Joseph Chamberlain, the father of his guest at
table; and this evening he spared none. With the usual abuse of
the quos ego, common to vigorous statesmen, he said all that he
thought about Russians and Japanese, as well as about Boers and
British, without restraint, in full hearing of twenty people, to
the entire satisfaction of his listener; and concluded by
declaring that war was imminent; that it ought to be stopped;
that it could be stopped: " I could do it myself; I could stop it
to-morrow!" and he went on to explain his reasons for restraint.
That he was right, and that, within another generation, his
successor would do what he would have liked to do, made no shadow
of doubt in the mind of his hearer, though it would have been
folly when he last supped at the White House in the dynasty of
President Hayes; but the listener cared less for the assertion of
power, than for the vigor of view. The truth was evident enough,
ordinary, even commonplace if one liked, but it was not a truth
of inertia, nor was the method to be mistaken for inert.
Nor could the force of Japan be mistaken for a moment as a
force of inertia, although its aggressive was taken as
methodically -- as mathematically -- as a demonstration of
Euclid, and Adams thought that as against any but Russians it
would have lost its opening.
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