e
heard of his qualities. We are none of us perfect, and we don't want a
priggish biographer to pretend that we are." He was speaking here mainly
of political matters; but Lord Cromer's training and experience had a
strong bearing on his literary tastes. With him politics reacted on
literature, although he liked to fancy that he kept them wholly apart.

No doubt a selection from his correspondence will one day be given to
the world, for he was a vivid, copious, and daring letter-writer. I
suppose that he wrote to each of his friends mainly on the subject which
absorbed that friend most, and as his own range of sympathies and
interests was very wide, it is probable that his letters will prove
excellent general reading. As in so many other of the departments of
life, Lord Cromer did not think letter-writing a matter to be lightly
regarded or approached without responsibility. He said:--

"There are two habits which I have contracted, and which I have
endeavoured to pass on to my children, as I have found them useful.
One is to shut the door after me when I leave the room, and the
other is always to affix the day of the month and the year to every
document, however unimportant, that I sign. I have received numbers
of letters, not only from women, one of whose numerous privileges
it is to be vague, but also from men in high official positions,
dated with the day of the week only. When the document is
important, such a proceeding is a fraud on posterity."

He often, both in conversation and in letters, took up one of his
favourite classic tags, and wove a shrewd modern reflection round it.
For instance, a couple of years before the war, a phrase of Aristotle
recommending a ruthless egotism in the conduct of war, led him to say:--

"I think that at times almost every modern nation has acted on this
principle, though they gloss it over with fine words. Its principal
exponents of late have unquestionably been the Hohenzollerns."

And, in connection with the axiom of Thucydides that war educates
through violence, he wrote, about the same time:--

"The Germans, who, in spite of their culture, preserve a strain of
barbarism in their characters, are the modern representatives of
this view. There is just this amount of truth in it--that at the
cost of undue and appalling sacrifices, war brings out certain
fine qualities in individuals, and some