(Contributed)
Mr. Stanley Baldwin is something of a curiosity among British Prime Ministers. He'is, to begin with, an Englishman and that, though not unknown (Mr. Asquith was a Yorkshiremen sitting in Parliament for a -Scottish constituency), has in recent years been a somewhat rare occurrence. Lloyd George was Welsh; Bonar Law, Balfour, Campbell-Bannerman were all Scottish. Mr. Baldwin, moreover, is not only Eng-_lish; he is extremely, characteristically English. He belongs to the Bewdley district of -Wo: cesters hire. In this typical] English countryside he was born and has lived most of his life and for this same region he has sat as representative in Parliament since the death of his father in 1908. If one thinks of the qualities thet go with the English type in a county like Worcestershire, one will find them in Mr. Baldwin, except, of course, that the qualities that are of the English soil have been refined and humanized in him by a good liberal education. Mr. Baldwin is patient, shrewd and equable. He is a tiring, modest man who spoke from the heart when he said on his accession to the Premiership that he needed the prayers of his well-wishers rather than their congratulations and when he declared that he would be quite happy if he could retire to his books and his.pigs in Worcestershire. He has, in a high degree, the sense of humour. at is the priceless gift of the Anglo-Saxon race. It might reasonably be argued that, if they had had a sense of humour, the Germans never would have plunged into and lost the war; certainly the Irish owe their prolonged civil war to the lamentable absence of humour from the equipment of De Valera and his special friends. Humour is that quality which is keenly alive to the ridiculous and disproportionate in life and which, by realizing the disproportionate, avoids it. When, in the original Bairnsfather story, Old Bill, surveying the appalling panorama of shellcraters, said to. his grousing pal "Well; if you know a better ole, go to it," he indicated a habit of mind—cool, unmoved, full of salty commonsense—which would keep a whole nation straight.
Mr. Baldwin -will never set the Thames on fire. He will never conduct a Midlothian campaign like Mr. Gladstone. He would probably never threaten his country with civil war as Mr. Bonar Law, in his fierce "Ulsteria," did in 1914. He will never "get up steam" as Mr. Lloyd George has done and will yet do again. He will never have the brilliance in dialectics of Mr. Balfour, the silver tongue of Lord Rosebery, or the massive eloquence of Mr. As-quite. And yet he is already very much trusted and liked in Eng-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.