People interested in heredity tried to trace in him some resemblance to his famous grandfather; but, alike in appearance and in character, the two were utterly dissimilar.  In only one respect they resembled each other, and that was the highest.  Both were earnest and practical Christians, walking by a faith which no doubts ever disturbed, and serving God in the spirit and by the methods of the English Church.  And here we see alike Will Gladstone’s qualifications and his drawbacks as a candidate for a Scottish constituency.  His name and his political convictions commended him to the electors; his ecclesiastial opinions they could not share.  His uprightness of character and nobility of aspect commanded respect; his innate dislike of popularity-hunting and men-pleasing made him seem for so young a man—­he was only twenty-seven—­austere and aloof.  Everyone could feel the intensity of his convictions on the points on which he had made up his mind; some were unreasonably distressed when he gave expression to that intensity by speech and vote.  He was chosen to second the Address at the opening of the Session of 1912, and acquitted himself, as always, creditably; but it was in the debates on the Welsh Disestablishment Bill that he first definitely made his mark.  “He strongly supported the principle, holding that it had been fully justified by the results of the Irish Disestablishment Act on the Irish Church.  But, as in that case, generosity should characterize legislation; disendowment should be clearly limited to tithes.  Accordingly, in Committee, he took an independent course.  His chief speech on this subject captivated the House.  For a very young Member to oppose his own party without causing irritation, and to receive the cheers of the Opposition without being led to seek in them solace for the silence of his own side, and to win general admiration by transparent sincerity and clear, balanced statement of reason, was a rare and notable performance.”

When Will Gladstone struck twenty-nine, there were few young men in England who occupied a more enviable position.  He had a beautiful home; sufficient, but not overwhelming, wealth; a property which gave full scope for all the gifts of management and administration which he might possess; the devoted love of his family, and the goodwill even of those who did not politically agree with him.  His health, delicate in childhood, had improved with years.  “While he never neglected his public duties, his natural, keen, healthy love of nature, sport, fun, humour, company, broke out abundantly.  In these matters he was still a boy”—­but a boy who, as it seemed, had already crossed the threshold of a memorable manhood.  Such was Will Gladstone on his last birthday—­the 12th of July, 1914.  A month later the “Great Tribulation” had burst upon the unthinking world, and all dreams of happiness were shattered.  Dreams of happiness, yes; but not dreams of duty.  Duty might assume a new, a terrible, and an unlooked-for form; but its essential and spiritual part—­the conviction of what a man owes to God, to his fellow-men, and to himself—­became only more imperious when the call to arms was heard:  Christus ad arma vocat.