I had great joy out of
the hearty humours of old Asquith, the late Lord Oxford; [Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1908 to 1916] and though our
conversations were light and even flippant, he was one who rose gloriously to
flippancy. Once when he appeared in Court dress, on some superbly important
occasion, an uncontrollable impulse of impertinence led me to ask whether the
Court sword would really come out of its sheath. “Oh, yes,” he said, shaking a
shaggily frowning head at me, “Do not provoke me.” But he also had about the
fundamentals of politics and ethics this curious quality of vagueness, which I
have found so often in men holding high responsibilities. He did not mind
answering a silly question about a sword; but if it had been a sensible
question about a super-tax, he would have adopted, however genially, a fencing
sort of swordsmanship. He would have faintly felt that he was being heckled,
and almost been disposed to ask for notice of that question. I have a
difficulty in not darkening the fine shade that I intended; he was very public,
as public men go; but they all seem to become hazier as they mount higher. It
is the young and unknown who have decisive doctrines and sharply declared
intentions. I once expressed it by saying, I think with some truth, that
politicians have no politics.
-Autobiography (1936)
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