New-York tribune., 1910-09-11
AnglO-Amer1can Memories
LXXXIN.
LORD FOREIGN MINISTER COLLEAGUE TO
Copyright 1910 by George W. srnal,.r,

| promise between two minds thus consti-
/ tuted was obviously impossible The
/ one or the other had to give way. and it
was Mr.. Gladstone who gave way.
/ II is among the little ironies of politi-
i cal life that a man who had fought such
a fight as this and Won it. and who made
/ the fruits OF victory his own and his
d. country's. should be supposed to be
wanting in resolution. During his ten
ure OF the Foreign Office. from 1892 to
/ 1894, the voice of England was heard
/ with respect on the Continent; the pol
| icy of England was recognized as a con-
sistent policy; firm, courageous IN
wavering.
''On the whole said Lord Salisbury,
/ among all qualities essential to a di-
plomatist patience is most likely 10 be
of permanent use''
He said it in the summer of 1896.
apropos of the Venezuela business. tnen
drawing TO its close. He himself had
shown all through the negotiations, .be-
ginning in July. 1s95. and ending in the
autumn Of 1896. both patience and firm
ness.
Lord Rosebery's diplomatic equipment
is. in truth. very like that of Lord Sails
bury. He, too, has patience; and he
has the irmness needful to get the true
value out of patience. He has another
gift in which Lord Salisbury was pre-
erninent-the power of work was with
Lord Rosebery one night at Mentmore
He sat in his room upstairs, inside u
rampant Of Foreign Office dispatch
boxes three sides Of 4 quadrilateral and
as high as his writing table. As l left,
about I o'clock in the morning. I asked:
When are you going through those"
Nov"
the night"
I can't tell how long they may take
till I have looked at them. but, long or
short. they must be done tonight. The
only way to deal with F. O business is
10 start with a clean slate every morn
ing
remembers having heard from
Foreign Office clerk that Lord Granville
used to leave his boxes unopened for
three weeks at a time. And I remem-
hered having met Lord Granville on
Sunday morning in the country. when
he learned from a Sunday newspaper
arriving about Il o'clock a piece Of
diplomatic intelligence of high i'm
portance which must have been known
in the Foreign Office in London the day
before We'll. yes and I remembered
having been told in Berlin that high
officials of that highly and deservedIy
praised German bureaucracy thought
themselves lucky if they got papers back
from the Emperor three weeks after
they had been sent.
Penal servitude for fourteen hours j
day was Lord Rosebery's own descrip-
ton Of his work at the Foreign Office
The workingman who thinks eight hours
day too much might be asked what he
thought Of fourteen as a measure for
one Of the leisured class. But Lord
Rosebery, whose name figures often and
high on the Turf and in Court cere-
monies, and as host and guest in Lon
don and in the country and abroad, has
nevertheless always been a worker He
is. for all practical purposes. the greatest
living English master Of that political
and diplomatic history without which a
politician or a diplomatist can be only an
amateur. II he had not that and much
else. including a knowledge of the world
and Of men, sometimes cynical but al
ways kindly. he would not be what the
great Queen called him. a heaven born
Foreign Minister q ". S