And I am inclined
to think--and some of the hottest Irishmen I know agree with me--that
this was the very way Lord Rosebery should have spoken. And after all it
was wonderfully impressive--even to me with all I feel about the Irish
question. For the image it presented--set forth by the physical aspect
of the orator--was such as I can imagine to be wonderfully impressive to
that dull, unimaginative, and unsentimental personage--the man of the
shifting ballast, whose almost impenetrable brain has to finally decide
this question. And the image presented to that very creature of clay was
this: "Here is a man who is my Foreign Secretary; as such, he has every
day of his life to deal with questions which affect my interests in the
most direct way; to fight for my purse, my future, my Empire; and he has
to do so with his brain matched against the brains of the astutest men
in the world--the diplomatic representatives of other Powers. And all
this he has to do with the sense that behind the smooth language of
diplomacy, the unbroken and even voices of diplomatic representatives,
there stand ironclads and mighty armies--bloodshed, wholesale, and
hideous death--the tiger spirit and powers of war.
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