns 
scarcely anvthing about the essential man from it. 
* * * * * 
There is an interesting communication here from General 
Seely, who says that for a long time he could not make out 
what on earth" Dilke was up to; and how at last he found that 
bis only motive was an unselfish desire to help his more un- 
fortunate fellow-men. It cannot but have been that ; but 
the slowness with which General Seely appreciated it is the 
measure of Dilke's extraordinary reticence. How far his 
intimates got past this— how far, that is, he ever had an 
intimate— one cannot tell ; but, dead as alive, the outside 
obser\'er cannot really feel he knows him. All his life he was 
to some extent a sphinx, though an active and loquacious 
sphinx. In later years tliere was an added mystery ; for he 
possessed, in the public eye, a special secret, whether it 
was the secret of his guilt or the secret of his innocence. But, 
apart from that, he did not disclose himself ; and it is possible 
that he did not even know himself. You can only get at his 
soul by inference. And this much is certain — and the justice 
or injustice of his condemnation after the scandal is not 
relevant here— that no man ever put up a finer show after a 
knock-down blow. He did not sulk, or take to drink, or even, 
as he might pardonably have done, retire to the country and 
read ; he faced the music and began a second political career, 
determining by sheer doggedness to induce his country to profit 
by a desire and ability to serve her which have seldom been 
united, in such a degree, in a single man. He succeeded so com- . 
completely that, at the end of ITis life, the later Dilke had com- 
pletely obscured the earlier Dilke in men's minds. That is not 
failure in the private man. And it is arguable that Dilke was 
not even a comparative failure as a politician. In these later 
years— his last two Parliaments saw him sitting, straight- 
iDacked, beautifully dressed, fortified with many blue-books, 
with the new Labour Party he was directly and indirectly 
responsible for most importyiit reforms, notably the Trade 
Boards Act. His advice behind the scenes was so freely 
sought and given that he may properly be regarded as an 
unofficial leader of the Labour movement. He did far more than 
he got recognition for ; but he had lost the desire for leader- 
ship ; and, iiaving rehabilitated himself in the eyes of his 
countrymeJi, he was not anxious for recognition of any other 
kind. Influence — to be exercised in the public interest — 
was wliat he wanted and got. And it is at least arguable that 
he would have done little more had nothing gone wrong 
than he did as things were. I-'or, in spite of his intellectual 
attainments, integrity and force of character, he had draw- 
backs which critics, for the moment, seem to have forgotten. 
***** 
It !»?ems, in short, now to be commonly assumed that had 
it not been for the Crawford catastrophe. Dilke would have 
become leader of his party and Prime Minister. Gladstone 
expected him to be, and Chamberlain had agreed that he 
should be so on account of his superior authority in the 
House. Speculation (m the point is of the "If Napoleon had 
won Waterloo " type : you may advance many reasons 
for whatever view you hold, but you cannot approach 
proof. But personally, not only do I think that Chamber- 
lain — leaving other candidates out of the question — would 
have inevitably overtaken Dilke had the partnership lasted 
and prospered, but I cannot easily persuade myself that 
anything could have made a Prime Minister out of Dilke. 
He was a statesman : and he was exceedingly skilful as a 
mere politician who knew the best way in which to get things 
done. His knowledge was immense of many kinds. He was 
fitted for anj' ministerial post, and had he become, in later 
years, foreign Secretary, Colonial Secretary, Secretary for 
India, Home Secretary. President of the L.G.B., President 
of the Board of Education, or President of the Board of Trade, 
he would have known more about any of these jobs than any 
other politician of his time. Everybody who knew him 
respected him : most people who met him liked him ; his 
constituents, both in Chelsea and in the Forest of Dean, were 
enormously proud of him. A man to be Prime Minister 
may have far less knowledge, sense and disinterested pat-riotism 
than Dilke ; but unless accident has given him the, as it 
were, automatic support of some strong " interest," local, 
commercial, social or religious, he must have the power of 
exciting or amusing, at any rate interesting, the electorate. 
Dilke's personality was not of the sort which captivates large 
masses of electors. VV'riting himself of a speech he made in 
his twenties, he says : 
It was a drearj' speech ; and. given the fact that my speaking 
was ahvay.s monotonous, and that at thi.'i time I was tr\nng 
specially to make speeches which no one could call empty 
noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, 
there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that 
between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of 
these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I de- 
livered to them — between cheers of joy when I rose and 
cheers of relief when I sat down. 
This was a peculiar occasion, for the discussion over the 
Civil List had given Sir Charles a fleeting reputation as a 
Republican fire-eater and the aiidiences assembled in a state 
of excitement. As a rule, you got the " incft'ably dry" 
speech without the cheers. In his last ten years his habits 
of discursiveness and droning had got so acute that he was 
impossible to follow. Whatever the subject — and it might 
be anything from Army organisation to the sweated chain- 
makers of Cradle}' Heath — ^he would stand up and pour out 
thousands of facts in a monotonous gruff boom, his words 
periodically becoming inaudible as he buried his head in his 
notes or turned round to pick up a profusely annotated Blue- 
Book from his seat. The Minister involved would stay ; 
a few experts on the particular subject involved would com- 
pel themselves to attend, knowing that his matter was bound 
to be valuable if they could only get 'the hang of it. 
***** 
His character was universally respected ; he was admired as 
a repository of information and wisdom, and a young member, 
of wliatever party, who was congratulated by him upon a 
speech got a more genuine pleasure out of his praises than 
from any perfunctory compliments from the front benches. 
Nevertheless, nothing could stop his audiences from dwindling 
away or his voice from lulling the survivors to sleep. He 
knew that his voice was monotonous : that he could not help. 
But he had also an intellectual disability which made him 
treat every small fact as if it were of equal value to almost 
any other fact, and a pronounced temperamental disinclination 
to be " rhetorical." He was too reticent to show his per- 
sonality : and he would not manufacture a sham personadity 
for public exhibition. He hated importing feeling into his 
speeches, however strong might be the passion for ju.stice 
or mercy behind them: he deliberately refitsed to make an 
easy appeal by frequent reference to " first principles " or 
cultivate those arts of expression whereby politics may be 
made enjoyable to bodies of men, or even those arts of arrange- 
ment whereby they may be made simple and comprehensible. 
He felt all the.se " things to be humbug, and humbug was 
abhorrent to him : failing to observe that, since under our 
system speeches are an important part of a controversialist's 
career and of a minister's administration, it is the business 
of a man who would lead his countryman to pay some 
attention — unless he is a demagogue born — to the technique 
of " rhetoric." In private conversation Dilke is reported 
to have been one of the most interesting men of his age. 
But on the platform and in the House of Commons he was 
distinctly and undeniably dull. And it is possible that 
England would not have stood a Radical Prime Minister who 
sent her to sleep. 
