d beaten me.

DIST. V. I--a type of success? My dear Chamberlain! In my wildest dreams,
I aim only at safety; and if my hesitations have sometimes distressed you,
they have been far more distressing to myself. You yourself, in a moment
of friendly candour, once described me (so I was told) as the champion
stick-in-the-mud.

CHAMBERLAIN. So I did, and it's true. But I said "champion." If you hadn't
been such a champion at it, the mud would have swallowed you up alive.
Instead of that, you have made it a tower of defence against your enemies.
That's why I regard you not only as so successful, but so British.

DIST. V. May I, at least, claim that even for self-defence I have not
slung it at my opponents?

CHAMBERLAIN. No. Why waste it? It's your use, not your misuse of it that I
so admire. If you hadn't been such a wonderful politician, you might have
been a great statesman.

DIST. V. Doesn't that rather indicate failure?

CHAMBERLAIN. No. Sometimes the political world has no use for statesmen--
except to down them. Sometimes it prefers politicians, and perhaps
rightly. Every age makes its own peculiar requirements; and those who find
out when the political line is the better one to follow, are the
successful ones. You and I have been--politicians; let's be honest and own
it. And now my particular politics are over. Circumstances have emptied me
out. That's different from mere failure. Great statesmen have been
failures; we've seen them go down, you and I--too big, too far-seeing for
their day. But they went down _full_, with all the weight of their
great convictions and principles still to their credit. I'm empty. Time
has played me out. That's the difference.

DIST. V. I am confident that history will give a different verdict.

CHAMBERLAIN. Will it? When exactly does history begin to get written? Is a
man's reputation for statesmanship safe, even after a hundred years? What
about Pitt? Can one be so sure of him now? His European policy may have
been a blunder; his great work in Ireland may yet have to be reversed.

DIST. V. In reversed circumstances, that may become logical. But what has
held good for a hundred year, I should incline to regard as statesmanship.

CHAMBERLAIN. "Held good"? Fetters a man can't break "hold good "; but they
make a prisoner of him all the same. Policies have done that to nations
before now. But would you, on that score, say of them that they have held
good?

DIST. V. But let me und