CHAMBERLAIN.  Yes, that is a new kind, hard to rear.  There are very few of it in England yet, and nowhere growing so well as they do here.

DIST. V. That is so like you, Chamberlain—­you are the born expert; everything you touch—­it’s in your blood.  Whatever you have done, you have done successfully.

CHAMBERLAIN.  So I have your word for it.  I was saying to Collins this morning that as a type of the really successful man you had beaten me.

DIST. V. I—­a type of success?  My dear Chamberlain!  In my wildest dreams, I aim only at safety; and if my hesitations have sometimes distressed you, they have been far more distressing to myself.  You yourself, in a moment of friendly candour, once described me (so I was told) as the champion stick-in-the-mud.

CHAMBERLAIN.  So I did, and it’s true.  But I said “champion.”  If you hadn’t been such a champion at it, the mud would have swallowed you up alive.  Instead of that, you have made it a tower of defence against your enemies.  That’s why I regard you not only as so successful, but so British.

DIST. V. May I, at least, claim that even for self-defence I have not slung it at my opponents?

CHAMBERLAIN.  No.  Why waste it?  It’s your use, not your misuse of it that I so admire.  If you hadn’t been such a wonderful politician, you might have been a great statesman.

DIST. V. Doesn’t that rather indicate failure?

CHAMBERLAIN.  No.  Sometimes the political world has no use for statesmen—­ except to down them.  Sometimes it prefers politicians, and perhaps rightly.  Every age makes its own peculiar requirements; and those who find out when the political line is the better one to follow, are the successful ones.  You and I have been—­politicians; let’s be honest and own it.  And now my particular politics are over.  Circumstances have emptied me out.  That’s different from mere failure.  Great statesmen have been failures; we’ve seen them go down, you and I—­too big, too far-seeing for their day.  But they went down full, with all the weight of their great convictions and principles still to their credit.  I’m empty.  Time has played me out.  That’s the difference.

DIST. V. I am confident that history will give a different verdict.

CHAMBERLAIN.  Will it?  When exactly does history begin to get written?  Is a man’s reputation for statesmanship safe, even after a hundred years?  What about Pitt?  Can one be so sure of him now?  His European policy may have been a blunder; his great work in Ireland may yet have to be reversed.

DIST. V. In reversed circumstances, that may become logical.  But what has held good for a hundred year, I should incline to regard as statesmanship.

CHAMBERLAIN.  “Held good”?  Fetters a man can’t break “hold good “; but they make a prisoner of him all the same.  Policies have done that to nations before now.  But would you, on that score, say of them that they have held good?