mebody else with him is Napoleon--I am sure that he
chose the title of Northcliffe so that he might sign his notes with the
initial N--but when he is walking in a garden, dressed in white
flannels, and looking as if he had just come from a Turkish bath, he has
all the appearance of a youth. It is a tragedy that a smile so agreeable
should give way at times to a frown as black as midnight; that the
freshness of his complexion should yield to an almost jaundiced yellow;
and that the fun and frolic of the spirit should flee away so suddenly
and for such long periods before the witch of melancholy.

Of his part in the history of the world no historian will be able to
speak with unqualified approval. His political purpose from beginning to
end, I am entirely convinced, has been to serve what he conceives to be
the highest interests of his country. I regard him in the matter of
intention as one of the most honourable and courageous men of the day.
But he is reckless in the means he employs to achieve his ends. I should
say he has no moral scruples in a fight, none at all; I doubt very much
if he ever asks himself if anything is right or wrong. I should say that
he has only one question to ask of fate before he strips for a fight--is
this thing going to be Success or Failure?

In many matters of great importance he has been right, so right that we
are apt to forget the number of times he has been wrong. Whether he may
not be charged in some measure at least with the guilt of the war,
whether he is not responsible for the great bitterness of international
feelings which characterized Europe during the last twenty years, is a
question that must be left to the historian. But it is already apparent
that for want of balance and a moral continuity in his direction of
policy Lord Northcliffe has done nothing to elevate the public mind and
much to degrade it. He has jumped from sensation to sensation. The
opportunity for a fight has pleased him more than the object of the
fight has inspired him. He has never seen in the great body of English
public opinion a spirit to be patiently and orderly educated towards
noble ideals, but rather a herd to be stampeded of a sudden in the
direction which he himself has as suddenly conceived to be the direction
of success.

The true measure of his shortcomings may be best taken by seeing how a
man exercising such enormous power, power repeated day by day, and
almost at every hour of the day, might