Evening star., 1932-06-19
BY G. PATRICK THOMPSON.

n
and hooded ewes, he looks like
Durer etching of Don QuiXote.
- All around him you can glimpse
the phantasmagoria OF crusades
and causes. :. . .ho
In the days before the war 1t was the
Established Church of England which
kept him riding fiercely back ana 1orth,
and many a violent clash ne mad
before they unhorsed him-Wlth LLOYD
George and all the villains VINO sought
to disestablish the church In wales
During the war the Anglo-SaXon
brand of civilization was the maloen
on whose behalf he fought the Hohen-
zollern militarists. and this time, In
vested with the authority of blockade
minister and backed by the British
feet he t,lted with terrible effect
among the non -combatant multltudes
in the land behind the fighting fronts.
The war ended; there fioated into
view above the roofs Of Paris the vision
of a world organization WIN seat
in the ,OOO-year-old City OF Gavin
and a raison detre in the achleVement
of international peace ana security ana
he hurried over to help an American
President, a Boer statesman-sololel ano
some others pull this shining dream
CONu 10 tai III Ai'~AA -
inviolable covenant.
Plan for Portrait.
And ever since he has been galloping
around harrying the enemies of the
neW League and searching for the Holy
Grail which contains the key to dis
armament. He has grown old in the
fight and the search, and worn and
bsttle-scarred, and covered himself with
honor and renoWn-So much SO That
he has been awarded the Wilson peace
prize offered the Albanian throne and
granted a peerage; he has witnessed
the political chiefs of his country COM
bine in a manifesto appealing for funds
for a portrait Of him to be hung in
the National Portrait Gallery under the
name tablet Edgar Algernon Robert
Gascoyne-Cec!l. First Viscount Cecil OF
Chelwood, IN the County of Sussex.
England.
As the greatest champion Of disarma-
ment of them all, you might expect 70
find him riding hard IN the great
Geneva arms tourney, the most active
and spectacular of the 1900 cham
pions. But something Is amlss here.
At the Disarmament Conference Don
Quixote does not ride.
During the sonorous platltudes OF
the preliminary OrationS at the grand
opening he sat slumped IN an obscure
corner listening On the day-it was
February 6-when organizations Of all
kinds were graciOusly allowed to pre-
sent petitions to the conference. he
his long body from the seat
reserved for the president OF the In
Federation OF League OF
Nations Societies, made a speech out
lining the federations diSarmaments
presented the federation's pc
tition and then the hawk face, the
brooding eyes sank out Of sight again
and were lost in the melee.
1000 Miles North.
Formalities over and the conference
settled down to business you might
have run across ViScount Cecil in the
Hall of Conversations" where the
delegates met daily and all the great
ores had a deferential handshake,
bow and a word for him: or you might
have sighted him here and there around
the city. But you would not have met
him in the conference council cham
bers and committee rooms or at the
lunches where Bruening and MacDon-
aid conferred with Stimson and Gibson
come to an understanding with Simon
or anywhere where the big hunt for the
key to disarmament was active. On
any of the big vital days. indeed, you
would have had to fly 1000 miles north
to find him. Thus it was in the early
DAYS of the conference and thus 1t IS
today
Back of the Kings palace, in Lon
don. is Grosvenor Crescent, a wide.
quiet backWater. and at the east end IS
a big. old-fashioned mansion sur
by a faded flag, and in the
on the ground floor at the
back, there is a small, ill-lighted. book
lined room which might have been the
buffers in the days when it was a pri-
vate residence. A quaint round black
hat hangs on a peg behind the door.
Viscount Cecil, Joint president with
Earl Grey of Fallodon. Asquith's war
time foreign secretary Of the League
of Nations Union, which he founded,
is at work in his room at union head
quarters.
Toward evening he leaves his room,
comes down the steps and heads west,
making for his modest house In a
square close by. His black coat flaps
away from his lean form. His big head
is hunched in his bent shoulders. A
group of children play at the corner.
He surveys them thoughtfully as ne
passes. nervous big hands elapsed be-
hind his back And for moment a
grave smile crosses the harsh qulxotlc
irradiates the dark and
eyes. 1t changes the whole
face. the whole man. The combative
fanatic you were looking at moment
before is metamorphosized into a calm
and kindly old scholar, sweetness in the
thin mouth, sadness in the deep-socket-
ed eye.
Many Possibilities.
Why is Viscount Cecil rot at Geneva
to help the world rid itself of an over
weight of arms? The answer to that
is another question: Why is Viscount
Cecil Just the sort of personality that
Viscount Cecil is? If he were not so
and provocatively the
man who has taken the center Of the
and League stage he
might today be Archbishop of Canter-
bury, grabbed lawyer, a country par
son or prime minister of England. He
had the seeds of all these and other
possibilities in his cadaverous frame.
The vicissitudes of his career and his
present magnificent isolation are ex-
COlllP1CA S4AoA
acter, in which honesty of purpose and
intellectual obliquity, simplicity and
casuistry, disdain OF power and lust
for it, and an unconquerable and
zeal are oddly mixed. His
place in the fabric Of British political
life was determined, fundamentally, by
his ancestor, that great Elizabethan
minister who miraculously managed to
keep head, poise and position in the
most dangerous times, and firmly
founded the extensive family. Lord
Salisbury, a marquis of elegant propor-
tions and die-hard tendencies, leader
of the old aristocracy in the House of
Lords, is head of the family now.
Viscount Cecil and Lord Salisbury
are brothers. Their father, the third
lea leader in Victorian days, was a great
figure in the life of his time. Robert
Cecil, his third son, was brought up in
the huge family house at Hatfield,
where Disraeli was a constant and hon.
orod uI,ect and whore the neW demo-