He was a great Parliamentarian, a brilliant debater and a famous Irish Secretary in difficult times, but his political energies lay in tactics.  He took a Puck-like pleasure in watching the game of party politics, not in the interests of any particular political party, nor from esprit de corps, but from taste.  This was very conspicuous in the years 1903 to 1906, during the fiscal controversy; but any one with observation could watch this peculiarity carried to a fine art wherever and whenever the Government to which he might be attached was in a tight place.

Politically, what he cared most about were problems of national defence.  He inaugurated the Committee of Defence and appointed as its permanent Chairman the Prime Minister of the day; everything connected with the size of the army and navy interested him.  The size of your army, however, must depend on the aims and quality of your diplomacy; and, if you have Junkers in your Foreign Office and jesters on your War Staff, you must have permanent conscription.  It is difficult to imagine any one in this country advocating a large standing army plus a navy, which is vital to us; but such there were and such there will always be.  With the minds of these militarists, protectionists and conscriptionists, Arthur Balfour had nothing in common at any time.  He and the men of his opinions were called the Blue Water School; they deprecated fear of invasion and in consequence were violently attacked by the Tories.  But, in spite of an army corps of enthusiasts kept upon our coasts to watch the traitors with towels signalling to the sea with full instructions where to drive the county cows to, no German army during the great War attempted to land upon our shores, thus amply justifying Arthur Balfour’s views.

The artists who have expressed with the greatest perfection human experience, from an external point of view, he delighted in.  He preferred appeals to his intellect rather than claims upon his feelings.  Handel in music, Pope in poetry, Scott in narration, Jane Austen in fiction and Sainte-Beuve in criticism supplied him with everything he wanted.  He hated introspection and shunned emotion.

What interested me most and what I liked best in Arthur Balfour was not his charm or his wit—­and not his politics—­but his writing and his religion.

Any one who has read his books with a searching mind will perceive that his faith in God is what has really moved him in life; and no one can say that he has not shown passion here.  Religious speculation and contemplation were so much more to him than anything else that he felt justified in treating politics and society with a certain levity.

His mother, Lady Blanche Balfour, was a sister of the late Lord Salisbury and a woman of influence.  I was deeply impressed by her character as described in a short private life of her written by the late minister of Whittingehame, Mr. Robertson.  I should be curious to know, if it were possible, how many men and women of mark in this generation have had religious mothers.  I think much fewer than in mine.  My husband’s mother, Mr. McKenna’s and Lord Haldane’s were all profoundly religious.