egoing examples will serve to illustrate the kind of difficulty
which every statesman has to encounter in dealing with political
misdeeds, and the impossibility of treating them by the clearly defined
lines and standards that are applicable to the morals of a private life.
Whatever conclusions men may arrive at in the seclusion of their
studies, when they take part in active political life they will find it
necessary to make large allowances for motives, tendencies, past
services, pressing dangers, overwhelming expediencies, opposing
interests. Every statesman who is worthy of the name has a strong
predisposition to support the public servants who are under him when he
knows that they have acted with a sincere desire to benefit the Empire.
This is, indeed, a characteristic of all really great statesmen, and it
gives a confidence and energy to the public service which in times of
difficulty and danger are of supreme importance. In such times a
mistaken decision is usually a less evil than timid, vacillating, or
procrastinated action, and a wise Minister will go far to defend his
subordinates if they have acted promptly and with substantial justice in
the way they believed to be best, even though they may have made
considerable mistakes, and though the results of their action may have
proved unfortunate.

But of all forms of prestige, moral prestige is the most valuable, and
no statesman should forget that one of the chief elements of British
power is the moral weight that is behind it. It is the conviction that
British policy is essentially honourable and straightforward, that the
word and honour of its statesmen and diplomatists may be implicitly
trusted, and that intrigues and deceptions are wholly alien to their
nature. The statesman must steer his way between rival fanaticisms--the
fanaticism of those who pardon everything if it is crowned by success
and conduces to the greatness of the Empire, and who act as if weak
Powers and savage nations had no moral rights; and the fanaticism of
those who always seem to have a leaning against their own country, and
who imagine that in times of war, anarchy, or rebellion, and in dealings
with savage or half-savage military populations, it is possible to act
with the same respect for the technicalities of law, and the same
invariably high standard of moral scrupulousness, as in a peaceful age
and a highly civilised country. In the affairs of private life the
distinction between r