This perhaps had been the fate of Lord Rhondda, for he was by nature of a true mathematical turn, had not the circumstances of his economic life forced him to apply this natural tendency to the practical affairs of commerce.  But nature herself had given him with this aptitude for mathematics another quality which must eventually, one would suppose, have saved him from the unfruitful fate of a theorist—­he was a man of rare imagination.  And so this mathematician, who was also a poet, brought a unique mind to the affairs of commerce and there scored a success which attracted attention in both hemispheres.

I do not know a better example to illustrate the main thesis of this book than the case of Lord Rhondda.  No doubt the case of a greater man, Lord Leverhulme, would lend itself to a far stronger illustration of that thesis, but, unfortunately for my argument and for the nation, Lord Leverhulme has never had an opportunity of vindicating in office those qualities which the House of Commons neglected or overlooked during the years in which, like Lord Rhondda, he sat humbly on its back benches.

For the best part of his manhood Lord Rhondda was a political failure.  The House of Commons, which prides itself on its judgment of men, treated him as a person of no importance.  He represented one of the largest industrial constituencies in the country, was always returned by an overwhelming majority, and was known to be in his own district an administrator of far-reaching talent; but because he could not speak effectually, and because the House of Commons—­that most self-satisfied assembly of mediocrities—­did not take to him, he was never offered by his political leaders during all the long years of his patient service even an under-secretaryship.

This was the man who saved the nation from one of its greatest perils during perhaps the most critical period of the war.

As one examines Lord Rhondda’s administration of the Ministry of Food one discovers an interesting and surely an important fact in the psychology of our public life.

His triumph, which was one of the greatest in the war, lay almost entirely in the region of personality.  For his gravest difficulties were not so much in the office of the Ministry as in the great and grumbling world outside, where toiling men and women stood outside provision shops for hours in the rain and cold only to be told in the vast majority of cases when their turn came that supplies were exhausted for that day.

By the power of his imagination Lord Rhondda saw that the first step towards saving a very perilous situation was to convince this vast world of seething discontent that absolute justice should characterize the administration of his office.  To this end, satisfied that those about him were men of devoted zeal and real talent, he set himself to the creation of a public opinion favourable to the discharge of his duties.  And by a stroke of inspiration he saw that to achieve this tranquillity of the public mind he must give his own personality to the world.  His character must become a public possession.  A man, and not an office, must stand for Food Control.  The instinct of the Briton for justice and fair play must receive assurance from a moral personality.