Lord Buckmaster
An Orator of Justice : Lord Buckmaster. By James Johnston. (Nicholson and Watson. 15s.)
Ma. JOHNSTON published some time ago a notable book on Parliamentary oratory, and his interest in the subject has prompted him to make a full study of Lord Buckmaster's speeches and career. It is a great proof of a man's power as a speaker that a book made up from his speeches can be of interest to any large audience, for a speech, like an article, is concerned with the events and controversies of the hour, and when the world has passed on to a new chapter the speech, like the article, loses its freshness. But nobody would say of this book that it has not a place and significance of its own. There are three reasons why it possesses an interest for the general reader. In the first place, as Mr. Buchan says in his excellent preface, "Lord Buckmaster seems to be our most finished master of oratory since Lord Rosebery's golden voice was silent." This was the opinion expressed by Lord Morley when discussing with a friend the possible leaders of the Liberal party in the dark days of the Black and Tans. Readers of this volume will find passage after passage that illustrates Lord Buckmaster's eloquence : an eloquence that is never forced or unnatural. In this one respect Lord Buckmaster is superior to Rosebery, who was sometimes betrayed into a false note or pitch. When Lord Buckmaster sketches the flight of the kingfisher in a phrase of perfect beauty, the eloquence seems as natural and spontaneous as the flight of the bird. In the second place Lord Buckmaster is inter- esting as a lawyer who does not speak as a lawyer. He has all the strength of a lawyer's -training and- discipline, but he has escaped the lawyer's habit of mind and argument. In his speeches he is a poet rather than a lawyer. In the third -place he represents interests and sympathies that fall outside party politics. Some speakers are at their best putting the ease for their party view, but he is at his best when defendilig some great truth or principle submerged for the moment in a flood of passion. Nothing could be better than the long and ultimately victorious battle that he fought for the decent treatment of enemy aliens after the War. He is a champion of bird and beast, of beauty, and peace, of the claims of the forgotten and the unjustly used. He may be compared in this sense with Erskine a century ago. His speeches will be of importance to the historian of our age for the light they throw on such questions as divorce and birth control, questions that have a great social importance but are outside the regular strife and life of parties. Lord Buckmaster's speeches will help succeeding ages to understand the early struggles for greater freedom and equality in these fields and tha
obstacles that had to be overcome J. L. HAMMOND.
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