If we lived in an entirely different world the police
might find their hero in a musician, an artist, a writer, or
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perhaps in the head of a Civil Department. But we all know that they do not. It is impossible to think of a soldier less like a soldier in his attachment to such military habits as become defects when transferred to another sphere than Lord Byng. He has a mihd which can see all round a question and is full of human sympathy and that sense of perspective which is indistinguishable from a keen sense of humour. The first insinuations of the Labour Party that Lord Byng was out for a new salary and a new pension have been fading in importance as being too absurd. Anyone who has spent five minutes in Lord Byng's company since the War must know that his ambition was satisfied by a quiet life, and that only a very deep sense of duty summoned him to undertake an arduous task which he repeatedly refused and would still refuse if he felt that he decently could do so. It is a high compliment to the police that an ex-Governor- General should after all place himself at their head.
