] has kindly relieved me of that difficulty. He has
pointed out certain topics which strikingly connect Gladstone's
personality with the events and emotions of the present hour. I
will take them as indicated, point by point.

[Footnote *: Of the _Red Triangle_.]

1. THE LOVE OF LIBERTY.

I have never doubted that the master-passion of Gladstone's nature
was his religiousness--his intensely-realized relation with God,
with the Saviour, and with "the powers of the world to come." This
was inborn. His love of liberty was acquired. There was nothing
in his birth or education or early circumstances to incline him
in this direction. He was trained to "regard liberty with jealousy
and fear, as something which could not wholly be dispensed with,
but which was continually to be watched for fear of excesses."
Gradually--very gradually--he came to regard it as the greatest
of temporal blessings, and this new view affected every department
of his public life. In financial matters it led him to adopt the
doctrine of Free Exchanges. In politics, it induced him to extend
the suffrage, first to the artisan and then to the labourer. In
foreign affairs, it made him an unrelenting foe of the Turkish
tyranny. In Ireland, it converted him to Home Rule. In religion,
it brought him nearer and nearer to the ideal of the Free Church
in the Free State.

2. BELGIUM AND THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.

Gladstone hated war. He held, as most people hold, that there are
causes, such as Life and Home and Freedom, for which the gentlest
and most humane of men must be prepared to draw the sword. But he
was profoundly anxious that it should never be drawn except under
the absolute compulsion of national duty, and during the Crimean
War he made this memorable declaration:

"If, when you have attained the objects of the war, you continue
it for the sake of mere military glory, I say you tempt the justice
of Him in whose hands the fates of armies are as absolutely lodged
as the fate of the infant slumbering in its cradle."

This being his general view of war, it was inevitable that he should
regard with horror the prospect of intervention in the Franco-German
War, which broke out with startling suddenness, when he was Prime
Minister, in the summer of 1870. He strained every nerve to keep
England out of the struggle, and was profoundly thankful that Providence
enabled him to do so. Yet all through that terrible crisis he saw
quite clearly that either