Will Gladstone loved peace, and hated war with his whole heart.  He was by conviction opposed to intervention in the quarrels of other nations.  “His health was still delicate; he possessed neither the training nor instincts of a soldier; war and fighting were repugnant to his whole moral and physical fibre.”  No one, in short, could have been by nature less disposed for the duty which now became urgent.  “The invasion of Belgium shattered his hopes and his ideals.”  He now realized the stern truth that England must fight, and, if England must fight, he must bear his part in the fighting.  He had been made, when only twenty-six, Lord-Lieutenant of Flintshire, and as such President of the Territorial Force Association.  It was his official duty to “make personal appeals for the enlistment of young men.  But how could he urge others to join the Army while he, a young man not disqualified for military service, remained at home in safety?  It was his duty to lead, and his best discharge of it lay in personal example.”  His decision was quickly and quietly made.  “He was the only son of his mother, and what it meant to her he knew full well;” but there was no hesitation, no repining, no looking back.  He took a commission in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and on the 15th of March, 1915, he started with a draft for France.  On the 12th of April he was killed.  “It is not”—­he had just written to his mother—­“the length of existence, that counts, but what is achieved during that existence, however short.”  These words of his form his worthiest epitaph.

XI

LORD CHARLES RUSSELL

A man can have no better friend than a good father; and this consideration warrants, I hope, the inclusion of yet one more sketch drawn “in honour of friendship.”

Charles James Fox Russell (1807-1894) was the sixth son of the sixth Duke of Bedford.  His mother was Lady Georgiana Gordon, daughter of the fourth Duke of Gordon and of the adventurous “Duchess Jane,” who, besides other achievements even more remarkable, raised the “Gordon Highlanders” by a method peculiarly her own.  Thus he was great-great-great-grandson of the Whig martyr, William, Lord Russell, and great-nephew of Lord George Gordon, whose Protestant zeal excited the riots of 1780.  He was one of a numerous family, of whom the best remembered are John, first Earl Russell, principal author of the Reform Act of 1832, and Louisa, Duchess of Abercorn, grandmother of the present Duke.

Charles James Fox was a close friend, both politically and privately, of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, and he promised them that he would be godfather to their next child; but he died before the child was born, whereupon his nephew, Lord Holland, took over the sponsorship, and named his godson “Charles James Fox.”  The child was born in 1807, and his birthplace was Dublin Castle.[*] The Duke of Bedford was then Viceroy of Ireland, and became involved in some controversy because he refused to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act.  When Lord Charles Russell reached man’s estate, he used, half in joke but quite half in-earnest, to attribute his lifelong sympathy with the political demands of the Irish people to the fact that he was a Dublin man by birth.