That is all quite clear. I am not quite sure
about the facts, but I quite understand the argument. But then, having
been called upon to contemplate this bracing picture of a boisterous
turmoil of all the classes of England, I am suddenly asked to accept as
example of it, Lord Milner, Lord Curzon, and the present Chancellor of
the Exchequer. What part do these gentlemen play in the mental process?
Is Lord Curzon one of the rugged and ragged poor men whose angularities
have been rubbed away? Or is he one of those whom Oxford immediately
deprived of all kind of social exclusiveness? His Oxford reputation does
not seem to bear out either account of him. To regard Lord Milner as a
typical product of Oxford would surely be unfair. It would be to deprive
the educational tradition of Germany of one of its most typical
products. English aristocrats have their faults, but they are not at all
like Lord Milner. What Mr. Asquith was meant to prove, whether he was a
rich man who lost his exclusiveness, or a poor man who lost his angles,
I am utterly unable to conceive.
There is, however, one mild but very evident truth that might perhaps be
mentioned. And it is this: that none of those three excellent persons
is, or ever has been, a poor man in the sense that that word is
understood by the overwhelming majority of the English nation.
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