t because he could not speak
effectually, and because the House of Commons--that most self-satisfied
assembly of mediocrities--did not take to him, he was never offered by
his political leaders during all the long years of his patient service
even an under-secretaryship.

This was the man who saved the nation from one of its greatest perils
during perhaps the most critical period of the war.

As one examines Lord Rhondda's administration of the Ministry of Food
one discovers an interesting and surely an important fact in the
psychology of our public life.

His triumph, which was one of the greatest in the war, lay almost
entirely in the region of personality. For his gravest difficulties were
not so much in the office of the Ministry as in the great and grumbling
world outside, where toiling men and women stood outside provision shops
for hours in the rain and cold only to be told in the vast majority of
cases when their turn came that supplies were exhausted for that day.

By the power of his imagination Lord Rhondda saw that the first step
towards saving a very perilous situation was to convince this vast world
of seething discontent that absolute justice should characterize the
administration of his office. To this end, satisfied that those about
him were men of devoted zeal and real talent, he set himself to the
creation of a public opinion favourable to the discharge of his duties.
And by a stroke of inspiration he saw that to achieve this tranquillity
of the public mind he must give his own personality to the world. His
character must become a public possession. A man, and not an office,
must stand for Food Control. The instinct of the Briton for justice and
fair play must receive assurance from a moral personality.

Therefore no member of the Government was more accessible, or more ready
to be interviewed and photographed, than the Food Controller. It was not
vanity, but foreseeing statesmanship, which opened his door to the
humblest newspaper reporter who visited the Ministry. His personality--a
moral, just, fearless, and confident personality--had to be conveyed to
the mind of the public, and every interview he gave to the Press had
this important objective for its reason. He saw the morals of an
economic situation, and he solved those economics very largely by making
a moral impression on the public mind.

The work of his office was carried to victory by Sir William Beveridge,
Captain Tallents, Professor