The moral and intellectual condition of the world, a position from which only a great spiritual palingenesis can deliver civilization, is a charge on the sheet which Lord Northcliffe will have to answer at the seat of judgment.  He has received the price of that condition in the multitudinous pence of the people; consciously or unconsciously he has traded on their ignorance, ministered to their vulgarities, and inflamed the lowest and most corrupting of their passions:  if they had had another guide his purse would be empty.

All the same, it is the greatest mistake for his enemies to declare that he is nothing better than a cynical egoist trading on the enormous ignorance of the English middle-classes.  He is a boy, full of adventure, full of romance, and full of whims, seeing life as the finest fairy-tale in the world, and enjoying every incident that comes his way, whether it be the bitterest and most cruel of fights or the opportunity for doing someone a romantic kindness.

You may see the boyishness of his nature in the devotion with which he threw himself first into bicycling, then into motoring, and then into flying.  He loves machinery.  He loves every game which involves physical risk and makes severe demands on courage.  His love of England is not his love of her merchants and workmen, but his love of her masculine youth.

He has been generosity itself to his brothers, with all of whom he does not, unfortunately, get on as well as one could wish.  The most beautiful thing in his life is the love he cherishes for his mother, and nothing delights him so much as taking away her breath by acts of astonishing devotion.  A man so generous and so boyish may make grave mistakes, but he cannot be a deliberately bad man.

MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR

THE RT.  HON.  ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR

Born in Scotland 1848; s. of Jas. M. Balfour and Lady Blanche Cecil; nephew of the late Marquis of Salisbury and therefore 1st cousin to the present Marquis, Lord Robert Cecil, and Lord Hugh Cecil.  Educ.:  Eton and Trinity Coll., Cambridge; LL.D.  Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Cambridge, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Columbia (New York); D.C.L.  Oxford.  M.P. for Hertford, 1874-85; Private Sec’y to his uncle, the late Marquis of Salisbury, 1878-80; served on Mission to Berlin with Salisbury and Beaconsfield, 1878; Privy Councillor, 1885; President of Local Government Board, 1885-86; Sec’y for Scotland, 1886-87; Lord Rector, St. Andrews, 1886; Sec’y for Ireland, 1887-91; Lord Rector, Glasgow, 1890; Chancellor of Edinburgh since 1891; First Lord of Treasury, 1891-92; President British Association, 1904; Prime Minister, 1902-1905; Leader of the Commons, 1895-1906; 1st Lord of the Admiralty 1915-16; Head of British Mission to America, 1917; Author of a series of philosophical and economic works.

[Illustration:  RT.  HON.  ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR]