The Ex-Leader of the Conservative Party, Mr. Bonar Law, however much he may differ from the Premier in many aspects of his temperament, also finds the foundation of his judgment in exercise and caution.  As a player of games he is rather poor, but makes up in enthusiasm for tennis what he lacks in skill.  His habits are almost ascetic in their rigour.  He drinks nothing, and the finest dinner a cook ever conceived would be wasted on him.  A single course of the plainest food suffices his appetite, and he grows manifestly uneasy when faced with a long meal.  His pipe, his one relaxation, never far absent, seems to draw him with a magic attraction.  As it was, his physical resources stood perhaps the greatest strain that has been imposed on any public man in our time.  From the moment when he joined the first Coalition Government in 1915 to the day when he laid down office in 1921 he was beset by cares and immersed in labours which would have overwhelmed almost any other man.  Neither this nor succeeding Coalition Governments were popular with a great section of his Conservative followers, and to the task of taking decisions on the war was added the constant and irritating necessity of keeping his own supporters in line with the administration.  In 1916 he had to take the vital decision which displaced Mr. Asquith in favour of Mr. Lloyd George, and during the latter’s Premiership he had to suffer the strain of constantly accommodating himself, out of a feeling of personal loyalty, to methods which were not congenial to his own nature.  In the face of all these stresses he never would take a holiday, and nothing except the rigid moderation of his life enabled him to keep the cool penetration of his judgment intact and his physical vigour going during those six terrible years.

The Lord Chancellor might appear to be an exception to the rule.  This is very far from being the case.  It is true that his temperament knows no mean either in work or play.  One of the most successful speeches he ever delivered in the House of Commons was the fruit of a day of violent exercise, followed by a night of preparation, with a wet towel tied round the head.  And yet he appeared perfectly fresh; he has the priceless asset of the most marvellous constitution in the British Empire.  Kipling’s poem on France suggests an adaptation to describe the Lord Chancellor: 

    “Furious in luxury, merciless in toil,
     Terrible with strength renewed from a tireless soil.”

No man has spent himself more freely in the hunting-field or works harder to-day at games.  Yet, with all this tendency to the extreme of work and play, he is a man of iron resolution and determined self-control.  Although the most formidable enemy of the Pussyfooters and the most powerful protector of freedom in the social habits of the people that the Cabinet contains, he is, like Mr. Bonar Law, a teetotaler.  It is this capacity for governing himself which is pointing upwards to still greater heights of power.