Away from it All
o much attention was given in the press to the appointment of the new Foreign Secretary that less than justice has been done to the man who, by his departure, precipitated the cabinet re- shuffle. Heathcoat Amory's particular merit lay in that he was the only Minister to whom the epithet politician—in its derogatory rather than its descriptive sense—could not have been applied. Every man who becomes a member of a political party must learn how to compromise with his principles, or he will not be able to remain a member for long: and if he enters Parliament, and attains ministerial rank, he must also learn how to be proficient in the art of rationalising those compromises to make them sound as if they were eternal truths. In the pro- cess, most politicians shed some indefinable part of their personalities. It becomes difficult to think of them as quite human Few Ministers in recent times have managed to preserve (or at least to appear to preserve) their characters unscathed. With the possible exception of Lord Monckton, none has survived so successfully as Mr. Amory. Such men are not an unmixed blessing in cabinets: they May allow their leaders to embark on foolish or hazardous enterprises because they are too nice, or too lazy, to let themselves be mixed up in the intrigue that is a preliminary to any successful revolt. But the cabinet and the Commons have not so many men of integrity that they can easily afford to lose another to the melancholy anonymity of a political viscountcy.
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