reathes in all
of us that made Falstaff refuse to give Prince Hal reasons: "I give thee
reasons? Though reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would not give
thee reasons _on compulsion_--I."

I was once talking to a member of Parliament, who was lamenting that he had
failed to win the ear of the House. He was puzzled by the failure. He was a
fluent speaker; he knew his subject with great thoroughness, and his
character was irreproachable; and yet when he rose the House went out. He
was like a dinner-bell. He couldn't understand it. Yet everybody else
understood it quite well. It was because he was always "telling you," and
there is nothing the House of Commons dislikes so much as a schoolmaster.
Probably the most successful speaker, judging by results, who ever rose in
the House of Commons was Cobden. He was one of the few men in history who
have changed a decision in Parliament by a speech. He did it because of his
extraordinarily persuasive manner. He kept the minds of his hearers
receptive and disengaged. He did not impress them with the fact that he was
right and they were wrong. They forgot themselves when they saw the subject
in a clear, white light, and were prepared to judge it on its merits rather
than by their prejudices.

One of the few persuasive speakers I have heard in the House of Commons in
recent years is Mr. Harold Cox. Many of his opinions I detest, but the
engaging way in which he presents them makes you almost angry with yourself
at disagreeing with him. You feel, indeed, that you must be wrong, and that
such open-mindedness and such a friendly conciliatory manner as he shows
must somehow be the evidence of a right view of things. As a matter of
fact, of course, he is really a very dogmatic gentleman at the bottom--none
more so. As indeed Franklin was. But he has the art to conceal the emphasis
of his opinions, and so he makes even those who disagree with him listen to
his case almost with a desire to endorse it.

It is a great gift. I wish I had got it.

ON COURAGE

I was asked the other day to send to a new magazine a statement as to the
event of the war which had made the deepest impression on me. Without
hesitation I selected the remarkable Christmas demonstrations in Flanders.
Here were men who for weeks and months past had been engaged in the task of
stalking each other and killing each other, and suddenly under the
influence of a common memory, they repudiate the whole gospel o