100 years ago: Death of Lord Curzon

ALTHOUGH Lord Curzon died at a comparatively early age, he really belonged to a political era that certainly came to an end in 1914, if indeed it would not be more accurate to date its demise eight years earlier. Lord Curzon eminently deserved the high tributes paid to him in Parliament. He was a man of wide culture, outstanding ability, and devotion to the public service. It is said of him that he never spared his subordinates. It is certainly true that he never spared himself, and it cannot be forgotten that there was hardly a day in all the years of his public work in which he did not suffer grievous physical pain. . . Yet with it all, Lord Curzon lived his later years in a world to which he did not belong, and to which, from lack of affinity, he was never able to give service commensurate with his outstanding abilities. His aloofness and hauteur were, no doubt, due to some extent to shyness and to physical disability. But they were also largely due to a lack of understanding of modern conditions and modern needs. As a statesman he inherited the traditions and the prejudices of Lord Salisbury. He was vastly affected by the anti-Gallicism of nineteenth century Toryism, and this made his post-war tenure of the Foreign Office a definite failure. It may be, too, that a remnant of the insensate pro-Turkish sympathy of Beaconsfield and Salisbury caused him to accept the infamous Lausanne Treaty, for which the Christians of the East have paid so bitter a price. Though, however, it may reasonably be felt that his career was, to some extent, a disappointment — and this was suggested by Mr. Baldwin — his death is a definite national loss. He was a dignified, self-respecting, impressive figure, definitely outside the world of jazz and jingle.

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