IX.
FREDERICK AUGUSTUS MAXSE.
"To side with Truth is noble
When we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit
And 'tis prosperous to be just."
IT is now several years since I first chanced to meet Rear-Admiral Maxse at a Reform conference; but, until quite recently, I have had no opportunity of verifying my early impressions. These, with certain reservations, were of a most favorable kind; and they have been abundantly confirmed on closer acquaintance.
Maxse is, what so very few Englishmen are, an idealist in politics, a singularly poor hand at a compromise. Instead of accommodating his theory to the facts, he strives to bend the facts to his theory. With sailor-like single-mindedness, he has an awkward trick—awkward in a politician—of making use of language in order to express his meaning, instead of concealing it, as a good wire-puller should. His more candid political friends, consequently, complain that he cannot be got, even at critical electoral seasons, to recognize the advantage of calling a spade an elongated agricultural implement. Hence the damning suspicion which obtains in certain quarters that the admiral is, with all his ability, "impracticable." An Englishman, and not "practical"!
