has confounded his enemies.

From his youth up Mr. Churchill has loved with all his heart, with all
his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength, three
things--war, politics, and himself. He loved war for its dangers, he
loves politics for the same reason, and himself he has always loved for
the knowledge that his mind is dangerous--dangerous to his enemies,
dangerous to his friends, dangerous to himself. I can think of no man I
have ever met who would so quickly and so bitterly eat his heart out in
Paradise.

He was once asked if politics were more to him than any other pursuit of
mankind.

"Politics," he replied, "are almost as exciting as war, and quite as
dangerous."

"Even with the new rifle?"

"Well, in war," he answered, "you can only be killed once, but in
politics many times."

Unhappily for himself, and perhaps for the nation, since he has many of
the qualities of real greatness, Mr. Churchill lacks the unifying spirit
of _character_ which alone can master the discrepant or even
antagonistic elements in a single mind, giving them not merely force,
which is something, but direction, which is much more. He is a man of
truly brilliant gifts, but you cannot depend upon him. His love for
danger runs away with his discretion; his passion for adventure makes
him forget the importance of the goal. Politics may be as exciting and
as dangerous as war, but in politics there is no V.C.

I am not enamoured of the logic of consistency. It seems a rather
ludicrous proceeding for an impecunious young man to join a very
strictly political club with the idea in his mind that he will always be
in favour of that particular party's programmes. Most of us, I think,
will agree that a man who never changes his opinion is a stupid person,
and that one who boasts in grave and hoary age of his lifelong political
consistency is merely confessing that he has learnt nothing in the
school of experience. One sees the danger of this state of mind when he
thinks of the theologians who burned men of science at the stake rather
than be false to their Christian dogmas.

Nevertheless, illogical and ridiculous as consistency may appear,
amounting in truth to nothing more than either inability to see the
other side of an argument or a deliberate refusal to acknowledge an
intellectual mistake, who can doubt that this quality of the mind
creates confidence? On the other hand, who can doubt that one who
appears at this moment fight