nterpret their ideas, transact their tribal business, and go away
without an Arab to admit that the strange new chief--or whatever they
might call him--would ever learn to be a true Arab.

This man without a congenial country has an unlimited talent for adapting
himself to the necessities of time, place and opportunity. He has little
or no power to assimilate himself to the real life of the people. He
trailed like a comet through the land of his birth and left it in a
mirage of finance before Canada had made him a citizen. He went to
England where in a few months he had made himself intimate with public
affairs; and in ten years, "with all his honours thick upon him," he has
not yet become an Englishman.

Once only I met this extraordinary man, at close range, for a number of
hours. He was a most absorbing study; and he knew it. There never was a
moment when Beaverbrook could not consciously estimate the effect of his
actions upon some other man, or group of men. As an actor he is not a
mediocrity.

A personal friend vividly describes meeting him at a small semi-private
dinner in a Canadian city. The ostensible occasion was a mere
complimentary affair to his lordship. The psychological objective
was--something else. There began the conjecture. What was it?

It must be inferred. There are some men who study the effect of
themselves upon a group. The group method of psychology is essentially
Beaverbrookian.

A number of speeches had been pre-arranged for this dinner on behalf of
various interests. At the close of the talks Beaverbrook was asked to
respond to a toast of his own health. He did so in a perfectly amazing
confessional of a speech, saying things which he said he felt sure no
journalist present would publish. He was asked questions. Each question
meant one more speech. He made four in all, occupying much more than an
hour of time in a most graphic and humanly interesting account of things
that had happened behind the curtain in British politics, shrewd
estimates of the signs of the times, forecasts of coming events and vivid
delineations of great men whom he had intimately met in various parts of
Europe.

In all this there was not a trace of embarrassment or of suspicion. The
little dynamo with the prodigious head and the baby mouth and the
intense, deepset, restless eyes stood by his chair, and with knuckles on
the table much of the time, talked down into the flowers directly in
front o