nda paper; but it was apt to turn out a
delusion and a snare. The Secretariat did their very best to calculate
when the different subjects down for discussion on the paper would
come up, and they would warn one accordingly. But they often were out
in their estimate, and they had always to be on the safe side. Some
quite simple and apparently straightforward subject would take a
perfectly unconscionable time to dispose of, while, on the other hand,
an apparently extremely knotty problem might be solved within a few
minutes and so throw the time-table out of gear. The result was that
in the course of months one spent a good many hours, off and on,
lurking in the antechamber in 10 Downing Street.

Still, there was always a good fire in winter time, and one found
oneself hobnobbing, while waiting, with all sorts and conditions of
men. There would be Ministers holding high office but not included in
the Big Five (or was it Six?), emissaries just back from some centre
of disturbance and excitement abroad, people who dealt with wheat
production and distribution, knights of industry called in over some
special problem, and persons purporting to be masters of
finance--which nobody understands, least of all the experts. Who could
possibly, under any circumstances, be angry with Mr. Balfour? But he
was occasionally something of a trial when one was patiently awaiting
one's turn. Although the Agenda paper might make it plain that no
subject was coming up with which the Foreign Office could possibly be
in the remotest degree connected, he would be descried sloping past
and going straight into the Council Chamber, as if he had bought the
place. Then out would come one of the Secretary gang. The Foreign
Minister had turned up, and was setting them an entirely unexpected
conundrum inside; the best thing one could do was to clear out of
that, as the point which one had been summoned to give one's views
about had not now the slightest chance of coming before the Cabinet
that day.

At the various forms of War Council at which the prosecution of the
war was debated, one was necessarily brought into contact with a
number of politicians and statesmen, and was enabled to note their
peculiarities and to watch their methods. I never to my knowledge saw
Lord Beaconsfield; but in the late 'eighties and early 'nineties Mr.
Gladstone was sometimes to be met in the streets, and, even if one
thought that he ought to be boiled, one none the less fel