LETTERS TO ISABEL
 
 ' X^X ^ 
 
 /j/S t*~4-i^-
 
 Letters to Isabel 
 
 By 
 
 Lord Shaw of Dunfermline 
 
 With Right Illustrations 
 
 NEW XSJF YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 WHO IS ISABEL? 
 
 It is always refreshing to get off the beaten track whether 
 in art or literature, or life. 
 
 We are very familiar with the stereotyped biography or 
 autobiography which describes the passage of a man or woman 
 from the cradle to the grave, sometimes at great and weari- 
 some length, and with unnecessary superfluity of detail. 
 When a bulky volume bearing the winsome title "Letters to 
 Isabel" looms upon your vision, your curiosity is at once 
 piqued, and you naturally enquire, "Who is Isabel*?" 
 
 One privilege to know intimately the source and inspiration 
 of this beautiful book makes bold to assert that the family 
 life of a man is his true life, where he is found at his best, 
 though sometimes, alas, at his worst! It was in the far back 
 days that I was first privileged to obtain a glimpse of a 
 family life more beautiful and sacred than most. 
 
 One day in a grey old family house on the North side of 
 Edinburgh I saw for the first time a solemn, round-faced 
 sturdy child with large, wistful, grey eyes and an aureole of 
 red-gold hair. The occasion was a meeting between her and 
 another imp of mischief bearing my name, the result a broken 
 doll, passion, tears, ultimate forgiveness, but little enthusiasm. 
 
 On the ruins of that disastrous day, however, was built a 
 very fair and rare fabric, a soul-satisfying friendship between 
 two houses which has survived every wind of adversity and 
 frost of fate. 
 
 If I have a fault to find with this book it is that there are 
 too few glimpses of that family, one of unusual affection and 
 beauty and charm. Perhaps in these days when reverence
 
 ii WHO IS ISABEL? 
 
 and wonder have had to hide their diminished heads in our 
 midst Lord Shaw does well to guard the portals of his house 
 of life. Nevertheless the home being the true test of a man's 
 quality none can be indifferent to the world's knowledge and 
 opinion of it. Besides, what precept equals example for 
 practice or imitation"? ; 
 
 Just here and there in these fascinating pages there are 
 gleams which are provocative, such as the exquisite tribute 
 paid to Lady Shaw "after forty years." Perhaps these gleams 
 are all the more effective because they are not too much in- 
 sisted on. 
 
 In the spring of 1915 Isabel, the last leaf on the family 
 tree, gave her heart and life into the keeping of one of the 
 great and gallant ones who laid youth and love and life on 
 the altar of his country's service. 
 
 In a long life of varied experience I have come up with no 
 more beautiful love story ; it was an idyll, alas, too poignantly 
 short, cut off in all its living beauty by the great holocaust 
 which robbed England, and broke so many hearts. 
 
 I saw this delightful pair in many queer settings ordained 
 by war service. I remember them best in a little house in 
 Colchester before he went "over there," the maiden of the 
 red-gold aureole struggling with the unaccustomed problems 
 of housekeeping under difficulties, aided only by an Irish help, 
 of very rich and diverting quality. 
 
 For the guidance of those two, so dear to her heart, a rather 
 old housekeeper wrote a little book called Letters to a War 
 Bride. One of the chapters dealt with the days that were 
 coming when they should be establishing the real home in the 
 heart of London. Ah me ! he sleeps on one of the ridges of the 
 Somme which will be "forever England" to some of us, and 
 Isabel is the heroine of her father's book. 
 
 Perhaps never has a distinguished public man made so
 
 WHO IS ISABEL? iii 
 
 late an entry into the world of letters and with such complete 
 success. But his true literary life began very early, at his 
 mother's knee, in the days of the tall bookcase. He carried it 
 right through his after life, and it lent a wonderful strain of 
 romance and beauty to the legal aspect of affairs. For he 
 was never too busy to consider the children. Wonderful plays, 
 poems, fairy stories he wrote for them. Why has the world 
 been robbed of them? Why are some of them not in this 
 book? 
 
 Shall we have more reminiscences dealing with this delight- 
 ful side of the author's life? It is what most readers will 
 desire when they lay down "Letters to Isabel." The curtain 
 has only been lifted a little way. Like Oliver Twist we 
 ask for more. i 
 
 I could almost prophesy that when Isabel becomes a 
 familiar, not to say notorious person in America, we shall 
 have it. 
 
 A. BURNETT SMITH 
 
 (Annie S. Swan}
 
 NOTE : These letters were written at the places 
 and on the dates they bear. Their order has had to 
 be rearranged, so as to put them more into sequence 
 with the events with which they deal. 
 
 I gratefully acknowledge the permission accorded 
 to me by Lord Pentland to quote from the little 
 bundle of letters written to me by Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Banner man. 
 
 While I was searching about for a suitable print 
 of the Parliament House of Edinburgh, my dear 
 and distinguished colleague Lord Dunedin who is 
 an expert in so much, including photography 
 delightfully relieved the difficulty by taking, for me 
 and for the book, the charming picture which recalls 
 the scene of so many of our labours. 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LETTER PAGE 
 
 1. THE PROMISE i 
 
 2. ROSYTH 5 
 
 3. THE HIGH GLAZED BOOKCASE 8 
 
 4. BOOKS FROM THE BOOKCASE 14 
 
 5. SCHOOLS AND THE LAW 19 
 
 6. BEFORE THE BALLOT 24 
 
 7. Two STEPS AT A TIME 30 
 
 8. THE THREE ROADS. WHICH ? 34 
 
 9. THROUGH THE METROPOLITAN GATE ... 42 
 10. MURDER ? FORGERY ? NEITHER .... 46 
 n. TRACTS OF WILDERNESS . . . . . . 55 
 
 12. WORSE THAN AN INFIDEL . . . . -65 
 
 13. THROUGH THE 'EIGHTIES . . . . . 71 
 
 14. ENTER MR. GLADSTONE 77 
 
 15. THE ELOQUENT IN TALK ...... 83 
 
 16. THE SARCASM CARVED IN STONE . ... .92 
 
 17. THE HARRY VANE POINT 97 
 
 / 
 
 18. A SPORTING AFFAIR . . . . . . 104 
 
 19. A FRONT-BENCH MAN WITH A BACK- BENCH MIND . no 
 
 20. THISTLE AND SHAMROCK . . . . . 117 
 
 21. A POLITICAL LECTURE . . . . . . 127 
 
 22. THE WIZARDS . . , . . ;. . 136
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 LETTER FADE 
 
 23. THE MILLIONAIRE . . ... . . 144 
 
 24. THE LEARNED GHILLIE . . . . . . 151 
 
 25. A DREAMER'S DREAM . . . . . . 155 
 
 26. THE AUTHENTIC LETTER . . . . . . 160 
 
 27. NIGHTMARE AND AWAKENING . , . . . 166 
 
 28. THE SACRED BATTLEFIELD . . . . .171 
 
 29. STORM AND SUNSHINE 179 
 
 30. BOTHA AND SMUTS 193 
 
 31. " ABOVE THIS SCEPTRED SWAY " 204 
 
 32. EDINBURGH AND FREEDOM 210 
 
 33. FROM REPRISALS TO RECONCILIATION . . . 219 
 
 34. TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS .... 227 
 
 35. SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN . . . . 234 
 
 36. SNOWED UNDER 244 
 
 37. THE STRANGE WILL . . . - . . . 252 
 
 38. THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY . . / . . 258 
 
 39. KEEPING STARS IN THEIR ORBIT . . . . 271 
 
 40. To THE GILDED CHAMBER ..... 279 
 
 41. THE IMPORTATION OF ARMS . . . . . 284 
 .42. THE SWISH OF THE SCYTHE . . .... 290 
 
 43. THE FIRST SINN FEIN REBELLION . . . 293 
 
 44. RIGHT TO WORK AND DUTY TO WORK . . 298 
 
 45. "TRUTH AND JUSTICE THEN" ..... 304 
 
 46. LITERATURE AND THE LEAGUE .... 308 
 
 INDEX 315
 
 LIST OF PLATES 
 
 THE AUTHOR . . . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 THE PARISH CHURCH AND ANCIENT ABBEY OF DUNFERM- 
 
 LINE . . . . . . . . .16 
 
 ISABEL . . . 66 
 
 THE ROYAL PALACE OF DUNFERMLINE . . . 144 
 
 PRINCIPAL RAINY . . . . .176 
 
 THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE OF EDINBURGH . . . . 208 
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN . . . . 241 
 
 CRAIGMYLE . . . . ' . 288
 
 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 LETTER I 
 
 THE PROMISE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 8, 1919. 
 MY DEAR ISABEL, 
 
 I can write again ! 
 
 Sitting in the loggia here, I look over great fair spaces 
 of Scotland. Under an arc of crystal air the scene, serene 
 and splendid, stretches out : horizoned by Mounts Battock 
 and Keen, by Lochnagar, by Morven, and away west by 
 far Ben Avon seventy miles from point to point ! 
 
 If outrivals the noble view which spread before the 
 eyes of Marmion and his men when they surveyed, from 
 the Braids, Edinburgh and the gleaming Firth, and north 
 to the bounding line of the Ochils. Then it was that 
 FitzEustace could not forbear and 
 
 "Cried, ' Where's the coward who would not dare 
 To fight for such a land ! ' " 
 
 But of those great things daring, fighting, dying 
 there is no question here. For it is the land of the 
 Gordons. Alas ! to many homes, away out there, has 
 come the Great Bereaving. 
 
 And so it is that it is not space nor beauty that most
 
 2 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 impresses one. It is that all at last is peace. The Great 
 War has closed. 
 
 In town, from day to day, one vividly realizes that, 
 although peace a glorious peace has been won, yet deep 
 problems have arisen, and suffering and peril remain, for 
 our heroic people. From the highest political to the 
 humblest domestic spheres we have still to reap the 
 aftermath of war. 
 
 I received a letter a few days ago from General 
 Smuts, saying good-bye, after his remarkable labours in 
 England and Paris. He was, as you know, the repre- 
 sentative of South Africa at the Peace Conference, and 
 was appointed to that high position after his victorious 
 African campaign. He puts the same thought about the 
 after-war thus : 
 
 "It will be a great change to go back to my small world, 
 after having taken part in the greatest doings on earth. But I 
 shall at any rate be very happy to rejoin my little family after 
 an absence of three and a half years. What a time that 
 has been ! What ' crowded hours of glorious life.' But the 
 aftermath is coming, and I fear we shall see grave troubles 
 all over the world. I hope you have liked my few parting words 
 to the British Public, calling them to patience and generosity 
 in the difficult times ahead. Our worn-out nerves and temper 
 are indeed going to be put to the severest test. I pray that 
 God may not leave the poor, erring tribes of men to their own 
 devices. 
 
 "Good-bye, my dear Friend. I send my dear love to you 
 and Lady Shaw. 
 
 "Ever yours most sincerely, 
 
 "T. C. SMUTS." 
 
 You know what in our home circle we think of Smuts. 
 He is is he not ? the Christian warrior ; a fine combina- 
 tion of courage and faith, of unquenchable valour, and yet 
 of the just, the serene, and the equal mind.
 
 THE PROMISE 3 
 
 Once, in a letter which I had from Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman, and which I shall tell you of some day, he 
 described to me what was higher as a political object than 
 party or national triumph, or the overthrow of others, 
 namely, to make I think these were his words " to 
 make those love us who now hate us." And this in the 
 grant of a Constitution to South Africa Sir Henry 
 did. Both Botha and Smuts have talked to me re- 
 cently about him with veneration and affection, in this 
 sense. 
 
 But South Africa is another story. After a bit we 
 shall come to it. Meantime, we are not doing things 
 decently and in order, for we have not begun at the 
 beginning. 
 
 I am rather at your mercy ; you know how importunate 
 you are that I should " tell you things," and then how you 
 gravel me with : " Why don't you write that down? " And 
 so I have grown submissive just because I am so brow- 
 beaten. 
 
 Autobiography ?. Catch me ! Horrible word : horrible 
 thing ! To stand aloof from oneself, mere impossible 
 acrobatics : to pretend that you are unconcerned as to 
 whether you should appear a pleasing object? mere 
 useless affectation. 
 
 So what to do ? Just this : to let you see places, 
 events and men just as I happen to remember them; and 
 if I stumble across the picture with any of the struggles 
 and the happinesses of my own life, I shall be there 
 because you have dragged me in. 
 
 I know that you want something about the early days. 
 Calm yourself, my dear; perhaps you may hear from me 
 to-morrow.
 
 4 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Meantime, as I say, it is the peace of everything here 
 which sinks into the soul. Away south, railway strikes, 
 bread strikes, coal strikes, with a haunting dread of social 
 upheaval. Here, the fields of ripening grain and the 
 
 everlasting hills. 
 
 Your grateful 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER II 
 
 ROSYTH 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 9, 1919. 
 MY DEAR, 
 
 Of all the changes in the appearance of places that I 
 can think of, you will be surprised to hear me name 
 Rosyth; I think Rosyth shows the greatest. It is tacked 
 on to Dunfermline with which it has about as much 
 affinity as modern brass-work has to old tapestry : it is 
 born of the spirit of war and the needs of war, and this 
 in a place which was the very backwater of peace. 
 
 The clang-clang of industry at high pressure for the 
 mastery of the seas resounds on a shore where in the 
 'Fifties you would see a belt of shingly beach with here 
 and there a broken bottle or an old boot which the shift- 
 ing of the tide had floated along from Limekilns their 
 natural emporium. And you might see, stepping west- 
 wards to the Castle of Rosyth, a couple of slow-paced, 
 heavily built men, who addressed each other as " Cap- 
 tain," and in a floating odour of black twist spoke affec- 
 tionately of a sloop or a brig which bore a wife's or a 
 daughter's name, and which went out across the North 
 Sea and through the Cattegat to Riga. 
 
 Yet their talk, too, was of change ; mostly, however, of 
 decay the decay of Limekilns and Charlestown, and even 
 Inverkeithing.
 
 6 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Such pictures could not but remain etched into the 
 memory of even the most restless of boys ; and the scenes 
 of to-day sometimes appear to fade away, and in their 
 place, as on a palimpsest from which the latest writing 
 was thought to have been quite erased, there appears the 
 earlier and the primitive record imprinted, overlaid, but 
 ineffaceable. 
 
 There, for instance, are huge docks and quays, and 
 there float battleships, cruisers, destroyers the wonder of 
 the age and the terror of the world. But all these pass 
 away, and on the self-same spot I see a little horseshoe 
 of stone, the prongs projected well into the salt water, 
 where children, adventurously wandering from Dunferm- 
 line, were wont to bathe, without guardians and without 
 fear. 
 
 One " grown-up " I remember well, a solicitor (Scotice, 
 a " writer "), named Blair one of the kindliest humour, 
 and most oracular of speech. Later, I used to hear of 
 his not infrequent reply to the not infrequent question : 
 "Well, Mr. Blair, how's business?" To this came, with 
 a sidelong cock of the head : " Business, Sir ! In the 
 language of Thomas de Quincey, business is suffering 
 from syncope, or solemn pause ! " This good man came 
 for his daily bathe to the " Basin of Rosyth." And so the 
 vision of the bustling present, with its majestic panoply 
 of naval power all this fades out; and in its place I see 
 the tall and sinewy form of Thomas Blair, the writer, 
 poised on a slab of rock, ere he plunged into the grey- 
 green waters of the Firth. 
 
 This, dear would you believe it? was more than 
 sixty years ago. There was then, as it were, an interlude 
 of peace : the Crimean War was over in 1856; the follow-
 
 ROSYTH 7 
 
 ing was the year of the Indian Mutiny!: and so when I 
 was six and seven your respected father, if you care to 
 know it, was born in 1850 there came new place-names 
 into even the vocabulary of the child. The one, rever- 
 berating through the world, was Sebastopol : the other 
 Lucknow; and these I distinctly remember as the gates 
 which opened on new avenues to wonder; and War, and 
 even Empire, gave an ampler range to the talk of the 
 fireside. 
 
 And so far as the old world was concerned, the next 
 nine years that is, from the Mutiny to Sadowa from the 
 shock and terror of India to the sudden outbreak of 
 Prussian military ambition, bursting like a new fear upon 
 Europe those nine years were the years of my conscious 
 school life. 
 
 You would like to hear about that fireside talk and 
 that school life, would you? Well, I am not sure. We 
 shall see about it. Good night ! 
 
 Your very own 
 
 TRUE LOVE.
 
 LETTER III 
 
 THE HIGH GLAZED BOOKCASE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 19, 1920. 
 DEAR INFANTA ISABELLA, 
 
 How dim the memory grows about the early years ! 
 And how capricious it is ! 
 
 No room in this world no, not in king's palace or 
 nobleman's castle, or anything down to the humblest 
 sheiling on the hillside can stamp its picture into my 
 mind so deeply as the little reading-parlour with the 
 high glazed bookcase and the great leathern arm-chair 
 in which of an evening she sat. 
 
 So brave and practical she was ! You may see her 
 lineaments in the last chapter of Proverbs. Yes, my 
 mother (and yours too, dear, but you must not let her see 
 this letter!) they both earned that priceless encomium: 
 " In her tongue is the law of kindness." Yet she was 
 austere, and with a high authority. Sometimes she was 
 bemused ; and when asked the reason, would reply, " Did 
 I look bethochted ? " and smile. 
 
 Dimly I understood that she was seeing again the 
 procession of her sorrows. And what sorrows they were ! 
 My father's death, just as he was making his standing 
 sure; then the eldest of a family of six, a lovely dark- 
 ringleted girl, in her twentieth year, her mother's be- 
 loved counsellor, fading away like a flower, as if
 
 THE HIGH GLAZED BOOKCASE 9 
 
 Death itself was afraid to snatch suddenly; then the 
 infant girl, born on the day of my father's death, and 
 named after him, Alexandrina she, too, torn from her 
 arms. I remember the doctor coming; and after his 
 verdict ah ! how I remember it ! never in my life did 
 I hear anything more pitiful than her heart-broken 
 cry. 
 
 Yet the dark clouds lifted, scattered by the stirrings 
 of necessity, and by a second cause, on which I dare 
 hardly speak : she kept up her communications with the 
 Unseen. Reverence was deep in her nature; and rever- 
 ence is the queen of the virtues. Lest reverence should 
 degenerate into superstition, lest sorrow should lapse into 
 fetish-worship, her broad downright sense, and I say it 
 quite sincerely her quick sense of humour, were always 
 at hand, and life's balance swung evenly, and by and by 
 merrily, again. 
 
 Twenty years after that is to say, forty years ago and 
 long before you were born there was a considerable out- 
 burst of agnosticism in Britain. I do not mean the 
 shallow agnosticism of the prig- which, of course, is 
 always with us but real agnosticism, sprung from honest 
 doubts and real intellectual dilemmas. 
 
 In the early days of which I speak there were 
 distinct premonitions of it. The fear of it appeared like 
 a spectre to the great and weary brain of Hugh Miller, 
 and he blew out his brains in a house in Leith Walk. My 
 father had studied his writings : among the books on our 
 shelves I distinctly remember " The Testimony of the 
 Rocks " and " My Schools and Schoolmasters," and I 
 recall discussions on his views. But it was mostly the 
 practical answer that appealed to the Scotch mind : and
 
 io LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 in due time many a Scotch response reverberated in 
 unison with Tennyson's 
 
 " Leave thou thy sister where she prays : 
 Her early faith, her happy views; 
 Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse 
 A life that leads melodious lays. 
 
 Her faith through form is pure as thine ; 
 Her hands are quicker unto good." 
 
 There was she, in whose veritable presence we saw 
 
 "The flesh and blood 
 To which she links a truth divine." 
 
 And so was given in our humble circle, as in so many 
 others, the perennial answer the answer of life to doubt. 
 
 Now then, back to the reading-parlour. ' Tom," she 
 used to say, " I like to hear clever men talk." I used to 
 sit on a footstool at her feet; and this she repeated to me 
 when they went away and the little parliaments ended. 
 Weighty problems were handled but let me first tell you 
 of the books. 
 
 Wodrow's History : little or no impression ; the super- 
 stition against which Buckle so declaims in his " History 
 of Civilization " was fleeting enough. 
 
 " The Scots Worthies " a different affair. It caught 
 hold, and there were passages in James Outline's dying 
 speech and several others which mixed in my mind not 
 a bad mixture the principles of civil liberty and religious 
 liberty. 
 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress." There was a book for 
 you ! A picture of Apollyon flames from the mouth, 
 hoofs for feet, and " the scaly horror of his tail " ; oh ! 
 the early rapture of really seeing the devil incarnate ! 
 Then the text : over and over again I read it till all was
 
 THE HIGH GLAZED BOOKCASE u 
 
 familiar, till great stretches of the noblest poetical pas- 
 sages of Scripture passed into the mind, and a gallery 
 of indelible sketches was made the Wicket Gate and 
 the Slough of Despond, the Valley of Humiliation, the 
 Delectable Mountains and the Land of Beulah. And 
 character-sketches: unforgettable: Greatheart; the Man 
 with the Muck Rake, and those immortal psychological 
 thumb-nail studies the Judge and Jury in " Vanity Fair." 
 What wonder was it that when your and my dear Dick 
 gave up his life at Thiepval, and the Church authorities 
 wanted a scroll for his memorial tablet, there should at 
 once spring into my mind the eloge of Bunyan on the 
 away-going of Mr. Valiant for the Truth, " And so he 
 passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the 
 other side." 
 
 Have I lingered too long over what one might call 
 these religious reminiscences? Well, dear, they were a 
 type. In thousands and thousands of Scotch homes, I 
 feel assured that this was so. It largely accounted for 
 some of the traits quaint, if you will and some of the 
 forces and currents, quiet and still, but yet strong, and, 
 when opposed, tumultuous of that Scotch character that 
 has modified many nations and ruled great spaces of the 
 earth. Jolly old Scots we are, to whom Providence in a 
 well-known sense has been good, has it not? 
 . Good night ! Sound sleep ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER. 
 
 P.S. Very well, my lass : I will. You have given 
 me back the letter and asked me to bring in something 
 about these big theological fellows " Did they have the
 
 12 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 same kind of upbringing or early impressions ? " Here 
 you are. 
 
 Well, I incline to the opinion that they had. The very 
 same kind of early training that I have sketched was theirs. 
 But in their case, of course, the soil was far richer. And 
 they had a far wider and far deeper University culture. 
 Natures such as theirs that were shocked into self-con- 
 sciousness by Hugh Miller's death, and were bored and 
 stung by the later extremes of Hegelian thought these 
 natures became a breed of intellectual giants. 
 
 They declined to bow the knee to Germany; they 
 remorselessly pursued to its recesses every avenue of 
 German thought, and they became the theological princes 
 of the Free Church of Scotland, to whom by and by every 
 Church and University in Christendom did homage. Some 
 of them, such as Bruce, Marcus Dods and Robertson 
 Smith, I hardly knew. Others I knew well, such as 
 Drs. Davidson, Orr and Lindsay, and Principal Rainy; 
 and one the last of the band still with us our friend 
 and my fellow-student, Principal Sir G. Adam Smith. In 
 these one and all I found the same traits : a penetrat- 
 ing judgment; a scholarship far beyond my limited reach; 
 a power of what I may call expository and illuminative 
 controversy. And their gifts were rested upon a depth 
 of conviction and were graced with that reverence of which 
 I have spoken and which only simple early training can 
 instil. 
 
 Now, lest you grow too solemn, listen to this : Was I 
 in these very early years " mighty in the Scriptures " ? 
 There seems to have been something of the sort. There 
 was a Mr. George Sampson, a grocer of my acquaintance, 
 for he was a donor of walnuts. It is a far back recollec-
 
 THE HIGH GLAZED BOOKCASE 13 
 
 tion, but it is very clear. I had to get my Scripture 
 puzzles settled, so I went personally, and on my own, 
 into the affair. I remember yet the tinkling of the front 
 door bell as I pushed into his shop. The customers 
 seemed to make way for me as I advanced. I was not 
 so high as his counter, but I put my hand up to it, inter- 
 rupting his business with the demand : " Mr. Sampson," 
 said I, " are you the gentleman that carried away the 
 
 gates of Gaza on his back ? " 
 
 Your own, 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER IV 
 
 BOOKS FROM THE BOOKCASE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 22, 1919. 
 MY DEAR, 
 
 Books, good books, and plenty of them : lucky lass 
 that you are ! This is what you have been brought up 
 among. Glad am I that in your day nearly all kinds 
 of literature, and certainly the good kind and the great 
 kind, are not only accessible, but actually obtainable 
 as a possession, for every well-doing household in the 
 land. 
 
 Formerly it was so very different, that it will soon 
 become impossible to realize the striking change in this 
 respect between the end and the middle of the nineteenth 
 century. Then, books were bought with self-denial. 
 Shall it be with literature lightly come and lightly 
 go? Preferring quantity to quality, and skimming to 
 study, people are, I dare say, staggering about a bit. 
 But cheer up! things will right themselves; in litera- 
 ture as in life, the only thing that wears is quality 
 character. 
 
 Anyhow, a book then was something individual, a 
 possession, to be weighed up, to be purchased with con- 
 sideration, to be perused with gravity, to be kept with 
 care. To stock a few shelves, then, cost as much as to 
 furnish a quite excellent library to-day. As for variety 
 
 14
 
 BOOKS FROM THE BOOKCASE 15 
 
 of interest I speak comparatively there was little of it. 
 Novel reading even novel reading on the Sabbath Day 
 slid modestly into the ordinary Scottish homes by the 
 artful wicket-gates of Good Words and the Sunday at 
 Home. Dr. Norman McLeod and Dr. Guthrie had much 
 to answer for ! But in the early days of which I speak 
 the hour and the power of these " daring innovators " had 
 hardly, I think, arrived ! 
 
 No. We worked upon the solid. The literature of 
 knowledge so much has science advanced was slender ; 
 but the real literature of power, especially the poets, that 
 did get a grip. 
 
 Imagine, for instance, a rather undersized boy sitting 
 in the great leathern chair and resting on one of its arms 
 a large one-volume edition of Shakespeare's Plays, with 
 Samuel Johnson's essay prefixed, and you may h'ear him 
 draw his breath hard : he is on his first big excursion 
 among the immortals, and he is panting with excitement 
 over the closing scenes of " Othello." I remember it as 
 if it were yesterday. 
 
 And there was a Burns a genteel and very proper 
 edition but with plenty in it to fire the blood and to 
 move the heart, and to show what human language can 
 rise to in the passionate exaltation of the love-songs. 
 These last, being wedded to familiar national music, 
 became easily it was the common case a lifelong 
 possession. 
 
 The non-religious prose I cannot well recall, though 
 there were reams of it, and books like Mungo Park's 
 " Travels," in two great volumes, I read from cover to 
 cover. But few made any imprint on the memory. Some 
 did. At one end of that scale there was, say, the homespun
 
 16 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 humour of " Mamsie Waugh," and at the other end the 
 thrilling episodes of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Legree was 
 for me the American Apollyon. 
 
 When you talk of books, don't forget the effects of 
 books like that last. Owing to it, I make free to say, more 
 than to any other cause, the sympathies of British homes 
 were enthusiastically won for the victory of Lincoln and 
 the North, and for the emancipation of the slave. We 
 had, you know, done our bit in our own dominions; but 
 we had done it in our compromising British way and 
 bought the owners out. But here was a conflict not to be 
 bought off, and, so far as Scotland was concerned, it was 
 founded on principles of independence, of freedom, of 
 brotherhood, which our history and our Burns had made 
 dear to us and worth a fight. 
 
 In the talk in which these well-instructed, thoughtful 
 men indulged, and which I was privileged to hear, these 
 last ideas often recurred. But it went wide of my reach 
 when they discussed, apparently with shrewdness, Adam 
 Smith's " Wealth of Nations " and George Combe's 
 " Constitution of Man." 
 
 While that was the kind of atmosphere (the Bible, 
 Bunyan, Shakespeare, Burns) the atmosphere in which 
 Scotch boys of my time and rank lived, do not, please do 
 not, put us down either for pundits or for prigs. On the 
 contrary, it was a wildish, rollicking, spirited time for 
 little fellows. And there were the materials for what is 
 a great asset in a boy's life, not mystery exactly, but what 
 I call historical wonder. I made friends with the clock- 
 maker and accompanied him or his son up the tortuous 
 stairs of the old Abbey Tower and into the reverberating 
 chamber of that great bell whose deep and resonant curfew
 
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 booms wherever one may wander, from childhood to age 
 booms in the memory for ever. Then climbing higher 
 I reached the frieze of the Bartizan, and peering over the 
 frieze, I saw far down below, the wood and classic glen 
 of Pittencrieff. These enclosed romantic ruins the tower 
 and tomb of Malcolm Canmore, and that pile, which I 
 knew to have been, long ago, the birthplace and the 
 dwelling-place of Kings. 
 
 Only the other day I verified some facts about this, 
 one of which facts, if your ladyship were English, I should 
 swear you didn't know, namely, that it was there that King 
 Charles I of England was born. 
 
 The story I give and the picture I send are from the 
 standard history of Dunfermline, by that industrious and 
 capable parish minister, Dr. Peter Chalmers. Puzzle : 
 pick out the window of the room where the Martyr King 
 first saw the light. 
 
 The plodding record reads : 
 
 " PALACE. A little to the south-east of King 
 Malcolm Canmore's Tower, and east side of the rivulet 
 close to the verge of the glen, in a very romantic situation, 
 are the ruins of a palace, once the residence of the 
 Sovereigns of Scotland. ... At the western end tradition 
 still points out a high window, now completely covered 
 with ivy, and the chimney, nearly entire, of the room in 
 which that ill-advised and unfortunate monarch, Charles I, 
 was born, which event occurred on the igth November, 
 1600. This, too, was the birthplace of his sister Elizabeth, 
 on the igth August, 1596, afterwards Queen of Bohemia, 
 from whom her present Majesty [Queen Victoria] is 
 descended."
 
 i8 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 In those days no dull definiteness like that weighed 
 me down, but all around there was impressionism and 
 romance. When my guide called to me from the bell 
 tower, I tumbled or clambered down the worn and dusty 
 steps beyond my power of numbering and I was away, 
 scampering over graves, to an abutment of the churchyard 
 to climb and to bestride a cannon from Sebastopol, and 
 strain my eyes across the Firth and away to the south-east, 
 to catch a glimpse of Edinburgh Castle. 
 
 But the rollicking took far less classic turns than that. 
 Think, for instance, of the snow. How it descended 
 on the cold, grey, slushy, slippery town, and re- 
 inspirited us by its supply of ammunition ! From an 
 entry, as from a fortification, a bombardment took place. 
 Dunfermline in those days was a labyrinth of closes, the 
 strategic possibilities of which I had studied with care. 
 The citizen who gave chase came to grief or got lost; but 
 by that time I was sitting at my mother's knee safe in the 
 reading-parlour and " hearing clever men talk." 
 
 Her, so long as there was nothing really bad in it, I 
 took for an ally. I once heard her spirited rejoinder to 
 a friend, who offered her sympathy about a boy who got 
 into scrapes and out again so often : " Rather," said my 
 mother, " rather a coal than a clod." 
 
 Ever your affectionate 
 
 PARENT.
 
 LETTER V 
 
 SCHOOLS AND THE LAW 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 15, 1919. 
 ISABEL DEAR, 
 
 Here is a memory which after sixty-four years remains 
 ineffaceable. It is a school scene; and if you can see its 
 connexion with education, you are the clever one. 
 
 Education was a passion with my father and mother. 
 He died, alas ! when I was in my sixth year, and I 
 remember that he was alive when this occurred. I had to 
 be at school at the fixed hour of nine in the morning. I 
 must frankly tell you that, like all the rules of my youth 
 (they were certainly good rules), breach meant punish- 
 ment. There was an unerring precision about that, which 
 left me no doubts about the reign of law ! To fend off 
 the consequences by either untruth or concealment or 
 evasion : somehow that did not come within one's range ; 
 perhaps the consequences of exposure would have been 
 too awful. So nothing was left for me but to try to drive 
 a bargain. 
 
 Armed, accordingly, with an apple, I faced the foe. 
 I remember yet climbing the school stair and entering the 
 upper room. 
 
 " Mr. Gellet," said I, " I'm ower late; but if you don't 
 give me the tawse, then I'll give you that big, bonny, red- 
 cheeked apple ! " 
 
 19
 
 20 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 " All right, Tom," said he as I thought very solemnly 
 and he accepted the apple and placed it on his desk. 
 
 The thing would have faded from my mind but for 
 this to me extraordinary circumstance, that he broke 
 his bargain. At the end of the school hours he gave me 
 my apple back ! When the worthy teacher called in the 
 evening, I heard splutterings of laughter in the home 
 circle, which mystified rather than mortified me. 
 
 After this Infant School for I had been sent to school 
 at three, I was so restless came the High School of 
 Dunfermline. 
 
 The time I speak of was, of course, long before the 
 passing of the famous Scotch Education Act of 1872, 
 which set up School Boards in every burgh and parish 
 in the Kingdom. In one sense this was a mere matter of 
 administration, namely, as I have said, the setting up of 
 an elected Board; for in every burgh and parish there 
 had already and for long been a schoolhouse and school 
 teacher, and the ideals of Knox had never failed. This 
 is literally so, and among their results is an outstanding 
 fact : the passion for education was the ideal, and the 
 uses of it for the main chance in life was the practical 
 side of the affair to the Scotch mind. 
 
 My mother shrewdness itself used to say to me : 
 
 " It's but little of this world's gear that you'll get from 
 me, but I would like to give you the best education that 
 that head of yours will hold." 
 
 So I went to the High School of the town, which had 
 a headmaster who received a house, 100 a year an old 
 burgh foundation and our school fees, as his reward. 
 He was of diminutive stature, but of more than average 
 intelligence, and faithful to his task. More by my
 
 SCHOOLS AND THE LAW 21 
 
 mother's influence than his, and possibly from a spirit of 
 emulation, I plodded through an elementary course. The 
 schoolbooks were bald and uninteresting; in nothing edu- 
 cational has there been more advance than in this vital 
 matter, the production of good schoolbooks. 
 
 There came in time, on top of the three Rs, a sound 
 course of Euclid taken in the raw with some Algebra 
 thrown in, and a smattering of Latin (grounding, ground- 
 ing, grounding, in Ruddiman's Rudiments), less French 
 and no Greek. Thus poorly equipped, I stood my ex- 
 amination, and remember, in a kind of dazed way I was 
 just over thirteen getting the Town Council medal a 
 fat bit of silver with a broad blue ribbon hung round 
 my neck by the Provost of the day, with a kindly word. 
 Then I rebelled : I declined to go back to school because 
 it would be mean to compete again for the Dux place. 
 What was to be done ? 
 
 Thus there arose the first educational puzzle which I 
 really took stock of as a thing to be solved, if I could, in 
 later days the puzzle of the educational ladder. There 
 was no real secondary school within our ken short of 
 Edinburgh and Edinburgh was distant three hours by 
 coach or rail : for nobody, so far as I know, had then 
 even dreamed of bridging the Forth. Dollar had a good 
 school, called an Academy, but there was no connexion 
 with it by train. Either Edinburgh or Dollar meant that 
 I had to be boarded and lodged away from home, with 
 the educational fees and expenses on top. The latter my 
 mother might have stood, but the former was not to her 
 liking she would not part with her boy. 
 
 For the same reason, and also because she was too 
 independent in her views, she refused the offer of a friend
 
 22 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 in Banbury to adopt me and send me, after some more 
 schooling, to Oxford University. Did I want to go to 
 sea? There was an Inverkeithing captain offering to 
 take me on, and under his own friendly eye, to his own 
 Baltic and coasting boat. No; it was of no use; she 
 would not part with her boy. 
 
 It turned out that all the time she had had her own 
 ideas. I had none. I had no preferences for any par- 
 ticular line of life none whatsoever. So she chose, and 
 she chose the law ! These vacations of trampings to 
 the sea, and trampings to the trout burns in the Ochil 
 Hills these vacations were too long; so I was taken into 
 counsel : we used to discuss things together till early 
 morning hours. 
 
 " I think, Tom," said she, " that you should turn your 
 attention to the law." 
 
 "What's the law? "said I. 
 
 " Oh," she says, with a twinkle in her eyes, " somebody 
 asks your opinion and you tell him : and then you send 
 in your account and say : ' The charge for this is five 
 shillings.' " 
 
 So no educational ladder for me. I could only grope 
 back to it a few years after. I should tell you, dear, that 
 I had tried to get into a bank, but, thanks be to a wise 
 Providence, I had failed. I was too small of stature ! 
 How could the British Linen Company be served by a 
 dwarf? A school companion was chosen, a fine, quiet 
 fellow, six feet high. He remained there in the same 
 room of the same bank, and probably at the same desk, 
 for forty years, and then he died, his maximum salary 
 probably never over ' 100. 
 
 So behold your paternal relative on a high stool in the
 
 SCHOOLS AND THE LAW 23 
 
 office of a high-minded, but high-tempered, solicitor ! I 
 simply had to grow up. And grow I did, like the sturdiest 
 of saplings. We banked at the British Linen, the office 
 that refused me, and I remember well the agent taking a 
 squint at me as I went in from time to time; it seemed 
 to me that -it was rather insulting to him that I should be 
 growing at the rate of about an inch a fortnight ! 
 
 Good-bye, then, educational ladder; good-bye for the 
 present. 
 
 " But, Father," I hear you say, " what about the hearth 
 and home talk that you sometimes speak of ? " 
 
 Well, my dear, one thing at a time. That is another 
 
 story. 
 
 Ever your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER VI 
 
 BEFORE THE BALLOT 
 
 Craigmyle, 
 
 September 30, 1919. 
 MY DEAR ISABEL, 
 
 The entire railway traffic of the country is under the 
 arrest of a strike. It carries my mind back to the con- 
 ditions and hours of labour half a century ago. 
 
 As a boy I stood watching one of the early processions 
 of miners, gathered to hear a leader of that day named 
 McDonald. It was not what was said, but what I saw, 
 which was stamped upon my mind. 
 
 The men were nearly all under middle age, and the 
 revolting fact was this : that, as it appeared to me, at 
 least one in three of these men bore, in his own person 
 in gait, in figure, or in face the traces of bodily injury. 
 Now it was the " hirpling " walk caused by a fractured 
 limb imperfectly repaired; again it was that twisted and 
 high-shouldered formation of the body which comes of 
 extreme labour in a thin seam when the workman plies his 
 pick horizontally. And over and over again " the human 
 face divine " had been gashed open and was seared by a 
 deep blue scar. 
 
 People raged against the wild things that were said 
 at these meetings; savage demands, if you will, but for 
 better and more human conditions of life. I forgot these, 
 but the pictures remained. And many, many times when 
 
 24
 
 BEFORE THE BALLOT 25 
 
 Statutes of Parliament like " Mines Regulations Acts " 
 have been proposed, or under interpretation, I seem to 
 have seen again, away beyond the green benches of the 
 Commons or the red benches of the Lords, that dolorous 
 tableau vivant the men maimed in form and marred in 
 visage, in whose cases sacrifice and suffering seemed 
 Labour's inevitable portion. 
 
 Forgive me, dear, bringing this before you. But when 
 you hear round condemnations of men like the miner, 
 remember the past. It was as I have described it. Notable 
 changes, enormous ameliorations, have taken place, for 
 which one is filled with a great thankfulness. But the 
 memory of men is tenacious, and the bitterness of to-day's 
 controversies may be in part owing to recollections of 
 acute and undeserved miseries. You are old enough to 
 reckon these things up for yourself; but, when you do so, 
 give play to the historical sense it teaches us to make 
 allowances. 
 
 As to hours of labour ha ! The fact is that we are 
 living in a different world. It seems odd to make a 
 lawyer's clerk's hours a general measure, but I do believe 
 that it is good enough at that. From 9.30 to 8, and on 
 Saturdays till i ; short intervals for meals ; roughly speak- 
 ing, a fifty-five hours week. But overtime ! There was 
 the rub. Just before the curfew sounded I was often 
 summoned up and the evening's extra work began. This 
 lasted variously till 9 or 10, or, in extreme cases, till 2 
 and even 3 in the morning. And no pay. Reward that 
 I was learning my business. 
 
 Was this slavery ? Not at all not at all. The reason 
 for which is that during the years when the work was the 
 most severe I was under a master whom I respected and
 
 26 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 revered; and as his amanuensis I saw the workings of an 
 alert, a highly principled, and a well-cultured mind. It 
 is the old story : " The labour we delight in physics 
 pain." 
 
 To show you, however, what we should now call the 
 drudgery side of it, consider this. It is quite remarkable 
 the changes in such an apparently little matter as the 
 expression and transmission of thought. This applies to 
 the mechanism of every office in the kingdom. Letters 
 or documents are dictated and the author is a free man 
 for other work. His words are stenographed, typed, 
 booked by press; the mechanics of the operation are 
 accurate and swift. Then we wrote to dictation in long- 
 hand, and we booked the letters also in long-hand witness 
 the great fat letter-books, those cruel devourers of time. 
 When press-copying was introduced it was an innovation, 
 a labour-saving apparatus, and wiseacres not knaves nor 
 fools, but simply wiseacres shook their heads. Laugh- 
 able. 
 
 # * # * # 
 
 Could the spirit of exhilaration or of fun enter into 
 such a life? Yet it did. Think of the roaring time at 
 elections the concocting of political squibs, the fine 
 rampagiousness of manoeuvring or disturbing a political 
 meeting. I remember well, in the years 1866-7, we were 
 agents for Mr. Ramsay, an estimable Whig. The oppo- 
 nent was a spruce, well-groomed Radical out of a 
 Tory nest, by name Mr. Henry Campbell, afterwards 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The nerve of every 
 man and boy in the establishment was strained for his 
 undoing.
 
 27 
 
 I broke hours. It was a duty, for had I not to clamber 
 into the front seat of the gallery of the Music Hall and 
 represent public opinion? A Mr. Thomas Morrison, a 
 shoemaker, orator and ex-Chartist (uncle, by the way, of 
 Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the millionaire), held forth after 
 Mr. Campbell had spoken. He made an astonishing 
 prognostication, which was rapturously received by the 
 Campbellites, but was greeted with a pandemonium of 
 derision by the Ramsayites, a derision in which my vocal 
 powers nearly brought me into notice from the Chair. The 
 prognostication was that the candidate would one day be 
 Prime Minister of England ! A good laugh Sir Henry 
 had when I told him the story five-and-thirty years after- 
 wards, at 10, Downing Street. I think you have heard him 
 chaffing me about it yourself. 
 
 By the way, there was a curious circumstance there. 
 We beat Mr. Campbell. He, however, saw that a wider 
 electorate was on the eve of enfranchisement, and he held 
 on. The Reform Act of 1867 was passed; and he then 
 beat us. And he retained the seat for the remainder of 
 his life forty years. 
 
 Of course, until the Ballot Act was passed the chances 
 of not a little " enjoyment " remained. In the county 
 we acted for Sir Robert Anstruther, and he had a body 
 of notably keen supporters. Let me give you an instance 
 of what went on. In the polling booth the Sheriff was 
 presiding officer, and on either side of him was seated a 
 representative of each candidate, whose duty was to mark 
 off each vote from the list before him, and to pass out 
 the results to a committee outside. I was Sir Robert's 
 representative and witnessed the scene. 
 
 One of the " incidents," you see, which the free and
 
 28 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 independent elector had to face was that within a few 
 minutes of his having done his duty to his country it was 
 known not only that he had voted, but how he had voted, 
 and he was greeted or treated accordingly, and on the 
 spot. There were happenings afterwards also but that 
 is another matter. 
 
 So the door was suddenly opened, and from the hubbub 
 outside there was thrust visibly shoved into the room 
 Laird So-and-so, a quite notorious drunkard. He had 
 been primed in every way, but principally on the name 
 of the candidate; that name was the compend and the 
 stamp of everything in Church and State that had to be 
 voted for. In fact, so well had it been dinned into him, 
 and so often had he repeated it, that he could not say 
 anything else. 
 
 He accordingly balanced himself carefully, reached the 
 desk, and to the Sheriff's courteous inquiry, " What is 
 your name ?. " he made the prompt and astonishing answer, 
 " Sir Robert Anstruther." 
 
 " I am not wanting the name of a candidate," said 
 the Sheriff, " but your own name. What is your name, 
 please ? " 
 
 The Laird balanced himself with dignity and eyed 
 the Sheriff up and down, evidently wondering what game 
 he was up to. Nothing else but the candidate's name 
 was in the programme. And so, to the question again 
 repeated : 
 
 "What is your name, sir?" he again replied with 
 determination : 
 
 " Sir Robert Anstruther." 
 
 His political convictions were not to be shaken. He 
 was removed by the police. In a couple of hours he was
 
 BEFORE THE BALLOT 29 
 
 back, but he had been better drilled. He gave his name 
 and voted straight, and was received outside with cheers. 
 Things are duller now. The ballot came, and the 
 drunkard lost his double chance. 
 Jolly old British Constitution ! 
 
 Yours ever and aye, 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER VII 
 
 TWO STEPS AT A TIME 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 October 10, 1919. 
 MY DEAR TRUANT, 
 
 I sometimes really do think about you and remember 
 my promise. But on these glorious days the partridges 
 have they not? have the first claim. 
 
 Anything more about the lawyer's apprentice? Not 
 a word more. It would bore you. I have no memory for 
 stodge. Stodge, however, is the anvil of application. And 
 the habit of application, again, is the making of mental 
 muscle. The strain upon my slender equipment of that 
 was coming. 
 
 After a year or two I came to see that the walls of a 
 solicitor's office were too narrow for the kind of life I 
 wished to live. The rebel in me broke loose, and I thought 
 of the Bar. 
 
 Why then not go, and go at once? Halt a bit. To 
 the Bar was a very adventurous jump. The solicitor's 
 life was narrow, but it was a living; the barrister's life 
 might be no living at all, and I might have to drop 
 back into being a solicitor after all. I could not afford 
 to have any nonsense in my head about carrying all before 
 me. So then, in order to be a solicitor, I had to complete 
 my indenture. Complete it, therefore, I did, thus leaving 
 that avenue open if the other speculation should fail. 
 
 30
 
 TWO STEPS AT A TIME 31 
 
 But if I went to the Bar, I must at least try to go on 
 even terms have degrees both in Arts and in Law, and 
 be " respected like the lave." Alas ! the blessed educa- 
 tional ladder ! I had lost hold of it for four years ; hence 
 I must mount two steps at a time, and take the two 
 curricula together compress seven years' work into four. 
 This was done; but I was a galley-slave. 
 
 Of the true aroma of University life I was never, 
 until the last year of it, fully sensible, and no real justice 
 could be done to either course. Yet on the one hand I 
 may have been fortified in habits of endurance already 
 formed, while on the other it may have tightened up a 
 certain tenacity of purpose. Endurance and tenacity. 
 Scotland demands these of her sons. 
 
 As bearing upon them, here is a curious circumstance. 
 You have heard many discussions about the advantages 
 of compulsory Greek. Well, Greek was compulsory in 
 those days; no degree without it. So here was a youth 
 of 19 or 20 who had no Greek not a word, not a letter 
 of it. What was to be done? Only one thing. I left 
 the office in July; on the ist of August I bought a Greek 
 grammar, and within three months I had matriculated 
 (make no mistake, there was no examination for that privi- 
 lege then !), and I was in the Greek classes. 
 
 There I was, sitting on the University benches, listen- 
 ing with amazement to the prelections of Professor Blackie 
 on everything in general, with a preference for Scotch, 
 and a little Greek by the way. Dear, nimble-witted, 
 lovable man ! And at the appointed eighteen months 
 afterwards I " scraped through " my classics for the 
 degree. 
 
 A perfect travesty of education; a cast-iron system.
 
 32 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Had there been the alternative of a modern language, 
 I might have been making use of that all my life, instead 
 of laying to one side and for ever that glorious dead! 
 language which I had never got the length of loving for 
 its own sake. 
 
 Yet we had had Blackie : and Blackie the alert, the 
 handsome professor, with the noble head of snowy hair 
 was an exhilaration. Often, too, he had the comforting 
 word and he drew us out. Once I was encouraged by 
 him when he looked over a rendering in English verse 
 of one of ^Eschylus's choruses which I ventured to submit 
 to him. He had a real turn for versification, but his talent 
 for it went to seed. For instance, this : Imagine 150 young 
 men watching his gesticulations as he shouted : 
 
 " There, there, there, there, there, there, there! 
 God bless Tom and his whalebone wigf ! " 
 
 So much for compulsory Greek. 
 
 With Latin one did as why not under a scholar like 
 Sellar? one did get a little farther. Yet the stage of 
 real facility in the iise of the language was never reached ; 
 and my impression is that this was the case with the over- 
 whelming majority of students who left the Scotch Univer- 
 sities during that generation. How is it in your day? 
 
 On the literature of it, especially on the Augustan 
 poets, Sellar was really inspiring. The memory retains, 
 curiously, only three outstanding points, two of style and 
 one of content. Carlyle was then in great vogue among 
 us; but in Tacitus I seemed to see a trenchant, vivid and 
 compendious strength beside which Carlyle, with no mean 
 grip of these qualities, appeared almost vaporous. At
 
 TWO STEPS AT A TIME 33 
 
 the other end of the scale, it was the delicate grace of 
 Cicero's letters to Atticus that came like a far-away yet 
 effective rebuke to that rawness and abruptness which are 
 the curse of Scottish youth. 
 
 Then the third had content in it as well as style; it 
 was Cicero's " -pro Cluentio" The merits of the case are 
 no matter; but many a time and oft in the course of a legal 
 and parliamentary life I have remembered how a great 
 solid portion of the famous address was dedicated to the 
 removal from the jurors' minds of " invidia" Invidia 
 prejudice for or prejudice against invidia never forget 
 this, dear invidia is the foe of fair judgment. It has 
 sent the innocent often and often to the gallows or the 
 stake; and, from the great scale of former days to the 
 petty scale of milder times, it has dealt out ostracism and 
 martyrdom with a callous mind. Within the circle of the 
 law it is still to be found. Human nature is so constituted 
 that in quarters of the brain both of judge and of jury 
 it's embers may lie ready for the stirring; but the art of 
 advocacy is never higher than when the herculean task 
 is undertaken in a cause debauched by public innuendo 
 to remove prejudice from the mind of a jury or from the 
 mind of a judge, over whom, much more than over a jury, 
 " invidia " has a strong and a subtle hold. I have often 
 thought about this, and I speak from a long experience. 
 
 But I weary you. Only remember beware of invidia. 
 It is, as I say, the foe of fair judgment. Well, Cicero, in 
 his " pro Cluentio" was the first to teach me this lesson. 
 
 Have I talked like a professor? I hope not, truly. 
 
 Your very own 
 
 TRUE LOVE.
 
 LETTER VIII 
 
 THE THREE ROADS. WHICH? 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 October 14, 1919. 
 
 MY DEARLY BELOVED LASS, 
 
 We were to motor all the way to the great Babylon, 
 and were proposing to start this morning. But all our 
 plans are upset. So what to do ? Whip up another recol- 
 lection or two of the student days, and write you another 
 letter? So be it. 
 
 Of all the professors, Masson was the prince. The 
 mark of everything he did was conscientious thoroughness. 
 He had no antipathy to modernity of style, for he had the 
 feeling of movement which comes from the historical sense 
 and the open mind. Mostly he plodded, and you could 
 not but respect his sureness of foot. But when he soared, 
 as he sometimes did, it was no mere flutter, but like the 
 lift of a great aeroplane, where everything awes you, even 
 the pulsing of the engines. When he reached the Eliza- 
 bethans the large class-room filled up and up; and his 
 three lectures on Shakespeare drew his former pupils back 
 to mingle with their successors on the crowded benches, 
 and to quaff once again the old inspiration. It quite 
 maddened me to realize that I was only able to give to 
 Masson the mere scraps of my ,time. 
 
 But I remembered and I practised one of his 
 rules. That rule has, I feel convinced, enriched many 
 
 34
 
 THE THREE ROADS. WHICH? 35 
 
 a life. It was something like this : " When anything 
 strikes you in a great poet, mark the passage down 
 and learn it if you can by heart. If you do that it 
 will go with you to the end of the world. It will become 
 part of yourself. That is culture." In my own case, as 
 in the case of a whole generation, this grave and simple 
 and by no means recondite lesson has been a veritable 
 well-spring of joy. 
 
 I must pull up. The four years drew to an end. 
 But, you ask, what was the student life like? My 
 dear, there was no student life. Those who came from 
 beyond Edinburgh lived in lodgings, alone, or two or 
 three in the same house. The life was severe, the loneli- 
 ness sometimes hard to bear. There was no College 
 refectory, no common room, no Students' Union. In the 
 lodging, it almost seems to me at this distance of time, 
 that the piece de resistance of the six o'clock dinner was 
 on four days of the week a steak and on three days of 
 the week a chop. Sometimes, I confess, it was a piece de 
 resistance in more senses than one. 
 
 Yet why complain ? Were we not conscious that many 
 others of our fellow-students rarely saw butcher meat? 
 Men of stalwart bearing, and nerves and muscle of iron : 
 oatmeal was their staple diet; and they grew masters of 
 themselves, learning to " scorn delights and live laborious 
 days." Some tutored in families, struggling to make ends 
 meet, and some succumbed, their purses drained by the 
 payment of fees, and they sickened and died. 
 
 I rejoice that the life of the poor student is now in- 
 finitely happier, infinitely more human. I love the poor 
 student. He is of earth's best. 
 
 This loneliness, this segregation of young manhood,
 
 36 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 produced curious results. Not meeting one another ex- 
 cept in the somewhat formal atmosphere of, it might be, 
 a debating society, where the only big tussles were on 
 points of order, the students got no advantage of " iron 
 sharpening iron." They wanted to be independent : 
 yet what they were taught was no matter of debate; 
 they followed the professor like sheep through a 
 gate. 
 
 Yet, as I say, they wanted to be independent. Of this 
 I will give you an instance. About the end of my curri- 
 culum I became, if you please, Assistant Professor of 
 Ethics (I hope your mind is sufficiently solemnized !), 
 and I delivered a short course of lectures to, say, 
 seventy students. In the course of examining some 
 problem, I said : ' Upon this point I differ from the 
 Professor." 
 
 You should have heard the gasp, and then a storm of 
 cheers enough to blow the roof off. Nobody in all their 
 experience and they were in their last Arts year had 
 ever ventured to differ from a Professor. And here they 
 were, asked to sit in judgment on a difference between 
 a Professor and a Lecturer. The fun of it ! 
 
 At the next examination they gave the good man value 
 for his money. And he was a good man was Dr. Calder- 
 wood a capital teacher, expositor, debater. He said to 
 me : " What's in the heads of these fellows ? Most of them 
 are saying that I am wrong. Where did they get that ? " 
 " I am afraid," said I, " they got it from me ! " " Oh, 
 that's it," said he, and he laughed loud and long; and then 
 he added : " Now, you know, that is first-rate ; they have 
 all been working this thing out. It is teaching them to 
 think for themselves." And I can guarantee that none
 
 THE THREE ROADS. WHICH? 37 
 
 of them suffered one whit in their awarded values for 
 differing from the Professor. 
 
 The fact was that philosophy was hitting me rather 
 hard; I was reading myself nearly blind with a great 
 variety of stuff, revelling in Jowett's Plato, moved beyond 
 belief with, say, the " Apologia " and the later books of 
 the " Republic," passing along, and possibly more hit by 
 Leibnitz than any of the others and landing and stand- 
 ing long on Kant pure reason, categorical imperative, 
 and all the rest of it and having as a working guide a 
 wonderful little History of Philosophy by Schwegler. 
 
 After a killing examination a fellowship of ^300 
 came my way. And here is an odd thing. The Fellow- 
 ship was founded in memory of Sir William Hamilton. 
 But among the things that most stimulated me in these 
 studies was the Examination of that same Hamilton's 
 Philosophy by John Stuart Mill a clever, penetrating 
 book (one need not agree with all of it), in which Hamilton 
 is vigorously reduced to mince-meat. I don't think a word 
 was asked about Hamilton " of pious memory " ; but, if 
 there had been, I was no doubt prepared to attack him on 
 Mill's lines. 
 
 It almost looked as if I were going to be a professor. 
 Had I ambitions in that direction? I had no ambitions 
 whatsoever. I had distractions distractions as to how I 
 was to earn my living. There were rivals to philosophy 
 in the field. Here was one. 
 
 In those days the Lord Rector of a Scotch University 
 was a person of distinction in the world of scholarship or 
 letters, and the practice of making these students' elec- 
 tions a political battle was not so common. Great names 
 there had been among the rectors, and the recollections of
 
 38 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 men were still fresh of the great addresses of Glad- 
 stone, of Carlyle, and of Froude. In such a class and 
 rank Sir William Stirling Maxwell was deservedly 
 placed. 
 
 One of the first things he did was to offer a Rectorial 
 prize on " the causes which prevented the Spanish- Ameri- 
 can dominions from being a source of wealth and power 
 to Spain." Here was an encouragement to research. Not 
 research in general, on which so much vague sentiment 
 is expended, but specific research, research on a prescribed 
 topic. 
 
 Students, " researchers," inquiring and willing young 
 fellows, by the scores and by the hundreds, not having a 
 specific and commanding lead, not being told what to do 
 and where to go, simply roam about the vast open fields, 
 say, of literature, of history, or of science; grow stale; 
 and reach nowhere. It was so then ; it is so still. A dozen 
 of such exercises essays in the true sense of being inde- 
 pendent efforts of the mind and faculty a dozen of such 
 in each University would do more for the intellect of 
 students than all the lectures of twice a dozen professors. 
 Would that not suit University authorities? And is that 
 why they are so slow in this direction? Perish the 
 thought ! 
 
 Anyhow, I can judge by what Maxwell did. His 
 rectorial problem set a band of us nosing around in 
 economics, in history and in theories of government, and 
 we saw country which we might never have seen but 
 for the coveted distinction and the five-and-twenty 
 guineas ! 
 
 It was no slight thing to have to dive deep into Adam 
 Smith and to feel the sweep of the eloquent impressionist
 
 THE THREE ROADS. WHICH? 39 
 
 view of Spanish history by Buckle, and the check and 
 sedative of such a writer as Sir George Cornewall 
 Lewis " on the Government of Dependencies." Such 
 things were the beginnings, too, of new thoughts as to 
 public life; for if history and economics be not the prime 
 equipment of the politician, what are? 
 
 " But," I think I hear you say, " you were going to 
 tell me what the rival to philosophy was." Forgive me, 
 dear, for wandering. It is an odious thing when people, 
 especially fathers, start airing their " views." Well, the 
 result of the rectorial affair was that Masson, one of the 
 examiners, sent me down to Professor Baynes, then edit- 
 ing the " Britannica." They were about that time willing 
 to have historical matter, and so, starting with the buc- 
 caneers, as a sort of branch of the Spanish-American 
 subject, I slid into the regions of Scotch and French bio- 
 graphy. If this was literature, it was pretty solid stuff. 
 Not the glorious literature which has been woven into the 
 texture of my life, as you within the circle of the home 
 have known it. But one had to work, and one had to 
 live. 
 
 Yet suddenly in this grubbing among historical matter 
 a great light would shine. What a gallery it was ! Des- 
 moulins, say, and Marat, the Rolands, Talleyrand and 
 Vergniaud. Of all these Vergniaud, the Girondist leader, 
 most impressed the imagination. I have often thought 
 of that day when the trial of the illustrious band was 
 summarily stopped lest their further eloquence should 
 move even hearts of stone. More often have I thought 
 of the evening of that day when Vergniaud " reasoned 
 sublimely " on the immortality of the soul, ere he passed 
 with his gifted company twenty-one in number the
 
 40 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 flower of France passed with them, in the dawn, to the 
 block. 
 
 And on the literary side this curious fact stuck in the 
 mind. Over and over again in the life and testimony of 
 these stormy figures you saw from the records that their 
 revolutionary ardour had been fired by one torch, namely, 
 the writings of Plutarch. As if thus, across the centuries, 
 Deep were calling unto Deep ! 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Meantime, where was the law? Well, my dear, the 
 classes in the law were my trade taught as a trade and 
 learned as a trade. I make no pretence to remember 
 anything worth uttering. Jurisprudence, serene, splendid, 
 the august image of ordered rule among men and nations : 
 that I never beheld, even in vision, in all my College 
 course. Whirl and excitements, examinations, degrees, a 
 business training, and ever with an eye on the finger of 
 the clock. Ah, me ! Cares and responsibilities there are 
 yet ; and they are heavy. Ye; how dare I complain, even 
 in memory ? 
 
 " If after every tempest come such calms, 
 
 May the winds blow till they have wakened death." 
 
 One other rival still. Philosophy and literature and 
 law seemed suddenly to become side issues. I fell in 
 love with your mother. At first sight and for ever. I 
 say it reverently after forty years. 
 
 But how could I ask such a one to share the fortunes 
 of a problematical, philosophical professor, or a literary 
 hack ? No : for her sake it must be the law. A legend of 
 fair women, it seemed to be. The hand of the one had 
 led me through the humble country portal; and now the
 
 THE THREE ROADS: WHICH? 41 
 
 hope of another seemed to beckon me through the 
 metropolitan gate. 
 
 That was the kind of impetuous, fantastical, distracted 
 person who in 1875 entered the Edinburgh Parliament 
 House. Friends, acquaintances, he had none, either on 
 the Bench or at the Bar. 
 
 Tired ? I don't wonder. Off to bed ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER IX 
 
 THROUGH THE METROPOLITAN GATE 
 
 I, Palace Gate. 
 
 October 24, 1919. 
 MY DEAR CHILD, 
 
 Well ! here I am, in the south again, and in the 
 dear old library, and hoping soon to see your very own 
 self, 
 
 ' Whereunto shall I liken " that generation of lawyers 
 who then trod the boards of the old historic Parliament 
 House of Scotland? Like every other generation, it was 
 all sorts of people. What thought they, for instance, of 
 the Parliament House itself? The plain man amongst 
 them thought simply, and he said : " Fine hall, fine roof, 
 fine floor, and on the walls those glorious Raeburns ! }: 
 The wit dubbed it the " salle des pas perdus" But when 
 the enthusiast would venture so far as : " It is the temple 
 of Themis " then the philistine would slide in with : 
 ' Themis, did you say ? Not Themis. The name is 
 Grundy. Temple of Mrs. Grundy." 
 
 There was truth with all of these gentlemen. The 
 law had a solid and dignified home. The trampings of 
 many young men there have been so fruitless ! And, upon 
 nearly every mother's son of them, convention there had a 
 narrowing and tyrannical power. Yet withal, justice there 
 was sought after, was veritably worshipped. Had you been 
 there and asked me to prove this, I should have pointed 
 
 42
 
 THROUGH THE METROPOLITAN GATE 43 
 
 you to two figures, strikingly dissimilar in bodily appear- 
 ance, but strikingly alike in their acquaintance with the 
 development of the law and their loyalty and reverence 
 to that which underlies it and is deeper and nobler than all 
 its earthly sanctions. Inglis commanding and austerely 
 majestic on the bench. Kind to me he was, and quickly 
 so. And at the bar Kinnear, soon to be Dean. That 
 trembling and apparently nervous figure concealed a spirit 
 of the rarest courage, and a mind so sweet that I do not 
 believe that there ever crossed it and I speak of him 
 after long years (he was Dean and Scotch Judge, and 
 in late years my colleague in the Lords) I do not 
 believe that there ever crossed it one single ignoble 
 thought. 
 
 But where was I ? I was speaking of that inevitable 
 division of young men, which you may dub, if you like, 
 rings or parties. To which of these parties or sets of men 
 did your father belong ? Alas ! dear, to none. No set 
 claimed him : no set knew him : he was alone. I believe 
 that had he not kept himself busily exercised he would 
 have felt the cold. 
 
 This must have been so, I think, because of the sur- 
 prise I felt when it was the day after I had donned the 
 gown pacing the Parliament Hall, I was suddenly con- 
 fronted by McKechnie, a brawny and bewigged High- 
 lander, who held out his hand and bade me welcome. 
 Why was I thus honoured ? I asked. " Oh," said he, " I 
 have heard about you speaking in my old debating club, 
 the Tusculan Society." 
 
 Thirty years afterwards I was pacing the same boards, 
 but I was differently attired. I had just presented to the 
 Court my Commission as Lord Advocate, and use and
 
 44 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 wont sent me to walk up and down the great hall. On 
 those occasions anyone is a guy black doeskin coat and 
 breeches, silk stockings, shoes with steel buckles, and, 
 over all, that beautiful black betasselled gown which a 
 great Lord Advocate, Lord Moncreiff, had furnished as 
 a handsome perquisite for the use of his successors. " Mr. 
 Dowell," said I to my clerk, standing on guard and hat 
 in hand in the crowd, " Mr. Dowell, send for McKechnie." 
 ' What, my Lord ? " said he, rather nonplussed. " Bring 
 McKechnie." 
 
 The brave McKechnie had had a struggle and a 
 history during that lapse of years. A native of Jura, he 
 had reached his boyish ambition and had risen to be 
 Sheriff of Argyll; then had had to resign all through 
 illness; but he had pluckily begun again and was again 
 gathering a practice. 
 
 He came, bowed low, spoke his felicitations, and asked 
 why I had done him the honour to send for him. 
 
 " McKechnie," said I, " when I came here thirty years 
 ago, friendless and alone, you were the first to bid me 
 welcome. So I thought that I should like, on this morn- 
 ing, to have the privilege of shaking you by the hand." 
 He was visibly moved, and murmured a few words; and 
 we shook hands and parted. 
 
 I am away from the early days ; but, you see, you tempt 
 me to these asides. So let us go back. Yes, it was a 
 lonely business; the solitude enough sometimes to strike 
 one to the heart. Yet whose fault was it? I could not 
 have it both ways and every way. My " immersion " was 
 philosophy; my true delights were in literature. And 
 apart from private friendships, which were not within my 
 range, there was not and there is not to this day, in Scot-
 
 THROUGH THE METROPOLITAN GATE 45 
 
 land, that general camaraderie of those Inns of Court 
 which are a true and sweet ornament of the English and 
 Irish Bar. As with University life, so with legal life, it 
 was all the veritable rigour of the game. 
 
 That is enough for you at present. Off you go. 
 
 Shoo! 
 
 Your very own, 
 
 SHAW OF D.
 
 LETTER X 
 MURDER? FORGERY? NEITHER 
 
 The North House, 
 Hertford. 
 
 December 7, 1919. 
 DEAREST INFANTA, 
 
 You remember the scandalous Sunday afternoons? 
 After being twice to church all of us as a family you 
 stormed my citadel, or rather my story-factory, where the 
 genuine home-made article was unfolded by the yard, and 
 how you, of all the pack, you were the most insistent for a 
 " bluggy " one ? All of you were set on " thrills." When 
 the drama in doggerel came along a Sunday composi- 
 tion ! with four parts, one for each of you, and a fifth 
 part for Cousin David you strove to thicken the plot and 
 even help the rhymes ? 
 
 Prologue 
 "The theme is Love, so deep and tender" 
 
 Author: " Now then, children, what rhymes with 
 'tender'?" 
 
 Chorus: " Fender ! " 
 
 Author: " Right. Here goes again : 
 
 " The theme is Love, so deep and tender, 
 And Crime as low and black as the fender : 
 And Magic, baffling Crime so well, 
 That Love ends with the marriage-bell. 
 Threads of Love and threads of Crime 
 Are woven in this Nursery Rhyme." 
 46
 
 MURDER? FORGERY? NEITHER 47 
 
 And so on. You remember? Well then, you are 
 still after thrills, I know; and you think that a young 
 barrister's acquaintance with the criminal classes should 
 produce some?, 
 
 I will, if I must. But bear in mind that a Scotch 
 advocate in good practice has hardly ever a good criminal 
 case. If he is on the Lord Advocate's team, of course 
 he must prosecute ; but never otherwise ; for in that happy 
 country private prosecution is unknown. An offence is 
 an offence against society, and society takes it in hand 
 and sees to its punishment and, if possible, its extirpation, 
 and that with never a smack of private umbrage or rancour 
 or hostility or revenge. 
 
 And the Courts are scrupulous that every prisoner, 
 however forlorn, shall be defended. So young advocates 
 roam the country with the Assizes, called the Circuit 
 Courts. Should they disappear, still the rule holds, and 
 the Bench there and then orders the sheriffs or County 
 Court judges to don the wig, and defend the defenceless, 
 be he the veriest wretch according to every code of pre- 
 judice or probability. 
 
 It was on one of these journeys to Glasgow that I 
 was asked to hold a junior brief for one Doherty, and in 
 this humble way I became participant in proceedings 
 which culminated in a callous and sinister judicial murder. 
 
 I have looked up no records of the case, but shall give 
 you the ghastly features of it, just as it remains for ever 
 stamped upon my mind. 
 
 Doherty and his sweetheart were standing at the door 
 of her dwelling near the Bridge of Rutherglen. A man 
 passed and flung a word of gross insult at the girl. 
 Doherty sprang forward and seized a hoe that was lean-
 
 48 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 ing against the wall. He struck the man a single blow, 
 or, as you might say, gave the man a whack with the hoe. 
 Unhappily, and most surprisingly, the blow was mortal : 
 the man was killed. 
 
 There was not the slightest suggestion of deadly in- 
 tent, not the slightest hint of anything like animosity 
 further than the passing resentment against the affront to 
 the sweetheart by his side. And Doherty's good character 
 was sworn to; his life had been blameless. It was as 
 plain a case of manslaughter or, as they say in the North, 
 of culpable homicide and as plainly not a case of murder, 
 as ever was seen. 
 
 Then misadventure crowded upon misadventure. 
 Robertson, the Advocate Depute, strangely enough, but 
 with skill, pleaded for a verdict of murder. The judge, 
 Lord Neaves, was then old and somewhat enfeebled : he 
 made the way clear for the minor verdict; but the jury 
 could not hear him. All that they did hear was an old 
 peroration (it had done duty before) about the majesty of 
 British justice; and they got it into their heads that the 
 law was that murder had been committed. They con- 
 victed, with a recommendation to mercy. 
 
 Still calamity followed calamity. The Home Secre- 
 tary had the petition of reprieve sent to him; the judge 
 backed it with his opinion. But it was the holiday season ; 
 some confusion, it was said, occurred with another and 
 far less deserving case of real murder where a false plea 
 of insanity had been set up. The Home Secretary, be 
 that as it may, reprieved the latter man, declined to inter- 
 fere in the Rutherglen case, and young Doherty was 
 hanged. In three weeks, as if to complete the tragedy, 
 his aged father died of a broken heart.
 
 MURDER? FORGERY? NEITHER 49 
 
 John Bright in his place in Parliament denounced the 
 transaction as a judicial murder. And a judicial murder 
 it was. From that hour to this I have ceased to believe 
 in the punishment of death. Cases, in the intervening 
 years, have occurred which have deepened my conviction. 
 Every human judgment is mingled with human error, and 
 in the issues of life and death no judge should be charged 
 with an irrevocable doom. 
 
 Perhaps, dear, you have got more than you bargained 
 for when you set me loose on this track. Let me now 
 draw you a cloud with a silver lining. No longer murder, 
 but forgery. 
 
 Persons or even places I will not name, and that for 
 obvious reasons, though the scene was between forty and 
 fifty years ago. I had in fact just passed to the Bar, I 
 was myself a high-strung actor, and everything in it 
 remains indelibly impressed upon my mind. 
 
 " Is it right for an advocate to defend a prisoner whom 
 he knows to be guilty?" How often have families dis- 
 cussed this old problem, and how often have debating 
 societies debated it? Aye, and how often has the con- 
 scientious, scrupulous man been troubled by it? Well, 
 listen. I was about to get my answer to it, and my answer 
 for life. 
 
 A day's journey from the circuit and county town of 
 X was the little village of Y. And in the neighbourhood 
 of Y dwelt two farmers, brothers-in-law. In those days, 
 far more, happily, than now, bills went flying about a 
 country community, one farmer backing another's notes, 
 and the other returning the accommodation, till you had
 
 50 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 almost said that one of the acknowledged processes of 
 agriculture was the circulation of blue paper. Now and 
 again there were charges of forgery, and strange hap- 
 penings on that head were investigated in the criminal 
 courts. 
 
 Presiding over that circuit was Lord Young, whose 
 reputation for intellectual force, and whose disposition 
 towards the rapid dispatch of business had, of course, 
 preceded him. This predisposed everyone to the view 
 that it was more in a prisoner's own interest to plead guilty 
 than to set up a hopeless defence. 
 
 Suddenly a big bundle of papers was put into my hand, 
 and I retired to read them through, and again read them 
 through. I came to the clear opinion that the accused, 
 whom I shall call " Mr. Prisoner," was a guilty man. 
 Was this, then, the old problem in front of me? I must 
 make sure. 
 
 So, wig and gown and all, I went down into the cells 
 and asked for an interview. 
 
 " Mr. Prisoner," s*aid I, " you know the judge on the 
 bench?" 
 
 " I have read about him," said he. 
 
 " Mr. Prisoner," I asked, "have you a family? " 
 
 " Sir," he said, " I have a wife and eight children." 
 
 He was a broadly built, simple-minded-looking, 
 honest-looking man. But the case against him was clear; 
 and how to get him the easiest terms was the point. 
 
 " Mr. Prisoner," said I, " I have gone over all the 
 documents, and honestly I think that your best way would 
 be just to plead guilty at once, and I shall say what I can 
 in mitigation of sentence." 
 
 He showed no surprise at this, none; he seemed to
 
 MURDER? FORGERY? NEITHER 51 
 
 take it for granted that this was inevitable, and was the 
 reasonable view. So he said, " Very well, sir, I will do 
 whatever you say. I will plead guilty." 
 
 I wish to make quite clear to you that that was the 
 length he went. It would have been brutal to treat him 
 as in the confessional; that is no part of an advocate's 
 duty and would have been presumption in a stripling. 
 But, of course, nothing could be clearer, as to his guilt. 
 To my own personal conviction he was to add his own 
 solemn plea. I returned to the Court. 
 
 There was another case going on, and it lasted some 
 time. I sat on, my head full of the coming task. Then 
 one of those curious psychological phenomena took place, 
 which I have never been able to account for, and which 
 old-fashioned people would reverently place to a special 
 Divine interposition. I came to think that perhaps the 
 prisoner's plea of guilty would be a false plea. Perhaps 
 my own conviction of his guilt was quite a mistake. Per- 
 haps he was the victim of an infamous conspiracy which 
 God help me with my inexperience and lack of skill 
 it was my duty to try to unravel. 
 
 In a little he came from below and sat between two 
 policemen, placing his two hands on the rail in front. 
 Those hands did it! I should explain to you that the 
 forgery was the most skilful I have ever known a precise 
 and delicate piece of work. 
 
 My doubts in an instant gave way to a conviction that 
 those hands could never have done it. They were broad, 
 fat, bulgy, unwieldy. I leaned over the dock and said : 
 " Mr. Prisoner, plead not guilty." He rose, dazed but 
 obedient, bowed to the judge, and so pleaded. The judge 
 said sharply : " I thought this was to be a plea of guilty."
 
 52 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 ' The prisoner pleads not guilty," said I. He looked at 
 me, then at the prisoner; and the trial began. 
 
 You must understand that there were six bills ; numbers 
 i, 3 and 5 were said to be genuine, and numbers 2, 4 and 
 6 were said to be forged. They were all, say, drawn by 
 the prisoner upon and accepted by his brother-in-law. 
 The bills had got into the hands of a so-called accountant 
 in the village. 
 
 Mr. Accountant swore that he could get his money on 
 the forged bills neither from the brother-in-law, to whom 
 he had written, nor from the accused. So he had set the 
 authorities in action. 
 
 " Where do you live ? " I asked. " And what do you 
 do? " 
 
 "In the village of Y," said he; "and I am an 
 accountant." 
 
 " How many inhabitants has Y ? " to which came the 
 answer : 
 
 " About three hundred." 
 
 " As an accountant in this village of three hundred," 
 I asked, " do you keep any books ? " 
 
 The witness flamed up, demanding loudly of the judge 
 whether he was bound to answer about his private affairs. 
 
 Said the judge : " The question is very simple : ' Do 
 you keep any books ? ' 
 
 " I keep a letter-book," said the witness. 
 
 " Your only book? " said I. 
 
 " Yes," said he; " and I have it here." 
 
 " You say that you wrote to the acceptor of these three 
 bills that they were overdue ; is that letter booked ? " 
 
 " It is," said the witness ; " and it is there'' 
 
 The book was handed down. I had never seen it;
 
 MURDER? FORGERY? NEITHER 53 
 
 but lo ! the entry was as I expected ! As an office boy I 
 had known that page-and-a-half letters left, of course, a 
 half-page which might be filled up by another short letter. 
 And I had often thought that that was a bad system, for 
 a little letter might be slipped into the vacant plot long 
 afterwards in fact, so long as the plot remained. It 
 seemed to me clear that this was exactly what had been 
 done. When the witness finally resolved to put the law 
 into operation, he preceded that by concocting such a 
 letter to be booked into a date and place with a suitable 
 blank. 
 
 By this time the judge, who had given me every 
 consideration, showed signs of very watchful interest. 
 " Hand me that book," said he, and he kept it beside him. 
 
 Then I launched my bolt. " Do you sell bill 
 stamps ? " I asked. 
 
 The witness went into a fury of protest. The judge 
 said, " Witness, the words are very short words : * Do you 
 sell bill stamps? ' Do you understand them? " 
 
 " Yes," said he. 
 
 " Then answer them," came the command. And the 
 answer was in the affirmative. 
 
 The next witness was the brother-in-law, who, of 
 course, denied the signatures. When I asked him 
 whether on a certain date he had received a letter from 
 the previous witness, Lord Young handed down the 
 letter-book and said, " Read the letter aloud and plainly 
 to him." 
 
 I did so. The witness showed signs of impatience, 
 but I read on to the end. Then he said in a loud voice, 
 " My Lord, I never got such a letter in the course of my 
 life."
 
 54 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 The Judge said firmly to the Crown Prosecutor, " Mr. 
 Advocate Depute, of the two principal witnesses for the 
 Crown, one or other has committed perjury." 
 
 Result, collapse; the prisoner, poor, dazed, honest 
 soul, dismissed expressly without a stain upon his char- 
 acter. The verdict was universally approved. Inno- 
 cence had triumphed. And, furthermore not a soul in 
 that crowded Court without the sure conviction that he 
 knew the true answer do you ? to the question, Who was 
 the forger? 
 
 A wicked world, my darling, but upon the whole Justice 
 does come to its own. And in the course of that process, 
 never have any doubt as to where the advocate's duty lies. 
 What was the problem ? " Is it right for him to defend 
 a man whom he knows to be guilty ? " The presumption 
 of an advocate even thinking that he knows ! I learned 
 my lesson. Let in such presumption, and Justice might 
 be debauched by cowardice, and on coward's terms 
 
 defeated. 
 
 Your highly respected 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XI 
 
 TRACTS OF WILDERNESS 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 May 27, 1920. 
 ISABEL DEAR, 
 
 One evening a few months ago I was sitting in the 
 dear library of Palace Gate when who should stalk in but 
 Sir Robert Home, the Minister of Labour just as 
 capable as a Minister of the Crown as he had been so 
 often as a junior to myself in Edinburgh. He told me 
 how the dockers at all the ports of the Kingdom had 
 consolidated their forces and tabled their demands, how 
 the employers and they wanted a Court of Inquiry, how 
 there were serious chances of the whole sea-borne trade 
 of the country being held up, and I was wanted by the 
 Government as President of the Court. I stoutly refused ; 
 the strain of these things was too great now; they must 
 get a younger man, and all the rest of it. 
 
 What did the fellow do? He went off to Paris where 
 the Conference of the great ones of the earth was sitting 
 trying to re-shape the world after the Great War. And 
 in two days I had a telegram, in the name of the Prime 
 Minister, and Mr. Bonar Law, the Leader of the) 
 Commons, and the Lord Chancellor, and Home himself, 
 asking me to take up the task. So the Dockers' Inquiry 
 had to be faced; a ticklish job, with many economic, 
 national and human interests hanging about it, as to which 
 
 55
 
 56 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 I may tell you something by and by. On that I make no 
 promise. 
 
 Then after that task was over came, for hearing and 
 decision, a swarm of law cases, dull, heavy, clamant 
 and so the letters to you receded out of sight. Months 
 elapsed. 
 
 But stop; who went there? It was Time itself; and 
 it hit me a whipping reminder. / was seventy last Sunday, 
 The other day I forgathered with a good old boatman in 
 similar case and on the eve of superannuation. 
 
 "Ah, my Lord," said he, " I'm not what I was; I am 
 not so sturdy; you see, I am growing old." 
 
 " Stop that, James Macdonald," said I ; " you have a 
 lot more ill to do yet." 
 
 " Well, my Lord," said he, solemnly, " I hope so." 
 Then he stopped short, realizing his slip; and we both 
 fell a-laughing. In that hearty spirit I yield to your 
 solicitations and I open the latch of memory. Where 
 was I ? 
 
 Ah ! it was about my law cases. Well, to tell the truth, 
 my recollections of them are fortunately dim; the one 
 case crushed out the other; and I could cry off on that 
 score alone. But there is the other also the real dis- 
 relish of anything which would savour of an attempt to 
 make a hero out of a person in drab. For which reason 
 there and thereabouts all legal autobiographies ought 
 to be burned. 
 
 It is a case for compromise. So you will get no more 
 from me than another story about the beginning of the 
 advocate's life. And perhaps, if time permit and memory 
 serve, some sample of interest towards its close.
 
 TRACTS OF WILDERNESS 57 
 
 Let me tell you the story of the Trial of the Lewis 
 Deer Raiders. 
 
 It is difficult to make anyone now realize the extra- 
 ordinary acuteness of controversial feeling over the 
 Highland land question forty years ago. Society, the 
 population of Scotland at large, was divided by a deep, 
 broad chasm. I had rather said, speaking in a special 
 sense of the one and in a general sense of the other, 
 Society was on one side of the chasm ; the population was 
 on the other. The three outstanding problems were, the 
 tragically unequal distribution of land, the insecurity of 
 the crofter or small cultivator in his holding, and the un- 
 fairness of his rent, this last producing a positively pitiable 
 dead-weight of debt in the shape of arrears. 
 
 The first the inequality in the distribution of land 
 is a puzzle old as the centuries. I do not say it is 
 insoluble, far from that; but it still remains, and it will 
 probably remain until the whole shape and colour of 
 government in this country undergo a fundamental 
 change. 
 
 But the second and third of these problems were 
 within the reach of the statesmanship of the day, and so 
 came the Crofters Act of 1886. Hardly had it been 
 passed into law and the Commissioners appointed, when 
 down came the Liberal Government, and a Unionist 
 Government strong, powerful, determined, and with 
 very different landlord and tenant views reigned in its 
 stead. 
 
 But the visits and perambulations of the Crofters 
 Commissioners, of course, however, went on, and with 
 them there appeared to be, and in truth there was, the 
 dawn of a new and better era.
 
 58 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 As I say, it is now difficult even to figure the strength 
 of the opposition between the two views of those who 
 defended their passionate attachment to their homes, 
 under the names of fixity of tenure and of fair rent, and 
 those who defended the right of eviction and the duty of 
 submission, under the names of freedom of contract and 
 of law and order. 
 
 Feeling was fanned into a flame by Mr. Chamberlain. 
 Mr. Chamberlain was never in his life afraid to be in 
 advance of the band. He passed like a fiery cross on 
 to Inverness. I remember yet the electrical effect of his 
 citation from the Canadian Boat Song : 
 
 " From the dear shieling- on the misty island 
 Mountains divide us and a world of seas ; 
 But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, 
 And in our dreams we see the Hebrides. 
 Tall are those mountains and those woods are grand ; 
 But we are exiles from our native land." 
 
 There was no mistaking the application of the lines, and 
 they pealed like a trumpet through the North. 
 
 Of the Hebrides, Tiree, belonging to the Duke of 
 Argyll, and Lewis, belonging to the Mathieson family, 
 were among the worst areas of unrest. So in the year 
 1887-8 the Crofters Commissioners were to visit Lewis 
 to hear evidence and to look about. And in a little 
 schoolroom of Belallan, near Stornoway, a meeting was 
 held for the worthy purpose of arranging who should be 
 the witnesses and of getting together a few pounds for 
 the crofters' case. 
 
 At this meeting, however, arrangements, not so worthy 
 and not so wise, were made for something more demon- 
 strative and emphatic. The deer preserve an immense
 
 TRACTS OF WILDERNESS 59 
 
 and, of course, lonely forest was to be invaded and some 
 of the deer killed, with all sorts of claims mooted to more 
 land, more land. In a fortnight afterwards, in the same 
 month of November, 1887, the raid took place. 
 
 The prime instigator was an able speaker and land 
 reformer, the schoolmaster, Donald Macrae. If there 
 was to be a case about it, the Government were right to 
 hold him quite as responsible as the actual participants 
 in the expedition. And so, sure enough, when six brawny 
 and bewildered Islemen stood up in the dock of the Edin- 
 burgh High Court of Justiciary to answer the fateful 
 question, " Are you guilty or not guilty? " the least brawny 
 and least bewildered of them all, the schoolmaster Macrae, 
 was first on the list. 
 
 The authorities had lost no time; the trial was in 
 January, 1888. As to the place, imagine if you can two 
 places in the whole land of Scotland more dissevered in 
 outlook, in habits of mind and life, in sympathy, than on 
 the one hand the bare and rain-swept outpost in the' 
 Hebrides, and, on the other, Edinburgh and its Parliament 
 House ! If the avoiding of local prejudice was to be 
 secured, it was secured; and if there was even a risk of 
 reaching an opposite camp of feeling, that was a bearable 
 misfortune ! 
 
 As to the bench, a thing rarely, if ever, seen, occurred. 
 To keep the ordinary jury right in point of law there was 
 really very little law in the case three judges occupied 
 the seat of justice instead of one. As to the bar, the 
 situation was queer : apparently it was considered hardly 
 respectable to defend such people a forgery or a murder 
 case was all very well but such people ! So the rumour 
 went that the defence had been offered to and not accepted
 
 60 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 by ; but I know nothing of that. The case came 
 
 my way in the ordinary course; I defended the school- 
 master and another of the accused, a worthy local mer- 
 chant. Their names stood first on the list of prisoners and 
 so I had to lead, owing to that circumstance. Another 
 prisoner was defended by Strachan, a man of wide literary 
 knowledge and of a real power of eloquence. Others de- 
 fended others : quite an array ! A kind of sub-conscious- 
 ness that there was more in the struggle than the case 
 gave the whole a spice of adventure. 
 
 Now, with all these advantages of place, time, sym- 
 pathy, prestige, in their favour, what went wrong with the 
 Crown authorities? Simply, my dear, what goes wrong 
 with such people so often : they overshot the mark. They 
 charged the accused with nothing other and nothing less 
 than " mobbing and rioting " ! The loneliness of the 
 spot, the total absence of any terror or alarm to anybody, 
 except the deer or the hawk or the curlew, the fact that 
 when the local sheriff heard of the incursion he went out 
 and spoke a word of kindly counsel to the men, who there- 
 upon all went off to their own homes all this I am say- 
 ing what I believed then and (saving their Eminences in 
 some high places) what I still think all this made a{ 
 charge of mobbing and rioting ridiculous. The advantage 
 of it, however, from an administrative point of view, was 
 this that conviction could be followed by such swingeing 
 sentences, even of penal servitude, as might stamp out 
 land agitation for a generation. 
 
 " But," I said at consultation before the trial, " these 
 men did wrong, though they were not mobbing and riot- 
 ing, did they not ?. " 
 
 Then I was answered by my junior, an industrious
 
 TRACTS OF WILDERNESS 61 
 
 and most thoughtful man, now Sheriff McPhail; and his 
 answer is one for which he and he alone has the entire 
 credit.' 
 
 ' They committed," said he, " an offence against an 
 Act of William IV (which he cited). They assembled 
 and trespassed, to the number of five or more, in pursuit 
 of game. Penalty, ^"5 each." 
 
 " I see," said I ; and on that we ran the case. Five 
 pounds a head would not satisfy the prosecutor; he was 
 out for penal servitude. 
 
 There is really nothing more on the legal side to tell. 
 What was proved was pretty much what I have set down. 
 Yet the prosecution was bitter, and always on the high 
 horse. The Solicitor-General demanded a verdict of 
 mobbing and rioting as " absolutely necessary and im- 
 perative for the interests of the State." This, of course, 
 let in the whole point of law and a good deal more. A 
 five pound fine : not enough for the interests of the State : 
 get up something, however grotesque, which would re- 
 sound, in every sense of the term, in something more 
 penal. A Government prosecution : nothing but a political 
 persecution; however the bench might disapprove, that 
 we fought openly and without reserve. All of us, counsel 
 for the defence, stood together. 
 
 Two things I should like to tell you about this trial; 
 one, a literary reference, which I think affected it in its 
 course, and another, a statistical fact, which gives much 
 cause for reflection on the action of Governments in all 
 such cases. 
 
 On the first matter, as you may imagine, the nature 
 of the charge mobbing and noting in a solitude 
 naturally led me to observations on local history and
 
 62 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 economy. What a picture it was ! No less than one 
 hundred and fifty square miles in the one forest, under 
 deer. The people lifted from the good inland holdings 
 to the wastes near the shore, and the whole inland con- 
 solidated turned into one vast solitude for sport. Then 
 I quoted, amid dead silence, Tennyson's lines on Pagan 
 England : 
 
 " And so there grew great tracts of wilderness 
 Wherein the beast was ever more and more, 
 And man was less and less." 
 
 There was an uproar in Court, in which I think I saw 
 the jury joining with their feet a tumult which the Court 
 and ushers peremptorily suppressed. The land lay safe. 
 Each of the three judges charged the unfortunate jury. 
 But the jury's mind was clear : there was no " not proven " 
 about it. All the six prisoners were found not guilty. 
 They went outside amid acclamations, and the school- 
 master spoke with fire and passion wild and exuberant 
 things. 
 
 The next thing is what I know that you and all shrewd 
 persons like yourself would want to be at, namely this 
 was there any real and substantial thing in fact which 
 can explain among such people such an emeute? You 
 are neither hocussed nor overawed by forms of law, and 
 you want to know what was at the back of it all. 
 
 Well then, listen to this. The Commissioners went 
 round. They made their independent investigations. 
 They reported I looked into the Report the other day 
 that in the Lewis, the Mathieson estate, there were 
 772 holdings on a rent-roll of ,2,384, but that this rent 
 was in excess of a fair rent by ^755. But affairs were 
 sadly worse than that. Suffering for years this excess,
 
 TRACTS OF WILDERNESS 63 
 
 and bound to submit to it or leave their homes, these 
 tenants had fallen into arrears : they were under a burden 
 of this debt to the staggering amount of ,14,845. Surely 
 life under such circumstances was without help or hope; 
 yet they nursed their misery and looked upon eviction as 
 doom. At one stroke the Commissioners cancelled arrears 
 by no less than ,10,216, and the mountain of debt was 
 reduced to a manageable balance, which was paid. In 
 all, rents were reduced by about 30 per cent, and arrears 
 cancelled by 70 per cent. Similar enormous reductions 
 were made over great spaces of the North and West. It 
 was better so for all parties, even financially, for rents 
 were no longer piled up : they were paid. 
 
 The new system did not fail. On the contrary, it was 
 in its main features, of fair rent and fixity of tenure for 
 all smallholders, extended by and by to the whole of the 
 country. Remember that the Raid took place in the dark- 
 ness before the dawn. The protest of the Raid may have 
 been incoherent, violent, if you like, ridiculous; but men 
 of all classes were startled by it into a consciousness that it 
 was a protest against a system which even in good hands 
 lent itself to oppression. 
 
 The defence made this consciousness articulate, and 
 all through the Highlands this fact a big, new fact- 
 was received with boundless and lasting gratitude. I did 
 not realize this or any of these more general things in 
 the outspoken hammer and tongs bit of work that had to 
 be done. But of this gratitude I will give you a curious 
 instance. 
 
 More than thirty years after the trial, Alexander was 
 the guest of his father-in-law, Lord Inchcape, in Ross- 
 shire. When fishing on one of the beautiful lochs, he
 
 64 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 was conscious that the boatman was watching him 
 keenly. 
 
 " Are you, sir," said the ghillie, " begging your pardon, 
 are you, sir, related to Lord Shaw ? " 
 
 " I am his son," said Alexander. And then the boat- 
 man, solemnly taking off his bonnet, said these words : 
 
 " Sir, there is many a man in the Highlands would 
 die for your father." 
 
 Please do not be flattering yourself that that had any- 
 thing to do with your father himself, more than this that, 
 as I have said, he made, at a critical social juncture he 
 made articulate the consciousness of undeserved misery. 
 
 Your ever loving 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER XII 
 
 WORSE THAN AN INFIDEL 
 
 Townhill Park, 
 
 Southampton. 
 
 December 31, 1919. 
 MY DEAREST LASS, 
 
 The year draws to its close. It is a time for looking 
 back, and for your sake and by your wish I am looking 
 back pretty far. One searches for " the things that can- 
 not be shaken." They remain. Fashions are volatile; 
 customs grow stale ; many conventions, once hard as iron, 
 have melted like wax. Does anything, then, anything at 
 all, in all the range and governance of life, stand sure? 
 Well, that depends. And it depends, more than on any 
 other one thing you can name, on how you have been 
 brought up. 
 
 This illustration occurs to my mind. The Sabbath Day. 
 I reverence it and I prize it. Forgive the paraphrase : 
 but it is " the balm of each week's life, sore labour's bath." 
 I say nothing about its divine institution, though I believe 
 in that too, as you well know. But if has been sorely 
 mishandled when it has lost its place of privilege and 
 become an interruption and a bore. Take my own case. 
 I can truly say that for over thirty years of my life there 
 was not one week-end on which I could not have pleaded 
 exhaustion and left work over for Sunday. And I ami 
 also as truly certain of this, that if I had yielded to 
 
 F 65
 
 66 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 that temptation I should long ago have been in my 
 grave. 
 
 The really laborious man cannot afford to work on 
 Sunday. Often and often have I seen times when the 
 strain of nerve and battle was so great, that one strove 
 through it and towards the Sabbath calm with a certain 
 passionate exaltation of mind. 
 
 I know quite well the habit of week-ending, how it 
 grows although it appears to be going off a bit and 
 how the reasons for it in many cases are well worth con- 
 sidering. But if such week-ending be but a whirl of 
 exciting gaiety, it is a point of grave question whether 
 it does not do more to disturb the true balance of life 
 than to restore it, or whether indeed it would not have 
 been better openly to ignore the institution of the Sabbath 
 altogether, and to go on without it. 
 
 That at least would more quickly bring the revulsion. 
 As when France, saddened, sickened and exhausted with 
 but a year or two of the decadi, restored the Christian 
 Sabbath as a central institution of religion come again. 
 You remember how Vandal treats the incident in one of 
 the most moving passages of " L'Avenement de Bona- 
 parte." He calls upon you to listen to the awakening of 
 the little church bells from the nightmare of a ruthless 
 rationalism. Parish calls to parish : 
 
 " Ecoutez ! C'est 1'eVeil : c'est 1'insurrection, c'est la 
 resurrection des cloches ! " 
 
 It was, as it were, the soothing of the nervous tension 
 of the world. 
 
 Anyhow, my Sabbaths gave to me my happiest 
 moments, and, in a great stretch of years crowded with 
 professional and public cares, they made family life in
 
 WORSE THAN AN INFIDEL 67 
 
 any responsible sense a possibility. Literary things, 
 divine things, the significance of life for oneself, for all 
 dear to one, for the great moving world; going to church 
 why, that was but part of the natural homage which 
 one paid to that supreme need which every sensible soul 
 feels for moral replenishment, unless he be a butterfly, 
 or a miser, or a clod. 
 
 Only, of course, dimly did I realize these things when 
 in your youth I adhered to the principles of my own. 
 But the more clearly that I see them now, the less in that 
 adhesion do I see to regret. 
 
 No rigidity, perhaps, except in the sense that the 
 foundations of life should be solid, and be well and truly 
 laid. This, after a long experience, in which I have 
 observed a greater sense of hurry in the pulses and the 
 pace of human society this at least one can truly say, 
 that the value of the Sabbath for the best uses of mankind 
 is an increasing value : its depreciation would mean a real 
 degeneration in all those processes of civilization which 
 make for the energy, the usefulness, the happiness of 
 men. 
 
 As to the Church just bear with me for a moment 
 when I speak of that, you will not, of course, take 
 me up in the Roman or the English sense. I do not 
 mean any privileged enclave of which the governor 
 is a padre and in which the sheep are sheep indeed. 
 I mean a spiritual community, purely spiritual, of men 
 and women gathered together for the sake of One who, 
 however small their numbers, has promised to be in 
 their midst. Such men and women have laid upon them 
 not merely the delights of a profound faith and a glorious 
 hope, but the duty and responsibilities of themselves
 
 68 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 witnessing and working. For them to shoulder that some- 
 times irksome task on to the clergy as a clerical affair 
 that would be mean. 
 
 There was a democracy for you ! Well, it was in this 
 school of thought and duty that I was brought up. 
 
 The worst is yet to come. Bad enough to be a Presby- 
 terian. But was I of those eminent and respected 
 Presbyterians whose Church was under the patronage and 
 control of the State, to which so many of the nobility and 
 landed gentry belonged until they too in more fashion- 
 able times " lapsed " into Episcopacy ? Not even that. 
 My ancestry, my upbringing, my beliefs, were all with a 
 set of pious, able and determined men called United 
 Presbyterians. Happy memories of your childhood and 
 youth recall them, and perhaps some time I may tell you 
 how they appeared to myself. But farther back than 
 they, the same class of thinkers was called the Secession. 
 But (now you must not be too proud !) my heart and faith 
 went farther back still : I believe I must have been an 
 Anti-burgher ! 
 
 Once upon a time (1596) the Reformation principles 
 were being played fast and loose with by a Scottish King 
 with, to say the least of it, an accommodating spirit. And 
 the story is well known how at Falkland Andrew Melville 
 answered the false claim of prerogative, plucking the 
 monarch by the sleeve, and declaring : " There are two 
 Kings and two Kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ 
 Jesus the King, and His Kingdom, the Kirk, whose sub- 
 ject King James the Sixth is, and of whose Kingdom not 
 a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member." Well 
 done, Andrew Melville ! Sure am I that, if he had been 
 spared, he would have been an Anti-burgher !
 
 WORSE THAN AN INFIDEL 69 
 
 Once when I was Solicitor-General for Scotland, I had 
 to take a turn in the House of Commons on some Church 
 subject. Being in a rollicking mood, and seeing before 
 me quite a galaxy of Tory Churchmen, I condoled with 
 them. When they came north of the Tweed every 
 mother's son of them would be a Dissenter ! The old 
 wheeze ! But it hit them hard, with wonder and with 
 merriment. Sir Richard Temple tendered me his most 
 courtly felicitations ! 
 
 One of the duties of this same Solicitor-General, by 
 the by, was that he should be in attendance on the Lord 
 High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland, the tradi- 
 tional task being, on the King's behalf, to watch out for 
 ecclesiastical pretensions ! This gave rise to fun. When 
 the dear Lord Advocate Balfour was asked in the 
 Commons lobby what had become of his Solicitor-General, 
 he replied : " Well, you see, ah ! he is bowing down in % 
 the Temple of Rimmon." And the wags of the Parliament 
 House maintained that when my carriage drove up in the 
 procession towards the General Assembly, the band struck 
 up the refrain : " 'E doan' know where 'e are ! " 
 
 But all this is cutting far beyond the point, namely, 
 the events and aspects of the young advocate's life. Well, 
 one of those aspects was this direct point of early religious 
 training. When Milton wrote of Sir Harry Vane 
 
 " The bounds of either sword to thee we owe," 
 and 
 
 " Both spiritual things and civil, what each means, 
 What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have known," 
 
 he was pronouncing in immortal words the eloge of human 
 penetration on one of the most delicate and profound 
 problems which will remain to torment or to inspire public
 
 70 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 men, until the political stage is reached of the separation 
 as in America and throughout our colonial empire of 
 Church and State. 
 
 Well, that, of course, was a problem which came my 
 way. My own view, and the view of those able, far-sighted 
 men with whom I worked in Church Courts as on wider 
 fields, was that the Church simply said to the State : 
 " Hands off ! We will not have your control. We will 
 not take your money." This we thought was the best, 
 infinitely the best, on the spiritual as well as on the civil 
 side. 
 
 Thus I became a Disestablisher, and worse than that, 
 a Disendower : mark that last. And so prejudices came 
 along, perhaps prejudices on either side, and men said 
 fiercely that I was the associate of agnostics, of atheists, 
 of infidels. This last fell very flat. We remembered the 
 apostolic rejoinder which McDowall of Alloa had taught 
 us, that there were worse men than infidels. " He that 
 provideth not for his own, and specially for those of his 
 own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than 
 an infidel." And those who knew me better well, they 
 didn't use the stupid taunt, or any taunt. Yet if you had 
 known the Edinburgh of the time of which I speak, you 
 would have realized what it meant to hold such views. 
 
 It was plain that politics and public life were looming 
 
 in the near future for 
 
 Your ever loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XIII 
 
 THROUGH THE 'EIGHTIES 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 1 8, 1920. 
 
 MY DEAR DAUGHTER ISABEL, 
 
 Tired of exciting epistles? Well, then, let me write 
 you a restful letter. 
 
 These two months in town have been lonely enough 
 in all conscience. Yet the judicial work was engrossing, 
 and it had that interest which sprang from being an after- 
 mafti of the Great War. 
 
 Why did great vessels, for instance, steam through 
 the darkness without lights, and add in this and many ways 
 new perils to the deep? Why? Simply because they 
 had to, by order of the Admiralty. They and their cargo 
 were precious to our people. Hundreds of millions of 
 pounds sterling were afloat on seas infested by German 
 submarines. And the enemy had abjured the duties of 
 capture and condemnation of ship and cargo as prize, and 
 of the rescue of shipwrecked passengers and crew. Ger- 
 many had abandoned the traditions of civilized war and 
 made a new code of terror for the traffic of the sea. 
 
 To meet this code, a vast energy of watchfulness was 
 developed by our fleet and a vast energy of heroism by 
 our beloved sailormen : while from places like the Moray 
 Firth, over there across the hills, there went one of the 
 glories of the war those great crews of mine-sweepers 
 
 7i
 
 72 
 
 modest, patient, skilled, unwearied men, who by day 
 and by night, in calm and in storm, showed the stuff of 
 which patriotism is made and were the saviours of our 
 country. 
 
 All these things, remember, were disciplined. With- 
 out that, all would have been lost. Thus there came 
 stern, clever, minute Regulations of the Admiralty, sup- 
 ported alike by prudence, by the common interest, and 
 by the instant sanction of force. Courses were changed : 
 sailing orders were given for traversing great spaces of 
 the sea which in normal times the prudent navigator would 
 avoid : lights on shore and on shipboard were dowsed : 
 vessels were put under convoy taking their course and 
 points of the compass from its commander. And that 
 commander had the power and had the right to fire on, 
 and to sink, offending, disobedient craft. 
 
 This vast new code or counter-code of the sea pro- 
 duced as every new code does a crop of problems of 
 its own. So our dear bright friend Sir Samuel Evans 
 earned a great renown, in shaping and applying old codes 
 and new, and so he wore out his brilliant life. And to us 
 in the Privy Council and the House of Lords there came 
 difficulties neither few nor slight in solving puzzles, such 
 as, for instance : which ship was to blame, or were both, 
 for a collision when both were sailing without lights, or 
 under convoy? Did the calamities spring from marine 
 risks, or from warlike operations? and so on and so on; 
 millions hanging in the balance of this way or that in the 
 solutions, with sometimes great insurance corporations in 
 the background, and always in the foreground the most 
 brilliant of advocacy. And even as we fingered the bulky 
 volumes, a hint, a reference, an allusion, would suddenly
 
 THROUGH THE 'EIGHTIES 73 
 
 touch a spring; and, away beyond law cases, and codes 
 and codeless destruction, tragedies unfolded to imagina- 
 tion's eye and ear : the watchers' straining senses, the 
 tearing of the torpedo in the entrails of the innocent, heroic 
 merchantman, the wrestling with doom, and even 
 
 "The cry 
 Of some strong swimmer in his agony." 
 
 Then in a moment the spring recoiled and one was 
 back again to duty and to legal issues. They were not 
 tiresome, but they were troublesome and tough. And that, 
 my dear, must be my excuse if I have failed to keep my 
 promise to go on writing and telling you about things 
 long past. 
 
 If I remember rightly, my recountings had not reached 
 the period when you arrived on the scene to brighten all 
 our lives. The legal years of the 'eighties have left few 
 impressions which are vivid. I have no memory for 
 drudgery. I suppose it would be possible by consulting 
 fee-books and the like to make up a kind of record; but 
 with all respect to some very, very eminent lawyer friends 
 of mine, now deceased, what would be the use of that to 
 any mortal? Was I earning more money from year to 
 year ? Were there fine solicitors standing by me ? and had 
 they good businesses?, and had I compliments from this 
 quarter or rebukes from that ? Oh ! dear, dear, the idea 
 of any sensible man, even a father, taking the trouble to 
 write down the like of that ! 
 
 I do not deny that drudgery there was. Yes, indeed ; 
 but why not? There are two ways of it to a practising 
 lawyer: either to treat work as duty, and to tackle it
 
 74 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 accordingly, preserving equanimity and, if possible, a 
 gaiety of mind; or to shirk it as an undeserved sentence 
 of penal servitude. This last means " giving in," and 
 I was not brought up that way. Whereas the other way 
 what happy inducements there were that I should 
 follow it ! " Fame," says Milton, 
 
 " Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 To scorn delights and live laborious days." 
 
 There is something in that, no doubt, but not so much 
 as men think. There are two passages in Burns which 
 come nearer to the actual life of the barrister both north 
 and south of the Tweed than most people unacquainted 
 with the early struggles of such men would dream of : 
 
 " To gather gear by every wile 
 That's justified by honour." 
 
 That, of course, stamps character upon achievement. 
 But the other is a tenderer and more inspiring wish : 
 
 " To mak' a happy fireside clime 
 
 For weans and wife 
 That's the true pathos and sublime 
 Of human life." 
 
 " Oh ! hoity, toity," exclaim the miraculous persons, 
 applauded by all sorts of affectation and the shallow 
 mind. " We believe in genius; it is for such that the pro- 
 fessions were made ; but stuff like that : never ! '' And, 
 mark you : all the time they believe nothing of the sort; 
 all the time they know that hard work, drudgery if 
 you will, and drudgery manfully faced, that the rub is 
 there. 
 
 For fame's sake? Well, perhaps so, in one case out 
 of a score. And the other nineteen cases? What do
 
 THROUGH THE 'EIGHTIES 75 
 
 they say about them ? Year in, year out, the steadfast 
 shouldering of work and care, what was its secret? Ah ! 
 it is the Latin tag that tells the truth : " Res angustce 
 domi" Yes, my dear, that is it. That is the secret, that 
 is the spur. It accounts for the nineteen cases. 
 
 Upon the whole, the Bench of the United Kingdom 
 has sufficient experience to know this, and so has sufficient 
 imagination to feel that an advocate's task, faithfully per- 
 formed and thus inspired, demands and deserves respect, 
 consideration, sympathy. And for that reason, as well as 
 for the sake of jurisprudence as the marshalled search 
 for justice, it has always appeared to me that the treat- 
 ment by a great Bench of the presentment of an uphill 
 case by a great Bar is a study in those higher ethics where 
 truth and courtesy are rich and shining things. And when 
 again, either in the case of judge or counsel, to know- 
 ledge and fidelity are added culture and imagination, then 
 indeed justice is justified of her children and jurisprudence 
 comes to its own. 
 
 Sometimes through the 'eighties and through all that 
 drudgery of which I have no memory, thoughts of that 
 sort, in the watching and measuring of judicial procedure, 
 drifted through the mind, and ideals were revealed. 
 " Who is sufficient for these things ? " I said it so often 
 during those toilsome years; and I say so still. 
 
 Have I told you nothing in this letter? Have I drifted 
 unwarrantably from what the philosophers call the objec- 
 tive to the subjective? Well, the mist is on the hills and 
 great clouds are drifting down the valley from Braemar, 
 and the grouse are too wild, and, as I have been sitting 
 in the library, my memory has yielded little to recount 
 from a decade which is blank. So the thoughts have
 
 76 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 turned inward, and instead of description and action you 
 have simply musing : musing, not on the outward be- 
 wildering events of to-day's bewildered world, but musing 
 just as the thoughts deploy from the past and as they 
 are felt in the quiet by a thankful heart. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XIV 
 
 ENTER MR. GLADSTONE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 25, 1920. 
 MY DEAR LASS, 
 
 When I wrote to you the other day about the blank 
 of memory in the 'eighties, I was thinking of the law. 
 
 As to other things, and notably to public affairs how 
 far indeed from humdrum were they ! Then was a time 
 to be alive. Times of war fire the blood. But there are also 
 crises when, in the political sphere, new ideas or a new 
 summons seem to break over the nation like a cataract. 
 Such a period was the first Midlothian campaign. The 
 stir of such conflicts, their enthusiasms, their challenges 
 and replies : of all these Midlothian was the centre. How 
 vivid were the points and explosions and outbreaks of 
 that splendid storm ! 
 
 The judgment of men on such things undergoes, it 
 may be, changes, even transformations : men's passions 
 may then have warped their opinions : they may now think 
 a different temperament more philosophical : they may 
 even forget that opinions are also warped by shivering 
 hesitations and recurrent chills. 
 
 I speak with intimate knowledge at least of Scotland 
 during that period; but of course thinking back to my 
 own impressions I should surprise many people by say- 
 ing that the large outstanding facts were two. Two great 
 
 77
 
 78 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 subjects of public life there were which were swept back 
 again, by profound personal appeal, into the region of 
 private interest, private responsibility and private duty. 
 The first of these was finance. It was restored to a rank 
 and level which it had not occupied since 1846. The 
 second, of course, was foreign policy. It was restored 
 to a rank and level which it had not occupied since 1853. 
 Men were sternly shown how errors in either of those 
 departments come home. Men felt then, as they do to- 
 day, that it was so, that it must be so : but then, as now, 
 there was need of a prophet, and, in that day, the prophet 
 came. 
 
 At the time of the Corn Law Repeal men had been 
 accustomed to think deeply of Budgets, of the foundations 
 of economics. In the lowlands of Scotland, and in many 
 very humble homes, these things and the views of Adam 
 Smith were frequent topics of canvass. So also with 
 foreign affairs. There remained even in the 'fifties which 
 I can remember a serious concern with our Eastern policy, 
 and not a little wondering whether Bright, mocked in the 
 war fever of his time as a pro-Russian, had not been 
 nearer than militarist passion to truth and to good sense. 
 These were the wonder and concern of a large and faith- 
 ful body of men men accustomed to test life by ethical 
 standards, men drilled in Christian doctrine. When states- 
 men ignore such men, politics are lowered. 
 
 Well, Isabel, it was to the sons and grandsons of 
 such men that Mr. Gladstone made his first famous 
 pilgrimage in the end of 1879. And when the new decade 
 came along, it was ushered in among crowds of persons, 
 of whom your father was one, who were moved, not to 
 admiration alone and a swaying of the mind, but to a
 
 ENTER MR. GLADSTONE 79 
 
 deeper sense of the responsibility of the individual citizen 
 as a sharer, however humble, in his country's destiny. 
 
 Take down, as I know you have done, Morley's " Life 
 of Gladstone," and you will find all these things infinitely 
 better said. Morley is a Stoic. A Stoic is a man who 
 is afraid to let himself go. A man who is afraid to let 
 himself go might be apt, if he were not so big a man as 
 Morley apt to become a poseur. But you see how, when 
 the great biographer reaches the early Midlothian cam- 
 paigns, such a temptation never came nigh those memor- 
 able days : his language grows warm and glowing. 
 
 But I am not quite sure that even Lord Morley under- 
 stands the kind of seed-time that these speeches were 
 for our younger manhood. In the case of myself and 
 many, many more, we make no pretence or secret about 
 it : they swept us after the sower into public life, to share, 
 however humbly, the labcurs of the field. 
 
 Ah ! how well, even *n a few years, I was to know 
 that to admire Mr. Gladstone, to revere him, to be con- 
 vinced, moved, impelled, arrested, by him to do or to 
 be these things, was to be esteemed a weakling, or far 
 worse, by most superior circles. 
 
 You have really no idea of the resentments which were 
 felt in such quarters. No doubt this senselessness is pass- 
 ing away. The events of Ireland, for .example, during 
 the past few years have produced a visible revulsion of 
 opinion in favour of Mr. Gladstone's patriotism, his true 
 moderation, his immense sagacity, in that very chapter 
 of his history for which the circles aforesaid held him 
 heartily reprobate. The blindness of England ! A policy 
 of healing rejected, rejected again, rejected with con- 
 tempt; then accepted, accepted helplessly, but accepted
 
 8o 
 
 too late ! England's blindness ! Yes : the misery of 
 
 Ireland ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 But I cut before the point. There was no Liberal 
 Home Rule policy then. The greatest questions of the 
 day were, as I say, foreign policy and finance. I am 
 recalling the first day of the first Midlothian campaign. 
 
 I was seated in a far-away corner of the Edinburgh 
 Music Hall to the orator's extreme right, but with a 
 good view of him and of the scene. The building was, 
 of course, ridiculously small for the requirements of the 
 occasion. Every chord curiosity, enthusiasm, criticism, 
 determination, watchfulness every chord was tensely 
 strung. General political interest appeared to be con- 
 centrated in that one room as from many nations of Europe 
 and the four quarters of the English-speaking world; 
 while to this the local spice was added of an attack upon 
 the Buccleugh in his own citadel. 
 
 My own thoughts, I confess, took a turn of a more 
 historical and personal kind; they were broken by each 
 extra spasm of the surrounding excitement. We were 
 about to see the man who in the darkest hours of Italian 
 history had written those daring exposures of the horrors 
 of Neapolitan prisons which had inspired with new life 
 and hope the great patriots of Italy, and had driven King 
 Bomba from his throne. Years had passed since Tennyson 
 in " In Memoriam " had made Arthur Hallam's death 
 immortal; and just in there, from under that gallery, there 
 was coming to speak to us the intimate associate of Arthur 
 Hallam. Here came the great survivor, the friend and 
 coadjutor of Peel, of Lord John Russell, of Cobden and 
 Cavour, and Mazzini.
 
 ENTER MR. GLADSTONE 81 
 
 There was a rustle of anticipation, and all faces turned 
 towards the expected comer. 
 
 He had known the inside and the chair of the great 
 offices of State Board of Trade, Treasury and all. 
 
 Then there was a roar of cheering from the thousands 
 in the streets outside, and the thoughts grew disturbed. 
 
 But still, was it not the very man who had risen from 
 being the greatest of Chancellors of the Exchequer to 
 being the greatest of Prime Ministers? 
 
 Well then, there he was, entering with a dignified, 
 sure, but rather swift step, very calm and serene, 
 but with a searching eye of fire. This is all that 
 I can remember of it till the immense hubbub of the 
 welcome sank, and, after a moment or two of hushed 
 waiting, he rose to begin his vast task of the campaign. 
 
 The numerous portraits of Mr. Gladstone represent 
 his exterior marvellously well, with more grip of the man 
 in his solid greatness than is usually secured ! I had 
 more than one opportunity of observation of him at close 
 quarters, and in a few days I shall send you some notes 
 taken at the time between 30 and 40 years ago descrip- 
 tive of his private conversational powers. But the truth 
 is that for me neither portrait nor picture can, of course, 
 ever reproduce that fact of marked significance which 
 the memory tenaciously retains, which I may call " speech 
 and the man." 
 
 I am recalling that fact now, that unusual responsive- 
 ness of body to mind, giving a vividness to description, 
 a charm to narrative, a magnetic penetration to those 
 feelings, whether of alarm, satisfaction, suspicion, pleasure 
 or conviction, which he wished to convey from his 
 own personality to that of the hearer. The hearer, the
 
 82 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 beholder, was made in truth a listener with ears and 
 eyes. 
 
 I need not say that the gestures which conveyed this 
 responsiveness were aided by his muscular development. 
 The head, massive as the portraits show, but deeper and 
 broader behind than one would have thought when one 
 watched the swiftness of its movements the head was 
 supported by broad and supple and, for an old man, very 
 square shoulders ; and the whole mass of the body upwards 
 from the toes, and outwards to the finger-tips everything 
 moved or was rigid according to the command of the 
 thought within. One quite peculiar gesture he had. He 
 would stretch his arm to the right, then swiftly cover the 
 back of his right hand with the palm of the left : as the 
 other side of the picture opened he would swing the whole 
 body to the left, distending the left arm and covering the 
 left hand with the right. He pointed in this way the 
 contrast which he argued; and he seemed to give to anti- 
 thesis a living human shape. 
 
 Now that is quite enough for one evening. I was 
 meaning to wind up with some lighter stuff about 
 journalism and so on, but no : I confess that these old 
 impressions still move me. The sun is setting over Loch- 
 nagar. This world is a very beautiful world. Good night. 
 
 Your own 
 
 TRUE THOMAS.
 
 LETTER XV 
 
 THE ELOQUENT IN TALK 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 August 29, 1920. 
 ISABEL DEAR, 
 
 When I wrote to you last I mentioned a conversation 
 that I had had with Mr. Gladstone, which I had written 
 out at length. Well, I have been rummaging among old 
 papers, and I have got the sheets. 
 
 Seldom or never have I taken down such things at 
 the time. But friends, to whom I recounted the talk next 
 day, were insistent that I should do so ; and now I am glad 
 that I did. You, however, will judge. 
 
 The first sheet of the paper is unfortunately missing. 
 It stated the occasion and the setting. If I remember 
 aright, the occasion was during, say, the third Midlothian 
 campaign. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was then staying with the Dean of 
 Faculty Balfour, afterwards my dear chief as Lord 
 Advocate, and thereafter, as Lord Kinross, Lord Presi- 
 dent of the Court of Session. The place of the dinner 
 was Balfour's house at Rothesay Place, Edinburgh. The 
 guests numbered about a dozen. I cannot remember their 
 names, but they included prospective Liberal candidates, 
 of whom I think I must have been one. The year probably 
 
 1890. 
 
 ***** 
 
 83
 
 84 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 The notes proceed : 
 
 Throughout the evening he was in great, almost tur- 
 bulent spirits, and he broke out at once : 
 
 " Mrs. Balfour, I have to-day seen a wonderful sight. 
 I said to Mr. Nelson ere I left him this afternoon that I 
 envied him and wished that it were in my power to carry 
 away with me that most marvellous and majestic view 
 which he has from his dining-room window. There rises 
 all the splendour of Arthur's Seat and there stand the 
 Salisbury rags. Wonderful ! " 
 
 All this ere we had left the drawing-room. As we 
 filed downstairs he leading the way we heard his voice 
 reverberating, the pauses being filled up by the ripple 
 of repartee which his sprightliness evoked. This con- 
 tinued all through the dinner. 
 
 I sat below Mr. Herbert Gladstone, and looked at the 
 aged statesman diagonally across the table. He domin- 
 ated and enthralled everybody, the lightest modulations 
 of his voice having a sonorous depth, and the mobility 
 of his face, and in particular the blazing brilliance of his 
 eyes in his serious moments, alternating in other moods 
 with their apparent contraction to a needle's point glimmer- 
 ing with merriment, were a constant study. 
 
 Few of us, however, could catch much until the ladies 
 retired, and then, indeed, began the serious business of 
 the evening. " Perhaps," said Herbert to me, " you 
 should take my place; you will want to hear my father 
 talk." I gratefully assented, and we changed seats, I 
 being then within four feet of his father. 
 
 As the conversation proceeded, this one peculiarity 
 became marked, namely, that when a statement might have 
 seemed too abstract, or a recollection too bare, he would
 
 85 
 
 instantly give it body and dress by the phrase " / will 
 give you an instance" the utterance of which would rivet 
 the attention of everyone present. 
 
 The Dean alluded to his visit to Mr. Nelson's. 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Gladstone, " I recollect well their 
 father's place of business. You ascended to it from the 
 Grassmarket, and following up essay after essay " (waving 
 with his hand) " you heard at each storey the clang-clang 
 of the coppersmith. I happen to have a most capricious 
 memory. I will give you an instance : For there, in the 
 year 1826, I well remember purchasing, from old Mr. 
 Nelson, Isaac Barrow's Sermons in five volumes at the 
 price of 263." 
 
 The reminiscence led on to the subject of old Scottish 
 literature; and Mr. Gladstone expressed the desire that 
 greater effort should be made for its full and exact 
 reproduction. 
 
 " No doubt," said the Dean, " it might require to some 
 extent to be expurgated." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mr. Gladstone, " but I refer to its repro- 
 duction on a limited scale, for the use of some of your 
 learned or Text Societies, rather than for popular con- 
 sumption. And as for that matter of expurgation, a great 
 change has come over the public taste even in compara- 
 tively recent times of which I give you an instance. It 
 would, I dare say, be hazardous to issue in our day for 
 popular use a full edition of the works even of Richard 
 Baxter Richard Baxter the divine ! " 
 
 " By the way," he added, " I do wonder that the trans- 
 lation of the entire Scriptures in verse by Zachary Boyd 
 has never seen the light. I have a most capricious 
 memory. It is now forty years ago since the late Dr.
 
 86 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Robert Lee conducted me through the University of 
 Glasgow, and in the Library of that University he showed 
 to me this work of Zachary Boyd. I opened it at the 
 prophet Jonah, and I still remember the four lines which 
 I read, and which, if you wish it, I will now repeat to you." 
 Of course we wished it. And then, with twinkling eyes 
 and a fine mockery of gravity, he repeated these words : 
 
 " Whin Jonah's whaul began to spew, 
 Thinks Jonah,, What's adae the noo? 
 Here's nather room for coal nor cawnle, 
 There's naethingf but fish-guts to haunle ! " 
 
 After the explosion of laughter had subsided, we 
 drifted from literature on to the subject of printing, when 
 he startled us by saying, with much seriousness : " In the 
 period which most of you will remember as the Jingo 
 period, no less distinguished and able a man than the 
 present Lord Derby said of the Montenegrins that they 
 were a half-savage people. Now I will give you an in- 
 stance. More than 400 years ago the Montenegrins were 
 overwhelmed by the devastating power of the Turk, and 
 were driven to their fastnesses in the mountains and the 
 rocks; from which inaccessible fastnesses for the space 
 of 400 years they have continued to wave the flag of 
 freedom in the face of the Turk. Now, what did they 
 carry with them to the mountains and the rocks ? They 
 carried with them their printing-presses ; and this fourteen 
 years before ever a printing-press was seen in Scotland ! 
 Thus far for Lord Derby's view that the Montenegrins 
 are a half-savage people ! " 
 
 About this stage Provost Cazenove was ushered in, 
 and Mr. Gladstone and he were soon immersed in dis- 
 cussions about the Tractarian movement, and about
 
 THE ELOQUENT IN TALK 87 
 
 Oxford in the days as old Dr. Cazenove amusingly 
 admitted before he knew it. 
 
 The conversation became more general, Mr. Gladstone 
 leading on the subject of Dr. Dollinger and trie late 
 Catholic movement in Germany; this, again, raising the 
 subject of the movement in Catholic circles against the 
 restraints of the vows of celibacy in the priesthood. Upon 
 this he remarked : " I remember having to spend a good 
 many years ago some period in Paris; and there I had 
 occasion to hear the attitude of Pere Hyacinthe frequently 
 discussed; and I am bound to confess that the position 
 of society in Paris not Roman Catholic society, not 
 Protestant society, but all society was one not of regret 
 merely, but of positive disgust at the conduct of Pere 
 Hyacinthe." 
 
 " But," someone aptly remarked, " did not Luther say 
 that unless he, a monk, married a nun, nobody would have 
 the good sense to follow his precepts ? " 
 
 " Ah," said Mr. Gladstone, with a shrewd smile, and 
 his eyes glimmering, " Luther was a dare-devil sort of 
 a fellow ! " 
 
 As we left the dining-room, he paused until someone 
 fetched him his black walking-cane, with the aid of which 
 he ascended to the drawing-room, we painfully contrast- 
 ing the weakness of his physical condition with the vigour 
 and vivacity of his mental and conversational powers. 
 
 We were introduced to him in turn. As one of our 
 number (who shall be nameless) was presented to him, 
 with a head not large by any means, and gleaming in its 
 baldness, Mr. Gladstone, moved by some fit, no doubt, of 
 association of ideas, got the conversation on to the subject 
 of heads and their varying sizes. " I am told," said he,
 
 88 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 " that the largest size of heads to be found in these islands 
 is in Aberdeen. Mr. Cooper, of the Scotsman in those 
 days (with a smile) when the Scotsman pursued a sound 
 and sensible policy related to me an anecdote. He 
 himself has a large head, so large that upon one occasion 
 no size in the front department of a hatter's shop could 
 be found to fit it; whereupon the hatter called (in Mr. 
 Cooper's hearing) to his assistant in the back shop, ' Jimmy, 
 bring me the Aberdeen size! ' 
 
 I was anxious to have his opinion of some of the great 
 lawyers of his time, and practically he himself led on to 
 the theme by inquiries as to literary pursuits by members 
 of the legal profession. I said to him that, although the 
 prejudice against these was dying hard, I thought it was 
 unquestionably dying. For one thing, citing from my own 
 experience, I was aware that the present Lord President 
 (Inglis) always relished the citation of the opinions of 
 Lord Jeffrey, expressed as these were in good literary 
 form. 
 
 Being thus on the subject of the Edinburgh reviewers, 
 I asked him pointedly, " Mr. Gladstone, did you know 
 Lord Brougham ? " 
 
 " Lord Brougham ! " said he with much animation, 
 " he was one of my intimate personal friends." 
 
 Then, tapping with his fingers the end of the sofa 
 on which he was seated, and speaking to me standing 
 by his side, in terms of what I may describe as enthusiastic 
 animation, he launched forth into a series of vivid descrip- 
 tions of men and events. 
 
 " I am told," said I, " that Scarlet? was Brougham's 
 most formidable antagonist, and a man of the greatest 
 persuasive powers."
 
 THE ELOQUENT IN TALK 89 
 
 " Well," said he, " if you refer to Parliament, I do 
 not agree with you. I will tell you what Scarlett's power 
 was : he knew the mind of a jury. I will give you an 
 instance. My father was a keen business man, and he 
 had a litigation at Westminster, and Scarlett was his 
 counsel. My father's antagonist was in the witness-box, 
 and was being cross-examined by Scarlett, and my father 
 a keen business man desired that a certain question 
 in particular should be put to his opponent. He accord- 
 ingly wrote the question down on a piece of paper and 
 handed it to Scarlett, who perused it, and, turning down 
 his thumb (you know how these things are done), put it 
 on one side. But my father was not to be beaten, and he 
 accordingly again wrote his question upon another slip 
 of paper, and again handed it to Scarlett, who thereupon 
 put the question and received a most damaging answer; 
 upon receiving which he turned round and said to my 
 father, ' Where are you now, Mr. Gladstone ? ' 
 
 " No," he said, " not Scarlett, but in Parliament I 
 should rather reckon that Sir William Follett was the 
 greatest; and about that time Parliament was never so 
 rich in great lawyers. Five of them, all great, I remember 
 sitting on the one front bench." 
 
 " We think," said I, " judging from our very limited 
 experience in Scotch appeals, that Lord Chancellor Cairns 
 stands at the head of the list of these Englishmen." 
 
 " Sir Hugh Cairns ! " he said. " Yes, I have heard 
 great lawyers in England discuss that topic, and I found 
 the general opinion to be that among them Sir Hugh 
 Cairns stands first, and Jessel Jessel the Jew stands 
 second." 
 
 " Of course," said I, " Westbury "
 
 go LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 " Westbury ! " cried he. " I consider that Lord 
 Westbury was a man of so acute and penetrating an 
 intellect that it mattered not to him one rush whether 
 the cause which he espoused was right or wrong. I will 
 give you an instance. You are not old enough to re- 
 member the first China War. We had a debate of five 
 days upon the subject in the House of Commons, with 
 the result that we threw Palmerston out, and on appeal 
 to the country, the country threw us out. 
 
 " Sir Richard Bethell was then Attorney-General, and 
 he and the Solicitor-General of the day were called in to a 
 Cabinet Council to advise on the question whether the war 
 could possibly be defended. The Solicitor-General a 
 plain, simple man thought that it was possible that it 
 might be defended; but Sir Richard Bethell announced 
 to the Cabinet emphatically his opinion that by no human 
 ingenuity could that war be defended. Well, as I said, 
 the debate came on in the House of Commons, and on 
 the evening of the third day the adjournment had been 
 moved. I was sitting on the front bench, while the Clerks 
 were arranging their papers on the table, and the Speakei 
 in my hearing, as he passed from the Chair, said to Sir 
 Erskine May, the Clerk of the House, ' What a remark- 
 ably able speech was that just delivered by Sir Richard 
 Bethell ! ' That speech was in defence of the first China 
 War, which, in the private consultations of the Cabinet, 
 he had advised by no human ingenuity could possibly be 
 defended ! " 
 
 By this time I, standing in front of him, had been 
 joined by others of the company, and, in short, the anima- 
 tion of his utterances, and the attractiveness and grace 
 of his presence and gesture, had gathered a circle about
 
 THE ELOQUENT IN TALK 91 
 
 him. No sign of lassitude was apparent, although by 
 this time the clock was on the stroke of eleven, and he 
 had had a day, and days, of stupendous exertion. But 
 he must be protected against even our delighted impor- 
 tunity : Mrs. Gladstone quietly slipped in amongst us, and 
 her husband was whisked off to his own apartments, and 
 the pleasant company dispersed. 
 
 How lifeless and bald must any reproduction in black 
 and white be of such conversation ! The magic and music 
 of it, its charm and grace, its range of feeling from volcanic 
 earnestness to the tenderest humour, all these, alas, no 
 skill can reproduce, no words describe. That is all that 
 our settled recollection can declare; at the immediate 
 moment our minds were in a storm of excitement. 
 
 As I left the hall, I was seized by both shoulders by 
 another of the guests, and shaken violently to the refrain, 
 " Did you ever, ever, ever in your life hear the like of 
 
 that?" 
 
 ***** 
 
 I have given you the notes just as they are; and thus 
 they end. What think you of it? Does it interest you? 
 Does it move you? Anyhow, it is a true picture, drawn 
 
 at the very time, by 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XVI 
 
 THE SARCASM CARVED IN STONE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September i, 1920. 
 MY ISABEL, 
 
 I have a confession to make to you. I cannot truth- 
 fully deny that newspapers did influence me, and some- 
 times helped to shape my opinion, in these early days. 
 You know very well how differently you were brought up, 
 and how journalistic opinion was never taken among you 
 at its face value. Had it been otherwise, our family life 
 would have been a poor flustered affair. 
 
 My complete disconnexion from society entanglements 
 may have had something to do with an outspokenness 
 which gave anxiety to friends and was received with 
 well, disapproval, by the other sort. But when day after 
 day, week after week, or even year after year, the same 
 familiar tags contempt, sophism, attack, and those lower 
 forms of hostility which are known in the lower quarters 
 when these were at their oftenest and their worst, they 
 provoked only a shameless hilarity among a family of 
 jolly unbelievers. They applied even to that our 
 standing family maxim : ' Turn every trouble into an 
 adventure." 
 
 But, as I say, it was different when I was young. To 
 be " in the papers " either for good or for bad was a 
 
 serious affair. This kind of feeling lasted till I was 
 
 92
 
 THE SARCASM CARVED IN STONE 93 
 
 grown up. It was so for hundreds of thousands of 
 Scotchmen. It is so no longer. A kind of emancipation 
 took place from the power of the Press and a great emerg- 
 ence of the right of private judgment. This independ- 
 ence of journalistic leading-strings has continued. It is 
 greater in Scotland than even in the North of England, 
 greater far than in the South. And I should put Scot- 
 land at least forty years in advance of London in this 
 regard; for London is the lowest in the scale of moral 
 misfortune that of being content, and even of wishing, 
 to have its thinking done for it. 
 
 What caused the change? Well, it had no doubt to 
 do with the Home Rule split. But most of all it was in 
 the world of hero worship that the shock occurred. Here 
 is an instance at hand. 
 
 A very leading paper in the East of Scotland was 
 the Scotsman. It had been conducted for a long 
 period with such ability as to have become a real 
 pioneer not only of political liberalism, but of religious 
 toleration. 
 
 We were most of us younger fellows very willing to 
 study public affairs in quarters more settled and scientific 
 especially in economics and history as well as scholar- 
 ship than the columns of a daily paper. Still, water 
 wears the rock. And when Mr. Gladstone came to Mid- 
 lothian, his disciples numbered thousands who had been 
 so deluged with praise of him that hero worship faintly 
 expresses their state of mind. The adulation of him by 
 the Scotsman " adulation " is quite a feeble and inade- 
 quate term the adulation of him in those columns was 
 so steady, so lavish, so indiscriminate, that it required a 
 real cleverness to conceal its being overdone. Such was
 
 94 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 the state and such was the influence of the Press in that 
 quarter in the first half of the 'eighties. 
 
 In the second half of the 'eighties all was changed. 
 The hero incarnate had become something else incarnate. 
 All that was bright had turned to darkness, and the same 
 man had suddenly been transmuted from the preacher of 
 righteousness to the prophet of evil; the sincere in him 
 had become sinister; the good in him had become evil; 
 there had been nothing like it since the fall of Adam, 
 only, owing to its dangerous accomplishments, this was 
 worse than original sin. So where there had been admira- 
 tion of the man there was now contempt, where there had 
 been streams of adulation there now ran rivers of 
 contumely. 
 
 Was this consistent or inconsistent? Was it right or 
 wrong? That, my lady, is not the point I am pressing. 
 The point is this : that the swift and tremendous change 
 from the one extreme to the other put it into the heads 
 of many, many citizens that both extremes were wrong, 
 and that such leading was only for the blind. I am not 
 talking, mark you, of that huge body of Scotchmen who 
 resented the change on its merits, and still revered Mr. 
 Gladstone. They did so now indeed with a new affection 
 as they watched how finely he bore adversity of opinion 
 and the buffetings of fortune. But I am referring to that 
 far from negligible body of men who realized afresh a 
 capacity and indeed a duty to do without Press domina- 
 tion, and who became steeled in favour of independence 
 of mind. That class has grown, grows, and will grow. 
 Even London may come along : the dear big Babylon 
 will be none the worse. 
 
 As to my own case, that is neither here nor there.
 
 THE SARCASM CARVED IN STONE 95 
 
 After I entered public life I became the object of the 
 affable attentions of the paper I have mentioned, and of 
 its satellite which revolved in the same orbit. As the 
 years went on the iteration grew laughable, and being 
 one-sided for I never took any notice except possibly 
 on an early opportunity to go one worse it became tire- 
 some, and after that a kind of testimonial; for if I had 
 earned approbation in that quarter it would have lost me 
 votes. 
 
 Then was I not in good company? Think of Dr. 
 Rainy, the ablest, the wisest, and the most truly Christian 
 man of affairs whom I have ever intimately known out of 
 Parliament. One's own case did not matter ; but to think 
 of such treatment, from such a source, of such a man ! 
 I once spoke to Dr. Rainy on the subject, making no 
 secret of my own sense of what was going on. The 
 learned Principal read me a lesson in philosophy. Half 
 gravely, half humorously, with that wonderful play of eye- 
 lids which seemed to tremble towards the distance, he 
 said : " Well, of course, it is a pity that Mr. Cooper is a 
 man who is so largely governed by hostilities ! " 
 
 Mr. Cooper was the editor of the paper, a man of 
 talent, clever rather than wise, a Roman Catholic English- 
 man, with no knowledge of the essentials of Scottish 
 history or character; and his sympathies and antipathies 
 were worked indefatigably and according to plan. The 
 admirable apparatus of his paper enabled him to gratify 
 these at will, and no doubt this temptation led him at 
 times too far. 
 
 I was wrong in saying that I took no notice. I once 
 did. There was a case being tried in Edinburgh an 
 unjust attempt (as I remember it) to extract damages from
 
 g6 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 a builder for a workman's own fault or mistake. There 
 were lots in it about scaffoldings, beams, and so on. I 
 had been possibly sent for from London to defend the 
 case, and as I walked up the North Bridge to Court, 
 something interested me. 
 
 The present fine buildings there had just been erected 
 among them the handsome premises of my journalistic 
 supervisors. The jury soon got on the wrong tack alto- 
 gether, and seemed to resent the defence : one had to get 
 them back to good sense by the way of good humour. 
 So in addressing them I made a detour. 
 
 ' There are strange freaks, Gentlemen," said I, " in 
 Edinburgh buildings. If any of you go down, for 
 instance, to the North Bridge, you will have a treat." By 
 this time there were symptoms that the jury, and Lord 
 McLaren too, who was presiding over them, were expect- 
 ing fun. ' You will see there," said I, " an architectural 
 freak : a sarcasm carved in stone" A bit of a pause. 
 ' You will see a Figure, holding the Torch of Truth over 
 the Scotsman office ! " 
 
 There was a little scuffle and racket, of course, but all 
 went well. And after the case was over a good few of the 
 auditors, including jurors and listening juniors, went home 
 via the North Bridge ! 
 
 Dear ! Dear ! What liberties one took ! 
 
 Your very own 
 
 TRUE LOVE.
 
 LETTER XVII 
 THE HARRY VANE POINT 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 5, 1920. 
 PLEASE, ISABEL DEAR, 
 
 Here is a Sabbath morning, peaceful, serene, lovely. 
 I have been wondering in my own mind whether perhaps 
 I have not been failing to show forth truly that great 
 decade of the 'eighties. Or rather whether I have not 
 been omitting, for you as well as for myself, its deepest 
 significance. 
 
 I mean this. It is true that professional work was 
 arduous, severe, unremitting; treadmill work, if you think 
 of it merely in itself, which is what nobody should do 
 who has the healthy mind. It is true that the affairs of 
 State came at that time rushing like a great wind info very 
 arid places. One's thoughts were swept out of the narrow 
 and self-centred round; exhilarations came in that ample 
 range, but with them came, sometimes conflict, sometimes 
 dust. 
 
 Yet that is not the whole truth. We must be fair and 
 candid with each other; there was that something else of 
 which I wrote to you some time ago. 
 
 I understand that there is a mighty difference, as 
 scientific men point out, between the effect of irregular 
 waves and regular waves in the world of sound. The one 
 
 is noise, the other is music. It is so in life. Effort, 
 H 97
 
 98 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 struggle, exhilaration : what shall abate the noise what 
 shall lay the dust what shall bring the pulsations, now 
 wild and now lethargic, into rhythm? Will insouciance 
 do it, or abandon? Will health do it or will stoicism? 
 No ! no ! none of these. " There is a world elsewhere." 
 That is the secret. It is the consciousness of that that 
 gives hope its scope and faith its power. As I was brought 
 up to believe, it was in that consciousness that the parallels 
 of principle were laid. That it is which is the great} 
 regularizer. And so the movements alike of the inner and 
 the outward world are transmuted from noise to a music 
 of life. 
 
 You know very well about these things ; and I am only 
 putting them down to show you that I am not forgetting 
 them, that after having reached the allotted span I still 
 most verily believe in them, and that indeed to leave them 
 out of the account would not be honest. Nay, I feel that 
 they are more widely, far more widely, making to great 
 masses of men a true motive power of life than is com- 
 monly supposed. Nowadays, of course, it is an affecta- 
 tion of the hour to play Gallic, to deny with a wink or a 
 smile all place for things divine in the springs of human 
 action, and to exhibit a sham and shabby shrewdness by 
 asking at every turn of a man's life what game he is up 
 to. This, of course, is a belittling of life to the critic's 
 measure, and but you well, to business. 
 
 The upshot of it all is that in the 'eighties the things 
 whose interest attracted me outside of the law were not 
 only the affairs of the State, but also, and quite naturally, 
 and as a matter of course, the affairs of the Church, in 
 that sense, wide and tolerant and true, for which the 
 term should stand.
 
 THE HARRY VANE POINT 99 
 
 The position of Scotland as to this was distinct. No 
 doubt in forty years that position may have shifted. As 
 what has not ? May not one cherish catholicity, toleration, 
 the love for and belief in more light light from all the 
 width of heaven? 
 
 " What custom wills, in all things should we do't, 
 The dust on antique time would be unswept, 
 And mountainous error be too highly heaped 
 For truth to overpeer." 
 
 More than any others that fine body of men I worked with 
 felt these truths, while cherishing with a deep loyalty " the 
 fundamentals." 
 
 But do not forget that the Scotland of those times 
 to the circle of which I speak stood thus; and if you 
 don't want this disquisition, then don't read it, but be 
 pleased to let me ease my conscience in describing that 
 part of the life of myself and thousands of us in that day 
 by just writing it down : 
 
 Scotland was the home of Presbyterianism, that is to 
 say, it was democratic, from the keel to the masthead. 
 The organizing genius of Calvin and the masterful in- 
 tellect of Knox had made the whole body of the people 
 inheritors in a personal sense, not only of the principle 
 of equality of rights, but of those imperative duties 
 which that equality implied. So the clergy were kept, 
 so to speak, in their proper place. They were teach- 
 ing elders, and no more. The doctrine of apostolic 
 succession was neither believed in historically nor was it 
 felt to be consistent with Presbyterian equality, putting as 
 it did fellow-men in a position of ascendancy and privi- 
 lege; whereas such ascendancy and privilege should and 
 could alone be won or kept in any Christian community
 
 ioo LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 by character and faith and moral worth. So men, with 
 the kind of upbringing I had, naturally felt that as man- 
 hood came to them its responsibility of witness-bearing led 
 them into Church life and work. There was no ecclesias- 
 ticism about it. 
 
 Therefore one worked away as an office-bearer, visiting, 
 teaching in the schools, and all the rest of it, in that little 
 Presbyterian world into which you, like the other dear ones, 
 were baptized. This led one in time into the so-called 
 Church Courts, the chief of these being that lively, inde- 
 pendent, capable, fearless, and altogether lovable body 
 called the Synod. 
 
 It numbered from 1,000 to 1,200 men; clergy and laity 
 equally represented, every congregation all over Scotland 
 sending its minister and an elder. If ever incongruity 
 had a chance, surely you might say it was there; they 
 came from a country as divided in sentiment as it was 
 by straits and seas. But this is a singularity of Scotland 
 itself that that variety of geographical distribution has 
 been accompanied by a surprising solidarity of belief. 
 
 It has been often noted in things political. It arose 
 from things religious. Men were welded together by a 
 common faith, and if the State and politics tried to con- 
 cuss that, there were in old days rebellions and scaffolds 
 and cruelties and killing times, and in these often and 
 often again Dissent stood side by side with Duty. Dis- 
 sent had gone through various stages and evolutions ; and 
 though a gentler and more insidious code of conformity 
 made easy became, of course, the vogue, the Synod may 
 be said to have represented the consolidated forces of all 
 Presbyterianism outside, deliberately and of set principle 
 outside, connexion with the secular power.
 
 THE HARRY VANE POINT 101 
 
 This connexion was in full force with the Established 
 Church ; the same connexion was historically visible in the 
 Free Church, which remained in a perplexity between the 
 dead past and the living present a perplexity for which 
 it suffered a most cruel punishment. Our own good 
 Church was neither in the Establishment nor did it make 
 the slightest claim or wish or pretence of right to be in it. 
 Its view was simply that State Endowments were a 
 deadening and deplorable affair, and that State control 
 was insufferable to an institution which ought to be moved 
 alone by the living Spirit. That was it : guidance and 
 direction were there. 
 
 Evangelical ? Yes ; come along, good old word ! " I 
 am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," said St. Paul, 
 and so said they. That was their Apostolical succession. 
 
 There were two great nights of their annual session 
 one on the relations of Church and State, and in this they 
 justified and fortified their position, making clear the in- 
 evitable logic of toleration. The other was on the spread 
 of the Evangel in accordance with the command. Thirty 
 or forty years ago that was a brace of topics which drew 
 great, intensely interested, deeply earnest audiences. 
 
 Had I thought that either cause would suffer by the 
 transaction of union with the Free Church I should never 
 have put my hand to that great work which was accom- 
 plished as the century drew to its close. Have these 
 causes suffered ? Well ! who knows ? The great Chris- 
 tian promises, commands, duties, stand as before, leading, 
 as I believe, to the same great conclusions. All is in the 
 best of Hands. 
 
 More than any other assembly I have ever known, the 
 Synod resembled in the quality of its debates the Parlia-
 
 102 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 ment at Westminster. Yet the former had some advan- 
 tages. It had no leaders, no parties, no coalitions. Every 
 subject was tested by good sense, sound knowledge, and 
 gospel truth. No other leadership did they want. One 
 would have thought that disintegration would have ensued. 
 Not a whit. As there were no parties, there was nothing 
 to fall asunder. 
 
 So aspirants to leadership were few. One or two 
 Doctors of Divinity I knew, whose ambitions in that 
 direction were quickly dowsed. Yet the real head-and- 
 shoulders men could not, of course, be concealed. Two 
 of them I vividly recall. They were singularly unlike in 
 personal appearance. The one tall, loosely built, yet 
 massive a great body, surmounted by a noble, truly noble, 
 snowy head. The other was small, compactly built; long 
 upper lip ; face closely shaven ; head closely cropped ; in 
 no way as the Scotch say " kenspeckle." The one 
 ample, rich and flowing, Ciceronian in style; the other 
 logical, compendious, pungent, Tacitian. Yet both of 
 them living embodiments of power, of a true modesty, of 
 a courage undaunted, and within a heart of golden 
 chanty. Having known them, I say this, not of one but 
 of both. 
 
 No mean men these, as teachers, as debaters. Both 
 were Principals in their time. Cairns had long years 
 before his death been offered the Principalship of the 
 University of Edinburgh; but till after his death it was 
 never known. 
 
 I was meaning to tell you of those influences and 
 associations which in the affairs of Church and State 
 moved me ere I was called to the parliamentary arena. 
 And I have begun with the former. Later and larger
 
 THE HARRY VANE POINT 103 
 
 events in the ecclesiastical sphere they can wait till 
 another occasion. 
 
 Now for the affairs of State. For I suppose you do 
 want to hear about the approach to Westminster? 
 
 But it is late. Not to-night. Forgive the ardour of 
 some of these old remembrances. But I am trying to tell 
 you things as I felt them. 
 
 Your Sabbath-breaking 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XVIII 
 
 A SPORTING AFFAIR 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 7, 1920. 
 DEAR LASS ISABEL, 
 
 The 'eighties are over. Their experiences hard in 
 the law, serious in the Church, inspiring in the State; 
 with literature a steady consolation, and family life a 
 support and a delight were these not richer far, for the 
 purposes of life, than accumulations of wealth ? 
 
 The inevitable consequence ensued. Just as in youth 
 the prescribed bounds had been broken, so it was in man- 
 hood. Much had to be risked again, but this time the 
 risks were broader and more serious. Work-a-day busi- 
 ness to be torn to fragments; Edinburgh forsaken for 
 Westminster, during most of the working year. Was one 
 justified in applying even to that the jolly family maxim 
 turn every trouble into an adventure? 
 
 I own to you that these thoughts did sizzle in the mind. 
 The sweet counsellor by my side never flinched. In 1890 
 I accepted the invitation to become Liberal, or rather 
 Radical candidate for the Border Burghs. 
 
 It was difficult country, and the pace was fast. Had 
 anything broken, had even the saddle-girths been slack- 
 ened by a single hole, I should have been unhorsed. But 
 it was the Scott country. The men were born fighters; 
 loyalty was not a passive but an active quality, and on 
 
 104
 
 A SPORTING AFFAIR 105 
 
 each side of politics loyalty was true as steel. A sure 
 seat? No! No! Just the very opposite. A sporting 
 affair. Of adventure there was such a spice as would have 
 tempted the most austere to a bout of betting. 
 
 On the one side there was the Liberal tradition. Sir 
 George Trevelyan had been member for eighteen years, 
 rendering conspicuous political service by his faithful advo- 
 cacy of the extension of the franchise, and making by his 
 literary achievements even his parliamentary pedestal 
 famous. His majorities had run into thousands. Who 
 was I to think of succeeding such a man, or of ever in 
 the world being not only his parliamentary but his 
 ministerial colleague ? 
 
 Yet I was to know the warmth of his friendship and 
 the steady kindness of his encouragement. Rummaging 
 among papers the other day I found this letter. Read it. 
 Can you wonder that I love and venerate its author? 
 
 " Welcombe, 
 
 " Stratford-on-Avon. 
 
 "February 11, 1897. 
 "DEAR SHAW, 
 
 "I have been following your energetic peregrinations. The 
 fact is that it is an extraordinary thing to see anyone who 
 really enjoys politics, and yet understands their higher aspect 
 and holds his opinions as a creed. It has been a great element 
 in my life for some years past to get some electricity from a 
 contact which fortunately was a pretty frequent one. I look 
 back to our relations with unmixed satisfaction, and forward 
 to enjoying the friendship which has resulted from them. 
 ***** 
 
 "With our united kind remembrances to Mrs. Shaw, 
 
 "I remain, 
 
 "Very sincerely yours, 
 
 "G. TREVELYAN."
 
 io6 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Following Trevelyan came Alexander Laing Brown, 
 who sat from 1885 till 1892. You know well enough 
 about him, so far as his conversational gifts and his 
 extraordinary powers of memory are concerned. But 
 of his public efforts you know nothing. Well; he 
 was quite the most powerful helper of Mr. Glad- 
 stone in all Scotland worth a dozen of platform sup- 
 porters and hundreds of the hanger-on species. He 
 was shortish of stature and spare of build. He had a 
 fine and lofty forehead, a gleaming eye, a good modu- 
 lation of voice; and he also had, when he passed out 
 of his humorous exordium, that true orator's strength a 
 word of power from a heart of flame. This will seem to 
 you exaggeration; but it is not. I have seen him over 
 and over again dip into the literary treasures that were 
 always to his hand, and for he was an ardent Brown- 
 ingite clinch both argument and appeal by vivid lines 
 from his favourite author. This man was resigning, and 
 so the vacancy. I always loved him; he was my friend, 
 eloquent, assiduous, unfailing, from my first contact with 
 the Burghs till the last. 
 
 I remember well one occasion on which the three of 
 us Trevelyan, Brown and I strode, back and forward, 
 from end to end of the Terrace of the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment, deep in an animated talk. Our good friends of 
 the other persuasion not a few of them watched us 
 kindly but with a grim smile. I interpreted their ques- 
 tion to be : " What new manoeuvre are these rebels of 
 Radicals discussing ? " Why, my dear, they were discuss- 
 ing the literature and ballads of the Borders, Brown's 
 knowledge and memory of these far excelling all of ours. 
 But I must get back to my story.
 
 A SPORTING AFFAIR 107 
 
 These were the pros. Now for the contras. 
 
 Alas ! Trevelyan had forsaken Mr. Gladstone and 
 followed Mr. Chamberlain. And so in the contest of 1885 
 his thousands had melted away. Brown, called upon at a 
 moment's notice to save Gladstonian Liberalism and to 
 defend Home Rule for Ireland, had stepped into the 
 breach, ousted him from the citadel, destroyed his 
 majority, and kept the pass by the narrow figure of 
 thirty votes. 
 
 It was no doubt true that, after the failure of a certain 
 Round Table Conference, Trevelyan had come back to 
 the old party fold. But did he bring back any Border 
 Unionists with him ? Not one. They were obstinate ; 
 some of them furious; and all of them chafed at the lead 
 of the Burghs being held against them for seven years 
 by thirty votes. They held a common talk that the Burghs 
 were since at least 1888 misrepresented, and that the 
 Chamberlain policy was now in the ascendant. 
 
 They had the singular good fortune of having as their 
 prospective candidate Mr. Chamberlain's own son. Here 
 would have been a shrewd blow Austen to restore 
 Chamberlainism in the constituency of Trevelyan who 
 had deserted it ! Enough to make every Unionist long 
 for the day of battle. I should tell you also that Mr. 
 Austen Chamberlain on his own merits was even then a 
 singularly attractive personality, and displayed the be- 
 ginnings of those high qualities which have since made 
 him so capable and effective in various Ministries of 
 State. No one could fail to wish such a man well. 
 
 Unfortunately at the last moment he chose a surer 
 seat in Worcestershire. There he won handsomely. The 
 Burghs selected a worthy ex-Provost, a manufacturer of
 
 io8 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 woollens, who sturdily fought for local interests and the 
 Unionist party ticket. 
 
 Yet the contest was strenuous what they call " stir- 
 ring." Great audiences, speeches every evening; heck- 
 ling galore. Yes, indeed, heckling, that great " popular 
 educator " north of the Tweed. Not infrequently I spoke 
 for an hour and was heckled for an hour and a quarter. 
 On the part of the constituency, extraordinary knowledge, 
 great quickness of apprehension, quickness of tongue, love 
 of a tussle, and loyalty to the game. 
 
 On the part of the candidate, whom you know, what 
 was his style and line? Madame, the question is im- 
 proper ! Are they not recorded in the Chronicles of etc., 
 etc., etc. ? When you stand for Parliament, dig into those 
 speeches for curiosity's sake. Mines of wisdom ! 
 
 One story I may tell you which I fear we owe to the 
 invention of some kindly rascals of the Parliament House. 
 You have heard in my last letter about my interest in 
 affairs ecclesiastical. In former epistles also those ele- 
 ments have appeared which moved me in warm support 
 of the popular Radical creed. And even in the cradle 
 you must have heard the reverberations of the Tweed 
 controversy. All this was compended by the clever diarist 
 aforesaid as follows : 
 
 " I like Maister Shaw," said a Galashiels voter, speak- 
 ing to a friend in the Peebles train. " I like Maister 
 Shaw. You see, sir, he's 
 
 For God; 
 
 And the People ; 
 
 And Free Fishing ! " 
 
 I was often chaffed about this programme; and once I
 
 A SPORTING AFFAIR 109 
 
 allowed that the best of all free fishing was " free fishing 
 in preserved waters." This last quip never came out. 
 The programme stood. It won. The majority rose from 
 30 to 365. 
 
 And so behold in the dusk of an evening of July, 1892, 
 at the door of Abercromby Place, a cab heaped up with 
 luggage. Within the dwelling a grave-faced father in 
 the nursery upstairs kissing the children one by one; and 
 then, after a parting serious glance at the bare library 
 desk, from which all the briefs had been sent back, he 
 enters the cab with the dear companion and boards the 
 train to King's Cross en route for Westminster. That 
 familiar route ! How often was he to traverse it, by day 
 and by night, during the next seventeen years ! 
 
 Your affectionate 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XIX 
 
 A FRONT- BENCH MAN WITH A BACK -BENCH MIND 
 
 Craigtnyle. 
 
 September 10, 1920. 
 MY OWN ISABEL, 
 
 The weather has been broken and the shooting infre- 
 quent; so what to do in these days but to keep on 
 answering your commands ?, 
 
 You remember how Barrie quaintly describes a dis- 
 cussion among his villagers, as to what could be the use 
 of a bit of ground for a front garden? The conclusive 
 defence for it was, I think, that it was a place where " a 
 body could gae back and fore, composing his mind " ! 
 As I paced to and fro on the terrace this morning, the 
 recollection of the saying caused a ripple of laughter in 
 the mind. Ah ! what a genius that of Barrie's, that gift 
 of bequeathing a pleasure to the memory, of causing a 
 laughter in the mind ! 
 
 Where was I ? What I meant to be at was this, that 
 looking westward and seeing the clouds drifting from 
 Lochnagar to Cloch-na-ben, I was thinking of you, and 
 of the past, and was " composing my mind." So here 
 goes for another letter. 
 
 The Home Rule Parliament of 1892 to 1895 was pretty 
 largely a new Parliament. What was my predominant 
 feeling? Well, to tell the plain truth, it was one of be- 
 wilderment. This was shared by, I should say, two 
 
 no
 
 FRONT-BENCH MAN BACK-BENCH MIND in 
 
 hundred of us; but in my case the bewilderment lasted 
 for at least a year. During that year there I sat, interested, 
 watchful, gradually absorbing the spirit of the procedure, 
 not in the least bored, scrupulously silent. 
 
 The time was well rilled up. There was the daily 
 letter home. Also a little cargo of letters to constituents, 
 helping this one here and that one there, and learning a 
 great patience in the removing of doubts and the soothing 
 of disquiet. Now and again cases for legal opinion 
 dropped from the skies. 
 
 I made the orthodox maiden speech, of course, and in 
 the orthodox manner. That is to say, it was a dismal 
 failure. I know about these things; years afterwards I 
 repeated the experiment in the Lords; dismal failure 
 again ! Only one spark of consolation in the Commons 
 Mr. Gladstone, probably remembering our conversation 
 at the Dean's, stayed in the nearly empty House and 
 into his dinner-hour to hear me, and, as he left the 
 chamber, gravely bowed his acknowledgments. It was 
 little, but the courtesy consoled. 
 
 Then one day, in an excited and a crowded House, 
 with a division impending on the Home Rule Bill, in 
 which every vote counted and which might mean the fall 
 of the Government, I felt irresistibly called to interpose. 
 The question at issue was very technical about keeping 
 up the procedure of a Petition of Right before you could 
 sue the Crown. I think it was Carson a man even then 
 of marked acuteness and vigour who raised the puzzle; 
 and he and Mr. Balfour made the pace in style. To them 
 replied Rigby worth any ten of us, but oh ! so ponderous 
 and he and Mr. Gladstone between them seemed to have 
 ransacked the world for precedents.
 
 ii2 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 It so happened that in some law case or other I had 
 had to investigate the topic. I said to Sir Joseph Leese 
 sitting next me : 
 
 " Leese, I know about this; should I say anything? " 
 
 Leese was in excitement like all the rest. 
 
 " What ? " said he. " Look at the House ; crammed 
 up. How dare you think of it? " 
 
 Before he had finished I was on my feet. A kind of 
 curiosity stilled the tumult for a moment. Mellor, the 
 Chairman, didn't even know my name, so he just pointed 
 to me with his finger. My theme was very simple. 
 People had been wandering all over the world for pre- 
 cedents ; would the House like to hear of one nearer home ? 
 If it would suffer two sentences I would tell them how we 
 managed north of the Tweed. Mr. Gladstone swung 
 round for a moment at this, looked at me, and thereafter 
 boomed out his " Hear, hears " as I proceeded. The 
 House and Government were making much ado about 
 nothing. In Scotland we did without Petition of Right 
 altogether. Any Government department making a con- 
 tract had to answer that contract and could be so com- 
 pelled in the Courts. If this cumbrous and archaic pro- 
 cedure were forced on Ireland, I should advise my Irish 
 friend to get rid of it at the quickest. 
 
 The House of Commons does really like to have a 
 new point, or a new fact, stated briefly and by one who 
 knows. And it listened to me as if it was getting that, 
 just when it most wanted it, that is to say. in the dreari- 
 ness of Committee. So there was far more made of the 
 thing than it deserved. 
 
 I am only telling you this for a reason which is coming 
 in a little. Next day Sir Charles Russell, the Attorney-
 
 FRONT-BENCH MAN BACK-BENCH MIND 113 
 
 General, came to me with a message from Mr. Gladstone. 
 Alas ! Sir Charles Russell soon wended his way to the 
 Bench as Lord Chief Justice. And alas ! Mr. Gladstone's 
 place was soon empty and we saw the grand figure no 
 more. 
 
 Readjustments for the great, too great void, had 
 to take place. Lord Rosebery reigned in his stead 
 as Prime Minister; Sir William Harcourt leading the 
 Commons. 
 
 Too little has been made of that Harcourt leading. 
 It was in circumstances as difficult, as we afterwards knew, 
 as ever fell to the lot of any party representative; but it 
 was quite conspicuous in force and argumentative power, 
 quite unwearied, quite fearless. I speak of him perhaps 
 as a partisan. Many times he called me to his side on the 
 front bench and we exchanged stories, he asking for the 
 latest in Scotch. One time but there you are; I am 
 cutting before the point. What right had I on the front 
 bench ? 
 
 Why ! that is just it. That accidental little speech 
 had put a point of Scotch law right into the heart of an 
 imperial debate. By this time also for I so loved the 
 place and all about it my friends were numerous in all 
 parts of the House. In the smoking-room, chess, with 
 even wild opponents like Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett; and 
 draughts a very serious affair with Fenwick, the miners' 
 high-principled, burly Labour leader; and with McGhie 
 (I hope the good McGhie is still to the fore), a Home Rule 
 Irishman, the best draught player I ever saw, and with a 
 head so stocked with Scotch literature and with Burns as 
 to make me ashamed. 
 
 As for the Scotch members, they were, as usual, steady
 
 H4 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 going, but a little slow in the pace; and with them there 
 used to be much joviality. About six-and-twenty of us 
 lived in Queen Anne's Mansions that vast ten- or twelve- 
 storey disfigurement which overhangs St. James's Park 
 and the Wellington Barracks. To get there from West- 
 minster we had to pass, not" the palatial Broadway as it 
 now is with its Central Buildings, but the Aquarium and 
 a rather slummy quarter. One night the House then sat 
 regularly till twelve we were companioning each other 
 to the Mansions. As usual with me through early life, 
 my intimates were nearly all my seniors. One of these, 
 as we passed up the dark quadrangle of those gloomy 
 towering Mansions, used to say sepulchrally, " Surely, 
 surely, God never made man to live in a dwallin' like 
 this ! " But the barrack has stood, and it thrives. 
 
 So the little stone which had been thrown from 
 Scotch law into the great waters of debate was from 
 the hand of one who had hosts of friends, and the 
 act was known to have had approval from the highest 
 quarters. 
 
 I wonder whether these things had their effect in a 
 certain emergency which was about to occur, whether they 
 helped or hindered, when a certain totally unexpected 
 vacancy occurred. I wonder. 
 
 You shall hear of that in a minute, but meantime be 
 good and listen to this. 
 
 These early days of sympathetic intercourse with the 
 back benches, and that kind of understanding comrade- 
 ship, had this effect. I got a new and quite certain 
 experience of that part of Parliament which is its least 
 showy, most serviceable, most modest, most genuine part. 
 The cheap sneer at politics, at Parliament, at public spirit
 
 FRONT-BENCH MAN BACK-BENCH MIND 115 
 
 itself, that you may hear wherever selfishness is the prac- 
 tice of men ! But that got its answer then and there with 
 me for life. The front benches newspapers and party 
 adulations and history will attend to them. But of the 
 back benches here is my testimony. 
 
 I saw around me men, literally in crowds, men mostly 
 in middle life or over, men with no axe to grind, no hope, 
 no expectation, no wish, except that they might be privi- 
 leged to repay in service for others the fortune which had 
 smiled upon their private affairs. This breed of men is 
 the strength of these islands. May it last for ever, 
 distinguishing our country from all less happier lands. 
 Do not let cynicism cheat you of the belief in this sound, 
 modest, wholesome strength ; it is true : I loved the back 
 benches for it. And so in after years my friends came 
 nearer the point than they dreamed, of what I really 
 wanted to be. They dubbed me a front-bench man with 
 a back-bench mind. 
 
 Do not let me lead you to think that there were not 
 grave and perplexing anxieties. That would be make- 
 believe. The fact is that public affairs were in a state of 
 high tension; the Liberal majority was barely workable; 
 so slender was it, that even a few days' absence from 
 London was hardly to be had. Add to this that less and 
 less grew the chances of that long winter recess, in which 
 had lain my expectation of earning my living in the 
 practice of my profession. 
 
 Yet somehow the clouds seemed to have always the 
 silver lining. Life, which was now on a broader and a 
 better scale for me, could not surely be put on a narrower 
 or a worse for those dearer than life. A little fanciful, 
 perhaps ; but it was a faith.
 
 n6 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Then suddenly, as in a thunderclap, the back-bench 
 period came to an end. Without a note or hint of 
 warning, Mr. Asher, one of the greatest advocates in the 
 United Kingdom, resigned the post he held, and I was 
 appointed Solicitor-General for Scotland. 
 
 Your quite exhausted 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XX 
 
 THISTLE AND SHAMROCK 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 17, 1920. 
 DEAR RESPECTED, 
 
 Yesterday I was planted in a high butt in the Forest 
 of Birse. I was doing all the things no decent shot should 
 do. I was gazing on range after range of mountains 
 beautiful beyond description, purple near at hand, blue 
 in the far distanced outline, while overhead was the saffron 
 sky streaked with bars of crimson and of grey. I sang 
 out the words from Marmion which you know. ' To fight 
 for such a land ? " 
 
 The reply came from the grouse : 
 
 '' Whr-r-r," said they, as they suddenly streaked by 
 with a most mortifying immunity. There you are ! Alto- 
 gether a bad business. 
 
 Anyhow, I was thinking about you, and of what to tell 
 you in my letter to-day. Here goes. 
 
 I was speaking about Asher suddenly resigning the 
 Solicitor-Generalship for Scotland. Asher's case in some 
 respects was a very sad one. He was a living bulwark 
 to the cause of every client he had. His presence, 
 forensic manner, industry and convincing power, all of 
 the very first order. His aloofness was no doubt against 
 him. Parliament did not know him. He was in it, but 
 not of it. I think that this was a deplorable misfortune. 
 
 117
 
 n8 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 With his gifts, he would have adorned Parliament and 
 moulded the history of his country. 
 
 Balfour, his senior by a month or two, was of a different 
 mould. Asher boldly and coldly bludgeoned his anta- 
 gonist; Balfour with a winning gesture, and with infinite 
 courtesy, stilettoed him. The latter's memory for case 
 law was prodigious; he had no less industry than the 
 former, but he had a quicker resource, a more adroit 
 persuasiveness and greater accomplishments. Asher 
 drove the judges along the road of reason; Balfour piped 
 to them, and they danced happily, and came his way. 
 
 A great pair. In one sense they were too near, and 
 their equality made the constant seniorship in office of 
 the one a disconcerting circumstance. At least, it may 
 have been so. Anyhow, Asher, who, under a massive 
 exterior, had not a robust constitution, resigned office. 
 
 Semper paratus: ready, aye ready. Yes, of course; 
 just so. But, my dear child, when you get either a sudden 
 lift or a knock-down blow from the totally unexpected, 
 fine maxims get a shake. There was more of that kind of 
 upsetting coming along for your astonished parent, as you 
 will presently see. Meantime, Lord Advocate Balfour 
 was a rare treasure of a chief consideration and helpful- 
 ness personified. He seemed intuitively to recognize my 
 being at times too conscious that there was a stiff load 
 to shoulder ; and he came, like the good man and colleague 
 he was, and he took the heavy end. 
 
 The work was steady and multiform, but, honestly, it 
 was not complex. Once the newness, for instance, of the 
 position in Edinburgh of a Solicitor-General settling all 
 the criminal work of Scotland with a capable team of 
 Deputes who were all his seniors once that newness
 
 THISTLE AND SHAMROCK 119 
 
 passed away, and once it was seen in London that I had 
 taken stock of the desire for a better front bench attend- 
 ance a thing I gave with a great good will the smooth- 
 ness of the going was noted. We were running, about that 
 time, a biggish Local Government Bill for Scotland, and 
 the Parliamentary demands were severe; but, as I say, 
 the smoothness of the going was noted. This may have 
 accounted for another blow from the unexpected which 
 nearly knocked me over, and in some measure broadened 
 and changed the current of my life. I was to touch, at 
 its very quick, the politics of Ireland. 
 
 It turned out that Morley had been keeping his eye 
 upon, and in fact stalking me. Greater prominence had, 
 you see, been given to my becoming Solicitor-General, 
 because the Unionists, although I had entered the House 
 only about eighteen months before, and stood on the 
 same ticket, blundered badly in contesting the seat. A 
 fluent English barrister was found to oppose me, and he 
 was handsomely beaten after a rattling contest. The 
 majority was nearly doubled and the Burghs came to be 
 looked upon as a Radical stronghold. 
 
 I sometimes think that the measure of that Parliament 
 might well in the eye of the historian be its Opposition. 
 The Opposition's three characteristics were the ability of 
 its men, the efficiency of its machine, and, withal, the hope- 
 less short-sightedness of its policy. This last only time 
 could reveal. Has it not done so? Think of it in things 
 small and great ! The Scotch Grand Committee a mere 
 trifle, a harmless commonplace of procedure then made 
 quite a battlefield. At the other end of the scale the Home
 
 120 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Rule Bill, with contention enough to threaten the very 
 existence of Parliamentary government, a Bill odious then 
 beyond all thinking to such men, and thrown out in 
 another place, but a Bill which to-day the same types of 
 men recognize to be of a safety and a moderation so 
 singular that what was at that time rejected with fury and 
 with scorn would to-day be accepted with meekness and 
 with gratitude. 
 
 At the height of this fury and scorn period, in the 
 spring of 1895, you may imagine the nerve required even 
 of an Irish Chief Secretary in bringing in a Land Bill 
 which was to amplify and crown the remedial Irish legisla- 
 tion of 1870 and 1 88 1. I need not go into these things, 
 except to tell you that the Bill came to grief with the 
 Government which framed it : but its denouncers saw its 
 value when their turn came, and its principles reappeared 
 and found their way to law under the distinguished Chief 
 Secretaryship of Mr. George Wyndham. 
 
 One day that spring your mother and I were walking 
 in the precincts of the House, when we were accosted 
 by Morley. We were old Cluny friends. Said he : 
 
 " Mrs. Shaw, I have just been to your husband's 
 room." 
 
 Then to me : 
 
 " Shaw, I want a word or two with you. When could 
 we meet ? " 
 
 We made a fixture for the following morning, 
 
 " What will this be next? " said the dear one. 
 
 Next day he said : 
 
 " You know that there is a Land Bill for Ireland 
 coming forward. Well, it is, of course, full of law, a 
 thing I am supposed to know nothing about. Now owing
 
 JHISTLE AND SHAMROCK 121 
 
 to the self-denying ordinance of the Irish, none of their 
 party, not even their lawyers, can be in the Government. 
 So there are the MacDermott and his colleague, Attorney 
 and Solicitor, helping, of course, privately, but they are 
 outside. Inside, here in the House, here am I, with no 
 law officer. To come to the point : I want you." 
 
 " Me ? " said I ; " I would do anything to help you 
 all, but how could I do that? I should have to learn it 
 all up. And besides, what would Mr. Balfour say? I 
 could not desert him. Is this your own idea ? " 
 
 " It is more than that," said he. " The Cabinet 
 approves and the Lord Advocate has been sounded and 
 is willing." 
 
 So there you are. Off went the brave woman to her 
 dear flock all the four by this time getting the most solid 
 and sensible schooling that Edinburgh could provide 
 knowing full well that this meant a fresh invasion of my 
 private practice and a fresh menace to our family life. 
 And I to internment : fresh studies in law and history ; 
 conferences with Lord Spencer, with Irishmen like Sexton, 
 Dillon, Redmond and O'Connor, and day after day 
 with Morley. 
 
 Slender, slender, was the equipment. It stood some- 
 thing like this : (i) For some literary purpose years 
 before I had read a good deal for an article to the British 
 Quarterly Review on " The Union with England of Scot- 
 land and Ireland." 
 
 " Where could I get something ? " said the Chief 
 Secretary to me one day, when I was pointing a contrast, 
 " some kind of comparative statement of the two cases ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said I. And then, after a pause, 
 " unless, by-the-by, it be in a paper I wrote myself." So
 
 122 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 it was sent for, and the article perhaps served a turn. 
 How nothing is ever lost ! 
 
 (2) For some debating purpose I had read and studied 
 Barry O'Brien's " History of the Irish Land Acts." 
 
 (3) The third was the most curious of all. Once in a 
 division on the Home Rule Bill, I had gone into the lobby 
 in support of an amendment by the little Parnellite party. 
 The purpose of it was frankly to call the proposed Irish 
 Legislature a Parliament. What a timid pack party men 
 are ! There were only seven of us in that lobby. Two 
 were Redmonds John, a born leader, orator and patriot; 
 and William, who afterwards showed his desire for a true 
 reconciliation between Ireland and England by laying 
 down his life for the Empire. 
 
 ' What makes you," said John Redmond to me, " take 
 such an interest in Ireland and the like of this ? " 
 
 " Well," said I ; " my answer is it was Sydney 
 Smith." 
 
 "Sydney Smith?" said he; "what do you mean?" 
 
 " Many years ago," I replied, " I read certain remark- 
 able reviews, in his collected Essays, of the books of 
 Henry Parnell and other authors on Ireland, its history, 
 its misgovernment, its Penal Laws." 
 
 What an unfolding of wrong, shortsightedness, re- 
 venge, ascendancy, misery, these books reveal ! 
 
 Shocked at the bedraggled spectacle, Sydney Smith, 
 in a burst of wrath, makes his memorable outburst : 
 
 "So great and so long has been the misgovernment of that 
 country that we verily believe the Empire would be much 
 stronger if everything was open sea between England and the 
 Atlantic, and if skates and codfish swam over the fair land 
 of Ulster."
 
 THISTLE AND SHAMROCK 123 
 
 Of this I reminded Redmond : We became friends ; 
 and once on the eve of a critical debate he asked me for 
 the volume, which I took to him. 
 
 I don't want you to go to sleep without getting the 
 benefit of another of these passages which both for his- 
 torical interest and for political purposes made such a 
 deep impression on your father's mind. So I am writing 
 it down. It is on that penal code which burnt into the 
 Irish mind an ineradicable belief in the appalling injustice 
 and unwisdom of England. Read this : 
 
 " During the reigns of George I and George II the Irish 
 Roman Catholics were disabled from holding any Civil or 
 Military office, from voting at elections, from admission into 
 corporations, from practising law or physic. A younger 
 brother by turning Protestant might deprive his elder brother 
 of his birthright; by the same process he might force his 
 father, under the name of a liberal provision, to yield up to 
 him a part of his landed property, and if an eldest son, he 
 might in the same way reduce his father's fee simple to a life 
 estate. A Papist was disabled from purchasing freehold lands, 
 and even from holding long leases ; and any person might take 
 his Catholic neighbour's house by paying ^5 for it. If a 
 child of a Catholic father turned Protestant he was taken away 
 from his father and put into the hands of a Protestant relation. 
 No Papist could purchase a freehold, or lease for more than 
 thirty years, or inherit from an intestate Protestant nor from 
 an intestate Catholic, nor dwell in Limerick or Galway, nor 
 hold an Advowson, nor buy an Annuity for life. ^"50 was 
 given for discovering a Popish Archbishop, .30 for a Popish 
 Clergyman, and ten shillings for a Schoolmaster." 
 
 How often have I told you that to plant antipathies 
 is to give root to what may last for generations ; so often, 
 alas ! do effects linger, long after causes have been re- 
 moved. Thus it is that every i2th of July in Belfast still 
 continues to be a disfigurement to civil life.
 
 124 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Then is not the following a political lesson worth 
 remembering and remembering? Years and years ago I 
 wrote it out, and I find it alongside of my Sydney Smith 
 note. For the life of me I cannot place its authorship. 
 Was it Smith who composed it, or Sir Erskine May, or 
 was it even John Milton himself?, 
 
 " It is a vain thing to boast of the severity of laws, and 
 keenly prosecute disorders already committed, which, though 
 it may have the appearance of justice, yet many will think it 
 not convenient; for if you suffer the minds of people to be 
 galled and chafed with a continued train of hardships and 
 severities, until their manners be corrupted, and then punish 
 them for these offences to which they thought their circum- 
 stances necessitated them, what else will be concluded from 
 this but that you first make them offenders and then punish 
 them for their offences? " 
 
 How awful and how frequent have been the ex- 
 emplifications of this truth ! To-day do we not feel 
 the pinch of it in every act and scene of the tragedy of 
 Ireland ? 
 
 Do forgive me, dear Isabel, if I have forgotten to be 
 lightsome. Some aspects of life and history are very 
 grim. 
 
 Anyhow, it was on top of this thin subsoil that the 
 seeds of my instruction had to be sown. When the debate 
 on the second reading of the Bill came on, I followed Mr. 
 Chamberlain, moving the adjournment of the debate. 
 Next day was trying enough. Chamberlain came down 
 to the House in courtesy for the reply, and he, Mr. Balfour 
 and the others were generous, notably Mr. Sexton speak- 
 ing for the Irish party. As I left the House Mr. Speaker 
 Peel, austerity itself, called me to his side and spoke 
 words of most touching approbation. The public prints
 
 THISTLE AND SHAMROCK 125 
 
 gave me a new kind of title ; in addition to being Solicitor- 
 General for Scotland, I was, if you please, called " Under 
 Secretary for Ireland " ! 
 
 Meantime, life had become a little less straitened. On 
 August 22, 1894, a Treasury Minute was passed raising 
 the Lord Advocate's salary from a little over ,3,000 to 
 ,5,000, and the Solicitor-General's salary from about 
 "950 to 2,000. The Scotch Members were all agreed 
 about this, and Graham Murray rarest of clever heads 
 and staunchest of friends nipped in opportunely on the 
 Scotch Grand Committee on some Bill and drove the point 
 home. 
 
 That was the true reason of the change of figure. I 
 fear that I gave a different version. Spencer, the gayest 
 and most attractive of whips, said to me': 
 
 ' Tommy Shaw, tell me how it is that you have 
 only been six months in office and have doubled your 
 screw? " 
 
 I answered on the nail : 
 
 " Sheer merit, Bobby Spencer," said I ; " sheer merit." 
 " Sheer merit," said he ; "I see ; " and he passed on, 
 carefully adjusting his immaculate collar. 
 
 But the Parliamentary battle grew keener and keener. 
 The country showed signs of restiveness and distrust. 
 Smaller and perilously smaller grew our majorities on a 
 division. The whipping on both sides was merciless. One 
 evening I dined at Berkeley Square with Lord Rosebery ; 
 there was some anxiety on foot, and they waited my 
 arrival. On entering, behind the hour, the Premier ex- 
 claimed : " Ah ! here at last is our Solicitor-General." 
 
 I replied seriously : " It has been a close division : a 
 narrow shave; a majority of two."
 
 126 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 "On which side?" said the host imperturbably. 
 
 " On our side," said I. 
 
 ' Then that is all right," said he ; " now let us all go 
 safely in to dinner." 
 
 This kind of thing could not last. It was plain that 
 our overthrow was at hand. 
 
 Enough, enough ! Another budget some day soon, 
 
 from 
 
 Your estimable friend and 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXI 
 
 A POLITICAL LECTURE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 20, 1920. 
 DEAREST MAIDIE, 
 
 Think what it was to be thrown out into the cold. 
 No payment of Members of Parliament in those days : 
 not a penny. Fought five elections in my time : three 
 elections in as many years. Any help from any organiza- 
 tion or any fund except my own savings? Not a penny. 
 I remember well after the Cordite vote, in 1895, walking 
 back to Queen Anne's Mansions and saying to your 
 mother in the midst of a party of friends : 
 
 ' We are out, my dear out for ten years." 
 
 True it was. It made a difference, and there was much 
 to consider. 
 
 The profession had been very forbearing of my 
 absences and very mindful of me when I could be 
 on the spot; and it seemed fairly clear that if my 
 presence in Edinburgh could be assured so also would 
 my practice. Thus, if we had been minded that 
 way, we could have accepted the defeat as a notice 
 to quit. 
 
 But the idea of giving the battle up never crossed our 
 minds. To dub this a felt call to continued public service 
 would be to put it on too high a pedestal. Simply it was 
 that I loved the House of Commons the men, the life, 
 
 127
 
 128 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 the moving panorama of affairs. As to the chance of 
 helping good causes along, it lay there, rather than in the 
 more comfortable line and the narrower view of private 
 advantage. 
 
 If I ever had any doubt, and I had none, it would 
 have been dispelled by the loyalty of the Liberals of the 
 Burghs. Their support was unwavering : and their 
 handling of a fight a thing to see. Everything political 
 they translated into combat. When towards the close of 
 my first Session I paired with Lord Randolph Churchill 
 there was a shaking of the head. They thought a pair was 
 a fight. And one Hawick weaver allowed to another, 
 ' Weel, Maister Shaw's met his match this time "f There 
 was no manner of coalition of parties, or compromise of 
 principle, with them ; their flag was never struck, never at 
 half-mast. As broad hints of this kind of thing, however 
 I mean coalition on the one hand and compromise on 
 the other were presently coming along, the Border 
 staunchness was to me a real stand-by. You shall hear 
 of that topic in a little. 
 
 So then ! It was the Wilderness. We were in oppo- 
 sition : very much so indeed. You would hardly be in- 
 terested in the daily hammer and tongs work. Education 
 was a great topic : my text always being that to clericalize 
 education is to sterilize it. Gradually in and about that 
 subject a party of forwards was formed on the opposition 
 side, and more was to be heard of nearly every one of 
 them. To a Government supported by a docile and over- 
 whelming crowd, they were a particularly aggravating 
 band. 
 
 In Committee all of them except Buxton and myself 
 below the gangway they did a real service, analytically
 
 A POLITICAL LECTURE 129 
 
 on the bills and educationally on the public. There were 
 Robson, McKenna, Macnamara, Sydney Buxton. English- 
 men; Lloyd George, Herbert Lewis and others, Welsh- 
 men; Scotland was nearly all on the ultra-respectable 
 side and as the waggish and very brainy Dr. Wallace 
 used to say, Shaw had to play the part of Lion Rampant 
 himself. 
 
 But none of us could hold the candle to Lloyd George. 
 He developed an amazing Parliamentary dexterity, and 
 no man in charge of a Government Bill could afford to 
 disregard him. He was no obstructionist oh no : but 
 the moral anxiety with which he could invest a trifle of 
 expression and show the superiority, say, of the word 
 " which " to the word " that," was enough to send the 
 Minister in charge of a measure into fits of fury : the 
 rest of us, of course, into fits of laughter. Then, out 
 of all this cloud of finesse, suddenly would come from 
 him a gleam of real eloquence, revealing dangers and 
 defects in the Bill and a new and better way. I 
 suppose it is wicked to be proud of it, but we had a 
 great time. 
 
 In the midst of all this struggle by-the-bye, why was 
 it so irresponsible? Why, my dear, because the re- 
 sponsible quarters as we came to see more and more 
 publicly the responsible quarters were not on what you 
 might call very easy terms with each other. 
 
 There were Temptations in the Wilderness. 
 
 One of these Temptations was Liberal Imperialism. 
 As for Imperialism, that is to say, the swashbuckler type 
 which claimed the name, it needed no lift. It was sup-
 
 130 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 ported well enough and more congenially in the other 
 camp, where militarism was at its pranks here and there, 
 and was desperate for more adventurous cantrips than 
 even the Jameson Raid which was coming along. 
 
 And as for Liberalism, the chef d'ceuvre of the party 
 of Temptation was, as Tim Healy wittily said to me, to 
 put Home Rule into cold storage. Home Rule, with all 
 the Herculean work of Mr. Gladstone and the party upon 
 it, and that Irish alliance which had been a model of 
 assiduous Parliamentary constancy all this courage and 
 loyalty and ardour to be damped down, the party machine 
 to be put under reconstruction, and Home Rule to be 
 put into cold storage. 
 
 I know, I wish to know, nothing of the private 
 differences which people buzzed about. Sir William 
 Harcourt was our leader in the Commons, and all I know 
 is that he was my hearty and encouraging and entertaining 
 friend. 
 
 " Ah," said he to me one day before we went into 
 opposition, and after I had been to Scotland officially at 
 the General Assembly, " ah, Mr. Solicitor-General, come 
 and tell me all about it. So the Fathers and Brethren 
 have dispersed : the Lord High Commissioner has vacated 
 Holyrood; and I suppose the Marchioness has given up 
 flirting with the Moderator ? " 
 
 When we were out of office and getting more and 
 more into the trough of the wave his gaiety did not 
 desert him. 
 
 " Tell me, Sir William," said I, when we were seated 
 together during some dull debate on which he was keeping 
 an eye, " tell me something of your life at the Parlia- 
 mentary Bar."
 
 A POLITICAL LECTURE 131 
 
 He gave that gurgling chuckle of his which shook his 
 heavy frame, and then he said : 
 
 " I was once, about the beginning, taken in as third 
 counsel. My seniors were Mr. Hope Scott and Mr. Pope. 
 We were for Lord , and we were to oppose an Irish 
 
 Railway scheme. So we had a conference and Lord 
 
 came to it. 
 
 " Said Hope Scott, ' Would your Lordship tell us in 
 a word what your case is ? ' 
 
 ' My case,' said his Lordship, ' is that the Directors 
 are all damned scoundrels/ 
 
 " ' Any more ? ' said Scott. 
 
 "'No,' said Lord - . 'That's enough, isn't it? 
 That is my case.' ' 
 
 We both laughed ; and I said : " Very definite." 
 
 Then he resumed : 
 
 ' The very thing I said at the blessed conference. I 
 
 struck in, ' Your instructions, Lord , are very clear. 
 
 You wish the case run on those lines ? ' 
 ' I do,' said his Lordship. 
 
 " So we all agreed that there was no more to be said. 
 And when the Bill came on, of course, Hope Scott and 
 Pope weren't there." 
 
 "What happened?" said I. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " I ran the case according to instruc- 
 tions. I cross-examined the first director. It rather 
 appeared that, after all, there was something in Lord - -'s 
 idea. When the cross-examination finished, my clerk 
 pulled my gown and said to me : 
 
 " ' Lord has given instructions to double your 
 
 brief fee.' 
 
 " Then came on another director. At the close
 
 132 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of his evidence my clerk again pulled my gown and 
 said : 
 
 ' Lord has given instructions to treble your brief 
 
 fee.' 
 
 " I turned to him and said : ' Any more directors? ' 
 
 "And were there? " said I to him. 
 
 " Alas, no, Shaw," said he. " They wouldn't face the 
 music. The Bill collapsed." 
 
 It seems a bit of a shame to go from this nonsense 
 to a serious strain. But it would be a mistake to think 
 that there was not a mighty weight of dead earnest in the 
 work of those days. I am not speaking of the legal work 
 and the hardship of even attempting to lead two lives 
 four hunded miles apart. But in Parliament, I do think 
 that good seed was being sown. 
 
 Some of it, alas ! may be late in ripening. Take this 
 instance. Many years of study had convinced me that 
 not a few of the social ills which infect, and are apt to 
 convulse, society are, there or thereabouts, owing to laws 
 which favour the aggregation of land in the hands of the 
 few, and impede its distribution among the many. Many 
 things lead to this; it is a danger to the State. Many 
 conventions, including family pride, favour it; and the 
 legislation against the danger is hampered on every hand. 
 
 Mark this, my lady, and mark it well : for after a year 
 or two, when women fully realize what it is to have the 
 vote, you may hear more about it. By the laws both of 
 England and Scotland landed estates are succeeded to 
 by the eldest son. The lot of the younger sons was easier 
 in former days. One, say, under the law of patronage,
 
 A POLITICAL LECTURE 133 
 
 went into the Church; another, under the law of pur- 
 chase, went into the Army. The younger sons, and all 
 the girls, succeeded by the law to not a single acre. The 
 boys may rough it : so may viragos I do not speak of 
 them. But did God ever make a sweeter type than the 
 British gentlewoman, her with the clear eye, the gentle 
 and the dainty upbringing, her life and hands full of the 
 ministry of loving kindness : yet so often, and so often 
 at life's crisis, made by a shameless law of inheritance 
 to fold up her slender belongings and to face the world 
 " a penniless lass with a long pedigree " ? 
 
 So I tabled a little Bill with the modest purpose of 
 cutting the system in Scotland up by the roots, and assimi- 
 lating the law of succession to land to that of all other 
 possessions. Result, primogeniture would go. Daughters 
 and younger sons would have equal rights with their eldest 
 brother, property would be distributed or come into the 
 market so that the proceeds would be distributed, and 
 be shared penny and penny about. 
 
 Add to this awful consummation of plain and simple 
 justice this other stroke. In Scotland the dead hand 
 cannot rule all; there is, as the lawyers say, a legal limit 
 to the power of testacy. Why not ? said the law of Rome. 
 Why not? say the laws of many European countries. And 
 they say it of all the deceased's property ; whereas in Scot- 
 land they say it of all except land : while in England they 
 do not say it at all. The power of testacy is unlimited 
 there : the dead hand rules all. 
 
 During the French Revolution it was, I think, Mira- 
 beau who exclaimed : " A testament. What is a testa- 
 ment ? It is the will of a man who has no longer any will, 
 with regard to property which is no longer his property."
 
 134 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 And two of the extraordinary facts in the French Revolu- 
 tion case are these : Distribution of property among the 
 members of a family when the father dies is secured by 
 giving to each of, say, his four children one-fifth, leaving 
 only the remaining fifth at the father's disposal. Do you 
 know that this very provision was drawn under the master 
 hand and eye of Napoleon himself? While, secondly, 
 when Louis Philippe came to the throne, he attempted to 
 rear up again the old vast succession scandal of family 
 pride. But he completely failed, amid the acclamations 
 of all society except the courtiers of the day, and Paris 
 was illuminated for three nights over the defeat of this 
 Bourbon reaction. 
 
 Oh, dearie, dear, such a long circumbendibus ! But 
 you ought to know that that was the kind of thing, from 
 the law of Rome, of France, of England and of Scotland, 
 that went to the making of the aforesaid modest little 
 mouse of a Bill. Was it ridiculous? Of course the law 
 societies, arch defenders of the status quo, almost said 
 it was. But, my dear lady, I hope you will have a long 
 as well as a useful life. Great changes are in front of 
 us. Women are feeling their power, their rights. Labour, 
 on the one hand, is learning the lesson of the dangers of 
 confiscation or a convulsive disintegration of society, and, 
 on the other, it sticks to its determination that the aggre- 
 gation of property must be ended on the lines of a radical 
 change to justice in succession. In all ranks of society 
 except the shallow and the thoughtless, men muse as did 
 
 Burns : 
 
 " 'Tis hardly in a body's power 
 To keep at times from being- sour, 
 To see how thing's are shared." 
 
 It is for wise men and women to turn this feeling into
 
 A POLITICAL LECTURE 135 
 
 safe, honourable, just channels. Perhaps some day the 
 little measure of healing which I moved on and on in 
 the Order Paper of the Commons for years, may under 
 a more auspicious sky, and in far wiser charge, see the 
 light, and work its beneficent purpose. 
 
 A political lecture ? Yes : yes ! Lapse oratorical ! 
 But I promise you, my one and only. 
 
 Ever your own, 
 
 S. OF D. 
 
 P.S. Out in the cold, did I say out in the cold? 
 What then? Should we simply stand and wait for better 
 weather? Still colder then. Or should we fall to work 
 where work was to be done, and find it bracing? Yes, 
 the latter, surely, even in the dark decade 1895 to 1905. 
 The Wilderness, did I say ? And, as you shall hear, there 
 were indeed Temptations in the Wilderness. What then ? 
 Should we listen to them, my dear, or should we fight 
 them ? These were the dilemmas of the Opposition years. 
 
 Different men took different lines. Work came my 
 way work on great public topics both in Church and 
 State and so did combat, heavy fighting. Good-bye, 
 however, for the present, mere record cf the Ins and Outs. 
 Now is our chance. " Fresh woods and pastures new." 
 You will ask, and I shall answer, some of yuur questions 
 on non-political affairs. We are off on our Grand Tour. 
 But we shall meet again in the Parliament fields. Mean- 
 time, as the centuries closed and opened, big issues were 
 afoot.
 
 LETTER XXII 
 
 THE WIZARDS 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, S.W '.5. 
 
 July 15, 1920. 
 MY DARLING ISABEL, 
 
 You have often asked me to tell you about any literary 
 men I have come up against; and I have been wondering 
 whether I could rummage in my memory for that kind 
 of stuff. 
 
 When I entered Parliament the connexion of literary 
 men with politics, or rather the identification of literary 
 men with public men was commoner than I think it has 
 ever been since. 
 
 When in the year 1894 I became Solicitor-General for 
 Scotland, I found myself surrounded on the front bench 
 by men who were known far and wide in the literary 
 world. Think of it ! I do not mention Gladstone himself, 
 who dropped, alas ! out of leadership a few months before 
 I took office, nor do I mention Lord Rosebery, whose 
 high literary gifts shone in whatever he wrote, and almost 
 in whatever he spoke. Lord Rosebery was in the House 
 of Lords; but there on the front bench of the Commons 
 were Bryce, the author of many portly volumes, but notably 
 of " The Constitution of America " ; Morley, whose ex- 
 quisite and daring papers from the time of his editor- 
 ship of the Fortnightly had been collected and published, 
 and who had followed these by many other notable books, 
 
 136
 
 THE WIZARDS 137 
 
 his " Life of Cobden " being one of the best; and, above 
 all, there was Trevelyan, as quick and sensitive a soul 
 to literary excellence as I have ever known, whose 
 masterly " Life of Macaulay " stands between his early 
 works, like " Cawnpore " and " Competition Wallah," 
 and his later more diffuse but still invaluable work on 
 " American History," as a great central peak stands in 
 a fine range of mountains and of gentle and beautiful 
 foothills. 
 
 These were the " Big Three " Bryce, Morley and 
 Trevelyan, while there were others of lesser note, like 
 George Russell, Acland and Sydney Buxton, who wielded 
 a facile and an accurate pen. My delights still were in 
 literature, and the association with these men must surely 
 have quickened the mind. 
 
 To come away from public men altogether, I cannot 
 say that my recollections would help you to fresh views 
 about many of those I am about to name. Stevenson I 
 saw, but never knew, and I saw him once and once only, 
 for he passed to the Bar at Edinburgh I think only two 
 days after me, and I remember seeing him, with his very 
 white wig and his glossy dark hair, his complexion of an 
 ivory pallor and his gleaming dark eyes. I knew shortly 
 afterwards from friends these two things about him : 
 
 Friend No. i, a professor at the University and a 
 practising barrister, told me this. A few days after 
 Stevenson went to the Bar he had got a guinea sent to 
 him, with " instructions." His sole duty was to ask the 
 Judge for intimation and service of a Petition on the party 
 against whom it was directed. All he had to do was to 
 stand up at the Bar and utter three words interrogatively, 
 " Intimation and Service? " But he was a mass of nerves,
 
 138 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 and these three words he could not utter, and he besought 
 his friend to go into Court and make the little motion for 
 him. I never heard of his earning another guinea as an 
 advocate. 
 
 I did hear of him, however, a year or two afterwards 
 from Sir Walter Simpson, Friend No. 2, also an advocate. 
 They were wandering on the banks, I think of the Loire, 
 together, and Simpson told me that they had to record in 
 each village they passed through, among other things, their 
 ages. Part of their frolic was that at each place the one 
 would grow a year older and the other a year younger. 
 Stevenson went on in front composing madrigals. Simp- 
 son's progress was slower, as he was collecting moths and 
 butterflies. As they neared a village Stevenson was seized 
 by the police and, as he had nothing on him but his clothes, 
 and these of the shabbiest order, and as he had no pass- 
 port, and as he could give no intelligent account of him- 
 self, he was lodged in prison. Part of his statement had 
 been that he was travelling with a baronet, and, sure 
 enough, in an hour or two, when the baronet arrived, he 
 was lodged in prison too, the suspicion against him being 
 that the authorities knew nothing of baronets, but that 
 a baron would not walk on his own feet or without a fine 
 retinue ! I think, however, Simpson had passports, and 
 after some hours they were liberated. Stevenson, trying 
 to put the best face upon it, spoke kindly to the jailor's 
 wife and her children, but she brusquely ordered him off, 
 telling him that she knew quite well he had come to sing 
 at the Fair ! Stevenson does allude to the affair in his 
 writings, but Simpson assured me that he was quite un- 
 strung by the incidents of that evening. 
 
 Another thing, however, about Stevenson you should
 
 THE WIZARDS 139 
 
 know. When the new books came out just about that 
 time, I got hold of " Virginibus Puerisque." " There," 
 said I to myself, " there is quality at last. English litera- 
 ture is not dead. I must keep my eye upon that man." 
 That was briskly followed by his being nominated as a 
 competitor for the office of Professor of Constitutional 
 History in the University of Edinburgh; a position the 
 nomination to which was in the gift of the Faculty of 
 Advocates. A large meeting was held. I was but a 
 youngster, but I seconded Stevenson's nomination. The 
 other man an excellent man of the ordinary type, by 
 name Kirkpatrick was elected by about 200 votes, 
 Stevenson's entire following being only seven in number ! 
 I dare say if the nomination had been a year or two later 
 the Bar of Scotland would have known better the genius 
 that was in their midst my only knowledge of him was 
 through the book I have mentioned but, as I say, its 
 quality was unmistakable and Stevenson might have 
 been elected Professor. How well it was ordered that it 
 was not so ! The drudgery of such a job would have 
 killed a man of his lively imagination, his subtle instincts 
 and his poor health. Simpson, however, assured me that 
 Stevenson had a much better historical equipment than 
 was generally supposed. And certainly when you read 
 works like " Kidnapped " and " Catriona " you can see 
 how deftly and delightfully he could weave that class of 
 matter into his web of romance. 
 
 You may be interested to know that, although I only 
 once saw John Brown, the author of " Rab and his 
 Friends," one of our acquaintances used to tell me beauti- 
 ful stories about him, he being their family physician. 
 At certain intervals of time he was well aware that a
 
 140 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 mental affliction was again recurring and he put himself 
 into voluntary retirement, emerging from it with as sweet 
 and sunny a disposition as before. 
 
 His love for human kind was only equalled by his 
 love for the canine kind. She told me that a friend, 
 driving with him in his carriage along Princes Street, in 
 Edinburgh, saw his attention suddenly attracted. As the 
 carnage moved along, his eyes followed the view, and, 
 lifting the back flap of the carriage, he peered anxiously 
 and scrutinizingly out of the window. 
 
 "Is that a friend you know?" said his companion 
 to him. 
 
 " No," said he, " but it is a dog I don't know ! " 
 
 He used to tell with a certain twinkling humour of a 
 certain grocer who had married three wives. He met 
 him in Princes Street. L^nknowing that wife No. 3 had 
 also died, he passed him the time of day, and then, " And 
 how's Mrs. Wilson, sir?" The inquiry no more discom- 
 posed Mr. Wilson than if it had been one for tea and 
 sugar of which the stock had run low. " Oh ! well, Dr. 
 Broon, the fact is " rubbing his hands " the fact is, 
 Pm just oot o' wives at present "/ 
 
 I should tell you, Isabel, that if you want truly to 
 understand the better part of the better side of the history 
 of Scotland, you will find one way and another the deepest 
 insight into at least a century of it in the " Horae Sub- 
 sicivse." Dr. John Brown knew, in short, that the moving 
 life of Scotland was not the official or the ornamental life, 
 but was a life quickened by an active and practical evan- 
 gelicalism often allied, if you will, with Dissent an 
 evangelicalism which fired the blood as well as steadied 
 the character, and he knew that it was from the Scotland
 
 THE WIZARDS 141 
 
 thus fired and quickened and steadied that there went 
 large numbers of men to the colonies who have infused 
 that energy and principle into the administration of 
 colonial affairs which every self-governing colony readily 
 acknowledges in the homage which it pays to the Scot. 
 
 You will be a little astonished to know that I can 
 carry you back to an earlier generation still, and to Sir 
 Walter Scott himself. 
 
 An old fellow-elder, Mr. Thomas Learmont, of the 
 Saint James Place Church, with which I was connected 
 in Edinburgh, was my informant. He was by business a 
 bell-hanger; and as an apprentice-boy he was engaged 
 on his job when Sir Walter Scott was laying out at Abbots- 
 ford those expensive alterations and additions which, alas ! 
 as it turned out, he could so ill afford. 
 
 "Did you ever see him, Mr. Learmont?" said I. 
 
 " O yes," he said ; " he used to come in and out among 
 us, hirpling here and hirpling there upon a stick; and his 
 blue bonnet had a bit of heather in it." 
 
 I got another side of the picture from a Sheriff John- 
 stone, of Selkirk, whom I visited after he was 90 years 
 of age. I was keen to get from him any reminiscences 
 of Scott, who had been Sheriff of the County. 
 
 " I suppose," said I, " Mr. Johnstone, that Sheriff Scott 
 was very popular ? " 
 
 " No, no," said Johnstone, " you are wrong there ; he 
 was real ill-likit." 
 
 " How in the world could that be ? " said I, rather 
 upset. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " he was that hard upon the poachers ! 
 They flung clods at him as he was going down the brae : 
 and they were had up before the Lords at Edinburgh,
 
 142 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 and some of them got twelve months' imprisonment for 
 the crime of ' murmuring judges ! ' 
 
 This was a damper; but I asked about the earlier days. 
 ' Well," he said, " the fact is that I was pretty good 
 at the fiddle, and I was gey and fond of the servant lassies. 
 And I used to go down to the kitchen at Abbotsford and 
 play them a tune. And then," he added, " Sir Walter, 
 he used to come into the kitchen and pretend to be very 
 angry ; but we knew what it would come to." 
 
 "What was that?" said I. 
 
 " Oh," he said, " he promised us forgiveness if I would 
 play him ' The Flowers o' the Forest ' and I did that 
 with a good will, him standing in the middle of the floor 
 to listen to me ! " 
 
 Think of it. Picture him; standing there; leaning on 
 his staff, listening. The quaint and quavering melody 
 rises and falls ; mystery and tragedy and a waft of weep- 
 ing, etched on the silence of the night. Now his ear 
 catches afar the sound of a wider, wilder music. Long 
 ages ago Ettrick and Yarrow met together, and he hears 
 the rush of their waters poured into the Tweed. And 
 with the refrain of 
 
 "The Flowers of the Forest are a* wede awa' ' 
 
 his imagination takes wing, from stream to strath and 
 strath to stream, over the centuries and over the ever- 
 lasting hills, till it reaches Flodden Field. Be assured 
 that the melody of the quaint lament stirred his heart 
 no less than it has stirred the hearts of generations 
 of his race. For, more vividly than any of the sons of 
 men, could he reclothe the past in all the glory of its 
 chivalry.
 
 THE WIZARDS 143 
 
 I know not why, here in this feverish city, on which 
 the cool of the evening seems to descend so tardily, I 
 should have let myself go on this old theme. For I am 
 a Burns man, and Burns was the Wizard of the Future 
 and the hopes and the brotherhood of man. But Scott 
 was the Wizard of the Past, and did he not ennoble the 
 human story, making our annals and inheritance stately 
 and rich and precious? 
 
 I must to bed. But as you see, my mind is " over the 
 hills and far away." And I am thinking of a sweet some- 
 body with the auburn hair. 
 
 Your doting 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXIII 
 THE MILLIONAIRE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September i, 1919. 
 MY DEAR ISABEL, 
 
 Alas ! This week has brought the news of Mr. Andrew 
 Carnegie's death. 
 
 Carnegie had a daring, adventurous spirit, and he was 
 able to punctuate the record of his astounding successes, 
 in business, in finance, in manufacture, with vivid dramatic 
 detail. But I am sure I am one of very many of those 
 whom he gathered about him who heard his record with a 
 rather unintelligent wonder. I once frankly told him so. 
 He was giving an account of an installation of two new 
 blast furnaces, their enormous output, their saving in cost, 
 and the like. I said to him : 
 
 Ck It all sounds very wonderful. But honestly I cannot 
 grasp it; I have no standard by which to measure these 
 things." 
 
 ' What do you mean ? " said he. 
 
 "Well," I replied, "how, for instance, do these two 
 blast furnaces compare with the Baird's ? " 
 
 " I think," he said, " that the output of these two new 
 furnaces alone is equal to the output of all the furnaces 
 in Scotland?" 
 
 In short, on all that material side of things, we had, 
 as I say, nothing in common. 
 
 144
 
 THE ROYAL PALACE OF DUNFERMLINE. 
 From an old print.
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE 145 
 
 On the spiritual side, the same, alas ! was largely true. 
 Our upbringing, fellow-townsmen though we were, had 
 been different, in the essentials. The old rigidity most 
 righteously he despised. But the noble underlying spirit, 
 with an evolution ever to higher and to higher planes, and 
 with new enrichments of scholarship such things made 
 him impatient; and he would at least to me, for I de- 
 clined positively ever to lower my flag to him he would 
 fling out at you savage tenets of the Old Testament as if 
 they were Religion ! 
 
 Yet he had a great heart; and he had a good heart. 
 Far and wide he voyaged to Confucius, to Zoroaster, to 
 the world's sages seeking the truth if haply he might 
 find it. And I do believe that, after all those voyagings, 
 and storms of argufying, and declamatory monologue, into 
 which an uneasiness of mind seemed ever to draw him, 
 that at last his bark landed on the Christian shore. Surely 
 it could not be otherwise : he revered conscience, sought 
 truth, loved and helped mankind, and was honest. Many 
 a time he was wrathful with me, because I would not yield. 
 But he is gone, and I want you to know that that is my 
 testimony about him. 
 
 Of course there were points of contact between us. 
 The most real of these were in our dreams. And there 
 we came together, helping, co-operating, companioning 
 each other. The dream of my life was to have the edu- 
 cational ladder free to the ability of Scotland wherever 
 real ability could be found, down to the humblest and 
 poorest dwelling in the land. That was something for 
 Scotland. And he helped my dream to come true by 
 giving ten millions of dollars for free University education. 
 
 The dream of his life was to be the Laird of Pitten-
 
 146 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 crieff, that sweet enclosure of the ruins of monastery and 
 Royal palace from which as a boy he and his townsmen 
 of Dunfermline had been always debarred. His dream 
 came true ; at a critical moment he besought my help and 
 I bought for him the picturesque Glen ; and he gifted it to 
 the lucky old town. That was something for Dunferm- 
 line. 
 
 Who says there is no romance in life? 
 
 I hope that I was numbered among his friends till the 
 last. But for two years he was unable to re-visit Skibo, 
 and I never visited New York. During that period I 
 learned with deep regret of his failing powers, and I was 
 sad, but not surprised, at having no letter from him. 
 
 He was in some ways a quite distinct type of the re- 
 markable man. I never quite understood him. We fished 
 together : but even on that we differed. He had a delusion 
 that a good basket of trout was like a loss of capital and 
 made a loch so much the poorer a delusion not unnatural 
 to a millionaire and a non-sportsman. 
 
 He liked literary men about him : and they listened. 
 Your mother and I once lunched with him at the Langham 
 to meet Mr. and Mrs. Clemens. He got on to a familiar 
 tack and declaimed against people getting mixed up as 
 directors with business they knew nothing about, against 
 speculation, and all in favour of a man sticking whole- 
 heartedly to his trade. 
 
 At that luncheon we got what I have often thought is 
 a double characteristic of Americans : I mean about their 
 telling of stories. For twenty years the Century Magazine 
 was the only magazine that entered my library, just as for 
 your nursery the only one was the St. Nicholas. There 
 could hardly be a higher testimonial to the United States
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE 147 
 
 of America than that. For a short written story, select in 
 matter, and in treatment vivid, dramatic, and done with, 
 America whips the world. But set an American on his 
 legs, allowing him to pad up a speech with a story, and 
 it is only the special restraint of a forgiving Providence 
 that prevents every auditor making for the door. The 
 detail, the elaboration of nothing at all, the visibility of 
 the point far far off why, in a country of revolver practice, 
 is it allowed ? 
 
 Clemens was a good illustration of both sides of it. 
 At lunch he told us a story of a gloomy-faced fellow- 
 traveller whom he found to be reading the " Innocents 
 Abroad " ! But before he got to the climax we had to 
 be worked up to the smiling scenery of England, the 
 anxiety of mind of the author, the personal appearance 
 of the reader, and course pursued course in the lunch, and 
 then all was over all but the story : it was still running. 
 
 But now see the other side of it. Some time after that 
 luncheon appeared " Puddenhead Wilson." And there, 
 by the way of preface to one of the chapters, I found that 
 Clemens had put into a tabloid all the doctrine about sense 
 in business of which we had heard so much from Carnegie. 
 
 It runs something like this : " The wise man sayeth : 
 ' Put not all thine eggs into one basket.' And the wiser 
 man sayeth : ' Put all thine eggs into one basket, and 
 watch that basket! ' 
 
 Now a truce to irrelevances. " I have a tale to fell, 
 oh!" 
 
 Of course you girls knew the rich man pretty well both 
 at Cluny and at Skibo. Elsie's singing pleased hin> and
 
 148 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 so did your violin-playing. He was certainly fond of 
 music, had heard good music in various lands; and he 
 was genuinely anxious to give it a lift as a " sweetness 
 and light " instrument. He used to join with gusto, keep- 
 ing good time and tune, in any American chorus that was 
 hit on of an evening, but naturally he had no expert know- 
 ledge of the subject and he depended in that, as in so 
 many other things, upon his impulses as the motive for 
 his benefactions. 
 
 Good impulses they were, however ; they leaned to the 
 sentimental side. Great and noble benefactions they 
 were, and of some of them an ungrateful world was not 
 worthy. Naturally, having had so much to do with it, I 
 think that his ten millions of dollars for the Scotch Uni- 
 versity Trust was the least rash and the most fruitful of 
 them all. 
 
 Often and often you have asked me to put down the 
 true story of the origin of that great gift. Well, here 
 goes. 
 
 In other letters you have had a peep at what romancers 
 would call the " early struggles." Well, they were 
 struggles, and they made a deep impression on my mind. 
 Once I made a singular discovery. In my second year 
 at the University, I happened, one week-end at home in 
 Dunfermline, to be let loose among old books and papers. 
 There were a good many of these about. The notes under 
 my father's beautiful hand showed signs of real scholar- 
 ship. He had had his bit of Latin, too, in his day, but 
 the necessity of earning a living by the sweat of his brow 
 had shut up for him most of the , upper doors of life. 
 Suddenly I came upon a private ledger kept by my 
 mother, and my attention was arrested by a long column
 
 THE MILLIONAIRE 149 
 
 of items headed by some title like " Tom's College." 4 
 There were the entries, advances for board and lodging, 
 advances for books, and then one damning entry froze 
 into my mind. It was " University Class Fees," say, 
 somewhere about fifteen guineas. The column was for a 
 five months' session and ran over 100. 
 
 She had never whispered a word to me about keeping 
 a record; she had never denied me the money required 
 absolutely trusting me to disburse it honestly and legiti- 
 mately never a complaint had passed her lips, not even 
 when she realized that after working at the law for three 
 years out of four for nothing, I was in for another four or 
 five years at college without earning a shilling, all the 
 oncost and the upkeep to be out of her slender bank 
 account. Faith and hope and love were her portion, and 
 therewith, and without any blindness to the struggle 
 therewith she was content. 
 
 All the entries except one were honourable; but the 
 entry of " Class Fees " seemed to me, knowing all that 
 it signified to her, to be indefensibly mean. And in the 
 renewing of my vows for there are such occasions in life, 
 my dear I vowed that that item should go, that great 
 corporations like Universities should no longer close their 
 doors to those with straitened means, should no longer 
 work their institutions and give their endowments making 
 entrance and enjoyment easy for the rich and relatively 
 harder for the poor. 
 
 Were there not, you ask, bursaries, and could not the 
 poor win these? There, my dear, was another hardship, 
 making the inequality cruel. The " well-off " parent had 
 the means to secure for his sons the questionable advan- 
 tages of cramming or the solid advantages of a full
 
 150 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Secondary School education. Thus and thereby even the 
 bulk of the bursaries went past the poor. The world and 
 the world's law seemed on every side against him. 
 
 I felt somehow that some universal bursary was re- 
 quired for everyone who had the knowledge and the brains 
 to enable him to matriculate. That was the idea; a uni- 
 versal bursary; won by matriculation; won as a right, 
 Nothing but that could bring strength and restore equality 
 into the system. Otherwise there was more than meanness 
 in if; there was social cruelty and national loss. 
 
 So there you are; the whole of these thoughts swept 
 dimly through my mind as I read the modest yet tragic 
 ledger sheet. Of none of them have I seen any reason 
 to repent; nay, time and experience have deepened and 
 strengthened my conviction of their truth, and I have seen 
 them shine and spread until they have become the common- 
 places of enlightened statecraft. 
 
 They were sizzling in my mind when I entered Parlia- 
 ment, and then one vacation I was fishing on Loch Laggan 
 when suddenly they became very active and vivid. That, 
 so to speak, would be Chapter Two of the University 
 story. What I have written to you this morning may be 
 called Chapter One what the writers of stories would 
 head, " The Birth of a Notion." 
 
 Quite enough at present, 
 
 From your very own, 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER XXIV 
 
 THE LEARNED GHILLIE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 2, 1919. 
 ISABEL DEAR, 
 
 In the summer of 1896 Carnegie was occupying Cluny 
 Castle, Inverness-shire. He had parties of us up for a 
 week at a time, as was his usual habit, during his Scotch 
 autumns. Morley, Sir Walter Foster afterwards Lord 
 Ilkestone, and I think also Webster afterwards Lord 
 Chief Justice Alverstone were among the set during my 
 week. 
 
 Foster wanted grouse and took a keeper or two; 
 Webster wanted ptarmigan on the high hills, and took 
 the balance of the hill staff; I wanted trout from Loch 
 Laggan, and all I could get for boatman and a very 
 good boatman he was was a young, powerful, thick-set 
 lad, whom I shall call James Mac. You remember him 
 quite well. 
 
 I have always made a point of the comradeship of 
 Highland boatmen and ghillies. On the whole and on 
 the average, they are, in my opinion, the most intelligent 
 men of the British community. Their aloofness and 
 " take your measure " attitude slips off them when they 
 are treated as real men, and their native courtliness and 
 gallantry shine out. 
 
 James handled the boat cleverly, and the trout were
 
 152 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 doing pretty well. Suddenly in the middle of a drift I 
 said to the youth at the oars, 
 
 'James, are you going to be a ghillie for always? " 
 
 He gave me no answer for a few moments ; there was 
 a cloud upon him; and then in a burst of confidence he 
 said : 
 
 " Sir, I'm mad to be a doctor." 
 
 1 Then why don't you be a doctor ? " I asked. 
 
 " It's the expense," he answered ; " my father is the 
 village shoemaker, and there are six of us." 
 
 Then I tabled my card. ' James," I said, " would 
 it make a difference if there were no college fees to pay? " 
 
 He seemed to catch his breath, and the cloud lifted, 
 and he said : " Oh, sir, if that was the case, my course 
 would be cleared." 
 
 'Which college would you go to?" said I, and he 
 answered at once he had been thinking it all out, dream- 
 ing of it, in the silence of the hills ' To Glasgow." 
 
 :t Why to Glasgow?" said I. "Is not Edinburgh a 
 greater medical school ? " To which his answer came at 
 once, " The living in Glasgow is cheaper." 
 
 Here was a genuine case, not an unusual case not 
 so by hundreds but a genuine case, and it had dropped 
 into my hand. How could I throw it away? There came 
 into my mind all the stock objections, and especially the 
 familiar sneer that the Universities would be degraded 
 because flooded with incompetent men, men with unwar- 
 ranted ambition. I resolved to clear this point up, and to 
 " mak' siccar." 
 
 ' James," said I, " have you any Latin? " 
 
 To this he replied : " I have just finished my schooling 
 at Kingussie, and I am sorry that I have not much of
 
 THE LEARNED GHILLIE 153 
 
 the Roman poets. I have read all the writings of Caesar, 
 some of the books of Livy, and some " here my memory 
 fails me; it was either Cicero or Tacitus. He had read 
 well into the ^Eneid, but he again confessed his lack of 
 acquaintance with the Latin poets. 
 
 "Any Greek?" I asked. 
 
 " I know the writings of Homer," he replied ; " but 
 this last session we have been working on Thucydides." 
 Other Greek authors he mentioned, including, I think, 
 .'Eschylus. I learned afterwards, by the way, from the 
 schoolmaster of Kingussie, that this account of his studies 
 was well within the mark. They included certain books 
 of Plato's Republic. 
 
 " Any mathematics? " said I. To which he answered, 
 " I know all the writings ' (that was a phrase he had) 
 " all the writings of Euclid. And " (after speaking of 
 Algebra) " I am studying mensuration." 
 
 You should have seen the sensation at the Castle' 
 dinner-table that evening. I broke the story over it like 
 a cataract. All were interested ; some were up in arms : 
 Morley was severely quizzical. The general sense was, 
 at first, " unwarranted ambition," and there was, of course, 
 a demand all round to know whether a ghillie boy had 
 learning sufficient to enable him to enter a college without 
 bringing down its average. Then I poured out the story 
 of the lad's scholarship, Morley and Foster following me 
 from point to point with questions. Then the head-shak- 
 ing ceased, and we all went off to bed. Carnegie himself 
 had not said as much as usual. He was puzzled, and he 
 seemed to think that the ground was unsure. He dis- 
 cerned, I think, a broad and a big undertaking somewhere 
 ahead.
 
 154 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Next morning Sir Walter said to me, " Shaw, you 
 should tell that story to the House of Commons; it likes 
 a human touch." 
 
 And so I did on the next discussion of the Education 
 estimates. Within forty-eight hours I had the offer, from 
 a friend, of ,25 a year for four years' fees and any 
 extras. Mac's career was made. He came to Edinburgh, 
 had his struggles, did well, and now commands a capital 
 practice, and leads a useful, skilful, helpful life in 
 England. 
 
 So ends Chapter Two of the Story, But there was 
 more than Mac in it. The wider and the national scheme 
 was to follow. The plot for that was thickening. 
 
 Now for a motor run, dear, a breath of the heather, 
 
 and a sight of the hills. 
 
 Your garrulous, loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXV 
 
 A DREAMER'S DREAM 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 4, 1919. 
 DEAREST, 
 
 You say, I know, " Yes, yes, Father, but what really 
 started the Free University education affair?" Well, 
 that is the very thing I am going to tell you. 
 
 It was suddenly announced to us in Parliament that 
 in consequence of a big sum of money going to be 
 given for education to England, an equivalent or rather 
 proportional grant about one-ninth, but still a large 
 figure was coming to Scotland. What was to be done 
 with it? 
 
 " Have you any views, Shaw?" said Bryce to me in 
 the lobby of the House of Commons. 
 
 " Let us have free education in the Universities," I 
 replied. He was always bustling; and in haste he said 
 to me, " I don't hold with that," and passed on. 
 
 Thereupon I sat down and wrote a Memorandum of 
 the situation and a plea for the idea, had the paper printed, 
 and sent to all the Scotch members. It came to nothing, 
 and went out like a lighted match on damp ground. That 
 attempt to get public money failed, failed completely. An 
 ideal? Not even that. It was treated as a dreamer's 
 dream. 
 
 This, of course, did not satisfy me. So what next?
 
 156 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Had I not been teaching you all your lives to turn every 
 trouble into an adventure? What next? 
 
 " We'll hae misfortunes great and sma', 
 But aye a heart aboon them a'." 
 
 Should I try a wider sweep and a heavier hammer ? The 
 cause was worth it. 
 
 The next effort was an article in the Nineteenth 
 Century, entitled, " The Educational Peace of Scotland." 
 It appeared in January of the year 1897, and all that I 
 can say is that I could see quite well that in the open 
 air the ground was not so damp. The historical appeal 
 that free education up to and through the Universities 
 would be the consummation of the Knox tradition went 
 home, here and there. Another Knox ideal that every 
 son and daughter of Scotland should be so equipped as 
 to develop every talent, every natural endowment, and 
 should make the whole a national asset available " for 
 the comfort of the Commonwealth " that ideal, being 
 furbished up, began to shine again. 
 
 After a while oh ! it seemed so long ! the article 
 was read by at least one man in America the very man 
 I wished to get at. 
 
 In May, 1901, I received a telegram from Mr. 
 Carnegie, asking me to meet him in Liverpool on the 
 arrival of his ship. I was deep in engagements and wired 
 regretting that I could not go. Some more wires followed ; 
 and he came to London and I met him at the Langham. 
 I felt that, as the play-writers would say, the fateful hour 
 had come. 
 
 " Shaw," said he, " I read your article in the Nineteenth 
 Century"
 
 A DREAMER'S DREAM 157 
 
 "Yes? "said I. 
 
 Then he added, " I am disposed to realize your idea." 
 
 My heart went bump. I replied quietly : " That would 
 be something for Scotland." 
 
 At once he asked, " How much do you need? " And 
 I at once answered : " A million." 
 
 " How do you know that? " he asked. 
 
 t You see," I said, " an endowment would have to 
 yield as much as would pay the fees and also leave room 
 for an increase in the students." 
 
 " How much are the fees? " he inquired. 
 
 "About ,50,000 a year," said I, "or, at least, they 
 might come to that." 
 
 " How do you know that? " he asked all in the same 
 " down on the nail " style. 
 
 I had a card up my sleeve for him ; for, in a way that 
 I cannot possibly explain, I had been preparing for some 
 sudden emergency. " I know it from this," said I, pulling 
 from my pocket a little White Paper. " I moved for a 
 Parliamentary Return on the subject a little while ago, and 
 here it is." 
 
 He looked it over carefully, and then said, " How are 
 we to do this ? Can you manage ? " 
 
 Here was railroad speed ! I pulled up. " Mr. 
 Carnegie," said I, " this is good business, but it is big 
 business, too big to entrust to me or to one man. You 
 must get the whole nation on your side, have a live trust, 
 put men on it of both parties take a look over the front 
 benches of the Commons and the Lords, and we may get 
 the men and meantime send for Ross; we need skilled 
 help like his." 
 
 " I agree to that," said he. " Ross will be wired for.
 
 158 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 He will be here to-morrow. How about your men ? Will 
 they agree to be Trustees ? " 
 
 " I don't know," said I ; " but we can ask them." 
 
 " How can you do that? " he queried. 
 
 " I'll take a cab," said I. 
 
 So imagine your respected parent tumbling there and 
 then into a hansom cab at the Langham door, a little 
 dazed, a little exhilarated, strictly sober, but, I suppose, 
 just like any man in a condition when dreams are coming 
 true. 
 
 I went first to Bannerman. After I told him what was 
 afoot, he said, " Lord, Tammas, this beats a' ! That 
 blessed little essay of yours which you sent round to us 
 well, it went into the waste-paper basket. And now here 
 is the whole affair. Yes, of course, I'll be a Trustee." 
 Then to Lord Reay; he was very cautious, very philoso- 
 phical ; and I could see (he was, of course, as deep as 
 Bryce in the University set and looked at things as much 
 as he from the University angle) that he shied a little at 
 the free entry of students. I said to him that the Univer- 
 sity purposes proper would no doubt get something of sub- 
 stantial gain by and by. He agreed to the Trusteeship. 
 
 Then I went to the Scotch Office, as I had told 
 Carnegie I would ; and I at once found myself up against 
 things. You could hardly on your oath have described 
 the atmosphere as enthusiastic for free University educa- 
 tion. ' There is a scheme afoot, Lord Balfour," said I, 
 " to further the cause of free University Education in 
 Scotland, and as Secretary for Scotland I should like 
 you to be very prominently in it." Then I mentioned 
 Carnegie. He said little; showed no enthusiasm. Reti- 
 cence was perhaps natural ; all was strictly official. I felt
 
 A DREAMER'S DREAM 159 
 
 chilled. Then I had the feeling that it was meant I 
 should be chilled. So I took fire. 
 
 " Look here, Lord Balfour," said I, " I came along 
 here because you and your position should be very respect- 
 fully recognized, and you could help; but if you stand 
 out, this affair goes on" He said nothing. 
 
 Then I added, " There is a million of money in it ! " 
 
 "What? "he said. 
 
 " Yes," said I, " a million of money." 
 
 Then we talked. I again impressed upon him my 
 view that, as Secretary of Scotland, he should be asso- 
 ciated with a movement of national importance. Then 
 he agreed, saying something ominous which I forget, 
 about consulting the Universities. 
 
 It was, however, evident that the thing the formation 
 of the Trust was now booming. The struggle ahead I 
 only partly saw, but anyhow, Sir Henry was wholly with 
 me, and there was comfort there. 
 
 I went back to Carnegie; and Ross came next morn- 
 ing. Dear Dr. Ross ! he is now over eighty, and there at 
 this moment he sits, in a great arm-chair in the Craigmyle 
 Library, and he snoozes away so comfortably. But he 
 has brought north his store of the original documents, and 
 he is to check what I say in these University letters. He 
 is the only other witness besides myself of a remarkable 
 scene which I may by and by describe to you, and he has 
 an intellect as penetrating and an outlook on life as serene 
 as ever. Long may his bow abide in strength.* 
 
 Your rather tired (for is not this too long a letter?) 
 and humbly affectionate FATHER 
 
 * March, 1921. He is now, by the favour of His Majesty and to the hearty 
 satisfaction of friends and public, Sir John Ross.
 
 LETTER XXVI 
 
 THE AUTHENTIC LETTER 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 12, 1919. 
 MY DEAR LASS, 
 
 Was it you or which of the other rebels was it that 
 used to reiterate to your mother and me that the secret of 
 a well-regulated household was obedient parents? 
 
 Anyhow, you are most insistent about the rest of this 
 free University education story. After all, it is a little bit 
 of real Scotch history, and it is well that you should get 
 it at first hand and true. 
 
 To be frank, mighty little enthusiasm did I find, in 
 the ranks of those who would have been powerful to help 
 the scheme along, for franking students through the col- 
 leges, for realizing the national ideal, for giving to every 
 son and daughter of Scotland this chance and scope of 
 developing intellectual gifts and talent, whenever in the 
 body of the people it could be found. On the contrary, 
 the opposite idea, the idea of the elect gathered not 
 from the well-to-do in an intellectual sense, but from the 
 well-to-do in a material sense, an elect for whom Uni- 
 versities and other national institutions should be a pre- 
 serve that idea was in the very bones of men, most 
 superior men with a great leverage over public opinion 
 through the Press and other channels. 
 
 Many letters, memoranda, and telegrams were flying 
 
 1 60
 
 THE AUTHENTIC LETTER 161 
 
 about; and for I was up to the neck in law work my 
 recollection is not quite clear as to the order of the next 
 events. However, I met Carnegie and told him that I 
 myself saw that the Universities would be none the worse 
 of strengthening, especially on the scientific research side. 
 Lord Balfour of Burleigh was very properly urging this, 
 and I thought that a claim in that sense was right. The 
 good donor agreed to add another half million to his gift 
 and to dedicate it to that purpose. That, added to 
 " Shaw's million," as he always called it to Ross, brought 
 the donation up to seven and a half millions of dollars. 
 The first drafts of the Trust Deed were made up for that 
 sum, and a meeting was held in the Scotch Office, where 
 Carnegie, as prospective donor, addressed his prospective 
 Trustees. 
 
 He confirmed all by the following letter : 
 
 " Langham Hotel, London. 
 
 "May 18, 1901. 
 
 "MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN, 
 
 " I now put in writing the substance of the statement which 
 I made to you this morning. 
 
 "Upon reading an article by my friend and townsman, Mr. 
 Thomas Shaw, M.P., in the Nineteenth Century magazine some 
 time ago, I was deeply interested in his proposal that the Uni- 
 versities of my native land should be opened free to the capable 
 youth of Scotland, in accordance with the scheme of that educa- 
 tional benefactor John Knox. 
 
 "I took an early opportunity of conferring with, my friend 
 upon the subject, and learned from him that about ,50,000 per 
 annum would cover all the fees paid by students. I thereafter 
 conferred with my friends Mr. Morley and Professor Bryce upon 
 the subject, and finally at my suggestion Mr. Shaw kindly 
 arranged a meeting with his Lordship the Secretary for Scotland. 
 The result of that highly satisfactory interview is the meeting
 
 162 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 which we have just held, you having all been conferred with in 
 the interval. 
 
 "I said this morning, and now confirm, that it would give 
 me the greatest pleasure to provide the necessary funds for the 
 purpose stated; a draft embodying the details you are already 
 in possession of. From it you will observe that, in addition to 
 abolishing fees, I have provided sufficient funds to enable the 
 Universities in due time to put themselves abreast of the Ameri- 
 can and Continental Universities in their scientific departments. 
 The securities which I propose to transfer to you as Trustees 
 are seven and a half million dollars in Bonds of the United 
 States Steel Corporation, the revenue from which will be 
 .78,000 per annum. The estimated charge for abolition of 
 fees from Scottish students being ,48,000, this would leave for 
 the scientific and other modern departments mentioned, say, 
 .30,000 per annum for the fifty years the securities run. This 
 expenditure for a number of years should provide the necessary 
 building and equipment of the science department. 
 
 "Further details are given in the paper herewith submitted. 
 
 " I desire to express my deep appreciation of your co-opera- 
 tion in agreeing to serve as Trustees. I have not the shadow of 
 a doubt but that the funds committed to your hands will be so 
 used as to keep our native land in the foremost rank in the 
 education of the people. You will, I am sure, readily under- 
 stand the peculiar charm this gift has for me, being suggested 
 by one Dumfarlan bairn and made possible by another. 
 
 "Always very truly yours, 
 
 "ANDREW CARNEGIE." 
 
 There was the whole thing. Purpose : ' That the 
 Universities of my native land should be opened free to 
 the capable youth of Scotland." Money : seven and a 
 half million dollars. Trustees : all accepting ; everything, 
 in short, as tight as a drum. 
 
 But no ! no ! no ! my dear ; little did I know of the 
 determined prepossessions I was up against. Before many
 
 THE AUTHENTIC LETTER 163 
 
 days were over I was to feel their force. Bannerman, 
 hearing of possible retrogression, laughed aloud at it, and 
 wanted to know what right we had to control the donor 
 and to look a gift horse in the mouth. 
 
 But the situation was more serious than that. And 
 its danger was in Carnegie himself, who naturally wanted 
 to be associated with men of power, and who always had 
 a real weakness towards the aristocrat. In later life, poor 
 man, this led him far astray; and his belaudings of the 
 German Emperor went so far that their brutal falsification 
 broke his heart. 
 
 Towards the end of May the storm broke. On the 
 2oth, when the ink was hardly dry on Carnegie's letter 
 of gift, I wrote to Dr. Ross this letter from the House 
 of Commons Library. You will see that my feeling over 
 the discovery of what had been going on was keen enough, 
 almost to the sense of outrage. 
 
 "I have just learned," I say, "from Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman, who was positively shocked and angered, that 
 Bryce has had a letter from Lord Reay saying that Mr. Carnegie 
 has modified his scheme, and that there is to be no general 
 exemption from fees, but only on special application on ground 
 of poverty ! I told Sir H. that the thing was incredible. . . . 
 It is a curious development of the classes v. the masses ! The 
 Professor lot, as Sir Henry says, will put obstacles in the way 
 and try to grab for their own University purposes; and so the 
 old sad record of improving a merely class institution would 
 go on ; while the great body of the Scotch people would be left 
 outside. This means more, in misdirection and in loss, than 
 I can describe." 
 
 Well did I know that all over Scotland fathers and 
 mothers, who and whose families were an honour to the 
 land, the very men, women and children whom it was a
 
 164 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 pride to preserve and favour they would never, never 
 plead this ground of poverty : they would rather die first. 
 The issue was a dole or a right. This kind of thing 
 could not keep. The " superior " Press kept harping on 
 the same old string. The influences gathered and the 
 millionaire was being engulfed. I felt singularly power- 
 less and alone. 
 
 But I was, as I have now discovered after an interval 
 of eighteen years, not alone. One journalist who knew 
 his Scotland widely, deeply, and at the first hand 
 of a lifetime, foresaw the peril and went to Carnegie. 
 It was Sir William Robertson Nicoll. But even his 
 " heart sank " when he saw the company the rich man was 
 keeping. Here is his account of the interview in a letter 
 which Ross showed to me only a week ago. I purposely 
 leave the name of the visitor blank; but you may take 
 it from me that he was one of the shrewdest acquaintance 
 with forms of " influence " which I have ever known. 
 
 "June 5, 1901. 
 
 "Bay Tree Lodge, 
 
 " Frognal. 
 "DEAR MR. CARNEGIE, 
 
 "I am constrained to write a line to thank you for what I 
 
 saw and heard to-day. When I observed you with my 
 
 heart sank. He is a good man, but he is an aristocrat from 
 the beginning, and he knows nothing of the poor. I am nobody 
 nothing but a journalist but I have known what it is to 
 be very poor and very proud and my whole heart is with 
 the poor to this day. If you will observe the tender considera- 
 tion and regard for the poor which I saw in you to-day in the 
 terms of your settled gift, you will have the blessing of Scots- 
 men to the end of time, t rejoiced also that the provision for 
 scientific education will be kept in your own strong and even 
 hands and not given over to the University Courts of Scot-
 
 THE AUTHENTIC LETTER 165 
 
 land the most quarrelsome and impractical and the least 
 democratic bodies in the world. I am not worthy to come under 
 your roof but my whole heart goes out to you. May God 
 bless you. 
 
 "Yours sincerely, 
 
 "W. RofiERTSON NlCOLL. 
 
 " I will send you this week's number of the British Weekly, 
 in which you will see a few letters out of many received which 
 will tell you how the true Scotland feels." 
 
 Meantime the Trust Deed, in terms of the letter of 
 gift of May 18, went forward. 
 
 " If the deed goes through in its present form as I 
 have sent it," I wrote to Dr. Ross on June i in a letter 
 sending him detailed suggestions and revisals, " I ami 
 ready to fight for it through thick and thin and to put a 
 willing share of my life into the Trust. Mr. Carnegie, 
 assure him, need have no fear of that. If, on the other 
 hand, the ' interests ' knock it into a cocked hat, then 
 the scene is changed." 
 
 Would you believe it, dear, it turned out that the 
 chances were 100 to i that the scene was to be changed, 
 and that the design which had been dear to me from my 
 youth, really a design of my life, was to be frustrated 
 intrigued to death. 
 
 Rather a shattering business, was it not, for your 
 poor old 
 
 FATHER ?
 
 LETTER XXVII 
 
 NIGHTMARE AND AWAKENING 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 13, 1919. 
 MY DEAREST ISABEL, 
 
 Shall we just complete the University gift story? 
 Well, here is the Fifth Act. Shall it be in the Shake- 
 spearean sense a tragedy a gloomy triumph of adverse 
 fate, or in the same sense a comedy, a drama with a 
 happy ending? 
 
 Suddenly there came a message from Mr. Carnegie 
 requesting my presence at Skibo. I wired that I was over- 
 whelmingly occupied and could not go. He then pro- 
 posed an intermediate meeting-place I think Inverness 
 or Aberdeen but I had again to cry off. Then, through 
 the intervention of Dr. Ross, a meeting was fixed. He 
 came from Skibo to Dunfermline, and I sent back all my 
 briefs for the day and went over to the old town, to the 
 house of my old master. 
 
 Papers were laid out on the table. Mr. Carnegie took 
 the head : I sat at the side. Dr. Ross sat apart on an 
 arm-chair, not taking part in the discussion, but listening 
 and watching keenly. 
 
 The start was abrupt and peremptory. 
 
 " Shaw," said Carnegie, " you have led me into a 
 nice fix. I feel that I have been rather affronted. I now 
 find that your scheme is no good." 
 
 166
 
 NIGHTMARE AND AWAKENING 167 
 
 I sat still for a moment, recognizing that he had been 
 got at, ad seeing at once that what it all meant was that 
 those whom I will for short call " the inner ring " were 
 no longer satisfied with having got half a million for their 
 design : they would have none of my scheme. Having 
 bagged the millionaire they were going to bag my million 
 too leaving free education, the great body of deserving, 
 struggling parents, and myself all, as the modern phrase 
 is all on the mat. A kind of tempest swept through my 
 mind. I tried to think clear : there was much to be lost 
 or much to be won. 
 
 " I am sorry to hear you say that," said I, " or think 
 that anything I have ever said or done has put an affront 
 upon you. I meant to make your name beloved for 
 generations." 
 
 ' The thing will not do," he broke in ; " the help is 
 not needed." 
 
 "Who told you that?" I challenged. "I know the 
 kind that told you. Tell me this," I asked, " tell me this : 
 has any one of these men that you have been colloguing 
 with, has any one of them gone through the hards for 
 education? Not one of them. I have. Who are they, 
 to know whether help is needed? They do not know.: 
 they have not had the experience. I have : and I 
 know." 
 
 He was unconvinced; but he was willing to parley. 
 He spoke of the remission of fees as but a small part of 
 the total oncost for the session; but for beneath his 
 resolute and dominating nature he had a kindly heart 
 he winced a little when I pictured the little, and some- 
 times big, gifts being sent from the farms and the crofts 
 and the sheilings the cheese, the potatoes, the oatmeal,
 
 168 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 sent or taken to the very humble city lodging where the 
 boy, lonely and indomitable, was struggling with the higher 
 learning ; how by this means the cost of living was reduced 
 to a minimum; but the meeting of the hard cash of fees 
 was cruel and so on. 
 
 Although I was sure it had been well dinned into him, 
 it is to his credit that he did not personally like in short, 
 rather revolted against either the poverty test or the 
 poverty appeal. And you should know also that by this 
 time Lord Elgin had pronounced against the idea, and 
 Mr. Arthur Balfour, at a meeting which the three of us 
 and Ross had at the Scotch Office for revising the deed 
 (I used the term, I remember, of turning the Trust 
 into " a sublimated Poor's Board ") expressed himself 
 quite peremptorily in the same sense. But this is a 
 digression. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Carnegie broke in : " There is a better 
 use for my money, and I have resolved on it to equip 
 the Universities." 
 
 The battery was unmasked. ' To equip the Univer- 
 sities," I said ; " you know that I favour that. Quite a 
 good object " ; and / began gathering together and fold- 
 ing up my papers! 
 
 " Shaw," he said, " what does this mean ? Does it 
 mean that you are not to be a trustee ? " 
 
 ' That is exactly," said I, " what it means. Your 
 scheme is good, but it is not my scheme ; you are building 
 it in the air. I took you for a democrat " his eyes blazed, 
 but I went on " and here you have been consulting with 
 aristocrats and giving away endowments right enough 
 but why not build on your democracy, get the people of 
 Scotland on your side by giving them this free charter
 
 NIGHTMARE AND AWAKENING 169 
 
 that I want ? Begin with them ; trust them ; build on that. 
 Otherwise you will build on the air ; closer and closer will 
 these corporations grow." Then I stopped, thinking I 
 had lost all by going too far. Carnegie sat in a sort of 
 maze. 
 
 Then in the pause, and to his everlasting credit, Ross 
 struck in, putting a point with a quiet and simple force. 
 ' Would it not be possible, gentlemen, to realize both 
 your schemes ? " 
 
 Carnegie looked at me; and I said, " I could have no 
 objection to that : I favour both." 
 
 Then he too began gathering up papers. ' You to 
 get your million," he said. 
 
 ' That would make things solid," I replied. 
 
 He continued : "The rest half a million for equipment." 
 
 " I don't scrimp that," said I ; " not at all ; the colleges 
 will grow, and scientific things make a big item and 
 growing." 
 
 " Let it be so," he said to the dear intervener. He 
 and I stood up and shook hands. And I back to my briefs. 
 He stayed all night in Dunfermline. 
 
 What happened next morning at the railway station 
 was told to me by Dr. Ross. In stepping into his com- 
 partment Mr. Carnegie turned and " Just give Shaw 
 another half-million," he said ; " I mean, a million for 
 him and a million for the others." So the sum of the 
 Trust endowment became ten millions of dollars. 
 
 Never was a Trust better officered. Lord Elgin was 
 unwearied as a Chairman, resolutely loyal to the deed, 
 considerate to the Universities, but preserving our inde- 
 pendence ; Sir William McCormick, as Secretary, very well 
 able indeed to hold his own with the most learned bat-
 
 170 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 talions. And for a model Treasurer who but Dr. Ross 
 
 himself ? 
 
 ***** 
 
 Shall I now write the epilogue? On the final settle- 
 ment of the Deed, several of us came out of the Secretary 
 of Scotland's room together, and of course the warm- 
 hearted donor was being congratulated. He little man 
 took Lord Balfour big man by the buttonhole, and 
 said : " Reminds me of the Sunday School collection. 
 Each scholar had to quote an appropriate text. Number 
 One toddles forward, puts down his dime with ' Blessed 
 is he that considereth the poor.' Number Two, with ' The 
 Lord loveth a cheerful giver.' Then comes up Number 
 Three, puts his dime in, and solemnly quotes his text 
 ' A fool and his money's soon parted ! ' 
 
 So, a happy ending. 
 
 Your fagged out 
 
 FATHER. 
 
 P.S. Let me add to this letter a little postscript 
 (October 28) as to what happened at Alloa the other day. 
 I stayed the week-end at the Gean House and Dr. Ross 
 motored along to Louise's from Dunfermline to get de- 
 livery of his papers and to hear these Carnegie letters. 
 After hearing them intently, he modestly disclaimed my 
 praise of himself, but: "On the merits?" said I. To 
 which he replied : " Not a single word to alter. Not a 
 
 word wrong." 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER XXVIII 
 
 THE SACRED BATTLEFIELD 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 28, 1920. 
 
 MY DEAR ISABEL, 
 
 The guests have gone, and these are quiet days. Last 
 Sunday a scholarly divine, speaking of " the still small 
 voice," vouched a better translation to be : " in the sound 
 of a great stillness." Just as we use the expression " dark- 
 ness made visible," so, it seems, there is, upon high 
 authority, such a thing as " silence made audible." It 
 is true : I hear it : in this afternoon of brown and 
 gold. 
 
 For some days I have been in " the sessions of sweet 
 silent thought," recalling the commanding voice and mind 
 and presence of one of the noblest men I ever knew a 
 great ecclesiastic, a great statesman, a great Christian, a 
 great man. 
 
 Let us turn aside to look at him and the things he 
 loved. I want you to see him and them as with my own 
 eyes. So for a little you and I will speak no more of 
 Parliaments or of affairs of State. We shall visit sacred 
 ground none the less sacred that it was a battlefield. 
 
 Principal Robert Rainy was at first to me a dweller 
 apart. But as I was drawn, on quite a humble plane, 
 more and more into the privilege of co-operation with him, 
 my respect for him took on a warmer and a warmer colour. 
 
 171
 
 172 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 This in the days of his advance and triumph. In those 
 days he remained serene, steadfast, with a quick ascription 
 of all to the Master he served, and himself an august 
 lesson in true humbleness of mind. 
 
 But in the days of check, of defeat, of apparent over- 
 throw and ruin, we were more closely in conference. Of 
 a Sunday afternoon then, he used to come along, his mind 
 loaded with care; and in the library at Abercromby Place 
 we had much colloguing. But then also his serenity and 
 steadfastness shone out as brightly as ever. You could 
 not but discern upon him the lineaments of a great sorrow ; 
 yet there was the same ascription of all to a Divine lead- 
 ing, and again his humbleness of mind lent a noble eleva- 
 tion to his unwavering faith. 
 
 When I think of these things, of his faculty of swift 
 intellectual penetration, of his rectitude, of his high 
 courage ; and, alas ! when I remember how for years he 
 was misinterpreted and loaded with obloquy, I feel, on 
 the one hand proud, and on the other hand ashamed, of 
 my country. 
 
 I have described to you in a previous letter my up- 
 bringing in the United Presbyterian Church. There can 
 be no doubt about it : that robust, growing, fearless body 
 of men seemed, on the one hand, to be veritable old 
 Covenanters, but, on the other, to hold the keys of the 
 future. Its two outstanding features were these : its belief 
 in the spirituality of the Church, disentangled from State 
 alliance, and independent of State endowment; and 
 secondly, in the advance of the bounds of that spiritual 
 Kingdom in accordance with the injunction of its Head. 
 This body seemed thoroughly well able to go on its own. 
 What need had it of Union?
 
 THE SACRED BATTLEFIELD 173 
 
 Yet is not the question selfish, narrow, improper The 
 only point in such cases is and ought to be : What would 
 be best for the Kingdom? It is a spiritual question and 
 must receive a spiritual answer : in other words, Church 
 Union must spring from spiritual affinity alone. If from 
 anything else, the Kingdom will suffer. That was un- 
 questionably the view of Cairns and of Rainy; I testify 
 on the subject at first hand. 
 
 But what could these two men, and the Churches they 
 represented, do when they realized every year more 
 clearly that the outstanding features which I have just 
 named did not characterize one Church alone, but charac- 
 terized both, and that the lines of essential belief and 
 duty in the two Communions were not merely parallel 
 but were identical ? 
 
 Both, of course, had difficulties. With Cairns it was 
 in the region of the heart. Take a notable case : The 
 annual Synod a body 1,200 strong, a Minister and Elder 
 from each congregation. The members of that body were 
 direct and regular participants in legislative labour, and 
 to them every year came, in a warm tide, the refreshing 
 of a c^.nmon inspiration. Was that to go, and go for ever ? 
 Few men and women outside of that Communion know 
 what that meant to those inside of it to those homes from 
 Shetland to the Solway in which the sweet and sacred 
 event of the Edinburgh visit was the axle of the year. 
 These seem but simple annals : this is no letter to the 
 proud. But go even now to remote country manses or 
 farms, far away as Orkney or Cantyre, and you will see 
 the lips of old men quiver as they talk of Synods past 
 and gone. Where principle, as they saw it, led, there they 
 needs must follow. But they gave up much.
 
 174 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Rainy's difficulties were more menacing : less human, 
 more historical, more metaphysical. The vast majority of 
 the Free Church saw the outstanding features as I have 
 depicted them. And they felt the call of the Spirit as of a 
 something living, moving, marching on. But a minority 
 small, steadfast to tradition, and rooted in the past, 
 were not so minded. And that awful shadow descended 
 the connexion of the State with the Church a con- 
 nexion in or about which difference, disruption, disunion, 
 had hovered in Scotland for over two hundred years. And 
 when that shadow fell across the path, the minority, 
 gathered mostly from the remote Highlands, stood stock 
 still. 
 
 There was no practical question of their joining the 
 Establishment none whatsoever. The point of difference 
 was a pure abstraction, conjectural, metaphysical. Imagine 
 an Establishment free from the old taint which made it 
 fall from grace at the Disruption, and also free from such 
 modern taints as " human hymns " : imagine all that : 
 imagine, in short, an Establishment to their liking : then to 
 favour that supposititious thing was to favour the so-called 
 principle of Establishment ! 
 
 Here was a something on which, as they conceived, 
 their forebears had testified, not merely according to their 
 lights, or according to the times, but as truth and truth 
 for ever. And to yield on this point seemed to them 
 infidelity to truth. 
 
 This was the problem with which the Free Church was 
 confronted by its slender but rigid minority. It was the 
 subject of learned and frequent debate. In that debate 
 the United Presbyterians had, of course, no concern : no 
 stranger could intermeddle. A certain wonder took posses-
 
 THE SACRED BATTLEFIELD 175 
 
 sion of the onlooker, not only at the clash of argument 
 upon what certain Church leaders had said, or unsaid, or 
 really meant, sixty years before, but also at the more 
 stupendous proposition that this, whatever it was, could 
 fetter the Christian religion among men who believed that 
 Christ alone was to be followed and He alone was Master 
 " in His own House." 
 
 Travelling once by train with Dr. Rainy to some 
 country meeting (we had a good many of these journeys 
 together in those years), I ventured to allude to the diffi- 
 culties in the handling of great masses of men divided 
 by doubts or by honest differences of opinion. 
 
 He made me this answer, which I shall never 
 forget : 
 
 ' There are, concerning any great body or organiza- 
 tion which is in general agreement on substantiate, two 
 things required of anyone who would serve it. One is 
 to keep the mass together, avoiding, so far as may be, its 
 disintegration or falling asunder : but yet to do this in 
 such a way as always to help the mass forward, making 
 its centre of gravity advance." 
 
 To this task he devoted himself with a power of moral 
 conviction that the cause of Union was a dutiful homage 
 to Jesus Christ. That was the touchstone of everything 
 with him. I remember well giving a dinner in my Solicitor- 
 General's room in the House of Commons in order that 
 great Statesmen should meet the great Churchmen. Har- 
 court, Bannerman, Morley and others were there, and I 
 purposely placed Rainy between Morley and myself. His 
 massive dignity and his sweet urbanity impressed all. I 
 watched particularly a discussion over some of Newman's 
 views between him and Morley. Neither the one nor other
 
 176 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of these men was of the cavilling or belittling species, but 
 I remember well with what a stately gravity Rainy summed 
 up all : " Mr. Morley, I believe that John Henry Newman 
 truly loved, truly loved, the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 
 And in that spirit his patience and persuasiveness, his 
 labour and learning, were given in ungrudging measure. 
 The Free Church majorities grew larger and larger : more 
 and more it was seen that the differences between majority 
 and minority were as plain as between marching and mark- 
 ing time. 
 
 Meantime the United Presbyterians itself the fruit 
 of many unions of smaller bodies had remained staunch. 
 The Free Church progress was now such that the coming 
 transaction seemed to be abundantly justified. With the 
 dawn of the new century the Union was consummated, 
 and the United Free Church was formed in October, 
 1900. 
 
 Veritably the blessing seemed to be poured upon it 
 in rich abundance. The processions from the Synod Hall 
 of the one Church and the Assembly Hall of the other to 
 the Edinburgh Waverley Market had an inevitable sad- 
 ness, but the first vast gathering of the United Church 
 was a memorable event. All Christendom took note of 
 it, as an Evangelical alliance of the first magnitude. 
 Scholars, divines, philosophers, also marked it. For 
 Cairns and Orr were in the one Church, and the other 
 was the Church of fearless thinkers who had met German 
 theology on the level and fought it foot to foot, some 
 like Robertson Smith and Bruce passed away, but others, 
 like Lindsay and Dods and Rainy and George Adam 
 Smith and Davidson and Denney, pillars of religion and 
 scholarship whom every centre of learning at home or
 
 From a photograph *> Marshall H'ane & Co. 
 
 PRINCIPAL RAINY.
 
 THE SACRED BATTLEFIELD 177 
 
 abroad treated with deference and respect. Above all, 
 the Union was marked by the hearty independence and 
 zeal of a free democracy. This last a literal but very 
 remarkable fact. 
 
 Yes. It was a democracy in which there was a 
 real equality. No distinction in power between laity 
 and clergy; nor among the laity between classes or 
 ranks. 
 
 The event was of deep interest to thoughtful laymen 
 of all classes and beliefs outside. Some, like Mr. Balfour, 
 Mr. Haldane, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
 openly rejoiced at it. Lord Rosebery did better he 
 was on the platform of its first General Assembly. The 
 few with a journalistic twist who affected to scorn it only 
 made men prize it the more. 
 
 Here and there in the England south of the Trent 
 you would note references to uncouth gait or attire; and 
 of course the accent of many came in for a slash. It 
 must have been about this, I think, that Bannerman 
 once remarked to me he had a habit of humorous 
 anger : 
 
 " I suppose the Jerusalem Pharisees would have their 
 fashionable joke about a Galilean accent." 
 
 Moving about in the great Assembly, I could hear the 
 districts of Scotland mingling in talk, but the sense of 
 difference in dialect disappeared in a warm, common 
 purpose, just as in these later years it has done in the Great 
 War, in Egypt and Palestine, or on those fields of 
 Flanders and of France which have so often been watered 
 by Scottish blood. 
 
 Have the twenty years that have elapsed since that 
 event altered the current of reflection or belief? Do we 
 
 M
 
 178 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 now think ourselves superior to such enthusiasms, such 
 manifestations ? If the current be different, is it a deeper 
 or a shallower current? 
 
 The Union was accomplished. But there was a night 
 of doubt and sorrow coming. But another day for that : 
 let me close this at a point while the sun was still shining. 
 
 Your ever loving Father, 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER XXIX 
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 October 3, 1920. 
 ISABEL MY CHILD, 
 
 You were but a child during those events, but, as you 
 have told me yourself, you saw the two impressive pro- 
 cessions which went, on October 31, 1900, to the great 
 Waverley Market, and there formed, amid a sort of solemn 
 acclaim, the great Union. 
 
 In that clear sky there was a cloud. It was no bigger 
 than a man's hand. Within six weeks the sky was 
 darkened and the storm broke. 
 
 On December 16 a Summons was issued at the instance 
 of the small minority of the Free Church. How small 
 it was you shall hear in a moment. But that was no matter ; 
 the argument, and case, and decision, would have been 
 the same although the minority had consisted of one single 
 man. 
 
 What were these " pursuers " submitting ? They dared 
 not challenge the Union as a spiritual association, or de- 
 mand its rescission. That would have been 
 
 "To force our consciences that Christ set free," 
 
 a thing impossible in Scotland, and not attempted since 
 the black epoch of the later Stuarts. 
 
 But they could challenge the right to property. The 
 Free Church had foolishly favoured accumulation under 
 
 179
 
 i8o 
 
 the names of capital or central funds. Curious it is how 
 such Churches run to that. Loyal and enthusiastic com- 
 mercial men in them favour that. But it is only safe within 
 very strait limits. For it tends to remove liberality from 
 the category of steady-going virtues and turn it into a 
 deathbed affair. And from it spring dangers danger 
 of ease, danger of inward self-satisfaction, danger of out- 
 ward attack. A Church's true reserves are not in such 
 investments, but in " the unfathomable riches." 
 
 Of all those reserves and property the minority could 
 claim the whole. This they did ; roundly demanding that 
 the Free Church which merged itself into the Union 
 should be stripped of its " whole lands, properties, sums 
 of money and others which stood vested in it " on 
 October 30, and that when the next day it became part 
 of a United Free Church it did so beggared of all its 
 possessions. Its churches, manses, colleges, mission 
 stations, schools, buildings, in this and many lands, its 
 capital funds, down to the last sixpence everything to be 
 swept away by legal capture : nothing left to it except 
 its soul. 
 
 For there was, according to these plaintiffs, no longer 
 any Free Church except themselves, and those who 
 " adhered " to them. They alone had been faithful ; this 
 they truly believed. All the others had been faithless ; this 
 also they believed. " We are the people, and wisdom will 
 die with us " ; all else was a remorseless logic. How to 
 manage this? Search out the old beliefs or protestations 
 of those who were leaders of the Disruption movement of 
 1843 ; piece these things two generations old piece them 
 together, and then treat the result as a trust under the 
 theory of " fundamental principles." Get a Court of Law
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 181 
 
 to uphold that; and all the rest follows; the law of the 
 dead hand rules all; the law of the living spirit that 
 very essence of a Church of a Living Christ signifies 
 nothing. 
 
 You think that this was ridiculous, do you? Not at 
 all. It was the law. You think it was ruthless, do you? 
 Pray, what had the law to do with that ? 
 
 The litigation lasted four years. The famous judg- 
 ment of the House of Lords was pronounced on August i, 
 1904. The prolix records of the case are available : far 
 be it from me to attempt their epitome. The substance 
 of the matter was what I have told you. 
 
 The Summons failed in both of the Houses of the 
 Scotch Court of Session. The Scotch judges were 
 unanimous. In the House of Lords the judges stood 
 3 against 3, it being an open secret that Lord Shand's 
 decision, which was actually in writing, was for dismiss- 
 ing the appeal. But alas ! he died ere judgment was 
 pronounced. New judges were called in, and by a majority 
 Lords Macnaghten and Lindley dissenting the Scotch 
 decisions were reversed. Then the havoc began. 
 
 The first thing to be done was one in which I took a 
 deep interest. As representing the United Presbyterians 
 I had been charged with one of the leading Union resolu- 
 tions in 1900, and along with Principal Rainy I had 
 visited various centres promoting the cause. The question 
 was what would that fine brave United Presbyterian 
 Church now do? Here was a thing in which she had 
 legally no concern. Her principles had not been in issue : 
 her property had not been at stake. All her material equip- 
 ments, capital funds, buildings, churches, manses, stations, 
 remained to her. What was her duty? Should she dis-
 
 i82 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 entangle herself from this quarrel which was no concern 
 of hers, and go on with her old work like her old self? 
 What was her duty? 
 
 She chose the better part. I shall never forget a great 
 meeting of office-bearers in Edinburgh at which the de- 
 cision was made that the Union should stand. The two 
 sides of the question were fairly pointed out. But the 
 advantages of " as you were " seemed as naught to these 
 Christian men. Nothing else than spiritual affinity and 
 a sense of what was best for the Kingdom nothing else 
 had made the Union : nothing else should undo it. " Seest 
 thou thy brother in need ? " asked one of the United 
 Presbyterian speakers, and the response was from the 
 heart. Our possessions were theirs : the lot and heritage 
 were common. What God had joined let no man put 
 asunder. 
 
 So that shadow fled. 
 
 Then there came a period of anxiety and unrest so long 
 drawn out as to be a misery. The judgment of the House 
 of Lords had to be applied. So application after applica- 
 tion was made to the Courts, and the energy of lawyers 
 was at the service of even the minutest minority in any 
 congregation throughout the country, to secure property 
 and funds and to dispossess the congregation as a whole 
 from all. It mattered not that buildings had been erected 
 by donors still living who protested against the diversion 
 of their own sacred gifts away from the Church to which 
 they clung. These are but single instances of extra- 
 ordinary consequences, logical, ruthless, hard to bear. 
 
 The repetitions of such legal proceedings throughout 
 the country began to sow the seeds of what might have been 
 serious trouble. The law courts were kept busy. Was
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 183 
 
 Scotland again to be the scene, as so often it had been 
 in her history, of open and violent defiance of the intrusions 
 of the law? 
 
 About that time I received the following letter : 
 
 " 8, Rosebery Crescent, 
 " Edinburgh. 
 
 " Wednesday 22. 
 " DEAR MR. SHAW, 
 
 " There is a natural and growing indignation about the 
 growing list of interdicts, and Presbyterians are talking of press- 
 ing for a suspensory bill and calling on the M.P.s for their 
 district to take the question up. 
 
 "I should not at all deprecate speaking out and claiming 
 deliverance. I am only afraid of Parliamentary action taking 
 a shape that may lead to Government rebuff I don't think 
 that would improve our position. 
 
 " It is also to be considered that these interdicts wicked 
 as their effects are constitute valuable object lessons. They 
 show what the House of Lords judgment really means. 
 
 " What I usually say to people is, that they should not 
 contemplate any Parliamentary action without consulting 
 Asquith and yourself. 
 
 * * * * # 
 
 " Yours very truly, 
 
 " ROBERT RAINY." 
 
 This letter contained the substance of many commun- 
 ings. Naturally, Dr. Rainy would have done much to 
 avoid Parliamentary intervention, but we agreed that it 
 had to come, not to settle Divine things, but to undo this 
 human intervention. I shared his plans as to the shape 
 it would take. 
 
 I try to keep myself out of all this story. But, my 
 dear, it is impossible. You will see how. After much 
 consideration I telegraphed to Belmont, and Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman asked me to come on. I laid before
 
 184 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 him the best I could make of it, told him that it would 
 require far more than my brains and energy to induce or 
 force a Government to accept it ; there was my plan : what 
 did he think? Would he and those he led support it? 
 
 He was at first non-committal. He joked : called me 
 " owdacious " and all the rest of it, groping his way, 
 putting points. We had two or three hours of it. Although 
 still determined, I was feeling discouraged and depressed : 
 but just as he was shaking hands he cheered me up by 
 saying : 
 
 ' Well, Thomas, it's worth a trial." He was heart 
 and soul with me on the gross wrongs of the position ; but 
 as to the remedy, he was doubtful and uneasy. Yet I 
 could see that he had no alternative plan, and what he had 
 said was quite warrant enough for me. 
 
 I spoke in Galashiels on October 17, setting out the 
 church difficulty and suggesting the way out. The news- 
 papers were most generous in their space, and the address, 
 reprinted, had a wide vogue. Letters poured in from all 
 quarters, quite irrespective of party : and it was clear that 
 the clouds were breaking. 
 
 I should mention that from the moment the judgment 
 was pronounced it was plain beyond all doubting that the 
 slender but successful minority thereafter, of course, to 
 be known as the legal Free Church was saddled under 
 Trust law with a sacred responsibility so vast that they 
 were quite unable efficiently to discharge it. In these 
 circumstances, an arrangement between the parties was 
 attempted. It failed. The legal Free Church held that 
 the laws of God as well as man put them in the position 
 they occupied, and that to yield an inch was a sacrifice of 
 principle.
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 185 
 
 So the conference ended in nothing. The Free 
 Church would arbitrate nothing. They would not even 
 agree to yield what they could not use ; and their inability 
 to work the mass of the churches they claimed was con- 
 fessed in their proposal that the present occupiers should 
 remain as caretakers. But even that was not to be 
 allowed, unless at the same time those caretakers should 
 also become spiritual bondsmen. 
 
 All over Scotland that was to be the spectacle that 
 Christian people were to yield the churches and manses 
 which they in thousands had themselves built, to hold 
 those properties as tenants-at-will of those who did not 
 build them and this on the understanding that they must 
 only worship God on conditions set up by those who had 
 bereft them of their possessions ! 
 
 The facts were startling enough. Of the 1,104 con- 
 gregations of the Free Church, how many stood out of 
 the Union? Only twenty-six. What, then, if the 1,100 
 churches, and all the colleges, manses, stations, halls, home 
 and foreign, were seized? Who was to undertake the 
 work of the Master, yearly, daily, hourly, of which these 
 resources were but the material shell and frame ? Empty 
 they must stand until living forces came into being to 
 utilize them according to Disruption principles, and bound 
 especially to the " principle of Establishment " as declared 
 fundamental and perpetual by the House of Lords. And 
 to stand empty was not Trust but breach of Trust. How 
 could twenty-six men fill 1,100 pulpits? 
 
 In mission work the old Free Church was pre-eminent 
 throughout Christendom. Her noble band of missionaries 
 numbered one hundred, and each and all they stood by 
 the Union and freedom. Were these mission stations,
 
 186 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 colleges, schools, to be vacated and go to ruin, waiting the 
 time when a trained ministry came along who would be 
 sound on the principle of Establishment? How grotesque 
 it all was ! 
 
 If so as to men, what as to funds? The foundation 
 of Free Church pulpit support was what was known as 
 its Sustentation Fund, kept alive by voluntary annual 
 offerings. In the year preceding the Union these offer- 
 ings amounted to no less than ,170,000. Of this the 
 " legal " Free Church contributed how much ? Only 
 ,2,900. No shame that it was small; but the point was 
 how out of this slender amount was the vast work of the 
 law-declared Trust to be fulfilled by its law-declared 
 Trustees ? It was manifest that the House of Lords judg- 
 ment was unworkable, impossible, and I am not going to 
 say any more about it. Upon that subject I delivered my 
 soul. 
 
 Without doubt Scotland, which far and wide still cared 
 for these things, was put into a difficult position. On the 
 one hand, the law; on the other, the clamant facts; the 
 chances of social disorder; above all, loss, disorder, mis- 
 chance and mischief to the work and cause of Jesus Christ. 
 
 After all, it was a case for- putting very plain facts 
 in a very plain way; and it was their urgency which com- 
 pelled the call which I ventured to make a call for legis- 
 lative interference to undo the disaster of judicial inter- 
 ference. 
 
 No trust can be allowed to lapse into a state of non- 
 administration. Let there be loyalty to the law on the 
 one hand, but also unflinching loyalty to the work of Christ 
 on the other. That is the work for which the Church 
 exists, and, if there is failure there, the law will step in.
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 187 
 
 I put the simple question thus : Should the successful 
 litigants take more than they can successfully administer 
 either now or in the reasonably near future? Whatever 
 they cannot so administer, the law would declare should 
 go to the nearest approximate object; and therefore, in 
 nine cases out of ten, you would come back after years 
 of heart-burning, anxiety, dispeace, loss, evictions and 
 scandal, exactly to where you had started from namely, 
 that the present possessors, carrying on the nearest ap- 
 proximation to the objects of the trust, should be, as they 
 should have been from the beginning, allowed to remain 
 where they were. 
 
 What I pled for was drastic enough; but I felt sure 
 that nothing less would bring peace in Church or State. 
 It was this : to set the judgment of the House of Lords 
 on one side; to put the existing havoc under immediate 
 arrest by staying instantly all legal proceedings, and by 
 Parliament itself lifting out of the hands of the parties the 
 whole funds and property, amounting in value to millions 
 of pounds sterling. Who to take it? A strong Parlia- 
 mentary Commission. What to do with it? Why, my 
 dear, to give it all back again; to distribute it among the 
 parties; to take stock, not only of the judgment, but also 
 of the manifest actualities of the case, and, above all, of 
 the overriding obligation that the living work of the 
 Evangel should not fail, that the true trust should not be 
 broken, that wherever at home or abroad the little lamp 
 had shone it should still hold on to burn. 
 
 Was this wild revolutionary stuff? Was it disrespect- 
 ful to the House of Lords? Was it disloyal to the law? 
 Or was it just plain honesty and common sense? 
 
 Well, it was in this last sense that the public and
 
 188 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Parliament and the Government took it up. I favoured 
 arbitration having been refused the appointment of a 
 Parliamentary Commission, armed with arbitrative and 
 executive powers, charged with a settlement of all existing 
 or prospective disputes between the two Churches; and I 
 asked Parliament to set it up authoritatively as a Com- 
 mission of Equity. 
 
 To those who hankered for precedent I cited Lord 
 Westbury for the lawyers, and for the politicians Sir 
 Robert Peel. 
 
 The Government served the occasion as became en- 
 lightened men. And the Crown lawyers Mr. Graham 
 Murray and Mr. Scott Dickson showed the grasp and 
 grit which became their high office, in this astonishing 
 nobody who knew their worth and quality. 
 
 So all went well. The Elgin Commission was set up, 
 worked with, shall we say, deliberation, giving, by the way, 
 to the successful litigants measure full and to spare. Peace 
 settled again over great spaces of country and great spheres 
 of religious effort. 
 
 Here is a curious thing. Namely this : that of all that 
 happened about the Parliamentary Bill my memory is 
 a complete blank. I must have been deep in it ; but I was 
 nearly wrought to death with legal work, travelling in that 
 Session alone, by rail and mostly by night, a distance equal 
 to the circumference of the earth. And this Church-recti- 
 fication business was high-strung work. I said plainly in 
 Parliament on the Bill that the country which had not in 
 the past feared the head that wore a crown was not in the 
 least likely to quail before the head that wore a wig ! And
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 189 
 
 as to these cruel interdicts I set the House astir by likening 
 the position to a penny-in-the-slot machine, where you had 
 only to drop in the House of Lords judgment and to pull 
 out a Church. Morley affected to be scandalized; but 
 when I rapped back at him : 
 
 " Our indiscretions sometimes serve us well 
 When our deep plots do pall," 
 
 he was placated. 
 
 All the rest has completely passed from my mind. 
 Once before the actual struggle I had said wonderingly 
 to Principal Rainy that there might be a danger of such 
 a colossal calamity as had occurred undermining good 
 men's faith. He severely reproved me, reminding me of 
 men's short-sightedness, of the need to be steadfast in 
 adversity, accepting these buffetings as became humble 
 believers in a supreme Wisdom. So we were drawn still 
 more closely together. 
 
 The other day I fished out this letter from him, which 
 I am venturing to send to you. I should rather tell the 
 story myself, but I cannot remember it, and so you will 
 excuse me falling back on the record of the saintly but 
 too indulgent friend. 
 
 "3,Tantallon Terrace, 
 "North Berwick. 
 
 "August 10, 1905. 
 "DEAR MR. SHAW, 
 
 "In reporting at the Commission and speaking of members 
 of Parliament, I named four who were in frequent consultation 
 with us. I named you last that I might add some sentences as 
 to our special obligations to you. I referred to your being a 
 member of our advisory Committee, having the whole details at 
 command your Parliamentary position and experience the 
 universal impression of the judgment, good temper and firmness
 
 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 with which you had handled matters, and that it was in your 
 hands that the arrangement was reached in which the Bill 
 became a matter of agreement among all parties in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " I am, dear Mr. Shaw, 
 
 "Yours ever truly, 
 " ROBERT RAINY." 
 
 Will you please forgive this epistle, so long, so dull? 
 But you have had to pay the penalty of demanding a full 
 and plain account from 
 
 Your very devoted parent, 
 
 S. OF D. 
 
 P.S. I should have mentioned that there was, as 
 regards the judgment of the House of Lords, a widespread 
 uneasiness as to whether the elementary fact had been 
 before their Lordships' minds that the funds in dispute 
 were not an endowment to which the Free Church had 
 succeeded, but that, on the contrary, it had started abso- 
 lutely penniless, that all that it possessed had been 
 voluntarily subscribed and given, the great bulk of it in 
 quite recent days, when the Church had cleared her testi- 
 monies and year by year made it plain that, to put it with 
 moderation, it was not a whit bound by the principle of 
 Establishment. I could not give such a doubt any place 
 in my mind, but many people did entertain it. 
 
 Well, two years ago I read with amazement this 
 account of the case by no less distinguished a friend than 
 the late Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice of England, 
 who was one of the actual Judges on the Appeal. In his
 
 STORM AND SUNSHINE 191 
 
 " Recollections of Bar and Bench " he gives writing not 
 very long after the event the following version of the 
 case, which I have underlined and marked with points of 
 exclamation at the spots of most astonishing singularity : 
 
 " In 1904 I was summoned to the House of Lords to 
 be one of the Judges for the hearing of the re-argument in 
 the dispute between the United Presbyterian Church of 
 Scotland and the Free Church ! Matters had been 
 brought to a crisis; the representatives of the United 
 Presbyterian Church had attempted to eject and deprive 
 of their offices certain Clergy of the Free Church // 
 
 " The first argument had taken place before the Lord 
 Chancellor, Lord Shand, Lord Macnaghten, Lord Lindley 
 and Lord Robertson. Lord Shand died before judgment 
 was delivered, and, in consequence of a difference of 
 opinion between their Lordships, the case was ordered to 
 be re-argued, and Lord James of Hereford and I were 
 summoned. The late Lord President, Lord Kinross, was 
 also asked to attend, but he could not sit, as he had been 
 consulted by some of the parties to the dispute. The case 
 was argued largely on admissions made in the Record, 
 and the facts relating to the later history of the United 
 Presbyterian Church were never before the House Iff I 
 only mention this because the criticisms after the judgment 
 assumed that a great deal more evidence had been given 
 than was actually the case. In the result the action of 
 the United Presbyterian Church was held to be illegal ( ! ) 
 and their endeavour to eject the Clergy from their cures 
 and vicarages not to be justified /// ' J 
 
 Perhaps I should not, even to you, make any comment 
 on all this ? Fancy that version not only entering into the 
 head of any man who had had to do with the case, but
 
 I 9 2 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 appearing under his hand in black and white ! A more 
 lamentable lapse of memory never occurred, even in all 
 the records of distinguished Judges. All the same, this 
 in it, at least, is pretty hard to bear. The United Presby- 
 terian Church were not even parties to the case. And this 
 puts upon that body a course of conduct which, from the 
 point of view of its principles, would have been nothing 
 but baseness and a protracted treachery. And then 
 " cures and vicarages " ! There is an English puzzle for 
 you ; apply such language to such a case !
 
 LETTER XXX 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens. S.W '.5. 
 
 July 6, 1920. 
 MY DEAR CHILD, 
 
 What think you of the following quotation, my Lady, 
 as a preface to another letter? You know the passage 
 well ; and you remember how amidst the fun of the Biglow 
 Papers we suddenly came upon it startled by its width 
 of vision, its statesmanship, its reverberating English ! 
 Lowell had the gift, rare in America, of aloofness and 
 perspective where national issues are concerned; and so 
 out of the Mexican imbroglio he read his countrymen a 
 lesson, humorous, but very serene and very brave, and he 
 made all of us, the world over, his debtors. 
 
 Let us hear again the famous words : 
 
 "We are inhabitants of two worlds, and owe a double, but 
 not a divided, allegiance. In virtue of our clay, this little ball 
 of earth exacts a certain loyalty of us, while, in our capacity 
 as spirits, we are admitted citizens of an invisible and holier 
 fatherland. There is a patriotism of the soul, whose claim ab- 
 solves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country 
 is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the 
 names of religion, duty, and the like. Our terrestrial organiza- 
 tions are but far-off approaches to so fair a model, and all they 
 are verily traitors who resist not any attempt to divert them 
 from this their original intendment. When, therefore, one 
 would have us to fling up our caps and shout with the multi- 
 tude : ' Our country, however bounded!' he demands of us 
 
 N IQ 3
 
 194 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, 
 and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil 
 our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country 
 is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, 
 by Justice. . . . That is a hard choice, when our earthly love 
 of country calls upon us to tread one path and our duty points 
 us to another." 
 
 The like of that doctrine was in our very bones. We 
 were a minority, but a minority numbering many millions 
 of our people, when in the autumn of 1899 the passions of 
 men were being fanned into a flame for the destruction of 
 the South African Republics. 
 
 Some weeks before hostilities broke out, I spent all the 
 strength I had in the study of the diplomatic correspond- 
 ence. After an analysis of it, made publicly and point 
 by point, I ventured so far as to make these declarations : 
 
 (1) that the way to peaceful settlement was clearly open; 
 
 (2) that war was avoidable ; and (3) that an avoidable war 
 must be an unjust war. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that 
 for me this was solid ground, and that no inexpediencies, 
 no unpopularity, no man alive, should shift me from it. 
 Here was a case of squaring the elbows. There was 
 trouble ahead trouble and plenty of it. What then? 
 
 ' Turn every trouble into an adventure." 
 
 It is difficult for even the imagination to grasp how 
 vivid were the ferocities which men and women cherished 
 in regard to the policy of the South African War. The 
 appeals for a calmer judgment were treated as symptoms 
 of the traitorous mind. " I want," said one decent soul, 
 " to bring this to the test of the Scriptures." " O, then," 
 says the other, " you are a Pro-Boer ! " 
 
 That was the common story, and it signified quite 
 accurately the attitude of mind of the party of ascendancy
 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 195 
 
 and their impatience of any appeal to reason. Even the 
 signs of returning calm were suspect, and the ready in- 
 vective of Mr. Chamberlain quickly whipped the waters 
 again into a storm. Between that invective, on the one 
 hand, and the dialectical skill of Mr. Balfour on the other, 
 militarists both in and out of Parliament had the time of 
 their lives. 
 
 Believing that their country's destiny was in the line 
 of their policy, they naturally encouraged the belief that 
 those who differed from them were worthy of but scant 
 respect. In journalism they found their powerful mega- 
 phone, and in public discussions freedom grew less and 
 less, and the epithets of " Traitor " and of " Friend of 
 every country but your own " became the catch-words that 
 evoked the cheapest of cheers in the vulgarest of 
 assemblies. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George had to escape from a gathering at 
 Birmingham disguised as a policeman. In my much 
 humbler sphere I dare say thousands would have 
 been very glad to see me hanged at the nearest lamp- 
 post. 
 
 Every motive of convenience, of self-interest, of 
 comfort, pointed to our swimming with the stream, and 
 had we done that we should have been certain that we 
 were wrong. 
 
 Events have, of course, been overruled for good; 
 but I go so far as to believe that the forces of advanced 
 Liberalism saved the Empire. After the passion of the 
 war, they swept its authors from power, and in the working 
 out of a peace they inspired the grant by Sir Henry 
 Campbell-Bannerman of a Constitution for South 
 Africa.
 
 196 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Lest they should fade from my mind, I will tell 
 you five things which are memorable in this connexion 
 one as to General Botha ; another as to General Smuts ; 
 a third as to carrying a challenge of martial law to the 
 very steps of the Throne; a fourth as to Edinburgh 
 and its defence of liberty; and a fifth as to your own 
 
 home. 
 
 ***** 
 
 As to General Botha. How well I remember the dis- 
 cussions as to Chinese labour ! The war, of course, was 
 over; but this and other problems, and, above all, the lack 
 of self-government, kept South Africa a land of unrest and 
 running sores. 
 
 I had gone over the Blue Books on the labour sub- 
 ject, and was charged by " C.-B." to lay the matter 
 before the House of Commons by open challenge. The 
 speech was afterwards published and had a wide cir- 
 culation, and, I suppose, has gone the way of all fugitive 
 literature. Bannerman, Morley and others were by my 
 side; John Burns, Lloyd George and others were watch- 
 ing below the gallery, Burns' great lungs punctuating the 
 storm, the development of which was watched with acute 
 and critical eyes by clever men in the Government and 
 on the bench opposite. 
 
 All that is neither here nor there, but the point is that 
 I cited Botha on the floor of the House of Commons, 
 saying plainly that I reckoned him a most responsible 
 witness and that, if nobody would speak up for him in 
 that House, I would do so myself. 
 
 I am not going to bore you in these letters by quoting 
 political speeches; but you must let me off if I quote to 
 you just this sentence or two in defence of the great
 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 197 
 
 General and Statesman. The date I see is the i7th of 
 February of the year 1904. 
 
 "I wish," I said, "to tell the Colonial Secretary frankly that 
 I do not think it makes for harmony in the relations of one 
 race to another to use such language as he employed last night 
 with regard to General Botha, who was spoken of in terms 
 which implied and expressed that he had suppressed evidence. 
 There was a suppression of evidence, but it was not suppressed 
 by General Botha. General Botha had actually prepared a 
 written statement of the evidence he was willing to lay before 
 the Commission appointed to investigate the shortage of labour, 
 but when he tendered that evidence they declined to receive 
 it. ... One of the Commissioners asked why the statement 
 offered by General Botha had not been accepted. Then the 
 Chairman said that that statement had been handed to him 
 that morning, and he had had representations made to him. 
 ' It was impossible to ask him to delete certain portions of it,' 
 said the Chairman, ' as it mainly dealt with the question of 
 Chinese labour, which is not before us.' With regard to this, 
 all I will say is that it does not lie in the mouth of the Govern- 
 ment which sanctioned the institution of a Commission so care- 
 fully limited, either to hustle the House of Commons, or to 
 make any reflection or suggestion of suppression of evidence 
 against this honourable man an honourable friend and an 
 
 honourable foe General Botha." 
 
 .!f] ;>>n- yo r .?'<ffi fnrw ivto/; 
 
 As it turned out, Botha's views, derided though they 
 were, proved full of good sense. This defence of him, 
 however, riveted the sincere friendship which, though 
 parted as we were by the wide seas, I knew him to 
 entertain for me. 
 
 At a time when the real peace was accomplished a 
 great transformation of opinion in this country was wit- 
 nessed, and, while the Pro-Boers may not have become 
 popular, the persons who undoubtedly did were the Boers 
 themselves ! General Botha visited this country then, and 
 he was well received in the highest quarters. I remember
 
 well a little dinner given by Mackarness, when there 
 were half a dozen of us or so to meet him : in journalism, 
 Massingham; in Parliament, Lloyd George and myself; 
 and I think also but of this I am not quite sure that 
 Sydney Buxton was with us. Anyhow, after the dinner, 
 and before we parted, George and I said to Botha a word 
 or two as to the political battles that had been fought, and 
 Botha replied, " Gentlemen, you need not think it likely 
 that I shall ever forget what Liberalism has done for 
 Africa." 
 
 The remainder of the story I have from Botha's own 
 lips. Shortly after the death of Lord Courtney dear 
 friend, great economist, deep thinker, moral and political 
 stalwart shortly after his death your mother and I visited 
 Lady Courtney, and who should come into the room but 
 General and Mrs. Botha? I reminded him of the little 
 dinner, and he said he remembered it well. Then he 
 added : 
 
 " Do you know that at that time Arthur Balfour 
 asked me to lunch, and after lunch he asked a private 
 word with me. You had just passed the Bill granting a 
 Constitution to Africa through Parliament." 
 
 " I remember well," said I, " Arthur Balfour in the 
 House of Commons, visibly suiting the action to the word, 
 and saying that he would wash his hands of it. And as 
 for Milner, he took the line, openly, that he would spew 
 it out of his mouth." 
 
 Let me here interrupt Botha's story to interpolate this, 
 that I have not been able to verify these expressions, 
 although I cannot get it out of my mind that they were 
 used. But the Parliamentary record shows that they are 
 far from exaggeration; they seem within the mark. How
 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 199 
 
 odd the reading is ! Lord Milner's portentous gravity 
 that 
 
 "mischief has been done which can never be retraced," 
 
 and that 
 
 " it is too soon after the events of the last few years to run the 
 risk of seeing the whole executive power in the colony trans- 
 ferred to the hands of men who must at present be totally out 
 of sympathy with the British institutions which they will never- 
 theless be called upon to work." 
 
 And the names of Generals Botha and Smuts were 
 used to whet the edge of fear ! 
 
 This timidity and distrust took a wilder argumentative 
 form when Mr. Balfour took the floor. 
 
 "No human being ever thought of such an experiment before 
 that of giving to a population equal to and far more homo- 
 geneous than our own, absolute control of everything civil and 
 military. There is nothing to prevent the country making every 
 preparation, constitutionally, quietly, without external interfer- 
 ence, for a new war." 
 
 He wound up by roundly declaring 
 
 "I am astonished that any Government or any Party that 
 cherished the British connexion in the Transvaal should desire 
 so audacious an experiment to be tried," 
 
 i f ii-! Ot l i<% - : *'t"-is '1 ' " O ' 
 
 and by denouncing the grant at such a time of a Constitu- 
 tion to South Africa as 
 
 "the most reckless experiment ever tried in the development of 
 a great colonial policy." 
 
 Think of that now ! In politics is there not the whole 
 diameter of distinction between Courage with Vision, and 
 Timidity without it ? Tell me, when you come to consider 
 it. who are the true Imperialists?
 
 200 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Now let us get back to Botha, and the talk with Mr. 
 Balfour after lunch. 
 
 " O, I remember," said Botha, " how they committed 
 themselves ; and when Balfour spoke to me he said, 
 
 ' Well, Botha, you have done it ; you have got your 
 Constitution. What will come of it? Who can tell? 
 What will you be up to next ? ' 
 
 " I said to him, ' Mr. Balfour, I believe that in five 
 years' time I shall return to this country to ask for the 
 Confederation of South Africa.' 
 
 f No,' replied Mr. Balfour, very vehemently to me, 
 ' the thing is impossible, is incredible.' 
 
 ' Well, we shall see,' I answered ; and so we parted." 
 
 There was a pause, and then Botha resumed : 
 
 " And so it came about that, sure enough, in five years' 
 time I did return, bringing with me the Confederation of 
 Africa. Mr. Balfour was good enough again to ask me to 
 lunch, and again he asked me for a few words privately 
 afterwards. He said to me, 
 
 ' Well, General Botha, this is an extraordinary 
 situation; you have done it again; you have got 
 Confederation.' ' 
 
 " What happened then ? " said I. 
 
 " O," he said, " I just said to him : 
 
 " c Mr. Balfour, will you wash your hands of that ? ' 
 and he replied to me, 
 
 " ' Not very likely/ " 
 
 So the whirligig of Time goes round and round. 
 
 Would you like now to hear my little story about 
 Smuts ?
 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 201 
 
 I think that some things our attitude through the 
 war, our positive declinature to have opinion stifled were, 
 of course, well known in Africa, and when General Smuts 
 returned to this country as the representative of South 
 Africa in connexion with the Great European War, he and 
 I were naturally drawn together. I think General Smuts 
 is himself a very great lawyer, and that his powers in that 
 respect have never been fully put to the proof. 
 
 At the time of my making his acquaintance I was writ- 
 ing a large and complicated judgment dealing with the 
 foundations of freedom and of those constitutional things 
 which underlay the roots of the question whether any 
 subject of this realm could, even by the authority of the 
 King's Council, be imprisoned without a trial. 
 
 As I stood alone, I am bound to conclude that I took 
 the wrong view. After the subsidence of that passion for 
 expediencies and short-cuts which a time of war produces 
 I wonder how the same problem would have fared. Right 
 to be docile, of course ; but I wonder ! Anyhow, twelve 
 judges were on the one side and I was on the other. 
 
 Well, the point about Smuts is this. He was, as a 
 young man, a distinguished student of the Middle Temple 
 and had held high legal office in Africa. My own election 
 as an Honorary Bencher of that Inn was, as I still feel, one 
 of the most gracious and beautiful things that were ever 
 done to, me within the sphere of the law. There is no 
 such organization in the North; and, a stranger, I was 
 inducted into a goodly fellowship which reaches the point 
 of companionship both with the Bench, and with the Bar, 
 upon whose advocacy I lean so much, and more and more. 
 Using my privilege I asked General Smuts to dine as my 
 guest at the Middle Temple.
 
 202 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 England was reverberating with his statesmanlike 
 utterances on Imperial topics. As our guest he won all 
 hearts ; and in a few weeks he too was made an Honorary 
 Bencher. It was, I think, at that very dinner that my 
 mind was sizzling over with the big constitutional task on 
 which I was engaged. So I broke the ice and I discussed 
 this very judgment with him. He saw the crux of the case 
 in a moment, and informed me that the same point had 
 been settled in a case decided in the Privy Council on an 
 appeal from Pondoland. I asked the date, and he gave 
 me the date within six months. I turned up the Reports 
 and found that he was right in every particular, and a page 
 or a page and a half of that judgment is really in that way 
 the work of General Smuts rather than of myself. 
 
 Now here is something far more important. Listen. 
 General Smuts one evening, after I had had him to dine, 
 with the Lord Chancellor and some of the great Judges, 
 in Palace Gate, disclosed to me what had happened in the 
 fateful Conference at Vereeniging, when the question of 
 the continuation of the war and the achievement of peace 
 with South Africa was hanging by a thread. 
 
 They discussed far into the night. Lord Milner was 
 obdurate I think Smuts's words were, " He was impos- 
 sible." When all hope seemed lost, Smuts felt himself 
 gripped by the elbow and, looking round, he saw Lord 
 Kitchener, who whispered to him : " Come out; come out 
 for a little." The two of them left the Conference and 
 they paced outside back and forward through the dark. 
 
 Kitchener and Smuts were both well aware of the 
 accumulating horror of a long guerrilla warfare. They 
 were both sincerely anxious for an arrangement. And 
 then Kitchener said to him,
 
 BOTHA AND SMUTS 203 
 
 " Look here, Smuts, there is something on my mind 
 that I want to tell you. I can only give it you as my 
 opinion ; but my opinion is that in two years' time a Liberal 
 Government will be in power; and if a Liberal Govern- 
 ment comes into power it will grant you a Constitution for 
 South Africa." 
 
 Said Smuts, " That is a very important pronounce- 
 ment. If one could be sure of the like of that, it would 
 make a great difference." 
 
 " As I say," said Kitchener, " it is only my opinion, 
 but honestly I do believe that that will happen." 
 
 1 That," said General Smuts to me. " accomplished 
 the peace. We went back, and the arrangements at the 
 Conference were definitely concluded, and the war came 
 to a close." 
 
 Now, as I was saying, I have three other instances illus- 
 trative of the spirit of those times one about an appeal 
 to the Throne, one about Edinburgh, and one about your 
 own home but it is time you were off to your violin, and 
 
 you can leave your old father in his den. 
 J 1 
 
 Off with you ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER. 
 
 bn& ^kf 
 z&'t? 

 
 LETTER XXXI 
 
 " ABOVE THIS SCEPTRED SWAY " 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens. S. W .$. 
 
 June 24, 1920. 
 ISABEL MY DEAR, 
 
 I do not know that it is possible to make you realize 
 the extraordinary length to which the creatures of the 
 militaristic spirit were at that time led in regard to the 
 South African War to its inception, to its conduct, to its 
 consequences. Their impatience of criticism was beyond 
 belief. The Olympian tone which in Press and in Parlia- 
 ment and in private life they adopted towards those who 
 wanted even to maintain the elementary principles of 
 international law was a spectacle for gods and men. It 
 quite maddened such people when some of us declined to 
 be awe-struck. 
 
 Of this I will give you an instance. Just in the middle 
 of the war sinister rumours were afloat as to our doings in 
 the name of martial law; and suddenly the death of 
 Scheepers rang through the world. He was known to 
 have been an able and powerful enemy openly in the field 
 against us. He was taken prisoner, tried by a military 
 court, and to all intents and purposes shot out of hand. I 
 believe the case not to have been creditable either on the 
 martial or the judicial side. And the suddenness and 
 
 swiftness of the procedure made some of us resolve that 
 
 204
 
 205 
 
 we should go through a good deal ere the like of that, if 
 we could help it, should happen again. 
 
 Almost at the same juncture, however, word reached 
 this country that General Kritzinger, a capable and honour- 
 able military leader, had been brought from prison for 
 trial by martial law. That is to say, the very same story 
 over again seemed about to be enacted a man tried by 
 his enemies on charges rapidly and probably very imper- 
 fectly canvassed, and swiftly sent to his doom. 
 
 The Minister of War of that day was Mr. Brodrick, 
 an apparently whole-hearted sympathizer with military 
 methods, and a quite contemptuous person with regard to 
 those who were critical of them. Questions were put in 
 the House of Commons. The Government was asked : 
 What were the charges upon which General Kritzinger 
 was being tried? It declined to tell. At what date was 
 the trial to take place? It declined to say. Would the 
 House of Commons have an opportunity of interposing 
 in the matter in the event of Kritzinger being sentenced 
 to death? It declined to give any word of satisfaction. 
 The Government was on its high horse and the horse was 
 at the gallop. 
 
 There was a meeting at Essex Hall one afternoon 
 just then, a meeting of people who declined to be 
 either submissive or overawed in face of these official on- 
 goings, and who were quite willing to adopt any course 
 within reason which would make the War Office call a 
 halt. 
 
 Just let me, for example, interpose this, to show to 
 what a pass public opinion in England had come. Alas ! 
 we knew well, but, as it turns out, not well enough, that 
 a certain side of the Liberal party was soaked with mili-
 
 206 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 taristic Imperialism. The horrors of martial law could 
 not rouse it. 
 
 One thing proves this. I did not know it at the time, 
 or it may have escaped my memory. But Mr. Gooch's 
 " Life of Lord Courtney " establishes it. He quotes a 
 letter addressed by Courtney on the i3th February, 1902 
 a letter to Lord Rosebery, asking him to speak up for 
 Kritzinger in a speech next day at Liverpool : 
 
 ' There may be legal arguments," he wrote, " to defend 
 the execution of Scheepers. There were overwhelming 
 legal arguments to defend the execution of Ney; but it 
 has been condemned by history, and we have always been 
 proud to believe that the Duke tried to prevent it. Let 
 not Kritzinger undergo the same fate as Scheepers ! The 
 scheme of executing these enemies is surely too sophistical 
 and too odious to beguile your judgment, and a word such 
 as you can say might serve to relieve us from the con- 
 demnation of Kritzinger's murder." 
 
 The appeal was unsuccessful. In Mr. Gooch's words, 
 " Lord Rosebery replied that unrestricted authority must 
 be given to the man on the spot." 
 
 Well, it was in circumstances such as these that the 
 Essex Hall meeting was held. 
 
 The gathering was crowded, and those there were all 
 in a state of deep and, it may be, inflammable anxiety. 
 My own blood was up; I reflected in a sentence or two 
 on the Scheepers procedure and then told them of what 
 was being done in the Kritzinger case. We were able to 
 affirm nothing as to guilt or innocence, but surely we were 
 entitled to have the judicial decencies observed in the 
 issues of life and death. I told them about the refusals 
 in the House of Commons, and it required no words of
 
 "ABOVE THIS SCEPTRED SWAY" 207 
 
 mine to make them realize the desperation of the position. 
 I then broadly advised them to make no further appeal to 
 the Government, to make no further appeal to the War 
 Office, to make no further appeal to the House of 
 Commons, but to go straight to the King himself. There 
 was a storm of excitement, and it was there and then 
 resolved that they would do that very thing. 
 
 Channing (afterwards Lord Channing), H. J. Wilson 
 (a high principled and fearless English Liberal) and my- 
 self were appointed a Committee, with instructions, if you 
 please, to go ahead and to take what I had recommended as 
 the only possible course. At the close of the meeting we 
 three looked at each other, and we said, " Now, how can 
 we do it ? " We walked up to the Reform Club together 
 and Channing communicated with the Court officials, and 
 discovered that His Majesty was then on a visit to Lord 
 Burton in Derbyshire; so we sat down and composed a 
 long telegram to King Edward. Channing was a Privy 
 Counsellor; I was a King's Counsel; if I mistake not, 
 Wilson also was a Privy Counsellor, but that event might 
 have come later. However, we were what you might call 
 responsible men two of us afterwards Peers, and all three 
 afterwards Privy Councillors and we began our telegram 
 by presenting our humble duty to His Majesty, and after 
 narrating briefly the circumstances of Kritzinger's case, we 
 implored the Sovereign to exercise his Royal prerogative 
 so that the reputation of British justice and the good name 
 of the Empire might not suffer a stain. Off went the 
 telegram. 
 
 Then a curious thing happened. The telegram was 
 not ignored. On the contrary, a letter was received from 
 Knollys (afterwards Lord Knollys), His Majesty's Private
 
 208 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Secretary, telling Channing that he must know, of course, 
 that the sending of such a telegram ought to have been, 
 not direct to His Majesty, but through a Minister, yet 
 doing this in such a way as not to leave us without hope. 
 To this we frankly replied that we knew the course we 
 had adopted was irregular, and that we deliberately meant 
 it to be so, because the circumstances were such as to have 
 made us lose all belief in the channel of approach to the 
 Crown to which he had referred ; that what we wanted to 
 get at was that the King himself should know what was 
 going on. In order, however, to save the position, we 
 had had pleasure in forwarding a copy of our telegram to 
 the King to the Secretary for War. 
 
 The affair did not end there. We got a note from 
 Knollys saying that His Majesty was pleased that we had 
 forwarded the communication through a Minister, and 
 there the matter stopped. 
 
 Was the door of justice and of mercy shut? Not a bit. 
 In a week or two news came from South Africa that Krit- 
 zinger's trial was delayed for a few weeks. We waited; 
 and both in Africa and in Britain many waited with curi- 
 osity and anxiety. Then the trial did come on. It was ap- 
 parently conducted with deliberation, and it lasted, I think, 
 three days. At the conclusion the Court unanimously 
 found Kritzinger not guilty, and he was dismissed. Then, 
 as I heard the account, he was recalled so that each member 
 of the Court might have the opportunity of shaking hands 
 with so distinguished and honourable a foe. 
 
 That is the story, my dear, to the best of my recollec- 
 tion. Who would not love King Edward after that? You 
 know the lines about mercy being enthroned in the hearts 
 of kings, but the lines come short a little when they talk
 
 o 
 
 D c ' 
 
 1 1 
 
 Q Q 
 
 W 
 
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 J (S
 
 "ABOVE THIS SCEPTRED SWAY' 209 
 
 about mercy seasoning justice. It often does more than 
 that. In many, many cases mercy is Justice itself. It was 
 to a monarch in whose heart mercy was truly enthroned, 
 and of the reputation of whose people through the war he 
 considered himself to be the ultimate trustee it was to 
 such a monarch that this highest appeal to British justice 
 was made and did not fail. 
 
 It is late, but the daylight still floods the long still 
 
 evening. God bless you ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXII 
 
 EDINBURGH AND FREEDOM 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens., S. W .$. 
 
 July 8, 1920. 
 MY DEAREST ISABEL, 
 
 You are not old enough to remember, but your brother 
 and your sisters to some extent do, these " nearer home " 
 touches which I am going to give you about the period of 
 the African War. 
 
 The old Liberalism of Scotland was sagging, and 
 when Lord Rosebery headed the Liberal Imperialism 
 Movement, and thereafter the formation of the Liberal 
 League, he carried with him many very able men who 
 upon the whole on almost every topic inclined to the old 
 Whig rather than to the modern Radical side. Yet they 
 made no headway, and not even the power of Lord Rose- 
 bery's eloquence could guide the movement of feeling 
 upon the part of the great mass of liberally-minded men in 
 the country. 
 
 This is a part of general history; and with that I shall 
 not weary you. In Edinburgh the dissatisfaction with 
 such guiding, however, took the form of an uprising by 
 the young men, who formed what was known as the 
 ' Young Scots' Society," and who were inspired by a 
 clever and daring political thinker and writer, Mr. Hector 
 MacPherson, of the Edinburgh Evening News. 
 
 A few of us, including dear Arthur Dewar (afterwards 
 
 210
 
 EDINBURGH AND FREEDOM 211 
 
 Lord Dewar), a Mr. John Blair (one of the ablest lawyers 
 in Scotland) and myself, gave open countenance to the 
 operations of the Young Scots, and the fun began. Mr. 
 Hogge, now a Member for Edinburgh, was near the centre 
 of the actual organization, always alert and active in every 
 way, and never afraid to be in the crown of the causeway. 
 
 Nearly everybody lectured to them who was of im- 
 portance as a leader of opinion either in England or in 
 Scotland, and the movement spread rapidly to other towns, 
 and even south of the Tweed. 
 
 Mr. Merriman, a former Prime Minister of the Cape, 
 was in England with Mr. Sauer, to put the rational case, 
 as they viewed it, of South Africa before the public mind. 
 An effort was made to get Mr. Merriman to come to Edin- 
 burgh, and the proposal was derided with hootings. Every 
 hall that could be thought of was refused, and it was clear 
 that free speech was to be put on its trial. 
 
 A vote was taken in the Town Council as to whether 
 the Waverley Market (a great flat building, capable of 
 holding many thousands and of being the scene of rough 
 enough exploits, it was true) should be let on the applica- 
 tion of these young blades. It was their only chance to 
 get a meeting, and there was keen division in the Town 
 Council. But the engagement of the hall was ratified, 
 ominous enough statements being made as to its glass roof, 
 its convenience for missiles from the street, and all the rest 
 of it. 
 
 And then public opinion began to be stirred up to 
 unquestionable mischief. The managing men in the 
 Society came to me and told me that they expected that 
 there would be serious disturbance. 
 
 I asked if that meant that freedom of speech in Edin-
 
 314 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 and the roaring all around, I watched the proceedings, 
 and they were very interesting. 
 
 The defenders of the meeting were in posses of six. 
 One of them approached a man who was bellowing like 
 a bull in a field, touched him on the shoulder, and asked 
 him if he would be so kind as to allow the meeting to 
 proceed. In no case that I saw was this request complied 
 with. On the contrary, the questioner was replied to with 
 insults which, not to put too fine a point upon it, were 
 unparliamentary. Then the disturber was gripped one 
 man taking one leg and another another, one taking one 
 arm and another another and laid out horizontally, the 
 fifth man leading the way, and the sixth man supporting 
 the head behind. Out they went, each success provoking 
 a mixture of feelings and of outcries. 
 
 I deliberately allowed this to go on, knowing what 
 was to happen. I was aware that the managers of the 
 meeting had informed the police that they meant to see 
 freedom of speech preserved in Edinburgh, that they meant 
 to keep within the law, and that they trusted to the police 
 preserving the peace. 
 
 At twenty-five minutes past eight Mr. Merriman, who 
 was sitting with his body rocking and his head in his hands 
 beside me, said, 
 
 " O Mr. Shaw, Mr. Shaw, stop it ! This will never 
 do. Let us give it up." 
 
 " Not a bit," said I to him, in the midst of the hubbub ; 
 " we are getting on first-rate." 
 
 So he held himself together for another ten minutes. 
 I then called out in a loud voice to the Chief of the Police, 
 and asked him to bear witness that we had been thirty-five 
 minutes trying to exercise our rights as citizens in the
 
 EDINBURGH AND FREEDOM 215 
 
 practice of free discussion, and that we were being deliber- 
 ately prevented from the exercise of those rights by dis- 
 turbers of the peace. 
 
 Thereupon a great calm fell upon the gathering, for 
 from a side door there emerged a posse of two or three 
 hundred policemen, who walked round the outskirts of the 
 assembly, gradually enclosing it, until a ring of police 
 put tht operations of the disturbers manifestly under sur- 
 veillance. The effect was immediate. Hundreds of them 
 rose, gathered themselves together, and poured out of 
 the hall, their exit being cheered to the echo by all friends 
 of the meeting. 
 
 The speeches then began, I recommending plainly that 
 the affair should be made like Paddy's blanket by taking 
 the thirty-five minutes that had been cut off the top and 
 fastening them on to the foot ! 
 
 It added no little to the success of the gathering that 
 Mr. Merriman's dispassionate speech was far too moderate 
 for the occasion. It was not fiery enough for those in the 
 meeting, and it totally deprived the opponents in the Press 
 of any defence for declining to hear such a well-reasoned, 
 thoughtful contribution to a great public issue. 
 
 After we got home, which we had to reach again by 
 detour, we found that an attempt had been made to attack 
 my house. A large gang of roughs had, however, fled 
 from the scene when, at a signal from Alexander, your 
 brother, who made a sprint out in front of them when 
 they were going down the hill, the police, who were on the 
 spot, lined up across the street. The attack was not 
 repeated, but the police kept their posts till well on in 
 the morning. 
 
 Really, I was not aware of the importance of it all
 
 216 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 at the time. I was in fact deeply engaged in a heavy 
 law case, and when I resumed a cross-examination the 
 next morning, the learned judge, a good Tory, looked at 
 me with a twinkle in his eyes. Secretly, I believe every 
 respectable Unionist in the country was glad that things 
 had gone as they did. People from all parts wrote to me 
 of the public value of what they were pleased to call the 
 fidelity and the courage that must have animated the 
 Society in its vindication of a big constitutional right. 
 
 The Press was in a state approaching apoplectic 
 spitfire ! 
 
 Then, dear Isabel, here is another thing which you 
 were not told for many years afterwards, but which hap- 
 pened in the home in Abercromby Place, and which I may 
 
 entitle 
 
 " WHO WAS THE BURGLAR ? " 
 
 How can I describe to you that ferment of mind into 
 which great masses of people were worked up, against 
 those who challenged the militaristic policy. Nothing was 
 too bad for them to believe of us. Insulting messages, 
 black flags, a hundred-fold use of the cowardly postcard, 
 false applications for passports to Holland, and all the 
 apparatus of meanness and invective were an everyday 
 occurrence. But we simply held on and refused any sort 
 of intimidation. A convenient idea was, for instance, that 
 your worthy and respected father was in the pay of Kruger ! 
 What man or newspaper ever began it I never was at the 
 trouble to find out; but there were, of course, plenty of 
 people, crazy with political prejudice, who took it for 
 Gospel.
 
 EDINBURGH AND FREEDOM 217 
 
 And so, when we returned from our holiday one autumn 
 day, I began dealing with my accumulated correspond- 
 ence. My shorthand clerk sat down at the library table, 
 and just as the dictation began, he said to me : 
 
 " Excuse me, Mr. Shaw, but the drawers of your desk 
 are all broken open." 
 
 "What!" said I. 
 
 And we looked, and there they were, every drawer on 
 both sides in the huge desk burst open with a jemmy ! 
 The locks were still sticking out, but the woodwork had 
 been wrenched away. More than that, every official or 
 omcial-loaking box was also wrenched open boxes such 
 as that containing my appointment as a Deputy- 
 Lieutenant, my appointment as Solicitor-General, and the 
 like ! 
 
 Then we went through the house. The same thing 
 had happened all over it. The dining-room sideboard 
 was wrenched open. Even in the breakfast-room, the 
 little tin box in which the children put their pennies had 
 been burst open. Nothing through the house that might 
 seem to have contained secrets or papers nothing had 
 been missed. 
 
 Then we returned to the desk, and found that it was 
 pretty plain that every document had been carefully 
 searched. 
 
 Not an article in the house was stolen ! 
 
 The police were sent for, and it was discovered that 
 the burglars I suppose we must call them political 
 burglars had got access to the house through a skylight, 
 and, we being away, had had a free run of the premises. 
 
 I remember well the Chief Lieutenant saying to me 
 with oracular solemnity :
 
 218 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 " Mr. Shaw, this is no ordinary burglary." 
 
 " It is not," said I. 
 
 " Mr. Shaw," he added, " this is a political matter." 
 
 " It is," said I. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " this needs careful investigation. I 
 
 wonder whether it is connected with " A particular 
 
 street in Edinburgh. (I decline, my dear, to give you 
 the name of that street, or even its shape.) 
 
 I said to him, " Now, officer, you must keep this quiet, 
 absolutely quiet. Murder will out. Let us keep our eyes 
 and ears open." 
 
 I was quite wrong. That murder never came out. I 
 hope the poltroons are still alive, but, if not, God rest 
 their bones ! To not a soul in these trying years did I 
 mention the event. I was a busy man ! 
 
 I was, however, really disturbed about your mother. 
 The sweet sanctity of her home invaded : and many of 
 the things that were dear and cherished scrutinized and 
 tossed about or torn up ! She associated such conduct 
 with desperadoes, and I could not quite persuade her that 
 they were only cowards. But she, who had sustained me 
 in these difficult years, bore this also with a quiet heroism 
 which is just part of herself. Be good to her : Be good 
 
 to her ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXIII 
 
 FROM REPRISALS TO RECONCILIATION 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, SW .$. 
 
 November 10, 1920. 
 ISABEL MY DEAR, 
 
 Since I have come to town, the main topic, if not of 
 discussion, at least of public uneasiness, has been what 
 are called " Reprisals." I mean, of course, what has been 
 going on in Ireland at the alleged hand or instigation of 
 the Government. Well, you will have your own opinion 
 about all that, I dare say : so have I. But the only bearing 
 which it has upon my pledge to you about letters is that 
 it brings other notorious cases of Reprisals to my mind. 
 
 Besides, you have seen how much of those years in the 
 Wilderness was occupied with South African affairs : so I 
 may just as well write you another word or two on the 
 same topic ; and ere we are done with it you will find that 
 we are back to Westminster again and in the company 
 of that one of our circle who was our most beloved of 
 public men. 
 
 People talk of reprisals as if some new horror had been 
 invented in the department of war, as if some new clever- 
 ness, defiant of military rules and of honourable traditions, 
 had come into play. Believe me, there is nothing of this 
 sort about reprisals. The Law of Nations against them 
 has been clear beyond question for at least over a century ; 
 but war is such an inflamer of passions that it tramples 
 
 219
 
 220 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 into dust traditions and regulations and international con- 
 ventions and all the provisos that nations at a time of 
 peace and reason seek to set up. Oblivion enshrouds 
 all these, and humanity yields to something so savage as 
 to make us ask ourselves whether, after all, progress and 
 civilization are not verily at an end. 
 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had been for years 
 Secretary for War, and he knew not only the international 
 rules but the provisions of the military " Red Book." 
 When I spoke to him, accordingly, and spoke very 
 anxiously, on the subject of Lord Roberts' Proclamations, 
 I was speaking to a skilled ear. I told him how uneasy I 
 was as to the whole of the on-goings in South Africa under 
 these military and administrative Orders, and how my 
 fear was that gross violations of the Law of Nations had 
 been and were being perpetrated. He encouraged me to 
 make a thorough study of the subject, and I did this to the 
 best of my power ; and no voice was more hearty than his in 
 commendation of the line I took in April of the year 1901. 
 I was speaking to an extremely hostile House of 
 Commons, but, I am bound to say, to an extremely atten- 
 tive ne, and there was no violation of courtesy. 
 
 Catch me treat you in a letter to that speech. Hansard 
 has it, and some of the societies printed it and sent it round. 
 But, as I was saying, it is a curious thing how this 
 kind of reprisal repeats itself in history. On June 16, 
 1900, a Proclamation was issued in Africa by Lord 
 Roberts. On reflection, I cannot but think that the great 
 general was from the beginning most uneasy on the 
 subject of it. It acerbated African feeling, prolonging, 
 as I think, the war, and doing much to retard the settle- 
 ment. But there were forces behind Lord Roberts which
 
 FROM REPRISALS TO RECONCILIATION 221 
 
 were extremely difficult to control, and it may have been 
 that among his advisers at the Front there was a reflection 
 of some part of that extraordinary bitterness and passion 
 which was manifest in Government circles at home. 
 When that kind of feeling is poured into the mind of a 
 nation there is no saying to what courses those in authority 
 may be led. 
 
 I need not refer to that part of the Proclamation which 
 authorized the selection from each district of Boers to be 
 put upon trains passing through. This was in reprisal for 
 damage having been done to trains. It was in imitation 
 of a German transaction of 1870 which had been 
 universally and justly reprobated, and which, according 
 to international authority which I cited, was treated in the 
 German case as an illegal brutality. This view must have 
 reached headquarters long before I spoke, and it redounds 
 to the credit of Lord Roberts that five weeks after the 
 date of the Proclamation that part of it was withdrawn. 
 
 The other part of the Proclamation was, however, much 
 more serious. It ordered a thing which I said, and I still 
 believe it, may have moved to revulsion the heart of civil- 
 ized mankind, viz., the devastation of the country, the burn- 
 ing of houses and farms and the dealing with the residents 
 therein under martial law, " in the vicinity where damage is 
 done." Of course, everybody understands that, by the 
 Laws of Nations and of war, it is not permitted to destroy 
 property unless it is used directly or indirectly for belli- 
 gerent purposes, nor is it permitted to molest, plunder, 
 imprison or injure any citizens of a hostile Power who are 
 non-combatants this rule being the nearest approximation 
 which the rough laws of war can make to the elementary 
 justice of not punishing the innocent for the guilty.
 
 222 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Lord Roberts, still uneasy, wrote to General Botha 
 in September an unhappy dispatch which made things 
 worse. He confessed that the measures were repugnant 
 to him, but declared that he was obliged to resort to them 
 " by the evidently firm resolve on the part of yourself and 
 the burghers to continue the war." In other words, be- 
 cause you continue to fight, we shall do things repugnant 
 not only to law but to our better nature. 
 
 Then in November a curious thing happened. Lord 
 Morley, on the i6th, wrote a letter to the Times, which I 
 quoted as " eloquent, touching and powerful," and two 
 days afterwards the notable Proclamation of June was 
 declared by Lord Roberts in a subsequent Proclamation 
 to have been misunderstood. Its meaning was declared to 
 have been confined, so far as the burning of farms was 
 concerned, to acts of treachery, or, in short, to those 
 belligerent operations which International Law takes stock 
 of. Nothing more unfortunate in the issue of a military 
 document, and nothing more highly creditable in military 
 history than its recall, do I remember. But for that recall, 
 we could not have looked the Germans in the face to 
 declare ourselves shocked at their conduct in Belgium and 
 France. And the very principles on which the Liberals 
 then relied in the debate to which I am referring were the 
 principles which to its honour Britain founded upon and 
 followed in its repudiation of these German doings. 
 
 Alas ! in the African case it was difficult to recall the 
 awful effects of what had been done. A few days after 
 the debate in the House of Commons to which I am 
 referring, a White Paper of the most appalling character 
 was issued, showing that 634 farms had been burned, and 
 that in many cases the sole reason assigned was that the
 
 FROM REPRISALS TO RECONCILIATION 223 
 
 owner was " on commando " that is to say, was fighting 
 for his country and in many more the still more awful 
 reason was assigned " husband on commando." Families 
 turned out on the veldt, property and furniture burned to 
 the ground. 
 
 How difficult the task of subsequent statesmanship ! 
 To eradicate an imprint so poignant and so deep upon 
 the memory of men and women and children ! Impos- 
 sible ? Nothing in true statesmanship is impossible. 
 
 It was to that colossal task that Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman devoted a large part of his later years, and 
 in it he was aided by the vast forgiveness of Generals 
 Botha and Smuts : Botha, whose wife wandered for months 
 hiding in the veldt, driven from her home ; and Smuts, 
 whose wife was herded to a Concentration Camp, where 
 her first and infant child shortly died ! Is it not to the 
 glory of the Dutch and Anglo-Saxon races that at a 
 supreme moment their leading statesmen rose to the call 
 of that oblivion of a dark past which makes possible a 
 glorious future of co-operation and unity and human kind- 
 ness ? The obscurantists who would undo that settlement 
 are the enemies of mankind. 
 
 It is easy now for us to recall such incidents of Parlia- 
 mentary discussion ; but it is less easy than it was to under- 
 stand what point statesmanship in England had reached 
 which did not understand the call of law and of humanity 
 which was then made. Our protestations in a Parliament 
 constituted as was that of 1900 were all in vain. Lord 
 Roberts in the field was a wiser man. He saw without 
 doubt the awful dilemma in which British policy had 
 placed him when it declared the annexation of the 
 Republics an annexation on paper not made effective by
 
 224 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 actual occupation, and therefore entirely contrary to law. 
 Such an annexation placed the population, however well- 
 doing they might be, however anxious for a quiet life 
 under any Government whatsoever, however innocent of 
 crime, in the awful dilemma of being either the rebels to 
 one Power or the traitors to another. 
 
 What were such people to do? Above them there 
 was placed, as the lawyers say, a Government de jure; 
 around them they had the Government of their own race 
 and country a Government de facto. The position of 
 Germany in Belgium was more legitimate than this, for 
 Germany had overrun Belgium in fact. 
 
 A strange analogy occurs to the mind from the times 
 in which we live. Always there is the same difficulty 
 where rule is ineffective, where there is what I have said, 
 the one Government above and the other Government 
 around. Then, indeed, whether it be Dutchmen or 
 Belgians or Irishmen, with each and all of them it is the 
 same lament of Rosse : 
 
 " Cruel are the times when we are traitors 
 
 And do not know ourselves : when we hold rumour 
 From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, 
 But float upon a wild and violent sea 
 Each way and move." 
 
 How is it, my dear child, that I have got into this 
 long political talk? Perhaps it is that in the intimacies 
 of life which I have made I have seen how this stern 
 South African battle tried the character and hearts of men. 
 Statesmen at home, statesmen in Africa, they needed 
 courage and wonderful wisdom. Would that I could have 
 helped them more !
 
 FROM REPRISALS TO RECONCILIATION 225 
 
 In those days I took refuge in literature and in history. 
 In literature the happiest of misfortunes had overtaken 
 me. The old fat Shakespeare you remember it the 
 Johnson Shakespeare without the back, got lost. Alex- 
 ander presented me with another, the three-volumed 
 edition of Macmillan. So I kept in that high company 
 over again, re-marking the whole plays and sonnets once 
 more, and finding and noting fresh glories, thus light- 
 ing up with delight what otherwise would have been the 
 saddened intervals of strenuous days. But more than 
 that : late in life alas ! how late ! I let myself loose on 
 Spenser, spreading myself among his spacious times and 
 finding him a veritable revelation. I even dragged him 
 on to platforms, reciting in the midst of the keen conflict 
 on the big issue of the day such lines as these : 
 
 " Is this the joy of armes? Be these the parts 
 Of glorious knighthood after blood to thrust 
 And not regard due rights and just desarts? 
 Vaine is the vaunt, and victory unjust 
 That more to mighty hands than rightful cause doth trust." 
 # # # # # 
 
 And in those days, too, I took my other refuge in 
 history, studying deeply the annals of Canada. I put 
 together an article on what I called " The Durham Road 
 to Peace," which Knowles, clever editor, deeply cut and 
 carved upon, but published in the Nineteenth Century. 
 It pointed out how when a fusion of races, or at least a 
 working constitutional unity, was wished for, it could not 
 be secured by the iron heel, but alone by the olive 
 branch. 
 
 The famous Report of Lord Durham, about the year 
 1840, laid down the lines of forgiveness and amnesty so 
 determinedly that the so-called Loyalists that is to say,
 
 226 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 the short-sighted fire-eaters rioted' in the streets of 
 Montreal and burned the Governor-General's residence 
 about his ears. The fire-eaters and fire-raisers were 
 quelled, and then the policy of amnesty triumphed. It 
 was for such a settlement as that, by the way, that I spoke 
 in express terms in the speech in the Commons to which 
 I have referred. 
 
 Canada ; Africa : Forgiveness, amnesty, the wisdom 
 of oblivion of evil, the call of a human brotherhood wider 
 and deeper and better than antagonisms of race : will 
 history teach men nothing of the value of these noble 
 things; and how they last; and how they heal? People 
 and Governors of Ireland, bethink yourselves ; consider ! 
 
 On these things my interventions were founded, and 
 perhaps they helped Sir Henry a little, for on them we 
 were absolutely agreed. Anyhow, closer and closer I got 
 into the intimacy of his friendship, and as I did so I 
 found that he was gifted with the rarest qualities of vision 
 and with a fearlessness that was quite indomitable. How 
 steadying it was to have him as a counsellor and friend ! 
 Was not your father a very lucky man? 
 
 Here is a little bundle of letters which I have come 
 upon. I cannot open it to-night : it is late, and I must 
 go to rest. How often you have heard me say, until it 
 has become one of our family maxims, that the greatest 
 of British institutions is the waste-paper basket. Well, 
 by some kind of good luck these letters never reached 
 that receptacle. Perhaps in a day or two I will disclose 
 some things from the little bundle. 
 
 Good night. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXIV 
 
 TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 September 25, 1920. 
 DEAREST, 
 
 In this quiet, how the poets come back to you : how 
 you find them helping you out by giving form and ex- 
 pression to the moods of nature and one's thoughts about 
 them ! The tempestuous passing of another equinox, 
 and then the succession of these sweet and placid and 
 reflective days. 
 
 For the former came Tennyson's strong lines (how 
 often is real strength concealed by the perfection of his 
 measure) : 
 
 " Risest thou, this dim dawn again, 
 And howlest, issuing out of night, 
 With blasts that blow the poplar white 
 And lash with storm the streaming pane? " 
 
 And then the welcome drought with the tang in its 
 reminder that the year is in the fall. And out there the 
 glorious harvest : how can you express the response of 
 the soul to the sense of plenty, and ingathering, and the 
 passage of time ? You do it in the words of Shakespeare's 
 immortal sonnet : 
 
 " When lofty trees I see, barren of leaves, 
 Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 
 And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, 
 Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard." 
 227
 
 228 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Then comes the inevitable reflection about beauty and 
 the wastes of time. But why should we, with our faith, 
 turn transiency into an obsession? Why should we? 
 but then I seemed to see you standing right in the middle 
 of that barley field, a good deal more attractive than Ruth, 
 and you were telling me a very unattractive Boaz that 
 you had not come so far for musings but for gleanings. 
 Gleanings you were after gleanings : where were the 
 gleanings? My dear, I am rebuked. Now then for 
 gleanings. 
 
 I was speaking, in a letter some time ago, of the 
 Temptations in the Wilderness. The Liberals were out 
 for the ten years from 1895 till 1905. Of all the Tempta- 
 tions, Liberal Imperialism was the chief well supported 
 in men and funds, well organized, well advertised; and 
 plain ordinary Liberalism felt that to yield to it would be 
 to lose its soul. This may have been right or wrong, but 
 that was how people felt. It was how I felt myself. All 
 through the Education battles and into the South African 
 War, this Temptation was the drag that was on the party 
 led by Sir William Harcourt in the Commons. 
 
 But that war, of which I have told you an incident 
 or two that war might and did appear to many as at least 
 some justification for a separate organization of Liberals 
 who sided with the militarist position. Yet, as you 
 may imagine, it was a pretty heavy addition to the 
 labours of those who had to lead the party as a sound 
 Opposition. 
 
 Well then, what happened next? Surely, when the 
 war was over, this kind of thing could come to an end ! 
 Not a bit of it. A new Temptation in the Wilderness
 
 TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS 229 
 
 appeared. But this time it was more of a theatrical 
 affair. The dramatic company the same. Lord Rosebery, 
 alas ! had left the leadership of the party. Sir William 
 Harcourt, alas ! had resigned, and none of the able trio, 
 Asquith, Grey and Haldane, had been selected to 
 succeed him. The choice fell on Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman. 
 
 Mutterings could not be stilled : the same powerful, 
 dissatisfied men were at work, and another hyphenation 
 saw the light. Enter the Liberal League. Of course these 
 men, able, versed in affairs, in the prime of their powers, 
 were entirely within their rights in pushing their versions 
 of national duty to the front and in claiming that reason 
 lay with them. But when they dubbed theirs the true 
 Liberalism and put the name on their signboard, they ran 
 the risk of disintegrating all the progressive forces in the 
 country. And some of us, who had seen in the Com- 
 mons and its Lobbies what a weight and harassment 
 disunion was to leadership, felt that all this was really 
 too bad to the old cause and to Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman. 
 
 It was in these circumstances that in September of the 
 year 1902 I received an invitation, worded curiously 
 enough, to accompany Lord Rosebery to the platform 
 when he addressed a great meeting in the Empire Theatre 
 under the auspices of the Edinburgh and East of Scot- 
 land Liberal League. The country was being elaborately 
 mapped out : the ex-Premier was himself President of the 
 organization, and most naturally there were the highest 
 expectations in regard to the new and determined political 
 departure. 
 
 I replied to the invitation by the following letter :
 
 230 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 "17, Abercromby Place, 
 " Edinburgh. 
 
 "September 25, 1902. 
 "DEAR MR. CLAY, 
 
 "I am in receipt of your circular, in which you intimate 
 that Lord Rosebery will deliver a political address in Edin- 
 burgh on October 25, under the auspices and in furtherance 
 of the principles of the Liberal League, and stating that, if I 
 am in general sympathy with the objects of the meeting, and 
 desire to attend, you would be pleased to forward to me a 
 platform ticket. I should gladly have put the circular aside 
 without remark were it not that you request an answer, and 
 I accordingly write to you to thank you for the invitation and 
 to decline it. 
 
 " How do the facts stand ? Lord Rosebery was asked by the 
 Scottish Liberal Association to address a meeting in Edinburgh 
 this autumn, and he declined; he was asked by the United 
 Liberal Council, representing the four constituencies of the 
 City, to address a meeting this autumn, and he again declined ; 
 and now he comes forward to address a meeting in the same 
 place, and at the same time, under the auspices and in further- 
 ance of the principles of the Liberal League. Can there be any 
 meaning in this but one? 
 
 "That one whom we admire and esteem, one through whose 
 continued co-operation with the party he once brilliantly led 
 so much good can be done and evil avoided for our people, 
 and one to whom we look for loyal and powerful work in the 
 future, that he should thus reject the whole and choose a section 
 is indeed strange, and, had it not happened, would have been 
 declared incredible. This is especially regrettable at a time 
 when the country is justly hostile to the present Government 
 and is earnestly looking for that unity and cohesion in the 
 Opposition by which alone can be secured an effective change 
 in the direction of public affairs. From this point of view your 
 meeting is not merely a party misfortune ; it is a national loss. 
 As a Liberal, anxiously desiring the health and growth of 
 Liberalism, I cannot accordingly say that I am in general 
 sympathy with the objects of the meeting. 
 
 "As to furthering the principles of the Liberal League, let 
 us be frank about it. Take ' efficiency.' Who is not for
 
 TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS 231 
 
 efficiency ? Why should one side of politics imitate the other 
 side in the presumption of capturing vague and sounding 
 generalities for party use ? I should as little admit that 
 efficiency had a sectional significance among Liberals, as agree 
 that ' Empire ' and ' Constitution ' were the special care of 
 the Tory party. Take ' education.' Who is not in favour 
 of education ? But come down to particulars : and while 99 
 per cent, of Liberals are against the present English Education 
 Bill, the i per cent, who stamp it with a certain approval are 
 good and able friends of my own who devoutly believe in the 
 furthering of the principles of the Liberal League. The list 
 already grows bare, but I need not refer to such principles 
 further. 
 
 "Faithfully yours, 
 
 "THO. SHAW." 
 
 This was plain speaking. Others, infinitely more im- 
 portant than I notably Mr. Morley had been working 
 in the same direction, deprecating disunion, pleading fear- 
 lessly for the old faith, and so on; and the Liberal 
 League's real position and possible future for good or for 
 mischief soon became a subject of wide discussion all over 
 the Kingdom. 
 
 Fortunately the chief adventurers in the enterprise were 
 saved for the service of the country. The dexterity and 
 forbearance, the determination and goodwill, of the lov- 
 able " C.B." shone in a transaction of which I will try to 
 give you an inside view by and by. 
 
 Unfortunately, the gifted Earl high office saw him 
 no more. More and more he withdrew from the range 
 of public affairs. This has been a source of infinite regret : 
 and the occasions have surely not been infrequent during 
 the great European War when his word for good would 
 have been a word of power. 
 
 You must not think that he who knew the game so
 
 232 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 well ever treated myself as one who had not played it. 
 On the contrary, I spoke for his son in Midlothian, and 
 that with pleasure and great goodwill. Little did I dream 
 then that within a few years my own son would be stand- 
 ing for the same county. And little did I dream that, like 
 Lord Rosebery, I should watch that contest, without per- 
 sonal participation, but with that aloofness, real or feigned, 
 which becomes a member of the House of Lords. 
 
 Certain incidents stick in the mind. One evening 
 during the earlier contest I dined at Dalmeny ; we got into 
 some kind of historical strain, give and take, and I have 
 seldom heard even that host so illuminating and so attrac- 
 tively vivid. Emerging from the dining-room, still in 
 talk, we were confronted by a bust of Mirabeau, just oppo- 
 site. I stopped before it : it was true to nature and showed 
 an appallingly ugly man. I said : 
 
 " Lord Rosebery, did you ever hear what the father of 
 Mirabeau said to the uncle of Mirabeau ? " 
 
 "What was that?" said he; "I don't think I know 
 that." 
 
 " Oh," said I ; " the youngster was attacked by small- 
 pox or some trouble of that kind; and there was a nurse 
 who besmeared his face with an ointment which horribly 
 disfigured it for life. The father conveyed the news to 
 the uncle in a brief compendious letter, which said : ' Your 
 nephew is as ugly as the nephew of the devil/ ' 
 
 It won a smile from the cultured Earl. 
 
 As to the Liberal League, it had a few big explosions ; 
 then there was a flicker here and there. Then silence. 
 I heard quite enough about that blessed letter written,
 
 TEMPTATIONS IN THE WILDERNESS 233 
 
 by the by, this very day eighteen years ago. Its only 
 point was, as it happened, that it expressed the protest 
 of tens of thousands of plain, sturdy people who wanted 
 peace and progress and an end to turmoil. Well, some- 
 body has to do these things. Said Morley to me : "I call 
 you Thomas Bell-the-Cat." 
 
 Sir Henry was hearty enough. 
 
 " I was at Wiesbaden; and one day Tom Sutherland, 
 in the reading-room of the hotel, handed me across the 
 Times, pointing with his finger and saying, ' Have you 
 read that ? ' 
 
 " ' What did you think ? ' said I, wanting to get at his 
 mind. 
 
 " ' Think ! ' said he. ' I was like the auld wife in the 
 sang. I gied three skips ower the floor, O ! ' 
 
 I am off through the fields. 
 
 Your ever affectionate 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXV 
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 
 
 9, Bolton Gar dens > S.W.$. 
 
 October 25, 1920. 
 MY DEAREST GIRL, 
 
 To be back again and into judicial harness will, of 
 course, be rather a hindrance to my doing my duty as a 
 letter-writer to your dear self. 
 
 The air is full of rumours. An actual strike of all the 
 coal-miners in the country has already lasted over a week : 
 and a strike is threatened of all the railway workers in 
 the country threatened from a desire to exhibit sympathy 
 or to show solidarity in labour, or, among the younger 
 bloods, to have a fling of leisure and liberty as well as the 
 colliers. And many anxieties there are for public men, 
 with too little consideration of these by a nervous and 
 irascible public. 
 
 This is what one is in the midst of here. To lift one's 
 head after a day of severe judicial labour is but to find 
 oneself deafened with the clamorous difficulties of public 
 issues. While you ! you are still lingering amidst the 
 country quiet of these sweet October days. 
 
 Often at such times I think upon my old and trusted 
 confidential aclviser. To him it was that I could with 
 utter frankness tell how I interpreted the currents of public 
 affairs, for what storms I thought I could foresee that we 
 should be prepared, and what rocks and shoals the political 
 
 234
 
 SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 235 
 
 mariner should avoid. I knew that everything was safe 
 in his keeping, that he would check me with wisdom, 
 encourage me with kindness, and turn things so deli- 
 ciously topsy-turvy that sunshine broke over all the land- 
 scape. 
 
 You know, of course, that I am speaking of Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Of all the rewards of 
 days and nights through years on end of political 
 labour, this, I think, was the greatest, that he was my 
 friend. 
 
 The first occasion, if I remember aright, on which, so 
 to speak, we took the floor together was at Stirling. He 
 had been hearing of how I was getting on in the Border 
 Burghs, and he had me along to eke out a constituency 
 meeting. You could see how he got on with his consti- 
 tuents. He never was a fluent speaker; but his hesitations 
 were studied, and these, along with the burr of his accent 
 and the weightiness of what he said, riveted the attention 
 of these Scotchmen upon him. Everyone had a general 
 feeling that here is the talk of a man who knows, to men 
 who trust him. 
 
 Thus it was that political confidence in him wavered 
 little; and what he was to these Stirling Burghs on the 
 small scale, he was also on the wider range to the Liberal 
 Party which he afterwards led. To trust, however, Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman was to give yourself to him; 
 and, doing so, he welcomed you into the circle of his 
 confidence. 
 
 But if ever Liberal or constituent or citizen in private 
 or in public showed signs, I will not say of double dealing, 
 but of being too clever and not completely on the square, 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman more quickly than
 
 236 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 any man I ever knew discerned that thing, and saw 
 in it the negation of true friendship and the death of 
 confidence. 
 
 I think that that is how I would put my testimony of 
 him. Hesitations, timidities, searchings of heart these 
 he could see with a great kindliness when they were symp- 
 toms of searching for truth ; but sharpnesses, clevernesses, 
 subtleties, finesse these also he could unerringly see; 
 but he looked upon these things as dangerous to truth. 
 That was how people who loved him loved him so much, 
 and people who affected to despise him showed that in 
 their hearts they realized that Sir Henry had found them 
 out. I have persons public men in my eye, when I 
 speak thus. 
 
 The next big bump of contact was, I think, in Alloa, 
 where the good J. B. Balfour had got Sir Henry and my- 
 self to some kind of big demonstration. It was at that 
 meeting perhaps that I spoke of him as reminding me of 
 the Spanish proverb, " ' Virtue in the middle/ as the Devil 
 said when he sat between two lawyers ! >: Anyhow, we 
 had a rollicking evening, and where do you think we 
 spent the night? Why, at Mr. Forrester Paton's beau- 
 tiful home. Little did I think then that that fine fellow 
 the eldest son was to run away with one of my own 
 daughters. 
 
 Sir Henry enjoyed Inglewood. For one thing and 
 that was noticeable both in London and at Belmont he 
 always loved comfort, warmth, good pictures, and, with 
 these and good fellowship around him, his geniality had 
 an easy flow. 
 
 It was this simplicity of character, directness of vision, 
 and extraordinary toleration even in listening to weaker
 
 SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 237 
 
 and more showy men, that concealed from them and from 
 the public both his scholarship and his strength. He saw 
 affectation through and through, but he viewed it without 
 vindictiveness and with a kind of amused sense that a man 
 who could show off in that fashion was really a better man 
 than all that, if he would only give himself a chance. For 
 the rest, including men's weaknesses and their varieties of 
 view, the warmth of his heart gave them a place in his 
 scheme of things; and in the later years of his life, when 
 great responsibilities rested upon him and the load of 
 domestic sorrow was hard to bear, the stability, as I happen 
 to know, of his faith in things unseen upheld him in a kind 
 of brave dignity that made one bow the head in sheer and 
 reverent respect. 
 
 More than once I have heard men in his presence 
 venture, for instance, upon literary topics, and find, from 
 a question put to them in almost a casual manner find 
 with an almost dazed surprise that they were talking to 
 an expert. 
 
 He had what I might call a retentive vision for the 
 characters of living men, and his judgment was often not 
 one that would have been shared by public opinion at 
 large. For instance, I have heard him place Gallifet as 
 in the first rank, in his opinion, of talented, efficient 
 Frenchmen. 
 
 I hardly like, even to you, to tell you how severe he was 
 when he met with anything that did not savour of straight 
 dealing, but I shall never forget how, looking across at 
 the Government front bench, he went on judging men 
 by honesty. That was always his touchstone, and he 
 said to me : 
 
 " Look, Thomas, at that man over there. He should
 
 238 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 lead the Tory party. He is of the old school, 
 but the true Tory school. He is a capital Parliamen- 
 tarian and he is an honest, straight man. I like Walter 
 Long." 
 
 In his house you could almost make a sure find in the 
 latest and best of the only two literatures, French and 
 English, which I was able to take stock of. But he 
 himself was what I may call a capacious reader. 
 Nothing came amiss to him, apparently, even in Italian 
 and German as well as French; and this habit of 
 getting to the heart of books very pleasantly filled up 
 his life. 
 
 I have to confess to you, Isabel, that he was a little 
 impatient of some of the modern Scotch literature im- 
 patient, that is, in one particular. He seemed to think 
 that those writers who developed their representations of 
 Scotch character attempted too much to make a dramatic 
 essay of whatever in it would appear odd and grotesque 
 or even uncouth, and that for the paltry purpose of tickling 
 or of truckling to the Southron. He looked upon this as 
 a kind of unfaithfulness to truth, and in this I most heartily 
 agreed with him, down to the last word; he could little 
 indeed abide Scotchmen who sold their own characteristics 
 in a market of curios for the English or American buyer. 
 No one knew better than he that the real Scotland was 
 not there, but was in a world where the realities were 
 sterner and the sympathies were tenderer and the drolleries 
 were pure and crystal clear. 
 
 I shall not name names, but I could well have imagined 
 him on the verge of wrath at any Play with squalid repre- 
 sentations of Scotch festivities and habits and with family 
 worship conducted on the stage amid the giggles of the
 
 SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 239 
 
 vulgar. Was there ever any such Play? I am afraid 
 there was. And when I saw it I felt glad that one great 
 Scotchman had passed from the scene. 
 
 These private affairs were all of a piece, mark you, with 
 the solid principles of his public life. I call him " Mr. 
 Honesty." Sometimes, when he was breasting a passion- 
 ate and contemptuous opposition, I called him " Mr. Great- 
 heart." People wondered at his influence; but character 
 always tells ; and the adhesion of many to him, when there 
 occurred those ' Temptations in the Wilderness " of 
 which I have spoken to you in previous letters, arose from 
 these two things first, that people liked his downrightness 
 and courage; and, secondly, for and because they loved 
 him so. 
 
 Once at Belmont your mother and I were his guests, 
 the only other guest being the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
 I watched those two Scotchmen with much interest. I 
 broke suddenly in upon them deep in a conclave in the 
 library, but I quickly made myself scarce. I thought at 
 the time that it would be difficult to match such a pair. 
 Both of them sturdy, scholarly, serious, Christian, Scotch- 
 men, with shrewdness and goodness and strength, and all 
 in a capital physical frame. As I observed them I could 
 almost fancy that the one was quite deliberately taking 
 the measure of the other and that the other was quite 
 deliberately aware of it. That the Prime Minister thought 
 that the Archbishop was his match in shrewdness rather 
 appeared from this : I cast a fly over him after the Primate 
 left, as to his view about the departing guest; but very 
 properly he gave me no satisfaction except this, by the 
 way, that he said to me : 
 " The old grey horse."
 
 240 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 I said, " What do you mean by that? " And then he 
 told me a story about real sagacity, the story of a bishop 
 who visited his diocese for the first time and was introduced 
 to his clergy, displaying extraordinary knowledge of their 
 separate peculiarities and habits. To the infinite delight 
 of one, he said : " And how is the old grey horse ? " 
 After the reception was over, he was asked about this, 
 and explained that he had seen a few grey hairs on the 
 coat of the worthy clergyman and felt pretty sure that 
 he had ridden across on the animal described. That 
 was all the light that I got from the Premier about the 
 Primate ! 
 
 He nursed a curious idea as he went about on his lawn, 
 namely, that the trees and he used to speak to each other ; 
 and he encouraged this whimsical notion until you almost 
 thought he was serious. In the evenings he joined in all 
 the games going, and I remember well one scene round 
 a billiard-table where he and some very distinguished 
 statesmen were gathered by your daring sister Elsie, and 
 he roystered with the rest in the heartiest merriment. 
 
 Of a Sunday he would tell me to be decent and go 
 down to the Established Kirk and sit in his seat " in the 
 briest o' the laft." 
 
 Underneath all this exterior gaiety I think that the 
 dangers and disloyalties to the good Liberalism which he 
 sincerely loved were gall and wormwood to his heart and 
 mind. He was a true inheritor of the Gladstone tradition, 
 with that noble admixture of the Bright and Cobden 
 doctrine that the principles of character in a good, straight 
 man were those that should be the principles of character 
 in a good, straight nation. Here, for instance, is a letter 
 which I think I ought to write out for you in full. He was
 
 SIR HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN.
 
 SIR H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN 241 
 
 coming to stay with us in Edinburgh for some Convention 
 in that metropolis, and this is what he wrote to me : 
 
 " Belmont Castle, 
 "Meigle. 
 
 " January 17, 1901. 
 " MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 " Your hospitable purposes are all too generous. I shall be 
 delighted to come early as you suggest on the 29th. 
 
 " The cloud over South Africa looks, to my view, blacker 
 than ever. This time last year the dangers were military, and 
 we believed that sooner or later we should overcome them. 
 Now, they are partly military and partly political, and what is 
 good for the one is bad for the other. It is not by force 
 of arms that South Africa will be lost, but by misgovernment ; 
 and instead of blustering about reinforcements and Army re- 
 form, or, shall we say, platitudinizing about commercial educa- 
 tion, it would be well if our eminent ones applied themselves to 
 this problem How to make those love us who now hate us. 
 
 "A fine New Year's sentiment, if ever there was one ! 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 Many a time in the years since then I have thought of 
 that sentence " How to make those love us who now hate 
 us." It is the pure gold of statesmanship. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 BELMONT CASTLE 
 MEIGLE 
 
 \f^u^ 
 
 - 
 
 *
 
 , /fot*
 
 LETTER XXXVI 
 
 SNOWED UNDER 
 
 House of Lords. 
 
 November 13, 1920. 
 MY DEAREST, 
 
 I find that this morning I had put the little bundle of 
 letters that I spoke of in my pocket, and, although we 
 have had a long day hearing very learned men speak, and 
 following their subtleties, so beautifully wound together, 
 I should like to ease my mind before I leave the precincts 
 of the Palace. I wish to let you see what was the style 
 of our dear friend, whom we came to love so well for 
 his warm-hearted interest in every one of us. And I 
 should like also to show you how he looked at life, without 
 any round-about argufying in his mind, but with a plain, 
 clear vision of great, straight truths. 
 
 You must know, by the way, that in the year 1900 of 
 course you will remember it there was a famous General 
 Election. It was called the " Khaki " Election. It was 
 astutely managed ; the time for it was adroitly chosen, on 
 the ground that the war was substantially over, that it was 
 only, as one eminent person said, " a sort of a war " that 
 remained. That made a good cry for continuing the 
 Government in office in order, don't you see? to complete 
 the policy to which the war had led up. 
 
 If not that, why then this, that even though the war was 
 still going on, would it not be an outrage on all political 
 
 244
 
 SNOWED UNDER 245 
 
 propriety to have horses swopped in the middle of the 
 stream? So, mark you, the Government won on this 
 version of it too, because they ought at least to be allowed 
 to complete the war itself. 
 
 A great science, electioneering ! And Liberalism, poor 
 thing ! was snowed under. Worse than that : here was a 
 great party in the State, even if not snowed under, likely 
 to all appearance to fall to pieces by internal disruption. 
 Smaller and smaller grew the ranks (within Parliament, 
 that is to say) of those who were root and branch in favour 
 of its ancient creed. As for Militarism, the Tory party 
 was completely at its mercy; and the result of the 1900 
 election justified its highest hopes. 
 
 What was to be done? Why, my dear, just this to 
 Stick to one's principles, to refuse all truckling and all 
 compromise, and to go on fighting to the last man. In all 
 my conversations with Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, 
 I never heard any other note than that; and there never 
 came from his lips any suggestion of compromising or 
 bartering on such major topics of the hour as Ireland, or 
 Africa, or Protection in any shape or form. 
 
 Now for the bundle. I had been fighting we all had 
 been fighting for our lives; and my majority of 500 went 
 down to 200. Shortly thereafter I received the following 
 letter : 
 
 " Belmont Castle, 
 
 " Meigle. 
 
 "October 17, 1900. 
 " MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 "We mariners who have survived the storm, now that we 
 have dried our clothes and swallowed a dram, may begin to rub 
 the salt out of our eyes and look about us. 
 
 "What think ye of Caledonia? ' Stands Scotland where
 
 246 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 she did ? ' as Shakespeare and Charles Parker have asked. Is 
 it not deplorable ? In my Burghs my falling-off is mainly due 
 to the Irish turning against me on the Education question : not 
 unnaturally, for I should be sorry to agree with them. But it 
 makes a big difference if we do not get votes from the Protestant 
 and anti-sectarian side to balance them. 
 
 "The same thing happened, I am told, elsewhere : e.g., 
 Bridgeton and Dumbartonshire. 
 
 " But there was a lot of Khaki in it, too : and we made a 
 mistake in holding our tongues last winter when men were 
 taking up their line on the war. 
 
 " Now, is it Imperialism or the other thing that has counted 
 for safety? 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " I do not see anything very clear from the pure electioneer- 
 ing point of view. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Yours always, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 This ^azed condition did not last long. As he emerged 
 from it he wrote to me that letter of the i;th January, 1900, 
 which I call the " golden letter " and which I sent to you 
 a short time ago. It showed that his vision had resumed 
 its normal clarity. 
 
 Yes, indeed, this was the man for me to follow. 
 He was by this time, however, I sometimes thought, 
 beginning to show signs of extreme strain. He was 
 not robust : still less so was his wife ; and his tender 
 care for her shone in all his arrangements and at many 
 turns of his conversation. He shirked meetings : here is 
 a letter, for instance, in which he implored me to go 
 and speak for him at Dunfermline; and you will see the 
 beginning of illness from which I do not think he ever 
 recovered.
 
 SNOWED UNDER 247 
 
 "6, Grosvenor Place, S.W . 
 
 March 23, 1901. 
 " MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 "Scripture, like Homer, sometimes nods; and it makes a 
 mistake on that point of prophets having no honour in their 
 own country. There are exceptions, and you are one. Read 
 the enclosed " (a letter from his chairman) "which I thoroughly 
 endorse. I am sure the Dunfermline people would rise like one 
 man to receive you but there would be more than one man 
 there. And, politically, the embers are sound and living, but 
 they would be all the better of being blown upon, if you could 
 undertake to act as bellows. 
 
 " Unfortunately, I am forbidden to-day by my doctor to under- 
 take my meeting and speech on the 27th. I have been rather 
 ' run down ? for some time and have been more or less laid up 
 with a cold which does not give way. He allows me to attend 
 (with due precautions and limitations) to Parliamentary work, 
 but he now positively forbids the journey and the big meeting. 
 I do not know what can be done. Sinclair, poor man, has to 
 patch something up. I am exceedingly sorry to cause dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 "This is a very critical time, too, and my proper place is 
 in the House of Commons. Still, I would have run down one 
 day and returned the next if I could have safely done it. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 He stayed with us on several occasions in Edinburgh 
 in the subsequent years, and there are charming letters in 
 the bundle showing the interest he took in all of you. 
 
 In a little while the Liberal Party, small, but banding 
 itself together under his leadership, began to make its mark 
 in public discussions, and some of these letters will make, 
 I suppose, good stuff for his biographer. We shall see. 
 I had, for instance, been writing to him in the beginning
 
 248 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of 1903, suggesting certain amendments to the Address at 
 the Opening of Parliament. Here is a bit of what he 
 
 wrote in reply : 
 
 "Lord Warden Hotel, 
 "Dover. 
 
 "January 6, 1903. 
 "Mr DEAR SHAW, 
 
 " I was delighted to receive your letter and your suggestions 
 as to action in the House. 
 
 41 1 was in London yesterday for a meeting we had summoned 
 of the supreme wisdom ; and all its elements seem well charged 
 with energy, and their respective winds apparently blowing the 
 same way. 
 
 "The situation is delicate, for which we must refuse all com- 
 promise, disregard results, challenge divisions, smite and spare 
 not we cannot despise the help of the timorous and forlorn 
 free fooder, and they are of the race of coney and easily scared. 
 
 "There are fifty-three of them of all sorts, but we are advised 
 that of these only five can be reckoned on to vote even on free 
 food against the superlative Government : these are indeed 
 valuable allies. 
 
 "i was glad to find that our friends, though anxious to make 
 things easy for them, have not a notion of yielding anything 
 or of spoiling any chance for their sake. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "My wife is getting along, but it is a slow business. 
 " Kindest remembrances to Mrs. Shaw. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 Things undoubtedly were moving. You can see it in 
 the tone of his letters. Here is a long eight-page one, 
 for instance, which deals in his firm, illuminating way 
 with a wide variety of political topics. As I have been 
 troubling you with the African thing, that is the only one 
 of these topics which I will show you his mind upon. 
 Anyhow, this is how it goes :
 
 SNOWED UNDER 249 
 
 "Belmont Castle, 
 "Meigle. 
 
 "September 10, 1903. 
 "MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 "A scratch of your pen is grateful. 
 
 "I think the Dunfermline people have not made a bad fixture 
 
 for the opening of their Club : November 2, afternoon diet, 
 
 me in the chair as President (an* wha daur say nay ?), and you 
 
 making an oration. Admirable ! Do not for any sake cry off. 
 
 **-*** 
 
 "We have a lively winter before us." 
 
 Then comes his catalogue of public issues, and he 
 proceeds : 
 
 "(c) Our old friend South Africa. Do you notice that little 
 Harry Johnston (ex-East Africa and Uganda), an Empire- 
 builder of the first water, Imperialist sans reproche, has been 
 saying at Rochester that it was Joe's bungling that caused the 
 South African War? 
 
 "The remarkable thing is, not that he should think so, but 
 that he should think it conducive (or at least not hurtful) to 
 his success to proclaim it. He need never have said a word 
 about it. This shows his estimate at least of present public 
 feeling. 
 
 "How every word you and I have said is confirmed as 
 true I Are we ever to be allowed to say so ? 
 
 "(d) Elgin's Report. Now here is a trap opened for us. 
 
 "I see in the papers that the Liberal Leaguers are going 
 to dance a fandango over it, and trot out the old fire-escapes, 
 efficiency, lack of foresight, etc., etc. . . . We shall, of course, 
 denounce stupidity, recklessness, carelessness, wherever we see 
 it, and there is a lot of it exposed. But we do not want to 
 militarize our people or our policy, and that is what these 
 people aim at. Don't have wars; have them only on a scale 
 within your means; above all, don't teach our people to think 
 that military drill and military power are the chief end of man. 
 Don't give the cat the cream to keep; don't let the Army 
 dictate to us. Keep its government in the old constitutional
 
 250 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 civilian hands, which the Duke of Wellington himself thought 
 essential. 
 
 " In this war the crime was in the war itself, in the proceed- 
 ings that brought it on, in the tone of our policy. The question 
 of men enough, of guns enough, or good or bad generals 
 these are subordinate questions, which are to be exaggerated 
 with a view to putting upon us huge military establishments, 
 preposterous preparations, and the subordination of everything 
 to military needs when we ought to be freer from that curse 
 than any nation in Europe. 
 
 "(How is that for a letting-off of steam ?) 
 
 "Enfin, a nice kettle of fish all round. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 His verdicts upon his colleagues were shrewd and 
 kindly always. Hear this, for instance, of Sir William 
 Harcourt, which he wrote to me from Vienna _: 
 
 "Hotel Kranz, 
 
 "Wien, i., 
 
 11 Neuer Markt 5. 
 
 "October 2, 1904. 
 " MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 "Your letter has come circuitously to hand, and it breathes 
 the kindness of Mrs. Shaw and her man. 
 
 * # * # * 
 
 "Late last night I heard that poor old W. V. H. was gone, 
 and we are much grieved. He was a good friend to our 
 friends and to the right cause ; and I am glad he has made an 
 exit, when he had to go, so stately and well ordered. We shall 
 miss him sorely, for he was a terror to (domestic) evil-doers, 
 though sometimes a thorn in the flesh to those who do well. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 "With our kindest regards, 
 
 "Yours always, 
 
 "H. C.-B."
 
 SNOWED UNDER 251 
 
 I feel almost tempted to go out of my dates to quote 
 to you one hearty commendation which he wrote to me 
 about Mr. Ure, the Solicitor-General for Scotland, whose 
 invaluable help and services I shall never forget. Ure 
 was unworthily treated in later days by Mr. Arthur Balfour, 
 but he defended himself in the House of Commons in a 
 speech so convincing and masterly as to demand very 
 much more in the nature of apology than he ever received. 
 Sir Henry had a truer knowledge of human nature, and 
 Ure will forgive me, I am sure, if I quote these sentences 
 from an amusing letter talking about our Abercromby 
 Place family, which he wound up thus : 
 
 "Belmont Castle, 
 
 " Meigle, Scotland. 
 
 "MY DEAR SHAW, "January 9, 1907. 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 "As to Ure, he is what in my antediluvian youth we used 
 to call ' a brick ' a good, square, adaptable, reliable, water- 
 proof and ornamental man. 
 
 "Remember me to all your next generation, and, if you 
 have anything over, throw in the head of the house. 
 
 "Always yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 I think that I must reserve, however, these letters until 
 I tell you of an interview I had with Sir Henry after the 
 General Election of 1905, when Liberalism regained its 
 power and when he was swept by acclamation into the 
 position of Prime Minister. 
 
 Meantime, I am off. We shall meet at the " Old Vic " 
 and hear the laughter of simple people and note how they 
 know already almost by heart the turns and finer passages 
 of As You Like It. Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXVII 
 
 THE STRANGE WILL 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, SW.$. 
 
 June 29, 1890. 
 MY OWN ISABEL, 
 
 I know quite well what you are thinking. You are 
 thinking that all these accounts and stories of doings 
 in Church and State are right enough, but, " Father, am 
 I never to hear anything about the law, and cases, and 
 the Parliament House of Edinburgh?" 
 
 Well, you see, the law was my living : these other 
 things, the movements of public affairs, they were my life. 
 Yet the law was no morose or jealous mistress, and was 
 far, far better to me than such a wayward lover deserved. 
 But to fit in these two ends of existence, the life and the 
 living, when between them there ran a railway track of 
 400 miles, needed some engineering and not a little loss 
 of sleep. As I once told you, I think, in the Session 
 before I became Lord Advocate I travelled on that track, 
 mostly by night, a distance equal to the circumference of 
 the Earth. 
 
 Let me compromise. You heard from me one or two 
 incidents of the earlier legal years : then comes that long, 
 steady pull of which the memory retains so little : but 
 now will you be satisfied if I give you, say, a couple of 
 stories from my closing years at the Bar? 
 
 Life at the Bar and life in the Commons have between 
 them this curious contrast. At the Bar you pass from 
 
 252
 
 THE STRANGE WILL 253 
 
 gravity and anxiety into familiarity, and thence to a sense 
 of buoyancy, exhilaration, and even gaiety. Whereas in 
 the Commons you pass from buoyancy, exhilaration, and 
 even gaiety, into familiarity and then to anxiety and 
 gravity. What a roundabout way this is of saying that in 
 the one you pass " from grave to gay," and in the other 
 " from lively to severe." 
 
 Having thus warned you not to expect too serious 
 matter, I proceed with my cases. 
 
 One was what was known as the Thorns case. Thorns, 
 a man of considerable means, had been for many years 
 Sheriff of the Orkneys and Shetland, and he died after a 
 life of not a little eccentricity, leaving a rather peculiar 
 will. This will was hotly contested by his relatives, and 
 I had to maintain against them that the quondam sheriff 
 was of sound disposing mind. 
 
 Some of the most peculiar things he did were, in point 
 of fact, not brought out in evidence, as, for instance, that, 
 instead of reversing his substitute's judgments, he had 
 sometimes scored them out sheet after sheet, and put in 
 judgments of his own ! 
 
 Some of the things that were brought out were odd 
 enough. In his bachelor household he kept with great 
 care a book of fines, and when any accident happened the 
 delinquent domestic was marked down as fined a penny 
 or twopence; but the cat also was among the number of 
 delinquents, and he frequently fined the cat ! 
 
 Things began to look critical for the will, and one of 
 the oddest facts was brought out, viz., that the learned 
 man had an hallucination that he was the Chief of the Clan 
 MacThomas. What was to be done with the like of 
 that?
 
 254 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 I set about looking into old books, and to my astonish- 
 ment I found that there had been a Clan MacThomas. 
 Thereupon I eked out the argument with the story, which 
 I thought I was safe to tell, there being a MacDonald 
 on the bench. So I narrated to the jury MacDonald 
 gravely listening and wondering what it was all coming 
 to how once, when you were all little, I had stayed in 
 Kingussie, where there were two bankers, one of the name 
 of MacPherson and the other of the name of Macintosh. 
 
 The dispute between the MacPhersons and the 
 Macintoshes was, of course, the famous question all over 
 the Highlands as to who was the head of the Clan Chattan. 
 The vigour of the Macintoshes was well known. They 
 carried into argument their warlike propensities, which are 
 made immortal in the lines : 
 
 41 Of all the clans MacKay 
 
 She is the most ferocious, 
 Excepting juist forbye 
 The Shaws and Macintoshes." 
 
 " Well," said I, " these bankers came to me as a lawyer 
 and they put the case before me for my opinion, the one 
 maintaining that the head of the Clan was MacPherson of 
 Cluny, and the other that the head was the Macintosh of 
 Macintosh. Now if a man," said I, " is not of sound dis- 
 posing mind because he thinks himself the head of the 
 Clan, where would any of us be who is of Highland ex- 
 traction ? As for these disputants, I took time to consider, 
 and then I gave my opinion. I advised that the Mac- 
 Phersons and the Macintoshes were both minor sects of 
 the Clan Chattan, and that the headship of the Clan was 
 with the Shaws ! " 
 
 There was a roar from the Court, but the Judge, gather-
 
 THE STRANGE WILL 255 
 
 ing himself together, ordered immediate silence, and the 
 case proceeded to its close, with considerable splutterings 
 here and there. 
 
 I do not ask you to believe that it was all fun. Indeed, 
 you may be interested to hear this about the same case : 
 The bulk of the learned sheriff's money had gone past 
 his relatives and was dedicated to the restoration of the 
 Cathedral of Kirkwall. 
 
 Now you have heard me before say what a spurious 
 reputation advocates are apt to get because they spring 
 upon the public things that look so learned or so clever, 
 but are not theirs at all, but probably suggested by a 
 shrewd solicitor. Here was another case of it. The 
 solicitor said to me that in regard to this benefaction, 
 which of course was denounced as futile and silly and 
 unpractical and all the rest of it, he thought that Sir Walter 
 Scott favoured the like of that in " The Pirate." So, 
 sure enough, I fished up " The Pirate," and I read to 
 the jury that passage in the fine novel which commends 
 the restoration of St. Magnus Cathedral as one well worthy 
 of the benefactions of any wealthy or patriotic son of 
 the North. The passage directly bore upon the issue in 
 hand; it affected the bulk of the estate, and, to make a 
 long story short, the jury upheld the will. 
 
 Perhaps the fun, but certainly the literary allusion, 
 helped them on the right road, because that it was a sound 
 verdict I do not doubt. 
 
 Just let me give you another instance of how admirably 
 the Scotch solicitors do their task and of how little and how 
 seldom they get the proper credit for it.
 
 256 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 I quite forget the name of the case : but at all events 
 there was one witness in the box, and sure was I that he 
 was lying lying cleverly, deliberately, steadily. But there 
 was no chink in his armour that I could see. Part of 
 his story was that a certain transaction, of, I think, a com- 
 mercial kind, had been carried out between him and his 
 antagonist on a certain date, that he had taken care to set 
 it down on paper at the time, and that from that date the 
 parties had shaped their relations accordingly, and 
 that he was, of course, right in his demand and his 
 opponent was wrong. The case stood to win or to lose 
 upon whether that man's evidence could be successfully 
 upset. 
 
 Then the solicitor, a painstaking, wise man, very honest 
 and very thorough, gave me the hint, for which I got all 
 the credit and for which I deserved none, that the docu- 
 ment which the witness was founding upon proved that he 
 was a liar. 
 
 ' Would your Lordship," said I, " be kind enough to 
 look at the document ? " 
 
 The Judge did so, and held it in his hand while I 
 elicited over again the facts as to the date and circum- 
 stances when this bargain was come to, making the whole 
 story clear as day, the witness adding at each stage his 
 oath in support. The dates I cannot remember, but the 
 fact you may draw from this illustration. The witness, 
 we shall say, described a day in June, 1890, when the 
 paper was got out and the memorandum made all in 
 June, 1890. 
 
 Said I to the Judge, " Would your Lordship hold that 
 paper against the light ? " and then to the witness, " How 
 do you explain, sir, that this memorandum, which you
 
 THE STRANGE WILL 257 
 
 say was written by you in June, 1890, was made upon 
 paper which was not manufactured till the year 1893?" 
 
 The water-mark on the paper broke the case to 
 pieces ! 
 
 Now that is all about the law when he was at the Bar 
 that you will ever hear from 
 
 Your most devoted 
 
 PARENT.
 
 LETTER XXXVIII 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, SW .^. 
 
 November 17, 1920. 
 MY DEAR LASS, 
 
 This library here thanks to your enterprise is getting 
 into decent order, and I have nothing to do but whip 
 round my chair, and in a galaxy of little drawers I select 
 the one that contains Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's 
 letters. 
 
 The tide of public opinion was turning his way : What 
 a satisfaction that his reward was coming ! Alas ! the 
 satisfaction was mingled with sadness, for just at that 
 juncture the marks of his failing health unmistakably 
 appeared. He maintained his policy undauntedly, 
 sagaciously unwinding perplexities, and no colleague ever 
 came from his counsel without light; but it was touching 
 to observe that more and more he leaned with an affec- 
 tionate pressure on the staff of private friendship. And 
 his humour did not fail. 
 
 He did love, strange to say, and loved passionately, 
 whatever combination he could get of quiet amid the 
 beauties of Nature with jollity among those he trusted. 
 You may see in this simple letter to your mother, for 
 instance, how the mixture works out. Private kindness, 
 affectionate interest, and, over all, a sharp eye to public 
 issues. 
 
 258
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 259 
 
 " Belmont Castle, 
 
 " Meigle, 
 
 "Scotland. 
 "December i, 1904. 
 "DEAR MRS. SHAW, 
 
 "If you and your goodman and your daughter could come 
 to us on the i6th till the Monday following it would be 
 a real pleasure, and I hope by good luck you may be free; 
 but I know that your metropolitan gaieties are many, and we 
 poor country mice are out of it. Do come if you can, and if 
 you brought your Oxonian our pleasure would be still greater. 
 We cannot do much entertaining on the grand scale, but I 
 would gather one or two congenial spirits. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "With our kind regards, 
 
 "Yours very truly, 
 
 "H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN. 
 
 "Will you ask your authority whether the Government plan 
 about the Churches is considered likely to answer? I have to 
 speak at Dunfermline in a few days, and should like to have 
 his mind on it." 
 
 The reference to the Oxonian is, of course, to 
 Alexander, to whom he was always kind. In an un- 
 guarded moment he had promised to speak at the Oxford 
 Union during Alexander's presidency. He tried to back 
 out : but was held to his bargain and went. During that 
 visit he was photographed, the result being more of the 
 man himself in his comfortable serenity than any other 
 likeness that had ever been taken. 
 
 Unionism was rocking to its fall. It fought tenaciously 
 to maintain its position, and it had within it a great store 
 of ability. In my humble sphere of the Border Burghs
 
 26o LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 it never wavered. When the election of 1905 came on 
 my opponents had the singular good fortune of securing 
 Mr. Conan Doyle as their candidate a gifted man, a 
 clever writer, and very strongly against me on the issues 
 of South Africa and Ireland. 
 
 On the latter he within a short time changed his mind 
 and became, I think, an out-and-out Home Ruler. I have 
 sometimes wondered whether Time that great Illuminant 
 helped him towards a change of view on Africa also. 
 But during the election he fought with vigour and emerged 
 from the contest, although without success, yet without an 
 enemy. 
 
 I was, of course, in London in those days of agitation, 
 when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was sent for by 
 the King; and I heartily enjoyed the comings and goings 
 of all sorts and descriptions of expectants and aspirants. 
 
 An intensely human touch there was in their confi- 
 dences. More than one of that class I have in my mind at 
 this moment, for I recall once setting on them as follows : 
 :< Will you men remember this, that we cannot all be in 
 office ? There is ahead of us possibly success and possibly 
 trial. People who do not get what they want are divided 
 into two classes the first are the sore heads, the second 
 are the stout hearts." This sermon was of the genus 
 " popular," that is to say, one which is severe in the 
 application but the application is always to the other 
 man ! 
 
 I resolved not to go near Sir Henry. But as time went 
 on the difficulty was whether to stop the habit of going 
 to talk over events which were stirring, or to keep up 
 going under a kind of make-believe that there was nothing 
 in which I was interested. It would have been out of the
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 261 
 
 question to continue that too long, so after a while I went 
 in one afternoon to see him. It appeared that all the time 
 he had been keeping his friendship warm. 
 
 After the interview I wrote an account of it, so to 
 speak, red-hot, and before the details could escape my 
 mind wrote it down in a long letter to your mother. Her 
 daily letters to me were a continual strength : she knew 
 well better than many courtiers the currents of public 
 events, and to her my replies at times of crisis were 
 like confidential dispatches. A great burning out of 
 letters took place, but I find that this one has been 
 preserved. 
 
 Shall I let you see that letter? Well, it reflects no dis- 
 credit upon anybody. It showed Sir Henry Campbell- 
 Bannerman as he was, and how he comported himself at 
 a not uncritical turn of Imperial history. I have omitted 
 a few words here and there, but otherwise you may take 
 the letter to be almost exactly as I now copy it out, under- 
 lining and all. 
 
 December 8, 1905. 
 
 Then to Belgrave Square, which I reached at 2.12. One 
 reporter at a side door was watching and timing, and, I think, 
 kodaking the proceedings. 
 
 Sir Henry was at lunch, but Sinclair came and took me 
 in beside him. I had lunched, but I took a glass of moselle 
 and sat down at table. This morning I had written to Buchanan 
 to tell him to stand firm, so I was relieved to hear C.B. break 
 into public affairs at once. I had shaken him warmly by the 
 hand, and he looked at me comfortably and said, " Ah, Thomas, 
 it's you." 
 
 "Before we begin," said I, "how is her Ladyship? " 
 
 "Never was better," he said; "she likes the stir no 
 monotony here, I assure you. That poor door-bell ! '
 
 262 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 My anxiety overnight had been about an alleged intrigue 
 to jockey the Prime Minister out of the House of Commons 
 and into the Lords. The Times confirmed our worst fears 
 by declaring that Grey had declined office except on that: 
 condition. 
 
 C.B. opened by saying, " Don't believe the Times news- 
 paper ! " 
 
 " My word! " I said, "I am glad. To be frank with 
 you, I may just say that I thought they were hitting you at 
 your weakest point your good nature; but I must say it 
 if you had yielded, the country would have thought itself 
 betrayed." 
 
 After a little, he said with a laugh, "Do you know it was 
 the comicality of it that I could hardly get over. They were 
 to serve under me, but on condition that they were not to be 
 with me ! " 
 
 By this time the bell was going, and he said, "Come! " 
 and off he and I went to his morning-room and sat down 
 together side by side. Then he opened out : 
 
 "You know it's been going on since Monday. The three 
 Asquith, Grey and Haldane all indicated that this was the 
 condition. But Asquith was always uneasy : he walked back 
 and forward in this very room here, and he stood up just at that 
 mantelpiece and said : 
 
 " ' Here we are, on every conceivable point of policy agreed, 
 and yet somehow something wrong. Suppose I go down to 
 my constituents, and they say to me : "Would you tell us, were 
 you not asked to be in the Government? " and I reply, "I 
 was." And then they say, "Did you not get a good enough 
 offer?" and I reply, "Well, the fact is, I was offered the 
 Chancellorship of the Exchequer ! " And then they say, 
 "What's wrong, then? " and I say, "Oh, but my leader was 
 to be in the Commons ! " How shall I look ? Then Grey 
 goes, and he has to confess that he was given the offer of 
 three great offices and got the one the Foreign Office which 
 he chose. And his constituents say, "Well, what more could 
 you want? " How foolish it all is! And Haldane too.' 
 * * * * * 
 
 "Well," said C.B., "this thing began on Monday; and I 
 let it go on for three days; and then I said to each and all
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 263 
 
 of them, ' Now look here, I have been playing up till now.' 
 The comicality of it, as I say, appealed to me. ' But now let 
 me just say that it is I -who am the head of this Government: 
 it is I who have the King's Command: I am on horseback, 
 and you will be all pleased to understand that I will not go to 
 the House of Lords; that I will not have any condition of the 
 kind imposed upon me, that you must take your own course, 
 on that footing. Do you understand? ' Grey said, ' I cannot 
 face the idea of Lord Rosebery attacking a Government of 
 which I am a member.' " As C.B. said that he laughed and 
 said, " Dear me, you are a man of distinction, and you are 
 going to be swayed by another man to a course which you 
 can't openly explain in any sort of way satisfactory to your- 
 self ! " 
 
 "So," says C.B., "they all came in no conditions; no 
 nothing: there they are." 
 
 Said I, "I hear that Morley has caused some trouble. Can 
 that be true ? " 
 
 "Not true at all. Asquith is to be Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer, Morley goes to India, Grey to the Foreign Office." 
 
 "And the Colonies?." I asked. 
 
 "Oh, Elgin to the Colonies. Then about Haldane : he 
 takes the War Office." 
 
 "Now, Tammas," he said, after a pause, and slowly tapping 
 my knee: "what am I to do with you, my son? You are 
 putting me in a plisky." 
 
 I knew what he meant. The letters which I had had from 
 Redmond and O'Connor and Dillon had very strongly placed 
 the Irish Office before me, but I was afraid to appear in any 
 way to have a wish or preference on my own part, for it was 
 his judgment I wanted to get. I felt that he knew far better 
 than I did what was for the best. Had he lifted his finger 
 and pointed me to Ireland, like a shot I would have gone 
 there, never doubting his judgment. Then, after a little, he 
 said : 
 
 "Lord Advocate? You. It is, remember, the head of your 
 profession, and it may be for a time only, but for a time you 
 must go there. It is your natural post. Perhaps, after, it may 
 be, some months, you may have to be put up higher. 
 
 " I have seen John Redmond : he has been here. The Irish,
 
 264 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 he says, want you to be Chief Secretary for Ireland. But I 
 said to him, ' How can he? He would be leaving the work 
 of his life, with all its avenues of advancement; he could not 
 be asked to do such a thing.' 
 
 "' He would be the man most acceptable to the Irish people,' 
 said Redmond." 
 
 And then C.B. said to me again : 
 
 "Remember your rightful place, to begin with, at least, is 
 the head of your profession; you must look at it so." 
 
 I said, "Well, yes; it is your command; but please don't 
 think I say ' Yes ' on that account. I dare say, in fact, I 
 believe, that your judgment is the sound one, and so please 
 don't think there is any regret about it; that's all right. I 
 really did not know what to think about it myself, and what- 
 ever decision you had come to I would have done my best, and 
 I felt sure that you would be looking round about the affair, 
 and honestly I am mightily glad that you have settled it one 
 way or another." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "Who are you sending to the Chief Secretaryship?" I 
 said. 
 
 "Well," he said, "James Bryce; he was a difficult man 
 exactly to place." 
 
 Sinclair then entered the room (our talk had lasted nearly 
 half an hour) and said : "Sir Henry Fowler and Lord Ripon 
 are here. Fowler has waited eight minutes already; I only 
 wanted you to know." 
 
 I smiled to Sir Henry and said, "Fowler has been going 
 about the Reform Club like a hen on a het girdle"; and he 
 laughed. 
 
 "Well, then," said I, "what do I do?" 
 
 "Oh, you can do nothing till Monday. I have to submit 
 my list to the King. The King has been first-rate through it 
 all. No difficulty in that quarter " (meaning, I think, that the 
 King approved his standing absolutely firm with Asquith 
 and Co.). 
 
 "Then you will write me? " said I. 
 
 "No," he said, "it's all right." 
 
 "I think you might drop me a note," I said; "I should 
 like to have it for Elsie's sake."
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 265 
 
 "I see," he said; and we moved to the door, and he went 
 upstairs to beard Fowler. 
 
 That is the history of the transaction to the best of my 
 recollection. Throughout the interview his humour was always 
 bubbling up, as for instance when he described certain men 
 and their peculiarities, their hesitations, their prejudices, and 
 their foibles; but always he felt his way back with a warm- 
 hearted reference to their strong points. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The letter which, for your mother's sake, the Prime 
 Minister had promised to write to me, came along. If 
 you would care to read it, here it is : 
 
 "29, Belgrave Square, S.W. 
 
 "December 10, 1905. 
 "MY DEAR SHAW, 
 
 " I hope you will give me the great pleasure of submitting 
 your name to the King for appointment as Lord Advocate. 
 
 "I need not tell you with what extreme satisfaction I shall 
 discharge this duty, and how I rejoice that it falls to me to 
 be the channel of conferring on so old and true and close a 
 friend the highest honour in his profession and one of the chief 
 offices in our common country. 
 
 "Yours very truly, 
 
 "H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN." 
 
 So there, my dear, your esteemed father was Lord 
 Advocate for Scotland. How did he comport himself in 
 that office ? Ah ! it is not for him to say, and even if he 
 wished it, his memory would not disclose much. Is it 
 not recorded in "Hansard"? And when you grope in 
 " Hansard," is there not the other record also, the Statute 
 Book of the Realm ? No ; you get no more from me ! 
 
 It is the jollity of those days that I remember. Just
 
 266 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 when everybody was on the qui vive, a few of us had a 
 rattling dinner at the Cafe Royal. There were Lloyd 
 George, Captain Seely, McKenna, Winston Churchill and 
 myself. We discussed everything under the sun. I can't 
 remember much more than that except this, that there 
 arose a great clamour amongst us as to who was to pay 
 for the dinner ! Captain Seely explained that he had just 
 made ^50 of profit on the sale of a boat. 
 
 ' Well, as for me," says Winston, " I have at this 
 moment a cheque for 1,000 from Macmillan in part 
 payment of what is due to me for writing my father's 
 life." 
 
 That settled it. It was agreed with acclamation that 
 he should pay for the dinner ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 Ere I leave these memories of Sir Henry I would 
 like to carry the years forward just a little and to tell you 
 what remains of the bundle of letters. He wrote to me 
 from various places amongst others, this from Balmoral, 
 and you will see how even in the midst of his deep respect 
 for and loyalty to his Sovereign, a humorous reference, 
 in that direction, breaks out. 
 
 "Balmoral Castle. 
 
 "October i, 1907. 
 "My DEAR THOMAS, 
 
 "Now that I am in the country I feel braced up to write. 
 
 "The 3oth ? Of course, joyfully. You are all too kind. 
 Perhaps you will, in the abundance of your leisure, tell me 
 what I can say about Edinburgh. I have in this year plastered 
 Glasgow for a big town and Montrose for a small one. On 
 Friday I have to praise Peebles (for pleasure). I want a few 
 fresh adjectives for the next noble Lucumo.
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 267 
 
 "The sun was shining on all the high summits here out- 
 door and indoor for the last three days. To-day Lochnagar 
 is misty : I have not yet seen the intramural peak, but I am 
 no feared. 
 
 "Kindest thoughts to all of you. 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 Then, alas ! come the letters with the deep black edge. 
 Lady Campbell-Bannerman was gone. Once, behind the 
 Speaker's chair, I asked him anxiously about her, know- 
 ing how ill she was; and he replied to me, with a deep 
 look in his eyes : " Thomas you know the ' Pilgrim's 
 Progress.' ' Then he suddenly stopped, and we parted, 
 very moved. I knew what he was thinking. The crossing 
 of the River; and the Land of Beulah; and the company 
 of the Shining Ones. 
 
 I went to Belmont to her funeral, being then the guest 
 of Sir Francis Evans, who had a shooting up Glen Isla. 
 When after the service I shook hands with him to go, he 
 looked blankly at me, and sat down on a chair, saying, 
 ' Thomas, you are not to leave me to-night." And so I 
 remained. And I wish to tell you that of that small com- 
 pany who remained no one was more considerate or more 
 tender to him than Asquith. If there had ever been any 
 failure to see eye to eye, I think surely that it must have 
 then come to an end; and Sir Henry reciprocated the 
 warmth, and I know, as I shall tell you in a minute, that 
 he did so to the end. 
 
 His own health I do not think was ever the same. 
 Honours came upon him : Freedoms of cities were con- 
 ferred, and so on ; yet you can see of course in these later 
 letters how his faculty for fun began to be resumed, with
 
 268 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 a joke now and again about public men, including Lord 
 Rosebery, whom he always called " Barnbougle." 
 
 After a visit to Edinburgh he tells, in a letter of thanks 
 about it to your mother, so gratefully worded as this : 
 
 "Belmont. 
 "October 31, 1907. 
 "DEAR MRS. SHAW, 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 "I was closely cross-examined by my two young ladies 
 regarding all my proceedings. But no description of mine was 
 adequate to your admirable arrangements for my comfort, and 
 to the enjoyment which you and your young ladies contrived 
 to put into my stay. I do not mention the men they count 
 for nothing. 
 
 "With very kind regards, 
 
 "Very sincerely yours, 
 \ 
 
 "H. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN." 
 
 During a short stay on the Continent he still kept his 
 eye upon all that was going on, and he was grateful for 
 any help that one could render to him even in a humble 
 way with his own constituency meetings. I feel almost 
 inclined to write you this letter out in full, and for the 
 saddest of all reasons, dear Isabel, namely that it is the 
 last letter he ever wrote to me. This is how it runs : 
 
 "Hotel Continental, 
 
 "Biarritz. 
 
 "December 6, 1907. 
 "MY DEAR THOMAS, 
 
 " I hear of a most kind, unselfish, public spirited thing being 
 done, in the shape of an engagement by a not unoccupied man,
 
 THE MAKING OF A MINISTRY 269 
 
 to take the place of a disabled friend, and gratify a patient and 
 faithful community by giving them a speech. If you know 
 the man, give him a word of praise from me. 
 
 " I am established comfortably here for, I hope, some weeks, 
 and if I do not get good from it, it will not be the fault of this 
 place. 
 
 "The weather is unfavourable boisterous wind and alter- 
 nations of sunshine and slashing rain. But it is a' ane to 
 Dandie : even indoors I get the fresh sea air which they say 
 is best. 
 
 "I am pronounced to be ' tired out ' and the tiredness takes 
 the form of asthmatic turns which are unpleasant (or worse) 
 while they last, but which I am told arise purely from weakness 
 and will disappear after a good rest. Nothing wrong organic- 
 ally or even functionally, they all say. 
 
 "This is a much more manly and outspoken part of the 
 world than your vapid, sickly, ill-balanced Riviera : its faults 
 I have not yet discovered. One advantage is that now we are 
 between seasons; the Autumn French and Spanish have gone, 
 and the Winter English not yet come. So we have plenty of 
 elbow-room, and no bores yet discovered. Yes, one . . . 
 ex-M.P. I have escaped him as yet. 
 
 All best thoughts and regards to your best of all halves and 
 the young ladies. I only wanted to tell you of that generous 
 man. 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "H. C.-B." 
 
 Yes : his last letter. I saw him on his death-bed twice 
 in Downing Street, in the break-up of his constitution, 
 like a brave warrior sinking to rest. And he was think- 
 ing of others, too. I am not alluding to our own selves; 
 but there is one thing that he said to me on the last occasion 
 when I saw him that I should like you to know. 
 
 " Do you remember, Thomas, what I told you about 
 Asquith ? " 
 
 " Don't I ? " said I ; " I remember every word of it."
 
 270 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 ' Well," he said, " bear this in mind : Asquith is a 
 fine fellow; he is a loyal fellow. Asquith has been like a 
 son to me." 
 
 I never saw the dear, great, lovable man again. 
 
 " Oh, but they say the tongues of dying men 
 Enforce attention like deep harmony." 
 
 Good night, my dear girlie ! I fear I have been a little 
 moved, myself, with these rememberings. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XXXIX 
 KEEPING STARS IN THEIR ORBIT 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, SW .$. 
 
 December n, 1920. 
 DEAR MAIDIE, 
 
 I know that you want to hear a little about those men 
 with whom the Lord Advocate found himself the associate 
 after he and all the others had been ten years in Parlia- 
 mentary opposition. 
 
 The gift which Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had 
 for what I would call the reconciliation of apparent oppo- 
 sites amounted to genius. Hence came that co-operation 
 of men drawn from different schools of political thought 
 which filled the enemy with surprise and which bore good 
 fruit. 
 
 A good, distinguished Tory friend of mine had hoped 
 publicly for the overthrow of his own party so as to provide 
 fun for the country in the spectacle of the sheer impossi- 
 bility of finding either talent or singleness of purpose in 
 the Liberal camp. One Liberal more distinguished in 
 literature than in politics said : " A queer stud, did you 
 say ? Ah ! but they all come to the manger ! " That was 
 the kind of fluffy stuff that was floating in the air. 
 
 What was wanted was one common foundation, and 
 the Prime Minister found that foundation in Liberalism 
 
 271
 
 272 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 itself. And secondly what was wanted was a note of firm 
 authority welding all together, and that Sir Henry Camp- 
 bell-Bannerman, with urbanity and determination and 
 strength, supplied. 
 
 The result of this variety in unity was harmony. Let 
 me give you three examples taken from three spheres of 
 action, namely, civil, military and foreign affairs. 
 
 I will take Mr. Lloyd George himself. We all knew 
 even before he joined the Government we should have 
 been blind in Parliament if we had not known how con- 
 summate were his powers, not only of public eloquence but 
 of Parliamentary criticism and management. As I have 
 told you, George and I had been closely associated. And 
 no one enjoyed more than you children did the tales of 
 our spirited adventures. He was younger and more 
 vigorous than I, and he always took exercise with a hearty 
 relish for which simple fact let Europe be thankful. We 
 played golf on some of these artificial English courses : 
 Let us draw the curtain on those Radical foursomes. We 
 were all, I hope and trust, better at politics than at the 
 other game ! When he stayed with us in Edinburgh I 
 used to be struck not only with his political gifts but with 
 his quickness of apprehension and with his powers of 
 adapting everything in any field that he came across to 
 the purpose of the argument that he had in hand. Of this 
 I will give you an example which amused the Edinburgh 
 political circles. 
 
 He was a great one for hearing sermons. One of the 
 best in the morning from our own Mr. Dunbar would not 
 satisfy him : he must be off in the evening to hear Dr. 
 Whyte. He had, I think, the next day to address a meet- 
 ing in Edinburgh on, of course, the follies and worse of
 
 KEEPING STARS IN THEIR ORBIT 273 
 
 the Government of the day. It was that time in politics 
 when Tariff Reform was sprung upon the country by Mr. 
 Chamberlain after the disillusionment over the war. A 
 disillusionment this was which I cannot but feel that Mr. 
 Chamberlain, having visited South Africa, deeply shared. 
 Well, it was then, and upon that topic of Tariff Reform, 
 that the Unionist Party, if not at sixes and sevens, was at 
 least at tens and threes. The task of Mr. Balfour might 
 have been considered to be that he should give definite 
 light and a definite lead upon the crucial and absorbing 
 theme. But he did not see it thus; and he was so astute 
 and so adroit as to keep his Party together without any 
 personal committal whatsoever. Many a time the Liberals 
 tried to corner him ; many a time he was called on to 
 stand and deliver; but on every occasion in a cloud 
 of words he escaped, to the delight of all admirers of 
 mental agility ; and even while his followers were puzzled, 
 they applauded to the echo. Now he appeared to be a 
 Free Trader; now he appeared to be a Tariff Reformer; 
 now it would almost appear as if he were neither; again 
 it would almost appear as if he were both. Yet the party 
 he led followed him. 
 
 To come back to Mr. Lloyd George. On the Sunday 
 afternoon of which I speak I tossed over to him an amusing 
 Glasgow book called " Wee Macgreegor "; would he care 
 to look at it? You know the book well, and remember 
 the scene where the boy sees the elephant at the circus 
 and is astonished by its oscillating trunk. To my surprise 
 the next evening in the midst of his speech Mr. Lloyd 
 George, to the relish of his audience, entered upon an 
 examination of the Tory Party, and he made some simile 
 between it and the large, unwieldy and thick-skinned
 
 274 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 elephant. How was it led? Alluding adroitly to the 
 leadership of Mr. Balfour, he exclaimed, in the language 
 of " Wee Macgreegor," 
 
 " Maw, whit wey is its neb sae shoogly ? " 
 Apart from these quips, his eloquence was then more 
 sustained, better ordered, less conversational, than his style 
 to-day, admirable and persuasive as that is. And he could 
 touch the mind to a deep conviction and the heart with a 
 high quickening. One of the most powerful passages 
 which I remember in the Music Hall of Edinburgh was 
 when he was pleading for the reality of patriotism in small 
 nationalities, and how they cherished with a tenacious 
 memory the adventures, the achievements and the suffer- 
 ings of heroism : and he cited with a moving brilliancy 
 the case of Hofer. To a man like him, and in such an 
 atmosphere, the Wallace episodes were weapons ready to 
 hand. 
 
 This, then, was one school of thought, to which, of 
 course, I ardently belonged, which for shortness' sake may 
 be called the Radical Pro-Boer School, earning that ap- 
 proval in some quarters and that contempt in others with 
 which we were all familiar. But once at the Board of 
 Trade Mr. Lloyd George speedily showed the beginnings 
 of that administrative talent and that driving power which 
 have made him in these later years like a messenger of 
 hope and saving to his country. 
 
 TV * *W" ^^ ^ 
 
 Now another school. Take Haldane himself. Sud- 
 denly he was placed by his Chief, to whom having once 
 given his allegiance he kept his pledge unwaveringly, in 
 that post, the Secretaryship for War, which of all others 
 Sir Llenry knew best. And when I think of what that
 
 KEEPING STARS IN THEIR ORBIT 275 
 
 selection was able to do, by placing the capacious industry 
 and brain of Lord Haldane into a definite orbit, and into 
 such an orbit, instead of permitting it to fly off at a tangent 
 into political space, I feel very grateful for my country's 
 sake. 
 
 Who knew better than Bannerman what it was to dis- 
 band the militia? Who knew better than he the varied 
 camps of military thought by which the novel proposal of 
 a territorial force capable of indefinite expansion was to 
 be canvassed ? One day of lack of harmony between the 
 shrewd sturdy chieftain and the subtle philosophical fol- 
 lower might have undone a project which has been charged 
 with inestimable benefit to the Empire. 
 
 " Blow, blow, thou winter wind ! 
 Thou art not so unkind 
 As man's ingratitude." 
 
 This is what I often say when I hear people talk about 
 Lord Haldane. I dare say I am a partial witness, having 
 been his colleague for many years in the Supreme Court 
 of the Empire ; but, harking back to politics, I cannot but 
 feel grateful that the great fund of common sense on the 
 part of both parties saved a situation and a split which 
 might have brought the nation to the verge of ruin. 
 ***** 
 
 It is the same with Grey. The influence of Lord 
 Rosebery upon Sir Edward Grey, who had been his Under- 
 secretary for Foreign Affairs, might appear to have re- 
 tarded his development and increased his detachment. 
 Yet a touchstone of his undoubted Liberalism was Ireland ; 
 for he has throughout been its true friend, never deviating, 
 so far as I know, from the Gladstonian cast of mind with 
 regard to that country. But all this and the definiteness
 
 276 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of his place in what I may call comprehensively the non- 
 Bannerman school, makes the transaction under which he 
 was lifted to Cabinet rank one for which on every side the 
 country may well be thankful. 
 
 Just recently I had occasion in looking over Blue Books 
 to consider what were the greatest dispatches of my time. 
 Speaking, I hope, quite impartially, and certainly with the 
 judgment of one who is now remote from public life, but 
 whose sole business in life is to make judgments, I would 
 name these greatest dispatches, or sets of dispatches, as 
 three in number. 
 
 The first, and they remained the first, in my estimation, 
 for many years, were those of Mr. F. W. Reits, State 
 Secretary of the Transvaal in August and September, 
 1899. I should put it at least thus that to the impartial 
 mind these stand, for riveting cogency and for convincing 
 power, in a very striking contrast with the narrow and 
 niggling cleverness of the British diplomacy of that day. 
 
 The second in rank among great dispatches was that 
 of Mr. Morley, when, shortly after entering the India 
 Office, he settled for many years that controversy then at 
 an acute stage between the military and the civil power. 
 Each he placed in position, but he lifted the latter to its 
 sound predominance in such a way as to make us and the 
 Indian Empire his debtors. 
 
 These two sets of dispatches to which I have referred 
 reached a very high level. But a higher still was attained 
 in those so simply worded by Sir Edward Grey in July 
 and August, 1914, that critical period of the history of the 
 world. 
 
 I do not like making quotations, but for your sake, dear 
 Isabel, it is well that you should remember, and that clearly
 
 KE;EPING STARS IN THEIR ORBIT 277 
 
 and vividly, these words from the communication made on 
 the 3Oth July, 1914, by our Foreign Secretary to Sir 
 Edward Goschen, our Ambassador in Berlin. The ques- 
 tion of Peace and War was trembling in the balance. 
 Germany, astonished that Britain should protest against 
 the violation of treaty and of honour by the invasion of 
 Belgium, had still to receive another surprise in the objec- 
 tion which this country tendered to the proposal that we 
 might be bought off from defending right, by an engage- 
 ment upon the part of Germany that the existing 
 boundaries of France in Europe would not be disturbed. 
 To this Sir Edward Grey replied in these words : 
 
 "What he asks us is in effect to engage to stand by while 
 French Colonies are taken and France is beaten, so long as 
 Germany does not take French territory as distinct from the 
 Colonies. 
 
 "From the material point of view, such a proposal is un- 
 acceptable, for France, without further territory in Europe being 
 taken from her, could be so crushed as to lose her position as 
 a Great Power, and become subordinate to German policy. 
 
 "Altogether apart from that, it would be a disgrace for us 
 to make this bargain with Germany at the expense of France, a 
 disgrace from which the good name of this country would never 
 recover." 
 
 But the gravity of the dispatch deepens and its vision 
 widens when it deals with no less a topic than the security 
 for the future peace of the world. Listen to this : 
 
 "And I will say this: If the peace of Europe can be pre- 
 served and the present crisis safely passed, my own endeavour 
 will be to promote some arrangement to which Germany could 
 be a party, by which she could be assured that no aggressive or 
 hostile policy would be pursued against her or her allies by 
 France, Russia and ourselves jointly or separately. I have 
 desired this and worked for it, as far as I could, through the
 
 278 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 last Balkan crisis, and Germany having a corresponding object, 
 our relations sensibly improved. The idea has hitherto been 
 too Utopian to form the subject of definite proposals, but if this 
 present crisis so much more acute than any that Europe has 
 gone through for generations be safely passed, I am hopeful 
 that the relief and reaction which will follow may make possible 
 some more definite rapprochement between the Powers than has 
 been possible hitherto." 
 
 In my humble judgment this part of the dispatch 
 brings the best thinking of Grotius up to date. I have 
 many times been grateful that it was the voice of England 
 which read that lesson. 
 
 In these later years, as you know, much of my spare 
 time was taken up in trying to get the League of Nations 
 Society set on its legs; but I must tell you, if I have the 
 chance, something more definite about that some other day. 
 Meantime I should only say this, that it was a dispatch like 
 that which I have just cited that gave precedence and 
 substance and a near and living reality to the idea, which 
 the world so slowly grasps, of a League of Nations. 
 
 Has this letter been too long? Well there, in that 
 Government of which I was a member was to be found 
 that ganglion of influences gathered together, and then 
 radiating through the Empire and through history, and 
 communicating a power which, with many mistakes, was 
 still one of healing and of right. 
 
 You see how high I place the Campbell-Bannerman 
 Government, and you see also how I think the world would 
 have suffered if its differing units had been permitted to 
 diverge, to dissipate their energies, or to perish in the 
 
 atrophy of isolation. 
 
 Your affectionate 
 
 S. OF D.
 
 LETTER XL 
 
 TO THE GILDED CHAMBER 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, SW.$, 
 
 December 24, 1920. 
 
 ISABEL, MY DEAR, 
 
 It was, I suppose, a bit of an event for all you children 
 when your father became the Lord Advocate for Scotland. 
 A great personage he was in former days, was the King's 
 Advocate. Some of the line were famous; some were a 
 bit notorious in their time, clever enough, but strange 
 persons to be entrusted with so large a power over the 
 liberty of the subject. If it had not been that I was so 
 hustled, I dare say I might have reflected with trembling 
 upon being successor to the bluidy MacKenzie ! The 
 high office, the Crown practice, the private practice, the 
 occasional advisings in Cabinet Committees, the Parlia- 
 mentary attendance : put together they were rather a strain 
 especially so for a reason which was by and by to put 
 me under the surgeon's knife. 
 
 In those days the Attorney-General for England had 
 his 10,000 a year, was debarred from private practice, 
 but was briefed in thousands upon thousands for Crown 
 work. In Scotland the Advocate had his ,5,000 a year, 
 could take what private practice he could gather in the 
 scraps of his time, but had to do all the Crown work for 
 nothing. This curious difference still, I believe, exists, 
 
 279
 
 280 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 but why it should be so I mean the scheme about Crown 
 and private work I am sure I cannot say. 
 
 In my own case, although a good deal came privately, 
 my place was the House of Commons, with now and again 
 a sortie into Scotland. As for Scotland, never was a Lord 
 Advocate better served by a Solicitor-General and a Crown 
 Agent than I was by Ure and Sir William Haldane. 
 Once the lines of even the most ticklish cases were settled 
 and it was only upon the most ticklish cases that they 
 sought my guidance I had no fears whatsoever that all 
 would be well handled. These offices were never filled by 
 more capable men. Often I leaned heavily upon them, 
 but they never failed. You see what real and standing 
 comforts I had? 
 
 It is a good rule that no man be a judge in his own 
 cause. Lawyers have been known to break the rule 
 break it deplorably when they have begun to write about 
 their legal and official doings. Anyhow, you don't get one 
 word from me on that subject. Can you not wander at 
 leisure in those Gardens of the Blest, Hansard and the 
 Statutes of the Realm? 
 
 In Parliament we were faced with a keen and intel- 
 lectually strong Opposition. While the country was 
 forcing the Government forward towards Radical legis- 
 lation, and much of it, it was faced in front by 
 steady and most capable criticism. It was a time for 
 having one's wits about one. The failing health of Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman made all eyes turn to his 
 successor; and, when his death occurred, Mr. Asquith 
 stepped into the vacant Premiership, and the choice of His 
 Majesty met with the heartiest approval, not of one party 
 but of all parties in Parliament and in the co'untry.
 
 TO THE GILDED CHAMBER 281 
 
 It is not generally known, but it is the fact, that the 
 acceptance of the seals of that office from the Sovereign 
 puts the Premier in the position, not of taking over a 
 Government, but of forming a Government of his own. 
 So we were all out of office. And we went on, on the 
 principle of holding the fort. One or two dropped out, 
 notably Lord Elgin from the Colonial Office. Mr. 
 Asquith was in every dealing I ever had with him kind- 
 ness and consideration; and he always loved any drollery 
 that was going. Somebody said to me one day, " Lord 
 Advocate " and I stopped him : " Not exactly," said I, 
 " but locum tenens! " When Mr. Asquith heard of it 
 he had forgotten all about Dover House he wrote me a 
 charming letter. So there I was planted again in the 
 high office. 
 
 Alas ! but not for long. Once more it happened ; 
 again a bolt from the blue ; again I was confronted by 
 the totally unexpected. On the 2nd of February, 1909, 
 there occurred at Cap Martin the death of Lord Robertson, 
 the brilliant Parliamentarian and Scotch Lord of Appeal. 
 
 Was there ever such a cantrip of fortune? On many 
 platforms I had spoken freely and I hope faithfully and 
 without undue compliment of the Gilded Chamber, and 
 then Dame Fortune comes along and she says : " No more 
 of platforms for you ; get you to the Gilded Chamber 
 yourself and stay you there for the rest of your natural 
 life ! " I was submissive and I went. 
 
 What of your principles now? said the wags. And I 
 feebly replied : " My principles are quite intact, (i) I 
 am still against the hereditary principle; (2) I am still in 
 favour of the payment of members; and (3) I am still in 
 favour of early rising ! "
 
 282 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Do I aggravate you, Isabel, by not giving you the 
 serious side of that transaction ? Well, dear, I made notes 
 at the time. I have them by me as I write. But no : you 
 cannot have them. 
 
 As some people would view it, it was perhaps a strong 
 thing to have passed by the Chair of the illustrious Stair, 
 the Chair of Duncan Forbes and of so many great Presi- 
 dents down to the majestic Inglis himself, who had en- 
 couraged me from his high place when I was but a youth. 
 Let these details, however, stand aside. The impressions 
 remain. The Future and the Past seemed so dissevered. 
 As for the Past, I was veritably heart-sore to leave the 
 House of Commons. As for the Future, then opening 
 before me, it presented to me those august lineaments of 
 jurisprudence and of law in which they still appear. 
 
 Law and Jurisprudence; they are high, sedate, and 
 stately things, but they are beyond the range of definition. 
 You cannot define a great landscape; you cannot define 
 a noble statue. Description alone must serve, and de- 
 scription must take its cast from the mould of the de- 
 scriber's mind. I have served twelve years, humbly 
 helping in the greatest jurisdiction in the world; but still 
 I hesitate even to describe. My imperfect language 
 reaches only to this single word. Jurisprudence is the 
 ordered march of justice. When order is forsaken and 
 the march becomes either a fevered rush, or an ill-balanced 
 and fantastic measure, then an ordinance truly divine has 
 been debased, the steps of justice falter, and the ends of 
 justice fail. 
 
 Next to the higher reaches of literature and of states- 
 manship, do not the search for, the unfolding of, the ad- 
 ministration of, the distribution of, justice do not these
 
 TO THE GILDED CHAMBER 283 
 
 things make an excelling call among all the secular affairs 
 of men ? 
 
 In writing these letters I should have remembered that 
 lightsomeness which is your due. But somehow not for 
 the first time I have got down among the deep gravities 
 of life. Pray forgive me. 
 
 Good night ! Good night ! 
 
 Your own 
 
 TRUE LOVE.
 
 LETTER XLI 
 THE IMPORTATION OF ARMS 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 New Year's Day 
 
 of 1921. 
 MY CHILD, 
 
 What a strange New Year's Day ! Here I am, be- 
 tween five and six hundred miles north of London, and 
 for hours I have been through fields and woods, gun in 
 hand, perspiring in the sun. The air is balmy so mild 
 that the flies rise thickly in the warmth from hedgerow and 
 ditch; no leaf falls, for the recent gales have stripped the 
 deciduous trees quite bare. But the others the hollies, 
 the spruces, and the Scotch and silver firs, stand resplen- 
 dent in green, bristling for the tempest and the snow. 
 
 The association of ideas is sometimes an association of 
 opposites ; I have passed from this peace to turmoil, from 
 faith and hope, to disquiet and the bounds of despair. 
 This being translated nationally means that in thought I 
 have crossed from Scotland to Ireland. As I truly love 
 both countries, that is a hard saying. 
 
 Some time ago I wrote to you of that " touch and go " 
 episode when my life was so nearly turned into the channel 
 of Irish administration. That was on the public side. 
 Then on the private side came the day when the great 
 Irish surgeon sought Elsie's hand in marriage : and of 
 course their busy life to him the glory of saving life and 
 
 284
 
 THE IMPORTATION OF ARMS 285 
 
 to both the ministry of brightening it has kept in Ireland 
 a goodly part of our interest and love. 
 
 But these are not what I wanted to be at in this letter ; 
 for in my wanderings to-day it occurred to me that there 
 were three years in succession in which, so far as making 
 marks on the memory is concerned, Ireland and some 
 events in it struck deep. In 1914 I presided over the 
 Royal Commission as to the importation of arms into the 
 Dublin district. In 1915 I lay in Dublin at the gates of 
 death. And in 1916 I personally witnessed in the Irish 
 capital the outbreak of the Sinn Fein Rebellion. 
 
 So much has happened there, and here, and in Europe, 
 during those six years, that to look up the pages of the 
 Royal Commission Report " into the circumstances con- 
 nected with the Landing of Arms at Howth on July 26, 
 1914," is as if one were turning on the light over trans- 
 actions half a century old. 
 
 I was to have gone alone upon the mission. But Mr. 
 Walter Long, representing the Unionist Party, suggested 
 to the Government that the Commission should be broad- 
 ened by the inclusion as my colleagues of a judge from, 
 so to speak, each of the two sides of Irish opinion. On 
 being appealed to, I expressed the view that Mr. Long 
 was unquestionably right. In the event we were able to 
 conduct the Inquiry with complete accord and to present 
 a Report which was unanimous in every particular. 
 
 " On the afternoon of Sunday, the 26th July, a yacht 
 entered the Harbour of Howth, about eight and a half 
 miles from Dublin, and was met by a body of about 1,000 
 Irish Volunteers. They took possession of the landing-
 
 286 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 place, and unloaded from the yacht a quantity of arms 
 and ammunition. Each man possessed himself of a rifle. 
 Some other rifles were conveyed away along with some 
 ammunition by motor-cars and wagons." 
 
 Since a Proclamation of the previous December arms 
 had become forbidden imports ; so that this was smuggling ; 
 a plain case for the Customs Authorities. It was notorious, 
 however, that this smuggling had been going on, in Ireland, 
 that is to say, in Ulster. It was notorious that the Customs 
 Authorities had never suppressed it. or obtained aid to 
 suppress it, in Ireland that is to say, in Ulster. 
 
 Whether what was so notorious was true, we had no 
 jurisdiction to inquire. Here was the rub. We were ap- 
 pointed on the Howth case alone, or rather on its lament- 
 able sequel. We had no power, even if we had so 
 inclined, to investigate what importation of arms, if any, 
 had been made at Belfast or any of the Ulster ports, or 
 as to whether the Government showed, there, a vigilance 
 which supported the law or a laches which lowered it and so 
 encouraged its defiance. Had we started that, we might 
 not have got to the bottom of it yet. Here was a not 
 unfamiliar affair. An intense public clamour : stilled by 
 the appointment of a Royal Commission : and the terms 
 of the remit so drawn, wilfully or unwittingly, as to shut 
 out vital sections of the truth. 
 
 We had not long started with the Inquiry till we came 
 to realize that. But we had to stick to our text. The 
 sequel of the importation was a sorry business. The 
 Customs Authorities did not move. But others did, and ; 
 as we unanimously found, without consultation with re- 
 sponsible superiors and without the bounds and sanction 
 of law. The police were called out in force; then the
 
 THE IMPORTATION OF ARMS 287 
 
 military; some arms were seized; numbers of people, 
 furious at this turn of affairs, followed the military with 
 insulting behaviour into Dublin. In Bachelors' Walk the 
 soldiers turned in wrath, and in the confusion fired point- 
 blank into the unarmed crowd, killing three and injuring 
 thirty-eight persons. 
 
 We had to unravel the story, and we were entirely 
 agreed in holding that neither on the civil nor the, 
 military side was the procedure warranted by law. 
 That law we investigated, analysing the Statutes; 
 and we devoted a special chapter to that delicate but 
 most important inquiry, namely, the scope and limits of 
 military duty in a civil emeuie. These things are worth 
 learning. Alas ! when the crisis comes, they are kept in 
 the study instead of being used in the street. Will either 
 civilians or military ever learn them and give heed ? Above 
 all, will it ever be so in Ireland? Still we grope on, in 
 the darkness, praying for the dawn. 
 
 That broil is not forgotten, but it is past. A few 
 deaths, a few woundings, sad and tragical as they were, 
 were as nothing compared to the underlying significance 
 of the affair ; and that, owing to the terms of our Commis- 
 sion, it was beyond our province to get at. My distin- 
 guished and learned colleagues and I felt this. Here 
 was a something passing out of our hands, but the cor- 
 rectitude of the position precluded our getting down to 
 those basic causes which were as wide as the administration 
 of Ireland. 
 
 We could not part with the problem thus. So we 
 boldly stated our conjecture, told how in the circumstances 
 there was no evidence, but ventured our emphatic opinion 
 as to what its awful meaning for Ireland would be if the
 
 288 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 conjecture were true. Was it true ? Men in Ulster knew. 
 The Irish administration, ah ! how great was its responsi- 
 bility if it knew : how great was its responsibility if it did 
 not know ! 
 
 Read these scrupulously careful sentences. Can any 
 man doubt their soundness? 
 
 " If the administration of the law in Ireland or the action of 
 the Executive had been characterized by partiality or discrimina- 
 tion as between localities or classes of Your Majesty's subjects 
 we should not have hesitated to condemn this, not only as wrong 
 in itself, but as provocative of those very hostilities and animosi- 
 ties among and between sections of the population which it 
 should be the object of all proper administration to allay. To 
 take the instance in hand if through the action of the Executive 
 Government a discrimination had been made under which the 
 seizure of arms had been forbidden in Belfast and ordered in 
 Dublin, or if in the one possession and parade of contraband 
 arms had been allowed, and in the other interdicted and treated 
 as a crime by the Government of the day we should not have 
 hesitated to connect the unfortunate and mischievous results 
 with this unfortunate and mischievous cause. . . . We may note 
 one singular illustration of how quickly the view of indis- 
 criminate or uneven administration is apprehended and resented. 
 When the order to seize rifles was given, eighteen of the police, 
 whose obedience and discipline are notorious, refused to obey. 
 One of their number who was examined before us gave their 
 reason, viz., that the disarming could surely not be legal as it 
 had not been done in Belfast. The eighteen were at once with- 
 drawn from action, and two of them, including the witness 
 referred to, were dismissed on the following evening. We only 
 cite the incident to illustrate how disastrous to contentment and 
 to order it would be if the law were partially or unevenly 
 administered." 
 
 But you ask, " Father, was the conjecture true? " Was 
 that one of the Sorrows of our beloved Island? 
 
 Ah, my dear, do not ask. These are questions for the 
 Muse of History.
 
 THE IMPORTATION OF ARMS 289 
 
 Besides, how late it is ! I fling another log or two 
 on the fire, thinking still of Ireland, but of another visit to 
 it, a visit in the spring of the following year, and of that 
 adventure which I may speak to you of to-morrow, an ad- 
 venture when I had a bout with the notorious Enemy with 
 the Scythe, who had dogged my steps for years. 
 
 Your ever affectionate 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XLII 
 THE SWISH OF THE SCYTHE 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 January 4, 1921. 
 DEAR LASS, 
 
 The mountains are robed in white, and the foothills 
 are swathed in a delicate tracery of snow. The hoar- 
 frost is on the ground, and in the glens and the hollows 
 the thin white mists rise like an exhalation. Five years 
 ago I had my doubts whether I should ever see such scenes 
 again. 
 
 The steady mass of professional cares was up to the 
 strength limit; but when on top of those came the Boer 
 War and the Church debacle, the stand to be taken about 
 these things nearly made an end of your respected parent. 
 There can be no doubt that, owing to those strained and 
 crowded hours, the uncertain dietary and sometimes no 
 dietary at all, the night travelling, the great gatherings, 
 there began those years of recurrent trouble which physi- 
 cians could not diagnose but which developed quickly 
 during the years of the Lord Advocacy. 
 
 Hardly a day passed of all the term of that high office 
 when I was free from pain, and, without the sterling help- 
 fulness and watchful care of the home circle and of my 
 secretaries, I could not have held on. Buoyancy went out 
 of life, and it was only when I was on my legs in the House 
 
 of Commons that it came back. Before I left that House 
 
 290
 
 THE SWISH OF THE SCYTHE 291 
 
 the recurrent had become chronic, and not to put too fine 
 a point upon it a certain interior was in urgent need of 
 alterations and repairs. A year or two without improve- 
 ment : a year or two more and things growing worse ; then, 
 in the spring of 1915, I packed up my traps en route for 
 Ireland. 
 
 Should I ever recross the Channel? Who knew? 
 Little was said to the dear ones, except that I was to rest 
 and recuperate in the good Wheeler's Nursing Home : / 
 knew that it was the surgeon's knife, and that I was near 
 the gates of death. Alexander's affectionate anxiety could 
 not be stilled, and he quietly followed me. 
 
 I may tell you that your worthy brother-in-law strongly 
 protested against being the performer. He was not going, 
 said he, to start slicing up his relations ! There was a 
 good deal of fun, but it closed up when I said that I could 
 almost hear the swish of the scythe, and that if he would 
 not operate I was quite content to die. So he buckled to. 
 
 Never was a man more in luck. My affairs were all 
 arranged. I was in the best of hands, human and divine. 
 And so were they, the best of all the earth, whether I was 
 with them or away. 
 
 The fear of death seems to me an incredible thing. 
 Life and Immortality have been brought to light. The 
 true Life is to come. 
 
 This lamentation about having to face death is partly 
 paganism and partly conceit. Paganism, because at the 
 pinch the belief in a God of Truth and Wisdom has 
 vanished and there is a tumult of fear at the prospect of 
 that very moment when we move into the Arms of Love. 
 And the conceit of it ! This over-valuing by otherwise 
 quite sensible people of their own little allotment on
 
 292 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Earth's surface and in Earth's history : it makes one a little 
 bit impatient to see the sorry spectacle so often. 
 
 All this : how old-fashioned it is ! But, my dearest, 
 there are at least two things about this faith. It wears 
 well ; and, at the hour of trial, it does not fail. 
 
 Perhaps it helped to save my life, giving the daring 
 deed a fair and even chance. The buoyancy returned : 
 the gnawing pain was gone. I was a rebel once again. 
 God save Ireland ! 
 
 Good night, dear child. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 LETTER XLIII 
 THE FIRST SINN FEIN REBELLION 
 
 Craigmyle. 
 
 January 5, 1921. 
 MY BELOVED ISABEL, 
 
 As the novels say : One year elapsed. I returned to 
 Ireland. It was Eastertide, and there was nothing what- 
 ever to suggest an impending tragedy or the spilling of 
 blood. On the morning of Easter Monday I motored off 
 into the Wicklow Hills to fish ; at half-past five I returned 
 to Dublin, where all was strangely quiet. 
 
 To a London daily at the time I contributed a series 
 of articles on my next five days' experiences, and I shall 
 make an extract or two. The first Sinn Fein rebellion had 
 broken out. It is all part of history now, but let me tell 
 you a point or two, here and there, still vivid. 
 
 Let us begin at the beginning : 
 
 "At the door in Fitzwilliam Square I was welcomed with a 
 curious sigh of relief. 
 
 "' It's great doings we've been having since your Lordship 
 lift us,' said the Irish housemaid to me on the threshold. She 
 was unable to keep silent. ' Them Sinn Feiners is shooting, 
 something awful. Mr. Wheeler's been run off his feet all the 
 day : there's officers in the Nursing Home badly hit with them 
 bullets, and at Mercer's it's dead and dying they are,' etc., etc." 
 
 The insurgents had dug trenches in St. Stephen's 
 Green, and from these they sniped, and their fire concen-
 
 294 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 trated on the Shelburne Hotel, which, when Sir Horace 
 Plunkett and I passed next day, was rather a woe-begone 
 sight, its glass smashed with bullets and its windows barri- 
 caded with bedding. But the incredulous curiosity of the 
 populace no military regulation seemed to be able to 
 restrain. I shared the feeling myself. 
 
 In fact, in the twilight I broke bounds. I escaped 
 from zealous guardianship, and found my way to Stephen's 
 Green. There were small gatherings of people here and 
 there, with no traces of real alarm, but many signs of 
 real curiosity. The firing was slacking off. I saw the 
 stopped tramcars, and the overturned carts and other 
 obstacles. The so-called barricades were poor affairs, 
 inartistically put together, incomplete as barricades, and 
 suitable merely as shelters here and there for individual 
 snipers. 
 
 One manoeuvre was certainly new to military annals. 
 I had been interned in the Nursing Home, during the 
 doctor's rushes to the wounded in hospital and elsewhere : 
 and of course the staff, with their pleasant recollections 
 of my case last year, thought that I was still under their 
 jurisdiction ! And when the hue and cry about me break- 
 ing bounds was raised, they formed a posse uniformed, 
 gentle, but very resolute and they tracked me to St. 
 Stephen's Green, surrounded me, scolded me, and marched 
 me out of danger. Very imposing affair ! 
 
 Besides curiosity, there was a sense of affront on the 
 part of these crowds of spectators. And when the military 
 was poured into Dublin I feel almost certain that there 
 was a sense of relief and gratitude. This distinguishes 
 that outbreak from probably all the others which have 
 succeeded. These soldiers, it has to be remembered, were
 
 THE FIRST SINN FEIN REBELLION 295 
 
 disciplined men. They lined the streets, and this I saw 
 with my own eyes, namely, that for hospitality soldiers 
 never at such a task had had such a time. In Nassau 
 Street, for instance, the people came out and were supply- 
 ing them with apples, biscuits and bananas one woman 
 going from man to man with her great teapot and a cup. 
 Fraternizing with the gallant Tommy was general. 
 
 This, mark you, was after severe fighting, after the 
 seizure of the Post Office, the destruction of great parts 
 of Abbey Street, and after a monitor in the Liffey had 
 blown Larkin's headquarters to bits. The sight of this 
 filled me with a strange hopefulness, and, notwithstanding 
 the hubbub, I wrote down this : 
 
 "As the night drew on, the heavy firing, the explosion of 
 hand grenades, and the rattle of musketry grew severe. The 
 sky was lit up by the flames from a part of Sackville Street and 
 its hinterland. This hinterland, a side street of buildings, was 
 being burnt out it was said to make clear range for an artillery 
 attack on the General Post Office. Against the background of 
 flame stood beautifully out the dome of a new building I think 
 the Royal College of Science. Was it an omen ? Against the 
 lurid and tragic background of its history, was a new, a better 
 Ireland, to stand forth? With the dawning of another day the 
 background flame and smoke and much that was old would 
 have gone, but the new dome would catch the sun. Was that, 
 too, an omen ? And so to bed." 
 
 And this also : 
 
 "Where are the police? There are no police. A uniform 
 was too tempting a target for the Sinn Fein snipers, and the 
 police have been disbanded or have taken to mufti. But there 
 is no general disorder not at all. On the contrary, the general 
 demeanour of the people, their bravery and good humour and 
 courage, their kindness and friendship towards the soldiery, and 
 their mutual helpfulness all this is beyond praise." 
 
 Alas ! alas ! Why were my hopes, why were the hopes
 
 296 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of millions, blasted? With my own eyes I had seen in 
 the Dispensary of Mercer's the rifle taken by a priest from 
 a wounded Sinn Feiner. It was engraven with the crown 
 and star and marked 
 
 :< Deutsche Waff en und 
 
 " Munitions Fabriken, 
 
 " Berlin," 
 
 and it had all the minute numbering of Prussian detail. 
 Here was an Ireland tempted with German munitions, and 
 one cannot doubt tempted with German money. Yet with 
 my eyes I had seen that Ireland's people wanted to be 
 our friends. 
 
 Why were our hopes blasted? Because, my dear, the 
 psychological moment the moment of fraternizing was 
 lost. The Rebellion was put down, but in the manner 
 of its putting down no heart was won. Martial law pre- 
 vailed; the country was scoured far and wide for arms, 
 and instead of a quick peace, one or two selected deaths, 
 and then a wide amnesty, there came the slow-footed an- 
 nouncement that to-day so many had been executed, then 
 in a day or two others had paid the last penalty; and so 
 day and death followed day and death, till the whole heart 
 of Ireland revolted, and the language changed : one heard 
 not now of penalty but of sacrifice : and still the bloody 
 task was not over; and men far and wide began to hate 
 the England that made these recurring martyrdoms. 
 
 What is martial law ? It may have its awful uses, and 
 it must needs follow the tide of conquest. But it is no 
 law : it is the helter-skelter struggle of the top-dog. And 
 in a civil broil, what are the things that are wanted to 
 commend a peace? Are they not understanding, sym-
 
 THE FIRST SINN FEIN REBELLION 297 
 
 pathy, forgiveness, reconciliation ? Of those things martial 
 law is not the instrument, for it is an instrument without 
 a heart. 
 
 I hear the wind among the pines. The long night is 
 closing in, and the storm-clouds are descending. To- 
 morrow the earth will be vestured in snow. 
 
 Your bethochtit 
 
 FATHER. 
 
 nr 
 
 T 41
 
 LETTER XLIV 
 RIGHT TO WORK AND DUTY TO WORK 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, S.W .$. 
 
 January 28, 1921. 
 ISABEL, MY DEAREST, 
 
 In a letter to you some time ago I described how, in 
 the beginning of the year 1920, the task was laid upon 
 me of being President of the " Court of Inquiry concern- 
 ing Transport Workers Wages and Conditions of Em- 
 ployment of Dock Labour." 
 
 We met in the Court of Criminal Appeal and the scene 
 was interesting. The problem to be investigated was as 
 acute as this, that upon its settlement rested the avoidance 
 of a strike at every port in the United Kingdom, of hard- 
 ship to every home in the land, and of misery and want on 
 a heartbreaking scale. What would happen should a dis- 
 pute in this business of dock labour stop our sea-borne 
 imports as well as our export trade, and so deny to the body 
 of our people the very necessaries of life? Who could 
 tell? 
 
 Well, I was informed that the crowd within those walls 
 were not curiosity hunters, but were men representing 
 employers and employed from every important port in the 
 Kingdom. And I think that this thought was in the back 
 of all our minds : that we should let the subject evolve 
 itself without passion or prejudice, but simply as an in- 
 vestigation of the rival courses suggested and of whether 
 
 298
 
 RIGHT AND DUTY TO WORK 299 
 
 these were for evil or for advantage, for peril or for safety. 
 Above all, the supreme need lay upon us to face difficulties 
 both with caution and with courage. We were there, in 
 short, to let both sides have, alike in the procedure which 
 achieved the result and in the result itself, a square 
 deal. 
 
 On the Court I had the honour to act along with four 
 representatives of Employers and four representatives of 
 Labour, and once we got into our stride these very able 
 men worked every one of them towards that end. And 
 somehow we felt that this spirit, which was admirably 
 helped by brilliant advocacy, was having an educative 
 effect on the representative gathering. Here was no 
 ordinary trade dispute, no violence, no overbearing, but 
 each party heard for all the best that it could make of its 
 side of the truth. Many of these men had not believed 
 that there was any other side to the dispute but one. To 
 unlearn that prejudice is surely an education. Thus the 
 way was prepared for the acceptance of an arbitrative 
 award. 
 
 Yet neither party, nor perhaps even the Government 
 itself, which had set up the Court, was prepared for the 
 lessons which were read to them each and all. The settle- 
 ment of wages was not the mere fixing of a figure; that 
 Court touched more than passing causes and it could not 
 but lift the curtain upon wider and abiding problems. 
 The outstanding one of these was what I may call the 
 status of Labour itself its economic status, its moral 
 status with all the responsibilities which this involved. 
 Near the very centre of this trouble was one topic with 
 a heartless past the dependence of our dock and harbour 
 trade upon casual labour. This was a past for revolt
 
 300 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 against which one at least of my respected colleagues had 
 stood in the dock. 
 
 I do not want you to forget the like of this, for instance, 
 which has appeared to learned students to be of historical 
 and economic significance, as even marking a stage in the 
 uplift of society. The majority of the Court reported 
 thus : 
 
 ".The Court is of opinion that labour frequently or constantly 
 unemployed is injurious to the interests of the workers, the 
 ports, and the public, and that it is discreditable to society. It 
 undermines all security, and is apt to undermine all self-respect 
 upon the workers' part. It is only among those who have sunk 
 very far and whom the system itself may have demoralized, 
 that it can be accepted as a working substitute for steady and 
 assured employment. In one sense it is a convenience to 
 authorities and employers, whose requirements are at the mercy 
 of storms and tides and unforeseen casualties, to have a reservoir 
 of unemployment which can be readily tapped as the need 
 emerges for a labour supply. If men were merely the spare 
 parts of an industrial machine, this callous reckoning might be 
 appropriate; but society will not tolerate much longer the con- 
 tinuance of the employment of human beings on those lines. 
 
 "The system of casualization must, if possible, be torn up by 
 the roots. It is wrong. And the one issue is as to what 
 practical means can be adopted of readily providing labour, 
 while avoiding cruel and unsocial conditions. 
 
 "So serious has the position become that it has evolved habits 
 of mind and body on the part of the workmen themselves which 
 are detrimental to them and on a wide scale deeply injurious. 
 Many workers have got into the habit of thinking that day 
 labour is a sign of independence, and that labour secured even 
 for a week leaves them devoid of that liberty to do nothing 
 which they have come to prize. As in so many other cases 
 mentioned in this Report, this habit of mind is in no respect 
 sanctioned by the leaders of the men, and, as properly urged by 
 them, one of the true lines of reform in this trade will be the 
 abolition of the daily wage system and the substitution therefor 
 of the payment of wages weekly."
 
 RIGHT AND DUTY TO WORK 301 
 
 With the uplifting of the status of dock labour there 
 came also into full view the problem of the standard of 
 living for human beings. Upon this problem philan- 
 thropists and sociologists had worked for two genera- 
 tions, but it had been brought to acuteness and extreme 
 urgency by the high level of prices reached during the 
 War. 
 
 On that problem this was the deliverance : 
 
 "The true and substantial case presented by the dockers was 
 based upon a broad appeal for a better standard of living. 
 What is a better standard of living ? By this is not meant a 
 right to have merely a subsistence allowance, in the sense of 
 keeping the soul and body of the worker together, but a right 
 to have life ordered upon a higher standard, with full regard to 
 those comforts and decencies which are promotive of better 
 habits, which give a chance for the development of a greater 
 sense of self-respect, and which betoken a higher regard for the 
 place occupied by these workers in the scheme of citizenship. 
 The Court did not discourage this view; on the contrary, it 
 approved of it; and it is fair to the Port Authorities and em- 
 ployers to say that its soundness was not questioned. In the 
 opinion of the Court the time has gone past for assessing the 
 value of human labour at the poverty line." 
 
 What then, with a new status of labour and with a 
 higher standard of living what then? Had not these 
 rights of labour their correlative in its duties? Must not 
 labour accept also its measure of responsibilities, dignify- 
 ing its sphere and justifying its place in the new scheme 
 of things? 
 
 This question brought us up not only to labour's reward 
 but to labour's return, not only to standards of living but 
 to standards of honour. On these things the Court spoke 
 thus :
 
 302 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 "When in the ordinary business of life the common 
 standards, say, of time, money, weight or measure, are made 
 matters of bargain, they, of course, become for each of the 
 parties standards of honour; and there is just as little justifica- 
 tion, say, for one man giving short time as for another giving 
 short weight. Each is upon the equal footing of being con- 
 demned by contract, by law, and by the principles of fair 
 dealing. These things are quite well known, and the habit of 
 ignoring them in any department of life is a habit against which 
 all enlightened men, and amongst these the Court emphatically 
 includes the leaders of labour, resolutely set their faces." 
 ***** 
 
 "Upon the second point, the course of enlightenment does 
 not seem to have made the progress which might have been 
 anticipated. The Court cannot be blind to the fact that there 
 is, not arising from exceptional causes but as part of a deliberate 
 policy, the adoption in not a few cases of a system of slowing 
 down of output. Blame in this respect can only be imputed 
 to a minority of the men interested in this Inquiry. The great 
 majority see the system in its true light. The system known 
 as ' ca' canny ' is loss on every side. The workman gains 
 nothing in time. Even with regard to his habits and character, 
 as well as the dignity of his calling, the things which to every 
 decent man are really precious, loss ,ind deterioration and injury 
 occur. It must need be so under a system which substitutes for 
 honest work a scheme of make-believe. To take the illustration 
 given, it is not a case of short time in the apparent bulk, it is 
 time adulterated, just as the other case, say, the case of a mer- 
 chant, who would make up weight by moistening his sugar or 
 mixing it with sand. There is one answer, and one only, to all 
 such devices : honesty forbids." 
 
 I hope that I have not bored you with these sentences. 
 Perhaps you will agree that they should not be entirely 
 buried in a Blue Book. 
 
 And remember this also. I share the regrets of so 
 many at the deficiencies of the economic education of our 
 people not of one class but of all classes. I share the 
 aspirations of sociologists. But beneath both regrets and
 
 RIGHT AND DUTY TO WORK 303 
 
 aspirations lies a something in the moral sphere : in 
 theology men call it righteousness; in law, justice; in the 
 life of man it is honesty. When capital is squandered 
 except it be in war the fragments of it may be ingathered 
 in other hands. But it is not so with labour or with time. 
 Labour withheld : only the severest strain can ever replace 
 that. Time squandered, is time lost for ever. These 
 things are no doubt so : but yet beneath all is another 
 essential fundamental truth, that the withholding of con- 
 tract labour and the adulteration of contract time do 
 violence to fair dealing. It is that which gives serious 
 men pause not simply that a loss is involved which makes 
 for poverty and want, but because " Honesty forbids." 
 
 But when men deplore the too frequent departure from 
 standards of honour, do not be too downhearted. That 
 is, that must be, a passing phase. It is the vicious remnant 
 of an evil past. It is of good cheer that of seven members 
 of the Dock Inquiry Court who signed these outspoken 
 words, four of them were able, leading, representative 
 working men. A better day is dawning the day of the 
 right to work and the duty to work. 
 
 " We walk the wilderness to-day, 
 The promised land to-morrow." 
 
 Have you read all this letter, without skipping? If 
 so, you are a good and thoughtful maidie, and you have 
 
 pleased a 
 
 Very austere 
 
 PARENT.
 
 LETTER XLV 
 
 "TRUTH AND JUSTICE THEN" 
 
 I, Palace Gate, 
 
 Christmas Eve, 1919. 
 MY DEAREST ISABEL, 
 
 (You have given me back this letter a year after it was 
 written, and asked me to bring it up to date. So the first 
 three paragraphs have been put in not as a postscript 
 but as an antescript !) 
 
 Yes, I hear you say : " You have been telling me about 
 Royal Commissions and the League of Nations and things 
 like that since you went into the Lords : but what about 
 the Law?" 
 
 It is perhaps not unnatural that after I have been 
 eleven or twelve years at the job, you should press me to 
 say something about my doings as a Judge. But I am 
 not going to yield to even your importunity or to start 
 anything of the kind. Do you not think, upon reflection, 
 that such an exercise is unbecoming? Speaking as a 
 lawyer, I must tell you again of the good rule, that no man 
 can be a judge in his own cause : And as a Presbyterian I 
 hereby solemnly declare that it is not to edification. 
 
 It is for others to appraise all that. Not even to 
 Hansard, not even to the Statute Book must they go, but 
 for all these twelve years' labour to the Law Reports ! 
 
 Oh, the Law Reports, the Law Reports ! Think of 
 them, with all their Diocesan dignity, and that kind of 
 
 304
 
 "TRUTH AND JUSTICE THEN' 1 305 
 
 unctuous and reproachful decency which repels your in- 
 trusive advances. Leave them alone; they are not for 
 the like of you. Have a look just at their backs : bucolic, 
 splendidly housed, all full calf. How often have I been 
 tempted to put a tablet above them inscribed with Byron's 
 couplet from " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " L : 
 
 " Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain, 
 The petrifactions of the plodding- brain." 
 
 Such irreverence, I am sure ! The kind of rebound 
 after a long period of tension, into the slack of the holiday 
 season. But I cannot keep it up. May I have a serious 
 word with you? 
 
 The other afternoon, with a sigh of relief, for it has 
 been a laborious term, the sittings for the year of the 
 Judicial Committee came to an end. The two last de- 
 cisions just before we rose awoke curious reflections. Not 
 unseasonable thoughts they were, even for Christmastide. 
 One of these cases was a conflict between a native prince 
 and a municipality in Oudh as to the right of the latter 
 to drive a street through a Gunj, or market-square, on 
 the ground of which, beneath the fierce rays of the Indian 
 sun, you might see the natives exposing their grain in 
 piled-up heaps. The other was a contest between a 
 wealthy Railway and a great Corporation, and it was, if 
 you please, about the clearing away of snow from the 
 tracks of a street railway in the City of Toronto ! At 
 one bound, so to speak, from the sweltering heat of India, 
 away to another continent, to the chill and rigour of 
 Canadian winter ! And all these contentions to be laid 
 to rest in that little room in Whitehall which you know. 
 
 Suddenly, as I felt that " the time draws near the birth
 
 306 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 of Christ," I realized that the quiet, far-reaching task in 
 which the Privy Council is engaged may be must be 
 a part of that process, in which, through instruments ever 
 so imperfect, the perfect scheme of peace on earth may 
 be lifted forward in the practice and affairs of men. 
 
 Quiet, did I say ? Yes : its business is the search for 
 truth; and the stuff which it works in is justice. A grave 
 task and austere, according so much with simplicity and 
 quiet that there is no place there for even the paraphernalia 
 of a Court. 
 
 Far-reaching, did I say? Yes. From that little room 
 in Whitehall is wielded a jurisdiction over one-quarter of 
 the population of the globe. To that little room come 
 able, learned men, widely different in race and creed and 
 colour, all to help in that task, fundamentally human, 
 fundamentally divine, the search for truth, the doing of 
 
 justice. 
 
 " Yea; Truth and Justice then 
 Shall down return to men." 
 
 Yes, the association of ideas of our task with the 
 season is not fanciful. Rightly conceived, the supreme 
 tribunal's authority and work must have their place in 
 an evolution and a purpose wider than human constitu- 
 tions, more lasting than human institutions, loftier than 
 all schemes of jurisprudence or of law. Was not the 
 Miltonic conception sound to associate truth and justice 
 with goodwill and peace? Over and over again there 
 come before the Board questions, antagonisms, rivalries, 
 jealousies, which in former times would have driven races, 
 provinces, kingdoms, to rancorous and bloody wars. These 
 problems are settled by the arbitrament of equity and by 
 a justice so manifestly achieved without fear or favour,
 
 "TRUTH AND JUSTICE THEN" 307 
 
 that their solution is accepted with a loyalty at once 
 respectful, real and complete. So that one can feel that 
 peace is being won and kept by justice a peace more 
 enduring than any that could be imposed even by the rod 
 of Imperial power. 
 
 Christmas Eve : Christmas Eve : Put up the holly. 
 
 Your affectionate Father, 
 
 SHAW OF DUNFERMLINE. 
 
 
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 LETTER XLVI 
 LITERATURE AND THE LEAGUE 
 
 9, Bolton Gardens, S.W '.5. 
 
 February i, 1921. 
 MY DEAR LASS, 
 
 There was a contrast, very broad indeed, between those 
 feelings and convictions which many of our people enter- 
 tained about the South African War (1899-1900) and those 
 which were stirred among us by the Great War of 1914- 
 1918. Of the former I have written to you more than 
 once; while of the latter you have felt the signification of 
 my view about a famous dispatch of Sir Edward Grey. 
 In the diplomatic dealings which preceded the first we did 
 not shine : in those which preceded the second I humbly 
 think that we did. You know my cast of mind how I 
 hate war, and militarism, and the tyranny of the powerful, 
 and all the rest of it : yet what I have stated on the Euro- 
 pean War question is my sincere belief : the War was on 
 its merits just, and on the facts a war which was unavoid- 
 able, so long as no method other than war had been devised 
 by civilization for the restraint of an aggressor. 
 
 The crucial point for millions like myself was : How 
 did we stand upon the broad issues raised by the pre-War 
 diplomacy? We thought in the one case that our dear 
 country was wrong, and in the other that it was right. 
 
 Who can tell? Our vision is too narrow. We must 
 humbly abide in each case the questionings of conscience 
 
 308
 
 LITERATURE AND THE LEAGUE 309 
 
 and the verdict of history. As for myself, I feel that it is, 
 of course, within the bounds of possibility that the dis- 
 passionate man may yet arise who will defend the trans- 
 actions and communications of Germany, unwinding her 
 policy and justifying her ambitions, but I gravely doubt 
 whether such a man has yet been born. 
 
 It is not for you and me within the compass of a letter 
 to go into these questions of deep policy. But while 
 there was so much of contrast between the one case and 
 the other, there was at least one point, one little spark 
 of lightness and of happiness, that shone for us in the 
 gloom of these terrible wars. 
 
 You know how I have always loved the highways of 
 literature rather than its by-ways probably because a 
 scant leisure did not permit of the more leisured enjoy- 
 ments. During these wars had not one the need and the 
 hunger for great elementary consolations rather than for 
 petty distractions ? So it came about that during the Boer 
 War my Elizabethan studies were broadened as I have 
 described. 
 
 Then, when the European conflict came, one felt that 
 one had not during one's life dealt faithfully by France, 
 that wounded, bleeding, distracted, heroic country. And 
 when I took to French literature again with that kind of 
 fanciful sense of duty, I confess to you, Isabel, that I did 
 not fully realize how solidly and nobly built was its great 
 highway. Just as in a former period Shakespeare and 
 Spenser had provided their unfailing springs of delight, so 
 amidst the clamorous noise of the great events of the 
 second vast conflict the quiet hours were brightened by 
 Moliere and uplifted by Victor Hugo. Here am I to-day, 
 having for instance read during that War all the works of
 
 3io LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 Moliere, and having gone from cover to cover of Hugo's 
 " Les Miserables," with its forty romances, having 
 wandered among his dramas and poems, stretching from 
 the glorious monologues of Hernani one of these so 
 daring as to recall to the mind the vast structure of human 
 order conceived by Hobbes in his " Leviathan " from 
 these to the idyllic sweetness of L'Enfant. 
 
 I give these only as samples from that great high- 
 way stretching on to Cherbuliez and Barbusse in our 
 own day; but I declare to you that it sometimes crosses 
 my mind that at least this is one of the uses of great wars, 
 to make men take to great literatures. One need not name 
 the list of heroes, but surely one will love France with 
 an affection which is more durable, having walked, how- 
 ever imperfectly, among her great ideas led by the most 
 gifted of her sons. 
 
 Shortly after the Armistice was declared I found these 
 studies to be not without value, and they formed, I think, 
 part of the link of my friendship with M. Bourgeois, the 
 present President of the French Senate. It came about 
 in this way. After the Armistice was declared, and when 
 the great Conference was being held in Paris to hammer 
 out the Treaty of Peace, I went there at the head of a 
 deputation from the League of Nations Society. Similar 
 deputations proceeded from other countries, and, together 
 with our brethren in France, we held a series of meetings, 
 our object being to get our ideas put into definite shape 
 on a subject which was infinitely more important to the 
 world, in our opinion, than the mere haggling over the 
 arrangements among the victors or with the vanquished. 
 Ostentatiously it had been declared that this was a War 
 to end War, and we wanted to help that in very truth it
 
 LITERATURE AND THE LEAGUE 311 
 
 should be so. Our desire was that the Peace should not 
 be a patch-up, but part of a recognized and permanent 
 principle for the arbitrative settlement of disputes between 
 all the kingdoms of the earth. 
 
 There was Utopia for you ! And on that subject just 
 let me go back a bit. For about a couple of years prior 
 to that the League of Nations Society had dragged on 
 with exiguous resources and in the cold shade of some- 
 thing worse than opposition, namely, indifference an 
 existence which was only brightened by the determination 
 and energy of a small knot of enlightened men. They 
 went from man to man looking for someone of the highest 
 public standing who would take them by the hand, and 
 they were not successful. It seems to-day like a dream 
 to me, the difference between that struggling infancy and 
 the quick and marvellous growth which has been reached 
 within four years' time. Just consider what it is to have 
 passed from that beginning, as I did as the President of 
 the Society, to that Chamber in Paris where the organizing 
 energy of M. Bourgeois and of delegates from Belgium, 
 Italy and many countries, some as far away as Japan and 
 India, had created an enthusiasm which was fanned into 
 a flame by the eloquence of Viviani. We were aware that 
 every evening as our propositions were formulated, after 
 discussion, they were conveyed by M. Bourgeois to M. 
 Clemenceau, and were welded into the Covenant which 
 was then being constructed. 
 
 The Covenant was framed. The actual League of 
 Nations came into being. And then think of that further 
 stage only the other day, when the League of Nations met 
 in Geneva with representatives upon it from forty-two 
 nations of the earth. You may see, of course, anywhere
 
 312 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 about the vast projects which came under discussion, but, 
 as I say, it is the contrast between the slender infancy and 
 the swift rise through an ardent youth to a strong manhood 
 that does impress one. 
 
 What shall happen to it ? Who can tell ? The memory 
 of man is short and the horrors of war pass into a kind 
 of gilded and glorified oblivion, and the demon is not 
 exorcised for ever. I know all that; but let us hope on. 
 It is indeed no light task for the nations to address them- 
 selves to a programme which is no less than the adjust- 
 ment of international disputes, the regulation of national 
 ambitions, and the prevention of international crimes. The 
 Holy Alliance failed, and all its pietistic provisions were 
 seen to have been but a cover for the jealousies of kings. 
 My hope is in the peoples of this world. It is they for 
 whom a League should exist. It is for them to say whether 
 the world is to be governed any longer by dynastic or 
 racial ambitions or on the principle of the brotherhood 
 of man. 
 
 Much learning in the past has led up to the present 
 situation, and, as you know, I have written upon Grotius 
 recently to some of the journals on this subject. But 
 neither past learning nor past history will guide civiliza- 
 tion far, unless all the great nations who own the name 
 will band themselves together. 
 
 What of America? Why does she stand out? In 
 Paris we found that our colleagues from America were 
 heart and soul with us, but were cramped at every turn 
 by consideration for the position of President Wilson and 
 by the trouble of party politics on that Continent, and their 
 Constitution seemed ever rising before them like a dis- 
 turbing spectre. At a great gathering one evening I spoke
 
 LITERATURE AND THE LEAGUE 313 
 
 heartily in public to our American friends, saying to them 
 what I now repeat to you, that it is right for a nation, just 
 as it is right for a man, to pay regard to the Constitution. 
 That makes it and him live a sober and a temperate life. 
 But when the tables are turned and the Constitution 
 becomes an obsession, and people are ever wondering 
 whether they should do this or that for fear of their Con- 
 stitution, then, whether it be for a nation or a man, the 
 paths of good sense and good comradeship and good 
 conduct may be blocked because of sheer hypochondria. 
 
 This view is, of course, open to many objections, but 
 it may strike some sensible men as true. America, thank 
 God ! came into the War before the European nations 
 were altogether bled white, and by her help the haemor- 
 rhage was staunched. It is no longer a case of a bleed- 
 ing world, but it is the case of a stricken, maimed and 
 wounded world, and in the healing of those wounds 
 and the restoration of a real peace, what we pray is 
 that America do not stand out until mortification has 
 set in. 
 
 It was from America that we learned afresh that " Man 
 is more than Constitutions." It was from America that we 
 learned afresh the unselfishness of true freedom, asking 
 ourselves, with a sense of consecration, whether we who 
 are free can 
 
 " With leathern hearts forget 
 That we owe mankind a debt." 
 
 Do not think I speak despairingly. I speak of a thing 
 which it is impossible for my mind to conceive that 
 America will turn its back upon those doctrines. With 
 the warmth of heart of its people and with the wealth 
 of talent in its public men, America will not be content
 
 314 LETTERS TO ISABEL 
 
 to find in its Constitution a paralysis which would disable 
 it from the duties of greatness and would make Alexander 
 Hamilton turn in his grave. No nation is strong enough 
 to turn its ideals into a derision. 
 
 Be patient, then : be patient with the League of 
 Nations. We hope in this : America will join up, and 
 so will Germany. Each of those countries has the equal 
 of a Bourgeois, or even his superior, in deep conviction, 
 in statesmanship, in organizing talent. May the time come 
 when in Britain, in America and in Germany there will 
 arise a Viviani ! I know that Lord Grey and Lord Robert 
 Cecil, who have done so much for the cause, will re-echo 
 this wish. 
 
 The cares of legal work press upon me. I have no 
 time to say more. How comforting to think that no pain 
 and no struggle in a good cause can ever be entirely lost ! 
 
 What an optimist I am ! 
 
 Your loving 
 
 FATHER.
 
 INDEX 
 
 " ABERDEEN Size " in hats, 88 
 
 Acland, Mr., 137 
 
 Admiralty Regulations for Shipping, 
 72 
 
 Advocate, becomes an, 41 
 drudgery of life of, 73, 74 
 
 Agnosticism, outbreak of, 9 
 
 Alexandriua, Lord Shaw's sister, death 
 of, 9 
 
 Alloa, Lord Shaw and Campbell- 
 Bannerman at, 236 
 
 Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice (see also 
 Webster, Sir Richard), on Presby- 
 terian Church Dispute in " Re- 
 collections of Bar and Bench," 
 191 
 
 America and Great War, 3 1 3 
 
 and League of Nations, 312-313 
 world influence of, 313 
 
 " American History," by Sir George 
 Trevelyan, 137 
 
 Americans, characteristics of, 146 
 
 Annual Synod of United Presbyterian 
 Church, 1 01 
 
 Anstruther, Sir Robert, as Parliamen- 
 tary candidate, 27 
 
 " Anti-burgher," Lord Shaw as, 68, 69 
 
 Apostolic succession and Presbyter- 
 ianism, 99, 101 
 
 Asher, Mr., estimate of, 117, 118 
 resigns Solicitor-Generalship for 
 Scotland, 116 
 
 Asquith, Mr., 229 
 
 and Campbell-Bannerrnau, 262, 
 
 263, 267, 269 
 
 formation of Government by, 281 
 succeeds Campbell-Bannerman, 280 
 
 Attorney-General for England, salary 
 of, 279 
 
 B 
 
 BACK Benches, loyalty of men of, 
 
 114-15 
 
 Balallan, Crofters' Meeting at, 58 
 Balfour, Mr. Arthur J., and Carnegie's 
 
 Scotch University Trust, 166 
 and United Free Church, 177 
 in Home Rule Debate, in, 124 
 lunches with Botha, 198, 200 
 on confederation of South Africa, 
 
 200 
 on South African Constitution, 198, 
 
 199 
 
 South African war, and, 195 
 Tariff Reform and, 273 
 unworthy treatment of Mr. Ure by, 
 
 251 
 
 Balfour, J. B., 236 
 Balfour, Lord Advocate, 69 
 
 as Lord Kinross, Lord President of 
 
 the Court of Session, 83 
 character of, 118 
 Mr. Gladstone as guest of, 83 
 Balfour of Burleigh, Lord, and Car- 
 negie's Scotch University Trust, 
 
 1 5&> 1 59> 1 6*> 17 
 
 Ballot Act, 27 
 
 Bar, Lord Shaw decides for, 30 
 training for, 40 
 
 " Barnbougle," Campbell - Banner- 
 man's name for Lord Rosebery, 
 268 
 
 Barrie, J. M., Lord Shaw on genius of, 
 no 
 
 Bartlett, Sir Ellis Ashmead, 113 
 
 " Basin of Rosyth," 6 
 
 Baxter, Richard, Mr. Gladstone on 
 works of, 85 
 
 Baynes, Professor, Lord Shaw intro- 
 duced to, 39 
 
 315
 
 INDEX 
 
 Belfast, July xath in, 123 
 " Belmont," Author as guest at, 239 
 funeral of Lady Campbell-Banner- 
 man from, 267 
 Bench of United Kingdom, sympathy 
 
 of, for barristers, 75 
 Bethell, Sir Richard, Gladstone's re- 
 collections of, 90 
 Bible, " atmosphere " of, in Scottish 
 
 homes, 16 
 
 " Biglow Papers " quoted, 193 
 Blackie, Professor, at Edinburgh Uni- 
 versity, 31, 32 
 Blair, Mr. John, and " Young Scots' 
 
 Society," 211, 213 
 Blair, Thomas, at Rosyth, 6 
 Board of Trade, Mr. Lloyd George's 
 
 administrative talent at, 274 
 Boers, popularity of, after war, 197 
 Bomba, King, 80 
 Books, availability of, to-day, 14 
 
 which influenced boyhood, 10, 15-17 
 Border Burghs, The, Alexander Laing 
 
 Brown, member for, 106 
 Austen Chamberlain candidate for, 
 
 107 
 
 Conan Doyle candidate for, 260 
 Election for, 108-109, 119 
 Home Rule and, 107 
 Liberal staunchness of, 128 
 Lord Shaw accepts invitation to 
 
 contest, 104 
 Sir George Trevelyan, member for, 
 
 105 
 Botha, General, Liberal dinner to, 
 
 198 
 
 Lord Roberts writes to, on repri- 
 sals, 222 
 
 Lord Shaw and, 198 
 Mr. Balfour, and, 198-200 
 prophecy on Confederation of South 
 
 Africa, 200 
 quoted by Lord Shaw, in Chinese 
 
 Labour speech, 196-7 
 sufferings of wife of, in war, 223 
 visit to England of, 197 
 Bourgeois, M., friendship with, 310 
 Boyd, Zachary, Mr. Gladstone on 
 translation of the Scriptures by, 
 85, 86 
 
 Bright, John, denounces verdict in 
 
 Rutherglen case, 49 
 mocked at, as pro- Russian, 78 
 British Linen Company Bank, Lord 
 
 Shaw tries for a clerkship in, 22 
 British Quarterly Review, article by 
 
 Author in, on Union with England 
 
 of Scotland and Ireland, 121 
 British Weekly, and Carnegie's Scotch 
 
 University Trust, 165 
 Brodrick, Mr., and trial of General 
 
 Kritzinger, 205 
 
 Brougham, Lord, Gladstone on, 88 
 Brown, Alexander Laing, as member 
 
 for Border Burghs, 106 
 Brown, Dr. John, " Horse Subsicivae " 
 
 by, 140 
 
 " Rab and His Friends," by, 139 
 stories of, 139, 140 
 Bruce, Dr., 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 Bryce, Mr. James (Lord Bryce), and 
 
 free University education, 155 
 
 et seq., 161 
 appointment as Chief Secretary for 
 
 Ireland, 264 
 " The Constitution of America," 
 
 by, 136 
 
 Buckle, Spanish History of, 39 
 Bunyan, " atmosphere " of, in Scottish 
 
 homes, 16 
 Burglary at Lord Shaw's Edinburgh 
 
 house, 216 et seq. 
 Burns, John, and Chinese Labour 
 
 debate, 196 
 Burns, Robert, as " Wizard of the 
 
 Future," 143 
 " atmosphere " of, in Scottish 
 
 homes, 16 
 influence of poems of, on boyhood, 
 
 15 
 quotations from, a propos of early 
 
 struggles of barrister, 74 
 quoted, on distribution of wealth, 
 
 134 
 Buxton, Mr. Sydney, at dinner to 
 
 Botha, 198 
 in opposition, 129 
 literary ability of, 137 
 Byron, Lord, quoted, 305
 
 INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 ROYAI,, politicians' dinner party 
 at, 266 
 Cairns, Lord Chancellor (Sir Hugh), 
 
 Gladstone's opinion of, 89 
 Cairns, Principal John, and Presby- 
 terian Union, 173 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 
 offered the Principalship of Edin- 
 burgh University, 102 
 Calderwood, Dr., Lord Shaw and, 36 
 Calvin, organizing genius of, 99 
 Campbell, Henry (see Campbell- 
 
 Bannerman, Sir Henry) 
 Campbell-Bannerruan, Sir Henry, ad- 
 herence to principle by, 245 
 
 and Carnegie Scotch University 
 Trust, 158, 163 
 
 and constitution for South Africa, 
 3, 195, 223, 241, 243 
 
 and Liberal League, 231 
 
 and military policy in South Africa, 
 220 
 
 and " Pilgrim's Progress," 267 
 
 and United Free Church, 177 
 
 as leader of Liberal Party, 247 
 
 as Prime Minister, 251 
 
 as public speaker, 235 
 
 authority of, 272 
 
 character of, 235, 236, 237 
 
 Chinese Labour debate, and, 196 
 
 death of, 269 
 
 elected for Dunfermline, 27 
 
 elected Leader of Liberal Party, 
 229 
 
 failing health of, 258, 268, 280 
 
 first parliamentary contest of, 
 26 
 
 formation of Ministry by, 260 et 
 seq. 
 
 gift of, for reconciliation of 
 opposites, 271 
 
 interview with, after 1905 election, 
 251, 26i?et seq. 
 
 intrigue against, 261 et seq. 
 
 letters from, 241-3, 246, 247, 248, 
 249, 250, 251, 259, 261, 265, 
 266-7, 268-9 
 
 literary tastes of, 238, 239 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 
 Lord and Lady Shaw as guests 
 of, 239, 240 
 Lord Shaw's last interview with, 
 
 269 
 
 Lord Shaw sees, concerning Presby- 
 terian legal proceedings, 183, 184 
 meets Presbyterian leaders, 175 
 on political ideal, 3 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Lady, death of, 
 
 267 
 Canada, Author and, 225 
 
 " Loyalist ',' riots in, 226 
 Canmore, King Malcolm, tomb of, 17 
 
 tower of, 17 
 Canterbury, Archbishop of, as guest of 
 
 Campbell - Bannerman, 239 
 Carlyle, as Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
 
 University, 38 
 Carnegie, Andrew, 27 
 as lover of music, 148 
 at Cluny Castle, 147, 151 et seq. 
 belaudings of German Emperor by, 
 
 163 
 
 character of, 144 et seq. 
 death of, 144 
 
 gift of, for free University education, 
 145, 156 et seq., 160 et seq., 166 
 et seq. 
 letter from, on University Trust, 
 
 161 
 Lord Shaw and, 144 et seq., 166 et 
 
 seq. 
 Carson, Sir Edward, in Home Rule 
 
 Debate, in 
 
 Catholic movement in Germany, Glad- 
 stone on, 87 
 " Cawnpore," by Sir George Tre- 
 
 velyan, 137 
 
 Cazenove, Provost Dr., discusses 
 Tractarian Movement with Mr. 
 Gladstone, 86, 87 
 Cecil, Lord Robert, and League of 
 
 Nations, 314 
 
 " Century Magazine," 146 
 Chalmers, Dr. Peter, " History of 
 
 Dunfermline " by, 17 
 Chamberlain, Mr. Austen, as candidate 
 
 for Border Burghs, 107 
 elected for Worcestershire, 107
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chamberlain, Joseph, and Crofters' 
 
 agitation, 58 
 
 and Home Rule, 107, 124 
 South African War, and, 195 
 tariff reform and, 273 
 Channing, Lord, and Kritzinger's trial, 
 
 207 
 
 Charlestown, changes at, 5 
 Chinese labour, speech on, 196 
 Church, affairs of, in Scotland in the 
 
 'eighties, 99 
 
 duty and responsibilities of, 67-8 
 Church and State, Presbyterians and, 
 
 101, 174 
 separation of, 70 
 Church Courts, 100 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, Loid Shaw 
 
 pairs with, 128 
 Churchill, Mr. Winston, at dinner at 
 
 Cafe Royal, 266 
 Cicero, influence of " pro Cluentio " on 
 
 Author, 33 
 Circuit Courts, young advocates and, 
 
 47 
 Clemenceau, League of Nations Society 
 
 and, 311 
 Clemens, Samuel, Mr. Carnegie and, 
 
 146, 147 
 Cluny Castle, Mr. Carnegie at, 147, 151 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Coal strike (1920), 234 
 Combe, George, " Constitution of 
 
 Man " by, 16 
 " Competition Wallah," by Sir George 
 
 Trevelyan, 137 
 " Constitution of Man," by George 
 
 Combe, 16 
 Cooper, Mr. (of The Scotsman), opinion 
 
 regarding, 95 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's story of, 88 
 Cordite vote (1895), 127 
 Corn Law Repeal, 78 
 Courtney, Lady, Author meets Botha 
 
 at house of, 198 
 Courtney, Lord, 198 
 
 on trial of Kritzinger, 206 
 Craigmyle Library, Dr. Ross at, 159 
 Criminal Cases, lack of, in Scotch 
 
 Advocate's experience, 47 
 Criminals, Defence of, in'Scotland, 47 
 
 Crofters Act, of 1886, 57 
 
 Crofters' Commissioners, report of, on 
 
 conditions in Lewis, 62, 63 
 work of, 57 
 
 D 
 
 DALMENY, Lord Shaw at, 232 
 Davidson, Dr., 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 Deer raiders, Lewis, trial of, 57 et 
 
 seq. 
 Denney, and United Free Church, 
 
 176 
 Derby, Lord, and Montenegrins as 
 
 " half savage people," 86 
 Dewar, Arthur (Lord Dewar), and 
 
 " Young Scots' Society," 211 
 Dickson, Mr. Scott, and Elgin Com- 
 mission, 1 88 
 Dillon, John, 263 
 " Disendower " and " Disestablisher, " 
 
 Lord Shaw becomes a, 70 
 Dissent, in Scotland, 100 
 Dockers' Inquiry, Lord Shaw invited 
 
 to preside over, 55 
 report of, 300 et seq. 
 scenes at, 298 et seq. 
 Dods, Marcus, 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 Doherty, trial and " judicial murder " 
 
 of, 47-49 
 
 Dollar, academy at, 21 
 Dollinger, Dr., Mr. Gladstone on, 87 
 Doyle, Mr. Conan, as candidate for 
 
 Border Burghs, 260 
 Dublin, Lord Shaw on Sinn Fein 
 
 rebellion in, 285, 293 et seq. 
 illness in, 285, 291, 292 
 Dunfermline, Abbey of, 16 
 boyhood in, 16, 17, 18, 20 
 election scene in, 27-29 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, born 
 
 at, 17 
 
 King Charles I. born at, 17 
 Mr. Carnegie's boyhood at, 146 
 Durham, Lord, Canadian report of, 
 226
 
 INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 EAST OF SCOTLAND Liberal League, 
 
 meeting of, in Edinburgh, 229 
 Lord Shaw and, 229-230 
 Edinburgh, difficulty of reaching from 
 
 Dunfermline, 21 
 Lloyd George at, 274 
 Lord Shaw's entrance to Parlia- 
 ment House at, 41 
 Mr. Gladstone on beauties of, 84 
 Mr. Merriman's arrival in, 212-214 
 Music Hall, Gladstone's meeting in, 
 
 80 et seq. 
 
 Parliament House of, 252 et seq. 
 student's life in, 35, 36 
 Edinburgh Reviewers, Mr. Gladstone 
 
 on, 88 
 Edinburgh University, celebrated 
 
 Lord Rectors of, 38 
 Ghillie's success at, 154 
 Lord Shaw at, 31 et seq. 
 principalship of, offered to Dr. John 
 
 Cairns, 102 
 
 Stevenson competitor for professor- 
 ship at, 139 
 Education, a passion with parents, 
 
 19 
 " Educational Ladder," ambitions 
 
 concerning, 145 
 Lord Shaw and, 22, 31, 128 
 Edward VII., King, sends for Camp- 
 
 bell-Bannerman, 260 
 telegram to concerning Kritzinger, 
 
 207, 208 
 'Eighties, The, affairs of Scottish 
 
 Church in, 99 
 Author's recollections of, 73 et 
 
 seq., 98 et seq. 
 public feeling in, 78 
 Election scenes in the 'sixties, 26-29 
 Elgin Commission, appointment of, 
 
 188 
 Elgin, Lord, and Carnegie's Scotch 
 
 University Trust, 168, 169 
 leaves Colonial Office, 281 
 " Encyclopaedia Britannica," Lord 
 
 Shaw as contributor to, 39 
 England, " blindness of," in relation to 
 Irish affairs, 79, 80 
 
 Essex Hall, meeting at, concerning 
 Kritzinger's trial, 205, 206 
 
 Established Church of Scotland, 101 
 
 Ethics, appointed assistant professor 
 of, 36 
 
 Evangelicalism in Scottish life, 140, 
 141 
 
 Evans, Sir Francis, 267 
 
 Evans, Sir Samuel, 72 
 
 FELLOWSHIP gained at Edinburgh 
 University, 37 
 
 Fenwick, Mr., 113 
 
 Finance, in the 'eighties, 78 
 
 Follett, Sir William, Gladstone's opin- 
 ion of, 89 
 
 Foreign Affairs in the 'eighties, interest 
 of Scotland in, 78 
 
 Foreign policy in the 'eighties, 78 
 
 Forgery, defence in case of, 49-54 
 
 Foster, Sir Walter (Lord Ilkestone), 
 at Cluny Castle, 151, 153, 
 
 154 
 
 Fowler, Sir Henry, 264 
 France, restoration of Christian Sab- 
 bath in, 66 
 
 Free Church of Scotland and Church 
 and State, perplexity of, in rela- 
 tion to, 101 
 
 question of union and, 101 
 " theological princes " of, 12 
 Free University Education, Lord 
 
 Shaw and, 155 et seq. 
 Mr. Carnegie and, 145, 148 et seq., 
 
 155 et seq., i6oet seq. 
 French biography, attraction of, 39 
 French literature, 309 
 French Revolution, distribution of 
 testamentary property under, 
 
 134 
 
 influence of Plutarch on, 40 
 Front Bench, promotion to, 113 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Froude, as Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
 University, 38
 
 320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 GENERAL Assembly of Church of 
 
 Scotland, Lord Shaw at, as 
 
 Solicitor-General, 69 
 George, Mr. Lloyd, administrative 
 
 talent of, 274 
 
 and " Wee Macgreegor," 273 
 as sermon hearer, 272, 273 
 asks Author to preside at Dockers' 
 
 inquiry, 55 
 
 at Cafe Royal dinner, 266 
 at dinner to Botha, 198 
 at Edinburgh, 274 
 character of, 272 
 
 Chinese Labour debate and, 196 
 eloquence of, 274 
 escape at Birmingham of, 195 
 Lord Shaw and, 272 
 Parliamentary dexterity of, 129 
 German Emperor, Mr. Carnegie's " be- 
 
 laudings " of, 163 
 German thought, Scottish theologians 
 
 and, 12 
 Germany, and Britain's protest 
 
 against invasion of Belgium, 
 
 277 
 policy of, in Belgium, compared 
 
 with British in South Africa, 
 
 224 
 
 Germany's code of terror, 71 
 Gladstone, Mr. Herbert, 84 
 Gladstone, Mrs., 91 
 Gladstone, W. E-, adulation of, by 
 
 Scotsman, 93 
 and Italy, 80 
 admiration for, 79, 136 
 appearance of, 82, 84 
 as Lord Rector of Edinburgh 
 
 University, 38 
 at meeting in Edinburgh Music 
 
 Hall, 8 1 
 death of, 112 
 discusses Tractarian Movement 
 
 with Dr. Cazenove, 86, 87 
 gestures of, 82 
 herculean work of, on Home Rule, 
 
 130 
 
 Home Rule debate, and, 112 
 introduction to, 87 
 
 Gladstone, W. E., listens to Author's 
 
 maiden speech, in 
 Lord Shaw's conversation with, in 
 third Midlothian campaign, 83 
 et seq, 
 
 Midlothian campaign of, 78 et seq. 
 Morley's life of, 79 
 on beauties of Edinburgh, 84 
 on Dr. Dollinger, 87 
 on Lord Brougham and Scarlett, 
 
 88, 89 
 
 on Luther, 87 
 on Montenegrins, 86 
 on Pere Hyacinthe, 87 
 on reproduction of old Scottish 
 
 literature, 85 
 
 personality of, 81, 82, 90, 91 
 recollections of great lawyers of, 8g > 
 
 90 
 
 reversal of Scotsman's policy con- 
 cerning, 94 
 story of Mr. Cooper, of Scotsman, 
 
 88 
 Glasgow, defence of Doherty at, 47, 
 
 48 
 
 Glasgow University, Zachary Boyd's 
 translation of Scriptures at, 
 86 
 
 Good Words, 15 
 Gordons, land of, i 
 Goschen, Sir Edward, Sir Edward 
 
 Grey's letter to, 277 
 Great War, aftermath of, 2, 71 
 literary recreations in, 309 
 on justice of, 308 
 popular feeling on, 308 
 Greek, a ghillie's knowledge of, 153 
 as a compulsory university study, 
 
 3i 
 Grey, Sir Edward (Lord), 229 
 
 and Campbell- Bannerman, 262, 
 
 263 
 
 and Ireland, 275 
 great despatches of, 276, 308 
 influence of Rosebery on, 275 
 League of Nations, and, 314 
 letter to Sir Edward Goschen, 
 
 277 
 
 The Times and, 262 
 Guthrie, Dr., 15
 
 INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 H 
 
 HAI<DANE, Mr. (Lord), 229 
 
 and Campbell-Bannerman, 262, 263 
 and United Free Church, 177 
 as Secretary for War, 274, 275 
 Author and, 275 
 Haldane, Sir William, as Crown Agent 
 
 for Scotland, 280 
 Hallam, Arthur, Gladstone as associate 
 
 of, 80 
 
 Hamilton, Sir William, fellowship 
 founded in memory of, gained by 
 Author, 37 
 Harcourt, Sir William, and Liberal 
 
 Imperialism, 228 
 as Leader of the Commons, 113 
 as Leader of Opposition, 130 
 Campbell-Bannerman on, 250 
 experiences at Parliamentary Bar 
 
 of, 130, 131 
 Lord Shaw and, 130 
 meets Presbyterian leaders, 175 
 resignation of, 229 
 Healy, Mr. Tim, 130 
 Highland land question, acute feeling, 
 
 over, 57 
 
 " History of Civilization," by Buckle, 10 
 " History of Irish Land Acts," by 
 
 Barry O'Brien, 122 
 " History of Philosophy," by 
 
 Schwegler, 37 
 
 Hobbes, " Leviathan " by, 310 
 Hogge, Mr., and " Young Scots' 
 
 Society," 211 
 Home Rule, " put into cold storage," 
 
 130 
 
 Home Rule Bill, division on, 122 
 safety and " moderation of," 1 20 
 speech on, in 
 Home Rule Parliament (1892-1895), 
 
 impressions of, no et seq. 
 Home Rule policy, Liberal, 80 
 
 Border Burghs election on, 107 
 " Horse Subsicivse," by Dr. John 
 
 Brown, 140 
 Home, Sir Robert, and Docker's 
 
 Inquiry, 55 
 Hugo, Victor, 309 
 Hyacinthe, P^re, Mr. Gladstone on, 87 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 
 II.KESTONE, Lord (see Foster, Sir Walter) 
 Imperialism, Liberal, 228 
 
 Liberal militaristic, 205-6 
 Lord Rosebery and, 210 
 the true, 199 
 
 Unionist Government and, 129 
 Infidels, Lord Shaw accused of being 
 
 an associate of, 70 
 Inglis, Lord President, 43 
 
 and opinions of Lord Jeffrey, 88 
 Inheritance, Law of, 132, 133 
 " Innocents Abroad," Mark Twain's 
 
 story of, 147 
 Inns of Court, as " sweet ornaments " 
 
 of English and Irish Bar, 45 
 Inverkeithing, changes at, 5 
 Ireland, effect of events in, on opinion 
 
 of Gladstone's policy, 79 
 family interest in, 284 
 German rifles, etc., in, in Dublin 
 
 rebellion, 296 
 martial law in, 296 
 politics of, 119 
 " reprisals "in, 219 
 Royal Commission on Importa- 
 tion of Arms into, 285 et seq. 
 
 JAMES, Lord, of Hereford, and United 
 
 Presbyterian action, 191 
 Jameson raid, 130 
 Jessel, Gladstone's opinion of, 89 
 Johnston, Sir Harry, on South African 
 
 War, 249 
 Judicial Committee of Privy Council, 
 
 experiences on, 305 et seq. 
 marine problems before, 72 
 " Judicial Murder," participant in a, 
 
 47-49 
 
 KANT, 37 
 
 " Khaki " election, 244 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman on, 246 
 Kinnear, Dean (afterwards Lord), 43
 
 322 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kinross, Lord (see also Balfour, Lord 
 
 Advocate) 
 and United Presbyterian action, 191 
 
 Kitchener, Lord, at Vereeniging Con- 
 ference, 202-3 
 
 Knollys, Lord, and telegram to King 
 on Kritzinger, 207, 208 
 
 Knox, John, educational ideal of, 156 
 masterful intellect of, 99 
 
 Kritzinger, General, trial of, 205 et seq. 
 
 LABOUR, and " dangers of confisca- 
 tion," 134 
 
 conditions and hours of, in the 
 'sixties, 24 et seq. 
 
 rights and duties of, 301-3 
 Land, inequality of distribution of, 57 
 
 law of inheritance and, 132, 133 
 Land Bill, Ireland (1895), 121 
 
 rejection of, 120 
 Latin, a ghillie's knowledge of, 153 
 
 teaching of, at Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity, 32, 33 
 " L'Avenement de Bonaparte," by 
 
 Vandal, 66 
 
 Law and Jurisprudence, 304 
 Law, Mr. Bonar, 55 
 Law of Nations, and destruction of 
 property in war, 222 
 
 and reprisals, 219 
 League of Nations, America and, 312 
 
 formation of, 311 
 
 future of, 312, 314 
 
 Lord Grey and, 314 
 
 Lord Robert Cecil and, 314 
 League of Nations Society, deputation 
 of, to Peace Conference, 310 
 
 Lord Shaw and, 278, 311 
 Learmont, Mr. Thomas, recollections of 
 
 Sir Walter Scott of, 141, 142 
 Lee, Dr. Robert, Mr. Gladstone and, 
 
 86 
 
 Leese, Sir Joseph, 112 
 Leibnitz, 37 
 " Les Miserables," 310 
 " Leviathan," by Hobbes, 310 
 Lewis, Crofters agitation on, 58 
 
 Lewis deer raiders, trial of, 57 et seq. 
 
 Lewis, Herbert, 129 
 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, " on the 
 
 Government of Dependencies," 
 
 39 
 Liberal Government (1895) defeat of, 
 
 127 
 
 Liberal Imperialism, 129 
 Liberal League, Campbell-Bannerman 
 
 and, 231, 249 
 formation of, 210, 229 
 meeting of East of Scotland, 229 
 Mr. Morley and, 231 
 Liberal Party, disruption of, 245 
 
 under Campbell- Bannerman's lea- 
 dership, 247-8 
 Liberalism and South African war, 199 
 
 et seq. 
 
 " Life of Cobden," by John Morley, 137 
 " Life of Gladstone," by Lord Morley, 
 
 79 
 " Life of Lord Courtney," by Mr. 
 
 Gooch, 206 
 " Life of Macaulay," by Sir George 
 
 Trevelyan, 137 
 Limekilns, changes at, 5 
 Lindley, Lord, judgment of, on Free 
 
 Church action, 181, 191 
 Lindsay, Dr., 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 Literature, Author's " true delights " 
 
 in, 44, 309 
 
 " Literature of Knowledge," 15 
 Local Government Bill for Scotland, 
 
 119 
 Loch Laggan, Lord Shaw and ghillie 
 
 on, 151 et seq. 
 
 London, power of Press in, 93 
 Long, Mr. Walter, and Royal Com- 
 mission on Importation of Arms 
 
 into Ireland, 285 
 Lord Advocate, appointed as, 263, 
 
 265, 279, 281 
 increased salary of, 125 
 salary of, 279 
 Lord of Appeal, Scotch, appointment 
 
 as, 281 
 
 Lords, House of, application of judg- 
 ment of, in Free Church action, 
 
 182
 
 INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 Lords, House of, judgment of, on Free 
 
 Church action, 181 
 Lord Shaw on judgment of, 187 
 maiden speech in, 1 1 1 
 results of judgment of, on Free 
 
 Church action, 185, 186 
 war-time shipping problems and, 
 
 72 
 widespread uneasiness concerning 
 
 judgment of, 190 
 Louis Philippe, and Testamentary Law, 
 
 133 
 Lowell, James Russell, " Biglow 
 
 Papers," quoted, 193 
 " Lucknow," recollections of, 6 
 Luther, Mr. Gladstone on, 87 
 
 M 
 
 MACDERMOTT, The, 121 
 
 Mackarness, Mr., and dinner to Botha, 
 
 198 
 
 Macleod, Dr. Norman, 15 
 MacNaghten, Lord, judgment of, on 
 
 Free Church action, 181, 191 
 Macnamara, Dr., in opposition, 129 
 MacPherson, Hector, and " Young 
 
 Scots' Society," 210 
 Macrae, Donald, leader of Lewis deer 
 
 raid, 59 
 
 trial and defence of, 59 et seq. 
 " Mansie Waugh," humour of, 16 
 Martial law, speech on, 296-7 
 Massingham, Mr., at dinner to Botha, 
 
 198 
 
 Masson, Professor, character and in- 
 fluence of, 34, 35 
 introduces Lord Shaw to Professor 
 
 Baynes, 39 
 Mathieson estate, Lewis, 58 
 
 Crofters Commission report on, 62, 
 
 63 
 Maxwell, Sir William Stirling, as Lord 
 
 Rector of Edinburgh University, 
 
 38 
 
 prize offered by, 38 
 May, Sir Erskine, 90 
 McCormick, Sir William, as Secretary 
 
 of Scotch University Trust, 169 
 
 McDonald, Miners' Leader, 24 
 McDowall of Alloa, on those " worse 
 
 than infidels," 70 
 McGhie, Mr., 113 
 McKechnie, first meeting with, 43 
 
 sending for, 43, 44 
 McKenna, Mr. Reginald, 129, 266 
 McLaren, Lord, 96 
 McPhail, Sheriff, and trial of Lewis 
 
 deer raiders, 60, 61 
 Mellor, Mr. (Chairman of Committee), 
 
 112 
 
 Melville, Andrew, and King's preroga- 
 tive, 68 
 Merriman, Mr., at Edinburgh, 211 et 
 
 seq. 
 Middle Temple, General Smuts as 
 
 student of, 201 ; elected Honorary 
 
 Bencher of, 202 
 Honorary Bencher of, 201 
 Midlothian campaign, 77 et seq. 
 Militarism, and South African War, 
 
 204 
 
 Liberals and, 205, 228 
 Tory party at mercy of, 245 
 Mill, John Stuart, " Examination of 
 
 Hamilton's Philosophy," by, 37 
 Miller, Hugh, influence of death of, 12 
 " My Schools and Schoolmasters," 
 
 by, 9 
 
 suicide of, 9 
 
 " The Testimony of the Rocks," 9 
 Milner, Lord, at Vereeniging Confer- 
 ence, 202 
 
 on South African Constitution, 198, 
 
 199 
 Milton, on fame, 74 
 
 on Sir Harry Vane, 69 
 Miners, meetings of, 24 
 " Mines Regulations Acts," 25 
 Mine-sweepers, " one of the glories of 
 
 the war," 71 
 
 Mirabeau, on Testamentary Law, 133 
 Moliere, 309 
 
 Montenegrins, Mr. Gladstone on, 86 
 Moray Firth, mine-sweepers of, 71 
 Morley, Lord, and Liberal League, 231 
 
 and Lord Shaw, 119, 120, 189, 233 
 
 as editor of " The Fortnightly," 136 
 
 at Cluny Castle, 151, 153
 
 324 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morley, Lord, Author's estimate of, 79 
 Campbell - Bannerman's Ministry 
 
 and, 263 
 
 Chinese Labour Debate and, 196 
 great despatches of, at India Office 
 
 of, 276 
 letter to Times by, on South 
 
 African reprisals, 222 
 " Life of Cobden," by, 137 
 " Life of Gladstone," by, 79 
 meets Presbyterian leaders, 175 
 Mr. Carnegie and, 161 
 Morrison, Thomas, ex-chartist, 27 
 prophecy of, concerning Campbell- 
 
 Bannerman, 27 
 Murray, Graham, 125 
 
 and Elgin Commission, 188 
 
 N 
 
 NAPOLEON and distribution of testa- 
 mentary property, 134 
 Neaves, Lord, and " Judicial Murder," 
 
 48 
 
 Nelson, Mr. Gladstone and, 84, 85 
 Newman, Cardinal, Professor Rainy 
 
 on, 176 
 
 Newspapers, influence of, on Author, 92 
 Nicoll, Sir William Robertson, and 
 
 Carnegie's Scotch University 
 
 Trust, 164, 165 
 Nineteenth Century, article in, on " The 
 
 Durham Road to Peace," 225 
 article in, on " The Educational 
 
 Peace of Scotland," 156, 161 
 Mr. Carnegie and, 156, 157 
 
 O'BRIEN, BARRY, " History of the Irish 
 
 Land Acts," 122 
 Ochil Hills, i, 22 
 O'Connor, Mr. T. P., 121, 263 
 Opposition, in Parliament of 1895, 
 
 characteristics of, 119 
 line taken by Author in, 127, 128, 
 
 135 
 Orr, Dr., 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 
 PARIS, visit for League of Nations to, 
 310 
 
 Park, Mungo, influence of " Travels " 
 of, on boyhood, 15 
 
 Parliament House, Edinburgh, en- 
 trance to, 41 
 
 experiences in, 252 et seq. 
 recollections of, 42 et seq. 
 
 Parliamentary Bar, Sir William 
 Harcourt's experiences at, 130, 
 
 131 
 
 Paton, Mr. Forester, 236 
 Peace Conference, deputation to, 310 
 Peel, Mr. Speaker, and Lord Shaw, 124, 
 
 125 
 
 Petition of Right, discussion of proce- 
 dure of, in Home Rule Parlia- 
 ment, in 
 
 discussion in Home Rule debate, 
 112 
 
 Philosophy, influence of, on Author, 
 
 37. 44 
 
 Pittencrieff, Glen of, 17 
 Plato, influence of, on Author, 37 
 Plunkett, Sir Horace, 294 
 Plutarch, influence of, on French 
 
 Revolution, 40 
 Pope, Mr., Sir William Harcourt and, 
 
 131-132 
 
 Presbyterian, Lord Shaw as, 68, 69, 100 
 Presbyterian Free Church, connexion 
 
 of Church and State and, 174 
 differences in, 176 
 Elgin Commission appointed, 188 
 judgment on action of, 181 
 minority of, issues summons, 179 
 minority of, refuses arbitration 
 
 185 
 
 mission work of, 185 
 
 Principal Rainy and, 174 
 
 " sacred responsibilities " of mi- 
 nority of, 184 
 
 strength of minority in, 185 
 
 sustentation fund of, 186 
 
 union of, with United Presbyterian 
 
 Church, 176 
 
 Presbyterianism, and connexion with 
 secular power, 101
 
 INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 Presbyterianism, influence of, in Scot 
 
 land, 99-100 
 
 State endowments and, 102 
 Press, and Merriman's visit to Edin- 
 burgh, 216 
 and Scotch University Trust, 
 
 164 
 
 influence of, 92, 93 
 Scottish objection to domination of, 
 
 93, 94 
 
 Press-copying, as an innovation, 26 
 
 Primogeniture, Lord Shaw's Bill rela- 
 tive to, 133 
 
 Privy Council, Judicial Committee of, 
 
 305 et seq. 
 
 war-time shipping problems and, 
 72 
 
 " Puddenhead Wilson," Carnegie's 
 talk compended in, 147 
 
 " RADICAL Pro-Boer School," 274 
 Railway strike, threat of, in 1920, 234 
 Rainy, Principal Robert, 12 
 
 and Presbyterian Free Church, 174 
 and United Free Church, 181 
 character of, 172 
 letters from, on Presbyterian law 
 
 case, 183, 189, 190 
 on Cardinal Newman, 176 
 on The Scotsman, 95 
 Reay, Lord, as Trustee of Carnegie's 
 Scotch University Trust, 158, 163 
 " Recollections of Bar and Bench," by 
 
 Lord Alverstone, 191 
 Redmond, John, 121, 263 
 
 Lord Shaw and, 122, 123 
 Redmond, William, 122 
 Reform Act (1867), 27 
 Reits, Mr. F. W., power of despatches 
 
 of, 276 
 Religion, influence of, on Scottish 
 
 character, 1 1 
 
 " Reprisals," in Ireland, 219 
 in South Africa, 221 
 Law of Nations and, 219 
 results of, in South Africa, 223 
 Rigby, Lord, " ponderousness " of, in 
 
 Ripon, Lord, 264 
 
 Roberts, Lord, and annexation of 
 
 South African Republics, 223 
 letter to Botha on reprisals, 222 
 proclamations of, in South Africa, 
 
 220, 221, 222 
 Robertson, Lord, and Free Church 
 
 case, 191 
 death of, 281 
 Robson, Mr., 129 
 Rosebery, Lord, 125, 126, 232 
 and Mirabeau, 232 
 and United Free Church, 177 
 as Prime Minister, 113 
 Campbell-Bannerman's nickname 
 
 for, 268 
 
 " high literary gifts of," 136 
 influence of, on Sir Edward Grey, 
 
 275 
 
 Liberal Imperialism and, 210 
 Lord Courtney's appeal to, con- 
 cerning Kritzinger, 206 
 meeting of East of Scotland Liberal 
 
 League, and, 229 
 resignation of, 229 
 withdrawal from public affairs of, 
 
 231 
 
 Ross, Dr. (Sir John Ross), and Car- 
 negie's Scotch University Trust, 
 157, 159, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166 
 et seq. 
 
 Rosyth, boyhood at, 6 
 changes at, 5 et seq. 
 Round Table Conference, 107 
 Royal Commission on Importation of 
 arms into Ireland, Lord Shaw as 
 president of, 285 et seq. 
 report of, 285 et seq. 
 Russell, George, 137 
 Russell, Sir Charles (Lord Chief Justice), 
 
 112 
 Rutherglen case, 47-49 
 
 SABBATH Day (see also Sunday), novel- 
 reading on, in Scottish homes, 
 
 15 
 
 observance of, 65 et seq.
 
 326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sabbath Day, restoration by' France 
 
 of Christian, 66 
 
 Sadowa, Lord Shaw's recollections of, 7 
 St. Magnus Cathedral, Sir W. Scott and 
 
 255 
 
 St. Nicholas, 146 
 
 Sampson, Mr. George, 12, 13 
 
 Sauer, Mr., and " Young Scots' 
 
 Society," 211 
 
 Scarlett, Mr. Gladstone on, 88, 89 
 Scheepers, death of, 204, 206 
 Schwegler, " History of Philosophy " 
 
 by, 37 
 
 Scotch Education Act, 1872, 20 
 Scotch Grand Committee, as a " battle- 
 field," 119 
 increased salaries for Scottish Law 
 
 Officers and, 125 
 Scotch University Trust, Mr. Carnegie's, 
 
 appointment of Trustees for, 158 
 
 et seq. 
 development of, 160 et seq., 166 et 
 
 seq. 
 
 Dr. Ross as treasurer of, 170 
 Press and, 164 
 Sir W. McCormick as secretary of, 
 
 169 
 Sir W. Robertson Nicoll and, 164, 
 
 165 
 
 story of origin of, 148 et seq. 
 Scotland, Bill on Law of Succession 
 
 in, 133 
 
 dissent in, 100 
 Established Church in, 101 
 evangelicalism in, 140, 141 
 Free University education in, and 
 
 Mr. Carnegie, 145, 148 et seq., 155 
 
 et seq., 160 et seq. 
 independence of journalistic lead- 
 ing strings in, 93 
 interest in views of Adam Smith in, 
 
 78 
 
 power of testacy in, 133 
 Presbyterianism and, 99, 100 
 public affairs in the 'eighties in, 
 
 77. ?8 
 
 " sagging " of Liberalism in, 210 
 solidarity of belief in, 100 
 Scotsman, The, " adulation " of Glad- 
 stone by, 93 
 
 Scotsman, The, Lord Shaw and, 95, 96 
 reversal of policy of, concerning 
 
 Gladstone, 94 
 Scott, Mr. Hope, Sir William Harcourt 
 
 and, 131-2 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, as sheriff, 141 
 as " Wizard of the Past," 143 
 citation of " The Pirate," 255 
 stories of, 141, 142 
 Scottish literature, Mr. Gladstone on 
 
 reproduction of old, 85 
 Sebastopol, recollections of, 7 
 Seely, Captain, 266 
 
 Sellar, Professor, at Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity, 32, 33 
 Sexton, Mr., 121, 124 
 Shakespeare, 15, 225, 309 
 
 Professor Masson's lectures on, 34 
 quoted, 227 
 Shand, Lord, judgment of, on Free 
 
 Church action, 181, 191 
 Shaw, Alexander (son of Lord Shaw), 
 
 63, 64, 259 
 Shaw, Mr. (Author's father), death of, 
 
 8, 19 
 
 Shaw, Mrs. (Author's mother), re- 
 collections of, 8-10, 20, 22, 148, 
 
 149 
 '' Shaw's Million," Mr. Carnegie and, 
 
 161 
 Simpson, Sir Walter, tour of, with 
 
 R. L. Stevenson, 138 
 Sinn Fein Rebellion, Lord Shaw and, 
 
 285, 293 et seq. 
 
 Skibo, Mr. Carnegie and, 146 
 Slaves, emancipation of, influence 
 
 of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " on, 
 
 16 
 Smith, Adam, and United Free Church, 
 
 176 
 interest in views of, in Scottish 
 
 homes, 78 
 
 " Wealth of Nations," by, 16, 38 
 Smith, Principal Sir G. Adam, 12 
 Smith, Robertson, 12 
 
 and United Free Church, 176 
 Smith, Sydney, on Ireland, 122, 123 
 Smuts, General, and South African 
 
 Constitution, 199 
 as constitutional lawyer, 201
 
 INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Smuts, General, as student of Middle 
 
 Temple, 201 
 character of, 2 
 
 death of infant child of, in Concen- 
 tration Camp, 223 
 letter on aftermath of Great War, 2 
 on conference at Vereeniging, 201 
 Solicitor-General for Scotland, appoint- 
 ment as, 69, 116, 136 
 increased salary of, 125 
 resignation of Mr. Asher as, 1 16, 117 
 Solicitor's office, work in, 22-3, 25-9, 
 
 30 
 South Africa, annexation of Republics 
 
 of, 224 
 
 Constitution for, granted by Sir H. 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman, 3, 195 ; 
 
 Mr. Balfour on, 198 ; Lord 
 
 Milner on, 198, 199 
 
 Lord Roberts's proclamation in, 
 
 220-1 
 
 on military policy in, 220 
 results of reprisals in, 223 
 South African Confederation, Botha's 
 
 prophecy on, 200 
 South African war, disillusionment 
 
 over, 273 
 
 militarists and, 205 
 outbreak of, 194 
 popular feelings on, 308 
 Spencer, "Bobby," and Author, 125 
 Spencer, Lord, 121 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, reading of, 225, 309 
 State Endowments, Presbyterianjsm 
 
 and, 1 01 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, as competi- 
 tor for Professorship of Constitu- 
 tional History, 139 
 " Catriona," by, 139 
 " Kidnapped," by, 139 
 recollections of, 137, 138 
 Sir Walter Simpson's tour with, 
 
 138, 139 
 
 " Virginibus Puerisque," by, 139 
 Stirling Burghs, Lord Shaw and 
 
 Campbell-Bannerman in, 235 
 Strachan, and trial of Lewis deer 
 
 raiders, 60 
 
 Strikes, colliers' and railway, 234 
 Students' life in Edinburgh, 35, 36 
 
 Submarines, German, action of, 71 
 Sunday, as Day of Rest, 65-67 
 
 " story factory," 46 
 Sunday at Home, 15 
 Sutherland, Tom, 233 
 Synod, composition of, 100, 173 
 
 quality of debates in, 101, 102 
 
 TARIFF REFORM, Unionists and, 273 
 Temple, Sir Richard, congratulates the 
 Solicitor-General for Scotland 
 (Lord Shaw), 69 
 Tennyson, " In Memoriam," 80 
 
 Lord Shaw quotes "Pagan England" 
 of, in Lewis deer raiders' trial, 62 
 quoted, 10, 227 
 
 Testae y, Power of, in Scotland, 133 
 " The Constitution of America," by 
 
 Mr. Bryce, 136 
 
 " The Durham Road to Peace," 
 article by Lord Shaw on, in 
 Nineteenth Century, 225 
 " The Educational Peace of Scotland," 
 article in Nineteenth Century, by 
 Lord Shaw, 156 
 Mr. Carnegie and, 156, 157, 161 
 " The Pilgrim's Progress," influence of, 
 on Lord Shaw's boyhood, 10, n 
 " The Scots Worthies," influence of, 
 
 on Lord Shaw's boyhood, 10 
 " The Testimony of the Rocks," by 
 
 Hugh Miller, 9 
 
 Thorns case, Lord Shaw and, 253 et seq. 
 Timet, The, and intrigue against 
 Campbell-Bannerman, 262 et seq. 
 Tiree, Crofters' agitation on, 58 
 Tractarian Movement, discussed by 
 Mr. Gladstone with Dr. Cazenove, 
 86, 87 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, " American 
 
 History," by, 137 
 as member for Border Burghs, 105 
 " Cawnpore," by, 137 
 " Competition Wallah," by, 137 
 letter to Author from, 105 
 " Life of Macaulay," by, 137 
 secession of, on Home Rule, 107
 
 328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 u 
 
 Ui<STER, and importation of arms, 
 
 286-88 
 " Uncle Tom's Cabin," emancipation 
 
 of slaves and, 16 
 influence of, on boyhood, 16 
 United Free Church, action by Free 
 
 Church against, 179 et seq. 
 as " Free Democracy," 177 
 campaign on judgment against, 
 
 184, 187 
 
 Elgin Commission appointed, 188 
 first General Assembly of, 177 
 formation of, 176 
 judgment on Free Church action 
 
 against, 181 
 
 legal proceedings of, 182 et seq. 
 United Presbyterian Church, and 
 
 judgment on Free Church action, 
 
 181 
 
 member of, 68, 172 
 principles of, 172 
 union with Presbyterian Free 
 
 Church, 176 
 Ure, Mr., as Solicitor-General for 
 
 Scotland, 280 
 defence of, in House of Commons, 
 
 251 
 
 VANDAL, on Sabbath in " I/Avene- 
 
 ment de Bonaparte," 66 
 Vane, Sir Harry, Milton on, 69 
 Vereeniging Conference, 202, 203 
 Vergniaud, Girondist leader, admira- 
 tion for, 39 
 
 " Virginibus Puerisque," admiration 
 
 for, 139 
 Viviani, M., and League of Nations, 311, 
 
 3H 
 
 W 
 
 WALLACE, Dr., in opposition, 128 
 Waverley Market, Edinburgh, United 
 
 Free Church meeting at, 179 
 United Presbyterian meeting at, 176 
 " Young Scots' Society's " meeting 
 
 at, 211 et seq. 
 " Wealth of Nations," by Adam 
 
 Smith, 1 6 
 Webster, Sir Richard (see also Alver- 
 
 stone, Lord), 465 
 at Cluny Castle, 151 
 " Wee Macgreegor," Lloyd George and, 
 
 273 
 
 Week-ending, habit of, 66 
 Westbury, Lord, Gladstone's opinion 
 
 of, 89 
 
 Westminster, changes in, 114 
 Whyte, Dr., 272 
 Wilson, H. J., and Kritzinger's trial, 
 
 207 
 Wilson, President, and League of 
 
 Nations, 312 
 Wodrow's History, 10 
 Women, political power of, 134 
 Wyndham, Mr. George, as Chief 
 
 Secretary for Ireland, 120 
 
 YOUNG, Lord, as judge in forgery case, 
 
 50-54 
 " Young Scots' Society," formation of, 
 
 210-11 
 
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