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MY marriage to Cynthia Curzon was an event in my life of outstanding happiness and enduring influence. She was my steadfast, ever loyal and able colleague in the tough existence of politics, and my delightful companion in most of the charming occasions described in this book from that happy day in 1920 until her tragic death in 1933 at the age of thirty-four. She died of peritonitis following an appendix operation in a period before the discovery of the modern drug which would have saved her. Like most people, I have a great appreciation of real goodness of character, and I have never seen that finest of qualities in higher degree in any human being. She was a good woman in the true, natural sense of the word. In addition, she had an immense gaiety and joie de viwe, an enthusiasm alike for the fun of private life and the causes of public life, whose unreasonable frustrations would move her to the most intense indignation, but her enthusiasms were balanced by her calm and steady character.

When I met her she had advanced Liberal opinions, an instant, automatic sentiment in favour of the under-dog. She reacted strongly against the splendours of Conservatism, so faithfully reflected in her early surroundings, and this led her to seek close contact with the mass of the people and to prefer simplicity in her own home. She liked people, and her transparent sincerity and friendly approach enabled her to get on with them. Our house combined her welcome with these tastes, and made everyone feel at home.

We began married life with two small cottages at Ifold in the middle of the Sussex woods near Dunsfold; with their beams and low ceilings they were in extreme contrast with the lofty magnificence of her father's Hampshire house at Hackwood. We moved later to Savehay Farm, a Tudor house in about a hundred and twenty acres of land near the lovely village of Denham in Buckinghamshire. Again, the simplicity of style presented a challenge to the Regency glories of her father's tastes; a natural reaction which enlarged her experience, for happily she still retained her capacity to enjoy all spheres of life's diversity. Our London house at 8 Smith Square, with its roseate Queen Anne panelling, was a retreat from the busy political world, disturbed only by the harsh summons of the division bell. Our two elder children were born and brought up in these houses; Cimmie was a completely devoted mother, the life was domestic. Her real political interests came later, for she was at first given entirely to home life, relieved only by the gaiety of young parties in the country and the fun of London in the glittering twenties.

As Cimmie grew to political maturity she combined a passion to end avoidable suffering and unnecessary poverty with an urge towards the essential action and a hot impatience with its frustrations. It was not only her deep personal loyalty, but also her recognition that sentiment is not enough, which held her always in my political companionship. She recognised that we must will the means as well as the end, though the rough struggle was often detestable to her gentle nature. All ignoble means were excluded by such a character; if fight we must, our weapons must be clean, our victory magnanimous, or our defeat unflinching.

I met Cimmie first just after the war, and remember driving her home from parties to her father's house at No. i Carlton House Terrace. My first close association with her was in the by-election at Plymouth in March 1919, which followed Waldorf Astor's entry to the House of Lords on the death of his father. Lady Astor was the candidate and Cimmie was very fond of her; Cliveden, their house by the Thames, at that time played a considerable part in all our lives.

The by-election was as lively as all other events connected with Nancy Astor. I spent some time at Plymouth as a speaker, while Cimmie canvassed, and I vividly remember riding the storm caused by my attacks on the Labour leaders' war record at the large eve-of-poll meeting. It was here I met for the first time the Liberal M.P. for the neighbouring division, Isaac Foot, father of several distinguished sons, and formed a personal friendship which lasted through my parliamentary life. A great authority on Cromwell, he was a Radical who appreciated the character of action.

Cimmie and I continued to see much of each other for the rest of 1919, and in the early spring of 1920 we became engaged. She was the daughter of an enigmatic figure to the younger generation, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who was then Foreign Secretary and had previously been a distinguished Viceroy of India. The stories of his dignity and pomp, of his archaic and affected manners were legion, and always include his old-world habit of giving words like grass a short 'a', as in bat. For instance, on his entry to the Secretary of State's room at the Foreign Office, when, pointing at the inkpot, he commanded: 'Remove that object of glass and brass, and bring me alabaster'. I had never met him, but soon discovered that his real character was very different from his public image, as it would be called in these days. Cimmie, his second daughter, was on the best of terms with her father, though resistant to the exaggerated magnificence in which she had been brought up. His hobby was acquiring old castles for national preservation and doing them up in the grand style of his most discriminating taste. He was a snob—the theme of many of the stories—and she was not. He quietly observed to me one day: 'If you are the Leader of the House of Lords, it is your metier to be a snob'.

No doubt he apprehended that Cimmie's independent character might lead her to some marriage less desirable than the alliance with the eldest son of a prominent peer which he might have selected for her. She was a little uncertain of her reception when she entered his room in Carlton House Terrace to announce her engagement, and her entertaining account of his demeanour on this possibly trying occasion was long a cause of merriment to her friends. When she said, 'I'm engaged,' he rose and embraced her warmly; always affectionate and always correct. Then she thought she detected just the whisper of a sigh as his eye roved along the imposing array of finely bound books on his library shelf until it reached the humble reference books: for a moment it paused on Debrett, but moved on without hope to Who's Who. Then he spoke, in his curious, archaic accent with clipped, short 'a': 'Pass me that red book, and tell me his name'. Laughing, she passed over Who's Who and brought him instead Debrett: I was one of the lesser denizens, but still just inside the magic circle.

I liked him at once, from the first meeting. Lord Curzon was certainly a distinguished and imposing figure; his appearance was almost a parody of what a Leader of the House of Lords should be, but his dignity carried it without absurdity. God's butler, the young used to say, and it was a joke to which he referred with quiet appreciation; he was aware of most of the tales and quips at his expense. He collected them rather as Henry Ford gathered jokes about Ford cars, and would often analyse their degree of verity. Such stories as his alleged observation when he saw men just out of the trenches in a bath-house behind the lines—'I never knew before the lower classes have such white skins'—would be laboriously dissected, with the conclusion that it was quite natural to note how remarkably clean these men had managed to keep themselves in these filthy conditions, yet—in the case of someone who had been haunted from Oxford days by the epithet 'superior person'—it had to be twisted into this absurdity.

He was much misrepresented, which to some extent was the fault of his rigid and frigid demeanour, though it was partly the result of shyness and partly due to a perpetual pain in his back for which he wore a support. He was almost always in pain, and anyone who knew him well must have felt sympathy for a man who sustained this affliction through incessant labour with gay good humour, only yielding occasionally to the petulance evoked by fatigue and suffering. He combined a sense of public duty with a zest for life, and though our conception both of the former and of the latter was deeply different, his apparent sympathy for me in our initial relationship may have rested on recognition of some corresponding motives. Cimmie said to me years later that my vitality took so much from life that I had a particular obligation to give much back. Lord Curzon in a more material sense took much from the world, and he certainly felt his obligation and laboured incessantly to repay it.

At our first meeting he had obviously decided it was his duty to ask me all the usual father-in-law questions, but found it embarrassing—too impolite; this basic shyness was one of the things never understood about him. The intense emotionalism also could never be detected behind the icy demeanour presented to the world. His manner and conduct in private life were more emotional than is usual in an Englishman. He was warm-hearted, and on all family occasions easily moved to tears. At the christening of our first child he made a little speech—toasting the trophy, as he called it—and then with tears on his cheeks embraced everybody. Margot Asquith gave the same event a more practical reception, visiting Cimmie in bed soon after the arrival. 'Dear child, you look very pale and must not have another baby for a long tune. Henry always withdrew in time, such a noble man.' We were left pondering the effect of this private exercise on public affairs.

Lord Curzon could, of course, inadvertently be very intimidating to anyone outside his own circle. Billy Ormsby-Gore—later Lord Harlech—told me one of my favourite stories. He was on official duty at some meeting of a committee of the War Cabinet in Carlton House Terrace. Mr. Barnes, the estimable Labour member, the first to arrive, was clearly rather oppressed by the sombre pomp of the surroundings. Seeking relief, he pointed to an enormous photograph on the wall and enquired: 'Lord Curzon, what is that picture?' The crisp, short a's were prominent in the patient explanation: 'That, Mr. Bames, is a photograph of myself and of my staff, riding upon elephants'. This ray of vice-regal sunshine did little to relieve the imperial gloom which was liable to settle on the Regency splendours of Carlton House Terrace on an occasion when unsuitable company was present.

The reaction to one of his own people who transgressed could be very sharp. The finer points of etiquette and dress were sustained with meticulous care when he gave dinners to the King and Queen at Carlton House Terrace. He had written, on the first occasion we were invited, a letter in his long flowing hand to the Palace, asking that I might be permitted to wear trousers instead of knee breeches; my smashed leg, of course, looked odd in the more formal dress. It is not therefore difficult to conceive that the sky was darkened and the earth shook when Sir Ronald Lindsay, of the Foreign Office, ambled up the stairs to shake hands with his chief and host standing at the top, clad in trousers. The hands were raised to heaven, the short 'a' was resonant, 'Lindsay!—I am aghast'. It was doubly an outrage, as on two clear counts Lindsay should have known better. Firstly, he was already well on the way to his subsequent achievement of becoming head of the Foreign Office, and secondly he was brother to an earl of ancient lineage. Lord Curzon, however, in another context commented adversely on men of no personal significance who took undue pride in official uniforms, and concluded: 'If I walked naked down Piccadilly people would still look at me'.

There was quite a run of bad luck around these Royal dinners. We ourselves began very badly indeed. The formal invitation arrived and I carelessly handed it for acceptance to my secretary, who was a member of the Labour Party and unversed in the intricacies of these affairs; we will call him John Smith. The reply to Lord Curzon ran on the following lines. 'Dear Lord Curzon, Mr. Mosley asks me to say that he and the wife will be glad to dine with you and the King and Queen on the I5th prox. Yours sincerely, John Smith.' By return a letter arrived in the long, flowing hand. 'In the first place, your secretary should address me (if he must address me at all) as My Lord.' To those who knew him well, there was a world of weary resignation in that bracket. Then followed a complete social register, how and in what order of precedence every dignatory of the realm should be addressed and placed. It was most useful.

We were able to be a little helpful in return at an embarrassing moment on one of these regal occasions. George Robey had been invited to sing to the King and Queen after dinner; a sensible choice, for the royal taste was hearty, and Robey was finally knighted. He was going strong with his usual gaiety and effrontery, when he suddenly stopped. He gazed wildly around him, and then ran from the stage. Cimmie and I felt it was our duty to follow him and find out what was up. He was sweating profusely and in a state of perturbation. 'You see,' he explained, 'I suddenly remembered the next line was, "I feel just as good as a jolly old queen".' We felt that no prospect less formidable than the combined disapproval of Queen Mary and Lord Curzon could have broken the nerve of the great comedian.

Yet all this stately ritual was a part of Lord Curzon's practical sense. He belonged to that order, and it had to be supported with the long-proven means appropriate to it. My father-in-law showed himself a man of very different intellectual and moral stature from most of my opponents when he said to me that he could well imagine my period would be very different, requiring a different policy, attitude and way of life. He added suddenly and simply: 'I ask you one thing, not to become a good debater in the wilderness, a brilliant lone-wolf. That is all I ask. I don't mind if you join the Labour Party or come back, which I can arrange for you at once, to the Conservative Party. I shall not blame you if you join Labour, but do not remain in ineffective isolation.' In retrospect this was prophetic, as I remembered when my attempt to found a new movement was frustrated by the Second World War and I was consequently thrown into a position of isolation. Although my instinct would have been to agree with his advice, fate confronted me with the dilemma of becoming a comfortable colleague in a journey to disaster or a lone challenger to a political world which was bringing ruin to my country.

Acute differences did not arise in our discussions of politics, for a clear reason. He represented in a high degree the qualities of order and stability without which the modern and complex state cannot survive. The dynamic progress which I sought to combine with order and stability in the creative synthesis necessary to secure either, was a concept which, for him, simply did not exist. He was profoundly familiar with every detail of imperial administration and concomitant questions of foreign policy, but a complete stranger to the economics of statecraft and to the lives of the people. Master of one subject in which I was interested, the other was a closed book to him; so we could only discuss subjects on which we had a certain measure of agreement.

Lord Curzon had a practical side in political judgments on his own ground which was more marked than in the organisation of his personal life and affairs. His method of life was obsolete, and he added to his ignorance of economics a lack of money sense in private life. I remember him showing in conversation, when he was Foreign Secretary, that he had not the least idea how the franc had moved during previous years, and his attitude in his personal affairs was the simple proposition that adequate money should be available to support his expensive tastes. He felt it a public duty to maintain in proper state the various fine establishments with which his exquisite and sophisticated judgment had endowed the national heritage; this led to some friction with his daughters, as most of the necessary money happened to belong to them.

When we married, the question arose of how Cimmie should deal with the money inherited from her American mother, who came from the Leiter family, which had amassed a considerable fortune in real estate. Years later they were stated by my political opponents to be Jewish, but when I was in America with Cimmie in 1924 this was never suggested. They were then reputed to be Dutch immigrants, and those I saw were big, blond, blue-eyed people. The rumour probably arose from the founder of the fortune being called Levi Leiter, but these Old Testament names are as common in the Welsh valleys as they are in Holland. The thought that they were Jews appeared in that period never to have occurred to anyone, but the story was freely circulated in England during the thirties, when I found myself in conflict with certain Jewish interests, for the clear but transient reason that I was trying to stop the outbreak of the Second World War. Needless to say, if Cimmie had been half-Jewish it would not have made the slightest difference either in my attitude to her or in my political action in opposing anyone, Jew or Gentile, who in my view was agitating in favour of war.

Cimmie decided on our marriage to leave some of her money with Lord Curzon for a short time in order to tide him over a transition which might be awkward for him. He had little money of his own, but his second wife had a considerable fortune. Their expenditure was very large. Already his eldest daughter, Irene, had departed with most of her money, to his considerable indignation. It was therefore a difficult moment when Cimmie decided, with my support, to take the rest of her own. I insisted, and she agreed, that no detailed rejoinder should be made to his reproaches; it would have been all too easy, but would have created additional and unnecessary acrimony. It was a sad business which clouded a relationship otherwise invariably agreeable and happy.

Lord Curzon was difficult in money matters because he appeared to think that society owed him not merely a living but an existence of singular magnificence. He had the attitude of a spoilt child. This foible brought its nemesis, for his time was inordinately occupied with redundant domestic details. A man of considerable ability and immense industry, he became exhausted by attending to things which were quite unnecessary, a range of large establishments, and the staff required to conduct them. What Nature intended for politics was given to an interior decorating business. He had fine taste and knowledge which enabled him to acquire a valuable collection of pictures and objets d'art. Most of this collection was purchased by money supplied on his daughters' account, and they behaved generously in never attempting to deprive him of the results. He would have been wiser as well as more correct had he lived in a fashion more modest and less exacting, surrounded by a few objects whose beauty he rightly loved, leaving his time available for more serious considerations.

Lord Curzon's private life was indeed curiously organised, and in a manner which clearly exhausted him prematurely. I found him one day nailing down the stair carpet at Hackwood, and ventured to suggest that this was an inappropriate exercise for the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as half-a-dozen footmen were available for the task. Could not one of them do it? Yes, but not so well, was the reply. He suffered from what I call the Bonaparte complex. A cherished possession was one of the best libraries in the country on the subject of Napoleon, which he afterwards bequeathed to the Bodleian at Oxford. He had firmly grasped the central fact of Bonapartism, that by working eighteen hours a day one of the ablest men who ever lived could personally supervise every detail of the working of his State and army; it was said down to the last button on the last gaiter of the last soldier. What my father-in-law never fully understood was that Napoleon's was the last epoch in which such a way of life was possible, even with such ability. The machine has become too big for such personal control by even the most gifted individual; in a later age even Caesarism has to be collective. The opposite method must be employed, which entails delegation, and rests, above all, on the choice of men. The ideal of modern organisation is that the ablest man in the central position should have only two functions: to initiate, and to repair when no one else can. He should be there to create ideas and to derive them from the whole nation—particularly from science—to launch them, and to drive them forward; also to act as a permanent breakdown gang in the event of disaster, which cracks the nerve of most men or passes beyond their capacities. That concept of modern method was not within the range of Lord Curzon.

Curzon was a great public servant who deserved better than the shabby treatment he received in the end. He was not in touch with the mass of the people as modern prime ministers must be, and he lacked the sensitive antennae which enable men to know what completely different people are thinking and feeling and so to devise their action. But as Prime Minister he would at least have saved the country from the squalid betrayal which led the nation toward war without providing the necessary armaments through fear of losing an election. In that sense was justified, after Curzon's defeat, his bitter jibe that Baldwin's appointment was the strangest event of its kind since Caligula had made his horse a consul. Curzon's limitations in the sphere of economics should not necessarily have inhibited his rise to the highest office of State, because others could then have taken adequate economic measures in spheres unfamiliar to the Prune Minister. He would, however, have been impossible as Prime Minister in the present period, because the intimate revelation of television immediately presents as a figure of fun any archaic aristocrat who is clearly as remote from the lives of the people as he is ignorant of the all-important subject of economics.

It is also unattractive to see a man destroyed through advice being given to the Crown by his best friends without a word of warning being conveyed to him. 'Then dear George will be Prime Minister?'—we understand his intimates enquired of Lord Balfour after the giving of crucial advice—'No, dear George will not be Prime Minister,' was the feline reply. Another old friend who intrigued against him on that occasion was St. John Brodrick, later Lord Midleton. Lord Curzon used to recite some lines about this contemporary of his which I think were of Oxford composition: Every dull complacent plodder Was meant by fate to be a Brodder. Then how did St. John learn to brod? Why by the special grace of God.

His early connections and friendships did not prevent, indeed, they possibly promoted Curzon's betrayal at the crisis of his career. Loyalty in the party which advertises loyalty is not always so apparent on these testing occasions as in the simpler homes of the mass of the people in their dealings with each other.

Lord Curzon did not deserve the trivial malice of some of the attacks made on him since his death. It is a modern fashion to ignore most of a man's public service and to publish instead any private scandal that can be raked from the ashes, but it does not give a true or complete picture. From some accounts it might be imagined that money and romance played a larger part in Lord Curzon's life than his service to the State. He certainly had an affair with Elinor Glyn which was subsequently much publicised; she spent a long period decorating his beautiful Elizabethan house at Montacute, where Cimmie as a young girl was often in her company. As a result, I met Elinor Glyn when we became engaged, then a most sedate lady without aid of tiger skin and full of good advice. She was more intelligent than her books; they clearly excluded marriage with a Foreign Secretary before tenure of that office became a comic turn.

If Elinor Glyn had never written a line she would have been an appropriate wife for an orthodox Foreign Secretary. She was a model of decorum, exceptionally well behaved; slightly prim for the aristocracy, but a good example of what the bourgeois world then believed a lady to be. She was also well educated and capable of discussing subjects with which few of her athletic heroes or exotic heroines would have been familiar. She knew what would touch the neo-romantic mood of the period and gave it to them, as others do today for a different market. Authors of this type are often not so silly as the books they write, but have sound money sense. When Curzon married again his relationship with Mrs. Glyn ended. Apparently he had omitted to tell her about his intended marriage; I knew little of the rights and wrongs of the matter, but would guess that the news broke sooner than Curzon anticipated. He was probably quite happily engaged on two fronts and felt no urgent necessity to withdraw from either. The exigencies of Venus in this situation differ from those of Mars. I doubt whether he meant to treat Mrs. Glyn unkindly or discourteously, for this was not in his character.

There is some reason to believe that the distinguished strategist was engaged at this time on yet a third front. After so much ill-nature in posthumous accounts of this side of his life, a more genial story can do Curzon no harm. A drawing-room in Grosvenor Square was rocked with laughter during successive luncheon parties because a letter had arrived beginning: 'My beautiful white swan'. Lord Curzon had inadvertently transposed two letters in their envelopes; one a formal refusal of an invitation from Lady Cunard and the other intended for Mrs. Astor, afterwards Lady Ribblesdale, who was a widow, rich, beautiful—and an American. Lady Cunard used to explain in exquisitely embroidered detail how touched she was by this unexpected attention.

Lord Curzon's policy and record in his various high offices can be left to history. The personal story of him can be left at my wedding day, a most trying occasion for one of his character and temperament, which illustrated his deep good nature. The trials were nearly all my fault, perhaps in one respect also Cirnmie's. First, I was late. Lunching too happily at the Ritz with an old Sandhurst and army friend, who was my best man, I was approached by Lady Cunard with the apposite inquiry, 'Were you not being married five minutes ago?' We jumped up and hurried hatless down St. James's Street to the Chapel Royal, where Lord Curzon and the bride were waiting. He said not a word, but Cimmie afterwards teased me by saying he was obviously thinking I had run out at the last moment. It was also awkward because two kings and two queens were waiting—monarchs of Britain and Belgium, the latter had been at Hackwood during the war—and worse was to follow. Not realising the enormity of our youthful enthusiasms, we had arranged for a passage from Tristan and Isolde to be played at the end of the ceremony. It took far longer than we had realised, and all were standing throughout. To keep two kings and two queens standing while you played your favourite music was not included in Lord Curzon's social register, but it was the young people's day and their every whim must be satisfied. He took it all on the chin and never blinked an eyelid. That was good nature.

Our honeymoon was spent at Portofino, near Genoa, then an unspoilt fishing village. We lived in the Castello Brown, which belonged to the family of Francis Yeats-Brown, who wrote Bengal Lancer. History and beauty were there in rare combination. Both Dante and Napoleon had slept in the medieval fortress; across the lovely bay you could see at Spezia the tragic water, wine-dark with Shelley's drowning; along the heights which linked Portofino with Rapallo strode Nietzsche in the ecstasy of writing Zarathustra. Cimmie and I followed the same route more prosaically riding donkeys, and falling off them among the fireflies in the dusk. Every day we went through the orange groves to the sea, an enchantment which we recaptured the following year.

Travel in those early years engaged us much and some account of it belongs properly to this chapter of continuing life-experience and of the happiness of marriage, even if it means anticipating a little in time and leaving politics for a moment. The memory of Lord Curzon should always be joined to a journey through India, the land to which as Viceroy he gave so much. We v/ent to India in the winter of 1924. If contrast is the essence of life, it was certainly present in the diversity of this extraordinary experience. Within India we found extremes of beauty and of ugliness, of flaunting wealth and abysmal poverty.

We determined to see everything, and we did—at that time some of the worst working conditions and the vilest slums in the world. In Bombay the great tenement blocks with four families often living in one quite small room, each group with its separate fire and the only egress for the smoke, one window; in Calcutta shanty towns worse than any I have seen anywhere else, with the main drain running down the centre of the street. Nothing could have prevented continual outbreaks of typhoid except the sterilising effect of the strong sun on the open cesspools. In the cotton mills they worked for a wage of five shillings a week, often with modern machinery supplied by Lancashire for its own suicide. It was no monument either to the humanity or to the intelligence of the British Raj. The contrast was the supreme beauty of India and the massive achievement of British administration in at least procuring with slender means peace, tranquility and life without bloodshed.

We went by P. & O. boat and stopped shortly in Cairo, where we combined seeing the wonders of Egyptian antiquity with a tour of the local slums; they were bad, though not so bad as those in India. I remember finding in a Port Said bookshop for the first time Shaw's book on Wagner; it had not yet appeared in his collected works. The sphinx should always be seen for the first time as Shaw's favourite hero saw it, by night. The same is true of most of the world's masterpieces, notably the Taj Mahal and the Piazza San Marco at Venice. We may arrange these moments, but chance brings often the most poignant emotion, as when suddenly and without forethought in the Protestant cemetery at Rome I read the words: 'Here lies one whose name was writ on water'. Sometimes the acute experience of beauty is due to the fortune of solitude, as lately in Greece when for over half-an-hour I found myself entirely alone in the Parthenon during the luminous sunshine of the afternoon, and felt that Goethe's pilgrimage was realised: 'Das Land der Griechen mit der Seele suchend'.

The journey to India by boat gave us the opportunity to read everything that could be found in London on the Vedas and the Upanishads; every aspect of Indian religion had to be studied. It was interesting in itself and it opened many doors which might otherwise have been closed. The combination of an effort to discover what Indians thought and felt with the Left-wing politics which suggested some sympathy with their aspirations, took us much deeper into Indian life than was customary for the English.

To arrive in Ceylon is the best way to start the Indian journey. After bathing in a sea of caressing warmth came the retreat to the hotel's swimming-pool when an Indian friend told us that sea-snakes were about, which were poisonous; perhaps he was inventing them, for we never saw any. Then came a tour of the island, at that time superbly organised for the few tourists. British administration was more concentrated here than in the rest of India, and the result was a high degree of efficiency. You could motor through primeval jungle on macadam roads and meet an extraordinary variety of wild animals. The butterflies are without parallel anywhere else I have visited in the world. Passing through a cloud of them with the sensations of the wings brushing against the face is described with pages of voluptuous French adjectives by Francis de Croisset in his little book, La Feerie Cingalaise.

Repose from these excitements was in the clean and well-arranged rest-houses in the middle of the jungle, where all was provided by a single capable and agreeable Sinhalese. Next morning an early start had to be made to see from the great rock the sun rising, and steam mounting in mysterious clouds towards the dawn from the vivid green sea of jungle. Within this jungle were astonishing things. The vast black Buddha with the eternal lotus flowers placed by the big toe. The golden-robed monks moving through the jungle, glittering in the distance like fantastic insects against the sombre green of the interlacing trees. The lost cities, Anuradhaoura and Polunnaruwa, in those days partly buried in the oblivion of the all-embracing vegetation, were defended only by a vast pearl of water. A sense of man's ultimate destiny, of his interwoven inspiration rose from the exquisite moonstone designs of this superb civilisation as we learned that it was contemporary with the architecture of classic Greece. At that moment it was difficult to believe that mankind would not at some point in time be as one in a union of high achievement. Already across every physical division and without earthly consciousness of another presence, these two heights of human genius had reflected one another.

After a stay at Government House in Ceylon, and another in Madras, we went north to Calcutta, where the Governor was Lord Lytton; he was married to a woman of remarkable beauty and charm, one of whose daughters had been bridesmaid at our wedding. Lord Lytton had many contacts with Indian life, being a highly intelligent and sensitive man, while his sister, Lady Emily Lutyens, had penetrated into some of the inner circles in Madras. None of these officials placed any obstacle to our entry into the plenitude of Indian company and way of living; we were often guests in Indian houses, unusual at that time. Apart from the study of social conditions under the guidance of experts this gave us an insight into spheres not usually available to the English. For instance, on the way northwards we visited perhaps the most remarkable of all Indian temples, at Madura, in the company of an Indian authority whose exposition swiftly transmuted what appeared to European eyes as the barbaric obscenities of Hindu mythology into an elevated nature symbolism and remoter mysteries. We were sustained throughout our Indian journey by a subtle blend of official realism and Indian culture, which afforded us exceptional opportunities of understanding the country and the life of its people.

In Madras we entered the strange circle of Mrs. Besant and her friends. It was indeed a bizarre ensemble, for it occupied the house of Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect; a complete non-believer in the theosophist cult. I knew a certain amount about it, for during my days in hospital I had read books by Blavatsky, Leadbetter and Mrs. Besant herself; kindergarten versions of theosophy have recently become popular. It appeared to be a quite logical religious theory—with less of the obvious contradictions which in some cases make metaphysical debates so easy to the experienced dialectician—but it was, of course, entirely lacking in proof for anyone who had not enjoyed these strange and felicitous experiences in dream journeys. The absent Leadbetter or the happily present Mrs. Besant could explain to you every detail of their journey in the astral or devechanic plane, but any request for evidence would be regarded as philistinism.

Sir Edwin Lutyens' hearty English character would burst through all this like an elephant through tissue paper. 'Annie'—he would say to Mrs. Besant at breakfast—'I have just dreamt that we were married in our last life, and you did not let me smoke in bed.' He was a most whimsical and engaging fellow of whom we were very fond. At that time he had just had his estimates drastically cut for the palace he had been commissioned to build at Delhi, and this threatened to spoil all his proportions.

Among other things, the avenue for his ceremonial march of elephants had been shortened, and the hill was consequently too abrupt for their gait. His imitation of an elephant waddling in these conditions with a viceroy on top of him, was almost as diverting as his quick pencil distortions of the ceremonial coat of arms on official menu cards into the face and body of an angry pekinese dog, which made us laugh during pompous speeches at the Lord Mayor's banquet some years later. He was a great droll as well as a gifted architect, and got on strangely well with the brilliant band of Indian thinkers and mystics who surrounded Mrs. Besant and Lady Emily. Chief among them was Ramaswani Ayer— then responsible for law and order in Madras—who combined in a degree exceptional for those climes, the capacity for thought and action. This circle at least gave me a certain insight into Hindu thinking and character. Unfortunately most English people in touch with Indian life belonged to freak cults of this kind. The rest seemed to be entirely cut off, although officials at the highest level were making painstaking efforts to understand. The mass of officialdom appeared to live entirely apart, particularly the women. They seemed conscious of little or nothing except the heat, which of course always affects Europeans more after a long sojourn than it does during the casual visit. Their manners to Indians for the most part left much to be desired. I remember commenting afterwards that India would be lost by bad manners. Some distinguished Englishmen—Lord Willingdon, for example—were loved, simply because they had the good manners which Indians appreciate. It was embarrassing a little later to sit next at dinner in Paris to one of the most beautiful and distinguished of the Indian princesses who had been educated in that city, and to have my enquiry why she never came to London met with the reply—'because in Paris I am treated like a lady'. Indians were then very sensitive, but they had cause to be.

It required, therefore, a certain degree of intelligence and sensitivity to get on with Indians at that time. They were full of complexes, well described in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. This attitude contained both a sense of inferiority and superiority. We were staying with the Viceroy, Lord Reading—Rufus Isaacs of Mr. Asquith's Cabinet, a man of considerable capacity and of appropriately distinguished appearance—when the foremost orator among Indian statesmen came to dinner. 'Tell me, Mr. Sastri,' said, the Viceroy, 'how did you acquire such a perfect command of the English language?' 'Your Excellency, I had the inestimable advantage of four years at Oxford University.' 'But many of our young men have had the same chance, without becoming orators like you.' 'Your Excellency, I had one very slight additional advantage, four thousand years of culture behind me.' My mind went back to the story of Disraeli's retort to the suggestion of Lord Malmesbury that he was an upstart. 'My ancestors were princes in the Temple of Solomon, while yours were running through your wet English woods with their backsides painted blue.'

Yet this arrogance could blend with the opposite complex. I had been up in the Rajput country staying in the magnificent dwellings of the Rajahs, and on returning observed to one of my best and most intelligent Indian friends that I had not seen a single painting by any of the European masters among all their wealth of possessions. At once came the shadow, and I knew he was thinking: the European feels that we are incapable of appreciating his art. It took me three days hard work to restore the old good relations; it was so absurd, because I should not have expected to find exquisite Persian miniatures in the country houses of England, and would not have been offended if an Indian had suggested that some should be acquired. I did not feel blameworthy for that, but a gaffe in the Rajput country made me feel guilty. It was in Udaipur, the lovely Venice of India, a city built on water. The Maharajah invited us to stay and arranged an elaborately organised tiger-shoot. We were placed in a high tower well out of harm's way while about a thousand retainers drove through the jungle; they were dressed in bright gold—as sunbeams—to emphasise the historic fact that the Maharajah was descended from the sun. The sunbeams converged on us from all sides, but no tiger; he had escaped. A small porcupine ran out, and I shot him; meaning to show that we were in no way put out by the failure of the tiger-shoot and that we still regarded it all as a jolly occasion. But my festive gesture was taken sadly amiss, as a sign of derision of the shoot provided for the Maharajah's guests. Again, it took some hard work to return to grace and favour.

One Englishman at least well understood India and the Indians: a clergyman, C. F. Andrews, who was an intimate friend of Gandhi's. This Englishman of saintly character introduced me to the Indian saint. I entered the room to find Gandhi in kadda—the cloth he used to spin—sitting cross-legged on the floor. I too sat down cross-legged opposite to him, instead of using the chair provided for the European, which seemed too pompous in the circumstances. He was a sympathetic personality of subtle intelligence who in appearance, mind and sense of humour reminded me irresistibly of Lord Hugh Cecil; perhaps because he was another ardent metaphysician with a sense of fun. He invited me to a private conference then being held between Hindus and Moslems to try to make a united front; he was Chairman. At the first session a roaring row developed between the Hindus and the Moslem Ali brothers, two mountainous men in flowing robes. Throughout the uproar Gandhi sat on his chair on a dais, dissolved in helpless laughter, overwhelmed by the comical absurdity of human nature. Not the intervention of the Chairman, but the sinking of the sun eventually restored order. At the ordained moment the Ali brothers stopped short, whirled round to face the appropriate direction and flopped down on their knees with their foreheads in the dust. After the specified interval, up they jumped and launched the row again, full roar, just where they had left off.

I later wrote a report on the Indian situation which was privately circulated among British politicians. It made two main points: the first that we could stay in India as long as we wished without so much trouble as some anticipated; Hindus and Moslems were hopelessly divided; never had divide et impera been so easy, for it had happened naturally. Further, if we did go, there would be bloodshed on a great scale. The first point was proved by the ultimate division of the country. The second was tragically proved when we left, and nearly a million were killed in the riot and massacre which followed.

I tried to put the economic problem in a nutshell with the phrase: India needs a mogul with a tractor and a deep plough. After a study of Indian agriculture and the land tenure system it was evident that starvation would be perennial until that great plain was deeply ploughed and sown with cereals, but every form of social and religious custom stood in the way. When a man died his holding was divided among his family into small plots surrounded by low banks. These bunns were sacred and must not be touched, so no plough could cross them. The peasants were scratching about inside their plots with the wooden instruments they had used for millenia. The system of zeminder land holding in Bengal was in some respects even worse. Add to this the problem of the large population of sacred cows—cows with free feeding range, even to eat vegetables off market stalls—and it is not difficult to observe the basic problem of Indian economics. Nor was it hard to deduce that a far stronger government would be required to cut through the tangle than anything the West at that time was able to produce. Hence my remark about the mogul with the tractor; it is all too easy to surmise who this may now be.

I studied Indian agriculture through the University of Rabindranath Tagore; it was called Santiniketan, the abode of peace. Situated in the middle of the great plain, the skyline encircled it on all sides like the inverted bowl of Persian poetry. Unfortunately the poet himself was in America, and I never met him, but his family and assistants were there in full strength. The study of agriculture by day mingled agreeably in the evening with philosophic discussion. Indians were present who had graduated at Oxford, the Sorbonne and Heidelberg, in fact, at practically every university of Europe; European languages were fluently spoken. The discussions, sitting cross-legged under a huge tree, chiefly touched Sanskrit, and were conducted in English by a Swedish professor called Konnor, who had come specially for the purpose. After dark, philosophy would yield to music and dancing. Musical instruments of four-thousand-years-old design were played with a strangely haunting, plaintive appeal to far-away memories. Then came the young women of the Tagore family to dance, among them some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Their faces, with perfect Greek features, were whiter than the Europeans', white as fine ivory, their figures sinuous perfection as they swayed to the rhythm of the age-old dance. There was no purdah among them, but we never saw them except on these occasions.

I met most of the Indian politicians in due course; Jinnah the Moslem leader, who seemed to me an able but cold and cynical lawyer: his long life dedicated to his cause later belied my judgment. Das, the early Congress leader, another lawyer without much regard for Hindu customs—he earned enormous sums, ate meat and drank alcohol—seemed sincere and forceful in his political views. In the Nehru family I met the distinguished father, Moltilal, but not the more famous son who later became Prime Minister. He was probably serving his long novitiate in British jails; an apparently indispensable preliminary to high office in the Commonwealth. These men were highly intelligent, and also reasonable. It should surely have been possible to arrange any necessary transition in due order, without the final panic-stricken evacuation which caused so much bloodshed and left so much bitterness, even if we had not the strength first to solve the economic question which is the real problem in India, the looming tragedy behind all the chatter and posture of the demagogues, both British and Indian.

This is not the place to discuss the present political and economic problems of India; they must either be solved from within, or else from without under the overwhelming pressure of material disaster. A truly Indian solution would require another Akbar, an extraordinary genius of thought and action of the supreme Caesarean category. Akbar had all the great qualities, the capacity for the most seductive persuasion linked to a reluctant ability for ruthless action when all else failed, the extremes of gentle sensitivity within the steel framework of statesmanship. His relations—as so often happens— separated and exaggerated all the qualities which in him found such exquisite harmony. The execrable Auraungzeb expressed his Moslem faith by cutting off the heads of Hindu monuments in the same wanton spirit of childish, vicious fanatacism which moved some early Christians to strike the heads from what they considered the pagan idols of classic Greece. The heavy paw of the ignorant, bigoted clown in not confined to one continent, the loutery is everywhere, always.

The other extreme in this same family was Shah Jehan, who created the Fort at Delhi, an abode of enchantment. Situated on top of a hill, it was surrounded by a wall roughly a mile long. Over the door the Shah had inscribed in Persian: 'If there be a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here,' in reiterative ecstacy. He spent his days in a pool containing forty niches in which he and thirty-nine wives sat neck-deep in warm water while over them were sprayed forty different scents, one for each; between their feet swam a glittering variety of oriental fish with jewels round their necks and tails, while into his hand was pressed wine in a goblet cut from a single ruby. Sparkling waterfalls—iridescent from various coloured lights placed behind them—rested their vision until dark, when boats of silver and golden hue conveyed them to love trysts in pagodas again surrounded by the eternally scented waters. It took just three generations of that way of life to turn the northern conquerors into drivelling incapables; the hard ice melted into the slush of the plain. It was Schiller who wrote that only the high gods could combine sensuous beauty of existence with spiritual peace, which in his neo-Hellenic thinking could come only from the striving of achievement and creation.

I developed a deep and abiding affection for India, and resolved to help in its difficult problems if fate ever gave me the chance. Never has there been such a world of contrast; the terrible suffering of the masses in the slums of Bombay and Bengal; the abysmal poverty of millions gripped fast in old belief which denied the saving hand of modern science; the shock of incidents such as the dwarf, part animal, part human, tapping my leg when I was alone in the midst of a rather hostile Indian crowd, at the behest of his wealthy and humorous owner, who led him with a chain round his neck like a dog; the physical beauty of many Indian men and women, comparable with anything on earth and illumined by a combination of inner goodness and of high and fine intelligence; the Taj Mahal reflected in the water by moonlight—built by Shah Jehan and set in a cadre of cypresses by Lord Curzon—a symbol of Indian beauty rising from squalor and horror. India is a land of contrast, of ineffable beauty and of darkest sorrow, a jewel of the world, which challenges mankind to save it.