TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. BALFOUR'S RESIGNATION.
OUR readers know what overwhelming importance we attached to Mr. Balfour's leadership of the Unionist Party at the present moment. They will therefore have no difficulty in judging how deep is our regret that he has been obliged to resign that leadership. Mr. Balfour has told the country that the reasons for his resignation are reasons of health, and has made it clear that his decision is irrevocable. That being so it would, we feel sure, be directly contrary to his wishes if we were to yield to the temptation of suggesting that the difficulties and responsi- bilities of leadership which he feels too much for his health and strength were greatly increased by the unjust and disloyal attacks that have been made upon him of late. While Mr. Balfour was leader it was necessary to speak out strongly about such attacks. Now that he has resigned and has deliberately refrained from asserting that his resignation was due in any sense to the feeling that he had lost the confidence of a section of his party, we shall say no further word in regard to the movement against him. What is essential now, and what we are sure Mr. Balfour would wish his former followers to do, is to consider the best way in which the leadership in the House of Commons can be filled, and generally what action is best in the interests of the party. Before, however, we consider who is to be Mr. Balfour's successor, we must find space to say how many and how great are the services which Mr. Balfour has rendered not merely to his party but to the nation as a whole. Un- questionably Mr. Balfour was and is a true lover of his country. It would not be right to say that he was without personal ambition. We doubt very much if any statesman can serve his country usefully who is without that quality. But Mr. Balfour's personal ambition was always unselfish. Unquestionably " he cared not to be great " except to " serve and save the State " ; not to secure triumphs or honours and emoluments for himself, but to preserve the Common- wealth was his ambition. He wanted to win as a man, and he wanted his party to win, for he was always a. good party man, but most of all he wanted the common good and that the nation to which he belonged should hold her head high in the world. To him, too, the Empire was not a matter for rhetorical or material exploitation, but a great trust to be discharged with honour, chivalry, and courage.
With the word courage we touch the keynote of Mr. Balfour's character. Personal courage he possesses in a high degree, as all his friends know. He possesses also, what is rarer, moral courage, and what is perhaps rarest of all, a courage that is not damped by the impossibility of personal intervention. His is the mens aqua in arduis, his the heart and brain that never despair of the Republic, his the power to see things in their true proportions, his the capacity to be an optimist in national affairs, though an optimist without ignorance or folly. He is a man neither " awed by rumour ' nor depressed by minor inconveniences. In handling State affairs he has always shown himself able to see through the superficial down to the fundamental. How invaluable was his high courage was realized by those who were in any sense behind the scenes during the South African War. During the black week at the end of 1899 many people who ought to have known better were either in a fuss or a fury, or confronting the world with " a foolish face " of tragedy quite inappro- priate to the dimensions of the crisis. Mr. Balfour, how- ever, was absolutely calm and serene, and that calmness and serenity was not the calmness and serenity of the passionless man or of the dreamy philosopher, but of the man of action who had not suffered any loss of self- control or allowed himself to be deflected from the main object by anger or anxiety. He kept his eye upon the object, and, like a good driver, while the coach was in difficulties refused to swear at the horses or at the helpers who had harnessed them wrongly. He was solely intent on keeping his road and preventing an upset. The present writer may perhaps be pardoned if for once and after an interval of nearly twelve years he breaks the very proper rule against the intrusion into the Press of the intimacies of private life, and recalls a personal incident. Mr. Balfour happened to be dining in his house with only one other guest, a. distinguished Colonial statesman, when the news of the disaster at Colenso was, late in the evening, brought to Mr. Balfour. Nothing could have been more admirable than the way in which• Mr. Balfour received the news, and no better proof could have been given of the steadiness of his nerves and the soundness of his head and heart than the manner in which he faced facts so exasperating. To put the matter concisely, no Englishman anxious that a British Minister should do the right thing in the right way before a statesman of one of the self-governing nations of the Empire specially involved at the moment could by any possibility have wished Mr. Balfour's attitude other than it was. He showed all the best qualities of our race. We trust Mr. Balfour and our readers will forgive us for writing thus.
But though this is a moment when we may fairly recall. Mr. Balfour's great qualities as a statesman, we are not going to pretend that he was in any sense perfect, either as Parliamentary leader or as administrator. When, however, a fair balance is struck in regard to Mr. Balfour's statesmanship, we believe that the verdict of history will be one of high commendation. Mr. Balfour by common consent quits the political arena, or at any rate abandons all further thought of holding office, with what must be a priceless consolation to a statesman—the knowledge that no man can accuse him of ever having acted basely or selfishly or from personal motives in any single transaction in his public life. He made mistakes, but they were never the mistakes of an. ignoble or a narrow nature. In our history we may com- pare him truthfully alike for character and for patriotism with the younger Pitt. It is true that he never had to face such terrible ordeals as did William Pitt, but we say with the most absolute conviction that had he been called upon. to go through for his country what Pitt went through during the first stages of the war with France he would have emerged as unblemished as did " the pilot who weathered the storm."
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