It is a thousand pities, I think, that he is not a fanatic.  It is for the very reason he is not fanatical that his progress in politics has been in the suburbs of the second rank.  He has every quality for the first rank, and for the foremost place in that rank, save the one urging passion of enthusiasm.  It is a sense of humour, an engaging sense of diffidence, a continual deviation towards a mild and gentle cynicism, it is this spirit—­the very antithesis of a fanatical temper—­which keeps him from leadership.

The nation has reason on its side for suspecting Lord Robert Cecil.  In the mind of the British people nothing is more settled than the conviction that the conquering qualities of a great captain are courage and confidence.  He has given no sign of these qualities.  Nature, it would seem, has fashioned him neither pachydermatous nor pugilistic.  He appears upon the platform as a gentleman makes his entrance into a drawing-room, not as a toreador leaps into the bull ring.  He expresses his opinions as a gentleman expresses his views at a dinner-table, not as an ale-house politician airs his dogmatisms in the tap-room.  The very qualities which give such a grace and power to his personality, being spiritual qualities, prevent him from capturing the loud and grateful loyalty of a political party.

Now, while a man like Mr. Lloyd George can only affirm his own essence by the exercise of what we may call brute force, and by making use of vulgar methods from which a person of Lord Robert Cecil’s quality would naturally shrink, it is nevertheless not at all necessary for a man of noble character and greater power to employ the same means in order to earn the confidence of his countrymen.

What is necessary in this case is not brute force but fanaticism, and by fanaticism I mean that spirit which in Cromwell induced Hume to call him “this fanatical hypocrite,” and which Burke adequately defined in saying that when men are fanatically fond of an object they will prefer it to their own peace.

Lord Robert Cecil need not adopt the tricks of a mountebank to achieve leadership of the British nation, but he must contract so entire a faith in the sacred character of his mission that all the inhibiting diffidencies of his modest nature will henceforth seem to him like the whisperings of temptation.  He must cease to watch the shifts of public opinion.  He must cease merely to recommend the probable advantage of rather more idealism in the politics of Europe.  He must act.  He must learn to know that a man cannot give a great idea to the world without giving himself along with it.  The cause must consume the person.  Individual peace must be sacrificed for world’s peace.

From the very beginning of the War Lord Robert Cecil perceived that the need of the nation was not for a great political leader, but for a great moral leader.  He told me so with an unforgettable emphasis, well aware that under the public show of our national life the heart of the British people was famishing for such guidance.  He numbered himself among those anxiously scanning the horizon for such a leader.  He should have been instead answering the inarticulate cry of the people for that leader.