A Spectator's Notebook
MR. BALDWIN is a master of portraiture, and his appreciation of Mr. Bonar Law last week cane as near the truth perhaps as is possible in the ease of so elusive. a character. Mr. Bonar Law was the very opposite of the conventional successful business man who has Parliamentary ambitions. His fundamental political interests were few—perhaps only Ulster and Protection, but he grappled most competently with the many novel tasks which the War brought him. His outlook was narrow ; he had read little except Gibbon and Carlyle; his tastes were circumscribed, and he was never happier than when playing chess in a dull room looking out on a blank wall. Yet he had a quick appreciation of more spacious talents. In temperament he was at once supremely confident and very shy. He had a great mastery of facts, and this, and his logic, made him a formidable debater ; but he could welcome boldness which went beyond facts and imagination which defied logic. To Mr. Lloyd George in the last years of the War, he was a perfect complement. It is likely that in history his figure will sink into the background, for he has left no great achievement or code of policy by which the world can remember him. That is the destiny of most statesmen—their work goes into the common stock and the man is forgotten. But that, I think; is what Mr. Ronal: Law -would have desired.
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