The Life of the Rt Hon Sir Charles W. Dilke, vol 1 | Page 3

periods incomplete because he had grasped the point involved
before they were halfway through a sentence; but his delight in finding
this same rapidity of thought in others was great, and I remember his

instancing it as a characteristic of Mr. Asquith.
His wide grasp of every question with which he dealt was accompanied
by so complete a knowledge of its smallest details that vague or
inaccurate statements were intolerable to him; but I think the patience
with which he sifted such statements was amongst the finest features in
the discipline of working under him. One felt it a crime to have wasted
that time of which no moment was ever deliberately wasted by himself.
The spirit in which he approached his work was one of detachment
from all personal considerations; the introduction of private feuds or
dislikes into public service was a thing impossible to him and to be
severely rebuked in those who helped him. He never belittled
antagonists, underrated his opponents' ability, or hesitated to admit a
mistake. Others will testify in the pages which follow to the warmth
and generosity of his friendship, but that which stands out in memory is
his forbearance to his foes.
Just as his knowledge was complete in its general grasp as in its
smallest detail, so was his sympathy all-embracing. No suffering, says
the Secretary of the Anti-Sweating League, was too small for his help;
the early atrocities of Congo misrule did not meet with a readier
response than did the wrongs of some heavily fined factory girl or the
sufferings of the victim of a dangerous trade.
For his own achievements he was curiously regardless of fame. He
gave ungrudgingly of his knowledge to all who claimed his help and
direction, and he trained many other men to great public service. In Mr.
Alfred Lyttelton's happy phrase, he possessed "rare self-effacement."
There are many instances in his early career of this habit of
self-effacement, and the habit increased with years. Remonstrance met
with the reply: "What does it matter who gets the credit so long as the
work is done?"
It is for this reason that we who love him shall ever bear in affectionate
memory those who brought his laurels home to him in their celebration
of the passing of the Trade Boards Act in 1910--that first instalment of
the principle of the minimum wage, on which he united all parties and
of which he had been the earliest advocate.
It has been said of his public life that he knew too much and interested
himself in too many things; but those coming after who regard his life
as a whole will see the connecting link which ran through all. I can

speak only of that side of his activities in which I served him. He saw
the cause of labour in Great Britain as it is linked with the conditions of
labour throughout the globe; his fight against slavery in the Congo, his
constant pressure for enlightened government in India, his
championship of the native races everywhere, were all part and parcel
of the objects to which he had pledged himself from the first. For
progress and development it is necessary that a country should be at
peace, and his study of military and naval problems was dictated by the
consideration of the best means under existing conditions to obtain that
end for England.
Yet to imagine that his life was all work would be to wrong the balance
of his nature. He turned from letters and papers to his fencing bout, his
morning gallop, or his morning scull on the river, with equal
enthusiasm, and his great resonant boyish laugh sounded across the
reach at Dockett or echoed through the house after a successful
"touch." His keenness for athletic exercises, dating from his early
Cambridge days, lasted, as his work did, to the end. In spite of the
warnings of an overtaxed heart, he sculled each morning of the last
summer at Dockett, and in Paris he handed over his foils to his
fencing-school only a month before his death, leaving, like Mr.
Valiant-for-Truth before he crossed the river, his arms to those who
could wield them. It was well for him; he could not have borne long
years of failing strength and ebbing mental energy. Anything less than
life at its full was death to him.
Released from work, he was intensely gay, and his tastes were
sufficiently simple for him to find enjoyment everywhere. He loved all
beautiful things, and, though he had seen everything, the gleam of the
sinking sun through the pine aisles at his Pyrford cottage would hold
him spellbound; and in summer he would spend hours trying to
distinguish the bird notes, naming the river flora, or watching the
creature life upon