DIST. V. But let me understand, my dear Chamberlain, what exactly in Pitt’s policy you now question?

CHAMBERLAIN.  Nothing:  I can’t see far enough ahead to question anything.  I only say, when does history begin to get written?  We don’t know.

DIST. V. What more can one do than direct it for the generation in which one lives?  That, it seems to me, is our main responsibility.

CHAMBERLAIN.  Well, that’s what you and I have done.  How?  Mainly by pulling down bigger men than ourselves.  Randolph, Parnell, Gladstone—­we got the better of them, didn’t we?  Have you never wondered why men of genius get sent into the world—­only to be defeated?  Gladstone was a bigger man than the whole lot of us; but we pulled him down—­and I enjoyed doing it.  Parnell, for all his limitations, was a great man.  Well, we got him down too.  And I confess that gave me satisfaction.  You helped to pull Randolph down; but you didn’t enjoy doing it.  That’s where you and I were different.

DIST. V. I helped?

CHAMBERLAIN.  Yes; it had to be done.  And you were sorry for him while you did it—­just as you were sorry for Wyndham.

DIST. V. But I did nothing!

CHAMBERLAIN.  Quite so.  He came down here to fight us in the Central division, and the Conservatives were keen for it.  It was touch and go:  Unionists were not in such close alliance then; he might have succeeded.  You did nothing; wouldn’t back him. (Quite right, from my point of view.) Randolph went down:  never the same man again.

DIST. V. But, my dear Chamberlain, we had our agreed compact.

CHAMBERLAIN.  An official understanding, certainly.  But that didn’t prevent me from going to the Round-Table conference.  That also was touch and go; it might have succeeded.  Where would our compact have been, then?

DIST. V. The Round-Table was merely an interrogation covering a forlorn hope.  It failed because you remained loyal to your convictions.

CHAMBERLAIN.  It failed because one day two of us lost our tempers—­one bragged, the other bullied.  That was the real reason.  If Gladstone had given me a large enough hand over his first Bill, d’you suppose I shouldn’t have been a Home Ruler?  I was to begin with, remember.

DIST. V. Standing for a very different Bill, I imagine.

CHAMBERLAIN.  Which you would still have opposed.  But I should have won.

DIST. V. Certainly, if we had lost you, it would have made a difference.

CHAMBERLAIN.  I was younger then:  I’d more push in me.  But you would have let me go, all the same.  Yes, I’ve always admired your courage when the odds were against you...So, when the time for it came, you pulled me down too.  It had to be done. ...And here I am.

DIST. V. My dear Chamberlain, you distress me deeply!

CHAMBERLAIN.  Of course I do.  D’you think I haven’t distressed myself too? 
Do I look like a man who hasn’t been through anything?